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C o nv e r t s ,H e r e t i c s ,and L e p e r s

Maimonides and The Outsider

J A M E S A . D I A M O N D

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

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© 2007 University of Notre Dame Press

Copyright © 2007 by University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Diamond, James Arthur.

Converts, heretics, and lepers: Maimonides and the outsider /

by James A. Diamond.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-268-02592-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-268-02592-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Maimonides, Moses, 1135–1204. 2. Other (Philosophy) 3. God (Judaism)

I. Title.

B759. M34D48 2007

296.1'81—dc22

2007033426

This book is printed on recycled paper.

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1

Introduction

O ver the course of my lengthy, and often interrupted, intellec-tual journeys I have repeatedly returned to Moses Maimonidesand his rich corpus of writings, seeking an anchor for my Juda-ism. Beginning in the yeshivah, or traditional rabbinical academy,and through numerous detours eventually landing me within theacademy, every genre of his thought—be it law, Talmud, exegesis,or philosophy—spoke to me as no other Jewish thinker could.Maimonides had assorted audiences in mind when crafting suchworks as his groundbreaking code of Jewish law, the MishnehTorah, or when articulating his lifelong struggle to reconcile thefaith into which he was born, and to which he would remainunflinchingly loyal, with equally cherished reason in the Guide ofthe Perplexed. In many ways these audiences are reflected in thevarious stages through which my own journey has passed from theyeshivah to the academy. The constituents of a public readershipmirror the various stages reached by an evolving reader, whoserepeated turns to a worthy text draw him into greater depths ofmeaning. The text increasingly discloses itself as the reader liber-ates himself from his social and literalist constraints.

When Maimonides took his prized student Joseph aside forprivate instruction, he took all his prospective readers aside for

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the very same purpose. When he abandoned his earlier project to “explainall the difficult passages in the Midrashim” (GP Intro., 9), he gave up anyattempt to write for the public at large. His experiment with different liter-ary forms ended in frustration, amounting to the simple exchange of oneparable for another and defeating the goals he had set for himself of clari-fying, explaining, and ultimately resolving doubt and confusion. Straight-forward explication would have offended the very principles that underliethe rabbinic literary form of midrash, since the general public would notfind its message palatable. Jewish law, or halakhah, had also imposed se-vere restrictions on the public teaching of the esoteric material that is thesubject matter of the Guide (m. Hagigah 2:1), limiting Maimonides’ op-tions even further. He was left with no choice but to both disclose andconceal at the same time.1 Those who do “not find impossibilities hard toaccept” (GP Intro., 10) could be comfortably ignored since they alreadyunderstood midrash and contentedly operated in a world of the absurd.Rabbinic authority sculpted their world, and so there was never a clash be-tween midrash and science that required any reconciliation. For them, ifthe prophet heard God then God has a larynx and vocal chords. God iswhat the prophet describes or sees. There is no standard outside of thetext by which to judge prophetic language, and so the prophet shapes theworld and God and bequeaths them to an undiscriminating posterity.

Maimonides had an entirely different posterity in mind when he chosethe format of the Guide to preserve his esoteric teachings. Aside fromthe obvious philosophical and rabbinic proficiency he expected of hisintended readers, the most essential qualifications he anticipated as anentitlement to read his work were angst and confusion caused by “theexternals of the Law” (ibid., 5). He was not interested in generating thatangst; nor, I believe, was he interested in altogether quelling it. Withoutthe Guide the Jew who pledged his allegiance to Torah and sophia couldonly hold on to both by leading an anxiety-ridden life that “would notcease to suffer from heartache and great perplexity” (ibid., 6).2 The ten-sion between the two would have to be so overpowering as to demandthe surrender of one of them; the choice would be determined by thegreater of the pull of either intellectual honesty or religious conformity.

