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Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds

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In this era of turbulent change, we need to savor the spiritual wisdom of people who thrived in such eras before us.

In January, during Interfaith Heroes Month, Daniel Buttry wrote a short tribute to the 12th-century Maimonides among 31 short profiles in his book, "Interfaith Heroes." Buttry's summary remains a pretty good snapshot of this towering figure: "Maimonides was one of the greatest Jewish thinkers ever, producing foundational philosophical works on Judaism. ... He also was known for the breadth of his thinking and scholarship. He wrote medical works in Arabic ... and he worked diligently to reconcile scientific teachings with the teachings of his faith. ... Because Maimonides was open to diversity and was knowledgeable about many different streams ... he was able to weave together ancient Greco-Roman, medieval Arab, Jewish and Western cultures while retaining clear and cogent roots in his own Jewish faith."

In short: This is a guy we need to consult today in our own period of cultural upheaval!

Dr. Joel Kraemer has spent 60 years of his own life studying Maimonides--including many years Dr. Kraemer devoted to learning the languages that Maimonides himself mastered. Fortunately, Dr. Kraemer's lifelong pursuit of the great sage has ended in the gift of this eye-opening exploration of Maimonides' life, work and wisdom.

This book could not have come at a better moment.

If you like to dive into challenging, in-depth biographies, like David McCullough's "John Adams" or Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," then you're going to enjoy Dr. Kraemer's approach to Maimonides. The book is written for a general readership, but Dr. Kraemer's decades of original research is backed up in more than 100 pages of notes and supplemental materials at the back of the volume--in case you want to dig further into particular details.

Maimonides' life flows through lands and cultures that seem exotic to us today, nearly a millennium later. His movement from what is now Spain to Morocco to Egypt involves groups and major figures who aren't household names today. We may even have trouble pronouncing some of them. Nevertheless, I find Dr. Kraemer's welcoming prose, his use of frequent sub-heads in the book and his organization of Maimonides' life into thematic units results in a clear and compelling story. Plus, his overall approach balances Maimonides' chronological path through life with detours to let us explore vignettes from his work as a scientist, doctor and jurist. These moments, when we get to explore how Maimonides resolved a particular legal dispute or to peek inside a medieval physician's practice come along in the text like gems to pause and ponder.

In the end, the great sage's confident and humane approach to global conflict and the alleviation of suffering--while he also was deepening the world's appreciation of Judaism and expanding the world's range of philosophy--give us a refreshing model for how we might strive to live in the rough-and-tumble changes of this new millennium.

Maimonides lived from 1135 to 1204, first in cities of Spain, then travelled to Morocco & Palestine and finally settling in Cairo Egypt, where he eventually became the undiputed leader and principal teacher of the Jewish community of Egypt. As Jewry main 'dude', modern term, in terms of legal authority and philosopher, he was humane and tough minded, a comfort to jews and the main disciplinarian of heresy. He wrote that it was incumbent upon a jew restricted in practice of his worship to depart to another location, as he himself had been repeatedly forced to do at the hands of the Almohads, a fundamentalist Islamic group that took control of the Spanish peninsula in 1148 and gave non-muslims the choice of conversion or death. Echoes of what is happening in our times. But he also said, " If a man asks me, Shall I be slain or utter the formula of Islam?" I answer "Utter the formula and live."

Maimonides transformed Judaism, composing its Thirteen commandments of faith. the celebrated 12th commandment, " I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the messiah, and though he tarry, i will wait daily for his coming - he entered popular consiousness. His "Guide for the Perplexed" written in Arabic and finished in 1190, further recast Judaism, offering a philosophical interpretation of the Scriptures far removed from the conventional readings of his, and our own, times.

Today, Maimonides stands for an austerely doctrinal Judaism, the severe reprimand of all forms of idolatry and the combining of Jewish learning with secular science and Aristotillean philosophy( by way of Islamic intellectuals such as Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushid and others). Maimonides is also known for having been studied by professor Leo Strauss, the conservative professor and an inspiration to the current crop of 'neocons', who championed and built upon Maimonides' distinction between esoteric & exoteric learning, wisdom for the few and a practical piety for the many. Dr Kraemer's concise account of Maimonides endeavors to find " commond ground on which Maimonides can walk together with a man or a woman of today."

