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Kabbalah © 1997 by Mark Podwal, Courtesy of Forum Gallery, New York.
VOL. 33, NO. 2 • NOVEMBER 2009
AJS Review ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES NEW YORK, NEW YORK EDITORS Elisheva Carlebach, Columbia University Robert Goldenberg, SUNY Stony Brook BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Charlotte Fonrobert, Stanford University ASSOCIATE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Eugene Sheppard, Brandeis University EDITORIAL BOARD Michael Alexander, Temple University Pamela Barmash, Washington University in Saint Louis Yaakov Elman, Yeshiva University Talya Fishman, University of Pennsylvania Gershon David Hundert, McGill University Riv-Ellen Prell, University of Minnesota Jeffrey Rubenstein, New York University Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University Magda Teter, Wesleyan University Chava Weissler, Lehigh University MANAGING EDITOR Stanley Mirvis The AJS Review (ISSN 0364-0094) is published twice annually by the Association for Jewish Studies The AJS Review has been subsidized in part by a contribution from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. Manuscripts for consideration should be e-mailed as a MS Word or rich text file to the AJS Review managing editor at
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THE JOURNAL
AJS Review OF THE
ASSOCIATION
FOR JEWISH
VOLUME 33, NUMBER 2
STUDIES NOVEMBER 2009
TABLE
OF
CONTENTS
ARTICLES Gershon David Hundert The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów: An Unexamined Source for the History of Jews in the Lwów Region in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century ................................................ 225 Barak Shlomo Cohen In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions: The Case of Tanna D'Bei Shmuel ..................................................................................................... 271 Geoffrey Goldberg Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim: Life-Cycle Celebration in the Song of the Ashkenazic Synagogue ........................................................................................... 305 Rebekah Klein-Pejšová “Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars”: Contested Jewish Loyalty in Interwar (Czecho) Slovakia ............................................................ 341 Gilead Morahg The Perils of Hybridity: Resisting the Postcolonial Perspective in A. B. Yehoshua’s The Liberating Bride ................................................................... 363 REVIEW ESSAY Jeffrey Veidlinger From Ashkenaz to Zionism: Putting Eastern European Jewish Life in (Alphabetical) Order ................................................................................................. 379 BOOK REVIEWS BIBLICAL STUDIES James W. Watts. Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus: From Sacrifice to Scripture WILLIAM K. GILDERS , Emory University .................................................................... 391 Bernard M. Levinson. “The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation BARUCH J. SCHWARTZ , Hebrew University of Jerusalem ............................................ 393 JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE IN LATE ANTIQUITY Gideon Bohak. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History KIMBERLY B. STRATTON , Carleton University ............................................................. 396
MEDIEVAL JEWISH CULTURE Miriam Bodian. Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World CLAUDE B. STUCZYNSKI , Bar-Ilan University ............................................................. 399 Esperanza Alfonso. Islamic Culture through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century MARTIN JACOBS , Washington University in St. Louis ................................................. 404 David Malkiel. Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000–1250 ETHAN ZADOFF, The Graduate Center, City University of New York ........................ 407 MODERN JEWISH THOUGHT AND THEOLOGY Hilary Putnam. Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein ERIC JACOBSON , Roehampton University .................................................................... 410 Mara H. Benjamin. Rosenzweig's Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity EUGENE R. SHEPPARD , Brandeis University ................................................................ 412 Henry Levin Goldschmidt. The Legacy of German Jewry WILLIAM PLEVAN , Princeton University ...................................................................... 414 Martin Samuel Cohen. The Boy on the Door on the Ox: An Unusual Spiritual Journey through the Strangest Jewish Texts MARTIN S. JAFFEE , University of Washington ............................................................. 417 Michael L. Morgan. Discovering Levinas ARYEH BOTWINICK , Temple University ....................................................................... 419 Benjamin Lazier. God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars BEN WURGAFT, University of California, Berkeley ..................................................... 424 MODERN JEWISH CULTURE
AND
HISTORY
Phyllis Lassner and Lara Trubowitz. Antisemitism and Philosemitism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Representing Jews, Jewishness, and Modern Culture HEIDI KAUFMAN , University of Delaware ................................................................... 427 Julius Novick. Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience EMILY KOPLEY, Stanford University ............................................................................ 429 YIDDISH LITERATURE Anita Norich. Discovering Exile: Yiddish and American Jewish Culture during the Holocaust TONY MICHELS , University of Wisconsin .................................................................... 432
MODERN HEBREW LITERATURE Gil Z. Hochberg. In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination NANCY E. BERG , Washington University in St. Louis ................................................ 435 GENDER STUDIES Tova Hartman. Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation JANE KANAREK , Hebrew College ................................................................................ 437 N. O. Body. Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years MAX STRASSFELD , Stanford University ....................................................................... 439 HEBREW ARTICLE א................................................................................................................... עמנואל פרידהיים ישראל-עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בארץ בימי המשנה והתלמוד
AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 225–269 © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009 doi:10.1017/S0364009409990018
T HE I NTRODUCTION TO D IVRE BINAH BY D OV B ER OF B OLECHÓW: A N U NEXAMINED S OURCE FOR THE H ISTORY OF J EWS IN THE LWÓW R EGION IN THE S ECOND H ALF OF THE E IGHTEENTH C ENTURY by
Gershon David Hundert*
Surprisingly, historians have not yet carefully examined the introductory pages of the unpublished manuscript Divre binah (Understanding Words) by Dov Ber Birkenthal.1 Although the evidence of a single witness seldom leads to the revision of historical narratives, the material provided in these introductory pages is quite rich and suggests much about a number of topics that will be of particular interest to students of the eighteenth century. Among these themes are Jewish attitudes to Christianity, to the new Austrian regime in Galicia, to the Enlightenment, and to early Hasidism. The author, an elderly successful businessman, wrote the work in question after retiring to his hometown, Bolechów. His book affords us a glimpse into his way of understanding his society and his time. Dov Ber ben Yehuda Birkenthal (or Brezer, 1723–1805) wrote another book as well. Mark Wischnitzer published some substantial fragments, which are all that survive, of Dov Ber’s Memoirs in 1922.2 Dov Ber’s second book, Divre binah,
*I wrote this article during my tenure (2007–2008) as a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The institute provided ideal conditions for scholarly work. A number of my colleagues there and elsewhere provided advice and suggestions that were indispensable in the preparation of this study. Many thanks to Marcin Wodziński, Michael Silber, Moshe Rosman, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Yonatan Meir, Zvi Mark, Rachel Manekin, Ze’ev Gries, Arthur Green, Uriel Gellman, Shmuel Feiner, and David Assaf. 1. Jerusalem, Jewish National Library, MS B964: Divre binah, pp. 329, completed 1800. The author explains that the numerical value of the letters in the title of his book (ʿim ha-kolel) is the same as the numerical value of the letters in his name (284). There seems to be a page missing between pp. 174 and 175. 2. London, Jews College, Ms. 31 (I found no differences significant for the present article between the manuscript and the printed version); The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechow (1723–1805), translated from the original Hebrew manuscript, with introduction, notes, and map by M. Vishnitzer (Wischnitzer) (London: Oxford University Press, 1922); Mark Wischnitzer, ed., Zikhronot R’ Dov mi-Bolekhuv ([5]483– [5]565) (Berlin: Klal, 1922). Cf. Pamiętniki reba Dowa z Bolechowa, przekład z języka hebrajskiego, wstęp i przypisy, Roman Marcinkowski (Warszawa: Formica, 1994). On the
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Gershon David Hundert remains in manuscript. Apparently through the offices of Ber’s son-in-law, Dr. Yakovka (Jacob) Rapoport (1775–1855), the manuscript was placed in Yosef Perl’s library in Tarnopol in 1814. From there, it arrived in Jerusalem after World War I,3 and today the autograph copy of the 329-page book is held by the Manuscript Division of the Jewish National Library.4 Dov Ber notes on the cover page of Divre binah that he completed the book in 1800. This date is presented on the title page as the numerical value of la-yeshuʿa ule-neh.amah (for redemption and consolation). It is apparent, thus, that the first scholar to analyze the manuscript miscalculated the date as 1780; a number of passages in the text support the veracity of the later date.5 For example, there are references to a Hungarian law of 1791 and to the tax on Sabbath candles imposed in 1797. Nonetheless, Joseph II (d. February 1790) is referred to as if he were still alive,6 which suggests that Dov Ber was working from a diary or from notes he
Memoirs, see Roman Marcinkowski, “Dow Ber z Bolechowa: ‘uzupelniać tore wiedza światowa,’” in Żydzi i judaizm we wspólczesnych badaniach polskich, ed. Krzysztof Pilarczyk (Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka, 1997), 183–90; idem, “Jews in Eastern Galicia in the Light of The Memoirs of Dov Ber of Bolekhov,” Studia Judaica 5, no. 1 (2002): 41–58; Israel Bartal, “Dow m’Bolechów—pamiętnikarz czasów kryzysu Sejmu Czterech Ziem w XVIII stuleciu” [Dov of Bolechow—A diarist of the Council of Four lands in the 18th century], in Żydzi w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej, ed. Andrzej LinkLenczowski and Tomasz Polański (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1991), 81–84 (in English, Polin 9 [1996]: 183–91). The author refers to his family name as Brezer (Memoirs, 153; Zikhronot, 94). See also A[braham] J. Brawer, “A Posthumous Change of Name (Birkenthal not Bolechower),” Jewish Quarterly Review, new series, 13 (1922): 99–100. A systematic comparison of Divre binah and the Memoirs is certainly a desideratum. The purpose of the present article, however, is to present only the introduction to Divre binah. 3. Shmu’el Werses, “Ginze Yosef Perl bi-yrushalayim ve-gilgulehem,” Ha-Universitah 19 (1974): 40–45 (38–52). Werses describes the impassioned but only partially successful attempts of Avraham Yaʿakov Brawer, Bialik, Agnon, Dov Sadan, and others to rescue the treasures of the Perl collection. The key figure in this effort was a Tarnopol native who worked at the Jewish National Library, Simh.ah Katz (1904–40). See also Werses, “Shivʿim shenot h.eker yetsirato u-foʿalo shel Yosef Perl,” H.uliyot 7 (2002): 327 (321–38). 4. The Perl materials were inaccessible after the War of Independence until they were brought from Mount Scopus in 1958. During the 1980s, the manuscript of Divre binah was misplaced and remained lost until some five years ago, when it was found, misfiled under Djerba (!), and microfilmed. Although I worked with the microfilm, the acting director of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, Dr. Yael Okun, kindly permitted me to examine the original manuscript as well to verify my readings. 5. Avraham Yaʿakov Brawer, Galiz.iyah vi-Yehudeha: Meh.karim be-toledot Galiz.iyah ba-me’ah ha-shemoneh-‘esreh (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1965), 200. On Brawer (1884–1975), see below. 6. There is another dating problem that is beyond the scope of the present study. On pp. 54–75, the author quotes in Hebrew from She’erit Yisra’el by Menah.em Amelander, citing chapter 26, p. 69. Published originally in Yiddish, the first known published Hebrew version of that book appeared in Lwów in 1804. Moreover, in that Hebrew version, the chapter that Ber quotes is numbered chapter 24, and the wording is quite different. Thus, either Dov Ber used a different translation, unknown to us, or he translated the passages himself. In either case, the passages should be of interest to students of the history of Yiddish.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów had prepared over the years. Most probably, the final composition of Divre binah followed the writing of the memoirs. Dov Ber intended to publish Divre binah, but the rabbi of Lwów, Z.evi Hirsh Rozanes, refused to grant him an approbation because of the text’s many negative remarks about Christianity; Rozanes advised Dov Ber to correct these. Avraham Yaʿakov Brawer reports this exchange on the basis of correspondence between Dov Ber and Yakovka Rapoport. The letters, however, have not been preserved.7 Dov Ber Birkenthal was born in Bolechów in 1723 and died and was buried there in 1805. His mother, Esther, died on his fifteenth birthday. In a passage virtually unique in his writings for its display of emotion—note the repetition of his mother’s name—the author tells us in his Memoirs: [O]n the sixth of the month of Second Adar, which fell on a Sabbath, my mother, the virtuous and pious marat Esther, daughter of the distinguished R. Mordecai, died at nine o’clock in the evening. She died in the fifty-fourth year of her life after having been greatly afflicted for more than a year with dropsy of the leg. She died peacefully [metah be-neshikah] and without struggle. At the same hour and day, on the same date of the month of Adar, my mother Esther had brought me into the world with great pains of childbirth, as I narrated on page … [there is no such page preserved]. She almost died in giving birth to me; but out of the compassion of Heaven on me, the weak and newly born, there were added to her life, out of Divine favor, fourteen more years, so that she could raise me to obey the Torah, the commandments, and to bind phylacteries.8
Dov Ber married twice, the first time at age sixteen in 1739. This marriage was forced on him, “because of our many sins,” by “the wife of my father, my stepmother, Feige.”9 The young woman “was not suited to me [she-‘eno [sic] hagunah li].” They were together for two and a half years; “she had no issue and I was freed of her by the grace of God, may He be blessed.” Dov Ber subsequently married Leah, who was, he says, his predestined partner.10 Later, he refers to her as exemplary, saying that her upstanding qualities were well known to all, both Jews and Gentiles (le-havdil).11 He also describes a premonitory and foreboding dream before a disastrous attack on Bolechów by bandits. 7. Brawer, Galiz.iyah, 208. In the summer of 1802, Ber had sent the manuscript of his book, in fifteen notebooks, to H.ayyim Kurmash, the former shtadlan of Lwów, asking that he review its contents and consult with others to ensure its accuracy. H.ayyim’s response to this request, which affirms Ber’s accuracy, makes it clear that he expected the book would be published; see N. M. Gelber, “Shalosh teʿudot le-toledot ha-tenuʿah ha-Frankit be-Polin,” Zion 2 (1937): 330 (326–32). 8. Memoirs, 72; Zikhronot, 41. 9. The Memoirs include references, in addition to his stepmother, to two other women whom Dov Ber blames for different unhappy developments—the wife of his partner, and his sister-in-law. Both women are portrayed as responsible for coming between Ber and his fellow. The motif of “the quarrelsome woman” in early modern Jewish literature awaits its researcher. 10. Memoirs, 79 (I have altered Wischnitzer’s translation to make it more literal); Zikhronot, 45. 11. Memoirs, 177; Zikhronot, 110.
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Gershon David Hundert A dream image “that my wife had severe labor with child” alerted him that something dire was about to happen.12 Dov Ber’s father, Yehuda, like his son after him, was a successful importer of Hungarian wines. Yehuda’s success was attributable, in part, to his knowledge of Polish and Hungarian. Dov Ber himself spent much of his life and conducted business in Lwów, where commercial activities brought him into contact with Polish merchants, nobles, Catholic priests and monks, and businessmen from numerous European states. He learned a number of languages, including Polish, Latin, French, and German. In his Memoirs, Dov Ber explains his acquisition of Polish as follows: I also learned the Polish language to please my father, who wanted me to know it. He kept a tutor in his house, an educated Polish gentleman, who made me conversant with Polish speech and writing. I learned it perfectly in a very short time. Moreover, I studied Latin and understood the principal part of its grammar.13
Not hesitant to record what reflected on him well, Dov Ber also quotes a certain Jacob, who says of him, I know a man who is a Jew and who writes Polish as nobody else can. All the nobles are astonished that he writes so well, and praise him for his fluency in the Polish language… . He is the young R. Ber, the brother of the well-known kaz.in R. Aryeh Loeb of Bolechów.14
In Divre binah, as will be seen, Dov Ber offers a different explanation for having learned Polish and other languages. In the memoirs, he also mentions a Jewish woman, named Khule, who not only spoke Polish but also knew how to receive a nobleman properly (ke-derekh ha-priz.im) in her home and to offer him appropriate wine.15 We learn of a Jew in Kraków in the mid-eighteenth century who knew a number of languages, including Latin.16 Even more noteworthy, the scholar and 12. Memoirs, 95; Zikhronot, 56. 13. Memoirs, 79–80; Zikhronot, 45–46. 14. Memoirs, 65; Zikhronot, 36. 15. Memoirs, 109; Zikhronot, 65. This episode would tempt the imagination of a novelist. Ber sought to deceive a nobleman and persuade him that he was a resident of Lwów. The nobleman, Ber tells us, asked to meet Ber’s wife. So Ber “promptly” sent his Hungarian Jewish assistant to his neighbor’s wife—Khule—to ask her to go to Ber’s house and “to entertain him in the Polish language after the fashion of the nobles [ke-derekh ha-periz.im] and to make him believe that she was my wife. She came to my house, received him as hostess, and ordered a bottle of good wine, which he drank; and he believed her to be my wife.” 16. Adam Kaźimerczyk, “Converted Jews in Kraków, 1650–1763,” Gal-Ed 21 (2007): 28 (17– 52). See also Daniel Stone, “Knowledge of Foreign Languages among Eighteenth-century Polish Jews,” Polin 10 (1997): 200–21; Murray Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate–Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 174–79.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów rabbi H.ayyim Reizes, martyred in Lwów in 1728, knew Latin “and other languages of the nations.”17 In other words, though Dov Ber was unusual in his knowledge of languages, he was far from unique among Jews in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth of his day. Divre binah contains a history of messianic movements and particularly concentrates on the Sabbatian-Frankist episode, focusing on the author’s prominent role, because of his knowledge of Polish, in the debate between the Frankists and the rabbis in Lwów in 1759.18 Dov Ber’s discussion of messianism and its history begins on page 49 and continues to the end of the book. Much space is devoted to quotations from Maʿaseh Tuvyah, She’erit Yisra’el, Kiz.ur tsitsat novel Z.evi, and Mishnat h.akhamim.19 Avraham Yaʿakov Brawer (1884–1975), who saw the manuscript of Divre binah in Tarnopol, published some forty pages of the text in installments in Ha-Shiloah. between 1917 and 1921.20 Brawer’s quotations from the book are drawn almost exclusively from the Frankist episode, and he provides a much too brief summary of the introductory pages of the manuscript. Brawer was convinced that he had copied the only valuable and “original” parts of the book. In fact, he explains in his own memoirs that he blocked publication of the parts of Divre binah that he had not copied.21 Hence, I have chosen to describe and begin to analyze the introductory section—the first forty-eight pages of the book. D OV B ER
ON
C HRISTIANITY
On page 2 of the text, which amounts to a second title page, the author announces his purpose, which is “to cause lying words against our religion to 17. Divre binah, 40 (quoting Moshe Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim). See also Hannah Węgrzynek, “The Attitude of the Catholic Church towards Jews in Poland at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów 6 (2006): 665 (662–68); Gavri’el ben Z.evi Hirz. (Soh.astov), Maz.evat kodesh: hu zikhron z.adikim ha-nikra bet ya‘akov, sefer zikaron le-khol ge’one u-gedole Yisra’el poh ‘ir Levov, part 4 (Lemberg, 1879), 13–15. 18. See Gershon Hundert, Jews in Poland–Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 154–59 and the references there. 19. Tuvyah ben Moshe Yirmiyahu ha-kohen, Maʿaseh Tuvyah (Venice, 1707); Menah.em Amelander, She’erit Yisra’el (Lwów, 1804); Yaʿakov ben Aharon Sasportas (David ben Rafa’el Meldola), Kiz.ur tsitsat novel Z.evi (Amsterdam, 1737; Altona, 1757); Moshe ben Yisra’el Yaʿakov Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim (Wandsbek, 1733). The quotations are not of consecutive pages and are studded with interpolations. For example, he quotes sixteen separate passages from Kiz.ur tsitsat novel Z.evi interspersed with comments and summaries of the elided portions of the work (Divre binah, 75–172). 20. Avraham Yaʿakov Brawer, “Makor h.adash le-toledot Frank ve-siʿato,” Ha-Shiloah. 23 (1917–18), 146–56, 330–42, 439–49; 38 (1921), 231–38. Also published in idem, Galiz.iyah, 197–275. 21. “There appeared in Jerusalem a young scholar who had also been to the Perl Library, found the manuscript [of Divre binah] and copied what I had omitted. He wanted to publish these portions. Professor Simh.ah Assaf asked my opinion and I answered that what I omitted was copied by Dov Ber from Hebrew and Polish books. The Hebrew books were checked—the Polish ones were unavailable in the land [of Israel] then—and it was found that my words were correct. The portions copied by that scholar were not allowed to be published.” Mikha’el Ha-kohen Brawer, Avraham Yaʿakov Brawer, Zikhronot av u-beno (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-rav Kuk, 1966), 404; cf. Brawer, Galiz.iyah, 208–209.
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Gershon David Hundert disappear.” And, indeed, one of his concerns, which finds expression in the early pages, is the defense of Judaism in general and of the Oral Torah in particular in the face of polemical remarks by Christians. Dov Ber tells us that he spent most of his life in Lwów engaged in the wine business, in the course of which he had frequent contact with, and often entered the homes of, Christian laymen and priests. He notes that “virtually daily” they would demean Judaism, saying that Jews had lost their ancient wisdom: “You are all confused and nothing remains to you but your Talmud which misleads and betrays you; it is full of absurdities and many lies.”22 Dov Ber’s desire to find a way to answer the enemies of Judaism began in his youth. His father, in addition to owning a wine business, operated an inn that attracted people of various nations. “And often the first thing they said was against the Oral Torah.” It was from that time that Dov Ber, he says, resolved to study their languages assiduously in order to be able to read their books. And, indeed, he used his free time for this purpose. Still, as a young person, he was afraid to read the writings of Gentiles because “they [the writings] are much detested among our people.” He was afraid, he says, until he found Leh.em Yehuda by the Sephardic scholar Yehuda Yuda ben Shemu’el Lerma, which is a commentary on the Ethics of the Fathers.23 In his Memoirs, as noted, Dov Ber explains that he learned Polish at the behest of his father. He had to stop, he explains there, because “some of the people in our community began to gossip about me and to suspect my faith … and I had to give up my [secular] studies.”24 The treatment of this matter in Divre binah, however, suggests that he did not cease his reading in European languages. To further justify and support his path, Dov Ber also presents, in addition to the passage from Leh.em Yehuda, the comments of Yitsh.ak Arama, Maimonides, and Abravanel on a well-known passage in Ethics of the Fathers (2:14–15): Rabbi Elazar [ben Arakh] said: Be eager to study the Torah. Know what to respond to a heretic. Know before Whom you toil and Who is your Employer Who shall pay you the reward of your labor. 22. Divre binah, 3. These lines on page 3 of Divre Binah and some of what follows there replicate almost exactly certain passages in Maʿaseh Tuvyah by Tuviyah Kohen (Krakow, 1908), ptih.a, 2: ופוערים פיהם לבלי חק ודוברים עלינו עתק בגאווה ובוז לאמר אין לכם פה להשיב ולא: עמ' ב, פתיחת המחבר,במעשה טוביה ועל.מצח להרים ראש בעניני האמונה וכבר אבדה חכמתכם ובינתכם הקדומה כמו ששמעתי דבת רבים מגור מסביב בימי חרפי והאמת הוא שבעו"ה אנשי ההחכמה אבדו.זה הזהירו אותנו חז"ל באמרם הוי שקוד ללמוד תורה ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורוס ולכן קמתי אני הצעיר באלפי ונתעוררתי לכבוד ה' אלהי.ואין אתנו יודע להשיב למפקפקים החורפים אותנו תשובה נצחת כראוי ובגאוה ובוז עתק. ולבלי חוק היו פיהם נגדינו פוערים. ומדי יום ממש היו לנו אומרים:3 ' ואלו בדברי בינה עמ. …ישראל ואין עוד לכם. כבר אבדה מכם חכמתכם הקדומה. בעסקי ועניני האמונה. אין לכם פה להשיב ולא ראש להרים. עלינו דוברים על שלא היו בנו איש שדבר. שומעים חרפתם ואינם משיבים. ובני ישראל נעלבים ואינם עולבים:5 ' ובעמ. איש היודע עד מה בתשובה. שישיב להם איזה איש יהודא על ספיקותם.ויען שבקטנותי הבינותי מדבריהם מגמתם.…לשונם בלשון לימודים ניצחת אף נגד דתם…ומאז רוח קנאה לבשתי…אעפ"כ לקרות בספריהם בילדותי יראתי…עד שהגיע לידי …פירוש על .מסכתא אבות …על מאמר ר' אליעזר הוי שקוד ללמוד תורה ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורס 23. Venice, 1553; 2nd ed., Sabbioneta, 1554. 24. Memoirs, 80; Zikhronot, 46.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów Dov Ber summarizes the commentators’ views as follows: The intention of the rabbi’s warning is not to demand that a person devote himself exclusively to the study of the Torah. In order to know how to respond to heretics, one must know their books and the source of their error. “And how much more so in our generation … when our Faith is much desecrated among the gentiles, certainly there is no fault if we know how to respond to their questions in their language. Once God had revealed this to me, I determined to take up this simple task; perhaps God’s name will be sanctified by me in this way.”25 The Sephardic commentators to Ethics of the Fathers thus provide Ber with a legitimate rationale for his study of “their books.”26 Although, in this passage, the author presents himself as convinced of the appropriateness of his study of languages, other passages in other contexts in Divre binah suggest a more conventional, isolationist tendency. As will be seen later, he praises Polish Jews for not using a single word of Russian or Polish.27 And in a passage that Dov Ber quotes from Mishnat h.akhamim, the author, Moshe Hagiz, recounts the story of the martyrdom of H.ayyim Reizes in Lwów. According to Hagiz, Reizes attested that he was going to be executed in such a cruel fashion—having his tongue torn out—because he had learned Latin and other languages.28 Dov Ber’s keen desire to find ways to answer the accusations of Christians, however, is unquestionable. There follows a brief recounting of the tradition regarding the transmission of the Oral Torah and a statement of its utter reliability. Indeed, this subject is a leitmotif of the first forty-nine pages of Divre binah.29 The reliability of the chain of transmission of the Torah seems intended to be persuasive evidence of its authority, in contrast to what Dov Ber characterizes as the irrational and forged traditions of other monotheistic faiths. Moreover, the first debate with the Frankists, which takes up much space in the latter pages of Divre binah not considered in the present article, focused on the Talmud and the accusation that it was blasphemous.30 Dov Ber then characterizes Christianity and Islam in a way that is distinguished by its relatively neutral tone. He presents the early Christians as rebels against the rabbis, stating that the first Christians persisted in their ways until “they were driven out and separated themselves” from the community of Israel. 25. Divre binah, 6–8. 26. Cf. “We Jews must know all things, so that there may be realized in us the saying from the Bible: ‘For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations’ [Deuteronomy 4:6]. Although our teachers, be their memories for a blessing, applied this saying to our holy Torah, they also taught that it is good to combine Torah with worldly knowledge; and it is advantageous for every intelligent and educated Jew to have a knowledge of the history of the nations of the world. This will sometimes enable him properly to answer questions directed against the Jewish Law and faith, as has occurred to me several times in my discourses with the nobles and the clergy. In most of the cases I have found the right answer, and it is well-known to all that my replies were always convincing” (Memoirs, 141–42; Zikhronot, 87). 27. Divre binah, 18–19. 28. Ibid., 40. 29. Ibid., 8, 9, 25, 36. 30. Ibid., 194–220.
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Gershon David Hundert Under the leadership of their priests, they learned some of the commandments of the Torah of Israel, which, until that time, “had been hidden among us from the nations. These Christians took hold only of the Written Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, and imprisoned them without understanding their meaning.” Indeed, they misinterpreted verses to signify their Redeemer and to strengthen their own religion.31 Somewhat later in the introductory pages, Dov Ber discusses the matter of the sacred texts of Christianity and Islam. He characterizes them as scriptural religions (toraniyim), a term, I believe, previously not used in this sense in writings by rabbinic Jews, at least in Eastern Europe. It is true, on the other hand, that Yaʿakov Emden uses similar terminology, and that Moshe Hagiz, whom Ber quotes extensively,32 seems to take a similar stance.33 Dov Ber says, The Christians have a version of the Torah of Moses and the Prophets in their Bible [bibli’ah]; however, it is not edited but forged from its beginning to its end because they received it from various nations in many languages through their forging priests over a long period of time, almost two thousand years. Each nation in turn added distortions and forgeries until it was completely counterfeit …. So, too, the Ishmaelites of the Mohammedan religion, although there is in their Koran something of the Torah of Moses, it too is forged and mixed with the lies of Mohammed their false prophet.34
On the subject of the Christian Bible (sifre evan gelyon),35 Dov Ber asserts that its books support the Torah of Moses. He notes that the Christian Bible testifies that Jesus came to fulfill the Torah and not to annul it, “as is explained in several places in their books, Matthew chapter 5, verse 17.”36 He asserts that he presented this issue to the priest (Gaudenty) Pikulski, “the author of the book Jewish Malice, in Polish Złość żydowski, and he responds to my question in that book on page 435.”37 The reference is correct; in the second edition of his book, Pikulski 31. Ibid., 4–5. 32. Ibid., 39–42, 176–85. 33. Yaʿakov Emden, Sefer Shimush (Amsterdam [actually Altona], 1758), 20b, refers to the “three leading faiths that have erected their fortresses on the basis of the Torah of Moses” (sheloshet umot [emunot?] rashiyot … she-banu mivz.arehem al yesod torat mrʿ”h). On Hagiz, see Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 262–67. See also the summary and extension of Jacob Katz’s work on this subject in Yosef Salmon, “Noz.rim ve-noz.rut be-sifrut ha-pesikah me-shalhey ha-me’ah ha-shemoneh-esreh ve-ʿad ha-mah.az.it ha-sheniyah shel ha-me’ah ha-tesha-esreh,” in Al pi ha-be’er: Meh.karim be-hagut yehudit uve-mah.shavat ha-halakha mugashim le-Yaʿakov Blidstein, ed. Uri Ehrlich, H.ayyim Kreisel and Daniel Lasker (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2008), 635–51. 34. Divre binah, 9. 35. E. Carlebach suggests that this is a pun to yield even (wicked) gilyon (scroll). 36. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Divre binah, 10). And see the citation of this verse in the context of the description of the debate over the Talmud in 1757, ibid., 213–14. 37. Gaudenty Pikulski, Złość żydowska Przeciwko Bogu y bliźniemu Prawdzie y Sumnieniu na obiaśnienie Talmudystów. Na dowód ich zaślepienia, y Religii dalekiey od prawa Boskiego przez Moyżesza danego. Rozdzielona na trzy części opisana (Lwów, 1760 [1st ed., 1758]).
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów does indeed cite a question, attributing it to “ieden Żyd we Lwowie” (a certain Jew in Lwów). Pikulski’s formulation of Ber’s question is, “Let us grant that Christ was the true Messiah and thus all the prophecies were fulfilled in him. He says, however, in Matthew 5:17, ‘I have not come to destroy the Law [of Moses] but to fulfill it.’ Why do you Catholics not fulfill the Law of Moses? You do not keep the Sabbath but Sunday. Either your Christ said these words with a false heart, or you obey neither God nor Christ.”38 According to Ber, Pikulski’s response was foolish, as “there is no answer to my question.”39 Ber’s various objections to Christian teaching, and his knowledge of the New Testament, derive in part from Yiz.h.ak ben Avraham of Troki’s H.izuk emunah, especially “the second part of this book [which includes] translations to the Holy Tongue of many passages in the Evan gelyon and the books of the messengers of Jesus; these are the apostles.”40 He praises this author, of whose Karaite identity he seems unaware, saying that no Jewish opponent of Christianity has ever been his equal in attacking the very foundations of their foolish faith. Still, he notes the usefulness in this regard also of Yom Tov Lipman Mülhausen’s Sefer niz.ah.on,41 and of Maʿaseh Tuvyah. Despite the efforts of these scholars, many could not tolerate the contempt and scorn of the exile at the hands of these “sons of Ham, Put, and Canaan,”42 idol worshippers who daily defame Jews before the rulers “of the states and lands of Europe both in spoken words and in books printed more and more often in order to arouse their hatred against us.”43 Among the lies propagated against Jews was the blood libel. Not surprisingly, Ber goes on at some length about this topic, as the issue had been a central theme at the Lwów confrontation with the Frankists in 1759, to which he alludes briefly. He notes that the libel had been transmitted among priests for centuries, and cites their words: The Jews cannot eat the unleavened bread on Passover without the blood of Christians. For this purpose they kidnap their sons and slaughter them to obtain their blood to eat it with the unleavened bread on the first night of Passover. The reason they give for this is the notion, both stupid and very strange, that the unjustified spilling of the blood of the Christian boy would atone on 38. “Daymy to żeby Chrystus był prawdziwym Messyaszem y o nim wszystkie spełnily Proroctwa; iednakże on się oświadczy u Mateusza w Rozd: 5, w. 17 że: Nieprzyszedł prawa psować (Moyżeszowego) ale go wypełnić. Zacoż wy Katolicy nie pelnicie Prawa Moyżeszowego, nie szanuiecie Sabbaszu, ale Niedziele: albo tedy wasz Chrystus zmyślonym sercem te slowa mowił, albo wy ani Boga, any Chrystusa swego niesłuchacie. Tak mowił zemną ieden Żyd we Lwowie” (ibid., 435–36). On Pikulski, see Gershon David Hundert, “Identity Formation in the Early Modern Polish Commonwealth,” in Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Commonwealth: Poland–Lithuania in Context, 1550–1772, ed. Karin Friedrich and Barbara Pendzich (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 146–47 (131–47). 39. Divre binah, 11. 40. Ibid. 41. Written in 1390 by Yom Tov Lipman Mülhausen (Altdorf, 1644; Amsterdam, 1709). 42. Chronicles I, 1:8. 43. Divre binah, 12.
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Gershon David Hundert the Jews’ behalf for the unjustified spilling of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth in Jerusalem.44
The charge of host desecration is another example of the slanderous defamations (ʿalilot shtutot u-bilbule shekarim) that for a thousand and some hundreds of years had led, in the lands and kingdoms of Europe, to the martyrdom of countless great scholars and leaders. This happened “not only in faraway lands, but also in several nearby communities.” Ber says that he feels obliged to recount this suffering, “so that those who come after us will not say that the early days were better than today.”45 Ber asserts that, in particular, the people and rulers of Poland, “together with their priests,” believed the libels. He notes that he has found evidence of this in historical works in Polish, which he has translated into Hebrew.46 Such material is indeed presented in the latter part of the book in connection with the Frankist debate. The wise responses of Rabbi H.ayyim (ben Simh.ah ha-Kohen) Rapoport47 during the Lwów debate in 1759 put this accusation to rest; moreover, Ber states that new trends of thought are now found among scholars of Europe: Great, wise, and learned scholars have arisen lately among the gentiles. They are familiar with many ancient books, and have written much, as a result of their researches, against idol worshippers and, even more, against Christians. They utterly deny the stories of their [the early Christians’] deeds, saying the tales of miracles in their New Testament [toratam ha-h.adashah] … are unbelievable and contrary to Nature.48
Dov Ber’s attitude to Christianity thus includes a measure of respect, but it is, ultimately, somewhat contemptuous. He predicts that Christianity and Christians will disappear and be forgotten, just as idolatry and idolaters have disappeared from human memory.49 D OV B ER
ON THE NEW
A USTRIAN
REGIME
In Dov Ber’s account, the origins of Jewish settlement in Poland began with the arrival of Jews from Ashkenaz. At the time, Poland was a neglected wilderness that lacked precious goods, gold, and silver, so the Jews brought their many treasures in an arrangement with the dukes and leaders of Kraków. He says that Poland had no king then, but was ruled by twelve provincial governors. It was they who accepted the Jews, receiving a huge loan from them and granting them the right of settlement on the condition that they continue to dress in their customary way. Indeed, Jews not only did not imitate the dress of their neighbors, but also did 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 12–13. 46. Ibid., 14. 47. The rabbi of Lwów, and the leading representative of the rabbinic side in the disputation with the Frankists, d. 1771. 48. Ibid., 16. 49. Ibid., 4.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów not adopt their language. “To speak amongst themselves, they used Yiddish [leshon Ashkenazi] without a single word from the ‘Russian’ [perhaps Ruthenian is meant] or Polish languages.” The Polish authorities also permitted Jews to build magnificent and important buildings for their synagogues.50 The First Partition of Poland in 1772 brought much of Galicia, as it was then called, under the sway of Austrian rulers. The author presents contradictory opinions about the new Habsburg regime and its laws affecting Jews. He alludes, for example, to legislation that is not recorded in standard texts on Jews in the Habsburg lands: And now under the rule of our Lord the magnificent pious Joseph II, His majesty the Emperor, whose honor is revealed in all the states of his kingdom [it has been decreed] that all the blood libels against the Jews are false and untrue. No ruler or judge may put faith in such [an accusation] against the Jews on pain of huge fines.51
Although such Habsburg legislation is unknown, a ruling to this effect was, in fact, issued by the Hungarian authorities in 1791: The Jewish community living in this kingdom turned to this Royal Hungarian Lieutenancy Council with the bitter complaint that in most Christians the prejudice according to which Jews need Christian blood to celebrate the holiday of Passover has risen again. Consequently, Jews are severely persecuted, especially by common people. Several instances are mentioned to prove it. Since these views and the like interfere with the peace and security of the Jewish people, the Royal Hungarian Lieutenancy Council deems it necessary to decree that the prejudice of Christian blood sacrifice at Jewish services be erased from the mind of the people with the assistance of priests. The Jewish religion is based on the laws of Moses and the prophetic books, that is, on the Old Testament; therefore, it is not at all worse than the laws of other religions. As a result, if a Jew commits murder, it is not because of their religion. You should not blame the whole Jewish people more than Christians in a similar case. Finally, the Royal Hungarian Lieutenancy Council decrees that those who persecute or abuse Jews are to be punished severely.52 50. Ibid., 18–19; cf. Brawer, Galiz.iyah, 203. 51. Ibid., 16. 52. Budapest, Magyar Zsidó Muzeum, Obudai Iratok (Obuda Documents), 8.007 (old no. 8.145): “Die in diesem Königreich wohnenden Juden, haben gemeinschaftlich bey dieser Königl. Statthalterey darüber bittere Klage geführet, dass sie wegen des bei den meisten Christen wieder aufblühenden Vorutheils, als wenn die Juden zur Feyerung ihres Osterfestes Christenblut bedürften, schwere Verfolgungen, besonders von dem gemeinen Volk erdulden müssen; zum Beweis dessen haben sie auch mehrere Beyspiele angeführet. Damit also die durch dergleichen irrige Meynungen geschwächte Rufe und Sicherheit, dieser Nation verschaft werde, so hat diese Königl. Statthalerey zu verordnen für nöthig befunden, daß man sich angelegen seyn müsse, dieses Vorutheil, daß bey dem Jüdischen Gottesdienst Menschen Blut geopfert werde, auf die schicklichste und den local Umständen angemessen seyn, allenfalls auch durch Beyziehung der Seelsorger als den Gemüthern des Volkes herauszureissen,
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Gershon David Hundert Presumably Dov Ber, who had strong links to Hungary because of his dealings in the wine trade, heard about this enactment and mistakenly assumed it applied to Galicia as well.53 Dov Ber characterizes other well-known aspects of Habsburg legislation—on taxation and economic activity, for example—more negatively, but his tone is guarded. He notes, among others, the legislation of 1785 limiting rabbinic courts to matters exclusively related to religion and to functioning as a court of arbitration in other spheres: According to the government, may God preserve it, rabbinic courts may not subpoena Jews, although it is explained in the imperial code [ba-sistem mehakʿyr’h] that our rabbis are permitted to function as an arbitration court [la-ʿarokh mishpatim lifnehem be-torat kompromost].54
In Bolechów, Ber explains, the community found a way around this law by having all its members sign and seal the writ of appointment of the rabbi,55 including accepting his right to subpoena them in any matter without appeal to government
und selbe zu belehren, dass dieses verachtungswürdige Laster dem Monarchie Gesetz und den Schriften der Propheten, mithin der ganzen Vorschrift des alten Testaments auf welche sich doch die Jüdische Religion vorzüglich gründet nicht minder als den Gesetzen der übrigen Religionen zuwider sey. Daher könne auch die von dem ein oder andern Juden verübte Mordthat, wenn sichs auch befinden würde, dass solche aus abergläubischen Absichten geschehen, der ganzen Jüdischen Nazion nicht mit mehr Recht zur Last gelegt werden, als man dergleichen Fälle wegen, wenn sie sich unter den Christen ereigneten, auf alle einen Haß werfet. Übrigens soll darüber ernstlich gewachet werden, dass Juden wider die Vorschrift des 38te Artikels der neueren Gesetze auf keine Weise beunruhigt werden, welches durch die gewöhnlichen Curentales dem Volke auf das nachdrücklichste, und unter Bedrohung der schwersten Strafen zu verbiethen, und im Fall einer Verfolgung, oder den Juden zugefügten Beleidigung der Schuldige, zum Beyspiel der anderen auf das schärfeste zu bestrafen ist. Gegeben aus dem Rathe der Königl. Hungs. Statthalterey Ofen, den 24 Juny 1791.” 53. In response to a blood libel in 1844 in Tarnów, the leaders of the community cited this Hungarian legislation and urged that it be applied to Galicia as well. See Gershon Wolf, “Blutbeschuldigungen der Juden,” Jahrbuch für Israeliten 5623 (Wien 1862), 37–38 (30–39). 54. Divre binah, 37. The end of Jewish communal autonomy was legislated in the Judensystem in Galizien (note that Dov Ber uses the term system) promulgated in May 1785 by Joseph II. Cf. Josef Karniel, “Das Toleranzpatent Kaiser Josephs II. Für die Juden Galiziens un Lodomeriens,” Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte 11 (1982), 59, 72–74 (55–89). The notion of courts of arbitration chaired by communal rabbis is anticipated in the Allgemeine Ordnung für die gesamte Judenschaft der konigreiche Galizien und Lodomerien promulgated by Maria Theresa in July, 1776, 5:3, which is headed “Von den jüdischen compromissen.” Continuatio edictorum et mandatorum universalium in Regnis Galiciae et Lodomerie (Lwów, 1774–1818), 20:114. See also Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Michael/448 (F20498); Jerusalem, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, PL/617, part 5, item 3. Rachel Manekin notes in an unpublished study that in the discussions between government officials and leading Jews in 1784, the officials emphasized that despite the anticipated disestablishment of Jewish communal courts, the option of arbitration courts would remain available: “wobei es sich jedoch von selbsten verstehet, dass den Parteien immer frei stehet, mit Vorbeigehung des Judicis ordinarii, sich auf ein Compromiss ensulassen.” 55. David Yaʿakov ben Yiz.h.ak Izak Heilperin. Cf. Meir Wunder, Me’ore Galiz.iyah: Entsiklopediah le-h.akhme Galiz.iyah, (Jerusalem: Makhon le-hantsah.at Yahadut Galitsyah, 1982), 2:588.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów courts (beli shum apelaz.iyeh). It is now, he says, two years since the rabbi assumed his post, and not a single community member has resorted to the courts (of the Gentiles).56 Dov Ber mentions, with regret, the decrees of 1789 forbidding Jews to hold arendas in the villages: For several years now the poor Jews have been deprived and forbidden arendas in the villages, from leasing the mills, the tolls, and from other good monopolies [maʿarufiyot ha-tovim].57
He is unhappier still with the Candle Tax of 1797 and its consequences because the legislation resulted not only in the abolition of the capitation tax but also in the end of government recognition of the kahal. In response, he states, “Our people is left like sheep without a shepherd.”58 Moreover, the Habsburg system had led to the corruption of the rabbinic office. Dov Ber’s response to the situation created by the Habsburg legislation forms part of his more general set of opinions about community leadership. This section of his text begins after his rejection of Kabbalah and his description of the “proper” qualities of the traditional rabbi—namely, that a rabbi ought to be fully occupied with the study of the revealed Torah, Talmud, and halakhah. In this way, rabbis become equipped to respond to questions and can publish them in the form of responsa literature. The study of ethical literature is also deemed important. And those who preach and rebuke the people also ought to be salaried by the communities, as is the case with the rabbis.59 Dov Ber also insists that rabbis must be appointed by the Jews themselves and paid from communal funds so that they can act as impartial judges. He hopes that all communities will find a way to follow the example of the town of Bolechów. Doing so will help Jews resist abrogation of the halakhah and will also fulfill the commandment that states, “You shall appoint for yourself judges” (Deuteronomy 16:18). The words “for yourself,” he claims, mean by yourselves and not by the government. Up to this time, rabbinical appointments had been based on large gifts of cash to government officials. That situation occurred despite the will of the majority of the community, and often resulted in the appointment of unfit persons.60 Ber also quotes a lengthy passage from Mishnat h.akhamim, devoted mainly to condemning the long-standing (“several hundred years”) practice in Poland of the purchase of rabbinical offices.61 56. Divre binah, 37. 57. Ibid. Cf. Karniel, “Das Toleranzpatent Kaiser Josephs II,” 81–82. 58. Ibid., 38. Cf. Bericht über die Verhandlungen des ersten galizisch jüdischen Cultusgemeinde-Tages (Lemberg, 1878), 33. 59. Divre binah, 36. 60. Ibid., 37. 61. Ibid., 39–42; Mishnat h.akhamim, Part 1, Maʿaleh 17, Siman 405. Cf. Rosman, Lords’ Jews, 198–204.
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Gershon David Hundert In Ber’s understanding, the abrogation of the capitation tax and its replacement by the candle tax had led to the subversion of the Jews’ communal government, leaving them without proper leadership. He prays that Jews living under the emperor will find a way to return to the practice of annually electing “seven good men” by majority vote.62 These men would be empowered to evaluate wealth and assess taxes for communal needs, and would also take counsel together to decide on appropriate “gifts” for government officials. Finally, Dov Ber hopes that the leaders of individual communities will be permitted to form a council of all communities. This would, however, be contrary to the recently promulgated law forbidding just such an institution, and forbidding the expenditure of communal funds to send representatives to Vienna or even to Lwów.63 The importance to Ber of the Council of Four Lands, disestablished by the Polish government in 1764, is made clear in his Memoirs; he states that, while it existed, the council represented “a small redemption and a bit of honor” for Jews. He then asserts that the Confederation of Bar, which culminated in the partition of Poland in 1772, was divine retribution for the abolition of the council.64 D OV B ER
ON THE
E NLIGHTENMENT
To Dov Ber, the times had brought changes other than those the Habsburg regime imposed on its Jewish population: An even worse evil has developed. In these times, some of our people have begun to imitate the unshaven young men of Ashkenaz65 who are accustomed from their youth to pursue the appetites of this world, and they permit themselves [to transgress] several positive and negative commandments, for many have mingled with gentiles. They learned wastefulness from them and to deny everything. Because of our many sins, these are heretics worse than the Sadducees and Boethusians of the days of the Second Temple …. Therefore, I deemed it appropriate to write some [words] about the knowledge of God that I have collected from the holy books of investigation of the wise men among the Sephardim.66
There follow some six pages under the subheading “Knowledge of God, May He Be Blessed.” Ber delves into the inability of the human mind to grasp divinity, and strongly affirms the existence of individual providence (hashgah.ah peratit). We must first study our own souls, he says, before we seek to understand our Creator. This is the teaching of the philosophers (deʿu nafshekhem ve-tedʿu elokekhem). Indeed, a human being is a microcosm of the universe, and the divine 62. The phrase is talmudic (e.g., B. Megillah 26a) and stands for the elected leadership of the community. 63. Divre binah, 38–39. 64. Memoirs, 150; Zikhronot, 92. 65. One wonders whether this passage refers to teachers brought to Galicia by (Naftali) Herz Homberg (1749–1841), and especially to the Pedagogical Seminary he established in Lwów in 1792. 66. Ibid., 42. Cf. Brawer, Galiz.iyah, 204.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów element is the soul. The Lord is the soul of the world and of nature—and the numerical values of nature (tevaʿ) and the Lord (Elohim) are equivalent (86). Ber then adamantly denies the view of some heretics who claim that the world functions according to its own nature without divine providence.67 D OV B ER
ON EARLY
H ASIDISM
Dov Ber devotes considerable space to the phenomenon of Hasidism, and constructs what can be read as an accounting for the appearance of its growth on the basis of four ingredients: region, changes in the method of study of Talmud, the growing preoccupation with the esoteric (razin de-oraita), and the influence of baʿalei shemot (masters of the Name; akin to shamans).68 Dov Ber associates the beginnings of Hasidism with “Podolia and Ukraine,” a region he characterizes as having been settled originally mainly by the poor who could not find gainful work in older communities. It was in that region also that Cossacks, in each generation, rebelled and murdered many Jews. Dov Ber says that ancient customs are neglected in that area; as examples, he notes the absence of the wearing of a special head covering (braytl ) and jacket (letnik) for prayer in the synagogue: “They do not prepare such garments for prayer in the holy synagogue but pray and study in whatever clothing they wear every day to the market.”69 “Worse than this,” he asserts, “the scholars of our generation have ceased to study the Talmud be-pilpula h.arifta, as was the ancient custom.”70 The abandonment of the traditional ways of studying was precipitated, as Dov Ber presents it, by a spreading preoccupation with the esoteric. He captures this trend 67. Divre binah, 43–44. Cf. Maʿaseh Tuvyah, 1: attacks those Jews who believe that everything happens according to ha-teva u-minhago—natural law—without divine intervention in the world. 68. In the Memoirs, there is virtually no attention to Hasidism. Ber does mention a man—subsequently shown to be a fool—who began to behave in the ways of h.asidut. This, however, seems not to refer to Beshtian Hasidism (Memoirs, 115; Zikhronot, 69). And there is reference to Ber’s contacts with the father and uncle of Yitsh.ak Eisik of (Nagy) Kallo (1751–1821), then a child, and subsequently the Kaliver Rebbe, well known for his songs and most famously “Szól a kakas már.” Dov Ber says of him, “When he grew up his singing made him famous among the Hasidim, as it is ‘said ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song and His praise in the congregation of the saints [h.assidim].’… R. Eisik became famous throughout the county on account of his piety [h.assiduto]. He was diligent in the study of rabbinical authors and became a rabbi and teacher in Israel; to this day he is chief of the bet din in Nagy Kallo” (Memoirs, 130; Zikhronot, 79). On baʿalei shem, see Hundert, Jews in Poland–Lithuania, 142–53. 69. Divre binah, 19–20. 70. Ibid., 21. Here Ber offers a brief portrait of yeshiva study: “I myself, as a young man, saw this with my own eyes… At the beginning of the term I studied a page of gemara selected by the rabbi, chief judge and mara de-atra, with all of its commentaries. Each student tried, in accordance with his own ability, to innovate something on the basis of the text and the commentators. First the rabbi himself stood and explicated his own innovative perspective on the passage with his great expertise and enormous insight. After him all of the advanced students (lomdim) and the students (talmidim) presented their novel insights in accordance with their abilities (kefi hasagato be-pilpulo). The wealthy would invite the advanced students to their homes and entertain them with delicacies and whiskey.” Cf. Elchanan Reiner, “Yeshiva,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 2:2051–55.
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Gershon David Hundert in his report of events that occurred in 1742 when the kabbalistic work H.emdat yamim arrived in Tyśmienica, where Dov Ber lived at the time: They purchased the books [H.emdat yamim] for the bet ha-midrash of the holy community of Tyśmienica for three adumim [a high price]. Since the author advocates the study of the books of Kabbalah devoted to the secrets of the divine, the students despaired of studying the Talmud and its commentaries be-pilpula h.arifta.71
The enthusiasm of the young men for this new trend became manifest in the synagogue: I saw with my own eyes several of our people who were possessed by the spirit, and they said it was the spirit of the heretics who had apostatized. They would throw themselves down in the front of the synagogues during the reading of the Torah on the sabbaths and on Mondays and Thursdays. They would pound their chests cruelly with large rocks. No man could suffer, it would seem, the murderous blows I [afflicted on] myself in my youth and in my naïveté.72
Although a major part of this passage was published by Brawer, the latter apparently feared the censor and omitted the reference to the souls of the apostates.73 It is not clear which apostates are meant. One scholar has characterized these possessed “madmen” as having the ability to identify the sins of a person, including those committed alone and those committed in a previous incarnation.74 Perhaps the notion that they had been apostates in a previous life is what is meant here. Dov Ber’s almost bemused comment about his foolishness as a youth is worthy of note. Solomon Maimon, Dov Ber’s considerably younger contemporary (ca. 1753–1800) notes in his autobiography that, as a young man, he became disillusioned with the rabbis because of their pride and was attracted to people “called hassidim” who devoted their entire lives to strict observance of the commandments, ethics, and morality. Young men seeking alternative ways to serve God seem to have been a phenomenon of the period.75 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., 22. Cf. “The Writer’s [Dov Ber of Liniec’s] Preface” to In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov: “There were also mad people who injured themselves with stones during the reading of the Torah, and who used to reveal people’s sins to them.” See Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz, In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 4; Shivh.e Ha-Besht, ed. Avraham Rubinstein (Jerusalem: Ruben Mass, 1992), 31. 73. Brawer, Galiz.iyah, 203. 74. Zvi Mark, “Dibuk u-devekut be-Shivh.e Ha-Besht: Heʿarot la-fenomenologiyah shel ha-shigaʿon be-reshit ha-h.assidut,” in Be-maʿagale h.assidim: Kovez. meh.karim le-zikhro shel profesor Mordekhai Wilensky, ed. Immanuel Etkes et al. (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2000), 251 (247–86). 75. Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte (München, 1911), 168; H.aye Shelomoh Maimon, trans. Y. L. Barukh (Tel Aviv: Masada, 1953), 120. Cf. Hundert, Jews in Poland–Lithuania, 179–81;
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów The author devotes some six of the forty-eight pages under consideration here to his attempt to demonstrate that it is preferable to avoid study of the esoteric. After asserting that what distinguishes the rabbis and scholars and makes them worthy of praise is their vast knowledge of the revealed Torah, Dov Ber cites Deuteronomy 29:28 (“The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever”). He then cites a quotation from the Wisdom of Ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus 3:21) found in the Talmud (B. Hagiga 13a): “Inquire not into that which is too great for thee; and that which is too hard for thee, search not out. That which is too difficult for thee do not know; and that which is concealed from thee do not ask. Attend to that which is permitted to thee; thou hast no business with hidden things.” This is followed by a lengthy (pp. 31–34) quotation from the first chapter of Sefer or ha-h.ayyim, by Yosef Yavez. (Jabez; d. 1507), which “was published first hundreds of years ago and has been issued recently [1791] in Lwów at the order and with the financial support of … Rabbi Yehuda Leib ben Shne’ur of Bolechów, who is now among the leaders of the community of the capital city of Lwów.”76 To lend further support to his argument, Dov Ber quotes from the beginning of the introduction to Ateret zekenim by Yitsh.ak Abravanel, “which was published first in 1557 and a second time in 1739 in Amsterdam.”77 After buttressing his position with these passages, the author offers his own explanation for the neglect of traditional Talmud study: It is because, from the time, long ago, when the Zohar was revealed, many of the lazy forsook and abandoned the study of the interpretation of the Torah revealed to us at Sinai… . They do not study the Talmud and its commentators … some among our people who lack the ability to understand the depths of the Talmud … but wish to be seen as knowledgeable scholars, boast and preen before the people because of their lofty study of the wisdom of Kabbalah and the secrets of the Torah.78
Proper rabbis and leaders, Ber adds, spend their days in the study of halakhah and Talmud. The fourth element in Dov Ber’s account of the rise of Hasidism concerns the popular esteem in which baʿalei shemot were held. People, he says, would praise them and relate stories about their abilities to heal the sick with amulets and to drive evil spirits out of the possessed by invoking the names of the spirits, each of whose name and function they knew. Indeed, the people were so
Zekhariah Mendel of Jarosław, “Igeret ha-kodesh,” at the end of Noʿam Elimelekh (New York: Shulzinger, 1942), 228–30. 76. The book was published in Amsterdam in 1781 as well. The author was a Spanish exile who, in this work, attacks the study of philosophy and those who study it as responsible for the expulsion from Spain. Note that the initiative for republication, and its funding, came from a local scholar. 77. Divre binah, 34. The quotation takes up most of p. 35. 78. Divre binah, 35–36.
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Gershon David Hundert fearful of the baʿalei shemot and of demons that “they were afraid to go out alone at night.” If they thought a house was haunted, they would seek out these baʿalei shemot to bring them to drive the demons out through the invocation of holy names.79 While still in Lwów, Dov Ber met “one of these baʿalei shemot,” who confessed and told him of deceptions he himself had employed to deceive people and those used by others to put the fear of demons in the masses: In 1758 and 1759, I came to know and to be convinced that we mortals including gentiles have nothing to fear from the influence of demons. Indeed, many ancient scholars had doubts about their existence and some denied it outright, including Maimonides.80
After insisting that one should trust in divine providence rather than be concerned about demons, Dov Ber announces, in what seems to me to be a sardonic, almost Swiftian depiction, that the era of demons has come to an end: It is now some thirty years or more that one has not heard of harm coming to people at the hands of demons. … Mortals have recognized the lies of the baʿalei shemot and their deceitful ways. Since the disappearance of the baʿalei shemot with their many books and their vain secrets and enigmas, the harmful demons have not been seen and not the slightest harm … has been caused to any Jew, great or small, or even to any gentile. For fear of the armies and the numerous soldiers of His Majesty the emperor, the demons have fled entirely from these lands. And the baʿalei shemot have changed their name to Hasidim.81
For Dov Ber, the hasidim thus arose as a new form of baʿalei shemot in the period after “the flight of the demons.” It is difficult to know which date he is implying when he states that “some thirty years ago,” hasidim appeared. Perhaps he is referring to the partition of Poland (and the end of the Bar Confederacy and its accompanying chaotic military battles) in 1772, but he is more likely alluding to the debate with the Frankists in 1759. In any case, Ber has more to say about these newly appeared hasidim, and it may be that the notion proposed in recent historical literature that baʿalei shem were “endowed … with high status in Jewish society,” and that “they had the respect of the scholars even though they themselves often were not scholars,” will have to be reexamined in light of his comments.82 79. Ibid., 22, 24. 80. Ibid., 23. 81. Ibid., 24. Cf. Brawer, Galiz.iyah, 204. 82. Hundert, Jews in Poland–Lithuania, 148. Cf. Moshe J. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Baal Shem Tov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Immanuel Etkes, Baʿal HaShem: HaBesht: Magiyah, mistikah, hanhagah (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 2000); idem, “Mekomah shel ha-magiyah u-vaʿalei ha-shem ba-h.evrah ha-ashkenazit be-mifneh ha-me’ot ha–17 ha–18,” Zion 60 (1995), 69–104.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów Before presenting Ber’s characterizations of Hasidism, a more general comment is in order. Because a major subject of Divre binah is messianism, one might think that the devotion of a section of the book to Hasidism implies that the author viewed the movement as messianic. This, however, is not the case, both because the sections in which Hasidism is mentioned precede the author’s turning to the subject of messianism and its history, and because the word messiah does not appear in the paragraphs devoted to Hasidism. What he seems to be doing is sketching the background of his time and emphasizing the problem of the new place of Kabbalah in Jewish culture. While Ber says that the hasidim, as mentioned, had been known formerly as baʿalei shemot, he also notes that they are called mekubalim—kabbalists who teach esoteric secrets of the divine to students who are unprepared for such study:83 Their entire purpose is to know the esoteric and their desire is to study divine secrets. These they reveal to themselves when they gather in one of their large houses to study with [their leader] during the third meal on the Sabbath.84
Ber, however, has ascertained in person from his own encounters with hasidic leaders that they know nothing of Kabbalah: More than a few times, I myself asked several of their great ones who were staying in my house to reveal to me some of the divine secrets. None of them responded in a satisfactory way. Since that time, I have come to know absolutely that they know no divine secrets, just a few hints in kabbalistic books of the rabbi Yisra’el b”s [baʿal shem], z”l [may his memory be a blessing]. And these make no sense [ve-‘en lahem shah.ar].85
The reference to “kabbalistic books of the rabbi Yisra’el b”s” (i.e., the Besht, Yisra’el Baʿal Shem Tov), most likely relates to the books of his school, of his followers. Dov Ber then expresses, with sarcasm, his skepticism that hasidim were 83. “Mi-pi ha-mekubalim hemah ha-h.asidim o baʿale ha-shemot shemi-kedem hayu mityah.asim le-kadmonehem shem zeh” (Divre Binah, 22). In his characterization of the Sabbatian ascetics, Dov Ber says, “they called themselves by the name Kabbalists” (ibid., 187). 84. Ibid., 27. 85. There is sufficient evidence that there were hasidim in Lwów to warrant granting trustworthiness to Dov Ber’s claim. Meshulam ben Shimshon Igra (1742–1801) of Tyśmienica wrote a letter in 1793 at the time of his departure for Pressburg, addressed to the leaders of Brody and Lwów, attacking Hasidism. Yisra’el Loebel, in his German antihasidic tract, published in 1799, reports that two hasidic leaders lived in Lwów in 1798. See Mordecai Wilensky, Hasidim u-mitnaggedim, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1990), 1:178; 2:337, 366. Cf. Entsiklopediyah shel galuyot, Lvov (Tel Aviv, 1956), 4:221, 425. Uriel Gellman kindly brought my attention to the fact that the brother-in-law of the Seer of Lublin was an active hasid in Lwów, and that Uri of Strelisk resided in Lwów for a period of time. He added that there are notes about Hasidism in Lwów before 1800 in Yosef Te’omim, Or Torah (Jerusalem, 1999).
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Gershon David Hundert qualified to pronounce the kavanot (intentional formulae before prayer) of the kabbalist Isaac Luria with the proper intention.86 Dov Ber claims that the hasidim study neither Aggadah nor the laws derived from the Talmud. They master only the minimum necessary to present themselves to people as following the Shulh.an ’arukh. They also know nothing of the laws (dinim) found in the Zohar, as they do not study them.87 Hasidic leaders justify these practices, claiming that they have no time for study because of their lengthy preparations for prayer and their numerous purifications in the ritual bath. Ber maintains, however, that hasidim all spend time smoking long pipes (lulki), which he compares to offering up smoke to the devil.88 Dov Ber also discusses the amount of time that hasidim devote to prayer. It is true, he says, that the Talmud describes very pious figures who delay their prayers by an hour to prepare themselves (B. Berakhot 32a), but Ber believes that hasidim take this concept too far. He notes that they delay their morning prayers, and finish their afternoon prayers only when the stars come out, “which is contrary to the rulings of the Shulh.an ’arukh.” Ber then expends several lines about the unique authority of Karo’s codification of the halakhah. It is striking that in these lines he does not refer to the work of Moshe Isserles. Returning to the hasidim, Ber is skeptical about the purity of their motivation in neglecting long-established customs: “One wishes that their purpose were for the sake of the fear of heaven and not the prideful performance of their piety.”89 He then describes how hasidic rabbis travel in long caravans with an entourage of attendants. Many students run before them, praising them before the foolish masses and declaring how remarkably pious these leaders are. He states that men, women, and children are attracted to hasidic leaders who claim the ability to reveal secrets, and know what the future will bring: And the masses of the People of Israel whose fear exceeds their wisdom are troubled and afraid because of the sins that each carries. They are afraid that their transgressions will be revealed in public. [Therefore,] they, their wives, and their children, bring gifts and presents and ask for [the leader’s] blessing.90
It is true, he says, that those who lead the prayers of the hasidim have excellent voices.91 And it is admissible to praise a person for this quality because it is 86. Divre binah, 22. 87. Ibid., 25. 88. Ibid. Cf. H.aye Shelomoh Maimon, 122 (Yosef mi-Kletsk). The term lulke is probably related to the seventeenth-century Turkish term Lületaşi (pipe or pipe stone). 89. Divre binah, 26–27. 90. Ibid., 27. 91. Cf. “the communal officials appoint whoever has a sweet voice to pray on the community’s behalf and lead the prayers from the pulpit. This evil custom is especially prevalent in the lands of Ukraine whence it has spread.” Yaʿakov Yisra’el ben Z.evi Hirsh, Sefer shevet mi-yisra’el (Żółkiew: 1772), pt. 2, 9b.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów evident and visible to all. Other praises that are said of them, however, are forbidden, including those that extol their spiritual prayers, their mortifications, their fasting from Sabbath to Sabbath, the fact that they eat nothing that has been living (she-‘einam okhlim shum davar meha-h.ay),92 and that through many immersions they have renewed themselves and emerged free of all impurity.93 What troubles the author about these praises is their dependence on the faith of the person who hears them. This passage alone contains the word praise (shevah.) fourteen times. The book In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov (Shivh.e ha-Besht) appeared in print more than a decade after Dov Ber completed his own book, but manuscripts of Shivh.e ha-Besht were certainly in circulation long before the text found its way into print. Perhaps this passage in Divre binah is an allusion to that work. Dov Ber grants that many praises were said of the “first” hasidim (i.e., before Beshtian Hasidism), such as for drawing out their prayers for many hours, reciting the kavanot of Isaac Luria, for leading prayers with sweet voices, and for the practice of many penitential acts according to teshuvat ha-kanah.94 These earlier pious persons, however, were humble and modest, and did not attack the authority of any scholar. Dov Ber states that such is not the case of the hasidim of his own time. In recent years, hasidim have come to lack modesty and humility, and do not follow the requirements of penitential practice.95 Most even ignore the fasts authorized by the rabbis and our ancestors. Their prayers are short because they do not recite the kavanot of Isaac Luria;96 they do not study the laws of the Talmud or the rulings of the Shulh.an ’arukh, nor are they interested in midrash or Aggadah and the relevant commentaries, and they avoid the Zohar. In addition, their h.utspah increases daily to the extent that they disparage the rabbis of the communities of Israel.
92. This refers to a penitential practice known as teshuvat ha-kanah. In Sefer ha-kanah (Krakow, 1894 [1st ed., Prague, 1610]), 12a, we read, “One should eat only sufficient bread to sustain life, cut oneself off from social contact, and from meat and from wine and from all living things and things that come from all living things.” On p. 129 of the same book, the author presents “The Secret of Who Is Permitted to Eat Meat.” See Yisra’el Ta-Shma, “Hekhan nith.abru sifre ha-kanah veha-peli’ah?” in Perakim be-toledot ha-h.evrah ha-yehudit bi-mei ha-benayim uva-ʿet ha-h.adashah, ed. I. Etkes et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1980), 56–63; Steven Bowman, “Mi h.iber et Sefer ha-kanah, ve-Sefer ha-Peli’ah?” Tarbiz 54 (1985): 150–52; Michal Oron, “Mihu meh.aber Sefer ha-peli’ah ve-Sefer ha-kanah? Tarbiz 54 (1985): 297–98; idem, “Bikoret ha-h.evrah be-sifrut ha-kabbalah,” Masekhet 2 (2004): 133–46. Cf. Salomon Maimons Lebensgechichte, 168, 170–71; H.aye Shelomoh Maimon, 121: the story of a certain scholar who performed teshuvat ha-kanah … and ate nothing that has been living “meat, milk, honey, and the like.” 93. Divre binah, 27–28. 94. Ibid., 27–28. See n. 89 herein. 95. Enam h.osheshim la-sigufim ha-re’uyim le-teshuvat ha-kanah. 96. On the elimination of kavanot in hasidic prayer, see Pinchas Giller, “Between Poland and Jerusalem: Kabbalistic Prayer in Early Modernity,” Modern Judaism 24, no. 3 (2004): 231–35 (226– 50), and the references there.
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Gershon David Hundert In fact, in some places rabbis had been forced to leave communities. For example, it was solely because of the hasidic presence that the great scholar Meshulam left his post as rabbi of Tyśmienica to accept a position in Pressburg.97 In sum, Dov Ber’s remarks on Hasidism are based in part on personal impressions he gained in Lwów. He clearly perceives that Hasidism is a new phenomenon, although the lines, established by historians, between the old-style hassidim and the Beshtian form are not entirely clear in his presentation. We might say, pending more systematic collection of source evidence, that in the eyes of observers in the last decades of the eighteenth century, the full distinctiveness of Hasidism from other paths had not yet been established.98 A good many of the complaints found in antihasidic literature in the late eighteenth century are not mentioned in Divre binah. There are no references to the hasidic mode of animal slaughter, to ecstatic prayer or separate places of prayer, to the wearing of white robes, or to the bans of excommunication against hasidim. Ber’s complaints focus on the neglect of study of the revealed Torah, disrespect for the learned rabbis, teaching Kabbalah to the uninitiated, frivolity, not praying at the correct time and omitting the kavanot, and failures in penitence for sins. He implies that hasidic leaders are tricksters and confidence men, but he does not elaborate on this characteristic to a great extent. A FTERWORD : D OV B ER
IN CONTEXT
The significance of these first pages of Divre binah, particularly if read along with the author’s Memoirs, is that they give us a window onto the outlook of a well-established and successful merchant in the Lwów region. He writes as a person of advanced years—in his seventies—and displays the conservatism natural to a man of his age and status. Consequently, his views reflect his discomfort with the changes afoot in his time, among them the new Hasidism, and manifestations of disbelief. His preoccupation, from the years of his youth, with defending Judaism and particularly the Oral Tradition against Christian attack is prominent in the material under discussion. Before attempting to determine whether one might justifiably link Dov Ber to the Haskalah or to the early Haskalah,99 perhaps it would be best to analyze his emphases in the introductory pages of Divre binah. There are four central motifs here: the confrontation with Christianity and with Christian attacks on Jews and 97. Ibid., 29–30. The reference is to Meshulam ben Shimshon Igra (1742–1801), who left Tyśmienica in 1793. The move to the much more prestigious Hungarian community may well have been motivated by factors other than the attacks of hasidim. It is true, though, that when he left Galicia, Igra sent a letter to the elders of the communities of Brody and Lwów attacking Hasidism. David of Maków published this letter in his antihasidic tract Shever poshʿim. Wilensky, H.asidim u-mitnaggedim, 1:177– 79. The letter does not say that its author left Tyśmienica because of the hasidim. 98. Cf. Ada Rapoport-Albert, “Hasidism after 1772,” in Hasidism Reappraised (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1996), 76–140. 99. For this distinction, see, e.g., Shmuel Feiner, “Ha-haskalah ha-mukdemet be-yahadut ha-me’ah ha-shemoneh-esreh,” Tarbiz 67 (1998): 189–240; idem, Mahapekhat ha-ne’orut: Tenuʿat ha-haskalah ha-yehudit ba-me’ah ha-18 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2002), 39–109.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów Judaism; the confrontation with the new Austrian regime and Ber’s proposals for restoring communal autonomy; the confrontation with Hasidism in all its forms and with the preoccupation with Kabbalah; and the defense of the tradition and traditional learning in the face of Hasidism, and, more importantly, with various forms of doubt and unbelief. Roughly equivalent amounts of space—about thirteen pages each—are given to each of the latter two motifs. The polemic with Christianity occupies only about nine pages, though these are placed at the beginning of the book.100 In addition, about six pages are devoted to Ber’s suggestions for maintaining both communal autonomy and an independent and powerful Jewish judicial system—the rabbinate.101 The similarity between the early passages in the book and certain lines in Maʿaseh Tuvyah is noted earlier. In Ber’s telling of the attacks of the nations who claim that true wisdom has vanished from among the Jews, he states, without attribution, the words of Tuvyah Kohen. He sets them, however, in a different context, suggesting that these interlocutors focus on the Talmud, and then proceeds to say that ultimately the Christians will vanish from the earth, following the path of idolaters in the past: “neither the nations nor the names of their gods are remembered by any person. The enemies of God who follow lying religions will be forgotten in just the same way.”102 Tuvyah finds that rabbinic literature does not provide a satisfying answer to his Christian challengers—we were weak in our debates with them, he says. This stimulates the Polish-born physician not to rest until he has composed a work that shows how wisdom has been given not only to them, “but … among us also, there are wise men.”103 In contrast, Ber’s stance is quite different, more confident and assertive, and much less given to a feeling of inferiority than Tuvyah’s. For historians wishing to classify the author as a maskil or early maskil, the passage under consideration here presents a set of contradictory behaviors and attitudes. On the one hand, Dov Ber had studied European languages and showed considerable respect for European scholarship. He composed his works in Hebrew in a style unblemished by the heavily ornate and allusive characteristics of some of his contemporaries. He seems to have had special admiration for Sephardic scholars (virtually all the authors he cites are Sephardic).104 And although the passages about Joseph II and the “flight of the demons” might seem to suggest that, to the author, a new era had begun, there is no support for this idea elsewhere in the text. Dov Ber’s remarks on communal organization and the rabbinate, on the other hand, are distinctly conservative. The notion that intellectuals deserve to lead the community alongside or in place of the traditional rabbinate finds no expression here. On the contrary, he wants to free the rabbinate from state interference and restore its traditional role. He expresses no special faith 100. Confrontation with Christianity: 3–7, 9–13; confrontation with Hasidism and Kabbalah: 22–29, 31–36; defense of the tradition and confrontation with unbelief: 17–22, 30, 42–48. 101. Divre binah, 30, 36–42. 102. Divre binah, 4. 103. Maʿaseh Tuvyah, 25. 104. Divre binah, 6, 19, 23, 36, 42.
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Gershon David Hundert in reason, which is surely the most indispensable criterion for identifying an individual with the Enlightenment. There is, moreover, no hint that Dov Ber advocated programs for educational, economic, or communal reform. In short, the introductory pages of Divre binah reflect the conservative outlook of an elderly, successful merchant who was pained by some of the changes and developments in his society. Unusual, but far from unique, in possessing a knowledge of European languages, Dov Ber wanted to restore traditional values and traditional leadership forms to his contemporaries and was confident that he had the intellectual wherewithal, provided to him by Jewish sources, with which to answer the challenges of Christians and doubting Jews. Thus, something undefined had changed, and he felt himself, consequently, obliged to seek to clarify an agenda for his time. Gershon David Hundert McGill University Montreal, Canada
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów APPENDIX NOTE ON THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE TEXT The text presented here preserves as exactly as possible the contents of the manuscript. Spelling and grammatical errors have not been corrected. Where they are egregious, I have added (!). I have also preserved both the “punctuation” and the paragraphing of the author. He uses dots placed between words, at the level of the upper-dot in a colon, to indicate some sort of division, usually when the words at the ends of the phrases rhyme. He uses what looks like a colon to mark the end of a paragraph. He is not, however, consistent in these patterns. ספ ר דברי בינה ****תקיף **חילי יגבר * מישרים לדבר 105
*________* **ובעזר *החונן לאדם דעת *יהיו לרצון אמרי פי אוזן שומעת * ויסיר **מאתנו חרון אף וכעס* דברי חדל אישים גבער **מדעת* לבית יעקב תולעת *_________* **שנת *לישועה ולנחמה **לפ"ק **פה באלחוב יצ"ו 2 'עמ ק ר את י שם החיבור הזה דברי בינה ** על כי בראשי תיבות דברי בינה מרומז שמי ** דוב בער וגם כי דברי בינה עם הכולל עולה רפ"ד גימטריא שמי דו"ב בע"ר וכה יוסיף ד' לי דיעה ובינה להבין ולהשכיל להוציא לאמור אזור. אשר העירוני רעיוני. לאור דברי 105. הספריה הלאומית, ירושלים. MS B964.
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Gershon David Hundert נא כגבור חלציך .לך שנס מתניך .ואל תרף ידיך .מלדבר דבריך .ולכתוב בספר את כל מעשיך למען תאלמנה שפתי שקר – נגד דתינו לפקיר עמ' 3 דברי בינה **** *יתעלה הבורא ויתפאר היוצר* *כל מעודי* בתשבחות ותהלות לאל הרועה אותי מעודי .בכל ההרפתקאות דעלי עברו . במשך ימי שני חיי בנפשי ומאודי .עד הנה עזרוני ד' ברחמיו .ובימי ישישי לא עזבוני חסדיו .והנני יושב בביתי נאוה ק"ק שליו .באין מחסור לי כל טוב .אמרתי עת לעשות לד' שתורתו הפרנו .המעט שמנעורינו למדנו .בגפ"ת מפי הגאונים ז"ל רבותינו בצוקות העתים . וטרדת הזמנים .לא עמד בנו טעמם .ונמר מפינו ריחם: שרוב ימי חיי יצאתי במו"מ יינות הגרים .בק"ק לבוב ברחובות הגוים . ובחצרות ערלים והכומרים .ושם קנאו בנו אותן הנוצרים .ומדי יום ממש היו לנו אומרים .ולבלי חוק היו פיהם נגדינו פוערים . ובגאוה ובוז עתק עלינו דוברים .אין לכם פה להשיב ולא ראש להרים .בעסקי ועניני האמונה .כבר אבדה מכם חכמתכם הקדומה . ואין עוד לכם איש היודע עד מה .בחכמות אלקות וטבעיות .אתם כולם נבוכים .ואין נשאר בכם .כי אם התלמוד לכם .להטעות ולהדיח אתכם .בגוזמאות ורוב דברי שקרים .מדת נוצרים שלדעתם הוא אמונת הישרים: והמה לזה שונאים אותנו טפי ויותר מכל עובדי עבודת עמ' 4 זרים .שמשלו מימות הבריאה בעולם .ולישראל היו מצרים והנה נאבדו עם עובדיהם מן העולם .ושוב לא שמם ולא שם הגוים שעבדו להם .משום אדם אינן מוזכרים .וכן יאבדו כל אויבי ד' המחזקים דתי שקרים: שמקרוב מאלפיים שנה בדו מלבם הנוצרים .תלמידי ישו בן יוסף מעיר נוצר .ולזה מכונים בשם עירו נוצרים .ומלאו לבם אף נגד חז"ל לדבר סרה .עד שגרשו אותם ופרשו עצמם מעדת ישראל תישרה .ונתקו את מוסרותיהן .ושלחו מהם את עבותימו .ויתערבו בגויים ולמדו לשוניהם .עם מנהיגי כומריהם .כדי לגלות ולהורות להם איזו ממצות התורה הקדושה שהיתה עד העת הזאת בינינו מכל הגוים נסתרה .ולנו בכתב ובע"פ ממשה מפי הגבורה .כבת מלכות בבגדי כבודה ורוב תכשיטיה מסורה .במעמד הר סיני שמעו אבותינו קול הד' מדבר מסערה .עשרת הדברות שתלוים בהם כל מצות התורה שכתב משה ולמדה לאבותינו בביאורה .בע"פ להורות להם מהות ואיכות קביעת המצות במועדם וזמנם היא הגמרא .לבוש לתכשיטי' וקישוט' דבת מלך היא התורה שבע"פ .וברצות ד' אבאר עמ' 5
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów למטה משל מובן דומה לנמשל שהשיבותי לשר השואל: והנוצרים אלו תפסו התורה שבכתב ונביאים וכתובים לבדם .לשבי לידם .באין מבין ויודע שפר פירושם .וערומה מאמיתות קבלתם .ומפרשים בהם איזה פסוקים בשיבוש סברתם .על גואלם לחזק דתם .חיברו ספרים הרבה בלשונם ודפוסם בכדי שכל אחד מהם הקורא בהם יוכל לבזות דת בני ישראל ותורתם: והיות שמילדותי נתגדלתי בבית אדוני אבי בית מלון אורחים .לכל האומות שבסביבתינו עוברים ושבים .כבתל שהכל אליו פונים – למצוא מרגוע לנפשם .במאכל ובמשתה ושם לנים .וברוב היו ראשית שיחתם .נגד תורה שבע"פ ועדת ישראל ואמונתם: ובני ישראל נעלבים ואינם עולבים .שומעים חרפתם ואינם משיבים .על שלא היו בנו איש שדבר לשונם בלשון לימודים .דברתי תשובתינו אף שלפעמים נוצחת .מעשיהם לכלום נחשבת .ויען שבקטנותי הבינותי מדבריהם מגמתם .שישיב להם איזה איש יהודא על ספיקותם .בתשובה ניצחת אף נגד דתם .רק שיהי' לפי דרכי לימודם .ולשון שיחתם: ומאז רוח קנאה לבשתי .וגמרתי בלבי ובדעתי .להתאמץ בכל יכולתי .לחקור ולדרוש ללמוד בשלימת לשונם .כדי שאוכל לקרות גם בספריהם שונים .ממחבריהם האחרונים והקדמונים: ואחרי שבאיזה שעות פנויות דימי פגרא בזה יגעתי .תוכן ושורש דקדוקי לשונם מצאתי . אעפ"כ לקרות בספריהם בילדותי עמ' 6 יראתי .על שהם בעיני בני עמינו מאד מאוסים .ונקראים מאתנו ספרי פסולים לאומתם: עד שהגיע לידי ספר לחם יהודא שחיבר החכם הקדמון הרב ר' יהודא יודא בן ר' שמואל לירמה ספרדי ז"ל 106פירוש על מסכתא אבות בראותי הפירוש על מאמר ר' אליעזר הוי שקוד ללמוד תורה ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורס 107וז"ל פירוש ענין שקידה הוא מלשון הכתוב כי שוקד אני על דברי כלומר מהיר ומשתדל .אז יהי' עניינו הרגל ותמידות וחשיבות כמו לשקוד על דלתותי יום יום .כוונת זה התנא לפרש לנו במשנתו זאת כוונתו במה שאמר למעלה שהדרך הטובה שידבק בה האדם הוא לב טוב ואמר שכוונתו בלב טוב לומר שיהי' לו לב חכם ונבון לב חד וחרוץ לפלפל ,וזה אי אפשר שיהי' כי אם במי שיעשה תורתו קבע ובשקידה רבה יתמיד לימודו וזהו אומרו הוי שקוד ללמוד תורה ואח"כ אמר ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורס כלומר שאין כוונתו באזהרתו זאת כדי שישים האדם את עצמו במעלות שכליות וחריפות בהוראות התורה בלבד אלא כדי שידע גם כן מה שישיב את האפיקורס הכופר בפינות התוריות ומבזה את דברי חכמים המקיימים אותם צריך לידע מספריהם מקום טעותם ותמצא התשובה בצדה: כמבואר בסנהדרין פרק אחד דיני ממונות דף ל"ח ע"ב אמרו לא שנו שמאמר דר' אליעזר אלא אפיקורס מהאומות אבל אפיקורס ישראל כ"ש דפקיר טפי .אמר ר' יוחנן כל מקום שפקרו הצדוקים 108תשובתן בצדן .ופ' הרי"א ז"ל הוא ר' יצחק ארמעה בעל מחבר ספר עקידת עמ' 7 יצחק ז"ל 109שהסיבה לפי שהאפיקורס מהאומות לא ראה אור התורה ולכן ראוי הוא לחמול עליו ולדבר עמו בחן מליצות לשון לימודים ולהדריכו במעגלי צדק אולי יש תקוה בו .אמנם אפיקורס ישראל שכבר יודע דרכי התורה וכפר אין ראוי לדבר עמו משום ולפני עור לא תתן מכשול 110כי הוא יוסיף על חטאתו פשע .בהתווכחו עמו ויתקצף ויקלל במלכו ואלהיו ולכן מוטב לעזבו: .106ויניציאה :במצות אלויסי בראגאדין ,שי"ג; סביונטה :טוביה פואה ,שי"ד. .107רבי אלעזר ]בן ערך[ אומר :הוי שקוד ללמוד תורה; ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורוס; ודע לפני מי אתה עמל ,ונאמן הוא בעל מלאכתך שישלם לך שכר פעולתך) .אבות פרק ב ,יד ,טו(. .108צ"ל מינים. .109שאלוניק :נדפס בבית דון יהודה לבית גדליה ,רפ"ב; ויניציאה :דפוס דניאל בומבירגי ,ש"ז; ויניציאה :דפוס אלויזי בראגדין ,שכ"ה; ויניציאה :נדפס בבית זואן דיגאה ,של"ג; פרנקפורט דאדר :דפוס אלמנת פראפעסר גרילא ,תקמ"ה. .110ויקרא יט :יד.
