Moses Maimonides: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Moses Maimonides, a scientist, physician, philosopher, rabbinic scholar, and communal leader, was perhaps the most important Jewish figure of the pre-modern age.

In this accessible introduction, Ross Brann presents a holistic picture of this towering figure, the author of The Guide for the Perplexed, the Commentary on the Mishnah, and the seminal Mishneh Torah (Code of Jewish Law), in which he reorganized and systematized all of rabbinic law in its entirety. Key to engaging Maimonides on his own terms is understanding that he applied a rationalist's regimen characteristic of his scientific research and practice of medicine to all his life's work: he observed and studied a problem, diagnosed it, and then prescribed a remedy for it whether the concern was physical, metaphysical, spiritual, intellectual, or social in nature.

Ross Brann is Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies & Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University. Brann is the author or editor of books and essays on the intersection of Jewish and Islamic culture, including The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain, Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Muslims and Jews in Eleventh- and Twelfth Century Islamic Spain, and Iberian Moorings: al-Andalus and Sefarad and the Tropes of Exceptionalism.