Introduction

YOM TOV BEN ABRAHAM OF SEVILLE (Ritva, c.1250–1330) was a student of Solomon ben Abraham Adret and a great admirer of Nahmanides. He is remembered primarily as the author of influential novellae on the Talmud. Despite these rabbinic, as opposed to philosophical, credentials, Rabbi Yom Tov wrote a little work called Sefer hazikaron, dedicated to defending Maimonides from the criticisms levelled at him by Nahmanides in the latter's commentary on the Bible. In this work, there is only one issue on which Rabbi Yom Tov sides with Nahmanides against Maimonides: the status of the Hebrew language.

Rabbi Yom Tov wrote: ‘Heaven forfend that I offer my soul as a pledge in defence of the essence of what Maimonides wrote, and may the Lord forgive him for it, since he made such a great and terrible matter depend upon something this insignificant.’

What great and terrible matter was it that Maimonides had slighted in this fashion and for which he needed God's forgiveness? He had denied that there is anything intrinsically unique about Hebrew. He maintained, in effect, that the sanctity of Hebrew has nothing to do with the facts that the Bible was written in it, that God said ‘ Let there be light’ in it and in so doing created the universe, that it is the language of prophecy, that it was the ‘ur-language’ of humankind, or that it is the most exalted language, spiritually and poetically, on earth. No, Maimonides maintained that Hebrew is called holy simply because it is a language without words for foul and disgusting matters, especially concerning sex and defecation. He thus claims that Hebrew is holy because of one of its characteristics, a characteristic which could, in principle, be shared by other languages. Hebrew is a language like other languages, only more refined.

Rabbi Yom Tov—and not only he—found this intolerable. I will try to show that he was right, according to his lights, to refuse to defend only this of all the many Maimonidean positions attacked by Nahmanides. Maimonides’ claims about the ‘normality’ of Hebrew reflect a much deeper agenda, one which could not have failed to arouse the ire of thinkers like Rabbi Yom Tov. This agenda is the subject of our study in this book.