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Why did a group of Dominican monks, in Paris, 1233, set fire to a pile of the philosophical works of Maimonides?

On a somber day in 1233, in a public square in Paris, a group of Dominican monks set fire to a huge pile of the philosophical works of Maimonides, the leading rabbi of his generation. According to some historical sources, a number of Jewish followers of the rabbis who opposed Maimonides accused him of heretical views, denounced his works to the Dominicans and demanded they be consigned to the flames. The Dominicans were only too pleased to accommodate them.

The conflagration sent shock waves through the Jewish communities of Medieval Europe and brought an end to a controversy that threatened to tear the rabbinate apart. But not entirely. Although the Guide for the Perplexed, the magnum opus of Maimonides philosophical works, is universally accepted as a central pillar of the Jewish scholarship, some circles still view it with suspicion and fear.

Who was Maimonides? What was his role in Jewish history and scholarship? Why did the views he expressed in the Guide spark so much incendiary controversy? Why were his opponents so frightened that they enlisted the help of the Christian authorities in an internal Jewish dispute?

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, known to history as Maimonides, was no stranger to controversy. He was born in 1135 in Cordoba, Spain, during the time when rival Muslim caliphates competed for power in Spain. In 1148, the fanatical Almohads conquered Cordoba and threatened to convert its Jews forcibly. The Maimon family fled and moved from city to city until they arrived in Fez, Morocco. In 1166, the family arrived in Egypt and settled in Fostat, the Jewish suburb of Cairo.

During this nomadic period of his life, despite the upheavals, dangers and hardships, Maimonides completed his Commentary on the sixty tractates of the Mishnah, the core element of the Talmud. The work was an incredible display of genius and scholarship that immediately elevated its author to the highest echelons of the rabbinate.

Maimonides authored the magisterial Mishneh Torah, the first formal codification of Jewish law written in clear, concise and easy-to-understand Hebrew. It rocked the rabbinate.

The first controversy came 15 years later. At the age of 45, Maimonides authored the magisterial Mishneh Torah, the first formal codification of Jewish law written in beautiful, clear, concise and easy-to-understand Hebrew. It was a work of art and science that rocked the rabbinate. Moreover, with fears of it affecting their livelihood, some of the less illustrious rabbis of the time responded with furious opposition and condemnation.

Some were concerned that it simplified and watered down the complex, interlocking tapestry of the authoritative Talmud. Until that point, questions of law and custom presented to rabbis were adjudicated solely by reference to the Talmud, the grand depository of all Jewish law. But the Talmud is not the kind of law book to which we are accustomed, in which all the laws are arranged in a series of articles and sub-articles. Rather, the Talmud is a voluminous transcript of wide-ranging and often contentious debates among the Sages of the first millennium of the modern area. The debates veer off into numerous tangents, and debates that begin in one tractate often reappear in other tractate with other proofs and arguments. The debates are rarely resolved in the two thousand pages of the Talmud, leaving it to later generations to derive the law as it should be applied to practical cases.

Consequently, in order for a rabbi to issue a ruling he needed great skill and experience in navigating the highways and byways of the Talmud. Ordinary people had no recourse to books that would give them guidance regarding issues that arose in daily life. Their only choice was to consult rabbinic experts who formulated their particular interpretations of the issues and issued rulings based on their personal conclusions. Most of these rabbis supported themselves and their families by the fees they collected for their services.

Maimonides felt there was an urgent need for a uniform set of laws that all rabbis would apply in their rabbinic courtrooms, and based on his encyclopedic knowledge of the Talmud, he provided just such a code. Furthermore, he believed that rabbis should not charge fees for their services but should seek trades by which to support their families while they studied the Torah. Maimonides himself earned a living as a physician and eventually became the personal physician to the royal family in Cairo.

His opponents raised numerous objections to his code. They claimed that people would stop studying the Talmud because they would find no need for it. They also complained that Maimonides had not given sources for his rulings.

