Maimonides and the Merchants. Mark R. Cohen
of the merchants, customs that were deeply entrenched among Jewish merchants. These are revealed in rich and colorful detail in the Geniza documents. In this light, Maimonides’ retort to the judge of Alexandria, like his insistence in the Introduction to the Code that he was simply compiling laws from classical Talmudic and post-Talmudic sources, sounds like a disclaimer intended to ward off criticism that he was, in some cases, overstepping the bounds of traditional Jewish jurisprudence.
1.2.1 Criticism of the Method of the Code
The perplexed judge of Alexandria was far from Maimonides’ only critic. One of his contemporaries, the Babylonian Gaon Samuel b. Eli, protested strenuously against the Code, which, in his view, undermined the teaching of the Talmud and, by extension, detracted from the importance of his Talmudic academy in Baghdad.22 The harshest critic was R. Abraham b. David of Posquières in southern France, although Twersky argues that his biting criticisms were in keeping with acceptable rhetoric of the times.23 Maimonides’ defenders, particularly his son and successor, Abraham, went to great lengths to refute accusations leveled against the Code.24
The vast majority of medieval and early modern commentators approached the Code with a more reverent attitude. They searched for Maimonides’ sources in classical rabbinic texts or in works of his predecessors in the Islamic period. Their goal was not to challenge the Code but rather to rehabilitate it. When they failed to find a reasonable underpinning for a ruling on commercial law in the Code, it was often because they did not fully understand the economic realia of Maimonides’ time.
1.3 Maimonides’ Reforms of Synagogue Practice and Their Relationship to the Code
To illustrate the interplay of law and society in Maimonides’ thought, I review here his well-known reform of the synagogue service—particularly, how he translated almost surreptitiously what was an ad hoc taqqana into a permanent change in the halakha in the Code. If Maimonides was willing to institute reforms in the sensitive area of religious practice in his Code, we should not be surprised to discover that he instituted changes in the less controversial domain of commercial law.
1.3.1 The Taqqana Abolishing the Silent Recitation of the ‘Amida on Sabbath and Festivals
Sometime after his arrival in Egypt around 1165, Maimonides promulgated an “ordinance” (rutba in the Arabic original of Maimonides’ responsa, translated as taqqana by the editor, Joshua Blau, and so referred to in the scholarly literature)25 abolishing the silent recitation of the Eighteen Benedictions, also called the ‘Amida prayer (lit., “standing”) because it is recited while erect. Traditionally, during the morning and afternoon prayers on the Sabbath and festivals, the ‘Amida was recited first by the congregation praying silently along with the cantor, after which the cantor repeated the prayer aloud. The purpose of the repetition was to enable congregants who did not know the prayers by heart to fulfill their liturgical obligation by listening as the cantor repeated each blessing and by responding “amen.” During the evening prayer, the Eighteen Benedictions were recited only once, silently, because that prayer was originally considered optional and therefore no obligation fell upon congregants to recite it.
Maimonides explained his action as a response to indecorous behavior during the service. During the reader’s repetition, members of the congregation who had already fulfilled their obligation by praying silently with the cantor were in the habit of getting up from their places during the cantor’s repetition, stepping outside, talking to one another, blowing their noses, spitting on the floor, and, in the process, turning away from the direction of prayer—which Maimonides, like other Jewish writers before him, calls qibla, employing the Islamic term for the direction of prayer toward the holy city of Mecca.26 This lack of decorum was not peculiar or new to Maimonides’ time and place. A responsum of the Babylonian Gaon R. Naṭronai b. Hilai (Gaon from 857/858 to 865/866) reprimands Jews who sit in the courtyard outside the synagogue during services, talking and making light of the sanctity of the prayers.27
Maimonides notes that the disrupters set a bad example for others, who imitated their gauche behavior. Consequently, the cantor’s repetition on their behalf fell unheeded, and the blessings that he chanted were for naught (berakha le-vaṭala). In addition, the people for whom the repetition was intended ended up failing to fulfill their obligation to at least hear the prayer. Maimonides was especially disconcerted by the prospect that Muslims, who “observe this with their own eyes” (yashhadūnahu), would think that, for Jews, prayer was “for fun [la‘b] and mockery [huzu’],” quoting the very words that the Qur’ān ascribes to the People of the Book when they mock Islam (Sura 5:57). We may imagine that Muslims passing by the synagogue during daylight hours overheard and even observed the chaotic spectacle inside the synagogue compound and ridiculed it. The reform, Maimonides asserted, limiting the ‘Amida to a single, public recitation led by the cantor with all congregants praying along or answering “amen,” aimed at removing a stain on the reputation of the Jews in Muslim eyes, a “profanation of the name of God” (ḥillul ha-shem), as he writes, citing a general rule.28
We learn about Maimonides’ reform from his responsa, which portray the taqqana as an expedient and as a response to an immediate problem. Such changes in the halakha were normally time-bound, enacted to address an urgent situation. They were justified by the principle that one may “violate” the law (haferu toratekha)29 when the alternative—leaving the law as is—would have dire consequences. This was a perfect case, then, for applying the haferu toratekha rule, which Maimonides invokes explicitly in explaining his action.30
1.3.2 Echoes of the Taqqana in the Code
In the Code, which was meant to serve all future generations, Maimonides adhered to the status quo ante, codifying the halakha in accordance with ancient practice, leaving the initial silent recitation of the ‘Amida intact.31 Nonetheless, we hear echoes of the taqqana in the Code in directives calculated to achieve the same end. In the halakha about the recitation of the Eighteen Benedictions, for example, Maimonides rules that, following the silent recitation, when the cantor begins chanting the prayer aloud, “everyone must stand and listen and answer ‘amen’ after each blessing, both those who have not yet fulfilled their obligation and those who have already fulfilled theirs.”32 I take this phrase to be aimed at those very people who disturbed the decorum during the cantorial reprise. Maimonides instructs them to adhere to proper conduct after they have finished their silent devotion in order to avoid ḥillul ha-shem. In this way, he achieved the goal of the reform within the context of the existing halakha.
Another echo of Maimonides’ concern about synagogue decorum may be found in a halakha recommending that people clean out their nose and mouth before praying, a practice not required in the Talmud but reminiscent of the Islamic custom of purifying the body before engaging in prayer. This practice would minimize the nose-blowing and expectoration that Maimonides singles out as an embarrassment in the face of Muslim onlookers.33 In short, while Maimonides left the silent recitation of the Eighteen Benedictions on Sabbath and festivals “on the books,” he instituted rules in the Code meant to eliminate the very behavior that had brought him to issue the taqqana in the first place.
An additional reverberation arising from Muslim ridicule of synagogue decorum seems to lurk behind another halakha in the Code. It concerns the seating arrangement during the prayer service.34 In Maimonides’ day, congregants seated themselves haphazardly, facing one direction or another, with no apparent order. This rankled Maimonides’ rationalistic bent—his passion for systematization in all things. Doubtless, too, he worried that Muslims would contrast this unfavorably with the more reverent way of sitting in parallel rows in the mosque on Friday, the day of congregational prayer. And so he sought to change the way things were done.
The reform is enveloped in an ancient halakha from the Tosefta, giving it the sanction of rabbinic tradition. In the Laws of Prayer and the Priestly Blessing, Maimonides draws upon the language of the Tosefta but adds his own twist. He rules that people should sit in straight rows in the synagogue, one row behind the other, everyone facing