Maimonides Life and Thought by Moshe Halbertal

Moshe Halbertal is one of those rare scholars, and this book reflects his uniqueness as a scholar and most of all as a writer. 'Maimonides Life and Thought' contains both biographical and academic information of one of the most influential medieval philosophers and thus offers a refreshing perspective on the magnitude of Maimonides' academic achievements given his tumultuous upbringing.

Firstly, it may be said that the title is a little misleading: the book is much more about Maimonides' thought than his life. Whilst it is probably Maimonides' fascinating and broad thought that motivates the reader rather than biographical details, the title would seem to imply that Halbertal gives equal weight to his life and thought. In fact, out of eight chapters, only one is dedicated entirely to Maimonides' life, but this chapter is surprisingly comprehensive: 68 pages long and covers his entire life, including his time in Spain, North Africa and Egypt. I feel as if Halbertal could have dedicated a little more to his life though. When contrasted to other medieval figures in general and philosophers in particular, significantly more about Maimonides life that has been historically recorded. Nevertheless, Halbertal writes in a lucid and crisp fashion enabling the reader to vividly imagine the life of a religious and philosophical genius.

The remaining seven chapters offer a brilliant introduction and elucidation of Maimonides' key works: The Commentary on the Mishnah, the Book of Commandements, Mishneh Torah, and of course, the most well known in the philosophical domain, the challenging Guide for The Perplexed - Maimondes' philosophy couched in Aristotelian language.

A particular unique strength of this book is that Halbertal splits up each chapter into short mini-chapters. This is a wonderful approach, showing that the author wants the reader to know exactly what is going on, making the book so much more readable and a challenging philosopher so much more understandable.

Maimonides' iconic philosophical positions are his opposition to anthropomorphism and viewing divine providence in the world as operating through nature rather than supernaturally. Halbertal does well to engage in these difficult-but-crucial ideas to give the reader a sense of Maimonides' religious philosophy.

Maimonides: Life and Thought by Moshe Halbertal is published by Princeton University Press

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Torah MiEtzion: New Readings in Tenach

The Torah MiEtzion series is a breathtaking exposition of key themes, ideas and events in the humash (five books of Moses). The novelty that runs through all five volumes of this magnum opus is the truly rigorous approach to reading the biblical narrative. All too often, such literary intensity is confined to talmudic law. The approach here is to transfer and adapt that to 'plumb the depths' of Tanach, and the effect is an outstanding academic and inspiriration multi-volume work. Emerging from the study halls of yeshivat har etzion in Israel, originality and insight in Tanach is given serious attention, making this publication of particular interest to the scholar and layman alike. So what are the defining features of the yeshivah's, and thus the Torah MiEtzion series, that differentiates it from the plethora of similar works? 1) Understanding Tanach through Tanach itself - meaning a commitment to figuring out the simply interpretation of the verses without reliance o
Read more

Tanya, the masterpiece of hasidic wisdom by Shapiro

A small, surprising book, Shapiro benefits greatly from the fantastic forward by Rabbi Shachter-Shalomi, a Hasidic scholar  par excellence  who draws on his own personal religious experience to discuss some of the aspects of the Tanya that stand out to him. Shapiro begins by introducing the key philosophical ideas in the Tanya - the mystical, the metaphysical, the technical and the spiritual. As you would expect, the mystical concept of 'the five worlds' is looked at closely as well as the more traditional theological positions such as divine non-duality ('simplicity'). This is a much needed 'toolkit' in order to understand the chapters that come afterwards. The way the chapters are written themselves are a little bizarre, and requires some getting used to! Basically, each chapter is titled with the 'headline' of the corresponding chapter in the Tanya itself. For example,  chapter 32 is 'love your neighbour', since love between man and his fell
Read more

Leaves of Faith by R Aharon Lichtenstein

To put Leaves of Faith into context, it is worth dwelling briefly on Lichtenstein's background. Born in 1933 in France, his family escaped the Holocaust and fled to the States, ultimately coming to study under Rabbi JB Soleveitchik, of whom he became a lifelong talmid (and son-in-law) of. He also completed a PhD at Harvard University in English Literature, a subject that continued to influence his religious works, outlook and style, explicitly and implicitly. He then lived and worked in Israel as head of a talmudic college for over four decades; lecturing, mentoring and writing. Leaves of Faith is a unique two volume work on Jewish learning and living, made up of the extraordinary intellectual contribution of the thought of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, one of the greatest twentieth century post-war thinkers. The author is not at all scared of tackling the most fundamental questions in Jewish life, and he does so with style, humility and rigour. Volume 1, 'The World of Jewi
Read more