maimonidean controversy
struct a rational structure for the world, but it cannot show
that this rational structure exists in fact. Hence, one can only
philosophize “conditionally.”
Maimon’s philosophy strongly influenced the philoso-
pher Johann Fichte and, through Fichte, German idealist phi-
losophy. During the 19t century, Maimon was neglected; as
a result of the efforts of the historian of philosophy J.E. Erd-
mann (in his History of Philosophy (18923), index), however,
interest in Maimon has been revived in the 20t century. In
recent years several basic books dealing with his system have
appeared. A new photostatic edition of his collected works
began to appear in 1965.
Bibliography: N.J. Jacobs, in: KS, 41 (1965/66), 245–62 (bibl.
of his writings and writings about him); S.H. Bergman, The Philosophy
of Solomon Maimon (1967). Add. Bibliography: G. Freudenthal,
Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Sceptic (2003).
[Samuel Hugo Bergman]
MAIMON, YA’ACOV (1902–1977), Israel government ste-
nographer. In 1976 Maimon was awarded the Israel Prize
for services in immigrant absorption. Born in Russia,
Maimon immigrated in 1922. With the influx of immigrants to
Israel after the establishment of the state he devoted him-
self, in a voluntary capacity, to the absorption of immigrants
and organized hundreds of volunteers who followed his
example. Maimon served as the official stenographer of the
government and invented the system of Hebrew stenogra-
phy.
MAIMON BEN JOSEPH (d. 1165/1170), Spanish rabbi and
dayyan; father of *Maimonides. Maimon studied in Lucena
under Joseph *Ibn Migash, and transmitted his teachings, both
oral and in writing, to his son, who utilized them as the basis
for his own halakhic works. Maimon was a dayyan of Cor-
doba for many years, until he and his family were compelled to
leave, in consequence of the edict of forced conversion issued
by the *Almohads after their conquest of the city about 1149.
For about ten years he wandered through Spain and probably
also Provence. About 1160 he immigrated with his family to
Fez, Morocco, where it was easier for forced converts to pre-
serve their Judaism. In Fez he forbade the people to follow the
false messiah, Moses Dari, who was popular there at the time.
In 1165 he proceded to Ereẓ Israel, where he died, possibly in
the following year. According to one tradition, his grave is in
Tiberias. Some scholars think, however, that he went to Egypt
with his son and died there.
Maimon was one of the most outstanding and influ-
ential scholars of his generation and the first of his distin-
guished family of whom a written work is known. His Iggeret
ha-Neḥ amah, written in his second year in Fez (published in
the original Arabic by M. Simons, see bibliography; and in a
scholarly Hebrew translation by B. Klar, 1945), was designed
to comfort and guide the forced converts of Islam in their ef-
fort to preserve their Judaism. “We who are in exile can be
compared to a man who is drowning. The water has reached
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13
our nostrils but we still grasp hold of something … and as the
water threatens to engulf us, behold, a rope consisting of God’s
precepts and His Torah dangles from heaven to earth. Who-
ever seizes hold of it still has hope of living … and surely he
who holds on even only with the tips of his fingers has more
hope than he who lets go completely.”
Maimon’s fundamental premise – later adopted by his
son Maimonides and accepted as law among Jews in Islamic
countries – is that Islam, in that it is free from personification
of the Deity, is not to be regarded as idolatry. In keeping with
this view, he opposed martyrdom to avoid conversion to Is-
lam. Unlike other scholars, who left the people without hope,
Maimon asserts that those who perform the precepts in secret
will be rewarded, laying particular stress on the value of recit-
ing the *Amidah three times daily, even in its abridged form,
and even in Arabic. He also places great emphasis upon the
importance of belief in the divinity of the mission of Moses,
to whose virtues the work is largely devoted, comparing such
belief to belief in God Himself. This principle, later embodied
by Maimonides in his 13 principles, was designed to nullify
belief in the divine mission of Mohammed, for which reason
Maimon also stresses that Daniel was the last of the prophets.
Maimon’s work reflects the spirit of despair that had seized the
Jews of the countries during the time of the Almohads, and
it fortified his readers that the tyrannical rule would not con-
tinue for long, as had been promised by the prophets. Maimon
also wrote commentaries to the Talmud, from which his son
quotes abundantly; a book on the laws of prayer and the fes-
tivals, from which only isolated quotations have been pre-
served (Simon b. Zemaḥ Duran,Tashbeẓ , 1, no. 2); responsa,
a number of which have been published by A.H. Freimann
(see bibl.); a commentary on the Torah; a work on the laws of
ritual purity; and, apparently, an exposition of an Arabic as-
tronomical book. With the exception of the responsa, all his
works were written in Arabic.
Bibliography: Marmorstein, in: Sefer ha-Rambam shel ha-
Tarbiz (1935), 182–4 (= Tarbiz, 6 (1934/35), 426–8); Freimann, ibid.,
164–76 (= Tarbiz, 6 (1934/35), 408–20; idem, in: Alummah, 1 (1936),
9–13; J.L. Fishman, in: Maimon b. Joseph, Iggeret ha-Neḥ amah, tr.
by B. Klar (1945), introd.; Halkin, in: Joshua Starr Memorial Volume
(1953), 102–3; Hirschberg, Afrikah, 1 (1965), 100f., 122–4, 263; Si-
mons, in: JQR, 2 (1890), 62–66, 335–69; J.M. Toledano, Sarid u-Falit,
1 (1960), 7–8.
[Israel Moses Ta-Shma]
MAIMONIDEAN CONTROVERSY, a vast complex of dis-
puted cultural, religious, and social problems, focusing around
several central themes. Some of the elements of this contro-
versy considerably antedate *Maimonides (1135–1204); and of
the questions brought into sharp relief by his ideas and writ-
ings, some have remained topical in many Jewish circles. Vast
fields of human experience and thought are encompassed by
it: reason and philosophy in their relation to faith and tradi-
tion; what components are permitted and what prohibited in
the education of a man following the Torah; the proper un-
derstanding of *anthropomorphism as expressed in the Bible
371
maimonidean controversy
and Talmud; central theological concepts such as the *resur-
rection of the body; and the very form of Maimonides’ Mish-
neh Torah and its attitude toward talmudic discussion. The
question of hierarchical leadership versus intellectual, per-
sonal leadership was one of the early causes of this contro-
versy. In the Middle Ages the controversy had four climaxes:
(1) during the last years of Maimonides’ life, following the
publication of his Mishneh Torah in 1180 until his death in
1204; (2) around 1230–35, involving David *Kimḥ i, *Solomon
b. Abraham of Montpellier, *Naḥ manides and others, and cen-
tering in *Provence; (3) the years 1288–90 in the Near East,
involving Solomon Petit and Rabbi Isaac of Acre; (4) around
1300–06, involving Abba Mari b. Moses *Astruc, Solomon b.
Abraham *Adret, *Asher b. Jehiel, *Jedaiah b. Abraham Bedersi
(ha-Penini, and Menahem b. Solomon *Meiri, and centering
in Christian Spain and Provence. In between these moments
when the conflict flared up anew and reached climaxes as a
result of specific circumstances and the personalities involved,
tensions and disputes continued among proponents and op-
ponents of philosophy and Maimonides.
Although it is convenient to frame the four climaxes of
the controversy as distinct historical stages, recent research has
led to a reappraisal, in light of which these climaxes cannot
be characterized as separate stages in a homogeneous process.
It is certainly true that there were some essential differences
among the stages. For example: in the fourth and final stage
Maimonides himself no longer was the subject of the contro-
versy, and even the conservative party accepted his positions,
whereas in the early stages his Guide of the Perplexed and Book
of Knowledge (the first section of the Mishneh Torah, contain-
ing philosophical material) were the main target; in the early
stages the opposition was to philosophy per se, whereas in
the latter stages the opposition was to unrestricted access to
and teaching of philosophy, not a total rejection of it. Histori-
ans of the controversy over Maimonides and philosophy have
tended to focus on extreme positions in each period, which
lend themselves to simple characterization. On the other hand,
the evidence increasingly supports the view that many Jew-
ish intellectuals did not fall into either extreme camp – that
of excessive rationalist allegorization or that of opposition in
principle to all “foreign wisdom.” Many of the rationalist camp
were strictly observant in their personal life and maintained
the supremacy of the authority of the Torah, such as Judah b.
