Solomon Maimon, an Autobiography

by Salomon Maimon

Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century. Now the definitive English version of Maimon's remarkable Autobiography, the 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, is available for the first time in paperback, enhanced with a new introduction by Jewish studies scholar Michael Shapiro.

Wry and spirited, shrewd and unrepentant, Maimon alternated between nomadic destitution and intellectual swordplay among the Jewish elite of Berlin. The son of a petty merchant in Polish Lithuania, Maimon was a child Talmud prodigy who became increasingly antagonistic toward the Jewish establishment and receptive toward the secular philosophies of Spinoza, Hume, Leibnitz, and Kant.

A perpetual outsider, Maimon observed with an equally sharp eye the excesses of his time and the vicissitudes of his own life. Parallel to his own development as a thinker in the company of Moses Mendelssohn and others, Maimon conveys the physically wretched but spiritually vibrant Polish ghetto, the beginnings of Hasidism (which he denounces as antirationalist), and the world of the wealthy Berlin Jewry who enthusiastically embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment.

Combining philosophical discourse with personal anecdotes that shift abruptly from the tragic to the hilarious and back, Maimon's Autobiography indelibly portrays one man's devotion to truth on his own terms regardless of the cost to himself or others.

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, School, Judaism, Nonfiction, History, Jewish

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1888

Reviews

[Eli Mandel · Rating 4 out of 5]

First I found this book to be surprisingly lighthearted. Why surprising? Because life in 1750s Poland was not light, but I guess in the 1790s, even in enlightened Berlin Maimon may not have known how bad things were. As possible proof of this I suggest you see page 37 where he recounts the remedy applied to his leg, which had been "pitiably crushed", by the country doctor who didn't have access to a pharmacy; "The remedy was, to kill a dog and thrust into it the cramped foot; this repeated several times, was to give certain relief. The prescription was followed with the desired result, so that after some weeks I was able to use the foot again, and by degrees I completely recovered."
Although that in itself isn't surprising, what was surprising to me, and what helped me adjust my mindset to the time period of the book was the following paragraph: "I think it would not be at all amiss, if medical men gave more attention to such domestic remedies, which are used with good results in districts where there are no regular physicians or apothecaries' shops; they might even make special journeys with this end in view. I know many a case of this sort, which can be in nowise explained away"

I found many of Maimon's criticisms of contemporary Jewish life and rabbis to be very relevant. He mentions that he found among "most rabbis a good deal of pride, quarrelsomeness, and other evil qualities so that they became objects of dislike"....sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Similarly I found his apologetics to be modern, which is to say, I found out that modern Jewish apologetics have quite a history. On page 131 there's this: "What innocence among unmarried people! It often happens that a young man or woman of sixteen or eighteen years is married without knowing the least about the object of marriage. Among other nations this is certainly very seldom the case." but what he, and the modern heirs of this argument, fails to do is tell us why this is such a valuable state of affairs as to justify the overall ignorance required to maintain it.

Maimon thought that there was much to admire in the chasidim (not to be confused with the new chasidim) but because of their excessive penitence they cause such harm to themselves as to "root out the wheat with the tares" by causing themselves to die young.
The above saying sounds quaint enough, but it isn't a literal translation. What Maimon really wrote was Das kind mit dem bade ausschütten. Which saying I just love, and I was glad to see it has 220 year old roots.

One whole chapter is devoted to a fascinating account of his short sojourn among the new chasidim which includes his cynical view of their belief system, social structure, where their rebbes derive their powers - four pages are dedicated to his analyses of "the internal constitution of the society" and his most interesting classification of the four personality types that give chasidic rebbes their power.
This chapter ends with Maimon believing that the new chasidim are being persecuted out of existence, especially with the help of Elijah of Vilna.

The story itself is a tragic one and definitely worth reading.

One note on the translation: it seems pretty obvious that the translator wasn't Jewish, not only because his name was J. Clark Murray, but because he seems completely unfamiliar with the Hebrew - he maintains the German transliteration of Hebrew words, he mentions a "fool named Chozek", translates what could only have been nekudos as "points" - and when giving the source for biblical verses Maimon quotes he references "our Authorized edition", now, I don't necessarily know what the Authorized edition was but I assume it didn't have a Badatz hashgoche to say the least.
Another short interesting note: the translator, who took the liberty of adding a chapter about Maimon at the end of the book, takes Maimon to task for never having developed solid work habits, he quotes many passages and stories from the Talmud which the translator's friend the Rev. Meldola de Sola, of the Portuguese Synagogue in Montreal provided for him proving that Jews believe in hard work and being financially self-sustaining.

[Fred R · Rating 2 out of 5]

This clever, lazy, eccentric, proud pseudo-scholar reminds me of me.

[Ken Krimstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unbelievable. Modest and arrogant at the same time. Fascinating.

