Changing the Halakha

Judaism, Fall, 2001 by Irvin Brandwein

(9.) R. M. Isserles, Responsa, # 124, Cracow, 1640.

(10.) This very point was made in a lecture by the late Dr. Gerson D. Cohen, my teacher and Chancellor in 1979. Also, Professor Raymond P. Scheindlin wrote: "The wine party was a time-honored tradition in tenth-century Moslem Spain, and an entire genre of wine poetry grew around its rituals." Wine, Women, and Death (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), pp. 55-59.

(11.) In his essay, "Open Rebuke and Concealed Love: Nachmanides and the Andalusian Tradition," Bernard Septimus writes: "For a very long time there as been an almost irresistible urge to juxtapose Nachmanides to Maimonides" (p. 11). "Nachmanides was born in a thoroughly Christianized environment and was saturated from earliest youth in northern Jewish scholarship. His career so strikingly represents the new directions taken by Jewish culture in Christian Spain that it is easy to overlook the lines of continuity" (p. 12). Septimus quotes Y. Baer's history of the Jews in Christian Spain to say that Nachmanides' "avowed aim was to silence the mouths of the men of little faith and meager wisdom and to refute the opinions of A. Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, on whom the rationalists lean for support" (p. 12). Further Septimus says about Nachmanides: "Those who view Nachmanides as an unmitigated opponent of Andalusian rationalism are led to the conclusion that in principle, he must have agreed with the anti-Maimunists-t hat his only real difference with them was tactical" (p. 14). Isadore Twersky, ed., Rabbi Moses Nahmanides: Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

(12.) See Keter Hatorah, edited by R Joseph Hasid (Jerusalem 1970/5730), vol. # 3 122b and his comments to Genesis 4:22 and Exodus 20:3 in the Chavel edition, Pirush Hatorah-Nachmanides, edited by C. D. Chavel (Jerusalem, 1962), Exodus 20:3, vol. 1, pp. 392-393, Genesis 4:22, vol. 1, p. 46, Deuteronomy 18:9, vol.2, pp. 427-428, vol. 1, p.6, Kitve haRamban, edited by C. D. Chavel (Jerusalem, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 146-147, 153-154, 162-168, Responsa, Rashba, edited by H. Z. Dimitrovsky, vol. 1, pp. 274-5, 282-3, 305-7, #167 pp. 400-403, Responsa, Rosh, 21:8-21:9, 55:9, for an exhaustive analysis of these sources see J. Faur's In the Shadow of History (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992), pp. 10-27.

(13.) Responsa, Rashba, Bologna 5285, vol. # 1 Resp. # 423, 86d, Biur al Hatorah, R. Bahye bar Asher, edited by C. D. Chavel (Jerusalem, 1977), vol. #2 p. 549.

(14.) In a bold and jarring comment addressed to his contemporaries, Maimonides condemned the rabbinic authorities who "caused people to think, in utter foolishness, that it is obligatory and proper that they should help sages and scholars and people studying Torah ... all this is wrong. There is not a single word, either in the Torah or in the sayings of the talmudic sages, to lend credence to it ... for as we look into the sayings of the talmudic sages, we do not find that they ask people for money nor did they collect money for the honorable and cherished academies." Maimonides, Commentary to the Mishna, Avoth, 4:5, and as quoted verbatim in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 11, p. 746.