JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

falaquera, shem tov ben joseph ibn
European spellings include Falaquera, Palquera, Palaquera,
Palquira, Palqira, Palkira, Palkera, Phalkira, Phalchera.
Most of Falaquera’s prose works survive, many in multiple
editions or manuscripts, but Falaquera testifies that half
of his prolific youthful poetry (totaling some 20,000 verses)
was lost, and in later life, although he abandoned his poetic career,
he continued to intersperse poetry with his prose works.
Some of this poetry was humorous. “Time said to the fool: Be
a doctor / You can kill people and take their money / You’ll
have an advantage over the angels of death / For they kill a
man, but for free.” His prose is also marked by occasional humor.
His last known work, in defense of *Maimonides’ Guide
of the Perplexed, plays on the name of the philosopher’s opponent
Solomon Petit and calls him peti (fool).
We do not know how Falaquera supported himself. Repeated
references to poverty in some of his writings may indicate
personal indigence. We also have no evidence whether
he ever married or had a family. With only a few exceptions,
Falaquera’s references to women were generally quite negative
and even misogynist. In one of his poems he aims his barbs
at women: “Let your soul not trust in a woman / A woman is
a spread net and pit (Proverbs 1:17, 22:14) / How can we still
believe that she is honest [straight] / For woman was taken
from a rib?” If the “Seeker” in his Book of the Seeker represents
Falaquera himself (since the Seeker’s curriculum would
have made him approximately Falaquera’s age at the time he
composed the book), and if the “Seeker” is patterned after
the character Kalkol in his earlier Epistle on Ethics, we may
be able to infer from Kalkol’s never marrying (because he did
not want to waste his time or strength on women, or to become
entrapped by them) that Falaquera himself never married
for similar reasons.
Modern scholarly interest in Falaquera, going back to the
early stages of *Wissenschaft des Judentums, began with Leopold
*Zunz’s doctoral disseration, “De Schemtob Palkira” (Halle
University, December 21, 1820) on the life, times, and doctrines
of Falaquera. In 1857 Solomon *Munk published Falaquera’s
Hebrew paraphrase of selections from the lost Arabic original
of the Fons Vitae, on the basis of which Munk determined that
the previously unknown and presumably Arab author was actually
the Hebrew poet and philosopher Solomon ibn *Gabirol.
Over the next century most of Falaquera’s works were published
(some with translations into European languages). The
latter decades of the 20th century saw a resurgence of interest
in Falaquera, with books, major studies, and doctoral dissertations
by R.K. Barkan, G. Dahan, S. Harvey, M.H. Levine, A.
Melamed, D. Schwartz, Y. Shiffman, L. Stitskin, M. Zonta. R.
Jospe’s Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov
ibn Falaquera (Cincinnati, 1988) includes a biography, descriptions
of Falaquera’s works, and systematic survey of his philosophy,
with a special study of his psychology.
Works
We know of eighteen works by Falaquera, all written in Hebrew,
in line with Falaquera’s aim of spreading philosophy
among the Jewish people. Based on internal evidence, in their
probable chronological order they are the following:
1. Battei Hanhagat ha-Nefesh – Batei Hanhagat Guf ha-
Bari (Verses on the Regimen of the Healthy Body and Soul),
a composite of two works on health and ethics, published by
S. Munter (Tel Aviv, 1950).
2. Iggeret ha-Musar (Epistle on Ethics), a *maqama (prose
narrative interspersed with verse), replete with Jewish and
Arabic ethical maxims, recounting the adventures of a youth,
Kalkol, in search of wisdom. Edited by A.M. Haberman (Jerusalem,
1936), this early work forms a model for Falaquera’s
later and larger Book of the Seeker.
3. Ẓori ha-Yagon (The Balm for Sorrow), also a maqama,
containing rabbinic and philosophic consolations, in several
editions; critical edition with annotated English translation
and a survey of the consolation genre of literature by R.K. Barkan
(Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1971).
4. Megillat ha-Zikkaron (The Scroll of Remembrance).
The work, of which Falaquera says elsewhere “in which I
discuss times past, for at this time hordes of troubles come
upon us daily,” probably chronicling Jewish sufferings, is not
extant.
5. Iggeret ha-Vikku’aḥ (The Epistle of the Debate). The
subtitle of the book is Be-Ve’ur ha-Haskamah asher bein ha-
Torah ve-ha-Ḥokhmah (Explaining the Harmony Between
the Torah and Philosophy). A popular work, much of it written
in rhymed prose, the book describes a debate between a
ḥasid, a pious traditionalist Jew and a ḥakham, a philosopher,
and is deeply indebted to Ibn Rushd’s Faṣl al-Maqal (Decisive
Treatise). S. Harvey’s Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An Introduction
to Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge, MA, 1987; Italian:
Genova, 2005) includes a critical edition of the Hebrew
text with annotated English translation and valuable appendices.
Harvey (1992) has also suggested persuasively that the
debate is patterned on the Maimonidean controversy of the
1230s. A Latin translation of the Epistle with French notes
and introduction was published by G. Dahan (in Sefarad, 39
(1979), 1–112).
6. Reshit Ḥokhmah (The Beginning of Wisdom), an encyclopedic
introduction to the sciences in three parts: I – On
the moral qualities necessary for the study of science; II – The
enumeration of the sciences; III – The necessity of philosophy
for the attainment of felicity; the philosophy of Plato and the
philosophy of Aristotle. Major portions of the book, which was
edited by M. David (Berlin, 1902), are paraphrases of Arabic
philosophers, especially Al-Farabi.
7. Sefer ha-Ma’alot (The Book of Degrees), an ethical work
describing the corporeal, spiritual, and divine degrees of human
perfection. The term ma’alot, degrees, also means virtues.
Those of the divine rank are the most perfect people, namely
the prophets, who no longer exist. Those of the spiritual rank
are the true philosophers. Most people are of the corporeal
rank, enslaved to their bodily needs. The book, a sequel to
Reshit Ḥokhmah, but unlike the former an original work of
Falaquera’s own ideas, was one of three Hebrew books in the
680 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6