Cultures in Collision

CULTURES IN COLLISION
AND CONVERSATION
Essays in the Intellectual History of the Jews
JUDAISM AND JEWISH LIFE
EDITORIAL BOARD
Geoffrey Alderman (University of Buckingham, Great Britain)
Herbert Basser (Queens University, Canada)
Donatella Ester Di Cesare (Università “La Sapienza,” Italy)
Simcha Fishbane (Touro College, New York), Series Editor
Meir Bar Ilan (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
Andreas Nachama (Touro College, Berlin)
Ira Robinson (Concordia University, Montreal)
Nissan Rubin (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
Susan Starr Sered (Suffolk University, Boston)
Reeva Spector Simon (Yeshiva University, New York)
CULTURES
INCOLLISION AND
CONVERSATION:
Essays in the Intellectual History of the Jews
DAV I D B E R G E R
Boston
2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berger, David, 1943-

Cultures in collision and conversation : essays in the intellectual history of the Jews / David Berger.
p. cm. -- (Judaism and Jewish life)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-936235-24-7 (hardback)
1. Judaism--Relations. 2. Intercultural communication--Religious aspects--Judaism. 3. Judaism--
History. 4. Jews--History. 5. Jews--Intellectual life. 6. Messianic era (Judaism) I. Title. II. Title: Essays
in the intellectual history of the Jews.
BM534.B47 2011
296.3'9--dc22
2010054451
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For Pearl
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
The Cultural Environment: Challenge and Response

Identity, Ideology, and Faith: Some Personal Reflections on the Social,
Cultural and Spiritual Value of the Academic Study of Judaism 3
Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times 21
How Did Nahmanides Propose to Resolve

the Maimonidean Controversy? 117
Miracles and the Natural Order in Nahmanides. 129
Polemic, Exegesis, Philosophy, and Science:

Reflections on the Tenacity of Ashkenazic Modes of Thought 152
Malbim’s Secular Knowledge and His Relationship to

the Spirit of the Haskalah 167
The Uses of Maimonides by Twentieth-Century Jewry 190
The Institute for Jewish Studies on its Eightieth Anniversary 203
Interpreting the Bible

‘The Wisest of All Men’: Solomon’s Wisdom in
Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Book of Kings 215
On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic and Exegesis 236
— vii —
Contents
Yearning for Redemption

Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism: Messiah
son of Joseph, Rabbinic Calculations, and the Figure of Armilus 253
Some Ironic Consequences of Maimonides’

Rationalist Approach to the Messianic Age 278
Sephardic and Ashkenazic Messianism in the Middle Ages:

An Examination of the Historiographical Controversy 289
Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: The Impact of Zionism on

Joseph Klausner’s History of the Second Temple 312
The Fragility of Religious Doctrine: Accounting for

Orthodox Acquiescence in the Belief in a Second Coming 326
Epilogue
The Image of his Father: On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
of the Death of Hadoar Author Isaiah Berger 343
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
— viii —
INTRODUCTION
The cultures that collide and converse in this book range temporally
from antiquity to the present and geographically from Israel to Europe
to the United States. As Jews embarked on a physical trajectory that they
defined as exile, they simultaneously set forth on a rich and complex
intellectual voyage that required them to confront the worldviews of their
neighbors along with internal differences of doctrine and philosophical
orientation that were themselves often born—at least in part—out of
engagement with the external environment. Thus, the culture of a small
and sometimes insular people took on an almost global character.
The first section of this volume addresses Jewish approaches to the
proper parameters of interaction with the values, beliefs, and intellectual
life of the larger society. The longest of the essays is an almost book-
length endeavor to provide an analytical overview of the range of
positions on this question in all the centers of Jewish life from the dawn
of the Middle Ages to the eve of the Enlightenment. In its most intense
form, the struggle over this issue erupted in a fierce controversy centered
on the works of Maimonides. Despite the passions engendered by these
debates, the orientations of the major protagonists were often far from
one-dimensional, and two of the essays in this section attempt to capture
the nuanced position of Nahmanides, one of the central figures of the
Jewish Middle Ages, and to assess the impact of the philosophical milieu
on one of his seminal doctrines. If the stance of an individual thinker can
defy easy classification, characterizing entire subcommunities is all the
more challenging. In the larger study, I set forth the evolving scholarly
position that no longer sees medieval Ashkenazic Jewry as isolated from
— ix —
Cultures in Collision and Conversation
its environment, but the essay on Ashkenazic modes of thought cautions

against allowing the pendulum to swing too far.
With the rise of the Jewish Enlightenment or haskalah, resistance
to significant acculturation came to be restricted to the segment of
Jewry labeled “Orthodox”—perhaps even to the smaller subdivision
assigned the particularly problematic label “ultra-Orthodox.” With
some hesitation, I have incorporated a youthful essay published in a
student journal assessing the complex position on haskalah and secular
learning of a rabbi and biblical commentator of considerable influence
who clearly belongs in the company of uncompromising traditionalists
but was nonetheless sufficiently cognizant of contemporary intellectual
currents that some adherents of the Enlightenment saw him as a model
whom the traditionalist community should strive to emulate. While
the classical Maimonidean controversy has long faded into the distant
past, Maimonides himself remains acutely relevant to any discussion of
Judaism’s embrace of “external” culture; in an essay based on an address
to a non-academic audience, I attempt to limn and assess the multiple
images of his persona proffered by contemporary Jews often seeking
themselves in the great medieval legist and philosopher.
Academic Jewish Studies are a quintessentially modern development
with an ambivalent relationship to movements of acculturation in the
medieval and modern past. If I am not entirely comfortable in describing
this field in its fullness as my ideological home, it is surely my professional
home. The first section of the book begins and ends with ideologically
charged essays with deeply personal elements addressing the challenges
and significance of an enterprise that thoughtful Jews ignore at their
intellectual and even spiritual peril.
The second, briefest section deals with the interpretation of the
Bible, but it decidedly reflects the theme of cultural interaction. The
understanding of the wisdom of Solomon among medieval commentators
varied in intriguing ways that mirror the philosophical—or non-
philosophical— orientation of the exegetes in question, and in the case
of Isaac Abravanel may even reveal traces of his experience in the royal
courts of Portugal and Spain. As to the charged question of the morality
of biblical heroes, I argue that Jewish perceptions were profoundly
affected by the nature of external challenges in both medieval and
modern times.
And then there is the End of Days. While the beliefs and movements
— x—
Introduction
analyzed in this section are almost bewildering in their thematic and

chronological variety, they all reflect the impact or at least relevance of
ideas and forces in the larger society: Rome as the paradigmatic enemy
of Israel in late antiquity; the effect of medieval rationalism on portraits
of the messianic scenario; the plausibility or implausibility of ascribing
differences in messianic activism to rationalism and non-rationalism;
the degree to which the modern redemptive movement called Zionism
could color academic analysis of the distant past; and the factors—both
sociological and religious—that have enabled a contemporary messianic
movement espousing doctrines once excluded from authentic Judaism
to achieve legitimation in the bosom of the Orthodox community.
The introduction to a collection of this sort would normally
incorporate ruminations about the personal factors that triggered the
author’s interest in the field as well as the evolution of his or her work
over a period of decades. In this case, however, I am excused from this
task because I have already fulfilled it. A companion volume published
by Academic Studies Press last year (Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue:
Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations) begins with an introduction that—
at least in part— engages precisely these questions. More important,
the opening chapter of this book provides considerable detail about
the unfolding of my scholarly work and its connection to my deepest
commitments. Finally, the epilogue about my father reveals the
wellsprings of my eventual career in a way that a routine introduction
could never convey. At this point, I will only add that the atmosphere
and ideology that suffuse Yeshiva University, where I was educated and
currently teach, place many of the issues addressed in this book at the
center of their universe of discourse, and I cannot fail to underscore
the effect of this unique institution on my approach to scholarship, to
religion, and to life.
This volume, like the earlier one, is not an exhaustive collection
of what I have written about its theme. First of all, several articles in
the volume on Jewish-Christian relations qualify as discussions of the
intellectual history of the Jews, and they are naturally not included
here. Many short pieces are not of a sufficiently scholarly nature even
though they touch upon relevant themes.1 A case could have been made
1 “Missing Milton Himmelfarb,” Commentary 123:4 (April, 2007): 54-58; “Introducing

Michael Wyschogrod,” Modern Theology 22 (2006): 673-675; “On Marriageability, Jewish
— xi —
Cultures in Collision and Conversation
for the inclusion of three review essays and several fairly substantive
reviews, but I decided to leave out material that does not stand on its
own.2 One full-fledged article whose genesis is described in the opening
chapter does not appear here despite its decidedly scholarly content and
direct relevance to the issues addressed in the first section of the book
because it is predominantly religious rather than academic in character
and motivation.3
For the same reason, I hesitated before deciding to include the
article about Lubavitch messianism. During the last fifteen years, I have
devoted much time and energy with what can generously be described
as mixed results to a religiously motivated effort to deny religious
authority within Orthodoxy to believers in the Messiahship of the
Lubavitcher Rebbe. Religious polemic of this sort does not belong in
this volume. However, the article that I incorporated proffers a relatively
irenic, primarily sociological analysis of the reasons for a phenomenon
that at first glance appears difficult to understand. Including it in this
volume provides the reader with a window into an important dimension
Identity, and the Unity of American Jewry,” in Conflict or Cooperation? Papers on Jewish
Unity (New York, 1989), pp. 69-77; “Response” in J. Gutmann et al., What Can Jewish
History Learn From Jewish Art? (New York, 1989), pp. 29-38 (a scholarly piece, but one
that cannot really stand without the article to which it responds).
The following symposia: “What Do American Jews Believe?” Commentary (August,
1996): 19-21; “Reflections on the State of Religious Zionism,” Jewish Action 60:1 (Fall,
1999), pp. 12-15; “Reflections on the Six-Day War After a Quarter-Century,” Tradition
26:4 (1992): 7-10; “Divided and Distinguished Worlds,” Tradition 26:2 (1992): 6-10
(criticism and response, Tradition 27:2 [1993]: 91-94); “The State of Orthodoxy,”
Tradition 20:1 (1982): 9-12.
2 The full review essays are “The Study of the Early Ashkenazic Rabbinate” (in Hebrew) [a
review of Avraham Grossman, Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim], Tarbiz 53 (1984): 479-487;
“Modern Orthodoxy in the United States: A Review Essay” [of Samuel C. Heilman and
Steven M. Cohen, Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America], Modern
Judaism 11 (1991): 261-272; “Must a Jew Believe Anything? [by Menachem Kellner]: A
Review Essay,” Tradition 33:4 (1999): 81-89. (I note for the record that Kellner’s response
to my review in the afterword to the second edition of his book leaves me thoroughly
unpersuaded.) I did publish one review essay in the earlier volume, but that was because it
contains an argument for the general reliability of Nahmanides’ version of the Barcelona
disputation that should in my view have a significant, even decisive, impact on this long-
debated scholarly crux. I am of course not holding my breath in the expectation that this
will actually happen.
3 “On Freedom of Inquiry in the Rambam—and Today” (with Lawrence Kaplan), The
Torah U-Madda Journal 2 (1990): 37-50. I would have of course needed Prof. Kaplan’s
permission to reprint the article in this volume, but I believe that he would have allowed
me to do so.
— xii —
Introduction
of my recent work without, I hope, undue violation of the bounds of

appropriate scholarly detachment.
I have thus far been careful not to repeat material that appeared in
the introduction to the earlier volume, but there is no point in avoiding
repetition when I need to express sentiments that I have already
formulated to the best of my ability. Here then are the final paragraphs
of that introduction with the joyful addition of a single word announcing
Shira’s arrival into the world and the family:
I am grateful to Simcha Fishbane for inviting me to publish this
collection of essays and to Meira Mintz, whose preparation of the index
served as a salutary reminder of the thoughtfulness and creativity
demanded by a task that casual observers often misperceive as routine
and mechanical. Menachem Butler was good enough to produce pdf files
of the original articles that served as the basis for the production of the
volume. I can only hope that the final product is not entirely unworthy of
their efforts as well as those of the efficient, helpful leadership and staff of
Academic Studies Press among whom I must single out Kira Nemirovsky
for her diligent and meticulous care in overseeing the production of the
final version.
I am also grateful to the original publishers of these essays for
granting permission to reprint them in this volume.
Finally, when publishing a book that represents work done over the
course of a lifetime, an author’s expression of gratitude to wife and family
embraces far more than the period needed to write a single volume.
Without Pearl, whose human qualities and intellectual and practical
talents beggar description, whatever I might have achieved would have
been set in a life largely bereft of meaning. And then there are Miriam
and Elie—and Shai, Aryeh and Sarah; Yitzhak and Ditza—and Racheli,
Sara, Tehilla, Baruch Meir, Breindy, Tova, and Batsheva; Gedalyah and
Miriam—and Shoshana, Racheli, Sheindl, Baruch Meir, and Shira. Each
of these names evokes emotions for which I am immeasurably grateful
and which I cannot even begin to express.
— xiii —
THE CULTURAL
ENVIRONMENT:
CHALLENGE AND
RESP ONSE
IDENTITY, IDEOLOGY AND FAITH:
Some Personal Reflections on the Social, Cultural
and Spiritual Value of the Academic Study of
Judaism
From: Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. by Howard Kreisel

(Beer Sheva, 2006), pp. 11-29. Delivered as the English keynote address
at a conference at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva. (The
Hebrew keynote was presented by Eliezer Schweid.) The topic and essential
title (“Personal Reflections on the Social, Cultural and Spiritual Value of the
Academic Study of Judaism”) were chosen by the organizers of the conference.
Academic Jewish Studies are a pivotal anchor of Jewish identity. It hardly

needs to be said that most identifying Jews are not practitioners of
Jewish studies, while many, if not most, are not active consumers either.
But even in a democratic age, the sort of identity that we mean when
we speak of Jewishness is molded in large measure by the minority who
seriously engage the traditions and texts of an ancient and challenging
culture.
It is commonly stated that Judaism is an unusual and perhaps
unique amalgam of peoplehood and religion and, as I once wrote in
a different context, one advantage of commonplaces is that they are
usually true. While secular Jews might want to replace the religious
component with culture or civilization, it remains clear, or it should,
that reading novels with Jewish themes, playing klezmer music,
and even living in the land of Israel and speaking Hebrew do not
in themselves confer a sense of Jewishness that provides sufficient
continuity with the historic Jewish people. Moreover, the national
component of Jewish identity is rooted not only in the reality and
centrality of a millennial tradition focused on religion, but also in
the very fact that Jews lived without a land for so many generations
— 3—
and had no choice but to define themselves through extraordinarily

powerful cultural-religious norms. To shed those norms entirely or
to understand them as altogether secondary is to denude Jewishness
of the meaning that it has accumulated over all those generations. It
follows, then, that even the most basic affirmation of Jewish identity
requires some interaction with the historic culture of the Jewish
people in its classical forms, though these forms might be transmuted
to accord with the sensibilities of contemporary secular Jews.
That the connectedness to the Jewish cultural past has been severely
attenuated or lost among massive sectors of Diaspora Jewry hardly needs
to be said, but it is only slightly more necessary to note that the same is
largely true of the Jews of Israel. After an unbalanced religious soldier
sprayed gunfire in a church in Jaffa, he was asked why he had done this.
According to the Jerusalem Post, he “said it was a shame that he had to
explain in court his motive for the shooting, which, he said, was self
explanatory and written in the Torah. His motive, he said, was to destroy
all idols, and anything which represented ‘foreign labor’ and did not relate
to Judaism.”1 Thus, avodah zarah, literally “foreign worship,” one of the
foundational conceptions in Judaism, evoked no resonance whatever for
an Israeli journalist, who thoroughly misunderstood the soldier’s intent.
Moving to somewhat more esoteric knowledge, a Hebrew reference to the
classic work of R. Saadya Gaon made use of the standard abbreviation
for the author’s name, so that the citation read “Rasag, Emunot ve-De‘ot.”
A scholar who studies medieval Jewish philosophy informs me that an
Israeli translator understood the abbreviation as a number and rendered
the reference into English as “263 Beliefs and Opinions.”
These anecdotes can be multiplied and, in the face of the depressing
reality that they illustrate, questions of more than a straightforward
educational sort arise. We must, of course, ask about what pedagogical
reforms are needed to convey knowledge of Jewish culture and history,
a question that lies outside the parameters of my assignment and of
my competence. But we must also ask how the content of that history
and that culture is to be preserved, recovered, and understood. The
elementary reply is that one consults with experts and, in the modern
world, expertise generally rests with people who have been trained, and
1 “Soldier who shot up church sent for psychiatric evaluation. Suspect says he was
destroying idols,” Jerusalem Post, May 25, 1995, p. 12.
— 4—
Identity, Ideology and Faith:
who often remain, in an academic environment. Thus, academic experts

in Jewish studies should, it would appear, serve as the highest authorities
in determining the parameters of Jewish identity, the content of Jewish
culture, perhaps even the policies of the Jewish State.
This last sentence followed ineluctably, or so it seemed, from a chain
of premises and reasoning so simple that affirming them appeared
superfluous to the point of embarrassment. Yet the real embarrassment
is the sentence itself, which cannot but elicit smiles, or worse, at the
self-importance of what the late Governor George Wallace of Alabama
described as pointy-headed intellectuals. Popular attitudes toward the
role of academics, whose disciplines cannot easily be separated from their
persons, are in fact marked by deep ambivalence. People consult experts,
but they embrace those whose views accord with their own, and often,
sometimes with good reason, direct withering contempt toward those
whose positions they reject.
We would do well, then, to approach the question before us with
due humility. Academics often disagree regarding the most fundamental
realities at the heart of their scholarly discourse. The questions of objective
meaning, of the interaction between the observer and the evidence, of
the elusiveness of truth, have become so pervasive that many important
scholars have essentially thrown in the towel, despairing of achieving
certain knowledge and embracing a multivalent reality dependant upon
the perspective of the observer. In extreme form, ideology determines
reactions to the point where respected figures inform us that in light
of the distortions in all autobiographies, Rigoberta Menchu’s wholesale
fabrications and Edward Said’s repeated misrepresentations of his
childhood are of no moment, that they are examples of the seamless
web entangling subjective and external reality.
This approach aside, even unchallenged scholarly conclusions can
be applied in very different ways in the arena of public policy, culture,
or the life of the spirit. There are lessons to be learned from history, but
they are filtered through values that are themselves rarely generated by
academic investigation. Thus, the Holocaust has been seen as evidence
that Jews must distrust, even despise, Gentiles, relying only on their
own strength and resolve, and at the same time as evidence that Jews
must treat others all the more sensitively in light of the unspeakable
suffering caused by mindless bigotry. These differing conclusions
are based on the examination of an unassailable historical reality
— 5—
recognized by both parties; it is other values that determine how that

reality will be used.
Moreover, the broad range of the term “study of Judaism”
complicates our discussion further, including as it does every discipline
in the humanities and social sciences, every chronological period, every
methodological approach. The social, cultural, and spiritual value of
investigating the evolution of halakhah is not the same as that of studying
the development of the Yiddish theater, though the latter is certainly
understood by many Jews as a manifestation of Judaism; midrashic
approaches to women and the nature of Israeli treatment of Arabs in
1948 both raise moral questions, but they can hardly be addressed within
the same framework.
This consideration, too, does not exhaust the complexities of our
inquiry, since the value of the academic study of Judaism demands
assessment in contrast to alternatives that differ from one another
profoundly. One is the abandonment of Jewish study, an option whose
consequences we have already encountered. Another is the pursuit of
such study in a traditional mode. Thus, animated debates swirl in the
Modern Orthodox, or dati-leumi, community about studying Talmud with
a critical approach that points to layers of composition and development.
A distinguished rabbi who advocates a traditional approach once
reported a remark regarding this matter in the name of Jacob Katz. The
Talmud asserts that for every forbidden food, God has provided a kosher
alternative with a similar taste (“Kol mai de-asar lan rahamana shara lan ke-
vateh”). Katz, after emerging from a lecture by an Orthodox scholar that
was suffused with the critical approach to Talmudic study, remarked, “Kol
mai de-asar lan rahamana shara lan ke-vateh. Asar lan biqqoret ha-Miqra:
shara lan biqqoret ha-Talmud.” (“Whatever God has forbidden to us, he has
permitted to us something similar to it. He has forbidden to us biblical
criticism; he has permitted to us talmudic criticism.”)
A final alternative is attachment to Judaism and its past neither
through a critical study of the tradition nor through an intense examination
of its texts in the manner of the yeshivot, but through instinct and
memory. This last word looms especially large in contemporary discourse
as the alternative to history; it is understood roughly as the construction
of a past filtered through the accumulated experience of a people, its
rituals, its beliefs, and its psychic needs, with little or no attention to the
findings of critical historians.
— 6—
In his seminal Zakhor, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi concluded with a

pessimistic peroration about the near irrelevance of academic history
to Jewish life even in a modern age in which tradition has lost much
of its force.2 But Yerushalmi’s lament, for all its rhetorical power and
large element of truth, underestimates the degree to which historical
study in an academic mode, working in tense but symbiotic concert with
mythopoeic memory, has influenced and even transformed the ideology
of Jews in the course of the last century. Jewish nationalism rested on
nostalgic memories, transmuted messianic longings, and driving social
realities, but it drew upon historical scholarship to a degree that should
not be dismissed. I have never forgotten a striking formulation that I
heard long ago from Arnold Band, whose field is not Jewish history but
Hebrew literature. The Hebrew translation of Graetz’s History, he said,
was the most influential novel in the annals of the Zionist movement.
One can, of course, argue that this is the case precisely because that
monumental study is suffused by ideology, but for all its manifold and
evident biases, it is surely a work of critical scholarship. If Graetz’s blatant
ideological Tendenz excludes him from the ranks of genuine, even great,
historians, no less is true of Gibbon.
As the Zionist movement unfolded, it defined itself through a
selective, creative reading of history. Some of this was no doubt dubious,
but precisely because Zionism saw itself as a secular movement, and
most of its leaders were in fact skeptical of beliefs held on faith, it relied
on academic historians to validate its claims. David Myers, himself a
student of Yerushalmi, has written much about the interaction between
Zionism and historiography,3 and a coterie of scholars have examined
the interplay between academic history and nationalist myth in the
Zionist understanding of the Maccabees, Massada, Bar Kokhba, and Tel
Hai.4 The nationalist moment is most blatant in the works of Joseph
Klausner, so blatant that some uncharitable observers would deny
him the status of academic historian at all.5 However that may be, the
2 Y. H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle, 1982), pp. 94-103.
3 D. N. Myers, Reinventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist
Return to History (New York and Oxford, 1995).
4 See, for example, Y. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of
Israeli National Tradition (Chicago and London, 1994).
5 See my “Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: The Impact of Zionism on Joseph Klausner’s
History of the Second Temple,” in the Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume. [Reprinted in this
volume.]
— 7—
role of the academic enterprise in the evolution of Zionist ideology is

beyond question.
In recent years, the historians’ debate about the behavior of Israelis
in 1948 provides a contemporary window into the interplay between the
pursuit of academic history and the ideological needs of a nation, or of
its critics. As in the case of cold-war revisionism in the United States and
the German controversy about the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its
relationship to the Gulag, one does not have to be a professional historian
to grasp the critical importance of the academy to the deepest interests
and most fundamental self-image of a society. While one might argue that
debates about the historical behavior of Jews are not the study of Judaism,
the line in instances like this is indistinct to the point of irrelevance.
The relationship between academic study and the establishment of a
Jewish state is not a one-way street. If the former affects perceptions of the
latter, the latter can affect the practice of the former. The establishment
of the state has allegedly provided some Israeli historians with a sense
of freedom to examine what they see as problematic Jewish behavior
with less concern for consequences than that of Diaspora scholars. Thus,
we periodically hear that unapologetic history, such as Yisrael Yuval’s
famous and controversial article arguing for a connection between the
killing of crusade-era Jewish children by their parents and the birth of
the ritual murder accusation, could only have been written in the Jewish
State.6 Whether this is true remains uncertain, and whether the era of
possible consequences has ended is regrettably even less certain, but
the perception itself testifies to the complexity and significance of the
interaction, in a new sense, between town and gown.
The value of the academic study of Judaism is not limited to the
national dimension. Since I was asked to provide personal reflections,
let me turn now to another arena reflecting my deepest personal
commitments and concerns: the intersection between the academic
study of Judaism and the living religion itself. I did not go to graduate
school in Jewish history because of an interest in history per se. I
studied the economic history of the Jews ke-illu kefa’anni shed — as if the
metaphorical demon was compelling me. The diplomatic moves of court
Jews, the battles of Judah Maccabee, the vagaries of Jewish legal standing
in the innumerable principalities of the Holy Roman Empire interested
6 See Y. Yuval, “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-‘Alilah,” Zion 58 (1992): 33-90.
— 8—
me little if at all. Learning about them was an unfortunate price that

needed to be paid to gain the necessary credential, although I have since
learned to tolerate such study and sometimes even to experience more
or less fleeting moments of mild interest. What I wanted to understand
was my religion — its texts, its thinkers, its responses to challenge from
within and without, and the parameters of its openness and resistance to
change, although fascination with the relationship between Judaism and
Christianity awakened an abiding interest in the interaction between the
bearers of those faiths that extended beyond the realm of religion alone
and into the often bloody streets of medieval Europe.
My own trajectory and motivations are surely not unique or even
unusual. It is no accident that the greatest interest in the study of
Judaism within the Israeli academy comes from the religious sector. One
might assume that secular Israelis would want to pursue the academic
study of their people and its culture no less than the religious; outside
the area of Hebrew literature and some of the social sciences, however,
this does not appear to be the case.
What, then, is the impact of academic Jewish studies on Judaism
today? In the non-Orthodox religious movements on the contemporary
Jewish landscape, the academic study of Judaism carries more weight and
authority than in any other setting. I vividly recall a remark by Gerson
Cohen at a public event held in the Jewish Theological Seminary when he
was its chancellor. Jewish historiography in an academic mode, he said,
is Torah as we understand it. Similarly, in response to initiatives within
the Reform movement that advocated a turn toward traditionalism in
a number of controversial respects, Robert Seltzer and Lance Sussman
vigorously affirmed that a critical analysis of historical development
stands at the core of Reform Judaism.7 Here again, we need to correct
7 “Just as our predecessors reconsidered their Judaism as a result of political

emancipation, Reform Judaism should continue to acknowledge the implications of
historical scholarship and the comparative study of religion, which have transformed
our understanding of the nature of religion as such. Doing so is not measuring Judaism
by an external and alien standard; it is a matter of courageous truthfulness in facing
up to the intellectual breakthroughs of the modern world that have occurred since the
Enlightenment. Modern historical consciousness requires that one always consider the
setting and context of every classical work and phase of Judaism from the emergence
of ancient Israel to the present.” (R. M. Seltzer and L. J. Sussman, “What are the Basic
Principles of Reform Judaism?” in: J. S. Lewis ed., Thinking Ahead: Toward the Next
Generation of Judaism: Essays in Honor of Oskar Brecher (Binghamton, New York, 2001),
— 9—
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s poignant assertion that history, as distinct

from memory, has little resonance in Judaism even today. At least for
the intellectual leadership of Conservative and Reform Judaism, history
takes center stage.
The social, even spiritual impact of this orientation became especially
striking when the Conservative movement needed to decide whether
or not to ordain women. Here was a decision of monumental religious
significance, one that would presumably limn the contours of the
movement for generations to come. Conservative Judaism’s rabbinic arm
has a Halakhah Committee presumably empowered to decide matters
of Jewish law. Yet, despite a largely successful effort to inject an ad hoc,
non-academic body at a preliminary stage, this issue was ultimately to
be decided by a vote of the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary,
a faculty chosen almost exclusively by academic criteria and containing
individuals whose adherence to the Conservative movement was dubious
at best. Thus, a far-reaching decision determining the trajectory and
ideology of a religious movement was to be made by academics. Now,
I do not deceive myself into thinking that Conservative Judaism would
not now be ordaining women had the Seminary faculty voted against this
step several decades ago. Larger forces would surely have reversed such a
decision by now. Nonetheless, this process is illustrative of the authority
that academic training can confer in a movement that places it near the
center of its values.
The impact of the academic study of history on a core religious
experience of Judaism exploded into public controversy a few years ago
when a prominent Conservative rabbi in the United States, speaking and
writing around the time of Passover, publicly questioned the historicity
of the exodus. His assertion surely reflected the views of a majority of
academicians in the field, but Conservative rabbis, even those who may
have agreed with the substance of his position, felt acutely uncomfortable
in the wake of such an open declaration. Generally speaking, the
Conservative rabbinate is religiously more traditional than its flock —
we recall Marshall Sklare’s famous bon mot in an earlier time that the
p. 10). “Historical Consciousness has been a primary force in shaping Reform Judaism
since the emergence of Wissenschaft des Judentums.” (L. J. Sussman and R. M. Seltzer,
“A Crisis of Confidence in the Reform Rabbinate?” Issues and Dilemmas in Israeli and
American Jewish Identities. Occasional Papers in Jewish History and Thought, No. 18 [New
York, 2002], p. 28).
— 10 —
movement has an Orthodox seminary, a Conservative rabbinate, and a

Reform laity — but in this case many rabbis (though certainly not all)
were more skeptical of tradition than a constituency unfamiliar with the
iconoclasm of contemporary archaeologists. The struggle to navigate the
tensions spawned by the interaction of academic history with religious
faith, with a critically important ritual of great social significance, with
a biblical story of the highest visibility that is evoked in innumerable
ceremonial contexts, and with a resistant laity provided a case study of
the complexity of such interaction in a movement deeply concerned with
both history and memory.
In the community of Orthodox Jews that is my primary home, the
role of academic Jewish Studies is uniquely problematic. In certain
circles, the entire academic enterprise is prohibited or suspect, and in
no realm more so than Jewish Studies, where spiritual dangers lurk in
every nook and cranny. Even in circles that permit and even value higher
academic learning, including Jewish learning, it is not professors but
rabbis who, if I may quote the most problematic Jew of all, sit on the seat
of Moses. Yet, it is precisely in such a community that the social, cultural,
and spiritual dynamics of the interaction with academic Jewish studies
are most intriguing and perhaps most fruitful.
In a recent talk at Yeshiva University, I observed that the most
arcane fields of academic Jewish studies can pulse with life in the eyes
of a committed Jew. Inter alia, I had in mind the distinguished Semitic
linguist specializing in the history of Hebrew who told me that his field
was “relevant” only at Yeshiva. Yeshiva University was, he said, a place
where he was besieged with practical questions motivated by religious
concerns, where the problem of whether a particular sheva was na‘ or nah
could actually matter, could even, for a Torah reader about to begin his
assignment, constitute an emergency. But, with all the genuine respect,
and even awe, that I feel for the knowledge and insight of my linguist
friend, his expertise is not my primary area of concern, nor do I suppose
that it is yours.
Several of the most sensitive questions in contemporary Jewish life,
questions about which the position of Orthodox Jewry matters well
beyond the inner confines of the group itself, intersect with the academic
study of Judaism and its history. These include attitudes toward secular
learning, rabbinic authority, halakhic change, and more. While some of
the ensuing discussion reflects an inner-Orthodox discourse, the briefest
— 11 —
reflection will remind us how different Israeli society would look if haredi
Jews affirmed the permissibility of higher secular education, or if the
authority of a few rabbis in matters of politics and government policy
were not seen as absolutely determinative by large segments of the
religious community.
From a non-Orthodox perspective, the question of the permissibility
and value of pursuing secular learning appears bizarre, yet within the
Orthodox community the stance affirming the desirability of that pursuit
is almost beleaguered. It is certainly possible, even without recourse
to an academic approach to classical sources, for a traditional rabbi to
conclude that secular education is desirable; a combination of ideological
propensities and a concentration on a limited array of sources is likely,
however, at least in the current environment, to inspire a position
hostile to such pursuits. An academic approach, which looks at a broader
spectrum of texts, will often point in a different direction.
To illustrate, a rabbi at Yeshiva University wrote an article more
than a decade ago arguing that a Maimonidean ruling in the section of
the Mishneh Torah dealing with idolatry forbids the study of any area
of knowledge that contains the potential of raising doubts regarding
fundamentals of the faith. Of course, the rabbi was well aware that
Maimonides was also the author of the Guide of the Perplexed, but he
dismissed this point with a generic argument about a special exception
that governed this work. In a response that I co-authored with Lawrence
Kaplan, we incorporated the content of the Guide, not merely the fact
of its existence, into a broader analysis of the issue, and noted a letter
of Maimonides in which he exhorted others to study the works of
philosophers whose heretical tendencies could not be denied.8
I must note immediately that the somewhat smug tone of these
remarks requires qualification. If certain traditionalists approach the
relevant texts with propensities to find a restrictive position, Orthodox
academics approach them with the desire to confirm their own prior
inclinations. Since the basic ethos of the academy requires openness
to unwanted conclusions, such academics cannot be certain that these
inclinations will always be confirmed. A case in point struck me quite
8 See Y. Parnes, “Torah u-Madda and Freedom of Inquiry,” The Torah u-Madda Journal 1
(1989): 68-71; L. Kaplan and D. Berger, “On Freedom of Inquiry in the Rambam — and
Today,” The Torah u-Madda Journal 2 (1990): 37-50.
— 12 —
some time ago, when I was intrigued by the convergence of two analyses
of Mendelssohn, one by Yehezkel Kaufmann in Golah ve-Nekhar and the
other by a contemporary traditionalist rabbi.
The Jewish Observer, the journal of Agudath Israel of America,
had published an article about Mendelssohn that was, at first glance,
surprisingly positive. This positive assessment, however, was designed
to serve an ideological purpose central to the Agudah: the affirmation
of the supreme importance of relying on religious authority. How is it,
the author asked, that this essentially good Jew spawned a movement
of rebellion against the Torah? The answer, he argued, is that for all his
adherence to the Torah, Mendelssohn did not submit to the judgment of
the great rabbis of his day.9
Despite this “kosher” objective, the article’s favorable assessment
of Mendelssohn aroused a storm of protest in a community where the
purported founder of the Haskalah is seen as a quintessential villain.
The journal consequently published a brief piece by the Novominsker
Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, then the youngest member of the Moezet
Gedolei ha-Torah, who argued that Mendelssohn’s world view was, in fact,
a radical one.
Admittedly, [Mendelssohn] was an observant Jew, but culturally he was a

thoroughbred German. He may have technically discharged his obligations
to Jewish law; this, however, was but a circumscribed aspect of his being.
His social and intellectual impact lay elsewhere — in the Enlightenment …
and in the cultural assimilation that he and his friends and family embraced
with such fervor.10
I doubt that Rabbi Perlow has read Golah ve-Nekhar, but his argument
was almost precisely that of Kaufmann, who made it at greater length
and no less vigorously.
Mendelssohn observed all the commandments in practice and…was

thus loyal in a dogmatic sense to the tradition of Judaism. And yet, in
Mendelssohn’s views, life, and work, there exists a profound “transformation
of values” … The old ideal of Judaism — a culture which is all religion, all
“Torah” — is no longer the ideal of Mendelssohn … His cultural ideal is far
9 See A. Shafran, “The Enigma of Moses Mendelssohn,” The Jewish Observer 19:9
(December, 1986): 12-18.
10 The Jewish Observer 19:10 (January, 1987): 13.
— 13 —
broader … In this cultural conception, “the Torah” could be assigned only

a modest place.11
Even if Rabbi Perlow did read Golah ve-Nekhar, the point about
convergence remains the same. In sum, an academic orientation, which
attempts to read the sources in all their variety and in their historical
context, can yield conclusions congenial to traditionalists as well as
modernists, though the very variety of its findings affords choices often
precluded by practitioners of a prescriptive and more narrowly focused
approach.
Elsewhere, addressing essentially the same issue, the Novominsker
made an observation far more problematic for a historian. “The
attempts that were made in past Jewish history, in medieval Spain and
in nineteenth-century Germany, to accommodate Torah life with the
culture of the times, were aimed at precisely that: accommodation, not
sanctification. Madda and the pursuit of secular wisdom is never, in any
Torah viewpoint, accorded the status of even a quasi-Torah obligation.”12
When reading this, I thought immediately of the title of an article by
Herbert Davidson addressing precisely the thinkers of medieval Spain
published twenty years before Rabbi Perlow’s remark: “The Study of
Philosophy as a Religious Obligation.”13 Several years later, when my
own book-length essay on “Judaism and General Culture in Medieval
and Early Modern Times” appeared,14 I sent it to Rabbi Perlow, without
any reference to his earlier remarks, and received a gracious response
defending his overall position on other grounds. Here, academic study
led to conclusions antithetical to assertions made out of a non-academic,
traditionalist orientation, and this raises an issue that had a brief run
several years ago as a cause célèbre: traditionalist attitudes toward the
non-ideological study of history itself.
To my mind, this controversy highlighted the inextricable link
between academic study and the most basic values affirmed by anyone
who feels a connectedness to tradition. Rabbi Simon Schwab, the late
11 Y. Kaufmann, Golah ve-Nekhar (Tel Aviv, 1928), vol. 2, pp. 28-29.

12 The Jewish Observer 27:3 (April, 1994): 13.
13 See S. D. Goitein ed., Religion in a Religious Age (Cambridge, MA, 1974), pp. 53-68.
14 See G. J. Blidstein, D. Berger, S. Z. Leiman, and A. Lichtenstein, Judaism’s Encounter
with Other Cultures: Rejection or Integration?, J. J. Schacter ed. (Northvale, N.J. and
Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 57-141.
— 14 —
rabbinic leader of the German community in New York, published an

essay arguing that objective historical research may be appropriate in
studying non-Jews, but it is inadmissible to publish findings ascribing
flaws to rabbinic figures.15 There may indeed have been such flaws, but
writing about them will only undermine the image of such rabbis, who
need to serve as models of proper behavior. Much can, and has, been
written in response to this position, most notably a lengthy article
by Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter,16 but to me the most interesting point is
an irony, almost a paradox, that reveals the critical significance of the
historical enterprise.
All arguments in traditional Judaism regarding normative positions
are, in an important sense, historical. We are not accustomed to think
of them in such terms; on the contrary, non-academic rabbinic decisors
are thought to argue, at least in their own self-perception, on the basis
of texts perceived to be divorced from history. To an important degree,
this is correct. But intellectual history is also history, and every rabbinic
decisor who cites precedent is affirming something about the views of
earlier authorities. Those views are captured in written works, but they
are also reflected in actions and in oral observations preserved in the
works or memories of others. When those who endorse Rabbi Schwab’s
position say that one should suppress the flaws of rabbis, and when
they actively do so, they refer not only to peccadilloes that all would
consider improper but to behaviors and positions that the rabbi in
question may have considered correct but contemporary traditionalists
consider wrong. Thus, one should not report that a particular rabbi said
positive things about maskilim, or that he admired Rav Kook, or that he
read secular books and newspapers. In other words, the observer, who
affirms untrammeled respect for the rabbinic figure, substitutes his own
judgment for that of the rabbi, and then appeals to that rabbi’s sanitized
image as a model for the posture of which he approves.
In his article, Rabbi Schacter made this point in the wake of a
conversation with me, and noted my citation in this context of a passage
by Yehezkel Kaufmann in an essay on a biblical theme. Bible critics, wrote
Kaufmann, create and compose verses with their own hands, and proceed
15 Rabbi Simon Schwab, Collected Writings (Lakewood, 1988), p. 234.

16 J. J. Schacter, “Facing the Truths of History,” The Torah u-Madda Journal 9 (1998-1999):
200-273.
— 15 —
to discover in them everything that they have inserted into them.17 In

our case, the objects of this tendentious intervention are people rather
than texts, but the essential process is the same.18 The very impulse to
distort history is testimony to its centrality.
Rabbinic authority itself, especially in its contemporary formulation
as da‘at Torah, evokes controversy in which historical inquiry plays a
particularly salient role. There are, of course, normative texts in play
from the Talmud to Maimonides to Nahmanides to the Sefer ha-Hinnukh
to Mikhtav me-Eliyyahu of Rabbi Eliyyahu Dessler. But the essential claim
being made, at least in its strongest form, requires the assertion that
absolute rabbinic authority in all areas of life was always recognized in
normative Judaism. In principle, at least, this assertion can be tested.
This is, of course, not the forum to perform that test, but I will say that
my overall impression is that the evidence militates against the most
extreme version of da‘at Torah in vogue in certain haredi circles, but it
also points in the direction of a greater degree of deference to rabbinic
authority than some of the more liberal elements of Modern Orthodoxy
are prepared to acknowledge.
A similar assessment seems appropriate with respect to the closely
related issue of change in Jewish law. While the most traditionalist
circles maintain that change is, and has always been, out of the question,
non-Orthodox figures, and even some in the most liberal sectors of
Orthodoxy, assert that rabbis have always succeeded in finding ways to
permit what they feel must be permitted. Blu Greenberg’s bon, or mal,
mot, “Where there is a rabbinic will, there is a halakhic way,” was provided
with a telling Hebrew translation by my distinguished brother in-law
David Shatz: “Im tirzu, ein zo halakhah.” This question has been subjected
to scholarly scrutiny by Jacob Katz, Haym Soloveitchik, Yisrael Ta-Shma,
and Daniel Sperber among others, and my sense, guided no doubt by
my own predilections, is that social, humanitarian, and ideological
factors — what I call competing religious values — have surely affected
the willingness to rethink the plain meaning of texts, but in the final
analysis the texts still matter. Here, again, the academic enterprise can
impinge, for those who allow it, on the understanding of crucial areas of
17 Y. Kaufmann, Mi-Kivshonah shel ha-Yezirah ha-Miqra’it (Tel Aviv, 1966), p. 253.
18 See “Facing the Truths of History,” p. 232, and the note there. (I am responsible for
the fundamental point, though the acknowledgment in the note, which mentions my
providing the citation from Kaufmann, can be construed in a more limited fashion.)
— 16 —
halakhah, but its application depends very much on the original values
of the rabbinic consumer of scholarly research.
In the realm of concrete decision-making in specific instances, it is
once again the case that the impact of academic scholarship does not
always point in a liberal direction. In other words, the instincts and
values usually held by academics are not necessarily upheld by the
results of their scholarly inquiry, and if they are religiously committed,
they must sometimes struggle with conclusions that they wish they
had not reached. Thus, the decision that the members of the Ethiopian
Beta Israel are Jewish was issued precisely by rabbis with the least
connection with academic scholars. The latter, however much they may
applaud the consequences of this decision, cannot honestly affirm that
the origins of the Beta Israel are to be found in the tribe of Dan; here,
liberally oriented scholars silently, and sometimes audibly, applaud the
fact that traditionalist rabbis have completely ignored the findings of
contemporary scholarship. Some academics do not hesitate to criticize
and even mock such rabbis for their insularity and their affirmation
of propositions inconsistent with scholarly findings, but on occasions
like this the very same people are capable of deriding other rabbis for
their intolerant refusal to ignore modern scholarship. One wonders, for
example, what position will be taken by such academics with respect to
the lawsuit filed by an Ethiopian cook who was fired from a Sephardi
restaurant because what she cooks would not qualify as food cooked by
a Jew (bishul Yisrael) by the standards of Sephardic pesaq even if a Jew
were to kindle the oven.
In my own case, awareness of the relevance of the academic study
of Judaism to the social, cultural and spiritual issues confronting
contemporary Jewry emerged out of largely unanticipated developments.
I am essentially a medievalist who wrote a dissertation consisting of a
critical edition with introduction, translation, and analysis of an obscure
thirteenth-century Hebrew polemic against Christianity. The number of
people worldwide who had ever heard of the Sefer Nizzahon Yashan when
I was in graduate school probably fell short of triple digits. My Master’s
thesis, on Nahmanides’ attitude toward secular learning and his stance
during the Maimonidean controversy, did deal with a central figure, but
it hardly seemed like the harbinger of a career that would address urgent
issues dividing contemporary Jews.
And yet, that Master’s thesis reflected and honed interests that turned
— 17 —
me into an advocate of the Modern Orthodox position favoring a broad

curriculum, expressed not only in the aforementioned article defending
the permissibility of reading heretical works but implicit in a book-length
study of Jewish attitudes toward general culture in medieval and modern
times to which I have also already alluded. While this was essentially
a work of scholarship, it appeared in a book commissioned by Yeshiva
University that ended with a frankly religious essay by Rabbi Aharon
Lichtenstein. In current terminology, this was “engaged scholarship”
whose larger objective was not disguised.
Perhaps more surprisingly, my work on medieval Jewish-Christian
polemic as well as the history of what is usually called anti-Semitism
propelled me into a series of contemporary controversies. The first was
deeply medieval in character, although it concerned a new movement.
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York asked me to write
a booklet with Michael Wyschogrod, a philosopher deeply interested in
Christianity, to persuade Jews to resist the blandishments of Jews for
Jesus. What emerged was one of the most polite Jewish polemics against
Christianity ever composed, one which I know had its desired effect in
at least a few instances, including the return to Judaism of a man who is
now an important figure in Jews for Judaism, a major anti-missionary
organization. In short, academic expertise was mobilized for spiritual
19
self-defense.
More broadly, I was gradually drawn into the growing and delicate
arena of Jewish-Christian dialogue, where academic expertise in earlier
encounters turns out to be critically important. Serious Christians do
not want to hold discussions solely with dilettantes whose primary
qualifications emerge out of their communal positions. Once involved, I
found myself dealing not only with directly religious questions but with
the role of the Church in historic anti-Semitism, the status of recent
efforts to shed that past, and the very practical and highly contentious
issue of the position of Christian groups regarding the State of Israel and
its confrontation with terror.20 Most recently, qafaz alai rogzo shel Mel
19 See Jews and ‘Jewish Christianity’, (New York, 1978) [reprinted by Jews for Judaism,
(Toronto 2002)].
20 “Jewish-Christian Relations: A Jewish Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies
20 (1983): 5-32 [reprinted in: N. W. Cohen ed., Essential Papers on Jewish-Christian
Relations in the United States (New York, 1990), pp. 328-361]; “Dominus Iesus and
the Jews,” America 185:7 (September 17, 2001):7-12 [reprinted in S. J. Pope and C.
— 18 —
Gibson — the controversy over Mel Gibson’s film overtook me. Academic
expertise in the New Testament, Christianity, Jewish-Christian polemic,
anti-Semitism, and contemporary dialogue turned out to be a particularly
relevant matrix of interests, and my effort to assess the debates over
“The Passion” in the May 2004 issue of Commentary reflects but one of a
multitude of requests and communal obligations thrust upon me by this
unfortunate affair.
Finally, I turn to the strangest and most unexpected development
of all. At a sheva berakhot celebration in Jerusalem, the father of the
groom introduced me to an acquaintance as follows: “This is a person who
specialized in Jewish-Christian polemics in the Middle Ages and suddenly
discovered that most of the major Jewish arguments against Christianity
now apply to Lubavitch hasidim.” We have witnessed in the last decade a
phenomenon that no Jew, academic or otherwise, could have imagined
a generation ago. A belief in classic, posthumous messianism evoking
the most obvious echoes of Christianity and Sabbatianism was born
and has become entrenched in a movement seen by virtually all Jews as
standing well within the confines of Orthodox Judaism. Its practitioners
remain accepted not merely as Orthodox Jews but as qualified Orthodox
rabbis in every respect. In this case, my academic interest in Jewish-
Christian polemic and the related field of Jewish messianism interacted
with my Orthodox beliefs to inspire an idiosyncratic campaign for the
de-legitimization of those believers, a campaign that stands in tension
with the openness and tolerance usually seen as the hallmark of the
academic personality. “I have spent much of my professional life,” I wrote,
“with the martyrs of the crusade of 1096. It is not surprising that I react
strongly when Orthodox Jewry effectively declares that on a point of
fundamental importance our martyred ancestors were wrong and their
Christian murderers were right.”21
I cannot, of course, discuss the merits of the debate on this occasion,
C. Hefling eds., Sic Et Non: Encountering Dominus Iesus (New York, 2002)]; “Dabru
Emet: Some Reservations about a Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity,”
www.bc.edu/cjlearning; “The Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the Catholic Church:
Reflections on Jewish–Catholic Relations at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century”
(in Hebrew), Hadoar 82:2 (January, 2003): 51-55; “Revisiting ‘Confrontation’ After
Forty Years: A Response to Rabbi Eugene Korn,” www.bc.edu/cjlearning.
21 The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London and Portland, Oregon
2001), p. 74. An updated Hebrew version, Ha-Rebbe Melekh ha-Mashiah, Sha‘aruriyyat ha-
Adishut, ve-ha-Iyyum ‘al Emunat Yisrael (Jerusalem 2005), recently appeared.
— 19 —
but I will say that one of the most gratifying reactions to my book was
that of Leon Wieseltier, who wrote that rarely has the academic study
of Judaism so interacted with living Judaism. I must caution you that
the book has also been described in print as Mein Kampf and its author
as Osama bin Laden.22 For our purposes, the point is not who is right
and who is wrong, but the degree to which scholarly pursuits, and of the
Middle Ages no less, can transform themselves into matters of burning
relevance to the core of the Jewish religion.
For Jews living in Israel, this assertion is by no means surprising.
A biblical scholar like Uriel Simon and an expert in medieval Jewish
philosophy like Aviezer Ravitzky, not to speak of academically based
philosophers like Yeshayahu Leibowitz and, yibbadel le-hayyim tovim va-
arukim, Eliezer Schweid have long played important roles in the social,
cultural, and spiritual discourse of the Jewish State. As we have seen,
however superficially, this role is essential, but it is also complex and
problematic. To construct the cultural and religious profile of a Jewish
society in blithe disregard of the academy is an intellectual and spiritual
failure of the first order; at the same time, the academic study of Judaism
should, in most cases, serve as the handmaiden, rather than the mistress,
of the deepest values that it helps to mold and inform.
22 See Y. Dubrowski, “Chutzpah without a Limit” (in Yiddish), Algemeiner Journal, Jan.
18, 2002. The author proudly declares that he has not read the book; he has, however,
heard about it, and this is “more than enough.”
— 20 —
Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times
JUDAISM AND GENERAL CULTURE

IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TIMES
From: Gerald J. Blidstein, David Berger, Sid Z. Leiman, and Aharon

Lichtenstein, Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection or
Integration?, edited by Jacob J. Schacter (Jason Aronson: New York, 1997),
pp. 57-141.
CONTENTS
I Prefatory Note 21
II The Dynamics of a Dilemma 22
III The Islamic Middle East and the Geonim 23
IV Muslim Spain and Maimonides 36
V The Great Struggle: Provence and Northern Spain from
the Late Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Century 51
VI The Sephardim of the Late Middle Ages 79
VII Ashkenaz 90
VIII Italian Symbiosis 99
IX The Scientific Revolution and
the Transition to Modern Times 108
Acknowledgments 115
PREFATORY NOTE
The attempt to provide an analytical overview of Jewish attitudes toward the

pursuit of general culture in the millennium from the Geonic Middle East
to the eve of the European Jewish Enlightenment is more than a daunting
task: it flirts with the sin of hubris. The limitations of both space and the
author required a narrowing and sharpening of the focus; consequently, this
essay will concentrate on high culture, on disciplines which many medieval
and early modern Jews regarded as central to their intellectual profile and
which they often saw as crucial or problematic (and sometimes both) for
— 21 —
the understanding of Judaism itself. Such disciplines usually included

philosophy and the sciences, sometimes extended to poetry, and on at least
one occasion embraced history as well. The net remains very widely cast,
but it does not take all of culture as its province.
Not only does this approach limit the scope of the pursuits to be
examined; it also excludes large segments of the medieval and early
modern Jewish populace from consideration. Thus, I have not addressed
the difficult and very important question of the cultural profile of women,
who very rarely received the education needed for full participation in
elite culture, nor have I dealt with the authors of popular literature or
the bearers of folk beliefs.
Paradoxically, however, the narrower focus also has the effect of
enlarging the scope of the analysis. The issue before us is not merely
whether or not a particular individual or community affirmed the value
of a broad curriculum. The profounder question is how the pursuit of
philosophy and other disciplines affected the understanding of Judaism
and its sacred texts. Few questions cut deeper in the intellectual history
of medieval and early modern Jewry, and while our central focus must
remain the affirmation or rejection of an inclusive cultural agenda, the
critical implications of that choice will inevitably permeate every facet
of the discussion.
THE DYNAMICS OF A DILEMMA
The medieval Jewish pursuit of philosophy and the sciences was marked
by a creative tension strikingly illustrated in a revealing paradox. The
justifications, even the genuine motivations, for this pursuit invoked
considerations of piety that lie at the heart of Judaism, and yet Jews
engaged in such study only in the presence of the external stimulus of a
vibrant non-Jewish culture. Although major sectors of medieval Jewry
believed that a divine imperative required the cultivation of learning in
the broadest sense, an enterprise shared with humanity at large could
not be perceived as quintessentially Jewish. Thus, even Jews profoundly
committed to a comprehensive intellectual agenda confronted the
unshakable instinct that it was the Torah that constituted Torah,
while they simultaneously affirmed their conviction, often confidently,
sometimes stridently, occasionally with acknowledged ambivalence,
— 22 —
that Jewish learning can be enriched by wider pursuits and that in the
final analysis these pursuits are themselves Torah. On the other side of
the divide stood those who saw “external wisdom” as a diversion from
Torah study at best and a road to heresy at worst, and yet the religious
arguments that such wisdom is not at all external often made their mark
even among advocates of the insular approach. The dynamic interplay of
these forces across a broad spectrum of Jewish communities makes the
conflict over the issue of general culture a central and intriguing leitmotif
of Jewish history in medieval and early modern times.
THE ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST AND THE GEONIM
The first cultural centers of the Jewish Middle Ages were those of Middle
Eastern Jewry under Islam, and the Islamic experience was crucial in
molding the Jewish response to the challenge of philosophical study. In
the seventh century, nascent Islam erupted out of the Arabian peninsula
into a world of highly developed cultures. Had this been the typical
conquest of an advanced society by a relatively backward people, we
might have expected the usual result of victi victoribus leges dederunt:
as in the case of the barbarian conquerors of the Roman Empire or the
ninth- and tenth-century invaders of Christian Europe, the vanquished
would have ultimately imposed their cultural patterns, in however
attenuated a form, upon the victors. The Islamic invasion, however, was
fundamentally different. The Muslim armies fought in the name of an
idea, and a supine adoption of advanced cultures would have robbed the
conquest of its very meaning. At the same time, a blithe disregard of
those cultures bordered on the impossible. Consequently, Islam, which
was still in an inchoate state in the early stages of its contact with the
Persian, Byzantine, and Jewish worlds, and whose founder had already
absorbed a variety of influences, embarked upon a creative confrontation
that helped to mold its distinctive religious culture.
The legacy of classical antiquity was transmitted to the Muslims by
a Christian society that had grappled for centuries with the tensions
between the values and doctrines of biblical revelation and those of
Greek philosophy and culture. For the Fathers of the Church, there was
no avoiding this difficult and stimulating challenge. As intellectuals
living in the heart of Greco-Roman civilization, they were by definition
— 23 —
immersed in its culture. The very tools with which patristic thinkers
approached the understanding of their faith were forged in the crucible
of the classical tradition, so that the men who molded and defined the
central doctrines of Christianity were driven by that tradition even as
they strove to transcend it. This was true even of those Fathers who
maintained a theoretical attitude of unrelieved hostility toward the legacy
of Athens, and it was surely the case for patristic figures who accepted
and sometimes even encouraged the cultivation of philosophy and the
literary arts provided that those pursuits knew their place.1
As Muslims began to struggle with this cultural challenge, a broad
spectrum of opinion developed regarding the desirability of philosophical
speculation. To suspicious conservatives, “reason” was a seductress; to
traditionalist theologians, she was a dependable handmaiden, loyally
demonstrating the validity of the faith; to the more radical philosophers, she
was the mistress and queen whose critical scrutiny was the final determinant
of all truth and falsehood.2 Jews in the Islamic world confronted a similar
1 Despite—or precisely because of—its excessively enthusiastic description of patristic

humanism, the rather old discussion in E. K. Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge, Mass., 1941), provides the most stimulating reminder of the importance
of this issue to the Fathers of the Church.
2 For an account of the Muslim absorption of “the legacy of Greece, Alexandria, and
the Orient,” which began with the sciences and turned toward philosophy by the third
quarter of the eighth century, see Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New
York and London, 1983), pp. 1-36. Note especially p. xix, where Fakhry observes that
“the most radical division caused by the introduction of Greek thought was between
the progressive element, which sought earnestly to subject the data of revelation to the
scrutiny of philosophical thought, and the conservative element, which disassociated
itself altogether from philosophy on the ground that it was either impious or
suspiciously foreign. This division continued to reappear throughout Islamic history
as a kind of geological fault, sundering the whole of Islam.”
In describing the manifestations of this rough division in a Jewish context, I have
succumbed to the widespread convention of utilizing the admittedly imperfect
term rationalist to describe one of these groups. As my good friend Professor Mark
Steiner has pointed out, philosophers use this term in a far more precise, technical
sense in an altogether different context. Intellectual historians, he argues, have not
only misappropriated it but often use it in a way that casts implicit aspersions on
traditionalists who are presumably resistant to reason. Let me indicate, then, that
by rationalist I mean someone who values the philosophical works of non-Jews or
of Jews influenced by them, who is relatively open to the prospect of modifying
the straightforward understanding (and in rare cases rejecting the authority) of
accepted Jewish texts and doctrines in light of such works, and who gravitates toward
naturalistic rather than miraculous explanation. As the remainder of this essay will
make abundantly clear, I do not regard this as a rigid, impermeable classification.
— 24 —
range of choices, but what was perhaps most important was that they
faced those choices in partnership with the dominant society. In ancient
times, the philosophical culture was part of a pagan world that stood in
stark opposition to Jewish beliefs. Under such circumstances, committed
Jews faced the alternatives of unqualified rejection of that civilization or
a lonely struggle to come to grips with the issues that it raised. Although
the philosophical culture of antiquity retained its dangers for medieval
Jews under Islam, the culture with which they were in immediate contact
confronted the legacy of the past in a fashion that joined Muslims and
Jews in a common philosophic quest.
Needless to say, there were fundamental, substantive reasons for
addressing these issues, but it is likely that the very commonality of
the enterprise served as an additional attraction for Jews. Members
of a subjected minority might well have embraced the opportunity
to join the dominant society in an intellectual quest that was held in
the highest esteem. This consideration operated with respect to many
religiously neutral facets of culture from poetry to linguistics to the
sciences. It was especially true of philosophy, which succeeded in
attaining supreme religious significance while retaining its religious
neutrality. Among the multiplicity of arguments that one hears from
Jews opposed to philosophical study, the assertion that it involves
the imitation of a specifically Muslim practice played no role precisely
because the problems addressed were undeniably as central to Judaism
as they were to Islam.
The existence of a religiously neutral or semi-neutral cultural sphere
is critically important for Jewish participation in the larger culture. The
virtual absence of such a sphere in Northern Europe before the high
Middle Ages—and to a certain degree even then—ruled out extensive
Ashkenazic involvement in the elite culture of Christendom and may
well have been the critical factor in charting the divergent courses of
Ashkenazim and Sephardim. The issue, of course, is not religious neutrality
alone. During the formative period of Middle Eastern and Iberian Jewry,
the surrounding civilization was dazzling, vibrant, endlessly stimulating.
During the formative years of Ashkenazic Jewry, the Christian society of
the North was primitive, culturally unproductive, and stimulated little
more than the instinct for self-preservation.3
3 Historians of the Carolingian Renaissance and other scholars who have rendered the
— 25 —
These central considerations were reinforced by a linguistic factor. In

the Muslim orbit, the language of culture and the language of the street
were sufficiently similar that access to one provided access to the other.
By the end of the first millennium, Arabic had become the language of
most Jews living under Islam, and mastery of the alphabet was sufficient
to open the doors to an advanced literary culture. In Northern Europe
this was not the case. Knowledge of German or even of early French did
not provide access to Latin texts, and the study of such texts had to be
preceded by a conscious decision to learn a new language.
The Jewish intellectual and mercantile class under Islam did not
merely know the rudiments of the language. The letters of Jewish
merchants that have survived in the Cairo Genizah are written in a good
Arabic style, which must reflect familiarity with some Arabic literature.4
The stylistic evidence is reinforced by the use of expressions from the
Quran and hadith. In tenth-century Mosul, a group of Jewish merchants
convened regularly to study the Bible from a philosophical perspective.5
This level of knowledge underscores an additional, crucial point about
the relationship between the cultural level of a dominant civilization
and the degree to which Jews will be integrated into their environment.
In a relatively backward society, any outsider can achieve economic
success without attaining more than a superficial familiarity with alien
modes of thought. In an advanced culture, maintaining ignorance while
achieving success requires enormous dedication to both objectives; it
may be possible, as some contemporary examples indicate, but it is
extraordinarily difficult. The upper echelons of medieval Muslim society
term Dark Ages obsolete will no doubt take umbrage at this description, but even on a
generous reading of the evidence, cultural activity took place within such narrow circles
that I do not think apologies are necessary. For an overview and reassessment of the
current status of research on early medieval Europe, see the discussion and extensive
bibliography in Richard E. Sullivan, “The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in
the History of the Middle Ages,” Speculum 64 (1989): 267-306.
For some observations on the importance of a neutral cultural sphere under Islam, see
Joseph M. Davis, “R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller, Joseph b. Isaac Ha-Levi, and Rationalism
in Ashkenazic Jewish Culture 1550-1650” (Harvard University dissertation, 1990), pp.
26-27. (Davis’s dissertation, which I shall have occasion to cite again in the section on
Ashkenazic Jewry, was submitted after this essay was substantially completed.)
4 See S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society 2 (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 180-181. This is not
to say that every Jewish merchant could read Arabic (cf. p. 179).
5 See Haggai ben Shammai, “Hug le-‘Iyyun Pilosofi ba-Miqra be-Mosul ba-Me’ah ha-
‘Asirit,” Pe‘amim 41 (Autumn, 1989): 21-31.
— 26 —
valued cultural sophistication, and a Jew who wanted access to the

movers and shakers of that society even for purely pragmatic reasons
could not allow himself to remain unfamiliar with its language, its
literature, and its thought. This is true not only for merchants; communal
leaders who wanted to lobby for essential Jewish interests also required a
sophisticated command of the surrounding culture, and the phenomenon
of the acculturated Jewish courtier, which reached maturity in Spain, was
born in this environment.
Familiarity with Arabic language and literature exercised a significant
influence on the development of a new phase in the history of Hebrew
poetry and prose. Here too the primary locus of this achievement was
Muslim Spain, where Hebrew literature attained dazzling heights, but
the beginnings were clearly rooted in the Geonic Middle East. Not
surprisingly, the most significant figure in this development was R.
Saadya Gaon, whose works often follow Arabic models and who explicitly
expressed admiration for the accomplishments of the dominant culture,
and there is reason to believe that the Gaon refined and embellished a
new literary trend that had already begun in the Jewish communities in
Egypt and Israel.6
Another pursuit which combined intellectual sophistication, prestige,
integration into the larger society, and economic success was medicine.
Medical education could be obtained privately and was part of any
advanced curriculum, and so no significant impediment limited minority
access to the field. Moreover, the service provided by a physician is so
crucial that any tendency to discriminate will be brushed aside by the all-
powerful will to live; it is no accident that those who wished to discourage
the use of Jewish doctors in Christian Europe could do so only by instilling
the fear of death by poison. It is consequently perfectly natural that both
religious minorities in the Muslim world entered the medical profession
to a degree that was entirely disproportionate to their numbers; by
the thirteenth century, this phenomenon was sufficiently striking to
impel a Muslim visitor to observe that most of the prominent Jews and
Christians in Egypt were either government officials or physicians.7
6 See the eloquent remarks of Ezra Fleisher in his “Hirhurim bi-Devar Ofyah shel Shirat
Yisrael bi-Sefarad,” Pe‘amim 2 (Summer, 1979): 15-20, and especially in his “Tarbut Yehudei
Sefarad ve-Shiratam le-Or Mimze’ei ha-Genizah,” Pe‘amim 41 (Autumn, 1989): 5-20.
7 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society 2, pp. 242-243, 247-250. See also Goitein’s “The
Medical Profession in the Light of the Cairo Genizah Documents,” Hebrew Union College
— 27 —
The flexible character of the educational system was not confined

to medicine. The absence of governmental or communal control as
the Islamic world was formulating its approach to the philosophical
enterprise meant that no societal decision had to be made about proper
curriculum, and diverse approaches could therefore coexist without
formalized pressure for homogenization. In twelfth- and thirteenth-
century Northern Europe, when medieval Christians first confronted the
issue of philosophical study seriously, the situation was quite different.
Ecclesiastical control of cathedral schools and the nascent universities
created a more homogeneous position, which both legitimated and
limited the philosophic quest. Thus, despite the persistence of diversity
even in the Christian West, one can speak of a quasi-official, religiously
domesticated philosophical approach, while Muslims and Jews faced an
array of possibilities in which virtually no option was foreclosed.
It is hardly surprising, then, that the atmosphere of tenth-century
Baghdad, which was the intellectual as well as political capital of the
newly matured Muslim civilization, resonated with a bewildering variety
of fiercely argued philosophical and religious doctrines. Two scholars
attempting to convey a sense of the environment in which R. Saadya
Gaon worked have reproduced a striking description which is well worth
citing once again. A Muslim theologian who visited Baghdad explained
why he stopped attending mass meetings for theological debate:
At the first meeting there were present not only people of various [Islamic]
sects, but also unbelievers, Magians, materialists, atheists, Jews and
Christians, in short, unbelievers of all kinds. Each group had its own leader,
whose task it was to defend its views, and every time one of the leaders
entered the room, his followers rose to their feet and remained standing
until he took his seat. In the meanwhile, the hall had become overcrowded
with people. One of the unbelievers rose and said to the assembly: we are
meeting here for a discussion. Its conditions are known to all. You, Muslims,
are not allowed to argue from your books and prophetic traditions since we
deny both. Everybody, therefore, has to limit himself to rational arguments.
The whole assembly applauded these words. So you can imagine… that after
these words I decided to withdraw. They proposed to me that I should attend
another meeting in a different hall, but I found the same calamity there.8
Annual 34 (1963): 177-194.

8 Cited from Journal Asiatique, ser. 5, vol. 2 (1853): 93 by M. Ventura, Rab Saadya Gaon
(Paris, 1934), pp. 63-64, and by Alexander Altmann in Three Jewish Philosophers (New
— 28 —
Both the vigor of the intellectual debate and the opposition to its
excesses left their mark on contemporary Jewish texts. In R. Saadya’s
Book of Beliefs and Opinions, we find the first major philosopher of the
Jewish Middle Ages arguing for the legitimacy of philosophical speculation
against explicit criticism of the entire enterprise. Any attempt to assess
the size and standing of the various parties to this dispute during the
Geonic period faces serious obstacles. Saadya himself cited the argument
that philosophical study bore the seeds of heresy and maintained that this
position is proffered only by the uneducated.9 Salo Baron has dismissed
Saadya’s assertion as “whistling in the dark.”10 Even if the Gaon’s
assessment does not result from wishful thinking alone, we cannot easily
use it to determine the extent and character of the opposition since it
may reflect Saadya’s conviction that anyone making this argument is
uneducated virtually by definition. At the same time, the passage is not
historically useless. For all of Saadya’s confidence, polemical aggressiveness,
and exalted communal standing, I doubt that he could have written this
sentence if recent Geonim or highly influential figures in the yeshivot had
maintained a vehement, public stand against philosophical study. On the
level of public policy in Saadya’s Baghdad, philosophical speculation was
either encouraged or treated with salutary neglect.
The introduction to The Book of Beliefs and Opinions vigorously sets
forth some of the basic arguments for this pursuit:
[The reader] who strives for certainty will gain in certitude, and doubt will
be lifted from the doubter, and he that believes by sheer authority will
come to believe out of insight and understanding. By the same token the
gratuitous opponent will come to a halt, and the conceited adversary will
feel ashamed.
The conviction that philosophical certainty is attainable and that

reasoned faith is superior to faith based on tradition alone underlies
York and Philadelphia, 1960), part II, pp. 13-14. At the same time, the authorities did
have a sort of inquisitorial mechanism for the enforcement of correct belief.
9 Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, translated by Samuel Rosenblatt (New
Haven, 1948), Introductory Treatise, p. 26.
10 A Social and Religious History of the Jews 8 (New York, 1958), p. 69. Baron (pp. 67-
68) also cites a ninth-century Muslim who maintained that Jews were uninvolved in
scientific pursuits because they considered “philosophical speculation to be unbelief.”
— 29 —
this argument and reflects the views of the Muslim mutakallimun

whose approach Saadya shared. Indeed, he anticipated the assertions
of later Jewish thinkers by maintaining that the Bible itself requires
such investigation. Isaiah, after all, proclaimed, “Do you not know?
Do you not hear?… Have you not understood the foundations of the
earth?” (40:21). And the Book of Job records the admonition, “Let us
know among ourselves what is good” (34:4). Not only does Saadya take
the term know as a reference to the understanding that results from
philosophical speculation; he is so convinced of this that he regards these
verses as decisive evidence that the talmudic rabbis could not possibly
have intended to ban such speculation when they forbade investigation
into “what is above and what is below, what is before and what is behind”
(M. Hagigah 2:1).11
Saadya’s confidence that reason can yield certainty is strikingly
illustrated by his application to philosophy of a talmudic statement whose
primary context was clearly that of Jewish law. The Rabbis inform us that
legal questions used to be settled through an appeals process leading up
to the high court in Jerusalem, but “ever since the number of disciples
of Hillel and Shammai increased who did not attend scholars sufficiently,
many disagreements have arisen in lsrael”(Tosefta Sanhedrin 7:1). “This
utterance of theirs,” says Saadya, speaking of the benefits of philosophical
speculation, “indicates to us that when pupils do complete their course
of study, no controversy or discord arises among them.”12 It is difficult to
argue against the sort of inquiry that is sure to lead to piety and truth.
Nonetheless, not everyone shared Saadya’s certainty. The greatest of
the Geonim other than Saadya was undoubtedly R. Hai, who flourished
in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. In some respects, his views
on these issues paralleled those of Saadya. He permitted Jewish teachers
to instruct children in mathematics and the art of writing Arabic, and
in the same ruling he agreed to allow non-Jewish children to study in
the synagogue (presumably with Jewish students) if there is no way
to prevent this without jeopardizing peaceful neighborly relations. As
Shlomo Dov Goitein has pointed out, it would appear to follow that
considerable time might be devoted to subjects other than Torah.13
11 Beliefs and Opinions, pp. 9, 27.
12 Beliefs and Opinions, p. 13.
13 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society 2, p. 177. At the same time Goitein notes that genizah
evidence does not indicate much formal study of arithmetic on the elementary level
— 30 —
A famous report informs us that R. Hai sent a student to consult the

Christian catholikos for assistance in understanding a biblical verse, and
while this does not bear directly on the question of general culture, it
reflects habits of mind that might well lead to a willingness to explore
beyond the boundaries of classical Jewish texts.14
At the same time, R. Hai had reservations about the results of
philosophical study, and our assessment of his reservations depends
to a critical extent on the authenticity of an important letter that he
reportedly addressed to R. Samuel ibn Nagrela of Spain. The letter itself
has come down to us in several versions. In the central passage that
appears in all the sources, R. Hai admonishes R. Samuel to
know that what improves the body and guides human behavior properly
is the pursuit of the Mishnah and Talmud; this is what is good for Israel.…
Anyone who removes his attention from these works and instead pursues
those other studies will totally remove the yoke of Torah from himself.
As a consequence of such behavior, a person can so confuse his mind that
he will have no compunctions about abandoning Torah and prayer. If you
should see that the people who engage in such study tell you that it is a
paved highway through which one can attain the knowledge of God, pay no
attention to them. Know that they are in fact lying to you, for you will not
find fear of sin, humility, purity, and holiness except in those who study
Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud.
A longer version of the letter preserved in the thirteenth-century Sefer

Me’irat ‘Einayim of R. Isaac of Acre places the issue in a concrete historical
context. R. Hai forbids the study of higgayon, which undoubtedly means
philosophy in this letter, and urges the constant study of Talmud in
accordance with the practice of
the beloved residents of Qairuwan and the lands of the Maghreb, may they
be blessed in the eyes of Heaven. Would that you knew of the confusion,
disputes, and undisciplined attitudes that entered the hearts of many
(pp. 177-178). For the text of R. Hai’s responsum, see Simcha Asaf, Meqorot le-Toledot
ha-Hinnukh be-Yisra’el 2 (Tel Aviv, 1930), pp. 4-5.
14 See Joseph ben Judah ibn Aqnin, Hitgallut ha-Sodot ve-Hofa‘at ha-Meorot: Perush Shir
ha-Shirim, ed. by A. S. Halkin (Jerusalem, 1964), p. 495.
Whatever the provenance of the poem Musar Haskel attributed to R. Hai, it is worth
noting the advice to teach one’s son a craft and to study “wisdom,” mathematics, and
medicine. See Asaf, Meqorot 2, p. 8.
— 31 —
people who engaged in those studies in Baghdad in the days of ‘Adud al-
Dawla [977-983] and of the doubts and disagreements that were generated
among them with respect to the foundations of the Torah to the point that
they left the boundaries of Judaism.
He goes on to say that “there arose individuals in Baghdad [apparently

somewhat later] who would have been better off as Gentiles”; indeed,
they went so far that they aroused the anger of non-Jews who were
presumably concerned about the spread of philosophical heresy that
might contaminate Muslims as well. Because of the damage that this
caused, R. Hai intervened to stop these miscreants in particular and
Jewish intellectuals in general from engaging in such pursuits. The letter
goes on to assert that even the Gaon R. Samuel b. Hofni, who had read
such material, saw the damage that resulted and refrained from doing
so any longer.
Since the days of Graetz, the authenticity of this document has been
the subject of scholarly debate. In the most recent discussion, two new,
conflicting considerations have been raised. On the one hand, the name
of the ruler in Baghdad is reported with a level of accuracy that might not
have been available to a late forger; on the other, the section preserved
in Me’irat ‘Einayim often uses the first person singular, while it was the
practice of the Geonim, without exception, to write in the first person
plural. If this letter in its entirety was written by R. Hai, it provides
fascinating information about extreme rationalism among Jews in late
tenth-century Baghdad and about a very strong Jewish counterreaction.
My own inclination, however, is to treat the document with considerable
skepticism. The unique appearance of the first person singular is surely
a weighty consideration, and an expert in the history of medieval Islam
assures me that ‘Adud al-Dawla’s name was not so obscure as to be
unavailable to a thirteenth-century Iberian forger (not to speak of an earlier
one) even in its precise form. The unconditional denunciation in the letter
is considerably stronger than what we would expect from R. Hai’s other
writings: there were a number of other appropriate opportunities in the
Gaon’s voluminous correspondence for him to have expressed such views,
and yet this passage remains unique; the assertion that R. Samuel ben
Hofni, for whom speculative pursuits were clearly of central importance,
would have abandoned them because of this incident is both implausible
in the extreme and reminiscent of other rereadings of history of the
— 32 —
sort that produced a document attesting to Maimonides’ late embrace

of kabbalah; and the specific reference to the abandonment of prayer,
an issue which is unattested as far as I know in this early period, echoes
similar charges in the literature of the Maimonidean controversy.
Whatever the authenticity of the original document, there is an
illuminating aspect to the later textual history of this letter. One of the
versions contains a brief addition clearly introduced by a reader who
wanted to soften the antiphilosophical message of the Gaon. Where R.
Hai criticized those who “pursue those other studies,” our philosophically
oriented copyist wrote “those other studies alone,” and where R. Hai
spoke about the purity and holiness of those who study Mishnah and
Talmud, our copyist wrote that these qualities will be found only in those
who study “Mishnah, Talmud, and wisdom together, not wisdom alone.”
These revisions, which were introduced by the interpolater into a letter
of Nahmanides that quotes R. Hai, have been embraced to our own day
by scholars who welcome an attenuation of the original message. In the
event that the letter itself is inauthentic, there is a certain poetic justice
in the undermining of its central point by yet another creative artist.15
15 R. Hai’s letter is most conveniently available in Ozar ha-Geonim to Hagigah, pp. 65-
66. The most recent discussion of the problem of authenticity, which cites earlier
studies, is in Amos Goldreich’s dissertation, Sefer Me’irat ‘Einayim le-Rav Yizhaq de-min
Akko (Jerusalem, 1981; Pirsumei ha-Makhon le-Limmudim Mitqaddemim, 1984), pp.
405-407. Goldreich notes Shraga Abramson’s observation about the Geonim and the
first person plural, which was made in a different context; see Abramson, Rav Nissim
Gaon (Jerusalem, 1965), p. 307. When I raised the issue in a conversation with Prof.
Abramson, he confirmed that there are no exceptions to this usage; since R. Hai became
Gaon when Samuel ibn Nagrela was a small child, the possibility that the letter was
written before the author assumed his position must, of course, be ruled out. (In a
personal communication, Menahem Ben Sasson has suggested the possibility that a
shift from plural to singular might have taken place in the course of translation from
Arabic into Hebrew.) See too Zvi Groner in ‘Alei Sefer 13 (1986): 75, no. 1099. I am
grateful to Ulrich Haarmann, my colleague at the Annenberg Research Institute when
this essay was written, for his assessment of the degree of familiarity with ‘Adud al-
Dawla in the thirteenth century.
For an example of the fortunes of the pro-philosophy version of the letter, see the
various printings of C. D. Chavel, Kitvei Rabbenu Mosheh ben Nahman (henceforth Kitvei
Ramban), beginning with Jerusalem, 1963, 1, pp. 349-350. For the initial challenge
to the letter’s authenticity, see H. Graetz, “Ein pseudoepigraphisches Sendschreiben,
angeblich von Hai Gaon an Samuel Nagid,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft
des Judenthums 11 (1862): 37-40. There is no concrete basis for Graetz’s suspicions
that the citation from R. Hai was inserted into Nahmanides’ letter by a later copyist;
consequently, if the letter is a forgery, we probably need to assume that it was produced
— 33 —
Whatever we make of the highly dubious report that R. Samuel ben

Hofni stopped perusing philosophical books as a result of a particular
incident, his study of such works is clearcut and their influence upon
him was profound. He rejected a literal understanding of the raising
of Samuel’s spirit by the witch of Endor, and according to R. Hai he
denied various miracles that the Talmud attributes to the ancient
rabbis, arguing that such miracles are associated only with prophets
and that the Talmudic reports are not “halakhah.” The point here,
if I understand the expression correctly, is not that the content of
these passages classifies them as aggadic but rather that they are not
normative in much the same way that a rejected legal position is not
normative. Here, however, normative seems synonymous with “true,”
and the utilization of this category to reject the truth of a rabbinic
narrative is striking, especially in the absence of any apparent effort
at allegorization. Indeed, the most recent study of R. Samuel’s thought
argues that his position denying these talmudic miracles stemmed from
a specifically Mu‘tazilite position on the relationship between miracles
and prophecy.16
Although various Geonim were favorably inclined toward the study
of philosophy, it is clear that the curriculum of the advanced yeshivot
was devoted to the study of Torah alone. I am unpersuaded by Goitein’s
suggestion that the reason for this was the feeling that only those whose
no later than the early months of the controversy of the 1230s and that it already
deceived Nahmanides.
16 See David Sklare, The Religious and Legal Thought of Samuel ben Hofni Gaon: Texts and
Studies in Cultural History (Harvard University dissertation, 1992), p. 74. Sklare’s
dissertation, which appeared well after the completion of this study, presents a broad
characterization of Jewish high culture in Geonic times from “extreme rationalism” to
traditionalism; see chapter four, pp. 145-210. For attitudes toward aggadah, see pp.
64-75.
On the witch of Endor, see Radaq’s discussion on I Samuel 28:25. For R. Hai’s responsum,
see Ozar ha-Geonim to Hagigah, p. 15. On R. Hai’s own reservations about the authority
of aggadah, see R. Abraham b. Isaac Av-Beit Din, Sefer ha-Eshkol, ed. by A. Auerbach
(Halberstadt, 1868), 2, p. 47. There is some confusion about R. Samuel’s views on the
talking serpent in Genesis and the talking donkey in Numbers; see the discussion in
Aaron Greenbaum, Perush ha-Torah le-Rav Shmuel ben Hofni Gaon (Jerusalem, 1979), pp.
40-41, n. 17. Whatever R. Samuel’s position may have been, there were Geonic views
that endorsed a nonliteral understanding of these accounts. For the expectation that
R. Samuel would facilitate a student’s pursuit of the sciences in addition to Mishnah
and Talmud, see I. Goldziher, “Mélanges Judéo-Arabes, XXIII,” Revue des Études Juives
50 (1905): 185, 187.
— 34 —
professional training would expose them to Greek science needed the

protection afforded by the proper study of philosophy and theology. The
private nature of philosophical instruction in the society at large made it
perfectly natural for Jews to follow the same course; more important, the
curriculum of these venerable institutions went back to pre-Islamic days,
and any effort to introduce a curricular revolution into their hallowed
halls would surely have elicited vigorous opposition. In any case, the
absence of a philosophical curriculum in the academies has led to the
recent suggestion that openness to Arabic culture by the later Geonim
resulted precisely from the weakening of the yeshivot which freed
someone like R. Samuel ben Hofni from the restraints of the traditional
framework.17
We are even told in an early Geonic responsum that Bible was not
taught in the academies. R. Natronai Gaon informs us that because
of economic pressures which required students to work, the talmudic
directive (Kiddushin 30a) that one-third of one’s time be devoted to biblical
study could no longer be observed, and the students relied upon another
talmudic statement (Sanhedrin 24a) implying that Bible, Mishnah, and
Midrash are all subsumed under Talmud. One wonders whether this was
only a result of insufficient time. The all-consuming nature of talmudic
study led to a very similar conclusion among Ashkenazic Jews; moreover,
the fact that Judaism shared the Bible with Christianity and, to a degree,
with Islam may have helped to generate an instinct that this was not
a quintessentially Jewish pursuit. Only the Talmud was the special
“mystery” of the Jewish people.18
The assertion that the Jews of Qairuwan studied Torah exclusively
may well reflect their general orientation accurately. At the same time,
we have evidence of some broader pursuits. Dunash ben Tamim of tenth-
century Qairuwan wrote several astronomical works, one of which he
composed to honor the local Muslim ruler, as well as a mathematical
treatise and a commentary to The Book of Creation (Sefer Yezirah).
Moreover, the famous question from Qairuwan about the composition
17 So Sklare, The Religious and Legal Thought of Samuel ben Hofni, pp. 96-99, 139-140. As
Sklare notes, R. Saadya himself was educated “outside the orbit of the Gaonic yeshivot.”
For Goitein’s remark, see A Mediterranean Society 2, p. 210.
18 For R. Natronai’s observation, see Asaf, Meqorot, p. 4. Cf. Rabbenu Tam’s remark in
Tosafot Qiddushin 30a, s.v. la zerikha leyomei. On the oral law as the mystery of Israel,
see Pesiqta Rabbati 5. On later reservations about biblical study, see below, n. 109.
— 35 —
of the Talmud that elicited a classic responsum by R. Sherira Gaon

may have been inspired as much by an interest in history, which is also
attested in other ways, as by Karaite pressures.19 Needless to say, the
sort of interest in history that expresses itself as a question about the
Talmud is itself a manifestation of the study of Torah, but the definition
of the boundaries between the sacred and the profane is precisely what
is at issue in much of the medieval discussion of pursuits that transcend
a narrow definition of Torah.
MUSLIM SPAIN AND MAIMONIDES
The cultural symbiosis between Judaism and Islamic civilization grew

to maturity in the Middle East during the time of the Geonim, but its
classic expression and most dazzling achievements emerged from Muslim
Spain in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. We have already seen
that linguistic acculturation is a precondition for such a symbiosis, and
familiarity with Arabic literature was one of the most important stimuli
to the development of a distinctive Jewish literary voice. Moses ibn Ezra’s
treatise on Jewish poetry contains a striking passage which reveals a
frank recognition of this process by medieval Jews themselves:
When the Arabs conquered the Andalusian peninsula… our exiles living
in that peninsula learned the various branches of wisdom in the course
of time. After toil and effort they learned the Arabic language, became
familiar with Arabic books, and plumbed the depths of their contents; thus,
the Jews became thoroughly conversant with the branches of their wisdom
and enjoyed the sweetness of their poetry. After that, God revealed the
secrets of the Hebrew language and its grammar.20
The relationship between the study of Hebrew grammar, with all that
it implies for the development of biblical exegesis, and the knowledge of a
different Semitic language is self-evident. Medieval Jews had always known
Hebrew and Aramaic, but the addition of Arabic, with its rich vocabulary
and literature, enabled grammarians to understand the meaning of a host
19 See Menahem Ben Sasson, Hevrah ve-Hanhagah bi-Qehillot Yisrael be-Afriqah ha-Zefonit
bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim—Qairuwan, 800-1057 (Hebrew University dissertation, 1983),
pp. 179, 185-186. R. Sherira’s epistle is now available in N. D. Rabinowitch’s English
translation, The Iggeres of Rav Sherira Gaon (Jerusalem, 1988).
20 Shirat Yisrael, ed. by B. Z. Halper (Leipzig, 1924), p. 63, cited in Asaf, Meqorot 2, p. 23.
— 36 —
of difficult Hebrew words and to uncover the mysteries of the Semitic

root. Unlocking the structure of the language provided a revolutionary
tool for the indisputably religious enterprise of understanding the Bible.
There can be no more eloquent testimony to the significance of this
development than the extensive appeal to grammatical analysis by R.
Abraham ibn Ezra, easily the greatest biblical exegete produced by the
Jewry of Muslim Spain. It is consequently both remarkable and revealing
that the greatest of medieval Jewish grammarians, Jonah ibn Janah,
alludes to Talmudists who regard the study of language as “superfluous,”
“useless,” “practically… heretical.”21
The unavoidable connection between grammatical investigations
and the study of non-Jewish works may well account for this attitude,
which continued in certain circles through the Middle Ages and persists
to our own day. It is difficult to think of any other consideration that
could account for so extreme an assertion as the imputation of virtual
heresy to grammarians. Considering the undeniable value of this pursuit
for biblical study, opposition could be expressed only by Jews who
attached little importance to the systematic study of the Bible itself
and regarded the Talmud as the only proper subject of intense, regular,
prolonged scrutiny. The denigration of biblical study, which we have
already touched upon and which also persists in the same circles to this
day, may well result not only from the fact that the Bible is shared with
non-Jews but from the inevitable contact that it fosters with gentile
scholarship and culture. A further consideration, which is not directly
related to our theme, may have been the concern that biblical study
undisciplined by the everpresent restraints of authoritative talmudic
commentary could itself lead to heretical conclusions in matters of both
theology and law.
Despite this evidence of opposition, the dominant culture of Andalusian
Jewry embodied an avid pursuit not only of linguistic sophistication but
of literary expression in the fullest sense. Ahad Ha-Am long ago coined
the felicitous term competitive imitation (hiqquy shel hitharut) to describe
the motivation and character of this culture,22 and later scholars have
elaborated the point with an accumulation of evidence of which Ahad
21 Sefer ha-Riqmah, ed. by M. Wilensky (Berlin, 1929), p. v, cited in Asaf, Meqorot, 2, pp.
19-20.
22 “Hiqquy ve-Hitbolelut,” in ‘Al Parashat Derakhim, 2nd ed., 1 (Berlin, 1902), p. 175.
— 37 —
Ha-Am was only dimly aware. In the words of a recent study, “Golden
Age Hebrew poetry… can be viewed as a literary discourse designed to
mediate cultural ambiguity because it signifies both the acculturation to
Arabic cultural norms and [emphasis in the original] the resistant national
consciousness of the Jewish literati who invented it.”23
Far more than ordinary intellectual competitiveness was at stake here.
The beauty of Arabic was a crucial Muslim argument for the superiority
of Islam. Since the Quran was the final, perfect revelation, it was also the
supreme exemplar of aesthetic excellence, and its language must be the
most exalted vehicle for the realization of literary perfection. When Jews
compared the richness and flexibility of Arabic vocabulary to the poverty
of medieval Hebrew, the Muslims’ argument for the manifest superiority
of their revelation undoubtedly hit home with special force. The quality
of Arabic was evident not merely from a mechanical word count or even
an analysis of the Quran; it shone from every piece of contemporary
poetry and prose.
Consequently, Jews were faced with a dual challenge. First, they had
to explain the undeniable deficiencies of the vocabulary of medieval
Hebrew. For all its terrible consequences, the exile has its uses, and
Andalusian Jews maintained that the untold riches of the Hebrew
language had gradually been lost due to the travails of the dispersion. The
numerous words that appear only rarely in the Bible and whose meaning
we must struggle to decipher are but the tip of the iceberg; they testify
to a language far more impressive than the one bequeathed to us by our
immediate ancestors.
Moreover, and far more important, Jews were challenged to
demonstrate that even the Hebrew at their disposal was at least as beautiful
as Arabic and that Hebrew literature could achieve every bit as much as
the literature of medieval Muslims. This created a religious motivation
to reproduce the full range of genres and subjects in the Arabic literary
repertoire, which meant that even the composition of poetry describing
parties devoted to wine, women, men, and song could be enveloped by at
least the penumbra of sanctity. There can be no question, of course, that
even if the genre was born out of apologetic roots, it took on a life of its
23 Ross Brann, “Andalusian Hebrew Poetry and the Hebrew Bible: Cultural Nationalism
or Cultural Ambiguity?” in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times 3, ed. by David
R. Blumenthal (Atlanta, 1988), p. 103. See also Brann’s book, The Compunctious Poet:
Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain (Baltimore, 1991).
— 38 —
own, and not every medieval wine song was preceded by a le-shem yihud;
at the same time, every such poem was a conscious expression of Jewish
pride, which in the Middle Ages had an indisputably religious coloration.
Furthermore, the power and beauty of the religious poetry of the Jews
of medieval Spain were surely made possible by the creative encounter
with Arabic models. Some of the deepest and most moving expressions of
medieval Jewish piety would have been impossible without the inspiration
of the secular literature of a competing culture.
Jews could have accomplished their fundamental goal by establishing
parity between Hebrew and Arabic, but such an achievement is
psychologically insufficient and polemically tenuous. Consequently, we
find the glorification of Hebrew over Arabic and the assertion, which we
shall find in other contexts as well, that Arabic culture, including music,
poetry, and rhetoric, was ultimately derived from the Jews.24
On a less exalted level, poetry also fulfilled a social function.
Businessmen had poems written in their honor which served the pragmatic
purpose of useful publicity as well as the psychological purpose of boosting
the ego. The ability to write poetry was the mark of an accomplished
gentleman, and this too encouraged the cultivation of the genre.25 As I
have already indicated in passing, the existence of the class of Jewish
courtiers created a firm social base for a Jewish literary and philosophic
culture. Jewish communities in Muslim Spain became dependent upon
the representation afforded by courtiers, and that representation was
impossible without a command of the surrounding culture. Since courtiers
came to expect poetic flattery, their presence and patronage gave the poet
both support and standing, although it hardly needs to be said that the
relationship between patron and poet is never an unmixed blessing.
24 The footnotes in Brann’s article provide a recent bibliography of the substantial work on
this theme. See especially A. S. Halkin, “The Medieval Jewish Attitude Toward Hebrew,”
in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. by Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp.
233-248, and Nehemiah Allony, “Teguvat R. Moshe ibn Ezra la-‘‘Arabiyya’ be-Sefer ha-
Diyyunim ve-ha-Sihot (Shirat Yisrael),” Tarbiz 42 (1972/73): 97-113 (particularly the
challenge from the beauty of the Quran on p. 101). Cf. also Norman Roth, “Jewish
Reactions to the ‘Arabiyya and the Renaissance of Hebrew in Spain,” Journal of Semitic
Studies 28 (1983): 63-84.
Le-shem yihud describes a dedicatory prayer recited by later Jews before fulfilling a
religious obligation. Despite the anachronism and the resort to Hebrew, I cannot think
of a better way to make the point.
25 See S. D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs (New York, 1955), p. 162.
— 39 —
Despite all this, disparagement of poetry and opposition to reliance

on Arabic models were not unknown among the Jews of Muslim Spain. In
some instances, however, even those who criticized what they perceived
as an overemphasis on language and rhetoric did not reject the enterprise
entirely, and there can be little doubt that the dominant social and
intellectual class regarded literary skill as a fundamental component of a
proper education. The ideal of adab, which roughly means general culture,
was embraced by many Jews, and the praises of a great man would point
to his mastery of the full range of medieval disciplines.26
Samuel ha-Nagid’s description of God’s kindness to him contains the
central elements to be sought in the well rounded Jewish intellectual:
“He endowed you [i.e., Samuel] with wisdom of His Scripture and His
Law, which are classified first among the sciences. He instructed you in
Greek knowledge and enlightened you in Arabic lore.”27 In this passage we
find only the most general categories of learning, and the sole hierarchy
of values places Torah above other pursuits. When the general sciences
are broken down in greater detail, a more nuanced picture emerges in
which philosophy takes pride of place while the remaining disciplines are
necessary both for their own sake and for their usefulness in preparing
the student for ever higher forms of study. As a result of this concept of
“propaedeutic studies,” virtually every field can bask in the reflected glory
of the queen of the sciences.
“It is certainly necessary,” writes Maimonides, “for whoever wishes
to achieve human perfection to train himself at first in the art of logic,
then in the mathematical sciences according to the proper order, then
in the natural sciences, and after that in the divine science.”28 More
complete lists include logic, mathematics, astronomy, physics, medicine,
music, building, agriculture, and a variety of studies subsumed under
26 For references and discussion, see Bezalel Safran, “Bahya ibn Pakuda’s Attitude toward
the Courtier Class,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature [1], ed. by Isadore
Twersky (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 154-196. For some tentative reservations
about the thesis of Safran’s article, see Amos Goldreich, “Ha-Meqorot ha-‘Arviyyim
ha-Efshariyyim shel ha-Havhanah bein ‘Hovot ha-Evarim’ ve-‘Hovot ha-Levavot’,” in
Mehqarim be-‘Ivrit u-ba-‘Aravit: Sefer Zikkaron le-Dov Eron, ed. by Aharon Dotan (Tel
Aviv, 1988), pp. 185, 199, nn. 22, 95.
27 Brann’s translation (p. 108) from Divan Shmuel ha-Nagid, ed. by Dov Yarden, 1
(Jerusalem, 1966), p. 58.
28 The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago and London, 1963),
1:34, p. 75.
— 40 —
metaphysics. So much significance was attributed to the propaedeutic

studies that one of the polemicists during the Maimonidean controversy
maintained that the only people who became heretics as a result of
reading The Guide of the Perplexed were those who came to it without
the proper preliminaries. This argument led him to a new application of
a famous Maimonidean admonition. No one, said Maimonides, should
approach the study of philosophy without first filling his stomach with
the “bread and meat” of biblical and talmudic law. In our context, says
Yosef b. Todros Halevi, that metaphor should be applied not to “the
written and oral Torah” but to
the other sciences like the sciences of measurement and physics and
astronomy. These are known as the educational, pedagogic sciences…
which lead the human intellect to approach the understanding of the
divine science with a generous spirit, with passion and with affection,
so that they can be compared to this world in its capacity as a gateway to
the world to come.29
Not all philosophers assigned such weight to these preparatory

studies. Thus, Abraham ibn Daud derided excessive preoccupation
with medicine, with the “still more worthless.… art of grammar and
rhetoric,” and with “strange, hypothetical” mathematical puzzles,
when the only valuable aspect of mathematics is the one that leads to
a knowledge of astronomy. Endless concentration on the means would
steal time better devoted to the end, which clearly remained the study
of metaphysics. 30
By far the most significant challenge to the prevailing ideal of the
philosophers came in R. Judah Halevi’s revolt against Andalusian Jewish
culture, a revolt so far-reaching that it actually serves to underscore
the centrality of philosophical inquiry for that culture. Halevi’s
29 Qevuzat Mikhtavim be-‘Inyenei ha-Mahaloqet ‘al Devar Sefer ha-Moreh ve-ha-Madda‘, ed.
by S. Z. H. Halberstam (Bamberg, 1875), p. 10. See Mishneh Torah, Hil. Yesodei ha-Torah
4:13. On the propaedeutic studies, see inter alia, Harry A. Wolfson, “The Classification
of Sciences in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” Hebrew Union College Jubilee Volume
(Cincinnati, 1925), pp. 263-315; A. S. Halkin, “Li-Demuto shel R. Yosef ben Yehudah ibn
‘Aqnin,” in Sefer ha-Yovel li-kevod Zevi Wolfson, ed. by Saul Lieberman (Jerusalem, 1965),
99-102; Halkin, “Yedaiah Bedershi’s Apology,” Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
ed. by Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 170; Halkin, “Ha-Herem ‘al
Limmud ha-Pilosophiah,” Peraqim 1 (1967-68): 41; Baron, History 8, p. 143.
30 Sefer ha-Emunah ha-Ramah (Frankfurt a. M., 1852), Part 2, Introduction, p. 45.
— 41 —
accomplishments as a poet and abilities as a thinker made him a sterling

example of what Jewish adab strove to produce; when he revolted against
the values of the Jewish elite, he challenged the very underpinnings of
his society.31 This challenge finds expression in his poetry, in his decision
to abandon Spain for the land of Israel, and in his antiphilosophical
philosophical work, the Kuzari.
Halevi substituted a deeply romantic, historically founded, revelation-
centered, strikingly ethnocentric faith for the philosophically oriented
religion of many of his peers. At the same time, the Kuzari operates within
the matrix of medieval philosophical conceptions. Halevi could no more
rid himself of the active intellect than a contemporary religious critic of
evolution could deny the existence of atoms or DNA. More important,
the antiphilosophical position of the Kuzari is an integral part of Halevi’s
revulsion at fawning courtiers, at Jewish groveling disguising itself as
competitive imitation, at much of what “the exile of Jerusalem that is in
Spain” stood for. It is no accident that his famous line denouncing Greek
wisdom for producing flowers but no fruit and for affirming the eternity
of matter is part of a poem justifying his decision to abandon Spain for
the land of Israel. To the degree that Halevi’s position developed in stages,
there can be little doubt that the radical social critique gave birth to the
philosophical revisionism; he clearly did not decide to leave Spain as a
consequence of his rethinking of the role of philosophical speculation.
If he did, however, the point would be even stronger. Nothing could
demonstrate more clearly the degree to which the philosophic quest had
become part of the warp and woof of Spanish Jewish civilization.
Halevi’s insistence on the radical superiority not only of Judaism
but also of the Jewish people has disturbed and perplexed many
readers, particularly in light of his assertion that even proselytes can
never hope to attain prophecy. His position can probably be understood
best if we recognize that the roots of his revolt lay not so much in an
intellectual reappraisal as in a visceral disgust with the humiliation and
self-degradation that he saw in the Jewish courtier culture. He describes
acquaintances who attempted to persuade him to remain in Spain as
drunk and unworthy of a response.
31 For a powerful depiction of Halevi’s revolt, see Gerson D. Cohen’s discussion in his
edition of Abraham ibn Daud, Sefer ha-Qabbalah (The Book of Tradition) (Philadelphia,
1967), pp. 295-300.
— 42 —
How can they offer him bliss/through the service of kings,/which in his
eyes/is like the service of idols?/Is it good that a wholehearted and upright
man/should be offered the happiness/of a bird tied up in the hands of
youths,/in the service of Philistines,/of Hagarites and Hittites,/as alien
gods/seduce his soul/to seek their will/and forsake the will of God,/to
betray the Creator/and serve creatures instead?
I have already noted the psychological inadequacy of attempting to

demonstrate that Jews are just as good as non-Jews; in such a case, the
standard of comparison remains the alien culture which Jews strive to
match and imitate. Though Halevi was not the only one to assert that
Jewish culture was not merely equal but superior, he appears to have
regarded the protestations of others as halfhearted, inadequate, even
pathetic. There was certainly nothing in the philosophical enterprise in
its standard form that had the potential to demonstrate the superiority
of Judaism over Islam. In Christian societies, philosophical arguments
offered the opportunity of establishing the implausibility, even the
impossibility, of distinctive Christian dogmas; in a society with a
dominant religion which Maimonides himself described as impeccably
monotheistic, this option was precluded. The only way to overcome the
status of “despised people,” a characterization which appears in the
very title of the Kuzari, was to cut the Gordian knot and declare one’s
emancipation from the usual rules of the philosophical game. Judaism
rests on a unique revelation, not a common philosophic consensus; Jews
are set apart and above, their status ingrained and unapproachable even
through conversion. Only such a position could speak to the psychic
impulses that lay at the very roots of Halevi’s revolt.32
32 For the poetic passage quoted, see Hayyim Schirmann, Ha-Shirah ha-‘Ivrit bi-Sefarad
u-bi-Provence 1 (Jerusalem, 1954), p. 498. For the passage about Greek wisdom, see pp.
493-494.
Several very recent studies have grappled with Halevi’s position on the second class
status of converts. Daniel J. Lasker’s “Proselyte Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in
the Thought of Judah Halevi,” Jewish Quarterly Review 81 (1990): 75-91, addresses
the issue without any effort to mitigate the sharpness of Halevi’s assertion. Attempts
to provide such mitigation appear in Lippman Bodoff, “Was Yehudah Halevi Racist?,”
Judaism 38 (1989): 174-184, and in Steven Schwartzschild, “Proselytism and Ethnicism
in R. Yehudah HaLevy,” in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard Lewis and
Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden, 1992), pp. 27-41.
There is a talmudic passage which could have served as a source for Halevi’s position
about the denial of prophecy to proselytes. See Kiddushin 71b for the assertion that
God rests his presence (shekhinah) only on families of unimpeachable Jewish lineage.
— 43 —
Halevi’s assertion that one who accepts Judaism because of faith in

the revelation is better than one who tries to approach it through the
clever application of reason did not prevent him from maintaining, along
with many other medieval Jews, that much of the wisdom of ancient
Greece and Rome was derived from Jewish sources. Since the travails of
exile have led to the loss not only of much of the Hebrew language but
also of ancient Jewish wisdom, that wisdom has come to be associated
with the Greeks and Romans. In the hands of rationalists, this argument
served not only as an assertion of Jewish pride but as a legitimation of
philosophical study. The wisdom of Solomon had to be redeemed from
gentile hands. To a later figure like Nahmanides, whose attitude toward
speculation was complex and ambivalent, the fact that gentiles have
been influenced by ancient Jewish learning was unassailable, but the
lessons to be drawn were less clear. Since the crucial Jewish wisdom
had been preserved within the fold, and the material embedded in
the books of the Greeks could be recovered only through explorations
fraught with spiritual peril, the decision to embark on such exploration
required careful, even agonizing deliberation. Despite this ambivalence,
the dominant message of the conviction that philosophy was purloined
from the Jews was undoubtedly to establish its Jewish legitimacy and
perhaps even its standing as a component of Torah itself.33
The position of medieval rationalists concerning the relationship
between philosophy and Torah is crucial to our entire discussion, and
it explains my scrupulous avoidance of the tempting and common term
“secular studies.” There was nothing secular about metaphysics, and
because of the preparatory character of many other disciplines, they
too assumed religious value. We have already seen Saadya’s arguments
for the existence of a religious obligation to engage in philosophical
speculation, and similar arguments recur throughout the Jewish Middle
Ages. Abraham, we are told repeatedly, attained his knowledge of God
through philosophical proofs. We are commanded to “know this day…
that the Lord is God” (Deut. 4:39). David instructed Solomon, “Know
the God of your father, and serve him with a whole heart and a willing
soul” (I Chron. 28:9). Jeremiah wrote, “Let him that glories glory in
33 Kuzari 2:26; 66. Cf., inter multa alia, Guide 1:71. Many of the relevant references have
been summarized in Norman Roth, “The ‘Theft of Philosophy’ by the Greeks from the
Jews,” Classical Folia 22 (1978): 53-67. For Nahmanides, see Kitvei Ramban 1, p. 339,
and see below for his overall stance.
— 44 —
this, that he understands and knows me. . . , says the Lord” (Jer. 9:23).34
These proof-texts, of course, were not unassailable, and antirationalists
argued that there are superior ways of reaching God. Halevi, for example,
cleverly reversed the rationalists’ argument that Abraham had attained
philosophical knowledge of God. The patriarch had indeed pursued
philosophical understanding, but the Rabbis tell us that when God told
him to go outdoors (Gen. 15:5), he was really telling him to abandon
astrology and listen to the divine promise. In this context, astrology is
merely an example of “all forms of syllogistic wisdom,” which are to be
left behind once direct revelation has been attained.35
The argument for speculation, however, was not wholly dependent
upon proof-texts. If love of God, clearly a quintessential religious value,
was to have any real meaning, it could flow only from a knowledge of
the Creator’s handiwork, and this required a pursuit of the sciences.
Moreover, the knowledge of God that comes from tradition alone
is inherently insufficient and is in any event secondary rather than
primary knowledge. Only those intellectually unfit for speculation
can be excused from this obligation; others who neglect their duty are
guilty of what R. Bahya ibn Paqudah called “laziness and contempt for
the word of God and his Law” and will be called to account for their
dereliction.36
A secondary argument pointed to the desirability, even the obligation,
of impressing the gentiles with the wisdom and understanding of the
Jewish people (cf. Deut. 4:6; Shabbat 75a). Bahya made this point with
exceptional vigor by maintaining that gentile recognition of Jewish
wisdom can come only if Jews prove the truth of their faith
by logical arguments and by reasonable testimony. For God has promised

to unveil the minds of the nations of their ignorance and to show His
bright light to prove the truth of our religion, as it is said, “And many
peoples shall go and say, Come yet and let us go up to the mountain of
the Lord, to the House of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His
ways, and we will walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the Law,
34 On these and other arguments, see Herbert A. Davidson, “The Study of Philosophy as
a Religious Obligation,” in Religion in a Religious Age, ed. by S. D. Goitein (Cambridge,
Mass., 1974), pp. 53-68.
35 Kuzari 4:17, 27.
36 The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, trans. by Menahem Mansour (London,
1973), Introduction, p. 94.
— 45 —
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3). Thus it becomes
a certainty to us, through logic, Scripture, and tradition, that we are
obligated to speculate upon every matter the truth of which is conceivable
to our minds. 37
This is a remarkable formulation. The object to Bahya is not merely to

cause gentiles to admire Jewish wisdom. Jewish philosophical expertise
is the medium of an eschatological missionary endeavor. Non-Jews
will accept the truth of Judaism at the end of days not because of a
supernatural deus ex machina but because of the persuasive powers,
aided no doubt by God, of Jewish philosophical arguments. Maimonides’
well-known view that gentile recognition of the truth at the end of days
will come through gradual preparation mediated by Christianity and
Islam rather than through a sudden, miraculous upheaval may well be
adumbrated in this strikingly naturalistic position in The Duties of the
Heart. In any event, Bahya has assigned philosophy nothing less than a
messianic function.
In a famous and controversial extended metaphor, Maimonides
graphically illustrated his conviction that philosophy alone affords the
highest level of religious insight. Near the end of his Guide, he tells us
that the varying levels of people’s apprehension of God can be classified
by analogy with the inhabitants of a city who seek the palace of the king.
People who have no doctrinal belief are like individuals who have not
entered the city at all. Those who have engaged in speculation but have
reached erroneous conclusions can be compared with people within the
city who have turned their backs on the palace. Then there are those
who seek the palace but never see it: “the multitude of the adherents of
the Law,… the ignoramuses who observe the commandments.” We then
come to those who reach the palace but do not enter it: “the jurists who
believe true opinions on the basis of traditional authority and study
the law concerning the practices of divine service, but do not engage in
speculation concerning the fundamental principles of religion.” At long
last we come to those who have “plunged into speculation.” Only one
“who has achieved demonstration, to the extent that that is possible, of
everything that may be demonstrated… has come to be with the ruler
in the inner part of the habitation.”38
37 The Duties of the Heart, ch. I., p. 115.
38 Guide 3:51, pp. 618-619.
— 46 —
The supreme value that Maimonides attributed to philosophical

speculation does not in itself demonstrate that he classified it as Torah.
Several passages in the first book of his code, however, establish this clearly
and reinforce the pride of place that he assigned to such speculation in his
hierarchy of values. The first two chapters of the code deal in summary
fashion with metaphysical questions which Maimonides then tells us
represent what the Rabbis called the “account of the chariot.” The next
two chapters set forth the essentials of astronomy and physics which, says
Maimonides, are “the account of creation.” In combination, these chapters
constitute what the Talmud calls pardes, which is clearly a term for the
secrets of the Torah. Later he informs us explicitly that “the subjects called
pardes are subsumed under the rubric gemara,” and in the Guide he describes
the philosophical discussion of divine attributes, creation, providence, and
the nature of prophecy as the mysteries and secrets of the Torah.
This, however, is not the end of it. Alone among medieval Talmudists,
Maimonides took literally a rabbinic statement that the talmudic
discussions between Abbaye and Rava are considered “a small matter”
compared with the account of the chariot, which is “a great matter.” Since
the account of the chariot means metaphysical speculation, the value
judgment expressed here is wholly consistent with the palace metaphor
in the Guide and, to many medieval observers, no less disturbing. 39
What renders Maimonides’ position all the more striking is its potential
implications for talmudic study. The introduction to his code contains
a famous observation that it will now be possible to study the written
39 See Hil. Yesodei ha-Torah 2:11-12; 4:10, 13; Hil. Talmud Torah 1:11-12; Guide 1:35.
Isadore Twersky has devoted a number of important studies to Maimonides’ views
on these questions. See especially his Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh
Torah) (New Haven, 1980), pp. 356-514, esp. pp. 488-507; “Some Non-Halakhic Aspects
of the Mishneh Torah,” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, pp. 95-118; “Religion
and Law,” in Religion in a Religious Age, pp. 69-82. That Bahya regarded metaphysics
as Torah may be reflected in his admonition that one must study metaphysics, but
it is forbidden to do so (as in the case of Torah itself) for worldly benefit. See Safran,
“Bahya ibn Pakuda’s Attitude” (above, n. 26), p. 160. For a halakhic analysis of
Maimonides’ position on the status of philosophical inquiry as a technical fulfillment
of the commandment to study Torah, see Aharon Kahn, “Li-Qevi‘at ha-Hefza shel
Talmud Torah,” Beit Yosef Shaul: Qovez Hiddushei Torah 3 (1989): 373-374, 386-403. In
Kahn’s view, even Maimonides believed that only philosophical discussions centered
on sacred texts qualify for the status of Torah. While Kahn’s interesting argument is
based on instincts that are (and should be) difficult to overcome, the hard evidence for
the conclusion remains rather thin.
— 47 —
Torah, followed by “this [book],” from which the reader will know the oral
Torah, so that it will be unnecessary to read any other book in between.
The possibility that Maimonides meant to render the Talmud obsolete was
raised in his own time, and he vigorously denied any such intention in a
letter to R. Pinhas ha-Dayyan of Alexandria. Nonetheless, the tone of even
this letter reveals an attitude not wholly typical of medieval Talmudists,
and some of Maimonides’ epistles to his student Joseph ben Judah express
relatively sharp reservations about extreme preoccupation with details of
talmudic discussions at the expense of other pursuits.
In the letter to R. Pinhas he testifies that he has not taught the Mishneh
Torah for a year and a half because most of his students wanted to study
R. Isaac Alfasi’s legally oriented abridgment of the Talmud; as for the
two students who wanted to study the Talmud itself, Maimonides taught
them the tractates that they requested. Although he goes on to insist
that he wrote the code only for people who are incapable of plumbing the
depths of the Talmud, this description of his students certainly does not
convey single-minded devotion to teaching the talmudic text.
Far more striking are the letters to Joseph ben Judah. In one section
of this collection, Maimonides predicts that the time will come when
all Israel will study the Mishneh Torah alone with the exception of those
who are looking for something on which to spend their entire lives even
though it achieves no end. Elsewhere he permits Joseph to open a school
but urges him to pursue trade and study medicine along with his learning
of Torah; moreover, he says,
Teach only the code of R. Isaac Alfasi and compare it with the Composition
[i.e., the Mishneh Torah]. If you find a disagreement, know that careful
study of the Talmud brought it about, and study the relevant passage. If
you fritter away your time with commentaries and explanations of talmudic
discussions and those matters from which we have excused people, time
will be wasted and useful results will be diminished.
Finally, a slightly later citation quotes Maimonides to the effect

that talmudic scholars waste their time on the detailed discussions of
the Talmud as if those discussions were an end in themselves; in fact
their only purpose was to make the determinations necessary for proper
observance of the commandments.40
40 Iggerot le-Rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon, ed. and trans. by Yosef Kafih (Jerusalem, 1972),
— 48 —
These passages do not make explicit reference to what it is that one

should do with the time saved by the study of the Mishneh Torah. It is
perfectly clear, however, that Maimonides had in mind more than the
study of medicine and the merchant’s trade. One of the functions of his
great halakhic work was to expand the opportunities for the pursuit of
philosophical speculation.
Despite the frequency, clarity, vigor, and certainty with which
Maimonides affirmed the supreme value of speculation and its standing at
the pinnacle of Torah, the poetry and pathos of a single powerful passage
reveal how all this can sometimes be overshadowed by the unshakable
instinct of which I spoke at the outset: the instinct that it is the Torah
that constitutes Torah. In his correspondence with R. Jonathan ha-Kohen
of Lunel, Maimonides addressed various questions about specific rulings
in his code. He was clearly moved by the informed reverence toward his
magnum opus that he found among the rabbis of Provence and looked
back with nostalgia on the years that he devoted to its composition. His
formulation is both striking and problematic:
I, Moses, inform the glorious Rabbi R. Jonathan ha-Kohen and the other
scholars reading my work: Before I was formed in the stomach the Torah
knew me, and before I came forth from the womb she dedicated me to
her study [cf. Jer. 1:5] and appointed me to have her fountains erupt
outward. She is my beloved, the wife of my youth, in whose love I have
been immersed since early years. Yet many foreign women have become
her rivals, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. The
Lord knows that they were not taken at the outset except to serve her as
perfumers and cooks and bakers. Nonetheless, the time allotted to her has
now been reduced, for my heart has been divided into many parts through
the pursuit of all sorts of wisdom.41
There are no doubt ways to mitigate the incongruity of this passage.

