Rav Avrohom Maimonides

Early years

Rav Avrohom Maimonides zt"l, known as Ben HaRambam, was the only son of the Rambam, born to his second wife in Fostat (Old Cairo), Egypt, around 4946 (1186). The Rambam was fifty-one years old when his son was born.

The custom among Egyptian and Sefardic Jews, the Maimon family included, was to name children after ancestors. The Rambam instead named his son Avrohom after the first believer, Avrohom Avinu.

Rav Avrohom merited to learn from his great father, who taught him personally and shared with him many chiddushim on Tanach and philosophical explanations of his thought, including new insights that the Rambam had not written down in his seforim.

In a letter to his talmid Rav Yosef ben Yehuda (ibn Aknin), to whom he dedicated the Moreh Nevuchim, the Rambam wrote that Hashem had blessed his son Avrohom with chen, natural grace, from the blessing of the forefather he was named for. He described him as humble and lowly, of good character, with a sharp and refined mind and a good nature. With Hashem's help, he wrote, his son would without doubt be counted among the great and famous rabbanim, and he would ask Hashem to watch over him and complete His kindness.

Torah and leadership

The Rambam passed away at the age of seventy, when Rav Avrohom was only nineteen, and at this young age the leadership of Egyptian Jewry fell on his shoulders. He received the title Nagid, a hereditary position that passed from father to son in the Maimonides family for five generations. The Nagid appointed dayanim (judges), and all the Jewish courts of Egypt were under his authority. Many manuscripts from the genizah are signed with the permission of our master the Nagid Rav Avrohom. He also took over his father's position as physician to the Sultan and his royal court.

As Nagid he made important improvements in communal life. Until then, minor officials had been pronouncing bans of excommunication and counter-bans against real or suspected opponents over the slightest insult to their honor. Rav Avrohom ruled that a ban could be pronounced only by a panel of three dayanim of the city's authorized beis din. To counter the hunger for honor among communal officials, he also forbade anyone to sit in the shul with his back to the aron kodesh facing the congregation, which he considered disrespectful to the Torah.

He was also known as Rav Avrohom HeChassid and was a leader in the early Chassidic movement of Egypt and other Muslim lands. Its members focused on kavanah (inner intention) in davening and prostrated themselves during tefillah, which Rav Avrohom approved.

Like his father, he received questions on halachah and hashkafah (Jewish philosophy) from every direction, from Egypt, Eretz Yisroel, Yemen, Provence, Baghdad, Syria and elsewhere in Europe, and he sent replies to all. About 130 of his responsa survive, scattered through manuscript collections and the works of other authors, and some have been published. His answers were brief and to the point, tracing each problem to its roots in the Gemara and resolving it through logical reasoning. Some of them deal with Torah commentary and ethics, and with defending the rulings of the Rambam in his code.

Teachings and seforim

His major work was HaMaspik L'Ovdei Hashem ("Sufficient for the servants of Hashem"), written in Arabic. It was an encyclopedic work covering all aspects of Yiddishkeit, from tefillah and avodah to the performance of mitzvos, mussar and the refinement of character traits. Only a few chapters survive, translated into Hebrew and into English as The High Ways to Perfection of Abraham Maimonides. They give a glimpse of the author's private thoughts and noble character, and confirm the Rambam's description of his son.

In this work he argues for austerity and describes the benefit of solitude and self-examination. In the section on bitachon (trust in Hashem), he teaches that how much trust a person must have depends on his spiritual level and his closeness to Hashem, and he shows through practical examples how trust should guide a believer's actions.

He also wrote a commentary on the Torah, of which only fragments on Bereishis and Shemos survive. He concentrated on peshat rather than on derashos and aggados. The commentary preserves gems of interpretation from the Rambam and from his grandfather, Rav Maimon, along with many quotations from the Geonim, among them Rav Saadiah and Rav Shmuel ben Chofni. In his teshuvos there are also commentaries on the Neviim Rishonim, again focused on peshat. An essay on the approach to aggadah, Maamar al HaDerashos, is attributed to him and has been printed many times.

Rav Avrohom also wrote several works defending his father's seforim. Birkas Avrohom answers the arguments of Rav Daniel HaBavli against the Mishneh Torah, and Maaseh Nissim defends the Sefer HaMitzvos. When he heard of the great controversy over his father's philosophical views, he rose to the defense of the Moreh Nevuchim in an essay called Milchemos Hashem. In it he reports that many French scholars who visited Egypt, among them tosafists, were able to understand the Moreh in Rav Yehudah al-Charizi's translation and rejoiced in its discussions. He began a commentary on the Mishneh Torah that would cite the source of each ruling, and a similar commentary on the Moreh Nevuchim, but he passed away before completing them.

Later years and passing

Rav Avrohom was niftar in Fostat on 18 Kislev 4999 (1238). His son, Rav Dovid, succeeded him as Nagid.