I have always been fascinated by the biographies of the Presidents of the United States. I am uncertain how I got hooked on this, but already as a child, I got ahold of a little booklet my grandfather had with pictures of all of the chief executives from George Washington to the then current occupant of the Oval Office, Dwight David Eisenhower, number 34. I memorized the names of these men in order and could recite them forward and backward. My mother, ever the school-teacher, seeing my interest, or more accurately my obsession, bought me a workbook which came with stamps with pictures of the Presidents to place on the proper page next to their biographies. You may recall a series of similar books with stamps of animals and birds, etc. But for me, it had to be presidents.
Over the years, I’ve found some interesting volumes written about many of these past leaders and always have learned more about American history through these books. When I have been in the neighborhood, I have made a point of visiting the homes or birthplaces, graves, and libraries of many of these folks as well, including Washington, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, Nixon, and even Franklin Pierce (after all, we lived in New Hampshire for several years and, driving past the Pierce homestead, I couldn’t resist.) Studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary, there were times when I had to park across the street from Grant’s Tomb, but I never stopped in to see who was actually buried there. Since we’ve been in Illinois, I did make a pilgrimage to Springfield and visited the Lincoln Museum and burial shrine. At that time, the Lincoln house was closed to visitors, so I did not get in there but took pictures from outside. In junior high school, I attended McKinley School for a year and was asked to play William McKinley (in silhouette) for a “McKinley Day” program. His sudden appearance over the hearth to speak to the children was the culmination of this little playlet and I guess I qualified for the role by virtue of my girth if nothing else. At one point, my wife told a friend that I knew all the Presidents and Vice Presidents in order. After that, I tried to actually learn the names of the Vice Presidents in order as well, but I have never been able to keep them all straight. They are, however, a most fascinating bunch of characters, to say the least. After all, they include notables such as Aaron Burr, Andrew Johnson, and Spiro T. Agnew.
With this interest in Presidents, naturally I have made it a point over the years to watch the proceedings on Inauguration Day most of the time going back to that snowy morning in 1961 when JFK was inaugurated and the aged Robert Frost, tried to read his poem for the occasion, blinded by the sunlight reflected off the snow. I also generally felt an obligation to watch the State of the Union message each year even when the incumbent was not my favorite. I must admit that my fervor for Presidents has diminished considerably over much of the past eight years. Nonetheless, I did tune in on my cellphone to the President’s address on Tuesday night which the commentators reminded us was not technically a State of the Union address. I watched some of the pomp and circumstance as the officials of the government entered the House chamber and I heard the announcement of the president’s arrival. After maybe five minutes listening to his lengthy speech, I got the gist of it, questioned the veracity of the little I had heard, and decided I could spend my time more profitably with a good book. If he said anything worth listening to, I figured I’d read about it in the commentaries in the morning. I think, perhaps, that listening to these annual reports often makes me feel proud to be an American as we hear of plans (often never realized) to build a better country and benefit others around the world. I never get that message from the current president.
Instead, I opened a copy of the writings of Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the 12th century sage, author of a significant commentary on the Mishnah, a massive legal compendium known as the Mishneh Torah, and a philosophical treatise entitled “The Guide for the Perplexed.” These are his major works, but there are others as well, a number of which have been collected in two volumes published in the past couple of years entitled “Kisvei HaRambam.” “Kisvei’ is the Ashkenazic pronunciation of the word Kitvei, writings of, and HaRambam is the acronym by which Maimonides is known in rabbinic circles as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. For the State of the Union, I thought perhaps I’d open Rambam’s treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead, Maamar Techiyat HaMeitim. This work, like most of Maimonides’ writings except for the MIshneh Torah, was originally written in Judeo-Arabic and subsequently translated into Hebrew. This edition includes the Hebrew translation done in Maimonides’ lifetime by Shmuel Ibn Tibbon with reference to more recent translations. It is translated from the Hebrew into English along with explanations, commentaries, and footnotes.
This volume also includes the essay from which we derive the thirteen principles of faith that Maimonides felt every Jew should profess. They are summarized in the Yigdal hymn which we sing at the end of Friday evening services each week, even if we may be uncertain if we accept all of those principles. The last of them is the belief in the Resurrection of the dead to take place at some point in the future, when body and soul will be reunited and stand in judgment before the Lord. We sing in the final verse, “Meitim y’chayei El b’rov chasdo,” God will revive the dead in His great kindness. Maimonides had written about this belief which appears again and again in the second blessing of the Amidah. He also wrote in his earlier works about the concept of the Immortality of the Soul. He did not see any contradiction in holding both of these beliefs. Instead, he claimed that at some unknown time, our souls will rejoin our bodies and be judged before God for the actions performed in this lifetime. However, eventually, the body will die again and the soul alone will enter the “world to come” in a pure spiritual state.
In the introduction to this treatise, the Rambam explains that some prominent rabbis in Provence, and more recently in the Middle East, had attacked him, claiming he denied the belief in the resurrection of the dead. He said that he tried to ignore these lies and misconceptions. However, as time went by, he found himself in the midst of a great controversy and had no choice but to write this work to clarify his views and defend himself from the vicious attacks that had been mounted against him and his important works. The Mishneh Torah, his massive law code, begins with a whole section on Jewish beliefs which he saw as equally authoritative as the various legal passages that make up the bulk of the fourteen volumes of this text. The fact that Maimonides did not include the sources from which he derived his rulings on the law in order to simplify his work, was also a major source of controversy. If one opens a traditional edition of the Mishneh Torah, one finds that problem has been overcome. The original Hebrew text is now surrounded by all sorts of commentaries trying to provide that missing element, linking every law to its source in the rabbinic tradition. For more than a century after the death of the Rambam, controversy continued throughout the Jewish world over the writings of this great sage. His Guide for the Perplexed, written in Arabic, when translated into Hebrew caused even greater perplexity when he tried in it to reconcile the teachings of Greek philosophy with the teachings of the Torah. His rationalist approach to many passages in the Torah, seeing them as allegories rather than literal truth, offended those who took a more traditionalist view.
Having watched a bit of the bitter partisan divide in the Congress, I was struck by how more than eight centuries earlier, this great teacher also had to grapple with his own poltical opposition, people whom he claimed, just did not understand his work. I have not yet gotten to the main teachings of this treatise, but nonetheless, just in the portions I have read I have had the opportunity to see that political controversies are not just a modern phenomenon. Opposition, debate, discussion are all found long before then among our Talmudic sages. One of my professors in Seminary used to point to the statement in the Talmud that Torah scholars bring peace to the world as an example of the Talmud’s sense of humor. Of course, that is not what one heard on Tuesday night. From what I heard, the President conducted another lengthy campaign rally before a captive audience rather than present a reasoned plan for the future of this nation. Would that we heard words that might bring us together as a nation, indeed unite us as a world rather than tear down all that came before. Reading this treatise on resurrection, I look toward a day when we might learn to work together respecting all people and joining together for the common good and resurrect the values upon which this country was founded and the institutions which have made us truly a force for good in the world..
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