Avodah Zarah 007

11:
In the previous shiur we saw how Rambam classified Christianity as a pagan religion of idol worshippers. For a Jew of his ilk the very concept of a divine trinity was anathema. It was Rambam who interpreted the word 'one' with which the Torah [Deuteronomy 6:4] describes God as teaching that Israel's God has no physical properties whatsoever and is therefore absolutely indivisible. So how could 'a part of' God be born and die as a human being? It is a theological outrage! Furthermore, how could a sage such as Rambam see the images in Christian churches as being anything but idols? The cross itself and the figure depicted on it; the statues and icons of the saints. For him and those like him all this was the epitome of idolatry, pure and simple.

12:
Such an attitude is understandable coming from a Jew living in a Moslem milieu. We have already seen [Avodah Zarah 001] that the Me'iri, living in Southern France, would remove Christianity from the designation 'pagan' and 'idolatrous' because it preached a religious ethic. The sages who were more or less contemporary with Rambam who lived in northern Europe (what is now France and Germany) were in a cleft stick: on the one hand they could see with their own eyes that Christianity, from the Jewish point of view, was far from pure and unadulterated monotheism. And the manner in which the simple Christian knelt before statues and crosses did have the appearance of idol worship. But, on the other hand, these people were the lords and masters of the host country: Jews had to live with them.

13:
Rabbenu Gershom, "The light of the Exile" [960-1028] lived mainly in Western Germany, in the Rhineland. He sought a way to permit Jews to mingle socially and commercially with their Christian neighbours. We saw [Avodah Zarah 001] that in the Gemara [Ĥullin 13b] Rabbi Yoĥanan states that

So, Rabbenu Gershom says (in a responsum):

When a colleague of his issued a statement that Jews were indeed forbidden to have truck with the local non-Jews at their festive times Rabbenu Gershom, in his retort, let the cat out of the bag:

(I wonder what a contemporary ultra-orthodox rabbi would have said at the time about this reasoning of Rabbenu Gershom. Is it not suspiciously 'Conservative'? After all, he is permitting what most rabbis thought was a biblical prohibition just for economic convenience.)

Thus Rabbenu Gershom admits that from the Jewish point of view Christianity is 'idolatry', but economic necessities bring him to finding an halakhic loophole. ("Where there is a rabbinic will there is a rabbinic way.")

To be continued.

We continue our review of comments that people have sent me concerning the etymology of the Hebrew word eyd. In the previous shiur we dealt with the question of spelling. Now we must deal with the suggestion that the Hebrew word eyd is not cognate with the Arabic word idh but is derived from a Latin word.

Juan-Carlos Kiel writes:

Could it be that the word eyd comes just from the Latin word Idus, as in the phrase telling Caesar to beware of the Ides of March. Originally the ides were celebrated on the 13th or 15th day of the month – by the time of the full moon (until the Julian and Augustan reforms of the calendar).

Elan Friedberg also writes:

I suggest that if there are any Latin / Roman History buffs out there, they look into the word Ides…

Others too have made the same suggestion.

I respond:

Yes, it is tempting to deduce such a derivation. The Roman months were originally lunar and there were three 'special' days in each month: the Kalends on the first day of the month; the nones on the fifth day and the ides on the thirteenth. (Later on, for four months of the year the ides were moved to the fifteenth day of the month and the nones to the seventh.) These days were not 'festivals' but served as markers for the other dates in the month: for instance April 3rd would be designated 'third day before the nones of April' (with inclusive counting of the day itself); July 29th would be 'fourth day before the Kalends of August'. Clearly, the nones originally indicated the half-moon and the ides the full moon.

I do not think that we can justify such an etymology, which may originally have been amateur wisdom. On the other hand such a derivation cannot be disproved. However, we shall see very clearly when we reach the next (third) mishnah in this chapter that the sages did not include the ides of any month among the pagan holy days (though they did include the Kalends as such). If the sages did not think that the ides were a holy day why should we?