The son of the Rambam [Rav Avraham ] wrote a short book called מלחמות השם concerning the attacks on his father, the Rambam. A large part of the book deals with the problems of pantheism. People were unhappy with the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam because it states clearly that the world was created by God and it is not God. It is not made of His Divine substance and has no pieces of Him inside. A lot of people at the time had pantheistic beliefs about the Torah just as all the religious world does today and they were upset that the Rambam was attacking their beliefs.
Nowadays the strategy has changed from attacking the Rambam to claiming that he agrees with their pantheism.
The Rambam held that God made the world and he is not the world. Instead of the idea "everything is Godliness" the Rambam held that only God is God, and everything else is not God.
There has been an attempt to finagle pantheism into Torah by Rav Shick [Moharosh]. And he was doing this because did not read the Guide of the Rambam. So instead of gaining his ideas about Torah from the Rambam, he got his ideas elsewhere.
[I am not happy about criticizing Rav Shick. But still when he is wrong, he is wrong. If he wanted to present the Bahavagad Gita, the Upanishads or Spinoza, then I would not have anything to complain about. But when he presents pantheism as the faith of the Torah I have to object.]
In any case the book goes into the events surrounding the person the Guide was written for, Joseph Aknin. There was a Daniel who had written a lots of questions about the Mishne Torah and the Guide and sent them to Rav Avraham in a respectful manner. And Rav Avraham wrote back answering him. Then after some years this same Daniel wrote a commentary on Kohelet and in a veiled way attacked the Rambam.
At this same time, the people in France had signed an excommunication against the Guide and the Ramban (Nachmanides) wrote his famous letter pleading with them to rescind their excommunication. Rav Avraham was apparently aware of the events going on in France also.
Nowadays the strategy has changed from attacking the Rambam to claiming that he agrees with their pantheism.
The Rambam held that God made the world and he is not the world. Instead of the idea "everything is Godliness" the Rambam held that only God is God, and everything else is not God.
There has been an attempt to finagle pantheism into Torah by Rav Shick [Moharosh]. And he was doing this because did not read the Guide of the Rambam. So instead of gaining his ideas about Torah from the Rambam, he got his ideas elsewhere.
[I am not happy about criticizing Rav Shick. But still when he is wrong, he is wrong. If he wanted to present the Bahavagad Gita, the Upanishads or Spinoza, then I would not have anything to complain about. But when he presents pantheism as the faith of the Torah I have to object.]
In any case the book goes into the events surrounding the person the Guide was written for, Joseph Aknin. There was a Daniel who had written a lots of questions about the Mishne Torah and the Guide and sent them to Rav Avraham in a respectful manner. And Rav Avraham wrote back answering him. Then after some years this same Daniel wrote a commentary on Kohelet and in a veiled way attacked the Rambam.
At this same time, the people in France had signed an excommunication against the Guide and the Ramban (Nachmanides) wrote his famous letter pleading with them to rescind their excommunication. Rav Avraham was apparently aware of the events going on in France also.
