Two Halves of the Rambam Together

I was privileged to attend tonight the opening of a special display of a Mishneh Torah, the classic Halachic codex of the Rambam, commissioned and completed ca. 1457 in northern Italy and illustrated in the Renaissance style of the time. 

It was at the Israel Museum in the presence of the Rishon Letzion Yitzchak Yosef, the Apostolic Nuncio in Israel Archbishop Guiseppe Lazzarotto, Msgr. Cesare Pasini, the Vatican's Prefect of its Biblioteca Apostolica with a nice talk by Prof. Moshee Halbertal who spoke of the Rambam's approach that to be religious, one must learn to love, which is beyond fearful respect and can only be achieved through knowing God which, in turn, can only be gained by learning of his works in nature.

The two halves of the volume were separated some two centuries ago and ended up in the Vatican and in Germany and that second Jewish-held half was only recently located and purchased by the Israel Museum jointly with New York's Metropolitan Museum.

The two halves

The Nuncio

and also with James Synder, Museum Director (red tie)

The attendees

The Chief Rabbi and the Nuncio

James Snyder speaking

P.S.  The title of the evening was a play on words - יד ביד - which is 'Hand in Hand' - but refers to the fact that the Rambam's work contained 14 sections which, in gammatria is יד, I think was lost to many of those who attended.

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A Politician On The Knife's Edge

Was directed here to learn that the Rambam got himself involved in an American election campaign in Minnesota:

Senator Coleman closed with two quotes, one from the Jewish sage Maimonides and one from Mother Teresa. Senator Coleman quoted Maimonides' admonition that "A person should see himself and the whole world as being on a knife edge, precisely and exquisitely balanced." With one good deed, Maimonides says, a person "can alter the balance of his life and the whole world to the side of blessing and life." I doubt I'll hear a politician quoting Maimonides again any time soon. It was a terrific performance.

(Kippah tip: Jennifer Rubin)

Funny though, I'm having trouble locating the Maimonidesean source.

In the meantime, see this:

"The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly. You see," Davies adds, "even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life -- almost contrived -- you might say a 'put-up job'."

- Dr. Paul Davies

And the Talmud notes:

"Sharpen the knife while the ox is fallen" (Talmud Bavli Shabbat 32a)

UPDATE

The revolutionary lives on the knife's edge. The question that harasses him
is, in fact, not merely the moral or religious one of whether he may kill; his
quandary has nothing at all to do, as has at times been said, with 'selling his
soul to the devil' in order to bring the revolution to victory. His entanglement
in the situation is here just the tension between end and means. I cannot
conceive anything real corresponding to the saying that the end 'sanctifies' the
means; but I mean something which is real in the highest sense of the term when
I say that the means profane, actually make meaningless, the end, that is, its
realization! What is realized is the farther from the goal that was set the more
out of accord with it is the method by which it was realized. The 'ensuring' of
the revolution may only drain its heart's blood. The responsibility which
results from these presuppositions must penetrate most deeply in the leader who
is summoned to make the watchword of the spirit into the watchword of the event.
But none of those who are led can neglect responsibility save by flight from
self-recollection, that is, by the atrophy of the spirit within. Here again the
true front runs through the centre.

"From Recollection of a Death" by Martin Buber
[This essay was originally written by Buber in 1929 as a memorial to one of Buber's closest friends and intellectual companions, Gustav Landauer]