Jewish History: 18 Controversies (Part 1/2)

It should come as no surprise that over the course of four millennia of Jewish history, numerous controversies (mahlokot) have animated Jewry and/or exercised its religious leadership. For a people so longevous, creative, and learned, this is to be expected. These controversies varied widely in their nature and extent, and comprised scholarly, philosophical, mystical, halakhic, and political topics. Some were academic, others practical, still others downright scandalous.

What follows is a précis of just some of the most notable and engaging controversies generated among Jewry within the classical, medieval, and modern eras:

The Patriarch’s Overreach: Gamliel II, scion of the House of Hillel and patriarch/president (nasi) of the Great Sanhedrin in Yavneh (after Yohanan ben Zakkai abdicated the office for him), once ordered revered sage Joshua ben Hananiah to appear before him with his staff and money on the day Joshua reckoned to be Yom Kippur, as opposed to the day Gamliel had reckoned. He greeted Joshua by saying: “Come in peace my master and my disciple—my master in wisdom and my disciple because you accepted my words.” On another occasion, concerning a dispute over the necessity of reciting the “Amidah” prayer (which Gamliel had finalized and instituted thrice daily) in the evening, Gamliel made Joshua stand while he himself sat and taught, and the sages were astir over the overbearing affront to their respected colleague. The aristocratic Gamliel was impeached, deposed, and replaced by Elazar ben Azaryah. However, Gamliel humbled himself by accepting the verdict while continuing to attend the academy. Joshua’s mild disposition contrasted with the heavy-handedness of Gamliel, whose humiliating treatment he bore with forbearance. When Gamliel sought Joshua’s forgiveness, it was readily given, whereupon the former was reinstated as nasi and shared the position with Elazar.

Exilarchate/Gaonate: From approximately the mid-second century to the mid-13^th century of the Common Era, Babylonian Jewry was internally managed by a succession of hereditary exilarchs (rashei galut), each of whom served as a political leader administering the Jewish community’s affairs while also representing the Jews to their various overlords. The exilarch (head of the exile) was known in Aramaic as the reish galuta (in Hebrew, rosh golah; in Arabic, ras al-jalut), and recognized as a royal scion of Davidic lineage; thus was each exilarch in the Diaspora acknowledged as the counterpart of each patriarch/president (nasi) in the Land of Israel (the title was also analogous to that of ethnarch, which obtained in the Hellenistic and Roman periods).

Throughout their collective tenure, the exilarchs were forced to contend for influence within the Babylonian Jewish community with its religious leadership—the rabbinical principals (geonim)—especially after the advent of the academies in Nehardea, Sura, Pumbedita, Mahoza, and Naresh in the third and fourth centuries. Jewish political and religious leaders were seldom identical; exilarchs were counseled on religious matters by the leading sages, in which role the latter were officially referred to as hakhamim. The relationship between the exilarchate and the gaonate was often amicable, sometimes disputatious, but always interdependent. Exilarchs appointed the rabbinical principals, but the rabbis also exerted influence over the appointment of the exilarchs.

The exilarch David II proved to be a chronic controversialist. In 930, his most famous dispute, featuring his erstwhile ally Sa’adiah ben Joseph (whom David had appointed head of the Sura academy), occurred when Sa’adiah declined to endorse the terms of a will benefiting David, despite its endorsement by Kohen Tzeddek II Kahana ben Joseph, head of the Pumbedita academy. A feud ensued in which David and Sa’adiah each excommunicated the other and appointed a replacement: David replaced Sa’adiah with Jacob ben Joseph ben Satia, and Sa’adiah returned the favor by replacing David with the latter’s brother Josiah. In 933, after both parties had appealed to Caliph al-Muqtadir, the dispute was settled by the last-named’s successor Caliph al-Qahir, who sided with David, resulting in the banishment of Josiah to Khorasan (Iran and Central Asia) and the removal of Sa’adiah from the Sura gaonate. Sa’adiah thereafter sojourned for four years in Baghdad (Iraq). In 937, David and Sa’adiah finally reconciled during the Purim festival, and Sa’adiah was reinstated as gaon. Despite his stormy temperament and excessive severity against adversaries, David is credited with reinvigorating the declining Sura academy at a time when it was near its demise, and with restoring the exilarchate’s authority over the wealthy among Babylonian Jewry. In 940, when David and his son Judah III died in quick succession, Sa’adiah raised David’s grandson Hezekiah in his own home until his decease in 942.

