Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupress.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Jewish Social
Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
The Return of Maimonideanism
by Warren Zev Harvey
249
250 JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
Perplexed of Our Times is inspired more by Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling than
by Maimonides, its very title implying that Maimoides' Guide is anachronistic.
Unsurprisingly, when Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), founder of the neo-Kan-
tian Marburg school, turned to Jewish philosophy and wrote his magnificent
Religion of Reason out of the Sources ofJudaism, it was not a Maimonidean
but a neo-Kantian work.
As for twentieth century Jewish philosophy, it has been largely under the
existentialist spell of Martin Buber (1878-1965) and Franz Rosenzweig
(1866-1929). While Krochmal and Cohen had reverently studied the Guide,6
and as Jewish philosophers had considered themselves to be modern-day Mai-
monides, albeit not modern-day Maimonideans, Buber and Rosenzweig were
sheer outsiders to Maimonideanism. Buber wrote dozens of volumes on an im-
pressively wide range of Jewish and philosophic topics, yet he rarely mentions
even the name of Maimonides. Rosenzweig occasionally cites Maimonides in
passing, but the medieval Jew who most significantly influenced him was the
Hebrew poet and anti-philosopher, Judah Halevi (c. 1080-c. 1140), whose
"middle-sized reincarnation"7 he fancied himself to be. Not inappropriately,
the present age has been caricatured by the French phenomenologist, Emman-
uel Levinas (b. 1905), as one "in which Jews understand only hasidic tales."8
Levinas is in his own right one of the most profound contemporary philoso-
phers of Judaism, and although his orientation is undeniably more Maimoni-
dean than hasidic, he is a student of Husserl and only remotely of Maimonides.
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), whose thought is perhaps representa-
tive of the dominant theological temper of the age, and who is certainly among
the most exciting of the hasidic storytelling Jewish existentialist philosophers,
had predictably little use for Maimonidean intellectualism, and wrote a beau-
tiful essay, "The Last Days of Maimonides," in which he tried to prove that in
the end Maimonides gave up "his earlier commitment to the superiority of in-
tellectual pursuits."9 Yet tepidness toward Maimonidean philosophy is found
even in places where one might have expected to find fervid enthusiasm. Thus,
Joseph B. Soloveitchik (b. 1903), who as an halakhist is probably the most
trenchant living interpreter of Maimonides' rabbinic system, and who is possi-
bly unique today among eminent rabbinic authorities in that, after the
Maimonidean model, he is also an original philosopher, has- notwithstanding
his mighty spiritual roots in Maimonides' rabbinism--constructed a philosophy
of Judaism which is influenced less by the Guide than by neo-Kantianism, by
Kierkegaardian existentialism, and maybe even by the Kabbalah. Again, there
have been historians of Jewish philosophy, such as Simon Rawidowicz
(1897-1957) and Israel Efros (b. 1891), who have made the Guide the subject
of meticulous study, and then have gone on to write their own Jewish philoso-
phy oblivious of Maimonides.
Return of Maimonideanism 251
"Are there Maimonideans today?" a student some years ago asked Shlomo
Pines (b. 1908), the encyclopedic authority on medieval Arabic and Hebrew
philosophy, and author of the now standard English translation of the Guide of
the Perplexed. "There is Leo Strauss," he replied without hesitation.26
Pines' reply requires explanation. While as an historian, Leo Strauss
(1899-1973), like Wolfson and Pines himself, wrote some highly important es-
says about Maimonides, as an original political thinker he does not seem to be
specifically "Maimonidean." In his Natural Right and History (1950), for ex-
ample, he mentions Maimonides only in one expendable footnote. As professor
of political philosophy at the University of Chicago (1949-1968), he raised a
generation of loyal Straussians who are propagating his theories in universities
throughout North America and also abroad, but no one thinks of calling them
"Maimonideans."
