A Doctor Named Rambam
Rambam Medical Center – Haifa, Israel. The hospital was inaugurated in 1938.
After the unexpected death of his brother, David, in the Indian Ocean in 1177, Maimonides experienced a terrible health crisis. For a year, as he testifies in a letter addressed to Yefet Dayan that was found in the Cairo Geniza, he “fell on the bed with bad boils and inflammation, and I was almost lost.”
Until his death, David was the breadwinner of the family. This enabled Maimonides to dedicate himself entirely to community affairs and to writing the Mishneh Torah. Before the disaster, as a young man in Spain, he had achieved a reputation as an expert in the medical profession.
An important and necessary profession, it enabled the Rambam, a perpetual refugee, to find a livelihood in every country he found himself in. He subscribed to the thinking that in order for a person to gain the knowledge of God and the world, as complete knowledge as one can attain, he must first take care of, and repair, the expendable body given to him.
This important aspect of Maimonides' life and work has been honored by many entities. The most significant of these is the establishment of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, the largest medical center in northern Israel.
