Maimonides taught that the best charity builds independence

Person: Moses Maimonides
Lived: c. 1138–1204
Field: Law, philosophy, medicine
From: Andalusian-Egyptian

The story

After his family fled persecution in Spain and Morocco, Maimonides settled in Fustat, near Cairo, around 1168. He hoped to keep studying, but when his brother David, a jewellery merchant, drowned in the Indian Ocean with much of the family's money, he had to earn a living. Rabbis were unpaid at the time, so he turned to medicine, which he had studied in Spain and in Fez.

He became so renowned that he was appointed physician to Qadi al-Fadil, chief secretary to Sultan Saladin, and then to Saladin himself and his family, remaining a physician to the ruling Ayyubid dynasty after Saladin's death. In a famous letter he described visiting the palace every morning, then returning home exhausted to an antechamber full of Jews and non-Jews, nobles and common people, whom he treated until nightfall. All the while he also led Cairo's Jewish community.

His medical writings, ten known works in Arabic, described conditions including asthma, diabetes, hepatitis and pneumonia, and stressed moderation, clean air and a healthy way of life. He relied on his own observation rather than simply accepting authority. His Guide to Good Health, written for Saladin's son, was translated into Latin and printed in Florence in 1477, and his treatises influenced generations of physicians.

Alongside this work he spent ten years, roughly 1170 to 1180, writing the Mishneh Torah, the first systematic code of all Jewish law. Its fourteen books gathered every binding rule from the Talmud in clear, logical Hebrew, rather than the Arabic of most of his works. It established him as the leading rabbinic authority of his age, and later codes, including the Shulchan Aruch, drew heavily on it.

One passage of the code has travelled far beyond Judaism: his eight levels of tzedakah, or charity. The lowest is giving grudgingly. Higher levels include giving cheerfully, giving before being asked, and giving anonymously, so that neither side knows the other. The highest of all is a gift, a loan or a business partnership that makes the recipient self-sufficient, so that they no longer need to depend on others.

Maimonides died in 1204, and Egyptian Jews mourned him for three days. His name lives on in Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, in schools in the United States and Morocco and in a learning community at Tufts University School of Medicine. His ladder of giving, with self-reliance at the top, is still widely cited as a guide to helping people while preserving their dignity.

Why it matters

Maimonides' ladder of giving, with self-sufficiency at the top, is still widely taught as a guide to helping people in a way that preserves their dignity.

About Moses Maimonides

The Rambam: refugee, court physician in Cairo and author of the Mishneh Torah and the Guide for the Perplexed, the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages.

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Moses Maimonides

c. 1138–1204 · Law, philosophy, medicine

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