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Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. In his time, he was also a preeminent astronomer and physician, serving as the personal physician of Saladin. He was born on Passover eve 1138 or 1135, and lived in Córdoba in al-Andalus (now in Spain) within the Almoravid Empire until his family was expelled for refusing to convert to Islam.Joel E. Kramer, "Moses Maimonides: An Intellectual Portrait", p. 47 note 1. In (2005). 9780521525787, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 97805215257871138 in Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 8Sherwin B. Nuland (2008), Maimonides, Random House LLC, p. 38 Later, he lived in Morocco and Egypt and worked as a rabbi, physician and philosopher.
During his lifetime, most Jews greeted Maimonides' writings on Halakha and Jewish ethics with acclaim and gratitude, even as far away as Iraq and Yemen. Yet, while Maimonides rose to become the revered head of the Jewish community in Egypt, his writings also had vociferous critics, particularly in Spain. He died in Fustat, Egypt, and, according to Jewish tradition, was buried in Tiberias. His tomb in Tiberias is a popular pilgrimage and tourist site.
He was posthumously acknowledged as one of the foremost posek and philosophers in Jewish history, and his copious work comprises a cornerstone of Jewish scholarship. His fourteen-volume still carries significant canonical authority as a codification of halakha.
Aside from being revered by Jewish historians, Maimonides also figures very prominently in the history of Islamic and Arab sciences. Influenced by Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and his contemporary Averroes, he became a prominent philosopher and polymath in both the Jewish and Muslim world.
In Arabic, he is sometimes called "Moses 'son of Amram' son of Maimon, of Obadiah, the Cordoban" (أَبُو عَمْرَان مُوسَى بْن مَيْمُون بْن عُبَيْد ٱللّٰه ٱلْقُرْطُبِيّ, Abū ʿImrān Mūsā bin Maimūn bin ʿUbaydallāh al-Qurṭubī), or more often simply "Moses, son of Maimon" (موسى بن ميمون).
In Greek, the Hebrew ('son of') becomes the patronymic suffix , forming Μωησής Μαϊμονίδης "Moses Maimonides".
He is sometimes known as "The Great Eagle" ().
Maimonides Torah study under his father, who had in turn studied under Joseph ibn Migash, a student of Isaac Alfasi. At an early age, Maimonides developed an interest in sciences and philosophy. He read ancient Greek philosophy accessible via Arabic translations and was deeply immersed in the sciences and learning of Islamic culture.Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker, Princeton University Press, 2009, p.65
Maimonides, who was revered for his personality as well as for his writings, led a busy life, and wrote many of his works while travelling or in temporary accommodation.1954 Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 18, p. 140.
Maimonides' family, along with many other Jews, chose exile. For the next ten years, Maimonides moved about in southern Spain and North Africa, eventually settling in Fez, Morocco. Some say that his teacher in Fez was Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Cohen Ibn Susan, until the latter was killed in 1165.See for example: Solomon Zeitlin, "MAIMONIDES", The American Jewish Year Book, Vol. 37, pp 65 – 66.
During this time, he composed his acclaimed commentary on the Mishnah, during the years 1166–1168.
Following this sojourn in Morocco, he lived in Acre with his father and brother, before settling in Fustat in Fatimid Caliphate-controlled Egypt by 1168.Davidson, p. 28. There is mention that Maimonides first settled in Alexandria, and moved to Fustat only in 1171. While in Cairo, he studied in a yeshiva attached to a small synagogue, which now bears his name.Goitein, S.D. Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders, Princeton University Press, 1973 (), p. 208 In Jerusalem, he prayed at the Temple Mount. He wrote that this day of visiting the Temple Mount was a day of holiness for him and his descendants.
Maimonides shortly thereafter was instrumental in helping rescue Jews taken captive during the Christian Amalric of Jerusalem's siege of the southeastern Nile Delta town of Bilbeis. He sent five letters to the Jewish communities of Lower Egypt asking them to pool money together to pay the ransom. The money was collected and then given to two judges sent to Palestine to negotiate with the Crusaders. The captives were eventually released.Cohen, Mark R. Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt. Princeton University Press, 2005 (), pp. 115–116
In a letter discovered in the Cairo Geniza, he wrote:
As he goes on to say in this letter, even on Shabbat he would receive members of the community. Still, he managed to write extended treatises, including not only medical and other scientific studies but some of the most systematically thought-through and influential treatises on halakha (rabbinic law) and Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages.
