Nahmanides Contra Rashi: Elucidating the Nahmanidean Hermeneutic

The seminal thirteenth century Geronese kabbalist, Talmudist, and exegete Moses Nahmanides (Moses b. Naḥman, 1194–c.1270) perceived the physical world as a mirror for the internal workings of the divine world. For him the Bible “relates about the lower matters and alludes to the upper,”Footnote ¹ rendering its apparently mundane legal, historical, and ethical dimensions a record of the inner variegated life of God. At the very inception of the world, each and every day of creation transcends its strict temporality, referring “at the inner core of the matter” () to the “sefirot which emanate from above.”Footnote ² The world's genesis unfolds along the parallel planes of the material world and the complex intradeical mechanics, the sefirot—a staple of kabbalistic thought and terminology—that are constituent of God himself. However, Nahmanides' exegetical project does not invite the escapist flight from reality that mysticism so often requires. On the contrary, his thoroughgoing kabbalistic ontology divulges a keen appreciation for and preoccupation with empirical reality and temporal history rather than threatening to overwhelm the mundane. His biblical exegesis has been characterized as exceptional within its genre for being “entirely free of the frequent kabbalistic tendency to devalue peshat [the plain sense of the text].”Footnote ³ As David Novak has argued, Nahmanides, despite his kabbalistic theology, “also finds in the Torah a commitment to the reality of nature and history, even if that level of truth is transcended by the Kabbalah. Kabbalah, the highest truth, does not displace all other truths but puts them in perspective.”Footnote ⁴ The argument that ensues in this article will demonstrate, firstly, that a prominent example of this feature of Nahmanidean exegesis pertains to the domain of interhuman relations. Here I will focus particularly on those “truths” his exegesis discloses about the spousal relationship. Secondly, Nahmanides' view of the spousal relationship is offered as paradigmatic of his kabbalistic theology, which not only does not displace its concrete social, psychological, anthropological, and juristic realia, but actually complements them. Thirdly, the case will be made that Nahmanides' narrative exegesis, with its overarching quest for the plain sense of the text, is not intended simply to sate his readers' intellectual and literary curiosity but also practically shapes his normative positions. In this particular context I will explore how his exegetical construct of a primordial composite human being, its gendered bifurcation, the definitive ideal of spousal union, the subsequent relational tensions between man and woman, and their conflict and resolution into a gendered hierarchy, all dramatized by the Garden of Eden narrative, inform his normative framework for the conduct of conjugal duties.

One of the most instructive methods of demonstrating this is by way of contrast to Shelomoh b. Yitzḥaq (Rashi, 1040–1105), the enormously popular and influential biblical exegete, who lacks the kabbalistic Weltanschauung that so prominently suffuses Nahmanides' hermeneutic. Rashi presents the ideal rabbinic foil to Nahmanides' exegetical agenda, for, while he shares a mythical midrashic language with Nahmanides, he is also one of the primary targets, if not the primary target, of Nahmanides' sustained critique. The use of Rashi as Nahmanides' exegetical counterpoint is also methodologically efficacious in demonstrating the systematic coherence of Nahmanides' exegesis, in which kabbalah, law (halakhah), and the human sciences converge to form an integral whole. Many of Nahmanides' criticisms of Rashi are motivated by what he perceives as Rashi's violence against the plain sense (peshat) of Scripture and are therefore reflective of another facet of his exegetical impulse which decidedly esteems peshat, in contrast to the more common kabbalistic hermeneutic of “devaluation” of peshat. The juxtaposition of Rashi's exegesis with that of Nahmanides, then, is not simply a study in contrasts. Rather, it is essential to the elucidation of individual comments as well as the overarching thrust of the Nahmanidean exegetical enterprise, in that Nahmanides frequently stakes out his positions in contradistinction to Rashi.

Nahmanides' deferential yet often acerbic engagement with Rashi is already presaged in an opening salvo prior to even the start of his formal commentary. Amidst a seemingly reverential paean to Rashi's formidable exegetical talents in the epigraphic introduction to his Commentary, Nahmanides concedes, “to him is due the law of primogeniture.”Footnote ⁵ Nahmanides' Commentary conducts a programmatic onslaught against Rashi's interpretations, marked repeatedly by “I don't understand,” “this is not correct,” and “there is no rhyme or reason in this explanation.”Footnote ⁶ Perhaps, then, the complement is not what it seems. Considering the rejection or usurpation of every firstborn in favor of a younger sibling that pervades biblical narratives, as well as the less formal meaning of “law” () as custom,Footnote ⁷ this deferential gesture is more than likely a subtle barb at Rashi's reputation.Footnote ⁸ Just as Jacob appropriates his older brother's (Esau's) birthright, so analogously, the application of this “law of primogeniture” to the history of exegesis is tantamount to the claim that Nahmanides' commentary intends to overcome Rashi's, its predecessor.Footnote ⁹

Nahmanidean metaphysics envisions a dynamic interplay within the internal recesses of the Godhead consisting of an ebb and flow of energy exchanged between its female and male potencies. The perpetual struggle for a proper balance between the two infuses the narrative relationships between their earthly counterparts of man and woman with far more significance than they otherwise would have.Footnote ¹⁰ Although others have noted the mystical enhancement of the sexual act in the kabbalistic tradition,Footnote ¹¹ studies of this aspect of kabbalistic thought have tended to focus on the precise identification of sefirotic allusions and symbolism. Insufficient attention has been paid to the model God poses simply as a unitary being (albeit, paradoxically, a dynamic one consisting of sefirot, or intradeical emanations) in his engagement with and governance of the world. As Gershom Scholem put it, “In its totality the individual elements of the life process of God are unfolded yet constitute a unity.”Footnote ¹² God's macro-relationship with both the world and Israel presents an archetype for imitatio dei in the micro-relationships between human beings and, in particular, between opposite genders. Notwithstanding the current scholarly debate as to the nature of the female role within the kabbalistic framework,Footnote ¹³ my contention is that in Nahmanides' case at least, the translation from the conceptual to the practical does not preclude masculine sensitivity to the feminine other within the marriage, albeit from a superior hierarchical vantage point. Particularly pertinent to my argument here is Elliot Wolfson's depiction of Nahmanides' hermeneutic and the identification of those instances in it which allow for parallel levels of meaning,Footnote ¹⁴ literal (peshat) and theosophical (sod), each corresponding to its independently existing referents in the material and divine worlds.Footnote ¹⁵ While both levels of reality are preserved, a full appreciation of the literal/mundane is dependent on an understanding of the mystical/divine. Rather than one overcoming the other, the kabbalistic and the plain sense operate in tandem to form a complementary hermeneutical grid.