Hebrew Grammar: In 10^th century Andalusia, under the auspices of Jewish courtier Hasdai ibn Shaprut, head of Sephardic Jewry in Muslim Spain, the Hebrew grammarians and poets Menahem ben Jacob ibn Saruk and Dunash ben Labrat flourished and debated their scholarly findings. Both Menahem and Dunash erred in their grammatical techniques, which allowed for Hebrew roots of one or two letters (Hebrew stems are triliteral). Menahem’s pioneering disciple Judah Hayyuj elucidated the triliteral aspect of Hebrew grammar (dikduk) that had eluded his predecessors, although his writings and ideas were still imperfect. It fell to the next generation’s Jonah ibn Janah to complete that which Judah had begun: while he criticized Judah and emended his errors, he vigorously supported his grammatical system, even against the biases of the adherents of the previous methods, and in his criticisms he never withheld the respect and gratitude due to Judah, to whom he owed his Hebrew philological knowledge: “If we can criticize him, we owe our ability to do so to his teaching and to the good we have received from his writings.”

In 12^th century France, the controversy revived: Jacob ben Meir (Rabbeinu Tam) composed a treatise on Hebrew grammar, Seifer HaHakhraot, wherein he defended Menahem against the 160 criticisms of Dunash and mostly decided in his favor. Joseph Kimhi (Rikam), who adhered to the seminal works of both Judah (Kitab al-Af’al Dhawat Huruf al-Lin) and Jonah (Kitab al-Tankih), indited the bipartite Seifer HaGalui, which criticized Jacob’s Seifer HaHakhraot for championing Menahem’s Mahberet, while adding his own critique of the latter work. Joseph was the first grammarian to distinguish five long and five short vowels and eight verb classes in Hebrew.

But why should grammar, of all things, become controversial? In Jonah’s words, “since the revealed Scriptures can be understood only by the aid of the science of language, the endeavor to comprehend them from all sides becomes a more imperative duty the higher the end aimed at and the more our reason recognizes the greatness and majesty of Him who has revealed these books.” In other words, when it comes to sacred religious works, exegesis relies upon linguistics.

Maimonidean: The Maimonidean Controversy comprised four climaxes in the Middle Ages: (1180–1204); (1230–1235); (1288–1290); and (1300–1306). More than one matter was at issue, but the common threads throughout these peaks were the particular methods, beliefs, and philosophies of—or represented by—the preeminent sage, philosopher, and physician Moses ben Maimon (Rambam/Maimonides).

The first climax occurred during Moses’ lifetime and centered upon his masterwork, indited in Hebrew from 1170–1180, the magisterial halakhic code Mishneh Torah (Yad HaHazakah), comprising 14 volumes and covering all legal subjects discussed throughout the Talmud. The tome’s tremendous breadth and systematic order were unequaled, but its lack of source references, its non-Talmudic arrangement, its use of Mishnaic Hebrew instead of Talmudic Aramaic, its periodic preference for the Jerusalem Talmud and Tosefta over the Babylonian Talmud, and certain of its rulings elicited sharp criticism from the likes of Abraham ben David (Rabad of Posquières/Rabad II) and Samuel of Baghdad. Moses had presumptuously asserted that study of his code could replace Talmud study: “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.” Unsurprisingly, this sat ill with his fellow sages. He also labelled anyone who affirmed that there is one God but that God possessed corporeality (a body, like human beings, and was thus spatially circumscribed) as a heretic (min); while divine corporealism was deemed false, the belief was widely maintained at the time and categorizing it as heresy seemed extreme. Moses also appeared to question the traditional belief in bodily resurrection in the World to Come (Olam HaBa) by accenting the survival of the soul or intellect. In his correspondence with the sages of France, Meir HaLevi Abulafia (Ramah) impugned as heretical Moses’ disbelief in physical resurrection of the deceased. Moses was cognizant of the criticism leveled against him, and responded to it with his Maqalah fi T’hiyat HaMeitim (Treatise on Resurrection), which reassured his detractors that he affirmed the traditional belief. The first climax then subsided with Moses’ decease in 1204.

