Yehudah ben Betzalel Loewe (Maharal)
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Rabbi Yehudah ben Betzalel Loewe (c. 1525-1609) was an eclectic Renaissance Jewish thinker who served as rabbi in Posen and Prague. His system, like many others in the early modern era, Jewish and non-Jewish, worked by creating binary pairs: in this case the redeemed world’s sustaining Jews and their opponents the gentiles. Maharal built his theology more on Midrash with its apocalyptic and typological themes than on Biblical or philosophic universalism. The ancient struggles of Israel with the seven wicked nations and Amalek are ever with us.
- Israel and Edom are inverse and opposite–when one is in ascent then the other is in descent (Sanhedrin 21b)
- At the beginning, Israel is connected to the nations like a shell around a fruit. At the end, the fruit is separated from the shell completely and Israel is separated from them. (Gevurat Hashem 23)
Maharal embraces separation and particularism. Where Yehudah Halevi used the metaphor of the fruit to refer to the branch religions that sprout with Judaism, Maharal gives the metaphor the opposite valence: Israel is the fruit whose connection with the other nations – the shell – only decreases with time. This opposition between Israel and the world – Edom – is real and absolute, a zero-sum game where cooperation is not conceivable.
