רמב"ם

Rav Moshe ben Maimon (4898/1138–20 Tevet 4965/1204), the Rambam, known throughout the world as Maimonides and crowned in Israel as HaNesher HaGadol — of whom it was said, from Moshe to Moshe none arose like Moshe — was among the greatest poskim of all the generations, a philosopher, and a physician. He was born in Cordoba on Erev Pesach to Rav Maimon the dayan, who had learned under Rav Yosef ibn Migash, the talmid of the Rif; from his father and from the writings of the Ri Migash the young Moshe received his Torah, alongside a broad command of the astronomy, mathematics, and medicine of his day. In 4908/1148 the Almohads took Cordoba and decreed conversion or exile, and the family chose wandering — some ten years through southern Spain and North Africa, and then the city of Fez.

At age 23, in 4921/1161, he began his commentary on the Mishnah — called by his talmidim the Kitab al-Siraj, the Sefer HaMaor — a clear and comprehensive commentary on all of Shas Mishnayot, completed in Egypt when he was thirty. In 4925/1165 the family sailed to Akko in Eretz Yisrael; in Cheshvan of that year he went up to Yerushalayim and davened there three days, and from there to Chevron and Me’arat HaMachpelah, writing that the day he stood and davened in the holy place would be a day of kedusha for him and his descendants. From Eretz Yisrael the family moved on to Egypt, first to Alexandria and then to Fustat, near Cairo. There he labored in the ransom of the captives of Bilbeis, and there disaster struck: his beloved brother David, the merchant who supported him, drowned at sea on the way to India with the family’s fortune, and the Rambam fell ill with grief for a full year. He turned to medicine for his bread and rose to be physician to the vizier al-Fadil and to the royal house of Salach a-Din (Saladin) — spending his days at the palace and returning, as he describes in a famous letter, to antechambers filled with Jews and gentiles waiting to be healed until evening.

Twice he was raised to the office of Nagid, head of the Jews of Egypt, the second time from 4956/1196 until his passing, and he stood at the head of the beit din that enacted takanot for all of Egypt — among them, in 4947/1186, that all marriage and divorce pass only through rabbanim expert in those dinim. Above all stand the sefarim: the Mishneh Torah, his fourteen-volume code embracing nearly the whole of halacha, a foundation of every halachic discussion since, on which Rav Yosef Karo rested the Shulchan Aruch as one of his three amudei hora’ah; the Moreh Nevuchim, published for his talmid muvhak Rav Yosef ibn Shimon, from which nearly every Jewish thinker after him drew; his thirteen principles of emunah; and the igrot — above all the Igeret Teiman to the persecuted Jews of Yemen, who received him as their posek and, as the Ramban brings, added his name to their Kaddish: b’chayei d’rabbana Moshe ben Maimon.

He was niftar in Fustat on 20 Tevet 4965 (1204), and his son Rabbeinu Avraham filled his place at the head of Egyptian Jewry. The tradition is that at his explicit request — do not bury me in Egypt — his body was carried up to Teveria, where his tziyun stands to this day, and on it the words: from Moshe to Moshe none arose like Moshe.