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Gershon David Hundert ודע לפני מי אתה עמל ר"ל שכוונתו בזה ג"כ בזה שאמר שהדרך הטובה היא לב טוב הוא לומר שתהי' לאדם כזה כוונה טובה ולב טוב עם אלקים ועם אנשים יהודים ולהבדיל עם ערלים ואפיקורסי’ ובויכוחו עמהם תהי' כוונתו וכל מעשיו לשם שמים: ולא יאמר אדם מה תועלת יש לי במה שאפסיד זמני בעסק לימוד מה שאשיב לאפיקורס כ"ש שאני מכניס עצמי בסכנה אם נתוכח עמו ולא תעשה כן אם בעל נפש אתה .דע לשים כנ"ל עיניך לפני מי אתה עמל .שהוא הקב"ה ואם בן חייל אתה אף בטורח גדול לוחם מלחמתו ופירשו המפרשים ומי הוא בעל מלאכתך שהוא כחני ויכול ונאמן שישלם לך שכר פעולתיך: והרמב"ם ז"ל פ' וז"ל הוי שקוד ללמוד ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורס אמר צריך שתלמוד דברים לפי דעת האומות שתשיב בהן לאפיקורסים מן האומות ותחלוק עליהם ותשיבם אם יקשו לך וכו' – ואמר אעפ" שתלמד דעות האומות לדעת איך תשיב עליהם השמר שלא יעלה בלבך דבר מן הדעות ההם ודע שמי שתעבוד לפניו יודע צפון לבך והוא אומרו ודע עמ' 8 לפני מי אתה עמל ר"ל שיכוון לבו באמונות הש"י עכ"ל הרמבם ז"ל :ופי' הרי"א ז"ל 111ואולי שאמר ודע לפני מי אתה עמל ג"כ על ענין הויכוח שלא יתווכח כי אם לפני דיין או שר ושופט שוה לשני הקצוות כי אז ישפוט בהויכוח צדק ומשפט מישרים ולא באופן אחר .וזהו ודע לפני מי אתה עמל ועם כל זה תבטח בבורא שהוא בעל מלאכתך שיעזרך באותו ויכוח ויתן לך שכר פעולתיך עכ"ל מהרי"א ז"ל: וכן משמע מהגמ' בבא קמא פרק מרודה ד' פ"ב ע"א של בית ר' גמליאל התירו להם לספר בחכמת יונית מפני שקרובים למלכות ומוכח שהוא איסורא כמבואר שם בגמ' שאסרו בארור מי שילמוד חכמת יונית והתירו בשעת הדחק .ומכ"ש וק"ו בדורותינו אלו שאנחנו יתומים מכל חכמה וקטנים מבינת אנשים ואמונתינו בשמו ית' מחולל מאד בגוים אלו בודאי אין שום אשם באם נדע להשיב על שאלתם בלשונם: ומ]א[חר שהודיעני ד' את כל זאת גמרתי בלבי לקרב אל המלאכה הנקלה הזאת אולי יתקדש שמו יתברך על ידי 112המחולל בגוים מכמה מאות שנים אלו הערלים מחללים שם שמים ומוצאים דבה ומחרפים ומגדפים את ספרי התלמוד קבלות האמת ודברי חז"ל הקדושים איש מפי איש מפי משה רבינו ע"ה מפי הגבורה בהר סיני קולו שמעו אבותינו מתוך האש עשרת הדברות ובהם תלוים התרי"ג מצות שבכתב עם כל המצות שבע"פ כולם למדו אבותינו מהר סיני בע"פ .עד אחר חורבן ביהמ"ק השני הוכרח רבינו ר' יהודא הנשיא ז"ל להתחיל לכתוב גם המשנה שהיתה כמה אלפים שנה בע"פ עמ' 9 ואח"ז נכתבו גם הלכות התלמוד מפי חכמינו התנאים ז"ל כמבואר בהרמב"ם ז"ל בסדר הקבלות שלו וגם בספר הקבלות להראב"ד הלוי ז"ל 113:וביותר כבוד הרב הגאון הרמב"ן ז"ל בהקדמתו לפירושו על שיר השירים ביאר בקיצור נמרץ בסדר נכון הקבלות מאדם הראשון עד זמנו בנגלה ובנסתר כאשר קיבל מרבותיו ז"ל .ופירושו זה נדפס בק"ק אלטונא ע"י התורני מהור"ר יצחק במו' שמעון ז"ל בשנת תקכ"ב לפ"ק עיי"ש :וכן שאר מחקרים מחכמינו ז"ל שכתבו לנו סדר קבלות האמתיות מפי אבותינו הקדושים איש מפי איש עד אדם הראשון קבלתינו מאב לבנו ממש :ולא כן אלו הגוים בני אדום והמאמינים בדת נוצרים ובני ישמעאל .111יצחק אברבנאל. .112וראו גם זכרונות ,עמ' :87ואנחנו בני ישראל מחוייבים לידע הכל .שיתקיים בנו מאמר הכתוב 'כי היא חכמתכם ובינתכם לעיני העמים' )דברים ד’ ו"( ואף גם שפסוק זה מפרשים חכז"ל על תורתנו הק' ,אבל אמרו שטוב תורה עם דרך ארץ ,וטוב לכל איש בר ישראל החכם ומבין דבר ,שידע אף ממעשה אומות העולם ,ומתוך זה יתרחש לו לפעמים שיוכל להשיב להם כהוגן על שאלתם נגד הדת והאמונת ישראל ,כאשר הקרה לי כמה פעמים בדברי עם גדולי האומות וכומריהם ,ומצאתי ברוב התשובה בצדו כידוע לכל שתשובתי תמיד נצחת היתה. .113אברהם בן דוד מפושקירה . 1120–1197
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów ודת מחמט שמכונים בשם תורניים על שיש לנוצרים נוסח תורת משה ונביאים בביבליאה שלהם והיא אינה מוגהה ומזוייפת מראשה לסופה באשר שקיבלו אותה מעמים שונים מעותקה מלשונות רבים ע"י זייפנים הכומרים שלהם במשך זמן רב קרוב לשני אלפים שנים וכל עם ועם זייפו בה עד שכולה מזוייפת בידם ערומה ומפושטה מכל פירוש וקבלת אמת :וכן הישמעאלים כת מחמט הנ"ל אף שיש באלקראן שלהם קצת מתורת משה ג"כ מזוייף ומעורב עם לימודי שקרים דמחמט הנביא שקר שלהם .ולפני אלו השנים ישו' ומחמט יצאו מכלל דת עמ' 10 ישראל גחזי 114תלמיד אלישע הנביא כאשר נטרד בקללות רבו הנ"ל התרחק מארץ ישראל והלך עם שלשה בניו למקום שאינן מכירים אותו ובאו עד מדינת פרס ומדי והתייסד שמה אמונת שתי רשויות לעובדים לאש ונתן להם ספר המצות לאמונה זו כאשר מבואר לקמן כל מעשיו ופקודותיו שהעתקתי מספרי האומות מלשונם חול ללשונינו לשון הקודש שיהי' למראה עיני בני ישראל: כאשר דרשתי וחקרתי ביכולתי לדעת כל ספריהם ועיקורי יסודי קבלתיהם לאמונתיהם .הרבה מספריהם בעיני ממש קראתי ומצאתי רובם ככולם שקרים והבלים .מלאים דברי דופי ושטותים גדולים .מספרים שניסים ונפלאות שראו בעיניהם .בכל דור מאנשיהם .שבדרשתם אשר אי אפשר אף לאיש נכרי בר שכל שיאמין בזאת .ובפרט אנחנו בני ישראל מאמינים בני מאמינים ויודעים את ד' מקבלות אמתיות מאבותינו הק' כנ"ל אי אפשר לשום אחד מאתנו אף להקל שבקלים שיכנסו בלבו אלו אמונות הכוזבות: והנה גם אלו ספרי און גליון דהנוצרים עצמם מחזקים תורת משה ומעידים שישו הנוצרי עצמו העיד שהוא בא לקיים תורת משה ולא לבטלו ח"ו כמבואר באיזה מקומות בספריהם הנ"ל. מאטיאש קפיטל ה' פסוק יז 115ושאלתי זאת להכמר פיקולסקי בעל מחבר ספר רשעת 116 היהודים בלשון פוליש זלאסץ זידאווסקי והוא מזכיר שאלתי זו בספרו הנ"ל עמוד תל"ה. והכריח עצמו להשיב על שאלה זו עמ' 11 והגיד להרשיע הרבה דברי שטותים ופתיות באין מענה לשאלתי זו :אשר גם כבר הרב ר' יצחק בן ר' אברהם ז"ל בעל המחבר ספר חיזוק אמונה העתיק בחלק שני מספרו זה ללשון הקודש הרבה מאמרים באון גליון וספרי שלוחי ישו' המה אפאסטאליס כולם מחזקים תורת משה ומצוים לקיים המצות שבה .עיין ותמצא איך הרב המחבר הנ"ל התאסף בכל יכולתו לקרות כל ספרי דתיהם ובודאי מקנאת הד' עשה זאת בכדי שידעו בני ישראל להשיבם .וכן עשה כנראה בספרו חיזוק אמונה הנ"ל שכתוב הרבה טענות חזקות נגדם טעותיהם שמפרשים בספריהם איזה פסוקים מהנביאים על ישו' וממש מיום התחדשות זה הדת הזאת לא עמד איש מאתנו נגדם כמו זה הרב ז"ל המחרפם ומגדפם ומוכיחם על פניהם בפתיות אמונתם מעיקרה: וכן עשה גם הרב ר' ליפמאן בעל המחבר ספר נצחון ברוב בקיאות בספרי חז"ל ולהבדיל באון גליון שלהם נצח הרבה נגדם .ואחריהם גם הרב ר' טובי' הרופא בספרו מעשי טוביה וכן כמה וכמה הקדמונים מחכמינו ז"ל לא יכלו לסבול עול הגלות ובזיונות ושפלות אשר אלו העבדים בני חם פוט וכנען 117כולם המה וכומריהם עובדי פסילים הערלים הטמאים מדי יום מוצאים דבת שקרים על בני ישראל לפני המלכות ושררות ודוכסים המושלים ולפני עם הארצות .114וארבעה אנשים היו ְמֹצָרִעים .זה גחזי ושלשת בניו )סוטה מז ,א( .שלושת הבנים נצטרעו כתוצאה מקללתו של אלישע )מל"ב ה ,כז( .גחזי הוא אחד מארבעה הדיוטות שאין להם חלק לעוה"ב )משנה סנהד' צ ,א(. " .115אל תחשבו שבאתי לבטל את התורה ,או את הנביאים ,לא באתי לבטל כי אם לקיים". 116. Gaudenty Pikulski, Złość żydowska Przeciwko Bogu y bliźniemu Prawdzie y Sumnieniu na obiaśnienie Talmudystów. Na dowód ich zaślepienia, y Religii dalekiey od prawa Boskiego przez Moyżesza danego. Rozdzielona na trzy części opisana (Lwów, 1760). .117דברי הימים א' א:ח.
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Gershon David Hundert עמ' 12 במדינות והארצות האראפי בדרשם לפניהם בדברים וגם במכתב מדי יום יום מדפיסים הרבה ספרים כדי לעורר שנאת המושלים והמון עם נגדינו: אמנם אחר זה מכמה מאות שנה בדו הכומרים מרוח רעה ורוח שקר שבקרבם איך היהודים אינם יכולים לאכול המצות בפסח לא דם נוצרים .ולזה גונבים את בניהם ושוחטים אותם להוציא דמם ולאכול עם המצה בלילה הראשונה ]![ של פסח ונותנים טעם לזה בסברה נבערה ומאוד זרה שדם הילד נוצרי זה הנשפך חנם יכפר ליהודים על דם ישו הנוצרי שנשפך בירושלים חנם: ויותר מזה היו מעלילים איך שהיהודים קונים הלחם מגואל בדמים יקרים מבית תפלתם .כדי לחרף ולגדף אמונתם .והנוצרי עצמו כאשר המה מאמינים שהלחם זה הוא גופו של ישו' גואל שלהם .ומפני עלילות שטותות ובלבולי שקרים .ומראים כאלו במשך אלף וכמה מאות שנים מעת התיסדות הכומרים בע"ז לאמונתם זאת בארצות ומלכיות בחלק אראפי נהרגו והומתו במיתות משונים וענוים קשים ומרים כמה וכמה רבוי והרבה ורבבות בעוה"ר מגדולי יחוסי גאונים גדולים רבנים מופלגים ראשים וקצינים מבני ישראל הקדושים שסבלו ענוים הקשים והיסורים המשונים מגוים אלו האכזרים ומתו עמ' 13 על קדושת שמו יתברך הגדול והנורא והוא ינקום את דמם וירחם את שארית ישראל אשר לא עשו עולה כזו מעולם לכל הגוים שהיו בארצם מיום הנטשם מעל אדמתם: ומי יוכל לשער גודל הדאגות והצער בשארית בני ישראל השרוים ביגונים ואנחות רבות ובשברי לבבות .על אחיהם העומדים בצרות רעות .אשר גם בימי נעורי מדי יום ממש היו מבהלים אותנו באלו בשורות רעות .ולא טובות השמועות .מקהלות בני עמינו העומדים באלו הסכנות .בדברי אלו בלבולי’ שקרים .המעלילים עליהם כומרי הנוצרים .לא לבד ממקומות רחוקים .אלא אף בכמה קהילות שמאתנו סמוכים רצו הגוים להעליל כזאת ומהשמים נצלו ברוב הפלאות .כאשר אכתוב ברצות הד' כל המאורעות .שהקרו לבני עמינו .במשך ימי חיינו .באלו ארצות עד מקום שידיעתי מגעת אמרתי חובה היא עלינו .להודיע לבני ישראל הבאים אחרינו .מרוב הצרות והתלאות המרות שסבלו בני עמינו באבדם הרבה נפשות יקרות .ואיזה שניצלו בפרוע פרעות .על לא חמס .אודיע לכם כל הקורות .שלא יאמרו הבאים אחרינו בדורות .שהימים הראשונים היו טובים מאלו .לא מחכמה זאת ישאלו .אך בחסרון עמ' 14 ידיעתם .מהמאורעות שהסיבו לאבותם .בימי מגוריהם .תחת ממשלת האומה זו בארצותם . וביותר בדברי אלו הבלבולי שקרים .שזכרתי והאמינו עם הפולין המושלים עם כומריהם – מיום התחדש אמונתם זאת בארצם כאשר מצאתי בספר דברי הימים למלכי פולין בלשון פוליש כתובים כמה מאורעות בלבולי שקרים כאלו מדם ולחם מגואל והעתקתי ללשונינו הקודש בביאור כל אחד מהבלבולים בדמים .מכמה מאות שנים .עד שנת התקי"ט: אחר המאורע המפורסמות שהכריחו רבני ופרנסי בני ישראל לעמוד ולהשיב להפוקר ורשע מפורסם יעקב בן ליב מק"ק קראלוקע ואביב היה בעל מלאכות היין שרף היינו ווייניר כאשר הודה בעצמו לפני הכומרים דההגמון בעיר קאמנעץ כמבואר למטה יעקב פרענקי וסייעתו עדה הרעה הזאת המייחסים את עצמם לכת המאמינים בפוקר הקדמון שלהם שבתי צבי ימ"ש שבגמטריתו עולה מספר אותיותיו תתי"ד והן עולין מספר רו"ח שק"ר וכן נעשה עמו ועם הבאים אחריו ונתוודע לעולם בכל דור ודור שקרותו וכן כל אחד שקמו ברשעתו אחריו המירו דתם בדת מחמט בק"ק סאליניקי כאשר הוא המיר דתו בקוסטנטינא עמ' 15 עד ימי הפוקר יעקב פרענק שאמר שבא בגלגול שבתי צבי הנ"ל והוכרחו כולם להמיר דתם בדת נוצרים כאשר אבאר ואכתוב כל המעשים שבימי ולעיני ממש נעשו לנו ולבני ישראל נסים ונפלאות ותשועות גדולות נגד אלו המשומדים אחרי שאעתיק קודם כל התחלות טעותם דהמאמינים בפוקר הראשון שבתי צבי ימש"ו כאשר מצאתי בספרים שונים שכתבו כמה
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów וכמה מהרבנים הגדולים בכל דור ודור כאשר אזכיר כל אחד בשמו במקומו .בהעתקתי מספרו דכ"א כל המאורעות כסדרן .ורוב ההרפתקאות דעדו להם עמהם בזמניהם: ואיך גם אנחנו בזמנינו ברחמי שמים .נצלו מרשעות ומלשינות שקרים .עלינו ועל ספרי התלמוד הקדושים .שפסקו הכומרים לשרפם ונצלו ברוב חסדי המקום עלינו .ועד היום כל התלמוד עם כל מפרשיו כמאז ומקדם הוא בתקפו בידינו .ולא ימוש מפינו ומפי זרעינו . מעתה ועד עולם: הגם מאז אחרי תשובתו האחרונה דהרב המאוה"ג הגאון כבוד מוהר"ר חיים כ"ץ רפפורט ז"ל אב"ד דק"ק לבוב והגליל יצ"ו על קושייתם האחרונה מאכזריות רשעתם נגד ספרי התלמוד . ומאותה שעה ממש נתוודע ראש הכומרים שקרות עלילות דם על היהודים מה שנראה בחוש מדברי המגומגמים דהמלשינים עצמם .ואחרי שנדפסו תשובת כבוד הרב המאוה"ג הנ"ל בשנת תק"כ לפ"ק בספר רשעת היהודים בלשון עמ' 16 פוליש .הכירו וידעו כל הגוים דעם פולין שעלילות דם על היהודים מעיקרא שקר היו .ומעת הזאת ת"ל לא נשמע יותר במדינות פולין שום דיבור מזה עוד .ואדרבה לחרפת הגוים היא האמונה הזאת להם: ועתה תחת ממשלת אדונינו האדיר החסיד יוזיף השני הק' יר"ה אשר כבודו נתגלה בכל מדינות וממשלת מלכותו שכל עלילת דם על היהודים המה שקרים וכזבים .וחלילה לשום שר ושופט להאמין כזאת על בני ישראל בקנסים עצומים: וגם שכעת קמו מהגוים .חכמים גדולים .ומלומדים מאוד ויודעים מהרבה ספרים קדמונים וישנים .ובגביה חקירתם .כתבו הרבה נגד עכו"ם .וביותר נגד הנוצרים .ומכחישים כל סיפורי מעשיהם .לגמרי באמרם שכל סיפורי הנסים .שבתורתם החדשה שלהם .שקוראים און גליון המה רחוקים להאמין .שנעשו נגד הטבע .וכן גם חז"ל אמרו אין הנס יוצא בדרך הטבע .והנה אם עיקר אמונתם מוכחשה – בודאי כל סכלות סברתם שכוזבה .מעלילות דם וכן מצאו הרבה מעשיות מעלילות אלו ויצאו היהודים זכאים מפי פסקים חרוטים וחתומים ממלכים קדמונים ויועציהם והרבה הגו כבר בפיוסים ות"ל אין שטן ופגע רע לבני עמינו מעת התחלת ממשלת המלכים הנ"ל ,ויתן ד' עד ביאת הגואל לא יאונה לנו שום רע: עמ' 17 אך מדאגה מדבר שבנינו הבאים אחרינו בדורות .לא ידעו ולא יזכירו מהקורות .שסבלנו צרות רבות ותלעות ]![ רעות .מהאומות לגוייהם באלו הארצות .כמה וכמה רבוי רבבות מבני עמינו הפרנסים – צדיקים וחסידים .גאוני ארץ מיוחסים וקצינים .על לא חמס בכפיהם – הוכרחו לעזוב חיי שעה ולילך לחיי עולמים .והומתו ונהרגו במיתות משונות וסבלו עינויים קשים ומרים .ומסרו נפשם על קדושת השם .ולא שמעו לקול הכומרים המסיתים לע"ז ומבטיחים בדברי שטותם עוה"ז ועוה"ב ומאסו בחייהם .ובחרו לעשות רצון קונם וחפץ צורם .באשר כתוב אי"ה למטה בביאור כל אחד איזו בשמם ואיזו במקמם .ובאיזה מהסיב' לבדו כאשר מצאתי בספריהם ספורי דברי הימים שלהם בלשון אשכנז ופוליש .וארשום אצל כל מעשה שם הערל המחבר הכותב: ובכל זאת שמו ית' לא שכחו .ובתורתו דבקו .ולא ויתרו ממנה אות או נקודה אחת מתורה שבכתב ושבע"פ .קיימו וקבלו קדמונינו ז"ל על עצמם ועל הבאים אחריהם כתורה עצמה . ואפילו מנהג הקל שקבלו עליהם קדמונינו ז"ל קיימו וקבלו על עצמם כתורה כמאמר חז"ל מנהג של ישראל הוא כתורה .ולזה לא ויתרו בני ישראל אזהרה קטנה ואפי' חק הקל נזהרו לנהוג בו בלבד שלא יהא כחוקת הגויים .ובפרט במלבושים .ובשאר ענינינו .תמיד היה כוונת קדמונינו .החז"ל להבדיל אותנו מן העמים .שנהי' אנחנו ניכרים .מבין הגוים .אף שתמיד היתה עמ' 18 שאת ההיכרות לבני עמינו לבוז ולשפלות .אבל אף לכפרת עונות .כי זה הוא עיקר הגלות הממרק עונות .בני ישראל כבשורות ד' לאברהם כי גר יהי' זרעך בארץ לא להם בעוה"ר
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Gershon David Hundert כדי שירשו חיים נצחיים לעוה"ב – גם כמאמר הגמרא יאה גלותא לישראל בורזא סומקא לסוסיא 118 חיורא: ולטעם זה לא שינו בני ישראל לבושיהם בהיותם בגלות ארצות אשכנזי במשך אלף שנים ויותר . עד שיצאו מערי ארצות אלו רובם ברשות עצמם ובחרו להם ארץ פלניא מדינתינו ארץ ציה ושוממה וריקה מכל סחורות יפות ומזהב וכסף ובני ישראל הביאו כל טוב לכאן במטמונות רבות .ובהתפשרם עם דוכסי ושרי יועצי מדינה בק"ק קראקא ואז לא הי' מלך בפולין רק י"ב וויווידס משלו ואלו קבלו את היהודים הראו להם את כל עשרם וגם לוו מהם שלשים מליאן זהב פוליש בתנאי כאשר אבאר לקמן וזה הי' תנאי מפורש שהיהודים ישארו תמיד בתבנית מלבושיהם שבאו לכאן .וכך נהגו עד זמננו זה ובשום דבר לא התערבו בני ישראל במדינה זו בגוים לא לבד במלבושים אף גם בלשונם מאסו לדבר בדברים המיוחדים שביניהם שמשו לשון אשכנזי בלי שום דבר אחד מלשונות רוסיש או פוליש .ובפרט בעסקי עבודות הבורא הבדלנו ד' מכל העמים ברוב חסדיו שרשות ניתן לנו תמיד בכל דור ודור מכל מלכות וממשלה מעמי הארצות שיכולים בני ישראל לעבוד את הבורא לפי דת אמונתינו בכל מקום שיהי' נמצאים שם עשרה אנשים .וגם הורשו כל אחד מהשררות במדינות עמ' 19 פולין לבנות להיהודים בתי כנסיות לתפילות בנינים מפוארים וחשובים הנקראים מאתנו בית המקדש מעט: והורגלו כל קהלות קדושות לבא לאלו בית הכנסתות להתפלל ערבית ושחרית בלבוש מיוחד לתפלה הנקרא מבני עמינו לעטניק ראק ועל ראשו כובע המכונה ברייטיל .ומצאנו בספר ישן ממחבר ספר מעלת המדת קדמון ספרדי הטעם למלבושים אלו הוא על שכל עבודת בית המקדש הגדול שהי’ לנו בירושלים נעשה ע"י הכהנים בני אהרן מלובשים בבגדי כהונה והקריבו את תמידינו וקרבנותינו בבגדי קודש ובצאתם לחוץ מהמקדש לבשו בגדים אחרים לשמושי חול .וכעת שאין לנו לא מקדש ולא מזבח ולא כהן לעבודה תקנו לנו אנשי כנסת הגדולה מאה ועשרים זקינים וביניהם חג]א[י זכרי' ומל]א[כי הנביאים סדר התפילות במקום הקרבנות כידוע לכל יודעי ספר והביה"כ במקום מקדש מעט ולטעם זה נהגו קדושי עמינו ללבוש בעת תפילתם בביה"כ הק' לבוש מיוחד לעטניק עם הברייטיל הנ"ל שיעבוד עבודתו בתפילתו ככהן בלבוש מיוחד לתפלה וכן נהגו כל ישראל במדינות אשכנזי ומעהרין וכל בני ישראל שבקהלות הגדולות שבארץ פולין גדול וקטן במשך כמה מאות שנים עד זמנינו זה קהלות הישנות נוהגין במלבושים אלו כתורה להם שזה חילוקא דרבנן .ועוד אפשר שכשם שבגדי כהונה היו מכפרים כמבואר במדרש ויקרא רבה פי' למה נסמכו בגדי כהונה אצל פרשת הקרבנות לומר לך מה הקרבנות עמ' 20 מכפרין אף בגדי כהונה מכפרים מבואר שם 119כל בגד ובגד על מה הי' מכפר ואם הקרבנות והבגדים מכפרים כשם שהתפלות המה לנו לזכרון במקום הקרבנות כן צריך לנו לאלו הבגדים להתפלל בהם לזכרון בגדי כהונה שהיו מכפרים שנאמר בהם חוקת עולם לדורותם אך כאשר נתיישבו מבני ישראל גם בהרבה מקומות במדינות פאדאלי ואקיריינע הצפונים לארץ פולין שמשם פתחו הרע פעמים ליושביהם מחמת מרידת עם הקאזאקין שבכל דור ודור חמסו ורצחו והרגו כמה ריבוי רבבות מבני ישראל .לכן לא נתיישב שם שום אדם חשוב וספון מבני ישראל כי אם איזה מדלת עם הארץ שלא הי' להם שום מחי' בקהלות הישנות הלכו להם על הבטחות השררות דהמקומות החדשים שנתיישבו ובנו להם בתים ובתי כנסיות לתפלה ובתי מדרשים ללומדי תורה וכן נהגו ולמדו בתוה"ק בגמפ"ת בפלפולים חריפים .118חגיגה טב :יאה עניותא ליהודאי כי ברזא סומקא לסוסיא חיורא. .119מדרש ויקרא רבה ,ערך מרדכי מרגליות )ירושלים תשי"ד( ,רי.ריא )י ,ו(.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów וחדים וגם במקרא ומשנה עם כל המפרשים הש"ס והמקרא ועם שאר ספרי תוכחות ליראים שבידיהם במשך כל ימי הזקנים תלמידי חכמים שהאריכו ימים שמה אחרי בואם לשם עבדו את ד' כפי מנהגי קהלות ישראל שיצאו משם .ואחריהם קם דור אחר אשר לא ראו ולא ידעו ממנהגי בני ישראל שבקהלות הישנות ועזבו הרבה מהם שהיו לישראל כתורה עצמה אינם חוששין למנהגים אלו ואינם מתקינים לעצמם מלבושים הנ"ל להתפלל בהם בביה"כ הק' אך באיזה בגד שהוא יוצא כל היום לשוק באלו הוא מתפלל עמ' 21 ולומד אם היא בר הכי בלי חלוקא דרבנן הנ"ל: ורעה גדולה מזו שגם פסקו התלמידי חכמים שבדורינו ללמוד התלמוד בפלפולי חריפתא כמנהגם היו מקדמת דנא' .ומאז גם בימי בחרותי בעיני ראיתי .וגם למדתי מפי רבותי ז"ל בכל התחלת הזמן דף גמרא המובחר מהרב אב"ד מרא דאתרא באיזה משיטות התלמוד עם כל מפרשי הש"ס והתאמצו התלמידים כ"א לפי השגתו לחדש איזה דבר בסברות הגמרא והמפרשים .ומתחילה עמד הרב עצמו ודרש לפנינו ברוב בקיאותו .וגודל חריפותו .מה שחידש בסוגיות התלמוד זה הנ"ל .ואחריו כל יתר הלומדים ומהתלמידים חידשו כ"א כפי השגתו בפלפולו .ובני עשירים היו מאספים את כל הלומדים לכבדם בביתיהם במיני מרקחת ומשקה י"ש ונהגו כן בכל תפוצות ישראל הרבה שנים אף במשך ימי חיי בהיותי בבית אבי ז"ל ישב על כסא הרבנות דק"ק באלחוב הרב המאוה"ג הגאון רבינו יעקב המכונה ר' יוקל בהרב המאוה"ג מוהר"ר מאיר זצ"ל הורוויץ ואחריו בנו הרב המאוה"ג הגאון מוהר"ר מרדכי ז"ל .ואחריהם הרב . המאוה"ג מוהר"ר משה סג"ל זצ"ל כלם למדו חילוקים בגמ' כנ"ל .וגם אלו הרבנים שהיו לפניהם החזיקו ישיבות ואף בביאתי אחרי נישואין שלי בשנת תק"ד ]צ"ל תק"ב?[ לפ"ק לק"ק טיסמניץ מצאתי שם עיר מליאה תלמידי חכמים לסופרים ועל גביהם חונה הרב המאוה"ג הגאון מוהר"ר מאנש זצ"ל שהיה מקדם אב"ד עמ' 22 בק"ק פולינאה ומפיו למדתי כמה חילוקים במסכתא כתובות וגיטין: ובאותו הזמן יצא לאור ספר חמדת הימים דפוס קאסטאנטינא 120וקנו אותן הספרים לביהמ"ד דק"ק טיסמניץ בעד שלשה אדומי' 121ועל שזה המחבר מורה לעם סגולות הלימוד בספרי הקבלה ברזין דאורייתא נתייאשו הרבה מהתלמידים מלימוד ש"ס התלמוד ומפרשיהם בפלפולא חריפתא אך אחרי שלמדו קצת מקרא בתורת משה ואפס קצהו מלשון המש' ופוסקים תיכף מתחילים לחקור רזין דאורייתא מפי המקובלים המה החסידים או בעלי השמות שמקדם היו מתייחסים לקדמוניהם שם זה והי' מתפארים אותם ומספרים מהם נסים ונפלאות שפעלו בקבלה מעשיות לרפאות חולים בקמיעות ולגרוש דבוקים רעים מבני אדם בהשבעות הרוחניים של מעלה איך שידעו שמותם ושמושם דכל אחד במשמרתו וכל העם היו יראים מהם ומהיזיקות השדים קטנים וגדולים מפחדים היו לצאת יחידים בלילה כאשר אבאר ברצות ד' איזה מעשיות מזה שאירעו בימינו .ומה שראיתי בעיני כמה אנשים מבני עמינו שנדבקו בהם רוח ואמרו שזה הוא רוח הכופרים שנשתמדו לדת הגוים כאשר מפילים עצמם לפני בתי כנסיות הק' בעת קריאת התורה בשבתות וב"ב ו"ה ומכין את עצמם באבנים גדולים מכות אכזריות על החזה ולפי הנראה אי אפשר לשום אדם לסבול מכות מות כאלו כאשר אני בעצמי בימי בחרותי .מן המתמיהים הייתי: עמ' 23 עד שבהיותי בלבוב פגע בי חד מאלו הבעלי שמות אשר כבר הי' מיודעי ומכירי מקדם והפקיד תחת ידי ארגז או קופערט מלא ספרים וכתבים והתרה באזהרה גדולה למשרתי ואנשי ביתי שלא יגעו ולא יטלטלו הקופערט הנ"ל בכדי שלא יזיק איזה בהם שינהג בזיון להשמות הקדושים שבו .120תצ"ה -תצ"ז )יצא בזולקווא :בתק"ב ותק"ו(. 54 .121זלוטי – סכום גדול.
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Gershon David Hundert אחר נתוודע לנו שאין בזה ממש ודבריו שקרים כאשר אבאר אי"ה איך שהודה בעצמו וסיפר לי איזה מתחבולותיו שעשה הוא עצמו לרמאות את הבריות וגם הרבה תחבולות שהמצאו שארי בעלי שמות בהשתדלותם להונות את העם להעלות מוראות בלבבם מפחד הזיקות השדים: וזה נתוודע לי בשנת תקי"ח ותקי"ט ונתאמת לי שאין לנו לבני אדם אף לגוים ליראה מהזיקות השדים שהרבה מהקדמונים מסופקים ואיזה מהם גם מכחישים מצאותם כמו הרמב"ם ז"ל ושאר חכמי המחקרים ז"ל מאומתינו בחיבוריהם הרחבים והמרובים אינם מזכירים משום הזיקות לבני אדם מסיבות השדים כמו הרב המחקר החכם הגדול מוהר"ר יצחק בעל עקידה ז"ל ,ורבינו בחיי בחובת הלבבות ויתר המחקרים הקדמונים והאחרונים אינו כותבים לנו שום דבר באיזה מאורע לסכנה לבני אדם מסיבות רוחות רעות ויראה מזה שגם לקדמונינו ז"ל לא הי' שום פחד ודאגה מסיבתם רק מזהירים אותנו להאמין בהשגחות שמו יתברך השומר אותנו מכל מקרה רעה ומי שאינו מאמין בהשגחותו ד' עלינו ועל כל בריאותיו בפרטות הוא כופר מוחלט ומסיר מעצמו השגחות השמים ונעזב למקרים רעים המה אוירים ורוחות המנשבים עמ' 24 122 בארץ בתמידות ובהשגחות השמים המה לרפואה לצדיקים ולסכנה לפושעים כמאמר חז"ל לעתיד אין גיהנם אלא הקב"ה מוציא חמה מנרתיקה ודן בה הרשעים והצדיקים מתעדים בה . וזה הוא שהנביאים מעידים הנה יום ד' בא בוער כתנור וגו' ורבים מישיני אדמת עפר יקיצו אלה לחיי עולם ואלה לדראון ולחרפת עולם ואינו מוזכר משום שד ומזיק – אך אך החטאים גורמים שהאויר יזיק לרשעים ולרפואה לצדיקים: והנה זה קרוב לשלשים שנה או יותר שלא נשמע מנזקי השדים לבני אדם ולא ממצאותם במפולת הבתים הישינים אשר בני אדם הי' יראים לגשת ולקרב לבית המתועב מהם .והרבה שנראה להם כנגע זאת בבית רדפו אחרי אלו הבעלי שמות להביאם בכדי שיגרשו בהשבעות בשמות הקדושים את אלו הקליפות ובחמלת הד' עלינו נפקחו עיני בני אדם ונתוודע בעולם שקרות הבעלי שמות ופעולתם בהם כוזבות .ומאז אחר שנאבדו אלו הבעלי שמות עם ספריהם המרובים ורזיהם וסודותיהם להבל דמו הנה גם השדים המזיקים לא נראו יותר ולא ירעו ולא ישחיתו ולא יזיקו לשום אדם בר ישראל קטן וגדול אף גם משום גוי הארצות לא נראה מהם שום דבר קל אחר .ומעת ממשלת אדוננו האדיר הקיסר יר"ה מפחד שרי צבאותיו .שבאו עם חיילותיו .המרובים ברחו להם השדים כולם לגמרי מאלו הארצות. והבעלי שמות החליפו את שמותם בשם חסידים: עמ' 25 ומרביצים תורתם מהרזין ודברי קבלה שבסודות התורה שבידם לתלמידים שלא למדו ממש כלום מהתורה שנמסרה לנו בע"פ ע"י משה רבינו ע"ה מהר סיני והוא התלמוד הקדוש שבידינו .המקובל מאבותינו .ומפי הגבורה מסיני ואלו אינן חוששין ללימודו .להבין עומקי חכמתו .בהלכותיו ובדברי משליו ומוסריו .בתוכחות מגולות לבני אדם באגדותיו . כאשר ביאר לנו הרבה מזה הרב המאוה"ג המחבר מוהר"ר שמואל אידלש בחיבורו מהרש"א ז"ל בחידושי אגדות שלו ושאר מחברים קדמונים ז"ל הרבה מאוד מפרשים דברי אגדות התלמוד בנגלה ובנסתר בחכמות מפוארות לאין מספר: ובני עמינו החסידים נ"י אינם לומדים מזה .הגם מהלכות הפסוקות לנו מפלפולי התלמוד אינם לומדים מזה כלום לידע מאיסור והיתר רק מה שמוכרחים לידע להראות להבריות שהנהגתם הוא כדת הש"ע וגם אינם יודעים כלום מהדינים הנמצאים בזוהר היות שאינן לומדים בו כלום ולא בשאר ספרי המוסרים והמחקרים הקדמונים והאחרונים שבידינו המפרשים לנו דברי תורתינו ודברי הנביאים והכתובים הקדושות בחכמות מפוארים וקבלות אמתיות שהי' להם בכתב ובע"פ מפי קדמונינו הקדושים: .122משנה עבודה זרה א' ג:ב :דאמר רבי שמעון בן לקיש אין גיהנם לעתיד לבא אלא הקדוש ברוך הוא מוציא חמה מנרתיקה ומקדיר :רשעים נידונין בה וצדיקים מתרפאין בה.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów וקהל החסידים הראשיים מכמה שנים היו מתנצלים את עצמם שאין להם שעה פנוי' ללמוד מחמת הכנתם לתפילתם בכוונות וטהרות גופם במי מקוה ומחשבתם במקטרתם הוא הלולקי שביד כ"א מקטר ומעלה עשן להס"ם עמ' 26 הוא הקליפה ויצר הרעה המתגרה באלה הגדולים וטעם לזה אבאר ברצות ד' מה שמצאתי בספר ישן שחיבר חכם אחד מחכמי ספרדיים למה רוב העולם יהודים ולהבדיל ערלים קטנים וגדולים מתמידים לקטר תמיד עשב הטבאק .ואף שכוונתם להתנהג כמאמר חז"ל 123הצדיקים הראשונים היו שוהין שעה אחת ואחרי כך מתפללין .ובזה מאחרים לפעמים זמן תפלת שחרית ומנחה גומרים עם צאת הכוכבים מה שהוא נגד פסקי ודיני הש"ע דהרב הב"י קרא ז"ל .אשר כל בני הגולה בכל קצוי הארצות קימו וקיבלו עליהם זה כמה מאות שנים בעודו הרב זה הי' בחיים חיותו נדפסו הארבעה ש"ע שלו בק"ק ווינעציע בדפוס דניאל בומברגי המדפיס הראשון .ומאז ועד עתה לא נוסף ולא נגרע שום דין מהוראותיו ופסקיו .אך כל ישראל נוהגים באורחותיו ומקיימים כל מצות התורה לפי דבריו .כמצווים לנו מהר סיני מפי הגבורה .כאשר הוא האחרון מבעלי הוראות שקדמוהו .כמו הטורים והאלפסי ויתר ספרי הפוסקים הקדמונים .שבידי רבנים המורים בצדק שלנו .ולא וויתר שום אחד דבר קל מדברי הש"ע: הגם הרבה מנהגי ישראל שהמה לנו כתורה ואלו האלופים החסידים אינן רוצים לנהוג בהם ומי יתן והי' גם בזאת כוונתם ליראת שמים ולא להתפאר בחסידותו כאשר הרבה מגדוליהם אלה ברבם ואלה בסוסים הולכים בשיירות גדולות ממשרתים ותלמידים הרבה הרצים לפניהם לשבחם ולפאר אותם בפני עמ' 27 המון עם הסכלים מספרים עליהם איך מופלגים בחסידות .ויוכל להגיד לכל איש שיחו ביודעו העתידות .ולגלות סודות .והמון עם ישראל בני יעקב שיראתם קודמת לחכמתם .יראים ובחלים מעונם שבידם מפחידים שלא יגלו עונם וקלונם לרבים מביאים דורונות ומתנות בסחר לידם ומבקשים ברכתם המה ונשיהם ובניהם אף שאינן יודעים אם אלו החסידים בני תורה המה ושלמים בתורה שבכתב ושבע"פ הנתונה לנו יחד מהר סיני .יען שכל מגמתם לידע נסתרות וחפצם לחקור אחר רזין דאורייתא .אשר מגלים לעצמם בהתאספם יחד לבית הגדול שבהם לשבוע עמו בסעודת שלישית דשבת ואז נתקיים בהם הברכה לשובע ולא לרזון .ובאמת ששום אחד מהם לא יודע עד מה מסודות: וכמה וכמה פעמים אני בקשתי בעצמי מכמה מגדוליהם שהתאכסנו בביתי שיגלה לי איזה מהרזין דאורייתא ולא מצאתי שום מענה מאיזה מהם ומאז נתוודע לי במוחלט שאינם יודעים משום רזין רק מדברים מאיזה רמזים שבסיפרי קבלה מהרב ר' ישראל ב"ש ז"ל ואין להם שחר ומשאר ספרי הקבלה שכתבו מכוונות התפלות דהאר"י ז"ל באשר כולם חפיצים מאוד לכוונות התפילות באם באפשרי יהי' להם לכווין .וביותר מי שקולו ערב ועומד לפני התיבה ודאי תהילתו אמיתית בקהל חסידים כמאמר דוד שירו לד' שיר חדש תהילתו בקהל חסידים .כי שבח זה נראה לעיני כל אמיתתו .אבל שבחים שמשבחים לעצמם כוונות תפילתם ושאר שבחים מסגופים נוראים ותעניתם הקשים משבת לשבת ושאינן אוכלים שום דבר מהחי ,ונזדככים את גופם למטהרים עמ' 28 א"ע מכל טומאה שנטמאו מחטאות נעוריהם ובטבילתם המרובים והתמדיות נתחדש להם גופים 124 חדשים וטהורים מכל טומאה כדכתיב לב טהור ברא לי אלקים וכו':
.123ברכות לב ע"א. .124תה' נא :יב.
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Gershon David Hundert ובאלה השבחים אסור לספר כמאמר הגמרא 125אל יספר אדם בשבחו של חבירו כי מתוך שבחו יבא לידי גנותו – ויש בזה המאמר לדקדק הרבה בלשון הגמרא .כי הי' לכתוב אל ישבח או יהלל את חבירו או יוכל לומר אל יספר מעלות ומדת טובות של חבירו ולא שבחו – ועוד האיך אפשר המספר שבח שיבוא לידי גנות .אך מאמר חז"ל בגמרא זו מדבר מאותן אנשים ששבחו יוצא מפיו עצמו היינו שצם או סיגף א"ע או שכיוון בתפילתו בטהרת גופו ומחשבתו לזה אמרו אל יספר אדם בשבחו של חבירו שיצא מפי עצמו שבאולי ימצאו אנשים שלא ירצו להאמין לדבריו בכוונותיו וסגופיו ויאמר שהוא זייפון ושקרן ומה לו לגנות גדול מזה לכן אמרו לשון שבחו אל יספר אבל שבח הנראה לעיני הכל יכול לספר להודות ולהלל לד': כל זה נאמר נגד האלופים והרבנים החסידים הראשונים ז"ל שנהגו את עצמם בחסידות ולמדו כוונות האר"י ז"ל והאריכו בתפילתם במשך שלשה שעות ויותר בניגוני זמרה בקולות ערביםלשומעם וגם נהגו בסיגופים נוראים וקשים הראוים לתשובת הקנה כאשר ביארתי לעיל ועכ"פ מדת הענווה היו בהם ועיקרו את הרבנים הגאונים ותלמידי חכמים בכל אתר ואתר ולא העזו פניהם נגד שום אדם תלמיד חכם: עמ' 29 ולא כן חסידי זמנינו זה כמה שנים מקרוב נועדו יחד גם לפרוץ גדר היראה וענווה בפרץ מרובה על העומד .היות שלא לבד שאינן חוששים לסיגופים הראוי' לתשובת הקנה ואף התעניתים המצווים לנו מחז"ל ואבותינו מימות הנביאים קבלו עלינו כתורה זה יותר מאלפיים שנה כל בני הגולה המפורדים ומפוזרים בהרבה ארצות העמים שונים ובני ישראל מקטנים ועד גדולים כולם צמים ומשלימים והמה רובם אינם צמים כלל .והתחילו להתפלל תפלה קצרה באין מזכיר עוד מכוונות האר"י ז"ל ואפשר גם בפירוש המלות אין להם חשש יותר לידע משאר המון עם יושבי הקרנות כנראה מתכלית למודם: בהלכות התלמוד ובפסקי הש"ע אין חפצם .מחיבורי אגדות התלמוד ומפרשים ושאר ספרי המחקרים המפרשים מקראות והתלמודים המלאים מוסרים גדולים במליצות משלי החכמה ותוכחות סגולות אינן יודעים מאומה .ובמאמרי הזוהר הקדוש אין להם עסק כלל כאשר אבאר למטה .ובכל זאת חוצפתם מתרבה בהם מדי יום עד שמלאה לבם לדבר נגד מלכים מאן מלכי רבנן גאוני ארץ היושבים על כסא ההוראות בקהלות ישראל בדברי בזיון וקצף שאין להעלות על הכתב מפני כבוד ישראל ותורתם .ובאיזה מקומות וקהלות העיזו פניהם לחלוק על רבניהם ולתרפם עד שלא יכלו לסבול שבט רשעתם .ועזבו כבוד רבנתם ועזבו דירתם .ופינה הודם וזיוום והדרם מקהלתם .ונתקבלו לממשלת עמ' 30 הרבנות לקהלות אחרים כמו הרב הגאון המפורסם מוהר"ר משולם נ"י אב"ד דק"ק טיסמניץ רק עבורם עזב רבנותו ונתקבל לאב"ד לק"ק פרעשבארג ראש הקהלה במדינת אונגרין וגם שם לכבודו ולתפארתו עלה .ואם בזה נפלה שלהבת גאוותם וטח עיניהם מראות וערל לבם בסכלותם מלהבין גודל המעלות והמדות כבוד הרבנים ותלמידי חכמים והצדיקים נ"י שפאר תהילתם נראה לעיני כולם גודל בקיאתם בחדרי התלמוד והפוסקים הקדמונים והאחרונים והתמדתם המרובים בהם בפלפולים חריפים והורים ומורים הדרך שילכו בה כלל בני הגולה עדת ישראל כדת תורתינו הקדושה הגלויה .ונתונה לנו כדכתיב 126הנסתרות לד' אלקינו והנגלות לנו ולבנינו עד עולם לעשות את כל דברי התורה הזאת וכו' כי היא חיינו – ואורך ימינו .ומפרשי' לעוה"ז ולעוה"ב לזה אין לנו עסק בנסתרות כנראה שאין שום אחד מהקדמונים הגאונים והרבנים ולפניהם התנאים והאמוראים מיום שפסקה הנבואה והנביאים עצמם לא התנבאו דיבור אחד
.125שבת יד ע"א : :לעולם אל יספר אדם בשבחו של חבירו יותר מדאי ,שמתוך טובתו בא לידי גנותו. .126דברים כט:כח.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów מסודות ומרזין דאורייתא כמו שאי' בתוספתא 127במופלא ממך אל תדרוש במכוסה ממך אל תחקור במה שהרשיתי לך התבונן ודע שאין לך עסק בנסתרות לזה כולם עסקו בתורה מגדולים ועד קטנים בלי הוכרה משום סודות: ולזה כבר קדמון זקן הגאון הגדול החסיד מוהר"ר יוסף יעבץ זצ"ל ה"ה בחיבורו השלישי ספר אורח חיים ]! צ"ל אור החיים[ שנדפס פעם ראשון זה שני מאות שנים וכעת נדפס בלבוב במצות והוצאות הרבני המופלג ונגיד המפורסם כבוד עמ' 31 מוהר"ר יהודא ליב בהרב מוהר"ר שניאור זצ"ל מק"ק באלחוב וכעת הוא מספוני ונגידי ק"ק 128 לבוב הבירה .והספר זה הוא קטן הכמות ורב האיכות וכותב בפרק הראשון שבו בזה הלשון: להודיע כי אין ראוי לטייל בפרדס התורה עד ימלאה תורת ד' ואהבתו .גלוי וידוע לכל יודעי דת ודין כי חכמת תורתינו הקדושה תתחלק לשני חלקים .החלק האחד הוא ידיעת פירוש המצות על אמיתתם .והחלק השני המה סודות התורה .לכן צריך שיוקדם החלק הראשון לחלק השני קדימה הכרחיות כי אי אפשר 129להשיב החלק הב' אם לא קדם ידיעת החלק הראשון .וזה יתבאר מן השכל ומדברי חז"ל ומן הכתובים: אמנם מן השכל כי מלכותא דרקיע כעין מלכותא דארעא .וכמו שאיש כפרי לא ימצא חן בעיני המלך להיות מאנשי סודו .אם לא קדמו לו מעשים נרצים אל המלך .משל לאחד שהי' משרת בבית המלך באמונה במלאכתו חוטב עצים ושואב מים .וכראות המלך טוב לבבו יעליהו למדרגה גדולה מזו יותר .ממדרגה למדרגה עד יבחרהו המלך לשבת עמו ולהיות מאנשי סודו .מצד אשר נמצא נאמן וזריז בכל מלאכת המלך: כן הדבר בסודות התורה כי לא יזכה אליהם אם לא קדם לו מציאת חן בעיני מלך מלכי המלכים הקב"ה .מצד עשיית המצות בלב שלם מאהבה וידיעת תלמודים .וזה שאמר אדון הנביאים אם נא מצאתי חן בעיניך הודיעני ]נא[ את דרכיך 130.ומציאת החן הוא עשיית רצונו ית' בלב שלם כאמור ונח מצא חן בעיני ד' .וכתיב בתר"י אלה תולדות נח נח איש צדיק תמים הי' בדורותיו . והנה עמ' 32 מענותנותו של משה רבינו ע"ה שהזכיר מציאת חן בלשון מסופק אם נא מצאתי וכו' .והשם ית' השיבו בלשון ודאי כי מצאת חן בעיני .והחושב להגיע או להשיג ידיעת חלק הב’ קודם השגתו הא' גדול עונו מנשוא: כי אם המלך נתן לעבדיו שני ספרים .ואמר להם התבוננו בראשון כל תכלית ההבנה .והזהירם על כך באזהרות גדולות .ועל השני צוה השמרו לכם פתוח אותו ונגוע בקצהו עד אומרי אליכם פתחוהו והביננו 131בו .והם עשו להפך ושלחו יד באותו ספר השני והראשון הניחו בקרן זויות ולא ראוהו ולא ידעו מה הוא .אין ספק אלא שחייבו את ראשם למלך .כן אנחנו נצטווינו מפי ממ"ה הקב"ה להתבונן בתלמוד מצותיו ולמדתם אותם וכו' .ושננתם לבניך ודברת בם וכו' . ואחר זה אם נמצא חן בעיניו הוא יגלה לנו ענין הספר השני ואנחנו עושים להפך כי החלק אשר נצטוינו בו רחוק מכליותינו וממחשבותינו ומכש"ק .החלק השני אשר הוזהרנו עליו לבלתי נגוע בקצהו ואנחנו מתפקרים בו וחושבים מחשבות משכלינו הקל בלי שום תענית
.127לא מצאתי בתוספתא .בתלמוד ,חגיגה יג ע"א מצטטטים מספר בן סירא )ג ,יט( :במופלא ממך אל תדרוש ובמכוסה ממך אל תחקור במה שהורשית התבונן ואין לך עסק בנסתרות. .128יוסף יעבץ ,אור החיים ,לבוב תקנ"א .המחבר לא דייק בהעתקתו; רק שינויים משמעותיים יסומנו כאן. .129במקור במקום "אי אפשר" :מנוע. .130שמות לג:יג. .131במקור :והתבוננו.
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Gershon David Hundert ותפלה להש"ית' שיגלה לנו סודות כאשר עשה אדון הנביאים .ואמר אם נא מצאתי חן וגו' . 132 והמשל הזה לא בדיתיו מלבי כי מצאתיו לחכמים הקדושים ז"ל: נמצא לפי זה כי הדור הזה אשר חרבות שיניו ומאכלות מלתעותיו ואין חסד ואין דעת אלקים בארץ .ואין אדם אשר עושה מצוה לשמה כי אם להתגדל ולתפאר ואין אתנו יודע עד מה . לא שתא סדרי ולא תלתא ולא מסכתא ולא פסק כסדרו .אסור לנו להתבונן בסודות התורה . וחטאנו עם אבינו הראשון אשר נצטווה מכל עץ הגן אכל תאכל ומעץ הדעת וכו' .והוא שלח ידו בו הפך רצון קונו ונקנסה עליו עמ' 33 מיתה .כמו שנקנסה על הדור ]הזה[ כמה צרות קשות מן המות .ד' למען שמו יצילנו מהם. ומדברי חז"ל אע"פ שנראה מיותר כי כל התלמוד מלא מזה ומבואר לתינוקת של בית רבן . אחרי 133עתה עם הארץ המוכים בסנורי גאותם .בחושבם שהשיגו סודות התורה ותעלומותיה מבלי ריח תורה וטעם מצות אביא לך קצת דבריהם: אמרו 134ארבעה נכנסו לפרדס אלישע אחר ור' עקיבא ובן עזאי ובן זומא .אחר קצץ בנטיעות קראו עליו אל תתן את פיך לחטיא את בשרך .בן עזאי הציץ ונפגע קראו עליו דבש מצאת אכול דייך וגו' .בן זומא הציץ ומת קראו עליו יקר בעיני ד' המותה לחסידיו .ר' עקיבא נכנס בשלום ויצא בשלום קראו עליו הביאני המלך חדריו .ואף ר' עקיבא בקשו מלאכי השרת לדוחפו אמר להם הקב"ה הניחו לו לזקן זה ראוי להשתמש בכבודי: הנה רבותי וגאוני הם החסידים היראים את השם החרדים אל דברו כבר אתם רואים בעיניכם כי אלה הארבעה היו גדולי ישראל .חכמים אשר עמהם עוז ותושיה .ספרא וספרי וכולה תלמודא ואחרי כן ערבו אל לבם לגשת אל סודות התורה וקרה להם מה שקרה ולא נמלט מהם איש כי אם ר' עקיבא אשר למד משנה והרביץ תורה בישראל מ' שנה וגדלה נפשו בעיני ד' עד אשר אמר למלאכי השרת הניחו לו וכו': עוד אמרו 135על ר' אליעזר אשר רקא 136עליו טובינא דחכימי והי' מתקרי מריה דארעא דישראל לרוב חכמתו וחסידותו .ואמר לו ר' יוחנן תא ואגמרינך מעשה מרכבה ואמר אכתי לא קשאי אנכי .הנה כי אע"פ שהי' בתכלית השלימות עמ' 34 לא בטח בלבו ללמוד סודות התורה כי לא הי' זקן .כי סודות התורה אין ראוי להשתדל בהם כי אם החסידים הלומדים .המופלגים .כי הם כמו שנתחבר אל המלך ונכנס בחדריו .שאם לא יהיה ראוי ויבוא לחדר המלך דמו בראשו .כמו שנאמר פן יהרסו לראות 137אל ד' ונפל ממנו רב .ודבר הורה על זה מה שאמרו 138הניחו לו לזקן זה ראוי לו שישתמש בכבודי .דומה למה שאמר אם נא מצאתי חן בעיניך ואם תבקש בכל אלו הדברים תמצא כי לא לבד על ידיעת חלק הראשון היו מקפידים .כי גם על זקנה ושיבה וענוה יתירה הצריכה להם לחסידים הרוצים לבוא לסוד ד': ואוי להם לתרבות אנשים חטאים .שועלים קטנים מחבלים כרמים אשר לא טעמו טעם בשר משנה ותלמוד .ולא הריחו ריח יראת שמים .רק לחמו לחם רשע ויין חמס הגאווה שתו עד לשכרה .יען 139הכתובים די לנו מוסר מהאיש משה עניו מאוד אשר הסתיר פניו מהביט אל
.132המחבר דלג כאן על המשפט :אמרו ]חגיגה יג[ במופלא ממך אל תדרוש ובמכוסה ממך אל תחקור במה שהרשית התבונן ואל יהיה לך עסק בנסתרות. .133במקור :אחרי שרבים עתה )שמות ה:ה(. .134חגיגה יד ע"ב. .135כתובות מ ע"א. .136צ"ל קרא .137צ"ל פן יהרסו אל ד' לראות .138המחבר דלג כאן על המילים :במאמר הראשון. .139במקור :ומן.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów האלקים .ואמרו רז"ל 140בזכות ויסתר זכה לקלסתר שאמר אם נא מצאתי – ודוד ידיד השם אמר 141סוד ד' אל יריאיו 142ובריתו להודיעם .העיד על כל דברי כי לא יוודעו סודות התורה כי אם 143מפי הש"י .למאן די יצבא יודיעם כאומרו בי ד' יתן חכמה מפיו דעת ותבונה. וכבר נשלם החלק הראשון תהלה לאל .ע"כ דברי הרב ר' יוסף יעבץ בספרו אור החיים הנ"ל פרק ראשון .ובאם שירצה איזה קורא לקרות ספרו הנ"ל ימצא הרבה חקירות וביאורים בענין הנ"ל: והנה גם החכם ומחוקק בישראל השר דון יצחק אברבנאל כתב בראשית הקדמתו לחבורו הקטן עטרת זקנים שנדפס פעם ראשון בשנת שי"ז לפ"ק ופעם שנית בשנת תצ"ט לפ"ק באמשטרדם בזה הלשון: עמ' 35 כי שמעתי דבת רבים יודעי דת 144ומביני מדע חדשים וגם ישנים מוצאי דבת אנשים צדיקים וטובים זקני העם ושוטרין מתנבאים במחנה רואי פני המלך ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר . ויוצא דבתם רעה לאמור ברכו אלקים בלבבם ויחפאו אצילי ב"י דברים אשר לא כן אשר לא כדת שגו ברואה וימירו כבודם כבוד אלקים בתבנית אבן דומם נופך ספיר ויהלם .והוא עון פלילה יום תת ד’ ג"שם .פקו פלילה אשר כללה מן הגשמיות 145מה שכללה דברי בד' .ויאמרו איש אל אחיו מן הוא ואיזה הדום רגליו ספיר גזר"תם גזרו אומר עמדו רגליו ביום ההוא על מראה אבן ספיר דמות כסא בחשכה יתהלכו במהמורות בל יקומו .עזבו את ד' ותהי להם חזות הכל חזון נפרץ .ויקומו לצחק ויאכלו וישתו .ואולם בעבור זה בני מות המה נתחייבו כליה ממתים מחלד .ויקרא ד' אלקים ביום ההוא המותה לחסידיו בני תמותה .אם לא כי צורם הצור תמים פעלו הטה אוזן לשמוע אל הרנה ואל התפלה .וציר נאמן לשולחיו בכה ויתחנן לו . לא יומת איש ביום הזה הן עוד היום גדול ממותי תחלואים ימותו ועתה למה נמות לעיניך . ויעתר לו אלקים האריך אפו ביום ההוא .והי' ביום פקדו ספו תמו מן בלהות חזיונו ובאש ד' יבא ותאכל בקצה המחנה החטאים האלה בנפשותם .ע"כ דברי המחבר ע"ז הנ"ל: נחזור לענינינו ונבאר יותר סיבת ביטול תורה בלימוד ופלפולי הגמרא והפוסקים .יען שמאז ומקדם כשנתגלה הזוהר הקדוש כבר התחילו הרבה מהעצלים להתרשל מלעסוק במפרשי התורה בנגלה לנו מסיני בחוקותיה בדקדוקיה ופירושיה בהלכותיה עמ' 36 בע"פ איש מפי איש מאבותינו עד משה רבינו ע"ה אשר רחבה היא מן הים וארוכה מארץ מזה לזה .המתעצלים אינם מכניסים א"ע ללמוד התלמוד ומפרשיו ופלפוליו הגלוים וחריפים הצריכים איש מבין בלב פתוח כאשר חז"ל מחברי התלמוד הקדמונים והאחרונים נראה מחיבוריהם שהיו לבבם פתוחים כפתחו של אולם בתורתינו שבע"פ הק' ואיזה מבני עמינו אשר אין להם לב להבין עמקי התלמוד בהוראותיו בעסקי המצות וקיומם כדת התורה וחפיצים להראות עצמם להמון כתלמידי חכמים מפוארים ומשבחים בפני המון עם את גבוה לימוד חכמת הקבלה בסודות התורה רצים אחרי גדולי החסידים ללמוד ולשמוע מהם רזין וסתרי תורה אף שאין להם ידיעה שלימה בהגלויה אשר ממנה תוצאות חכמה להורים ומורים לנו הלכות פסוקות כמו הרבנים וגאוני ארץ שבכל קהלות ישראל רובם ככולם מבלים ימיהם בהתמדם בלימוד הלכות הגמרא ופוסקים קדמונים ואחרונים בכדי שידעו לשאל ולהשיב על שאלה שיזדמן לפניהם
.140ברכות ז ע"א. .141תהילים כה :יד. .142צ"ל ליראיו .143דלג כאן המחבר על המילים :לאשר קדם לו החלק הראשון ושלא יוודע כי כולם. .144במקור :דעת. .145במקור :גשמות.
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Gershon David Hundert ומהם יצאו טבעם בעולם בספרי שאלות ותשובות שכתבו הרבנים בעלי הוראות הנ"ל אחרי שפסקו הגאונים: וזולת אלו הרבה מהתלמידים שמו עיונם במקראות ואגדות התלמוד ביגיעת הרבה ושקידות גדולות חוזרים אחרי ספרי המחקרים החכמים הקדמונים שבדבריהם כולם מוסר במשל ומליצה בתוכחות מגולה ואלו הולכים בנתיבתם וחוזרים בעיירות כל קהילות ישראל ונשמעים קולם כשופר המחריד את העם לשמוע חכמה ומוסר השכל במשל ומליצה . ומהראוי היא להחזיק התלמידי חכמים כאלו הרבנים אב"ד הצדק וגם את המוכיחים או מגידי מישרים כאלו בכל מקום שהם נמצאים בקהלת ישראל לפרנסם מקופת הקהל והעדה . יצ"ו: עמ' 37 ובפרט בקהלות שיש להם בתי דינים מחוייבים כל בני ישראל עצמם להתמנות עליהם רב הגון לאב בית דין וב"ד צדק שידונו דין אמת עפ"י תורתינו הק' בנקוב להם שכרם מקופת העדה שלא ישאו פנים לשום אחד ולא גורו משום אחד .ואף שמצד הממשלה יר"ה יע"א ]יגן עליה אלהים[ אין כח ביד ב"ד ורב להזמין את איזה מבני עמינו למשפטם אך שמבואר בסיסטעם מהק’יר"ה שמותר לנו ולרבנינו לערוך משפטים לפניהם בתורת קאמפראמוסט ,היינו זבל"א וזבל"ב והרב הוא השלישי או הראש תמיד על שהוא התמנה בהסכמת כולם בודאי הוא מרוצה לכל העדה: וכן נעשה פה ק"ק באלחוב יע"א קיימו וקבלו על עצמם כל בני קהלתינו יצ"ו וחתמו כתב הרבנות לכבוד הרב המאוהג"ל הגאון מוהר"ר דוד יעקב נ"י בהרב הגאון המנוח באופנים אלו שכל אחד מבני קהלתינו יצ"ו מחוייב לעמוד בכח הזמנתו לפני ב"ד הצדק ולשפוט עם יהי' מי שיהי' בלי שום אפילאציע .ות"ל זה סוף שנה שניה הרב הנ"ל יושב בשלוה על כסאו ההוראה ואין אחד מעדתינו יצ"ו לערכאות לדון אף משפט הקל עם יהודי חבירו במשפטיהם .ואולי יתן ד' גם בלבם של כל בני גולה שארית ישראל שבקהלות מדינות אלו ויסכימו ליתן לכל רב ואב"ד שלהם תוקף ועוז לעשות משפט צדק לבני עמינו עפ"י דת תורתינו הק' וזאת לא לבד שיעלה לעזר מעט נגד גדירות וביטול משפטים אף יקויים מצות עשה .שופטים תתן לך וכו' 146.עפ"י עצמיכם ולא עפ"י שררות המושלים כאשר נהגו עד עתה מי שהרבה מוהר ומתן לשררה נתמנה לרב ומורה אף במעט הסכמות אנשי העדה . ולפעמים נתקבל אף שאינו הגון לאב"ד: עמ' 38 ובפרט כעת נטבע שיבוטל נתינת הגלגולת מראשי בני ישראל .ונתחדש נתינה מנירות שבת . ושוב לא יצטרכו שרי הממשלה להתמנות לנו ראשים היינו רעגירורש שהושיבו עלינו רק לבטחון בגביות מעות הגלגולת הנ"ל .וכשיבוטל הנתינה לא יתנו לנו ראשים .וישארו בני עמינו כצאן בלא רועה ח"ו .יעלה גלות זה מר מכולם .כאשר מדי יום ממש מתאמצים שונאי ישראל גוים עריצים מוצאים דבת רעות ושקרים הרבה על בני עמינו לפני שררות הממשלה בכדי לקעקע ביצת ישראל ולהפר מצות התורה והדת חו"ש .אשר זה כמה שנים היהודים אומללים מסוגרים או מוגבלים מאוראנדיש בכפרים ומחזיקי הרחיים והמכסים ומהרבה מארופיות הטובים .ואין מי יעמוד בעדינו שמו הגדול יעמוד לנו בעת צרה: ויתן ד' בלבם דכל בני גולה עדת ישראל מדינות אדונינו האדיר הק"ירה שיסכימו כולם כאחד לא לבד לבחור להם רב לאב"ד באופנים שבארתי לעיל .אף גם יתרצו ויחפוצו כולם כאחד לחזות מכל העדה אנשי חיל יראי אלקים אנשי אמת שונאי בצע ולבררם עפ"י רוב הסכמות העדה .שבעה אנשים .כאשר מקדמת דנא בכל קהלות ישראל התמנו מדי שנה שבעה טובי עיר עפ"י רוב דיעות והי' להם כח והרשאה מכל העדה לעשות בעסקי הקהל כישר בעיניהם לערוך את כל אחד .כפי משאת הונו מה שיש לו ליתן לכל מאה זה’ להצטרכות הקהלה יצ"ו – ולגבות ממנו .ולהוציאם להצטרכות הקהלה לבנות ולהרוס לנטוע .146דב' טז:יח.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów ולעקור וליתן מתנות כפי הבנתם למי שיסכימו ברוב דעתם לאיזה שררות מהמושלים עבור איזה השתדלות טובה לכלל הקהלה .הגם באם שיתן ד' שעה מוכשרה ויורשה לנו לעשות אסיפה גדולה מכלל הקהלות .שכעת אסרו לנו שרי הגובערוג יר"ה שלא נעשה מבני ישראל שום עמ' 39 אסיפה .ושלא יוצאו שום פרוטה מקופת הקהל על איזה משולחים לווינא או אף ללבוב . וכשיתמנו בקהלות שבעה טובי עיר .בודאי ימצאו תחבולה מובטחה להתיצב לנוסדו יחד הרוזנים אחד אחד מעיר ובהתאספם כולם בודאי יעלה ביניהם עצה מוצלחה בעצת ד’ שלעולם תעמוד לטובת כלל קהלות ישראל: ומובטחים יהיו שאם יעלה הסכמתם דכלל ישראל להתמנות עליהם רבנים ובתי דינים צדיקים עם מנהיגים וראשי עדה ישרים .ובזה יקויים מצות עשה מפורשה בתורה שופטים ושוטרים תתן לך בכל שעריך אשר ד' אלקיך נותן לך לרשתה .ופירשו רז"ל תתן לך עפ"י עצמך ובהסכמתך ולא .ובזכות זה גם יקויים בנו הברכה השיבה שופטים כבראשונה ויועציםעפ"י שררות המושלים .כבתחילה .ולא כאשר נהגו בני ישראל במדינת פולין מכמה מאות שנים ה ר בה מהם הרבו מוהר ומתן להשררות בכדי שיתמנו לרבנים כאשר כתב מזה הגאון הגדול הרב המופלג חכם הכולל מוהר"ר משה חאגיז ז"ל בספרו משנת חכמים 147שחיבר על מ"ח דברים שהתורה נקנית בהן וז"ל בחלק ראשון מעלה י"ז סימן ת"ה: ומה מאוד תמה אני ורעדה אזרתני איך ימלאום לבם של שום רב לקבל רבנות על פי ממון לשררה .דמלבד מה שאיסורו מבואר מצד הדת והשכל .בפרט אחרי שמעם וראותם מעשה שהי' בק"ק 148לבוב מהצוואה שעשה האב"ד הקדוש מוהר"ר חיים רייצלס זצ"ל בערב שבועות משנת דאשתקד זו שנת תפ"ח היינו פתח ד' אוצרו לקבל נשמת קדוש זה שמימות ר' עקיבא ועד עכשיו לא קם כמוהו .ויוצא ד' כלי זעמו .כי מלאכה היא לד' אלקים צבאות. בכללות ארץ פולין .שכך עלתה בימיהם וימינו .להיות צדיק יסוד עולם מקדש שם שמים ברבים .ולסבול כמה יסורין ועינויים עמ' 40 קשים כקדם מיתה ושרפה שגזרו עליו .והכל קבל עליו בשמחה .והתודה ברבים שמה שצוו לחתוך ידיו הי' מפני שסיפר מעותיו בידו לשררה לקבל הרבנות .ומה שצוו וגזרו לחתוך את לשונו הי' מקבל לעונש מפני שלמד לשון לאטייניש ושאר לשונות העמים .ומה שגזרו עליו לרצות 149את מוחו הי' מקבל עליו לעונש שהי' מדבר 150בדברי העולם ופוסק מדברי תורה . וכן נמי על מה שגזרו עליו להוציא את לבו והוא עודנו חי .כי שאר הגוף לא פלט ולפיכך הי' נדון להשרף .ולכן הי' מצווה לכל בני ישראל להתרחק מן השררות ומן המחלוקת .ומללמד את בניהם שום לשון מלשונות העמים .ושלא לקבל שום רבנות ע"י ממון: ואחר שראה את אחיו החסיד מוהר"ר יהושע זצ"ל שמת בבית האסורין שישב עמו ונגזר עליו לנקוב את ארכובי 151רגליו ולקושרם בזנבי הסוס כדי שילכו הלוך וסחוב שנגרר על כל אשפה וטיט .התפלל מנחה והצדיק עליו את הדין ככל האמור .ויותר מזה כמו שנראה מהצוואה שלו . ומסר עצמו לעינוי ולמיתה משונה ולשריפה כאמור .ויצאה נשמתו באחד .אשריו ואשרי חלקו שזכה לכך .ואוי לו לדור שכך עלה בימיו .כי בעונות הרבים הקול נשמע שיד פושעי ישראל 152 היתה במעל הזה .
.147ונדסבק תצ"ג. .148דלג כאן המחבר על המילים :לעמבורג הנקראת. .149במקור :לרצץ. .150במקור :מהרהר. .151במקור :עקובו. .152מכאן ,דברי דב בר.
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Gershon David Hundert ובהיותי בק"ק לבוב שמעתי מפי זקן אחד ר' מאיר שמו ז"ל .וסיפר לי איך שהלשינו לפני השררה היינו הסטאראסטי בלבוב איך שאמר הרב הקדוש הנ"ל על הסטאראסטי שהוא עני ודלת למי יכול לשבעו ולמלאות חסרונו בממון .ובשמעו השררה דברי הרב נעשה שונאו שנאת מות להרב ובסיבת זאת העלילו על אלו הרבנים הקדושים הנ"ל איך שהם החזירו מומר יהודי מדת נוצרי לדת יהודית .והביא את המומר והעמידו אותו לפני קהל יהודים ואלו הרבנים הנ"ל עמהם .ולא ידע המומר ולא יכול להכיר את הרבנים .ובראותם הרבנים שהמומר מוכחש בדבריו הכוזבים על הרבנים .והוא אינו מכירם .צווח ככרוכיא מלשון לאטיין פראטעסטר וכשמעו המומר את קול הרב תיכף רץ אליו ואמר עמ' 41 לפני כל הפריצים שהתאספו שמה בבית המשפט זה הוא הרב שהחזיר אותי לדת יהודית .ובסיבת 153 זה נגזרו עליהם מיתה .ומתו על קדושת שמו ית' בעו"ה כנ"ל: אשר ודאי על שמועה רעה כזו .מחוייבים אנו לקרוע סגור לבבינו הערל משמוע אל דבר ד' כי הוא יתברך היודע כמה חרה לי וכמה מהצער ויגון מר ורע נגע אל לבי מכח מעשה זה .ועל הכל דאין אני רואה בדורותינו דור יתם זה מי שיעמוד בפרץ לתקן בתיקון הראוי את הדבר הרע הזה . ולגזור ולהחרים בכל תוקף על כל ק"ק שבגולה בכל אשר צוותה התורה וצווי הקדוש הנזכר . ומי ראה כזאת ומי שמע כאלה ולא ירך לבבו .להיות מואס ברבנות כעין זה המביאו לידי נסיון כזו .על זאת ודאי תאבל הארץ .ויחרד כל לב על מה עשה ד' ככה לארץ הזאת .ומה יהי' באחריתינו בהמשכות הגלות המר הזה עד מתי ד' .כי אין מנחם ואין מנהל לנו .ואין לנו על מי להשען כי אם על אבינו שבשמים .הוא ברחמיו יעשה עמנו אות לטובה .למען שמו הגדול .ויקויים בנו מקרא שכתוב .ואשיבה שופטיך כבראשונה ויועציך כבתחילה: ולדבר הזה וכל כיוצא בו .שאני כותב במלאכה קטנה זו .יסלח ד' ויסלחו לי ארזי הלבנון חכמי רבני ארץ .כי לפניו ית' גלי דלא גבה לבי ולא רמו עיני וגו' .ואם דברתי עד הנה אינו אלא מדאגת לבי שת"ל ית' כיוון שאני מבחוץ אני רואה ושומע דברים אשר לא הייתי רוצה לשמוע בזילותייהו דרבנן ומחילול ד' ותורתו שנעשית שיחתן של ת"ח קלה בפי ההדיוטות ואין לי פה להשיב ולא מצח להרים ראש כנגדם .כי כל אלה הדברים מפיהם הם יוצאין . ולא ידעתי מה להשיב כי אין בפי מענה: יען רואה אנוכי רוח ד’ דבר במהרש"א ז"ל שכתב בשביעי דסוטה ז"ל על מה שכתב עמ' 42 ותו רבי אבוהו אימנו רבנן עליה לממניה ברישא וכו' .אחר שפירש ענין ענוותנותי' ד"ר אבוהו מאי הוא .סיים דבריו אבל ראיתי גודל הסיבה בזה .שהבעלי בתים הם הם הממנים ומבררים להם ראש כפי רצונם .לפי הנאות דכל אחד מהם .וביתר בממון .אבל מן הראוי שהלומדים והרבנים בכל עיר בעצמם .יבחרו להם איש ראוי להיות ראש ב"ד שלהם .כמו שהיתה בדורות הראשונים .כמו שמצאנו בהך עובדא לר' אבוהו דאימנו רבנן עליה לממניה ברישא וכו' .וכן בהך דהוריות דרבן גמליאל וב"ד מינו את ר' אבן חסמא ור"י בן גודגדא לראשים עכ"ל .ויבוא שלום וינוח על משכבותיו .דידע וראה שורש הדבר מכה זו המהלכה .לכך נשכבה בבשתינו .ותכסינו כלימתינו .ואוי נא לנו כי כך עלתה בימינו .המרחם הוא ירחם ויחוס על פלטתינו .וישקיף השקפה לטובה על דלותינו .כי אביט ואין עוזר ואין סומך מפלתינו ואין לנו על מי להשען כי אם על אבינו שבשמים .ויקויים בנו מקרא שכתוב ואשיבה שופטיך כבראשונה וגו' .ע"כ דברי הרב ר' משה חאגיז בעל המחבר ספר משנת חכמים: ועוד רעה גדולה מזו נתהווה .כעת מבני עמינו .איזה שלמדו מבחורי אשכנזים המגולחים . ומורגלים מנעוריהם בתאוות עה"ז .ומוותרים לעצמם כמה ממצות עשה ולא תעשה .שהרבה מהם נתערבו בגוים .ולמדו מהם בטול להכחיש הכל ובעוה"ר אלו פוקרים טפי ויותר
.153חוזר המחבר כאן לצטט ממשנת חכמים.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów מהצדוקים ובייתוסים שהיו בימי בית שני ונאדרו ונהרגו מן העולם בעת חורבנו .לכן אמרתי מהרואי לכתוב מה מידיעת האל מה שלקטתי מספרי חכמי הספרדיים המחקרים הקדושים: עמ' 43 ידיעת האל יתברך לא שלמה לאדם ידיעת מה ממהות וחכמות הבורא ב"ה .ולא השיג שום אחד מהמחקרים . הענינים הנעלמים .והגלוים על אמיתת ידיעתם .כמאמר הנביא ישעיהו ואל מי תדמיון אל ומה דמות תערכו לו .וכתוב עוד ואל מי תדמיוני ואשוה 154ואם איזו בקשו להשיב דבר אשר לא יושב אולת יחשב להם .ומחלוקותיהם בזה חטא הוא .כי מי יוכל להכריע ביניהם: וראוי לנו לחקור מקדם מהות נפשינו .אשר בקרבינו .טרם שנחקור לדעת מהות יוצרינו .וגם הוא מאמר הפלוסופים .דעו נפשיכם – ותדעו אלקיכם .ועוד אמרו אם הדברים יגעים בענין הנפש שניכרים לנו פעולותיה כ"ש בענין יוצרינו ית' שמו .שאי אפשר לשום אדם להשיג אפס קצת מפעולותיו ולזה אמרו תכלית שנדעך הוא שלא ידעך .וכן כתוב ומבשרי אחזה אלקים .155ופירושו כאשר גוייתינו הוא מארבעה יסודות אש רוח עפר מים .חלקו מעולם השפל .ונפשינו הוא רוחנו .וחלק אלקי ממעל .וכל פעולת אדם וטבעותיו ממנה .לזה מכנים את גוף אדם בשם עולם קטן .ומראים בחלקי גופו ובאדריו כל הדברים ממש הנמצאים בשמים ובארץ .היות שברא את האדם בדמותו ובצלמו כאשר השמים והארץ עם כל העולמות כולם המה גוף אחד .ואלקים ב"ה בהם נשמה .ומשגיח ופועל הכל בהם בטובעותיו .היות שאותיות אלקים ואותיות הטב"ע עולים בגימטריא אחד ומספרם פ"ו .כי אלקים נשמת עולם וטבעותיו הוא אחד קדמון ולא כמו שחושבים איזה פוקרים ימ"ש . ואומרים שטבעת העולם עמ' 44 פועלים בעצמם בלא משגיח חו"ש .זה שקר גמור וכל בקרתם בור רוקים .ואנחנו מאמינים בודאי בלי שום ספק .אחרי כל החקירות שעשינו בשכליות .לדעת את אלקי אבינו .כמצווה לנו דע את אלקי אביך .מצאנו שאלקים זה אשר ברא הכל הוא אחד .קדמון במצאותו בכל העולמות .ומחשיב בהשגחתו .להשפיע לכל שאר הנמצאים טובתו .כנאמר טוב ד' לכל שברא אותם לאות על אחדותו שנאמר ד' אחד .והחל חדשות שניכר חכמתו דכתיב ד' בחכמה יסד ארץ .ויצר יצירות לעד על גבורתו .שנאמר וגבורותיך יגידו: לכן צריכין אנו להאמין ולידע ידיעה בתורה בלי שום ספק ובתמים .שיש אלקים בעולם .והוא אחד ברוך בורא הכל את השמים ושמי שמים וכל צבאם .הארץ וכל אשר עליה .הימים וכל אשר בהם .והוא מחיה את הכל ברוב רחמיו וברוב חסדיו .ולא מטובו קדמו לו בריותיו .כי אם בטובו וחסדיו עליהם .כענין שנאמר טוב ד' לכל ורחמיו על כל מעשיו .ואומר זכור רחמיך וחסדיך כי מעולם המה .וכן הוא אומר מי הקדימני ואשלם .תחת כל השמים לי הוא .ואמרו חז"ל באגדה 156עתיד בת קול להיות מפוצצת בראשי ההרים ואומרת מה העל אל כל מי שפעל עם אל יבוא ויטול שכרו .ורוח הקודש אומר מי הקדמני ואשלם .מי קלס לפני עד שלא נתתי בו נשמה .מי אל לפני עד שלא נתתי לו בן זכר .מי עשה מזוזה לפני עד שלא נתתי לו בית .מי עשה מעקה לפני עד שלא נתתי לו בית וגג .מי עשה סוכה לפני עד שלא נתתי לו חצר .מי הניח לקט שכחה ופיאה עד שלא נתתי לו שדה .מי הפריש לפני תרומה ומעשר עד שלא נתתי עמ' 45
.154ישעיהו מ :י"ח ,כה. .155איוב י"ט:כ"ו –ומבשרי אחזה אלוה. .156מדרש תנחומא ,פרשת אמור ,סימן ז.
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Gershon David Hundert לו גורן .מי הפריש לפני קרבן עד שלא נתתי לו בהמה .עלי לשלם שכרי .למה תחת כל השמים לי הוא .שהכל שלי ומשל הוא נותן לי .ובכל מקום עלי לשלם שכרו .ואמרו עוד מאי דכתיב והאלקים מלכי מקדם פועל ישועות בקרב הארץ .שהקדים לי שכר פעולתו .עד שלא נבראתי . כיצד גן עדן נברא בשלישי בשבת ואדם בששי .הווי שהקדים לי שכר פעולתו .עד שלא נבראתי .וכן הוא אומר הנה שכרו אתו ופעולתו לפניו .כלומר שהקדים שכרו של אדם עד שלא עשה הפעולה .הואיל והקביל ברא את השמים וכל צבאם .הארץ וכל אשר עליה .הימים וכל אשר בהם .כענין שנאמר בראשית ברא אלקים את השמים ואת הארץ .א"כ צריכין אנו להאמין .שהוא לבדו ברא את העולם בחכמתו וברצונו .ומחדש בכל יום תמיד מעשה בראשית . כענין שנאמר אתה הוא ד' לבדיך .אתה עשית את השמים שמי השמים וכל צבאם הארץ וכל אשר עליה .הימים וכל אשר בהם ואתה מחיה את כולם וצבא השמים לך משתחוים ואין אלקים אחר זולתו .כענין שנאמר אתם עדי נאום ד' ועבדי אשר בחרתי למען תדעו ותאמינו לי ותבינו כי אני הוא .לפני לא נוצר אל ואחרי לא יהי' .ואומר למען תדעו ממזרח שמש וממערב כי אפס בלעדי אני ד' ואין עוד .יוצר אור ובורא חושךעושה שלום ובורא רע אני ד' עושה כל אלה .וכן הוא אומר כה אמר ד' גואלך ויוצרך מבטן אנוכי האל עושה כל נוטה שמים לבדי רוקע הארץ מאתי .ואמרו חכמים באגדה .מי אתי כתוב שלא תאמר מיכאל מותח מכאן וגבריאל מכאן שעדיין לא נבראו המלאכים .לכך עמ' 46 כתוב מאתי כלומר מי הוא שותף עמי במעשה בראשית והלא לא נבראו המלאכים עדיין: לכן צריכין אנו להאמין ולעמוד על הודאי כי אלקים זה אשר ברא הכל הוא אחד ושמו אחד . כענין שנאמר שמע ישראל ד' אלקינו ד' אחד .והשמיעה הזאת היא קבלת הלב שנכוון בלבנו . ונקבל בשכלינו .שהקב"ה נמצא תמיד .כלומר הי' והווה ויהי' הי' קודם שנברא העולם .והווה תמיד בעוד שהעולם מתקיים .ויהי' אחרי שישוב העולם לתוהו ובוהו .וכתוב אלקינו לומר שצריכין אנו לקבל עלינו את אלוהותו .ואחר כתוב אחד לומר שצריכין אנו להאמין שהוא אחד ומיוחד .בכל מין יחוד בלא שיתרץ ובלא דמיון .ולא יצטרך אחר עמו ל… .וגם הוא אחד בלי שום הרכבה משום מעשה .ובלי שום גזירה .כי כל גזירותיו נגזרות וידועות וגלויות לפניו . ואין נמצא בעולם כאחדותו .וכן הזהירנו המקום בתורתו הקדושה שמחוייבים אנו לידע ולבחון בשכלינו את יחוד שמו ית' .כמו שנאמר וידעתם היום והשבות אל לבבך כי ד' הוא האלקים בשמים ממעל ועל הארץ מתחת אין עוד .וכן הוא אומר אתה הראית לדעת .כי ד' הוא האלקים בשמים ממעל ועל הארץ מתחת אין עוד: והוא ברוך הוא ראשון בלי ראשית וקדמון לא קדמו אחר .כמו שנאמר מעונה אלקי קדם .והוא ברוך הוא אחרון בלי אחרית וסוף .שנאמר אני ד' ראשון ואת אחרונים אני הוא .ואומר אני ראשון ואני אחרון ואין בלעדי מושיע והוא חי וקיים לעולמים ולנצח נצחים .ואין חקר ואין מספר לשנותיו .כענין שנאמר הן אל שגיא ולא נדע מספר שניו ולא חקר .ואומר ואתה הוא ושנותיך עמ' 47 וצריכין אנו לידע ולהבין שאין לבורא יתברך לא גוף .ולא גשם ותמונה ולא שום דמות .כמו שנאמר קול דברים אתם שומעים ותמונה אינכם רואים זולתו קול .ועוד כתוב ונשמרתם מאוד לנפשותיכם כי לא ראיתם כל תמונה .ורצה לומר בזה הזהרו במחשבותיכם ורעיוניכם .שלא תמשילוהו לבורא ית' לשום תבנית .ולא תדמוהו לשום דמות ודמיון .מפני שלא הרגשתם בחוש הראות .ומה דמות תערכו לו .והרבה מזה כתבתי לעיל .ע"כ צריך האיש הנולד להטריח נפשו ולהשתדל בכל מאמצי כחו לידע את בוראו מצד סימני מעשיו .ולא מצד הוייתו ועצם כבודו .כי מצד פעולותיו קרוב הוא מכל קרוב .ורחוק רחוק הוא מאוד מצד דמות עצם כבודו ועצמותו .מפני שאי אפשר למצוא ולדעת אותו בזה האופן מצד 157
.157תהילים עד :יב.