Samuel ibn Abbas and Kalonymos, who were confirmed ra-
tionalists but rejected extreme philosophical positions. At the
same time, among the conservative halakhic authorities were
those who did not object in principle to the study of philoso-
phy (to the contrary, they themselves had philosophical edu-
cations) but only to premature exposure of the youth to phi-
losophy and to extreme rationalist allegorization, especially in
public sermons in the synagogue. Abba Mari *Astruc ha-Yarḥ i,
for example, who played a major role in promoting the limited
Barcelona ban on philosophy in the fourth and final climax of
the controversy (1305), wrote a philosophical work, Sefer ha-
Yare’aḥ , which in many respects is rationalist in outlook.
372
The crisis of Spanish Jewry in the 15t century accentu-
ated the main educational and social themes of the old con-
troversy. In Renaissance Italy and in the diversified and flour-
ishing Jewish center of Poland-Lithuania the old quarrel again
became topical, though in a milder form. With the enlight-
enment (*Haskalah) of the 18t century the “Maimonidean
side” of the controversy was given a new, greatly secularized,
and radical expression by Moses *Mendelssohn and his fol-
lowers – an expression that could scarely have been imagined
by the former protagonists. In German *neo-Orthodoxy, the
“Maimonidean side” – particularly in its striving for a synthe-
sis of Jewish faith and “general culture,” as well as in certain
of its social tendencies – found a new, conservative expres-
sion. In Yemen in the 19t century and well into the 20t, there
was a distinct “Maimonidean camp” and a struggle against
it (see Kafaḥ ).
In the last two decades of the 20t century and the first
years of the 21st century, Maimonides again became the focus
of a controversy in ultra-Orthodoxy, as a result of the emphasis
placed by Rabbi Menaḥ em Mendel *Schneersohn of Chabad-
Lubavitch Ḥ asidism on the study of the Mishneh Torah. The
non-ḥ asidic leadership, in particular of the Lithuanian type
of yeshivah, vehemently rejected placing Maimonides at the
center of the curriculum in place of such classic codes as Jo-
seph Caro’s Shulḥ an Arukh.
The First Clash: During Maimonides’ Lifetime
Through the charisma of his personality and the trend of his
thought and leadership Maimonides himself initiated this. An
exile from Muslim Spain, he met in the Near East the hierar-
chical traditions of the exilarchate and the *geonim. Maimo-
nides was willing and ready to respect the *exilarch as scion
of the royal house of David and as the proper authority, from
the halakhic point of view, to appoint and ordain judges.
His mind and heart vehemently opposed the claims of
the geonim. He criticized sharply the way they:
fixed for themselves monetary demands from individuals and
communities and 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 (commentary to Avot 4:5).
This attempt to undermine the economic and social founda-
tions of the leadership of the Babylonian geonim went hand
in hand with Maimonides’ opposition to their program of
studies and his contempt for their very office. The Gaon at
Baghdad at this time was *Samuel b. Ali, a strong and au-
thoritarian personality. In an ironic “apology” for Samuel b.
Ali’s attacks on the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides explains to
one of his pupils:
Why, my son, should you take offense that a man whom people
accustom from his youth to believe that there is none like him
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13

in his generation; when age, high office, aristocratic descent, the
lack of people of discernment in this town, and his relationship
with individuals, all have combined to produce this execrable
consequence that each and every individual hangs expectantly
on each word pronounced from the academy in anticipation of
an honorific title from there… – why do you wonder that he has
acquired such [evil] traits? How, my son, could you imagine that
he should love truth enough to acknowledge his weakness?…
This is a thing that a man like him will never do, as it was not
done by better men who preceded him (letter to Joseph b. Judah
in: D.H. Baneth (ed.), Iggerot ha-Rambam (1946), 54f.).
The gaonate is represented as corrupt, and typical academy
study as being of questionable value. Concerning Zechariah,
the son-in-law of the Gaon, Maimonides writes:
He is a very foolish man. He studies very hard at this talmu-
dic discussion and its commentaries, and thinks that he is the
greatest of his generation, having already attained the peak of
perfection. My esteemed son knows that my appreciation of
the greatest of the sages of Israel is such that I evaluate their
worth according to their own criteria. They themselves have
defined ‘the argumentations [havayot] of *Abbaye and *Rava
[as] a small matter.’ If this is a small matter, why should I pay
attention to an old man who is really miserable, an ignoramus
in every respect? To my eyes he is like a newborn baby; one has
to defend him, according to the measure of his [Zechariah’s]
foolishness (ibid., 56ff.; the bulk of this passage has been erased
in most manuscripts).
This vehement revolt against the authority of the geonim came
at a time when Samuel b. Ali was attempting to minimize the
authority of the exilarch on the grounds that what the people
needed then was no more than the leadership of the geonim
and the guidance of their study in the academy. Small wonder
that such a revolt aroused reciprocal anger, coming, as it did,
in defense of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah which claimed ex-
pressly (in the introduction) to supersede the Talmud in pop-
ular usage, replacing its deliberations – the very core and sub-
stance of the life of academies and geonim – by his systematic
code. The claim of the intellectual to replace an aristocratic
hierarchy seemed to be combined with an attempt to impose
Greek systematic modes of codification in place of the tradi-
tional many-voiced flow of talmudic discussion. It is hardly
suprising that Samuel b. Ali, Zechariah, and *Daniel b. Saa-
diah ha-Bavli all sought and found halakhic flaws in this code.
Some of their arguments have philosophical and theological
overtones, but these were to come to the forefront only in the
second stage of the controversy. In the main, in this phase,
it was Maimonides’ creativity which was found provocative,
as well as his attitude to Talmud study and to the leadership
of established institutions, all of which were being defended
against him.
The First Stage in Europe
In this first flare-up, the controversy was thus not over
philosophy as such, or over Maimonides’ philosophy in par-
ticular, since his Guide of the Perplexed was translated into
Hebrew only at the very end of his life. The criticism was
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13
maimonidean controversy
leveled primarily against his Mishneh Torah and his attitude
toward resurrection. The criticism of the Mishneh Torah fo-
cused on Maimonides’ methodology, the fact that he did not
cite sources for his decisions, and his claim that the study of
his Code would replace the study of Talmud: “A person should
study the written Torah first, and then read this [book], and
thereby know the entire oral Torah, so that he will not need
to read any other book in between them.” The criticism also
reflected divergent local traditions and custom (minhag).
Maimonides’ great Ashkenazi critic, R. *Abraham b. David of
Posquières (Ravad), in his critical gloss (hasagah) to the In-
troduction to the Mishneh Torah, asserted that Maimonides
“has abandoned the method of all the authors who preceded
him, because they brought proofs for their words, and cited
their sources … But this way, I do not know why I should dis-
regard my tradition and my proof for the sake of this author’s
book.” Ravad also attacked Maimonides on theoretical issues.
Maimonides had categorized as a heretic (min) anyone who
affirms that there is one God but that God has a body (Yad,
Teshuvah 3:7). In his hasagah to this passage, Ravad protested:
“Why did he call such a person a heretic, when some who were
greater and better than he followed this opinion, according to
what they found in the Bible and even more, according to what
they found in aggadot which corrupt opinions?” What is sig-
nificant here is not that Ravad defended corporealist beliefs –
he also rejected the corporealism of “aggadot which corrupt
opinions” – but that he attacked the legitimacy of Maimonides’
categorization of such corrupt opinions as heresy.
