The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz: Expanding Horizons and Innovating Traditions

Preface

Preface While talmudic studies certainly constituted the primary area of schol- arly endeavor in Ashkenaz during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the goal of this book is to put forward disciplinary and interdisciplinary treat- ments and methodologies that will lead, for the first time, to an assessment of the intellectual proclivities of Ashkenazic rabbinic culture as a whole. Sefardic (and Provençal) rabbinic culture during this period tended on the whole to be more compartmentalized. A small number of the greatest medieval Sefardic talmudists and halakhists—figures such as Maimonides, R. Meir ha-Levi Abulafia (Ramah), Nahmanides, and R. Solomon ibn Adret (Rashba)—also pursued extra-talmudic disciplines such as philosophy, kab- balah , and biblical exegesis. At the same time, however, many of the leading specialists in these other disciplines were not necessarily important talmud- ists or halakhists. The names of Judah ha-Levi, Abraham bar Hiyya, Abra- ham ibn Ezra,and Abraham Abulafia,as well as the Provençal scholars Isaac the Blind (son of Rabad of Posquieres) and Yedayah ha-Penini of Beziers, come readily to mind in this regard.1 This study will demonstrate that despite the lesser degree of cultural interaction between Jews and Christians in northwestern Europe, as com- pared to Jews who (originally) lived in Islamic lands and their Muslim counterparts, the disciplinary interests of Ashkenazic rabbinic figures were much broader than talmudic studies alone.A significant difference between 1 See, e.g., Nahum Arieli, “Tefisat ha-Halakhah ezel R. Yehudah ha-Levi,” Daat 1 (1978), 43–52 (and cf. Israel Ta-Shma, R. Zerahyah ha-Levi Baal ha-Maor u-Bnei Hugo [Jerusalem, 1992], 142–43); Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity (Cambridge, 2008); Shlomo Sela,“Abraham bar Hiyya’s Astrological Work and Thought,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006), 128–58; Jonathan Dauber,“‘Pure Thought’in R. Abraham bar Hiyya and Early Kab- balah ,” Journal of Jewish Studies 60 (2009), 185–201; R. Abraham Ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writ- ings of a Twelfth-Century Polymath, ed. I. Twersky and J. Harris (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Yesod Mora ve-Sod ha-Torah, ed. Y. Cohen and U. Simon (Ramat Gan, 2007); Moshe Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia (Albany, N.Y., 1989); Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia: Kabbalist and Prophet (Los Angeles, 2000); Haviva Pedaya, Ha-Shem veha-Miqdash beMishnat R. Yizhaq Sagi Nahor (Jerusalem, 2001); Daniel Abrams, R. Asher b. David: Kol Ketavav ve-Iyyunim be-Qabbalato (Los Angeles, 1996); I. Twersky,“Yedaayah ha-Penini’s Commentary on the Aggadah,”[Hebrew] in Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History Presented to Alex- ander Altmann, ed. S. Stein and R. Loewe (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1979), 63–82; and Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 201–10. viii Preface these two orbits, however, is that those Ashkenazic scholars who pursued a range of intellectual and spiritual disciplines most often began this pursuit with very strong credentials in the study of Talmud and halakhah, upon which the other disciplines were then built, as a means of promulgating a larger and more variegated conception of the“multiple truths of the Torah.” In tracing the scope of Ashkenazic cultural achievements, we will also get a better sense of the levels and layers of scholarship in medieval Ashkenaz. Leopold Zunz, for example, whose published volumes list and briefly de- scribe virtually all the biblical commentaries and liturgical poetry produced in medieval Ashkenaz (that were available in his day, in both published and manuscript form), made almost no effort to separate these strands and strata, even as he strove to identify the various individual authors.2 A description of the contents of this book is in order. The introduction points to several factors that have contributed to the relatively narrow per- ceptions of Ashkenazic rabbinic culture.It sets the stage for what follows by arguing that the Tosafists and Ashkenazic rabbinic scholarship more gen- erally advocated a wide definition of the truths that could be discovered through Torah study. In addition to subjecting the text of the Talmud to a range of questions and inquiries, different kinds of textual and conceptual methods could be deployed across a wide range of Jewish texts and disci- plines , as appropriate means of arriving at truthful and meaningful inter- pretations .Indeed,different methods could be undertaken at the same time and even by the same rabbinic scholar without concern for how or whether the results...