This week’s quiz: What does Israel have in common with Bolivia, Dominica, Grenada, Grenada-Grenadines, Guinee, Lesotho, Micronesia, Paraguay, Sierra Leone, Spain, St. Vincent, and Uruguay? The answer will follow below.
The Rambam (1135 – 1204, though many scholars now agree he actually was born in 1138, on erev Pesach) was one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of all time and is counted among the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history. Though his copious and seminal work constitutes a cornerstone of Jewish scholarship, he was also a renowned polymath – a physician, scientist, and astronomer.
Regrettably, I can only dream of owning an example of the Rambam’s handwriting but, as I described in my Nov. 7. 2014 front-page essay “Confessions of a Judaica Document Collector,” I did have a “meaningful encounter” in the British Library in London with a handwritten Rambam responsa. In that fabulous document, he writes that the doctrine of caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) has no place in Jewish law; that is, the seller has an absolute duty to disclose to the buyer all the material faults of the item known to him, and his failure to do so not only constitutes grounds for a ruling in the buyer’s favor, but also establishes a religious violation.
But I do have some very interesting documents relating to the 1935 octocentenary of what was then widely believed to be the year of the Rambam’s birth. It was a great historical event marked throughout the world. As the American Jewish Year Book (5696) noted: “The worldwide celebration of the 800th anniversary of the birth of Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, was undoubtedly the most important event of the past year in the cultural life of the Jewish people.”
Thousands of symposia, conferences, lectures, and discourses on the Rambam were held that year throughout the world, and there was an outpouring of texts and materials on the Rambam, including biographies by Solomon Zeitlin and Abraham Heschel. The Library of Congress joined in the celebration by setting up an exhibit featuring the Rambam’s writings, which was said to be the most representative collection extant of early and rare editions of his works and which included valuable editions of early writers who drew upon the Rambam’s philosophical and religious views.
Other celebrations and commemorations took place in other venues. In New York City, the Maimonides Octocentennial Committee announced that the Jews of New York would be uniting to celebrate the 800th birthday of the Rambam at Temple Emanuel on East 65th Street.
Shown here is the (rare) brochure issued by the Committee, which includes sections on Estimates of Maimonides’s Work; Why Observe the Octocentennial; Suggestions for Programs; Communal Celebrations; Maimonides Study Units in Jewish Schools; and Maimonides Sabbath – April 13, 1935 (Shabbat HaGadol).
At a May 5, 1935 gathering at the Blue Hill Avenue Shul in Roxbury, Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik delivered a drasha on the Rambam, which was followed by a performance by the New England Cantors Association. Commemorations were also held at many American Universities, including Columbia, Yale, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, Loyola, and the Catholic University of America.
In London, a community prayer service was held at the renowned Bevis Marks Synagogue (the “Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue”), which has been the shul of another prominent “Moses,” Moses Montefiore.
Shown here is a May 27, 1935 “Service of Praise and Thanksgiving” prayer booklet issued for that ceremony:
But the grandest celebration of all was held, not surprisingly, in Eretz Yisrael. In the presence of thousands of Jewish visitors from all over the country and the world, including representatives of the major Jewish organizations, the celebration of the Rambam’s birth took place in Tiberias, at his gravesite.
Shown here is a letter of invitation issued by the Central Committee for the Celebration of the Rambam to attend the ceremony in Tiberias:
Dear Brothers!
The National Committee for the Jewish Assembly in Eretz Yisrael, together with the Jewish community in Tiberias, invite you to participate in the celebration of the Rambam in the capital city of the Galilee, Tiberias, on Sunday and Monday, the third and fourth days of Chol Hamoed Pessach on April 21-22 of this year.
In these great days in our history, when the eyes of the entire nation through its dispersion are raised to our cities and all residents of our land should send the best of their children to participate with us on the day of the rejoicing of our hearts; during these days, when the capital of the Galilee will remove its clothes of bereavement…upon the gathering of its children in its midst to seek shelter under the spirit of its Great Teacher – let your place be counted among them.
The Tiberias municipality was represented at the ceremonies by Zaki-Alchariv, the Jewish mayor of the city, and Professor Selig Brodetsky of Leeds University, a member of the World Zionist Executive, greeted the assemblage. The celebration began near the grave with music followed with speeches by Jewish leaders, but soon after the commencement of the celebration a pouring rain compelled the gathering to disperse until the evening, when the rain finally stopped.
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The answer to the question posed at the top of this column is that all the nations mentioned have issued stamps in a philatelic salute to the Rambam. A selection of these stamps is displayed below.
Postal agencies around the world issued special postage stamps and souvenir sheets to commemorate the 850th anniversary of the Rambam’s birth in 1985. The first country to issue a series of stamps for the Rambam was Antigua and Barbuda, a former British colony in the Leeward chain of the West Indies, which issued a $2 stamp and $5 souvenir sheet on June 17, 1985. The Republic of Guinea, a former French colony in West Africa, followed with the release of a 7 Syli stamp and 7 Syli souvenir sheet. At the foreground of the sheet is a portrait showing the Rambam’s famous visage and at the bottom is a contemporary illustration of a rabbi reading from a Torah scroll to a group of young Jewish orphans in Israel, which evokes the Rambam’s own bar mitzvah ceremony in Cordoba, after which he was forced to flee with the other Jews when Cordoba was conquered by Muslims.
Dominica, Grenada, the Grenada Grenadines, Lesotho, and Sierra Leone issued single stamps bearing the Rambam’s likeness and emphasizing his significant medical contributions. The special souvenir sheets issued by Bolivia and Paraguay are rather rare, with only 5,000 copies of each being issued.
Earlier Rambam stamps were issued by Spain in 1967 and Grenada in 1970; a later stamp was issued by Micronesia in 2000; and Israel issued Rambam stamps in 1953.
The Rambam stamp issued by Israel in 2005 to mark 800 years since Rambam’s death is particularly interesting in its depiction of an eagle with a human head representing Rambam as “the Great Eagle” or Ha-Nesher ha Gadol, the great expounder of the Oral Torah. The eagle’s wings span the Mediterranean, the area where he lived, and at the end of the wings are Stars of David, which express his journeys from Cordoba, where he was born; through Morocco to Cairo, where he spent most his life; to Jerusalem and Acre, which he visited.
