Biography
Rabbi Moshe ben Chasdai Taku (משה תקו) was a rishon of Bohemia in the thirteenth century, one of the Baalei HaTosafot. He lived in the town of Taku in Bohemia, today Tachov in the Czech Republic, and in his last years in Wiener Neustadt near Vienna, where he was niftar and is buried.
His rebbi was Rabbi David ben Kalonymus of Minzburg, and among his talmidim was Rabbi Yonah ben Shmuel of Ashkenaz. He wrote many sefarim, among them a peirush on Seder Zeraim and Seder Taharot of the Mishnah, close in style to the peirush of Rabbi Shimshon of Shantz, and Tosafot on the Shas. Parts of these are brought by other rishonim; the Ramban, for one, mentions him in his chiddushim on Gittin 7. Some hold that the peirush on Torat Kohanim printed under the name of Rabbi Shimshon of Shantz is really his. He also wrote piyyutim (liturgical poems) and selichot, of which one, beginning “Evyonei melech naakat amecha,” became widely known, and many teshuvot in halacha that are brought in the sefarim of the rishonim.
In a large work called Ketav Tamim he attacked the study of philosophy, and in particular the Jewish philosophers Rav Saadia Gaon, Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra and the Rambam, calling the views of those who follow them minut (heresy). He also opposed the hidden teachings of the Chasidei Ashkenaz, especially those of Rabbi Yehudah HaChasid and the Kalonymus family. He held that the accounts of the Torah and the aggadot of Chazal are to be taken in their plain meaning. In Ketav Tamim he writes that although the Creator has no body, at times He contracts Himself and appears in a bodily form, and that the power to do so itself comes from His being without limit.
At some point in his life he went up to Eretz Yisrael, and wrote there of his thanks to Hashem for having merited to come to the Land and to keep the mitzvot of maaser (tithes) in it.
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רבי משה בן חסדאי מתקוּ, היה מחכמי בוהמיה בשנות ד'תתק"פ (1220) בערך. מושבו היה בעיר תקוּ בבוהמיה, הנקראת כיום טאכוב. באחרית ימיו חי בעיר וינר נוישטאדט הסמוכה לווינה, בה נפטר ונקבר.
Moshe ben Ḥasdai Taku was a 13th-century Tosafist from Tachov, Bohemia. The name Taku is a variant of Tachau, Bohemia, now Tachov, Czech Republic. Despite his own seemingly mystical orientation, Rabbi Taku is controversially known to have been an opponent of both the esoteric theology of the Ashkenazi Hasidim, particularly the Kalonymos family, i.e. followers of Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg) 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 Gershom Scholem, the title of one of the two truly reactionary Jewish writers of the Middle Ages, the other being Joseph Ashkenazi.
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