Arguing about Maimonides in 14th-Century France

In the early 14th century, an ongoing controversy over the work of Moses Maimonides—or more generally over the relationship between philosophy and Judaism—flared up in the southern French region of Languedoc. Unlike previous episodes in which anti-Maimonideans challenged the acceptability of any study of Gentile philosophy, this one, which took place mainly among his admirers, concerned the line dividing acceptable philosophical interpretations of the Bible from outright heresy. Defending the Maimonidean position was the great scholar Menaḥem ha-Meiri. Gregg Stern writes:

Meiri records his community’s commitment to philosophy and the sciences as a change in orientation resulting from the 1204 publication of the Hebrew translation (from Arabic) by Samuel ibn Tibbon of [Maimonides’] Guide of the Perplexed.

In Meiri’s view, Maimonides had enlightened the Jews of Languedoc, and had invited them to integrate Greco-Arabic learning into their curriculum of Torah study; they had done so admirably, without harm to their talmudic studies. After four or five generations—by Meiri’s day—many Languedocian Jews had [accepted] this broader curriculum as a cultural ideal. Meiri emphasizes that the success of Languedocian talmudists with philosophic study had exercised no deleterious effect upon them.

Read more at Book of Doctrines and Opinions

More about: French Jewry, History & Ideas, Maimonides, Middle Ages, Philosophy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society