COMMENTARY: Conversing across the ages with some very important people

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) (UNDATED) Reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton imagined talking with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mohandas K. Gandhi set me thinking. Which people of the past would I choose as conversational partners? Assuming that such communication is possible (e-mail, pagers […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) Reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton imagined talking with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mohandas K. Gandhi set me thinking. Which people of the past would I choose as conversational partners?


Assuming that such communication is possible (e-mail, pagers and fax machines cannot help), my preferences are a great rabbi and a woman who is very important to me, but whose name I do not know. So, even though I lack the assistance of any New Age guru, I’m ready to give it a try.

My first trans-century call would be to Moses Maimonides, the greatest rabbi who ever lived. Born in Spain in 1135, he spent most of his life in Egypt, where he was physician to the royal court.

In his spare moments away from his medical practice, he wrote a brilliant commentary on the Mishnah, an important post-biblical legal code. Maimonides also wrote a dazzling commentary on Judaism’s 613 religious commandments along with an incredible work that analyzed Jewish law.

Somewhere along the way, he composed a prayer for his fellow physicians as well as affirming 13 basic articles of faith for his fellow Jews. Talk about an overachiever!

Among his many writings, Maimonides’ best-known work is”A Guide for the Perplexed,”in which he attempted to reconcile belief in the Bible with the philosophy of Aristotle. Maimonides vehemently rejected religious superstitions and opted instead for a life of rationality and reason. “People should never cast out sound reason,”he once said,”for the eyes are in front and not in back.”For him, authentic belief is a state of intellectual and moral perfection in which human beings become linked to the active intellect that is God.

If I could converse with Maimonides, I would ask about his doubts as well as his assertions of faith. I would press him about his attempt to balance the Bible and traditional religion with the teachings of the premier Greek philosopher.

Can a person be both in the world and at the same time faithful to God? Must we pick one over the other? Can the two be brought into harmony?

These are, of course, the same questions that people ask today as they grapple with the inhuman values of an increasingly secular world.


Clearly, Maimonides wrestled with these problems. As the physician to the Egyptian royal house, he was very much a part of his time and place. He was no religious hermit who turned his back on the world, nor did he abandon his traditional religious faith. And, like millions of Jews today, he lived an intensely Jewish life as a member of a religious minority outside the land of Israel.

The second person I want to talk to is my paternal great-great grandmother, a woman so far in my family’s past that no one remembers her first name. I can only call her Froi Rudin,”froi”being the Yiddish term for the lady of the house. I estimate that she was born around 1825 somewhere in Poland or the part of Russia that today is the independent state of Belarus.

In our conversation, I would bring her up to date on the last 175 years of our family. She would probably be surprised that the Rudin family ended its centuries-long link with Eastern Europe when they joined the mass immigration to America in the early 1900s.

She would be appalled, of course, to learn of the Holocaust, but she would probably not be surprised. She faced virulent anti-Semitism all her life.

The Russian ruler of her time, Czar Nicholas I, was a tyrannical despot who actively encouraged anti-Semitism. Jewish boys were routinely conscripted into Nicholas’ army for 25-year tours of duty, and czarist agents, known as”catchers,”roamed the Russian countryside grabbing for military service those Jewish males who lacked the proper identification papers. I want to know how she and her family endured such terror.

I would ask my great-great grandmother about everyday life in her village. How did the members of the Rudin family make a living? Or did they? Where and how did they live?


History books can give me some idea about the alien conditions of her existence. But what brought my great-great grandmother personal pleasure and satisfaction? What hopes, what dreams, did she have for herself and her children?

I would be pleased to tell her about the founding of the state of Israel; she would regard it as both a surprise and a joy. There would be plenty to keep us talking for quite awhile.

But as much as I want to converse with my great-great grandmother, I end up only talking to myself. It is far easier to have such a conversation with Maimonides, because he left a compendium of writings that can answer my many questions.

Both of these great people have left me great gifts. From Maimonides I inherited a spiritual and intellectual treasure that enriches my existence. And the nameless Froi Rudin has provided the gift of life and the great gift of Judaism passed down to my father’s father and all who came after.

And to each of them, I want to whisper across the centuries these two simple words: Thank you.

END RUDIN

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