On Reading the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah Like a Love Letter

This week's Torah content has been sponsored by Naomi Mann in honor of Rabbi Moskowitz zt"l, whose shloshim is this week.

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close-up of the Oxford 577 Huntington 80 manuscript
"checked against my book - I, Moshe, son of Maimon zt"l"

On Reading the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah Like a Love Letter

This article is part PSA and part rant. For the past two years I’ve given a Rambam shiur in yeshiva four days a week. Time and again I’ve stressed the importance of using a critical edition of the Mishneh Torah based on accurate manuscripts, rather than relying on the standard Warsaw-Vilna printed editions owned by most Jews. Here’s an excerpt from R’ Yosef Qafih’s [1] introduction to his edition of the Mishneh Torah in which he explains why the standard editions are so unreliable:

The errors and deficiencies of the printed texts were well known, so much so that the printed books were used to characterize a mistaken person: when someone said something incorrect on some subject, they would respond "you are like a defoos (printed text)," and point out the correction. These matters were inscribed on my heart, and I grew up with the assumption that there were two types of Maimonides texts in the world: that of the Yemenite manuscripts and that of the printed book.

Qafih goes on to write about how the Rambam updated the Mishneh Torah throughout his lifetime and how the Yemenite scholars made every effort to incorporate these emendations into their copies. With the printed texts, this did not happen.

… in the printed texts, only a few of the changes which Maimonides himself inserted in his book appear, since only a few reached the early printers. Some of the emendations which Maimonides added he wrote in the margins on the side, and the copyists did not pay attention to the correct placement and inserted them in the wrong place, causing much trouble and difficult questions in the understanding of Maimonides’ words … The "editors" tried to deduce changes. The Mishneh Torah was subjected to severe editing by the printers, and various editors who made emendations of style, language, the structure of sentences and the division of halachot … to the extent that there is hardly any halacha that has not been emended. I know of no other book that was so severely emended … every third or fourth rate scholar who thought himself capable of doing so would presume to try his hand at making emendations and corrections according to his own understanding.

Mark Twain once quipped: “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” Kal va’chomer for a book which contains not only transcription errors, but willful emendations made recklessly by unqualified individuals. And the Twain quotation doesn’t do it for you, consider this analogy given by Mortimer J. Adler in How to Read a Book (1940):

If we consider men and women generally, and apart from their professions or occupations, there is only one situation I can think of in which they almost pull themselves up by their bootstraps, making an effort to read better than they usually do. When they are in love and are reading a love letter, they read for all they are worth. They read every word three ways; they read between the lines and in the margins; they read the whole in terms of the parts, and each part in terms of the whole; they grow sensitive to context and ambiguity, to insinuation and implication; they perceive the color of words, the odor of phrases, and the weight of sentences. They may even take the punctuation into account. Then, if never before or after, they read.

The Rambam most certainly wrote the Mishneh Torah with love: love for Hashem, love for His Torah, and love for all Jews, “small and great,” for whom it was written. His book should be read like a love letter. And if you wouldn’t trust a transcription of a love letter knowing that its text was mangled, manipulated, and revised by scores of strangers, then don’t even touch the standard editions of the Rambam. I cannot, for the life of me, understand those talmidei chachamim who continue to use the bad versions of the Mishneh Torah. I’m tempted to chalk this up to ignorance or laziness, but I can’t tell whether doing so counts as being dan l’chaf zechus (giving them the benefit of the doubt) or its the opposite.

Do you know what is not an excuse? Accessibility. The most accurate version of the Mishneh Torah is the new edition published by R’ Yitzchak Sheilat, available in its entirety for free on AlHaTorah.org. A close runner-up is R’ Yohai Makbili’s edition, which has a free app for iPhone and Android. Use these. Use them in good health. And don’t die of a misprint.

[1] Rabbi Yosef Qafih (1917 – 2000) was a Yemenite scholar who translated and published critical editions of the Rambam’s works. The 20-page introduction to his critical edition of the Mishneh Torah can be found here, translated into English by Michael J. Bohnen.

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Mishneh Torah as a Mirror of Self-reflection

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Artwork: Extraplanar Lens, by Noah Bradley

Mishneh Torah as a Mirror of Self-reflection

Background Info: The Uniqueness of the Mishneh Torah

The Mishneh Torah is a one-of-a-kind work. The Rambam did something that none of his predecessors even attempted: he compiled, organized, and codified ALL of the halachos for ALL of Taryag (613 mitzvos). The Rambam first mentioned this project in his introduction to the Sefer ha'Mitzvos:

I deemed it advisable to compile a compendium which would include all the laws of the Torah and its regulations, nothing missing in it ... so that this compendium would embrace all the laws of the Torah of Moshe our teacher, whether they have a bearing in the time of the exile or not ...