First, the allusion may well be to ancillary, propaedeutic studies whose
status as “handmaidens of theology” was well established; neither
metaphysics nor, arguably, even physics are necessarily included.
Moreover, just a few lines later the letter concludes, “May the Lord,
blessed be He, help us and you study His Torah and understand His unity
so that we may not stumble, and let the verse be fulfilled in our own time,
pp. 126, 134, 136.

41 Teshuvot ha-Rambam, ed. by Jehoshua Blau, 2nd ed., 3 (Jerusalem, 1986), p. 57.
— 49 —
‘I will put my Torah in their inward parts and write it on their hearts’”
(Jer. 31:33). Nonetheless, the passionate wistfulness of Maimonides’
tone leaves me resistant to efforts at integrating this outburst of religious
nostalgia seamlessly into the web of his thought.42 One almost suspects
that as Maimonides recovered from the surge of emotion that overcame
him, he purposely inserted the crucial phrase into his final sentence so
that no one should suspect that he had renounced some of his central
commitments. We are witness here to a fascinating and revealing
glimpse of the capacity of an unphilosophical, almost atavistic love for
old-fashioned Torah to overwhelm, if only for a moment, the intellectual
convictions of the very paradigm of philosophical rationalism.
Aside from the special case of Halevi, we have little direct evidence
of principled opposition to philosophy in Muslim Spain. Some of the
polemical remarks in the works of Bahya, Maimonides, and others
reveal the unsurprising information that there existed Talmudists
who looked upon the enterprise with a jaundiced eye and resisted
efforts to reread rabbinic texts in the light of philosophical doctrines.
Nonetheless, there was no concerted opposition whose work has
come down to us, and Samuel ibn Nagrella is a striking, early example
of a figure of some stature in talmudic studies who represented the
full range of adab. Moreover, we can probably be confident that the
greatest Spanish Talmudist of the twelfth century did not maintain
a vigorous antiphilosophical stance. R. Joseph ibn Migash, who
taught Maimonides’ father, did not, as far as we know, produce any
philosophical work. At the same time, given Maimonides’ oft-expressed
contempt for Talmudists who opposed speculation, the great reverence
with which he described his illustrious predecessor would be difficult
to understand if ibn Migash was counted among them, and R. Abraham
Maimonides listed him among the luminaries who “strengthened
the faith that they inherited from their fathers… to know with the
42 See the attempt in Yosef Kafih, “Limmudei ‘Ноl’ be-Mishnat ha-Rambam,” Ketavim
2 (Jerusalem, 1989), p. 594, where the author nevertheless expresses doubts about
Maimondes’ authorship of these remarks. See too Rashba’s comment in Abba Mari b.
Joseph, Sefer Minhat Qenaot (Pressburg, 1838), p. 40=Teshuvot ha-Rashba, ed. by Haim
Z. Dimitrovsky 1 (Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 342-343; Profiat Duran, Ma‘aseh Efod (Vienna,
1865), pp. 15-16. The immense religious value that Maimonides attached to philosophy
as well as his ongoing philosophical scrutiny of Jewish religious texts would render this
passage problematic even if we were to accept Kahn’s conclusion that philosophical
inquiry must be based on Jewish sources in order to qualify as Torah. See above, n. 39.
— 50 —
eye of their intellect and the understanding of their mind” that God
cannot be conceived in corporeal terms.43 As in the case of Saadya’s
Baghdad, many Spanish Talmudists probably treated philosophy with
salutary neglect while others, probably including ibn Migash, looked
upon it with some favor even though it was not their particular field
of expertise. With few significant exceptions, Spanish Jewry under
Islam was unambiguously hospitable to the pursuit of philosophy, the
sciences, and the literary arts.
THE GREAT STRUGGLE: PROVENCE AND

NORTHERN SPAIN FROM THE LATE TWELFTH
TO THE EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The great religious value of philosophy was inextricably intertwined

with its great religious danger. Since reason and revelation were rooted
in the same source, they could not conflict with one another;44 at the
same time, the study of philosophic texts generated a host of problems
for traditional conceptions, particularly as Aristotelianism launched its
triumphant march across the medieval intellectual landscape. To most
believers, God had created the world out of nothing; to Aristotelians, a
form of primeval matter had always existed. To the traditional believer,
God’s knowledge extended to the most minute details affecting the lowest
of creatures, and his loving providence was over “all his handiwork”
(Psalms 145:9); to the Aristotelian, he did not know particulars at all.
To the person of faith, celestial reward awaited each righteous individual
as a separate entity; to the Aristotelian philosopher, the soul’s survival
depended upon intellectual attainments and took a collective rather
43 See Abraham Maimonides, Milhamot Hashem, ed. by Reuven Margaliyot (Jerusalem,

1953), pp. 49-50. With respect to direct evidence, however, note Israel Ta-Shema’s
remark that “we do not have a scintilla of information on his pursuit of philosophy,
grammar, or science”; see “Yezirato ha-Sifrutit shel Rabbenu Yosef ha-Levi ibn
Migash,” Kiryat Sefer 46 (1971): 137. In light of Abraham Maimonides’ statement, this
formulation may be a shade too vigorous.
44 For a sharp formulation of this point, see Norman Roth, Maimonides: Essays and Texts,
850th Anniversary (Madison, 1985), p. 94. He argues that from the point of view
of medieval Jewish and Muslim rationalists there can be no conflict because “what
prophetic revelation brings in the way of flashes of light to the masses, the philosopher
sees in the full blaze of rational illumination.”
— 51 —
than an individual form. One is tempted to paraphrase Maimonides’

exalted assessment of metaphysics by observing that these are indeed
not small matters.
Medieval thinkers had a wide range of options in dealing with such
issues. At one end of the spectrum were those who rejected philosophical
inquiry on principle. On the other were those who accepted virtually
the full corpus of Aristotelian conclusions and maintained that revealed
religion, which should not be consulted for the answers to ultimate
questions, was intended as a political instrument for ordering the life
of the masses. Ranged between these extremes were the large majority
of thinkers with greater or lesser inclinations toward the preservation
of traditional beliefs. In any given instance, one could argue that the
philosophical position was unproven and unpersuasive or that the
standard religious conception was not essential or had been misconstrued.
The last approach was both controversial and fruitful because it required
not only a rethinking of doctrine but a reinterpretation of classic texts.
The allegorical understanding of both biblical and Talmudic material is
consequently an integral and significant part of our story. The attitudes of
Jews toward general culture had a profound impact on their conceptions
of Judaism itself.
The battle over philosophical study became a major theme in medieval
Jewish history as a result of a watershed event: the migration of many
Spanish Jews to Southern France in the wake of the Almohade conquest
of the late 1140s. This conquest brought the history of Andalusian Jewry
to a tragic end and opened a new chapter in the relationship between
Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews. A number of the exiles moved only as far
north as Christian Spain, where some of them translated scientific and
philosophical works that helped to transfer the advanced culture of the
Muslim world into the ever more curious Christian Europe of the twelfth
century. While this dimension of cultural activity did not play a central
role within the Jewish community itself, it was a development of major
importance in the evolution of European civilization.45
45 See M. Steinschneider’s classic Die Hebraeischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters und die
Juden als Dolmetscher (Berlin, 1893). For a readable survey of medieval translations
and the Jews, see section II of Charles Singer’s “The Jewish Factor in Medieval
Thought,” in The Legacy of Israel, ed. by Edwyn R. Bevan and Charles Singer (Oxford,
1927), pp. 202-245. On earlier contacts between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, see the
important reassessment by Avraham Grossman, “Bein Sefarad le-Zarfat: ha-Qesharim
— 52 —
From an internal Jewish perspective, the major acts in this drama

were to be played out in the south of France.46 For the first time,
substantial numbers of Ashkenazim and Sephardim confronted one
another in the same community, and the immigrants resisted any
assimilation into the cultural patterns of the native Ashkenazim. On
the contrary, one senses a degree of self-confident assertiveness that
borders on cultural imperialism. The Provençal Jews needed to defend
even their halakhic traditions against a Sephardic effort to impose the
rulings of R. Isaac Alfasi, and the Spanish Jews brought with them a
feeling of almost contemptuous superiority toward those who were
untrained in the broader culture of the Andalusian elite. What made
this challenge particularly effective was the inability of the Jews of
Provence to point to their own unambiguous superiority in Torah
narrowly construed. Although the immigrants themselves could offer
no Talmudists to compete with R. Abraham b. David of Posquières or
R. Zerahiah HaLevi of Lunel, they could point to a substantial cohort
of distinguished rabbis produced by their native culture along with its
philosophical achievements.
Under such circumstances, the argument that pursuit of philosophy
enhanced religion by providing insight into the nature of God was
difficult to resist. At the same time, the deviations from traditional
religious conceptions that philosophy brought in its wake could not but
cause concern in a society that was being exposed to such ideas for the
first time, and the argument from the dangers of philosophical heresy
loomed large. It may well be that this dialectic was responsible for one
of the most important developments in the history of Judaism: the rise
of mysticism as a highly visible factor in the intellectual constellation of
medieval Jewry.
The central component of Jewish mysticism in the Middle Ages was its
theosophic doctrine. Without detracting from the significance of ecstatic
kabbalah, there can be little doubt that one seeking to understand the
bein Qehillot Yisra’el she-bi-Sefarad ha-Muslemit u-bein Qehillot Zarfat,” in Galut

Ahar Golah: Mehqarim be-Toledot ‘Am Yisrael Muggashim li-Professor Haim Beinart, ed.
by A. Mirsky, A. Grossman, and Y. Kaplan (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 75-101. See now
his Hakhmei Zarfat ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 554-571.
46 For a characterization of Provençal Jewish culture in this period, see Isadore Twersky,
“Aspects of the Social and Cultural History of Provençal Jewry,” in Jewish Society through
the Ages, ed. by H. H. Ben Sasson and S. Ettinger (New York, 1971), pp. 185-207.
— 53 —
attraction of esoteric lore in the initial stages of its popularity must look
at its doctrinal rather than its experiential aspects. Such an examination
reveals that kabbalah provided the perfect solution, at least to people
with a receptive religious personality, to the critical intellectual issue
that confronted Jews at precisely the time and place in which mysticism
began to spread.
The essential claim made by kabbalists was that God had revealed
an esoteric teaching to Moses in addition to the exoteric Torah. This
secret lore uncovered the deeper meaning of the Torah, and it also taught
initiates the true nature of God and creation; it is here, not in Aristotelian
physics and metaphysics, that one must seek the meaning of the accounts
of creation and of the chariot. Indeed, a recent study has argued that
longstanding mystical doctrines were now at least partially publicized
because the bearers of these doctrines could not suffer in silence the
Maimonidean-style claim that the rabbis had referred to gentile
disciplines as the secrets of the Torah. However that may be, kabbalah
offered a revealed key to precisely the knowledge that philosophers
sought. By locating that key in an inner Jewish tradition, kabbalists
could argue that philosophy with all its dangers was superfluous, and
even though Rabbinic tradition had attributed spiritual peril to the study
of mystical secrets, one could hardly compare the potential for heresy
in the pursuit of revealed truth to the dangers of studying Aristotle.
Even without reference to the problem of heresy, kabbalah promised the
late twelfth-century Provençal Jew all that philosophy offered and more,
since human reason is fallible while the word of God is not. Small wonder
that Jewish thinkers began to respond, and mysticism embarked on a
path that would lead it toward a pre-eminent position in Jewish piety
and religious thought by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.47
The penetration of Sephardic philosophical culture into Southern
France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries produced the
47 I made the essential point in “Miracles and the Natural Order in Nahmanides,” in
Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity,
ed. by Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England, 1983), p. 111. Cf.
the citation from A.S. Halkin in note 17 there. On the suggestion that mystics were
responding to the claim that Aristotelian doctrines are the secrets of the Torah, see
Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven and London, 1988), p. 253, and
much more fully in sections I and II of his “Maimonides and Kabbalah,” in Studies in
Maimonides, ed. by Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England, 1990),
pp. 31-50.
— 54 —
first great conflict over the propriety of rationalistic speculation. The

Maimonidean controversy erupted in the early 1230s as a result of the
perception by R. Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier that the study
of certain works of Maimonides was leading people into heresy. Though
the internal Jewish dynamic that we have been examining could have
set these events in motion without any external impetus, there can be
little doubt that the atmosphere of early thirteenth-century Christian
Languedoc aided and abetted the process. The century had begun with
the Albigensian Crusade, and the decade of the Jewish controversy was
also witness to the birth of an inquisition aimed at Christian heresies.
R. Solomon sent his distinguished student R. Jonah to bring the
writings in question to the attention of his natural allies, the rabbis of
Northern France. As a result of this initiative, the rabbis of the North
proclaimed a ban against The Guide of the Perplexed and the first, quasi-
philosophical section of the Mishneh Torah (“The Book of Knowledge”). At
this point, the defenders of Maimonides in the South proclaimed a ban
against R. Solomon and his disciples and sent the biblical commentator
R. David Kimhi (Radak) to their natural allies in what was now Christian
Spain to obtain support for the second ban.
Radak discovered to his surprise that a mixed reception awaited him.
While some Spanish communities affirmed the ban enthusiastically,
the distinguished physician R. Judah Alfakar refused to offer support
and instead wrote several sharp letters expressing his reservations
about Maimonides’ Guide. The ambivalence that Radak encountered
in Spain speaks volumes for the fact that the direction of influence in
the Sephardi-Ashkenazi confrontation of the previous decades was not
reflected exclusively in the adoption of a philosophical culture by some
Ashkenazim. The Ashkenazi impact on many Sephardim was no less
profound. In some cases, this influence came through Southern France; in
others, it was direct. Whatever the medium, however, Radak discovered a
transformed Spanish Jewry whose attitude toward the culture produced
by its own forebears could no longer be predicted with confidence.
This transformation is also evident in a letter by Nahmanides
that we shall have to examine later in which he attempted, with some
success, to bring the controversy to a close. In the meantime, events in
Montpellier overtook developments in Spain. Zealous anti-Maimonists
approached local ecclesiastical authorities with what they presented
as heretical Jewish books, and the churchmen obliged by burning the
— 55 —
controversial works of Maimonides. Indignant Maimonists complained

to lay authorities apparently unhappy with ecclesiastical intervention,
and the anti-Maimonist delators were promptly punished by having
a part of their tongues cut off. Contemporary Maimonists evinced no
dismay at the harshness of the penalty; on the contrary, they regarded
it as an appropriate divine retribution for an offense whose seriousness
in the medieval Jewish context could hardly be exaggerated. Though
the internal Jewish controversy did not end immediately after these
events, it began to die down, and the works of Maimonides remained
undisturbed for decades to come.48
The issues raised in the substantial corpus of letters written during
this controversy reveal the concerns, the tactics, and the deeply held
convictions of most of the parties to the dispute. Regrettably, we possess
only one letter from R. Solomon ben Abraham himself. It is of no small
interest that he denies requesting a ban against the Guide and “The Book
of Knowledge” and that he makes a point of his careful, sympathetic study
of Maimonides’ code in his yeshivah. What concerned him, he writes, was
that some Provençal Jews had affirmed extreme philosophical positions
that went so far as the allegorization of the story of Cain and Abel and
even of the commandments themselves. R. Meir HaLevi Abulafia, who
had questioned Maimonides’ view of resurrection three decades earlier,
reports that R. Solomon was motivated by a concern about rationalists
who “wish to break the yoke of the commandments” by denying that God
really cares for ritual observances. All God wants, they maintained, is that
people know him philosophically; whether the body is pure or impure,
hungry or thirsty, is quite irrelevant. R. Meir’s brother Yosef b. Todros
speaks of Jews who argued that all the words of the Torah and rabbinic
tradition are allegories, who mocked the belief in miracles, and who
regarded themselves as exempt from prayer and phylacteries. To what
48 The clarity of this brief summary obscures the obscurity of the events. For an admirable
effort to reconstruct the chronology of the controversy, see A. Schochet, “Berurim
be-Parashat ha-Pulmus ha-Rishon ‘al Sifrei ha-Rambam,” Zion 36 (1971): 27-60,
which takes account of the important sources in Joseph Shatzmiller, “Li-Temunat
ha-Mahaloqet ha-Rishonah ‘al Kitvei ha-Rambam,” Zion 34 (1969): 126-144. Cf. the
earlier works by Joseph Sarachek, Faith and Reason: The Conflict over the Rationalism
of Maimonides (Williamsport, Penna., 1935), and Daniel Jeremy Silver, Maimonidean
Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 1180-1240 (Leiden, 1965). The best analysis
of significant aspects of the debates is in Bernard Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in
Transition (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England, 1982), pp. 61-103.
— 56 —
degree these assertions reflect reality is far from clear; what is clear is that
the argument that rationalism has in fact produced heresy was one of the
most forceful and effective weapons in the arsenal of the opposition.49
In addition to specific charges of disbelief and violations of law,
rationalists also faced the accusation that they abandon the study of
Talmud in favor of philosophical speculation. Thus, Radak found it
necessary to testify that he studies Talmud assiduously and observes
the commandments meticulously; the only reason that people suspected
him, he tells us, is that he had indicated that the detailed exchanges in the
Talmud will be rendered obsolete in the Messianic age when everything
will become clear. Many Talmudists would surely have disagreed even
with the assertion to which Radak admits, and Alfakar’s letter to him
explicitly speaks of the inclination to abolish the discussions of Abbaye
and Rava in order “to ascend in the chariot.”50
On the most fundamental level, Alfakar, whose letters evince an
impressive level of philosophical sophistication, denied the controlling
authority of reason. Any compelling demonstration, he wrote, requires
investigation of extraordinary intensity because of the possibility of
hidden sophistry, and an erroneous premise, no matter how far back in
the chain of reasoning, can undermine the validity of the conclusion.
Consequently, reliance on reason to reject important religious teachings
is inadmissible.
Alfakar’s specific examples concentrate on the denial or limitation
of miracles. Maimonides, he says, regarded Balaam’s talking donkey
and similar biblical miracles as prophetic visions despite the Mishnah’s
inclusion of the donkey’s power of speech among the ten things created
immediately before the first Sabbath. This Maimonidean tendency is
symptomatic of the deeper problem of attempting to synthesize the
Torah and Greek wisdom. Radak had explicitly praised Maimonides’
unique ability to harmonize “wisdom” and faith. On the contrary, says
Alfakar, the attempt was a failure. Maimonides, for example, limited the
number of long-lived antediluvians
because his intention was to leave the ordinary operation of the world intact
so that he could establish the Torah and Greek wisdom together, “coupling
49 See R. Solomon’s letter in Qevuzat Mikhtavim, pp. 51-52; R. Meir in Qovez Teshuvot ha-
Rambam (Leipzig, 1859) 3, p. 6a; R. Yosef in Qevuzat Mikhtavim, pp. 6, 21.
50 Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam 3, pp. 3a-4a.
— 57 —
the tent together so that it may be one” (Exod. 26:11). He imagined that
the one could stand with the other “like two young roes that are twins”
(Song of Songs 4:5); instead, there was “mourning and lamentation” (Lam.
2:5). “The land was not able to bear them, that they might live together”
(Gen. 13:6) as two sisters, “for the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian
women” (Exod. 1:19).
As for lesser figures than Maimonides, they reduce the number of

miracles because “their soul does not consider it appropriate to believe
what the Creator considered it appropriate to do.”51
Yosef ben Todros Halevi affirmed the dangers lurking in the Guide by
arguing that no one in his generation has the capacity to read the work
without exposing himself to the danger of heresy. Consequently, he can
justify the action of the Northern French rabbis without forfeiting his
respect for Maimonides. Both “acted for the sake of heaven, each in his
place and time.” Moreover, he says, the dangers of speculation have even
been recognized by the kings of the Arabs, who forbade “Greek wisdom”
and philosophical study. If Yosef is referring to the Almohade rulers, we
would have a striking appeal by a Jewish conservative to the judgment
of persecutors of his people for the sake of validating or at least lending
support to a decision affecting the internal spiritual life of Judaism.52
The Maimonist party responded with a vigorous defense of the value
of general culture. Radak succeeded in eliciting a ban against R. Solomon
and his students from the Jewish community of Saragossa, the text of
which contains instructive arguments for the rationalist position taken
from Rabbinic literature.
It is widely known among our people that our sages instructed and warned
us to learn the wisdom concerning the unity of God as well as external forms
of wisdom that will enable us to answer heretics and know the matters
utilized by disbelievers to destroy our Torah. [They] also [instructed us to
study] astrology and the vanities of idol-worship, [which] one cannot learn
from the Torah or the Talmud, as well as the measurement of land and
knowledge of solstices and calculations, as the learned teacher of wisdom
said, “The pathways of the heavens are as clear to me as the pathways of
51 Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam 3, pp. la-2a, 3a.

52 Qevuzat Mikhtavim, pp. 21-22, 13-14. The term malkhei ha-‘erev, based on I Kings
10:15, appears as malkhei ‘arav in the parallel verse in II Chronicles (9:14) and was no
doubt understood by Joseph as Arab kings despite the ambiguity introduced by the
juxtaposition of the two phrases in Jeremiah 25:24.
— 58 —
Nehardea,” and an understanding of the scope with which they measured

at a distance on both land and sea. Moreover, they ruled that no one can
be appointed to the Sanhedrin to decide the law unless he knows these
disciplines and medicine as well.53
A particularly interesting aspect of this text is the distinction

between “the wisdom concerning the unity of God” (hokhmat ha-yihud)
and “external forms of wisdom” or “external disciplines” (hokhmot
hizzoniyyot). The former requires no defense on instrumental grounds;
it is part of the Torah, and the problem is just that the antirationalists
do not recognize this. External wisdom, on the other hand, needs to be
justified in other ways. The document provides Rabbinic authority for
some of these pursuits, whose purpose is often self-evident, but the only
concrete argument set forth is the need to respond to heretics. This need,
which was legitimized by a Rabbinic text, was routinely cited in other
contexts to defend so religiously dubious an enterprise as the study of
the New Testament. Its application to our context is attested not only in
the Saragossa ban but in the counterargument of Yosef ben Todros that
the rabbis’ intention in urging Jews to learn the appropriate response
to heretics was manifestly “to reconstruct the ruins of the faith, not to
destroy it.” Yosef, in other words, regarded the use of this argument
as the last refuge of scoundrels, a pro forma justification for a pursuit
motivated by entirely different considerations.54
If the information of the Saragossa authorities was reliable, the text
of their denunciation contributes to our knowledge of the ban issued by
the antirationalists.
The earlier ban, we are told, was directed not only against the Guide
and “The Book of Knowledge” but against “anyone who studies any of
the external disciplines.” R. Bahya ben Moses, the chief signatory of
the Saragossa ban, repeats this information in a letter to the Jewish
communities of Aragon.55 On the one hand, we could be dealing with an
exaggeration designed to facilitate the eliciting of additional counterbans;
on the other, the fact that “external books” are denounced in the
53 Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam 3, p. 5b.

54 Qevuzat Mikhtavim, p. 14. On reading the New Testament to answer a heretic, see
my comments and references in The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages
(Philadelphia, 1979; rep., Northvale, N.J. and London, 1996), pp. 309-310.
55 Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam 3, pp. 5b, 6a.
— 59 —
Mishnah renders it difficult to reject this report out of hand. However

that may be, rationalists were clearly uncomfortable with the talmudic
prohibition of “Greek wisdom,” and we find efforts at redefinition that
limit the meaning of the term to a kind of coded communication that
has not survived and that therefore poses no limitation whatever to the
philosopher’s intellectual agenda. One Maimonist argued that however
one understands the term, the prohibition can certainly not result from a
concern with heresy since the Rabbis would never have excluded potential
diplomats from the ban had the reason for it been that weighty.56
Defenses of rationalism and its allied disciplines appealed to other
considerations as well. The argument that philosophical sophistication was
necessary to impress gentiles was fairly widespread, and it occasionally
took an even stronger form: the Jewish loss of Greek wisdom, which was,
of course, originally Jewish wisdom, makes Jews an object of ridicule in the
eyes of their educated neighbors.57 During the Maimonidean controversy,
a more fundamental argument appears in a novel formulation that may
reflect the influence of a major Christian work. In the twelfth century,
Peter Abelard wrote his celebrated Sic et Non, which challenged opponents
of speculation to account for a variety of apparent contradictions in
authoritative texts. The “authority” which is the presumed alternative to
reason is simply not usable without its supposed rival. One Maimonist
letter argues for rationalism by citing contradictions in Rabbinic sources
that can be resolved only by the sort of speculation that the antirationalists
eschew.58 Patristic contradictions have become Rabbinic contradictions,
but the Abelardian argument remains intact.
We have already seen that the anti-Maimonists’ concern that
rationalism tends to produce heresy constituted one of their most
powerful arguments against philosophical study. A striking feature of
56 Samuel Saporta in Qevuzat Mikhtavim, p. 95. On Greek wisdom, see Saul Lieberman,
Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1962), pp. 100-114, and cf. the references in
Davidson, “The Study of Philosophy as a Religious Obligation” (above n. 34), pp. 66-67,
n. 44.
57 Samuel ibn Tibbon, Ma’amar Yiqqavu ha-Mayim (Pressburg, 1837), p. 173. On the need
to impress gentiles, see Twersky, “Provençal Jewry,” pp. 190, 204-205.
58 Joseph Shatzmiller, “Iggarto shel R. Asher be-R. Gershom le-Rabbanei Zarfat,” in
Mehqarim be-Toledot ‘Am Yisrael ve-Erez Yisrael le-Zekher Zevi Avineri (Haifa, 1970), pp.
129-140. Shatzmiller was struck by the argument but not by the Abelardian parallel,
which is, of course, speculative. In a recent lecture, Bernard Septimus has noted that R.
Asher may well have been making a sharp allusion to the Tosafists’ own use of dialectic.
— 60 —
the controversy is that the Maimonists argued that precisely the reverse
was true: it was antirationalism that had produced a heresy more serious
than the worst philosophical heterodoxy, because many naive believers
worshipped a corporeal God. The issue of anthropomorphism is therefore
crucial to an understanding not only of the Maimonidean controversy
but of the role that philosophy played in defining the parameters of a
legitimate Jewish conception of God. There can be no higher stakes than
these and no better evidence of the powerful, almost controlling presence
of the philosophical enterprise at the very heart of medieval Judaism.
Maimonides listed belief in the incorporeal nature of God as one of
his thirteen principles constituting the sine qua non of the faith. As he
indicated both in his discussion of this creed and in his code, failure to
affirm this belief is rank heresy which excludes one from a portion in
the world to come. Maimonides has been assigned a highly sophisticated
motivation for taking this position. Survival after death requires a cleaving
to God that is possible only through the development of that aspect of
the soul which perceives certain abstract truths about the Deity; the
belief in an incorporeal God is consequently the minimum requirement
for attaining eternal life.59 While Maimonides may well have endorsed
this view, the immediate motivation for perceiving anthropomorphism
as heresy was probably simpler and more fundamental: the believer in a
corporeal God does not really believe in one God at all.
Maimonides drew the connection between unity and incorporeality
forcefully and explicitly:
There is no profession of unity unless the doctrine of God’s corporeality

is denied. For a body cannot be one, but is composed of matter and form,
which by definition are two; it is also divisible, subject to partition.… It is
not meet that belief in the corporeality of God… should be permitted to
establish itself in anyone’s mind any more than it is meet that belief should
be established in the nonexistence of the deity, in the association of other
gods with Him, or in the worship of other than He.60
Maimonides’ son provided an even sharper formulation.

Anthropomorphism, he writes, is an impurity like that
59 See Arthur Hyman’s important article, “Maimonides’ ‘Thirteen Principles’,” in Jewish
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, pp. 141-142.
60 Guide 1:35, p. 81. Hyman is, of course, well aware of this passage but argues that the
belief in incorporeality is what gives the very profession of unity its salvific value.
— 61 —
of idolatry. Idolaters deny God’s Torah and worship other gods beside
Him, while one who, in his stupidity, allows it to enter his mind that the
Creator has a body or an image or a location, which is possible only for a
body, does not know Him. One who does not know Him denies Him, and
such a person’s worship and prayer are not to the Creator of the world.
[Anthropomorphists] do not worship the God of heaven and earth but a
false image of Him, just like the worshippers of demons about whom the
Rabbis say that they worship [such] an image, for the entity that they have
in mind, who is corporeal and has stature or a particular location where
he sits on a throne, does not exist at all. It was concerning those fools and
their like that the prophet said, “He has shut their eyes, that they cannot
see, and their hearts, that they cannot understand.”61
It is especially noteworthy that Maimonides does not appeal to

tradition to validate his declaration that anthropomorphism is heretical.
On the contrary, his comments on the motivation for his stand clearly
reveal the determinative role of philosophy. He tells us in the Guide
that if he wished to affirm the eternity of the world, he could provide
a figurative interpretation to biblical texts that imply the contrary just
as he has interpreted anthropomorphic verses figuratively. One reason
for distinguishing the case of anthropomorphism from that of eternal
matter is that the latter has not been proven. On the other hand, “that
the deity is not a body has been demonstrated; from this it follows
necessarily that everything that in its external meaning disagrees with
this demonstration must be interpreted figuratively.” Alfakar, while
wrestling with the same problem, pointed to the fact that the Bible itself
contains contradictory verses regarding the corporeality of God and
argued that this legitimates figurative interpretation. Though Alfakar and
Maimonides also cited Onkelos’s alleged avoidance of anthropomorphic
expressions as a precedent, and Nahmanides, Abraham Maimonides,
and Samuel Saporta provided a list of anti-anthropomorphic authorities
beginning with the time of the Geonim, there can be little doubt that the
driving force in the extirpation of a corporeal conception of God was the
philosophic enterprise.62
61 Milhamot Hashem, p. 52. For a very strong (perhaps just a bit too strong) assertion of
this understanding of Maimonides’ motivation (without reference to Milhamot Hashem),
see Menachem Kellner, Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought From Maimonides to Abravanel
(Oxford, 1986), p. 41: “Maimonides held that. . . one who conscientiously observes the
halakhah while believing in the corporeality of God is, in effect, performing idolatry.”
62 See Guide 2:25, p. 328; Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam 3, p. lb; Kitvei Ramban, 1, pp. 346-347;
— 62 —
The philosophers, in fact, did their job so well that contemporary

Jews find it very difficult to acknowledge the existence of medieval
Jewish anthropomorphism despite substantial, credible evidence. By
far the best known testimony is the assertion by R. Abraham b. David of
Posquières that greater Jews than Maimonides believed in a corporeal
God because they were misled by the literal meaning of Rabbinic aggadot.
Maimonist rhetoric during the controversy is replete with assertions that
the anti-Maimonists believe in a corporeal God and are consequently
heretics. Some of these attacks may well be exaggerated, but they play
too prominent a role in the discussion for them to have been invented
out of whole cloth. Abraham Maimonides reports that the prominent
anti-Maimonist David ben Saul vigorously denied that he conceived of
God in crudely anthropomorphic terms; at the same time, says Abraham,
David affirmed his belief that God sits in heaven, where his primary
grandeur is to be found, and that a partition separates the Creator from
his creatures. In a particularly sharp attack, Abraham comments that
Christian support for the anti-Maimonist cause is hardly surprising since
the beliefs of the two groups diverge so little.63
Finally, we have the works of two Ashkenazic writers who explicitly
express conceptions of God which are corporeal by Maimonidean
standards. R. Moses Taku is the better known of these figures, and his
Ketav Tamim is a polemic specifically directed against the Saadyanic
and Maimonidean insistence on an incorporeal God. Taku, who is cited
in Tosafot and was not an entirely marginal figure, not only affirmed a
moderate kind of anthropomorphism but also accused the philosophers of
heresy in terms strikingly reminiscent of Abraham Maimonides himself.
In his vigorous reversal of the Maimonidean argument, Taku wrote,
Who knows if the redemption is being delayed because of the fact that they
do not know who is performing miracles for them. Moreover, if tragedy
strikes, they cry out and are not answered because they direct their cries to
something other than the fundamental object of faith; for this new religion
and new wisdom recently came upon the scene, and its adherents maintain
Milhamot Hashem, pp. 49-50; Qevuzat Mikhtavim, pp. 85-86, 90-91.

63 Rabad to Hil. Teshuvah 3:7; Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam 3, p. 3b; the letter of the Rabbis
of Lunel and Narbonne in Zion 34 (1969): 140-141; Milhamot Hashem, pp. 69, 55.
Note especially Schochet’s vigorous presentation of the Maimonist polemic against
anthropomorphism, Zion 36 (1971): 54-60. See also the literature cited in Kellner,
Dogma, p. 233, n. 159.
— 63 —
that what the prophets saw was the form of created beings, while from the
day that God spoke to Adam and created the world through His word, we
have believed it to be the Creator and not a creature.64
In addition to Ketav Tamim, we now know of a late thirteenth-century

French work which maintains the bizarre belief that the substance
of God is to be found in the light above the firmament and in the air.
The sun is nothing more than a moving window in the firmament, and
what we see when we look at it is therefore the very substance of the
deity. It is more than a little disconcerting to find a medieval Hebrew
text that routinely refers to “the air, blessed be it [He?] and blessed be
its [His?] name,” but in this case at least, the author describes himself
as the object of persecution, and he was no doubt on the theological
margins of Ashkenazic Judaism despite the fact that he may have been
the author of a rabbinic responsum. Nonetheless, in the late fourteenth
or early fifteenth century, an Ashkenazic rabbi was still asking the basic
question about the corporeality of God, and there can be little doubt that
Ashkenaz in the high Middle Ages did not enjoy a consensus on this most
critical of theological questions.65 Thus, the presence of anthropomorphic
conceptions among some medieval Jews provided the rationalists with a
powerful religious argument for philosophical inquiry and even enabled
them to reverse the accusation of heresy. Ironically, as the philosophers
won their greatest victory, they destroyed the most effective argument
for their importance.
For Taku, the major obstacle to the rejection of anthropomorphism
was not only the plain meaning of biblical expressions; he was concerned
to at least an equal degree with a multitude of Rabbinic texts which
he was unwilling to interpret nonliterally. In this and other contexts,
conclusions drawn from philosophy and the sciences forced medieval
Jews to confront the question of aggadah on a fundamental level, so
that these pursuits once again impinged upon the study of Torah even in
the narrowest sense. We have already seen that Geonim like R. Samuel b.
Hofni and R. Hai had legitimated rejection of certain aggadot, although
64 Ozar Nehmad 3 (1860): 82-83.

65 See Israel Ta-Shema, “Sefer ha-Maskil: Hibbur Yehudi Zarfati Bilti-Yadua mi-sof ha-
Me’ah ha-Yod-Gimel,” Mehqerei Yerushalayim be-Mahashevet Yisrael 2:3 (1982-83): 416-
438; Ephraim Kupfer, “Li-Demutah ha-Tarbutit shel Yahadut Ashkenaz va-Hakhameha
ba-Me’ot ha-Yod-Dalet-ha-Tet-Vav,” Tarbiz 42 (1972/73): 114.
— 64 —
R. Hai had insisted on the need to make the most strenuous efforts to
validate all Rabbinic statements, particularly if they are incorporated in
the Babylonian Talmud. The need to reinterpret rather than reject outright
was especially acute with respect to an issue like anthropomorphism,
where the error was too profound to allow it to stand even as a minority
view among the Rabbis. Consequently, by the time of Maimonides and
the Maimonidean controversy, substantial precedent existed for a variety
of approaches to aggadic texts.66
The issue of aggadah had already been raised by opponents of
Maimonides in the debate over resurrection just after the turn of the
thirteenth century, and the Northern French rabbis in the 1230s once
again expressed concern. They believed that Maimonides had undermined
the traditional understanding of reward after death and specifically
criticized his rejection of a literal feast of Leviathan as described in
Rabbinic aggadot. It is of no small interest that while one defense of
Maimonides argued that he had not in fact denied that this banquet
would take place, Abraham Maimonides sardonically observed that the
Rabbis had proffered this promise so that naïve believers like R. Solomon
of Montpellier would have something to look forward to. On a more
significant level, Maimonides’ assertion that the biblical punishment of
cutting off (karet) signifies the destruction of the soul was attacked as
a contradiction of the talmudic perception that it refers to premature
death. Maimonides’ critics proceeded to denounce those who abandon
“halakhot and aggadot, which are the source of life, to pursue Greek
wisdom, which the sages forbade.” The point here is not merely the choice
of one pursuit over another, but the manner in which the study of the
one distorts the understanding of the other. According to a Maimonist
report, some of the Ashkenazim went so far as to propose that Rashi’s
interpretation of aggadot be made dogmatically binding.67
66 On Taku, see his Ketav Tamim: Ketav Yad Paris H711, with an introduction by Joseph Dan
(Jerusalem, 1984), Introduction, p. 24. On the Geonim, see above, n. 16. For a survey
of attitudes toward aggadah, see Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis (Cambridge,
Mass., and London, England, 1980), pp. 1-20, and cf. I. Twersky, “R. Yeda‘yah ha-Penini
u-Perusho la-Aggadah,” in Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History Presented
to Alexander Altmann, ed. by S. Stein and R. Loewe (University, Alabama, 1979), Heb.
sec., pp. 63-82. See also Lester A. Segal, Historical Consciousness and Religious Tradition
in Azariah de Rossi’s Meor ‘Einayim (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 89-114.
67 See Saporta, Qevuzat Mikhtavim, p. 94; Milhamot Hashem, pp. 60-61; Joseph Shatzmiller,
“Li-Temunat… ,” Zion 34 (1969): 139; idem, “Iggarto… ,” in Mehqarim… Avineri, p. 139.
— 65 —
The centrality of this issue is illustrated not only by the citations of

various midrashic passages in the heat of the controversy but by Abraham
Maimonides’ special treatise on the aggadot, which undoubtedly emerged
from these debates. This treatise not only proposes reinterpretation but
recognizes the occasional need for outright rejection as well. “We are
not obligated… to argue on behalf of the Rabbis and uphold the views
expressed in all their medical, scientific, and astronomical statements,
[and to believe] them the way we believe them with respect to the
interpretation of the Torah, whose consummate wisdom was in their
hands.”68 The essence of this position had already been expressed in
the Guide itself. Although Maimonides had argued that respect for
the wisdom of the Sages requires us to strive to understand even their
scientific assertions as consonant with the truth, he nonetheless laid
down the following principle:
Do not ask of me to show that everything they have said concerning

astronomical matters conforms to the way things really are. For at that time
mathematics were imperfect. They did not speak about this as transmitters
of dicta of the prophets, but rather because in those times they were men
of knowledge in these fields or because they had heard these dicta from the
men of knowledge who lived in those times.69
Despite the apparent effort to impose Rashi’s presumably literal

understanding of aggadot, even Ashkenazic Jews were not wholly
inflexible on this issue. Moses Taku himself indicated that his teachers had
distinguished between Rabbinic statements that appear in the Talmud and
those that do not. “If a person sees a strange remark in external [Rabbinic]
books, he should not be concerned about it since it does not appear in the
aggadot in our Talmud upon which we rely.” Several disagreements with
the Rabbis appear in the admittedly atypical Sefer ha-Maskil, and under
the pressure of polemics with an apostate attacking the Talmud, R. Yehiel
of Paris observed, if only for the sake of argument, that the aggadah does
not have the same binding force as talmudic law.70
Note too Charles Touati’s remarks in, “Les Deux Conflits autour de Maimonide et des
Études Philosophiques,” in Juifs et Judaism de Languedoc, ed. by M. H. Vicaire and B.
Blumenkranz (Toulouse, 1977), p. 177.
68 Ma’amar ‘al Odot Derashot Hazal, in Milhamot Hashem, p. 84.
69 Guide 3:14.
70 Ketav Tamim, Paris ms., p. 7b; Ozar Nehmad 3, p. 63; Ta-Shema, “Sefer ha-Maskil,” p.
— 66 —
The most famous medieval assertion that aggadic statements

are not binding also emerged out of the crucible of the Jewish-
Christian debate, this time from a figure who played a crucial role in
the Maimonidean controversy of the 1230s. In 1263, Nahmanides
faced a different apostate who attempted to utilize Talmudic evidence
for the purpose of demonstrating the truth of Christianity; in their
disputation, Nahmanides argued that midrashic statements should be
treated as sermons which command respect but not unqualified assent.
The sincerity of that argument has been the subject of controversy to
our own day, but an analysis of Nahmanides’ commentary to the Torah
leaves little doubt that he meant what he said.71 Many medieval Jews
wished to preserve considerable latitude in dealing with aggadah, and
although a variety of motives were at work, philosophical considerations
took pride of place.
Nahmanides’ role in the controversy and his stand regarding
philosophical speculation are especially important both because his
efforts appear to have effectively ended the Northern French intervention
and because he represents a crucial transitional type in the evolution of
medieval Jewish attitudes toward general culture. On the one hand, he was
hardly typical of the Andalusian-style Jewish philosopher. He expressed
considerable hostility toward “the accursed Greek” Aristotle, described
himself as a disciple of the Northern French Tosafists, and fully embraced
the “hidden wisdom” of the kabbalah. On the other hand, he mastered
the corpus of Jewish philosophical and scientific literature, practiced
429; Vikkuah R. Yehiel mi-Paris, ed. by S. Gruenbaum (Thorn, 1873), p. 2. See also the
citation in Avraham Grossman, Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1981), p.
96, for Rabbenu Gershom’s opposition to a deviation from a rabbinic interpretation
on a nonlegal matter in a liturgical poem by a distinguished colleague. This may be at
least a faint indication that some Jews in early Ashkenaz considered such deviations
legitimate. It is, of course, a commonplace that twelfth-century Northern French
exegetes proposed interpretations that deviated from those of the rabbis even on
matters of law.
71 See Kitvei Ramban I, p. 308, and Bernard Septimus’s excellent, though preliminary
discussion in “‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Nahmanides and the Andalusian
Tradition,” in Rabbi Moses Nahmanides, pp. 20-22. Marvin Fox, “Nahmanides on the
Status of Aggadot: Perspectives on the Disputation at Barcelona, 1263,” Journal of
Jewish Studies 40 (1989): 95-109, reaches a conclusion with which I am in fundamental
agreement, although I cannot endorse several of his arguments. On one occasion (p.
101), he perpetuates a blurring of the distinction between rejection of aggadah and its
allegorization; see my remarks in “Maccoby’s Judaism on Trial,” Jewish Quarterly Review
76 (1986): 255, n. 2.
— 67 —
medicine, and pursued a sort of golden mean during the Maimonidean

controversy. His extraordinary commentary on the Pentateuch, which
mobilized the full range of his diverse interests, defies neat classification
into any prior category of Jewish exegesis or thought.
In an oft-quoted passage from his Sha‘ar ha-Gemul, a work that
addresses the problem of theodicy, he denounces people who oppose any
inquiry into the nature of divine justice as “fools who despise wisdom.
For we shall benefit ourselves in the above-mentioned study by becoming
wise men who know God in the manner in which He acts and in His
deeds; furthermore, we shall become believers endowed with a stronger
faith in Him than others.” Despite the vigor of this formulation and its
similarity to arguments for philosophical study in general, it is important
to recognize that in Nahmanides’ case it is narrowly focused. Speculation
about theodicy differs from investigation into the existence or unity of
God in a way that illuminates Nahmanides’ fundamental approach to
philosophical pursuits. A good philosopher speculates on the basis of
empirical data. But the revelation of the Torah is an empirical datum par
excellence; consequently, there is no more point in constructing proofs
for doctrines explicitly taught in the revelation than for the proposition
that the sun rises in the morning. At the same time, philosophical
reasoning for the purpose of clarifying those doctrines is not only
sensible but critically important. Although Nahmanides never formulated
this position explicitly, I think that it emerges from the pattern of his
work and the issues that he addressed. It surely helps to explain why he
wrote his magnum opus as a commentary to the revelation and why he
was attracted to kabbalah, which provided, as we have seen, revealed
information about key philosophical questions.
This nuanced approach placed Nahmanides in a difficult position
during the controversy of the 1230s. He opposed both untrammeled
speculation and “fools who despise wisdom”; he admired both Maimonides
and the rabbis of Northern France; he felt unreserved enthusiasm for
“The Book of Knowledge” and mixed emotions about the Guide. His own
sophisticated synthesis of speculation and revelation, even in its exoteric
form, could not be mechanically prescribed to the masses or, for that
matter, to ordinary intellectuals. Consequently, the proposal that he
made is a combination of tactful diplomacy and an effort to implement
the values that he considered particularly important under the trying
circumstances of the dispute.
— 68 —
His most important letter was directed to the rabbis of Northern

France. It expresses great admiration for the addressees, defends
Maimonides’ orthodoxy with respect to key theological issues, explains
the purpose of the Guide, whose intended audience needs to be appreciated
by the Ashkenazim, and launches into a vigorous, even impassioned
encomium to “The Book of Knowledge.” At this point, Nahmanides was
prepared to offer a concrete proposal: The ban against “The Book of
Knowledge” should be annulled, and the ban against the Guide should
be reformulated to include public study only, which Maimonides himself
had disapproved. In the spirit of R. Hai Gaon’s letter, the pursuit of
philosophy should be discouraged entirely, but since such a level of piety
cannot be enforced for all of Israel, no broader ban is advisable.
The distinction between “The Book of Knowledge” and the Guide
accords well with Nahmanides’ fundamental outlook because the former
operates within the context of the revelation while the latter raises
questions that approach the tradition from the outside. The difference,
then, is as much one of structure as of content. The discouragement of
any philosophical study even for the elite goes beyond Nahmanides’
position as it appears in his other writings, and it is likely that he adopted
it because of the needs of the moment. Nonetheless, this proposal too
reflects a genuine uneasiness with speculation and hostility toward the
dominant form of Aristotelianism. Nahmanides, who sought not so
much a religious philosophy as a philosophical religion, embodies an
approach that is reflected to a greater or lesser degree in figures like R.
Meir Abulafia and R. Judah Alfakar and in some of his great successors
among the Talmudists of Christian Spain.72
72 For a full exposition of my perception of Nahmanides’ position, see my master’s

essay, Nahmanides’ Attitude Toward Secular Learning and Its Bearing Upon his Stance
in the Maimonidean Controversy (Columbia University, 1965). See also my “Miracles
and the Natural Order in Nahmanides” (above, n. 47), pp. 110-111, and Septimus,
“’Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’” (above, n. 71). For brief characterizations of
Nahmanides, see my articles in The Encyclopedia of Religion 10 (New York, 1987), pp.
295-297, and in Great Figures in Jewish History (in Russian [translated by the editorial
staff]), ed. by Joseph Dan and Judy Baumel (Tel Aviv, 1991), pp. 77-84. On Abulafia,
see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, which also contains an insightful
typology of approaches to philosophical study in this period. See also his “Piety and
Power in Thirteenth-Century Catalonia,” Studies in Jewish History and Literature [1],
pp. 197-230, for an effort to reconstruct a struggle between rationalists and Talmudists
of Nahmanides’ type for political control of a Jewish community.
The interpretation of Nahmanides’ proposal is dependent on the resolution of textual
— 69 —
The waning of this phase of the controversy used to be attributed

primarily to nearly universal revulsion at the burning of Maimonides’
works. We now have reason to believe that Nahmanides’ letter played a
major role by persuading the Northern French rabbis to withdraw from
the fray.73 In any event, despite an eruption in the 1280s involving a
relatively minor anti-Maimonist agitator, the dispute about philosophical
study did not regain its status as a cause célèbre until the first decade of
the fourteenth century, when the issue was joined again. In many ways,
the debate was unchanged, but in some respects it had been transformed
in significant and revealing fashion.
The controversy began when R. Abba Mari of Lunel initiated a
correspondence with R. Solomon ibn Adret (Rashba) to complain about
the inroads made by extreme rationalism in Provence, especially in the
person of Levi b. Abraham of Villefranche, who advocated an allegorical
understanding of some biblical narratives. The first thing that strikes
the reader of Abba Mari’s work is the impact of philosophy in general
and Maimonides in particular on this “antirationalist.” Science and
metaphysics should be studied only by one
who has filled his stomach with bread and meat, as we have learned from
the Rabbi, the teacher of righteousness, from whose mouth we live through
his true statements… built upon the foundation of the Torah in “The Book
of Knowledge” and Guide of the Perplexed, which illuminate the path of
those who have been in darkness and cannot adequately be evaluated by
the greatest of assessors.74
It is true that even in the 1230s, many antirationalists treated

Maimonides himself with considerable respect. We have already noted R.
problems in the letter. This is not the place for a detailed discussion. Suffice it to say
that the emendation of tehazzequ to lo tehazzequ (Kitvei Ramban 1, p. 349), which
eliminates the ban entirely, is, in my view, insupportable. For details, see chapter 5
of my master’s essay and my forthcoming article, “How did Nahmanides Propose to
Resolve the Maimonidean Controversy?” [reprinted in this volume].
73 See the letter of the Maimonists in Lunel and Narbonne, Zion 34 (1969): 142, and the
discussion by Schochet, Zion 36 (1971): 44.
74 Minhat Qenaot, Preface, p. 4 (unpaginated)=Dimitrovsky, 1, p. 228. For a summary
of the events and arguments of the early fourteenth-century controversy, see Joseph
Sarachek, Faith and Reason (Williamsport, Pennsylvania, 1935), pp. 167-264. Despite
a variety of subsequent studies that will be noted later, Sarachek’s work can still serve
as a useful orientation to the dispute.
— 70 —
Solomon b. Abraham’s reference to the study of the Mishneh Torah in his

yeshivah, and Judah Alfakar had distinguished rather sharply between
the author of the Guide and those who had made it into a new Torah.
At the same time, Alfakar had written that he wished that the Guide
had never seen the light of day, and Abba Mari’s encomium to precisely
the two works that were at issue in the earlier controversy is striking
testimony to the status that Maimonides himself had attained among
all parties to the new dispute.75
Not only did Abba Mari express unqualified admiration for
Maimonides; he even defended no less a rationalist than Aristotle
himself. In a passage about the importance of the belief in creation
out of nothing, where Abba Mari was clearly echoing an argument of
Nahmanides, he defended his predecessor’s “accursed Greek” by noting
that in the absence of the information provided by revelation, a gentile
in antiquity could not have been expected to achieve an adequate level
of understanding with respect to this issue. On the contrary, Aristotle
deserves great credit for disseminating an accurate conception of the one
God to a world rife with paganism. Moreover, Abba Mari’s endorsement
of Maimonides’ assertion that creation from nothing cannot be proved
philosophically served him as an explanation for the use of the term hoq
as a designation of the law of the Sabbath. The term is usually used for
regulations whose reasons are unfathomable; in this case, the purpose
of the law, which is to remind us of creation ex nihilo, is clear, but the
belief itself cannot be demonstrated by human reason. Maimonidean
philosophy has been integrated by a Provençal conservative into the
warp and woof of his study of Torah.76
75 For Alfakar, see Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam 3, pp. 2b-3a. On respect for Maimonides
during the controversy of the early fourteenth century, see the remarks by Charles
Touati, “La Controverse de 1303-1306 autour des études philosophiques et scientifiques,”
Revue des Études Juives 127 (1968): 23-24.
76 Minhat Qenaot, Introduction, ch. 13-14, pp. 14-15=Dimitrovsky, pp. 255-258. On Abba
Mari’s philosophical orientation, see A. S. Halkin, “Yedaiah Bedershi’s Apology,” in
Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. by Altmann, p. 178; “Ha-Herem ‘al Limmud
ha-Pilosofiah,” Peraqim 1 (1967-8): 48-49.
The intriguing transformation of Nahmanides’ argument into a defense of Aristotle
deserves brief elaboration. The original point was that miracles demonstrate creation
ex nihilo because God would not have limitless control over matter as primeval as He.
Since miracles are an empirical datum that became well known throughout the world,
the affirmation of the eternity of matter by “the accursed Greek” is a denial of his own
vaunted empiricism. Abba Mari accepts the argument with one small correction: miracles
— 71 —
Abba Mari provoked sharp disagreement from Rashba when he

asserted that gentile philosophical works are not harmful since everyone
recognizes their provenance. Since the legitimacy of Maimonides’ treatises
was surely not at issue, Abba Man’s ire was narrowly focused on what
he perceived as the heretical teachings of the Jewish hyperrationalists.
As he reports the situation, people like Levi b. Abraham understood
Abraham and Sarah as matter and form, the twelve tribes as the twelve
constellations, the alliances of four and five kings in Genesis 14 as the
four elements and the five senses, and Amalek as the evil inclination.77
Such accusations about rationalist allegorization appear in various
works during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Even more seriously,
we find the assertion that certain rationalists regarded verbal prayer as
superfluous and did not observe various commandments either because
they allegorized them or thought that they could fulfill their underlying
purpose in a different manner. Thus, R. Jacob b. Sheshet maintained that
contemporary heretics, in a fashion strikingly reminiscent of Christian
polemic against Judaism, argued, “What is the purpose of this particular
commandment? Reason cannot abide it. It must have been nothing but
an allegory.” Elsewhere, Jacob is quoted to the effect that in addition
to heresies regarding primeval matter, divine providence, and reward
and punishment, these rationalists assert that the purification of one’s
thoughts is a more than adequate substitute for prayer. Moses de Leon
alleged that the adherents of “the books of the Greeks” do not observe
the commandment of taking the four species on the festival of Sukkot
because, they say, the reason the Torah provides is that this will enhance
the joy of the holiday; well, they are happier with their gold, silver, and
clothing than they could possibly be with the four species.78
are attested in a revelation granted to the Jewish people that was not in fact widely
known in Aristotle’s world. Hence, although Nahmanides is correct that creation ex nihilo
can be proven, the demonstration depends on the knowledge of miracles, which is, or at
least was, specifically Jewish knowledge; Maimonides is correct that the doctrine cannot
be proven in a philosophical system uninformed by revelation. From this perspective,
Nahmanides’ position is not an indictment of Aristotle but an exculpation. For a similar
view of Aristotle by a somewhat earlier figure, see Septimus’s citation of Judah ibn
Matka’s Midrash Hokhmah, in Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, p. 97.
77 Minhat Qenaot, letter 7, pp. 40-41=Dimitrovsky, ch. 25, pp. 343-344, and elsewhere.
78 For Jacob b. Sheshet, see his Meshiv Devarim Nekhohim, ed. by Georges Vajda (Jerusalem,
1968), p. 145, and the citation in Isaac of Acre, Sefer Me’irat ‘Einayim, ed. by Goldreich,
pp. 58-61. For de Leon, see his Book of the Pomegranate, ed. by Elliot Wolfson (Atlanta,
1988), p. 391.
— 72 —
During the controversy, we hear occasional references to a refusal

to wear tefillin because of a philosophically motivated rejection of the
commandment’s literal meaning and even to wholesale allegorization of
biblical law. In these extreme cases, however, the indictments appear
to reflect the behavior of isolated individuals or even what the critic
perceived as the logical consequence or underlying intention of the
philosophical position. One allegation about tefillin refers to a single
person, and Rashba is clearly describing a teaching that was not made
explicit when he observes that “it is evident that their true intention
is that the commandments are not to be taken literally, for why should
God care about the difference between torn and properly slaughtered
meat? Rather, all is allegory and parable.” Although such claims are not
entirely unfounded, the statement that the villains in this indictment
“have regarded the Torah and its commandments as false, and everything
has become permitted to them” was clearly a deduction. Indeed, Rashba
explicitly asserts that the hyperrationalists maintain that everything in
the Torah is allegory from Genesis until—but not beyond—the revelation
at Sinai; nonetheless, he says, it is evident that they really have no faith
in the plain meaning of the commandments either.79
As a result of these concerns, Rashba issued a ban which itself reflects
the changes in this issue since the 1230s. Unlike Nahmanides, Rashba
was sufficiently concerned by the spread of rationalist extremism that
he was prepared to go beyond the very narrow ban advocated by his
79 On tefillin, see Minhat Qenaot, letter 79, p. 152=Dimitrovsky, ch. 88, p. 721, which
bans anyone who understands the commandments in a purely spiritual sense, and cf.
letter p. 153=Dimitrovsky, ch. 101, p. 735, where it is fairly clear that the concern
was based on a specific statement made by a particular rationalist. Cf. also letter 7,
p. 41=Dimitrovsky, ch. 25, p. 344. The passage in The Book of the Pomegranate cited in
the previous note continues with the allegation that these reprobates also fail to wear
tefillin because they understand the commandment in a spiritual sense. For the more
general assertions, see Minhat Qenaot, letter 20, p. 60=Dimitrovsky, ch. 38, pp. 411-
412, and letter 10, p. 45=Dimitrovsky, ch. 28, p. 360. The last assertion is in a text
that was distributed in connection with the ban; see Dimitrovsky, ch. 100, p. 727. On
neglect of tefillin, see the references in Isadore Twersky, Rabad of Posquières (Cambridge,
Mass., 1962), p. 24, n. 20. See also Ephraim Kanarfogel, “Rabbinic Attitudes toward
Nonobservance in the Medieval Period,” in Jewish Tradition and the Nontraditional Jew,
ed. by Jacob J. Schacter (Northvale, New Jersey and London, 1992), pp. 3-35, esp. 7-12;
the issues there, however, are not philosophical. At the eleventh World Congress of
Jewish Studies in 1993, Aviezer Ravitsky described a hitherto unknown commentary on
the Guide by a Samuel of Carcassonne, who indicated quite clearly that the philosopher
need not observe commandments whose purpose he regards as no longer relevant.
— 73 —
predecessor and to forbid the study of philosophy and some sciences by

anyone who had not reached the age of twenty-five. On the other hand,
the works of Maimonides were entirely exempted from the prohibition
during subsequent discussions clarifying its scope; the only reason this
remains in some sense a “Maimonidean controversy” is that the targets
of the ban made what Rashba and Abba Mari considered blatantly
illegitimate use of Maimonides’ works to justify their heresies. Though
the distinction between Maimonides and his followers had been made
earlier, it is now far sharper and more fundamental. Thus, when modern
scholars who see Maimonides as a philosophical radical tell us that the
people attacked by Abba Mari were no more dangerous than Maimonides
himself, they impose a reading of the Maimonidean corpus which the
proponents of the ban did not share.80
The validity of the conservatives’ perception of Maimonides is,
of course, only one side of the coin; the other is the validity of their
perceptions of the Maimonists. We have already seen that even the
evidence of the antirationalist pronouncements suggests that assertions
of wholesale rejection of the commandments by more than a handful of
rationalists may be exaggerated. The vigorous response to the ban provides
us with a substantial set of arguments for the religious orthodoxy of the
philosophers and for the value of the maligned philosophical enterprise.
The most extensive of these polemics that remains extant is the apology
for philosophy addressed to Rashba himself by R. Yedaiah Bedershi.81
Though the work is written in a tone of extreme reverence for the
addressee, it concedes virtually nothing to the allegations leveled in the
ban. A handful of Provençal Jews may deserve censure for publicizing
philosophical teachings best left to the elite, but the content of these
teachings is untainted by heresy. The reports of allegorization of biblical
narratives and commandments are wholly false; at most, one philosopher
is known to have argued that the correspondence between the number
of tribes and the number of constellations demonstrates that the Jewish
people is bound by the stars, but even this deplorable position takes the
reality of the twelve tribes for granted.
80 Touati, “La Controverse,” pp. 23-24; A. S. Halkin, “Why Was Levi ben Hayyim Hounded?,”
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 24 (1966): 65-77.
81 See Halkin’s articles cited in n. 76. The text appears as Ketav Hitnazzelut, She’elot
u-Teshuvot ha-Rashba (Bnei Braq, 1958), 1:418, pp. 154-174, and was separately edited
by S. Bloch (Lvov, 1809).
— 74 —
Moreover, says Yedaiah, the study of philosophy has overwhelming

religious value. It provides proof of the existence and unity of God;
demonstrates the falsehood of determinism, magic, and metempsychosis;
establishes the truth of prophecy and the spiritual character of the
immortal soul; and distinguishes between impossibilities that can
be rendered possible through miracles and those which even divine
omnipotence itself cannot overturn. First and foremost, philosophy
has extirpated what was once the epidemic of anthropomorphism. Here
Yedaiah’s formulation is extraordinarily strong:
In the early generations, the corporeal conception of God spread through

virtually the entire Jewish exile… ; however, in all the generations there
arose Geonim and wise men in Spain, Babylonia, and the cities of Andalusia,
who, because of their expertise in the Arabic language, encountered the
great preparatory knowledge that comes with smelling the scent of the
various forms of wisdom, whether to a greater or lesser degree, which have
been translated into that language. Consequently, they began to clarify
many opinions in their study of Torah, especially with respect to the unity
of God and the rejection of corporeality, with particular use of philosophical
proofs taken from the speculative literature.82
The issue of tradition versus philosophical innovation emerges in even

bolder relief than it did in Maimonides’ discussion of anthropomorphism.
Although Yedaiah explicitly denies that the ancient Rabbis were
anthropomorphists, he sees the attaining of a purified conception of
God in the Middle Ages as an achievement of a philosophical enterprise
unaided by tradition but crucially dependent upon familiarity with Arabic
texts. The very essence of the Torah, largely lost through the travails
of exile, was restored through the discipline which the antirationalists
would now undermine.
Once again we find the advocates of philosophy referring to non-Jews
in an effort to legitimate speculation. Jacob ben Makhir pointed to
the most civilized nations who translate learned works from other languages
into their own… and who revere learning.… Has any nation changed its
religion because of this?… How much less likely is that to happen to us,
who possess a rational Torah.83
82 She’elot u-Teshvot ha-Rashba 1, p. 166.

83 Cited in Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain 1 (Philadelphia, 1961), p. 296.
— 75 —
Jacob’s reference to the rationality of Judaism carries significance

that goes beyond the specific point in this text. The fact that these
discussions now take place in a Christian rather than a Muslim context
means that the conviction that Judaism is more rational than its rival
can be mobilized to enhance the importance of philosophical study by
pointing to its value as a polemical tool. When a Jew justified speculation
on the grounds of its usefulness in replying to heretics, the reference
was not necessarily to Christians; nonetheless, when Bedershi tells us
that one advantage of setting criteria for the possibility of miracles is
that it enables us to rule out God’s ability to make Himself corporeal,
the implications for anti-Christian polemic are self-evident. R. Israel b.
Joseph, a fourteenth-century Spanish rabbi who studied with R. Asher
ben Yehiel, vigorously supported the study of “external disciplines”
solely on the basis of their value in supplying “answers to those who
err” and providing the ability “to defeat them in their arguments.” Here
too, while those who err no doubt included philosophical heretics, it is
hard to imagine that R. Israel was not also thinking of the utility of
philosophy for vanquishing the arguments of Christian missionaries.
Hasdai Crescas’ Bittul ‘Iqqarei ha-Nozerim constitutes eloquent testimony
to the importance of philosophical sophistication for the late medieval
Jewish polemicist in Spain, and it can be asserted with full confidence
that no Jewish reader of that work could have come away from it with the
slightest doubt that at least some Jews ought to study philosophy.84
In light of the usefulness of philosophy for anti-Christian polemic, it is
ironic and intriguing that the desire to convert Jews impelled the governor
of Montpellier to take the side of the rationalists at the height of the
controversy. The advocates of philosophy had issued a counterban against
84 For R. Israel b. Joseph ha-Yisre’eli’s remarks, see his commentary to Avot 2:14, cited
in Israel Ta-Shema, “Shiqqulim Pilosofiyyim be-Hakhra‘at ha-Halakhah bi-Sefarad,”
Sefunot 18 (1985): 105. R. Israel noted that these external disciplines cannot be
approached safely before the reader has become a mature Talmudic scholar; hence,
the rabbis forbade one to teach higgayon or Greek wisdom to one’s son. The thrust of
his observation, however, is permissive: It is prohibited for the father to teach his son,
but it is permissible for the father to study on his own. See Saul Lieberman, Hellenism
in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1962), pp. 102-104. On Crescas, see Bittul ‘Iqqarei ha-
Nozerim, ed. by Daniel J. Lasker (Ramat Gan, 1990), or Lasker’s Jewish Philosophical
Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York, 1977). On the use of more
rigorous philosophical arguments for polemical purposes, see also Shalom Rosenberg,
Logiqah ve-Ontologiah ba-Pilosophiah ha-Yehudit ba-Me’ah ha-Yod-Dalet (Hebrew
University dissertation, 1974), p. 44. On answering heretics, see also n. 54 above.
— 76 —
anyone who would refuse to teach the banned disciplines to people under
the age of twenty-five in obedience to the antirationalists’ proclamation,
and they sought legal backing from the civil authorities. Abba Mari informs
us that although the governor did not grant all their requests, he lent some
support because he was convinced that if Jews were to prohibit anything
but Talmudic study for a substantial period of a person’s life, this would
create a situation in which no Jew would ever convert to Christianity.85
There is strong reason to believe that a majority of the Jews in
Montpellier sided with the rationalists.86 The philosophical culture of
85 The phrase that I have translated “talmudic study” literally means “the discipline
(hokhmah) that you call Gamaliel” (Minhat Qenaot, letter 73, p. 142=Dimitrovsky, ch.
92, p. 701). For the identification of “Gamaliel” with Talmud, see Heinrich Graetz,
Geschichte der Juden (Leipzig, 1863), 7, p. 276; Ch. Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i ha-
Nazrut (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 211, and Dimitrovsky, ad loc. (“apparently this refers to
the Talmud”). For the view that “Gamaliel” means medicine, see David Kaufmann, Die
Sinne (Budapest, 1884), p. 7, n. 12; D. Margalit, “’Al Galenus ve-Gilgulo ha-‘Ivri Gamliel,”
Sinai 33 (1953) : 75-77; Judah Rosenthal’s review of Merchavia, Kiryat Sefer 47 (1972):
29; Joseph Shatzmiller, “Bein Abba Mari la-Rashba: ha-Massa ve-ha-Mattan she-qadam
la-Herem be-Barcelona,” Mehqarim be-Toledot ‘Am Yisrael ve-Erez Yisrael 3 (Haifa, 1974),
p. 127. I cannot see why a Christian would find it necessary to describe medicine by its
presumed Jewish name, especially since the ban does not call it Gamaliel, or even why
the exclusion of medicine would need to be mentioned at all in this context. The fact
that this would constitute the only attested use of Gamaliel in so broad a sense also
militates against the identification. It is true that Talmud was not normally called a
hokhmah, but in the context of this ban, I can easily see a Christian using the equivalent
term, presumably scientia. Moreover, the Christian argument that the study of rabbinic
literature is an impediment to conversion is attested as far back as Justinian’s Novella
146 and was reiterated in the 1240s by Odo of Chateauroux. For Justinian, see the text
and translation in Amnon Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Jerusalem,
1987), pp. 405-410; for Odo, see the text in Merchavia, p. 450 (“. . . hanc esse causam
precipuam que iudeos in sua perfidia retinet obstinatos”). Because the motive assigned
by Abba Mari is so congenial to his own position in the controversy, we must read it
with some skepticism; note Kaufmann’s remark (loc. cit.) that the antirationalist Yosef
Yavetz would have given a great deal to have known this quotation. In light of Odo’s
assertion, however, the report is entirely plausible.
Note too Kaufmann’s argument that philosophical allegory may have been influenced
by Christian allegory and that this connection led to the hope for conversion through
philosophical study; see his “Simeon b. Josefs Sendschreiben an Menachem b. Salomo,”
in Jubelschrift zum Neunzigsten Geburtstag des Dr. L. Zunz (Berlin, 1884), German section,
p. 147. I doubt that Christian influence on rationalist allegorizarion was decisive, and
the main point appears to have been that talmudic study retards conversion.
On the counterban and the governor, see the references in Marc Saperstein, “The
Conflict over the Rashba’s Herem on Philosophical Study: A Political Perspective,”
Jewish History 1:2 (1986): 37, n. 19.
86 Shatzmiller has argued this point persuasively in “Bein Abba Mari la-Rashba,” pp. 128-130.
— 77 —
Provençal Jewry was so pervasive that rationalist sermons were delivered

in synagogues and even at weddings. Opposition to the ban came from
the distinguished Perpignan Talmudist R. Menahem ha-Meiri, who
argued that spiritual damage to a handful of people cannot be allowed to
undermine entire fields of study, that even the books of the Greeks have
great religious value, that Jews cannot allow gentiles to mock them for their
intellectual backwardness, and that Provence can boast a variety of figures
who have distinguished themselves in both talmudic and philosophical
learning. Here again the antirationalist party demonstrated how much
the atmosphere had changed since the 1230s: The reply to ha-Meiri by
a disciple of Abba Mari fully conceded the great value of philosophy and
pointed out that the ban was directed only at the young.87
Ha-Meiri himself was a paradigm of the ideal toward which moderate
rationalists strove and to which even extreme rationalists paid lip
service: a Talmudist of standing who valued philosophy and the sciences
and devoted himself to their study. Ha-Meiri’s openness to general
culture combined with his well-known attitude of toleration toward
Christianity suggests an additional dimension of the issue that we have
been addressing. Intellectual involvement with the dominant society
often goes hand in hand with social involvement of a relatively benign
sort. By this time, Christian intellectuals had attained an impressive
level of philosophical sophistication to the point where ha-Meiri could
express concern about their contempt for ignorant Jews; consequently,
familiarity began to breed respect. In ha-Meiri’s case, this respect led
to the formulation of a wholly novel halakhic category which roughly
means civilized people, a category which helped to exempt Christians
from a series of discriminatory Talmudic statements. While this is not a
case of incorporating an external value or doctrine into Rabbinic law—
the Christendom that ha-Meiri knew had hardly developed a theory of
religious toleration—it probably is an instance of reexamining halakhah
and Jewish values in light of habits of mind developed by exposure to a
culture shared with the gentile environment. Once again, the core of the
Torah was touched—or its deeper meaning revealed—through insights
inspired by involvement in general culture.88
87 See “Hoshen Mishpat,” Jubelschrift… Zunz, Hebrew section, pp. 142-174. For the last
point, see especially pp. 162-164.
88 On ha-Meiri and Christianity, see Yaakov Blidstein, “Yahaso shel R. Menahem ha-Meiri
la-Nokhri—Bein Apologetiqah le-Hafnamah,” Zion 51 (1986): 153-166, and the earlier
— 78 —
THE SEPHARDIM OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
The affirmation of the value of philosophy even by the conservatives in

this dispute reflects a critically important characteristic of late medieval
Jewish culture in Provence and in Spain. Virtually without exception,
rabbinic figures of the first rank, whose pursuit of Talmudic study was
their central preoccupation, either devoted some time to the study of
“wisdom” or expressed no opposition to its cultivation.89
Rashba himself was not uninfluenced by philosophical ideas. This
would be evident even from Bedershi’s apology, which clearly assumed
that its recipient was receptive to the major thrust of the argument, but
it is also explicit in Rashba’s own writings. In one elaborate responsum,
for example, he analyzed the parameters within which philosophical
arguments can be brought to bear on the reinterpretation of sacred texts,
and he staked out a position that we would expect from a disciple of
Nahmanides: there is a legitimate place for such arguments as long as
the critical demands of tradition are accorded unchallenged supremacy.90
R. Yom Tov Ishbili (Ritba), perhaps the greatest rabbinic figure in the
generation following Rashba, wrote a work exemplifying the same general
posture. He defended Maimonides against the strictures in Nahmanides’
studies cited there. See now the important analysis by Moshe Halbertal, “R. Menahem
ha-Meiri: Bein Torah le-Hokhmah,” Tarbiz 63 (1994): 63-118, which points to a specific
philosophical context for ha-Meiri’s position.
89 See Israel Ta-Shema’s “Rabbi Yona Gerondi: Spiritualism and Leadership,” presented
at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s 1989 conference on “Jewish Mystical Leadership,
1200-1270,” esp. p. 11. A bound volume of typescripts of the proceedings is available
in the Mendel Gottesman Library, Yeshiva University. See also Ta-Shema’s “Halakhah,
Kabbalah u-Pilosophiah bi-Sefarad ha-Nozerit—le-Biqqoret Sefer ‘Toledot ha-Yehudim
bi-Sefarad ha-Nozerit’,” Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-‘Ivri 18-19 (1992-94): 479-495. For a
balanced, moderate defense of a broad curriculum in fourteenth-century Spain, see
Profiat Duran’s introduction to Ma‘aseh Efod, pp. 1-25.
90 She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rashba (1958) 1:9, also edited by L. A. Feldman, Shnaton Bar-Ilan
7-8 (1970): 153-161. For a thorough analysis of Rashba’s stance, see the unpublished
master’s thesis by David Horwitz, The Role of Philosophy and Kabbalah in the Works of
Rashba (Bernard Revel Graduate School, Yeshiva University, 1986). See also Carmi
Horowitz, “‘Al Perush ha-Aggadot shel ha-Rashba—Bein Qabbalah le-Pilosophia,” Da’at
18 (1987): 15-25, and Lawrence Kaplan, “Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret,” Yavneh Review 6
(1967): 27-40. (I should probably not press the argument from Bedershi’s perception
too hard since Ktav Hitnazzelut takes for granted the questionable proposition that
Rashba would recognize the value of philosophy because of its ability to refute the
belief in metempsychosis, a kabbalistic doctrine that Rashba probably endorsed.)
— 79 —
commentary to the Pentateuch while at the same time affirming that in

the final analysis Nahmanides is usually correct.91
The endorsement of at least a moderate level of rationalism no
doubt resulted from the importance of philosophy in traditional Spanish
Jewish culture, but we should not underestimate the impact of the heroic
image of Maimonides. Just as Nahmanides’ embrace of kabbalah made
it very difficult to reject mysticism as a heresy, Maimonides’ devotion
to philosophy rendered its thorough delegitimation by Sephardic Jews
almost impossible. Even some kabbalists attempted to synthesize their
discipline with a reinterpreted Maimonidean corpus, though others went
so far as to assert that the author of the Guide had seen the error of
his ways once the secrets of the hidden wisdom were revealed to him.
This last example is a rare case of the exception that really proves the
rule, because it demonstrates that Maimonides’ position stood as such
a hallmark of legitimacy that some Jews could comfortably maintain a
contrary position only by forcibly redefining the Maimonidean stance.92
Moderate rationalism was, of course, not the only approach endorsed
by Provençal and Spanish Jews in the later Middle Ages. Despite the
exaggerated nature of the conservative manifestoes issued during the
controversy, some late medieval thinkers really did espouse radical
positions with respect to many philosophical and exegetical issues. When
Jacob b. Sheshet denounced rationalists who “assert that the world is
primeval… , that divine providence does not extend below the sphere
of the moon… , that there is no reward for the righteous or punishment
for the wicked… and that there is no need to pray but only to purify
one’s thoughts,”93 he was engaging in hyperbole but not in fantasy. The
91 See his Sefer ha-Zikkaron, ed. by Kalman Kahana (Jerusalem, 1956), pp. 33-34.
92 For Abraham Abulafia’s effort to create a Maimonidean kabbalah, see sections IV-VI of
Moshe Idel’s “Maimonides and Kabbalah,” in Twersky, Studies in Maimonides, pp. 54-78.
On Maimonides as a kabbalist, see Gershom Scholem, “Me-Hoqer li-Mequbbal: Aggadot
ha-Mequbbalim ‘al ha-Rambam,” Tarbiz 6 (1935): 90-98, and Michael A. Shmidman,
“On Maimonides’ ‘Conversion’ to Kabbalah,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and
Literature, ed. by Twersky, 2, pp. 375-386. For a discussion of this and similar legends
in the broader context of folk conceptions about Maimonides, see the study by my
father Isaiah Berger, “Ha-Rambam be-Aggadat ha-‘Am,” in Massad: Me’assef le-Divrei
Sifrut 2, ed. by Hillel Bavli (Tel Aviv, 1936), pp. 216-238; and compare his eloquent
observations on the contrast between the folk images of Maimonides and Rashi in his
“Rashi be-Aggadat ha- ‘Am,” in Rashi: Torato ve-lshiyyuto, ed. by Simon Federbush (New
York, 1958), pp. 147-149.
93 Cited in Me’irat ‘Einayim, ed. by Goldreich, p. 58.
— 80 —
rationalist propensity toward allegorization undoubtedly went beyond

anything that rabbis like Rashba would countenance, and we should
not allow the Maimonist arguments of Bedershi and his colleagues to
blind us to this reality. The works of Samuel ibn Tibbon, Moses Narboni,
Joseph ibn Kaspi, Gersonides, and Isaac Albalag constitute but part of
a corpus of literature attesting to a flourishing tradition of vigorous
rationalism that severely tested the prevailing boundaries of religious
orthodoxy.
Philosophers of this stripe were often prepared to make an explicit
case against excessive concentration in Talmudic study. The most famous
example of this attitude is the story ibn Kaspi tells in his will about the
problem that arose during a party in his home when “the accursed maid”
placed a dairy spoon in a pot of meat. Poor ibn Kaspi had to go to the
local rabbi, who kept him waiting for hours in a state of near starvation
before apprising him of the halakhah. Nonetheless, he tells us, he was
not embarrassed by his ignorance, since his philosophical sophistication
compensated for the shortcomings in his halakhic expertise. “Why,” he
asks, “should a ruling or directive regarding the great existence or unity
of God be inferior to a small dairy spoon?”94
Other expressions of this approach are less amusing but no less
striking. Some Jews demonstrated the obscurantism of those who
devote their lives to talmudic study by pointing to the Talmud’s own
assertion that the phrase “He has set me in dark places like the dead of
old” (Lamentations 3:6) refers to the Talmud of Babylon. R. Judah ibn
Abbas maintained that people who study Talmud constantly “neglect the
proper service and knowledge of God” and described Talmudic novellae
and Tosafot as a waste of valuable time. It is a matter of no small interest
that Hasdai Crescas wrote his philosophical refutation of Christianity
in Aragonese or Catalan so that Jews could have ready access to his
arguments; there was thus a substantial, sophisticated Jewish audience
in late medieval Spain who could follow a difficult vernacular text but not
a difficult Hebrew one.
94 Israel Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills 1 (Philadelphia, 1926), pp. 151-152. The somewhat
awkward use of the term “great,” which technically modifies unity in the original, is clearly
intended to evoke Maimonides’ straightforward understanding of the Talmudic contrast
between great and small matters. See above, n. 39. On Ibn Kaspi’s intellectual stance, see
Isadore Twerksy, “Joseph ibn Kaspi: Portrait of a Medieval Jewish Intellectual,” in Studies
in Medieval Jewish History and Literature [1], pp. 231-257.
— 81 —
Ibn Kaspi himself, in a work marked by the arresting assertion

that Job’s suffering was a just consequence of his failure to pursue a
philosophical understanding of his faith, utilized the traditionalists’
affirmation of the importance of Talmudic study to support the
indispensability of philosophy. After all, he argued, there exist both
physical commandments and commandments of the heart or intellect.
Everyone agrees that with respect to the former, an understanding of
the intellectual underpinning is eminently desirable. “Why else should
we toil to study the Talmud? We might just as well be satisfied with
the rulings of Maimonides and R. Isaac Alfasi.” Now there is surely no
basis for distinguishing the latter commandments from the former with
respect to this principle, and books of physics and metaphysics stand in
the same relationship to the commandments of the heart as the Talmud
does to the physical commandments. Originally, such philosophical
works were written by Jewish sages like Solomon, but “we were exiled
because of our sins, and those matters have now come to be attributed
to the Greeks” except for scattered references in the Talmud. In other
words, one cannot affirm the critical importance of Talmudic study
without being logically compelled to grant at least equal value to the
pursuit of philosophy and the sciences.95
On the other side of the ledger, R. Asher b. Yehiel, who was born and
trained in Germany, brought with him a pejorative attitude toward the
value of general culture. In responding to the suggestion that no one
without expertise in Arabic should render a legal decision, he maintained
that his reasoning powers in Torah were in no way inferior to those
95 On the “dark places” and the Talmud, see Me’irat ‘Einayim, p. 62; Isadore Twersky,
“Religion and Law,” in Religion in a Religious Age, p. 77, and Twersky, “R. Yeda‘yah ha-
Penini,” Altmann Festschrift, p. 71. The Talmudic passage is in Sanhedrin 24a. For Ibn
Abbas, see Goldreich’s quotations from the manuscript of Ya’ir Nativ (Oxford 1280, p.
50a) in Me’irat ‘Einayim, pp. 412-413. The oft-quoted curriculum in ibn Abbas’s work,
which culminates with the study of metaphysics, was published by Asaf, Meqorot 2, pp.
29-33. On the vernacular original of Bittul ‘Iqqarei ha-Nozerim, see Lasker’s edition, pp.
13, 33. Note too the Castilian Proverbos Morales by the fourteenth-century R. Shem Tov
ibn Ardutiel, The Moral Proverbs of Santob de Carrion: Jewish Wisdom in Christian Spain,
ed. by T. A. Perry (Princeton, 1988).
If we contemplate for a moment the magnitude of Job’s suffering, we can begin to
appreciate the importance attached to the philosophic quest by a man willing to propose
ibn Kaspi’s explanation for such torment. This explanation appears along with the very
clever argument linking Talmudic and philosophical study in Shulhan Kesef: Be’ur ‘al
Iyyov, in ‘Asarah Kelei Kesef, ed. by J. Last (Pressburg, 1903), pp. 170-172.
— 82 —
of Spanish Rabbis, “even though I do not know your external wisdom.

Thank the merciful God who saved me from it.” The pursuit of such
wisdom, he said, leads people away from the fear of God and encourages
the vain attempt to integrate alien pursuits with Torah. Still, even R.
Asher describes philosophers as very wise men, and an assessment of
Spanish Jewish attitudes would have to assign greater weight to the
remarkable suggestion that he rejected than to the negative reaction
that he expressed.96
That suggestion reflects a real and significant phenomenon: the
halakhic decision-making and Talmudic study of Provençal and Spanish
rabbis were sometimes affected by philosophical considerations. To begin
with the most famous example in Maimonides himself, the omission
in the Mishneh Torah of talmudic laws based on the intervention of the
creatures that the rabbis called shedim was almost certainly the result of
philosophically motivated skepticism. R. Zerahiah Halevi cited technical
logical terminology and philosophical references in a halakhic discussion.
Conceptions of providence were brought to bear on decisions regarding
the remarriage of a woman whose first two husbands had died. A more
general illustration of the pervasiveness of the philosophical atmosphere
emerges from the first sentence of R. Yeruham b. Meshullam’s introduction
to a work of Talmudic scholarship, where he informs us how “the scholars
of [philosophical] research” have classified the considerations leading to
the pursuit of wisdom.97
96 See She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rosh (Venice, 1603), 55:9. Cf. Israel Ta-Shema, “Shiqqulim
Pilosofiyyim,” Sefunot 18 (1985): 100-108.
97 On the impact of Maimonides’ attitude toward “popular religion” on the Mishneh
Torah, see Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides, pp. 479-484; see especially
Marc B. Shapiro’s forthcoming essay in Maimonidean Studies. I am unpersuaded by
Jose Faur’s effort in his generally perceptive ‘Iyyunim be-Mishneh Torah le-ha-Rambam:
Sefer ha-Madda (Jerusalem, 1978), pp. l-2 n. 1, to minimize the philosophical
motivation for the omission of shedim. For some observations on the impact of
Maimonides’ scientific posture on his halakhic approach, see Isadore Twersky,
“Aspects of Maimonidean Epistemology: Halakhah and Science,” in From Ancient Israel
to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding. Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox,
ed. by Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Nachum M. Sarna (Atlanta, Georgia,
1989) 3, pp. 3-23. For R. Zerahiah Halevi, see I. Ta-Shema, “Sifrei ha-Rivot bein
ha-Ravad le-bein Rabbi Zerahiah Halevi (ha-Razah) mi-Lunel,” Qiryat Sefer (1977):
570-576. On the problem of remarriage, see Ta-Shema, Sefunot 18, p. 110, and Y.
Buxbaum, “Teshuvot Hakhmei Sefarad be-Din Qatlanit,” Moriah 7 [78/79] (1977):
6-7. R. Yeruham’s comments are in Sefer Mesharim (Venice, 1553; rep., Jerusalem,
1975), p. 2a.
— 83 —
Most strikingly, it now appears that an innovative methodology

of Talmudic study which conquered Spain in the fifteenth century and
dominated the approach of Sephardic communities for two hundred
years was rooted in philosophical logic. R. Isaac Kanpanton produced
guidelines which required the student to investigate the correspondence
between the language and meaning of a Talmudic text with exquisite
care and to determine the full range of possible interpretations so
that the exegetical choices of the major commentators would become
clear. In setting forth this form of investigation, or ‘iyyun, Kanpanton
made explicit reference to logical terminology, and Daniel Boyarin has
recently made a compelling argument that the system as a whole and all
its major components originated in the medieval philosophical milieu.
He maintains that
Jewish scholars in the final days of the Spanish Jewish community saw
logic as the road to attaining truth in all sciences, including that of the
Torah. Any argument which did not qualify under the canons of logical
order was faulty in their eyes. Logical works and principles served as the
foundation for scientific and philosophical investigation, and they pointed
the way toward valid proof and the avoidance of error in these fields. Since
the science of the Talmud differed in its language and its problems from the
other sciences—mainly because it is essentially exegetical—the need was
felt for general works specific to this field which would direct investigation
there.98
These were indeed the final days of Spanish Jewry, and the
connection between philosophical pursuits and the behavior of the
community in extremis has exercised analysts both medieval and
modern. Conservatives like R. Isaac Arama renewed the attack against
allegorists by asking why they need the Torah at all. When it corresponds
to philosophical truths, they accept it literally, and when it does not, they
explain it figuratively; in either case, the knowledge they had before the
revelation is coterminous with what they know after it. R. Yosef Yavetz
attributed the relatively large number of conversions around the time of
the expulsion to the corrupting influence of philosophical relativism, a
98 Daniel Boyarin, Ha-’Iyyun ha-Sefaradi (Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 48-49. The main
documentation of Boyarin’s general thesis is on pp. 47-68. For a similar development
in the field of biblical exegesis, see Shimon Shalem, “Ha-Metodah ha-Parshanit shel
Yosef Taitazak ve-Hugo,” Sefunot 11 (1971-77): 115-134.
— 84 —
judgment endorsed in the twentieth century by Yitzhak Baer. R. Abraham

Bibago, on the other hand, writing in the middle of the fifteenth century,
denied that philosophically oriented Jews were any less steadfast than
pure Talmudists; spiritual weakness is not dependent upon intellectual
orientation. More generally, Bibago’s attack against extreme rationalists
and especially against opponents of philosophy tends to demonstrate
that both groups were active in late medieval Spain. Bibago himself was a
relatively moderate rationalist who fits well into the category of Spanish
Jews like R. Isaac Abravanel who studied philosophy but attempted to
counter rationalist extremism through a conservative interpretation of
Maimonides and his legacy. When such a person denounces fools who
call “people of intellect and reason” heretics, his remarks deserve special
notice; apparently, Spain too was not without thoroughgoing critics of
the philosophical enterprise for whom even the rationalism of Bibago
was an impermissible deviation from pristine Judaism.99
There is little evidence for the outright Averroist-style skepticism
that Yitzhak Baer blames for the apostasy of beleaguered Iberian Jews.
Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that an acculturated community
is a less likely candidate for martyrdom than an insular one. Imagine
two people with equal faith in the truth of Judaism confronting the
executioner’s sword. The first is an admiring participant in the culture he
is being told to embrace, however much he rejects its religion; the second
responds to that environment with visceral revulsion. While there are
no easy formulas for determining the willingness to be martyred, the
second type, who represents the Ashkenazic Jew of the first crusade, is
surely more likely to choose death. On this level, the Jews of Spain paid
a spiritual price for integration into the cultural milieu of their potential
persecutors.
99 See Yavetz’s Sefer Or ha-Hayyim (Lemberg, 1874), ch. 2, and the references in Baer, A
History of the Jews in Christian Spain 2, p. 509, n. 12, and in Isaac E. Barzilay, Between
Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought, 1250-1650 (The Hague,
1967), p. 148. For Baer’s citation of Arama and indictment of Jewish Averroism, see
his History 2, pp. 253-259. Baer’s position was rejected by Haim Hillel Ben Sasson,
“Dor Golei Sefarad ‘al ‘Azmo,” Zion 26 (1961): 44-52, 59-64. On Bibago, see Joseph
Hacker, “Meqomo shel R. Avraham Bibag ba-Mahaloqet ‘al Limmud ha-Pilosophiah
u-Ma‘amadah bi-Sefarad ba-Me’ah ha-Tet-Vav,” Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress
of Jewish Studies 3 (Jerusalem, 1972), Heb. sec., pp. 151-158. Cf. also the oft-quoted
anti-philosophical responsum by R. Isaac ben Sheshet, She’elot u-Teshuvot Bar Sheshet
(Vilna, 1878), no. 45.
— 85 —
As we have seen in various contexts, the pursuit of the natural sciences

went hand in hand with philosophical study, and their status as a mere
handmaiden of metaphysics did not prevent them from being investigated
with intensity and sophistication. Jewish physicians remained prominent
throughout the Middle Ages, and Maimonides’ medical treatises contain
insights of lasting value. Gersonides made impressive contributions
to astronomy, including the preparation of astronomical tables at the
request of influential Christians, and fourteenth-century Provençal
Jews continued to translate numerous scientific texts. Ibn Kaspi took
pleasure in the unvarnished meaning of a Talmudic text which asserted
that gentile scholars had defeated the sages of Israel in a debate about
astronomy; this, he said, demonstrates that non-Jews have something
to teach us and that their works should not be ignored.100
The relationship between astronomy and astrology raised scientific
and theological questions which confound the usually predictable
boundaries between rationalists and their opponents. From a modern
perspective, Maimonides’ vigorous opposition to astrology seems
precisely what we ought to expect from a person of his intellectual
bent. To many medievals, however, astrology was not only validated
by Rabbinic texts; it was a science like all others. Gersonides, for
example, argued that the discipline was often empirically validated,
and it was taken for granted that miracles must overcome not only the
regularities of physics but the astrological order as well. At the same
time, nonrationalist religious considerations could produce opposition
100 For a succinct summary of Maimonides’ contributions to medieval medicine, see S.

