Avodah Zarah 006

נושא: AZ

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

Rabbi Yishma'el says that [commerce] is forbidden for three days before them and for three days after them. But the [rest of the] sages say that [commerce] is forbidden before their festivals but it is permitted after them.

7:
We have seen that the Amora Shemu'el [3rd century CE] understands the opinion of Rabbi Yishma'el [2nd century CE] as being directed against the emergent Christianity, and we noted that Shemu'el assumes that Christianity is avodah zarah. In this he is not alone. Rambam's commentary on the next mishnah has been severely garbled because of censorship but luckily not one but two handwritten copies of Rambam's Mishnah Commentary have survived in the Cairo Genizah. Both are in Rambam's own handwriting, one clearly a 'first edition' and the other a 'second edition'. (It is quite fascinating to look at the way Rambam phrased his comments, crossed out infelicities and reworded.)

8:
The Mishnah Commentary was written as a 'popular' work in Arabic. Here is Rambam's commentary, as he wrote it, from the Hebrew translation by Rabbi Yosef Kafiĥ z"l:

Christians with their messianic claim – all their various sects – are all idol-worshippers. All their festivals are prohibited [as in mishnah 1] and in all Torah matters we relate to them as we relate to idolators. Sunday is one of their holy days. It is therefore forbidden to have any contact whatsoever with those messianists on Sundays: on Sundays we relate to them as we relate to all idolators on their feast day.

When Rambam came to codify his opinion as halakhah in his great work Mishneh Torah [Avodah Zarah 9:4] this is what he wrote:

Christians are idolators and Sunday is their holy day. Therefore it is forbidden to do business with them in Eretz-Israel on Thursday and Friday in every week, and, it is superfluous to add, that on Sunday [business with them] is forbidden everywhere [in the world]. In like manner we relate to them on all their feast days.

9:
One wonders what personal knowledge Rambam had of Christians, living as he did in Egypt. In Cairo he must have known Coptic Christians. He visited Eretz-Israel at least once where he would have seen Crusader Christianity in full bloom. And doubtless in Saladin's court, where Rambam was the family physician, comments about the enemy Christians must have been rife. However, I can't help thinking that it was the philosopher in him that dictated his attitude to Christianity. For Rambam any trinitarian conceptualization of the Deity was pure and unadulterated pagan idolatry.

10:
In order to balance the picture, before we move on to the next mishnah, I shall bring the opinions concerning Christianity of certain European rabbis who were more or less contemporary with Rambam.

To be continued.

Quite a few people have written to me concerning the etymology of the Hebrew word eyd, which in these mishnayot designates a non-Jewish festival. I will not burden you with each one of the messages that I received (though I am grateful for them all). There were two basic comments and I will choose a representative message from each.

You will recall that I connected the word with the Arabic word idh, festival.

Tamar Dar writes:

Since the pronunciation of the letter ayin is completely different from the pronunciation of the letter alef I do not understand how it is possible to explain eyd (with alef) by eyd (with ayin).

I respond:

Those who receive these shiurim in Hebrew (and Tamar is one of them!) will surely have noticed that on several occasions after writing the word eyd with alef in parentheses I wrote it with ayin. This is because both forms appear in the manuscripts. It would seem that the original spelling was indeed with ayin and it was only later corruption through misunderstanding that ayin was often replaced with alef. The misunderstanding probably arose because of the etymologies suggested by the sages: see AZ 003, Notes 19 and 20. One of the etymologies in the Gemara is spelt with alef and the other with ayin.