Yet, in some respects, Strauss was undeniably Maimonidean. In the first
place, he read the Guide more like a medieval Maimonidean than like a
modern historian. He knew how to approach the Guide as a puzzle, doggedly
seeking to uncover its esoteric teaching, and even worried about the morality of
divulging it. In response to this moral problem, he affected a quasi-Maimoni-
dean esoteric style in his essays on Maimonides: if the Guide, he insisted, is "an
esoteric interpretation of an esoteric teaching," then its interpretation should
254 JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
I have tried ... to give a general account of a great medieval figure, but I have tried to re-
veal not his medievalism but his greatness ....
But it is a pity that sound doctrine should receive a date at all. That religion has an in-
256 JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
tellectual content . ..; that social institutions have an educational reference; that living de-
mands discipline and that virtue should ask for no reward-these and similar characteristic
teachings of Maimonides would seem to deserve attention even though they were enunci-
ated . . . many centuries ago. We may reject (though why should we?) his vision of God as
the centre towards which all creation yearns; but we should do well to ponder many other
lessons . . . and perhaps learn from them for our own need: that Biblical texts in order to
remain fruitful must be re-interpreted . . .; that the world is an ordered whole open to the
mind of man . . .; that design and law do not conflict, and that law and not miracle is the
sign-manual of the deity . . .; that all knowledge is revelation and all thinking inspiration.
... All this is "modern" enough. . . . After all, life is much the same in every age ....
The ultimate question for us is not therefore what Maimonides actually said but what
Maimonides would have said if he had lived in our day.40
All Roth's writings on Jewish subjects are at heart an attempt to say "what
Maimonides would have said." Even his important researches on Spinoza are
essentially part of this attempt; for he thought that Spinoza, despite his aliena-
tion from the synagogue, could help show how Maimonideanism might be
adapted to modern liberal society.41
Dissimilar to Spinoza, Wolfson, Strauss, and most modern Jews, Roth was
personally observant of Jewish law, the Halakhah. Whether or not such observ-
ance is a necessary condition of any living Maimonideanism, Roth preferred
not to dwell on the connection between Maimonideanism and Orthodoxy. He
was interested primarily in Maimonides' ethics and religious rationalism,
which he considered pertinent to all monotheists. Moreover, he saw Maimoni-
deanism as leading to religious observance, not presupposing it.
Although Roth occasionally acknowledged the legitimacy of alternative
approaches to Judiasm, his ineluctable tendency was to identify Judaism with
Maimonideanism. "Maimonides," he wrote in Judaism: A Portrait, "may be
said to have erected the structure of what is known now as Judaism."42 Accord-
ing to Roth, Maimonides was "in outlook both Jew and Greek," and his philos-
ophy was practical proof that the Hebraic and Greek views of life "are not in
principle incompatible." Even as the anti-Maimonideans have denounced
Maimonides for Hellenizing Judaism, Roth applauded him for it. The "great
achievement" of Maimonides' Judaism, he wrote, "is to have adapted Judaism
to the Western mind," and "the Western mind is ultimately the Hellenic."43
Maimonidean rationalism, preached Roth, preserves us from the "inco-
herences" and "phantasmagoria" of the Kabbalah,44 and from modern reli-
gious existentialism.45 Even when his enthusiasm for art and belles-lettres com-
pelled him to attack what seemed to him the excesses of this rationalism,
Roth-always the true-blue Maimonidean-commandeered his ammunition
from the Master's own arsenal, and argued "with Maimonides against Maimo-
nides" that the most excellent individual is not the philosopher but the proph-
et, who is distinguished not only in intellect but also in imagination.46
Return of Maimonideanism 257
Roth's Maimonideanism was unswervingly humanistic and moral. His
messianic vision was that of the universalistic prophecy with which Maimonides
concluded his Mishneh Torah: "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9).47 His humanistic, moral Mai-
monideanism led Roth to demand that all halakhic decisions be made with ex-
plicit regard to ethics. In "Moralization and Demoralization in Jewish Ethics,"
he called for the thorough moralization of Jewish law: "the Law, the Torah, is
a law of life and kindness and love and decency and pity. This being the
guiding principle, whatever appears contrary to it must be explained away."48
It was Roth's Maimonidean universalism which inspired his sharp criti-
cisms of what he saw as Jewish and (after 1948) Israeli parochialism. To Roth's