Maimonides offered to transform these opposing pulls from repel-lent forces into convergent ones by attuning those “distressed” seekers tothe literary genre of metaphor. Once prophetic language was understoodto be equivocal and its narratives parabolic, a new dimension would

2 n Converts, Heretics, and Lepers



open up in which the religious and philosophical flourish. Metaphor wasthe remedy to restore a bifurcated existence into a holistic one in which re-ligion, law, and science meld into one seamless truth. Maimonides cau-tioned his readers, however, that the process of attunement to the figura-tive nuances of prophetic and rabbinic language would itself entail itsown angst. He warned them to be realistic in their expectations, for “I donot say that this Treatise will remove all difficulties for those who under-stand it” (ibid., 6). Maimonides’ textual legacy inspired a new productivereading angst to replace the former destructive existential angst by itsstrategies of scantiness (“chapter headings”), organizational chaos (“Notset down in order or arranged in coherent fashion . . . but rather are scat-tered and entangled”), and elusiveness (“my purpose is that the truths beglimpsed and then again concealed”) (ibid.).3 The searcher who wishes toenter the Maimonidean academy must be willing to accept an angst-riddenfuture in which every point of clarity that is achieved paves the way forfurther perplexity. The end goal of the quest for knowledge is paradoxi-cally the furthest reaches of no knowledge.

Maimonides contended that his writing style follows a long-standingtradition commenced by God Himself and picked up by the sages “follow-ing the trail of these [prophetic] books” of communicating in “riddles andparables” (ibid., 7). God is as important an exemplar of writing as he isof pure contemplative thought. The compositions in which Maimonidesexploited this strategy of dissemblance were never intended to garnersubstantial audiences and become insider texts. In the case of the MishnehTorah, he informed his beloved student Joseph ben R. Judah that “I did notcompose this hibbur to gain prominence in Israel or to garner for myself areputation but I composed it—and God himself knows—primarily for my-self ” (Iggerot, 300–301, emphasis mine). As far as the Guide is concerned,it was written as a private correspondence to the very same student withthe stated intention to “address that single man [virtuous man] by himself”(ibid., 16). His two major works are private affairs, conversations with onlymyself or, at their most expansive, with himself, emerging out of privatespaces. They are self-heuristic exercises, or, at the most, private dialoguesinto which the reader can eavesdrop. The reader has been duly forewarned:trade in your existential distress for a lifetime of struggle solving theriddles of the very text, which holds the key to solving riddles.

The prerequisites for students who wish to be taught the two mostesoteric disciplines within the medieval Jewish studies curriculum—the

Introduction n 3



first chapters of Genesis known as the “Account of Creation” (ma’asehbereshit) and the first chapter of Ezekiel or the “Account of the Chariot”(ma’aseh merkavah)—were compared by the medieval commentator Efodito the seven items of clothing priests were required to wear for the templeservice (MN 4a–b). The analogy captures a new theology wherein serviceof God has moved from the space of the temple to the abstract arena ofthe mind. The priests have been replaced by the sages/philosophers as itsnew attendants.4 They can be identified by their “clothing” (intellectualand ethical constitutions), and the rule “when their clothes are on theirpriesthood is on, when their clothes are not on their priesthood is noton” (MT Laws of the Temple Vessels 10:4) still metaphorically applies. Ac-cording to Maimonides, certain priestly vestments can not be worn on anyoccasion other than temple service (MT Laws of the Temple Vessels 8:12),and so, analogously, the troubled scholar cannot publicize all of his quali-fications. One of those better kept a private affair is the anxiety that wouldbe disturbing to a public unaware that there is anything in their traditionthey need be anxious about. A sage who struggles with tradition wouldpose an unsettling picture for those who look up to him for leadershipand guidance.

Another aspect of priestly clothing deepens the significance of theanalogy. Just as many of the laws regarding temple sanctity are intendedto promote awe and reverence for the temple, so the priests must wear“the most splendid, finest and most beautiful garments”; as Polonius saysto Laertes in Hamlet, “the apparel oft proclaims the man,” and the publicjudges worth and value based on appearance. Clothing conceals as muchas it reveals, “for to the multitude an individual is not rendered greatby his true form, but by the perfection of his limbs and the beauty of hisclothes” (GP III:45, 579). What goes on within the “true form” of man,that is the intellect, must be covered up to make a positive impression.Maimonides replaced the geographical space, which God and man wereonce understood to share and where there was divine/human interaction,5

with intellectual apprehension, in the exercise of which “the divine in-tellect conjoined with man” (GP I:1, 23).

