The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus. Maud Kozodoy

there is no cutting off and eternal punishment—it is not proper according to our faith that heresy [minut] be attributed to him.”³⁷ This can be compared profitably with Crescas’s own fourth category, which consists of doctrines and theories about which the Torah gives no definitive teaching and “one who does not believe in them is not called a heretic.”³⁸ This last category takes up the final quarter of Or ha-Shem, where Crescas gives his own opinion on all of these various matters, including the particular topic at hand in Duran’s responsum—that is, punishment after death—which appears in Crescas under the title “Paradise and Hell.”³⁹ Finally, one should note that Crescas himself denies that all souls survive death.⁴⁰

      Since Duran’s letter is undated, could it possibly have been written after 1410 or 1412, in which case he would likely have known Or ha-Shem? If that were the case, one might think he would simply have followed the straightforward positive categorization used by Crescas. One wonders, too, to whom this letter was written in the first place. It is addressed rather perfunctorily to “the lord scholar” (“ha-adon ha-ḥoqer”), which is certainly tantalizing. Sadly, however, we know too little about this text to do more than speculate.

      But let me note one more possible point of contact. In Ma‘aseh Efod, as we will see in Chapter 11, Duran’s scheme for meditating on the text of the Hebrew Bible focuses on that text’s power when held in the memory. Duran’s favorite term for this inner contemplation of the Bible is “keeping in the heart” (shemirah ba-lev, or shemirah ba-levavot); it is a concept that engrosses him throughout the introduction to Ma‘aseh Efod, usually coupled with the term “remembering” (zikhronah). In order to keep the Torah in the heart, one needs to know it, and to that crucial end, Duran in Ma‘aseh Efod lays out fifteen rules for enhancing the memory.⁴¹ For as he explains in introducing them, proper study and comprehension of the Bible can be effectuated only when one knows the material by heart.⁴²

      I am tempted to see an echo of Duran’s emphasis on memorization, and even meditation, in Hasdai Crescas’s introduction to Or ha-Shem, where he notes that one cannot perform the commandments without knowing them, and continues:

      Since knowing the commandments of the Torah is the straight path that brings [one] to [ultimate] perfection, it is therefore proper that knowing [them] be attained in the most perfect fashion possible; perfecting [one’s] knowledge of the words and reviewing them, which should be done in three [ways]: with careful examination of them, and with simple understanding, and with keeping and remembering them…. And keeping and remembering them is either by abbreviating them, or by presenting qualities that are the foundations and cornerstones of the Oral Torah in the form of signs [simanim], [since] one of the mnemonic techniques [ofnei ha-zekhirah ha-takhbuliyit] is to make signs for subjects so that one does not forget them. And all the more so with that which the Torah commanded about meditating on them always, for all this is the root and great foundation of keeping and remembering them.⁴³

      That is to say, the salvific “knowing the commandments of the Torah” is a matter of learning the words and turning them over in your mind, which should be achieved in three areas, first by careful examination, which means learning the words accurately, then through a general grasp of their meaning, and then by “keeping and remembering” them. This last phrase, as Crescas goes on to elaborate, is associated with memorization and, in particular, mnemonic techniques. True, where Duran focuses on the text of the Hebrew Bible, Crescas is concerned with knowing the Law. But it would not be surprising if Crescas had read Ma‘aseh Efod and associated the phrases used by Duran with advice for improving one’s memory of halakhah.