Dr Kraemer writes sympathetically of Maimonides given that he has studied and researched him for most of his professorial career. Dr Kraemer, emeritus professor of religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School, is a careful and appreciative expositor, and has taken the trouble to read the critical literature, especially at Cambridge University, the Genizah Snynagogue in Egypt and consulted the leading scholars such as S.D. Goiten and others. His book is a guide for those perplexed by Maimonides, as well as those who have not heard of him. It is also a useful guide to Jewish ethics. For example, the punishment in Jewish law for using incorrect weights and measures in business is more severe than the punishment for sexual immorality, because the latter is a sin against god, while the former is a sin against one's fellow man. There is also a secular ethics implicit in this distinction waiting to be developed, as it would be by John Stuart Mills, centuries later. A somewhat forbidding aspect of Maimonides' thought is his rigor in matters of heresy.

Example, His relentless rationality and contempt for superstition is also forbidding, though perhaps not quite so antipathetic to modern sensibilites. He was fierce with Jewish thinkers who embraced obscurantism. This is one of the better passages from "The Guide for the Perplexed," chapter " there is a group of human beings who consider it a greivous thing that causes should be given for any law; what would please them most is that the intellect would not find a meaning for the prohibitions and commandments. What compels them to feel thus is a sickness that they find in their souls, a sickness to which they are unable to give utterance and of which they cannot furnish a satisfactory account. For they think that if those laws were useful in this existence and had been given to us for this or that reason, it would be as if they derived from the reflection and the understanding of some intelligent being. If, however, there is a thing for which the intellect could not find any meaning at all and that does not lead to something useful, it indubitably derives from God; for the reflection of man would not lead to such a thing. It is as if, according to these people of weak intellects, man were more perfect than his maker, for man speaks and acts in a manner that leads to some intended end, whereas the Deity does not act thus but commands us to do things that are not useful to us and forbids us to do things that are not harmful to us."

Notice the tone of reproachment, amounting to contempt for his intellectual adversaries. Maimonides' writing has a polemical tone: he is impatient with stupidity, especially a stupidity masking as piety. The arguement in which he is intervening here concerns the question of whether there are reasons for the commandments, specifically those commandments not amenable to immediate justification. For Maimonides, even the most puzzling commandments have an instrumental purpose, teaching right opinions, moral qualities or proper civic conduct. Maimonides was concerned with mainting the simple faith of the uneducated. The difficult idea of philosophy, the esoteric understanding of religious truth, was not for them. He had no conviction that the profound truths of Judaism were within equal reach of all Jews.

Dr Kraemer does not concern himself with the tension between what Maimonides stood for and what Modern Judaism stands for; and though he remarks on it, he does not explore the implications of the tension in Maimonides' thinking between the few and many, the esoteric and the exoteric. The book remains a satisfying and humane introduction to 'one of civilization's greatest minds.'

Outside of students of religion and philosophers, the only ones who can be expected to know the name Maimonides are those youngsters who attended Hebrew School. The great 12th-century thinker composed a "ladder of charity" that ranks his preference from best (helping the individual find a job so he may take care of himself) to worst (giving begrudgingly). Since Jews are taught at an early age about the importance of charity, it's a perfect fit.

And that's pretty much it, which is a shame for someone who would have been called a Renaissance man had he been born a couple of centuries later.

Scholar, philosopher, doctor, astronomer, poet: Maimonides apparently mastered many disciplines during his lifetime. I say "apparently" because, as well researched as Joel L. Kramer's new biography obviously is, something seems to be lacking. He spends much more time on "the world" aspect and less on "the life." Despite the depth of Kraemer's epic, he acknowledges, "where there are gaps in Maimonides' life, they are often filled with legend and surmise so that his life is surrounded by myth."

Indeed, no sooner does the author mention his birth than he expounds on Cordoba and the surrounding regions, Andalusian Jewish culture and the educational methods of the day. There are gaps in the biographical data that he seeks to fill, with mixed results. Much of Maimonides's world is fascinating, as Kramer explains the day-to-day routines, the political and royal machinations, the exultations and hazards of long-distance travel.

As a Jew, Maimonides seems to have come out better than his co-religionists (although it seems he converted, as many were forced to do in those tenuous times, it was to Islam rather than Christianity). Nevertheless, the Cordovan-born Moses ben Maimon --- like his fellow Spanish Jews --- was forced to seek safer environs, moving with his family to Fez, Morocco, before settling in Egypt for the remainder of his life.

Maimonides produced the texts for which he became famous while in Egypt. His Book of Commandments, a prelude to his Mishneh Torah (the code of Jewish religious law), lists the 613 commandments, posting guiding principles for identifying and enumerating them, and dividing them into positive (do this) and negative (don't do this). His Commentary on the Mishneh "was unsurpassed and transformed the whole realm of rabbinic literature," writes Kramer. "The great composition became the benchmark for all subsequent writing on Jewish jurisprudence."

