Evolution of Torah: Maimonides
Establishing Torah Culture (Season 2, Episode 4)
For this episode, we focus solely on Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204, Maimonides/Rambam), whose work in diverse disciplines from medicine to philosophy worked to elevate rabbinic legal culture. We examine the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides’s companion to the written Torah, which is the oldest in existence and delve into his rigorous work life. Through his letters, we get a sense of Maimonides personal challenges and extensive reach during his lifetime underscoring our desire to dedicate an episode to this transformational figure.
SHOW NOTES
Further Reading
“Introduction” to the Maimonides Reader by Isadore Twersky
Maimonides’s Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibon
Maimonides’s Letter to Mar Yoseph ibn Gabir
Bio
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, Rambam, 1138-1204) As a child, Maimonides studied with both Jewish and Arabic masters, accounting for the breadth of his learning and his output in so many different fields. Religious persecution forced his family to move from Spain to North Africa and before he turned thirty Maimonides had lived in at least five different cities. He became the court physician to Saladin’s vizier and worked tirelessly in his medical practice and as a leader of the Jewish community in Cairo. When he died at age seventy, three days of mourning were observed by both Jews and Muslims in Cairo.
Transcript
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Announcer Welcome to Season two of the Evolution of Torah, a podcast with JTS professor, Rabbi Mordecai Schwartz. In this season, Establishing Rabbinic Culture, Professor Schwartz traces the development of medieval Jewish legal literature through a journey to four key centers of learning across North Africa and Europe. This is episode four, in which we delve into the life and legacy of Maimonides.
Rabbi Mordecai Schwartz For this episode, we return to Spain and North Africa to explore the life and legacy of Maimonides, the towering figure of this period. In 1183, Maimonides, the Rambam, who lived from 1138 to 1204, wrote a letter describing the agony and grief he felt at the sudden death of his brother David eight years earlier. He writes:
In Egypt I met with great and severe misfortunes. Illness and material losses came upon me. In addition, various informers plotted against my life. But the most terrible blow, a blow which caused me more grief than anything I have experienced in my life, was the death of the most perfect and righteous man, who was drowned while traveling in the Indian Ocean. For nearly a year after I received the sad news, I lay ill on my bed struggling with fever and despair. Eight years have passed, and I still mourn, for there is no consolation. What can console me? He grew up on my knee; he was my brother, my pupil. He was engaged in business and earned money that I might stay at home and continue my studies. He was learned in the Talmud and in the Bible and an accomplished grammarian. My one joy was to see him. Now my joy has been changed into darkness; he is gone to his eternal home, and left me prostrated in a Strange Land. Whenever I come across his handwriting or one of his books, my heart grows faint within me, and my grief awakens. In short: “I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning.” Were not the study of the Torah my delight and did not the study of wisdom divert me from grief, I should have succumbed to my affliction.
Greatness comes with a price. Maimonides did not have an easy life. In his 1972 Maimonides Reader, Isadore Twerski famously wrote:
Maimonides’ biography immediately suggests a profound paradox. A philosopher by temperament and ideology, a zealous devotee of the contemplative life who eloquently portrayed and yearned for the serenity of solitude and the spiritual exuberance of meditation, he nevertheless led a relentlessly active life that regularly brought him to the brink of exhaustion. A harassed physician and conscientious leader of his community, he combined an arduous professional routine with unabated scholarship, vigorous creativity, and literary productivity. Maimonides’ life was a mosaic of anxiety, tribulation, and at best, incredible strenuous work and intellectual exertion. This is perhaps the first matter worthy of attention for the modern reader, accustomed for the most part to comfort, leisure, and even affluence.
Well known for contributions in multiple fields, physician, philosopher and legal scholar, Maimonides spent most of his career in Egypt.
