Maimonides and Impakuta on Virtue

The wise ancients steered a course towards asceticism, but without going too far from the moderate behavior that remained their ultimate goal. Maimonides openly admits that the prophets were no paradigms of virtue. With Imdawud and more decisively with Maimonides, we are seeing a major shift in the Jewish intellectual tradition. No longer will rational philosophy take the form of neoplatonism, as in Imgabirol or Pius exhortation,. writes Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.