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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2021
This article discusses Maimonides’s rationale for the incest taboo and traces its reception in Christian and kabbalistic traditions in the thirteenth century. Tracing the reception of Maimonides’s view enables recognition of the resemblance between Maimonides and Aquinas, the ambivalent stance toward Maimonides’s explanation expressed by Nahmanides, and the incorporation of Maimonides’s reasoning in one of the most systematic and enigmatic works of kabbalistic rationalization of the commandments, the Castilian Kabbalist Joseph of Hamadan’s The Book of the Rationales of the Negative Commandments. R. Joseph’s acceptance of Maimonidean principles and his integration of them in the theurgic Kabbalah reveal a conflict in the heart of its system and teach us about an important aspect of the theory of sexuality in Kabbalah. The inquiry offered here examines the inter-relations between divergent medieval religious trends in constructing the role of sexuality. Instead of the common presentation of Kabbalah as diverging from the ascetic positions of Jewish philosophy and Christianity, this analysis will elucidate Kabbalah’s continuity with them.
I would like to express my gratitude to my teacher and PhD advisor, Daniel Abrams, under whose supervision I wrote the majority of this article. I am also grateful to Elisheva Carlebach for providing me with the opportunity to spend time at Columbia University’s Department of History as a visiting scholar, during which time I learned Latin and Arabic and wrote the first draft of this paper. Elliot Wolfson’s ideas, and my conversations with him, inspired the core of my argument. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers whose insights greatly improved the article.
1 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (ed. Rodney Needham; trans. James Harle Bell and John Richard von Strumer; Boston: Beacon, 1967) 12. For an analysis of the role of kinship and the incest taboo in culture through a philosophical discussion of Hegel, Lévi-Strauss, and others, see Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) 1–25. See, more recently, the discussion of the importance of the separation, on the one hand, and the dialogue, on the other, between the study of “incest” in culture and research concerning “inbreeding avoidance” among animals: Alan H. Bittles, “Genetic Aspects of Inbreeding and Incest,” in Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century (ed. Arthur P. Wolf and William H. Durham; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005) 38–60. His essay is part of an entire volume dealing with the criticism of the incest theories advanced by Frazier, Lévi-Strauss, and Freud, showing a preference for the theories of Westermarck. See Wolf’s introduction to Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo, 1–23. See also, for example, the emphasis on cultural relativity, which tries to exclude biological claims from the discussion, in Dorothy Willner, “Definition and Violation: Incest and the Incest Taboos,” Man, n.s., 18 (1983) 134–59. See also another survey of the dominant positions vis-à-vis the incest taboo in anthropological, feminist, cultural, and psychological discourse, in Anna Meigs and Kathleen Barlow, “Beyond the Taboo: Imagining Incest,” American Anthropologist 104 (2002) 38–49. Julia Kristeva, through reconstructing the term taboo as abjection, sees it as a safeguard of meaning and defined it as “The primers of my culture”: see Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (trans. Leon S. Roudiez; New York: Columbia University Press, 1982) 2.
2 I follow Durkheim’s unique approach to the incest taboo and laws of exogamy; he saw them as rooted in and derived from religious systems, not as purely biological or psychological. Indeed, in contrast to his predecessors, such as Morgan and others, who explained that the reason for the incest taboo is connected to the preservation of the human race and the prevention of congenital defects, he claimed that the basis and explanation of the taboo lies in the religious plane. See Émile Durkheim, Incest: The Nature and Origin of the Taboo (trans. Edward Sagarin; New York: L. Stuart, 1963) part 3, 54–67. For the uniqueness of Durkheim and his contribution to the understanding of taboo as a religious system, see the postscript by Albert Ellis, “The Origins and the Development of the Incest Taboo,” in ibid., 132–34. For a different analysis of the taboos related to reproduction as rooted in the religious sphere, see George Bataille, Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo (New York: Walker, 1962) 49–54.
3 On the relation to sexuality within marriage in Europe during the 13th and 14th centuries, see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 447–53. On the different stances with regard to the basis of the original sin in sexuality and the negation of the sexual urge in this period, see ibid., 420–30. For a discussion of the Christian context, in which sexual sins were a central concern of 13th cent. confessionary literature, see Pierre J. Payer, Sex and the New Medieval Literature of Confession (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009) 3–4, 197–99. On the interest in proper sexuality, particularly regarding the purity of married life in the Iberian Peninsula, and even in Muslim society, which scholars tend to perceive as more permissive, see Manuela Marin, “Marriage and Sexuality in Al-Andalus,” in Marriage and Sexuality in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (ed. Eukena Lanz; Florence: Taylor & Francis, 2016) 3–20. For a short survey of the earlier roots of the rejection of sexuality in Christianity and the claim that this is rooted in Hellenistic attitudes rather than Jewish culture, see Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Sin, Sickness, and Sanity: A History of Sexual Attitudes (New York: Garland, 1977).
