Studies in Judaism 18

Studies in Judaism 18

The second of these two works, the _Law of Man_, may be regarded as a

sanctification of grief, and particularly of the grief of griefs, death.

The bulk of the book is legalistic, treating of mourning rites, burial

customs, and similar topics; but there is much in the preface which bears

on our subject. For here again Nachmanides takes the opportunity of

combating a chilling philosophy, which tries to arm us against suffering

by stifling our emotions. "My son," he says, "be not persuaded by certain

propositions of the great philosophers who endeavour to harden our hearts

and to deaden our sensations by their idle comfort, which consists in

denying the past and despairing of the future. One of them has even

declared that there is nothing in the world over the loss of which it is

worth crying, and the possession of which would justify joy. This is an

heretical view. Our perfect Torah bids us to be joyful in the day of

prosperity and to shed tears in the day of misfortune. It in no way

forbids crying or demands of us to suppress our grief. On the contrary,

the Torah suggests to us that to mourn over heavy losses is equivalent to

a service of God, leading us, as it does, to reflect on our end and ponder

over our destiny."

 

This destiny, as well as Reward and Punishment in general, is treated in

the concluding chapter of the _Law of Man_, which is known under the title

of _The Gate of Reward_.(81) Nachmanides does not conceal from himself the

difficulties besetting inquiries of this description. He knows well enough

that in the last instance we must appeal to that implicit faith in the

inscrutable justice of God with which the believer begins. Nevertheless he

thinks that only the "despisers of wisdom" would fail to bring to this

faith as full a conviction as possible, which latter is only to be gained

by speculation. I shall have by and by occasion to refer to the results of

this speculation. Here we must only notice the fact of Nachmanides

insisting on the _bodily_ resurrection which will take place after the

coming of the Messiah, and will be followed by the _Olam Habba_(82) (the

life in the world to come) of which the Rabbis spoke.

 

Irrational as this belief may look, it is only a consequence of his

theory, which, as we have seen, assigns even to the flesh an almost

spiritual importance. Indeed, he thinks that the soul may have such an

influence on the body as to transform the latter into so pure an essence

that it will become safe for eternity. For, as he hints in another place,

by the continual practising of a thing the whole man, the body included,

becomes so identified with the thing that we call him after it, just as

the Holy Singer said: I am prayer,(83) so that--

 

 

Oft converse with heavenly habitants

Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape,

The unpolluted temple of the mind,

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,

Till all be made immortal.

 

 

But if even the body holds such a high position as to make all its

instincts and functions, if properly regulated, a service of God, and to

destine it for a glorious future of eternal bliss and rejoicing in God, we

can easily imagine what a high place the soul must occupy in the system of

Nachmanides. To be sure it is a much higher one than that to which

philosophy would fain admit her. A beautiful parable of the Persian poet

Yellaladeen (quoted by the late Mr. Lowell) narrates that "One knocked at

the beloved's door, and a voice asked from within, 'Who is there?' and he

answered, 'It is I.' Then the voice said, 'This house will not hold me and

thee,' and the door was not opened. Then went the lover into the desert

and fasted and prayed in solitude, and after a year he returned and

knocked again at the door, and again the voice asked 'Who is there?' and

he said 'It is thyself'; and the door was opened to him." This is also the

difference between the two schools--the mystical and the philosophical--with

regard to the soul. With the rationalist the soul is indeed a superior

abstract intelligence created by God, but, like all His creations, has an

existence of its own, and is thus separated from God. With the mystic,

however, the soul is God, or a direct emanation from God. "For he who

breathes into another thing (Gen. ii. 7) gives unto it something of his

own breath (or soul)," and as it is said in Job xxxii. 8, "And the soul of

the Almighty giveth them understanding." This emanation, or rather

immanence--for Nachmanides insists in another place that the Hebrew term

employed for it, _Aziluth_,(84) means a permanent dwelling with the thing

emanating--which became manifest with the creation of man, must not be

confounded with the moving soul (or the _Nephesh Chayah_),(85) which is

common to man with all creatures.

 

It may be remarked here that Nachmanides endows all animals with a soul

which is derived from the "Superior Powers," and its presence is proved by

certain marks of intelligence which they show. By this fact he tries to

account for the law prohibiting cruelty to animals, "all souls belonging

to God." Their original disposition was, it would seem, according to

Nachmanides, peaceful and harmless.

 

 

About them frisking played

All beasts of earth, since wild, and of all chase

In wood or wilderness, forest or den.

 

 

It was only after man had sinned that war entered into creation, but with

the coming of the Messiah, when sin will disappear, all the living beings

will regain their primćval gentleness, and be reinstituted in their first

rights.

 

The special soul of man, however, or rather the "over-soul," was pre-

existent to the creation of the world, treasured up as a wave in the sea

or fountain of souls--dwelling in the eternal light and holiness of God.

There, in God, the soul abides in its ideal existence before it enters

into its material life through the medium of man; though it must be noted

that, according to Nachmanides' belief in the Transmigration of souls, it

is not necessary to perceive in the soul of every new-born child, "a fresh

message from heaven" coming directly from the fountain-head. Nachmanides

finds this belief indicated in the commandment of levirate marriage, where

the child born of the deceased brother's wife inherits not only the name

of the brother of his actual father, but also his soul, and thus

perpetuates his existence on earth. The fourth verse of Ecclesiastes ii.