The “Not Good” of Solitary Man: Nahmanides vs. Rashi

The first negative divine assessment of God's creation is of the lonely condition of the male deprived of female companionship in the second chapter in Genesis. All other creations were judged “good,” whereas this single product of the originating process is “not good”—“for it is not good for man to be alone”—prompting a corrective creative measure: “I will make for him a helpmate” (Gen 2:18). The exegetical question posed by this particular verse is what precisely is “not good” about the solitary state of man. For Rashi the phrase “not good” expresses a grave theological concern that man's presence as the sole representative of his species on earth will miscast him as a singularity leading to his deification: “That they should not say, ‘there are two powers: God is unique among the higher beings as he has no partner, and this [man] is unique among the lower since he has no partner.’”Footnote ¹⁶ In other words, the particular condition of man vis-à-vis man does not concern Rashi. It is not his existential loneliness or incompleteness or his inability to form relationships or propagate that is problematic, but rather, it is how his predicament, intrinsically good on its own, will be religiously misconceived as some form of dualism by others.

Nahmanides, on the other hand, sees the “not good” as an existential malaise of Adam's resulting from his being a single composite entity of male and female.Footnote ¹⁷ First he accedes to the rabbinic opinion that original man was created with two faces, male and female back to back:Footnote ¹⁸ “It is likely that this account is according to the one who holds they were created with two faces ().” He then explains the mechanics of self-reproduction: “and they were made to have the natural means whereby the reproductive male organ would enable the female reproductive organ to give birth.” Once the anatomical features of this primal being have been determined, Nahmanides addresses God's assessment of its value and identifies that facet which elicits God's not good, and he explains how “I will make him a helpmate opposite him” responds to the problem. God realizes that “it is good that the mate stand opposite him so that he can see it and either separate from it or unite with it according to his will.”Footnote ¹⁹ It is crucial to note that since Nahmanides establishes a possible procreative biology of the primordial androgynous being, it is not the negative prospects for propagation of the species that he views as the problem. What is problematic about this original condition is the permanent state of unity between the male and female and the lack of choice to either form or sever a relationship with another human being. The “good” of the human species is that there can be both separation and union between the sexes, each instigated by an independent exercise of will. We have here none other than a definition of man as a relational being whose “goodness” lies in his capacity to enter into and leave relationships.Footnote ²⁰ On this issue Rashi exhibits no concern for the relational facet of man, while Nahmanides is keenly sensitive to the vacuity of a life devoid of the other where relations are a static given rather than attained and maintained. It is important to note here that I do not intend to portray Nahmanides as a liberal advocate of equality between the sexes but only to emphasize his appreciation for the complexity of human relationships.

“Saying” and “Seeing”: Supernal Referents of Sexual Relationship

Nahmanides deepens our appreciation of man as a relational being by further elucidating why “good” could not be pronounced over primordial man: “And the reason why it was ‘not good’ is because it could not be said about it that ‘it was good,’ since it was not sustainable that way. In the account of the creation the term ‘good’ means ‘sustainable,’ as I have explained previously with regard to the phrase ‘And God saw that it was good.’” The reader is referred to the first time God judges one of his creations to be good, in Gen 1:4, which states, “And God saw the light that it was good, and he divided between the light and the darkness.” Rashi sees the positive assessment of created light as a motivation for the corrective sifting-out action of the second half of the verse: “In order to explain this verse as well we need to resort to the words of the aggadah: ‘He saw that it was not fitting for the wicked to use so He separated it for the use of the righteous in the future world.’ And according to the simple meaning (peshat), He saw that it was not good and not appropriate for darkness and light to be mixed together, so he confined this to daytime and confined that to the night.” For Rashi, then, light on its own is intrinsically good, and it is therefore inappropriate for it to remain part of an admixture with darkness. Nahmanides disagrees, since this would imply a new awareness on the part of God about the nature of light that He did not possess prior to its creation, thus impugning God's omniscience. For Nahmanides, every step of creation undergoes two stages, the initial one being its actualization, captured by the term “saying” ()—“for the bringing out of things into actuality is called ‘saying’ ()”—and the second being its grant of staying power, denoted by God's “seeing”—“and their permanence is called ‘seeing’ ().” This gradated process “indicates that their viability is dependent on his will, and if that will should separate from them for even an instant they would revert to nothingness; and just as it was daily declared about each creation, ‘And God saw that it was good,’ and on the sixth day when all was completed it said, ‘And God saw all that He had done and behold, it was very good,’ so it was on the first day in regard to light: ‘And God saw that it was good’—meaning He desired its sustainability forever.”Footnote ²¹ Nahmanides' cross reference to his own exposition of the “good” that runs throughout the unfolding of creation draws a parallel between God's relationship with the world and human relationships. Both are dependent on the will, on conscious acts of preservation.

The “good” for creation, then, is not only its permanence per se but also that its permanence is contingent on divine will. As with human relationships, in a certain sense it can also be said that what is good about the universe as a whole is that quality of its existence which is relational. Just as an essential feature of the world's existence is that its sustenance can be maintained or withheld by God, so is the ability to enter into or withdraw from relationship critical for man's permanence. The precedent of God's originating will vis-à-vis the world shaped Nahmanides' attunement to a key social, psychological, and emotional dimension of man to which Rashi was either oblivious or which he chose to ignore in favor of theological correctness. But for the theologically misleading appearance of a solitary individual, it would seem that Rashi's ideal is in fact a single masculine human being. The physical bifurcation of that single male into two distinct genders is a concession to the frailty of the human mind, which is prone to drawing theologically damaging inferences from its physical surroundings.

True to rabbinic form, Nahmanides draws on biblical prooftexts to establish the veracity of his philological claims. Thus, in support of his explication of God's “seeing” as a grant of permanence during the process of creation, Nahmanides cites four prooftexts, the precise choice of which is integral to his interpretation. The following four instances of “seeing,” he claims, are analogous to the creative divine seeing he has posited:

The common thread which links all four examples of “seeing” is the sense of understanding, where each act of seeing expresses a perception of a truth. Ecclesiastes appreciates a desideratum, Eve recognizes the tastiness of the tree, a rabbi concedes the logic of an opposing argument in a halakhic debate, and, during a political crisis, a city is considered safe. However, since all these acts of seeing are human, the analogy is not apparent. In what sense can a human perception convey permanence or sustainability? The integral correspondence between God's seeing and the object of His sight is lacking in these parallel human visions. God's sight affects what is seen, human sight does not. The problem of how these illustrations present credible analogies is compounded by the anomalous reference to Gen 3:6, in which it is Eve's seeing that leads her to violate the divine proscription against eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. While the other three seeings express some positive act of perspicacious clarity, Eve's is insidious.