He was born in Cordova, which at the time was the greatest center of Jewish learning in Islamic culture. His father Maimon was a prominent judge and a respected scholar, having been the student of the Ri Migash. When he was thirteen, the Almohad Caliphate, withits extremist views, took power in Spain. They presented all non-Muslims with a simple choice, conversion to Islam or death. Some Spanish Jews chose martyrdom, others fled away, while many more disguised themselves, perhaps regretfully, with ambivalence, as Muslims, practicing Islam in public but Judaism in the home. [1]
Maimonides’ family uprooted itself from Spain, where they had lived for eight generations, and fled for Northern Africa to the city of Fez in Morocco. The Almohads ruled here as well, and there is some thought that my Maimonides’ family practice a public Islam here while remaining faithful to Torah and Mitzvot in secret. In 1165 Maimonides departed on an arduous sea voyage from Morocco to the land of Israel, which was then the scene of the Crusades. In the midst of what must have been a period of enormous instability and travail, the young Maimonides managed to write his commentary on the Mishnah.
Maimonides originally published his commentary to the Mishnah in Judeo-Arabic(Arabic written by Jews in Hebrew characters). Not only do we have the entire commentary available for us to study at our leisure, but most of the work is even available to us in a manuscript copy in the Maimonides’ own hand. I want to take a second once again to thank my friend and colleague Jonathan Milgram for his careful scholarship and research which I have used a great deal to prepare for this podcast. I also want to be clear that any mistakes that I make are mine and not his.
Back to Maimonides’ commentary on the Mishnah. While as a matter of historical fact, Maimonides’ work is the second known commentary to the entire Mishnah. His commentary remains the only complete commentary to the Mishnah that is that early. The earlier commentary is not available in its entirety and the sections we do have been highly altered over time.
Maimonides listed four goals for his Mishnah commentary:
- The first, to expound each individual mishnah in light of the analyses presented in the Babylonian Talmud;
- To give conclusions for each mishnah interpreted, based on the entire Talmudic tradition;
- To introduce the beginner to the Talmud;
- And then the fourth, the final one, to place before the student or scholar all that is necessary for the easy study and repetition of the commentary’s contents.
His introductions are also a real innovation and deeply important. They present not only a history of the oral law but also useful conceptual framing for different parts of the Mishnah.
Around 1170, Maimonides reached Cairo with his father and his younger brother, and that city was to become his home for the remainder of his life. As he describes in the letter we opened the episode with, his brother David had planned to support him by being a merchant, while Maimonides the scholar had time for learning and writing. But this was not to be. We do not know how his father died, but it was before David took his fateful trip. The circumstances and the need to support himself and the other members of his family led him to take up the profession of medicine, at which he was apparently quite successful.
Eventually he became the physician to Saladin’s vizier and one of the most respected court physicians. At the same time, he became the untitled leader of the Jewish community, combining the duties of a rabbi, judge, and administrative chief with those of overseer of communal charities. In 1190, Maimonides wrote a letter to Shemuel Ibn Tibon, who was translating his great philosophical work, The Guide for the Perplexed from Arabic to Hebrew. Ibn Tibon wished to come and visit Maimonides and ask him questions related to the translation. In the letter, Maimonides flatters him, assuring him he is up to the task, and answers some questions Ibn Tibon had put to him about the translation, and then proceeds to discourage him from coming to Cairo, explaining that his schedule is so busy that he would just have no time. This is ultimately the reason that I want to quote the letter here; so that you can get a taste of the kind of schedule that Maimonides may have endured on a daily basis, quote:
But with respect to your wish to come to me, I cannot but say how greatly your visit would delight me, for I truly long to commune with you, and would anticipate our meeting with even greater joy than you. Yet, I must advise you not to expose yourself to the perils of the voyage, for, beyond seeing me, and doing all that I could to honor you, you would not derive any advantage from your visit. Do not expect to be able to confer with me on any subject for even one hour, either by day or by night. For the following is my daily occupation:
I dwell at Mizr [that is Fostat in Cairo], but the sultan resides at Kahira. These two places are two Sabbaths-day journey distance from each other (just to explain, that is a total of 4,000 cubits, 2000 cubits being the maximum that one can travel on the Sabbath). My duties to the sultan are very heavy. And I’m obligated to visit him every day, early in the morning; and when he or any of his children, or any of the inhabitants of his harem, are indisposed, I dare not leave Kahira, but must stay the greater part of the day in the palace.