The storm raged for a short while, and then it subsided. The Mishneh Torah became one of the pillars of Jewish learning, which it remains to this very day. But the resentment this work had triggered continued to simmer under the surface, and ten years later, it burst forth in a blaze of rage.

In 1190, Maimonides published his Guide for the Perplexed, a work of Jewish theology that aimed to forge a synthesis between the traditions of the Torah and the principles of Aristotelean philosophy and thereby place Judaism on a firm footing of rationalism and science. The Arabs had translated the works of the ancient Greeks into Arabic, and young Jewish intellectuals were drawn to them. Maimonides wrote his book to demonstrate that faith and reason were not contradictory.

In the book, Maimonides accepted Aristotles propositions. A good part of the book, however, is devoted to a vehement refutation of Aristotles claim that the world always existed. There can be only two possibilities, either the world always existed, or it was created ex nihilo by a God in the Jewish conception. Maimonides demonstrates that the second option is much more rational than the first.

The book is magnificent in its scope and originality. It presents a brilliant system of Jewish theology such as had never been previously formulated. It addresses all anthropomorphic references to God, such as laughing, flying, sitting, having hands and feet and so forth, that might be construed as corporeality, and it explains each one as a metaphor for one or another of Gods actions. It discusses prophecy, divine providence and the underlying reasons for all the commandments. In its totality, it defends and elucidates the basic tenets of Jewish theology, but the authors detractors found much fault with it.

The Jewish communities in medieval times were insular, as was the broader Christian community. They had a great fear of Greek philosophy, believing that it would lead to heresy. They were leery of the fine line Maimonides had drawn and did not believe that his readers would stay on the right side of it. They also took exception with some of the authors Torah interpretations they considered radical.

Maimonides limited the reliance on the supernatural to explain natural phenomena, whereas others saw miracles everywhere. Maimonides interpreted many episodes in the Torah, such as Balaams talking donkey, as taking place in prophetic visions rather than in real life. Maimonides believed there were limits to divine providence, allowing for strands of randomness in the world. Moreover, Maimonides failed to write about the physical resurrection of the dead, an omission he corrected in one of his later epistles.

Some firebrands denounced the book to the Dominican monks and it was consigned to the flames. The shock of this incredible event brought the rabbinate to its senses.

The controversy raged in the rabbinate for decades after Maimonides passed away, with many rabbis condemning the book and many others coming to its defense. Adding injury to insult, two very prominent rabbis issued a cherem a ban on the book, a shocking development considering that Maimonides was universally acknowledged as the greatest rabbi of his generation. Seismic tremors rippled through the Jewish community. Numerous hotheads emerged on both sides of the dispute and stirred the cauldron of dissension. Finally, some of these firebrands denounced the book to the Dominican monks, and it was consigned to the flames.

The shock of this incredible event brought the rabbinate to its senses. The rabbis who had issued the bans retracted them and publicly repented, and the book was widely embraced and quoted as one of the most important expositions of Jewish theology ever written. A shameful episode in Jewish history came to an end.

It is unlikely that the book posed a serious threat to the faith of the average Jews of the time, since it can only be penetrated after long and painstaking study. Although the other works of Maimonides are written in a clear and beautiful style, the Guide is written in an entirely different style, convoluted and almost opaque, most probably resembling the style of Muslim philosophers against whom it competed.

Furthermore, there is very little in the book that could be considered even a tiny window to heresy, but the very idea of giving validity to Greek philosophers caused consternation in the insular communities. Even today, there is some residual reluctance to study the book and approach Judaism from the perspective of rationalism rather than simple faith.

Most Jewish people in todays age of almost unlimited access to information, however, are open to the combination of faith and reason with the understanding that the synthesis strengthens both.

Rabbi Reinman is author of the recently published A Guide to the Guide: A Chapter-by-Chapter Summary of the Guide for the Perplexed (Amazon), in which he summarizes the thoughts of Maimonides in modern, easy-to-understand English. Click here to order.