mind, Maimonideanism was a necessary condition not only of a viable modern
Jewish religion, but also of a viable modern Jewish state. No less zealous a lib-
eral than was Spinoza or Mendelssohn, he unequivocally opposed any religious
coercion by the state, but like Spinoza and Mendelssohn he could not imagine
a viable state without true religion. In an essay on Spinoza's Theologico-
Political Treatise, he spoke of a "political paradox": "even though the state
cannot exist if the values of religion are coerced upon its citizens, still, without
these values the state will not exist at all."49 Often and urgently he argued the
corollary: even though the Jewish state cannot exist if Judaism is coerced upon
its citizens, still, without Judaism - that is, without Maimonidean Judaism - it
will not exist at all.50
claimed that the state cannot exist without religion. Leibowitz argues that to
judge religion by its utility to the state is fascism.55 Jewish humanists, among
them Roth, have often contended that the biblical account of the creation of
man "in the image of God" is the foundation of the doctrine of the worth of
man. Leibowitz, on the contrary, finds that it teaches the worthlessness of
man, a mere image of God!56 Religion, as Leibowitz understands it, is the ser-
vice of God for its own sake, not an instrument to satisfy human needs; it is
theocentric, not anthropocentric: man serving God, not God serving man.57
Leibowitz sees Maimonides as "the axis of any attempt at the systematiza-
tion of Jewish religious thought,"58 and his own attempt is in large measure
nothing but a rigid explication of what he takes to be Maimonides' implicit axi-
ology. According to this axiology, Judaism has one end, one ultimate value:
the service of God out of love, as expressed in the Torah and the command-
ments. This means that in Judaism, questions of ethics, politics, science, or his-
tory have no value whatsoever59 except insofar as they might be means to the
service of God in accordance with the Torah and the commandments, that is,
in accordance with the Halakhah.60
It is no less a mistake, according to Leibowitz, to call Maimonides a "ra-
tionalist" than it is to call him a "moralist," since for Maimonides reason, like
morality, is never more than a means to the service of God. Consequently, Lei-
bowitz insists that even though Maimonides was a consummate master of phi-
losophy, he was not properly a "philosopher," since he was interested not in
knowledge but in the knowledge of God. "Maimonides," Liebowitz almost
spitefully proclaims, "was the greatest Jewish mystic."61 Being mystical, the
Maimonidean service of God, according to Leibowitz, cannot be reduced to
human needs or to humanist values: Abraham on Mount Moriah is its symbol.
Leibowitz points to Maimonides' dictum in the resounding final chapter of his
Book of Knowledge: "he who serves [God] out of love occupies himself with the
Torah and the commandments . .. not on account of anything in the world"
(Teshuvah 10:2). Another text cited by him to illustrate Maimonides' mysti-
cism is found in the Guide, III, 51: "all the commandments [whatever their
utility or inutility] have only the end of training you to occupy yourselves with
His commandments rather than with matters pertaining to the world ... as if
you were occupied with Him!"62
Leibowitz is of course as aware as Roth of Maimonides' extensive analyses
of how the Torah leads to moral, social, and intellectual perfection. Yet, he in-
sists that these analyses, while surely of philosophic and political interest, have
"no religious significance whatsoever." Maimonides, Leibowitz explains, dis-
cussed Judaism on two levels, the "mystical" (religious) and the "utilitarian"
(non-religious), and he blurred the distinction between them so that only the
probing student can detect it, because he believed that since most people,. ow-
Return of Maimonideanism 259
ing to ignorance, act only for utilitarian reasons (see Maimonides, Introduc-
tion to Perek Helek), it would be pedagogically unwise to demand of everyone
unconditionally the mystical non-utilitarian service of God out of love. Against
Strauss, who thought that Maimonides' esotericism was intended to shield the
vulgar from true philosophy, Leibowitz thus avows that it is to shield them
from true religion!63
Leibowitz is convinced, however, that Maimonides' pedagogical approach
must be abandoned in our own modem secular society, because he believes
that it is foolish to try to advance religion by pointing to its utility in satisfying
human needs when these needs are in fact presently being satisfied quite well
without religion. To teach religion today as a means, he therefore argues, is to
teach that it is superfluous. What is urgent now, he advises, is to teach moder
man what religion is, and to distinguish it from other phenomena.64 He conse-
quently insists that today Judaism must be taught unequivocally as the service