4 For a theoretical discussion of the meaning of law and the tensions between nomos and narrative, which are expressed in relation to the law of primogenitor in the Bible, see Robert Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” in Narrative, Violence and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover (ed. Martha Minow, Michael Ryan, and Austin Sarat; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993) 95–172, at 115–20. For an up-to-date discussion of the complementary nature of the biblical narratives and the laws of Leviticus, see Johanna Stiebert, First-Degree Incest and the Hebrew Bible: Sex in the Family (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).
5 Augustine, De civitate Dei libri (ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb; 2 vols; 4th ed.; Leipzig: Teubner, 1928–1929) XV, XVI.
6 Decretum magistri gratiani: Corpus iuris canonici (ed. Emil Friedberg; vol. 1 of Corpus iuris canonici; Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879) 1: Pars Secunda, C. 35 q. I. For a survey of the medieval reception of Augustine’s concept of incest, see Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 24–26.
7 Levi ben Avraham, Livyat Hen: The Quality of Prophecy and the Secrets of the Torah (ed. Howard T. Kreisel; Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University in the Negev, 2007) 407 (Hebrew). See also Ms. Parma de Rossi 2904, 99a. This quote is discussed without mention of its Christian context in Moshe Idel, “The Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Secret of ‘Arayyot in Early Kabbalah,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 12 (2004) 89–199, at 99 (Hebrew).
8 Yehuda Liebes compared the Zohar and R. Joseph, describing R. Joseph’s Kabbalah as more graphic and extreme than the Idrot literature, which emphasizes the divine faces; see Yehuda Liebes, “How the Zohar was Written,” in Studies in the Zohar (trans. Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache, and Penina Peli; Albany: SUNY Press, 1993) 85–138, at 103–10. Moshe Idel also emphasized that R. Joseph’s Kabbalah is particularly anthropomorphic and demonstrated that his isomorphic and iconic conception of the Torah points formally to the limbs of God as the supernal anthropoid. See Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) 70–74; idem, Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005) 132–41. For a description of the letters of the Torah as the limbs of the Divine Chariot, see Joseph de Hamadan, Fragment d’un commentaire sur la Genèse (ed. and trans. Charles Mopsik; Lagrasse: Verdier, 1998) 22–23.
9 The tensions that will be presented here accord with the nuanced reading of the friction between asceticism and the divine union offered by Elliot Wolfson. See, for example, Elliot R. Wolfson, “Ascetism, Mysticism, and Messianism: A Reappraisal of Schechter’s Portrait of Sixteenth-Century Safed,” JQR 106 (2016) 165–77; idem, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005) 296–332.
10 For the subordination of marriage to procreation in rabbinic texts and their Greco-Roman context, see Jeremy Cohen, Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989) 139–40. There, he also quotes Philo’s justification of marriage, which negates pleasure and subordinates it to procreation. Cohen limits these attitudes and emphasizes that in halakah, as in Kabbalah, marriage has an additional value besides bringing forth offspring. For his discussion of the value of marriage and procreation in Kabbalah, see ibid., 196–220.
11 Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (trans. Shlomo Pines; 2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) 2.36, 371 and 3.49, 608. All translations are from this edition. For a discussion of this statement, see Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013) 334. For a full analysis of the problem of physical matter and its limitation on the intellect, see ibid., 97–131.
12 Quoted in the name of Ocellus Lucanus, Of the Nature of the Universe, in Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–19th Centuries (ed. Jean Deluneau; trans. Eric Nicholson; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990) 215. Compare with the older translation in Ocellus Lucanus, On the Nature of the Universe (trans. Thomas Taylor; London: 1831) ch. 4, 22.
