Berakhot 160

We conclude our excursus on Evil in the World with some of your comments:

Sherry Fyman writes:

If I correctly understood the recent discussion on Rambam's view of individual suffering, you explain his view that the individual should not feel that personal suffering is directed against him or her by God. What is his basis for this view? While it appeals to me on a gut level, our whole religion is based on the notion that God is directly involved in our destiny as a people. Isn't it logical to extend this to a personal level?

I respond:

This could either be a very difficult nut to crack or a very easy one – and I am not sure that the alternatives are mutually contradictory. Sherry is raising the issue of Divine Providence, the extent to which God is perceived as being involved with the destiny of all creatures. It is sometimes very difficult to state categorically what Rambam's philosophical view actually was concerning several major theological issues, because of the way in which he designed his book "The Guide for the Perplexed". Realizing that some of his views could possibly be interpreted as deviating from traditional Jewish thought, he seeded his book with a generous helping of obfuscation, deliberate contradictions, and artful misdirection. His expectation was that the masses would understand his book at one level while the thinking person would perceive his real intentions. In most cases he succeeded. As regards Providence:-

In Chapter 17 of Part III Rambam prefaces his discussion by mentioning five views on Divine Providence:

1. Those who consider that there is no providence at all with regard to anything whatever in all that exists … This is the opinion of Epicurus … Aristotle [one of Rambam's philosophical heroes] has demonstrated that this opinion is inadmissible.
2. Those who hold that providence watches over certain things … whereas other things are left to chance. This is the opinion of Aristotle.
3. The third opinion is … the opinion of those who hold that in all that exists there is nothing … that is in any respect due to chance … This is the opinion of the Islamic sect, the Ash'ariyya.
4. The fourth opinion is the opinion of those who hold that man has the ability to act of his own accord … The [Islamic philosophical trend of the] Mu'tazila also hold this opinion.
5. The fifth opinion is our opinion, I mean the opinion of our Law.

As far as this latter opinion is concerned, Maimonides divides it up into sub-sections:

In his own inimitable way, Rambam has thus prepared the thinking reader for the possibility that not everything stated by the prophets is to be understood literally "as is believed by the [ignorant] multitude of our scholars"; that there are scholars of repute with whom he disagrees; and there is his own view (assuming that this is not camouflaging his acceptance of Aristotle's view).

Rambam then makes the following points:

… In other words, these two points belong to "what has been literally stated in the books of our prophets and is believed [wrongly] by the multitude of our [ignorant] scholars". Later on in the chapter Rambam expatiates upon his "own view" according to which there is only "general providence" for creation as a whole, and only man is the subject of "special providence". This "special providence" is in direct proportion to the intellectual closeness that a person develops between their own intellect and the Divine Intellect.

When one studies this book over many readings one begins to get a feel for the man's methodology. My own – completely unsubstantiated – opinion as to Rambam's real view is that it was an amalgam of that which he describes as "my own" and that which he ascribes to Aristotle. Firstly, that is that there is no such thing as "special providence" for individuals and species:

Note how Rambam artfully slides from the leaf and the fly to "individuals", and the implications that are there enshrined. Thus, secondly, Divine Providence is over the generality of creation, but not over each and every individual.

Thus far "the very difficult" answer to Sherry's point. The easier answer is that God is, indeed, actively and directly involved with the destiny of the Jewish people in particular and all mankind in general; but that involvement does not necessarily extend to the particular. The Jewish people has, through the ages, suffered enormous atrocities at the hands of our enemies, and our numbers have probably been more than decimated. But, because of Divine Providence, the Jewish people still exists and flourishes.

To be continued.