I suggest that Nahmanides is alluding to the parallel between the divine and mortal worlds along the lines of the principle that what is below reflects what is above. These two worlds mirror each other, though, given their diverse natures, not with absolute precision. What God achieves instantaneously by sight, mortal sight instigates. In each of the cases cited, the perception of sight effects an objective realization of its underlying signification. In (i), Ecclesiastes' determination of the worth of wisdom vis-à-vis folly initiates a line of thought ending with an emotion (“I hate life…”; 2:16) which instantiates his original insight. Ecclesiastes' seeing is thus concretized. In (ii), Eve's sighting motivates her to pluck the fruit and eat it, thereby lending “permanence” to her perception of the tree as a culinary delight. In (iii), a rabbi's understanding of the cogency of his opponent's argument impels its permanence in the objective form of a normative ruling. Finally, in (iv), the priest Zadok's “seeing” of David's counsel to return to the city from which he has fled as a result of his son's coup d'état promotes the action of returning to inhabit the city (“And Zadok and Abiathar returned the Ark of God to Jerusalem and they remained there”; 2 Sam 15:29), thereby realizing that counsel and lending it its permanence. Nahmanides' analogy relates divine seeing, which is at one and the same time instantiation, to human seeing, which relates to instantiation by prompting it.

In order to appreciate Nahmanides' argument more fully, it is instructive to examine his objection to the interpretation of divine “seeing” by Abraham ibn Ezra, another major target of exegetical assault throughout his Commentary: “‘And He saw’ is similar to ‘and I saw’ (Eccl 2:13) and it means in the mind [i.e., I perceived], and the sense of ‘And He separated’ is by the calling of names.” Ibn Ezra ascribes to this “seeing” the sense of intellectual reflection (“thought of the heart”), citing the very same verse from Ecclesiastes in support of his semantic proposition.Footnote ²² For ibn Ezra, God's “seeing” is a prelude to the next divine action, which is distinguishing light from darkness by the assignment of distinct names: “seeing” is the realization that these creations need naming. For the reason mentioned previously, Nahmanides' objection is to the notion of seeing as a means rather than an end in itself. For Nahmanides, as opposed to ibn Ezra, “seeing” is itself effectually sufficient rather than the first stage of a two-stage process.

The question remains as to how Eve's seeing, which instigates a transgression, supports Nahmanides' argument. The Eve prooftext is a critical cipher for Nahmanides' identification of the aptitude that the original pair of human beings acquired once they consumed the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Nahmanides, in his commentary on Gen 2:9 (“And God caused every tree that was attractive to sight and good for food to grow from the earth, and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil”), first rejects the common opinion that “knowledge of good and evil” means sexual desire, arguing that this interpretation is inconsistent with the serpent's claim, “and you shall be like elohim” (Gen 3:5). The veracity of the serpent's lure is later corroborated by God himself: “Man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (3:22), indicating that this “knowledge” imparts a godly quality. Instead of sexual awareness, Nahmanides understands this “knowledge” as the capacity to choose:

Striking for both its noveltyFootnote ²³ and its insight into the evolving human condition, this comment posits that prior to the eating of the forbidden fruit all human conduct was a mere function of logical necessity, “unmotivated by love or hate,” free of any emotions that could impede or deflect it from the course set by nature. The first humans' growth and development was much like that of the tree from which they ate. Ingestion of the fruit enabled passion and an increasingly complex anthropology enriched by eros. For Nahmanides, Eve's “seeing” signals her transition from a predictable automaton, lacking any behavioral latitude, to an autonomous human being, by the integration of a sovereign will into the human psyche.

Will is the very essence of the human condition, and with its attainment what is generally regarded as a narrative of humankind's “fall” is transformed into its very opposite. The reader now confronts a foundational saga of ennoblement in which “their incipient humanity was not a curse; it was an opportunity.”Footnote ²⁴ Nahmanides further theorizes that sexual relations prior to plucking the fruit were emotionless affairs prompted solely by the natural rhythms of fertility in the cold service of species replenishment: “for in this time there was no sexual desire; only during the reproductive cycle they would unite and propagate.”Footnote ²⁵ After eating of the tree, however, man acquired “choice and the capacity for good or evil actions toward himself or others, and this is in one sense a Godlike quality but also bad for man in that it can involve desire and craving ().”Footnote ²⁶ If one's humanity is expressed by the exercise of an autonomous will, and “Godlike” if properly implemented, then the post-tree knowledge of sexuality is greatly enhanced. Passionate sexuality, when licitly engaged, is not only condoned but in some sense “Godlike.”Footnote ²⁷ Human will is only “bad” when it indulges its “desire and craving” by falling prey to the seduction of illicit sexual relations.

One of Nahmanides' prooftexts supporting his position on the phrase “knowledge of good and evil” (2 Sam 19:36) is the defeatist response of Barzilai, an infirm senior who has given up on life's pleasures, to David's gracious offer of support: “I am now eighty years old. Can I still know the difference between good and evil? Can your servant taste what he eats or drinks? Can I any longer listen to singers and songstresses?” According to Nahmanides, the phrase here indicates that “he has lost the ability to conceptualize, he is not attracted to or repulsed by anything, and he ate without tasting and listened without any enjoyment in music.” Barzilai's life lacks luster since his passions have been dulled to the point where he no longer derives any pleasure from life's common joys. Clearly Barzilai does not describe a superior or enviable state. He is lifeless and considers himself dead weight (“why should your servant continue to be a burden”; v.36). Nahmanides' citation of this verse draws a parallel between Barzilai's near comatose-like state and Adam's pre-fruit existence, which was likewise lacking in passion and therefore devoid of “godliness.”

We can now appreciate Nahmanides' seemingly anomalous inclusion of Eve's “seeing” in Gen 3:6 (“And the woman saw that the tree was good for food”) as one of the four prooftexts cited in support of his philological contention regarding God's “seeing” during the creation process. Bearing in mind the distinction I proposed previously between human and divine seeing, the consequence of Eve's seeing is precisely analogous to that of divine seeing, particularly the instance in which God realizes that man's solitude is “not good.” Humanity's permanence, as demonstrated above, is contingent on his capacity to willfully cultivate relationship. The creation of woman addresses the necessity of a separate other as the object of relationship, but in and of itself it does not provide will and the ability to choose, which Nahmanides identified as essential to man's existence in Gen 2:18: “so that he can see it and either separate from it or unite with it according to his will.” The passionless natural reproductive capacity of the single hermaphroditic creature could just as easily subsist between two individuals. Eve's seeing introduces will, that second facet of the human condition which supplements simple separation and guarantees human durability.

According to Nahmanides, Eve's seeing involves the understanding of free choice that he previously described as a double-edged sword: both Godlike and sinister. Eve sees the tree as both “a delight to the eyes” and “desirable as a source of wisdom” (Gen 3:6). Nahmanides parses the verse into two separate seductive forces:

The critical distinction for Nahmanides is between those choices spurred by emotions and those spurred by reason. Through the tree “one obtains delight and strays after one's eyes,” and by it also “one is seized of the wisdom to desire.” He then concludes with a general statement as to the psychological constitution of a human being which assigns delight () to the domain of the eyes while desire () is under the control of the intellect. This is further reduced to “the general principle that through it one gains the ability to will and want something or its opposite.” What is Godlike is not the absence of desire but controlled desire—that is, desire channeled toward one's spouse, its lawful object—while what is damaging is unbridled desire subject to emotional whimsy.

