Solomon Maimon’s translation of his role model’s Guide for the Perplexed lies at the heart of his autobiography, attesting to his stubborn quest for knowledge above all

The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon:
The Complete Translation

---

Ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Abraham P. Socher, trans. Paul Reitter
Princeton University Press, 2019
332 pages

 

The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, published in German in 1792–3, is the memoir of a man both compelling and unlikeable, an itinerant scholar who abandons his Jewish faith (along with his wife and children) in search of truth. The author is always positive he’s right. His trenchant observations are often funny, wise, and even cruel.

Solomon was born in 1753 in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From his youth, he felt far too grand for his circumstances. Like the child of paupers who imagines himself a prince, Solomon is sure he belongs elsewhere. He therefore shows little patience for the financial failures of his parents and grandparents (though eventually he becomes even poorer than they ever were).

Maimon receives a classical Jewish education, developing into a prodigy, and his memoir describes rabbinic law reasonably accurately for the non-Jewish readership at which it was aimed.

Solomon’s early secular education is sparse, but his quest for knowledge leads him to centers of learning and important intellectuals. At first, he stays within the world of Judaism. Drawn to the Maggid of Mezritch, he has left us the sole contemporary outsider’s view of this early Hasidic court of. Maimon soon concludes that “once you’d heard one of [the Maggid’s] interpretations, you heard nothing new from the rest […] I found the combination of cynicism and extreme cheerfulness off-putting, and I began to dislike the sect intensely” (p. 97). The final straw was when one of the Hasidim had a daughter, and the Maggid responded, “A daughter! Whip him” (ibid.). The Hasidim complied. Solomon wryly reports that the whipping “put everyone – except the victim – in a good mood” (ibid.)