Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Explains Why Maimonides Was Controversial

maimonides was a controversial figure in jewish history because he combined two things that nobody had quite combined with such prowess before on the one hand he was an ish he was the greatest rabbi of the middle ages he wrote the greatest law code in all of jewish history the mishnah tower he was an absolutely outstanding master and a commentator on the talmud and everything else at the same time he also mastered what we call which is the universal wisdom of humankind which we have in virtue of the fact that at the beginning of history god made us each in his image which russia defines as a skill god gave us the power to understand and to serve and that translated itself into two fundamental disciplines in maimonides then still to some extent today namely philosophy and science and maimonides was an absolute master at both these things are both science and philosophy so his first published work was on how to calculate the calendar was on astronomy his second published work was milota igaona his own logic he he knew the works of aristotle and plato and islamic interpreters and so on now you know jews and you could be one thing or another thing but somebody was both at the same time was quite perplexing to them and occasionally it would spill over into the kind of things maimonides did so for instance if you look at the shulker narrative the code of jewish law written by jesus christ in the 16th century it begins arachim chapter one paragraph one about getting up in the morning that's the jewish way begin at the beginning getting up in the morning the rambam begins the mission of terror not with getting up in the morning but with the existence of god in other words maimonides brought to bear the logical imagination whereas jerusalem brought to bear the chronological imagination where time begins not where logic begins and this was all very unprecedented and actually nobody really followed the rambam in this the rambam includes at the beginning of his law code um which is all about physics and metaphysics and it also said all sorts of things that no one had ever said before the real irony though was that rambam was accused of being a heretic and in failing to believe certain normative jewish beliefs in particular he was accused of not believing in the resurrection of the dead now i can't begin to tell you how ironic this is number one we wouldn't even have a set of jewish beliefs were it not for maimonides he wrote what had come to be known as the yud giveaway karen the 13 principles of jewish faith that you will find in the syria at the and you will find in the city at the beginning of the doubling in that poetic form called that was a setting poetic setting in the rambam's 13 principles of jewish faith to accuse him of lack of jewish faith when he defined in the first place what jewish faith is is ironic secondly it is particularly ironic since every single place that he ever mentioned the thirteen principles of jewish faith included in faith in the resurrection of the dead so how they managed to accuse him of denying what he affirmed in all his writings whenever he raised the matter i don't know and yet he still was forced in his lifetime to write a treat is called igeret in which he defended his belief in the resurrection of the dead so it was ironic and it was foolish but it was much worse than that because the truth is that when the dominicans heard that the jews regarded maimonides as a heretic they in 1232 burned maimonides writings after all if the jews say their heresy why shouldn't we say the heresy and do the kind of thing you do with your radical stuff which is get rid of it and then thus emboldened a mere eight years later in 1240 they carried out one of the worst book burnings in history and that is the reason why we have for instance no complete manuscript edition of the talmud why all sorts of major jewish works were lost forevers some of them were thought to be lost were eventually discovered in the vatican library they hadn't mentioned this for 500 years the countries of erie for instance so um you know it was it was very very foolish and very disastrous what they did to maimonides and um i really feel for him having been there a little bit myself i realized that you know people condem what they don't understand and i think we all need a little more humility than that

Channel: Jewish Learning Institute

Views: 27,783

Keywords: jli, Jewish Learning Institute

Id: EnjgLk8l5RQ

Length: 5min 46sec (346 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020