Oral and Written Law, plus Physics [Modern] and Metaphysics [of Aristotle].

 Torah is not about mystical experience. However as a result of true attachment with God one can have as a side thing the experience of oneness with God. Devekut.

But it is not experience -it is a kind of  knowledge and sense of meaning.  It is what I felt in learning Torah, and it certainly is what learning Torah is all about. Yet, it is a kind of thing which has a close connection with morality. And it is on one hand highly powerful. It is the meaning of life. It is certainly not mystical experience. 

This area of value is on one hand the most powerful thing in the world and in any person's life, and yet the most delicate and sensitive and can be destroyed simply by the slightest whisper.
The approach of the Rambam --to learn the Oral and Written Law, plus Physics [Modern] and Metaphysics [of Aristotle]. There I seek the luminosity and numinous value that is hidden in the ten statements of Creation in which the light of Torah is hidden. 


[That is the Rambam himself saw that what people consider Torah alone is not enough to come to what the Torah requires of man.]



Faith plus reason had early beginnings even before the middle ages-with Saadia Gaon.



Faith in the wise is one of the 48 ways the Torah is acquired in  Pirkei Avot. The question is that of interpretation. What does the Torah mean? And who has the right to interpret it? The Talmud to a large degree has settled this question. "Divine Spirit" is not the way to interpret the Torah. Only rigorous painstaking reason as we see in the Talmud and Tosphot.

The influence of Protestantism  however is very apparent nowadays that people think they have the right to interpret the Torah on their own. This has very terrible implications. (1) Divine spirit is claimed as a guide which in practice means to ignore what the Torah actually says. (2) People claim authority though in fact ignorant  of Torah.

Oral and Written Law, Physics, and Metaphysics.

In math we have necessary and sufficient conditions for certain solutions to apply for some differential equation.  In a parallel vein I have the idea that the approach of Maimonides  is necessary and sufficient. That is the Oral and Written Law, Physics, and Metaphysics. [These last two are  necessary because the Rambam considers them to be what the Sages of the Talmud called מעשה בראשית ומעשה מרכבה the Work of Creation and the Work of the Divine Chariot that are both refereed to in the first mishna in the second chapter of tractate Hagiga. The Rambam is not thinking all secular knowledge is a good thing Rather he has a specific reason for emphasis these last two subjects.

His approach to this Physics and Metaphysics is scattered over many places in the Mishne Torah and the Guide and also in the commentary on the Mishna. The basic idea is that while most people think the Gemara is referring to kabalah the Rambam clearly disagrees. Saadia Geon wrote a commentary on Sefer Yetzira and the Rambam was familiar with everything that Saadia Geon wrote. Still niether him nor Saadia Geon thought the Kabalah was the Work of Creation and the Work of the Divine Chariot.

The problem I have is that the religious world seems to me to be "off the derech (path)." The fanatic religious people from Israel seem to me to be clinically insane. But even the more down to earth rational approach of New York seems a bit off. And I can not figure out what the problem is.  At best I have a workable solution for myself. I try to stick with this basic approach of the Rambam which was clearly also the approach of my parents. But in what way the religious world has gone wrong seems to me to be a mystery.

Some people seem to believe the Rambam gives a blank check to all secular disciples.-even those that are obviously pseudo science. Other think the only added things outside of the Oral and written Law are Kabalah. The Rambam clearly disagreed with both of these opinions.

[Incidentally I met a fellow  who had the entire Mishne Torah of the Rambam as one book. I do not remember if it was the Yemenite version of Rav Kapach. He also had with him the letters of the son of the Rambam  print by the Rav Kook Institute, However at this point in my learning the Oral Law I would prefer to learn the Gemara straight with Rashi Tosphot and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.]