But his master opus was The Guide for the Perplexed, created "to instruct a religious person who believes in the law and has studied philosophy and is perplexed by the contradictions between the two." Such a work has been known to serve as an epiphany to its readers.

A word of caution: MAIMONIDES can be a bit daunting, with scores of names and places to get through. This thick tome doesn't make for beach reading (which is perhaps why it was released in October).

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds is a fascinating biography. Kraemer's meticulous research creates the only biography of Maimonides, often known as Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204), which enables the reader to start to understand the milieu in which Maimonides lived.

The book provides an overview and analysis of all of Maimonides myriad classic works, in addition to an account of his life and travels of Maimonides, from his birth in Spain to his moves to Morocco, Israel and Egypt provide a context to the philosophy of Maimonides, and the events that formed his weltanschauung

An interesting observation Kraemer makes is that the findings of the Cairo geniza, the debris of Fostat's (Old Cairo) Ben Ezra synagogue (where many of Maimonides documents have been discovered) has been markedly more valuable to historians that the Dead Sea scrolls; even though it has gotten much less exposure. Fostat is where Maimonides spent the last 40 years of his life.

An overriding theme of the book is the Islamic influence on Maimonides. At times, it seems as if Kraemer attempts to connect dots that are not there. Those who want to see a more critical analysis of this should read Allan Nadler's review of this book in the November/December 2008 issue of Moment magazine. And while it may seem like Islamic influence was the prime influence on him, Maimonides was clearly based in the sea of the Talmud and Masoretic Judaism.

Overall, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds does a fine job of bringing to life one of history's greatest intellects and philosophers.

I selected this book for its subtitle "life and world...", expecting a portrait of the 12th century in Spain, Morocco and Egypt. I was anticipating more on Spain's re-conquest, the Crusades and a description of everyday life at the time. The book leaned more towards "civilization's greatest minds" which made it an intellectual history and a heavy slog for a general reader like me with minimal background.

Maimonides, who emigrates with his family from Spain to Fez to Egypt is physician with a scholarly avocation. He brings together all existent law and writes on religions and legal issues. His avocation becomes a vocation.

Joel Kraemer describes this period in the infancy of the world's great monotheistic religions. While monarchs raised armies to fight the groups, commerce between the groups flourished and religious scholars shared spiritual and intellectual ideas.

It seemed to me that all three religions embedded mores of the culture into their religions. Religions re-enforced the culture rather than determine it. This was most apparent to me in the religious laws regarding women. Laws regarding their mobility, their dress, control over their marriage, their financial affairs, etc. seem more earthly than divinely inspired.

The author writes of the insecurity of the times. Illness, shipwreck and banditry are only a few ways to die young. There is not only a fear for one's own life, but a fear among survivors. Kraemer cites Maimonides' brother going down to the sea with a large piece of the family's savings.

This book has both depth and breadth. I give this book the full 5 stars for the author's achievement in bringing all this together.

I was interested in this book for several reasons. I have not read, but have read of Goitein's work based on the document trove recovered from the Cairo Geniza, a storeroom for worn manuscripts too sacred, because of the presence in them of God's name, to throw away. These are Kraemer's primary sources, and I was curious how close they allowed him to get to an individual separated from us by 800-odd years. With a few exceptions, such as Maimonides' reaction to death of his brother and the loss of much of the family's capital in a shipwreck during a trading voyage--grief for the one, resentment at the other--the answer is: not all that close. Despite Kraemer's evident excitement at having access to some manuscripts in Maimonides' own hand, this remains primarily a work of intellectual history: I can't say I have gained much of a feel for a personality beyond the philosophical-religious positions that make his work significant.

I was particularly interested in the Arab-Jewish cultural milieu of which M. is the most important representative. This is, I think, the most successful aspect of the book: it portrays the paradoxes of Jewish intellectual life in Muslim lands whose culture could still, for a while yet, and in some places, exercise a genuinely humanistic appeal. Thus, Kraemer shows how thoroughly M. accepted the influences not just of the Arabic language, but of Arab-Muslim rhetorical, theological, legal, literary and philosophical conceptions as well. So on the one hand a fruitful merging of Semitic cultures occurred. But on the other, persecution, both top-down official, and bottom-up casual, and forced conversions and the fear and dissimulations that they gave rise to were more or less constant impediments to Jewish (and perhaps Muslim as well) cultural flourishing.