Nahmanides cites Eccl 7:29 (“This alone I have found, God made man upright but they have sought many thoughts”) to substantiate his notion of free will as a dual-natured precarious gift that can achieve the opposing ends of godliness or depravity: “And perhaps the verse contemplated this notion [that free will is a mixed blessing] when it stated, ‘This alone I have found, God made man upright but they have sought many thoughts’: The ‘uprightness’ () means that he should maintain one right path, while the ‘seeking many thoughts’ means that he pursues deeds that change in his choice of them.”Footnote ²⁸ Nahmanides' choice of prooftext is itself a salient illustration of the contrast between his perspective on human relationships and that of Rashi. Nahmanides understands the verse as identifying man's true purpose, which can be thwarted by free will. Choice here is not condemned but rather qualified as an aptitude that can be channeled in many directions, but only the destination “uprightness” is compatible with God's original intent.Footnote ²⁹ Rashi, on the other hand, interprets this verse in light of its context, a rant against the evils of women. “‘This alone I have found’ indicates that women are the source of man's problems.” God created man upright; the source of his problems, according to Rashi, is revealed by the plural subject of the second cola of the verse, “they.” In keeping with his interpretation in Genesis, Rashi here presumes that solitary man is ideal and that his decline is marked by the shift from “he” to “they”: “when Eve his wife is paired up with him and they become two and they are called ‘they,’ they ‘seek many thoughts’—plans and thoughts of sin.” What Nahmanides sees as the good relational essence of man in meeting the other, yielding the possibilities of vice or virtue, Rashi sees as intrinsically evil.

The “One Flesh” of Conjugal Union: Nahmanides vs. Rashi

These rival positions on the merits of distinct genders, the creation of woman, and consequently sexual relationships inform Nahmanides' and Rashi's respective exegeses throughout their commentaries. One striking example is their divergent positions on the implications of the divine pronouncement on the future of sexual relationships: “Therefore man shall leave his father and mother and join his wife, and they shall become as one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Rashi explains the spousal metamorphosis into “one flesh” in terms of progeny: “The child is created by both of them and there their flesh unites.” Nahmanides is baffled by this view, which, he says, “makes no sense” since the verse is specific to human beings while Rashi's genetic explanation of “one flesh” applies equally to the animal kingdom.

Nahmanides responds with an alternative according to which becoming “one flesh” is a distinguishing characteristic of human, as opposed to animal, relationships:

Rashi, who never considered the creation of woman an asset, fails to consider the relational implications of the spousal “one flesh.” In fact, Rashi might respond to Nahmanides' critique with a “precisely the point”—man would have been better off without this female companion, and her creation only serves to cultivate qualities and actions that feature the animalist component of his being. Nahmanides, on the other hand, who subscribes to the notion that what sustains humanity is its facility for relationship, assesses the forging of “one flesh” in terms of this essential quality. Authentic relationship is born of commitment, of which only human beings are capable. Animals simply follow wherever their sexual urge leads them, while exclusive dedication to a sexual partner is a quality restricted to humankind.Footnote ³⁰

Nahmanides' sentiments, and particularly his disagreement with Rashi on this issue, are highlighted in his concluding comments on this verse. He argues that the use of phrase “one flesh” to describe sexual relationships is related to the use of the term “flesh” to describe biological relationships: “And in a similar sense is ‘For he is our brother our flesh’ (Gen 37:27), and ‘anyone of his own flesh’ () (Lev 18:6). Familial relatives are called . And so he will leave the [flesh] of his father and mother and their kinship and will realize that his wife is even closer to him than they.” Although two prooftexts are cited to confirm the familial connotation of the term “flesh” (), this is done primarily to distinguish them from the dedicated sexual relationship of marriage. If the “flesh” of the verse were confined to hereditary “flesh,” then Rashi's identification of united flesh with the child, genetically related to both the father and mother, would be perfectly reasonable. However, Nahmanides emphasizes that although “flesh” connotes family members, “one flesh” connotes a more intense bond between individuals who in fact are not necessarily related by blood. The closeness of genetics expresses that which is common among all living species, while there is a relationship of even greater proximity that only humanity offers, characterized by intimacy.

Nahmanides' contention with Rashi regarding the implications of the phrase “one flesh” crystallizes in their debate over the deterioration of the male-female relationship after the first couple eats from the tree of knowledge. Rashi explains the primal curse of Gen 3:16, which condemns woman to a persistent state of “craving for your man while he rules over you,” in terms of carnal desire. Despite the fact that she will endure a “craving for sexual intercourse,” Rashi states that she will be subject to the sexual whim of her husband. She is condemned to a perpetual state of sexually frustrated passivity in which her capacity to initiate or demand sex is muzzled, since “he will rule over you, as everything comes from him and not you.” Her destiny is akin to that of a nymphomaniac whose sexual outlet is completely dependant on the arbitrary demands of her spouse.

Taking issue with both Ibn Ezra's and Rashi's interpretation of this curse, Nahmanides comments that the sole meaning of “craving” () is “lust” () and “desire” (). In light of this philological nuance, Nahmanides continues: “And what is correct in my view is that He punished her that she should excessively desire her husband without any fear of the pain of pregnancy and birth. He will control her like a maidservant and, although it is not natural for a servant to desire a ruler over her, but rather it is to escape from him, this is a fitting consequence, for she gave him and he ate at her command, so she will no longer command him; rather he will command her at will.”Footnote ³¹ Here “lust” implies a yearning for servility, the direct opposite of its standard meaning. “Lust” () defines a heterosexual relationship in terms of a master/slave paradigm. On the other hand, the pre-sin idyllic spousal relationship captured by “and he shall cleave to his wife and they will become one flesh” (Gen 2:24) rejects that paradigm in favor of something approximating gender parity. As noted, Nahmanides explains this facet of relationship as a “desire for her to be with him continuously,” which defines man's nature vis-à-vis his wife “to consider their wives as if they were one flesh with them.” Nahmanides has thus profoundly understood the post-sin curse of the female as a deterioration in the idyllic state of affairs of intimacy and companionship connoted by the “one flesh” of dedication and commitment.

