Sentimental Beliefs

By: Jonathan Seidel

French textuality, anti-maimonideans and orthodox dogma 

Maimonides is famous for writing his thirteen principles. What is not well known and has raised recent scholarship from Kellner and Shapiro is mitigating the uniformity. Kellner traces the controversy through the Middle Ages, while Shapiro breaks down the alternative opinions. I myself have written extensively on the subject. There is a historical component and an ideological component. I reckon that I’ve used the history to bolster my ideological position like Kellner though I take it way farther in alluding to a revolutionary identity. Before arriving at the ramifications of the historical discontinuity, it is best to lay out the linear drive of dogma in Jewish history beginning before Maimonides. 

There is no such word for belief in the ancient world. There was no dogma, no religious wars and so forth. Dogma was a christian invention with advent of their conversion model. Anyone in the world can be christian if one believed in certain doctrines. This revolutionary idea crosses borders. No longer was location or even practice relevant, now it was soulful and abstract. This mission required a structure of belief to connote the necessary obligations of an affiliate. The muslims caught wind of this and proposed similar ideas following in the christian influence. Though I am unsure of this was an original intent, it nonetheless creeped into the religion. There is one mention of Jewish beliefs in tenth chapter of Sanhedrin. Even if this considered the Jewish dogma it is nothing like Maimonides’ list and is more like the minimised ani ma’amins. It does seem more polemical than creedal but nonetheless it is incongruent with later developments.   

Maimonides thirteen principles are not the ani ma’amins said after the morning services. Those are corrupted phrases of Maimonides. Maimonides’ list especially in the Commentary to the Mishnah are flushed out, philosophically generated and intelligently argued. For Maimonides it was not just to believe in the principle but understand its totality. This was no hidden gem in the Guide but bright as day in the commentary and repeated in the codex. To hold by Maimonides principles is to accept in their entirety. To accept his frame and defend against, instead of censoring his intellectual mastery. Though he was attacked in the infamous controversy, it was not his principles that were ever part of the problem. His codification and philosophy were the issue. Though Nahmanides requested that the ban on Sefer Madda which includes the principles be lifted it is unclear that the principles are the problem and rather the philosophical theology as a whole that it is. 

Maimonides’ principles went unchallenged for many years. With the exception of  Rabad’s critique, yet silence denotes ignorance not acceptance. Nahmanides never openly challenged Maimonides but put forward a different model as did Abba Mari. The latter was part of a group of second rate thinkers including Shem Tov Falaquera, Rabbis David Kohavi, David ibn Bilia, and Shemaraih ha-Ikriiti who posited their views without any traffic or blowback. It is only Duran and then Hasdai that things begin to rumble. Duran took issue with Maimonides’ formulation. It is clear from the medieval thinkers that dogma is essential, what are the dogma is differs. Duran was motivated by what a Jew is and Hasdai cared for the ultimate truth of correct dogma. Duran reduced Maimonides to three principles and effectively reduced it to the acceptance of Torah. Hasdai’s dismantling Maimonides life goal obviously extended to his principles. Hasdai like a Maimonides’ alter ego constructs it all from scratch. His are different than Miamonies and number eleven. Albo though Hasdai’s student follows Duran’s structure but Hasdai’s maimonidean contempt. He marks the three but the three give way to hight more. Both omitted creation from their models. Arama’s list includes creation and numbers six principles Bibago accepted Maimonides thirteen as subsets to creation and miracle axioms. The two outliers are Abarbanel and Yom Tov Lipman. Abarbanel defends Maimonides and then denies dogma outright while Lipman was the single ashkenazi scholar interested in the debate and follows a similar maimonidean scheme. 

This extended paragraph of the medieval dogmatics dogfight ended with no real winner. Most of the ashkenazi world was ignorant to this or didn’t care to intervene with no stake in the game. For them, dogmatics was not a necessary phenomenon. While for the sephardi world, the world just kept spinning. The fighting calmed down and with the expulsion along with Abarbanel’s mighty opinion the debate died out. The Italian maimonideans of Messer Leon and Vital perpetuated the maimonidean theme. Maimonides ideas permeated Renaissance Italy and to slimmer extent the Ashkenazi elite of Rema and his contemporaries. 

