Shalom and thank you for your question! I have now become acquainted a little with who Baruch Spinoza was, as a result of your question.
Can we ask whether or not an acorn is better than a pizza? If you are a squirrel, an acorn may be better. (Not 100 percent sure about that, not knowing much about squirrels’ tastes.) If you are a modern person in Western culture, you may prefer pizza to acorns.
Baruch Spinoza, according to my search, was a Jew who drifted away from the traditional approach to Torah learning. According to people who reject traditional religion, and more specifically Judaism, Spinoza may have been a great thinker and philosopher. He denied however, the most basic tenets of Jewish belief, for example, the concept that the Torah (which includes the five books of Moses, the books of the prophets, the stories of Esther and Ruth, and the writings of King Solomon, as well as the ‘Oral Law’ which was eventually written down in the form of the Talmud or Gemarah, and expanded in more detail throughout the generations in the form of books of Jewish law based on the Talmud,) was received by Moses from G-d and transmitted by him. The Jewish belief is that the Torah (in its entirety as described above,) is G-d’s holy will and wisdom, and the Talmud further calls it the blueprint by which the world was created.
Regarding Maimonides, Moses the son of Maimon, it is written ‘from Moses until Moses there was none like Moses.’
This means that Maimonides is considered to be one of the greatest Jewish scholars and leaders that there ever was.
Maimonides was great not only inTorah scholarship and philosophy, he was also proficient in secular philosophy and science, and earned his living as a doctor for the Egyptian king. After his official work hours in the court of the king he would treat scores of patients who had lined up to wait for him, including the poor who couldn’t pay. After that he would sit up during the night studying and writing his prolific scholarly works.
He slept very little.
When he was a boy and wished to srudy medicine, there was no medical school. In that period, people studied medicine by becoming apprenticed to an experienced doctor. Maimonides knew of a very talented Arab doctor, (I think this happened in Morocco, ) and wished to study under him. The problem was that this Arab doctor was also a known antisemite. The young Maimonides found a creative way to get around the issue. He knocked at doctor’s door dressed as a local pauper, and presented himself as a deaf-mute who wanted to earn some money by doing household chores. The doctor took him on to clean the room where he received patients. One day the doctor had to deal with a very big challenge. His patient had a worm in his head, between the brain and the skull. The doctor had made an incision in the skull, but the worm was embedded in the brain in a way that meant that removing it could damage the brain. The worm was alive. Maimonides, the ‘deaf-mute,’ saw that the doctor was at a loss. He went to the atrium and plucked a particular leaf off a tree, and entered the surgery. He placed the leaf close to the worm. Lo and behold, the worm crawled on to the leaf and the patient was saved! The doctor then realized that Maimonides had hidden his identity, and allowed him to stay and learn.
Maimonides, also know as Rambam, the acronym for ‘Rabbi Moses the son of Maimon’ in Hebrew, was indeed a great scholar, philosopher, doctor, and spiritual leader.
Now that you know a little about Maimonides, you can look up Spinoza and try to draw your own conclusions…
