Introduction
The taboo against incest is not only a prerequisite for culture, and, in a sense, “culture” itself,Footnote 1 it is also a gateway to religion.Footnote 2 Through a study of rationales for the existence of incest prohibitions, which have been established across the generations, it becomes clear that incest rules represent the sanctity of law and the marking of the boundaries between the divine and the mundane, holiness and impurity, and the elevated and the degraded. Therefore, an analysis of the justifications for this most basic taboo can reveal the deep structures of theological systems and the building blocks of the legal system that the taboo represents. More generally, considering taboos as a separate category requiring independent analysis provides a methodological starting point for this article. Although the study of religious ritual raises awareness of the gap between medieval philosophy, Christian theology, and Jewish Kabbalah, an analysis of taboo—constructed as negative prohibitions—reveals common characteristics in these religious systems that are veiled when analysis focuses on the positive commandments alone. Additionally, notwithstanding the many studies of sexuality in the Middle Ages,Footnote 3 there are only a few that offer comparative textual readings of Jewish and Christian texts and that trace the philological connections between these different compositions. This inquiry provides a means for an examination of the interrelations between divergent medieval religious trends in the ways they constructed the role of sexuality.
Jewish writers and Christian theologians both recognized and struggled with the gap between the narratives about the amorous relationships of the biblical patriarchs and the laws of kinship and incest taboos in Leviticus and subsequent religious law.Footnote 4 Augustine dealt with this question and offered a rationale for the incest taboo, which had a decisive influence on later Christian theologians. He assumed that the repulsion about incest developed over generations and should be seen as a blessed cultural-religious development, but not as natural. For Augustine, the central reason for an incest taboo was to encourage exogamy and expand friendly relations in human society, in addition to bringing about the natural feeling of shame that developed through legal traditions.Footnote 5 In contrast with Augustine, who justified the incest taboo on social grounds as a way to strengthen friendship through exogamy rules, Maimonides added a religious meaning to this taboo, which I will discuss below.
Augustine’s approach decisively influenced canon law in the late Middle Ages. Gratian was already quoting and discussing it in his codification in the twelfth century.Footnote 6 Levi ben Avraham, who flourished in Provence in the thirteenth century, discusses a Jewish parallel to the theory of friendship, whose formulation is very close to Augustine’s reasoning. He stated: “There is another possible rationale of the laws against incest, which is that the human species can only be perfected through political groupings and the group is completed through love.”Footnote 7 Just as the influence of Augustine—as opposed to Maimonides—on Levi ben Avraham has escaped the attention of scholars, so also have scholars overlooked clear traces of Maimonides’s justification of the incest laws in Aquinas’s remarks on incest.
In this article, I will trace Maimonides’s position on incest prohibitions as a repression of the sexual impulse. I will demonstrate how his position was accepted by various traditions in the thirteenth century, including Christian theology, Jewish philosophy, classic Jewish literature, and even Kabbalah. I will start by presenting Maimonides’s two rationales for incest: the first, on the disgrace of sexuality; and the second, that incest is understood as contradicting the shame required toward parents. Then, I will delineate the resemblance of Aquinas’s reasoning to Maimonides’s rationales and the way Maimonides’s arguments fit into Aquinas’s theological framework. After presenting these affinities, I will continue by tracing the reception of Maimonides’s rationales for incest in the Spanish Kabbalah. I will argue that although it is not obvious that kabbalists would appropriate Maimonides’s rationales for the commandments—since the Maimonidean approach to sexuality as disgusting and degraded presumably stands in tension with the concept of the holiness of corporeal union that has been emphasized in most of Kabbalah scholarship—they did indeed do so.
