Maimonides and the Merchants. Mark R. Cohen
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in the Talmud, placing an individual traveler before a group, perhaps to focus attention on travel by individual merchants, which was so prevalent in his day and age.
It is likely that Maimonides was familiar with a responsum of R. Naḥshon Gaon (871–879), who lived in Abbasid Iraq, explaining a different Talmudic passage. The Talmud (Bava Batra 8a) quotes a baraita explaining that a visitor who stays in a town for at least thirty days is obligated to contribute to local charity. Naḥshon specifies that this refers to a person who is traveling “for commerce” (bi-sḥora) and who stays at an inn. This describes perfectly the situation of merchants in the Islamic world, who arrived in a town, did their business in the local marketplace, and lodged at an inn (funduq) or caravanserai.4
It is even possible that Maimonides meant to specify that the obligation to give to charity when visiting a foreign city applies only to individuals traveling for commerce5 but not, for instance, to the itinerant poor. According to the Talmud (Giṭṭin 7b), indigents living off charity are themselves obligated to donate at least a small sum to charity. This was an ideal, and Maimonides codifies the Talmudic rule earlier in the same chapter of the Laws of Gifts for the Poor (7:5). But in the Geniza world, huge numbers of indigent travelers from near and distant parts of the Islamic domain and even from Byzantium and Latin Europe traveled from city to city, where, as the Geniza poor lists from Fustat copiously illustrate, they were entered into the local dole and were even expected to defray some fraction of their poll tax.6 It was unrealistic to expect them to contribute to charity as well. Merchant travelers, on the other hand, were financially more able to give, and we may imagine that, when they attended a local synagogue while on a business trip, they were solicited for charity. The Geniza documents for Egypt describe how this so-called pesiqa system worked (the verbal form pasqu is used by Maimonides in the halakha in question): people in the synagogue made pledges either for a general fund or a specific, needy person, often a newcomer to town.7
The term “for commerce” is absent in the epitome of the Talmud compiled by Maimonides’ Andalusian predecessor, R. Isaac Alfasi (d. 1103) (Megilla 8b in the pages in the printed Talmud). R. Asher b. Yeḥiel (Rosh, ca. 1250–1327) similarly omits the addition in his own code (Megilla 4:5). On the other hand, Maimonides’ gloss on the Talmud was accepted by Rosh’s son, Jacob b. Asher (d. 1340 in Toledo, Spain) in his Ṭur (Yoreh De‘a 256), as well as by Joseph Caro in both his commentary on the Ṭur (Beit Yosef, Yoreh De‘a 256:6), and his own code, the Shulḥan ‘Arukh (Yoreh De‘a 256). When Caro chose Maimonides’ updated ruling on the obligation of a traveling merchant to contribute to charity in another town, he put the final stamp of approval on a change that Maimonides, building on a Gaonic precedent, had codified in the twelfth century in an effort to harmonize an ancient halakha with the economic realities of the medieval Islamic world. Per Watson, we may say that he was attempting to bring law and society into greater harmony. The adaptation fit Caro’s own sixteenth-century economic milieu (Safed in his time was a major trading crossroads in Ottoman Palestine), a fact that may have encouraged him to accept Maimonides’ gloss “for commerce.” Normally, Caro followed the ruling of the majority among his three authorities, Alfasi, Maimonides, and Rosh; but in this case, he ignored Alfasi and Rosh, both of whom simply quote the Talmud, and adopted Maimonides’ update instead.
3.3 Commerce and the ‘Eruv
The gloss “commerce” (seḥora) appears in the Code in connection with the Sabbath ‘eruv, a symbolic device meant to enable people to carry items on the day of rest from a private dwelling to the common courtyard (Hebrew, ḥaṣer; Arabic, dār) and between disjoint living units in a common courtyard; or between disjoint courtyards opening onto a common alleyway (Hebrew, mavoi). The rabbinic solution was to symbolically aggregate separate domains into one so that people could move about freely, carrying items outside their private dwellings. This was accomplished by having all neighbors deposit an item of food in one of the living units.
