[Avodah] Rambam on corporeality

[Silverman, Philip B]

I enjoyed Rabbi Eidensohn's post the other day at Avodah.

I was wondering where Rabbi Akiva Tatz's position (as described in
his book WorldMask) fits into all this.

If I understand R' Tatz correctly, he takes the expressions "God's
hand" and "God's eyes" literally. If there's any metaphor going on,
it is we humans who have the metaphoric hand and eyes. (Extending
this thought, I suppose the whole universe would be, in a sense, a
metaphor.) At the same time, he believes firmly that God is
completely incorporeal, and that He is absolutely One. I believe he
holds that the seeming contradiction is above humans to comprehend.
I don't fully understand this position (and don't know how 'kosher'
it is), but I was wondering something. Perhaps the "sages (the
Raavad refers to) who are greater and better than the Rambam who
hold this ... view" believed not that God was corporeal in any way,
but rather, believed in the way R' Tatz writes about.

Maybe what I'm doing is trying to defend the honor of these unknown
sages against the charge of believing in a corporeal God, but my
main goal is to figure out whether R' Tatz's position is the one the
Raavad was actually referring to as being mistaken.


A gmar chasima tova,

Phil Silverman



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