Muntner, “Gedulato ve-Hiddushav shel ha-Rambam bi-Refuah,” in Ha-Ram Bamza”l
[sic]: Qovez Torani-Madda‘i, ed. by Y. L. Maimon (Jerusalem, 1955), pp. 264-266. On
Jewish physicians in general, see inter alia, I. Munz, Die Jüdische Ärzte im Mittelalter
(Frankfurt am Main, 1922), and D. Margalit, Hakhmei Yisrael ke-Rofe’im (Jerusalem,
1962). On science in general and astronomy in particular, see Bernard R. Goldstein, “The
Role of Science in the Jewish Community in Fourteenth-Century France,” Annals of the
New York Academy of Sciences 314 (1978): 39-49, reprinted in his Theory and Observation
in Ancient and Medieval Astronomy (London, 1985); L. V. Berman, “Greek into Hebrew:
Samuel b. Judah of Marseilles, Fourteenth-Century Philosopher and Translator,” in
Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, pp. 289-320; Twersky, “Joseph ibn Kaspi”
(above n. 94), p. 256, n. 52, where he cites a variety of references to divergent Jewish
interpretations of the passage in Pesahim 94b concerning the victory of the gentile
astronomers. On continuing astronomical study by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean, see Goldstein, “The Hebrew Astronomical Tradition:
New Sources,” Isis 72 (1981): 237-251, also reprinted in Theory and Observation.
— 86 —
to astrology, so that on this issue the Maimonidean legacy found itself in

the unaccustomed company of R. Moses Taku. In the case of Gersonides,
astronomy and astrology were kept rigorously separated, so that the
affirmation of astrological truths had no adverse effect on his important
astronomical studies.101
Although Spain and Provence were the major centers of philosophical
and scientific pursuits among the Jews of the high and late Middle Ages,
they did not enjoy a monopoly. Byzantine Jewry lived in a culture which
preserved much of the Greek legacy of antiquity, and its intellectual
profile has been described as “catholic in outlook and integrated with
its environment. Secular studies were pursued as much as traditional
religious studies.”102 Israel Ta-Shema, who has read substantial portions
of the massive, unpublished works of Byzantine Jews available in the
Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem, has spoken to
me with wonderment of the immense size and scope of the encyclopedic
compositions produced by that Jewry, although he is less impressed by
their depth or creativity.
Yemenite Jews, in part because of the influence of the Muslim
environment and in large measure because of the inspiration provided by
Maimonides, produced works reflecting familiarity with the full range of
101 For Maimonides’ position, see his letter in Alexander Marx, “The Correspondence
between the Rabbis of Southern France and Maimonides about Astrology,” Hebrew Union
College Annual 3 (1926): 311-358. (This letter [p. 351] also contains Maimonides’ well-
known remark that he had read a multitude of Arabic works on idolatry, an observation
which has been regarded as problematic in light of Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah 2:2. For a
discussion of the passage in Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah, see Lawrence Kaplan and David Berger,
“On Freedom of Inquiry in the Rambam—and Today,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 2
[1990]: 37-50.) For Nahmanides’ arguments from Talmudic texts, see his responsum in
Kitvei Ramban 1, pp. 378-381; see also his Commentary to Job, Kitvei Ramban 1, p. 19, for
the assumption that overturning someone’s astrological fate requires miraculous divine
intervention. Gersonides presented his argument on dreams, divination, prophecy,
and astrology in Milhamot Hashem 2:1-3 (Leipzig, 1866), pp. 92-101; Levi ben Gershon
(Gersonides), The Wars of the Lord, trans. by Seymour Feldman, 2 (Philadelphia, 1987),
pp. 27-41. On the frequent but imperfect success of astrologers, see p. 95; Feldman, p.
33. For his separation of astronomy and astrology, see Goldstein, “The Role of Science,”
p. 45. On Moses Taku, see Ketav Tamim, Ozar Nehmad 3, pp. 82-83. (I do not mean to
imply that Taku’s position, which is reflected in a fleeting remark, was fully identical
with that of Maimonides.)
102 Steven B. Bowman, The Jews of Byzantium: 1204-1453 (University, Alabama, 1985), p.
168. Bowman goes on to suggest that this integration into Byzantine culture may have
served to undermine the cultural independence of the established Jewish community
in the face of the Ottoman conquest and Sephardi immigration.
— 87 —
the medieval sciences. In an exceptionally strong formulation, R. Perahiah

b. Meshullam wrote that “without the sciences of the intelligibles there
would be no Torah,” and Hoter b. Shlomoh reiterated the standard
justification of scientific study as a preparation for metaphysical
speculation.103
Similarly, the successor culture of medieval Spain was largely true
to its heritage. The relative decline and stagnation of Muslim culture in
the late Middle Ages had taken its toll on the intellectual creativity of
Eastern Jewry, but under the stimulus of the Spanish immigration, the
Jews of the Ottoman Empire displayed a renewal of cultural ferment.
While this activity was mainly exegetical and homiletical, it included the
study and translation of philosophical works. A recently published text
provides a striking glimpse into a cast of mind which takes all learning as
its province. A young scholar felt insulted when his town was denigrated
as climatically unfit for the production of intellectuals. In an indignant
response, he challenged the critic to do battle:
Come out to the field and let us compete in our knowledge of the Bible,
the Mishnah, and the Talmud, Sifra and Sifrei and all of Rabbinic literature;
in the external sciences—the practical and theoretical fields of science,
the science of nature, and of the Divine; in logic… , geometry, astronomy,
and law; in the natural sciences—the longer commentary and the shorter
commentary, Generatio et Corruptio, De Anima and Meteora, De Animalia
and Ethics. . . Try me, for you have opened your mouth and belittled my
dwelling-place, and you shall see that we know whatever can be known in
the proper manner.104
103 The first major scientific work by a Yemenite Jew was Netanel al-Fayyumi’s Bustan
al-‘Uqul, and interest in these disciplines persisted into the seventeenth century.
See, inter alia, Y. Tzvi Langermann, Ha-Madda‘im ha-Meduyyaqim be-Qerev Yehudei
Teiman (Jerusalem, 1987); Yosef Kafih, “Arba‘im She‘elot be-Pilosophiah le-Rav
Perahiah be-R. Meshullam,” Sefunot 18 (1985): 111-192; David R. Blumenthal, The
Commentary of R. Hoter ben Shelomo to the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides (Leiden,
1974); Meir Havazelet, “‘Al ha-Parshanut ha-Allegorit-ha-Pilosofit be-Midrash ha-
Hefez le-Rabbi Zekharyah ha-Rofe,” Teima 3 (1993): 45-56; and the references in
Amos Goldreich, “Mi-Mishnat Hug ha-‘Iyyun: ‘Od ‘al ha-Meqorot ha-Efshariyyim
shel ‘ha-Ahdut ha-Shavah’,” Mehqerei Yerushalayim be-Mahashevet Yisrael 6 (3 -4)
(1987): 150, n. 35.
104 Joseph Hacker, “The Intellectual Activity of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire during
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth
Century, ed. by Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, Mass., and
London, England, 1987), p. 120. (Hacker’s translation was printed in a somewhat
garbled form, and so I have modified it slightly on the basis of the Hebrew version of
— 88 —
The polemical vigor and unmitigated pride in such remarks reflect a

mentality that does not harbor the slightest twinge of doubt about the
legitimacy and significance of all these pursuits.
At the same time, we have interesting evidence of opposition to
philosophical study in this community. R. Menahem de Lonzano
published an attack against philosophy which pointed to serious
religious errors that it had inspired even in great figures of the past
including Maimonides, R. Joseph Albo, and, strikingly, R. Bahya ibn
Pakuda. We have already seen that Bahya decidedly belonged among
the strongest advocates of speculation, but the piety that suffuses
the bulk of his ethical work served to mute his rationalistic message
and insulate him from serious attack by most anti-rationalists. De
Lonzano was sensitive to this message and complained that Bahya, like
Maimonides, placed metaphysics at the pinnacle of human endeavor
despite the implications for the status of straightforward study of the
Torah; indeed, the broadside cites a nameless rabbinic contemporary
in Istanbul who wondered why the Guide had been burned while The
Duties of the Heart had remained untouched. On the one hand, it is clear
that de Lonzano’s attack reflected the view of an influential circle of
Talmudists. It is equally clear, however, that he was deeply concerned
about the likelihood that he would be subjected to scathing criticism for
his position, and he describes contemporaries who advocated the study
of halakhic codes rather than the Talmud so that they could devote their
time to other disciplines. While we cannot know with any certainty
why this critique of philosophy was omitted from the second, early
seventeenth-century version of de Lonzano’s book, the opposition that
it no doubt engendered is as likely an explanation as any.105 Ottoman
Jewry, though on the verge of cultural decline and by no means univocal
in its attitude to general culture, remained generally loyal to the legacy
of medieval Sephardic thought.
his article, “Ha-Pe‘ilut ha-Intelleqtualit be-qerev Yehudei ha-Imperiah ha-‘Ottomanit

ba-Me‘ot ha-Shesh-‘Esreh ve-ha-Sheva‘-‘Esreh,” Tarbiz 53 [1984]: 591.) Note also
Hacker’s citations from Solomon le-Beit ha-Levi and Abraham ibn Migash on
pp. 123-126.
105 See Joseph Hacker, “Pulmus ke-neged ha-Pilosophiah be-Istanbul ba-Me‘ah ha-Shesh-
‘Esreh,” Mehqarim be-Qabbalah be-Pilosophiah Yehudit u-be-Sifrut ha-Musar ve-he-Hagut
Muggashim li-Yesha‘yah Tishbi bi-Melot lo Shiv‘im ve-Hamesh Shanim (Jerusalem, 1986),
pp. 507-536.
— 89 —
ASHKENAZ
The Northern European heartland of medieval Ashkenazic Jewry had

a complex relationship with the dominant Christian civilization that
defies the often simplistic characterizations describing the Ashkenazim
as insular and narrow. There is no question that Northern French and
German Jews, unlike their Sephardi counterparts, were deeply resistant
to philosophical inquiry, largely because of the absence of a surrounding
philosophical culture during their formative period; a Jewish civilization
which reached maturity unaccustomed to speculation will be particularly
sensitive to its alien dangers. Certainly the image of the Ashkenazim
among Spanish and Provençal advocates of philosophy was that of
benighted obscurantists. Radak wrote to Alfakar, “You and other wise
men engage in the pursuit of wisdom and do not follow the words of the
Ashkenazim, who have banned anyone who does so.” R. Isaac of Acre,
who became an advocate of such inquiry late in his life, reacted with
disdain to those who refuse to examine
a rational argument or to accept it. Rather, they call one to whom God has
given the ability to understand rational principles… a heretic and non-
believer, and his books they call external books, because they do not have
the spirit needed to understand a rational principle. This is the nature of
the rabbis of France and Germany and those who are like them.
During the controversy of the 1230s, Maimonists in Narbonne

sent a letter to Spain with a particularly vitriolic denunciation of
the French rabbis as fools and lunatics with clogged minds, who are
devoted to superstitious nonsense and immersed in the fetid waters of
unilluminated caves.106
Even in the context of philosophical speculation narrowly defined,
the situation was not quite so simple. A paraphrase of Saadya’s Beliefs and
Opinions that made its way to early medieval Ashkenaz had a profound
effect on the theology of significant segments of that Jewry. Unusual
works like Ketav Tamim and Sefer ha-Maskil demonstrate familiarity
with some speculative literature, and the author of the latter treatise
106 For Radak, see Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam, p. 3b. For Isaac of Acre, see Goldreich’s
quotation from Oxford ms. 1911 in Me’irat ‘Einayim, p. 412. The letter from Narbonne
was published by Shatzmiller in Zion 34 (1969): 143-144.
— 90 —
was conversant with a variety of up-to-date scientific theories and

experiments. In general, technological advances, experimental results,
and observations of nature raised no serious religious problems, and
there was no intrinsic reason for people unaffected by a theory of
propaedeutic studies to connect them to philosophy. We should not be
surprised, therefore, that Ashkenazic literature, probably even more
than that of the Sephardim, reflects the keen interest and penetrating
eye of Jews evincing intense curiosity about the natural and mechanical
phenomena that surrounded them.107 Moreover, the moment we broaden
the question to include the Jewish response to the surrounding culture in
general, we discover the possibility of creative interaction that may have
transformed important aspects of Ashkenazic piety and thought.
First of all, the religious confrontation with the Christian world
impelled some Jews to study Latin as a polemical tool. More important, the
ruthless pursuit of straightforward interpretation, or peshat, by twelfth-
century Jewish commentators in France can plausibly be seen as a Jewish
reaction to nonliteral Christian exegesis. A Jewish polemicist insisting
107 On the paraphrase of Saadya and its influence, see Ronald C. Kiener, “The Hebrew
Paraphrase of Saadiah Gaon’s Kitab al-Amanat Wa’l-I‘tiqadat,” AJS Review 11 (1986):
1-25, and Yosef Dan, Torat ha-Sod shel Hasidut Ashkenaz (Jerusalem, 1986), especially
pp. 22-24. On science and philosophy in Sefer ha-Maskil, see Ta-Shema, “Sefer ha-
Maskil,” pp. 435, 437-438.
Though the observation about propaedeutic studies is mine, I owe the vigorous
formulation about the Ashkenazim’s keen interest in the world around them to
a conversation with Ta-Shema; cf. Noah Shapira, “‘Al ha-Yeda‘ ha-Tekhni ve-ha-
Tekhnologi shel Rashi,” Korot 3 (1963): 145-161, where Rashi’s extensive technological
information is treated, probably wrongly, as exceptional. See now the brief but very
important note by Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Hibbur Ashkenazi Bilti Noda‘ be-Madda‘ei ha-
Teva‘,” Kiryat Sefer 62 (1988-89): 448-449, where he describes a scientific treatise by
a fourteenth-century French Jew who was particularly interested in practical science,
including various instruments, and who reported that he had written a different work
demonstrating how scientific knowledge sheds new light on the understanding of
Torah. See also n. 131 below.
The warm, respectful welcome extended to R. Abraham ibn Ezra by prominent Tosafists
certainly does not bespeak instinctive hostility to bearers of a broader cultural
orientation. For Ta-Shema’s more problematic assertion that Ashkenaz boasted full-
fledged rationalist allegorizers, see his “Sefer ha-Maskil,” 421; if such an approach had
really attained an appreciable level of visibility in Northern Europe, it is hard to imagine
that we would not find more substantial criticisms of it in the extant literature. Finally,
it is worth noting an oral observation by Haym Soloveitchik that the major rabbinic
luminaries of Northern France are not among the signatories of the ban against the
Guide and Sefer ha-Madda.
— 91 —
upon peshat in a debate with a Christian could not easily return home
and read the Bible in a way that violated the very principles of contextual,
grammatical interpretation that he had just been passionately defending.
Even explanations that are not labeled as anti-Christian can be motivated
by the desire to avoid Christological assertions. There is, moreover,
substantial evidence of scholarly interchange of a cordial, nonpolemical
sort among Jews and Christians attempting to uncover the sense of the
biblical text, and the Jewish approach had a considerable impact on the
churchmen of St. Victor and other Christian commentators. Finally,
the fact that the explosion of Jewish learning and literary activity took
place in twelfth-century France may well be related to the concomitant
“renaissance of the twelfth century” in the larger society.108
The stereotype of the narrow Ashkenazi sometimes included the
assertion that even biblical study was ignored, and there is a degree of
validity in this image, particularly in the later Middle Ages.109 Nonetheless,
108 See Aryeh Grabois, “The Hebraica Veritas and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations
in the Twelfth Century,” Speculum 50 (1975): 613-634; David Berger, “Mission to the
Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle
Ages,” The American Historical Review 91 (1986): 576-591; Berger, “Gilbert Crispin, Alan
of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission of Medieval Polemic,”
Speculum 49 (1974): 34-47 (on the use of Latin texts by a Jewish polemicist); Avraham
Grossman, “Ha-Pulmus ha-Yehudi-ha-Nozri ve-ha-Parshanut ha-Yehudit la-Miqra be-
Zarfat ba-Me’ah ha-Yod-Bet (le-Parashat Ziqqato shel Ri Qara el ha-Pulmus),” Zion 51
(1986): 29-60 (for persuasive examples of unlabeled anti-Christian commentaries);
Grossman, Hakhmei Zarfat ha-Rishonim, 473-504; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible
in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 1964); Elazar Touitou, “Shitato ha-Parshanit shel ha-
Rashbam ‘al Reqa‘ ha-Meziut ha-Historit shel Zemanno,” in ‘Iyyunim be-Sifrut Hazal
ba-Miqra u-be-Toledot Yisrael: Muqdash li-Prof. Ezra Zion Melamed (Ramat Gan, 1982),
ed. by Y. D. Gilat et al., pp. 48-74 (on the impact of the twelfth-century Renaissance).
For the possible influence of Christian art on Ashkenazic Jews, see Joseph Gutmann’s
presentation and my response in J. Gutmann, et al., What Can Jewish History Learn
From Jewish Art? (New York, 1989), pp. 1-18, 29-38. Gabriele L. Strauch’s Dukus Horant:
Wanderer Zwischen Zwei Welten (Amsterdam and Adanta, 1990) analyzes a fairly typical
medieval German romance written or copied by a fourteenth century German Jew in
Yiddish (or at least in Hebrew characters with some specifically Jewish terminology).
Note also Dan, Torat ha-Sod, pp. 37-39, for some general observations on the impact
of folk beliefs about magic, astrology, and the like on Ashkenazic Jewry. Finally, Ivan
G. Marcus has now presented an analysis of an Ashkenazic ritual for the purpose of
illuminating the manner in which responses to Christian society can make their way
into the religious life of both scholars and the laity; see his Rituals of Childhood: Jewish
Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven and London, 1996).
109 See Profiat Duran’s introduction to Ma‘aseh Efod, p. 41, and the discussion in Isadore
Twersky, “Religion and Law,” in Religion in a Religious Age, ed. by Goitein, pp. 74-77.
— 92 —
the innovative biblical exegesis in twelfth-century France demonstrates

that this perception is selective and skewed. Not only did Ashkenazic
Jews study Bible; biblical exegesis served as both a battleground and a
bridge where Jews and Christians came into frequent, creative contact
as enemies and as partners.
In the field of biblical study, interaction is firmly established; what
requires elucidation is the extent and nature of its effects. We face a more
fundamental problem with respect to the most intriguing question of all:
Did the revolutionary use of dialectic in the Talmudic methodology of the
Northern French Tosafists owe anything to the intellectual upheaval in
the larger society? There is hardly any evidence of Jewish familiarity in
Ashkenaz with the study of canon law and philosophy, which were the two
major areas in which the search for contradictions or inconsistencies and
their subsequent resolution began to play a central role. It is even more
difficult to imagine that Christians, whose familiarity with the Talmud was
virtually nil, could have been much influenced by Tosafists. At the same
time, the very individuals who pursued the new methodologies in fields
unknown by the members of the other faith met on the terrain of biblical
studies. Rashbam, who was a Tosafist as well as a peshat-oriented biblical
exegete, is a good Jewish example. In light of these well-documented
contacts, it surely cannot be ruled out—indeed, it seems overwhelmingly
likely—that some taste of the exciting new approaches was transmitted.
When the German pietists wanted to criticize the Tosafist approach, they
denounced the utilization of “Gentile dialectic” (dial tiqa [dialeqtiqah]
shel goyim); though we are under no obligation to endorse the historical
judgment of the pietists, the criticism establishes at least a threshold
level of familiarity with the term and its application.110
See also Mordechai Breuer, “Min‘u Beneikhem min ha-Higgayon,” in Mikhtam le-David:
Sefer Zikhron ha-Rav David Ochs, ed. by Yitzhak Gilat and Eliezer Stern (Ramat Gan,
1978), pp. 242-264, and Frank Taimage, “Keep Your Sons From Scripture: The Bible in
Medieval Jewish Scholarship and Spirituality,” in Understanding Scripture: Explorations
of Jewish and Christian Traditions of Interpretation, ed. by Clemens Thoma and Michael
Wyschogrod (New York, 1987), pp. 81-101. On evidence for Ashkenazic biblical study
in the pre-crusade period, see Avraham Grossman, Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim,
pp. 240, 288-289, 323 (inter alia), and cf. my review, “Heqer Rabbanut Ashkenaz ha-
Qedumah,” Tarbiz 53 (1984): 484, n. 7. For an overall analysis of the evidence, see
Ephraim Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages (Detroit,
1992), pp. 79-85.
110 See Kanarfogel, Jewish Education, pp. 70-73. The pietists’ denunciation of dialectic
is in Sefer Hasidim, ed. by J. Wistinetsky, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1924), par.
— 93 —
The relationship of these pietists to the surrounding culture is itself

highly suggestive. The system of penances that they introduced into the
process of repentance is no longer regarded as a defining characteristic of
their movement; nonetheless, that system remains a major development
in the history of Jewish piety, and despite a smattering of antecedents in
rabbinic literature, it is overwhelmingly likely that the influence of the
Christian environment was decisive.111 With respect to quintessentially
religious behavior, the inhibition against following Christian models
should have been overwhelming, and I think that the psychological
factor that overcame it was analogous to the competitive imitation
that we have already seen in Muslim Spain. It was critically important
for the Jewish self-image that Jews not be inferior to the host society.
In Spain, the competition was cultural and intellectual; in Ashkenaz,
given the different complexion of both majority and minority culture,
it was a competition in religious devotion. I have suggested elsewhere
that this consideration may account in part for the assertions by Jewish
polemicists that the chastity of monks and nuns is more apparent than
real. Celibacy was an area in which Jewish law did not allow competition,
and so the problem was resolved by the not entirely unfounded allegation
that the religious self-sacrifice of Christians was illusory. With respect
to self-mortification for sin, Jewish law was not quite so clear, and
Ashkenazi pietists set out to demonstrate that they would not be put to
shame by Christian zeal in the service of God.112
In the late Middle Ages, Northern European Jewry was subjected to
expulsions, persecutions, and dislocations which disrupted its cultural
752, p. 191. Note too the citation of some parallel methods in Tosafot and Christian
works in Jose Faur, “The Legal Thinking of Tosafot: An Historical Approach,” Diné
Israel 6 (1975): xIiii-lxxii. For intimate familiarity with Christian works in the writings
of the probably atypical R. Elhanan b. Yaqar of London, see G. Vajda, “De quelques
infiltrations chrétiennes dans l’oeuvre d’un auteur anglo-juif du XIIIe siècle,” Archives
d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 28 (1961): 15-34.
111 On the Christian analogues to the penances of Hasidei Ashkenaz, see Yitzhak Baer,
“Ha-Megammah ha-Datit ve-ha-Hevratit shel Sefer Hasidim,” Zion 3 (1938): 18-20. For
the new evaluation of the movement’s center of gravity, see Haym Soloveitchik, “Three
Themes in the Sefer Hasidim,” AJS Review 1 (1976): 311-357. See also Ivan Marcus,
Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany (Leiden, 1981).
112 On celibacy, see my observations in The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages,
p. 27. I have elaborated somewhat in a forthcoming essay, “Al Tadmitam ve-Goralam
shel ha-Goyim be-Sifrut ha-Pulmus ha-Ashkenazit,” in [Yehudim mul ha-Zelav], ed. by
Yom Tov Assis, et al.
— 94 —
life and moved its center of gravity eastward. By the late fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries, a figure like R. Yom Tov Lipmann Mühlhausen
of Prague demonstrates that some Jewish intellectuals had achieved
familiarity with philosophy and general culture. In 1973, Ephraim Kupfer
published a seminal article which attempted to establish the substantial
presence of rationalism in Ashkenaz during this period. There can be
no question that much of the evidence that he adduced is significant
and stimulating. We can hardly fail to be intrigued, for example, by
an argument in an Ashkenazic text that ancient shifts in the halakhah
of levirate marriage resulted from a rejection of metempsychosis by
increasingly sophisticated rabbis. At the same time, it is far from clear that
this material reflects the views and interests of substantial segments of
Ashkenazic society, and it is very likely that one of the important figures
in the article came to Europe from Israel bearing texts and ideas that stem
from the Jewish communities of the Muslim East. Both the dissemination
and the rootedness of philosophical study in fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century Ashkenaz remain an open question, and I am inclined to think
that it stood considerably closer to the periphery than to the center.113
The question of the standing of philosophy among fifteenth-century
Ashkenazim has a significant bearing on the proper evaluation of major
113 See Kupfer, “Li-Demutah,” Tarbiz 42 (1973): 113-147. It is noteworthy that one of the
texts cited by Kupfer (p. 129) takes it for granted that the ancient rabbis learned proper
methods of demonstration from the works of Aristotle, a position which reverses the
standard medieval Jewish assertion about the source of Greek philosophy. See also
Kupfer’s brief supplementary notes in his “Hassagot min Hakham Ehad ‘al Divrei he-
Hakham ha-Rav R. Yosef b. ha-Qadosh R. Yosef ha-Lo‘azi she-Katav ve-Qara be-Qol
Gadol neged ha-Rambam,” Qovez ‘al Yad n.s. 11 [21] (1985): 215-216, nn. 2, 4. For
some evidence of interest in philosophy outside the “Mühlhausen circle,” particularly
in Sefer Hadrat Qodesh written in Germany shortly before the middle of the fourteenth
century, see Davis, R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller, pp. 88-103, and see now his “Philosophy,
Dogma, and Exegesis in Medieval Ashkenazic Judaism: The Evidence of Sefer Hadrat
Qodesh,” AJS Review 18 (1993): 195-222. For an early, brief expression of reservations
about Kupfer’s thesis, see Joseph Dan, “Hibbur Yihud Ashkenazi min ha-Me’ah ha-Yod-
Dalet,” Tarbiz 44 (1975): 203-206. For a more detailed critique, see Israel Jacob Yuval,
Hakhamim be-Doram (Jerusalem, 1988), 286-311. In an oral communication, Moshe
Idel has noted several considerations pointing to the likelihood that Menahem Shalem
came from Israel: His non-Ashkenazic name usually refers to a Jerusalemite; he makes
reference to Emmaus, which he identifies as Latrun; he had a text by Abraham Abulafia
and a translation of an Arabic text by Abraham Maimonides. If Idel is correct, and if
Kupfer’s suggestion that the two Menahems in his study are really one and the same is
also correct, then the dominant personality in the article was not an Ashkenazic Jew.
— 95 —
trends and figures in the intellectual life of the burgeoning new center
in sixteenth-century Poland. R. Moses Isserles and R. Mordecai Jaffe
are the two most prominent examples of distinguished Talmudists who
maintained a position of moderate rationalism in which a conservative
understanding of Maimonides and a philosophical interpretation of
kabbalah served to unite diverse strands of Jewish piety and theology in a
manner that removed any threat to traditional religious affirmations.114 If
Kupfer is correct, then this position can be seen as a natural continuation
of intellectual trends in late medieval Ashkenaz, and the approach of
Isserles and Jaffe would fit well into their generally conservative posture.
If he is not, then we must seek other sources for the penetration of
philosophical ideas into Polish Jewish thought.
The first of these is the Northern European Renaissance, which
affected both Poland and Bohemia and can consequently help to account
not only for the elements of rationalism in the works of Polish rabbis but
for the significant scientific and philosophical activity among the Jews
of late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Prague. In the case of
David Gans of Prague, the relationship with Christian society is crystal-
clear: Gans was the first influential Jew to confront Copernicanism, and
he did so as a personal associate of Tycho Brahe and Johann Kepler.
Gans’s illustrious contemporary, R. Judah Loew (Maharal), produced an
impressive theological corpus which made extensive, though cautious
use of the Jewish philosophical tradition, and described astronomy as
“a ladder to ascend to the wisdom of the Torah,” while his student R.
Yom Tov Lipman Heller, best known for his standard commentary to the
Mishnah, displayed considerable interest in the pursuit of mathematics
and astronomy. The period from 1560 to 1620 saw a significant increase
in works of a philosophical and scientific nature throughout the
Ashkenazic orbit, and the contacts between the Jewish communities of
Prague and Poland no doubt contributed to the spread of these pursuits.
A second significant source of cultural stimulation for Polish Jewry
may well have been Renaissance Italy. Polish Jews were in continual
contact with Italy in a multitude of contexts; numerous Padua-trained
114 See Lawrence Kaplan, “Rabbi Mordekhai Jaffe and the Evolution of Jewish Culture in
Poland in the Sixteenth Century,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. by
Bernard D. Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, 1983), pp. 266-282.
On Isserles’ thought, see Yonah Ben Sasson, Mishnato ha-‘lyyunit shel ha-Rama
(Jerusalem, 1984).
— 96 —
physicians came to Poland, and a constant stream of literary material

crossed the border.115
The use of this material would have been legitimated in the eyes of
some conservatives by the heroic image of Maimonides, whose orthodoxy
was now beyond reproach. Once again, we find an exception, which
genuinely proves this rule. In midsixteenth-century Posen, the extreme
and eccentric anti-rationalist R. Joseph Ashkenazi persuaded his father-
in-law R. Aaron to deliver an uncompromising attack against the study
of philosophy. Ashkenazi, as we know from a later work of his, attacked
Maimonides with startling vitriol as an outright heretic who deserves no
defense and who is largely responsible for popularizing the allegorization
of the Bible and of aggadah that has undermined authentic Judaism.
Nevertheless, he himself cited with disgust the unanimity of the admiring
chorus of Maimonides’ supporters, and R. Avraham Horowitz’s attack
on Ashkenazi demonstrates further the passionate reaction inspired
by unrestrained criticism of the author of the Guide. Horowitz’s work,
which contains a vigorous defense of philosophical study, also reflects
the presence in sixteenth-century Poland of unabashed exponents of
speculation, although the author’s partial revision of his rationalist
views years later points to the countervailing forces that may well have
been dominant even at that time, as they surely were by the dawn of the
Jewish enlightenment.116
115 On Gans in particular and Prague in general, see Mordecai Breuer, “Qavvim li-Demuto
shel R. David Gans Ba‘al Zemah David,” Bar Ilan 11 (1973): 97-103, and his edition
of Sefer Zemah David le-Rabbi David Gans (Jerusalem, 1983), esp. pp. 1-9. On Heller,
see Davis, R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller, pp. 339-517; for documentation on the upsurge
in Ashkenazic works of a philosophical and scientific nature, see Davis, pp. 121-129.
On the contacts between Ashkenaz and Italy, see Jacob Elbaum, “Qishrei Tarbut bein
Yehudei Polin ve-Ashkenaz le-bein Yehudei Italia ba-Me’ah Ha-Tet-Zayin,” Gal‘ed 7-8
(1985): 11-40, and, more briefly, his Petihut Ve-Histaggerut (Jerusalem, 1990), 33-54.
On Jews in the medical school at Padua, see Daniel Carpi, “Yehudim Ba‘alei Toar Doctor
li-Refuah mi-Ta‘am Universitat Padua ba-Me’ah ha-Tet-Zayin u-be-Reshit ha-Me’ah ha-
Yod-Zayin,” in Sefer Zikkaron le-Natan Cassutto (Scritti in Memoria di Nathan Cassuto),
ed. by Daniel Carpi, Augusto Segre, and Renzo Toaff (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 62-91.
116 Lawrence Kaplan has pointed out that despite the impression given by some earlier
scholarship, Horowitz’s revision does not represent a radical rejection of his earlier views;
see “Rabbi Mordekhai Jaffe,” p. 281, n. 8. Horowitz’s attack was published and discussed
by Ph. Bloch, “Der Streit um den Moreh des Maimonides in der Gemeinde Posen um die
Mitte des 16 Jahrh.,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 47
(1903): 153-169, 263-279, 346-356. For an analysis of Joseph Ashkenazi and selections
from his work, see Gershom Scholem, “Yedi‘ot Hadashot ‘al R. Yosef Ashkenazi, ha-‘Tanna’
— 97 —
Isserles’ conservative philosophical treatise contained considerable

scientific discussion as well, and he also wrote a separate astronomical
work in the form of a commentary to the standard textbook in that field,
Georg Peurbach’s Theoricae Novae Planetarum. R. Solomon Luria, in an
oft-quoted exchange with Isserles, denounced him for citing scientific
information derived from gentile sources in a halakhic decision about the
kashrut of a particular animal and for reading philosophical works at all,
and he blames such attitudes for the bizarre and otherwise unattested
phenomenon of young Polish Jews who recite an Aristotelian prayer in
the synagogue. Isserles’ response is revealing. He justified his actions, but
made it clear that he gained his scientific knowledge only from Jewish
books and that he pursued these studies only at times when most people
are out taking walks on Sabbaths and holidays.
Recent research has tended to portray a greater openness to
rationalism and science than we had been accustomed to ascribe to this
Jewry. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to take the pulse of sixteenth-
century Polish Jewish intellectuals with respect to our question: probably
a small group of full-fledged rationalists, a substantial number of
conservative advocates of a tamed philosophy, and a significant group of
rabbis who either shied away from speculation or actively opposed it.117
mi-Zefat,” Tarbiz 28 (1959): pp. 59-89, 201-235. A detailed response to Ashkenazi by a

contemporary Italian Jew was published by Kupfer, “Hassagot min Hakham Ehad,” Qovez
al Yad n.s. 11 [21] (1985): 213-288. On Ashkenazi’s denunciation even of Maimondes’
code, see I. Twersky, “R. Yosef Ashkenazi ve-Sefer Mishneh Torah la-Rambam,” Sefer
ha-Yovel li-Kevod Shalom Baron, ed. by Saul Lieberman (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 183-194.
The moderate rationalism of R. Eliezer Ashekenazi of Posen also deserves mention,
although the fact that he spent many years in the East mitigates his significance for a
characterization of Polish Jewry; see the analysis of Ashkenazi’s exegetical independence
in Haim Hillel Ben Sasson, Hagut ve-Hanhagah (Jerusalem, 1959), pp. 34-38.
117 On Isserles’ astronomical treatise, see Y. Tzvi Langermann, “The Astronomy of
Rabbi Moses Isserles,” in Physics, Cosmology, and Astronomy, 1300-1700: Tension and
Accommodation, ed. by S. Unguru (Dordrecht and Boston, 1991), pp. 83-98. For the
exchange between Isserles and R. Solomon Luria, see She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rama, ed.
by Asher Siev (Jerusalem, 1971), nos. 5-7, pp. 18-38, and cf. the summary in Ben Zion
Katz, Rabbanut, Hasidut, Haskalah 1 (Tel Aviv, 1956), pp. 32-33. It is worth noting that
even Luria maintains that he is as familiar with the disputed literature as Isserles (Siev,
p. 26). On Poland specifically and sixteenth-century Ashkenazic Jewry in general, see
Jacob Elbaum, Zeramim u-Megammot be-Sifrut ha-Mahashavah ve-ha-Musar be-Ashkenaz
u-be-Polin ba-Me’ah ha-Tet-Zayin (Hebrew University dissertation, 1977), pp. 120-135;
Elbaum, Petihut ve-Histaggerut, esp. chapter 5; Davis, R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller; and the
still useful survey by Lawrence H. Davis, “The Great Debate: Secular Studies and the
Jews in Sixteenth Century Poland,” Yavneh Review 3 (1963): 42-58.
— 98 —
ITALIAN SYMBIOSIS
With respect to Poland and the Ottoman Empire, we could legitimately

speak of successor cultures to Ashkenaz and Spain respectively, despite
the fact that Middle Eastern Jewry had its own intellectual tradition
before the Iberian immigration. Italy is a more complex and more
interesting story. Despite their Christian environment, the Jews of
medieval Italy appear to have maintained a greater degree of openness to
the surrounding culture than did Ashkenazic Jewry. Shabbetai Donnolo
is a well-known, early example of the sort of learned physician and
scientist that we usually associate with Jews in the Muslim orbit. To
some degree, this phenomenon may have resulted from the significant
Muslim impact on Southern Italy, but I am inclined to attribute even
greater importance to the fact that pre-twelfth-century Southern Europe
maintained a greater continuity with the classical past than did the
Christian communities of the North. A case in point is the familiarity
of the anonymous tenth-century Italian Jew who wrote Josippon with
earlier Latin works. By the thirteenth century, Italian Jews displayed a
level of sophistication in philosophical and literary pursuits that owed
something to contacts with Iberia but at least as much to a receptivity to
the cultural developments in their immediate environment. Thus, easily
the most philosophically sophisticated anti-Christian polemicist of the
thirteenth century was Moses ben Solomon of Salerno, and the often
secular, sometimes ribald poetry of Immanuel of Rome could not have
been composed in any other Jewry in the medieval Christian world.118
Toward the end of the Middle Ages, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi
immigrants introduced a mixture of new influences. Elijah del Medigo’s
late fifteenth-century Behinat ha-Dat is a clear-cut example of the impact
of rationalism, but the fate of Aristotelian philosophy among the Jews
of Renaissance Italy is bound up with central questions about their
118 On Donnolo, see the discussion and references in A. Sharf, The Universe of Shabbetai
Donnolo (New York, 1976). For the greater cultural continuity in Southern Europe, see
R. W. Southern’s observations in The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven and London,
1953), pp. 20-25. On Josippon, see Sefer Yosifon, ed. by David Flusser, 2 vols. (Jerusalem,
1978, 1980); in particular, note Flusser’s well-documented observation that the author
knew Latin works better than rabbinic literature. Moses of Salerno’s philosophical polemic
was published by Stanislaus Simon, Mose ben Salomo von Salerno und seine philosophischen
Auseinandersetzung mit den Lehren des Christentums (Breslau, 1931). For Immanuel, see
Mahberot Immanuel, ed. by A. M. Haberman (Tel Aviv, 1946).
— 99 —
cultural posture. Lists of books in Italian Jewish libraries in the fifteenth

and early sixteenth centuries appear to reflect a decline of interest in
philosophy from the beginning to the end of that period, with the
important and unsurprising exception of Maimonides’ Guide and some of
its commentators. This impression is reinforced by a complaint leveled by
R. Isaac Abravanel in Venice as early as the late fifteenth century about the
unavailability of Averroes’ Epistle on the Conjunction and Moses Narboni’s
commentary on it. If the requisite work were “tosafot or codes, I would
borrow it from one of the natives, but in philosophy this is impossible.”
The declining philosophical content of Jewish sermons in the first half of
the sixteenth century provides further evidence of the same significant
development.119
The diminution of interest in metaphysics does not bespeak the end
of Italian Jewish acculturation. First of all, the continuing use of the
scholastic philosophical approach by no less a figure than R. Ovadiah
Seforno demonstrates the persistent vitality of that tradition within
important rabbinic circles. More important, Renaissance Christians
were themselves engaged in disputes about the value of philosophy and
tended to emphasize the scientific, ethical, and political dimensions of the
Aristotelian corpus rather than its metaphysical component; in a sense,
then, the very de-emphasis of the philosophical tradition can be seen not
as a turning inward but as a reflection of a larger cultural trend. There is
no denying that the gradual displacement of Aristotelianism by kabbalah
in the minds of many Italian Jews reflected a desire to emphasize the
uniqueness of the Jewish people and its culture in a manner reminiscent
of Halevi, whose Kuzari underwent something of a popular revival;
nonetheless, even R. Yehiel Nissim of Pisa, who produced the most
impressive reasoned argument for this displacement, recognized the value
of philosophical investigations, not to speak of scientific inquiry, provided
that they were not assigned primacy in a rivalry with the Torah.120
119 For del Medigo, see his Sefer Behinat ha-Dat, ed. by Jacob Ross (Tel Aviv, 1984), and D.
Geffen, “Insights into the Life and Thought of Elijah del Medigo Based on his Published
and Unpublished Works,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 41-
42 (1973-74): 69-86. On, libraries, sermons, and the overall phenomenon, see Reuven
Bonfil, Ha-Rabbanut be-Italia bi-Tequfat ha-Renaissance (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 173-206;
Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (Oxford and New York, 1990), pp.
270-323. For the citation from Abravanel, see Hacker, “The Intellectual Activity of the
Jews of the Ottoman Empire” (above, n. 104), n. 47 (pp. 117-118).
120 See Bonfil, Ha-Rabbanut, pp. 179-190; Rabbis, pp. 280-298.
— 100 —
Once we step outside the four ells of Aristotelian metaphysics, the

evidence for Renaissance Jewry’s immersion in the surrounding culture
becomes overwhelming. Indeed, to an observer coming to the subject
from the study of another Jewish community, including that of Iberia, the
lively and genuinely significant historians’ debate over the inner or outer
directedness of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian Jews takes on a
surreal quality. This is a community with intellectuals entranced by the
rhetorical works of Cicero and Quintilian and with preachers who lace their
sermons with references to classical authors while insisting that the Bible
cannot be properly understood without a literary sensitivity nurtured by
careful study of gentile as well as Jewish literature. It is a community
with thinkers who set up the Renaissance ideal of homo universalis or
hakham kolel as a paradigm of intellectual perfection attained by King
Solomon and sought by anyone with healthy educational priorities. It is
a community that produced a plan, at least on paper, of setting up what
one observer has described as a Yeshiva University, where the primary
emphasis would be on the study of “the written and oral Torah, laws,
tosafot, and decisors,” but instruction would also be provided in the works
of Jewish philosophers, Hebrew grammar, rhetoric, Latin, Italian, logic,
medicine, non-Jewish philosophical works, mathematics, cosmography,
and astrology. It is a community with vigorous, ongoing exchanges
with the contemporary Christian elite. Not only did Elias Levita teach
Hebrew to Christian scholars; not only did kabbalah itself, which was
sometimes taught by Jews, inspire the speculative creativity of Christian
thinkers; it now appears likely that Pico della Mirandola’s version of the
quintessentially Renaissance definition of man as a median creature with
the power to fashion himself in freedom owes much to a medieval Muslim
formulation mediated by Pico’s Jewish associate Yohanan Alemanno.121
121 On rhetoric, see The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow. Sefer Nofeth Suphim by Judah
Messer Leon. A Critical Edition and Translation by Isaac Rabinowitz (Ithaca and
London, 1983). See also R. Bonfil’s introduction to the facsimile edition of Nofet
Zufim (Jerusalem, 1981). Like del Medigo, Messer Leon was interested in philosophy
as well. On homo universalis and King Solomon, see Arthur M. Lesley, The Song of
Solomon’s Ascents (University of California at Berkeley dissertation, 1976), and the
citation from David Messer Leon’s Shevah Nashim in Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, “In
Defense of Jewish Humanism,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 54 (n. 55); note also her
remarks on p. 33.
On the proposal in 1564 to set up an academy for Torah and general studies in Mantua,
see the text in Asaf, Meqorot 2, pp. 116-120; Asaf noted (p. 115) that only an Italian
— 101 —
At the same time, vigorous opposition to philosophy and the humanist

agenda produced a continuing debate. The fact that Joseph Ashkenazi
wrote his vitriolic attack against Maimonides while in Italy is no doubt
fortuitous, but it made enough of an impact there to have elicited
an elaborate refutation. Yosef Yavetz’s Or ha-Hayyim is the work of a
Spanish exile in Naples who rejected philosophical pursuits as damaging
to faith and did battle with the hallowed rationalist understanding of
the biblical admonition to “know” God as a philosophical imperative;
a pious individual needs to be rescued from “the ambush of human
reason, which lurks in wait… at all times.” R. David Proventzalo advised
the young David Messer Leon to follow the ways of distant Talmudists
rather than the philosophical agenda of local rabbis, who appear to assign
no value to the Torah and Talmud. R. Ovadiah of Bertinoro denounced
the study of Aristotle in particular and philosophy in general in both
his commentary to the Mishnah and his correspondence, writing
approvingly of the untainted piety that he found in the land of Israel in
contrast to the deplorable situation in Italy. In the introduction to his
halakhic work Giddulei Terumah, R. Azariah Figo lamented his youthful
pursuit of general culture in the late sixteenth century and described his
decision to “expel this maidservant” and return to the Talmud, although
it is noteworthy that he berated himself only for reversing the proper
order of priorities, not for pursuing a forbidden path.122
Jew could have thought of such a project. The apt analogy to Yeshiva University was
made by Yehezkel Cohen, “Ha-Yahas le-Limmudei Hol me-Hazal ve-‘ad Yameinu—
Seqirah Historit-Sifrutit,’” in Yahas ha-Yahadut le-Limmudei Hol (Israel, 1983), p. 20.
Although this would not have been a degree granting institution, the plan envisioned a
preparatory program that would enable the student to enroll subsequently in a formal
studio and receive a secular degree (semikhah) in a very short time. On Elias Levita
and the teaching of Hebrew and kabbalah to Christians, see the discussion in Yitzhak
Penkower, “‘Iyyun Mehuddash be-Sefer Masoret ha-Masoret le-Eliyyahu Bahur: Ihur
ha-Niqqud u-Biqqoret Sefer ha- Zohar,” Italia 8 (l989): 36-50, and the references in n.
93 (pp. 37-38).
For Alemanno’s likely influence on Pico’s crucial conception of man, see Moshe Idel, “The
Anthropology of Yohanan Alemanno: Sources and Influences,” Topoi 7 (1988): pp. 201-
210. David Ruderman has recently argued that Pico’s replacement of a narrow vision of
Christian culture with one that was more broadly human created a new challenge and
a new opportunity for Renaissance Jews confronting their intellectual environment;
see his very useful summary article, “The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought,” in
Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, Volume I: Humanism in Italy, ed.
by Albert Rabil Jr. (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 382-433.
122 On the response to Ashkenazi, see Kupfer, “Hassagot min Hakham Ehad” (above,
— 102 —
Despite the advice that he received, David Messer Leon ultimately

opted for humanist pursuits to the point of arguing that the Talmudist
who is also a hakham kolel is more deserving of rabbinic ordination than
an ordinary Talmudist. When he left Italy for Constantinople, he found
himself under attack for his frequent citation of classical literature in his
sermons; in response, he produced a passionate defense of the humanist
enterprise, arguing for the value of classical poetry and rhetoric in
achieving human perfection, which is bound up with the quest for
religious perfection. Two Jewish biographies, one of King Solomon, the
other of Isaac Abravanel, written in Italy between the late fifteenth and
mid-sixteenth centuries, clearly reflect Renaissance literary trends and
further illustrate Jewish involvement in humanistic study and creativity.
The seventeenth-century autobiography of Leone da Modena, which can
be seen as an extension of this genre, is but one of many indications
not only of its author’s extraordinary range of interests but of the
continuing, even growing Jewish familiarity with the broader culture
well into the Baroque period. The glorification of Hebrew reached its peak
at the height of the Renaissance, while in the post-Renaissance period
even Jewish authors with an excellent command of Hebrew were ever
more likely to write in the vernacular.123
n. 113). For the translation from Yavetz’s Or ha-Hayyim (Lublin, 1910), pp. 74-76,
see Arthur M. Lesley, “The Place of the Dialoghi d’amore in Contemporaneous Jewish
Thought,” in Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism, ed. by K. Eisenbichler and O. Z.
Pugliese (University of Toronto Italian Studies I, Ottawa, 1986), p. 75, and cf. Barzilay’s
discussion, Between Reason and Faith, pp. 133-149. For R. Ovadiah of Bertinoro, see
his commentary to Sanhedrin 10:1 and the letter published in A. Kahana, Sifrut ha-
Historiah ha-Yisre’elit 2 (Warsaw, 1923), p. 47, and cf. the commentary to Avot 5:22.
Cf. also Immanuel Benevento’s kabbalistically motivated hostility to philosophy; see
the references in Segal, Historical Consciousness and Religious Tradition, pp. 61-62 (n.
20). On Proventzalo’s advice, see Bonfil, Ha-Rabbanut, pp. 173-174; Rabbis, p. 270. For
Figo, see Sefer Giddulei Terumah (Venice, 1643), and Barzilay, pp. 192-209. A similar
statement of regret at excessive attention to works of general culture appears in the
early seventeenth-century Shiltei ha-Gibborim of Abraham Portaleone, but the book
itself, despite its presumed character as an act of penitence for these intellectual
indiscretions, is replete with references to the classics; see Segal, p. 52, and the
references in n. 23. In a personal communication, David Ruderman has underscored
his view of Portaleone and Figo as anti-Aristotelians who nevertheless maintained a
positive attitude toward empirical science.
123 Messer Leon’s observation on the qualifications for ordination is reminiscent of the
assertion that angered R. Asher b. Yehiel about the connection between knowledge of
Arabic and the right to render a decision in Jewish law. The apologia for humanism
is in Messer Leon’s unpublished Shevah Nashim; for a summary and analysis, see
— 103 —
In her study of David Messer Leon’s work, Havah Tirosh-Rothschild

observes that
by the end of the fifteenth century, Jewish rationalist tradition had so

absorbed Greek philosophy that it had become far less subversive and was
even palatable. By David ben Judah’s day, however, no such absorption
had yet occurred of the poetry, oratory, geography, history and letters of
classical antiquity—all introduced to Jews through Renaissance humanism.
These subjects, if not philosophy, still seemed to threaten Jewish traditional
values, at least in Constantinople if not in Italy.124
The point is an important one; nevertheless, most of these pursuits

did not have the potential to challenge Judaism in the manner of
Aristotelian philosophy. The one which did was history, and the Italian
Jew who utilized the discipline dangerously generated a brief but
revealing cause célèbre.
In its most common mode, history was a humanistic endeavor
no more dangerous than poetry or rhetoric, and some sixteenth- and
Tirosh-Rothschild, “In Defense of Jewish Humanism.” On the biographies, see Arthur

M. Lesley, “Hebrew Humanism in Italy: The Case of Biography,” Prooftexts 2 (1982):
163-177. Da Modena was a multifaceted figure who continues to fascinate. See The
Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s The Life of Judah,
trans. and ed. by Mark R. Cohen (Princeton, 1988), and cf. Cohen’s “Leone da Modena’s
Riti: A Seventeenth-Century Plea for Social Toleration of Jews,” Jewish Social Studies
34 (1972): 287-321. On the persistence and growth of certain forms of acculturation,
including use of the vernacular, in the Baroque period, see Robert Bonfil, “Change in
the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis: Italian Jewry at the Close of the
Sixteenth Century,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 11-30. For some observations on Italian
Jewish familiarity with Christian philosophy and, more generally, on the relatively
painless absorption by this Jewry of a multitude of diverse disciplines and approaches,
see Yosef Sermoneta’s review of Barzilay’s Between Reason and Faith in Kiryat Sefer 44
(1970): 539-546.
Despite changes in orientation and advances in methodology, the material accumulated
in Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959), and Moses Shulvass, The
Jews in the Life of the Renaissance (Leiden, 1973), retains its value and documents Jewish
activity in fields like art, drama, music, and printing, which I have been unable to treat in
this survey. The most vigorous and influential argument for a new perspective is Bonfil’s
“The Historian’s Perception of the Jews in the Italian Renaissance. Towards a Reappraisal,”
Revue des Études Juives 143 (1984): 59-82, which sees Italian Jewish acculturation as part
of a competitive struggle affirming Jewish identity in the face of pressure rather than a
reflection of an idyllic cultural symbiosis. See now Bonfil’s synthetic treatment, Jewish
Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1994).
124 “In Defence of Jewish Humanism,” p. 39.
— 104 —
seventeenth-century Jews in Italy and elsewhere utilized it to provide

religious consolation, to place the Jewish experience in a broader
context, to validate the tradition, to set the stage for the end of days, to
ponder the causes of the Jewish condition, or simply to entertain. Some
of these purposes had been pursued even in the Middle Ages by the few
Jews who had engaged in the enterprise of setting down events that
had, after all, already taken place and whose utility was consequently
viewed with considerable skepticism. R. Sherira’s epistle took the form
of a standard responsum; Josippon provided a basic historical survey as
well as implicit advice about appropriate Jewish behavior in the face
of superior force; R. Abraham ibn Daud’s Book of Tradition validated
the tradition, defended the glories of Andalusian Jewry, and may
have pointed esoterically to the date of the redemption; the crusade
chronicles provided emotional release and religious inspiration in the
wake of unspeakable tragedy.125
Whether or not the historical writings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Jews reflect a significant historiographical movement has
recently become a disputed question. On the one hand, Jewish authors
produced ten books of a roughly historical character in the course of
about a century, a number that exceeds the entire output of the Middle
Ages, and some of these are clearly indebted to the historiographic
corpus that emerged in Renaissance society. On the other hand, a
rigorous definition of history would exclude many, perhaps most, of
these works, and even if they are all counted, they do not approach the
number that one might reasonably expect in light of the proportion
of Christian Renaissance works devoted to historiography.126 In any
125 See Sefer Yosifon, ed. by Flusser; ibn Daud’s Sefer Ha-Qabbalah, ed. by Cohen; Shlomo
Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders (Madison, Wisconsin, 1977), and Robert Chazan,
European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), pp. 223-297.
On R. Sherira, see above, n. 19. For an example of medieval Jewish denigration of the
value of history, see Maimonides’ Commentary to the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10:1 (almost
immediately before the list of the thirteen principles of faith).
126 See Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle
and London, 1982), pp. 55-75, and his “Clio and the Jews: Reflections on Jewish
Historiography in the Sixteenth Century,” American Academy for Jewish Research Jubilee
Volume (PAAJR 46-47 [1979-80]): 607-638; Robert Bonfil, “How Golden Was the Age of
the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography?” History and Theory 27 (1988): 78-102. Bonfil
accounts for what he regards as the relative paucity of Jewish historical works on the
grounds that diaspora Jews did not have the sort of political and military history that
lent itself to the narrative style most characteristic of Renaissance historiography.
— 105 —
event, despite the great interest of several of these books and despite
their frequent debt to Christian models, they do not challenge Jewish
tradition.
Except one. Azariah de’ Rossi’s Me’or ‘Einayim, which is not a
narrative history but a series of historical studies, utilized non-Jewish
sources to test the validity of historical assertions in Rabbinic texts to
the point of rejecting the accepted chronology of the Second Temple
and modifying the Jewish calendar’s assumptions about the date of
creation. The author was clearly sensitive to the prospect of opposition,
and he defended the study of history on the grounds of religious utility
and the intrinsic value of the search for truth. There is, however,
considerable irony in his argument for rejecting historical statements
of the Rabbis in favor of gentile authorities. The Sages, he writes, were
concerned with important matters; with respect to trivial concerns like
history, we should expect to find a greater degree of reliability in the
works of gentiles, who after all specialize in trivialities.127 The difficulty
of distinguishing the strands of sincerity and disingenuousness in this
assertion speaks volumes for the problematic nature of de’ Rossi’s
undertaking. He can justify his methodology only by minimizing the
significance of his discipline.
Contemporary histories differ about the novelty of de’ Rossi’s
challenge. Since the reinterpretation and even rejection of aggadah
had respectable medieval precedent, Salo Baron and Robert Bonfil
have argued that Azariah did little more than broaden the grounds for
such a step to embrace historical as well as philosophical or kabbalistic
considerations. Yosef Yerushalmi, on the other hand, sees a more radical
and significant innovation in Me’or ‘Einayim; philosophy and kabbalah,
he argues, had long been regarded as sources of truth, while Azariah
was willing to utilize “profane history… drawn from Greek, Roman
and Christian writers” to judge the validity of rabbinic statements.128
The distinction is important and the formulation can, I think, be
sharpened. Philosophical truth was not based on the authority of
Aristotle; it rested on arguments that Aristotle may have formulated
127 Sefer Me’or ‘Einayim, ed. by David Cassel (Vilna, 1866), p. 216.
128 See Baron, History and Jewish Historians (Philadelphia, 1964), pp. 167-239, 405-442;
Bonfil, “Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de’ Rossi’s Me’or ‘Einayim in the Cultural
Milieu of Italian Renaissance Jewry,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 23-48,
esp. 23-25; Yerushalmi, “Clio and the Jews,” pp. 634-635, and Zakhor, p. 72.
— 106 —
but were now available to any thinker in an unmediated fashion. It was

reason, not Aristotle, that required the reinterpretation of whatever
Rabbinic text was at issue. History is different. Although reason is very
much involved and the decision to follow a gentile account instead of a
rabbinic one does not result from a simple preference for Tacitus over
Rabbi Yosi, the fact remains that on some level one is accepting the
testimony of gentiles rather than that of the Talmudic sages. This may
be a legitimate extension of the medieval precedent, but it is hardly a
straightforward one.
This point tells us something significant about Italian Jewry and
not merely about de’ Rossi. Bonfil has demonstrated convincingly that
the Italian attack on Me’or ‘Einayim was much more limited in both its
ideological scope and its degree of support than historians used to think.
Since Bonfil himself does not see the work as radically innovative, he
regards the relatively mild opposition as roughly the sort of reaction that
we might have expected. Yerushalmi, writing before Bonfil’s study, made
the cautious observation that “it is perhaps a token of the flexibility of
Italian Jewry that the ban upon the book, [which] only required that
special permission be obtained by those who wanted to read it, was not
always enforced stringently.” If we accept, as I think we should, both
Yerushalmi’s perception of the book and Bonfil’s findings about the ban,
the implications for Italian Jewry become more striking. A substantial
majority of the rabbinic leadership accepted with equanimity a work
which treated the historical statements of the ancient Sages with
startling freedom. The contrast with the intense opposition to Me’or
‘Einayim from R. Joseph Caro in Safed and R. Judah Loew (Maharal)
in Prague highlights the openness of sixteenth-century Italian Jews to
non-Jewish sources and the willingness to utilize them even in the most
sensitive of contexts.129
129 See Yerushalmi, “Clio,” p. 635; Zakhor, pp. 72-73. On R. Joseph Caro, see the references
in Segal, Historical Consciousness, p. 68, n. 51; on the Maharal, see Segal, pp. 133-161.
Another, perhaps fairer way to make the point would be to say that Italian Jewry
agreed with Bonfil while the Maharal and R. Joseph Caro agreed with Yerushalmi, but
this alone would fail to convey the significance of the Italian position. For a nuanced
discussion of major features of de’ Rossi’s work, see now Bonfil’s elaborate introduction
to his anthology, Kitvei ‘Azariah min ha-Adummim: Mivhar Peraqim mi-tokh Sefer Me’or
‘Einayim ve-Sefer Mazref la-Kesef (Jerusalem, 1991).
— 107 —
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

AND THE TRANSITION TO MODERN TIMES
Apart from the humanistic pursuits that characterized the Renaissance,

early modern Europe also witnessed an increasing interest in the natural
world. Though the most significant manifestation of this interest was
the Copernican revolution and its aftermath, scientifically oriented Jews
in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries evinced
greater interest in new approaches to chemistry, medicine, zoology,
botany, mineralogy, and geography. Hundreds of Jews graduated from the
medical school in Padua. Various Jewish works demonstrate familiarity
with Paracelsian chemical medicine and Cartesian mechanics, and they
display an insatiable curiosity about wondrous beasts and other natural
marvels widely reported in an age of exploration. We find a revival and
elaboration of the medieval arguments for the Jewish origin of the
sciences and their religious utility along with a recognition that the
ancient philosophers had attained important religious truths unaided
by Jewish instruction.130
Jewish enthusiasm for these new scientific pursuits was greatly
facilitated by a critically important conceptual change. In the Middle
130 See David B. Ruderman, Science, Medicine, and Jewish Culture in Early Modem Europe.
Spiegel Lectures in European Jewish History 7 (Tel Aviv, 1987), and his overlapping article,
“The Impact of Science on Jewish Culture and Society in Venice,” in Gli Ebrei e Venezia
(Milan, 1987), pp. 417-448. See also his Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural
Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1988).
In light of Abba Mari of Lunel’s salute to Aristotle for achieving genuine monotheism
in the absence of revelation, Ruderman’s description of Abraham Yagel’s “remarkable”
assertion that pagan philosophers “discovered their faith independently of Jewish
revelation” (p. 146) needs to be toned down a bit; see above, n. 76. For Jews at the
medical school in Padua, see above, n. 115.
On the Jewish origins of the sciences, see, in addition to the references in n. 37 of
Ruderman’s lecture, the introduction to David Kaufmann’s Die Sinne, and D. Margalit,
“’Al Galenus ve-Gilgulo ha-‘Ivri Gamliel,” Sinai 33 (1953): 75-77. On geography, see L.
Zunz, “Essay on the Geographical Literature of the Jews from the Remotest Times to
the Year 1840,” in The Itinerary of R. Benjamin of Tudela, trans. by A. Asher, 2 (London,
1841), pp. 230-317; Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of
Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati, 1981), pp. 131-143; André Neher, Jewish
Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: David Gans (1541-1613)
and His Times (Oxford and New York, 1986), pp. 95-165.
For a major synthesis and analysis of the entire subject, see now Ruderman’s Jewish
Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, 1995).
— 108 —
Ages, the natural sciences were part of a larger tapestry whose dominant
element was metaphysics. During the Renaissance and beyond,
philosophy and certain kinds of science grew apart, and the scientific
domain itself came to be divided between empiricist and rationalist-
mathematical spheres. In this environment, certain scientific fields were
uncontaminated by the philosophical baggage associated in some Jewish
minds with Aristotelianism, and a Jew could remain a staunch opponent
of rationalism in its medieval mode while retaining an intense interest
in the new science.131
The Jewish absorption of the monumental revolution in astronomy
was far more problematic. David Gans of late sixteenth-century Prague,
though best known for his historical work Zemah David, was the first
influential Jew to confront Copernicanism, and his attitude to the new
astronomy is characteristic of what was probably the dominant reaction
by knowledgeable Jews through the early eighteenth century: interested
awareness but ultimate rejection.132 Although Yosef Shlomo Delmedigo,
who studied with Galileo and ended his days in Prague, spoke very highly
of Copernicus, two major compendia at the very end of our period still
reject the heliocentric theory in sharp terms. Toviah Katz described
Copernicus’s position with some care and even presented a series of
Copernican arguments; at the same time, he called him “the firstborn of
Satan” and described the adherents of his view as heretics.133 Similarly,
131 David Ruderman is largely responsible for sharpening my awareness of this point. On
the division within the sciences, see Thomas S. Kuhn, “Mathematical vs. Experimental
Traditions in the Development of Physical Science,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1
(1976): 1-31. As I indicated above, it is important to note that for medieval Ashkenazic
Jews, the link between empirical science and rationalist philosophy had never been made,
and so their interest in the physical world was never encumbered by this complication.
132 See Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution.
133 Ma‘aseh Toviah (Krakau, 1908), pp. 43b-44b (“‘Olam ha-Galgalim,” ch. 4). Ruderman
(Science, Medicine, and Jewish Culture, p. 21) notes correctly that the chapter ends
“limply,” without any refutation of the Copernican arguments noted. Nonetheless, the
conclusion is slightly more forceful than he indicates. Toviah does not assert that the
unspecified counterarguments “are easily confusing [even] to one who understands
them”; he says that their validity is easily evident to such a person (benaqel nekhohot,
not nevukhot). Moreover, the previous chapter sets forth six standard arguments
against the Copernican theory.
On Delmedigo, see Isaac Barzilay, Yosef Shlomo Delmedigo, Yashar of Candia: His Life, Works,
and Times (Leiden, 1974), and Yosef Levi, “Aqademiah Yehudit le-Madda‘im be-Reshit ha-
Me’ah ha-Sheva-‘Esreh: Nisyono shel Yosef Shlomoh Delmedigo,” Proceedings of the Eleventh
World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division B, vol. 1, Hebrew section, pp. 169-176.
— 109 —
David Nieto dismissed the Copernican conception as an abomination.134

By this time, the scientific defense of the Ptolemaic system had become
very difficult, but Copernicus had still not carried the day among all
intellectuals, let alone among the masses. Since most seventeenth- and
early eighteenth-century European Jews, especially outside Italy, were
relatively isolated from the burgeoning scientific community, and since
they had rabbinic as well as biblical texts to inhibit their receptivity to
the new astronomy, it is not surprising that they generally cast their lot
with the rear guard action aimed against the Copernican revolution.
During the centuries in which modern Europe was being formed,
the major Jewish cultural centers turned inward despite the growing
Jewish involvement in national and international commerce. In a recent
revisionist work, Jonathan Israel has argued that the period from 1550
to 1713, and particularly from 1650 to 1713, saw “the most profound and
pervasive impact on the west which [the Jews] were ever to exert while
retaining a large measure of social and cultural cohesion.” To the extent
that he applies this observation to economics and politics, including the
ascendancy of Court Jews in Central Europe and elsewhere and the rough
synchronism of Ashkenazi and Sephardi influence on finance and trade,
he provides an important new perspective on early modern Jewry. On
the other hand, he underestimates and misconceives much of medieval
Jewish culture and considerably overrates the achievements of early
modern Jews when he writes that “the radical transformation of Jewish
culture which occurred during the middle decades of the sixteenth
century was, assuredly, one of the most fundamental and remarkable
phenomena distinguishing post-Temple Jewish history” and then extends
his enthusiastic evaluation into the following century as well.135
As we have seen, Italian Jewish culture was indeed marked by an
impressive synthesis of Jewish pride and openness to the surrounding
134 This translation may be a trifle too strong for piggul, but Neher’s effort to soften Nieto’s
anti-Copernicanism by taking “piggul hu lo yerazeh” in the narrow legalistic sense
determined by the phrase’s biblical context (“a sacrifice which would not be acceptable in
the Temple”) is an apologetic distortion of a very strong expression; see Jewish Thought
and the Scientific Revolution, p. 256. On Delmedigo, Katz, Nieto, and others, see Hillel
Levine, “Paradise Not Surrendered: Jewish Reactions to Copernicus and the Growth of
Modern Science,” in Epistemology, Methodology, and the Social Sciences, ed. by Robert S.
Cohen and Mark W. Wartofsky (Dordrecht, Boston, and London, 1983), pp. 203-225.
135 Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750, 2nd ed.
(Oxford, 1989). The quotations are from pp. 1 and 70.
— 110 —
culture. In the new Jewish community of seventeenth-century Holland,

Sephardic Jews, including some with a Marrano past that made them
fully conversant with Christian civilization, contributed philosophical,
polemical, and scientific works that utilized wide learning and, when
written or available in the vernacular, sometimes influenced European
intellectuals. It was not only in Italy that Christian Hebraists held
discussions with Jews about scholarly and religious issues. Court Jews
were necessarily conversant with the surrounding culture while remaining,
at least in many cases, loyal members of the Jewish community.136
At the same time, the major seventeenth-century Jewish centers
outside Italy were either in a state of cultural decline or evinced relatively
little concern with intellectual trends in the surrounding society. Jewry
under Islam confronted a Muslim world that was itself culturally
stagnant and consequently failed to provide the stimulus that Jewish
thinkers needed for creative engagement with disciplines outside of
Torah. Theoretically, this Jewry continued to value the sort of intellectual
described in an early seventeenth-century chronicle from Fez as
a complete scholar thoroughly familiar with all the sciences: the science
of speculation (‘iyyun) to an infinite degree, the science of grammar, the
science of philosophy, the science of metrical poetry. There was no one
like him among all the scholars of Israel.… If anyone had an uncertainty
regarding a passage in Tosafot or the work of R. Elijah Mizrahi or the
Talmud, he would come to this scholar and would not leave until those
uncertainties would be fully resolved.137
Nevertheless, such scholarship, at least with respect to philosophy,

meant mastery of an existing corpus rather than the production of
original, creative work.
Ashkenazic Jewry had always felt more of an adversarial relationship
with the surrounding society, and even the examples of cultural interaction
136 Israel, European Jewry, pp. 70-86, 142-144, 216-231. On the former Marranos, see Yosef
Kaplan, “The Portuguese Community of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century between
Tradition and Change,” in Society and Community, ed. by Abraham Hain (Jerusalem,
1991), pp. 141-171, and Kaplan, “Die Portugiesischen Juden und die Modernisierung: zur
Veränderung jüdischen Lebens vor der Emanzipation,” in Jüdische Lebenswelten: Essays,
ed. by Andreas Nachama et al. (Frankfurt a.M., 1991), pp. 303-317.
137 Divrei ha-Yamim, in Fez va-Hakhameha, ed. by David Ovadia, 1 (Jerusalem, 1979), pp.
47-48. Cf. Elazar Touitou, Rabbi Hayyim Ibn ‘Attar u-Perusho Or ha-Hayyim ‘al ha-Torah
(Jerusalem, 1981), p. 28.
— 111 —
that we examined earlier were often characterized by an element of

reserve or competition. With the removal of the Ashkenazic center to
the alien environment of Poland, the sense of existential separateness
was reinforced, and Jacob Katz has noted that even the martyrdoms
in seventeenth-century Poland differ from those of the Crusades as
defiant confrontation gave way to a sense of isolation from a hostile
environment.138 Although sixteenth-century Poland was not unaffected
by the intellectual currents inspired by humanism and the Reformation,
the rationalism that found lukewarm expression in R. Moses Isserles
and some of his contemporaries essentially came from a culture outside
the immediate environment. As Poland became a cultural backwater in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, this mild philosophical
interest found no reinforcement either in the surrounding society or
the indigenous Ashkenazic tradition, and without such reinforcement
it largely faded away.
Even in seventeenth-century Germany, which was closer to the center
of European creativity, there was insufficient impetus for Ashkenazic
Jews to overcome the cultural legacy of their formative period without
substantial struggle and considerable delay. In many cases, the
communities were being reconstituted in the wake of expulsions and
persecutions. The gradual opening of Christian society to some Jews
began to undermine the observance of Jewish individuals rather than
inspire an intellectual transformation and Renaissance.
Profound differences separated the medieval Iberian experience
of a culturally stimulating environment from the situation of early
modern Ashkenazim. First, the Jews of Northern Europe came to
modernity with a deeply entrenched, fully formed approach that was
highly suspicious of external wisdom. Second, the challenges of modern
science and philosophical skepticism could not be faced in the kind of
partnership with the dominant society that medieval Jews had enjoyed.
It is true that Christianity had to face these challenges quite as much as
Judaism, but the challenges emanated from Christian society itself, not
from a philosophy inherited from classical antiquity. Thus, the search
for intellectual allies was severely complicated. Traditional Christians
were for the most part heirs to a fully developed, millennial legacy of
138 Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (Oxford, 1961), pp. 131-155, and “Bein Tatnu LeTah-
Tat,” Sefer Yovel le-Yitzhak Baer, ed. by S. Ettinger et al. (Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 318-337.
— 112 —
contempt for Judaism; seventeenth-century skeptics and eighteenth-

century philosophes regarded Judaism with at least as much disdain as
they felt for Christianity and were in any event the authors of the very
challenge that had to be faced. When medieval philosophers were called
heretics, they usually denied the charge; the moderns often embraced it,
indeed, shouted it from the rooftops. The pursuit of speculative thought
became associated with irreligion to a far more profound and extensive
degree than it had in the Middle Ages.
Moreover, the nature of modern philosophy was so different from
that of the medieval past that the religious attractiveness of the discipline
was severely undermined. To the medievals, if philosophy posed serious
challenges to religious faith, it also provided indispensable insights into
the nature of God. Modern philosophy seemed to supply little more than
the problems. At best, religious philosophers could refute attacks against
the faith, but they would probably not emerge with new insights about the
issues that they were accustomed to regard as the classic subject matter of
philosophy. They would find little but heresy on divine providence, hardly
anything on attributes or incorporeality, and nothing at all about the
recently deceased active intellect and celestial spheres. If all philosophy
could achieve was the neutralizing of its own evil influence, then ignoring
the enterprise could achieve the same result at a great saving of time and
effort, not to speak of averting danger to one’s faith. The imperative of
answering the heretic was rarely sufficient in itself to inspire philosophical
study. In addition to these critical considerations, the religious value
of philosophical inquiry was radically diminished by the conviction of
many traditional Jews at the dawn of the Enlightenment that the crucial
information about God was available through kabbalah.
For the sake of sharpening the analysis, I have intentionally formulated
these points with one-dimensional vigor. If modern philosophy did not
provide solutions to medieval questions about God and creation, it
might nevertheless suggest new areas of fruitful inquiry. The medieval
argument that studying the world inspires love of God seemed all the more
persuasive to believers beholding the mathematically elegant universe
of the new science. We cannot, however, expect the rabbinic leadership
of Ashkenazic Jewry to have known the evolving new approaches well
enough to have formulated an innovative positive response; indeed, in
the early stages they did not know them well enough even to have fully
appreciated the new dangers.
— 113 —
Thus, when we do find an interest in philosophical inquiry among the

rabbis of early modern Ashkenaz, it tends to take a very traditional form.
R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach, for example, laid great emphasis on the practical
primacy of talmudic study and the theoretical primacy of kabbalah, while
demonstrating considerable familiarity with Jewish philosophical literature.
In a study of Bacharach, Isadore Twersky observes that “philosophic
literature was studied for religious reasons, as part of a spiritual quest,
totally separate from external contacts and influences.” R. Jacob Emden
reports in his autobiography that his father Hakham Zevi Ashkenazi read
secular works “in his spare time” and studied “other knowledge” with the
scholars who attended the Klaus that he headed in late seventeenth-century
Hamburg “until they achieved perfection in Torah and wisdom”; here too
we are undoubtedly dealing with something other than a fresh and creative
confrontation with the world of modern wisdom.139
By the mid-eighteenth century, Emden’s own ambivalent attitude to
the study of the “external” disciplines reflects the growing impact of the
European opening to the Jews. His essential position is quite negative; at
the same time, he speaks of a yearning for the sciences which he fulfilled
in part by reading Hebrew books in fields like history and geography
and in part by studying the works of non-Jews in the bathroom. His
familiarity with the New Testament is striking, and it comes together
with a relatively favorable attitude to Jesus and even to Paul. What is
most interesting is a recurring justification for secular study that does
not appear in premodern times. Jews, says Emden, must achieve some
familiarity with gentile language and culture for the sake of mingling
comfortably with people. This is a striking reflection of a changed social
atmosphere with far-reaching importance for the integration of Jews
into European society.140
Outside of rabbinic circles, incipient social integration in a world
of growing religious skepticism gradually eroded the loyalties of some
Ashkenazic Jews. Beginning around the end of the seventeenth century,
139 On Bacharach, see I. Twersky, “Law and Spirituality in the Seventeenth Century: A Case
Study in R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, pp.
447-467 (quotation from p. 455). On Hakham Zevi, see Emden’s Megillat Sefer, ed. by
D. Kahana (Warsaw, 1897), pp. 11, 16-17, cited in Jacob J. Schacter, Rabbi Jacob Emden:
Life and Major Works (Harvard University dissertation, 1988), pp. 587-588.
140 See chapter 6 of Schacter’s dissertation for a discussion of Emden’s general stance,
and see especially p. 505, where he notes the novelty of the argument from social
interaction.
— 114 —
substantial numbers of Jews began to drift away from accepted religious

norms, and a smaller number may even have rejected traditional beliefs
under the influence of Enlightenment thought. The official community,
however, did not begin to change until the second half of the eighteenth
century, when leaders of the Jewish Enlightenment began to demand
curricular reform and social accommodation.141
Despite the fact that these demands were often made in the name of
the well-attested rationalist tradition that we have examined throughout
this study, the timing, the context, and the orientation of the new
movement made it a threat to the established order both politically and
religiously. European Jewry, like European Christendom, faced a world
in which religion itself could no longer be taken for granted. In the new,
largely secular order that established itself in the eighteenth century and
continues to our own day, the legitimacy of general culture remained
an issue only for the traditionalist segment of the Jewish people, and
the terms of the debate were narrowed and transformed. For some, the
overwhelming new dangers required an ever more stringent isolation
from the evils of modernity. For others, these dangers could be tamed by
selective admission of the religiously neutral elements of the new society
and culture. For a few, the Torah itself required a heroic confrontation
with modernity in all its fullness, a confrontation that would enrich both
Judaism and the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This essay was written when I was a fellow at the Annenberg Research
Institute during the academic year 1989-1990. It is a pleasure to
thank the staff of the Institute and of its library for their courtesy and
141 On the timing and extent of these transformations, see the debate between Azriel
Schochet, ‘Im Hillufei Tequfot (Jerusalem, 1960), and Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto
(Cambridge, 1973). Cf. Schochet’s “Reshit ha-Haskalah ba-Yahadut be-Germania,” Molad
23 (1965): 328-334. See also Israel, who argues very strongly that there was widespread
abandonment of tradition, including outright conversion (European Jewry, pp. 254-
256). On apostasy in the wake of Sabbatianism, see Elisheva Carlebach, “Sabbatianism
and the Jewish-Christian Polemic,” Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish
Studies, Division C, 2 (1990): 6-7. For a relevant analysis that focuses primarily on a
later period, see David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840 (New
York, 1987).
— 115 —
professionalism. It is a particular pleasure to thank Professor Daniel J.

Lasker, who occupied the office next to mine and served as an unfailing
source of sound advice and refreshing good humor. I no doubt invaded
the offices of two additional fellows of the institute far too frequently,
but Professors Anita Shapira and William C. Jordan provided such
intellectual stimulation that any expression of regret that I might offer
for those interruptions would be insincere. Please forgive me, but I
confess that I would do it again.
Outside the institute, Professors Menahem Ben Sasson and David
Ruderman read the entire manuscript and provided illuminating,
significant suggestions, many of which I had the good sense to incorporate.
I am very grateful to Dr. Jacob J. Schacter for his meticulous editorial
supervision, which was often substantive as well as technical. After my
return from Annenberg, I benefited from the welcoming atmosphere,
extraordinary resources, and knowledgeable staff at the Mendel
Gottesman Library of Yeshiva University in preparing the final version of
the study. While I have added references to more recent scholarship and
included many observations reflecting subsequent research, the 1990
text remains at the core of this work.
Finally, my wife Pearl as well as Miriam, Elie, Yitzhak, and Gedalyah
not only endured my weekly absences during preparations for the
marriage which brought Elie into the family, but, together with Ditza and
Miriam, who have joined us more recently, provided love, encouragement,
and the inspiration that comes from their own embodiment of Torah and
the best of general culture.
— 116 —
How Did Nahmanides Propose to Resolve the Maimonidean Controversy?
HOW DID NAHMANIDES PROPOSE TO RESOLVE

THE MAIMONIDEAN CONTROVERSY?
From: Meah She‘arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory

of Isadore Twersky, ed. by Ezra Fleischer et al. (Magnes: Jerusalem, 2001),
pp. 135-146.
The permissibility of pursuing “external wisdom” became a major

motif in the intellectual history of the Jews during the Middle Ages,
and in the 1230’s it exploded into the greatest controversy that had
ever shaken European Jewry, cutting across the three major cultural
centers of Northern Europe, Southern France, and Iberia. Concerned
by allegorization of Scripture and other manifestations of philosophical
radicalism, R. Solomon b. Abraham of Montpellier dispatched his
distinguished student R. Jonah Gerondi to Northern France with copies
of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and Sefer ha-Madda so that he
might alert the Northern Rabbis to the sort of works that had been used
and misused by the radical allegorizers.
Whatever Rabbi Solomon’s intentions, the result was a ban prohibiting
the study of both books. Enraged, Provencal advocates of philosophical
study proclaimed a counterban against R. Solomon and his disciples and
sent their own distinguished representative, the aged R. David Kimhi,
to solicit support for the counterban among their presumed natural
allies in Northern Spain. Radak’s mixed reception speaks volumes
for the intellectual and religious changes in certain segments of the
Sephardic elite during the early thirteenth century. In some circles he
received the unalloyed support that he expected; elsewhere, however,
for reasons ranging from the ideological to the personal, he encountered
reluctance, ambivalence, even hostility.1 With the benefit of hindsight,
1 The best reconstruction of the course of events remains that of Azriel Schochet,
“Berurim be-Parashat ha-Pulmus ha-Rishon ‘al Sifrei ha-Rambam,” Zion 36 (1971): 27-
60. For a recent analysis, see my discussion in Gerald J. Blidstein, David Berger, Sid Z.
Leiman and Aharon Lichtenstein, Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection or
— 117 —
we can unhesitatingly identify Nahmanides as the most distinguished

Spanish Rabbi in the 1230’s, indeed, in the entire history of Christian
Spain. At the time, his preeminence was not quite so unambiguous, but
all sides surely recognized that his stand in the controversy would loom
large. It was hardly a simple matter, however, to predict the position of
a figure who exemplified in striking fashion the kaleidoscopic variety of
intellectual and spiritual currents which swirled through Provencal and
Spanish Jewish communities during those decades. Talmudic exegete
and codifier, mystic, physician, theologian, poet, biblical commentator,
communal leader, and future polemicist, Nahmanides absorbed and
reshaped the influence of Tosafist dialectic, of Southern French Rabbinics
and kabbalah, and of indigenous Spanish traditions. Nahmanides’ attitude
toward philosophical study reflected the complexity of his intellectual
and spiritual legacy. He studied the philosophical corpus of his Jewish
predecessors, greatly admired Maimonides, and insisted on the value of
theological investigation in his work on theodicy. At the same time, he
despised Aristotle, vigorously rejected many of Maimonides’ rationalistic
assertions, and believed the secrets of the Torah to be embodied in
mysticism rather than metaphysics. As I have noted elsewhere, Nahmanides
regarded the revelation as an empirical datum par excellence, so that
philosophical inquiry could build upon it without struggling by unaided
reason to reach conclusions already provided by God. Consequently,
Nahmanides expressed his central views in the form of a commentary to
the revelation, and his attraction to kabbalah was itself an expression of
his search for a revealed source of theological truths.2 This presentation of
Nahmanides’ position hardly reflects the unvarying consensus of modern
scholarship. Because of the great variety of strands which formed his
religious persona, students of medieval history and philosophy, of the
Maimonidean controversy, and of Nahmanides himself have perceived
him in strikingly different ways. Until quite recently, most scholars placed
Integration?, ed. by Jacob J. Schacter (Northvale, N.J., and Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 85-
100.
2 See my “Miracles and the Natural Order in Nahmanides,” in Rabbi Moses Nahmanides
(Ramban): Explorations in his Religious and Literary Virtuosity, ed. by Isadore Twersky
(Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 110-111, and my discussion in Judaism’s Encounter, pp.
99-100. See too my unpublished Master’s essay (which analyzes more briefly the letter
which stands at the center of this article), Nahmanides’ Attitude toward Secular Learning
and Its Bearing upon his Stance in the Maimonidean Controversy (Columbia University,
1965), chapter 1 (pp. 2-23).
— 118 —
him squarely in the anti-philosophical camp, and some of these regarded

his expressions of admiration for Maimonides and his works as tactical
stratagems that did not reflect his deepest convictions.3 Other scholars
understood that this one-sided picture of Nahmanides was a caricature,
but presenting a balanced, integrated portrait of his multi-faceted genius
remained a daunting task.4 As we shall see, all students of Nahmanides
face a difficult challenge in describing and accounting for his position
during the Maimonidean controversy. Though a full characterization of his
stand requires the analysis of more than one document, by far the most
important source is a much-discussed letter that he wrote to the rabbis of
Northern France. Here, textual uncertainties and ideological perplexities
have produced contradictions and confusion in the scholarly literature.
My limited purpose in this essay is to examine some of these uncertainties
with the hope that confusion will give way to clarity. The bulk of this
3 Note, inter alia, Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, first edition (New
York, 1937), vol. 2, p. 140 (“With the growth of antirationalist forces, most kabbalists
rejected Maimonides and all scholasticism. With Nahmanides, the antiphilosophical
reaction received the stamp of approval from a revered authority.”); J. Newman, The
Commentary of Nahmanides on Genesis Chapters 1-6:8 (Leiden, 1960), pp. 13-14; the
references to Y. Baer, H.H. Ben Sasson, Y. Kaplan, S. Krauss and others in Bernard
Septimus, “‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Nahmanides and the Andalusian
Tradition,” in Twersky, Rabbi Moses Nahmanides, p. 14, n. 12. Krauss (Ha-Goren 5
[1905]: 84, 88) affirms that Nahmanides was insincere even in his limited defense
of philosophy and goes so far as to ascribe to him a belief in the corporeality of
God; for a more recent affirmation of the erroneous view that Nahmanides was an
anthropomorphist, see Martin A. Cohen, “Reflections on the Text and Context of the
Disputation of Barcelona,” Hebrew Union College Annual 35 (1964): 169, 176.
4 Though leaving much to be desired, the most successful effort in the ninetenth century
was Joseph Perles, “Über den Geist des Commentars des R. Moses ben Nachman
zum Pentateuch und über sein Verhältniss zum Pentateuch-Commentar Raschis,”
Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums (MGWJ) 7 (1858): 81-
97, 117-136. The best characterization to date is Septimus, “‘Open Rebuke and
Concealed Love’” (n. 3). See too Ch. Henoch, Ha-Ramban ke-Hoqer ve-ki-Mequbbal
(Jerusalem, 1978); Moshe Idel, “R. Mosheh ben Nahman—Kabbalah, Halakhah,
u-Manhigut Ruhanit,” Tarbiz 64 (1995): 535-580; Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Acceptance
and Devaluation: Nahmanides’ Attitude toward Science,” Journal of Jewish Thought and
Philosophy 1(1992): 223-245; David Novak, The Theology of Nahmanides Systematically
Presented (Atlanta, 1992); Josef Stern, “Nachmanides’s Conception of Tacamei Mitzvot
and its Maimonidean Background,” in Community and Covenant: New Essays in Jewish
Political and Legal Philosophy ed. by Daniel Frank (Albany, 1995), pp. 141-171; Stern,
“The Fall and Rise of Myth in Ritual: Maimonides versus Nahmanides on the Huqqim,
Astrology, and the War against Idolatry,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy
6 (1997): 185-263.
— 119 —
highly respectful, even deferential letter explains that the rabbis of the
North do not fully understand the cultural circumstances that produced
Maimonides’ Guide and indicates why his purportedly objectionable views
are either correct or at least well within the framework of normative
Judaism. The Mishneh Torah, including Sefer ha-Madda, receives unstinting
praise; while one may challenge specific points, the work itself is Torah
pure and simple. Finally, as he concludes his lengthy, eloquent defense
of “the great rabbi,” Nahmanides sets forth a concrete proposal. The first
element of this proposal is crystal clear: the ban against both books must
be revoked. At this point, however, textual problems begin to muddy the
waters. Nahmanides’ letter is extant in three versions. Chaim Dov Chavel
reproduced the poorest of these in the first two printings of his standard
Kitvei Ramban; beginning with the third printing, he published a better
one based on the first printed edition. The best text was published in
1860 from a Saraval manuscript by Joseph Perles, who supplied variant
readings from the other versions.5 Because Chavel’s text is by far the most
widely used and hence the most influential, our story must begin there.
After the vigorous recommendation that the ban against the Guide and
the Sefer ha-Madda be revoked, the letter in the current printings of Kitvei
Ramban continues as follows:
‫ויצא דבר מלכות מלפניכם ותהיו לאגודה ולקשר של קימא לאבד זרוע רמה להחרים לנדות‬
‫ולשמת כל לשון מדברת גדולות אשר האלוהים יצמת המלעיג על ההגדות או מרחיב פה על‬
‫ )והיא מן‬,‫האסמכתות ואל עוסקי ספר מורה הנבוכים כתות כתות תשימו יד מוראכם אל פיהם‬
.'‫ 'לא תפרשוהו ולא תפרסמוהו‬:‫המדה( כי מצות הרב הגדול המחברו הוא לאמור‬
Let a royal command issue forth from you as you become a single group and
a lasting bond to destroy an upraised arm, to excommunicate, ban, and place
under a curse every tongue speaking arrogantly which God will destroy, one
who mocks the aggadot or opens his mouth against asmakhtot. As for those
who study the Guide of the Perplexed in groups, place your fearsome hand to
their mouth, for the command of the great rabbi who wrote it was, “Do not
5 See C.D. Chavel, Kitvei Ramban (Jerusalem, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 333-351; Joseph
Perles, “Nachträge über R. Moses ben Nachman,” MGWJ 9 (1860): 175-195. For the
publication history of the various versions, see Mauro Perani, “Mistica e Filosofia:
La Mediazione di Nahmanide nella Polemica sugli Scritti di Maimonide,” in Correnti
Culturali e Movimenti Religiosi del Giudaismo, ed. by Bruno Chiesa (Rome, 1987) (Atti
del V Congresso internazionale dell’ Associazione Italiana per lo Studio del Giudaismo [AISG
Testi e Studi 5]), p. 239, n. 35.
— 120 —
interpret or publicize it.”6

This appears to be perfectly clear, and indeed it is. The ban on private
study of the Guide should be revoked, but a ban on group study should
remain (or be instituted). Nonetheless, Chavel, following Ze’ev Jawitz,
was persuaded by a later passage (which we shall examine presently)
that Nahmanides did not want any ban at all against the Guide. A reader
who regards such a conclusion as firmly established can force this text to
conform to it. Thus, the ban might apply to those who speak arrogantly
and who mock Rabbinic texts, but for those who study the Guide in
groups, a fearsome hand (without a ban) is sufficient. Chavel himself
goes even further than this. His English translation of the letter reads
as follows:
...to excommunicate, ban, and desolate every “tongue that maketh great
boasts,” while God will crush whoever mocks the Agadoth (homilies) or
speaks boldly [and disparagingly] about the Scriptural supports [for Rabbinic
interpretations]. Concerning those who engage [themselves] in group study of
the book Moreh Nebuchim, lay the hand of your fear upon their mouth.7
This translation appears to limit the ban to those who make

unspecified “great boasts” without applying it even to those who mock
the Rabbis. As for group study of the Guide, Chavel explains in his note
to the last line that “lay the hand of your fear upon their mouth” means,
“Your fear will leave them awestricken, unable to contravene your word.”
Any formal ban against organized study of the Guide has been made to
disappear.8 The language of the Saraval manuscript, however, links the
6 Kitvei Ramban I, p. 349. Aggadot are the non-legal pronouncements of the Rabbis;
asmakhtot are Scriptural citations used to buttress Rabbinic laws. On the parenthetical
phrase ‫והיא מן המידה‬, which I have left untranslated, see n. 8.
7 Nahmanides, Writings and Discourses, translated by Charles B. Chavel (New York, 1978),
vol. 2, p. 409.
8 Two additional points make the story of Chavel’s understanding of this passage even
more interesting. 1. His translation continues, “This is the proper measure [of action],
for the charge of the great Rabbi [Maimonides], its author, was as follows: ‘Do not
explain it or publicize it.’” Presumably, he takes the first clause to mean that striking
fear without a ban is the proper measure of action. The clause itself, however (‫והיא מן‬
‫)המידה‬, does not appear in the text utilized in the later printings of Kitvei Ramban,
a text which forms the basis for Chavel’s translation of the letter as a whole; it is,
rather, borrowed from the text he used in the first two printings (see the end of this
note), where it substitutes for a line in the current text and, as Perles remarked in his
apparatus (MGWJ 9 (1860): 193, n. 15), defies comprehension. Chavel has not only
— 121 —
treatment of those who study the Guide in groups even more tightly to
those who mock the Rabbis and speaks unambiguously of a ban.
‫ויצא דבר מלכות לפניכם ותהיו לאגודה ולקשר של קיימא לנדות ולשמת על לשון מדבר‬
‫ המלעיג על ההגדות או מרחיב פה על האסמכתות ועל עוסקי‬,‫גדולות אשר אלהים יצמת‬
‫ כי מצות הרב הגדול המחבר היא לא תפרסמוהו ולא‬.‫בספר מורה הנבוכים כתות כתות‬
.‫תפרשוהו‬
Thus, the Rabbis should ban “the tongue speaking arrogantly which
God will destroy, one who mocks the aggadot or opens his mouth against
the asmakhtot, and those who study the Guide of the Perplexed in groups.”
Here there is no room for maneuver. Group study of the Guide is to be
placed under a ban.9 Let us now continue with Chavel’s text:
‫ תחזקו הדבר הזה‬,‫ואם אתם רבותינו תסכימו עם חכמי פרובינצה וגם אנחנו נצא בעקבותיכם‬
‫ ברעם וברעש ובקול המולה גדולה ולהב אש אוכלה ובמלחמת תנופה עבדותו‬,‫בחרם ואלה‬
.‫הרדפה הן למות הן לשרושי הן לענוש נכסין ולאסורין הלא די בזה תקנה וגרר‬
And if you our Rabbis will agree with the Provencal sages and we too
will follow in your footsteps, you will strengthen this matter with an
excommunication and curse, with thunderous noise, a great roaring sound,
the blaze of consuming fire, and sweeping warfare, engaging in pursuit unto
death, uprooting, confiscation of possessions, or imprisonment [cf. Ezra
7:26]; with this step there will be a sufficient enactment and restraint.10
borrowed it from the other version; he has changed its location in order to provide
the necessary transition. (In the current Hebrew printings, it appears in parentheses
in its new location.) 2. In the version published in the first two printings, we find
the erroneous reading ‫“( תשימו יד מוראכם אל פיכם‬place your fearsome hand to your [not
“their”] mouth”). In his note to that line, Chavel commented, “The intention is that
you should place your hand to your mouth by refraining from issuing a curse and an
excommunication, but only an enactment and restraint, as he explains later.” In the later
printings, this note has, of course, disappeared, but the overall interpretation which it
presumably supported remains intact. (The truth is that even in the first version this
reading was virtually impossible to sustain because of the immediate continuation.)
To clarify these two points, let me present the relevant lines in Chavel’s first printings,
which correspond to the text in Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam (Leipzig, 1859), sec. 3, p.
10a:
‫ ואל עוסקי ספר מורה הנבוכים‬.‫ויצא דבר מלפניכם ותהיו לאגודה ולקשר של קימא והיא מן המדה‬
‫ לא תפרשוהו ולא‬:‫כתות כתות תשימו יד מוראכם אל פיכם כי מצות הרב הגדול המחברו הוא לאמר‬
.‫תפרסמוהו‬
9 Perles’ ed., p. 193. The point is that this text leaves us no syntactic option at all. ‫ועל‬
‫ עוסקי בספר מורה הנבוכים כתות כתות‬can only be governed by ‫לנדות ולשמת‬.
10 Kitvei Ramban, p. 349. The word that I have translated “pursuit” (hardafah) is actually
— 122 —
The last part of this sentence is the crux of our problem. As I have
translated it, it means that a stringent ban against those who mock the
Sages and study the Guide in groups is sufficient to address the legitimate
concerns of the Northern French Rabbis; there is no need for a general
ban against the Guide, let alone the Sefer ha-Maddac. The exaggerated
rhetoric is there to persuade the Rabbis of the North that the narrow
ban Nahmanides proposes is more than a symbolic gesture; at the same
time, no one took literally the references to death and imprisonment
taken from Ezra 7:26. This rhetoric does not obscure the main thrust of
the proposal, which is the abolition of the key ban. Thus, Nahmanides
can continue, as we shall see, with a description emphasizing the irenic
character of his recommendation.
Jawitz, however, and Chavel after him, did not see the possibility
of this reading or did not find it plausible in light of the continuation
emphasizing peaceful persuasion. Thus, Chavel translates, “An ordinance
and safeguard will suffice for this [problem].”11 In other words, this
clause explicitly rules out any ban. How, then, can this be reconciled
with the categorical statement, “You will strengthen this matter with
an excommunication...”? There is only one solution to the problem, and
it was proposed as self-evident by Jawitz. The little word “not” (lo) is
missing from the text. Hence, read, “Do not strengthen this matter with
an excommunication.”
Jawitz was so certain of this that in his critique of Graetz’s
understanding of the letter, he wrote the following remarkable
footnote:
It may well be that a little word, the word lo which is missing between
‘footsteps’ and ‘strengthen’ in the Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam before me, is
also missing in the other versions of the letter to which I do not currently
have access; perhaps (sic!) this is what caused Graetz to err. But who can
fail to see that every word in the remainder of this passage demonstrates
its [erroneous] omission, indeed proclaims that omission in the loudest
tones?”12
the Talmud’s explanation of the word I have translated “uprooting” (sheroshi); hardafah
is in turn defined as excommunication. See Bav. Moced Qatan 16a.
11 Writings and Discourses, p. 411.
12 Ze’ev Jawitz, Toledot Yisrael, vol. 12 (Tel Aviv, 1954), p. 183. Jawitz’s conviction was
certainly reinforced by the fact that he was working with the text that reads, “Place
your fearsome hand to your mouth.” (See above, n. 8.)
— 123 —
Although Chavel did not incorporate this emendation into his text,
he cited it in a note, inserted it in brackets into his English translation,
and predicated his entire understanding of the letter upon its validity.
In the most recent study of the letter, Mauro Perani does not address
this textual issue directly; nonetheless, his unqualified assertion that
Nahmanides simply proposed the annulling of the ban indicates quite
clearly that he reads the passage along the same lines.13 I hesitate to
say that this reading is the current state of the question—despite the
crucial role of this letter in the controversy, there probably is no state
of the question. What is certain is that this is a central position in
current scholarship and the reigning impression among lay readers of
the standard edition.14
I have already alluded to the irenic continuation of the letter and its
impact on the deletion of the ban from the text by some scholars. Here,
then, is that continuation, again following Chavel’s text:
‫ ועוד ראוי לכם להזהיר בנחת את‬,‫במרעה השלום תנהלו הצאן ובנאות האהבה תרביצו העדר‬
13 “Mistica e Filosofia” (n. 5), p. 251.

14 Neither Schochet nor Septimus clearly articulates his understanding of Nahmanides’
position, though both properly refer the reader to Perles’ edition. Schochet discusses only
Nahmanides’ proposal to annul the ban and tells his reader nothing about the concomitant
recommendation to ban group study of the Guide; see “Berurim” (n. 1), p. 44.
In his Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy 1180-1240 (Leiden, 1965),
Daniel Jeremy Silver, who used the edition in Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam, reported that
Nahmanides “suggests peace and a withdrawal of the ban as the sole remedy; if not the
withdrawal of the whole ban, at least of that part which subjects the Mishneh Torah”
(p. 171). This summary, which misses the distinction between private and public study
of the Guide while accurately reflecting Nahhmanides’ far greater enthusiasm for the
Mishneh Torah, is an indication of Silver’s own struggle to determine the bottom line
of this text.
The other book-length treatment of the controversy (Joseph Sarachek, Faith and Reason:
The Conflict over the Rationalism of Maimonides [Williamsport, Penn., 1935]) maintains
that Nahmanides urged that the ban be revoked. “In the first place, it should never
have been enacted.... Under no circumstances...should the Book of Knowledge, a part
of the Code, have been prohibited because it could not be put in the same category
as the Guide.... On the other hand, extreme caution must be exercised in using the
Guide. Maimonides himself urged that it not be studied save under certain stipulations,
particularly, that people occupying themselves with it be mature in age and steeped in
rabbinic literature” (pp. 116-118). In other words, no ban at all should remain, even
against the Guide, although the latter should be studied only by properly qualified
readers. Here again, the author’s struggle to make sense of a challenging text is painfully
evident.
— 124 —
,‫ ירא שמים ישוב וישקוד על ספר תורה שבכתב ותורה שבעל פה‬,‫הכל להניח העסק מכל וכל‬
‫ שאי אפשר לכם להוכיח‬,‫ השומע ישמע והחדל יחדל‬,‫כי הוא בית חיינו ובזה מעלתנו תגדל‬
‫ אף כי‬,‫ ובזה נהגו אבות העולם ליסר מזה חכמים גדולים‬.‫לכוף כל ישראל להיות חסידים‬
‫ כמו שמצאתי בתשובת רבינו האי גאון ז״ל‬,‫למנוע מן ההגיון התלמידים המתחילים ללמוד‬
,‫ 'תקון הגוף ומישור הנהגת האדם הוא עסק המשנה והתלמוד‬:‫לנגיד מ״כ שכתב לו בלשון הזה‬
‫ יסיר מעליו תורה‬,‫ואשר טוב לישראל… ואשר יסיר לבו מזה ויתעסק בדברים ההם בלבד‬
‫ ויסיר מעליו כל דברי‬,‫ ויפסיד עצמו באותן הענינים הכתובים בספרים החצונים‬,‫ויראת שמים‬
…‫ ומזאת ההסרה יארע לאדם שישבש דעתו עד שלא יחוש לעזיבת התפלה‬.‫תורה לגמרי‬
‫ואם תראה שאותן בני אדם המתעסקים באותן הדברים ודרכי הפילוסופיא יאמרו לך שהיא‬
‫ ולא תמצא‬.‫ ודע כי יכזבו לך באמת‬,‫ לא תאבה להם‬,‫דרך סלולה ושבזה ישיגו לידיעת הבורא‬
‫ לא בדברי‬,‫יראת חטא וענוה וקדושה אלא באותם המתעסקים במשנה ובתלמוד ובחכמה יחד‬
.'‫חכמה בלבד‬
Guide the sheep in a peaceful pasture and rest the flock in meadows of
love. It is also proper for you to admonish everyone gently to set aside the
pursuit (ha-ceseq) altogether, so that a Godfearing individual will return to
diligent study of the written and oral Torah, for this is the abode of our life
and through this will our standing increase. He who listens will listen, and
he who refrains will refrain, for you can not admonish and compel all Israel
to be saints. In such fashion were the fathers of the world accustomed to
reprove even great scholars to refrain from this, and all the more to prevent
beginning students from pursuing philosophy (higgayon), as I have found
in a responsum of R. Hai Gaon of blessed memory to the Nagid, may his
rest be honored, in which he wrote him as follows: “The perfection of the
body and proper human behavior is [the result of] the pursuit of Mishnah
and Talmud; this is what is good for Israel.... Anyone who removes his heart
from this and pursues those matters alone will remove from himself Torah
and the fear of heaven; he will ruin himself with those matters written in
external books and will entirely remove from himself all the words of the
Torah. And this removal will result in the confusion of a person’s mind to
the point where he will not be concerned about abandoning prayer.... If
you will see that those people who pursue those matters and the ways of
philosophy tell you that this is a paved road which enables them to attain
knowledge of God, do not heed them, and know that they are in fact lying
to you. You will not find fear of sin, humility and sanctity except in those
who study Mishnah, Talmud, and wisdom together, not matters of wisdom
alone.”15
The authenticity of R. Hai’s letter is in question, but this difficult
15 Kitvei Ramban, pp. 349-350. Whatever the meaning of higgayon may be in its original
Talmudic context (Bav. Berakhot 28b), in this letter it appears to refer to philosophy.
— 125 —
problem need not detain us here.16 There is no persuasive reason to

believe that it was interpolated into Nahmanides’ letter, and our concern
here is with Nahmanides, not with R. Hai.17 In the text printed by Chavel,
which is distinguished by the words I have italicized, the Gaon opposes
the exclusive study of philosophy but explicitly approves the study of
“wisdom” along with Torah. Jawitz, Chavel, and Perano endorse this
version as consistent with what they believe to be the overall tenor of
the letter. This reading, however, must overcome nearly insuperable
obstacles.
First of all, it is difficult to sustain even in its original setting. Did R.
Hai really have to polemicize against the position that one should study
no Torah at all? Moreover, Nahmanides introduces the Gaon’s letter by
saying that one should gently admonish people “to set aside the pursuit
(ha-ceseq) altogether.” This has to mean that philosophy should not be
studied at all. Jawitz apparently took the “pursuit” here to mean study
of the Guide in groups, while Chavel and Perano take it as “excessive
study of the Guide”;18 given their version of the quotation from R. Hai,
such desperate efforts are understandable, but they are implausible in
the extreme.
The Saraval manuscript as well as other citations of R. Hai’s letter
omit the crucial words ‫( בלבד‬alone) [in the phrase “those matters alone”]
and ‫ לא בדברי חכמה בלבד‬,‫( ובחכמה יחד‬and wisdom together, not matters
of wisdom alone).19 Thus, R. Hai criticizes one who removes his heart
16 I have discussed this question in my essay in Judaism’s Encounter (see n. 2), pp.
68-69. The most careful recent analysis is in Amos Goldreich’s dissertation, Sefer
Me’irat ‘Einayim le-Rav Yitzhak de-min ‘Akko (Jerusalem, 1981; Pirsumei ha-Makhon
le-Limmudim Mitqaddemim, 1984), pp. 405-407. Goldreich is inclined to accept the
authenticity of the letter; I am more inclined to be skeptical.
17 Graetz, who first challenged the authenticity of R. Hai’s letter, also expressed suspicion
that it was interpolated into our text. Once the first position is affirmed, the second
has the advantage of avoiding the conclusion that Nahmanides was misled by a forgery.
See H. Graetz, “Ein pseudoepigraphischen Sendschreiben, angeblich von Hai Gaon an
Samuel Nagid,” MGWJ 11 (1862): 37-40.
18 Chavel may equate excessive study with study in groups. See Kitvei Ramban, p. 349,
n. 62: ,'‫ מבואר שכל עצמה של הצעת רבינו היתה 'להזהיר בנחת‬.‫ השקידה היתירה על ספר המורה‬,‫העסק‬
‫ רק תקנה וגדר לבלתי עסוק בתלמוד זה בחבורה‬,‫אבל לא לגזור שום גזרת איסור‬. Perano (“Mistica e
Filosofia,” p. 251), clearly influenced by Chavel’s formulation, speaks of “un tempo
eccessivo dedicato allo studio del Moreh,” while Chavel’s English translation of “lehaniah
ha-‘eseq mi-kol ve-khol” reads (p. 411), “To completely desist from engaging abundantly
[in the study of the Moreh Nebuchim]” (bracketed phrase in the original).
19 Perles’ ed., p. 194. The quotation from R. Hai in the Saraval manuscript differs in
— 126 —
from Torah and studies those matters—not those matters alone—and he

asserts that you will find fear of sin, humility, and sanctity only in those
who study Mishnah and Talmud—not in those who study Mishnah and
Talmud along with philosophy. The point is that someone who turns his
attention from the exclusive study of Torah will eventually reach the point
of removing himself from Torah entirely. In this version, both R. Hai
and Nahmanides present a coherent argument. The study of philosophy
should be discouraged, period.
What, then, did Nahmanides propose to resolve the Maimonidean
controversy? First, the ban on the Sefer ha-Maddac, which is a wonderful
book, must be lifted. Second, the ban on the Guide, a ban which currently
applies to private as well as public study, must be lifted as well. Third, a
ban on group study of the Guide should be instituted. Fourth and finally,
the study of philosophy should be entirely discouraged, but gently and
without a ban.
Read in this fashion, the letter is smooth and clear—but the fourth
point remains troubling. Nahmanides had studied Maimonidean
philosophy, and he continued to do so. The letter of R. Hai is explicitly
directed to a great scholar, and so we cannot easily appeal to special
dispensation for exceptional people. I am inclined to think that this
provision results in part from the exigencies of the moment and in part
from a genuine element in the complex psyche of the author. Nahmanides
was of two minds as he struggled with the question of philosophical
study. In his own very capable hands, it could be a useful handmaiden
of the Torah; for most others, it was fraught with peril. The gentle
discouragement of this pursuit—even if applied to scholars—was by no
means bad public policy, particularly if it could persuade the Northern
Rabbis to withdraw their damaging ban.20
Faced with a major communal crisis, Nahmanides crafted a delicately
balanced resolution. Even though the proposal was never implemented in
all its details, it may well have been instrumental in helping to defuse a
other, minor ways from the passage I have reproduced from Chavel’s edition, but these
changes are not sufficiently significant to detain us here. On other citations of R. Hai’s
letter, see Ozar ha-Geonim to Hagigah, pp. 65-66, and the literature noted by Goldreich,
Sefer Me’irat ‘Einayim (above, n. 16).
20 Note that despite his observation that even great scholars were admonished against
philosophical study, Nahmanides makes a point of indicating the special importance
of discouraging beginning students.
— 127 —
situation which jeopardized cordial intellectual and communal interaction

among the three great centers of European Jewry in the formative period
of their relationship. I suspect that the rabbis of Northern France regarded
Nahmanides’ suggestion as so nuanced that pursuing it would only lead
them deeper into the morass. After reading it they decided that they
should leave this matter in the hands of the local authorities, and they
simply withdrew from the fray, perhaps after a formal revocation of their
ban.21 In the final analysis, it is more than likely that this was precisely
what Nahmanides preferred and precisely what the Jews of Europe
needed as they shaped their distinctive cultural and religious profiles
aware of one another but driven by diverse instincts and aspirations to
produce the rich and varied tapestry of a united and divided people.
21 For evidence that Nahmanides’ letter had a significant impact on the Northern French
Rabbis, see Shohet, “Berurim,” p. 44.
— 128 —
Miracles and the Natural Order in Nahmanides*
MIRACLES AND THE NATURAL ORDER IN

NAHMANIDES*
From: Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in his Religious and

Literary Virtuosity, ed. by Isadore Twersky (Harvard University Press:
Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 107-128.
The centrality of miracles in Nahmanides’ theology cannot escape the

attention of even the most casual observer, and his doctrine of the
hidden miracle exercised a particularly profound and abiding influence
on subsequent Jewish thought. Nevertheless, his repeated emphasis on
the miraculous—and particularly the unrestrained rhetoric of a few key
passages—has served to obscure and distort his true position, which
was far more moderate, nuanced and complex than both medieval and
modern scholars have been led to believe.
To Nahmanides, miracles serve as the ultimate validation of all three

central dogmas of Judaism: creation ex nihilo, divine knowledge, and
providence (hiddush, yedi‘ah, hashgahah).1 In establishing the relationship
between miracles and his first dogma, Nahmanides applies a philosophical
argument in a particularly striking way. “According to the believer in the
eternity of the world,” he writes, “if God wished to shorten the wing of
* Some of the issues analyzed in this article were discussed in a more rudimentary form
in chapters one, three, and four of my master’s essay, “Nahmanides’ Attitude Toward
Secular Learning and its Bearing upon his Stance in the Maimonidean Controversy”
(Columbia University, 1965), which was directed by Prof. Gerson D. Cohen.
1 Torat HaShem Temimah (henceforth THT), in Kitvei Ramban, ed. by Ch. Chavel I (Jerusalem,
1963), p. 150. On Nahmanides’ dogmas and their connection with miracles, see S.
Schechter, “Nachmanides,” in Studies in Judaism I (Philadelphia, 1878), pp. 118-122, and
Ch. Henoch, Ha-Ramban ke-Hoqer ve-ki-Mequbbal (Jerusalem, 1978), pp. 159-179.
— 129 —
a fly or lengthen the leg of an ant he would be unable to do so.”2 Hence,

miracles demonstrate creation.
The reverse contention that creation demonstrates the possibility of
miracles is an assertion which goes back to Philo.3 In this case, however,
Nahmanides is applying to miracles an argument that Saadya had used
about the fundamental hypothesis of creation from primeval matter.
Such creation, the Gaon had contended, would have been impossible,
since “God would not have [had] the power to create things out of” pre-
existent matter; “it would not have accepted his command nor allowed
itself to be affected according to his wish and shaped according to his
design.”4 The direct source of Nahmanides’ imagery, however, is not
Saadya but Maimonides. In discussing the Aristotelian version of the
eternity of the universe, Maimonides remarked that if the world operates
through necessity and not through will, “very disgraceful conclusions
will follow… Namely, it would follow that the deity, whom everyone
intelligent recognizes to be perfect in every kind of perfection, could, as
far as all the beings are concerned, produce nothing new in any of them;
if He wished to lengthen a fly’s wing or shorten a worm’s foot, He would
not be able to do it.”5
The glaring anomaly in Nahmanides’ borrowing of this vivid image
is that Maimonides applied the argument not to any denial of ex nihilo
creation but only to an Aristotelian universe governed by necessity;
2 THT, p. 146. All translations from Nahmanides’ works are mine.

