Rabbis Who Rhyme

On Archetypes in Halakhic History

If I gave you the following set of information and told you to guess who I was talking about, who would you guess?

-Bitterly opposed to codification

-Acerbic wit who was not shy about expressing opposition to his contemporaries and even authoritative predecessors

-Opposed to the study of philosophy

-We have record of a debate between him and other famous rabbi which became at some points personal.

Who am I talking about?

You could answer the Raavad (R. Abraham ben David 1110-1180), with his opposition to the Mishneh Torah and the Rambam, his critiques of the Rif, and his famous fight with the Baal HaMaor. And you’d be correct.

You could answer the Maharshal (R. Shlomo Luria, 1510-1574), with his opposition to the Shulkhan Arukh, his summary dismissal of the Rambam, Ibn Ezra, and associated halakhists and commentators, and his conflict with the Rema over the Rema’s time spent on philosophy. And you’d be correct.

Halakhic history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.

What I’m saying is, there is a certain type of personality that seems to recur in halakhic history, embodied by the Raavad and the Maharshal, that is primarily known for opposition to codification but includes a bunch of other characteristics that seem irrelevant but may not be. If this were a mystical text I might ascribe this to reincarnation,¹ but I prefer to understand it as “within a halakhic system, given a certain kind of time period in which codification is attempted, a certain type of person tends to rise to the occasion as its primary opponent.”. Halakha is a system that has certain inputs, and given the right variables, it gives renown and authority to certain people with particular sets of skills and talents.

Here is an attempt to describe some of the archetypes of halakhic history. It is an attempt, and I am likely getting stuff wrong, so if you see something wrong, please comment to correct it! I’m more concerned with seeing if this way of thinking about halakhic history holds water than I am with my own specific conclusions about which authority belongs with which archetype or even the types of archetypes.