In a treatise on Talmudic law written in Languedoc in the 12th century, Abraham Ben David de Posquières (now Vauvert) raises the question of desire and the love relationship in terms that contemporary sensibilities would not disapprove of. By basing the authenticity of this relationship on intention, he sketches out a philosophy of the couple aimed at preserving the person in the desired being, and avoiding instrumentalizing it for the purposes of selfish enjoyment. To the point where one might say that there is no “sexual” relationship in love… Shmuel Trigano’s interpretation of the last chapter of the Book of the Masters of the Soul unveils an unsuspected landscape in the medieval world of Jewish Law, where we sense the stirrings of the nascent Provençal Kabbalah.
L’intention d’amour: desire and sexuality in “Les maîtres de l’âme” by R. Abraham Ben David de Posquières