Maimonides and Legal Theory Ariel Beery

Prof. Moshe Halbertal Paper due since Fall ‘06

In Those Days, In Our Times: Maimonides and the World to Come

R’Chiya bar Abba said in the name of R’ Yohannan: All the prophets
prophesized only about the Messianic era, but as for the World-to-Come,
No eye except yours, O God, has seen (Isaiah 64:3). And he disagrees with
Shmuel, for Shmuel said: There is no difference between this world and
that of the Messianic era, except for Jewish independence from the
dominion of foreign kingdoms, for it says, For the poor shall not cease
from the land (Deut 15:11). [BT Berachot 34b]

The way a culture identifies and reifies the World-to-Come reflects upon the

expectations put upon the individual in present life. In terms of law, to borrow from the

work of Robert Cover, the World-to-Come becomes the ideal future towards which the

law in the present is cast as a bridge.1 As such, many if not most of the major religious

systems have focused a strong part of their teaching on their vision of the World-to-

Come, and how their teaching leads to a more pleasurable experience of the hereafter

through restrictions on the here and now. When Christian serfs were told that the reward

for their toils was to be found only their passing into the Kingdom of Heaven, and that

such reward was predicated upon their keeping their place in the highly structured society

of their birth, social calm was traded for individual opportunity and class action.

Calvinism’s revolution came in the double-edge of the proposition of this-worldly reward

and acknowledgement: as Max Weber points out, its attitude towards one’s ability to

prove this-worldly salvation led to the caste-busting ethic of capitalism. Islam has used

the World-to-Come as a motivator to both extremes, from the much-remarked upon

reward of 72 virgins in carrying out that religion’s struggle to bring that world, to the

1
Robert M. Cover, "The Supreme Court 1982 Term. Forward: Nomos and Narrative," Harvard Law
Review 97.4 (1983).

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depths of hell promised to those people who did not accept the Book and retard its

coming. Even Buddhism, which could arguably be seen at times as a life philosophy and

not a religion, focuses heavily on the existence hereafter, linking the nothingness and

freedom of Nirvana to the steps taken by an individual in the span of their own life.

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (the Rambam) knew well the way those faiths

surrounding him had dealt with the World-to-Come, and, in their light, well understood

the social power of their hold. As a resident of the Near East saturated with the messianic

idea, he lived in an environment that sought redemption in multiple forms.2 It is in this

light that it is interesting to explore Rambam’s perspective on the World-to-Come,

especially because of his currently-enjoyed prominence within the Jewish legal tradition.

In this light, this short paper will explore the present day implications of Rambam’s

ruling when it comes to a disagreement between Rav Chiya bar Abba speaking in the

name of Rabbi Yohanan and Shmuel,3 namely the political nature of the messianic age—

and how such a this-worldy political understanding of the concept of the World-to-Come

may affect policy in the current Jewish polity. If law does indeed serve as a bridge

between this imperfect reality and the sought-after state in the World-to-Come, then a law

crafted to bring a World-to-Come defined by, to quote Shmuel, an age in which “Israel

will be free from the domination of foreign kingdoms,” will be different than law crafted

to bring about the traditionally thought about Isaiahesque era of lion-with-lamb, or the

more politically hardnosed vision of the religious Zionist movement in which a Greater

Israel will be reborn.

2
Shelomo Dov Goitein, ""Meeting in Jerusalem": Messianic Expectations in the Letters of the Cairo Geniza," AJS
Review, 4 (1979).
3
Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Brakhot, 34b – for Rambam, Mishne Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah, 9:10

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 Jewish law as derived from a relationship with the sought-after-future has

remained unclear, since the Jewish relationship with the World-to-Come is uncertain to

say the least. As opposed to the lifesystems surrounding the Jewish People, the history of

the Jewish religion has been anything but explicit when it comes to its relationship to the

World-to-Come. The core texts of the Jewish Bible—what have become known as the

Five Books of Moses—never directly reference a World-to-Come or an afterlife. More,

when Moses exhorts Israel to choose the laws and statues contained in the revelation, he

declares: “choose the life so that you and your seed shall live.”4 Live in this life, The

Life, capitalized, as the life of The Commandments as revealed by the Deity who ‘Will

Be as It Will Be”—and is therefore constantly in a state of becoming. This message of

the dynamic future with its uncertainty and potential for good and evil explains the

process-oriented nature of the laws and ordinances transmitted and communicated by

Moses. With an unclear desired future—and therefore little vision of the world the legal

tradition sought to bring—the laws spoken by Moses for the most part governed either

interpersonal behavior or the social structures necessary to live a life that honors the

Deity—and did not discuss specifics of rewards and punishments as did other religions,

beyond the general promise of successful breeding and spreading of seed.

