jake

@mevaqesh, Abarbanel is here by the way.

@mevaqesh, The fact that he is a 19th century Ashkenazi rabbi itself is irrelevant if he is analyzing the Ramban in the context of his wider writings, as you said; then his opinion, if he is well-versed in the Ramban's writings is indeed valuable. It is unclear to me how much Abarbanel gave credence to the idea that this was the Ramban's actual approach. It is possible that he just was trying to give a well-known name to the approach he was already elaborating upon. Or that he meant that this was the approach of the Ramban in his disputation, although that seems unlikely.

Regarding the Ramban, it should be noted that because of this statement of his in the disputation, Abarbanel grouped him with those who don't believe they are bound to believe in the statements and stories and midrashim of Chazal. Also, in the footnote in the Chavel edition, Chavel brings R' Mordechai Eliasberg, who writes with certainty that Ramban could not possibly have meant what he said.

@Yishai, Including the Abarbanel who believed that Moshiach would come from the dead?. This is untrue; Abarbanel believed no such thing necessarily. Please see Ch. 5 of Gil Student's book linked to above for clarification.

@ShmuelBrill, Do you believe that the Sun orbits the Earth? There may or may not be disproof of geocentrism, but just the fact that Rambam said it does not prove its truth. Rambam wrote according to the science of his time. Even if there is no disproof, the evidence is stacked against geocentrism and I see no reason to defend it.

@msh210 Are you replying now to my post from 3 years ago??

@MonicaCellio, Thank God.

Hi @MonicaCellio. It's been a while.

@IsaacMoses, Thank you. That was very thoughtful. (I'm sure you know what I'm referring to.)

@msh210 Thanks again. Good night.

@msh210 Thanks

@msh210 Great. Just posted the link.

@msh210 Sure, but can you delete it afterwards?

@msh210 Had a good friend who took it a couple times in NYC, but much more recently.

@msh210 Oh, then never mind.

@msh210 Cool. Incidentally, how long ago did you take the Putnam?

@msh210 Right. I think you told me me you do something with statistics (biological?)

@msh210 my major

@IsaacMoses :)

@msh210 Actually I recall mentioning that to you before.

@msh210 Looks like an interesting guy. We've never crossed paths, although I did major in math.

@msh210 Common belief?

@soandos daat.ac.il/daat/olam_hatanah/…

@DoubleAA I was annoyed by the same thing in shul a couple months ago. I wasn't as courageous though.

@IsaacMoses @DoubleAA Yeah, I saw that. Funny, because someone actually corrected me for that same mistake when I was still in high school. I've done it correctly since then.

@DoubleAA Fair enough.

@Daniel Good night.

@DoubleAA I'm very meikel when it comes to correcting baalei k'ria. (Or very machmir when it comes to their embarrassment.)

@DoubleAA Maybe. But besides the fact that many baalei k'ria will not understand what you're trying to say, the difference itself is negligible to the point that the listener can hardly tell if it's a mistake or not.

@DoubleAA I would never correct that. What are you even supposed to say to correct it?

@DoubleAA @IsaacMoses Y'know, now that I think about it, more than once before have random conversations I've had here turned into grammar nitpickings.

@Daniel There's gotta be something to the correlation between nekudos nitpickers and great site moderators.

@Daniel Tell me about it.

@DoubleAA I should have known better than to post the pointed version of that poem in this chatroom before going through it carefully and adding all the dageshes and chatafs (and don't forget metegs). :)

@IsaacMoses @DoubleAA That's probably the best idea. I could definitely use a little bit of an upgrade in my grammatical instincts.

@msh210 Amen. Thank you.

@DoubleAA I've lained long enough to get a very basic feel for it. Basically under every t'nua (non-shva) following a t'nua k'tana. But I still have to think about it briefly before saying it, and I'm sure there are more precise rules than that.

@IsaacMoses Parsha Chats... good times

@DoubleAA Like I said, I only pointed it to ease the work of the proofreaders, who don't really know the difference between chatafs and dagesh's (which I have to think about too much for it to be worth it anyways). And like I said the final version is without nekudos.

@IsaacMoses @HodofHod I am not from Toronto; my fiance is.

@DoubleAA Couple days of word-playing in my head.

@IsaacMoses @MonicaCellio @Daniel Thanks for your well wishes

@mevaqesh, to the Kanarfogel book provided by MoriDoweedhYaa3qob. In the book he cites the article that I was looking for.

@mevaqesh, Thanks to the above link, I have found the reference I was looking for about Ibn Ezra: link

@MoriDoweedhYaa3qob, Fantastic, thank you!

[cont] And I'm afraid R. Kanarfogel's book is not available online, but here is the google books page.

@mevaqesh, I'm not really sure if we're agreeing or not. As far as names, I could list dozens of Tosafists who said nothing explicitly against philosophy, and I'm sure you can as well. That's the point. The handful of anti-philosophy references in the course of a couple hundred years is difficult to generalize from. And while R. Tam may have been one of the only ones to have met Ibn Ezra personally, several Tosafist commentaries and compilations implicitly reference his commentaries (such as Bechor Shor, Hizkuni, Daath Zekeinim).

What they were against (and this seems to come out in the Maimonidean controversy) is the idea that philosophy is fundamental to Judaism. There is a big difference. What I say here is a general statement; there were of course individuals (R. Taku among them) who held strong opinions that don't seem to have been the norm among the top rank of rabbinic leaders, but it is very unclear (especially re R. Taku) if they had any influence on their colleagues.

@mevaqesh, It is not just the characterization of philosophy as "intellectualism" which I was commenting about, but also the the characterization of the Ashkenazim as "anti" it. While they certainly did not study it, and seemed to have little interest in it, it also doesn't seem that they were fervently against it. The Tosafists were well acquainted, for example, with Ibn Ezra and his commentaries - hallmarks of rationalism - and were in general well-disposed toward them.

I would be careful with calling the Medieval Ashkenazic Jews, especially the Tosafists, "anti-intellectual" or even against anything non-Talmudic. Simply being unexposed (or at least not to the same level as their Spanish brethren) to scientific and philosophical thought, and uninterested in it does not make one anti-intellectual in general, especially considering the dialectical revolution in Talmudic study of the 12th-13th centuries. Additionally, Rabbi Kanarfogel has already demonstrated the greatness of the extent to which the Tosafists engaged in non-Talmudic literary activity.