Asher ben Yeḥiʾel

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ASHER BEN YEḤIʾEL

ASHER BEN YEḤIʾEL (c. 1250–1327), known as Rabbenu ("our teacher") Asher or as RʾoSH, the acronym of that epithet; Talmudist and rabbinic legal authority. Born and educated in Germany, Asher was the leading disciple of the outstanding German rabbinic scholar of his age, Meʾir ben Barukh of Rothenburg. The turbulence disrupting German Jewish life impelled him to emigrate in 1303. He eventually settled in Toledo; that a man of such alien background was accepted as head of the Toledo rabbinical court reflects the power of his learning and his personality.

In Spain, Asher was immediately embroiled in a Kulturkampf over the study of philosophy. The product of an exclusively Talmud-centered curriculum, he did not fully understand all the issues involved (he declined to answer a legal query concerning the astrolabe because, he said, "It is an instrument with which I am not familiar"). Asher hesitated to support the ban promulgated by Shelomoh ben Avraham Adret proscribing the study of Greek philosophy until age twenty-five, because this implied that such study was permissible later, and he believed it should be prohibited throughout life. He ultimately endorsed the ban to ensure that failure to do so would not be misunderstood as support for philosophy. His was the most conservative position taken by any major protagonist in the conflict.

Asher's legal works, which emerged from intensive study of the Talmud, are of three kinds: (1) commentaries on two orders of the Mishnah and several Talmudic tractates; (2) tosafot, brief excursuses on specific problems in the Talmudic text, which brought together recent German and Spanish insights; and (3) a codification called Pisqei ha-Rʾosh. Following the order of the Talmud and covering most of its tractates, Pisqei ha-Rʾosh integrated the Talmudic argument with decisions of post-Talmudic authorities to arrive at the operative law. Asher condemned the practice of rendering legal decisions based on Maimonides' Mishneh Torah by those not expert in the Talmudic sources.

Asher's responsa, or replies to legal questions, are among the more important and influential of this genre. He was frequently called upon to interpret communal ordinances and their relationship to classical Jewish law, and to decide which local Spanish customs should be honored (e.g., the use of capital or corporal punishment in cases of blasphemy or informing) and which should be opposed. Responsum 55 moves from the specific issue, concerning a wife's right to dispose of her assets as she desired through a will, to a significant debate over general principles of jurisprudence. Asher rejected the use of philology, philosophical logic, and commonsense argumentation in order to defend the integrity of the halakhic decision-making process, insisting that philosophy and Torah are "two opposites, irreconcilable, that will never dwell together."

A bridge between the great rabbinic centers of Germany and of Spain, Asher and his sons had a lasting impact on the development of Jewish law. One son, Yehdah, succeeded him as rabbi in Toledo; another, Yaʿaqov, used his father's legal oeuvre as the basis for his own magnum opus, the Arbaʿah ṭurim, a code of operative Jewish law with a new structure independent of the Talmud and earlier codes, which became the basis for Yosef Karo's Shulḥan ʿarukh.

Bibliography

The most detailed bio-bibliographical monograph on Asher, his disciples, and his descendants is Alfred Freimann's "Ascher b. Jechiel, Sein Leben und Wirken, " Jahrbuch der jüdisch-literarischen Gesellschaft 12 (1918): 237–317, and "Die Ascheriden, 1267–1391," Jahrbuch der jüdisch-literarischen Gesellschaft 13 (1920): 142–254. Yitzhak F. Baer assessed Asher's communal leadership at Toledo in Historical context in A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1961), pp. 316–325. A provocative analysis of the jurisprudential issues in responsum 55 is provided in J. L. Teicher's "Laws of Reason and Laws of Religion: A Conflict in Toledo Jewry in the Fourteenth Century," in Essays and Studies Presented to Stanley Arthur Cook, edited by D. Winton Thomas (London, 1950), pp. 83–94. More technical treatment of the Talmudic writings is available in Hebrew: see Haim Chernowitz's Toledot ha-posqim, vol. 2 (New York, 1947), pp. 144–160; E. E. Urbach's Baʿalei ha-tosafot, 4th ed. (Jerusalem, 1980), vol. 2, pp. 586–599; and a superb index to the subjects and sources of the responsa, Mafteaḥ ha-sheʾelot ve-ha-teshuvot: Shuʾʾt ha-Rʾosh (Jerusalem, 1965), by Menahem Elon.

New Sources

Gutwirth, Eleazar. "Asher b. Yehiel e Israel Israeli: actitudes hispano-judías hacia el árabe." Creencias y culturas (1998): 97–111.

Ta-Shma, Israel Moses. "Between East and West: Rabbi Asher b. Yehi'el and His Son Rabbi Yaʿakov." In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, vol. 3, edited by Isadore Twersky and Jay M. Harris, pp. 179–196. Cambridge, Mass., 2000.