of God out of love. Moreover, he is convinced not only that this is presently the
only sensible pedagogic option, but also that it should be a highly stimulating
one because education to the service of God out of love is education to valor
and rebellion. In every age, he explains, the true service of God entails rebel-
lion against utilitarianism and anthropocentrism,65 but today it is additionally
a rebellion against the reigning secularist values of society. "A person who
takes upon himself today the yoke of the commandments is a revolutionary
who is taking upon himself to create a new world!"66
Leibowitz' response to the modem world, therefore, is to teach Maimoni-
des' esoteric doctrine stripped bare of its exoteric costume. The obvious prob-
lem with this response is that even if the secularization of society has rendered
the utilitarian approach to religious education theoretically counterproduc-
tive, it has not transformed human nature: people remain utilitarian, and the
service of God for its own sake remains difficult. It is therefore not surprising
that while Leibowitz has won wide popular attention, his opinions have found
favor only among the few. Typical of Leibowitz' refusal to compromise with
folkloristic religion is his comment shortly after the Six Day War that the West-
ern Wall had been turned into a center of mob idolatry, and therefore should
be demolished even as King Hezekiah broke to pieces the brazen serpent made
by Moses when it became an object of fetishism (cf. II Kings 18:4).
Since Maimonides, clothed in exoterica, was attacked by the anti-Maimo-
nideans, it was inevitable that the naked Leibowitz should be attacked by
them. WhileJudaism, Jewish People, and the State of Israel has received some
sober analysis, and some partisan support, it often has drawn frenetic opposi-
tion, which has strikingly (and perhaps surprisingly) been more against Mai-
monideanism in general than against Leibowitz' theses in particular; but since
the esoteric disguise of Maimonides' philosophy is as effective today as ever,
260 JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
6
The work of Roth, the ongoing work of Leibowitz, and the burgeoning
work of Hartman suggest that it might be legitimate to speak of the return of
Maimonideanism. That such a return could today be possible is perhaps at-
tributable to three factors. First, the process of secularization begun with Spin-
oza, while showing no signs of abating, had evidently stabilized, and it now
seems that religion, though battered and crippled, is not doomed. Second, the
philosophic world, having apparently tired of grand domineering systems, is
currently in a self-critical, searching, eclectic mood, and as a consequence phi-
losophers today are more likely than they have been at any time since the sev-
enteenth century to approach earlier thinkers openly and without prejudice.
The third factor has already been mentioned: modern Zionism has created a
new situation which is conducive to (and perhaps demands) critical political
thinking about Judaism, such as is found in Maimonideanism.
All this is not to say that Husik would consider Roth, Leibowitz, or Hart-
man to be "Jewish philosophers," let alone "Maimonideans." The possibility of
any Jewish philosophy in the modern world is still moot. Yet today, for the first
time since Spinoza, it seems that if Jewish philosophy is possible at all, Mai-
monideanism is.
Return of Maimonideanism 263
NOTES
1. Without defining Judaism or philosophy, one could define Jewish philosophy as a mix-
ture of the two.
2. As a philosopher, Maimonides belonged to the school founded by the Muslimfaylasif,
Alfarabi (c. 870-950), which was characterizedby a staunch Aristotelianismin logic, natural sci-
ence, and ethics, a grim Platonism in politics, and a neo-Platonized Aristotelianism in meta-
physics. Maimonides taught that Judaism commands the study of philosophy, and that philoso-
phy demonstratesthe utility of Judaism. He wrote the Guide of the Perplexed in order to explain
this to young, scientifically-mindedJews, perplexed because they were unable to reconcile their
disparate commitments to Judaism and to philosophy. Since, like Plato and Alfarabi, he was
anxious about the potential of philosophy to corrupt or to derange those readersincapable of re-
placing lost belief with reasoned conviction, he contrived to conceal his own philosophic specula-
tions from such readers by writing the Guide in a bizarreliterarygenre: the puzzle. To decipher
the true teaching of the Guide, one must connect dispersed argumentsby pursuing subtle logical
implications, and one must ignore rhetorical red herrings, delectable to the imagination but in-
sipid to the intellect; in short, one must read it as only a philosopher can. Owing to this esoteri-
cism, neither medievals nor moderns have been able to agree on a precise definition of Maimoni-
deanism.
