Maimonides and the Merchants. Mark R. Cohen
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statement in 7:24 about protecting the hireling or the store owner from dearth addresses the plight of the “working poor” in Maimonides’ Egypt, who earned meager, subsistence wages and could not afford to sacrifice income for an entire week twice a year (ḥol ha-mo‘ed plus the festival days that precede and follow). Both weeklong Jewish festivals fell within the Mediterranean sailing season, which ran from April through October: the week of Passover in early spring and the week of Sukkot at the dawn of the fall/winter season.25 Noteworthy is the clear allusion to Maimonides’ own “ladder of charity” near the end of the Laws of Gifts for the Poor (10:7), which puts employment of a poor person, entering into partnership with him, giving him a loan, or making an outright gift at the top of the list of commendable methods of charitable giving (“workfare” rather than “welfare,” to invoke anachronistically a political policy of some conservative opponents of government subsidies to the unemployed poor in American politics).
Most significant in terms of Jewish commercial life is the phrase sanctioning commerce: “Likewise, he may engage in commerce [seḥora] to provide enough for his livelihood.” By using the word “likewise” (ve-khen), Maimonides separates this clause from the sentences before and after it that address the needs of the poor and signifies that he is adding something new. Seemingly, according to the codifier, the permission to engage in trade exceeds the Talmudic rationale—the concern that people might starve.
The Geniza merchants, we must remember, were not indigent. For them, the threshold of basic livelihood was higher than the subsistence level assumed by the Talmud in its discussion of work during the festival interlude. The Geniza merchants’ livelihood depended upon doing business continually, with minimal interruption, constantly offsetting losses or potential losses with gains, always keeping their capital moving. Ships delivered and exported goods, and, for merchants, the inability to engage in trade during the full week of each of the two Jewish festivals could cost them dearly, especially because, as Maimonides himself states two halakhot earlier (Hilkhot shevitat yom ṭov 7:22), prices for buying or selling could be at their optimum when ships or caravans arrived. The halakha in question (7:24) follows naturally, therefore, from the earlier one, which explicitly allows transacting business with merchants traveling by ship or by caravan on the intermediate days of the festival and, by implication, in the marketplace itself, not just in the privacy of their homes, as stipulated more conservatively by R. Naṭronai Gaon. Refraining from work on the intermediate days of the festival could truly entail lost business opportunity—praqmaṭia ovedet.
Seemingly, Maimonides does not limit merchants’ activities to corresponding with business associates, as stipulated by Naṭronai Gaon. In his merchant guise, Maimonides knew that traders needed to have direct and immediate access to markets to take advantage of business opportunities and favorable prices that might not be available if they had to wait until after the conclusion of the festival week, especially if caravans or ships were arriving or departing. This reality, more typical of the commercial Islamicate economy than of the agrarian world of the Talmud, called for greater halakhic flexibility. In his rulings on work on the intermediate days of the festival, both in the opinion he addressed to the rabbinic authority in Palestine and in his Code, Maimonides appears to have had in mind the reluctance of Jewish merchants like those of his native Córdoba to take time off from their business affairs for so many consecutive days twice a year. The responsum of Ibn Migash, which Maimonides is likely to have known, describes explicitly the habit of those merchants to engage in buying and selling on the intermediate days. Ibn Migash responds that they should not be barred from doing so if it meant avoiding financial loss. What Maimonides appears to have done in the Code, and to have gone further in this respect than Naṭronai Gaon, is to stretch the definition of praqmaṭia ovedet to accommodate contemporary merchant habits.
Writing three and a half centuries later, R. Joseph Caro seems to have understood Maimonides this way. In his Beit Yosef, he writes (Oraḥ Ḥayyim 539:4): “It seems from what [Maimonides] says that it is only permissible when he has nothing to eat. But it is possible that he also permits [a merchant to work] when he has limited assets and wishes to profit by selling, so he will have a surplus of money, for this, too, is tantamount to ‘enough for his livelihood.’” Not just “enough for his livelihood” but “a surplus of money.” Caro understood, as did Maimonides, that earning a livelihood through trade required always keeping ahead of the game, never letting one’s cash reserves run low, never allowing one’s liquid assets to lie fallow. We seem, therefore, to be witness to another instance in which Maimonides, well versed in the ways of commerce and business in general, adjusted the halakha to conform to the entrepreneurial spirit of the post-Talmudic Islamicate economy.
3.5 Commerce and the Sabbath
Exemplifying Maimonides’ extension of a rabbinic law written in an agrarian context to fit the world of the Geniza merchants is his treatment of the question of certain types of work that must be avoided on the Sabbath. The Mishna, tractate Shabbat 23:3, states: “One may not hire laborers on the Sabbath, nor may one tell another person to hire laborers for him. One may not walk to the Sabbath limits [teḥum, the maximum distance allowed for a walk from home on the Sabbath] to await nightfall to hire laborers [i.e., to be nearer the place, beyond the limits, where one hires laborers] or to bring in produce, but one may do so to watch [one’s own field, located beyond the limit, immediately upon nightfall], and then he may bring [home] produce with him. Abba Saul stated the general rule: ‘Anything that I am permitted to instruct be done, I am permitted to await nightfall for it’” (i.e., at the Sabbath limits).
Like the Mishna, the Gemara (Shabbat 150a) situates this ruling in an agricultural context, exemplifying the principle with examples—hiring laborers and transporting produce—that indicate a society invested in farming.
Maimonides’ approach differs markedly. In Laws of the Sabbath 24:1, he updates the Mishnaic and Talmudic texts to conform more closely to a world in which long-distance trade was widespread.
Some acts are forbidden on the Sabbath even though they neither resemble nor lead to prohibited work. Why, then, were they forbidden? Because Scripture says, “If thou turn away thy foot because of the Sabbath, from pursuing thy business on My holy day.… And thou shall honor it, not doing thy wonted ways, nor pursuing thy business, nor speaking thereof (Isa. 58:13).” Therefore, one may not walk with one’s goods on the Sabbath or even speak about them, for instance, to speak with one’s partner [shutaf] about what to sell on the morrow, or what to buy, or how to construct a certain house; or what merchandise [seḥora] to take to such-and-such a place. These things and all others like it are forbidden, as it is written, “nor pursuing thy business nor speaking thereof,” which means that speaking [about business] is forbidden, though thinking [about it] is permitted.
The type of economy assumed by this Maimonidean halakha is not the local and regional agrarian economy of the Talmud but the more wide-ranging commercial economy of the Islamic world. The Mishna speaks about walking the distance to the Sabbath limits in order to wait there to hire agricultural laborers after nightfall, when the Sabbath ended, or to carry produce from there back home. By contrast, Maimonides specifies travel for business (“walk with one’s goods”), a significant nod to the long-distance trade pursued by Jewish (and Muslim) merchants. Then there is his all-important reference to partnership, which, in his time, represented a prominent (though not the primary) method of doing business, especially long-distance trade across the Mediterranean and India routes. This will be discussed in greater detail in Chapters 4 and 5.
Patently reflecting the agricultural society of the Talmudic era, the Mishna forbids instructing a person to “hire laborers for him.” Characteristic of the Geniza world, Maimonides exemplifies the kinds of verbal exchanges forbidden on the Sabbath with discussions that business partners would be likely to have. Such conversations might include plans for marketing after the Sabbath ended or the geographical scope of the partnership or agency relationship—“what merchandise to take to such-and-such a place”—which was especially important in long-distance commercial ventures, where one person was often stationary and the other did the work.