ECUMENICISM AND DIALOGUE–1263 C.E.

ECUMENICISM AND DIALOGUE–1263 C.E.
By Berel Wein
[..]  the idea of a “dialogue” between Jews and Christians is not a 20th Century thought but was already explored centuries ago, albeit in a different environment and under other circumstances.
The most famous example of an exchange of this order is the debate that took place in the city of Barcelona, Spain, in the year 1263. James I of Aragon sat on the throne of northern Spain, and the spirit of Christian dominance of the civilized world was wafted in the air. Seven hundred and four years have passed since then, but in the record of that dialogue written by Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman (commonly called the Ramban, and, in the non-Jewish world, Nachmanides), and preserved by both Jewish and non-Jewish sources, one senses yet the grandeur and terror of that moment in Barcelona and a feeling of immediacy and relevancy overtakes the reader of that record. For here are our modern-day problems, differences, disputes, and bitterness poured out on an ancient canvas and curiously, the positions of the antagonists have changed very little in the seven centuries that have since swept by. It will be the attempt of this article to reflect some of the thoughts and words of this debate and thereby emphasize that the cascading dash to dialogue may perhaps be merely the foolish pursuit of an unattainable and ephemeral illusion.
The Historical Background
James I, who was destined to reign 63 years over the province of Aragon, was, as medieval monarchs went, a friend of the Jews. During the period of his reconquest of Catalonia and Aragon from the Moors, he consistently displayed a tolerance and sympathy towards the Jewish residents of those countries. He encouraged Jewish emigration to those lands, appointed Jews to vital governmental positions, and generally did nothing to interfere with the Jews’ ability to practice and worship in the tradition of their fathers.1
However, then as now changes were being felt in the structure of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in Spain. The reforms in the church initiated by Innocent III and continued by Gregory IX reached Spain and rested in the province of Aragon, where the “Holy Office” of the Inquisition was to reach dominance. The Dominican confessor to James I, Raymond de Penaforte, was noted for his zeal to punish, persecute, and/or convert the Jews in Aragon, and his influence over the king was notable.
From 1228 to 1250, a series of anti-Jewish economic edicts were issued by the king which helped foster a climate of anti-Jewish feeling in the land. In 1254, the famous trial of the Talmud in Paris occurred, and the Talmud was found guilty of stating calumnies against Christianity and cartloads of Talmudic manuscripts were burned by the order of Louis IX of France. When this coercion had little or no effect on the Jews or on their reverence for the Talmud, the Dominican friars of Spain, benefiting by the lesson of their French colleagues, changed their strategy.
No longer was the Talmud criticized, it was rather extolled. The Midrosh now became an accepted source book of accurate portrayals, and Jewish scholarship was no longer publicly reviled. The reason for this was ingeniously simple—the truth of Christianity would now be proven, not from Christian or other non-Jewish sources, but rather from the Talmud and the Midrosh themselves! It was their obstructionism that prevented the Jews from seeing the light of Christianity emanating from their own holy books. This new approach was spearheaded by an apostate Jew who had become a leader in the Catholic church of Aragon, Pablo Christiani. Because of his zeal to convert his fellow Jews, he goaded Raymond, the king’s confessor, to convince James to order a public debate regarding the proofs from the Talmud as to the veracity of Christianity. The burden of defending the Talmud and the Jews fell upon the venerable shoulders of one of the greatest of all Talmudists, Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman. On the 20th of July in 1263, at the Court of James I of Aragon, this dialogue began. It was to last until the 31st of July, though actual debating sessions occupied only four days of this time. The shock of this debate was to leave scars on the memories of both protagonists which have lasted to this day.
The Debate
The record of the debate that forms the basis for this article is one written by one of the protagonists himself—the Ramban.2 Written in a clear and lucid Hebrew style, it presents a picture of the debate and a record of the polemics as seen and heard by the Ramban.
