ALL OUR ACTIONS ARE PUBLIC

Chapter 52 is relatively short and much more clearly written than other chapters of the Guide, so much so that I am tempted to simply urge you to read the Pines translation and leave it at that. However, since I have taken it upon myself to provide my own reading of Rambam's words, I will do so here as well.

Rambam opens the chapter by noting that we all differentiate our public from our private behavior, with the best example of public behavior being that which we would or would not do while standing in front of a king. Armed with that distinction, Rambam can now point out that we all have a greater king than any human one with us at all times, our intellects. To understand this fully, we have to stress for a moment a point that we have somewhat glossed over before, that Rambam believes the connection between humans and God, to whatever extent there is one, depends on our intellects. Our tselem elokim, our divine image, in Rambam's view, is our intellect, and as we develop that intellect we become more God-like, more prone to direct providence, and more connected to God (in some sense).

INTELLECT AS A VEHICLE OF PROVIDENCE

This intellect is a two-way street: it connects us to God, but it is also how God is aware of us. As such, our intellects are a tremendous tool, but also a tremendous responsibility, since it means that God, in some sense, is always with us, aware of our actions. Rambam adds here the words "Understand this well," which always signal for him a deeper message than we might originally catch. Here, I think he means that since he has previously made personal providence a function of the level of our intellectual development, we might think that people of low levels of development are thus safe from God's awareness. For those concerned only with their own pleasure, that might be an advantage; they could say that they are willing to forego the pleasure of connection to God, and reap the benefit (from their perspective) of free indulgence of their base physical desires. If we believe that providence depends on a developed intellect, they might be making a silly choice, but their premises would seem to be correct.

It is that impression that I think Rambam is subtly combating here. Without retracting his belief that levels of providence depend on the intellect, I think he is saying that even the lowest human intellect is enough to create a connection with God, and an awareness of that intellect within the Divine (in some way). That, for him, is the meaning of the verse in Jeremiah-- "Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him?"

The notion of a base level of Divine awareness, regardless of a person's intellect, puts Rambam in a much less intellectualist light than modern readers of him have claimed. If even the lowest humans (intellectually) are, by virtue of that intellect, within God's sphere of awareness, the kind of intellect that passes that threshold is not all that high. That would suggest that olam haba, for example, can be earned with a fairly low level of intellectual awareness of God; obviously, more would merit a higher experience, but the intellect necessary for entry wouldn't be all that high. It also suggests that even those with mental impairments may fit into Rambam's view of olam haba, again as long as they have some basic understandings of God and the Jews' relationship to Him.

PROVIDENCE AS A VEHICLE OF MODESTY AND HUMILITY

Since Rambam has already noted that people behave differently when in the presence of exalted persons, those who recognize God's presence will also behave differently (at all times). They will also achieve humility, since they will always feel the awe, reverence, and shame of standing before such a perfect Being. For that reason, in Rambam's view, perfect men (meaning well-known rabbinic figures) behave in the most private situations-- such as during marital relations and while using bathroom facilities-- as others would behave in public. Rambam names several specific practices of such people-- not walking around with one's head uncovered, not walking completely erect, and acting modestly in terms of dressing and undressing.

SILENCE AND THE AWARENESS OF GOD

A final practice he mentions in this connection is limiting one's speech, and he refers to his Commentary on Avot, a reference that bears expansion. Towards the end of the first chapter of Avot, R. Shimon b. Gamliel is quoted as saying that he had not found a better quality for a person than silence. In a remarkably long comment, Rambam notes that (in Judaism-- he is actually working off categories he openly acknowledges taking from Aristotle) there are five categories of speech-- the obligatory (saying Shema twice a day, prayer, reading the Haggadah on Pesah night), the preferred (praising good virtues), the permissible (discussing life's necessities), the discouraged (idle chatter), and the prohibited (slanderous talk).

For four of those categories (the first two and the last two) the definition of the set also carried a value judgment with it. It is not true, according to Rambam, that R. Shimon meant to limit even preferred speech-- part of being preferred is that one should spend time on it. Rather, it is only the neutral kind of speech where it is better to be silent. There are several other sections to the comment in Avot, and it is well worth people's while to look it up, but for our purposes, that is what he says.

When he refers to that comment here, then, he seems to mean only that perfect people speak little about mundane matters. Further, he seems to be saying that they are staying silent out of an awareness of the presence of God; the value of silence then is not only not to waste our time with the unimportant, it is that that silence expresses our awe of the God in whose presence we constantly stand.

MITSVOT AS A VEHICLE OF AWARENESS

It is the full awareness of God-- leading to the awe and humility we have already mentioned-- that is one of the central purposes of the commandments, Rambam says. That means that despite his detailed discussions in the past 25 chapters, he is now giving a general purpose to all the commandments, that they consistently instill the awareness, and therefore fear, of God. Of course, any arbitrary laws could have done that so his explanations were still necessary, but it adds an element of simple discipline to our observance of mitsvot.

Aside from awe, the positive mitsvot teach us ideas and opinions, and those bring us to the other half of the worship of God coin, the element of love. Observance of the commandments thus brings us to both halves of the service of God, love and fear, with fear primarily coming from the prohibitions and love from the required actions.CHAPTER 53

Rambam takes this chapter to explain three terms that will be important for the next chapter, hessed, tsedakah, and mishpat. Hessed he defines as giving to someone that which they in no way are owed or deserve (it actually means excess in any form, but it usually means in a good way-- I give you an undeserved excess of money, love, health, whatever). It is in these terms that we refer to God as a Hasid, since our entire existence is undeserved and therefore an action that if a human performed it would be called hessed (remember that for Rambam we cannot say anything about God, only about how His actions would be characterized if a human performed them.)

Tsedakah comes from the root for justice, so that it theoretically refers to giving someone anything to which they have a right. That would mean, however, that when I pay a worker his/her salary, I have done an act of tsedakah, which is clearly not the common usage. Rambam therefore says that in the usage of Tanakh, tsedakah refers to an act of justice whereby I improve a moral virtue, since I am in doing so performing an act of justice with my rational soul, namely giving it the chance to develop in the way that it ought. Tsedakah therefore carries a moral connotation, although it does not completely lose the notion of justice. This means (to repeat an old idea) that alms we give to the poor in some sense actually belong to them, they have a right to them, hence the term tsedakah. At the same time, in giving those alms, we uplift our rational souls, the moral element that helps the act retain the right to be called tsedakah.

Mishpat refers to judging what needs to be done to someone, whether good or bad. This already is a tougher mode of action, in which we make realistic decisions about various situations. When applying this term to God, Rambam says we call Him a shofet because He has put into a place a world that has good things as well as calamities, for reasons that are necessary and good, but nonetheless involve a hardheaded decision about how to handle a situation.

The importance of these three terms will become clear next week, be-ezrat Hashem, when we finish the third section of the Guide. Shabbat Shalom