THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEVER KNEW
THE GREAT DEBATE
Rabbi Moses ben Nachman,
better known as Ramban, was
born in the Spanish city of
Barcelona in 1194. At the age of
69, he became the defender of
the Jews in the great Disputation
of 1263 – the most famous of the
debates in which the Christians
attempted to prove to Jews their
religion was false in order to
convince them to convert.
The Jewish community had
always tried to avoid having to
take part in these debates as it
put them in a hopeless situation.
Forbidden to offend the Christians by allowing their arguments to seem
in any way critical of Christianity, meant simply that the Jews were not
allowed to win.
In 1263, a debate was staged in front of the Spanish King James I of
Aragon, and Ramban was given the royal permission to speak without
fear of retribution. He took full advantage of this. His primary opponent
was a Jew who had converted to Christianity named Pablo Christiani (the
name he adopted after his conversion), and it was Pablo’s idea to
challenge the great scholar to this debate. Realising that Pablo might
need some extra help, the Church sent leaders of the Dominican and
Franciscan orders as his advisors.
Three questions were to dominate the debate:
1. Has the Messiah come, as the Christians say, or has he yet to come, as
the Jews say?
2. Is the Messiah divine, as the Christians say, or human, as the Jews say?
3. Do the Jews practice the true law or do the Christians?
The Ramban answered that had the Messiah come, the Biblical
prophecies of his coming would have been fulfilled. Since the lion wasn’t
lying down with the lamb and there was no universal peace, clearly the
Messiah had not come. Indeed, he noted, “from the time of Jesus until
the present the world has been filled with violence and injustice, and the
Christians have shed more blood than other peoples”.
As for the divinity of Jesus, the Ramban said it was just impossible for
any Jew to believe that “the Creator of heaven and earth resorted to the
womb of a certain Jewish woman... and was born an infant... and then
was betrayed into the hands of his enemies and sentenced to death...
The mind of a Jew, or any other person, cannot tolerate this.”
At the end of the debate, the King James stated, “I have never seen a
man support a wrong cause so well,” and gave the Ramban 300 pieces of
gold and the promise of continued immunity.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the promise did not hold. The Church
ordered him to be tried on the charge of blasphemy, and he was banished
from Spain. In 1267, at the age of 72, the Ramban arrived in Jerusalem,
where there were so few Jews at the time that he could not even find 10
men for a minyan in order to pray. He died in 1270 and was buried in Haifa.
10 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 72
ISRAEL
The gematria of Israel is 541. 5+4+1 = 10.
The number 10 typifies holiness and the resting
place of the Shechinah. The fulfilment of Torah,
as encapsulated in the 10 Commandments, is
the purpose of existence. Existence was created
by the 10 utterances.
The first letter of each name of the patriarchs
and matriarchs are found within the word Israel:
(Yitzchok) and
(Yaakov)
(Sarah)
(Rivkah)
(Rochel)
(Avraham)
(Leah)
THE LUZ BONE
What is the Luz bone? Although the location of the Luz
is disputed, most believe it’s a small, indestructible, almond-shaped bone located at the top of the spine, just
under the brain – at the exact area on which the knot of
the tefillin rests – and it symbolises the point where the
physical and spiritual meet. As the confluence of these
two forces, it is said that the Luz bone receives nourishment only from food eaten on Saturday night at the
melava malka meal – the meal eaten between the spiritual Shabbos and the physical weekday.
The Midrash says the Roman emperor Hadrian once
asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, “From which
part of the body will G-d make man sprout forth when
the dead are revived?” “From the Luz bone of the spinal
column,” came his answer. Hadrian then took a Luz and
tried to grind it, burn it, and dissolve it in water, to no
avail. When he hammered it against an anvil, the hammer and anvil broke!
The Luz bone has also been likened to the Western
Wall. Just as the Western Wall will never be destroyed,
and from it the Third Temple will be built, so too the
Luz is never destroyed, and from it the person will be
rebuilt during the future resurrection.
Interestingly, the Talmud also mentions a city named
Luz where death had no hold. “Sennacherib marched
without disturbing it, against which Nebuchadnezzar
marched without destroying it, and even the
Angel of Death has no permission to pass
through it. When the old men there become tired of life they go outside the
wall and die.”
So, where was Luz? Ramban holds
that the city originally called
Luz is none other
than Jerusalem,
called by Yaakov
Beth-el House
of G-d. JL
TEXT: LIZ SAMUELS; PHOTOGRAPHS: WIKIPEDIA.ORG; ILAN OSSENDRYVER
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