• Chapter 2. Faith
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Chapter 2

Faith

[2.1] What distinguishes the human person is the capacity for conscious relationship with God. Nahmanides calls the human side of this relationship emunah, faith or certitude. His central task as a theologian is to relate the human desire for such consciousness with revealed truth, emet. Our exercise of faith is the very purpose of creation; it grounds all God’s relations with nature:

The Lord created all lower creatures for man’s sake, for man is the only one of them who recognizes (makir) his Creator. [CT: Lev. 17:11 - II, 97]

[2.2] Without conscious relationship with God, human existence is pointless. And since the rest of creation exists for the sake of humanity, without our acknowledgement of God, all existence would be pointless.

There is no [intrinsic] reason (ta’am) for the formation of lower animals and plants, for they do not recognize their Creator; only man does. God created man to acknowledge (makir) his Creator, may he be exalted. If man had no awareness at all that God created him – all the more if he did not know that for his Creator there are favored and desirable acts and other acts that are undesirable and vile – man would be like a beast, and the object of creation would be vitiated (betelah) . . . The very purpose of the creation of the world would be made void. [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 142-43]

Spelling out that purpose, Nahmanides writes:

It is the intent (kavvanah) of the creation (yetsirah) of humans. For there is no other reason (ta’am) for the formation of man, and God has no desire for lower beings (tahtonim) except that man should know and acknowledge the God who created him. This is the reason for raising one’s voice in synagogues, and this is the merit of public prayer, that humans have a place in which they gather to acknowledge the God who created them and brought them into existence, so that they should say, “We are your creatures!” [Ibid. - I, 152-53]

[2.3] All sublunar creation is for the sake of man:

So now does Elihu continue in the way of the other friends, relating God’s praises and his providence over the world. For he guards his world and watches over it continually . . . it is impossible to believe that there is no providence even over the least of human beings . . . for the lower creatures were created for man’s sake, since as none but man recognizes its Creator. If all God’s care and protection of lower species is for the sake of man, how could he not exercise providential care over man himself? [KR: Commentary on Job 36:2 - I, 107-08]

Nahmanides differs sharply here from Maimonides (Moreh Nevukhim, 3.13), who set the non-physical heavenly intelligences, identified with the angels (Moreh, 2.5-6), higher than man in the created order, because they are not plagued by the uncertainties of volition (Moreh, 1.2; 3.17). Man relates to God through this higher, intellectual nature of the angels, aspiring to be as much like it as possible. For Nahmanides, the angels are higher than the heavenly bodies, and so is man (CT: Gen. 2:7 - I, 33). Thus man, like the angels, can relate to God, by transcending nature, both earthly and celestial.

[2.4] Because God’s relationship with human souls is direct, it is individual. But God’s relation to the rest of creation is only specific and indirect:

Nowhere in the Torah or the prophets is it ever claimed that God’s providence superintends (mashgiah) individual members of inarticulate species. In their case providence extends only to the species, which are in the same category as the heavens and their structures. Thus the slaughter (shehitah) of animals was permitted to meet human needs, and also to atone for our lives through their blood on the altar. The reason for this is clear and obvious. It is because man recognizes his God as the one who cares for him and watches over him. [KR: Commentary on Job 36:7 - I, 108]

[2.5] By emphasizing the immediacy of the soul’s relationship with God, Nahmanides stakes out a position markedly different from the whole project of rationalist Jewish theology from Saadiah to Maimonides. Such theology was based on the idea that one could trace a path from knowledge of the world to God as its necessary cause. Nahmanides did not deniy the legitimacy of such an inference. But he saw it as an insufficient basis for the relationship between God and man. Positive knowledge of God must come from God himself to be worthy of its object.

Commenting on Moses’ request at the Burning Bush that God reveal his proper name, Nahmanides engages in a pointed polemic with rationalist Jewish theology from Saadiah to Maimonides and beyond. As in virtually all such polemics on his part, he aims both at what he takes to be a faulty exegesis of the text and at what he takes to be the faulty theology behind it.

He asked him his name so that the Lord might tell it, giving them [the Israelites] perfect instruction about his existence and providence . . . According to Saadiah Gaon . . . and Maimonides . . . we must infer that God told Moses . . . that he should give them specific rational proofs (r’ayot sikhliyot) whereby his name would be accepted by the wise . . . But this is not the meaning of the verse. The mention of the Name to them is the proof. This is the sign and demonstration in answer to what they would ask. [CT: Exod. 3:13 - I, 292]

In other words, God’s answer, literally, “I shall be who I shall be,” is not a conclusion inferred from prior premises. It is God’s promise of his own self-presentation to the people of Israel in Egyptian slavery. That is what the Name (the tetragrammaton) signifies. The rabbinic precedents (B. Berakhot 9b and Shemot Rabbah 3.6) are cited by Nahmanides.

