Moses Taku

Who is Moses Taku?

Moshe ben Chasdai Taku was a 13th-century Tosafist from Bohemia. Despite his own seemingly mystical orientation, Rabbi Taku is controversially known to have been an opponent of both the esoteric theology of the Chassidei Ashkenaz and the philosophical orientation of rabbinic rationalists such as Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Abraham ibn Ezra et al. He believed that both trends were a deviant departure from traditional Judaism, which he understood to espouse a literal perspective of both the biblical narrative, and the Aggadata of the Sages. His opposition to all theological speculation earned him, in the opinion of Gershon Scholem, the title of one of the two truly reactionary Jewish writers of the Middle Ages.