Following the Five Books of Moses, the core narrative of the Jewish People

switches to a mainly political theme, detailing the campaigns of the Generals of the

Children of Israel, the formation of kingdoms, the criticism of the officers of State, and

the behavior of the Israelite citizenry. The pyrotechnics of God acting directly in History

take a backseat, only occasionally reappearing, as the Judges, Prophets and Kings devote

themselves to the historical presence of the collective, seeking to balance political-

4
Deuteronomy, 30:19

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military needs with their relationship with the higher power on this world. Other than

brief instances such as the recall of the prophet Samuel by Shaul,5 the focus remains on

the terrestrial and the this-worldly, the spiritual serving the higher good of the physical.

Discussion of the World-to-Come, and the mystical tradition on reincarnation—

or, more correctly here, the quickening of the dead—gained prominence with the rise of

the Rabbinic class in the shadow of Rome’s rise and the spread of Christianity. For one

reason or another—possibly to compete with the claims of competing religions, perhaps

in reaction to the humiliation and desperation of exile—the early Rabbinic class, and

especially during the years prior to the Bar Kochva rebellion, was strongly focused on the

political messianic miraculous potential, blending the political and military capabilities of

the people with a belief in the imminence of God’s help in bringing the World-to-Come.6

With the crushing of the rebellion, and the dashing of this-world aspirations for

the messianic age in their era, the reaction of the Rabbis was swift in its banishing of the

messianic age from the realm of history into the realm of apocalypse, declaring that

anyone who does not believe in the quickening of the dead will be cut off from the world

to come. Literature concerning the mystical beliefs that united miracles with politics

were banished from the Rabbinic canon of that period—and this state of affairs became

normative with the institutionalization of Jewish life in exile under the Babylonian

empire, so much so that those mystical-political texts that were kept from the Jerusalem

Talmud were readmitted and thereby permitted for integration into Jewish thought with

the spread of the Babylonian Talmud.

5
I Samuel 28
6
As strongly reflected in the Gnostic treatment of Bar Kochva by Rabbi Akiva in text that would later
make up the tractate of Hagigah in the Babylonian Talmud and its assorted parts.

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 The Rambam’s own approach to messianism and the World-to-Come was

impacted by this course of events, and even more so by the near-universal acceptance of

two legal and spiritual traditions: one more messianically-focused religion, Islam, and the

other the alluring value-system capturing the hearts and minds of many of his fellow

intellectuals, Greek philosophy. Viewing himself in the reflection of Rabbi Judah the

Prince, who compiled the Mishna when faced with the crisis of Greek thought and the

loss of the Jewish polity, the Rambam chose to compose the Mishna Torah in order to

meet the crisis of his day: the competition of Judaism’s particularity with the other two

systems universalisms, and their claim on a singular World-to-Come.

This struggle against Universalism was one that the Jewish tradition had not

traditionally been accustomed to. The roots of the Jewish religion grew in a time in which

multiple Gods had been worshiped, and therefore no universal code of law could be

expected from humanity. In those times, since each tribe or people had their own deity or

in some cases pantheon, the victory of a God and the verification of belief in that God

could occur to that tribe or people alone, motivating them to worship without need of

further external verification and without inspiring the molestation of their neighbors.

Each people thereby also had its own vision of its perfect future, its World-to-Come, and

followed laws that would transform the present reality so as to ensure that future would

come: certain practices for rain, others to ensure protection from enemies, etc. Relative

truth led to relative practice, and no universal vision for the future of man. As such,

Jewish thought focused on the obligations of the People of Israel to their God, and the

creation of a society that could coexist with others while not compromising their own

exclusive relationship with the Deity.