As for the criticism of Maimonides’ regarding the tradi-
tional belief in bodily resurrection, because of his consistent
emphasis on an intellectualist understanding of the world to
come (olam ha-ba) in terms of the survival only of the actual
intellect in proportion to its attainment of knowledge, Ravad
wrote (on Yad, Teshuvah 8:2): “The words of this man seem
close to one who says that there is no bodily resurrection of
the dead, but only of the soul.” Others were equally critical of
Maimonides’ apparent denial of resurrection.
Ramah (R. Meir b. Todros ha-Levi *Abulafia), who was
active in the first two climaxes of the controversy, was in many
respects a sincere admirer of Maimonides. In the first period
he was shocked at the implication that Maimonides did not
affirm the resurrection of the body as a halakhic principle.
In an angry letter sent to the scholars of *Lunel he not only
sought to prove by copious quotations the dogmatic truth of
bodily resurrection, but also added passionately that if there is
no such resurrection, “to what end did the bodies stand watch
for their God, did they go in darkness for the sake of their
God? If the bodies are not resurrected, where is their hope
and where are they to look for it?” (Kitāb al-Rasīlʾ (1871), 14).
Abulafia also attacked Maimonides on other halakhic points.
It was only after he saw Maimonides’ Treatise on Resurrection
that he became satisfied that Maimonides, in fact, affirmed the
traditional belief. While some of his correspondents agreed
with his earlier criticism, others tried to convince him that he
had misunderstood the purport of Maimonides’ teaching on
373
maimonidean controversy
resurrection, and this latter view was accepted wholeheartedly
by the nasi Sheshet b. Isaac of Saragossa, who in a very radical
sense gave expression to Maimonides’ rationalism and philo-
sophic synthesis. Writing about 1200, he attacked sharply and
derisively what he regarded as the simplicism and materialism
of Abulafia’s view (A. Marx, in: JQR, 25, (1934/35), 406–28). To
speak about bodily resurrection is “to bring down our saintly
fathers from the highest level – the status of the angels who
enjoy divine glory and live forever – to the status of man,
through their returning to the impure body which cannot ex-
ist except through food and drink, and must end in dust and
worms … but the life of wisdom is greater than foolishness, as
light is greater than darkness. These notions seem to me like
the words of one confused” (ibid., 418). The only correct con-
ception of resurrection, he thought, is the one also accepted by
the pagan philosophers. Resurrection means the eternal life of
the soul of the sage-philosopher. “If the soul – while still in the
body – was yearning for its Creator, subordinating its passion
to its reason, [then] when it leaves the body, [it] will attain the
highest status, for which it yearned while still in the body; and
over it God will emanate of His spirit. This, in the view of the
sages, is the resurrection of the dead and the reward of the just
at the end of days” (ibid., 421ff.). All pronouncements in the
Bible and the Talmud about bodily resurrection are only for
the simple men who constitute the majority of mankind and
who understand only material rewards, and the same holds
true for the Muslim paradise (ibid., 424).
I ask this fool who maintains that the souls will return to the
dead corpses and that they are destined to return to the soil of
Israel. Into which body will the soul return? If it is to the body
from which it has departed, [then this will] already have re-
turned to its elements thousands of years earlier; [it is now]
earth, dust, and worms. Where it has been buried, a house
has been built, a vineyard planted, or some other plants have
taken root and you cannot find the earth or the dust or the
worms into which the body has turned. If, however, this soul
is to return to another body, which God will create, then it is
another man who will be created in his own time, and has not
been dead; how, then can you say that he is being resurrected
and that God rewards him, as he has not as yet achieved any-
thing? (ibid., 426).
Sheshet records opposition to the Mishneh Torah by reporting
the opinion of one of the judges who quarreled with him and
refused to judge according to Maimonides: “As he does not
adduce proofs from the sayings of the talmudic sages for his
decisions, who is going to follow his opinion? It is far better
to study Talmud. We will have nothing to do with his books
and his writings.” In Sheshet’s view this opposition stems from
the fact that until the Mishneh Torah the whole matter of legal
decision was so confused that the vast majority of Jews, be-
ing ignorant of the Talmud, had to obey their judges, whereas
now people had before them a clear and open code and were
not dependent on judges alone (ibid., 427).
Maimonides was aware of the criticism leveled against
him, and responded to it by his Treatise on Resurrection
(Maqalah fi Teḥ iyat ha-Metim, 1190–91). Maimonides’ de-
374
fense of resurrection in that work was accepted at face value
by such early critics as Ramah (Rabbi Meir b. Todros ha-Levi
Abulafia), who then retracted his criticism. Ravad’s critical
glosses were incorporated into standard editions of the Mish-
neh Torah. So the first climax in the Maimonidean controversy
subsided with Maimonides death in 1204, but the criticism of
the Mishneh Torah was preserved for later generations together
with the Code itself.
The Second Climax: 1230–1235 in Europe
What led to periodic controversies over Maimonides and phi-
losophy? In the first period, as we have seen, it was Maimo-
nides’ enormous status which led towards the end of his life
to the rapid availability in Hebrew of his works in Europe, in-
cluding his Guide of the Perplexed, outside his own immediate
sphere of influence. It was this almost immediate availability
of his philosophical views in areas previously unexposed to
philosophical culture which in turn aroused resistance. In
the second period, external circumstances contributed to the
flare-up of the controversy. Furthermore, whereas Maimo-
nides himself was the subject of controversy in the first period,
he was merely the catalyst for a much broader and fundamen-
tal controversy in the second period, when philosophy itself
came under sharp attack. In addition, whereas Maimonides,
however much his views were criticized in the earlier period,
was personally highly regarded, in the later period the philoso-
phers themselves were attacked and subject to suspicion.
Maimonides’ works reached Christian Europe, chiefly in
the southwest – Spain and Provence – entering a cultural and
social climate very different from the one in which they had
been created in the Arabic-Islamic culture of Egypt. As we
have seen, Maimonides’ authority in the Mishneh Torah had
been criticized halakhically by Ravad and *Moses ha-Kohen,
among others. The Christian Reconquest was proceeding
apace in the Iberian peninsula. Mystical tendencies and vi-
sionary approaches began to find explicit and strong expres-
sion in the developing *Kabbalah of Provence and Spain. Jews
everywhere were suffering from the impact of the *Crusades,
with martyrdom (*Kiddush ha-Shem) in their wake. Maimo-
nides’ grand attempt at a synthesis between the Jewish faith
and Greek-Arabic Aristotelian philosophy was received with
enthusiasm in some circles, mainly of the upper strata of Jew-
ish society, and with horror and dismay in others, imbued with
mysticism and dreading the effects of Greek thought on Jewish
beliefs. The old and continuously smoldering issue of “Athens
versus Jerusalem” conceived in the Talmud as the problem of
“Greek wisdom” – ḥ okhmah yevanit (BK 82b–83a; Meg. 9a–b),
now burst into flames. Essentially the problem is one of the
possible synthesis or the absolute antithesis between mono-
theistic revealed faith and intellectually formulated philoso-
phy. Both faith, based on revelation, and philosophy, based
on human reason, were understood to fundamentally con-
tradict each other’s methodology and undermine each other’s
authority. The rational method of inquiry, which in classical
and medieval times was equated with science (the distinction
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13

between philosophy and the natural sciences being a modern
phenomenon), is an open system. It can lead to any conclu-
sion, and the conclusion is justified and necessitated by the in-
tegrity of the method of inquiry itself, which can be replicated
by others; furthermore, it is universal, transcending national,
cultural, or religious differences. Faith, which differs from sci-
entific knowledge precisely in that it involves an affirmation of
truth without conclusive and demonstrative proof, basically
is a closed system which reverses the process of inquiry: one
begins with the conclusion, which is given as a revealed fact,
which one can then subject after the fact to rational analysis
and explication, but which cannot itself be rejected or denied.
Faith, moreover, begins with revelation occurring within a
particular national, cultural, linguistic, or religious context,
and its authority is thus conventional, even if it claims to be
ultimately universal in its significance and application.
