Asher ben Jechiel

Ascher ben Jechiel (born around 1250 in the Rhineland; died October 24, 1327 in Toledo ), also known by the names Ascheri and Rosch , was a medieval Talmudist who lived in France , Germany and Spain .

Life and meaning

He first studied with his father and his older brother, then spent some time in France, probably in Troyes , and then lived in Cologne and Koblenz . From here he moved to Worms , where his teacher Meir ben Baruch had been appointed rabbi in 1281 . Meir valued his student and appointed him a member of the local court . After Meir was incarcerated in 1286, Ascher led the unsuccessful effort to free his teacher and would have been willing to spend a significant portion of his fortune on it. After witnessing the Rintfleisch pogrom in 1298 , he feared a fate similar to that of Meir von Rothenburg and left Germany in 1303 with his son Jakob ben Ascher . The following year he reached Barcelona via northern Italy and Provence , where he was received with great honors by the incumbent Rabbi Solomon Adret . In 1305 he accepted the position of rabbi in Toledo. His son Jehuda reports that shortly afterwards, Ascher rejected a request from the German authorities to return to his homeland, for which they agreed to provide an imperial charter and an escort of 50 soldiers.

Asher ben Jechiel was drawn into the Maimonides controversy about the importance of studying philosophy. The fact that he found only a few people in Provence who were exclusively concerned with the study of the Torah , he attributed to the widespread study of philosophy . From Barcelona he sent an encouraging letter to Abba Mari Astruc, a leading opponent of philosophy. However, he was aware of the danger of disagreement and proposed an inter-congregation meeting in order to reach a reconciliation of the different views. When Solomon Adret threatened every member of the community with a ban on July 26, 1305 , who is under 25 and studying the works of the Greeks on natural science or metaphysics, be it in the original language or in a translation , Ascher influenced the from Toledo local community leaders to support this ban. He criticized those who used influential positions at court to their own advantage, and also opposed customs instituted through contact with the Christian environment, such as the transfer of the entire inheritance to the eldest son, as in It was common in aristocratic circles to keep debtors chained and to allow a divorce in cases in which the wife declared that she no longer wanted to live with her husband. His spiritual influence was even recognized by the Castilian Queen Maria de Molina , mother of Ferdinand IV .

Ascher ben Jechiel mastered Hebrew as well as the Arabic language , even if only in its spoken form, Spanish law and German law . His responses were not always unchallenged. When the rabbi of Valencia tried to enforce his contradiction to traditional practice and to Ascher's opinion, the latter threatened him with the death penalty if all other means listed in a letter to a parishioner were to prove useless. Although he had doubts about the rabbis' right to pronounce the death penalty, he allowed adaptation to the law then in force in Spain and consented to judgments of mutilation , particularly in the case of denunciations . In response to a complaint that members of leading families had not been appointed cantors , Ascher made it clear that neither a significant background nor a pleasant voice should be decisive for this office, only moral behavior. Ascher introduced the Tosafot system in Spain . He wrote numerous halachic works, the most important of which is called Piske ha-Rosch (“Judgments of Rosh”), is a summary of most of the Talmudic treatises and adheres to the model of Isaak Alfasi .

literature

• Encyclopedia Judaica . Volume 3, pp. 706-708.
• Jacob Ben Ascher Ben Jechiel , in: Johann Gottlob Wilhelm Dunkel , Historisch-Critische Nachrichten von deceased scholars, but especially those who in the very latest edition of Jöcher's General Scholarly Lexicon either completely passed over with silence or are at least inadequately and incorrectly cited . Volume 3, Part I, Cörner, Koethen and Dessau 1757, pp. 768-769 ( online ).

Web links

• Ascher-ben-Jehiel in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 4, 2010