13 For sources concerning the ambivalence toward sexuality in the Talmud, see Yishai Kiel, Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud: Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016) 31–74. He presents an alternative to Daniel Boyarin’s presentation of the rabbinic position as a positive stance toward sexuality and the body. For Boyarin’s position, which distinguishes between the earlier Palestinian talmudic discourse that saw sexuality as a “troubling” necessity of existence and the positive Babylonian attitude to sexuality, see Carnal Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 47–57; and for his discussion of the two positions with regard to the “evil impulse” and the positivity of desire in rabbinic literature, see ibid., 64–67. The disgust at excessive sexual desire and the violence of pleasure brought Plato, in Resp. 403b–c, to limit the ideal love relationships between lover and beloved to the closeness between father and son; see J. Adam, The Republic of Plato (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902) 1:169–70. Aristotle understood his words as granting legitimacy to erotic love between father and son and others, and commented on Socrates’s “strange” attitude to physical relations; he rejected them only on the basis of the “violence” of the pleasure, yet did not see a danger in relationships between father and son and between other relatives. See Aristotle, Pol. 2.4, in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (ed. Jonathan Barnes; 2 vols; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) 2:2003. For a short discussion of the tension between them as regards incest, see Juha Sihvola, “Aristotle on Sex and Love,” in The Sleep of Reason: Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome (ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Juha Sihvola; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) 200–221, at 215–16.
14 On this Maimonidean position, which was antithetical to the Zoharic positions, see Joel Hecker, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005) 52–56. Although Hecker emphasized the monistic position vis-à-vis the body and soul in the Zohar, he also stressed the ambivalence about them in the Zohar and the writings of Moses De León; see ibid., 80–81. For a survey of the different attitudes toward the body in the introduction, see ibid., 8–10. In his composition On Sexual Intercourse, Maimonides provided methods to stimulate sexual desire and male potency for those readers interested in increasing intercourse, without referencing his philosophical attitudes to the topic, perhaps because he had been invited to do so by a Muslim vizier. For an introduction, explanation, and treatment of the Muslim and Galenian sources of Maimonides’s medical doctrines as contained in this treatise, and an English translation, see Moses Maimonides, Maimonides “On Sexual Intercourse”: Fi ‘L-Jima (trans. and ed. Morris Gorlin; Brooklyn: Rambash, 1961). See also the short text attributed to Maimonides that deals with healthy sexual conduct: Mordechai L. Wilensky, “Health Conduct in Intercourse Taken from Rabbi Moshe Maimon,” PAAJR 56 (1990) 101–10. There, the conduct is more temperate and addresses the tension with the philosophical statement that “anyone who is overly involved in intercourse, his days are short and his years are few” (ibid., 109). See also Maimonides’s statement, “Even though there is great benefit to intercourse, for it cleans the whole body and reduces its humidity and gladdens the spirit, and distracts from the worry in a man’s heart, this is only if one does not overly [indulge in] it” (ibid.). This statement implies that intercourse is medically beneficial, which is consistent with Maimonides’s utilitarian approach, albeit without reference to the purpose of the perfect man, as in the Guide 3.33, 532–34. In neither of the introductions to these treatises did I find a discussion of the difference between Maimonides’s approach to intercourse in the Guide and in his medical writings. This issue is beyond the scope of the present paper but presumably the difference stems from the divergent audiences—the medical writings were intended for the masses, including the Muslim community, while the Guide was intended for individuals.
15 The Judeo-Arabic follows Moses Maimonides, Dalālat al-Hā‘irīn (ed. Salomon Munk; Paris: n.p., 1856–1866) 445.
16 Maimonides, Guide, 3.49, 606.
17 The concept of incest also appears as a category of revealed—and not rationally derived—law in Maimonides, Eight Chapters, ch. 6, in Ethical Writings of Maimonides (ed. Raymond L. Weiss and Charles E. Butterworth; New York: Dover, 1975) 78–80. For this assumption by Maimonides, opposed to the rabbinic view of incest as “rational law,” and which may be part of the context of Freud’s perception of incest as “natural,” which he claimed opposes the rabbinic view of the incest prohibitions as rational rules reflecting natural law, see David Bakan, “Freud, Maimonides, and Incest,” in Religion and Psychoanalysis: Reading in Contemporary Theory (ed. Janet Liebman Jacobs and Donald Capps; Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997) 23–27, at 25–27. For more on the similarity between the positions of Freud and Maimonides, see Jerome Eckstein, “The Incest Taboo: Maimonides, Freud and Reik,” Psychoanalysis 5 (1957) 3–15. However, a more complex understanding of the rabbinic position regarding incest as a natural law rather than particular and culturally dependent is proposed by Kiel, who suggested that the Zoroastrian context of the Babylonian Talmud led to the development of an attitude of tolerance toward incest among gentiles, as opposed to the Greco-Roman context of the Palestinian Talmud, which led to the inclusion of the incest prohibitions of Leviticus in the seven Noahide laws in an inclusive manner; see Yishai Kiel, “Noahide Law and the Inclusiveness of Sexual Ethics: Between Roman Palestine and Sasanian Babylonia,” JLA 21 (2015) 59–109 (reprinted in Kiel, Sexuality, 182–211).
