Book of Meat on Coals

Unknown

Late 10th or Early 11th Century

A certain woman called Esther, from Spain, divorced her husband. When he gave her the bill of divorce, he said to her, “You are permitted to all men, apart from So-and-so,” [thereby invalidating the bill of divorce]. She subsequently proceeded to marry another man, with whom she had a daughter. That girl is a mamzer. What, then, should a man do if he suspects his wife [has had adulterous relations with] a particular man and does not want her to marry [that man]? The court writes a valid bill of divorce for him, in the manner instituted by the sages, which they give to him, and he hands it over to her in their presence, and then the court formally prohibits the woman from marrying that man suspected by her former husband. If she violates their order and marries him, the court will compel him to divorce her. [ . . . ]

A certain Muslim inserted his hand into the wine of a Jew, against his [the Jew’s] will, with the intention of rendering the wine forbidden to him. Is it permitted to drink that wine? There are some authorities in our place who rule that it is permitted to drink it, based on the statement of R. Judah ben Betera and R. Judah ben Baba in chapter 4 [b. Avodah Zarah 59b] that if a non-Jew poured the wine of a Jew as a libation but did not do so before an idol, he is permitted to benefit from the wine. For one thing, wine can be poured as a libation only before an idol, and secondly, the Jew can say, “You do not have the power to render the wine forbidden to me against my will.” However, I maintain that although they ruled that the wine is permitted, they permitted him only to benefit from it [and not to drink it]. He further wrote that a Muslim cannot render wine forbidden as “libation wine,” and that such a person does not pour wine as a libation to idols.

However, it nevertheless appears that Muslims are in fact idol-worshipers, as the sages stated:

There are five established temples of idolatry in Babylonia: The temple of Nebo, the temple of Kalkal in Kur, Sif Tirata in Sippar, Tsirifin in Ashkelon, and Nashra, which is in Arabia. [b. Avodah Zarah 11b]

Accordingly, Muslims have the same status as other non-Jews.

Translated by Avi Steinhart.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.

The nature of the Book of Meat on Coals (Sefer basar al-gabe geḥalim) and the meaning of its title—which already raised some questions in the late medieval period—remain unclear. This work survives only in later quotations, the earliest of which is from eleventh-century Germany. Several citations also survive from Rashi’s circle of disciples in northern France, while other passages derive from a late twelfth-century collection of responsa from Provence and a late fourteenth-century manuscript of Mordechai ha-Gadol. The latter source attributes the work to a certain Bibi Ga’on, who might be identified with Jacob ben Yakar, a student of Rabbenu Gershom. The first of the two excerpted passages deals with a writ of divorce, which the husband issued conditionally, thereby invalidating it. The second case concerns the status of Jewish wine touched by a Muslim, a problem that turned on whether Muslims were considered idolaters according to Jewish law. It is possible that the negative assessment of Islam was linked to the text’s likely origins in an area that had little exposure to Muslims.

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Book of Meat on Coals

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