I began to plan my reading of Maimonides. I filled in a reader’s card at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan, I sifted through the shelves of Judaica at the Strand Bookstore, I got permission to take out books at the Columbia University Library. I started to read several biographies of Maimonides, histories of al-Andalus, North Africa, and Egypt, books on Arab philosophy, books on the Talmud and Jewish law, histories of medieval medicine. The more I read, the vaster my subject became.