The second climax flared up in southwestern Europe—Spain and Provence (France), the seedbed of kabbalah—with the Hebrew publication of Moses’ last masterpiece, Dalalat al-Ha’irin (translated into Hebrew as Moreh Nevukhim/Moreh HaNevukhim and into English as the Guide for the Perplexed), a philosophical treatise whose tripartite structure comprised 176 chapters, and whose intent was to rationalize Judaism and harmonize it with Neo-Aristotelian philosophy. This tract, which Moses had indited in 1190, prompted a storm of protest that began even during his lifetime. Philosophy and philosophers came under sharp attack and were controverted on theological, exegetical, and practical grounds. The sages debated the potential synthesis or the absolute antithesis of divinely revealed faith and humanly conceived philosophy; revelation and reason were generally considered contradictory systems that challenged each other’s veracity and authority. While not the first sage to do so (e.g., Philo Judaeus had attempted to harmonize Hebraism and Hellenism a millennium earlier), Moses had expressly sought a merger between Judaism and Greek philosophy, an alien element that originated among a pagan civilization. Solomon of Montpellier (Shlomo Min HaHar) sincerely admired Moses as a learned Talmudist and referred to him respectfully, but feared that the latter’s philosophical perspective (hashkafah) would undermine the authority of the Torah and engender heresy among Jewry. In 1232, he and his disciples Jonah Gerondi (Jonah of Gerona/Rabbeinu Yonah) and David ben Saul imposed a ban of excommunication (heirem) upon the philosophical works of Moses—viz., Seifer HaMada (the first volume of the Mishneh Torah) and Moreh Nevukhim—and those who studied them. Although the ban was sustained by the sages of northern France, the sages of Provence retaliated by excommunicating Solomon and his disciples. The increasing discord among the Maimonist (rationalist) and anti-Maimonist (anti-rationalist) parties soon led to a bitter ruction that threatened to spread throughout Jewry. David Kimhi (Radak), champion of the Maimonists, accused Solomon of seeking allies among the monks of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders, who publicly consigned to the flames copies of Moses’ works in Montpellier (France) in 1232, tidings of which horrified Jewish communities across France and Spain. Moses’s son, Abraham, dwelling under Islam in the East, was outraged at what had been done to his father’s works and accused anti-Maimonist sages in the West of being influenced by anti-rational Christianity. However, it is highly unlikely that Solomon informed on the Maimonists to the Catholic Church authorities, especially given that he and his disciples remained esteemed among the Jewish community in the aftermath of the scandal, and thus his erstwhile depiction as an overzealous reactionary is unwarranted. Renowned sage and kabbalist Moses ben Nahman (Ramban/Nahmanides) counseled the anti-Maimonists to adopt a moderate position so as to achieve what was feasible in the struggle against the strictures of philosophy and rationalism: he addressed an epistle, Igeret HaHemdah, to French rabbis in defense of Moses ben Maimon, and attempted to conciliate Maimonists and anti-Maimonists, though both parties rejected his proposed compromise. When, from 1242–1244, 24 cartloads of Talmuds and Judaic books were burned in neighboring Paris’ Place de Grève (now Place de l’Hôtel de Ville), the shock of such wanton desecration engendered remorse and diffused tensions among Jewry for several decades.

