probably find this writing peculiar and may ridicule it. But I am paying no heed to such criticisms; I write only that ignorant people may grasp their meaning.81
Rather than interpreting these words as being elitist, they demonstrate that “[t]he truth is simple but not necessarily so easy to grasp because we are led astray by our attachment to words and letters.”82 However, by making his writing accessible to the ordinary people does not mean that Shinran had any intention of “devaluing the intellect.”83 Even Kyōgyōshishō, which includes a systematic study of Pure Land doctrine and is intended for scholar-monks, shows that by periodically including his own name in the discussion, Shinran aimed to make this work more personal, personable, and accessible to all.84
Maimonides
Moses Maimonides85 was born in Cordoba, Andalusia, in 1138,86 which was then an Arabic metropolis. Maimonides’ life, like Shinran’s, can also be roughly divided into four periods: the Andalusian period (1136/1138–1148); the Almohadian period (1148–1165); the period of the wandering (1165–1171) including a short stay in Christian Spain; and the life in Egypt under the Fatimids (1166–1171) and the Ayyubids (1171–1201/1204). Each of these periods implicitly affected Maimonides’ thought as exhibited through his writing and politico-religious participation.
In Cordoba, Maimonides’ family experienced a fairly peaceful life under the Almoravids (1086–1147). Maimonides’ father was a highly respected rabbi who served as dayyan (the judge of the Jewish court) in Cordoba. During that time Jews and Christians were given the status of dhimmi—the protected minorities—and were able to combine their secular and religious interests without any fear of persecution. By the early 1150s, the Almohads had conquered a wide area of North Africa as well as the western portion of Muslim Spain, including Cordoba. By 1160, the Almohads had expanded their control covering vast territories, including by then Tunisia and Tripoli. Ten years later, the Almohads had completed their conquest of Muslim Spain. By that time the Almohads had forced conversion on all non-Muslims and ended previous protection of minority religions (dhimmi status). Already in the late 1140s, the relatively safe Andalusian environment fell apart and Jewish lives dramatically changed. Unable to live under these conditions, Maimonides’ family left Cordoba in 1148. The Andalusian period lasted for about twelve years when Maimonides and his family wandered from place to place in Andalusia and Maimonides became an exile and a refugee at an early age.
In 1160, Maimonides and his family settled in Fez, Morocco, where they stayed for about five years. Some information on the treatment of the Jews during this time can be gleaned from a letter by Maymun b. Yusuf, father of Maimonides, when in 1160 he wrote: “Overwhelmed with humiliation, blamed and despised, the seeds of captivity surround us and we are submerged in its depth.”87 About five years after arriving in Fez, driven by compassion for his fellow Jews, Maimonides wrote his Epistle on Forced Conversion (Iggeret ha-Shemad) also called Treatise on Martyrdom (Ma’amar Qiddush ha-Shem) written in 1160 or 1161. In this letter, he privileges human life and states that if general persecution and transgression is public, the Jew must die rather than transgress.88 He shows compassion and tolerance by advising Jews to confess the Islamic creed rather than die. Yet, when this Jew is forced to transgress, he should do it to the smallest extent possible and aim to leave that place as soon as it becomes possible.
In 1165, Maimonides and his family arrived in Acre, the capital of the Crusader towns of Syro-Palestine. They stayed there for the summer of 1165. In October 1165, they made a three-day pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In 1166, Maimonides and his family finally came to Fustat (Old Cairo) after a brief stay in Alexandria.
These wanderings from place to place influenced Maimonides’ ability to integrate various influences and later manifested in his intellectual versatility and testified to his “cosmopolitan” nature. Perhaps this ability was enhanced by the fact that even before his exile, Maimonides’ life was embedded in the Islamic culture of Muslim Spain (Andalusia), characterized at that time by a peaceful coexistence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Although his ability to adapt to a new environment was developed prior to his final exile in Egypt, his life under Islamic dominance made him well aware of a certain inherent duplicity.
While still wandering from Andalusia and not settled in any permanent place, Maimonides started writing his Commentary on the Mishnah,89 a preparatory work to his own Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Torah) that consisted of fourteen books that were compiled between 1170 and 1180. It grew out of his focus on the preservation of Jewish community and led to his emphasis on the commandments.90 The Commentary was his major compilation of comprehensive law code.91 Because the Talmud records conflicting explanations of the Mishnah, Maimonides took upon himself to determine which explanations are authoritative. It mirrors, to some extent, Shinran’s approach to the commentary on the sutras, particularly his translation of some sutras. In the Commentary on the Mishnah, conclusion to Seder Taharot,92 Maimonides explicitly addressed exile by stating that his “heart is often burdened by the troubles of the time and what God has decreed for us with regard to exile and wandering the world from one end to another.”93
While Maimonides recognized that complete adherence at times might not be feasible, he considered following the commandments as being imperative to preserving Jewish heritage. The possible inability to have a complete devotion to the commandments necessitated certain creative reinterpretations. By contextualizing specificity of the exilic conditions and putting Mishneh Torah into language accessible to everyone, he converted it into a mechanism central to the construction of a viable diaspora. In his discussion of laws of inheritance and laws related to the poor, Maimonides transformed the Talmudic elliptic style with its variety of overlapping arguments into comprehensible material and a functional tool for continual survival, imbued with a sense of compassion for the disadvantaged and the excluded other.
Maimonides’ life significantly improved when he moved to Egypt in 1166. The Fatimid dynasty that ruled Egypt at that time was spared Almohads’ fanaticism. In Fustat, Maimonides became integrated into Egyptian society and involved with the day-to-day life of the Egyptian Jewish community. There the boundary between the Jewish community and the other communities was largely demarcated by the commandments and the requirement to adhere to them. Maimonides did not necessarily translate this legal separation into strict relational boundaries and did not erect any impenetrable boundaries between his existence as a Jewish leader and a thinker influenced by Islamic thought.
In 1171, Egypt was conquered by the Ayyubids, a Muslim dynasty of Kurdish origin. Shortly after Saladin became sultan over Egypt, Maimonides was elected to become the head of Egyptian Jewry—ra’is al-yahud. Navigating between Jewish and Islamic communities, Maimonides exercised the highest judicial authority by appointing chief judges and having broad communal responsibilities. In addition, he functioned as a respondent to legal inquiries from Jewish communities in Egypt and elsewhere. Maimonides’ active participation in public affairs demonstrated his concern with the lives of the Jewish community. Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen (Iggeret Teiman), written in 1172, is a further testimony to his commitment to the Jewish community as well as his recognition of the forced duplicity.94 In this letter, Maimonides reminds the Jews that they were constantly challenged, “Kings attempted to destroy God’s Law and religion with the Sword. Thinkers—Syrian, Persian, and Greek—tried to undermine it with their writings” and the Christian and Muslims, “combined both tactics, force together with persuasion.”95 When Maimonides is subsequently told that a Jewish convert to Islam Jacob ben Fayyum claimed that Islam fulfilled the mission of Judaism, his response exemplifies an attempt to raise Jewish consciousness. Maimonides avoids contrasting Judaism and Islam in terms of their monotheistic claims but rather does so in terms of their respective revelations. He concludes this epistle by noting that, despite having concerns about his own safety after making his views public, he is convinced that “the public welfare takes precedence over one’s personal safety.”96 Maimonides’ diasporic personality allows him to speak in the language that is close and clear to those who share
