I was learning the following Halacha in Rambam -
וכל זמן שיכנס לבית הכסא אומר קודם שיכנס התכבדו מכובדים קדושים משרתי עליון שמרוני שמרוני עד שאכנס ואצא שזה דרכן של בני אדם[1]
רמב"ם הלכות תפילה ונשיאת כפים פרק ז הלכה ה
Whenever he enters the toilet, he says before entering – [I offer] my respects O respected ones, holy ones, servants of the [One] on high. Wait for me, wait for me until I enter and exit, for that is how humans are.
This Halacha is based on a Gemara in Berachot 60b and at first blush seems like a mystical formula, an incantation that one says for protection or for some other superstitious motive. Apparently, the person is addressing an angel or an invisible presence that waits for him while he takes care of his bodily functions. Interestingly, Rambam quotes this Gemara as is without any comment although he generally ignores any supernatural or mystical prescription in the Gemara. Clearly, he did not see it as such and it behooves us to understand how he viewed this formula.
In MN 3:23 in a discussion regarding the story of Iyov, Rambam quotes a Gemara in Bava Batra 16a that says that Satan, the angel of death and the Yetzer Harah (the evil inclination) are synonymous. Yetzer Harah (the evil inclination), clearly is an internal human trait, not something external. Satan and the angel of death are therefore also not external but different appellations (descriptions) of that same human trait. Satan in Iyov is described as belonging to the category of angels,
ו וַיְהִי הַיּוֹם--וַיָּבֹאוּ בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים, לְהִתְיַצֵּב עַל יְהוָה; וַיָּבוֹא גַם הַשָּׂטָן, בְּתוֹכָם.
6 Now, it fell upon a day, that the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.
The conclusion therefore is that a person’s evil inclination, his personal trait, is in the angel category. The Yetzer Harah’s companion, the Yetzer Hatov, the good inclination is therefore also categorized as an angel. Angels in Rambam’s worldview are not external entities but rather concepts and forces that are entwined and enmeshed in every aspect of the world and its existence. The word Mal’ach means messenger or intermediary. It is a word used to describe a perception of something being the immediate cause of an occurrence, an action or an event. It could be a physical entity but it also could be just a completely non-physical concept. If a personal urge was the cause of an action by a person, that urge is seen as the intermediary that provoked the action – an angel. As HKBH is seen as the First Cause, everything that happens is seen as the effect of His original will. Everything that happens is therefore seen as being caused by God’s messengers – His angels. As man’s freedom of choice is defined as the ability to choose between good and bad, the two opposing urges within him, and that ability being the result of HKBH’s original will, we attribute that to two angels, Yetzer Harah and Yetzer Hatov – good and bad inclinations. Yetzer Harah being the necessary inclination of man to preserve his physical wellbeing and Yetzer Hatov his ability to develop his Sechel, his mind to understand his own existence and his relationship to HKBH. These two opposing but necessary inclinations are part of man and accompany him throughout his life.
“According to our Sages, the evil inclination, the adversary (Satan) and the angel [of death] are undoubtedly identical. As the adversary is called angel, “because he is among the sons of God”, and the good inclination being in reality an angel, it is to the good and the evil inclinations that they refer in their well-known words, "Every person is accompanied by two angels, one being on his right side, one on his left." In the Babylonian Gemara (Shabbat 119b), they say distinctly of the two angels that one is good and one bad. See what extraordinary ideas this passage discloses, and how many false ideas it removes.” (MN 3:22)
That brings us back to the Halacha we started with. We are fortunate to have nowadays the Frankel edition of Rambam where they have added the Pirush of Rabbeinu Manoach of Narbonne on Ahavah. Provence in the 12th through 14th centuries was a center of Maimonidean thought. They worked on understanding and developing the master’s Torah expanding its limits in both Halacha and theology. As is known Rambam saw no difference between the two, each being complementary to the other. Here is how Rabbeinu Manoach, one of the prominent Rishonim of the era and area interprets this Rambam.