The third climax was relatively less dramatic, and involved Solomon Petit of France, who in 1288 immigrated to the Land of Israel, where he settled in Akko and led the local kabbalists. Once he began denouncing Moses’ works and agitating for their destruction, he ran afoul of the exilarchs David ben Daniel II (based in Mosul, Iraq) and Yishai ben Hezekiah (based in Damascus, Syria), who placed Solomon under a ban of excommunication signed by a dozen sages. Solomon failed to appreciate the intellectual culture of his new milieu and to recognize that he was now residing in the Land of Israel, which was within the ambit of the nagidate—i.e., of the prince (nagid) of Egyptian Jewry, who at the time was none other than Moses’ grandson, David ben Abraham. Moreover, within Islamdom, Jews had adapted long ago to the study of philosophy, unlike their counterparts in Christendom who had previously supported Solomon. Solomon was also controverted in Europe by the likes of Shem Tov ben Joseph ibn Falaquera, who in his Mikhtav Al Dvar HaMoreh ridiculed Solomon and referred to him as a fool (a pun on his surname Petit; peti = fool).

The fourth and final climax did not question the validity of philosophy and science, which had gained acceptance among traditionalist Jews, who now sought not to proscribe the study of philosophy but merely to restrict it among the young, who lacked the intellectual and spiritual wherewithal to cope with the challenges it posed to tradition. The anti-rationalists rebuffed the rationalists’ radical allegorization of Scripture and their supposed denial of Creation and the miraculous, which traditionalists deemed fundamental to affirming the Torah; they were concerned that such drastic construals would engender laxity in religious practice—for if the Torah were true merely symbolically, then the Torah’s commandments (mitzvot) could also be construed merely symbolically, at the cost of their actual observance, which is premised upon a literal interpretation of Scripture. Ironically, what provoked this last phase of controversy was the rationalists’ practice, contra Moses ben Maimon, of healing the ailing by means of astral magic—then part of the universities’ medical studies curriculum. Traditionalists like Abba Mari of Lunel deemed this a species of idolatry (avodah zarah) and a contravention of halakhah, and even some rationalists agreed with him. However, leading Spanish Talmudist Solomon ben Abraham ibn Aderet (Rashba) highlighted that both Talmuds featured plenty of magical material that violated no religious precept, and believed that God had imbued the universe with various powers (such as stellar forces) meant to ensure the health and well-being of His creatures. In 1305, though, in the face of dissension among the sages, he issued a ban of excommunication upon Jewish community members “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.” Even though works by Jewish philosophers and the study of medical science were excepted from the ban (which was intended to be a compromise), it elicited a counterban from Menahem Meiri, who did not share Solomon’s aversion to philosophy or his inclination for intervention in the studies of other scholars. In 1306, King Philip IV of France expelled French Jewry, a disaster that dwarfed the internal rift regarding philosophical studies, upon which even the limited ban proved ineffective because unenforceable. As it turned out, for all its inarguable greatness, the Mishneh Torah did not supersede the Talmuds, but was itself superseded for practical purposes by Joseph Karo’s Shulhan Arukh.

Zoharic: In 13^th century Spain, a little-known rabbi, Moses de León, published a kabbalistic Torah commentary in a cryptic Aramaic (with an admixture of Hebrew), the Zohar (Midrash D’Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai), a multilayered and multivolume compilation depicting the theosophical epiphanies of peripatetic Galilean mystics in search of God and ascribed to the tanna Shimon bar Yohai. From the outset the mysterious appearance of the Zohar, ostensibly a work some 1,150 years old yet thitherto unknown, generated controversy. The Zohar has most recently been recognized as a kabbalistic compilation, a stratified composition with dozens of distinct literary units; moreover, the text might have been produced by a mystical fellowship (havurah), and might have been developed, supplemented, and edited by multiple generations of kabbalists. Thus Moses ought to be more precisely and more accurately identified as the author, compiler, and redactor of only a significant portion of the extant text, the work’s final shape only having been determined by printers in Italy nearly 300 years later. In its printed edition, the Zohar became a quinquepartite composite work comprising the tripartite Seifer HaZohar Al HaTorah, Tikunei Zohar, and Zohar Hadash. At some point, Moses might well have become head of a fellowship (rosh havurah) in Castile, and in all likelihood devoted himself to the Zoharic corpus to counteract the rationalism and philosophy prevalent among Spanish Jewry in his era. Despite its dubious and disputed provenience, the Zohar attained widespread acceptance and became the basis of all subsequent kabbalah, and as Scripture ranks in importance just after the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and the Talmuds. It is now acknowledged as the masterpiece of kabbalah and as a classic of world literature.