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The Introduction to Divre binah by Dov Ber of Bolechów הוייתו .בלי ספק נמצא ונרגיש אותו מצד פעולותיו ואז יהי' קרוב לנו כאלו לא נפרד ממנו .וזה על דרך משל: במי שטרח להשיג השמש מצד אורו נצוצו וזריחתו ושקיעתו ועלייתו וירידתו ונטיותו זה בודאי יעמוד על מצאותו .ומשתמש לאורו ונהנה מזיבו ומגיע אל הענין המבוקש ממנו .אבל מי שיטריח לחקור על מהותו ולמצאו מצד יגולו ומכווין בענין להביט אל עין השמש בלי ספק תכהינה עינו ויפסיד אורם ולא יהנה מאור השמש .וכל טרדתו לבטלה .וכן יקרה לנו כשנשתדל להשיג מצאות הבורא יתברך .מצד אותות פעולותיו וחכמתו ויכולתו בכל הברואים ונשכיל ונבין בענינו .אז יאיר שכליות בידיעתו ונשיג ממנו כל מה שיש בבת שכליות להשיג .אבל אם נטריד ונטריח שכליות להשיג הוויתו ועצם כבודו ולדמותו ולהמשילו במחשבותינו לשים גוף וגשם בעולם נפסיד שכלינו עמ' 48 והכרתינו ולא נשיג בהם שום דבר .כמו שיקרה לזה שרוצה להביט אל עין השמש וזהרו כדי להשיג מהותו .ולכן צריכין אנו להזהר מאוד בענין זה ולזכרו חקירתינו על מצאות ד' ואחדותו ובקדמותו לדעת כי הוא יתברך איננו גוף ולא כח בגוף ואי אפשר להמשילו לשום דבר:
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AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 271–303 © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009 doi:10.1017/S036400940999002X
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B ABYLONIAN TANNAITIC T RADITIONS : T HE C ASE OF TANNA D’B EI S HMUEL by
Barak Shlomo Cohen* I The question of the existence of Babylonian rabbinic traditions dating from the mishnaic period (pre-220 CE) has not been thoroughly and methodically addressed in the scholarly literature. Historians have pointed out that several rabbis were active in Babylonia during the mishnaic period; some researchers have even suggested that in this early period, organized rabbinic intellectual activity already existed in cities such as Nisibis,1 Nehardea,2 and Husal.3,4 However, a systematic examination of halakhot whose provenance was Babylonia *I wish to express my gratitude to the Taylor-Schechter Geniza Research Unit of Cambridge University for making available to me their collection of Cairo Geniza fragments. I would especially like to thank Dr. Ben Outhwaite and Dr. Friedrich Niessen of the Taylor-Schechter Unit for their time and assistance. I would also like to thank the Beit Shalom-Kyoto Foundation at Bar-Ilan University for its generous support. 1. See S. Funk, Die Juden in Babylonien 200–500 (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1902), 1:7; J. Bruell, Mavo HaMishnah (Frankfurt, 1836; repr., Jerusalem: Makor, 1970), 30; W. Bacher, Agadot Hatannaim, vol. I, part II (Yaffo: Eitan & Shoshani, 1932), 102; I. Halevy, Dorot Harishonim, (Berlin and Vienna: B. Hertz, 1933), 5:681–88; J. Obermeyer, Die Landschaft Babylonien im Zeitalter des Talmuds und des Gaonats (Frankfurt: I. Kauffmann, 1929), 129; A. Hyman, Toldot Tannaim Veamoraim, (London: Express, 1910), 1:425; A. Neubauer, La Géographie Du Talmud (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967), 370; M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 416; I. Gafni, Yehudei Bavel bitkufat Hatalmud (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Letoldot Israel, 1991), 77; A. Oppenheimer, “HaMercaz BeNetzivin Bitkufat Hamishnah,” in Umma Vetoldoteha, ed. M. Stern (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Letoldot Israel, 1983), 1:41–150; idem, Babylonia Judaica in the Talmudic Period (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1983), 331; idem, “Nehardea unetzivim Batkufa Hapartit,” Bar Ilan Annual 26–27 (1995): 117–30; idem, “Batei Midrashot BeBavel Lifnei Hatimat HaMishnah,” in Yeshivot UBatei Midrashot, ed. I. Etkes (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Letoldot Israel, 2006), 20–21. 2. On rabbinic activity in Nehardea during the mishnaic period, see M. D. Yudolowitz, Hayyei HaYehudim Bizman Hatalmud: Sefer Nehardea (Jerusalem: Makor, 1971), 30–31; Oppenheimer, Babylonia Judaica, 287–91; idem, “Batei Midrashot,” 23–28. 3. Scholars have posited that Husal was a center of rabbinic activity after the Bar Kokhba revolt. According to this theory, it was in Husal that the Babylonian literary corpus of halakhic midrashim from the academy of R. Ishmael (D’Bei R. Ishmael) was created. See Halevy, Dorot Harishonim, 5:181–93, 678–81; J. N. Epstein, Mevo’ot Lesifrut Hatannaim (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Magness Press, 1957), 168–71; J. Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 1:128–35, 179–87; E. Z. Melamed, “Hilkhot Eretz Yisrael Beor Hatnnaim BeBavel,” in Iyyunim Besifrut Hatalmud
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Barak Shlomo Cohen in the mishnaic period has yet to be undertaken. Most prior attempts to uncover Babylonian rabbinic activity from this period have focused on a few traditions ascribed to Tannaim who had a known connection to Babylonia, such as R. Judah b. Bathyra,5 R. Nathan,6 and R. Hiyya7 (the “Babylonians,” as they are sometimes called in rabbinic literature).8,9 In light of the absence of a systematic study of Babylonian pre-talmudic rabbinic traditions, Gafni came to the following conclusion, one that this paper will support with solid evidence: Even if there was a composed Babylonian halakhic tradition that originated before the end of the mishnaic period, it seems that the Palestinian tradition was accepted as the main tradition of the Babylonian sages already at the beginning of the amoraic period. Moreover, when this tradition penetrated into the Babylonian centers of learning, it seems to have completely pushed
(Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1986), 292. For a reexamination of this evidence and this supposition, see n. 9 herein. 4. Nineteenth-century historians and maskilim tended to push back the development of centers of Torah learning in Babylonia to the beginning of the talmudic period. In contrast, historians who identified with the emerging Orthodox movement tended to stake the opposite claim, namely, that a center of Torah learning in Babylonia was operative from as early as the Second Temple period, and perhaps even earlier. It is clear that both of these tendencies can be tied to the political and religious leanings of the authors, and to the struggle between those historians and intellectuals who placed themselves in the Haskalah Reform camp and those from the traditionalist Orthodox camp. See I. Gafni, “Ben Bavel LeEretz Yisrael: Olam Hatalmud Veimutim Ideologim Behistoriagraphia Shel Haet Hachadashah,” Zion 82 (1997): 213–42. 5. See, e.g., Halevy, Dorot Harishonim, 5:677. 6. See Funk, Die Juden in Babylonien, 1:ii n. 2; Halevy, Dorot Harishonim, 6:178–210; Epstein, Mevo’ot Lesifrut hatannaim, 168–71; Melamed, “Hilkhot Eretz Yisrael Beor Hatnnaim BeBavel,” 292. 7. See, e.g., Hyman, Toldot Tannaim Veamoraim, 1:425. 8. See Gafni, Yehudei Bavel bitkufat Hatalmud, 85 n. 144, 87 n. 154. A further attestation to R. Natan’s Babylonian origins is the fact that R. Sherira Gaon calls R. Natan’s mishnah “matnita deBavlai”; see R. Sherira Gaon, Iggeret R. Sherira Gaon, ed. B. M. Levine (Jerusalem: Makor, 1972), French ascension, 41. The appellation haBavli is attached to R. Hiyya in three passages in the Bavli: Eruvin 90a, Shabbat 60b, and Keritot 8a. For a collection of passages that testify to R. Hiyya’s Babylonian origins and his migration to Israel at a late stage in his life, see O. Meir, R. Yehudah Hanasi: D’yukano shel Manhig Bemasoret Eretz Yisrael UBavel (Tel Aviv: Hakibuts Hameukhad, 1999), 69–70. 9. Most of the evidence that scholars have claimed connects halakhic traditions with Babylonia in the mishnaic period (concerning these three sages) is based on preconceived notions or on tendentious interpretations of sources, as was noted by Gafni, Yehudei Bavel bitkufat Hatalmud, 86–91. Doubtful also are the attempts of several scholars (see Halevy, Dorot Harishonim, 678–79; Epstein, Mevo’ot Lesifrut Hatannaim, 518–20) to identify parts of the Ishmaelian midrashim (such as R. Yonatan, R. Oshaya) as Babylonian. See Gafni, Yehudei Bavel bitkufat Hatalmud, 50–54; M. Kahana, “Maalat Yeshivat Eretz-Yisrael BaMekhilta Devarim,” Tarbiz 72 (1993): 512–13 nn. 50–54; idem, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, ed. S. Safrai, Z. Safrai, J. Schwartz, and P. Tomson, part 2 (Van Gorcum: Assen, 2006), 62–63; Oppenheimer, “Batei Midrashot,” 27–28. I wish to thank Professor D. Henshke for directing my attention to Kahana’s remarks on this issue.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions aside other traditions, causing them to become almost untraceable…. This subject still awaits thorough treatment by talmudic researchers, and at this stage we can discuss only the amount of rabbinic intellectual activity that existed in Babylonia before the talmudic period began…. Reason dictates that after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar-Kochba revolt, as sages began to arrive in Babylonia, the basic foundations of the rabbinic activity were established.10
There are some fifty instances in the two Talmuds in which a baraita’ is ascribed to Shmuel through the appellation Tanna D’Bei Shmuel, a “Tanna from the House of Shmuel” (henceforth, TDBS). These compose one of the largest collections of baraitot identified by scholars as representative of pre-talmudic Babylonian halakhah, and as such, they serve as perhaps the best focal point for a study of the issue at hand. In our discussion, we will critically examine the nature of the halakhah presented in this corpus, focusing especially on its connection with Palestinian halakhah. We will reexamine the claim that the content of the halakhot found in TDBS baraitot is Babylonian in origin. As we shall see, most of these halakhot are actually anchored in earlier, tannaitic, Palestinian halakhah. This conclusion will allow us to reopen the larger question of the existence of pre-talmudic Babylonian halakhic traditions and cast some doubt on many scholarly theories—theories that were often not based on a thorough examination of the evidence. In the end, we will have a greater awareness and appreciation of the tremendous influence that Palestinian tannaitic traditions had on Babylonian rabbinic study, even in the early talmudic period. II Shmuel and his influence on Babylonian talmudic halakhah have been the focal points of many scholarly studies.11 In contrast, few studies have focused on the nature and origin of the fifty or so tannaitic traditions ascribed to his 10. Gafni, Yehudei Bavel bitkufat Hatalmud, 90–91. 11. Listed here are just a few of the main studies that deal with this issue: D. Hoffmann, Mar Samuel: Rector der Jüdischen Akademie zu Nehardea in Babylonien: Lebensbild eines Talmudisch, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Leiner, 1873); S. Fessler, Mar Samuel: der bedeutendste Amora: Rektor der Juedischen Akademie zu Nehardia in Babylonien (Halle: E. Franck, 1879); A. Krochmal, “Toldot Shmuel Yarhinai,” Hechalutz 1 (1852): 66–89 (repr., Jerusalem, 1972); H. Graetz, History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1893), 2:518–30; I. Weiss, Dor Dor Vedorshav (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Ziv, 1962), 3:146–56; P. R. Weis, “The Controversies of Rab and Samuel and the Tosefta,” Journal of Semitic Studies 3 (1958): 288–97; D. Gordis, “Al Parshanut Rav Ushmuel Lamishnah Ubaraita: Part One: Nimukei Halakhah Veokimtaot” (PhD diss, Jewish Theological Seminary, 1980); Sh. Shilo, Dina Demalkhuta Dina (Jerusalem: Defus Academi, 1975), 4–43; B. M. Bokser, Samuel’s Commentary on the Mishna: Its Nature, Forms, and Content (Leiden: Brill, 1975); idem, Post-Mishnaic Judaism in Transition (Samuel on Berakhot and the Beginnings of Gemara) (Chico, CA, 1980); E. Halivni, Kelalei Pesak Hahalakhah Batalmud (Lod, Haberman Institute, 1999), 84–98, 107; R. Kalmin, “Changing Amoraic Attitudes toward the Authority and Statements of Rav and Shmuel: A Study of the Talmud as a Historical Source,” Hebrew Union College Annual 63 (1992): 83–106. I will make reference to a few other studies later.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen “academy” in the two Talmuds,12 traditions that are introduced by the terms Tanna D’Bei Shmuel, Tannei Shmuel, or Matnita DeShmuel. While some general remarks have been made about these traditions, it is difficult to glean from these generalities anything specific concerning their origin or nature. David Tzvi Hoffman described this collection of baraitot as “oral traditions from different teachers.”13 So, too, Jacob N. Epstein described the collection as “mostly derived from various ancient sources.”14 According to David Goodblatt, the source of this collection of baraitot remains a mystery.15 Solomon Funk16 and Abraham Goldberg,17 who delved deeper into these traditions, tended to see them as a reflection of Babylonian tannaitic traditions stemming from the pre-talmudic era. Some of these studies even ascribed an interpretive agenda to these baraitot—they were intended to adapt Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s Mishnah, which was, of course, Palestinian in origin, to prior Babylonian tradition. Goldberg, who dedicated an entire study to this topic, came to the following conclusion: 12. This count is based on Epstein’s lists, which he based mainly on the textual evidence gleaned from medieval commentaries; see J. N. Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2000), 1:213–14. It should be noted that Epstein was concerned with the entire corpus of tannaitic traditions, and not merely the tannaitic traditions in TDBS baraitot. The following is the full list: Shabbat 12a (manuscripts), 35b (manuscripts), 54a, 131b; Eruvin 70b, 96a, 99b; Pesahim 3a, 39b (three instances); Rosh Hashanah 16a (manuscripts); Yoma 70a; Sukkah 56b; Betzah 29a; Megillah 4b (manuscripts); 23a (manuscripts), 30a; Moed Katan 18b; Gittin 24b (manuscripts), 66a (manuscripts), 70b (manuscripts); and Bava Metzia 111a (manuscripts). Bacher compiled a list of twelve traditions (W. Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens [Leipzig: Fock, 1914], 225), but this list was based solely on the printed edition of the Talmud. In the Yerushalmi, there are more than twenty cases of baraitot that are introduced with the term Tannei Shmuel or Matnita DeShmuel. The following is a full list of these cases: Berakhot 1:1, 4b; 1:1, 4d; Sheviit 5:1, 35d; Kilayim 8:2, 31c; Shabbat 1:3, 3b (based on the Leiden manuscript); 2:1, 4d; 3:3, 6a; 8:4, 11b; 9:3, 12a; 11:1, 13a; 17:3, 16b; Eruvin 2:5, 20b; 6:7, 23d; 6:8, 24a; Pesahim 9:6, 37a; Rosh Hashanah 1:1, 56b; Betzah 2:5, 61c; Taanit 3:9, 66d; Megillah 1:1, 70b; 2:1, 73a; 3:4, 74b; 4:4, 75b; Hagigah 1:1, 76a; and 1:1, 80b. Concerning the parallel meaning of the terms Tanne Shmuel in the Yerushalmi and Tanna D’Bei Shmuel in the Bavli, see Hoffman, Mar Samuel, 25 n. 3; Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens, 208; idem, “Mishnayot Hitzoniyot Umidrashei Tannaim,” Jerusalem 10 (1914), 68–70; Epstein, Mevo’ot Lesifrut Hatannaim, 212. My analysis of this material serves to strengthen the assumption of the essential identity between the two terms. 13. Hoffman, Mar Samuel, 24. It is difficult to glean any concrete information on our subject from Krochmal’s general remarks; see Krochmal, “Toldot Shmuel Yarhinai,” 78. 14. Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 213. Rashi (Betzah 29a, s.v. tanna d’bei) explained in a similar fashion. 15. See D. Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sassanian Babylonia (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 134. The TDBS baraitot did not merit any discussion in Bokser’s two books (see n. 11 herein) concerning Shmuel’s commentary on tannaitic sources. This absence was noted by E. Segal in his review of Bokser’s book, “Hamaavar Mitkufat HaMishnah el Tekufat Haamoraim,” Tarbiz 51 (1982): 317. 16. Funk, Die Juden in Babylonien, 62. Funk did not present any proof for this claim. 17. A. Goldberg, “Shimusho Shel Rava Ba Tosefta Ube’Tanna D’Bei Shmuel’ LaPerush Hamishnah,” Tarbiz 40 (1971): 144–77. I. H. Weiss, Dor Dor Vedorshav, 150, provided a later date for the editing of this collection and ascribed it to Shmuel: “The great Amoraim of the first generation compiled collections of mishnahs entitled ‘baraitot’ or ‘toseftot’… He too (Shmuel, B.C.) compiled a collection of baraitot and they are introduced with the phrase: Tanna D’Bei Shmuel.”
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions What emerges from our study is that the main function of “Tanna D’Bei Shmuel ” is to adapt the Mishnah, in any place possible, to the Babylonian halakhic tradition, even if this requires a forced interpretation of the Mishnah or a slight emendation of its language.18
Goldberg reached this conclusion based on one source alone (Bavli Yoma 70a), in which he found a similarity in halakhah between a baraita’ ascribed to TDBS and tannaitic traditions in the Yerushalmi that he ascribed to Tanna D’Bei R. Yishmael. According to Goldberg, R. Yishmael’s students settled in Babylonia after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and were the source for the Babylonian halakhic tradition found in the TDBS baraita’ in the Bavli.19 Even if we accept Goldberg’s conclusion, in reality, all it does is demonstrate a connection between the halakhah as represented in TDBS sources and a Palestinian halakhic tradition, albeit one that differs from the Mishnah. “This is not a case of ‘Babylonian tradition’ versus ‘Palestinian tradition’ but rather two different Palestinian traditions (the Mishnah and the Tanna D’Bei R. Yishmael baraita, B.C.) that arrived in Babylonia with a gap of only one generation between them.”20 Indeed, as we shall see, there is a deep connection between the baraitot ascribed to TDBS in the Bavli (and to Tannei Shmuel in the Yerushalmi) and other Palestinian tannaitic halakhic traditions, and Goldberg’s work only serves to further demonstrate this. Hanokh Albeck raised a similar claim with regard to the Babylonian provenance of these halakhot, but from a different perspective. Albeck’s research into the TDBS baraitot is part of his larger study of collections of baraitot ascribed to the Amoraim who transmitted them in the two Talmuds (such as Tannei X or “A tanna taught in front of Rabbi X”).21 Based on a few external literary characteristics shared by these collections of baraitot, Albeck concluded as follows, The baraitot transmitted by Amoraim differ from the baraitot that were transmitted anonymously in that the former are usually short, contain no disputes and do not mention the name of any tanna, whereas the latter are longer, contain disputes and mention the names of Tannaim. The content and form of the baraitot transmitted by Amoraim testify that they were later creations and that they were transmitted according to the name of the amora who taught them or arranged them, whereas the anonymously transmitted baraitot 18. Goldberg, “Shimusho Shel Rava Ba Tosefta,” 149–50. 19. Goldberg, “Shimusho Shel Rava Ba Tosefta,” 148. The theory that there was a mass movement of rabbis from Palestine to Babylonia after the Bar Kokhba revolt can be found in a number of studies. Within the framework of this theory, the claim is made that among these rabbis were the students of R. Ishmael. See Halevy, Dorot Harishonim, 674ff.; Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia, 1:141–44; Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 510–11. This theory was rejected because of a lack of supporting evidence; see Gafni, Yehudei Bavel bitkufat Hatalmud, 82ff.; Kahana, “Maalat Yeshivat Eretz-Yisrael,” 512 n. 50–52. 20. Gafni, Yehudei Bavel bitkufat Hatalmud, 91 n. 175. 21. H. Albeck, Mehkarim Babraita Ubatosefta Veyachasan LaTalmud (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kuk, 1970), 15–43; idem, Mavo LaTalmudim (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1969), 28–39.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen were older, and they begin with, “Our Rabbis taught,” or just “It was taught.”22
Albeck’s claim that these baraitot are “new, and their origin is not from Tannaim in the mishnaic period”23 is based on general evidence gleaned from an examination of a broad literary corpus of halakhot, and not on a specific examination of the halakhot represented in Shmuel’s baraitot. In about 70 percent of the cases, the halakhah presented in the TDBS baraitot reflects Palestinian tannaitic halakhah,24 even if the literary style of these baraitot (as Albeck noted) or linguistic expression (see below)25 is reflective of late Tannaim or early Amoraim. This finding makes it difficult to accept the claim that the content of the halakhot in TDBS baraitot is late in origin. Rather, we should distinguish between their language and style, which may reflect later editing, and their halakhic content, which is usually faithful to and reflective of earlier Palestinian tannaitic tradition.26 We should note that the same phenomenon exists in general with regard to many baraitot that appear in the Bavli —they are faithful representations of Palestinian halakhah as found in the Tosefta and the Yerushalmi, even though there are significant stylistic and linguistic differences between them and their corresponding Palestinian versions, differences whose origins mostly lie in the editorial activity of later Babylonian tradents.27 We will discuss this phenomenon at greater length.28 22. Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 28. 23. Albeck, Mehkarim Babaraita, 32. 24. See n. 33 herein and the examples discussed in the body of this work. 25. For a concrete example of an expression found in a TDBS baraita’ that is common among late Tannaim or early Amoraim in Palestine and Babylonia, see the discussion below, near note 67, in regard to the term “Leilei” ( )ליליin the TDBS baraita’ (replacing “Or” [ ]אורin the Mishnah). For another such example in which an expression found in a TDBS baraita’ seems to be a later emendation, even though the content of the baraita’ is reflective of tannaitic Palestinian tradition, see S. Friedman, Tosefta Atikta: Masekhet Pesah Rishon (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003), 230–38. 26. This distinction was drawn by Albeck himself; see his Mavo LaTalmudim, 71–72. 27. There are numerous examples of this phenomenon that have been already noted by talmudic scholars. See M. Moreshet, “Habaraitot Haivriot BaBavli Enan Lashon Hakhamim Aleph,” in Sefer Zikharon LeHanoch Yalon (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1974), 275–314; S. Friedman, Talmud Arukh: Perek Hasokher et Haomanin, Hanusah (Jerusalem: JTS Press, 1997), 12 n. 38; idem, “Habaraitot BaTalmud HaBavli Veyahasan Lemakbiloteihen ShebaTosefta,” in Atara Lehayyim— Mehkarim Besifrut Hatalmudit Veharabanit Likhvod Professor Hayyim Zalman Dimitrovsky, ed. D. Boyarin, M. Hirshman, S. Friedman, M. Shmeltzer, and I. Ta-Shma (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2000), 166–96, esp. 195–96 and the bibliography, n. 112; B. Katzoff, “Yahas Habaraitot BaTosefta Lemakbiloteihen Hatalmudiyot: Iyyun Mehudash Leor Masekhet Berakhot,” Hebrew Union College Annual 75 (2004): 1–24 (Hebrew section). Also taken into account must be the possibility that the TDBS baraitot reflect an early Babylonian tradition, one that is parallel to the Palestinian tannaitic tradition. See, e.g., Y. Elman, Authority and Tradition: Toseftan Baraitot in Talmudic Babylonia (Hoboken, NJ: Yeshiva University Press, 1994), 277–81; cf. Friedman, Tosefta Atikta: Masekhet Pesah Rishon, 195 n. 112. According to this theory, the TDBS baraitot reflect a Palestinian halakhic tradition that stems from an alternative source, similar to the theory suggested by Goldberg, which I have described earlier. 28. There are scholars who have cast doubt on the reliability of the attribution of statements to specific Amoraim in the Bavli. See William Scott Green, “What’s in a Name? The Problematic of
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions There are twenty-five instances in which the Bavli ascribes a baraita’ to Tanna/Tannu + [D]’Bei Shmuel (including instances found only in manuscripts).29 Because the term Bei Rav X in the Bavli refers to the academy headed by Rabbi X,30 the phrase Tanna D’Bei Shmuel should be understood as baraitot taught in the name of Shmuel.31 In more than twenty instances in the Yerushalmi, these baraitot are transmitted with the term Tannei Shmuel or Matnita DeShmuel.32 In thirty of these fifty or so baraitot, the halakhic content is parallel to Palestinian halakhic traditions found in the Tosefta and in the Yerushalmi (about 70 percent of the overall cases).33
Rabbinic ‘Biography,’” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), 77–96; Jacob Neusner, “Evaluating the Attributions of Sayings to Named Sages in the Rabbinic Literature,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 26 (1995): 93–111. Other scholars, myself among them, do not cast blanket doubt on the accuracy of all such attributions, but rather accept their accuracy unless there are specific reasons not to. Recent research into the Bavli that has focused on issues such as the chronology of the Babylonian sages, the existence of historical layers within sugyot, the Bavli’s terminology, the hierarchical relationship between its sages, the study patterns of the Babylonian Amoraim, and a variety of other such topics has tended to support the general reliability of the attribution of statements to Amoraim in the Talmud, although one must still, of course, be cautious in accepting any given attribution. For a survey of some important studies on this issue, see Y. Elman, “How Should a Talmudic Intellectual History Be Written? A Response to David Kraemer’s Responses,” Jewish Quarterly Review 89 (1999): 378. To Elman’s article, we should add A. Cohen, “Bikoret Hilkhatit Leumat Bikoret Sifrutit Besugyot Hatalmud,” Asufot 3 (1989): 346 n. 75; Richard Kalmin, “Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity as a Source for Historical Study,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Neusner and Alan J. Avery-Peck (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 187–99; Y. Kelman, “Haokimta Haamorait ‘Hakha Bemai Askinan,’ Hamityaheset Lemekorot Hatannaim—Tiva, Ofya Vetzurata” (PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2002), 353–54; A. Cohen, “Was Age the Decisive Criterion of Subordination among the Amoraim?” Jewish Quarterly Review 92 (2002): 289 n. 35; D. Halivni, “Iyyunim Behithavut HaTalmud,” Sidra 20 (2005): 69–70; B. Cohen, “Rav Sheshet Leumat Rav Nahman: Shtei Shitot Parshaniyot Lemekorot Tannaim,” Hebrew Union College Annual 76 (2005): 32; idem, “Rami ber Hama Leumat Rava: Analogiot Parshaniot uPsikatiot Batalmud.” Dine Israel 25 (2008): 184 n. 155; idem, “Nigudim Bedarkhei Halimmud shel Amoraei Nehardea Haaharonim,” Hebrew Union College Annual 78 (forthcoming). 29. The following is the full list: Shabbat 12a (manuscripts), 35b (manuscripts), 54a, 131b; Eruvin 70b, 96a, 99b; Pesahim 3a, 39b (three times); Rosh Hashanah 16a (manuscripts); Yoma 70a; Sukkah 56b; Betzah 29a; Megillah 4b (manuscripts), 23a (manuscripts), 30a; Moed Katan 18b; Gittin 24b (manuscripts); 66a (manuscripts), 70b (manuscripts); Bava Metzia 111b (manuscripts). 30. For a discussion of this term, see Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sassanian Babylonia, 149–51; I Gafni, “Hearot Lemaamaro shel Goodblatt,” Zion 46 (1981): 54; J. Rubenstein, “The Rise of the Babylonian Rabbinic Academy—A Reexamination of the Talmudic Evidence,” Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 1 (2002): 56 n. 6. 31. R. Sherira Gaon, in his talmudic chronology, calls the collection “Baraita D’Bei [Mar (absent in Oxford II)] Shmuel ”; see R. Sherira Gaon, Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon, 47. Rashi calls this collection “The Tosefta that Shmuel Arranged”; see Rashi, Betzah 29a s.v. tanna d’bei. 32. For a discussion concerning the essential similarity between the different technical terms found in the two Talmuds and their reference to the same collection of baraitot ascribed to Shmuel, see n. 12 herein. A list of the appearance of these terms in the Yerushalmi can also be found there. 33. The following is a complete list of cases in which TDBS baraitot have a parallel in Palestinian tannaitic literature. Bavli: Shabbat 12a (see Yerushalmi Shabbat 6:2, 8b; Tosefta Shabbat 1:2
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Barak Shlomo Cohen With the exception of one case,34 there are no Palestinian tannaitic traditions that parallel the other TDBS traditions, meaning these traditions neither contradict Palestinian sources nor are affirmed by them. We will examine this through a number of representative examples, culled from both Talmuds.
(1) Bavli Eruvin 89a–b Mishnah:35 All the roofs of a town are considered to be a single domain, provided no roof is ten handbreadths higher or lower [than the neighboring roof], the words of Rabbi Meir. The sages say: each one is its own domain. Gemara: (1) It was stated: Rav said: They may carry only within four cubits, and Shmuel said: It is permitted to carry throughout its area….36 (2) It taught in the mishnah: The sages say: each one is its own domain. (3) This goes well according to Shmuel but it is a difficult for Rav! (4) They said in the House of Rav in the name of Rav: [The mishnah means that] one may not carry an object two cubits on one roof and another two cubits on an adjacent roof. (5) [Is this so?] 37 But didn’t R. Elazar say, “When we were in Babylonia we used to say: The House of Rav in the name of Rav said: ‘They may carry in it only within four cubits,’ whereas those of the House of Shmuel (D’Bei
[ed. Lieberman, 3]; and S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, Seder Moed [New York, 1962], 3:9); Shabbat 35b (see Tosefta Sukkah 4:12 [ed. Lieberman, 274–75]; S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 4:894); Shabbat 131b (see D. Henshke, “Tekiat Shofar Beshabbat,” Sidra 8 [1992], 24–25); Eruvin 70b (see Y. Dinnur, Hiddushei HaRitzad, Seder Moed [Jerusalem, 1981], 1:125); Eruvin 96a; Eruvin 89b (see below inside, near footnote n. 35); Pesahim 3a (see below inside, near footnote n. 66); Pesahim 39a (three times) (see Friedman, n. 25 herein); Yoma 70a (see Goldberg, n. 17 herein); Rosh Hashanah 16a (see below inside, near footnote n. 54); Sukkah 56b (see Tosefta Sukkah 4:24 [ed. Lieberman, 277]); Megillah 4b (see Yerushalmi Megillah 1:1, 70b); Moed Katan 18b (see Tosefta Moed Katan 1:10 [ed. Lieberman, 367]; and S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 5:1237]; Gittin 66a (see Yerushalmi Gittin 3:1, 44c); Bava Metzia 111b; Zevahim 12a (see Yerushalmi Shabbat 19:5, 17b). Yerushalmi: Berakhot 1:1, 2b (see L. Ginzberg, Perushim Vehidushim BaYerushalmi [New York, 1941], 1:22– 23); Kilayim 8:2, 31c (see below inside, near footnote n. 82); Shabbat 3:3, 6a (see Bavli Shabbat 40a); Shabbat 8:4, 11b (see Tosefta Shabbat 8:19 [ed. Lieberman, 33]; and Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens, 68 n. 3); Shabbat 19.3, 12a (see below inside, near footnote n. 89); Shabbat 11:1, 13a (see Tosefta Shabbat 10:1 [ed. Lieberman, 41]); Pesahim 9:6, 36a (see Tosefta Pesahim 9:9 [ed. Lieberman, 192]); Megillah 3:4, 74b (see Tosefta Megillah 3:1 [ed. Lieberman, 353]; and Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 5:1165]; Hagigah 1:1, 90b (see Bavli Moed Katan 4a). To this list, we should add Yerushalmi Berakhot 4:1, 7c (see Epstein [n. 12 herein], 891–92). 34. Bavli Shabbat 54a. This source presents a tannaitic tradition that seems to contradict a halakhah found in the Tosefta. For further analysis, see A. Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah: Masekhet Shabbat (Jerusalem: JTS Press, 1976), 93. 35. The Mishnah, here and in subsequent passages, is quoted from the Kaufman manuscript. 36. This debate between Rav and Shmuel appears also in Yerushalmi Eruvin 9:2, 25c. 37. The part in the brackets is added based on Munich 95, Oxford Opp. ADD. Fol. 23, and Vatican 109.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions Shmuel) taught, ‘they have use only of their own roof.’” (6) What does it mean, “they have use only of their own roof?” Is it not that they are permitted to carry throughout its entire area? (7) Does this have greater force than our Mishnah which we have explained to mean, “That one must not carry an object two cubits on one roof and another two cubits on an adjacent roof,” so too here [we can explain], two cubits on one roof and two cubits on the other.
In section 5, R. Elazar (b. Pedat), a Palestinian Amora of Babylonian origin and a student of Rav and Shmuel,38 presents a tannaitic tradition from the House of Shmuel through use of the words “Those of the House of Shmuel [D’Bei Shmuel] taught [tannu],” where the verb tannu appears after the expression “[of] the house of Shmuel.”39 This expression, parallel to the expression Tanna D’Bei Shmuel,40 appears one other time in the Bavli,41 where it is also employed by an Amora contemporary with “those of the house of Shmuel”—R. Nahman (b. Yaakov), who cites it in front of his student, Rava.42 In contrast, when fourth-generation and later Amoraim (Abbaye, Rava, R. Papa, and Ravina)43 cite baraitot ascribed to Shmuel, they do not use this phrase but rather the more typical Tannei D’Bei Shmuel. In other words, Amoraim chronologically closer to Shmuel44 do not cite a collection of baraitot that they refer to as Tannei D’Bei Shmuel, but rather use traditions ascribed to the members of Shmuel’s house.45 Indeed, it is likely that “those of the House of Shmuel” is not a technical phrase but rather is firsthand testimony of R. Elazar (or R. Nahman) concerning sages from his own generation. 38. See Z. Frankel, Mavo HaYerushalmi (Breslau: Shlater, 1870; facsimile edition: Jerusalem: Omanim, 1967), 111b; Hyman. Toldot Tannaim Veamoraim, 1:192; Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 224. 39. In the Bavli, the term “Be [Rav] X ” refers to the yeshiva or academy that was headed by X; see n. 30 herein. 40. See Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens, 225, n. 10; Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sassanian Babylonia, 132 and n. 86. 41. Eruvin 70b. 42. R. Sherira Gaon identifies R. Nahman as Shmuel’s student (Iggeret R. Sherira Gaon, 82) but this claim raises a chronological difficulty. For a discussion of this issue, see A. Cohen, Ravina Vehakhmei Doro: Iyyunim Beseder Hazemanim shel Amoraim Aharonim BeBavel (Ramat-Gan:Bar-Ilan University Press, 2001), 74 n. 46; B. Cohen, “Yeshivot Mekomiot BeBavel Betekufat HaTalmud,” Zion 70 (2005): 449 n. 11; B. S. Cohen, “‘May You Live to One Hundred and Twenty’: The Extraordinary LifeSpan of Several Babylonian Amoraim according to Rashi,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 10 (2007): 231–33. In any case, the period in which R. Nahman was active, the last half of the third century and the first half of the fourth century, accords with the period of “those of the house of Shmuel,” to whom his comments relate. 43. Abbaye: Shabbat 54a; Betzah 29a. Rava: Rosh Hashanah 16a (see below inside, near footnote n. 54); Yoma 70a; Sukkah 56b; Megillah 23a; Bava Metzia 111b. Rav Papa: Zevahim 12a. Ravina: Pesahim 39b (in this passage, Ravina comes into contact with R. Aha the son of Rava, meaning that this is Ravina the colleague of R. Ashi [see Cohen, Ravina Vehakhmei Doro, 232]). 44. Concerning the dating of R. Nahman and the question of whether he was a student of Shmuel, see n. 42 herein. 45. Bacher understands the expression “those of the house of Shmuel” as referring to “reciters” who were active in Shmuel’s academy and collected baraitot; see Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens, 225 n. 10.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen The word tannu functions here as a verb and not a technical literary term.46 In sum, only from the fourth generation47 of Amoraim onward did this collection of baraitot become a collection of halakhot that received the appellation Tanna D’Bei Shmuel. The content of the baraita’ ascribed to the House of Shmuel (“they have use only of their own roof”) accurately reflects the most straightforward interpretation of the sages’ opinion in the Mishnah. According to the simple meaning of this mishnah, R. Meir considers all the roofs of the city to be one domain, and therefore allows one to carry vessels from one roof to another roof,48 as long as those vessels are on the roof at the beginning of the Sabbath and the height of the roof is ten handbreadths. In contrast, the other sages view each roof as a separate entity and therefore do not allow one to carry from one roof to another.49 Rav further limits the sages’ opinion, interpreting their statement to mean that one can only carry within a radius of four cubits on any given roof. Rashi explains that according to Rav, “since the rabbis hold that each [roof] is its own domain and each roof is open to one another—each [roof] causes the other to be prohibited, for each is considered a domain completely open to another domain into which it would be forbidden to carry.”50 In contrast, Shmuel, who holds that one can carry within the entire area of any given roof, remains closer to the simple interpretation of the sages’ opinion in the mishnah. Shmuel’s own opinion is identical to that of the tannaitic tradition preserved in the baraita’ ascribed to “those of the House of Shmuel.”51 The similarity between the mishnah’s halakhah, stating that “each one is its own domain,” and Shmuel’s baraita’, claiming that “they have use only of their own roof,” is also confirmed by the attempt of the anonymous voice in sections 5 and 6 (the stam)52 to reject Rav’s interpretation of the mishnah through the use of Shmuel’s baraita’, and in section 7 to resolve 46. Concerning the interpretation of the term tannei/tannu to mean “quote,” “recite,” or “review,” see W. Bacher, Die Exegetische Terminologie der Jüdischen Traditionsliteratur (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1899), 238; J. Levy, Wörterbuch über die Talmuds und Midraschim (Darmstadt: Harz, 1963), 4:653; M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Pardes, 1971), 1681; M. Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan and Baltimore: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 1218–19. 47. See n. 43 herein. 48. See Tosefta Eruvin 7:12 (ed. Lieberman, 131). 49. See H. Albeck, Seder Moed: Mefurash Perush Hadash im Mevo’ot Hosafot Vehashlamot (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1952), 119–20; S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 3:448–49; Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah: Masekhet Eruvin (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1976), 253–55; see also S. Krauss, Kadmoniyot HaTalmud, vol. I, part 2 (Berlin and Vienna: Moriah, 1934), 417. 50. Rashi, s.v. ele be’arba amot. 51. The stam (the anonymous voice in the Bavli) connects the dispute between Rav and Shmuel with the question of whether to apply a legal concept called “[fictionally] extend its walls (god asik mehitzata).” However, Moscovitz demonstrated that this legal fiction is not actually present in tannaitic sources in Talmudic Reasoning (From Casuistics to Conceptualization) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 187–88. 52. See D. Halivni, Makorot Umasorot, Eruvin VePesahim (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1982), 232–33.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions Rav’s opinion by using the same forced interpretation to Shmuel’s baraita’ that he used when solving the difficulty on Rav brought directly from the mishnah (section 4).53 In sum, the D’Bei Shmuel tannu baraita’ transmits the same content as the mishnah’s halakhah but in language different from that found in the Mishnah itself. The content of the baraita’ does not differ from the simple, unforced interpretation of the sages’ opinion in the mishnah. The halakhic similarity between these two sources provided the stam (the anonymous voice in the Bavli) with a source with which to reject Rav’s more difficult interpretation of the mishnah. (2) Bavli Rosh Hashanah 16a Mishnah: At four set times the world is judged: on Pesah. in respect of the produce; on Atzeret (Shavuot) in respect of the fruits of the tree; on Rosh Hashanah all the people of the world pass before Him like the sons of Meron, as it says, “He who fashions the hearts of them all, who discerns all their doings” (Psalms 33:15); and on the H.ag (Sukkot) they are judged in respect of rain. Gemara: Whose opinion is that in our mishnah? Rava54 said: This Tanna [of our Mishnah] is the Tanna D’Bei Shmuel, since in the House of Shmuel55 it was taught: “At four set times the world is judged, on Pesah. in respect of the produce, on Atzeret (Shavuot) in respect of the fruits of the tree, on the H.ag (Sukkot) they are judged in respect of rain, and man is judged on Rosh Hashanah and his judgment is sealed on Yom Hakkipurim.” And when they taught our mishnah—[it referred to] the beginning of judgment.
In three other places in the Bavli, Rava explains that the halakhah of a mishnah accords with a baraita’ attributed to TDBS,56 as he does here in Rosh Hashanah.57 To limit the scope of our discussion, we will focus on the information 53. See the parallel in the Yerushalmi (above, n. 36), where a difficulty against Rav is raised from the following mishnah (Eruvin 9:2). Like the Bavli, the Yerushalmi also has great difficulty in explaining Rav’s opinion. 54. Munich 140 reads “Ravina.” It seems that the reading “Rava” should be preferred because Rava is the Amora who customarily quotes TDBS baraitot as an explanation of the Mishnah. Concerning this tendency of Rava, see Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens, 225; Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 213–14; Goldberg, “Shimusho Shel Rava Ba Tosefta,” 144–77. 55. “Tanna D’Bei Shmuel” is the version found in Cambridge T-S F1(2)43 (R. Shmuel), Leningrad-Antonin 502, London Harl. 5508 (400), Munich 95, JTS Rab. 108 (EMC 319), JTS Rab. 218 (EMC 270), and Oxford Opp. Add. Fol 23. This is also the version found in the commentary of R. Hananel; see D. Metzger, ed., Perushei Rabbenu Hananel bar Hushiel LaTalmud (Jerusalem: Vagshal, 1994), 38. In contrast, London Or. 5558A/23, Munich 140, and JTS Rab. 1608 (ENA 850) all read “Tanna D’Bei R. Yishmael.” Concerning the preference of the reading “Tanna D’Bei Shmuel,” see Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 213; Albeck, Mehkarim Babraita UbaTosefta, 45.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen found within the TDBS baraita’ itself, and not on Rava’s interpretation of the baraita’, which attempts to draw a parallel between the baraita’ and the mishnah at hand. Shmuel’s baraita’ can be separated into two parts. The first part lists three “set times” in which the world is judged: in respect of produce, the fruit of the tree, and water. This section is identical to the halakhic content of the Mishnah, and also to R. Judah’s opinion in a baraita’ found in the Tosefta quoted below (and in a parallel in the Bavli)58 and to an anonymous baraita’ brought in the Yerushalmi (1:3, 57a).59 The second part of the baraita’ contains some information not found in the Mishnah, namely, that human beings are judged on Rosh Hashanah and that their judgment is sealed on Yom Kippur. Significantly, this same opinion is found in Tosefta Rosh Hashanah 1:13 (ed. Lieberman, p. 308): All are judged on Rosh Hashanah and their decree is sealed on Yom Hakippurim, the words of R. Meir. R. Judah says: All are judged on Rosh Hashanah and each and everyone’s decree is sealed in its time: on Pesah. in respect of the produce; on Atzeret (Shavuot) in respect of the fruits of the tree; on Sukkot in respect of rain and each man’s decree is sealed on Yom Hakippurim. R. Yose says: man is judged every day, as it says, “You inspect him every morning” (Job 7:18).
Despite their dispute, both R. Meir and R. Judah agree that a man is judged on Rosh Hashanah and that his decree is sealed on Yom Hakippurim, as is found in the second half of the TDBS baraita’.60 Shmuel’s opinion is in complete agreement with that of R. Judah’s from the Tosefta, which is also found in the parallel version in the Bavli. It is clear, therefore, that in this case, both parts of the TDBS baraita’ have parallels in Palestinian tannaitic literature. (3) Bavli Shabbat 12a Mishnah: A tailor must not go out with his needle near nightfall lest he forget and go out [after the Sabbath has begun]. Nor a scribe with his quill. And one 56. Bavli Megillah 27a; Sukkah 56b; Bava Metzia 111b (based on manuscript evidence; see Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 213–14). 57. In another instance (Bavli Sukkah 56b), Rava challenges R. Judah’s opinion based on a tradition found in a TDBS baraita’. 58. Rosh Hashanah 16a. Concerning the connection between Rava and the TDBS baraitot, see n. 54 herein. 59. See A. Goldberg, “Al Shtei Hamishnayot Harishonot shel Masekhet Rosh Hashanah,” Tarbiz 29 (1952): 326 n. 1. Goldberg, basing his comments on the printed edition, treats this case as a Tanna D’Bei R. Yishmael baraita’ (See n. 55 herein). 60. See R. David Pardo, Hasdei David (Jerusalem: Vagshal, 1994), 2:399, s.v. hakol nidonin; R. Yehezkel Avramsky, Tosefta im Perush Hazon Yehezkel, vol. 2, Seder Moed (Jerusalem, 2000), 10–11, s.v. hakol nidonin beR”H; see also J. Tabory, Moadei Yisrael Bitekufat HaMishnah VehaTalmud (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2000), 220.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions may not search his garments [for lice or fleas], nor read by the light of a lamp. Gemara: Tanna D’Bei Shmuel:61 A man may go out with his tefillin on the eve of Sabbath near nightfall ()עם חשיכה. What’s the reason? Because Rabbah bar R. Huna said: One must check his tefillin every hour, kal vehomer, from [the High Priest’s] diadem. If in the case of the diadem, which contains the Divine Name only once, yet the Torah said, “And it shall always be on his forehead” (Exodus 28:38)—[which means] that he should not divert his mind from it, then with the tefillin, which contain the Divine Name many times, how much more so! Therefore he will remember [that they are on his head and he will not go out with them on Shabbat].
Shmuel’s baraita’ allows one to go out while wearing tefillin close to nightfall on Friday eve. He is not concerned “lest the tefillin stay on his head once it is already dark,” which would be a transgression of the prohibition of carrying in the public domain on the Sabbath.62 The Bavli explains this opinion by citing an amoraic statement according to which “one must check his tefillin every hour … therefore he will remember.” Shmuel’s baraita’ also appears in Yerushalmi Shabbat 6:2, 8b: One may go out63 with tefillin on the eve of Shabbat near nightfall, but one may not go out with a nailed sandal on the eve of Shabbat near nightfall. What is the difference between the two? This one it is his custom to remove, and this one it is not his custom to remove.
According to the Yerushalmi, one is allowed to wear tefillin close to sunset on Friday evening because that is the time of day when people would always remove their tefillin after having worn them all day, as was the custom in those times. Because the tefillin would normally be removed at that time, there was no great concern that he would forget and leave them on and carry them in the public domain on the Sabbath.64 The same halakhah also appears in Tosefta Shabbat 1:11 (ed. Lieberman, p. 3): “They may go out with tefillin near nightfall. 61. This is the version found in JTS ENA 2069.22; R. Hananel (see D. Metzger, ed., Perushei Rabbenu Hananel bar Hushiel LaTalmud [Jerusalem: Vagshal, 1995], 14; Sefer Haitim, ed. Y. Shor [Kraków: Mekizei-Nirdamim, 1903], 7); Tosafot, Menahot 36b, s.v. i’ kasavar; and in the writings of other rishonim. In contrast, Munich 95, Oxford Opp. Add. Fol. 23, Vatican 127, and the printed editions read Tanna D’Bei R. Yishmael. Concerning the preference of the reading Tanna D’Bei Shmuel, see Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 213; S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kiftshuta, 3: 9. 62. Rashi s.v. im hashekhah. 63. As is well known, the Yerushalmi often does not employ technical terms to introduce tannaitic traditions. See S. Lieberman, Al HeYerushalmi (Jerusalem: Darom, 1929), 29; idem, “Talmuda shel Kesarin,” Musaf Tarbiz 2 (1931): 19; Albeck, Mehkarim Babaraita Ubatosefta, 4; Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 21; B. Katzoff, Hayahas ben HaTosefta VehaYerushalmi Lamasekhet Shabbat (PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2004), 297–99. 64. The P’nei Moshe, s.v. velo haishinan, explains, “since it is customary to remove tefillin at nightfall, he won’t forget them [and carry them into the public domain].” See also Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah, 13.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen And they may read the Holy Scriptures near nightfall, but they may not read them on the Sabbath eve itself.” Lieberman notes the similarity between the two baraitot, “This baraita (from the Tosefta, B.C.) is brought on Bavli Shabbat 12a in the name of Tanei [D’Bei] Shmuel.” Lieberman even explains the two sources in an identical fashion: There is no doubt that in Palestinian terminology “ ”עם חשיכהmeans close to nightfall… . Here they taught “ ”עם חשיכהwhich means before they lit the Sabbath candles. At that time they would remove their tefillin, and the baraita teaches us that it is permitted to go out with tefillin, to the courtyard and to the public domain, meaning that it is permitted to wear tefillin until right before nightfall, similar to “reading the Holy Scriptures” mentioned immediately after, and there is no fear lest he go out with them to the public domain after dark.65
Like the cases discussed earlier, this case demonstrates the connection between Shmuel’s baraita’ in the Bavli and the Palestinian tannaitic tradition. (4) Bavli Pesahim 2a–3a Mishnah: At the light [or] of the fourteenth [of Nissan] they check for leaven with the light of the candle. Gemara: What is “at the light”? R. Huna says, “At twilight” [naghei]. And R. Judah says, “At night” [leilei]. Come and hear, the House of Shmuel taught (Tanna D’Bei Shmuel):66 On the night [leilei] of the fourteenth they check for leaven with the light of the candle. Therefore, “at the light” refers to “at night.” Rather … all agree that “at the light” refers to “at night,” and they don’t disagree, rather one says according to [the typical way of saying things in] his place and the other according to [the typical way of saying things in] his place. In Rav’s place the call it “twilight” [naghei] and in R. Judah’s place they call it “night” [leilei].
On the exact correspondence between the halakhah in Shmuel’s baraita’ and that found in the mishnah, Shamma Friedman writes, “Shmuel’s baraita is nothing but the language of our mishnah, with one small change, ‘night’ (leilei) instead of ‘light’ (or).”67 Shmuel’s baraita’ is presented by the stammaitic editors68 as decisive proof that or in the mishnah refers to night (as is the opinion of R. Judah), and
65. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 3:9; see also Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah, 13. 66. Sasson-Luntzer is the only manuscript that reads D’Bei R. Yishmael. 67. S. Friedman, “Lashon Hamoadim (I): ‘Or Learba Asar,’” in Mehkarim Batalmud Ubamidrash, ed. M. Bar-Asher, J. Levinson, and B. Lifshitz (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2005), 495. The expression or learba asar from the Mishnah also appears in several parallel passages; see Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, Bo 17 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 22); Tosefta Pesahim 1:1 (ed. Lieberman, 140). 68. On the late dating of this sugya, see the note 69 below.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions this after nine other proofs failed.69 Indeed, it is indisputable that the meanings of the two expressions are identical.70 There is no doubt that or in rabbinic Hebrew means “night.” Nevertheless, whereas J. N. Epstein claims that the two different expressions, or and leilei, stem from two parallel tannaitic sources,71 Friedman views Shmuel’s leilei as a later revision of the earlier or. He writes, “‘or l …’ is the earlier version, as opposed to ‘leilei’ [which is] a later version, and an expression more commonly found in the words of later Tannaim and even early Amoraim in both Palestine and Babylonia.”72 In any case, even if we accept Friedman’s opinion that the expression in Shmuel’s baraita’ is a later revision of the word or in the Mishnah, the halakhic content found in the TDBS baraita’ is again identical to the Palestinian halakhic tradition. (5) Yerushalmi Shabbat 3:4, 6a73 Mishnah: It once happened that the people of Tiberias conducted a pipe of cold water through an aqueduct of hot springs. The sages said to them: if this happened on the Sabbath, it is like hot water heated on the Sabbath, which is forbidden both for washing and for drinking. If on a festival, it is like water heated on a festival, which is forbidden for washing but permitted for drinking. Gemara: Hot water heated on a festival, and similarly hot water heated on the eve of the Sabbath for the Sabbath: Rav and Shmuel, one says: “One may use it to wash his face, hands and legs,” and the other says, “One may use it to wash his limbs, one limb at a time.” And we do not know which one said this and which one said this. From that which Shmuel taught (tannei): “One may use 69. According to D. Halivni, Makorot Umasorot: Seder Moed, Eruvin VePesahim (Jerusalem: JTS Press, 1982), 376, the stam did not originally use the TDBS at the outset as a “conclusive proof,” because the editors of the sugya were familiar with another version of the TDBS baraita’, a version that was the same as the language of the mishnah (or learba asar), as well as the baraitot in the Tosefta and in the Mekhilta de Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (see n. 67 herein). Were we to accept Halivni’s theory, our claim here, concerning the connection between Shmuel’s baraita’ and the Palestinian tannaitic tradition, would be strengthened. Nevertheless, Albeck, Mavo LaMishnah (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik-Dvir, 1959), 173 n. 31, identified the opening sugya of Pesah as a “saboraic” sugya. According to Albeck, the multiplicity of rejected proofs can be explained by the desire of the editors to exhaust all possibilities of explaining or as “evening,” until the final proof could be brought from Shmuel’s baraita’. Concerning the identification of this sugya as saboraic, see A. Weiss, Hayetzirah shel HaSavoraim: (Helkam Beyetzirat HaTalmud) (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1953), 12, n. 22. On the characteristics of the saboraic literature in the Bavli, see A. Cohen, “The Saboraic Halakhah in Light of bKiddushin 2a–3b and the Geonic Tradition,” Diné Israel 24 (2007): 161–214. 70. Albeck, Mavo LaMishnah, 173 n. 31; see also Epstein, Mevo’ot Lesifrut Hatannaim, 352–54; Friedman “Leshon Hamoadim,” 475. 71. Epstein, Mevo’ot Lesifrut Hatannaim, 236. 72. According to Friedman, “Leshon Hamoadim,” 509, the earlier expression or learba asar was replaced as a result of interpretive concerns. Friedman writes, “The idiomatic style ‘or learba asa’ and phrases similar to it were perceived by late Tannaim and early Amoraim as a style that required explanation, and some even saw fit to replace them with more easily understood expressions.” 73. The text of the Yerushalmi here and in subsequent passages is based on the Leiden manuscript.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen it to wash his face, hands, and legs,” it can be concluded that Rav was the one who said, “One may use it to wash his limbs, one limb at a time.”
In this parallel, Shmuel’s baraita’ is introduced with the term Tannei Shmuel, a term parallel to Tanna D’Bei Shmuel74 found elsewhere in the Bavli. This baraita’ was used by the editor(s) of the sugya in the reconstruction of the halakhic opinions of Rav and Shmuel,75 under the assumption that Shmuel’s opinion is the same as that found in a baraita’ transmitted under his name.76 The same opinion is ascribed to Shmuel in Bavli Shabbat 40a: “It was stated: Hot water that was heated up on the eve of the Sabbath: Rav says, ‘On the next day one may use it to wash one’s whole body, one limb at a time,’ and Shmuel says, ‘They only allowed one to wash one’s face, hands and legs.’”77 The mishnah prohibits washing (on the Sabbath) with water that has been heated on the Sabbath because this is like cooking, which is prohibited.78 In contrast, the dispute between Rav and Shmuel relates to the question of the use of hot water heated on the eve of the Sabbath. As stated, the opinion of Shmuel matches that found in the baraita’ transmitted under his name, “Shmuel taught: One may use it to wash his face, hands and legs.” This halakhah has a precise parallel in Tosefta Betzah 2:10 (ed. Lieberman, pp. 288–89):79 One may not rinse with hot water heated on the festival, and there is no need to say [that this is prohibited] on the Sabbath. But on the Sabbath one may wash his face, hands and feet with water that was heated on the eve of the Sabbath, 74. See n. 12 herein. 75. Concerning sugyot in which the Yerushalmi transmits amoraic statements without certainty of their attribution, see Frankel, Mavo HaYerushalmi, 38b; Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens, 548–65; D. Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 147 n. 24; Cohen, Ravina, 239 n. 30; Y. Sussman, “‘Torah Shebe’al Peah’ Pshutah Kemashma’a—Koho shel Kotzo Shel Yod,” Mehkarei Talmud (2005), 3: 270–71 n. 38a. We should note that this phenomenon is especially prevalent in the Bavli with regard to disputes between Rav and Shmuel on matters of Aggadah. The Bavli uses the phrase, “Rav and Shmuel dispute the matter, one says … and one says …” See Cohen, Ravina, 233 n. 1. 76. I. Francus, ed., Talmud Yerushalmi: Masekhet Betzah im Perush Ehad Hakadmonim Rabbenu Elazar Azkari Baal Sefer Haredim (New York: JTS Press, 1995), 151, s.v. min mah detanei. The assumption that Shmuel’s own opinions are identical to those found in his baraitot is common in both Talmuds. For a detailed analysis of the relationship between Shmuel and TDBS baraitot, see the addendum at the end of this essay. 77. See also Yafeh Enayim, s.v. hamin shehuchmu; B. Ratner, Ahavat Tzion VeYerushalayim: Masekhet Shabbat (Jerusalem: Makhon Muzal Me’esh, 1967), 50; I. Francus, Mehkarim Beharkavah shel Masekhet Betzah ShebaTalmud HaBavli Ubedarkei Arikhatah (PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1961), 242–43. 78. In contrast to Bavli Shabbat 39b, which connects the explanation with the prohibition of “covering [food to keep it warm],” the context of this mishnah in Chapter 3 and its explanation in the Yerushalmi show that the prohibition stems from a concern that this would look like prohibited cooking. See A. Weiss, “Perushim Vehearot Latext Uleseder HaMishnah shel Masekhet Shabbat,” Horev 7 (1943): 12–13; Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah, 66. 79. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 5:952.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions and there is no need to say [that this is permitted] on the festival with water that had been heated on the eve of the festival.
The Tosefta explicitly prohibits one from washing anything more than one’s face, hands, and legs with water that had been heated before the Sabbath, the same halakhic opinion found in Shmuel’s baraita’, and attributed to Shmuel in both Talmuds. The same baraita’ is brought, with some variants, in Bavli Shabbat 40a, as a support for Shmuel’s opinion in the dispute: It was taught in a baraita in accordance with Shmuel: Water that was heated on the eve of the Sabbath, the next day one may use it to wash one’s face, hands and legs, but not one’s whole body, even one limb at a time. And it wasn’t even necessary to state [that this is permitted] with water that was heated on the eve of the festival.80
The Bavli goes on to quote two additional baraitot that also support Shmuel’s opinion and contradict that of Rav.81 Again, as in the other cases, Shmuel’s opinion reflects the halakhic tradition of the Palestinian Tannaim. (6) Yerushalmi Kilayim 8:2, 31c R. Hama bar Ukba82 in the name of R. Yose b. R. Hanina said: One who leads two different animals yoked together [kilayim] is lashed… . But didn’t Shmuel teach [tannei]: If he was standing outside of the city limits and he called it and it came after him, behold this one is exempt. There, it (the animal) goes on its own volition; here it goes against its will.
The passage opens with the opinion of R. Yose bar R. Hanina, a Palestinian Amora of the second generation,83 who holds that leading an animal by voice
80. The text of the baraita’ is based on Oxford Opp. Add. Fol. 23; see Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 5:952. 81. See Y. Dinnur, Hidushei HaRitzad, 28, s.v. bat’hila, who tries to find some halakhic basis in a tannaitic source for Rav’s words. Dinnur concludes, “Most people prohibited washing one’s whole body, as you can see from the baraitot that were brought here to support Shmuel.” Even so, it is not impossible that the baraita’ found on Bavli Shabbat 39b (and its parallel) relate to water heated on the eve of the Sabbath; see Dinnur, Hidushei HaRitzad, 28; Goldberg (above, n. 65). According to this possibility, Rav’s opinion could match the lenient opinion of R. Shimon in the baraita’. 82. Vatican 33 reads, “Rabbi Nehemiah bar Ukba,” a fourth-generation Babylonian Amora who may have been from the exilarch’s family. See G. Herman, Rashut Hagolah BeBavel Bitkufat HaTalmud (PhD diss., Hebrew University, 2005), 233. R. Hama bar Ukba, on the other hand, is a thirdgeneration Palestinian Amora (see Frankel, Mavo HaYerushalmi, 86a; Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 238–339) who in both Talmuds transmits statements in the name of R. Yose bar Hanina (as in this case; see Bavli Pesahim 52b; Sukkah 37b; Yerushalmi Sheviit 9:1, 38d; Pesahim 7:9, 35a; Ketubbot 2:10, 26d). Hence, this reading seems preferable. 83. See Frankel, Mavo HaYerushalmi, 102b; Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 185–86.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen alone is considered to be of legal significance,84 and therefore, if one calls out to two animals of different species that were yoked together and they move, he has transgressed the prohibition of kilayim (see Deuteronomy 22:10). Against this opinion, the passage brings Shmuel’s baraita’, according to which one who “calls” an animal that is found outside the Sabbath border into the Sabbath border is exempt from causing his animal to pass through the Sabbath border, because Shmuel holds “the animal comes on its own when it is called … and he doesn’t transgress by the fact that his animal has on its own gone out of its Sabbath border.85 This is what the Yerushalmi means when it explains, “it goes on its own volition.” A similar halakhah appears in a baraita’ on Bavli Shabbat 151a, and in Tosefta Shabbat 17:12, (ed. Lieberman, p. 82): “They may not wait at the Sabbath border [toward the end of Shabbat in order to immediately] fetch an animal.86 If it was outside the border, he may call to it so that it comes.” From this baraita’, it is clear that on the Sabbath, one may call an animal that is outside the Sabbath border if one happens to be there, but he may not go to this border on the Sabbath in order to wait for it to get dark so that he can immediately go out and bring the animal back.87 Lieberman again points out the parallel between Shmuel’s baraita’ and that found in the Tosefta. He writes, “There is no doubt that most of the commentators were correct when they explained that this [Shmuel’s baraita’, B.C.] is the same halakhah as that found in our Tosefta.”88 Just as in the previous two cases, there is a clear correspondence between the halakhah found in Shmuel’s baraita’ in the Yerushalmi and the tannaitic halakhic tradition found in the Tosefta and in the Bavli. (7) Yerushalmi Shabbat 19:3, 12a Mishnah: They may wash a child before his circumcision and after his circumcision and they may sprinkle water on him by hand, but not with a vessel. Gemara: R. Abbahu in the name of R. Yohanan: The halakhah goes according to the one who says that they may wash the child. R. Yose said: You must say that they may wash the child. Shmuel taught [tannei]:89 They [never]90 stop one from putting oil or hot 84. See P’nei Moshe, s.v. vetanei. 85. R. Yehezkel Avramsky, Tosefta im Perush Hazon Yehezkel, vol. 2, Seder Moed (Jerusalem, 2000), 113, s.v. kore lah. From here, we can conclude that if he led the animal by pulling it, he would be liable, as Shmuel implies in the Yerushalmi quoted here; see also, Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 3:288. 86. See Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 3:287–88; Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah, 387. Concerning the meaning of the phrase מחשיכין על התחום, see B. Cohen, Mishnah and Tosefta: A Comparative Study—Part 1: Shabat (New York: JTS Press, 1935), 143. 87. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 3:287–88; Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah, 387. 88. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 3:288. It is possible to explain the TDBS baraita’ as exempting ex post facto one who calls an animal, whereas the Tosefta permits it ab initio. In any case, even if we explain the opinion in the Shmuel baraita’ in this way, it is still anchored in tannaitic halakhah. 89. In a parallel in Genesis Rabbah 80:25 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 962), the word Shmuel is missing. However, his name is found in another parallel on Yerushalmi Shabbat 9:3, 12a. 90. The bracketed word לעולםis found in the parallel in Yerushalmi Shabbat 9:3, 12a.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions water on a wound on the Sabbath. R. Yose said: R. Zera and R. [Ba]91 would92 always come and say to me, “Recite our mishnah, ‘And not only that, but they may also sprinkle water on a wound on Shabbat.’ If you say that they may wash [the child after] circumcision, what is the difference between the wound of an adult and the wound of a minor?”93
The Tannei Shmuel baraita’ allows any wound to be cleansed with oil or hot water on Shabbat, and not just that of a child after circumcision (see below).94 The baraita’ is brought as proof that the mishnah should not read as, “they may wash the [wound from] circumcision,” rather, “they may wash the child.”95 In his commentary on the Yerushalmi, R. Moshe Margoliot explains, “If you say that the mishnah should read ‘they wash the [wound from] circumcision,’ then what is the difference between the wound of an adult and the wound of a child, and why would the mishnah have specified ‘they wash the [wound from] circumcision,’ for other wounds of adults are washed as well with hot water.”96 According to H. Albeck, the baraita’ quoted by R. Yose, the one that his teacher R. Zera97 told him to recite frequently,98 is the continuation of Shmuel’s baraita’. The intention of this continuation was to expand upon the leniency mentioned before—not only do we not withhold oil or hot water, but we even sprinkle (“”זלף99) it upon the wound.100 It turns out, therefore, that R. Yose’s baraita’ not only matches the halakhah found in Shmuel’s baraita’, but even expands on it.101 This halakhah, which 91. The bracketed word באis absent in the parallel in the Yerushalmi. 92. The bracketed word הוהis found in the parallel in the Yerushalmi Shabbat 9:3, 12a. 93. In the Leiden manuscript, this entire sugya is found in the margins of the manuscript. 94. See also the statement of Rav in the Bavli 134b: “Rav said: they don’t prevent one from putting hot water or oil on a wound on Shabbat.” 95. See Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 55–56. 96. P’nei Moshe, s.v. amar R. Yose. 97. Concerning the identification of R. Yose, the student of R. Zera, see Frankel, Mavo HaYerushalmi, 111b; Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 334–36. 98. Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 55 n. 4. This literary style is common for R. Yose in the Yerushalmi; see S. Lieberman, HaYerushalmi Kifshuto, 2nd ed., ed. M. Katz (Jerusalem and New York: JTS Press, 2008), 162. 99. I. Kohut, ed., Arukh Hashalem (New York, 1955), 3:294. The Arukh’s explanation is quoted from the commentary of R. Gershon Meir Hagolah to Moed Katan; see N. Zakash, ed., Kovetz Rishonim Lemasekhet Moed Katan (Jerusalem:Makhon HaTalmud HaIsraeli Hashalem, 1966), 60. Concerning the meaning of the root זל”פin rabbinic Hebrew, see Levy, Wörterbuch über die Talmuds und Midraschim, 1:539; S. Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie (Leipzig, 1910), 1:228; Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, 1:401; E. Ben-Yehuda, Milon Halashon HaIvrit (Jerusalem-New York: T. Yoslof, 1960), 2:1348; Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic), 415. 100. Albeck, Mehkarim Babaraita UbaTosefta, 101. 101. Compare Shmuel’s own opinion, Bavli Shabbat 134b, “And Shmuel said: He can put it on the side of the wound, and it runs down onto the wound.” It is also, of course, possible that the baraita’ transmitted by R. Yose in the name of R. Zera was not meant to be the end of Shmuel’s baraita’ but rather to bolster it through the use of another tannaitic source. In any case, this is not relevant for the issue at hand.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen allows one to use hot water on Shabbat to take care of a wound, is found in Tosefta Shabbat 15:4102 (ed. Lieberman, 69): And one may sprinkle hot water on [the circumcision wound] and not only that but one may sprinkle hot water on [any] wound.
Lieberman103 and Goldberg104 correctly pointed out that this toseftan baraita’ (and its parallel in the Yerushalmi) relates to the use of hot water on the Sabbath by any person, and not just for the sake of a circumcised child: “That is to say, not just a child who is still weak and the wound was put in a place where there is a threat to his life, but any person can pour hot water on his wound [on the Sabbath].”105 Again, the halakhah found in Shmuel’s baraita’ fully accords with the Palestinian tannaitic halakhah, both that found in the Tosefta and in the baraita’ in the Yerushalmi, which R. Yose quotes in the name of R. Zera. The permission that Shmuel grants to use oil to heal a wound on Shabbat106 is also mentioned in tannaitic literature, in Tosefta Shabbat 12:12 ([ed. Lieberman, 53]; see also Tosefta Terumot 9:12 [ed. Lieberman, 159]): “A person may anoint his wounds with oil, as long as he doesn’t dip it with a cloth or rag.” Lieberman also pointed out that a similar halakhah appears in Mishnah Shabbat 14:4, “The children of royalty may anoint their wounds with rose oil, since it is their practice to anoint themselves thus on weekdays. Rabbi Shimon said: all Israel are royal children.”107 From this mishnah Lieberman concluded, “From here we can see that all agree that one can anoint one’s wounds with regular oil on the Sabbath.” As in all of the previous cases, again the halakhah in Shmuel’s baraita’ that allows anyone to use hot water and oil on the Sabbath in order to care for wounds is anchored in Palestinian tannaitic halakhah. (8) Bavli Bava Metzia 111a Mishnah: The wages of a man or the renting of a beast or the renting of utensils, each is subject to the rules “You must pay him his wages on the same day” (Deut. 24:15) and “You may not retain the wages of a laborer with you until the morning” (Lev. 19:13). When is this so? When [the employee] demanded it, but if he did not demand it [the employer] does not commit a transgression. 102. See also Cohen, Mishnah and Tosefta, 129. 103. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 3: 245. 104. Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah, 332. 105. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta 3: 245. 106. Concerning the treatment of a wound with oil, water and other substances during the mishnaic and talmudic periods see, J. Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, trans. and ed. F. Rosner (London: Aronson, 1993), 238–39. 107. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 2:461. The Tosafot on Bavli Shabbat 134b, s.v. v’ein mon’in, explain, “since it teaches, ‘the children of kings anoint their wounds with rose oil’ we can deduce that for other people it is permitted to put other types of oil on their wound [on the Sabbath].”
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions A resident alien is subject to the rule, “You must pay him his wages on the same day,” but he is not subject to the rule, “You may not retain the wages of a laborer.” Gemara: [As] it is taught: “From among your brothers” (Deut. 24:14)—this excludes Gentiles [aherim]; “your stranger”—this refers to a righteous proselyte; “in your gates”—this refers to one who eats carrion. From this I know [the rule only with regard to a man’s wages], how do I know to extend the same rule to beasts and utensils? Scripture says, “in your land,” anything that is in your land. And in respect of all these, one [can] transgress all of these rules. From here they said: The wages of a man or the renting of a beast or the renting of utensils, each is subject to the rules, “You must pay him his wages on the same day” and “You may not retain the wages of a laborer.” R. Jose son of R. Judah said: A resident alien is subject to the rule, “You must pay him his wages on the same day” but not to the rule, “You may not retain [the wages of a laborer].” Animals and utensils are only subject to the rule, “You shall not oppress.”… Rava said: This tanna [of our Mishnah] is a tanna from the House of Shmuel108 [Tanna D’Bei Shmuel], for the House of Shmuel taught: The wages of a man or the renting of a beast or the renting of utensils, each is subject to the rules, “You must pay him his wages on the same day” and “You may not retain [the wages of a laborer].” A resident alien is subject to the rule, “You must pay him his wages on the same day,” but not to the rule, “You may not retain [the wages of a laborer].”
Rava identifies the Mishnah’s halakhah with the TDBS baraita’, both of which are contrasted with the preceding anonymous baraita’ that contains a different halakhah.109 In five other places in the Bavli,110 Rava identifies the Mishnah with a TDBS baraita’. One of these examples was discussed earlier.111 In another case,112 Rava identifies the Mishnah with a tanna of the House of Menashe (Tanna D’Bei Menashe),113 meaning a collection of baraitot identified with Rav Menashya, a third- or fourth-generation Babylonian Amora.114
108. This is the version preserved in the geniza fragment Antonin 1190 (= A. Y. Katz, Ginzei Talmud Bavli [Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 1979], 2:212), in Munich 95, in Vatican 116–17, and in the Saloniki printed edition. The other printed editions, Hamburg 165, Florence, Ascorial G-I-3, and Vatican 115 all read, “is a tanna from the House of R. Yishmael, for it was taught in the House of R. Yishmael.” Concerning the preference for the version, “Shmuel,” see Epstein, Mavo Lenusah Hamishnah, 1:213; idem, Mevo’ot Lesifrut Hatannaim, 723. Goodblatt also based his discussion on identifying the correct version as “a tanna from the House of Shmuel”; see Rabbinic Instruction, 134 n. 94, and my discussion below. 109. Concerning the contradiction between the mishnah and the anonymous baraita’, see the stammaitic discussion that begins the passage (Bavli Bava Metzia 111a), “Who is our mishnah? Not the first opinion of the ‘of your brother’ [baraita’] nor R. Jose b. R. Judah … !” 110. Altogether, there are five such cases: Rosh Hashanah 16a; Sukkah 56b; Megillah 23a; Ketubbot 49a; Kiddushin 29b. 111. See the discussion near n. 54 herein. 112. Sanhedrin 56b. 113. The version Tanna D’Bei Menashe is found in all manuscripts. Some manuscripts, however, read “R. Papa” instead of “Rava.” 114. See Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 297.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen Shmuel’s baraita’ is composed of two parts. The first discusses the prohibition of an employer to withhold wages for a laborer or craftsman or to withhold rent due for the use of an animal or utensils. Word for word, this baraita’ is nearly identical to the halakhah found in the Mishnah. Other Tannaim disagree, as is evident by the words of R. Jose, the son of R. Judah, in the anonymous baraita’ that appears at the beginning of the passage: “Animals and utensils are subject only to the rule, ‘You shall not oppress.’”115 So, too, the second half the TDBS baraita’—concerning the prohibition of withholding the wages of a resident alien—is the same as that found in the Mishnah. All five prohibitions that apply to an employer who withholds the wages of his employee (“Do not oppress,” “Do not steal” [counting as two prohibitions],116 “Do not withhold,” “Do not let the sun rise [without paying him his wages]”)117 do not apply, according to the Mishnah and the TDBS baraita’, to the resident alien: “To [the resident alien] the laws of ‘Do not withhold’ … and also ‘Do not oppress’ and ‘Do not steal’ do not apply.”118 Like the halakhah found in the first half of the TDBS baraita’, so, too, do other Tannaim disagree with this halakhah. The baraita’ found earlier in the passage applies all five prohibitions to an employer who withholds wages from a resident alien. In any case, both halves of the TDBS baraita’ contain halakhot identical to the Palestinian tannaitic tradition of the Mishnah. (9) Bavli Moed Katan 18b Mishnah: They may write the following documents during the festival: betrothal of women [documents], divorce documents and receipts, a will of a dying person, a bequest and prozbuls; evaluation certificates and court orders for support, documents of release from Levirate marriage and documents of repudiation [of marriage] and arbitration records; decrees of the court and correspondence. Gemara: Shmuel said: It is permitted to betroth a woman on the intermediate days of a festival, lest someone else precedes him… .119 Come and learn: that the House of Shmuel taught [Tanna D’Bei Shmuel]:120 [During the intermediate days of a festival] one may betroth but not marry, and one may not make 115. See also S. Warhaftig, Dinei Avodah Bamishpat HaIvri (Tel Aviv: Moreshet, 1969), 1:3. 116. Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:14. 117. See Tosefta Bava Metzia 10:3 (ed. Lieberman, 117), and parallels. 118. Rashi, s.v. ve’eyn bo. 119. Shmuel’s statement is parallel to his statement in Yerushalmi Betzah 5:2, 63a: “even on the ninth of Av one may betroth lest someone else precede him.” For a discussion comparing the two different versions, see N. Aminoah, Arikhat Masekhtot Sukkah Umoed Katan Batalmud (Tel Aviv: Tel-Aviv University Press, 1989), 392. 120. This is the version preserved in all manuscripts and printed editions. This is also the version preserved in Halakhot Pesukot, ed. N. Danzig (Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1999), 439. The version preserved in the commentary of R. Hannanel (Perushei R. Hannanel bar Hushiel LaTalmud, ed. D. Metzger [Jerusalem: Vagshal, 1993], 47) and R. Shlomo ben Hayatom (Perush Masekhet Mashkin LeRabbenu Shlomo Hayatom, ed. T. P. Hayot [Berlin: Mekizei Nirdamim, 1910], 96) reads Tanna D’Bei Menashe.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions betrothal feasts, nor may one perform Levirate marriage, for it is a joy to him. Learn from it.
The TDBS baraita’ allows betrothals to take place on the intermediate days of a festival, as does the statement of Shmuel found earlier in the passage and in a parallel statement in the Palestinian Talmud.121 This halakhah is also found in Tosefta Moed Katan 1:10 (ed. Lieberman, p. 367): “One may not betroth women during the intermediate days of the festival. R. Judah permits, lest someone else precedes him.” Albeck,122 Lieberman,123 and Aminoah124 were therefore correct in identifying Shmuel’s amoraic statement and the halakhah found in the TDBS baraita’ with the opinion of R. Judah (b. Ilai) found in the Tosefta, both with regard to the halakhah itself and in the justification for the leniency, “lest someone else precede him.”125 The opinion prohibiting betrothal on these days stems, apparently, from an assumption that the act looks like an acquisition,126 and generally acquisitions are prohibited during the entire festival. Another of the halakhot found in this TDBS baraita’, “one may not perform Levirate marriage,” and its justification, “for it is a joy to him,” is found in Mishnah Moed Katan 1:7: “They may not marry women during the festival, neither virgins nor widows, nor may they perform Levirate marriage, for it is a joy to him.” Again, both halakhot mentioned in the TDBS baraita’ are identical to other halakhot in the Palestinian tannaitic tradition.127 121. Concerning Shmuel’s statement as preserved in the Yerushalmi, see n. 120 herein. 122. Albeck, Mehkarim Babraita Ubatosefta, 112. 123. S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 5:1237. 124. Aminoah, Arikhat Masekhtot Sukkah, 262. 125. According to Albeck, the phrase “betrothals of women” in the Mishnah refers to “all documents related to betrothal, for example a document of arranging the marriage (shidukhim) and its financial considerations (t’naim), or the betrothal document itself, which a man can use to betroth a woman by document” (Albeck, Shisha Sidrei Mishnah [Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1958], 2:381; see also idem, “Haerusin Veshtarotehen,” in Kobetz Mada’i Lezekher Moshe Shor [New York, 1947], 12–13). According to this interpretation, Shmuel’s statement and the halakhah in the TDBS baraita’ are both identical with the halakhah found in the Mishnah, from which one can conclude that it is permitted to betroth a woman during the festival (compare this interpretation with that offered by the stam in the earlier section of the passage). 126. S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta 5:1237. 127. There is no tannaitic tradition that explicitly prohibits having a betrothal feast during the festival. N. Rubin, Simhat Hahayyim (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameukhad, 2004), 148, attempted to conclude indirectly from Mishnah Pesahim 3:7 (“One who goes to slaughter his passover sacrifice, or to circumcise his son or to eat the betrothal feast at his in-laws’ home … ”) that “they arranged betrothal feasts during the festival or during the intermediate days of the festival.” This seemingly contradicts the halakhah found in the TDBS baraita’, according to which one may not make a betrothal feast. However, Rubin did not note that with the exception of Tosefta Pesahim 3:12 (ed. Lieberman, 154), in all of the other tannaitic parallels to this halakhah, the words “to eat the betrothal feast at his in-laws” are absent. See Sifre Deuteronomy 131 (ed. Finkelstein, 188); Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon bar Yohai 13:6 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 39–40); Midrash Hagadol Exodus (ed. M. Margoliot, 230). According to both Epstein (Mavo Lenusah Hamishnah, 746) and S. Friedman (Tosefta Atikta: Pesah Rishon [Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002], 33 n. 7) this is not an incidental late omission in some texts. Rather, there are two authentic and contradictory tannaitic traditions concerning this question. Hence, even if
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Barak Shlomo Cohen (10) Bavli Shabbat 131a–b But was it not taught: The shofar and all its accoutrements supersede the Sabbath, the words of R. Eliezer… .128 From where does R. Eliezer derive this? … The verse says: “A day of blasting it shall be for you” (Num. 29:1) —on that day, and even [if it falls] on the Sabbath. Concerning what [was this stated]? If you say concerning the [shofar] blasts themselves—hasn’t the House of Shmuel taught (Tanna D’Bei Shmuel):129 “All manner of work you shall not do”—this excludes blasting shofar and removing bread [from the oven] which are wisdom and not work! Rather [it concerns] the accoutrements.
According to early tannaitic tradition, when Rosh Hashanah falls on the Sabbath, the shofar should be sounded in the Temple but not outside it. Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 4:1 states, “The festival day of Rosh Hashanah which falls on the Sabbath: in the Temple they would blow [the shofar] but not in the provinces.” According to the Mishnah, after the destruction of the Temple, R. Johanan b. Zakkai130 decreed that the shofar should be sounded even outside the Temple. Scholars have detected in Palestinian tannaitic literature two main halakhic approaches toward R. Johanan’s decree.131 According to the earlier approach, blasting a shofar on the Sabbath is a violation of the Torah,132 and hence it supersedes the Sabbath (outside of the Temple) only in a court of law; “the blasts of Rosh Hashanah supersede the Sabbath in all of the land only in a court of law.”133 The later approach perceived of shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah as being forbidden only by rabbinic decree.134 According to the halakhah presented in the TDBS baraita’, sounding a shofar on the Sabbath is not prohibited
Rubin is correct, and Shmuel’s baraita’ does contradict the Mishnah, the Mishnah’s opinion is not the only tannaitic opinion. Again, it seems likely that there is tannaitic halakhic precedent for the opinion found in the TDBS baraita’. 128. This baraita’ can also be found in Yerushalmi Shabbat 19:1, 16d. 129. This is the version preserved in all manuscripts of this passage and the parallel in Bavli Rosh Hashanah 29b. In another parallel in Bavli Shabbat 117b, Munich 95 and the printed editions read Tanna D’Bei R. Yishmael. 130. See the above-cited mishnah, Rosh Hashanah 4:1. Concerning the historical background to R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s decree, see G. Alon, Toldot HaYehudim BeEretz Yisrael Bitkufat HaMishnah VehaTalmud (Tel Aviv: Akibutz Hameukhad, 1953), 1:67–68; S. Safrai, Bimei Habayit Ubimei HaMishnah (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1994), 1:139–42. 131. See I. Heineman, Iyyunei Tefilah (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1981), 85–89; D. Henshke, “Tekiat Shofar BeShabbat,” Sidra 8 (1992): 19–37; J. Tabori, Moadei Yisrael (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2000), 247–52. 132. It seems that the original reason that blowing the shofar was prohibited on the Sabbath was because of making noise; see Henshke, “Tekiat Shofar BeShabbat,” 31–36. 133. See Sifra Behar Parsha 2:4, 107a. 134. Concerning the chronological development of this halakhah in tannaitic literature, see Henshke, “Tekiat Shofar BeShabbat,” 22–27.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions by the Torah, for it is not considered to be in the category of “work which is toilsome.”135 Lieberman, Heineman, and Henshke all identified the halakhah in Shmuel’s baraita’ with this later approach, according to which sounding a shofar on the Sabbath is only prohibited by the rabbis, and not by the Torah. This line of thinking is reflected, for instance, in Tosefta Rosh Hashanah 2:16 (ed. Lieberman, p. 320): They may learn to blow [the shofar] on Shabbat, and they need not stop women or children from blowing [the shofar] on Shabbat, and there is no need to say on the festival.
The baraita’ allows women and children who have reached an educable age to blow a shofar on the Sabbath in order to learn. The underlying assumption here is that blowing a shofar on the Sabbath is not prohibited by the Torah, “for if they thought there was a toraitic prohibition in blowing the shofar, there would be no doubt that they would prevent women from blowing.”136 Henshke demonstrates that the same halakhic approach toward blowing the shofar on the Sabbath lies at the heart of a halakhah in Mishnah Hullin 1:7 and its parallel in Tosefta Sukkah 4:13 (ed. Lieberman, p. 275):137 “A festival that falls on the eve of the Sabbath, they blast but they do not recite havdalah; [if it falls] after the Sabbath they recite havdalah, but they do not blast.” Interpreting this mishnah, Henshke writes, This blast, performed on a festival that falls on the eve of the Sabbath in order to announce that henceforth work done in preparation of food would be prohibited, proves that sounding a blast was not considered a labor prohibited by the Torah. Obviously, the need to announce that the Sabbath was beginning could not itself supersede a Sabbath prohibition. Rather, the author of this Mishnah clearly thinks that sounding a blast is only a rabbinic prohibition, and therefore, in order to prevent people from performing prohibited labors on the Sabbath, the rabbis waived the rabbinic prohibition of sounding a blast.
