Three Sefardi Halachists: Yitzchak Ibn Ghiyat, Ri Migash, Yehuda bar Barzillai

🌅 The these three early figures represent the flowering of Talmud learning in al-Andalus, proving influential both in the Islamicate world and in the Christian period in Spain.

You’re reading Stories from Jewish History, a weekly newsletter exploring Jewish thinkers, events, and artifacts, from the famous to the obscure. We’ve spent some time with grammarians and poets, who, as we saw, were generally steeped in the culture of Talmud learning. Today we’ll focus on three renowned early Sefardi halachists who, true to form, also wrote poetry and philosophy.

View of the medieval city, Roda, Andalucía, Spain

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In this issue:

• R. Yitchak Ibn Ghiyat

• The Ri Migash

• R. Yehuda bar Barzillai, baal Sefer ha-Itim

• Reads and Resources

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Given an earlier generation of historians’ emphasis on the “secular” aspects of Judeo-Arabic synthesis in the Islamic period, it is important to note that Talmud study remained at the center of the early Sefardi curriculum. (The reason for the quotes around the word secular is that it did not come to have the valence of “non-religious” in the way we use it today until the eighteenth century or so. It comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning an age or a generation; in its adjectival form, it came to mean “worldly,” as in the “secular clergy,” a term used of the Latin West to denote priests serving in parishes as opposed to monasteries.) What is striking in “golden age” Spain (those quotation marks again) is the degree of creative integration between spiritual life and newly developing fields. These were made accessible to Jews through their knowledge of the vernacular, which was also the learned language of the Islamicate world. Arabic poetic meters were channeled into piyut (liturgical poetry), the focus on Arabic grammar was applied to Biblical Hebrew, and yawning theological questions were answered with Greco-Islamic philosophical techniques. The influence of classical Islamic jurisprudence, fiqh, on the development of halacha is a research question only beginning to be plumbed, but it is notable that the theory of the law and its sources were central in both Jewish and Islamic cultures during this period.

R. Yitchak Ibn Ghiyat

The life of R. Yitzchak ben Yehuda Ibn Ghiyat (1038–1089) reflects all the characteristic features of Jewish life in Muslim Spain: he is a consummate Andalusi Jewish figure. First, he was a renowned halachic authority who headed the famed yeshiva of Lucena. This places him two or three generations past the establishment of Sefarad as a preeminent center of serious Torah study; he presided over an established institution whose weight was pulling the halachic center of gravity into Europe.

As with many halachic works from early Sefarad, Ibn Ghiyat’s work survives only in part. From the extant sections, we know he wrote an early code of practical laws called Halachot Kelulot, based upon the opinions of the Geonim. In it he also quotes extensively from his friend and associate, R. Shmuel ha-Nagid’s, halachic work Hilcheta Gavrata. From the citations of others, we know that Ibn Ghiyat also composed a commentary on challenging sections of the Talmud which he titled Sefer ha-Ner (The Book of the Candle), i.e., whose purpose is to illuminate difficulties. A few of his responsa are extant, and there is evidence he wrote commentary on Tanach as well—parts of a commentary on Kohelet survive.

Characteristically for the period, Ibn Ghiyat was also an esteemed and technically proficient poet. Among his many piyutim are selichot (prayers for forgiveness), Yom Kippur piyut, kinot (dirges for Tisha be-Av), and poems for other occasions of the year. He also wrote elegies on the death of R. Yehosef ha-Nagid, the son of R. Shmuel ha-Nagid who we met last week, who was murdered in an anti-Jewish riot in Granada in 1066. Early sources state that R. Yehosef’s widow and son, Azaria, escaped to Lucena where they were warmly received by R. Yitzchak. Sadly, Azaria died at a young age, and R. Yitzchak’s promotion of him as a new leader of the community was not to be.

The Ri Migash

R. Yosef ben Meir ha-Levi Ibn Migash (1077–1141), known as the Ri Migash, was also active in Lucena, where he was among the last students of the famed R. Yiztchak Alfasi (the Rif). He also studied under R. Yitzchak ben Baruch Albalia, who was an expert halachist as well as a court astronomer, nasi of Sevilla (Seville), and a poet. The Ri Migash was appointed head of the Lucena yeshiva even over the Rif’s own son, and he served at its helm reportedly for thirty-eight years.

During his tenure as rosh yeshiva, the Ri Migash had numerous students, including among them R. Maimon, the father of Rambam (Maimonides). From his father, Rambam received and preserved many of the teachings of the Ri Migash, which are otherwise lost. Rambam held Ri Migash in highest esteem, writing of him:

רבינו יוסף הלוי כי לב האיש ההוא בתלמוד מבעית למי שיסתכל בדבריו ועומק שכלו בעיון עד אשר כמעט נאמר בו וכמוהו לא היה לפניו מלך [מלכים ב כג כה] כמנהגו ודרכו.

[Regarding] R. Yosef ha-Levi, the intellect¹ of that man in Talmud learning is terrifying to anyone who looks into his words and the depths of his ability to analyze—to such an extent that it can almost be said of him, ‘before him there was no king’ (Melachim Bet 23:25) in his manner and his way.

Rambam, Introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah

Despite his reputation, influence, and productivity, few works of the Ri Migash have come down to us. In particular, his chiddushim (“insights”) on tractate Bava Batra are preserved in Shita Meukbetzet (an anthological commentary on parts of the Talmud). However, from the attestations of later scholars, we know of the significance of his works across generations. The Ramah (R. Meir ha-Levi Abulafia) and Ramban (R. Moshe ben Nachman) cite him extensively, not always by name, and passed his Torah down to their students, including Rashba (R. Shlomo Ibn Adret) and Ritva (R. Yom Tov Ishvili) His contemporary and friend, R. Yehuda ha-Levi, who wrote letters of praise about him and who we’ll meet again in a couple of weeks, was tasked by Ri Migash to dispatch a letter to the scholars of Provence (the Jewish name for the whole of medieval southern France), which created an enduring link—perhaps one of the first—between the two communities.