I will first analyze the reception of these rationales in Nahmanides’s Commentary to the Torah and then their elaboration in the work of R. Joseph of Hamadan, one of the “radical” proponents of Castilian Kabbalah who flourished at the end of the thirteenth century. This kabbalist described the divinity in a way that fundamentally diverged from Maimonides’s doctrine of negative divine attributes:
R. Joseph described the world of the sefirot anthropomorphically, with images of eating, drinking, procreation, urination and defecation, and with descriptions of pubic hairs.Footnote 8 As we will see, as opposed to the reception of Maimonides’s rationales in Aquinas’s theology, where they fit his religious ideal, the acceptance of Maimonidean principles and their integration in the theurgic Kabbalah teaches us about an important aspect of the theory of sexuality in Kabbalah, which roots it in its historical context.Footnote 9
The reception of Maimonides’s rationales for the commandments in thirteenth-century Jewish and Christian thought sheds new light on the question of the similarities between these traditions.
Disgrace: Diminishing Sexuality as the First Rationale for the Incest Taboo
Maimonides argued that the prohibition against incest was a way of diminishing the natural sexual desires, and he gave an educational-psychological explanation for the commandment as limiting the possibility of sexual relations with female relatives. The declaration of the degradation of intercourse fits with philosophical formulations whose origins are in Hellenistic antiquity, and which also developed in Christianity.Footnote 10 Together with Maimonides’s famous statement, following Aristotle, about the pleasures of eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse, which, since they are all connected to the sense of touch, are “a disgrace to us,”Footnote 11 we can compare the neo-Pythagorean statement, “The sexual organs were not given to man for pleasure but for the preservation of the human race.”Footnote 12 Sexuality is a means of procreation, and nothing else. Accordingly, the incest prohibitions were considered ethical-behavioral tools that were meant to limit the repulsive sexual urges,Footnote 13 according to the approach that holds that the body has no inherent value except when it is seeking another appropriate end, such as procreation or the preservation of psychological or physical health.Footnote 14 In order to analyze the influence of Maimonides, here I quote at length from the rationale for the incest prohibitions that appears in his Guide of the Perplexed 3.49:
As for the prohibitions against illicit unions, all of them are directed to making sexual intercourse (nkhah)Footnote 15 rarer and to instilling disgust for it so that it should be sought only very seldom. The reason for the prohibition against homosexuality and against intercourse with beasts is very clear. For if the thing that is natural should be abhorred except for necessity, all the more should deviations from the natural way and the quest for pleasure alone be eschewed. All illicit unions with females have one thing in common: namely, that in the majority of cases these females are constantly in the company of the male in his house and that they are easy of access for him and can be easily controlled by him—there being no difficulty in making them come into his presence; and no judge could blame the male for their being with him. Consequently if the status of the women with whom union is illicit were that of any unmarried woman, I mean to say that if it were possible to marry them and that the prohibition with regard to them were only due to their not being the man’s wives, most people would have constantly succumbed and fornicated with them. However, as it is absolutely forbidden to have intercourse with them, the strongest deterrents making us (rd‘ana) avoid this—I mean by this a sentence of death by order of a court of law and the threat of being cut off—so that there is no way to have intercourse with these women, men are safe from seeking to approach them and their thoughts are turned away from them. It is very clear that relations are easy with all women included in the prohibitions concerning illicit unions. For it is very general that if a man has a wife, her mother, her grandmother, her daughter, her granddaughter, and her sister will be in his house most of the time, so that the husband will constantly meet them whenever he enters, goes out, and is engaged upon his business. A wife also is often in contact with her husband’s brother, his father, and his son. It is likewise manifest that in most cases a man is often in the company of his sisters, maternal and paternal aunts, and the wife of his paternal uncle, and is brought up together with them. Now these are the women with whom union is illicit because of their being relatives. Consider this, this being one of the reasons why intercourse with relatives is prohibited.Footnote 16
Maimonides’s assumption that there is a natural erotic relationship between relatives led him to explain the prohibition against incest as a prohibition that was intended to limit sexuality. This also shaped his concept of the incest prohibitions as revealed laws and not as “rational law.”Footnote 17 Furthermore, his rationale for this law was that it reduced sexual desire to the minimum possible, since corporal pleasure is “bestial” and conflicted with his notion of “humanity” as rational.Footnote 18
