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One-The Maimonidean Controversy: In Defense of Reasonable Faith
- University of Notre Dame Press
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19 Chapter one The Maimonidean Controversy In Defense of Reasonable Faith In 1230 Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier, a renowned teacher and talmudic scholar, sent a series of circular letters lobbying the rabbis and leaders of Jewish Provence officially to forbid the study of Maimonides’ writings in their communities. Already by the beginning of the thirteenth century, Maimonides’ innovative methods had attracted a large following in Spain and North Africa. By 1225 Hebrew translations of Maimonides’ philosophical works, originally written in JudeoArabic , began circulating north of the Pyrenees. Critics like Solomon ben Abraham viewed Maimonides’ philosophical interpretation and pedagogy as a threat to the cohesion of Jewish teaching and study. The efforts of Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham and his disciples to mark certain methods of interpretation as dangerous set in motion a dispute involving leaders throughout the Jewish world and solidified the unique cultures of study and leadership that developed in each diaspora community. The question that quickly came to the fore in this dispute was whether Maimonides’ synthesis of rabbinic teachings, shaped as it was by an Aristotelian hierarchy of categories and genre, offered a legitimate method of interpreting Jewish ritual and texts. Maimonides’ systematic use of philosophical methods to read and interpret Jewish tradition had a profound influence on the way Jews understood and practiced their traditions. His 5 20 Nahmanides in Medieval Catalonia Mishneh Torah represents the first attempt to present the fundamental elements of Jewish faith and practice in a systematic digest organized thematically according to Aristotelian principles of argument, evidence, and proof based on observation and philosophical assumptions. The hallmark of this approach, and the very characteristic of Maimonides’ philosophical writing that troubled the scholars of Montpellier, was a sustained effort to seek explanations for Jewish practice outside the accepted rabbinic and biblical canon. As many of his critics noted, this methodical presentation limited the necessity of mastering traditional rabbinical methods of argument in which dissenting opinions appear in the flow of talmudic text. It was feared that students would now master the philosophical method instead, then use that method as a key for extracting hidden or secondary meanings from the text. Also troubling for the opponents to philosophical exegesis was Maimonides’ success in accommodating the Bible to a philosophically logical or rational paradigm. This methodological innovation shifted pedagogical and interpretive priorities, favoring the assumption that philosophical questioning and argument could lead directly to the correct understanding of the Torah and the reasons behind its form and content. For example, Maimonides sought logical rationales for the laws of the Torah. Now if there is a thing for which no reason is known and that does not either procure something useful or ward off something harmful, why should one say of one who believes in it or practices it that he is wise and understanding and of great worth? And why should the religious communities think it a wonder? Rather things are indubitably as we have mentioned: every commandment from among these six hundred and thirteen commandments exists either with a view to communicating a correct opinion, or to putting an end to an unhealthy opinion, or to communicating a rule of justice, or to warding off an injustice, or to endowing men with a noble moral quality, or to warning them against an evil moral quality. Thus all [the commandments] are bound up with three things: opinions, moral qualities, and political civic actions. Traditional rabbinic readings of Torah and halakhah (rabbinic law), in contrast, accepted divine authorship as sufficient explanation for the purpose and meaning of such commandments, asserting that God’s purpose is by definition inaccessible to the imperfect human intellect. [52.205.159.48] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:35 GMT) The Maimonidean Controversy 21 Solomon ben Abraham’s campaign began in Montpellier, but soon expanded to involve rabbis and leaders throughout the Jewish diaspora. Some of the community leaders Solomon ben Abraham contacted in Provence failed to appreciate the threat he perceived in Maimonidean interpretation . Rather than ban those individuals in their communities who had accepted and continued to teach Maimonides’ methods, they instead called for a herem, an official ban, on Solomon ben Abraham and his students for impugning the great rabbi and his writings. The communities of Provence split immediately into two contentious factions, one favoring a prohibition of Maimonides’ philosophical works, the other defining Maimonides’ methods of interpretation as indispensable. Unsuccessful in their drive to attract a following for their cause locally, Solomon ben Abraham and his...