How Maimonides overcame centuries of controver

“Maimonides rules: Throw a Torah scholar in prison? You’ve thrown away your place in the World to Come.” That is the message on a popular sticker circulated by ultra-Orthodox activists affiliated with the Ger Hasidic movement, who are currently protesting the arrests of yeshiva students accused of evading military service in Israel. The slogan draws on a ruling by Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides or the Rambam: “One who disparages the sages has no share in the World to Come.” Meanwhile, critics of the ultra-Orthodox community’s emphasis on full-time religious study often quote a different passage from Maimonides, also taken from his Laws of Torah Study: “Anyone who sets his heart on studying Torah without working, and supports himself through charity, has desecrated God’s name, disgraced the Torah, extinguished the light of religion, brought harm upon himself and forfeited his life in the World to Come.” Despite…