Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Interpretation and Controversy in Medieval Languedoc. By Gregg Stern

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Pp. xiii, 273 , London , Routledge , 2009 , $140.00. Stern shows how the Jewish communities in the Languedoc region – free of the control of royal France during the 12th century and of divided political loyalties in the 13th– held the traditional literalist reading of Torah and Talmud in tense equilibrium with a naturalistic allegorizing of these same scriptures, under the influence of the incoming translations of Averroes' commentaries on Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics. Maimonides had already found an accommodation a century earlier through his doctrine of esotericism – but now which way should the ‘esoteric’ interpretation of problematic texts go – towards kabalistic hermeticism or naturalistic debunking scepticism? Both directions found defenders. Through a thorough study of the collections of ‘open letters’ sent by scholars on both sides, the denunciations of heresy and mutual excommunications, Stern opens a window into the fascinating, vibrant, and uniquely progressive regional culture the Jews of Occitania took such pride in, until Philip the Fair expelled them from the French regions in 1306. Stern follows two figures – Don Vidal Solomon ha-Meiri of Perpignan and Abba Mari ben Moses of Montpelier – both moderate rationalists who ended up on different sides. Because of the doctrine of the Trinity, Christians were considered idolaters and formally denied a series of rights and privileges by the Talmud. These included compensation for property damage, return of lost property, protection from delay in payment due, protection from excessive prices, rescue from danger, and prosecution of robberies and murders whose victims were non-Jews (p. 90) Meiri found a way to include Christians as gentiles ‘constrained by religious laws’ so as to accord them these privileges, and thus to bring the Talmud into better accord with the situation in which the Jews in Languedoc found themselves. One danger with Greek philosophy was that it seemed to make immortality dependent, not on observing the commandments, but on mastery of Aristotelian metaphysics, whereby the (mortal) soul advances to an ‘acquired intellect’ which can then fuse with the ‘Active Intellect’, the lowest stage of emanation from the One. Abba Mari held that all Greek philosophy was known to Moses, who is its source, but was subsequently lost to the Jews because of their sins. Aristotle, however, gives a true ‘account of the Chariot’ or ascent into divine matters; this is the scripture's esoteric meaning. Abba Mari became alarmed, however, at how the young had lost balance with the literal meaning in their reductive allegorizing; he sought to prohibit the study of Greek philosophy until the age of 30: ‘Today those who break down the fences have multiplied those who loathe instruction and despise the rebuker at the gates. They hold fast to the waste and abandon the essence. They break the covenant by diminishing their Torah study; they please themselves with the children of strangers; they destroy the richness of the Torah. They expound defective interpretations of scripture, from which they have written several books. Some of them are submerged in logic, and I have seen men entombed in physics as well. Their cornerstone is the writing of Averroes, and the axis of their foundation is the teaching of Aristotle. They are almost captured in their net, and fallen into their trap; they have placed their feet in stocks.’ (quoted p. 142) The radical hot-heads had gotten out of hand – they were half-way to Spinoza, so to speak. Abba Mari lost this particular battle, but perhaps he saw more deeply – that Aristotle would have to be purged of Averroes before he could become compatible with revealed religion.