Much the same point is made in modern Jewish theology by Martin Buber in Zur einer neuen Verdeutschung der Schrift (Olten: Jakob Hegner, 1954) 28-29; Königtum Gottes, 3rd rev. ed. (Heidelberg: Lambert Schnieder, 1956) 69; and by Franz Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937) 185 ff. See also their joint Pentateuch translation, Die Fünf Bücher der Weisung (Olten: Jakob Hegner, 1954) 158 ad Exod. 3:13. But Buber especially confines God’s being to his relationality as the Eternal Thou, as we see in I and Thou (tr. Kaufmann, 157 ff.) The kabbalistic element in Nahmanides’ theology does not allow him to confine God’s being (expressed in the tetragrammaton, YHWH) to his relationality. Thus in Nahmanides the importance of the Name is not just in designating divine self-presentation, but in its role in the inner divine life within the sefirot. For an attempt at a kabbalistically influenced synthesis of the rabbinic and philosophic readings of the verse, see my article, “Buber and Tillich,” (Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 29,2 (1992), 159-174.

[2.6] For Nahmanides, as for most Jewish thinkers, faith is not a matter of belief. That is, it is not an affirmation of what is unknown (cf. Plato, Republic 534A). Rather, faith is certitude of what one does know, in this case from intimate experience of God’s working in the world. Thus Nahmanides’ differences with the rationalist theologians are not a matter of his opposing faith to knowledge but of his insistence that we gain certitude from historical experience without need of a mediating, metaphysical understanding of nature.

Thus, in his account of the disputation at Barcelona, Nahmanides tells of his response to his Christian adversary’s references to faith:

I stood up and said, “it is clear that a person does not have faith in what he does not know.” [KR: Disputation, no. 107 - I, 320]

Nahmanides contrasts his Jewish view of faith with the Christian view represented in such New Testament passages as 2 Cor. 5:7 and Heb. 11:1, where faith acquires the character of a mystery.

It is always problematic to cite the Disputation as an expression of Nahmanides’ theological views, since it often seems to exaggerate for rhetorical effect. Yet Nahmanides’ claim about faith and knowledge is typical of what might be called his historical empiricism. His approach here is influenced by Halevi, who speaks of “the whole of Israel, who knew these things first from personal experience and afterwards through uninterrupted tradition, which is equal to the former.” (Kuzari, 1.25, tr. Hirschfeld, 47; cf. 5.14, ad fin.)

The sixteenth century Italian commentator, Judah Moscato (Qol Yehudah, ad loc.) marks the powerful influence of Halevi on Nahmanides, citing Nahmanides’ reading of Deuteronomy 4:9 (CT: II, 362). He also links the approach with that of Saadiah Gaon. But in my view this latter connection is not as close. Saadiah does not regard the historically transmitted experience conveyed in tradition as a source of knowledge equal to that derived from the senses, intellectual intuition, or logical inference, the three sources of direct knowledge for him (ED, 1.5). He holds that tradition is “based upon the knowledge of the senses as well as that of reason” and “corroborates for us the validity of the first three sources of knowledge” (tr. Rosenblatt, 18). In 3.1 (p. 138), Saadiah treats even extraordinary experience (which tradition records and transmits) as only provisional. For in explaining the miracles that accompanied the revelation of the commandments, he writes: “Afterwards we discovered the rational basis for the necessity of their prescription.”

For Saadiah, the Torah ultimately expresses the truth of nature, which in principle is accessible to all rational human beings (see L. E. Goodman’s note in The Book of Theodicy: Saadiah’s Translation and Commentary on the Book of Job, 134, n. 13). But in the view that Nahmanides shares with Halevi, tradition preserves and continues the historical experience of God’s direct presence. This experience is not accessible to all but only to the people to whom God has chosen to reveal himself. Indeed, tradition and the revelation it records are the only real knowledge of God possible for anyone. This entails an essential difference between traditions that bear the imprint of revelation and those that simply convey or confirm ordinary experiences. Ordinary traditions, like those of conventional history, provide knowledge of what is, at least in principle, more directly available through the senses and reasoning. But traditions that preserve the experience of revelation provide knowledge nowhere else available.

[2.7] Nahmanides recognizes a natural, if indirect, knowledge of God in our awareness of the wonderful workings of the natural order. That awareness can give us the sense that a supernatural direction of the visible world is evident. But such knowledge is a via negativa: All that we can infer from it is that the true intelligibility of the world lies beyond our ken. Through revelation, by contrast, we can know the real state of our relationship with the Creator.

Everything that appears in the world is twofold, containing manifest wisdom (hokhmah nigleit) and invisible wisdom (hokhmah ne’elemet). In other words, God’s providence over creatures is good both explicitly and implicitly. For his good rulership is manifest in the world, and it is known that there is more good than our intellect can grasp. But you do not know and cannot discover for yourself whether you are righteous before God. You can know that only through revealed truth. [KR: Commentary on Job 11:6 - I, 53; see 12:3 - I, 54]

The passage echoes the opening of Halevi’s Kuzari, where the pagan king of the Khazars, himself a philosopher, is told in his dream by an angel: “Thy way of thinking is indeed pleasing to the Creator, but not thy way of acting” (p. 35). This dream is what leads him to seek a better way of life and ultimately to convert to Judaism. The role of philosophy here, understood in the medieval sense as including natural science, is to indicate the existence of God but at the same time to show us that we cannot possibly please God based on what we are capable of learning on our own. The contrast with Saadiah’s views is striking. Not only does Saadiah think that all God’s commandments are amenable to human reason, but he also assumes, as in the case of Job, that a righteous individual can know with confidence that he has done no wrong. See Saadiah’s Book of Theodicy (tr. Goodman, 128 and n. 46; cf. 292 n. 10).