[Misha Kahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an extraordinary, surprising read.
It is so interesting to read the perspective of someone that walked the unlikely path from traditional Judaism to German Enlightenment right then at the time of the Maggid of Mezerich and Mendelssohn and Kant.

Some of the things that impressed me:
- The utter poverty of even the relatively well-off Jews in Poland at the time
- The insane level of casual oppression by the powerful against the weak. It really makes you feel grateful for how far we have come as a civilization.
- Even literate Jews mostly only really read Hebrew and Yiddish
- Even back then, there were people seeing the Talmud as an incredible intellectual exercise, founded on very shaky epistemic bases. Interestingly, Maimon points to the idea that Talmudic discussions are an ex-post rationalization of preexisting practical norms, which is an idea I only learned about two weeks ago and I thought was much more recent.
- No mention of havruta study in Talmud learning methods. I guess it must have developed later
- Surprising the language of the Talmud is never called Aramaic, just the Language of the Talmud, a mix of laguages, etc.
- I found it really fascinating how the transition from Talmudic to Zoharic learning felt to the author like a first step toward Enlightenement - in the sense of knowledge based on Reason. This is not at all how most people think 0f mysticism, and yet I found it spot on - "Kabbalah is nothing else but amplified Spinozism [...]". At some point, if I understand this correctly, Maimon almost seems to point to the Sefirot as equivalent to Kantian categories. Super cool.
- The episode of Maimon, full of himself because of his newly acquired "rational" Cartesianism beating a sheep because it is only a machine, and making fun of his 'superstitious" friends that took compassion. A cautionary tale.
-The adventures and the hardships this person went through, and his persistence are absolutely novel-worthy. Also, crazy how his wife and children disappear from the story

[Avraham Deutsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arrogant, sanctimonious prick. A useless husband who abandoned his wife yet lived as a leech off others. He wandered through Europe on other people’s dime, preaching as if he were so much smarter and nobler than everyone around him. Naturally, everyone ended up hating him. He had no real friends, even Mendelssohn, and the rest couldn’t stand him, quietly shuffling him from one place to another just to get him out of their hair.

And when the loneliness and resentment finally caught up with him, he tried to convert to Christianity not out of conviction but out of sheer spite. Pathetic.

In the end, he was exactly what everyone saw from the start: a bitter, self-important hanger-on, tolerated only until people couldn’t bear him anymore.

[Seekers of Unity · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maimon drops religion back in the day in Europe and gets involved in the philosophy scene, Kant and whatnot, or rather tries to, they don’t take very well to this clever but scruffy Jew in fancy Berlin. In the interim he has some insightful first-hand remarks to say about Kabbalah, chasidut and chasidim and mysticism.

If you like books like this you'll love my project:
http://youtube.com/c/seekersofunity?s...

[Vletrmscx · Rating 5 out of 5]

would love to look at the new reitter translation.

[Miriam Dichter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating! A must-read.

[Vletrmscx · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the great books

[zz]

-i won’t pretend i read the whole book bc we weren’t assigned the whole book lmao
-bro had a bonkers life

[Daniel Lovins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story begins with discussion of grandfather, who was arrested for murder after a boy's corpse was planted and discovered in his house. He was tortured but refused to confess, and was eventually exonerated.

Maimon's father kept a library of Hebrew books, some on secular topics. One in particular, David Ganz's "Zemah David", opened his eyes for the first time to modern science. It turned out that Ganz had studied astronomy with Tycho Brahe in Copenhagen, and had a lot to say on the subject. Also on the father's bookshelf was a (garbled) Hebrew translation of Josephus. But it was the astronomy what most appealed to the 7-year old.

Despite his general dislike for Talmud study, Maimon excelled at it. This made him, by the time he reached age 12, an exceedingly eligible bachelor (within the traditional Jewish community, in any case). At one point he found himself betrothed to two women simultaneously. Around this time he also taught himself Latin and German alphabets by studying printers' marks on the signatures of Hebrew books. He also discovered the Zohar, the principal work of Jewish mysticism, and studied it intensively. He likened himself to the 1st century sage Rabi Meir, of whom it was said (regarding his willingness to study with the heretic Elisha ben Abuya): "He found a pomegranate, and he ate the fruit but cast the rind away." Maimon found Jewish mysticism fascinating, but thought the imagery was sometimes strange. There was the image of God's Beard, for example, "in which the hairs are divided into numerous classes with something peculiar to each, and every hair is a separate channel of divine grace. With all my efforts," he writes, "I could find no rational meaning in these representations." At one point, he experimented with "Kabalah maasit," or Practical Kabbalah, invoking the "roeh ve-eno nireh" (seeing but not being seen) technique, and attempted to box a friend on the ears, but, not really being invisible after all, the friend immediately turned around and returned the blow.

