Nahmanides and Rashi on the One Flesh of Conjugal Union: Lovemaking vs. Duty

摘要

The seminal thirteenth century Geronese kabbalist, Talmudist, and exegete MosesNahmanides (Moses b. Naman, 1194–c.1270) perceived the physical world asa mirror for the internal workings of the divine world. For him the Bible “relatesabout the lower matters and alludes to the upper,”1 rendering its apparently mundanelegal, historical, and ethical dimensions a record of the inner variegated life ofGod. At the very inception of the world, each and every day of creation transcendsits strict temporality, referring “at the inner core of the matter” ( ) tothe “sefirot which emanate from above.”2 The world’s genesis unfolds along theparallel planes of the material world and the complex intradeical mechanics, thesefirot—a staple of kabbalistic thought and terminology—that are constituent of Godhimself. However, Nahmanides’ exegetical project does not invite the escapist flightfrom reality that mysticism so often requires. On the contrary, his thoroughgoingkabbalistic ontology divulges a keen appreciation for and preoccupation withempirical reality and temporal history rather than threatening to overwhelm themundane. His biblical exegesis has been characterized as exceptional within itsgenre for being “entirely free of the frequent kabbalistic tendency to devalue peshat [the plain sense of the text].”3 As David Novak has argued, Nahmanides, despitehis kabbalistic theology, “also finds in the Torah a commitment to the reality ofnature and history, even if that level of truth is transcended by the Kabbalah.