Abstract
AbstractIn his works from the past decade, Menachem Fisch offered an analysis of a crucial distinction between two modes of rationalized transformation: an intra-framework transformation and an inter-framework one, the latter entailing a revolutionary shift of the framework itself. In this article, I analyze the attempt to produce such a framework transition in the tradition of Jewish Halakha (i.e., Jewish Law) by one of the key figures in its history, Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), and to explore how this transition was rationalized and promoted by the utilization of crisis discourse. Using discourse analysis, I analyze the introduction to Maimonides’ great legal code, Mishneh Torah, and explore the modes by which he sought to establish, install and stabilize a homogenous and centralistic legal order at the center of which will lie one – that is, his own – Halakhic book.
Highlights
In his works from the past decade, Menachem Fisch offered an analysis of a crucial distinction between two modes of rationalized transformation: an intra-framework transformation and an inter-framework one, the latter entailing a revolutionary shift of the framework itself
Halbertal’s analysis focuses on the role of the “geopolitical” crisis in the narrative, that is, on circumstances in which “the prospect of centralized, institutional halakhic authority – which depends on political stability – was lost.”[6]. In Halbertal’s words: Maimonides appears to regard the rise of Islam, and the dispersion of Jewish communities to the Maghrib and Spain in its wake, as the ‘extraordinarily great dispersion’ that has taken place since the completion of the Talmud
Instead of accepting Maimonides’ claim about the crisis as a well-established fact and an external, circumstantial instrument, an assumption that has yielded further studies that focused on reconstructing the critical historical circumstances, I seek in the following pages to analyze the way in which the very pronouncement of crisis, as a declaration of a halakhic “state of exception,” allows Maimonides to reshape, in a dialectical manner, the discursive space and canonical politics in which the Mishneh Torah is situated
Summary
In his works from the past decade, Menachem Fisch offered an analysis of a crucial distinction between two modes of rationalized transformation: an intra-framework transformation and an inter-framework one, the latter entailing a revolutionary shift of the framework itself. Halbertal’s analysis focuses on the role of the “geopolitical” crisis in the narrative, that is, on circumstances in which “the prospect of centralized, institutional halakhic authority – which depends on political stability – was lost.”[6] In Halbertal’s words: Maimonides appears to regard the rise of Islam, and the dispersion of Jewish communities to the Maghrib and Spain in its wake, as the ‘extraordinarily great dispersion’ that has taken place since the completion of the Talmud His remarks about the intensified historical crisis of his own time appear to relate to the destruction of Andalusian Jewry by the Almohads.[7]. Instead of accepting Maimonides’ claim about the crisis as a well-established fact and an external, circumstantial instrument, an assumption that has yielded further studies that focused on reconstructing the critical historical circumstances, I seek in the following pages to analyze the way in which the very pronouncement of crisis, as a declaration of a halakhic “state of exception,” allows Maimonides to reshape, in a dialectical manner, the discursive space and canonical politics in which the Mishneh Torah is situated. Attuned to the earlier Talmudic stratum, emphasizing the specific way in which these sources conceptualize crisis
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