Eventually Maimon made his way to Berlin where he befriended (and later estranged) Moses Mendelssohn and other enlightenment thinkers. After a period of extreme poverty, Maimon began a study of Kant's critical philosophy, won the philosopher's praise, and published a Kantian work of his own entitled "Transcendental Philosophy".

[Philemon - · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the entertaining first-person account of an 18th-century Lithuanian Jew who married a Polish woman, decided that Poland was hopelessly backward and superstitious, and then decided to relocate to Berlin and become an Enlightenment philosopher -- which he did!

His ill-starred trip to Germany reduced him to total vagabond poverty, but once there he managed to strike up acquaintances with rabbis who recognized his brilliant Talmudic mind and helped get him on his feet. He then worked on and off as a tutor while studying Locke, Hume, Spinoza, Wolff, Leibniz, Mendelssohn, and Kant, and then developing his own theories of transcendental philosophy.

After publishing a comprehensive treatise, he convinced a scholarly friend to send it to Kant himself. When Kant finally read it, in 1790, he proclaimed Maimon one of the very few scholars able to understand his work. Unfortunately, Maimon's enjoyment of this stellar validation was brief: within five years he had died, succumbing "apparently to alcoholism."

Note five middle chapters are devoted to summarizing and explicating 12th-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonedes (from whom Maimon took his name) The Guide For The Perplexed. This turgid collection of technical chapters is perhaps better skipped over, as Maimon only gets around to suggesting in a later chapter!

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the autobiography of an 18th-century Polish Jew who moved from rural Poland to Berlin, taught himself philosophy and met all manner of important people, but was limited by his lack of people skills. The most interesting chapters are the first few, where he describes the poverty and misery of rural life. Maimon himself was married off by his parents at age 11, and had no formal secular education. (He implies that the only Jewish education he had was the Talmud; it seems hard to believe that he was not exposed to the Bible first, but he may be skipping over his early years). Also interesting are his descriptions of the early Hasidim; he makes it clear that the Hasidim followed in the steps of earlier mystics and ascetics, and suggested that the Hasidim met with hostility from leading rabbis because their anti-ascetism sometimes led to rude, out-of-control behavior. (I would imagine that some Hasidim would take offense to his description- but then again, Hasidism has had 200 years to improve their system, as the best leaders created dynasties and the charlatans pretending to be rebbes faded into oblivion). He also describes the character of Moses Mendelssohn, who comes across as a truly admirable man.

[Miriam Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

For people interested in Jewish history, Maimon's autobiography is is essential reading, even though his perspective, historically speaking, I think is somewhat skewed. His is the not-uncommon story of a brilliant and frustrated youth, trapped in a provincial society, who seeks his fortune in a more enlightened world. The Canadian biographer who assembled and edited the work is prejudiced, and sometimes as a reader, you don't feel a lot of gratitude for his notes and observations. Maimon himself doesn't bother to make himself likable - a facet of his personality that constitutes a position. It is clear why and how he managed to offend benefactors and alienate other scholars in his field. He makes assertions without providing definitions or examples - which is tedious. And he is guilty of abuse of power - in his long refusal to allow his wife to divorce him - the very thing he accuses rabbis of his youth in exercising. Still, there are little shafts of light into what was otherwise a closed world. What did Jewish scholars of the Enlightenment talk about in private? What was the nature of their friendships? What were the mechanisms of establishing connections among them in the 18th century?

I am glad I read it.

[Sal]

I've wanted to read this for three years or so. look at this description! how could you not!

Wry and spirited, shrewd and unrepentant, Maimon alternated between nomadic destitution and intellectual swordplay among the Jewish elite of Berlin. The son of a petty merchant in Polish Lithuania, Maimon was a child Talmud prodigy who became increasingly antagonistic toward the Jewish establishment and receptive toward the secular philosophies of Spinoza, Hume, Leibnitz, and Kant.

A perpetual outsider, Maimon observed with an equally sharp eye the excesses of his time and the vicissitudes of his own life. Parallel to his own development as a thinker in the company of Moses Mendelssohn and others, Maimon conveys the physically wretched but spiritually vibrant Polish ghetto, the beginnings of Hasidism (which he denounces as antirationalist), and the world of the wealthy Berlin Jewry who enthusiastically embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

weird, brilliant guy, maybe his Germanwasn't so good because he only heard, Hebrew, Yiddish an Polish until he was an adult, yet he became a protege or admired critic of Moses Mendelssohn and Imanuel Knnt, and at various times a dropout idler or a true vagabond beggar. I dont think most of the book was ghostwritten by his publisher. too rough hewn with the ring of truth and phiolsphical or religious discussions of a very highe order, a bit over my head at times..

[Yehuda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first OTD memoir. Honestly, just a fun read. Highly recommend to those interested in Jewish history and the haskalah.

[Rich Booher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the greatest texts of the 18th century. The new translation is superb. All students of early modern philosophy or German Idealism must read this.

[MaxBet · Rating 4 out of 5]

In het nederlands gelezen