Nahmanides, Moses
NAHMANIDES, MOSES (c. 1194–c. 1270), also known by the acronym RaMBaN (Rabbi Mosheh ben Naḥman); Spanish name, Bonastrug da Porta; Talmudist, biblical exegete, mystic, and polemicist. Born in Gerona, Catalonia, in a period of cultural transition and controversy, Nahmanides confronted the traditions and attitudes of Spanish, Provençal, and northern Ashkenazic Jewry in a wide range of intellectual pursuits.
His Talmudic education with Yehudah ben Yaqar in Barcelona and with Meʾir ben Yitsḥaq of Trinquetaille exposed him to the dialectical methodology of the Tosafists of northern France, which had penetrated into Languedoc and was revolutionizing the study of the Babylonian Talmud, the central text in the Jewish curriculum. Nahmanides adopted this methodology, which he enriched with the Talmudic studies of Provençal scholars and the textual traditions of Spanish Jewry, to produce novellae and legal monographs that would establish the dominant school of rabbinics in Spain until the expulsion of 1492. Aside from his novellae, Talmudic commentaries that served as standard texts in medieval Spain, Nahmanides' works in this field include Milḥamot ha-Shem, a defense of Yitsḥaq Alfasi's code against the strictures of Zeraḥiah ha-Levi, in which Nahmanides presented what is essentially a complex commentary on selected portions of the Talmud; a critique of Maimonides' Book of the Commandments which was also a defense of the Geonic Halakhot gedolot; Torat ha-adam, a lengthy monograph on the laws of mourning; a series of studies on other aspects of Talmudic law such as vows, menstrual impurity, and indirect causation of damages, some of which were modeled after Alfasi's code; and, of course, responsa.
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