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When They Burned Maimonides' Books: The Controversy behind The Guide for the Perplexed - aish.com - Aish

In this weeks sedra Tzav we read about the offerings brought to the Temple, and the one that was totally consumed, the Olah. But immediately we are told: Each morning, the priest shall kindle wood on [the altar] Thus, there shall be a constant fire kept burning on the altar, without being extinguished. (Leviticus 6:5-6)

So far, very much about human action. It seems that there is a commandment to keep fire on the altar by a daily placing of wood. The Talmud (Tractate Yoma 21b) states that Even though fire came down from the Heavens, there is a commandment that a human should bring.

Sefer HaChinuch, a 13th century compendium of the commandments, explains that there is something positive about miracles being carried out by God in a way that would be perceived as hidden by people, rather than open. For example, the splitting of the Red Sea was a great miracle, but may have been experienced in natural terms such as a strong wind parting the sea.

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This makes me think of the Talmudic concept that one should not rely on a miracle (Shabbat 32a). We are a religion that is anchored in a belief in God and his ongoing involvement in the world, alongside our own efforts to build a better world. We do so by observing the mitzvot and bringing the values of the Torah to the world. This is why, for example, God asks Moses to go into the Red Sea after a short prayer, rather than awaiting reliance on a miracle to save the Children of Israel.

And so with our growing Climate Crisis. An approach based on belief in miracles might say that God would not allow His world to be destroyed, and will miraculously save it. But we too must not rely on miracles. Like Moses, we need to pray alongside taking action to protect our planet, bringing Jewish values to the fore in doing so. Campaigns such as the United Synagogues Dorot phasing out disposables campaign and the Board of Deupties EcoSynagogue initiative enable us to be part of protecting our world.

Even avoiding single use plastics and other disposables in our home, our place of work and our community is significant from a Jewish perspective. This week the United Synagogues head office and nearly a third of US shuls have gone disposables-free or have committed to do so as part of the Dorot initiative and I commend them for doing so.

This recognises the very real responsibility we have for the future of humanity. These small acts may counter the feel of disillusionment borne by the question what difference can I make? Eschewing disposables is a role we can play in protecting Gods creation.

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Making Sense of the Sedra: if God undertakes miracles, what is the point of human action? - Jewish News

This liberal sentiment stresses the importance of any single individual, any one of us. And, as difficult and distressing as it may be, this has to be a central part of how we think about war: personally.

So we should think about the wounded pregnant woman who was pictured being carried on a stretcher from a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after it was shelled by Russian forces.

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Her pelvis had been crushed and her hip detached. Taken to another hospital for treatment, she cried out kill me now! as realised she was losing her baby. Despite the efforts of medical staff, both she and the child died.

What happened was documented by journalists from the Associated Press, a highly respected news agency, and yet, with the glib certainty of liars, Russias government swiftly dismissed the account. According to them, no patients or medical staff were present when the missiles hit home, and the photographs of the woman who died and other expectant mothers at the scene were fakes.

Murderers caught with blood-red hands, spouting nonsense as they angrily insist on their innocence.

But Vladimir Putin is not the only killer in the international community, there are others. The world's liberal democracies have to learn the lesson he is teaching us about despots whose main concern is their iron grip on power. Just as Russia is being belatedly shunned, the West should also be turning away from other oppressive regimes before they decide to copy the Kremlin.

The central pillars of liberal democracy have long been undermined by Putin, his agents and his political fellow-travellers in the West, but his invasion of Ukraine and suppression of dissent in Russia have demonstrated beyond dispute just how important they are to the preservation of fundamentals like the right to life. If there is one positive to this war, it is that it has re-energised our commitment to democratic values.

So, amid the desensitising effect of regular death tolls, think of the husband who last month was looking forward to the joy of a new child, but who instead found himself collecting the bodies of both his wife and baby, his world destroyed entire.

