"Very Short Introductions" is a series of scholarly studies published by Oxford University Press. Launched in 1995, there are now some 750 titles in the series, ranging from Abolitionism and the Abrahamic religions to Zionism and Emile Zola. The series is described as being “for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way into a new subject.” Each book is written by an expert in that particular field.
The author of Moses Maimonides: A Very Short Introduction is Ross Brann, professor of Judeo-Islamic studies at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1986. Born in 1949, Brann studied at the University of California-Berkeley, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, New York University, and the American University in Cairo. He has specialized, in a long and distinguished academic career, in the intersection of medieval Jewish and Islamic cultures.
A towering figure in both was Moses Maimonides, known in Hebrew scholarship as the Rambam, the acronym for his Hebrew name, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. Many other respected titles, both Hebrew and Islamic, have been attached to him in recognition of his unique contributions to the fields of Jewish law, Aristotelian philosophy, medicine, and science, and as the communal leader of the Jews of Egypt.
A different approach
The usual pattern in academic works on Maimonides has been to consider each aspect of his life and achievements in separate chapters. Brann has chosen a different approach. He tells us that he has followed “current trends in research, which present an integrated view of Maimonides as a rabbinic scholar without peer, a philosophically minded deep thinker, religious reformer… communal leader, physician, and scientist who moved seamlessly between specialized, private and public Jewish and Muslim spheres.”
Because Maimonides himself is multi-disciplinary in his writings, which range widely across many disciplines and fields of study, Brann organizes Maimonides’s thinking and written legacy by theme and, as he describes it, “puts his works into dialogue with one another intertextually.”
The result, for the reader, is to gain a genuine insight into how the Rambam’s masterpieces, such as the Mishneh Torah, which codifies Jewish law, and the Guide for the Perplexed, which unites Jewish law with rational inquiry, flowed from his intensive study of both the Torah and Islamic philosophy.
Hebrew precision, Arabic methodology
The Guide, written in Judeo-Arabic (classical Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet) and completed around 1190, is among the most powerful and influential texts in Jewish scholarship, a masterwork that steers a course between religion and science, logic and revelation.
Brann explains how Maimonides revives the aesthetics and precision of Hebrew while applying Arabic scientific and rational methodologies to Jewish scholarship, and how he synthesizes Torah, Greek philosophy, and Arabic science.
In one chapter, Brann examines Maimonides’s view that the ultimate human purpose lies in intellectual and moral perfection, achieved through studying natural and divine sciences and adhering to the Torah. In Maimonides’s view, divine commandments are rational tools intended to advance society and spiritual growth.
In another chapter, Brann explains how Maimonides perceives history as a gradual return to universal recognition of the One God, culminating in the messianic age, and how he acknowledges Christianity and Islam as contributors to this progression, despite their deviations from Torah. Finally, he presents Maimonides’s vision of a united world in the messianic era, in which knowledge of God unites humanity beyond religious boundaries.
The Cairo 'geniza'
Brann's exposition is greatly enhanced by the 10 illustrations he places judiciously throughout the text. Images include an autographed responsum in Maimonides’s own hand, signed “Moshe” by him. It is one of many such documents discovered in the Cairo "geniza,"a store of Hebrew and Aramaic documents housed in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in old Cairo. Brann also includes a photograph of its interior. Among the other illustrations is a photograph of the statue of Maimonides in Cordoba, the city of his birth.
Brann confesses that writing about Maimonides, whom he describes as a larger-than-life subject, “is a humbling challenge” because he “resists reductive interpretation in virtually all his works and in his person.”
Despite these understandable reservations, readers gain a real insight not only into Maimonides as a person heavily engaged in the political and philosophical issues of his day but also into the essence of his scholarship and his religious convictions.
The author explains why, more than 800 years after his death, Maimonides remains a towering figure in the sphere of Jewish religious scholarship, still supremely relevant and influential. The book is highly recommended.
The reviewer, a former senior civil servant, is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at
www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.
- MOSES MAIMONIDES: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION
- By Ross Brann
- Oxford University Press
- 168 pages; $14