This problem is common to Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam. In the view of H.A. Wolfson, all of Western religious
philosophy, whether in Hebrew, Latin, or Arabic “garb,” is es-
sentially the same regarding the problematical relationship
between revelation and reason. In Wolfson’s scheme, *Philo
was the first “synthetic” philosopher, and the greatest figure
in the history of Western philosophy after Plato and Aristotle,
because he attempted to synthesize biblical revelation (which
did not know philosophy) and philosophy (which was pagan
and did not know revelation), and all subsequent philosophy
in the Middle Ages was “Philonic” in structure, until Spinoza
destroyed that structure and made possible modern philoso-
phy by freeing philosophy from revelation (Wolfson, Philo:
Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity
and Islam (1947)).
In all three traditions, therefore, tensions exist between
rationalistic religious belief, inclining in the main toward syn-
thesis, and mystic belief, which is largely opposed to it.
The problem was not new in Judaism. In Islamic coun-
tries in the tenth century it was in the main decided in favor of
rationalism and synthesis. Maimonides was not the only one
in the 12t century who expressly sought a synthesis between
Greek philosophy and Judaism; a philosophic approach was
attempted by Abraham *Ibn Daud (see, e.g., his Sefer ha-Emu-
nah ha-Ramah (1852), 2, 58), and he was preceded by a ratio-
nalist tradition of synthesis going back to *Saadiah Gaon and
*Samuel b. Hophni who denied the historical veracity of the
incident of Samuel and the Witch of Endor.
Yet in Maimonides’ time radical changes were taking
place in Jewish communities in Europe. The influence of the
Christian environment became more pervasive. Increasingly,
Christianity was involved in similar problems, as the conflict
between Peter *Abelard and *Bernard of Clairvaux clearly
shows. After the Crusaders captured Constantinople in 1204
(the year of Maimonides’ death), the Greek works of Aristotle
became directly accessible to Western Christians, who no lon-
ger had to rely on Latin translations of the Greek texts made
(often by Jews) from Arabic or from Hebrew versions based
on Arabic translations from the Greek. The growing univer-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13
maimonidean controversy
sities increasingly challenged the monasteries as centers of
learning. While the traditional doctrines of the Church were
being confronted by secular learning, Christian Orthodoxy
was also challenged in the 12t and 13t centuries by “heresies,”
especially that of Cathari and the related heresy of the ratio-
nalist Albigensians, who had begun in the 11t century to in-
terpret Scripture allegorically and who denied the literal in-
terpretation of the miraculous events of Jesus’ life and death
that was central to Catholic dogma. Such “heresy” spread es-
pecially among the upper classes. The Church moved against
both threats in the first decades of the 13t century. Against
the threat of secular philosophy, the Church issued repeated
bans on the study of Aristotle and commentaries on his works.
Pope Innocent III launched the Albigensian Crusade, to
eliminate the heresy (which he regarded as instigated by ed-
ucated Jews). In 1231 the bans on Aristotle were renewed by
Pope Gregory IX, who established the permanent Inquisition
under the Dominicans, with the aim of completely eradi-
cating Albigensianism. There were, in fact, certain parallels
between the Christian Albigensian “heresy” and the Jewish
philosophers of the day, at least in the eyes of their respective
opponents, who accused them of indiscriminate allegoriza-
tion of Scripture and of antinomian laxity in moral or ritual
behavior. The stormy winds of anti-rationalism in the Chris-
tian environment were a contributing factor in the exacerba-
tion of long existing, if usually dormant, tensions within the
Jewish community.
Social upheavals in Jewish society during the 12t and 13t
centuries also added communal tension to the spiritual strife.
When Maimonides was still young, and most of his work as
yet unwritten, *Judah Halevi warned: “Turn aside from mines
and pitfalls. Let not Greek wisdom tempt you, for it bears flow-
ers only and no fruit.… Listen to the confused words of her
sages built on the void.… Why should I search for bypaths,
and complicated ones at that, and leave the main road?” (from
his poem beginning “Devarekha be-Mor Over Rekuḥ im”).
Maimonides’ prestige and the external pressures thus
combined in a volatile mixture for Jews in Europe. Despite
common admiration for Maimonides and his all-embrac-
ing devotion to Torah and the Jewish faith, there was in real-
ity no common language between the two radical positions.
Gradually the opponents of Maimonides began to attack his
very conception of a synthesis between Greek philosophy
and Jewish faith.
Solomon b. Abraham of Montpellier, together with David
b. Saul and *Jonah b. Abraham Gerondi (a relative of *Nah-
manides) agitated against philosophy, and in 1232 succeeded
in persuading the rabbis of northern France to issue a total
ban on the study of philosophy, including Maimonides’ Guide
of the Perplexed and Book of Knowledge (the first section, con-
taining philosophical material, of the Mishneh Torah). The
traditionalists’ arguments against philosophy were based on
three oft-repeated claims (recurring in the later stages of the
controversy as well), which were consistently denied by the
philosophers: (1) Theological – The philosophers were depicted
375
maimonidean controversy
as denying miracles, as regarding prophecy as a purely natu-
ral phenomenon, as undermining the authority of the Torah,
and as rejecting traditional eschatology; (2) Exigetical – The
traditionalists charged the philosophers with engaging in in-
discriminate allegorization of Scripture and of denying the
historicity of various biblical persons and events; (3) Practi-
cal – The philosophers were suspected of laxity in observance
of the commandments.
The controversy of the 1230s also involved exchanges of
letters, many between the philosopher and biblical exegete
Radak (David *Kimḥ i) and the physician and courtier, Judah
*Ibn Alfakhar. Remarkably, the letters from both sides of the
controversy were preserved in a collection Iggerot Kena’ot,
“Letters of Zealotry” (published in Koveẓ Teshuvot ha-Ram-
bam, Leipzig, 1859). When Kimḥ i traveled about the commu-
nities of Provence to rally the supporters of Maimonides, he
was greatly surprised to be answered by Judah ibn Alfakhar
with a bitter attack on Maimonides’ very attempt to rationalize
and explain away miracles and wondrous tales. Ibn Alfakhar
was against half acceptance; logical proofs were not so impor-
tant, “for each true proof needs great checking, since some-
times it may include misleading elements of that false wisdom
called sophistry in Greek, and when a proof is joined to this it
misleads even sages.” Maimonides’ “erroneous” intention was
to explain matters according to the laws of philosophy and
nature “so as to put the Torah and Greek wisdom together,
to make out of them one whole.” He imagined that the one
would live with the other like two loving twin deers. In reality
this has resulted in sorrow and dissension, for they cannot live
together on the earth and be like two sisters, for the Hebrew
women are not like the Egyptian ones. To this our Torah says:
‘No, my son is the living one, and yours is the dead’ (I Kings
3:22) and her rival angers her. I want peace; if I start to talk
to them, they go to war” (letter to Kimḥ i, Iggerot Qena’ot, 2a).
Thus, through radical rationalistic argumentation, this phy-
sician and courtier in Spain rejects the synthesis of the phy-
sician and courtier in Egypt and the logical compromise it
involves. As suggested by S. Harvey (1987), the dispute of the
1230s between Kimḥ i and Alfakhar may well have served as
the model for the book “The Epistle of the Debate” by Shem
Tov ibn *Falaquera, who was a participant in the next, third
climax of the controversy.
The demand for logical consistency was also answered
from the Maimonidean camp. Increasingly they inclined to-
ward extreme allegoristic explanations of talmudic and even
biblical expressions and tales. Their opponents accused them
of even inclining to explain away as no more than symbols
certain practical commandments, which need be fulfilled
only by simple men, but not by educated people. The rational-
ists denied this. Social overtones became stronger. The anti-
Maimonideans berated their upper-class opponents for their
hedonistic, luxurious, and sinful way of life. The Maimoni-
deans countered by accusing their adversaries with anarchy,
harshness, ignorance, simplicity of mind, and of being under
Christian influence.
