Synopses & Reviews
Part of the Jewish Encounter seriesMoses Maimonides was a Renaissance man before there was a Renaissance: a great physician who served a sultan, a dazzling Torah scholar, a community leader, a daring philosopher whose greatest work—The Guide for the Perplexed—attempted to reconcile scientific knowledge with faith in God. He was a Jew living in a Muslim world, a rationalist living in a time of superstition. Eight hundred years after his death, his notions about God, faith, the afterlife, and the Messiah still stir debate; his life as a physician still inspires; and the enigmas of his character still fascinate.
Sherwin B. Nuland—best-selling author of How We Die—focuses his surgeon’s eye and writer’s pen on this greatest of rabbis, most intriguing of Jewish philosophers, and most honored of Jewish doctors. He gives us a portrait of Maimonides that makes his life, his times, and his thought accessible to the general reader as they have never been before.
Synopsis
A DIFFERENT WAY OF LOOKING AT HERITAGE: For the first time in a boxed set, a perfect addition to your familys library, are 3 of the remarkable titles in the Jewish Encounters series:
Betraying Spinoza,
Maimonides, and
The Life of David. Discover 3,000 years of Jewish life, history and culture with the series that
The Washington Post calls “lively and distinguished”.
The critically acclaimed Jewish Encounters series brings together writers of the first rank with people, ideas and events from the Jewish past.
Synopsis
Moses Maimonides was a Renaissance man before there was a Renaissance: a great physician who served a sultan, a dazzling Torah scholar, a community leader, a daring philosopher whose greatest work——The Guide for the Perplexed——attempted to reconcile scientific knowledge with faith in God. He was a Jew living in a Muslim world, a rationalist living in a time of superstition. Eight hundred years after his death, his notions about God, faith, the afterlife, and the Messiah still stir debate; his life as a physician still inspires; and the enigmas of his character still fascinate.
Sherwin B. Nuland——best-selling author of How We Die——focuses his surgeons eye and writers pen on this greatest of rabbis, most intriguing of Jewish philosophers, and most honored of Jewish doctors. He gives us a portrait of Maimonides that makes his life, his times, and his thought accessible to the general reader as they have never been before.
About the Author
REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN is the author of
Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel and of six works of fi ction. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has received many awards for her fiction and scholarship, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She lives in Massachusetts.
SHERWIN B. NULAND, PH.D., is the author of ten previous books, including How We Die: Reflections on Lifes Final Chapter which won the National Book Award. He is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University, where he also teaches bioethics and medical history. He lives with his family in Connecticut.
ROBERT PINSKY is the author of many books of poetry, including Gulf Music and The Figured Wheel, and of the award-winning translation The Inferno of Dante. His prose works include The Situation of Poetry and The Sounds of Poetry. He teaches at Boston University and lives in Massachusetts.