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AN EVENING with MAIMONIDES John D ’ AN EVENING WITH MAIMONIDES John D. Rayner Introduction Moses Maimom'des was, by general consent, the greatest Jewish mind of the Middle Ages in the same way as Thomas Aquinas, who lived a century after him, is generally considered to have been the greatest Christian mind of the Middle Ages, but with this difference: that, whereas Aquinas had few rivals, since medieval Christendom was, outside the monasteries, mostly illiterate, Maimonides was one of a whole galaxy of medieval Jewish scholars for whom the epithet of ’greatest’ could conceivably be claimed, since universal education had been a fact of Jewish life —- or, rather, of male Jewish life — since antiquity. In particular, Maimonides is commonly regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, and therefore of all times prior to Spinoza. But I don’t intend this evening to talk much about his hilosophy, although of course I shall touch on it, because medieval Jewish philoso fly is not a subject in which I am well versed or, to be 'gh honest, for which I have a very regard. Others, especially LJS member Dr Esther Seidel, who teaches Jewish philosophy at Leo Baeck College, are better qualified to deal with that topic. Instead, I want to talk about Maimonides the man. That is to say, I want to tell you the story of his life in an old-fashioned, pedestrian, chronological way, and read you a few extracts Emm his writings, so as to allow him to "speak for himself”, with emphasis on those of his writings which throw light on his character and ideology. {g Youth in Spain if: In Jewish tradition Maimonides is better known as the Rambam, an acronym for Mosheh L“? ben Maimon, Moses the son of Maimon. This Maimon was a Talmudist, astronomer and . (-{ ;.*, mathematician, and one of the Dayyanim (Judges) of Cordoba, the principal city of "‘ Andalusia and of Muslim Spain. He had two sons, Moses and David, and a daughter 5 whose name, I am sorry to say, has not been preserved. ~~~ 30‘“ _’ Moses was born in Cordoba on March, 1135. In the year of his Bar-Mitzvah, by ' which time he had already acquired a formidable knowledge of the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic Literature, the Golden Age of Spanish Ie came to an abrupt end when Cordoba fell to the Almohades ’Unitarians’ (literally , a fanatical Muslim sect from North Africa who persecuted nonconformists. So the Majmon family did what Jews have so often done in such circumstances: they left their home and wandered from city to city for many years, keeping out of the way of the inquisitors. Nothing is known about these years of wandering except that wherever the family went Moses must have sou ht out the local library and read voraciously every book he could get hold of. For w en they finally left Spain, although Moses was still only twenty-five, he had already written a treatise on logic and another on the calendar, and begun work on his first magnum opus, a commentary on the Mishnah. Interlude in Morocco In 1160 the family finally left Spain for Morocco and settled, paradoxically, at Fez, the very capital of the Almohade kingdom. Most probabl this involved outwardly converting to Islam for their own safety, and may explain w y both Maimon and his son Moses took a surprisingly lenient view of other Jews who had taken that step. Maimon, for instance, wrote a ’Letter of Consolation’ which has been called “one of the finest expressions of tolerance which medieval literature can show”(David Yellin & \ Israel Abrahams, Maimanides, Jewish Historical Society of England, 1935, p. 29). In it, the author implores his fellow Jews to remain at least inwardly loyal to their faith and to await the fulfilment of God’s promises which would put an end to their present plight, “praying regularly, using, if need be, an abridged form of the liturgy, and the Arabic language, if Hebrew were unfamiliar; content with little materially, hoping for much spiritually. The Law of God was a Cord 'suspended from earth to heaven,’ a sure rescue for those who, immersed in the sea of captivity, grasped at this unbreakable means of safety...He who clings to it with his whole hand has, doubtless, more hope than he who has more clings to it with but part of it, but he who clings to with the tips of his fingers hope than he who lets go of it altogether” (ibid., pp. 28f). Moses followed this up with a letter of his own, which became known as Ma’amar Kiddush ha-Shem, ’The Essay on the Sanctification of the Name’. Like his father, he sought to encourage his fellow Jews to remain loyal to their faith in the knowledge that he it is better to