Moses Taku
1200 CE–1280 CE · Rishonim · Tachov (Tachau)
Moses ben Hasdai Taku was a 13th-century Tosafist and the era's fiercest anti-rationalist polemicist, his name taken from Tachov (Tachau) in Bohemia. In his Ketav Tamim he attacked both the philosophical rationalism of Maimonides and Saadia Gaon and the esoteric theology of the German Pietists, defending the plain, literal sense of Scripture — including its anthropomorphic descriptions of God — as a matter of faith. Gershom Scholem called him one of the only truly 'reactionary' Jewish writers of the Middle Ages, and his work survives as a rare dissenting voice against the medieval turn to philosophy.
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Tachov (Tachau)תאקוBohemia
What they did here
A Tosafist of Tachov (Tachau) in Bohemia, from which he takes his name; here he composed Ketav Tamim, his polemic against rationalist and mystical theology alike.
About Tachov (Tachau)
Tachau (Czech Tachov), a town in western Bohemia (today the Czech Republic), was the home of Rabbi Moses ben Hisdai Taku, a thirteenth-century Tosafist and polemicist. In his treatise Ketav Tamim he argued forcefully against both the philosophical rationalism of Maimonides and Saadia Gaon and the esoteric theology of the German Pietists, defending a literalist reading of Scripture and aggadah.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Moses Taku’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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