Belonging in the Land and the Law: A Reading of Joseph David on Nahmanides’s Territorial Exegesis

Abstract Joseph E. David’s Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging provides an erudite demonstration of how an analytical approach that directs attention to negotiations of belonging in exegetical and legal thinking can yield crucial insight into how social boundaries are defined and defended in throughout human history in a broad array of contexts. Among the examples he brings to illustrate premodern efforts to delineate belonging is Nahmanides’s interpretation of territory based commandments. David shows that Nahmanides made the radical claim that the covenant was firmly linked to the land, so that any people inhabiting the land were obliged to follow it, and complete compliance with divine law could be achieved only in the Land of Israel. This essay examines David’s discussion of Nahmanides’s interpretation of law in the Land of Israel and considers the implications of extending an analysis of conceptions of belonging into other corners of Nahmanides’s career as a commentator, community leader, and teacher.