Free Will: During the Roman era, preeminent sage Akiva ben Joseph averred that “everything is foreseen, yet free will is given to every human being”. Yet in 14^th century Spain, Jewish apostate (and former chief rabbi of Burgos) Abner of Burgos (Alfonso of Valladolid) indited Igeret HaGzeirah, an epistle justifying his apostasy on the grounds that planetary influence—i.e., astrological predestination—negates free will. His apostasy and defense of determinism generated controversy and engendered tension, including between Abner and his erstwhile student and friend Isaac ben Joseph ibn Pulgar, who responded to his former master’s fatalistic work with a scathing satirical poem referring to the biblical test of the adulterous woman (Numbers 5:11-30). Isaac tried to resolve the problem posed by Abner of the supposed contradiction between human freedom and divine foreknowledge by theorizing about the mutual cooperation of the divine and human wills. He strongly opposed astrology and astrologers. He responded to Abner’s anti-Judaic polemic Minhat Knaot with his refutation Igeret HaHarfit (Igeret HaHarifot). Jewish philosopher and physician Moses of Narbonne (Moses Narboni) further refuted Abner’s views concerning free will in his polemical essay Ma’amar BiB’hirah, later published in the collection Seifer Divrei Hakhamim (1849).

Rabbinical Ordination: In 16^th century Tzfat, an attempt was made to renew a significant Jewish rite of passage long in abeyance. There in 1538 Jacob Berab reintroduced the institution of rabbinical ordination (smikhah) in the hope of restoring the Great Sanhedrin council required before the advent of Messiah, according to Moses ben Maimon, and to unite the Jewish people under an authoritative central leadership. He was nominated by an assembly of 25 sages of Tzfat as the first ordainee (samukh) who could then ordain others, although this was rejected by Jacob’s personal opponent Levi ben Jacob ibn Habib (Ralbah), chief rabbi of Jerusalem, and the latter’s ally David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz), chief rabbi of Egypt. Levi strongly opposed the renewal effort on the grounds that this measure would preempt the messianic redemption and signify the primacy of Tzfat over Jerusalem. The bitter ruction was documented in a pamphlet, Smikhat Zikkeinim O Kuntres HaSmikhah. Jacob was expelled from the Land of Israel by the Ottoman authorities after being denounced by his rivals who imputed political motives to his activities. Before he departed, however, he ordained four rabbis of Tzfat: Joseph Karo, Israel di Curiel, Moses di Trani I (Mabbit), and Abraham Shalom. Jacob withdrew either to Syria or to Egypt and continued to advocate the right to ordain and reconstitute the Sanhedrin, ultimately to little avail. He eventually returned to Tzfat, where he died and was buried. His grandson Jacob ben Abraham Berab was a disciple of Joseph Karo, who ordained him, and this younger Jacob went on to become the leading sage of Tzfat who in turn ordained seven sages, including his brother Moses Berab.

Shabbateanism: In 1665, during the overnight study custom known as “Tikun Leil Shavuot”, Nathan of Gaza (Abraham Nathan HaLevi Ashkenazi) reportedly swooned and convulsed on the ground while possessed by a heavenly mentor (maggid). Thereafter he earned a reputation as a spiritual physician who rectified souls, and the epithet “the holy lamp” (butzina kaddisha), the honorific applied to the tanna Shimon bar Yohai in the Zohar. During his episodes of raptus or afflatus, he claimed to have beheld the figure of (the probably bipolar) rabbi and kabbalist Shabbtai Tzvi engraved on the divine throne and to have heard a voice announcing in the name of God that Shabbtai was Messiah. When Shabbtai approached him as a patient in search of spiritual healing, instead of treating him Nathan confirmed his messianic claim and encouraged his salvific vocation. He professed to be Elijah the prophet and assumed the role of messianic herald, acting as both Shabbtai’s baptist and his apostle, as it were. He announced that in a year’s time Messiah would make his glorious appearance (and repatriate the Ten Lost Tribes to the Land of Israel, “riding on a lion with a seven-headed dragon in its jaws”), take captive the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and establish Israel’s predominance over all the world’s nations. Since Nathan’s vatic powers were widely acknowledged as authentic, his endorsement of Shabbtai as Messiah gained credence.