376
The anti-Maimonidean camp turned to the great sages
of northern France. Never having been acquainted with Ar-
istotelian philosophy, they never felt the need for synthesis
with it; therefore, they unhesitatingly pronounced a ḥ erem
on Maimonides’ philosophical works. Some report that they
excommunicated even parts of his halakhic code. In Provence
and Spain the anti-Maimonidean camp was led by Solomon
b. Abraham of Montpellier, *Jonah b. Abraham Gerondi,
the poet Meshullam *da Piera, and above all Naḥ manides.
The position of Naḥ manides is remarkable for its simultane-
ous flexibility in expression and rigidity of mental attitude.
Seeing that the extreme anti-Maimonidean stance taken by
the rabbis of northern France and by Solomon of Montpel-
lier had no chance of finding support among the leading
circles of Jewish society in Provence and Spain, he therefore
advised the anti-Maimonidean camp to adopt a moderate
stand in order to achieve at least what was possible. Writing
to the north French rabbis (printed in: MGWJ, 9 (1860), 184–95)
he expresses his devotion and admiration, but he humbly
submits that they “are nourished in the bosom of [true] faith,
planted in the courts of tradition,” and therefore had to un-
derstand Maimonides in his peculiar cultural and social
circumstances. The situation he describes is actually that of
Spanish and Provençal Jewish upper society in the early 13t
century:
They have filled their belly with the foolishness of the Greeks …
they … make fun … of the trusting souls.… They did not enter
profoundly into the ways of our Torah; the ways of alien chil-
dren suffice for them. But for the words of [Maimonides], but
for the fact that they live out of the mouth of his works … they
would have slipped almost entirely.
It is not only a matter of false spiritual pride and alien culture;
it is also a case born of social necessity:
God save and guard us, my teachers, from such a fate. Look
about and see: is there a pain like our pain? For the sons have
been exiled from their fathers’ tables; they have defiled them-
selves with the food of gentiles and the wine of their feasts.
They have mixed with them and become used to their deeds …
courtiers have been permitted to study Greek wisdom, to be-
come acquainted with medicine, to learn mathematics and ge-
ometry, other knowledge and tricks, so that they make a living
in royal courts and palaces.
This intrinsically hostile description of the life of the upper
classes of Jewish society in Provence and Spain is given in or-
der to put Maimonides in the light of a great talmudic sage
who – argues Naḥ manides – would certainly and gladly have
written and lived as the northern French rabbis did. Alas, it
was not granted him: “Did he trouble himself for your sake,
you geniuses of the Talmud? He saw himself compelled and
constrained to structure a work which would offer refuge from
the Greek philosophers.… Have you ever listened to their
words, have you ever been misled by their proofs?” He goes
on to explain that extremism would bring about an irreparable
split. It is far better to educate gradually this misled society
and bring it back to the right way of northern France, by par-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13

tial prohibitions only. The region most afflicted is Provence;
Spain he considers to be in far better order.
Naḥ manides was merely temporizing in his writings to
the northern French rabbis. His true temper and the temper of
the entire anti-Maimonidean camp is revealed in his commen-
tary on the Torah, which is basically a mystical work against
Maimonides and Abraham *Ibn Ezra. The very concept of a
system of laws of nature ordained by God in His wisdom to be
admired by man through his reason, as expressed by Maimo-
nides (see, e.g., Mishneh Torah, Sefer ha-Madda), he and his
colleagues believe to be sheer heresy. The workings of nature
are to be conceived of only and always as “hidden miracles.”
God performs extraordinary *miracles in order that we should
understand the miraculous nature of all existence and life:
Through the great and famous miracles man recognizes the
hidden foundation of the entire Torah. For no man has a share
in the Torah of Moses until we believe that all our matters and
accidents are miracles, the product neither of nature nor of the
way of the world, whether for the multitude or for the indi-
vidual; but if a man fulfills the commandments his reward will
bring him success, if he transgresses them his punishment will
strike him – all by divine decree (Comm. to Ex. 13:16).
Though their tactics might thus vary, dogmatics were radical
and clearly defined on both sides. Ḥ erem was hurled against
counter-ḥ erem, as the authority of northern France was met
by the authority of local scholars and communal leaders in
Provence and Spain. Emissaries of both camps traveled about,
rallying their supporters. A profusion of letters and coun-
ter-letters, sermons and counter-sermons, commentaries
and counter-commentaries poured out. The weapons in the
campaign were polemics, original and translations, and the
Ibn *Tibbon and *Anatoli families made their name in both.
In the work of men like Jonah Gerondi the struggle against
Maimonides was merged with a general reforming spirit in
morals and community leadership. This battle was ended by
a terrible shock when Maimonides’ books were burned by
the *Dominicans in 1232. Proponents and opponents of Mai-
monides and philosophy alike interpreted this calamity as a
punishment for the opposition. Accordingly, Jonah Gerondi
relented in his views and many adherents of the anti-Mai-
monidean camp followed suit.
The controversy returned to the Muslim countries in
the East. Maimonides’ son, *Abraham b. Moses b. Maimon,
was outraged at what had happened in the West. He attacked
“many overseas [scholars who are] mistaken. They cling to the
literalistic sense of biblical verses, Midrashim, and aggadot.
This pains our heart; at the sight of this our eyes have dark-
ened, and our fathers are dumbfounded: How could such
an impurity, so like the impurity of idol worship, come to
be in Israel? They worship idols, deny God’s teaching, and
worship other gods beside Him.” Flinging these accusations
against Maimonides’ opponents in Europe, Abraham holds
that through their exegetical explanations they are guilty of
pagan-like anthropomorphism (Milḥ amot ha-Shem, ed by R.
Margalioth (1953), 52). He compares their faith to that of the
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13
maimonidean controversy
Christians (ibid., 55). Continuing his father’s line of thought,
he attacks the European antirationalistic scholars for their ex-
clusive devotion to talmudic studies only, while neglecting the
philosophical and philological foundations of the faith (ibid.,
49). They are among “those that walk in the darkness of their
understanding and in the paucity of their wisdom” (ibid., 50).
He expressly prefers Islamic surroundings and influence –
conducive to a rationalistic-monotheistic faith – to a Christian
environment, which influences men in the direction of antira-
tionalism and anthropomorphism (ibid., 51). Abraham restates
the basic rationalistic principle of faith and exegesis:
Know ye God’s people and His heritage, that God differentiated
men from animals and beasts through the reason, wisdom, and
understanding which He granted them. He also differentiated
Israel from the gentiles through the Torah He gave them and
the precepts He commanded them. Hence reason preceded
Torah, both in creation of the world, and in each and every one
living in it. Reason has been given to a man since the six days
of creation; Torah was given to man 4,448 years after creation.
Should someone say to you, ‘But the sages have explained that
the Torah was created two thousand years before the world,’
you should reply that this Midrash needs many commentaries
to justify it. It is impossible to take it in its simple sense.… Rea-
son was implanted in each and every one of the seed of Israel
before his knowledge of Torah. Know and understand that it
is because the child’s reason is not yet ripe, that God did not
oblige him to fulfill commandments (ibid., 57–58). In Abraham’s
view, corporealist beliefs, rather than philosophy, constituted
the true denial of the Torah.
While this blast was going forth from the East, extremists from
the West caused the desecration of Maimonides’ tomb at Ti-
berias, which shocked not only the Maimonidean camp but
also the majority of the anti-Maimonideans. When in the early
1240s the Disputation of Paris and the burning of the Talmud
added shock to shock, public quarrels among Jews were set
aside for several decades, and the second climax of the con-
troversy came to an end.
It remains a much disputed point whether the Domini-
cans set fire to Maimonides’ writings on their own initiative,
scenting heresy wherever they could find it, or whether their
action resulted from a denunciation by Jews, as contempo-
rary Maimonideans believed. Neither the social nor the cul-
tural motivating forces of the controversy disappeared with
the cessation of polemics. The rise of kabbalistic circles and
literature (see *Zohar) on the one hand, and the continuing
philosophical activity and way of life of the upper and “pro-
fessional” circles of Jewish society on the other implied a con-
tinuation and an intensification of the struggle between ratio-
nalists and anti-rationalists.