The impetus, I believe, for Nahmanides' notion that marriage trumps heredity can be traced to the parallels between marriage and heredity in the divine process of creation. There we were introduced to the two stages signified by “saying” and “seeing that it was good,” where the former represented the bringing into existence of a creation and the latter its permanence, which is contingent on divine will. Hereditary relationships mirror the divine “saying,” defined as they are by acts of birth or simple bringing into existence. Humanity cannot endure based on this alone, just as the world could not persist simply on God's “saying.” Concomitantly, just as the world's existence is consummated by God's “seeing” and sustained ever after by His will, so is human existence secured by willed relationships. A “saying” God remains a distant one whose connection to the world is transient. The connection is tightened and fixed by the “seeing” of relationship. Man will “realize that he is even closer to his wife than they” when he perceives that he has emulated the cosmic drama described in Genesis. As stated in the introduction to my argument, Nahmanides maintained that the six days of active creation reveal the construction of both the material world and the complex intradeical mechanics, or sefirot, that are constituent of God himself. The ongoing human mirroring of the incipient divine saying and seeing during that embryonic period is exemplary of the operative principle, “the lower alludes to the upper” within the dynamics of human sexuality.Footnote ³²

Once spousal bonds are considered closer than genetic ones, Nahmanides' choice of prooftexts, or, more accurately, intertexts and cotexts—a close examination of which is critical when dealing with rabbinic exegetes—is notably apt. They are cotexts in the sense that they do not merely serve as corroboration for his suggested interpretations of these terms but rather are integrated through their intertextual allusion into a “new discourse” that actually generates novel and enhanced meaning.Footnote ³³ While both texts establish a genetic connotation for the term “flesh,” both appear in contexts where there occurs a distancing of those relations designated by the term. The context of “For he is our brother, our flesh” (Gen 37:27) is an appeal by Judah to his brothers, who are seized by hatred and jealousy for Joseph and have conspired to murder him, to spare his life for the sake of blood ties. However, the proposed alternative is the sale of Joseph into slavery, where there would be no prospect of ever seeing him again. The term “flesh” in this passage designates a brother on the verge of permanent estrangement from his siblings. The other cotext, “anyone of his own flesh” (; Lev 18:6), appears as part of a general prohibition banning sexual relations between what are for the most part biologically related individuals.Footnote ³⁴ The “flesh” of this prooftext/cotext also connotes blood relatives that must be kept at a distance. Thus, the two prooftexts/cotexts are carefully chosen for their thematic fit with Nahmanides' point: they are examples of both narrative and normative settings in which , meaning blood relatives, are estranged. The second verse even employs the term “to come close” as the proscribed activity: “No individual shall come close () to anyone of his own flesh.” “To come close” is clearly a euphemism for sexual intercourse,Footnote ³⁵ perhaps motivating Nahmanides' preference for the same term in his assertion that the husband “will realize that his wife is even closer than they.” With intercourse there is the realization that there can be no more intimate an act between individuals, and that act is proscribed between blood relatives.

Conjugal Rights: Lovemaking vs. Socioeconomic Duty

This fundamental divergence between Nahmanides and Rashi on human sexuality manifests itself normatively as well as anthropologically. Exodus 21:7–11 regulates the treatment of a minor girl sold into slavery who, while subject to the master's discretion to consecrate her in marriage to his son, is entitled to the same rights possessed by any wife of full legal capacity. These include the three primary conjugal rights stipulated by the obscure Hebrew terms , (clothing), and (21:9). Nahmanides takes issue with virtually every leading medieval commentator's definition of the ambiguous term , finding the consensus view, chiefly advocated by Rashi, defining as the duty of providing foodstuffs philologically specious.Footnote ³⁶ Citing various prooftexts which associate with the physicality that most often connotes relationships of the flesh or blood relatives, he argues:

Here Nahmanides links his definition of as sexual relations directly back to his position on the meaning of “one flesh” in Genesis. If conjugal duties are those that are essential to a marriage, and marriage is defined as a “one flesh” union sustained by sexual intimacy, then one of those duties must entail sexual relations. Rashi, on the other hand, who views marital union solely in terms of procreative utility, consistently considers conjugal duties in terms of procreative utility as well. Providing physical comfort as a framework for sexual regularity, not intimacy, is his concern.

Rashi's definition of each of these three terms amounts to a curt, almost clinical list of the basic necessities of food, clothing, and sex, which establishes a kind of socioeconomic framework for the survival of a marriage. Nahmanides' definitions, on the other hand, produce a list of interrelated duties all geared to enhancing the sexual relationship between husband and wife. , we have already seen, is sexual intimacy, a physical contact of flesh on flesh. is not just any clothing but “the cover of her bed”—that is, the venue of sexual encounter must be welcoming and comforting. Finally, , which Rashi and others take as sexual relations, is a far more nuanced sexual obligation than simply dutiful sex. Since Nahmanides has already consigned the duty of sexual relations to the term , he takes the term to regulate its occurrence and curtail it to those moments when “he comes to her at the time of love ().” For Nahmanides these three primary conjugal duties all converge in sexual cohabitation providing the essential factors that enhance the marital sexual encounter: the place (bed); the level of physical intimacy (flesh on flesh); and a conducive time (time of love).Footnote ³⁷ He confirms this attitude explicitly in his concluding comment on this verse, where he rationalizes the use of three ambiguous terms as consistent with biblical coyness with regard to sex, “always mentioning sexual cohabitation in a curt and sanitized manner; thus all these three terms, , , and , allude to the three facets of union ()Footnote ³⁸ between a man and his wife.” By synchronizing sex with the emotional and psychological needs of the woman, Nahmanides has constructed an encounter that is mutual—between partners—rather than a one-sided fulfillment of duty performed on the other.

The phrase “time of love” (), more aptly translated “the age of lovemaking,”Footnote ³⁹ is particularly suggestive in light of its allusion to Ezek 16:8, which employs graphic biblical sexual/spousal imagery to depict the relationship between God and Israel: “And I passed over you and I saw your time, the time of love, and I spread my garment over you and covered your nakedness.” The prescriptive appropriation of this term for a spousal conjugal duty provides strong support for the thesis that the notion of parallel worlds mirroring each other increasingly sensitized Nahmanides to the emotional dimensions of sexuality. As God couples with Israel at the “time of love,” so too must man regulate his own sexual desires in accord with his wife's. Mere procreation as the goal of sex reduces sexual relations to rights and duties, whereas sexual intimacy at the appropriate moment is a mutual engagement in sexual fulfillment. It is not surprising that Rashi glosses the phrase in Ezekiel with Old French usage of amitié,Footnote ⁴⁰ which he takes to be its cognate, draining it of any sexual connotations in favor of mere friendship or cordiality.

