Editing The Feast of the Wild Ox and Leviathan (section)

== Feast: Literal or Not ==
The Rambam, in his words about the World to Come as a spiritual world for souls without bodies, says: "The goodness, after which there is no goodness, and it is what all the prophets desired... [and] the Sages called it, by way of metaphor... a feast."

Some understood from his words that there will not be a physical feast for the righteous in the time of redemption. The Raavad, who understood it this way, argues against this: "And if this is the feast - there is no cup of blessing here!" In the Gemara, it speaks of a cup of blessing over which they will recite the blessing of Zimun at the end of the meal, and if the feast is only a spiritual concept - over what will they recite Birkat Hamazon?

But the Ramban determined that even the Rambam did not claim that there would not be a feast, and said, "And we have heard the truth, that the great Rabbi [the Rambam] upholds the Midrashim of our Rabbis and their Aggadot, that all things will be as they are in the future feast with the preserved wine and leviathan." The Kesef Mishneh also explains the Rambam's intention this way, that he did not mean that the feast of the righteous is a metaphor, and when he spoke of a feast as a metaphor for the World to Come, he was referring to the expression "everything is prepared for the feast" in Pirkei Avot.

This has also been established in Chassidic teachings in many places, that the future feast will be physical.

Interestingly, the Rambam's son, R' Avraham, in letters recently discovered, wrote that during Shabbat meals in his father's house, the Rambam would say: "We need to yearn for the leviathan."