The Third Climax: A Renewed Outbreak of the
Controversy in 1288–1290
Whereas the controversy of the 1230s took place largely in
southern France, within a Christian environment, most of
the controversy towards the end of the 13t century took place
in the Near East. Solomon Petit, a mystic and anti-rational-
377
maimonidean controversy
ist, had first agitated against Maimonides in northern France
and Germany, where he was supported in his attempts to ban
the study of the Guide and the Book of Knowledge. In 1288, Pe-
tit immigrated to Acre, where he taught Kabbalah; many of
his students had been students of Naḥ manides after his emi-
gration to Israel. In Acre, Petit continued to agitate against
Maimonides and to urge the burning of his books, especially
the Guide. But he met with consistent failure, and was him-
self banned no less than four times. Petit had fundamentally
miscalculated: he was now living in the Land of Israel, which
came under the jurisdiction of the nagid (governor) of Egyp-
tian Jewry, David b. Abraham b. Maimonides. In the Arabic
environment of the Near East, the Jews were long accustomed
and exposed to philosophical culture, unlike the Jews of Chris-
tian Europe who had originally supported Petit.
Petit was also opposed in the west. The last known work
of Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, Mikhtav al Devar ha-Moreh (“Let-
ter Concerning the Guide”) defended Maimonides against the
attacks of Petit and others. In his “Letter,” Falaquera mocks
Maimonides’ opponents in a poem: “I wonder about those
who differ with Moses [i.e., Maimonides] / How they don’t re-
member the punishment of Korah. / He is a true teacher, and
his word / Is like fire; their word is like ice.” Playing on Petit’s
name, Falaquera calls him a peti (fool). Falaquera argued that
Maimonides was compelled to write the Guide because of
widespread corporealist beliefs among the Jews, even among
the great rabbis. But such people, wrong as they are, were not
the perplexed for whom Maimonides had written his Guide.
No wonder that Maimonides had been misunderstood – af-
ter all, even the Torah had been misunderstood. The masses
of Jews in the Torah had rebelled against God and Moses; no
wonder that they rebel against the Moses of today. The oppo-
nents of philosophy, Falaquera suggested, glorified in their ig-
norance of science and philosophy, and had to rely on faulty
and misleading Hebrew translations of the Guide because they
were ignorant of Arabic.
The Fourth and Final Climax: 1300–1306
When the controversy flared up again for the fourth and final
time at the end of the 13t and beginning of the 14t century,
the immediate catalyst was the extreme allegorical exegesis of
certain rationalists. In the century since Maimonides’ death,
philosophy and science had become deeply entrenched in Jew-
ish culture. Therefore, whereas in the 1230s the traditionalists
sought a total ban on the study of philosophy, in the fourth
and final climax of the controversy the traditionalists also ac-
cepted the validity of philosophy and science. They did not
seek to ban totally the study of philosophy, but only to limit
it, especially among the youth who lacked the intellectual and
spiritual maturity to deal with its challenges to tradition. What
they rejected was the philosopher’s extreme allegorization of
Scripture and alleged denial of creation and miracles, which
they saw as basic to the affirmation of the Torah. The tradi-
tionalists also objected to the rationalists’ use of astral magic
for medical purposes; they saw such magic not as scientific
378
but as forbidden avodah zarah (idolatry). In particular, the
controversy focused on the content of Jewish education and
the question of the possibility or impossibility of synthesis be-
tween “Greek wisdom” and the Torah of Moses. Abba Mari
Astruc ha-Yarḥ i of Lunel turned to Rashba (Rabbi Solomon b.
Abraham *Adret) in Barcelona for guidance on the rationalists’
allegorical interpretations, which he saw as heretical. Despite
Astruc’s strong partisan views, he preserved a collection of
the exchange of letters from both sides in his Minḥ at Kena’ot,
“The Offering of Jealousy” (cf. Num. 5:15) (ed. M. Bisliches,
Pressburg, 1838; reprinted Jerusalem, 1968; new and superior
ed., H. Dimitrovsky, Teshuvot ha-Rashba, Jerusalem, 1990, 2
vols.). Astruc charged the philosophers with treating histori-
cal figures and events in the Bible purely symbolically, at the
expense of their historicity; with regarding Plato and Aristo-
tle, rather than the Torah, as the criteria of truth; with reject-
ing miracles and divine revelation; and with being personally
lax in observance of Jewish law.
Although these charges, especially those of interpreting
biblical figures purely symbolically and laxity in observance,
were consistently denied by the rationalists, such as Mena-
hem b. Solomon Meiri and Jedaiah b. Abraham Bedershi ha-
Penini, they were on some level accurate. For example, Jacob
b. Abba Mari Anatoli (1194–1296), the son-in-law of Samuel
ibn Tibbon, in his book Malmad ha-Talmidim, had interpreted
the patriarchs and matriarchs allegorically, rather than his-
torically. Abraham and Sarah symbolized form and matter;
Lot and his wife symbolized the intellect and the body; Isaac
symbolized the active soul, and his wife Rebecca the intelli-
gent soul; Leah symbolized the perceptive soul, and her sons
the five senses; Leah’s daughter Dinah represented sensations
induced by imagination; Joseph symbolized practical reason,
while Benjamin symbolized theoretical reason. He also inter-
preted the seven-branched menorah (candelabrum) as repre-
senting the seven planets, the twelve tribes as symbolizing the
constellations, and the Urim and Thummim of the high priest
as representing the astrolabe.
The traditionalists feared that such views could only lead
to laxity in observance. If the Torah is true only on a symbolic
level, the commandments might also be interpreted purely
symbolically, at the expense of their actual observance, which
is based on the literal text. Nevertheless, their attacks on in-
dividual rationalists like Levi b. Abraham b. Ḥ ayyim of Vile-
franche (who seems to have been the immediate catalyst of
the outburst), were unwarranted, since these rationalists, as
they themselves insisted in their own defense, did not in fact
go beyond Maimonides’ views or give up strict observance of
the law, despite their radical allegorization.
Toward the end of the 13t century, a fierce dispute broke
out in Provence between traditionalists and rationalists. While
the main bone of contention was ostensibly radical rational-
ist allegorical exegesis of the Bible, the dispute actually flared
up over the rationalist practice of healing with astral magic.
Astral magic was included in the curriculum of medical stud-
ies in the universities. Paradoxically, it was thus the rational-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13

ist camp which employed astral magic in healing, and it was
their use of such magic which the traditionalists, led by Abba
Mari of Lunel, rejected as idolatrous avodah zarah and as pro-
hibited by the halakhah.
Abba Mari tried to drag R. Solomon b. Adret (Rashba)
into the argument, but failed. Rashba noted that he himself,
before the anti-philosophical controversy had arisen, had un-
hesitatingly permitted the fashioning of effigies for medical
purposes, and even while the controversy was still raging re-
fused to issue an absolute prohibition of the medical use of
astral magic. As against Maimonides’ approach, denying the
reality of sorcery, Rashba pointed out that both the Babylonian
and Jerusalem Talmuds contain an abundance of magical ma-
terial which violates no religious precept. Moreover, Rashba
accused the opponents of sorcery of denying the possibility
of miracles. To support his acceptance of the possibility that
spirituality might descend upon amulets, he wrote:
And I say that it was the kindness of the Supreme Being at the
start of Creation to create in his world things that would ensure
the health of the created beings, that if the existents happen to
fall ill or for any other reason deviate from their natural per-
fection, these [things] are ready to restore them to their realm
or to make them healthy. And He placed these forces in the es-
sence of things found in nature, as may be attained by study,
such as medications and aids known to scholars of medicine, or
in nature based on properties but not attainable by study. And
it is not impossible that such a power should also be in speech,
as in the case of amulets and similar things (Minḥ at Kena’ot, in
Rashba, Responsa, ed. H.Z. Dimitrovsky, p. 302).