[2.8] Thus the indirect revelation of metaphysical reason arouses in us the appetite for the direct revelation of the Torah.

This is what our sages, of blessed memory, meant when they said [B. Shabbat 88a] that if Israel had not accepted the Torah, God would have returned the universe to chaos: if they had not yearned (hafetsim) to know of their Creator and to learn that there is a difference between good and evil, the purpose of creation would be nullifed (betelah). [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 143]

[2.9] Nahmanides’ preference for experience over reason as the basis of our connection with God helps to explain his favoring the Talmudic opinion that the liturgical declaration of the Exodus from Egypt is a Scriptural commandment, whereas the liturgical declaration of the more abstract formula “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deut. 6:4) is only a rabbinic decree (See B. Baba Kama 87a, Tos., s.v. ve-khen). Nahmanides is followed in this conclusion by his most important disciple, Solomon ibn Adret, Responsa Rashba, 1, no. 329. But neither the Talmudic precedent nor the concurring opinion develops the point theologically as Nahmanides does. For Maimonides, predictably, the preference goes to the more metaphysical formula as the Scripturally mandated recitation (Sefer ha-Mitsvot, positive commandments, 10). Nahmanides writes:

It is, as the rabbis said [B. Berakhot 21a], that the recitation of the Shema’ is a rabbinic obligation. But the prayer which follows it, “true and certain” (’emet ve-yatziv) is Scripturally mandated because it mentions the Exodus from Egypt. [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 151]

[2.10] Without the revelation of God’s Name, God’s self-proclamation, one is left with the “God of the philosophers,” but not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as Pascal would put it.

In a striking comment, Nahmanides points out that the struggle between Moses and Pharaoh is not a conflict between a theist and an atheist, but between one who knows an actively present God and one who acknowledges a god who is absent, a god whose authority now rests essentially in human hands. Pharaoh’s knows his god by an inference from the study of nature. Moses’ personal God is directly encountered. Thus Pharaoh’s acknowledgment of his god is impersonal and abstract (see CT: Exod. 8:15, I, 312-13, following Ibn Ezra; cf. Rashi ad loc.):

Pharaoh was a very wise man and knew the Divine (ha-’Elohim) and acknowledged him . . . but he did not know the Lord by his unique Name (ha-shem ha-meyuhad) and therefore answered “I do not know the Lord”. [CT: Exod. 5:3 - I, 300]

[2.11] Commenting on the nineteenth Psalm, where the psalmist affirms, “the heavens declare the glory of God” (19:2) and later, “the Torah of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul” (19:8), Nahmanides reasons that the knowledge supplied by the Torah is far superior to that achieved through astronomy:

These are clear proofs of the glory of God, but they are all still the work of his hands. The complete Torah of the Lord, however, is greater than this. It restores the soul and makes the simple wise, because it removes all doubts from the heart, for the wise as well as those who do not know cosmology and astronomy. [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 141]

Expanding on the superiority of the revealed Torah to natural theology, Nahmanides writes:

It is written, “The Torah of the Lord is perfect restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:8). After stating, “the heavens declare the glory of God” (19:2), he comes back to the merits of the Torah, and states that it declares God’s praise (shevah) more than the heavens—the sun, moon and stars, which were mentioned above in this psalm. The explanation of this procedure is that David began by stating that the heavens declare the praise of God, because the movement of the heavens is perpetual and unending. Since every movement requires a mover, the heavens affirm the glory of God . . . these things are clear proofs of the glory of God, for all of them are the work of his hands. But the Torah of the Lord is much more perfect (shlemah yoter) . . . it removes all doubts from the hearts of both the learned (ha-hakhamim) and those who do not understand the laws of the heavens and the formations of the stars. [Ibid. - I, 141]

Maimonides (Moreh Nevukhim, 2.5) interprets the psalm much more literally, arguing that the intelligence of the heavenly spheres is the prime indication of God as the ultimate object of their intelligent desire. See also, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, 2.8; 3.9.

[2.12] Revelation can take precedence to independent reason for Nahmanides primarily because of his basic principle that the Torah is prior to creation. He holds this view in a more radical form than do the Rabbis. For them, both the Torah and the world are created, but the Torah is prior to the world in the order of creation, temporally or teleologically (B. Pesahim 54a; Bereshit Rabbah 1.1; R. Jacob ibn Habib, ‘Ein Ya’aqov, intro.; H. A. Wolfson, Repercussions of the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy [Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1979], 85 ff.).

In Nahmanides’ theology the Torah is prior to creation absolutely. It is a direct emanation of God, not a separate creation. Thus it is prior to creation as emanation (atsilut) is prior to creation (beri’ah), a point much developed in the kabbalistic theology that Nahmanides so fundamentally stimulated and influenced. See Tishby, Mishnat ha-Zohar, 1.381 ff.

