Abstract
In my paper, I examine the rhetoric and the arguments of an early-fifteenth century Jewish polemical treatise Sefer nizzahon (The Book of Polemic), written by Yom Tov Lipman Mühlhausen, one of the most one of the most original Ashkenazic thinkers of the late Middle Ages. Lipman's intellectual interests were wide-ranging - in his texts, he combined philosophical and Kabbalistic interpretations of Jewish religious texts with reflections on Jewish religious practice; discussions of esoteric theories with a concern for popular piety.
Sefer nizzahon, possibly written in Prague around 1400, remains Lipman's best known and most widely disseminated work - it is preserved in more than twenty Hebrew manuscripts and later it became an object of interest for seventeenth-century Christian Hebraists. However, as I will argue, Lipman's Sefer nizzahon is far from an exclusively anti-Christian work.
Rather than a handbook for polemical encounters, to be drawn at the time of combat, Sefer nizzahon was composed with a distinctly broader educational project in mind. Its structure is meant to facilitate regular study and its thematic subdivisions reinforce the core message delivered by the author in the introduction: contemporary Judaism faces serious threats from several groups of "ideological enemies", both internal and external.
Not necessarily reflecting Lipman's real-life polemical encounters, his argumentative strategies are rather aimed at updating the intellectual profile of contemporary Judaism. Sefer nizzahon thus illustrates that whenever used to (re)draw boundaries and (re)define identity, religious polemics may reflect external as well as internal concerns, allowing for multiplicity of voices addressing a multiplicity of imagined opponents.
At the same time, polemic with Christianity does play a pivotal role in Lipman's treatise. In addition to numerous places where he attempts to refute Christian Biblical exegesis or articles of faith, Lipman also includes a narrative of a disputation he allegedly held with Pessah, a Jewish convert to Christianity known under his Christian name Peter.
This debate focused on Jewish liturgy and its purportedly anti-Christian meaning. As I will show, Lipman's discussion of Christian dogma in Sefer nizzahon as well as his polemical replies to Peter/Pessah reflect his awareness of contemporary Christian theological debates, in particular the discussions about the role of image worship animating the reform preaching in Prague at the turn of the fifteenth century.
By embedding his responses in the broader context of internal Christian theological debate, Lipman effectively suppressed the polarity of the polemical situation and introduced an element of ambiguity into the antagonistic image of Jewish-Christian relationship. Here too, Lipman's polemical strategy was directed internally as well as externally - his critique of Christian image worship was conceived as a part of a broader attack on anthropomorphism in Jewish tradition.
The analysis of Lipman's treatise thus fruitfully illustrates the polyvalent nature of Jewish polemical writing in the late Middle Ages.