Monday, November 23, 2009

Rambam and me

One of my few original contributions to the laws of the Jewish internet
were The Rambam syllogisms:

Rambam 1:
Rambam was a genius but he lived a long time ago.
I live today, and I believe X.
Therefore if Rambam were alive today he would believe X.

Rambam 2:
Rambam was a genius, and so his works are correspondingly difficult to
understand
I believe X.
Therefore if we study Rambam's works, we can see that he believed X.

Personally, I believe that if Rambam were alive today, he'd probably say
"get me out of this tomb!". And then he'd be upset at all the bare faced
women on the women's side of the mechitza at the tomb site.

Of course, when people say if Rambam were alive today they generally mean
'if Rambam was born 50 years ago' rather than 'if when Rambam allegedly
died 800 years ago he was actually brought through time and no is saying
what he thinks about the state of today's Judaism'. I'm not very
interested in either Rambam - what the former thinks is unknowable and what
the latter thinks is irrelevant as he does not qualify as 'the judge that
is in our generation'.

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