Kraemer shows why the physicians--of whom M. was a particularly well-known example--of the period were so culturally central: their training, unlike that of students of religious law, required constant attention to Greek scientific, secular texts and traditions. So for them, almost uniquely, a certain well-roundedness was built into the educational system. Scholastic attempt to harmonize Greek science and philosophy with revelation took in the Muslim world a medical coloring that I don't see in the West.

It could well be that the part of the subtitle about "one of civilization's greatest minds" was not of Kraemer's invention, but was boilerplate supplied by the publisher. In this respect, though, Kraemer doesn't make his case. Maybe because I know so little of the traditional Talmudic scholarship that predated him, I was able only vaguely to appreciate M.'s innovations in the field (more logical format, mnemonic arrangement, suppression of overt citing of earlier authorities). Even in the case of the "Guide" I was left rather underwhelmed by the newness and depth of the insight it was supposed to embody. This, I think, is a serious shortcoming.

thought enough of the historical content to purchase a copy for my Rabbi. if you are looking for a detailed analysis of his works, this is not the source. however, if you want to learn his life story (which is what a biography is supposed to be) buy this.

Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), philosopher, codifier, scientist, physician, and head of Egypt's Jewish community, was and is considered by many to have been the greatest genius that Judaism produced, greater than even the first Moses who brought the Bible to mankind, or at least second to him. He authored significant Jewish writings, including a Code of Jewish Law and the Guide of the Perplexed, the most important book on Jewish thought. The non-Jewish contemporary of Maimonides, ibn Sana al Mulk, extolled him in verse:

Where he to treat the [present] time with his knowledge,

He would cure it from the disease of ignorance.

Where the full moon to ask him for treatment,

It would obtain the perfection it claims.

Maimonides was born in Cordoba, Spain, but he and his family fled his birthplace because of the persecution by a fanatical Muslim invader that insisted that Jews convert to his faith. Maimonides settled in Fez, Morocco for five years under the same dire conditions, then escaped to Israel where his family remained for a year, and then left for Egypt where he lived for close to forty years (1166-1204) until his death.

Joel L. Kraemer, a retired professor who lectured at many prestigious universities, gives his readers an excellent and readable biography of this exceptional man. He explains Maimonides' ideas by placing his life story within the history of his time - the era of the crusades, the battles of Saladin, the clash of cultures, the persecution of Jews by Christians and Muslims - and by enlivening his presentation with interesting portrayals of dozens of persons who impacted the scholar's life, including accounts by people who knew him. He offers his readers detailed information about subjects important to understanding the great sage, which virtually all Maimonides biographies ignore, such as revealing what specifically Maimonides did at the Egyptian court as a physician, what were his duties as head of the Jewish community, and what conflicts did he face from fellow Jews.

An example of Dr. Kraemer's thorough treatment is his handling of the controversial subject: did Maimonides, the prototype of the outstanding and dedicated Jew, ever converted to Islam to save his life, living the life of a Muslim in Fez, Morocco for five years while practicing Judaism when secluded at home? Most Maimonides biographies spend no more than a page or two on the subject. Dr. Kraemer devotes nine pages and outlines why it is likely that he did outwardly convert. The evidence is based on the testimony of a historian who was with Maimonides in Fez and writers who knew and discussed the matter with Maimonides' son Abraham and with Maimonides' student Joseph ben Judah whom Maimonides loved and treated as a son. While some scholars and biographers claim that persecution also forced him to act as a Moslem in Spain before arriving in Fez, Dr. Kraemer, a careful biographer, finds no evidence to support or deny it.

Another example is Dr. Kraemer's handling of another disquieting question: why did Maimonides and his family leave the Land of Israel, to which he arrived after fleeing from Fez, and only stayed in the holy land for a year? Isn't the land of Israel dear to all Jews? Didn't Nachmanides (1194-1270) criticize his predecessor Maimonides and contend that there is a biblical obligation to dwell in Israel?

Dr. Kraemer shows how it was impossible for the enlightened Maimonides to remain in the land occupied by Christian crusaders who lived in the Dark Ages, under filthy conditions, in a conquered country devoid of education. These near primitive conditions affected the Jews in Israel; they spent much of their time in prayer and mystical contemplation, anathema to a rationalist and progressive thinker like Maimonides. Egypt, where he and his family settled was different. It was a land where study and reason was encouraged, a land where Jews, although not treated as equals - they were forced to pay higher taxes and forbidden to perform certain acts - were not otherwise mistreated, and could rise high in Egyptian government, like Maimonides, who became the friend and chief physician of the vizier of Egypt, Saladin's general administrator of Egyptian affairs. It is possible, although the fact is disputed by scholars, that Maimonides was also a physician to Saladin himself, and this is the view of Dr. Kraemer.

