Yehuda Halper on Maimonides and the Human Condition

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Recently, the Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy Yehuda Halper joined Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss Maimonides, the Rambam, perhaps the most significant medieval rabbinic sage and Jewish philosopher. They discussed Maimonides’s life and the main genres of his work—his commentary on Jewish law, his codification of Jewish law, his elaboration of philosophic mysteries that he believed are laden within the biblical and rabbinic corpus, his writings on science and medicine, and his views on the laws pertaining to Torah study.

Halper now returns for another conversation about Maimonides. This week, they look at “Hilchot De’ot,” a section of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides’s great work on Jewish law, pertaining to the laws of character traits. In “Hilchot De’ot,” Maimonides introduced a portrait of the human condition, suggesting a moral psychology that can be assessed, trained, and elevated, and a description of the human person as an embodied being with a physical presence. There are profound philosophical and religious questions raised explicitly in this work, and even more profound ones residing just under the surface of the text.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Recently, the Barilane University professor Yehuda Halper joined me for a discussion of Maimonides,
0:14.1	the Rambam, perhaps the most significant medieval rabbinic sage and Jewish philosopher.
0:19.9	In that previous conversation, we discussed his
0:22.3	life and the main genres of his work, commentary on Jewish law, the codification of Jewish law,
0:28.3	the elaboration of philosophic mysteries that Maimonides believes are laden within the biblical
0:33.6	and rabbinic corpus. And finally, his writings on science and medicine. We spent time in
0:39.7	that previous conversation discussing one part of the Mishina Torah, the laws pertaining to Torah study.
0:45.6	Professor Halper now returns for another conversation about Maimonides, and this week we look at
0:51.6	Hilhote de Ote, another section of the Mishnahe Torah, this one, pertaining
0:55.7	to the laws of character traits. In Hilchot de Ote, Maimonides will introduce a portrait of the human
1:01.8	condition, suggesting a moral psychology that can be assessed, trained, and elevated, and also
1:08.4	a description of the human person as an embodied being with a physical
1:13.4	presence that has a moral and even religious purpose. As we'll see, there are philosophical and
1:19.8	religious questions raised in this work, and they reside just under the surface of the text.
1:25.3	Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. If you enjoy this conversation, you can Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
1:28.5	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts,
1:33.3	Google Play, Spotify. I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas.
1:39.1	I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at tikfafund.org. And of course,
1:45.9	if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website, tikfafund.org,
1:51.2	and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here now is a second installment of our short series
1:56.5	on Maimonides, this week's conversation with Yehuda Halper.
2:00.8	Youhuda Halper, welcome back to the Tikva podcast.
	...

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