Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith: Judaism's Closest Thing to a Creed

A Philosopher’s Gamble

In the 12th century, a young rabbi in his thirties did something audacious. He sat down and wrote a list of thirteen things that every Jew must believe.

This was not normal. Judaism had survived for over a thousand years without a formal creed. The Torah commands actions — keep Shabbat, honor your parents, do not steal — but it does not command beliefs in the way that Christianity’s Nicene Creed or Islam’s Shahada do. The great rabbis of the Talmud debated endlessly about law but rarely tried to systematize belief.

Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known as the Rambam, 1138–1204) broke with this pattern. Writing his commentary on the Mishnah — specifically on the tenth chapter of Sanhedrin, which discusses who has a share in the World to Come — he formulated thirteen principles that he considered the non-negotiable foundations of Jewish faith. Deny any one of them, he wrote, and you are a heretic who has separated yourself from the community of Israel.

It was, in its way, a gamble. And it paid off — sort of. The 13 Principles became the most famous formulation of Jewish belief in history. They also became one of the most debated.

The Thirteen Principles

1. God’s Existence. God exists, and is the cause of all existence. Everything that exists depends on God; God depends on nothing.

2. God’s Unity. God is absolutely one — not one among many, not one made up of parts, but a unity unlike any other unity. This principle directly rejects the Christian Trinity and any form of dualism.

3. God’s Incorporeality. God has no body and no physical form. All biblical descriptions of God in physical terms (“the hand of God,” “the eyes of the Lord”) are metaphors, accommodating human language to describe what is beyond human comprehension.

4. God’s Eternity. God is the first and the last — existing before time and beyond time. God was not created and cannot cease to exist.

5. God Alone is Worthy of Worship. Prayer and worship must be directed only to God, not to angels, stars, intermediaries, or any other being. This principle reinforces strict monotheism against any tendency toward saint worship or angelic mediation.

6. Prophecy. God communicates with human beings through prophecy. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others — were genuine recipients of divine communication, not merely wise or inspired individuals.

7. The Supremacy of Moses’ Prophecy. Moses was the greatest of all prophets, and his prophecy was qualitatively different from all others. Other prophets received visions and dreams; Moses spoke with God “face to face” (a metaphor, per Principle 3). No prophet has arisen or will arise who surpasses Moses.

8. The Torah is from Heaven. The entire Torah — both the Written Torah (the Five Books of Moses) and the Oral Torah (the rabbinic tradition) — was given by God to Moses. It is not a human composition or a product of historical development.

9. The Torah’s Immutability. The Torah will never be changed or superseded. No new revelation will replace it. This principle directly rejects Christian and Islamic claims that the Torah has been superseded by a new covenant or final revelation.

10. God’s Omniscience. God knows all human actions and thoughts. Nothing is hidden from God. This is the theological basis for divine judgment and accountability.

11. Reward and Punishment. God rewards those who keep the commandments and punishes those who violate them. The nature and timing of this reward and punishment are debated, but the principle of divine justice is affirmed.

12. The Coming of the Messiah. The Messiah will come, though we do not know when. One must believe in and await his coming, even if he delays. “Though he tarry, I will wait for him” — a phrase that took on shattering significance during the Holocaust.

13. Resurrection of the Dead. The dead will be brought back to life at a time determined by God. This is connected to the concept of Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come) but is a distinct event — the physical reconstitution of bodies and their reunion with souls.

Ani Ma’amin: Faith Sung and Suffered

The 13 Principles entered Jewish consciousness most powerfully through the Ani Ma’amin prayer — “I believe with perfect faith” — which reformulates each principle as a personal declaration of faith. Its authorship is uncertain; it appears in prayer books from the 15th century onward.

The twelfth Ani Ma’amin — “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and though he may tarry, I will wait for him every day” — became one of the most iconic phrases in all of Jewish religious expression. Survivors of the Holocaust reported that Jews sang these words as they were marched to the gas chambers. The melody most commonly associated with it is haunting and spare, and it has become a symbol of faith maintained in the face of absolute darkness.

Yigdal: Theology You Can Sing

The other great liturgical expression of the 13 Principles is Yigdal (“May He be magnified”), a hymn composed by the Italian Jewish poet Daniel ben Judah around 1404. Each of its thirteen lines corresponds to one of Maimonides’ principles, condensed into elegant Hebrew verse.

Yigdal is sung at the opening or closing of synagogue services, often to lively melodies that vary from community to community — Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrachi, Yemenite. The fact that a systematic theological treatise became a congregational hymn is itself remarkable. It suggests that for many Jews, the principles function less as dogma to be examined and more as poetry to be lived with.

The Controversy: Not Everyone Agreed

Maimonides was one of the greatest minds in Jewish history, but the 13 Principles did not go unchallenged.

Hasdai Crescas (1340–1410), a Spanish rabbi and philosopher, argued in his Or Adonai that Maimonides had conflated different categories of belief. Some principles (like God’s existence) are truly foundational; others (like resurrection) are important but secondary; still others (like the immutability of Torah) are debatable. Crescas proposed his own, shorter list of essential beliefs.

Joseph Albo (1380–1444), a student of Crescas, reduced the essential principles to three: God’s existence, divine revelation, and reward and punishment. Everything else, he argued, is derivable from these three roots (ikkarim).

The Raavad (Abraham ben David of Posquières, 1125–1198), Maimonides’ most famous critic, objected specifically to Principle 3 (incorporeality), noting that “greater and better people” than Maimonides had believed God had a physical form based on their reading of certain biblical and Talmudic passages. The Raavad did not endorse this view but argued that holding it did not make someone a heretic.

Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508) questioned whether Judaism should have a creed at all. The Torah, he argued, is an integrated whole — every verse is equally divine and equally binding. Selecting thirteen beliefs as more fundamental than others distorts the organic unity of the tradition.

These objections never fully displaced Maimonides’ principles. Instead, both the principles and the objections became part of the ongoing Jewish conversation about faith — which is, in its way, the most Jewish outcome possible.

Comparison with Other Creeds

Maimonides’ 13 Principles are sometimes compared to the Nicene Creed of Christianity or the articles of Islamic faith. The comparison is instructive but limited.

The Nicene Creed arose from church councils seeking to resolve specific theological disputes (particularly about the nature of Christ). It was enforced by imperial authority, and dissent was treated as heresy punishable by law.

Maimonides’ principles had no institutional enforcement mechanism. No Jewish court ever convicted someone of heresy for denying one of the principles. No Jewish community ever executed or excommunicated a member solely for theological disagreement (though Spinoza’s excommunication in 1656 came close). The principles function more as a theological North Star than as a legal requirement.

Islam’s articles of faith (belief in God, angels, books, prophets, the Day of Judgment, and divine decree) are closer in spirit to Maimonides’ list — both attempt to identify the irreducible core of a monotheistic faith. But Islam’s articles are derived from the Quran and Hadith and carry the weight of direct revelation; Maimonides’ principles are the work of a single (if extraordinary) scholar.

Legacy: Living with the Principles

Eight centuries after Maimonides wrote them down, the 13 Principles occupy a unique place in Jewish life. They are printed in most traditional prayer books. They are taught in Jewish schools. They are sung in synagogues. And they are debated — as everything in Judaism is debated.

Perhaps their greatest legacy is not any individual principle but the very idea that Jewish belief can be articulated. In a tradition that often privileges practice over creed, Maimonides insisted that what you believe matters — that theology is not a luxury but a foundation. Not everyone agreed with his specific formulations. But the conversation he started has never ended, and the faith he articulated — in one God, in Torah, in justice, in hope — continues to sustain millions of lives.