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Nahmanides
(Moses b. Nahman) (b. 1194, d. 1270)
Nahmanides was one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of his
generation. His commentary on the Pentateuch is printed in
standard editions along with those of Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi)
and Abraham Ibn Ezra. His halakhic (legal) works are also widely
used by students of Talmud. He has been aptly described as "a
genius at intellectual crossroads." He represented a synthesis
between the Talmudic traditions of the Tosafists in Northern
France, the emergent Kabbalah of Provence, and the
Andalusian cultural milieu. It is to a great extent due to his
influence and to that of his colleagues and students that
Barcelona became a center of Jewish culture in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries.
Nahmanides lived in Girona, and has been primarily associated
with that city, and particularly with a circle of Kabbalists based
there. Moshe Idel, however, has argued that Nahmanides'
approach to Kabbalah is distinct from that of the Girona
Kabbalists. In particular, he emphasizes Nahmanides' greater
resistance to discussing kabbalistic secrets in writing, and
consequent reliance on oral transmission from master to disciple,
and on his focus on Kabbalah as a means of illuminating the
esoteric meaning of the Torah and the commandments rather
than as an abstract theosophical system. Idel points to
Nahmanides' role in establishing an influential circle of
Kabbalists based in Barcelona whose success he contrasts to the
decline of the Girona circle in the next generation. In any case,
Nahmanides had many close connections in Barcelona,
including his contemporary Samuel HaSardi, and a number of
his students.
Apart from his work in Kabbalah, law and exegesis, Nahmanides
played a critical role as a communal leader at several points in
his life. In the 1230s, he took a moderate position in the conflict
over the works of Maimonides. Although critical of some features
of Maimonides' rationalism, he understood it better than many of
its other opponents did. In 1263, he was ordered to represent the
Jews in the Disputation of Barcelona. In response to the apostate
Paul Christian's radical strategy of arguing that rabbinic literature
contains evidence that Jesus was the messiah, Nahmanides
attacked both Paul's specific readings and his entire
methodology.
Towards the end of his life, Nahmanides left Spain for the Land
of Israel, arriving in 1267. He died in 1270.
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