3. Cf. The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), I, vii; also Studies in the His-
tory of Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), II, 605.
4. (New York, 1916), p. 432.
5. The Guide, nonetheless, was for Mendelssohn a fond symbol of enlightened Judaism.
Poring over the Guide as a youth, he would quip, left him with his hunchback, but was worth it!
See Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia, Pa., 1973),
p. 12. Long after Spinoza and Mendelssohn, traditionally-educatedJews of an inquisitive bent
continued to be initiated into philosophy by way of the Guide, which often had to be studied
clandestinely (cf. Bialik's reference in "Ha-Matmid" to the lad expelled from the talmudic
academy after being caught "hiding away in the attic with the Guide of the Perplexed"). After
this initiation, they would-if they persisted in philosophy- move on to Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche,
or other such contemporary fare, and leave the Guide behind as a happy schoolday memory,
and a symbol.
6. See, for example, Simon Rawidowicz, ed., Kitvei Rabbi Nakhman Krokhmal [The
Writings of Nachman Krochmal] (Waltham, Mass., 1961), pp. 432-43; and Hermann Cohen,
"Charakteristikder Ethik Maimunis,"Jiidische Schriften (Berlin, 1924), III, 221-89.
7. Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York, 1953), p.
167.
8. Difficile liberty (Paris, 1963), p. 45, (1976), p. 49.
9. The Insecurity of Freedom (New York, 1967), p. 288. Cf. Maimonides, Eine Bio-
graphie (Berlin, 1935), pp. 272-79. Unlike mostJewish existentialists, Heschel was fascinated by
Maimonides'spiritual life. Cf. also his "Ha-he'eminha-Rambam she-Zakhahle-Nevu'ah?"[Did
Maimonides Strive for Prophetic Inspiration?] Louis GinzburgJubilee Volume (New York,
1945), pp. 159-88. A similar fascination with Maimonides may be found in the writings of the
French Jewish existentialist, Andre Neher.
10. Mitpahat Sefarim (Altona, 5528/1768), II, 8, p. 24b; cf. his Siddur, hallon VII. The
claim of forgery may have been but a device to discredit Maimonides' philosophy without im-
pugning his rabbinics.
264 JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
11. Neunzehn Briefe (Altona, 1836), XVIII, 89. (English trans., New York, 1899, 1960).
12. Luzzatto's Yesodei ha-Torah [Foundations of the Torah], a counterblast to Maimon-
ides' composition of the same name, argues that the foundations of the Torah are not in reason
but in compassion. In the first Introduction to that work, Maimonides is cited as an example of
"Atticism" (Mehkerei ha- Yahadut [Studies in Judaism] [Warsaw, 5673/1913], I, v-vi; English
translation in Noah H. Rosenbloom, Luzzatto'sEthico-PsychologicalInterpretation ofJudaism
[New York, 1965], p. 148). Luzzatto's sharpest attack on Maimonidean philosophy appeared in
Kerem Hemed (1838), III, 66-71 (Mehkerei ha-Yahadut, I, 164-69), and drew the response
from Krochmal (Kerem Hemed [1839], IV, 260-74) cited above in Note 6.
13. "Shilton ha-Sekhel," English translation in Ten Essays on Zionism andJudaism (Lon-
don, 1922), pp. 162-222.
14. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1941), pp. 25-39.
