HOW BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE

Last week, we noted that Rambam's theory of providence and how it related to our attempts to always be mindful of God wouldhelp him explain how misfortunes could befall the righteous. To recap his theory of Providence quickly: Rambam believes that Providence (which we speak about as if it means that God watches over somebody) really consists of a person having developed a connection with God, a connection that innately prevents any harm befalling that person.

He probably adopts this view because he is strongly resistant to any implication of change within God, since change implies (to Rambam) a lack of perfection. In fact, Rambam cites a verse to support his contention, a verse that refers to God "hiding His face," which will engender catastrophes for the Jewish people. The verse does say that God will do this "hiding" because of our sins, which Rambam takes to mean that it is when we are sinning that we do not merit Divine Providence. He then asserts that individual providence works the same way as national or communal providence.

Although I do not intend to generally argue with Rambam's view, this particular point is weak on three accounts. First, the verse does suggest that God will actively remove His presence from our midst, rather than it being a natural outcome of our sins. Second, the verse does not suggest that we have to be actively sinning at the moment the things will happen to us; while Rambam might explain that in the aftermath of sin it is more difficult to reconnect to God, that is not a necessary representation of his view. Imagine someone who works for years on his connection to God, developing a fine one. Could that person sin for a while (simply yielding to various physical desires that are a part of being human) and then just activate his connection to God, thus avoiding all punishment? Hard to imagine.

By defining Providence as the natural outgrowth of a connection with the Creator, a connection wholly dependent on humans, Rambam has made the whole notion of God's watching over people closer to a natural process, avoiding the problem of how God can be affected by events on Earth. His view also suggests that while a person is involved in the activity of thinking about God, the person would be protected by virtue of the connection thus created. If that person stops, however, the connection is broken (like a scribe who stops writing), and chance disasters again become possible.

Rambam's view of providence has sometimes been summarized as saying that righteous people merit a higher degree of providence than the wicked. The formulation in our chapter, however, suggests that he actually sees providence as a function of a certain kind of activity, that of thinking about God in a way that connects the person to Him. It is the activity, not the person, that merits that Providence.

As far as he goes, I have no particular problem with Rambam's view, although if we take that as his whole belief (as academics would), we run into many serious problems. For example, Prof. Twersky a"h used to discuss the "pious old grandmother" problem, the question of how Rambam would conceptualize an illiterate (or barely literate) person who did all the mitsvot that came his/her way, but had no intellectual view of God at all. From his statements in this chapter, Rambam seems to say that such a person has really not gotten near God in any meaningful way, would not merit any more Providence than an idol-worshipper and, in all probability, had not developed any share in the World to Come. (Menahem Kellner, who will be serving as our SCHOLAR IN RESIDENCE at the RJC this Shabbat, speaking Friday night, Shabbat morning, and Shabbat afternoon between Mincha and Maariv, explicitly interprets Rambam this way).

One obvious flaw in this reading of Rambam is that it gives no room for him to understand the Mishnah in Sanhedrin that says "Kol Yisrael yesh lahem helek le-olam haba, all members of the Jewish people have a share in the World to Come (with certain exceptions)." If Rambam really assumes that deep intellectual understanding is necessary for Olam haBa, he clearly could not believe that all Jews have a share in it. There are more examples along these lines that I could produce, but I think the point is clear-- Rambam certainly saw intellectual achievement as a central element in developing a connection to God, speaking of it as the road to Providence, and as the way to develop personal immortality. Assuming that was the whole picture, however, leaves out huge swaths of the Jewish people, too deep a contradiction to Jewish tradition for me to accept as accurately representing his view.

Rambam adds that Psalm 91 (Yoshev be-Seter Elyon) talks of God's protecting people from various kinds of mishaps, and explains at the end that God does this for aperson "ki vi hashak…ki yada shemi, for he passionately loved me…for he knew My name." As Rambam has previously explained, he sees knowledge as meaning apprehension or understanding of God, and passionate love as a result of continued knowledge, so that in his reading, protection extends from knowledge.

YOUTH AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Rambam now points out that when we are young, our physical urges (he uses slightly different words, but that is what he means) are much stronger, creating an impediment to developing the kind of apprehension to which he refers. As people age, those physical interests dim, so that the person is freer to develop the connection to God that he is recommending.

The highest expression of that connection would be that the person loses all connection to the physical, and dies in a state of complete connection to the Divine. In fact, Rambam terms this state-- dying in a state of deep apprehension of God, such that death is almost a favor, freeing the soul from the body that chains it-- mitat neshikah. Mitat neshikah is a rabbinic term for the perfect death, and literally means death by a divine kiss. Since Rambam wasn't going to take that to mean a literal kiss (I hope that doesn't surprise anybody, since it would mean that you have not been following Rambam nearly carefully enough), his interpretation points to what he sees as a perfect death-- a death in which the person is freed of physicality, and leaves the world by being more connected to God than to Earth. As Rambam notes, this is the death that Hazal attribute to Moshe, Aharon, and Miriam.

Leaving aside the question of whether we accept Rambam's denigration of the role of the physical in human experience-- we are here to learn from Rambam, not to present alternatives to him--his explanation of what it means to have mitat neshikah is puzzling, since it ignores Avraham, Yitshak, and Yaakov. Although Rambam has previously noted that they, like Moshe, achieved the level of ani yeshenah ve-libi er, where they were always focused on God, they are not portrayed as having such a death. If mitat neshikah were a function of one's connection to God, in opposition to one's being held back by one's physical body, surely the Avot would have had such a death as well. Secondly, the notion of mitat neshikah again implies a more active God than Rambam's presentation.

Regardless of that kind of death, Rambam sees the moment of death as always involving an intensifying of the person's experience of God, a notion that seems more widely accepted than his previous one. That means that, whatever one's view of God and the relationship of the Divine to human beings, our awareness of God and things Divine increases at the moment of death. This also makes intuitive sense. To the extent that one believes in God and some notion of immortality of the soul, death would be the passage from one realm of existence to another, more Divine one. That passage would necessarily involve a fuller awareness of aspects of existence that are currently hidden from us. This is also the kind of thing that people report in their near-death experiences (you know, circling above the room, being drawn towards the light, etc.).