RAMBAN OF GIRONA

There is no way for me to forgo mentioning Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Girondi (1194-1270), also known, or rather, little-known, outside the Haredim communities, as Ramban, or Nahmanides, who is placed at the very respectable #72 in Michael Shapiro’s 100 List of the most influential Jews of all time. He is also known, or rather, little-known, as a philosopher, physician, early Kabbalist, and Biblical and Talmudic commentator.

Nahmanides has to be famous for two particular achievements. First, he virtually invented a whole new type of Talmudic studies, producing a series of commentaries on selected Talmudic passages, which would later be copiously imitated. Secondly, he reinvented Biblical studies by infusing them with heavy mysticism and digging Biblical passages down literally to each letter, ascribing particular symbolic values to these letters, and to their combinations. Going after the irrational and esoteric, he did not deny any legitimacy to reason, but severely curtailed its applicability and effectiveness in matters of religious and philosophical studies. He valued mystical interpretations well above literal meanings and rational deductions, and applied them quite profusely in his mystical understanding of history.

Ironically, while happily at home with non-literal, allegorical-mystical interpretations of the Written Torah, he invested the authority of virtual literal infallibility in the Rabbis of the Oral Torah. “We bow before them,” he wrote, “and even when the reason for their words is not quite evident to us, we submit to them.” His intention is well understandable. With the Torah having lost its practical authority, following the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, the Jews needed an absolute religious authority, as an everyday substitute for the disabled Scripture, and Nahmanides strove to offer such a substitute in the augmented authority of the Oral Torah. Needless to say, this Herculean labor could not be handled single-handedly by one man, even armed with a perfectly good sense, but at least he was able to achieve some limited success with his endeavor.

As for his esoteric mystical pursuits, he was truly one of the principal developers of the Kabbalah; and all these things taken into account, he deserves a much greater measure of name recognition than he is getting, despite Mr. Shapiro’s valiant, but hopelessly elitist effort to exalt him in his famous ranking roster.

Fittingly, Ramban ended his days in the Holy Land, where he moved in 1267, three years before his death.