Significant Persons Essay- Nereash Nicholson

Religious traditions change and develop over time.

Often this is because of the influence at critical times
of significant individuals that interpret the religious
traditions on anew. They set the tradition as part or
part of it on a new path. Judaism has always valued
learning and the quest for knowledge throughout
history. It has also produced its share of strong
personalities with definite opinions on many subjects.
Jews have always been at the forefront of social
change and intellectual development. One such
person was Moses Mainonides.
Mainonides was born in Cordova, Spain around
1135. During this time, the end of the golden ages
Mainionides and his family moved constantly around
town to town to find a safe place to live for nearly a
decade. This was due to Almohads conquering
Mainonides and his families home town and resulted in
them with a choice of exile, death or converting to
Islam. They chose exile. Therefore meaning their
travelling around did not stop there. After they
travelled around southern Spain and Mainonides was
much older, they lived in Egypt. Here Mainonides
supported his family by serving as a court physician to
the sultan of Egypt. Here was the start of Mainonides
career as a physician. Mainonides had previously
studied medicine and law at the University of FES at
Morocco. Mainonides was born into a family of rabbinic
scholars but rabbis receive no pay therefore leading
him into the training of a physician and becoming one
of the most influential and important Jews in History.
Mainonides was the first to write a systematic
code of all Jewish law therefore leading to the
significance of Mainonides in Jewish history. His basic
intentions were to compose a book that would guide
Jews on how to behave in all situations just by reading
the Torah and his code, without having to expand large
amount of his time searching through the Talmud. This

did not sit well with Traditional Judaism as they feared

that people would rely on his code and no longer study
the Talmud. Within his commentary of the Torah,
Mainonides includes his 13 principles of faith, some of
which include, the existence of God, the pre-eminence
of Moses among the prophets and reward of God and
retribution of evil.
Mainonides did not only influence the Jewish
community but also Christian leaders. He brang Greco
Roman, Arab, Jewish and Western all together in one
person. Yet his teachings of Jewish laws and ethics
were not met by his opposition however, managed to
convey his ideas and his teachings today are seen as
the corner stone of Orthodox Judaism.
In conclusion Mainonides among modern
scholars remains the most widely debated and
controversial Jewish thinker. By all major movements
in modern Judaism, he has been adopted as a symbol
and an intellectual hero and to philosophers such as
Leo Strauss, he has proven to be immensely
important. Mainonides importance to diverse systems
of thought lies in the philosophers embrace of
paradoxical and often contradictory ideas. Mainonides
reconciliation of the philosophical and traditional has
given his legacy an extremely diverse and dynamic
quality.