HSC Studies of Religion Practice Questions

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), also known as the Rambam, was a rabbi, philosopher and physician whose work reshaped both Jewish law and Jewish thought. His greatest legal contribution is the Mishneh Torah, a systematic code that reorganised the entire body of halakhah by subject into fourteen books written in clear Hebrew, so that an adherent could find the law on a given matter without having to trace an argument through the Talmud. This made observance accessible far beyond the scholarly elite and gave later codifiers, including the Shulchan Aruch, a model to work from. His philosophical contribution is the Guide for the Perplexed, which addressed Jews educated in Greek and Islamic philosophy by arguing that Torah and reason are not in conflict, and which insisted on a strictly non-corporeal understanding of God, so that anthropomorphic language in scripture must be read as metaphor. He also formulated the Thirteen Principles of Faith, the closest Judaism has to a creedal statement, which entered the liturgy in the poetic forms Yigdal and Ani Ma'amin and are still sung in synagogues today. Together these works gave Judaism a coherent legal framework, a rational theology and a statement of core belief that continue to shape Orthodox practice and modern Jewish philosophy.