18 See Maimonides, Guide 2.36, 371; 3.8, 432. For a discussion of Maimonides’s ascetic approach to pleasure, see Moshe Sokol, “Attitudes toward Pleasure in Jewish Thought: A Typological Proposal,” in Moshe Sokol, Judaism Examined: Essays in Jewish Philosophy and Ethics (New York: Touro College Press, 2013) 87–88. For Maimonides’s different attitude toward pleasure in Mishneh Torah and the criticism it evoked in the Holy Letter, see ibid., 96–100.
19 Maimonides, Guide 3.35, 537–538. For a discussion of the commandment of circumcision as intended to decrease the sexual urge (which contradicts the Maimonidean religious ideal of intellectual perfection), and which is similar to the incest taboo and different from other commandments that received two—and not just one—rationales, see Josef Stern, Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Ta‘amei Ha-Mitzvot) (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998) 87–107.
20 Aristotle, Pol. 2.4, 2003.
21 At the same time, R. Joseph Bekhor Shor suggested a similar rationale in his commentary on Lev 18:6: “That if a man was permitted [to have relations] with his female relatives, since they are found together, they would multiply licentiousness,” but it is unclear whether either knew of the other’s commentary. On the possibility of a connection between them regarding the rationales for the commandments, see Martin Lockshin, “Was Joseph Bekhor Shor a ‘Peshat’ Exegete?,” in Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies, vol. 1, The Bible and Its World, Rabbinic Literature and Jewish Law, and Jewish Thought (2005) 161–72, at 171–72 (Hebrew).
22 Concerning the possibility that Ibn Ezra influenced Maimonides on this issue, see Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) 252 n. 33.
23 Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on the Torah (ed. Asher Weiser; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1977) 3:54–55, Lev 18:6 (Hebrew).
24 Dalālat al-Hā‘irīn, 445.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Maimonides, Guide, 3.49, 607.
28 For a discussion of the role of kinship and family friendship as an essential principle in Maimonides’s rationalization of commandments related to sexual restriction, see Don Seeman, “Maimonides and Friendship,” Jewish Studies Internet Journal at Bar-Ilan University 13 (2015) 1–36, at 18–21.
29 Avital Wohlman, “From Faith to Faith through Reason: Maimonides and Aquinas,” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophy Quarterly 35 (1986) 212–39, at 214 (Hebrew), claimed that “Thomas read the ‘Guide’ in depth.” She even cited several places in which Aquinas cites Maimonides’s words verbatim; see ibid., 6. Harvey showed that Aquinas often agrees with Maimonides in his Bible commentary, yet also differs from him: see Warren Zev Harvey, “Maimonides and Aquinas on Interpreting the Bible,” PAAJR 55 (1988) 59–99. There, he noted that Aquinas used the anonymous Latin translation Dux Neutrorum seu Dubiorum (Paris, 1520), which was based on Judah al-Harizi’s Hebrew translation of the Guide; see Harvey, “Maimonides and Aquinas,” 59 n. 1. For a description of the genesis of this text from the 13th cent. text until the printed edition in the 16th cent., see Mercedes Rubio, Aquinas and Maimonides on the Possibility of the Knowledge of God: An Examination of the Quaestio de Attributis (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006) 266–78. There, she noted that although the original text was based on al-Harizi’s translation, it was then corrected in different manuscripts according to ibn Tibbon’s translation and the Arabic. Thus, the final version of the printed text does not reflect the whole range of variants and the exact text consulted by Aquinas. See also the additional sources relating to Aquinas’s reliance on Maimonides in Harvey, “Maimonides and Aquinas,” 60 n. 3. Harvey provided another example in his Physics and Metaphysics in Ḥasdai Crescas (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 76. For introductory remarks about Aquinas’s interest in Maimonides as part of a wide-ranging study and a complex discussion of Maimonides’s influence on the formation of the negative theology of Aquinas, and for a survey of the studies that treat the relationship between them, see Rubio, Aquinas and Maimonides, 3–13.
30 Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, Second Part of the Second Part (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province; London: Benzinger Brothers, 1921) Q. CLIV, A. 9, 153; Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae (vol. 10 of Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Opera omnia; Rome: Typographie Polyglotta, 1899) Q. CLIV, A. 9, 238: “Primo quidem, quia naturaliter homo debet quandam honorificentiam parentibus, et per consequens aliis consanguineis, qui ex eisdem parentibus de propinquo originem trahunt.”
