Menachem Meiri

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Rabbi Menachem Meiri (1249 – c. 1310) was a famous Catalan rabbi, Talmudist and Maimonidean.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Beit HaBechirah 3 Other works 4 See also 5 References

[edit] Early life

Menachem Meiri was born in 1249 in Perpignan, which then formed part of the County of Barcelona. He was the student of Rabbi Reuven the son of Chaim of Narbonne, France.

[edit] Beit HaBechirah

His commentary, the Beit HaBechirah (The building of choice), is one of the most monumental works written on the Talmud. This work is less a commentary and more of a digest of all of the comments in the Talmud, arranged in a manner similar to the Talmud - presenting first the mishnah and then laying out the discussions that are raised concerning it. This commentary cites many of the major Rishonim, referring to them not by name but rather by distinguished titles.^[1]

His commentary was largely unknown for centuries until being republished in modern times. Thus, it has had much less influence on subsequent halachic development than would have been expected given its stature. Some modern poskim even refuse to take its arguments into consideration, on the grounds that a work so long unknown has ceased to be part of the process of halachic development. This is despite the respect they nevertheless have for the commentary and for its author.

Professor Haym Soloveitchik has remarked^[2] on what makes the Beit ha-Behira so unique. First^[3], Soloveitchik summarizes the general trend of Jewish traditional scholarship:

Halakhic literature, indeed, traditional Jewish literature generally, has no secondary sources, only primary ones. The object of study from childhood to old age was the classic texts the Humash (Pentateuch), the Mishnah and the Gemara (Talmud). For well over a millennium all literary activity had centered on commenting and applying those texts and every several centuries, or so, a code would be composed that stated the upshot of these ongoing commentarial discussions. Self-contained presentations of a topic, works that would introduce the reader to a subject and then explain it in full in the language of laymen, did not exist. There were few, if any, serious works that could be read independently, without reference to another text which it glossed. Indeed, the use of such a work would have been deeply suspect, for its reader would be making claim to knowledge which he had not elicited from the primary texts themselves. Knowledge was seen as an attainment, something that had been wrested personally from the sources. Information, on the other hand, was something merely obtained, passed, like a commodity, from hand to hand, usually in response to a question. Study of primary sources is a slow and inefficient way to acquire information, but in traditional Jewish society, the purpose of study (lernen) was not information, nor even knowledge, but a lifelong exposure to the sacred texts and an ongoing dialogue with them. Lernen was seen both as an intellectual endeavor and as an act of devotion; its process was its purpose.

By contrast, says Soloveitchik^[4] of the Meiri's work

The current popularity of the Beit ha-Behirah of R. Menahem ha-Meiri reflects this change in modes of learning. Meiri is the only medieval Talmudist (rishon) whose works can be read almost independently of the Talmudic text, upon which it ostensibly comments. The Beit ha-Behirah is not a running commentary on the Talmud. Meiri, in quasi-Maimonidean fashion, intentionally omits the give and take of the sugya, he focuses, rather, on the final upshot of the discussion and presents the differing views of that upshot and conclusion. Also, he alone, and again intentionally, provides the reader with background information. His writings are the closest thing to a secondary source in the library of rishonim. This trait coupled with the remarkably modern syntax of Meiri's Hebrew prose have won for his works their current widespread use. It is not, as commonly thought, because the Beit ha-Behirah has been recently discovered. True, the massive Parma manuscript has been in employ only for some seventy years. However, even a glance at any Hebrew bibliography will show that much of the Beit ha-Behirah on sefer mo'ed, for example, had been published long before Avraham Sofer began his transcriptions of the Parma manuscript in the nineteen twenties. (E. g. Megillah Amsterdam, 1759; Sukkah Berlin, 1859; Shabbat Vienna, 1864.) Rather, Meiri's works had previously fallen stillborn from the press. Sensing its alien character, most scholars simply ignored them, and, judging by the infrequent reprintings, if any, they also appear not to have found a popular audience. They have come into their own only in the past half century. (On Meiri's quasi-Maimonidean intentions, see Beit ha-Behirah, Berakhot, ed. Y. Dickman [Jerusalem, 1965], introduction, pp. 25-32. Meiri consciously follows Maimonides in addressing the halakhic dicta rather than the Talmudic discussion, in gathering scattered halakhic dicta under one roof, and in writing in neo-Mishnaic rather than Rabbinic Hebrew. He parts company with Maimonides and follows R. Judah ha-Nassi in writing not topically but tractatewise, and in registering multiple views. Indeed, no one writing after the dialectical revolution of the Tosafists could entertain again the Maimonidean notion of halakhic univocality.)

Meiri's commentary is noted for its position on the status of gentiles in Jewish law, stating that discriminatory laws found in the Talmud only applied to the idolatrous nations of old. ^[5][6]

[edit] Other works

He also wrote several minor works, including a commentary to Avot whose introduction includes a recording of the chain of tradition from Moses through the Tanaim.

[edit] See also

• Hachmei Provence

[edit] References

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