Accordingly...

Accordingly, the comparison of Jewish and Islamic legal theories from an etic perspective is justified by the comparative consciousness at the emic level.[^78] Additionally, our analysis teaches that the modes which a jurist uses to view a legal system as comparable and comparison as a cognitive procedure are crucial to understand his perspective.

To comprehend better the nature of the comparative consciousness we suggest the distinction between two comparative attitudes – substantiating comparison and incorporating comparison . The first views comparison as a means to confirm the uniqueness of the compared object by underlining the differences between the objects. Thus, the aim of comparison is to reveal the peculiar aspects of the compared objects.

Conversely, incorporating comparison is taken as a tool to establish or to expose cross-references between the compared objects. These distinctive attitudes can be demonstrated through two different accounts on the hybrid background of the Judeo-Arabic literature.

Those accounts are provided by two inspiring Jewish thinkers who lived in two distinct historical and cultural contexts – the medieval Spanish writer Moses Ibn Ezra (1055-1140 CE) and the modern Zionist poet Hayim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934 CE). H. N. Bialik, committed to a strong nationalist view, pugnaciously condemns all literary expressions of Jewish thoughts in languages other than Hebrew.

In fact, presenting Jewish ideas in languages other than Hebrew is, for him, not only alien to the Jewish volksgiest , but rather a betrayal – an act of apostasy that threatens the nation’s very existence. Accordingly, Bialik refers to historical evidence that refutes such linguistic loyalty as rare exceptions.

The three counterexamples are: (1) the Alexandrian Jewry, represented by Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE), which integrated Second Temple Jewish traditions with Hellenic cultural and intellectual values; (2) the medieval Judeo-Arabic literature; and (3) the modern Jewish Enlightenment, represented by the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786 CE), who saw in the political emancipation an invitation for a genuine integration into the European culture.