Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism

Many books on Maimonides have been written andstill more will appear. Few present Maimonides, as Menachem Kellner doesagainst the actual religious background that informed his many innovative andinfluential choices. He not only analyses the thought of the great religiousthinker but contextualizes it in terms of the 'proto-kabbalistic' Judaism thatpreceded him. Kellner shows how the Judaism that Maimonides knew had come toconceptualize the world as an enchanted universe, governed by occultaffinities. He shows why Maimonides rejected this and how he went about doingit. Kellner argues that Maimonides' attempted reformation failed, the clearestproof of that being the success of the kabbalistic counter-reformation whichhis writings provoked.Kellner showshow Maimonides rethought Judaism in different ways. It is in highlighting thisand identifying Maimonides as a religious reformer that this book makes its keycontribution. Maimonides created a new Judaism, 'disenchanted', depersonalized,and challenging; a religion that is at the same time elitist and universalist.Kellner'sanalysis also shows the deep configuration of Judaism in a new light. If, asMoshe Idel says in his Foreword, Maimonides was able to 'reform so many aspectsof rabbinic Judaism single-handedly, to enrich it by importing suchdramatically different concepts, it shows that the profound structures of thisreligion are flexible enough to allow the emergence and success of astonishingreforms. The fact that, great as Maimonides was, he did not overcome thetraditional forms of proto-kabbalism shows that the dynamic of religion is muchmore complex than subscribing to authorities, however widely accepted.'