Astrology Note Rambam’s appeal to both truth and expert opinion. Prof. Abraham Halkin, in a note to his translation (p. 142, n. 178), implicitly reduces the effect of Rambam’s appeal to authority: “Maimonides was one of the few in the Middle Ages, Jews or non-Jews, who rejected astrology, and he tried hard to disprove it.” Rambam would surely have responded that the few true scholars deny astrology and those who do not, are not. (Rambam also wrote an entire letter devoted to rejecting astrology. See R. Yitzchak Sheilat ed., Iggeros Ha-Rambam, vol. 2 p. 474ff.) In a powerful and revealing footnote (n. 54), R. Yosef Kafach.
himself a rationalist — discusses his personal struggle with astrology. When he was young, he studied books on the subject and even wrote a commentary to a medieval rabbinic treatise on astrology. On the one hand, like Ibn Ezra, he desired to understand the hidden secrets of the world. On the other, like Rambam, he was unimpressed with the discipline’s intellectual foundation. I would like to think that he overcame his Ibn Ezra-like attraction and adopted a Maimonidean rejection, but I recognize that no one — not even Rambam nor his intellectual descendants — fits nicely into preconceived categories.
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