Nachmanides Quotes

As Nachmanides championed the cause of Maimonides against his enemies, so he took up the cause of Alfazi, against Sarachya Halevi and Abraham Ben David, who attacked Alfazi's Talmudic productions.

In view of the fact that Nachmanides helped to cultivate the Kabbalah, he became, as his commentary shows, a severe critic of Ibn Ezra, the outspoken opponent to the Jewish Medieval mysticism. It is Professor Schechter, who says of Nachmanides, when contrasting him with Maimonides, "If he was not a profound thinker like the author of the Guide of the Perplexed, he had that which is next best — he felt profoundly.

had been ripped from her father’s Torah, but also from Torat Ha-Adam, the Nachmanides volume. Both had been utterly destroyed. Intact on the floor, unmolested, she found Historia Calamitatum, the only book not in the divine language from which the entire cosmos was created. Holding the Historia and the valise, she began to leave the room, but her composure failed and she broke into a run, tore down the two remaining flights of stairs and out into the U-shaped courtyard. What she saw stopped her. The nearest part of the quadrangle was vacant, but at its far end a throng of inmates was clustered inside the recently erected funnel of barbed wire. The limit of the courtyard was defined by the platform at the terminal point of the railway track. Rachel ran toward the crowd of prisoners, but as she approached, she saw smaller knots of soldiers, and stopped. To one side, they wore the brown uniforms of the Gendarmerie, and to the other, the gray-green of

Precisely at the time when one king arises to pillage our possessions and destroy us, another shall arise to protect and save us ... This is an important lesson for future generations.

The fact that such “jesting” is part of the Biblical description of the act of intercourse indicates that Judaism does not treat intimacy as a cold, physiological act. And this is not limited to Biblical sources. The Talmud159 advises one to speak “endearing words” to create an emotional connection with one’s partner before engaging in physical intimacy. Similarly, Nachmanides160 notes: “First one must cleave to his wife, and then they will become one flesh. There can be no true oneness of the flesh without first experiencing a cleaving together of the heart.” Fundamentally, Judaism views intimacy as a loving and even playful experience, in which both emotional arousal and sensual pleasure play integral roles.