Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) [Paperback]

Sherwin B. Nuland (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jewish Encounters | Publication Date: August 26, 2008

Sherwin B. Nuland—best-selling author of How We Die—focuses his surgeon’s eye and writer’s pen on this greatest of rabbis, most intriguing of Jewish philosophers, and most honored of Jewish doctors.

Moses Maimonides was a Renaissance man before there was a Renaissance: a great physician, a dazzling Torah scholar, a daring philosopher. Eight hundred years after his death, his notions about God, faith, the afterlife, and the Messiah still stir debate; his life as a physician still inspires; and the enigmas of his character still fascinate. Nuland's portrait of Maimonides that makes his life, his times, and his thought accessible to the general reader as they have never been before.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Maimonides, one of the preeminent personalities of medieval Jewish history, was a jurist, philosopher, expert in Jewish law, physician at the court of Saladin and a respected and dedicated communal leader. Given all that, it's difficult to understand the decision to present Maimonides's legacy primarily through the lens of his work as a physician. The 12th century was a time of stagnation in the history of medicine, and the author himself concedes that Maimonides contributed very little that was new or innovative to the field. By contrast, his jurisprudential magnum opus, the Mishne Torah, constituted a groundbreaking work in its own day and continues to be authoritative almost a millennium later. Although Nuland acknowledges this in a chapter on Maimonides's religious scholarship, it is dwarfed by the overarching concern with medicine—which seems the primary interest of Nuland, a clinical professor of surgery at Yale. The author does a serviceable job of stitching together this slight, popular biography of the larger-than-life Maimonides, but his writing is marred by an overwrought prologue and some glib generalizations. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Reputedly the greatest figure in Judaism after his namesake, Moses Maimonides (1138 [not, as long supposed, 1135]-1204) was also a great physician. That second identity (he has a third as a philosopher, though no one now comprehends his Guide for the Perplexed, and a fourth as a judge) furnishes the surgeon--author of the National Book Award-winning How We Die (1994) entree into the life of this medieval intellectual titan. Like disproportionately many Jewish sons, Maimonides became a doctor in obedience, Nuland thinks, to the Lord's injunction to his people to choose life. In chapters centered on Maimonides' travels, three great books, and medical papers, Nuland argues that that obedience shows in more than Maimonides' medical career. Maimonides was devoted to sustaining the Jews as a people, and out of that, to human life generally. If he was otherwise a physician of his time, bound by the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, he believed that reason and observation should also inform prescription. A little gem of intellectual biography. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Schocken; 1 Reprint edition (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805211500
• ISBN-13: 978-0805211504
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #243,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sherwin B. Nuland is Clinical Professor of Surgery at Yale University School of Medicine and a Fellow at Yale's Institute for Social and Policy Studies. He is the author of over ten books, including the National Book Award-winning, HOW WE DIE: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, an inquiry into the causes and modes of death that spent 34 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. In addition he is a contributor to leading publications including the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Hero for Our Time, January 24, 2006

By 

Virginia J. Prickett "retired librarian" (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) (Hardcover)

The great philosopher, physician and leader is brought vividly to life by Sherwin Nuland, himself a writer-physician. Although this is a relatively brief book, it touches on all the points of Maimonides's life with authority and clarity. Nuland positions his subject's writings within the issues of his time and ours. With a well-annotated bibliography this is a fine entry into a fascinating life.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good read, bad scholarship, September 14, 2008

By 

MRL (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) (Paperback)

It's an interesting read, but Nuland cites absolutely no sources, a problem when you have a subject with as much scholarship - much of it conflicted - as there is on Maimonides. One spot where this actually leads to him to make a pretty egregious error is when he cites the Maimonidean 13 'principles of faith.' Nuland correctly states that Maimonides writes these principles in his mishnaic commentary, but he then proceeds to give a word for word translation of a watered down version of these principles that appears in all Orthodox prayer books. This is highly problematic because the anonymously authored (not by Maimonides!) prayerbook version often inaccurately summarizes or even 'censors' Maimonides' statements in his commentary, and Nuland doesn't even bother noting that or even crediting the anonymous author as a source! He disingenuously makes it appear that this is his own correct paraphrase of Maimonides' formulation - a total inaccurate impression. I find this an alarming sign of Nuland's lack of in-depth research or even understanding of this important topic. I would not recommend this book to anyone who wishes to actually understand Maimonides' life and works.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Moses to Moses there was none like Moses, December 7, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) (Hardcover)

Sherwin B. Nuland opens this book by explaining how he finally came to after much discouragement write this book on the great Jewish thinker, halachist, communal leader and physician Moses Maimonedes, commonly known as the Rambam. Nuland's reluctance is understandable as he is not a scholar of Jewish texts, nor one deeply versed in Jewish thought. He is a prominent well- known highly esteemed physician and writer. And a good share of the book is devoted to understanding the Rambam as a physician. In the course of this Nuland provides a brief historical sketch of the development of Medicine from Galen to and through the Middle Ages. In the course of this he makes it clear that the Rambam was like all the great Medieval physicians not really a medical innovator. The Rambam was an extraordinarily dedicated physician whose observational powers were complemented by his vast knowledge of the extant medical literature. Nuland quotes the famous letter of the Rambam in which he details his exhausting schedule as physician including his work at Court and his work with the poorer Muslim population and with the Jewish community. Nuland also describes in some detail the medical writings of Rambam, including the Aphorisms and guidebooks which served a wider public to the dawn of the ear of Modern Medicine.
The Rambam turned to Medicine only after a great personal tragedy the loss at sea of his younger brother David. David had provided the material means for the Rambam to be totally devoted to scholarship. Rambam went into depression for over a year until finally emerging with the decision to practice medicine.
Nuland gives an excellent summary of the whole course of Rambam's life, including the childhood in Cordoba, the early years in Fez, the expulsions the Jewish community suffered, the forced conversion, and above all the genius which surfaced quite early. Rambam mastered whole worlds of Jewish texts , held them in his mind . And this enabled him to create his vast works of syncretic scholarship, most notably the work still studied and of great significance today , 'The Mishneh Torah'. Nuland provides a good understanding of the basic meaning of and history of 'The Mishnah Torah'. However in confronting Rambam's philosophical masterpiece "Guide to the Perplexed" Nuland is somewhat less understanding and appreciative.
In assessing Rambam's overall historical signifiance Nuland writes this telling analysis of why Rambam is held in such great importance by Jews to this very day.
" it is the iconic memory of a man whose life was devoted to the continuity of the Jewish people.
- From the letter to the Jews of Fez written when he was twenty- four years old , to his labors until the hour of his death as his community's acknowledged leader ,he devoted the totality of his prodigious talents to the preservation of the community of the Jews everywhere."