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Updated: May 28, 2025
And Abraham Mendelssohn also has just had his boy Felix baptized a wonder-child in music, I hear." Maimon fell back on his pillow, overcome with emotions and thoughts. The tragedy latent in that smile of the sisters had developed itself.
Maimonides relates that the Sabians believed the world to be eternal, and called Adam “the Prophet of the Moon,” which symbolized, as we know from other sources, the deity of water. Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, More Nevochim, cap. iv. As the second coming of Christ was to be the destruction of the world, how plainly appear the germs of the myth of the Epochs of Nature in the Judæo-Christian mind!
To me the way seems made up of plainly discernible links. If I had not found Mirah, it is probable that I should not have begun to be specially interested in the Jews, and certainly I should not have gone on that loitering search after an Ezra Cohen which made me pause at Ram's book-shop and ask the price of Maimon.
As convincedly as synagogue-elders sought during fatal epidemics for the secret sins of the congregation, so had they two striven to uncover the secret sinfulness of self-deceived righteousness. "Bad self-analysis is the foundation of contentment," Lapidoth had summed it up one day, as they lounged on the town-wall. To which Maimon: "Then, friend, why are we so content to censure others?
What Leroy-Beaulieu says of Maimon, "that type of the most cultured Jew to be found before the French Revolution," might more justly be applied to many a less prominent Maskil after him: "Despite his learning and philosophy he sank deeper than the most degraded of his fellow-men, because in repudiating his ancestral faith he had lost the staff which, through all their humiliations, served as a prop even to the most debased of ancient Jews."
And the only Judaism that stood stable amid this flux, the ancient rock of Rabbinism he had sought to dislodge, the Amsterdam Jewry refusing even the civil rights for which he had fought. "Poor Mendelssohn!" thought the dying Maimon. "Which was the Dreamer after all, he or I? Well for him, perhaps, that his Phœdon is wrong, that he will never know."
Late, very late, the next morning he dragged himself from his snug cocoon, and called, in response to a summons, upon his benefactor. "Well, and how do you like your lodging?" said the gentle Rabbi. Maimon burst into tears. "I have slept in a bed!" he sobbed, "I have slept in a bed!"
What true self-estimate as well as wit in the sage's famous retort to the swaggering German officer who asked him what commodity he dealt in. "In that which you appear to need good sense." Maimon roused himself to listen to the conversation.
As the head fell back, it caught the light from the festive candles of the Passover board. The face was bare of hair; even the side curls were gone. 'Maimon the Meshummad! cried the mother, shuddering back. 'You have saved the Apostate. 'Did I not say the door must be opened? replied Ben Amram gently. Then a smile of humour twitched his lips, and he smoothed his white beard.
"People like you, there's no use trying to help," said another, worn-out, when Maimon pleaded for only a few coppers. Yet he never acquired the beggar's servility, nay, was often himself the patron of some poorer hanger-on, for whom he would sacrifice his last glass of beer. Curt in his manners, he refused to lift his hat or embrace his acquaintances in cold blood. Nor would he wear a wig.
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