Maimonides created a textual space restricted to those who completetheir preliminary studies of logic, mathematics, and natural science, allow-ing them to proceed to the final stage of divine science—a group so statis-tically insignificant as to be limited to “one of a city or two of a family”(Jer 3:14; GP I:34, 75). Finally, after a lifetime of work in the arenas of com-




munity activism, politics, public health, and business,6 he carved out aspace on the margins to which he could retreat and invite other “solitaryindividuals” to share those margins with him. Already in his legal code,the Mishneh Torah, he set the stage for camaraderie of the singular and soli-tary. Historical precedent had shown, however, that the prospects of qual-ifying as one of those “solitary individuals” Maimonides had in mind wereminimal. The attempt by four of “the great men of Israel and great sages”to master the divine and natural sciences ended in a 25 percent success rateand disastrous consequences for the failures; “they did not all possess thecapacity to know and grasp these subjects clearly” (MT Laws of the Founda-tions of the Torah 4:13).7 Those with inadequate preparation and qualifica-tions faced the direst prospects of heresy, insanity, or even death.

Maimonides adopted the rabbinic metaphor of the “garden” (pardes) todescribe and explain these esoteric disciplines, and the endeavor to com-prehend them is correspondingly “a walk in the garden” (ibid.). The firstoccurrence of this term in the Hebrew Bible is set in a context of impene-trability. The lover of the Song of Songs addresses his “sister,” his “bride,”as a “locked garden [gan na‘ul] . . . a locked pool [gal na‘ul],8 a sealed foun-tain [ma’ayan hatum],” and continues, “Your shoots are a garden [pardes]of pomegranates” (Song 4:12–13). Twice locked and once sealed, the origi-nal context of pardes is shrouded in mystery and exclusivity. In many ways,Maimonides’ philosophical project is an attempt to gain access to the pri-mal Garden of Eden where thought reigned free of imaginative constraints(GP I:2). Could it be that Adam’s utopian state was shattered once he madethe transition from loneliness (Gen 2:18) to companionship? It is no coinci-dence, from a Maimonidean perspective, that the moment the social circlewidened the decline began, from looking only upward to looking at oneselfas standing before others: “And the eyes of both of them were opened andthey knew that they were naked” (Gen 3:7). It was only then that clotheswere needed and concealment became endemic to society. Human beingsbecame elohim, defined by Maimonides as “rulers,” whose primary con-cerns are governance and social harmony. The process of concealmentshifted from clothes (“and He clothed them” [Gen 3:21]) to language (“AndGod said to Cain ‘where is your brother Abel?’ and he responded ‘I don’tknow; am I my brother’s keeper?’” [Gen 4:9]).

The language of the prophets is all-embracing, as reflected in theaxiom The Torah speaks in the language of the sons of man (common humanparlance). However, the Torah’s popularity is sustained at the expense

Introduction n 5



of unequivocal truth, for “everything that the multitude consider a per-fection is predicated of Him, even if it is only a perfection in relation toourselves—for in relation to Him, may He be exalted, all things that we con-sider perfections are the very extreme of deficiency” (GP I:26, 56; emphasismine). The Torah describes God in terms of how man views himself andso, curiously, openly espouses a narcissistic theology. Maimonides setout to redirect man’s gaze upward.9

The chapters that follow discuss one means of redirecting that gaze.Each focuses on a type or character that in some way is an outsider, onewho does not quite fit any broad societal norm. They become, in Maimoni-des’ hands, metaphors for something much larger than their own exis-tential predicaments. The external existences of such outsiders are trans-formed into philosophical archetypes of notions that are marginal and that,in turn, marginalize. Whether it is the convert who enters from the outsidein or the heretic who travels from the inside out, they are philosophicallysuggestive in Maimonides’ deft hands. Each one radically reorients theo-logical perceptions and challenges long-standing “beliefs” (as opposed todemonstratively gained knowledge) through a type that itself poses ex-istential and social challenges. There is a heightened urgency to ostracizethe leper and the heretic because they pose far greater philosophical dangersthan previously thought. The convert is far more an insider than acknowl-edged and, in fact, may be the only authentic insider, leaving his new hoststhemselves as outsiders. The sage/philosopher can only pretend to be aninsider while he transports himself internally, in the realm where authen-tic existence abides, to the regions most remote from his religious cohorts.The king starts at the point most distant from the inside and travels in theother direction, pushed inside by the extreme humility his throne embod-ies. To hold on to any true sense of God, the philosophical traditionalistmust be pushed beyond anything familiar, distanced and estranged fromman—beyond cognition. Maimonides constructed these metaphors out ofhis own outsider space, where he may have developed an affinity for out-siders as apt conveyors of philosophical truths.