Readers who are introduced to Maimonides for the first time, as well as most people who know little about him, will be surprised, perhaps even shocked to learn that this great sage had views about life that are totally different than those held by most people, Jews and non-Jews alike. God, he wrote, does not need or want sacrifices. Prophecy is not a divine communication, but an intelligent person offering his understanding of a situation. God does not come to the aid of people, the world functions according to the laws of nature. Thus, for example, when the land is flooded, people should not remain in the dangerous area and pray for salvation, but use their intelligence and seek higher ground. People, he also wrote, are not resurrected after death, but their intelligence continues to exist.

Maimonides taught that when the Bible states that God becomes angry at people, the words should not be understood literally because God does not have emotions; the words mean that the act described as provoking divine anger is wrong. It is entirely possible and reasonable to understand that God never created this world from nothing, but "formed" it from preexisting matter; after all the Bible itself states in Genesis 1:1 and 2 that when God began to create/form the heaven and earth "the earth was formless," God gave form to the "formless" matter. He said that many biblical stories should be understood as parables, morality stories and homilies that never occurred, such as the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - or as dreams, such as the tale of the patriarch Jacob wrestling with an angel. The Bible has two levels of teachings: the surface meaning designed for the average reader, and a deeper meaning for the educated few.

Maimonides gives a different answer to the age old problem: "why does God harm innocent people?" God is not involved. The world, as previously stated, functions according to the laws of nature. These laws are good. People make a mistake thinking that the world was created for them and that God should ignore the overall good of the universe and aid an individual. People are harmed by one of three ways. The laws of nature that benefits the world in general may harm them; for example, a hurricane or storm that cleanses the earth may kill them. Second, people bring harm to themselves, as when they overeat or fail to exercise or make wrong decisions. Third, another person may hurt them; as when a robber robs them or a warrior nation attacks their home. What is significant is that God is not involved in protecting individuals. Maimonides wrote in his Guide of the Perplexed: "With regard to this world, which has a wondrously ordered structure, and which is very good, as the wisdom of the Creator has determined, we must assume that everything that is created in it is for the good, even death. Therefore, a man should [focus on] the existence of the species, not the good of individuals."

This is the genius of Cordoba and these are his thoughts. This is the exceptional mind who could metaphorically cure the ills of mankind and whitewash the spots on the moon. This is he who influenced Spinoza and other thinkers, he who was the true father of the enlightenment. Whether a reader agrees with his ideas or not, they should be known, for they stimulate thought and lead to understanding, and Dr. Kraemer's biography helps people do that.

Among the many ephitets applied to the Jewish sage Maimonides (1138 -- 1204) was the "Great Eagle" derived from the Book of Ezekiel. 17:3: "Thus saith the Lord God: The great eagle with the great wings and the long pinions and brilliant colors." In his biography, "Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds" (2008), Joel L. Kraemer examines the life and work of the Great Eagle, or the Great Rav to explain why Maimonides is held in high esteem and why he remains important. Kraemer is Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. His study of Maimonides began in 1947, at the age of 14. Kraemer has published books of Islamic thought and books for the specialist in Maimonides. Although his biography of Maimonides is lengthy and detailed, it is written to appeal at least as much to the interested educated reader as to the scholar. An intruiging aspect of this book is the sources on which it draws. Kraemer makes extensive use of what is known as the Cairo Genizah -- a body of 300,000 documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. These papers include many contemporary letters and manuscripts of Maimonides and much information about him and his times.

Kraemer tries to show the continued importance of Maimonides. The book has an ecumenical cast, as Kraemer stresses the interaction between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars in Maimonides's day and, in particular, Maimonides's heavy indebtedness to Muslim thought. On a related theme, Maimonides was a polymath and a renaissance figure who mastered medicine, the sciences, and logic as well as Jewish philosophy and law. He has become a model for many Jewish people in his combination of high secular and religious accomplishment. Again, Maimonides was deeply aware of what even in his time was developing as the conflict between science and reason on the one hand and religious faith on the other hand. He tried valiantly to reconcile the two in his famous late masterwork "The Guide of the Perplexed." Finally, Maimonides saw has age as tending towards degeneracy, with its increased secularization and loss of religious commitment. He was pessimistic about the religious state of his world. This theme too has echoes in our day.