In the Bavli, Rabbah offers an explanation as to why the rabbis prohibited the blowing of the shofar on a Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath; he states that it was “a rabbinic decree lest someone carry [the shofar] four cubits in the public domain.”138 For our purposes, what is crucial is that, again, the TDBS 135. Rashi, malekhet avodah. Concerning the tendency in tannaitic literature to perceive sages as having the authority to decide what constitutes prohibited Sabbath labor based on their own logical conclusions, see Y. D. Gilat, Mehkarim Behishtalshelut Hahalakhah (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1992), 249–61. 136. J. Tabory, Moadei Yisrael, 250; see also Heineman, Iyyunei Tefilah, 86; S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 5:1061. 137. See Henshke, “Tekiat Shofar BeShabbat,” 26. 138. Bavli Rosh Hashanah 29b; Sukkah 42b. The Bavli commonly phrases Sabbath prohibitions using the words “lest someone does… .” See Goldberg, “Lehitpatchut Hasugya Batalmud HaBavli,” Sefer HaYovel LeRabbi Hanokh Albeck (Jerusalem:Mosad Harav Kuk, 1963), 101–13.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen baraita’ contains a halakhic tradition identical to that found in the Palestinian tradition. III Analysis of the fifty or so halakhic traditions found in baraitot ascribed to Shmuel in the two Talmuds (Tanna D’Bei Shmuel, Tannei Shmuel, or Matnita DeShmuel) demonstrates that in the majority of cases, the halakhic content of these baraitot reflects Palestinian halakhic tradition.139 These findings preclude us from accepting the scholarly opinion according to which Shmuel’s baraitot reflect a Babylonian halakhic tradition that originated in the pre-talmudic period,140 or even a Babylonian tradition from a later period.141 While it is true that the form and external characteristics of these baraitot differ from typical Palestinian baraitot, as proposed by Albeck (near n. 22)—they tend to be brief, are anonymous, and contain expressions frequently ascribed elsewhere to Tannaim from later generations—this is not sufficient to conclude that the content of these baraitot is Babylonian in origin.142 Identifying the nature and origin of the halakhic material found in the Shmuel baraitot requires systematic examination of the contents of all the halakhot contained in this corpus. It is not sufficient to use a characterization of this material’s external literary style or form as the basis for any proposal as to the time or place of the origin of its content.143 It cannot be coincidental that approximately 70 percent (thirty 139. A surprisingly high percentage of the TDBS baraitot, about 70 percent, are concerned with the Sabbath and festival laws. Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten, 208, already noted this strange phenomenon, and staked the claim that this phenomenon was a result of Shmuel’s or the Talmuds’ selected focus on certain tannaitic material, mostly that found in Seder Moed. Support for this theory can be found in the fact that Shmuel himself demonstrates a tendency to offer interpretations to mishnahs and baraitot from Seder Moed. D. Gordis, who analyzed Rav and Shmuel’s commentaries on tannaitic sources, evaluated more than 250 instances in which one of these two Amoraim contextualized a tannaitic source using a term such as “what are we dealing with here” (hakha bemai askinan), or “it was only taught regarding …” (lo shanu) (Gordis, Al Parshanuet, 340). His conclusion was that Shmuel demonstrates a more pronounced tendency than Rav to deal with tannaitic sources from Moed and Kedoshim (60 percent of all cases). This conclusion may support Bacher’s supposition with regard to the TDBS baraitot. However, a firmer conclusion will only be able to be suggested after a more thorough examination of all of Shmuel’s literature found in both Talmuds. This is a topic I hope to return to in a broader work, one that will deal with the intellectual activity of Shmuel and the other Nehardean sages. 140. As was claimed by S. Funk Die Juden in Babylonien, 62 and Goldberg, “Shimusho Shel Rava Ba Tosefta,” 144–77. 141. As was suggested by Albeck, Albeck, Mehkarim Babraita Ubatosefta, 15–43; idem, Mavo LaTalmudim, 28–39. 142. As was claimed by Albeck, Albeck, Mehkarim Babraita Ubatosefta, 15–43; idem, Mavo LaTalmudim, 28–39. For examples of chronologically late expressions found in TDBS baraitot see above, near footnote n. 25. 143. Concerning the relationship of Shmuel’s baraitot to the Mishnah, Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 214, writes, “The relationship of this collection of baraitot to the Mishnah is thus: part of it explains the Mishnah … part of it expands upon the Mishnah … and part of it disagrees with the Mishnah.” In order to prove his assertion that Shmuel’s baraitot “disagree with the Mishnah,”
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions traditions)144 of the Shmuel baraitot are representative of Palestinian tannaitic halakhah.145 For most of the other traditions (about fifteen), no parallel in Palestinian tannaitic halakhah has been discovered.146 The significance of these findings is that the baraitot transmitted under Shmuel’s name cannot support a general claim as to the existence of an independent corpus of tannaitic halakhah in Babylonia prior to the onset of the amoraic period. Analysis of this corpus, which is one of the largest literary corpuses identified by scholars as reflecting a tannaitic Babylonian halakhic tradition,147 demonstrates just the opposite, namely, the extreme degree of influence that Palestinian tannaitic halakhah had on Babylonian rabbis, even in this early period. We should emphasize how significant it is that this finding analyzes traditions ascribed to Shmuel, a first-generation Babylonian sage who seems never to have learned Torah in Palestine.148 Supposing the existence of
Epstein cites Yoma 70a, discussed at length by Goldberg (see “Shimusho Shel Rava Ba Tosefta,” 144– 77). While it is true that Shmuel’s baraita’ in this passage does present a halakhic tradition that differs from that presented in the Mishnah, Shmuel’s baraita’ does match, as Goldberg noted, the Palestinian tannaitic tradition ascribed to R. Yishmael and his students as it appears in the Yerushalmi. Epstein’s comments are only directed at the relationship between Shmuel’s baraitot and the Mishnah, and not their relationship to the broader scope of Palestinian literature, as is the concern in this article. 144. See n. 33 herein. 145. Sources in both Talmuds reveal that Shmuel’s father, Abba bar Abba, called in the Bavli “Avuha DeShmuel,” also maintained close ties with sages in Palestine, and especially with Rabbi [Judah Hanasi]. In a number of passages, Avuha DeShmuel, who, like Shmuel, lived in Nehardea, is described as sending halakhic questions to Palestine (see Bavli Pesahim 103a; Rosh Hashanah 27b [= Yerushalmi Rosh Hashanah 3:6, 59a]; Rosh Hashanah 28a; Yevamot 104b; Yevamot 105a; Yevamot 115b; Bava Metzia 90a; Yerushalmi Bava Metzia 4:1, 9c). In one of these traditions, Yevamot 115b, Avuha DeShmuel’s connection with Rabbi is so great that the former sends the latter a question with an obvious answer, and Rabbi bothers to answer it “due to the honor of Avuha DeShmuel” (see S. Albeck, Mishpachot Sofrim [Warsaw: Sholdberg, 1903], 22). These traditions demonstrate the close connection between Avuha DeShmuel and the Palestinian halakhic traditions, and also suggest how these traditions may have reached Babylonia in the first generation of Amoraim and how they may have been so familiar to and influential on Shmuel. 146. See the discussion near n. 33 herein. 147. For another group of halakhot that has been identified as being a tannaitic halakhic corpus with some attachment to Babylonia, see nn. 3–7 herein. 148. It is doubtful whether Shmuel ever spent time in Palestine. The main source that has served as the basis for the supposition that he did is an Aggadah found in Bavli Bava Metzia 85b–86a. In this source, Shmuel is called “Rabbi’s doctor”; see Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, 148. In the story, Rabbi attempts to give Shmuel rabbinic ordination, but his plan is not successful and Shmuel does not receive ordination. Many scholars have seen this as a source for the fact that Shmuel was a disciple of Rabbi [Judah Hanasi]. See Graetz, History of the Jews, 2:518; I. H. Weiss, “The Controversies of Rab and Samuel and the Tosefta,” 164; T. Yaavetz, Toldot Yisrael (Tel Aviv: Am-Olam, 1938), 7:26; Hyman, Toldot Tannaim Veamoraim, 1123. According to D. Hoffman, Mar Samuel, 15, and W. Bacher, “Samuel Yarhina’ah,” Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901), 11:29, Shmuel did indeed spend time in Israel but learned mainly from Rabbi’s students in Babylonia. In contrast, S. Rappoport, Erekh Milin (Prague: M. Landa, 1852), 1:222; Frankel, Mavo HaYerushalmi, 124b; and M. Beer, “Samuel,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Detroit: Macmillan, 2007), 17:757, doubted the historical accuracy of this tradition because of its late, aggadic character. Indeed, there are several other difficulties with this aggadic tradition, which have been pointed out
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Barak Shlomo Cohen an independent Babylonian halakhic tradition, the most likely Babylonian sage we would expect to be identified with this tradition would be Shmuel. Nevertheless, the facts lead to the exact opposite conclusion. The source of Shmuel’s tradition is the Palestinian halakhic tradition, frequently the same traditions as those found in the Mishnah and the Tosefta, the two great corpuses of Palestinian tannaitic halakhah. The fact that Shmuel’s baraitot always accord with Shmuel’s own halakhic opinions as found in the two Talmuds149 also demonstrates the great influence that the Palestinian halakhah had on Shmuel’s halakhic decision making and talmudic commentary.150
by other scholars. See, e.g., Epstein, Mevo’ot Lesifrut Hatannaim, 200 n. 1; Beer, “Samuel,” 757; D. Halivni, “Iyyunim Behithavut HaTalmud,” 84 and n. 69; and Meir, R. Yehudah Hanasi, 238. Epstein, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 212, cited two other sources that he believed imply that Shmuel spent time in Palestine, but deeper analysis of both of these sources demonstrates that his conclusion is doubtful. The first proof is Shmuel’s statement on Bavli Shabbat 51b, “R. Judah said in the name of Shmuel: In front of Rabbi [Judah Hanasi] they would switch this one with that one.” It seems that Epstein interpreted the phrase “in front of Rabbi [Judah Hanasi] they would switch” as indicating Shmuel’s physical presence in front of Rabbi when he and others would ask questions. However, it is equally possible that Shmuel was merely transmitting a tradition with which he was familiar and not that Shmuel himself was present in front of Rabbi (see D. Halivni, Makorot Umasorot: Shabbat [Jerusalem: JTS Press, 1982], 153). The second proof that Epstein cited is a passage in Bavli Gittin 66b that begins, “Shmuel said in the name of Rabbi.” There are two problems with this proof. First of all, some manuscripts (e.g., Vatican 130, which reads, “Shmuel said”) do not contain the ascription to Rabbi. Even more problematic is that when the first three generations of Babylonian Amoraim cite traditions in the name of Tannaim from Rabbi’s generation, the term “X said in the name of Y” does not necessarily mean that X heard the statement directly from Y. See B. S. Cohen, “How Many R. Hamnunas in the Babylonian Talmud? A Study in Talmudic Chronology,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 10 (2007): 98 n. 22. 149. See above n. 76 herein. 150. This conclusion is supported by a sample check of a collection of baraitot in the two Talmuds which open with the term, Tanna D’Bei Levi. Levi was a first-generation Babylonian Amora (see Albeck, Mavo LaTalmudim, 153–55) whose center of activity was Nehardea (Bavli Megillah 29a; Ketubbot 103b; Yerushalmi Sukkah 4:3, 54c) and whose close colleagues were Shmuel’s father (Avuha DeShmuel—Bavli Megillah 29a) and Shmuel (see, e.g., Bavli Bava Metzia 38b; Yerushalmi Ketubbot 2:5, 26c). The connection between the Tanna Levi statements and the Tosefta was already sensed by B. Ratner, “Mishnato shel Levi ben Sisi,” in Zikaron LeAvraham Eliyahu Lekh’vod HaRav Hachakham Hamephoar Avraham Eliyahu Harkavi (Peterburg: Z. H. Izkovask; Berlin: Itzkovaski, 1908), 117–18. Our sample check affirms Ratner’s conclusion. The following are the main findings that stem from this examination: (I) The baraitot in the Yerushalmi: Four of the five baraitot ascribed to Levi in the Yerushalmi are consistent with those found in tannaitic halakhah. (1) Gittin 5:3, 46d. See Tosefta Ketubbot 4:17 (ed. Lieberman, 70); see also S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta, 6:254 n. 103, “And this [Tanna D’Bei Levi] baraita is our Tosefta.” (2) Bava Kamma 5:10, 15b (according to the Escorial manuscript, S. Lieberman, Yerushalmi Nezikin [Jerusalem, 1984], 19). The halakhah in this baraita’ appears in Tosefta Kilayim 1:8 (ed. Lieberman, 204). (3) Bava Batra 4:4, 14c (according to the Escorial manuscript, p. 90). This baraita’ appears in Tosefta Bava Kamma 3:1 (ed. Lieberman, 138); see also S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta (New York, 1988), 10:362, “It turns our Tosefta is like the House of Levi.” (4) Bava Batra 10:5, 17c. The halakhah in this baraita’ is found in Tosefta Bava Batra 11:9 (ed. Lieberman, 169). (II) The baraitot in the Bavli. For the Bavli, I only examined a sample selection of Tanna D’Bei Levi baraitot from the orders of Moed, Nashim, and Kedoshim: (1) Eruvin 10a. There is a parallel to this baraita’ in Yerushalmi Eruvin 1:1, 18c, where it is transmitted anonymously. (2) Pesahim 17a. The stam connects Levy’s baraita’ with an anonymous baraita’ by using
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions In conclusion, the detailed evidence that I have analyzed here and elsewhere supports and leads to the acceptance of Gafni’s proposal that “the Palestinian corpus of traditions was adopted by the Babylonian sages from the beginning of the amoraic period. Moreover, when these traditions reached Babylonia in this period they caused prior traditions, for all intents and purposes, to disappear.”151 A DDENDUM
TO NOTE
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(Concerning the relationship of Shmuel to the Tanna D’Bei Shmuel baraitot) How did Shmuel himself relate to the halakhot found in the collection of baraitot transmitted under his name—Tanna D’Bei Shmuel? In the entirety of talmudic literature, Shmuel does not once relate directly to this collection of baraitot. Most scholarly inquiry concerning this question has focused on the discussions found in the two Talmuds, discussions that point out the identity between the halakhot transmitted by Shmuel and the halakhot ascribed to Tanna D’Bei Shmuel. My own comparison of Shmuel’s halakhic statements and those found in TDBS baraitot, in cases where the Talmuds themselves do not compare them, leads to a similar conclusion. Furthermore, even in the few cases (four out of nearly fifty cases, representing about 8 percent of the total TDBS baraitot) in which one of the two Talmuds contrasts a halakhic statement by Shmuel with a TDBS baraita’, the case is not one of an explicit halakhic tradition transmitted by Shmuel, but rather an assumption that stems from Shmuel’s words. Subsequently, the assumption that Shmuel disagrees with his own baraita’ is rejected by the Talmud. These findings reveal the significant influence that the Palestinian tannaitic halakhic traditions found in TDBS baraitot had on Shmuel’s own halakhic opinions. This is a broad topic, one that demands a separate discussion, and it is my intention to return to this subject elsewhere. Nevertheless, through the use of representative examples, I shall touch on some of the main points. As I stated earlier, the similarity between Shmuel’s halakhic positions and those in the TDBS baraitot is already noted in talmudic discussions. In three places in the Yerushalmi, the Talmud decides the correct ascription of an opinion in a debate between Rav and Shmuel by using a halakhah found in one of Shmuel’s baraitot. The assumption is clearly that Shmuel’s own opinion should match those found in the TDBS baraitot. The first example of this phenomenon was discussed earlier (near n. 76). In two other cases, the Yerushalmi acts in a similar fashion: “Rav and Shmuel argued … one said … and the other said … and we don’t know who said this and who said that. From that which Shmuel taught [tannei Shmuel]… . We can say that he said …” (Yerushalmi Eruvin 6:7, 23d; ibid 10:7, 26b). The Yerushalmi
the phrase “It was taught in a baraita like Levi ( )תניא כוותיה דלוי.” (3) Ketubbot 96b. This baraita’ is found in Tosefta Ketubbot 11:1 (ed. Lieberman, 92). See also Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshutah, 6:355. (4) Menahot 48b. This baraita’ is found in Tosefta Nezirut 4:9 (ed. Lieberman, 40). See also S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta 7:554. (5) Hullin 108b. This halakhah is found in Tosefta Makkot 4:7 (ed. Zukermandel, 442). See also Dinnur, Hiddushei HaRitzad, 4:340. 151. Gafni, Yehudei Bavel Bitkufat Hatalmud, 90.
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Barak Shlomo Cohen also notes the similarity between Shmuel’s own opinions and those in his baraitot by using the phrase “[and Shmuel taught (tannei Shmuel) thus …] and Shmuel taught according to his own opinion (Shmuel tanita keshitateh …” (Yerushalmi Pesahim 9:6, 37a), or by the words, “and Shmuel taught… . Shmuel goes according to his own opinion, for Shmuel said …” (Yerushalmi Megillah 2:1, 73a, according to the Leiden manuscript). In another case discussed earlier (near n. 122), the Bavli presents a proof from a Shmuel baraita concerning Shmuel’s own opinion in a dispute with Rav: “Shmuel said … Come and learn that the House of Shmuel taught (Tanna D’Bei Shmuel)… .” (Bavli Moed Katan 18b). Along with these cases, our critical examination of the material has yielded additional cases in which Shmuel expresses a halakhic opinion similar to that found in his baraitot. In the first case, Shmuel explains the Mishnah in a manner identical to the explanation in a Shmuel baraita’ (near n. 51). In the second case, Shmuel’s halakhic opinion matches the halakhic tradition found in one of his baraitot: “Shmuel said … Tannei Shmuel…” (Yerushalmi Shabbat 8:4, 11b). In addition, there is a case in the Bavli (Bekhorot 37b) where a statement by Shmuel explaining a mishnah is replaced by second- and third-generation Amoraim with a Shmuel baraita’: “R. Tahlifa b. Abudimi said to [R. Hisda]: Thus did Shmuel say: as a sela… . And R. Shmuel b. Judah said: A baraita says this” (= Thus taught Shmuel: as a sela [Epstein, Mavo Lenusah (see n. 12 herein), 213, n. 5]). These examples demonstrate the identity between halakhot ascribed to Shmuel himself and those found in TDBS baraitot, even if the Talmud does not make the identification. In four places, the two Talmuds (Bavli Shabbat 54a; Betzah 29a; Yerushalmi Shabbat 1:3, 3a [according to the Leiden manuscript, see below]; and Eruvin 6:8, 24a) present a halakhic discrepancy between Shmuel’s own halakhic position and that found in a TDBS baraita’. However, analysis of these four cases reveals that these are not truly discrepancies. As we shall see, the Talmud recognizes that Shmuel’s own opinion does not actually disagree with that found in the TDBS baraita’, and the suggestion of a discrepancy is eventually rejected. We will now deal with two of these cases, also pointing out that the very fact that the Talmuds contrast Shmuel’s opinion with that found in TDBS baraitot reveals the underlying assumption that these two sources should be in agreement; otherwise, why bother noting that they disagree?
(1) Yerushalmi Eruvin 6:8, 24a It happened that they were sitting outside in a courtyard when the Sabbath began. The case came in front of Shmuel and he said: Since they began to eat the dish while it was still day it is permissible.152 Shmuel’s statement implies [milta deShmuel amara] that a shittuf must be placed in a house.153 152. This halakhic position is ascribed to Shmuel also in Bavli Bava Batra 130a. 153. A shittuf is a symbolic communal meal that allows one to carry from a courtyard into an alleyway or vice versa.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions Shmuel’s tannaitic teaching (matnita) disagrees with him: they may place the shittuf in a guard house.
In the Yerushalmi, the phrase “X’s statement implies” (milta deShmuel amara) cites a rule that stems from a halakhic tradition stated by X or from a story in which X was involved.154 It is important to emphasize that this halakhic rule was not stated explicitly by X, nor has X stated such a halakhic rule elsewhere. In the foregoing passage, the Yerushalmi concludes from Shmuel’s ruling that in general a shittuf (a symbolic communal meal that allows one to carry from certain domains to others) must occur inside a house. Shmuel only reluctantly counted the meal that they were eating as the shittuf, because they had begun to eat while it was still day. The implication is that in other circumstances, he would not have counted this meal as a shittuf because it was not taking place in a house.155 The Yerushalmi then contrasts Shmuel’s ruling in this case with a tradition found in a matnita deShmuel baraita’. According to the baraita’, even if the meal is placed in a guard house found in the courtyard,156 the meal is considered valid and allows carrying from one place to another.157 The shittuf did not need to be placed in the house. Lieberman had such great difficulty with this passage that he offered a completely different understanding of the phrase “Shmuel’s statement implies that a shittuf must be placed in a house,” one that completely contradicts the normal use158 of this technical term in the Yerushalmi: This is how we must also interpret the phrase “Shmuel’s statement implies that a shittuf must be placed in a house.” This line is not based on the above story, for there they are not speaking about “shitufei mevuot” [communal meals which allow one to carry from an alleyway to a courtyard and vice versa] but rather “shitufei hatzerot” [which allow one to carry from a house into a courtyard and vice versa]. Shmuel allowed them this because they began to eat while it was still day. However, it seems that they also were familiar with another statement by Shmuel from which it is possible to prove that a shittuf [of an alleyway] must be placed in a house.
Even though Lieberman’s suggestion is quite difficult to accept,159 it demonstrates that the Talmud’s conclusion is not simply and straightforwardly derived from Shmuel’s halakhic ruling. It is doubtful, therefore, whether we can use this 154. See, e.g., Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten, 112; S. Lieberman, HaYerushalmi Kifshuto, 415. This is also the more recent conclusion of Leib Moscowitz in his recent book, Haterminologia shel HaYerushalmi: Hamunachim Haikari’im (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, forthcoming). I wish to thank Professor Moscowitz for allowing me to examine a draft of his forthcoming book. 155. See the commentary of R. Moshe Margoliot (Penei Moshe), s.v. miltei deRav. 156. Concerning the identification of the “gate house” in talmudic literature, see S. Kraus, Kadmoniyot HaTalmud (Berlin and Vienna: Moriah, 1924), 1:420–21. 157. See Penei Moshe, s.v. matnita deShmuel. 158. See n. 160 herein. 159. As noted by Moscowitz (n. 155 herein), who writes, “However, this is a difficult interpretation, both in light of the actual words of the term and in light of its typical usage.”
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Barak Shlomo Cohen example to posit an actual halakhic discrepancy between Shmuel and a baraita’ transmitted under his name. As we shall see, the same is true of the following source.
(2) Yerushalmi Shabbat 1:3, 3b Mishnah: A tailor should not go out with his needle close to darkness [on the eve of the Sabbath] lest he forget and go out [on the Sabbath], nor a scribe with his pen, nor should one check his clothes for lice, nor read by the light of the candle. Gemara: Shmuel said: [That one should not read by the light of the candle] was taught only with regard to one person, but if two [are reading together], since each can protest the other’s [Sabbath violation] it is permitted. Shmuel’s tannaitic teaching [matnita]160 disagrees with him: [It is forbidden to read by the light of] both a lamp that he can tilt and a lamp that he cannot tilt. Ulla bar Ishmael [said] in the name of R. Lazar: Even if it is very [high].161
The mishnah prohibits reading by the light of a lamp lest one tilt the lamp,162 which is considered by the rabbis to be a violation of the Sabbath. Shmuel’s baraita’ adds that the prohibition is in effect in all cases, regardless of whether there is an actual possibility that the reader might tilt the lamp. According to this, once the rabbis prohibited a certain activity, it remained prohibited under all circumstances.163 The Talmud posits that this baraita’ contradicts Shmuel’s own halakhic opinion, which distinguishes between one person reading by the light of the lamp and two. Two people can read together because each will prevent the other from violating the Sabbath by tilting the lamp. According to the Talmud’s reasoning, if activities that are prohibited lest someone violate the Sabbath are prohibited even if a Sabbath violation is unlikely, as was implied in the baraita’, then what does it matter whether his friend will prevent him from reading?164 Hence, the two sources are perceived as contradicting each other. However, the Talmud’s conclusion that the two sources contradict each other is not actually necessary. This was already noted by Lieberman, in an explanation of Ula bar Ismael’s (and perhaps also R. Elazar b. Pedat in the Bavli)165 rejection of the proposed contradiction: 160. This is the version preserved in the Leiden manuscript. Printed editions read, “the Mishnah disagrees with him.” However, Epstein has already demonstrated that this is a printer’s error; see “Medikdukei Yerushalmi,” Tarbiz 5 (1934): 260; idem, Mavo Lenusah HaMishnah, 163; see also S. Lieberman, HaYerushalmi Kifshuto, 32. 161. The word high is an addition based on S. Lieberman’s emendation, HaYerushalmi Kifshuto, 32. 162. See also Tosefta Shabbat 1:13 (ed. Lieberman, 3); Goldberg, Perush LaMishnah, 13. 163. See Abramsky, Tosefta Hazon Yehezkel, Seder Moed, 4, s.v. afilu gavoha. 164. R. David Frankel, Korban Haedah, s.v. meahar sheyekholin limhot. 165. As was suggested by Halivni, Makorot Umasorot, 28–29.
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In Quest of Babylonian Tannaitic Traditions Shmuel’s baraita is not concerned with a case where another person is with him or when he is alone. Rather it states that it is prohibited to read by the light of the lamp whether the lamp is low and he can tilt it, or whether it is high and he cannot tilt it. However, if two are reading together even Shmuel’s tannaitic source would allow reading.166
Indeed, in the Bavli’s version of this passage (Shabbat 12b), the parallels to the statements of Shmuel and his baraita’ are presented without any suggestion of a contradiction between them. For our purposes, we should again emphasize that the contradiction presented in the Yerushalmi between Shmuel’s statement and his baraita’ is founded on an unnecessary conclusion that was rejected by the Talmud. There is little evidence that the sources themselves actually contradict each other. Furthermore, we can again see that the Talmud expects Shmuel’s own opinions to be in accord with those baraitot transmitted under his name, and that when there seems to be a contradiction, a resolution is offered. Barak Shlomo Cohen Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel
166. S. Lieberman, HaYerushalmi Kifshuto, 32.
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AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 305–339 © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009 doi:10.1017/S0364009409990031
M AH. AZOR H A -H . AYYIM : L IFE -C YCLE C ELEBRATION IN THE S ONG OF THE A SHKENAZIC S YNAGOGUE by
Geoffrey Goldberg
Joyous life-cycle events celebrated by American Ashkenazic Jews, especially those belonging to the more liberal denominations, invariably conclude with the singing of the words siman tov u-mazal tov, yehei lanu u-lekhol yisra’eil (May it bring good luck to us and to all Israel).1 Whether after the long anxious minutes of the berit milah, the struggle of the youngster through the Hebrew text and trope of the haftarah, the calling up of the bridegroom (and the bride as well in most non-Orthodox synagogues) at an aufruf, or the breaking of the glass at a wedding, the spontaneous singing serves as a catharsis to relieve the built-up tensions of the communal ritual event as well as to express an outpouring of joy. The celebration and commemoration of the Jewish life cycle (in Hebrew, mah.azor ha-h.ayyim) has attracted the interest of modern historians, liturgists, and anthropologists. The musical dimension of these ceremonies, however, has often been underplayed by scholars in these disciplines.2 Ethnomusicologists, by contrast, have long recognized the centrality of music in Jewish life-cycle celebrations and have contributed to a growing body of scholarly literature on the subject.3 The vital role of music in such ceremonies was well put by Amnon Shiloah:
1. The song was published in Velvel Pasternak, Songs of the Chassidim (New York: Bloch, 1968), 125, no. 153. 2. Ivan G. Marcus writes that “rituals include words to be read out, chanted, sung (The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004], 11), yet as a historian, he makes only three brief references to music in this otherwise excellent comprehensive work. The contributors to chapters on Jewish liturgy in Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman, eds., Life Cycles in Jewish and Christian Worship (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), largely omit references to music. On the other hand, Harvey Goldberg emphasizes the importance of musical elements in a number of life-cycle events in his anthropological study Jewish Passages: Cycles of Jewish Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 3. The most recent studies include Susan Weich-Shahak, Judeo-Spanish Moroccan Songs for the Life Cycle: Recordings, Transcriptions and Annotations (Jerusalem: Jewish Music Research Center, 1989); Kay Kaufmann Shelemay, Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance among Syrian Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Yael Shai, “Yemenite Women’s Songs at the Habani Jews’ Wedding Celebrations,” Musica Judaica 15 (2000–2001): 83–96; Miriam Meghani, “Canticas de parida: canti per la madre
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Geoffrey Goldberg A person’s lifetime, from birth to death, is filled with a succession of outstanding occasions, many of which are celebrated in song and dance. In the past, when means of entertainment were limited, if a family or ethnic group had extensive social ties, the celebration of various ceremonies would extend over several days. … Songs sung at those times reflected the life and happenings in the community; they mirrored the people’s character, culture, way of thinking, beliefs, aspirations, and longings. At such times folk song reaches its fullest expression.4
Ethnomusicologists have primarily researched the rich life-cycle musical traditions of Sephardic Jews and the ‘eidot ha-mizrah.. Yet if we direct our attention to the ceremonies celebrated by Ashkenazic Jews, if the contemporary American scene is our standard, we might legitimately ask whether life-cycle song exists in any meaningful sense. The past, however, reveals a far different story, examination of which shows that Ashkenazic Jewry once developed a rich body of song associated with rituals of passage. This body of song was first expressed through piyyutim that, before the advent of printed prayer books, h.azzanim almost certainly sang aloud in their entirety. Ezra Fleischer countered the widespread impression that early Ashkenazic synagogal poetry only gave voice, through kinot and selih.ot, to national tragedy, collective suffering, and personal sin. He revealed how various types of piyyut, inserted into fixed texts of the liturgy, also gave expression to praise, joy, and celebration.5 More recently, Menahem Schmelzer, in his study of a manuscript collection of Ashkenazic piyyutim, expanded on Fleischer’s fresh perspective.6 Many of the piyyutim in this collection were recited in the synagogue when the bridegroom was called to the Torah on the Sabbath following his wedding (Shabbat Nisu’in), as in the early Middle Ages marriages were conducted on Fridays.7 A number of piyyutim were also recited at circumcisions.8
di um bimbo appena nato” [Canticas de parida: Songs for the mother of a newborn child], in La nascita nella tradizione ebraica, ed. Elena Loewenthal (Livorno: Belforte Salomone, 2005): 154–63. 4. Amnon Shiloah, Jewish Musical Traditions (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 170. This is an abridged version of his Ha-moreshet ha-musikalit shel kehillot yisra’eil (Tel-Aviv: Ha-universitah ha-petuhah, 1985). 5. Ezra Fleischer, Shirei ha-kodesh ha-‘ivrit biymei ha-beinayyim (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), 448–67, esp. 471–73. 6. MS 8972, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, analyzed by Menahem Schmelzer, “Mashehu ‘al piyyutim le-nisu’im be-’ashkenaz,” in Essays on Hebrew Literature, ed. Zvia Ben-Yosef Ginor (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2003), 31–52. 7. The piyyutim bore superscriptions identifying them for use at weddings and had references to marriage woven into them. They were associated with specific liturgical stations, such nishmat, or were grouped together as insertions in the yoz.er prayer, or in the Torah service when the bridegroom was called up to the Torah; see Schmelzer, “Mashehu,” 33. Piyyutim of this genre are documented in the late eleventh-century Mahzor Vitry; see ibid., 35, referring to Mahzor Vitry, ed. S. Hurwitz (Nuremburg: Y. Bulka, 1923), 593, 599. Schmelzer has now analyzed MS Oxford 1099 listing similar piyyutim embodied within yoz.erot and reshuyyot written between the tenth and thirteenth centuries; see
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim Ashkenazic life-cycle songs were primarily limited to the synagogue, in contrast to those of Sephardim and ‘eidot ha-mizrah., whose conduits for life-cycle song were paraliturgical piyyutim sung in Hebrew and folk piyyutim sung in the vernacular.9 Ashkenazic synagogue life-cycle song was never eclipsed, at least not in Western and Central Europe, by the later development of folk songs in the Yiddish vernacular.10 The following study of life-cycle songs in the Ashkenazic synagogue focuses on the early modern period. By that time, a number of commonly held practices had coalesced in much of Europe, and one can trace the performance of synagogue-centered liturgical–musical customs within specific communities and regions. The piyyut component became relatively modest, largely because of the cessation of the Sabbath wedding with its special liturgy.11 What gained in importance was the Ashkenazic synagogue practice of elaborating fixed liturgical texts (matbe‘a ha-tefillah) by singing them to special melodies. The focus on the early modern period also reflects the availability of historical sources. Jewish musical traditions are overwhelmingly oral; the notation of Ashkenazic synagogue chants began sporadically only in the late eighteenth century, continuing more systematically in the mid- and late nineteenth century, particularly in Western and Central Europe. For evidence before this time, the historian must draw on literary sources. A particularly and surprisingly useful genre is the minhag book, collections of community and synagogue customs, most of which emanated from German-speaking lands. One such minhagbuch, hitherto little exploited by musicologists, comes from seventeenth-century Worms, composed by Yiptha Yuspa Shamash (1604–78). It constitutes perhaps the most significant source for documenting West European Ashkenazic musical practices in the pre-emancipation
“Piyyutim le-nisu’in le-rishonei h.akhmei ‘ashkenaz,” in Le-’ot zikaron: meh.kharim ba-shirah ha-‛ivrit uve-moreshet yisra’eil: sefer zikaron le-Aharon Mirski, ed. Efraim Hazan and Yosef Yahalom (RamatGan: Bar-Ilan University, 2006), 173–85, esp. 175–79; 175 n. 6 lists additional MSS containing marriage-related piyyutim. The writer is grateful to Professor Schmelzer for his assistance and for drawing my attention to his “Piyyutim le-nisu’in” article. 8. Schmelzer, “Mashehu,” 39 n. 14. 9. Shiloah, Jewish Musical Traditions, 160; Shlomo Hamburger, “Zemer le-h.atan ba‘aliyato la-torah,” in Shorshei minhag ’ashkenaz (Jerusalem: Makhon Moreshet ’Ashkenaz, 2001), 3:369– 72. In Morocco, there was a genre of piyyutim known as ma‘alot ha-torah—an indication of the reverence attached to them—to honor those called to the Torah on this and other special occasions; see Hayyim Zafrani, Ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit be-moroko, ed. Yosef Tobi (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1984), 144–45. 10. A convenient overview is found in Ruth Rubin, Voices of a People: The Story of Yiddish Folksong (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000, 1974). 11. On the Sabbath of shabbat nisu’in, the bridegroom recited a special, festive haftarah (שוש אשיש, Isaiah 51). Eric Zimmer demonstrated that in France, and somewhat later in Austria, this haftarah frequently took precedence over the talmudic-based prophetic readings for special Sabbaths; see Zimmer, “Keri’at haftarah likhvod h.atan,” in Olam ke-minhago noheig: perakim be-toledot ha-minhagim, halikhoteihem ve-gilguleihem (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1996), 273–80; Fleischer, Shirei ha-kodesh, 153, 472.
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Geoffrey Goldberg period.12 Judah Löw Kirchheim (d. 1632) also compiled a collection of Worms customs, but provided considerably less information than did Shamash with respect to musical practices.13 Yuspa Shamash’s minhagbuch gives us a convenient starting point for tracing the historical development of many musical aspects. By virtue of the geographic locale of this minhag source, and that of several others, too, the following study largely reflects the musical practices of the western Germanic lands, coterminus with the liturgical (and musical) rite of minhag ’ashkenaz. F ROM B IRTH
TO
D EATH
Birth Some four weeks following the birth of a child, as soon as the mother or yoledet regained strength following her confinement, she attended the synagogue on the Sabbath, a folk custom referred to as shabbat yez.i’at ha-yoledet.14 On this occasion, the child’s father was called to the Torah. While a boy would already have been named at the berit milah, the day the yoledet came to the synagogue was the occasion for a girl to receive her Jewish name. In addition, both boys and girls were given a secular name on this day, an event that took place at home following the Shabbat afternoon meal, with a ceremony known as Hollekreisch. In most German communities, the attendance of the yoledet was an occasion for musical celebration. This embellishment occurred at the end of ’eil ’adon, the second of two poetic sections of the expanded yoz.er blessing recited on the Sabbath.15 Ordinarily, during the winter, to avoid lengthened services in the generally unheated synagogues, these piyyutim were not recited aloud, whereas in the summer, they were chanted responsively, often led by two h.azzanim.16 However, 12. Yiptha Yuspa Shamash, Minhagim de-kehillah kedoshah vermaiza le-rabbi Yuspa Shamash, ed. Benjamin Salomon Hamburger and Eric Zimmer, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1988). Seventeenth-century Worms had the fourth-largest Jewish community in Western and Central Europe, after Prague, Frankfurt, and Vienna; see Shamash, Minhagim, introduction by Zimmer, 1:61. 13. Juda Liva Kirchheim, Minhagot vermaiza, ed. Israel Mordecai Peles (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1987). 14. Shamash described the elaborate folk customs concerning confinement and its termination; Minhagim 2:256–64, section 288. Cross-cultural influences between the Jewish rite of passage for the birth mother and the Christian Ausgegang ritual have recently been examined in Elisheva Baumgarten, “Tiksei nashim: minhag ‘shabbat yez.i’at ha-yoledet’ be-heksheiro ha-tarbuti be-reishit ha‛eit ha-h.adashah,” in Meh.karim be-toledot yehudei ashkenaz: seifer yoveil likhvod yiz.h.ak (eric) z.immer, ed. Gershon Bacon, Daniel Sperber, and Aharon Gaimoni (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2008), 11–28. 15. The poetic expansion of the yoz.er blessing comprises of three sections, starting with ha-kol yodukha. See Reuven Hammer, Or h.adash: A Commentary on Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 2003), xxiii. 16. Shamash, Minhagim 1:37, hag. [annotation] to par. 34 (MS Warmaiza). The second h.azzan would have been a lay member of the congregation. For more on the responsorial singing of ha-kol yodukaha and ’eil ’adon, see Geoffrey Goldberg, “H.azzan and Qahal: Responsive Chant in Minhag Ashkenaz,” Hebrew Union College Annual 61 (1990): 211, 214–16.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim as Shamash described, on the Sabbath when the yoledet came to the synagogue, irrespective of the season, the h.azzan would sing the concluding verses of ‘eil ’adon, commencing at semeih.im be-z.eitam, to a special festive melody.17 The text depicts the heavenly bodies as animated beings rising and falling to serve their Creator’s will: ,ְֹשֵמִחים ְּבֵצאָתם וְָֹשִֹשים ְּבבוָֹאם עוִֹֹשים ְּבֵאיָמה ְרצוֹן קוֹנָם Rejoicing in rising, gladly setting, They rush to obey their Creator’s Will.18
At some stage in minhag ’ashkenaz, the text was personalized to refer to the rising of the yoledet from her confinement. Later historical sources attest to the widespread practice of this musical custom. For example, according to the statutes of Hamburg-Altona of 1726, the singing of this Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) was regarded as obligatory, and required the payment of a fee to the h.azzan.19 A similar stipulation, also mentioning remuneration, was included in the statutes of the Hungarian community of Mattersdorf.20 Testimony to the diffusion in Germany of this liturgical–musical custom are references in several early and mid-nineteenth-century synagogue regulations.21 While only two musical notations of semeih.im be-z.eitam appear to be extant, many additional melodies were certainly in use. The first notation is present in the short handbook of life-cycle melodies compiled by Wilhelm Flamm, a h.azzan in Prague.22 Flamm harmonized the melody for choral rendition so that it could be fit for the sophisticated musical tastes of Prague’s Jews in the 1860s. A second melody was published in 1912 in the compendium of south German h.azzanut by Selig Scheuermann (1873–1935); here, the author provided the rubric beim Ausgang einer Wöchnerin (On the Coming Out of the Birth Mother).23 In both examples, the melody was set to the verse quoted earlier and to the verse cited here in example 1:24 17. Shamash, Minhagim 1:119, section 120, annotation in MS of Yair Hayyim Bacharach (1639–1702, rabbi in Worms from 1650) and n. 4 to same by Hamburger. 18. Translation of Jules Harlow, Hammer, Or h.adash, 108. 19. Max Grunwald, “Die Statuten der Hamburger-Altona Gemeinde von 1726,” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für jüdische Volkskunde 11, no. 1 (1903): 9, par. 19. For some reason, however, the song was referred to not as semeih.im be-z.eitam but as kara laschemesch, (God summoned the sun, whose light shone forth), a subsequent verse of the text. 20. Max Grunwald, “Mattersdorf,” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Jüdische Volkskunde 26–27 (1924–26): 509. Grunwald did not provide the date of the statutes (takkanot), but by their character, they are unquestionably pre-emancipation. The “festive intoning” of semeih.im be-z.eitam was also recalled in Alfred Fürst’s reminiscence of Eisenstadt in the same region of western Hungary; see Fürst, Sitten und Gebräuche: Einer Judengasse (Minhag Asch.) (Székesfehérvár: E. Singer, 1908), 52. 21. See the section on “The Emancipation and Life-Cycle Song” in this essay. 22. Wilhelm Flamm, Noten-Beilagen zum Handbuch für Cantoren (Prague: Samuel W. Pascheles, 1868), 14–15, no. 9.
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Example 1. Selig Scheuermann’s Semeih.im be-z.eitam. Selig Scheuermann, Gottesdienstliche Gesänge, 21, section 1/E, no. 14 (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1912) Berit Milah on Weekdays. The birth of a male child was an occasion for great festivity, especially, but not exclusively, on the day of the berit milah.25 In medieval Europe, it became the norm for circumcision to take place in the synagogue following the shah.arit service.26 Both Shamash and Kirchheim discussed the widespread custom of the moheil, rather than the h.azzan, leading the chanting of the shah.arit service.27 If the moheil were not capable of this task, he would at least lead the closing prayers, starting at la-menaze’ah. (Psalm 20).28 In Frankfurt, however, the moheil was only permitted to lead from la-menaze’ah. on.29 The tradition of the moheil leading shah.arit was widespread also in Poland, where Moses Isserles (1488–1575) mentioned the custom in his glosses to the Shulh.an ‛arukh.30 At the end of the introductory pesukei de-zimrah, both the moheil and the sandak were called upon to recite va-yevarekh david and shirat ha-yam
23. Selig Scheuermann, Die gottesdienstlichen Gesänge der Israeliten für das ganze Jahr (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1912), 21, section I/E, no. 14. 24. Scheuermann did not indicate whether the remainder of the piyyut was sung to the same melody. Flamm, however, stated that the following verse starting kara la-shemesh was recited (in free style) by the h.azzan, while the third and last verse repeated the opening melody. Both melodies are of relatively recent origin and lack archaic or modal musical elements. 25. Other celebrations included the special festivity (referred to by Shamash as the zakhar) on the preceding Sabbath known as shabbat zakhar. This took place in the home after the Friday night Sabbath meal. 26. Goldberg, Jewish Passages, 45–46. 27. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:67, section 240; Kirchheim, Minhagot Vermaiza, 83. Kirchheim gives an explanation for this honor: the first letters of the Hebrew phrase מוהל יורד לפני התבה, “the moheil leads the service,” spell the word milah (ibid., gloss to Shamash, ')ה. 28. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:67, section 240. In minhag ’ashkenaz, the service began with the opening hymn, ’adon ‘olam; see Mordechai Gumpil, Sefer minhagim de-kehilateinu (Fürth: Hayyim Zevi Hirsch, 1767), 3, par. 7. In some communities, the moheil led from yishtabah onward; see Shamash, Minhagim, 2:47, section 240, n. 50 of Hamburger, quoting David Leib of Lida, Sod ’adoshem, section 39. 29. Joseph Juspa Kosman, Noheig ka-z.on yoseif (Frankfurt, 1718), repr., ed. Judah Miller (Tel Aviv [s.n.], 1969), 51. 30. Shulhan ‘arukh, yoreh dei‘ah, section 265, par. 11.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim responsively.31 This practice began, appropriately enough, at the verse ve-kharot ‘imo ha-berit (You made a covenant [of the flesh] with him [Abraham]). Shamash described how, in Worms, the moheil would chant one verse and the sandak the next, up until yishtabah.. If neither could chant or follow these customary divisions, the h.azzan or shamash would stand in their stead.32 Although Joseph Yuspa Kosman of Frankfurt (d. 1758) was of the opinion that the responsorial singing of these verse by the moheil and the sandak was the custom throughout Germany (medinot ’ashkenaz),33 its strongest hold was in the south and southwestern parts of the country.34 Even in Frankfurt, where, as we have noted, the h.azzan led all or most of the service, the tradition became rooted in the early eighteenth century.35 In northeast Germany, including Berlin, the chanting was often led by the moheil alone, with the congregation responding. This was still the practice at a leading Orthodox synagogue in Berlin in the late 1930s.36 Responsorial chanting by the moheil and the sandak was also known in parts of Poland.37 Originally a fluidity prevailed with regard to the division of the verses,38 but a uniform practice soon coalesced, testified to first by R. Ya’ir Bacharach of Worms (1638–1702). Custom soon saw the dividing of verses at every sof pasuk (full close) and every ’etnah.ta (half close).39 This standardized practice of dividing the recitation between the moheil and the sandak is reflected in ‘Avodat yisra’eil, the authoritative edition of the daily prayer book of Seligmann Baer (1825–1897; see example 2).40
31. I Chronicles 29:10–13; Nehemiah 9:6–11; Exodus 14:30–15:19; Psalms 22:29; Ovadiah 1:21; Zekhariah 14:9; Deuteronomy 6:4. 32. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:65, section 240; Kirchheim, Minhagot vermaiza, 82–83. 33. Kosman, Noheig ka-z.on yoseif, 51. Nevertheless, this was not the custom in Fürth (Bavaria), where evidently only the moheil sang ve-kharot, and possibly the subsequent passages as well. See Mordechai Gumpil, Sefer minhagim de-kehilateinu (Fürth: H.ayyim ben Z.vi, 1767), 3, par. 7. 34. Salomon Carlebach, Ratgeber für das jüdische Haus: Ein Führer für Verlobung, Hochzeit und Eheleben (Berlin: Hausfreund, 1918), 66. 35. Salomon Geiger, Seifer divrei kehillot (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kaufmann, 1862), 26, excursus 17; Kosman, Noheig, 108, par. 8. 36. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah: oder der practische Vorbeter, 2nd. ed. (Gothenberg: privately printed, 1883; reprinted by Sacred Music Press, Out of Print Classic Series, Vol. 1, 1953), 6, no. 30; Minhagei … kehal ‘adat [Adass] yisra’eil poh berlin (Berlin, 1938), 8. In other parts of northern Germany, at least by the nineteenth century, the h.azzan tended to lead the responsorial chanting of shirat ha-yam; see Carlebach, Ratgeber für das jüdische Haus, 66. 37. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:65, section 240, n. 27 of Hamburger, referring to Magein ’avraham, OH, section 51, par. 9. 38. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:66, section 240, n. 29 of Hamburger; Kirchheim, Minhagot, 82, hag. 7. 39. Shamash, Minhagim, annotation of Havvat ya’ir (Bacharach). Division in the middle of verses was disapproved of by Joseph Kosman of Frankfurt; see Kosman, Noheig, 32, par. 13, 319. Even so, here, too, this later became the practice; see Divrei kehillot, 53, excursus no. 3. 40. Seligmann Baer, ‘Avodat yisra’eil (Rödelheim, 1868; repr., Berlin: Schocken, 1937), 72–74. Somewhat surprisingly, ‘Avodat yisra’eil included irregular breaks in the shorter ve-kharot section of
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Example 2. Divisions between moheil and sandak in Seligmann Baer’s ‘Avodat yisra’eil (Roedelheim Verlag, 1868) The divisions were somewhat different in the northeast, in Berlin, and in western Poland, as is evident in the cantorial compendium of Abraham Baer (1834–1894; see example 3).41 Kirchheim emphasized that the moheil and sandak were to sing ve-kharot and shirat ha-yam in a beautiful melody (niggun yafeh).42 This melody replaced the regular chant pattern and, in the case of shirat ha-yam, use of the melody of the te‘amim.43 Transcriptions reveal that a number of texts in the shah.arit service were singled out for special musical performance. In south and southwest Germany, a core group of texts was sung to the special berit milah melody, and included not only ve-kharot and shirat ha-yam but also shirah h.adashah and z.ur yisra’eil at the conclusion of the ge’ulah prayer. In more eastern territories (but also in Hürben, Bavaria),44 this practice was expanded to include the opening hymns ’adon ‘olam (Eternal God) or yigdal (Praise the Living God; see example 4).45
va-yevareikh david, a phenomenon also found in all the musical transcriptions of shirat ha-yam for a berit milah. 41. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 6, nos. 30–32. Comparatively similar divisions were also recorded by Lion Wolff (1835–1934?) of Rostock and Berlin; see Wolff, Liturgisches Handbuch für alle Kasualien von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (Berlin: Louis Hamm, 1914), 10–13. 42. Kirchheim, Minhagot vermaiza, 83. 43. Kosman, Noheig, 31, section 12; Seligmann Baer, ‘Avodat yisra’eil, 73 (rubric to shirat ha-yam); Fabian Ogutsch, Der Frankfurter Kantor: Sammlung der traditionellen Frankfurter Gesänge, ed. J. B. Levy (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1930), no. 7, starting at tevi’eimo. 44. The transcriptions of the melodies sung in Hürben, transcribed by Isaak Lachmann, sometimes present serious problems because some of them, which he identified as Western European, actually represent Eastern European versions. 45. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 71, no. 257.
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Example 3. Divisions between sandak/moheil and choir/congregation in Abraham Baer’s Baal T’fillah: oder der practische Vorbeter, 2nd ed. (Gothenberg: privately printed, 1883; reprinted by Sacred Music Press, Out of Print Classic Series, Vol. 1, 1953), nos. 30–32.
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Example 4. The opening hymn, Yigdal, sung to the special berit milah melody. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah: oder der practische Vorbeter, 71, no. 257. Additional portions of the pesukei de-zimrah, such as romemot ’eil (High Praises of God; Psalm 149:6)46 and halleluyah (Psalm 150),47 were sometimes added. Mizmor le-todah (A Song of Thanksgiving; Psalm 100) was also included, a custom, according to Baer, of minhag polin. Cantorial compendia from the midnineteenth to the early twentieth century show the expansion of texts selected for special singing (see Table 1):48 The differences between the musical notations in these texts are essentially only variations of a melody pattern built on a basic musical structure and similar motives. This pattern was also used for chanting the prayers of the berit milah ceremony itself, whence, it would seem, it was transferred to the shah.arit service. Shamash’s statement that shirah h.adashah was sung to the niggun berit milah would seem to confirm this tradition.50 Even though notations of shirah h.adashah reveal a more elaborate, metrical melody, incorporating new thematic material of 46. “A double-edged sword in their hand,” the phrase וחרב פיפיות בידםin this verse was interpreted as referring to the knife used by the moheil. 47. In Frankfurt, according to Moshe Berlove, ’adon ‘olam was sung to the special berit milah melody. See Berlove, “Music and Ritual Practices in the German Synagogue,” Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy 9 (1986–87): 21. Divrei kehillot and Der Frankfurter Kantor do not, however, provide any corroboration for Berlove’s statement. 48. In the following sources, the shirat ha-yam section is written in bold numbers: (1) Frankfurt: Fabian Ogutsch, Der Frankfurter Kantor, no. 8, 14; (2) Bavaria, Munich: Maier Kohn, Der Vorbeter in der Synagoge von München (Munich, 1839–44), MS, Birnbaum Collection, Hebrew Union College– Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, Mus. Add. 4, nos. 14–15; (3) Bavaria, Nuremberg: Moritz Rosenhaupt, Schire Ohel Yaakov, Gottesdienstliche Gesänge für Israeliten III, Werktags-Gottesdienst (Leipzig: privately printed, 1895), Anhang, nos. 6–9; (4) Bavaria, Hürben: Isaak Lachmann, Awaudas Jisroeil, I Teil, Wochentags-Gottesdienst (Hürben: privately printed, 1899), nos. 33, 42–45, 58–59; (5) Berlin: Aron Friedmann, Schir Lisch’laumau (Berlin: Deutsche-israelitischer Gemeindebund, 1902), nos. 11, 13, 16, 23 no. 16; (6) Silesia, Breslau: Moritz Deutsch, Vorbeterschule: vollständige Sammlung der altern Synagogen-Intonationem (Breslau: J. Hainauer, 1871), nos. 475–82; (7) Posen, northeast Germany (and northwest Poland): Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 1883, nos. 257 (yigdal), 25, 26, 28, 30–32, 49–51 (third melody); (8) Moravia: Maier Wodak, Hamnazeach: Schule des isr. Cantors (Vienna: privately printed, 1898), nos. 13–17, 21–22 (the core melody pattern), 27–28, 41 (pe’eiro ‘alay). 49. In col. 7, the abbreviation . פ. מstands for minhag polin. 50. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:65–66.
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Table 1. Texts sung to a special berit milah melody (left to right)49
ואני בחסדך מזמור לתודה רוממות הללויה וכרות וכו’ שירה חדשה צור ישראל
יגדל ואני בחסדך מזמור לתודה )מ .פ(. רוממות )מ. פ(. ב ר וך ה’ לעולם אתה הוא/ וכרות וכו’ שירה חדשה צור ישראל
שבת: פארו עלי
יגדל ואני בחסדך רוממות וכרות וכו’ שירה חדשה
מזמור לתודה רוממות הללויה ב ר וך ה’ לעולם אתה הוא/ וכרות וכו’ שירה חדשה צור ישראל
אדון עולם רוממות הללויה ב ר וך ה’ לעולם אתה הוא/ וכרות וכו’ שירה חדשה צור ישראל
וכרות וכו’ ושירת הים )נ’ מהרי”ל( שירה חדשה צור ישראל
וכרות וכו’ שירה חדשה צור ישראל
ומצאת )וכרות וכו’( שירה חדשה צור ישראל
315
8. Moravia
7. Posen/NE Germany
6. Silesia )(Breslau
5. Berlin
4. Bavaria )(Hürben
3. Bavaria )(Nuremberg
2. Bavaria )(Munich
1. Frankfurt am Main
Geoffrey Goldberg
Example 5a. Elaborate setting of Shirah h.adashah by Löb Wolf. Published in 1933. Reprinted by Ktav in 1973. This comes from Idelsohn's Thesaurus volume, The Synagogue Song of the German Jews in the 18th Century, 213, no. 36. later provenance,51 the core niggun berit milah melody pattern returns in the concluding z.ur yisra’eil. The shirah h.adashah melody seems to have been especially popular. It was first transcribed in 1809 by Löb Wolf, a cantor in Berlin, whose setting is elaborate, but lacks text underlay (example 5a–b).52 51. Francis L. Cohen (1862–1934) held that this melody probably coalesced during the eighteenth century; see Cohen, “Shirah H.adashah,” Jewish Encyclopedia, 11:293–94. In support of his contention is the fact that the London version, as transcribed by Cohen, includes a recurring cadential phrase found in numerous Ashkenazic synagogue melodies of the time. See Abraham Z. Idelsohn, The Synagogue Song of the German Jews in the 18th Century, Hebräisch-orientalisicher Melodienschatz 6 (Leipzig: Friderich Hofmeister, 1932), for many examples of this musical phrase. 52. Idelsohn, The Synagogue Song, 213, no. 36. Parts of this setting were probably sung by a boy soprano vocal assistant (singerl) to the h.azzan; see Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 13, nos. 49–50;
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Example 5b. The berit milah melody in Shirah h.adashah and Z.ur yisra’eil (Abraham Baer). Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah: oder der practische Vorbeter, 13, nos. 49–50. Berit Milah on the Sabbath. The addition of piyyutim provided textual and musical enrichment when a berit milah took place on the Sabbath.53 Shamash described these additions, largely repeating information detailed by R. Jacob
14, no. 5. The melody pattern niggun berit milah was also used in minhag ‘ashkenaz for the chanting of ’elohim z.ivita lididkha, “God, You Commanded Your Beloved,” a piyyut recited following the circumcision at the ritual meal (se‘udah), which was sometimes held in the synagogue or in an adjoining room. The piyyut includes a recurring short refrain, berit ‘olam. See Maier Kohn, Der Vorbeter in der Synagoge 7, no. 16; the melody of Baer, Baal T’fillah, no. 276, is merely according to the customary chant pattern of the birkat ha-mazon. ’Elohim z.ivita lididkha was inserted toward the end of the second blessing of the birkat ha-mazon after [“ לעולם ועדby the mouth of all the living] continually, forever.” Shamash describes how, if two persons had carried out the berit, the moheil and a moz.ez., then both were honored with chanting the piyyut responsively; see Shamash, Minhagim, 2:76, section 241. 53. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:79, section 244, where he writes . מ.( חh.azzan menagein); Kirchheim, Minhagot, 85. Shamash and Kirchheim both use the term menagein to differentiate between the lay precentor and the h.azzan; see Shamash, Minhagim, 2:52–53; Kirchheim, Minhagot, 79. Later, in hasidic circles in Eastern Europe, ba’al menag’n (Yiddish) was used for a h.azzan who composed and introduced new melodies (niggunim).
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Example 6. The ’ofan ’Azurei ’eimah for Sabbath of a berit milah. Selig Scheuermann, Gottesdienstliche Gesänge, 18, section 1/E, no. 3 (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1912) Moellin of Mainz (the Maharil; d. 1427), the most influential late medieval authority on minhag.54 In the ensuing centuries, a number of these piyyutim continued to be recited, as evidenced by their inclusion in Baer’s ‘Avodat yisra’eil.55 One such poem, inserted before the h.atimah (conclusion) of the yoz.eir blessing, was ’azurei ’eimah ([The angels] girded with fear). There are four extant musical notations, three from south, southwest, and west-central Germany, and one from eastern France, the last dating from as recently as 1951.56 Each stanza concludes with a varying pizmon refrain (see example 6): . ְמֲהְלִלים ְלזוֵֹכר ַהְּבִרית,וְַעּמוֹ ְּכרוֵּתי ְבִרית But God’s people, cut with the sign of the Covenant Praise the One who remembers the Covenant.
Some h.azzanim also used the occasion of a berit milah to include a special extended melody while singing the passage ‘al ha-rishonim ([Incumbent] upon the Early Generations) within the ge’ulah (Redemption) blessing that follows the shema‘ and leads into the ‘amidah of shah.arit. ‘Al ha-rishonim was only recited elaborately when a piyyut belonging to the category of a zulat was inserted within the ge’ulah blessing. On the occasion of a berit milah the zulat ’ot berit (Sign of the Covenant) was added—hence the special treatment of the ‘al ha-rishonim text that had led into it (see example 7).57 54. Jacob Moellin, Seifer maharil, minhagim, ed. Shlomo Spitzer (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1989), 486, section 21; Shamash, Minhagim, 2:79, section 244. 55. Seligmann Baer, ‘Avodat yisra’eil, 798–802. For the wider context of change in the liturgical use of piyyut in Ashkenazic communities, see Ruth Langer, To Worship God Properly: Tension between Liturgical Custom and Halakhah in Judaism (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1998), 136–47, 183. 56. The musical example (example 6) is from Scheuermann, Die gottesdienstlichen Gesänge 18, section 1/E, no. 3. Other notations of ’azurei ’eimah include Isaac Lachmann, Awaudas Jisroeil, Mus. Add. 39 (2), Birnbaum Collection, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, part 2, 122, no. 271; Bernard Bochner, Schirë David: Recueil des chants et récitations religieux d’après les airs traditionalles alsaciens (Strasbourg, 1951), 294, no. 455.
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Example 7. Elaborate ‘Al ha-rishonim on the Sabbath of a berit milah. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah: oder der practische Vorbeter, 127, no. 529.
An expanded kedushah was sung during the musaf service. Following the congregational response, ( אני ה’ אלהיכםI am the Lord, your God), a short poem belonging to a group of piyyutim with the opening word ’eloheikhem was inserted.58 It begins ’eloheikhem ’ani zokher berit (Your God, indeed, am I, who remembers the covenant).59 This poem was included in JTS Library MS 8972; its chanting was referred to by Jacob Moellin, Yuspa Shamash, and the eighteenth-century minhagbuch of Fürth, Bavaria.60 Traces of the musical performance of this piyyut remain in a partial notation by Abraham Baer, but by that time, the h.azzan only sang, in a minor mode, the concluding words.61 In eastern Germany and Central Europe, on the occasion of a Sabbath day circumcision, certain verses in the brazenly anthropomorphic ’an‘im zemirot (Hymn of Glory) were sung responsively to the berit milah melody.62 This occurred in the stanza starting at pe’eiro ‘alay (His glory is upon me), where, in
57. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 126, no. 529. 58. Fleischer, Shirat ha-kodesh, 448–49; Macy Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer: Ashkenazic and Sephardic Rites (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), 127–28. There were eight such ’eloheikhem poems: six for special Sabbaths, and one each for shabbat nisu’in and berit milah. In Worms, they were recited only for two life-cycle occasions and Rosh H.odesh (New Month); see n. 2 of Hamburger, to Shamash, Minhagim, 1:57. 59. For the full text, see Seligmann Baer, ‘Avodat yisra’eil, 244. 60. Schmelzer, “Mashehu,” 38–39; Moellin, Seifer maharil, 486, section 21; Shamash, Minhagim 1:57, section 54, 2:80, section 244; Gumpil, Sefer minhagim de-kehillateinu, 4, par. 12. 61. “Who says unto Zion, ‘Your God reigns brightly’” ( ;)האמר לציון מלך אלהיך זהוריתAbraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, nos. 615–16. In Frankfurt, according to Fabian Ogutsch, the words were sung to the melody used for כבודו מלא עולםin the kedushah; see Ogutsch, Frankfurter Kantor, rubric, 104. 62. Minhagei … kehal ‘adat [adass] yisra’eil poh berlin, 8. There is a possibility that in this Berlin synagogue, the hymn was also recited on weekdays, although this was a rather rare practice. For a musical transcription, see Wodak, Hamnazeach, no. 41.
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Geoffrey Goldberg the second line, the word ’adom (red) appears three times, an obvious allusion to the blood of the circumcision: ,ַצח וְָאדוֹם ִלְלבוּשוֹ ָאדוֹם .ּפוָּרה ְבָדְרכוֹ ְּבבוֹאוֹ ֵמֱאדוֹם Radiant and bloody, with garments red as wine God punishes sinning nations [Edom] like grapes pulled from a vine.63
The piyyut yom le-yabashah was especially associated with berit milah; its authorship is ascribed to Judah Halevi (1085–1145), and was customarily read at the end of the ge’ulah prayer on Shabbat beshalah. and on the seventh day of Passover, when shirat ha-yam was read from the Torah. In some regions, however, it was also recited at a Sabbath day circumcision. The opening words of the piyyut connect immediately to the verse “The children of Israel walked into the dry land [va-yabashah]” of shirat ha-yam (Exodus 15:19), while the ensuing verse, shirah h.adashah shibbeh.u ge’ulim, quotes the closing section of the ge’ulah prayer: 64
נֶֶהְפכוּ ְמצוִּלים/ יוֹם ְליַָּב ָׁשה : ִׁשְּבחוּ ְגאוִּלים/ ִׁשיָרה ֲח ָֹדָשה
The day the depths turned into dry land Your redeemed people praised You And sang a new song.
The recitation of yom le-yabashah in the synagogue on the occasion of a berit milah can be easily explained. A condition for the full celebration of the first Passover in Egypt and its subsequent observance was circumcision (Exodus 12:44– 48), a requirement referred to in the following stanza of the piyyut: ִּבְבִרית ֹחָתְמָך/ ַהָּבִאים ִע ְּמָך ִׁשיָרה ֲחָֹדָשה ִׁשְּבחוּ ְגאוִּלים: 65 ֵהָּמה נִּמוִֹלים/ וִּמֶּבֶֽטן ְלִׁשְמָך Those who come with You with the covenant of Your seal And from the womb are circumcised for Your name’s sake.
Recitation of yom le-yabashah for a berit milah was mentioned first by Abraham Klausner (late fourteenth century) in his collection of Austrian customs,66 and thereafter, it became a custom of minhag polin rather than minhag ’ashkenaz.67 While 63. Hammer, ’Or h.adash, 186. Edom was the nation descended from Esau, “the ruddy one” ()ַאְדמֹוִני in Genesis 23:25. A literal translation of the second line reads, “When from treading Edom’s winepress he comes”; see Philip Birnbaum, Daily Prayer Book (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1949), 417. 64. The text is in accordance with Yonah Fraenkel, Mah.zor Pesah. le-fi minhagei b’nei ’ashkenaz le-khol ’anafeha (Jerusalem: Koren, 1993), 475–76. 65. In this stanza, there are allusions to Ezekiel 16:8: וָָאבוֹא ִּבְבִרית ֹאָתך, the berakhot of the berit milah ceremony: להכניסו בבריתו של אברהם אבינות, and Genesis 34:22: ַּכֲאֶׁשר ֵהם נִמֹ ִלים. 66. Abraham Klausner, Seifer minhagim le-rabbeinu Avraham Kloizner (minhagei Maharak), ed. Yonah Yosef Disen (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1978), 12, section 13, par. 3–4. 67. The minhag books of Mainz, Worms, Fürth, and Frankfurt include no references to the recitation of yom le-yabashah.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim Seligmann Baer gave the impression that yom le-yabashah, in both its liturgical and life-cycle contexts, was normative in German congregations,68 a contrary opinion was given by Wolf Heidenheim (1757–1832), who published innumerable editions of German prayer books, and more recently, by Yonah Fraenkel.69 Furthermore, Abraham Baer inserted a liturgical–musical rubric in his Baal T’fillah, explicitly classifying recitation of yom le-yabashah for a circumcision as minhag polin.70 Musical settings of yom le-yabashah in various cantorial compendia are, not surprisingly, of eastern German and Central European provenance. They range from a simple one notated by Abraham Baer, in which the h.azzan sang each stanza in a joyous melody in major (example 8a),71 to more elaborate pieces transcribed by Moritz Deutch (Breslau), Aron Friedmann (Berlin), and Maier Wodak (Moravia), each based on various traditional prayer modes of the Ashkenazic synagogue. Similar or recurring refrain lines in the more complex pieces, melodic elements of which were shared in common by Deutsch and Friedmann (whose version is cited here), invited congregational participation at every strophic recurrence of the closing words, shibbeh.u ge’ulim (“the redeemed ones sang”: example 8b).72 Bar Mitzvah The emergence of the bar mitzvah ceremony was a comparatively late development. It was of German origin but only coalesced and became widespread in the late Middle Ages or the early modern period.73 Despite the relatively late emergence of the ceremony, two musical traditions developed. Yuspa Shamash mentioned that in Worms, a special attractive
68. Seligmann Baer, ‘Avodat yisra’eil, 645. 69. “In mehreren deutschen Gemeinden wird יום ליבשהnicht gebetet”; see Wolf Heidenheim, Gebete für das Pessachfest mit deutscher Übersetzung (Rödelheim, 1860), 96. Yonah Fraenkel, Mah.zor Pesah., 474, states that recitation of yom le-yabashah on the seventh day of Passover (which points to its use at berit milah as well) belonged to minhag polin. 70. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, no. 691, annotation. 71. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, no. 647. This melody was also sung on Shabbat beshalah. and on the seventh day of Passover; see annotation to no. 881. However, Baer adds that “In den meisten deutschen Gemeinden fällt יום ליבשהweg,” which leads to the possibility that while some German (minhag ’ashkenaz) communities did recite the piyyut on that day, this was not normally the case when there was a berit milah. 72. Deutsch, Vorbeterschule, nos. 166–70; Friedmann, Schir Lisch’laumau, no. 249; Wodak, Hamnazeach, no. 312, explicitly stating that it was for a berit milah on the Sabbath, as well as other occasions. Deutsch’s setting is in major, but with modulations to the minor mode; that of Friedmann also begins in major, but thereupon expands into the ’Adonai Malakh mode (major with lowered seventh and tenth); Wodak’s setting is in the ’Ahavah Rabbah (augmented second interval between second and third tones and lowered sixth) mode. 73. Marcus, The Jewish Life Cycle, 99. Yuspa Shamash’s use of the words “the bar mitzvah (boy)” points to a recent development; see Marcus, The Jewish Life Cycle, 98, quoting Shamash, Minhagim 2:164, section 289.
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Example 8a. Baer’s joyous setting of yom le-yabashah for h.azzan alone. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah: oder der practische Vorbeter, 150, no. 647. melody was sung for the reshut (invocation) “May God shield and protect,” ve-ya‘azor ve-yagein, recited in the Torah service immediately before the Torah reading. Normally sung by the h.azzan or the Torah reader as a preface to the
Example 8b. Aron Friedmann’s yom le-yabashah. Printed in 1902 under the auspices of Deutcheisraelitischer Gemeindebund (Berlin). Source: Schir Lisch’laumau, no. 249.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim first ‘aliyah to the Torah,74 on the occasion of a bar mitzvah, it was recited by the boy himself. In Worms, the same melody was used for this prayer text on Simhat Torah (example 9a):75 This special ve-ya‘azor ve-yagein melody was the custom in Frankfurt as well,76 and it appears to have been restricted to western and southwestern Germany.77 On every other occasion, ve-ya‘azor ve-yagein was chanted in a modal chant of considerable antiquity (based on High Holy Day cantillation), the same mode used in minhag ’ashkenaz for the weekday evening (ma‘ariv) service and the shema‘ and its blessings in the weekday morning (shah.arit) service (see example 9b).78 There was further musical elaboration in Frankfurt on those Sabbaths when a bar mitzvah ceremony occurred. After the seventh ‘aliyah and before the maftir portion when the boy would be called up to the Torah, the “Kaddish over the Torah” (kaddish ‘al ha-torah) was recited. The h.azzan sang the first part, as on a regular Sabbath,79 but to mark the distinctiveness of the day, he departed from the usual melody in the second part of the text, singing it to one of the more recent “popular melodies.”80 Marriage The wedding ceremony was the pinnacle in a cycle of ritualized community festivities both preceding and following it. Perhaps because of the protracted stages involved in contracting marriage and the complexity of the rituals surrounding it, over time, there occurred more far-reaching musical changes than with berit milah. A major factor influencing these developments was the change of the day of the traditional wedding ceremony. Engagement. The cycle leading to marriage began with the engagement (tena’im), known in western Ashkenazic communities as k’nas (legen), and involved a financial settlement (k’nas) incumbent should the wedding be cancelled. On the Sabbath following the k’nas, the h.azzan called up the bridegroom to the Torah with a festive ya’amod (“let [the bridegroom] arise”), and the latter made a charitable contribution.81 This special calling up “with a loud voice” 74. In Germany, this was invariably the same person, as there was no separate Torah reader. The emergence of a separate office in Eastern Europe of the ba‘al keri’ah requires further study. 75. Shamash, Minhagim, 1:222, section 288. The special melody appears in Ogutsch, Frankfurter Kantor, 54, no. 159, ;נגון בר מצוהGeiger, Divrei kehillot. 76. Geiger, Divrei kehillot, 360, section 2. In footnote, no. 19, to Shamash (vol. 1), Hamburger states that in Frankfurt, the h.azzan sang ve-ya‘azor ve-yagein, but Geiger wrote בנגון שמנגן בר מצוה, “in the melody that a bar mitzvah boy uses.” 77. The bar mizvah niggun, at least according to the joyful melody transcribed by Fabian Ogutsch (see n. 75 herein), had a strictly metrical rhythm and was sung in a major key, good indications of its later origin. 78. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 28, no. 104a. 79. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 139, no. 590; Ogutsch, Frankfurter Kantor 20, no. 51. 80. Ogutsch, Frankfurter Kantor, 29. Geiger refers to four melodies, all settings of the “Full Kaddish” (nos. 125–28). 81. The donation was made to the hekdeish, probably the hostel for wayfarers; Shamash, Minhagim, 2:2.
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Example 9a. Ve-ya‘azor ve-yagein melody for a bar mitzvah boy (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1930). Source: Fabian Ogutsch, Der Frankfurter Kantor: Sammlung der traditionellen Frankfurter Gesänge, 54, no. 159.
Example 9b. Modal chant for Ve-ya‘azor ve-yagein sung on a regular Sabbath. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah: oder der practische Vorbeter, 28, no. 104a. (be-kol ram) was regarded as praiseworthy and customary by Yehudah Zelichover, a seventeenth-century h.azzan from Amsterdam.82 The same tune was used on other occasions, such as the Sabbath before (or after) the wedding, for the calling up of a bar mitzvah, and for announcing the h.atan Torah and h.atan Bereishit on Simhat Torah. The melody of the festive ya‘amod, according to the musical notation of Isaak Lachmann (1838–1900), was trumpet-like (see example 10).83 82. Shamash, Minhagim, 2:2; Yehudah Leyb ben Moshe of Zelichov [Zelichover] (d. 1701), Shirei yehudah (Amsterdam: Asher Anshil ben Eliezer, 1696), 26b, be-kol ram. The statement of the author (who originally was from Poland) that this was the practice “in these states” could refer either to the Dutch Republic or to the western Ashkenazic lands in general. Two and a half centuries later, Bruno Stern, in his memoir of small-town life in pre-Holocaust Württemberg, recalled the festive calling up; see Stern, Meine Jugenderinnerungen: an eine württembergische Kleinstadt und ihre jüdische Gemeinde (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1968), 122. 83. Isaak Lachmann, Awaudas Jisroeil: Der israelitische Gottesdienst: traditionelle Synagogengesänge des süddeutschen und osteuropäischen Ritus (Hürben, Bavaria, 1898–99), 153, no. 120, Birnbaum Collection, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Mus. Add. 2–3. While the text underlay here is for a bar mitzvah, יעמוד פלוני בן פלוני בר מצוה שלישי חזק, Lachmann signifies that the same melody is used for calling up a bridegroom.
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Example 10. Festive melody for Ya‘amod, notated by Isaak Lachmann. From the Birnbaum Collection, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati). “Shabbat Weddings” or Shabbat Breilaft. An older medieval custom, in both ’ashkenaz and polin, from at least the time of the First Crusade in 1096, had been for the h.uppah ceremony to be conducted on Friday, even close to the onset of Shabbat, as was the case in Worms.84 In Germany, these “Sabbath weddings” extended into the Sabbath proper. Such weddings were often known as Shabbat Breilaft, although Jacob Moellin did not use, or was unfamiliar with, this name.85 Almost all the special wedding piyyutim included in JTS Library MS 8972 were connected to the ceremonies of Shabbat Breilaft. In the early modern period, however, the day for weddings was transferred to Wednesday, as had been talmudic practice.86 In Frankfurt, Shabbat Breilaft was discontinued around the year 1660, despite a short-lived attempt in 1701 to revive it.87 In Worms, the older practice had already ceased by the time Shamash wrote down his minhagim,88 although he described the former practice in detail. On Saturday morning, when the bridegroom, followed by the bride, was escorted to the synagogue, a special musical elaboration occurred. In Frankfurt, the escorting was even accompanied by music played by Gentile musicians.89 In Worms, the precentor (menagein) of the pesukei de-zimrah halted the shah.arit service before mi yidmeh lakh, “who is like You,” in the nishmat hymn, to permit the escorting of the bridegroom.90 Once the latter had been brought into the synagogue, the precentor would sing mi yidmeh lakh with special emphasis (be-kol ram)—a personalization of the text to “who, indeed, is like you.”91 84. Shamash, Minhagim 2:9–10, section 229, n. 1 of Hamburger; 52–59, section 235 (Shamash’s complete description of Shabbat Breilaft), and n. 18 of Hamburger, quoting Yoseif ’omez.; Kirchheim, Minhagot, 79. The original intent of the “Sabbath wedding” was to save expenses, following the massacres of 1096 and the impoverishment of the Jews. 85. Breiluft, Bruitloft, Brautloft, i.e., “wedding”; see Shamash, Minhagim, 2:52, n. 20 of Hamburger Moellin, Seifer Maharil 464, section 2. 86. M. Ketubot 1:1 (for virgins). 87. Seider ve-hanhagah shel nisu’in ha-h.atunah breilaft ke-minhag frankfurt-de-main ‛im birkat ha-mazon (Frankfurt: John Wust, 1701; repr., Jerusalem: [s.n.], 1992). 88. Shamash, Minhagim 2:9, section 229. 89. Seider ve-hanhagah shel nisu’in 5, par. 5; 7, par. 11. Strangely, this source makes no mention of the bride being escorted with instrumental music from the synagogue. See the section of Shabbat Spinholz for further on the employment of Gentile musicians on the Sabbath. 90. Shamash, Minhagim 2:52, section 235; Kirchheim, Minhagot, 79–80. 91. Kirchheim mentioned the special musical emphasis; Minhagot, 80. R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach was shocked that this had been the custom in Worms because, in other localities, the interruption occurred at “a more appropriate place,” such as before barukh she’amar—where the pesukei de-zimrah
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Geoffrey Goldberg There was a fairly logical reason why the break for the escorting occurred at mi yidmeh lakh: at this juncture, a piyyut opening with the same words ָּלְך- וִּמי יִ ۟ ְשוֶה/ ָּלך- ִמי יְִדֶמהhad once been inserted. This piyyut was included in JTS Library MS 8972.92 Shamash and Kirchheim apparently did not know this particular piyyut, which, had it once been sung in Worms, had long been discontinued. Nevertheless the escorting on Shabbat Breilaft remained, and the final section of nishmat was given musical emphasis.93 Wedding-related piyyutim inserted into the service listed by Shamash and Kirchheim, and somewhat earlier almost identically by Jacob Moellin, belonged to a smaller and different repertory. These might have represented minhag reinus (Rhineland) as against minhag oystraikh (Austria) represented by JTS Library MS 8972.94 A piyyut from both repertories was ’ataneh shevah.ei, sung after the bridegroom had been called up to the Torah by a special reshut (the same as that sung on Simhat Torah). The piyyut includes references to the h.atan and quotes God’s blessing to Adam and Eve and the commandment and hope for children (Genesis 1:28). According to Moellin, the opening stanza was sung together by the h.azzan and shushvinim, his close friends also “obligated” to be called up on this occasion, indicating that the text and the melody were familiar.95 The Later Mid-Week Wedding. With the transfer of the marriage ceremony to Wednesday, the shah.arit service on the day of the wedding now occasioned far less musical enrichment. The cessation of the Sabbath wedding enabled the
section began—or after nishmat, just before it ended. See Shamash, Minhagim 2:53, n. 26 of Hamburger, quoting Yair Bacharach, Mekor h.ayyim, section 51, par. 5; Moellin, Seifer maharil, 469, section 8, gloss n. 6. 92. Schmelzer, “Mashehu,” 36–37. 93. A similar piyyut in JTS Library MS 8972 was nishmat yesharim, noted for its beauty and simplicity, although it likewise received no mention by Shamash or Kirchheim. Each stanza begins with the word נְִֹשַמת, and its final line concludes with the opening phrase of the second part of the nishmat hymn, ]אוְֹמִרים[ ִאילוּ ִפינוּ ָמֵלאֹ ִשיָרה ִַכיָּם. It makes references to marriage, the bride and groom (through biblical quotations that constitute the last line of each stanza), and friends who participate in the escorting. It was first printed in 1717 in the prayer book of R. Isaiah Horowitz (ca. 1565– 1630), and might have still been sung despite discontinuation of Shabbat Breilaft. The prayer book includes the rubric that the h.azzan was to sing the piyyut before nishmat. See Schmelzer, “Mashehu,” 34–35; R. Isaiah Horowitz, Sha’ar ha-shamayim (Amsterdam: Beit ’aharon di shelomo antonis, 1717), 134. 94. In Mainz and Worms, the insertion of piyyutim commenced immediately before barekhu; see Moellin, Seifer maharil, 469–70, par. 8–9; Shamash, Minhagim, 2:52–57; Kirschner, Minhagot, 80–81. In Austria and in the east, the piyyutim started at the end of nishmat; see Isaac Tyrnau, Seifer ha-minhagim, ed. Shlomo Spitzer (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim 1979), 163–65. 95. The remainder of ataneh shevah.ei was sung by the h.azzan alone. According to Moellin, it was sung immediately after the Torah reading, but Shamash and Kirchheim say it was sung after ’ashrei; see Moellin, Seifer maharil, 470, par. 9; Davidson, א, 8967; Shamash, Minhagim, 57, section 235; Kirchheim, Minhagot, 81. In Frankfurt (and possibly elsewhere), the h.azzan and his vocal assistants (meshorrerim) also sang ve-ya‘azor ve-yagein בקול נעימה וזימרה, “in a melodious singing tone,” perhaps similar to, or the same as, the niggun bar mizvah; see Seider ve-hanhagah shel nisu’in, 5, par. 6.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim avoidance of rabbinic opposition to removing piyyut. Of all the piyyutim once sung on Shabbat Breilaft, by the nineteenth century, only a special ’eloheikhem inserted in the kedushah of the musaf service generally continued to be sung.96 Nevertheless, in Worms, several fixed liturgical texts in the morning service on the day of the wedding received musical embellishment. As with the berit milah, shirah h.adashah, and z.ur yisra’eil, the concluding sections of the ge’ulah prayer, were sung to special melodies. Despite a lack of clarity in Shamash’s description, it is clear that at least one melody was used exclusively for marriages.97 If, for some reason, the marriage ceremony took place on Thursday, even though the “supplication” was omitted, the short passage ’eil ’erekh ’appayim was sung to a “pretty melody.”98 In addition, the bridegroom was called to the Torah.99 Pre-Marriage Rite: Spinholz. The Sabbath before the wedding was known as Spinholz ()שפינהולץ, a rather obscure term whose etymology remains unresolved.100 Then, as now, the bridegroom was called to the Torah, although the term aufruf (calling up) is of later origin.101 Such importance was given in Mainz to the festive character of Shabbat Spinholz that up until the year 1743, kabbalat shabbat was celebrated on this occasion with instrumental music (kelei zemer).102 In the ma‘ariv service, in order to bring attention to the forthcoming wedding, the h.azzan sang two liturgical texts to special melodies. The first was malkhutekha in the ge’ulah prayer, following the mi khamokha response of the congregation.103 This was a popular text for cantors to embellish. For example, the Berlin h.azzan Aaron Beer (1738–1821) composed a different malkhutekha 96. Seligmann Baer, ’Avodat yisra’eil, 244; Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, nos. 615–16. On change in Ashkenazic liturgical use of piyyut in the early modern period, see Langer, To Worship God Properly, 183. 97. According to one manuscript source, Shamash explicitly stated that “on the day of the wedding the h.azzan sings shirah h.adashah in the special melody for a wedding day”; see Shamash, Minhagim 2:26, section 231, gloss. Elsewhere, however, he wrote, “the h.azzan sang shirah h.adashah with the melody (for the bridegroom) [of the berit milah] and z.ur yisra’eil with the melody for the berit milah [for the bridegroom].” The seemingly contradictory annotations within square brackets were those of a later manuscript of Shamash; see Minhagim 2:81, long additional note of Shamash to section 245. 98. Ibid., 2:28, section 23; Shamash uses the term teh.inah, rather than the more familiar term tah.anun. 99. Ibid., 2:28, section 231. 100. The word literally means “spinning-wood,” but Marcus argues against any connection between Spinholz and Spindel (distaff, referring to the supposed spinning abilities of the bride); see Marcus, Jewish Life Cycle, 152. In Frankfurt and elsewhere, there were originally two consecutive Spinholz sabbaths; see Shamash, Minhagim 2:4, n. 25 of Hamburger, quoting Yosif ’omez. (1723) of Joseph Yuspa Hahn (1570–1637), section 657. 101. Marcus, Jewish Life Cycle, 152. 102. Shamash, Minhagim 2:4, section 227, n. 29 of Hamburger, quoting ’Eileh divrei ha-berit (Hamburg, 1819), 5. Instrumental music for kabbalat shabbat prior to the onset of the Sabbath was not uncommon in a number of Central European communities in the eighteenth century; see Idelsohn, Jewish Music, 205–207. 103. Shamash, Minhagim 2:4. However, Hamburger points out (4, n. 28) that in one manuscript variant, Shamash does not include malkhutekha.