In addition to this explicit rationale, there is another place in the Guide where Maimonides posited the minimization of the sexual urge as one of fourteen principles underlying the rationales for the commandments in the Torah. Thus, in Guide 3.35, where he considers these fourteen principles, the final principle explains the rationale for the sexual and incest prohibitions: “The fourteenth class comprises the commandments concerned with the prohibition of certain sexual unions…. The purpose of this too is to bring about a decrease of sexual intercourse and to diminish the desire for mating as far as possible, so that it should not be taken as an end, as is done by the ignorant.”Footnote 19 Maimonides’s assumption that lusting after relatives was natural had a philosophical source and accords with Augustine’s approach,Footnote 20 but Maimonides’s formulation is original.Footnote 21 His rationale is similar to that of Abraham Ibn Ezra, as stated in the latter’s commentary on Lev 18:6, the verse that prohibits relations with relatives, as Nahmanides already noted in his commentary on this verse.Footnote 22 Ibn Ezra writes:
Since the heart and impulse of a man is like animals, it is not plausible to forbid all the females, and behold [God] forbade all those [women] who are found with him at all times. And in the Torah portion of Ki Teitze Mahaneh I will reveal a closed and sealed secret to you, and behold all who are redeemed will distance the received name from there, therefore it mentioned that “I am God.”Footnote 23
To this rationale for the incest prohibitions, which has a circumstantial basis, Maimonides added another: the shame that accompanies the proximity of a “root” and its “branch.” It is possible that Maimonides felt the need to give an additional explanation, because of the weakness of the circumstantial explanation, which Nahmanides later pointed out, as I discuss below.
Shame: The “Branch” and the “Root” Rationale
The second rationale Maimonides offers for the incest prohibition is that it is forbidden to bring a “root” and its “branch” together; this served as the basis for the development of kabbalistic discourses already in the early Kabbalah, which used the terms “root” and “branch” as signifiers of ontological aspects of the supernal metaphysical system. I will discuss the original idea in Maimonides and then examine its reception in later works:
The second reason derives, in my opinion, from the wish to respect the sentiment of shame (alhiya).Footnote 24 For it would be a most shameless thing if this act could take place between the root (alazal)Footnote 25 and the branch (alfar‘a);Footnote 26 I refer to sexual intercourse with the mother or the daughter. On the ground of the root and the branch, sexual intercourse of one of the two with the other has been forbidden.Footnote 27
The prohibition against drawing close the root and the branch is meant to establish appropriate intergenerational relationships, where the child is the branch and the root is the parent, i.e., between a father and daughter or a mother and her son.Footnote 28 This sort of connection is “most shameless” because it destabilizes the appropriate relations between different statuses. The organic metaphor Maimonides used suggests a more natural aversion expected toward parents, and, at first glance, this might seem inconsistent with the first rationale, which highlights the natural attraction and stresses the ethical source of the taboo. Nevertheless, although Maimonides employed the organic idiom, he explained the avoidance ethically and not naturally; the disorder it creates is in the ethical realm, not the biological. Morally, it is shameful for people related by such natural blood relations to copulate, even if they are naturally attracted to each other. This does not indicate that their shame is natural, but rather, that it is required for the proper social order.
Having outlined the two rationales that Maimonides used to explain the incest taboo, and which he tied to the ethical realm, I now move to an analysis of his influence, as received in thirteenth-century literature that considered incest, and the implications of Maimonidean traces on the theological function of sexuality in these writings.
Aquinas’s Resemblance to Maimonides’s Rationales
Even though Aquinas explicitly agreed with Augustine and Gratian on the context of incest, and though he did not mention Maimonides, in light of other Maimonidean influences on him and similarities in content and language, it is reasonable to infer that the rationales offered in the Guide are echoed in Aquinas’s discussion on the matter.Footnote 29 Even if this resemblance could be explained as deriving from a different source, their affinity remains, notwithstanding. Their common attitude toward rationales against incest and the decisive influence Maimonides had on Spanish- Jewish kabbalistic traditions emphasizes the shared ground within these separate traditions, which in many studies have been depicted as opponents. Previous studies have noted the influence of Augustine on Aquinas regarding the incest taboo. I will now demonstrate how Aquinas’s reasoning is similar to the arguments Maimonides made.
