perhaps the first Jewish writer who mentions the apocryphal book _The
Wisdom of Solomon_, which he knew from a Syriac version, and which he
believed to be genuine. And when we read there (vii. 7‐25), “Wherefore I
prayed and understanding was given to me. I called upon God and the spirit
of wisdom came upon me.... For God has given me unmistakable knowledge to
know how the world was made, and the operations of the planets. The
beginning, ending, and midst of the times, the alterations and the
turnings of the sun, the changes of the seasons, the natures of the living
creatures and the furies of the wild beasts, the force of the spirits and
the reasonings of men, the diversities of plants and the virtues of the
roots. All such things that are either secret or manifest, them I
knew”—the wise king was, according to Nachmanides (who quotes the passages
which I have just cited), speaking of the Torah, which is identical with
this wisdom, a wisdom which existed before the creation, and by which God
planned the world. Hence it bears the impression of all the universe,
whilst on the other hand when it is said, “The king brought me into his
chambers,” those secret recesses of the Torah are meant in which all the
great mysteries relating to Creation and to the Chariot (Ezekiel i.) are
hidden.
We must content ourselves with these few sparks struck from the glowing
fires of these inner compartments, which, imperfectly luminous as my
treatment has left them, may yet shed some light on the personality of
Nachmanides, which is the main object of this essay. But I do not propose
to accompany the mystic into the “chambers of the king,” lest we may soon
get into a labyrinth of obscure terms and strange ways of thinking for
which the Ariadne thread is still wanting. We might also be confronted by
the Fifty Gates of Understanding, the Thirty‐Two Paths of Wisdom, and the
Two Hundred and Thirty‐One Permutations or Ciphers of the Alphabet, the
key to which I do not hold. It is also questionable whether it would
always be worth while to seek for it. When one, for instance, sees such a
heaping on of nouns (with some Cabbalists) as the Land of Life, the Land
of Promise, the Lord of the World, the Foundation Stone, Zion, Mother,
Daughter, Sister, the Congregation of Israel, the Twin Roes, the Bride,
Blue, End, Oral Law, Sea, Wisdom, etc., meant to represent the same thing
or attribute, and to pass one into another, one cannot possibly help
feeling some suspicion that one stands before a conglomerate of words run
riot, over which the writer had lost all control.
Indeed Nachmanides himself, in the preface to the above‐mentioned
Commentary, gives us the kind advice not to meditate, or rather brood,
over the mystical hints which are scattered over this work, “speculation
being (in such matters) folly, and reasoning over them fraught with
danger.” Indeed, the danger is obvious. I have, to give one or two
instances, already alluded to the theory which accepts the Torah or the
Wisdom as an agent in the creation of the world. But the mystic pushes
further, and asks for the Primal Being to which this Wisdom owes its
origin. The answer given is from the great Nothing, as it is written, And
the Wisdom shall be found from Nothing.(93) What is intended by this, if
it means anything, is probably to divest the first cause of every possible
quality which by its very qualifying nature must be limiting and
exclusive. Hence, God becomes the Unknowable. But suppose a metaphysical
Hamlet, who, handling words indelicately, should impetuously exclaim, To
be or not to be, that is the question?—into what abyss of utter negations
would he drag all those who despair, by his terrible Nothing.
On the other hand, into what gross anthropomorphisms may we be drawn by
roughly handling certain metaphors which some Cabbalists have employed in
their struggling after an adequate expression of God’s manifestations in
His attribute of love, if we forget for a single moment that they are only
figures of speech, but liable to get defiled by the slightest touch of an
unchaste thought.
