Black-Jewish History FAQ

 

Was the great and revered rabbi Moses Ben Maimon (Maimonides) a racist?

The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion refers to Moses Maimonides, a.k.a. Rambam, as “the symbol of the pure and orthodox faith.” His Guide of the Perplexed is considered the greatest work of Jewish religious philosophy, but his view of Blacks was Hitlerian:

  1. “[T]he Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them from among them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes. For they have the external shape and lineaments of a man and a faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes.”

Several Jewish scholars have translated the “Guide,” interpreting the above passage as referring to Black Africans:

  1. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), The Guide of the Perplexed, translated and edited by Shlomo Pines; with an introductory essay by Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), Chapter 51, pp. 618-19. Moses Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed, trans. and ed. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), 2:618-19. Other translations use the term “cushites” or “blacks” in place of “Negroes.” See M. Friedlander’s translation (1904; reprint, New York: Dover, 1956), 384.

  2. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), The Guide of the Perplexed; an abridged edition with introduction and commentary by Julius Guttmann; translated from the Arabic; Dalalat al-ha’irin; English; selections by Chaim Rabin; new introduction by Daniel H. Frank (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995), p. 185.

  3. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), The Guide of the Perplexed, translated from the original and annotated by M. Friedländer (New York: Hebrew Pub. Co., 1881), pp. 279-80. Here the word “Kushites” is used.

One might also see Essays on Maimonides; An Octocentennial Volume, edited by Salo Wittmayer Baron (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941). Baron is quite explicit about the attitudes of Maimonides on slavery. On page 239, for instance, he writes, “For Maimuni [Maimonides] a slave is not fully human in matters of sex...”