Must a Jew Believe Anything? (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 272-275 Menachem Kellner. Must a Jew Believe Anything? London: The Liftman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999. Pp. ? + 182. Menachem Kellner is not a disinterested scholar. As a result, his books are provocative, and Must a Jew Believe Anything? is no exception. Over the last decade, Kellner has written a number of monographs on Maimonides and his relevance for contemporary issues. In general, Maimonides emerges in a very positive light. In his 1991 book, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People, Maimonidean universalism is juxtaposed to the nationalistic particularism of Judah Halevi, to the advantage of the former and to the detriment of those who, like Halevi and his contemporary counterparts , wish to see the difference between Jews and non-Jews as more than (merely) religious, but as grounded in nature. In his more recent Maimonides on the "Decline of the Generations" and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority (1998) Maimonides' halakhic authority is invoked very favorably against contemporary fundamentalists who would use him as the arbiter in non-religious disputes. One immediately sees that Kellner's target in these books is the religious right in Israel and abroad. Given his earlier pro-Maimonidean stance, it is surprising to see Maimonides pilloried in Kellner's current book. But he is, in the name of a Jewish future which is less doctrinaire and less inclined to read out of the community those Jews whose views are not Orthodox. Maimonides is presented here as the champion of orthodoxy in the literal sense of the word. He is presented as the first among Jewish thinkers to demand adherence to a set of doctrines or principles—dogmas—as a necessary condition to be a Jew and a member of the Jewish community, and to enjoy a share in the world to come. According to Kellner, Maimonides holds that the beliefs that God exists, is one, is incorporeal, is ontologically prior to the cosmos, and must be the sole object of worship, are absolutely mandated for every Jew, insofar as that individual is to be counted as a member of the community . Maimonidean dogmatism counters Halevian essentialist nationalism, but the anti-essentialism of the former is in its own way as deeply exclusivist and intolerant as the latter. For Kellner, Maimonides, the great codifier of the law, is ironically out of step with the rabbinic tradition in his dogmatism. This tradition centers upon orthopraxy, not orthodoxy, and studiously avoids any kind of systematic theology. Doing is primary in the rabbinic tradition, and the commandments are injunctions to act in certain ways, not to consider and hold certain beliefs. Kellner points to Crescas in the late medieval period as anti-Maimonidean (and authentically rabbinic?) in his insistence that beliefs cannot be commanded. For Kellner, Crescas thus correctly holds that KELLNER, MUST A JEW BELIEVE ANYTHING?—FRANK273 Maimonidean moral psychology, which argues the contrary view, is deeply flawed. As can be seen, Kellner grounds his argument against Maimonides in a number of dichotomies, such as theology/halakhah, orthodoxy/orthopraxy, and believing/doing. He might have added philosophy/religion and Hellenism /Hebraism. But all these divisions are too simple and fail, I think, to capture what Maimonides is up to in positing principles of Jewish belief. Kellner himself vacillates between understanding Maimonides as claiming that theology of a sort must be understood as falling under halakhah (p. 99) and arguing that in his theologizing Maimonides was, in fact, "not trying to modify accepted halakhah" (p. 55). Which is it? For Kellner, the emphasis is clearly upon the former, with its clear goal of making belief the litmus test for being a Jew (see also Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People, pp. 62-63; 136, n. 14). But all such dichotomies, especially that between theology and halakhah , are unnecessary. In fact, what Maimonides is doing in his positing of principles is not any different than what he normally does, namely teasing out of canonical texts whatever is of philosophical interest. Kellner himself suggests this when he characterizes Maimonides' theologizing: "Maimonides sought to make explicit matters which in his view had always been implicit in Judaism" (p. 24, n...