Q&A: How to Relate to Claims that Maimonides Believed in Demons
How to Relate to Claims that Maimonides Believed in Demons
Question
Many people today claim that Maimonides was a kabbalist and a pietist, and that he even believed in demons, but did not mention these things for the sake of the Jewish people as a whole. They also cite what Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook wrote: “Maimonides … felt within himself a responsibility … to all Israel … It was clear to him that, as an educator of the Jewish people as a whole, he was obligated to omit mysterious matters or matters on the borderline of the mysterious. Vague matters are a danger to the broad general public; therefore Maimonides saw it as his duty to leave them out … Maimonides did not mention demons and the evil eye, not because he denied their existence, but because he was careful and refrained from publicizing them among all Israel” (Talks of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda, Genesis, p. 259, cited by Rabbi Aviner). How should one relate to these statements?
Answer
With contempt.
Discussion on Answer
In other words, Sinwar, Nasrallah, Putin, Assad, Al Capone, and many other murderers are the demons in which Maimonides believed. But people are always looking for the supernatural while real demons are walking around right in front of their eyes.
“And you already know that anyone who has not attained this form, whose meaning we have explained, is not a human being but a beast in human shape and form. However, he does have the capacity for various kinds of harm and the devising of evils, unlike other living creatures. For the intellect and thought that were prepared in him for attaining the perfection which he did not attain, he uses in various schemes that bring about evil, and he generates harms as though he were something resembling a human being or imitating him. And so were the human beings before Seth. And they said in the midrash: ‘All those one hundred and thirty years during which Adam was under rebuke, he begot spirits’—that is, demons. But when God found him acceptable, he begot in His image and likeness.”
(Moreh Nevukhim 1, chapter 7)