Abstract
The Middle Ages have bequeat hed us one additional major resource for developing a theology of other religions. In many ways it is the most promising and most helpful resource, because it deals directly with the question of the status of contemporary religions, rather than constructing a history of Avoda Zara, as did Maimonides and Nachmanides, or resolving the practical challenges posed by living in a Christian society, as did the Tosafists’ Shituf construct. This resource is the teaching of Rabbi Menachem Hameiri (henceforth: Meiri; 1249–1310). Meiri is, in my opinion, the single most important classical resource to be harnessed for a contemporary Jewish theology of religions, and the full import of his theology of religions has yet to be fully appreciated.
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Notes
A list of such authorities may be found in David Berger’s, Jews, Gentiles and the Modern Egalitarian Ethos: Some Tentative Thoughts, Formulating Responses in an Egalitarian Age, ed. Marc Stern, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2005, p. 100.
Note also the list in Eugene Korn’s Rethinking Christianity: Rabbinic Positions and Possibilities, Jewish Theology and World Religions, ed. A. Goshen-Gottstein and E. Korn, The Littman Library, Oxford, 2012, pp. 198–199.
Haym Soloveitchik has attempted an account of this by appeal to Meiri’s literary style that does not conform to the norms of medieval talmudic learning. Only with the rise of secondary halachic literature that organizes sources by themes, in the past 50 years, does Meiri’s clear style and patterns of organization receive a new and enthusiastic hearing. See Haym Soloveitchik, The Betha-Behira of R. Menahem ha-Meiri: Its Nature and Fate, Studies in Jewish History Presented to Joseph Hacker, ed. Y. Ben-Naeh et al., Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem, 2014, pp. 253–259. The suggestion that Meiri’s time has only now come may be made with reference to his interreligious thought as well.
The extension to non-Jews is particularly relevant for understanding the background of Meiri. For an overview of talmudic attitudes, see Sacha Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings, Brill, Leiden, 1994, pp. 22–39.
Modern Meiri scholarship is much indebted to the pioneering work of Jacob Katz. See Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, Oxford University Press, London, 1961, pp. 114–128. Katz related to Meiri within a broader presentation of Jewish views of Christianity. As Meiri lived in a Christian society, it makes sense to consider his references to other religions as relevant to Christianity. Nevertheless, Katz’s framing of Meiri’s views in relation to Christianity did much to limit continuing discussion of Meiri to the specifically Christian context, rather than to a broader consideration of Jewish attitudes to other religions.
Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 124, notes that Meiri composed his treatise on repentance following an exchange with a Christian priest. Daniel Lasker, Christianity, Philosophy and Polemic in Jewish Provence, Zion 68, 2003, pp. 313–333 [Hebrew], notes the broader sharing that creates community-like bonds between Jews and Christians in Provence. Yaakov Elman has recently attempted to account for the uniqueness of Meiri’s position in light of personal and experiential considerations, rather than in terms of the internal unfolding of halachic tradition. See Yaakov Elman, Meiri and the Non Jew, New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations, in Honor of David Berger, ed. E. Baumbgarten and J. J. Schacter, Brill, Leiden, 2012, pp. 265–296.
David Novak seems to read Meiri this way. See David Novak, The Image of the Non Jew in Judaism: An Historical and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws, Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Toronto, 1983, Chapter 12.
See Leviticus 18. On historicity and ideology in this depiction see the note by Edward Greenstein, The God of Israel and the Gods of Canaan: How Different Were They?, Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A, Jerusalem, 1999, p. 58.
Indeed, some have attempted to minimize the import of Meiri’s work, due to the fact that he has not broken new ground in terms of actual comportment in relation to non-Jews. See E. E. Urbach, Rabbi Menahem Ha-Meiri’s Theory of Tolerance: Its Origin and Limits, Studies in the History of Jewish Society in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Period, Presented to Jacob Katz, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1980, pp. 34–44 [Hebrew]. Urbach’s reading has been refuted even within the framework of the first reading of Meiri.
See Gerald Blidstein, Maimonides and Meiri on the Legitimacy of Non-Judaic Religions, Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction between Judaism and Other Cultures, ed. Leo Landman, Yeshiva University Press, New York, 1990, pp. 27–35.