Despite the heavy critiques by the educated elitist philosophers, at the same time, many communities translated Maimonides’ ideas into simple phrases, piyytim, to remind of the important principles. These piyytim known today as the ani ma’amins and Yigdal are fundamental distortions of Maimonides’ ideas. The piyyut for Yigdal was added to the ashkenazi siddur and to sephardi Yemenite and even the karaite prayer book. The strong maimonidean theme in the communities did not intend to reduce the master’s full capacity but the principle was a short layer of a longer idea (ironically this poetic style was against Maimonides’ beliefs). The poetic style hid the true intent. Ani Ma’amin was the same. Both are ashkenazi additions. Given the ashkenazi opposition to philosophical jargon, the lack of treatises makes sense. For the public, they just needed to know the jotted principles. The transition to popular wisdom either was intentionally distorted or incidentally done so. The authors wished to ground Judaism in dogma with Maimonidean authority in simplest terms. The sermonic editorial alliteration purged the Aristotelianism and naturalism. The principles mentioned in the siddur have no bearing on Maimonides’ intent and their dogmatism only proves more problematic in perverting the great master.

As the principles were garnering popular wisdom, the fierce intellectual battle raged on. Whether Hasdai or Duran were aware of these piyytim is speculative. They may have brought up the fight seeing this distortion and attempting to deconstruct Maimonides’ real persona. Nevertheless, the piyytim were greatly instrumental in forging a maimonidean path. Hasdai and Albo never had a chance. Though I hasten to remark on the tantalising effect these piyytim had on the public given the continuous discprencies even into the nineteenth century by thinkers such as Hatam Sofer and Hirsch. Yet its centrality in the siddur though in the margins (Yigdal is only said outloud Friday nights and ani ma’amins are way after morning services) did place it in the canon. Thus it could dogmatically assigned at any point in time.       

For a few reasons or not the principle fight came to an end in the same manner that philosophical discourse in such a manner became obsolete in Jewish history. Albo and really Abarabanel was the last systemic critique in such jargon. Though Spinoza is really the last of the philosophical knights, his isolationism and minimal impact on the religious canon excludes his integrity. The decline of rationalism and further support to Kabbalah grew in its prestige. Despite Luria’s opposition his successor Karo pushed a mystical maimonideanism. He forthright codified many of Maimonides opinions already seeing him as a legal landmark, a rabbi and a rebbe. Karo shifted Nahmanides status from the French rabbis to Maimonides. This kabbalistic Maimonides passed on to other kabbalists that of Shela, Alshich and Ramchal who regarded his principles as mystical affiliations of reality. The continued acceptance of Maimonides legislation indirectly accepted his philosophy embedded in the text. Despite or in spite of their anti-philosophical positions, Maharasha and Mabit both fight for Albo’s three against the thirteen. 

Throughout the eighteenth century Hatam Sofer Malbim and Netziv make no mention of requiring the thirteen principles and instead make reservations regarding the complacency of these views. Hirsch and Hoffman play the defensive game but there is no absolution to these doctrines until very recently. Mendelssohn’s “dogma-less” Judaism followed by Gieger’s rejection and then Baeck subsequently. Mendelssohn’s denial was less a denial of dogma and more a denial of Maimonides. Hirsch in his dogmatic excess of fragmented Judaism posed the same Mendelssohn argument of the dogma of every commandment. For them, halakha was the central piece over faith articles. This is not a rejection of dogma just Maimonides’ version. 

It seems it was only in the past century that the principles have been cemented as the requirement of all Jews. The haredi rabbis have claimed as such but their authority stretches into the political realm. Of the major poskim in the twentieth century Hafetz Chaim, Hazon Ish and Feinstein all attributed the thirteen principles as the Jewish or orthodox dogma. Only with the polemical charge against heterodox factions. Even among the the orthodox leaders: Parnes, Bleich and Sacks, it is Maimonides principles that are to be upheld as the essence of Orthodox Judaism. For neither of these thinkers is halakha the most important factor, it is the belief system. The fear of the orthoprax model or any deviation from literal absolute Torah from heaven is sacrilege. These thinkers not only uphold maimonidean dogma but do so in the ani ma’am format not even Maimonides’ philosophy. Even Sack’s philosophical passion is no match for contenting with the Aristotelianism. He voids it completely in favour of the minimised statements.    

In all its irony, the anti-dogmatics of Leibowitz, Levinas now Wettstein among others is to promote ritualistic expression. Dogma is historically irrelevant and fundamentally flawed. The halakhic centrality of these thinkers is precisely the Hirischian ideal. Halakha is the basis of religiosity. Beliefs are essential but not foundational. Spirituality and connection muster the legal fortitude. The plunge of orthopraxy is doubtful. It is less the bindingness the belief. The convoluted history clearly upholds beliefs as central to society. Maimonides’ formulation guards the public from despair but it need not be the eternal systematisation. 

For an earlier draft and some solutions: Permanent Power