The outstanding rabbinic authority and philosopher of the Middle Ages, Maimonides, was also a physician. After writing The Guide of the Perplexed, his great philosophical treatise, he turned his attention to composing works of medicine. He produced ten: On Hemorrhoids, On Cohabitation, On Asthma, On Poisons and Their Antidotes, Regimen of Health, On the Causes of Symptoms, Extracts from Galen, Medical Aphorisms, a Commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, and a Glossary of Drug Names.

In all of these, Maimonides is preoccupied with organizing, clarifying, simplifying vast expanses of text into usable guidelines. That’s one reason why the production of and instruction in aphorisms was so important for him—they were designed to be easy for physicians and their patients to remember. And there was a lot to remember. According to Maimonides, a doctor must know all about anatomy, symptoms, the health and sickness of the body and its parts, how to restore health when a person is sick, and food and diets, medicines, bathing, bandaging, and the various instruments that a medical doctor would need to use.

To get a sense of all this, the Maimonides expert Yehuda Halper sits down with host Jonathan Silver to focus on one particular medical work, Maimonides’s Commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms. Many now will be familiar with Hippocrates because the popular Hippocratic oath that inducts physicians into their profession is attributed to him. But in Maimonides’ time, medical research often took the form of commentary on the ancient writings of Hippocrates. One of Hippocrates earliest and most authoritative commentators was Galen, an ancient Roman doctor, and in his commentary, Maimonides applies his reason and empirical experience in the medical field to both of them. Along the way, Halper, in the fourth and final episode in their mini-series on Maimonides, explains how Maimonides thinks about the nature of authority, about the role and also the limits of tradition, and about the domain of reason and observation in human life.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

In the 1850s, when a young Italian Jewish boy named Edgardo Mortara fell ill, his family’s Christian maid had secretly baptized him in hopes that he would be restored to health, or that if he died, his soul would be saved.

This meant that when Edgardo survived and his baptism was revealed, the church saw him as a Christian child, not a Jewish one—and it was forbidden by Canon law for a Christian child to be raised by Jewish parents. So Edgardo, then six years old, was removed from his family against their wishes by the pope, and brought to Rome where he was instructed in the Catholic faith and eventually became a priest.

This is the background to a new work of short fiction, “The Story of My Family,” written by the great American Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick and published in the March 2024 issue of Commentary. In it, Ozick retells the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara as it is remembered by Edgardo’s nephew’s daughter who, by the time of the story, has moved to America. From there, she reflects on the way that Edgardo’s life and priesthood haunted his nephew, that is, her own father.

To discuss her new story, Ozick joins Mosaic’s editor and podcast host Jonathan Silver this week. Together, the two investigate the meaning of a tale about a Jew who becomes a tormentor of the Jews, and how such theological disturbances can rattle future generations.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

This week, the Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic returns to the towering intellectual and religious sage of medieval Judaism, Moses Maimonides, the Rambam. In two previous conversations about his work, the professor of Judaism Yehuda Halper and podcast host Jonathan Silver focused on Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, his code of law.

This week, the two turn from the Mishneh Torah to Maimonides’s philosophical magnum opus, Moreh ha Nevukhim, known in English as The Guide of the Perplexed. Whereas the Mishneh Torah leaves one with the impression that philosophy and law can be reconciled within the covenantal structure of an observant Jewish life, the emphasis in The Guide of the Perplexed is on the tensions, difficulties, and apparent contradictions between philosophy and law.

The Guide is one of the great books of Jewish philosophy, and it requires some preliminary introduction before anyone can seriously engage its questions. So this discussion is an orientation to the kind of study, the kind of person, and the kind of life that the Guide is written to instruct.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Since October 7, there have been more than one hundred attacks by Iran-backed militias against American forces in the Middle East. On January 28, a drone strike, probably launched by Iran’s most powerful proxy in Iraq, killed three and injured more than 40 American soldiers. Iran-supported Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea. Iran’s most important proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, sustains a low-grade confrontation with Israel. And, of course, 130 Israelis remain captive to Iran-backed Hamas as hostages in Gaza.

In other words, there is a war, sometimes hot, sometimes cool, happening across the entire Middle East between Iran, Israel, the U.S., and various other smaller actors. What does Iran want out of this war? Is it achieving its objectives? What is it concerned about?

To answer these and other questions, Ray Takeyh here joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver. Takeyh is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs, and the author, just last week, of a New York Times opinion piece called “Why Iran Doesn’t Want a War.”

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.