In 1172–74, Maimonides wrote his famous Epistle to Yemen. It has been suggested that his "incessant travail" undermined his own health and brought about his death at 69 (although this is a normal lifespan).The comment on the effect of his "incessant travail" on his health is by Salo Baron, "Moses Maimonides", in Great Jewish Personalities in Ancient and Medieval Time, edited by Simon Noveck (B'nai B'rith Department of Adult Jewish Education, 1959), p. 227, where Baron also quotes from Maimonides' letter to Ibn Tibbon regarding his daily regime.
Maimonides and his wife, the daughter of Mishael ben Yeshayahu Halevi, had one child who survived into adulthood,אגרות הרמב"ם מהדורת שילת Abraham Maimonides, who became recognized as a great scholar. He succeeded Maimonides as Nagid and as court physician at the age of eighteen. Throughout his career, he defended his father's writings against all critics. The office of Nagid was held by the Maimonides family for four successive generations until the end of the 14th century.
A statue of Maimonides was erected near the Córdoba Synagogue.
Maimonides is sometimes said to be a descendant of King David, although he never made such a claim.
Later codes of Jewish law, e.g. Arba'ah Turim by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher and Shulchan Aruch by Rabbi Yosef Karo, draw heavily on : both often quote whole sections verbatim. However, it met initially with much opposition.Siegelbaum, Chana Bracha (2010) Women at the crossroads : a woman's perspective on the weekly Torah portion Gush Etzion: Midreshet B'erot Bat Ayin. page 199 There were two main reasons for this opposition. First, Maimonides had refrained from adding references to his work for the sake of brevity; second, in the introduction, he gave the impression of wanting to "cut out" study of the Talmud,Last section of Maimonides' Introduction to Mishneh Torah to arrive at a conclusion in Jewish law, although Maimonides later wrote that this was not his intent. His most forceful opponents were the rabbis of Provence (Southern France), and a running critique by Rabbi Abraham ben David (Raavad III) is printed in virtually all editions of . Nevertheless, Mishneh Torah was recognized as a monumental contribution to the systemized writing of halakha. Throughout the centuries, it has been widely studied and its halakhic decisions have weighed heavily in later rulings.
In response to those who would attempt to force followers of Maimonides and his to abide by the rulings of his own Shulchan Aruch or other later works, Rabbi Yosef Karo wrote: "Who would dare force communities who follow the Rambam to follow any other posek of, early or late? ... The Rambam is the greatest of the decisors, and all the communities of the Land of Israel and the Arabistan and the Maghreb practice according to his word, and accepted him as their rabbi." (first printed in Saloniki 1791)
An oft-cited legal maxim from his pen is: "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." He argued that executing a defendant on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until defendants would be convicted merely according to the judge's caprice.Moses Maimonides, The Commandments, Neg. Comm. 290, at 269–71 (Charles B. Chavel trans., 1967).
Until very recently, it was accepted that Maimonides wrote the Treatise on Logic in his twenties or even in his teen years.Abraham Heschel, Maimonides. New York: Farrar Straus, 1982 p. 22 ("at sixteen") Herbert Davidson has raised questions about Maimonides' authorship of this short work (and of other short works traditionally attributed to Maimonides). He maintains that Maimonides was not the author at all, based on a report of two Arabic-language manuscripts, unavailable to Western investigators in Asia Minor.Davidson, pp. 313 ff. Rabbi Yosef Qafih maintained that it is by Maimonides and newly translated it to Hebrew (as ) from the Judeo-Arabic.
Maimonides is said to have compiled the principles from various Talmudic sources. These principles were controversial when first proposed, evoking criticism by Rabbis Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, and were effectively ignored by much of the Jewish community for the next few centuries. Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought, Menachem Kellner However, these principles have become widely held and are considered to be the cardinal principles of faith for Orthodox Judaism.See, for example: Marc B. Shapiro. The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (2011). pp. 1–14. Two poetic restatements of these principles ( and ) eventually became canonized in many editions of the Siddur (Jewish prayer book).e.g.
The omission of a list of these principles as such within his later works, the and The Guide for the Perplexed, has led some to suggest that either he retracted his earlier position, or that these principles are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
The principle that inspired his philosophical activity was identical to a fundamental tenet of scholasticism: there can be no contradiction between the truths which God has revealed and the findings of the human mind in science and philosophy. Maimonides primarily relied upon the science of Aristotle and the teachings of the Talmud, commonly claiming to find a basis for the latter in the former.Kraemer, 66
Maimonides' admiration for the Neoplatonism led him to doctrines which the later Scholastics did not accept. For instance, Maimonides was an adherent of apophatic theology. In this theology, one attempts to describe God through negative attributes. For example, one should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; it can be said that God is not non-existent. One should not say that "God is wise"; but it can be said that "God is not ignorant," i.e., in some way, God has some properties of knowledge. One should not say that "God is One," but it can be stated that "there is no multiplicity in God's being." In brief, the attempt is to gain and express knowledge of God by describing what God is not, rather than by describing what God "is."Robinson, George. "Maimonides' Conception of God/" My Jewish Learning. 30 April 2018.