Nahmanides persists in disassociating himself from the Rashi school on this issue with a sexually explicit illustration of the demands this verse makes of a husband. For him, it protects the sexual status of co-wives in a polygamous marriage by preserving conjugal acts as relational rather than merely carnal. Once a man takes an additional wife, he is prohibited from “decreasing her [the first wife's] closeness of flesh, her bed cover, and her time of love, for such is the custom of daughters.” He then offers a rationale for this proscription which preserves the dignity of the wife and deflects her vulnerability to being reduced to supplementary stature: “And its rationale is that the other wife should not occupy a ‘stately bed’ (Ezek 23:41) where they are as one flesh while the other one is treated like a concubine with whom he sleeps randomly and on the ground ‘as one does with a whore’ () (ibid, 23:45).” Nahmanides here alludes to Ezek 23, a parable of God's marriage to two women marred by lewdness, promiscuity, and wanton infidelity, illustrating Israel's disloyalty to its God. He thus consistently maintains the parallel between human and divine marriage which attunes him to the mutuality of marital sex.

After employing philology, rabbinic tradition, and scriptural allusion to overcome Rashi's position, Nahmanides moves from textual demonstration to a presentation of a sociocultural model of sexual decadence that concretely typifies the kind of sexual behavior to be avoided at all costs: “And so our Sages said that means closeness of flesh, that one should not behave with her as is customary of the Persians who service their beds [conduct sexual relations] fully clothed.” The Persians, he claims, citing rabbinic tradition to this effect, customarily engaged in sex with their clothes on, the precise converse of the “closeness of flesh” required by the obligation of . Considering his repulsion by this sexual more and its role in strengthening his argument so far, he certainly did not consider the Persians to be motivated by sexual modesty. Their lack of intimacy reflects an attitude toward sex as autoerotic self-gratification rather than mutually satisfying intimacy. As a leading exponent of the Nahmanidean school, R. Yom Tov ben Abraham Alishbili comments on why such sexual behavior is grounds for divorce: “It is grounds even if it is done out of modesty, and the same applies when she demands it, for she has rebelled against meaningful sex which is not by way of intimacy ().”Footnote ⁴¹ It may be motivated by a misguided sense of modesty, but its common occurrence is a sign of wanton disregard for anything meaningful beyond the carnal. Just as one need not disrobe to masturbate, so one need not do so in the conduct of sex with one's mate if all it amounts to is sexual release. Nahmanides thus concludes his argument with an example of a culture which has failed to move beyond the primordial dual-gendered being whose sexual activity cannot by nature transcend autoeroticism. Once again, the transcendent ramifications of inner divine marital bliss attune Nahmanides to the need for human sex that is conducive to intimacy rather than a mere fulfillment of duty.

Here attention must be drawn to statements made by Nahmanides which, in their abhorrence of the sexual act for anything other than reproduction, would seem to run counter to his stance on sexuality as presented thus far. Nahmanides' rationale for the prohibitions of incest, pederasty, and bestiality is that they are either non-procreative or produce defective offspring. Considering that “fornication is distanced and disgusting in the Torah unless it is for the preservation of the species (), when there is no [procreative] success or [the offspring] is not good [defective], the Torah proscribes it.”Footnote ⁴² In this case, however, Nahmanides simply wishes to fix the boundaries for licit sexual intercourse, which, he claims, are motivated by concern for “preservation of the species.” This does not preclude the physical, emotional, and intimate relational setting Nahmanides favors for the conduct of licit sexual relations between husband and wife. It is also noteworthy that Nahmanides reserves these extreme expressions of revulsion for the Levitical proscription of incest, homosexuality, and bestiality. He may have resorted to such sentiments in order to deter potential offenders from deviant behavior that warrants the direst of biblical sanctions.

Search for a Reproductive Mate vs. Search for Uniqueness

We now return to that stage of human sexual development with which we began: the creation of woman and its prelude. All the animals were paraded before the primordial androgyne, in its supremely solipsistic state, who assigned each its appropriate name, never discovering one who could qualify as a “help opposite him” (Gen 2:20). It is essential to have in mind Nahmanides' concluding cryptic allusion to a kabbalistic “secret” about the divine significance of the word “this” () while reading the discussion that precedes it. Adam's first confrontation with woman, the living resolution of his previously conflicted self, evokes a “this”-imbued declaration: “This shall be called woman (), for this has been taken from man ()” (Gen 2:23). Throughout Nahmanides' commentary runs a chain of references to the “secret” meaning of the term “this” (), which can refer variously to woman, the sign of the rainbow, temple donations (), or blessing, among other things. This chain is forged through links that unmistakably identify “this”, a simple demonstrative pronoun, with the feminine shekhinah (divine indwelling), the lowest of the ten sefirot, which emerged from tiferet (Beauty), its masculine counterpart.Footnote ⁴³ For example, Nahmanides' exposition of the term equates it with the “assembly of Israel” (), which in mystical parlance refers to the shekhinah. Footnote ⁴⁴ Another illustration of the shekhinah/ pairing is Nahmanides' explanation of Judah's association with the attribute of in the phrase “And this () shall be for Judah” (Deut 33:7), on which he comments, “from him descends eternal kingship ().” Given the common designation of shekhinah as in the Spanish kabbalistic tradition preceding Nahmanides,Footnote ⁴⁵ it is evident that here, too, he understands the term to symbolize shekhinah. Indeed, all major scholars of Jewish mysticism, and in particular of Nahmanides' thought, as well as an important medieval kabbalistic exponent of Nahmanides, are unanimous as to the unequivocal allusion of the term to the shekhinah. Footnote ⁴⁶ Elliot Wolfson cites this “secret” as a prime example of the ontological parallelism that is so characteristic of the Nahmanidean hermeneutic, the message of which is “that the mundane creation of Eve from the side (or rib) of Adam reflects the process above of the emanation of the feminine Shekhinah out of the masculine Tiferet.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Nahmanides' intended audience must revisit the plain sense (peshat) of the episode of Adam's naming other species until his discovery of his other gender, and reread it armed with this sod (secret).

Rashi offers what appears to be a shockingly perverse explanation of Adam's first encounter with the woman that had been surgically removed from his body. Adam's realization that “this time” (2:23) he had discovered his appropriate mate indicates for Rashi the occurrence of previous failed “times” leading to this final eureka: “It teaches that Adam copulated with every wild and domestic animal, but his anxiety was not relieved () by them.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Rashi offers no indication as to whether woman offers anything more than the other species in terms of meeting man's emotional or existential needs. Rashi's comment here fits his clinical view of man's relationship to woman, according to which the potential for becoming “one flesh” is realized in the product of reproduction. Adam's goal is to propagate. His repeated sexual forays with animals end in procreative failure, whereas woman offers the promise of success. The value of sexual relations is determined solely in terms of breeding utility. What seems initially to be a scandalously vulgar interpretation turns out to be a puritanical sanitizing of the relationship between the sexes. Adam was not motivated by any erotic or emotional impulses in his repeated acts of bestiality, but rather by a detached quest for a biologically suitable reproductive partner. Each act of bestial intercourse is simply a stage in a process fuelled by the scientific method of progressive elimination, leading to the discovery of woman. Rashi thus portrays sexually outrageous behavior on the part of Adam only to drain human sexuality of its eros.