R. Yehuda bar Barzillai, baal Sefer ha-Itim

R. Yehuda bar Barzillai ha-Nasi al-Bargeloni (“of Barcelona”), who also flourished in the late 1000s into the early 1100s, is best known today for his Sefer ha-Itim (The Book of Seasons), a halachic book on calendrication, and Sefer ha-Shetarot (The Book of Bills), about official documents. The story of how these books, and these only, have come down to us is instructive to the understanding of how early European halachic knowledge was produced, transmitted, and transformed. We know, from others’ citations or references to them, that R. Yehuda authored at least several more works that did not make it into modernity, including a larger composition titled Sefer ha-Din of which Sefer ha-Shetarot was only a part. In fact, our Sefer ha-Itim is also merely a part of a larger work, which apparently included not only Shabbatot but also the full cycle of holidays. In other words, what we have is but the tip of the iceberg, as is the case for his colleagues.

The parts that remain of R. Yehuda bar Barzillai’s works demonstrate that he was influenced by the Geonic material he had access to and especially by the Rif, even as he cited Sefardi scholars only a generation or two earlier, including R. Shmuel ha-Nagid, R. Yitzchak Albalia (mentioned above in connection with the Ri Migash), and R. Yitzchak Ibn Ghiyat (discussed in the first section above). That is, he valued current knowledge coming out of Spain along with the venerable teachings of the Geonim. R. Yehuda himself tended to write at length, presenting detailed summaries and analyses of the Talmudic material.

As noted by the scholar Israel Ta-Shma, R. Yeheda’s halacha was extensively quoted up until the sixteenth century, i.e., the end of the middle ages. Several known works are essentially abridgements of Sefer ha-Itim, including R. Avraham ben Yitzchak of Narbonne’s Sefer ha-Eshkol. Others, such as Raavad (R. Avraham ben David of Posquières) and the Sefer ha-Ora (associated with Rashi’s beit midrash) cite large extracts from R. Yehuda’s work as well. This pattern, of copying and even subsuming earlier halachic works, points to their precious nature and practical utility. Unlike in our post-Romantic world (that big “R” again) where authorship is a moral issue—though in a postmodern digital age that’s fading back from whence it came—in the medieval period is was decidedly flattering to copy and be copied.

So what happened that R. Yehuda’s work fell by the wayside? It was, like most things, multifactorial; new codes and the standardization enabled by the invention of moveable type in Europe were certainly two important ones. Another, Ta-Shma suggests, is simply the length of R. Yehuda’s works. What we ended up with were the most applicable, and manageable, sections of two of his books. In total, we see how influential early post-Geonic halachic works were in their time and the deep echoes of them that remain within our present codes, even as relatively few direct traces remain.

R. Yehuda bar Barzillai was also interested in philosophy, as demonstrated by his commentary on Sefer Yetzira. In it, he extensively cites the early Iraqi Jewish philosopher known as al-Mukammis (also, David ha-Bavli), whose work has mostly been otherwise lost, as well as R. Saadia Gaon. He also criticizes dualistic beliefs (that there are two co-eval forces of good and evil) and the Christian trinitarian doctrine. R. Yehuda is known to have been in touch with his fellow Barcelonan, R. Avraham bar Chiya (possibly, Chaya), a fascinating character in his own right. (Yes, this is me sneakily inserting Bar Chiya into the newsletter.) Bar Chiya was an astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, and courtier who wrote the first, highly eclectic Hebrew philosophical encyclopedia (these were, happily, a thing in the middle ages) as well as a detailed (as in mathematically justified) calculation of the end times. (Spoiler alert: 1383 and 1448 came and went.) His original works and translations of Arabic works helped to vault various types of rationalist knowledge into Christian Europe when they were translated into Latin. Bar Chiya is the first known Jewish writer to record that the area of a circle is calculated by πr² and the first person out of antiquity to figure out the calculation of a truncated pyramid.

The two, R. Avraham bar Chiya and R. Yehuda bar Barzillai, were in disagreement about the postponement of a wedding due to an inauspicious astral situation. R. Avraham thought that postponing was the way to go, and R. Yehuda did not. (He thought it was idolatrous.) It’s tempting to dismiss this incident as a typical example of medieval superstition; it’s easy to smugly side with R. Yehuda. But I think we should dig a little deeper because it actually poses a serious question to us. Astrology was considered a valid source of knowledge by highly intelligent, well-educated people. How do we know that a field of knowledge we rely upon will not be similarly outmoded a thousand-odd years from now? We don’t. And perhaps we should be more magnanimous towards the Bar Chiyas of our world. But notice that on the ground, at the time, reasonable people could, and often did, disagree, just as they do today. The fact that only one of them was right is not nearly as interesting as the fact that challenging received wisdom, especially when widely accepted, was possible and significant.

Reads and Resources

• Sefer ha-Itim is available on Sefaria.

• For enterprising folks who need to get into the guts of medieval astrological debates, the letter of R. Avraham bar Chiya about the wedding debate is in the PDF found here, on p. 23 of the Hebrew section.

• A selection of Ibn Ghiyat’s piyutim (in Hebrew) can be found here and in Haim Schirmann’s anthology.

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1. Literally, “heart”—the heart was generally considered the seat of the intellect in medieval thought and expression (though sensation could be imputed to the brain, as in Ibn Ezra).