Word: rabbies
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...even improbable. The meeting honored the medieval genius Maimonides, one of history's greatest Jewish thinkers, and the host was UNESCO, the troubled United Nations cultural organization, which has upset Jews by frequently denouncing Israel. The World Jewish Congress co-sponsored the gathering, and one of its American leaders, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, even ventured that the conference might indicate "a reformed UNESCO." Sponsoring nations for UNESCO's Maimonides year, the 850th anniversary of his birth, include Pakistan, India, Cuba and Spain, which refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, and the Soviet Union, whose mistreatment of Jews is an international...
...strange mixture of participants underscored the unusual cross-cultural impact of Maimonides, who is also known as Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, "the Rambam" (an acronym) and the "second Moses." Religious sage, philosopher, community leader and physician, the Rambam was also culturally complex--a Jew steeped in ancient Greek philosophy who spent his life among Muslims and influenced Christian Europe. As Soviet Scholar Vitali Naumkin told the Paris meeting, "Maimonides is perhaps the only philosopher in the Middle Ages, perhaps even now, who symbolizes a confluence of four cultures: Greco-Roman, Arab, Jewish and Western...
Maimonides' last major work was the Guide, which has long been the subject of dispute. Alvin Reines, a radical Reform rabbi in the U.S., thinks that Maimonides wrote on two levels, presenting the literal meaning of the Scriptures for the ignorant rabble while holding to a hidden antimiraculous religion in which God was an impersonal concept. Drawing on Maimonides' writings, more conventional scholars hold that the Rambam, though committed to traditional Judaism, sought to harmonize it with philosophy and science...
...Gevalt, you say? Harvard Hillel agreed, Bock said, and refused to have anything to do with Jewish Introductions in its trial run three years ago. "They thought it was tacky," said Rabbi Richard Israel, the founder of Jewish Introductions...
...Rabbi Richard Israel, founder of Jewish Introductions