But the greater the dangers that beset the path of mysticism, the deeper
the interest which we feel in the mystic. In connection with the above‐
mentioned warning, Nachmanides cites the words from the Scriptures, “But
let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the Lord,
lest he break forth upon them” (Exod. xix. 24). Nevertheless, when we read
in the Talmud the famous story of the four Rabbis(94) who went up into the
_Pardes_, or Garden of Mystical Contemplation, we do not withhold our
sympathy, either from Ben Azzai, who shot a glance and died, or from Ben
Zoma, who shot a glance and was struck (in his mind). Nay, we feel the
greatest admiration for these daring spirits, who, in their passionate
attempt to “break through” the veil before the Infinite, hazarded their
lives, and even that which is dearer than life, their minds, for a single
glance. And did R. Meir deny his sympathies even to Other One or Elisha
ben Abuyah, who “cut down the plants”? He is said to have heard a voice
from heaven, “Return, oh backsliding children, except Other One,” which
prevented his repentance. Poor fallen Acher, he mistook hell for heaven.
But do not the struggle and despair which led to this unfortunate
confusion rather plead for our commiseration?
Nachmanides, however, in his gentle way, did not mean to storm heaven.
Like R. Akiba, “he entered in peace, and departed in peace.” And it was by
this peacefulness of his nature that he gained an influence over posterity
which is equalled only by that of Maimonides. “If he was not a profound
thinker,” like the author of the _Guide of the Perplexed_, he had that
which is next best—“he felt profoundly.” Some writers of a rather
reactionary character even went so far as to assign to him a higher place
than to Maimonides. This is unjust. What a blank would there have been in
Jewish thought but for Maimonides’ great work, on which the noblest
thinkers of Israel fed for centuries! As long as Job and Ecclesiastes hold
their proper place in the Bible, and the Talmud contains hundreds of
passages suggesting difficulties relating to such problems as the creation
of the world, God’s exact relation to it, the origin of evil, free will
and predestination, none will persuade me that philosophy does not form an
integral part of Jewish tradition, which, in its historical developments,
took the shape which Maimonides and his successors gave to it. If
Maimonides’ _Guide_, which he considered as an interpretation of the Bible
and of many strange sayings in the old Rabbinic homilies in the Talmud, is
Aristotelian in its tone, so is tradition too; even the Talmud in many
places betrays all sorts of foreign influences, and none would think of
declaring it un‐Jewish on this ground. I may also remark in passing that
the certainty with which some writers deprecate the aids which religion
may receive from philosophy is a little too hasty. For the question will
always remain, What religion? The religion of R. Moses of Tachau or R.
Joseph Jabez(95) would certainly have been greatly endangered by the
slightest touch of speculation, while that of Bachya,(96) Maimonides,
Jedaiah of Bedres, and Delmedigo undoubtedly received from philosophy its
noblest support, and became intensified by the union.
But apart from that consideration, the sphere of the activity of these two
leaders seems to have been so widely different that it is hardly just to
consider them as antagonists, or at least to emphasise the antagonism too
much. Maimonides wrote his chief work, the _Guide_, for the few elect,
who, like Ibn Tibbon(97) for instance, would traverse whole continents if
a single syllogism went wrong. And if he could be of use to one wise man
of this stamp, Maimonides would do so at the risk of “saying things
unsuitable for ten thousand fools.” But with Nachmanides, it would seem,
it was these ten thousand who formed the main object of his tender care.
They are, as we have seen, cultivated men, indeed “students,” having
enjoyed a proper education; but the happy times of abstract thinking have
gone, and being under a perpetual strain of persecutions and cares, they
long for the Sabbath and Festivals, which would bring them both bodily and
spiritual recreation. They find no fault with religion, a false syllogism
does not jar on their ears; what they are afraid of is that, being engaged
as they are, all the six days of work, in their domestic affairs, religion
may be too good a thing for them. “To appease their minds,” to edify them,
to make life more sweet and death less terrible to them, and to show them
that even their weaknesses, as far as they are conditioned by nature, are
not irreconcilable with a holy life, was what Nachmanides strove after.
Now and then he permits them a glance into the mystical world in which he
himself loved to move, but he does not care to stifle their senses into an
idle contemplation, and passes quickly to some more practical application.
To be sure, the tabernacle is nothing but a complete map of the superlunar
world; but nevertheless its rather minute description is meant to teach us
“that God desires us to work.”
