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Answer by Maurice Mizrahi for What do I do when I run into a gemara that is contrary to common sense

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Understand the Gemara the way the Rambam said to understand it:

Astrology is a disease, not a science... It is a tree under whose shadow all sorts of superstitions thrive. ... Only fools and charlatans lend value to it. [Rambam, Responsa 2:25b]

I know that you may… find sayings of… sages in the Talmud and Midrashim whose words appear to maintain that at the moment of a man's birth, the stars will cause such and such to happen to him. Do not regard this as a difficulty… Possibly the matter was hidden from them. Or there may be an allusion in those words. Or they may have been said with a view to the times and the business before them. (You surely know how many of the verses of the Torah are not to be taken literally…) [Rambam, Letter on Astrology]


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