The En Yaaqov: Jacob ibn Habib’s Search for Faith in the Talmudic Corpus

Introduction

Introduction 1 For Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the medieval world, religion and faith were wedded intimately. The nature of this relationship was defined and redefined by an array of thinkers, each searching for religious meaning. A combined sense of fidelity to the past and of sensitivity to the intellectual, social, and political contexts in which they found themselves resulted in the creation of different expressions of religious spirituality. One such gesture, quite unique for its time, is the En Yaaqov, the Talmud-based work of the late-medieval Spanish rabbi Jacob ibn H . abib (d. 1516). Approximately a decade after resettling in the Ottoman city of Salonika following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, ibn H . abib devoted himself to removing the majority of the Talmud’s legal portions from the Talmudic corpus. His intention was to produce a new “Talmud-like” collection containing only aggadic passages (that is, nonlegal material). The resultant text, the En Yaaqov, resembled the Talmud in the sense that ibn H . abib preserved the order of the aggadic material as it was within the Talmud’s original chapters and tractates. His introduction and running commentary to the aggadic passages show that his devotion to the En Yaaqov project was rooted in his desire to portray the Talmud as more than Judaism’s foundational legal tract. His goal was to characterize the Talmud as a theological document, its aggadah having the power to mold and sustain a believing Jewish community . Ibn H . abib’s dramatic editorial and creative efforts emerged in reaction to the traumatic events of Jewish expulsion and forced conversion as well as 01 Text.indd 1 10/19/11 10:13 AM 2 I n T rO d u C T I O n to the diminishing status of Talmudic aggadah, the Jewish preoccupation with the study of legal codes, the prominence of Maimonidean intellectualism and Kabbalistic esotericism. during the medieval period Jewish legists , philosophers, and mystics objected to what they viewed as an exclusive Talmudism or a “Talmudo-centric” spiritual orbit1 and proposed alternative approaches to religious reflection that were not focused on the Talmud alone. Ibn H . abib produced the En Yaaqov in reaction to medieval thinkers who were challenging the Talmud’s status as Judaism’s sole normative text. In fact, the En Yaaqov emerged in part out of this longstanding debate over the Talmud’s canonical status within the curriculum of Jewish learning. Its publication offered a unique alternative text through which to answer the questions that had been reverberating throughout the Jewish community for centuries: What is rabbinic Judaism, and what are the texts that define it? To be sure, the Talmud’s very nature—that is, its complicated dialectical style and its interweaving of legal and nonlegal material—came into conflict with a desire to foster a practice-based Judaism whereby Jews could readily gain access to a set of legal decisions. To observe the commandments properly, the Jewish community needed a more straightforward guide. As a result, the production of legal codes began. However, an increased focus on their study within the curriculum led to a decline in the study of the Talmud, reshaping the curriculum into one that did not necessarily require avid Talmud study and Judaism into a religion represented by another set of canonical texts,2 such as Hilkhot Harif, the eleventh-century legal code of Isaac Alfasi (rif); Mishne Torah, Maimonides’ twelfth-century legal work; Pisqe Harosh, Asher ben Yeh .iel’s late thirteenth/early fourteenth-century summary of earlier legal decisions; and Tur, Jacob ben Asher’s fourteenthcentury code.3 While Maimonides never doubted the Talmud’s significance as a work of Jewish law, he did not envision the Talmud as the central text of Jewish theology. He argued that it was a spiritual error to view the Talmud as the only text worthy of study.4 His remedy regarding the “limitations” of the Talmud involved far more than the production of a new legal code.5 He also produced a system of thought rooted in Aristotelian philosophy, which he laid out in his philosophic treatise the Guide for the Perplexed. In the Guide, Maimonides charts the path toward an intellectual form of spiritual perfection . In such a system the external disciplines of physics and metaphysics became the preferred means for achieving an understanding of God, and Aristotelian philosophy, rather than Talmudic discourse, was considered the highest expression of the human spirit.6 That Maimonides did not...