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4 From Talmudic Text to Theology The Search for God, the Search for Home 117 In describing the survival of Judaism through the ages, George Steiner wrote, “The text is home; each commentary a return [to it].”1 Steiner’s words illustrate ibn H . abib’s encounter with Talmudic aggadah. His journey “home” to the texts of the Talmud was motivated by a host of historical and intellectual biographical factors. As a witness to the end of Spanish Jewry on Iberian soil after decades of religious, political, social, and economic turmoil , and as a result of his experience living within an intellectual culture that did not always hold the Talmudic canon as its central text, ibn H . abib returned to the only home he knew. In his desire to contribute to Jewish continuity and to reshape Jewish identity after the expulsion from Spain, ibn H . abib adopted a textual strategy that allowed him to focus on classic categories of rabbinic theology, including messianism and the World to Come, exile and the Land of Israel, theodicy, the effectiveness of prayer, and the nature of God. In so doing, he produced a practical religious message for his troubled generation and created a new path of study. As ibn H . abib pointed out in his introduction to the En Yaaqov, he intended to unearth the messages of faith rooted in the texts of the Talmud. using the Talmudic commentary as his medium, ibn H . abib responded to the pressing theological questions of his day without aligning himself with any one preexisting system of thought. Quoting freely from thirteenth - and fifteenth-century philosophic, halakhic, and Kabbalistic thinkers , he responded to the same aggadic texts and questions that had provoked controversy among them. Where was the God who had affirmed His loyalty 01 Text.indd 117 10/19/11 10:13 AM 118 C H A P T E r 4 to Israel?2 If not in Salamanca or Lisbon, where would the Jewish community find God? On what basis would they form a relationship with Him? In a struggle to create a Jewish self in the absence of a safe physical home, ibn H . abib embraced the dialectic between core text and interpretation.3 To ibn H . abib, identity was rooted in this indigenous dialogue far more than in the disciplines of philosophy or Kabbalah. As John Hirsh argued in his book on medieval spirituality, “The religious person never reaches forward so confidently as when he or she reaches back.”4 By returning to the ancient aggadic texts of the Talmud, ibn H . abib espoused a unique theological viewpoint intended to spiritualize existential circumstance and to supersede the intellectual approaches used by his predecessors to understand God and their relationship to Him. To read ibn H . abib’s commentary is to discover a rabbi who, through the texts of the Talmud, was intent on shaping self-reliant, believing Jews out of the self-doubting and religiously insecure refugees who found themselves in the Ottoman empire. For this reason, ibn H . abib molded references to daily prayers found in the texts of the Talmud, such as the recitation of Psalm 145 (Ashre [b. Ber. 4b]), into sources of consolation. The mere absence of one Hebrew letter (nun) in the psalm’s alphabetic acrostic, as noted in the aggadic passage, became an opportunity for ibn H . abib to remind his readership that the psalmist did not want to call attention to the concept of defeat (nefilah). rather, the psalmist intended for worshipers to understand that there would be a time when the people of Israel would rise up again. Stressing that the prior verse (Ps. 145:13) began with the Hebrew word malkhut (kingship), ibn H . abib noted that those who uttered the Ashre prayer were to recognize the eternal kingship of God. They were to know that “many days after the death of [King] david, Judah and Israel were exiled from their land.” But they were not to make the “mistake and think that during this time of defeat there would be a lapse [of any kind] in the dominion of God”; as ibn H . abib writes, “God save us from thinking this way.” rather, they were to understand that God “supports all who stumble” (Ps. 145:14). In these words, one can hear ibn H . abib’s desire to find comfort and to offer his community a sense of hope that God had not abandoned them during their years as Spanish exiles living in...

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