Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds by Joel L. Kraemer, Random House Inc.

Do we need another biography of Maimonides? One would think not. Books, readily available, cover every aspect of his life, work and personality.

What is different about this formidable volume by Joel L. Kraemer, a scholar of Islamic history and religion, and former professor at the University of Chicago, is that it is based primarily upon documents from the Cairo Genizah, that great repository of manuscripts found in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo and now in European, Russian and American libraries.

The roughly 300,000 manuscripts of the entire Genizah take in a broad range of subjects: the Bible, the Apocrypha, the Talmud, liturgy, philosophy, medicine, and personal and business letters, as well as commercial, legal and communal documents.

What is especially pertinent – where this new biography is concerned – is that this treasure-trove contains many of the private and communal letters of Moses ben Maimon (his full name), some in his own handwriting, along with documents pertaining to his career and public activities. Understandably, these materials are an indispensable source of knowledge of the cultural, economic and social history of Maimonides’ era.

Kraemer raises the controversial question, was Maimonides forced to convert to Islam? In his well-known Letter on Forced Conversion, Maimonides included himself among the forced converts who had to seek God’s forgiveness. The advice that he gave fellow Jews who had to choose between conversion to Islam or death was to avoid martyrdom. Instead, he suggested dissimilation or migration. It seems that in 1148, the Maimonides family pretended to convert to Islam when the Jews of Cordoba were told to become Muslims or leave, on pain of death.

The author writes that those who deny this act on the part of Maimonides point out that his enemies never mention it. Actually, says Kraemer, we don’t really know what his enemies said about him, beyond what has come down to us in documents that are limited in scope. What we need to keep in mind, he suggests, is that Maimonides’ conversion to Islam was widely circulated in both Muslim and Jewish sources.

The accomplishments of Maimonides are unparalleled. His compendium of Jewish law, the Mishnah Torah, became the basis for all future Jewish legal codes. His “Guide for the Perplexed,” drawing on the teachings of Aristotle and Islamic scholars, argues that reason and faith can be harmoniously interrelated.  

Kraemer indicates that Maimonides, brilliant and farsighted in many directions, harboured a variety of contradictions. “He scorned pride and extolled humility, yet he sought power and prestige. He believed that happiness is attained by solitary contemplation, yet he immersed himself in community affairs. Deploring anger, he displayed impatience and petulance in his letters and in public quarrels.”

Above all else, Maimonides aspired to revolutionize Judaism by transforming it into a religion of reason. He 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 the knowledge of the human condition. In a word, God’s works rather than God’s words.

This monumental biography concludes with these inspiring words, “Maimonides held aloft, amid the chaos and turmoil of his epoch, a love of order, restraint and moderation. His ethical system is a form of therapy, a cure for excessive desires, illusions, false standards and extreme tendencies. If people live by reason and harmony, following ethical and religious precepts, and adhering to a regimen of health, they can escape the ‘sea of chance’ as far as humanly possible.”