practise Judaism in secret than to abandon it completely. In particular, ed that Islam was not idolatry, so that to conform to it outwardly was not one of the three 'cardinal’ sins which must be avoided even at the cost of death. The letter continues: "Now we are not asked to render active homage to heathenism, but only to recite an empty formula which the Moslems themselves know we utter insincerely in order to circumvent a bigot....1ndeed, any Jew who, after uttering the Moslemlformula, wishes to observe the whole 613 precepts in the privacy of his home may do so without hindrance. life for the Nevertheless, if, even under these circumstances, a Jew surrenders his sanctification of the name of God before men, he has done nobly and well, and his reward is great before the Lord. But if a man ask me: Shall I be slain or utter the formula of Islam? I answer, Utter (he formula and live” (fl)id.. p. 34f). Nevertheless, the Rambam went on to advise ose who were forced to choose between apostasy and death to by-pass the dilemma by emigrating. And just that is what the Maimons themselves did a few years later, when a renewed in uisition led to the arrest and execution of the head of the Jewish community of Fez, w 0 was a close friend, and their own lives were saved only through the intervention of a Muslim friend. In 1168 they sailed for the eastern end of the Mediterranean, landed at Acre, and after spending the summer in Palestine, then a Crusader kingdom, journeyed on to E t, settlin first in Alexandria, then in Fostat or Old Cairo, where the Rambam spent e ‘ '3 rest of life. The Mishnah Commentary By that time Maimonides had already finished his commentary on the Mishnah, the fruit of ten years’ work, written in Arabic but soon translated into Hebrew. (A better Hebrew translation was published in 1973) This commentary, or Perush ha-Mishnah, was a pioneering achievement because previously the Mishnah had always been treated as a mere part of the Talmud, whereas Maimonides expounded it as a document in its own right. It is also important on account of two excursuses. One is the introduction to his commentary on Tractate Avot, better known to those familiar with the traditional prayerbook as Pirkey Avot or "The Ethics of the Fathers’, which Maimonides used as a peg on which to hang his own theory of ethics. This excursus is commonly known as Sh’monah Perakim, ’The Eight Chapters’. It is especially noteworthy for its thesis, derived from An'stotle, that virtue is the golden mean between undesirable extremes. For instance, courage is the golden mean between cowardice and recklessness. It is a theory which works only up to a point, but the excuzsus is nevertheless one of the great and influential Jewish ethical treatises of the Middle Ages. Even better known is another excuxsus, prompted by the tenth chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin, known as Perek Chelek because it discusses the question, what sort of people do, and what sort of people do not, "have a share in the world to come", chelek being the Hebrew for ‘share’. Among those excluded, according to the first paragraph of the chapter, are those who reject the doctrine of bodily resurrection, those wlfl deny the divine origin of the Torah, and ’Epicureijns’, meaning those who seek pleasure without moral restraint, and heretics generally. Maimonides used this as an irresistible opportunity to expound his own view as to what are the fundamental and indispensable n'nciples (in Hebrew ikkarim) of Judaism, which turn out to be thirteen in number. ‘s excursus was later compressed by an "I unknown author into a short creed each principle of which begins nnbm m: mun w, — believe with perfect faith” - a formula which Maimonides did not use himself and in that form found its way into the traditional Siddur, which also includes a versified hymn Maimonides‘ based on it - the Yigdal, by a fourteenth-century Italian poet. But own excursus is about ten times longer than either of these abridgements. (It runs to about 2,600 words.) Of special interest is the eighth of the thirteen principles because it states what we — know as the fundamentalist view of Scripture in the most uncompromising and, from our modern int of view, simplistic - way. Here is how it begins: "The Fig th Fundamental Principle is that the Torah came from God. We are to believe that the whole Torah was given us through Moses our Teacher entirely from God. When we call the Torah ’God’s Word’ we speak metaphorically. We do not know exactly how it reached us, but only that it came to us through Moses who acted like a secretary taking dictation.
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