Dear Maimonides, by Andrew Sanders (Book of the Month, Kislev 5785)

Dear Maimonides: a discourse on religion and science is described by its author as “a major attempt to understand the ‘meaning of it all’”, using the viewpoint of someone far removed in space and time from our world. This might seem something out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—but it isn’t. It transports Yosef ben Yehudah ibn Shimon, the original addressee of Rambam’s Guide to the Perplexed, to 20^th century North America. By doing so, the author seeks to provide a new and empirical worldview that incorporates the teachings of both the ancient and the modern Jew.

Who is the man who dares to do this? Our author, Andrew Sanders, was born and raised in Hungary, where he lived through both the Holocaust and the subsequent Communist regime. Leaving Hungary at the age of 24, he was educated as a chemist, and worked in that capacity at the University of Toronto. Later, he learned computer applications, was an early practitioner of that field, became an executive of a major financial institution, eventually starting his own computer software company, which was highly successful. Thereafter he devoted his time and effort to researching and writing on Jewish subjects, from philosophy and theology to historical fiction. In 1989 he and his wife made aliyah.

This volume forms part of the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection, housed in Beit Knesset Hanassi. You are welcome to borrow it.