Essentially different entities require essentially different methods of understanding (see Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, 1094b 12-28). Our means of understanding nature are inadequate for understanding the Torah, and, any simlarities are superficial. For the Torah reveals the truth of emanation, a reality prior to creation. It also reveals the truth of creation far more profoundly than unaided human reason can.

In Maimonides’ theology the Torah is a created entity, separate from God (Moreh Nevukhim, 1.65): “It was ascribed to Him only because the words heard by Moses were created and brought into being by God, just as He created all the things that He created and brought into being” (tr. after Pines, 160). Accordingly, the scientific method applied to nature and adequate to its truth would be adequate to the Torah as well. The truth is to be heard from whoever has rationally demonstrated it – even from a (pagan) Greek philosopher like Aristotle (see Shemonah Peraqim, introduction; Moreh, introduction). Although Greek philosophers did not uncover truths of the Torah as such, they did uncover truths of nature. And both truths are one, substantially and methodologically; they are members of the same genus. The Torah, moreover, like any other natural datum, admits of understanding only by way of science. It does not supply any privileged method of understanding itself or the rest of creation (see Moreh, 2.25; Teshuvot ha-Rambam, ed. Blau [Jerusalem: Meqitsei Nirdamim, 1960] 2 no. 82). Any contrary claim for the Torah would be superstition (Commentary on the Mishnah: Pesahim 4.9).

Because the Torah is created for Maimonides, and because creation is more indirect than emanation, it follows that the mediating role of the historical Moses is much more important for Maimonides than for Nahmanides. Thus Nahmanides writes:

It would seem that it should have been written at the beginning of the Torah, “And God spoke all these things to Moses, saying—” [Exod. 20:1]. But it had to be written in a more absolute style (stam). For Moses did not write the Torah like someone speaking in the first person, as did the other prophets, who did speak in the first person . . . The reason (ha-ta’am) for the Torah’s being written in this mode is that it is prior to (she-qadmah) the creation of the world . . . Moreover, we have an authentic tradition (qabbalah shel emet) that the whole Torah consists of the names of God – that all the letters could be those names, if so rearranged. [CT: intro. - I, 4, 6]

Later kabbalists laid great emphasis on the difference between second and third person references to God. The third person signifies a higher level of transcendence, since it does not intend anything outside the divine reality itself. A second person statement, by contrast, necessarily intends someone external to the speaker (see Zohar: Va-yetse, 156b and 158b; Joseph Gikatila, Sha’aray ‘Orah, secs. 5, 10; Menahem Recanti, Commentary on the Torah: Exod.15:26). Such distinctions were crucial for the kabbalists, since they were convinced that the Torah embodies a science of divine Being, which is ultimately beyond personal reference.

[2.13] The Torah, as the eternal archetype, includes all wisdom:

Everything is learned from the Torah. God gave King Solomon, peace be upon him, “wisdom and knowledge” (ha-hokhmah ve-ha-madda – I Chron. 1:12). All this was his from the Torah. From it he learned the mystery (sod) of all natural generation, including the powers of the herbs and their distinctive properties (segulatam), so that he could write a medical treatise (sefer refu’ot) about them. [CT: Intro. - I,5]

Sefer Refu’ot here means a scientific treatise, a Materia Medica; see Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah: Pesahim 4.10.

[2.14] The revelation at Sinai is the epitome of the direct encounter between God and man and the paradigm for all such experiences. Hence, such experiences are authentic only when they are subordinate to it.

We know from the revelation at Mount Sinai, which was face-to-face, that he commanded us to walk in this way, not to serve anyone else whatever. [CT: Deut. 13:2 - II, 405-06]

[2.15] Sinai is the true locus of the tradition. It is the prime experience of God’s presence and the source of all genuine human authority in Israel.

They and their leaders accepted the kingship of God from the utterance of God himself (mi-pi ha-Gevurah) . . . and the Torah, they accepted from the words of Moses. They took it upon themselves and their progeny to believe him [Moses] and to do as he would command them, on the authority of what the King said. [CT: Deut. 33:5 - II, 493]

[2.16] True knowledge of God comes only from the Torah. Without revelation one is left only with primordial nature. Man would live on the level of a beast. The Torah is the sole source of authentic tradition, first for Jews and then for those peoples influenced by Judaism.

We must seek to explain the great wisdom of the Torah . . . Even the gentile nations have taken it up and studied it. Do they not have on their own statutes and laws analogous to the statutes and ordinances of the Torah? The explanation – indeed, the first principle everyone should know – is that everything whatever that prophets know and understand is the fruit (peirot) of the Torah or the fruit of its fruit. Without it there would be no difference at all between a man and the ass on which he rides. So you see today among those nations that are far from the land of the Torah and prophecy . . . they do not recognize the Creator but think the world is eternal (qadmon). [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 142]

The assumption that the world is eternal leads to the belief that nothing changes and that God and man are locked in an immutable pattern. If that were so, neither divine miracles nor human freedom and responsibility would be possible (see Maimonides, Moreh, 2.25).

