Jewish Thinkers
Presented by
Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen
Significant People and Ideas
• the contribution to Judaism of ONE significant person or school of
thought, other than Abraham or Moses, drawn from:
• Isaiah
• Hillel (and Shamai)
• Beruriah
• Rabbi Solomon Isaac (Rashi)
• Moses Maimonides
• Kabbalah
• The Hassidim
• Moses Mendelssohn
• Abraham Geiger
• Rabbi Isaac Abraham Hacohen Kook (Rav Kook)
• Jewish Feminism
• another person or school of thought significant to Judaism
Session 1
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Moses Maimonides
Moses Mendelssohn
Abraham Geiger
Rabbi Isaac Abraham Hacohen Kook (Rav
Kook)
Maimonides- the man
• Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon was one
of the towering figures in the history of
the Jewish people.
Of him it was said, "From Moshe (Moses) to
Moshe (the son of Maimon) there arose none
like Moshe." Among the Jewish people, he is
known as the Rambam, an acronym for Rabbi
Moshe ben (son of) Maimon (RaMBaM); while
universally - for his fame and influence reached
far beyond the confines of his own people - he is
called Maimonides, the Greek form of "the son
of Maimon."
Maimonides- in his time
Maimonideshis contribution
• Maimonides composed both works of Jewish scholarship, and
medical texts. Most of Maimonides' works were written in Arabic.
However, the Mishneh Torah was written in Hebrew. His Jewish
texts were:
• The Commentary on the Mishna, in Hebrew Pirush Hamishnayot,
written in Arabic. This text was one of the first commentaries of its
kind; its introductory sections are widely-quoted.;
• Sefer Hamitzvot ("The Book of Commandments").
• The Mishneh Torah (also known as " Sefer Yad ha-Chazaka"), a
comprehensive code of Jewish law;
• The Guide for the Perplexed, a philosophical work harmonizing and
differentiating Aristotelian philosophy and Jewish theology;
• Teshuvot, collected correspondence and responsa, including a
number of public letters
• Maimonides also wrote a number of medical texts; some of which
are still in existence. The best known is his collection of medical
aphorisms, titled Fusul Musa in Arabic ("Chapters of Moses", Pirkei
Moshe in Hebrew).
13 principles of faith.
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The existence of God
God's unity
God's spirituality and incorporeality
God's eternity
God alone should be the object of worship
Revelation through God's prophets
The preeminence of Moses among the prophets
God's law given on Mount Sinai
The immutability of the Torah as God's Law
God's foreknowledge of human actions
Reward of good and retribution of evil
The coming of the Jewish Messiah
The resurrection of the dead
The Enlightenment
• Emancipation, the process by which Jews gained the
rights of citizenship, stimulated acculturation among the
Jews. No longer required to exist solely within their
religious community, Jews felt impelled to reorganize
their sense of identity. Competing views regarding the
format of the new, voluntary Jewish community led to the
emergence of modern denominationalism.
• The first denominational vision of modern Judaism to
emerge was Reform, which developed first as a series of
aesthetic changes, afterwards as a theological stance.
Moses Mendelssohn
• Moses Mendelssohn (September 6, 1729 – January 4,
1786) was a German Jewish philosopher. He was an
important Jewish figure of the 18th century, and to him is
attributable the renaissance of European Jews,
Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment. To some he was
the third Moses (the other two being the Biblical lawgiver
and Moses Maimonides) with whom a new era opens in
the history of the Jewish people. To others, he was a
step into the beginning of assimilation and loss of identity
for Jews and the dilution of traditional Judaism. He was
also the grandfather of the great composer Felix
Mendelssohn.
Moses Mendelssohn (cont)
• He valued reason and felt that anyone
could arrive logically at religious truths.
• He argued that what makes Judaism
unique is its divine revelation of a code of
law.
• He wrote many philosophical treatises and
is considered the father of the Jewish
Enlightenment.
Abraham Geiger
• Abraham Geiger (1810-74) German REFORM leader
and scholar. After becoming a RABBI in Wiesbaden in
1832, he reformed the SYNAGOGUE service and
published the Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift fur judische
Theologie. In 1837 he convened the first synod of
Reform rabbis. Later he served as rabbi in Breslau,
where he founded a school for religious studies and led
a group that worked on HEBREW philology. He was a
participant in subsequent Reform synods; from 1863 he
served as rabbi in Frankfurt am Main. In 1870 he
became rabbi of the Berlin congregation, and he helped
establish the Hochschule fur Wissenschaft des
Judentums in the city.
Rav Kook
• Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the first
Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel during the British
Mandate period, developed an alternative
theological vision, sowing the seeds for religious
Zionism.
• Kook embraced the work of the secular Zionists
because he thought the messianic era was at
hand, and that the existence of secular Jewish
power was a symptom of the upheaval predicted
to precede the messianic age.
• Born in Latvia, he retained throughout his life a unique blend of the
mystical and the rational.
• He saw the return to Eretz Yisrael as not merely a political
phenomenon to save Jews from persecution, but an event of
extraordinary historical and theological significance.
• He sought to reach those who had strayed. He refused to reject
Jews as long as they identified themselves as Jews.
• Though keenly aware of the huge numbers of non-observant Jews,
he had a vision of the repentance of the nation. His concept of
repentance envisioned in addition to the repentance of the
individual, a repentance of the nation as a whole; a repentance
which would be joyous and healing.
• He called for and envisioned a spiritual renaissance where "the
ancient would be renewed and the new would be sanctified."
• His vision of repentance disdained fear and apprehension and
looked forward to "the poet of Teshuva [repentance], who would be
the poet of life, the poet of renewal and the poet of the national soul
waiting to be redeemed."
Bibliography
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Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) by Sherwin B. Nuland Schocken, 2005
Maimonides Reader by Isadore Twersky Behrman House Publishing 1976
Ethical Writings of Maimonides Dover Publications; 1983
Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed by Kenneth Seeskin Behrman House
1991
Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis and Leadership by Moses Maimonides, Abraham
Halkin, David Hartman Jewish Publication Society of America 1992
Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds by Joel L.
Kraemer Doubleday 2006
Maimonides: Metaphysics, Metaphor, Morality by Menachem Kellner Littman Library
2006
Dear Maimonides: A Discourse on Religion and Science Andrew Sanders Jason
Aronson 1996
Maimonides' principles: The fundamentals of Jewish faith : an anthology by Aryeh
Kaplan NCSY 1973
We Have Reason To Believe: Some Aspects of Jewish Theology Examined in the
Light of Modern Thought Louis Jacobs Vallentine Mitchell; 5th edition, 2004
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Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago Studies in the History of
Judaism) by Susannah Heschel University Of Chicago Press, 1998
Abraham Geiger and Liberal Judaism: The Challenge of the Nineteenth
Century by Abraham Geiger, Max Wiener Hebrew Union College Press,
1981
The Art of T'Shuva: The Teachings of HaRav Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen
Kook (Hardcover) by David Samson (Ed), Tzvi Fishman (Ed) Beit Orot
Publications (1999)
Guides for an Age of Confusion: Studies in the Thinking of Avraham Y. Kook
and Mordecai M. Kaplan by Jack Cohen Fordham University Press, 2000
High Priest of Rebirth: The Life, Times and Thought of Abraham Isaac Kuk
by Jacob Bernard Agus Bloch Pub Co; [2d ed.] 1999
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality (Reappraisals in Jewish
Social and Intellectual History) by Lawrence J. Kaplan, David Shatz (Editor)
New York University Press,1995
Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights
of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems by Ben Zion Bokser Paulist Press;
1978