One notes that Meiri never appeals to the notion of reason in his construction of “religion.” In this, he is different from Mendelssohn, who in many other respects might be presented as a continuation of Meiri’s position. See Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment, Notre Dame University Press, Indiana, 2012, p. 10.
Jan Assman, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel and the Rise of Monotheism, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2008, p. 128, suggests that a biblical understanding of idolatry goes beyond the distinction between true god and other gods, or true belief and idolatry. Idolatry includes evils such as injustice, lawlessness, oppression, violence, murder, and fornication. But it is also characterized by lack of insight, a failure to recognize the truth. If we join fundamental religious insight (rather than full recognition of truth) to upholding moral norms, we arrive, in fact, at a Meiri position, suggesting Meiri’s fidelity to a biblical view of idolatry.
In this, Meiri is much closer to Nach manides, who a lso considered idolatr y to possess spiritual reality. See Moshe Halbertal, By Way of Truth: Nahmanides and the Creation of Tradition, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, 2006, pp. 265–276 [Hebrew]. The issue is not truth versus falsehood or illusion, but the different spiritual or energetic realities associated with true religion on the one hand and with idolatry on the other. It is precisely here that moral and spiritual living makes such a difference. It serves as testimony to the quality of spiritual life associated with a religion. It is likely that Meiri would also acknowledge that moral living provides the foundation for accessing the reality of God, rather than alternative realities associated with idolatry.
See, however, Brill’s suggestion regarding Meiri’s knowledge of literary works coming from India. See Alan Brill, J udaism and World Religions: Encountering Christianity, Islam and Eastern Traditions, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, pp. 206–207.
The passage thus remains enigmatic. To make sense of it, one would have to identify a distant Jewish community residing in the shadow of another religion that is neither Christianity nor Islam, unless we had cause to believe that Meiri would declare remote forms of either of these religions as idolatrous. Michael Avraham’s suggestion that Meiri did consider Christianity, after all, as idolatrous, does not withstand the scrutiny of the texts and can therefore not aid in making such an argument. See Michael Avraham, Is There Enlightened Avoda Zarah? On the Attitude to Non-Jews and on Changes in Halacha, Akdamot 19, 2007, pp. 65–86 [Hebrew].
See Frederique Marglin, Hierodouleia, Encyclopae dia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade, Macmillan, New York, 1987, vol. 6, pp. 309–313, drawing heavily on her 1984 work, Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadasis of Puri, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
Concerning the class of women known as devadasis, temple dancers and courtesans, see some of the recent research that provides a counterpoint to previously prevailing views of these women. See Priyadarshani Vijaysri, Recasting the Devadasi: Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in Colonial South India, Kanishka Publishers, New Delhi, 2004,
and more recently Davesh Soneji, Unfinished Gestures: Devadāsīs, Memory, and Modernity in South India, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2012.
See Raymond Williams, An Introduction to Swaminarayan Hinduism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, Chapter 1.
See Balwant Dhillon, Sikh Perspectives of Friendship, Friendship across Religions, ed. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2015, pp. 135–144.
A theory of progress need not rely on Meiri’s position. It can be incorporated also into other views of religions. Eliyahu Henkin applies a notion of progress within the Shituf view, suggesting that Christian society is progressively less idolatrous. Therefore, even contemporary image worship may not really be idolatrous. See Ketz Hayamin, Hadarom 10, 1959, p. 8.
The range of presentations of Tantra is confusing, as is the attempt to attain a clear focus on how representative Tantra—and what we mean by the term—are of the religion of India throughout the ages. A fairly tame presentation is Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition, Doubleday, New York, 1965. Far more challenging is a presentation such as David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in Its South Asian Contexts, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003. The challenge is not only in accommodating the sexual practices of Tantra, but in the broader claim of the author that Tantra is the truly pervasive religion of South India, rather than the more refined elite forms of Hinduism that have served most of our discussion. Serious exploration of this claim is beyond my competence, but may matter little, once we acknowledge changing constellations and constructions of Hinduism, and the prominence of certain constructions in today’s Hinduism. Meiri’s views on the evolution of religions are particularly relevant in this context.
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© 2016 Alon Goshen-Gottstein
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Goshen-Gottstein, A. (2016). Thinking of Hinduism in Light of Meiri. In: Same God, Other god. Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-45528-4_10
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