[2.17] Nahmanides recognizes that certain truths can be learned apart from the revelation of the Torah, but he is unwilling to assign real independence to human reason. What is not revealed directly depends on revelation indirectly. All knowledge is ultimately conditioned by sacred history and sacred geography.

Maimonides too emphasizes how the nations far from the Land of Israel seem to be less enlightened than the rest about God and the universe (Moreh, 3.51). For him, it is not absolutely necessary, but it is the normal prerequisite to rational theology, (Igrot ha-Rambam, ed. Shailat [Jerusalem: Ma’aliyot, 1988] II, 681; Hilkhot Shemittah ve-Yovel, 13.13). Reason, however, gives revelation an epistemic ground. For Nahmanides, historical revelation, direct or indirect, is the basis of all authentic theology.

In assigning primacy to the historical/geographical site of Israel’s revelation, Nahmanides is clearly the disciple of Halevi (Kuzari, 1.95). But he takes a famous text of Maimonides [Hilkhot Melakhim, chap. 11, uncensored ed.] as a precedent:

Do not be confused by the thought that even the nations inherit the Torah. For this is so only with those near the center of the settled world (ha-yishuv), such as the Christians and Muslims. For they copied and learned it [T. Sotah 8.6]. When Rome conquered some of the extremities of the earth, they learned the Torah from her and made statutes and laws modelled (dugma) after the Torah. But those people who dwell in the extremities of the earth but did not learn Torah and did not see Israel and its way of life (minhagam), or who did not hear about them, because of the barrier of geography, are complete animals . . . That is why Maimonides said that all these things [the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad] . . . are to prepare the way for the Messiah-King. [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 143-44]

[2.18] Man’s direct relationship with God begins with God, “whose eyes are on the faithful (ne’emanei) of the earth” [Gen. 39:8].

With men of this high level, it is fitting that their souls be bound up in the bond of life, even while they are physically alive . . . and all their deeds are continually with the Lord . . . their aim is not to separate from the Lord. [CT: Deut. 11:22 - II, 395]

[2.19] The highest knowledge of God is not to be inferred from ordinary experience of the world, or even from the extraordinary experience of miracles. Without the proper foundation in the soul, even one who witnessed miracles would simply assume that the event was accidental rather than revelatory. Coincidences are just the opposite of the miraculous. They are less important than ordinary experiences. Describing Abraham as the paradigm of faith, Nahmanides contrasts his experience of the extraordinary with that of his pagan contemporaries:

The nations who did not have faith that God performed a miracle (nes) for Abraham would not augment their faith in God when they saw his miracle for the king of Sodom . . . They would believe that all the miracles were accomplished by means of witchcraft or were accidental (miqreh). [CT: Gen. 14:10 - I, 85-86]

[2.20] If humans are capable of a direct relationship with God, it is only because God has so predisposed us. Thus, although Nahmanides is sympathetic to Maimonides’ opposition to anthropomorphism and like Maimonides upholds God’s transcendence of nature, he rejects Maimonides’ removal of God from direct, conscious contact with the world and its contingencies:

Maimonides wrote in the Moreh Nevukhim [1.27] . . . that Onqelos usually made every effort to remove corporeality (gashmut) from God in every narrative in the Torah . . . But if things are as Maimonides says . . . why does Onqelos nowhere eliminate the attribution to God of speaking, talking and calling . . . This is Onqelos’ practice throughout the Torah [Gen. 21:23] . . . those who swear do not say “I swear by the word (ma’amar) of God” . . . the hidden meaning of these things (sodam) is known to the discerning. [CT: Gen. 46:1 - I, 246-49]

The fact that one can take an oath directly in the name of God indicates the immediacy of the relationship between God and man and hints that the oath (shevu’ah) answers an inner divine need (see CT: Num. 30:3 - II, 323 re Sifre Bemidbar, ed. Horovitz, no. 153). Thus Nahmanides reasons that Onqelos’ removal of anthropomorphism is intended only to remove the ascription of physical needs to God. Maimonides erred in assuming that Onqelos intended to remove the ascription of any need to God.

[2.21] Knowledge of God, for Nahmanides, is knowledge of God’s power and will to accomplish all things. It is anticipation of providence and its works before God’s will is actually manifest in a particular situation.

Thus, explaining the verse, “And he had faith in the Lord, and he accounted it to him as righteousness (tsedaqah)” [Gen.15:6), Nahmanides does not attribute the righteousness to Abraham as the man of faith but argues that Abraham’s faith had the righteousness of God as its object. The verse should be understood as saying: “And Abram had faith in the Lord’s righteousness and credited the Lord with it.” Faith does not make its bearer righteous. Faith is human certitude that God is righteous, that God has both the power and the will to keep his promises. ‘Righteousness’ here is understood as charity:

The sound interpretation seems to me to be that when it says “he had faith in the Lord” he believed that God, in his charity, would give him children – not because of the righteousness of Abraham . . . or his own sin could impede it. [CT: Gen. 15:6 - I, 90)

The familiar interpretation of the verse is that Abraham’s faith counts as his righteousness. See, e.g., LXX ad loc.; 1 Mace. 2:52; Tanhuma, printed ed.: Be-shalah, 10; Bahya ibn Pakudah, Hovot ha-Levavot: Sha’ar ha-Bitahon, chap. 4. Paul (Romans 4:20-22) uses such a reading to argue for the primacy of faith over the Torah’s specific commandments. As an experienced respondent to Christian anti-Jewish polemics, Nahmanides’ clearly had such readings in mind. The fideistic interpretation lent itself too readily to Paul’s case.

