From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Reference in The Chosen
"'[...]Now I am going to tell you another story, also a true story, about a Jewish boy who lived in Poland in the second half of the eighteenth century. [...] This boy, Reuven, was brilliant, literally a genius. His name was Solomon, and later in life he changed his long Polish name to Maimon. When he was young, he found that the Talmud could not satisfy his hunger for knowledge. His mind would not let him rest. He wanted to know what was happening in the outside world. German was by then a great scientific and cultural language, and he decided to teach himself to read German. But even after he learned German he was not satisfied, because the reading of secular books was forbidden. Finally at the age of twenty-five, he abandoned his wife and child and after many hardships came to Berlin where he joined a group of philosophers, read Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume and Kant, and began to write philosophical books. He had a great mind, but it never left him in peace. He wandered from city to city, never finding roots anywhere, never satisfied, and finally died at forty-seven on the estate of a kind-hearted Christian who had befriended him." from The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, Chapter Six This seems important in some way. Dwarf Kirlston 17:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