The possibility that stellar forces could be used to heal the sick
was provided for in advance by God. Whether such practices
were permissible or not depended, according to Rashba, on
the magician’s innermost intention: it was his awareness that
God was the primary cause of recovery that legitimized the as-
tral-magical practice. Thus, Abba Mari was unable to persuade
Rashba to join him in condemnation of astral magic.
Through the 14t century, the dispute became increas-
ingly acrimonious; at least four positions can be distinguished
with regard to the status of astral magic:
(a) False and forbidden: The moderate rationalists re-
jected astral magic of any kind and therefore also considered it
halakhically prohibited. They thus accepted Maimonides’ firm
negation of any reality of astral magic and his prohibition of
its practices. These thinkers, then, took up Maimonides’ ap-
proach in content, style, and language (Menaḥ em ha-Meiri,
David ha-Kokhavi). Some rationalists chose almost to ignore
the issue, probably because they attached no reality whatever
to astral magic (Joseph ibn Kaspi).
(b) Dubious and forbidden: This was the view of the
traditionalists, who consistently battled the radical rational-
ists and in fact defined the latter group, inter alia, in terms of
their employment of astral magic for medical purposes (Abba
Mari, Jacob b. Solomon ha-Zarfati). They, too, prohibited the
practice absolutely, as did the moderate rationalists, although
they did not entirely deny the possible reality of astral magic.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13
maimonidean controversy
Their most characteristic trait was the connection they per-
ceived between the practice of astral magic and the magician’s
affinity for philosophy: in their view, a rationalist philosophy
was bound to lead to the practice of astral magic.
(c) False in respect of its reality but psychologically ef-
fective, and forbidden: Some circles denied that astral magic
could actually bring down stellar forces, but believed that there
was some psychological benefit in the practice. Nevertheless,
they, too, prohibited its use from the standpoint of Halakhah
(Gersonides, Jedaiah ha-Penini of Béziers). In a sense, this
might be considered an intermediate position, though it is
closer to that of the moderate rationalists and its proponents
were essentially a subgroup of the latter.
(d) Real and permitted: Certain thinkers believed in the
absolute reality of astral magic (Nissim of Marseilles, Frat
Maimon) and even considered it halakhically legitimate (Levi
b. Abraham). For such thinkers, astral magic was a theologi-
cal principle that could be used in interpreting various bibli-
cal passages.
All these issues provided the background for Rashba’s
ultimate decision to support a limited ban.
After much hesitation, and spurred on by the influence of
Asher b. Jehiel, Rashba and the Barcelona community issued a
ḥ erem 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” (Resp. Rashba
pt. 1, no. 415). A ban was also pronounced against all who “say
about Abraham and Sarah that in reality they symbolize mat-
ter 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 wis-
dom” until the age of 25 was sharply opposed on grounds of
principle, though to Rashba 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 Menahem b. Sol-
omon Meiri was one of the most eloquent voices. In his coun-
ter-ḥ erem (printed in excerpts in Jubelschrift… L. Zunz (1884),
Heb. pt. 153–72) he reminded Adret of the failure of the early
13t-century attacks against Maimonides. Rejecting insinua-
379
maimonidean controversy
tions 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 neces-
sary 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 hu-
man intellect and nature, he maintains, will even cause the sec-
ond 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 op-
posed (see his commentary to Psalms, ed. by J. Cohn (1936),
e.g., ch. 36, p. 78f., and many passages in his commentary to
Proverbs and to Mishnah Avot).
Finally, Jedaiah b. Abraham Bedersi (ha-Penini) wrote
Adret a “letter of apology” (Ketav Hitnaẓ ẓ elut) – actually a
sharp attack against the anti-rationalists – basing himself on
the spiritual greatness of Provençal Jews and praising ratio-
nalism and philosophy. He daringly proclaims:
My rabbis, please look into the mighty pattern of the benefits
of philosophy to all of us, even to those who despise it. For it
is extremely well-known that in ancient times anthropomor-
phism was widespread, one may say almost in the entire Di-
aspora of Israel … but in every generation there arose geonim
and sages – in Spain, in Babylonia and in the cities of Andalu-
sia – who, thanks to their familiarity with the Arabic language,
had the great opportunity to smell the perfume of the sciences,
some much, some a little, for they are translated into this lan-
guage. It is thanks to this that they began to elaborate and clarify
many of their opinions on the Torah, above all as to the unity of
God and the abolition of anthropomorphism, especially by the
philosophical proofs taken from scientific works.
He goes on to list this rationalistic literature, from the days
of Saadiah Gaon onward (Resp. Rashba pt. 1., no. 418). This
long epistle concludes:
Relinquish your ḥ erem for the heart of this people will not turn
away from philosophy and its books as long as there is breath
in their frame and soul in their bodies, especially as together
with it [i.e., with devotion to philosophy], they are true to Torah
and commandments. Even if they had heard it from the mouth
of Joshua bin Nun they would never have accepted it, for they
intend to do battle for the honor of the great teacher [i.e., Mai-
monides] and his works; and for the holiness of his teaching
they will sacrifice fortune, family, and soul as long as there is a
breath in their bodies. And thus they will teach and command
their children in generations to come (ibid.).
On this sharp though inconclusive note, the great controversy
of the early 14t century petered out. In any event, the expul-
sion of the Jews from France by King Philip IV on July 22, 1306,
almost exactly one year after the Barcelona ban was issued,
overshadowed the internal Jewish controversy. The greater ex-
ternal threat totally eclipsed a potential internal threat from
philosophy. Like its predecessors, the Barcelona ban, as lim-
ited as it was in comparison to earlier bans, also proved inef-
fective and unenforceable, and to that extent, the rationalists
had the last word in the controversy.
380
Aftermath of the Controversy
The tension between rationalists and antirationalists never
abated throughout the Middle Ages. Among the beleaguered
Jews of 15t-century Christian Spain, Maimonidean rational-
ism was seen by many as the root cause of the misfortunes
and the reason for *apostasy. On the other hand, a man like
Abraham *Bibago, throughout his Derekh Emunah, defended
rationalism, not only as being justified but as the very essence
of Judaism. Proudly calling himself “a pupil of Maimonides,”
he believed that the Jewish people is the bearer of reason –
weak in this world as reason is weak against the unreason-
able passions. Generalizing the traditional rationalistic view,
he stated:
The reasonable creature having reason has to study the sci-
ences; and being a believer, he will study Torah and acquire
faith and its roots and dogmas. The first study will be a kind
of carrier and vessel to bear the second study. In the same way
that life is an assumption and carrier by which humanity and
speech are carried, so through the form of reason – by whose
accomplishment one studies and acquires the sciences – Torah
study will be assumed and carried. Thus faith will be complete
and without doubt, and the one attitude [faith], will not con-
flict with the other [philosophy]. Therefore did the sage say,
‘Reason and faith are two lights.’ To solve all doubts we must
explain that ‘Greek wisdom’ cannot be the above-mentioned
wisdom of reason belonging to man insofar as he is a man.
Hence it is a human wisdom and not a Greek one. The wisdom
called [by talmudic sages] ‘Greek wisdom,’ must be something
peculiar to the Greeks and not to another nation (see above,
pt. 2, ch. 3, 46a).
That views like this were acceptable also among 16t-century
Ashkenazi Jewry is proved by the fact that the Sefer ha-Miknah
by *Joseph b. Gershom of Rosheim is in reality a kind of syn-
opsis of Bibago’s Derekh Emunah. In Renaissance Italy Jehiel
b. Samuel of *Pisa wrote a detailed treatise (Minḥ at Kena’ot)
against rationalism, while the life and works of many of his
contemporaries and countrymen constituted a clear espousal
of it. In Poland-Lithuania in the 16t–17t centuries the ten-
sion between Maimonideans and anti-Maimonideans like-
wise continued, as evidenced, for example, by the dispute be-
tween Moses *Isserles and Solomon b. Jehiel *Luria (see Moses
Isserles, Resp., nos. 687; and see also his Torat ha-Olah).
