Recently, I had the pleasure of reading a book that sat on my shelf for two decades, languishing there because I was put off by the somewhat dry, academic title: David Ruderman’s Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe. I wish I hadn’t waited. The book is truly a magnum opus, presenting a compelling, rich panorama of Jewish thinkers over more than two centuries who are by and large unknown today.
Most chapters explore the writings of Italian Jews, simultaneously rabbis and doctors, who were finding their way in reconciling the scientific discoveries, methods and mentalities of the Renaissance with the Jewish intellectual tradition, from Tanakh and the Talmud through its inflection in medieval philosophers and kabbalists. Long before Darwin, extending at least back to Aristotle, the scientific view of the world stood in tension or conflict with Judaism’s (and Islam’s and Christianity’s) theological framework. At the same time, Jews have been drawn to the sciences, studying not only medicine, for which they were often renowned, but other fields as well. Over the centuries, thinkers have needed to come to an understanding of the relationship between religion and science, to delineate the limits of each, where they are separate and how they connect.
The story starts in the medieval period with the distinction between philosophy and Kabbalah/mystical writings, both of which provided vast rivers that influenced the Italian scientists. The Rambam, in his Guide, described nature as a realm that God endowed with its own laws, worthy of study and attention. Aside from his landmark commentaries, halakhic compendia and decisions, philosophical tome and important letters, he also wrote several medical and scientific treatises. He prized knowledge that came from non-Jewish sources and at times included scientific formulations in his legal writings, “to recognize its autonomy and not to superimpose it on the structure and fabric of the halakha” (in the words of Isadore Twersky). In his footsteps, other famous rabbis likewise studied and wrote about science, including the Ralbag (Gersonides), the Rema (R. Moshe Isserles), and even the Vilna Gaon. The key figure for the Renaissance authors, though, according to Ruderman, was the Maharal, who, while not a scientist himself, legitimated the free pursuit of the sciences by drawing a firm distinction between the realms of theology / spirit and the material world–between metaphysics and physics.
The writers examined in the book mostly cluster around the Italian city of Padua. Located near Venice, a powerful city-state in the Renaissance, Padua was the Harvard Medical School of its time, and open-minded in its admissions policies, accepting of Protestants and Jews. More than 300 Jews are known to have studied there from the late 16th to the 18th centuries, by which time Padua had greater competition. Jewish men (only) flocked there from all over Europe, not only from Italy and Germany but also from Czech, Polish, and Lithuanian lands. (The university’s first female graduate was Elena L. Cornaro-Piscopia in 1678.) These were often bright students who started out excelling in the beit midrash and yeshiva before medical training.
When in Padua, their studies were hardly limited to anatomy; they also needed to master Latin and were exposed to classical studies, philosophy and the “liberal arts” of the period. At the same time, they often continued their Jewish study, forming strong bonds with their fellow Jewish students, obtaining food from and affiliating with the local Jewish community. In many cases, they walked in the Rambam’s shoes by becoming simultaneously rabbis and doctors. Often they worked in both fields during their careers, acting as pulpit and community rabbis, delivering sermons, teaching in yeshivas and representing the community, even as they practiced the healing arts. And like the Rambam, some gained outstanding medical reputations, providing their services to popes and princes.
Many of these rabbi-doctors also wrote books, which ranged widely in their subjects and approaches. Some were written in Italian or Latin, largely for a non-Jewish audience; others in Hebrew, for an Italian-Jewish readership still capable and eager to read in our holy language. Some focused on science, such as the popular science and medical reference book Ma’aseh Tuviyah by Tobias Cohen that was republished 50 times, into the late 19th century; Cohen was born in Poland, escaped to Metz, France during the Chmielnicki massacres, studied medicine in Frankfort and Padua, returned to Poland before moving to Turkey, where he was the doctor to five successive Ottoman sultans, finally retiring to Jerusalem. Simone Luzzatto, rabbi of Venice who penned a responsum that permitted travel by gondola on Shabbat, wrote a book Socrate in Italian about the relationship between human reason and divine revelation, with little reference to Jewish sources.
Rabbis argued bitterly over the acceptability of philosophic vs. kabbalistic approaches–while remaining friends and devoted scientists. They discussed discoveries of Copernicus, Brahe, Bacon and Newton. One of the most interesting chapters concerns the work of Converso doctors; some returned to Jewish faith and practice after leaving Spain and Portugal, while others maintained their own unique status, recognizing their Jewish ties but not formally re-connecting or converting back. They maintained contacts with other Converso doctors in different countries, forming their own Jewish sub-community while incorporating Jewish messages in their writing.
Ruderman takes the reader to the threshold of the Haskalah, seeing in this assortment of writers a distinct group, poised between medievalism and modernity, that wrestled with matters of faith and science and embraced both as best they could.