The Great Jewish Thinker Who Combined Law and Mysticism

One of the foremost Spanish rabbis of his day, Moses Naḥmanides (1194-1270) was also a learned physician and the author of enormously influential commentaries on the Pentateuch, Talmud, and other works. Reviewing a book on Naḥmanides’ thought by Moshe Halbertal, recently translated into English, Nathaniel Berman sums up the rabbi’s career:

Naḥmanides was both halakhist and kabbalist, as well as a Jewish community leader, indeed the Jewish representative in a pivotal 1263 [government-mandated] disputation with Christian theologians. He stands in striking contrast to most of the key 13th-century Spanish kabbalists, [who, as one historian put it], “did not contribute in a significant manner to the communal Jewish life as leading figures, nor . . . play a major role in the halakhic literature.” . . . Halbertal strives throughout the book to relate the various features of Naḥmanides’ oeuvre to each other, particularly his legal and kabbalistic visions.

Naḥmanides declared that the Torah originally was written without any breaks between words. It can, therefore, be read in different ways depending on how the letters are divided. According to the familiar reading, the Torah consists of stories and commandments; according to an alternative, esoteric division of the letters, it consists entirely of divine names. As Halbertal explains, this conception rests on a vision of the Torah primarily as the emanation of divine essence, not as communicative of a determinate message. And just as divine essence is infinite, the “current division of letters resulting in our Torah is merely one of the kaleidoscopic manifestations of the divine essence” itself.

In this view, the debates and differences of opinion that characterize the Talmud and post-talmudic rabbinic literature are a reflection of the mystical essence of the Torah, which can manifest itself in different ways.

Halbertal cites a passage from Naḥmanides’ commentary on Numbers 11:16, concerning the “seventy elders” assembled by Moses to serve as intermediary judges of the Israelites. Naḥmanides associates this group with the 70-member Sanhedrin [of talmudic times]. . . . For Halbertal, Naḥmanides thus ascribes “a quasi-prophetic quality to the number of judges on the Sanhedrin,” setting “the Sanhedrin’s adjudication within a kabbalistic framework.” By “creating symbolic structures on earth that parallel supernal ones,” human beings “draw down God’s presence into the world”—a key kabbalistic vision, most elaborately articulated in relation to the desert Sanctuary and the Temple, but often extended even to the most familiar ritual performances.

Read more at Marginalia

More about: Judaism, Kabbalah, Moshe Halbertal, Mysticism, Nahmanides

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023