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Ukraine-Russia war: Vladimir Putin is showing liberal democracies that their values really matter Scotsman comment - The Scotsman

The Chidon Ha-Tanach (International Bible Contest) is an international competition on the Tanach (Torah, Prophets, and Hagiographic Writings) for middle school and high school Jewish students sponsored by the Israeli government and held annually in Jerusalem on Yom Haatzmaut (Israel Independence Day).

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The Chidon was conceived by David Ben Gurion who, ironically, exhibited a cognitive dissonance of sorts with respect to Torah-true Judaism. On one hand, he did not believe in the G-d and the Sinaic revelation but, on the other hand, he believed Torah knowledge to be fundamental to Jewish existence. Nonetheless, he was enormously well-versed in scripture and Jewish learning, and he held regular weekly meetings at his home with the Prime Ministers Bible Study Circle, a select group of students of the Bible including many prominent Israeli biblical scholars.

The role of Judaism and the Bible in his life may perhaps be best summarized by his famous statement: Since I invoke Torah so often, let me state that I dont personally believe in the G-d it postulates . . . I am not religious, nor were the majority of the early builders of Israel believers. Yet their passion for this land stemmed from the Book of Books . . . [and the Bible is] the single most important book in my life. In one famous episode, when he appeared before the Peel Commission and was challenged to produce a land deed proving Jewish ownership of Eretz Yisrael, he held up a Bible and exclaimed: Here is your land deed! He often adopted biblical messages in public speeches and characterized the Bible as underscoring Jewish destiny.

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In 1958, Israels Society for Biblical Research, with Ben Gurions enthusiastic support, inaugurated a Chidon Ha-Tanach for adults as, ironically, a one-time special event. This first Chidon was overseen by Yechezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963), a Jewish philosopher, biblical scholar, and author of many highly-regarded scholarly works, the greatest of which is his ambitious The Religion of Israel from its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (1960). In this masterwork, he traces the history of religion and biblical literature and presents his thesis that Jewish monotheism did not evolve from paganism or any of the cultures surrounding the first Jews but, rather, was an entirely new religion. He was awarded the first Bialik Prize for Jewish thought (1933) and the prestigious Israel Prize, for Jewish studies (1958).

The first Bible Quiz, which was heavily text-based and extraordinarily challenging, commenced on August 4, 1958, at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem. The questions were treated as national security secrets and extraordinary measures were instituted to preserve the integrity of the contest, including the assignment of 300 police officers and sending a special contingent to guard the examinations and the 14 translators sequestered at an undisclosed hotel. The final, which was held in the open-air amphitheater at the Hebrew University, was attended by 2,400 spectators, including members of the Israel Cabinet and Knesset, diplomats, heads of religious communities, and other dignitaries.

During the tightly run proceedings, each contestant appeared on stage backed by an illuminated country flag, which demonstrated not only the internationality of the contest, but also the role of Israel as a Jewish nation taking its place amongst the family of nations, an important propaganda goal during Israels early years. Television and private radio broadcasts in Israel did not exist at the time, so the entire country tuned in to the broadcast of the event by Kol Yisrael (Israels public radio station). The Chidon became a matter of great interest and positive discussion not only in Israel, but also worldwide, although several of the first participants and others were upset to learn that the questions were limited to the Old Testament.

The two leaders among the nine male and six female finalists from 14 countries were Israels representative, Amos Hakham, and Irene Santos of Brazil. The American contestant, Mystelle Davis, the wife of a Georgia farmer, won the Bible quiz and a spot in the finals on the popular $64,000 Question television show. Hakham (1921-2012), a remarkable man at the center of an incredible and deeply moving story, was the first-prize winner. A solitary man who kept mostly to himself, he became a national hero; he was thrown into the spotlight and idolized by both the press and the public, and his name became synonymous with Bible study.

