The eighth mitsvah adjures us lalekhet bidrakhav, to follow God’s ways. We could have limited that to requiring us to act in ways that are God’s; perhaps even just keeping mitsvot, the "ways" God ordained for us, would have sufficed. However, based on several rabbinic formulations of the same idea, Rambam understood this obligation to apply to character as well. That is, and here Rambam’s Aristotelianism comes to the fore of his halakhic writings, Rambam assumed that this mitsvah obligates us to develop a character that follows God’s ways, which at a fundamental level involves striving for the middle path.

The middle path, for those who have not heard me discuss it before, was the Aristotelian ideal of character. In the question of spending money, for example, Rambam and Aristotle would approve of someone who was neither profligate nor miserly, but right in the middle. There are limits to that theory of character, but I want to first spend some time discussing the implications of this mitsvah for Rambam.

If we follow the sources Rambam cited in his presentations of the issue, we will notice an interesting struggle going on in Rambam’s various writings. In the Sefer haMitsvot, which he wrote before the Mishneh Torah, Rambam cites a version of this notion that does not seem to appear in the Talmud, but does appear in Yalkut Shimoni Parshat Ekev, Paragraph 873. There, commenting on the obligation lalekhet be-khol derakhav, to walk in all His ways, the Midrash says, "Just as He is called hanun, so you be hanun; just as He is called, etc." In that expression of the issue, there is no indication that God is compassionate, merciful, or any of the other listed character traits, just that he is called such. Given Rambam’s theological concerns about ascribing emotions and actions to God—a perfect Being would be completely unchanged and unchanging, in his view—the Midrash’s care in saying that God is called by those characteristics is important. It maintains, for Rambam, a vital distinction between God and us; Scripture uses certain words for God not because they correctly describe Him but because they instruct us as to how to develop our character.

Two other sources complicate the picture. First, as he notes in the Sefer haMitsvot, Sotah 14a obligates us to act in manners similar to Him. Based on the verse, "Aharei Hashem Elokeikhem Telekhu, You shall follow after the Lord Your God," (Devarim 14; 5), the Talmud says that just as God clothes the naked (as He did with Adam and Eve), visits the sick (Avraham after his circumcision), and comforts the bereaved (after Sarah dies), we too must perform all those deeds. That is relatively easily explained, however, as there, too, we do not have to say that God actually performed those deeds, but that Scripture describes Him as having done so.

Thus far, the focus of this mitsvah could be completely Scriptural. By combining two rabbinic sources, Rambam could simply have noted that Scripture describes God as both having character traits and performing certain actions. Since we know that those cannot be fully accurate in terms of God, we are left to assume that Scripture meant to indicate to us that we are to adopt and imitate, to the best of our abilities, those actions and traits. The mitsvah of ve-halakhta bidrakhav would mean that we are required to scour Scripture to see how God is portrayed (write a Scripture-based Biography of God), and mold ourselves to mimic those traits and actions that God performs, learning personal lessons from Biblical history.

However, one more source (which Rambam says he found in the midrash on Parshat Kedoshim; we have it in Shabbat 133b) forces us to expand even further the realm in which we can be educated about how to develop ourselves. In that source, based on the verse zeh eli ve-anvehu, this is my God and I will glorify Him", Abba Shaul says that just as God is hanun, so, too, do we have to be, etc. The notable difference here is that Abba Shaul apparently assumes that God actually is all of the things that we have generally assumed are just Scriptural descriptions of Him.

In the Moreh (I; 54—I should remind readers that I absolutely could not find these sources without my Bar-Ilan CD-Rom), Rambam makes a similar, although broader assertion. He says that the way God impacts on this world—not the manner but the result—would, if a human were to have such impact, betray certain traits of character, particularly those listed in the 13 Attributes we say in Selihot and on Yom Kippur. Those attributes of action, the character of a person that would produce such results, are binding on us. It is in that sense that we can meaningfully say that God is compassionate (He has created a world which, if a human had created it, would betray its Creator’s compassion) and so on.

Accepting this claim means that we can base the character we try to develop in ourselves on several different pieces of information. To some extent, the Golden Mean (with appropriate adjustments for hasidut, an unclear term that I cannot describe fully in this context) that Aristotle saw as perfect was a value to strive towards. Beyond that, we have a Scriptural legacy of both actions and traits that describe God, which we should also strive to emulate. Finally, we can study the world, God’s Handiwork, for evidence (by reasoning back to the kind of human we would have to be to shape the world the way it is) of how we should be shaping ourselves to be more God-like. Shabbat Shalom.