Prof. Haym Soloveitchik on Mishneh Torah vs. Shulhan Arukh

Among the articles included in a very recently published volume, Maimonides After 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence (Harvard University Press, 2007), edited by Harvard University professor Jay M. Harris and published by Harvard's Center for Jewish Studies, is a magisterially eloquent article by Professor Haym Soloveitchik of Yeshiva University, entitled "Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art," on pages 327-343. As is common parlance within academic circles, this paper had been previously delivered on several occasions, including, among other times, as “Overt and Covert Agendas in the Mishneh Torah,” at a March 2004 conference (“Moses Maimonides: Talmudist, Philosopher, and Physician”) cosponsored by New York University and Yeshiva University; and then "Mishneh Torah: Multiple Agendas and Levels," delivered at the AJS Conference, 20 December 2004 [see here -- p. 49 of the PDF]; and, most recently, "Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art," in February 2006, at Yeshiva University's inaugural Dr. Asher Siev Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Student Organization of Yeshiva (SOY), of which I was then president, on the occasion of the conclusion of the shloshim for longtime Yeshiva College professor Dr. Asher Siev. (Professor Marc B. Shapiro of the University of Scranton delivered the second annual Dr. Asher Siev Memorial Lecture, with a paper entitled "A Non-Orthodox Traditional Approach: Reflections on the Authority of the Moroccan Rabbinate." The lecture is available [here -- 17MB]. Preparations for the third annual Dr. Asher Siev Memorial Lecture are in the works and more information will be available shortly.)

I have been (very patiently) waiting for Professor Soloveitchik's "Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art" to appear in print, a chapter that is truly required reading for anyone interested in the development of Rambam's thought as reflected within his Mishneh Torah, and compared with latter halakhic corpuses, as Prof. Soloveitchik carefully mines the depths of Rambam's hilkhot shabbat offering a very-compelling solution – nay, it's quite convincing and I'm convinced – for the seemingly unorganized chapter order of hilkhot shabbat and suggests implications for studying Maimonidean thought and law.

One section of "Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art" was especially fascinating, for me at least, as it provided an unbelievable description of many issues that I have questioned and discussed amongst others in various conversations, yet have not been able to articulate as coherently as Professor Soloveitchik (which is quite common the case), and this relates to a comparison of Mishneh Torah and the Shulhan Arukh. The following text appears on pages 335-336:

Both Mishneh Torah and the Shulhan Arukh are towering works, but Mishneh Torah is that rarest of things – a book of law, a work of sequitur, discursive reasoning that is, at the same time, a work of art. And a work of art creates its own imaginative universe. You can decline to enter that universe as did Ashkenaz in the late medieval and early modern period; it rejected the Yad even as emended by the Haggahot Maimuniyot. However, if you choose to enter that world, you must do so on its terms rather than on your own. For a work of art is self-justificatory; it commands rather than seeks attention. It constitutes an end in itself and resists any attempt to turn it into a means, to have it serve a purpose other than its own. You can take the Mona Lisa or you can leave it, but you cannot turn it into something other than what it is or use it as an instrument to attain some other artistic goal.

The Shulhan Arukh is a great work, especially its functional classification – indeed, in ease of use, it far exceeds that of Maimonides' code – but it is not a work of art. It is a pastiche, a great pastiche if you will, but a pastiche nonetheless. You can gloss it, tear the fabric of its prose with no sense of violation or even of diminution. You can equally transform it, Ashkenize it, as did so successfully R. Mosheh Isserles. You can no more Ashkenize Mishneh Torah than you can Americanize The Brothers Karamazov or Russify Huckleberry Finn, for a work of art is the product of an innate development. It is an organic form that unfolds from within, according to laws derivable from its own essence. Once this essence has been completely realized, achieved full expression, attained its entelechy, it cannot be altered. R. Meir of Rothenburg realized the greatness of Mishneh Torah; he did not perceive it – how could he at so early a date? - that the Yad was also a work of art whose very nature resists conversion. The Haggahot Maimuniyot was an attempt to emend the Mishneh Torah, to modify and adapt it for Ashkenazic use. Not surprisingly, it resisted this transformation. So strong was the intuited sense of the innate unity of the Mishneh Torah, so universal was the perception of its resistant integrity and immutability that no one ever attempted again to emend Mishneh Torah and assimilate it to another culture – Ashkenazic, Yemenite, North African, or what you will.

The singularity of Mishneh Torah goes yet further. What you see in the Shulhan Arukh is what you get, and after the various obscurities in its formulations are cleared up, there is nothing more to say. So you must begin to discuss other things, i.e., new cases. What you see in a work of art is not what you get, or, not just what you get. Moby Dick is a story about a whale; it also more than that. The lucid, calibrated formulations of the Yad have also a remarkable lexical subtlety; its spare, almost chaste words are somehow freighted with a richness of meanings. Under the surface clarity of its formulations there are further layers of creative ambiguity. These uncertainties of intent have fascinated readers for generations, and they have labored tirelessly to resolve them. And the quest never ends.

After I completed reading Professor Soloveitchik's "Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art" in Maimonides After 800 Years, which I received on Monday as a gift, I could not do anything but pick up the nearest volume of the Shabse Frankel edition of Rambam's Mishneh Torah (vol. Ahavah) and learn several halakhot after I thought: how could I miss such an opportunity?

To reiterate a point mentioned above, "Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art" is a magisterially eloquent article and truly required reading. Copies of Maimonides After 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence will be prominently displayed at the upcoming SOY Seforim Sale 2008.

Lastly, among the interesting footnotes in the above article (p. 333, n.25) is where Professor Soloveitchik writes that the editors of a volume that included his entry on Maharam of Rothenburg

wishing to improve upon my scant bibliography, added Shmuel Argaman, The Captivity of the Maharam: A Narrative of the Events Surrounding the Arrest and Captivity of the Maharam of Rothenburg [New York, 1990] - a children's storybook published by the Lakewood Heder.