Interesting Biography of RAMBAM

[muman613]

I found this site very informative about Rambam and his life story... This was published by the JPS in 1903...

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Maimonides/YAAMAI/1*.html

Here is a short extract from the first Chapter:

At one o'clock in the afternoon of March 30 (Nisan 14), 1135, Moses, son of Maimon, was born in Cordova. The very hour of his birth was thus treasured up in the loving memory of posterity. His genealogy has been traced to Judah the Prince, compiler of the Mishnah, and through him to the royal house of David. It is at least certain that he came of a family of scholars. He himself has recorded modest yet honourable pedigree, describing himself as Moses, son of Maimon, dayan (official Rabbi, or "judge"), son of the learned R. Joseph, dayan, son of R. Obadiah, dayan, son of R. Solomon, son of R. Obadiah.2 Of the boyhood of Moses we know little. Legend has been busy with him, and the story goes that the child revealed but little of the man. But the contrast thus drawn between the dull, idle lad and the brilliant, industrious man is unfounded. The father, Maimon (i.e. Felix, Benedictus, or Baruch), was a scholar and man of enlightenment, Talmudist, astronomer, and mathematician. Maimon (or Maimûn) was a disciple of Joseph ibn Migash (1077‑1141), who had imbibed the spirit of Alfassi, and who had succeeded the latter as head of the school at Lucena. The poet, Jehuda Halevi, eulogised Ibn Migash in lavish terms, but the eulogy was well deserved. Maimon profited by his studies under this renowned teacher, composed commentaries on the Talmud, a work on the ritual, and expository notes on the Pentateuch. He influenced his son's mind profoundly, but in one respect father and child differed. "The son was not unemotional, but he was a philosopher first of all. The father is all enthusiasm, full of faith, longing to dwell in the beautiful stories of Hagadah, not afraid of believing in angels, not desirous of making G-d an abstraction, or the anyone of G-d merely a deep thinker." He was gifted with a genius for allegory, and his images flow like a soothing stream over the reader's heart. His most famous work, the "Letter of Consolation," must have bound up many a wound, and filled with fresh courage those who despairingly feared that G-d had forsaken His world.

His son Moses grew up in this gentle and refined home, his mind and soul trained by a father who, amid the tribulations which were soon to follow, was upheld by the same confidence and trust which he sought to impart to others. Maimon's precept and example planted in his son's heart a pure and ineradicable veneration for all tried and traditional virtues of the Jewish character. The Law and the Commandments were his delight. Not the less was this so because Maimon at the same time instilled into him a powerful inclination towards science and philosophy. In Maimon's home the stream of life ran broad and deep. What was Jewish, what was human, alike found a resting-place in the capacious soul of Maimonides. The Talmud was his chosen love. The works of Alfassi and of Ibn Migash were the eyes with which he penetrated into the Rabbinical lore. Equally devoted was the young scholar to the various sciences expounded by ancient Greeks, medieval Arabs, and Hebrews of all ages. Mathematics, philology, natural science, medicine, logic, and metaphysics, were included in the liberal education of the day, and all of these were the familiar friends of our hero's early manhood. Through the maze of these varied pursuits his keen, orderly intellect found a clear and straight path. Knowledge was not with him a more or less confused amalgam of discordant or dissociated elements; it was one and indivisible. And he early learned the lesson, most precious to the genuine student, that "it is possible for a wise man to be taught by a fool." He saw the limitations of astrology, for instance, but he recognised the necessity of mastering its literature.