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- Title
The Talmudic Methodology of Rabbi Bezalel Ashkenazi, the Author of the Shitah Mekubbetzet.
- Authors
Toledano, Shiomo
- Abstract
Rabbi Bezalel Ashkenazi, the author of the Shitah Mekubbetzet, lived in the period of the Renaissance, a period of intellectual agitation stemming from encyclopaedic curiosity. Most of his activity took place in Egypt, which was the geographical area where most of the main Jewish communities met after the expulsions and migrations of the fifteenth century. His magnum opus, Shitah Mekubbetzet, formally named Asefal Zekenim ('The Convocation of the Elders'), is an enormous compendium of commentaries on the Babylonian Talmud culled from hundreds of works originating in Ashkenaz, France, Spain and the Near Eastern countries which had been written during a period of several centuries. In addition, in the later volumes of the work, Rabbi Bezalel Ashkenazi added commentaries of his own. In the period under discussion Egypt was one of the most important historical crossroads in the field of Talmudic study methods. There, in Ashkenazi's time, the various methodologies of Talmud studies which had developed since the beginning of the fifteenth century in all the great centers of Jewish learning met: the Sephardic method of study established by Rabbi Isaac Canpanton; the Ashkenazic casuistic system which developed in the late fourteenth century and in the fifteenth century in the academies of the Gornish Tosafists; the eclectic methodology; and system of study with an eye to practical halakhic conclusions of which the outstanding practitioner in the sixteenth century was Rabbi Joseph Caro. The present paper attempts to assess Rabbi Bezalel Ahkenazi's attitude to the various schools of Talmudic methodology which is reflected in his choice of the commentaries he included in his compendium as well as in his personal commentaries. It appears that the dominant system in his methodology was that of Sephardic study, although he maintained an open mind regarding the other study methods and used them all, even those which he disparaged. In effect, it is incorrect to state that Rabbi Bezalel Ashkenazi had one Talmudic study method; his Shitah Mekubbetzet is a repository not only of commentaries but also of various Talmudic methodologies. In the main, he utilized points of contact between Ashkenazic casuistry and the Sephardic study, and it seems that he believed only a combination of both constituted the correct study method. Ashkenazi's only partial loyalty to the Sephardic study method becomes understandable in the light of the evidence which has begun to emerge concerning the changes in the system which developed in the sixteenth century.
- Subjects
EGYPT; RABBINICAL literature; TALMUD; TALMUDIC academies; OLD Testament; QUOTATIONS; ECLECTICISM; ASHKENAZIM; JEWISH learning &; scholarship; TOSAFISTS
- Publication
Tarbiz, 2009, Vol 78, Issue 4, p479
- ISSN
0334-3650
- Publication type
Article