He quotes Rashi on the Gemara who says that the person is addressing the angels that accompany him, the same angels Rambam referred to in the quote above. RM adds, “The Mal’achim are intellectual powers [Hakochot Hasichlyot]. The person states that he does not want to use them [his intellectual powers] at this time”. RM explains the words wait for me “as if saying that he is not abandoning them altogether [just for a while]. However even during this down time, he has in mind to use them immediately afterwards as the verse says “I place God in front of me at all times”. These forces are referred to metaphorically as Mal’achei Hasharet – serving angels[2].”
RM clearly had the above MN and Rambam’s understanding of angels in mind when he wrote this. He agreed with Rashi connecting the Gemara of the two angels that always accompany a person to this formula – but reinterpreted them according to Rambam. The idea is, being that during this activity the intellect is put on hold, so is the inclination and drive for physical endeavors other than the present one. One cannot trust one human trait without the other so both are put in abeyance. By asking them to wait, he does not however sever completely his connection with them.
Interestingly, based on this understanding, RM explains the first part of the blessing [Bracha] we make after relieving ourselves, as follows:
“, אשר יצר את האדם בחכמה who created man giving him wisdom with which he can understand his own nature and the loving-kindness [Chesed] he received. If one were to translate [as it is traditionally – see Tur and Shulchan Aruch] that his creation was done with wisdom, one need to ask was not all God’s creations done with wisdom? [Why is man singled out?]”.
As we have temporarily relinquished our connection with our intellect, now that we rejoin it, we acknowledge that it is God who made us and gave us that ability to think and grow.
Unfortunately, this interpretation was lost and not known to the later codifiers. [Aruch Hashulchan suggests this interpretation of the Bracha based on the Maharsha who sees this as comparing man’s intellect to other animals. He however does not explain why one would mention this at this occasion and time.]
[1] Rav Kafih has a different text – RM seems to have the same as the Frankel text so I left it and translated it accordingly.
[2] Think how this changes the meaning of the Friday night poem Shalom Aleichem! These two angels being the ego and the id in psychiatric parlance, we are declaring the Shabbat to be a time for introspection, integrating our two opposite urges.
I love this interpretation. It is excellent.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with your exposition, which you may have heard echoes of on XGH's blog over the past day or two, is the inaccurate statement "Angels in Rambam’s worldview are not external entities but rather concepts and forces that are entwined and enmeshed in every aspect of the world and its existence."
It is true that the Rambam adopted a broad interpretation of the term "angel", and held that it included natural forces, prophets, etc. But it is patently false to claim that he held that there is no such thing as an external, metaphysical entity which is univocally called an angel.
The Rambam's view on this matter is so clear and explicit that it is difficult for me to fathom how certain moderns can ignore or distort it. The Rambam describes the levels of angels and their names and properties in the second chapter of Yesodei Hatorah, emphasizing that they are pure form, have a profound intellectual understanding of God, and are "alive" in the sense that they possess true existence. He elaborates upon these points even more liberally in the Moreh.
The perfected human soul in its disembodied, post-mortem state would be close to the level of the lowest angel in its comprehension of the ways of God. Prophecy is transmitted from the mind of the angel to the mind of man.
Aside from all this, the effort to dismiss the Rambam's obvious belief in angels as real existences can only be seen as an attempt to "modernize" the Rambam's thought and force it into harmony with current views.
The unassailable reality is that during the medieval period, it was considered a scientific fact that metaphysical beings called angels existed. Not one Jewish, Christian or Muslim scholar thought otherwise, as this was considered a well-established piece of knowledge. In his era, denying the existence of angels would have made the Rambam less scientific, not moreso.
So the whole enterprise here is not only wrong, it is a fundamentally misguided attempt to recraft the Rambam in the image of a twentieth-century modern Orthodox liberal theologian, when he was actually an outstanding representative of the best of medieval rationalism and metaphysics.
RJM I ommitted from the fianl post these two rambams as I did not want to distract from the issue.