31 Ibid.: “in actibus venereis maxime consistit quaedam turpitudo honorificentiae contraria unde de his homines verecundantur.”
32 Rabbi Mossei Aegyptii, Dux seu Director Dubitantium aut Perplexorum (Paris, 1520) Lib. III, L, ff. CVII. Al-Harizi translated the two terms as bošet gedolah ve‘azut in the Guide 3.49, translated into Hebrew by Yehuda al-Harizi (Tel Aviv: Ha-Menorah, 1984) 260.
33 Ibid., 153-5: “Secunda ratio est quia personas sanguine coniunctas necesse est ad invicem simul conversari. Unde si homines non arcerentur a commixtione venerea, nimia opportunitas daretur hominibus venereae commixtionis, et sic animi hominum nimis emollescerent per luxuriam.”
34 The Arabic verb rd‘ana means to dissuade, to prevent, to restrain, similar to arceor, which also means to distance, to prevent, and to separate.
35 I.e., “plures hominum semper perpetrarent incestum.”
36 For David Biale’s suggestion that Aquinas was more positive about sexuality than Maimonides in accepting a moderate form of desire, see Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 97.
37 Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995) 11. For her analysis of Aquinas’s positive attitude toward the body as a product of the soul, the soul’s form, and the necessity for its perfection, see ibid., 242–43, 256–57.
38 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De Malo (vol. 23 of Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Opera omnia; Rome: Comissio Leonina, 1982) Q. XV, a. 4, 277–278.
39 Thomas Aquinas, On Evil (trans. Richard Regan; ed. Brian Davies; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 432; De Malo, 278, ll. 79–81: “desperatio futuri seculi, quia dum nimis affectat carnales delecatationes magis despicit spirituales.”
40 Aquinas, On Evil, Q. I, a. 3, 71. De Malo ll. 264–265: “delectatio … est mesurandum et regulandum secundum regulam rationis et legis diuine.” For a discussion of this, see Carl N. Still and Darren E. Dahl, “Evil and Moral Failure in De Malo,” in Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Evil: A Critical Guide (ed. M. V. Douherty; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) 146–63, at 152–53.
41 Idel, “The Kabbalistic Interpretation,” 100–138. Idel analyzed extensively how this idea was received in the early Kabbalah in a range of sources, including a fragment found in a manuscript that was copied in Šošan sodot of R. Moses of Kiev, in The Discourse on the Intellect, in the Zoharic literature, in Menahem Recanati’s Commentary on the Torah, in R. Joseph Angelet’s Kupat Roḵlin, in R. Bahye ben Asher’s Commentary on the Torah, and others, but without referring to the Castilian appropriations of R. Joseph of Hamadan.
42 The term šoreš is related to the term ‘iqqar (both meaning “root”) in the Kabbalah of R. Isaac the Blind. Besides Idel’s analysis here, see also the note of Haviva Pedaya, “‘‘Flaw’ and ‘Correction’ in the Concept of the Godhead in the Teachings of Rabbi Isaac the Blind,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the History of Jewish Mysticism; The Beginnings of Jewish Mysticism in Medieval Europe 3–4 (1987) 157–220, at 173 n. 53 (Hebrew).
43 Rabbi Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales of the Negative Commandments, in Leore Sachs-Shmueli, “The Rationale of the Negative Commandments by R. Joseph Hamadan: A Critical Edition and Study of Taboo in the Time of the Composition of the Zohar: Volume 2” (PhD diss., Bar Ilan University, 2018) 116 (Commandment 33) (Hebrew). All further citations of this work will be based on this edition, and will be referred shortly: R. Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales of the Negative.
44 Ibid., Commandment 32. For an analysis of the role of the image of the “King’s scepter” in R. Joseph of Hamadan’s rationale of the incest taboos, see Charles Mopsik, Les grands textes de la Cabala: Les rites qui font Dieu (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1993) 232.
45 Tiqqunei Zohar, tiqqun 56, fol. 90b. Compare my literal translation to the translation of this passage in Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (trans. David Goldstein; 3 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Littman Library, 1989) 3:1201. For a discussion of this principle, see Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, “Between Kabbalah, Gender, and Law: Sexual Ethics in the Zohar,” AJSR 39 (2015) xiv–li, at xix (Hebrew).
