FANATICS-THEN AND NOW

 

                                SONSINO’S BLOG

                               rsonsino.blogspot.com

  Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

 Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) of Spain was one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages. He was a physician and philosopher, a rationalist. There is a statue of him in downtown Cordoba that I saw a few years ago. He was the author of The Guide of the Perplexed (he wrote it in Arabic) on theology, and Mishne Torah (“The Second Law”-he wrote it in Hebrew) on Jewish law.

 But he was also controversial, because of his advocacy of Aristotelian philosophy. Some people did not like him. And in 1233, in a public square in Paris, a group of Dominican monks set fire to a huge pile of his books. The sad part was that they did this at the instigation of some fanatic Jews who had accused him of heretical views.

Every religion has its own fanatics who think they have the truth and cannot accept a diversity of opinion. Christians have them- look at the fights between Catholics and Protestants.  Moslems have them- look at the enmity between Sunnis and Shiites. We Jews have them too. In fact, right now, there are a number of Haredim, members of the right-wing Orthodox movement, attacking Reform Jews at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, who are celebrating a Bar Mitzvah!!! What a shame!

 No one has an exclusive key to the truth. It is by an open and respectful discussion of issues that we can learn from one another and reach an understanding of the mysteries of the universe.