In keeping with this attitude, Rashi explains verse 2:20, “And Adam assigned names to all the cattle, and to every bird of the sky, and to every animal of the field, but for Adam no helpmate was found,” as a process whereby the male and female of each species were presented to Adam evoking the response, “All of them have a mate, but I do not have a mate.”Footnote ⁴⁹ If Adam has this verbal reaction, it must have been because of the failure of his mass bestiality, and the final failure of his quest for a mate. The naming process, according to Rashi, emerged from sexual experimentation, which gradually disqualified each species when the experiment ended in dismal failure. The conclusion that “all of them have a mate, but I do not have a mate,” articulates the psychological anxiety expressed by (anxiety; non-relief).

Nahmanides' initial endorsement of Rashi's interpretation of this episode only serves to underscore his essential divergence from it. He approvingly cites Rashi's reading of Adam's despairing discovery, “All of them have a mate, but I do not have a mate,” the veracity of which he asserts is borne out by the verse's juxtaposition of the naming process with the search for a helpmate. The latter is therefore contingent on the former. However, his ensuing discussion of the verse implicitly limits his approval to the idea that Adam engaged in a search; it decidedly does not extend to the carnal facets of trial and error. Nahmanides distinguishes himself from those who take Rashi's position by linking the naming process to the idea of “help”:

In direct opposition to Rashi, Nahmanides understands Adam's onomastic classification of the species as an intellectual endeavor rather than a carnal one.

The other crucial aspect of Nahmanides' interpretation is that in the context of the animal kingdom is defined purely in terms of procreative feasibility. Adam's role in naming each animal's is to preserve the genetic purity of each of the species by restricting crossbreeding. There is no other dimension to animals except their ability to perpetuate themselves through intra-species copulation. On the other hand, when it comes to humanity, Nahmanides introduces another feature without which the creation of woman could not proceed, and which transcends mere propagative coitus. Opening with the self-confident “what is correct in my view” (), Nahmanides offers the following novel comment:

Here Nahmanides inserts the relational facet that was conspicuously absent from Adam's scientific scrutiny of animals. An essential consequence of Adam's comprehensive animal husbandry was the arousal of both desire for woman and the awareness of her uniqueness as an irreplaceable subject of his desires.Footnote ⁵²

It is crucial to bear in mind at this juncture that Rashi and Nahmanides hold diametrically opposing positions on the identity of this primordial subject who is either copulating with or scrutinizing the entire spectrum of the animal kingdom. For Nahmanides, it is that elemental androgyne whose feminine side must be divorced from its masculine in order, as noted previously, for there to be a “good” viable existence. Rashi, on the other hand, while citing the midrashic identity of Genesis 1 man as androgynous, subscribes primarily to a peshat resolution of Genesis 1 and 2 which understands both as referring to the same creation. Chapter 1 is simply a general statement about creation, while chapter 2 elaborates on the details of that creation.Footnote ⁵³ For him, the subject is a single male out of whom a female is extracted and fashioned. In the Nahmanidean scenario, in contrast, androgynous man has already experienced an intimacy with woman who was an integral part of his very physical being, sharing with him a physical proximity impossible to surpass.

The respective positions of Rashi and Nahmanides on the meaning of “one flesh,” discussed previously, logically cohere with those pertaining to the nature of the pre-Eve humanoid. For Rashi, there was never any pre-existing unity between the genders that could serve as an archetype for the future of sexual relations. The surgical excision of woman was simply a means to produce genetically compatible material for procreation. Rashi defines the very anatomical assembly of woman out of her male donor solely in terms of reproductive utility. “And God built () the rib He took from man into a woman” conjures, for Rashi, a structural design analogous to buildings, “wide at the base and narrow at the top in order to receive the fetus, like a storehouse for wheat which is wide at the base and narrow at the top so that it does not exert undue pressure on the walls” (Gen 2:22). Rashi reduces an essential feature of erotic appeal to reproductive functionality. For Nahmanides the primordial androgyne points to an existential predicament equally experienced by both man and woman, presenting a model of physical intimacy to be recaptured in every sexual contact between a man and his wife.Footnote ⁵⁴ Commitment, lacking in Rashi's analysis, is a function of male desire for an irreplaceable mate whose being is measured by something more than biological fecundity.

A “This” ()-Informed Life of Marital Bliss

The driving kabbalistic hermeneutical force propelling Nahmanides' “romantic” perspective on marriage is the theosophical symbolism of the term (this). The supernal referent of the worldly woman is, as ascertained previously, the feminine sefirah of shekhinah. Man's earthly declaration,” This time bone of my bones…” and the etymological rationale for the name “woman,” “because this was taken from man,” both resonate with shekhinah (the lowest of the sefirot), their sefirotic analogue. There are a number of instances in his Torah commentary in which Nahmanides refers to the symbolic valence of , but one bears particular relevance to the issue at hand. His comment on the full significance of the with which Aaron shall approach the sanctum (“With this [] shall Aaron enter the sanctum”; Lev.16:2) infuses the term with an wide range of Jewish observance and thought:

The sefirah shekhinah radiates across a broad swath of Judaism's praxis and institutions, including Torah, covenants (circumcision, Sabbath, rainbow), government (Judah=kingship), community (tribes), nation (assembly of Israel), temple (donations, tithes, sacrifices), and even geography (Jerusalem).Footnote ⁵⁵ Virtually every religious moment is measured in terms of its rapport with the lowest sefirah of shekhinah, whether it is in contact with fellow Jews, the priests, the sovereign, one's locale, one's sexuality, the entire normative framework of the Torah, or even nature.Footnote ⁵⁶ However, the very first material representation of shekhinah, the premiere , is woman, whose physical extraction from the primordial androgynous entity is in fact beneficial (“good”) for the perpetuation of humankind. These beneficial ingredients, as I have argued, are the opportunity to will relations, longing, desire, and an awareness of the uniqueness of the other, all of which separation engenders. The High Priest enters the Holy of Holies armed with an arsenal of merits associated with shekhinah, which is imbued with the sense of matrimonial ceremony. To mention but one of the links in the chain of correspondences, the demand for temple donations (), “And take [for] me a ” (Exod 25:2), is considered by Nahmanides a reciprocal engagement to be read as “for the is for me and I am with her in the same sense as ‘My beloved is mine and I am his’ (Song 2:16).”Footnote ⁵⁷ The entire list of referents is patterned after the archetypical of primeval woman, which sets the agenda for relationships that are informed by eros rather than simply procreative mandate.