Maimonides took his literary cue from his perception of nature. Thenatural analogue of the literary maxim The Torah speaks in the language ofthe sons of man is the rabbinic maxim that governs all of reality, The worldgoes its customary way,10 which excludes any permanent change in the natu-ral order of the world. Just as language conforms to human nature, so na-ture persistently conforms to its own design. Miracles, however, are the




natural equivalent of the existential outsider and must be accounted for aspossible violations of that rule. The solution is to naturalize them, consis-tent with rabbinic sources stating that “when God created that which ex-ists and stamped upon it the existing natures, He put it into these naturesthat all the miracles that occurred would be produced in them at the timewhen they occurred.”11 In a sense, then, every miracle, normally perceivedas a suspension of the physical laws of nature, can be viewed as in factsubstantiating the natural order by directing our attention back to its ori-gins at creation. The miracle, or the “outsider” phenomenon, is merely an-other facet of nature, or the “insider” order. Every interruption or extraor-dinary event indicates the universal order, and its eventual relapse backinto a natural state of affairs vindicates the durability of natural causa-tion. From its inception, nature is conditioned to interrupt itself at certainhistorical junctures. Ruptures in nature are therefore an integral part ofthe historical chain set in motion at the point of creation.

The rule The world goes its customary way will continue to be opera-tive in the messianic era as well: “It should not enter one’s mind that dur-ing the messianic period any law of nature will cease or that there will beany novelty in the creation. The world will go its customary way” (MTLaws of Kings 12:1).12 It maintains the seamless continuum between theorigins of man and the world on one end and the crowning achievementof human potential on the other. Beginnings anticipate ends. The mes-sianic period culminates a historical series of peaks and valleys in the re-alization of the human “form,” the “image of God” (tzelem elohim), com-mencing with a single human (adam) and climaxing with humankind.Every miraculous “outside” event then looks back at creation and forwardto messianic utopia by jolting one into an awareness of the principle Theworld goes its customary way. Rather than offending the rule, miracles areshocking reminders of its operational currency. Just as each of the out-siders examined in this book stands as a metaphor for broader philosophi-cal ideals, so the miracle is an empirical metaphor for the workings of na-ture, which in turn apprises human beings of creation and its originatingdivine impetus. Increasing awareness of origins (creation) also heightensone’s consciousness of destination (the messianic era). The very structureof the Mishneh Torah reflects this journey, beginning with “the fundamen-tal of all fundamentals and the pillar of all sciences to know that there isa First Existence and that He has brought everything that exists into ex-istence,” and ending with another fundamental principle, anticipation of

Introduction n 7



the messianic period. The latter feeds right back into the beginning, sincethen “there will be no other preoccupation of the entire world than toknow God alone.”13 The Mishneh Torah charts a historical current initiatedby an individual commandment to know a First Existence (“I am the Lordyour God” [Exod 20:2])14 and evolves into a universal state of affairs inwhich that knowledge is endemic to all of humanity—the normative be-comes the norm.

More importantly, metaphor drives the historical continuum from itsinception to its culmination. The Torah’s anthropomorphic language can-not be a true description of any being that can be known as a singularFirst Existence. All such language, therefore, is geared “to the capacity ofthe public who only appreciate physicality and the Torah speaks in thelanguage of men and they are all figures of speech as it is written When Iwhet my flashing sword [Deut 32:41]. Has God a sword and does He kill witha sword? It is a metaphor and all such phrases are metaphors” (MT Lawsof the Foundations of the Torah 1:9). Likewise, all prophetic depictions ofthe messianic period in terms of the fantastic, emblematic of which is“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down withthe kid” (Isa 11:6), “is metaphor and riddle (mashal, hidah) . . . and all simi-lar passages regarding the messiah are metaphorical, and in the days of themessianic king the meaning of the metaphors and to what they allude willbe known to all” (MT Laws of Kings 12:1). In a sense, deciphering metaphoris the defining feature of the messianic age. Aside from the political ac-tivism required to bring about universal peaceful coexistence, every read-ing of prophetic texts that is cognizant of their metaphorical content andthat determines the meaning of such metaphor constitutes a step closerto this redemptive epoch. Hermeneutics is redemptive.