3 H. A. Wolfson, Philo (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1948) I, pp. 298-299, 354; II, pp. 199-
200. Cf. also the references in Wolfson’s Religious Philosophy (Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1961), p. 223.
4 Translation from A. Altmann’s selections in Three Jewish Philosophers (Cleveland, New
York, and Philadelphia, 1960), p. 61 = The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, translated by S.
Rosenblatt (New Haven, 1948), p. 48. Halevi (Kuzari I.91, and cf. V.14) also spoke of a
connection between miracles and creation; he was, however, less dogmatic about the
indispensability of the belief in creation ex nihilo since “a believer in the Torah” who
accepted the reality of eternal hylic matter could nevertheless retain the conviction
that “this world was renewed at a certain time and the beginning of humanity is Adam
and Eve” (I.67; contrast, however, II.50). Apparently Halevi’s characteristic skepticism
about the decisive force of philosophical arguments—in this case the demonstration
of a link between miracles and ex nihilo creation—ironically enables him to tolerate a
radical philosophical position more readily than Saadya or Nahmanides. (On the other
hand, he may have been thinking of a specific refutation of this link, perhaps along the
lines of the argument that we shall be examining shortly.)
5 Guide II. 22 (Pines’ translation).
— 130 —
according to the “Platonic” version of eternity, miracles are possible.6

Maimonides, in fact, practically begins his discussion of the question
of creation by describing how the Platonic approach can maintain both
the eternity of matter and divine control over it by appealing to an
analogy with the potter’s relationship to his clay. Here is a case in which
control is manifestly not dependent upon creation or even chronological
priority.7
Since Nahmanides uses only the word hiddush (not creation me-‘ayin)
in connection with this argument in his Torat Ha-Shem Temimah and since
Maimonides at one point uses the word hiddush about the Platonic view of
eternity,8 there is a fleeting temptation to suggest that Nahmanides was
not pressing this particular argument, at least to the discerning reader,
beyond the point where Maimonides had taken it. This temptation,
however, must almost certainly be resisted, for we find Nahmanides
using the same argument (though without the Maimonidean language)
in his Commentary to Exodus explicitly about creation ex nihilo; miracles
demonstrate hiddush by showing that everything is God’s since he created
it from nothing.9 Nahmanides nowhere addresses the “Platonic” analogy
with the potter, and it must be said that, in the very same chapter of
the Guide where he presents the analogy, Maimonides himself suggests
that the Aristotelian and Platonic versions of creation do not differ
significantly in the eyes of one who follows the Torah.10 Hence, it may
well be that Nahmanides was disarmed by Maimonides’ ambiguities and
was not fully cognizant of the disparity between his use of the “fly’s
wing” image and the use to which it was put in his source.
In any event, we are left to speculate about Nahmanides’ response
to the potter analogy. He may have felt that the potter’s control over
his clay is far too restricted to serve as a paradigm for God’s power over
the world. Perhaps more significantly, he might have argued that this
analogy begs the question since the control of a potter over his clay is
6 Guide II. 25.

7 Guide II. 13.
8 Guide II. 25. The word appears in Al-Harizi’s translation (II. 26), which was the one
Nahmanides used, as well as in Ibn Tibbon’s.
9 To Exodus 13:16.
10 Guide II. 13. Cf. also the end of n. 14 below. For some of the peculiarities in Maimonides’
treatment of Platonic eternity, see H. Davidson, “Maimonides’ Secret Position
on Creation,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. by I. Twersky
(Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1979), pp. 16-40.
— 131 —
ultimately derived from God (Genesis 1:28; Psalms 8:7), but God’s own
power must be called into question if matter is primeval. Miracles are
possible only, to use Shem Tov’s play on a talmudic phrase, because “the
mouth which prohibited is the one which permitted.”11
However Nahmanides may have dealt with this question, the most
telling aspect of his presentation involves the sharpening of another,
related point made by Saadya. To the Gaon, the denial of creation ex
nihilo is motivated by the excessive empiricism of people who believe only
what their eyes see and what their senses perceive,12 and Nahmanides
twice refers to Aristotle as a man who believed only what he could
sense.13 In light of this perception, the argument from miracles can be
sharpened into a remarkably effective polemical weapon: since miracles
are an empirical datum, and they establish creation ex nihilo through a
straightforward philosophical demonstration, the affirmation of eternity
is a rejection of empiricism. “Hence you see the stubbornness of the leader
of the philosophers, may his name be erased, for he denies a number of
things that many have seen, whose truth we ourselves have witnessed,
and which have become famous in the world.”14 The arch-empiricist is
revealed as a pseudo-empiricist.
In an important way, this argument exemplifies Nahmanides’
fundamental philosophical stance. Because revelation—and hence
the content of the revelation—is an empirical datum, there is hardly
much point in wasting energy and ingenuity in demonstrating such
11 Commentary to Guide II. 25.

12 For example, Beliefs and Opinions I, Rosenblatt’s translation, pp. 38-39, 61-62, 71, 76.
13 THT, p. 147; Comm. to Lev. 16:18.
14 THT, p. 147. Saadya’s attack against the empiricism of believers in eternity usually
took the form of arguing that they too end by believing in things that they have
never experienced (cf. the references in n. 12). He does appeal to miracles as well
(e.g. Rosenblatt’s translation, pp. 40, 58, 73), but on at least one of those occasions
(and probably the others too) he seems to have in mind the less direct argument that
miracles validate Scripture, which in turn teaches the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In
any case, he never formulates the argument found in Nahmanides as clearly, sharply,
or effectively.
In Maimonides’ “fly’s wing” passage, the argument was based not on the fact that God
had demonstrated his control of the world but on the assertion that lack of such control
would be a philosophically inadmissible imperfection in the deity. In the Treatise on
the Resurrection, however (ed. by. J. Finkel [New York, 1939], p. 32, #46), which was
directed to a more popular audience, Maimonides did argue that miracles demonstrate
hiddush “as we have explained in the Guide.” Most readers were not likely to realize that
this hiddush can include Platonic eternity.
— 132 —
things as God’s existence or unity, and Nahmanides never bothers with

such philosophical exercises. At the same time, the use of reason to
understand God, creation, and other key theological issues is essential.
Those who spurn an investigation into theodicy on the grounds that it
will inevitably remain a mystery are “fools who despise wisdom. For we
shall benefit ourselves in the above-mentioned study by becoming wise
men who know God in the manner in which he acts and in his deeds;
furthermore, we shall become believers endowed with a stronger faith
in him than others.”15
In our case, the reality of miracles is taken for granted, and the
connection with creation ex nihilo is made by a philosophical argument.
Without denigrating the use of reason, Nahmanides has eliminated
the boundary between revelation and reason by incorporating revealed
information, openly and unselfconsciously, into what might be described
as the data base for philosophical analysis. It is this approach which
accounts for his discussing theological issues primarily in the context of
a commentary to the revelation,16 and it is this, I think, which attracted
him to kabbalah. Nahmanides’ mysticism, after all, is essentially a revealed
philosophical system, and the function of kabbalah as a harmonizing
force subsuming both reason and revelation may well precede and
transcend Nahmanides to account for the attractiveness of medieval
Jewish mysticism in precisely the time and place where it first became a
major force. It is no accident that late twelfth-century Provençal Jewry
was the locus of both the rise of kabbalah and a confrontation with
philosophy by a Jewish community without a philosophical tradition.
Jewish mysticism provided an ideal solution for a mind captivated by
the philosophic quest but committed only to authentic, revealed sources.
The Talmud, it is true, spoke of the danger that esoteric investigation
could lead to heresy; nonetheless, the perils posed by the study of
15 Sha‘ar ha-Gemul, in Kitvei Ramban II, p. 281. The phrase “fools who despise wisdom”
(‫הכסילים מואסי החכמה‬, though based, as Chavel remarks, on Proverbs 1:22 (‫וכסילים ישנאו‬
‫)דעת‬, is borrowed from a similar discussion in Saadya: “Many people have erred and
despised wisdom (‫)מאסו בחכמה‬, some because they did not know the way to it, while
some knew and entered the path but did not complete it… Therefore, let not the
contemptuous fool (‫ )הכסיל הקץ‬blame God for his sin.” My translation from Ibn Tibbon’s
Hebrew. See Sefer ha-Emunot ve-ha-De‘ot (Józewów, 1878) I, p. 41 = Rosenblatt’s
translation, p. 13. On the reading ‫( הכסיל הקץ‬not ‫)הכסיל או הקץ‬, see M. Ventura, La
Philosophie de Saadia Gaon (Paris, 1934), p. 311.
16 Cf. Chavel, Ramban: His Life and Teachings (New York, I960), pp. 67-68.
— 133 —
esoteric doctrines revealed by God pale in comparison with the heresies

awaiting a student of ultimate questions whose only guides are reason
and Aristotle.17 Within the kabbalistic system, the boundary between
revelation and philosophy was completely erased, so that Nahmanides
and like-minded contemporaries could satisfy their yearning for what
might best be termed not a religious philosophy but a philosophical
religion.
This commitment to kabbalah raises a crucial final question
concerning the sincerity of the argument that we have been examining.
Nahmanides demonstrates creation ex nihilo through an appeal to
miracles—but did he really believe in creation ex nihilo? Scholem has
shown that the mystical school in Gerona, of which Nahmanides was the
most prominent representative, turned the naive understanding of the
term on its head and understood ‘ayin (= nihil) as a word for the hidden
recesses of the Godhead itself; creation is a process of emanation from
the divine Nothing, not the sudden appearance of matter from ordinary
nothingness.18 Although there may be a certain disingenuousness in
the kabbalist’s use of this term to an uninitiated audience, Nahmanides’
argument remains relatively unaffected and must almost certainly be
regarded as sincere. The kabbalistic doctrine continues to assert—indeed,
to insist—that the process of creation precludes the primeval existence
of matter independent of God; even from a mystical perspective, then,
the argument from miracles can be mobilized to deny the existence of
such independent matter, and that is essentially what Nahmanides has
done. Whether the alternative is creation from nothing or from Nothing
depends on the reader’s kabbalistic sophistication, but Nahmanides’
appeal to miracles in support of his first dogma remains both ingenious
and ingenuous.19
17 Though he is referring to a later period, A. S. Halkin’s remarks can be applied to the

twelfth century as well: “Its [kabbalah’s] concern with fundamental problems and
its incorporation of philosophical concepts into a system which vaunted a purely
Jewish ancestry and claimed that it represented the deepest understanding of the
revealed books, qualified it both to satisfy the curiosity of those who sought answers
to theological and cosmological questions and to challenge Aristotelianism and its
Jewish exponents as alien plants within Jewry.” “Yedaiah Bedersi’s Apology,” in Jewish
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. by A. Altmann (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967),
p. 183.
18 Scholem’s most elaborate discussion is in Ha-Qabbalah be-Gerona, pp. 212-240.
19 For the possibility that Nahmanides may have attempted somehow to salvage the
— 134 —
II
Nahmanides goes on to assert that miracles—or more precisely, manifest

miracles—validate the remaining two dogmas of divine knowledge
and providence.20 The connection here is so obvious as to be scarcely
interesting, but it is in this discussion of the nature of providence that
Nahmanides cites his central, seminal doctrine of the hidden miracle—
and that doctrine is exceptionally interesting. Although similar views
had been expressed earlier by Bahya, Halevi, and even Maimonides,21
straightforward understanding of creation ex nihilo within a mystical framework, see

Ha-Qabbalah be-Gerona, pp. 255-265, esp. 261-265. On the subject of straightforward
versus esoteric biblical exegesis (peshat vs. sod), A. Funkenstein has recently written that
“peshat and sod correspond [or ‘overlap’—hofefim] in only one place [in Nahmanides’
exegesis]: kabbalah is the central dimension in understanding the reason for sacrifices
(Comm. to Lev. 1:9). Everywhere else peshat and sod are different, and in Genesis 1:1 this
reaches the point of syntactical contradiction: according to ‘the way of genuine truth,’
the word ‘God’ is not the subject of the verse but rather its object” (“Parshanuto ha-
Tippologit shel ha-Ramban,” Zion 45 [1980]:46-47). Cf. also H. H. Ben Sasson, “Rabbi
Moshe ben Nahman: Ish be-Sivkhei Tequfato,” Molad, n.s. 1 (1967):360, 362-363.
In fact, however, Nahmanides displays a pronounced tendency to equate peshat and
sod by finding that the plain meaning of Scripture can be explained satisfactorily—or
most satisfactorily—only by resorting to kabbalistic doctrine. Thus, only the esoteric
interpretation pointing to metempsychosis really “fits the verses” of Elihu’s critical
speech in Job (Comm. to Job 32:3), only according to the kabbalistic interpretation is the
sin of Moses and Aaron “mentioned explicitly in the biblical text” (Comm. to Numbers
20:1), only a midrash requiring kabbalistic elaboration ‘fits the language of the verse
best” in Genesis 6:4, only after understanding a mystical secret in connection with the
second commandment will “the entire verse become clear in accordance with its simple,
straightforward meaning” (Comm. to Exodus 20:3), and Exodus 6:2-3 will reveal its
“simple, straightforward meaning” (Comm. ad loc.) “with nothing missing or superfluous”
(Sermon on Qohelet, Kitvei Ramban I, p. 192) only through kabbalistic exegesis. Cf. also
Scholem’s remark about the Commentary to Job, Ha-Qabbalah be-Gerona, p. 75, specifically
with respect to Job 28 (cf. too p. 230). It is particularly significant that although
Nahmanides endorses the content of the kabbalistic doctrine read into that chapter
by his source (R. Ezra’s commentary to the Song of Songs), he expresses reservations
(not noted by Scholem) about the validity of the exegesis (Kitvei Ramban I, p. 90). In
a sense, this underlines the point; if Nahmanides were prepared to find sod through
forced interpretation, he would have accepted such exegesis without resistance. On the
importance of peshat to Nahmanides, see also J. Perles, “Über den Geist des Commentars
des R. Moses ben Nachman zum Pentateuch und über sein Verhältniss zum Pentateuch-
Commentar Raschi’s,” MGWJ 7 (1858):119-120, esp. n. 2.
20 THT, pp. 150, 155.
21 See Ha-Qabbalah be-Gerona, pp. 305, 309. Nahmanides himself (THT, p. 154) noted that
Maimonides’ Treatise on the Resurrection contains a passage supporting his view; the
passage he had in mind, which certainly influenced him, was without question the one
— 135 —
no previous Jewish thinker had laid equivalent emphasis on such a

conception, applied it as widely, or made it as central to his world view.
The hidden miracle, then, justly came to be regarded as a Nahmanidean
doctrine par excellence, and the intellectual image of Nahmanides has
often been drawn in significant measure with this doctrine in mind.
Thus, to the extent that we have misunderstood the hidden miracle, we
have misunderstood Nahmanides.
In at least two formulations of his position, Nahmanides permitted
himself some rhetorical excesses that have inevitably fostered such
misunderstanding. “A person has no portion in the Torah of Moses,” he
writes, “without believing that all things that happen to us are miracles;
they have nothing to do with ‘nature’ or ‘the customary order of the
world’.”22 More succinctly, “One who believes in the Torah may not believe
in the existence of nature at all.”23 The analysis underlying these remarks
appears almost as a refrain throughout Nahmanides’ works: since the
Torah promises rewards and punishments ranging from famine to plague
to constant good health, and since there is nothing “natural” about the
link between human behavior and such phenomena, providence must
be realized through a series of hidden miracles disguised as part of an
apparent natural order.24
It is hardly surprising, then, that students of Nahmanides have
perceived him as a thinker who denied, or virtually denied, the existence
of natural law. Solomon Schechter, for example, argues that “We may…
maintain that in Nachmanides’ system there is hardly room left for such
a thing as nature or ‘the order of the world’… Miracles are raised to a
place in the regular scheme of things, and the difficulty regarding the
possibility of God’s interference with nature disappears by their very
multiplication. [There is] an unbroken chain of miracles.”25
To Gershom Scholem, Nahmanides tends
to turn what we call the laws of nature into a sort of optical illusion, since
we regard what is really a continuum of miracles as a manifestation of
pointed out by Scholem (Finkel’s ed., pp: 33-36, #48-50), not the ones noted by Chavel
in his edition of THT ad loc.
22 Comm. to Exodus 13:16; THT, p. 153.
23 Sermon on Qohelet, Kitvei Ramban I, p. 192.
24 See Comm. to Gen. 17:1, 46:15; Exod. 6:2; Lev. 18:29, 26:11.
25 “Nachmanides,” pp. 119-120.
— 136 —
natural law… These hidden miracles, which are the foundation of the entire
Torah, are miracles which do not appear miraculous to us… The world and
the behavior of nature and their relationship to man are not at all in the
category of what we call nature; they are, rather, a constant and constantly
renewed miracle, a continuous chain of miracles…26
Nahmanides’ position, Scholem says, is very close to occasionalism, a

later philosophical school which denied natural law entirely, though there
is one very significant exception: Nahmanides was a virtual occasionalist
only with respect to Israel; other nations live in a world of nature.27
In his recent book on Nahmanides, Chayim Henoch makes the same
comparison between the “constant miraculous renewal” in Nahmanides’
thought and both occasionalists and mutakallimun, while pointing out, like
Scholem, that this applies only to Israel.28 Yitzhak Baer’s classic History
presents Nahmanides as an anti-rationalist who denied the natural order,
Haim Hillel Ben Sasson’s characterization is even more extreme and
explicit, and a recent study by Amos Funkenstein refers somewhat more
cautiously to “Nahmanides’ tendency to blur the boundaries between the
natural and the miraculous.”29
There can be no question that Nahmanides perceives the operation
of providence as a phenomenon consisting of repeated miracles. Indeed,
he has forced himself into a position where he denies that God enters the
causal chain in any but the most direct way.
26 Ha-Qabbalah be-Gerona, pp. 306-307.
27 Ibid., pp. 309-310.
28 Ha-Ramban ke-Hoqer ve-ki-Mequbbal, p. 178. Henoch goes on to emphasize the kabbalistic
character of Nahmanides’ position, which we shall touch on briefly a bit later. In a much
earlier footnote (p. 54, n. 162), he had proposed, as we shall see, a crucial additional
qualification, but there is no echo of that note in his later discussion.
29 See Baer’s History of the Jews in Christian Spain I (Philadelphia, 1971), p. 245; Toledot
ha-Yehudim bi-Sefarad ha-Nozrit (Tel Aviv, 1959), p. 145; Ben Sasson in Molad, n.s. 1
(1967):360-61; Funkenstein in Zion 45 (1980):45. Ben Sasson’s discussion clearly
implies that Nahmanides did not recognize a natural realm even in areas that do not
impinge on human affairs; thus, it is not only “all things that happen to us” that are
miracles. According to Nahmanides, we are prohibited from mixing species because this
would constitute unwarranted interference with creation, a sort of hubris reflecting
the conviction that we can improve on the divine handiwork. To Ben Sasson, the
motivation for this interpretation stems from Nahmanides’ conviction that even such
a “natural” phenomenon as the maintenance of species in their present form is an
ongoing miraculous process; hence, human intervention would involve an unseemly
attempt to compete not merely with God’s creative acts in the distant past but with
miracles that He is performing at this very moment.
— 137 —
If we will stubbornly insist that the [non-priest] who eats of the heave-
offering will not die through a change in nature, but that God will cause
him to eat food that causes sickness or that he will go to war and die, the
fact would remain that the astrological configuration of his constellation
would have changed for ill through his sin or for good through his merit so
that nature would in any event not prevail. Thus, if the alternative is that
God would change this person’s mind as a result of his sin so that he would
eat harmful foods that he would not have eaten otherwise, it is easier to
change the nature of the good food so that it will do him harm.30
Since there is no conceptual difference to Nahmanides between

indirect, “natural” providence and miraculous divine intervention, the
workings of providence are best understood as direct hidden miracles
unmediated by natural forces. There is therefore hardly any point in
asking why Nahmanides does not formally list the hidden miracle as one
of his dogmas. He does list it—under the name “providence.”31
Nevertheless, Nahmanides was forced by the Bible, the halakhah, and
intuitions influenced by philosophy or common sense or both, to recognize
that natural law often does operate—even for Jews and probably even for
the Jewish collective. Consequently, a careful examination of the totality
of Nahmanides’ comments on this issue reveals nature in operation
ninety-nine percent of the time, and it is perforce nature without
30 Introduction to Job, Kitvei Ramban I, p. 19.

31 In THT, p. 155, Nahmanides comes very close to saying this explicitly:
‫כבר נתברר כי הנסים המפורסמים מורים על החידוש ועל הידיעה שיש לו להקב“ה בפרטי העולם‬
‫ועל ההשגחה והנסים הנסתרים לדעת כל מאמין בעונש העבירות ובשכר המצוות ולדעת כל מתפלל‬
‫ כלם מודים על החידוש ועל הידיעה וההשגחה הודאה אמיתית אלא שהיא‬,‫וכל נושא עיניו לשמים‬
‫נסתרת והם שלש מוסדות התורה‬
Henoch (p. 171) cites this passage, but I don’t think he takes it (as I do) as a virtual
equation of hidden miracles and providence in particular. The references to hashgahah
and nissim nistarim really merge into one another, and, despite the syntactical
awkwardness which I must ascribe to Nahmanides, the phrase ella shehi nisteret seems
to me to modify hashgahah (not hoda’ah) and to mean that providence takes the form
of hidden miracles. (Henoch’s subsequent citation of the phrase “all the fundamentals
of the Torah come through hidden miracles” from Comm. to Gen. 46:15 as another
assertion of the connection between miracles and dogmas is probably not germane;
in that context, “fundamentals of the Torah” does not mean creation, knowledge and
providence but reiterates Nahmanides’ standard assertion that all the Torah’s promises
of reward and punishment [=”the fundamentals of the Torah”] come through hidden
miracles.) Manifest miracles are not listed among the dogmas for the reason Henoch
suggests: they are not a dogma in themselves but an expression of divine power and a
means by which the fundamental dogmas are validated.
— 138 —
providence, since “natural,” indirect providence is a contradiction in

terms.32 Nahmanides’ world is therefore exceptionally—extraordinarily—
naturalistic precisely because of his insistence on the miraculous nature
of providence.
This is, to say the least, an unexpected conclusion, and we must now
take a careful look at the texts which make it inescapable.
God’s knowledge, which is his providence in the lower world, is to guard

species, and even individual human beings are left to accidents until their
time of reckoning comes. With respect to people of special piety (hasidav),
however, God turns his attention to such a person to know him as an
individual and to see to it that divine protection cleaves to him always;
knowledge and remembrance are never separated from him at all. This
is the meaning of “He withdraws not his eyes from the righteous” (Job
36:4); indeed, many verses refer to this principle, as it is written, “Behold,
the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him” (Psalms 33:18), and others
besides.33
Since he is commenting on a verse which says that God “knew”

Abraham, Nahmanides here understands the term knowledge in a strong
sense as the equivalent of providence, but there is no reason to think that
this passage limits divine knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word.34
The limitation on providence itself, however, is significant enough; not
many people are designated hasidim in Nahmanides’ terminology, and
the attribution of constant providence to precious few individuals is
made even clearer by the phrase he uses in a later passage.
Know that miracles are performed for good or ill only for the absolutely
righteous (zaddiqim gemurim) or the absolutely wicked. Those in the middle
have good or ill occur to them according to the customary order of the
world “in accordance with their way and their actions” (Ezekiel 36:17).35
32 Contrast Maimonides, Guide II. 48.

33 Comm. to Gen. 18:19.
34 Cf. the passage from Bahya cited by Chavel ad loc., and contrast L. Stein’s assertion cited
in n. 37 below. Note too that, if we would not assume constant divine knowledge in the
weak sense, we would need to resort to complex and obscure triggering mechanisms
to account for the “time of reckoning” and perhaps even for God’s recognition that so-
and-so has become the sort of pious man deserving of constant divine protection. See
the related discussion at nn. 38-42 below.
35 Comm. to Deut. 11:13.
— 139 —
The assertion that miracles are performed only for the absolutely
righteous or wicked is couched in general terms and appears to include
every variety of miracles. Hence, ordinary people are excluded from the
regular operation of hidden miracles and are left, as in the Commentary
to Genesis, to the customary, natural order. The last phrase from Ezekiel,
however, remains troublesome. It could mean that such people are left
to some sort of indirect providence weaker than the one which works
by hidden miracles, but this would directly contradict the introduction
to the Commentary to Job, which virtually denies the existence of such
providence, it would contradict the assertion in the Commentary to
Genesis that non-hasidim are left to “accidents,” and it would introduce
a category or providence found nowhere else in Nahmanides. The most
likely meaning, then, is that people left to accidents will be subjected
to good or evil according to “their way and their actions” in a purely
naturalistic sense; those who are careful will be safer than those who
are not. Just such a position, in fact, emerges from a passage in the
Commentary to Job that we shall examine in a moment where Nahmanides
maintains that people left to accidents are likely to stumble unless they
are particularly cautious.
Reinforcing this conception that God may well decide to leave people
to accidents is Nahmanides’ celebrated discussion of medicine, where he
maintains that in an ideal Jewish society even individuals would be dealt
with miraculously so that medical treatment would be either unnecessary
or futile. Regrettably, people began to consult doctors, and so God left
them “to natural accidents.”36 In this case, the halakhic permissibility of
consulting physicians, which Nahmanides goes on to cite, undoubtedly
played a role in moderating his skepticism about his own profession; the
Torah, he says, does not rest its laws on miracles. This halakhic principle
is not especially congenial to an occasionalist, and, as we shall see, this
is not the only instance in which it worked to mitigate Nahmanides’
emphasis on the miraculous.
These passages leave no alternative to a thorough rethinking of the
standard image of Nahmanides. Chayim Henoch, who studied Nahmanides’
oeuvre with painstaking care, does confront them in a footnote, and he
suggests that the passages about miraculous providence may refer to the
Jewish collective and not to all Jewish individuals. Nevertheless, since
36 Comm. to Lev. 26:11.
— 140 —
we have seen that he later describes Nahmanides as maintaining a view

close to that of the occasionalists and the mutakallimun, the enormity of
this concession has apparently failed to make a sufficient impression.37
Finally, even the sharply shrunken position which applies Nahmanides’
denial of the natural order only to the Jewish collective (in addition to
a handful of extraordinarily righteous and wicked individuals) must be
shaken by a particularly striking passage in the Commentary to Job.
He withdraws not his eyes from the righteous (Job 36:7): This verse explains
a great principle with respect to providence concerning which there are
in fact many verses. For people of Torah and perfect faith believe in
providence, i.e., that God watches over and protects the members of the
human species… It is not said in the Torah or prophets that God watches
over and protects the individuals of other groups of creatures that do not
speak; rather, he guards only the species… The reason for this is clearly
known, for since man recognizes his God, God in turn watches over him
and protects him; this is not true of the other creatures, which do not speak
and do not know their creator.
This, then, is why he protects the righteous, for just as their heart and eyes
are always with him, so are the eyes of God on them from the beginning of
the year until the end, to the point where the absolutely pious man (hasid)
who cleaves to his God always and who never separates himself from him
in his thoughts by paying attention to mundane matters will be guarded
always from all accidents, even those that take place in the natural course
of events; such a person will be protected from these accidents through
a miracle occurring to him constantly, as if he were considered one of
the supernal beings who are not subject to generation and corruption by
accidents. To the extent that this individual comes close to God by cleaving
to him, he will be guarded especially well, while one who is far from God
in his thought and deeds, even if he does not deserve death because of his
sin, will be forsaken and left to accidents.
Many verses make this point. David [sic] said, “He will guard the feet
of his holy ones, but the wicked shall be put to silence in darkness” (I
Samuel 2:9). He means by this that those who are close to God are under
37 See above, n. 28. One nineteenth-century scholar noticed the passage in Comm. to Gen.
18:19 and allowed it to make too great an impression, asserting in a brief passage that
Nahmanides’ view of both divine knowledge and providence is virtually identical with
that of Gersonides. See L. Stein, Die Willensfreiheit und ihr Verhältniss zur göttlichen
Präscienz und Providenz bei den Jüdischen Philosophen des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1882), pp.
126-127. See above, n. 34.
— 141 —
absolute protection, while those who are far from him are subject to
accidents and have no one to protect them from harm, just as one who
walks in the darkness is likely to fall unless he is cautious and walks
slowly. David also said that “it is not with sword and spear that the Lord
saves” (I Samuel 17:47), and it is written, “Behold, the eye of the Lord is
on those who fear him, on those who wait for his mercy” (Psalms 33:18);
i.e., God’s eyes are on them when they wait for him constantly and their
souls cleave to him.
Since most of the world belongs to this intermediate group, the Torah
commanded that warriors be mobilized, and that the priest anointed
for war send back the fearful so that they will not sap the courage of the
others. It is for this reason too that we find the preparation of the order of
battle in the Torah and the prophets, for example, “And David inquired of
the Lord, and the Lord said, ‘Do not go up; circle around behind them...’ (II
Samuel 5:23), and ‘Go and draw toward Mount Tabor, and take with you
ten thousand men” (Judges 4:6). Had they been meritorious, they would
have gone out with a few people and achieved victory without arms, and
had they deserved defeat, no multitude would have helped them. In this
case, however, they deserved to be treated in the manner of nature and
accident. This is a matter which was explained well by Maimonides in the
Guide of the Perplexed.
As Nahmanides hints in his last sentence, much of this passage (until

the final paragraph) is a paraphrase of Maimonides’ discussion in Guide
III. 18, and it is so striking in its naturalism and limitation of providence
that we shall first have to devote some time to demonstrating that
Nahmanides has not changed into a Maimonides in disguise. The truth
is that he has introduced some subtle but crucial—and characteristic—
changes into his paraphrase of the Guide, so that his final sentence,
implying an identity of views with Maimonides, is profoundly misleading.
First, despite Maimonides’ use of the term pious (hasidim in both Ibn
Tibbon and Al-Harizi) to describe people who attain the benefits of
providence, the Guide repeatedly emphasizes the intellectual dimension
as well; to put it moderately, providence is connected not only with
righteousness but also with intellectual achievement. In Nahmanides,
this central point of the Guide vanishes entirely; though even he could
hardly have perceived his hasid as a pious fool, the emphasis on intellect
is completely absent.
A second and for our purposes even more important divergence
comes through Nahmanides’ introduction of an apparently innocuous
— 142 —
phrase into the final sentence of the second paragraph. Maimonides

had asserted that pious intellectuals are close to God and hence attain
providence while those who are far from him are likely to stumble
because they remain unprotected. The absolutely wicked, who constitute
an extreme example of the second category, are thus likely to fall because
of an absence of protection; consequently, the citation of the verse “The
wicked shall be put to silence in darkness” interpreted as blind, unguided
groping in the dark is especially appropriate. Nahmanides, however, as
we have seen in his commentary to Deuteronomy 11:13, believed that the
absolutely wicked are punished by miraculous divine intervention, and so
he slipped his crucial phrase into the Maimonidean discussion: “One who
is far from God in his thoughts and deeds, even if he does not deserve death
for his sins, will be forsaken and left to accidents.” When Nahmanides
then continues to paraphrase the Guide by citing “the wicked shall be put
to silence in darkness” understood merely as absence of protection, the
reference becomes forced and inappropriate. All of a sudden, “wicked”
excludes the truly wicked and refers only to an intermediate category
that plays no role in the Maimonidean passage. It is only because of
this tampering with the analysis in the Guide that Nahmanides’ final
paragraph, which is not derived from Maimonides, can begin with a
reference to “this intermediate group.”
The introduction of the person who deserves death for his sins also
undermines the essentially naturalistic character of Maimonides’ analysis.
To Maimonides, a person who reached the requisite level attained
providence “by necessity” through his link with the divine overflow,
and Nahmanides’ discussion of his hasid’s achieving providence through
cleaving to God (devequt) could also be read in a relatively naturalistic,
though mystical sense.38 Later kabbalists, in fact, were uncomfortable
with the entire concept of the hidden miracle because of their conviction
that the process by which human actions affect both nature and the
individual’s fate is one of clearcut cause and effect involving the esoteric
relationship between upper and lower worlds.39
38 On the process of devequt, in which the sefirah of ti’feret plays a special role, cf. Henoch,
pp. 248-251. On the hasid who cleaves to God, cf. also Comm. to Deut. 5:23, 11:22;
Comm. to Lev. 18:4; Sermon on Qohelet, Kitvei Ramban I, p. 192.
39 Meir ibn Gabbai, ‘Avodat HaQodesh (Warsaw, 1894), II. 17, p. 36b (brought to my
attention by Prof. Bernard Septimus); Isaiah Horowitz, Shnei Luhot HaBerit (Józewów,
1878), pp. 9b-10a, discussed by Chavel, Ramban, pp. 85-86, and Henoch, p. 56,
— 143 —
Nevertheless, it would almost certainly be a mistake to understand

Nahmanides’ miracles as entirely “naturalistic” mystical events. It is, first
of all, overwhelmingly likely that Nahmanides understood sefirotic action
as involving specific divine volition,40 and so the providence attained by
the hasid who cleaves to God does not have to be understood as coming
“by necessity.”41 Moreover, the miraculous punishment of the person
deserving to die for his sins certainly does not come through any cleaving
to God (just as it could not come through linkage to a Maimonidean
overflow), and, while an alternative kabbalistic mechanism of a naturalistic
sort is theoretically feasible, Nahmanides does not provide one. In
particular, the search for a “naturalistic” mystical triggering mechanism
to account for the “time of reckoning” of intermediate individuals who
are normally ignored would be especially difficult.42 In short, for all its
limitation of providence, this passage in the Commentary to Job does not
lead to naturalism of a Maimonidean or even mystical variety.
The fact remains, however, that it not only provides a vigorous
reassertion of the largely accidental life of ordinary individuals, it calls
into question the exclusively miraculous fate of even the Jewish collective.
The final paragraph of this passage, which is Nahmanides’ own, asserts
unambiguously that miraculous providence did not always protect the
Jewish people in its biblical wars. Ironically, Nahmanides is once again
forced into a naturalistic posture precisely by his miraculous conception
of providence. The verses that he cites include direct advice given to the
Jewish army by God himself; for someone who believed that providence
normally operates through nature, these battles would constitute classic
examples of divine protection of Israel. Instead, Nahmanides explicitly
cites them to show that when Jews are in the intermediate category, they
n. 171. Prof. Septimus’s Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies
of Ramah (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England, 1982), which appeared after the
completion of this article, contains a discussion of the argument in ‘Avodat Ha-Qodesh
(pp. 110-111); the book also called my attention to a two-sentence passage in E.
Gottlieb’s Mehqarim be-Sifrut ha-Qabbalah (Tel Aviv, 1976), p. 266, which comments
on the central theme of this essay with real insight (Septimus, pp. 110, 170 n. 54).
40 See Henoch, p. 18, n. 21.
41 Note that Nahmanides’ remark that the hasid “will be protected from accidents through
a miracle occurring to him constantly” is another elaboration on his Maimonidean
source.
42 The systems of the later kabbalists did not generally assume the existence of a group
of Jews usually left to accidents.
— 144 —
are abandoned to accidents, with a clear analogy to the individual who is

allowed to stumble in the darkness. We are apparently left to assume that
in an age without prophecy, when no divine advice is proffered, such an
army would have been left to accidents pure and simple. But if a Jewish
army fighting under the judges of Israel is not the Jewish collective, it
is hard to imagine what is. Hence, although Nahmanides could never
consider the possibility that God would allow the Jewish people to be
utterly destroyed through the accidents of nature, it seems clear that
even the Jewish collective is not always governed by an unbroken chain
of hidden miracles.43
Finally, a responsum by Nahmanides on astrology raises questions
about the constancy of miraculous providence even for the remaining
handful of extraordinarily righteous individuals. From a talmudic
discussion, he says,
it follows that it is permissible to listen to [astrologers] and to believe them.

This is clear from Abraham, who said, “I looked at astrological calculations,”
and from R. Akiba, who worried deeply about his daughter [who had been
the subject of a dire astrological prediction] and concluded after she was
saved that charity had rescued her literally from death… However, God
sometimes [my emphasis] performs a miracle for those who fear him by
nullifying the decree of the stars for them, and these are among the hidden
miracles which occur in the ordinary manner of the world and upon which
the entire Torah depends. Consequently, one should not consult astrologers
but should rather go forth in simple faith, as it is written, “You shall be
wholehearted with the Lord your God” (Deut. 18-13). If someone does see
43 Needless to say, miraculous providence often does govern the wars of Israel; see the
references in Henoch, pp. 60-61. On the suspension of such providence from the Jewish
collective, cf. Rashba’s responsum (1.19) cited by Henoch, p. 57, n. 171, which asserts
that, although Jews are generally excluded from astrological control, their sins can lower
them to a position where this is no longer the case. Though Henoch apparently considers
this inconsistent with Nahmanides’ view, the passage from the Comm. to Job may suggest
otherwise, since nature and the astrological order are pretty much synonymous. For
Nahmanides’ frequent denials that the Jewish people or the land of Israel are subject to
the constellations, see Sermon on Qohelet, Kitvei Ramban I, pp. 200-201; Sermon on Rosh
HaShanah, Kitvei Ramban I, p. 250; Comm. to Gen. 15:18; Comm. to Lev. 18:25; Comm. to
Deut. 29:25; THT, p. 150. It was presumably the repeated assertions in these passages
that Gentiles are subject to the constellations which persuaded Scholem and Henoch
that Nahmanides’ supposed denial of a natural order applied only to Jews. The belief
that nature prevails in the absence of special merit was used by Solomon ibn Verga as a
clever transition from religious to naturalistic explanation of Jewish exile and suffering
(Shevet Yehudah, ed. by A. Schochet [Jerusalem, 1947], p. 127).
— 145 —
something undesirable through astrology, he should perform good deeds

and pray a great deal; at the same time, if he saw through astrology that
a particular day is not auspicious for his work, he should avoid it and not
depend on a miracle. It is my view that it is prohibited to go counter to the
constellations while depending on a miracle.44
A legal responsum requires a particularly strong measure of

caution and responsibility, and it may therefore be dangerous to draw
conclusions about Nahmanides’ more general theological inclinations
from this sort of source; even occasionalists do not walk off cliffs, and
occasionalist halakhists do not advise others to do so. Nevertheless,
the plain meaning of the passage appears to be that even “those who
fear” God are not favored with continuous miracles, and methodological
reservations cannot entirely neutralize the impact of such a remark.
Thus, Nahmanides’ denial of nature may not apply in undiluted form
even to that final category of the absolutely righteous.45
Moreover, even though Nahmanides complains that Maimonides
“limits miracles and increases nature,”46 his own exegesis is by no means
free of such a tendency. The plain meaning of the biblical text indicates
that the rainbow was first created after the flood, but Nahmanides is
prepared to resort to reinterpretation under the pressure of scientific
evidence. “Against our will, we must believe the words of the Greeks
that the rainbow comes about as a result of the sun’s burning in the
moist air, for the rainbow appears in a vessel of water placed in the sun.”47
Thus, the Bible means only that the rainbow, which had appeared from
the beginning of creation, would henceforth be invested with symbolic
significance. Similarly, he reinterprets a Rabbinic statement that the
land of Israel was not inundated by the waters of the flood, arguing that
there was no fence around it to prevent the water from entering; all the
Rabbis meant was that the rain did not actually fall in Israel nor were its
44 Kitvei Ramban I, p. 379. The talmudic discussion that Nahmanides cites is in B. Shabbat
156a-b.
45 It may be relevant to note Maimonides’ sudden insight in Guide III. 51, where he
explains that even the pious intellectual is likely to stop concentrating on the divine for
a while, and during that time he remains unprotected. Even within a less naturalistic
framework than that of Maimonides, a parallel analysis is not impossible. Cf. also the
somewhat enigmatic passage in Sermon on Qohelet, Kitvei Ramban I, p. 192, which
apparently speaks of occasional accident with respect to the righteous.
46 THT, p. 154.
47 Comm. to Gen. 9:12, and cf. THT, p. 174.
— 146 —
subterranean waters let loose, but the water that originated elsewhere
covered Israel as well.48
With respect to the age of the antediluvians, there is a well-known
dispute in which Nahmanides takes Maimonides to task for ascribing
extreme longevity only to the figures explicitly mentioned in the Bible.
There is an almost instinctive tendency to ascribe Maimonides’ position
to his desire to restrict miracles49 and Nahmanides’ to his tendency to
multiply them. In fact, however, Nahmanides attacks Maimonides for
precisely the opposite offense. The argument in the Guide, he reports, is
that a few people lived such long lives either because of the way they took
care of themselves or as a result of a miracle. But it is hardly plausible
that people could quadruple their life span by following a particular
regimen; as for miracles, “why should such a miracle be performed for
them when they are neither prophets nor especially righteous men?” The
real reason for this longevity was the superior air before the time of the
flood combined with the excellent constitution with which their recent
ancestor Adam had been created, and these reasons, of course, apply to
all antediluvians equally.50
It is a matter of special interest that Ritba’s defense of Maimonides
on this point already reflects what was to become the standard
misreading of Nahmanides’ position on hidden miracles. Maimonides,
Ritba argues, believed in the constancy of natural phenomena over the
generations, and so Nahmanides’ naturalistic explanation about superior
air could not appeal to him. As for the objection that miracles would not
be performed for ordinary people, this is a peculiar argument coming
from Nahmanides. He himself, after all, “has taught us that there is a
great difference between a miracle like longevity that comes to a certain
extent in a natural way and a miracle that comes entirely outside the
natural order.”51 In other words, manifest miracles would happen only
to the specially righteous, but hidden miracles happen to everyone.
48 Comm. to Gen. 8:11. As M. D. Eisenstadt pointed out in his comment ad loc. (Perush
ha-Ramban ‘al HaTorah [New York, 1958]), Nahmanides’ exegesis ignores a Rabbinic
statement that the inhabitants of the land of Israel died only from the vapors.
49 Maimonides wanted to leave the natural order intact, said Judah Alfakar at the height
of the Maimonidean controversy, but what does it matter if someone tells you that he
saw one camel or three flying in the air? See Qovez Teshuvot ha-Rambam (Leipzig, 1859),
III, p. 2a.
50 Comm. to Gen. 5:4.
51 Sefer ha-Zikkaron, ed. by K. Kahana (Jerusalem, 1956), pp. 37-39.
— 147 —
Whether Nahmanides would have considered the Maimonidean version

of antediluvian longevity a hidden or manifest miracle is debatable,52 but
the main point is that Ritba has misread his view of the ubiquity of the
hidden miracle: such miracles too happen regularly only to “prophets or
especially righteous men.”
One place where Nahmanides introduces a miracle which is not in any
of his sources is in the account of the flood, where he suggests that the ark
miraculously contained more than its dimensions would normally allow.
The problem here, however, is so acute, and the alternative solutions so
implausible, that it is difficult to regard this as evidence of eagerness
to multiply miracles, particularly since he makes a point of saying that
the ark was made relatively large “for the purpose of minimizing the
miracle.”53
Nahmanides, then, was no occasionalist or near occasionalist. Except
in the rarest of instances, the natural order governs the lives of non-Jews,
both individually and collectively, as well as the overwhelming majority
of Jews. The Jewish collective is often (usually?) guided by miraculous
providence, but it too can find itself forsaken and left to accidents; and
though the absolutely righteous and absolutely wicked also enjoy (or
suffer) a chain of hidden miracles, the chain is apparently not unbroken.
Moreover, Nahmanides’ uncompromising insistence that providence is
exclusively miraculous means that, although God is constantly aware of
everyone, he does not exercise providence when nature prevails; since
nature almost always prevails, the routine functioning of Nahmanides’
world is, as we have already noted, extraordinarily naturalistic.
52 As Kahana notes, Ritba was probably thinking of Nahmanides’ assertion (Comm. to

Gen. 46:15) that Jochebed’s giving birth at the age of 130 is a hidden miracle. It is
worth noting, however, that even though hidden and manifest miracles are performed
through different divine names (e.g., Comm. to Exodus 6:2), the boundary line between
them is not always hard and fast, if only because the constant repetition of certain
hidden miracles can make them manifest (Comm. to Lev. 26:11).
53 Comm. to Gen. 6:19. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that unless Nahmanides had in
mind the miniaturization of the animals in the ark (and he does not say this), the
miracle he is suggesting appears to involve the sort of logical contradiction that Jewish
rationalists refrained from accepting even in miracles and which they ascribed only
to their Christian adversaries. See D. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against
Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York, 1977), passim, and esp. pp. 25-43, and cf.
my The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 351-
352, esp. n. 11, for a possible affirmation of this rationalist position by Nahmanides
himself.
— 148 —
What, then, is the meaning of Nahmanides’ assertions that “a person

has no portion in the Torah of Moses without believing that all things
that happen to us are miracles; they have nothing to do with ‘nature’ or
‘the customary order of the world’ “ and that “one who believes in the
Torah may not believe in the existence of nature at all”?54
To resolve this question, we must look again at his standard argument
for hidden miracles and the terms in which it is usually couched. As we
have already seen, the essence of this argument is invariably the fact
that the Torah promises rewards and punishments which cannot come
naturally; hence, they are all miracles. This is true, he says, “of all the
promises (ye‘udim) in the Torah.”55 “The promises of the Torah (ye‘udei
ha-Torah) are all miracles.”56 Hidden miracles were performed for the
patriarchs in the manner of “all the promises (ye‘udim) of the Torah, for
no good comes to a person as the reward of a good deed and no evil befalls
him as a result of sin except through a miraculous act… The reward and
punishment for the entire Torah in this world comes through miracles
that are hidden.”57 “All the promises (ye‘udim) in the Torah, favorable or
unfavorable, are all miraculous and take the form of hidden miracles.”58
“All the blessings [in the Torah] are miracles.”59
In all of these passages, Nahmanides’ affirmation of miracles refers
specifically to the realm of reward and punishment promised by the Torah.
Similarly, when he makes the extreme assertion in his commentary that
“all things that happen to us are miracles,” he immediately continues, “If a
person observes the commandments his reward will make him successful,
and if he violates them his punishment will destroy him.”60 In his sermon
Torat HaShem Temimah, where be repeats his strong statement about
miracles, the evidence again comes from the “promises of the Torah”
(ye‘udei haTorah).61 Nahmanides’ intention is that “all things that happen
to us” in the context of reward and punishment “are miracles.”
The passage in his sermon does appear to be arguing for a somewhat
broader conclusion, but that conclusion is not the non-existence of
54 See notes 22-23.
56 Comm. to Gen. 46:15.
57 Comm. to Exod. 6:2.
58 Comm. to Lev. 18:29.
59 Comm. to Lev. 26:11.
60 Comm. to Exod. 13:16.
61 THT, p. 153.
— 149 —
nature. Nahmanides is concerned by Maimonides’ tendency to limit

miracles wherever possible, a tendency exemplified most disturbingly
in his allegorical interpretation of Isaiah’s prophecy that the nature of
wild animals will be transformed at the end of days. Since Maimonides
himself once demonstrated an understanding of ongoing miraculous
providence, his apparent inclination to resist every extra miracle through
the mobilization of all his considerable ingenuity appears pointless,
inexplicable, and unwarranted.62 The religiously unavoidable belief in
such providence must logically lead to a relaxation of inhibitions against
the recognition of miracles. There is nothing achieved by the tendency of
Maimonides and Ibn Ezra to approach every miracle stated or implied in
Scripture with the hope that it can be made to disappear through some
naturalistic explanation; we will still be left with a world punctuated by
the regular appearance of miraculous providential acts. No denial of the
natural order is either explicit or implicit in this argument. Aside from the
fact that such a denial would contradict a number of Nahmanides’ explicit
statements, it would be an extravagant inference from the evidence of
ye‘udei haTorah. The Torah’s promises of reward and punishment do not
demonstrate the non-existence of nature, and Nahmanides never meant
to say that they do.63
The Nahmanides that emerges from this discussion is a complex,
multi-dimensional figure whose world view is shaped by an almost
bewildering variety of intellectual forces. He must grapple with the
pressures of profound religious faith, philosophical argument, halakhic
doctrine, mystical belief, astrological science, and Scriptural teaching to
forge a concept of the miraculous that will do justice to them all. On the
one hand, his God retains the unrestricted right of intervention in the
62 THT, p. 154 (cf. n. 21). The argument in Comm. to Gen. 46:15 is virtually the same, except
that here the target is Ibn Ezra’s refusal to recognize Jochebed’s advanced age when
she gave birth. Here too this unreasonable resistance stems from a failure to appreciate
the fact that the Torah is replete with hidden miracles. Nahmanides’ statement that
the punishment of a woman suspected of infidelity is the only permanent miracle
established by the Torah (Comm. to Numbers 5:20) refers, of course, only to manifest
miracles (cf. Henoch, p. 55, n. 169).
63 The remark in the Sermon on Qohelet that “one who believes in the Torah may not
believe in the existence of nature at all” (Kitvei Ramban I, p. 192) appears in an elliptical
context with many of the same features as the other discussions of hidden miracles,
and I am confident that it too refers to the realm of reward and punishment. See also
the end of n. 45 above.
— 150 —
natural order; even ordinary individuals have their time of reckoning, not
only the absolutely righteous or the absolutely wicked die from eating the
heave-offering, non-Jewish collectives can surely be punished for sin64—
and Nahmanides’ logic requires that all these divine acts be understood as
miraculous. At the same time, such interventions remain very much the
exception in a world which otherwise functions in an entirely naturalistic
way. Nahmanides’ position allows for untrammeled miracles within a
fundamentally natural order and is a striking example of his effort to
integrate an uncompromising religious position into a world view that
recognizes the validity of much of the philosophical achievement of the
medieval world.
— 151 —
POLEMIC, EXEGESIS, PHILOSOPHY, AND SCIENCE:

REFLECTIONS ON THE TENACITY OF ASHKENAZIC
MODES OF THOUGHT
From: Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 8 (2009): 27-39.
RATIONALIST PHILOSOPHY
The presumed absence or near-absence of what we usually call rationalism

in medieval Ashkenaz raises a series of questions large and small: If
rationalism is in fact absent or largely absent, what accounts for this,
especially in light of recent scholarship demonstrating that Ashkenazic
Jews were exposed to the works and culture of Sephardic Jewry to a
greater degree than we had thought? Should the evidence of such
exposure lead us to conclude that philosophical rationalism was in fact
present among Northern European Jews, an approach that would greatly
diminish the cultural contrast between Ashkenaz and Sepharad? Indeed,
the assertion that new evidence diminishes that contrast served as the
basis for one of Elisheva Carlebach’s arguments against Gerson Cohen’s
thesis that differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazic messianism
are linked to different approaches to rationalism.1 If we insist that the
contrast is real, should we assume in light of the new scholarship that
Ashkenazim were in fact fully aware of rationalist ideas but refrained
from utilizing or even addressing them out of motives that they had
articulated clearly and consciously, at least in their own minds? Thus, as
we shall see, several outstanding scholars have accounted for the absence
of philosophical arguments or interpretations in specific Ashkenazic
texts or intellectual endeavors such as anti-Christian polemic and biblical
exegesis by positing local explanations relevant to those discrete areas or
1 Elisheva Carlebach, Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and
Sepharad: Third Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanowitz Chair of Jewish History (New
York 1998), pp. 3-4. See note 16 there for references to studies that have pointed to
the interaction between the cultures.
— 152 —
even to particular figures. Is this the appropriate approach to account for

what appears to be a large, more or less consistent cultural phenomenon?
Finally, should science and rationalist philosophy be treated separately
or as two aspects of the same discipline or mode of thought?
Let me begin with a working definition of rationalism (or rationalist)
that I formulated a decade ago in a footnote apologizing for the use of this
“admittedly imperfect term”: “By rationalist I mean someone who values
the philosophical works of non-Jews or of Jews influenced by them,
who is relatively open to the prospect of modifying the straightforward
understanding (and in rare cases rejecting the authority) of accepted
Jewish texts and doctrines in light of such works, and who gravitates
toward naturalistic rather than miraculous explanation.” I hastened to
add that “I do not regard this as a rigid, impermeable classification.”2
If we work with this understanding of rationalism, we will find it very
difficult to endorse a fundamental reassessment affirming Ashkenazic
openness to the philosophical culture characteristic of medieval Sephardic
thinkers. Yes, a paraphrase of Saadya’s philosophical work influenced a
certain sector of Ashkenazic Jews. Yes, as Ephraim Kanarfogel notes in
this volume, opposition to anthropomorphism characterized this and
arguably other sectors of Ashkenazic Jewry, and one might be inclined
to describe such opposition as a reassessment of the straightforward
understanding of accepted texts. Yes, one can find references or figures
here and there that evince familiarity with philosophical works and may
even allude to characteristically rationalist positions. But the instinct
that tells us that the rationalist inclinations delineated in this definition
are for the most part alien to Ashkenaz is not an antiquated scholarly
prejudice. Exceptions remain exceptions; allusions remain allusions;
rejection of anthropomorphism is not in itself rationalism; and the
reading of a few books does not necessarily alter deeply entrenched
modes of thought.
Ashkenazic culture was initially formed in a Northern European
Christian environment largely innocent of a philosophical tradition,
at least of the sort that fits the model that we have been utilizing. As
Christian Europe became exposed to that tradition, it began to change,
2 “Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times,” in Gerald J.
Blidstein, David Berger, Sid Z. Leiman, and Aharon Lichtenstein, Judaism’s Encounter
with Other Cultures: Rejection or Integration?, edited by Jacob J. Schacter (Northvale,
N.J. and Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 62-63.
— 153 —
although even then the dominant expression of scholastic thought

remained considerably more conservative than the strongly rationalist
strain of Arabic and Jewish philosophy. The major figures of Ashkenazic
Jewry are very unlikely to have read Latin, and so the inner workings of
nascent and even mature scholasticism were largely closed to them. More
to the point, whatever exposure Ashkenazic Jews may have had to the
philosophical works of Sephardic Jews in Hebrew translation came after
their cultural profile had been largely formed.
At this point, it is worth turning to the controversy surrounding
a book to whose fundamental insight I subscribe even as I remain
uncertain about its concrete theses. In 1985, Charles Radding published
a study entitled A World Made by Men that aroused a brief but vigorous
tempest. His essential argument was that Europeans in the early Middle
Ages thought and acted on a moral level that corresponds not to that
of modern adults but to one or another of the levels that Jean Piaget
ascribes to children. Inter alia, he noted that they disregarded intent
in evaluating the seriousness of a crime. Some of his critics argued that
it is simply impossible for early medieval Christian legislators to have
dismissed the significance of intent since they read and revered the
Bible, where intent is an important element in determining the gravity
of a crime and its appropriate punishment. Moreover, as Radding
himself pointed out, Augustine and other patristic figures whom the
medieval legislators considered authorities also ascribed significance
to intent.
It seems to me, however, that this argument, which affirms that
people who believe in certain books will necessarily internalize the
values in those books, does not accord with psychological reality. Peoples
that developed certain modes of thinking during a lengthy formative
period do not quickly undergo a fundamental transformation because
they embraced a belief in a text that reflects a different perspective.
It is much easier to adopt a new doctrine than a new conception of
reality, of the world order, and of modes of thinking and arguing. To
the degree that Radding succeeded in pointing to data demonstrating
that the mentalité of pre-twelfth-century Europeans really exemplified
the moral perception that he attributes to them, the fact that this
perception is not consistent with that of the Bible or of Augustine does
not undermine his thesis.
If this point is correct with respect to Christian works that were seen
— 154 —
as transcendentally authoritative —and I realize that I have essentially

asserted the point rather than proven it—it follows that we should not
resist the possibility that Ashkenazic Jews could have been exposed to
Sephardic philosophical texts, nodded in agreement with some though
surely not all of their arguments, and continued to think along lines
that remained entirely alien to the spirit of those texts. I note in passing
the even more far-reaching argument by Haym Soloveitchik that at least
in their pietistic mode, hasidei Ashkenaz somehow managed to remain
unaffected by the most basic concepts of the midrashic worldview that
permeated the liturgy and the essential construction of collective Jewish
identity.3 To return to our concerns, a highly instructive case in point
emerges in two articles by the pre-eminent scholar of the medieval
philosophical debate between Jews and Christians on the nearly complete
absence of philosophical polemic in Ashkenazic works preceding the end
of the thirteenth century.
PHILOSOPHICAL POLEMIC
In the first of these articles, Daniel Lasker sets forth the evidence for
the absence of such polemic while simultaneously demonstrating that
some anti-Christian philosophical arguments were known to Ashkenazic
authors even in the early period. Thus, the paraphrase of R. Saadya’s
work was available, but its philosophical arguments against Christianity
leave no trace at all.4 Nestor ha-Komer was mined, but its philosophical
material, to which we shall return, usually was not. In his first article,
Lasker explained the phenomenon with a formulation that I endorse:
3 Soloveitchik, “The Midrash, Sefer Hasidim and the Changing Face of God,” in Creation
and Re-Creation in Jewish Thought: Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan on the Occasion of
His Seventieth Birthday, ed. by Rachel Elior and Peter Schaefer (Tuebingen, ca. 2005).
4 Upon reading the typescript of this article, Yehuda Galinsky remarked in an email
message, “A trace there is, even if barely,” pointing to R. Moses of Coucy’s Sefer
Mitzvot Gadol, positive commandment #2, where we find a citation from Saadya of
a philosophical argument against multiplicity in God. When I brought this to Daniel
Lasker’s attention, he was grateful for the reference but noted that the passage cited
is not among Saadya’s more sophisticated arguments. I would add that R. Moses of
Coucy, unlike the vast majority of Ashkenazic rabbis, spent significant time among
Sephardic Jews. In any event, the passage is surely of interest, but, as Galinsky’s careful
formulation indicates, it does not change the larger picture.
— 155 —
Most Ashkenazic Jews were not familiar with ‘Greek wisdom’; even the
intellectuals among them were generally not fluent in philosophy. There is
no reason to believe that a polemicist, who addressed his book to a Jewish
audience which itself was not philosophically sophisticated, would use
arguments which even he would regard as foreign.5
At the end of the article, he succinctly captures what I see as the

key point, although I am uncomfortable with the level of familiarity
with philosophical arguments that he ascribes to Ashkenazic Jews. “The
lack of a Sephardi style full-scale philosophical critique of Christianity
in Ashkenaz was not a function, then, of Ashkenazi ignorance. It was
a result of a totally different intellectual outlook.”6 I do not think that
Ashkenazim had the knowledge needed to launch a full scale philosophical
critique, but I do think that their distinct intellectual outlook accounts
for the almost total absence of philosophical arguments.7
Several years later, however, Lasker extended a greater level of
generosity to Ashkenazic polemicists, and here the tendency to assume
that familiarity with texts must penetrate an individual’s psyche leads to
a position that grants the authors of these works a greater philosophical
orientation than I think they had. In the second article, he reiterated
some of the evidence surveyed in the first, but this time he argued that
it was primarily the Ashkenazic audience that had “a totally different
intellectual outlook from that of Sephardic Jews.” Because of this different
outlook, “the Jewish polemicists felt that their audiences would not have
responded well to the same type of philosophical argumentation that
appealed to the Sephardic Jews….The classics of Ashkenazic polemic…
all play down any possible philosophical critique of Christianity. To a
great extent, it was the audience, and not so much the author, which
determined that fact.”8
5 Daniel J. Lasker, “Jewish Philosophical Polemics in Ashkenaz,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient

and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews, ed. by Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa
(Tuebingen 1996), pp. 197-198.
6 ibid, p. 212.
7 I made a briefer version of the argument in the preceding paragraphs (beginning with
the discussion of Radding) in “Ha-Meshihiyyut ha-Sefaradit ve-ha-Meshihiyyut ha-
Ashkenazit bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim: Behinat ha-Mahloqet ha-Historiografit,” in the
Avraham Grossman Festschrift, which should have appeared before the publication of
this volume. [English translation in this collection]
8 Lasker, “Popular Polemics and Philosophical Truth in the Medieval Jewish Critique of
Christianity, “The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999): 254-255.
— 156 —
In light of my view that deep structures of thought are not readily

undermined by exposure to a few books, I do not see convincing evidence
for this distinction. The Ashkenazic polemicists and their audience
inhabited the same cultural world, and very little in it resonated with
Sephardic style philosophical argument. It is far from clear that an
intellectual chasm separated the composers of polemical works, who
stood a cut or more below the intellectual elite of Ashkenaz, from their
literate readers, and some members of that audience stood above them.
Moreover, numerous passages in Ashkenazic polemical works make it
clear that the authors were not writing solely to bolster the morale of
their Jewish readers. To a significant degree, they were providing manuals
to be used by Jews in real confrontations. A Jewish polemicist would
have to think twice or thrice before depriving the most capable segment
of his audience of arguments that would have the greatest effect in an
actual exchange with Christians. Our first assumption should be that the
philosophical arguments in question did not resonate with the authors
any more than with their audience.
An examination of one of the few examples of Ashkenazic
philosophical polemic before the fourteenth century will, I think, reinforce
this assumption. The author of Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, working with an
argument reflecting the direct or indirect influence of Nestor ha-Komer,
addressed the question of whether Jesus was the incarnation of just one
person of the trinity or of all three. Nestor and other Jewish polemicists
objected to the possibility that all three persons were incarnated by
insisting either that this would constitute an impermissible separation
in God—assuming the partial incarnation of each of the three—or, in
the event of the complete incarnation of all three, that it would mean
that God is limited.9 For the last argument from the infinitude of God,
the Nizzahon Yashan substitutes the almost amusing question, “Who was
in heaven all that time?” supplemented by “Who ran the world during
the three days when they were buried and none of them was either in
heaven or on earth?”10 I suppose that one could argue that the author
9 For an excellent survey and analysis of these arguments, see Lasker, Jewish Philosophical
Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford and Portland, Oregon,
2007), pp. 121-125.
10 David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of
the Nizzahon Vetus with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Philadelphia,
1979), English section, p. 137. See too my discussion in Appendix 5 (“Who Was
— 157 —
intentionally changed the argument because he did not believe his readers
would understand the point that the incarnation of all three persons
would limit God. This is not, however, such an intellectually challenging
argument; a Tosafot passage of average difficulty is considerably more
daunting. I am much more inclined to assume that the author himself, who
shows no signs anywhere in his lengthy work of thinking in philosophical
terms, naturally shifted into language that was more congenial to his
instinctive pattern of thought.
WISDOM, TORAH, AND RATIO
We turn now to a very recent article regarding biblical exegesis by one

of the towering scholars of medieval Ashkenazic Jewry where I think
we encounter an unwarranted reluctance to adopt a straightforward
explanation of a phenomenon rooted in the traditionalist rabbinic
mentality of that culture. Avraham Grossman has argued that Rashi’s
commentaries to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job 28 evince a striking,
tendentious commitment to understand “wisdom” (hokhmah) as Torah.11
This is the case, he says, even though the plain meaning generally
points to straightforward human wisdom. Since Rashi’s approach
presumably requires explanation, Grossman suggests two possibilities.
The first begins with the contention that Rashi’s familiarity with the
works of Sephardic grammarians makes it difficult to assume that he
was not also familiar with the ideas of Sephardic thinkers and those
Babylonian geonim who engaged in speculative pursuits, even though
such familiarity is not attested in France until the works of Rashbam
and especially of Bekhor Shor. Thus, Rashi may have been attempting
to guide his readers away from such philosophical rationalism. The
second explanation, which Grossman considers more plausible, is that
Christians, at a time when polemic had reached one of its peaks, were
beginning to use arguments from reason in their exchanges with Jews,
and Rashi wanted to keep his readers away from an enterprise that could
lead them to religious doubts.
Incarnated?”), pp. 366-369.

11 “Ha-Metah bein Torah le-‘Hokhmah’ be-Perush Rashi le-Sifrut ha-Hokhmah she-ba-
Miqra,” in Teshurah le-Amos: Asufat Mehqarim be-Parshanut ha-Miqra Muggeshet le-Amos
Hakham, ed. by Moshe bar Asher et al. (Alon Shevut, 2007), pp. 13-27.
— 158 —
For Grossman, the reason for preferring the second explanation is

not because of any deficiency in the first. Rather, it follows from the
emphasis in the uncensored version of Rashi’s commentary on Proverbs
on the dangers of Christianity, which he identifies as the seductive
woman who appears so frequently in that work. Since the commentary
focuses so often on this danger, and since wisdom understood as Torah
is presented as the antidote to the blandishments of the seductress, it is
reasonable to assume that concern with the Christian appeal to ratio is
what motivated Rashi’s insistence, in the face of the plain meaning of the
text, that wisdom in fact refers to Torah with absolute consistency.
Grossman of course points to Anselm as the prime example of a
contemporary of Rashi who utilized dialectic in a theological context, but
the example that he supplies illustrating the polemical appeal to reason
by Christians is the assertion that the exile demonstrates that the Jews
have been rejected in favor of the True Israel. There is really nothing
particularly new about this, and if I were to argue for the late-eleventh
and early twelfth-century utilization of ratio in a specifically anti-Jewish
polemical context, I would be more inclined to cite Odo of Tournai’s (or
Cambrai’s) Disputatio contra Judaeum Leonem nomine de adventu Christi
filii Dei, which reports what is likely to be a real exchange in which Odo
argued for the logical necessity of Jesus’ sacrifice for the forgiveness
of sin.12 This work, virtually alone, provides a serious evidentiary base
for the self-conscious, explicit appeal to ratio by a Christian polemicist
in France who engaged in actual exchanges with Jews more or less
contemporary with Rashi.
Before proceeding, let me note that the issue before us, as I hope
we shall see, has considerable methodological significance beyond
its specific context. Moreover, historians in the last several decades
have ascribed many cultural practices and literary phenomena in late
antique and medieval Jewry to the influence of the Jewish-Christian
confrontation. These range from midrashic passages to significant
elements of the Passover Haggadah to the evolution of life-cycle rituals
to the motivation of peshat exegesis as a whole to specific exegetical
observations, and the assessment of these assertions has in some cases
12 See On Original Sin; and, A Disputation with the Jew, Leo, concerning the Advent of Christ,
the Son of God : two theological treatises / Odo of Tournai, translated with an introduction
and notes by Irven M. Resnick. (Philadelphia, ca. 1994).
— 159 —
produced a mini-literature.13 Avraham Grossman’s oeuvre is generally a

paradigm of caution and sober judgment, and his essay on the influence
of the Christian context on Joseph Kara’s commentaries is one of the
most convincing and insightful studies in this scholarly genre.14 To the
degree that my reservations about his position in our case are persuasive,
they may serve as a salutary reminder of the occasional need to resist
inappropriate utilization of an often valuable and persuasive scholarly
approach whose seductive attractions can sometimes penetrate the
defenses of even the greatest and most responsible historians.
It seems to me that in evaluating a thesis proposing an extraneous
motive for a particular exegetical position, we need to begin with two
fundamental questions. First, how compelling is the argument for seeking
such a motive? Put differently, can the exegetical position be accounted
for without undue strain by straightforward considerations emerging out
of the exegete’s culture and approach to text? Second, how persuasive
is the extraneous motive? These considerations work in tandem. If the
proposed motive is highly plausible, we may entertain it seriously even
if there is little reason to seek it. If it is not particularly persuasive, we
may decide that internal considerations suffice even if we began with a
sense of dissatisfaction that sent us searching for external motivations.
In our case, I am not inclined to go far afield. With respect to the
first question, Rashi’s position can be explained to my satisfaction on
the basis of traditional Ashkenazic mentalité without recourse to other
considerations. With respect to the second question, I am not persuaded
that Rashi was likely to have been motivated by concern about Sephardic
hokhmah or Christian ratio.
Is Rashi’s emphasis on hokhmah as Torah really problematic? It
indeed stands in some tension with what moderns and even some
Jewish medievals considered peshat. Rashbam (or the commentary to
Job that incorporates material from Rashbam) pointedly comments that
according to the peshat, the term hokhmah in Job 28:12 refers to hokhmah
mammash (literal wisdom) and not to Torah. 15 For Rashi, however, whose
13 I have commented on some of that literature in “A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-

Christian Interaction in the Medieval World,” Tradition 38:2 (Summer, 2004): 4-14.
14 “Ha-Pulmus ha-Yehudi-Nozri ve-ha-Parshanut ha-Yehudit la-Miqra be-Zarfat ba-Me’ah
ha-Yod-Bet (le-Parashat Zikato shel Ri Qara el ha-Pulmus),” Zion 51 (1985/86): 29-60.
15 Sarah Yafet, Perush Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir (Rashbam) le-Sefer Iyyov (Jerusalem, ca.
2000), ad loc.
— 160 —
immersion in the world of midrash was deeper and in large measure

taken for granted, we need to ask whether there were powerful enough
reasons in the text itself to impel him toward other interpretations.
First we need to consider the weight of the midrashic tradition.
Prof. Grossman refers to midrashim that understand hokhmah as
Torah in Proverbs and elsewhere, but he argues that Rashi could have
chosen other midrashim. This is a familiar and often valid argument,
but in this case, even a casual look through the midrashic and other
rabbinic materials reveals that the equation of Torah and hokhmah is
simply overwhelming. It made its way into the liturgy and is treated as
virtually self-evident.
Moreover, key passages in Proverbs discuss Torah, commandments
(mitzvot), and wisdom (hokhmah)—as well as the righteous and the
wise—in closely linked contexts. “The mouth of the righteous produces
wisdom (hokhmah)” (Proverbs 10:31). One especially instructive example
is 7:1-5:
My son, heed my words, and store up my mitzvot with you. Keep my mitzvot
and live, my Torah, as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers;
write them on the tablet of your mind. Say to Wisdom (hokhmah), “You are
my sister,” and call Understanding a kinswoman. She will guard you from
a foreign woman whose talk is smooth.
Modern biblical scholars will say that Torah here and elsewhere in
the Wisdom Literature refers to the teaching of the sage and the mitzvot
to his directives. But to medieval Jews—including rationalists—Torah is
Torah and mitzvot are mitzvot. Ralbag on this passage writes as follows:
“My son, heed my words” in your heart. These are the stories of the Torah
and the commandments of the Torah. Put them away with you to observe
them. “Keep my mitzvot and live”: The mitzvot of the Torah, so that you will
attain eternal life. And keep my Torah as you keep the apple of your eye.
It is, moreover, not sufficient that you keep the mitzvot in your heart; you
must bind them on your fingers to do them…
Now it is true that when Ralbag comments on the next verse about
wisdom he does not continue to speak of Torah, but the connection
between the two in this passage is so intimate that we can hardly
expect Rashi to have felt a peshat-driven impulse to seek a different
— 161 —
interpretation. Thus, when the passage proceeds to speak of how wisdom

protects against a foreign woman, it is more than natural for Rashi to
identify this wisdom as Torah.
And so we come to two revealing passages that Grossman cites.
Proverbs 2: 10-16 asserts that wisdom can save its bearer from an alien
woman. Rashi affirms that the foreign woman is
A gathering of idolatry, i.e. heresy. It is not plausible that the verse speaks of
an adulteress literally understood, for how is it the praise of Torah… that it
protects you from a foreign woman and not from a different transgression?
Rather, this refers to heresy and idolatry, which constitutes throwing off
the yoke of all the commandments.
Similarly, on Proverbs 6:24, which says, “It will keep you from an evil
woman, from the smooth tongue of a foreign woman,” Rashi remarks,
The Torah will keep you from an evil woman…We must conclude that
Solomon was not speaking of an evil woman but rather of heresy, which is
as weighty as everything. For if you will say that this refers to a prostitute
in the literal sense, is this the entire praise and reward of Torah that it
protects against a prostitute and nothing else?
There is, however, a key distinction between the passages. In the

first case, the verses speak of wisdom, but in the second they speak of
Torah. The verse preceding 6:24 reads, “For the mitzvah is a candle, and
Torah is a light,” which of course even ibn Ezra and Ralbag understand
in accordance with what any medieval Jew would have considered the
peshat. It is also noteworthy that Ibn Ezra, though he understands Torah
here as Torah, inserts a reference to wisdom without any textual basis.
The Torah, he says, gives light, while the fool walks in the dark; thus, the
way of life refers to wisdom. In this passage, at least, Torah and hokhmah
are intertwined, virtually identified with one another, even for ibn Ezra.
Even more striking is a passage in Ralbag’s commentary where, as Prof.
Richard Steiner noted to me, the rationalist exegete tells us that wisdom
in a series of verses (Proverbs 3: 15-18) that the Rabbis had famously
utilized in their encomia to the Torah very likely means precisely what
the Rabbis assumed.16
16 Prof. Steiner also notes that the identification of wisdom and Torah is already present
in Ben Sira 24.
— 162 —
Two highly relevant points emerge from this discussion. First, the
parallels between passages on wisdom and on Torah are so close that an
exegete with a strong predisposition to follow rabbinic precedent would
have little reason to seek an understanding of wisdom different from
that of the Rabbis. Second, it is extremely revealing that in his comment
on the passage in chapter 2 where the biblical text speaks of hokhmah,
Rashi demonstrates that the foreign woman is idolatry or heresy using
the same argument that he does when the text speaks of Torah: “Is this
the praise of Torah,” he asks, that it saves you from a harlot? But you
do not prove something on the basis of an interpretation that itself
requires proof unless you have so internalized that interpretation
that you simply take it for granted. It appears that Rashi did not even
consider the possibility that the reader might say, “Wait a moment.
How do you know that the verse here is referring to Torah?” Rashi’s
assumption could result in part from the similarity between chapters 2
and 7; as we have seen, 7:2 refers to “my Torah,” which Rashi would have
taken in the traditional sense. Still, for Rashi, the equation of wisdom
with Torah appears to have been foundational, not just ideologically
but psychologically. If this is true, as I think it is, we need to be very
hesitant about assuming that he rejected the non-Torah explanation in
an exegetical campaign inspired by external concerns.17
Let us now turn very briefly to the proposed external concerns. There
is little or no evidence that Rashi was sufficiently aware of Sephardic
rationalism for him to have provided a tendentious interpretation of
hokhmah in order to protect his readers, who probably needed no such
protection, from its baneful influence. What then of the dangers of
the Christian use of ratio? Despite Odo of Tournai, the evidence that
the recent introduction of this category into the lexicon of Christian
polemicists had come to Rashi’s attention is tenuous at best. Even the
later Ashkenazic polemics do not address ratio as a category. When the
author of the Nizzahon Yashan, writing two centuries after Anselm,
addresses the Christian explanation for the incarnation, he deals only
with the antiquated ransom theory in apparent blissful ignorance of the
17 None of this means that Rashi was unaware of the fact that the plain meaning of the
word hokhmah is wisdom and that it sometimes signifies nothing more than that. Thus,
he is unprepared to rely on an overarching introductory observation and instead points
out to his readers on repeated occasions that their untutored instincts embracing this
understanding are incorrect.
— 163 —
satisfaction theory in Cur Deus Homo?18 Moreover, when Jews in Spain

and Provence did confront arguments from ratio, they usually took the
offensive, maintaining that it was precisely Christian dogmas that were
unreasonable; it is not clear why a Jew who was the product of an often
assertive Ashkenazic culture would choose to react to the challenge not
by utilizing the category but by fleeing from it.
This Ashkenazic assertiveness and self-confidence— akin to the
self-image noted in the title of Haym Soloveitchik’s study of the laws
governing the taking of interest19—may well play a role in the larger
phenomenon that we are examining. Limited exposure, perhaps even
substantial exposure, to books representing alternative ways of thinking
would not easily transform the psychic world of people confident about
their mode of understanding God and the world. Indeed, it is by no
means clear why we should take for granted that they should have
adopted the new approach. Are the workings of the Active Intellect really
so intrinsically plausible that anyone who hears about them should nod
in automatic assent? Setting this last point aside, I suspect that the
self-confidence that characterized Ashkenazic Jewry played a role in its
resistance to the absorption of non-Ashkenazic works and influences
in the realm of Torah as well. The Jews of Southern France were more
receptive—perhaps one should say more vulnerable— than Northern
European Jewry to Sephardic rationalism for various reasons. First, their
self-image in the area of halakhic observance studied by Soloveitchik
was less secure, and this may mean something for their overall self-
confidence as well. Second, the culture of Provencal Christian society
during the formative period of the region’s Jewry was itself marked by
greater sophistication than that of the North, so that the Jews of the
South may have developed a somewhat more open cultural orientation,
at least in potentia. Most important, with the immigration of Sephardic
Jews into Languedoc in the second half of the twelfth century, Provencal
Jewry was exposed not just to books but to people. Sustained interaction
with human beings is far more powerful than reading alone. You cannot
set aside people the way you can set aside books.
18 The Jewish-Christian Debate, English section, pp. 195-196, and cf. my remarks in
Appendix 2, p. 353.
19 Halakhah, Kalkalah ve-Dimmuy Azmi: ha-Mashkona’ut bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim (Jerusalem,
ca. 1985).
— 164 —
IV
Finally, a word about science that will return us to the subject of hokhmah
in medieval Ashkenazic exegesis. A decade ago, I wrote a piece on the
understanding of Solomon’s wisdom by Jewish exegetes.20 In their
comments on the passage in Kings describing that wisdom, both Rashi and
R. Joseph Kara gave pride of place to Solomon’s command of the sciences
and only then went on to mention a “midrash aggadah” that understands
the king’s discourses on trees, birds, and fish as halakhic discussions.
I noted that in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, traditionalist commentators
routinely identified wisdom with Torah, but in this instance there were
powerful textual reasons to marginalize this understanding. Let me add
here that if Rashi really had a driving ideological motive for avoiding
an understanding of wisdom as human understanding, he should have
avoided it in Kings as well as in Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes despite the
fact that the local context of the passage about Solomon militated against
the identification of wisdom with Torah. Indeed, the very fact that Rashi
does regard the identification of Solomonic wisdom with mastery of
halakhah as a viable possibility makes his primary interpretation all the
more difficult to explain if he had an overriding concern with preventing
his readers from understanding hokhmah as human wisdom.
But my primary reason for citing this article is the following argument
for distinguishing the attitude of Ashkenazic Jews toward science from
their attitude toward philosophy:
We should not wonder about the positive assessment of practical scientific

knowledge expressed in [the] commentaries of the [Northern] French
exegetes. As I have argued elsewhere,21 the pursuit of natural science could
become the subject of controversy precisely in the Sephardic orbit, where
it was caught up in the web of philosophy. If the natural sciences were part
of the “propaedeutic studies” leading to the queen of the sciences, they
could be tainted by the unsavory reputation of the queen herself. Where
they stood on their own, it is hard to imagine any grounds of principle
for dismissing them or for failure to admire one who had mastered their
20 “’The Wisest of All Men’: Solomon’s Wisdom in Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the
Book of Kings.” In Hazon Nahum: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought and History presented
to Dr. Norman Lamm on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. by Yaakov Elman and
Jeffrey S. Gurock (New York, 1997), pp. 93-114.
21 “Judaism and General Culture,” p. 118 and p. 134, n.131.
— 165 —
secrets. The very indifference of Ashkenazic Jews to philosophical study

liberated them to examine the natural world with keen, unselfconscious
interest.22
In sum, I see no reason in principle for Ashkenazic Jews to have

resisted an interest in science. But the rationalist spirit of Sephardic
philosophy, with its questioning of the plain meaning of biblical texts and
rabbinic aggadah, its valuing of philosophical inquiry as an enterprise at
least on a par with traditional study of Torah, its suspicion of miracles,
and its pursuit of the works of non-Jewish thinkers, was decidedly alien
to the most deeply embedded instincts of Ashkenazic Jews. When we
find an approach in an Ashkenazic work or series of works that accords
with the traditionalist instincts of that culture, we need not look any
further in an attempt to explain it.
22 “The Wisest of All Men,” p. 95.
— 166 —
Malbim’s Secular Knowledge and His Relationship to the Spirit of the Haskalah
MALBIM’S SECULAR KNOWLEDGE AND HIS

RELATIONSHIP TO THE SPIRIT OF THE HASKALAH
From: The Yavneh Review 5 (Spring, 1966): 24-46.
Rabbi Meir Loeb ben Yehiel Michel (1809-1879), who became known
by his initials as Malbim, was a fascinating and significant figure on the
Orthodox Jewish scene in the nineteenth century. Born in Volochisk,
Volhynia and troubled by a stormy Rabbinical career in a half-dozen
Jewish communities, Malbim wrote a large number of books, many of
which had a powerful influence upon the intellectual life of those Jews
who remained opposed to the Haskalah movement, even rejuvenating
the much neglected study of the Bible to a considerable extent.1 The
degree of his influence may be partially gauged by two quite divergent
sources which yield the same impression — that the admiration for
Malbim was almost boundless. Tzvi Hirschfeld, in an article in Zion
1841, which will be discussed more fully below, wrote of Malbim, “I
know very well that the Jews who live in Eastern lands, upon whom
the light of wisdom has not yet shone, have decided to raise him up
and exalt him.” Many years later, the famous Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac of
Slonim said, “He is matchless in our generation and is as one of the
great scholars of medieval times (rishonim), and one page of his books
is as beloved to me as any treasure and is dearer than pearls.”2
Yet Malbim, the champion of Orthodoxy, was imbued with a very
wide range of secular knowledge; indeed, as we shall see, he could never
have exercised such influence without it. It is the purpose of this paper to
1 S. Glicksburg (Ha-Derashah be-Yisrael [Tel Aviv, 1940], p. 406) writes, “In the circles
of the extremely orthodox it was permitted with difficulty to study Bible with the
commentary of the ‘Kempener’ (= Malbim)."
2 Quoted by Isaac Danzig in his Alon Bakhut, Evel Kaved ‘al ha-Rav ha-Gaon... Malbim (St.
Petersberg, 1879), p. 14.
— 167 —
examine Malbim’s secular learning and to determine how he related it to

his faith and to the religious, intellectual, and social developments of his
time. We shall thus gain insight into the worldview of a very influential
rabbi who, while remaining within the orbit of the strictest Orthodoxy,
grappled with the manifold problems of the age of Haskalah.
Let us turn first to a central issue, Malbim’s attitude toward the
Jewish Enlightenment and toward religious reform, problems which
were closely intertwined in his mind. This subject is best approached
through an analysis of perhaps the most painful experience of
Malbim’s life, his tenure as chief rabbi of Bucharest from 1860 to
1865. Here he suffered intensely from people sympathetic to religious
reform who accused him of obscurantism and who eventually had
him thrown into jail, from which he was released only through the
intervention of Moses Montefiore. His reaction to these events,
detailed in a long article he wrote in Ha-Levanon 2,3 is of great value
in giving us an understanding of his feelings on these questions.
We must constantly keep in mind, however, the circumstances
under which this article was written. Malbim was very angry and
bitter; his negative feelings will thus be exaggerated and the picture
of his enemies will approach caricature. Yet exaggeration is often
valuable, for it clarifies beliefs and emotions that might otherwise
have remained vague.
Malbim’s article, important for social and economic as well as
intellectual history, divides the Jewish population of Bucharest into
three groups: 1) artisans, 2) peddlers and storekeepers, and 3) the
upper class. His attitude toward the first two groups is friendly, for
despite their ignorance they were responsive to his preaching and
careful in religious observance.4 This friendliness toward the ignorant
masses is found elsewhere in Malbim’s works as well; he says, for
example, that “the masses can reach the (religious) level of a scholar by
supporting him.”5 These Jews apparently returned his affection, for he
relates that many made valiant physical efforts to prevent his arrest,6
3 “Shenat HaYovel,” Ha-Levanon 2 (1865): 68-71, 85-87, 101-103, 116-118, 134-136,

199-201, 230-233, 261-263, 294-297.
4 Pp. 231-233.
5 Manuscript notes published in Eretz Hemdah (Warsaw, 1881; henceforth E.H.) on Deut.,
p. 170.
6 “Shenat HaYovel,” p. 86.
— 168 —
and at his funeral the crowds were so large that the city administration
of Kiev had to supply a special guard.7
The upper class, however, was viewed by their rabbi with dislike
and contempt. Malbim, as we shall see presently, felt that genuine
enlightenment and religious belief are inseparable; the rich lacked
the latter and, Malbim maintains, did not, despite their pretenses,
possess the former. When asked by his fictitious questioner about
the philosophical position of his opponents, Malbim answers that
previous philosophers based their systems upon knowledge obtained
through the mind, the eye, and the ear, while these “philosophers”
depend upon taste, touch, and smell. “Their taste gains wisdom (‫)ישכיל‬
in understanding the nature of all sorts of animals about which no
Jew has ever gained wisdom; it investigates ‘all animals that go on all
fours and that have many feet’ and all ‘that have no fins or scales in
the waters.’ The sense of touch looks into the nature of the generative
faculty... and investigates prohibited women for three [cf. Mishnah
Hagigah 2:1] of these philosophers. And the sense of smell, because it
is a spiritual faculty, was not privileged to reign on weekdays but only
on the Sabbath, for those who do not smoke all week ‘have their smoke
rise’ on the Sabbath in all streets.”8
Now Malbim, we know, did not care much for rich people generally.
This dislike goes back to his unpleasant experiences with his first wife,
of a very rich family, whom he divorced largely because she wanted
him to give up his studies and enter the world of business.9 Thus,
Malbim may well have antagonized these people by not treating
them respectfully. But there can be little doubt that their religious
observance was minimal and that this was a major factor in the
development of antagonism. Malbim, as we shall see, was exaggerating
when he said that their opposition was based solely on his preaching,
which emphasized religious observance, but there is surely some basis
for his assertion.10
7 Danzig, Alon Bakhut, p. 11.
9 David Macht, Malbim, The Man and his Work (1912?, reprinted from Jewish Comment
[Baltimore, February 9-16, 1912]), p. 7.
10 The assertion comes in the following sarcastic passage of “Shenat HaYovel” (p. 117):
,‫ ״כי עבור שהוכיח אותם לשמור את השבת מחללו ולהנזר מבשר החזיר מלאכלו‬:(‫ויאמר עוד )החוזה‬
‫ אמרתי גם אם לא ידעו היהודים‬,‫לכן חיתו למומתים נתנו״ — פג לבי מלהאמין שהיו הדברים כפשוטן‬
‫האלה כי הזהירה התורה על חלול שבת ועל מאכלות אסורות וחשבו כי מלבי בדיתי המצוות החדשות‬
— 169 —
The militant non-observance of some of Malbim’s detractors is

illustrated by the well-known story that on Purim one of them sent
him a sugar pig as mishloah manot [items of food traditionally sent to
a neighbor], whereupon he paid the messenger and sent back his own
picture “saying that Malbim thanks the sender for his image which
the respectable gentleman was kind enough to send the rabbi, and
that in return he sends his own likeness.”11 It is also told of Malbim
that a non-observant Jew asked him whether smoking was permitted
on the Sabbath; the answer: yes, if it is done with some change (‫על‬
‫)ידי שינוי‬, that is, by putting the burning side into one’s mouth.12 The
fact that such incidents are related about Malbim indicates that there
was strong antagonism which at least manifested itself in the form of
militant opposition to religious observance and which, as we shall see,
was justified on the basis of enlightenment.
Malbim’s preaching, then, was a major factor in the developing
animosity. Still, it is clear from his writings that he felt that a
preacher must not admonish people with unmitigated harshness and
severity. “One who admonishes the people… must be one of the sons
of Aaron… to love peace and pursue peace, to love people and bring
them closer to Torah.”13 Elsewhere, he emphasizes the fact that the
reprover must see to it that he does not embarrass the person being
admonished.14 In his commentary on Genesis,15 Malbim attributes to
God an approach which he is likely to have followed himself: “This was
God’s custom in most of the prohibitions: to first mention what was
permitted, e.g., “Six days thou shalt work”… “Six years thou shalt sow
thy land”… intending to show that the prohibitions of the Sabbath
and of the Sabbatical year are not impossible to observe. Here too he
‫ בכ״ז הלא לא אמרתי להם ״כה אמר ה׳ אלי אמור‬:‫האלה ונבאתי להם בשם ה׳ ונביא שקר חייב מיתה‬
‫ ״כה אמר ה׳ אל משה נביאו זכור את יום השבת‬,‫ כה אמרתי להם‬,‫ כל טמא לא תאכלו״‬...‫אל בני ישראל‬
‫ הנה עברתי על לאו דלא‬,‫ ״ וגם לפי מחשבתם כי הוספתי דברים אלה מלבי על תורת משה‬...‫לקדשו‬
‫ ואחשבה‬,‫ הלא המוסיף הוא רק המוסיף דבר על דבר‬:‫ לא מיתה! אמרתי עוד‬,‫תוסיף וחייבתי מלקות‬
?‫ עד שיאמרו שאני הוספתי על הדבר הזה עוד דבר זולתו‬,‫לדעת איזה דבר שמרו מתורת משה וקיימוהו‬
?‫ על איזה דבר‬,‫ ״לא תוסיפו על הדבר׳׳‬:‫ואיך יאמרו שעברתי עמ״ש בתורה‬
11 Macht, op. cit., p. 13. For a different version, see A. Ettinger, Da‘at Zeqenim (Warsaw,
1898), p. 54.
12 E. Davidson, Sehoq Pinu (Tel Aviv, 1951), p. 239. Cf. also p. 238, no. 874b.
13 Torah Or (supplementary notes to the commentary on the Pentateuch, henceforth T.O.)
to Numbers 10:8.
14 Com. to Lev., Qedoshim no. 43.
15 2:16-17.
— 170 —
meant to say (to Adam), ‘After all, I have prohibited only one tree; I
have prohibited only luxuries and the pleasure which causes evil, and
I have not commanded that you refrain from enjoying food.’” Such
a man is unlikely, despite the frequent difference between theory
and practice, to have been unrestrained in the violence of his attack
against the practices of the people of Bucharest. Still, the troubles
he experienced in other cities as well tends to indicate that he was
perhaps short-tempered and somewhat intolerant of those with whom
he differed, although it should be recalled that these incidents were
all after his bitter experience in Bucharest. Earlier, he had had a long
and successful rabbinical career without such friction. In any event,
he tells us that ten days before his arrest he came to an agreement
with his opponents permitting him, as he puts it, to preach about the
Sabbath and prohibited foods only to those who would willingly listen.16
Malbim probably agreed to this compromise or at least rationalized
his agreement on the basis of a realization that admonitions to his
opponents would go unheeded, and one of the necessary components
of the commandment “Thou shalt rebuke thy neighbor” is that he be
a person who might accept reproof.17 In any case, the agreement was
broken by Malbim’s enemies, and his unhappy years in Bucharest were
brought to an end.18
At this point, we must examine the charges made against Malbim
by his opponents. S. Sachs, in an article defending Malbim in Ha-
Levanon,19 says that he was blamed for three reasons: 1) preaching
in Hebrew, 2) inability to represent the Jewish community to the
government because of inability to speak languages (German, French,
or Rumanian) well, 3) lack of supervision of the schools to see to it
that secular subjects and languages (‫ )ספרים ולשונות‬be taught. There is
unquestionably much truth in all these allegations. It should, however,
be pointed out that even if Malbim did not speak these languages
fluently, he could read at least German quite well. This is clear from
his treatise on logic (Yesodei Hokhmat ha-Higgayon) where he refers, in

17 Com. to Lev., loc. cit.
18 Malbim probably saw his own fate reflected in Amos 5:13: "‫"והמשכיל בעת ההיא ידום‬, where
he comments, ‫משכילי עם היודעים רעתכם והיה דרכם להוכיח ועתה ידמו וישימו יד לפה באשר ״עת רעה‬
‫היא״ ושונאים את המוכיח והורגים אותו‬.
19 2 (1865): 92-94, 106-110.
— 171 —
frequent parentheses, to many difficult German philosophical terms

which he has translated into Hebrew.20
The third charge is more serious and more significant. On December
7, 1864, the Rumanian government passed a law requiring elementary
education of all children between eight and twelve years of age.21 That
there was strong Jewish opposition to this law is clear from a letter
from the Minister of Public Instruction sent to Jewish communities
in 1865. “I have been receiving requests,” writes the minister,
“from several Israelite communities to continue to tolerate the old,
unsystematic schools.” This he refused to do and proposed instead a
sort of “released time” program for Jews. He ends: “The separation of
schools will perpetuate the Jews’ separation from the nation, for they
will not become accustomed to the life of Rumanians and will accustom
themselves, from infancy, to the idea of a separation between Jews
and Christians.”22 Thus, some degree of Jewish assimilation was the
avowed aim of this program. Malbim probably felt that national and
cultural assimilation of this sort was but the first step toward religious
assimilation, and he was surely familiar and probably in sympathy with
the cry of many Russian Jews, “No secular schools!”23 It is true that he
himself had broad secular knowledge, but he had not obtained it in an
assimilation-oriented, government-sponsored program. Furthermore,
there was long-standing Jewish precedent for permitting such studies
to people of more advanced age and knowledge while prohibiting it to
youngsters.24
Malbim’s experience in Bucharest aroused within him powerful
feelings of distaste for what he regarded as pseudo-enlightenment.
20 Cf. also E.H. on Gen., p. 18. Sachs writes of Malbim, (‫ולוא היה חי בימי הרמב״ן )צ״ל הרמבמ״ן‬
‫ אשר נקבצו‬,‫ורנה״ו ובעלי המאספים ז״ל כי אז היו שמחים כמוצא שלל רב למצא טוב בדורם רב גדול כמוהו‬
‫ כמותו ירבו בישראל‬,‫( באו לו יחדו מכלל כל השלמות והמעלות‬p. 109). He also makes the point
that Malbim knew German, though he could not speak it fluently.
21 E. Sincerus, Les Juifs en Roumanie (London and New York, 1901), p. 119.
22 “La séparation des écoles perpetuera leur séparation de la nation; car ils ne s’habitueront
pas à la vie des Roumains, et se feront, des leur enfance, a l’idée d’une séparation entre
Juifs et Chrétiens.” V.A. Urecke, Oeuvres Complètes, I, pp. 393-4. Cited in Sincerus, pp.
119-120.
23 Cf. Gideon Katznelson, Ha-Milhamah ha-Sifrutit bein ha-Haredim ve-ha-Maskilim (Tel
Aviv, 1954), ch. 1, esp. p. 14.
24 Cf. the famous ban of R. Solomon ben Adret as well as a similar reaction of Italian
rabbis to Azariah de’ Rossi’s Me’or Einayim. Cf. also Malbim’s Com. to Lev., Aharei Mot
no. 41, where he explains the limited value of secular learning.
— 172 —
He expressed these feelings in poetic form in “Shenat HaYovel”: “The

darkness is dispelled, you say, the light has come; you say, ‘Ethics and
justice were born in my time; religion and faith are slaves of my light.’
You say, ‘I have grown wise though my fathers were fools…’ O pure and
enlightened generation! When the light descended, darkness ascended
from beneath it… So has darkness turned to light!… What is to be
done to the shepherds of Israel who say that there are still Torah and
commandments for Israel?… What is to be done to obscurantists who
say that ‘a commandment is a candle and Torah light’ and whose ear is
deaf to the voice of the times that cries, ‘There is no Torah, for liberty
has come’?”25
In truth, Malbim believed in haskalah — in his own way. In the
introduction to his commentary on Leviticus and Sifra, he says that his
book is intended for wise or enlightened people (‫)משכילי עם‬, and he is
fearful lest it be seen by obscurantists (‫)מורדי אור‬. The candelabrum in
the sanctuary is a symbol of the light of wisdom and knowledge (‫אור‬
‫)ההשכלה והדעת‬.26 To Malbim, however, haskalah means either knowledge
and understanding of God and Torah or the use of linguistic, logical,
and even scientific tools to buttress faith or to explain it.
Malbim felt that the non-belief or “heresy” of his time was a result
of a perversion of the intellectual process. He discusses the person
“who sins because of disbelief and comes ‘with a high hand’ to deny the
Sinaitic revelation as did Menasseh ben Hezekiah… who equated the
words of the Torah with those of men.” There is no doubt that he has in
mind the reformers of the nineteenth century, for in the introduction
to his commentary on Leviticus, he accuses those who gathered at
Brunswick of comparing the Torah to other ancient stories and its
poetry to that of Homer and the Greeks. The passage about Menasseh
25 ‫ אמרת הדת והאמונה עבדי אורי‬/ ‫ המוסר והיושר ילידי דורי‬:‫ אמרת‬/ ‫סר החושך — אמרת — בא האור‬
‫ כי ברדת‬/ !‫ הדוד הנאור‬/ !‫ הדור הטהור‬...‫ אני קמתי ואבותי נפלו‬/ ‫ אני השכלתי ואבותי סכלו‬:‫ אמרת‬/
/ ‫ מה לעשות לרועי ישראל‬...!‫ כך היה החשך לאור‬/ !‫ הדור הטהור והנאור‬...‫האור עלה החשך מתחתיה‬
‫ תורה צוה משה מורשה‬/ ‫ האומרים תורה אחת לנו ולאבותינו‬/ ‫האומרים יש עוד תורה ומצוות לישראל‬
‫ דבר צוה‬,‫ בין שדי ילין‬/ ‫ האומרים דודי לי צרור המור‬/ ! ‫ מה לעשות למורדי אור‬/ ‫היא גם לקהילותינו‬
‫ האומרים אל תבכר בן כזבי בת‬/ ! ‫ מה לעשות למורדי אור‬/ .‫ אל תמיר כבודו בתבנית שור‬/ ,‫לאלף דור‬
?‫ מה לעשות למורדי אור‬/ .‫ אל תצמד ישראל לבעל פעור‬/ ‫ על פני בן הישראלית השנואה הבכור‬/ ‫צור‬
‫ אין תורה כי בא דרור‬:‫ הקורא‬/ ‫ אזנם חרשה לקול העת והתור‬/ ,‫האומרים נר מצוה ותורה אור‬. “Shenat
HaYovel,” pp. 134-136.
26 Rimzei ha-Mishkan on Exodus, ch. 25. Cf. also T.O. on Numbers, beginning of
Beha‘alotekha and Com. to Song of Songs 2:5.
— 173 —
continues: “There is a difference between one who sins through passion

— for he will later repent — and one who sins through disbelief, for
he will never repent. The first act is called sin (‫ ;)חטא‬the second —
an act of perversity (‫ )עוון‬because it is a perversion of intellect (‫עוות‬
‫)השכל‬.”27 Malbim’s pessimism about repentance is qualified somewhat
in his eschatological speculations, but it is clear here that he considers
the non-believer hopelessly lost. In any case, the idea that certain
manifestations of the haskalah, viz. the anti-orthodox developments,
are perversions not only of faith but also of intellect is a central
one in Malbim’s thought. Examples of this conviction can be easily
multiplied;28 we shall see later that he considered certain aspects of
disbelief in Orthodoxy to be absolutely untenable philosophically.
Malbim, in fact, wrote a long poem called Mashal u-Melitzah to
emphasize the interdependence of wisdom and faith. It has been
suggested that this poem was written as a response to Emet ve-
Emunah of Adam ha-Kohen. Klausner points out that the two books
appeared in the same year but adds that Malbim may have seen the
other work in manuscript form.29 This seems far-fetched. It is much
more likely that this poem, which was first given to the editor of Ha-
Levanon, is the result of Bucharest; it is a poetic expression of the ideas
of the unfinished “Shenat HaYovel.” The latter appeared in 1865 and
the former in 1867; the essential idea of both is that enlightenment
without faith is folly. The fact that the chief protagonist, a man in love
with Wisdom (‫ )חכמה‬but repelled by her sister Fear of God (‫)יראה‬, is
named Rich (‫ )עשיר‬lends further plausibility to this conjecture. The
central point, that Wisdom and Fear of God are “twin sisters,” is made
over and over again.30 It is significant that Malbim used the poetic
27 Com. to Numbers 15:30 (Shelah no. 48).
28 Following are a number of examples: Com. to Gen. 2:7: ‫ לפעמים ישכיל‬.‫וכן בכחות הנפש המשכלת‬
‫ ולפעמים ישמש בשכלו להתנכל ולהתחבל בתחבולות רשע ודרך רע וכדומה‬,‫לדעת ה׳ ודרכיו ותורתו‬. Com. to
Gen. 3:6: ‫ והשכל ימשך אחר התאוה ויעזר לה‬,‫כשתקדם התאוה אל השכל ואז תקרא התאוה את השכל לעזר לה‬
‫ בתחבולות רשע ובהמציא היתרים ואמתלאות למעשיו ויחפה כסף סיגים על חרש לאמר שהדבר מותר‬,‫בשכלו‬.
Com. to Isaiah 1: 29: ‫ )בחירת ע״ז בשכל( היה גדול יותר כי יד השכל והבחירה היה במעל הזה‬,‫וחטא זה‬.
29 Joseph Klausner, Historiah shel ha-Sifrut ha-lvrit ha-Hadashah, vol. 3 (Jerusalem,
1952/53), p. 224.
30 Mashal u-Melitzah, p. 22: ‫ אשה רעה אל‬/ :‫ אם לא יגרע עונתה‬,‫ אשת חן‬/ ‫אור חכמה אל הולך בנתיבתה‬
‫ כך שוכב חיק חכמה ועוזב‬/ — ? ‫ ולא יהיה לשרפת אש צרבת‬/ ‫ הישכב איש את להבת שלהבת‬/ .‫ממיר את דתה‬
!‫ תורתה‬P. 34: ‫ אחיות תאומות דומות יראה וחכמה מלידה מבטן ומהריון״‬P. 110 (note): ‫אם אין יראה אין‬
‫ ואם אין אמונה אין תבונה‬,‫חכמה‬. Cf. note on p. 95. Also Artzot ha-Shalom (Munkacs, 1895;
henceforth Ar. Sh.). p. 2b: ‫ ומתהום המחקר רובצת תחת‬,‫ ממגד האמונה מעל‬,‫מבורכת ה׳ ארצי‬.
— 174 —
form to express this idea; he was interested in proving that technical

skill in language can and does go hand in hand with strict fidelity to
religious tradition. This too, as we shall discover, was a basic approach
in all Malbim’s literary endeavors.
One of the clearest examples to Malbim of the use of intellect for
perverse purposes was the discovery of rationalizations to justify the
abandonment of certain biblical injunctions. These rationalizations
usually took the form of discovering a reason for the commandment
and showing how that reason is no longer relevant. In discussing
Eve’s encounter with the serpent, Malbim writes, “Here we learn the
serpent’s method of seduction and leading astray which exists to this
very day. For if people investigate the reasons for the commandments
as do those of our nation who are breaking away, they ask why God
prohibited five impure animals and try to discover as the reason the
fact that they do damage to the body of the one who eats them. Then,
when they discover that the foods are not harmful to the body, they
throw away the commandment.”31 In his homiletical work, Artzot ha-
Shalom, Malbim blames Maimonides for laying a trap into which many
have fallen by saying that the reason for prohibited foods is medical.32
Finally, he says that people who indulge in such speculation should at
least be uncertain as to the reasons they advance and therefore not
abandon religious observance.33
Thus far, we have sketched Malbim’s attitude toward the
Enlightenment, particularly as it affected religious reform. Later,
we shall discuss other aspects of his approach and the scope and
application of his secular knowledge. First, however, we must examine
his attitude as reflected in his life work: biblical exegesis.
In 1839, a book of sermons by Malbim called Artzot ha-Shalom
appeared. Tzvi Hirschfeld, in Zion 1841,34 reviewed the book and asked
Malbim to abandon far-fetched, homiletical interpretations of Scripture
and to write a commentary based on the simple, true interpretation
(peshat). Hirschfeld notes the fact that Malbim is greatly admired by
the Jews of Eastern Europe and can thus influence them profoundly;
he points, furthermore, to Ha-Ketav ve-ha-Kabbalah of Rabbi Jacob
31 Com. to Gen. 3:3-4.
32 Ar. Sh. Sermon III, p. 18a.
33 Com. to Gen. 2:16-17.
34 Pp. 59-62, 73-75.
— 175 —
Meklenburg as a work worthy of emulation by Malbim. In turning

to Malbim’s commentaries, we see an attempt to fulfill Hirschfeld’s
request by explaining the Bible according to the plain meaning, though
Malbim’s idea of peshat and that of Hirschfeld were undoubtedly quite
different. But there was much more to motivate Malbim than a single
review of Artzot ha-Shalom. There was one of the overriding ambitions
of his life: to prove that modern attacks on the divine authorship of
the Bible and the oral law are not based on genuine scholarship and
that, on the contrary, a more profound understanding of grammar and
logic can demonstrate the validity of tradition. Thus, Malbim decided
to use the tools of the Enlightenment to oppose its anti-Orthodox
tendencies. It should be stated at the outset that his command of the
tools and the spirit of modern scholarship was far more restricted
than that of a man like David Hoffmann, for example, whose goals
were quite similar. Yet Malbim’s influence was much wider, and his
approach, both in its successes and failures, merits careful study.
Malbim tells us in his introduction to Leviticus that what really
motivated him to write his commentary was the conference of reform-
minded rabbis at Brunswick in 1844, although it is quite clear from the
same introduction that he himself was deeply concerned with the basic
problems involved and did not want to neglect the plain meaning of
either the written or oral Torah. Thus, the commentary is avowedly a
reaction to the times, a phenomenon which we see in the case of Artzot
ha-Shalom35 and Artzot ha-Hayyim, [a commentary on Orah Hayyim]
which, says Y.L. Maimon,36 was to be a commentary on the entire
Shulhan Aruch as well. The reaction, in the case of the commentary to
Leviticus, was to unite the oral and written law. It is interesting that
Malbim uses the phrase ha-ketav ve-ha-kabbalah in this context, yet
does not refer explicitly to Meklenburg at all, perhaps because his own
methods were to be novel.
Malbim based his commentary on a very thorough study of
Hebrew grammar,37 a pursuit very popular among the maskilim. His
central purpose in this pursuit was to demonstrate that “none of the
35 Introduction to Ar. Sh., pp. 3a-b: ‫ אך בחלום חזיון‬...‫ לא עשיתי כל מאומה‬...!‫אך אנכי תולעת עצלה‬
‫ ואשכב‬...‫תרדמה ראה לבבי את כל המעשים אשר נעשו תחת השמש ואת כל המהפכה אשר הפכו ילדי יום‬
‫וארדם״‬.
36 Sarei ha-Meah (Jerusalem, 1965), vol. 6, pp. 109-110.
37 Introduction to Isaiah.
— 176 —
grammarians have reached even the ankles of the first generation,”

a demonstration which will give “ammunition… against any
heretic… denier, or critic.”38 The method Malbim employs to effect
this demonstration is the bringing of proof that previous attempts
to explain grammatical phenomena have been inadequate and that
only the rabbinic midrash provides a full explanation. To do this,
he conveniently assumes that fixed rules for all phenomena must
be preserved at all costs, ignoring the fact that languages develop
through use.39 He would justify this assumption, of course, on the
basis of the special sanctity of Hebrew. When Malbim cannot establish
the accuracy of a rabbinic statement, he tries to show its probability
and the impossibility of contrary demonstration. When dealing, for
example, with certain rabbinic comments on the compound nature of
some Hebrew words (e.g. ‫)תנאף = תתן אף ;יחניף = יחן אף ;רכיל = רך אל‬, Malbim
shows that many words probably are compounded, “and we do not
know how. The Rabbis, however, who were near the source and knew
the language and its origin knew how the development took place.”40
This exaggerated agnosticism as to liguistic development ignores the
role of comparative Semitic philology of which Malbim may or may not
have been aware, but it aids him in making his point in an area where
proof of rabbinic accuracy would be well-nigh impossible.
Malbim, in using grammatical and logical principles, is allegedly
seeking the simple meaning of the text. In his introduction to Joshua,
Isaiah, and the Song of Songs, he explicitly differentiates between peshat
and derash and says that he seeks only the former. In his commentary
to Genesis41 he begins in one place by quoting his homiletical Artzot
ha-Shalom and then says, “But according to our present method…” and
gives another explanation. Despite the fact that Malbim ordinarily
insists that the simple meaning and the rabbinic interpretation are
identical, there are passages where he distinguishes the two and feels
impelled to explain the simple meaning separately. “This,” he writes, “is
in accordance with the simple meaning (‫)פשט‬. And now let us explain
the verses according to the interpretation of the Sifrei and Talmud.”42
38 Introduction to Lev.
39 Com. to Lev., Tazria‘ no. 17: ‫וזה רחוק שתהיה לשוננו הקדושה כעיר פרוצה אין חומה וגדר‬.
40 Com. to Lev., Va-Yiqra, no. 152; Qedoshim no. 40.
41 12:22-23.
42 Com. to Deut. 24:1.
— 177 —
“Till here,” he writes elsewhere, “we have interpreted according to

the Mishnah (ch. 5 of Ma‘aser Sheni) and the Sifrei, and now let us
explain according to the peshat.”43 He feels it necessary to explain the
lex talionis according to its biblical formulation and therefore says that
“in the hands of heaven” there is theoretically such punishment and
payment is to be regarded as ransom money (‫)כפר‬.44 In Eretz Hemdah,45
he mentions a rabbinic explanation of a non-halakhic matter together
with one from the Kuzari as if they had equal weight. Malbim’s
theoretical recognition of the primacy of the simple interpretation is
present in his Artzot ha-Hayyim as well,46 although we shall later see
that Malbim often lost sight of the simple meaning completely and
indulged in the most fanciful homilies in his commentary.
We must now examine a vitally important question with regard
to Malbim’s biblical exegesis, and that is the extent of his familiarity
with biblical criticism, both historical and textual. Probably the most
significant passage in Malbim’s writings which deals with higher
criticism is in his introduction to Psalms. Here, he confesses that
certain psalms were written under divine inspiration as late as the time
of Cyrus and tries to adduce Talmudic authority for a similar opinion.
He adds that he admits this “to remove from us the arguments of
scoffers who ask how it is possible that in the time of David, when
the monarchy was still powerful, Israel was on its land, and the decree
was not yet made, that the priests should have sung about the end of
the monarchy and the exile in the time of Zedekiah.” Malbim, in other
words, is willing to grant a small concession in order to strengthen
the foundations of the faith; he is attempting to show that the divine
inspiration of Psalms can be defended without farfetched reasoning
that insists upon Davidic authorship.
Malbim, however, always had a double audience in mind, and to
his Orthodox readers he supplied the necessary far-fetched reasoning.
The Bible, he explains, traditionally has four levels of meaning (peshat,
43 Com. to Deut. 26:15.

