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Maimonides

Name: Maimonides
Author: Sherwin B. Nuland
ISBN: 9780805211504

by Sherwin B. Nuland

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Overview

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.

Synopsis

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.

The New York Times - Anthony Julius

… [Nuland's] book remains a deeply satisfying and humane introduction to the greatest of Jewish thinkers.

About the Author, Sherwin B. Nuland

Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., is the author of nine previous books, including Doctors: The Biography of Medicine, The Wisdom of the Body, The Mysteries Within, Lost in America: A Journey with My Father, and The Doctors Plague. His book How We Die: Reflections on Life s Final Chapter won the National Book Award and spent thirty-four weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, Time, and The New York Review of Books. Nuland is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University, where he also teaches bioethics and medical history. He lives with his family in Connecticut.

Lost in America, Doctors: The Biography of Medicine, How We Live, and How We Die are available in paperback from Vintage Books.

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Editorials

Anthony Julius

… [Nuland's] book remains a deeply satisfying and humane introduction to the greatest of Jewish thinkers.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Maimonides, one of the preeminent personalities of medieval Jewish history, was a jurist, philosopher, expert in Jewish law, physician at the court of Saladin and a respected and dedicated communal leader. Given all that, it's difficult to understand the decision to present Maimonides's legacy primarily through the lens of his work as a physician. The 12th century was a time of stagnation in the history of medicine, and the author himself concedes that Maimonides contributed very little that was new or innovative to the field. By contrast, his jurisprudential magnum opus, the Mishne Torah, constituted a groundbreaking work in its own day and continues to be authoritative almost a millennium later. Although Nuland acknowledges this in a chapter on Maimonides's religious scholarship, it is dwarfed by the overarching concern with medicine--which seems the primary interest of Nuland, a clinical professor of surgery at Yale. The author does a serviceable job of stitching together this slight, popular biography of the larger-than-life Maimonides, but his writing is marred by an overwrought prologue and some glib generalizations. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Nuland (surgery, Yale Univ.; How We Die) condenses the life of Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher, natural scientist, and physician, into a short, accessible work relevant to contemporary readers. The text traverses the highlights of Maimonides' religious and medical career without delving too deeply into any area. Though Nuland's focus is usually more biomedical and scientific, here he devotes only about 30 pages to Maimonides as a physician (his primary contribution was a condensing and correcting of Galenic writings); there is little explanation of medical beliefs at the time. As in his Leonardo da Vinci, Nuland has succeeded in capturing the essence of Maimonides and explaining why physicians still esteem the rabbi today. A short biographical notes section allows readers to look deeper into any area that interests them. Another title to consider is Ilil Arbel's Maimonides: A Spiritual Biography. Recommended for general collections. [This marks the first volume in the "Jewish Encounters" series, a collaboration between Schocken and Nextbook.-Ed.]-Eric D. Albright, Tufts Univ. Lib., Boston Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A portrait in brief of a remarkable scholar/philosopher/physician of the 12th century, and an examination of the long tradition of Jewish healing. In this second volume in the Jewish Encounters series, Nuland, a surgeon and NBA-winning author (How We Die, 1994, etc.), sketches the religious and political tensions of the time, chronicling the Maimon family's wanderings around the Mediterranean in search of a place to live. Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, settled in Islamic Egypt, where his driving purpose was preservation of the Jewish community, a task demanding strong leadership. As a young man, Maimondes became the spiritual leader of Jews in Saladin's kingdom and the foremost scholar of his time. Nuland sifts out the facts from the many legends and myths surrounding Maimonides, and for readers unfamiliar with Jewish traditions, carefully explains the significance of his major religious works, which incorporate science and philosophy into religious thought. Maimonides possessed a remarkable mind for observing and interpreting the world, and a powerful talent for collecting, codifying and clarifying. If the portrait of the man himself is hazy, Nuland cannot be blamed, for details of Maimonides' personal and family life are obscure. What is known is that tradition forbade him from making a living as a rabbi, and when his brother's ship was lost at sea, taking the family fortune with it, Maimonides turned to the practice of medicine for income. Already a prominent public figure, he was soon made a physician in Saladdin's court. Nuland concludes that Maimonides, who inspired centuries of Jewish physicians, should be revered for his devotion to the Jewish people and theprogressive worldview he brought to theology. An appendix briefly discusses his medical writings. A fine distillation.