Studies in Judaism 17

Studies in Judaism 17

Before proceeding to speak of his works, let us first cast a glance at his

letters from Palestine, forming as they do a certain link between his

former life and that which was to occupy him exclusively for the rest of

his days. We have three letters, the first of which I shall translate here

_in extenso_.

 

The letter was written soon after his arrival at Jerusalem in the year

1267. It was addressed to his son Nachman, and runs as follows:--

 

 

"The Lord shall bless thee, my son Nachman, and thou shalt see the

good of Jerusalem. Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children

(Ps. cxxviii.), and thy table shall be like that of our father

Abraham!(75) In Jerusalem, the Holy City, I write this letter.

For, thanks and praise unto the rock of my salvation, I was

thought worthy by God to arrive here safely on the 9th of the

month of Elul, and I remained there till the day after the Day of

Atonement. Now I intend going to Hebron, to the sepulchre of our

ancestors, to prostrate myself, and there to dig my grave. But

what am I to say to you with regard to the country? Great is the

solitude and great the wastes, and, to characterise it in short,

the more sacred the places, the greater their desolation!

Jerusalem is more desolate than the rest of the country: Judća

more than Galilee. But even in this destruction it is a blessed

land. It has about 2000 inhabitants, about 300 Christians live

there who escaped the sword of the Sultan. There are no Jews. For

since the arrival of the Tartars, some fled, others died by the

sword. There are only two brothers, dyers by trade, who have to

buy their ingredients from the government. There the Ten Men(76)

meet, and on Sabbaths they hold service at their house. But we

encouraged them, and we succeeded in finding a vacant house, built

on pillars of marble with a beautiful arch. That we took for a

synagogue. For the town is without a master, and whoever will take

possession of the ruins can do so. We gave our offerings towards

the repairs of the house. We have sent already to Shechem to fetch

some scrolls of the Law from there which had been brought thither

from Jerusalem at the invasion of the Tartars. Thus they will

organise a synagogue and worship there. For continually people

crowd to Jerusalem, men and women, from Damascus, Zobah

(Aleppo),(77) and from all parts of the country to see the

Sanctuary and to mourn over it. He who thought us worthy to let us

see Jerusalem in her desertion, he shall bless us to behold her

again, built and restored, when the glory of the Lord will return

unto her. But you, my son, and your brothers and the whole of our

family, you all shall live to see the salvation of Jerusalem and

the comfort of Zion. These are the words of your father who is

yearning and forgetting, who is seeing and enjoying, Moses ben

Nachman. Give also my peace to my pupil Moses, the son of Solomon,

the nephew of your mother. I wish to tell him ... that there,

facing the holy temple, I have read his verses, weeping bitterly

over them. May he who caused his name to rest in the Holy Temple

increase your peace together with the peace of the whole

community."

 

 

This letter may be illustrated by a few parallels taken from the appendix

to Nachmanides' _Commentary to the Pentateuch_, which contains some rather

incoherent notes which the author seems to have jotted down when he

arrived in Jerusalem. After a lengthy account of the material as well as

the spiritual glories of the holy city in the past, he proceeds to say:--

 

 

"A mournful sight I have perceived in thee (Jerusalem); only one

Jew is here, a dyer, persecuted, oppressed and despised. At his

house gather great and small when they can get the Ten Men. They

are wretched folk, without occupation and trade, consisting of a

few pilgrims and beggars, though the fruit of the land is still

magnificent and the harvests rich. Indeed, it is still a blessed

country, flowing with milk and honey.... Oh! I am the man who saw

affliction. I am banished from my table, far removed from friend

and kinsman, and too long is the distance to meet again.... I left

my family, I forsook my house. There with my sons and daughters,

and with the sweet and dear children whom I have brought up on my

knees, I left also my soul. My heart and my eyes will dwell with

them for ever.... But the loss of all this and of every other

glory my eyes saw is compensated by having now the joy of being a

day in thy courts (O Jerusalem), visiting the ruins of the Temple

and crying over the ruined Sanctuary; where I am permitted to

caress thy stones, to fondle thy dust, and to weep over thy ruins.

I wept bitterly, but I found joy in my tears. I tore my garments,

but I felt relieved by it."

 

 

Of some later date is his letter from Acra, which may be considered as a

sort of ethical will, and which has been justly characterised as a eulogy

of humility. Here is an extract from it:--

 

 

"Accustom yourself to speak gently to all men at all times, and

thus you will avoid anger, which leads to so much sin.... Humility

is the first of virtues; for if you think how lowly is man, how

great is God, you will fear Him and avoid sinfulness. On the

humble man rests the divine glory; the man that is haughty to

others denies God. Look not boldly at one whom you address....

Regard every one as greater than thyself.... Remember always that

you stand before God, both when you pray and when you converse

with others.... Think before you speak.... Act as I have bidden

you, and your words, and deeds, and thoughts, will be honest, and

your prayers pure and acceptable before God."

 

 

The third letter is addressed to his son (R. Solomon?) who was staying (in

the service of the king) in Castile. It is in its chief content a eulogy

of chastity.(78) Probably Nachmanides had some dread of the dangerous

allurements of the court, and he begs his son never to do anything of

which he knows that his father would not approve, and to keep his father's

image always before his eyes.

