Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. We're going to be taking a break from Wednesday Hebrew to make room for a new feature, Person of the Week. Each week, we will be learning about an individual who contributed greatly to the Jewish world. To start things off, I can think of no person more fitting for this blog than the scholar Maimonides.
Maimonides was a 12th century Talmudic sage who operated exclusively in Muslim-controlled territories of Europe and Northern Africa. Like many scholars of his time, he is referred to by a Greek name (Maimonides) thanks to the pervasiveness of neo-classical ideals and fashions. In his time, however, he would have gone by any number of other names, depending on his surrounding community. His Hebrew name is Moshe ben Ma'imon, meaning "Moses, son of Ma'imon". He also would have been known by the very exact, honorific-laden Arabic name Abu Imran Mussa bin Maimun ibn Abdallah al-Qurtubi al-Israili. In most of the texts that refer to him, though, he is known by a simple acronym: Rambam, from the Hebrew title Rav Moshe ben Maimon, the "rav" meaning "rabbi".
Rambam was born in Cordoba, Spain in the mid-1100's. He studied Torah in addition to the popular teachings of Arab and Greek philosophers. From the latter he adopted a firm stance against poetry and mysticism. Maimonides was, if anything, a scientist.
The invasion of Spain by the Almohad Dynasty brought with it a much more stringent version of Muslim law than the Moorish leniency of Rambam's childhood. Non-Muslims in the conquered territories were forced to convert, die, or go into exile from their homes. Many Jews in the region chose exile, including the young Rambam's family. They settled in Morocco where Maimonides got the chance to study at Al Karaouine University where he was trained as a physician. While studying medicine, Rambam also began writing his famous commentaries of the Mishnah, the first and most revered of the rabbinic oral law documents.
Maimonides spent much of his life traveling and he became something of a celebrity in his time. He lived briefly in Israel but lived the longest in Egypt where he was a doctor for high-level government officials under Saladin himself. There is even reason to believe he treated Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades.
Rambam penned a number of documents that came to be formative in Jewish philosophy, especially the Western variety thereof. Perhaps his most famous and important work is Guide for the Perplexed, a sort of introductory text for the subtleties of interpreting Torah. The title itself hints at Rambam's notorious dismissiveness. This is something we will find in all of our discussions of prominent Jewish scholars. There is a personality underneath all of their work, so much so that the scholars are often use them as larger-than-life figures representing whole approaches to faith and philosophy.
Maimonides died in Fostat, Egypt in the year 1204. He was succeeded by his son Avraham, also a notable scholar in his own right. Rambam's grave is located in Tiberias, aka modern-day T'verya, Israel. For today's students of Jewish thought, Rambam represents a sort of clinical, empirical approach to faith. He warned against assuming too much about the divine and giving in to superstition. His views are often put against those of Nachmonides, the Ramban. But that's another discussion for another day.