Question

Good evening, Rabbi (I started writing this at night; now it’s more like very early morning, so good morning).
My name is Yehuda and I study in a hesder yeshiva. As a result of learning in yeshiva around the subject of attitudes toward gentiles, I decided to try my hand at understanding the Meiri’s approach. A friend referred me to this article by the Rabbi, and on the one hand I really liked the logic with which the Rabbi operates, as well as the general mode of analysis, but I didn’t entirely agree with the conclusions. I think the reason is the order in which I encountered the sources. I’ll try to summarize my understanding of the topic, which differs from the Rabbi’s, and I’ll bring a few anecdotes the Rabbi didn’t mention that, in my opinion, offer somewhat simpler solutions than the Rabbi’s solutions.
In general, I agree with the conclusion that the Meiri did indeed think that the gentiles of his time were less devoted idol worshippers than in the period of the Talmud.
On the other hand, I do not agree that he permitted them completely. In my humble opinion, the Meiri permitted commerce with the gentiles of his time only after the fact. The Meiri basically drew a distinction between the prohibitions governing one’s relationship to an idol worshipper and the gentile’s own liability for the prohibition of idolatry.
Whereas his two grounds for leniency (the lesser religious devotion of those gentiles, and their being bound by the ways of religion) do indeed allow commerce with a gentile in a situation where a person has no other option—for example, in the reality of the Diaspora, where Jews had no choice but to trade with gentiles (and parenthetically I’ll say that the Meiri also permits it in a case of financial loss for exactly the same reason of necessity).
As for the Meiri’s right to make such distinctions regarding the gentiles of his generation, he writes explicitly:
“Some raise a difficulty here based on the rule that with regard to something enacted by a formal count, even if the reason has lapsed, the decree does not lapse. They answer that they too only decreed according to what they saw in their places, for Samuel said on 7b: in the Diaspora it is forbidden only for one day, and the Jewish law follows him. Therefore, wherever it appears appropriate in a given place to permit, they permit even on the festival day itself…” (Beit HaBechirah, Avodah Zarah, 2a)
The Meiri himself says that apparently the principle that when the reason lapses the enactment does not lapse is not relevant to these prohibitions, since even the Amoraim changed the rule according to the reality of their times (indeed, later in that source he brings further proofs that these laws are reality-dependent). Therefore, he too can adapt the law to his era.
Still, one may ask: from where did the Meiri infer that these two categories would permit commerce with an idol worshipper? In my humble opinion, the Meiri brings sources for this as well.
As for religious devotion—the Meiri, in the passage dealing with the law of a gentile’s slaughter (Hullin 13a), brings as an answer to the question why we should classify the slaughter of a gentile as a carcass, rather than forbidding it entirely out of concern that he is an idol worshipper, the idea of the lesser devotion of the gentiles of his own generation. The source he cites to support this is the source appearing there in the passage: “The gentiles outside the Land of Israel are not idol worshippers; rather, they merely follow the custom of their ancestors.” The Meiri understands this leniency to be speaking about the degree of religious devotion of those gentiles and the level of their belief (in the manner of Maimonides).
From here one can understand his reading of this leniency as applying specifically to gentiles outside the Land—because only there, when there is no other option and there is great need, can one permit those gentiles with respect to commerce and benefit; but this law is not meant to exempt them from the status of idol worshippers altogether.
Regarding the second category, nations bound by the ways of religion, in my humble opinion the Meiri derives it by inference from another law. He presents this rule in his commentary to Avodah Zarah 20a:
“Nevertheless, it was explained in the Tosefta that this applies specifically to a gentile whom one does not know, or who was passing from place to place. But if he was his neighbor or his friend, it is permitted, for it is as though he is selling it to him directly. Therefore, any nation that is bound by the ways of religion and acknowledges divinity—there is no doubt that even when one does not know him, it is permitted and proper. And they already said: one may send a thigh to a gentile.”
The Meiri is basically taking the Tosefta’s statement and extracting a principle from it: just as with a gentile you know, where you know how he conducts himself, so too with nations bound by religion, where you know how they conduct themselves.
Regarding censorship—the Rabbi Zini wrote a book called The Sin of the Nations Is Kindness, in which he proves (in his view) that there is no chance the Meiri really thought this about Christians, and one must understand it as censorship that he himself carried out. I do not agree with all of his proofs, but there are some of them where I am very inclined to agree that this is indeed censorship. For example, the following passage:
“What was said in the Talmud, ‘A Christian is always forbidden,’ I explain from the language of ‘watchers are coming from a distant land,’ stated in Jeremiah, where the people called them ‘Notzrim’ after Nebuchadnezzar; and it is known that the image of the sun was in Babylon and that all the people of Nebuchadnezzar worshipped it. And you already know that the sun serves on the first day, as with the beginning of the days, and therefore they called that day
Notzri because it was fixed for Nebuchadnezzar on account of the dominion of the sun in it. And the matter appears clear and convincing.”
(Beit HaBechirah, Avodah Zarah, 2a)
This source is very puzzling. Mainly because there is no reason this statement should be correct—the Babylonians/Persians in the Talmudic period were not worshipping Nebuchadnezzar’s idol worship, but were instead following dualist belief in general (Zoroastrianism was the accepted religion in the Sasanian Empire, corresponding to the period of the Amoraim), and therefore this statement makes no sense at all. It seems, then, that in speaking of worship of the sun-god on Sunday, the Meiri is hinting at the Christian “sun-day” of his own time, and is in fact hinting through censorship.
Moshe Halbertal wrote an article on the Meiri’s mode of halakhic ruling. In it he devotes a chapter to this issue of the Meiri’s approach regarding idolatry.
He explains that since there is a clear method in the Meiri, and a certain ranking of severity that is fairly consistent, there is no basis to say this is censorship. He says this on the grounds that no one else engaged in censorship at such a level of complexity as to create an entire fictitious system. The censors of the Talmud, for example, were satisfied with replacing mentions of “gentile” with “idol worshipper,” and apparently that was enough.
In my opinion, there is truth in both their words—the Rabbi Zini is indeed correct regarding the existence of censorship in the Meiri, but not regarding its scope. The Meiri indeed did not hold that Christians are not idol worshippers—he only permitted commerce with them, and even that only after the fact. Beyond that, he did not permit commerce with actual idol worshippers themselves—the devout ones—but only with the common masses, who merely follow the custom of their ancestors. This is where the method that Halbertal highlighted comes in.
One more comment that is interesting to notice—Halbertal brings proofs for interpreting the expression “bound by the ways of religion” somewhat differently from the Rabbi. He shows that this expression appears in other sages of Provence as well. He explains that “bound by the ways of religion” means that they believe in the existence of some divinity that rewards and punishes, apparently without reference to whether it is a matter of multiple deities or not. Therefore the Meiri also brings “the chief of the philosophers,” who said: kill one who has no religion—only belief in the existence of a power above you that can punish you is what makes morality possible.
In my opinion—and with this I’ll conclude—this is the basis of the Meiri’s approach, the place where his two categories come together. The common denominator between the devout and the cultic problem, and being bound by religion. Basically, once you have a person who both believes in a divinity that rewards and punishes, and also does not conceive of it as human (the lack of cultic worship and attachment to it, “the custom of their ancestors,” etc.), he remains almost like a Noahide. There is still the problem of his ritual objects, and therefore according to the Meiri, once the issue directly touches idolatrous worship, he will forbid it.
What started as a comment on the site turned into 1,000 words… sorry about that. I’d be very glad to hear your opinion on the matter, and whether you have certain objections to my conclusions and anecdotes.