Yale University Publishes 15-volume English Translation of Code of Maimonides

The first volume of an English translation of the Code of Maimonides was published here today by Yale University Press. The look represents the first time that any part of the famous encyclopedic Code has over been translated into any language from the original Hebrew.

Publication of the book inaugurates a projected 15-volume translation of the entire medieval Code that is being prepared under the auspices of Judaica Research at Yale University. The volume published today is “The Book of Civil Laws” – Book XIII in the Maimonides Code. It was translated by Jacob Rabinowitz, New York attorney. The other 14 books of this monumental work are presently being prepared by a number of distinguished scholars in this country and abroad, each responsible for one of the books of the Code.

In his translation, Mr. Rabinowitz aimed at making the Book of Civil Laws available to modern Jurists as well as to others interested in the legal institutions of Judaism. The Code is the most detailed and systematic exposition of Jewish civil law after the close of the Talmud. Book XIII contains five treatises dealing with the laws of hiring, borrowing and depositing, creditor and debtor, pleading, and inheritance.

To introduce the Code of Maimonides to English readers has been one of the mayor projects of Judaica Research at Yale, established in 1944 by Louis M. Rabinowitz, of New York, for research in Hebrew lore and literature. Julian J. Oberman, professor of Semitic Languages at Yale, has directed Judaica Research from its beginning and is editor-in-chief of the Yale, Judaica Series. Associated with him as editors are Professors Louis Ginzberg, or the Jewish Theological seminary of America, and Earry A. Wolfson, of Harvard University.