Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider

Chapter 6: God, the Supreme Outsider: Indwelling (Shekhinah) as Metaphor for Outdwelling

141 C H A P T E R 6 God, the Supreme Outsider Indwelling (Shekhinah) as Metaphor for Outdwelling P hysical or existential displacement is often the lot of the outsider who defies containment within the narrow confines of the societal norm. The convert’s loss of family can never be fully replaced by his newly adopted family for its cohesion is still largely determined by ancestral roots. The heretic, though sharing those roots, travels in the opposite direction than that of the convert by rejecting the beliefs that help shape his lineage. The leper is halakhically ostracized and forced to assume an official mode of estrangement that is “outside the camp.” The king, as we have seen, must resist the tendency of his office to situate himself beyond the reach of his people, which is accomplished by relegating himself to a place on the social spectrum accessible to all. One form of social estrangement driven by humility neutralizes another driven by arrogance. The sage fits comfortably within the social framework of his co-religionists, but only externally. Internally he practices a religion and worships a God wholly alien to those who surround him. 142 ■ Converts, Heretics, and Lepers The Ontologization of a Placeless Presence All these outsiders share a sense of spatial alienation, either internally or externally, from their surrounding religious and intellectual environments, and their physical spaces shift, either congruently or not, with their inner psychic spaces. The leper’s expulsion from his home environment follows a diagnosis by the priest, and not by a medical practitioner, which indicates an inner dislocation serious enough to invite physical spatial dislocation. In Heideggerian terminology, one can only understand where any of these “outsiders” are situate in the world “in terms of the ‘yonder’ of the world that is ready-to-hand—the ‘yonder’ which is the dwelling place of Dasein as concern.”1 For Maimonides, however, the “yonder” is the limit of intellectual reflection regarding the nature of God, or the ground of all Being. The predicament of these various outsiders serves to accentuate the authentic dwelling place of man in general, which is dwelling as concern, concern for that Being as creator that provided the dwelling place enabling man to create his own dwelling place saturated with concern. This book would be incomplete without a chapter devoted to God, the one existence that ontologizes placelessness. God does not occupy space, but provides and governs space, as indicated by the midrashic translation of the verse “The eternal God is a dwelling place” (Deut 33:27): “He is the dwelling place of the world, but His world is not His dwelling place” (Gen Rabbah 68:9; quoted in GP I:70, 172–73).2 The locus of God is pure perfection, and His place in the prophetic texts, for Maimonides , always signifies “His rank and the greatness of His portion in existence” (GP I:8, 33). As such, there is no greater model for the kind of place man must ultimately stake out for himself. Imitatio dei would consist of striving for, and eventually achieving, a place of rank and perfection. Man’s destination is God, and the road he travels is thought; as he gets closer to his goal (as discussed in the case of the sage), he merges with placelessness. Since Maimonides’ entire body of work can be said to be about God, in this chapter I limit myself to God as shekhinah (Indwelling), a “manifestation” of God particularly problematic for its later emergence in the mystical tradition as an actual divine hypostasis. That the notion of “place” must be thoroughly deconstructed is indicated by a particularly lengthy digression in the lexicographical chapter in the Guide on the term “place” (me’onah), which actually serves as a second introduction to the Guide as a whole: Know with regard to every term whose equivocality we shall explain to you in this Treatise that our purpose in such an explanation is not only to draw your attention to what we mention in that particular chapter. Rather do we open a gate and draw your attention to such meanings of that particular term as are useful for our purpose, not for the various purposes of whoever may speak the language of this or that people. As for you, you should consider the books of prophecy and other works composed by men of knowledge, re...