Aquinas put forward the argument concerning shame as the first rationale for there to be incest prohibitions: “First, because man naturally owes a certain respect to his other blood relations, who are descended in near degree (de propinquo originem) from the same parents.”Footnote 30 This argument is very close to Maimonides’s rationale about the root and the branch, for “de propinquo originem” (translated less literally as “in near degree”) appears to be a translation of “emerged from the same root,” both in terms of terminology (originem parallels the term alazal, which means root, source, origin) and derivation from the proximity between root and branch—that is, between the relationship of the son to his parents and the relationship between those who stem from the same root.
After he presented this rationale, Aquinas offered as proof the words of Valerius Maximus (first century CE) that, in antiquity, it was traditional for a son not to bathe with his father, so that they should not see each other naked (not “reveal their nakedness”). Subsequently, Aquinas proceeded to detail explicitly the rationale of shame, which is caused when a man acts incestuously toward his parents, whom he ought to honor: “it is evident that in venereal acts there is a certain shamefulness (turpitudo) inconsistent with respect, wherefore men are ashamed of them (verecundantur).”Footnote 31 The terms turpitudo and verecundantur both refer to the shame and disgrace that are in oppostion to the honor due to parents—equivalent to the term alhiya that Maimonides used and which was given in Latin translation in Dux neutrorum as “verecundia magna & improperium.”Footnote 32 Decrying this honor is termed “honorificentiae contraria,” and Maimonides saw this as ‘atimah jeda (brazenness, extreme pride).
Aquinas’ second rationale could also be an appropriation from Maimonides:
The second reason is because blood relations must needs live in close touch with one another. Wherefore if they were not debarred (non arcerentur) from venereal union, opportunities of venereal intercourse (commixtionis) would be very frequent and thus men’s minds would be enervated by lust.Footnote 33
Aquinas’s use of the term arcerentur is similar to Maimonides’s use of rd‘ana— both mean prevention or distancingFootnote 34—and through it Aquinas emphasizes the frequent presence of female relatives with whom a man would often transgress sexually (zanat in Judeo-arabic, zenut in Hebrew, was translated as incestum in Dux neutrorum and as commixtione venerea in Aquinas),Footnote 35 if the women were not forbidden to him. For both Maimonides and Aquinas, in accordance with the Aristotelian tradition, the goal is to minimize sexual desire, which damages a person’s intellectual soul that enables perfection.Footnote 36
From this inquiry it becomes clear that both of Maimonides’s rationales—the one having to do with shame and the one on the fact that the incest prohibitions in Leviticus are meant to limit common temptations stemming from the frequent presence of a man’s female relatives—have parallels in Aquinas, but without the former being named. This second one is to ensure that sexual desire does not distract a man’s mind and weaken his intellectual soul (anima). This reasoning connects the incest prohibitions to the religious ideal of the unity of the intellectual soul with God, establishes an ideal that is appropriate to Aquinas’s position on sexuality, and serves the theological-religious purpose of humanity. In this, Aquinas followed the main ascetic Christian attitudes, already expressed in the New Testament and developed by Augustine and others, of a complex dualism of body and soul. Although scholars like Caroline Walker Bynum have advanced our understanding of medieval Western Christianity as not simply dualistic in a gnostic sense, its suspicion of the flesh and lust cannot be ignored.Footnote 37
For Aquinas, who gives a full treatment of sexual diversions, sexuality was problematic because of the danger of forbidden pleasures, lustful thoughts, and intemperate bodily practices. According to him, the end of intercourse is procreation, forbidden pleasure is a mortal sin, and sexual lust is a capital sin.Footnote 38 The disorder of sexual desire, Aquinas claimed, is rooted in its rivalry with the love for God and the spiritual pleasures. For him, lust is “despair of the next world, since the more one desires pleasures of the flesh, the more one despises spiritual pleasure.”Footnote 39 Carnal pleasure means neglecting the future world, the spiritual end and ultimate pleasure of the soul. Thus, pleasure should be regulated by reason and divine law: “pleasure … should be measured and regulated by the rule of reason and God’s law.”Footnote 40 If we consider this theological framework and its view of pleasure, sin, reason, and divine law, Aquinas’s affinity to Maimonides is less surprising, the interreligious gap notwithstanding, as opposed to the challenge Maimonides created around the formation of approaches to sexuality for the kabbalists of the thirteenth century.