Finally, it is crucial to note that Nahmanides anchors the secret of the extensive list to that of the rainbow: “The secret of [of this verse] is like the secret of ‘this () shall be the sign of the covenant that I have established’ (Gen 9:17).” The kabbalistic symbolism of the rainbow is highly complex and deserving of a study on its own.Footnote ⁵⁸ I, however, merely wish to draw attention to one facet of it that is relevant to the present discussion. Nahmanides, in his symbolically charged excursus on the rainbow, refers to the rabbinic anathema of gazing at a rainbow (b. Ḥagigah 16a),Footnote ⁵⁹ the kabbalistic reason for which is, according to Elliot Wolfson, “to avoid visually contemplating the moment of sacred union above, between the masculine and feminine potencies of the divine, when the male organ is exposed.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Additionally, in a recent analysis of zoharic rainbow symbolism, Wolfson has stressed the androgynous nature of the rainbow, which is capable of identification with both masculine yesod and feminine shekhinah, the exilic state of the latter being manifested in gender separation. Changes in hue from dark to bright mark the reunion of the male and female sefirot, which is initiated by desire. Although Wolfson presents this as part of what he persuasively argues is the androcentric agenda of reintegrating the female to produce the perfected male, his comment on the essential prerequisite of desire is critical to my argument here: “The adorning of the rainbow as a bride indicates the imaginal representation of Shekhinah as the feminine other of masculine desire. The heterosexual union cannot be effected in the absence of reciprocal yearning on the part of male and female…”Footnote ⁶¹ Paradoxically, although the kabbalistic project is propelled by androcentrism, its material manifestation, especially in the arena of sexual relations, has the practical result of increased sensitivity to the woman as a relational “partner.”

We can now fully appreciate the ontological parallelism of Nahmanides' perspective on the process leading to the creation and discovery of primal woman. This process presents the mundane paradigm for all future sacred encounters with or shekhinah, of which the rainbow is one early prototype. Sustainable union of the sexes on the earthly level requires all the accoutrements we normally associate with dynamic relationships, such as desire, longing, commitment, reciprocity, and uniqueness. In the human realm these ingredients both enrich conjugal union and empower the upper male and female potencies to merge into a balanced divine androgynous unit. Androgyny on earth is “not good,” but it offers a glimmer of a divine state that is recaptured precisely by all those emotions which attract separate individuals to coalesce into a relational unit.

I wish to conclude with one more divine model of relationship, in this case with the nation of Israel, which exemplifies the characteristics Nahmanides considers essential to the maintenance of conjugal life. Deut 7:7 (“It is not because you are more numerous than other nations that God desired you and chose you”) describes the bond between God and His people in terms of both desire () and choice (). Nahmanides' sense of the term in this context is “that He is attached to you with such an intense bond that He will never separate from you. [This is] etymologically associated with “and their bands () to be of silver” (Exod 27:10). Thus far, the term , descriptive of the vertical divine-human affiliation, mirrors the enduring horizontal commitment expressed by the “one flesh” of matrimonial union. Nahmanides now proceeds to flesh out the ingredient of “choice” in the vertical plane: “‘And He chose you’ out of all the nations that you should be his treasure and portion, because ‘choice’ in every instance means sifting out of others.” Here Nahmanides affords us another mirroring of the process of discovery of and commitment to woman by Adam on the horizontal plane, which was likewise informed by a sifting out of all other possibilities (the naming of the animals), finally arriving at a unique and irreplaceable object of desire.

He next proceeds to link God's love to His confidence in the unconditional love His choice of lover will exhibit: “And it stipulates the reason ‘Because of God's love for you’ to account for His ‘choosing you,’ for only one who tolerates his lover regardless of any treatment to which he is subject is chosen as a lover.” However, he continues, the reason “for His desire for you () is on account of your forefathers,” to whom He expressed an unconditional promise. severed from choice, although it produces an indissoluble bond, amounts to an emotionless relationship grounded in contractual duty. God's attachment to Israel would be merely a functional satisfaction of a legal obligation to Israel's ancestors. God's “choosing,” however, uniquely qualifies Israel for His love, just as Adam's naming of the animal species uniquely qualifies Eve to be his lover. Rashi, on the other hand, understands God's as a function of His “love,” the rationale for which, in turn, is “because of His keeping the promise” (commentary on Deut 7:8). Once again Nahmanides' contention with Rashi sharpens our appreciation for the full import of the former's position. Rashi drains the emotive dimensions of love, choice, and desire by anchoring all the dedication associated with these terms in a legally actionable antecedent. Rashi's view of the horizontal may also be affected by that of the vertical: both are reduced to duty and functionality. Conversely, Nahmanides injects an emotive component into the vertical which filters its way into the horizontal. He configures the mortal conjugal relationship as a dual imitatio dei, mimicking the divine commitment both universally to the world and parochially to a single people.

Conclusion

True to the intentions stated in his epigraph, Nahmanides conducts a sustained and deep engagement with Rashi's commentary, whose words he “contemplates,” is “enraptured” with, “debates,” “examines,” and “investigates.” All these expository methods are utilized in the articulation of a profound disagreement on marital sexuality which can only be fully appreciated in the juxtaposition of these two medieval exegetical antagonists. Some of the impetus for Nahmanides' attunement to the relational dimension of the human condition stems from his struggle to salvage the “plain sense” (peshat) of biblical narrative from Rashi's aggadic infusion, which he views as undermining it. A prime illustration of this is what Nahmanides considers Rashi's dubious location of spousal “one flesh” in the offspring of conjugal union. A divine model for imitatio dei crystallizes out of that struggle for peshat in which God not only teases existence into being by generative “saying” but subsequently maintains it through attentive “seeing,” the two pivotal acts that frame the originating days of creation. This generative process culminates in the construction of a composite primordial human being whose relational deficit impels its deconstruction into separate component genders which can “face” each other. The two in place of the unitary androgyne provide the anthropological possibility for imitatio dei, where corresponding relational “willing” and “sustaining” are vital facets of sexual intercourse between partners.

The subject of spousal sexuality has also been offered as a paradigm for the Nahmanidean hermeneutic whose kabbalistic theosophy neither displaces nor devalues the peshat but rather places it in perspective. The ontological parallelism of divine male and female potencies with their human counterparts operates precisely in this manner. Finally, Nahmanides' kabbalistic orientation and sensitivity to the plain sense of the text translates into the normative realm, where we have seen a fundamental divergence between Rashi and Nahmanides with respect to the identification of legally actionable conjugal duties. The full implications of debates such as these only become apparent once examined in light of their hermeneutical antecedents, since they provide the conceptual underpinnings for the respective contentions they fuel. In the particular debate discussed here, a key term suggesting temporality () mandates sexual regularity for Rashi, while for Nahmanides it qualifies dutiful regularity by restricting it to moments of intimacy. Rashi's duties are determined by the concern for sheer physical survival as well as the normative reproductive function of marriage, while Nahmanides' are for the relational endurance of the marriage.