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Geoffrey Goldberg for each Sabbath of the year, although, as far as can be ascertained, none was specifically for a life-cycle event.104 On Shabbat Spinholz, the opening words ( מלכותך ראו בניךYour children beheld Your sovereignty) were taken out of context and personalized, with vanekha (your children) directed toward the bridal couple rather than (or in addition) to the Israelites. Unfortunately, no musical transcriptions of this special malkhutekha appear to be extant. According to Scheuermann, it was sung to the same melody as semeh.im be-z.eitam.105 The second text receiving emphasis was hashkiveinu, the second blessing after the evening shema’. In Worms, this special musical treatment began two-thirds of the way through, at ki ’eil shomereinu (For God watches over us), which was also the custom in Alsace and Baden.106 In Amsterdam, while the older practice was to begin at ki ’eil shomereinu, it later became customary for cantors to compose a setting of the entire prayer in honor of the celebration, a practice found also in Frankfurt.107 The similarity between a melody used in Frankfurt for ki ’eil shomereinu on Hanukkah and that of a south German kallalied (bridal song) suggests that this melody might originally have been used on Shabbat Spinholz (see examples 11a–b).108 The next day, almost everywhere (but not, for example, in Fürth),109 the bridegroom would be called to the Torah with the special ya’amod melody at shah.arit. In Worms, however, the bridegroom was called up at minh.ah, possibly so as to be honored at a time closer to the wedding.110 At the musaf service, the h.azzan sang the closing lines of the kaddish shaleim (yehei shelamah rabbah and ‘oseh shalom) to a special melody referred to by Shamash as “the melody for the bridegroom and the bride” (niggun h.atan ve-kallah), suggesting a well-known traditional tune.111 Following the midday se‛udah (obligatory meal), the bride and bridegroom proceeded to the Braut Haus (wedding hall) or the Tantz Haus (dance hall). The 104. Idelsohn, The Synagogue Song of the German Jews, passim. 105. Scheuermann, Gottesdienstlichen Gesänge, 21, section I/E, no. 14. 106. Shamash, Minhagim 2:4, section 227, where he writes hashkiveinu, ki ’eil shomereinu, possibly referring to two separate melodies, but more likely referring to ki ’eil shomereinu within the hashkiveinu; see Freddy Raphael, “Le Mariage juif dans la compagne Alsaciènne dans la deuxième moiti édu XIX siècle,” Folklore Research Center Studies 4 (1974): 190; Scheuermann, Gottesdienstlichen Gesänge 21, section I/E, no. 14. 107. Shamash, Minhagim 2:4, n. 29 of Hamburger (Amsterdam); Kosman, Noheig, 112, par. 2. A full setting of hashkiveinu for when a bridegroom attended the Friday night service before the wedding was included in the unpublished Dutch cantorial collection, transcribed between 1943 and 1945, of Hazzan Louis Frank (1880–1962), section III, 24–26. See Josée Wolff, H.azzanut and Nusah. in the Dutch Ashkenazic Community (master’s thesis, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 1991), 73. 108. Ogutsch, Frankfurter Kantor, 102, no. 315; Idelsohn, The Traditional Songs of the South German Jews, 112, no. 325. 109. Gumpil, Sefer minhagim de-kehillateinu, section 100; Shamash, Minhagim 2:6, no. 42 of Hamburger. 110. Shamash, Minhagim 2:5, 8, section 227. The explanation is that suggested by Hamburger, 6, n. 42. 111. Ibid., 6. It is possible that the melody in question was one of the paraliturgical or folk songs sung at the wedding celebrations following the Sabbath meals on Friday night and Saturday morning.
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Example 11a. Fabian Ogutsch’s notation of Ki ’eil shomereinu. Fabian Ogutsch, Der Frankfurter Kantor, ed. J.B. Levy (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1930).
Example 11b. Maier Kohn’s notation of a South-German kallalied. Published in 1933. Reprinted by Ktav in 1973. Source: Idelsohn, Thesaurus volume, The Traditional Songs of the South German Jews, 112, no. 325. bride was accompanied from her parent’s home with instrumental music played by non-Jewish musicians (leiz.anim). In medieval ’ashkenaz, music played by Gentiles on the Sabbath during the seven days of feasting after the wedding had been quite widespread, and in the early modern period, employment of such musicians was still not uncommon.112 112. Shamash, Minhagim 2:6–8, and nn. 45–49 of Hamburger. For Gentile musicians playing on the Sabbath, see Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 197; Hamburger, 7 n. 47, quoting Shenei luh.ot ha-berit, section 2, of R. Isaiah Horowitz, who served in Frankfurt and Prague. In Germany in the seventeenth century, the term leiz.anim had no connection with the role of badh.anim (jesters), while the term ( כלי זמרkelei zemer) referred to the musical instruments, not the instrumentalists ( כליזמריםklezmorim), as in Poland. The latter term only started to be used in Germany in the mid-eighteenth century; see Isaac Rivkind, Kleizmorim: Perek be-toledot ha-‘amamit [Jewish folk musicians: A study in cultural history] (New York: Futuro Press, 1960), 15.
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Geoffrey Goldberg Pre-Wedding Rite: Mayen. If the bride had not previously been married and was a virgin, a special festivity commenced early in the morning of wedding day. This ceremony was known as the mayen ()מאיין, derived from May Day customs relating to courtship and fertility.113 Before the shah.arit service, the bride and groom were escorted with torches and instrumental music to the mayen, the location of which, in most German communities, was the entrance to the synagogue,114 though in Worms it was held in the Braut Haus.115 There, the people threw wheat (a symbol of fertility) at the bridal couple and called out to them, ְּּפרוּ וְּרבו, “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).116 Then the bridegroom was escorted to the synagogue. One melody (dating from the late eighteenth century) played at the mayen was, in the following century, transferred into the synagogue when marriages were again performed there.117 This melody was known in the Judeo-Deutsch of Alsace as the kale-lid or khuppe-lied, and in Bavaria as the maan (a corruption of mayen) niggun;118 it became one of the most popular folk songs of nineteenthcentury German-speaking Jews. A number of transcriptions of the melody are extant, the first dating from 1832 (see example 12a). A second transcription of the mayen shows that it acquired a text in Alsatian Judeo-Deutsch and German (see example 12b).119 The Paraliturgical Song: ’Eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad. Most embellishments did not survive the discontinuance of the Shabbat wedding. Nevertheless, the rabbinic ideal of mezamerim ’oto, the obligation to provide song for the couple, helped to prevent the complete eclipse of festive singing.120 Consequently, the
113. Marcus, The Jewish Life Cycle, 150–51; Shamash, Minhagim 2:20, section 231, n. 5, where Hamburger provides a detailed explanation of the origins of the word mayen and its alternative spellings. 114. Moellin, Seifer maharil, 464, section 1; Shamash, Minhagim 2:22, section 231, n. 10 of Hamburger. 115. Moellin, Seifer maharil, 464, section 1; Shamash, Minhagim 2:22, section 235. 116. Shamash, Minhagim 2:20–25, section 231. 117. Geiger, Divrei kehillot, 420. In medieval Mainz, weddings were performed inside the synagogue; see Moellin, Seifer maharil, 465, par. 3; Moses ben Isaac ha-Levi Minz, Teshuvot maharam minz. (1415–80), section 109. However, in the centuries prior to the emancipation, the general custom was to conduct them outside, in the courtyard of the synagogue. Synagogue weddings were reintroduced in Germany in the nineteenth century, this change being arguably less an innovation than a restoration. 118. Daniel Stauben, Scènes da la vie juive en Alsace (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1860), 188; Raphael, “Le Mariage juif,” 192–93; Moritz Rosenhaupt, Schire Ohel Yaakov, vol. 3, Werktags-Gottesdienst (Leipzig: privately printed, 1895), 16. 119. Max Grunwald, “Musik bei jüdischen Hochzeiten,” Jahrbuch für jüdische Volkskunde 1923: 249–51. Grunwald did not identify the name of the 1832 published musical transcription. The triple-time meter fits perfectly into the character of a Ländler, and it bears a strong resemblance to two German ballads; see Walter Salmen, Jüdische Musikanten und Tänzer vom 13. bis. 20 Jahrhundert (Innsbruck: Hebling, 1991), 129. This melody was also used in south Germany at Purim for a verse relating to the hanging of Haman on the gallows (Esther 7:10). See Ogutsch, Frankfurter Kantor 103, no. 317; Scheuermann, Gottesdienstlichen Gesänge, 91, section 5/D, no. 5. 120. Hamburger, “Zemer le-h.atan,” 367.
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Example 12a. Maan-niggun for a wedding processional arranged by Moritz Rosenhaupt. Privately printed in Germany, 1895. Source: Schire Ohel Yaakov, vol. 3, 16.
Example 12b. Kale-lid with Alsatian Judeo-Deutsch and German text (unattributed). From Jahrbuch für jüdische Volkskunde, 1923. tradition of singing a piyyut after the bridegroom was called to the Torah still continued. Rabbi Abraham David Warhman (1771–1841) of Buczacz, Galicia, in his commentary to the Shulh.an ‛arukh, alluded to the singing of a pizmon at this time as if it were a fairly common occurrence.121 He was quite probably alluding to a piyyut that had gained almost universal popularity and survived into modern times: ’eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad by Avigdor Karo of Prague (d. 1439). Written in Hebrew, but also with a variant in Yiddish, early printings of the Hebrew piyyut, often with the heading zemer na’eh le-h.atan (A Fitting Song for a Bridegroom), were included in publications of the birkat ha-mazon for use at the 121. Eshel ’avraham to Shulhan ‘arukh, Orah h.ayyim, Section 140:1. Strictly speaking, pizmon refers to a piyyut with a refrain, but Wahrman applied it more broadly.
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Geoffrey Goldberg wedding feast, the earliest dating from 1580.122 Every indication shows, however, that eh.ad yahid u-meyyuh.ad was not sung at the wedding feast, but rather after the h.atan had been called up to the Torah.123 This usually occurred on the Sabbath before the wedding, though in some places it occurred on the Sabbath after the wedding or even following the betrothal (tena’im), while in some communities it was sung on all three occasions.124 .ֶאָחד יִָחיד וְּמיָֻחד ֵאל .נְִדָֹרש ְלַבר ֵלָבבֹשוֵֹאל .ַאְך טוֹב ֱאֹלִהים ְליְִֹש ָרֵאל .ַהֲללוּיָה God, the One and Unique, Sought by the pure in heart who seek, That God acts kindly to Israel, Halleluyah.
Textually, the piyyut has no connection whatsoever with marriage, but deals, instead, with strengthening one’s trust in God, observance of the 613 commandments, invoking God’s blessing on Israel, and inviting anyone of the three monotheistic faiths (ערבי-נוצרי-)יהודי125 to experience the purity of Judaism’s fidelity to the oneness of God. The purely theological character of the piyyut was stressed by Juspa Kosman, who considered the song one of “great praise and a testimony to the principles of the religion.”126 Entry into marriage was a time for forgiveness of sins of the past and for devotion not only to one’s beloved, but also to God. This factor also explains the singing at wedding celebrations of other piyyutim that had no outward connection to marriage, such as yigdal, the poetic paraphrase of the Maimonides’ Thirteen Articles of Faith.127 There are many historical references to the singing of the piyyut. For example, Judah Leib Zelichover extolled the singing of ’eh.ad yah.id for the bridegroom (on shabbat k’nas, the Sabbath after the betrothal) among other customs “in these lands,” the reference being to Amsterdam and the Republic of the United Provinces.128 Rabbi Joseph Juspa Kosman (d. 1758) detailed how, in Frankfurt, the Sabbath before the wedding was a time “to increase joy … to call him [the bridegroom] to the Torah … and sing on this behalf (u-mezamrim lo) ’eh.ad 122. Birkat ha-mazon (Prague, 1580), quoted in Hamburger, “Zemer le-h.atan,” 378 n. 81. 123. Birkat ha-mazon (Amsterdam, 1694), quoted in Hamburger, “Zemer le-h.atan,” 397. 124. Hamburger, “Zemer le-h.atan,” 399–401. 125. Opening of the third stanza. 126. Kosman, Noheig, 112, section 2. 127. Hamburger, “Zemer le-hatan,” 394–97, gives a number of explanations for the connection between yigdal and “rejoicing the bridegroom.” In Worms, guests sang yigdal at celebrations and feasting at the Braut Haus on the night prior to the wedding; see Shamash, Minhagim 2:19, section 230. At the end of the next day, “the men and the boys” sang yigdal again in honor of the newly married couple; see ibid., 44, section 230. 128. Zelichover, Shirei yehudah, 26b.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim yah.id.”129 In Frankfurt, meshorerim, the vocal assistants to h.azzanim, played an active role,130 as they did in Prague131 and undoubtedly elsewhere. In postemancipation times, references to singing ’eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad for the bridegroom were frequently made in descriptions of traditional Jewish life in Western and Central Europe, as well as in autobiographical reminiscences.132 Remarkably, for centuries, ’eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad was never printed in a standard Ashkenazic prayer book. The only siddur that appears to have eventually included it (and then only the opening stanza) was the Festival prayer book edited in 1866 by Rabbi Michael Sachs of Berlin.133 Seligmann Baer included the entire piyyut in his handbook for Torah readers published that year,134 as did Lion Wolff in his 1914 handbook for cantors.135 The first published musical transcription of the piyyut, like the text itself, emanated from Prague.136 Several notations were included in the collections of nineteenth-century h.azzanim, and Idelsohn provided three versions in his Thesaurus volume of south German melodies (examples 13a–b).137 The absence of ’eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad from printed siddurim underscores that it functioned as a paraliturgical text transmitted orally by h.azzanim. As a result, much of the text was forgotten, especially in eastern regions of Europe.138 Even in Western Europe, just the opening stanza (or two) was generally sung.139 This process of reduction was noted by Juspa Kossman of Frankfurt, who held that all the stanzas should be sung, “unlike some h.azzanim who sing only one or two.”140 In Central and Eastern Europe, even the first (and only) stanza was
129. Kosman, Noheig 112, section 2. 130. Seder ve-hanhagah shel nisu‘in, 6. 131. Hamburger, “Zemer la-h.atan,” 398. 132. References include Samuel Bloch, “Aus dem ehemaligen Kurhessen,” Mitteilungen zur jüdischen Volkskunde 29 (1926): 588 (Kurhessen); Stern, Meine Jugenderinnerungen, 122 (Niederstetten, Württemberg, where it was sung on the Sabbath after the wedding); Carlebach, Ratgeber für das jüdische Haus, 43 (Lübeck, northern Germany); Fürst, Sitten und Gebräuche, 57 (Eisenstadt, western Hungary, where it was sung on the Sabbath after the wedding). 133. Festgebete der Israeliten, fünfter Theil, Succoth, trans. and ed. Michael Sachs (Berlin: Louis Gerschel), 282. 134. Seligmann Baer, Tikkun ha-sofeir veha-korei (Rödelheim: I. Lehrberger, 1866), xiii. 135. Wolff, Liturgisches Handbuch, 80–81. 136. Flamm, Noten-Beilagen, 5–6, no. 3. 137. Abraham Baer, Baal T’fillah, 206, no. 993 (and liturgical annotation, 139); Isaac Lachmann, Awaudas Jisroeil: Der israelitische Gottesdienst, III Teil, Die Drei Wallfahrtsfeste, hrs. Andor Izsák (Hannover: Europäisches Zentrum für Jüdische Musik, 1993–95), 2:242–44, no. 191; Samuel Bloch, “Aus dem ehemaligen Kurhessen,” 588; Idelsohn, The Traditional Songs of the South German Jews, Hebräisch-orientalisicher Melodienschatz 6 (Leipzig: Friderich Hofmeister, 1933), 126, nos. 356 –58. Baer and Lachmann include rubrics stating that the piyyut was also sung for the h.atan torah and h.atan bereishit on Simhat Torah. 138. Hamburger, “Zemer le-h.atan,” 403–404 (Eastern Europe). 139. Ibid., 406–407. 140. Kosman, Noheig 112, section 2. Yet Kosman only referred to “all four stanzas.” If he was referring to double stanzas, then the complete text would include five, the first possibly serving as a refrain. A more likely explanation is that Kosman only knew of four (single) stanzas, which he took
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Examples 13a.
Examples 13b. Two versions of ‘Eh.ad yah.id included by Idelsohn in his Thesaurus volume of south German Jewish melodies. Published in 1933, Reprinted by Ktav in 1973. Source: The Traditional Songs of the South German Jews, 126, nos. 356 (a) and 358 (b). corrupted through textual deletions, substitutions, additions, or paraphrases141 to such an extent that among h.aredim in Jerusalem before the Shoah, only a wordless niggun was sung, the melody of which had formerly carried the words of ’eh.ad yah.id.142 Death For mourners, absence of song was an effective means to enable the community to share an individual’s personal loss. In minhag ’ashkenaz, and even in some western regions of minhag polin, such as in Berlin, the h.azzan or ba’al tefillah
to be the complete text. Seligmann Baer, in his handbook for Torah readers, provided the annotation “in many communities only the first stanza is recited.” See Baer, Tikkun ha-sofeir veha-korei, xiii. 141. Hamburger, “Zemer le-h.atan,” 405. 142. Ibid., 406.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim commenced the morning service with the recitation of the hymn ’adon ‘olam. On ordinary weekdays, this was usually a simple chant. In Frankfurt, following the death of a member of the community (older than one year of age) and burial had not yet taken place, the chanting of ’adon ‘olam was omitted.143 In this way, without any formal verbal pronouncement of sad news, the community was informed of a person’s death. The Emancipation and Life-Cycle Song In the early nineteenth century, there was a drive in Germany to eliminate, reduce, or at least regulate the singing of melodies associated with life-cycle events in the synagogue. Several factors contributed to this downplaying. The presentation of Judaism as a faith rather than as a way of life led to a minimization of the folk and peoplehood aspects of Jewish life. Attention to individual semah.ot (celebrations) was viewed as a digression from a liturgy whose purpose was to express the universal truths of Judaism. Increased sensitivity to the image of Jews and Judaism in German society influenced attitudes toward the suitability of music for divine worship; an attendant lack of formality surrounding life-cycle song and rituals offended a changed aesthetic on the part of many German Jews who sought something “more akin to ecclesiastical formality” rather than the former “more improvised expression of Jewish worship.”144 Efforts to eliminate or regulate life-cycle folk customs found concrete expression in many Synagogen-Ordnungen, or synagogue regulations, drawn up by German rabbis, and were sometimes authorized by state authorities. They were introduced, mainly in the 1830s and 1840s, by Reformist-leaning rabbis and, for the most part, tended to avoid fundamental halakhic changes. Life-cycle synagogue melodies and piyyutim were brought under especially sharp scrutiny and regarded unfavorably.145 The first Synagogue Regulation issued in 1810 by the Consistory of the Kingdom of Cassel, headed by the early Reform leader Israel Jacobson, ruled that the calling up of a bridegroom should no longer be accompanied by special singing. The special singing of semeih.im be-z.eitam for a bridegroom or a yoledet was also no longer allowed. The Synagogue Regulation of Mittelfranken, Bavaria (1836), issued similar rules, prohibiting special singing when calling up a bar mitzvah or a bridegroom to 143. Geiger, Divrei kehillot, 13. 144. Stephan C. Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 270. 145. Invaluable is the comparative study of the Synagogue Regulations by Steven M. Lowenstein, “The 1840s and the Creation of the German-Jewish Religious Movement,” in Revolution and Evolution in German-Jewish History, ed. Werner E. Mosse (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1981), 255–97. Curtailment of piyyutim, except on High Holy Days, was generally favored. This was facilitated by “a general loss of Ashkenazic interest in piyyut”; see Langer, To Worship God Properly, 182–85. For attitudes toward piyyut by leading nineteenth-century German rabbis, see Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 88, 106, 124, 150.
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Geoffrey Goldberg the Torah and forbidding the singing of semeih.im be-z.eitam and malkhutekha for a bridegroom and for women after confinement.146 The Synagogue Regulation of Bamberg, Bavaria, specified that ’eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad could no longer be sung when a h.atan torah or a bridegroom was called up to the Torah.147 On the other hand, the Synagogue Regulation of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimer continued to permit its singing, if the bridegroom specifically requested it.148 In Württemberg, “inappropriateness” of the melodies was the motivating force in opposing the singing of malkhutekha for the bridal couple, ’eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad for the bridegroom, and semeih.im be-z.eitam for a woman after confinement.149 Even so, the new legislation intimated that if suitable melodies could be composed, they might be acceptable.150 These various regulations are useful in revealing how, by the nineteenth century, the texts and their melodies had become disconnected from the life-cycle events with which they had been originally associated. Semeih.im be-z.eitam (yoledet) was sometimes also sung for the bridegroom,151 and malkutekha was sometimes sung for a yoledet. It was also not uncommon for eh.ad yah.id to be sung for a bar mitzvah,152 as well as for the h.atan torah and h.atan bereishit. The words of the texts that connected to the life-cycle ceremonies lost their specificity and became generic. By the second part of the century, there were indications of a more positive reevaluation of these practices. For example, the Regulation of Hannover of 1870 sanctioned the recital of ’eh.ad yah.id and, on a Sabbath when there was a berit milah in the synagogue, encouraged the singing of a special piyyut.153 Furthermore, it permitted the special recitation of ve-kharot ‘imo ha-berit, suggesting the continuance of responsive singing of shirat ha-yam, as well as eloheikhem in the kedushah of musaf.154 Examination of the publications of several cantor-composers shows that some degree of life-cycle song in the synagogue not only was retained, but even was sometimes presented in more stylized forms. Three leading nineteenth-century composers of synagogue music, Louis Lewandowski (1823–94), Salomon Sulzer (1804–90), and Samuel Naumbourg (1815–80), composed choral settings for the 146. Synagogen-Ordnung … Mittelfranken, 1838: 7, par. 20. 147. Synagogen-Ordnung der Israelitischen Cultus Gemeinde zu Bamberg (1840s?), 4, par. 15. 148. Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 1/28 1837, 110, par. 22; Jacob Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform in Europe: The Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism (New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968), 126. However, the regulation no longer permitted any dramatic singing of ya‘amod by the h.azzan. 149. Königl. israelitische Oberkirchenbehörde, Gottesdienst-Ordnung für die Synagogen des Königreichs Württemberg (Stuttgart, 1838) 23, par. 22. 150. Ibid. 151. This transference occurred early; see Zelichover, Shirei yehudah, 26b. The occasion was on the Sabbath following the betrothal (Shabbat kenas). 152. Kosman, Noheig, 137, section 9; Minhagei… kehal ‘adat yisra’eil, 12; liturgical rubric in Sachs, Festgebete, 282. 153. The z.ulat, “‘ot berit.” Allgemeine Synagogen-Ordnung für das Königreich Hannover (Hannover, 1916), 79, par. 9. 154. Ibid.
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Example 14. Hirsch Weintraub’s chorale Ve-nismah. be-divrei toratekha u-vemiz.votekha for the evening service of a Sabbath over which a bar mitzvah is being celebrated. Hirsch Weintraub, Schire Beth Adonai oder Tempelgesänge für den Gottesdienst der Israeliten, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Breitkop & Härlel, 1859; reprinted by Sacred Music Press, Out of Print Classic Series, Vol. 19, 1954), 21, no. 10. wedding ceremony.155 Naumbourg, however, also created a choral arrangement of the “traditional” Western European melody of shirah h.adashah and z.ur yisra’eil for a berit milah when it occurred on the Sabbath.156 His melody line for these two pieces continued to be sung in France well into the twentieth century.157
155. Salomon Sulzer, Schir Zion: Gottesdienstliche Gesänge der Israeliten (Vienna, 1840, 1863; New York: Hebrew Union College Sacred Music Press, Out of Print Classics Series, vol. 8, 1954), 357–76, nos. 467–77; Louis Lewandowski, Todah W’simrah, Vierstimmige Chöre und Soli für den israelitischen Gottesdienst, Part 2, Festgesänge (Berlin: Bote and Bock, 1882), 297–315, nos. 262–68; Samuel Naumbourg, Semiroth Israël: Chants Religieux, Les Hymnes, les Psaumes (Paris, 1857; repr., New York: Hebrew Union College Sacred Music Press, Out of Print Classics Series, vol. 15, 1954), 24–52, nos. 26–35. 156. Samuel Naumbourg, Semiroth Israël: Chants Liturgiques de Sabbath (Paris, 1847; repr., New York: Hebrew Union College Sacred Music Press, Out of Print Classics Series, vol. 13, 1954), 60–61, no. 55. 157. Bernard Bocher, Schirë David: Recueil des chants et récitations religieux d’après les airs traditionnels alsaciens (Strasbourg: Consistoire israelite du Bas-Rhin, 1951), 295–96, no. 456.
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Example 15. Weintraub’s ’Eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad with a modified text, for a bar mitzvah or marriage ceremony. Hirsch Weintraub, Schire Beth Adonai oder Tempelgesänge für den Gottesdienst der Israeliten, vol. 1, 21, no. 10.
On the other hand, the gifted and eclectic cantor-composer Hirsch Weintraub (1811–81) of Königsberg wrote new melodies specifically for life-cycle ceremonies. These were published in his Schire Beth Adonai (1859) and included choral settings for berit milah, bar mitzvah, the new ceremony of confirmation, and weddings. For the Sabbath preceding marriage and for a bar mitzvah, he composed a new setting of ’eh.ad ỵahid u-meyyuhad (examples 14–15).158 The second of these pieces is of particular interest because the text has been modified. Only the three opening words have been retained, and, most notably, the word ֵאל, has been omitted. The text now reads,
158. Hirsch Weintraub, Schire Beth Adonai oder Tempelgesänge für den Gottesdienst der Israeliten, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Breitkop & Härtel, 1859; repr., Sacred Music Press, Out of Print Classics Series, vol. 19, 1954). The particular items were: (1) ve-nismah. from ’ahavat ‘olam on the eve of a bar mitzvah, 21, no. 10; (2) calling up to the Torah, 60, no. 71; ’eh.ad yah.id u-meyyuh.ad for a h.atan and a bar mitzvah, 60, no. 72; kerah.eim ’av (Psalms 103:12–13, 16–17) for confirmation (for boys), 76, no. 89; romemot ’eil and barkuh ha-ba for a berit milah, 80–81, nos. 93 and 92.
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Mah.azor Ha-H.ayyim ַהְללוּיָּה, וְנֹאַמר ְלָפנָיוִֹשיָרה ֲחָֹדָשה,ֶאָחד יִָחיד וְּמיָֻחד The one and unique, Before him let us recite a new song, Halleluyah.
Without question, “the one and unique” refers directly to the bar mitzvah or the bridegroom, before whom “a new song was sung.” Weintraub’s setting of ’eh.ad yah.id provides concrete evidence for the personalization of liturgical texts for use at mah.azor ha-h.ayyim celebrations, a customary practice that has been documented throughout this article. C ONCLUSION The revival of synagogal life-cycle song by Hirsch Weintraub was shortlived. It represented the endpoint of many centuries of liturgical and musical creativity in this genre within the European Ashkenazic synagogue. Yet the need to respond to the spiritual needs of the individual within the larger communal context continues. In many contemporary American synagogues, the prayer on behalf of the sick (mi-sheberakh) is no longer hurried through in an undertone, but is often sung to new musical settings, often by the entire congregation, extending for several minutes.159 This American practice seems to be responding to deeply felt personal needs not adequately met in the past. It has become—in addition to the singing of siman tov u-mazal tov—a peak individual “life-cycle” moment supported by the community. Yet the rich development of life-cycle song in the European Ashkenazic synagogue shows that innovations were not primarily for life’s woes, but for life’s celebrations. Geoffrey Goldberg University of Rochester Rochester, New York
159. Examples are the settings of cantor-composers Debbie Friedman and Paul Zim.
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AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 341–362 © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009 doi:10.1017/S0364009409990043
“A BANDON Y OUR R OLE AS E XPONENTS OF THE M AGYARS ”: C ONTESTED J EWISH L OYALTY IN I NTERWAR (C ZECHO )S LOVAKIA by
Rebekah Klein-Pejšová
On the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, October 28, 1926, the Neolog Jewish Community of Bratislava (Pozsony, Pressburg) gathered for a commemorative service led by their chief rabbi, Dr. Samuel Funk. They were joined by representatives of the government administration and other religious confessions. Toward the end of his sermon, an increasingly agitated Rabbi Funk turned and pointed with an angry finger at the members of the assimilationist Union of Slovak Jews (Sväz slovenských židov) in attendance from his position behind the podium. He publicly accused them of destroying Jewish unity and making it impossible for the Jewish Party to win a parliamentary mandate.1 He concluded his sermon by recalling a meeting that he had recently enjoyed with the president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. President Masaryk, Funk related, regarded it as very embarrasing that in spite of the 100,000 votes that the Jewish Party had received in 1925,2 it was not able to obtain even one parliamentary mandate. Funk reported that Masaryk only respected those Jews who declared Jewish as their nationality.3 The Union of Slovak Jews recounted this narrative of events in the grievance they lodged against Funk with the Bratislava police on February 17, 1927. Their action marked the opening of a six-year state investigation of the Neolog Jewish Community of Bratislava centered on the personality of Rabbi Funk. The state took a keen interest in the complaint, as the dispute was a window through 1. These were, in fact, the main arguments of the Jewish national movement in Slovakia against all other Jewish political groups. The Czechoslovak state understood that the Zionist struggle against the Union of Slovak Jews stemmed from the threat that the latter posed to winning a Jewish national mandate in Parliament; see Slovenský národný archív (SNA)/fond Policajné riaditeľstvo (PR)/556/69–70. 2. The Jewish Party received a total of 98,845 votes in 1925; see Manuel statistique de la République Tchécoslovaque III (Prague, 1928), 256, table XI 3, Votes valuables, exprimés aux élections pour la Chambre des Députés, en Tchécoslovaquie, en novembre 1925 et mandates attributes. 3. SNA/PR/kárton 556/1–3. Kongruová náboženská obce židovská v Bratislave—Stažnost sväzu slovenských židov.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová which it could view the swiftly evolving world of modern Jewish politics, and attempt to understand the implications of the conflict between Jewish nationalist and assimilationist positions within Slovak parameters. The first report of the Bratislava police correspondingly framed the utility of the incident: Recently, the Zionist movement in Slovakia has significantly expanded— much greater attention needs to be paid to Jewish movements in Slovakia generally, and from this standpoint the public outburst of Rabbi Dr. Samuel Funk should be evaluated.4
This article considers the dimensions of the loyalty issues faced by the Jewish population in Slovakia during the interwar period through an examination of two long-term Czechoslovak state investigations into Jewish personal and communal, national and linguistic behaviors: the “Funk Affair” and the Budapestbased Heroes’ Temple memorial project. In the Funk Affair, the state initially focused its examination on Funk’s public condemnation of the assimilationist Union of Slovak Jews, considering his attack an expression of less than adequate personal loyalty to Czechoslovakia, rather than of Jewish national conviction. The state later showed greater interest in the dispute between Funk and the leadership of the Neolog Jewish Community of Bratislava, finding the complaints of the community leadership about Funk a result of their own allegedly problematic relationship to Czechoslovakia. The shift in the state’s attention from Funk to the Neolog Jewish community matches the growing ascendancy of transnational security issues over domestic socio-cultural affairs. The Czechoslovak state investigation into the Heroes’ Temple memorial in Budapest, a Hungarian Jewish project intended to commemorate all of the Jewish soldiers from the territory of the former Kingdom of Hungary who had fallen during the First World War, is a striking example of how Czechoslovakia understood connections with Hungary and Hungarian Jewry as an indicator of Slovak Jewish citizens’ loyalty. The Czechoslovak administration closely followed Slovak Jewish participation in the commemoration project, conflating their potential involvement with the irredentist ambitions of the interwar Hungarian regime. In this article, I seek to demonstrate the productivity of loyalty as a means of analyzing problems of Jewish relations with the modern state, an essential key for understanding the development of Jewish history.5 I intend to show how loyalty can be used to locate the active function of nationality and its implications for minority citizenship, especially as it pertains to members of minority religious groups. At the center of my concern is the meaning of “Jewish nationality,” a new category of political nationhood introduced after the First World War, for the state and surrounding Slovak population. 4. SNA/PR/kárton 556/9. 5. Nancy Sinkoff argues in her recent book Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2004) that nothing is more important than Jewish– state relations for understanding how Jewish history develops.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars Jewish nationality in Czechoslovakia was directly tied to larger conceptions of nationality in the new state. The most important of these was the new definition of nationality, used for the first time in the 1919 census of the territory of Slovakia, which challenged prewar methods of counting and classifying the population based on language. Czechoslovakia eliminated linguistic criteria (designated as “mother tongue”) as an equivalent indicator of nationality, deciding instead to define nationality as an “internal conviction,” a subjective state known by the individual, similar to religious conviction. This was the basis for the decision that Jews should have the option of declaring their own Jewish nationality, or the nationality of others, without regard for religious affiliation. The specificity of the Jewish case in turn buttressed the general argument for defining nationality as an internal conviction. The state accepted the contention that despite the fact that Jews in Czechoslovakia had “lost Hebrew as their national tongue, and did not even speak Yiddish, [they] had not ceased to live their own peculiar national life.”6 Czechoslovakia’s innovative approach to the question of nationality, not surprisingly, worked to the advantage of the newly dominant “Czechoslovak” nation. When Jews who traditionally had affiliated with German speakers in Bohemia and Moravia, and with Hungarian speakers in Slovakia, now declared Jewish as their nationality, the number of Germans and Hungarians in the state would statistically decrease. Jewish nationality appealed to the state as an authentic expression of Jewish national belonging. While Czechoslovakia offered the most favorable environment for the Jews of its Eastern and Central European neighbors, renounced antisemitism, and supported Zionism and Jewish national rights, there still remained significant challenges to the Jewish relationship with the state. This was particularly true in Slovakia, where Jews were suspect as potential accomplices to the Hungarian revisionist aims because of their history of alignment with the Hungarian nation, the dominant national group in the former Kingdom of Hungary, of which the territory had been a part.7 The linguistic and political alignment of the Jews of the former Kingdom of Hungary with the Magyars and Magyar nobility had been essential for the maintenance of a slim Magyar majority over the nationalities of the kingdom, including large minorities of Romanians and Slovaks, and had been rewarded by Hungarian governmental protection from popular anti-Semitism as well as tolerant, liberal policies with regard to the Jewish population. This theme forms the cornerstone of the scholarship on Hungarian Jewish history, most recently by Howard N. Lupovitch and others.8
6. Antonín Boháč, “Národnost či materský jazyk?” [Nationality or mother tongue?], ČSV, ročník I (Prague, 1920), 273. Yiddish was not considered to be a viable national language for the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia because its use was not widespread, but remained limited to population blocs in northeastern Slovakia and in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. 7. The northernmost sixteen counties and four municipalities of the former Kingdom of Hungary became, in whole or in part, the territory of Slovakia after the First World War. 8. Howard N. Lupovitch, Jews at the Crossroads: Tradition and Accommodation during the Golden Age of the Hungarian Nobility, 1729–1878 (Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2007); Gyurgyák János, A Zsidókérdés Magyarországon, (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2001); Peter
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová In the words of Vavro Šrobár, the Czechoslovak minister for the administration of Slovakia, the Jews in Slovakia had been tools of the Magyar government in carrying out the violent policy of magyarization before the war, had been informants and spies during the war, and had worked as Magyar agitators against the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic after the war.9 The Magyar/Jewish symbiosis in pre-1918 political and cultural affairs accounts for the primary difference in the post-war relationship of the Jews in Slovakia with the Czechoslovak state when compared with Jews in Bohemia and Moravia. Despite the predilection of many Jews in Bohemia and Moravia for German language, culture, and education,10 Jews had not comprised an essential constituency in the ranks of the German national movement of the late nineteenth century, and found themselves excluded from the movement as it became increasingly radicalized and espoused an evermore anti-Semitic orientation.11 In addition, the history of a strong Czech–Jewish movement and census declarations of Czech as their language of daily use by more than 54% of Bohemian and Prague Jews by 1900,12 significantly diluted the question of overwhelming Jewish alliance with a formerly dominant nationality turned interwar irredentist actor. Although 34% of the Jewish population in both Bohemia and Moravia declared German as their nationality on the 1921 state-wide Czechoslovak census,13 Kateřina Čapková, in her recent study of Jewish national identity in interwar Bohemia, does not indicate that Jews there found their loyalty to Czechoslovakia questioned by the state. Čapková asserts that German Jews, like all Jewish citizens (though here she makes the exception of communists), were fully loyal to the Czechoslovak state and they knew what problems the German minority caused for the Czech government.14
Haber, Die Anfänge des Zionismus in Ungarn (1897–1904) (Köln Weimar Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2001); Karády Viktor, Önazonositás, Sorsválasztás: A zsidó csoportazonosság történelmi alakváltozásai Magyarországon (Budapest: Új Mandatum, 2001), William O. McCagg, Jr., A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670–1918 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); William O. McCagg, Jr., Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1972). 9. Letter from Vavro Šrobár to the Republique Tchecoslovaque legation à Londres, September 14, 1919. The full text of the document can be found in Aharon Moshe Rabinowicz, “The Jewish Minority,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, ed. Livia Rothkirchen (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 226–27. 10. Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1860–1914 (Princeton University Press, 1981). 11. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 133–140; and Hillel Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 12. Census data from: Österreichische Statistik, vol. 63, Pt. 3 (1902), 178; on the Czech-Jewish movement: Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry; Kateřina Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé? Národní identita Židů v Čechách, 1918–1938 (Praha-Litomyšl: Paseka, 2005), 93–105. 13. Sčítání lidu 1921 (Praha, 1924), 90 část textová, tables 104 and 105 combined: “Israelité československé státní přislušnosti podle národnosti.” 14. Čapková, 71, 93.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars The Jews in the territory of Slovakia were organized into three categories of Jewish religious affiliation: Neolog (or Congress), Orthodox, and Status Quo Ante (neither Neolog nor Orthodox), a legacy of the 1868 Congress of the Jews of the Kingdom of Hungary. Jozséf Eötvös, then the Hungarian minister of education and cults, had organized the congress with the intention of creating a centralized state body to handle Jewish affairs on the model of the French Consistory. Instead, the meeting had resulted in a deep division among the Jews of the Kingdom of Hungary, made official in 1871 with Emperor/King Franz Josef’s recognition of Orthodoxy as a separate Jewish religion.15 Hungarian Jewish religious institutional organization carried over to the successor states in all territories that had been part of the Kingdom of Hungary, that is: in Slovakia (Czechoslovakia), Transylvania (Romania), and Vojvodina (Yugoslavia). Jewish communities found it natural to maintain their established religious affiliations. Neolog Judaism is a type of moderate Reform Judaism peculiar to the territories that once comprised the Kingdom of Hungary, which emerged as a means of modernizing Judaism within the Hungarian context, and drawing the Jews closer to the surrounding population. Neolog tendencies began to appear in Hungary in the early nineteenth century, though Neolog Judaism was officially recognized only with the Hungarian Jewish Congress of 1868. It encompassed no radical changes to the traditional liturgy, but allowed for the use of an organ, and moved the bimah from the center to the front of the synagogue, as in reform congregations. Neolog Jews referred to themselves as Hungarians of the Jewish religion, or Hungarians of the Mosaic faith.16 Members of the Neolog branch were considered the most suspect as potential accomplices of the Hungarian revisionist efforts. Neolog Jews tended to have identified themselves more deeply with the Magyar nation and government—that is, to have been “magyarized” in the decades before the war. It is important to distinguish between this form of magyarization and more common patterns of acculturation that were prevalent among the Jews of the Kingdom of Hungary. These included the use of the Magyar language and the declaration of Magyar as one’s mother tongue on the census—both expressions of Hungarian Jewish loyalty to, but not necessarily identification with, the Magyar government. Neolog Jews were more closely watched by the Czechoslovak state than the Orthodox or Status Quo, as well as more strongly courted by Hungary and Hungarian Jewry for the revisionist cause. Unlike the Orthodox majority in the territory of Slovakia, who expressed their acceptance of and loyalty to the new Czechoslovak state by breaking away from the Hungarian statewide Orthodox religious organization in 1920, Neolog communities in Slovakia maintained 15. For a detailed discussion of the organization, proceedings, and implications of the 1868 congress, see Jacob Katz, A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry, trans. Ziporah Brody (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998). 16. “Neology (Neologism),” Encyclopedia Judaica (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 951–954; Kinga Frojimovics and Rita Horváth, “Jews and Nationalism in Hungary,” The European Legacy 7, no 5: 642; Leonard Mars, “Discontinuity, Tradition, and Innovation: Anthropological reflections on Jewish Identity in Contemporary Hungary,” Social Compass, 46 (1999): 26.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová institutional ties to Budapest until 1926. Only in 1928 did the Neolog and Status Quo communities join to form a separate organization under the name Ješurun.17 Nevertheless, Jews in Slovakia, no matter their religious affiliation, acknowledged that life was better for them in Czechoslovakia than it was for their coreligionists and former compatriots in neighboring Hungary. The collapse of Austria-Hungary and the subsequent peace settlement were devestating for Hungary and Hungarian Jewry. The Treaty of Trianon dissolved the multinational Kingdom of Hungary and left in its place a nationally homogenous, bitter pariah state that was hostile to its Jews. The series of political upheavals that the state experienced immediately following the First World War further damaged the relationship of the Jewish population to the new postwar Hungary. The most significant upheaval in this respect was the disastrous and shortlived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, which counted among its leadership many communists of Jewish origin. The government of Admiral Miklós Horthy came to power riding a crest of legitimacy stemming from its reaction against the 133-day Soviet Republic. The World War One defeat, subsequent collapse of the Monarchy, and reduction of prewar territorial holdings by more than 70%, combined with post-war revolutionary chaos determined the course of interwar Hungarian politics. As many Hungarians held Jewish traitors responsible for the humiliation of the country,18 a popular connection between anti-Semitism and national security developed in the wake of the Bolshevik regime’s demise, and with it the belief that “anti-Jewish politics [were] justice for a nation wronged.”19 The Hungarian parliament passed the numerus clausus law in 1920, imposing legislation directed against the Jewish population that limited the number of students of each racial and national group admitted to institutions of higher learning according to their share of the population.20 The numerus clausus legislation marked the end of tolerant, liberal pre-war Hungarian government policy toward the Jews and initiated a culture of flourishing anti-Semitism.21 The memory of the Soviet Republic cast a long shadow of suspicion over the Jewish population of post–World War I Hungary, while the numerus clausus emphasized that they were now regarded as racially distinct from the Magyars.
17. “Náboženství a církve,” Deset let československé republiky. Svazek první (Prague, 1928), 442; Vratislav Bušek, “Poměr státu k církvím v Československé republice,” in Bohomil Janda, ed., Československá vlastivěda díl V. Stát (Prague, 1931), 355–56. The 52 Neolog and Status Quo Ante communities came together under the name Svaz židovských náboženských obcí na Slovensku Jeschurun. Out of the 217 Jewish religious communities in Slovakia, 165 belonged to the Organization of Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Communities. 18. Paul A. Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890 –1944 (Ithaca, NY, 2006). 19. Paul Hanebrink, “Transnational Culture War: Christianity, Nation, and the Judeo-Bolshevik Myth in Hungary, 1890–1920,” The Journal of Modern History (March 2008): 80. 20. Nathaniel Katzburg, “Hungarian Jewry in Modern Times,” in Hungarian Jewish Studies, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York: World Federation of Hungarian Jews, 1966), 155. 21. Mária M. Kovács, Liberal Professions and Illiberal Politics: Hungary from the Habsburgs to the Holocaust (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 50, 51, 64.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars The great majority of Jews in Slovakia recognized that revising the Treaty of Trianon so as to place the territory of Slovakia under control of the Hungarian government was not in their best interest. They prefered to avail themselves of the possibilities available to them in Czechoslovakia, a parliamentary democracy under the leadership of Masaryk, whom they admired. The Weiss family of Košice (Kassa, Kaschau), for instance, a city that was both a Hungarian national and Neolog Jewish center in the interwar period, took advantage of the opportunities of their Czechoslovak citizenship to bring relatives up from Sátoraljaújhely, a Hungarian town close to the border with Slovakia. As Erzsébet Weiss recalled, “My father brought [my mother’s three younger sisters] to Košice because the standard of living was higher than in Hungary. It was a civic democracy, we lived on an incomparably higher standard than our relatives in Hungary.” Her father arranged for more relatives to come up from Hungary as well.22 To what extent did individual cases such as this soothe the territorial insecurities of interwar Czechoslovakia? The answer is, insignificantly. The Czechoslovak state wanted to see verification of the loyalty of the Jews in Slovkia in very practical terms: by cutting ties with Hungary and Hungarian Jewry. The state wanted to see that Jews in Slovakia did not engage in subversive politics or other activities detrimental to state security. T HE F UNK A FFAIR For this purpose, Rabbi Dr. Samuel Funk was a useful person for the state to follow. He was a well-known eccentric and choleric character whose outspoken opinions often exposed the fault lines in Jewish community politics. By all accounts, Funk used his position as chief Neolog rabbi to proclaim his political judgments and hurl insults from behind the podium. He was a great admirer of Masaryk, whom he habitually quoted and referred to as the “Benefactor of the Jews” (dobrodinca židov). Funk included passages from well-known Czech authors in his sermons, which was said to make members of the congregation who had been raised as Hungarians uncomfortable. In general, Funk’s unpleasant temperament earned him a remarkably small following. Many members of the Neolog community allegedly avoided him at all costs.23 The Bratislava police investigating the case of the grievance of the Union of Slovak Jews against Funk viewed it as characteristic of the local Zionists to allow an irresponsible person like Funk to act as the mouthpiece in their struggle against the Union of Slovak Jews.24 This observation was typical of the investigation’s generally unflattering evaluation of Funk’s personality and behavior. 22. From the interview with Erzsébet Weiss conducted by Éva Kovács in the late 1980s for her 1991 dissertation, “A Kassai Zsidóság Etnikai Identitása A Két Világháborü Között (1918–1938)”, submitted to University of Szeged, Hungary [The ethnic identity of Kassa (Košice) Jewry between the two world wars]. 23. SNA/PR/kárton 556, “Stažnost sväzu slovenských židov,” 4. 24. SNA/PR/kárton/9.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová Funk’s attack on the Union of Slovak Jews put him in an awkward position. Now he had to prove that he was a loyal citizen who did not harbor anti-Slovak feelings. The situation was made more disagreeable by the fact that since his meeting with Masaryk, Funk had trumpeted himself as a confidant whom the president consulted in serious political and cultural matters.25 Things did not look good for Funk. He attempted to clear his name by airing his side of the story in a leading Slovak daily (Slovenský denník), but the editorial board refused his request. He tried to become a member of the Slovak League (Slovenský líga), a prominent Slovak national organization, but found no success. At the consecration ceremony of the new synagogue in Parkaň (Hungarian, Parkány; later renamed Šturovo) close to the border with Hungary, Funk gave his address in the state language, Slovak, instead of his usual German.26 Leo Sipos, a Bratislava lawyer and a leading figure in the Zionist movement in Slovakia, was the only source interviewed in the early phase of the investigation who spoke in support of Funk. Sipos confidentially testified in 1927 that Funk’s attack on the Union of Slovak Jews derived from the rabbi’s belief that the founding of a Slovak Jewish political party would harm Jewish interests and undermine the wishes of Masaryk, who admonished the Jews in Slovakia to “return to the worldview of [their] forefathers, be Jews, and abandon [their] role as exponents of the Magyars.”27 Sipos stressed that Funk condemned Jewish assimilation, and believed it essential for Jews to achieve national independence.28 Sipos’s argument articulated the perceptions of Jewish nationality held by the Jewish national movement. The Jewish national leadership advanced Jewish nationality and Jewish national politics as an inherently anti-assimilationist position, considering it an honest way of remaining “true to ourselves” and expressing the conviction of belonging to “no other people than the Jewish people.”29 By declaring Jewish nationality and pursuing Jewish national politics, they argued, Jews could simply be Jews and avoid the dangers and misunderstandings of national affiliations in the multinational state. As such, it also seemed to be a good means of demonstrating separation from the prewar practice of affiliating with the dominant Magyar nation. Understood in this way, Jewish nationality was an elegant fulfillment of Masayk’s appeal. In the eyes of the state, however, the embrace of Jewish national politics was not compelling evidence of abandoning the role of “exponents of the Magyars.” The state suspected a Magyar subtext to Jewish national politics in Slovakia, revealed in the same anti-assimilationist stance of the Jewish national program that Jews thought cleared them of that suspicion. “Zionism here in the republic 25. SNA/PR/kárton/6. 26. SNA/PR/kárton/6. 27. SNA/PR/kárton/7. 28. SNA/PR/kárton/7. 29. This idea was orginally expressed by Max Brod; see “Orthodoxie, Zionismus, Nationaljudentum,” Jüdische Volkszeitung, November 28, 1919. “Ich bin nichts als Jude. Ich gehöre (bei voller Beobachtung meine staatsbürgerliche Pflichten) keinem andern Volk an als dem jüdischen.”
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars has a political background,” concluded the 1927 report, “which means that Jews who were brought up in the German or Magyar spirit and who still sympathize with Magyar thinking—they are against any kind of assimilation.” The state believed that Jews in Slovakia who maintained a Magyar orientation found defense against pressures to assimilate into the new Slovak environment under the banner of Jewish politics.30 The Czechoslovak administration concluded its first report on the Funk affair in the year 1927, a year which, not uncoincidently, marked a turning point in the history of the Hungarian movement to revise the borders established by the Treaty of Trianon. In that year, the English Lord Rothmere began his “Justice for Hungary” campaign in his newspaper the Daily Mail, the Hungarian Revisionist League was founded, international financial and military monitors left Hungary, and the Horthy government signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with Mussolini’s Italy. In addition, the intensification of the Hungarian revisionist campaign coincided with the beginning of the Tuka Affair in Czechoslovakia, in which Vojtěch Tuka was found guilty in 1929 of working for the restoration of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary as an agent of the Interwar Hungarian government under the guise of struggling for the creation of an independent Slovakia. Together, these events generally heightened Czechoslovak state suspicion of Jews in Slovakia as potential accomplices to Hungarian ambitions, as well as colored its interpretations of Jewish politics. In the case of Bohemia, the greatest analogous suspicion seems to have stemmed not from the side of the state, but from the Czech Jews (Čechožidé). Before the 1920 parliamentary elections, for instance, the Czech Jewish leadership suggested to the Czech National Council that the Jewish National candidate from the Associated Jewish Parties may not be loyal to the Czech nation if elected to parliament. They argued that Zionists with a German or Hungarian past and upbringing may be beholden to the interests of another party than would be representatives of the Czech nation, which could work against Czech interests. Masaryk, Beneš, and other leading governmental figures did not take the advice of the Czech Jews to reject the candidate from the Associated Jewish Parties, but instead supported the Jewish national movement, its leadership and candidates. The Jewish national movement in Bohemia and Moravia reciprocated the continuing support of the government with efforts to make Czech the language of the movement, especially in Moravia, and promoting the use of Czech in Zionist meetings and periodicals. The German language was not used at all at the Zionist Congress in Prague in 1933 as a protest against Nazism. It is worth noting that across Czechoslovakia, it was the Jewish assimilationist movements that stressed the potential disloyalty of the Jewish Nationalists to state. The Funk Affair raised awareness of the variety of Jewish opinion on the question of national affiliation within the Jewish community and within the
30. SNA/PR/556/69–70. Kongruová náboženská obce židovská v Bratislave—Stažnost sväzu slovenských židov.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová population at large. Until then, noted the prominent Slovak daily Národný denník, little was generally known about the activities of the Union of Slovak Jews. Jews were Jews, and that was that. Now, the paper continued, the differences between the Jewish nationalist and Slovak assimilationist camps were becoming visible. The conflict between Funk and the Union of Slovak Jews fueled local Slovak and Czechoslovak state suspicions that the Jewish national movement was in fact a cover for Magyar national activity. Slovak public opinion, not surprisingly, quickly lined up behind the Union of Slovak Jews. Národný denník congratulated itself ten days after Funk’s outburst for having pointed to the Zionists as promoters of magyarization in Slovakia even earlier: it was evident that Jews who opposed the Union of Slovak Jews were Magyar national elements.31 Slovenský denník later called Funk the “Jewish Tuka,”32 a reference to Vojtěch Tuka, who had been found guilty in 1929 of working for the restoration of the prewar Kingdom of Hungary as an agent of the interwar Hungarian government under the guise of struggling for the creation of an independent Slovakia. Slovak authorities, even earlier, tended to view Zionism as a branch of Hungarian revisionist activity in Slovakia. A 1925 preelection report discussing the Zionist candidate from the district chief of Hlohovec in western Slovakia bears out this point: Dr. Eisler is not an excellent speaker and has not learned Slovak well yet. But he is the chairman of the Jewish scouts’ organization and intensively occupies himself with Zionism. These young scouts speak mainly Hungarian or German amongst themselves. They maintain the Hungarian spirit and culture under the veil of Zionism. The Orthodox Jews recognize the government’s interests and also the dangers that the Zionists represent as they deepen the chasm between the Jews and the local population.33
Slovak authorities also carried out a series of investigations of possible Hungarian irredentist activity within Jewish national sport, cultural, and educational associations in Slovakia in 1926, employing language as a basis of inquiry. The police reports expressed offense that these associations carried out their activities in Magyar and German, and offered foreign-language instruction in English, French, and Hebrew, but did not use Slovak, the state language. The investigations, however, did not turn up any concrete evidence of antistate propaganda.34 31. “Sväz slovenských židov,” Národný denník, November 9, 1926. 32. “Pán rabín Funl vo “Slováku,” Slovenský dennik, September 12, 1928. 33. Štátný oblastný archív Bratislave, fond Župný úrad v Bratislave, file 8833/1925, in Marie Crhová, “Jewish Politics in Central Europe: The Case of the Jewish Party in Interwar Czechoslovakia,” in Jewish Studies at the Central European University, vol. 2, 1999–2001, ed. András Kovács and Eszter Andor (Budapest: Jewish Studies Project, Central European University, 2002), 289–90. 34. SNA/PR/kárton 79/836/report submitted in Bratislava, February 25, 1926. The reports concerning possible irredentist activity within Jewish national associations in Slovakia are located in carton 79, and date from 1926.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars The police official investigating the branch of the Jewish scout association Ha-Shomer ha-Tsair in Komárno noted that he heard only one word in Slovak: “Pozor!” (attention!).35 On the state level as well as in public opinion, the expression of Slovak suspicions and grievances against Jews converged on the issue of Magyar language use. “There are no Jews in the world like the ones in Slovakia,” acidly remarked the author of a 1929 article in Nitrianské noviny: Jews living in Poland speak Polish, in Germany German, in France French, in Bohemia Czech, in Hungary Magyar—only in Slovakia do we have Jews who speak Magyar. It is a world rarity, which is likely to be what make the Jews such great lords in Slovakia … on the main street in the coffeehouse and in the shops you hear only Magyar spoken. You see [the Jews] reading only Magyar newspapers, they ignore Slovak cultural enterprises. [They] speak only Magyar within the family and in public. … we cannot explain the Jewish mentality in Slovakia in any other way than that the whole nation still regards us a nation of stupid Slovaks who must put up with every insult, like under the Magyar government.36
Using the Slovak language was also regarded as the fulfillment of an obligation both to the Slovak nation and to Czechoslovakia, as seen in the following evaluation of Jewish community education from the Košice-based daily Slovenský východ: The Jewish Orthodox Religious Community in Košice understood its duties not only to the Slovak nation, but also to the republic. The expression of this understanding is that this community established an elementary school on Kazinczy Street with Slovak as the language of instruction. Slovak state teachers provide the instruction. The Neolog Jewish Community in Košice has not forgotten Hungary, though, as we see from the fact that it has its own elementary school in which, as the only such Jewish school in the republic, Magyar is the language of instruction.37 35. SNA/PR/kárton 79/842. Report submitted in Komárno, March 9, 1926. 36. “Židia u nás,” in Nitrianské noviny, April 28, 1929. 37. “Židia v Košiciach,” in Slovenský Východ (Košice), November 19, 1929. Interestingly, the example of the Orthodox elementary school in Košice also shows an auspicious overlap between Slovak linguistic and political pressures and the fulfillment of religious obligation. From the Orthodox Jewish perspective, hiring non-Jewish Slovak teachers ensured that the students at the Orthodox school would never see their Jewish teachers breaking the Sabbath during Saturday classes. A former student of the Orthodox school on Kazinczy Street in Košice, the same school to which the author of the article refers, recalled asking why the teachers at his school were Christian. The answer was that the religious community did not want the children to see their Jewish teachers pick up the chalk and write on the blackboard on Saturday, as they did in the Neolog school. From an interview with Jenő Silber conducted by Éva Kovács for her 1991 thesis, “A Kassai Zsidóság Etnikai Identitása A Két Világháborü Között (1918–1938).”
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová From this perspective, there could be no neutral maintenance of the Magyar language among the Jewish population, at the very least for official purposes. The Slovak press sharply criticized Jews who wished to preserve the Magyar language and culture in Slovakia while at the same time putting themselves forth as loyal citizens of the state and declaring their own separate Jewish nationality: The same Jews who cross their fingers in questions like [retaining Magyar street names in Bratislava] have just in the past few days had some congress from which they tossed a speech to the public about loyalty to the Czechoslovak Republic. They will have to forgive us if we give no [credence] to such speeches. … We regard the Jews as fellow citizens in the full sense of the term. That should suffice and should bring them to a better understanding of their duties to this state. It is high time that the Jews put their words into action. And when they now declare for their own nationality, let them do it consistently.38
The seeming inconsistency of the national orientation of Jews who declared Jewish nationality but continued to speak Magyar corroborated the distrust that Slovak state authorities as well as the local Slovak population felt for Jews. They interpreted claims of Jewish nationality accompanied by the continued use of the Hungarian langugage as disingenuous. The Jewish loyalty question was framed in linguistic terms. When the Union of Slovak Jews brought their grievance to the Bratislava police, they struck back at Funk as well as exposed the weaknesses of the Jewish national movement in Slovakia. They also demonstrated their confidence in the validity of their complaint and the correctness of their position regarding the state and the local Slovak population. The 1927 police report shrewdly observed that the real motivation of the Union of Slovak Jews in lodging their grievance against Funk was to pressure the leadership of the Neolog Jewish Community to grant their request to hold Slovak-language services in the Neolog synagogue. “It is an open secret,” the report remarked, “that this request has found no echo with the community board, whose members are primarily Germans and Magyars.”39 The subsequent shift in attention to the leadership of the Neolog Jewish Community of Bratislava from the Union of Slovak Jews led to a dramatic turnaround in the state’s view of the much-maligned Rabbi Funk. By 1932, the state had reversed its perception of Funk from magyarophile element working under the cover of Zionism, to loyal Czechoslovak citizen and advocate of the lower classes. The state instead condemned the community leadership as a disloyal element that behaved in the political interests of Hungary rather than of Czechoslovakia.40 38. “Židia na Slovensku,” in Národný denník, June 2, 1929. 39. SNA/PR/kárton 556/5. 40. SNA/PR/kárton 556. “Neolog žid. cirkevná obec v Bratislave—vnutorné rozpory,” November 12, 1932, 9.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars A spate of articles appeared in the statewide press in 1932 (notably in the papers České slovo, A Zet, and Slovenský večerník), drumming up the public’s interest in the question of the national orientation of Slovak Jews.41 The ongoing conflict between Funk and the leadership of the Neolog Jewish community erupted into open antagonism after Masaryk’s visit to Bratislava in mid-October 1930. On that occasion, Viktor Stein, the president of the community, arranged Neolog Jewish participation in the program in such way that Funk was unable to officially greet Masaryk on behalf of the Neologs, as his Orthodox counterpart was able to do. Stein also made it impossible for Funk to bless Masaryk, an honor enjoyed by the Orthodox rabbi Akiba Schreiber.42 Stein himself gave the official speech, in which he remarked that it was the fate of the Jews to “suffer in silence.”43 Masaryk responded to Stein’s comment with indignation, declaring, “In our republic you have nothing to suffer from, here all can live in freedom as decent men.”44 Funk rebuked Stein’s speech on the following day, detailing a long list of the rights and privileges the Jews in Czechoslovakia enjoyed. Funk testified that his exclusion from Masaryk’s visit not only had been unjust and contrary to the obligations of his office, but also constituted an anti-Czechoslovak stand. Funk demanded that the state examine the motivations behind Stein’s actions. The state did so, and concluded that Stein’s “nonsensical” complaints stemmed from his “well-known Magyar chauvanistic conviction.”45 By this reasoning, Stein had barred Funk from Masaryk’s visit out of fear that Funk would offend Stein’s connections in Hungary with a very loyal address to Czechoslovakia. In Funk’s place, Stein delivered a speech that the state considered grist for the mill of Hungarian interests.46 According to the conclusions of the state investigation, Stein’s meaning was quite clear when considered alongside his other dubious activites, especially the appointment of three rabbis trained at the allegedly irredentist Budapest Rabbinical Seminary to positions with Neolog Jewish communities in Slovakia.47 The state held Stein responsible
41. SNA/PR/kárton 556/1. 42. SNA/PR/kárton 556/report filed November 6, 1930, 4. Rabbi Akiba Schreiber was a descendent of Rabbi Moshe Schreiber (the Chatam Sofer), belonging to the Schreiber dynasty of Orthodox rabbis. He served from 1906 to 1939, and then immigrated to Jerusalem, where he died in 1959. 43. SNA/PR/kárton 556/1. 44. SNA/PR/kárton 556/125. The full text of both Stein’s and Masaryk’s comments can be found in the October 24, 1930, article “Das slovakische Judentum begrüßt den Staatspräsidenten,” in Jüdisches Familienblatt. 45. SNA/PR/kárton 556/report filed November 6, 1930, 1. 46. SNA/PR/kárton 556/report filed November 6, 1930, 4. 47. The most publicized of these was the installation of Rabbi Dr. Resovski, formerly the rabbi of Abony in Hungary, as the rabbi of Lučenec (Losonc). Materials relating to this matter, including a police report and newspaper clippings from the Magyar and Slovak press, are located in SNA/PR/557. The head of the Rabbinical Association in Slovakia, the Orthodox rabbi Stein of Trnava (Nagyszombat), believed that the election of Rabbi Resovski would have a disastrous impact on the development of loyalty among Jews in Slovakia, and that it would set a precedent for other places where the hostile
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová for bringing these “very chauvanistic Magyars” from Hungary to serve in Slovakia.48 In comparison with Stein, rather than with the Union of Slovak Jews, the state found Funk’s behavior correct, if eccentric. The 1932 report went so far as to paint Funk as a beacon of democracy, a hero of the lower classes in the Neolog Jewish community, struggling for their just representation within the rich community leadership. The report enthusiastically noted that Funk called for the overthrow of the current leadership—whom Funk regarded as lukewarm to Czechoslovakia because of their property holdings in Hungary49—and for rewriting the community statutes, which he argued had been designed under the former regime to favor the rich.50 Other points in Funk’s favor included his use of the Slovak language for official events and his condemnation of actions that could potentially harm the Czechoslovak state. The report emphasized that Funk had delivered part of his address in Slovak on the occasions of Masaryk’s birthday and the anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1932, demonstrating his efforts to become proficient in the state language even at his advanced age. Funk vigorously protested against Stein’s filling rabbinical positions in Slovakia with graduates of the seminary in Budapest, against the English Lord Rothmere’s international campaign for the revision of Hungary’s borders, and against the declaration made by the Hungarian minister of defense, Gyula Gömbös, in 1930 that he regarded the Jews in Slovakia to be supporters of Hungary. In addition, Funk called on the members of the Neolog Jewish Community in Bratislava to condemn Gömbös’s statement and thereby show their loyalty to Czechoslovakia.51 The reversal of the state’s view of Funk over the course of its six-year investigation corresponded with a shift in the markers that the state defined as indicators of citizen loyalty, as well as its techniques of observation. At first, the investigation was based on internal strife within the Neolog Jewish community connected to issues of relations with the surrounding Slovak population. Later, the investigation centered on problems with a more immediate bearing on external relations with Hungary: the connections of the leadership of the Neolog Jewish community with Hungary, their property holdings in Hungary, the appointment of rabbis who were Hungarian citizens trained at the rabbinical seminary in Budapest, and responses to the international Justice for Hungary campaign of Lord Rothmere
influence of Budapest worked behind the scenes; see SNA/PR/557, “Voľba rabína v Lučenci,” March 12, 1929, 4. 48. SNA/PR/557, “Voľba rabína v Lučenci,” March 12, 1929, 4. 49. Funk testified that Stein, Dezső, and Porzsolt would always officially take a stand against the Hungarian government, but that they were bound to Hungary by their property holdings in southern Slovakia; see SNA/KU/266/Neologické žid. Náboženské obec v Bratislave—činnost. 50. SNA/PR/kárton 556, “Neolog žid. cirkevná obec v Bratislave—vnutorné rozpory,” November 12, 1932, 7. 51. SNA/PR/kárton 556, “Neolog žid. cirkevná obec v Bratislave—vnutorné rozpory,” November 12, 1932, SNA/KU/266/Neologické žid. Náboženské obec v Bratislave—činnost.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars and to the contentious statements of Hungarian minister of defense Gömbös in the Hungarian parliament. A host of linguistic, social, cultural, and religious issues burdened Jewish– Slovak relations: interpreting these was an ineffective way of determining overall allegience to the Czechoslovak state. The state could better determine the political loyalties of its Slovak Jewish citizens by considering their connections to Hungary or Hungarian Jewry, and to activity that ran counter to Czechoslovak interests. Matters of citizen loyalty gained meaning in the transnational context. T HE H EROES ’ T EMPLE
COMMEMORATION PROJECT
The Heroes’ Temple (Hősök Temploma) lies on the corner plot of Wesselényi and Dohány streets in central Budapest. It is a modest building: its minimalist lines contrast with the Moorish grandeur of its neighbor, the monumental Dohány Street Synagogue, which was consecrated with much pomp and circumstance in September 1859. Conceived in 1927 and completed in time for Rosh Hashanah services in September 1931, the Heroes’ Temple serves as both a Neolog prayer hall and a site of commemoration for the 10,000 Jewish soldiers from the prewar territory of the Kingdom of Hungary who fought and died for the monarchy during World War I. The case of the Heroes’ Temple memorial project was one of the most intriguing used by the Czechoslovak state to investigate the political loyalties of Jews in Slovakia. Perceiving the project as a potential branch of the larger Hungarian irredentist enterprise, the administration filed the documents relating to the Heroes’ Temple under the heading “Hungarian Jews and the Revision of Trianon,” and stamped them “classified” and “urgent.” It was clear that the Czechoslovak government was deeply suspicious of a war commemoration project that extended beyond the Trianon borders of Hungary in its scope. By remembering the Jews of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia as Hungarians, the project appeared to go hand in hand with the revisionist ambitions of the Horthy government. The Budapest Jewish community intended to engrave the names of the 10,000 fallen Hungarian Jewish soldiers in marble on the walls of the memorial, a fact that the Czechoslovak state administration noted with exclamation marks in its reports on the project. Physical representation of numbers and names was important to the Budapest Jewish community for proving the extent of the Hungarian Jewish wartime sacrifice. The Hungarian Jewish newspaper Egyenlőség had kept a running list of fallen Jewish soldiers throughout the course of the war. In 1922, the Hungarian National Statistical Bureau had calculated the figure at 10,000, based on the prewar territory of Hungary, as the official number of fallen Hungarian Jewish soldiers. That number was recalculated in 1927 to 5,116 based on the bounds of the postwar territory. The recalculation was taken as offensive and inaccurate by Hungarian Jews.52 Because they regarded 10,000 52. Vér Andor, “Világháború” [World war], in Magyar Zsidó Lexikon, ed. Péter Ujváry (Budapest: A Magyar Zsidó Lexikon Kiadása, 1929), 950.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová as the accurate number, it was important to back it up with the personal data of soldiers from the successor states. The Czechoslovak investigation of Slovak Jewish participation in the Heroes’ Temple commemoration project began in September 1929, shortly after the chief Orthodox rabbi of Slovakia, Koloman Wéber, advised the government to be on the lookout for revisionist activity on the part of Hungarian Jewry.53 The state proceeded to follow the activities of several rabbis and Neolog Jewish communities in Slovakia to see whether they were involved in any way with the building of the Heroes’ Temple.54 The Budapest Jewish community was inspired to create the Heroes’ Temple memorial by a call from the Hungarian government for each religious community in the country to commemorate its own war martyrs. Within this context, the building of the Heroes’ Temple seemed like a perfect opportunity to simultaneously accomplish three objectives: to mourn the dead, to support the official declaration that “[Hungary] is bleeding from a thousand wounds,”55 and to remind postwar Hungary of the loyalty and patriotism of its Jewish citizens. The latter was of particular importance after the disastrous and short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, which had counted among its leadership many communists of Jewish origin. The Budapest Jewish community set up a commission right away to meet with the rabbis in the successor states in order to gather financial and other support for the Heroes’ Temple project, as well as to enter the personal data of the fallen soldiers.56 In their quest to reaffirm the loyalty and patriotism of Hungarian Jewry during the war, as well as to testify to their continued devotion to and identification with postwar Hungary, however, the Budapest Jewish community set its needs on a collision course with those of the Jews in Slovakia. Any involvement of Jews in Slovakia in the Heroes’ Temple project would only serve to make them more suspicious as pro-Hungarian elements in the eyes of the Czechoslovak state. The situation represented an inevitable and irreconcilable conflict of interests. Demonstrating the loyalty of the Jews in Slovakia to Czechoslovakia depended on their breaking ties with Hungary and Hungarian Jewry. In November 1929, the Czechoslovak administration advised the Jews in Slovakia to “reject the courting of their coreligionists from Hungary in so far as it concerns obvious, but unacknowledged irredentist activity,” and recommended that Czechoslovak officials carefully follow Jews with Hungarian connections.57 An understanding of distance from Budapest is required to comprehend the impact and fallout of the Heroes’ Temple memorial project. Viewing it from a territory that had been part of the prewar Hungarian state allows for the charting of issues emphasized by the project, especially as they facilitated a more concrete 53. Ministerstvo zahraničních věcí české republiky (MZV), sekce II, řada III, krabice 326, 113601/29. 54. MZV, sekce II, řada III, krabice 326, 111943/29. 55. Kinga Frojimovics et al., Jewish Budapest: Monuments, Rites, History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 294. 56. SNA/PR/kárton 558, 56.347/29. 57. SNA/PR/kárton 558, 56.347/29.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars expression of altered postwar group belongings. For Neolog Jews in Slovakia, the project facilitated their reorientation as Slovak Jews, an identity characterized by fluidity of movement among the aspects of their group belongings, especially with regard to the separation of language use from national conviction. Recent literature on the process of commemoration asks us to consider whom or what war memorials are asking us to remember. In what ways do these memorials reflect the search for meaning in war? As sites of rituals, rhetoric, and ceremonies of mourning, they speak of the connection of the past to the present, the living to the dead, and to the location of the trauma of war in contemporary memory.58 This connection is especially poignant in cases of geopolitical discontinuity. If Slovak Jews were to participate in the Heroes’ Temple project with their coreligionists and former compatriots, they, too, would be mourning the collapse of the Kingdom of Hungary. Their sons had fought and died for Hungary as Hungarians on the battlefield, but it was no longer possible to mourn them as such. The creation of the Czechoslovak state in which they now lived depended on the collapse of the monarchy, and its continued existence rested on keeping the revisionist ambitions of postwar Hungary at bay. The Czechoslovak state hoped that the following of developments related to the Heroes’ Temple memorial project would provide it with a barometer of Jewish connections to Hungary. The bulk of the investigations took place in early fall 1929, and were carried out by local authorities. In most cases, this meant the local police. The most detailed reports came in to Bratislava and Prague from Nitra in western Slovakia and from Prešov in eastern Slovakia in the first half of November 1929. In the police report from Nitra, the head rabbi confirmed that he had received a letter with the stamp of the Heroes’ Temple on it in February from Péter Ujváry, who, along with Samuel Glückstahl, a member of the Upper House in Hungary, was gathering the personal data of fallen soldiers in Slovakia. Ujváry was seeking the names of fallen soldiers as well as subscribers to the memorial. The police investigator stated that as far as it was possible for him to ascertain, none of the rabbis in the area of Nitra had joined the commission to help gather names, but some may have given names to Ujváry because doing so represented a good opportunity to show pride in those Jewish soldiers of the former Hungary. Significantly, he noted in his report that it would be mistaken to assume that the Jews in Nitra were under the influence of Hungarian Jewry, because they felt at home and were convinced that life is better in the Czechoslovak Republic than in neighboring Hungary. Jews in Nitra had told him that they knew their coreligionists in Hungary were “politically persecuted.” As a final note, the police investigator added that Ujváry was in the southern Slovak town of Nové Zamky and had been in Bratislava four years earlier (1925), trying to raise money for an “Album of Heroes” among the Jews in Neolog communities, but had not been able to collect the necessary amount.59
58. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 59. SNA/fond Krajinský úrad (KU)/kárton 266, 1602/29.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová The police report from Prešov, a Neolog Jewish stronghold in eastern Slovakia, makes for convincing proof that the Jews there were not involved in the Heroes’ Temple project or other suspected irredentist activity. The report exhibits a bluntly hostile position toward the local Jewish population. Sure, the report states, Even the last Jewish barkeep in the most remote village of Šariš was an informer of the present Hungarian government. … in spite of this … it’s impossible to claim that they would be subject to the influence of Hungarian irredentist circles, mainly the Revisionist League, or that they would have close ties with them.60
Notwithstanding his own unfriendly attitude, the author of the report recognized that the Hungarian irredentist movement, and especially the antisemitic Revisionist League, would hardly be an attractive forum for anti-Czechoslovak activity among Jews in Slovakia. All of the Jews of Prešov were “100 percent magyarized,” he stressed, but Hungarian assimilation ended after the changes. In its place came Zionism, which propagated Jewish nationality and asserted that the Jews should have their own sovereign state in Palestine. In Prešov, a Dr. Karol Ferbstein spread Zionism, recruiting mainly from magyarized Jews, who “vote for a separate Jewish nation, but are not able to rid themselves of the Hungarian mentality.” The report concluded that it was better for the Jews in Czechoslovakia than it was in Hungary, even before the war, which is the primary reason they were not interested in the success of any plans for revising the Trianon borders—not because of any special love for or loyalty to the state.61 Briefer reports arrived throughout 1930 and 1931, many repeating information that was known. Several concerned specific instances of Jewish interaction with Ujváry, Glückstahl, or the local authorities. For example, the Jewish community in Snina, in northeastern Slovakia, did gather names of fallen Jewish soldiers from their community as Ujváry had requested, but the president of the Jewish community had refused to send the data to Budapest despite repeated reminders. He later received a questionnaire from Ujváry, which he handed over to local officials.62 A report from the spring of 1930 stated that Ujváry and Glückstahl had visited the Neolog Jewish community in Šahy, southwestern Slovakia, in February 1929 to request the names of fallen soldiers. At that time, the head of the Jewish religious community there, Dr. Jakub Váradi, had the requested information be drawn up and sent to Budapest. However, he wanted the record to state clearly that he had intended the document only to serve the purpose of piety and reverence for the dead, and to prove the falsity of accusations from antisemitic circles that the Jewish population had not sacrificed their blood on the battlefields. He did not wish to have anything to do with further Hungarian actions. The report concluded with a list of Slovak national organizations to which Váradi belonged, noting his membership on the board of the Matica Slovenska and his active role in the 60. SNA/KU/266, 3161/29. 61. Ibid. 62. MZV, II, III, 326, 1.470, March 25, 1930.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars Agrarian Party, and stating that he had come forward against the Justice for Hungary action of Lord Rothmere.63 To what extent was the investigation of Neolog Jews in Slovakia successful in determining levels of continuing political loyalty to Hungary? The Heroes’ Temple memorial project was important in the eyes of the Czechoslovak government only for this purpose. The method, while ingenious, was far from foolproof. The Heroes’ Temple was, after all, a memorial for fallen Hungarian Jewish soldiers, and the sons of the Jews in Slovakia had died as Hungarian Jews. How else were they to be mourned? As the reports show, Jews in Slovakia were not willing to be viewed as Trianon revisionists for the sake of participating in the Heroes’ Temple memorial. Nevertheless, the commemoration project of the Budapest Jewish community proved attractive. The Czechoslovak government would have been wrong to assume that two of the motivations that drove the Budapest community to undertake the project—mourning the dead and fighting antisemitic accusations—would not appeal to Jews in Slovakia. However, the accusations of involvement with Hungarian revisionism aimed at the Jews in Slovakia, focusing on Neolog Jewry, took precedence. Jews in Slovakia chose to commemorate their war dead locally and modestly. Examples of their memorials include a plaque at the entrance to the Neolog cemetery in Bratislava, a pillar and rectangular concrete slab in the Neolog cemetery in Prešov, and a plaque on the wall of the Neolog synagogue in Bytča.64 In this way, those who chose to do so could publicly pay tribute to their war dead without being connected to a project initiated by Budapest that raised the suspicion of the Czechoslovak state. The Heroes’ Temple memorial project illustrates a turning point in the history of Slovak Jewry. It marked the conclusion of a formative period in which their linguistic and cultural ties to Hungary were unbound from political ones. Their peculiar position as a group had become more clearly defined in relation to Hungary, Hungarian Jewry, and the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. As the police report from Prešov noted, Hungarian assimilation had ended after the changes, and in its place had come Zionism, which propagated Jewish nationality. Jewish nationality was the primary means by which the majority of Slovak Jews expressed their internal convictions.
C ONCLUSION Jewish nationality and Jewish national politics offered a productive way for Slovak Jews to feel, demonstrate, and act on their reorientation as citizens of Czechoslovakia. Jewish nationality also played a significant role in the 63. MZV, II, III, 326, 5279, April 14, 1930. 64. I wish to thank Maroš Borský, author of Synagogue Architecture in Slovakia: A Memorial Landscape of a Lost Community (Bratislava, Slovakia: the Jewish Heritage Foundation—Menorah, 2007), for his help in locating these memorials.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová development of a particular Slovak Jewish collective identity, facilitating the delineation and management of the set of concerns peculiar to Slovak Jewry in relation to the Czechoslovak and Hungarian states, and to the multinational population of Slovakia, Czech, and Hungarian Jewry. Slovak Jews appreciated the fluidity of movement among the various aspects of their group belongings that Czechoslovak citizenship allowed. They could be Czechoslovak state citizens of the Jewish nationality, and could speak German, Magyar, Yiddish, Czech, and Slovak, or any combination of these languages as they chose. The ability to affiliate with a separate Jewish nationality gave the appearance of removing them from the national fray. The majority of Slovak Jews pinned their hopes on Jewish nationality as “the only possibility of avoiding conflict with every party, every religion, and every nationality, of eliminating all misunderstandings.”65 Affiliation with the Jewish nationality and participation in Jewish national politics also seemed to be a good way to demonstrate the severing of ties with Hungary and Hungary Jewry that Czechoslovakia was looking for as transnational evidence of Czechoslovak state loyalty among Slovak Jews. Slovak Jewish reactions to the “courting” of Hungary and Hungarian Jewry, as it was called in the case of the Heroes’ Temple commemoration project, figured prominently among the suitable evidence. The Slovak Jewish press and representative organizations used the argument of belonging to a separate Jewish nationality to defend the Slovak Jewish population against the undesirable Hungarian embrace. At the same time, the Jewish national movement in Slovakia bore within it the weakness of appearing to have a Magyar national subtext, as the Funk Affair revealed. This was attributable in part to its fierce anti-assimilationist position, as well as to the maintenance of Magyar language use by a number of its adherents. A Jewish national political affiliation accompanied by Magyar language use seemed inconsistent, even if language had been officially disengaged from the Czechoslovak conception of nationality as an internal conviction, especially in the case of the Jewish population. It fueled rather than quelled suspicions held both by the state and by the surrounding Slovak population of a continuing Magyar orientation accompanied by possible antistate activity among Magyarspeaking Jews in Slovakia, when this segment of the Jewish population was distinguished from the rest. Jewish national activity in Slovakia underwent a profound reorientation in the 1930s. Whereas in the 1920s, Jewish national goals had centered on issues such as securing seats in Parliament for the Jewish Party and staking out an authentic and neutral position among the nationalities in Czechoslovakia, the Jewish national organizations that mushroomed across the territory of Slovakia in the 1930s were more interested in the development of Palestine-centered Zionism. Shekel purchases in Czechoslovakia grew from 8,685 in 1921 to 18,887 in 1938, with the preponderance of buyers in Slovakia and Subcarpathian
65. In the words of Rabbi Samuel Reich of Vrbové, from his article “Die Bedeutung der jüdischen Wahlpartei,” Juedische Volkszeitung, April 16, 1920.
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Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars Ruthenia.66 Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia were also the Czechoslovak strongholds of the pioneering movement Ha-Shomer ha-Tsair. Emigratory Zionism grew in strength in the 1930s in response to the escalation of antisemitism that accompanied the struggle for Slovak national autonomy, German and Hungarian revisionism, the rise of Hitler and the 1935 promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, and a new generation’s conclusion that nationality required a territory of one’s own. The administration noted that a growing number of Jewish emigrants to Palestine after 1933 were young and male, and were likely going to perform military service.67 The intensification of the overlap of language, nationality, and territory in the interwar period pushed Jewish nationality out of its earlier position as a solution to the question of Jewish national affiliation in Czechoslovakia that appealed to both the Jews and the state as an authentic national position that favored the dominant “Czechoslovak” nationality. Territory was the decisive factor, but language and nationality were complementary elements. Language traditionally had served as the external marker of nationality, and was used by the state as the primary means to count and classify its population on a national basis. Czechoslovakia had broken with that tradition in redefining and counting nationality according to internal conviction, usually, though not always—as the Jewish case showed—equivalent to one’s mother tongue. The growth in the significance of territory in this equation was a consequence of postwar state building. The successor states of the fallen AustroHungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires were established on a national principle: they were territorial manifestations of nationhood. Their meaning as such only increased under the pressures of internal and external national conflict. The force of irredentism, in particular, aided the activation of how nationality would function within the new borders of the Eastern and Central European state system, in states that were both the subjects and the objects of irredentist ambition. State sovereignty and security were at stake in the question of nationality. Within the Slovak environment, everyday language use was taken as a gauge of Jewish acceptance of the political status quo. Slovaks wanted to hear the Jewish population in Slovakia speak Slovak, not Magyar: on the street, in coffee shops, in schools. Slovak public opinion held speaking Slovak as the fulfillment of a Jewish obligation to the Slovak nation, and only secondarily to Czechoslovakia. Through use of the Slovak language in Slovakia, Jews and other non-Slovaks could show their acceptance of the political order and their respect for the Slovak nation. Language use, once an external marker of nationality, was now politically charged as an indicator of loyalty to the bound territorial nation. The tragic weakness of Jewish nationality was in its illegibility; it could not be read the same way as other nationalities. While the removal of linguistic criteria from the
66. Oscar K. Rabinowicz, “Czechoslovak Zionism,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, 55. 67. SNA/PR/501/643.