Having traced the resemblance between Aquinas and Maimonides by explaining the purpose in Aquinas of the prohibitions on incest as being to reduce sexual urges, I will next examine the kabbalists’ attempts to grapple with this rationale. This will reveal the degree of continuity among these thirteenth-century thinkers in their approaches to sexuality across religious, geographic, and theological divides.
The Reception in Kabbalah of the Rationale of the “Branch” and “Root”
I will now look at the reception of the idea of shame and the appropriate honor that is the mother’s due, which was widely incorporated into Jewish thought—for example, in Sefer ha-Hinukh, which presents this interpretation as the simple-literal meaning of the verse—as well as in kabbalistic literature.
This rationale for the laws against incest—the prohibition against bringing the branch and its root together—was widely accepted in kabbalistic literature, but, as Moshe Idel has analyzed in detail, it was taken to a new level, that of cosmic relationships. The kabbalists did not leave this prohibition on the interpersonal plane but transformed it to a regulation concerning the interactions between God and humanity. The terms “root” and “branch” in the context of the theosophictheurgic secret of incest were first used by R. Ezra of Gerona in his commentary on the Talmudic Aggadah, attributed to R. Isaac the Blind.Footnote 41 Since then, kabbalists related this rationale to a new construal of the prohibition of “returning the root to the branch”: it became a guideline for the appropriate relationship between the upper and lower worlds and for the maintenance of hierarchical relationships between the world of unity and the world of separation.Footnote 42 In one of the clearest and most expansive elaborations of the Maimonidean concepts of branch and root, the kabbalist R. Joseph of Hamadan defined the prohibition against incest as flowing from the blurring of the appropriate relations between the root and the branch.
For R. Joseph, as for the kabbalistic tradition that preceded him, the incest prohibitions were intended first and foremost to guard the distinction between the higher and lower realms, but he added a new element that was not present among his predecessors: He perceived the incest taboo as symbolizing the hierarchical difference between God, who can freely use his “scepter,” that is, his “sexual freedom,” to bestow influx and to partner with each sefirah, and man, who is forbidden from influencing the proximate “branch”:
Each family in Israel is one branch of all of Israel and is a tree in the Garden of Eden for they are all holy and God is amongst them. Therefore, they are called “close” [alt. “relatives”] for they are all close together in one tree. Whoever is closer, like a son and a daughter, is a branch close to its fellow, for it is emanated from it and sprouted from that same branch itself, and it bestows influx in it like the roots do to the branches. Therefore, regarding Heaven it is common to bestow influx on that branch which is close to it, for this is the scepter of the King of glory.Footnote 43
The prohibition against shame is first and foremost “regarding Heaven”; namely, it is related to the relations between humanity and God, and, accordingly, the incest prohibitions are intended to preserve the hierarchical relationships between the supernal King and his human subjects— relationships symbolized by “the scepter of the King” and by the organic relations between a root and its branch.