One means of doing this is stipulated in Mishna ‘Eruvin 6:5 (and discussed in the Talmud, ‘Eruvin 71a): “If a householder is a joint owner [shutaf] with his neighbors, with one of them in wine and with the other in wine, they need not prepare an ‘eruv. But if with one it is wine and the other, oil, they must prepare an ‘eruv. R. Simeon says: In neither case do they need to prepare an ‘eruv.”
Maimonides (Hilkhot ‘eruvin 5:1) retains the structure of the halakha but embellishes it with some revealing changes in the language. “If residents of an alleyway [mavoi] hold some article of food jointly for commercial purposes [shittuf le-‘inyan seḥora], for example, having bought wine, oil, honey, or the like in partnership [shutafut], they need form no additional token joint ownership [shittuf] for the Sabbath but may rely on their commercial joint ownership [shittuf shel seḥora]. The item in which they are partners [shutafin] must be the same type and contained in one vessel, but if one of them is partner [shutaf] with one person in wine and another in oil, or in oil alone but in two separate vessels, they must prepare an additional jointly owned [shittuf] item for the Sabbath [‘eruv].”
These alterations do not occur in any earlier reiteration of the Mishnaic ruling, including Alfasi’s a bridgment of the Talmudot occur in any earlier reiteration of the Mishnaic ruling, including Alfasi’s abridgment of the Talmud. Maimonides’ modifications, considerably elaborating on the Mishna, are steeped in significance. They demonstrate his effort to update classical rabbinic law in the light of the commercial realities of his time.
The rabbinic term for aggregating living units (apartments or whole courtyards) is shittuf, a word that is related to shutafut, “partnership.” Maimonides, who follows the Talmudic commentary and understands the Mishna to refer to the aggregation of multiple courtyards opening onto a common alleyway, infuses the text with the meaning of commercial partnership by adding the word seḥora. He also uses the Hebrew term for commercial partnership, shutafut, to explain how the jointly owned articles of food were acquired. Along the same lines, in his Commentary on the Mishna, Maimonides defines shutaf in ‘Eruvin 6:5 as sharīk, the Arabic term for “partner,” typically applied to commercial or craft partnerships (sharika). To further strengthen the contemporary connotation, he specifies “commercial joint ownership” (shittuf shel seḥora). Finally, he amplifies the Mishna by adding “honey” to the original list, a commodity, in addition to wine and oil, in which, according to the Geniza documents, people in the Mediterranean traded.8
I submit that these are not accidental or incidental modifications of the classical rabbinic text. They illustrate Maimonides’ careful choice of language, adapting an ancient halakha to fit the commercial context of the Islamic world in which he lived, a world in which partnership in business was much more common than in Talmudic times. This update, like the one in the Laws of Gifts for the Poor discussed above, is repeated by the later codifier, Jacob b. Asher (Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim 366). He understood Maimonides’ intention to update the halakha and made it even more explicit: “If a householder is a commercial partner with his neighbors [shutaf ‘im shekhenav bi-sḥora], even if with one person in wine and another in oil, he does not need to create a separate ‘eruv, even if they had not formed the partnership for the sake of an ‘eruv, provided it is all in one vessel.”9
3.4 Commerce and Work on the Intermediate Days of the Festival (Ḥol Ha-mo‘ed)
An excellent example of how Maimonides builds on Gaonic and Andalusian precedents in an economic matter is to be had by considering the question of work on the intermediate days of a festival (Passover and Sukkot). This issue occupied the attention of the rabbis of the Talmudic period. The Mishna (Mo‘ed Qaṭan 2:4; Mo‘ed Qaṭan 13a in the Talmud) restricts labor on those days to certain types of religious or subsistence economic activity: “It is not permissible to buy houses, slaves, or cattle except for what is needed for the festival, or where the seller has nothing to eat.”
Characteristically, as this and other statements show, the discussion in the Talmud assumes agricultural work (Mo‘ed Qaṭan 12a–b). Further exemplifying subsistence economic activity,