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Competing Approaches to Maimonides in Early Kabbalah*

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Competing Approaches to Maimonides in Early Kabbalah* CHAPTER THREE COMPETING APPROACHES TO MAIMONIDES IN EARLY KABBALAH* Jonathan Dauber There is no one kabbalistic view of Maimonides’ philosophy. Rather, different Kabbalists took dramatically different approaches to the thought of the Great Eagle, ranging from outright rejection to appropriation.1 Competing views towards Maimonides’ thought can, as I will argue here, already be identified among those twelfth- and thirteenth-century Kabbalists who were responsible for forging Kabbalah as a literary phenomenon. These include, most prominently, the Southern French scholars R. Abraham ben David (Rabad), his son R. Isaac the Blind, and R. Isaac’s nephew and disciple R. Asher ben David. They also include R. Isaac’s Catalonian disciples, R. Ezra ben Solomon and R. Azriel, both of whom resided in the city of Gerona. Also of note are two other Geronese scholars, R. Jacob ben Sheshet, who seems not to have been R. Isaac’s direct disciple but was heavily influenced by him, as well as the illustrious R. Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) who, similarly, was not R. Isaac’s direct disciple, but was in contact with him regarding kabbalistic matters. It was primarily members of this group—especially R. Asher, R. Ezra, R. Azriel, and R. Jacob—who for the first time put the previously oral traditions that constitute the prehistory of Kabbalah into writing and blended them with various other intellectual trends, notably philosophic ones, thereby creating the written discourse of Kabbalah.2 * I would like to thank Professor David Berger for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1 For an overview of various approaches that Kabbalists took towards the thought of Maimonides, see Jacob I. Dienstag, “Ha-Rambam ve-Æakhme ha-Kabalah,” in Maimonides, His Teachings and Personality: Essays on the Occasion of the 750th Anniversary of His Death, ed. Simon Federbusch (New York, 1956), pp. 100–135 [Hebrew], and the annotated bibliography prepared by idem, “Maimonides and the Kabbalists: Bibliography,” Da{at 25 (1990), pp. 54–94; 26 (1991), pp. 61–96 [Hebrew]. 2 The groundbreaking work of identifying and explaining the significance of this 58 jonathan dauber One approach to viewing the relationship of this group to Maimo- nides is that of Moshe Idel. Idel has, on the whole, seen this group as taking an anti-Maimonidean stance. Indeed, he suggests that its members formulated their esoteric traditions as a response to Maimo- nides’ claim that the ancient esoteric areas of study, the “account of the creation” and the “account of the chariot,” could be equated with Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Thus the spread of Maimonides’ works becomes, according to Idel, a major negative catalyst for the emergence of Kabbalah.3 More recently, Elliot Wolfson has presented numerous striking instances in which these Kabbalists appropriated Maimonidean ideas.4 Wolfson’s analysis, in my view, highlights the need to assess more carefully the complex relationship between these Kabbalists and Mai- monides. In the present study I will suggest that while it is clearly the case that all of the aforementioned Kabbalists, in various instances, appropriated Maimonidean ideas, their attitude towards him was not uniform. In particular, I will focus on two of these Kabbalists, R. Asher group was done by Gershom Scholem and Isaiah Tishby. Scholem discussed this group in many contexts. His fullest and most mature account appears in his Origins of the Kab- balah, trans. Allan Arkush, ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Princeton, 1987). Tishby’s most significant contribution appears in Studies in Kabbalah and its Branches (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 3–35 [Hebrew]. Other scholars have made further strides in elucidating the literary and social history of this group. In this context I would single out Moshe Idel’s work in clarifying the relationship between R. Isaac and Nahmanides. See Idel, “R. Mosheh ben Naman: Kabalah, Halakhah, u-Manhigut Ruanit,” Tarbiz 64 (1995), pp. 535–580. See also the English version of Idel’s study, “Nahmanides: Kabbalah, Halakhah, and Spiritual Leadership,” in Jewish Mystical Leaders and Leadership in the 13th Century, eds. Moshe Idel and Mortimer Ostow (Northvale, N.J., 1998), pp. 15–96. I would also make special note of Haviva Pedaya’s important analysis of these Kabbalists in her Name and Sanctuary in the Teaching of R. Isaac the Blind: A Comparative Study in the Writings of the Earliest Kabbalists ( Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 42–69 [Hebrew]. 3 Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988), pp. 250–253; idem, “Maimonides and Kabbalah,” in Studies in Maimonides, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), pp. 31–81. See also idem, Absorbing Perfections (New Haven, 2002), pp. 280–289. Idel’s view is echoed by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Philosophy and Kabbalah: 1200–1600,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, eds. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 218–232. See also Harvey J. Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden, Boston, and Köln, 2000), pp. 31–82. 4 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in Moses Maimonides (1138–1204): His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical “Wirkungsgeschichte” in Different Cultural Contexts, eds. Görge K. Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse (Würzburg, 2004), pp. 209–237. See also idem, “Via Negativa in Maimonides and Its Impact on Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008), pp. 393–442. .
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