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 In Rambam’s day, however, the nature of truth had changed, and the truth of law

as derived from the value-system of the day was declared as absolute. Islam not only

preached itself as the universal and ultimate of solution to religious questioning, but also

the ultimate solution as to how one lived a good political life in this world. Alternative

modes of thought could coexist with Islam, but were only protected insofar as their first

assumptions held that the legal framework as recorded in the Book was ultimate, and that

its reach was universal. Philosophy, too, held to its own claims on universalism, rejecting

prophecy as mere imagination, and upholding rational thought and argument as the reach

towards perfection available to all who had the capacity of rational thinking.7

In addressing these claims on the universality of truth and the universal

jurisdiction of law, Rambam seeks to subvert Islam by arguing that its work is in service

of the Jewish mission to spread the light of monotheism.8 But he also seeks to distinguish

Jewish thought and uphold and justify Jewish particularity through justifying prophecy

within the rational framework of politics.9 Or, in other words, Rambam is attempting to

explain to his fellow Jews why it is rational to remain part of a Jewish polity that is

dispersed and holds with no political jurisdiction, one that is bound solely by its common

belief in the truth of its laws as revealed in a revelation that took place remotely from

their time and space. This approach holds on one hand that revelation does exist and is

justified in making first assumptions, and that prophetic truth therefore has a place in the

political decisions of the community. As such, Rambam respects the religious reading of

the Bible through faith and justifies that prophecy’s truth and centrality against the

challenges brought about by those who might discard the religious as mere imagination.
7
S. Daniel Breslauer, "Philosophy and Imagination: The Politics of Prophecy in the View of Moses
Maimonides," The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series 70.3 (1980).
8
Menachem Kellner, "Messianic Postures in Israel Today," Modern Judaism 6.2 (1986).
9
Breslauer, "Philosophy and Imagination: The Politics of Prophecy in the View of Moses Maimonides."

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But to meet the demands of rationality, Rambam situates the effects of prophecy in the

current world, at times bending the conceptual framework so that it refers only to those

effects that can rationally be measured in this world—and thereby generating a case

justifying the logical adherence to prophetic vision.

This this-worldly application of the World-to-Come can be seen most clearly in

Rambam’s dealing with the disagreement recorded above between the worldviews of R’

Yohanan and Shmuel, where Rambam takes a nearly unprecedented move and records

the opinion of the over-ruled party in what he presents as the ultimate code of the law—

specifically in this case the nature of the World-to-Come which, in this case, provides a

rational justification for why one would follow prophetic law. In reviewing the question

of other-worldly reward, Rambam writes in his Mishna Torah,

--‫מאחר שנודע שמתן שכרן של מצוות והטובה שנזכה לה אם שמרנו דרך ה' הכתוב בתורה‬
‫ ואם לא‬,‫ אם תשמעו יגיע לכם‬,‫היא חיי העולם הבא…מה הוא זה שכתוב בכל התורה כולה‬
‫ וכל אותן הדברים בעולם הזה…ואם עזבתם את ה' ושגיתם במאכל‬,‫תשמעו יקרא אתכם‬
‫ עד שייכלו‬,‫מביא עליכם כל הקללות האלו ומסיר כל הברכות‬--‫ומשקה וזנות ודומה להם‬
‫ כדי שתאבדו‬,‫ ולא יהיה לכם לב פנוי ולא גוף שלם לעשות המצוות‬,‫ימיכם בבהלה ופחד‬
‫ שבזמן שאדם טרוד בעולם הזה בחולי‬:‫ ונמצא שאיבדתם שני עולמות‬.‫מחיי העולם הבא‬
‫ אינו מתעסק לא בחכמה ולא במצוה שבהן זוכין לחיי העולם הבא…וסוף‬,‫ובמלחמה ורעבון‬
‫ הוא חיי העולם הבא; אבל ימות‬,‫השכר כולו והטובה האחרונה שאין לה הפסק ולא גירעון‬
‫ וכבר אמרו‬.‫ אלא שהמלכות תחזור לישראל‬,‫המשיח הוא העולם הזה ועולם כמנהגו הולך‬
.10‫ אין בין העולם הזה לימות המשיח אלא שיעבוד מלכייות בלבד‬,‫חכמים הראשונים‬

With divine reward and punishment reduced to observable cause and effect, the notion of

the World-to-Come in effect becomes a measure of one’s success in the world, very

much like Calvinist doctrine would claim centuries later. The messianic age then works

in service of the World-to-Come—that is, the advent of the King Messiah (a human being

serving the role of the chosen and not anointed and divine in-and-of-himself) returns the

10
Excerpted from Mishna Torah, Hilkhot Teshuva, 9, as published online by Mechon Mamre at
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/1509.htm

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Jews into the field of politics and enables them to build a polity that enables its citizens to

live lives that merit a World-to-Come in their own days.