This tendency toward being useful to the great majority of mankind may
account for the want of consistency of which Nachmanides was so often
accused. It is only the logician who can afford to be thoroughgoing in his
theory, and even he would become most absurd and even dangerous but for
the redeeming fact “that men are better than their principles.” But with
Nachmanides these “principles” would have proved even more fatal. Could
he, for instance, have upset authority in the face of the ten thousand?
They need to be guided rather than to guide. But he does not want them to
follow either the Gaon or anybody else slavishly, “the gates of wisdom
never having been shut,” whilst on the other hand he hints to them that
there is something divine in every man, which places him at least on the
same high level with any authority. Take another instance—his wavering
attitude between the Maimonists and the Anti‐Maimonists, for which he was
often censured. Apart from other reasons, to which I have pointed above,
might he not have felt that, in spite of his personal admiration for
Maimonides’ genius, he had no right to put himself entirely on the side
where there was little room for the ten thousand who were entrusted to his
guidance, whilst the French Rabbis, with all their prejudices and
intolerance, would never deny their sympathies to simple emotional folk?
This tender and absorbing care for the people in general may also account
for the fact that we do not know of a single treatise by Nachmanides of a
purely Cabbalistic character in the style of the _Book of Weight_, by
Moses de Leon, or the _Orchard_, by R. Moses Cordovora, or the _Tree of
Life_ by R. Isaac Loria.(98) The story that attributes to him the
discovery of the _Zohar_ in a cave in Palestine, from whence he sent it to
Catalonia, needs as little refutation as the other story connected with
his conversion to the Cabbalah, which is even more silly and of such a
nature as not to bear repetition. The _Lilac of Mysteries_(99) and other
mystical works passed also for a long time under his name, but their claim
to this honour has been entirely disproved by the bibliographers, and they
rank now among the _pseudepigraphica_. It is true that R. Nissim, of
Gerona, said of Nachmanides that he was too much addicted to the belief in
the Cabbalah, and as a fellow‐countryman he may have had some personal
knowledge about the matter. But as far as his writings go, this belief
finds expression only in incidental remarks and occasional citations from
the Bahir,(100) which he never thrusts upon the reader. It was chiefly
when philosophy called in question his deep sympathies with even lower
humanity, and threatened to withdraw them from those ennobling influences
under which he wanted to keep them, that he asserted his mystical
theories.
Nachmanides’ inconsistency has also proved beneficial in another respect.
For mysticism has, by its over‐emphasising of the divine in man, shown a
strong tendency to remove God altogether and replace Him by the creature
of His hands. Witness only the theological bubble of Shabbethai
Tsebi—happily it burst quickly enough—which resulted in mere idolatry (in
more polite language, Hero Worship) on the one side, and in the grossest
antinomianism on the other. Nachmanides, however, with a happy
inconsistency, combined with the belief of man’s origin in God, a not less
strong conviction of man’s liability to sin, of the fact that he _does_
sin—even the patriarchs were not free from it, as we have seen above—and
that this sin _does_ alienate man from God. This healthy control over
man’s extravagant idea of his own species was with Nachmanides also a
fruit of the Torah, within the limits of which everything must move, the
mystic and his aspirations included, whilst its fair admixture of 365 _Do
not’s_ with 248 _Do’s_ preserved him from that “holy doing nothing” which
so many mystics indulged in, and made his a most active life.
Much of this activity was displayed in Palestine, “the land to which the
providence of God is especially attached,” and which was, as with R. Judah
Hallevi, always “his ideal home.” There he not only completed his
_Commentary on the Pentateuch_, but also erected synagogues, and engaged
in organising communities, whose tone he tried to elevate both by his
lectures and by his sermons. His career in Palestine was not a long one,
for he lived there only about three years, and in 1270 he must already
have been dead. A pretty legend narrates that when he emigrated to
Palestine his pupils asked him to give them a sign enabling them to
ascertain the day of his death. He answered them that on that day a rift
in the shape of a lamp would be seen in the tombstone of his mother. After
three years a pupil suddenly noticed this rift, when the mourning over the
Rabbi began. Thus, stone, or anything else earthly, breaks finally, and
the life of the master passes into light.