Nachmanides seems to interpret to mean that the very generation which

passes away comes up again, by which he tries to explain the difficulty of

God's visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children; the latter

being the very fathers who committed the sins. However, whatever trials

and changes the soul may have to pass through during its bodily existence,

its origin is in God and thither it will return in the end, "just as the

waters rise always to the same high level from which their source sprang

forth."

 

It is for this man, with a body so superior, and a soul so sublime--more

sublime than the angels--that the world was _created_. I emphasise the last

word, for the belief in the creation of the world by God from nothing

forms, according to Nachmanides, the first of the three fundamental dogmas

of Judaism. The other two also refer to God's relation to the world and

man. They are the belief in God's Providence and his _Yediah_.(86)

Creation from nothing is for Nachmanides the keynote to his whole

religion, since it is only by this fact, as he points out in many places,

that God gains real dominion over nature. For, as he says, as soon as we

admit the eternity of matter, we must (logically) deny God even "the power

of enlarging the wing of a fly, or shortening the leg of an ant." But the

whole Torah is nothing if not a record of God's mastery in and over the

world, and of His miraculous deeds. One of the first proclamations of

Abraham to his generation was that God is the Lord (or Master) of the

world (Gen. xviii. 33). The injunction given to Abraham, and repeated

afterwards to the whole of Israel (Gen. xvii. 2, and Deut. xviii. 13), to

be perfect with God, Nachmanides numbers as one of the 613 commandments,

and explains it to mean that man must have a whole belief in God without

blemish or reservation, and acknowledge Him possessed of power over nature

and the world, man and beast, devil and angel, power being attributable to

Him alone. Indeed, when the angel said to Jacob, "Why dost thou ask after

my name" (Gen. xxxii. 29), he meant to indicate by his question the

impotence of the heavenly host, so that there is no use in knowing their

name, the power and might belonging only to God.

 

We may venture even a step further, and maintain that in Nachmanides'

system there is hardly room left for such a thing as nature or "the order

of the world." There are only two categories of miracles by which the

world is governed, or in which God's Providence is seen. The one is the

category of the manifest miracles, as the ten plagues in Egypt, or the

crossing of the Red Sea; the other is that of the hidden miracles, which

we do not perceive as such, because of their frequency and continuity. "No

man," he declares, "can share in the Torah of our Teacher, Moses (that is,

can be considered a follower of the Jewish religion), unless he believes

that all our affairs and events, whether they concern the masses or the

individual, are all miracles (worked by the direct will of God),

attributing nothing to nature or to the order of the world." Under this

second order he classes all the promises the Torah makes to the righteous,

and the punishments with which evil-doers are threatened. For, as he

points out in many places, there is nothing in the nature of the

commandments themselves that would make their fulfilment necessarily

prolong the life of man, and cause the skies to pour down rain, or, on the

other hand, would associate disobedience to them with famine and death.

All these results can, therefore, only be accomplished in a supernatural

way by the direct workings of God.

 

Thus miracles are raised to a place in the regular scheme of things, and

the difficulty regarding the possibility of God's interferences with

nature disappears by their very multiplication. But a still more important

point is, that, by this unbroken chain of miracles, which unconditionally

implies God's presence to perform them, Nachmanides arrives at a theory

establishing a closer contact between the Deity and the world than that

set forth by other thinkers. Thus, he insists that the term _Shechinah_,

or _Cabod_(87) (Glory of God), must not be understood, with some Jewish

philosophers, as something separate from God, or as _glory created_ by

God. "Were this the case," he proceeds to say, "we could not possibly say,

'Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place,' since every mark of

worship to anything _created_ involves the sin of idolatry." Such terms as

_Shechinah_, or _Cabod_, can therefore only mean the immediate divine

presence. This proves, as may be noted in passing, how unphilosophical the

idea of those writers is who maintain that the rigid monotheism of the

Jews makes God so transcendental that He is banished from the world. As we

see, it is just this assertion of His absolute Unity which not only

suffers no substitute for God, but also removes every separation between

Him and the world. Hence also Nachmanides insists that the prophecy even

of the successors of Moses was a direct communion of God with the prophet,

and not, as others maintained, furnished through the medium of an angel.

 

The third fundamental dogma, _Yediah_, includes, according to Nachmanides,

not only the omniscience of God--as the term is usually translated--but also

His recognition of mankind and His special concern in them. Thus, he

explains the words in the Bible with regard to Abraham, "For I know him"

(Gen. xviii. 19), to indicate the special attachment of God's Providence

to the patriarch, which, on account of his righteousness, was to be

uninterrupted for ever; whilst in other places we have to understand,

under God's knowledge of a thing, his determination to deal with it

compassionately, as, for instance, when scripture says that God knew

(Exod. ii. 25), it means that His relation to Israel emanated from His

attribute of mercy and love. But just as God knows (which means loves) the

world, He requires also to be recognised and known by it. "For this was

the purpose of the whole creation, that man should recognise and know Him

and give praise to His name," as it is said, "Everything that is called by

my name (meaning, chosen to promulgate God's name), for my glory have I

created it."

 

It is this fact which gives Israel their high prerogative, for by

receiving the Torah they were the first to know God's name, to which they

remained true in spite of all adversities; and thus accomplished God's

intention in creating the world. It is, again, by this Torah that the

whole of Israel not only succeeded in being real prophets (at the moment

of the Revelation), but also became _Segulah_,(88) which indicates the inseparable attachment between God and His people, whilst the righteous who never disobey His will become the seat of His throne.