338 A History of Judaism
rest of the world, for we Jews are dispersed throughout the world. Our
bodies, but not our souls, are in your hands.^35
The issues which had caused such strife were too deeply based to dis-
appear altogether, and by the end of the century passions were aroused
by the extent to which allegorizing was adopted by the rationalists. In
Barcelona in the late thirteenth century, Shlomo b. Avraham Adret,
known as Rashba, sought a compromise. Despite his opposition to
extreme allegorizing, he himself had studied philosophy, and he defended
Maimonides’ philosophical writings. But he was concerned that phil-
osophy and other secular studies would distract young students from
the Torah ‘which is above these sciences’ and issued a ban on 26 July
1305, stating that ‘we have decreed for ourselves, for our children and
for all those that join us, that for the next fifty years and under threat of
being banned from the community, no one among us under the age of
twenty- five shall study either in the original or in translation books
written by the Greeks on religious philosophy or natural science ...
Excluded, however, from this general ban are books on the science of
medicine.’
For many rationalist rabbis by this date, such a ban was not accept-
able, even if they did not themselves indulge in philosophy, and
Menahem Meiri, a great talmudist from Perpignan in Provence, wrote
explicitly to Adret in opposition, pointing to the (by now) many tal-
mudic scholars who had been philosophers. A younger contemporary
from Provence, Yosef b. Abba Mari Caspi, who wrote a commentary on
Maimonides’ Guide and indeed went further than Maimonides in
accepting Aristotelian arguments by arguing for the eternity of the uni-
verse, left in a testamentary letter to his son an outline of the educational
curriculum he believed most suitable for the young. It included, along-
side practical sciences and ethics, the study of logic, theology, Aristotle’s
Metaphysics and (of course) Maimonides’ Guide :
There are, my son, two dispositions among contemporary Jews which must
be firmly avoided by thee. The first class consists of those of superficial
knowledge, whose studies have not gone far enough. They are destroyers
and rebels, scoff at the words of the Rabbis of blessed memory, treat the
practical precepts as of little account, and accept unseemly interpretations
of biblical narratives. They betray unmistakably their inadequate acquaint-
ance with the philosophical writings of Aristotle and his disciples ... The
second class referred to above includes those of our people who hold in
contempt genuine philosophy as presented in the works of Aristotle and