And I would include in it everything of the Torah that has been established and confirmed, omitting no question which might arise, or at least I would mention the principle by means of which that question can easily be resolved without too deep reflection.

Such was my goal to be in this work: brevity with completeness - so that the reader thereof might encompass all that is found in the Mishnah and the Talmud, Sifra, Sifre, and Tosefta, and more than that, all decrees and ordinances of the later Geonim, of blessed memory, as well as all that they have explained and commented upon concerning the prohibited and permissible, unclean and clean, invalid and valid, liable and free, pay and not pay, swear and free from swearing.

In short, outside of this work there was to be no need for another book to learn anything whatsoever that is required in the whole Torah, whether it be a law of the Scriptures or of the Rabbis.

The Mishneh Torah was revolutionary not only in its scope, but in its structure and organization. The Rambam describes his decision-making progress:

As I directed my attention toward this goal, I began thinking about how the division of this work, and the arrangement of its parts, were to be done. Should I divide it in accordance with the divisions of the Mishnah and follow in its footsteps, or should I divide it in some other way, arranging the subjects at the beginning or at the end of the work as logic will dictate, since this is the proper and easier way for learning? 

Then it became clear to me that in place of the tractates of the Mishnah, it would be best to arrange this work in groups of halachos, so that it would read: Hilchos Sukkah, Hilchos Lulav, Hilchos Mezuzah, Hilchos Tzitzis, and that I should divide every group of halachos into chapters and paragraphs, even as the Mishnah has done, so that, for example, in Hilchos Tefilin there would be chapters one, two, three, four, and each chapter would be subdivided into various laws, so that knowledge of it by heart should render it easy for one who wishes to learn something from it by memory. 

The Mishneh Torah is comprised of 1,000 chapters grouped into 83 topical sections ("Hilchos _____"), the contents of which are all arranged conceptual order. These 83 sections further grouped into fourteen "books" - each of which is devoted to a thematic supercategory which encompasses all of the mitzvos therein.

The ingenuity of the Rambam's achievement cannot be understated. R' Isadore Twersky, in his Introduction to the Code of Maimonides, is effusive in his praise:

This syntopic presentation reveals, with immediacy and force, the innovative character of Maimonides' classification. There is novelty in the grouping of laws. There is novelty in the creation and delimitation of certain sections. There is novelty in the nomeclature, rather imaginative and often felicitous. There is novelty in the interpretations which inform and validate the juxtaposition of sections as there is in the entire sequential order, starting with the theoretical-ethical foundations of Torah, moving through the varied realms of ritual, and culminating in an imaginatively conceived presentation of civil and criminal, and we might add, constitutional, law. There is novelty in the amount of extra-Talmudic material and the generally smooth integration of halachic exposition with philosophical-ethical explication. There is also, as we have seen, novelty in the scope and style - in short, in daring to undertake a work of such magnitude and structure. This many-splendored novelty must be confronted and appreciated ... If, as Aristotle said, "it is the business of the wise man to order," Maimonides displayed great wisdom in his ordering and structuring of halacha. Diderot's evaluation of Leibniz is applicable: "He combined two great qualities which are almost incompatible with one another - the spirit of discovery and that of method" ... 

The fact is that there is no antecedent, or indeed sequel, in Rabbinic literature for such a keen, energetic, and comprehensive classification, nor is there any parallel to its rigor, precision, and conceptual tidiness.

There is obviously much more one can say about the greatness of the Mishneh Torah. I have limited myself here to a brief description as an introduction to the primary topic of this post.

The Crowning Pesukim

The Rambam begins each of his fourteen books with a "crowning" pasuk from Nach - a pasuk which encapsulate the overall philosophy or character of the mitzvos expounded upon in that book. For example:

Sefer ha'Mada (The Book of the Knowledge) is about mitzvos which pertain to the foundational principles of Torah; the crowning pasuk of this book is: "Extend Your kindness to those who know You, and Your righteousness to those with upright hearts" (Tehilim 36:11). 