Maimonides argued adamantly that God is not corporeal. This was central to his thinking about the sin of idolatry. Maimonides insisted that all of the anthropomorphic phrases pertaining to God in sacred texts are to be interpreted . A related tenet of Maimonidean theology is the notion that the commandments, especially those pertaining to Korban, are intended to help wean the Israelites away from idolatry.Reuven Chaim Klein, " Weaning Away from Idolatry: Maimonides on the Purpose of Ritual Sacrifices ", Religions 12(5), 363.
Maimonides also argued that God embodied reason, intellect, science, and nature, and was omnipotent and indescribable. (2025). 9781119643074, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. ISBN 9781119643074 He said that science, the growth of scientific fields, and discovery of the unknown by comprehension of nature was a way to appreciate God.
To justify the existence of evil, assuming God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, Maimonides postulates that one who created something by causing its opposite not to exist is not the same as creating something that exists; so evil is merely the absence of good. God did not create evil, rather God created good, and evil exists where good is absent (Guide 3:10). Therefore, all good is divine invention, and evil both is not and comes secondarily.
Maimonides contests the common view that evil outweighs good in the world. He says that if one were to examine existence only in terms of humanity, then that person may observe evil to dominate good, but if one looks at the whole of the universe, then he sees good is significantly more common than evil (Guide 3:12). Man, he reasons, is too insignificant a figure in God's myriad works to be their primary characterizing force, and so when people see mostly evil in their lives, they are not taking into account the extent of positive Creation outside of themselves.
Maimonides believes that there are three types of evil in the world: evil caused by nature, evil that people bring upon others, and evil man brings upon himself (Guide 3:12). The first type of evil Maimonides states is the rarest form, but arguably of the most necessary—the balance of life and death in both the human and animal worlds itself, he recognizes, is essential to God's plan. Maimonides writes that the second type of evil is relatively rare, and that humanity brings it upon itself. The third type of evil humans bring upon themselves and is the source of most of the ills of the world. These are the result of people's falling victim to their physical desires. To prevent the majority of evil which stems from harm one does to oneself, one must learn how to respond to one's bodily urges.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Maimonides did not believe that Greek knowledge had originated with the Jews originally, but he does believe that the sages and Solomon knew science and philosophy, however he does not believe those books have survived down to his time. He notes that rabbinical knowledge of mathematics was imperfect because it was learned from contemporary men of science, and not divinely inspired prophecy.
Eventually, Maimonides felt pressured to write a treatise on the subject, known as "The Treatise on Resurrection." In it, he wrote that those who claimed that he believed the verses of the Tanakh referring to the resurrection were only allegorical were spreading falsehoods. Maimonides asserts that belief in resurrection is a fundamental truth of Judaism about which there is no disagreement.Kraemer, 422
While his position on the World to Come (non-corporeal eternal life as described above) may be seen as being in contradiction with his position on bodily resurrection, Maimonides resolved them with a then unique solution: Maimonides believed that the resurrection was not permanent or general. In his view, God never violates the laws of nature. Rather, divine interaction is by way of , whom Maimonides often regards to be metaphors for the laws of nature, the principles by which the physical universe operates, or Platonic eternal forms. Thus, if a unique event actually occurs, even if it is perceived as a miracle, it is not a violation of the world's order.Commentary on the Mishna, Avot 5:6
In this view, any dead who are resurrected must eventually die again. In his discussion of the 13 principles of faith, the first five deal with knowledge of God, the next four deal with prophecy and the Torah, while the last four deal with reward, punishment and the ultimate redemption. In this discussion Maimonides says nothing of a universal resurrection. All he says it is that whatever resurrection does take place, it will occur at an indeterminate time before the world to come, which he repeatedly states will be purely spiritual.
The knowledge of God is a form of knowledge which develops in us the immaterial intelligence, and thus confers on man an immaterial, spiritual nature. This confers on the soul that perfection in which human happiness consists, and endows the soul with immortality. One who has attained a correct knowledge of God has reached a condition of existence, which renders him immune from all the accidents of fortune, from all the allurements of sin, and from death itself. Man is in a position to work out his own salvation and his immortality.
Baruch Spinoza's doctrine of immortality was strikingly similar. However, Spinoza teaches that the way to attain the knowledge which confers immortality is the progress from sense-knowledge through scientific knowledge to philosophical intuition of all things sub specie æternitatis, while Maimonides holds that the road to perfection and immortality is the path of duty as described in the Torah and the rabbinic understanding of the oral law.
