#rambamblr

[maimonidiva]

basically İ'm like if auntie mame was a character in the footnotes of maimonides' writing, you know his four great epistolary works: the epistle on martyrdom, the epistle to yemen, the treatise on resurrection, and the postcard to my dear aunt lea

[maimonidiva]

İ like to think of myself as someone who enjoys poetry, but when İ come across poetry İ didn't pick out myself İ do sort of understand sometimes why maimonides found it pointless

[maimonidiva]

RAMBAM: "Make for yourself a mentor": He means to say even if he is not fit to be your mentor; still place him upon you as a mentor, so that you can give and take (discuss and argue) with him, and as a result of this the study of wisdom will come to your hand. As the study of a man on his own is no good, but his study from someone else will be better established in his hand and it will be more clear – and even if he is like him in wisdom or below him. And so did they elucidate the explanation of this commandment.

And he sad, "acquire for yourself a friend". He said it with an expression of acquisition and he did not say, "Make for yourself a friend", or "Befriend others". The intention of this is that a person must acquire a friend for himself, so that all of his deeds and all of his matters be refined through him, as they said (Taanit 23a), "Either a friend or death". And if he does not find him, he must make efforts for it with all his heart, and even if he must lead him to his friendship, until he becomes a friend. And the he must never let off from following his friend's will, until his friendship is firmed up. It is as the masters of ethics say, "When you love, do not love according to your traits, but rather love according to the trait of your friend." And when each of the friends has the intention to fulfill the will of his friend, the intention of both of them will be one without a doubt. And how good is this statement of Aristotle, "The friend is one." And there are three types of friends: a friend for benefit, a friend for enjoyment and a friend for virtue. Indeed, a friend for benefit is like the friendship of two business partners and the friendship of a king and his retinue; whereas a friendship for enjoyment is of two types – the friend for pleasure and the friend for confidence. Indeed, the friend for pleasure is like the friendship of males and females and similar to it; whereas the friend for confidence is when a man has a friend to whom he can confide his soul. He will not keep anything from him – not in action and not in speech. And he will make him know all of his affairs – the good ones and the disgraceful – without fearing from him that any loss will come to him with all of this, not from him and not from another. As when a person has such a level of confidence in a man, he finds great enjoyment in his words and in his great friendship. And a friend for virtue is when the desire of both of them and their intention is for one thing, and that is the good. And each one wants to be helped by his friend in reaching this good for both of them together. And this is the friend which he commanded to acquire; and it is like the love of the master for the student and of the student for the master.

"and judge every person as meritorious": Its subject is when there is a person whom you do not know about him if he is righteous or if he is wicked and you see him doing an act or saying something and if you interpret it one way it will be good and if you interpret it another way it will be bad – in this case take it to the good and do not think bad about it. But if the man is known to be famously righteous and of good deeds; and an action of his is seen that all of its aspects indicate that it is a bad deed and a person can only determine it to be good with great stretching and a distant possibility, it is fit that you take it that it is good, since there is some aspect of a possibility that it is good. And it is not permissible for you to suspect him; and about this did they say (Shabbat 97a), "The body of anyone who suspects proper ones will be struck."

[maimonidiva]

my favourite thing about maimonides is when he talks like if a reddit atheist was very religiously observant

[maimonidiva]

gérard haddad, who wants to be yeshayahu leibowitz' son-wife, who wants to be maimonides' son-wife, and so on and so forth all the way to sinai. maybe maimonides' transferral of incest from the category of "don't do it bc you don't want to do it" to "you should want to do it and then refrain from it" is, similiarly to the sacrificial cult channeling idolatrous tendencies into a monotheistic framework, an attempt to channel gay/feminising incest into the framework of student-teacher relations where it actualises itself in the passing on of knowledge,

עשה לך רב / וקח לך אשה

[maimonidiva]

Rav also redacted the Beraita, which is the Sifra and Sifre. Many others besides these Sages also compiled commentaries as they stated: "When Rabbi so and so came... he brought a Beraita with him." However, none of these Beraitot were as eloquently worded as the Mishnah, nor as logically formulated, nor as concisely worded. Therefore, this work, namely the Mishnah, remains the major compilation and all those other compositions are secondary to it. The Mishnah is the most esteemed work in the eyes of all people. When compared to the other compositions the daughters saw her and exalted her, Yea the queen and the concubines, and they praised her.

Maimonides Introduction to his Commentary on the Mishnah, translated by Fred Rosner

[maimonidiva]

Whoever believes in these and similiar things [astrology, sorcery] and thinks in his heart that they are true and scientific and only forbidden by the Torah is nothing but a fool, deficient in understanding... Sensible people, however, who possess sound mental faculties, know by clear proofs that all of these practices which the Torah prohibited have no scientific basis but are chimerical and inane; and that only those deficient in knowledge are attracted to these follies and, for this sake, leave the way of truth.

Maimonides, Mishneh Torah Avodah Zarah 11:16

[maimonidiva]

Nous avons déjà expliqué dans le quatrième chapitre de l'Introduction au Traité Avot qu'il ne convient de se séparer de la communauté des hommes qu'à cause des dommages et des perversions dont ils sont la cause. Et Hillel ajoute que même lorsque l'on a acquis en son âme des dispositions élevées et qu'elles s'y sont affermies, on doit sans cesse recommencer à faire le bien afin de les affermir toujours davantage. Et que nul homme ne se convainque d'avoir déjà fait sienne telle ou telle disposition saine, ni ne se dise qu'il est impossible de la perdre, car il est toujours possible de la perdre ; et tel est le sens de son propos : « Ne te fie pas à ce que tu es jusqu'au jour de ta mort. »

Maïmonide, Commentaire de la Mishna