Adam Schiff is sworn into Senate on edition of Maimonides’ Jewish legal code printed in 1490

Adam Schiff, the freshman Democratic senator from California, is being sworn into office on a 1490 edition of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, one of the most revered and prominent codes of Jewish law.

Schiff, in a statement ahead of his swearing in on Monday, said the edition, published in the duchy of Milan, now in northern Italy, was “a monumental legal code and one of the most organized, comprehensive, and influential works of Jewish law.”

The edition was published by Gershom ben Mosheh ish Sontsino, a scion of a pioneering Jewish printing family known as Soncino. A publishing house in the family’s name is still active.

Former federal prosecutor

A spokeswoman for Schiff, until this week a US Representative and a former federal prosecutor, said he chose the volume, held by the Library of Congress, in part because of his concerns about the state of the rule of law as President-elect Donald Trump returns to office.

Schiff led one of Trump’s impeachments in the president’s first term and co-chaired the congressional investigation into the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 US Capitol riot, which was spurred by Trump’s false claims he won that election. Trump, who has promised “retribution” against his perceived enemies, said this week Schiff should be jailed.

The spokeswoman said that Schiff was also attracted to the volume because of his intellectual curiosity. “It’s simply his nerdy interest in how old this volume is and how comprehensive it is,” she said.

Maimonides, also known as Rambam and considered one of history’s preeminent Jewish scholars, wrote the Mishnah Torah in the 12th century as an all-inclusive guide to the system of Jewish law. Written in Hebrew and divided into 14 volumes, it is a fixture of Jewish houses of study and other educational institutions.

Schiff is not the only Jewish elected official who in recent years chose to be sworn into office on volumes that reflect why they got into politics. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, in 2023 was sworn in on a stack of three Hebrew Bibles, including the one that was on the bimah when a gunman massacred 11 Jewish worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in 2021 was sworn in on a book of Hebrew scripture once owned by an Atlanta rabbi whose synagogue building was bombed by white supremacists in 1958.