44 Com. to Lev., Emor no. 249.
45 Gen., p. 55.
46 Ar. H. on Orah Hayyim 1.6, Ha-Me’ir la-Aretz no. 73: ‫ והוא‬,‫״ועיין בארץ יהודה כתבתי בדרך אחר‬
‫רק בדרך החידוד‬. Cf. also the introductory comment of Rabbi Moses Sofer: ‫הדברים בנויים‬
‫ וקרובים לאמיתתה של‬,‫על אדני השכל‬
.‫ לא כדרך הפלפול הנהוג‬,‫תורה‬
— 178 —
remez, derash, sod [or kabbalah, as he puts it] known as PaRDeS) and as
many as seventy different valid interpretations (‫)ע‘ פנים לתורה‬. Malbim
is interpreting according to the simple meaning, but the traditional
view may be correct on some other level. Here he is in serious logical
difficulty. The principle of PaRDeS makes sense in some areas of
exegesis; an author, especially if that author is God, can intend to
convey various nuances and even levels of meaning. But it makes little
sense in this case. Even if “the Torah has seventy faces,” how can both
David and a priest of Cyrus’ time have written the same psalm? Malbim
was quite aware of this difficulty and suggests that the psalm may have
been written early, transmitted secretly by a few select individuals, and
finally made public in the time of Cyrus. While this is hardly derash,
remez or sod, it is an interesting attempt to solve a problem which
obviously perplexed Malbim and troubled him considerably.47
A striking parallel to this reasoning, one, in fact, which may have
influenced Malbim, is found in an article by S. D. Luzatto on Isaiah
published much before Malbim wrote his introduction to Psalms.48
Luzzatto, in defending the unity of Isaiah, wrote, “Those prophecies
which refer to the distant future Isaiah did not proclaim publicly… but
he wrote them down to be preserved for future generations.”
It is significant that Malbim scarcely mentions the critical dissection
of Isaiah and certainly does not enter into a careful polemic against it.
That he knew about it is clear from his introduction to Ezekiel where
he says, “This well (of Ezekiel’s words) ... has been left undisturbed by
the commentators and critics of the last generation, unlike the books
of Isaiah and Job and other wells of holy water which come from the
sanctuary which they have disturbed; and some of them have come
to Marah and thrown in their trees and made the water bitter, while
others closed up the wells and filled them with dust.” He was well
aware of the critical approach to the Song of Songs as well, and writes
in his commentary, “You see that God… has closed the eyes of some
of the commentators and translators of the German Bibles… who have
47 Following are selections from this passage: ,‫ אולם אצלנו‬...‫״וכתבתי לגול מעלינו טענת חמלעיגים‬
‫ כל המזמורים האלה כבר צפו במחזה‬,‫אמונה אומן כי שבעים פנים לתורה וכפי דרך הדרוש והרמז והקבלה‬
‫ והיו גנוזים וצפונים ביד אנשי הרוח דור דור עד עת שיצא הדבר אל הפועל ואז נאמרו‬...‫הנביאים והמשוררים‬
‫בקול רם‬.
48 Kerem Hemed 7. Reprinted in Mehqerei ha-Yahadut (Warsaw, 1913), Vol. 1, part 2. The
relevant passage [in Mehqerei ha-Yahadut] is on p. 38.
— 179 —
profaned the sanctity of this song, for they have explained it according
to its outer form, according to its husk, and have considered it like
the song of a harlot… They have therefore cut it in pieces and torn it
to shreds... and considered it a combination of many songs — a wine
song, a song of friendship, a song of spring, a song for the dance, etc.”49
In the case of Job, it is fairly clear that Malbim believed it was written
by Moses, for he says in his introduction, “Its value, order, character,
and wisdom are evidence that there is divine wisdom in it and that
it was composed through divine inspiration by a man unique in the
history of Israel (‫)איש לא קם בישראל כמוהו‬.”
In the case of Isaiah and the Song of Songs, it was religiously
crucial to reject higher criticism. In Job, Malbim thought the objective
evidence to be clearly in favor of traditional views. His general feeling
was, as he relates at the end of his introduction to Joshua, that recent
commentators had either repeated what had already been done before
or had gone dangerously astray. In the one case where the core of
the significant religious assertion could be preserved even after the
acceptance of certain critical conclusions and where the objective
evidence favored such conclusions — the case of Psalms — we see
Malbim torn by a number of opposing forces: his desire to show that
one did not require far-fetched reasoning to affirm divine inspiration,
his adherence to tradition, his Orthodox audience, his common sense.
He finally arrived at an unoriginal but instructive compromise trying
to preserve all elements and satisfy all his readers.
Malbim’s position on textual criticism is wholly negative. It may
even be probable that his opposition to lower criticism caused him to
adopt a position which profoundly affected his most basic exegetical
method. In his introduction to Jeremiah, he carries on a polemic
against Abravanel who had dared criticize the stylistic skill of the
prophet. Malbim maintains that God dictated the specific language of
each prophet word for word, for if we do not affirm this and assume
instead the fallibility of the prophet in transmitting the content of
his prophecy then we are opening the door to an unusual sort of
lower criticism (stylistic improvement rather than restoration of a
corrupt text). “Then,” writes Malbim, “a person would dare to add
49 “He-Harash ve-ha-Masger,” an epilogue to the commentary on Song of Songs, vol. 2

(Jerusalem, 1956 ed. of Malbim), p. 1730.
— 180 —
and subtract from Holy Writ according to his stylistic preference, and
the holy books will be like an open, unwalled city which ‘little foxes
that destroy vineyards’ would enter to damage and destroy… And we
are commanded not to change even one letter.” In his introduction
to Leviticus, Malbim refers to those who gathered at Brunswick as
“little foxes” bent on destruction, a parallel which indicates that he
is not merely referring to a theoretical danger here but was quite
well aware of the growing tendency toward conjectural emendation
even, to a limited extent, in a man as religious as Luzzatto. He may
have felt that by raising the sanctity of each prophetic word to that
of the Pentateuch itself he would prevent this tendency. Luzzatto,
for example, did not emend Pentateuchal passages. In light of this
conviction, the principles he laid down in his commentary to Isaiah
that prophetic writings can contain no redundancy or superfluity in
style takes on new meaning, for the style too is not the prophet’s but
God’s. Thus, in an indirect and perhaps subsidiary way his reaction
against lower criticism is responsible for the principles underlying a
major part of his exegetical works.
Malbim, as we have seen, maintained that his sole quest was for
the simple meaning. Yet, despite Hirschfeld’s request and despite his
own resolution, he very often lapses into a homiletical excursus. Torah
Or is replete with them, but there they are at least labeled. In Ha-Torah
ve-ha-Mitzvah (the commentary proper) as well, we find him explaining
that land cannot be sold forever because the human soul is merely
sojourning on earth.50 This sort of lapse is excusable and even welcome
because of its brevity and beauty, and it justifies Glicksburg’s comment
that Malbim introduced some very appealing homiletical ideas into his
commentary which do not stray too far from the plain meaning.51
There are instances, however, where the homiletical passage is longer
and flagrantly violates the plain meaning of the text. In Artzot ha-Shalom,
Malbim explained that the true test of Abraham was not in the command
to sacrifice his son but rather in the second command — to spare him!
The test was to discover whether Abraham would feel the joy that a
father naturally experiences when his son is saved or whether his only
joy would be that of fulfilling “a positive commandment” (‫)מצות עשה‬. The
50 Com. on Lev., Behar no. 39.

51 Ha-Derashah be-Yisrael, p. 406.
— 181 —
latter was true, and Abraham thus passed the test. This explanation is
repeated at length in the commentary to Genesis and in Eretz Hemdah.52
The dehumanization of Abraham had its precedents — in Abravanel, for
example, upon whom Malbim often relies heavily, Abraham begs God for
permission to sacrifice Isaac — but Malbim completes his interpretation
with the following far-fetched exegesis of Gen. 22:12 (“And thou hast
not witheld thy son, thine only son, from Me”): “Thou hast witheld” him
“not” because he is “thy son, thine only son” but only because you heard
a command “from Me.” This type of interpretation is, unfortunately, not
rare in Malbim’s commentaries.53
We have seen, then, that Malbim’s entire commentary was a reaction
to the developing world of Haskalah and reform. It was the work of a
man who wanted to fight these tendencies with their own tools and
to prove that a proper understanding of the texts refutes almost all
the major conclusions of both historical and textual criticism. But the
task of trying to completely satisfy his extremely orthodox audience
and to employ fully the tools of modern linguistics and research was
a task too great even for a man with as fine a mind as Malbim. Hence
the numerous shortcomings of a work which is, nevertheless, a valiant
and valuable effort to accomplish a monumental task.
After this discussion of Malbim’s attitude toward the Haskalah,
biblical criticism, and reform in his great works of scholarship, we can
now turn to his position on some more practical matters.
The two most important political developments among Jews
during Malbim’s lifetime were emancipation and the rise of proto-
Zionist activity. His practical attitude toward emancipation is not
quite clear, although we know of his opposition to government-
sponsored schools. One fact, however, is clear and instructive. Malbim
succeeded in placing emancipation within the framework of a religious
philosophy of history. “In this exile,” he writes, “and especially in the
last generation, many states have given Jews the rights of citizens
(Buergerrecht), and their fortune and honor have risen to the extent
that there is no difference between the period of exile and the time of
redemption except observance of the commandments connected with
the land of Israel and the Temple. Why has God done that in this last
52 Ar. Sh., Sermon II, p. 14a; Com. to Gen. 22:12; E.H. on Gen., p. 69.
53 Cf., for example, his almost incredible explanation of Numbers 11:5.
— 182 —
generation?” The answer: it is a test to determine whether the desire to

return to the land of Israel and to repent is based only upon suffering.
If the Jews are wise, they will not be satisfied with the temporal good
to be obtained in exile; if they are foolish and remain content, God
may leave them in exile indefinitely.54 Thus, emancipation is the final,
crucial test for the Jewish people, and it is a test Malbim expected
them to pass. For in his commentary on Daniel he calculates that the
complete redemption will take place in 1927-28; thus, according to
the Zohar in Shemot, “an awakening for redemption” should begin in
1867-68. Malbim expected just such an awakening.
The awakening that did take place was proto-Zionist agitation for a
return to Palestine. Chaim Heshel Braverman, in Knesset Yisrael of 1888,55
writes as follows of Malbim’s attitude toward this movement: “Malbim
was a true lover of Zion… who approved of the intention of the ‘Lovers
of Zion’ (‫ …)חובבי ציון‬to transport a number of Jews who find it extremely
difficult to make a living… to the desolate land of our fathers, to develop
and till its soil and take bread out of our fatherland that has remained
as a living widow for two thousand years.” It is particularly interesting
that Malbim, in a number of passages, emphasizes his belief that the
redemption will take place in stages, the first stage expressing itself
in a state with only a small amount of power.56 Malbim’s nationalistic
feelings left little room for universalism, and even the book of Jonah
and a verse like Amos 9:7 are interpreted—in the latter case with total
disregard for the plain meaning57—in a manner not at all complimentary
toward Gentiles.
In other practical matters of less significance we find Malbim
defending old customs which had been ridiculed by maskilim. He
defends, for example, the method of arranging marriages in which
bride and groom do not see each other till the wedding. His defense is
based first on biblical precedent (Isaac and Rebecca), but he then adds
54 Notes published in E.H. to Deut., p. 173. It should, however, be noted that the
implication concerning indefinite exile is questionable, because in many passages
Malbim says that the final date cannot be delayed.
55 Sefer 3, p. 212.
56 Com. to Micah 4:8, and see Malbim’s own references there. Pointed out by Ephraim
Wites, Evel Yahid (1887), pp. 44-45.
57 Com. to Amos 9.7: ...‫ ע״י שחרות עורם‬...‫״אתם״ מיוחדים לי ״כבני כושיים״ שהם מצויינים ונכרים תמיד‬
‫ ולא התערבתם עם המצריים והעליתי‬...‫ ומביא ראיה לזה ״הלא את ישראל העליתי מארץ מצרים״‬...‫כן אתם‬
‫אבל הכי ״פלשתים״ )העליתי( ״מכפתור וארם מקיר״ בתמיה?ה‬...‫את ישראל‬
— 183 —
the following psychological observation: “According to the modern

custom, children learn to show each other love which does not exist
in real life but only in parables and stage performances; therefore,
when they later discover that they deceived each other, their love cools
off until it might dissolve into nothingness.”58 Thus, Malbim defends
a much-attacked custom not only on the basis of the Bible, but on
grounds that no maskil could challenge: the perpetuation of love.
The conservatism in dress which characterizes nineteenth century
Orthodoxy is reflected in Malbim,59 yet in his commentary to Orah
Hayyim he defends the opinion of R. Solomon Luria that covering the
head is a sign of special piety and not a legal requirement.60
At this point, it should be mentioned at least in passing that
Malbim studied kabbalah from his youth, but he was opposed to the
Hasidic movement, an opposition which caused him serious trouble
in at least two towns where he was Rabbi.61 Maimon maintains that
Malbim eventually became more sympathetic to Hasidism,62 but this
never became very apparent.
Finally, we must examine Malbim’s secular knowledge—in
philosophy, science, and history—and discover how he used this
knowledge in his works.
Malbim’s early education, under R. Moshe Halevi Hurwitz, included
the classics of medieval Jewish philosophy.63 Later he was to write a
commentary on Behinat Olam and a treatise of more than one hundred
pages on the principles of logic. Malbim insisted on the validity of
logical and philosophical reasoning and argued against the contrary
claims of skeptics. He writes in his treatise on logic that the first step
in philosophy is “to clarify the fact that it is in our power to attain
knowledge through syllogistic reasoning… for the Skeptics denied
this, and decided that a man cannot deduce matters through scientific
reasoning but only through sense-perception and common sense. And
58 Com. to Deut. 24:1.

59 Com. to Gen. 48:8-9.
60 Ar. H. on Orah Hayyim Vol. 2, Eretz Yehudah no. 4; on 2:6, Ha-Me’ir la-Aretz no. 43.
61 H.N. Maggid -Steinschneider, Ir Vilna [Jerusalem, 1968], p. 234 note. Also Macht, op.
cit., p. 12.
62 Sarei HaMeah, vol. 4, p. 177. Malbim even wrote a treatise on kabbalah called ‫מגלת סתרים‬
(not ‫ סגולת סתרים‬as Macht quotes it).
63 Macht, op. cit., p. 5.
— 184 —
for this a special study is needed called a critique of pure reason.”64

Malbim, then, maintained the possibility of reaching fairly certain
conclusions in philosophical discourse.
This certainty is reflected in metaphysical questions taken up by
Malbim in his other works. Knowing of Kant, Malbim nevertheless
considers the belief in God to be philosophically demonstrable
through the argument from design. He says, in fact, that it is almost
impossible to conceive of “a fool who could think that the world came
about by chance.”65 Occasionally Malbim displays an exaggerated
feeling of certainty even when his argument is not particularly
convincing. He writes, for example, in his discussion of God’s reply
to Job, that it is a “foolish question” (‫ )שאלה סכלה‬to ask why God
created predatory animals, because it would not be in accordance
with God’s glory to create “only worms and ants. His glory is shown
by the fact that there are powerful animals… which He subdues with
His might.” 66 Sometimes, on the other hand, Malbim argues against
non-believers by insisting upon the limitations of human knowledge:
“Do you know God, and do you weigh your knowledge on the same
scales as His?”67
Malbim, though he read modern philosophers, was completely
immersed in the problems of medieval philosophy in general and
medieval Jewish philosophy in particular. He discusses hylic matter
and the question of man’s soul— whether it is one with three functions
or whether there are distinct souls;68 he constantly operates with the
Nahmanidean concept of the hidden miracle;69 he deals with the opinion
that angels “are made up of matter and form, their matter sometimes
being of fire and sometimes of air, as is the opinion of Ibn Ezra, the
Kuzari, and Ibn Gabirol”;70 he accepts the idea that Jews are uniquely
receptive to divine inspiration (‫ )הענין האלקי‬straight out of the Kuzari;71
64 Yesodei Hokhmat ha-Higgayon (Warsaw, 1900), p. 95. Occasionally, Malbim uses technical
principles of this treatise in his commentaries. Cf. Deut. 4:32.
65 Com. to Gen. 1:1. Cf. also Ar. Sh. pp. 43b-44a for a more elaborate philosophical
discussion. Also E. H. on Gen., p. 15.
66 Com. to Job 40:7.
67 Ar. Sh., Sermon 5, p. 25a.
68 Com. to Gen. 2:7.
69 Com. to Gen. 17:3; Exod. 3:13, 6: 2; Deut. 3:24 and passim.
70 Com. to Gen. 18:3.
71 Com. to Exod. 19:1.
— 185 —
he frequently discusses man as a microcosm (‫ )עולם קטן‬and the world as

a large man;72 he accepts the opinion that elemental fire is dark.73
Malbim often opposes Maimonides in philosophical matters,
though he occasionally comes to his defense.74 Malbim maintains,
against Maimonides, that man is the purpose of all creation;75 he
opposes Maimonides on prophecy in two major areas;76 most
important, he maintains that modern logic has re-established the
philosophic probability of creatio ex nihilo.77 This assertion is repeated
in his commentary on Exodus78 with an argument that is most
interesting in the age of the controversy over Darwin: “I think that
the principal testimony for ex nihilo is the fact that we see that for
thousands of years no new species has been added to the world, while
according to those who believe in the eternity of the world, it would be
necessary that new creatures appear from time to time as they did in
the past.” Here is another example of Malbim’s philosophical certainty
in complicated matters.
The philosophical knowledge that Malbim possessed was put to use
for ethical and exegetical purposes as well as for philosophical ones. He
explains, for example, that success or suffering in this world is not very
important and scarcely even exists, for it is predicated upon things which
are merely contingent and haven’t any necessary, intrinsic existence,
“as has been explained in philosophy.”79 Malbim explains the Talmudic
statement that the Septuagint began, “God created in the beginning” by
saying that since the Greeks believed in the eternity of the world, the
biblical order could have been misunderstood as implying hylic matter co-
existent with God.80 This is a remarkably perceptive comment by a person
who did not even know the philosophical uses of the Greek arche.
Malbim’s knowledge of the sciences, particularly astronomy, was
extensive if not systematic. His major use of science, as we have by
72 Com. to Lev., Qedoshim no. 2; Com. to Psalms 104:1 and passim.

73 Com. to Deut. 4:11. Cf. Nahmanides at the beginning of Genesis.
74 Cf. Com. to Exodus 20:2 for a defense of Maimonides against an important criticism by
Crescas.
75 E.H. on Gen., p. 12.
76 E.H. on Exod., pp. 10-11.
77 E.H. on Gen., p. 17.
78 20:8.
79 Com. to Psalms 73:20
80 E.H. on Gen., p.5.
— 186 —
now learned to expect, is in the service of religion. He shows, for

example, that it is implied in Genesis that the sun, already created
as a sphere, was invested with light by God on the fourth day. He
continues: “Scientists have all been confused as to the light which
comes from the sun and why its source is not depleted. Actually, its
source can never be depleted, for it comes from the hidden light that
has no end.”81 Malbim refutes an interpretation of Abravanel with
a refutation based on the modern sciences,82 yet he seems to have
believed in celestial intelligences.83 He expresses belief in astrology
in many passages, though in others the belief is qualified or denied,84
and in one place implies that he might believe in alchemy.85 He uses
his scientific knowledge extensively for biblical exegesis;86 occasionally,
however, his information is very dubious, and he relies on as old a
source as Shevilei Emunah for medical information.87
This knowledge of science impelled Malbim to engage in
naturalistic interpretations of some miracles. The fact that the
rainbow was not seen before the flood, a problem that disturbed R.
Saadyah Gaon and Nahmanides, is given a scientific explanation by
Malbim.88 So, too, he gives a scientific analogy to Abraham’s seeing
of stars during the day.89
Despite his extensive scientific knowledge, and despite his assertion
that it is not the purpose of the Torah to teach science,90 Malbim insists
that the Rabbis had literally superhuman knowledge of scientific facts.
“Although the power of inquiry is insufficient to clearly ascertain the
nature of that thin air (of the upper atmosphere), still the Rabbis, who
viewed, through the holy spirit (‫)ברוח הקדש‬, places that investigation
81 Com. to Gen. 1:14.

82 Com. to Gen. 1:1 and 6.
83 Com. to Psalms 89:3.
84 Belief: Com to Gen. 12:1, 15:5 and elsewhere. Qualification, doubt or denial: Com. to
Deut. 4:19 and especially Com. to Job, introd. to chs. 4 and 6.
85 E.H. to Gen., p. 25.
86 Cf. Com. to Gen. 1:6 (on electricity and the atmosphere), 1:25, 3:1; E.H. on Gen., p. 15
(on gravity) and elsewhere.
87 ‘Aleh li-Terufah, a commentary on ch. 4 of Hilkhot De‘ot, pub. in E.H. on Numbers, p. 62.
Cf. Com. to Gen. 6:1 and 30:1 for dubious information.
88 Com. to Gen. 9:13.
89 Com. to Gen. 15:17.
90 T.O., note 2 to Gen. 1:1.
— 187 —
cannot teach, told us…”91 When Malbim was younger, he was criticized
in a letter by R. Ephraim Horowitz of Volochisk for implying that in a
rabbinic dispute one opinion was that what we now call the Western
Hemisphere is unpopulated. R. Ephraim exclaims, “Even if the Gentile
scholars erred, is the Jewish people like all nations?!” Malbim answers
by pointing out that in every dispute one opinion is erroneous; however,
in deference to the principle that there must be an element of truth
in both views (‫)אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים‬, he constructs a defense for the
other opinion as well.92 Thus, we see that there were powerful social
as well as intellectual pressures upon Malbim to defend the scientific
infallibility of the Rabbis.
Malbim read historical works as well, particularly on ancient history.
He knows that early civilizations sprung up near rivers93 and indicates
a familiarity with mythology and ancient idolatory.94 Occasionally, he
is somewhat credulous in historical matters, but he certainly read a
great deal in the field.
It is clear, then, that Malbim’s secular knowledge was quite
extensive, and he put it to use for his central goal, the defense of his
tradition.
We have seen that Malbim did not reject the pursuit of philosophy,
the sciences, and other intellectual endeavors, although he was wary
of including them in elementary education. He believed in haskalah in
his own way. What he did oppose, however, was what he considered
the perversion of intellect that led to the antireligious manifestations
of the enlightenment. This feeling was strengthened by his position on
the ability of the intellect to attain philosophical certainty.
Malbim could never have exercised the influence he did without
his secular learning, for his life’s work expressed itself in the use
of science, logic, philosophy, grammar, and poetry to further and
defend religion. This use, however, is often uncritical, because
Malbim is caught in the dilemma of trying to satisfy completely his
own orthodoxy and his orthodox readers and yet remain within the
framework of secular scholarship. Given the approach of many of
91 Com. to Gen. 1:6.

92 Letter published as epilogue to Ar. H.
93 Com. to Gen. 2:10.
94 Com. to Gen. 4:22, where he makes a statement that anticipates the methodology of
Cassutto and Kaufmann; Gen. 6:2, 4; Exod. 2:23; Isaiah 9:7; E.H. on Gen., p. 59.
— 188 —
his readers on the infallibility of the Rabbis in all areas, this was
an impossible task. Malbim himself often gets carried away by
homilies and loses sight of his resolution to approach texts in a
straightforward manner.
Still, Malbim is a fascinating example of a brilliant individual who
could not close his eyes to the Haskalah and to secular learning and
who was yet unwilling to compromise his orthodoxy by one jot or
tittle. His solution was to use his learning to defend religion, a solution
which gained him enormous influence and which, whatever its failings,
was a courageous effort to turn two worlds into one.
— 189 —
THE USES OF MAIMONIDES

BY TWENTIETHCENTURY JEWRY
From: Moses Maimonides: Communal Impact, Historic Legacy,

ed. by Benny Kraut (Center for Jewish Studies, Queens College,
CUNY: New York, 2005), pp. 62-72.
The influence of iconic figures and texts can be complex to the point of
inscrutability. We all know, for example, that the Devil can quote Scripture;
what, then, does this tell us about the influence of Scripture? On the one
hand, believers feel bound by Scriptural teachings; on the other, this very
loyalty can lead them to force Scripture to say what they badly want to do
or believe on other grounds. To cite a sharp pre-modern observation of
this point in an area of great relevance to Maimonidean studies, R. Isaac
Arama, a distinguished fifteenth-century Spanish thinker, asked why
certain philosophers need the Bible at all. After all, their modus operandi
appears to be as follows: If the Bible agrees with their philosophical views,
they interpret it literally; if it does not, they interpret it allegorically or
symbolically so that it is made to agree with those views. In what sense,
then, are they bound or even influenced by the Bible?1
Maimonides is not the Bible, but he has achieved such stature in the
minds of Jews that citing his authority is always useful and sometimes
compelling, while dismissing him out of hand is difficult or at least
undesirable. In assessing his impact or how he is used, we consequently
need to ask ourselves a series of questions: Was the position in question
actually formed under the impact of Maimonides? If it was formed out
of other considerations, was it genuinely honed or reinforced by his
authority? Is his view simply a useful aid in arguing for that position?
Is the position really in tension with his but forced into compatibility
1 Hazut Qashah, appended to Sefer Aqedat Yitzhak, vol. 5 (Pressburg, 1849), chapter 8, p.
16b. Cf. Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia and
Jerusalem, 1992), p. 257.
— 190 —
The Uses of Maimonides by Twentieth-Century Jewry
by questionable reasoning? Has a position acknowledged to be different

from his nonetheless been modified and moderated under the impact
of his opposing view? What makes this complex enterprise even more
daunting is the fact that Maimonidean positions themselves can be
divided into those that more or less reflect straightforward recording of
earlier rabbinic texts, those that endorse one strand of rabbinic opinion
over another, and those that are more or less the independent views of
Maimonides. The more quintessentially Maimonidean the position, the
more its impact reflects that of Maimonides himself.
Maimonides’ iconic status in the twentieth century was greater than
that of any other Jew in post-biblical history. Now this may be true of
earlier periods as well, but there was a time when Rashi might have
given him a run for his money. Unlike Maimonides, whose positions as
codifier and philosopher produced assertions clearly seen as his own,
Rashi’s originality was somewhat obscured by the fact that he was
primarily an elucidator of other texts. Still, serious students of those
texts understood the nature of Rashi’s contribution and realized that his
understanding contrasted with that of other authorities in innumerable
cases. But in modern times, and especially in the twentieth century, the
bulk of Jewry saw itself as very different from Rashi, while Maimonides
remained a model for serious Jews in all religious denominations and
even for some who saw themselves as secular. He was, after all, a
physician and philosopher, perhaps a radical philosopher, as well as a
Talmudist, and even his great rabbinic code was suffused with a broad,
philosophical spirit.
On the other hand, the percentage of Jews who studied Maimonides
seriously - or even not so seriously - was much lower in the twentieth
century than in any previous period. Thus, a discussion of his impact and
how he was used is primarily a discussion of elites - and largely, though
far from exclusively, of Orthodox elites, who regarded his work as in
some sense authoritative.
Maimonides’ extraordinary standing was illustrated in an academic
environment when the late Isadore Twersky of Harvard—admittedly a
not-altogether typical academician—was invited to deliver the keynote
address in the amphitheater of the Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus
campus at the quadrennial conference of the World Congress of Jewish
Studies. What he chose to do for nearly an hour was to read excerpts of
Jewish testimonials through the ages to the greatness of Maimonides.
— 191 —
My father was a folklorist who wrote articles about legends concerning

both Rashi and Maimonides. Folk legends about Rashi, he wrote, are
largely depictions of the personality of a beloved father, underscoring
his devotion to Torah and his outstanding character. The legends about
Maimonides, on the other hand, reflect the awestruck admiration of “a
village-dweller for an international personality, the attitude of an ordinary
person to his relative occupying a position in the highest circles,” so that
the popular imagination did not even shrink from attributing to him an
effort to create an immortal human being.2
It is not surprising, then, that few controversies in twentieth-
century Jewish life bearing a religious dimension were carried on without
reference to Maimonides, and often his presence loomed very large
indeed, sometimes bestriding the discussion like a colossus. The reasons
for this extend beyond his exceptional stature and reflect several special
characteristics of his great legal code. First, despite the importance of R.
Isaac Alfasi’s earlier compendium, Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah was the
first comprehensive code, so that the trajectory of later decision-making
was in many cases set by his judgment as to the Talmudic opinion that
should prevail. Second, he included assertions that we would normally
describe as theological rather than legal in that code. For some readers,
this transformed an expression of opinion into a position that bore legal
force. Related to this point is his formulation of a creed, some of whose
elements are also incorporated in his code, in which he asserted principles
that could not, he said, be rejected without crossing the line into heresy.
Thus, the deviant believer would forfeit his or her portion in the world-
to-come. How many people could screw up the courage to defy a figure of
Maimonides’ stature once the stakes had been ratcheted up to so high a
level?3 Finally, his code, unlike the later Shulhan Arukh, incorporated laws
that applied only to a sovereign Jewish state, whether in the past or in
the future. Thus, for several issues that arose in the twentieth century,
Maimonides was the prime, sometimes virtually the only, classical source
with something relevant and authoritative to say.
2 Isaiah Berger, “Ha-Rambam be-Aggadat ha-Am,” in Massad, vol. 2, ed. by Hillel Bavli
(Tel Aviv, 1936), p. 216; “Rashi be-Aggadat ha-Am” in Rashi: Torato ve-Ishiyyuto (New
York, 1958), ed. by Simon Federbush, p. 148.
3 This is not to say that his dogmas went entirely unchallenged. See Marc B. Shapiro,
The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised (London &
Portland, OR, 2004).
— 192 —
Let us, then, take a fleeting glimpse at the role Maimonides played
and continues to play in a series of issues dividing twentieth and early-
twenty-first-century Jewry.
For Orthodox Jews, the issue of the permissibility and desirability
of advanced secular education remains, perhaps remarkably, a major
point of contention. For obvious reasons, Maimonides appears to lend
support to the position affirming the desirability of such education, not
only because of what he said but because of what he so patently did.
Indeed, Norman Lamm once remarked that if Maimonides returned to
this world, he would surely choose to teach at Yeshiva University. But, as
we shall see, nothing about the uses of Maimonides is straightforward.
In this instance, a genuine characteristic of Maimonides that we shall
encounter again, to wit, his elitism, affords the opportunity to challenge
this assessment. Thus, representatives of Traditionalist Orthodoxy have
argued that Maimonides’ own pursuit of philosophy was to be restricted
to a small coterie of the elite. Did he not say that his great philosophical
work was intended for a tiny number of readers? Did he not also say
that one may not turn to philosophical pursuits without first mastering
the corpus of rabbinic law? Now, these arguments do not accomplish
all that their advocates wish, since they leave in place Maimonides’
value judgment as to the superiority of philosophically accomplished
individuals to philosophically naïve rabbinic scholars, but at least the
traditionalists’ educational and curricular priorities can be salvaged
without an overt rejection of Maimonides.
Moreover, Maimonides did not always formulate his legal rulings in
a manner conducive to the interests of Orthodox modernists. Thus, he
forbade the reading of idolatrous books and apparently extended this
prohibition to anything that could engender religious doubts. This passage
became the basis for an article by Rabbi Yehudah Parnes, then at Yeshiva
University, in the first issue of The Torah U-Madda Journal, a publication
dedicated to the principle of integrating Torah and worldly knowledge,
arguing that Jewish law requires severe restrictions on the reading habits
and hence the curriculum of all Jews. I responded to this argument in an
article co-authored with Lawrence Kaplan, invoking other Maimonidean
texts as well as the evident behavior of Maimonides himself, but there is
no better illustration of the ability to appeal to Maimonidean authority
on both sides of almost any issue than an exchange in which advocates
of a broad curriculum need to defend themselves against the assertion
— 193 —
that they are defying the precedent set by a man who took all of human
learning as his province.4
A delicate issue with a long history that became particularly acute in the
late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the Jewish attitude toward
non-Jews. Beginning in the thirteenth century, Christians pointed to
Talmudic passages discriminating against Gentiles. Without diminishing
the acute threat that these arguments posed to medieval Jews, one can
still point out that the matter became all the more sensitive (though
slightly less dangerous) in an age that began to advocate an egalitarian
ethic granting Jews citizenship, genuine religious freedom, and legal
equality. Here again Maimonides plays a major role on both sides of the
discussion. Antisemites cited Maimonides’ codification of discriminatory
laws such as the exemption from returning lost objects to non-Jews,
even a prohibition against doing so, while defenders of the Jews, both
Jewish and Gentile, pointed to his citation in similar contexts of the
biblical verse that God’s mercy is upon all his creatures, as well as specific
rulings such as those prohibiting theft from non-Jews as well as Jews.5
More than one Orthodox rabbi in the late twentieth century maintained
that Maimonides’ formulation of the reason why one may not return lost
objects to non-Jews, namely, that one would be “strengthening the hand
of the world’s wicked,” limits the prohibition only to wicked Gentiles. For
reasons rooted in the values of the commentator, an apparently general
statement that non-Jews are wicked becomes an explicit distinction
between those who are wicked and those who are righteous.6
Now, Maimonides did famously affirm that pious non-Jews have a
portion in the world to come; at the same time, he conditioned this on
their belief in revelation. This condition has troubled some Jews since the
days of Mendelssohn, when its source was unknown. We now know the
source, and one recent scholar - the late Marvin Fox - noted Maimonides’
requirement, apparently approved of it, and enthusiastically endorsed a
4 Yehuda Parnes, “Torah U-Madda and Freedom of Inquiry,” The Torah U-Madda Journal
1 (1989): 68-71; Lawrence Kaplan and David Berger, “On Freedom of Inquiry in the
Rambam - and Today,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 2 (1990): 37-50.
5 See, for example, Joseph S. Bloch, Israel and the Nations (Berlin and Vienna, 1927).
6 For a discussion of this and related matters, see my “Jews, Gentiles, and the Modern
Egalitarian Ethos: Some Tentative Thoughts” in the forthcoming proceedings of the
2001 Orthodox Forum; on returning lost property, see the discussion at note 15 there
and the references provided in that note. [The article was published in Formulating
Responses in an Egalitarian Age, ed. by Marc Stern (Lanham, 2005), pp. 83-108.]
— 194 —
version of the Mishneh Torah text denying that those who observe moral
laws on the basis of reason alone are even to be considered wise.7 What
motivated Fox was his own philosophical argument against the existence
of a morality independent of the divine will. Most moderns, who have
different instincts about morality and fairness, remain troubled, and so
they eagerly point to a letter attributed to Maimonides that appeals to
contradict the condition he set forth in his code.8 It is perfectly evident
that larger moral instincts are at work in the choice of which Maimonides
you embrace.
This issue applies to non-Jews in general, but Maimonides has also
been invoked in very different ways with specific reference to Christianity.
In a famous censored passage near the end of his code (Hilkhot Melakhim
11:4), he explains why he thinks the divine plan arranged for the spread of
Christianity and Islam. It has not been uncommon for twentieth-century
Jews motivated by ecumenical sentiments to cite this explanation as
evidence of Maimonides’ positive stance toward those religions, to the
point of asserting that he saw them as a way of preparing the world
for the messianic age by disseminating monotheism. In fact, as rabbinic
authorities know very well, this is not what he says at all. Christianity
and Islam, he maintains, prepare the world for the messianic age by
familiarizing many people with the Torah, so that the Messiah will be able
to speak to them within a familiar universe of discourse. But Christianity,
unlike Islam, is in Maimonides’ view full-fledged avodah zarah, usually
translated loosely but not quite accurately as idolatry.
The central philosophical and religious beliefs of Maimonides have
been the subject of fierce debate in academic circles with little impact
on more than a few Jews. Still, the subject deserves some attention
even in this forum. Under the influence of Leo Strauss, Shlomo Pines,
and others, the perception of Maimonides as a theological radical who
disguised many of his real views has attained pride of place among many
historians of philosophy. In this perception, Maimonides considered
matter eternal, denied that God actively intervenes in human affairs,
rejected physical resurrection, considered philosophical contemplation
superior to prayer, and did not believe that anyone other than the most
sophisticated philosopher has a portion in the world to come. For these
7 Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago and London, 1990), pp. 130-132.
8 See my “Jews, Gentiles and the Modern Egalitarian Ethos,” n. 49.
— 195 —
scholars, his legal works and more popular philosophical teachings were
intended for the political purpose of establishing a stable social order.
One deep irony of this position is that the author of the standard list of
Jewish dogmas would be revealed as one whose adherence to some of
those dogmas is very much in question. The irony is deepened in light
of the contention in Menachem Kellner’s Must a Jew Believe Anything?
that Maimonides virtually invented the notion of Jewish dogmas, a
contention that I consider overstated but nonetheless reflective of an
important reality.9
Other scholars, such as Arthur Hyman, Isadore Twersky, and Marvin
Fox, resisted the extreme radicalization of Maimonides. It is, I think, very
difficult to reconcile the portrait of a radical Maimonides who denied
immortality to any non-philosopher with the Maimonides who fought to
teach even women and children that God has no body so that they would be
eligible for a portion in the world to come. Maimonides battled to establish
a conception of God that in its pristine form was indeed inaccessible to
the philosophically uninitiated, but I believe that he meant his dogmas
sincerely as a realistic vehicle for enabling all Jews to achieve immortality.
In recent years, several efforts have been made to render Maimonides the
philosopher accessible and relevant to a larger audience. Kenneth Seeskin
has made this an explicit objective,10 Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s depiction
of an austere, distant Maimonidean God for whom halakhah is the be-
all and end-all of Judaism was broadcast on Israeli radio,11 and David
Hartman’s Maimonides: Torah and the Philosophic Quest was clearly aimed
at an audience beyond the academy. But the Maimonides presented in
these works and others is not always the same Maimonides.
A few moments ago, I allowed myself the expression “even women
and children.” The role of women is an issue that came to occupy center
stage in much twentieth-century discourse, and Maimonides played
no small part in Jewish debates about this matter. His dismissal of the
intellectual capacity of women is well known, but his heroic image and
immense influence have led committed Jewish thinkers and scholars with
twentieth-century sensibilities to see if some more positive assessment
can be elicited from his works. Thus, Warren Harvey argued in an article
9 See my review essay in Tradition 33:4 (1999): 81-89.

10 Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (Oxford University Press, 2000).
11 The Faith of Maimonides, trans. by John Glucker (New York, 1987).
— 196 —
published more than twenty years ago that although Maimonides

excluded women from the study of the Oral Law, and preferably even
from that of the written Torah, he regarded the commandments to know
God and love him, which certainly obligate women, as inextricably bound
up with the study of Torah, indeed of Talmud or gemara. Thus, we have
a powerful deduction to set against Maimonides’ explicit assertion, and
we ought at least to take it into account.12
An even stronger example of this approach is Menachem Kellner’s
recent article13 contrasting Gersonides, who allegedly regards women as
intellectually inferior by their very nature, with Maimonides, who allegedly
sees their deficiencies as environmentally induced. Among other things,
Kellner points to a passage in which Maimonides lists Moses, Aaron, and
Miriam as the three individuals who died in a state reflecting the highest
level of human achievement. Thus, says Kellner, one-third of those who
reached the highest level ever achieved were women. (One could quarrel
with his use of the plural here.) I am inclined to think that Kellner is
too hard on Gersonides and too easy on Maimonides. No rationalist
philosopher in the Middle Ages—including Gersonides—could really
exclude all women from the capacity of attaining a high level of intellectual
achievement, since these philosophers regarded such achievement as
necessary for prophecy, and there were indisputably women prophets. As
to Maimonides, Kellner’s arguments for his higher estimation of women
strike me as very weak, to the point where I understand them primarily
as a result of the admirable desire to interpret the stance of the greatest
of Jewish thinkers in as favorable a light as possible.
And so we come to two issues where a Maimonidean ruling placed
significant restrictions on women. As Harvey pointed out in that article,
it is very far from clear that the usual guidelines for deciding among
conflicting talmudic opinions required the ruling that women should not
be taught Torah. But that is how Maimonides ruled in his pioneering code,
with lasting impact on Jewish law and practice. The twentieth century
has seen major changes, but Beis Yaakov schools had to be justified as
an emergency measure, and Orthodox institutions teaching Talmud to
12 “The Obligation of Talmud on Women according to Maimonides,” Tradition 19:2

(Summer, 1981): 122-130.
13 “Sin’at Nashim Pilosofit bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim: ha-Ralbag le-‘ummat ha-Rambam,” in
Me-Romi li-Yerushalayim: Sefer Zikkaron le-Y. B. Sermonetta (Mehqerei Yerushalayim be-
Mahashevet Yisrael 14 [5758]), pp. 113-128.
— 197 —
women, though they rely on the position of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

and other distinguished authorities, are subject to ongoing criticism that
requires incessant justification.
The second of these issues reflects the fact that only Maimonides’ code
ruled on matters relating to Jewish kingship and authority. A rabbinic
text had affirmed that a Jewish king must be male, and Maimonides
extended this, without a clear source, to all positions of authority
(Hilkhot Melakhim 1:5). In pre-State Palestine, this ruling was mobilized
to argue even against women’s suffrage, but it was particularly relevant
to the holding of political office. A discussion of this issue by Rabbi
Ben Zion Uzziel illustrates strikingly some of the motifs that we have
already encountered.14 First, he berates his correspondent for suggesting
that Maimonides may have misunderstood the rabbinic text under the
influence of the custom of his own time. We are permitted to disagree
with Maimonides, but we may not say such things about him. Second,
Rabbi Uzziel stresses that Maimonides’ position is not articulated in
any other classical source. (Note that Maimonides’ addressing of issues
not dealt with by other authorities usually endows him with special
authority; in this instance, it was used against him.) Finally, Rabbi
Uzziel deduces from a discussion of the Tosafists that they disagree with
Maimonides even though they do not say so explicitly. In the presence
of a strong desire to rule against Maimonides, both inference and the
silence of other sources can count against an explicit ruling. It is worth
noting that the Maimonidean prohibition of positions of authority for
women played a role in Saul Lieberman’s opposition to the ordination
of women, a stand that had a significant impact on the decision of some
Conservative traditionalists to leave the Jewish Theological Seminary or
break with organized Conservative Judaism when women were admitted
into the rabbinical program.
The role of women in the Israeli polity leads us to the question of
the State itself. Maimonides has been a central figure for both religious
Zionists and religious anti-Zionists. His position that the messianic
process will develop naturalistically was seized upon by religious Zionists
to demonstrate that Jewish sovereignty must be reestablished by human
effort, this despite his explicit admonition that we are simply to wait.
His assertion that the final Temple would be built by human hands and
14 Pisqei Uzziel bi-She’elot ha-Zeman (Jerusalem, c. 1977), #24.
— 198 —
not, as Rashi thought, by the hand of God, reinforced this perception.15

On the other hand, the vehemently anti- Zionist Satmar Rov pointed
to Maimonides’ omission in his Book of the Commandments of the
commandment to live in Israel. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, sympathetic to
the State and hawkish on territorial concessions but opposed to Zionist
ideology, “proved” that the State has no messianic significance whatever
by citing the fact that Maimonides did not list the return of the dispersed
of Israel until a late stage of the Messianic process - this despite the
fact that Maimonides wrote that the order of events in the unfolding
messianic scenario is not a fundamental religious principle. The Rebbe
was well aware of the rabbinic texts about gradual redemption cited by
religious Zionists, but he maintained that Maimonides knew them too
and had effectively ruled against them in a binding, authoritative code.
Beyond the State there is the Messiah. Here Maimonides looms
enormously large. In the last two chapters of his code, he set forth
criteria for identifying first a presumptive Messiah and then one who
had attained his status with certainty. While many Jews had written
about the Messiah, only Maimonides expressed his views in a code, which
once again led some readers to grant them the force of law. A king from
the House of David becomes presumptive Messiah by studying the Torah,
strengthening it, compelling all Israel to obey it, and fighting the wars
of the Lord. He attains the status of certain Messiah by gathering the
dispersed of Israel and building the Temple in its place.
The waning years of the twentieth century produced a major messianic
movement that apparently violated these Maimonidean guidelines,
and it was precisely the movement whose leader had described the
last two chapters of the Mishneh Torah as legally binding. Here we are
witness to the most creative efforts to establish that a position that
Maimonides explicitly rejected is in fact compatible with his guidelines.
Thus, Lubavitch hasidim during the Rebbe’s lifetime argued that he had
achieved the criteria of presumptive Messiah. He was a king because
rabbis are called kings in the Talmud; he “compelled” by persuasion;
several thousand Jews qualify as “all Israel”; and mitzvah tanks qualify
as instruments of the wars of the Lord. Some even argued that he had
15 See my discussion in “Some Ironic Consequences of Maimonides’ Rationalistic

Messianism” (in Hebrew), Maimonidean Studies 2 (1991): 1-8 (Hebrew section) [English
translation in this volume].
— 199 —
at least begun the activities associated with the certain Messiah; he was,
after all, instrumental in preserving the Jewish identity of Soviet Jews
so that they could be gathered into the land of Israel, and 770 Eastern
Parkway is at least the interim Temple and the spot where the final,
heavenly Temple will descend before both buildings are transported to
Jerusalem. As to Maimonides’ assertion that if the figure in question
“does not succeed to this extent or is killed, then it is known that he is
not the [Messiah],” this refers only to one who was killed, not one who
died of natural causes, or it refers only to a scenario in which the Messiah
would arrive naturalistically, or it is irrelevant because the Rebbe did
not die at all.16 Remarkably, almost incredibly, a learned Lubavitch rabbi
arguing that a supremely righteous man can annul himself to the point
where he is nothing but divinity found a Maimonidean passage that
allegedly reflected this conception.17
These are instances where people who know Maimonides’ statements
very well and even consider them binding nonetheless disregard or
refashion them through creative exegesis. But many people who revere
him reject his positions or even consider them heretical without knowing
that he held them at all. Orthodox Jewish education, even in Modern
circles and all the more so in Traditionalist ones, pays little attention to
what we call theology. Thus, it is easy to compile a list of explicit positions
of Maimonides - not those of the putative esoteric radical - that would be
labeled heresy or near-heresy in many contemporary yeshivas. Examples
include his assertion that rabbinic statements about the details of the
messianic process may be unreliable, that the Rabbis could have made
scientific errors, that God does not intervene in the lives of individual
animals, and more. Maimonides’ iconic status was achieved at the price
of consigning many of his views to a black hole of forgetfulness.
In these circles, however, Maimonides’ great rabbinic works are
alive and well. In the course of the twentieth century, the Mishneh
Torah moved to center stage in traditionalist bastions of Torah study.
Here too there is a certain degree of irony, but it predates the twentieth
century. Maimonides envisioned his code as a work that would serve as
a standard handbook for scholars, summarizing the results of Talmudic
16 For these arguments and much more on Lubavitch messianism, see my The Rebbe, the
Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London and Portland, Oregon, 2001).
17 Avraham Baruch Pevzner, ‘Al ha-Zaddikim (Kfar Chabad, 1991), pp. 8-10.
— 200 —
discussions and freeing people already familiar with those discussions

from the need to revisit them in painstaking detail. He did not realize
that it would become an adjunct to Talmudic study, complicating and
enriching it even further.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, R. Meir Simchah of Dvinsk
wrote his classic Or Sameah centered on Maimonides’ code. The immensely
influential, pathbreaking methodology of R. Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk
took Maimonides as its point of departure even as it revolutionized
the study of the Talmud itself. Two generations later, R. Joseph B.
Soloveitchik made Maimonides’ “Laws of Repentance” the centerpiece of
annual discourses during the High Holiday season that drew thousands
and influenced thousands more, discourses captured in part in On
Repentance, one of the great Jewish religious works of the century. In
an effort at popularization that engendered criticism but also enjoyed
modest success, the Lubavitcher Rebbe urged daily study of sections
of the Mishneh Torah modeled after similar initiatives in the study of
Mishnah and Talmud. And in the far narrower world of the academic
study of Talmud in a university setting, scholars specializing in the field
sought to find in Maimonides evidence of sensitivity to their own central
contention, to wit, that the anonymous sections of the Babylonian
Talmud are later than the rest and should be treated accordingly.
When Prof. Kraut sent the participants in this conference an e-mail
message indicating that many hundreds of people had registered, I
replied, “Did you tell them that Maimonides himself was speaking?”
The attendance here is ample testimony to the magic of Maimonides’
name. This wide appeal leads me to a final observation about the abiding
power of Maimonides the communal leader and gifted writer to inspire
audiences to this day.
In early 1989, I spent seven extraordinary weeks teaching at the
inaugural mini-semester of the Steinsaltz yeshiva in Moscow, the
first such institution to be granted government recognition since the
Communist revolution. The students consisted largely of refuseniks
who had risked careers and livelihoods to commit themselves to Jewish
learning and observance. In addition to the study of Talmud, Bible and
more, there was a slot twice a week for Jewish Thought. I decided that
the text I would teach would be Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, a work
directed to a beleaguered Jewish community pressured to abandon its
faith. It was as if Maimonides had composed the work for the students
— 201 —
in that yeshiva. The greatest challenge in teaching the Epistle to Yemen in

that environment was to read the words without shedding tears.
I conclude then with one small selection from the many relevant
passages in which Maimonides speaks to Soviet Jews during the
transitional moments between implacable persecution and the beginnings
of hope.
Persecutions are of short duration. Indeed, God assured our father Jacob
that although his children would be humbled and overcome by the nations,
they and not the nations would survive and endure. He declares, “Your
descendants shall be as the dust of the earth,” that is to say, although they
will be abased like the dust that is trodden under foot, they will ultimately
emerge triumphant and victorious. And as the simile implies, just as the
dust settles finally upon him who tramples upon it and remains after him,
so will Israel outlive its oppressors. The prophet Isaiah predicted that
during its exile various peoples will succeed in their endeavor to vanquish
Israel and lord over them, but that ultimately God would come to Israel’s
assistance and put an end to their woes and afflictions… The Lord has
given us assurance through His prophets that we are indestructible and
imperishable, and we will always continue to be a preeminent community.
As it is impossible for God to cease to exist, so is our destruction and
disappearance from the world unthinkable.18
18 Abraham Halkin and David Hattman, Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis and Leadership
(Philadelphia and Jerusalem, 1993), p. 102.
— 202 —
The Institute for Jewish Studies on Its Eightieth Birthday
THE INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH STUDIES

ON ITS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
One of four talks to commemorate the anniversary of the Hebrew University’s

Institute delivered at the closing session of the Fourteenth World Congress for
Jewish Studies
From: Jewish Studies (Madda‘ei ha-Yahadut) 43 (2005-6): 29-36 (Hebrew).

Translated by the author.
A lecture on the Institute for Jewish Studies and its place in the
constellation of the academic study of the Jewish people and its faith
in the past, present and future no doubt deserves to be listed among
those matters that have no measure (Mishnah Pe’ah 1:1), though it is
by no means clear that it also deserves to be counted in accordance with
the continuation of the mishnah among those matters whose fruits one
consumes in this world and whose core remains in the world to come.
Nonetheless, even if that promise is not applicable in our case, I find my
reward in the very fact that I was invited to address this esteemed body
in such an impressive venue.
It is customary to speak of a Jerusalem school at the time of the
formation of the yishuv and the State that saw Jewish history through
a Zionist-nationalist perspective. There is clearly much truth in this
assertion. The majority of scholars in the field of Jewish Studies who
arrived in the Land of Israel during the major migrations saw themselves
through the prism of a monumental historical revolution that they
simultaneously perceived as a continuation of the central motif in the
nation’s history. Nonetheless, in his book on the first decades of the
Institute, David Myers pointed persuasively to the complex reality that
forbids us to ignore the ideological disagreements among the greatest
Judaica scholars in that period and all the more so the opposing influences,
images, and aspirations that animated each of them individually.1
1 D.N. Myers, Reinventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist
Return to History (New York and Oxford, 1995).
— 203 —
On this occasion, I would like to focus on several of the motifs that

emerged in the early days of the Institute and to examine—even if
superficially—how they developed and to what degree they are relevant
to the world of Jewish Studies today. I refer to the abandonment of
apologetics, the search for a presumably objective scholarly truth, the
place of the national vision in that objective scholarly matrix, the revival
of the Hebrew language, and the attitude toward scholars of Jewish
history and culture who lived in the diaspora. The establishment of a
center for Jewish Studies in the yishuv and later in the State served
as the basis for the assertion that scholars in the Land of Israel would
succeed in freeing themselves from the bonds of self-abnegation and the
fear of what gentiles will say, so that they would be capable of dealing
with the behavior and beliefs of Jews through the generations “with all
their lights and shadows,” as Gershom Scholem put it in his classic and
penetrating article on Jewish scholarship.2 Despite the reservations that
I will express in the course of my remarks, I must emphasize that anyone
familiar with the apologetic Jewish literature of the late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries will understand that there is indeed a deep
divide between that literature and the scholarly literature that appeared
under the aegis of the institution established in Jerusalem.
A striking example from the fourth decade of the Institute illustrating
both the rejection of apologetics and its stubborn survival is Jacob Katz’s
Bein Yehudim le-Goyim that also appeared in an English translation entitled
Exclusiveness and Tolerance, which enjoyed an impressively wide readership.
In an essay on Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri that preceded the book, Katz
had set for himself the explicit objective of studying the attitudes of Jews
toward Christianity and Christians without an apologetic orientation.
And in fact, unlike his predecessors, Katz emphasized in his book that
ha-Meiri’s liberal approach was not at all typical. Nonetheless, as I noted
some years ago, even this book contains a passage that demonstrates
clearly that residence in the Land of Israel did not provide protection
against older concerns. In that passage we find a fascinating difference
between the English and Hebrew versions of the book. In the Hebrew text,
Katz affirms that “the vision of the end of days signifies the overturning
of the current order, when the dispersed and humiliated people will see
2 G. Scholem, “Mi-Tokh Hirhurim ‘al Hokhmat Yisrael,” Devarim be-Go: Pirqei Morashah
u-Tehiyyah, ed. by A. Shapira (Tel Aviv, 1976) II, p. 398.
— 204 —
its revenge from its tormentors. The hope for a day of revenge and the
prayer for the arrival of that day may be considered as conflicting with a
profession of loyalty to the government …” Here now is the English: “A
reversal of the existing order was envisaged in the messianic age, when
the dispersed and humiliated Jewish people was to come into its own.
The entertaining of such hopes, and the prayer for their fulfillment,
might well be considered as conflicting with a profession of loyalty.…”
Thus, we discover that the proper equivalent of “see its revenge from its
tormentors” is “was to come into its own.”3
Katz wrote his book in 1960, when it was plausible to assume that
a Hebrew book would remain, in the well-known midrashic formulation
referring to the oral law, the “mystery” of the Jewish people. In the age
of the internet, globalization, and the increasing role of excellent non-
Jewish Judaica scholars, one cannot rely on this assumption, and we
shall have occasion to return to this point presently.
The motivations for an apologetic presentation do not always stem
from concern about critical reaction from the outside. The environment
in which academics develop and work causes them to internalize to a
large degree the values of the larger society with regard to interaction
among faiths and respect for the culture of the Other. Consequently,
even a Jewish scholar in the Land of Israel, who is relatively free of
external pressures, will feel impelled to describe the Jewish heritage in
colors that appear attractive to him, and this is after all a quintessentially
apologetic approach. Moreover, it was precisely the national pride
essential to Zionism that engendered a powerful desire to point to the
special qualities that characterize the nation.
This inclination even affected the choice of topics for research.
Thus, Yitzhak Baer abandoned the study of medieval Spanish Jewry to
concentrate on the period of the Second Temple and the Mishnaic rabbis
in order to uncover what he saw as the glorious foundational principles
of the Jewish people. Even his unusual introduction to his great work
on Spain clearly exemplifies this approach. It seems to me that Yehezkel
Kaufmann abandoned the broad expanse of Jewish history analyzed in
his book Golah ve-Nekhar and moved to the study of the biblical period
3 I noted this passage in my article, “Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle
Ages,” in The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and his Work, ed. by Jay M. Harris,
(Cambridge, Mass., 2002), pp. 41-63.
— 205 —
because in his understanding that is where the historic contribution of

the Jewish people was to be found. The concept of divine unity spread
throughout the world, but for reasons that were clarified in Golah ve-
Nekhar, that expansion took place not through the direct action of
the nation that first produced that concept, but through messengers
called Christianity and Islam. This development was simultaneously
a monumental Jewish achievement and a profound Jewish tragedy.
Kaufman chose to focus on the achievement without the admixture of
the tragedy.4
The most blatant nationalist apologetics—to the point where it
is almost superfluous to underscore the matter—can be found in the
studies of Joseph Klausner. What is interesting is precisely his rhetorical
sensitivity to concerns about subjectivity. In the introduction to his
work Jesus of Nazareth he emphasized what he saw as the care that he
takes to avoid subjectivity and apologetics, and almost forty years later
he devoted the introduction to his History of the Second Temple to “the
problem of subjectivity and relativism,” affirming unequivocally that one
can achieve absolute objectivity, that is, a quest for truth unaffected by
any personal or political predilections whatsoever.
To a significant degree we now inhabit a different scholarly universe,
one in which the very ideal of objectivity is in question. It is not just that
no scholar would dare allow Ranke’s famous sentence about history as
it actually was to emerge from his lips or his pen; rather, the recognition
that one cannot avoid subjectivity entirely has led in certain circles to
an utterly unrestrained erasure of all boundaries, so that one may not
express criticism even of complete fabrications. Several years ago, it
became evident that Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu had invented
entire chapters of her autobiography ex nihilo. Many historians, especially
those with leftist ideologies, argued that one should nonetheless refrain
from even the slightest criticism of the book since the overall reality
described there is in the final analysis essentially correct, and we are
dealing with a justified effort to denounce evildoers. When I expressed
disapproval of this position to a distinguished Jewish historian, he
replied with equanimity that every autobiography is written from a
4 See my observations in “Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography: Yehezkel
Kaufmann’s Account of Jesus and Early Christianity,” Scholars and Scholarship: The
Interaction between Judaism and Other Cultures, ed. by Leo Landman (New York, 1990),
pp. 149-168.
— 206 —
subjective perspective that apparently differs from fiction only with

respect to literary genre. Similarly, many observers reacted with utter
disdain to criticisms leveled at Edward Said after it became known that he
knowingly created a misleading impression that his permanent residence
was in Jerusalem until he was expelled at the age of twelve in the midst
of the “naqba.” Needless to say, here too ideological considerations played
a role, but in both cases, the widespread emphasis on the subjective
element in all the social sciences and humanities facilitated reactions
that in my view exceed appropriate bounds.
Subjectivity is itself a complex phenomenon with varied consequences
that can be exemplified in the history of the Institute. Occasionally, the
desire to reach a particular conclusion motivates a scholar to discover
reliable information or achieve a plausible insight that would have eluded
him or her in the absence of an internal impulse that was conceived
outside the realm of academically objective purity. Thus, I argued in an
article written in the eighties that Moshe David (Umberto) Cassutto
succeeded in finding subtle criticisms of the actions of the patriarchs
in the Book of Genesis precisely because he wanted to defend the Torah
against the assertion that it lacks sensitivity to moral offenses.5 On the
other hand, the very effort to flee from apologetics can sometimes lead
to an excessively pejorative characterization of the views and behavior of
Jews in earlier generations. I have great respect for all the participants in
the controversy surrounding the famous and important article by Israel
Yuval in which he argued that the blood libel, which is assuredly a total
lie, was nonetheless nurtured by Jewish behavior and Jewish beliefs. I do
not wanted to enter into the actual content of the dispute that swirled
around the article, but the debate itself demonstrated that both the
apologetic impulse and the anti-apologetic impulse are alive and well
and have the capacity to produce new approaches as well as affirmations
that are open to challenge.6
5 “On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic and Exegesis,” in Understanding
Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian Traditions of Interpretation, ed. by Clemens
Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod (New York, 1987), pp. 49-62. Reprinted with minor
changes in Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations, ed. by
Shalom Carmy (Northvale and London, 1996), pp. 131-146 [reprinted in this volume].
6 Y. Yuval, “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-Alilah,” Zion 58 (1992-93): 33-90, and
the polemical exchange in Zion 59 (1994). I expressed my views regarding the issues in
question in my lecture, From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some New Approaches
to Medieval Antisemitism, The Second Victor J. Selmanowitz Memorial Lecture, Touro
— 207 —
I doubt very much that there remains in our generation a material

difference between Israel and the diaspora with respect to the willingness
of scholars to express opinions or present information dangerous to the
image of Jews. Geographic location and even the use of a particular
language can no longer protect scholars against the diffusion of their
works, and it is any event evident that even those who are concerned
about the consequences do not recoil entirely from the prospect that
their scholarship will exert wide influence. Even scholars of Jewish
studies in the diaspora have succeeded in persuading themselves that
despite the revival of anti-Semitism, open and honest engagement with
elements of Jewish tradition that arouse unease at the beginning of the
twenty-first century will not at this point create existential danger, and
even if they do—as the recent initiative among Russian anti-Semites
to ban the standard code of Jewish law (Shulhan Arukh) suggests—any
effort to conceal crucial data will be ineffectual.
However, the problem of apologetics and national pride arises now
in a different context, which surely involves existential danger. The
history of Zionism, relations between Jews and Arabs in the days of the
yishuv, expulsion versus voluntary flight or emigration during the War of
Independence, the behavior of the IDF or intelligence agencies in times of
war and intifada—all these are not a matter for political or public relations
figures alone. They are quintessentially academic topics that decidedly
belong within the sphere of Jewish Studies. This assertion itself points
to the transformations that have taken place in the definition of the field
since the days the Institute was founded. On the one hand, scholars who
identify with the State confront the challenge of objectivity since their
ideological predilections are liable to lead to a presentation that obscures
problematic Israeli behavior. On the other hand, scholars who identify
with Palestinian aspirations are liable to endorse interpretations or even
make factual assertions that violate proper standards of judgment in
order to lay blame on the State and reveal its perversity. Regrettably,
the atmosphere in the field of Middle Eastern Studies in European and
College Graduate School of Jewish Studies (New York, 1997) as well as in my article,
“On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature” (in Hebrew),
Facing the Cross: The Persecutions of 1096 in History and Historiography, ed. by Yom Tov
Assis et al. (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 74-91 [English translation including an addendum
in David Berger, Persecution, Polemic and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations
(Boston, 2010), pp. 109-138].
— 208 —
American universities exercises severe pressures on anyone who wishes

to refrain from untrammeled attacks against the State and even against
the Zionist vision itself. Here, devotion to Zionist ideology leads not to
apologetics but to the capacity to maintain loyalty to balanced analysis.
When the Institute was established, the national renaissance that
stood at its core was intimately connected to the revival of the Hebrew
language. In a famous essay, Bialik sharply criticized scholars of Jewish
Studies for writing their works in German,7 and this original sin was to
be rectified in Jerusalem. And indeed the great miracle of the revival of
the language left its mark not only on scholarly academic literature in
Hebrew but also on the study of the language in the Institute itself, an
enterprise that continues to be pursued on the highest level. It is true
that the teaching of Jewish Studies in Hebrew and even the writing of
scholarly studies in Hebrew are by no means endangered species, but
it is nonetheless necessary to point to the well-known academic joke
that embodies too large an element of truth, to wit, that God would
not receive tenure in an Israeli university because he wrote only one
book—and he wrote it in Hebrew. Fifteen years ago, I spent a sabbatical
in the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadelphia, and an Israeli
professor specializing in the sociology of Israel saw that I was writing
an article about Maimonides in Hebrew. With genuine puzzlement, he
asked me, “Why are you writing in Hebrew? After all, you know how
to write English.” It is indeed important that knowledge of scholarly
works in Jewish Studies not be restricted to readers of Hebrew, but the
Institute and the departments of Jewish Studies throughout Israel have
a sacred obligation to assign equal standing to Hebrew and non-Hebrew
publications.
I must add that eight years ago I received a copy of a page of the
schedule of the Twelfth Congress of Jewish Studies before its final
publication, and I was astonished to see that in the Hebrew section my
first name appeared with the spelling ‫דיוויד‬, i.e., a phonetic transliteration
of the name David as it is pronounced in English. I was able to correct this
to the standard Hebrew spelling of what is after all a biblical name, but
this phenomenon continues; an American scholar who moved to Israel
informs me that he faces bureaucratic difficulties in both governmental
7 H.N. Bialik, “Al ‘Hokhmat Yisrael’,” Kol Kitvei H.N. Bialik (Tel Aviv, 1956), pp. 221-224,
as well as at http://benyehuda.org/bialik/artcle22.html#_ftn1.
— 209 —
and academic administrative contexts that compel him to use his English
name in his publications as well as on other occasions. The State that
once pressured its representatives to Hebraize their names—a practice
that was also improper in my view—now pressures its new citizens to
set aside the Hebrew name given to them at birth. It is not difficult to
imagine Bialik’s reaction to this phenomenon.
Speaking of names, an examination of the names of the members
of the Institute in its early days yielded only those of males. This reality
clearly reflected the place of women in the academic world at large, but
in the field of Jewish Studies, the exclusion of women from the study of
classical Jewish texts in the religious educational tradition exacerbated
this deficiency all the more. Without deep knowledge of Talmud and
rabbinic literature, serious work in central areas of research in Jewish
Studies was virtually impossible. This problem has not achieved full
resolution to this day, but it is evident that the situation has changed.
This transformation not only reflects progress in society as a whole; it
also engenders substantive scholarly advances by providing a different
perspective that enriches the overall field, and particularly the burgeoning
studies of the history and creativity of women throughout the course of
Jewish history.
Another motif that served as the subject of discussion in the
early days of the Institute was the role of the Jewish religion. Several
members of the Committee wanted to establish a rabbinical seminary
on the European model as part of the new enterprise in Jerusalem. This
proposal was not realized for understandable reasons, but the question
of the relationship between the academic study of Judaism and the
religion itself remains intact. On the one hand, there is a fundamental
tension between faith and the untrammeled intellectual freedom that is
the hallmark of academic research. At the same time, believing Jews who
are familiar with the academic study of Judaism and even participate
in it cannot escape—and do not wish to escape—from its interaction
with their religious commitment. It is consequently no surprise that a
disproportionately large percentage of students in departments of Jewish
Studies in Israel come from the religious sector. As a result of unfortunate
sociological forces, many secular Israelis are indeed interested in modern
Hebrew literature and other areas that they do not associate with religion,
but they are not interested in classical texts or pre-modern history. With
respect to the study of the Bible, the picture appears more complicated,
— 210 —
but I do not regard myself as qualified to assess the situation. In any

event, we are dealing with an educational challenge that Israeli society
must confront.
It is clear from everything that I have noted to this point that the
quest for scholarly objectivity does not free academics from responsibility
to society and its problems. On the contrary, by the very nature of things
political leaders turn to universities and avail themselves of expert advice,
and in the State of Israel, issues embedded in Jewish Studies are always
on the agenda. Even without external consultation, the impulse toward
engaged scholarship emerges out of one’s social, political or religious
conscience. The challenge facing responsible scholars is to mobilize the
knowledge that they have accumulated in the academic environment to
advance objectives important to them without distorting the results of
their research and to continue to pursue that research without dictating
predetermined conclusions that will provide them with ideological
satisfaction. In matters of this sort, it is easy to set forth the ideal; it is
far more difficult to realize it.
Finally, since I stand here as a citizen of the United States, I need to
conclude with some remarks about the complex relationship between the
Institute and the Israeli establishment in the field of Jewish Studies and
scholars in the diaspora. From a certain perspective, Israeli scholars can
feel isolated. They are careful to travel outside the country for intellectual
stimulation provided by contact with academics, not necessarily in Jewish
Studies, who carry out their research with the aid of novel, up-to-date
methodologies. On the other hand, they speak with disdain about the
overall level of diaspora Jewish Studies out of the conviction that the
knowledge of Hebrew and the deep understanding of classical Jewish
texts are highly deficient outside the State of Israel.
As to the perspective of Judaica scholars in the diaspora, one
sometimes hears the assertion that certain areas of Jewish Studies in
Israel are marked by narrow philological and textual concerns that do
not interest more than a dozen or so insiders. With respect to the last
point, it seems to me that linguistic and textual discipline must not
be compromised even when this means that topics of narrow interest
will be pursued, and the members of the Institute along with their
colleagues in Israel bear maximal responsibility to protect such areas
of inquiry and not to be embarrassed by those who would subject them
to mockery.
— 211 —
I must also note the Institute’s initiatives to encourage the pursuit

of Jewish Studies in the diaspora both by providing educational
opportunities for young scholars who come to Israel and through programs
in a variety of diaspora locales. Despite all the difficulties and obstacles
noted here, we are dealing in this session not simply with the founding
of a single institute but with the establishment of an Israeli Center of
Jewish Studies unparalleled in the world. The traditional blessing “until
a hundred and twenty” is inappropriate for an organization, and so I
mobilize the blessing (Genesis 24:60) that the spiritual descendants of
the Institute, which has reached the point described by the Mishnah as
the age of strength, “will grow into thousands of myriads.”
— 212 —
INTERPRETING
THE BIBLE
"The Wisest of All Men": Solomon's Wisdom in Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Book of Kings
"THE WISEST OF ALL MEN": SOLOMON'S WISDOM IN

MEDIEVAL JEWISH COMMENTARIES ON
THE BOOK OF KINGS
From: Hazon Nahum: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought and History

presented to Dr. Norman Lamm on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday,
ed. by Yaakov Elman and Jeffrey S. Gurock (Yeshiva University Press:
New York, 1997), pp. 93-114.
The Book of Kings informs us that Solomon was granted

incomparable wisdom, but it presents a narrative of his reign which
stands in considerable tension with this assertion. Both religious
transgressions and troubling policy decisions engender serious
doubts about Solomon’s judgment, and these in turn raised a series
of intriguing challenges for Jewish biblical commentators in the
Middle Ages.
What is the meaning of wisdom in general and of Solomon’s
wisdom in particular? Was Solomon granted miraculous discernment
ex machina, or did this divine gift build upon impressive preexisting
intellectual strengths? What is the relationship between wisdom and
piety? To the extent that these are intertwined, we need to understand
Solomon’s real or apparent transgressions. How many sins are to be
imputed to him, at what points in his life did he commit them, and how
serious were they? Was his marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter permissible,
moderately objectionable, or profoundly sinful? Did he act knowingly
or inadvertently? How should we view the multiplicity of horses, the
accumulation of wealth, the many wives? Is it possible that he really
worshipped idols in the straightforward sense of the term? Finally, on
a more mundane but no less critical level, was he guilty of policy errors,
including unconscionable levels of taxation and forced labor, that led to
the political catastrophes, both foreign and domestic, which followed in
the wake of his reign?
— 215 —
Not every commentator appears sensitive to each of these questions,

and occasionally the proposed solution is less interesting than the deeper
issue of whether the problem is raised at all. As we shall see, both the
threshold level of sensitivity and the modes of resolution can rest upon
the overall worldview and cultural environment of an exegete and provide
insights into the relationship between the reading of a biblical passage and
attitudes toward fundamental issues of philosophy, politics, and faith.
THE CONTOURS OF SOLOMONIC WISDOM
What, then, was the nature of the extraordinary wisdom with which
Solomon was blessed? Let us begin, as any exegete must, with the biblical
data themselves. Strikingly, Solomon made the wisest decision of his
life before he received his special blessing: he chose to request wisdom.
In his crucial dream, he responds to the divine offer by asking God for
“an understanding mind to judge Your people, to distinguish between
good and bad; for who can judge this vast people of Yours?” (I Kings
3:9). God responds by praising Solomon for requesting “discernment in
dispensing justice. ... I grant you a wise and discerning mind; there has
never been anyone like you before, nor will anyone like you arise again”
(I Kings 3:12).
Two chapters later, we are provided a more extensive definition:
The Lord endowed Solomon with wisdom and discernment in great measure,
with understanding as vast as the sands on the seashore. Solomon’s wisdom
was greater than the wisdom of all the Kedemites and than all the wisdom
of the Egyptians. He was the wisest of all men… He composed three
thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered one thousand and five. He
discoursed about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows
out of the wall; and he discoursed about beasts, birds, creeping things, and
fishes (I Kings 5:9-13).
As to concrete, explicit applications of Solomon’s wisdom, we are

afforded two examples: the famous judgment determining the true
mother of a child, and the ability to solve the unspecified riddles posed
by the Queen of Sheba (I Kings 3:16-28, 10:1-9).
Aside from judicial discernment, which can itself be understood in
many ways, the biblical material leaves us extensive leeway in interpreting
— 216 —
the character of Solomon’s wisdom. Despite the apparent numbers, Rashi

restricts the proverbs and songs to the biblical books ascribed to Solomon,
and he makes reference to a “midrash aggadah” which understands the
discourses about trees, birds, and fish as halakhic discussions. Before
citing this midrash, however, he presents a straightforward reading which
interprets Solomon’s wisdom as medical knowledge concerning trees and
animals, the usefulness of particular trees as building materials, the diet
of various animals, and the like.1 R. Joseph Kara, who hailed from the
same cultural sphere as Rashi, exhibits similar inclinations, though he
provides a lengthier, more detailed list of the scientific fields and specific
questions which Solomon mastered, so that we are informed that the
wisest of men knew the precise measure of a given animal’s strength,
whether or not it could be domesticated, whether it inhabited deserts
or settled areas, and more. Almost as an afterthought, he too notes the
midrashic comment explaining the passage in halakhic terms.2
Not surprisingly, we find no reference to metaphysical insights in the
comments of these French exegetes. At the same time, we should not
wonder about the positive assessment of practical scientific knowledge
expressed in their commentaries. As I have argued elsewhere, the pursuit
of natural science could become the subject of controversy precisely in
the Sephardic orbit, where it was caught up in the web of philosophy. If
the natural sciences were part of the “propaedeutic studies” leading to the
queen of the sciences, they could be tainted by the unsavory reputation
of the queen herself. Where they stood on their own, it is hard to imagine
any grounds of principle for dismissing them or for failure to admire one
who had mastered their secrets. The very indifference of Ashkenazic Jews
to philosophical study liberated them to examine the natural world with
keen, unselfconscious interest.3
1 Commentary to I Kings 5: 12-13. The midrash is in Pesiqta Rabbati, chap. 14. In

commenting on the earlier verses of this passage, Rashi also alludes to astronomy, or
astrology (hokhmat ha-mazzalot), and music.
2 Perush R. Yosef Kara ‘al Nevi’im Rishonim, ed. by S. Eppenstein (Jerusalem, 1972),
commentary to I Kings 5:13.
3 I made the basic point in Gerald Blidstein, David Berger, Sid Z. Leiman, and Aharon
Lichtenstein, Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection or Integration?, ed. by
Jacob J. Schacter (Northvale, N.J., and London, 1997), p. 118, and cf. p. 134, n. 131. The
intensive study of natural science might remain problematic because it takes time from
the study of Torah, but this concern is far less acute or fundamental than the issues raised
by pursuit of scientific knowledge as part of the philosophic quest.
— 217 —
Despite the citation of the midrash equating Solomon’s wisdom with

mastery of the Torah, the secondary role of this interpretation is striking.
In Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the Rabbis and traditionalist commentators
routinely identified wisdom with Torah. Here, perhaps because of the
plain meaning of the references to trees and beasts, perhaps because
Solomon’s wisdom appears to refer to the same disciplines pursued by
the Kedemites and Egyptians, perhaps because of the apparent relevance
of his wisdom to the riddles of the Queen of Sheba, this understanding
is thoroughly marginalized.
At the other end of the ideological spectrum, Joseph ibn Kaspi
provided an explanation tenuously rooted in the text and driven almost
entirely by his thoroughgoing rationalism. Here is the meaning of
Solomon’s discoursing about trees and animals:
It is evident (mevo’ar) that this is the science of nature, which is included

in the interpretation of the account of creation and the account of the
chariot, held in contempt by our masses in their sinfulness. Indeed, in our
sinfulness we lost the works of Solomon and other of our sages, so that
matters pertaining to the intellectual disciplines are attributed to Plato
and Aristotle.4
Anyone with elementary discernment, then, will see an “evident”

reference in this verse to Aristotelian metaphysics, which is
unquestionably how ibn Kaspi understood “the account of the chariot.”
Here, the connection between natural science and philosophy taken for
granted by certain Provençal and Spanish thinkers enabled ibn Kaspi to
expand the reference to trees and beasts to the point where Solomon’s
self-evident command of philosophy serves as an admonition to the
obscurantist objects of the exegete’s acerbic critique. In fairness, the
grandiose biblical rhetoric describing Solomon’s wisdom opens the door
to a legitimate expansion beyond trees, beasts, and fish, but the distance
between this rhetoric and a confident reference to Plato and Aristotle
rests upon a series of rationalist assumptions far removed from the
biblical text.5
4 Adnei Kesef, ed. by Isaac Last (London, 1911), commentary to 5:13, p. 47.
5 These include most notably the Maimonidean identification of the accounts of creation
and the chariot with physics and metaphysics and the belief that Jewish wisdom was lost
to its original masters, appropriated by the Greeks, and hence available to medieval Jews
primarily through the study of alien texts. On the first point, see Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah
— 218 —
Ralbag, whose intellectual profile was close to that of ibn Kaspi,

provided an interpretation which stands somewhere between the readings
of the Northern European exegetes and of his Provençal contemporary.
Solomon knew the causes, composition, and essential traits of trees,
beasts, and fish by investigating their nature, and he probably also knew
the uses to which they could be put. Ralbag describes this knowledge with
the technical language of philosophically oriented scientific discourse,
and in a comment on Solomon’s prayer several chapters later, he takes
for granted the king’s familiarity with the celestial intelligences and the
acquired intellect. At the same time, he does not indicate in any way that
the Solomonic wisdom singled out by Scripture is to be understood as
the mastery of metaphysics.6
The reason for this may emerge from an examination of the position
of his philosophically oriented but more conservative predecessor Radak.
That position is at first a bit surprising but ultimately highly revealing.
Despite his vigorous affirmation of the importance of philosophical
study, Radak’s understanding of these verses also attributes no special
metaphysical knowledge to the wise king. Here, however, we are provided
enough information to discern the explanation, which could have
motivated Ralbag as well as Radak. The moment a commentator provides
a definition of wisdom in our context, he is committed to the position
that Solomon attained the apex of achievement in that field, surpassing
all others, including Moses. Thus, it is precisely because Radak valued
philosophy so highly that he refrained from identifying it with Solomon’s
wisdom; such an identification would have forced him to affirm that the
greatest of prophets was not the greatest of philosophers. Solomon, says
Radak, achieved ultimate superiority in the science of nature (hokhmat
ha-teva‘), but in the divine science (ba-hokhmah ha-elohit), Moses was
greater than he.7
Abravanel, the final commentator that I will examine in this study,
was, like Radak, a philosophically oriented exegete with a conservative
2:11-12; 4:10, 13; Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:11-12. Cf. Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the
Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven, 1980), pp. 488-507. On the second, see
the material collected in Norman Roth, “The ‘Theft of Philosophy’ by the Greeks from the
Jews,” Classical Folia 22 (1978): 53-67.
6 Commentary to 5:13, and cf. Commentary to 8:23.
7 Commentary to 3:12, and cf. to 5:12. See Maimonides, Guide 3:54, and Sara Klein- Braslavy,
Shlomo ka-Melekh ve-ha-Esoterizm ha-Pilosofi be-Mishnat ha-Rambam (Jerusalem, 1996),
pp. 121-123.
— 219 —
bent. In his case, however, this orientation led to more complicated

conclusions. Like ibn Kaspi, Abravanel was unwilling to limit the wisdom
described with such sublime rhetoric to a single field of endeavor.
Solomon’s intellectual perfection embraced the totality of wisdom.
Indeed, Abravanel exploited this opportunity to write a lengthy excursus
on the nature of wisdom itself, the categories of which it is comprised,
and its limitations.8
This approach, however, forced him to confront the apparently
unavoidable conclusion that Solomon was superior to Moses and all
the other prophets in every form of wisdom despite the inextricable
connection for medieval philosophers between prophecy and intellectual
perfection. It is almost painful to observe Abravanel’s acute discomfort
with this dilemma and his difficult struggles to extricate himself from
its grasp. Perhaps there is, after all, no intrinsic connection between
wisdom and prophecy. Perhaps there is, but the former is not necessarily
proportional to the latter. Perhaps it is proportional, but this is the
case only for the highest forms of knowledge, not for the lower forms
(management of household and state) in which Solomon excelled but
Moses needed the advice of Jethro. (And so we watch incredulously as
Solomon’s perfection in the totality of wisdom, underscored in page after
page of Abravanel’s excursus, fades into anticlimax.)9 Finally, perhaps
the unqualified Scriptural assertion that Solomon was wiser than all
who came before or after him refers only to those who failed to attain
prophecy.10
To a certain degree, Abravanel deflects the full force of the question by
arguing that Solomon obtained his wisdom miraculously, so that it may
not be governed by the usual rules of nature. The immediate impetus to
this position was Ralbag’s hypernaturalistic assertion that the assurance
of unique wisdom is incomprehensible, since nothing, not even a miracle,
can provide a person with intellectual gifts that could not be attained to
an equal degree by a later individual.11 Abravanel’s sharp retort is that
8 Perush ‘al Nevi’im Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1955), pp. 466-480.
9 The suggestion is especially striking in light of the fact that in one of his preliminary
questions (p. 451), Abravanel explicitly rejected Radak’s assertion that Solomon’s
blessing was confined to natural science and did not extend to metaphysics.
10 Pp. 479-480.
11 Ralbag to 3:12. On another occasion, I hope to address the tension between Ralbag’s
denial of this possibility with respect to wisdom and his affirmation of precisely this
reality regarding Mosaic prophecy.
— 220 —
Ralbag’s belief in miracles and divine power is sorely wanting if he thinks

that God could not miraculously grant Solomon the ability to be wiser
than he.12
This position leads Abravanel to an extremely strong formulation
of the miraculous nature of Solomonic wisdom. On the evening of
Solomon’s dream, he went to sleep as “a brutish man who does not
know, and he awoke wise as an angel of God.”13 The first part of this
sentence is, of course, hyperbole, and it would be unfair to Abravanel to
hold him to it in its literal sense. On the one hand, the perception that
Solomon’s wisdom was miraculous guides Abravanel’s understanding of
both Scriptural examples of the practical application of this wisdom; on
the other, his deviation from the assertion that Solomon was without
prior intelligence is sometimes so sharp that it appears inconsistent even
with a discounted version of that assertion.
Let us begin with the examples. The Queen of Sheba, says Abravanel,
was interested precisely in the supernatural quality of Solomon’s
discernment. The solutions to the riddles she proposed were based
on her subjective understanding; no one could have perceived her
intentions naturalistically. The fact that Solomon provided precisely the
interpretations which she had in mind demonstrated conclusively that
his knowledge was of divine origin.14 At first glance, it is truly remarkable
that this interpretation, whose emphasis on the miraculous apparently
results from Abravanel’s rejection of Gersonidean naturalism, is derived
from Gersonides himself. To Ralbag, Solomon’s experience exemplifies
the fundamental truth that knowledge can be obtained in a dream
without the usual intellectual effort;15 precisely because such knowledge
was obtained in atypical fashion, it appears that its beneficiary might
achieve insight that goes beyond the information available through
logical reasoning.16 Despite their very different views of the scope and
nature of miracles, both Ralbag and his most distinguished critic agree
that it was a form of nonrational perception which provided Solomon
12 P. 471.
13 Ibid.
14 Commentary to 10:2, pp. 540-541.
15 Commentary to I Kings 11, to‘elet 3.
16 Commentary to I Kings 10:1: The queen wanted to see “if [Solomon] would determine
the secrets that she had in mind in these riddles, for in this manner one can test if this
wisdom is a gift of God. If it is, he would be able to discern her intention even though
[the riddles themselves] are susceptible of other interpretations.”
— 221 —
with his success in deciphering the riddles of the queen.17

With respect to the second practical application of Solomon’s
wisdom, Abravanel and Ralbag present contrasting approaches. The latter
expresses the straightforward understanding that Solomon determined
the true mother by a clever, rational ruse. To Abravanel, on the other
hand, the famous stratagem appears insufficiently impressive; no “great
wisdom” was needed to think of it. What really happened was that
Solomon identified the true mother from an examination of the litigants’
facial expressions alone, and he communicated his conclusion to his
aides; only then did he pursue his stratagem to demonstrate that he had
been correct.18 Needless to say, there is not a sliver of textual evidence for
this interpretation, which results either from Abravanel’s commitment
to his portrait of supernal wisdom or from personal experience with
intrigues in royal courts that made Solomon’s creative trickery seem
entirely routine.
Despite Ralbag’s affirmation that wisdom can sometimes be attained
through dreams and prophecy without the usual effort, medieval
philosophers did not believe that divine inspiration rests on individuals
bereft of any preparation. In light of this conviction, Abravanel’s
assertion of Solomon’s thorough ignorance before the dream was highly
problematic. Near the beginning of the Commentary to Kings, he
writes that David was concerned that Solomon, in the typical manner
of youths, would be unduly influenced by Shimi son of Gera’s flattering
behavior toward him;19 in fact, however, Solomon’s decision to send
Shimi away should be seen not as a mechanical act of obedience to his
father’s final wishes but as a display of intelligent initiative.20 Much more
strikingly, Abravanel’s summary of Solomon’s reign asserts that David’s
references to his son’s wisdom at the beginning of Kings demonstrate
“that Solomon had natural preparation for wisdom before the dream,
and that knowledge was added to him through a divine overflow in a
17 On Abravanel’s critical stance toward Ralbag, see Menachem Kellner, “Gersonides and his
Cultured Despisers: Arama and Abravanel,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6
(1976): 269-296.
18 Commentary to 3:24, p. 482.
20 Commentary to 2:36, p. 457. Note too his assertion that Solomon had to be no less
than twenty years old when he became king in light of his understanding of the policies
necessary to sustain his rule; see Commentary to 3:7-8, p. 466.
— 222 —
prophetic manner.”21 Indeed, the gold in the Temple, which symbolizes

Solomon, was affixed to the cedars, which represent David, to indicate
the intimate connection through which Solomon, who was similar to
his father, inherited wisdom from him along with kingship.22 Hardly “a
brutish man who does not know.”
WISDOM AND RELIGIOUS TRANSGRESSION
The varying perceptions of Solomon’s wisdom inevitably affect the

approaches to his real or apparent sins. In principle, it seems reasonable
to assume that a commentator who understands this wisdom as primarily
scientific and who does not see the natural sciences as a step toward
the knowledge of God will face only minor obstacles in accepting the
reality and, within limits, even the gravity of Solomon’s transgressions.
On the other hand, a broad understanding of Solomonic wisdom makes
it more difficult to understand how such an individual could have sinned,
particularly in light of the standard philosophical approach which saw
sin as an intellectual, not merely a moral failing, and which encouraged
developing the faculty of reason as the most effective weapon against
the evil inclination.
Solomon’s marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter, which appears to violate
the biblical injunction against marrying an Egyptian, took place before
the dream. Needless to say, the focus of this study on Solomon’s wisdom
should not obscure the obvious: traditionalist commentators were
disturbed by the sins of biblical heroes even in the absence of a special
21 Commentary to chapter 11, p. 551.

Commentators outside the philosophic tradition could presumably have affirmed
Solomon’s ignorance prior to the divine gift of wisdom with equanimity. Nonetheless
– though I would be hesitant in the extreme to draw confident conclusions from
this evidence – it is at least worth noting an intriguing passage in the Sifrei cited by
Rashi in his commentary to Deuteronomy 1:9. “Is it possible that the one of whom
it was written, ‘He was the wisest of all men’ would say ‘For who can judge [this
vast people of yours]?’?” The glaring difficulty in Rashi’s – or the Sifrei’s – question
is that Solomon became the world’s wisest man as a result of his comment about
the difficulty of judging. There appears to be an instinct at work here which cannot
imagine that unparalleled wisdom would be granted to one who was not already
exceptionally wise. (So Siftei Hakhamim ad loc., though cf. Maharal’s Gur Aryeh ad
loc.)
— 223 —
bestowal of discernment.23 In our case, the problem was sharpened by

the assumption of several exegetes that Solomon was exceedingly wise
even before the dream and by the persistence of the marriage even after
it.
Rashi, who is not likely to see a special connection between piety
and Solomonic wisdom, understands this union as a straightforward
transgression. Following Rabbinic precedent, he remarks that as long
as Solomon’s teacher Shimi was present, he did not establish a marital
relationship with Pharaoh’s family; we see, then, the critical importance
of residing near one’s teacher. Moreover, Rashi endorses Seder Olam’s
rearrangement of the chronological order of I Kings 3 in order to blunt the
appearance of the verse “And Solomon loved the Lord” (3:3) immediately
after this forbidden marriage.24
R. Joseph Kara goes even further by taking the apparently neutral
phrase “And he brought her to the city of David” (3:2) as evidence of
compounded transgression. “Know that this point is mentioned by
Scripture to indicate improper behavior. This place was designated for
holiness, since the city of David, which is Zion, is where the ark of the
divine covenant was brought; and this man brings Pharaoh’s daughter
there.”25 The comment was no doubt triggered by the Chronicler’s report
(II Chron. 8:11) that Solomon eventually removed Pharaoh’s daughter
from the city of David for this very reason, but the critical reference here
clearly goes beyond what the verses require and reflects a relatively low
threshold of resistance to intensifying the sin of a biblical figure.
Ralbag too extends and heightens Solomon’s sinfulness with respect
to his marriages, but he does not do so until chapter 11, where the biblical
text itself sharply criticizes the king’s behavior. The tone of Ralbag’s
23 See my “On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic and Exegesis,” in
Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian Traditions of Interpretation,
ed. by Clemens Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod (New York, 1987), pp. 49-62; reprinted
in Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah, ed. by Shalom Carmy (Northvale, N.J., and
London, 1996), pp. 131-146. Also see Avraham Grossman, Hakhmei Zarfat ha-Rishonim
(Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 488-492.
24
Commentary to 3:1. Rashi (to 11:39) also cites Seder Olam’s assertion that a thirty-six-
year punishment was initially set for the Davidic kingdom to correspond to the thirty-
six years that Solomon was married to Pharaoh’s daughter. So too Radak to 11:39 and
R. Joseph Kara to 11:41.
25 Commentary to 3:1, where he also makes reference to the Rabbinic comment about
Shimi.
— 224 —
comment in chapter 3, where Pharaoh’s daughter is first introduced,

differs markedly, and the difference reflects a crucial point which can
often determine an exegete’s approach. The changing local contexts of
biblical data may lead to profoundly different emphases and even to
outright inconsistencies in a commentator’s approach. Thus, the report
of the questionable marriage in chapter 3 is followed immediately by the
assertion that Solomon loved the Lord though he continued to sacrifice
at a variety of shrines. We have already seen how this juxtaposition
disturbed Rashi and Seder Olam, and the reference to the shrines as
the only exception to Solomon’s love of God further strengthens the
implication that the marriage was unobjectionable. At this point, then,
Ralbag writes, “It is appropriate for you to know that Solomon married
into Pharaoh’s family after the latter’s daughter converted; nevertheless,
this was a slight deviation (yezi’ah qezat) from the ways of the Torah,
which permitted Egyptians to enter the community only in the third
generation.”26 It is difficult to envision a milder formulation.
In chapter 11, we find ourselves in a different world. Here, we no
longer encounter a Solomon who loved the Lord, but one who
loved many foreign women in addition to Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabite,

Ammonite, Edomite, Phoenician, and Hittite women, from the nations of
which the Lord had said to the Israelites, “None of you shall join them…”
Such Solomon clung to and loved… And his wives turned his heart away
(vv. 1-4).
So we search Ralbag’s commentary in vain for a marriage which

constituted a “slight deviation” from the ways of the Torah.
If someone will argue that it is appropriate for us to believe that [these

foreign women] converted before Solomon married them, we would
nonetheless be unable to avoid a conclusion of improper behavior
(genut). Pharaoh’s daughter, after all, was prohibited from entering the
community of the Lord because only the third generation is permitted
to do so. Moreover, Ammonite and Moabite women also come from a
nation unworthy of entering the community… , and even though the
females among them were not forbidden to enter the community… , it
was inappropriate for a king to marry them, since it was impossible for the
offspring that he would have from them to be truly perfect.27
26 Commentary to 3:1.
— 225 —
A genuine exegetical problem is certainly at work here, since

the verses appear to imply that Solomon’s marriages to women from
nations other than Egypt were forbidden, while the halakhah actually
permits marriage to converted women from all the peoples on that
list. Nonetheless, the reference to necessarily deficient offspring is not
forced upon Ralbag—indeed, Solomon’s own descent from a Moabite
convert named Ruth makes it highly problematic—and while we do not
face a full-fledged contradiction, the attitude toward the truly forbidden
marriage is considerably less forgiving than it was when the king who
contracted it loved the Lord.28
The juxtaposition between Solomon’s marriage and the reference to
his love of the Lord led other commentators to remarkable conclusions.
Radak argued that the biblical account here reveals that the Talmudic
sage who limited the prohibition against marrying Egyptians to their
males was correct (nir’in devarav) despite the fact that “the halakhah has
not been fixed in accordance with [his] view.”29 Abravanel tells us that
if he were to approach this question “according to the plain meaning of
the verses,” he would argue that Solomon did not sin at all, and what
follows is a veritable assault upon standard Rabbinic law on this point.
First, there is the rejected position cited by Radak which Solomon, who
was, after all, one of the Sages, might have endorsed. Moreover, “the
third generation” could begin from the Exodus, not from each act of
conversion; even if the count begins with conversion, the assertion that
the third generation “will enter” may mean that at this juncture such a
step becomes a quasi-obligation (be-hiyyuv u-mi-derekh mizvah), but it is
permissible even earlier; finally, “entering the community” may not mean
marriage at all but admission to positions of leadership.
Only after this lengthy and vigorous presentation of the thorough
rejection of Rabbinic law that a straightforward examination of the
text would have impelled Abravanel to propose does he assert that the
position of the Sages constitutes the transmitted truth (ha-mequbbal ve-
28 In his retrospective evaluation at the end of the biblical account of Solomon’s reign,
Ralbag goes so far as to say that the ultimate exile and destruction of the Temple resulted
from the king’s failure to heed the divine admonition that he command his children to
observe the ways of the Lord (to‘elet 33 at the end of chapter 11). This sin is nowhere
in the biblical text and appears to be a deduction based on the behavior of Solomon’s
descendants.
29 Commentary to 3:3. See B. Yevamot 77b.
— 226 —
ha-amitti). The correct position, then, is that Solomon misinterpreted the

law; he believed that after the conversion of Pharaoh’s daughter he was
permitted to marry her, and since this was the honest error of a young
man motivated by understandable diplomatic considerations, God did
not punish him for it.30
What Abravanel does not address is a problem which appears to
follow from his all-embracing view of Solomon’s wisdom after the
dream. Among many other things—one is tempted to say, among all
other things—Solomon was expert in “the commandments. He knew
them in general and encompassed their particulars down to the most
precise minutiae, just as Moses our teacher, may he rest in peace, received
them from God without the slightest doubt or dispute.”31 At that point,
we would imagine, Solomon should have divorced his prohibited wife.
Abravanel, however, refuses to ascribe any blemish to Solomon after his
dream and before the sins of his old age, so that the problem of this
marriage, which had already been resolved in the Commentary to chapter
3, is not permitted to rise up again to taint the perfection of the wise
king at the height of his powers.32
Solomon’s proliferation of wives, wealth, and horses stands in stark
contrast to the injunctions in Deuteronomy 17 concerning proper royal
behavior. Rashi, R. Joseph Kara, Radak, and Ralbag all acknowledge this
behavior as sinful, in some cases with explicit or implicit reference to
the Rabbinic assertion attributing the transgressions to Solomon’s self-
confidence. Since the Torah makes clear that it is primarily concerned
with the results that normally follow from the actions it has prohibited,
Solomon concluded that an individual of his discernment could perform
the acts and avoid the consequences.33 To Ralbag, the sins resulted
31 P. 477.
32 The reference in I Kings 3:3 to Solomon’s worship at multiple shrines raises a problem
which is the mirror image of the marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter. Here the Bible appears
to condemn behavior which Rabbinic law considered permissible before the period of the
Temple. Rashi (to 3:3) and R. Joseph Kara (to 3:2) see this as a criticism of Solomon’s
delay in building the Temple. Radak and Abravanel (to 3:3) regard it as a deviation from
David’s practice and consider it objectionable because it can lead to idolatry (Radak)
or unspecified sin (Abravanel). Ralbag to 3:3 and in to‘elet 2 at the end of chapter 11
apparently finds nothing wrong in behavior whose purpose he sees as the attainment
of prophecy. In to‘elet 1, however, he acknowledges the criticism implicit in the biblical
formulation and indicates that such worship is flawed, though permissible.
33 See Radak to 11:1 and Rashi to Ecclesiastes 1:18. Also see R. Joseph Kara to 10:28 and
— 227 —
not from Solomon’s reliance on his wisdom but from a powerful desire
which prevailed despite that wisdom.34 None of these commentators was
committed to a portrait of Solomonic perfection like that of Abravanel,
and the Rabbinic affirmation of sin easily removed whatever inhibitions
may nonetheless have remained. For Abravanel himself, the issue was
more difficult, and we shall look at his approach when we examine the
question of errors in royal policy.
For all commentators, one sin ascribed to Solomon violates the
canons of both wisdom and piety so severely that it could not be suffered
with equanimity.
In his old age, his wives turned away Solomon’s heart after other gods…
Solomon followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Phoenicians, and Milcom
the abomination of the Ammonites… Solomon built a shrine for Chemosh
the abomination of Moab… and one for Molech the abomination of the
Ammonites. And this he did for all his foreign wives who offered and
sacrificed to their gods (I Kings 11:4-8).
Following Talmudic precedent, Rashi and Radak insist that Solomon

was faulted for failing to prevent his wives from worshipping idols, not
for doing so himself.35 Ralbag draws an explicit connection between
Solomon’s wisdom and the inconceivability of attributing idolatry to
him personally; such a man could not have followed “these vanities
and abominations given the fact that he grasped the Lord, may He be
blessed, to a greater degree than others,” not to speak of the fact that he
wrote works under divine inspiration and twice experienced revelation
directly.36
Abravanel repeats Ralbag’s argument,37 but he goes further by
attempting to establish an almost direct causal link between Solomon’s
wisdom and the idolatry of his wives. Through his unique wisdom,
Solomon understood “the modes of service relating to the celestial
powers assigned to the nations [of his wives] through which the overflow
11:1. Cf. B. Sanhedrin 21b.