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Rebekah Klein-Pejšová Czechoslovak conception of nationality as an internal conviction had been extraordinarily productive in activating a separate Jewish nationality and Jewish national politics in Czechoslovakia, it left Jewish citizenship loyalty open to hostile interpretation. Rebekah Klein-Pejšová Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
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AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 363–378 © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009 doi:10.1017/S0364009409990055
T HE P ERILS OF H YBRIDITY: R ESISTING THE P OSTCOLONIAL P ERSPECTIVE IN A. B. Y EHOSHUA’ S T HE L IBERATING B RIDE by
Gilead Morahg
The Liberating Bride (2001)* figures as the most discursive of A. B. Yehoshua’s novels. It follows the comings and goings of Yochanan Rivlin, an aging Middle East scholar, as he tries to discover the untold cause of his son’s failed marriage and struggles to breathe life into his own moribund study of the causes of internal violence in contemporary Algiers. The novel abounds in the minutiae of everyday life and the often inane nature of human conversation. Its progression is intermittently impeded by eruptions of social comedy and political parody. It dwells on the myriad routines of marital, familial, and social transactions and gives ample scope to arcane academic disputations. But this seemingly sprawling narrative surface generates a carefully crafted deep structure by means of which the novel conducts a wide-ranging exploration of personal and political conundrums. As in many of his previous novels, Yehoshua’s practice of constructing analogies between family situations and national issues enables him to engage psychological motivations, moral considerations, and ideological determinants that affect both the private and the public spheres of life. The central analogy in The Liberating Bride is between the complex relationships within the Rivlin family and the similarly complex relations between Jews and Arabs within Israel and in the territories it occupies. At the latter level, which is the focus of this essay, The Liberating Bride joins “Facing the Forests” (1963), The Lover (1977), and Mr. Mani (1990) as a work in which Yehoshua takes a periodic measure of relations and prospects for accommodation between these communities. In The Liberating Bride, this effort involves an extensive interrogation of the relevance of postcolonial theories about the nature of national identity to the reality of the relations between Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians living beyond the Green Line. This aspect of the novel
* The publishers of the English translation of this novel changed its title from the original, The Liberating Bride (Ha-kalah ha-meshah.reret), to The Liberated Bride. While this may be a more marketable choice, it deprives the title of its intended meaning. For the purpose of this essay, I have retained the original title.
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Gilead Morahg is most evident in the manner in which its protagonist, Yochanan Rivlin, resists the repudiation of essentialist notions of national identity that has become the staple stance of postcolonial theorists and critics. The concept of hybridity is a mainstay of the argument against national and cultural essentialism.1 This argument draws much of its authority from the work of Homi Bhabha, part of whose project is to undermine the binary opposition between colonizer and colonized and to emphasize, instead, mutualities and negotiations across the colonial divide.2 Such negotiations, he believes, will redefine the concepts of homogenous national cultures, or organic ethnic communities, and will result in hybrid forms of human solidarity that transcend cultural boundaries.3 The character Rivlin, by contrast, is preoccupied with the intransigence of cultural boundaries and the consequent collapse of human solidarity. His research aims to determine the causes of the civic breakdown of Algerian society, which, after Algeria gained independence from the French, descended into an exceptionally vicious cycle of internecine violence. But the question that haunts and frustrates Rivlin extends beyond the confines of the Algerian conflict. His larger concern is, as he says, “what is happening to Arab identity, of which the Algerians are a part.”4 In this assertion of an essential ethnic identity, Rivlin is, of course, close to Yehoshua, who has been consistently concerned with the essence of Jewish and Israeli identity. But while in his previous works Yehoshua sought to discern, define, and perhaps transform what he regards as pathological deformations in the Jewish psyche, in The Liberating Bride, he directs a comparable narrative effort toward the Arab psyche. The assumption guiding this thematic departure is that, like Jews, all Arabs share an ancient cultural root that persists in shaping their inner world and determining their relations to the outside world. Rivlin’s intellectual point of departure is his quest for the sources of violence between two Algerian communities that inhabit the same land, but his experiences shift the focus of this inquiry away from the distant North African conflict to the tensions afflicting his own part of the Middle East. Contemplating the difficulties of writing sympathetically about the Algerian struggle for independence in the 1940s and 1950s while “witnessing their terrible murders today; the insane terror that is raging there,” Rivlin experiences an unsettling shock of recognition. “Suddenly,” he says, I despaired of “all the Arabs” (37, 35; emphasis added). Later, while visiting with the family of his Arab assistant,
1. Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (New York: Routledge, 1995), 27. 2. Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London: Verso, 1997), 116. 3. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1998), 284. 4. A. B. Yehoshua, Ha-kalah ha-meshah.reret [The liberating bride] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2001), 296. Page references in the text refer to this book, followed by a reference to the English translation (italicized) by Hillel Halkin: A. B. Yehoshua, The Liberated Bride (New York: Harcourt, 2003), 307. For purposes of greater accuracy, I found it necessary to provide my own translations. Consequently, the translations given in this article may differ from the published English translation.
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The Perils of Hybridity Samaher, he concludes that even though the Arabs with whom he is interacting are not the same as the Algerians he is studying, they have an “‘ancient common root,’ which is sometimes hard and cruel and sometimes generous and caring” (188, 194). And when his hosts inquire about when he will write about the Arabs of Palestine, Rivlin explains that “even when he writes about distant Arabs in distant times, he looks for connections with those that are near, because, after all, you are all from the same root, from the same desert” (192, 199). Rivlin’s essentialist assumptions are challenged by Dr. Miller, a junior member of the Middle East Studies faculty and one of the new breed of postcolonial theorists. In the spirit of Edward Said, Miller rejects the entire field of Oriental studies and dismisses Rivlin’s premise of an essential national identity as an artificial, oppressive, totalizing construct that obstructs mobility, creates boundaries, and blocks the natural flow of human coalescence, integration, and cooperation. Drawing on the work of Bhabha, he offers an alternative vision of dynamic intercultural contacts that create a “hybrid, androgynous experience” that “demolishes the old, static, essentialist categories” (493, 508). Rivlin is initially dispirited by Miller’s critique. But later, drawing on the experiences that are recounted in the novel, he is able to formulate a skeptical counterargument to the antifoundational perspective of the postcolonial approach and an affirmation of the discipline of Orientalism (mizrah.anut), which is based on what he describes as “the long-standing faith in the ability of Western reason to study and understand the history and the actions of the Arabs with the customary tools of scientific inquiry” (498, 513). This, he argues toward the end of the novel, is particularly important to Israeli Orientalists because, For the Israelis, whether they like it or not, whether they admit it or not, this is not just a matter of scientific inquiry. These are questions that affect their future, questions of life and death that hang over their heads and over the heads of their children. This is why they, more than anyone else, must arrive at a correct interpretation of the Arab world. And just as they must beware of attitudes of contempt, disdain and condescension toward the neighbors they are studying, they must also avoid forgiving delusions about them. Unlike experts from other nations, who have the luxury of imagining what the Arabs could or should be. (499, 514)
As it traces the evolution of Rivlin’s thinking on Arab identity from initial uncertainty to a greater sense of clarity, The Liberating Bride interrogates the postulations of postcolonial theory by testing them against the reality of the Israeli– Palestinian conflict. What this examination demonstrates is that, irrespective of prevailing theoretical disclaimers, national identity remains a powerful cultural force that must be acknowledged and contended with, especially in situations of social instability, conflict, and disruptive change.5 These are precisely the situations created by the continuing Israeli occupation of an increasingly restive 5. Young, Colonial Desire, 4.
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Gilead Morahg Arab population. And a central thematic concern in The Liberating Bride is what is perceived as an ominous Palestinian impulse toward hybridization with the Israelis that has been induced by the subordinate Palestinian position in this clash of national wills. During a visit to a Palestinian village, Rivlin is surrounded by a group of young Arabs who are skeptical about the “peace process” that followed the Oslo Accords. The Arabs want to know, “What’s the story with the Jews? Because if peace turns out to be an illusion, why do we need to separate?” (219, 228). It gradually becomes clear that this desire to merge, which is reiterated at various junctures in the novel, is an expression of a deeper national aspiration that transcends the arbitrary demarcation of the Green Line and binds both Palestinians and Israeli Arabs in a common cause: they appear possessed by a primal desire to return and inhabit the land that they lost. This desire, which is portrayed as a constitutive component of both the Israeli Arab and the Palestinian psyche, manifests itself in the ideological insistence on the hybridizing right of return. Contrary to the benign presumptions of postcolonialist theorists, The Liberating Bride presents an increasingly apprehensive view of the dynamics of social hybridization as they apply to the Israeli–Arab situation. An incident with the hybrid creature that appears toward the end of the novel is emblematic of this concern. The incident is introduced with an epigraph from Kafka’s parable “A Crossbreed.” It says, “I have a curious animal, half kitten, half lamb. It is a legacy from my father. But it only developed in my time” (506, 520).6 This epigraph is followed by a story that Netur Kontar, a Druze officer in the Israeli army, tells his friend Marwan, a Christian Arab dentist, about a strange creature that his father, the legendary hunter Abu Netur, had recently encountered. This “hybrid creature,” is “part giant cat, part lamb … Its size and form were clearly that of a large lamb, but its head and claws, and especially its expression, were definitely that of a cat. And its eyes were a mixture of the two animals. Wild, darting eyes, round and green, glowing with fear and cunning” (506, 520). A deliberate replication of Kafka’s crossbreed, which, “[f]rom the cat takes its head and claws; from the lamb its size and shape; from both its eyes, which are wild and darting,”7 this creature shows no fear of Abu Netur. It approaches him gingerly, sniffs his garments, and rubs its head against him. But when it senses the old hunter’s intent to capture it, the creature strikes with its claws, leaps away, and vanishes into the thicket, leaving a long gash in Abu Netur’s forehead. Determined to capture the creature, the veteran hunter lays a trap and lies in wait. The creature appears again, and again allows Abu Netur to caress it, exposing its underbelly to show that, as is typically the case with hybrids, “it is completely sexless.” But when Abu Netur tries to drop his net over it, “the creature jumped away, and before running toward the Jezreel Valley, it clawed the face of the old man who was trying to deprive it of its freedom and almost ripped out one
6. Franz Kafka, “A Crossbreed,” in Kafka: The Complete Short Stories and Parables, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Quality Paperback Club, 1983), 426. 7. Ibid.
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The Perils of Hybridity of his eyes” (507, 522). Marwan is skeptical about the story, but Netur is convinced of its veracity and persuades his friend to help him hunt the strange animal because, as he explains, “he wants to know and understand what kind of new creatures are emerging in this land” (508, 523). This emblematic depiction of hybridity emphasizes its sterility, its deceptive affability, its capacity for violence, and, as it turns out later, its potential for causing catastrophe. The signifying function of this incident is further informed by the epigraphic gesture to Kafka’s parable and, through it, to the lessons of the Jewish historical experience with hybridization. The outcome of the Jews’ diasporic efforts to graft themselves onto various branches of other national identities refutes Bhabha’s conviction that such an incorporation will categorically replace the concepts of homogenous national cultures and organic ethnic communities with hybrid forms of human solidarity that transcend cultural boundaries. The Jewish experience in Europe shows that the dynamics of national or ethnic hybridization are not universally beneficial and may often serve to exacerbate national pathologies and generate catastrophic consequences. Long before the Jewish effort to integrate into European society unleashed the most murderous pathologies within that society, Kafka contemplated the internal consequences of this effort in “A Crossbreed.” His half-kitten, half-lamb hybrid incorporates the inherently contradictory mind-sets of both animals,8 and, as a result, is alienated from both of its constitutive domains: “It flees from cats and makes to attack lambs.”9 Doomed to perpetual exclusion and isolation, the creature shares the narrator’s suicidal inclinations. “Perhaps,” the narrator muses, the knife of the butcher would be a release for this animal; but as it is a legacy I must deny it that … even though it sometimes gazes at me with a look of human understanding, challenging me to do the thing of which both of us are thinking.10
Yehoshua devoted his 1990 novel Mr. Mani to an extended exploration of the causes of what he regards as a self-destructive drive that is pathologically embedded in the collective Jewish psyche and constitutes a persistent impediment to a healthy Jewish national life. In The Liberating Bride, he turns his attention to the roots of what he sees as a similarly destructive pathology deeply rooted in the Palestinian psyche. He locates the external political manifestation of this pathology in the voices within both the Israeli Arab and Palestinian communities that are calling for a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by merging the two communities into a single, hybrid state. Like almost every Israeli, and probably most Palestinians, Yehoshua understands that the call for a state that would abolish the Jewish Law of Return and legitimate the Palestinian right of return 8. Sander L. Gilman, “Kafka Wept,” Modernism/Modernity 1, no. 1 (1994): 33. 9. Kafka, “The Crossbreed,” 426. 10. Ibid., 427.
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Gilead Morahg is driven by a desire for a demographic restoration of Arab hegemony over the entire land and the reduction of its Jewish population to subordinate minority status once again. His concern is not with the actualization of this desire, which is presented in the novel as a delusional dream, but with the potential for violence involved in living in close proximity to a community that continues to be driven by this dream. In The Liberating Bride, he seeks to dispel this delusional aspiration by exposing its pathological roots. Rivlin’s experiences in the novel redirect his attention from his original concern with the connection between aspects of a collective Arab psyche and the causes of internal violence in Algiers to the correlative potential for violence inherent in the desire for a hybrid Jewish–Arab state. What he sees and hears stands in distinct opposition to Bhabha’s contention that, rather than causing conflict and contestation, hybridization brings forth new forms of amalgamation in which two or more cultures merge into a new mode.11 Bhabha derives this notion from Mikhail Bakhtin’s discussion of organic hybridization of languages, and transforms it into a process of cultural negotiation that leads to social integration. The Liberating Bride points to the problematics of extrapolating social principles from linguistic models and of imposing such abstract theoretical constructs on the realities of complex social and political situations. However, Bakhtin’s original thinking on hybridization is actually useful for understanding the manner in which the novel proceeds to expose and explore the roots and nature of a social pathology. Bakhtin’s notion of hybridization pertains to the mixing within a single utterance of two different linguistic consciousnesses that may be widely separated by time, by social differentiation, or by some other factor. He distinguishes between two forms of hybridization, which are often in conflict with each other. One is unintentional, organic hybridization, which takes place within the social discourse. The other is intentional, artistic hybridization, which is characteristic of literary discourse, especially the novel. Organic hybridization involves an unconscious dynamic that mixes various languages coexisting within the boundaries of a single dialect or a single national language. Such unconscious hybrids have been profoundly productive historically, but are largely invisible and unfelt. Bakhtin mentions them almost in passing in order to differentiate and better define intentional, novelistic hybridization, which is his primary interest.12 Unlike organic language hybrids, an intentional language hybrid is the conscious creation of an artist constructing a literary fiction. And, unlike organic hybrids, in which the separate languages are merged, intentional hybridization is an artistically organized system for bringing different languages in contact with one another in order to set different points of view against each other in a dialogical structure. Typically, this involves two individualized sociolinguistic
11. Young, Colonial Desire, 21–22. 12. M. M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 358–60.
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The Perils of Hybridity consciousnesses that come together and contend with each other within the boundaries of a single utterance. One of these is the consciousness and the will of the author who is doing the representing. The other is the consciousness and the will of the character who is being represented. This double-voicedness enables the perception and illumination of one linguistic consciousness by another linguistic consciousness. And for Bakhtin, the crucial effect of such intentional hybridization comes at the moment when, within a single discourse, one voice is able to unmask the other. This is the point at which authoritative discourse is undone.13 In The Liberating Bride, this double-voiced capability of novelistic art is most clearly evident in the representation of the exorcism scene from S. Ansky’s iconic Jewish play The Dybbuk, as it is produced and performed by some of the Arab participants in a festival of Arab and Jewish poetry held in Ramallah. Rivlin and his wife are invited to the poetry festival by Rashad, a cousin of Rivlin’s Arab assistant, Samaher. Rashad is preoccupied with the fate of his sister, Rauda, who is prohibited from returning to her family village in Israel because she is married to a Palestinian from across the Green Line. He befriends Rivlin in the hope that the professor will use his connections to obtain permission for Rauda and her children to return to Israel. Extending his invitation, Rashad explains to Rivlin that the festival will be a celebration of poetry from both sides, and “is open to anyone who loves co-existence” (369, 384). “There will be no politics and no jokes,” he says, “only poems and gentle speech. Poems of friendship and poems of love” (387, 404). The ironic strain that informs much of the novel’s signifying structure is particularly evident in the events of the festival; these events signal that simmering beneath the amicable surface of civility is a rigid Palestinian nationalism, steeped in hatred for Jews and rooted in the yearning for a dominant Arab presence throughout the entire land. Some of the Arabic poems that are recited are blatantly antisemitic. Others are passionately anti-Israel. And when an angelic Lebanese nun, who came to Ramallah in order to contribute to the “festival’s spirit of love,” (430, 446)14 attempts to perform her celebrated “Song of Paradise,” she is drowned out by a chorus of Palestinian “veterans who, remembering the demonstrations and confrontations of their youth, rise to their feet and try to bend the nun’s sacred singing into a stark nationalistic anthem” (433, 449). It is little wonder that Rivlin sees, in all of this, “a warning; a warning about the abyss that is waiting for all of us here” (433, 449). Alert to this danger, Yehoshua seeks to mitigate it by attempting to discern the psychological motivations that underlie such extreme expressions of political and ideological aspirations. This effort is manifest in his intentionally hybridized, double-voiced representation of the exorcism scene from The Dybbuk, a play that involves an extreme instance of hybridization in which one individual consciousness grafts itself onto another and subsumes it completely. The exorcism scene is translated into Arabic by Samaher and directed by Rashad. Both also participate in
13. M. M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 356–61. 14. The English translator interpolates “God’s love,” which does not appear in the original.
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Gilead Morahg the performance, along with Rashad’s sister, Rauda, and two of her young sons, who serve as a kind of chorus. Samaher plays Rabbi Azriel; Rauda plays the young bride, Leah; and Rashad plays the spirit of her dead lover (the dybbuk) who has possessed her. Rashad appears wearing a shroud and carrying a staff topped with the face of a large doll-bride with features strikingly similar to those of Samaher. Rauda remains standing behind a thin lace curtain. When Samaher recites Rabbi Azriel’s lines, Rashad, as the dybbuk, responds in Hebrew, and, from behind the curtain, Rauda echoes his words in Arabic, so that the scene, in which the dybbuk resists the rabbi’s increasingly forceful efforts to expel it from the body it has occupied, proceeds in both languages simultaneously. Applying Bhabha’s paradigm of colonial discourse to this pivotal scene, Dorit Yerushalmi concludes that the Ramallah Dybbuk is an example of the occupied subject’s cultural praxis (I am condensing Yerushalmi’s argument but retaining her language). The occupied subject, who is in the midst of his national struggle, appropriates a theatrical event that has been a cornerstone in the ZionistJewish cultural memory. The purpose of doing this is to impose the “other’s” story of longing on the Israeli Jewish spectator’s attention and, in so doing, to restructure and complete the national narrative of this spectator. Rauda and her sons both symbolize and claim the right of return, and Israeli readers of The Liberating Bride cannot avoid seeing, through the exorcism in the Ramallah Dybbuk, the occupation and expulsion of which they are a part and which is the constitutive experience of Palestinian nationalism.15 Given the context of the forum in which it is performed, this is an obviously defensible reading of the Dybbuk scene—although one may question how many Israeli readers of The Liberating Bride, in the year 2001, were still not fully aware of this perspective and its place in the Palestinian national narrative. But the full context of the novel’s signifying structure makes it clear that Yehoshua’s thematic intentions are more ambitious than the reiteration of a familiar political position. Moreover, the remarkable casting and staging that he creates for his fictional Dybbuk scene signal strongly that this is a scene that speaks with more than one voice. And if we shift the critical paradigm from Bhabha to Bakhtin, we can discern in the same discourse the voice of the author, unmasking the voice of his characters and challenging the authority of their narrative. The contending view that emerges from this intentionally hybridized text is that the trope of a demon lover inhabiting the body of his living bride and clinging to it at all costs is a metaphoric representation of a pathology that has afflicted the Palestinian psyche. It is a manifestation of an obsessive adherence to the fantasy of reconstituting a life in a land that they once possessed but to which they cannot return. From this perspective, Rauda and her children represent the dangers of the delusional clinging to the Palestinian right of return. As the voice of the dybbuk makes clear, underlying and motivating the ideological refusal to accept
15. Dorit Yerushalmi, “Remembering the Self/Other: Theatrical Events and Shifting Gazes of Israeli-Palestinian Memory,” paper presented at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference on Theater and Cultural Memory, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2002.
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The Perils of Hybridity the imperatives of a changed reality is a profound psychological cause: a deep fear of the unknown—an inability to relinquish a national narrative of comforting but ultimately debilitating delusions in order to construct a life designed to accommodate the new realities rather than to validate old myths. When Rabbi Azriel commands the dybbuk to leave Leah’s body, saying, “You have crossed over to another world and there you must stay until the resurrection of the dead. Therefore I command you to leave the body of this maiden and return to your place of rest” (422, 439), the dybbuk’s adamant refusal is not an expression of principled conviction but rather of paralyzing fear. Rashad, as the dybbuk, says, Righteous Rabbi! I know how great you are and what formidable powers you possess. Angels and Seraphs obey your every command. But I will not listen. I will not obey. (Bitterly) I don’t know where I can go. There is no other place for me in the world except where I dwell right now. Out there, beyond, the terrible abyss awaits me, and hoards of devils and demons are lying in wait to devour me. I will not leave! I cannot leave!
And Rauda reiterates in Arabic, “La astati’u ‘l-huruj” (422, 439). It is difficult to read this defiant but deeply fearful refusal as the voice of the Israeli occupier. It is, rather, the voice of the weaker entity, which, in its fear of making an existential change, is resisting a superior force and vowing to cling to its position irrespective of the dire consequences. Even when the rabbi promises to protect it from the demons if it leaves Leah’s body and to deliver it into their hands if it does not, the dybbuk remains adamant: Rashad [as the dybbuk]: In the name of the Lord of the Universe, I am eternally attached to my bride and I will never leave her. Rauda: Malusk wa’mulassak ana bi’zowjati wala atrukha ila ‘l-abd. (423, 440)
The exorcism scene is a constitutive component of a broader signifying structure that, by means of Yehoshua’s characteristic practice of constructing analogies between family situations and national issues, thematizes the debilitating effects of obsessive striving to restore an unattainable past. The analogical correlative to Rivlin’s effort to better understand the Arab psyche is his ongoing effort to liberate his son, Ofer, from a life that has been immobilized by his fixation on the dream of return to the imagined Eden of his marriage to his ex-wife, Galya, who has long moved on and is now bearing the child of her new husband. And the analogical correlative to Ofer’s futile fixation on regaining the lost paradise of his past marriage is the Palestinian fixation on regaining the imagined paradise that was lost to them in the land that is now Israel. Both are regarded as delusional obsessions that impede and distort the lives of those who submit to them. The precise nature and destructive consequences of the fixation that, as is intimated in the exorcism scene, inhabits both Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, is most clearly evident in Rashad’s compulsive devotion to the right of return, which, like a dybbuk, inhabits his soul and compels him to disastrous action.
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Gilead Morahg After he fails in his efforts to obtain legal permission for Rauda and her children to return to Israel, Rashad decides to smuggle them across the border on his own. But this effort, too, fails. He is stopped by Israeli border guards who permit only Rauda and her small children to cross; Rashad is thus forced to leave the two older boys behind. And when the eldest, Rasheed, tries to steal across the border by himself, he is mistakenly shot by the Druze officer and Arab dentist who were out hunting for the crossbreed creature. Rashad blames himself for this catastrophe, and, as he reconstructs the events that led to it, it becomes clear that the catastrophe is a direct result of his obsessive devotion to the right of return. When the people of his village attempt to comfort Rashad and persuade him that he is not to blame for the tragedy because “[i]t is all a matter of an ancient fate that only God understands and only God will remedy in the end,” Rashad, speaking of himself in the second person, admonishes them in his heart, Oh, ignoramuses, oh, jackasses, to whom can you [Rashad] explain and who will believe you that there is something stronger than fate and more powerful then God. This is The Right, the source of sweet justice. This is The Right that has claimed you. “Take me,” it cried, … “release me from the white muck. … Take me, you, Rashad, because if not now, when? … Take me, you, an Israeli Arab, who many have called a present absentee but I know you exist.” … And, like a lion cub, The Right jumped into your lap and filled you with courage. (509, 524–25; emphasis added)
When Rashad reaches Rauda’s house and announces his intention to smuggle her and her children across the border, “Everyone is a little scared and confused and only you are joyous and confident, as if the Right of Return had already mated with you” (511, 526; emphasis added). But the confidence instilled by the right of return turns out to be false and a cause of calamitous consequences. Rashad’s agonized reaction to the ensuing tragedy indicates the danger inherent in convictions that disregard the reality to which they are applied. Rashad’s anguish is not caused by the realization that he made a horrible mistake but rather by the sense that he did not have the courage to act on his own convictions. He believes that the catastrophe that befell his nephew was caused by his own willingness to compromise on the right of return. When he is stopped by the Israeli border guards and allowed to cross with Rauda and the smaller children on the condition that he leave the two older boys behind, Rashad agrees to a compromise that, in retrospect, he regards as the true cause of the calamity that followed. “Oh, Rashad, reckless Rashad,” he grieves, “why did you succumb to the compromise that drove the boy into the hands of the hunters who broke the law on the mountain?” (510, 526). And he continues, If, instead of making that second mistake, you would have … resisted and said, “forgive me, fellow citizens, The Right that I ingested is incapable of compromising on anything. So I’m not moving until you let them all in. … But you said nothing. You only squirmed and stuttered. (512, 527 )
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The Perils of Hybridity While recognizing and reflecting the depth of conviction and power of emotion involved in the Arab claim of the right of return, The Liberating Bride regards the Arab dream of reclaiming the entire Land of Israel as a debilitating, yet extremely dangerous, delusion. Its extensive exploration of this dream’s manifestations culminates in a double-voiced expression of both fear and hope. It is fear of the great violence that might erupt from the clash between the intrinsic dedication of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to the right of return and the equally intrinsic rejection of this right by the Israeli Jews. And it is hope for what may result from a greater Jewish awareness of this deep-seated Arab aspiration, and from an increased Arab awareness of the futility of basing a national life on a delusional aspiration, which has brought catastrophe upon them time and again. Subtle indicators of this latter prospect are embedded throughout the final movements of the novel. When, for example, Rivlin attempts to commiserate with Rasheed’s aunt, Afifa, saying, “I’m so very sorry about Rasheed … believe me, I loved him very much,” Afifa responds angrily, Everybody loved him, but what good did all this love do for him … what good is all this love of my mother who wants everybody back, who wants everybody to come back home to the village … what did this get us in the end … a vegetable. (550, 562–63)
A similar sense of disillusionment is ultimately expressed by Rashad himself when, sitting at the bedside of the comatose boy and recounting the events of that fateful night, he finally confronts the connection between the obsessive dream of return to the lost land and the debilitating catastrophe that struck Rasheed. “Because now,” he says, “during the nights and the days that you spend by the bed of the vegetable that refuses to blossom, you keep asking why did the catastrophe happen on that black night, and how The Right, that appeared to have become your friend, stabbed you in the back” (512, 528; emphasis added). In the novel’s final movement, the hopeful prospects intimated by Rashad’s loss of confidence in the validity of his dream of return to a lost land are amplified by the manner in which Ofer comes to relinquish his analogously obsessive dream of return to a lost love. For about a year, Ofer had been happily married to Galya, the daughter of Yehuda Hendel, a prosperous Jerusalem hotel owner. When Ofer stumbles on a scene of incest between Yehuda and his other daughter, Tehilla, he feels compelled, as he says, “to tell my wife, my life companion, my true soul mate, about the shocking thing I had seen” (257, 267 ). But when he does so, he is horrified by her totally unexpected response. Galya’s loyalty to the image and honor of her family is stronger than her loyalty to Ofer and to the truth. She refuses to acknowledge the possibility that what Ofer saw actually occurred. Insisting it was a disgusting delusion, she demands that he apologize and never mention it again. And when Ofer refuses to deny what he saw, she terminates their relationship and makes him promise never to reveal the reason for the breakup. Five years after their divorce and total estrangement, irrespective of the fact that Galya has remarried and is about to have another man’s child, Ofer still clings to the delusion that, despite this radical change in circumstances, he
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Gilead Morahg can still return to the original bliss of his marriage. In a sly indication of the signifying connection between this situation and that of the dybbuk in the Ramallah production, Yehoshua has Rivlin refer to Ofer as “his eldest son, whose soul refuses to part from the wife who left him” (448, 464). Ofer, who lives alone in Paris, believes that if he continues to maintain his silence, Galya will eventually relent and permit his return to what he calls her “Garden of Eden” (241, 251). Literally, this is a reference to the Hendel hotel where his wedding took place and which became emblematic of his connection to Galya and her family. Figuratively, the Garden of Eden trope, which recurs throughout the novel,16 is emblematic of a fantasy of an idyllic past existence that was unjustly lost but will, one day, be restored. As Hagit Halperin has noted, there is a sustained analogy between Ofer’s debilitating delusion of regaining the Eden of his lost love and the equally self-damaging Arab fixation on the dream of return to their lost land.17 It is also important to note that there is a snake lurking in the recesses of this Edenic garden. The basement of the idealized Hendel hotel is the site of the incestuous relationship between Yehuda and Tehilla. As in Yehoshua’s earlier novel, Mr. Mani (1990), incestuous relations are a mark of a character’s moral turpitude. Within the signifying structure of The Liberating Bride, incest also marks an unsettling instance of hybridity challenging the notion that all forms of human coalescence are morally and socially beneficent and that obliterating boundaries and demolishing essentialist categories will invariably yield positive results. The cautionary connotations of this incestuous relationship are amplified by the fact that, as revealed by Fuad, the Israeli Arab headwaiter of the hotel and the keeper of many of its secrets, the affair between father and daughter was initiated by Tehilla as a means of exerting power over her father, taking control of the hotel, and completely altering its character (534, 547–8). Tehilla was named, with apparent, and ultimately ironic, hope, after the supremely virtuous protagonist of Agnon’s novella of the same name. But her true nature and sinister intent are signaled by the repeated references to her as the adonit,18 an archaic and virtually obsolete term for “lady,” a term familiar today almost solely for its place in the title of another short work by Agnon, Ha’adonit veharokhel (The Lady and the Peddler). In this story, the seemingly genial adonit, who is never seen eating, turns out to be a vampire who takes in lodgers, becomes intimate with them, and then feasts on their blood.19 Commenting on Tehilla’s success in taking over the hotel, Fuad, who knows her better than anyone, observes that this is “a success that will kill us all. … She has all the talent and intelligence
16. For an insightful discussion of the Garden of Eden motif in The Liberating Bride, see Hagit Halperin, “Hagerush migan eden, zekhut hashivah, hah.erut, umah shebeinehem, tavnit tashtit be’hakalah hameshah.reret’ shel A. B. Yehoshua,” Alai Siah. 47 (2002): 36–44. 17. Halperin, “Hagerush migan eden,” 41. 18. See pp. 335, 337, 334, 342, 363, 372, 388, 400, 483, 484, 485, 488, 493, and 528. 19. For a discussion of the correspondences between Tehilla and Agnon’s adonit, see Rachel Albeck-Gidron, “Totem ve’ivaron beyisrael shel 2001: tahalikhay breirah tarbutiyim hameyutsagim baroman ‘hakala hameshah.reret,’” Mikan 4 (2005): 8–10.
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The Perils of Hybridity her father had, but none of the compassion” (325, 339). And, as is often the case in Yehoshua’s work, the story of The Liberating Bride turns on compassion. The agent of transformative compassion is Fuad, the Israeli Arab who embodies the aspiration to full incorporation within the Jewish nation. In the course of the novel, he undergoes a transformation that constitutes what the novel proposes as a viable existential response to the realization that this is a futile and essentially degrading objective. Fuad’s long and loyal subservience is motivated by what he understood to be Yehuda Hendel’s promise that he will eventually become a full and equal partner in the hotel.20 He stays in place despite his awareness of Yehuda’s incestuous relationship with Tehilla, and he hides this knowledge from Galya, whom he loves and who, from early childhood, has regarded him as her friend and protector. When faced with the choice between saving Galya’s marriage by confirming what Ofer saw, or protecting his prospects of partnership by continuing to withhold the truth from her, “he decides in favor of the desired partnership without realizing that it was the real delusion” (536, 549; emphasis added). The degrading force of this delusion is also evident in the manner in which Fuad withholds his sympathy and compassion from Ofer, whom he encounters one night near the hotel, weeping over the loss of Galya and being eager to talk about it. In his determination not to lose favor with any member of the family he serves and whose enterprise he seeks to join, Fuad refuses to extend solace and, despite the compassion he feels for him, dismisses Ofer with a cold admonition: No talking now. No stories. Because you are leaving this hotel for good and I hope God will take pity on you and help you forget your pain. But I am here to stay. For good. So I don’t want to hear one bad word about anyone in the family. Not about Mr. Hendel, or his wife, or the girls. Because I want the orders they all give me to be pleasant, reasonable and respectful. So, my friend, please keep your troubles to yourself, just like I keep mine to myself. (345, 360)
But then Fuad goes home and, out of sorrow and compassion for Ofer, writes a poetic lament in which he gives voice to the empathy his subservient position prevents him from expressing to others (345, 360). When Rivlin learns of this and asks to see the poem, Fuad claims that it is lost, just as, later, at the Ramallah poetry festival, he will claim that his poetic ability has been lost because his symbiotic connection to the Jews has caused him to lose his authentic Arab voice. After hearing the readings of the Palestinian poets, Fuad explains to Rivlin, “I realized that my Arabic has lost all its flavor, all its spices and hot sauces. Perhaps because I have become so closely connected to you Jews, my natural spring has dried up and my Arabic comes out of a rusty faucet” (427, 443). To which Rivlin offers a caustic corrective: “Fuad, with sudden despair, … 20. The Liberating Bride, 533–34, 547–48. Unfortunately, the English translation blunts this point by rendering the Hebrew sentence that refers to Yehuda Hendel’s offer of “new terms, which the Arab understood as leading to a true partnership” as “an offer that hinted at taking him into the business.”
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Gilead Morahg Your Arabic wasn’t impoverished because of the Jews, but because you gave up your freedom and became a slave of the hotel. … You look out only for yourself, and care only about getting ahead. But where do you think you’ll get to, Fuad? Without inner freedom you’ll never get anywhere. And, in the end, the only laments you’ll write will be about yourself” (427–28, 444). This is another iteration of the novel’s preoccupation with the stunting consequences of lives shaped by the delusional pursuit of an unattainable object of desire. The centrality of the Hendel hotel in the lives of both Ofer and Fuad imbues this trope with a metaphorical force that fuses the personal and political dimensions of this preoccupation. In the case of Fuad, the political dimension is first foregrounded during his participation in the Ramallah poetry festival, to which he, like Rivlin, is invited by Rashad. Fuad accepts the invitation in the hope of restoring his flagging sense of Arab identity and “finding poetic inspiration among his compatriots from across the border” (410, 427 ). However, also like Rivlin, Fuad is profoundly disillusioned by what actually transpires there. He realizes, as he later tells Galya, that Rashad invited him to the festival in order to get to know those who do not believe in partnership but in a complete merging, because, for them, autonomy is not equal to freedom. And, therefore, even though they sing nice love songs right now, they may truly be nice only after they dismantle the world around them. (539, 552; emphasis added)
This realization of the violence and destruction that may be unleashed by the force of the Arab desire to merge with, and thus submerge, the Jews of Israel is very disturbing to Fuad. Equally distressing is the realization that Yehuda, whose name bears an unmistakable national connotation, never intended to live up to his promise of partnership. With Tehilla now in control of the hotel, Fuad will never be made a full and equal partner. These realizations lead Fuad to the conclusion that his aspiration to true partnership in the hotel is hopeless and that he would be better off resigning, “collecting his compensation and going back to the olives and figs of his wife’s orchards. Because, he says, what’s the point of remaining loyal to the deceased in order to protect a family from the truth that is still causing someone great suffering” (539, 552). That someone is, of course, Ofer, who is still suffering the consequences of Galya’s refusal to abandon her fantasy of an idyllic family life and to confront the unsettling truth, which Fuad knew and Ofer discovered. Fuad also recognizes the similarity between Ofer and Rashad who, “like Ofer, is a person who keeps trying to breathe life into a dead love” (539, 552). And, when this realization elicits in him a surge of empathic compassion for the hapless Rashad, Fuad experiences a similar rush of compassion for Ofer, just as he did on the night he found him weeping for his lost love. “But now he [Fuad] is wiser,” Galya tells Ofer when they finally meet: Now he knows that poetry will not redeem anything and will not be of any help to you or to Rashad. Therefore, before he proceeds to resign and leave
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The Perils of Hybridity us all, he replaces the old desire for partnership with a hope for a new partnership that would require me to resign together with him. And so, three days ago, he led me to the wedding gazebo in the hotel garden and began telling me the whole story. And when he saw that I was shaking he said, This is good. Now you will understand that you need to ask his forgiveness in order to cleanse the baby that should have been his. (539, 552)
Fuad’s new perspective contains two elements that inform much of Yehoshua’s fiction: an unflinching commitment to truth and a steadfast belief in the redemptive qualities of empathy and compassion. These capacities constitute the foundation for the new partnership that Fuad is proposing and that Galya finds herself accepting. The power of truth and the force of compassion impel Galya away from the strictures of denial and delusion in the hope of protecting the next generation from their dire consequences. These forces also alter the course of Fuad’s life in a direction that suggests Yehoshua’s perception of what could constitute a viable basis for a partnership between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews: not the hybridizing impulse to merge and subsume, but rather an intimate and respectful recognition of the essential otherness of each partner. This is subtly articulated in the narrator’s rendition of Galya’s confession to Ofer. We are told that, through her long association with Fuad, Galya came to see in him “a double shadow of intimacy and otherness” (533, 546 ). Similarly, Yehuda regarded Fuad as “an employee who combines the qualities of total otherness and great closeness” (534, 547 ). In rendering his resignation from the hotel, Fuad acknowledges the error of his effort to suppress his otherness in order to pursue what turned out to be an impossible prospect of attaining an equal role in running the facility. For, in the course of this prolonged and consistently frustrating effort, he lost many facets of his original Arab identity and much of his authentic Arab voice. Fuad’s resignation from the hotel and return to his family’s orchards marks a determination to recover his true self. This is a critical step toward establishing the new partnership he proposes to Galya, for this partnership requires, first and foremost, relinquishing debilitating delusions and acknowledging the existential imperatives of unchangeable realities. It requires recognizing, as Fuad observes in another context, that “what was lost will not return and there is no point in agonizing about it” (389, 406 ). Galya seeks to confer the same understanding on Ofer. Confronted with the truth and moved by compassion, she relinquishes her attachment to a delusional vision of an idyllic past and arranges to meet Ofer in the hope of releasing him from the constraints of his own delusional attachment. But she also makes it clear that acknowledging the truth of what Ofer saw does not make her accessible to him again because their circumstances have changed and an altered reality requires an altered response to it. Ofer resists mightily, clinging to his dream of rejoining his life with Galya’s. But she is adamant in insisting that reality has severed the connection between them. Not only is she married to another and about to have his child, but also Galya now realizes that their love had been doomed from the moment Ofer discovered the truth about Yehuda and Tehilla, and that only his forced separation from her made his continuing devotion
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Gilead Morahg possible. “If we would have stayed together,” she tells him, “your love for me would have died. Because you are a person who cannot accept the cruel complexity of the world and fights against it all the time. Your hatred, and perhaps even envy, of my father would have driven you crazy and poisoned both of us. … No, don’t be sorry that we parted. There really is nothing left of our love” (541, 554–55). Galya is the Liberating Bride. She manages to free Ofer from the delusion that had so stunted and obstructed his life. The specific nature of her success on the personal level signifies the direction the novel signals on the political level. As Ofer prepares to board the plane back to Paris, Rivlin presses him, once again, for the cause of his breakup with Galya. When Ofer maintains his silence, Rivlin accuses him of continuing to believe that he and Galya will be reunited and that, consequently, his life will be more stuck than ever. Previously, Ofer would have regarded such criticism from his father as an intolerable intrusion into his private life and would have responded with aggrieved resentment. But now, with newly acquired calm and confidence, Ofer answers that he is no longer stuck. And he explains, “Because even if I am still attached to her in my thoughts and perhaps also in my heart, morally, I have freed myself of her. And this, dad, should be enough for you!” (547, 560). The alteration that Galya manages to effect in Ofer’s mind constitutes a call for a similarly liberating transformation in the Arab mind. The prospect of a conscious relinquishment of the moral commitment to a delusional desire is the hope with which The Liberating Bride seeks to counter its acute awareness of the depth of the emotional ties that connect Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to their lost land and its growing dread of the violence that may be unleashed by their deeply ingrained dream of repossessing this land. It is a prospect that is given considerable thematic weight by its position and its force in the concluding movement of the novel. But the viability of this hopeful prospect is called into question by countervailing forces that are so vividly represented in many of The Liberating Bride’s preceding moments. Gilead Morahg University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin
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AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 379–389 © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009 doi:10.1017/S0364009409990250
FROM ASHKENAZ
REVIEW ESSAY TO ZIONISM: PUTTING EASTERN EUROPEAN JEWISH LIFE IN (ALPHABETICAL) ORDER by
Jeffrey Veidlinger
The publication of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe is a monumental achievement. It is the type of text that can transform a discipline, providing easily accessible and reasonably accurate answers to common reference questions and summarizing the state of the field in an evenhanded and inclusive manner. As one of the nearly 450 contributors to the encyclopedia, I personally feel a great deal of pride in its outcome.1 The two-volume, 2,400-page encyclopedia includes more than 1,800 entries, almost 1,200 illustrations, 57 color plates, and 55 maps. Editor in chief Gershon David Hundert of McGill University has succeeded in producing, as YIVO claims, “the definitive reference work on all aspects of the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe from the beginnings of their settlement in the region to the present.”2 Encyclopedias often serve not only to categorize knowledge but also to forge identities. They tend to emerge at a time of taking stock, when it is possible to reevaluate a community in response to social or political upheaval. The goal of the encyclopedia is not only to present accumulated knowledge on a given topic, but also to celebrate the topic, either as a means of paying homage to a proud past or as a way of looking forward to a bright future. Modern Jewish encyclopedias emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as attempts to counteract the perceived exclusiveness of the national encyclopedias that had come to dominate the nineteenth-century world of reference books. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the standard by which all others were measured, was first published in the late eighteenth century as a Scottish response to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie. By the late nineteenth century, with its ninth edition, the Britannica was widely recognized as
1. I wrote six entries and am listed as a coauthor of a seventh. Given the large number of contributors, the editors of the AJS Review did not believe that my contribution posed a conflict in writing this essay. 2. See http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=136&aid=351.
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Jeffrey Veidlinger the premier scholarly reference work in the world. Yet many Jewish intellectuals were reluctant to allow the Britannica—and the many converts from Judaism who had written articles on Jewish-related topics—to serve as the sole reference on their own distinct culture. It was within this milieu that Isidore Singer, a member of the French press attached to the French foreign office who had been active in the defense of Alfred Dreyfus, envisioned the creation of a Jewish encyclopedia that would serve as a storehouse for all Jewish knowledge. Lacking scholarly credentials himself, Singer enlisted the assistance of Cyrus Adler, Marcus Jastrow, Louis Ginzberg, and others to help with the task, but Singer retained the position of managing editor, and managed to publish, between 1901 and 1906 in twelve volumes, the Jewish Encyclopedia. “The history of the Jewish people has an absorbing interest for all who are concerned in the development of humanity,” the editors wrote in the preface. Writing in the American Journal of Theology, J. M. P. Smith, J. W. Moncrief, C. W. Votaw, and W. Muss-Arnolt argued that “compared with the history of other nations, Jewish history excels in its capacity to exercise an ennobling influence upon the heart. It has, moreover, a humanitarian influence which appears in its tragic and heroic past.” The reviewers believed that Jewish history “will be of the utmost value, not only to the Jewish people, but to all peoples who have any interest in understanding the system of moral forces that have made them what they are.” The publication of the encyclopedia was envisioned as a bridge that would bring communities together: “If the work gets the recognition that it deserves,” they wrote, “the outcome must be to bring Christians and Jews nearer together, because it will reveal what they have in common, and thus relax the rigidity of prejudice.”3 The 1908–13 publication of the Russian-language Evreiskaia entsiklopediia by the Brokhaus and Efron publication venture in St. Petersburg was a key moment in the creation of a distinct Russian Jewish identity, signifying the celebration of Russian Jewry as a group of people united by their shared Jewish and Russian identities. This project came about as part of a larger effort to create a Jewish public culture by disseminating key concepts about the Jewish world at large, and about the Russian Jewish community in particular, to the emerging Jewish secular community of the Russian Empire.4 The encyclopedia included many articles translated or adapted from the Jewish Encyclopedia, as well as much larger entries on subjects of specific relevance to the Jews of the Russian Empire, written by local intelligentsia such as Shimon Dubnov and Iulii Gessen. By creating a common base of knowledge, the editors of Evreiskaia entsiklopediia hoped to stimulate identity formation and secular learning among Jews and to correct numerous misconceptions about the nature of the Jewish community among Russian-speaking Christians. In the aftermath of the Great War, Jacob Klatzkin and Ismar Elbogen imagined that they could harness the best that German scholarship had to offer to
3. J. M. P. Smith, J. W. Moncrief, C. W. Votaw, and W. Muss-Arnolt “Review: Recent Encyclopædic and Bibliographical Literature,” American Journal of Theology 9, no. 3 (July 1905): 524. 4. I have written about this phenomenon in Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).
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Ashkenaz to Zionism present a complete reference work on Judaica. Their project began in 1928, but by the time they reached the letter L in 1938, the German political landscape made continued work on the project impossible and the effort was abandoned. A review of the tenth volume in 1938 lamented that “it is sad to contemplate that a work of such magnitude and of such great usefulness should be interrupted because of the cruel persecutions that have befallen the Jewish people in the land of the Third Reich.”5 The project, though, was revived by a joint Israeli– American venture and continued publication in English under the editorship of Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder. The resulting Encyclopaedia Judaica, published in 1972, was once again touted as a great achievement capable of bringing about world peace and reconciliation: copies were presented to President Richard M. Nixon and to Pope Paul VI. Not everyone rejoiced, however. Writing in the Jewish Quarterly Review, Solomon Zeitlin opined, “The publication of the Encyclopaedia Judaica is not a major accomplishment in the world of Jewish scholarship. On the contrary, it reveals the paucity and decadence of Jewish learning. Many articles are below the standards of a good encyclopedia, they are sophomoric… . The publication of the Encyclopaedia Judaica was a waste of effort and money.” Zeitlin was right to point to numerous factual errors and misinterpretations that had made their way into the encyclopedia. He was likely also perturbed by the overtly Zionist bias of the text. Yet even as harsh a critic as Zeitlin could not resist commending one aspect of the venture: the last sentence of his twenty-seven page-review read, “Israeli printing is highly commendable.”6 The fate of the Yiddish-language Di algemeyne entsiklopedye parallels in some ways that of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Di algemeyne entsiklopedye began publication in 1930 with the goal of bringing general knowledge to Yiddishspeaking readers, but as the community to which it was addressed came under increasing threat toward the end of the decade, the editors changed their mode and began publishing instead on specifically Jewish topics. Seven volumes were published between 1939 and 1966, serving after the war as a commemoration of a destroyed way of life instead of the edifying resource book initially envisioned.7 Other Jewish encyclopedic ventures that began in 1930s Poland were also curtailed or transformed as the war intervened, resulting in multivolume, mismatched sets published in disparate locales. Zalmen Zylbercwaig’s Leksikon fun yidishn teater serves as a prime example: the first two volumes, published in New York in 1931
5. Julius H. Greenstone, “Review: Encyclopedia Judaica,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 28, no. 4 (April 1938): 379. 6. Solomon Zeitlin, “Encyclopaedia Judaica: The Status of Jewish Scholarship,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 63, no. 1 (July 1972): 27–28. For more on the Jewish Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Judaica, see David B. Levy, “The Making of the Encyclopaedia Judaica and The Jewish Encyclopedia,” Proceedings of the 37th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries (New York: Association of Jewish Libraries, 2002), available at http://www.jewishlibraries.org/ajlweb/publications/proceedings/proceedings2002/levy.pdf. 7. Barry Trachtenberg, “Di Algemeyne Entsiklopedye, the Holocaust and the Changing Mission of Yiddish Scholarship,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5, no. 3 (2006): 285.
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Jeffrey Veidlinger and Warsaw in 1934, respectively, reflect a great deal of optimism in the future of Yiddish culture. By the time the third volume appeared in New York in 1959, all hints of a normal order (along with an alphabetical order) were abandoned. The remaining three volumes were finally published in Mexico in the late 1960s, and included a volume dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust. Like many of these encyclopedic publications, The YIVO Encyclopedia also appears at a time of great optimism, expressed in YIVO’s publicity and Hundert’s preface. Drawing contributors from sixteen different countries, the encyclopedia, YIVO claims, “not only provides a forum for [its contributors’] collective knowledge, but also serves as a meeting point for a new generation of scholars from Communist Europe and their colleagues from North America, Israel, and Western Europe.”8 Certainly it was the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe that served as the catalyst for the encyclopedia. In the twenty years since the Iron Curtain was opened, our understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe has been enhanced immeasurably. Travel to and around the region has become incomparably easier, not only for Western researchers who were entirely restricted from visiting many important sites of Jewish interest, but also for researchers from Eastern Europe, whose travel itineraries were monitored and restricted. This travel informs numerous articles on specific places throughout the encyclopedia, particularly smaller towns and cities for which earlier encyclopedias provided only minimal statistical information. The relative ease of travel has also helped a younger generation of scholars acquire language experience through immersion made difficult a generation earlier. Physically getting to many regional archives was almost impossible, let alone accessing relevant files once one arrived. The opening of archival collections has, if not completely revolutionized our understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, at least reformed it. From wax cylinder musical recordings to tax records, newly available archival documents from Eastern Europe have substantially enriched scholarship on Jewish life in that region. Published archival guides, both in print and online, have also made it substantially easier to find relevant information. The efforts of archives outside Eastern Europe, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Study in Washington, D.C., and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, have embarked on major campaigns to obtain copies of important archival documents, increasing access to these materials. While personal worldviews continue to inform scholarship in important ways, the ideological biases that tainted much Cold War scholarship have largely evaporated. Behind the Iron Curtain, scholars were prohibited from addressing many topics of importance to Jewish studies and were required to pursue an often hostile party line when they did address them. Some scholars in the West, as well, hoped to use their work to promote political change in Eastern Europe. New sources of funding have also helped stimulate scholarship on Eastern European Jews as philanthropic organizations have grown and government support has continued.
8. See http://www.yivoinstitute.org/index.php?aid=269&tid=109 (accessed May 4, 2009).
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Ashkenaz to Zionism The YIVO Encyclopedia was funded by numerous family foundations, along with major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The proliferation of Jewish studies programs around the world has also aided scholarship on Eastern European Jewry. As the German Jewish historians who once dominated the academic discipline of Jewish studies have welcomed into their midst specialists on diverse Jewish communities, the pantheon of modern Jewish thinkers has expanded beyond the likes of Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Scholem to include Dubnov, An-sky, Ringelblum, and others. The cultural and social turns in history have also elevated the status of everyday life and popular culture, encouraging scholars to study not just the luminaries who spoke on behalf of the people, but the people themselves. The single most important factor in the transformation of the field since the collapse of communism has indubitably been the increased communication and integration of scholars from Eastern Europe with those from the Americas, Israel, Europe, and elsewhere. It is not just the lessening of travel restrictions that has collapsed the scholarly world, but also modern communications and the Internet that have made international collaboration not only possible, but the norm. In this age of the Internet, where, as I write these lines, I have one window on my computer open to http://www.jewishencyclopdia.com, containing the complete text of the Jewish Encyclopedia; another window open to http://www.eleven. co.il/, where I am reading the Elektronnaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia), an online version of the Israeli Kratkaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Short Jewish Encyclopedia); another window open to the electronic edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica made available by the Gale Virtual Reference Library through my university’s subscription;9 and yet another window on which I am running the CD-ROM version of the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, the printed version of the YIVO Encyclopedia seems almost quaint. If the goal of a reference work is simply to check a fact or a date, printed reference books may very well be on their way out. Macmillan’s decision to publish the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica in electronic version was preceded by the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s decision to publish a digital version in 1994. Yet encyclopedias do not just exist to check a date; rather, the best of them can and should be read, if not cover to cover in a single sitting, at least sporadically and intensively in order to fully appreciate their richness and the underlying themes that permeate each entry. As much as I look forward to the release of the electronic edition of the YIVO Encyclopedia currently under way, I have truly enjoyed and expect to continue to enjoy reading the print edition. Like so many of the other encyclopedias I have mentioned, the new YIVO Encyclopedia thus emerges at a time of transition, not only in terms of changing political and social conditions, but also in terms of the radically different ways in which information is accessed around the globe.
9. Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., 22 vols., ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007).
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Jeffrey Veidlinger The transition is also, in many ways, generational. The list of contributing scholars who either did not live to see the encyclopedia’s completion or passed away soon after is substantial. The field was still mourning the passing of Miron Chernenko, Victor Erlich, Natan Gross, Louis Jacobs, Nathaniel Katzburg, and John Klier at the time of the encyclopedia’s publication. Among those we have lost since its publication are Jonathan Frankel, Avraham Greenbaum, Leonard Praeger, Joseph Sherman, and Josephine Woll, all doyens of the field. The generation of scholars who were raised in prewar Eastern Europe, in communities infused with Jews and Judaism, is dwindling. The next generation will have to secure its knowledge of that time and place secondhand. The YIVO Encyclopedia, in Hundert’s words, “seeks to reflect all aspects of Jewish life in its variety and multiplicity: religious and secular; male and female; urban and rural; Hasidic and Misnagdic; Yiddishist and Hebraist; Zionist and assimilationist; Russian and Polish; Romanian and Ukrainian; Lithuanian and Galician; even Karaite and Rabbinite… . The YIVO Encyclopedia is intended to be an ecumenical work: nondenominational, nonideological, and nonconfessional” (ix). The geographic limits include the regions corresponding to today’s Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The use of twenty-first-century borders for the encyclopedia’s parameters may seem anachronistic, but Hundert explains that “most readers … would have been confused by the inclusion of only parts of several countries, and of some areas only during specific historical periods” (xii). The chronological limits span from the earliest settlements in the region, often in Roman times, to the end of the twentieth century, with most attention given to modern periods. Throughout the encyclopedia, the focus is on Jewish life. Nevertheless, those who were born Jewish but either abandoned Judaism or never identified as Jews are included within the parameters. Notably, the Jewish Encyclopedia dealt with a similar issue one hundred years ago, concluding that, “As the present work deals with the Jews as a race, it was found impossible to exclude those who were of that race, whatever their religious affiliations may have been.”10 The YIVO Encyclopedia comes to a similar conclusion but with different justifications. Hundert notes in his preface that even those who chose not to identify as Jewish may still have been identified as Jewish by others, may have affected the Jewish community through their actions, or may have excelled in spite of their Jewishness. Further, he notes, readers expect to find them in such an encyclopedia. One could add that the phenomena of abandoning one’s Jewishness and of assimilating are also part of the Eastern European Jewish experience, for better or for worse. Non-Jewish figures who had a major impact on Jewish life are discussed in appropriate places, but individual biographical entries are reserved for Jews. Thus, the blind entry for “Khmel’nyts’ky, Bohdan” refers the reader instead to “Gzeyres Takh Vetat.” Similarly, panhistoric events, such as the world wars, the Nazi occupation, and communism, are discussed primarily in reference to their impact on Jewish life.
10. See http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/preface.jsp.
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Ashkenaz to Zionism The YIVO Encyclopedia is truly unprecedented in that it is the first encyclopedia of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Many of the topics covered, however, have appeared as entries in more general encyclopedias, particularly the Jewish encyclopedias. Some biographical entries in particular may sound familiar from other reference works, as authors seek to list the subjects’ accomplishments in the five hundred words allocated for the life. Although most of the biographical entries I read summarized their subjects’ lives with color and precision, setting a new standard as the definitive source on the subject, it is the thematic articles that I found most enjoyable. John Klier’s entry on the “Pale of Settlement” (1311–14), for instance, corrects the common error of including the Kingdom of Poland within the Pale, an inaccuracy repeated even in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Klier also adds about 100,000 square miles to the size of the Pale, listing it at approximately 472,590 square miles instead of the Encyclopaedia Judaica’s 386,100 square miles.11 Finally, Klier gives the Russian cherta postoiannogo zhitel’stva evreev (boundary of permanent Jewish residence) as the official Russian name for the region rather than the more common cherta postoiannoi evreiskoi osedlosti (boundary of permanent Jewish settlement). Like Iulii Gessen’s splendid entry on “Residence and Movement of Jews According to Russian Law” in the Brokhaus and Efron encyclopedia (which does not have an entry on the Pale itself), Klier’s YIVO article begins with background on the historical origins of the Pale, focused on legal definitions and limitations imposed on settlement within the Pale, followed by a section on “modifications of the Pale.” Klier’s entry, however, does a much better job of placing the Pale in a comparative context, noting, for instance, that all classes of Jews had greater freedom of movement within the Pale than burghers, and that the region included “areas of dynamic economic growth” (1311), thereby countering the popular conception of the Pale as economically backward. Whereas Gessen viewed the Pale as a debilitating restriction that forced the Jewish population into poverty, Klier argues that “Jewish impoverishment in the Pale is best explained as a product of the uneven and unsteady economic development of the empire as a whole” (1314). The YIVO entry on “Hasidism” is another example of the high standard of scholarship that informs the thematic articles throughout. The entry begins with a historical overview written by David Assaf, which presents an evenhanded account of the emergence, growth, consolidation, and dissemination of the movement across Eastern Europe. Assaf draws on recent scholarship to correct some long-standing misconceptions associated with the emergence of Hasidism. He notes, for instance, that early hasidic leaders did not seek to overturn traditional institutions, and that when they did gain positions of leadership within the community, they did so by appropriating existing institutions rather than establishing new ones; even the Besht emerged out of preexisting communities of pietists. Assaf continues his discussion with a report on the spread of Hasidism, devoting sections to the various regions in which hasidic circles were active and discussing the 11. Yehuda Slutsky, “Pale of Settlement,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 15:577–80.
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Jeffrey Veidlinger distinct themes that emerge within the practice of different hasidic groups. He is particularly successful at linking his discussion of internal Jewish developments to wider political and social changes taking place around the Polish partitions, the creation of Congress Poland, the First World War, communism, and the Holocaust. His attention to individual hasidic courts serves to dispel the notion that Hasidism was a united movement: “One was not just a ‘Hasid,’ with no further affiliation,” he notes, but “one had to be associated with a specific tsadik or Hasidic court” (664). Assaf’s attention to Polish Hasidism, in particular, represents a significant addition to the Encyclopaedia Judaica’s coverage of the topic, which focuses overwhelmingly on the movement’s Podolian genesis. The addition of two maps, one of major hasidic centers, 1740–1815, and the other on major hasidic courts, 1815–1939, aids the reader in appreciating the spread and diversity of the movement. The Hasidism entry continues with a segment on “teachings and literature” in which Joseph Dan complicates our understanding of hasidic theology, arguing that “every attempt by modern scholars to present such a body of ideas … has failed” (670). In the rest of his contribution, Dan problematizes some of the major features that scholars have identified with hasidic thought, arguing that none can be accepted as part of a universal hasidic theology. It is not theology, he argues, that identifies a hasid, but rather “their dress, customs, manner of prayer, loyalty to a rebbe, and many other obvious aspects of daily life and worship” (670–71). In keeping with this observation, the YIVO Encyclopedia’s entry on Hasidism continues with sections on “Everyday Life” by Louis Jacobs, and “Music” and “Dance,” both by Yaakov Mazor. The focus on ritual and lifestyle reflects the direction that much scholarship on the hasidic movement has taken in recent years, and conveys the impact that hasidic lifestyles have had on the Eastern European Jewish landscape. Immanuel Etkes’s entry on “Haskalah,” immediately following the “Hasidism” entry, presents the particular dimensions of the Haskalah as it developed in Eastern Europe. In particular, Etkes argues that “from the beginning, a prominent characteristic of the Haskalah in Galicia was an uncompromising struggle against Hasidism” (682), an aspect obviously absent from the Berlin Haskalah. Etkes pays attention to the role of merchants in spreading the Haskalah both from Berlin to Galicia and from Galicia into the Pale of Settlement; he includes a section on “Government-Sponsored Haskalah,” discussing in detail the educational reforms initiated under Nicholas I; and he links Haskalah in Eastern Europe to the emergence of Jewish nationalism. Throughout the article, Etkes provides detailed commentary on the ideas of leading maskilim, but also integrates the impact of the Haskalah into broader social and cultural trends within the Jewish population as a whole. The YIVO Encyclopedia brims with life, presenting its civilization as much more than dry lists of names, places, and dates. Indeed, one of the YIVO Encyclopedia’s goals was to integrate everyday life into the work. Principal articles on everyday life include ChaeRan Freeze on “Family” and “Sexuality,” Paula Hyman on “Gender,” and Harvey Goldberg on “Life Cycles.” Notably, gender is addressed not only directly in its own entry, but in gendered analyses and attention to women that permeate the encyclopedia. Other topics related to everyday
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Ashkenaz to Zionism life include magisterial essays by Antony Polonsky on “Relations between Jews and Non-Jews” and Samuel Kassow on “Shtetl,” among many others. Younger scholars have also made particular contributions to these newer fields of study: Scott Ury’s reflections on “Sabbath Rest” and Alyssa Quint’s entries on “Personal Hygiene and Grooming” and “Social Conduct” come to mind. Comparing Olga Goldberg-Mulkiewicz’s entry in the YIVO Encyclopedia on “Dress” with that of the Evreiskaia entsikopediia, we can see in YIVO a greater emphasis on styles, and particularly on women’s styles. The corresponding entry in the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia includes a one-column discussion of styles written by Rakhil Bernshteyn, followed by Iulii Gessen’s four-and-a-half column discussion of Russian legal enactments on Jewish dress. Whereas a century ago, the legal restrictions were a hotly debated topic of enormous relevance to people’s everyday lives, they are mostly historical curiosities to modern readers. An entry on “Talk” includes an overview and sections on storytelling and professional talkers by Michael Wex and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a section on “blessings, curses, and other expressions” by James A. Matisoff, and a section on argots by Robert A. Rothstein. (I would note, however, that the encyclopedia lacks an entry on “Reading” despite extensive scholarly and didactic writings on the topic.) Entries on “Geese” by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and “Pigs” by Anna Shternshis are intriguing, but where are the goats? I was also surprised not to find an entry on “Prostitution,” although the topic is mentioned in passing on several occasions. Clearly topics related to everyday life could be never-ending. Although most biographical entries concern cultural figures who made their mark in high culture, particularly literature or theater, numerous entries also address popular culture. Edward Portnoy’s article on entertainment focuses not on theatrical and musical performances, both of which are well covered elsewhere in the encyclopedia, but on psychics, magicians, illusionists, wrestlers, and strongmen. Cultural figures and ideas, including the 220 or so rabbis who merit biographical entries, seem to be represented more heavily than political figures. For instance, one of the best-known figures in the entire encyclopedia is Leon Trotsky (1879–1940). A Google search of “Trotsky” that I conducted resulted in 2,210,000 hits, far more than I found for “Isserles” (41,300) or “Schneerson” (139,000), but significantly less than I found for “Kafka” (9,640,000). The English-language Wikipedia article on Trotsky runs to 150 paragraphs. However, Boris Morozov, the author of the Trotsky entry in the YIVO Encyclopedia, gives Trotsky a mere nine paragraphs to cover the man whom much of the world associates most saliently with the Eastern European Jew. Similarly, Ana Pauker, the former Romanian foreign minister and Romanian Communist Party leader, is assigned three paragraphs, despite her outspokenness on Jewish matters. Pauker’s entry is, in fact, shorter than that of the Romanian Jewish writer Felix Aderca. This relative weighting of space may give readers the impression that Eastern European Jews had a greater impact on culture than on politics, or that cultural pursuits tended to occupy them more than political action. The illustrations and maps that infuse the text are among the highlights of the project. In particular, the six Overview Maps at the end of the encyclopedia
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Jeffrey Veidlinger provide a wonderful teaching tool, displaying the shifting borders of the region at six moments in time, each drawn to identical scale. Smaller-scale maps, such as the two-page map of Jewish institutions in Warsaw on the eve of the Second World War (1998–99) provide powerful visual evidence of the diversity of Jewish life in a single locale. This diversity is also reflected in the photographs that range from architectural monuments to street scenes of Jewish life. We see not only the familiar pictures of writers posing in their studies, but also photographs of soldiers in foxholes, seamstresses at work, students in their schools and Talmud Torahs, children at summer camp, workers at demonstrations, and celebrations in synagogues. The preface and guide by Hundert and project director Jeffrey P. Edelstein address many of the problems encountered in an encyclopedia of this nature and explain many of the parameters used in its composition. I still had some problems following the standards that the YIVO Encyclopedia set. For instance, regarding geographic names, the practice is stated as using “the current, official form” as the headword (xviii), even in cases in which the “modern form used for the headword is not the form most frequently used.” Thus, the city known as Lemberg and Lwów is listed by its current Ukrainian name, L’viv. Yet for some reason, the Ukrainian capital of K’yiv is listed by its more familiar Kiev, the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa retains its Russian double s (Odessa), and the Moldovan capital of Chişinău is listed as Kishinev. The index entry for “Akkerman” refers the reader to “Cetatea Albă,” the Romanian name by which the city currently known as “Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi” was once called. The city’s current name is not even listed in the index. Instead, an index entry for the current Russian name of the city, “Belgorod-Dnestrovski,” refers the reader to “Cetatea Albă.” Moldova is listed under the archaic “Bessarabia,” with only a blind entry under “Moldova, Republic of” directing the reader to “See Bessarabia; Kishinev” (1192). An entire country is thereby relegated to a single blind entry. We can certainly forgive the editors for neglecting the breakaway republic of Transnistria, mentioned only to distinguish the region from its World War II–era namesake, and somewhat awkwardly incorporated into that entry (1899). Transliteration of names is also always a problem in dealing with Eastern European Jewish names. Sholem Aleichem’s official family name, for instance, can be spelled Rabinovitz (the choice made by the YIVO Encyclopedia), Rabinowitz (the choice made by Sholem Aleichem himself), Rabinovich, Rabinovitsh, or Rabinovitch. His given name, as well, can be rendered as Solomon, Sholem, or Shalom. Thus, the encyclopedia renders his official name as Shalom Rabinovitz, although the author used Solomon Rabinowitz. The editors chose to allow a great deal of latitude in the transliteration of personal names. The index includes listings for Rabinovich, Rabinovici, Rabinovitch, Rabinovits, Rabinovitsh, Rabinovitz, Rabinowicz, and Rabinowitz. The rendering of first names can also be a difficult choice. Isaac Leyb Peretz, for instance, is rendered as Yitskhok Leybush Peretz. One is reminded of the debates that Shimon Dubnov (or Simon Dubnow, as rendered by YIVO) recalled taking place over the transliteration of names for the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia. The biblical scholars and Hellenists argued that biblical
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Ashkenaz to Zionism names should be rendered according to the Russian Synodal Bible used by the Russian Orthodox Church. This transliteration, they argued, would render the names familiar to Russian society. Dubnov, on the other hand, argued for a transliteration based on the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew. A century later, we may not have reached a universal solution to the problem of transliteration, but the YIVO Encyclopedia is well situated to become the authoritative standard for Eastern European Jewish names. As a comprehensive digest of past and current fields of inquiry within Eastern European Jewish studies, the YIVO Encyclopedia points to the directions in which future scholarship could go, highlights areas in which questions remain to be answered, and hints at questions that have yet to even be asked. Like numerous other Jewish encyclopedias that have been published over the past century, it emerges at a time of optimism in the field, excitement over the possibilities of inquiry that greet young scholars, and confidence in the future. Let us hope that tomorrow’s scholars will continue to update, revise, and question the YIVO Encyclopedia as it now embarks on its transition from the printed page to the digital image. Jeffrey Veidlinger Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana
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AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), 391–443 © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009
BOOK REVIEWS BIBLICAL STUDIES James W. Watts. Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus: From Sacrifice to Scripture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xviii, 257 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400940999016X
As the title of this monograph indicates, the focus of discussion is rhetoric, understood by James W. Watts in Aristotle’s terms as “the art of persuasion” (xv). Specifically, Watts deals with the rhetoric of ritual material in Leviticus 1–16, asking the question, “Who was trying to persuade whom of what by writing these texts?” (xv). As a rhetorical exercise, this study seeks to convince readers that the persuasive intentions and effects of Leviticus merit careful consideration. Watts makes a significant new contribution to understanding Leviticus as the work of Aaronide priests who were seeking to establish and reinforce their legitimacy and authority. In dealing with cutting-edge theoretical issues in the study of ancient ritual texts and their rhetorical significance, Watts writes in a lucid, accessible style, free of jargon. Another virtue of the work is that while its several chapters do stand together well as a coherent study of the portions of Leviticus 1–16 that focus on sacrificial ritual, each chapter may also be read as an essay on its own terms. The first chapter (“Ritual Text and Ritual Interpretation”), which serves as an introduction, deals with issues in the rhetorical interpretation of ritual texts, with Leviticus as the main example. Watts provides an extremely useful review of recent scholarship, and a necessary critique of the influential work of Jacob Milgrom and Mary Douglas. Worthy of particular note is Watts’s explanation of weaknesses in Douglas’s last several works on Leviticus and Numbers. Watts offers, for example, a careful critique of Douglas’s argument that Leviticus is based on analogical rather than discursive reasoning. He also notes that a fundamental flaw in Douglas’s reading of priestly texts is her treatment of their emphasis on priestly privilege as insignificant because it is so “obvious.” In contrast to Douglas, Watts emphasizes what Leviticus itself emphasizes: the special significance of the (Aaronide) priesthood. It is this emphasis that results in what, to Douglas, appeared as an image of a nonhierarchical society: the singular importance of the priesthood meant that no other hierarchical social distinction could matter. Another major focus of the introductory chapter is on the crucial theoretical distinction between texts and rituals. A fundamental consequence of this distinction, as Watts notes, is that while texts are necessarily implicated in symbolic communication, rituals may not be. This is an admittedly controversial claim, given the insistence by many interpreters of ritual that it is intrinsically symbolic action. However, Watts follows a line of critical engagement with ritual theory that questions this stance. Anyone wishing to engage with this debate would do well to study Watts’s discussion.
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Book Reviews Watts’s second chapter (“The Rhetoric of Ritual Instruction”) provides an overview of the rhetoric of Leviticus 1–7, demonstrating how ritual instruction can be read for its persuasive functions and effects. According to Watts, the first seven chapters of Leviticus were not composed simply to provide information on correct ritual performance, but were shaped to persuade their audience of their normative authority. Continuing the focus on persuasion, Chapter 3 (“The Rhetoric of Burnt Offerings”) engages with the question of why the “burnt offering” appears first in Leviticus’s treatment of offerings. Watts suggest a variety of persuasive purposes for this arrangement, the most fundamental being to gain acceptance for priestly cultic legislation as a legitimate representation of Israelite values. In particular, placing the “burnt offering” at the beginning of Leviticus foregrounded the ideal of selfless devotion as a foundation upon which to build a claim to priestly privileges. In Chapter 4 (“The Rhetoric of Sin, Guilt, and Ritual Offerings”), which deals with the “sin offering” and “guilt offering” in Leviticus 4–5, Watts demonstrates why these traditional translations of the Hebrew terms hatta’t and ’asham retain interpretive value. He highlights the assertive wordplay in Leviticus 4–5, which juxtaposes the names for the two offerings with identical words meaning “sin” and “guilt” and with verbs from the same two roots. He argues, on this basis, that the authors of this material were introducing new forms of offering and sought to gain acceptance for these innovations by emphasizing their vital importance in dealing with sins and offenses. Watts’s overall argument is quite persuasive. However, a weakness of the chapter is that he does not deal with the several cases in which the hatta’t is prescribed in situations in which “sin” does not seem to be in view (e.g., the parturient, in Leviticus 12). In these instances, is the emphasis on “sin” in Leviticus 4 really still in play? While I agree with Watts’s claim that Leviticus 4 is constructed to persuade its audience of the connection between “sin” and the “sin offering,” I would argue that what is innovated is not the offering itself, but its particular usage: the author(s) of Leviticus 4 is seeking to establish a new use and significance for the hatta’t as an offering for particular types of “sin,” whereas it seems originally to have been an offering used only to deal with impurity. Chapter 5 (“The Rhetoric of Ritual Narrative”) deals with Leviticus 8–10. Here, Watts makes an effective case for identifying priestly obedience as the key theme of the three chapters understood as a coherent unit. In particular, he demonstrates how Leviticus 10 follows logically and necessarily from Leviticus 8–9, and reinforces the essential significance of the priesthood of Aaron and his sons—rather than undermining it, as some interpreters have suggested. Particularly striking in its simple cogency is Watts’s response to the various attempts to define precisely what led to the fiery destruction of Aaron’s sons (Leviticus 10:1–2): “The endless attempt by interpreters to explain what Nadab and Abihu did wrong is pointless. The story says it explicitly—they did not follow instructions… . In the context of twenty-two repetitions of the refrain of compliance with divine instruction, that is quite enough to explain the fatal consequences” (107). Although Watts does not discuss the issue, I was struck by the ways in which his treatment of Leviticus 10 establish its vital connection with Leviticus
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Book Reviews 8–9, such that it seems problematic to claim that Leviticus 10 is a late addition to Leviticus, as has recently been argued by Christophe Nihan.1 In Chapter 6, Watts deals with “The Rhetoric of Atonement,” examining how the verb kipper is situated within Leviticus 1–16, and is made a basic category for understanding the efficacy of offering rituals. Again, the author emphasizes that the rhetoric of “atonement” in Leviticus reinforces priestly status. Having emphasized the fundamental significance of priestly legitimacy and authority in Leviticus 1–16, in Chapter 7 (“The Rhetoric of Priesthood”), Watts focuses on this theme and its impact in ancient Israel and early Judaism, underscoring the success of Aaronide rhetoric in creating an Aaronide hierocracy. In Chapter 8 (“The Rhetoric of Sacrifice”), Watts explains his avoidance of the term sacrifice in previous chapters and problematizes its utility as a category applicable to the offering rituals of Leviticus 1–16. Then, in his ninth and final chapter (“The Rhetoric of Scripture”), he argues that the Aaronide authors achieved a second major success. Not only did they establish their own unique legitimacy, but also they also succeeded in creating the foundation for the scripturalization of their writings, as it was the focus on the correct performance of ritual that gave the Pentateuch its initial authority. This brief review cannot do justice to the wealth of careful argumentation and textual analysis contained in this volume. I recommend it strongly as a study of ritual texts in Leviticus, and more generally as a work demonstrating the value of rhetorical analysis of biblical ritual texts, and as a study of the ideology and literary activity of ancient Israel’s Aaronide priesthood. William K. Gilders Emory University Atlanta, Georgia
• • • Bernard M. Levinson. “The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 54. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. xxiii, 432 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990171
This is a collection of twelve of Bernard M. Levinson’s previously published essays on various aspects of biblical law, all painstakingly updated. The epigraph in the title of the volume (and in that of the opening essay, “The Right Chorale: From the Poetics to the Hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible” [1991]), taken from a Wallace Stevens poem, expresses Levinson’s insistence that biblical scholarship must strive for a correct balance between diachronic and synchronic approaches. As he makes clear throughout, the “right chorale” is the one that acknowledges
1. From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2, Reihe 25 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
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Book Reviews 8–9, such that it seems problematic to claim that Leviticus 10 is a late addition to Leviticus, as has recently been argued by Christophe Nihan.1 In Chapter 6, Watts deals with “The Rhetoric of Atonement,” examining how the verb kipper is situated within Leviticus 1–16, and is made a basic category for understanding the efficacy of offering rituals. Again, the author emphasizes that the rhetoric of “atonement” in Leviticus reinforces priestly status. Having emphasized the fundamental significance of priestly legitimacy and authority in Leviticus 1–16, in Chapter 7 (“The Rhetoric of Priesthood”), Watts focuses on this theme and its impact in ancient Israel and early Judaism, underscoring the success of Aaronide rhetoric in creating an Aaronide hierocracy. In Chapter 8 (“The Rhetoric of Sacrifice”), Watts explains his avoidance of the term sacrifice in previous chapters and problematizes its utility as a category applicable to the offering rituals of Leviticus 1–16. Then, in his ninth and final chapter (“The Rhetoric of Scripture”), he argues that the Aaronide authors achieved a second major success. Not only did they establish their own unique legitimacy, but also they also succeeded in creating the foundation for the scripturalization of their writings, as it was the focus on the correct performance of ritual that gave the Pentateuch its initial authority. This brief review cannot do justice to the wealth of careful argumentation and textual analysis contained in this volume. I recommend it strongly as a study of ritual texts in Leviticus, and more generally as a work demonstrating the value of rhetorical analysis of biblical ritual texts, and as a study of the ideology and literary activity of ancient Israel’s Aaronide priesthood. William K. Gilders Emory University Atlanta, Georgia
• • • Bernard M. Levinson. “The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 54. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. xxiii, 432 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990171
This is a collection of twelve of Bernard M. Levinson’s previously published essays on various aspects of biblical law, all painstakingly updated. The epigraph in the title of the volume (and in that of the opening essay, “The Right Chorale: From the Poetics to the Hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible” [1991]), taken from a Wallace Stevens poem, expresses Levinson’s insistence that biblical scholarship must strive for a correct balance between diachronic and synchronic approaches. As he makes clear throughout, the “right chorale” is the one that acknowledges
1. From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2, Reihe 25 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
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Book Reviews that because biblical literature exists in time and is shaped by history, the biblical text is often the result of historically conditioned literary processes: intentional reuse, allusion, and polemic at the compositional stage, and deliberate interpolation, accretion, and revision at the redactional stage. Indeed, for Levinson, not only is an appreciation of the final form of the text impossible without an awareness of these features, but also it consists essentially of this very awareness because, to his mind, the creative impulse behind much biblical literature is in fact re-creative: intertextual and interactive. It is to the philologically solid and exegetically sound implementation of this conviction, within the confines of biblical legal literature (broadly defined as including the Pentateuchal narratives, but primarily the law collections themselves), that Levinson has devoted these essays, and indeed much of his scholarly career thus far. In the opening selection, Levinson sets out his methodological agenda. Analyzing the overtly synchronic approach of Meir Sternberg and providing contrastive illustrations of his own, he reminds us that it is unfair to brand the diachronic study of biblical literature as interested solely in textual history for its own sake because it, no less than the synchronic method, is concerned with meaning (11). He goes on to urge that the term “the Bible” not be seen as interchangeable with “biblical prose narrative,” not only because the Bible contains law as well but also because the legal literature preserves and embodies “that which is truly distinctive” of biblical Israel’s revelation: the perception of the divine command, “the revelation of cultic, ethical, and civil law” (27), “the formulation of ethics and law in covenantal terms, the attribution of law to Sinai” (9). The second essay, “The Seductions of the Garden and the Genesis of Hermeneutics as Critique” (2002), further explores the latter point by examining the inherent paradox of the Eden narrative in Genesis 2–3: that in order to understand the very concept of command, Adam and Eve first needed to disobey the single command they were given. This leads to a discussion of autonomous accountability as an essential component of the view of humankind expressed in biblical law as well as narrative. In the next essay, “The Sinai Covenant: The Argument of Revelation” (2000), Levinson presents his understanding of the basic covenantal idea underlying biblical Israel’s self-image. He correctly stresses that Israel sensed its role as a ministry, but one must take issue with his determination that this was thought of as a ministry “to the world” (49); surely the biblical covenant conceives of Israel’s task as one of service—on behalf of the world, as it were—to YHWH. Levinson rightly calls attention to the fact that depicting Israel’s relationship with YHWH in covenantal terms is a conceptual innovation marking a watershed in the development of the biblical tradition, but this should not be credited to the seventh-century Deuteronomic movement (48). The covenant idea, in its explicit, literary expression, is fully and independently developed in the narratives of J, E, and P. The Deuteronomic covenant marks the end, not the beginning, of this process. In Chapter 4, “Deuteronomy’s Conception of Law as an ‘Ideal Type’” (2005), Levinson expertly delineates the Deuteronomic contribution to the judicial structure and hierarchies of power in Israel, a theme that he has addressed in some of his other writings as well, but this time emphasizing that in D, “law does not
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Book Reviews merely enshrine or reflect the existing social order” (86) but rather envisions, and attempts to implement, an ideal. Here, too, emphasizing the presence of this feature in D runs the risk of ignoring the earlier sources on which D relied and that exhibit it as well. Chapters 5–8 contain four of Levinson’s most important recent essays on specific legal texts: “The ‘Effected Object’ in Contractual Legal Language: The Semantics of ‘If You Purchase a Hebrew Slave’ (Exodus 21:2)” (2006), “Textual Criticism, Assyriology, and the History of Interpretation: Deuteronomy 13:7a as a Test Case in Method” (2001), “Recovering the Lost Original Meaning of ( ולא תכסה עליוDeuteronomy 13:9)” (1996), and “‘But You Shall Surely Kill Him!’: The Text-Critical and Neo-Assyrian Evidence for MT Deuteronomy 13:10” (1995). Each of these is a masterful illustration of the meticulous and uncompromising philology, exegetical common sense, and healthy skepticism for which Levinson is justly renowned. They also demonstrate the sort of results that may be achieved by the truly expert use of Near Eastern texts, the ancient versions and the rabbinic exegetical tradition, as opposed to the arbitrary and impressionistic theories that abound when these tools are employed by those less skilled in their use. Levinson is perhaps at his most penetrating and his most compelling in the final four chapters of the book, each of which contains his detailed and rigorous critique of the work of a scholar whose approach, while innovative, exhibits serious shortcomings. These are “The Case for Revision and Interpolation within the Biblical Legal Corpora” (1994), in which he addresses the work of Raymond Westbrook; “Calum M. Carmichael’s Approach to the Laws of Deuteronomy” (1990); “The Hermeneutics of Tradition in Deuteronomy: A Reply to J. G. McConville” (2000); and “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition? A Response to John Van Seters” (2004). No biblical scholar active today carries out the arduous and delicate task of refuting untenable suggestions as responsibly as Levinson, and we are all in his debt for doing the indispensable work that many are reluctant to do. Levinson is unsurpassed in his awareness of the potential detriment to future research that methodologically problematic approaches, even idiosyncratic or transparently tendentious ones, are liable to cause if they go uncriticized and unchecked. Never dismissive, he piercingly but respectfully addresses the faulty logic, inadequate philology, historical omissions, and problematic assumptions of scholars. Proceeding point by point, he patiently adduces the relevant evidence and supplies the needed corrective. He is particularly critical of any failure to consult and engage the scholarly literature, and his own work serves as an exemplary reminder of how crucial this element is if any progress is to be made in the field. His view of biblical literature as patently self-reflective corresponds to the standard that he demands of the discipline of biblical scholarship. Debate over Levinson’s own approach to the Pentateuch will no doubt continue. Source critics will certainly wish that his earnest pleading in favor of the need for diachronic study would also make room for the study of the earlier components—the literary sources themselves—on their own terms, prior to their having been combined or revised. For Levinson, diachronic study is defined as the study of reformulation, revision, and interpolation, and his critique of scholars
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Book Reviews who ignore the diachronic dimension of biblical literature is, not surprisingly, aimed at their failure to study these aspects. This emphasis on redactional genius and creativity is no coincidence; Levinson indeed views the Pentateuch as essentially the product of redactional stages and refers to the “redactional creation of the Pentateuch” as “the integration of three originally independent legal collections into a common narrative” (222; emphasis added). Adherents of competing, equally diachronic, approaches to the formation of the Torah will have their work cut out for them as they contend both with Levinson’s own scholarship and with his conscientious scrutiny of the state and progress of scholarship at large. Baruch J. Schwartz Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem, Israel
• • • JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE IN LATE ANTIQUITY Gideon Bohak. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 496 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990183
Gideon Bohak’s Ancient Jewish Magic: A History presents, as its title suggests, a historical approach to understanding the phenomenon of Jewish magic in antiquity. He engages the topic from a largely positivist point of view, eschewing theoretical debates over the definition of magic and Jewish in favor of adopting an etic position vis-à-vis these terms. Through a careful diachronic study of material and textual evidence, Bohak presents a cultural history of ancient Jewish magic that seeks to elucidate “its cultural make-up, and what it tells us about its origins and transformations and about the people who practiced it” (5). In the course of this study, he argues that the Jewish practice of magic developed over time, changing in significant ways from the Second Temple period to the Roman era. Specifically, he argues that Jewish magic existed in the Second Temple period, but was primarily oral, both in practice and in transmission; consequently, very little, if any, evidence for this magic survives. It was only in the Roman period and as a result of influence from Greco-Egyptian magic that Jewish magicians began to inscribe their spells on material artifacts and pass on their knowledge in recipe books, leaving behind a much richer corpus of material to study and understand. What ensues is a virtually encyclopedic study of every aspect of ancient Jewish magical practices, ranging from the commonplace wearing of amulets to the scholarly adjuration of angels. For Bohak, magic is fairly easy to identify and can be studied as a class of ritual practices that is sui generis.
