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Maimonides on the Renewal of “Semikha”: Some Historical Perceptive by Gerald Blidstein

October 30, 1998 | Gerald Blidstein

This article proposes that the Maimonidean suggestion that semikha can be renewed should be seen in historic, as well as jurisprudential, perspective. Maimonides denied the right of any contemporary institution, especially the Babylonain gaonate (which vigorously claimed the priviledge) to grant semikha. But since semikha is an essential component of messianic redemption in its rabbinic version, the Maimonidean position could be undermined by the argument that it denied the messianic possibility. By providing a mechanism for the renewal of semikha, Maimon ides could negate that claim.

Kenneth Hart Green’s Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss by Laurence Berns

October 20, 1997

In his book on Leo Strauss, Jew and Philosopher..., Kenneth Hart Green has provided the first serious study of the development ofStrauss's thought. Strauss's fundamental thought that revealed theology and philosophy are mutually irrefutable takes the form in Maimonides of a cosmological opposition between creation and eternity. Philosophy's incapacity to refute its revealed counterpart requires recognition of that counterpart as a possibility. Green's Strauss's Maimonides' prophetology articulates human perfection as a reconciliation of reason and revelation, a reconciliation of prophet and philosopher-king.

Kenneth Hart Green’s Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss

October 20, 1997

Are philosophy and biblical faith compatible? Early, Strauss wrote that in every attempt to harmonize them, one of the two is sacrificed to the other. Later, he seemed to think that the two can co-exist peacefully, each learning from the other. I argue that there is no place for revelation in the life of reason. Because Maimonides was primarily a philosopher, he argued that there were rational grounds for all the commandments. Philosphy thus enslaves revelation instead of co-existing peacefully with it.

Kenneth Hart Green’s Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss

October 20, 1997

Politics and Perfection: Gersonides vs. Maimonides

April 27, 1994