15. "There is no doubt at all that there are people on whom certain ideas work to a good ef-
fect to bind their hearts to holiness and purity, to faith and service, to Torah and command-
ment, and there are other people on whom just other ideas are capable of bringing their hearts
near to all those holy and sublime things; and if the ideas explicated in the Guide suited [the holy
Maimonides] . . ., there is no doubt at all that there are very many in Israel on whom these ideas
might . . . work to a good effect" (Appendix to Ze'ev Jawitz, Toledot Yisrael, [History of Israel]
[Tel-Aviv, 5695/1925], XII, 211-12).
16. For Wolfson's biography, see Leo Schwartz, Wolfson of Harvard (Philadelphia, Pa.,
1977) and his "A Bibliographical Essay," Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem,
1965), I, 1-46; Lewis S. Feuer, "Recollections of Harry Austryn Wolfson," AmericanJewish Ar-
chives, 28 (1976), 25-50; Isadore Twersky, "Harry Austryn Wolfson (1877-1974)," American
Jewish Year Book, 76 (1976), 99-111.
17. "Maimonides and Halevi: A Study in Typical Jewish Attitudes towards Greek Philoso-
phy in the Middle Ages," Studies, II, (cited above, Note 3), 120-60.
18. "With this [i.e., with Crescas' ideas!] Halevi's criticism of philosophy is completed"
(ibid., p. 159; see also pp. 158 n. 93 and 159 n. 94). Cf. "Studies in Crescas," ibid., pp. 475-76.
19. "Note on Crescas' Definition of Time,"Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 10 (1919), 17;
and Crescas' Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), p. 97.
20. Ibid. Cf. also his long monograph, "Crescas on the Problem of Divine Attributes"
(1916), Studies, II, pp. 247-337.
21. See Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
(Cambridge, Mass., 1947), pp. 459-60; Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays (Cambridge,
Mass., 1961), p. v; Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), I, 70.
22. Religious Philosophy, pp. 25-26.
23. Modern religious philosophy, like modern religion, seemed to Wolfson a sham. In "The
Professed Atheist and the Verbal Atheist" (1955), he delicately but mordantly suggested that the
only difference between the modern religious philosopher and the fool of Psalm 14 who said
"there is no God" is that the latter was "a downright honest and plain-spoken fellow," while the
former uses "polite but empty phrases" (ibid., pp. 270-71; cf. p. 26).
24. See "The Needs of Jewish Scholarship in America," The Menorah Journal, 7, no. 1
(1921), written more than a decade before Wolfson's theory of Philonic philosophy attained its
mature form.
25. Far from being a rejection of his original patriotic "Hebraism," Wolfson's thesis about
Philonic philosophy was a bold expression of it, for it presents Hebrew thought (primarily that of
the Bible and secondarily that of the Jewish philosophers) as fundamental even to the philoso-
Return of Maimonideanism 265
phic tradition. See my "Hebraism and Western Philosophy in H. A. Wolfson's Theory of
History" (Hebrew), Daat, 4 (1980), 103-109. Nonetheless, this "Hebraic" thesis of his was
ironically responsible for turning him away from his yet unfinished researches into Crecas, and
causing him to apportion the lion's share of his subsequent scholarly work to Greek, Latin, and
Arabic texts. See Leon Wieseltier, "Philosophy, Religion, & Harry Wolfson," Commentary, 61,
no. 4 (April 1976), 57-64; and my Letter to the Editor, 62, no. 1 (July 1976), 10-12.
26. Cf. Pines, " 'Al Leo Strauss" [On Leo Strauss], Molad, 7, nos. 37-38 (1976), 455-57. In
this article, Pines does not call Strauss a "Maimonidean," but does state that "he was perhaps the
first one, after the medieval commentators, who read with attention Maimonides' book [the
Guide]." He states also: "[Strauss] saw himself as a philosopher"; and "he was a philosopher."
27. Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Ill., 1952), p. 56.
28. See, e.g., What is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, Ill., 1959), pp. 221-32.
29. Cf. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed (Pines translation: Chicago, 1963), pp. 15-20.
Fundamentally a puzzle-solving activity, esoteric reading demands careful attention to detail. As
a result of their Maimonidean reading style, Straussians are known for their scrupulous transla-
tions of philosophic texts.