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Book Reviews who ignore the diachronic dimension of biblical literature is, not surprisingly, aimed at their failure to study these aspects. This emphasis on redactional genius and creativity is no coincidence; Levinson indeed views the Pentateuch as essentially the product of redactional stages and refers to the “redactional creation of the Pentateuch” as “the integration of three originally independent legal collections into a common narrative” (222; emphasis added). Adherents of competing, equally diachronic, approaches to the formation of the Torah will have their work cut out for them as they contend both with Levinson’s own scholarship and with his conscientious scrutiny of the state and progress of scholarship at large. Baruch J. Schwartz Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem, Israel
• • • JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE IN LATE ANTIQUITY Gideon Bohak. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 496 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990183
Gideon Bohak’s Ancient Jewish Magic: A History presents, as its title suggests, a historical approach to understanding the phenomenon of Jewish magic in antiquity. He engages the topic from a largely positivist point of view, eschewing theoretical debates over the definition of magic and Jewish in favor of adopting an etic position vis-à-vis these terms. Through a careful diachronic study of material and textual evidence, Bohak presents a cultural history of ancient Jewish magic that seeks to elucidate “its cultural make-up, and what it tells us about its origins and transformations and about the people who practiced it” (5). In the course of this study, he argues that the Jewish practice of magic developed over time, changing in significant ways from the Second Temple period to the Roman era. Specifically, he argues that Jewish magic existed in the Second Temple period, but was primarily oral, both in practice and in transmission; consequently, very little, if any, evidence for this magic survives. It was only in the Roman period and as a result of influence from Greco-Egyptian magic that Jewish magicians began to inscribe their spells on material artifacts and pass on their knowledge in recipe books, leaving behind a much richer corpus of material to study and understand. What ensues is a virtually encyclopedic study of every aspect of ancient Jewish magical practices, ranging from the commonplace wearing of amulets to the scholarly adjuration of angels. For Bohak, magic is fairly easy to identify and can be studied as a class of ritual practices that is sui generis.
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Book Reviews After a brief eight-page introduction, which addresses questions of definition and theory, Chapter 1, “Jewish Magic: A Contradiction in Terms?” tackles Bohak’s primary concern: namely, to rehabilitate the study of Jewish magic. He attempts to steer a middle course between scholars who regard Judaism of all periods as “shot through with magic” and those who reject the idea that magic was anything other than a naming strategy, used to derogate the religious practices of an Other (10). In this chapter, Bohak explores biblical prohibitions and paradigms, including miracle workers and “men of God” such as Elijah and Elisha. He also examines biblical rituals that smack of magic. He then poses the question, how could such rituals have appeared rational to ancient practitioners? He concludes that the conflict or contradiction that we perceive did not exist in the ancient world. Instead, Bohak considers ways in which magic may have appeared to work and would have answered psychological needs. Finally, he considers the apparent contradiction between magic and monotheism, demonstrating ways in which magic could be perceived to operate legitimately within a monotheistic worldview. Chapters 2–6 follow the chronological development of magic from the Second Temple until the rabbinic period, examining both “insider” and “outsider” evidence where it is available. In Chapter 2, “Jewish Magic in the Second Temple Period,” Bohak notes the paucity of insider evidence for Jewish magic from this era and relies instead on outsider testimony (71). He begins this chapter by highlighting the lack of magic accusations against opponents by Jews of this period (75), and next turns to consider Philo’s attitude regarding mageia, which reveals an ambivalence typical of his time; Philo acknowledges the divine knowledge of the Persian priests but rejects “the base art which sometimes goes by the same name.” Bohak then discusses the demonic origins of magic according to texts such as I Enoch, Jubilees, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which attribute knowledge of magic to the fallen angels of Genesis 6:1–4. At the end of the Second Temple period and as witness to its demise, Josephus describes various rabblerousers as goêtes, but his description suggests something comparable to “charlatans” or “impostors” rather than magicians in the typical sense of the term. These examples, Bohak posits, point toward “a general absence of magic from the public discourse of Second Temple Jews” (87). He then discusses the ample evidence for Jewish exorcism, which seems to have typified Jewish magic at this time. In Chapter 3, “Jewish Magic in Late Antiquity—The ‘Insider’ Evidence,” Bohak examines extant evidence for Jewish magic, including the use of amulets, curses, papyri, recipe books, and other realia. Chapter 4, “Non-Jewish Elements in Late-Antique Jewish Magic,” explores the ample evidence for foreign influence on Jewish magical practices, including direct Hebrew and Aramaic translations of Greek originals, the use of Greek words and phrases, as well as mistranslations and transliterations of Greek words and phrases. Foreign deities, magical symbols (charactêres), and words of power (voces magicae) also indicate borrowing from Greek magical paradigms. Here, Bohak lays out his theory of the scribalization of Jewish magic: Greek magic became increasingly scribal sometime during the first centuries BCE and CE as writing became an
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Book Reviews integral part of the ritual practice of magic. Jewish magic, he points out, underwent a similar transformation in the third or fourth century CE; he thus posits that “a connection between these two processes seems quite plausible” (284). Apparently, as Jewish magicians increasingly encountered Greco-Egyptian traditions and practices, they integrated and eventually naturalized them, substantially altering the way in which Jewish magicians conceived and practiced their art. Chapter 5, “How ‘Jewish’ Was Ancient Jewish Magic?” examines what kind of Judaism and what kind of Jews are revealed by the variety of magical practices (291). Bohak first addresses the difficulty of “deciding what exactly to consider ‘Jewish’” (295); he seeks elements that are specifically Jewish (not common to Gentile and Christian magic) but that are also flexible enough to account for changing ideas of what constitutes Jewishness (295). He then examines Jewish divine names, epithets, and descriptions as well as the use of biblical verses and historiolae. He also discusses evidence for the synagogue as a place where magic was performed, either to harm or heal. This chapter helpfully explores “the complex relations between Jewish magic and Jewish mysticism in late antiquity” (322), revealing that despite many similarities, the two traditions emerge from distinct social groups within Judaism and pursue different aims and purposes (333). Finally, Bohak analyzes the limits of cultural receptivity: when and why Jewish magicians confine their willingness to appropriate and naturalize foreign elements. He concludes that Jewish magicians were far more Jewish and less syncretistic that previously argued (350). The final chapter, “Magic and Magicians in Rabbinic Literature,” examines rabbinic evidence for and attitudes toward Jewish magic in light of “insider” sources (352). Bohak begins this chapter quite naturally with a discussion of rabbinic halakhah regarding magic, noting that exceptions existed for certain types of magic to be studied and practiced, at least by rabbis. Next, he considers depictions of rabbis employing the magic of creation, as well as magic for medicinal purposes and self-defense. He also discusses cases in which rabbis promulgate a fear of demonic or magical attack as a form of social control, to convince ordinary Jews to accept rabbinic prescriptions and authority. Also under the heading of “Magic as a Means for Social Control,” Bohak discusses cases where rabbis employ magic to defeat opponents and offenders (369). He also discusses rabbinic attitudes toward the wearing of amulets and magical uses of the divine name. The chapter culminates with a discussion of rabbis as magicians and rabbinic magical recipes. The book concludes with an epilogue that summarizes Bohak’s findings and reemphasizes the main objectives of the study: (1) to rehabilitate Jewish magic as a legitimate aspect of Jewish life and culture, (2) to establish its study as a legitimate field, (3) to emphasize that magic is not universal but culturally specific and subject to change, and (4) to define the parameters under which a scientific study of Jewish magic could be undertaken (i.e., comparatively and diachronically). Gideon Bohak’s Ancient Jewish Magic: A History provides a comprehensive survey of virtually every aspect of Jewish magic in antiquity; its breadth is encyclopedic and its discussions richly informative. It provides the most
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Book Reviews up-to-date single resource for the study of ancient Jewish magic and will serve as an excellent tool and starting point for those who wish to undertake research in this field. Specialists will find much with which they are already familiar, along with stimulating discussions and new insights. My main reservations about the book stem from Bohak’s positivist approach to understanding magic in antiquity; he decides to employ an etic definition but fails to qualify precisely what that definition is. Bohak tosses all variety of ancient ritual and medicinal practices into a grab bag that he presumes is self-evidently “magical” to a modern observer, but he is unreflective about the presuppositions, historical context, and cultural biases of his indeterminate definition. He also accepts at face value attributions and depictions of magical practice without considering possible ideological motivations for such representations. In a similar vein, the book employs categories such as “Jew” or “Christian” uncritically, assuming that these were completely clear, uncontested categories and identities in late antiquity. The “borrowing” of magical symbols that Bohak describes between Jewish and Christian magic could also reflect blurred identities and community boundaries in late antiquity, providing a snapshot of the moment when these boundaries and identities were still being formed. Kimberly B. Stratton Carleton University Ottawa, Canada
• • • MEDIEVAL JEWISH CULTURE Miriam Bodian. Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. xvii, 278 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990195
At first glance, Miriam Bodian’s Dying in the Law of Moses runs counter to recent converso and Inquisition historiography. She deals with what Cecil Roth (1899–1970) described as the most heroic, quintessential, and thus authentic— yet exceptional—product of conversos facing the Inquisition, namely, a predisposition of some conversos to choose a painful death at the stake as unrepentant judaizers rather than a quick and painless death as repentant heretics.1 Current scholarship, by contrast, seeks to transcend the reductive historiographical debate regarding the epistemic relationship between Inquisition and
מלחמות קודש ומארטירולוגיה בתולדות ישראל ובתו: בתוך,” “דת ומארטירולוגיה בין האנוסים, בצלאל )ססיל( רות1 .105–93 ’ עמ, ירושלים תשכ”ח,לדות העמים Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1992).
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Book Reviews up-to-date single resource for the study of ancient Jewish magic and will serve as an excellent tool and starting point for those who wish to undertake research in this field. Specialists will find much with which they are already familiar, along with stimulating discussions and new insights. My main reservations about the book stem from Bohak’s positivist approach to understanding magic in antiquity; he decides to employ an etic definition but fails to qualify precisely what that definition is. Bohak tosses all variety of ancient ritual and medicinal practices into a grab bag that he presumes is self-evidently “magical” to a modern observer, but he is unreflective about the presuppositions, historical context, and cultural biases of his indeterminate definition. He also accepts at face value attributions and depictions of magical practice without considering possible ideological motivations for such representations. In a similar vein, the book employs categories such as “Jew” or “Christian” uncritically, assuming that these were completely clear, uncontested categories and identities in late antiquity. The “borrowing” of magical symbols that Bohak describes between Jewish and Christian magic could also reflect blurred identities and community boundaries in late antiquity, providing a snapshot of the moment when these boundaries and identities were still being formed. Kimberly B. Stratton Carleton University Ottawa, Canada
• • • MEDIEVAL JEWISH CULTURE Miriam Bodian. Dying in the Law of Moses: Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom in the Iberian World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. xvii, 278 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990195
At first glance, Miriam Bodian’s Dying in the Law of Moses runs counter to recent converso and Inquisition historiography. She deals with what Cecil Roth (1899–1970) described as the most heroic, quintessential, and thus authentic— yet exceptional—product of conversos facing the Inquisition, namely, a predisposition of some conversos to choose a painful death at the stake as unrepentant judaizers rather than a quick and painless death as repentant heretics.1 Current scholarship, by contrast, seeks to transcend the reductive historiographical debate regarding the epistemic relationship between Inquisition and
מלחמות קודש ומארטירולוגיה בתולדות ישראל ובתו: בתוך,” “דת ומארטירולוגיה בין האנוסים, בצלאל )ססיל( רות1 .105–93 ’ עמ, ירושלים תשכ”ח,לדות העמים Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1992).
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Book Reviews converso crypto-Judaism. Inquisition studies are no longer content to concentrate on the actions and evolution of the Holy Office, nor on its influence on particular heterodoxies. Rather, they focus on its role in the variegated aspects of societies and institutions. Scholars now consider the Inquisition to have been a powerful means of social control and mass education, an integral part of the early modern European confessional process.2 Similarly, converso studies have begun to question previously held rigid sociohistorical frameworks. David L. Graizbord’s recent discussion of the meaning and articulation of crypto-Jewish identities, Souls in Dispute, is a case in point. Graizbord opposes I. S. Révah’s (1917–73) univocal definition of marranism as “potential Judaism.” According to Graizbord, the acculturation of conversos into Iberian lifestyle qualified them equally as “potential Catholics.” In support of this claim, he traces the phenomenon of continuous reversal of religious identities. Some conversos fled Spain and Portugal in order to reclaim their Jewish identity in the Sephardic diaspora, only to return to their native lands to recover their Catholic identities. Graizbord maintains that this process served as a clear indicator of dual Jewish–Catholic identities.3 Consequently, converso identities are treated as inherently heterogeneous, defying any pretense of representativeness. One could argue, therefore, that the relatively few converso martyrs studied by Bodian are the exception rather than rule. A closer examination of Bodian’s converso martyrs uncovers surprising similarities to Graizbord’s converso “renegades.” As will be demonstrated, the origins of both groups can be traced back to a common converso hybridism. As a result, Bodian’s study becomes an unexpected contribution to the most avantgarde historiography. By shifting converso martyrdom from the epicenter of group identity to its margins, and from the core of Jewish authenticity to its borderlines, Bodian has created a historiographical tour de force. From this perspective, the book can be seen in the context of Bodian’s earlier work, in which she sought to demonstrate that the space in which converso group ethnicity was negotiated is not to be located in the center but in its peripheries.4 Similar to Benedict Anderson’s “national identities,”5 Bodian’s converso martyrology appears to be a matter of imagined individual constructions.
2. Jean-Pierre Dedieu and René Millar Carvacho, “Entre histoire et mémoire: L’Inquisition à l’époque moderne: dix ans d’historiographie,” Annales, Histoire, Sciences sociales 57, no. 2 (March/ April 2002): 349–72; Jean-Pierre Dedieu, “L’historiographie récente sur l’Inquisition espagnole,” in Convegno: a dieci anni dall’apertura dell’Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede: Storia e archivi dell’Inquisizione, Roma, 21–23 febbraio 2008 (http://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/ 247801/a-dieci-anni-dallapertura-dellarchivio-della-congregazione-per-la-dottrina-della-fede-storiae-archivi-del). 3. David L. Graizbord, Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora, 1580–1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 4. Miriam Bodian, “‘Men of the Nation’: The Shaping of ‘Converso’ Identity in Early Modern Europe,” Past and Present 143 (1994): 48–76. 5. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991).
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Book Reviews The focal point of Bodian’s book is an analysis of four case studies: the son of Mexican “conquistador” Luis Rodríguez de Carvajal, the Portuguese monk Frei Diogo d’Asumpção, the South American physician Francisco Maldonado da Silva, and the University of Salamanca Hebrew scholar Lope de Vera y Alarcón. Significantly, these cases have already been discussed by earlier scholars.6 Other converso martyrs, who have gone mainly unnoticed by previous scholarship, appear only incidentally, probably because of the scarcity of primary sources relating to them.7 In the last part of this review, I will address some implications of this selection. Meanwhile, let it be said that Bodian’s study is both moving and illuminating. The author successfully reconstructs the inquisitorial trials of these four converso martyrs in a meticulous and vivid fashion. In some instances, she corrects errors made by previous historians. Throughout the reconstruction, she offers compelling and original interpretations of their behavior, without diminishing their personal drama. In this sense, her methodology is reminiscent of Nathan Wachtel’s acclaimed contribution to converso studies, La foi du souvenir.8 Bodian’s decision to analyze individual files rather than entire groups both underlines the heterogeneity of converso experience and uncovers common denominators. While Wachtel’s converso biographies sought to represent larger typological groups (i.e., men and women, judaizers and skeptics, rich and poor, educated and simple),9 Bodian’s analysis is very narrow and specific. The results are far from surprising. That is, the juxtaposition of these four cases proves that in many respects, converso martyrs were part of the typical “marrano condition.” This is illustrated by the fact that many of them had close ties (familiar, professional, and social) with other conversos. Of the latter group, some were also tried by the Inquisition but died in more “routine” ways (readmittance to the bosom of the church or garroted as repentant heretics). Moreover, the former only became martyrs at some point during their trials rather than at the beginning of their imprisonment. Indeed, the transformation was sometimes incited by their interaction with the Inquisitors (e.g., D’Asumpção). Were all judaizing conversos “potential martyrs” then? Bodian would be inclined to say no, because regardless of converso common features and idiosyncratic traits (historical and geographical context, social background, psychology), all converso martyrs shared a common characteristic. They were part of a distinct subgroup, labeled by the author as
6. See, e.g., the recent edition of the celebrated martyrdom of Lope de Vera y Alarcón by the converso writer Antonio Enríquez Gómez, De la cárcel inquisitorial a la Sinagoga de Amsterdam (1600–1663), ed. Kenneth Brown, De la cárcel inquisitorial a la Sinagoga de Amsterdam: edición y estudio del ‘Romance a Lope de Vera’, compuesto por Antonio Enríquez Gómez (Toledo: Consejería de Cultura de Castilla-La Mancha, 2007). 7. For example, “The data I have collected indicate that in the course of the seventeenth century up to 1680’s, a total less than twenty five persons were recognize by name in the literature of the Portuguese-Jewish diaspora as having been burned alive for judaizing” (41). 8. Nathan Wachtel, La foi du souvenir; Labyrinthes marranes (Paris: Seuil, 2001). 9. See the comments of Jacques Revel, “Une condition marrane?” Annales, Histoire, Sciences sociales 57, no. 2 (March/April 2002): 335–45.
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Book Reviews “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” (Chap. 2). This subgroup was an extreme by-product of converso hybridism. Historically, they appeared in the late sixteenth century and not at the beginning of the marrano phenomenon. They did not experience mass conversion, nor did they live in the vicinity of a Jewish community, as had conversos of previous generations. For them, Catholicism and the Inquisition were familiar and ubiquitous. Ethnically, they were of Old Christian ancestry to varying degrees. Some could claim pure Old Christian lineage (as in the case of Alarcón), virtual purity (D’Asumpcão’s paternal great-great-grandparent alone was a converso), or partial purity (Maldonado da Silva and his father both married Old Christians). Only Carvajal had converso parents, but he did not hesitate to proselytize among Old Christians while in prison. Like all “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs,” Carvajal’s attitude was “a striking indication of their expansive attitude, in contrast to the ethnic exclusivism more typical of cryptoJews” (63). Moreover, while current scholarship assigns a preponderant role to women, as the primary promoters of converso Crypto-Jewish identities, “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” were men. Capable of engaging in theological disputes with trained church theologians, they were all familiar with Iberian Catholic “high” culture. As with other educated judaizers, they used Catholic and Christian heterodox ideas and books to frame their own “Jewish” identities (i.e., Maldonado da Silva’s use of Pablo de Santa Maria’s antirabbinic Scrutinium Scripturarum [124, 143, 147]). Although they took diverse theological approaches, the ideologies that led them to die at the stake “in the Law of Moses” as martyrs were heavily influenced by the Iberian notion of honor; Christian “Protestant” discourses (in the broadest and simplest sense of the term luterano, as it was understood in early modern Iberia); and, I would add, by the Counter-Reformation notions of martyrdom. The decision to perform selfcircumcision (in the cases of Carvajal, Maldonado da Silva, and Alarcón) was “one of the defining acts of the crypto-Jewish martyr” (169) rather than an act of crypto-Jewish converso authenticity. According to Bodian, it was an idiosyncratic consequence of the biblicism (essentially “Protestant”) that characterized “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs.” She admits that “[c]onverso deaths of a heroic type had occurred … even before the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition [i.e., 1478]… . But earlier conditions did not lend themselves to the kind of prolonged, staged “combat” between inquisitor and prisoner that mark the career of the celebrated martyrs” (23). These common features distinguish “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” from the majority of Iberian judaizer conversos, who generally adopted strategies of secrecy and deceit. In Chapter 6, the final chapter, Bodian discusses the ambivalence of the Sephardic diaspora of converso origins toward converso martyrs. The uncompromisingly heroic deaths of the latter contrasted with the more pragmatic attitudes of the former. Though the Judaism endorsed by the martyrs was sui generis (e.g., the “Sadducean” tendencies of D’Asumpcão or Alarcón’s affinities with Islam), offering valuable examples for propaganda and edification for elegies and synagogue celebrations, it was actually an inappropriate and even hazardous norm for Jewish Sephardic communities. Bodian compares “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” with Sephardic “heretics” such as Uriel da Costa (c. 1585–1640).
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Book Reviews Bodian’s converso martyrs did not represent “authentic” historical manifestations of Iberian marranism, not to say normative Sephardic Judaism. Their actions appear reminiscent of Iberian Christian alumbrados and early modern Sephardic “heretics.” Consequently, one wonders whether the magnitude of their personal tragedy was attributable more to the atypical way in which they decided to “die in the Law of Moses” than to the humiliation and pains they suffered during their dilated Inquisition trials. One answer to this perplexity is suggested throughout Bodian’s “archeological” research of martyrdom. In Chapter 1, largely dedicated to the history of Jewish martyrdom prior to the eruption of “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs,” the author stresses its cross-cultural character. As a radical act of faith performed before and against others, martyrdom was “countercultural.” In Bodian’s own terms, martyrdom endorsed an extreme “counter theology” (xiii). Countercultural acts performed by a minority group affirm its resistance to the majority, and often employ the rhetoric of majority as a means of underlining differences between the two. Therefore, such acts tend to be an acculturated phenomenon. The martyrdoms can be distinguished by their cultural locations. While Jewish martyrdom erupted in the interstices created by inner Jewish and non-Jewish conceptions of martyrdom, “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrdom” was formulated only within the cultural values and ideas of Others. For this reason, martyrdom attained its acculturated—even syncretistic—apogee precisely among “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs.” Resisting Christianity but nevertheless relying heavily on it, converso martyrdom was inexorably condemned to remain a heroic act of resistance against oppression but an “absurd” (in Albert Camus’s sense of incomprehension) manifestation of positive differentiation. A second answer could be drawn from Bodian’s hermeneutic considerations. Bodian is aware of the well-known issues regarding the use of Inquisition archives to study the converso phenomenon (xii, 13). She argues that converso martyrdom may have been the consequence rather than the instigator of Inquisitorial imprisonment. Imprisoned conversos knew that their ethnic origins all but negated the possibility of being proclaimed innocent. They faced the choice of denying the charges at the price of death at the stake as negativos, or confessing faults (even faked) and naming accomplices (preferably close acquaintances) in the hopes of reconciliation. All the while they were forced to undergo public humiliation and suffer the confiscation of their property: “It was possible to view martyrdom as a ‘best’ option—that is, as one that would preserve self-esteem and honor …, provide a noble outlet for the expression of anger, vindicate one’s inner sense of truth, and ensure eternal salvation” (24). Bodian explains that converso martyrdom began with debates and theological confrontations held during their imprisonment and interrogations (36–37). Even defiantly, the subject of an inquiry must react to the discursive apparatus of his inquisitor. Martyrdom can be seen as an extreme manifestation of explicit antagonism against the Inquisitors. Third, the removal of a converso martyr from the dungeons of the Holy Office to the crowded theater of public sentencing and executions signified “the last scene of an extended drama” in which the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” “became martyrs in the classic, ‘athletic’ sense… . [T]he moment that
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Book Reviews transfixed the crowd and ‘defeated’ the inquisitors came after the auto-da-fé, when those condemned to death, having been relaxed to the secular authorities, were to be taken to the ‘quemadero’ to be burned” (27). Certainly, this was the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” own interpretation of the drama. The work of Stuart B. Schwartz confirms Bodian’s assumption concerning the shocking impact they had on many other Iberian people, Inquisitors, and others (33).10 Still, I am rather inclined to adopt Foucault’s assumptions on the overwhelming edifying role of spectacular executions like these on behalf of the establishment.11 Finally, I would like to address the implications of Bodian’s criteria of selection. It seems to me that despite the scarcity of data, a closer examination is required of those converso martyrs appearing only incidentally in this volume. I believe that a more comprehensive reconstruction of their lives may elucidate— or even challenge—the nature of the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” paradigm. These would include, for instance, the “few women” who “were praised in the diaspora literature for having been burned alive at the stake, [although] none of them attained iconic status” (41), or the converso surgeon Manuel Tavares alias Manuel da Fonseca alias David (as he was named following his circumcision in the Leghorn Sephardic community), who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition of Lima (126). Further study may reveal that the profile of many of these converso martyrs corresponded to other converso judaizers rather than to “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs.” This suggestion is not meant to cast a shadow on the qualities of Bodian’s book. On the contrary, her self-imposed limits prove Dying in the Law of Moses to be a major contribution to converso studies and a demonstration of intellectual honesty. Claude B. Stuczynski Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel
• • • Esperanza Alfonso. Islamic Culture through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century. New York: Routledge, 2008. ix, 201 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990201
Based on a thorough analysis of a wide array of Jewish literature originating in tenth- to twelfth-century al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), Esperanza Alfonso discusses representations of Muslims and Islamic culture—by which she means literary, not material, culture. This book is a significant contribution to recently growing scholarship about Jewish constructions of cultural and religious otherness; I shall mention only the closest parallel, Ross Brann’s Power in the 10. Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 11. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).
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Book Reviews transfixed the crowd and ‘defeated’ the inquisitors came after the auto-da-fé, when those condemned to death, having been relaxed to the secular authorities, were to be taken to the ‘quemadero’ to be burned” (27). Certainly, this was the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” own interpretation of the drama. The work of Stuart B. Schwartz confirms Bodian’s assumption concerning the shocking impact they had on many other Iberian people, Inquisitors, and others (33).10 Still, I am rather inclined to adopt Foucault’s assumptions on the overwhelming edifying role of spectacular executions like these on behalf of the establishment.11 Finally, I would like to address the implications of Bodian’s criteria of selection. It seems to me that despite the scarcity of data, a closer examination is required of those converso martyrs appearing only incidentally in this volume. I believe that a more comprehensive reconstruction of their lives may elucidate— or even challenge—the nature of the “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs” paradigm. These would include, for instance, the “few women” who “were praised in the diaspora literature for having been burned alive at the stake, [although] none of them attained iconic status” (41), or the converso surgeon Manuel Tavares alias Manuel da Fonseca alias David (as he was named following his circumcision in the Leghorn Sephardic community), who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition of Lima (126). Further study may reveal that the profile of many of these converso martyrs corresponded to other converso judaizers rather than to “Dogmatista Crypto-Jewish Martyrs.” This suggestion is not meant to cast a shadow on the qualities of Bodian’s book. On the contrary, her self-imposed limits prove Dying in the Law of Moses to be a major contribution to converso studies and a demonstration of intellectual honesty. Claude B. Stuczynski Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel
• • • Esperanza Alfonso. Islamic Culture through Jewish Eyes: Al-Andalus from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century. New York: Routledge, 2008. ix, 201 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990201
Based on a thorough analysis of a wide array of Jewish literature originating in tenth- to twelfth-century al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), Esperanza Alfonso discusses representations of Muslims and Islamic culture—by which she means literary, not material, culture. This book is a significant contribution to recently growing scholarship about Jewish constructions of cultural and religious otherness; I shall mention only the closest parallel, Ross Brann’s Power in the 10. Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 11. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).
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Book Reviews Portrayal.1 Alfonso’s study is, moreover, indicative of a growing interdisciplinary trend in the study of medieval Judaism, as it engages both Hebrew and Arabic literature and takes much inspiration from literary criticism and postcolonial theory. As the concepts of identity and otherness are by now widely recognized as reciprocal notions, Alfonso simultaneously examines the Jewish authors’ constructions of their own identity through their expressed attitudes toward the Arabic language and toward literary genres imported from the Arabo-Islamic milieu. These subjects, in particular, are the topics of the first two chapters, on which I will focus. They constitute a major thematic unit within the book consisting of four lengthy chapters. Andalusian Jews are known to have been fully fluent in the Arabic culture of which they were part. In the book’s first chapter, Alfonso accordingly raises questions about the ways in which Andalusian Jewish authors perceived the dominant language and the extent to which the discourse on the use of Hebrew vis-à-vis Arabic shed light how Jewish identity was conceptualized. In other words, was language considered to be a means of self-definition? Did Jewish attitudes toward Arabic change over time, and if so, to what extent did these developments reflect the process of identity building? Alfonso does not offer simplified answers to these questions but always reads her sources within their historical context and points to their complexities and ambiguities. Thereby, she follows a tendency in contemporary scholarship that increasingly understands identity as an ongoing process of construction, redefinition, and negotiation. Thus, by the tenth and early eleventh centuries, diverging trends were expressed in the linguistic dispute between Menahem ben Saruq and Dunash ibn Labrat, and their respective supporters. While the latter downplayed the otherness of Arabic because its knowledge had proven to be an indispensable tool for the understanding of Hebrew grammar and philology, the followers of the former not only resisted comparative linguistics but also rejected even the composition of Hebrew poetry in Arabic meters. In the late eleventh and mid-twelfth centuries, incursions into Muslim Iberia by the North African Almoravids and Almohads set off waves of Jewish migration toward Christian-held areas of the peninsula, which resulted in redrawn cultural and linguistic maps. While Moses ibn ‘Ezra migrated north, he longingly looked back to what he regarded as the superior civilization of lost al-Andalus. Against this background, he (in his treatise on poetics) explained the similarities between Hebrew and Arabic as a consequence of the contact and intimacy between Jews and their Arabic-speaking neighbors. As Alfonso points out, Ibn ‘Ezra thereby includes Arabic features within the self-definition of a cultured Jew, an identity that, in his case, is not contrasted against Islam but against 1. Ross Brann, Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). Alfonso, in addition, refers to Tova Rosen’s analysis of gendered othering: Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); see also Martin Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte in jüdischen Chroniken: Hebräische Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).
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Book Reviews what he saw as the lower cultural standards of the Hispanic kingdoms and their Christian and Jewish populations. According to Alfonso, the most adversarial attitudes toward Arabic evolved in thirteenth-century Hebrew writings from the Christian-ruled parts of Iberia. She then raises the question of “to what extent this preoccupation with the status of Hebrew versus Arabic … is not a reflection of similar Christian polemical positions on Arabic, but rather mirrors Christian polemical positions toward the Jews, that would have been internalized” (27), an intriguing question, the discussion of which, however, would go beyond the book’s scope. In the second part of her study, Alfonso explores the traditional idea of a collective exile of the Jews versus the notion of a Jewish domicile in al-Andalus. As her sophisticated discourse demonstrates, these constructs are not mutually exclusive but frequently interplay in the corpus of texts under discussion—much as the Other and the Self are not static poles but are constantly being negotiated. Moreover, with the transition toward Christian Spain, “a sense of nostalgia surfaces among Andalusi Jewish authors forced to migrate” (74). As “exile” under the “nations” is expected to ultimately give way to redemption, the last chapter, then, turns to eschatological expectations and their impact on the discourse of religious otherness with regard to both Islam and Christianity. The broad range of sources and topics in this meticulous study is most ambitious. While Alfonso includes a much wider array of Jewish literature from al-Andalus than Brann’s Power in the Portrayal—which also explores Muslim representations of Jews—Islamic Culture through Jewish Eyes, at the same time, is more technical in character than the latter’s work. In certain cases, Alfonso’s source analyses seem to be too condensed to allow for a smooth reading (more frequent quotations might have helped in this respect). As is almost unavoidable in any study that dares to survey such a broad spectrum of literature, a few long-held assumptions that have been questioned lately are perpetuated (e.g., the “clear antiphilosophical tendency” of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, p. 44).2 Occasionally, readers may wonder whether the rather abstract categories of the Other and the Self always offer keys to unlock multilayered texts. Indeed, Alfonso allows for the “fact that otherness did not constitute a dominant discourse in medieval Jewish sources” (111). In a similar vein, she notes that “[s]ome aspects related to the representation of language and the construction of Self and Other … overlap with religious polemics” (34)—polemics that were not necessarily directed against the external but oftentimes against the internal Other. Thus, the negative views (or dissatisfaction) voiced by certain Jewish authors about literary genres and disciplines (such as poetry, historiography, or philosophy) that were widely associated with Islamic culture find parallels in Muslim critiques of the 2. By contrast, compare Barry S. Kogan’s recent characterization of the Kuzari: “While the work is generally regarded as apologetic in character, it is no mere polemic. Rather, its theological defense of Judaism is deeply informed by philosophy, and respectful of both its integrity and methods” (“Judah Halevi and His Use of Philosophy in the Kuzari,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 111).
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Book Reviews same forms and topics (something Alfonso is aware of). Why did “opposition to a given discipline, a literary form, or a cultural practice surface” at some point in both Jewish and Muslim literature from Iberia? Is this phenomenon already “best understood as part of a shared tension between more or less conservative groups” (51) that similarly existed within the two communities? A topic for further exploration would be to study how external and internal polemics are related, and to what extent Jewish authors reciprocated tendencies found within their Ibero-Muslim (or Ibero-Christian) environment. However, despite these minor critical remarks, Esperanza Alfonso’s book is a carefully argued and wellnuanced study of Jewish literature from al-Andalus on the background of the Arabo-Islamic milieu in which it emerged. Martin Jacobs Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, Missouri
• • • David Malkiel. Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000–1250. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. xvi, 376 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990213
Over the past two decades, scholarly forays into the medieval Jewish experience have yielded significant, innovative, and at times revisionist analyses of the historical image and historiographical representation of the Jewish communities of medieval Western Christendom. David Malkiel’s absorbing new study joins this ever-growing body of work that has sought to modify the seemingly antiquated image of the medieval Jew. His analysis is the most recent effort to recharacterize the historical portrait and historiographical perception of the eleventh- to thirteenth-century Ashkenazic community. In broad terms, Malkiel aims to challenge the accepted categorization of medieval Franco-German society as saintly, absolutely faithful to Jewish law, and subject to rabbinic authority. This perception dictated the historiographical image of mutual and incessant enmity between the Christian majority and the Jewish minority, while historians remained mindful of the ever-changing and reciprocal economic dependence of the two communities. Malkiel argues in eight skillfully written chapters that medieval Ashkenaz was not a community of saints and martyrs but simply one of ordinary people (xi). By lowering the Ashkenazic community from its pedestal, Malkiel aims to complicate the picture of the medieval period as a time of religious purity and spiritual dogmatism, and instead paints a picture of a community grappling with proscribed internal legal norms and external religious, social, and cultural influences. The first chapter sets the stage for the subsequent investigation by examining the depiction of the medieval Franco-German Jewish community in premodern and modern historiography. Malkiel reveals a strong bias among historians of
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Book Reviews same forms and topics (something Alfonso is aware of). Why did “opposition to a given discipline, a literary form, or a cultural practice surface” at some point in both Jewish and Muslim literature from Iberia? Is this phenomenon already “best understood as part of a shared tension between more or less conservative groups” (51) that similarly existed within the two communities? A topic for further exploration would be to study how external and internal polemics are related, and to what extent Jewish authors reciprocated tendencies found within their Ibero-Muslim (or Ibero-Christian) environment. However, despite these minor critical remarks, Esperanza Alfonso’s book is a carefully argued and wellnuanced study of Jewish literature from al-Andalus on the background of the Arabo-Islamic milieu in which it emerged. Martin Jacobs Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, Missouri
• • • David Malkiel. Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000–1250. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. xvi, 376 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990213
Over the past two decades, scholarly forays into the medieval Jewish experience have yielded significant, innovative, and at times revisionist analyses of the historical image and historiographical representation of the Jewish communities of medieval Western Christendom. David Malkiel’s absorbing new study joins this ever-growing body of work that has sought to modify the seemingly antiquated image of the medieval Jew. His analysis is the most recent effort to recharacterize the historical portrait and historiographical perception of the eleventh- to thirteenth-century Ashkenazic community. In broad terms, Malkiel aims to challenge the accepted categorization of medieval Franco-German society as saintly, absolutely faithful to Jewish law, and subject to rabbinic authority. This perception dictated the historiographical image of mutual and incessant enmity between the Christian majority and the Jewish minority, while historians remained mindful of the ever-changing and reciprocal economic dependence of the two communities. Malkiel argues in eight skillfully written chapters that medieval Ashkenaz was not a community of saints and martyrs but simply one of ordinary people (xi). By lowering the Ashkenazic community from its pedestal, Malkiel aims to complicate the picture of the medieval period as a time of religious purity and spiritual dogmatism, and instead paints a picture of a community grappling with proscribed internal legal norms and external religious, social, and cultural influences. The first chapter sets the stage for the subsequent investigation by examining the depiction of the medieval Franco-German Jewish community in premodern and modern historiography. Malkiel reveals a strong bias among historians of
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Book Reviews medieval Jewry against Ashkenazic Jewry and its economic and intellectual homogeneity, in favor of the enlightened and philosophical medieval Sephardic society. Over the latter half of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars addressed this imbalance by offering a more nuanced assessment of medieval Ashkenazic intellectual and economic culture, a position that Ze’ev Ya’avetz and Yitzhak Baer pioneered. Malkiel exhibits wide-ranging knowledge of the historiography of the previous generations, and offers a compelling and succinct baseline from which to develop his thesis. Several chapters focus on the First Crusade and arise from Malkiel’s previously published material concerning the events leading up to and including the attacks of 1096. He confronts the traditional view that several rancorous and hostile encounters that took place between the mid-ninth and eleventh centuries served as a forewarning of the devastations of the First Crusade. Malkiel takes aim against this thesis of a linear progression of violence and anti-Jewish sentiment, and he illustrates that these events, mostly eleventh-century incidents, have little or no connection with the attacks of the First Crusade. The consequence of this revision is a more stable image of Jewish–Christian relations during the High Middle Ages. In an effort to present a less heroic and more “human” face of the First Crusade martyrs, Malkiel maintains that contrary to the uniform portrayal of the Crusaders presenting Jews with the choice of death or baptism, the element of choice was largely absent. According to both Latin and Hebrew texts, Jews expected to be killed with no option of conversion. Death without a choice of baptism rendered mass suicides less heroic and, in some sense, more comprehensible. Similarly, Malkiel illuminates the heterogeneous, credible, and human nature of Ashkenazic society through its expressed ambivalence concerning martyrdom, and its outright rejection and unheroic conduct by a number of individual Jews during the 1096 attacks. Malkiel’s discussion of apostates challenges the prevailing image of the absolute religious fidelity of medieval Ashkenazic Jewry by arguing that forced apostates did not necessarily outnumber voluntary ones, and even coerced apostates did not always revert to Judaism. Additionally, Malkiel makes a strong and convincing argument that for the medieval rabbis, the distinction between coerced and voluntary apostasy was generally unimportant.1 Malkiel continues to question the image of absolute fidelity to Jewish law and rabbinic authority by arguing that Ashkenazic Jews, especially women, appeared to act contrary to the law of the Talmud and refused to respond to the efforts of medieval rabbis to correct their behavior. Though a number of tosafists posited that nonhalakhic behavior must be grounded in a legal rationale, Malkiel posits that nonhalakhic actions should be accepted for what they are—violations of talmudic law and rabbinic dicta.
1. Malkiel could have strengthened his case by consulting Chaviva Levine, “Jewish Conversion to Christianity in Medieval Northern Europe: Encountered and Imagined, 1100–1300” (PhD diss., New York University, 2006).
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Book Reviews Malkiel analyzes Jewish social and cultural integration into the majority culture, arguing against the outmoded image of an autonomous Jewish community. He presents the Jews of France and Germany as an essential component of European society who adopted ideas and values into their own culture. Jewish texts condemning Christian belief or behavior actually imply a degree of reality of conviviality and intimacy on both the social and cultural planes. These arguments echo the significant work of Yisrael Yuval and Ivan Marcus, among others, though it remains unclear to what degree Malkiel acknowledges the cultural, social, and intellectual assumptions in the earlier works. In his final chapter, Malkiel returns to the Ashkenaz–Sepharad dichotomy discussed in the opening chapter of the book. Malkiel questions the regnant interpretation of Baer, who assigns responsibility for the post-1391 Spanish breakdown to the sizable class of Jewish courtiers. Instead, he posits that the gap between the Spanish and Ashkenazic communities is narrower than it appears, as both cultures exhibited nonhalakhic and deviant behavior. At the same time, he calls into question the feasibility of a comparative analysis of the two communities, and therefore rightly concludes that the shared characteristics between Spain and the Franco-German communities can only complement the more nuanced image of Ashkenazi society. Throughout the work, Malkiel exhibits an extensive familiarity with diverse medieval and modern source material. A useful methodological discussion of the First Crusade narratives and their questionable historical value precedes their analysis in Chapters 3 and 4. In the later chapters, medieval rabbinic literature underpins the historical argument. However, two key challenges are apparent. The first is the absence of an explicit methodological approach in using responsa and legal literature as the basis of a historical inquiry. Much of the rabbinic literature is quoted from published editions; few, if any, medieval manuscripts are referenced in the endnotes. Second, one might question the frequent dependence on Sefer Hasidim as an accurate reflection of the broader medieval Ashkenazic community. While the author understands the pertinent methodological issues and pitfalls associated with Sefer Hasidim (195–96), he does not fully substantiate the usefulness of the German pietistic work as evidence of the larger context in which it was written. These criticisms notwithstanding, Malkiel’s meticulous summary and evaluation of the extensive modern scholarship are of great value; his broader set of arguments is an important and welcome contribution toward recasting the image and historiography of medieval Franco-German Jewish society. This work is a wonderful and significant resource for the teaching and study of the medieval Ashkenazic community.
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Ethan Zadoff The Graduate Center City University of New York New York, New York
Book Reviews MODERN JEWISH THOUGHT AND THEOLOGY Hilary Putnam. Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. 1 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990067
At the end of an illustrious career at the center of the neo-Kantian school in Marburg, Hermann Cohen dedicated his last years to the study of Jewish culture and philosophy. Cohen retired from his university post in Marburg in 1913 and resumed teaching with a new mandate at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, the leading institute for the study of Judaism. During his last years, he devoted himself to the task of developing a systematic Jewish philosophy of religion, a comprehensive study of the discursive and rational basis of Judaism that was published posthumously as the Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism. Cohen’s late calling to Jewish studies was expressed in a lecture to the Hochschule as a hope for a renewal of Jewish theology to move beyond the mere “abstraction of literary production,” to “become truly alive” through the creation of original scholarly work. His comments were directed to the flaccid state of seminary learning, and he mentioned Franz Rosenzweig’s Zeit ist’s (It’s Time) in this context. One cannot help but think of the academic study of philosophy as well. Nearly a century later, Hilary Putnam’s book comes as a historical marker in both respects. Written by the distinguished emeritus professor of analytical philosophy, this intriguing little study is a concise presentation of three figures in modern Jewish thought: Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. It is introduced by an autobiographical chapter with Putnam’s personal turn to religious Judaism and an expanded version of his preface to Rosenzweig’s Understanding the Sick and the Healthy (Harvard University Press, 1999). A chapter introducing Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein is followed by two short chapters on Buber’s I and Thou and Levinas’s concept of “infinite responsibility.” The book closes with an afterword that is both a summary and a return to Putnam’s expression of his own religious convictions. These reflections, despite the title and a picturesque sunset on the jacket, offer much less a “guide to life” than an introduction to the Lebensphilosophie of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. This is not a self-help book. It is a search for a living philosophy. The tiny gems of this work are found in the brief comparisons between these three figures and the analytical tradition. The longest is the discussion on Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein, which seems to begin and end roughly halfway into the chapter of the same title. The comparison—that “objects of desire” cannot be measured merely by their satisfaction, as a wish is as little defined by its fulfillment as religious beliefs are by empirical evidence—will nevertheless remain with me for some time. The more general summary of Rosenzweig’s system of thought in the next chapter is less illuminating than those offered by other scholars of Rosenzweig, such as Stéphane Mosès. The defense of Buber in the third chapter seeks to restore the centrality of his dialogical thinking to modern Jewish thought, to correct terminology, and to explain Buber’s
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Book Reviews personal God, who can only be reached through an Other—a step that reflects neither negative nor positive theology in any simple sense. The last chapter, on Levinas, is particularly rich with observations: Descartes’s discovery not of deduction but of fissure, the difference between Kant’s legislative ethics and Levinas’s “infinite responsibility,” the independence of the Other in contrast to Husserl’s idea of construction, and more. These are the tremendous strengths of a work whose greatest disappointment is its brevity. It would surely be a great service to Jewish philosophy if Putnam were to continue to develop these observations into a critique of the Anglo-American philosophy of religion, which has largely overlooked Judaism (and every other religion other than Christianity) and has concerned itself with questions such as whether God is best conceived as a person without a body. There is another problem that is difficult to overlook. Perhaps I can best express this with an example: we have no difficulty speaking of modern French philosophy and associating a few names as representative. It is also possible to accept that a person born in Paris may wish to study German idealism and be so enamored with this philosophical tradition that she or he contributes to their chosen subject in a substantive way. It is for this reason that I found the inclusion of Wittgenstein as a Jewish philosopher based on an argument of one-quarter “Jewishness” particularly disconcerting and proven absurd by the very fact that Husserl’s “quarters” are not even mentioned. The problem of inclusion based on such criteria rather than the specific contribution to Jewish philosophy is accentuated by the discussion of the author’s personal convictions—that he prays regularly but is not Orthodox, that he holds Jewish beliefs but not in an afterlife or in miracles. This has little to do with the ideas that inform modern Jewish philosophy as an intellectual tradition and that Putnam advances. It is now widely accepted that a person can make a meaningful and “living” contribution to Jewish studies without Jewish relatives (and occasionally be even the better for it). When Hermann Cohen completed his career with a turn toward Judaism, his intention was to enliven Jewish theology but also to lend legitimacy to Jewish studies, which would eventually find a place in the university as part of the humanities. The great advance that Putnam makes in situating modern Jewish thought in the context of modern philosophy is a gift to the field. His own personal religious views (between Jewish Lebensphilosophie, Pierre Hadot, and John Dewey) would have been better served in a separate publication. We await both an autobiography and a philosophy of religion with great anticipation. Eric Jacobson Roehampton University London, England
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Book Reviews Mara H. Benjamin. Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xi, 209 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990079
Many scholars claim to have found different keys that unlock the underlying system of Franz Rosenzweig’s imposing “everything work,” the Star of Redemption. However, too much emphasis has been placed on this canonical work of German Jewish thought. Mara H. Benjamin brushes against the grain of much Rosenzweig scholarship by viewing the Star as an “early, even immature experiment rather than a crowning achievement” (20). At the heart of Rosenzweig’s developing religious thought, Benjamin argues, is the Bible. Rosenzweig’s thinking about the relationship between “revelation and scripture acquired a sharper edge in his later writings.” The Hebrew scriptures became “a gateway to revelation” and “provided the Archimedean point from which he would define a new politics of Jewish life within Germany” (106). Benjamin adroitly navigates her way through all of the shifting nuances about how Rosenzweig thought about the Bible. The famed Bible translation project that Rosenzweig undertook with Martin Buber is the most tangible example of Rosenzweig’s sustained project of recasting and “rewriting” the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, as Benjamin demonstrates, Rosenzweig viewed the Bible project as a vehicle for transforming what the Bible meant in postwar German language, culture, and religion. The aspirations here were simultaneously Jewish and universal, and it might make more sense to talk about Luther’s Bible versus Rosenzweig’s, rather than Protestant and Jewish bibles. And in Benjamin’s fascinating account, we learn how Rosenzweig partially overcame his dependency on Luther’s translation by establishing a new German Bible steeped in the authentic and uncanny aura of its Hebraic revelation. Although Rosenzweig drew on the confident energy of his collaborator Martin Buber, he also worked within a larger Christian discussion regarding biblical hermeneutics that could be found in the radical theological journal Zwischen den Zeiten. Liberal Protestant intimates such as Eugen and Margrit (“Gritli”) Rosenstock-Huessy also provided Rosenzweig with much feedback on his developing notions of the significance of the biblical word. The common problem these thinkers approached related to ways in which the Bible had became all too human, all too familiar, and all too irrelevant for the individual of the early twentieth century. Rosenzweig certainly did not aim to come up with a beautiful and smooth German translation; Luther had already accomplished this. The Bible’s unitary character remained crucial if it was to retain or acquire the sacred aura. He thus carefully elided issues of authorship and redaction, instead concentrating on recapturing the oral character the text had had in premodern Jewish communities when it was authoritative. While early rabbinic texts simultaneously reinforced and yet subverted the authority of the biblical text, Rosenzweig admired how Torah became transposed for new generations as both authentic and authoritative. Rosenzweig similarly sought to transpose or “rewrite” the Bible for his contemporaries. Just as Luther utilized the hermeneutic principle of sola scriptura (the scripture alone) to wrest away the church’s authoritative stranglehold of the
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Book Reviews Bible, so, too, did Rosenzweig, but the latter did so in order to re-Judaize the German Bible. Rosenzweig was most hesitant to stray from Luther’s decisive effort (111), but he eventually grew determined to wrest the Bible away from Luther’s imprint by deploying a number of distinctive elements, ranging from a sparse page layout, font selection, a deliberate use of repetition, and the invention of new German words that captured the Hebrew root or conveyed a visceral or stilted character. These devices served to defamiliarize biblical language and underscore the primordial uniqueness of the Hebraic origins of the German. He and Buber also brought to the fore the Leitworte (theme words) that clued the reader as listener into the thematic thread which runs a particular section. Moreover, they tried to recreate an audience who would hear the revelatory words of scripture by dividing the prose into breath-length units (colometry). All of these translation devices and strategies shared the goal of defamiliarizing the Bible. The Buber–Rosenzweig Bible is thus marked by a distinctive and controversial religious aesthetic, one that has aptly been called “archaism as modernism.”1 Rosenzweig contended with other legacies besides Luther’s decisive shaping of the Bible for modern Germans. Spinoza’s radicalization of Luther’s principle of sola scriptura had a decisive effect in the historicization and secularization of the Bible—regarding it as a text to be read and studied as any other human artifice. And even though Spinoza sought to effectively demolish a suprahistorical acceptance of scripture as divine truth, Rosenzweig was nevertheless attracted to an imputed Hebraic existential core. He surprisingly praised Jakob Klatzkin’s 1924 Hebrew translation of the Ethics (concurring with Klatzkin’s own judgment), noting that the inventive Hebrew translation more clearly expressed Spinoza’s thought than the original Latin.2 This striking appraisal points to Rosenzweig’s inclusive view of postbiblical Hebrew sources, which he utilized for his project. But his judgment about Spinoza’s secret Hebrew character betrays a slip into a “jargon of authenticity,” a discourse that couches much of his thinking about scripture and revelation. Benjamin’s book provides a new window onto Rosenzweig’s religious thought. For example, Rosenzweig’s project of grounding thought in speech, which he called Sprachdenken (speech-thinking), becomes something quite different when we see Rosenzweig interested in biblical speech, not ordinary speech. And even though Benjamin diminishes the relative significance of the Star in Rosenzweig’s overall religious development, she nevertheless provocatively lays out her own interpretation of the Star as anchored in the problem of biblical speech; concerns about ethics arise only as a tertiary issue. While Rosenzweig’s thinking about the Bible and translation undoubtedly became more sophisticated as he achieved a fuller understanding of medieval and biblical Hebrew during the 1920s, the Star nevertheless remains an 1. Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 239ff. 2. Rosenzweig’s review of Klatzkin’s Torat ha-Middot can be found in Franz Rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Schocken, 1937), 220–27. It also appears in English in Nahum N. Glatzer, ed., Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken, 1953), 263–71.
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Book Reviews extraordinary work of philosophy, theology, and poetry. Still, Benjamin demonstrates why Rosenzweig’s projects mattered to him and still have contemporary relevance; at the same time, she lets her reader know where Rosenzweig is inconsistent, strategically disingenuous, or simply less than compelling. As a scholar of modern Jewish thought, she acknowledges other scholars who have walked similar paths, whether as historians, philosophers, or social theorists. Steeped in religious studies more generally, Benjamin also provides relevant debates regarding comparative scriptural studies, canon formation, and a whole host of complex minefields. This work should certainly be read by anyone who is interested in the central role that all things biblical have played in modern theological discussions, and Jewish theology in particular. Eugene R. Sheppard Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts
• • • Henry Levin Goldschmidt. The Legacy of German Jewry. Trans. David Suchoff, with an introduction by Willi Goetschel and David Suchoff. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. 265 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990080
In a 1915 essay, Hermann Cohen declared that in light of the achievements of German Jewry, “any Jew of the West must, in addition to being loyal to his political fatherland, acknowledge, love and revere Germany.” After the Shoah, a Jewish “love of Germany” is difficult to fathom. But what about Cohen’s more basic point, namely, that the achievements of German Jewry should serve as a guiding example to Jews facing the challenges of modernization in the West? Again, the Shoah casts doubt on this claim. It is one thing to admire the remarkable cultural achievements of modern German Jews, but to say that the experience of this community provides a paradigm for how Jews confront modern conditions seems almost absurd in historical hindsight. And yet, even with the benefit of such hindsight, this is precisely the argument that Henry Levin Goldschmidt makes in The Legacy of German Jewry, originally published in 1957. Now available in English for the first time in a translation by David Suchoff with an enlightening introduction by Suchoff and Willi Goetschel, The Legacy of German Jewry offers a fresh opportunity not only to consider the achievements of German Jewry but also to show how contemporary Jews and students of the modern Jewish experience view those achievements. Goldschmidt’s argument for the significance of German Jewry’s achievements owes a great deal to the work of Cohen and Cohen’s Jewish disciples, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Born into an assimilated German Jewish family in 1914, Goldschmidt escaped in 1938 to Zurich, where he would begin his career as a philosopher and advocate for adult Jewish learning, founding a
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Book Reviews extraordinary work of philosophy, theology, and poetry. Still, Benjamin demonstrates why Rosenzweig’s projects mattered to him and still have contemporary relevance; at the same time, she lets her reader know where Rosenzweig is inconsistent, strategically disingenuous, or simply less than compelling. As a scholar of modern Jewish thought, she acknowledges other scholars who have walked similar paths, whether as historians, philosophers, or social theorists. Steeped in religious studies more generally, Benjamin also provides relevant debates regarding comparative scriptural studies, canon formation, and a whole host of complex minefields. This work should certainly be read by anyone who is interested in the central role that all things biblical have played in modern theological discussions, and Jewish theology in particular. Eugene R. Sheppard Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts
• • • Henry Levin Goldschmidt. The Legacy of German Jewry. Trans. David Suchoff, with an introduction by Willi Goetschel and David Suchoff. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. 265 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990080
In a 1915 essay, Hermann Cohen declared that in light of the achievements of German Jewry, “any Jew of the West must, in addition to being loyal to his political fatherland, acknowledge, love and revere Germany.” After the Shoah, a Jewish “love of Germany” is difficult to fathom. But what about Cohen’s more basic point, namely, that the achievements of German Jewry should serve as a guiding example to Jews facing the challenges of modernization in the West? Again, the Shoah casts doubt on this claim. It is one thing to admire the remarkable cultural achievements of modern German Jews, but to say that the experience of this community provides a paradigm for how Jews confront modern conditions seems almost absurd in historical hindsight. And yet, even with the benefit of such hindsight, this is precisely the argument that Henry Levin Goldschmidt makes in The Legacy of German Jewry, originally published in 1957. Now available in English for the first time in a translation by David Suchoff with an enlightening introduction by Suchoff and Willi Goetschel, The Legacy of German Jewry offers a fresh opportunity not only to consider the achievements of German Jewry but also to show how contemporary Jews and students of the modern Jewish experience view those achievements. Goldschmidt’s argument for the significance of German Jewry’s achievements owes a great deal to the work of Cohen and Cohen’s Jewish disciples, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Born into an assimilated German Jewish family in 1914, Goldschmidt escaped in 1938 to Zurich, where he would begin his career as a philosopher and advocate for adult Jewish learning, founding a
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Book Reviews Lehrhaus after the war, modeled on Buber and Rosenzweig’s institution of the same name. As Suchoff and Goetschel explain, Goldschmidt’s philosophical work develops the notion of dialogue as a principle of cultural and historical development. In The Legacy of German Jewry, Goldschmidt develops this insight in a way that anticipates contemporary arguments about the value of multiculturalism. This work is best understood not as intellectual or social history but as philosophical history. Goldschmidt argues that the achievements of German Jewry reflect an ancient Jewish approach to cultural interaction and exchange. The experience of the Jewish people since the Babylonian exile, he claims, reveals a pattern of cultural integration in which Jews contribute to world civilizations both by absorbing the achievements of foreign cultures and by maintaining cultural distinctiveness. The biblical paradigm for this Jewish experience is Jeremiah, who counseled the Judean exiles to “seek the peace of the city” in which they lived. This dialogical process of cultural integration contains two steps: “outer development,” in which Jews assert their political and cultural rights within a majority culture, and “inner development,” in which Jews turn to their own tradition and interpret it in light of modern knowledge and culture. Jews are the original multiculturalists in that they insist both on maintaining their cultural distinctiveness and on the value of cultural exchange. Goldschmidt’s philosophy of history also contains a messianic element, as he argues that this Jewish pattern of cultural exchange and integration represents Judaism’s unique contribution to the universal redemption of humanity. The Jewish national experience in ancient Israel, he notes, was the integration of twelve tribes into one unified national family. This internal pattern of integration models the messianic hope for all nations to join as one family, maintaining their differences but united in purpose nonetheless. What makes the German Jewish experience so important is that it demonstrated the intense efforts of Jews to achieve inner and outer development in the spirit of this universal messianic project. Thus, Goldschmidt understands Moses Mendelssohn’s embrace of German culture and his subsequent argument for a German–Jewish synthesis as an expression of a longestablished Jewish cultural strategy and messianic longing. On Goldschmidt’s account, this process of cultural interaction is not a Jewish capitulation to majority culture, but a genuine dialogical encounter that affirms the dignity of both participants. Moreover, because true freedom and enlightenment depend on this kind of cultural exchange, the universal aspirations of Western culture turn out to depend on the very “sources of Judaism” the West had despised. The cultural interaction and exchange modeled by Jews since their first exile holds the key to all cultural vitality. This view leads Goldschmidt to the startling conclusion that only those Jewish writers and artists who embraced their heritage were able to realize their full potential. This category is somewhat broad for Goldschmidt, perhaps controversially so, as it includes writers such as Heine and Kafka, the former of whom converted. Goldschmidt’s argument turns on the fact that even these writers did not succumb to the pathology of Jewish self-hatred (Heine only converted for the benefits, Goldschmidt thinks), which Goldschmidt defines as the attempt to deny altogether one’s cultural heritage and the potential contribution it could make to a life of the spirit.
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Book Reviews Goldschmidt attempts to capture the totality of the cultural, intellectual, and political achievements of German Jewry by considering particular spheres of activity, such as literature or politics, and significant figures, such as Moses Mendelssohn or Theodor Herzl, in thematic chapters. But the book is neither a survey nor an introduction. Goldschmidt’s effort to capture the whole by considering all its parts is to a large degree an act of memory. In some chapters, we find long lists of names of cultural figures and their achievements. This does not always make for compelling reading, but these lists recall the contemporary custom of reading the names of Shoah victims. The recitation of name after name has a numbing effect: we cannot possibly comprehend the lives lost or the cultural vitality that was destroyed. In one of the book’s last chapters, Goldschmidt looks to the biblical paradigm of Job to understand the suffering of German and European Jews in the Nazi genocide, and here, too, his philosophy of history guides his response to suffering. While some now look at German Jewry’s loyalty to their adopted homeland as a kind of grand delusion and a loss of Jewish self, for Goldschmidt, this loyalty was the highest expression of Jewish messianic consciousness, which only serves to underscore the injustice of the Shoah. The trauma of the Holocaust was not just the murder of innocents but the breaking of faith between the German and Jewish peoples. Although Goldschmidt acknowledges that too many German Jews were misguided by their love of Germany to realize what was happening in the early years of the Nazi regime, he refuses to become one of Job’s false friends and blame the victim. Goldschmidt follows others in viewing modern antisemitism as an outgrowth of chauvinistic nationalism, but in his account, antisemitism was not just a response to the perceived threat of a Jewish minority, but, more importantly, a response to the threat of Judaism’s teachings that cultural exchange would usher in human freedom. Like Job, the Jews of Germany suffered for being committed to their ideals. And like Job, Goldschmidt insists that the suffering is unjust. The strength of Goldschmidt’s argument for using German Jewry as a model for Jewish modernization turns on his ability to separate the aspirations of the victims to be loyal Germans from the response they received. Seen this way, the American Jewish project and the German Jewish project look remarkably similar, and Hermann Cohen’s love of Germany was not that different from the widespread Jewish love of America. Goldschmidt’s call to consider the ways in which the project of German Jewry lives on after its destruction will, of course, be enormously valuable for understanding the continued existence of a Jewish community in Germany today. But it should also draw our attention to the ways in which German Jewry lives on in many modern Jewish communities both in Israel and the Diaspora. William Plevan Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey
• • • 416
Book Reviews Martin Samuel Cohen. The Boy on the Door on the Ox: An Unusual Spiritual Journey through the Strangest Jewish Texts. New York: Aviv Press, 2008. 314 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990109
Martin Samuel Cohen’s writing career is remarkable for its range of topics and genres. The author of a scholarly monograph on early rabbinic visionary texts of the shi’ur qomah tradition and a remarkably original translation and commentary on the Psalter, he is also a novelist, essayist, literary editor, and composer of liturgies for the synagogue whose pulpit he occupies in suburban Long Island. In the present work, he offers a genre-defying literary and theological homage to the foundational document of the rabbinic legal tradition. The “strangest Jewish texts” of the book’s subtitle are none other than the twelve tractates of the Mishnah’s Order of Purities (Seder Tohorot). The “spiritual journey” on which Cohen takes his readers is a hike through some of the most arcane topics of the halakhic system of the Tannaim. These laws govern how people, foods, and useful everyday objects—such as stoves, ovens, cattle prods, Hawaiian shirts (OK, Sidonian togas), and sieves—contract tum’ah, a form of intangible yet virulent contagion conveyed by corpses, menstruants, parturients, gonorrheacs, and those suffering a rash (żara’at) rather more troublesome than “the heartbreak of psoriasis.” Each of Cohen’s twelve chapters is devoted to an anonymous “spiritual guide” whom he discerns hiding in the shadows of an obscure mishnaic legal dilemma, silently pointing by his or her mute presence to the larger lesson about the life of the spirit that the compilers of the Mishnah (in Cohen’s view) conjured that very soul to embody. One of these mysterious psychopomps is “the boy on the door on the ox” of the book’s title. He makes his fleeting mishnaic debut (and curtain call) in Tractate Parah 3:2–4. There, the Mishnah illustrates the lengths to which participants in the rabbinic version of the Rite of the Red Cow (Numbers 19:1ff.) are preserved in a state of physical isolation from corpse contamination so that they may ensure the production of a purifying detergent made of the ashes of a red cow and water. “The boy,” raised since infancy in a Temple apartment isolated from all possible impurity, sits on a door tied to the back of an ox as he is conveyed to the pool of Shiloach. There, perched (according to at least one mishnaic Tanna) on the door to prevent himself from inadvertent pollution derived from a corpse that may have become buried in the waters, he draws water into stone vessels for use in the ceremony. Let us review the text in Cohen’s own free translation/paraphrase: There were once courtyards in Jerusalem that were built on bedrock, but which also had beneath them hollow space of the kind able to protect against the kind of impurity associated with unknown graves sunk deep in the earth. To this place would be brought pregnant women, who would then give birth and raise their sons there. Eventually, oxen bearing doors on their backs would be produced, and the boys would ride atop the doors holding cups made of stone in their hands. When they would come to the Siloam spring, they would climb down and fill up the cups, then climb back
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Book Reviews up and sit again atop the ox. Rabbi Yossi is of the opinion that they would lower the cups on ropes without actually descending themselves. (296)
Cohen’s explication of “the boy’s” significance in the context of the Mishnah’s system is itself a marvelous example of “guiding.” In Cohen’s view, this completely pure child is a kind of metaphor for the virtue of “spiritual audacity” that, in his opinion, runs through the entire rabbinic tractate on the Red Cow. To disclose in a review just how Cohen brings his reader through various dimensions of the Mishnah’s meaning, including his own state of mind when he first encountered this particular psychopomp in the course of his studies, would be akin to tipping off in a review the ending of a movie thriller. Suffice it to say that “the boy” caught Cohen’s eye in a chance moment of mishnaic study while Cohen was recovering from the dislocations of a cross-country move from one pulpit in California to his present one on Long Island. Cohen’s commentary weaves this autobiographical moment of (self-) discovery into an uncluttered, elegant, and witty prose narrative, expertly mediating for the reader the main exegetical options exposed by earlier generations of the Mishnah’s rabbinic readers as well as more recent historical discussions, and effectively seducing the reader into affirming Cohen’s utterly idiosyncratic opinion that this particular psychopomp has come to teach the rabbinic virtue of “spiritual audacity.” Namely, [The Rabbis] make it perfectly clear that the point of their creative work was not to suggest that they felt justified in relating to the word of God casually, but just the contrary: to show that they took the word of Scripture totally seriously by interpreting it as they saw fit. And so they enacted this long list of incredibly exaggerated legal requirements [including, among others, the entire concept of children raised in purity to ride on door-laden oxen] precisely to underscore their insistence on their own right to interpret the law according to their own lights in sync with their own sense of the innermost meaning of Scripture. (124)
In this, as in each chapter, Cohen’s goal is not to isolate the historical or halakhic peshat of the Mishnah, but rather to enable the simple sense of the Mishnah to launch the reader into the moral world of the system of purities that emerges in and through the halakhic details. As the microscope’s lens discloses a cosmos in a drop of water, Cohen’s literary style discloses a host of contemporary spiritual preoccupations lurking in the Mishnah’s laconic accounts of the rabbinic law as it stood in the late Roman era. This book is not pitched to an “academic rabbinic studies” audience in any sense, although the author, trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, clearly is in touch with up-to-date rabbinics scholarship of both the traditional and the academic variety. But it is a fresh and virtually unique essay in constructive Jewish theology that should engage the attention of anyone who is involved in the academic world of contemporary Jewish studies. As in his commentary on the Psalter, Cohen presents his texts in ways that startle the
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Book Reviews attentive reader into considering the world of the text as somehow more real than one’s own. The value of Cohen’s book for nonacademic readers lies in his ability to turn the most obscure (and, it must be said, at times unappetizing) halakhic problems into a platform for launching flights of literary artistry and religious insight of the most unsuspected kinds. He finds in the dankest corners of halakhic curiosity— such as the ancient notion, adopted by the rabbis by way of Galen, that male semen is produced in the brain—food for thought that nourishes daring explorations of the meaning of seeking the divine in a world constantly suffering the existential assaults of death and disease. Cohen’s reading of the Mishnah may indeed be idiosyncratic and personalistic, but his hermeneutic is not arbitrary or willful; rather, it is humbled by immense respect for the mishnaic text as a tutorial voice to which the reader is invited to respond in full hermeneutical openness. His explications of the lessons learned from each of the Mishnah’s twelve psychopomps at times appear only loosely linked to a literal reading of the Mishnah; at times they are audacious in their assertions. But they are always thoughtful, provocative, and engaging. It is not too much to say that in Cohen, American Judaism has produced a union of poetic sensibility, theological vision, and religious sensitivity the likes of which have not been seen since the heyday of Abraham Joshua Heschel. I enthusiastically recommend this book as a text in advanced classes on contemporary meta-halakhic reflection, to anyone who is curious about contemporary Jewish theology and religious thought, as well as for readers who are simply in love with and curious about rabbinic texts and their interpretation. Martin S. Jaffee University of Washington Seattle, Washington
• • • Michael L. Morgan. Discovering Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xxi, 504 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990237
Michael L. Morgan’s Discovering Levinas very admirably situates Levinas’s work in historical and philosophical context—and provides us with lucid restatements of such key issues in Levinas scholarship as his relationship to phenomenology, his understanding of God, his relationship to contemporary moral philosophy, and how he comprehends Judaism. It is a rich and rewarding book. Morgan charts a commonsensical path through the labyrinthine Levinasian corpus that attempts to place Levinas in the most charitable light possible by allaying anxieties about what might appear to be problematic aspects of his thought. One could say that Morgan touches all of the right bases in his presentation of
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Book Reviews attentive reader into considering the world of the text as somehow more real than one’s own. The value of Cohen’s book for nonacademic readers lies in his ability to turn the most obscure (and, it must be said, at times unappetizing) halakhic problems into a platform for launching flights of literary artistry and religious insight of the most unsuspected kinds. He finds in the dankest corners of halakhic curiosity— such as the ancient notion, adopted by the rabbis by way of Galen, that male semen is produced in the brain—food for thought that nourishes daring explorations of the meaning of seeking the divine in a world constantly suffering the existential assaults of death and disease. Cohen’s reading of the Mishnah may indeed be idiosyncratic and personalistic, but his hermeneutic is not arbitrary or willful; rather, it is humbled by immense respect for the mishnaic text as a tutorial voice to which the reader is invited to respond in full hermeneutical openness. His explications of the lessons learned from each of the Mishnah’s twelve psychopomps at times appear only loosely linked to a literal reading of the Mishnah; at times they are audacious in their assertions. But they are always thoughtful, provocative, and engaging. It is not too much to say that in Cohen, American Judaism has produced a union of poetic sensibility, theological vision, and religious sensitivity the likes of which have not been seen since the heyday of Abraham Joshua Heschel. I enthusiastically recommend this book as a text in advanced classes on contemporary meta-halakhic reflection, to anyone who is curious about contemporary Jewish theology and religious thought, as well as for readers who are simply in love with and curious about rabbinic texts and their interpretation. Martin S. Jaffee University of Washington Seattle, Washington
• • • Michael L. Morgan. Discovering Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xxi, 504 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990237
Michael L. Morgan’s Discovering Levinas very admirably situates Levinas’s work in historical and philosophical context—and provides us with lucid restatements of such key issues in Levinas scholarship as his relationship to phenomenology, his understanding of God, his relationship to contemporary moral philosophy, and how he comprehends Judaism. It is a rich and rewarding book. Morgan charts a commonsensical path through the labyrinthine Levinasian corpus that attempts to place Levinas in the most charitable light possible by allaying anxieties about what might appear to be problematic aspects of his thought. One could say that Morgan touches all of the right bases in his presentation of
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Book Reviews Levinas’s thought—but he does not interconnect his discussion of them tightly enough to notice some of the devastating impact that results for Levinasian thought from this pursuit of interconnections, and to mobilize textual strategies to overcome it. Levinas defines the ethical stance in terms of “a passivity prior to activity and prior to freedom” (155). He uses a variety of terms, such as “substitution,” “incarnation,” “responsibility,” “obsession,” “hostage,” “accusation,” “persecution,” “subjection,” and “proximity” to suggest “that the self is passive, obligated, and burdened, prior to being free and active—that, in a sense, the self is object before it is subject” (155). Morgan seeks to redeem the extreme, bizarre character of this formulation by proposing that “we think of the self as passivity as a transcendental condition … for meaningful human life, for the ordinary and the everyday as the fabric of social, intersubjective, and interactive human experience. Ethics is the metaphysics of meaningful human existence” (158–59). In his major work, Otherwise than Being, Levinas is especially attentive to what he considers to be the problem of “the third party”—how our being dominated by the absolute demands of the other takes place against the background of the coexistence of multiple others with their heterogeneous claims on us and the inadequacy of the psychological and material resources at any individual human being’s disposal for appropriately ethically dealing with all of them. Levinas acknowledges that “the third party [i.e., persons other than any particular one you are engaged with or related to] isn’t there by accident. In a sense, all the others are present in the face of the other.”1 The awareness of the presence of the third party for Levinas constitutes the Greek phase of Western moral development (340), which renders conceptualization, generalization, theorizing, and comparative assessment and judgment necessary in all arenas of human deliberation, including the ethical. The “third party” also places moral dilemmas (how to preserve the oneness of the one in the face of the plurality of many ones) at the very heart of the moral enterprise. Morgan rightly says that “these [dilemmas] are not challenges to his [Levinas’s] ethical insight but rather part of the process of coping with it and living with our realization of it” (418). “Ultimately, then,” according to Morgan’s reading, “Levinas hopes for a kind of utopia, the ground for which is a permanent, deep feature of all human existence” (25). As against Morgan, one could argue that “passivity as a transcendental condition for ethics” merely pushes the question of how to make sense of Levinas one stage back, without firmly resolving it. Subordination of one’s interests and concerns to those of the other could just as easily and validly be nurtured by metaphors of distance as they are by metaphors evocative of overwhelming proximity. If the other is irredeemably separate and distinct from me, then I also cannot legitimately transform him into a means toward my ends. The affirmation (and even the priority of the other, barring cogent countervailing considerations on my part) can just as convincingly be predicated on metaphors of distance as upon
1. Levinas, Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jill Robbins (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 168; quoted in Morgan, 24 n. 73.
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Book Reviews metaphors of total closeness and identification. In fact, Morgan concedes as much when he discusses how Levinas conceives of ma’asei mitzvah (conformity to divine commandments) in general and ritual acts in particular in Judaism: “Such ritual acts, which help train Jews to acknowledge otherness and thus to recognize one’s responsibility to others, do so by occurring in nature by setting up a ‘distance’ between the Jew and God as other. Ritual acts, that is, are part of the mythology of theology; they deal with Jews and God, but what they accomplish is a first step in the process of education that leads to the acknowledgment of the face of the other person” (378). What I suggest ought to be considered is that perhaps the transcendental condition of rabbinic Judaism is the opposite of the transcendental condition of Levinasian ethics—which is to say, one needs a more probing exploration of the interconnections subsisting between two topics that Morgan discusses (transcendental philosophy and Levinas in Chap. 2 and rabbinic ethics and Levinas in Chap. 11) than the one that Morgan provides. Levinas’s ethics of substitution could be appropriately regarded as a Jewish ethics if in fact a cogent linkage could be shown to exist between Jewish humility and Christian passivity. In my view, the two virtues are deeply antagonistic. A good textual locus for capturing the momentous differences that are at stake between them is Aphorism 515 of Pascal’s Pensées: “Romans iii, 27. Boasting is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by faith. Then faith is not within our power like the deeds of the law, and it is given to us in another way.” Paul and Pascal emphasize an intimate conceptual bond that they take to exist between a religion that emphasizes justification by faith (Christianity) and humility, and a religion that focuses on justification by works (Judaism) and boasting. From their point of view, a religion that is pivoted on faith and denigrates works because it is so utterly God dependent induces humility. By contrast, a religion that assigns important theological space to human works (ma’assei mitzvah) creates unending occasions for boasting and the assertion of human pride. From the negative theological perspective that Levinas endorses—one that emphasizes that we can only say what God is not, but not what he is, that, in effect, the whole divine vocabulary remains irredeemably metaphoric—one could say that Paul and Pascal have got it all wrong. Judaism assigns a central role to human doing in carving out the man–God relationship because of God’s utter transcendence. The human community must assent to the idea of God and fashion a way of life that is geared toward acknowledging and serving him because, otherwise, the idea of God would be an unsustainable and untranslatable abstraction. The stress on deeds is itself a dramatization of our humility—of our hankering for an infinite dimension in our explanatory quests that we are then (because of its very unbridgeable metaphysical distance from us) unable to assimilate into our regular experience. The idea of God represents a limit to human rationality—and we structure a way of life centering around mitzvot to serve him and to worship him as an extended gesture toward integrating our awareness of and grappling with our limitations into an ongoing fabric of life. By contrast, Christianity’s characterization of itself as committed to salvation through faith transforms humility into passivity before God as the supreme
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Book Reviews virtue. In many respects, passivity constitutes the antithesis of humility—and, indeed, in its refusal to assign positive importance to deeds, represents a species of arrogance. Humility confronts a jarring issue of reflexivity that makes it akin to skepticism. The practicing skeptic who questions everything already knows more (that everything is vulnerable to questioning) than his skepticism warrants him to know. Analogously, self-consciously pursuing humility, critically assessing whether one is succeeding in cultivating it, and finally being able to acknowledge that it is within one’s repertoire of moral virtues all foster a sense of pride concerning one’s humility, which undermines the content of the virtue. To be a self-aware practitioner of humility is already to have forfeited the virtue. Morgan devotes a good deal of attention to considering the role of skepticism in Levinas’s thought. In addition to addressing the question of the role of skepticism in Levinas’s argument in Otherwise than Being (305–13), he elaborates in two whole chapters (Chap. 6 and Chap. 9), taking Levinas to belong in relation to contemporary debates in moral philosophy between the moral realists and the antirealists (whether they be relativists, naturalists, or constructivists). The textual evidence with regard to this central question is ambiguous and complex. Drawing the lines of interconnection between Levinas’s Jewish (rabbinic) selfidentifications and questions pertaining to objectivity and subjectivity in moral judgment more tightly might have nudged Morgan to assign greater weight to the following considerations: Is moral realism the only route to take to get to ethics as first philosophy? Cannot skepticism and ethical constructivism accomplish the same result at a far lower level of ontological commitment? Why is ethical realism necessary in order to make the case for the primacy of the face —the absolute demand of the other over me? Does not a more pragmatic basis for this commitment yield the ultimately more powerful position because it is contingent on being able to show that the moral realist cannot do better than the moral pragmatist in coming up with a set of assumptions and a structure of argument that will exhibit the enduring nature of moral principles? This negative route might be the most we can traverse in moral argument—and this position might be part of the latent content of Levinas’s thought. In the Talmud’s delineation of the virtue of humility in its famous story about Hillel (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 30b–31a), who refused to be ruffled by the provocative heathen who came to him in a series of visits on the eve of the Sabbath to ask a whole host of nonsensical questions and who in the end proclaims that he lost a huge amount of money in a bet that he would be able to upset Hillel, a more coherent and consistent reading of the virtue of humility emerges that has its analogues with regard to skepticism. Hillel responds to the heathen’s cry of despair at his equanimity by saying that it would have been worth that the heathen should lose a lot more money and Hillel should not lose his balance and composure. In other words, given the way in which the virtue of humility militates against its own realization, the only way that it becomes humanly accessible, albeit in an adulterated, secondary form, is through the manifestation of egoistic pride. Hillel’s pride in being able to sustain an even-tempered, inner-directed and inner-controlled disposition nurtures his humble stance in relation to the menacing, gratuitously intrusive heathen. Humility is a willfully
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Book Reviews fabricated external mask engendered by a self that is endlessly devoted to continuing calculations and manipulations that will exalt it in its own eyes. Humility forms a limit and a boundary of the self driven to its self-cultivation and self-transcendence (which turns out to be just one further stage in its self-cultivation). Christianity seeks to eviscerate the taint of human selfhood, both in terms of how it theorizes the human approach to God and how it conceives of our relationship to others and to ourselves. The metaphors of God the son and the incarnation are supposed to conjure up the outpourings of grace and salvation from the divine side—dramatizing what is inconceivable and unattainable from the human side. Instead of God being a humble posit by a distraught humanity passionately grappling with its limitations, he constitutes an arrogantly fabricated disruption of our problematic human estate who presupposes the crushing of our humanity in the form of abject passivity before His saving and incomprehensible grace. Christian “humility” is achieved at the cost of a radical foreclosing of human groping and uncertainty. “Passivity,” by attempting to remove the taint of the self from humility, yields an unearned (arrogant) form of knowing passing itself off as a new form of knowing—namely, faith. I would argue that Levinasian ethics with its primary emphasis falling on passivity before, substitution for, and incarnation of the Other reshapes human ethics after the manner that Christianity reconfigures the man–God relation. A self whose enthrallment by the Other precedes its integration of itself—a self whose nurturance of its ego cannot proceed outside the context of thorough subordination to the other—bears even as metaphor and transcendental deduction very little direct affinity to generally understood ethical norms and forms of behavior. The overtaking of the self by the Other before there can even be a self means that none of the menus of traditional ethical virtues from thoughtfulness to charitableness has scope in which to operate. A self that already incarnates the Other does not have to engage in the usual processes of ethical deliberation and judgment before it can behave in ethically approved ways toward others. Just as Christian theology in glorifying passivity circumvents the self and its rational limitations and deposits God in our laps instead of having us struggle toward Him, so, too, Levinasian ethics in underscoring the ontological primacy of substitution for and incarnation of the Other, in effect, jettisons ethics by giving us the Other as a precondition of selfhood, instead of acknowledging him or her as a perennially elusive goal that we delicately, tenuously, and precariously strive for. By denying the infrastructure of the self, the metaphor of closeness sells us much shorter than the metaphor of distance with regard to both religion and ethics. In conclusion, I would like to say that Morgan’s book is still an important book, because in the clarity and comprehensiveness of its treatment of Levinas, it enables us to gauge how far we can travel by taking Levinas at face value. In Morgan’s reading, we are able to appreciate the full force of Levinas’s rhetoric, and to understand better than we would have without his help why it has such a gripping effect upon us. The question that I have sought to raise in this review is whether, on a deeper level of interpretation, one needs to perceive Levinas’s philosophy as diverging from his rhetoric in order to remain faithful to the
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Book Reviews Levinasian imperative of being maximally charitable toward him alongside all of our other human interlocutors. Aryeh Botwinick Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• • • Benjamin Lazier. God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. xiv, 254 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990249
Between the end of World War I and the outbreak of World War II, Christian and Jewish theologians became preoccupied with heresy. The postwar years saw a revival of two very old rebellions against a present and interventionist version of God: the heresy of Gnosticism, which banished God from the earth and pronounced that earth the creation of an evil “demiurge” or demon, and that of Spinozist pantheism, which made the world and God coextensive with one another. If these heresies had premodern origins, the Weimar theological preoccupation with them was an artifact of modernity, as the rapid transformation of cultural and political life, the decline of tradition, and, most especially, the bloodshed of the Great War forced theologians to inquire about God’s will and capacity for intervention. The project of Benjamin Lazier’s brilliant book is to explore the meanings of this interwar preoccupation with heresy, both in its interconfessional modes and as it appeared in German Jewish thought. Lazier follows three thinkers in particular —Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Gershom Scholem—and their writings become lenses through which he reconstructs their intellectual, political, and theological worlds. Lazier describes how the preoccupation with heresy effectively became a theological expression of the modern crisis of legitimacy and authority, and a sign of rising doubts about the increasing potential of human artifice. With so much attention recently lavished on Weimar Jewish thought, it is surprising that so little has been said about heresy during this period. Lazier’s pathbreaking book demonstrates that even as political life, social thought, and philosophy were radicalized during the Weimar years, so was theology, and those theological transformations cast very long shadows into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The new Gnosticism arose through the efforts of Protestant theologians, including the “crisis theologians” Friedrich Gogarten and Karl Barth, who promoted das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, “the gospel of an alien God.” Their gospel was a deliberate move away from earlier versions of liberal theology, which had kept God and the world close together and took social progress as a sign of divine approval. In contrast, Spinoza was often celebrated by Catholic theologians whose God, instead of fleeing the natural world, became coextensive
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Book Reviews Levinasian imperative of being maximally charitable toward him alongside all of our other human interlocutors. Aryeh Botwinick Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• • • Benjamin Lazier. God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. xiv, 254 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990249
Between the end of World War I and the outbreak of World War II, Christian and Jewish theologians became preoccupied with heresy. The postwar years saw a revival of two very old rebellions against a present and interventionist version of God: the heresy of Gnosticism, which banished God from the earth and pronounced that earth the creation of an evil “demiurge” or demon, and that of Spinozist pantheism, which made the world and God coextensive with one another. If these heresies had premodern origins, the Weimar theological preoccupation with them was an artifact of modernity, as the rapid transformation of cultural and political life, the decline of tradition, and, most especially, the bloodshed of the Great War forced theologians to inquire about God’s will and capacity for intervention. The project of Benjamin Lazier’s brilliant book is to explore the meanings of this interwar preoccupation with heresy, both in its interconfessional modes and as it appeared in German Jewish thought. Lazier follows three thinkers in particular —Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Gershom Scholem—and their writings become lenses through which he reconstructs their intellectual, political, and theological worlds. Lazier describes how the preoccupation with heresy effectively became a theological expression of the modern crisis of legitimacy and authority, and a sign of rising doubts about the increasing potential of human artifice. With so much attention recently lavished on Weimar Jewish thought, it is surprising that so little has been said about heresy during this period. Lazier’s pathbreaking book demonstrates that even as political life, social thought, and philosophy were radicalized during the Weimar years, so was theology, and those theological transformations cast very long shadows into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The new Gnosticism arose through the efforts of Protestant theologians, including the “crisis theologians” Friedrich Gogarten and Karl Barth, who promoted das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, “the gospel of an alien God.” Their gospel was a deliberate move away from earlier versions of liberal theology, which had kept God and the world close together and took social progress as a sign of divine approval. In contrast, Spinoza was often celebrated by Catholic theologians whose God, instead of fleeing the natural world, became coextensive
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Book Reviews with it. No matter how God was evacuated from the scene, however, it was the evacuation itself that was crucial, making it impossible either for God to judge man, or for man to judge God. However, in such a heretical world, human will and self-assertion were left exposed. With God no longer an immediate and potentially interventionist lawgiver, fresh doubts were raised about the proper scope and limits of human action. Many younger Jewish thinkers found both the Gnostic and Spinozist heresies fascinating, and adapted different versions of them for use in their rebellion against liberal forms of Judaism. The origins of Jonas’s, Strauss’s and Scholem’s thought are situated, for Lazier, in the heretical Weimar “interruption” of God. If this divine absence troubled these future titans of scholarship, it also became a crucial catalyst for their thinking. Lazier’s book will reward scholars of Jonas, Strauss, and Scholem, as well as newcomers to their works. His examination of Hans Jonas is especially valuable because Jonas, of all of his generation of German Jewish thinkers, may be the most unjustly ignored.1 Not only did Jonas make a significant philosophical contribution through his work on the philosophy of science and nature, but also his work on early Gnosticism has inspired generations of scholars. Perhaps Lazier’s most intriguing contribution to our understanding of Jonas lies in his challenge to Jonas’s own account of his intellectual development. As Jonas told his story, he began his scholarly career fascinated by theology and then turned to questions of biological life because of his life-and-death struggles as a soldier both in World War II and in Israel’s War of Independence. Lazier shows that, in fact, Jonas developed his interest in nature by first exploring the Gnostic condemnation of the natural world. Jonas effected a new, twentiethcentury “overcoming of Gnosticism” (Lazier borrows the phrase from the intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg, a crucial influence on God Interrupted) by rejecting the “gospel of an alien God” and exploring nature as a field of almost, though not quite, divine meaning. This overcoming of Gnosticism had important Jewish dimensions, for Jonas was a critic not only of the “Gnostic” (because hostile toward the flesh) theology of Paul—which he studied with his teacher Rudolf Bultmann—but also of the “Gnostic” existentialism of his other important teacher, Martin Heidegger. Celebrants and enemies of Leo Strauss usually read him as a follower of Plato who began his career with a strong interest in Judaism but ultimately made Nature rather than God into his “God-term” in his classic 1953 defense of natural right, Natural Right and History. Through a careful investigation of Strauss’s correspondence (including letters exchanged with both Jonas and Scholem), Lazier shows that this story is far too simplistic. In fact, Strauss’s ultimate turn to Nature should be understood as a continuation of his early search for an absent God. While there has been a proliferation in the literature on Strauss in recent years, including two excellent intellectual biographies by Eugene Sheppard and Daniel Tanguay, Lazier makes an original contribution by showing that
1. However, see also The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2007), reviewed by Eric Jacobsen in AJS Review 33, no. 1, 2009.
