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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 296.181
EAN num: 9780805242003
ISBN number: 0805242007
Label: Schocken
Manufacturer: Schocken
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: October 04, 2005
Publishing house: Schocken
Release Date: October 04, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 435250
Studio: Schocken
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Moses Maimonides was a Renaissance man before there was a Renaissance: a great physician who served a sultan, a dazzling Torah scholar, a community leader, a daring philosopher whose greatest work——The Guide for the Perplexed——attempted to reconcile scientific knowledge with faith in God. He was a Jew living in a Muslim world, a rationalist living in a time of superstition. 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.
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. He gives us a portrait of Maimonides that makes his life, his times, and his thought accessible to the general reader as they have never been before.
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Rated by buyers 
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Maimonidies' two biggest contributions to civilization were his religious writings, and medical practice. As author Sherwin Nuland himself points out, Maimonidies' truest, lasting legacy are his religious writings. Yet probably because he himself is a doctor, Sherwin Nuland emphasizes the medical Maimonidies at the expense of not giving the religious Maimonidies his proper due. When reading this book, Maimonidies sounded like quite an ordinary man, nothing special, and the truth is, as a doctor he was nothing special. Yet in religious circles, he is a giant. This specialness of Maimonidies was lost in this short biography of this great man.
Rated by buyers 
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The most interesting parts of this book focus on Maimonides the physician (as opposed to Maimonides the religious leader, where Nuland's discusion is a bit too sparse here and there). Maimonides (known to most Jews as Rambam) did not develop new medical knowledge, but wrote ten books synthesizing existing medical knowledge in a clear and concise way, and even occasionally criticizing the Greco-Roman masters whose works dominated medieval medicine. By the low standards of the Middle Ages, this passed for genius.
Nuland links Rambam's religious and medical careers by pointing out that in both areas, Rambam focused heavily on codifying existing knowledge in ways that would be easy for the public to use.
Nuland also engages in interesting speculation about a variety of other issues, including:
1. Why were Jews so likely to be doctors in the Middle Ages? Nuland asserts that (a) Christians were uninterested in medicine because they were more ascetic, (b) because priests could not take employment as doctors, the Christian talent pool for medicine was artificially diminished and (c) because Jews' wealth could easily be taken away, Jews had a strong incentive to seek portable skills (as opposed to investing in fixed assets such as land).
2. Why was Rambam so uninterested in accommodating or discussing competing religious views? Nuland speculates that because of Judaism's dire condition in those days (beset in persecution in some places and the temptation of assimilation into Islam in more tolerant places) Rambam may have felt the need to "circle the wagons" by encouraging as much uniformity as possible.
3. Why did Rambam (who generally opposed Messianic speculation) suggest in his letter to Yemenite Jews that prophecy might return in 1216? Nuland suggests that Rambam may have been trying to defang Messianic fever by setting a date so far in advance that he could not be disproven during his lifetime.
Rated by buyers -
Nuland has accomplished the difficult task of summarizing Maimonides' complex writings in a way that is accessible to the common reader. Nuland's style is clear and concise, and he obviously admires Maimonides as a sort of Renaissance man before the Renaissance. It is true that the book gives considerable attention to Maimonides' life as a physician, but as someone who has dipped a bit into Maimonides' writings on Jewish law and thought but knew little of his place in medical history, I didn't see that as a problem. In fact, I found that that made this book even more enlightening.
I could have used more discusion of the Guide to the Perplexed, however, beyond the notions that the book is difficult and that some see it as a hidden confession by Maimonides of his lack of belief (an unlikely hypothesis). The Guide is an extraordinarily fascinating book, from all I understand, and Nuland does not do it justice.
Rated by buyers 
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it shows you right way about life
i think it is possible to adopt it to today.
it was very interesting book for me.
it is the kind of book that i always enjoy reading
Rated by buyers -
Dr. Nuland, himself a Jewish physician, was understandably reluctant to engage in doing the biography of perhaps the ultimate Jewish physician of all time: Moses Ben Maimon also referred to as Rambam or Maimonides.
His reluctance was understandable on a number of levels. First, Maimonides was of pronounced expertise in the healing arts. Not only the author of ten medical books, he had through dint of skill managed to elevate himself to being court physician at the court of Saladin.
Second, for Jewish thought (and derivatively for western thought itself) Maimonides was significant for his recognition of and endeavor to deal with the conflict between the canonized precepts of faith and the unanswered questions of science. His "Guide for the Perplexed" itself perplexing is an endeavor in some ways an endeavor at striking a balance.
However, in both ways Nuland managed to briefly make the material accessible to the reader.
And significantly also, Nuland managed to connect the reader with Maimonides humanity...his early difficulties with learning, his grief at the loss of his brother and his joy in parenthood.
In this way, Nuland managed to create and even more iconic figure because rather than putting him a pedistal, Nuland put Maimonides right subsequent to you...all the more human and therefore all the more relevant.
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