Before we can study the patterns of history and determine the forces that drive it, we have to identify the purpose of its existence. Coming from the House of Classical Judaism, we know that God created the world, but why did He create it? God is perfect. He has no needs, no wants in the human sense that derive from a void that must be filled. What then was His purpose in creating the world? What is the ultimate goal of creation?

The traditional commentators offer a number of answers, some rational, some kabbalistic. I don’t claim to understand them all, and my purpose here is not to weigh the relative merits of these answers and determine which is valid. They are probably all valid in some sense. I just want to present what I consider to be the Rambam’s view. As the subtitle of this book points out, this is a Jewish view, not the definitive, authoritative Jewish of the world.

The Rambam writes in the fifth chapter of Shemoneh Perakim, “A person must harness all his faculties and talents for the achievement of one purpose, and that is the attainment of knowledge of God to the extent that a person can have such knowledge …

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