Maimonides describes the world to come as the stage after a person lives their life in this world as well as the final state of existence after the Messianic Era. Some time after the resurrection of the dead, souls will live forever without bodies. They will enjoy the radiance of the Divine Presence without the need for food, drink or sexual pleasures.
Maimonides employed rationalism to defend Judaism rather than limit inquiry of only to rationalism. His rationalism, if not taken as an opposition, also assisted the Kabbalists, purifying their transmitted teaching from mistaken corporeal interpretations that could have been made from Hekhalot literature, though Kabbalists held that their theosophy alone allowed human access to Divine mysteries.Norman Lamm, The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary, Ktav Pub, 1999: Introduction to chapter on Faith/Reason has historical overview of religious reasons for opposition to Jewish philosophy, including the Ontological reason, one Medieval Kabbalist holding that "we begin where they end".
However, Maimonides was also one of the most influential figures in medieval Jewish philosophy. His adaptation of Aristotelianism to Biblical faith deeply impressed later Jewish thinkers, and had an unexpected immediate historical impact.This is covered in all histories of the Jews. E.g., including such a brief overview as Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews, Revised Edition (New York: Schocken, 1970), pp. 175–179. Some more acculturated Jews in the century that followed his death, particularly in Spain, sought to apply Maimonides' Aristotelianism in ways that undercut traditionalist belief and observance, giving rise to an intellectual controversy in Spanish and southern French Jewish circles.D.J. Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 1180–1240 (Leiden: Brill, 1965), is still the most detailed account. The intensity of debate spurred Catholic Church interventions against "heresy" and a general confiscation of rabbinic texts.
In reaction, the more radical interpretations of Maimonides were defeated. At least amongst Ashkenazi Jews, there was a tendency to ignore his specifically philosophical writings and to stress instead the rabbinic and halakhic writings. These writings often included considerable philosophical chapters or discussions in support of halakhic observance; David Hartman observes that Maimonides clearly expressed "the traditional support for a philosophical understanding of God both in the Aggadah of Talmud and in the behavior of the hasid the."David Hartman, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976), p. 98. Maimonidean thought continues to influence traditionally observant Jews.On the extensive philosophical aspects of Maimonides' halakhic works, see in particular Isidore Twersky's Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah), Yale Judaica Series, vol. XII (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980). Twersky devotes a major portion of this authoritative study to the philosophical aspects of the Mishneh Torah itself.The Maimunist or Maimonidean controversy is covered in all histories of Jewish philosophy and general histories of the Jews. For an overview, with bibliographic references, see Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, "The Maimonidean Controversy," in History of Jewish Philosophy, Second Edition, edited by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 331–349. Also see Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 205–272.
The most rigorous medieval critique of Maimonides is Hasdai Crescas' . Crescas bucked the eclectic trend, by demolishing the certainty of the Aristotelian world-view, not only in religious matters but also in the most basic areas of medieval science (such as physics and geometry). Crescas' critique provoked a number of 15th-century scholars to write defenses of Maimonides.
Because of his path-finding synthesis of Aristotle and Biblical faith, Maimonides had an influence on Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas who refers to Maimonides in several of his works, including the Commentary on the Sentences.
Maimonides' combined abilities in the fields of theology, philosophy and medicine make his work attractive today as a source during discussions of evolving norms in these fields, particularly medicine. An example is the modern citation of his method of determining death of the body in the controversy regarding declaration of death to permit organ donation for transplantation.Vivian McAlister, Maimonides's cooling period and organ retrieval (Canadian Journal of Surgery 2004; 47: 8 – 9)
Issued from 8 May 1986 to 1995, the Series A of the Israeli New Shekel featured an illustration of Maimonides on the obverse and the place of his burial in Tiberias on the reverse on its 1-shekel bill.
In 2004, conferences were held at Yale University, Florida International University, Penn State, and Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, which is named after him. To commemorate the 800th anniversary of his death, Harvard University issued a memorial volume. In 1953, the Israel Postal Authority issued a postage stamp of Maimonides, pictured.
In March 2008, during the Euromed Conference of Ministers of Tourism, The Tourism Ministries of Israel, Morocco and Spain agreed to work together on a joint project that will trace the footsteps of the Rambam and thus boost religious tourism in the cities of Córdoba, Fez and Tiberias.Shelly Paz (8 May 2008) Tourism Ministry plans joint project with Morocco, Spain. The Jerusalem Post
Between December 2018 and January 2019 the Israel Museum held a special exhibit dedicated to the writings of Maimonides.
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