34 To‘elet 36 at the end of chapter 11, where Solomon is described as homeh el ha-nashim and
possessed of a yezer leharbot sus.
35 Rashi to 11:7; Radak to 11:1.
— 228 —
could be lowered upon those nations.”38 Abravanel suggests that when

the Gentiles flocked to learn Solomon’s wisdom, it was this wisdom that
they sought. Such instruction was not sinful in light of Deuteronomy
4:19, which asserts that God assigned the heavenly hosts to the nations
of the world.39 Later, however, Solomon imparted this knowledge to his
wives, who put it into practice in idolatrous rites which he tolerated. By
transforming the king from a passive tolerator of idolatry into an active
participant in imparting its intellectual underpinnings, Abravanel has
gained the exegetical advantage of accounting for very strong biblical
language, but the damage to Solomon’s image is not inconsiderable.
Abravanel has also gained something else; he has constructed a
bridge which can bring us from the paragon of wisdom and piety that we
have known until now to the sinful—and unsuccessful—ruler of I Kings
11. What Solomon did was teach wisdom to his wives—and precisely
that wisdom which he had taught other Gentiles without incurring
divine wrath. Nonetheless, the effect of his action was the facilitating of
idolatry, a grave offense worthy of severe punishment. At this point, the
miraculous nature of Solomon’s ascent to the heights of wisdom becomes
his undoing. Wisdom, power, and wealth all depart from him.
Just as these perfections had rested in his home, so they left him. They
came in a divine manner and with a supernal overflow, not in a natural
fashion. When he separated himself from his God so that the thread
of grace which had always descended upon his head was severed, those
perfections departed along with the overflow which was their cause.40
Abravanel’s Solomon, then, moves from a youth of considerable

potential but little understanding to a maturity marked by unique,
miraculous wisdom, to an old age that might well be characterized in
the words of the wisest of men as that of “an old and foolish king who
no longer has the sense to heed warnings” (Eccles. 4:13).
Despite the gravity of Solomon’s sin, even Abravanel does not
38 Ibid. So too in the excursus on wisdom, p. 475.

39 An even stronger, surprisingly explicit assertion that this verse frees Gentiles from the
obligation of monotheism appears in Abravanel’s contemporary, R. Isaac Arama; see his
‘Aqedat Yitzhak, chapter 88, p. 16a, and his Hazut Qashah, chapter 12, p. 32b. I hope
to discuss Arama’s comments, which appear to contradict the unambiguous position of
Talmudic law, in another context.
— 229 —
maintain that he himself committed idolatry. Ironically, it was precisely

a commentator of an extreme philosophical bent, a man for whom it
was virtually inconceivable that a philosopher of Solomon’s stature could
commit such a sin, who constructed a solution so radical that anything
became possible. We will recall that Joseph ibn Kaspi regarded Solomon
as a metaphysician par excellence. How, then, could he have been caught
up in idolatry?
Although ibn Kaspi makes no reference to Maimonides, the
inspiration for his answer emerged, I believe, from a famous passage in The
Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides conveys to us “a most extraordinary
speculation” to explain how people who have achieved a high level of
apprehension of God could nonetheless find themselves unprotected by
divine providence. Occasionally, he explains, even such a person allows
his attention to stray so that “for a certain time” his thought “is emptied
of God,” and “providence withdraws from him during the time when he
is occupied with something else.”41
Moses’ intellect, says ibn Kaspi, was actively engaged with God
without interruption, but Solomon turned away to some degree precisely
because he was capable of being distracted. His wives disrupted his
concentration to a limited extent even in his youth, but at that point
this spiritual detour
did not reach the point where he would worship other gods, which is
the heresy called ‘avon [iniquity] in Hebrew; it did, however, reach the
point where there was some deficiency in his apprehension. At the very
least, there were moments (‘ittot) at that time in which his intellect was
potentially iniquitous, and this is what is called het [sin] in Hebrew.42
Once ibn Kaspi had discovered a mechanism which neutralized

Solomon’s supernal wisdom, nothing was ruled out, and it is apparently
his position that in the king’s old age, his wives turned him away to the
point where he actually worshipped foreign gods.
41 The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago, 1963) 3:51, pp. 624-625.
42
Commentary to 11:3. The editor (Adnei Kesef p. 51) notes that V. Aptowitzer suggested
that ‘ittot be emended to ‘ivrut. Once one is aware of the Maimonidean basis for ibn
Kaspi’s suggestion, the impropriety of this emendation becomes self-evident. (In light
of our earlier discussion about Solomon and Moses, it is worth underscoring ibn Kaspi’s
explicit assertion that the latter, whose apprehension of God never flagged, was wiser
than the former.)
— 230 —
THE ROYAL POLICY OF THE WISEST OF KINGS
It has become abundantly clear that for some commentators, the

problem of Solomon’s sins was significantly exacerbated by the reports
of his exceptional wisdom. For others, who limited the sphere of his
wisdom and saw no intimate relationship between such wisdom and
piety, the connection was tenuous and marginal. But Solomon was
arguably guilty of more than religious error. His taxes and corvées,
expensive building projects, lavish palace life, and elaborate stables
appear to have engendered smoldering resentment which exploded into
flame after his death, destroying the Davidic empire and rending the
fabric of Israel. What are we to make of fundamental policy errors by
the wisest of men?
Rashi and R. Joseph Kara do not raise the question and are apparently
untroubled by it. This may be because their commentaries tend to focus
on the verses immediately before them, and this problem—if it is a
problem—arises only when one steps back and looks at the entire picture.43
In their immediate context, the biblical accounts of taxes and building
projects are part of the description of a glorious, highly successful reign.
Equally or even more important, the Northern European commentators
probably saw the rebellions of subject kings and the internal resistance
that culminated in secession in purely religious terms. These were divine
punishments for Solomon’s sins and need not be connected to his policies
by natural causation.
Radak and Ralbag explicitly defend Solomon against the people’s
charge that he had imposed a heavy yoke upon them (I Kings 12:4).
At earlier points in the commentaries, we were informed that the
difficult labor was done entirely by non-Israelite peoples. Both exegetes
maintained that the only corvée affecting real Jews was the one in
Lebanon, and Ralbag took pains to point out that it was arranged
so that the work would not be unduly burdensome.44 To Radak, the
complaints expressed to Rehoboam about Solomon’s taxation were
entirely unjustified.
43 For a related observation about Ashkenazic polemicists, see my forthcoming study, “On
the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity: The Search for the
Historical Jesus,” in the Festschrift for Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi.
44 See Radak on 5:27, Ralbag on 5:29 and 9:23, and to‘elet 15 at the end of chapter 11. Cf.
Rashi on 5:30 and R. Joseph Kara on 5:29-30 and 9:23.
— 231 —
They lived in great tranquility in his time, so that the entire taxation
was easy for them… Rather, God saw to it that they should concoct an
accusation in their discussion with Rehoboam so that they should secede
and crown Jeroboam.45
Ralbag reiterates the same point, though his more naturalistic

orientation impels him to explain the complaint not by an appeal to
divine intervention but as the result of the recent wars. Still, Ralbag
asserts that even now the request was for nothing more than a “slight”
alleviation of the burden, an elaboration of the biblical information which
underscores the reasonableness of Solomon’s policies.46 Indeed, one of
the lessons to be drawn from the account of Solomon’s reign is precisely
that the king should impose taxes and corvées to support his household
and his projects.47 Both Radak and Ralbag may well have sought to avoid
unforced criticism of Solomon, but their position also appears to result,
at least in the case of Ralbag, from a genuine political conviction about
the acceptability, even desirability, of substantial royal taxation.
On this issue, Abravanel’s stance is particularly instructive. He
himself served as a courtier for more than one king, and his complex
but fundamentally critical approach to monarchy is well known.48 It
is, then, striking though not surprising that he is the only one of the
six exegetes I have examined who evinces sensitivity to the dangers
inherent in Solomon’s life of ostentatious luxury supported by onerous
taxes. As we have seen, however, it is his position that at the height of
Solomon’s career, the king was blessed with all-embracing wisdom which
would presumably have prevented serious errors. Even when Abravanel
47 To‘elet 10 at the end of chapter 11. It is especially striking that at the conclusion of
this to‘elet affirming the desirability of such royal actions, Ralbag writes, “And this
has already been explained as well in Samuel’s statement when he explicated the law
of kingship.” But in his comment on Samuel’s oration (I Samuel 8:11), Ralbag took
the position that the provisions of “the law of the king” are not in fact legal rights
but reflect Samuel’s desire to make the people fearful of actions the king will take in
violation of the laws of the Torah.
48 Aviezer Ravitsky has recently provided an analysis of some aspects of this issue in “Kings
and Laws in Late Medieval Jewish Thought: Nissim of Gerona vs. Isaac Abrabanel,” in
Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction between Judaism and Other Cultures, ed. by Leo
Landman (New York, 1990), pp. 67-90; see notes 10 and 11 of his study for some of the
other secondary literature.
— 232 —
retreated for a moment and raised the possibility that this wisdom might,
after all, have been concentrated in a particular area, that area, we will
recall, was precisely “the management of household and state.” How,
then, could Solomon in his prime have pursued policies which sowed
the seeds of disaster?
The answer is that such policies are indeed unwise, but Solomon
never pursued them. Like Radak and Ralbag, Abravanel maintains that
the heavy labor was done by non-Israelites,49 but he goes further than his
predecessors in several respects. First, he underscores how objectionable
these policies would have been had Solomon really pursued them.
Scripture, he says, informs us of the true source of the king’s taxes to
prevent anyone from asking the following indignant questions:
Where did Solomon obtain all these resources which he expended upon the
Temple, his own palace, and other matters? Did he impose a tax upon his
nation and his righteous subjects, or did he confiscate their wealth by force
in accordance with the law of the king which Samuel mentioned to Saul?50
Second, he maintains that even the Gibeonites, who were the ones
assigned the difficult physical labor, “surely agreed to do this willingly.”51
Third, he insists that monetary taxation came entirely from non-Jewish
merchants engaged in international trade, “not from those doing business
inside his kingdom as the commentators thought.” Solomon imposed tariffs
similar to those that exist in the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds.
“None of Solomon’s wealth which he garnered came from his servants.
He took nothing from them by authority of the law of the king; rather, it
all came to him from the Gentile countries outside of his kingdom.”52 The
reader comes away from this passage with the unmistakable impression
that Solomon’s Jewish subjects paid nothing at all before the imposition
of war-related taxes in the king’s old age, though in the analysis of the
later complaints to Rehoboam, Abravanel does acknowledge the existence
of a substantial burden of taxation, which he appears to consider entirely
justified, even at the height of the reign.53
49
Commentary to 5:29, p. 492, and to 9:20, p. 539.
50
Commentary to 9:15, p. 539. Note the contrast to Ralbag’s to‘elet 10 cited in note 47
above.
51
Commentary to 5:29, p. 492.
52
Commentary to 10:15, p. 542. Cf. too the excursus on wisdom, p. 476.
53
— 233 —
Finally, Abravanel repeatedly lavishes unstinting praise upon a policy

as problematic as the accumulation of horses, which raises the specter
of outright sin. He cites and rejects the Rabbinic assertion that Solomon
violated the Deuteronomic prohibition, which applies, after all, only to
an excess of horses beyond what the interests of the state require. The
king’s horses, he says, were a source of glory and, more to the point, a
deterrent to any would-be aggressor; this was the very reason for the
peace that Solomonic Israel enjoyed.54
Unlike the other commentators, Abravanel is also sensitive to the
problem of Solomon’s profligate spending.
One might ask: Even though Solomon possessed extensive wealth, why did
he spend it so freely? After all, this would inevitably cause it to dwindle so
that he would become impoverished.
The answer is that enormous supplies of gold were constantly

arriving as a result of foreign trade, so that there was no danger that
the kingdom’s wealth would be depleted.55 Later, however, after his sin,
Solomon had to impose taxes both because of wars and because—for
reasons Abravanel does not specify—he stopped sending out merchant
vessels while still requiring substantial income to support his lavish way
of life.56 One wonders whether this was not precisely the possibility that
Solomon should have foreseen. Abravanel’s implicit response, I think, is
that because these problems arose only as a result of sin, Solomon did not
need to consider them earlier, given his reasonable, though ultimately
incorrect assumption that he would remain a righteous man.
Abravanel, then, is acutely attuned to the political dangers inherent in
the policies that Solomon appears to have pursued. Although his perception
of Solomonic wisdom prevents him from ascribing error to Solomon in
his prime, he does not solve the problem by endorsing such policies. The
solution is to deny that Solomon pursued them, to ascribe them to his old
age, or to argue, as in the case of lavish spending, that special circumstances
justified them in this unusual, perhaps unique situation.
54
The excursus on wisdom, p. 476; Commentary to 5:8, p. 487, where he cites the Talmudic
indictment; Commentary to 10:26, p. 544; the summary of Solomon’s reign in chapter
11, p. 551. In his commentary to Deuteronomy 17:14-20, he notes the Talmudic passage
without disagreement.
55
56
— 234 —
While Abravanel cannot entirely avoid flashes of inconsistency, he

stands out in his attempt to step back from the immediate context and
see the overarching pattern of the narrative. The result is a dynamic
portrait of Solomon that allows for a sharply drawn characterization at
any given moment. For most commentators, the king was a complex
figure of some ambiguity even at the peak of his powers—glorious,
brilliant, yet moderately flawed. Abravanel’s Solomon, on the other
hand, was almost infinitely wise and virtually perfect from the moment
of his dream until the sin of his old age, but before and especially after
that period his defects were considerable and even decisive. Not flawed
greatness, but unrealized potential followed by perfection followed in
turn by fatal sin.
The varied perceptions of Solomon’s wisdom and the consequent
disparities in the evaluation of his piety and policy reflect fundamental
differences in the cultural environments and worldviews of the exegetes
we have examined and tell us a great deal about the complex interplay
between texts and their interpreters. The attitude toward metaphysics, the
place of the sciences, political theory, the courtier experience, a narrow or
broad exegetical focus, a naturalistic or miraculous orientation, varying
degrees of resistance to ascribing sin to biblical heroes, the readiness or
refusal to deviate from Rabbinic tradition and interpretation—all these
play a role, sometimes peripheral, sometimes significant, sometimes
decisive, in the application of medieval wisdom to an understanding of
the wisest of men.
— 235 —
ON THE MORALITY OF THE PATRIARCHS

IN JEWISH POLEMIC AND EXEGESIS1
From: Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian Traditions

of Interpretation, ed. by Clemens Thoma and Michael Wyschogrod (Paulist
Press: New York, 1987), pp. 49-62. Reprinted with slight revisions in Modern
Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations, ed. by Shalom
Carmy (Jason Aronson: Northvale and London, 1996), pp. 131-146.
THE POLEMICAL WORLD OF THE MIDDLE AGES

On three separate occasions, Nahmanides denounces Abraham for
sinful or questionable behavior.2 The first of these passages asserts that
“our father Abraham inadvertently committed a great sin” by urging
Sarah to identify herself as his sister, and goes on to maintain that the
very decision to go to Egypt was sinful. Later, Nahmanides expresses
perplexity at Abraham’s rationalization that Sarah was truly his half-
sister; this appears to be an unpersuasive excuse for omitting the crucial
information that she was also his wife, and although Nahmanides
proceeds to suggest an explanation, his sense of moral disapproval
remains the dominant feature of the discussion. Finally, he regards the
treatment of Hagar by both Sarah and Abraham as a sin for which Jews
are suffering to this day at the hands of the descendants of Ishmael.
The bold, almost indignant tone of these passages is both striking and
significant—but it is not typical.
Most medieval Jews were understandably sensitive about ascriptions
of sin to the patriarchs, and the situation was rendered even more delicate
by the fact that the issue of patriarchal morality often arose in a highly
charged context in which Jews were placed on the defensive in the face of
1 It is a pleasure to thank my friend Professor Sid Z. Leiman for his careful reading of the
manuscript. I am particularly grateful to him for the references to Menahot and pseudo-
Jerome in n. 13, Sefer Hasidim and the midrashim in n. 14, and Ehrlich’s commentary
in n. 22.
2 Commentary to Genesis 12:10, 20:12, and 16:6.
— 236 —
On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic and Exegesis
a Christian attack. Two thirteenth-century Ashkenazic polemics reflect a

somewhat surprising Christian willingness to criticize Jacob as a means
of attacking his descendants. Since the patriarch was a Christian as well
as a Jewish hero, such attacks on his morality were problematical: Jacob
may be the father of carnal Israel, but he is the prototype of spiritual
Israel as well. While criticisms of this sort are consequently absent from
major Christian works, it is perfectly evident that no Jew would have
invented them. On the medieval street, then, Christians did not shrink
from such attacks on Jews and their forebears. Jacob, they said, was a
thief and a trickster; the implication concerning his descendants hardly
needed to be spelled out.
In Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne we are informed that Joseph Official met a
certain Dominican friar on the road to Paris who told him, “Your father
Jacob was a thief; there has been no consumer of usury to equal him, for
he purchased the birthright, which was worth a thousand coins, for a
single plate [of lentils] worth half a coin.”3 The technical impropriety of
the reference to usury merely underscores the pointed application of this
critique to medieval Jews. The next passage reports a Christian argument
that Jacob was a deceiver who cheated Laban by exceeding the terms of
their agreement concerning the sheep to which Jacob was entitled, and
this criticism is followed by the assertion that Simeon and Levi engaged
in unethical behavior when they deviously persuaded the Shechemites
to accept circumcision and then proceeded to kill them.4
With respect to Jacob, the Jewish response was conditioned by two
separate considerations acting in concert. First, religious motivations
quite independent of the polemical context prevented the perception of
Jacob as a sinner; second, the Christian attack itself called for refutation
rather than concession. Hence, Joseph5 responded with a remarkable
suggestion found also in Rashbam’s commentary that Jacob paid in full for
the birthright; the bread and lentils are to be understood as a meal sealing
the transaction or customarily following its consummation. As Judah
Rosenthal pointed out in his edition of Yosef ha-Meqanne, Rabbi Joseph
Bekhor Shor reacted with exasperation to the apparent implausibility of
this interpretation, which was almost surely motivated by both moral
3 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, ed. by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 40-41.
4 Rosenthal, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, pp. 41-42.
5 Despite the manuscript, this must refer to Joseph Official and not Joseph Bekhor Shor;
cf. the editor’s note, and see just below.
— 237 —
sensitivity and polemical need. As for Laban, the answer to the Christian
critique was that Jacob was the real victim of deception, and his treatment
of his father-in-law was marked by extraordinary scrupulousness.6
Joseph Official goes on to an uncompromising defense of Simeon
and Levi which is particularly interesting because this was the one
instance in which a concession to the Christian accusation was tactically
possible. Jacob, after all, had denounced their behavior, and even if his
initial concern dealt with the danger that could result from an adverse
Canaanite reaction rather than with the moral issue (Genesis 34:30), his
vigorous rebuke of his sons at the end of his life (Genesis 49:5-7) could
certainly have supported the assertion that he considered their action
morally reprehensible as well as pragmatically unwise. Nevertheless,
there is no hint of condemnation in Yosef ha-Meqanne; if Christians
denounced Simeon and Levi, then surely Jews were obligated to defend
them, especially since a sense of moral superiority was crucial to the
medieval Jewish psyche in general and to the polemicist in particular.7
Thus, Joseph tells us that the Shechemites regretted their circumcision
and were in any event planning to oppress Jacob’s family and take over
its property; consequently, their execution was eminently justified.8
There is a certain irony in the fact that the Christian question in
Yosef ha-Meqanne which immediately follows this series of objections to
patriarchal behavior begins, “After all, everyone agrees that Jacob was
a thoroughly righteous man; why then was he afraid of descending to
hell?”9 Although this is a return to the Christian stance that we ought
to expect, there is in fact one more incident in Jacob’s life that Christian
polemicists apparently utilized in their debate with Jews, and this is, of
course, his deception of his own father.
6 Rosenthal, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, loc. cit.
7 On this point, see my brief discussion in The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle
Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus with an Introduction, Translation and
Commentary (Northvale, NJ, 1996), pp. 25-27. I hope to elaborate in a forthcoming
study on the problem of exile in medieval polemic.
8 Rosenthal, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 42. The persistence of Jewish sensitivity to this
story in modern times can perhaps best be illustrated by a contemporary example of
Jewish black humor. Simeon and Levi—so the explanation goes—were just as concerned
as Jacob about adverse public opinion, and this is precisely why they arranged to have
the Shechemites undergo the judaizing ceremony of circumcision. Once it would be
perceived that it was a Jew who had been killed, no one would be concerned. Cf. Kli
Yakar to Genesis 35:25.
9 Rosenthal, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 42.
— 238 —
The anonymous Nizzahon Vetus presents the following argument:
“I am Esau your firstborn” [Genesis 27:19]. One can say that Jacob did not lie.
In fact, this can be said without distorting the simple meaning of the verse,
but by explaining it as follows: I am Esau your firstborn, for Esau sold him the
birthright in a manner as clear as day. It is, indeed, clear that Jacob was careful
not to state an outright lie from the fact that when Isaac asked him, “Are you
my son Esau?” he responded, “I am” [Genesis 27:24), and not, “I am Esau.”
They go on to say that because Jacob obtained the blessings through trickery,
they were fulfilled for the Gentiles and not the Jews. The answer is that even
the prophet Amos [sic] prayed for Jacob, for he is in possession of the truth,
as it is written, “You will grant truth to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, which
you have sworn unto our fathers” [Micah 7:20], that is, had not the truth
been with Jacob, then you would not have sworn to our fathers. 10
The pattern holds. Once again Christians attack the patriarch’s

morality; this time the consequences for his descendants are spelled out
with explicit clarity, and once again Jewish ingenuity is mobilized for an
unflinching, unqualified defense.11
Nevertheless, the pattern does not always hold. Polemicists will do
what is necessary to win whatever point appears crucial in a particular
context, and on one occasion at least we find two Jewish writers
displaying very little zeal in defending the questionable action of a
biblical hero. Their motivation is hardly mysterious: Jesus had cited this
action approvingly.
Jacob ben Reuben and the Nizzahon Vetus both comment on the
story in Matthew 12 in which Jesus defends the plucking of corn by his
10 Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate, p. 56.

11 For Rashi’s rather different defense of Jacob’s veracity as well as the persuasiveness
of the version in the Nizzahon Vetus for later Jews, see my commentary in The Jewish-
Christian Debate, pp. 246-247. It is worth noting that the Nizzahon Vetus also reports
a Christian argument that Moses’ delay in coming down from Mount Sinai (Exodus
32:1) renders him “a sinner and a liar” (p. 67). Mordechai Breuer has suggested (Sefer
Nizzahon Yashan [Jerusalem, 1978], p. 21, n. 57) that this argument may have originated
among Christian heretics. On the other hand, since it ends with the question “Why did
he delay?” it may have been leading to a Christian answer that Moses, who was not
really a sinner, was testing the Jews and found them wanting. The ancient rabbis, of
course, were generally not faced with the polemical concerns of the Middle Ages, and
on rare occasions the Talmud ascribes sin to the patriarchs even where the biblical
evidence does not require such a conclusion; see, for example, the accusations against
Abraham in Nedarim 32a.
— 239 —
hungry disciples on the Sabbath with reference to David’s eating of the

shewbread when he was hungry. In his late-twelfth-century Milhamot
ha-Shem,12 Jacob responds as follows:
How could he cite evidence from David’s eating of the shewbread when he
was fleeing and in a great hurry? If David behaved unlawfully by violating
the commandment on that one occasion when he was forced by the
compulsion of hunger and never repeated this behavior again, how could
your Messiah utilize this argument to permit the gathering of corn without
qualification?
More briefly, the author of the Nizzahon Vetus remarks, “If David
behaved improperly, this does not give them the right to pluck those ears
of corn on the Sabbath.”13 Although Jacob provided mitigation for David’s
behavior and the Nizzahon Vetus’s comments might be understood as a
counterfactual concession for the sake of argument (“even if I were to
agree that David behaved improperly”), the impression of sin is not only
allowed to stand but is actually introduced by the Jewish writers. Even
more striking, Jacob continued his argument by saying that once Jesus
was permitting every act of King David, “why did he not permit sexual
relations with married women since David had such relations with the
wife of Uriah?” Now, the Talmud had made the most vigorous efforts to
deny that Bathsheba was still married to Uriah and, indeed, that David
had sinned at all, and the insertion of this question—which was not
essential to the argument and is in fact missing from the parallel passage
in the Nizzahon Vetus—is a telling illustration of the impact of the search
for effective polemical rhetoric.14
Thus far we have seen Jewish defenses of biblical heroes for reasons both
religious and polemical, and criticisms of their behavior which arose from
12 Edited by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 148.

13 P. 182. It is important to note that the Talmud (Menahot 95b-96a) had suggested a legal
justification for what David had done. Note too the anomalous report in pseudo-Jerome
cited by L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 6 (Philadelphia, 1928), p. 243.
14 It is, of course, difficult to say what Jacob’s view of David’s relationship with Bathsheba
was in dispassionate, non-polemical moments. For Abravanel’s rejection of the rabbinic
exculpation of David (Shabbat 56a), see his commentary to 2 Samuel 11-12. See also the
very interesting remarks in Sefer Hasidim, ed. by J. Wistinetzki (Frankfurt am Main, 1924),
sec. 46 (p. 43)=R. Margulies’ edition (Jerusalem, 1957), sec. 174 (p. 181). Cf. also the less
striking references in Midrash Shmuel, ed. by S. Buber (Krakau, 1893), pp. 122-123, and
Seder Eliyyahu Rabbah, ed. by M. Ish-Shalom (Friedmann) (Vienna, 1902), p. 7.
— 240 —
a sensitive, straightforward reading of the text as well as from polemical

concerns. It remains to be noted that the particular ideology of a Jewish
commentator, if pursued with sufficient passion, could itself overcome the
profound inhibitions against denouncing the morality of the patriarchs. I
know of but one example of this phenomenon, but it is quite remarkable.
In his study of Jewish social thought in sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Poland, Haim Hillel Ben Sasson frequently pointed to the animus
against the wealthy displayed by the prominent preacher and exegete
Rabbi Ephraim Lunshitz. Among many examples of this animus, Ben
Sasson draws our attention to Lunshitz’s remarks about the rabbinic
comment that when Jacob remained alone prior to wrestling with
the angel, his purpose was to collect small vessels that he had left
behind. Before Lunshitz, Jews had universally understood this as an
exemplification of an admirable trait. Not so the author of the Kli Yakar:
“A majority of commentators agree that this angel is Sammael the officer
of Esau… whose desire is solely to blind (lesamme) the eyes. . . of the
intelligence.” Now, as long as Jacob refrained from the slightest sin,
Sammael could not approach him, but once Jacob was guilty of even
a small measure of sin, his immunity was lost. And for a rich man like
Jacob to remain behind in a dangerous place for a few vessels is indeed
the beginning of sin. Jacob had begun to blind himself, “for who is as
blind as the lovers of money about whom it is written, ‘The eyes of a man
are never satiated’ (Proverbs 27:20)?… Who is such a fool that he would
endanger himself for such a small item? Rather, it is a mocking heart
which turned him away from the straight path to succumb to such love
of money, which causes forgetfulness of God.”15
What makes this passage all the more noteworthy is that the
talmudic source contains an explicitly favorable evaluation: the righteous
care so much for their property because they never rob others (Hullin
91a). Moreover, if Lunshitz was uneasy with this talmudic evaluation,
nothing was forcing him to mention the passage in the first place; the
point is nowhere in the biblical text, and the Kli Yakar is in any event a
discursive, selective commentary, which could easily have skipped the
verse entirely. Clearly, he made the point because it served as an outlet
for one of his driving passions. Patriarchal immunity from criticism, even
in a traditional society, evidently had its limits.
15 Kli Yakar to Genesis 32:35. See Ben Sasson’s Hagut ve-Hanhagah (Jerusalem, 1959), pp. 118-119.
— 241 —
BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND JEWISH EXEGESIS

IN MODERN TIMES
As the Middle Ages gave way to the modern period, the content
and context of this issue were radically and fundamentally altered.
Inhibitions against criticizing biblical morality began to crumble,
and both Enlightenment ideologues and nineteenth-century scholars
gleefully pounced upon biblical passages that appeared morally
problematical. In the first instance, the target was the Bible as a whole
and, ultimately, Christianity itself; in the second, it was usually the
Hebrew Bible in particular, whose allegedly primitive ethics served as a
preparation and a foil for the superior morality of the Gospels. In effect,
an argument originally directed against Christianity was refocused to
attack Judaism alone.16
Modern biblical scholarship, then, transformed the essential terms
of this discussion, and the transformation was so profound that it
ultimately inspired a reaction strikingly different from the standard
medieval response. The crucial point is that the attack was no longer
on the morality of the biblical personalities. To many Bible critics, the
very existence of the patriarchs was in question, and the historicity
of specific accounts of their behavior was surely deemed unreliable
in the extreme. The attack now was on the morality of the biblical
author or authors—an attack that was almost impossible in the
premodern period, when the author was ultimately presumed to be
God Himself.17
Consequently, it now became possible—perhaps even polemically
desirable—for traditionally inclined Jews (whether or not they were
strict fundamentalists) to take a different approach by driving a wedge
between hero and author. There were indeed occasional imperfections
in the moral behavior of the patriarchs, but these are condemned
16 Cf. the similar medieval phenomenon in which arguments by Christian heretics against
the Hebrew Bible were reworked by Orthodox Christians in their polemic with Jews.
See my Jewish-Christian Debate, p. 6.
17 For an exception, note Luther’s remarks on Esther in his Table Talk: “I am so hostile
to this book that I wish it did not exist, for it judaizes too much, and has too much
heathen naughtiness.” Cited approvingly by L. B. Paton in his discussion of “the moral
teaching of the book” in The International Critical Commentary: The Book of Esther (1908;
reprint, Edinburgh, 1951), p. 96.
— 242 —
by the Torah and required punishment and expiation. Whatever

the exegetical merits of this approach, and they are, as we shall see,
considerable, it would have been extraordinarily difficult both tactically
and psychologically had the attack of the critics still been directed at the
patriarchs themselves.
There is, however, a deeper issue here. The assertion that the Bible
disapproves of certain behavior was not based on explicit verses of
condemnation; rather, it depended on a sensitive reading of long stretches
of narrative in which patterns of retribution and expiation emerged. On
the simplest level, this approach demonstrated that the morality of the
Torah is not inferior to that of Bible critics. On a deeper level, it undercut
the effort of some critics to utilize the moral “deficiencies” of certain
passages to establish divergent levels of moral sensitivity in the Pentateuch
as a whole and in Genesis in particular. But on the profoundest level—at
least for some proponents of this approach—it went to the heart of the
essential claims of the higher criticism by arguing in a new way for the
unity of Genesis. Many of the newly discovered patterns cut through the
documents of the critics and emerged only from a unitary perception of
the entire book; since the patterns seemed genuine, the only reasonable
conclusion was that the unity of Genesis was no less real than its literary
subtleties. These observations were not confined to narratives bearing
on the morality of the patriarchs, but it is there that some of the most
striking examples were to be found.
In the first half of this century, a number of Jewish writers—Martin
Buber, Benno Jacob, Umberto Cassutto—began to note such patterns.
Before going further, we are immediately confronted by a challenging,
almost intractable methodological problem. I have suggested that
this revisionist reading of the Bible is rooted in part in traditionalist
sentiments, that it presented a new way of responding to people critical
of sacred Jewish texts. At the same time, I consider the essential insights
justified by an objective examination of the evidence (although my own
motives are surely as “suspect” as those of the figures under discussion).
Decades ago, Jacob Katz argued that one may not readily assign ulterior
motives to someone whose position appears valid in light of the sources
that he cites,18 and more recently Joseph Dan has criticized a work
18 Jacob Katz “Mahloqet ha-Semikhah bein Rabbi Yaaqov Beirav ve-ha-Ralbah,” Zion 15,
secs. 3-4 (1951): 41.
— 243 —
about Gershom Scholem for attributing his view of kabbalah to factors

other than his accurate reading of the kabbalistic texts themselves.19
Fundamentally, these methodological caveats are very much in order,
and in certain instances they are decisive. At the same time, undeniable
intuitions tell us that even people who are essentially correct can be
partially motivated by concerns that go beyond the cited evidence, and
there ought to be some way to determine when this is likely to be so. In
our case, a figure like Cassutto was clearly concerned not only with the
unity of Genesis but with the standing and reputation of the biblical
text. Moreover, despite the fact that he was not a fundamentalist and
that he was no doubt sincere in his protestation that his essential
conclusions flowed solely from an objective examination of the text,
the consistency of his conservative tendencies in issue after issue where
the evidence could often point either way surely reveals a personality
that was inclined to seek traditional solutions.20
In contemporary biblical scholarship, such an inclination frequently
labels one a neo-fundamentalist whose conclusions are rejected almost
a priori. This is a manifest error with the most serious consequences.
Even people with much stronger traditionalist tendencies than
Cassutto can be motivated by those tendencies to seek evidence that
turns out to be real. Kepler’s laws are no less valid because he sought
them as a result of his religious convictions. In this instance, a change
in the attack on biblical morality liberated and then impelled people
with traditionalist inclinations to see things in the text that had gone
virtually unnoticed before. At first, these figures were necessarily non-
fundamentalists; genuine Jewish fundamentalists would not easily
shed their inhibitions about criticizing the patriarchs. With the passage
of time, however, even some uncompromisingly Orthodox Jews could
adopt this approach,21 while others—probably a majority—would
19 Qiryat Sefer 54 (1979/80): 358-362. Dan does note (p. 361) that even in Scholem’s case,
extratextual considerations can play some role.
20 While maintaining that Cassutto’s work in essentially anti-traditional, Yehezkel
Kaufmann nevertheless pointed to several examples of this conservatism; see “Me-
Adam ad Noah,” in Mi-Kivshonah shel ha-Yetzirah ha-Miqra’it (Tel Aviv, 1966), p. 217.
21 Yissakhar Jacobson, Binah ba-Miqra (Tel Aviv,1960), pp 33-36; Nehama Leibowitz,
Iyyunim be-Sefer Bereshit (Jerusalem, 1966), pp. 185-188 (English trans., Studies in
Bereshit [Genesis] [Jerusalem, 1976], pp. 264-269); Leah Frankel, Peraqim ba-Miqra
(Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 102-104, 143-144.
— 244 —
retain unabated the religious inhibitions of the past;22 fundamentalism

is far from a monolithic phenomenon.
THE BIBLE’S JUDGMENT OF PATRIARCHAL BEHAVIOR:

THE CASE OF JACOB’S DECEPTION
Let us turn now to a central example of an approach that we have thus far
discussed only in the abstract. At Rebecca’s behest, Jacob deceived Isaac
by pretending to be Esau and thereby obtained a blessing intended for
his brother. We have already seen a medieval Jewish defense of Jacob’s
behavior, and in the entire corpus of premodern Jewish exegesis there
is hardly a whisper of criticism.23 In the twentieth century, however,
a number of scholars have noted a series of indications that make it
22 Professor Lawrence Kaplan has called my attention to Rabbi A. Kotler’s “How To Teach
Torah,” Light 10, 12, 13, 15, 19 (1970/71), republished as a pamphlet by Beth Medrash
Govoha of Lakewood. A Hebrew version appears in Rabbi Kotler’s Osef Hiddushei Torah
(Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 402-411. “If there were any fault,” writes the author, “—however
slight (Hebrew: dak min ha-dak)—in any of the Ovos [patriarchs], the very essence of
the Jewish people would have been different” (English pamphlet, p. 6=Hebrew p. 404).
Rabbi Kotler makes it clear that his work is a reaction to modern heresy (kefirah), which
perceives the patriarchal narratives as ordinary stories. On the other hand, Professor
Kaplan notes that the popular Pentateuch and Haftorahs edited by Rabbi J. H. Hertz
(1936) extols Scripture precisely because it “impartially relates both the failings and
the virtues of its heroes” (commentary to Genesis 20:12, citing one of the passages
from Nahmanides with which we began). Similarly, Arnold B. Ehrlich asserts that
Scripture does not conceal the faults of the patriarchs; see Miqra ki-Peshuto, vol. 1 (New
York, 1898; reprint, New York, 1969), pp. 33, 73 (to Genesis 12:14, 16 and 25:27); his
German Randglossen zur Hebräischen Bibel (Leipzig, 1908; reprint, Hildesheim, 1968)
omits the first and more important passage. Ehrlich, a brilliant maverick who was
neither a traditionalist nor a conventional critic, was in many respects sui generis and
resists inclusion in any neat classificatory scheme. Finally, Rabbi Shalom Carmy has
called my attention to the willingness of representatives of the nineteenth-century
Musar movement to acknowledge minor imperfections in the patriarchs as part of the
movement’s special approach to the analysis of human failings.
23 David Sykes, in his Patterns in Genesis (Ph.D. diss., Bernard Revel Graduate School,
Yeshiva University, 1984), notes Zohar, va-Yeshev, 185b, which indicates that Jacob was
punished for this act because even though something is done properly, God judges the
pious for even a hairbreadth’s deviation from the ideal. He also points to the Yemenite
manuscript cited in Torah Shelemah, vol. 6, p. 1432, no. 181 (where the editor also notes
the Zohar passage), which indicates that Jacob was deceived by his sons with a goat
(Genesis 37:31) just as he had deceived his own father with a goat (Genesis 27:16). See
also below, note 25.
— 245 —
exceedingly difficult to deny that the Torah implicitly but vigorously

condemns Jacob’s action.
First, the deception was motivated by a misreading of Isaac’s
intentions. The blind patriarch bestowed three blessings on his children:
the first to Jacob masquerading as Esau, the second to Esau, and the third
to Jacob. It was only in the third blessing, when he knew for the first time
that he was addressing Jacob, that he bestowed “the blessing of Abraham
to you and your seed with you so that you may inherit the land in which
you dwell which God gave to Abraham” (Genesis 28:4). Although other
interpretations of this sequence are possible, the most straightforward
reading is that Rebecca and Jacob had gravely underestimated their
husband and father. Isaac had indeed intended to bless Esau with
temporal supremacy, but the blessing of Abraham—the inheritance
of the holy land and the crucial mission of the patriarchs—had been
reserved for Jacob from the outset. The deception was pragmatically as
well as morally dubious.24
Jacob is then subjected to a series of misfortunes and ironies whose
relationship to the initial deception cannot be accidental. He must work
for his “brother” Laban (Genesis 29:15) instead of having his brothers
work for him (Genesis 27:37); he is deceived by the substitution of one
sibling for another in the darkness and is pointedly informed that “in
our place” the younger is not placed before the older (Genesis 29:26); his
sons deceive him with Joseph’s garment and the blood of a goat (Genesis
37:31) just as he had deceived Isaac with Esau’s garments and the skin
of a goat (Genesis 27:15-16); his relationship with Esau is precisely the
opposite of the one that was supposed to have been achieved—Esau is
the master (Genesis 32:5, 6, 19; 33:8, 13, 14, 15) to whom his servant
Jacob (32:5, 19; 33:5, 14) must bow (33:3, and contrast 27:29). Moreover,
Jacob’s debilitating fear of his brother results from the very act that was
supposed to have established his supremacy.25
24 Binah ba-Miqra, loc. cit. Cf. also Malbim on Genesis 27:1 and Leibowitz, Iyyunim, pp.
193-195.
25 For premodern references to such arguments, see note 23; Midrash Tanhuma, ed. by S.
Buber (Vilna, 1885), Va-Yetzei 11, p. 152, and the parallel passage in Aggadat Bereshit,
ed. by S. Buber (Krakau, 1902), ch. (48) [49], p. 99, where Leah tells Jacob that he has no
right to complain about being deceived since he too is a deceiver (although the midrash
does not explicitly endorse her criticism); Eliezer Ashkenazi (sixteenth century) Ma‘asei
ha-Shem, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1972), p. 115b, who comments on Laban’s remark about the
younger and older but apparently considers it evidence of Laban’s nastiness rather than
— 246 —
There is, then, ample evidence that Jacob had to undergo a series
of punishments to atone for his act of deception. It is almost curious,
however, that no one has noted an additional—and climactic—element
in this series, which can fundamentally transform our understanding of
a crucial aspect of the Joseph narrative. One reason why the point may
have been missed is that there are no key words calling it to our attention,
and the presence of such words not only alerts the reader but serves as a
methodological guide preventing undisciplined speculation. At the same
time, we cannot permit ourselves to ignore grand thematic patterns, and
in this instance I think that such a pattern has been overlooked.
Leah Frankel, utilizing the “key word” approach, has noted that
the root meaning “to deceive” (resh-mem-yod) appears in Genesis three
times. The first two instances, in which Isaac tells Esau that his brother
deceitfully took his blessing (Genesis 27:35) and Jacob asks Laban why
he deceived him (Genesis 29:25), are clearly related to our theme.26
Perhaps, she suggests, the third instance, in which Simeon and Levi
speak deceitfully to Shechem (Genesis 34:13), is intended to indicate
that Jacob was “to taste deceit carried out by sons. He would have to
stand in the place where his father stood when his son Jacob deceived
him” [her emphasis].27 While this approach is not impossible, it seems
Jacob’s culpability. Note too Genesis Rabbah 67:4, which speaks of later Jews crying out
in anguish because of Esau’s agonized exclamation in Genesis 27:34, and the somewhat
more ambiguous midrash of unknown provenance cited by Rashi on Psalms 80:6, in
which Jews shed tears as a result of Esau’s tears; see Leibowitz, Iyyunim, p. 190. Such
isolated observations over a period of more than a millennium and a half do not, I think,
undermine or even significantly affect the thesis of this paper. For twentieth-century
references, often containing additional arguments, see Martin Buber, Die Schrift und
ihre Verdeutschung (Berlin, 1936), pp. 224-226; Benno Jacob, Das Erste Buch der Tora:
Genesis (Berlin, 1934), p. 591 (abridged English translation, New York, 1974), pp. 197-
198; Umberto Cassutto, La Questione della Genesi (Florence, 1934), esp. p. 227; idem,
Torat ha-Te‘udot (Jerusalem, 1959), pp. 55-56=The Documentary Hypothesis (Jerusalem,
1961), pp. 63-64; idem, “Yaakov,” Entziklopediyyah Miqra’it (EBH), vol. 3, cc. 716-722;
Jacobson, Leibowitz, and Frankel (see note 21); Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis
(New York, 1966), pp. 183-184; Jacob Milgrom in Conservative Judaism 20 (1966): 73-79;
J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis (Assen and Amsterdam, 1975), pp. 128-130, 200,
223, 227; Sykes, op. cit. (note 23). With the exception of Fokkelman, all these figures,
whether they are fundamentalists or not, more or less fit the traditionalist typology
that I have proposed. Needless to say, the evident validity of many of these exegetical
suggestions must (or at least should) eventually affect biblical scholars of all varieties.
26 Cf. Tanhuma and Aggadat Bereshit in the previous note.
27 Peraqim ba-Miqra, p. 104.
— 247 —
unlikely; although Jacob suffers indirect consequences from Simeon and

Levi’s trickery, he is in no sense its object, and the resemblance to his
own deception is exceedingly remote.
But there is another act of filial deception in Genesis whose similarity
to Jacob’s seems unmistakable. Jacob concealed his identity from his
father by pretending to be someone else. Similarly, his own misery and
anguish reach their climax when his son Joseph conceals his identity and
pretends to be something other than what he truly is. The fact that the
direct victims of Joseph’s deception were the brothers may be the main
reason why this observation has been missed, but it is perfectly clear
that Jacob is as much a victim as his sons. This point alone should make
us reevaluate the key element of the Joseph cycle as the culmination
of the process of expiation suffered by the patriarch, and the essential
argument does not depend on anything more. But there is more. Joseph
deceives his father while providing him with food just as Jacob deceived
his own father while bringing him the “savory food” which he liked
(Genesis 27:7, 14, 17, 25). It is not just that the brothers are Jacob’s
messengers and will report Joseph’s deceptive words to their father
(although this is quite sufficient); in the final confrontation between
Joseph and Judah, the latter is explicitly a surrogate for Jacob, acting
to protect Benjamin in loco parentis (Genesis 44:32).28 Moreover, there is
only one other place in Genesis where one person speaks to another with
as many protestations of servility as Judah addresses to his “master” in
that climactic confrontation; that place, of course, is the description of
Jacob’s servile behavior toward Esau upon his return from the house
of Laban (Genesis 32:4-6, 18-21; 33:1-15).29 In short, Joseph has not
28 It may be worth asking (with considerable diffidence) whether Judah’s status as a

surrogate for Jacob may help us resolve an old, intractable crux. In Joseph’s second
dream, the sun, moon, and eleven stars, presumably symbolizing his father, mother,
and brothers, bow down to him (Genesis 37:9-10). But his mother was already dead at
the time of the dream; less seriously, Jacob does not bow to Joseph until Genesis 47:30,
by which time our intuition tells us (I think) that the dreams ought to have already been
fulfilled. Perhaps two of the brothers who bow to Joseph represent both themselves and
a parent; Judah is the surrogate for Jacob, and Benjamin, who is pointedly described
as his mother’s only surviving child (Genesis 44:20), is the representative of Rachel.
Joseph’s parents bow down to him through their offspring.
29 For whatever this is worth, Jacob addresses Esau as “my master” seven times in these
verses (32:6, 19; 33:8, 13, 14 [twice], 15 [32:5 is not addressed to Esau]) and Judah
addresses Joseph as “my master” seven times in his final speech (44:18 [twice], 19,
20, 22, 24, 33). Since seven is clearly a significant number and since Jacob is explicitly
— 248 —
merely concealed his identity from his father; by threatening Jacob’s

family from a position of mastery, he has actually taken on the role of
Esau.30 The parallel to Jacob’s deception is genuinely striking.31
LITERARY PATTERNS AND THE DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS
During the last decade, J. P. Fokkelman,32 Robert Alter,33 and Michael

Fishbane34 have searched the narratives of Genesis for patterns out of
purely literary motivations, sometimes with the implicit assumption that
the conventional documentary hypothesis remains virtually unchanged
no matter how many interlocking themes are discerned. In a reaction
to one of Alter’s early articles on this subject, I wrote that “I think he
underestimates the impact of such literary analysis on the documentary
hypothesis. You can allow the ‘redactor’ just so much freedom of action
before he turns into an author using various traditions as ‘raw material.’
Such an approach must ultimately shake the foundations of the regnant
critical theory, not merely tinker with its periphery.”35 More recently,
said to have bowed to Esau seven times (Genesis 33:3 [“complete subjection,” says
Fokkelman, in Narrative Art in Genesis, p. 223]), it is at least possible that this is more
than coincidence.
30 Note too that Jacob was most concerned with Esau’s threat to Rachel and her child
(Genesis 33:2), and it was Rachel’s child Benjamin who was singled out for persecution
by the Egyptian viceroy. Finally, Professor David Shatz has called my attention to the
use of the rare verb stm, “to hate,” with regard to both Esau’s hatred of Jacob (Genesis
27:41) and the brothers fear that Joseph would hate them (Genesis 50:15).
31 The fact that Joseph’s actions were no doubt motivated by other factors involving his
brothers does not, of course, refute the perception that we are witnessing the final step
in a divine plan to purge Jacob of his sin. It is, in fact, possible that an even later incident
in Genesis is related to Jacob’s deception of Isaac. The successful expiation of that sin may
be symbolized by Jacob’s ability, despite his failing eyesight, to discern the difference in
the destinies of his older and younger grandsons (Genesis 48:10-20). Cf. Benno Jacob,
Das Erste Buch, p. 884 (called to my attention by David Sykes), and Cassutto, La Questione
della Genesi, p. 232. (It need hardly be said that this new approach does not end with a
denunciation of biblical heroes. After a process of retribution and moral development,
the ethical standing of the patriarch is beyond reproach.) Finally, it must be stressed that
other moral questions like the scriptural evaluation of the treatment of Hagar and the
behavior of the young Joseph are also susceptible to this mode of analysis.
32 See n. 25.
33 The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York, 1981).
34 Text and Texture (New York, 1979).
35 Commentary 61:3 (March, 1976): 16. It may be worth asking whether Shakespeare
— 249 —
the point has been made with vigor and documentation in David Sykes’s
dissertation, Patterns in Genesis.36 To Alter’s credit, he does confront
the question in his later book, and although his conclusions are by no
means traditional, they are not wholly consonant with those of critical
orthodoxy.37
It is becoming clearer from year to year that Genesis is replete
with linguistic and thematic patterns of subtlety and power which run
through the warp and woof of the entire work. Despite the overwhelming
force generated by a critical theory that has held sway for generations,
scholars will not be able to hide forever behind the assertion that they
are studying the art of a redactor as that word is usually understood. The
issue will have to be joined.
has ever been described as the redactor of the various Hamlet documents because he
worked with earlier, related stories.
36 See n. 23. My affirmation of the validity of this general approach does not, of course,
imply an endorsement of every pattern or set of patterns that has been suggested, and
it is self-evident that some proposals will be more persuasive than others. This mode
of interpretation will always be vulnerable to the charge of arbitrary and subjective
eisegesis. Nevertheless, such is the fate of almost all literary analysis, and a combination
of methodological guidelines and a healthy dose of common sense can minimize, though
never eliminate, undisciplined speculation. In any case, I am thoroughly persuaded that
the recent literature contains more than enough convincing examples to sustain the
essential point.
37 P. 20, and especially chap. 7 (pp. 131-154). In the present climate, it requires some
courage to express such views, and Alter has already been accused of involvement
in (horribile dictu) “the new fundamentalism” (and he has already denied it); see
Commentary 77:2 (February 1984): 14. Cf. also Fokkelman’s very brief comment on
the issue in Narrative Art, p. 4.
— 250 —
YEARNING F OR
REDEMPTION
Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism:
THREE TYPOLOGICAL THEMES

IN EARLY JEWISH MESSIANISM:
MESSIAH SON OF JOSEPH, RABBINIC
CALCULATIONS, AND THE FIGURE OF ARMILUS
From: AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies
10 (1985): 141-164.
The messianic dream owes its roots to biblical prophecy and its rich
development to generations of sensitive and creative exegetes anxiously
awaiting redemption. Scripture itself is less than generous in providing
detailed information about the end of days, so ungenerous, in fact,
that some modern scholars have expressed skepticism about the very
appearance of a messianic figure in the biblical text.1 While this skepticism
is excessive, it reflects a reality which troubled the ancients no less than
the moderns and left room for the diversity and complexity that mark
the messianic idea by late antiquity.
In the first centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple,
many Jews were no doubt content to leave the messianic hope as an
article of faith whose precise contours would be elucidated at the time
of its fulfillment.2
For others, however, it exercised a fascination that sometimes
bordered on obsession, and such Jews looked with both eagerness and
frustration at the messianic material available in Scripture. The paucity
of detail was simultaneously discouraging and stimulating, serving as
obstacle for the fainthearted and catalyst for the daring. The intense
desire to know the events, the time, the nature, the heroes, and the
1 Some examples are cited in James H. Charlesworth, “The Concept of the Messiah in
the Pseudepigrapha,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 11.19.1, ed. by
Wolfgang Haase (Berlin and New York, 1979), p. 189, n. 4.
2 Jacob Neusner’s Messiah in Context (Philadelphia, 1984) argues at length for the relative
insignificance of the Messiah in most early rabbinic works.
— 253 —
villains of the end of days could not be satisfied by an examination of

the explicit record of biblical prophecy, and the determined messianic
theorist turned perforce to more creative approaches. The most fruitful
of these was the enterprise we know as typology—the utilization of the
figures, events, and periods of the past to illuminate the messianic age.
The crucial “type,” which left its mark on virtually every aspect of
messianic speculation, was the great redemption of the past. “As in the days
of your exodus from the land of Egypt will I show him marvelous things”
(Mic. 7:15). On the most obvious level, this meant that the overt miracles
of the period of the exodus could be expected to return. Hence, “the Holy
One, blessed be He, will in the future bring upon Edom all the plagues that
He inflicted on the Egyptians.”3 As in the desert, Jews will enjoy the manna
and will have no need of the light of sun or moon.4 Theudas, like Joshua,
was to split the waters of the Jordan,5 a Jewish prophet would repeat the
miracle of Jericho at Jerusalem,6 and a man would arise who would again
command an obedient sun to stop in its tracks.7
It is not, however, only in the realm of the overtly miraculous that
themes of the first redemption will recur in the future. The Midrash
informs us that the final redeemer, like Moses, will make himself known
to his people and then become hidden from them before revealing himself
once again at the end.8 The prophet who was going to bring down the
walls of Jerusalem hailed, like Moses, from Egypt.9 Matthew places Jesus
in Egypt in a passage whose dubious historicity makes its typological
scheme all the more striking.10 Like Moses, Jesus fasts forty days and
3 Tanhuma, ed. Buber, II, p. 43 and parallels. See L. Ginzberg, Eine Unbekannte Jüdische
Sekte (New York and Pressburg, 1922), p. 334 (hereafter cited as Sekte) = Monatsschrift
für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 58 (1914): 412 (hereafter cited as MGWJ)
= An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York, 1976), p. 234 (hereafter cited as Sect).
4 Sekte, pp. 335-336 = MGWJ, pp. 413-414 = Sect, p. 235.
5 Josephus, Antiquities 20.5.1.
6 Ibid. 20.8.6.
7 Sibylline Oracles 5.256-259. See H. M. Teeple, The Mosaic Eschatological Prophet
(Philadelphia, 1957), pp. 10-11 (and note the references on pp. 29-31 concerning the
exodus as a prototype of the final redemption). Cf. also G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (New
York, 1973), p. 98.
8 Be-Midbar Rabbah 11:3; Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 2:22; Ruth Rabbah 5:6; Pesikta Rabbati 15,
ed. Friedmann, p. 72b (cf. esp. n. 63 there); Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, ed. Buber, p. 49b.
See also Sekte, p. 335 = MGWJ, p. 413 = Sect, p. 234.
9 Or at least he said so. See Antiquities 20.8.6.
10 Matt. 2:14-15. The fact that the plain meaning of Hosea 11:1 refers to the exodus means
that Matthew’s citation of that verse strengthens rather than weakens the typological
— 254 —
forty nights in the desert,11 and messianic forerunners in the first century
were to fulfill the words of Hosea (2:16-17) and Ezekiel (20:35-36) by
bringing the Jews into the wilderness in preparation for redemption.12
Finally, the rabbis inform us that in light of God’s promise that He will
give us joy in accordance with the duration of our suffering (Ps. 90:15),
the messianic age will endure as long as the forty-year sojourn in the
desert or the four-hundred-year period of the Egyptian exile.13
While the significance of typology in Jewish messianism is beyond
question, there are several areas where its role has been inadequately
appreciated, and a reexamination of three controversial messianic topics
through the prism of typology will, I think, yield valuable and intriguing
results.
The messianic precursor from the tribe of Ephraim who goes by the name
Messiah son of Joseph is an anomalous figure who has properly aroused
intense scholarly interest. In the most common scenario, he fights the
enemies of Israel with considerable success, only to fall on the field of
battle shortly before the triumphant advent of Messiah son of David. No
such figure makes anything resembling a clear appearance in the Hebrew
Bible, and since a dying Messiah is both inherently mysterious and
superficially related to Christian belief, unremitting efforts to trace his
origins have produced an abundance of diverse and creative theories.
A recent article by Joseph Heinemann proposing a revolutionary
reinterpretation of this redeemer begins with an excellent summary and
evaluation of the major theories, and the interested reader can consult
this compact and convenient analysis.14 One of these theories, which
interpretation.
11 Matt. 4:2. This, of course, is a miracle, but not a redemptive one.
12 Antiquities 20.8.6; War 2.13.4. On the typology of Moses, see Teeple, Mosaic Eschatological
Prophet, passim; S. Isser, The Dositheans: A Samaritan Sect in Late Antiquity (Leiden,
1976), pp. 131-142; Vermes, Jesus the Jew, pp. 97-98, and esp. his references in n. 61.
13 B. Sanhedrin 99a; Pesikta Rabbati 1, p. 4a.
14 “The Messiah of Ephraim and the Premature Exodus of the Tribe of Ephraim,” Harvard
Theological Review 68 (1975): 1-16. A Hebrew version of the article had appeared
in Tarbiz 40 (1971): 450-461, and has been reprinted in Heinemann’s Aggadot ve-
Toldoteihen (Jerusalem, 1974), pp. 131-141. References here will be to the version in
— 255 —
Heinemann (along with most other scholars) rejects, is a typological

one suggested long ago by Louis Ginzberg. The rabbis, Ginzberg noted,
believed that the tribe of Ephraim had left Egyptian bondage for the
land of Israel before the appointed hour, and the Ephraimites’ efforts
at military conquest had ended in death on the field of battle. Since the
ultimate recapitulation of the first redemption is at the very heart of
rabbinic messianism, such an event could not go unreflected at the end of
days; hence, there will arise an Ephraimite Messiah whose early struggle
for redemption will end in death at the hands of the enemies of Israel.15
The essential argument against this extremely attractive proposal
was made by Viktor Aptowitzer and is endorsed by Heinemann. The
Ephraimite exodus, Aptowitzer wrote, was a “sinful undertaking” because
of its effort to effect a premature redemption, and messianic parallels
are to miracles, “not sacrilegious undertakings, not catastrophes.”16 In
Heinemann’s paraphrase, “The technique of ‘analogy’ is applied only to
miracles and the like, not to events given a negative evaluation.”17 Finally,
the sources demonstrate no negative attitude toward Messiah son of
Joseph, who, unlike the Ephraimites, is far from a total failure.
Let us leave this explanation for the moment and proceed to an
examination of the core of Heinemann’s article, which will inadvertently
lead us toward a reaffirmation of Ginzberg’s typological interpretation.
Heinemann’s striking thesis is that the story of Messiah son of Joseph did
not originally envision his tragic death; on the contrary, this Messiah was
a successful warrior hero whose genesis requires no special explanation
in light of the proliferation of messianic figures in this period (Elijah-
Phineas, Melchizedek, and the Priestly Messiah of the Dead Sea Scrolls
and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs). Even though the earliest
datable discussion of Messiah son of Joseph refers to his death,18 the
HTR, where the summary of earlier theories appears on pp. 1-6.

15 Ginzberg, Sekte, pp. 336-339 = MGWJ, pp. 414-417 = Sect, pp. 235-238. The rabbinic
sources about the Ephraimites are noted by Ginzberg and discussed by Heinemann,
“Messiah of Ephraim,” pp. 10-13.
16 Parteipolitik der Hasmonäerzeit im Rabbinischen und Pseudoepigraphischen Schrifttum
(Vienna and New York, 1927), p. 107.
17 “Messiah of Ephraim,” p. 4. In the Hebrew, “and the like” was the stronger “and acts of
salvation” (‫)ומעשי ישועה‬, which reflects Aptowitzer’s assertion more closely. Whether
neutral acts, which are neither redemptive nor sinful, would be recapitulated is left
ambiguous.
18 The second reference in B. Sukkah 52a. On the problems of dating the earlier reference
— 256 —
original form of the story is preserved in those later Midrashim which

make no such reference. This follows from two considerations. First, “if
the death in battle of the Messiah son of Joseph was a generally accepted
doctrine, it is quite inconceivable that a good many of the sources
should ignore it; this is not the sort of ‘detail’ which may accidentally
be omitted.” Second, some of those sources speak of this Messiah as a
victorious redeemer. The failure of scholars to notice the absence of the
death motif results from “a kind of ‘optical illusion’ which makes one
see what is said explicitly in some of the sources also in the ones which
know nothing of it.”19
Since the death of Messiah son of Joseph could not have been ignored
once it was known, it follows that although the passages oblivious of
his death are embedded in later sources, they must predate the second-
century source which knows that he will die. The question now becomes
not where Messiah son of Joseph comes from but what it was in the
second century C.E. that brought about the motif of his death. To this
Heinemann replies: the Bar Kokhba experience. Disappointed Jews
attempted to retain faith in some sort of messianic role for their slain
leader, and so they associated him with the heroic Messiah son of Joseph,
now transformed into a tragic hero who will fall in battle.
At the same time, Heinemann argues, another, unrelated legend was
undergoing a radical metamorphosis. The Mekhilta in Beshallah regards
the Ephraimites who left Egypt prematurely as arrogant rebels who “kept
not the covenant of God and refused to walk in his law” (Ps. 78:10);
other sources, however, regard them as victims of an error in calculation,
not apparently as sinners, while one source, which identifies them with
the dead resurrected by Ezekiel, must surely consider them “essentially
righteous men.”20
The generation of Bar Kokhba, Heinemann says, cannot have been
responsible for a story that reflects “complacent, righteous condemnation”
of people who attempt to hasten redemption, with all that such
condemnation would imply about so many members of that generation,
on that page, see J. Klausner, Ha-Ra‘ayon ha-Meshihi be-Yisrael (Jerusalem, 1927), pp.
318-319.
19 Heinemann, “Messiah of Ephraim,” pp. 6-8.
20 Ibid., pp. 10-13. Heinemann attributes special significance to this last source (B.
Sanhedrin 92b and elsewhere); I have downplayed it somewhat for a reason that will
soon become evident.
— 257 —
including R. Akiva. Thus, the uncompromisingly negative attitude must

have preceded the Bar Kokhba experience, while those who shared that
experience transformed the old view of the Ephraimites and regarded
them as victims of an error or even as tragic heroes. Finally, Heinemann
suggests that because the Ephraimite exodus came to be associated with
contemporary events, Bar Kokhba himself became connected with that
tribe and was ultimately identified with the old, newly transformed figure
of Messiah son of Joseph.
This is a stimulating, often brilliant article which is nonetheless only
partly persuasive. The revolutionary thesis about Messiah son of Joseph
stands or falls on a single assertion: sources that speak of him as a
successful, redeeming warrior without mentioning his death cannot have
known of that death. To sustain Heinemann’s thesis, this assertion must
be more than plausible; it must have the overwhelming force necessary to
compel a rearrangement of the chronological order of the sources at our
disposal by dating the relevant material in the later Midrashim before
the tannaitic statement about this Messiah’s death. To make matters
worse, the tannaitic source refers to his death in a matter-of-fact fashion
as something which is apparently common knowledge.21
Moreover, Heinemann must concede that the later rabbis who
“faithfully transmit” what he considers “the older version ... must already
have been aware of the new conception of the death of Messiah ben
Ephraim.”22 In short, they too were presumably victimized by the same
optical illusion that has afflicted modern scholars. Though the point is not
decisive, it is worth noting that the later apocalyptic Midrashim explicitly
describe an often victorious Messiah son of Joseph who is nevertheless
killed before the final redemption and almost immediately resurrected
by Messiah son of David.
Most important, the psychological process by which a messianic
warrior who will be killed nevertheless comes to be described as a
conquering hero seems perfectly understandable. Whatever the origins
of such a figure, Messiah son of Joseph is after all a Jew fighting the
forces of evil at the dawn of the messianic age. How could the Jewish
messianic imagination fail to hope for his success? And, of course, it need
21 “When [Messiah son of David] saw that Messiah son of Joseph was killed, he said before
God, ‘Master of the Universe, I ask you only for life’” (B. Sukkah 52a). The point was
made by Klausner, Ha-Ra‘ayon ha-Meshihi be-Yisrael, p. 318.
22 “Messiah of Ephraim,” p. 8, n. 31.
— 258 —
hardly be said that the desires of the messianic imagination do not go

unfulfilled in the texts that we are examining. A Messiah son of Joseph
whose raison d’être is to fight and die would nonetheless be transformed
almost inevitably into precisely the warrior hero that confronts us in the
Midrashim that Heinemann cites. If everyone knew that this Messiah
would die — and the chronological order of our sources gives us every
reason to think that this is so — then there is no need to mention this in
each story of his exploits; the “optical illusion” of modern scholars may
well have been the reality of the third-, fourth-, and fifth-century reader.
Finally, I would not even rule out the possibility that someone caught up
in the triumphs of Messiah son of Joseph might have come to believe
that his death in battle is only one possible outcome and that sufficient
merit might render it avoidable.23 Whether or not this is so, Heinemann
has allowed a brilliant but speculative reconstruction to overpower the
extant progression of sources.
On the other hand, Heinemann’s insightful discussion of the
Ephraimite story is, with one important exception, thoroughly persuasive.
The supposed wickedness of anyone who hastened the end would simply
have to be rethought in the wake of the Bar Kokhba revolt;24 even if the
messianic pretender could be considered a villain, his renowned rabbinic
supporter could not. Unfortunately, Heinemann’s direct evidence for a
positive evaluation of the Ephraimites will not do. As my former student
David Strauss has pointed out, the same page of the Talmud which records
the view that Ezekiel resurrected the Ephraimites also reports other
identifications of these revived “dry bones”: they are those who denied
the resurrection, those who have no enthusiasm for the commandments,
or those who covered the Temple with abominations. Nevertheless,
the basic point remains; for most Jews in the mid-second century, the
Ephraimites were not and could not have been sinners.
If we now step back and look at the broader picture, we suddenly
discover that something very interesting has happened. Heinemann has
unwittingly refuted the centerpiece of Aptowitzer’s argument against
Ginzberg. If the Ephraimites are not sinners, then the typological
explanation of Messiah son of Joseph no longer involves the recapitulation
23 Precisely this conviction is attested in sources from a much later period; see M. Kasher,
Ha-Tekufah ha-Gedolah (Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 428-431.
24 Though there are imperfections in the analogy, one cannot help but think of the Zionist
reevaluation of the ma‘pilim of Numbers 14:40-45 in Bialik’s Metei Midbar.
— 259 —
of a “sinful, sacrilegious undertaking,” and we have already seen abundant

evidence that it is not only miracles that will be repeated at the end of
days.25 If there existed a favorable evaluation of the Ephraimites, the
point would of course grow even stronger.
Because of the structure of his article, Heinemann was virtually
precluded from recognizing the implications of his own argument. By the
time he reached the discussion of the Ephraimites, he had already argued
that Messiah son of Joseph did not originate as a dying Messiah; if this is
true, then Ginzberg’s thesis is automatically refuted and is no longer a live
issue. Hence, Aptowitzer’s argument, which Heinemann had endorsed
earlier, is no longer relevant, and the destruction of its major premise
can go unnoticed. However, if we reject the article’s novel thesis about
Messiah son of Joseph (as I think we should) and accept its observation
about the Ephraimites (as we also should), the typological genesis of
Messiah son of Joseph reemerges in all its considerable attractiveness.
If Ginzberg is correct, we should expect the first references to this
Messiah to deal primarily with his death in battle without any heroic
overtones; the Ephraimites, even to second-century Jews, were not
necessarily great heroes. The glorious victories would result from a
psychological process that we have already discussed and should make
their appearance only as the story develops. Though we have only one
certain source as early as the second century, it is at least interesting that
it fulfills this expectation to perfection.26 The typological explanation,
which fits the central, established pattern of rabbinic messianic thinking,
has unwittingly been rescued, and it deserves first place in any discussion
of the origins of Messiah son of Joseph.27
25 See nn. 8-13 above and cf. n. 17.

26 See n. 21 above. The same can be said about the possibly tannaitic source a bit earlier
in Sukkah 52a.
27 Let me make it clear that I consider Heinemann’s point about the likely attitude
toward the Ephraimites in the post-Bar Kokhba period to be extremely useful but not
absolutely indispensable for a defense of Ginzberg. A weaker defense might maintain
that a condemnatory and a neutral attitude toward the Ephraimites coexisted in the
pre-Bar Kokhba period and that the latter (which saw them as mistaken calculators)
produced the typological figure of Messiah son of Joseph. One might even regard the
severe condemnation in the Mekhilta and elsewhere as a later development — a reaction
to the Bar Kokhba revolt by one (minority) faction that was so concerned to prevent a
repetition of this disaster that they were indifferent to· the implication for R. Akiva’s
reputation. Nevertheless, I agree with Heinemann to the extent that I cannot imagine
this as a majority view. (For a new typological explanation that does not persuade me,
— 260 —
II
Whether or not the Ephraimites of the Aggadah are models for Messiah
son of Joseph, they are surely the precursors of a long line of messianic
calculators doomed to disappointment. In the rabbinic period, attitudes
toward this seductive enterprise ranged from a famous curse against the
calculators to a series of messianic dates, some of which appear on the
same folio of the Talmud as the curse itself.28 A careful examination of
these dates will reveal once again the overwhelming impact of typology
on Jewish messianic thought.
The destruction of the Second Temple inevitably inspired messianic
calculation, and one obscure report tells us of three such calculations
apparently referring to the period between the destruction and the
Bar Kokhba revolt. The details, however, are too sketchy to facilitate a
reconstruction of the precise dates except to say that the one ascribed to
R. Akiva no doubt pointed to the 130s.29
Between the Bar Kokhba revolt and the end of the talmudic period,
we have precisely five (or perhaps four) clear rabbinic statements
concentrated on two pages of the Talmud indicating the year, or in one
case the jubilee, in which the Messiah will come. (1) The world will last
six thousand years: two thousand chaos, two thousand Torah, and two
thousand the messianic age, though our sins have delayed the long-
awaited hour.30 (2) After the four hundredth year of the destruction of
the Temple, if someone offers you a field worth a thousand dinars for just
one, do not buy it.31 (3) Do not buy it after the year 4231 A.M.32 (4) After
see Raphael Patai’s suggestion that Messiah son of Joseph dies because Moses died
short of the promised land [The Messiah Texts (New York, 1979), introd., p. xxxiii].)
Shimon Toder’s “Mashiah ben David u-Mashiah ben Yosef,” Mahanayim 124 (1970):
100-112, came to my attention after this article was completed. Though it contains
no reference to Ginzberg, it maintains the typological origin of Messiah son of Joseph
and notes that the attitude toward the Ephraimites in the Aggadah is not uniformly
negative.
28 B. Sanhedrin 97b. On rabbinic opposition to calculations, note the material assembled
by A. H. Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel (Boston, 1959), pp. 195-
206.
29 See the middle of B. Sanhedrin 97b, and note Klausner’s emendation of R. Simlai to
Rabbi Ishmael (Ha-Ra‘ayon ha-Meshihi, p. 272).
30 B. Sanhedrin 97a-b; B. Avodah Zarah 9a.
31 B. Avodah Zarah 9b.
32 Ibid.
— 261 —
the year 4291 A.M. the world will enter a period of wars leading to the
messianic age.33 (5) Elijah informed a certain rabbi that the world would
last no fewer than eighty-five jubilees, and in the last jubilee the Son of
David would come. When asked whether the Messiah would arrive at the
beginning or the end of the jubilee and whether or not the jubilee would
be completed before his advent, Elijah confessed that he did not know.34
It has long been recognized that the first of these dates is dependent
upon a typological scheme in which the six-thousand-year duration of the
earth is derived from the six days of creation; since Abraham came upon
the scene not far from the year 2000, another period of two thousand
years until the Messiah seemed to make typological sense.35 The typology
of the second date is also blatant; the final exile will last precisely as long
as the four-hundred-year Egyptian bondage (Gen. 15:13).36
The next date, however, is an enigma. The simplest solution was
formulated most explicitly by P. Volz, who informs us matter-of-
factly that 4231 is four hundred years after 3831, which is “the year
of the destruction of the Temple according to the Israelite calendar.”37
33 B. Sanhedrin 97b.
34 Ibid. Because of a misreading of three rabbinic passages dealing with the duration of
the messianic age, Silver presents three other dates for the time of its advent; see
his Messianic Speculation, pp. 19-20, #3 (and contrast his correct reading of analogous
material on p. 14, #2), and pp. 25-26, #1 and 2. Silver’s misreading was endorsed by
Yehudah Even Shmuel, Midreshei Ge’ullah (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1954), introd., p. 42;
the proof-texts cited in these passages, however, rule out this interpretation. A rabbinic
statement which could be considered typological describes Balaam’s speeches as taking
place at the midpoint of world history; though some medievals cited this as a messianic
calculation (and the proof-text tends to support such a reading), it may tell us only
when the world will end. See J. Shabbat 6:9, fol. 8d, and cf. A. Halkin’s introduction
to Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen (New York, 1952), p. xiii. For what may be another
typological calculation with details unclear, see the last statement in section 21 of the
introduction to Eikhah Rabbati.
35 Whatever Iranian influences may have affected this calculation (see the reference in
E. Urbach, Hazal: Pirkei Emunot ve-De‘ot [Jerusalem, 1969], pp. 610-611 = The Sages:
Their Concepts and Beliefs [Jerusalem, 1975], p. 678) cannot be allowed to overshadow
the straightforward relationship with the days of creation. Cf. the associated talmudic
statement (B. Sanhedrin 97a) about a six-thousand-year period followed by a one-
thousand-year “Sabbatical” destruction.
36 The discussion of this point in Neusner’s Messiah in Context, p. 180, creates the
impression that the only duration assigned to the sojourn in Egypt by Scripture is 430
years (Exod. 12:40).
37 Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentalichen Zeitalter (Tübingen,
1934), p. 144.
— 262 —
The only trouble with this is that it isn’t true. The rabbis dated the
destruction in 3828,38 and the Talmud explicitly notes that there is a
three-year discrepancy between 4231 and the four hundredth year after
the destruction.39 Among the medievals, the tosafists maintained that
4231 was a majority of the eighty-fifth jubilee (apparently counting by
decades), while Abravanel argued the same point, suggesting that the
number was obtained by adding a sabbatical cycle of seven years to the
midpoint of the eighty-fifth jubilee (4225 + 7 = 4232, and the Talmud,
after all, speaks of the year after 4231).40
The fundamental basis of this date, however, may really be quite
simple. It is, I think, a typological date identical with four hundred years
after the destruction with a three-year delay resulting from a passage in
the Book of Daniel. The basic period of exile is in fact the four hundred
years of the very first exile; Daniel, however, specifically says that we
shall have to wait 1290 or 1335 days, here taken as additional days (Dan.
12:11-12). Though most later calculators understood these days as years,
there is a recurring midrash which unequivocally understands them as
days which pass during the final messianic scenario.41 Thus, Daniel 12:11,
38 Or 3829. See the Ba‘al ha-Ma’or’s comments on Avodah Zarah 9b (= fol. 2b of the Rif),
s.v. amar R. Huna. In either case, the last official year of the Temple is considered 3828,
and 3829 is the first year of destruction; hence, the four hundredth year remains 4228.
The years 3828 and 3829 are 68 and 69 C.E. according to the current Jewish calendar;
nevertheless, the common view that the rabbis misdated the destruction of 70 C.E. by
one or two years is mistaken, because their calendar differed by a year or two from the
one that became standard among medieval Jews. See the Ba‘al ha-Ma’or, loc. cit., and E.
Frank, Talmudic and Rabbinical Chronology (New York, 1956). This affects other rabbinic
dates as well and means, for example, that the eighty-fifth jubilee is not 441-490 C.E.,
as scholars routinely indicate, but 442-491 or 443-492.
39 Silver, Messianic Speculation (p. 26), apparently oblivious of the Talmud’s comment, also
considers 4231 as the four hundredth year of the destruction, since in the current Jewish
calendar it is “c. [this little letter deserves notice] 470 C.E.” In a puzzling passage, Urbach
cites the talmudic remark about a three-year discrepancy between the four hundredth
year and 4231, and in the first sentence of text following this footnote says that 4231 is
identical with that year (Hazal, p. 613 = Sages, p. 682). Perhaps he is tacitly suggesting a
new understanding of the talmudic statement which would take it to mean that there is
a three-year difference in calculating the four hundredth year; he does not, however, say
this explicitly, and it is not, in my view, a tenable reading of the passage.
40 Tosafot Avodah Zarah 9b, s.v. le-ahar; Isaac Abravanel, Yeshu‘ot Meshiho, 1812, p. 10b.
Abravanel explains 4228 (= 400 years after the destruction) in a similar fashion as a
majority of the eighty-fifth jubilee in sabbatical units. (A typographical error in this
edition of Yeshu‘ot Meshiho has changed ‫ רכ״ח‬into ‫רנ״ח‬.)
41 See the references in n. 8. The discrepancy between 1290 and 1335 determines that the
— 263 —
which reads, “From the time that the continual burnt-offering shall be
taken away [me‘et husar ha-tamid] and the abomination of desolation is set
up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days,” must mean
that from the end of the period of exile inaugurated by the removal of the
burnt-offering there shall be an additional 1290 days culminating in some
important event. Then, forty-five more days will pass, reaching a total of
1335. Since the period of exile is four hundred years, waiting an additional
1290 or 1335 days adds three and a half years and leads to the conclusion
that the Messiah will come just after the year 4231. In sum, this date also
reflects the typology of the Egyptian exile; indeed, the ‘et of Daniel 12:11
refers specifically to this period of time. The extra three years are simply
an appendage forced upon us by the Book of Danie1.42
Our fourth date (4291) can be dealt with quickly. Since I cannot
explain it, and since the Hebrew abbreviations for 4231 (‫ )רל״א‬and 4291
(‫ )רצ״א‬can easily be confused, I am prepared to follow the lead of the Gaon
of Vilna and emend it to 4231.43 If this is correct, then there is nothing
Messiah will be hidden forty-five days. Though Rashi on Dan. 12:12 understandably
interprets this midrash as a reference to forty-five years, its plain meaning resists
such an interpretation. For forty-five days, not years, in this context, see also the
apocalyptic midrashim in Even Shmuel, Midreshei Ge’ullah, pp. 43, 81, 104, 195. Some
of the apocalypses also take the reference to “time, times, and half a time” in Dan. 7:25
and 12:7 in the literal sense of three and a half years; see Midreshei Ge’ullah, pp. 103
and 470, and R. Bonfil’s plausible suggestion in his “‘Hazon Daniel’ ki-Te‘udah Historit
ve-Sifrutit,” Sefer Zikkaron le-Yizhak Baer (= Zion 44 [1979]), p. 146.
It should also be noted that had the rabbis taken these days as years, they would have
been forced to delay the redemption unbearably. Indeed, their failure to use Daniel as an
important basis for calculations may result precisely from the fact that they regarded the
numbers there as references to events taking place within the final messianic process;
such numbers cannot be useful in predicting when the process itself will begin.
42 Even Shmuel maintains, as I do, that the number 4231 is also based on the four-
hundred-year period of exile, but he accounts for the three-year delay by a rather
uncomfortable expedient. He argues that what begins after 4228 is the seven-year
period during which the Messiah will come; and “after three years of this seven-year
period have elapsed, normal life cannot continue” (Midreshei Ge’ullah, introd., p. 45).
43 So too Silver, Messianic Speculation, p. 26, and Urbach, Hazal, p. 613 = Sages, p. 682.
Though I remain skeptical, it is worth recording a characteristically brilliant explanation
proposed by Gerson Cohen when I was his student at Columbia; 4291, he suggested,
may constitute a sabbatical unit of years for each commandment (613 × 7). An
elaborate but unpersuasive effort to account for this date was made by Even Shmuel
in his introduction to Midreshei Ge’ullah, p. 46. The setting up of the abomination of
desolation in Daniel 12: 11, he says, must have been taken as the establishment of the
city of Rome, and from that point we must wait 1290 days (= years). The traditional
date of the founding of Rome is 753 B.C.E., and this corresponds to 3008 A.M. (Even
— 264 —
to explain, and our five rabbinic dates are transformed into four.
Finally, we reach the most intractable date of all. One approach to
the mysterious eighty-fifth jubilee (4201-4250 A.M.) is to regard it as a
period so rife with potential messianic dates that it was a convenient way
to subsume them all. Even Shmuel points to a Roman tradition predicting
the end of the empire twelve hundred years after the founding of the city.
This brings us to a point approximately seven years after the beginning
of the crucial jubilee, and by subtracting the oft-mentioned seven-year
period of the messianic advent, we can reach its starting point. Since
no Jewish source mentions this Roman tradition, however, we would
do well to remain skeptical. More to the point, Even Shmuel notes not
only that 4228 and 4231 fall within the jubilee but that a typological
calculation assigning to the exile a duration equal to that of the First
or Second Temple (410 and 420 years respectively according to rabbinic
chronology) would also culminate in the eighty-fifth jubilee.44 It may
Shmuel [p. 54, n. 49] regarded this Hebrew equivalent, given in a late Jewish source, as
approximate. In fact, it is precise; since there was no year zero, the Hebrew year 3000 =
761 B.C.E., even though the more familiar year 4000 = 240 C.E.) 3008 + 1290 = 4298,
when Rome will fall. But the rabbis often spoke of the seven-year period in which the
Messiah will come, and that period will therefore begin in 4291. This is ingenious, but
aside from the fact that we have no early evidence that Jews used or knew the date
3008 as the beginning of Rome (cf. the end of n. 74 below), the reference in Daniel
12:11 to the removal of the burnt-offering, which can have no association with the date
of the founding of Rome, would appear to make Even Shmuel’s proposal impossible.
44 Midreshei Ge’ullah, introd., pp. 45-46. Baron’s summary of Even Shmuel (A Social and
Religious History of the Jews, vol. 5 [New York, London, and Philadelphia, 1957], p. 366,
n. 28) can leave the impression that this typological reasoning about the Temples is
actually attested in the ancient sources. For such a calculation in the Middle Ages, see
Nahmanides, Sefer ha-Ge’ullah, in Ch. D. Chavel, Kitvei Ramban, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1963),
p. 294, citing debatable evidence from section 21 of the introduction to Eikhah Rabbati.
Moshe Ber suggested that the messianic hopes associated with this jubilee may have been
connected with the problems of Babylonian Jewry at the time; see Sinai 48 (1961): 299-302.
On this talmudic passage, cf. also I. Levi’s note in Revue des Études Juives 1 (1880): 110.
Urbach (Hazal, p. 612 = Sages, p. 680) may have a point in stressing Elijah’s uncertainty about
the precise year of redemption, but that surely does not mean that there is no messianic
calculation here. This explicit uncertainty, however, does have an important corollary: it
prevents us from assuming that the Talmud has in mind only the last year of the jubilee,
despite the fact that the Testament of Moses (1:2 and 10:12) appears to point to the year
4250 A.M. as the year of redemption. The connection of that text to our talmudic passage
was already made by R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
(Oxford, 1913), 2:423, and was repeated by E. S. Artom in his commentary to 10:12 (Ha-
Sefarim ha-Hizzonim: Sippurei Aggadah, vol. 1 [Tel Aviv, 1965]) and by S. B. Hoenig, “Dor
she-Ben David Ba,” Sefer Zikkaron li-Shmuel Belkin (New York, 1981), p. 142.
— 265 —
well be that this approach is correct, but since the only persuasive dates
(which are all typological) fall in the second half of the jubilee, and since
this would then be the only calculation which in effect gives us a choice of
calculations, it seems preferable to search for an explanation that would
account for the number eighty-five jubilees itself.
There have been, as far as I know, only two efforts to accomplish this.
In the Middle Ages, Abravanel made the striking suggestion that the
number is derived from the eighty-five letters in Numbers 10:35-36; these
verses constitute a separate biblical book according to the rabbis, they are
enclosed by two reversed nuns (a letter with the numerical value of fifty in
Hebrew), the Mishnah makes special reference to these eighty-five letters
in a legal context (M. Yadayim 3:5), and, Abravanel might have added, the
content of the passage deals with the dispersal of the enemies of God.45
One can only admire the ingenuity of this proposal, but the connection
with the messianic age remains tenuous at best. Much more recently, Even
Shmuel advanced the conjecture that messianic calculators may have cited
the verse “Hitherto [ad po] shall you come, but no further” (Job 38:11) in
light of the fact that the numerical value of po is eighty-five. Nevertheless,
he apparently means only that the date may have been further validated,
not originated, by this numerical equivalence, which appears in a verse
that has no redemptive context and no connection with jubilees.46
In the absence of any satisfactory explanation of this number, it
may be worthwhile to introduce a new, highly speculative typological
suggestion. King David, and hence the final redeemer, had only one
distinguished ancestor at the time of the first conquest of the land of
Israel, which was, of course, the culmination of the first redemption. The
rabbis inform us that no less a figure than Caleb, who was the prince of
the tribe of Judah, was a forefather of David.47 The typologically oriented
messianist would almost inevitably look at Caleb as a possible prototype
of the final redeemer or at least as a source of information about the
final redemption.
As the conquest of the land reaches its completion, Caleb tells Joshua,
45 Yeshu‘ot Meshiho, p. 12a.

46 Midreshei Ge’ullah, introd., p. 46. Once again, Baron’s summary (History, 5:167) can
leave the impression that this is more than a conjecture.
47 B. Sotah 11b; Sifrei Numbers 78, Friedmann’s ed., p. 19b. There seems, however,
no alternative to the conclusion of the Maharsha (Sotah ad loc.) that the Talmud is
referring to descent through one of David’s female ancestors.
— 266 —
“I was forty years old when Moses sent me to explore the land, and I
brought back an honest report. ... Moses swore an oath that day and said,
‘The land on which you have set foot shall be your patrimony.’ ... It is now
forty-five years since God made this promise to Moses, at the time when
Israel was journeying in the wilderness, and today I am eighty-five years
old” (Josh. 14:7-10).
Consider the following. First, the passage contains unusual,
apparently unnecessary emphasis on Caleb’s age, even in light of the
next verse, which tells us how his strength has remained unchanged; if
forty-five years have passed, of course he is now eighty-five years old.
Second, the number forty is strikingly suggestive and could have drawn
the attention of a numerologically oriented reader all by itself. Can it be
a coincidence that Caleb was forty years old when the decree of a forty-
year exile in the desert was issued, and can it be that Scripture tells us
this merely to satisfy our idle curiosity? If his age at the time of the
exile reflects the length of that exile, might not his age at the time of
redemption, which we have been told in such a verbose and striking way,
contain information about the time of redemption? Finally — and this is
what removes this suggestion from the realm of sheer speculation — the
Talmud informs us that the conversation between Caleb and Joshua took
place close to the time when Jews began to count jubilees, and that the
numbers in these verses are there to enable us to calculate precisely when
the count began.48 The rabbis, in other words, explicitly connect jubilees
with this number eighty-five, and a messianic calculator may well have
asked himself whether the connection is more than just exoteric.
If this is correct, then all messianic dates in rabbinic literature
pointing to the post-Bar Kokhba period result from typological reasoning.
The first is based on the typology of the days of creation, the next two on
the typology of the first exile and its four-hundred-year duration, and the
fourth on the typology of a redemptive figure, an ancestor of the final
redeemer, and his age at the culmination of the initial redemption.49
48 B. Arakhin 13a. I have formulated this sentence fairly strongly in light of what I think
is the correct observation at the end of Tosafot ad loc., s.v. Caleb.
49 Finally — a reminder that if my speculation about Caleb is rejected, the most reasonable
explanation of the eighty-fifth jubilee remains the proliferation of messianic dates
within that fifty-year period, and every one of those dates is typological. Needless to
say, this proliferation of dates could have enhanced the suggestiveness of the passage
in Joshua as well.
— 267 —
III
The eschatological monster with the mysterious name Armilus has long
fascinated students of early medieval apocalyptic. Born of a union between
Satan and a beautiful statue, this final ruler of Rome-Edom will kill the
Messiah son of Joseph only to fall victim to the ultimate, Davidic redeemer.
Bald and with a leprous forehead, with one small eye and one large one, his
right arm grotesquely short and his left unnaturally long, his left ear open
and his right ear closed, Armilus is a figure of menacing terror.50
Since there is general agreement that the two references in the
Targumim may well be later additions,51 Armilus makes his first datable
appearance in the third and fourth decades of the seventh century.
Whatever the relevance of a few enigmatic terms in Sefer Eliyyahu and
Perek Eliyyahu,52 Armilus appears as a major actor in the eschatological
drama in the Hebrew apocalypse Sefer Zerubbavel (ca. 628)53 and is
mentioned as a matter of course in several sections of the Greek polemic
Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati (ca. 634).54
While the notion of a monstrous final ruler of Rome could have arisen
directly from Daniel 7:7-8, 23-25 in conjunction with Ezekiel 38-39, it
is especially likely that the Jewish apocalyptic imagination was inspired
by the elaborate Christian descriptions of Antichrist as an evil Roman
emperor, often taking the form of Nero redivivus.55 The Christianization
of the Roman Empire created an ambivalence which required Christians
to envision the defeat of this monstrous figure by a good Roman emperor
50 While none of the sources portrays Armilus as Prince Charming, I have reproduced one
of the most elaborate descriptions from Midrash va-Yosha‘, Midreshei Ge’ullah, p. 96. See
also pp. 79, 131, 136, 320. For an English translation of some of the Armilus texts, see
Patai, Messiah Texts, pp. 156-164.
51 Pseudo-Jonathan to Deut. 34:3, Isa. 11:4. Cf. A. Kohut, Arukh ha-Shalem (Vienna,
1878), p. 292.
52 For ‫הרמלת‬, ‫תרמילא‬, and ‫תרמלת‬, see Even Shmuel, Midreshei Ge’ullah, pp. 42 and 51, and
cf. his discussion on pp. 34-35, n. 12, 18.
53 Ibid., pp. 74, 79-83.
54 Διδασκαλία Ιακώβου Νεοβαπτίστου, ed. N. Bonwetsch, Abhandlungen der Königlichen
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, n.f., vol. 12, no. 3 (Berlin,
1910), pp. 4-5, 66, 70-71, 86, and more.
55 See W. Bousset, The antichrist Legend (London, 1896); J. Berger, Die griechische Daniel
Exegese — Eine altkirchliche Apokalypse (Leiden, 1976), pp. 103-150. I see no persuasive
evidence that the Christian conception comes from earlier Jewish sources (other than
Daniel itself).
— 268 —
who is the major agent of redemption.56 Jews, however, were under

no such constraints. A single, Satanic ruler was all that Rome would
produce in its final days, and stories of such a figure could be assimilated,
reworked, and expanded without any of the usual inhibitions about the
adoption of Christian legends; indeed, the myth was even more congenial
to Jews, whose hatred of Rome was unalloyed and whose hope for its
destruction was untainted by ambivalence.
The name Armilus, however, is neither biblical nor talmudic nor
Christian, and its origin and meaning cry out for explanation. Ideally,
such an explanation should be more than an etymology; it should tell us
something more about the ideas generating the concept and may help
us place it in the typological framework which is the hallmark of Jewish
messianism in this period. No such understanding is achieved by Hitzig’s
curious suggestion that the similarities between Suetonius’ description
of the armillatus Caligula and Sefer Zerubbavel’s depiction of Armilus
mean that our monster received his name from Caligula’s bracelet.57 Such
a derivation concentrates on a triviality and has justly been ignored.
Another explanation, however, which has deservedly received more
serious attention, suffers from a similar, though less acute problem. Several
scholars have regarded Armilus as a corruption of the name of the evil Persian
deity Ahriman or Angro-Mainyus.58 This derivation reinforces a certain
sense of the exotic produced by the Armilus legend, but it evokes no specific
associations with the story, nor is the similarity in the names particularly
satisfying. More important, a Persian god would not have produced the
resonance necessary for this figure and this name to have flourished within
the Jewish messianic tradition. Ahriman strikes no familiar chord, and
only in the absence of an alternative explanation should we be willing to
assume that so alien a villain would find a home as a standard figure in the
mainstream of Jewish messianism. But we have an alternative explanation.
The problem, in fact, is that we have one too many.
56 For brief summaries, see M. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages
(Oxford, 1969), pp. 299-301, and N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 2d ed. (New
York, 1970), pp. 31-34. Cf. also I. Levi, “L’Apocalypse de Zorobabel et le roi de Perses
Siroès,” Revue des Études Juives 71 (1920): 59-61.
57 F. Hitzig, Das Buch Daniel (Leipzig, 1850), p. 125.
58 K. Kohler in Jewish Encyclopedia 1:296-297, s.v. Ahriman; Kohut in Arukh ha-Shalem, loc.
cit., and esp. in his Über die Jüdische Angelologie und Daemonologie in Ihrer Abhängigkeit
vom Parsismus (Leipzig, 1866), p. 62. Kohler emphasized the gimel in the ‫ ארמלגוס‬of the
Targumim (see n. 51 above).
— 269 —
The name Armilus has not inspired much recent controversy

because one derivation has carried the day to the point where the
question is generally considered resolved. Scholars might sometimes
go through the motions of citing earlier theories, but the prevailing
attitude appears to be that this problem is behind us. Armilus is
Romulus.59
Now this really is an attractive identification, even more attractive
than is generally realized. It is not merely that Romulus founded and
hence symbolizes Rome,60 which is the empire that Armilus will rule. The
Romulus identification recalls the central theme of messianic typology,
in which an early figure or event recurs at the end of days. If the final
redeemer will be like the first redeemer, so will the final king of Rome be
like its founder. The logic of messianic reasoning led inexorably to such a
notion, and it may even be that historical events provided reinforcement
to the seventh-century observer. The Western Roman Empire had, after
all, already fallen, and it could hardly be coincidence that the name of its
final ruler was Romulus.61
As far as linguistic similarity is concerned, we face no serious
problem. Romulus and Armilus are more than close enough to sustain the
identification, and Armilus’ Greek name, Ermolaos, which appears in one
Hebrew apocalypse as ‫ ארמילאוס‬and which we shall discuss in a moment,
is virtually identical with a Syriac form of Romulus (‫ )ארמלאוס‬that was
noted long ago by Nöldeke.62 To clinch the argument, we even have a late-
seventh-century source which makes the identification explicit. The Latin
translation (though not the Greek text) of pseudo-Methodius informs us
matter-of-factly that Romulus is Armaleus.63
59 See, e.g., E. Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (Leipzig,
1907), II, pp. 621-622; Klausner in Ha-Ra‘ayon ha-Meshihi, p. 232, and in Enziklopedyah
Ivrit, 5:954-957; Levi, “Apocalypse de Zorobabel,” p. 59; M. Guttmann in the German
Encyclopaedia Judaica 3:364-366; Baron, History, 5:145; J. Dan, Ha-Sippur ha-‘Ivri bi-
Yemei ha-Beinayim: Iyyunim be-Toledotav (Jerusalem, 1974), p. 42.
60 Cf. Klausner, Ha-Ra‘ayon ha-Meshihi, loc. cit.
61 Since Romulus Augustulus had at least one competitor for his dubious distinction, and
since a seventh-century resident of the Eastern Roman Empire may not have shared
the perception that the Western Empire had “fallen,” we should perhaps be cautious
about pressing this point too hard.
62 Zeitschrift der Deutschen-Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 39 (1895): 343.
63 Ernst Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen (Halle, 1898), p. 76. The pseudo-
Methodian passage was noted by Bousset (Antichrist Legend, p. 105), Levi (loc. cit.),
and others.
— 270 —
The only trouble with all this is that another, widely rejected
derivation is at least as attractive as this one. It has been recognized
for centuries that Armilus may be the Greek Eremolaos (’Ερημόλαος),
meaning “destroyer of a people”; the possibility, in fact, is almost
forced upon us by the ‫ ארמילאוס‬of Nistarot de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai64
and the Hermolaos or Ermolaos routinely used in Doctrina Jacobi. The
definition of Armilus in Menahem de Lonzano’s early-seventeenth-
century dictionary reads as follows: “This means ‘destroyer of a nation.’
It is a Greek word compounded from ereme, meaning ‘destroy,’ and laos,
meaning ‘a nation’; it refers to an Edomite king who will win a major
victory against his enemies and destroy them and who will consequently
be called Eremolaos.”65 As in the case of the Romulus identification, this
approach is confirmed by a very early source — in this instance by one
manuscript of Sefer Zerubbavel itself, which tells us that Armilus means
“destroyer of a nation” in Greek.66
Despite these early references, it was not, as far as I know, until
Graetz that the real significance of this derivation was noticed. Armilus,
Graetz argued, is none other than a new Balaam, the archenemy who
had tried to destroy the Jews, and whose name, according to the
Talmud, means “destroyer of a people” (‫)בלעם = בלע עם‬.67 Eremolaos,
he says, “is a felicitous Greek reproduction of the biblical archetype of
enmity toward Israel.”68 Armilus as eremolaos (often without reference to
Balaam) has received only the most perfunctory comment by twentieth-
century scholars; those who mention the derivation at all tend to reject
it summarily and virtually without discussion. Klausner’s comment is
64 Even Shmuel, Midreshei Ge’ullah, p. 195.

