Lecture 11-Jewish Law Notes

Shulchan Aruch

  • Authored by Rabbi Yosef Karo

  • Also known as Beit Yosef

  • Abridged version of his larger work on the Arba'ah Turim, which he named Beit Yosef

  • His work is designed to provide clear rulings on all laws and customs.

  • A guide to finding answers concerning any law and custom.

Martyrdom

  • Occurred during the First Crusade in 1096.

  • Rhineland Massacres: Several thousands of Jews were killed.

  • Included forced conversions.

  • Examples of collective suicides to avoid conversion.

  • “The pure ones of the Most High girded themselves with strength and slew their sons and daughters, their young children and tender infants… to sanctify the Unique Name.” (Mainz Chronicle)

  • Related Articles- Comparing views between Maimonides and Rashi

    • Tosafot’s dialectical legal analysis including viewing majority action as representative of law

Martyrdom and Jewish Law

  • Question: Is being killed instead of converting acceptable, or even lauded, by Jewish Law?

  • Talmud: Three Cardinal Sins (Murder, Idolatry, Adultery)

  • Conversion to a different religion technically isn’t one of these.

  • Maimonides: It is forbidden and if one opts for being killed instead of converting they are akin to a murderer.

  • Tosafot: Yes - it is an ideal.

  • Question: How does law evolve bottom-up in Ashkenaz?

Vehicles of Change in Law

  • Laws necessarily change/evolve, even if only implicitly.

  • Tosafot: The Legal process continues through dialectics.

  • Dialectics and Commentaries

  • Codes (Mishneh Torah): Law is frozen, making it harder to adapt codes to new circumstances.

  • Maimonides Legal Project failed because it was too rigid!

Rationalism, Pietism, and Mysticism

  • Sefaridic Intellectual tradition was rationalistic.- Saadia Gaon, Maimonides

  • Ashkenazic Intellectual tradition was Pietistic.- Legal centric

    • Increase in legal stringencies

  • Changing landscape of Spain during the Reconquista

  • In late Medieval Sefarad a mystical movement arose

  • The rationalistic reconstructions of Judaism prompted, in turn, a powerful reaction wherein an amalgam of older traditions, including the same mystical, mythical, and magical elements, came to the surface in more overt and crystallized forms. (Moshe Idel)

Two “Sides” of the Divine?

  • Zohar, Bo 15

  • Before He gave any shape to the world, before He produced any form, He was alone, without form and without resemblance to anything else. Who then can comprehend how He was before the Creation? Hence it is forbidden to lend Him any form or similitude, or even to call Him by His sacred name, or to indicate Him by a single letter or a single point … But after He created the form of the Heavenly Man, He used him as a chariot wherein to descend, and He wishes to be called after His form, which is the sacred name “YHWH”

Kabbalah

  • Zohar (Radiance)

  • Late 13th century Northern (Christian) Spain

  • Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (Ramban) and Moses de Leon

  • In some sense a fusion of Ashkenazi and Sefardic philosophy

  • Law is central but also underpinned by “philosophy”

  • God is infinite but also finite (paradox)

  • Panantheism

  • Sefirot

  • Brokenness of God

  • Male and Female components who have been separated and must be rejoined

  • Maimonides’ failure to purify Judaism is, ironically, further demonstrated by the fact that it was his project which apparently brought about the crystallization of everything which he opposed in the form of kabbalah. (Menachem Kellner)

Halacha in the Zohar

  • Theurgic: Human action (the Law) restores the divine

  • The world is a reflection of God.- Panantheism

    • The world is broken therefore God is broken

    • Humans must repair both the world and God by restoring balance

  • Balance is first restored in the self via Mitzvot

  • Then balance is restored in God (the world)

  • "Whoever bonds to the Holy One, blessed be, and performs the commandments of the Torah, it is as if they uphold and Repair the worlds, the world above and the world below." (Zohar 3:122a-b)

  • Reuniting the Male and Female aspects of God

  • “The fact that it obtained recognition in spite of the obvious difficulty of reconciling it with the conception of the absolute unity of God, and that no other element of Kabbalism won such a degree of popular approval, is proof that it responded to a deep-seated religious need,” (Gershom Scholem)

Maimonides and Zohar

  • Both set out philosophies underpinning the law

  • While Ashkenazi Rabbis are still debating within the law

  • Zohar eventually “won” this debate

  • Due to Halacha being central and not tangential

  • Increased Halachic observance amongst Sefardic Jewry

From Medieval to Modern

  • Jews expelled from England (1290)

  • Jews expelled from France (1306)- Most went to Spain or East

  • March 1492: Alhambra Decree- Jews issued ultimatum in Spain

    • 200,000 Jews converted to Christianity

    • 100,000 Jews were expelled

  • Rise of New Centers- Central/Eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Russia)

    • Ottoman empire