46 Although there is evidence that the author of Tiqqunei Zohar was influenced by R. Joseph of Hamadan, a clear conclusion concerning the literary relationship between them is still pending. Yehuda Liebes proposed that Hamadan is the source of Tiqqunei Zohar’s concept of reincarnation of a human soul in a dog; see Yehuda Liebes, “Sections of the Zohar Lexicon” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976) 295 (Hebrew). Moshe Idel discussed the possibility that the author of Tiqqunei Zohar was influenced by R. Joseph of Hamadan’s writings; see Moshe Idel, introduction to The Hebrew Writings of the Author of “Tiqqunei Zohar” and “Ra’aya Mehemna” (ed. Efraim Gottlieb; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2003) xxix–xxxvii (Hebrew).
47 For an analysis of the term “King’s scepter” in R. Joseph of Hamadan’s work and its conflict with the principle of imitatio Dei, see Iris Felix, “Theurgy, Magic, and Mysticism in the Kabbalah of R. Joseph of Shushan” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005) 145–71 (Hebrew).
48 Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Lev 18:6. Translation adapted from Moses NaḤmanides, Commentary on the Torah (trans. Charles Ber Chavel; 5 vols.; New York: Shilo, 1971) 3:246–48.
49 On this claim that a tradition concerning the secret of incest and its link to transmigration is lacking, see Moshe Idel, “We Have No Kabbalistic Tradition on This,” in Rabbi Moses NaḤmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity (ed. Isadore Twersky; Cambridge: Harvard University, Center for Jewish Studies, 1983) 51–74. On transmigration in the tradition of Nahmanides, see Moshe Idel, “Commentaries on the Secret of ‘Ibbur in 13th-Century Kabbalah and Their Significance for the Understanding of the Kabbalah at Its Inception and Its Development,” Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah 72 (2012) 5–44, at 32–49 (Hebrew).
50 Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, 2:115, Lev 19:2: “And He commanded in a general way that we abstain from excess and minimize intercourse.” For a different understanding of this matter, see James A. Diamond, “Nahmanides and Rashi on the One Flesh of Conjugal Union: Lovemaking vs. Duty,” HTR 102 (2009) 193–224, at 211. For a recent study discussing this same passage and stressing Nahmanides’s ascetic views complementing my argument, see Oded Yisraeli, “‘‘Taking Precedence over the Torah’: Vows and Oaths, Abstinence and Celibacy in NaḤmanides’s Oeuvre,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 28 (2020) 121–50, at 133–34.
51 Adam and Eve had sexual intercourse before the sin. However, this was not “lustful intercourse” but only for procreation, according to Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Gen 2:9. There, he also includes the opinion of the commentators that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge generated sexual desire. He also explained, following the Guide, that the reason the punishments for incest are so harsh “is because incest is exceedingly disgusting to the Torah … and those things which are prone to failure require a great punishment to forbid them and this is also true” (Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Lev 18:29). Nahmanides also explained, in his commentary to Lev 19:2, concerning the verse “You shall be holy …,” that the requirement for abstention includes minimizing sexual intercourse along with the satisfaction of other desires, such as those for meat and wine. Likewise, Bahye ben Asher followed Nahmanides and explained the purpose of the commandments as the minimization of desires; see Bahye ben Asher, Commentary on the Torah (ed. Chaim Dov Shavel; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1970) 2: 465–66, Lev 11:44 (Hebrew).
52 On R. Solomon Ibn Aderet’s interpretation of Nahmanides’s statement that the rationales of the commandments are the esoteric “work of the chariot,” see Elliot R. Wolfson, “By Way of Truth: Aspects of NaḤmanides’ Kabbalistic Hermeneutic,” AJSR 14 (1989) 103–78, at 119 n. 47. Idel ties the different kabbalistic tendencies toward oral transmission versus innovative writing to two types of elites; see Moshe Idel, “Kabbalah and Elites in Thirteenth-Century Spain,” Mediterranean Historical Review 9 (1994) 5–19, at 10–14. On esotericism and the rationales for the commandments in the Kabbalah of Nahmanides, see also Moshe Halbertal, By Way of Truth: Nahmanides and the Creation of Tradition (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006) 249–96 (Hebrew).
53 Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Lev 18:6.
54 This statement repeats in R. Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales, 144 (Commandment 37): “Know that the matter of a man’s aunt is that she is a close relative, and a man is habitually with her, and the matter of intercourse is disgusting before God, and not permitted except for the preservation of the human race, and since the matter of relatedness in the matter of all the incest [prohibitions] which I mentioned is that a man is habitually near them, and this is a disgusting and despicable thing before God.” And ibid., Commandment 47, in the prohibition against prostitution: “For sexual intercourse is disgusting before God except for the preservation of the human race.” The phrase “for the preservation of the human race,” without the beginning of the phrase, is repeated independently and seems to serve as a repetitive principle in his composition.
