CHAPTER 1

Moses the Man

"Moses of his Generation"

In his introduction to the first chapters of Part III of the Guide, Maimonidestook the rare step of disclosing his self-image and the role he set forhimself in the complex times in which he lived and worked. While writingthis section of the Guide around the year 1180, he was forty-two yearsold and at the height of his power. Those chapters are devoted to interpreting"the Account of the Chariot" (ma'aseh merkavah, the term appliedto the prophet Ezekiel's vision of the divine chariot), the holy of holies ofJewish mystical teachings. According to a ruling in the Mishnah, "the Accountof the Chariot" may only be elaborated orally and only to one person,and that person must be capable of apprehending the matter on thebasis of his own understanding. To write a commentary on Ezekiel's vision,even one limited to chapter headings only, thus constitutes a breachof the accepted boundaries of esotericism. Maimonides' introduction tothe chapters is meant to justify the literary transgression of committingthe Torah's mysteries to writing, and much can be gleaned from it aboutthe writer's self-image.

Maimonides understood himself to have been born into a period ofdevastation and loss in which the inner meaning of the Account of theChariot disappeared from the world. He attributes that loss in part to theearlier generations having been so cautious about disseminating and transmittingit that it failed to endure. But even though the information wasentirely lost, Maimonides claimed that he was able to apprehend the meaningof the Account the of the Chariot by the sheer force of his own intellect:"in that which has occurred to me with regard to these matters, I followedconjecture and supposition; no divine revelation has come to me to teachme that the intention in the matter in question was such and such, nor didI receive what I believe in these matters from a teacher" (Guide, p. 416).The historical desolation in which he lived, and his status as the only personholding the key to the deep significance of the tradition, were thefactors that led him to commit his interpretation of the Account of theChariot to writing, in the form of chapter headings, even though doing sowas forbidden and information of that sort was to be transmitted onlyorally and in private. He justified this literary transgression in the followingterms: "... if I had omitted setting down something of that which hasappeared to me as clear, so that that knowledge would perish when I perish,as is inevitable, I should have considered that conduct as extremelycowardly with regard to you and everyone who is perplexed" (Guide, pp.415–416).

Maimonides thus believed that his life offered a unique opportunity toreveal the inner meaning of Judaism, a possibility that would disappearfrom the world upon his death. Were he to feel bound by the traditionalprohibition on committing the material to writing, the deep meaning ofIsrael's Torah, which he had apprehended through the power of his intellect,would have been denied to future generations. Moreover, understandingthe hidden meaning of the Torah could, he believed, resolve the greatcrisis afflicting the perplexed of his time. Accordingly, revealing the mysteriesof the Torah in the Guide was the best hope for saving the perplexedfrom the confusion in which they found themselves in the wake of theencounter between the Torah and wisdom.

How did Maimonides understand the perplexity generated by the encounterbetween Torah and philosophy? And how did he think his proposedinterpretation of the Jewish tradition would be able to resolve thatperplexity? These questions are among the important foci of the book, andwe shall deal with them extensively. In this chapter, I want to examine adifferent question: what was Maimonides' perspective on himself and histimes, and how did the events of his life contribute to the shaping of thatself-image? In that context, the introduction to Part III of the Guide makesevident the great audacity underlying Maimonides' philosophical work, anaudacity flowing from his sense of historical crisis that imposed on himpersonally a mighty historical responsibility, and from his self-perceptionas the last and sole opportunity to reveal and preserve the inner meaningof Torah. Boldness of this sort has no parallel in the history of Jewish philosophy,either prior to Maimonides or after.

This historical consciousness and sense of self drove Maimonides' halakhicactivity as well as his philosophical work. In the introduction to hislegal magnum opus, Mishneh Torah, he paints a starkly sorrowful picture ofthe state of halakhah in his time. According to Maimonides, the deteriorationin halakhic knowledge and in the ability of scholars to produce anysort of unity and clarity in the halakhic corpus began immediately after thecompletion of the Talmud in the sixth century, some six hundred yearsbefore the writing of Mishneh Torah:

After the Court of Rav Ashi, who compiled the Gemara which was finallycompleted in the days of his son, an extraordinarily great dispersion of Israelthroughout the world took place. The people emigrated to remote parts anddistant isles. The prevalence of wars and the march of armies made travelinsecure. The study of the Torah declined. The Jewish people did not flockto the colleges in their thousands and tens of thousands as heretofore; butin each city and country, individuals who felt the divine call gathered togetherand occupied themselves with the Torah; studied all the works of thesages; and from these learned the methods of legal interpretation. (Introductionto Mishneh Torah, pp. 37–38)

Maimonides refers here to the decline of the Babylonian center's power asnew Jewish communities were established in the wake of the spread ofIslam to North Africa and all the way...