ר' אברהם בן הרמב"ם

Rabbeinu Avraham ben HaRambam (28 Sivan 4946/1186–18 Kislev 4998/1237), the Raavam, was the only son of the Rambam — born in Fustat (Cairo, Egypt) when his father was fifty-one — and his successor in everything: in Torah, in leadership, and in medicine. The Rambam wrote of the boy that in worldly matters he had no comfort but two things — his learning, and “this my son Avraham… the most humble and lowly of men, with his fine character, a subtle intellect and a beautiful nature; he will surely have a name among the great.” The son was his father’s confidant in the deepest matters, those the Rambam never set in writing.

When the Great Eagle was niftar in 4965/1204, the eighteen-year-old was recognized as the greatest chacham of his community and succeeded his father as head of Egyptian Jewry — the office of Nagid, which his descendants would hold for four generations — and as physician in the Sultan’s court, directing the great hospital of Cairo. His standing withstood fierce opposition within the community, and under his hand many of Egypt’s Karaites returned to the Torah of Chazal; the chachamim of Yemen sent him their she’eilot, and his answers survive.

He was the first and greatest defender of his father’s Torah: when word came of the burning of the Rambam’s sefarim in Montpellier in 4995/1235, he wrote Milchamot Hashem to the chachamim of Provence, answering the critics of the Moreh Nevuchim. His own great work, HaMaspik L’Ovdei Hashem, teaches the pietist path he lived and taught — humility, self-accounting, and inwardness in avodat Hashem — a derech his talmidim carried on for generations. There survive as well his luminous peirush on Bereishit and Shemot in the way of peshat, his responsa Birkat Avraham, and his famous Maamar al Derashot Chazal, the discourse on the aggadot of the sages whose principles guide learners to this day.