30. See, e.g., Jerusalem and Athens: Some PreliminaryReflections (New York, 1967).
31. See, e.g., Persecution, pp. 19, 43, 104-105; and "How to Begin to Study The Guide of
the Perplexed," in Pines' translation of the Guide, p. xiv.
32. Persecution, pp. 42-46; "How to Begin to Study the Guide," p. xiv.
33. Jerusalem and Athens, p. 3.
34. See Persecution, pp. 55-56.
35. With unabashed vicarious joy, Strauss speculates about Judah Halevi's triumph over
philosophy: "for some time, we prefer to think for a very short time, he was a philosopher. After
that moment, a spiritual hell, he returned to the Jewish fold" (Persecution, p. 109). Cf. Strauss'
comments on "our prophets" in What is Political Philosophy?, pp. 9-10. See also Strauss' autobi-
ographical remarks in "A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss," The College (a
publication of St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., April 1970), pp. 1-5. Cf. Ralph Lerner, "Leo
Strauss (1899-1973)," American Jewish Year Book, 76 (1976), 91-97.
36. The impossibility of a living Maimonideanism today also would seem to be presupposed
by Pines in his naming of Strauss as a modern "Maimonidean." However, Pines may be implying
that Strauss as a philosopher was indeed a Maimonidean, and that, writing in an age of histori-
cism, he assumed the exoteric posture of the historian precisely as Maimonides, writing in an age
of religion, had assumed the exoteric posture of the religionist. "Maimonideanism" in this odd
sense would be devoid of any Jewish content. Pines' views on the relationship between Judaism
and philosophy, it might be noted, are in some respects close to Strauss', but there is also a pro-
vocative affinity between them and those of Micah Joseph Berdyczewski (1865-1921).
37. (New York, 1960, 1972).
38. Ha-Dat ve-'Erkhei ha-Adam [Religion and Human Values] (Jerusalem, 1973). More re-
cently, a Hebrew translation of Roth's Spinoza (London, 1929) appeared in Israel (Jerusalem,
1974). On Roth, see T. E. Jessop in Proceedings of the British Academy, 50 (1964), 317-29;
Raphael Loewe in Studies in Rationalism, Judaism, & Universalismin Memory of Leon Roth
(London, 1966), pp. ix-xiii, 1-11; and Zvi Adar and Moshe Sternberg in Ha-Dat, pp. vii-xxii.
In the introductory Latin epitaph in Studies in Rationalism, Roth is aptly called "magistri sui
Maimonidis fidelis discipul[us]."
39. Judaism: A Portrait, p. 162. Cf. "Jewish Thought in the Modern World," in E. R.
Bevin and Charles Singer, eds., The Legacy of Israel (Oxford, 1927), pp. 433-72.
266 JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES
ish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 98. Twersky's long-antici-
pated Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (New Haven, Conn., 1979), should provide fur-
ther evidence of Maimonides' integration of philosophy and Jewish law.
76. Hartman provocatively uses this phrase made famous by Spinoza, but found also in
earlier Maimonidean literature, although not in Maimonides.
77. Hartman, Maimonides, pp. 191, 196, 208-209.
78. Ibid., pp. 52, 66, 127, 140, 142, 159, 206-207, 214.
79. Ibid., p. 76.
80. Ibid., p. 262 n. 44; p. 256 n. 5; pp. 142-43; cf. p. x.
81. Both Wolfson and Strauss were faithful Zionists with original ideas about Zionism, but
neither chose to live in the Land of Israel. Wolfson, who declined a professorship at the Hebrew
University in 1925, never visited the Land. Strauss was a visiting professor at the Hebrew Univer-
sity in 1954-1955.
82. Ibid., p. x.
83. See hisJoy and Responsibility (Jerusalem, 1978). See my review (Hebrew) in Daat, 2-3
(1978-79), 263-68. See also Leibowitz's review (Hebrew) in Petahim, 45-46 (1979), 82-88, and
Hartman's (Hebrew) response in Petahim, 47-48 (1979), 78-83.