Politics, therefore, becomes the necessary prerequisite for creating a life in which

religious belief in prophecy can bear reward and access to the World-to-Come. Or,

politics becomes the pre-requisite to bringing the World-to-Come, and since bringing the

World-to-Come is the focus of law, political consciousness becomes the pre-requisite for

legal philosophy: politics determines law. Since Rambam was not a revolutionary, and

did not advocate the declaration of political independence by force but rather believed

that the natural course of events would lead to the messianic age,11 this did not amount to

a declaration of law in service of politics. Rather, an extension of this line of reason

would have it that political independence of Israel would amount from the natural course

of political life—a notion seemingly widely held during this time of Saladin as

maintained by the Cairo Geniza12—and the maintenance of political independence once

gotten, by extension, becomes the main religious task for an individual who would like to

uphold prophecy and rationally prove its relevance not only to that individual, but to the

world.

Process wise, then, Rambam’s logical steps would have it that the natural order

brings about a leader who overcomes in the political sphere and regains Israel’s freedom

from the nations; the legal system enabled to exist by that leader’s actions provides the

necessary space for individuals to be rewarded and punished in this world according to

what had been stated by revelation—and thereby justify externally the truth inherent in

revelation; in order to maintain this state of political reality that justifies prophetic truth,

11
Kellner, "Messianic Postures in Israel Today."
12
See Goitein, ""Meeting in Jerusalem": Messianic Expectations in the Letters of the Cairo Geniza."

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law needs to uphold the political needs when it comes to maintaining independence.

Politics, therefore, becomes in service of justifying the law—and law, therefore, depends

on politics in order to be actionable and relevant. One complements and enables the other

symbiotically.

Reflecting upon these conclusions in the current era in which a Jewish polity

exists as a sovereign state among the nations of the world, it is striking that Jewish law

and politics in the State seem so often to not complement each other—and sometimes

even seem to preclude the existence of the other. If one is to accept the notion that, to

Rambam, the messianic era is one in which the People of Israel is free from the

domination of foreign kingdoms—sovereign in terms of developing internal laws that

include both rewards and punishments—then the State of Israel has indeed brought the

messianic age. The reality in the Jewish polity, however, has it that the secular law of the

State does not intersect with revelation, and the religious law of revelation does not bend

in order to accommodate the political realities of maintaining the messianic age’s core

component of independence. If one is to assume the verity of Rambam’s observation

concerning the need for causal proof in order to buttress values and truths generated by

revelation, then the laws of the Jewish State work against the acceptance of revelation as

a this-worldly truth. But if the laws (of the religion) have to first and foremost work for

the polity as a whole such that they enable a political reality that will guarantee

independence of jurisdiction and jurisprudence, then the laws of the religious Jewish

people work against the acceptance of the State as a messianic opportunity.

Taking into account Cover’s observations about law’s bridging aspect, and the

understanding that the core narrative of a People determines its destiny whether that

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People believes in the divinity of that narrative or not,13 The laws and politics of the State

would be at least partially aligned by focusing on generating a shared vision of the

World-to-Come. Political Zionism, in a sense, did this for the Jewish People in the

century past, enabling the religious and the socialists to agree upon the need for a

political reality that would enable further perfection – creating a this-worldly messianic

moment that generated a platform for additional exploration and envisioning of future

Worlds-to-Come. Without a shared narrative expressing what is wrong with the current

world and inkling as to what world would be desired to come, as Rambam might have

pointed out, law and politics will remain separate and even opposing elements in the

Jewish polity.

Secondary Sources Cited:

Breslauer, S. Daniel. "Philosophy and Imagination: The Politics of Prophecy in the View
of Moses Maimonides." The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series 70.3 (1980):
pp. 153-71.
Cover, Robert M. "The Supreme Court 1982 Term. Forward: Nomos and Narrative."
Harvard Law Review 97.4 (1983): 3-68.
Dane, Perry. "The Yolk of Heaven, the Question of Sinai, and the Life of Law." The
University of Toronto Law Journal 44.4 (1994): 353-400.
Goitein, Shelomo Dov. ""Meeting in Jerusalem": Messianic Expectations in the Letters of
the Cairo Geniza." AJS Review, 4 (1979): pp. 43-57.
Kellner, Menachem. "Messianic Postures in Israel Today." Modern Judaism 6.2 (1986):
pp. 197-209.

13
For an excellent secular exploration of the centrality of Jewish law to the Jewish reality, see Perry Dane,
"The Yolk of Heaven, the Question of Sinai, and the Life of Law," The University of Toronto Law Journal
44.4 (1994).

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