When Jews win the debates. But not the politics

Wall painting of a great Jewish scholar
Rabbi Moshe ben Rahman, ‘Ramban’

There’s a story about a Pope who decided that he wanted to turn Italy into a uniformly Christian, by which he meant Catholic, nation. He warned the Jews that they were going to have to convert or leave and gave them just three days to do it.

The Jewish community was, naturally, appalled.

“At least give us a chance to debate the issue with you,” they argued, “to see if we can make a case against our being forced to leave or convert.”

The Pope decided this was a reasonable demand and agreed to the debate.

Unfortunately, though the rabbi the Jewish community selected was the wisest scholar it had in Italy, he spoke neither Italian nor Latin. The Pope spoke neither Hebrew nor Yiddish. So it was decided they would conduct their debate in silence.

The great day dawned and it was the Pope who opened the debate. 

First, he held up three fingers.

The Rabbi replied by holding up one and wagging it. 

The Pope waved his hands around in a great circle.

The Rabbi pointed at the ground.

The Pope pulled out a chalice of communion wine and a wafer.

The Rabbi pulled out an apple.

“I concede,” cried the Pope, “he is too strong for me. He wins. The Jews may stay in Italy without converting.”

That evening, the Cardinals asked the Pope to explain what had happened.

“First I held up three fingers to show the great power of the doctrine of the Trinity. But he replied by waving one finger to admonish me and say that God is one and indivisible and the same for both our faiths. 

“Next, I moved my arms around to say that the Lord sees all we do. But he pointed to the ground to say that he stands with us as well as seeing us, all his creatures, Jew as much as Christian.

“Finally, I brought out the wine and wafer to signify Christ’s sacrifice to redeem all mankind. But he showed an apple to denote original sin and to say that we are all equally tainted and our sight clouded by it, so only the Lord can guide us through this vale of tears. And I conceded, since he had an answer to everything I advanced.”

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Jewish community had visited the Rabbi to ask him what he thought had happened.

“Well,” he said, “first he held up three fingers to say we had just three days to comply. And I shook one at him to say there was no way we were doing that.

“Then he moved his hands around to say he wanted us all gone. And I pointed to the ground to say we were staying right here.”

“And then what happened?” asked a community leader.

“Why, then we both got our lunch out.”

I suppose that’s a moderately funny joke. But I find the story of a real debate, one that happened, much more fun. Though, also, rather sadder.

We live near Valencia in Spain and all around the city we see the motif of a bat, including on the coat of arms of the Valencia football team. This commemorates an almost certainly mythical incident in the career of King James I of Aragon. He’s still venerated, at least among people who venerate the triumph of the Catholic Church, as the liberator of Valencia from the Moors.

The Moors had given Valencia great wealth, superb irrigation systems and some wonderful culture. Have you visited the town of Anna and its Arab palace with its extraordinary Moorish decorations? It demonstrates that liberation is a questionable term in this context.

It seems that at one point in his campaign, James I was asleep in his tent, when a flock of bats (do they come in flocks?) flew through it. That woke him up, as it would me. This was a good thing, though, because it meant he was awake and ready to respond a few minutes later when the Arabs launched a surprise attack on his camp.

Hence the bat motif.

The Valencia Football Club logo
complete with James I’s bat

Still, that’s not what matters about James I here.

From the 20th to the 24th of July 1263, James I organised what came to be known as the Disputation of Barcelona. The initiative came from a Dominican Friar, Pablo Christiani, a Jew who’d converted to Christianity. He claimed he could prove the truth of Christianity from references to Jewish texts and asked to debate the matter with a leading Jewish scholar to make his case.

The Superior of Christiani’s order was also the King’s confessor, so he was able to get the debate set up.

Against him was an outstanding Jewish scholar, Moshe ben Nahman, also called Ramban or Nahmanides.

Christiani argued that there were Talmudic texts that predicted the arrival of the Messiah, and that their predictions fitted the story of Jesus. Clearly, Jesus must have been the Messiah they were expecting. But Ramban replied that the sages who’d written those texts lived after Jesus had died. If they had believed he was the Messiah, and written their texts with him in mind, how could they possibly have remained Jews? They would surely have converted to Christianity. The fact that they didn’t, proved that they did not identify Jesus as the Messiah.

Much more powerful still is what he said about the nature of the Messiah. His arrival was to herald the start of a period of peace and justice. Could anyone looking around the world since Christ’s time believe that such an age had started? What’s worse, among the people disturbing any hope of peace and justice, the Christians themselves were the most warlike of all.

James was so impressed by Ramban’s arguments that he awarded him 300 gold coins. He even attended a Jewish service in the Major Synagogue of Barcelona, an unprecedented event anywhere in Europe in the Middle Ages. The real victory of the Rabbi in a real debate with a Christian scholar strikes me as far more amusing than the joke I started with.

Now for the sad bit. The Dominicans didn’t give up. They claimed that they’d won the debate and, when Ramban published a transcript of the debate with a record of his conversation with the King, they moved to have him expelled. James I gave way and Ramban was forced into exile. 

He’d had the best arguments, but the army was with the Dominicans.

Christiani went on trying to force Jews to convert, with little success. But he did persuade the Pope to order the censorship of the Talmud, the central text of Jewish law and theology. Even in James I’s realm, passages of the Talmud deemed offensive to Christianity would be cut out.

As for Ramban, he was forced to leave his native country. But at least he was able to travel to what was then Palestine. Once there, he founded a Synagogue in Jerusalem. Called the Ramban Synagogue, it’s still functioning to this day.

Which feels like a bit of a victory. After all, what monument records the doings of Pablo Christiani?

The Ramban Synagogue in Jerusalem