Even with the Genizah manuscripts, there are many gaps in the knowledge of Maimonides's life, particularly in his early years. Kraemer thus offers a combination of biography, history, as he explains the complex and changing Muslim world in which Maimonides lived, and exposition of Maimonides's works and thought. Kraemer sees Maimonides as endeavoring to "revolutionize Judaism by turning it into a religion of reason. Maimonides wanted to change Judaism from a religion rooted in history, in great events, such as the Exodus and revelation, to a religion implanted in nature and knowledge of natural beings, God's works rather than God's words." (p18)

The book is arranged chronologically in five parts. The first two parts cover Maimonides's first 22 years when he lived in Spain. He then lived in Fez, Morocco for 5 years and in Acre for one year. He apparently converted to Islam under duress and fear for his life and did penance by a trip to the Holy Land. The final three parts of the book cover the 38 years that Maimonides spent in Egypt where he wrote his major works, was a physician to the ruling class, participated actively in Jewish communal and business life, wrote responsa on questions of Jewish law, and served as Head of the Jews among many other accomplishments.Political and personal details are interspersed with discussions of Maimonides's works. Some of the historical information is fascinating but difficult to follow. Besides his forced conversion to Islam, the most interesting personal information about Maimonides involves his relationship with his brother, David. David died during a shipwreck taking much of the wealth of Maimonides's family with him. Maimonides grieved over his death and was despondent and depressed for many years.

Maimonides's reputation rests largely upon his writings. The best portions of Kraemer's book are those in which he discusses Maimonides's voluminous works, especially the Commentary on the Mishna, the Mishneh Torah, and the Guide of the Perplexed. Each of these books is difficult and profound.

The Mishna is part of the Talmud -- called the oral law -- of traditional Judaism, and it includes discussions among the early sages of Jewish law. Maimonides's commentary written between 1161 -- 1168 discusses and summarizes in a philosophical way the teachings of the Mishna. It is best-known for its elucidation of the "Thirteen Principles of Faith" -- the first attempt to establish a creed for traditional Judaism. Controversial at first, Maimonides's thirteen principles have become part of Orthodoxy.

The Misheh Torah. written between 1168 -- 1177, was an even more difficult and influential work. It was in fourteen lengthy volumes in which Maimonides created for the first time a code of Jewish law out of the welter of discussion in the Talmud. Part of Maimonides's reason for writing this work was to settle difficult questions of practice so Jews could devote time to the sciences. This work went far in the attempt to create a Judaism based upon rationalism. In Kraemer's discussion of the text, I was interested in his treatment of Maimonides's views on abortion. He avoids the temptation of reading current ideas on this difficult question into Maimonides.

Maimonides's most famous work remains the Guide of the Perplexed. In this difficult, obscure book, Maimonides tried to resolve the apparent contradictions between science and reason and religious faith and to explain some of the parables and concepts that occur in the Bible. Maimonides was heavily influenced by Islamic thought and by Islamic commentators on Aristotle. The book is written in a deliberately difficult way, with apparent contradictions and esoteric teachings. Readers from Maimonides's time to our own have disagreed radically in its interpretation and in their views of Maimonides's own attitude towards religion. Kraemer's summary of the book draws many insightful parallels between Maimonides' approach to science and reason and that latter taken by Spinoza -- a thinker who was excommunicated by the Jewish community of the Netherlands and who was as far as possible from Jewish orthodoxy. With all this, one can only be hesitant in concluding that Maimonides succeeded in his avowed goal of harmonizing science and reason with religious faith. His attempt, however, has inspired many Jews and persons of other faiths.

Kraemer's book concludes with a consideration of Maimonides as a physician, emphasizing his emphasis on the emotions, on ethical teachings and on the similarities of his teachings with stoicism.

Kraemer has written a thorough and eloquent introduction to a great Jewish thinker. Reflection on what remains valuable in Maimonides's thought is a matter for each reader.

Robin Friedman

I was introduced to this book by Dr. Stephen Teitelbaum, Chief of Urology,

Kings Highway Division of Beth Israel Hospital, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.

My thanks and gratitude to the abovementioned gentleman.

I read the book TWICE. I was astonished by the accumulation, compilation and systematic in-depth of the various account-of-events in Maimonides life. Rabeinu Ha'Ramban ZT"L will be pleased. The Author did an excellent job.

22 of Shvat 5761 - January 27 2011

David Sebbag