rabbis in the west (1000– 1500 ce) 325
Individuals who live in accordance with the definition of the highest type
of asceticism, so that they resemble the spiritual beings ... renounce every-
thing that distracts them from the thought of God. They flee from inhabited
places to the deserts or high mountains, where there is no company, no
society ... The love of God delights them so much that they do not think
of the love of human beings ... Of all classes, this class is furthest removed
from the ‘mean’ which our religion teaches, because they renounce worldly
interests completely. And our religion does not bid us to give up social life
altogether, as we have previously quoted: ‘He created it not a waste; He
formed it to be inhabited .. .’^17
It would be wrong to deduce from this variety that innovation and
change went unchallenged over these centuries. Variant Jewish customs
practised by co- religionists at a safe distance could be tolerated more
easily than those within the local community. When in the ninth century
a certain Eldad arrived in Kairouan to announce to the local community
his origins in an independent Jewish kingdom in Africa made up from a
number of the lost tribes (including Dan, to which he claimed he himself
belonged), the Kairouan Jews were disturbed by the dubious form of
ritual slaughter (shehitah ) that Eldad used, only to be reassured by a
letter from the great rabbi Tsemach Gaon, in Baghdad, that such diver-
sity was not heretical because it was only to be expected in the diaspora.
The Rosh, who had fled from Germany to Spain (as we have seen above)
in 1306, claimed less legal justification when he endorsed the decision
of rabbis in Cordoba to execute a blasphemer: even though this was not
in his view permitted by halakhah, he gave his approval in order to pre-
vent greater bloodshed and the Islamic authorities depriving the Jewish
community of self- jurisdiction.^18
The principle behind rabbinic decisions implicit in the Mishnah and
Talmud had been, as we have seen (Chapter 11), that legislation accord-
ing to the majority of sages should be binding on all, but with the
dispersal of rabbis to numerous different countries the principle was no
longer easy to follow. Rashi’s grandson Rabbenu Tam tried in the
twelfth century to insist instead on unanimous consent, but this was if
anything even less practical, and it conflicted somewhat with his own
controversies with contemporaries, such as his argument with the Pro-
vençal scholar Meshullam b. Yaakov of Lunel over the precise rules for
the lighting of candles for the Sabbath and other customs. Criticism of the
halakhic rulings of others even became a distinct literary genre in the
writings of a younger contemporary of Rabbenu Tam, Avraham b. David,