The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Series).)

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Summary: Believe This
Review: There are those for whom their belief in religion will never quite approach their scholarly understanding of it. But the opposite is probably more prevalent. Many more people sincerely profess faith but are ignorant of the knowledge that should necessarily underpin such faith.

It is to this latter group that Marc Shapiro is addressing himself in his book, traditional Jews who might know halakha but who are otherwise ignorant of what their great spiritual giants believed for millennia. Many of the beliefs espoused by these great men run counter to the Thirteen Principles set down by Maimonides (some disagreements extending into the present!), a situation that, ostensibly, should have prevented them from an afterlife and which would have excised their souls from the Jewish nation.

Besides proving his point exhaustively, Dr. Shapiro is presenting a fine intellectual history of Jewish thought from the vantage point of its outer limits. The appendix even includes pictures of God on the title pages of sacred books written in the past few hundred years!

There is no doubt that this book, based on a controversial and satisfyingly unsettling essay that Shapiro penned just a few years ago, will both elicit praise and scorn, the scorn manifesting itself in book bannings and in the hiring of scholarly mercenaries who will be asked to trash the book, site unseen, in predetermined reviews.

Well, these reviewers will have their work cut out for them because Shapiro's book is thoughtful and nuanced and, thereby, evades pigeon holing. Besides addressing out-and-out disagreements that people had regarding creed, there is the bigger problem of Maimonides contradicting himself in matters of belief, both within different contexts and at different times in his life.

Shapiro also notes at length the recognized yet endlessly ironic fact that Maimonides himself was accused of not believing in his own Principles both during his lifetime and afterward.

Most importantly, by invoking an authority no less central than Maimonides himself, Shapiro debunks the notion, embraced by some writers, that scholarly debate concerning the correctness of doctrine is a relic of the past, and that this pursuit of the truth has calcified into unwavering dogma.

The historical realities are to the contrary. The search for what believers are supposed to believe is still driven by studying sacred texts, by our logic and, to some degree, by our intuitions.

Excellent!