Honoring the Second Moses

By Richard Ostling

The conference of scholars last week in Paris could best be described as unexpected, and perhaps even improbable. The meeting honored the medieval genius Maimonides, one of history's greatest Jewish thinkers, and the host was UNESCO, the troubled United Nations cultural organization, which has upset Jews by frequently denouncing Israel. The World Jewish Congress co-sponsored the gathering, and one of its American leaders, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, even ventured that the conference might indicate "a reformed UNESCO." Sponsoring nations for UNESCO's Maimonides year, the 850th anniversary of his birth, include Pakistan, India, Cuba and Spain, which refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, and the Soviet Union, whose mistreatment of Jews is an international issue.

The strange mixture of participants underscored the unusual cross-cultural impact of Maimonides, who is also known as Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, "the Rambam" (an acronym) and the "second Moses." Religious sage, philosopher, community leader and physician, the Rambam was also culturally complex--a Jew steeped in ancient Greek philosophy who spent his life among Muslims and influenced Christian Europe. As Soviet Scholar Vitali Naumkin told the Paris meeting, "Maimonides is perhaps the only philosopher in the Middle Ages, perhaps even now, who symbolizes a confluence of four cultures: Greco-Roman, Arab, Jewish and Western."

/ Other experts in Paris laid their own cultural claims. "I regard him first and foremost as an Arab thinker," said Muslim Professor Abderrahmane Badawi of Kuwait University. Huseyin Atay, who teaches religious thought in Saudi Arabia, agreed: "If you didn't know he was Jewish, you might easily make the mistake of saying that a Muslim was writing." Israeli Historian Shlomo Pines said, "Maimonides is the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages and quite possibly of all time."

Within Judaism, Maimonides is held in high regard by the Orthodox, who frequently quote his sayings and avidly study the Mishneh Torah* (Repetition of the Law), his magisterial systematization of biblical commandments and the Talmud. Many Orthodox ignore his philosophical masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed, which continues to inspire secularized Jews and is required reading in the Jewish studies departments that are proliferating in U.S. universities.

Maimonides was born on Passover eve in the Spanish city of Cordoba in 1135 and died in Egypt in 1204. He was 13 when the Almohades, a fanatical Muslim movement, seized control of his hometown. The Almohades gave Jews the choice of death, conversion or exile. The Maimon family, choosing to depart, wandered for a decade before settling in Fez, then the capital of Morocco. Maimonides, educated by his father and other local rabbis, soon began his first major project, a commentary on the Mishnah, which is part of the Talmud, the massive and authoritative compilation of Jewish law. Maimonides' work contained the 13 Articles of Faith, to this day part of synagogue ritual.

Persecution of the Jews began in 1164 in Morocco, and two years later the Maimon family moved to Egypt, where they found a final refuge. (Despite being the adopted land where Maimonides achieved world fame, Egypt is conspicuously absent from the dozens of official observances of the anniversary year.) There he devoted ten years to the writing of the Mishneh Torah. Its preface contained what became Judaism's standard listing of the 613 biblical commandments, which deal with matters ranging from ritual slaughtering laws to recompense for injuries. Maimonides said that "no other work should be needed for ascertaining any of the laws of Israel."

Maimonides believed it was wrong to receive income from religious scholarship and earned his living as a doctor. Eventually he was appointed a physician to the Egyptian court of the storied Saladin, and became famous for voluminous medical writings.

Although the Rambam was an intellectual and something of an elitist, he cared greatly for the welfare of ordinary Jews. In Egypt, he was the religious and social head of his community. The newly published Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides, by Abraham Halkin and David Hartman (Jewish Publication Society; $15.95), portrays an international leader of his faith who was courageous and compassionate, though sometimes blunt.

Maimonides' last major work was the Guide, which has long been the subject of dispute. Alvin Reines, a radical Reform rabbi in the U.S., thinks that Maimonides wrote on two levels, presenting the literal meaning of the Scriptures for the ignorant rabble while holding to a hidden antimiraculous religion in which God was an impersonal concept. Drawing on Maimonides' writings, more conventional scholars hold that the Rambam, though committed to traditional Judaism, sought to harmonize it with philosophy and science.

That blending involved some distinctly modern ideas. Maimonides argued that the biblical account of creation out of nothingness was a more plausible concept than the eternal universe of Aristotle. But he also declared boldly that if his philosophical thinking had substantiated Aristotle's view, he would simply have reinterpreted the Bible accordingly. Maimonides treated the sacrificial rituals commanded by biblical law as accommodations that God made to the Hebrews' pagan background.

Maimonides conceived his Mishneh Torah as a single unifying law code for Judaism. Although it never became that, his work substantially affected every later development in Jewish scholarship. By many accounts, Maimonides' legal compendium provided a strength that enabled Judaism to avoid factionalism during the Muslim and Christian persecutions of the Middle Ages. The Guide of the Perplexed influenced the metaphysical speculations of Thomas Aquinas and other Christian scholastics while being largely ignored by medieval Judaism. But for modern Jews, says Biblical Scholar Nahum Sarna of Brandeis University, Maimonides provides "the model of a person who is able to accept a religious position without compromising on intellectual honesty and freedom of inquiry."

FOOTNOTE: *Yale University Press has published 13 of a projected 15 volumes of a modern English edition.

With reporting by Marlin Levin/Jerusalem and Adam Zagorin/Paris