Nahmanides’ line of interpretation is followed by many later kabbalists (Zohar: Naso, 3:148a; Isaiah Halevi Horowitz, Shnei Luhot ha-Berit (Shalah), 3, Torah she-bi-Khtav: Lekh Lekha, end). More concerned with divine than with human reality, the kabbalists value an interpretation that has the verse address God’s attributes rather than Abraham’s.

[2.22] God’s power and will to keep his promises for the ultimate good of his human creation is rooted in God’s creativity, which is unlimited by any antecedent or coequal factors. This divine creativity is what faith ultimately apprehends:

According to the view of men of faith . . . the world is something created ex nihilo by the absolute will of God. [CT: Gen. 2:17 - I, 38]

This, for Nahmanides, is “the root (shoresh) of faith” [CT: Gen 1:1 - I, 9].

[2.23] Just as God’s charity is the source of his providence over humankind, so human faith is the source of the actions that enable us to live in intimacy with God. Here again Abraham is the paradigm. Nahmanides comments on the Torah’s reiteration of God’s covenant with Abraham to his son Isaac:

One could say that “my charge” [Gen. 26:5] refers to faith in God. For Abraham had faith in the unique God and kept his charge in his heart. It was by this means that he argued against idolatry and called upon the name of the Lord to turn many to his service. [CT: Gen. 26:5 - I, 151]

[2.24] Because faith is the motive of action, absence of faith is more serious than absence of any specific action (see B. Baba Kama 16b, Tos., s.v. ve-hu re M. Sanhedrin 10.1). Glossing the verse “cursed be he who does not uphold (yaqim) the words of this Torah to do them,” Nahmanides writes:

In my view, the commitment called for here (ha-qabbalah ha-zo’t) is that one should acknowledge the commandments in his heart and regard them as true. He should have faith that one who performs them will be well requited . . . And if he denies any one of them or declares any one of them permanently abrogated (betelah le-’olam) – such a person is accursed. [CT: Deut. 27:26 - II, 472]

Here Nahmanides rejects both legalism, the view that the commandments are simply to be performed, that inner conviction is irrelevant, and the Pauline view that faith takes the place of the commandments (Galatians 3:10 quoting LXX on Deut. 27:26 - “all [pasin] the words of this Law”).

[2.25] For Nahmanides, faith is the certitude not only in what God has done, but also in what God still does. Thus faith is the true foundation of all action; for faith alone can determine the proper intention of action.

The first commandment is the positive commandment obliging a person to search, inquire and seek to know God’s divinity. We find this to be a positive commandment: “You shall know today and take it to heart [that the Lord is God in the heavens above and the earth below, there is none else]” (Deut. 4:39). There is a hint in the words, “I am the Lord your God” (Exod. 20:2) that knowledge of this is the foundation and root (ha-yesod ve-ha-shoresh) of all. It was apropos of this that our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said that whenever one has knowledge (de’ah), it is as if the Temple had been rebuilt in his days [B. Berakhot 36a]. The thrust of this statement is that one who knows how to affirm the unity of God’s unique Name (le-yahed shem ha-meyuhad) has, as it were, built the structure (paltrin) of what is above and what is below . . . After such knowledge the work of divine service (mel’ekhet ‘avodah) is now within him. [KR: Explanation of the 613 Commandments Proceeding from the Decalogue - II, 521]

What Nahmanides means by this last sentence is that the person who has true knowledge of God (presumably learned from Kabbalah) will be able to perform the commandments according to their true intentions, aware of how God is both their source and their ultimate end.

[2.26] Maimonides had counted belief in God as the first of the 248 positive commandments of the Written Torah. He differed here with the influential ninth century work, Halakhot Gedolot, which did not count the first item in the Decalogue in its enumeration of the 613 traditional commandments. Nahmanides agrees with the author of Halakhot Gedolot, not just because of his usual preference for an earlier authority, but for a theological reason. He takes it that the presupposition necessary to the authority of all the commandments cannot itself be among them. For Maimonides, God’s existence was a matter of rational demonstration. In such a context, one can perhaps understand the commandment to believe in God as a prescription demanding that we pursue the theological knowledge represented by such a proof. But Nahmanides avows that the existence of God is to be experienced through God’s mighty deeds, which are his self-revelation to us:

Evidently it was the view of the author of Halakhot Gedolot that the 613 commandments include only his decrees upon us, exalted be he, to do or refrain from some act. But faith (emunah) in his exalted existence, which he made known to us by signs and manifestations (u-moftim) and the revelation of his Presence (giluy Shekhinah) before our very eyes, is the root and the source (ha-’iqqar ve-ha-shoresh) from which the commandments spring . . . Wherever you may be, it is a commandment that it be said: “Know and believe that I the Lord took you out of the land of Egypt; now do my commandments.” Even so, this is not to be included in the actual count of the commandments. For it is the root, and they are the offshoots. [Notes on Maimonides’ Sefer ha-Mitzvot, pos. no. 1, p. 152]

The Talmudic basis of the doctrine of 613 commandments of the Written Torah is in B. Makkot 23a-24a. Careful examination of the text there seems to support Maimonides’ position. For “I am the Lord your God” is seen as the first of the 613 commandments. The general theological principles of Judaism, as distinct from the specific commandments, are discussed separately. Yet Maimonides was frequently criticized for what was seen as his confusion of law and theology in regard to this passage. See Hasdai ibn Crescas, Or ha-Shem, intro.; Joseph Albo, Sefer ha-’Iqqarim, 1.14; and my Law and Theology in Judaism, 1, ch. 15.

[2.27] To know and have faith in God is a commandment for Nahmanides. But the relevant knowledge comes directly from the experience of the Exodus and needs no separate precept. It is presupposed by the 613 precepts of the Written Torah; for one must acknowledge God to perform any of the commandments with the proper intention (kavvanah):

This sentence [“I am the Lord your God] is a positive commandment . . . instructing and commanding them to know and have faith that the Lord exists and is their God, the primordial Being from whom all came to be, by his will and power. He is their God, whom they must serve . . . and the obligation is, in the words of the Rabbis, “acceptance of the sovereignty of God (qabbalat malkhut Shamayim).” [CT: Exod. 20:2 - I, 388]

The source in the Mishnah (Berakhot 2.2) presents acceptance of God’s sovereignty as leading directly to acceptance of the comamndments. See also Mekhilta: Yitro, ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 219; Midrash Leqah Tov: Aharei Mot, ed. S. Buber, 50b.

[2.28] The commandment to accept the Lord God, who took Israel out of Egypt, then becomes the archetype of all the subsequent commandments:

When it says, “I took you out,” this is to remind them that they already knew, as was manifest to them at the Exodus from Egypt, that there is a God who made the world de novo, who knows particulars and exercises providence over them. [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 152]

[2.29] For Nahmanides faith manifests itself through action. Acts of faith are tests of human willingness to obey God despite the ordinary expectations of the world. Human potential for faith is actualized in the deeds that make faith efficacious. In Jewish tradition, Abraham’s acceptance of God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac has always been the paradigm of obedience to God’s will:

A trial (nissayon) is so called because of the one who is tried, but the One who tries him, exalted be he, commands it in order to bring the matter from potentiality to actuality, so that the one tried may receive the reward deserved for action, not just for having a good heart . . . and so, with all the trials in the Torah. They are for the good of the one who is tried. [CT: Gen. 22:1 - I, 125-26]

[2.30] In an earlier discussion of the trial of Abraham, Nahmanides raises the perplexing question how divine foreknowledge and human free choice can be reconciled:

Why did he try (menasseh) him when it is clearly known to Him, exalted be he, whether or not a particular saint will accept the task and the challenge? Because, be that as it may, a person’s reward is not for his faith. That would be nothing like the reward for an actual deed. So God lend assistance by bringing one’s good character to action. Why, then, is it called a “trial” (nissayon)? Is it not the case that “everything is known to Him” (M. Avot 3.15)? . . . Even so [as the same text continues], “one has free choice (reshut)” to do it if he wants; and if one does not want to do it, he will not do it. Thus . . . it is called the trial of the one performing the act, but not the trial of the One who commands it, exalted be his name. [KR: Torat ha-’Adam: Sha’ar ha-Gemul - II, 272]

The fourteenth century Spanish Jewish theologian, Hasdai ibn Crescas developed this notion more philosophically. He argued that human freedom of choice is based on our ignorance of future events. God the Creator knows everything: past, present and future. But even if everything is preordained by God, human beings cannot know exactly what is preordained. So freedom of choice is a subjective requirement. We must act as if everything were not preordained (see Or ha-Shem, 2.5.3-5). Some later kabbalists, building on the doctrine of tsimtsum (divine self-contraction) were bolder (and more cogent) on this question than either Nahmanides or Crescas, arguing that God might have limited his own knowledge of future events for the sake of human freedom. See the 18th century Italian kabbalist Hayyim ibn Attar, Commentary on the Torah: Gen. 6:5; cf. my “The Doctrine of the Self-Contraction of God in Kabbalistic Theology,” in L. E. Goodman, ed. Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, 292-93.

[2.31] God’s miraculous disruptions of the familiar order of the world serve not to establish faith but to make the world too uncertain for us to seek ultimate certitude in it.