At the outset, Mosheh ben Nachman insisted that he be granted the right of free speech throughout the debate. This right was guaranteed to him by the king, and because of this right, the Ramban at all times spoke boldly, incisively, and openly. It was the presence of this guarantee that made this medieval debate in reality a modern one wherein both sides speak their minds without intimidation. Such an open debate was a rarity in Christian Europe until our own times. Later events proved to the Ramban how costly the exercise of this freedom would prove to him personally. I would presume to state that this freedom of expression is what uniquely characterizes and ennobles this discussion and precludes any comparison with the earlier debate of Rabbi Yechiel of Paris3 or the later encounter at Tortossa.4 For here, perhaps for the only time in the annals of medieval Christian European history, Jew meets Gentile as equal, and for the majority of the debate is not the defendant or apologist but rather presses home his criticism and disbelief of Christian concepts and principles.
Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman summarized one main historical argument against the acceptance of Christianity by the Jews of Aragon and, in so doing, he attempted to entirely avoid the necessity of debating Talmudic or Midrashic references to Jesus.
“It has been proposed to me that the wise men of the Talmud themselves believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and that he was a man and a god, and not merely a mortal man alone. But is it not a well known fact that the incidents and events of Jesus occurred at the time of the Second Temple and that he was born and died before the destruction of that Temple? (70 C.E.) And the Rabbis of the Talmud, such as Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues, died after the destruction of the Temple … and the editor of the Talmud, Rav Ashi, lived almost 400 years after the Temple’s destruction. If it would be true that the wise men of the Talmud believed in Jesus and in the truth of his religion, how then did they themselves remain faithful to the religion and practices of the Jews? For they lived and died as Jews, they and their children and their disciples unto this very day. And they are the ones who have taught us the faith of Judaism, for we are all Talmudic Jews … And if they believed in Jesus, as you are trying to impute from their words, why did they not behave as Friar Paul (Pablo Christiani), who evidently understands their words better than they (and themselves convert)?”
His argument resounds through the halls of time—the classic answer of Jewish tradition:
“If our forefathers, who witnessed Jesus, saw his works, and knew him, did not hearken unto him, how should we accept the word of our king (James I), who himself has no first-hand knowledge of Jesus, and was not his countryman as were our forefathers?”
Here the Ramban puts into awful clarity the basic point of contention between Jews and Christians. The stubbornness of the Jew stems not from his “perfidy” but rather from the fact that he is convinced of the truth of his own belief and not the slightest convinced of the truth of Christian belief. The current Vatican schema on the Jews remains unclear as to whether Christianity has yet come to grips with this fact. For it does not yet specify the cause of the Jew’s affirmation of the one and denial of the other—it merely hopes through better social relations to soften, if not to reverse, that affirmation and denial.
The Dominicans were not deterred from their purpose by the Ramban’s onslaught. They brought numerous passages from Talmudic and Midrashic literature to prove the truth of their faith. The Ramban stated that he did not consider himself bound by the “agadoth” of the Talmud,5 and therefore no proofs could be deduced from them. However, he said that even if he granted their accuracy, they in no way agreed with Christian thought or belief. His strength in swimming in the sea of the Talmud easily refuted his antagonists who were not nearly as erudite in the subject matter as he. And he used every opportunity to return to the offensive against his opponents.
“Does not the prophet say regarding the Messiah ‘that he shall reign from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth’ (Psalms 72:8)—and has not your empire (the Roman empire), declined since it accepted Christianity? Do not your enemies, the Moslems, rule over a greater empire than yours? And does not the prophet also say that at the time of Messiah ‘they shall not teach their friends war, etc’? (Jeremiah 31:33) and is it not written (Isaiah 11:9) that then ‘the world shall be full of knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’…? And from the days of Jesus till now, the entire world is full of robbery and pillaging, and the Christians have spilled more blood than any of the other nations, and they are also sexually immoral. How hard it would be for you, my great King, and for your knights, to survive if there would be an end to warfare!”
This indictment of the status of the Christian, or, as we call it today, the Western world, is even sharper in our time when over fifty million people have been destroyed by war in the past century alone, and when all of the economies of the great powers of the world rest on a foundation of defense spending and war preparation.
The Ramban further stated that the basic dispute between Christianity and Judaism is not regarding the messianic mission of Jesus himself as much as it is regarding the entire Christian concept of Divinity and belief.
