Abstract
According to Numbers 12:3, Moses was the most aanav (humble, meek) person on earth. In his Bible commentary, Rashi (1040-1105) explains that ?anav means ‘humble’ (shafel) and ‘tolerant’ (savlan). Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) addressed Rashi’s explanation in his Be?ur and argued that the main meaning of aanav is ‘tolerant’. In his Jerusalem, Mendelssohn criticised Locke (1632-1704) for restricting tolerance to the political realm (i.e. the state) and for allowing intolerance in the religious realm (i.e. the Church). The rabbis considered tolerance to be an expression of imitatio Dei (Tan., Pin?as, 10): just as God created every individual to be different from every other individual, so too a person endowed with ‘the spirit of God’ will know how to treat every individual as a unique being (Num 27:16; cf. Gen 41:38). This Rabbinic approach was later developed by Moses Maimonides (1138-1204). The most radical notion of tolerance in Jewish philosophy is that of Rabbi Nissim of Girona (c. 1310-76), who took Aristotle’s ethical theory of the mean and adapted it to the political realm (Derashot, 1). A society can only attain the mean if it encourages the participation of the sinful extremes; for example, a generous public policy can be achieved only if both the profligate and the miserly are heard and are allowed to balance each other. Similarly, a brave or heroic public policy can be achieved only if both the rash and the pusillanimous are heard. The silencing of one extreme leads to the rule of the other. Thus, in Nissim’s view, tolerance is not a compromise motivated by altruism or liberalism but is necessary for the efficient functioning of any political entity.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Tolerance and Intolerance in Religion and Beyond |
Subtitle of host publication | Challenges from the Past and in the Present |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis |
Pages | 87-96 |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781000987294 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780367519353 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2023 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Anne Sarah Matviyets, Giuseppe Veltri, and Jörg Rüpke; individual chapters, the contributors.