Hakham had sustained a head injury as a young child that caused a speech impediment such that his father, Noah, feared that his son would be ridiculed and, as such, declined to enroll him in school. Instead, Noah who earned a doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Vienna, became the founder of the Seminary for Teachers of the Mizrachi movement, and was a scholar in his own right personally taught him Bible. When Hakhams father died, he was forced to become the familys only breadwinner and, with no formal education and having learned no trade or craft, he took a low-paying position as a clerk with the Institute for the Blind. While devoting himself to the study of Bible on his own time, he also aided disadvantaged blind students attending regular schools in Jerusalem and helped to create a Hebrew Braille Bible.

When news of the coming Chidon Ha-Tanach began to circulate, Hakhams neighbors, who were aware of the breadth and depth of his scholarship, urged the shy and quiet man to become a contestant and, mired in extreme poverty, he had to borrow a suit for the competition. The combination of his victory and his modest personal story made him the center of national and international attention to the point that Israeli newspapers proclaimed that he had become the most popular person in Israel.

After Hakhams great triumph, Ben Gurion took him on a national tour, and he was offered a position as a Bible teacher at the Ayanot Agricultural School. He later formally studied Bible to earn an academic degree and he went on to write eight volumes (including Psalms, Job, and Isaiah) of the seminal Daat Mikrah, a series of biblical commentary in Hebrew published by Mossad Harav Kook, which serves as a foundation of contemporary Israeli Orthodox Bible scholarship. He is credited with creating the model for a methodological, word-by-word, verse-by-verse commentary.

The success of the Chidon Ha-Tanach launched other Bible contests, including a competition sponsored by the IDF (Israel Defense Force), and numerous local and regional quizzes, usually also held on Yom Haatzmaut, reflecting the broad popularity of learning Torah even among secular Israelis. Two years after the inaugural Chidon, Israel instituted an international Bible quiz for adults marked by great publicity.

The success of this adult competition led to Israels establishment of Chidon Ha-Tanach Le Noar Yehudi, a Torah Quiz for Jewish Youth, with the first such contest held in 1963 on Yom Haatzmaut in Jerusalem with much pomp and ceremony. The change in emphasis from the adult population to Jewish high school students was seen by many as the fulfillment of the quintessence of the transmission of Judaism the Torah of Israel, in the land of Israel, for the people of Israel to the next generation. Even the secular Ben Gurion, who delivered the final questions at the first Youth Chidon during his final year as prime minister, characterized it while witnessing the annual grand military procession as the spiritual parade alongside the military parade.

The Youth Chidon Ha-Tanach, which is today run by the Jewish Agency, begins at the regional level and then nationally, with each country setting its own rules, and the national winners, about 20 finalists from about 60 countries, are invited to Jerusalem to participate in the finals of the international competition. Following the precedent set by Ben Gurion, the final questions are delivered by Israeli notables, including prime ministers. The first-place winner is awarded a full scholarship to study at Bar Ilan University, and the highest finisher from the Diaspora is awarded a scholarship to study at Machon Lev (the Jerusalem College of Technology).

The 2020 Youth Chidon, which had no live audience because of COVID, generated some controversy when the master of ceremonies, Avshalam Kur, repeatedly berated and demeaned Diasporan contestants for not making aliyah. Below are ten sample questions from the 2020 U.S. national finals (the answers are intentionally not provided):

For many years, the youth event overshadowed the adult Chidon, which was discontinued in 1981. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought unsuccessfully to revive it in 2007, but it was Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose son Avner beat 12,000 participants to win the Youth Chidon in 2010, who succeeded in getting it reinstituted in 2012, and many former youth competitors from different countries now participate in the adult Chidon.

Most scholars and educators see the Chidon Ha-Tanach as an important pedagogical tool that inspires broad interest in the Torah and in Torah study among Jews, including particularly among secular Jews who may not have been fortunate to have parents who enrolled them in a yeshiva. As time passes and we get ever further from Sinai, the lack of Jewish education has become a growing problem and presents a greater threat to Jewish survival than our worst enemies ever could. As all reliable and statistically credible studies show, there is a direct correlation between a lack of Jewish education and intermarriage.

