To the Editor:
It has been said, I think by Mordecai Kaplan, that it is hard to disagree with one’s teachers, harder to disagree with one’s colleagues, and hardest of all to disagree with one’s students. But I hope my task is, after all, not so hard in replying to the very friendly criticism of a former pupil of mine, now the highly esteemed Grand Rabbi of Luxembourg, Dr. Ch. C. Lehrmann (“Pupil and Master,” February 1955).
I did not wish to imply—as he seems to believe I did—that Maimonides ever “denied the authority of poetic and even anthropomorphic language.” All I wanted to say was that, according to Maimonides, the true interpretation of this authoritative poetic language of the Bible demanded from us that we see in it only an esoteric wrapping of much profounder abstract truth. And I, instead, suggest that we should dare take the word of Scripture neither in its literal sense nor as a merely “popular” way of expressing abstract philosophical wisdom, but to live with it in the way it presents itself: as poetic truth, as profoundest poetic insight not directly translatable into any genuine philosophical language.
As Dr. Lehrmann agrees with me about the specially high value of poetic truth as such, why should there be no agreement between us concerning the fact that Maimonides thought it essential to subscribe to poetic language only inasmuch as it expresses in an indirect way metaphysical dogma while we—in some accord with ancient orthodoxy—can return to the letter of the Torah without Maimonides’ fear of seeing it understood in a fundamentalist literal sense?
David Baumgardt
Columbia University
New York City
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