R. Joseph Hamadan summarized this hierarchy: “(in the world) above a (sexual union with a) sister is common, while (in the world) below it is called incest.”Footnote 44 This exact terminology, acknowledging the difference between the supernal world above and the human world below, was adopted by the author of Tiqqunei Zohar. In his exegesis of the incest taboos, after illustrating forbidden relations through the adaptation of botanical imagery, [the author] asserted: “(In the world) above there is no incest (‘ervah), or rupture, or separation, or breach. (In the world) above … there is (sexual) union of brother and sister, son and daughter, mother and son.”Footnote 45 These similar articulations suggest Hamadan influenced this later author’s view of incest as permitted above but prohibited below.Footnote 46 They both conceived the prohibition of incest as signifying the degraded state of humanity. They both formulated the ruling of difference between above and below as conflicting with the principle of imitatio dei; that is, incest is an exception to the general instruction to imitate the deity.Footnote 47
Reducing Sexual Desire in Kabbalistic Literature
Unlike the wide reception of the prohibition of “drawing close the root and the branch,” the first reason, concerning the diminution of the sexual urge, at first aroused exoteric opposition. Nahmanides pointed to the weakness of the claim that the purpose of the Torah was to weaken the sexual urge, for if this were so, the Torah would have forbidden polygamous marriages and not necessarily marriages to female family members:
None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness. The reason for the prohibition of sexual relationships with one’s near of kin is not expressly written [in the Torah]. The Rabbi [Moshe ben Maimon] wrote in the Guide of the Perplexed that [this law seeks to inculcate the lessons that] we should limit sexual intercourse, hold it in contempt, and perform it rarely…. But this is a very weak reason, that Scripture should make a person liable to the punishment of excision in the case of these forbidden relations, just because they are sometimes found together with him, and at the same time permit a man to marry many women, even in the hundreds and thousands! And what harm would there be if a man would marry only his daughter, just as was permitted to the Noachides, or marry two sisters as did our patriarch Jacob? A person could not do better than to give his daughter in marriage to his elder son, and they would inherit his possessions and multiply and increase in his house…. Know that sexual intercourse is held distant and in contempt in the Torah unless it is for the preservation of the human species, and therefore where there can be no offspring [such as in pederasty or carnal intercourse with beasts], it is forbidden Footnote 48
However, the correctness of Nahmanides’s claim about the problems with the rationale of reducing the libido notwithstanding, the two parts of his own commentary are themselves inconsistent. While in the first part Nahmanides rejects Maimonides’s rationale, which is based on minimizing sexual desire, and hints that the transmigration of souls is the basis for the prohibition—a matter that Moshe Idel discusses thoroughlyFootnote 49—in the second part, he opens by declaring: “Know that sexual intercourse is held distant and in contempt in the Torah unless it is for the preservation of the human species.” The minimization of the sexual urge is also brought forward as a way to realize the ideal of holiness,Footnote 50 which is consistent with other statements Nahmanides makes in his commentary on the Torah.Footnote 51 Although this statement supports Maimonides’s rationale and contradicts Nahmanides’s earlier claim, Nahmanides later considers the incest prohibitions as decrees whose rationale is esoteric and known only to sages, which is congruent with the first part of his commentary. In fact, the esotericism of the rationale for the incest taboo and the abstention from giving normative rationales for the commandmentsFootnote 52 is the fundamental reason that Nahmanides gives for his rejection of Maimonides’s rationale, even though he basically agrees with the value of diminishing sexual desire.
Nahmanides’s esoteric orientation stands in contrast to Joseph of Hamadan’s exoteric attitude, reflected in his composition on the rationales of the commandments. In his writings, Hamadan intended to explain, systematically and clearly, the esoteric meaning of the commandments in a way that combined several levels of interpretation. In this exoteric orientation, R. Joseph was part of a literary trend, which included non-kabbalistic literature on the rationale of the commandments, such as Sefer ha-Hinukh, as well as the Castilian kabbalistic traditions, which undermined the authority of Nahmanides concerning the esotericism of the rationales for the commandments.
