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No. 52. Vienna, 23rd December 1904. — 15th Tebeth 5665. 8th Year.

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Maimonides.

Next Wednesday, according to the Jewish reckoning of time, seven hundred years will have passed since Moses, the son of Maimon, died at Fostat (Old Cairo, south of the new city) in Egypt. If one would rightly grasp his significance, one must say that he was the most universal man our people has possessed until now. Universal in his life, universal in his works, universal above all in his idea. Since his death a week of centuries has now gone by. But his labour endures and works on to the present day. And the idea which illumined his life and shines through his works stands for ever as a sun at the centre of the manifold and intertwining paths which Judaism travels in the world.

Yet with this the greatness of the man is only stated, not yet explained. One comes nearer to him only when one seeks to comprehend the peculiar features of his destiny, of his achievement and of his ideal. One then sees what it means to speak of Maimonides. It means, in turn, to perceive questions of Jewish scholarship and of Jewish life. And further: questions of science and of humanity as a whole.

Maimonides was born in Cordova in 1135; upon his earliest youth lies the splendour of the Spanish days. The man whose scientific work is characterised by synthesis, and whose personal activity by an unbroken bond with his own people, grew out of a Jewish culture distinguished as no other by its close connection with its age. In this respect the science of Judaism in Spain is doubtless still superior to that of Germany to-day. Chiefly, no doubt, because the latter has not yet reached the summit of its development. And then because the manner of learned pursuit among the Arabs lay by nature far nearer to the Jews than the sober thoroughness of the Germans, which is itself in turn the product of centuries. But however this may be: if one goes further and demands that the man Maimonides be explained in his several features out of his own age, that task cannot yet be accomplished to-day. After more than seven decades of modern Jewish research we know a multitude of infinitely valuable details of our Spanish period. Here specialised work since Graetz has advanced considerably, but a conclusive account is wanting and must long be wanting still. And of the life of Maimonides, too, we really know little. Far more, it is true, than of other eminent men of the Jewish Middle Ages. But here also, on the material hitherto available — whose increase by new discoveries may, after all, be hoped for — it is impossible to give a truly rounded and complete picture. — When we regard his fortunes, we may well say that here too a certain synthesis prevails, a balance of fortune and misery such as must arise when the adversities of the Golus collide with the strength of an overmastering personality. A quiet happiness of childhood blesses his boyhood. Then from his thirteenth year he leads a wandering life, which for a longer time comes to rest in Fes. But here too the family cannot long remain; outward conformity to Mohammedanism affords only very doubtful safety. So they move on to Palestine and at last to Egypt. Thus Maimonides first experiences in his own person the fate of his people, the wandering fate of exile. But individual traits, too, are not wanting in the story of his sufferings. Sickness and many deaths among his nearest kin are not spared him. Material losses, and above all the death of his brother, who perished at sea with the whole of the remaining fortune, make him a poor man. So he practises the art of healing in Fostat.