What life meant to him, how deeply he was convinced that there is no other
life but that originating in God, how deeply stirred his soul was by the
consciousness of sin, what agonies the thought of the alienation from God
caused him, how he felt that there is nothing left to him but to throw
himself upon the mercy of God, and how he rejoiced in the hope of a final
reunion with Him—of all these sentiments we find the best expression in
the following religious poem, with which this paper may conclude.
Nachmanides composed it in Hebrew, and it is still preserved in some
rituals as a hymn, recited on the Day of Atonement. It is here given in
the English translation of Mrs. Henry Lucas.(101)
Ere time began, ere age to age had thrilled,
I waited in his storehouse, as he willed;
He gave me being, but, my years fulfilled,
I shall be summoned back before the King.
He called the hidden to the light of day,
To right and left, each side the fountain lay,
From out the stream and down the steps, the way
That led me to the garden of the King.
Thou gavest me a light my path to guide,
To prove my heart’s recesses still untried;
And as I went, thy voice in warning cried:
"Child! fear thou him who is thy God and King!"
True weight and measure learned my heart from thee;
If blessings follow, then what joy for me!
If nought but sin, all mine the shame must be,
For that was not determined by the King.
I hasten, trembling, to confess the whole
Of my transgressions, ere I reach the goal
Where mine own words must witness ’gainst my soul,
And who dares doubt the writing of the King?
Erring, I wandered in the wilderness,
In passion’s grave nigh sinking powerless;
Now deeply I repent, in sore distress,
That I kept not the statutes of the King!
With worldly longings was my bosom fraught,
Earth’s idle toys and follies all I sought;
Ah! when he judges joys so dearly bought,
How greatly shall I fear my Lord and King!
Now conscience‐stricken, humbled to the dust,
Doubting himself, in thee alone his trust,
He shrinks in terror back, for God is just—
How can a sinner hope to reach the King?
Oh, be thy mercy in the balance laid,
To hold thy servant’s sins more lightly weighed,
When, his confession penitently made,
He answers for his guilt before the King.
Thine is the love, O God, and thine the grace,
That folds the sinner in its mild embrace;
Thine the forgiveness, bridging o’er the space
’Twixt man’s works and the task set by the King.
Unheeding all my sins, I cling to thee;
I know that mercy shall thy footstool be:
Before I call, oh, do thou answer me,
For nothing dare I claim of thee, my King!
O thou, who makest guilt to disappear,
My help, my hope, my rock, I will not fear;
Though thou the body hold in dungeon drear,
The soul has found the palace of the King!
POSTSCRIPT
The third letter of Nachmanides to which I have alluded above, is embodied
in the following will by R. Solomon, son of the martyr Isaac. Neither the
date nor the country of the testator is known, but style and language make
it probable that he was a Spanish Jew, and lived in the fourteenth
century. I give here a translation from the whole document as it is to be
found in the Manuscripts.
These are the regulations which I, Solomon, the son of the martyr,
Rabbi Isaac, the son of R. Zadok, of blessed memory, draw up for
myself. That as long as I am in good health, and free from
accident, and think of it, I shall not eat before I have studied
one page of the Talmud or of its commentaries. Should I transgress
this rule intentionally, I must not drink wine on that day, or I
shall pay half a _Zehub_(102) to charity. Again, that I shall
every week read the Lesson twice in the Hebrew text, and once in
the Aramaic version. Should I intentionally omit completing the
Lesson as above, then I must pay two _Zehubs_ to charity. Again,
that I shall every Sabbath take three meals, consisting of bread
or fruit. Should I omit to do so, I must give in charity half a
_Zehub_. Again, in order to subdue my appetites, and not to enjoy
in this world more than is necessary for the maintenance of my
body, I must not eat at one meal more than one course of meat, and
not more than two courses altogether; nor must I drink more than
two cups of wine at one meal, apart from the blessing‐cup (over
which grace is said), except on Sabbath, Festivals, Chanukah (the
Maccabean Dedication Feast), New Moon, and at other religious
meals (for instance, wedding‐dinners and similar festive
occasions). Again, I must not have any regular meal on the day
preceding Sabbath or Festivals. I must not have during the day
more than one course, so that I shall enter upon the holy day with
a good appetite. Should I transgress this resolve intentionally I
shall have to fast a day, or to pay two _Zehubs_. Again, that I
shall not eat the fish called _burbot_,(103) if I think of it.