In his commentary on the prohibition of maternal incest, after discussing the severity of the prohibition in rabbinic literature, R. Joseph explains the rationale for the commandment in light of Nahmanides’s adaptation in his Torah commentary of Maimonides’s doctrine,Footnote 53 that “sexual intercourse is held distant and in contempt in the Torah unless it is for the preservation of the human species.”Footnote 54 The educational explanation R. Joseph makes ties the purpose of the commandment to the acquisition of proper habits, according to an educational-behavioral approach:
For when a man comes into the world, he is habitually with his female relatives like his mother and sisters. Afterwards he is habitually with his mother-in-law and his daughter-in-law. Therefore, the Torah instructed about incest and said “the nakedness of your father and the nakedness of your mother you shall not reveal” (Leviticus 18:7), which is the beginning of this habit.Footnote 55
This explanation assumes that since a person’s habits are acquired in his youth (“the beginning of this habit”), he should be accustomed to overcoming his sexual urge. Habit is a central key to a person’s behavior. Similarly, in another context, R. Joseph determines that the reason for the prohibition “is so that a man not become accustomed to sins because everything follows habit.”Footnote 56 Sexual desire is understood as contemptible because of its physicality and materiality, and the severity of the incest taboo is based on the rabbinic statements that exclude the prohibition of incest from the guiding rule of the commandments, “live by them and do not die by them”; therefore, a man is required to give his life rather than transgress this commandment.
Tensions
From a conceptual point of view, the rationale of minimizing the sexual urge seems to stand in conflict with the theurgic weight that is lent to sexual relations in the theosophic-theurgic Kabbalah, which led scholars to emphasize the “positive” attitude toward sexuality and eros in this trend.Footnote 57 Specifically, R. Joseph’s statements about the obligation of procreation as the preservation of the divine chain, as stated in his Book of the Rationales of the Commandments, served as the basis for one part of Charles Mopsik’s general claim that the Jewish tradition—as opposed to the Pauline aberration that was also supported by the gnostics—from antiquity through the rabbinic period and until medieval Kabbalah, had a positive appraisal of the body and sexual relations and saw sexuality as a peak of the realization of the religious ideal.Footnote 58 This is also what seems to emerge from R. Joseph’s rationales for the positive commandment “to fulfill the commandment of procreation and to marry a woman,” where there is no mention of any reservations about intercourse, quite the opposite. R. Joseph emphasizes that “one who has a wife indicates wholeness corresponding to the groom who is the King, the God of hosts, and corresponding to the bride,”Footnote 59 as opposed to one who does not have a wife that “indicates deficiency.”Footnote 60 Indeed, when we consider only those discourses and compositions that deal positively with the union with woman, without comparing them to the taboo prohibitions related to impure sexuality, we do perceive a picture of Kabbalah as celebrating sexuality and union.
I suggest that the combination of the principles of holiness of sexual union with the repeated statement in R. Joseph of Hamadan’s Rationales of the Negative Commandments that “intercourse is degraded,” testifies to an ambivalent attitude toward sexuality, even at the heart of the theosophictheurgic Kabbalah, and not only at the margins of the ecstatic Kabbalah.Footnote 61 This accords with the ambivalence toward sexuality and the ascetic dimensions found in Zoharic literature, which Elliot Wolfson stressed.Footnote 62 The adoption of this principle teaches us about reservations about sexual behavior and its value when it is engaged in for its own sake and not for the sake of heaven, even though it might be expected that a kabbalist who uses graphic and “extreme” expressions when describing divine sexuality would see human sexuality in a more positive light.
