13 - Responses to Critiques of ‘Maimonides’ Iggeret ha-Shemad: Law and Rhetoric’

Summary

A RESPONSE TO DAVID HARTMAN

DAVID HARTMAN'S essay first appeared in the journal Maḥshevet Yisra’el in a poor Hebrew translation that did not do justice to his ardent style. He later published the original English version as an introduction to a new translation of the Iggeret ha-Shemad in a work entitled Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides. I have thought it best here to cite the original English version, rather than to translate back into English the deficient Hebrew translation of the English original. (I nevertheless provide page references equally to the original Hebrew version, designated MY in the footnotes, to which my reply was originally addressed.) It is customary in academic circles to invite the object of an article's criticism to respond, so the editors of Maḥshevet Yisra’el solicited a reply from me. I have translated my original rejoinder, moved a long quotation from a footnote into the body of the text where it seemed more apropos, and, in one instance, added two paragraphs where I thought the original version had been too elliptical. I have identified the additional two paragraphs in the footnotes.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK David Hartman for bringing to the attention of scholars an article of mine that had lain unread in a Gedenkschrift. I am doubly grateful that he saw fit to devote some forty pages of discussion to an essay that I had written in my schooldays.

Despite the obvious differences between us in style and temperament, I believe we are of the same opinion as to the terrible problem that the Jews of the Maghreb confronted under the rule of the Almohads. It also seems to me that we are in agreement on the motives of Maimonides and that he was right in doing what he did. Our disagreement lies in how one should characterize Maimonides’ deeds: as an act of religious leadership or as the rendering of a halakhic judgment. This matter needs to be addressed both methodologically and substantively.

Methodological Considerations

The crucial issue that lies at the very heart of our disagreement is whether there are outer limits to an intellectual discipline which cannot be breached and whether we can lay down some ground rules for arguments within a discipline.