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The Renewed Outbreak






When the controversy flared up again at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th century, the immediate catalyst was the extreme allegorical exegesis of certain rationalists. However, it came to encompass the whole range of the content of Jewish education and the question of the possibility or impossibility of synthesis between " Greek wisdom" and the Torah of Moses. Abba Mari Astruc of Lunel turned to Solomon ben Abraham Adret for guidance on these allegorical interpretations, to his mind heretical ones (see the exchange of letters initiated by him in his Minchat Kena'ot (1838), this collection has been altered to a large extent by tendentious editing). After much hesitation, and spurred on by the influence of Asher ben Yechiel, Solomon ben Abraham Adret and the Barcelona community issued a Cherem on July 26, 1305, against " any member of the community who, being under the age of 25 years, shall study the works of the Greeks on natural science or metaphysics, whether in the original language or in translation."

Works by Jewish philosophers were excepted, as was the study of medicine. The ban was intended to prevent young men from being influenced by Greek philosophy to turn away " from the Torah of Israel which is above these sciences. How can any man dare to judge between human wisdom based on analogy, proof, and thought, and the wisdom of God, between whom and us there is no relation nor similarity? Will man, who is embodied in a vessel of clay, judge...

God his creator to say, God forbid, what is possible and what he cannot do? Truly this, sometimes leads to utter heresy" (Responsa Rashba pt. 1, no. 415). A ban was also pronounced against all who " say about Abraham and Sarah that in reality they symbolize matter and form, that the 12 tribes of Israel are [an allegory] for the 12 planets... [and] that the Urim and Thummim are to be understood as the astrolabe instrument... Some of them say that everything in the Torah, from Bereshit to the giving of the law, is entirely allegorical" (ibid., no. 416).

The condemnation of extreme allegory did not arouse opposition, but the prohibition on the study of " Greek wisdom" until the age of 25 was sharply opposed on grounds of principle, though to Adret and his group this formula was certainly in many respects a compromise. Among the many communities and individual sages in Provence and Spain who opposed the ban, the great Talmudic scholar Menachem ben Solomon Meiri was one of the most eloquent voices. In his counter- Cherem he reminded Adret of the failure of the early 13th-century attacks against Maimonides. Rejecting insinuations that the study of philosophy causes heresy, he pointed to many Talmudic scholars who were students of philosophy. Meiri stressed that sciences such as mathematics were necessary for the understanding of many passages in the Talmud. He regarded the prohibition against certain types of study as self-defeating: " Each individual [nature] will search for what suits him according to his natural inclination." This trait of human intellect and nature, he maintains, will even cause the second generation of the excommunicating community to seek ways out of this prohibition. Meiri was well aware that there was a more radical wing among the rationalists, which he opposed. Finally, Yedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi (ha-Penini) wrote Adret a " letter of apology" — actually a sharp attack against the anti-rationalists — basing himself on the spiritual greatness of Provenmal Jews and praising rationalism and philosophy.

 






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