September 1: Ramban in Jerusalem

Rabbi Moses ben Nahman Girondi (1194 – 1270), known as Nahmanides and by his acronym, Ramban, arrived in Jerusalem on this date in 1267, after spending his life in the Catalonia region of Spain. Nahmanides was a Talmudic authority, mystic, and a rabbi of major influence who was critical of the rationalism of Maimonides (his contemporary) yet admiring of his intellect. Like Maimonides, Nahmanides was a doctor and philosopher, serving as court physician to King James of Aragon. In 1263, as chief rabbi of Catalonia, Nahmanides was forced to debate publicly with Pablo Christiani, an apostate Jew sponsored by the Dominican order. The disputation in Barcelona lasted four days and mostly addressed questions about Judaism’s messianic beliefs; King James awarded Nahmanides three hundred gold pieces and commented that he had never encountered a man who, while yet being wrong, argued so well for his position. His “victory” in debate, however — which he followed up in writing — so angered the Dominicans that Ramban was banished by Pope Clement IV. In Jerusalem, the rabbi established a synagogue that still exists in the Old City, known as the Ramban Synagogue, and attracted enough students and devotees to reestablish Jerusalem’s Jewish community, which had been destroyed by the Crusades. He did the same in Acre when he settled there, and wrote an extensive commentary on the Torah during his final years of life. Several of his letters to his family from exile (“My heart and my eyes will dwell with them forever,” he wrote) have been preserved.
“[According to Christianity,] the Creator of Heaven and Earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewish lady, grew there for nine months and was born as an infant, and afterwards grew up and was betrayed into the hands of his enemies who sentenced him to death and executed him, and . . . afterwards . . . he came to life and returned to his original place. The mind of a Jew, or any other person, simply cannot tolerate these assertions. You have listened all your life to the priests who have filled your brain and the marrow of your bones with this doctrine, and it has settled into you because of that accustomed habit.” —Ramban