Maimonides, Spinoza and Us: Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism (review)

Abstract

Maimonides, Spinoza and Us: Toward Intellectually Vibrant Judaism, by Marc D. Angel. Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2009. 197 pp. $24.99. When Yeshiva University granted honorary doctorate to Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz, he gave a public lecture on and Science (Torah u-Madda being the motto of YU). He began by remarking that when people find conflicts between and science, the problems are usually the result of popular Torah or popular (or both). The more serious and broad-minded a scholar is, said Rabbi Steinzaltz, the less he will find substance in many such apparent contradictions. Nevertheless, there still remain some deeper and more nuanced problems that are far more difficult to deal with, and may never have satisfactory solutions. Rabbi Marc Angel's new book on Maimonides, Spinoza and Us takes the reader on intellectual journey in Rabbi Steinzaltz's direction, by promoting balanced models of faith and reason that can co-exist and mutually enrich each other. Maimonides (or Rambam) is Rabbi Angel's role-model for how to seek a careful, nuanced, and rational understand of what the says and demands, while Spinoza is the ultimate representative of the challenge that reason and science pose to traditional views. Rabbi Angel eloquently argues that both and science would each be enriched by respectfully engaging with the other: On the one hand a Jew learns to understand the more deeply by confronting Spinoza's challenge, and on the other hand human reason itself benefits from this process by learning its own limitations, and by abandoning its more extravagant claims about what it is capable of accomplishing or proving. None of these ideas are new, but they are certainly refreshing in today's Jewish world. Indeed, the most surprising thing about this wonderful little book is that it was written at all. In this day and age, for the rabbi of Orthodox community to unabashedly choose Maimonides as his role model is uncommon enough. But for that same rabbi to devote his weekly Sunday community study sessions to a sympathetic comparison of Maimonides and Spinoza is virtually unheard of. This book was the outgrowth of exactly such study by a rabbi with his congregants. Rabbi Angel begins by calling his book an attempt to reclaim the narrow path of Torah, which lies between the two dangerous extremes of fire and ice: This path eschews religious zeal that has lost control of itself on the one hand, and scepticism, rationalism run amok on the other. And it is here that the two heroes of the book are presented: While Maimonides lays the foundation for intellectually sound by challenging each Jew to probe the with his mind, Spinoza's honest and direct criticism of Maimonides' approach is a healthy challenge to modern Jews to once again re-think the tension between faith, tradition, and reason. The narrow middle path, however, lies between the extremes on two sides. If Spinoza is the ice challenge to Maimonides, then it is anti-Maimonidean that wages war on his approach as fire. This world lacks a clear persona in the book, and no specific name is attached to it (at least not until Judah Halevi makes his appearance in Chapter Seven on Israel and Humanity). But it is very important for balance within the book, especially in the chapter on Religion and Superstition and in the various sections that discuss authoritarianism: Judaism does not-and according to Rambam cannot-demand that we turn offour brains at the behest of scholars whose very worldview precludes open intellectually sound approach to the attainment of knowledge (p. …