65 Ma‘arikh, ed. by A. Jellinek (Leipzig, 1853), p. 15.
66 I. Levi, Revue des Études Juives 68 (1914): 136 = Midreshei Ge’ullah, p. 387. The text of
the passage is slightly corrupt, but however we emend it (see Levi’s note on p. 152), it
clearly says that Armilus means ‫יחריב עם‬. Levi notes other early scholars who proposed
this translation, and cf. also the citation from David de Lara's Keter Kehunnah in Kohut’s
Arukh ha-Shalem, p. 292.
67 B. Sanhedrin 105a.
68 “Eine glückliche griechische Nachbildung des biblischen Urtypus der Feindseligkeit
gegen Israel” (my translation). See Jahrbuch für Israeliten 5265 [1864/65], ed. by J.
Wertheimer and L. Kompert (Vienna, 1865), p. 19. The essay has recently been
translated into English by I. Schorsch in H. Graetz, The Structure of Jewish History
and Other Essays (New York, 1975), pp. 151-171 (notes on p. 310). Cf. also J. Levy,
Chaldäisches Wörterbuch über die Targumim und einen grossen Theil des Rabbinischen
Schrifttums (Leipzig, 1881), 1:66, s.v. Armilus.
— 271 —
among the most extensive: “And the suggestion that Armilus comes from
the Greek eremolaos is especially farfetched despite the fact that it is
already noted in [one manuscript of Sefer Zerubbavel].”69
It hardly seems necessary to say that modern conceptions of what is
or is not farfetched do not serve as trustworthy guidelines for penetrating
the early medieval apocalyptic imagination. We have already seen that
Eremolaos, like Romulus, is associated with Armilus in an early source
and that both derivations are linguistically appropriate and attractive.
Typologically, Romulus provides the return of the first king of Rome;
Balaam-Eremolaos provides the return of the archenemy of the first
redeemer.70 In light of the frequent stress on the similarities between
the first and last redeemers, the Balaam derivation may well be the
more attractive in this respect. Finally, there are even some concrete
resemblances between Balaam and Armilus. The physical asymmetry
of the monstrous king of Edom reflects the talmudic description of a
Balaam who was blind in one eye and lame in one foot,71 while Armilus’
construction of seven altars in Sefer Zerubbavel is a transparent
reminiscence of the seven altars built by Balak at Balaam’s behest.72
These considerations force a reassessment of the regnant Romulus
derivation, not because of any deficiency in that explanation, but
because of the persuasiveness of an alternative. Like Buridan’s ass, we
are apparently condemned to eternal indecision in the face of two equally
attractive options.
In fact, however, a single observation dissolves the problem and
presents us with a richer and more fully persuasive picture of the
mysterious figure of Armilus. Balaam is Romulus!
There is nothing esoteric or inordinately complex in this identification.
To the seventh-century Jew steeped in midrashic lore, Balaam was
Romulus not by some stretch of the exegetical imagination but as a simple
matter of fact. Romulus, of course, was the first king of Rome, and the
69 Enziklopedyah Ivrit 5:955. All reference to the eremolaos derivation was dropped from the
abridged English translation of Klausner’s article in the recent Encyclopaedia Judaica.
(Why is an article on a Jewish theme that appears in a general encyclopedia abridged
when it is transferred to a Jewish encyclopedia?) Cf. also the brief references to this
explanation in Schürer and Guttmann, loc. cit. (see n. 59 above).
70 On the frequent midrashic contrast between Balaam and Moses, see the references in
Ginzberg, Legends, 6:125, n. 727.
71 B. Sanhedrin 105a and Sotah 10a; for Armilus, cf. n. 50 above.
72 Num. 23:29-30. Cf. Even Shmuel’s note in Midreshei Ge’ullah, p. 82.
— 272 —
identification of Rome and Edom was the most basic commonplace. But
the Bible informs us that the first king of Edom was Bela the son of Beor
(Gen. 36:32; I Chron. 1:43), and some Jews made the almost inevitable
identification of this king with Balaam the son of Beor.73 Hence, even
without a linguistic correspondence, the Jewish apocalypticist knew that
Balaam is the person whom the Gentiles call Romulus or Armaleus; the
identification was confirmed beyond all question when he noticed that
Armaleus (= Eremolaos) is a direct translation of Balaam’s name. The
name—and to some degree the figure—of Armilus was generated by an
exceptionally powerful typological impetus: the first king of Edom, who
was also the archenemy of the first redeemer, will return at the end of days
as both the final king of Rome and the archenemy of the final redeemer.74
Thus far, we are on fairly firm ground, and I am tempted to end
the argument at this point; nevertheless, understanding the messianic
imagination virtually requires us to take the risk of more venturesome
speculations. In an isolated footnote in the general introduction to
Midreshei Ge’ullah, Even Shmuel made the following suggestion:
Apparently, people tended to call Rome “Aram” because of Laban the

Aramaean, the deceiver (rammai), who “sought to destroy everything,”
and because of the verse, “My father was a wandering Aramaean” (Deut.
26:5), which the midrash took as “An Aramaean [Laban] sought to destroy
my father [Jacob].” In the time of the Palestinian Amoraim this name was
grafted on to (Remus and) Romulus ..., and thus the name Armilus was
born.75
Although I know of no evidence that Rome was called Aram, the

Laban connection may be worth pursuing for reasons unmentioned by
Even Shmuel. Laban the Aramaean, the eremolaos who attempted to
destroy the patriarch whose very name was Israel, is another alias of
73 See the Targum to I Chron. 1:43 and the reference in Ginzberg, Legends, 5:323, n. 324.
74 In this context, I think that the argument that Romulus was the founder of the city of
Rome, not all of Edom, and that Bela ben Beor’s city was Dinhavah (Gen. and I Chron.,
loc. cit.) would be a quibble. There is an overwhelming likelihood that in the apocalyptic
mentality, where Rome and Edom had merged into synonyms, Romulus would have been
perceived as the first king—and symbol—of all of Edom. On the fluid midrashic tradition
about the founding of the city, which ranged from the time of Esau’s grandson Zepho to
the time of Solomon, see Ginzberg, Legends, 5:372, n. 425, and 6:280, n. 11.
75 Midreshei Ge’ullah, introd., p. 51, n. 67. The midrash cited is best known for its
appearance in the Passover Haggadah.
— 273 —
Balaam. The full text of the same Targum that identifies Balaam as the
first king of Edom reads as follows: “And these are the kings who ruled
in the land of Edom before any king ruled over the children of Israel: the
evil Balaam son of Beor, that is, Laban the Aramaean, who united with
the sons of Esau to do harm to Jacob and his sons and who sought to
destroy them.”76
We may have arrived, then, at a threefold interpretation of Armilus
in which Romulus, Balaam (= Eremolaos), and Laban (the Arami) are
identified with one another. Each is described as the first king of Edom,
and the apocalypses may even have understood Laban’s epithet “the
Arami” as a term bearing the dual meaning of “Aramaean” and “destroyer.”77
The typological richness of the figure is further enhanced. History will
have come full circle. The first king of Edom, who was the archenemy of
both the father of the children of Israel and the first redeemer, will return
at the end of days to rule over Edom once again. Once again he will seek
to destroy Israel, but he will go down instead to a decisive and this time
permanent defeat at the hands of the final redeemer.78
***
As the Middle Ages wore on, the significance of typology began to wane;
though this mode of messianic speculation would never be entirely
displaced,79 other factors gradually removed it from center stage. Amos
76 Targum to I Chron. 1:43. On the variety of relationships between Laban and Balaam
posited in rabbinic literature, see Ginzberg, Legends, 5:303, n. 229, and 6:123, n. 722.
See also the references in R. LeDéaut and J. Robert, Targum des Chroniques, vol. 1
(Rome, 1971), p. 42, n. 22.
77 Midrashic literature is not devoid of Greek puns. Is it beyond the realm of possibility
that the famous and problematic midrashic interpretation of ‫ ארמי אובד אבי‬is based in
part on an understanding of ‫ ארמי‬as both “Aramaean” and “destroyer”?
78 Let me finally propose two suggestions that may be improbable but should nevertheless
be noted. (a) Balaam was the son of Beor. The root b‘r refers to an animal, and associations
with the story of the she-wolf that suckled Romulus could have arisen despite the fact
that b‘r usually means a beast of burden. (b) I. Levi in “Apocalypse de Zorobabel” thought
that Armilus’ birth from a statue was a parody of the alleged virgin birth of Jesus. (Note
especially the Christianized Armilus in Even Shmuel, Midreshei Ge’ullah, p. 320.) Though
I am skeptical, someone attracted by this theory might want to suggest a connection with
the possible talmudic association between Balaam and Jesus.
79 If Gerson Cohen’s reading of Abraham ibn Daud’s Sefer ha-Kabbalah is correct (see
his edition [Philadelphia, 1967], esp. pp. 189-222), then it is a case of typological
— 274 —
Funkenstein’s perceptive study of the marginal role of typology in

medieval Jewish exegesis is not directly concerned with messianism;80
nevertheless, some of the factors that he proposes to account for the
exegetical phenomenon have application to our concerns as well. What
is perhaps most relevant is the suggestion that Jews shied away from
typology because they had come to see it as a classically Christian
approach.81 Such reservations would have exerted special force in the
context of messianic theory, and even Jews living in the orbit of Islam
would not have escaped their impact.82
Nevertheless, the typological heritage was extraordinarily strong
in the realm of messianism, and additional explanations need to be
mobilized to explain its relative decline. The first of these is the virtual
elimination of a messianic enterprise for which typology was especially
suited. The medieval mind was too constrained by the authority of
the now plentiful ancient texts to create new messianic personalities,
and as a result, figures of the past could no longer give birth to tragic
heroes and diabolical monsters at the end of days. It was primarily in
the area of calculations where typology could still hold sway, but here
too its dominance was challenged, this time by several new sources of
information whose significance in the rabbinic period was minor or nil.
The most important of these was the Book of Daniel. We have already
seen that in the earliest period Daniel’s 1335 days were understood as
days and that this understanding precluded their use as a clue to the
time of the Messiah’s advent.83 As centuries passed, it became possible
messianism in its most striking form. For another illustration of what remains a
significant approach, see Yehudah Liebes, “Yonah ben Amittai ke-Mashiah ben Yosef,”
Mehqarim be-Kabbalah Muggashim li-Yesha‘yah Tishby (= Mehqerei Yerushalayim be-
Mahashevet Yisrael 3, pts. 1-2 [1983-84]), pp. 269-311, and cf. n. 85 below.
80 “Parshanuto ha-Tippologit shel ha-Ramban,” Zion 45 (1980): 35-59.
81 Ibid., p. 55.
82 The effect on such Jews would, of course, have been more limited, and it may be worth
noting that the contrast between the relative messianic activism of Sephardim and
the quietism of Ashkenazim in the Middle Ages is in significant measure a contrast
between Jews living under Islam and those living under Christianity. In a classroom
discussion of Gerson Cohen’s “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim,” in
Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute, ed. by Max Kreutzberger (New York, 1967), pp. 117-
156, my former student Avraham Pinsker made the interesting suggestion that Jews
in the Christian world, who constantly saw themselves as rejecting the claims of a
false Messiah, may have been instinctively more cautious about any involvement with
messianic pretenders.
83 See n. 41 above.
— 275 —
to understand these days as years without inordinately delaying the

messianic age. Once this happened, the Bible suddenly contained a
messianic calculation which, for all of its obscurity, bordered on the
absolutely explicit, and the primary task of the calculator was the relatively
simple one of determining the terminus from which the count begins. In
addition to the date latent in Daniel, the growing, almost promiscuous
use of numerical equivalence in some medieval and early modern
Jewish circles turned Scripture into a treasure trove of eschatological
information through a process which appeared more promising than the
relatively subtle approach of typological speculation. Finally, the talmudic
material itself provided a more concrete basis for calculations than the
rabbis themselves had possessed, and this consideration too made their
successors less reliant on the uncertain techniques of typology.
These approaches, of course, were not mutually exclusive. Daniel’s
1335 years had to be coordinated with its “time, times, and half a time”
(Dan. 7:25; 12:7); since these times were perceived as eras of the past
whose duration points to the length of the exile, they were understood,
at least in a limited sense, typologically. Abravanel extended the 1335
years to 1435 by adding the numerical value of the word “days.” And in a
tour de force which strikes me as the most stunning messianic calculation
in history, sixteenth century Jews combined Daniel’s number, gematria,
and a typological rabbinic calculation to produce a messianic date of 5335
A.M. (= 1575 C.E.). The rabbis had said that after the year 4000, the
messianic age should have begun, but our sins have delayed its arrival.
Thus, when Daniel was told to wait 1335 years, the count must have
commenced at the point where anticipation began to make sense, i.e.,
after the year 4000.84 This calculation could have stood on its own, and
no doubt would have. But then someone noticed the incredible: the
number 1335 is embedded in the last two verses of Daniel, which read,
“Happy is he who waits and comes to one thousand three hundred and
thirty-five days. And now go your way until the end; you shall rest, and
shall stand up to your lot at the end of days.” The numerical equivalence
of both verses in their entirety is precisely 5335! We can only marvel at
the resistance of those who remained skeptical; at the same time, we can
also marvel at the creative orchestration of diverse modes of messianic
84 See David Tamar, “Ha-Zippiyyah be-Italyah li-Shenat ha-Ge’ullah Shin-Lamed-He,”

Sefunot 2 (1958): 65-68.
— 276 —
calculation, an orchestration in which typology lingers, but in a decidedly

secondary role.85
Whatever position messianic typology was ultimately to assume,
its significance in early Jewish messianism was even greater than has
hitherto been recognized. The much-debated Messiah son of Joseph was
probably produced after all by typological speculation, typology is the
most plausible source of every single rabbinic calculation in the post-Bar
Kokhba period, and the intriguing monster Armilus is a typological figure
of extraordinary resonance, richness, and complexity.
85 In the Sabbatian heresy, of course, typology was mobilized once again for the same
reasons that it was mobilized in Christianity: the unorthodox career of a messianic
personality had to be prefigured by biblical heroes whose own careers would be
subjected to subtle, innovative scrutiny.
— 277 —
SOME IRONIC CONSEQUENCES OF MAIMONIDES’

RATIONALIST APPROACH TO THE MESSIANIC AGE
From: Maimonidean Studies 2 (1991): 1-8 (Hebrew section). English

translation by Joel Linsider in The Legacy of Maimonides: Religion, Reason,
and Community, ed. by Yamin Levy and Shalom Carmy
(Yashar Books: New York, 2006), pp. 79-88.
Rationalism and messianic activism are conceptual strangers. The

rationalist views the world as ever following its natural course. The
typical messianic activist views it as teetering on the edge of fundamental
change that will topple the order of the Creation, or perhaps more
accurately, restore that order to its ideal form. The rationalist perspective
is hostile even to the activist who anticipates a naturalistic messianic
age that is “no different from the current world except with regard to
our subjugation to [foreign] kingdoms” (Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 34b;
Sanhedrin 99a) since even such an activist seeks to hasten the end,
while the sober and skeptical view of the rationalist reminds him that
Jewish history is replete with messianic disappointment. He believes in
the coming of the anticipated day, but even if the deeds of the Jewish
people can help speed its arrival, he understands those deeds as the
ordinary performance of mizvot, and not classic messianic activity. Both
the psychology of the rationalist and his logic dictate his fundamental
opposition to messianic activism.1
And yet, it is not only the case that rationalism and messianic activism
sometimes coexist; inevitably, and against the will of those who uphold
the banner of messianic rationalism, the rationalist orientation produces
views that serve as the impetus for active messianism and provide a means
1 I have used the term “rationalist” to refer, following Nahmanides’ formulation,

to someone who tends to maximize nature and limit miracles, and who reacts
skeptically toward beliefs that lack plausible evidence. It should be understood that
the term carries no fixed definition, and when referring to medieval thinkers, one
must utilize standards appropriate to that period.
— 278 —
Some Ironic Consequences of Maimonides’ Rationalist Approach to the Messianic Age
of defense for messianic phenomena of even the most hysterical sort. As

if impelled by a demon, the skeptical thinker extends decisive support to
movements that are thoroughly inimical to his mode of thought.
One example of this phenomenon is set forth without reference to its

implicit irony in Gerson Cohen’s essay on the messianic postures of
Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews. Cohen suggests that it was precisely
the rationalistic worldview of the Sephardim that generated optimism
regarding the possibility of penetrating the secrets of history, and
thus, some Sephardic intellectuals succumbed to the temptation of
eschatological calculation. Even though these thinkers themselves were
not caught up in messianic movements, they created an atmosphere
charged with messianic tension, which made the masses more receptive
to a variety of messiahs.2 Cohen’s thesis is intriguing, but it cannot
be accepted with certainty both because the messianic movements in
question were not particularly significant and because it is possible to
offer other tenable explanations for Sephardic messianism.3
Another example of this phenomenon whose sharp irony has not
been previously noted derives from the most famous messianic passage
in the writings of Maimonides—the description of the messianic process
that appears at the end of “The Laws of Kings”:
Do not suppose that the Messianic King must produce signs and wonders,
bring about new phenomena in the world, resurrect the dead, and the like.
This is not so… If a king will arise from the House of David who studies
the Torah and pursues the commandments like his ancestor David in
accordance with the written and oral law, and compels all Israel to follow
and strengthen it and fights the wars of the Lord – this man enjoys the
presumption of being the Messiah.. If he proceeds successfully, builds the
Temple in its place, and gathers the dispersed of Israel, then he is surely
the Messiah (Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Kings” 11:3-4).
2 Gerson D. Cohen, “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim,” Studies of the

Leo Baeck Institute, ed. by Max Kreutzberger (New York, 1967), pp. 56-115.
3 For another explanation, see my article, “Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish
Messianism: Messiah Son of Joseph, Rabbinic Calculations, and the Figure of
Armilus,” AJS Review 10 (1985): 162, n. 82.
— 279 —
In the following chapter, Maimonides adds the following:
As to all these matters and others like them, no one knows how they will
happen until they happen, because they are impenetrable matters among
the prophets. The Sages too had no tradition about these issues; rather, they
weighed the Scriptural evidence, and that is why they differed about these
matters. In any event, neither the sequence of these events nor their details are
fundamental to the faith, so that no one should occupy himself and spend an
inordinate amount of time studying the aggadot and midrashim that deal with
these and similar matters, nor should he make them central, for they lead to
neither love nor fear of God. Nor should one calculate the end…. Rather, one
should wait and believe in the general doctrine as we have explained (Mishneh
Torah, “Laws of Kings” 12:2 ).
It is evident that Maimonides’ purpose, which he formulates here

almost explicitly, is to moderate and dissipate messianic tension.4 One
who understands that the statements of the rabbinic sages regarding
these matters can be mistaken will not direct most of his energy toward
the study of the midrashim that describe the redemptive process and
will thus not succumb to the dangerous messianic temptation. But
this practical purpose is not the only consideration that motivated
Maimonides’ assertion. There can be no doubt that his repudiation of
signs and wonders and his rejection of confident reliance upon rabbinic
aggadot derive from a fundamental rationalist perspective. He believed,
however, that the philosophical approach and the practical objective
go hand-in-hand. To provide further security, he went on to propose
standards necessary for establishing not only messianic certainty, but
even presumptive messianic status. Not everyone who wants lay claim
to the mantle can come and do so.5
4 Cf. Amos Funkenstein, Teva, Historia, u-Meshihiyyut ezel ha-Rambam (Tel-Aviv, 1983),
p. 57: “The purpose of the substantial attention that Maimonides dedicated to the
messianic era was to prevent the proliferation of messianic movements seeking
to hasten the End, and thus, following his forerunners who advocated a realistic
messianism, he refrained from painting the Messiah in overly concrete colors. To
do so would give an opening to anyone who wanted to come and proclaim himself
the Messiah.” We shall see as we proceed that the last part of this passage requires
fundamental rethinking.
5 The importance of the category of presumptive Messiah in preventing the spread
of messianic movements is highlighted in Aviezer Ravitsky’s analysis, “Ke-fi
Koah ha-Adam: Yemot ha-Mashiah be-Mishnat ha-Rambam,” in Meshihiyyut
ve-Eskatologiyyah, ed. by Zvi Baras (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 205-206, and in David
— 280 —
And yet, not only was this rationalist approach inadequate to stem
the tide of burgeoning messianism; under certain circumstances it
actually helped fan the flames of a messianic movement by depriving
its opponents of their primary weapon. In the absence of an existing
movement, it may be that Maimonides’ approach could convince certain
types of readers to refrain from plunging into messianic activity,6 but
when messianic movements already have a solid footing, this rationalist
approach brings about results diametrically opposed to those that
Maimonides expected.
In the presence of a real messianic pretender whose followers affirm
with certainty that the process of redemption is already upon us, what
evidence is available to non-believers who wish to demonstrate beyond
doubt that this is not the Messiah, nor is this the beginning of the
redemption? If the figure in question is neither an ignoramus nor a
heretic, the only option is to demonstrate that specific conditions that
should already have been met at this stage have in fact not been fulfilled.
There is simply no other argument that can refute the messianic claim
with certainty.
And now, along comes Maimonides to inform us that the Messiah
need not perform a single sign or wonder, and that even the rabbinic
descriptions of the messianic process are not authoritative. If so, the
non-believer’s sole method of providing an absolute refutation of the
messiah has been taken away from him. In the throes of the enthusiasm
and psychological upheaval marking a powerful messianic movement,
the certainty of the believer will surely wield greater force than the
tentative rejection expressed by the denier. Under these conditions, even
the criteria required to establish the status of presumptive Messiah offer
little assistance to the skeptic. First, someone who has not yet attained
the status of presumptive Messiah could still conceivably turn out to be
the Messiah; thus, even one who argues that these criteria have not been
met cannot rule out the possibility that the figure in question is destined
to be the redeemer. Moreover, it was precisely Maimonides’ rationalistic
approach that compelled him to choose standards that are not so difficult
Hartman’s introduction to A.S. Halkin and D. Hartman, Crisis and Leadership: Epistles
of Maimonides (Philadelphia, 1985), p. 191. On Maimonides’ moderate approach
to events in the messianic era, see Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism
(New York, 1971), pp. 24-32.
6 Though, as we will see, even this assumption needs to be substantially qualified.
— 281 —
to achieve – at least in the eyes of a believer. Thus, before Shabbetai Zevi’s

apostasy, his followers were convinced that he was a king of Davidic
ancestry who studied the Torah and pursued the commandments, that
he compelled all Israel to follow and strengthen it, and that he fought the
wars of the Lord if only in a spiritual sense. Similarly (after due allowance
for the deep differences between the movements), just such an explicit
argument can be found in publications of some circles in the Habad
movement, who see all the virtues enumerated by Maimonides in the
personality and deeds of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.7 It is very difficult for
a rationalist to establish pre-messianic requirements that someone who
is not the Messiah would find absolutely impossible to fulfill, especially
since the criteria are, by their very nature, designed to characterize an
individual who could ultimately turn out not to be the Messiah.
If we now turn our attention to the largest messianic movement in
the history of Judaism, we will see that we are not dealing with a merely
abstract possibility. One who carefully reads Sefer Zizat Novel Zevi by
R. Jacob Sasportas, the primary opponent of Sabbateanism before the
apostasy, will realize that the Maimonidean ruling from the “Laws of
Kings” was the major stumbling block that he faced, preventing him
from presenting his rejection of Shabbetai Zevi’s messianic claim in
unequivocal terms. It is true that Sasportas continually relies on the
words of Maimonides as his basis for rejecting a confident affirmation of
the Sabbatean faith, and this reliance is legitimate and even convincing
for those who are prepared to be convinced. However, his frequent
assertion that the Sabbateans deny the validity of Maimonides’ position
obscures the true historic impact of this Maimonidean passage on the
raging controversy regarding the Messiahship of Shabbetai Zevi.
Scholem, for example, writes that while Nehemiah Cohen relied on
sources such as Sefer Zerubbavel and Sefer Otot ha-Mashiah8 to refute the
claim of the messianic pretender, Sasportas relied upon Maimonides and
the plain meaning of Biblical texts.9 This is correct. Nonetheless, it is
7 See M. Zelikson, Kol Mevasser Mevasser ve-Omer, Kovez Hiddushei Torah: ha-Melekh
ha-Mashiah ve-ha-Ge’ullah ha-Shelemah (1983), pp. 14-17. See also: “Mihu Yehudi:
Shabbat ha-Gadol—ve-ha-Hishtammetut ha-Gedolah,” Kfar Chabad (1984): 53, at the
end of the essay.
8 These were popular works depicting an apocalyptic drama preceding the messianic age.
9 Gershom Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi ve-ha-Tenu'ah ha-Shabbeta’it bi-Yemei Hayyav (Tel
Aviv, 1957), pp. 557-559.
— 282 —
absolutely clear that if Maimonides had ended his “Laws of Kings” after
Chapter 10 without ever writing the last two chapters on the Messiah,
Sasportas would have presented his objections to Sabbateanism on the
basis of the plain meaning of Scripture and other sources such as the
Zohar without any need for the Maimonidean position. Even more so
– and this is the main point – had Maimonides not written these final
two chapters, Sasportas would have presented his rejection of Shabbetai
Zevi’s Messiahship not tentatively but with absolute conviction. Anyone
who relies upon the passage in the Mishneh Torah for anti-Sabbatean
purposes must also accept its authority with respect to the view that
we have no definitive knowledge of the messianic process. Maimonides’
position proved to be a minor and almost negligible impediment to the
Sabbatean movement; its primary impact was to lend the movement
major and almost definitive support.
Let us examine several illustrations from Sefer Zizat Novel Zevi:
And if those who rebel against the rabbis’ words [i.e., the Sabbatean believers]
will say that our sages have not hit upon the truth, and, as Maimonides said,
all these matters cannot be known by man until they occur, then I too agree.
But I will not discard the tradition of our sages, all of whose words are justice
and truth, before the messianic fulfillment. And if after that fulfillment, it
turns out that their statements still do not accord [with the actual course
of events], then the Messiah himself will argue on their behalf… And if you
have acted out of piety by believing [in Shabbetai Zevi], you have in fact
placed yourselves in the straits of serious doubt… Either way, I am innocent
and bear no iniquity… Have you heard me declare in public that this is all
lies and falsehood? Rather, I have told all those believers who have asked me
that it is possible [that he is the Messiah], although it is a distant possibility
until he has performed a messianic act.10
And in another passage:
None of his initial deeds accord with the words of Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai
in [Zohar] Parashat Shemot, and God forbid that we should say, like the
ignorant among the masses, that none of our sages hit upon the truth. And
though Maimonides stated in the above mentioned passage that no one
will know these matters until they occur, he nonetheless agrees that until
that time, we are to remain rooted in the tradition of our sages.11
10 Isaiah Tishbi, Sefer Zizat Novel Zevi le-Rabbi Ya‘akov Sasportas (Jerusalem, 1954), p. 104.
11 Ibid., p. 119. The reference to Zohar Parashat Shemot points to an extensive and
— 283 —
It is clear from these passages that were it not for the Maimonidean
ruling, the followers of Shabbetai Zevi would have been at a loss to
account for the lack of congruence between what they saw as reality and
the depiction of the redemptive process in rabbinic texts and the Zohar.
It is also clear that Sasportas would have taken advantage of this lack
of congruence to refute the Sabbatean messianic claim categorically.
Indeed, after the apostasy, we find a letter by R. Joseph Halevi denying
Shabbetai Zevi’s Messiahship on the basis of passages from the Talmud
and the Zohar that are no less relevant to the period before the apostasy,
and he does so without any need for additional arguments relying upon
Maimonides.12 The importance of Maimonides for the Sabbateans
themselves is manifest in the words of Nathan of Gaza, who falls back
upon the Maimonidean passage even after the apostasy of his master:
And though we have found no hint of this matter in the explicit words of
the Torah, we have already seen how strange the sages’ words are regarding
these matters, so that we cannot fully understand anything they say in
their context, as the great luminary Maimonides has also testified; their
words will be understood only when the events actually unfold.13
I would not venture so far as to say that the success of the Sabbatean
movement would have been impossible if not for the Maimonidean
ruling, but there can be no doubt that we are witness here to a sharp
and highly significant irony.
It is particularly interesting that Maimonides himself encountered
the problem that we have been examining when he composed his Epistle
to Yemen. The Epistle’s assertion that the Messiah will be recognized
by signs and wonders results from the need to reject the messianic
mission of a specific individual by establishing clearcut criteria. Thus, the
discrepancy between the “Laws of Kings” and the Epistle on this point
also demonstrates the tension between rationalism and the requirements
of anti-messianic polemic during a confrontation with a real messianic
movement.14
detailed description of events during the course of the messianic process that should
have already occurred, at least in part, by that point in the Sabbatean movement. See
Zohar, Part II, 7b and following.
12 Ibid., pp. 190-191, and cf. 195.
13 Ibid., p. 260. See Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi, p. 628.
14 See: Maimonides, Iggerot, ed. by Yosef Kafah (Jerusalem, 1972). There is some
— 284 —
II
Until now we have concerned ourselves with messianic activism of an

extreme sort that did not arise out of rationalism but used it effectively
as a protective shield. Now we will turn to more moderate messianic
manifestations that derive in no small part from the naturalistic
conception of the redemption, which continues to provide them
with inspiration to this day. Thus, the ironic connection between the
restrained messianism of the rationalist and messianic activism is by no
means restricted to the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern
period; it extends into the modern age, leaving its mark on Religious
Zionism both in the nineteenth century and in our own day. This irony
arises from deep within messianic rationalism and is rooted in its very
essence. On the one hand, the naturalistic conception of the redemption
tends to prevent messianic delusions as well as behavior that deviates
from the realm of the normal. But on the other hand, the very nature
of the naturalistic conception encourages activism. If the Messiah is not
destined to appear with the clouds of heaven, if it is necessary to fight
the wars of the Lord in the plain sense of the word, if the Temple is not
destined to descend fully assembled from the heavens, if it is necessary
to re-institute semikhah (the direct chain of rabbinic ordination between
master and pupil deriving from Sinai) and the Sanhedrin before the
arrival of the redeemer, then human activity is needed to help realize
the messianic hope. This conclusion appears so clear and unavoidable
that some scholars and thinkers view Maimonides as a guiding spirit for
religious Zionism.15
It seems to me that despite the logic inherent in this claim,
Maimonides had no such intentions. He advises his readers simply
plausibility in Kafah’s attempt to harmonize the assertion in the Epistle with

Maimonides’ position in the Mishneh Torah. See Kafah’s notes ad loc. Nonetheless,
the emphasis in the Epistle is certainly different from the impression given by the
“Laws of Kings.”
15 For this general conception from different perspectives and with different degrees
of emphasis, see Joel L. Kramer, “On Maimonides’ Messianic Postures,” Studies in
Medieval Jewish History and Literature II, ed. by Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, Mass.,
and London, England, 1984), pp. 109-142; Aryeh Botwinick, “Maimonides’ Messianic
Age,” Judaism 33 (1984): 425; Menachem Kellner, “Messianic Postures in Israel
Today,” Modern Judaism 6 (1986): 197-209; Shubert Spero, “Maimonides and the
Sense of History,” Tradition 24:2 (1989): 128-137.
— 285 —
to “wait.” The Maimonidean positions that are capable of generating

messianic activism derive solely from rational and halakhic
considerations. For example, the determination that semikhah must
be re-instituted by an act of the rabbis in the land of Israel before the
redemption can occur is based on a verse from Isaiah in conjunction
with the quintessential Maimonidean position that the halakhah will
not change at the End of Days and that miracles are to be left out of
the messianic process.16 This approach precludes Maimonides from
describing a Sanhedrin composed of rabbis without semikhah, or of
proposing, as did certain rabbis after him, that semikhah would be re-
instituted with the return to earth of the prophet Elijah (who certainly
had semikhah) from his place in the heavens. There is no intention on the
part of Maimonides to encourage actions expressly designed to bring the
redeemer. Nevertheless, Jacob Katz’s important essay showed how his
position led to the famous attempt to re-institute semikhah in sixteenth-
century Safed out of explicit messianic motivations.17
Similarly, Maimonides’ determination that the Third Temple will be
built by human hands, a determination that was so important to R. Zevi
Hirsch Kalischer in his proto-Zionist polemic, certainly did not stem
from a desire to encourage messianic activism. The view that the Third
Temple will fall intact from the heavens appeared in marginal sources,
and Rashi introduced it into the center of Jewish messianic consciousness
only as a consequence of a serious difficulty in a Talmudic passage in
tractates Sukkah and Rosh ha-Shanah. There, the Talmud states that the
origin of a particular rabbinic prohibition lies in a concern arising out
of the possibility that the Third Temple might be built at night or on a
holiday. Rashi raises an objection based on another Talmudic passage
that unequivocally prohibits building the Temple during these times,
and he resolves the contradiction by concluding that the Third Temple
will not be built by human hands.18 Although from a purely exegetical
standpoint there is no better answer than the one offered by Rashi, a
16 Maimonides, Perush ha-Mishnayot, Sanhedrin 1:3; cf. Hilkhot Sanhedrin 4:11.

This example is cited by several of the authors in the previous footnote. See also
Funkenstein, Teva, Historia, u-Meshihiyyut, pp. 64-68.
17 Jacob Katz, “Mahloket ha-Semikhah bein Rabbi Ya‘akov Beirav ve-ha-Ralbah,” Zion
15 (1951): 28-45.
18 Rashi, Sukkah 41a s.v. i nami; Rosh ha-Shanah 30a s.v. la tzerikha. Cf. Tzvi Hirsch
Kalischer, Derishat Ziyyon, ed. by Israel Klausner (Jerusalem, 1964), pp. 144-147.
— 286 —
commentator who has been influenced by rationalism will be unwilling

even to consider such a possibility. For this reason, R. Menahem ha-
Meiri does not even mention Rashi’s explanation, and instead he forces
himself to manufacture a suggestion that we are concerned about the
prospect of an error by the rabbinic court, which out of love for the
Temple may allow it to be constructed during times when it is forbidden
to do so.19 That is to say, ha-Meiri is prepared to express concern
about an error by a rabbinic court presumably functioning under the
supervision of the Messiah himself so that he will not have to entertain
the notion of buildings dropping out of the sky. Despite the rationalist
motivation, which has nothing to do with messianic activism, the
position that the Third Temple would be built by human hands- – as well
as related naturalistic approaches—had a greater potential to generate
such activism than the approach that looks forward to miracles in which
human beings play no active role.
As I have noted, there are scholars who do not see the irony in this
situation because they attribute to Maimonides a conscious, though
moderate, activist intention. I see no evidence for this motivation in his
writings, and I am not willing to create such a Maimonidean position
based on logical considerations alone, when his explicit directive is simply
to wait.20 On the other hand, scholars who have dealt with Maimonides’
19 Ha-Meiri, Beit ha-Behirah, Sukkah, ad loc.

20 For reasons that may be scholarly and may be personal, I do not assert that
Maimonides’ own posture would have necessarily compelled him to oppose the
messianic motif in religious Zionism, especially after the development of the
larger movement out of other considerations; my remark at the beginning of this
essay about movements that are “thoroughly inimical to [the rationalist’s] mode
of thought” refers to Sabbateanism and other classic messianic movements. Still,
the encouragement of messianic activism, even of the moderate type, played no
role in Maimonides’ consciousness, but emerged willy-nilly out of his rationalist
position.
On the other hand, the attempt to use Maimonides to prove that there is no
messianic significance in the establishment of the State of Israel runs afoul of the
problem we pointed out in the first half of the essay. Proponents of this position
customarily point out that Maimonides mentions the ingathering of the exiles only
after the appearance of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple (“Laws of
Kings” 11:4). But Maimonides himself pointed out in his “agnostic” ruling (“Laws
of Kings” 12:2) that the order of these events is not central to the faith. When I
mentioned this to Zalman Alpert of the Yeshiva University Library, he graciously
directed me to the exchange between Amnon Shapira and Dov Wolpo, Ammudim 413,
415, 416 (1980): 211-214, 291-295, 345-347.
— 287 —
influence on messianic developments before the rise of Zionism tend to

view his stand as a successful attempt to thwart messianic activism. As
we have seen, this position too is highly questionable. It seems to me
that we stand before an ironic paradox with significant consequences.
The rationalist, while striving to moderate the messianic drive, will
sometimes unwillingly enhance it.
— 288 —
SEPHARDIC AND ASHKENAZIC

MESSIANISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES:
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
DEBATE
From: Rishonim ve-Aharonim: Mehqarim be-Toledot Yisrael muggashim

le-Avraham Grossman (The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History:
Jerusalem, 2009), pp. 11-28 (Hebrew). Translated by Gabriel Wasserman
and the author.
This article is dedicated to my friend Professor Avraham Grossman, an

outstanding Jewish historian who deserves the highest regard not only
for his intellectual achievements, but also for his exceptional personal
qualities. As I already noted twenty years ago, he has taught us how to
express differences of opinion with humility, impelled by the quest for
truth for its own sake, and with a sense of respect for others.1 In this
essay, I set out to examine the positions of two outstanding historians
with a special place in my life. Gerson Cohen was my doctoral advisor
and primary mentor in the field of history, and I personally heard him
espouse the well-known thesis at issue here before it reached its printed
form. I still remember my reaction at the time: I was taken aback by his
claim, which opposed my immediate instincts regarding the relationship
between rationalism and messianic movements. But I also remember
my growing sense of admiration as I came to understand the ingenuity
and depth of his proposal.2 Some years ago, Elisheva Carlebach, who
studied with me as she began the process that ultimately led to her
1 David Berger, “Heqer Rabbanut Ashkenaz ha-Qedumah,” Tarbiz 53 (1984): 479.

2 Cohen’s article has been published four times: Gerson D. Cohen, “Messianic Postures
of Ashkenazim and Sephardim,” Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture #9 (1967); Studies of the
Leo Baeck Institute, ed. by Max Kreutzberger (New York, 1967), pp. 115-156; Gerson D.
Cohen, Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures (Philadelphia, 1991); Essential Papers
on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, ed. by Marc Saperstein (New
York, 1992), pp. 202-233.
— 289 —
impressive accomplishments as a historian, wrote a sharp critique of

Cohen’s thesis. No one can disagree that the topic in question is of great
importance, and I believe that the arguments on both sides deserve
careful examination. Because I have such great respect for both the
originator of the thesis and its critic, the chances that I will not slip
into inappropriate formulations are greater that they might normally
be, but it is not superfluous to express the hope that the image of the
honoree will provide all the more protection.
What is it that Cohen claims in his article? He argues that there is
a striking, almost polar, opposition between medieval Sepharad and
Ashkenaz with regard to the issue of messianism. In Sepharad, we find
lively discussions of messianism in the writings of commentators and
intellectuals, as well as popular messianic movements. In Ashkenaz, on
the other hand, there is no discussion or discourse, no ferment and no
messiahs. Cohen strives to prove these assertions, and then to arrive at
an explanation for the phenomenon itself.
He begins his analysis with the usual scholarly assumption that
Ashkenazic Jewry had a strong connection to the Palestinian tradition,
whereas Sephardic Jewry’s connection was to Babylonia. Thence he
proceeds to examine these two centers of early medieval Jewry, Palestine
and Babylonia, for the first signs of the contrast between Ashkenazic
and Sephardic attitudes toward messianism. In the Persian/Byzantine
era and the beginning of the Muslim era, we find apocalyptic literature
in Palestine, but no active messianic movements. Cohen’s understanding
is that this literature owes its existence to a sublimation of messianic
energy from the world of action into the world of the imagination, to
the point where it can even be viewed as a contrast to active messianism.
On the other hand, Babylonia in the same period produced a number of
movements with messianic characteristics, even including violent and
quasi-military elements.
In Cohen’s opinion, this difference between the two centers persisted
throughout the Middle Ages. In the realm of straightforward activism,
we can identify about a dozen messianic figures between 1065 and
1492, all of them in the Sephardic cultural orbit. We do find instances
of messianic ferment in Byzantium and Sicily, but these were passing
phenomena in communities that had strong ties to the Middle East. In the
realm of calculations and messianic discourse, we find almost nothing in
Ashkenaz. There is a letter, dated 960, from an Ashkenazic community to
— 290 —
the Geonim of the Land of Israel asking about certain messianic matters;
but the curiosity about this topic seems to have been based on reading
Sefer Zerubbavel, and the question about the End of Days is put together
with an entirely different question about kashrut. One of the Crusade
chronicles states that the Jews were hoping that the Messiah would
arrive during the 256th cycle of the Jewish calendar (1085-1104 CE),
based on Jeremiah 31:6: “Ronnu le-Ya’akov simhah” (“sing with gladness
for Jacob”) where the numerical value of the first word, ronnu, is 256);
however, this number reflects a calculation from a late Byzantine midrash.
Rashi’s calculations in his commentary on the Book of Daniel actually
illustrate a lack of messianic enthusiasm, since the effort to calculate the
End was forced upon him by exegetical necessity and the dates that he
proposes point to a redemption that is to be delayed for generations. In
the last years of the fifth millennium (which ended in the Jewish year
5000, corresponding to 1240 CE), some prophecies of the imminent End
begin to appear in Ashkenaz, but this is an atypical phenomenon whose
character is entirely different from the rationalistic calculations produced
by Sephardim. Similarly, the calculations attested in Ashkenaz tend to
be based on innovative numerical equivalencies (gimatriyyot), which
reflect a very different way of thinking from the calculations used by the
Sephardic intellectuals. Finally, the migration of French rabbis to the Land
of Israel in the thirteenth century emerged out of considerations that
were essentially unconnected to messianic hopes.
Let us now look at Sepharad through Cohen’s lens. There, we see many
calculations of the End of Days, based on rationalistic interpretations
of biblical verses or rabbinic statements, on historical typology, and on
astrological investigation, which was considered a scientific field of study
in the Middle Ages. (Maimonides’ opposition to astrology was atypical
even among philosophers.) Interest in the End of Days and the date
when it will occur appears in the letter of Hasdai ibn Shaprut to the
King of the Khazars; in the writings of Avraham bar Hiyya, Solomon
ibn Gabirol, and Judah Halevi; in Abraham ibn Daud’s Book of Tradition
(Sefer ha-Qabbalah); in Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen; in Nahmanides’
Book of the Redemption (Sefer ha-Ge’ullah); and in the diverse writings of
Isaac Abravanel.
Cohen connects messianic calculations and even the rise of messianic
movements to rationalist modes of thought. As I have noted, I initially
recoiled from this assertion; after all, our instincts do not take well to
— 291 —
a position which states that rationalism creates activism that appears

contrary to common sense. However, Cohen explains the logic of this
argument. The Sephardic rationalist was convinced that God governs the
universe in accordance with principles that can be grasped by reason,
whereas the Ashkenazic scholar did not presume to understand God’s
mind. Therefore, the Sephardic rationalist was able to delve into the
complexities of the unfolding historical drama, and his intellectual
efforts along these lines encouraged actual messianic movements among
the masses. The Ashkenazic scholar was forced to wait until the time that
God Himself would decide to redeem His people and His universe, and in
an environment that was not suffused with concern about messianism,
the masses, too, did not become caught up in messianic movements.
In the best-case situation, an Ashkenazic Jew who yearned very much
for the redemption might hope for a prophetic experience from God, or
might attempt to interpret the secrets concealed in biblical verses.
Moreover, Cohen argues that these distinctions in attitude toward
rationalism and messianism also explain the difference between Ashkenaz
and Sepharad with regard to readiness to undergo martyrdom. The
Jews of Sepharad avoided martyrdom for two basic reasons: first of all,
rationalism weakened their faith to a degree that undermined the inner
strength necessary to sacrifice one’s life; second, they were convinced
that the messiah would soon come, at which point they would be able to
return to Judaism.
Finally, in a brief passage that appears almost as an aside, Cohen
makes an important, even revolutionary, point in the historiography of
messianism: persecutions in and of themselves do not produce messianic
movements. Even a scholar who utterly rejects Cohen’s basic positions
must give him credit for the short passage in which he lists the major
persecutions from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century and
notes that not one of these produced a messianic movement. One might
argue with Cohen’s affirmation with respect to the expulsion from Spain
and the massacres of 1648, but the basic observation remains intact in
all its force, and it appears to stand unchallenged.
Cohen’s article became a classic in the academic discussion of Jewish
messianism in the Middle Ages, but there were nonetheless scholars who
rejected his position. Israel Yuval, in his long article on the hatred that
Ashkenazic Jews felt towards Christianity and the implications that he
attributes to this hatred, proffered two arguments against Cohen’s thesis.
— 292 —
First of all, if Ashkenazic Jews did not produce the sort of messianic
movements that we find in other centers, this should not be seen as
an expression of passivity. Ashkenazic society considered words very
powerful, and so we should view their bitter curses against the gentiles
and their prayers for vengeance as active messianism. Activism in the
form of movements would have been redundant or perhaps even harmful.
Moreover, Sephardic expressions of messianism in the realm of theory
and calculations appear primarily in speculative philosophical literature,
a genre that barely existed at all in Ashkenaz.3
But a broad and systematic critique of Cohen’s thesis was presented
by Carlebach in a lecture that she delivered in 1998.4 Here, then, is a
summary of her argument:
1 Cohen speaks of “aggressive military activity” in the movements
that arose in Persia in the first centuries of Muslim rule. In fact,
as even Cohen admits in a later article, these movements were
hardly organized, and they had no true military component.
2. Messianism was hardly foreign to Ashkenaz, nor was martyrdom
absent in Sepharad. Furthermore, dying for the faith was not
considered an expression of passivity by medieval Jews, for the
martyrs first tried to save themselves in any way possible.
3. Cohen sees the Ashkenazic position as an expression of passivity
on the part of the rabbinic elite, whereas he sees the active
messianism of Sepharad as “popular.” Thus, he overlooks the
conservative messianism of the Sephardic rabbis from the time of
the Geonim, on to Maimonides, and through R. Jacob Sasportas.
Moreover, movements with messianic characteristics “often”
took place in Ashkenaz under the leadership of the rabbinic elite
itself, thus evincing a character that penetrated to the very core
of communities that identified with its great rabbinic scholars;
on the other hand, the movements in Sepharad often came from
an anti-rabbinic sector.
3 Israel Yuval, “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-Alilah,” Zion 58 (1993): 60. This
passage also appears in Yuval’s book Shenei Goyim be-Bitnekh (Tel-Aviv, 2000), p. 145.
See also note 19, below.
4 Elisheva Carlebach, Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and
Sepharad: Third Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanowitz Chair of Jewish History,
Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro College (New York, 1998).
— 293 —
4. The use of the term “Sepharad” to embrace both the movements

that arose on the fringes of Persian Jewry in the seventh century
and the complex calculations born in the elitist environment of
rationalist courtiers in Andalusia is highly dubious.
5. In light of a number of studies made in the past few decades
pointing to cultural contacts between Ashkenaz and Sepharad,
it is becoming clear that the general picture of a deep cultural
divide between the Jewish centers has been exaggerated, and it
is doubtful that we can use it to explain the distinctions that we
are discussing.
6. A central portion of Carlebach’s lecture is devoted to an analysis
of the historiography of two sixteenth-century messianic
movements in the writings of various Ashkenazic and Sephardic
authors:
I. Asher Laemmelein:
Carlebach points to three Ashkenazic sources and three Sephardic
sources that address this movement.
On the Ashkenazic side, David Ganz portrays Laemmelein as the
messiah’s herald, not as the messiah himself. At the same time, he
describes significant messianic fervor in Ashkenaz that was generated
by the news of the movement. An anonymous chronicle from early
seventeenth-century Prague includes a short note about a rumor in
1502 regarding the Messiah that inspired mass acts of repentance. At
the end of the sixteenth century, a student of R. Solomon Luria wrote
that Laemmelein’s influence had extended to Ashkenaz, to Italy, and to
other lands in the Christian world.
On the Sephardic side, Gedalya ibn Yahya reports that when
Laemmelein died in an unredeemed world, many Jews apostatized. Yosef
ha-Kohen refers to him with the biblical pronouncement, “The prophet
is a fool, the man of the spirit is insane” (Hosea 9:7), and recounts that
“the Jews flocked to him, and said: ‘This is a prophet, whom God has sent
to be a ruler over his people Israel and to gather the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth’.” Yosef Sambari, who repeated Yosef
ha-Kohen’s remarks,5 also noted the influence of these events on “the
sinners of Israel,” i.e., the apostates.
5 Carlebach does not note this point, although it would help support her thesis.
— 294 —
Christian writers who mention Laemmelein’s movement view it,

of course, as yet further evidence of the repeated disappointments
generated by erroneous Jewish imaginings regarding the identity of the
Messiah. Ashkenazic writers willfully ignore the fact that Laemmelein’s
failure led Jews to apostasy. In conclusion, “the historiography of the
movement changes greatly based on the identity of the reporter.”
Beyond the historiographical question, Carlebach notes also that
despites Cohen’s refusal to attribute significance to Laemmelein as well
as his hypothesis that he was influenced by Sephardim, Laemmelein’s
recently-published writings, which were not available to Cohen, show
that he was committed to Ashkenazic culture.
II. Solomon Molkho:

Ashkenazic authors tell the story of this figure only briefly, and tend
to gloss over the messianic aspect. Josel of Rosheim describes Molkho
as a proselyte who caused trouble for the community but also inspired
acts of mass repentance. Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller discusses the
ritual fringes (tzitzit) worn by Molkho and classifies him as a martyr,
but not as a messianic claimant. David Ganz writes a brief description
of Molkho with no mention of messianism. The Prague chronicle reports
that there were messianic expectations in the year 1523, but makes no
mention of Molkho.
In two Sephardic accounts, which are longer, the messianic moment
in Molkho’s life is mentioned explicitly. Yosef ha-Kohen introduces
Molkho with the expression, “A shoot came forth out of Portugal” (cf.
Isaiah 11:1), which has clear messianic implications. Yosef Sambari
explicitly says that Molkho identified himself as the Messiah. Similarly,
two Christian authors write that Molkho announced that he was the
Messiah.
From these data, Carlebach reaches conclusions of decisive
significance for our topic. Ashkenazim write succinct accounts of
messianic events, limiting the messianic aspects of the relevant figures
or ignoring it entirely, for precisely the reason that Christian writers
emphasize it – namely, that any failed messianic movement strengthens
the Christian argument against Judaism. In this context, Carlebach
turns our attention to a comment that I once noted in the name of my
student Avraham Pinsker, to wit, that Ashkenazim may have hesitated
to embrace messianic activism precisely because they lived in a Christian
— 295 —
environment, where they were constantly forced to be on the defensive

against faith in a false messiah. His original comment was made with
reference to actual messianic activity, but Carlebach uses it to explain
the historiographical phenomenon. She also points to a passage in Sefer
Hasidim that warns against openness to messianic prophecies that could
bring disgrace to the Jewish community.
7. Carlebach goes on to examine the messianic movements that
did arise in Ashkenaz or related regions: the messianic tension
in Byzantium at the time of the First Crusade; the expectations
surrounding the 256th cycle of the calendar; the messianic
ferment in the decades preceding the year 5000 (1240 CE); the
migrations to the Land of Israel in the thirteenth century; and
messianic expectation in 1337 attributed to Jews by a Christian
Bavarian chronicle in a miracle story dealing with well-poisoning
and host-desecration. She rejects Cohen’s position that we need
not deal with events recounted only in Christian sources, for
the Ashkenazic tendency to downplay such incidents raises the
likelihood that reliable reports will appear only in Christian
writings.
In Carlebach’s opinion, all the phenomena in this list show that there
was a significant level of messianic activity in Ashkenaz, to the point
where we can affirm that active expressions of messianic hope were no
less a part of the collective personality of Ashkenazic Jewry than that
of the Sepharadim. Cohen’s thesis reflects a historiographical tradition
hostile to Ashkenazic Jewry. Cohen sees in this Jewry a metaphor for a
rabbinic elite suffused with fundamentalism and intolerance, in contrast
to the scientific spirit that animated Sephardic Jewry. “The true deficiency
of Ashkenaz resided not in its messianic posture, but in its deficient
alignment with the temper of the historian.”
Carlebach, like Cohen, was blessed with a sharp mind, broad
knowledge, stylistic precision, broad vision, and intellectual depth. This
debate addresses one of the fundamental issues that faced medieval
Jewry, and it requires serious assessment of the arguments on both sides.
In the remainder of this article, I shall attempt to present the case for a
more modest approach than Cohen’s without fully endorsing Carlebach’s
position.
Let us begin with my reservations about Cohen’s arguments. Some of
— 296 —
these reservations are identical to Carlebach’s, but most are different.

1. It is true that the Jews of Palestine, who wrote apocalypses in the
first decades of the seventh century, did not form movements that
pointed to any actual individuals as messianic figures; however,
the word “passive” is hardly an appropriate term to characterize
them. These Jews carried out military campaigns alongside the
Persians against Christian Byzantium, and it is quite plausible to
conclude that some of them slaughtered Christians in Mamilla.6
The apocalyptic writings understand these wars as part of the
unfolding drama of the End of Days, and it is hard to see how any
Jew who saw these events could have reject this interpretation.
Even if we assume that not all the Jews who fought in these wars
saw the Persian-Byzantine conflict through a messianic prism, it
is clear that this community was as remote from “passivity” as
East is from West.
2. In light of the Italian origins of Ashkenazic Jewry, Cohen
emphasizes the fact that Josippon, which was written in tenth-
century Italy, opposes aggressive activism, but he downplays
the identical position of the Sephardi Abraham ibn Daud.
(Cohen writes that while Ibn Daud did agree with the author of
Josippon on this point, his position did not succeed in curbing the
Sephardic enthusiasm for messianic movements, and Ibn Daud
himself did not refrain from attempting to calculate the End.)
3. Cohen attributes great significance to Hasdai ibn Shaprut’s
letter asking the Khazar king whether he has any information
about the coming of the Messiah. However, when he discusses a
contemporaneous letter from Ashkenaz that contains almost the
identical question, he sees it as nothing more than a meaningless
expression of curiosity.
4. Cohen regards the intensive use of gimatriyyot in messianic
contexts as a sign of the non-rational Ashkenazic mode of thought,
but when he encounters the same approach in the writings of
Abraham bar Hiyya, he views it as a marginal phenomenon.
6 See K. Hilkowitz, “Li-She’elat Hishtattefutam shel Yehudim be-Kibbush Yerushalayim

‘al Yedei ha-Parsim bi-Shenat 614,” Zion 4 (1939): 307-316; Elliot S. Horowitz, “‘The
Vengeance of the Jews was Stronger than their Avarice’: Modern Historians and the
Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614,” Jewish Social Studies 4:2 (1998): 1-39.
— 297 —
5. Although Rashi’s date for the End of Days lay far in the future,
we find other calculations in Ashkenaz that point to a date in
the near future. As to Sepharad, despite the general tendency to
provide imminent dates, Nahmanides produced a calculation that
postponed the final End 140 years.
6. As I have mentioned above, Cohen did not attribute significance
to Laemmelein’s movement, and he hypothesized that it resulted
from Sephardic influence. Carlebach’s criticism of this claim is
fundamentally correct, even though the movement did not arise
in the heartland of Ashkenaz, and dates from the early sixteenth
century.
7. I agree with Carlebach that the supposed connection between
Sepharad and the peripheral movements in Persia is extremely
tenuous. Moreover, it is highly doubtful that rationalism played
any significant role in seventh-century Persia. Thus, the messianic
ferment there was certainly based on factors that had absolutely
nothing to do with Cohen’s thesis. If the messianic activity in
Sepharad was actually connected to Persia – or “Bablyonia”
– it reflected a tradition that had no connection to scientific
modes of thinking. It is entirely possible that these movements
developed in Persia under Shi‘ite influence (as Israel Friedlaender
noted many years ago), and it is not impossible that some of
the medieval movements – though not all of them – were also
inspired by a similar environment.7
8. Our list of messianic movements in the Middle Ages is partly
based on the reports of Maimonides in his Epistle to Yemen.
Needless to say, the information which Maimonides had about
these movements came mainly from the Sephardic world.
9. Although a number of studies have appeared emphasizing the
acts of martyrdom that occurred in the Sephardic sphere, I
believe that we can say that Cohen’s distinction between the two
centers still retains some validity. Nevertheless, the connection
between messianism and the relative reluctance in Sepharad to
7 In a personal conversation, Mark Saperstein has stressed this possibility to me. I think
that many of the parallels suggested by Friedlaender are forced, but some of them are
entirely reasonable. See Israel Friedlaender, “Jewish-Arabic Studies,” JQR .n. s. 1 (1910-
1911):183-205; 2 (1911-1912): 481-516; 3 (1912-1913): 235-300.
— 298 —
die a martyr’s death is exceedingly tenuous and borders on the

incoherent. On the one hand, Cohen describes a belief marked by
uncertainty, and on the other, he points to a belief so strong that
those who held it were prepared to convert out of firm conviction
that the Messiah would come in the immediate future to save
them from their distressing fate. Moreover, a simple question
arises: Would it really be a good idea to greet the messiah with
the words: “Welcome, my master the king! I am your servant
so-and-so, the apostate”? Although forced apostasy and willing
conversion are hardly the same thing, it is worth mentioning the
debate in Majorca, where a Jew became more-or-less convinced
that Christianity was the true faith, but to be on the safe side, he
decided to remain Jewish for a few more years, until the arrival
of a messianic date that was current at the time.8
Despite all these considerations, I also have serious reservations
about the criticisms of Cohen made by Yuval and Carlebach.
There is indeed more than a grain of truth in Yuval’s assertion that
curses and prayers for vengeance can be classified as messianic activism in
a society that views speech as a magical act. However, the Jew in the well-
known joke who shouts in the study hall, “Jews! Do something! Recite
Psalms!” does not exactly typify “activism” in the usual sense, even if he
attributes magical impact to the recitation of Psalms. In the final analysis,
Ashkenazic Jews did not make a clear distinction between the “natural”
process generated by the declarations of the Jewish masses and divine
activity on the cosmic plane, so that their prayers and curses—even if
they included a magical element—were essentially requests for divine
mercy. Furthermore, routine messianic “activism” cannot be compared
to messianic movements that arise at discrete moments of history. The
messianic fervor that characterizes movements cannot characterize
quotidian activities, certainly not when these activities involve nothing
more than speech. As to Yuval’s assertion that from a magical perspective,
typical messianic activism would be harmful, the fact remains that even
from this perspective the expected result is the arrival of the Messiah, so
that it is difficult to see any harm in his appearance. A messianic figure
and his followers do not see themselves as pressing for a premature
End of Days. On the contrary, such a figure would assert that the long-
8 Ora Limor, Vikkuah Majorca 1286 (Jerusalem, 1985), volume I, p. 132.
— 299 —
awaited time has arrived, perhaps precisely because the prayers and
curses have had their effect. We must also note that Yuval’s criticism is
directed only against Cohen’s claim that the Ashkenazic attitude toward
messianism was “passive.” From another perspective, Yuval’s position
actually reinforces Cohen’s analysis since it points to a basic difference
between Sephardic “rationalistic” messianism and a very different sort
of messianism among Ashkenazic Jews.
As to Yuval’s observation that there was virtually no speculative
philosophical literature in Ashkenaz, the point itself merits serious
consideration, but we must remember that when Cohen cites Sephardic
materials, he includes letters, commentaries, and Abraham ibn
Daud’s chronicle (or chronography). Moreover, the lack of speculative
philosophical works is due to a considerable extent to precisely what Cohen
emphasized, to wit, the absence of speculative thought of the sort that
would have generated serious analysis of the nature of the messianic era
as well as sustained interest in the questions associated with it, including
the calculation of when that era would begin. The distinctions that Cohen
drew are not neutralized by Yuval’s methodological observations, as
important as the latter may be.
The sharp critique in Carlebach’s summary remarks is directed against
a stereotypical anti-Ashkenazic attitude that she attributes to Cohen. In
her view, he adopted a negative image of the Ashkenazic “fundamentalists”
in contrast to the rationalistic heroes of Sepharad. This criticism of Cohen
evokes a stereotype of its own—the image of the broadly educated
historian who respects the Sephardim for their variegated and open culture
and disdains the Ashkenazim because they did not study philosophy and
were caught up in a narrow, limited belief system.
I believe that this perception is imprecise. Despite Carlebach’s
assertion that Cohen attributes “a heroic and active profile”9 to the
warring messianism of the Sephardic world, his article nowhere contains
any expression of respect for the putative “military messianism” of the
sects in late seventh-century Persia; he does not present the adherents
of these movements as heroic in any way. As to his overall assessment of
Ashkenaz and Sepharad, there is some basis for Carlebach’s evaluation.
Cohen sees the Ashkenazim as “fundamentalists” and mentions their
belief in anthropomorphism and strange aggadot. His statement, which
9 Carlebach, p. 2.
— 300 —
Carlebach quotes in her study, that eventually even “some fine Sephardim”
internalized Ashkenazic fundamentalism10 can create the impression that
he wanted to set up a dichotomy between the enlightened Sephardim,
who deserve respect, and the Ashkenazim, who deserve disdain. And
indeed, it is of course true that Cohen himself identified more with the
culture of the medieval Sephardim than that of the medieval Ashkenazim.
Nevertheless, anyone who studied with Cohen will understand that this
formulation was not meant to belittle or mock the Ashkenazim; rather,
all that he meant is that distinguished Sephardim absorbed Ashkenazic
influence. It is true that even in the sixties the term “fundamentalism”
was not a compliment, but even in academic circles, it had not yet attained
the full degree of vitriol that it bears today. Cohen did not feel disdain
for the simple faith of the Ashkenazim that the Messiah would come
whenever God would determine, and certainly not for their avoidance
of active messianic movements. When all is said and done, does it really
make sense to say that messianic uprisings fit well with “the temper of
the historian”? I can testify that Cohen respected the Ashkenazim for
their self-sacrifice in times of crisis as a consequence of precisely the
constellation of beliefs that he presents in this study, even though he did
not identify with those beliefs himself.
Similarly, Carlebach’s assertion that Cohen’s typology has no room
for the conservative messianism of the Sephardic rabbinate from the
Geonim through Maimonides through R. Jacob Sasportas requires
qualification. Cohen does mention this conservatism several times
and even emphasizes it. As Carlebach understands very well, his basic
argument is that the rabbis related to messianism only on the level
of theory, but they did so in such impressive, constant fashion that
the masses were inspired to embrace messianic movements, despite
the reservations and opposition of the rabbis. As to Ashkenaz, even a
generous evaluation of the messianic movements there will reveal a very
modest number; it is difficult to agree with the claim that movements of
a messianic nature were “frequently” led there by the rabbinic elite.
As I have mentioned, Carlebach points to the discovery of contacts
between the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz and Sepharad, and she sees
those contacts as a basis for denying the presence of sharp, clear lines
distinguishing the two cultures. This argument, for all its plausibility,
10 Cohen, p. 132 (ed. Kreuzberger).
— 301 —
requires us to confront a broad, complex historical-methodological

question with many significant implications: When a civilization, or
segment of a civilization, is already beyond its formative stage, and
has an established cultural character, under what conditions might we
expect that its fundamental characteristics would change due to outside
influences? This is not the place to deal with the full dimensions of this
question, which have the broadest implications, but generally speaking,
it does not appear that cultures undergo deep changes simply on the
basis of books and reports brought by travelers or even on the basis of a
few personal contacts.
In 1985, the historian Charles Radding published a book which
spawned a furious debate. In this book, he argued that the residents
of Europe in the first half of the Middle Ages evinced modes of ethical
thought that correspond not to those of adults in our society, but to
those of children whose age can be identified on the basis of Jean Piaget’s
system of classification.11 Among other things, Radding maintained that
Europeans in that period evaluated the severity of a crime based on its
consequences without reference to the perpetrator’s intent. One of the
criticisms leveled against Radding was that it is impossible to argue
that the authors of medieval laws could have ignored the importance
of intent since even in the early centuries of the Middle Ages Christian
intellectuals read the Bible with the belief that it represented divine
revelation, and biblical law views intent as a very important component
in ascertaining the severity of a sin and the degree of its punishment.
Moreover, as even Radding himself notes, Augustine and other church
fathers who were regarded as authorities by medieval lawmakers, also
ascribed considerable importance to intent.
However, I think that this argument, which maintains that people
who believe in certain books will necessarily internalize their values, does
not accord with real psychological processes. Nations that developed
characteristic ways of thinking over long periods of time do not undergo
fundamental changes over a few generations just because they have
adopted a belief in a book that represents a different mentality. It is
much easier to adopt a new doctrine than a new way of conceiving
reality and the manner in which the universe operates. To the extent
11 Charles Radding, A World Made by Men: Cognition and Society, 400-1200 (Chapel Hill,
1985).
— 302 —
that Radding has succeeded in pointing to evidence that the mentalité

of pre-twelfth-century Europeans in fact evinced the ethical conception
that he attributes to them (and this remains a debatable proposition),
the fact that this conception does not fit the Bible or Augustine does not
undermine his conclusion.
With respect to the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz and Sepharad,
this point can be illustrated through an examination of an important
article on Jewish-Christian polemic.12 Daniel Lasker demonstrated
that philosophical arguments against Christianity originating among
Sephardic Jews appeared in books known to Ashkenazim. He pointed
to sporadic Ashkenazic use of these arguments beginning in the mid-
fourteenth century and to a nugatory number of exceptional philosophical
passages before that point. The reader of Lasker’s comprehensive book
on medieval Jewish philosophical polemic against Christianity will
plainly see that Ashkenazic polemical literature plays so negligible a role
in it that deletion of the few references to this literature would effect
virtually no change at all in its contents.13 The article suggests a number
of explanations for the absence of philosophical argumentation, but the
one that I find most convincing is that the phenomenon is rooted in
a difference in worldviews. Lasker’s data effectively show us that the
estrangement of Ashkenazic Jews from a philosophical mode of thought
was so deeply ingrained that they could not digest philosophical concepts
even to the extent needed to direct them against Christian disputants –
despite the fact that arguments drawing upon them were more effective
than those formulated by the Ashkenazim on their own. I do not mean
to suggest that the Jews of Ashkenaz, among them sages whose “little
finger is thicker than my loins,” were not capable of understanding
philosophical discourse. However, even one who understands and even
values an argument that is embedded in a cognitive system foreign to
the way of thinking in which he has been raised from childhood will not
easily mobilize it and transfer it from his peripheral, passive awareness
to his central, active consciousness.
In the final analysis, then, the contacts between Ashkenaz and
12 Daniel J. Lasker, “Jewish Philosophical Polemics in Ashkenaz,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient

and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews, ed. by Ora Limor and Guy Stroumsa
(Tuebingen, 1996), pp. 195-213.
13 Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages
(New York, 1977).
— 303 —
Sepharad were meaningful, and we should not minimize their significance.

But we should also not exaggerate their significance. Deep differences
separated the two cultural spheres, certainly to a sufficient degree to
sustain Cohen’s thesis from an abstract methodological perspective.14
We have arrived, then, at Carlebach’s analysis of the historiographical
material. We recall that the key point of her analysis is the affirmation
that the Christian environment is what caused Ashkenazic Jews to refrain
from recounting messianic episodes, and even when they mentioned them,
they downplayed or even ignored the messianic element. Consequently,
it is entirely possible that there were many more messianic movements
in Ashkenaz than the ones whose memory has been preserved. In other
words, the perception of a deep division between a Sepharad overflowing
with messianic movements and an Ashkenaz bereft of them rests on the
broken reed of flimsy historical documentation.
When I noted earlier that our list of messianic movements is based in
part on Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, I meant to point out the possibility
that a different picture might have emerged had we possessed a fuller,
more balanced record. It is clear, then, that we cannot eliminate this
uncertainty entirely, and from an abstract, logical perspective, Carlebach’s
observation indeed sharpens it. Nonetheless, the historiographical data
cited in her article do not appear to prove the point.
These data focus on only two movements, those of Laemmelein
and Molkho, both in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the
first instance, I see no support for the thesis that Ashkenazic writers
downplayed the messianic dimension of such movements whereas
Sephardic writers presented it fully. Carlebach emphasizes the fact that
the Ashkenazi David Ganz characterizes Laemmelein only as a harbinger
of the messiah. However, as she reports further, Ganz also informs us
of messianic expectations that were associated with Laemmelein’s
announcement of the redemption, and the Prague Chronicle also speaks
in this context of a rumor regarding the Messiah. Among the Sephardim,
Ibn Yahya’s formulation does not contain any clear messianic content
that goes beyond what we find in the Ashkenazic sources. As noted above,
14 I addressed this subject more fully in “Exegesis, Polemic, Philosophy, and Science:
Reflections on the Tenacity of Ashkenazic Modes of Thought,” scheduled to appear
in the proceedings of a conference on “The Attitude to Science and Philosophy in
Ashkenazic Culture through the Ages” to be edited by Gad Freudenthal [now reprinted
in this volume].
— 304 —
Yosef ha-Kohen and Sambari report that Laemmelein was considered a

prophet sent to be a ruler over the Jewish people, who would “gather
the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth,” but even
they have no explicit statement that Laemmelein declared that he was
the Messiah. Moreover, the motif of the ingathering of the exiles also
appears clearly in David Ganz’s chronicle. (“My grandfather, Seligman
Ganz of blessed memory, destroyed an oven dedicated to baking matzah
for Passover, for he was absolutely certain that in the following year,
he would be baking matzah in the Holy Land.”15) The general picture
here does not reflect a significant difference between Ashkenazic and
Sephardic historiography, and Carlebach herself words her conclusions
from the data on Laemmelein very cautiously.16
In the second instance, Carlebach’s analysis points to a somewhat
more evident difference, but even this is not convincing. A single
Sephardic source (Sambari) says explicitly that Molkho claimed to be the
Messiah. Ibn Yahya, who is mentioned in the article without quotation or
analysis, writes that Molkho declared that he was one of the emissaries of
the Messiah,17 a formulation that Carlebach characterized as avoidance
of an explicit messianic identification when she dealt with Ganz’s report
that Laemmelein saw himself as the herald of the messiah.
Yosef ha-Kohen’s use of the expression “a shoot came forth out of
Portugal” does appear to allude to messianism, but in a manner so brief
and indirect that one might plausibly speculate that if the author had
been Ashkenazic, Carlebach would have seen such a non-explicit allusion
as support for her thesis. Moreover, careful examination generates doubt
as to whether or not this formula alludes to messianism at all, for Molkho
wrote of himself, “Give your ears to hear the words of a worm, scarcely
a man, a shoot from the stem of the men of our exile, who has emerged
from our enemies”.18 Aescoly points out that the word “enemies” here
refers to Portugal, a country that persecuted its Jews. It is likely, then,
that this passage in the letter by Molkho is the source (whether directly
15 Zemah David, ed. by Mordechai Breuer (Jerusalm, 1983), p. 137, cited by Carlebach, p. 6.
16 I believe that she is right in her claim that Ashkenazic writers intentionally avoided
describing the instances of apostasy that occurred in the wake of the movement,
but this point does not necessarily mean that they avoided mentioning messianic
movements in and of themselves.
17 Aharon Ze’ev Aescoly, Ha-Tenu‘ot ha-Meshihiyyot be-Yisrael (Jerusalem, 1967), p. 408.
18 Aescoly, p. 386.
— 305 —
or indirectly) of Yosef ha-Kohen’s expression “a shoot came forth

out of Portugal,” and the context in that letter refers according to its
straightforward meaning to humble ancestry, not to Davidic lineage.
If David Ganz really refrained from mentioning the messianic ferment
associated with Molkho out of a calculated decision to ignore messianic
episodes, why does he mention the messianic stirrings inspired by the
accounts concerning Laemmelein? The Prague Chronicle reports messianic
expectations that spread as a consequence of Reuveni’s activities. Even if
Josel of Rosheim intentionally avoided any reference to the messianic
aspect of Molkho’s activity, we must remember that because he served
as a diplomat in royal and princely courts, he could have motivated by
special considerations, and it is doubtful that one may extrapolate from
his behavior to that of the general population. Yom Tov Lipman Heller’s
mention of Molkho is only a side-point in a halakhic discussion, so that
his failure to identify Molkho as a messianic figure bears no significance.
In general, the omission of the fact that Molkho identified himself as
the messiah is not meaningful, because it is very likely that this “fact”
is not correct. There is no reason to consider Sambari’s confused report
to be a historically authentic account, and in a matter of this sort we
cannot rely on Christian testimonies, whose self-interest with respect to
this assertion is blatant.19 The failure to mention an erroneous fact about
a messianic declaration can hardly prove an Ashkenazic tendency to avoid
reporting candid and complete information about messianic figures. Thus,
Carlebach’s only meaningful argument from the historiography about
Molkho is that Ashkenazic sources fail to mention messianic ferment, not
that they fail to mention Molkho’s supposed self-identification as messiah.
Yet even from this point of view, we are speaking about one source that
mentions messianic ferment in other contexts (Ganz), a second source
that mentions it here (the Prague Chronicle), a third source written by
an author with a delicate and atypical position (Josel of Rosheim), and a
fourth dealing primarily with an entirely different topic (Heller).
To sum up, Carlebach’s methodological point about the
historiographical literature is of great interest as a hypothesis, but it
19 I am not saying that we should reject any Christian report out of hand on the assumption
that Christians invented fictional messianic movements out of whole cloth. However,
when a Christian provides an account of such a movement, we cannot expect him to
distinguish carefully and meticulously among a prophet, a harbinger of the Messiah,
an emissary of the Messiah, and the Messiah himself.
— 306 —
has no convincing support from the documentation available to us. What

I have written above about the tendency of Jews in Christian lands to
recoil from messiahs referred, as I noted, to the embrace of messianic
figures, not to the avoidance of reference to messianic movements in
Hebrew books. There is a certain logic in the avoidance of such references,20
but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that an Ashkenazic
historiographic practice has deprived us of information about messianic
movements.
Now let us attempt to sum up and propose some cautious
suggestions.
It is difficult to accept Cohen’s argument that there was a connection
between the messianic tendencies of Babylonia and Palestine, on the one
hand, and the communities of Sepharad and Ashkenaz hundreds of years
later, let alone that this proposed link rested on a common rationalistic
component. Similarly, the suggested link between messianic calculations
and activism on the one hand and acts of apostasy on the other is baseless
and without any convincing logic.
What remains is Cohen’s central thesis with its three components.
1. In Sepharad, we find lively messianic discussion of a rationalistic
nature, including great interest in calculating the End. In
Ashkenaz, on the other hand, the dimensions of messianic
discourse are much smaller, and to the degree that it existed, it
was entirely different in nature and focused on prophecies and
numerical equivalencies.
2. In the Sephardic sector, we find about a dozen messianic figures
between 1065 and 1492. In the Ashkenazic sector, we do not find
a single one.
3. These differences are rooted in the influence of Sephardic
rationalism, which inspired an entire messianic literature. Once
this topic was on the agenda, it led to movements despite the
opposition of the rabbinic/intellectual elite.
It is clear that Cohen’s first assertion is correct to the degree that
20 We recall that Carlebach directs our attention to an interesting and relevant passage in
Sefer Hasidim, ed. by Wistinetzky (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1884), section 212, pp. 76–77,
in which the author warns the reader to be wary of individuals who prophesy about
the messiah, for the prediction “will ultimately be revealed to the whole world, and will
lead to shame and disgrace.”
— 307 —
it addresses messianic thought, but this point in itself is neither

controversial nor innovative. Similarly, messianic calculations are indeed
found in the works of important thinkers in Sepharad, whereas the
calculations in Ashkenaz tend to occupy a much more peripheral place.
Nevertheless, we do find quite a few calculations in Ashkenaz: Ronnu
le-Ya‘akov simhah (the 256th cycle of the calendar), the end of the fifth
millennium, and more, though the calculations in Sepharad are more
variegated as a result of the broader intellectual vision that we might
label “rationalism.”
With respect to messianic movements or figures, Cohen’s factual
claim retains considerable persuasive power even after all the criticism
that has been leveled against it. Even if we use the general term
“ferment,” we do not find meaningful messianic activism in the heartland
of Ashkenaz except in the generation immediately before the end of
the fifth millennium. Yuval has recently argued on the basis of a very
interesting text that the migrations of rabbis to the Land of Israel in
that generation were inspired after all by messianic motives.21 Avraham
Grossman has endorsed a messianic explanation, but he emphasizes not
the significance of the year 5000 but the influence of the news that the
kingdom of the Crusaders had been defeated by Saladin, which, he says,
inspired messianic expectation in the communities of Ashkenaz.22 Even if
we adopt the messianic understanding of these migrations, the activism
in question is simply travel to the Holy Land to pray there. It is difficult
to take the Christian report about the year 1337 with all of its anti-
21 Shenei Goyim be-Bitnekh, pp. 276-283. The sixth chapter of the book is devoted to a
comprehensive and fascinating analysis of the influence of messianic expectation in
the years before 1240, even though there are grounds for reservations regarding some
of the arguments.
22 Grossman, “Nizhonot Salah a-Din ve-ha-Hit‘orerut be-Eropah la-‘Aliyyah le-Erez
Yisrael,” in Ve-Zot li-Yehudah: Mehqarim be-Toledot Erez Yisrael ve-Yishuvah: Muggashim
li-Yehoshua ben Porat, ed. by Yehoshua Ben-Aryeh and Elchanan Reiner (Jerusalem,
2003), pp. 362-382. Grossman adduces the following in support of his thesis: the
travails that Ashkenazic Jewry was suffering at the time; the argument proffered by
Christians that their victory in the Crusades was further evidence that the Jews had
been rejected in favor of the “True Israel”; liturgical poems describing the desecration
of Jerusalem by Christian pollution; a rabbinic statement that the redemption would
come at a time of war between the great world-empires; the joy of two Ashkenazic
authors (only one of whom refers to Saladin) upon hearing the news of the Muslim
victories; a near-messianic description of Saladin in a work by Al-Harizi; and the text
which Yuval cites. These arguments establish a reasonable possibility, but it is hard to
say that the evidence is genuinely convincing.
— 308 —
Semitic legends too seriously, although there are no decisive grounds for
rejecting the possibility that it could be based in fact. Moreover, even one
who sees messianic ferment in 1096 in light of Ronnu le-Ya‘akov simhah,
and believes the Christian reports about 1337, and, in the wake of Yuval’s
study, lays great emphasis on the excitement leading up to 1240, would
nonetheless have to admit that before Asher Laemmelein—and even he
was not active in the Ashkenazic heartland—we do not have a report of a
single messianic figure in Ashkenaz.23
The burden of proof rests on one who wants to challenge this picture.
We may therefore move on to Cohen’s third point, where he attempts to
explain the phenomenon. Were popular messianic movements actually
born out of the influence of elite discussion of messianism, which trickled
down to the masses in distorted fashion? This is by no means impossible.
The educated elite certainly maintained connections with the masses,
and personalities such as Avraham Abulafia even straddled the boundary
between messianic thinker and semi-messianic figure.
Nevertheless, it seems that this scenario is relevant only in Spain
itself. Figures such as David Al-Ro’i, and others like him, were active in
an environment that was not characterized by a rationalist component
strong enough to create movements among the masses. In general, it
is doubtful that we would be wondering at all about the appearance of
about a dozen messianic figures over a period of hundreds of years if
not for the contrast with Ashkenaz. We should consequently turn our
attention not to the presence of messiahs in the Sephardic communities,
but to their absence in Ashkenaz.
In the wake of a reference in Carlebach’s article, I have already noted
a suggestion made by my student Avraham Pinsker that Ashkenazim
may have recoiled from messianic activism because they lived in a
Christian environment where they were forced to defend themselves
constantly against a religion that believed in a false messiah. This
suggestion, however, is subject to challenge. In Christian Spain, after
23 The messiah of Linon evinces clear “eastern” characteristic, and I believe that Cohen
is correct is seeing him as Sephardic rather than French. It should be noted that in a
later article, Cohen dismissed all medieval messianic movements as insignificant. While
there is much truth in this assertion, the contrast between Ashkenaz and Sepharad
in this sphere remains unaffected. See “Messianism in Jewish History: The Myth and
the Reality,” in Gerson D. Cohen, Jewish History and Jewish Destiny (New York and
Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 183-212.
— 309 —
all, we continue to find messianic “ferment,” and sometimes even figures

of a messianic character. One might respond to this difficulty by arguing
that the messianic orientation of Sephardic Jewry was formed under the
rule of Islam, and it did not change in the face of the “logical” concerns
that might have been expected to uproot it in a Christian environment.
Nevertheless, the initial explanation is just a hypothesis, and the fact
that we need to defend it immediately against a reasonable challenge
shows that we should probably not embrace it with conviction.
Let me move then to a different suggestion, which was also first
proposed in a discussion with students. Sheila Rabin, who studied with me
many years ago, suggested that the small populations of the Ashkenazic
communities served as an impediment to messianic movements. She
did not elaborate, but I believe that the suggestion deserves serious
consideration.
The number of people who follow a messianic figure at the beginning
of his career – and in most cases, even at the height of his career – are
normally only a small percentage of the community’s population. If the
community is very small, one could hardly expect the number of believers
to reach the level necessary to transform the presumed messiah from a
mere curiosity to an influential personality. Furthermore, people who
have intimately known the messianic figure since his childhood are not
usually those who are mostly likely to be convinced by his messianic
claims. From this perspective, the communities in the Sephardic sector,
which were usually larger than those in Ashkenaz, were more likely to
generate messianic movements.
Finally – another suggestion that is also related to the nature of small
communities, but focuses primarily on the relationship between the
rabbinic elite and the masses. Let us remember that Carlebach has noted
the sense of identification that the members of the small Ashkenazic
communities felt with the rabbinic scholars in their midst to support
her claim that messianic activity by rabbis influenced the community
as a whole. I have already expressed my view that messianic activity
among the rabbis of Ashkenaz was in reality extremely limited. For this
very reason, Carlebach’s observation about the relationship between
the Ashkenazic rabbis and the masses provides an opening for a new
understanding of the absence of messianic movements or figures in
Ashkenaz. In general, as Cohen has emphasized, rabbis did not follow
messiahs. The small messianic movements in the Middle Ages arose and
— 310 —
grew in the popular stratum of society, whereas the rabbinic elite reacted
to them with suspicion, even with hostility. Consequently, we should
not expect messianic movements to develop in small communities in
which the “masses” are very closely linked to the rabbis. Of course, this
picture of the authority held by the rabbis of Ashkenaz is exaggerated
and generalized, but I believe that there is enough truth in it to support
the basic argument.
We have examined a truly gripping historical and historiographical
issue. After the criticisms presented both in this article and in Carlebach’s
lecture, Cohen’s famous thesis is reduced to the point where it stands
on two factual claims: (1) In medieval Spain and the Middle East, we
find messianic figures; but in Ashkenaz, we find none. (2) Speculative
messianic thought, including variegated calculations of the End, is
characteristic specifically of Sephardic communities. It is not impossible
that Cohen was correct in his attempt to associate the presence or absence
of messianic figures with varying approaches to faith and thought;
however, the suggested connection is not straightforward, since he must
assume that rationalism created movements only indirectly. Moreover,
not all the messianic claimants appeared in rationalistic environments. It
is consequently preferable to turn to other considerations. In Spain and
the Middle East, messianic figures occasionally appeared, sometimes as a
result of influences that we can identify, or at least surmise, such as the
Shiite environment or the turmoil in Yemen; but even when we do not
have a good explanation for a particular movement, there is no basis for
perplexity regarding the rise of a few small movements over the course
of many generations. The real question is why there were no messianic
figures in Ashkenaz, and here we may perhaps proffer the modest
suggestions that I have proposed. Even when small communities grow
to some extent over the course of time, patterns of messianic thought
and expectation formed over the course of generations do not change
easily, especially in light of the continuing authority and influence of the
rabbinic leadership, which was very wary of embracing messianic figures.
In sum, it may well be that the communal profile that characterized
Ashkenazic Jewry also determined its messianic profile.
— 311 —
MACCABEES, ZEALOTS AND JOSEPHUS:

THE IMPACT OF ZIONISM ON JOSEPH KLAUSNER’S
HISTORY OF THE SECOND TEMPLE
From: Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism: Louis H.

Feldman Jubilee Volume, ed. by Shaye J.D. Cohen and Joshua Schwartz
(Koninklijke Brill N.V.: Leiden, 2006), pp. 15-27.
It is hardly a secret that Zionist ideology had a profound impact on Joseph

Klausner’s historiographic enterprise. Even a superficial perusal of his
works reveals a powerful Zionist commitment expressed in both rhetoric
and analysis, so much so that his right to teach the period of the Second
Temple in the Hebrew University was held up for years on the grounds
that he was more of a publicist and ideologue—and of the Revisionist
variety no less—than a historian. Nonetheless, I believe that there is
much to be said for a serious examination of the nationalist element
in his multi-volume work on the Second Temple.1 However we assess
the political and scholarly arguments for and against his appointment,
a man who had nothing of the historian in him would not have been
appointed to Klausner’s position in the world’s flagship institution for
Jewish Studies. With all his abundant methodological flaws, he was not
a publicist pure and simple.
Since readers of this article, which will sharply underscore some
of those flaws, may ultimately question this judgment, let me move
immediately to a second, even more important point. The ideological
use of selected episodes in a nation’s history is an integral part of any
nationalist movement or educational system. Zionism was no exception;
indeed, its unusual, even unique, character generated a particularly
acute need to establish a national history that would provide models for
the struggling yishuv and the early state. The pedagogic utilization of
the ancient paradigms of Jewish heroism had to draw upon academic,
1 Historia shel ha-Bayit ha-Sheni, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (Jerusalem, 1951), henceforth Historia.
— 312 —
Maccabees, Zealots and Josephus:
not merely popular, legitimation. From this perspective, the fact that
Klausner stood with one foot in the world of academic research and the
other in the public square, where he exercised considerable influence,
lends special interest to an analysis of his scholarly-ideological approach
to key developments in Second Temple history.2 As Klausner confronted
the dilemmas of military, political and religious policy in ancient Israel,
his own dilemmas illuminate not only Zionist historiography but the
political and moral challenges facing the nascent, beleaguered State.
It is self-evident that Klausner was sensitive to the charges leveled
at him by his colleagues at the university, and so his inaugural lecture on
the Second Temple, which is also the opening chapter of the book, was
devoted to the question of historical objectivity. The argument in that
lecture is so strange that only the extraordinary defensiveness generated
by relentless criticism can serve to explain it.
The objective study of history, says Klausner, leads to ‘necessary
conclusions,’ to ‘absolute evaluations.’3 It is true that each generation
sees the past through its own experience, but as long as the historian
seeks truth to the best of his ability, his conclusions are absolute for that
generation. This is an idiosyncratic use of the term ‘absolute,’ and when
Klausner proposes a concrete example, the peculiarity of the argument is
thrown into even bolder relief. A Jew and a Pole, he says, must evaluate
Chmielnicki differently, but precisely because of the ineluctable nature
of this difference, ‘there is no subjectivity involved at all.’ Chmielnicki
persecuted the Jews but strove to improve the lot of his own people.
Consequently, ‘the honest scholar must see both sides of the accepted
historical coin.’4 Thus, in virtually the same breath, Klausner speaks of the
absolute necessity compelling a Jew to evaluate Chmielnicki in a one-sided
fashion and proceeds to present him in all his mutivalent complexity. This
almost incoherent argument for untrammeled, unmodulated historical
objectivity was surely generated by the subjective realities of Klausner’s
personal situation.
2 Klausner’s profound impact on certain sectors of the yishuv, an impact grounded

precisely in his combined personae of scholarly researcher, Zionist thinker, and public
personality, is strikingly evident in the tone of the admiring intellectual biography
written by two disciples during his lifetime. See Yaakov Becker and Hayim Toren, Yosef
Klausner, ha-Ish u-Po‘olo (Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 1947).
3 Historia 1:10.
4 Historia 1:11.
— 313 —
When we turn to the period of the Second Temple, we confront a

series of personalities and events central to the self-image of both yishuv
and State: the return from the Babylonian exile, the revolt of Mattathias
and his sons, the achievement of independence and the pursuit of
territorial expansion under the Hasmoneans, the great revolt, and the
heroic stand at Masada.5 The longest lasting of these developments was
the Hasmonean dynasty, rooted in the most successful and spectacular
event of the entire period, a revolt emblematic of Jewish military might
and remembered not only by historians but by every Jewish child who
has ever seen a Hanukkah menorah.
That revolt and that dynasty were pivotal to Zionist self-consciousness.
Pinsker lamented the servile state of a people that had produced the
Maccabees; Herzl declared that the Maccabees would arise once again;
and in one of the most wrenching passages in all of Jewish literature,
Bialik portrayed with bitter sarcasm the cellars in which “the young lions
of the prayer ‘Father of Mercy’ and the grandsons of the Maccabees”
lay hidden in their miserable cowardice.6 Jabotinsky sharply criticized
the ghetto mentality that intentionally blotted out the memory of the
Maccabees, and Gedaliah Alon’s refutation of the thesis that the rabbinic
Sages had done something similar was formulated in particularly sharp
fashion: “Did the Nation and Its Rabbis Cause the Hasmoneans to be
Forgotten?”7 Who then were these Maccabees, and are they really worthy
of this extraordinary veneration?8
Klausner examined the Hasmonean period—and not that period
alone—in an analytical framework reflecting categories of thought more
characteristic of a twentieth-century Zionist scholar than of Judaean
5 In the last decade or so, several important works have, in whole or in part, analyzed
the use of these and similar models in Zionist education, literature, and civic life. See
Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Meaning of Israeli National
Tradition (Chicago and London, 1995) and the literature noted there; Nachman Ben-
Yehudah, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel (Madison,
Wisconsin, c. 1995); Mireille Hadas-Lebel, Masada: Histoire et Symbole (Paris, c. 1995);
Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948 (New York, 1992).
As early as 1937, Klausner himself had contributed to the popularization of the Masada
story as a heroic, paradigmatic event. See Land and Power, p. 311.
6 See the references in Land and Power, pp. 14, 37.
7 Mehqarim be-Toledot Yisrael I (Tel Aviv, 1957), pp. 15-25.
8 For a useful survey of Jewish perceptions of the Hasmoneans from antiquity through the
twentieth century, see Samuel Schafler’s 1973 Jewish Theological Seminary dissertation,
The Hasmoneans in Jewish Historiography. On Klausner, see pp. 164-167, 199-204.
— 314 —
fighters in the second pre-Christian century. Granted, he says, Judah

Maccabee fought for the religion of Israel, but he understood that his
success was nourished by ‘”another non-material and non-measurable
force—the national will to live. When a nation has no choice other than
to achieve victory or pass away from the world, it is impossible for it
not to be victorious. So it was then and so it has been in our time and
before our eyes.”9
And the essential element in this “understanding”—the knowing
incorporation of a nationalist consciousness into a religious ideology—
characterized Judah’s father as well. “[Mattathias] recognized clearly
that it is appropriate to desecrate one Sabbath in order to observe many
Sabbaths—in order to sustain the entire nation.”10 The undeclared
shift from the Talmudic formula—that the Sabbath may in certain
circumstances be desecrated so that many Sabbaths may be observed in
the future—to the nationalist formula that Klausner created as if the two
were self-evidently interchangeable is a striking example of ideological
sleight of hand.
It emerges, moreover, that this integration of the religious and the
national characterized not only the Maccabees but the bulk of the Jewish
population. “Most of the nation” overcame “all manner of torments” to
stand against the decrees of Antiochus.
Tens of thousands of spiritual heroes arose in Judaea who could not be

coerced to betray the Torah of their God by any torment in the world or by
any threat of bizarre death. . . . There was an intuitive feeling here that by
betraying their God they would also be betraying their people, and if the
Torah of Israel would be destroyed so too would the People of Israel.11
Finally, Klausner takes a remarkable further step by elevating land

over spirit, and doing so through an original piece of speculative biblical
exegesis so bereft of any evidentiary support that it is mildly unusual
even by the anarchic standards of the Bible critics of his day. It is likely,
he says, that the psalm asserting that “the heavens belong to the Lord
but the earth He gave over to man” (Ps 115:16) was written during the
great victory of Judah Maccabee. The warriors,
9 Historia 3:19.
10 Historia 3:17.
11 Historia 2:199.
— 315 —
suffused by a sense of the sanctity of the Homeland (qedushat ha-

moledet) and the joy flowing from fulfilling the divine command, felt no
need for the world to come. Through their conquest, they had acquired
earthly life for themselves and for their nation and were prepared to
leave the heavens to the Lord their God, provided that he would give
them the land as an inheritance—the land of their fathers and their
children.12
Though the verse appears to speak of a contrast between the heavens

and an earth given to humanity as a whole, the true, deeper meaning
refers to the land of Israel granted to its chosen people.
Although Klausner asserts that even the pietists—the “hasidim” of
the sources—were nationalists, he underscores the contrast between
their primarily spiritual interests and the political orientation of the
Hasmoneans. In itself, such a perspective is eminently defensible.13
Klausner, however, goes further by ascribing to his heroes from the very
beginning of their appearance on the historical stage a fully formed,
unambiguous ideology that is not expressed in the sources but accords
perfectly with that of the historian.
“From the outset,” Judah and his brothers sought “absolute freedom.”
They understood that “inner—religious and national-social—freedom”
is impossible without “absolute political sovereignty (qomemiyyut).’’14
Thus, the distinctive categories of religious freedom, national-social
freedom, and political sovereignty did not merely animate Judah’s
policies on a subconscious level; they were a key element of his conscious
ideology from the first moment of the revolt. Nor was this ideology
created ex nihilo in the Hasmonean period. The spiritual creativity that
Klausner ascribes to the four centuries between the Babylonian exile
and the revolt would have been impossible in his view in the absence
of “a profound yearning for political freedom.”15 Once again—an
argument resting not on a documented source but on a psychohistorical
generalization rooted in this instance in a sense of what the author’s
ideologically honed instincts have declared impossible.
12 Historia 3:29.
13 See Historia 2:182-183, and cf. 3:38. For a discussion of the role of land and politics in
this context, see Doron Mendels, The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean
Literature (Tuebingen, 1987).
14 Historia 3:41.
15 Historia 2:273.
— 316 —
When Klausner moves to the very different contrast between early

Hasmoneans and Hellenizers, he describes the former, not surprisingly, as
“the national party.” In this instance, however, the interplay of ideological
factors was potentially more complex. While the Zionist movement was
in one sense a reaction against the classical Haskalah, to a very important
degree it was its offspring. Klausner, whose other, less controversial field
of expertise was modern Hebrew literature, surely identified with the
movement to broaden the intellectual and cultural horizons of Eastern
European Jewry, and he could not dismiss the value of Greek culture
even for the Jews of antiquity. Indeed, in another work, he described
his central credo as follows: “To absorb the culture of the other to the
point of digesting it and transforming it into our own national-human
flesh and blood— this is the ideal for which I fought during the prime
of my life, and I will not stray from it till my last breath.”16 Might it not
be possible, then, even necessary, to say something positive about the
Jewish arch-enemies of the Maccabees?
In order to avoid this undesirable consequence, Klausner mobilizes
another presumably ineluctable law of history to help him conclude
that the Hellenizers’ objective was not the incorporation of Greek
values into Jewish culture but the annihilation of the latter in favor of
the former. Some scholars, he says, maintain that the Hellenizers were
correct in their desire to open provincial Jewish society to the wide-
ranging culture of the Hellenistic world. This, however, misperceives the
Hellenizers’ intentions. “If they had possessed a liberating, essentially
correct ideology, it would eventually have prevailed and been realized
in life, even if little by little. The truth bursts forth and makes its way,
sometimes immediately, sometimes after the passage of time.”17
Here Klausner’s questionable rhetoric about the inevitable success
of “truth” conceals an even more extreme and implausible position upon
which his argument really rests. In light of the progressive Hellenistic
influence on the Hasmonean dynasty, what he sees as the essentially
correct ideology of integrating Greek ideas and Judaism was indeed
realized after the passage of time. So far so good. But how does Klausner
know that this correct objective, which arguably did prevail, was not the
goal of the Hellenizers? The answer cannot be the circular argument
16 Bereshit Hayah ha-Ra‘ayon, p. 172, cited in Becker and Toren, p. 13.

17 Historia 3:155.
— 317 —
that their ideology did not prevail; rather, despite the plain meaning
of his language, it must be that the group failed as a political entity, a
failure that proves that it could not have had a correct worldview. In
other words, his argument—if it is to be granted any coherence at all—
amounts to the assertion that not only proper ideas but the political
group that originates them must survive and ultimately triumph. Since
this was not true of the Hellenizers, it follows that their goal was not
integration but Jewish cultural suicide.18
The Hasmoneans ultimately attained genuine political freedom;
this alone, however, did not satisfy them, and here Klausner mobilizes
religion to explain and justify even more far-reaching national ambitions.
Because the new rulers regularly read the Torah and the Prophets, “it
was impossible for them not to sense how unnatural their situation
was—that of all the Land of Israel promised to Abraham and ruled by
David and Solomon, Israel remained with only the little state of Judaea.”19
Once again Klausner declares something impossible, and once again the
assessment leads to a conclusion identical to the ideology of the historian,
this time in its Revisionist form.
This orientation appears even more clearly in Klausner’s lament
over the civil war in the days of Alexander Jannaeus. If not for this
internal war, he suggests, the king may have taken advantage of the
opportunity afforded by the weakness of the Seleucid Empire to conquer
the coastal cities of the Land of Israel—and even Tyre and Sidon. And
this too is not the end of it. “There are grounds to believe that Jannaeus,
like his ancestors, dreamed the great dream of returning the Kingdom
of David and Solomon to its original grandeur, and even more than
this—of inheriting the Seleucid Empire itself.”20 It cannot be ruled
out that Jannaeus dreamed such dreams, but it is difficult to avoid the
impression that the historian’s vision has merged with the ambition
of the Hasmonean king to the point where the two can no longer be
distinguished.
Dreams, however, collide with realities, and these collisions can spawn
not only practical difficulties but serious moral dilemmas. In describing
the Hasmonean wars in general and the expansion of the boundaries
18 Cf. also Historia 2:145.

19 Historia 3:31.
20 Historia 3:151.
— 318 —
of Israel in particular, Klausner must confront the leveling of pagan

temples, expulsions, the destruction of cities, and forced conversions.
The ethical problems posed by such behavior disturb him, and he is
occasionally prepared to express disapproval. Thus, it is as if Judah
Maccabee forgot what he himself suffered from religious persecution and
ignored “the slightly later dictum, ‘Do not do to your fellow that which
is hateful to you.’”21 Similarly, the destruction of the Samaritan temple
“can only be explained but not justified.”22 Nonetheless, Klausner’s basic
inclination is to provide mitigation for such acts and sometimes even
to justify them.
The most striking example of such justification appears in his reaction
to Simon’s expulsion of pagans as part of the policy of judaizing sections
of the land of Israel. It is true that these actions involved considerable
cruelty, he says, but had the Hasmoneans behaved differently, the tiny
Judaean state would have ceased to exist under the pressure of its
neighbors, “and the end would have come for the People of Israel as a
whole.” Under such circumstances, “the moral criterion cannot help but
retreat, and in its place there comes another criterion: the possibility of
survival. . . . For our ‘puny intellect,’ this appears to constitute the very
antithesis of justice; for the ‘larger intellect,’ this is the way to justice, the
footstool of absolute justice” (emphasis in the original).23
Elsewhere, he returns to the “biblical view of the Land of Israel,”24
arguing that in light of this tradition, the newly formed Judaean state “had
[was mukhrahat] to expand eastward—toward Transjordan, northward—
toward Shechem, and southward—toward Idumaea.”25 The conquest of
Idumaea, complete with the forcible conversion of its inhabitants, was
unavoidable. Stolen land was being recovered; a Jewish majority was a
necessity for the nation; Judaea could not have been left surrounded
by enemies forever. What follows is very difficult to read today: If we
are concerned with “the admixture of blood, almost all the neighboring
peoples were Semites, and so the race remained unaffected even after
the conversion of the Idumaeans.”26 The major themes repeat themselves
21 Historia 3:33, 35.

22 Historia 3:86.
23 Historia 3:65, 66.
24 Historia 3:78.
25 Historia 3:85.
26 Historia 3:88.
— 319 —
in Klausner’s evaluation of the policies of Alexander Jannaeus: “Out of

historical compulsion—deeply regrettable in itself—Jannaeus was forced
to destroy cities . . . whose inhabitants did not agree to accept Judaism.
. . . Is it plausible that in territories called by the name ‘Land of Israel’
that were part of Israel in the days of David, Solomon, Ahab, Jeroboam
II and Josiah, aliens and enemies should reside forever?”27
Klausner makes a point of emphasizing that the Jewish people as a
whole supported the Hasmonean rulers no less than he. First, his idyllic
characterization of this people is noteworthy in and of itself. “The true
Jewish democracy [consisted of] farmers owning small homesteads, day
laborers, craftsmen, and workers in fields and homes.” This was “a large
nation, assiduous and wise, religious-moral, laboring and satisfied with
limited wealth.” The typical Jewish farmer was “a religious conservative
and a nationalist patriot.” And this nation “defended the Hasmonean
family and its aspirations as one man.”28
Klausner provides four arguments for rejecting the historicity of the
story asserting that Jannaeus crucified eight hundred of his opponents
in a single day. Two of these strikingly underscore his attitude to the
Hasmoneans themselves as well as his emphasis on their popular
support. First, a king and high priest of the Hasmonean dynasty could
not have been capable of such behavior.29 Second, if this had really
happened, “the nation would not have been devoted to the Hasmoneans
with all its heart and soul and would not have spilled its blood like water
for anyone in whose veins there coursed even one drop of Hasmonean
blood.”30 Elsewhere, Klausner is a bit more cautious, speaking of support
from “the decisive majority of the activist nation,”31 but the fundamental
emphasis remains unchanged. Finally, we hear of the special qualities of
Hasmonean blood on more than one further occasion. Aristobulus II,
for example, refused to accept one of Pompey’s demands because “the
blood of the Maccabees coursing in his veins did not allow him to debase
his honor excessively.”32 One wonders what sort of blood coursed in the
veins of Aristobulus’s brother Hyrcanus II.
27 Historia 3:160.
28 Historia 3:12; 5:132: 3:43, 82.
29 This point was noted by Schafler, p. 201.
30 Historia 3:155.
31 Historia 3:235-36.
32 Historia 3:222.
— 320 —
When we turn from war and politics to cultural life, the spectrum
of Klausner’s views becomes wider, richer, more varied, more nuanced,
and more interesting. In some respects, the single-minded nationalist
perspective persists. Thus, in the aftermath of political liberation
following centuries of submission to foreign rule, “it was impossible”
that spiritual life would remain unchanged. “This will become clear
in the course of time in the young State of Israel as well even though
in the early years this is not yet very evident.”33 One of the prime
characteristics of the Hasmonean period was the revival of the Hebrew
language. Political independence led to “an exaltation of the soul” that
“greatly reinforced national consciousness and prepared the ground for
any powerful national-religious aspiration. And what national-religious
possession could have been more precious and sacred to the nation than
the language of the Torah and prophets that had been nearly suppressed
by Greek on the one hand and Aramaic-Syriac on the other?”34 Thus,
as Klausner sees it, “the national government” along with the Council
of the Jews nurtured this development and helped determine its form
almost along the lines of the twentieth-century Academy for the Hebrew
Language.
At the same time, conflicting ideological commitments led Klausner to
less predictable evaluations as he examined larger cultural developments.
In his view, a central group among the Pharisees concentrated on
religious and moral concerns at the expense of the political dimension,
and we might have expected him to evaluate such a group pejoratively.
He understood, however, that this group laid the foundations of Jewish
culture for generations to come, and his own nationalist orientation was
light years removed from that of the so-called “Canaanites” in the early
years of the State. For all of Zionism’s “negation of exile,” the stream
with which Klausner identified saw itself as an organic continuation of
authentic Jewish culture freed to develop in new and healthy ways in
the ancient homeland. Thus, a man like Hillel could not be seen through
a dark lens, and we suddenly find very different rhetoric from that to
which we have become accustomed.
Hillel, we are told, had to refrain from taking a political stand during
the terror regime of Herod. This was the only way that he could achieve
33 Historia 3:9.
34 Historia 3:105.
— 321 —
his sublime objectives.35 As to the Pharisees in general, their emphasis

on religion over state “afforded the nation eternal life” even though “it
stole away its political power. The Pharisees achieved the survival of
the nation at the expense of its liberty” (emphasis in the original).36 In
virtually every other context, Klausner, as we have seen, perceives the
liberty of the nation as a condition of its survival. Here, looking back at
the founders of rabbinic Judaism through the prism of a millennial exile,
he speaks with a very different voice.
We have already encountered Klausner’s reaction to the Hellenizers’
efforts to open Judaea to Greek culture. In other contexts as well, he
mobilizes the imperative of national survival for an even more surprising
defense of cultural perspectives narrower that his own. Philo, he tells us,
was a proud Jew, but in the final analysis the great Alexandrian thinker
maintained that Moses and Plato had said the same things. “The nation’s
instinct, its feeling of self-preservation, whispered to it. . . that it may
not admit this compromising ideology into its home.”37 This instinct, he
adds, also explains the attitude of the anti-philosophical party during the
Maimonidean controversies many generations later. This understanding,
almost supportive analysis of the anti-Maimonist position adumbrates
Yitzhak Baer’s critical approach to Jewish openness to general culture in
the Middle Ages, an approach that impelled Charles Touati to formulate
a particularly sharp critique.
According to Baer, the Jewish religion belongs to the category of myth,

a term never defined but clearly understood favorably. Judaism is placed
in danger by philosophical culture. For Baer, all philosophers are suspect
throughout Jewish history; their adversaries… always enjoy a favorable
presumption. The position of the eminent historian, the product of a
German university who was reared in rigorous scientific disciplines, seems
odd (cocasse) to us. Is Judaism, then, to be devoted always, in its entirety,
by its very essence, to lack of culture (l’inculture)?38
Klausner does not go as far as Baer, though he was motivated by similar

instincts, and it is fascinating to see his willingness to empathize with
35 Historia 4:125, 129-130.