Therefore, the fact that R. Joseph adopted the Maimonidean principle, even though in his compositions he emphasized the holiness and theurgic power of sexuality, requires a nuanced estimation of the role of desire in this type of framework. The acceptance of Maimonides’s rejection of intercourse should be considered in light of the polemic that appears at the beginning of the Holy Letter, a text that is conceptually close to him.Footnote 63 The author of the Holy Letter described the statements of Maimonides—based on Aristotle—as “imperceptible heresy,” because they imply that God’s creation is disgusting and impaired; and perhaps he also hints, thereby, that, aside from the Greek source for Maimonides’s words, they reflect a Christian position that denigrates sexuality. In addition to the claim the author of the Holy Letter makes on the exoteric level, he points out that, according to “the esoteric tradition,” not only is intercourse not degraded, but it “can be a means of spiritual elevation when it is properly practiced.”Footnote 64 Yet, even according to him, it is not desire in itself that is holy. Rather, the sanctity derives from its resemblance to the divine couple, and the purity of the coupling is dependent on the proper intention (kavana), the sake of heaven; otherwise, it is considered profane.Footnote 65
Rabbi Joseph of Hamadan framed the negative commandment of “not being covetous” as the paradigm of all prohibitions, since it signifies the “desirous soul”Footnote 66 as the evil impulse, which threatens to control the human body.Footnote 67 He frequently used a version of rabbinic homilies, such as the one found in the Babylonian Talmud, Ned. 32b about the body as a microcosm and locus of battle with the evil impulse as the elderly king or the fly, and thus expresses the position that desire is a central threat for proper observance of the commandments.Footnote 68 Furthermore, in various commandments that deal with incest prohibitions, he repeated the statements about “intercourse being a disgusting thing, if not for the preservation of the race.”Footnote 69 That is, sexual union is valuable only with the proper intention, without which it is “disgusting.” The statement about sexual intercourse as disgusting allows us to clarify that in this religious ethic, which placed correct sexuality at its center, and which is signified in the divine phallus, the Sefirah of Yesod (foundation), sexual deviation was considered the central sin, “harming the covenant,” forsaking Yesod.Footnote 70 Here, we should distinguish between actions that are driven by material pleasure and the negation of pleasure, which is understood to be an integral part of the sexual act, especially as relates to the man’s halakic obligation to give his wife pleasure.Footnote 71 Furthermore, attention should be paid to the fact that the man’s need to fulfill his female partner’s desire does not affirm his own desire but testifies to an act of love of the other, which is recognized as legitimate and even obligatory for the sex life of a married couple (conjugal debt). This is in contrast with the concept of desire itself as a sin, articulated already at the beginning of Christianity in Augustine, and as was pointed out above in Aquinas’s valuation of corporeal pleasures as replacing and repressing spiritual ones.Footnote 72 The variety of statements helps us recognize that, even in compositions that see the union of man and woman as a holy act, there is not necessarily any affirmation of desire, lust, or sexuality in and of itself.
Comparing these kabbalistic treatments of passion and desire to Aquinas’s framework of sin and lust highlights the resemblances between them; in both traditions, corporeal desire is an enemy of the soul. This does not contradict the fact that associating a divine quality and positive theurgy to correct sexuality reflects a separate Jewish tendency.Footnote 73 In fact, the minimization of the desire for intercourse does not contradict the ideal of union as the imitation of the hieros gamos, but rather sharpens the fact that, even in a kabbalistic framework, subordinating desire to an external and supernal goal is required for the sanctification of the sexual act. Only divine law, the proper intention, and the end of procreation legitimize sexuality.
Conclusions
Tracing Maimonides’s imprint on the different works sheds light on the existence of a closer affinity between kabbalistic appraisal of sexuality and the philosophical trends of Judaism and Christianity in the thirteenth century than had hitherto been recognized in the academic literature on sexuality in Kabbalah. The textual evidence discussed here suggests the importance of reconsidering the scholarly tendency to overestimate the positive stance toward sexuality in Kabbalah. Instead of the dominant presentation of Kabbalah being seen as a break away from Jewish philosophy’s and Christian ascetic positions, this analysis elucidates their common attitudes. Thus, in analyzing the complex relationships between religions and cultures, one should be wary of antithetical and oppositional theological positions. Considering their shared contexts accentuates that it is far more accurate to portray a more ambivalent and complex relationship between these religious systems. In this specific case, analyzing the systems of justification for sexual taboos in the late thirteenth century in Jewish and Christian textual traditions throws into stark relief the processes of assimilation, similarity, and identification that were intertwined with attitudes of reservation and rejection.
