Milhemet ha-dat (Religious War)

Second Article, Chapter One

In the previous article, I presented you, dear reader, with the essence of the three different approaches existing within our religion, to which I have respectively referred by the names: “The Enlightened Ones, the Godly Ones, and the Group of the New Rabbis,” and in the three chapters of this article I shall subject their respective views to scrutiny, and in so doing, I shall not be laying one handbreadth bare while concealing two!

[ . . . ] Let us suppose for a moment that the approach of the Enlightened Ones is correct, and that the objective of the Torah was, in their view, merely to teach philosophical expositions such as the following: the Unity of God, and that whatever is written in the Torah is within the realm of philosophy; if that were the case, the philosophical investigators amongst the gentile nations, who acknowledge these truths as a result of their own contemplation, ought to be regarded as fully fledged Jews, or perhaps as “saints on earth,” despite their not having been circumcised and immersed in a ritual bath, and notwithstanding that, throughout their lives, they have never engaged in performance of the practical precepts. Is this not a really foolish proposition, to which no intelligent person would give his assent?

[ . . . ] Let not a stubborn person think that the exhortation contained in many places in our Torah against idol worship logically implies, through its repudiation, the notion of divine unity, for in reality, the intent of these exhortations is not directed against the perceptions and notions which are opposed to the spirituality of contemplative science involved in divine wisdom. Rather, it is intended as a repudiation, expressed in the form of a Torah-based statute, of the service of and reverence for the acts of idolatry and the secondary matters associated with it, and of the making of images and fashioning them with one’s own hands, the reasons underlying which you will hear about in our explanation in the third article; and also, the reason mentioned in the Torah in connection with the exhortation against idolatry is by no means capable of teaching us the necessity of distancing ourselves from materialization of the deity, as it is written (Exodus 20:5): “You shall not bow down to them,” etc., “for I, the Lord, am a zealous God, Who visits the sins of the fathers,” etc. Those who oppose our nation and our religion would be able to imagine, because of this (and in fact, many among them have so thought) that the Lord, the God of Israel, feels jealousy and rivalry, loves dominion and honor and the like, being possessed of the attributes of a ruler of flesh and blood. They further claim that the verse: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4) is not a principle of faith, as the belief of Israel in the Unity of the Almighty, blessed be He, and the like, is not clearly outlined in this phrase—but rather, the word “Hear” simply means “Know” or “Pay attention,” in the way that such an expression is employed in casual conversation or as an established hypothesis, and it is not used by way of a command and decree. Moreover, the precise parameters of and the exclusive meaning that may be derived from this exalted teaching are not so plainly delineated therein as to preclude it being expounded in other ways, or even in a manner contrary to its original intent; only once in the Torah is its meaning clarified, to a minor degree and very briefly (in Deuteronomy 4:39), albeit as a secret matter, and merely by way of allusion intended for the one who discerns, and is aware of, and has penetrated into, its true meaning. It is not a plain exposition, inscribed explicitly upon the tablets of the Torah in such manner as to enable the masses to run through it at speed, and as to permit every individual not belonging to the special elite, or who has not delved sufficiently deeply into Divine wisdom as to be conversant with the mysteries of existence, to understand it.—

(Continuation to follow)

Fabius Mieses