The time when all humanity will be engaged in one goal—the knowl-edge of God—is also tantamount to a universal engagement with the in-terpretation of metaphor. Messianic redemption is as much about her-meneutical activity as it is about political and theological activism. It isprecisely for this reason that Isaiah casts this period as a new creation—“For behold I create new heavens and a new earth” (Isa 65:17)— sinceclarity of metaphor brings clarity of a “First Existence who has broughteverything that exists into existence.” Piercing through the veil of meta-phor leads to understanding the origins of the world, which in turn lendspermanence to the new world, heralded by the Messiah.15 The metaphorsthat now conceal God will become transparent when the metaphors that




now conceal the messianic period become themselves transparent. Mai-monides sought to offer hermeneutical guidance so that one can fully ap-preciate “the key to the understanding of all that the prophets, peace beon them, have said, and to the knowledge of its truth . . . [that is,] an un-derstanding of the parables, of their import, and of the meaning of thewords occurring in them” (GP Intro., 9–10). During the course of his en-terprise, he constructed his own “parables” out of the biblical and rabbinicfabric he inherited. The theme of this study is to show how this was ac-complished with one piece of that fabric—namely, outsiders constructedas “parables,” or metaphors. In this vein, Maimonides perpetuated thelegacy of the prophetic hermeneutic.

To illustrate what awaits the reader, I offer here a sampling of twoof the “outsiders” who are afforded comprehensive treatments in laterchapters: the convert and the king. Both operate at the margins of societyalthough at extreme opposite poles of the social spectrum. The convert,the alien who has joined the ranks but whose status remains legally dis-tinct and who will likely never achieve full social integration,16 becomesa parable about the authentic Jew. For Maimonides, this foreign import is,in essence, the only truly indigenous Jew. All biologically bred Jews areactually hampered by their genetic pedigree, and the standard by whichtheir Judaism is to be judged is the convert’s. The outsider, whose pres-ence has infiltrated insider space, becomes the only genuine insider, rela-tive to whom all insiders are edged outside.17 Though Maimonides wasconstrained by his commitment to the rabbinic tradition to assign the con-vert a separate juridical status, he was able to escape that inequity by con-structing a metaphysics of conversion. Maimonides’ convert ultimatelyovercomes the rabbinic presentation of converts “as marginal beings, oc-cupying the liminal space between the Israelite and the gentile communi-ties.”18 God’s personal love for the convert—for the biblical ger (stranger)in Deut 10:18, which becomes the rabbinic term for convert19—is a reflexof the convert’s love for God, as the only one even capable of an unadulter-ated amore dei.

The king, as a figure who occupies the uppermost extremity of thesocial hierarchy, is also an outsider presence, but is one who can be so im-posing and overwhelming as to leave no space for anyone else. While theconvert’s acceptance is always tenuous and his “orphaned” status leaveshim vulnerable, the king’s position may be so overpowering as to exposeeveryone beneath him to that same vulnerability. In a sense, he poses the

Introduction n 9



danger of making all who perceive him as the ultimate authority into out-siders and therefore need look no further upward than him as the source oftheir sustenance and object of their fear.20 Civilization has in fact experi-enced the logical outgrowth of just such a perception in the doctrine of thedivine right of kings. To prevent the realization of such an idolatrous the-ology, Maimonides’ juridical construction of the king consciously aims atlowering the king to the opposite end of the social spectrum where, in fact,the converts, the orphans, and the destitute reside. The result is an impe-rial image that projects the very extremes of humility, an ideal ethical pos-ture codified as an exception to the ethical golden mean in Maimonides’Laws of Ethical Traits (hilkhot de‘ot). It is through the prism of the kingthat Maimonides informs us of the precise meaning of the formulations“lowly of spirit” (shefal-ruah) and “exceedingly base of spirit” (ruho nemukholeme’od) (MT Laws of Ethical Traits 2:3).21

No Maimonidean king could ever deify the throne as did King James(1566–1625) in an address to the English Parliament in which he pro-claimed, “Kings are justly called Gods for they exercise a manner or re-semblance of divine power on earth. For if you consider the attributesto God you will see how they agree in the person of the king. God hathpower to create or destroy, make or unmake at his pleasure. . . . And thelike power have kings.”22 Maimonides’ king becomes the very embodimentof supreme humility, a metaphor for everyman, by directing his subjects’gaze downward rather than upward. The precedent for Maimonides’ idealmonarch is the midrashic David, of whom it is said, “No man in Israelabased himself for the sake of the commandments more than David . . . [ashe said:] Like the baby that has just come out of its mother’s womb and isnot too proud to suck at his mother’s breasts, so is my soul within me, forI am not ashamed to learn Torah even from the least in Israel.”23 The ex-treme standard of humility that is assimilated by the king not only thwartsany Pharaoh-like image that “belongs not to the order of mankind butto that of the gods,”24 but also inspires a universal awareness of the greatdivide between man and God.




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