ReplyDeleteומהם ברואים צורה בלא גולם כלל--והם המלאכים, שהמלאכים אינם גוף וגווייה, אלא צורות נפרדות זו מזו
והצורות שאין להם גולם, אינן נראין לעין, אלא בעין הלב הם ידועים, כמו שידענו אדון הכול בלא ראיית עין.
I know you will say that when they are known in the mind only it is like we know that there are atoms though we cannot see them. Atoms thosugh could be seen while Tzurot cannot. I understand that to mean it is only a mental picture of a non physical concept.
You are much better versed than I am in medieval philosophy, but is not the argument about how many angels can stand on the head of a needle the same we are having?
but is not the argument about how many angels can stand on the head of a needle the same we are having?
ReplyDeleteNo, that argument is a spurious old wive's tale that never took place in reality! No respectable medieval theologian ever ascribed material properties to angels.
You must ask yourself the following question: Does God really exist, or is He just a "mental picture of a concept"?
What about human souls in the afterlife? Do they really continue to exist after death, or are they "mental pictures of a concept?" Does the fact that simpletons may debate how many souls fit into a telephone booth detract from the authenticity of a soul's existence?
The analogy to angels is clear. They are metaphysical beings, actualized disembodied intellects with conscious awareness. Why are they any less entitled to existence independent of the human mind than any other metaphysical entity?
How anyone can read anything else into the second Pereq of Yesodei Hatorah, or the manifold discussions of angels as real entities both in the Moreh and in the works of Rishonim that followed the derech Harambam, is beyond me.
Being a "mental picture of a concept" does not negate existence if you understand the word "existence" to be equivocal.
ReplyDeleteMN 1:49 is the place he discusses it in detail and the way I read it - as far as us humans are concerned they can only be conceptualized in the mind - in the manner as we conceptualize HKBH. Although we use positive description for them we can only say what they are not - just like we would about God. They exist like He does and they are His creations - but as far as we are concerned they are just a concept.
I think we are saying the same thing using different words - you say metaphysical I say concepts. As you know our Yediah in comparison to God's is only equivocal.
The word "concept" is usually used to refer to something that has no existence outside of our minds, i.e., a purely mental product.
ReplyDeleteThis is why neo-Aristotelian philosophers and realists in general are typically opposed to the term "concept" altogether, since it implies that what we understand about the world - the "concepts" we reflect on - are not correlated with what actually exists outside of our heads. Conceptualists like Locke and Kant, on the other hand, believe that we are inextricably lost in our own mental worlds and will never access reality as such.
In truth, the "forms" we abstract from matter - like the formulas of physics, for example - exist in the real world, although their natural existence is inherent in matter rather than separate from it. Knowing them is knowing something real about the world, not just acquiring a "concept".
Angels, on the other hand, are pure form that we can't fully understand because they are entirely immaterial and thus inaccessible to the human intellect.
I found your note about the shalom 'alekhem poem very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI always felt very uncomfortable when I was in the precence of people singing it -it is not part my minhagh-, but this puts it in a different light.
I am still uncomfortable with "barekhuni leshalom" though.
Yehudah, I would have no problem understanding that we ask that the two human traits live peacefully with each other in service of HKBH - bishnei Yetzareicha. Don't forget to Rambam yetzer hara is not intrinsically bad and is good when controlled by the intellect - vide Eishet Chayil. Which BTW explains why Rshet Chayil follows Shalom Aleichem in most ashkenaz minhagim.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. So what is your take on "barekhuni leshalom"? Is it okay to ask angels for a blessing?
ReplyDeletenow you are going into a totally other area what is tefilla. I have not written a lot about it but think of Tefilla in Ahavah which is Yediah and tefillah in Ta'anyot which is Midarchei Hateshuvah.
ReplyDeleteThis would belong to the former which is less a petition but rather a hoda'ah in the sense of admitting and confirming. A lot to talk about Ve'od chazon lamoed.
Thanks for your reply. I know it is an ancient discussion but I never fully understood the Maimonidean take on it.
ReplyDelete