 

As to his works, we may divide them into two classes. The one would

contain those of a strictly legalistic (Halachic), whilst the other those

of a more homiletic-exegetical and devotional character (Agadic). As

already indicated in the preliminary lines of this paper, I cannot dwell

long on the former class of our author's writings. It consists either of

Glosses or Novellć to the Talmud, in the style and manner of the French

Rabbis, or of Compendia of certain parts of the Law after the model set by

R. Isaac Alfasi or Maimonides, or in defences of the "Earlier Authorities"

against the strictures made on them by a later generation. A few words

must be said with regard to these defences; for they reveal that deep

respect for authority which forms a special feature of Nachmanides'

writings. His _Wars of the Lord_, in which he defends Alfasi against R.

Zerahiah of Gerona, was undertaken when he was very young, whilst his

defence of the author of the _Halachoth Gedoloth_(79) against the attacks

of Maimonides, which he began at a much more mature age, shows the same

deference "to the great ones of the past." Indeed, he says in one place,

"We bow before them (the earlier authorities), and though their words are

not quite evident to us we submit to them"; or, as he expresses himself

elsewhere, "Only he who dips (deeply enough) in the wisdom of the 'ancient

ones' will drink the pure (old) wine." But it would be unjust to the

genius of Nachmanides to represent him as a blind worshipper of authority.

Humble and generous in disposition, he certainly would bow before every

recognised authority, and he would also think it his duty to take up the

cudgels for him as long as there was even the least chance of making an

honourable defence. But when this chance had gone, when Nachmanides was

fully convinced that his hero was in the wrong, he followed no guide but

truth. "Notwithstanding," he says in his introduction to the defences of

the _Halachoth Gedoloth_, "my desire and delight to be the disciple of the

Earlier Authorities, to maintain their views and to assert them, I do not

consider myself a 'donkey carrying books.' I will explain their way and

appreciate their value, but when their views are inconceivable to my

thoughts, I will plead in all modesty, but shall judge according to the

sight of my eyes. And when the meaning is clear I shall flatter none, for

the Lord gives wisdom in all times and ages." But, on the other hand,

there seems to have been a certain sort of literary agnosticism about

Nachmanides which made it very difficult for him to find the "clear

meaning." The passage in the _Wars of the Lord_ to the effect "that there

is in the art (of commenting) no such certain demonstration as in

mathematics or astronomy," is well known and has often been quoted; but

still more characteristic of this literary agnosticism is the first

paragraph of the above-mentioned defences of the _Halachoth Gedoloth_.

Whilst all his predecessors accepted, on the authority of R. Simlai,(80)

the number (613) of the commandments as an uncontested fact, and based

their compositions on it, Nachmanides questions the whole matter, and

shows that the passages relating to this enumeration of laws are only of a

homiletical nature, and thus of little consequence. Nay, he goes so far as

to say, "Indeed the system how to number the commandments is a matter in

which I suspect all of us (are mistaken) and the truth must be left to him

who will solve all doubts." We should thus be inclined to think that this

adherence to the words of the earlier Authorities was at least as much due

to this critical scepticism as to his conservative tendencies.

 

The space left to me I shall devote to the second class of his writings,

in which Nachmanides worked less after given types. These reveal to us

more of his inner being, and offer us some insight into his theological

system. The great problem which seems to have presented itself to

Nachmanides' mind was less how to reconcile religion with reason than how

to reconcile man with religion. What is man? The usual answer is not

flattering. He is an animal that owes its existence to the same instinct

that produces even the lower creatures, and he is condemned, like them, to

go to a place of worm and maggot. But, may not one ask, why should a

creature so lowly born, and doomed to so hapless a future, be burdened

with the awful responsibility of knowing that he is destined "to give

reckoning and judgment before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be

He"? It is true that man is also endowed with a heavenly soul, but this

only brings us back again to the antithesis of flesh and spirit which was

the stumbling-block of many a theological system. Nor does it help us much

towards the solution of the indicated difficulty; for what relation can

there be between this _materia impura_ of body and the pure intellect of

soul? And again, must not the unfavourable condition in which the latter

is placed through this uncongenial society heavily clog and suppress all

aspiration for perfection? It is "a house divided against itself," doomed

to an everlasting contest, without hope for co-operation or even of

harmony.

 

The works _The Sacred Letter_ and _The Law of Man_ may be considered as an

attempt by Nachmanides, if not to remove, at least to relieve the

harshness of this antithesis. The former, in which he blames Maimonides

for following Aristotle in denouncing certain desires implanted in us by

nature as ignominious and unworthy of man, may, perhaps, be characterised

as a vindication of the flesh from a religious point of view. The contempt

in which "that Greek," as Nachmanides terms Aristotle, held the flesh is

inconsistent with the theory of the religious man, who believes that

everything (including the body, with all its functions) is created by God,

whose work is perfect and good, without impure or inharmonious parts. It

is only sin and neglect that disfigure God's creations. I cannot enter

into any further details of this work, but I may be permitted to remark

that there is a very strong similarity between the tendency of the _Sacred

Letter_ and certain leading ideas of Milton. Indeed, if the first two

chapters of the former were a little condensed and put into English, they

could not be better summarised than by the famous lines in the _Paradise

Lost_:--

 

 

Whatever hypocrites austerely talk

Of purity, and place, and innocence,

Defaming as impure what God declares

Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all,

Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain

But our destroyer, foe to God and man?

Hail, wedded love, mysterious law!...

Far be it that I should write thee sin or blame

Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,

Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets.