Preparations are being made in several countries where Jews reside to celebrate in varied but fitting manner the 800th anniversary of the birth of the great luminary of Israel, Moses ben Maimon or the Rambam, as he is usually called. This famous and outstanding man was born in March, 1135. It was on the eve of Passover, the Festival of Deliverance, that this soul saw the light of day in the famous and romantic city of Cordova, Spain.
There is an old Jewish saying, characteristic of the traditional and unbounded veneration by the Jews of their great men—’From Moses until Moses, there hath arisen none like Moses.’ Of Moses the great prophet, inspired teacher and lawgiver of old Scripture, tells that he was unique, that there arose, none like unto him for certain sterling outstanding excellences and attributes. He led Israel out of Egypt, out of a land where it had been physically and spiritually enslaved, bringing the people to the foot of Mount Horeh to receive that Revelation which spelt true physical and spiritual freedom.
His soul was pure and expressive of a high sense of his lofty calling and of the fundamental nature of his tremendous task to create a singular people conscious of a divine destiny. At the same time, and because of his spiritual nobility, he met the circumstances of his life and the difficulties of his mission with an excessive but typical modesty; he confronted his foes with a calm dignity and an all-conquering selflessness.
MAN OF ENERGY ARISES IN ISRAEL
Many, many centuries later another Moses arose in Israel, a man of amazing energy, dynamic originality, uncanny versatility, and a tremendously determinative force in the history of Judaism. Strangely enough, the greater part of his many-sided activities was brought in Egypt, and Moses ben Maimon was called upon to lead his contemporaries and their descendants from an enslavement of ignorance and superstition and perplexity to a Promised Land of knowledge, truth and a clearly demonstrated but warm and sure faith. His life and work had far-reaching effects similar to those of his very great predecessor and namesake.
He had many grateful and understanding admirers but also some strenuous foes who did not disdain to hurl personal abuse at him for views which they regarded as pernicious if not heretical. But he went on his way, undeterred by the attacks and invective of his opponents, while at the same time great enough to stand corrected if critics pointed out errors of fact or fallibility of opinion in any of his works.
He always preserved a philosophical and genial calm; he concentrated his inexhaustible energy on the thousand and one different problems which affected his people in the many lands of their sojournings. He strengthened the faith and courage of his co-religionists who looked to his comforting light in the dread days of darkness.
CONTENT WITH SMALL GROUP WHO UNDERSTOOD HIM
On the other hand, without hauteur or superiority he was prepared to be content with finding only a select few who would understand his thought and its arguments and profundities, while appreciating the genuinely religious motive of all his thinking.
His contemporaries and subsequent generation came under his pervasive influence not only through his colossal work of systematic and complete codification of Israel’s vast accumulation of laws and traditions, not only through his lucid and logical commentary on the collection of Traditional Law made by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the second century of the current era and known as the Mishna, but also through his method of approach to the problems arising from the relationship of reason and the accepted teachings of religion.
The distillation or summing up of the whole elaborate plan and aim of his great thinking is formulated in his thirteen dogmas of Judaism which can be described as articles of belief and which for centuries have been accepted by Jews as a whole and hymned by many poets.
NOT APPROPRIATE PLACE TO DETAIL CHECKERED LIFE
This is not the place to give a detailed account of the interesting and checkered life of Maimonides, nor yet to appraise his great originality against a not unworthy background of Judeo-Arabic culture, though then a little past its zenith.
Nor would it be possible in a short talk to point out his great influence upon some of the great masters of medieval scholastic philosophy as well as upon modern philosophy through the vehicle of Spinoza’s thinking which shows how much the Rambam’s ‘Guide of the Perplexed’ had provided essential strands.
Suffice it that these facts are facts which are illustrated in the works of those who have treated of such matters. I will content myself however with a consideration of the attitude of our renowned Rambam towards other faiths.
TOLERANT ATTITUDE ADOPTED BY SAGES OF EARLY TIMES
The tolerant attitude to other faiths adopted by the Sages of early Rabbinic times may be summed up in the well-known Talmudical saying that the pious of other nations have a share in the world to come
It is the recognition that while the Jew is firmly convinced of the truth of his faith and the only direct means of knowing and experiencing the highest truths about God, the world and man, none the less he recognizes that the stranger who is not of the people of Israel may be following a path which though not free from stumbling or straying, may yet be an earnest seeker after God, may be overcome by an overwhelming consciousness of God’s presence and reveal a heart only known for purity of intention to God Himself. Such an one must merit the same bliss as is vouchsafed the true and faithful in Israel.
The saying of the Rabbis referred to above was probably uttered in connection with the devotees of a paganism in its serious and melancholy moments.
Maimonides lived at a time when Christianity and Islam were well established in the medieval world.
While he knew of the mild tolerance of Caliphs and Christian Kings, he had had personal dangerous experience of fanatical Mohammedan sects and knew of the many trials to which his brethren in Christian lands had often to submit.
And yet, in spite of his knowledge of the dominant faiths in practice, in spite also of his sure conviction that Judaism alone was the true and pure faith, he recognizes that both the daughter faiths have lone much under providential guidance to
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