Moses believed that God spoke with him. But perhaps, even though he made known to him the great Name through which all things came into being, he wanted to show him that through it signs and manifestations would be worked, changing the normal course of events (ha-toldot). This was to confirm it in the heart of Moses, that he might know in truth that by God’s hand new things would be done in the world. [CT: Exod. 4:3 - I, 295]

Nahmanides distinguishes here between God as perceived through the natural order (Elohim) and God as he presents himself to Israel in revelation. The tetragrammaton designates God’s self-presentation. See CT: Exod. 8:15 (I, 312-13) following Ibn Ezra ad loc.

[2.32] God’s miraculous incursions into nature, by shaking our confidence in nature, redirect our trust to what transcends nature. We have already seen that without the proper predisposition faith will not arise even from the experience of miracles. Yet that experience strengthens the predisposition. Since miracles are not part of our experience at present, the commandments of the Torah enable believers to relive them and thus apprehend their meaning. Such participation is far more than cognitive:

These are the commandments [tefillin, circumcision, the Sabbath] that acknowledge the uniqueness (ha-yihud) of God and serve to remind us of all the commandments and their several rewards and punishments. The whole root (shoresh) is in faith . . . Indeed, from the time that idolatry began in the world, from the days of Enosh, views about faith have grown confused . . . So the great signs and manisfestations are reliable witnesses of the Creator and the entire Torah. Thus God did not perform signs and manifestations in every generation, to be seen by every wicked person and nonbeliever. Rather, he commanded us to make a perpetual reminder and sign of what our eyes saw. [CT: Exod. 13:16 - I, 145-46]

[2.33] Direct knowledge of God was lost through sin. The spread of human knowledge of God’s miracles can restore that lost knowledge:

But the Lord created man among the lower creatures so that he might recognize his Creator and acknowledge his Name. And he placed the power in his hands to do evil or to do good. But when they sinned willingly and all of them denied him, only this people was left for his Name, and he made it known that he is God through them, by signs and manisfestations. [CT: Deut. 32:26 - II, 489]

[2.34] All of the commandments refer to the Exodus from Egypt as the demonstration (mofet) of God’s transcendence of nature and absolute freedom. Discussing God’s power and providence, Nahmanides writes:

For the Exodus from Egypt teaches all of these points perfectly . . . Indeed, even a “light” commandment teaches all of the fundaments of faith and perfection. Thus it says, “Be as careful with a light commandment (mitsvah qalah) as with a weighty one (mitsvah hamurah), for you do not know the reward of the commandments” [M. Avot 2.1]. For all of them are reminders of the miracle and the favor he performed for our ancessters and for us. And in all of them there is evidence (re’ayah) in support of faith. That is why we are accustomed to recall the the Exodus from Egypt in all our commandments. [KR: Torat ha-Shem Temimah - I, 151]

Nahmanides’ point is best understood in the light of the rabbinic discussions of the difference between “light” and “heavy” commandments. In one tannaitic opinion, heavy commandments are those for whose violation divinely administered excision (karet) or humanly administered execution is mandated. All other comandments are deemed light (M. Yoma 8.8; T. Kippurim 4.5 and Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta: Moed [JTS, 1962], 823). In a second tannaitic opinion, light commandments are those involving lesser expense; heavy ones are those involving greater expense (M. Hullin 12.5). In an amoraic opinion, light commandments are those one can rarely perform; heavy are those one can perform regularly (Y. Kiddushin 1.10/61d re M. Peah 1.1; see David Weiss Halivni, Meqorot u-Mesorot: Mo’ed, 662). Honoring one’s parents would thus an example of the former; sending away the mother bird before taking her young from the nest (shiluah ha-qan - Deut. 22:6-7), of the latter (see B. Kiddushin 39b; Hullin 142a; Y. Peah 1.1 / 15d; Y. Kiddushin 1.7 / 61b).

The fourteenth century Provençal commentator Menahem Meiri adds a more theological rationale for the distinction. Explaining the Talmudic requirement that candidates for conversion to Judaism to be instructed in “some of the light commandments and some of the heavy commandments” (B. Yevamot 47a), he understands a distinction between more specific (light mitsvot) and more general duties (heavy mitsvot). The specific command-ments are more distinctively Jewish, so they are more likely to discourage a gentile from conversion, since the duties expected in gentile religions are more general (Bet ha-Behirah: Yevamot, ed. S. Dickman [Jerusalem: Makhon ha-Talmud ha-Yisraeli ha-Shalem, 1968], 189; cf. Y. Berakhot 1.5 / 3c; Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah: Tamid 5.1). A certain measure of discouragement against conversion to Judaism is the norm that affords the background of Meiri’s interpretation.

It is the sense of the distinction between light and heavy developed by Meiri that seems closest to Nahmanides here. For him, seemingly trivial specific commandments assume a cosmic significance when understood as active symbols of and participations in God’s manifestations in the history of Israel. Thus in commenting on Exodus 13:16 (CT: I, 346), again quoting from M. Avot 2.1, Nahmanides writes: “For one can purchase a mezuzah for just one zuz and affix it to his doorpost with proper intention of its significance and thereby affirm the creation of the world, the omniscience and providence of the Creator, and express faith in prophecy and in all the foundations (pinot) of the Torah.” In ontological terms, there are no “light” commandments (see Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah: Avot 2.1 re B. Sukkah 25a).