55 R. Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales, 105 (Commandment 30). The terms “habitually with,” or “habit” are presented as the simple/literal meaning of several other incest prohibitions. See ibid., Commandments 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 40, 46.
56 Ibid., Commandment 58. These types of rationales are also found, for example, in the prohibition on bribery, Commandment 83: “In order to remove from us the bad habit”; and, likewise, in the prohibition against usury, Commandment 573: “So that one not be habituated to it constantly.”
57 Karen Guberman, “The Language of Love in Spanish Kabbalah: An Examination of the ‘Iggeret Ha-Kodesh,” in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times (ed. David R. Blumenthal; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982) 53–105. Yehuda Liebes emphasizes the holiness, religious, mystical, and cosmic importance that the Zohar attributes to sexuality and the unrestrained and unprecedented positive attitude toward the sexual union between male and female; see his article, “Zohar and Eros,” Alpayyim 9 (1994) 67–115, at 78–80, 99–103 (Hebrew). Daniel Abrams analyzed the positive aspect of the love of the earthly woman and its relation to the supernal woman, i.e., the Shekhina, in, The Female Body of God in Kabbalistic Literature (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2004) 163–78 (Hebrew). Idel also described the “theosophic-theurgic model” in this way; see Moshe Idel, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) 214–17.
58 Charles Mopsik, Sex of the Soul: The Vicissitudes of Sexual Difference in Kabbalah (ed. Daniel Abrams; Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005) 53–68; for a specific discussion of R. Joseph’s discourse on procreation see p. 66.
59 R. Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales, Commandment 84, 287. On the obligation to procreate as the preservation of the divine form and the chain that flows from the union of male and female, and the inclusion of the female in the male, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995) 92–98. For a short discussion of the value of procreation in R. Joseph’s thought according to his discussions in The Book of the Rationales of the Positive Commandments, see Menachem Meier, “Joseph of Hamadan: A Critical Edition of Sefer Ta’amey Ha-Mizwoth (‘Book of Reasons of the Commandments’) Attributed to Isaac ibn Farhi; Section I—Positive Commandments” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1974). For background from the Zohar and his relation to de León, see Cohen, Be Fertile, 216–17.
60 R. Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales, 288.
61 Idel highlights Abulafia’s attitude as the antithesis of that found in theurgic Kabbalah; see Kabbalah and Eros, 218–19.
62 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Asceticism, Mysticism, and Messianism,” 165–77; idem, “Eunuchs Who Keep the Sabbath: Becoming Male and the Ascetic Ideal in Thirteenth-Century Jewish Mysticism,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler; New York: Garland, 1997) 151–85 (reprinted in idem, Language, Eros, Being, 296–33); David Biale, Eros and the Jews, 109–13.
63 The text was mistakenly attributed to Nahmanides: see “Iggeret ha-Qodesh,” in Kitvey Rabenu Mosheh ben NaḤman (2 vols; Jerusalem: Mossad haRav Kook, 1964) 2:323. For a discussion of its authorship, see Gershom Scholem, “Ha‘im Ḥibber ha-Ramban ’et Sefer Iggeret ha-Kodesh,” Kiryat Sefer 21 (1944–1945) 179–86. English translations are drawn from The Holy Letter: A Study in Jewish Sexual Morality (trans. Seymour J. Cohen; Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993). For a discussion of the notion of sexuality in Kabbalah through an introduction to this work, see Charles Mopsik, Lettre sur la sainteté: Le secret de la relation entre l’homme et la femme dans la cabale (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1993) 7–23. For the symbolic significance as sanctifying sexual intercourse in this work, see idem, “Union and Unity in the Kabbalah,” trans. Santhar Visuvalingam, in Between Jerusalem and Benares: Comparative Studies in Judaism and Hinduism (ed. Hananya Goodman; Albany: SUNY Press, 1994) 233–34.
64 The Holy Letter, 80. R. Joseph himself expressed this in an even more explicit manner than the Holy Letter, stating that pure intercourse between man and women hints at the heavenly union; see The Book of the Rationales, 351 (Commandment 104).
65 For an analysis of the place of desire in this work and its controversy with Maimonides, see Monford Harris, “Marriage as Metaphysics: A Study of ‘Iggeret ha-Kodesh,’‘” Hebrew Union College Annual 33 (1962) 197–220, at 200–202. For the dichotomy between physical pleasure and spiritual eros revealing the ascetic dimension of this work, see Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 314–15. For a discussion of the centrality of intention and thought as subordinating body and desire, spiritualizing sex by rejecting lust, and revealing the ambivalence and dialectical approach toward sexuality, see Biale, Eros and the Jews, 102–9.