Shabbtai’s status and fame disseminated throughout Europe and catalyzed much excitement and enthusiasm among Jews and Christians alike, especially in England, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Lithuania. Remarkably, he managed to gain the allegiance of eminent sages, including Isaac Aboab (Simao) da Fonseca, Moses ben Jonathan Galante (Moses Galante the Younger), Moses Zacuto, and Hayyim Benveniste. His leading opponents included Jacob Hagiz, Hayyim Abulafia, Jacob Sasportas, Solomon Algazi, Aaron Lapapa, and Samuel Aboab. But after Shabbtai sailed for Istanbul, his vessel was intercepted once it emerged from the Strait of Gallipoli (the Dardanelles/Hellespont) into the Sea of Marmara, and upon arrival he was arrested, shackled, and incarcerated. Sultan Mehmet IV of the Ottoman Empire issued an ultimatum: conversion or death. Shabbtai donned a turban and embraced Islam. He accepted the new name Aziz Mehmet Effendi and was rewarded with the honorary royal title “Keeper of the Palace Gates” (Kapiči Bashi) and a generous royal pension of 150 aspers per day (w/no actual duties required). In 1673, he was exiled to Dulcigno (Ulcinj, Montenegro), where he all but vanished from public view and within a few years died on Yom Kippur, just two months after his 50^th birthday and almost exactly a decade post-apostasy, in isolation and obscurity. Shabbateanism, however, outlived its leading man and continued to trouble Jewry for more than a century.

Emden-Eybeschütz: Jacob Emden (Yabetz), former chief rabbi of Emden (Germany), was a staunch opponent of the Shabbatean movement and carefully scrutinized kabbalistic works for hints of heresy. His stormy temperament embroiled him in several rabbinical controversies, the most famous occurring in 1751 with Jonathan Eybeschütz—chief rabbi of Germany’s Three Communities: Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek—and dividing German Jewry for decades.

In a series of books and pamphlets, Jacob accused Jonathan, whose youngest son Wolf was a confirmed Shabbatean, of secret adherence to Shabbateanism, as evidenced by his circulation among the ailing of amulets (kammeiot) with Shabbatean inscriptions. Jonathan denied the accusation, excommunicated (for the second time) the Shabbateans, and was reelected to his office. Most German rabbis supported Jacob, while most Polish and Moravian rabbis supported Jonathan. Jacob was excommunicated by rabbis in Poland, condemned by the German Jewish community, and compelled to leave Altona, which prompted him to seek refuge in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 1752, as a result of King Frederick V of Denmark siding with Jacob, his opponents in Germany were censured and fined, while Jacob was proscribed from further agitation against Jonathan. In 1753, the matter was brought before the Va’ad Arba Artzot (Committee of Four Lands), which ruled in Jonathan’s favor. In 1755, Jonathan excommunicated the Shabbateans for the third time. That same year, Jacob’s opponents burgled his home, seized his papers, and turned them over to the authorities, who ultimately absolved Jacob of ongoing wrongdoing. In 1760, however, the bitter ruction erupted anew when Shabbateans were found among the students attending Jonathan’s academy and his youngest son Wolf declared himself a Shabbatean prophet, which precipitated the academy’s closure. In 1761, Jonathan excommunicated the Shabbateans for the fourth and final time.

Among his numerous writings, Jonathan indited a defense against his critics, Luhot Eidut, and the kabbalistic monograph Shem Olam. Fueling the lingering doubts regarding his genuine beliefs is the affinity between Shem Olam and the overtly Shabbatean work V’Avo HaYom El HaAyin, ascribed to him by several of his own students and which he ultimately admitted authoring at least in part. Paradoxically, Jonathan seemed to oppose pseudo-messiahs while appreciating messianism as an exilic phenomenon; in this way his supporters and detractors represented manifestations of his own internal, contradictory views. He died and was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Altona (where Jacob Emden would soon join him only a few grave plots away).