A story of the Rambam and judging your fellow Jew

On the 4 mile walk to shull for mincha yesterday my roommate old me an interesting story about the Rmabam I thought to be related to many of my judging posts. I have recently been writing the different ways in which Jews judge each other and basically posting them to show their foolishness and well just read on:

The story goes as follows and I do not remember all the details but the basic point can be made. The Rambam used to be very controversial and many people didn’t hold of his ways of relating halacha to the modern days. So much so that many great Rabbis told their followers to burn any books by the Rambam. Some town’s decided to send a delegation of great Rabbis to see the Rambam and see if he was really crazy or it just falsified rumors and loshon harah. The Delegation gets to the Rambams house where ever he lived at the time and the Rambam decides he will play a trick on these Rabbis and see how smart they are.

In those days they did not have yayin mevushal so he calls to his servant Peter to get the wine and the Rabbis are wondering the Ramam can tell his non-Jewish servant Peter to get yayin nesech. They refuse the wine and then he takes a calf and instead of shechting it he clops it over the head with a hammer and cooks it and serves it. Then he places a cooked human hand on the table before them. This stamps the fact that its true that the Rambam is crazy and they leave satisfied with this verdict.

The Rambam tells his servant to catch up with them and bring them back. He tells them that his servant is Jewish and in the Gemara there was a Rav named Petros- which is like Peter, so they need not worry about the wine being handled. He then tells them of the halacha that if you shecht a cow and inside is an unborn calf, you do not need to shecht it. Then he says that the human hand is really a root vegetable that looks like a hand. Some poskim have thought it to be ginger, but no on really knows.

I found this story very applicable today, where besides many of us including my self not being dan-mcav-zchus we are even quicker to judge our fellow Jew based on outward things done and not thinking positively. I really liked this story and wanted to share kit with you.