66 The identification between the desirous soul and the evil impulse is found in Commandments 15 and 50. On the “desirous soul” that chases the evil impulse, see Zohar 1.109b, 110b (Midrash ha-ne‘elam). One could compare the fourth part of the soul, the “arousing soul,” according to Maimonides’s definition in his Eight Chapters, ch. 1. Yet while here the soul has a negative connotation, the role of the “arousing soul” is neutral in Maimonides’s psychology. By contrast, there is a similar use of the term “desirous soul” in Sefer ha-Ḥinuḵ, where the fulfillment of the commandments strengthens the “intellectual soul” and tames the “desirous soul”; see, for example, Sefer ha-Ḥinuḵ (Jerusalem: Orayta, 1984) Commandments 102, 120, 529.
67 R. Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales, 34 (Commandment 10, “not to covet”). Other commandments also emphasize the degradation of desire and mark it as the source of all evil. For example, in Commandment 22, f. 124b, one of the rationales for the prohibition on the consumption of forbidden foods is that they strengthen the evil impulse, while permitted foods weaken the desire of the evil impulse. This reason for the prohibition of eating meat and milk together is also brought by de León in the name of “some who say” and as the simple meaning of the prohibition in the Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de Leon’s “Sefer Ha-Rimmon” (ed. Elliot R. Wolfson; BJS 144; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 314–15. The position that specific foods, such as aphrodisiac foods, strengthen sexual desire is an ancient one, and is discussed at length in Maimonides’s composition on sexual intercourse, albeit without rationalizing the forbidden foods for this reason; see almost every chapter of Maimonides, On Sexual Intercourse. On aphrodisiac foods in the Middle Ages, including reference to the prescriptions of Maimonides, see Medeleine P. Cosman, “A Feast for Aesculapius: Historical Diets for Asthma and Sexual Pleasure,” Annual Review of Nutrition 3 (1983) 1–34. For a reading of R. Joseph of Hamadan’s rationale for the prohibition of eating meat and milk together in its Christian context, see Jonatan M. Benarroch, “‘‘Christum qui est Hædus Iudaeis, Agnus Nobis’: A Medieval Kabbalistic Response to the Patristic Exegesis on Exod. 23:19,” JR 99 (2019) 263–87, at 274–77.
68 See R. Joseph of Hamadan, The Book of the Rationales, Commandments 5, 10, 13, 49, 55, 64, 69, 76, 112.
69 Ibid., Commandments 30, 37, 46.
70 This tendency is also consistent with the conception of “damaging the covenant,” i.e., masturbation, as the central sin in Kabbalah. On this topic, see Shilo Pachter, “Shmirat ha-Berit: The History of the Prohibition of Wasting Seed” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2006); idem, “‘‘A Sin without Repentance’: On a Disagreement between Moshe de León and the Zohar,” in And This Is for Yehuda: Studies Presented to our Friend, Professor Yehuda Liebes, on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (ed. Maren R. Niehoff et al.; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2012) 144–63 (Hebrew).
71 Notes on a man’s obligation to fulfill his wife’s desires can be found in Abrams, The Female Body, 170. On the fact that there is nothing unacceptable with regard to a woman’s desire, see Idel, Kabbalah and Eros, 71. See Augustine, Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects (trans. Charles T. Wilcox; ed. Roy J. Deferrari; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1955) 17–19.
72 For a discussion of this aspect of a good marriage in Augustine, besides his negative stance toward sexual desire and its reception in the Middle Ages, see Philip L. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) 109–20.
73 For the emphasis on the difference in attitudes toward sexuality in Kabbalah and Christianity, see Moshe Idel, “Sexual Metaphors and Praxis in the Kabbalah,” in The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory (ed. David Kraemer; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) 197–224, at 199; Yehuda Liebes, “Ha-’omnam betulah hi’ ha-sheḵinah,” Pa‘amim 102–103 (2005) 303–313; Bernard McGinn, “The Language of Love in Christian and Jewish Mysticism,” in Mysticism and Language (ed. Steven T. Katz; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 202–35, at 217–27. For an analysis of the status of marriage in Kabbalah within a historical framework, see Judith Baskin, “Medieval Jewish Models of Marriage,” in The Medieval Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy (ed. Sherry Roush and Cristelle L. Baskins; Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005) 1–22, at 14–16. On the similarities and not just the differences between Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe with regard to the understanding of marriage and the birth of offspring, see Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) 24–28.