140 Aaron W. Hughes
At the crossroads of these cultures stood the commanding fi gure of
Nahmanides. Th e rich diversity of his work and his role in numerous com-
munal and intercommunal confl icts attest to his ability to draw on and ap-
peal to numerous constituencies. Perhaps more than any of his immediate
contemporaries, Maimonides included, he was able to mediate the tensions
associated with these diverse Jewish cultures and, in the process, absorb
the best that each had to off er. Th is is certainly not to imply that Nahman-
ides is a synthetic or derivative thinker; on the contrary, his work exhibits
an uncommon comprehensive and multilayered quality. He could, for ex-
ample, quite easily employ philosophical rationalism, expound on the mys-
tical currents associated with the kabbalah, and, at the same time, uphold
the conservatism of the rabbinic schools associated with northern France.
Biographical Sketch
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman was born in 1195 to a prominent family of the
city of Gerona in the kingdom of Aragon in northern Spain, and he seems
to have died sometime in 1270 in the land of Israel. In between the book-
ends of his life, the Tosafi sts in northern France had just revolutionized
the study of Talmud, the great Maimonides had died in Egypt, and the fi rst
recognizable group of Spanish kabbalists emerged in the city of Nahman-
ides’s birth.2 At his death, he was known as a scholar, physician, rabbinic
sage, orator, and defender of the faith against the attacks of the Church at
the Court of Aragon.3 Indeed it was on account of this latter role that he
was forced to fl ee Aragon for the land of Israel in 1267. It was there that he
wrote his commentary on the Torah, the synthesis of his life’s work.
Recognized at a fairly young age as a great intellect, he soon became
a communal leader, administering to the Jewish communities of south-
ern France and northern Spain. On account of this, he was drawn into the
controversies surrounding both the fi gure of Maimonides and his ratio-
nalist teachings.4 He defended, for example, antirationalists in Montpel-
lier against a ban imposed on them by pro-Maimonideans in Provence;
yet he also wrote to the Tosafi sts of northern France encouraging them
to withdraw their ban against Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed and
Sefer ha-Madda, the latter being the fi rst book of his revolutionary Mish-
neh Torah.5 His ability to defend both sides in these disputes has led some
scholars to conclude that Nahmanides, whether because of polemical pres-
sure or the need for intercommunal peace, hid his true opposition to the