Maimonides Lit.
Word from: Mordy
"His book is a guide for those perplexed by Maimonides, as well as those ignorant of him."
The New York Times ran a review last week of a Sherwin B. Nuland's book 'Maimonides,' and while the review said more about the Rambam's life than the book's treatment of it, it was nice to see the above quote, which is of course a reference to the Rambam's seminal work, "Guide to the Perplexed." Personally, I was perplexed by the fact that a 250 word quote from "Guide to the Perplexed," is included in the review, but only one superficial quote from Nuland's book.
Anthony Julius's last book was "T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form," which makes it interesting that he has gone from T.S. Eliot's poetic anti-Semitism, to an article in the Guardian reassuring Jews that they mustn't panic over anti-Semitism, to a review of the Rambam who basically spent his life fighting... anti-Semitism.
Other treatments of the Rambam have until know included a CIS book and Rachel Yaffe's Rambam, published by Hachai publishing in 1992, both are which are more novels than academic treatments of the scholar. Then of course there is the classic Leonard Nimoy DVD, which Berel Wein produced, and I believe Michel Abehsera (writer of "The Possible Man") helped develop.
4 Comments:
At 1:16 PM, Josh F said…
I'm not at all familar about this new book that you talk about, but surely the list of books on Maimo. is far longer than what you described there. Even the popular list is much longer. A fun one, written by Heschel, was originally serialized in a German newspaper when he was a grad student, they translated it into English years ago. Also, if you jump over to Hebrew, you can find many books by Leibovitz which are very accessible to someone with no background and present Prof. Leibowitz's sharp approach to the Rambam. In gneral though, for somebody looking for a Rambam bibliography, the best place to turn is the one at the end of Schwarz's translation of the Guide. It is a pretty comprehensive listing of alla cademic articles/books on the Rambam, until it was published of course.
At 1:30 PM, Mordy said…
I wasn't trying to list all the treatments of the Rambam's life, just a few notable ones. And, of course, because I wanted to mention Leonard Nimoy, of whom I rarely have a chance to namecheck in a blogpost. (His work with Rashi was excellent as well).
At 7:30 PM, bits'n pieces said…
i just bought nuland's book on rambam as a gift for a friend. she's read nuland before and says he's good. have you seen the book?
At 4:19 PM, Anonymous said…
In terms of Anti-Semitism, Anthony Julius was also Deborah Lipstadt's solicitor in the suit brought against her by David Irving. Maybe, since they won, he's feeling encouraged.
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