Moshe ben Maimon in Hebrew, known to students of the rabbin'

tradition by his acronym Haram-Bam, and to students of Western theology and philosophy,

Moses Maimonides, is perhaps the most eminent Jewish intellectual of the Middle Ages,

and he is perhaps the most important rabbinic author, well, ever.

It is sometimes said, comparing him to the greatest lawgiver and prophet of biblical Israel,

Mimoshet ad Moshe lo kamkamkamu. From Moses to Moses, there arose none like Moses. This year, 2024, marks 820 years

since Maimonides' death in the Egyptian city of Fustat. He left behind an enormous amount of

written material, letters, really short treatises, on subjects such as resurrection, astrology, and logic, he wrote

response to Jewish communities in faraway places, such as Yemen, and correspondence and other

material that has been preserved for these past many centuries in the Cairoganiza.

But the main focus of his writing can be divided into three chief categories.

His commentary on the Mishnah and his Mishnah Torah make up his monumental paradigm-shifting

contribution to jurisprudence and halakhah, or Jewish law.

His guide of the perplexed, his magnum opus of theological and philosophical reflection, and his writings about science,

health, and medicine are an expression of the expertise he developed in his career as a court

physician in Egypt. To introduce readers to this rare and magisterial thinker, the sage of Israel,

to put students young and old before an example of Jewish excellence,

we're going to inaugurate today a multi-episode mini-series on Maimonides.

Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. My guest is the Barilan University

professor and author Yehuda Halper, among the most distinguished students of medieval Jewish

philosophy, medieval Islamic philosophy, and our guide to the Rambam. This week we will focus

on a short passage from Maimonides' legal writing, the Mishne Torah, from a volume of that

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