36 Historia 3:228.
37 Historia 5:85.
38 Charles Touati, ‘La controverse de 1303-1306 autour des études philosophiques et
scientifiques,’ Revue des Études Juives 127 (1968): 37, n. 3.
— 322 —
Jews who banned and even burned the works of the hero of generations of
maskilim who were in large measure role models for Klausner himself.
Klausner’s cultural instincts lead to a particularly interesting deviation
from the anticipated line with respect to an even more pivotal figure than
Philo, a figure whom historians of the Second Temple period confront
every hour of every day. Klausner is acutely aware that his attitude to
Josephus will surprise us, and in a passage demonstrating with painful
clarity how insecure he felt in the face of criticism, he points to this
explicitly as evidence that he is an objective historian.39 He understands
that we would expect him to disdain the historian-traitor; instead, he
sees him as a man of initial good intentions who, even after his act of
genuine treason, deserves regard as an exceptional historian. Perhaps
this is indeed a sign of objectivity, but it is more likely the product of
a collision of two subjective impulses. Of course Klausner was repelled
by Josephus’ treason, but his belief that the capacity to explain history
is one of the quintessential qualities of the Jewish people40 moved him
toward an almost visceral appreciation of the talents of the major Jewish
historian of antiquity.
The emotional tie that Klausner felt toward his illustrious predecessor
emerges from a gripping, almost amazing passage. Josephus tells us that
he chose to survive in Jodephat because had he died before transmitting
the message (diangelia), he would have betrayed the divine charge.
Klausner contends that this does not refer to the message that Vespasian
would become Emperor. It refers, rather, to the destiny of Josephus
himself, who somehow understood that he was fated to become the
historian of the Jewish people. “A supernal force impelled him to live in
order to write books that would endure for thousands of years, to survive
so that he could be revealed as one of the great Jewish historians of all
generations.”41
The career of Josephus transports us to the final days of the Second
Temple. Despite Klausner’s qualified sympathy for the spiritually oriented
Pharisees, his deeper identification is with the group that he calls “activist
Pharisees,” to wit, the Zealots, who enjoyed the support, as he sees it, of
“the nation in its masses.” Here too he must confront moral questions,
39 Historia 3: introduction.
40 Historia 2:270.
41 Historia 5:190-191.
— 323 —
which he resolves in part by recourse to a slightly altered version of a

famous line in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari. “Their intentions were desirable,
but their actions were not always desirable.” Nonetheless, even if they
sometimes engaged in robbery, they had no alternative. “Since they were
constantly guarding the national interest, it was impossible for them to
pursue remunerative work.”42
And so we arrive at the great revolt that these Zealots precipitated.
In addition to the routine reasons that Klausner proposes to explain that
revolt, he suggests that the Romans encouraged it through intentional,
blatant provocations inspiring an uprising that they could then exploit
to destroy the threat posed to them by the “metropolis of world Jewry.”43
Once again, warring tendencies in the historian’s psyche produce a
slightly unexpected result. Klausner is prepared to depict his heroic
Jewish rebels as dupes of a successful Roman stratagem in order to
magnify the importance, power, and centrality of world Jewry.
Finally, even the failure of the revolt does not demonstrate that it was
mistaken. On the contrary, simple submission to Rome would have led to
decline and, ultimately, to the disappearance of the nation. Instead,
a destruction following glorious, remarkable wars of the sort fought by

the “bandits” and “ruffians” against the dominant Roman Empire, wars
that remained in the memory of all generations, was not an absolute
destruction. It was not the Torah alone that sustained us in our exile. The
memories of a monumental struggle with the great world power preserved
in Talmud and Midrash, in Josippon and other of our narratives also led to
long life, indeed, to eternal life. [Such a] nation will never be destroyed.44
It is difficult to agree that the actions of the “bandits,” which were

sharply criticized in most of the sources informing the consciousness of
Jews in exile, played a central role in sustaining the spirit of persecuted
Jews in medieval and early modern times. But in the Zionist period,
refashioned in the works of Klausner and others, they surely did. Even one
who reads Klausner’s History for the purpose of analyzing its ideological
Tendenz cannot help but feel the deep pathos that informs his work, and
there can be no question that readers were inspired, educators energized,
42 Historia 5:29-30.
43 Historia 5:132, 140, 141.
44 Historia 5:136-137.
— 324 —
students instructed, and public opinion molded. In full awareness of

Klausner’s historiographic sins, some observers with Zionist sympathies
may nonetheless set aside an academic lens and conclude that not only
were his intentions desirable, but, under the pressing circumstances in
which he wrote, even his actions may have achieved ends that partially
atone for those sins.
— 325 —
THE FRAGILITY OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE:

ACCOUNTING FOR ORTHODOX ACQUIESCENCE
IN THE BELIEF IN A SECOND COMING*
From: Modern Judaism 22 (2002): 103-114.
In the last seven years, we have witnessed a watershed in the history of

Judaism that cries out for explanation. With minimal resistance, in the
full view of world Jewry, two propositions from which every mainstream
Jew in the last millennium would have instantly recoiled have become
legitimate options within Orthodox Judaism:
1. A specific descendant of King David may be identified with certainty
as the Messiah even though he died in an unredeemed world. The
criteria always deemed necessary for a confident identification of
the Messiah—the temporal redemption of the Jewish people, a
rebuilt Temple, peace and prosperity, the universal recognition of
the God of Israel—are null and void.
2. The messianic faith of Judaism allows for the following scenario:
God will finally send the true Messiah to embark upon his
redemptive mission. The long-awaited redeemer will declare that
all preparations for the redemption have been completed and
announce without qualification that the fulfillment is absolutely
imminent. He will begin the process of gathering the dispersed
of Israel to the Holy Land. He will proclaim himself a prophet,
point clearly to his messianic status, and declare that the only
remaining task is to greet him as Messiah. And then he will die
and be buried without redeeming the world. To put the matter
more succinctly, the true Messiah’s redemptive mission, publicly
* This article is an adaptation and elaboration of chapter 13 of my The Rebbe, the Messiah,
and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London and Portland, Oregon, 2001). The first
few paragraphs are adapted from the book’s Introduction.
— 326 —
The Fragility of Religious Doctrine:
proclaimed and vigorously pursued, will be interrupted by death

and burial and then consummated through a Second Coming.
While the vast majority of Jews continue to perceive these as alien
propositions, and the Rabbinical Council of America has declared that
there is no place for such doctrines in Judaism, the assertion that
contemporary Orthodox Jewry effectively legitimates these beliefs rests
on a simple observation: A large segment—almost certainly a substantial
majority—of Chabad hasidim affirm that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was laid to rest in 1994, did
everything subsumed under proposition two and will soon return to
complete the redemption in his capacity as the Messiah. Adherents of
this belief, including those who have ruled that it is required by Jewish
law, routinely hold significant religious posts with the sanction of major
Orthodox authorities unconnected to their movement.
These range from the offices of the Israeli Rabbinate to the ranks of
mainstream Rabbinical organizations to the chairmanship of Rabbinic
courts in both Israel and the diaspora, not to speak of service as scribes,
ritual slaughterers, teachers, and administrators of schools and religious
organizations receiving support from mainstream Orthodoxy. Shortly
after signing a public ruling that Jewish law obligates all Jews to accept
the messiahship of the deceased Rebbe, a Montreal rabbi was appointed
head of the rabbinical court of the entire city. In summer, 2001, one
could pick up a flyer in Jerusalem advertising a program for children
run by a local Chabad house that begins with the logo of the Jerusalem
Department of Torah Culture and ends with the slogan, “May our Master,
Teacher and Rabbi the King Messiah live forever.” For much of Orthodox
Jewry, the classic boundaries of Judaism’s messianic faith are no more.
I take it for granted that a typical Orthodox Jew ten years ago would
have questioned the sanity of anyone asserting that adherents of such
posthumous messianism would be recognized as Orthodox rabbis in
perfectly good standing. If this assumption is correct, then the current
status quo represents a startlingly swift, profound transformation. I
refer not to the messianist belief itself but to the failure of mainstream
Orthodoxy to marginalize the believers. What can account for such
acquiescence in a community that prides itself on strict adherence to
tradition and often denies that social factors play any significant role in
shaping its beliefs and practices?
— 327 —
Let me begin with a broad, theoretical consideration and then move to

a constellation of more specific factors that render this development not
merely comprehensible but so ineluctable that efforts to roll it back face
almost insuperable hurdles. I do not command sufficient expertise in the
comparative sociology of religion to set up rules of general applicability
governing such transformations. It seems to me, however, that Chabad
is marked by a combination of characteristics critical for making this
sort of religious upheaval possible. Both an in-group and an out-group,
it is sufficiently self-contained, even sectarian, to generate a deviationist
ideology and sufficiently integrated to make that ideology an acceptable
option within the larger community.
On the one hand, Chabad hasidim see themselves as bearers of the
only fully authentic expression of Judaism. It is through their leaders that
the progressive revelation of the inner Torah has taken place; it is their
rebbes who have been the potential messiahs of recent generations; it is
their emissaries who are the agents of the redemptive process, destined
to be granted front row seats near the Messiah when he comes;1 it is
to a location adjoining their headquarters in Crown Heights that the
ultimate, heavenly Temple will descend before moving to Jerusalem.2
The sense that they are different not only facilitates the creation of a
theology undisciplined by mainstream consensus; it leads mainstream
Jews to minimize the impact of that theology because it is perceived as
marginal and hence not threatening.
On the other hand, Lubavitch hasidim engage in outreach to all Jews,
emphasize the value of loving all of Israel, make highly sophisticated
use of mass media, retain ties with other hasidim and Orthodox Jews
even as they refrain from participating in many common endeavors, hold
posts integrated into the warp and woof of Orthodox communal life, and
establish deep reservoirs of sympathy through activities that almost all
Orthodox Jews cannot help but admire. Thus, their beliefs can decidedly
change the Jewish religion writ large.
1 Note the little vignette in Kfar Chabad 731 (Eve of Sukkot, 5757; Sept. 27, 1996), where
the Rebbe tells the discouraged wife of an emissary, “We are on the verge of being
privileged to experience the coming of the Messiah. You must decide where you want
to be at that time—pushed far back among the masses or together with the emissaries
who see the face of the king and sit first in the kingdom.”
2 See R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Kuntres be-Inyan Mikdash Me‘at Zeh Beit Rabbenu
she-be-Bavel (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1992).
— 328 —
Within this framework, then, let us turn to specific causes, reasons,

and rationales—stated and unstated—for the effective Orthodox
decision to allow this process to unfold.
THE IDEAL OF UNITY AND THE AVOIDANCE

OF COMMUNAL STRIFE
The point is self-evident. Every practicing Jew has heard countless

sermons about the imperative to love one’s neighbor, particularly one’s
Jewish neighbor. At the barest minimum, the annual Torah reading about
Korah’s rebellion against Moses (Numbers 16-17) generates discourses
about the severe prohibition against fomenting disputes within the
community. While rhetoric about this value cuts across all Orthodox—
and Jewish—lines, it is especially compelling for Modern Orthodox Jews
who maintain cordial, even formal relations with other denominations
and pride themselves on embracing an ideal of tolerance.
The impact of this tolerant self-image, which borders on self-
definition, can cut very deep. It is nurtured not only by a positive
ideology but by disdain for the narrowness and intolerance that are seen
as quintessential traits of the orthodoxies of the Right. It is reinforced
by humorous putdowns whose power to mold as well as express self-
perceptions should not be underestimated. Thus, a widely repeated joke
explains that God serves Leviathan fish at the messianic banquet out of
solicitude for those participants who will not eat the meat because they
do not trust God’s shehitah (ritual slaughter). Modern Orthodox Jews
who have made a habit of poking fun at the Traditionalist Orthodox for
divisive hyper-religiosity are now faced with the prospect of evaluating
the status of Lubavitch shehitah in light of the belief of some hasidim
that the Rebbe is not only the Messiah but pure divinity. Even the few
who take this matter seriously can find it psychologically impossible to
don the mantle of those they see as religious fanatics and engage in the
very behavior they have been mocking for years.
From the perspective of the abstract principles of Orthodox Judaism,
the argument from tolerance and unity is beside the point. A few weeks
after the Torah reading about Korah, very different sermons are preached
about the zeal of Phineas (Numbers 25). No Orthodox Jew believes that
everyone committed to the Jewish community has the right to serve
— 329 —
as an Orthodox rabbi irrespective of his religious outlook because of

the value of unity. Resort to this principle is relevant only after one has
concluded that Lubavitch messianism is essentially within the boundaries
of Orthodoxy. Since this is precisely what is at issue, the argument begs
the question, and its powerful appeal is rooted in a different instinct to
which we now turn.
ORTHOPRAXY AND APPEARANCE
Though my presentation in this scholarly venue is academic in substance

and largely irenic in tone, it is no secret that I have pursued a rhetorically
charged campaign to change the widespread Orthodox indifference to this
development. Two distinguished academic observers of contemporary
Orthodoxy have chided me for incurable naivete in imagining that
matters of faith play any significant role in the community. Anyone
who looks and acts the way Lubavitch hasidim do will be treated as an
Orthodox Jew. Period. A traditional talmudist in full agreement with my
position told me, “If the messianists looked like you, people would react
differently.” Similarly, two other academics argued that issues of faith
can be relevant, but only when the deviations come from the left, that
is, from a group seen as more modernist than that of the critic.
In several conversations with fully Orthodox Jews, both Traditionalist
and Modern, I have heard formulations that come close to an unalloyedly
orthoprax position, to wit, that any Jew who observes the commandments
remains within the fold. It is no accident that enemies of Lubavitch through
the years have laid special stress on deviations from the straightforward
requirements of halakhah. This argument rests upon Chabad justifications
for not sleeping in a sukkah, not eating the third Sabbath meal, waiting till
well into the night to recite the afternoon prayer upon the Rebbe’s return
from his father-in-law’s gravesite, and, on one occasion in 1991, delaying
the morning prayer on Sukkot till 3:30 P.M.3
The theoretical superstructure of Orthodoxy insists on the importance
of doctrinal as well as behavioral criteria in defining membership in
3 With respect to the first two issues, the problem was less with the practice itself than
with the seemingly principled rejection of the requirement. On that Sukkot day in 1991,
see Binyamin Lipkin, Heshbono shel Olam (Lod, 2000), pp. 112-113.
— 330 —
the group.4 Nonetheless, my critics are certainly correct in arguing

that an instinct placing almost exclusive emphasis on observance of
the commandments has played a key role in discouraging a serious,
effective reaction to Chabad messianism. In pre-modern times, when
visible conformity to ritual standards was taken for granted, it could not
overwhelm all other criteria in determining an individual’s communal
standing. For contemporary Jews, full observance of Orthodox law is
so clearly seen as an unambiguous marker that theology can become
virtually irrelevant.
This instinct extends even to areas of belief that technically impinge
on halakhah. Observers cannot imagine that some Lubavitch hasidim
really maintain beliefs about the Rebbe’s divinity amounting to avodah
zarah, which roughly means the formal recognition or worship as God of
an entity that is in fact not God. Sociologically, then, a proviso needs to be
appended to this definition: such recognition or worship is avodah zarah
provided that the believer is someone other than a Sabbath-observing
Jew wearing a wig or a black hat. Judaism, which was once a great faith,
has become an agglomeration of dress, deportment, and rituals.
This very point about external appearance and ritual observance was
made in Yated Ne’eman, a newspaper published in Israel by one group
that does delegitimate the messianists and, indeed, all of Chabad—the
followers of R. Elazar Menachem Man Schach of the Ponevezh yeshiva in
Bnei Brak.5 The challenge, said the author, is to transcend externals and
recognize the illegitimacy of these superficially Orthodox Jews. This sector
of Israeli Orthodoxy and its counterparts in some American yeshivas do
not act on this issue because they believe they have already acted.
THE BALKANIZATION OF ORTHODOXY,

OR THE ORTHODOXY OF ENCLAVES
Why do such Jews remain relatively passive at this point despite the
evident ineffectiveness of their efforts in the wider community? While
part of the explanation lies in despair born of frustration and another,
4 See my review of Menachem Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything?, Tradition 33/4
(Summer, 1999): 81-89.
5 See Natan Ze’ev Grossman, in the Hebrew Yated Ne’eman, March 13, 1998, pp. 15, 22.
— 331 —
conflicting part in a rose-colored belief that by now everyone sees that

R. Schach was correct, there is a deeper issue that plays a very important
role in other sectors of the Orthodox community as well. The challenge
of modernity and the growth of religious deviationism have impelled
much of Orthodoxy to turn inward. One consequence of this orientation
has been the attenuation of the instinctive sense of a Jewish religious
collective extending beyond one’s own group. Moreover, and very much
to the point, “group” does not even refer to Orthodoxy as a whole but to
a much smaller entity.
The main focus of many Orthodox Jews is on their own subgroup,
anshei shlomenu in the terminology of hasidic communities, yeshiva layt
in non-hasidic groups, and so on. Consequently, the argument that
something called Judaism, even Orthodox Judaism, has changed because
of the legitimation of Lubavitch messianists, invokes categories that
have lost much of their force. I do not mean to suggest that Orthodox
Jews—even in Traditionalist circles—have entirely rejected their
responsibilities to the larger community, but instincts have undoubtedly
changed. The question posed—even in Modern circles—is, “Does anyone
in my immediate environment believe that the Rebbe is the Messiah?” If
the answer is no, then the rise of this movement becomes a curiosity or
at most a mildly disturbing development. A blinkered, myopic question
produces a blinkered, myopic response.
ORTHODOX INTERDEPENDENCE,
OR THE INTERLOCKING OF THE ENCLAVES
Paradoxically, another critically important explanation stands in stark

contrast to the psychology of balkanization, namely, the reality of
interdependence. Lubavitch messianists, for all their sectarianism, are
so entwined in the larger Orthodox community—and even the Jewish
community as a whole—that excision is extraordinarily difficult.
I have had more than one conversation in which an Orthodox Jew
would argue that Lubavitch is after all a relatively small, ultimately
peripheral movement and then agree under questioning that he or she
would have considerable difficulty living without it. Rabbinic courts
headed by messianist rabbis interact regularly with other courts.
How should they be regarded? Scores of Israeli rabbis holding posts
— 332 —
throughout the country have signed a halakhic ruling requiring belief

in the messiahship of the Rebbe.6 How easy would it be to remove
them from office? Messianist rabbis play a significant role in countries
throughout the world. How realistic is it to propose that they be
marginalized? A respected, Lubavitch-run kashrut organization is the
supervisor of choice for restaurants full of messianist propaganda. How
does one deal with it? Rejecting Lubavitch ritual slaughter or refusing
to attend a messianist synagogue would cause no little inconvenience
to religiously observant travelers—Orthodox and non-Orthodox— and
require significant modification of vacation plans. How realistic is the
expectation that concern with a matter of abstract theology will change
established behaviors? A significant number of Jews reside in places to
which most Jews merely travel. How can they be expected to react to the
assertion that the food, the synagogue, and the school upon which they
rely have suddenly been rendered unacceptable?
The matter is complicated further by the fact that not all Lubavitch
hasidim are messianists and not all messianists endorse a theology of
avodah zarah. It is much easier to accept false assurances that a majority
maintain Orthodox beliefs than it is to take the very difficult steps implied
in the previous paragraph. Rather than face these consequences, Jews
force themselves to conclude that second-coming messianism promoted by
people whose services they need is not really second-coming messianism,
that legitimation is not legitimation, that avodah zarah is not avodah zarah.
Of all the causes of inaction, this is the most intractable, and it may well
result in a permanent and profound transformation of Judaism.
“GOOD THINGS”
“But they do so many good things.” I cannot count the number of times
I have heard this sentence or its equivalent. Some of these “things” are
acts of kindness that are not specific to Judaism; others involve the
teaching of Torah and the successful dissemination of Jewish rituals to
the proverbial four corners of the earth. Much of the loyalty to Lubavitch
on the local level flows from personal relationships established with Jews
of all stripes—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, even secular—in need
6 Hatzofeh, January 17, 2000.
— 333 —
of an understanding heart, a sympathetic ear, a favor large (sometimes

very large) or small. In an increasingly impersonal society, Lubavitch
emissaries exult in the joy of others and empathize with their sadness,
forging bonds that cannot be broken by mere theology. On the ritual
level, they not only encourage the wearing of tefillin and the lighting
of Sabbath candles; they provide travelers with kosher food, a Passover
seder, a prayer service, and more. The beneficiaries of this largesse cannot
help but feel the most profound gratitude.
Once again, looking at this consideration through a purely theoretical
Orthodox prism renders it highly problematic. If the recognition of
Lubavitch messianists as Orthodox rabbis really destroys the parameters
of Judaism’s messianic faith (as it surely does), then the issue needs to
be framed in global terms. You can gain ten thousand (or one hundred
thousand, or one million) additional observant Jews at the price of
accepting a fundamental change in a core belief of Judaism. Are you
prepared to pay that price? Posed in the abstract to an Orthodox audience,
this should be a rhetorical question. But people are rarely motivated by
abstractions or by concern for the course of history writ large. How, they
ask, can we not be impressed with this selfless family that has established
a synagogue in a spiritual wilderness and persuaded people who would
have lost their Jewish identity entirely to observe the Torah? In such a
struggle between heart and mind, the mind stands little chance.7
TRANSIENT INSANITY
I have heard the assertion that the messianists are crazy no less frequently
than the argument that “they do good things.” Sometimes this appears to
mean that because the belief is insane it will surely not last and should
therefore be treated with benign—or malign—neglect. In this version,
the contention is problematic but coherent. In most cases, however,
the word meshugoyim (crazy people) or meshugaas (craziness) seems to
7 Arguments for the delegitimation of Lubavitch messianism can, of course, also appeal
to the heart, and I have attempted in other forums to evoke such emotions to the
best of my ability. See, for example, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox
Indifference, where I argue that Orthodox Judaism has effectively declared that “on a
matter of fundamental principle our martyred ancestors were wrong and their Christian
murderers were right” (p. 75).
— 334 —
be intended as a self-contained argument. Because they are crazy, they

cannot be taken seriously and should be ignored—or even supported for
their “good things.” Precisely because it is so difficult to assign a coherent
meaning to this argument, it reveals once again the operation of a deep
instinct that seeks any avenue to avoid the unwanted conclusion that
messianists should be excluded from Orthodoxy.
Most people who proffer this argument appear to agree that the
messianist belief stands in contradiction to the classical Jewish messianic
faith. But if this is so, it is difficult to see how the ”fact” that it is also a
form of craziness qualifies the believer to be a rabbi, judge, principal, or
teacher. Does the very fact that it is crazy somehow make it compatible
with Judaism?8 Imagine a colloquy in which someone objects to hiring a
messianist rabbi. A supporter of the appointment responds, “It is true that
he maintains a profoundly un-Jewish belief, but this drawback is neutralized
by a countervailing consideration that works in his favor. He is crazy.”
Moreover, the large majority of messianists are not crazy in any
clinical sense; to suggest that they are is crazy. The non-messianists in
Chabad face daunting obstacles in their efforts to interpret teachings
of the Rebbe that appear to point to his messiahship. Against this
background, for a hasid to defend the messianist position through a
variety of learned and complex strategies is decidedly not a violation of
the canons of reason. An outside observer is, of course, free to argue
that belief in the resurrection of the dead, or in a personal Messiah, or,
for that matter, in God, is itself irrational. By that criterion, however, all
serious Orthodox Jews (and, for that matter, Christians) are crazy.
This is not to deny that the percentage of unbalanced individuals
is probably somewhat higher in the messianist population than in the
Jewish population as a whole. Extreme doctrines like the belief that the
Rebbe is fully alive can easily elicit contemptuous jokes, and this too is
an important factor in preventing serious responses. The assumption
that only meshugoyim could possibly believe that the Rebbe is the
Messiah also contributes to a dramatically unrealistic underestimate of
the extent of messianism in Chabad. After all, say many observers, since
I know that Rabbi so-and-so is a perfectly normal person; it follows that
8 For those concerned with the posthumous destiny of people who might be heretics, the
assertion that they are crazy can serve as mitigation. This, however, does not appear to
be the primary context is which the argument is used.
— 335 —
he could not possibly be a believer.9

The association of messianism with insanity also bears on the
confident predictions of the inevitable, imminent disappearance of
belief in the messiahship of the Rebbe. The fact that a religion called
Christianity, which also believes in a dying and resurrected redeemer,
has not yet disappeared ought to give at least some pause to these
prognosticators. Let me reinforce this point by adducing a much more
recent and hence even more apt example.
Mormonism was born in modern times as a dramatically deviant
form of Christianity. It makes highly problematic historical assertions
about relatively recent events. Its theology makes that of Lubavitch
messianists appear like the very soul of rationality. It has a sophisticated,
well-educated constituency. It sends emissaries to the ends of the earth
to make converts and is, I believe, the fastest growing religion in the
world. Whatever one thinks of the rationality of the first generation of
believers, children brought up in such a faith can surely accept it without
damage to their rational faculties. If Mormonism flourishes, why is
Chabad messianism necessarily condemned to extinction?
I will not hazard a prediction as to the medium or long term survival
of this belief. Menachem Friedman, the most distinguished sociologist
of Orthodoxy in Israel, believes that in a leaderless movement, the
group with the most fervent message is likely to prevail. If so, then all
the worldwide institutions of Chabad will eventually be mobilized to
spread this version of Judaism. However that may be, I certainly do
not see what will destroy this faith as long as the rest of Orthodoxy
legitimates messianist rabbis and the bulk of the Chabad educational
system remains in messianist hands. Confident prognostications of
imminent demise fly in the face of reason.10
9 It is not uncommon for ordinary Orthodox Jews to find themselves subjected to

analogous misperceptions. Many years ago, a non-Jewish colleague in my department
took it for granted that I did not follow a bizarre practice that she had just been told
about, to wit, that Orthodox Jews will not drink wine handled by Gentiles. Somewhat
more recently, two Jewish colleagues asked me about an article in the New York Times
describing a shatnez-testing laboratory in Brooklyn. When I proceeded to show them
the non-shatnez label in my jacket, they managed to remain polite but were clearly non-
plussed to discover that a person who usually appeared reasonably sane actually adhered
to such outlandish regulations. All this notwithstanding the fact that I wear a yarmulke
at work and make my Orthodox affiliation clear in more ways than I can recount.
10 The failure to take this development seriously has led more than one person to suggest
— 336 —
THE WANING OF A CHRISTIAN THREAT AND THE ATROPHY

OF JEWISH MESSIANIC INSTINCTS
With the decline of a pervasive Christian threat, familiarity with

messianic texts and sensitivity to messianic deviationism has waned
to the vanishing point even among learned Jews. Jewish polemical
texts are not part of the Orthodox curriculum nor (outside Chabad) are
treatises dealing with redemption. Moreover, I think that the celebrated
observation that many Orthodox Jews no longer trust the traditions
with which they were raised is also germane to this development.11 In
previous generations, Jews would have paid little attention to messianist
sectarians who “proved” that their belief is acceptable by pointing to one
line in Sanhedrin 98b. Now, unbound by a consensus once imbibed by
every Jewish tailor and shoemaker with his mother’s milk, and oblivious
of a rich polemical literature, they function as tabulae rasae for every
unfamiliar text introduced to them. While they will not go so far as to
embrace the belief in the Rebbe’s messiahship, they can be persuaded
that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it.
JUST ANOTHER CHANGE
Finally, several people who understand very well that Lubavitch

messianism has no legitimate precedent in Judaism have nonetheless
chided me for attributing so much significance to this development.
After all, they say, I am a historian, and a historian of ideas no less. I
should know better than most that beliefs change, that religions evolve.
Hasidism itself was an innovation. Religious Zionism was an innovation.
that I stop wasting my time on it. A very distinguished scholar who is an observant Jew
urged me to remain focused on the area where I do important work: the Middle Ages.
In other words, I should spend all my time studying what is really significant, namely,
Jewish arguments against Christianity in the Middle Ages, rather than diverting my
attention to the trivial issue of whether Jews still believe those arguments. I wonder
what this scholar tells his students about the uses of history.
11 See Menachem Friedman, “Life Tradition and Book Tradition in the Development of
Ultraorthodox Judaism,” in Judaism from Within and from Without: Anthropological
Studies, ed. by Harvey Goldberg (Albany, 1987), pp. 235-255; Haym Soloveitchik,
“Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,”
Tradition 28:4 (Summer, 1994): 64-130.
— 337 —
Why must I remain in a state of arrested development, embalmed in the

world of the Barcelona disputation?
I am inclined to think that this argument is not a primary cause
of Orthodox inaction because it appeals only to the most modernist
worldview within Orthodoxy. Some Lubavitch hasidim, however, have
also mobilized it for polemical purposes. Since it involves an issue of
religious judgment and has been posed to me in a personal way, I take the
liberty of injecting an overtly personal response into this analysis.
It should not be necessary to say that historians are permitted to
have commitments to abiding principles. The decision to study history
is not a decision to embrace change as one’s supreme value. All religious
traditions have boundaries, and any adherent of such a tradition faces
the challenge of deciding whether or not a particular innovation subverts
core elements of that tradition. Here is my response to one of these
critics:
I consider this issue [especially] serious for roughly the following reasons:
1- It involves a key element in the understanding of one of the iqqarei ha-
emunah (fundamentals of the faith). 2- Comparable movements throughout
Jewish history have been thoroughly, vehemently, angrily delegitimated
by klal Yisrael [the Jewish collective]. I refer both to the movements that
persisted after the candidate’s death and the movements that died with
his death precisely because their posthumous survival was unthinkable.
3- Denial of such a belief has been a part of the very definition of Judaism
in innumerable confrontations with the Christian mission. Accepting it as
a harmless enthusiasm awards victory to Christianity on a fundamental
matter of principle. 4- It has led to avodah zarah in both past instances and
shows signs of doing so again.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF
“STARTING A FIGHT WITH LUBAVITCH”
Finally, there are pragmatic obstacles that beset any effort to delegitimate
this belief and its adherents. Lubavitch messianists are the dominant
part of an influential movement with impressive human, financial, and
political resources that defends its interests vigorously. Few people
have the stomach to pursue a cause that will cause them to be publicly
labeled—as I can testify from personal experience—haters, dividers,
— 338 —
liars, heretics, egotistical seekers of fame and fortune, ignoramuses,

snakes, asses, and pigs. The reluctance to “start a fight with Lubavitch” is
palpable, particularly on the part of those whose institutions might lose
support from Chabad sympathizers or whose positions might even be
jeopardized. Since a large majority of Orthodox Jews rely on a very small
number of rabbinic authorities to make decisions of such moment, it is
only necessary to deter a relative handful of people from taking action.
******
A phenomenon that appears at first, uncritical glance to be inexplicable

turns out upon examination to be overdetermined. Primarily social
factors abetted at critical points by religious sensibilities can sweep away
a central doctrine of a well established faith with a millennial history of
withstanding the most severe pressure. Had this change been imposed
from without, Orthodox Jews would have resisted at all costs. But it
came from within, and to this point it has prevailed.
— 339 —
EPILOGUE
“The Countenance of his Father”:
“THE COUNTENANCE OF HIS FATHER”:

TWENTYFIVE YEARS SINCE THE PASSING OF
HADOAR AUTHOR ISAIAH BERGER OF BLESSED
MEMORY
Hadoar 78:4 (December 25, 1998) (Hebrew). Translated by the author.
I grew up on the front lines of an incessant war between books and

clothing, and the books had the better of it. In the bookcases, they
reigned supreme, while in the closets the long coats and dresses had
to defend themselves against the infiltrations and attacks of the new
volumes that multiplied without cease.
This lust for books may have resulted from the fact that my father
had virtually no formal education in either Jewish or general studies and
attained most of his knowledge not from teachers but through constant,
wide-ranging reading. His father, who was a rabbi in Zinkov in Ukraine,
passed away when his younger son was a baby. The elder son migrated to
Canada, where he succeeded in setting up a business, and as time passed
he helped his mother and younger brother come to New York via Canada
when my father was sixteen years old.
The young immigrant studied for some time in Rabbi Isaac Elchanan
Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, but he carved out an
independent path for himself in areas that interested him and decided
to educate himself outside the framework of organized educational
institutions.1 The evidence furnished by the dates noted in his books
indicates that he began to form his library in 1927 when he was twenty-
one years old, and in the following year his first scholarly article appeared
in Ha-Tzofeh le-Hokhmat Yisrael (“Le-Toledot Meqorotav ve-Hashpa‘ato
shel Sefer Sha‘ashu‘im le-R. Yosef ben Meir Zabbara”). The article is
1 Nonetheless, he wrote two enthusiastic articles about Yeshiva, one on its fiftieth
anniversary (Hadoar 16:32), and another on the opening of Stern College (“Mikhlalah
li-Benot Yisrael,”Hadoar 33:40).
— 343 —
Epilogue
remarkable for the range of expertise that it displays in Jewish literature

throughout the generations, and there is no doubt that readers would
have been stunned had they known that the author is a twenty-two year
old without an academic degree.
Nonetheless, my father experienced difficulty in his search for a means
of livelihood, in large measure because learning was his heart’s desire,
but also as a result of character traits like modesty, lack of initiative in
economic matters, and sometimes even an excess of decency. I remember
his telling me that one of the obstacles that he faced as a teacher in a
primary school for part-time Jewish study (a Talmud Torah) over a period
of several months—a position that was in any event not designed to
generate great wealth— was his refusal on ethical grounds to utilize the
proven method suggested to him to control disruptive children, namely,
to appoint them as monitors over the other pupils.
Eventually, he opened a bookstore that served primarily as a
warehouse. He periodically issued a catalogue with a list of books in
Hebrew and other languages that dealt mainly with Jewish themes but
to a non-trivial extent also with general folklore and other areas of study
that interested him. An important scholar informed me quite recently
that he saves the catalogues of “Isaiah Berger, Books” as documents of
importance for the history of Jewish culture in the United States.
In the thirties, articles by Isaiah Berger began to appear in Hadoar,
including reviews of overarching studies like Joseph Klausner’s History of
Modern Jewish Literature (Hadoar 19:30) and Meyer Waxman’s A History
of Jewish Literature (Hadoar 16:31, and 21:22). These essays combined
heartfelt positive evaluation and pointed, sometimes sharply formulated
criticism. In 1954, shortly after the passing of Menachem Ribalow [the
founder and long-time editor], he began his work on the editorial staff of
Hadoar on a regular basis. The catalogues that he published provided him
with an opportunity to continue his involvement with the books that
served as the source of his spiritual sustenance, but his daily livelihood
came from his position with Hadoar, where he remained almost until his
passing in 1973.
He was of course acquainted with all the prominent figures in the
Hebrew movement in the Unites States—Ribalow, Daniel Persky, Moshe
Meisels, A.R. Malachi, and many more. Even though his main areas of
expertise were folklore, proverbs, and literature, he wrote a major article
on “Jewish Scholarship in America” surveying such scholarship from
— 344 —
1848 until the date of the study (1939).2 His task at Hadoar included
the reading and correcting of the large majority of articles, and beginning
with the mid-1960’s he transformed the section on “Books Received
by the Editors” (which he wrote anonymously) from a simple list to a
succinct analysis of studies in all fields and periods, to the point where
one could characterize him as Samuel David Luzzatto once characterized
himself: “Nihil judaicum alienum est mihi.”3
He was graced with a well-developed sense of humor, and his scholarly
interest in jokes did not remain restricted to research. Despite the smile
that frequently played across his lips, he took very seriously the cultural
aim of Hadoar as he understood it and vigorously opposed proposals to
lower the journal’s intellectual level for the sake of achieving popularity.
This seriousness marked his attitude toward all matters of culture and
language. We did not speak Hebrew at home, but my father insisted on
the purity of language even in English. When I would intersperse words
in Hebrew or Yiddish into an English conversation, he could not tolerate
the admixture, and he would always stop me by asking, “How do you say
that in English?” He was also not among the despisers of Yiddish, and
he wrote articles on Peretz in Yivo Bleter and in Die Goldene Kait without
any diminution of his engaging literary style.
In addition, he served as a translator in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish.
In these instances as well his name was not mentioned, and generally
2 “Hokhmat Yisra’el ba-America,” Sefer ha-Shanah li-Yehudei America li-Shenat Tav Resh
Tzadi Tet, ed. by Menachem Ribalow (New York, 1939), pp. 345-378.
3 He wrote short notes or reports on events in the Hebrew movement anonymously or
with an abbreviated byline (Y. B. or just B. or sometimes Y. ben Yitzhak). In addition to
his position in Hadoar, he also did editorial work for Ktav Publishing House, where he
prepared inter alia detailed indexes in the form of entire volumes to the Hebrew College
Annual and the old series of the Jewish Quarterly Review, indexes that are based (as one
of the reviewers of the project noted) not on the reading of the titles alone but on the
study of the articles themselves.
In an earlier period, he helped Israel Davidson prepare Otzar ha-Meshalim ve-ha-Pitgamim
(Jerusalem, 1957) to the degree that by his own testimony he almost deserved to be
described as an author, and he was disappointed that his name did not appear anywhere
in the book. (This may be because the work was not completed in the author’s lifetime.
In one place in the introduction by Shmuel Ashkenazi, who prepared the volume for
publication, there is a reference to “the author and his assistants” [p. 15].) He left
behind many notes containing material relevant to the study of folklore and proverbs.
He was especially interested in the topic of the “evil eye,” but did not live to publish the
large amount of material that he assembled. [I will be happy to supply this material to
any scholar in the field who can put it to good use.]
— 345 —
Epilogue
speaking I have no information regarding the articles that he translated.

I must, however, note one translation of a particularly important work.
At the end of the 1950’s. he put great efforts into translating a lengthy
lecture by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik from Yiddish into Hebrew. The
lecture never appeared in Yiddish and was first published in Hebrew in the
collection Torah u-Melukhah: Al Meqom ha-Medinah ba-Yahadut (Jerusalem,
1961), edited by S. Federbush, who turned to my father with the request
to translate Rabbi Soloveitchik’s work from its original language. I am
referring to the famous essay, “Qol Dodi Dofeq.” When the essay appeared
in print, my father reacted with disappointment when he saw the extent
of the changes introduced by Rabbi Soloveitchik, but he consoled himself
somewhat with the observation that in the final analysis his translation
still served as the foundation for the published version.
The first major article that he wrote when I was capable of appreciating
his work to some degree was a study entitled “Rashi in Popular Legend”
(“Rashi be-Aggadat ha-Am”)4, which appeared as a sort of companion
piece to his important, much earlier article on “Maimonides in Popular
Legend” (“Ha-Rambam be-Aggadat ha-Am”).5 The new article, written
not only in response to the invitation of the editor of the collection but
also thanks to the encouragement of my mother, appeared when I was
fifteen-years-old, and I read it with the enthusiasm of a son beginning
to appreciate the stature of his father. The Hebrew dedication that he
wrote in the offprint that he gave me resonates in my memory to this
day: “On your fifteenth birthday, I present you my dear son David with
this booklet of mine on Rashi who is beloved and admired by you. May
our Torah always be your delight, and may you find favor in the eyes of
God and man. Your father who hugs, kisses and respects you.”
The final verb, which was underlined, made a profound impression on
me because my father was never impressed by elementary achievements.
He derived enjoyment from my public reading of the Torah and haftarah—I
learned the proper cantillation of the haftarah from him—but my general
4 Rashi: Torato ve-Ishiyyuto, ed. by Simon Federbush (New York, 1958), pp. 147-179.
5 Massad: Me’assef le-Divrei Sifrut 2, ed. by Hillel Bavli (Tel Aviv, 1936), pp. 216-238. In
his book Shivhei ha-Rambam (Jerusalem, 1998), Yitzhak Avishur cites this study dozens
of times. He writes among other things that the article “includes everything that was
known at the time about stories concerning Maimonides” and that “from the time of
Berger’s study no article of importance on popular stories concerning Maimonides
appeared until…1962” (pp. 15, 17).
— 346 —
impression when I was a child was that he did not get particularly excited
over the trivial things I was capable of learning or accomplishing. I
recognized that he had exalted expectations, even when they were
expressed—if they were expressed at all—in a calm and relaxed fashion.
He once told me with a smile that he would be happy if I would know the
content of one small bookshelf, and he showed me the shelf containing
the volumes printed in a small format by the publishing house “Horeb”:
the Babylonian Talmud in four volumes, the Palestinian Talmud in two,
Shulhan Arukh in two, Mishneh Torah in two, the Mishnah, Midrash Rabbah,
Midrash Tanhuma, Yalkut Shim‘oni, Humash with the Miqra’ot Gedolot
commentaries and Nakh with the Miqra’ot Gedolot commentaries.6
It may be that one should not draw conclusions from off-the-cuff
comments accompanied by a smile, but I had no doubt whatever that
this was precisely what my father wanted. The only imprecision in his
remarks was that he wanted even more than that. Among the many
books that surrounded me at home in my high school years, I was
particularly attracted to Nahmanides’ commentary to the Pentateuch
and his disputation with Pablo Christiani, to Mehqerei ha-Yahadut of S. D.
Luzzatto, and to the poems of Bialik. The ability to hold discussions with
my father about matters that he considered important engendered great
satisfaction for both of us, and a new stage in our relationship developed,
even though neither of us could relate seriously to the subject to which
the other devoted his leisure hours: I had no talent in chess, and he never
succeeded in understanding a scintilla of the rules of baseball.
The list of “Horeb” publications underscores another central
characteristic that was not altogether typical in the Hebrew movement:
the intimate connection to Jewish tradition, to the observance of the
commandments, to Torah in its full sense. If the Hebrew movement of the
twentieth century was born at the knees of the Jewish Enlightenment,
6 My father loved those little books passionately. When I studied at the Rabbi Isaac
Elchanan Theological Seminary, we were granted permission to bring a copy of the
entire Babylonian Talmud to a major examination in Talmud. With considerable
difficulty, I succeeded in persuading my father to allow me to bring that little four-
volume Talmud to the yeshivah. When I returned home that evening, I had to stop on
the way for several hours at Columbia University, and I left a full suitcase in the car with
those four volumes next to it. The suitcase was stolen, but the books remained. I told
my friends that I saw the hand of providence in the fact that the suitcase had been too
full to fit the volumes of the Talmud in it, because if the books had been stolen—even
without the suitcase—I would not have dared to come home.
— 347 —
Epilogue
or Haskalah, my father’s worldview was born at the knees of the religious

Haskalah. Needless to say, the term Haskalah does not fit the current
century, and my father also felt great affection for hasidism in a fashion
that was not at all typical of the original Haskalah, even in its religious
manifestation. Although he did not live the life of a hasid, he read hasidic
works, writing notes recording hasidic observations and “words of Torah”
that touched him both as a scholar and as a Jew.
I was educated in the Yeshiva of Flatbush, a modern yeshivah where
the discourse in Jewish studies classes was conducted in Hebrew, but the
decision to send me there came primarily from my mother. My father
was prepared to have me study in Yeshiva Chaim Berlin because of the
emphasis on the study of Talmud.7 As I noted, he did not know his father,
but on several occasions, he referred to a conversation that made a deep
impression on him. He once met a non-religious Jew who grew up in
Zinkov and asked him if he knew Rabbi Yitzhak Berger. The immediate
reaction was, ”I must go into the other room and find a skullcap before
I can discuss him.” This heritage generated a religious dimension in my
father that merged almost seamlessly with the cultural atmosphere of
the Hebrew movement on all its levels.
Approximately twenty years after my father’s passing, my first
grandchild was born. He was named after my father, and at the meal
marking his circumcision, I cited the Hebrew lines written on my father’s
monument. As a historian, I must tell my students that one can learn
a great deal about the values of a society from tombstone inscriptions,
but one learns very little about the deceased themselves. But as a son,
I call upon Him who knows hidden things to witness that these lines
describe faithfully and almost without exaggeration the rare qualities
that characterized my father of blessed memory:
‫יקר רוח ועדין נפש‬
‫גבוה משכמו ומעלה ונחבא אל הכלים‬
‫אוהב את המקום‬
‫אוהב את הבריות‬
‫סופר חוקר וחובב ספר‬
‫בקי בכל חדרי התורה והחכמה‬
7 Many years later, Joel Braverman, the celebrated principal of the Yeshivah of Flatbush,
told me that he succeeded in expanding the time devoted to Talmud study from one hour
a day to two after a lengthy debate with members of the school’s Board of Education.
“I explained to them,” he said, “the importance of the study of Talmud, since without
Talmud it is impossible to understand Bialik.”
— 348 —
(Precious in spirit and refined in soul

Taller from his shoulders upward yet hidden among the vessels8
Loving God and loving mankind9
Author, scholar, and lover of books
Erudite in all the recesses of Torah and wisdom.)10
When my father passed away, my mother was inconsolable. On a

number of occasions, she expressed her conviction that a person like him
was simply not to be found, and she could not forget a sentence that he
uttered on his deathbed. At that point, his words were not always clear,
but while apparently referring to his imminent passing, he suddenly said,
“Yeshayahu ve-Sarah Chanah Berger” (his name and that of my mother).
My mother understood these words as an invitation to accompany him
to the world to come, and she indeed passed away less than a year later.
She asked me to write his words on her monument. I was unable to find
a felicitous way of fulfilling this request with absolute literalness, but
on the line before the date of her passing, I wrote, “Aletah la-marom
lehityahed im nishmat ba‘alah” (“She ascended heavenward to be united
with the soul of her husband”).11
May their souls be bound up in the bond of life.
8 Cf. I Samuel 10:22-23.

9 Ethics of the Fathers 6:1, 6.
10 I borrowed the first line from the eulogy delivered by Tovia Preschel at the funeral. See
too Preschel’s article, “Yeshayahu Berger z”l” (Hadoar 53:11) where most of my father’s
important articles are mentioned, and the letter to the editor in 53:14 ,“Le-Zekher R.
Yeshaya Berger z”l.” (If I remember correctly, the author of that letter, which is signed
Qore Pashut [A Simple Reader] was A.R. Malachi.) Aside from the articles listed by
Preschel and Malachi and the plethora of smaller pieces in Hadoar, I note a political
analysis where my father expressed his views on the Dumbarton-Oakes conference, the
secession of “Si‘ah Bet” from Mapai, and the beginning of the activity of Lehi (“Bein
ha-Zemannim,” Bitzaron 5 [1944]: 379-382. The article is signed, “Ben Yitzhak.”)
11 [The full inscription—once again with nary an exaggeration—reads as follows:
/‫ ועמוד התווך של כל משפחתה‬/‫ מסורה ללא שיעור להוריה בעלה ובנה‬/‫בת ישראל נאמנה לבוראה‬
‫ עלתה למרום להתיחד עם נשמת‬/.‫ בינה ואצילות ועוז והדר לבושה‬/‫חלשה בגופה ואדירה ברוחה‬
.‫ תשל“ה‬,‫ ז‘ חשון‬/‫בעלה‬
(A daughter of Israel loyal to her Creator,/ Devoted without measure to her parents,
husband, and son/ And the central pillar of her entire family./ Weak in body and
powerful in spirit,/ Wisdom, nobility, strength and grandeur were her raiment./ She
ascended heavenward to be united with the soul of her husband/ 7 Cheshvan, 5735.)]
— 349 —
Index
INDEX
Unelaborated references in the notes are not listed in the index.
A
Abba Mari of Lunel (Minhat Qenaot), 70-74, Adud al-Dawla, 32, 33n15
71n76, 77-78, 77n85, 108n130 Aescoly, Aharon Z., 305
Abelard, Peter, 60, 60n58 aggadah, 34n16, 63-67, 67n71, 97, 106,
Abraham, 44-45, 72, 181-2, 236, 239n11, 120-2, 120n6, 280, 300; see also Midrash
246, 261-2, 318; see also patriarchs Agudath Israel of America, 13
Abraham b. David of Posquières (Rabad), Ahad Ha-Am, 37-38
53, 63 Ahriman, 269
Abraham bar Hiyya, 291, 297 Akiva, 258-9, 260n27, 261
Abramson, Shraga, 33n15 Albalag, Isaac, 81
Abravanel, Isaac, x, 85, 100, 103, 180-2, 187, Albigensian Crusade, 55
219-22, 220n9, 226-35, 222n17, 227n32, Albo, Joseph, 89
263, 263n40, 266, 276, 291 alchemy, 187
Abulafia, Abraham, 80n92, 309 Alemanno, Yohanan, 101
Abulafia, Meir ha-Levi, 56, 69, 69n72 Alexander Jannaeus, 318, 320
Academic Jewish studies, x, 3-20, 203-12 Alfakar, Judah, 55-58, 62, 69, 71, 90,
areas of study, 205-6 147n49
female scholars of, 210 Alfasi, Isaac, 48, 53, 82, 192
in Israel vs. Diaspora, 8, 204, 208-9, 211- Al-Fayyumi, Netanel, 88n103
12 Al-Harizi, 131n8, 142, 308n22
and Jewish faith, 8-18, 210-11 allegory, 34, 52, 56, 67n71, 70, 72-74,
non-Jewish scholars of, 204 77n85, 81, 84, 91n107, 97, 117, 150, 190;
accidents, 139-45, 144nn31-32, 146n45, see also Bible, allegorical interpretation
148; see also Nahmanides, on natural law; of; commandments, allegorization
providence of; Christianity, allegory in; Talmud,
Account of creation, 47, 54, 218, 218n5 allegorical interpretation of
Account of the Chariot, 47, 54, 57, 218, Almohades, 52, 58
218n5 Alon, Gedaliah, 314
active intellect, 42, 113, 164 Al-Ro’i, David, 309
adab (general culture), 40, 42, 50 Alter, Robert, 249-50, 250n37
Adam ha-Kohen, 174 Amalek, 72
— 351 —
Index
Andalusia, see Spain, Jews of and Christian culture, 25-26, 92-95,

angels, 185 92n108, 111-12, 114, 153, 292-3, 300-1
Annenberg Research Institute, 115-16, 209 connection to Palestinian tradition, 290,
Anselm, 159-63 297, 307
anthropomorphism, 61-64, 63n63, 75, 119n3, erosion of tradition among, 114-15
153, 300; see also God, incorporeality of; historiography of, 294-301, 304-7,
Maimonidean controversy; Maimonides, 305n16
and incorporeality of God influence of Sephardim on, 152, 154-5,
Antichrist, 268, 268n55 155n4, 158, 160, 164, 295, 298
anti-Maimonists, see Maimonidean influence on finance, 110
controversy interaction with Sephardim, ix-x, 52-53,
anti-rationalism, xi, 24, 45, 50, 52, 61, 70, 52n45, 55, 95, 294, 301-4
75, 77-78, 85-86, 89, 101, 108, 119n3, interest in science, 91, 91n107, 96,
137; see also Halevi, Judah; Maimonidean 109n131, 153, 165-6, 217, 217n13
controversy in Late Middle Ages, 111-12
anti-Semitism, 18-19, 194, 208, 308-9 and Maimonidean controversy, 55, 58,
anti-Zionism, 198-9 63-69
Antiochus, 315 and martyrdom, 85, 112, 292-3
Apocalypses, Hebrew, 268-72, 282n9 mentality of, ix-x, 152-66, 302-4, 311
apocalyptic, 268-77, 290, 297 messianism of, 152, 275n82, 279, 290-
apocrypha, 265n44 311
apologetics, 204-8 philosophical rationalism, 90-98,
apostasy, 84-85, 115n141, 294-5, 299, 109n131, 113-14, 152-3, 156-66, 217,
305n16, 307 293, 300-4, 307, 311
Aptowitzer, Viktor, 256, 256n17, 259-60 polemics of, 91, 94, 155-8, 163-4
Arabic, 26, 30, 36, 38-40, 75, 82-83, vs. Sephardim, 25-26, 90-91, 94, 112,
104n123 152-3, 156-7, 275n82, 279, 290-311
Arama, Isaac (Aqedat Yitzhak), 84, 190, as viewed by Sephardim, 90; see also
229n39 Christianity, Jews under; France, Jews
Aramaic, 36 of; France, Northern; Germany, Jews of;
archaeologists, 11 Hasidei Ashkenaz; Italy, Jews of; Poland,
Aristobulus II, 320 Jews of; Sephardim
Aristotle and Aristotelianism, 51-52, 54, asmakhtot, 120, 121n6, 122
54n47, 67, 69, 71, 71-72n76, 95n113, assimilation, 172
98-109, 103n122, 108n130, 118, 130-4, astrology, 45, 86-87, 87n101, 92n108, 101,
134n17, 218 145-6, 145n43, 150, 187, 217, 291
Armaleus, see Eremolaos astronomy, 40-41, 47, 66, 86-88, 86n100,
Armilus, 268-274, 277 96, 98, 109, 186-7, 217
Artzot ha-Shalom, see Malbim attributes, divine, 47
Asher b. Yehiel (Rosh), 60n58, 76, 82, Augustine, 154, 302-3
104n123 Averroes, 85, 85n99, 100
Ashkenazi, Eliezer, 98n116, 246-7n25 Avishur, Yitzhak, 346n5
Ashkenazi, Joseph, 97, 98n116, 102 avodah zarah, 4, 195, 331, 333, 338
Ashkenazim,
assertiveness of, 164 B
and Bible study, 35, 92-93, 93n109 Bacharach, Yair Hayyim, 114
biblical exegesis of, 152, 158-65, 217, Baer, Yitzhak, 85, 85n99, 94n111, 137, 205,
224-5, 229, 231 322
— 352 —
Index
Baghdad, 28, 29, 32; see also Islam, Jews literary approach to, 249-50, 250n36
under messianic prophecies of, 253, 291-2
Band, Arnold, 7 philosophical approach to, 50n42, 55,
Bahya b. Moses, 59 57-58, 62, 72-3, 77n85, 79, 81, 84,
Bahya ibn Paqudah, 45-46, 47n39, 50, 89, 91n107, 117, 190
135, 139n34 study of, 35, 37, 92-93, 93n109, 167,
Balaam, 262n34, 271-4, 272n70, 274n76, 167n1, 210; see also anthropomorphism;
274n78 Daniel, Book of; Ecclesiastes; exegesis;
ban, Gospels; Job; New Testament;
on anti-rationalists, 55, 58-59, 76-77, Proverbs
77n85, 117 blood libel, 8, 207
on Maimonides, 55-56, 59, 69, 117, Bodoff, Lippman, 42n32
120-8, 122n10 Bohemia, 96
on study of philosophy, 30, 60, 69, 70n72, Bonfil, Robert, 100n119, 103n122,
73-74, 78, 125-7; see also Maimonidean 104n123, 105-6n126, 106-7, 107n129,
controversy; Nahmanides 264n41
barbarians, 23 “The Book of Knowledge” (Sefer ha-Madda),
Bar Kokhba, 7, 257-9, 260n27, 261, 267, 59, 68-70, 91n107, 117, 120, 123,
277 124n14, 127
Baron, Salo, 29, 29n10, 106, 119n3, 265n44, Bowman, Steven, 87n102
266n46 Boyarin, Daniel, 84
Bathsheba, 240, 240n14 Brahe, Tycho, 96
Bedershi, Yedaiah, 74-76, 79, 79n89, 81 Braverman, Chaim Heshel, 183
Bekhor Shor, Joseph, 158, 237, 237n5 Breuer, Mordechai, 239n11
Beis Yaakov schools, 197 Brunswick (Reformers’ meeting), 173, 176,
Bela b. Beor, 273 181
Benjamin, 248, 249n30 Buber, Martin, 243
Ben Sasson, Haim Hillel, 85n99, 98n116, Bucharest, Jews of, 168-71, 174; see also
137, 137n29, 241 Malbim
Ben Sasson, Menahem, 33n15, 116 Byzantine Empire, Jews of, 87, 87n102,
Ber, Moshe, 265n44 290, 296
Berger, Isaiah, 80n92, 192, 343-349
Berger, Yitzhak, 343, 348 C
Beta Israel, 17 Caro, Joseph, 107, 107n129
Bialik, Hayyim Nahman, 209-10, 259n24, Cairo Genizah, 26, 30n13
314, 347, 348n7 Caleb, 266-7, 267n49
Bibago, Abraham, 85 Canaanites, 321
Bible Carlebach, Elisheva, 152, 289-311, 307n20
allegorical interpretation of, 52, 56, 70, Carmy, Shalom, 245n22
72-74, 77n85, 81, 84, 91n107, 97, 117, Carolingian Renaissance, 25-26n3
150, 190 Cassutto, Umberto (Moshe David), 188n94,
belief in, 154 207, 243-4, 244n20
criticism, 6, 15-16, 178-81, 242-3, 249-50 celibacy, 94, 94n112
Hebrew, 242, 242n16 Chabad hasidim, see Lubavitch hasidim
heroes of, x, 207, 223-4, 235, 236-50, 277 Chavel, Chaim Dov, 33n15, 120-26, 121-
interpretation of, x, 36-37, 52, 67n70, 2n8, 126nn18-19, 133n15, 136n22,
146, 215 139n34, 143n39
levels of meaning in, 178-9 Chmielnicki massacres, 292, 313
— 353 —
Index
Christianity, 319-20; see also Pharaoh’s daughter

allegory in, 77n85 creation ex nihilo, 51, 71, 71n76, 129-34,
and anti-Maimonism, 56-57, 63 130n4, 132n14, 186; see also Aristotle
attitude of Jews towards, 204-5 and Aristotelianism; Maimonides;
and the Bible, 35, 303 Nahmanides; primeval matter
contempt for Judaism, 112 Crescas, Hasdai, 76, 81, 186n74
and the Enlightenment, 115 crusades, 8, 19, 55, 85, 105, 112, 296,
and general culture, 23-24, 28, 78 308n22
Jewish tolerance for, 78, 78-79n88 cultural-religious norms, 3-4
Jews under, 25, 27-28, 43, 52, 55, 76, 90- curses, 293, 299-300
93, 99, 153, 275n82, 295-6, 304, 307, customs, 183
309-10
Maimonides’ attitude towards, 195 D
missionizing in, 76-77, 77n85, 338 da‘at Torah, 15
and modern challenges, 112 da Modena, Leone, 103, 104n123
and rationalist philosophy, 153-4, 158- Dan, Joseph, 95n113, 243-4, 244n19
60 Daniel, Book of, 263-4, 264n41, 264-5n43,
role of, 206 268, 268n55, 275-6, 291
and the Second Coming, 336; see also Darwin, Charles, 186
Ashkenazim; disputation; exegesis, dati-leumi, 6
Christian; heresy, Christian; Jesus; Dark Ages, 25-26n3
Jewish-Christian interaction; New David b. Saul (anti-Maimonist), 63
Testament; philosophy, study of under David, King, 222-3, 227n32, 240, 240nn13-
Christianity; polemics, Christian; 14, 266, 266n47, 318, 320, 326
polemics, Jewish Davis, Joseph M., 26n3, 95n113, 97n115
Church Fathers, 23-24, 24n1, 302 Davidson, Herbert, 14, 131n10
Cicero, 101 Davidson, Israel, 345n3
codes, 89, 100 de Lonzano, Menahem, 271
Cohen, Gerson, 9, 129n1, 152, 264n43, de’ Rossi, Azariah (Me’or ‘Einayim), 106-107,
274n79, 275n82, 279, 289-311, 309n23 107n129, 172n24
Cohen, Nehemiah, 282 Dead Sea Scrolls, 256
Cohen, Yehezkel, 102n121 del Medigo, Elijah (Behinat ha-Dat), 99
cold war revisionism, 8 della Mirandola, Pico, 101
commandments, 161-2 Delmedigo, Yosef Shlomo, 109, 110n134
allegorization of, 56, 72-74, 73n79 Dessler, Eliyyahu, 16
observance of, 13, 46, 48, 57, 72, 73n79, determinism, 75
74, 149, 172-3, 182, 259, 279, 282, devequt (cleaving to God), 143-4, 143n38
330-1, 347 dialectic, 60n58, 93, 93-94n110, 118, 159
reason for, 175 Diaspora, scholars of, 8, 204, 208, 211-12
types of, 82; see also halakhah; reform, disputation, 66-67; see also polemics
religious Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati, 268, 271
competitive imitation, 37, 42, 94 documentary hypothesis, 249-50; see also
Conservative Judaism, 9-11, 198, 333 higher criticism; Bible, criticism
Copernican revolution, 96, 108-110, Donnolo, Shabbetai, 99
110n134 Dunash b. Tamim, 35
court Jews, x, 8, 27, 39, 42, 110-111, 222, Duran, Profiat, 79n89, 92n109
232, 235, 294, 306 The Duties of the Heart, see Bahya ibn
conversion, 42-43, 43n32, 84-85, 115n141, Paqudah
— 354 —
Index
E midrashic, 161-3
Eastern Europe, Jews of, 167, 175 motive for, 160-1, 243-4, 247n25
Ecclesiastes, 158, 165, 218 mystical (sod), 135n19
Edom, 254, 268-74, 273n74 peshat, 91-93, 135n19, 159-60, 161-3,
Ehrlich, Arnold B., 245n22 175-7, 188
Eisenstadt, M.D., 147n48 in philosophical tradition, 219-31,
Elhanan b. Yaqar, 94n110 223n22
Elijah, 256, 262 Provencal, 218
emancipation, 9n7, 182-3 Sephardic, 219
Emden, Jacob, 114, 114n140 typology in, 275, 277n85; see also Bible
emanations (sefirot), 134, 143-4; see also exile, ix, 42, 75, 82, 145n43, 159, 182-3,
kabbalah 183n54, 202, 226n28, 255, 262-5, 267,
empiricism, 71n76, 132, 132n14 276, 321-2, 324
Emunot ve-De‘ot (Book of Beliefs and Opinions), Babylonian, 314, 316; see also
4, 29, 133n15; see also Saadya Gaon redemption
End of days, x-xi, 105, 204, 253-77, 286, 291, Exodus, 10, 226, 254, 254n10
298-9; see also messianism, apocalyptic expulsions, 94, 112
Enlightenment, ix-x, 9n7, 113, 115, 242; see expulsion, Spanish, 84, 292
also haskalah external wisdom, 23, 59, 83, 112, 117; see
Ephraim Horowitz of Volochisk, 187 also grammar; history; mathematics;
Ephraim, tribe of, 255-61, 260-1n27 philosophy; sciences
Epistle to Yemen, 201-2, 284, 285n14, 291, Ezekiel, 140, 179, 255-9, 268
298, 304; see also Maimonides; messianic
movements F
Eremolaos, 270-4 Fakhry, Majid, 24n2
Esau, 239, 245-9, 247n25, 248-9n29-30, Faur, Jose, 83n97, 94n110
273n74, 274 Federbush, Simon, 346
eschatology, 46, 174, 268, 276, 279 ; see also Figo, Azariah, 102, 103n122
Apocalypses; end of days; messianism; Fishbane, Michael, 249
redemption, calculations of Fleischer, Ezra, 27n6
esotericism, see kabbalah; mysticism Flusser, David, 99n118
eternal matter, 62; see also creation ex nihilo; Fokkelman, J.P., 247n25, 249, 249n29,
primeval matter 250n37
Ethiopian Jews, 17 folklore, 192, 344, 345n3
Even Shmuel, Yehudah, 262n34, 264- four species, 72
5nn42-43, 265-6, 273, 274n78 Fox, Marvin, 67n71, 194-6
evil eye, 345n3 France, Southern, see Provence
excommunication, see bans France, Northern, 55, 58, 65, 67-70,
exegesis, 67n70, 90-93, 91n107, 117, 119-23,
Ashkenazic, 152, 158-65, 217, 224-5, 127, 128n21; see also Ashkenazim;
229 Christianity, Jews under; Maimonidean
Christian vs. Jewish, 91-93, 275, 277n85 controversy; Nahmanides, letter to rabbis
criticism of biblical heroes, 241-250 of Northern France
and culture of the exegete, 215-235 Frankel, Leah, 247
as defense against bible criticism, 242-3 freedom, 316, 322
homiletical, 181-82, 188 Friedlaender, Israel, 298, 298n7
of Malbim, 175-82, 186-8 Friedman, Menachem, 336
messianic, 273 fundamentalism, 243-5, 296, 300-1
— 355 —
Index
fundamentals of faith, 61, 192, 192n3, 338 will of, 144; see also creation ex nihilo;
Funkenstein, Amos, 135n19, 137, 275, miracles; providence; revelation
280n4 Goitein, Shlomo Dov, 30, 30n13, 34
Goldreich, Amos, 33n15, 40n26, 82n95,
G 125-6n16, 126-7n19
Galileo, 109 Goldziher, I., 34n16
Galinsky, Yehuda, 155n4 Gospels, 242; see also New Testament
Gans, David, 96, 109, 294-5, 304-6 Gottlieb, E., 144n39
Gaon of Vilna, 264 Graetz, Heinrich, 7, 32, 33n15, 123, 126n17,
gematria, 276, 291, 297, 307 271
Gentiles, grammar, 36-37, 41, 101, 111, 158, 176, 188
attitude towards, 78, 194-5 Great Revolt, 314, 323-4
desire to impress, 204, 208 Greek philosophy and culture, 23-24, 40,
righteous, 194 42, 44, 57, 103, 186, 317, 322; see also
Genesis, unity of, 243-4, 249-50 Aristotle and Aristotelianism
Geonim, 21, 27-35, 34n16, 36, 62, 64, 75, “Greek wisdom,” 60, 65, 76, 82, 156
125-6, 158, 291, 293, 301 Greenbaum, Aaron, 34n16
Gerondi, Jonah, 117 Greenberg, Blu, 16
Germany, Jews of, 14, 82, 90, 93, 112, 114; Grossman, Avraham, 52-53n45, 67n70,
see also Ashkenazim; Christianity, Jews 93n109, 158-62, 289, 308, 308n22
under Guide of the Perplexed, 12, 41, 46-47, 55-56,
Gershom of Mainz (Rabbenu Gershom), 58-59, 61-62, 66, 68-71, 73n79, 80, 89,
67n70 91n107, 97, 100, 107, 120-27, 124n14,
Gersonides (Ralbag/Levi b. Gerson), 81, 126n18, 130-32, 132n14, 139n32, 142-3,
86-87, 87n101, 141n37, 161-2, 197, 219- 146n45, 147, 219n7, 230; see also bans, on
228, 220n11, 222n17, 226n28, 227n32, Maimonides; Maimonidean controversy;
228n34, 231-3, 232n47 Maimonides
Gibbon, Edward, 7 Gulag, 8
Gibson, Mel, 18-19
Ginzberg, Louis, 256, 256n15, 259-60, 260- H
1n27, 272n70, 273n74, 274n76 Haarman, Ulrich, 33n15
Glicksurg, S., 167n1, 181 Hacker, Joseph, 88-89n104
God, hadith, 26
attributes of, 47, 113 Hadoar, 343-5, 345n3, 349n10
cleaving to (devequt), 143-4, 143n38 Hagar, 236, 249n31
incarnation of, 157-8, 163 Haggadah, 159
incorporeality of, 51, 61-64, 61n60, Hai Gaon, 30-34, 31n14, 33-34n15, 34n16,
62n61, 75-76, 113, 119n3, 196 64-65, 69, 125-7, 126n17, 126n19
infinitude of, 157 Ha-Ketav ve-ha-Kabbalah, 175-6
knowledge of (yedi‘ah), 129, 135, 139, hakham kolel, 101, 103
139n34, 141n37, 148 Hakham Zevi, 114
love of, 45, 113, 197 Ha-Kohen, Yosef, 294-5, 305-6
omnipotence of, 75 halakhah,
proofs of existence of, 44, 75, 185 affected by interaction with general
responsibility to know, 44-45, 102, 173, culture, 78, 83, 83n97, 95, 196
197, 223 change in, 6, 11, 16-17, 81, 226
unity of, 49, 58-62, 68, 71, 75, 81, 133, 206 observance of, 160-70, 330-1
universal recognition of, 326 Halbertal, Moshe, 79n88
— 356 —
Index
Halevi, Joseph, 284 Hitzig, F., 269

Halevi, Judah, 41-44, 42n31, 43n32, 50, Hoffman, David, 176
100, 130n4, 135, 291, 324 hokhmah (wisdom), 158, 160-5, 163n17,
Halkin, A.S., 134n17 218-20, 220n9; see also Solomon,
Hanukkah, 314 wisdom of
haredi, 12, 16; see also Orthodox Judaism, Holland, Jews of, 111
Traditionalist; ultra-Orthodox Holocaust, 5, 8
Hartman, David, 196, 280-1n5 Holy Roman Empire, 8
Harvey, Warren, 196-7 hoq, 71
Hasidei Ashkenaz, 93-93, 94n111, 155 Horowitz, Avraham, 97, 97n116
hasidim (supremely pious), 139-48, 143n38, Horowitz, David, 79n89
144n41, 146n45, 151 host desecration, 296
Hasidism, 184, 337, 348; see also Lubavitch Hoter b. Shlomoh, 88
hasidim humanism, 24n1, 102-5, 104n23, 108, 112
Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), x, 13, Hurwitz, Moshe Halevi, 184
21, 115, 167-89, 317, 323, 347-8 hylic matter, 130n4, 185-6
and lack of religious observance, 160-70; Hyman, Arthur, 61nn59-60, 196
see also Malbim Hyrcanus II, 320
Hasmoneans, 314-21, 314n8
Hebrew literature, 9, 27, 38, 210, 317, 321 I
Hebrew language, 3, 11, 44, 81, 101, 103, Ibn Abbas, Judah, 81. 81n95
111, 176, 204, 209-11, 317, 345, 348 Ibn Ardutiel, Shem Tov, 82n95
poetry in, 38-40 Ibn Daud, Abraham, 41, 105, 274n79, 291,
Hebrew movement, 344, 345n3, 347-8 297, 300
Hebrew University, 312-3; see also Institute Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 37, 107n91, 135n19,
for Jewish Studies 150, 150n62, 162, 185
Heinemann, Joseph, 255-60, 256n15, Ibn Ezra, Moses, 36
257n20, 260n27 Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, 185, 291
Hellenizers, 317-8, 322 Ibn Janah, Jonah, 37
Heller, Yom Tov Lipman, 96, 295, 306 Ibn Kaspi, Joseph, 81-82, 81n94, 82n95,
Henoch, Chayim, 137, 137n28, 138n31, 86, 218-20, 230, 230n42
140, 145n43 Ibn Migash, Joseph, 50-51, 51n43
heresy, 23, 29, 32, 37, 53-64, 72-76, 80, 85, Ibn Nagrela, Samuel, 31, 33n15, 50
90, 97, 109, 113, 133, 162, 173, 192, 200, Ibn Shaprut, Hasdai, 291, 297
245n22 Christian, 55, 239n11, 242n16 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel, 81, 142
Herod, 321 Ibn Verga, Solomon, 145n43
Hertz, J.H., 242n22 Ibn Yahya, Gedalyah, 294, 304-5
Herzl, Theodore, 314 Idel, Moshe, 54n47, 95n113, 102n121
higgayon, 31, 76, 125, 125n15; see also Greek idolatry, 62, 62n61, 87n101, 162, 188, 195,
wisdom; philosophy 227n32, 228-30
higher criticism, 178-80, 242, 249-50 Idumaea, 319
Hillel, 321-2 Immanuel of Rome, 99
Hirschfeld, Tzvi, 167, 175, 181 inquisition, 55
historiography, 7, 15, 105, 294-301, 304-5, ingathering of exiles, 199, 279, 287n20,
305n16, 311, 312-25 294, 305, 326
history, study of, 104-107, 114, 188 Institute for Jewish Studies, 203-12
objectivity and subjectivity in study of, intifada, 208
204, 206-8, 211, 312-4, 323 Isaac, 241, 245-7, 249n31
— 357 —
Index
Isaac b. Sheshet, 85n99 Jesus, 18, 114, 157, 159, 239-40, 254-5,
Isaac of Acre (Sefer Me’irat ‘Einayim), 31-32, 274n78
90 Jewish-Christian dialogue, 18-19
Isaiah, 179-81 Jewish-Christian interaction, 5, 18-19, 92-
Ishbili, Yom Tov, see Ritba 93, 92n108, 101, 111, 114, 159, 237
Ishmael, 236 Jewish identity, 3-5
Islam, Jewish Theological Seminary, 9-11, 198
and the Bible, 35 Jews for Jesus, 18
culture of, 23-26, 24n2, 39, 154 Jews for Judaism, 18
impact in Italy, 99 Job, 30, 82, 82n95, 135n19, 160, 165, 179-
Jews under, 23-42, 50, 76, 88, 111, 80, 185, 266
275n82, 290, 293, 298, 310-11 Jonathan ha-Kohen of Lunel, 49
Maimonides’ attitude towards, 195 Jordan, William C., 116
role of, 206 Josel of Rosheim, 295, 306
superiority of, 38; see also Quran; Joseph, 246-8, 248n28, 249n31
philosophy, under Islam; Sephardim Joseph ben Judah, 48
Israel, carnal, 237 Josephus, 323
Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 208 Joshua, 254, 266
Israel, Jonathan, 110, 115n141 Josippon, 99, 99n118, 105, 297
Israel, Land of, 182, 199, 315-6, 318-20, jubilee years, 261-7
326 Judaea, 315, 318-9, 322
migrations to, 291, 296, 308 Judah, 248, 248nn28-29
Israel, State of, 3-5, 12, 192, 31-4, 321 Judah ibn Matka, 72n76
academic scholars and, 208-11 Judaism,
academic scholars of, 8-9, 20, 204-8, 211- rationality of, 76, 148n53
12 superiority of 42-45, 94, 238
behavior in 1948, 6, 8, 208 Justinian, 77n85
Christians and, 18
messianic nature of, 198-9, 287n20; see K
also Zionism kabbalah, 53-54, 67-68, 79n89, 96, 100,
Israel b. Joseph, 76, 76n84 101, 106, 113-14, 118, 119n3, 133,
Isserles, Moses (Rema), 96, 96n114, 98, 143-4, 144n42, 184, 244
98n117, 112 dangers of study, 133-4
Italy, Jews of, 96-97, 99-107, 110-11, 294, and philosophy, 54, 133-4, 134n17; see also
297 exegesis, mystical; metempsychosis;
Nahmanides, as kabbalist
J Kahn, Aharon, 47n39, 50n42
Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 314 Kalischer, Zevi Hirsch, 286
Jacob, 237-41, 245-9, 245n23, 246n25, Kanarfogel, Ephraim, 73n79, 93n109, 153
248-9n29, 249n31, 273-4 Kanpanton, Isaac, 84
Jacob, Benno, 243 Kant, Immanuel, 185
Jacob b. Makhir, 75-76 Kapah, Yosef, 50n42, 284-5n14
Jacob b. Reuben (Milhamot Hashem), 239- Kaplan, Lawrence, 12, 87n101, 97n116,
40, 240n14 193, 245n22
Jacob b. Sheshet, 72, 80 Kara, Joseph, 160, 165, 217, 224, 227,
Jaffe, Mordecai, 96 227nn32-33, 231
Jawitz, Ze’ev, 121, 123, 123n12, 126 Karaism, 36
Jeroboam, 232 karet, 65
— 358 —
Index
Katz, Jacob, 6, 16, 112, 115n141, 204-5, linguistics, study of, 25

243, 286 liturgy, 155, 161
Katz, Toviah, 109, 100n134 Loew, Judah (Maharal), 96, 107, 107n129
Kaufmann, David, 77n85 logic, 84, 101; see also philosophy
Kaufmann, Yechezkel, 13-16, 188n94, Lovers of Zion (Hibbat Zion), 183; see also
204-5, 244n20 Zionism
Kellner, Menachem, 62n61, 196-7 lower criticism, 180-1
Kepler, Johann, 96, 244 Lubavitch hasidim,
Ketav Tamim, 63-66, 90 halakhic deviations of, 329
Kimhi, David (Radak), 55, 57-58, 90, 117, messianism of, xii, 19, 199-200, 282,
219, 220n9, 224n24, 226-8, 227nn32-33, 326-39
231-3 non-messianists, 333-5;
Kings, Book of, 215-235 opponents of, 330-1; see also Lubavitcher
Kitvei Ramban, see Chavel, Chaim Dov; Rebbe
Nahmanides Lubavitcher Rebbe, xii, 199-201, 282, 327-8,
Kli Yakar, 241 331; see also Lubavitch hasidim
Klausner, Joseph, 7, 174, 206, 258n21, Lunshitz, Ephraim, 241
261n29, 271-2, 272n69, 312-325, 344 Luria, Solomon, 98, 98n117, 184, 294
Kohler, K., 269n58 Luther, Martin, 242n17
Kook, Abraham Isaac Ha-Kohen, 15 Luzzatto, Samuel David, 179, 181, 345, 347
Korah, 328
Kotler, Aharon, 245n22 M
Krauss, Samuel, 119n3 Maccabee, Judah, 315, 319
Kraut, Benny, 201 Maccabee, Simon, 319
Ktav Hitnazzelut, see Bedershi, Yedaiah Maccabees, 7-8, 314-17; see also
Kupfer, Ephraim, 95-96, 95n113 Hasmoneans
Kuzari, 42-44, 100, 130n4, 178, 185, 324; magic, 75, 92n108
see also Halevi, Judah Maimon, Y.L., 176, 184
Maimonidean controversy, ix-x, 17, 54-81,
L 90, 91n107, 119-128, 147n49, 322-3
Laban the Aramean, 237-8, 246-7, 246n25, Maimonides, Abraham, 50, 51n43, 61-63,
273-4, 274n76 65-66
Lamm, Norman, 193 Maimonides (R. Moses ben Maimon),
Laemmelein, Asher, 294-5, 298, 304-5, 309 and aggadah, 65-66
Langermann, Y. Tzvi, 91n107 on astrology, 86, 291
Lasker, Daniel J., 43n32, 116, 155-6, 155n4, ban on, 55-56, 59, 69, 117, 120-8,
157n9, 303 122n10
Latin, 26, 91, 99, 101, 154 burning of works of, 56, 70
Leah, 246n25 on Christianity, 195
legislators, 154 code of, 47-49, 55-56, 59, 61, 71, 82-83,
Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, 20, 196 191-2, 198-9
Leiman, Sid Z., 236n1 conservative interpretation of, 85, 96
Levi b. Abraham of Villefranche, 70, 72 and creation ex nihilo, 71, 72n76, 130-1,
Levi, I., 271n66, 274n78 132n14, 195
levirate marriage, 95 dogmas of, 61, 192, 192n3, 196
Levita, Elias, 101 elitism of, 193, 195
Lichtenstein, Aharon, 18 vs. Gersonides, 197
Lieberman, Saul, 198 heroic image of, 80, 97
— 359 —
Index
impact of, 190-202 on customs, 183-4

and incorporeality of God, 61-64, 61n60, and Hasidism, 184
62n61, 75, 196 and Haskalah, 167-84, 188-9
and kabbalah, 33, 80, 80n92 and history, 188
kabbalists and, 119n3 and kabbalah, 184, 184n62
on karet, 65 knowledge of languages, 171, 172n20, 174
Malbim on, 186, 186n74 and Maimonides, 186, 186n74
and medicine, 86, 86n100, 191 and philosophy of history, 182-3
and messianism, 198-200, 279-86, and philosophy, 184-6, 188
280n4, 281n5, 287n20, 291, 293, 298, as preacher, 168-71
301, 304 on redemption, 182-3
on miracles, 58, 135, 142-3, 146n45, 150, and religious reform, 168, 173-5, 182
195 and science, 186-8
on natural law, 142-3, 146n45, 147, secular knowledge of, 171-2, 172n24, 184-9
147n49, 150, 195 on secular schools, 171-2
and non-Jews, 43, 46, 194-5 on true haskalah, 173-4
and study of philosophy, 46-50, 47n39, Marcus, Ivan G., 92n108
50n42, 52, 89, 191, 195, 200, 218n5 marranos, 111, 111n136
Platonism in, 131, 131n10, 132n14 martyrdom, 85, 112, 292-3, 298-9
in popular legend, 192, 346, 346n5 maskilim, see Haskalah
and providence, 142-3, 150, 195, 200, Masada, 7, 314, 314n5
230, 230n42 Mashal u-Melitzah, see Malbim
and rabbinic authority, 16, 200 mathematics, 40-41, 66, 96, 101
as radical philosopher, 74, 191, 195-6, 200 Mattathias, 314-5
and reasons for commandments, 175 Matthew, 239-40, 254, 254-5n10
respect for, 71, 71n75, 191-2 medicine, 27, 40-41, 48, 59, 77n85, 86,
on resurrection, 55, 65, 195 86n100, 99, 101, 108, 140, 187
and secrets of the Torah, 47, 54 Meir Simhah of Dvinsk, 201
and study of history, 105n125 Meiri, Menahem, 78, 78-79n88, 204, 287
and study of other disciplines, 12, 40-41, Meisels, Moshe, 344
49, 50 Mecklenburg, Jacob (Ha-Ketav ve-ha-
as support for Zionism, 198-9 Kabbalah), 175-6
and Talmud, 48, 83, 201 Melchizedek, 256
on unity of God, 61 memory, power of, 6-7, 10
and women, 196-8; see also “The Book of Menahem de Lonzano, 89
Knowledge”; Epistle to Yemen; Guide of the Menasseh (King of Judah), 173
Perplexed; Maimonidean controversy; Menchu, Rigoberta, 5, 206
Mishneh Torah; Nahmanides, and Mendelssohn, Moses, 13, 194
Maimonides; thirteen principles of Messer Leon, David, 102-104, 103n123
faith; Treatise on the Resurrection Messiah,
Maimonists, see Maimonidean controversy death of, 326
Malachi, A.R., 344, 349n10 preparation for, 195
Malbim (Meir Loeb b. Yehiel Michel), 167-189 presumptive, 199, 280-1, 280n5
attitude towards emancipation, 182-3 qualifications of, 199-200, 279-82,
attitude towards upper class, 168-9, 174 280n4, 326
attitude towards Zionism, 182-3 son of David, 255, 258, 258n21, 262, 268
awareness of biblical criticism, 178-82 son of Joseph, 255-60, 258n21, 260-
as biblical exegete, 175-82, 186-8 1n27, 268; see also messianism
— 360 —
Index
messianic activism, xi, 275n82, 278, 285-8, relying on, 140, 146
287n20, 295 299, 301, 307-9; see also for righteous, 139-48, 151; see also
messianic movements providence
messianic movements, 290-311 Mishneh Torah (Maimonides’ Code), 12, 47-
Christian accounts of, 294-6, 306, 49, 55-56, 59, 61, 71, 82-83, 83n97, 120,
306n19, 308-9, 326 124n14, 191-2, 195, 198-9, 200-1, 279-
in Ashkenaz, 279, 294-301, 304-11, 80, 283, 285n14, 347; see also “The Book
305n16 of Knowledge”; Maimonides
Maimonides and, 278-88, 280n4, 287n20 Modern Orthodoxy, 6, 16, 18, 193, 200,
in Sepharad, 279, 293, 297, 304, 307, 328, 330, 332, 338
309, 309n23, 311; see also Lubavitch Molkho, Solomon, 295, 304-6
hasidim; Sabbatianism monarchy, 232-3, 232nn47-48
messianism, xi, 19, 198-9, 204, 253-77 monotheism, 43, 108n130, 195, 206,
Bible, 253, 229n39
elite vs. masses, 293, 296, 301, 307-11 Montefiore, Moses, 168
exegesis, 25 Moreh Nevukhim, see Guide of the Perplexed
persecution, 292, 308n22 Mormonism, 336
rationalism, 278-88, 289-300, 311 Moses, 219-20, 220n11, 227, 230, 230n42,
Sephardic vs. Ashkenazic, 275n82, 239n11, 254, 261n27, 272n70, 322, 328
290-311; see also apocalyptic; End of Moses b. Solomon of Salerno, 99
Days; Maimonides, and messianism; Moses de Leon, 82
philosophy, messianic function of; Moses of Coucy, 155n4
redemption Moses Narboni, 100
metaphysics, 40-41, 44, 47, 47n39, 49, 51, Mühlhausen, Yom Tov Lipmann, 95
54, 70, 82, 82n95, 86, 88-89, 100-101, Musar movement, 245n22
108, 118, 218-20, 218n5, 235 music, 39, 40
metempsychosis, 75, 79n89, 95, 135n19; mutakallimun, 137, 141
see also kabbalah Mu‘tazilites, 34
Milhamot Hashem, 239-40, 240n14 Myers, David, 7, 203
Minhat Qenaot, see Abba Mari of Lunel mysticism, 53-54, 54n47, 80, 133, 143-4;
Mikhtav me-Eliyyahu, 16 see also kabbalah
Midrash, 159, 161, 165, 177, 217, 246- mythology, 188
7n25, 254, 255-8, 260n27, 262n34, 263,
264n41, 273, 273n74, 274nn76-77, 280; N
see also aggadah Nahmanides, ix, xiin2, 16, 33, 33-34n15
miracles, on aggadah, 67
hidden, 129, 135-50, 138n31, 148n52, on Aristotle, 67, 71-72n76, 118, 132, 134
150nn62-63, 185 on astrology, 87n101, 145-6, 145n43, 150
in the course of redemption, 254, 256, as biblical commentator, 68, 79-80, 118,
260, 278n1, 286 133, 135n19, 146-8, 147n48, 148nn52-
for Jewish collective, 138, 140-1, 144-5, 53, 150, 150n62
145n43, 148, 151 characterization of, 137
Maimonides and, 57-58, 71-72n76, 135, on creation ex nihilo, 129-134, 134-5n19
142-3, 146n45, 150, 195 disputation of, 67, 118
Malbim and, 185, 187 on divine providence, 136-151
Nahmanides and, 71-72n76, 129-151 on incorporeality of God, 62, 119n3
rationalist philosophy and, 75-76, 86, and kabbalah, 67-68, 80, 118, 133-4,
166, 220-2 135n19, 137, 143-4, 150
— 361 —
Index
letter to rabbis of Northern France, 119- Onkelos, 62

128, 120n5, 121-2n8, 124n14, 126n17, Orthodox Judaism,
128n21 and Lubavitch messianism, 326-39
and Maimonidean controversy, 17, 55, definition of, 330-1
67-70, 69-70n72, 73, 118-28 Traditionalist, x, 12, 16, 193, 200, 328,
and Maimonides, 118-20, 119n3, 124n14, 330, 332
127, 130-1, 135n20, 142-144, 144n31, and academic Jewish studies, 11-20
146-7, 150 Modern, 6, 16, 18, 193, 200, 328, 330,
on medicine, 140 332, 338
and messianism, 265n44, 291, 298 orthopraxy, 330
om miracles, 71, 71-72n76, 129-151, Ottoman Empire, Jews under, 87n102, 88-
185, 187 89, 99
on natural law, 136-151, 145n43 Ovadiah of Bertinoro, 102
as occasionalist, 137, 140-1, 148
and other learning, 17, 44 P
on patriarchs, 236, 245n22 Padua, medical school of, 96, 97n115, 108
and philosophy, 68-69, 79, 118-19, paganism, 25, 71
119n3, 125-7, 127n20, 133, 150-1 Palestine, Jews of, 290, 297
on reward and punishment, 136, 138n31, pardes (secrets of the Torah), 47, 54, 54n47,
143-4, 149-50 178-9
and theodicy, 68, 118, 133 Parnes, Yehudah, 12, 193
names, divine, 148n53 The Passion, 19
Narboni, Moses, 81 Patai, Raphael, 261n27
Nathan of Gaza, 284 Paton, L.B., 242n17
nationalism, 7, 183, 203, 205-8, 312-25; see patriarchs, 236-250
also Zionism Paul, 114
Natronai Gaon, 35 Perahiah b. Meshullam, 88
naturalism, 24n2, 46, 139-40, 142-4, 146- Perani, Mauro, 120n5, 124, 126, 126n18
50, 153, 187, 220-21, 235, 278n1 Peretz, Y.L., 345
natural law, 136-9, 137n29, 140-51, 150n63; Perles, Joseph, 119n4, 120, 121n8, 124n14,
see also miracles 135n19
Nero, 268 Perlow, Yaakov (Novominsker Rebbe), 13-14
Nestor ha-Komer, 155, 157 Persia, Jews of, 290, 293-4, 298, 300
Neusner, Jacob, 253n2, 262n36 Persky, Daniel, 344
New Testament, 19, 59, 59n54, 114 peshat, 91-93, 159-62, 175-6
Nieto, David, 110, 110n134 Peurbach, Georg, 98
Nistarot de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, 271 Pharaoh’s daughter, 215, 223-7, 227n32; see
Nizzahon Vetus, see Sefer Nizzahon Yashan also Solomon, sins of
Nöldeke, Theodore, 270 Pharisees, 321-3
numerical equivalence, see gematria Philo, 10, 322-3
philosophy,
O in Ashkenaz, 90-98, 109n131, 113-14,
objectivity, 204, 206-8, 211 152-3, 156-66
occasionalism, 137, 140-1, 146, 148; see also ban on study, 30, 60, 69, 70n72, 73-74,
miracles; providence 78, 125-7
Odo of Chateauroux, 77n85 centrality of, 61
Odo of Tournai, 159, 163 under Christianity, 22, 26, 28, 43, 52, 90,
Official, Joseph, 237-8, 237n5 153
— 362 —
Index
and commandments, 55-56, 72-74, 73n79 Pinsker, Leon, 314

denial of miracles in, 57-58, 63, 75-76, Plato, 131-2, 131n10, 218, 322
86, 166, 220-2 poetry, 22, 25, 27, 36, 38-40, 42, 111, 188;
Geonim and, 23-36, 75, 125-6, 158 see also Hebrew; Arabic
as Greek wisdom, 60 Poland, Jews of, 96-99, 98n116, 112, 241
impact on study of Talmud, 83 polemics, Jewish,
to impress Gentiles, 60 and aggadah, 66
and incorporeality of God, 61-65 in Ashkenaz, 91, 94, 152, 155-8, 237-9,
and interpretation of traditional texts, 303
50n42, 51-51, 55-58, 62, 72-3, 77n85, authors of, 156-8
79, 81, 83-84, 91n107, 107-7, 117, audience for, 156-158
166, 190 modern, 17-19
under Islam, 22-35, 29n8, 29n10, 40-51, philosophical, 76, 76n84, 99, 155-7,
58 163-4, 303
in Italy, 100-102 in Provence, 164
and kabbalah, 54, 133 purpose of, 94, 157, 238
and logical study, 84 in Spain, 164, 303; see also polemics,
Malbim and, 184-5 Christian; Sefer Nizzahon Yashan; Sefer
messianic function of, 46 Yosef ha-Meqanne
modern vs. medieval, 113, 185 polemics, Christian,
non-Jewish, 37, 101, 106-7, 166, 218n5 and commandments, 72
in polemics, 76, 76n84, 99, 155-7, 163-4, criticism of patriarchs in, 237-9
303 use of rational argument in, 158-9, 163
as producing heresy, 55-58, 60-61, 84-85, political theory, 231-5
89, 113, 134 Pompey, 320
in Provence, 53-56, 70-80, 83, 86-87, 90 Portaleone, Abraham, 103n122
as religious value, 46-49, 47n39, 50n42, prayer, 72, 80, 195
51, 58-59, 74, 78-79, 108, 111, 113 Preschel, Tovia, 349n10
as response to heresy, 58-59, 61-64, 113 primeval matter, 51, 71n76, 72, 80, 130-2,
in Spain, 36-50, 51-89, 152, 165-6, 290- 130n4, 134; see also creation ex nihilo
304, 307-8, 311 propaedeutic studies, 40-41, 41n29, 49, 91,
taken from the Jews, 44, 60, 218n5 91n107, 165, 217, 217n13, 223
vs. Torah study, 23, 57, 81-82, 82n95, 165; prophecy, 42, 43n32, 47, 75, 145, 180-1,
see also allegory; Aristotle and Aris- 186, 197, 219-23, 220n11, 222, 227n32,
totelianism; Ashkenazim, and rationalist 228
philosophy; Bahya ibn Paqudah; Provence, 49, 53, 55, 70, 83
Bible, philosophical interpretation of; biblical exegesis of, 218
Hai Gaon; Halevi, Judah; hokhmah; culture of, 53n46, 118, 164
Maimonidean controversy; Maimonides; interaction between Sephardim and
Nahmanides; Plato; rationalism; Saadya Ashkenazim, 52-53, 55, 164
Gaon; skepticism and kabbalah, 53-54, 133
Phineas, 328 philosophical study in, 53-56, 70-80, 83,
physics, 40-41, 47, 49, 54, 82, 86, 218n5 86-87, 133, 218
Piaget, Jean, 154, 302 polemics in, 164
pietists, 93-94 self-confidence of, 164; see also
Pines, Shlomo, 195 Maimonidean controversy
Pinhas ha-Dayyan, 48 Proventzalo, David, 102
Pinsker, Avraham, 275n82, 295-6, 309 Proverbs, 158-62, 165, 218
— 363 —
Index
providence (hashgahah), 47, 51, 72, 80, 83, in popular legend, 80n92, 192, 346
113, 129, 135-45, 138n31, 141n37, 148, scientific knowledge of, 92n107
151, 230 on Solomon’s wisdom, 216-7, 217n1,
for Jewish collective, 138, 140-1, 144-5, 223n22, 224-28, 224n24, 227nn32, 231
145n43, 148, 151; see also Maimonides, stature of 191-2
on providence; miracles; Nahmanides, ratio, 158-64
on providence; occasionalism rationalism, xi, 24, 24n2, 44-45, 51, 51n44,
Psalms, 178-80 55-60, 64, 69n72, 76, 86, 95, 99-100, 103,
pseudo-Methodius, 270 112, 115, 148n53, 152-3, 161, 166
hyper, 70, 72-74, 73n79, 80-81, 85, 117
Q and messianism, 278-88, 289-300, 311
Qairuwan, 31, 35 moderate, 78-80, 85, 96; see also
Queen of Sheba, 216, 218, 221-2, 221n16; Maimonidean controversy; philosophy
see also Solomon, wisdom of Ravitzky, Aviezer, 20, 73n79, 232n48,
Quintilian, 101 280n5
Quran, 26, 38; see also Islam Rebecca, 245
redemption, 182-3, 198, 253-77, 326, 328,
R 337
Rabad, 53, 63 calculations of, 257, 261-7, 275-7, 279-
rabbinic authority, 11, 13 80, 290-1, 293, 298, 300, 307-8, 311
Rabbinical Council of America, 327 hastening, 257-9, 278, 280n4
Rabin, Sheila, 310 natural process of, 278, 285-7; see also
Rachel, 248n28, 249n30 apocalyptic; Messiah; messianism
Radak, see Kimhi, David Reformation, 112
Radding, Charles, 154, 302-3 Reform Judaism, 9-10, 9-10n7
Ralbag (R. Levi b. Gerson), see Gersonides reform, religious, 168, 173-6
Rambam (R. Moses b. Maimon), see refuseniks, 201
Maimonides Rehoboam, 231-3
Ramban (R. Moses b. Nahman), see Renaissance, 108-109
Nahmanides Italian, 99-105, 102n121
Rand, E.K., 24n1 Northern European, 96
Ranke, Leopold, 206 twelfth century, 92
Rashba (R. Solomon ibn Adret), 70, 72-75, repentance, 173-4, 183, 201
79, 79n90, 81, 145n43, 172n24 resurrection, 55, 65
Rashbam (R. Solomon b. Meir), 93, 158, Reuveni, David, 306
160, 237 revelation, 42-45, 51, 51n44, 68, 71, 72n76,
Rashi (R. Solomon Yitzhaki), 73, 84, 108n130, 118, 132-4, 173, 194
and dangers of Christianity, 159, 163 reward and punishment, 51, 72, 80, 136,
and defense of biblical heroes, 239n11, 138n31, 143-4, 149-50, 150n63
247n25 Ribalow, Menachem, 344
familiarity with works of Sephardim, 158, Ritba (R. Yom Tov Ishbili), 79-80, 147-8,
163 148n52
on hokhmah, 158-65, 163n17 ritual murder accusations, 8
messianic calculations of, 264n41, 286-7, Rome, x, 23, 264-5n43, 265, 268-73,
291, 298 273n74, 324
messianic views of, 199 Romulus, 270-4, 270n61, 273n74, 274n78
and midrashic tradition, 65-66, 161-2, Rosenberg, Shalom, 76n84
217 Rosenthal, Judah, 237
— 364 —
Index
Rosh, see Asher b. Yehiel secular education, 193-4

Roth, Norman, 51n44 secular Jews, 3-4, 9, 191, 210
Ruderman, David, 102n121, 103n122, Seder Olam, 224-5, 224n24
108n130, 109n131, 109n133, 116 Seeskin, Kenneth, 196
Rumania, Jews of, 168-72, 174 Sefer Hasidim, 296, 307n20
Russia, Jews of, 172 Sefer ha-Madda, see “Book of Knowledge”
Sefer ha-Maskil, 66, 90-91
S Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (Nizzahon Vetus), 17,
Saadya Gaon, 4, 27-30, 35n17, 44, 51, 63, 157, 163, 239-40, 239n11
90, 91n107, 153, 155, 155n4, 187, 130, Sefer Otot ha-Mashiah, 282
130n4, 132, 132n14, 133n15 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, 237-8, 237n5
Sabbateanism, 19, 277n85, 115n141, 282-3, Sefer Zerubbavel, 268-72, 282, 291
287n20 Sefer Zizat Novel Zevi, 282
Sachs, S., 171, 171-2n20 Seforno, Ovadiah, 100
Said, Edward, 5, 207 Seltzer, Robert, 9, 9-10n7
Saladin, 308, 308n22 Seleucid Empire, 318
Samaritans, 319 semikhah, 285-6
Sambari, Yosef, 294-5, 305-6 Sephardim,
Samuel b. Hofni, 32, 34-35, 34n16, 64 apostasy of, 294-5, 299, 305n16, 307
Samuel ha-Nagid, 40, 125 vs. Ashkenazim, 25-26, 90-91, 94, 112,
Samuel of Carcassonne, 73n79 152-3, 156-7, 218, 275n82, 279, 290-311
Sanhedrin, 285-6 biblical exegesis of, 219-21, 224-7, 229-
Saperstein, Marc, 77n85, 298n7 31, 223n22
Saporta, Samuel, 62 connection to Babylonian tradition, 290,
Sarachek, Joseph, 70n74, 124n14 298, 307
Saragossa, 58-59 historiography of, 294-301, 304-5
Sarah, 236 influence on Ashkenazim, 152, 154-5,
Sasportas, Jacob, 282-4, 293, 301 158, 160, 164, 301
Satmar Rav, 199 influence on finance, 110
Schach, Elazar Menahem Man, 331-2 interaction with Ashkenazim, 52-53,
Schacter, Jacob J., 15-16, 16n18, 114n140, 52n45, 55, 294, 301-4
116 in Late Middle Ages, 90-91, 94, 111-2,
Schechter, Solomon, 136 152;
Schneerson, Menachem Mendel, see and martyrdom, 292-3, 298-9
Lubavitcher Rebbe messianism of, 152, 275n82, 279, 290-
Schochet, Azriel, 56n48, 63n63, 115n141, 304, 307, 311
117n1, 124n14, 128n21 and philosophical rationalism, 82-89,
Scholem, Gershom, 97n116, 134, 134n18, 152, 165-6, 290-304, 307-8, 311
135n19, 136-7, 136n21, 145n43, 204, and study of science, 36-51, 217-8
244, 244n19, 281n5, 282 view of Ashkenazim, 90;
Schwab, Simon, 14-15 see also Holland, Jews of; Islam, Jews
Schwartzschild, Steven, 43n32 under; Italy, Jews of; Spain, Jews of
Schweid, Eliezer, 20 Septimus, Bernard, 56n48, 60n58, 67n71,
sciences, study of, 22, 25, 40, 45, 51, 70, 78, 69n72, 72n76, 119nn3-4, 124n14, 144n39
82, 86-88, 86n100, 91, 91n107, 99, 108, Septuagint, 186
112, 165, 186, 218-9, 220n9, 223, 235 Sha‘ar ha-Gemul, 68; see also Nahmanides
108, 218; see also propaedeutic studies Shabbetai Zevi, 282-4; see also
Second Coming, 326, 333 Sabbatianism
— 365 —
Index
Shakespeare, William, 249-50n35 Sperber, Daniel, 16

Shapira, Anita, 116 Steinschneider, M., 52n45
Shapiro, Marc, 192n3 Steiner, Mark, 24n2
Shapiro, Noah, 91 Steiner, Richard, 162, 162n16
Shatz, David, 16, 249n30 Steinsaltz yeshiva, 201-2
Shatzmiller, Joseph, 60n58, 77n86 Strauss, David, 259
Shechemites, 237-8, 238n8 Strauss, Leo, 195
shedim, 83, 83n97 subjectivity, 206-8, 211
Shem Tov b. Joseph, 132 suffering, 145n43, 186
Shenat Ha-Yovel, see Malbim Sussman, Lance, 9, 9-10n7
Sherira Gaon, 36, 105 Sykes, David, 245n23, 249n31, 250
Shim‘i b. Gera, 222, 224
Shulhan Arukh, 176, 192, 208, 347; see also T
Caro, Joseph Taku, Moses (Ketav Tamim), 63-66, 87,
Silver, A.H., 261n28, 262n34, 263n39 87n101
Silver, Daniel J., 124n14 Talmud,
Simeon and Levi, 237-8, 238n8, 247-8 allegorical interpretation of, 52, 56, 65,
Simon, Uriel, 20 70, 72-74, 77n85, 81, 84, 91n107, 97,
sin, 138, 141, 149, 159, 173, 223-31, 117, 146, 150, 190
226n28, 227n32, 234 and anthropomorphism, 64-65
Singer, Charles, 52n45 authority of, 66
skepticism, 113-14, 184 composition of, 35-36
Sklare, David, 34n16 contradictions in, 60
Sklare, Marshall, 10-11 critical study of, 6, 201
Solomon, King, x, 44, 82, 101, 103, 165, and dangers of esotericism, 133-4
273n74 as “dark places,” 82, 82n95
dream of, 216, 221-4, 227, 235 historical statements of, 106
vs. Moses, 219-20, 220n11, 227, 230, Maimonides and, 48
230n42, 318, 320 messianism in, 255-67, 256-7n18,
sins of, 223-31, 226n28, 227n32, 234 261n28, 262n35, 263n39, 265n44,
wisdom of, 215-35 276, 279-84, 291
Solomon b. Abraham of Montpellier, 55-56, miracles in, 34
58, 65, 71, 117 as mystery of the Jewish People, 35
Solomon ibn Adret, see Rashba and non-Jews, 78, 194
Soloveitchik, Chaim (of Brisk), 201 philosophical considerations in study of,
Soloveitchik, Joseph B., 198, 201, 346 83-84
Soloveitchik, Haym, 16, 91n107, 94n111, and physics and metaphysics, 47, 82
155, 164 rationalist positions of, 30, 58-59, 86
Song of Songs, 179-80 science in, 187-8, 200
soul, 51, 61, 65, 75, 181, 185 and sins of biblical heroes, 239n11, 240,
Soviet Jewry, 201-2 240n13
Spain, Jews of, 14, 27, 36-42, 50-51, 55 see study of 31, 33, 35, 37, 40-41, 47-49, 57, 77,
also Islam, Jews under 77n85, 81-82, 89, 101-102, 114, 125-7,
Spain, Northern (Christian), 52, 55, 69, 197, 201; see also aggadah; Midrash;
76, 79-87, 90, 112, 117-18, 204; see also Talmudists; Torah study; Tosafists
Maimonidean controversy; Nahmanides; Talmudists, 37, 47-48, 50-51, 53, 57, 69,
philosophy, in Spain; polemics, in Spain 69n72, 78-79, 85, 89, 96, 102, 103, 191,
Spanish expulsion, 84 330
— 366 —
Index
Targum, 268 W
Ta-Shma, Israel, 16, 51n43, 87, 91n107 Wallace, George, 5
taxation, 232-3 Waxman, Meyer, 344
tefillin, 73, 73n79 well-poisoning, 296
Tel Hai, 7 Wieseltier, Leon, 20
Temple, 182, 198-200, 223, 226n28, wisdom literature, 158-65
227n32, 233, 265, 265n44 women,
destruction of, 253, 261-4, 263n38 and general culture, 21
Second, 312-4, 323 Maimonides on, 196-8
Third, 285-7, 287n20, 326, 328 in Midrash, 6
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 256 ordination of, 10, 198
theodicy, 68, 118, 133 suffrage of, 198
theosophy, 53 world to come, 61, 65, 192, 195-6
Theudas, 254 Wyschogrod, Michael, 18
thirteen principles of faith, 61, 192, 192n3;
see also Maimonides Y
Tirosh-Rothschild, Havah, 104 Yagel, Abraham, 108n130
Toder, Shimon, 261n27 Yavetz, Yosef, 77n85, 84, 102
Torah study, 47n39, 48-50, 64, 77, 89, 101, Yehiel of Paris, 66
114, 125-7 Yehiel Nissim of Pisa, 100
Torat Hashem Temimah, see Nahmanides Yemen, Jews of, 87-88, 88n103
Tosafists, 60n58, 63, 67, 81, 91n107, 93, Yeruham b. Meshullam, 83
94n110, 100-101, 118, 158, 198, 263 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, 7, 10, 106-7,
Tosafot, see Tosafists 107n129
Touati, Charles, 66n67, 71n75, 322 Yeshiva University, xi, 11-12, 101, 116, 193,
trade, study of, 48-49 343
Transjordan, 319 Yiddish, 345
Treatise on the Resurrection, 132n14, 135n19; Yiddish theater, 6
see also Maimonides yishuv, 203, 208, 312-4, 313n2
tribes of Israel, 72, 74 Yitzchak Isaac of Slonim, 167
trinity, 157 Yosef b. Todros Halevi, 41, 56, 58-59, 58n52,
Twersky, Isadore, 47n39, 53n46, 60n57, 41
73n79, 82n95, 83n97, 86n100, 92n109, Yuval, Israel, 8, 207, 292, 299-300, 308-9,
98n116, 114, 191, 196 308n21
typology, 254-77, 254n10, 260-1n27,
265n44, 274-5n79, 277n85, 291
Z
U Zealots, 323-4
ultra-Orthodox, x Zerahiah Halevi of Lunel, 53, 83
universalism, 183 Zionism, xi, 7-8, 182-3, 203-9, 259n24,
Urbach, 263n39, 265n44 312-25, 314n5
usury, 237 and Haskalah, 317, 323
Uzziel, Ben Zion, 198 history of, 208
Religious, 198-9, 285-8, 287n20, 337
V Revisionist, 312, 318
Verus Israel, 159, 237, 308n22 Zohar, 283-4, 283-4n11
Vespasian, 323
Volz, P., 262
— 367 —

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CULTURES IN COLLISION

Berger, David, 1943-

Copyright © 2011 Academic Studies Press

Open Access publication is supported by:

ISBN 978-1-936235-24-7 (hardback)

Book design by Ivan Grave

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2011

The Cultural Environment: Challenge and Response

Judaism and General Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Times 21

How Did Nahmanides Propose to Resolve

Miracles and the Natural Order in Nahmanides. 129

Polemic, Exegesis, Philosophy, and Science:

Malbim’s Secular Knowledge and His Relationship to

The Uses of Maimonides by Twentieth-Century Jewry 190

The Institute for Jewish Studies on its Eightieth Anniversary 203

Interpreting the Bible

On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic and Exegesis 236

Yearning for Redemption

Some Ironic Consequences of Maimonides’

Sephardic and Ashkenazic Messianism in the Middle Ages:

Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: The Impact of Zionism on

The Fragility of Religious Doctrine: Accounting for

its environment, but the essay on Ashkenazic modes of thought cautions

analyzed in this section are almost bewildering in their thematic and

1 “Missing Milton Himmelfarb,” Commentary 123:4 (April, 2007): 54-58; “Introducing

of my recent work without, I hope, undue violation of the bounds of

From: Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. by Howard Kreisel

Academic Jewish Studies are a pivotal anchor of Jewish identity. It hardly

and had no choice but to deﬁne themselves through extraordinarily

who often remain, in an academic environment. Thus, academic experts

recognized by both parties; it is other values that determine how that

In his seminal Zakhor, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi concluded with a

role of the academic enterprise in the evolution of Zionist ideology is

6 See Y. Yuval, “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-‘Alilah,” Zion 58 (1992): 33-90.

me little if at all. Learning about them was an unfortunate price that

7 “Just as our predecessors reconsidered their Judaism as a result of political

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s poignant assertion that history, as distinct

movement has an Orthodox seminary, a Conservative rabbinate, and a

Admittedly, [Mendelssohn] was an observant Jew, but culturally he was a

Mendelssohn observed all the commandments in practice and…was

broader … In this cultural conception, “the Torah” could be assigned only

11 Y. Kaufmann, Golah ve-Nekhar (Tel Aviv, 1928), vol. 2, pp. 28-29.

rabbinic leader of the German community in New York, published an

15 Rabbi Simon Schwab, Collected Writings (Lakewood, 1988), p. 234.

to discover in them everything that they have inserted into them.17 In

me into an advocate of the Modern Orthodox position favoring a broad

JUDAISM AND GENERAL CULTURE

From: Gerald J. Blidstein, David Berger, Sid Z. Leiman, and Aharon

The attempt to provide an analytical overview of Jewish attitudes toward the

the understanding of Judaism itself. Such disciplines usually included

THE DYNAMICS OF A DILEMMA

THE ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST AND THE GEONIM

1 Despite—or precisely because of—its excessively enthusiastic description of patristic

These central considerations were reinforced by a linguistic factor. In

valued cultural sophistication, and a Jew who wanted access to the

The ﬂexible character of the educational system was not conﬁned

Annual 34 (1963): 177-194.

The conviction that philosophical certainty is attainable and that

this argument and reﬂects the views of the Muslim mutakallimun

A famous report informs us that R. Hai sent a student to consult the