Again, even on the above‐mentioned days, I must not eat more than
three courses at a meal, nor drink more than three cups of wine,
exclusive of the blessing‐cup. Again, ... I must not swear by God,
nor mention the name of Heaven without a purpose, nor curse any
man in the name of God. Should I, God forbid, transgress it, I
must not drink more than one cup of wine on that day exclusive of
the blessing‐cup. Should I, however, transgress this after dinner,
I must abstain from wine the following day. Should I transgress
it, I have to pay half a _Zehub_. Again, that I shall get up every
night to praise God, to supplicate for His mercy, and to confess.
On those nights when confession is not to be said (Sabbaths and
Festivals), I shall say hymns and psalms. This I shall do when I
am in my house, and in good health, free from any accident. Should
I transgress it, I shall drink not more than one cup of wine the
following day, except the blessing‐cup. I again take upon myself
to give in charity the following proportion of my expenditure—from
each dress which I shall have made for myself or for one member of
my family, costing more than ten _Zehubs_, I must pay one
_Pashut_(104) for each ten _Zehubs_. Again, if I should buy an
animal, or a slave, or a female slave, or ground, that I shall
also pay at the same rate. And if I shall buy clothes for sale,
called _fashas_, I shall pay two _Pashuts_ for each garment. As
often as I have occasion to say the benediction of thanksgivings
for having escaped danger I shall pay a _Zehub_, except when I am
travelling [also involving danger in those times!], in which case
I shall have to pay a _Zehub_ on my arrival, and two _Pashuts_
daily during the journey. Again, from every kind of fish bought
for me, costing more than a _Zehub_, I shall pay a _Pashut_ for
each _Zehub_. And also, if I shall be deemed worthy by God to
marry my children, and to be present at their wedding, to cause
them to give to the poor from the dowry brought to them by their
wives, whether in money or in kind, at the rate of one per cent.
If God will find me worthy of having sons, I must give in charity
according to my means at the time.
I shall also, between New Year and the Day of Atonement in each
year, calculate my profits during the past year and (after
deducting expenses) give a tithe thereof to the poor. Should I be
unable to make an accurate calculation, then I shall give
approximately. This tithe I shall put aside, together with the
other money for religious (charitable) purpose, to dispose of it
as I shall deem best. I also propose to have the liberty of
employing the money in any profitable speculation with a view to
augmenting it. But in respect of all I have written above I shall
not hold myself guilty if I transgress, if such transgression be
the result of forgetfulness; but in order to guard against it, I
shall read this through weekly.
I also command my children to take upon themselves as many of the
above regulations as may be in their power to observe, and also to
bind them (_i.e._ the regulations), from generation to generation,
upon their children. And he who carries them out, and even adds to
them, at pain of discomfort to himself, shall merit a special
blessing. And this is the text of the will which I, the above‐
mentioned Solomon, draw up for my children, may God preserve them.
That they shall pray thrice daily, and endeavour always to utter
their prayers with devotion. Again, that this prayer shall be said
in the _Beth Hammidrash_, or in the synagogue together with the
congregation. Again, that they shall apply all their powers to
maintain the synagogues and the houses of study, which our
ancestors have built, as well as to continue the endowments
established by my ancestors and myself. They must always endeavour
to imitate them, so that goodness shall never cease from among
them. Again, that they shall always have a chair on which a volume
of the Talmud, or some other Talmudical work, shall lie; so that
they shall always open a book when they come home. At least, they
shall read in any book they like four lines before taking their
meal. Again, that they shall every week read the Lesson twice in
the Hebrew text, and once in the Aramaic version. Again, to take
three meals on the Sabbath....