Dear Marvin:

I just read and very much enjoyed your “Prolegomenon” to Cohen’s "The Teachings of Maimonides."

(1) What are you ibbiding to in your ibid in n. 21?

(2) For purposes of possible revision in a new edition: what you have to say about Rabad's gloss on Maimonides is reinforced from the version of that gloss preserved by Albo (your n. 32).

(3) You "read between the lines" of Strauss and Pines to conclude that they considered Maimonides a heretic. I read between your lines and conclude that you do not overly disagree with them. Am I a Satmarer if you conclude from my lines themselves and not in between, that I don’t agree with you? What the whole Strauss-Pines-Becker school has not done, it seems to me, is to lay down some hermeneutic principles for the exegesis of Maimonides if we are to take Maimonides’ own warning in his introduction radically. The code theory, while no doubt it has a certain validity, can be taken to extravagance so that the interpretation of Maimonides becomes a game where you make up your own rules. The whole effort, I feel, fails on the verifiability principle – עדות שאי אתה יכול להזימה.

(4) For over a decade I am waiting breathlessly for your theory of the RaMBaM’s three “14’s” – and again you offer a teaser but no explanation. Unfair!

I saw your boys at Yeshiva recently, and if they are doing as well as they look, you have no worries.

Warmest regards to your charming wife and daughter, and my hopes that at least one of your gang will be at Morasha this summer.

Satmaristically,

Rabbi Norman Lamm

NL/eg