History-Makers: Maimonides

"From Moses to Moses, there was none like Moses." Jump into 1100s Cordoba & Cairo as we take a look at the life of one of the Medieval world's most boundary-breaking History-Makers: Moses Maimonides!

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[JG-wgiv]

Really like the personal touch on the right-left scrolling when writing out his Arabic and Jewish names, then transitioning to left-right for his Christian name. 👌🏽

[SamAronow]

To say that medicine was Maimonides' "fallback job" is to misunderstand the Jewish context. Until fairly recently, being a rabbi was a part-time, unpaid position. Technically speaking, it isn't a position at all but rather a qualification, like a JD, that enables one to perform any number of duties relating to the practice of Jewish law. Some rabbis at this time were practicing professionally, but it was rare until the 19th century and Maimonides himself disapproved of it.

[hasmoneanhistorian]

Fun fact: Maimonides was the person who came up with "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

[merrittanimation]

Maimonides, upon going to Egypt:
"Hi my name is Moshe-"
"NOT AGAIN-"
"Not that Moshe."
"Oh."

[Zivon]

Literally releasing a video on one of the most famous Jewish scholars of all time, the day after the holiest day in the Jewish calendar Yom Kippur and right before Shabbat, AND with grammatically correct Hebrew with proper vowel placement.

Blue, as my rabbi would say, a very loud and boisterous MAZAL TOV to you!

[colonelsanders]

Appreciation for Blue's amazing year corner card thingies:
Flawless Disguise: 1148-1159
eeeeast: 1165-1168
Holy Land?: ∼1167-1168
Holy Banned
Exodusn't: 1169-1204
Begone, Fatimid: 1169-1174
Saladin for the Sala-Win: 1174-1193

[Kirbydudette]

Honestly you could just make a sub-series called "cool people in history" and we would watch it and you would not have to worry about making it fit a category like history makers.

[HistoryOfRevolutions]

"A single candle can light a thousand more without diminishing itself"

- Hillel the Elder (הִלֵּל‎)

[johnathanmonsen]

"Guide for the Perplexed?" My man wrote the first For Dummies Book? Nice.

[rafisanders]

As an Orthodox Jew, he's my personal idol. All of my family and friends try to follow and emulate his ethics and law interpretations

[elimcclellan]

If I had a nickel for every time an openly Jewish man named Moses found a warm welcome in Egypt after fleeing his previous homeland due to religious persecution, I would have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but it is weird that it happened twice.

[xavierestelles]

I live in Andalucía, and this guy's a local hero, especially as you get close to Córdoba.

[talknight]

He's still considered one of the most important Jewish scholars of all time and is a household name in any Jewish community. Within Judaism he's as famous as Isaac Newton.

[PaulGAckerman]

I love hearing about Maimonides just because my mother worked a nurse at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, NY.

[escudojoreg]

Amazing! Portuguese Schools rarely teach us much about Muslim Iberia, so it's always amazing to learn more!

[zollieberdy]

You're right - he is awesome. A few notes:
1) Actually, a lot of people had problems with his compendium of law because he DIDN'T explain where he was getting his sources from. He just assumed that you would understand how he reached that conclusion.

2) The story how he became a doctor: There was a rather arrogant world class doctor, so he pretended to be mute and then worked in the doctors home, watching as he treated patients. One day they brought in a person. The doctor wasn't sure how to treat him, (there was a worm eating at his brain, if I recall correctly) so the Rambam put a leaf at the edge of his skull and the worm crawled out and onto it. The doctor purportedly asked him "what are you doing - can't you see it's life and death" to which he replied "yes. that's why I'm acting now."

3) There's another story that king Saladin's advisor didn't like that his personal physician was Jewish. They forced Saladin to agree to a murder plot, where Saladin asked the Rambam to go to a certain brickmaker and ask him "if he did what the (king?) asked him to do, " whereupon the brickmaker had orders to shove the first person who said that into a pit of lime. On the way the Rambam was asked to perform a circumcision on an infant, and was therefore delayed. In the interim, the advisor, in his haste to see the Rambam dead, asked the bricklayer if he did what the king wished to do, whereupon the advisor was shoved into the lime. When the Rambam asked the brickmaker if he did as told, he said that he had. The king was in a bit of a shock when the Rambam walked to the palace that day.

4) Richard the Lionheart purportedly asked him to be his physician.

5) The Rambam DID NOT say that much of the bible was allegorical. It's complicated, but he has very specific rules when something can be considered allegorical.

6) Nowadays, most people hold of other rulings on Jewish law than the Rambam, but he's far from obsolete. And most of the time many Jewish Philosophers hold the same rule most of the time.

Sorry for the rant - I'm just really excited that this video exists. I've actually wondered if Blue would cover him. (The Ramban - Moses ben Nachman is also pretty cool. Look up the disputation of barcelona).

[jgr]

"Maimonides is the coolest" is an understatement.

[ientrancedi]

“From Moses to Moses, none arose like Moses”

[DarkMeridian]

Glad I'm not the only one who says "¿Porque no Los dos?" In casual English conversation

[miraf.]

i can't tell if you timed this video for the high holidays but either way it's a delight to see our boy