Reinventing Maimonides in Contemporary Jewish Thought (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization) - Hardcover

Diamond, James A.; Kellner, Menachem

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1906764956 ISBN 13: 9781906764951

Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2019

Synopsis

Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A. N. Whitehead's famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' could equally characterize Maimonides' place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations - Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman - have read and provided footnotes to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today.

About this title

About the Author

James A. Diamond is Joseph & Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (2012), winner of a Canadian Jewish Literary Award in 2015, and Converts, Heretics and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider (2007).
Menachem Kellner is chair of the Department of Philosophy and Jewish Thought, Shalem College, Jerusalem and Wolfson Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought, University of Haifa.

Review

"Carefully and convincingly, Diamond and Kellner show that Maimonides' written words were repeatedly appropriated by Jewish religious thinkers in the 20th century to promote theological positions that Maimonides would never have subscribed to."
Martin Lockshin, The Canadian Jewish News

About this edition

• Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1906764956
• ISBN 13: 9781906764951
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248