I do not return to Mizr until the afternoon. Then I am almost dying with hunger… I find the antechamber is filled with people, both Jews and Gentiles, nobles and common people, judges and bailiffs, friends and foes…
He describes eating just one meal a day and seeing patients until two in the morning.
Even on Shabbat this hectic pace continues with a study and instruction with the “whole congregation.”
We know for certain that Maimonides was not merely putting off Ibn Tibon when he told him about the questions he constantly received from the Jewish community. Maimonides’ responsa, many of which were originally authored in Arabic, were collected by Joshua Blau in the early 1970’s in a large 4 volume set and are presented with an accompanying parallel column providing Blau’s Hebrew translation.
He settled disputes regarding divorce, inheritance, business partnerships, the status of Christians and Muslims in Jewish law, and more. The responsa also attest to Maimonides’ stature as a world-renowned legal decisor; questions were sent to him from places as far flung as Baghdad and southern France.
Maimonides revolutionized the codification of Jewish law with the publication of his Mishneh Torah. Although conceptually organized into sections on specific laws (Laws of the Sabbath, Laws of Inheritance and so forth) like the geonic codes, the Mishneh Torah remains the only code whose scope includes all of biblical and Talmudic law. It includes even the legal system’s inoperable elements and enactments because the Temple is no longer standing.
Maimonides’ writing style is lucid, it’s precise, it’s concise. In each chapter he strikes a balance between providing judicial generalizations and case law. With educational and pedagogic skill, the beginnings of chapters Maimonides uses to define concepts and terms, and only then presents cases in which he applies the definitions.
As we have already seen, Maimonides was also an excellent letter writer. We have many letters, with much correspondences on a variety of topics. One of the most difficult times I had while preparing this podcast was in deciding which letter of Maimonides to conclude this episode with. In the end I decided to conclude with his letter to Mar Yoseph ibn Gabir. In it, Maimonides shows both his quality as a teacher and his generosity of spirit. He writes:
I gather from the letter of the esteemed Mar Yoseph called ibn Gabir that he regrets being an am haaretz (ignorant of Jewish learning), because he knows Arabic only, but not Hebrew and that he, therefore, while studying our commentary on the Mishnah with zeal, he is unable to learn our code Mishneh Torah which is written in Hebrew… First of all I must tell you, may the Lord keep and increase your welfare, that you are not justified in regarding yourself as an am haaretz. You are our beloved pupil. So is everybody who is desirous of studying even one verse or one single halakha. It also makes no difference whether you’re studying in the Holy Tongue, or Arabic or Aramaic. It matters only whether it is done with understanding… I say therefore, in general, that you must not belittle yourself or give up the intention of improving.
There are great Scholars who did not begin their studies until an advanced age, and they have become scholars of distinction in spite of this. If you want to study my work you will have to learn Hebrew little by little. It is not so difficult, as the book is written in an easy style, and if you master one part you will seem to be able to understand the whole work. I do not intend, however, to produce an Arabic edition as you suggest. The work would lose its specific color. How could I do this, when I would like to translate my Arabic writings into the holy language! In any case you are a brother. May the Lord guard you, lead you to perfection and Grant you the happiness of both worlds…
From Moses until Moses none arose like Moses. It is undoubtedly true in the Rambam we have a figure of monumental proportions and achievements. His qualities cannot be overestimated.
Next Time we return to Europe, to explore the piety of German sages and the challenges of medieval life.
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Announcer Thanks for listening to the Evolution of Torah with Professor Mordechai Schwartz. It was recorded at JTS by Christopher Hickey, and produced by Ellie Gettinger, with editing assistance from Sarah Brown. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. For those who want to dig a little deeper, visit jtsa.edu/podcasts where you’ll find sources, archival material and more in the evolution of Torah show notes along with links to all of JTS podcasts, exploring Jewish texts, history, culture and experience.