“Listen to me, my master, my king,” said the Ramban, “Our contention and judgment with you is not primarily concerning the Messiah,6 for you are more valuable to me than the Messiah. You are a king and he is a king. You are a Gentile king and he is a king of Israel, for the Messiah will only be flesh and blood as you are. When I serve my Creator under your sovereign rule, in exile, poverty, oppression and humiliated by the nations that constantly insult us, my reward for this service is indeed great: For I bring forth a voluntary sacrifice to G-d of my own being, and through this shall I merit a greater portion of the world to come. However, when there will be a king of Israel, abiding by my Torah, who shall rule over all the nations, then I shall be involuntarily compelled to retain my faith in the Torah of the Jews, and therefore my reward shall not be as great (as it is now). However, the main dispute and disagreement between the Christians and the Jews is in that you have some very sorry beliefs regarding the essence of Divinity itself.”

Thus did the Ramban emphasize clearly that the fundamental differences between Judaism and Christianity are not those of detail and history but rather those of definition and understanding of the nature of Divinity and His relation to man.
The question of Original Sin was also touched upon in this debate. Both Pablo and King James asserted that all men had been condemned to Hell because of the original sin of Adam, but that the advent of belief in Jesus had released man from this state of eternal damnation. To this the Ramban retorted with bitter irony:
“In our province we have a saying— He who wishes to lie should be sure that the witnesses to the transaction are far away. There are many punishments mentioned in regard to Adam and Eve—the earth was cursed, thorns and thistles shall grow therefrom, man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, that man shall return to the dust, and that woman shall suffer the pain and travail of childbirth. All of these conditions yet exist to this day, and anything tangible that can be evidenced, as the alleviation of any of these conditions, has yet to appear, even since the advent of your messiah. But the curse of damnation to Hell, which Scripture nowhere records, this is the punishment which you say was relieved (by Jesus coming), for this is the one matter which no one can disprove. Send from your midst someone, and let him return and report to us! G-d forbid that the righteous should be punished in Hell for the sin of the first man, Adam. For my soul is as equally related to the soul of the wicked Pharaoh as to the soul of my father, and I shall not be punished by the damnation of my soul because of the sins of that Pharaoh. The punishments that accrue to mankind because of the sin of Adam were physical, bodily punishments. My body is given to me by my father and mother, and therefore if it was ordered that they be mortal and die, so will their children forever be mortal and die, for such is the law of nature.”

But, he stated, the soul of man, which is given to him by the Eternal Creator, is not damned because of the sins of others, even of his ancestors themselves, unless he himself continues in their evil ways.
The Ramban thereupon entered into a theological disputation regarding the theories of the Virgin Birth and the Trinity. He proved them not to be Jewish in origin and that therefore “the mind of no Jew could understand or accept them.” He stated that
“your words (regarding the Talmud and the Messiah) are therefore for naught, because this is the kernel of our disagreement, but if you wish to discuss the concept of Messiah, I will bow to your wishes.” He told the king that “you believe this bitter thing regarding divinity (the Virgin Birth and the concept of the trinity) because you are born a Christian, the son of Christian parents, and you have been indoctrinated your entire life by priests who have filled your mind and marrow with this belief, and you now accept its truth, by basis of habit alone.”

His criticism of these tenets of the Roman Catholic faith placed in sharp focus the reason for the Jew’s refusal to accept Christianity from its very onset. Its notion of G-d was, and is, foreign to Jewish tradition and logic. Nothing has yet occurred to change this status either for the Jew or the Christian.
The Debate ended rather abruptly. It was never formally closed, but the king recessed it, apparently out of fear of rioting by fanatical mobs stirred up by emotional sermons of certain Dominican friars.7 The king himself took an active part in the debate and one is struck by the fairness and tolerance of James I. It was only the deceitful friars who distorted the teachings of the Talmud. He is quoted by the Ramban as having told him that “I have yet to see such a man as you, who, though being wrong, has yet made an excellent presentation of his position.” 8 The Ramban also notes that he received a gift of three hundred coins from James, evidently as reimbursement for his expenses. The Ramban states that “I departed from [the king] with great affection.” Mosheh ben Nachman remained in Barcelona for over a week, and was present for a sermon in the Synagogue on the following Sabbath delivered by a Dominican priest, in the presence of King James, calling on the assembled Jews to convert to Christianity.9
The Dominicans, angered by the Ramban’s successful defense, turned their wrath against him personally. He was sentenced to temporary exile from Aragon and had to pay a fine for speaking blasphemy. In his old age, broken by the ordeal of his persecution and by a vision of the sorrows that would yet befall the Jews in Spain, Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman emigrated to the Land of Israel in the year 1267 and on its holy soil he expired shortly thereafter.