The problems of the synthesis between Judaism and
other cultures, of the proper content of Jewish education, and
of the right way to God – through reason or through mystic
union – has remained, though formulations and expressions
have changed considerably. The old hierarchical basis of Jewish
leadership, wholeheartedly hated by Maimonides, has disap-
peared, but the leadership of the individual scholar, even after
Maimonides, retained many hierarchical and sacral elements
(see *Semikhah). The Mishneh Torah did not supersede the
Talmud, and Maimonides’ aristocratic opposition to monetary
support for Torah study failed completely. So strong was his
personality, however, that most of his opponents made great
efforts to say that they opposed not Maimonides himself but
some element of his teaching or, better still, some misguided
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13

interpretation or citation of his work. The Maimonidean con-
troversy is both very specifically at the heart of Jewish culture
and, at the same time, part or a set of problems central to Ju-
daism, Islam, and Christianity alike.
Bibliography: D.J. Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the
Maimonidean Controversy, 1180–1240 (1965), bibl., 199–210; S.Z. Hal-
berstam, in: Jeschurun (Kobak), 8 pt. 1–2 (1871), Heb. pt. 17–56; pt.
3–4 (1895), Heb. pt. 89–100; J. Sarachek, Faith and Reason: the Con-
flict over the Rationalism of Maimonides (1935); H.H. Ben-Sasson,
in: Ha-Ishiyyut ve-Dorah (1963), 93–106; idem, Toledot Am Yisrael, 2
(1969), 155–8, 216–23, 303–6; I. Twersky, Rabad of Posquières (1962);
idem, in: Journal of World History, 11 (1968), 185–207; A.S. Halkin, in:
Perakim, 1 (1968), 35–55; Baer, Spain, index; Schatzmueller, in: Zion,
34 (1969), 126–44; idem, in: Meḥ karim le-Zekher Ẓ evi Avneri (1970),
129–40; Dinur, Golah. Add. Bibliography: D. Schwartz, “Chang-
ing Fronts toward Science in the Medieval Debates over Philosophy,”
in: Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 7 (1997), 61–82; G. Freu-
denthal, “Les Sciences dans les communautéa juives médiévales de
Provence: leur appropriation, leur role,” in: REJ, 152 (1993), 29–136;
idem, “Science in the Medieval Jewish Culture of Southern France,” in:
History of Science, 33 (1995), 23–58; D. Schwartz, “Meharsim, Talmudi-
yyim and Anshei Ha-Hokhma – Judah Ben Samuel Ibn ‘Abbas’s Views
and Preaching,” in: Tarbiz, 52 (1993), 585–615; “The Debate over the
Maimonidean Theory of Providence in Thirteenth-Century Jewish
Philosophy,” in: Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2 (1995), 185–96; Faith and
Reason: Debates in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Heb., 2001); J. Shatz-
miller, “In Search of the Book of Figures: Medicine and Astrology in
Montpellier at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century,” in: AJS Review
7:8 (182/183), 383-407; I. Twersky, “Beginnings of Mishneh Torah Criti-
cism,” in: A. Altmann (ed.), Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies
(1967), 95–118; R. Jospe, “Faith and Reason: The Controversy Over
Philosophy in Jewish History,” in: I. Kajon (ed.), La Storia Della Fi-
losofia Ebraica (Archivio di Filosofia, 61 (1993)), 99–135; B. Septimus,
Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies
of Ramah (1982); S. Harvey, Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An In-
troduction to Jewish Philosophy (1987).
[Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson / Raphael Jospe and
Dov Schwartz (2nd ed.)]
MAIMONIDES, MOSES (Moses ben Maimon; known in
rabbinical literature as “Rambam”; from the acronym Rabbi
Moses Ben Maimon; 1135–1204), rabbinic authority, codifier,
philosopher, and royal physician.
biography
The most illustrious figure in Judaism in the post-talmudic
era, and one of the greatest of all time, Maimonides was born
in Cordoba, Spain, to his father *Maimon, dayyan of Cordoba
and himself a renowned scholar and pupil of Joseph *ibn Mi-
gash. He continues his genealogy, “the son of the learned Jo-
seph, son of Isaac the dayyan, son of Joseph the dayyan, son
of Obadiah the dayyan, son of the rabbi Solomon, son of Oba-
diah” (end of commentary to Mishnah); traditions extend the
genealogy to R. Judah ha-Nasi. Posterity even recorded the day
and hour and even minute of his birth, “On the eve of Pass-
over (the 14t of Nisan) which was a Sabbath, an hour and a
third after midday, in the year 4895 (1135) of the Creation”
(Sefer Yuḥ asin). Maimonides’ grandson David gives the same
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 13
maimonides, moses
day and year without the hour (at the beginning of his com-
mentary to tractate Rosh Ha-Shanah).
As a result of the fall of Cordoba to the *Almohads in
May or June, 1148, when Moses had just reached his 13t birth-
day, and the consequent religious persecution, Maimon was
obliged to leave Cordoba with his family and all trace of them
is lost for the next eight or nine years, which they spent wan-
dering from place to place in Spain (and possibly Provence)
until in 1160 they settled in Fez. Yet it was during those years of
wandering, which Maimonides himself describes as a period
“while my mind was troubled, and amid divinely ordained
exiles, on journeys by land and tossed on the tempests of the
sea” (end of commentary to Mishnah) that he laid the strong
foundations of his vast and varied learning and even began his
literary work. Not only did he begin the draft of the Sirāj, his
important commentary on the Mishnah, in 1158, but in that
same year, at the request of a friend, he wrote a short treatise
on the Jewish calendar (Ma’amar ha-Ibbur) and one on logic
(Millot Higgayon) and had completed writing notes for a com-
mentary on a number of tractates of the Babylonian Talmud,
and a work whose aim was to extract the halakhah from the
Jerusalem Talmud (see below Maimonides as halakhist). Ac-
cording to Muslim authorities the family became formally
converted to Islam somewhere in the period between 1150
and 1160. But Saadiah ibn Danan (Z. Edelmann (ed.), Ḥ emdah
Genuzah (1856), 16a) relates that the Muslims maintain the
same about many Jewish scholars, among them Dunash ibn
Tamim, Ḥ asdai b. Ḥ asdai, and others. In any case in the year
1160 Maimon and his sons, Moses and David, and a daugh-
ter, were in Fez. In his old age ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, the Almohad
ruler, somewhat changed his attitude to the Jews, becoming
more moderate toward those who were living in the central,
Moroccan, part of his realm. It was probably on account of this
that in 1159 or early in 1160 Maimon deemed it worthwhile to
emigrate with his family to Morocco and settle in Fez. Living
in Fez at that time was R. Judah ha-Kohen ibn Susan, whose
fame for learning and piety had spread to Spain, and Maimo-
nides, then 25, studied under him. Many Jews had outwardly
adopted Islam and their consciences were troubling them,
and this prompted Maimon to write his Iggeret ha-Neḥ amah
(“Letter of Consolation”) assuring them that he who says his
prayers even in their shortest form and who does good works
remains a Jew (Ḥ emdah Genuzah, pp. LXXIV–LXXXII). Mean-
time his son worked at his commentary on the Mishnah and
also continued his general studies, particularly medicine; in
his medical works he frequently refers to the knowledge and
experience he gained among the Muslims in North Africa (see
Maimonides as physician). Here also he wrote his Iggeret ha-
Shemad (“Letter on Forced Conversion”) also called Iggeret
Kiddush ha-Shem (“Letter of the Sanctification of the Divine
Name”). These letters of father and son, as well as Maimonides’
utterances after leaving Morocco, do not point to outrages and
bloody persecutions. Although Maimonides in the opening
lines of the Iggeret ha-Shemad most strongly deprecates the
condemnation of the forced converts by “the self-styled sage
381