Sefer Ahava (The Book of Love) is about mitzvos which are designed to continually remind us to love and remember God; the crowning pasuk of this book is: "How much I have loved Your Torah! All day long it is my conversation" (ibid. 119:97). 

Sefer Zmanim (The Book of Times) is about mitzvos which are obligatory at specific times - most of which are mitzvos described by the Torah as "testimonies" since they bear witness to historical events involving God's intervention; the bulk of these mitzvos are associated with the joyous moadim (holidays); the crowning pasuk of this book is: "I have inherited Your testimonies forever, for they are the joy of my heart" (ibid. 119:111).

The Rambam also chose a pasuk as a "crown" for the Mishneh Torah as a whole. That pasuk is:

"Then I will not be ashamed 

when I gaze upon all of Your mitzvos" 

(Tehilim 119:6) 

Just as the crowning pasuk for each of the fourteen books was chosen to epitomize the character of all the mitzvos in that book, the crowning pasuk of the Mishneh Torah was chosen to represent all of Taryag.

The Questions

When this pasuk was first brought to my attention, it struck me as strange. The implication is that we are - or ought to be - in a perpetual state of shame as our "default mode," and that the antidote to this shame is contained within the Mishneh Torah. Then (i.e. after we have mastered the Mishneh Torah) we will no longer be ashamed. 

This raises two questions:

1. What shame are we in / supposed to be in? What is the nature of this shame? What are its effects? What if we don't feel like we experience this shame? 
2. How, exactly, does the Mishneh Torah help us to remove this shame? Does the Rambam mean that someone who learns the Mishneh Torah will remove this shame, or is his implication that this shame will only be removed if we succeed in following all of the mitzvos in the Mishneh Torah? Or is it something else altogether?

I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but I wasn't clear enough on the idea to do it justice. I even raised the question in an earlier blog post about shame, but didn't propose an answer.

[Note: the answer I am about to suggest was arrived at without looking at the pasuk in Tehilim in its context. Perhaps I will offer a second answer using that route at a later time.]

An Answer

This past Shabbos I was reading The Week magazine and I came across a quotation which perfectly expressed the idea I wished to convey. That quotation came from the Swedish writer Alain de Botton, and it goes like this:

"If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn't begun."

The Torah is the God-given regimen to success as a human being, as the Ralbag explained in his introduction to his commentary on Sefer Bereishis. The very notion of a "regimen" presupposes that if we attempt to succeed on our own, we are at a disadvantage. To quote Eric Hoffer: "Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be." It is extremely difficult to simply be human without the aid of a program - which is exactly why the Creator of man provided us with the perfect program.

It follows, then, that to the extent that we have not "mastered" the Torah regimen, we are lacking in a fundamental way: we are living our human lives without knowing how to live as humans! Such an approach to life is shameful indeed. This is the type of shame that the Rambam was referring to by citing the pasuk from Tehilim - not the Christian shame of religious guilt, nor the relativistic shame of being obsessed with what people will think of you. The Rambam is talking about the shame that comes from our recognition that we are "[walking in] darkness, not knowing [on what] we stumble" (cf. Mishlei 3:19) and our realization that: 

The words of prophecy are like the words of a sealed document, which one gives to a literate person, saying, "Please read this," and he says, "I cannot, for it is sealed." Then the document is given to an illiterate person, saying, "Please read this," and he says, "I am illiterate" (Yeshayahu 29:11-12).

The more we understand Taryag, the more cognizant we will be of the type of life we lived before we learned Taryag. And as we reach each developmental breakthrough in our Torah-growth, it is as if we are being told by the Rambam (borrowing the words of Simon Stimson from Thorton Wilder's Our Town):

"Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those ... of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To always be at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know - that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness."

This recognition of how we once lived and how there is much room there is for development is bound to cause shame (the good kind) in those who have embarked on this lifelong journey of Torah-development. Lefum tzaara agra ("The reward is in accordance with the suffering").

Conclusion

The Mishneh Torah is a multifaceted sefer, seen differently by different groups of people. They layperson relates to it as a halachic code, just like the others. The Briskers regard it as a repository of lomdus and sevara. The Yemenites treasure it as the bedrock of their halachic culture.

It is said that my Chumash rebbi was in the habit of referring to the Mishneh Torah as "the mirror of self-reflection." Personally, that is how I choose view it. And in light of my understanding of the Mishneh Torah's crowning pasuk, I believe that the Rambam would approve of this characterization, and endorse this approach to his magnum opus.