Conclusion
The importance of this encounter between the Jews and the Christian world is not to be minimized. It would be many centuries before Jews dared to speak so openly to their Christian fellow countrymen about the fundamental differences that separate them. To our very day, no other Jewish religious leader of the caliber of the Ramban, responsible and responsive to his faith and tradition, has ever presented our case. Those who presume to speak for Judaism in today’s dialogues would do well to read the record of this dialogue seven centuries ago. I do not believe that the case for Jews and Judaism can be better stated, with as much candor, compassion and truth, than the manner in which it is reflected in the words of Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman. Both Jew and Christian would profit by a study of that record from Barcelona before plunging headlong into any new dialogue or ecumenical discussion. The issues and the world itself has changed little from the days of James I of Aragon. Neither has the people of Israel.
The mountain of His holiness, His Holy Temple standing on the heights of eternal hills,
That is Sinai, the glory of G-d that dwelled upon it, thrills,
Let the nations proclaim His majesty and awe,
The voice of the Red Sea, never ending, where His flock saw,
All of His wonders, miracles, beauty,
Cleanse yourselves, O ye nations and states
Raise up your son, give glory and honor to the Lord! 10
—————————————————–
Notes:
1) Yitzhak Baer, “A History of the Jews in Christian Spain,” Volume I, pp. 138-147.
2) Vikuach Haramban—Found in Otzar Havikuchim by J. D. Eisenstein, Hebrew Publishing Society, 1915 and Kithvey Haramban by Rabbi Charles D. Chavel, Mosad Horav Kook, 1963.
3) Rabbi Yechiel of Paris, one of the leaders of the school of the Tosafists, defended the Talmud against the accusations of Nicholas Donin, a Jewish apostate, before Louis IX of Paris in 1254.
4) Tortossa was the locale of a series of debates carried on by many Jewish Rabbis, foremost among them being Rabbi Yoseph Albo, against Dominican Theologians and a Jewish apostate, Joshua Halorki, in the years 1413-1414, which ended in disaster for the Jewish cause.
5) The Agadoth—literally, Tales—are the parables and traditional legends of the Talmud—usually with a moral or ethical message woven into their fabric. The term “Agadah” is used in contradistinction to “Halochah” which is the law or legal system of Torah. Whether or not the Ramban’s point in this connection was actually his belief, or was merely a tactic used for this discussion, has been a matter of conjecture among Jewish scholars for considerable time.
6) See Rabbi Chavel’s note in his Kithvey Ramban, wherein he quotes the statement of the Ramban in the Sefer Hageulah, that “even if we admit to ourselves that our sins and those of our fathers are so enormous that all hope of comforting us be lost, and that our exile will last till eternity—all of this will still not damage our belief in the fundamental precepts (of our Torah), for the ultimate reward to which we look forward is only in the world to come—the pleasure of our soul in Paradise, and our salvation from Hell; yet we still believe in our redemption (the Messiah), because it is a well known truth among those of great stature in Torah and prophecy.”
7) Baer, History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Vol. I, p. 153. Also see the Vikuach Haramban where the Ramban himself makes mention of the “preachers who stir up the mob and bring terror to the world, and of many great priests and knights of the king’s court, who have advised me not to speak evil against their religion. Also the Jews of this sector reported that they were told to warn me not to continue to do so.”
8) An alternative reading of this statement in the Hebrew original is: “I have yet to see such a man as you, who though not being a legal advocate, has yet made an excellent presentation of his position.”
9) The Ramban himself delivered a sermon-lecture in rebuttal, entitled, “The Torah of G-d Is Perfect,” a copy of which is printed in the Kithvey Haramban mentioned in note 2 above.
10) The last stanza of a poem “From Thy Hand, Lord, Give Forth Honor,” written by the Ramban in honor of the Pesach festival.
The Missionaries claim that Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies pertaining to the Messiah. The truth, however, is that he did not fulfill even one of the important prophecies. All the things that he fulfilled were in reality quite trivial.