As such, anything that promotes and encourages Torah study on whatever level is to be embraced and promoted. Even if the level of knowledge required to participate in the Chidon is rudimentary, as some critics argue (see below), there can be no dispute that having a stable base of fundamental biblical knowledge is a condition precedent to higher Jewish learning, such as the study of Talmud and halacha. Even given that this level of study should not constitute an end in itself, public events such as the Chidon, and Bible quizzes in general, generate interest and promotes learning that may someday lead to greater in-depth study.

Nonetheless, there are critics who object to the Chidon on the grounds that Bible study is supposed to be for its own sake. They argue that the Torah is not a book of stories and history but, rather, a guidebook for a way of life and that the competition undermines the Torah study by turning it into a sport, where scoring points becomes more important than absorbing the halachic and ethical essence of the Torah. Moreover, they contend that the contest rewards rote memorization rather than the deep understanding of G-d and his ways that can only come from a lifetime of toiling in Torah.

In this regard, I recall a favorite theme of my Rav, teacher, and friend, R. Amnon Haramati, ah, who was always highly critical of yeshivot that only taught Talmud and that deemphasized the study of the Prophets. He would observe that the prophets were generally not discussing such things as putting on tefillin, or sitting in a sukkah, or eating matzah on Passover but, rather, they were all about ethical teaching and the importance of being, above all, a mensch. The Rav explained that virtually all their prophesies of doom were not because Jews had failed to perform mitzvot but, rather, because their conduct was inconsistent with how G-d expected them to behave.

Thus, I would argue, by promoting the study of even no more than the text of the Prophets, the Chidon Ha-Tanach facilitates the extrapolation of the very values and principles that the critics maintain that the Chidon discounts. Moreover, Chidon participants learn Hebrew; a love for Eretz Yisrael, both through their studies and through their travel in Israel as part of the Chidon experience; and experience the Jewish unity that is cultivated through exposure to other Jews from around the world whom they would likely never have had the opportunity to meet.

An important issue concerning the Chidon arose after Israels victory in the Six-Day War. For thousands of years, Jews romanticized the sites in Eretz Yisrael that they could only read about but never experience directly but, after 1967, they were able to follow in the footsteps of their holy biblical ancestors and walk the land of Jerusalem, Hebron, and Judea and Samaria. Religious Zionists, always a minority in Israel and across the world, saw the 1967 victory in religious terms as a manifestation of the hand of G-d in Jewish history, as the Torah and the prophetic visions of the ultimate Jewish conquest and settlement of all of Eretz Yisrael which they had been studying for 2,000 years was coming true before their very eyes.

For most secular Jews, however, the miraculous not only became commonplace, but it also became a political issue that weakened cultural Zionism as, sadly, many began to question the right of Jews to live in their own historic land. The result was that while even secular Jews like Ben Gurion, for example had historically seen the Bible as critical to Jewish identity and existence, one of the ways that the erosion of the Zionist ethos after Six-Day War manifested itself was that many, if not most, of the Chidon competitors were Jews with no real emotional investment in either Torah or Judaism.

In fact, some argue that the Chidon Ha-Tanach today has become a source of political and religious tension and conflict and is therefore antithetical to fostering Jewish unity in the name of Torah. For example, during the 2008 competition on Yom Haatzmaut marking Israels 60th anniversary, a leading contender was a Jew for Jesus, which resulted in a call by many Torah-observant Jews to boycott the event. A year later, the winner presented then-prime minister Netanyahu with a request that Israel become more active in the attempt to secure the release of Jonathan Pollard. Nonetheless, the Chidon remains an important pedagogical and cultural phenomenon that remains internationally popular.

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Pros And Cons Of The Chidon Ha-Tanach - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com