A Portrait of the Artist

Abstract

This introductory chapter provides a background of Maimonides and his code of Jewish law, the Mishneh torah. Maimonides applied the highest literary art to the highest of tasks: to bequeath, as philosopher-statesman, a law that would regulate the life of the individual and of society and move people closer to the knowledge of God. The result of that art is a book to be read and experienced, not just consulted. The central feature of Mishneh torah as a work of art is the casting of the commandments of the law in the form of the cosmos. The microcosmic form suggests, in the first place, that studying Mishneh torah, like the study of the universe, can be a way to the knowledge and love of God. On the plane of ideas, this form embodies the relationship between the ‘small thing’ and the ‘great thing’, between halakhah, on the one hand, and physics and metaphysics on the other. It depicts philosophy as the matrix of halakhah, reflecting the view of the relationship between philosophy and religion in the Islamic philosophers.