(Jewish Group) Why Maimonides is the ideal mind for surviving the era of Fake News

Moses ben Maimon, also known as Rambam, and commonly called Maimonides, was the ultimate Jewish polymath.

He was the court physician to the sultan Saladin, and author of the Mishnah Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed. But his life was marked by exile from his native Spain. Regime changes forced his family to move to Morocco, Palestine and finally, Egypt, where he died in 1204. Along the way he refined a philosophy that blended Islamic, Christian and Greek concepts and applied it to Jewish Law.

In a new Jewish Lives biography, Maimonides: Faith in Reason, Argentine-Canadian author Alberto Manguel offers a multifaceted look at one of history’s most consequential minds, whose influence touched thinkers as varied as Thomas Aquinas, Franz Kafka and James Joyce.

In an approach that mirrors his subject — or, perhaps, Jorge Luis Borges, whom Manguel read to as a young man, after the renowned author lost his sight — Manguel draws widely from the canon to suggest Maimonides’ significance for today.

more...