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Book Reviews despite Strauss’s avowed atheism, he nevertheless held Jewish categories to be enormously important. As Lazier shows, the language of God and the language of natural right were not in fact opposing languages for Strauss, but instead were dialects of the same language. Thus, Lazier not only makes a historical point about Strauss’s development, which Strauss scholars would do well to heed, but also shows that the distinction between religion and philosophy that Strauss maintained in all of his writings cannot be taken entirely at face value. Like Jonas, Strauss engaged with philosophy in ways that were shaped by the categories of Judaism and Jewish experience, and he worked toward the recovery of some version of physis—purposive nature—in order to effect the overcoming of the Gnostic impulse. Lazier also deserves praise for noting the importance of Strauss’s attitudes toward Epicureanism, which escapes most commentators. For Gershom Scholem, the scholar of Jewish heresies and committed Zionist, there was a direct link between the self-assertion of the heretic and the self-assertion of the modern Jewish people. Thus, there was indeed “Redemption through Sin,” of a sort (to cite the title of one of Scholem’s famous essays), for as Lazier writes, “[Heretics] could be mobilized in the service of a Jewish peoplehood understood as prior to religious creed or practice” (141). For Lazier, Scholem’s entire history of Jewish mysticism should be read as a conflict between Gnostic and pantheistic versions of heresy against Jewish law. It was the Kabbalah that enabled him to imagine these two heresies coexisting within one system of thought. The necessity of heresy, for Scholem, derived from its capacity to encourage the self-empowerment of the Jewish people. Indeed, so long as heretics remained within the compass of Judaism broadly considered— so long as their heresies augmented Judaism rather than breaking from it completely—they had to be considered a boon. Scholem’s history of the Jewish people can be understood, Lazier suggests, as though it were a kind of Golem mdash;an expression of the same self-creative impulses that fueled Scholem in his most Nietzschean and Zionist moments. Like the creation of a Golem, which in some legends emulates the divine act of creation, Scholem’s history flirted with heresy. Intriguingly, in his preface and epilogue, Lazier invokes a question asked by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition, effectively making her a spectral interlocutor of Jonas, Strauss, and Scholem: would the modern turn away from God be followed by a turn away from Nature? This was a worry for both Jonas and Strauss, for whom the autonomy and dignity of Nature stood as a check against the autonomy of man. Jonas, certainly, was as concerned about environmental heresy as about theological variations. He was troubled by any exercise of human will that ignored not only the divine as a source of limits and laws, but also the natural world as a source of limits and a phenomenon worthy of respect in and of itself. Lazier ends his book by suggesting that we may have no choice but to live in a world in which God is interrupted, but he also suggests that the natural world remains a “channel” through which the divine might yet speak to us. If the arguments Lazier chronicles may seem arcane—a collection of premodern heresies refracted through the lens of early twentieth-century German Jewish historical and theological scholarship—his concern about
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Book Reviews human assertion is strikingly relevant as biotechnology brings us closer and closer to determining our own biological telos and thus, perhaps, inventing new heresies. Ben Wurgaft University of California Berkeley, California
• • • MODERN JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY Phyllis Lassner and Lara Trubowitz, eds. Antisemitism and Philosemitism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Representing Jews, Jewishness, and Modern Culture. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008. 248 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990110
In Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, David Theo Goldberg maintains that one of the central paradoxes of modernity, “the irony perhaps,” is that “as modernity commits itself progressively to idealized principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as it increasingly insists upon the moral irrelevance of race, there is a multiplication of racial identities and the sets of exclusions they prompt and rationalize, enable and sustain.”1 Central to Goldberg’s argument is that liberal culture is not just an antidote to racism, but also often acts as one means by which racist expressions persist. The essays included in Phyllis Lassner and Lara Trubowitz’s timely and illuminating collection explore this irony in great detail. Although the two ideologies—Jew hatred and Jew love— are sometimes understood to be mutually exclusive or as signs of ambivalence toward Jewish people and culture, this collection makes a compelling case for considering how these positions often complement or sanction each other. In foregrounding philosemitism as both a subject of inquiry and a critical lens through which to read expressions of antisemitism, the essays in this collection will have broad appeal. The editors note in the introduction that their approach of mixing cultures, genres, nationalities, and time periods “will allow readers to compare the rhetorical effects of diverse, even ostensibly unrelated, instances of philosemitism, and to see how philosemitism and antisemitism are never discrete manifestations of a particular cultural and/or political movement, but rather engage and interweave images, myths, and ideas whose forms and meanings transform over centuries” (9–10). The insightful, well-connected eleven essays that follow the introduction argue persuasively for the importance of reading philosemitism as a distinct subject that may interact with strident antisemitism, but nonetheless has its own ideological underpinnings. 1. David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 6.
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Book Reviews human assertion is strikingly relevant as biotechnology brings us closer and closer to determining our own biological telos and thus, perhaps, inventing new heresies. Ben Wurgaft University of California Berkeley, California
• • • MODERN JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY Phyllis Lassner and Lara Trubowitz, eds. Antisemitism and Philosemitism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Representing Jews, Jewishness, and Modern Culture. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008. 248 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990110
In Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, David Theo Goldberg maintains that one of the central paradoxes of modernity, “the irony perhaps,” is that “as modernity commits itself progressively to idealized principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as it increasingly insists upon the moral irrelevance of race, there is a multiplication of racial identities and the sets of exclusions they prompt and rationalize, enable and sustain.”1 Central to Goldberg’s argument is that liberal culture is not just an antidote to racism, but also often acts as one means by which racist expressions persist. The essays included in Phyllis Lassner and Lara Trubowitz’s timely and illuminating collection explore this irony in great detail. Although the two ideologies—Jew hatred and Jew love— are sometimes understood to be mutually exclusive or as signs of ambivalence toward Jewish people and culture, this collection makes a compelling case for considering how these positions often complement or sanction each other. In foregrounding philosemitism as both a subject of inquiry and a critical lens through which to read expressions of antisemitism, the essays in this collection will have broad appeal. The editors note in the introduction that their approach of mixing cultures, genres, nationalities, and time periods “will allow readers to compare the rhetorical effects of diverse, even ostensibly unrelated, instances of philosemitism, and to see how philosemitism and antisemitism are never discrete manifestations of a particular cultural and/or political movement, but rather engage and interweave images, myths, and ideas whose forms and meanings transform over centuries” (9–10). The insightful, well-connected eleven essays that follow the introduction argue persuasively for the importance of reading philosemitism as a distinct subject that may interact with strident antisemitism, but nonetheless has its own ideological underpinnings. 1. David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 6.
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Book Reviews This collection has many merits; two, however, are particularly noteworthy. Until recently, studies of antisemitism traditionally searched for the source of hatred or cultural disease that fostered Jew hatred. Along these lines, studies by scholars such as Gavin Langmuir and Sander Gilman, among many others, have examined the profound and disturbing effects of hateful antisemitic expressions. In the 1990s, scholars began to approach this subject from a slightly different angle by foregrounding the varieties of Jewish or antisemitic representations. For example, in Constructions of “The Jew” in English Literature and Society, Bryan Cheyette explains that the “radical emptiness and lack of a fixed meaning in the construction of ‘semitic’ difference results in ‘the Jew’ being made to occupy an incommensurable number of subject positions which traverse a range of contradictory discourses.”2 More recently, Nadia Valman’s The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture recovers a legacy of philosemitic literature written by British women writers that sought to save idealized Jewesses from their threatening Jewish communities.3 Such studies have begun to open up a space for reading philosemitism as antisemitism’s accessory. And yet, although some studies like Valman’s have addressed the direct and complex connections between antisemitism and philosemitism in the cultural sphere, Lassner and Trubowitz are the first to foreground philosemitism as a primary agent in antisemitic rhetoric. A second important strength of this collection is the range of subjects it covers, testifying to the elasticity that marks philosemitic rhetoric from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. Read together, the essays suggest that philosemitism does more than just change shape over time; rather, it is engaged in a constant process of renewal and re-indoctrination. Thus, unlike antisemitism’s shock-and-awe tactics, Jew love frequently operates more discreetly, which makes it all the more difficult to point to or pin down. We know it exists, these essays argue, precisely because of its quiet logic that allows for, mingles with, or grows from its more strident accomplice, antisemitism. Following the introduction, the collection is divided into two sections. The first lays important cultural and theoretical groundwork for studying the history of the way scholars have understood antisemitism and philosemitism. This section includes an important discussion by Jonathan Judaken on the Frankfurt School and anti-antisemitism; Max Silverman’s illuminating essay that situates Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question juive “within the wider parameters of the modern construction of Jewish difference” (57); a coauthored essay by Seyla Benhabib and Raluca Eddon on Hannah Arendt’s cosmopolitanism; and Sander L. Gilman’s discussion of “the nature and form of Jewish intelligence by Islamic anti-Semitic discourse” (83), which builds from his earlier work, Smart Jews (1996), to read contemporary Islamic expressions of Jew hatred embedded in a discourse of Jewish intelligence.
2. Bryan Cheyette, “Constructions of ‘The Jew’ in English Literature and Society: Racial Representations, 1875–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 8. 3. Nadia Valman, The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
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Book Reviews The collection’s second section covers a range of topics on literature and the arts from around the globe, including Helene Meyers’s fascinating essay on Sandra Goldbacher’s film The Governess; Margaret D. Stetz’s comparison of the antisemitisms and gender tensions addressed in Arthur Symons’s short story “Esther Kahn” and Arnaud Desplechin’s 1999 film adaptation of that story; Lisa Marcus’s analysis of novel depictions recalling the “panic” among elite colleges and universities in early twentieth-century America that led to restrictions on the admission of Jewish students; and Jonathan Freedman’s brilliant essay on the Left Behind series, “the most popular series of books in contemporary America,” in which he argues that “despite, or perhaps even because of, their ostensible philosemitism, the basic narrative structures and figurative associations that have traditionally marked antisemitic discourse remain strikingly in place. Indeed, they are effectively reanimated, retrofitted for a seemingly tolerant, multicultural age” (156). Also included in this section is Kristin Bluemel’s exceptional essay “The Urban Geography of English Antisemitism and Assimilation: A Case Study,” which examines Betty Miller’s Farewell Leicester Square (1941), and Sara R. Horowitz’s equally important examination of interfaith marriage in philosemitic representations and Michel Tournier’s novel The Ogre. Murray Baumgarten’s powerful examination of the Chilean writer Marjorie Agosin stands as a fitting conclusion to this study. This collection argues for variety over fixity and ambivalence over unity in analyses of Jewish representations. Echoing Goldberg’s identification of that which is ironic in liberalism’s desire to be more inclusive and more tolerant, these essays show us how these “inconsistent, over determined, contradictory, and contextual relationships between artistic representations of Jews and their current and historical sites of production” (15) refuse to be contained or consistent. Antisemitism and Philosemitism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries is an important study that grounds and extends earlier work by Goldberg, Cheyette, Valman, and many others and, in the process, demonstrates how philosemitism has functioned, why it will not go away, and how we might read it as one mode of antisemitic discourse. The essays in this well-focused collection are thus a very welcome addition to the fields of cultural studies, literary studies, film studies, critical race discourse, and Jewish studies. Heidi Kaufman Department of English University of Delaware
• • • Julius Novick. Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. x, 189 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990092
For the past fifty years, Julius Novick has assessed American drama with insight and affection. In 1958, he began a thirty-year tenure as theater critic for
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Book Reviews The collection’s second section covers a range of topics on literature and the arts from around the globe, including Helene Meyers’s fascinating essay on Sandra Goldbacher’s film The Governess; Margaret D. Stetz’s comparison of the antisemitisms and gender tensions addressed in Arthur Symons’s short story “Esther Kahn” and Arnaud Desplechin’s 1999 film adaptation of that story; Lisa Marcus’s analysis of novel depictions recalling the “panic” among elite colleges and universities in early twentieth-century America that led to restrictions on the admission of Jewish students; and Jonathan Freedman’s brilliant essay on the Left Behind series, “the most popular series of books in contemporary America,” in which he argues that “despite, or perhaps even because of, their ostensible philosemitism, the basic narrative structures and figurative associations that have traditionally marked antisemitic discourse remain strikingly in place. Indeed, they are effectively reanimated, retrofitted for a seemingly tolerant, multicultural age” (156). Also included in this section is Kristin Bluemel’s exceptional essay “The Urban Geography of English Antisemitism and Assimilation: A Case Study,” which examines Betty Miller’s Farewell Leicester Square (1941), and Sara R. Horowitz’s equally important examination of interfaith marriage in philosemitic representations and Michel Tournier’s novel The Ogre. Murray Baumgarten’s powerful examination of the Chilean writer Marjorie Agosin stands as a fitting conclusion to this study. This collection argues for variety over fixity and ambivalence over unity in analyses of Jewish representations. Echoing Goldberg’s identification of that which is ironic in liberalism’s desire to be more inclusive and more tolerant, these essays show us how these “inconsistent, over determined, contradictory, and contextual relationships between artistic representations of Jews and their current and historical sites of production” (15) refuse to be contained or consistent. Antisemitism and Philosemitism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries is an important study that grounds and extends earlier work by Goldberg, Cheyette, Valman, and many others and, in the process, demonstrates how philosemitism has functioned, why it will not go away, and how we might read it as one mode of antisemitic discourse. The essays in this well-focused collection are thus a very welcome addition to the fields of cultural studies, literary studies, film studies, critical race discourse, and Jewish studies. Heidi Kaufman Department of English University of Delaware
• • • Julius Novick. Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. x, 189 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990092
For the past fifty years, Julius Novick has assessed American drama with insight and affection. In 1958, he began a thirty-year tenure as theater critic for
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Book Reviews the Village Voice, publishing reviews that earned him the Nathan Award for dramatic criticism. He has also discussed drama in dozens of other periodicals, including the Jewish Daily Forward, American Theatre, The Nation, New York Times, Threepenny Review, and Vogue. Novick has served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize drama jury and taught as a drama studies professor at several New York City universities. In 1968, he published his first book, Beyond Broadway: The Quest for Permanent Theatres, a field guide to American resident theaters outside New York and a call for the revitalization of those theaters. As an elegant marker of his fiftieth year critiquing American drama, Novick has published his second book, Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience. With Beyond Broadway and Beyond the Golden Door, Novick aims beyond his usual medium of journalism. With the latter work, he also aims beyond his usual audience of theatergoers and theater participants. Aside from a few scholarly articles, Novick has not written specifically for an academic audience. While Beyond Broadway suggests a practical argument to both theater professionals and the public, Beyond the Golden Door offers a survey of “significant plays by Jewish American dramatists, written in English and produced for general audiences … plays in which Jews take center stage” (3–4) for an academic readership. This survey spans the period from The Melting Pot (1908) by Israel Zangwill (the book’s only nonAmerican playwright), to Neil Simon’s Forty-Five Seconds from Broadway (2001), and concentrates on plays written in the decades after World War II, when Jewish Americans felt increasingly comfortable addressing Jewishness and when Jewish-themed plays proved marketable to general audiences (6). The argument of this book, unlike that of Beyond Broadway, is gentle: Novick regards Jewish American drama as an index of Jewish American concerns, and dwells on thirty-four plays to chart the evolution of these concerns. The grand preoccupation he observes is that of balancing Jewish with American identity. Novick writes, Certain themes keep recurring: the memory of persecution; the fear of the big Gentile world and the yearning to join it; generational conflict; upward social mobility; pride; shame; ambivalence; the counterpoint of outward success and inward disappointment; new American ways of being Jewish; the survival of Jewish identity among those indifferent to Jewish religious belief and religious observance; the diminution of Jewish identity over the generations. All these, like the spokes of a wheel, lead to and from the great subject of this Jewish American drama: the question of how (or whether) to be Jewish and American at the same time. (4)
As this list suggests, social and psychological themes dominate; rarely do the plays address religious conviction and practice. In the book’s introduction, Novick lays bare the premises he uses to explore these themes. He explains that he considers a character in a play Jewish if that character is regarded as such by others in the play or by the play’s audience (4). He prefers the term Jewish American to American Jewish because he intends a comparison with other Americans, not with other Jews (5). (Associating Jewish Americans with African Americans, Novick repeatedly
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Book Reviews refers to W. E. B. Du Bois’s statement from The Souls of Black Folk, “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.”) And he acknowledges that the book is not exhaustive (7). Still, Novick presents rather a sufficient sample of Jewish American plays that is both representative and eclectic: here are Awake and Sing! (1935) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964) alongside Welcome Stranger (1920) and Falsettos (1992); here are Gertrude Berg and Tony Kushner alongside Wendy Wasserstein and Jon Robin Baitz. The book’s first three of ten chapters narrate chronologically from The Melting Pot to Death of a Salesman (1949), after which chronology yields to arrangement by author (Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, Alfred Uhry), theme (prosperity, fathers and sons, daughters), and genre (the musical). An epilogue on Angels in America and the apparent decline of secular American Judaism somberly ties off the chapters. A useful series of notes, a play index, a playwright index, and a general index conclude the work. Novick summarizes each play with detail and clarity, and provides historical and biographical context to show how each play reflects its author’s milieu and life. The strongest chapters are those that sustain attention on a particular playwright, such as the chapter tracing Arthur Miller’s increasing ease with exploring his Jewishness onstage and the chapter pursuing Alfred Uhry’s portrayal of German Jewish American self-hatred. Striking observations, followed by propositions, proliferate. For instance, Novick comments on Samuel Raphaelson’s The Jazz Singer (1925): “Again and again in Jewish American plays, Americanization takes the form of rebellion against the family and against the Jewish community, of which the family is in some measure a microcosm. … Could these children be reenacting, in diminished form, the great leaving-home of their immigrant ancestors?” (18). And on Death of a Salesman, Novick writes, “The lack of specific ethnic markers is paralleled by a lack of specific chronological markers. … Does this make the play merely vague, inauthentic, ahistorical, or does it help the audience to believe that the process we are seeing is not the product of one historical moment, but a possibility over many decades, and even now? Whether the generalizing impulse is a fault or a virtue is an open question” (49). Compelling as these propositions are, they leave the reader wanting more. By posing a rhetorical question instead of a speculative answer, Novick departs from a topic just when it clamors for further analysis. While Death of a Salesman, like all art, can rest happily in ambiguity, academic criticism rests with less comfort. Novick’s book leaves a frustrating number of “open question[s],” without advancing contestable claims. His thesis—that Jewish American drama mirrors Jewish American life—invites complication. Is there ever tension between this drama and the life it purportedly represents? That is, do the playwrights ever get it wrong? Why is there so little religious tradition portrayed onstage in these plays? Why do the plays seem to ignore Israel? Why are all these plays in the realist mode? How does Jewish American drama compare to contemporaneous Jewish American fiction, Jewish American art, and non-Jewish American drama? And, most broadly, what is the role of drama besides mirroring the culture out of which it comes? In addition to calling for further argumentative development, the book would benefit from deeper dialogue with scholarly work on the subject. Louis
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Book Reviews Harap addresses Zangwill, Raphaelson, Odets, Miller, Elmer Rice, and others whom Novick studies in Dramatic Encounters: The Jewish Presence in TwentiethCentury American Drama, Poetry, and Humor and the Black–Jewish Literary Relationship (1987). Given Novick’s repeated citation of Du Bois, Harap’s book seems particularly apt for engagement. Twice Novick quotes Henry Bial, whose Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen (2005) also invites a rich critical response. Scholarship by Jonathan C. Friedman on Jewishness and homosexuality in the performing arts might have enriched Novick’s summary of Angels in America, while work by Sarah Blacher Cohen on drama by Jewish American women might have productively informed Novick’s chapter on “Jewish Daughters.”1 Novick’s writing style reflects his journalistic background. He writes conversationally, with a happy absence of jargon and convolution. We read that the 1922 hit drama Abie’s Irish Rose is “supremely trashy” (11) and that Forty-Five Seconds from Broadway is “lame and implausible” (86). Sometimes the fluidity yields wordplay, as when Novick wonders whether Jack Robin in The Jazz Singer will choose between a career as a cantor or as a jazz singer: “What will it be, Kol Nidre or Cole Porter?” (20). Whether this and other wordplays strike as clever or cloying will depend on the reader. Novick’s wit could have been more finely showcased by another round of copyediting and proofreading. For scholars in the field of Jewish American history and literature, the book will lack innovation. But for nonspecialists and nonacademics who seek to learn more about the topic, Beyond the Golden Door will be helpful as an a clear, engaging survey of twentieth-century Jewish American drama. Emily Kopley Stanford University Stanford, California
• • • YIDDISH LITERATURE Anita Norich. Discovering Exile: Yiddish and American Jewish Culture during the Holocaust. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. xiii, 215 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990122
Starting in the 1930s, American Yiddish writers—poets, novelists, critics, and essayists—confronted the unfolding catastrophe in Europe. Intimately
1. Jonathan C. Friedman, Rainbow Jews: Jewish and Gay Identity in the Performing Arts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007); Sarah Blacher Cohen, ed. Making a Scene: The Contemporary Drama of Jewish-American Women (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
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Book Reviews Harap addresses Zangwill, Raphaelson, Odets, Miller, Elmer Rice, and others whom Novick studies in Dramatic Encounters: The Jewish Presence in TwentiethCentury American Drama, Poetry, and Humor and the Black–Jewish Literary Relationship (1987). Given Novick’s repeated citation of Du Bois, Harap’s book seems particularly apt for engagement. Twice Novick quotes Henry Bial, whose Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen (2005) also invites a rich critical response. Scholarship by Jonathan C. Friedman on Jewishness and homosexuality in the performing arts might have enriched Novick’s summary of Angels in America, while work by Sarah Blacher Cohen on drama by Jewish American women might have productively informed Novick’s chapter on “Jewish Daughters.”1 Novick’s writing style reflects his journalistic background. He writes conversationally, with a happy absence of jargon and convolution. We read that the 1922 hit drama Abie’s Irish Rose is “supremely trashy” (11) and that Forty-Five Seconds from Broadway is “lame and implausible” (86). Sometimes the fluidity yields wordplay, as when Novick wonders whether Jack Robin in The Jazz Singer will choose between a career as a cantor or as a jazz singer: “What will it be, Kol Nidre or Cole Porter?” (20). Whether this and other wordplays strike as clever or cloying will depend on the reader. Novick’s wit could have been more finely showcased by another round of copyediting and proofreading. For scholars in the field of Jewish American history and literature, the book will lack innovation. But for nonspecialists and nonacademics who seek to learn more about the topic, Beyond the Golden Door will be helpful as an a clear, engaging survey of twentieth-century Jewish American drama. Emily Kopley Stanford University Stanford, California
• • • YIDDISH LITERATURE Anita Norich. Discovering Exile: Yiddish and American Jewish Culture during the Holocaust. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. xiii, 215 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990122
Starting in the 1930s, American Yiddish writers—poets, novelists, critics, and essayists—confronted the unfolding catastrophe in Europe. Intimately
1. Jonathan C. Friedman, Rainbow Jews: Jewish and Gay Identity in the Performing Arts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007); Sarah Blacher Cohen, ed. Making a Scene: The Contemporary Drama of Jewish-American Women (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
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Book Reviews connected to a European world threatened with obliteration, Yiddish writers responded urgently to events overseas, as they had done during earlier periods of crisis. They grappled with the relationship of Jews to the surrounding world, the legacy of the Enlightenment, and their own relationship to the Jewish people and its traditions. Slightly later, in the early 1940s, and in different ways, American-born, English-speaking Jewish intellectuals also began to reckon with the destruction of European Jewry. As Anita Norich argues in her thought-provoking, deeply personal study, the two conversations overlapped to a surprising degree, as members of each intellectual community read and reacted, in varying degrees, to what their counterparts wrote. By making that point, Norich advances a major argument about American Jewish culture in the twentieth century. As she contends, American Jewish culture did not, contrary to the standard view, follow a straight chronological line along which Yiddish literary culture inexorably gave way to English. Without denying the shrinking numbers of Yiddish speakers after the 1920s, Norich rejects the conventional narrative of declension and, instead, stresses the vitality of Yiddish letters in the midtwentieth century and their important role in the larger cultural firmament. “[T]he paths of Jewish cultural exchange,” she states, “were more open at this time than is usually supposed, with cultural periodicals in both languages aware of one another, commenting on one another’s cultural and political stances, and even publishing authors who wrote in both Yiddish and English” (12). Discovering Exile thus effectively recasts American Jewish culture as a “bilingual, multi-valent, untidy, array that challenges the more familiar linear view of Yiddish decline and growing English dominance” (12). Literary interchanges between English and Yiddish began long before the war years, one might add. Starting in the late nineteenth century, Yiddish literature appeared in English translation; Yiddish theater, literature, and the periodical press received attention (and praise) in prominent English-language journals; and Yiddish writers crossed over into English. There was even a short-lived magazine, East and West, dedicated entirely to bringing Yiddish literature to the Englishreading public. The period analyzed in Discovering Exile reflects not the beginning of interactions between English- and Yiddish-speaking intellectuals, but rather their most significant manifestations during the 1930s and 1940s. Yiddish writers reacted immediately to the war, but not uniformly. Some writers, concerned that Yiddish culture was becoming a yortsayt kultur preoccupied with commemorating deaths, urged colleagues “to cultivate their own gardens” (27). Others argued that Yiddish literature should serve to console the Jewish public. Among such figures, remarkably, were modernist poets who had, two decades earlier, “sought to free themselves of the strictures of writing within the confines of a Jewish audience.” Now, during the war years, they felt “compelled to speak in quieter cadences, returning to the very audience they had castigated only a few years earlier when they had sought to write Yiddish, and themselves, into literary modernism. Instead, they began to write elegies and lamentations, which were necessarily declarative, communicative, accessible” (27). Norich focuses on the modernist poet Yankev Glatshteyn, who founded, in 1919, a group known as the Inzikhistn, which championed free verse and a
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Book Reviews highly individualized, “introspective” approach to poetry. In 1938, Glatshteyn published “Good Night, World,” a seeming rejection of modernity that depicts the Enlightenment as “a dangerous, misguided flirtation” (47). His poem served as a “touchstone for Yiddish intellectuals in America faced with increasingly frightening news from Europe and seeking new ways to understand their own relationship to modernity” (42). An English translation was published just months after it first appeared, and at least seven others were published over the decades. Amid the flurry of debate prompted by “Good Night, World,” many critics interpreted Glatshteyn’s poem as a call to return to “the ghetto,” but Norich offers a more subtle reading. What Glatshteyn’s poem does, she writes, is gesture toward two antagonistic worlds, and then question whether the poet, in saying “good night,” is the one who leaves the modern world or whether it is the world that is about to go to sleep. Glatshteyn “calls the whole wide world into being, enlivens it, and announces the impossibility of doing precisely the one thing the poem is meant to do: ‘wipe out, stamp out all the alien traces.’ His bind is made horribly clear” (51). “Good Night, World,” according to Norich’s assessment, is both “defiant and pathetic” (72). In the following chapter, Norich examines the controversy that raged around the novelist Sholem Asch, the most famous living Yiddish novelist at that time. Asch was accused of apostasy because of his sympathetic depiction of Jesus in his novel, The Nazarene (1939). As if to fan the flames, Asch followed with two other novels—The Apostle (1943) and Mary (1949)—that completed what Glatshteyn referred to as Asch’s “Christian trilogy” (75). For most (though not all) Yiddish readers and critics, Asch’s sympathetic depiction of Jesus, albeit as a Jew, was an outrage. Whereas most Yiddish writers turned to Jewish tropes during the war years, Asch “tried to reconcile Jews and Christianity in order to break down the barriers between them” (120). English-language readers and critics were more sympathetic, seeing in his novels a compelling blend of Jewish and modern European culture, an example of the different sensibilities brought to bear by writers in each language. Writers in English reacted differently toward the war in Europe. They expressed horror and mourning, but not with “the radical urgency of their Yiddish contemporaries.” Their consciousness was not “inescapably shaped” by the war, they did not forge a group identity in response to it, and they produced little in the way of imaginative literature dealing with it (28). In a well-known symposium on “American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews” published in Contemporary Jewish Record in 1944, none of the questions posed alluded directly to the war. To the extent that participants addressed the war and the problem of antisemitism, their tropes were not explicitly Jewish, but those of alienation: “the inability to fit in or make sense of any social system, the individual disconnected from the self” (32). Yiddish writers, for their part, reacted angrily to the symposium, faulting participants for their lack of Jewish knowledge and alienation from the Jewish people. They viewed their English-writer counterparts as members of a spiritually empty, lost generation. Such an assessment, as Norich argues, was not entirely accurate—certainly not across the board—but it nonetheless reflected a stark difference in perspective and sensibility between Yiddish and English writers. The chapter on the thirtieth yortsayt of Y. L. Peretz, the “father” of modern Yiddish literature, which occurred in 1945, rounds out Discovering Exile. The
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Book Reviews anniversary of Peretz’s death precipitated an outpouring of appreciative, even hagiographic, essays, which marked a shift in Yiddish toward a “culture of mourning” (which was precisely what some writers had warned against). Accompanying this shift was the rise of a “nostalgic and laudatory” view of Eastern European Jewry, which had roots further back in time, but reached fuller expression than before and anticipated broader developments in postwar American Jewish culture. As a result, the “vital tensions” between tradition and rebellion in Peretz’s fiction became flattened (112). In close readings of Peretz’s work, Norich explores those tensions with sensitivity and insight. Discovering Exile is a vital, compact study of a formative moment in American Jewish culture when writers in both English and Yiddish began to confront the Holocaust and its implications. Probing the politics of representation, Norich uncovers the crucial role of Yiddish in American Jewish culture and American literary modernism. Tony Michels University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin
• • • MODERN HEBREW LITERATURE Gil Z. Hochberg. In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. xiii, 192 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990134
The relationship of Arabic and Hebrew has become an increasing part of the study of Hebrew literature and Israeli culture. Moving from an almost entirely Eurocentric grasp—with a few token examples—to studies of the marginalized, with some attempts to bring the marginalized to the center, this scholarship has now entered a new stage with research by Ammiel Alcalay, Dror Mishani, Lital Levy, Yehuda Shenhav, Deborah Starr, and others. These studies take it for granted that the Mizrachi and/or Arabs have a place in the republic of letters and no longer allow Orientalism—or even the struggle against Orientalism—to grab the center. Gil Hochberg’s book expands the field with an exploration of the very “inseparability of Arabs and Jews” from a sophisticated literary perspective. Hochberg illustrates Edward Said’s assertion, which is quoted in the introduction, that neither Jew nor Arab can ignore the other, or develop in the vacuum of the other, and investigates the complexity of identities formed—and forming— through the entwining of Arab and Jew. Hochberg acknowledges the risks in abstracting the identities under discussion, and she fights them, largely avoiding the characteristic pitfalls. She shows herself to be a true comparativist, and, with an unusual approach, adds fluency
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Book Reviews anniversary of Peretz’s death precipitated an outpouring of appreciative, even hagiographic, essays, which marked a shift in Yiddish toward a “culture of mourning” (which was precisely what some writers had warned against). Accompanying this shift was the rise of a “nostalgic and laudatory” view of Eastern European Jewry, which had roots further back in time, but reached fuller expression than before and anticipated broader developments in postwar American Jewish culture. As a result, the “vital tensions” between tradition and rebellion in Peretz’s fiction became flattened (112). In close readings of Peretz’s work, Norich explores those tensions with sensitivity and insight. Discovering Exile is a vital, compact study of a formative moment in American Jewish culture when writers in both English and Yiddish began to confront the Holocaust and its implications. Probing the politics of representation, Norich uncovers the crucial role of Yiddish in American Jewish culture and American literary modernism. Tony Michels University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin
• • • MODERN HEBREW LITERATURE Gil Z. Hochberg. In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. xiii, 192 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990134
The relationship of Arabic and Hebrew has become an increasing part of the study of Hebrew literature and Israeli culture. Moving from an almost entirely Eurocentric grasp—with a few token examples—to studies of the marginalized, with some attempts to bring the marginalized to the center, this scholarship has now entered a new stage with research by Ammiel Alcalay, Dror Mishani, Lital Levy, Yehuda Shenhav, Deborah Starr, and others. These studies take it for granted that the Mizrachi and/or Arabs have a place in the republic of letters and no longer allow Orientalism—or even the struggle against Orientalism—to grab the center. Gil Hochberg’s book expands the field with an exploration of the very “inseparability of Arabs and Jews” from a sophisticated literary perspective. Hochberg illustrates Edward Said’s assertion, which is quoted in the introduction, that neither Jew nor Arab can ignore the other, or develop in the vacuum of the other, and investigates the complexity of identities formed—and forming— through the entwining of Arab and Jew. Hochberg acknowledges the risks in abstracting the identities under discussion, and she fights them, largely avoiding the characteristic pitfalls. She shows herself to be a true comparativist, and, with an unusual approach, adds fluency
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Book Reviews in French, a significant language for Jews and Arabs writing in the Middle East, to the more typical trio of Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The book is a collection of five case studies that together measure the extent and result of Arab–Jewish entanglement. The first chapter considers the case of Albert Memmi’s canonical La statue de sel and El Maleh’s lesser-known Mille ans, une jour. It engages theories of memory and forgetting, reading the novels as political explorations of ideology and identity. Because the close readings of selected passages are so compelling, one wishes for more. In the second chapter, which pairs Jacqueline Kahanoff and Ronit Matalon, Hochberg reads Matalon’s novel The One Facing Us as a critique of Kahanoff’s Levantinism, which is presented as an elitist ideology that removes the Arabness from Mediterraneanism. Hochberg suggests that the novel counters both A. B. Yehoshua’s idea of normalization and Kahanoff’s “dream of cultural pluralism.” The chapter about Arabesques by Anton Shammas, a novel that is often discussed more as a phenomenon—a Hebrew novel written by an Arab—predictably, albeit gracefully, considers the act as an attempt to “deterritorialize” the Hebrew language. Here, too, Yehoshua’s extranovelistic writing—and in particular his famous statement effectively setting limits on Shammas’s identity—is contested. While the Shammas– Yehoshua debate has already been covered by Shai Ginsburg, Baruch Kimmerling, Rachel Brenner, and Laurence Silberstein, as well as by sources included in the book, the discussion fits well here, and contributes to the larger argument. In the penultimate chapter, Hochberg takes on Albert Suissa’s difficult novel ‘Aqud and its various readings. Its macaronic multilingualism—including lexical items from Hebrew strata ranging from the rabbinic to the street, the biblical and the mystical, combined with Judeo-Berber and phrases from the Jewish Moroccan Arabic dialect—was criticized rather than celebrated as a “new and ‘foreign’ kind of Hebrew text or as a further development in the actualization of modern Hebrew.” Hochberg suggests that the failure of the immigration process depicted in the novel, like the language used, is a form of resistance. The final chapter, “Memory, Forgetting, Love,” introduces the issue of the Holocaust and the question of the hierarchy of suffering through an analysis of Amin Ma’alouf’s Ports of Call and a reading of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry and essays. Darwish’s text Memory for Forgetfulness offers a scene in which a Lebanese woman protests against a Palestinian’s appreciation for Fairuz (the Lebanese national singer), asking him “by what right” does he love her song. The scene reverberates powerfully against Yehoshua’s objections to Shammas’s claim to Hebrew, and against the alienation of Memmi’s character Benillouche. In Spite of Partition is a slender, elegantly written volume that offers a great deal of material for thought. It complicates the questions of Arab and Jewish identities, and shows these identities to be entwined in complex ways, and in nearly constant flux. Memory plays a central role in the formation and reception of these identities. While the cultural implications of Hochberg’s analysis are clear, there are disciplinary implications as well. We need to continue to break down the entrenched borders and walls between Arabic language programs and Jewish studies programs, between Hebrew and Arabic literature associations, and between identity and literary studies, and to encourage our students to
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Book Reviews study multiple languages and traditions. Hochberg’s study is important both for its argument and as a model for future scholarship. Nancy E. Berg Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, Missouri
• • • GENDER STUDIES Tova Hartman. Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation. Hadassah Brandeis Institute Series on Jewish Women. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008. xvi, 162 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990146
It has been twenty-eight years since the publication of Blu Greenberg’s On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition.1 Greenberg’s book is a story of the author’s own journey toward interweaving Judaism and feminism, as well as a programmatic laying out of an ambitious agenda for exploration and confrontation. Greenberg’s discussion includes such topics as a theoretical basis for women’s equality, a call for women’s obligation to adhere to fixed liturgical prayer, a reevaluation of the menstrual laws, a careful look at abortion, and a demand for change in divorce law. While at times approaching caricature of the feminist movement, Greenberg’s book nevertheless still startles with the radical nature of many of its proposals. Like Greenberg’s, Tova Hartman’s latest book, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation, stems from the author’s own journey within her Orthodox community. As feminism is not only, or even primarily, a theoretical construct but an ideology that emerges from lived experience, it is fitting that Hartman’s experiences within her community drove her to write this book and to examine more closely the dual claims of feminism and Orthodox Judaism. Committed to both realms, she explores the ways in which feminism offers a powerful critique of traditional religion and the ways in which traditional religion offers a textured life that feminism has yet to achieve. Unlike Greenberg’s journey, and telling of the years since the publication of On Women and Judaism, Hartman’s quest led her to found a synagogue, Shira Hadasha, a community that has redefined the boundaries of women’s public ritual expression within the modern Orthodox world. Hartman describes her book as following a similar experimental model to that of her synagogue, an exploration of what can be learned when two compelling forms of knowledge are put into sympathetic dialogue with each other. She aims not to simplify but to present the claims of these two living visions in all their 1. Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981).
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Book Reviews study multiple languages and traditions. Hochberg’s study is important both for its argument and as a model for future scholarship. Nancy E. Berg Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, Missouri
• • • GENDER STUDIES Tova Hartman. Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation. Hadassah Brandeis Institute Series on Jewish Women. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008. xvi, 162 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990146
It has been twenty-eight years since the publication of Blu Greenberg’s On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition.1 Greenberg’s book is a story of the author’s own journey toward interweaving Judaism and feminism, as well as a programmatic laying out of an ambitious agenda for exploration and confrontation. Greenberg’s discussion includes such topics as a theoretical basis for women’s equality, a call for women’s obligation to adhere to fixed liturgical prayer, a reevaluation of the menstrual laws, a careful look at abortion, and a demand for change in divorce law. While at times approaching caricature of the feminist movement, Greenberg’s book nevertheless still startles with the radical nature of many of its proposals. Like Greenberg’s, Tova Hartman’s latest book, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation, stems from the author’s own journey within her Orthodox community. As feminism is not only, or even primarily, a theoretical construct but an ideology that emerges from lived experience, it is fitting that Hartman’s experiences within her community drove her to write this book and to examine more closely the dual claims of feminism and Orthodox Judaism. Committed to both realms, she explores the ways in which feminism offers a powerful critique of traditional religion and the ways in which traditional religion offers a textured life that feminism has yet to achieve. Unlike Greenberg’s journey, and telling of the years since the publication of On Women and Judaism, Hartman’s quest led her to found a synagogue, Shira Hadasha, a community that has redefined the boundaries of women’s public ritual expression within the modern Orthodox world. Hartman describes her book as following a similar experimental model to that of her synagogue, an exploration of what can be learned when two compelling forms of knowledge are put into sympathetic dialogue with each other. She aims not to simplify but to present the claims of these two living visions in all their 1. Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981).
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Book Reviews complex possibilities. Hartman begins by detailing her experiences within her modern Orthodox community and her awakening to feminism. However, Hartman’s voice emerges not only through her encounters within her home community but also through her acquaintance with cross-cultural feminist writings, such as those of third-world feminists, and of social theorists, such as Michel Foucault. Through this framing, she exposes the way in which Joseph Soloveitchik’s concept of Halakhic Man emerges from Kantian ethics of the autonomous individual—and not relational feminist ethics. Hartman’s sophisticated analysis thus exposes the extent to which modern Orthodox ideology is as much a product of modern Western ideology as is feminism. Fitting for her claims about Orthodoxy’s location within Western ideology, Hartman draws a parallel between women’s readings of Freud and feminist readings of Orthodoxy. She outlines three paradigms that women have used to read Freud— reaffirmation, reinterpretation/revision, and rejection—and then applies them to her religious canon. Hartman claims the second of these models as most useful for her project. Reinterpretation, she asserts, entails remaining with tradition as the reader reexamines and reinterprets that tradition. Reinterpreters negotiate with the tradition as they engage in dynamic dialogue with it, moving from ancient to modern and back again, adding their voices to the chain. This is a two-sided conversation lacking in easy solutions. It requires a willingness to sit with problems and to confront both dissatisfaction and an honest assessment of gain and losses in so doing. Following her methodological outline, Hartman addresses four different areas: modesty, liturgy, niddah (menstrual laws), and backlash. She is particularly insightful in her writing about modesty and niddah. In her chapter on modesty, Hartman observes a double bind: Orthodoxy demands that women cover up and Western culture demands that they uncover themselves. Utilizing Foucault’s insight that a defining aspect of modern societies is their ad infinitum discussion of sex while simultaneously claiming sex as secret, Hartman reveals that texts about modesty are themselves immodest—or even pornographic. She notes that one book has mapped “the halakhic status of the neckline’s progressive plunge” (49). Hartman thus exposes the ways in which Orthodoxy in fact preserves precisely the elements it says it counters, placing the male gaze at the center and rendering women a collection of body parts to be observed and analyzed. Orthodoxy’s modesty discourse, itself immodest, is bound up with Western society’s constant discussion of sex. These observations do not mean that Hartman negates the category of modesty. Instead, she seeks a way to restore the female gaze, a way for men and women to walk together with the divine. Hartman does not provide an easy answer for how her community should do this, but she gestures toward a possible path for travel. In her chapter on niddah, Hartman takes feminist theorists to task for not listening sufficiently to women’s own voices about their experiences of practicing the menstrual laws, for allowing theory to silence traditional women. In examining or reinterpreting the laws of niddah, Hartman takes these women’s voices seriously, arguing that the omission of their voices from feminist discourse constitutes a serious weakness. She thus turns to interviews with female practitioners of niddah that reveal a range of perspectives, from willful disobedience to engaged
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Book Reviews practice. Hartman’s goal is texture, and she succeeds admirably. She sounds a cautionary note about overriding theory and flattening lived experience, particularly of those women who live within more traditional societal structures. Hartman’s chapter on liturgy is the weakest part of the book. Writing about the male terminology used for the divine, Hartman ultimately accepts the immutability of the traditional liturgy. In place of altering the grammatically male liturgical language, she argues that we reinterpret maleness. Instead of regarding the “he” of God-language as inevitably associated with traits that have come to define masculinity within a particular society, we should view maleness as more fluid. This shift is dependent on our changing the human meanings of maleness and womanhood and the relationships between the genders. “Our Father” can be a nurturing God holding maternal qualities as much as a domineering God. This perspective recognizes the insight of feminist theologians, such as Judith Plaskow, that our images of God reflect the human realm. However, it does not give enough credit to the ways in which prayer also shapes human relationships. Even with an attempt to reinterpret the meaning of maleness, it is still difficult to escape the physical maleness of the traditional liturgy. In a society in which men hold primary public ritual power, the overwhelming male grammar of the liturgy serves to reinforce that status. Hartman appears to be most constrained in this chapter, not only by halakhah but also by politics. Altering liturgy may ultimately prove to be a more visceral shock than women’s participation in public synagogue ritual. Hartman’s text will be valuable not only to students of Judaism, but also to students of any traditional religious culture. Beyond the specifics of its analysis of modern Orthodoxy, this work frames a conversation between tradition and modernity. It is a powerful articulation of how and why a person can value both a traditional culture and the values of modernity—and what happens when she demands that both inform one another. Jane Kanarek Hebrew College Boston, Massachusetts
• • • N. O. Body. Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years. Trans. Deborah Simon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. xxiv, 136 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990158
An articulate intersex memoir from the early twentieth century, Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren, or Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years, makes for gripping (if occasionally melodramatic) reading. Its concerns feel quite current and presage the struggles of modern intersex activists: How much suffering and how many battles would I have been spared if, either at home or at school, one single person had spoken earnestly and honestly to me about my sex! (107)
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Book Reviews practice. Hartman’s goal is texture, and she succeeds admirably. She sounds a cautionary note about overriding theory and flattening lived experience, particularly of those women who live within more traditional societal structures. Hartman’s chapter on liturgy is the weakest part of the book. Writing about the male terminology used for the divine, Hartman ultimately accepts the immutability of the traditional liturgy. In place of altering the grammatically male liturgical language, she argues that we reinterpret maleness. Instead of regarding the “he” of God-language as inevitably associated with traits that have come to define masculinity within a particular society, we should view maleness as more fluid. This shift is dependent on our changing the human meanings of maleness and womanhood and the relationships between the genders. “Our Father” can be a nurturing God holding maternal qualities as much as a domineering God. This perspective recognizes the insight of feminist theologians, such as Judith Plaskow, that our images of God reflect the human realm. However, it does not give enough credit to the ways in which prayer also shapes human relationships. Even with an attempt to reinterpret the meaning of maleness, it is still difficult to escape the physical maleness of the traditional liturgy. In a society in which men hold primary public ritual power, the overwhelming male grammar of the liturgy serves to reinforce that status. Hartman appears to be most constrained in this chapter, not only by halakhah but also by politics. Altering liturgy may ultimately prove to be a more visceral shock than women’s participation in public synagogue ritual. Hartman’s text will be valuable not only to students of Judaism, but also to students of any traditional religious culture. Beyond the specifics of its analysis of modern Orthodoxy, this work frames a conversation between tradition and modernity. It is a powerful articulation of how and why a person can value both a traditional culture and the values of modernity—and what happens when she demands that both inform one another. Jane Kanarek Hebrew College Boston, Massachusetts
• • • N. O. Body. Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years. Trans. Deborah Simon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. xxiv, 136 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990158
An articulate intersex memoir from the early twentieth century, Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren, or Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years, makes for gripping (if occasionally melodramatic) reading. Its concerns feel quite current and presage the struggles of modern intersex activists: How much suffering and how many battles would I have been spared if, either at home or at school, one single person had spoken earnestly and honestly to me about my sex! (107)
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Book Reviews This lament might have been uttered by one of the many intersex adults who were operated on at birth and who have been denied access to their own medical records. The epilogue written by Magnus Hirschfeld, an important figure of the Sexualwissenschaft movement, helps situate the memoir in the context of the history of sexology. It is both a call for compassion in the treatment of intersexuality and a fascinating, if brief, rumination on the question of gender identity: “The sex of a person lies more in his mind than in his body” (110). In content and context, then, Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years suggests multiple avenues for theoretical and historical analysis of issues that are of immediate contemporary concern. The translation into English and the accompanying explanatory essays, moreover, will make the memoir accessible to a broader audience working in sexuality and gender. The afterword by Hermann Simon, the current director of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, builds a case for the true identity of N. O. Body as Karl Baer, a German Jew, and provides biographical data. Sander Gilman’s preface both contextualizes the memoir historically and offers up a preliminary analysis of the gendered and ethnic dynamics at play. The newly published English translation and accompanying contemporary essays make Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years eminently teachable for both Jewish history and gender studies. Several tantalizing mysteries surround the memoir. The first is, of course, decoding the identity of N. O. Body, the pseudonymous author. As mentioned, Hermann Simon’s afterword meticulously argues that N. O. Body is Karl (Martha) Baer, a Jew born in West Germany in 1885 with ambiguous sexual characteristics and assigned female by the attending physician. Simon’s family knew Karl Baer personally and believed that he was not intersexed, but rather that his parents lied about his sex on the birth certificate in order to avoid later mandatory conscription in the army.1 Simon, however, is convinced of Baer’s intersex status, and evidence regarding Magnus Hirschfeld’s interest in Baer (and the memoir, of course) seems to support this view. Much of the content of Memoir of a Man’s Maiden Years describes Baer’s childhood in order to illustrate his early conflicts around gender identity. Baer’s adult life, while taking up less of the work, is equally fascinating—after discovering feminism and organizing in the struggle against white slavery (some of which is only obliquely referenced in the memoir), Karl Baer fell in love with a woman. As a result, he enlisted the aid of a lawyer and transitioned his gender legally to male in order to be able to marry. After transition (as Simon narrates in the afterword), Baer became the director of the Berlin B’nai B’rith and ultimately immigrated to Palestine in 1938. Throughout the narrative, N. O. Body proffers his own internal conflict over his gender identity while describing the perceptions of others, the impact of the secrecy surrounding his birth, and the cost of his continuing maintenance of a “normal” female persona. All of these constitute
1. I will use masculine pronouns throughout because that is how Karl Baer/N. O. Body identifies himself.
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Book Reviews evidence for his masculine identity and support his bid for a legal transition. As N. O. Body succinctly describes it, “I was born a boy, raised as a girl” (7). The memoir is a good example of sexological narrative. As Jay Prosser points out in Second Skins about transsexual autobiographies, narrative is the key to diagnoses, and the technique of collecting narrative can be attributed to early sexologists: [T]ranssexuality does not symptomize itself in the subject’s body, at least not visibly or reliably so. The diagnosis required for … [transition] must instead derive from the patient’s narrative … autobiography is transsexuality’s proffered symptom.2
While intersexuality is written on the body, the propensity of the body to “lie” requires the subject’s proper narrativization. Baer’s self-representation, framed by the testimonies of a journalist and a doctor to help affirm its authenticity, is a rich example of sexology’s narrative drive, in part because it is so extended and (presumably) less filtered through doctor’s notes. As with the story of Herculine Barbin, this memoir is richly valuable for writing Jewish and intersex histories and for the theoretical issues that it raises.3 Lest we simplistically treat memoir as straightforward history, a further mystery entices us. In the opening pages, N. O. Body identifies himself as French Catholic: Our lineage is not German. Our forefathers came from France. My family is very old and proud of its family tree, whose beginnings reach back as far as the sixteenth century. … We trace our lineage back to a Franciscan monk who left his order at the time of the Reformation and founded a family. (13–14)
Simon demonstrates some of the mechanics of the substitution of French Catholicism for Judaism: for example, he points out that Shavuot is transformed into Whitsunday (119). Gilman further contextualizes N. O. Body’s claim by explaining that French identity was in itself a kind of racial othering in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. In overlaying French Catholicism onto German Judaism, Baer pairs two categories of racial other. As Sander Gilman points out in his preface, however, this detailed invention of a grand (Catholic) past is strictly unnecessary for the plot of the memoir. N. O. Body’s Catholic identity seems to be as irrelevant to the subject matter at hand as 2. Jay Prosser, Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 104. 3. Michel Foucault, Herculin Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a NineteenthCentury Hermaphrodite), trans. Richard McDougall (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980). While the interest of recent scholarship in Herculine Barbin’s memoir is in part attributable to interest in Foucault, still, the memoir has been profitably cited by scholars in fields ranging from biology to linguistics. For a well-known engagement with the memoir, see Judith Butler’s critique of Foucault’s introduction: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), 119–35.
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Book Reviews Baer’s actual Jewish identity, as the stated purpose of the work is to assist science in its understanding of gender and sexuality. Neither Gilman nor Simon answers the question of why Baer substitutes Catholicism for Judaism throughout the memoir. Moreover, neither proposes an answer for this strange origin myth: why begin an intersex memoir not with an intersex birth (the rather obvious starting point), but with the ancestry that precedes the birth? It could be argued that the choice of situating himself within a grand past serves to both legitimate his voice and to recontextualize the memoir within a framework of otherness writ large. Gender, ethnicity, and the experience of foreignness are tightly woven together in N. O. Body’s description of his origin. In a sense, then, the genre itself begs for interpretation: in what ways does the anonymous memoir both conceal and reveal N. O. Body’s identity, and how are we to understand the construction of gendered and ethnic identity in the persona of N. O. Body? It is so easy to become engrossed in the interpretative difficulties that surround the reading of the memoir that one faces the danger of losing sight of the interpretative difficulties of the content. One of the earliest anecdotes occurred when the narrator was four years old, and it sets up the themes of the memoir succinctly: “Three children dressed in girls’ clothing are sitting beneath a tree” (16). Note the use of the third person to create a rhetorical distance in this selfdescription, as N. O. Body describes himself as a child dressed in gender. Notice also how N. O. Body’s indeterminate gender seems catchy, undermining, at least momentarily, the girlness of the other children who accompany him. The vignette develops into a story of sexual awakening, in which one of the girl children, Hilde, begins a game of kissing and caressing Nora (the name that the other characters in the text call N. O. Body). The stream of this erotic memory is interrupted briefly by N. O. Body’s voice as an adult: “I still recall that we felt no revulsion for one another’s bodies, although we had been taught to do so by our mothers” (18). By the end of the vignette, Nora/N. O. Body’s playmates discover his bodily differences in the course of their explorations. Thus, we see the simultaneous moment of sexual differentiation paired with sexual experimentation. The consistent emphasis on erotic awakening throughout the memoir leads one to be constantly aware of Nora/N. O. Body’s physical desiring body and the desire his body inspires in others. Gilman’s preface raises central questions about the connection of sexuality, ethnicity, and gender identity. As he writes in his introductory paragraph, “N. O. Body” is a most appropriate pseudonym. … For being “nobody” was his way of seeing his body. It was doubly alienated (“nobody” is English rather than German) as it was male as well as female, Jewish as well as German. This is how he imagined his past life raised as a woman, Martha Baer, in a Jewish family in Imperial Germany. (vii)
Although Gilman raises some interesting questions about the poetics of the pseudonym, whose meaning stands in direct tension to the emphasis on erotic arousal throughout the text, his preface tends to dispel such tensions: as Gilman puts it, in the end “Masculinity, like Jewishness, will out” (xxiv).
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Book Reviews I would argue that Gilman’s interpretation is not a foregone conclusion. While the teleology of the narrative tends toward erotic enlightenment (through marriage to Hanna), and to transition to a masculine identity, the memoir also emphasizes the struggle that the protagonist undergoes in order to achieve this ending. The effort to claim an identity is what compels the narrative, and the excruciating tension between gender assignment and gender identity belies the implication that masculinity “will out,” as do N. O. Body’s plaintive questions about who he really is. And of course, the analogy is flawed, because Jewishness does not out itself in the memoir; it is only through a painful process of reconstruction that Baer’s Jewish identity is proposed after the fact. N. O. Body asserts his arrival at an untroubled masculine identity, and Gilman (in an essentialist manner) clearly wishes to uphold Baer’s selfidentification. However, it is possible to respect his self-identification and recognize the underlying fractures that animate this memoir of a man’s maiden years. One hopes for a good dissertation on the topic sometime in the not too distant future that will offer a reading on some of these textual and historical challenges. In the meantime, we can be grateful to the University of Pennsylvania Press for the release of the recent translation by Deborah Simon in paperback. The accessible English translation and contextualizing essays will make it a great primary text for general scholars who work in gender and sexuality studies. And Sander Gilman’s invaluable notes will lead any generalist in Jewish history looking to expand their repertoire in gender analysis to some of the more current scholarship on intersex issues. This volume should hold an important place in both of those scholars’ libraries, and will be invaluable to anyone interested in Judaism and gender. Max Strassfeld Stanford University Stanford, California
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עמנואל פרידהיים יום-יום עם תמורות חברתיות ותרבותיות כבדות-משקל שחלו בעם ישראל על-מנת לשמור על האיזון העדין שבין ניסיונם להנהיג את היישוב היהודי מחד גיסא ,אימון האומה בחכמיה מאידך גיסא ,כל זאת תוך כדי שמירה על עקרונות הלכתיים מחמירים יותר או מקלים יותר לפי נסיבות שהזמן גרמן. עמנואל פרידהיים המחלקה לתולדות ישראל ע"ש ישראל וגולדה קושיצקי אוניברסיטת בר-אילן
באמצעות היתרים ,וראו עודE. Friedheim, ‘Sol Invictus in the Severus Synagogue at Hammath Tiberias, the : Rabbis and Jewish Society A Different Approach’, Review of Rabbinic Judaism 12/1 (2009), pp. 89 128.
יח
עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י ניתוח מסכם: לסיכום שאלת היחס ההלכתי של החכמים כלפי תרבות יוון ורומא ,נציין כדלהלן .דומה הדבר ליחס החכמים כלפי הרכיבה על סוסים .הם התנערו ממנה כתוצאה בין-היתר מן המטען התרבותי היווני-רומי הקשור במישרין ברכיבה על סוסים שהשפיע קרוב לוודאי על יהודים רבים .הם 57 נלחמו בתופעה באמצעות דרשות רבות -אך לא נמצא איסור הלכתי מקיף וגורף לרכב על סוס! 'איכא רבנן דפרשי ואיכא רבנן דלא פרשי' 58,היו כאלה שאסרו בעקבות מצב תרבותי חמור בעיניהם ,אך באותה נשימה אותה מציאות קשה הניעה חכמים אחרים להתיר )או לפחות סברו מלכתחילה להתיר( ולהקל ,ובייחוד בערים מיוונות כגון גדרה או קיסריה כאשר חכמים אלה החשיבו מאוד את המצב התרבותי והחברתי שבעיניהם סיכן את חוסנה הדתי של הקהילה היהודית באותם מרכזים שבהם חיו יהודים ונכרים אלה לצד אלה .היה מקום להלחם בתופעה במסע שכנוע באמצעות דרשות המוניות אך לרוב לא באמצעות פסיקה הלכתית מחמירה שרוב הסיכויים להצלחתה נמוכים היו .עמדות הלכתיות ורעיוניות אלו מוכיחות גם כי החכמים נגררו פעמים רבות אחרי המציאות ההיסטורית ובמרבית המקרים לא עיצבו אותה 59.עליהם הוטלה החובה להתמודד
הרוכב במרכבת השמים ,או כפי שהיה ידוע במאות הג'-ד' לסה"נ בכינוי סול אינויקטוס"; M. Dothan, Hammath Tiberias . Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains, Jerusalem 1983, pp. 39 45ועוד הרבה. .57מ' בר' ,רכיבה על סוסים בארץ-ישראל בתקופת המשנה והתלמוד' ,קתדרה) 60 ,תשנ"א( ,עמ' .28תופעה דומה מצויה ביחס שהפגינו חכמי ארץ-ישראל כלפי המוזיקה בימי המשנה והתלמוד ,ראו :ע' פרידהיים' ,לשאלת ההתמודדות של החברה היהודית בארץ-ישראל עם המוזיקה בימי בית שני ,המשנה והתלמוד' ,קתדרה) 132 ,תשס"ט( ,עמ' 76 55 ובייחוד ,שם ,עמ' .76 75 .58בבלי ,עבודה זרה ,נ ע"א) .לפי כ"י פיזרו ,1511כ"י מינכען 95ודפוס וילנא( כ"י ספרדי )= ש' אברמסון ,מסכת עבודה זרה כתב יד בית המדרש לרבנים בניו יורק ,ניו-יורק תשי"ז ,עמ' (90וכ"י פריס 1337גורסים" :איכא רבנן דפרשי מיניהו ואיכא רבנן דלא פרשי מיניהו". .59עלול להשתמע מדברים אלה ,כי סבור כותב שורות אלו ,שחכמי המשנה והתלמוד חיו ופעלו בשולי החברה היהודית בארץ-ישראל ושרוב היישוב היהודי לא היה כפוף להם במאות הראשונות לסה"נ ]על עמדה זו ראו למשלE. R. Goodenough, : Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, XII, New York 1967, pp. 184 198; C. Hezser, ‘Social Fragmentation, Plurality of Opinion, and Nonobservance of Halakhah: Rabbis and Community in Late Roman Palestine’, Jewish Studies Quarterly 1/3 (1993 4), pp. 234 251; S. J. D. Cohen, ‘The Rabbi in Second Century Jewish Society’, The Cambridge History of Judaism, III, The Early Roman Period, Cambridge 1999, p. 975: "The rabbis were but a small part of Jewish society, an insular group which produced an insular literature. They were not synagogue leaders."; 977: "In their own universe the rabbis were kings ;".but their universe was still small and their kingship still limitedשוורץ) ,לעיל ,הערה (35עמ' ,[199 ,104 ,7 6 ולא היא .דומני כמו היסטוריונים רבים אחרים כי יהודי הארץ היו באופן כללי קרובים וקשובים לחוג החכמים ]ראו :ז' ספראי ,הקהילה היהודית בארץ-ישראל בתקופת המשנה והתלמוד ,ירושלים תשנ"ה ,עמ' .352ועוד הרבה[ ולראיה הדיאלקטיקה הארכיאולוגית ,ובייחוד תגלית כתובת רחוב המוכיחה בעיני כי הלכות שביעית היו מקובלות על קהילה יהודית בסביבות בית-שאן במאה השישית ]ראו :י' זוסמן' ,כתובת הלכתית מעמק בית שאן סקירה מוקדמת' ,תרביץ מג )תשל"ד( ,עמ' ;158 88הנ"ל' ,כתובת מבית-הכנסת של רחוב ]בעמק בית שאן[' ,קדמוניות ,ח )תשל"ו( ,עמ' ,[128 123ואולי כבר קודם לכן ]ראו :ח' משגב' ,כתובות בתי-כנסת מתקופת המשנה והתלמוד' ,בתוך :י' אשל )עורך(, ועשו לי מקדש בתי כנסת מימי קדם ועד ימינו ,קדומים-אריאל תשס"ד ,עמ' [56 49וכן בעניין המקוואות ,ראוS. : Hoss, ‘Die Mikwen der späthellenistischen bis byzantinischen Zeit in Palästina’, Zeitschrift des ;deutschen Palästina Vereins 123 (2007), pp. 49 79א' ברוך ,בית המגורים בארץ-ישראל בתקופה הרומית תרבות חומרית ומבנה חברתי ,דיסרטציה ,רמת-גן תשס"ח ,עמ' ;264 244י' אדלר' ,בתי כנסת עתיקים ומקוואות טהרה הממצא הארכיאולוגי וזיקתו להלכה הקדומה' ,קתדרה) 128 ,תשס"ח( ,עמ' Y. Adler, ‘Ritual Baths Adja- ;72 51 cent to Tombs: An Analysis of the Archaeological Evidence in Light of the Halakhic Sources’, Journal .for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period, 40/1 (2009), pp. 55 73ואולם אין בכך כדי לבטל את הסכנות התרבותיות-הדתיות הקשות שארבו ליישוב היהודי -כולל מעמד החכמים -בתחום המפגש הבעייתי עם התרבות היוונית-רומית ,או למשל עם היהדות-נצרות בימי התנאים ,ועוד סכנות תרבותיות רבות ומאבקים חברתיים מגוונים שהחכמים בימי המשנה והתלמוד היו צריכים להתמודד עמם ,פעמים באמצעות איסורים ופעמים
יז
עמנואל פרידהיים מורי ההלכה -אך בהתאמה למציאות שבה פעלו .דהיינו ,כאשר התברר שהאיסור איננו אפקטיבי 47 אימצו אלטרנטיבה כדי להילחם בתופעה זו והתירו. ו .החכמים ורחיצה במרחץ אפרודיטי בעכו: גם באשר לשאלת הרחיצה של יהודים בבית-המרחץ הרומי נוכל לומר כי פסל אפרודיטי שנמצא בבית המרחץ שבעכו 48היה פולחני לכל דבר 49ואולם רבן גמליאל רצה לחדש חידוש מהותי ביותר ,שלא זו בלבד שהרחיצה בבית-מרחץ ציבורי מותרת ,אלא גם שהפסל איננו פולחני ובשל כך מותר להתרחץ במרחץ גם בנימוק של העדר עבודה זרה .אלא שבמקרה זה רבן גמליאל היה חדשן ללא ממשיכים, שכן ביטול מהותו הפולחנית של הפסל היה מנותק למציאות בת-הזמן שבה התרחשויות פולחניות ארעו בבתי-המרחץ הרומיים .תנאים ואמוראים כאחד ראו בפסלי בית המרחץ הרומי פסלים פולחניים 50.עם זאת ,גם הם התירו יותר ויותר את הרחיצה במרחץ ,אך לא מתוך ביטול ההיבט הפולחני והמקודש לעבודה זרה ,כי אם מתוך נימוקים הלכתיים אחרים כגון" :אין דבר של רבים נאסר" 51,וזאת קרוב לוודאי בשל הלחץ החברתי של המוני העם ,כאשר יהודי ארץ-ישראל 52 בלאו-הכי ביקרו בבית המרחץ הרומי ולכן היו צריכים למצוא דרך הלכתית להכשיר זאת. ז .החכמים ואמנות הדמות: בכיוון דומה ,ניתן גם לומר כי ההיתר )או לפחות העדר האיסור וההסכמה בדיעבד( לצייר על כתלים במאה השלישית לסה"נ 53ועל פסיפסים במאה הרביעית לסה"נ 54,אינו תוצאה של ירידתה של אמנות 56 הדמות בעלת המשמעות האלילית אלא ההיפך 55.אמנות הדמות האלילית חודרת לבית הכנסת, וקרוב לוודאי שאין דרך להוציאה ולכן מתירים בדיעבד את הנעשה.
.47ע' פרידהיים' ,השמות 'גד'' ,גדיא'' ,גדא' בקרב חכמי ארץ-ישראל ובבל ומאבק החכמים בהשפעות אליליות', בתוך :א' דמסקי )עורך( ,ואלה שמות מחקרים באוצר השמות היהודיים ,3 ,רמת-גן תשס"ב ,עמ' קיז-קכו. .48משנה ,עבודה זרה ג ,ד-ה )עפ"י כ"י קופמן ]מהדורת רוזנטל ,עמ' ;([42 40בבלי ,שם ,מד ע"ב; מדרש תנאים לדברים יג ,יח )מהדורת הופמן ,עמ' ;(69 68ילקוט שמעוני על ספר דברים ,רמז תתפט )מהדורת הימן ,עמ' .(266 265 .49פרידהיים) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(17עמ' ;32 9הנ"ל) ,לעיל ,הערה .(36 .50שם )פרסום ראשון( ,עמ' .30 26ולמקורות ראשוניים ,ראו :משנה ,עבודה זרה א ז; ירושלמי ,שם פ"ג ה"ד )מב ע"ד ,טור ;(1396שם ,פ"ד ה"ד )מג ע"ד ,טור ;(1402שביעית פ"ח ה"יא )לח סע"ב רע"ג ,טור ;(208בבלי ,עבודה זרה, מד ע"ב; מדרש חסד לאומים )מהדורת ורטהיימר ,בתי מדרשות ,ב ,עמ' קמג(; מדרש הגדול לדברים ז ,יב )מהדורת פיש ,עמ' קנח(; שיר השירים זוטא ]אגדת שיר השירים[ ,א טו )מהדורת בובר ,עמ' .(20 19 .51ירושלמי ,שביעית פ"ח הי"א )ח( )לח ע"ג ,טור ;(208עבודה זרה ,פ"ב ה"ו )ט( )מב ע"א ,טור .(1393 .52ויקרא רבה לד ,ג )מהדורת מרגליות ,עמ' תשעו(; אבות דר' נתן ל )נו"ב ,מהדורת שכטר עמ' ;(66י"צ אליאב, 'האם הסתייגו היהודים מבית המרחץ הציבורי בראשית הופעתו?' ,קתדרה) 75 ,תשנ"ה( ,עמ' ;35 3פרידהיים) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(17עמ' .32 31 .53ירושלמי ,עבודה זרה פ"ג ה"ג )מב ע"ד ,טור " :(1396ביומוי דר' יוחנן שרון ציירין על כותלא ולא מחי בידייהו". אין כמובן בכך כדי להעיד שר' יוחנן הוא זה שהתיר ,ובוודאי שלא מלכתחילה ,וראו על כך :י' ל' לוין ,מעמד החכמים בארץ-ישראל בתקופת התלמוד ,ירושלים תשמ"ו ,עמ' ;122הנ"ל' ,בית הכנסת כמוסד קהילתי מי קבע את מדיניותו?', דברי הקונגרס העולמי האחד-עשר למדעי היהדות ,ירושלים תשנ"ד ,עמ' .3ועוד. .54שם ,פ"ג ה"ב" :ביומוי דר' אבון שרין ציירין על פסיפסס ולא מחי בידון ".פורסם מתוך הגניזה ע"י י' נ' אפשטיין, 'לשרידי הירושלמי' ,תרביץ ,ג )תרצ"ב( ,עמ' =] 20הנ"ל ,מחקרים בספרות התלמוד ובלשונות שמיות ,ב/א ,ירושלים תשמ"ח, עמ' .[256 .55פרידהיים) ,לעיל ,הערה 6פרסום שני( ,עמ' .159 109והשוו לדברי וייס) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(44עמ' 439 הערה .59 .56כך נזכיר את הופעתו של הליוס/סול אינויקטוס בגלגל המזלות -אל השמש היווני-רומי -בבתי כנסת קדומים כגון בחמת-טבריה ,נערן ובית-אלפא שהספרות המחקרית לגביהם רחבה מאוד .נסתפק כאן בהפניה לגבי הממצא בחמת-טבריה, ראו :מ' דותן' ,דמותו של סול אינויקטוס בפסיפס של חמת טבריה' ,בתוך :כל ארץ נפתלי הכינוס הארצי הכ"ד לידיעת הארץ, ירושלים תשכ"ח ,עמ' .134 130וראו בייחוד :שם ,עמ' " :131 130אין ספק שלפנינו תאור דמות הליוס אל השמש,
טז
עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י שאם לא כן איש לא יקשיב עוד לדבריהם 44".בהקשר לכך ,חשוב להביא את המקור הבא ,שאולי משקף מציאות ארץ-ישראלית מן המאה השלישית לסה"נ ,שעניינו אדם שמכר את עצמו למשחקי גלדיאטורים ושאלת פדיונו: "ההוא גברא דזבין נפשיה ללודאי ]כך בנוסח הדפוסים וגם בכ"י וטיקן ,[130אתא לקמיה דרבי אמי ,אמר ליה :פירקן ]רש"י :פדני[ ,אמר ליה ,תנן ]= שנינו במשנה[ :המוכר עצמו ואת בניו לעובדי כוכבים -אין פודין אותו ,אבל פודין את הבנים משום קלקולא ]רש"י :שלא יוטמעו בגוים וילמדו ממעשיהם[ ,וכ"ש הכא דאיכא קטלא ]וכל שכן כאן כי יש סבירות רבה שהאב ,מפאת היותו גלדיאטור ,ייהרג[ .אמרו לי' רבנן לר' אמי :האי ישראל מומר ]בכ"י וטיקן ואוקספורד, שם" :משומד"[ הוא ,דקא חזו ליה דקאכיל נבילות וטריפות! ]כיוון שראו שהוא אוכל נבלות וטריפות יהודי זה מומר/משומד כי אז אין לפדותו[ אמר להו :אימא לתיאבון הוא דקאכיל ]כלומר יהודי זה אוכל לתאוותו ואין כאן ראיה כי הוא מומר/משומד[ .אמרו ליה :והא זמנין דאיכא היתירא ואיסורא קמיה ,ושביק היתירא ואכיל איסורא! ]כלומר פעמים שיש מאכלים מותרים ואסורים והוא אוכל דווקא את האסור ,משמע שהוא כן מומר/משומד[ א"ל :זיל ,לא 45 קא שבקי לי דאפרקינך ]כלומר :לך ,לא נותנים לי לפדותך[".
אף הפעם ,בדומה לבעיה שהתעוררה עם השתתפות יהודי גדרה ביום משתה של גוים ,אותו ר' אמי ביקש גם כאן מלכתחילה להקל ובמקרה דנן עם יהודי שמכר את עצמו לגלדיאטורים .ר' אמי ניסה בכל דרך לפדותו כדי להחזירו לחיק ישראל ,אף אם בדיעבד העניין לא הסתייע כשיתר החכמים מנעו זאת ממנו )בביטוי המאלף" :לא קא שבקי לי" ,המצביע על גבולות האכיפה של הפסיקה הדתית/חברתית של ר' אמי( בטענה שגלדיאטור יהודי זה ,כבר נטמע יותר מדי בין הנכרים .ושוב ,הגישה המחמירה של החכמים הנה תוצאה של מצב קשה שבו יהודים מכרו את עצמם מיוזמתם -קרוב לוודאי מסיבות כלכליות ואולי גם מפני בצע כסף -לעולם המשחקים הרומיים עקובים מדם .המסר המחמיר העקרוני של החכמים הוא שבמקרה כגון זה ,אין דרך חזרה ליהדות .והנה זוהי אותה מציאות בעייתית שהביאה את ר' אמי ,בדומה לר' אבהו בקיסריה ,לחפש בכל האמצעים דרך להחזיר את היהודי הנידון לעם ישראל תוך כדי הקלות בהלכה התנאית שהובאה במשנה גיטין ד ט הגורסת בפירוש כי "המוכר את עצמו ואת בניו לגוים אין פודין אותו".
ה .החכמים ושימוש בשמות אליליים: הוכח במקום אחר כי חכמי ארץ-ישראל מימי הבית השני ועד ימי התלמוד התייחסו לשמות :גד ,גדא, גדיא כאל שמות אליליים .מתברר כי המשמעות האלילית של שמות אלו בקרב הנכרים תושבי סוריה - כגון בפלמירה -אינה משתנה כלל מימי הבית השני ועד המאה הרביעית לסה"נ .ואולם ,אם בשלהי הבית ובימי המשנה אסרו חכמים את השימוש בשם הנידון ,מתברר שבמאה השלישית לסה"נ התיר ר' יוחנן להזכירו 46.גם הפעם לא ניתן לומר כי ההיתר של ר' יוחנן נובע מהיעלמות המהות האלילית הטמונה בשם גד ובנגזרותיו הסמנטיות ,שכן השם 'גד' לא היה כאמור פחות אלילי בימי חכם זה. לא המציאות הפולחנית השתנתה כי אם יחסה של ההלכה אליה -קרוב לוודאי למורת רוחם של
.44ז' וייס' ,יהודי ארץ-ישראל ותרבות הפנאי הרומית :חכמים וקהילה ,הלכה ומעשה' ,ציון ,סו )תשס"א( ,עמ' ,438 .439ועל גישה הלכתית זו לאורך הדורות ,ראו בהרחבה :ד' שפרבר ,דרכה של הלכה -קריאת נשים בתורה :פרקים במדיניות פסיקה ,ירושלים תשס"ז ,עמ' 46הערה ;56עמ' 140ואילך .ועוד. .45בבלי ,גיטין מו סע"ב מז רע"א .ושמא עניין זה ארע גם בקיסריה בדומה אולי למקרה הקודם עם ר' אבהו ,שכן מסופר על ר' אמי שהעביר את הישיבה לקיסריה ,ראו :בבלי ,חולין פו ע"ב; אלבק) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(14עמ' .228וצריך עיון. .46בבלי ,סנהדרין ,סג ע"ב.
טו
עמנואל פרידהיים היהודי עלום-השם לבצע את השחיטה כדת וכדין ,הלא ברור שחלק ממעשיו היו בבחינת עבודה זרה של ממש ,ועל כן היינו מצפים למצוא כאן איסור גורף על השחיטה .ואולם ,התנאים היססו והתלבטו, אולי יש בכל זאת מקום להתיר דבר שדבק בו הרבה יותר מאשר סתם 'אבק עבודה זרה'! אף הפעם ,אי אפשר להסביר את מקורו של הרצון להתיר עם הטיעון המוטעה של היעלמות ההיבט האלילי ,שכן המהות הפולחנית הפגאנית המובהקת בוקעת בפירוש מתוך המעשה ,ואכן היו שרצו לאסור כאשר לדידם אף השחיטה הוקרבה לעבודה זרה ולא רק הדם והחלב .אשר על כן ,יש לומר כי מחד גיסא היה מקום לאסור עקב עבודה זרה ומאידך גיסא היה גם רצון להתיר ,פועל יוצא של התחשבות בעניין השחיטה הכשרה והדחקה מכוונת של המעשים האליליים של היהודי ,קרוב לוודאי כדי לא לגמרי לסתום את הגולל בפני יהודי זה שמעשיו שיקפו אולי תופעה הרבה יותר נפוצה מאשר מקרה יחיד .התלבטות התנאים נובעת גם -ואולי בעיקר -מן העובדה שמעשה זה ארע דווקא בקיסריה שבה הקהילה היהודית הושפעה רבות כאמור על-ידי התרבות היוונית-רומית, ולפיכך יחס החכמים אל יהודי קיסריה דרש התחשבות והבחנה יתירה בהגדרת הגבול שבין האיסור לבין ההיתר מאשר במקומות יהודיים מובהקים שבהם איסור גורף -בבחינת 'מסורת סייג לתורה' )משנה ,אבות ג יג( -היה מתקבל הרבה יותר בהבנה ובקלות. ד .החכמים והמשחקים הרומיים: בעוד ההשתתפות של יהודים במופעי התיאטרון והאמפיתיאטרון נתקלה לרוב בהתנגדות חריפה מצדם של התנאים 41ועל-אף שחכמים רבים סבורים שיהודי שמכר את עצמו מיוזמתו למשחקי גלדיאטורים אינו נחשב לשבוי ,ולפיכך אין מצוות 'פדיון שבויים' תקיפה לגביו ,דווקא ר' אבהו סבור שיש מקום לפדותו שכן סיבות כלכליות -שאינן בשליטתו -הביאוהו כפי הנראה להילחם בזירה ,כדברי הירושלמי: המוכר את עצמו ואת בניו לגוים כול' מתנית' בשמכר עצמו ושנה אבל אם מכר עצמו פעם אחת פודין אותו ואם מכר עצמו ללודים ]= = Ludusמשחק גלדיאטורים[ אפי' פעם אחת אין פודין אותו .מעשה 42 באחד שמכר את עצמו ]ללודים[ אתא עובדא קומי ר' אבהו אמ' :מה נעשה? מפני חייו עשה.
היחס הפרגמטי -המתון יחסית -של ר' אבהו בעניין זה אינו סותר את עמדתו הביקורתית העקרונית כלפי ההליכה לתיאטרון שהייתה בוודאי למורת רוחו 43,וכפי שהעיר בצדק ז' וייס" ,ר' אבהו מבקש להראות בדרשתו את הפן השלילי ,האנטי יהודי ,של מופעי הבידור הרומיים ,בתקווה שהדבר ישכנע את קהל המאזינים שלא לבא בשערם ,אך לא נמצא בדבריו לשון מפורשת האוסרת את ההליכה אל התיאטרון…האמוראים ]בניגוד לתנאים )ראו למעלה במאמרו של וייס( ,ע"פ[ הבינו שעליהם לשנות את נימת דבריהם לנוכח המציאות ,שבני הקהילה פקדו את מבני הבידור כצופים וכמשתתפים כאחד, .41ראו למשל :תוספתא ,עבודה זרה פ"ב ה"ה )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' ;(462שם ה"ז" :היושב באיסטרטון הרי זה שופך דמים"; ירושלמי ,עבודה זרה פ"א ה"ז )מ ע"א ,טור " :(1381היושב באיצטדין הרי זה שופך דמים"; בבלי ,שם ,יח ע"ב: "ת"ר :ההולך לאיצטדינין… אין הולכין לאיצטדינין מפני מושב לצים" .לגבי הסיפא של המקור הנידון גורס כ"י מינכען כדלהלן]" :דתניא[ אין הולכין לאצטדינין ]מפני שפיכות דמים דברי רבי["; דק"ס על אתר ,אות ז .ועוד. .42ירושלמי ,גיטין פ"ד ה"ט )מו סע"א רע"ב ,טור .(1071וראו :פני משה ,שם ,ד"ה' :מפני חייו עשה'" :מפני דוחקו שלא היה לו ממה להתפרנס ופודין". .43איכה רבה ,פתיחתא יז )מהדורת בובר ,ז ע"ב(":רבי אבהו פתח .ישיחו בי יושבי שער )תהלים סט יג( .אלו אומות העולם שהן יושבין בבתי תרטיאות ובבתי קרקסיאות .ונגינות שותי שכר )שם( .מאחר שהן יושבין ואוכלין ושותין ומשתכרין, הן יושבין ומשיחין בי ,ומלעיגים בי ,ואומרין בגין דלא נצרוך לחרובא כיהודאי ,והן אומרין אלו לאלו ,כמה שנים את בעי מחי, והן אומרים כחלוקא דיהודאי דשבתא .ומכניסין את הגמל לטרטיאות שלהם והחלוקים שלו עליו ,והן אומרים אלו לאלו על מה זה מתאבל ,והן אומרים היהודים הללו שומרי שביעית הן ואין להם ירק ואכלו החוחים של זה והוא מתאבל עליהם ,ומכניסים את )המתים( ]המיומום[ לתיטרון שלהם וראשו מגולח ,והן אומרים אלו לאלו על מה ראשו של זה מגולח ,והוא אומר היהודים הללו שומרי שבתות הן ,וכל מה שהן יגעין כל ימי השבת אוכלין בשבת ,ואין להם עצים לבשל בהן ,והן שוברין מטותיהן ומבשלין בהן ,והם ישנים בארץ ומתעפרים בעפר ,וסכין בשמן ,לפיכך השמן ביוקר".
יד
עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י הירושלמי מעתיק את ההלכה הנידונה
39
ומוסיף לה דיון אמוראי מרתק:
"שחטה וזרק דמה לע"ז והקטיר חלבה לע"ז זה היה מעשה בקיסרין ולא אמרו לא לאיסור ולא להיתר .ר' חנינה בשם רב חסדא זאת אומרת לא חשו ]כלומר לעבודה זרה[ אין תימר חשו ]שהרי אם תאמר שחשו ממש לעבודה זרה[ היה להם להורות איסור! ר' יוסי בשם רב חסדא זאת אומרת שחשו ]כיוון שלא התירו במפורש משמע שבכל זאת חשו שמא מדובר בעבודה זרה[ אין תימר 40 לא חשו ]שהרי אם לא ראו בכך עבודה זרה[ לא היה להן להורות? ]כלומר להתר[".
דא עקא ,זאת היא בדיוק הדילמה העומדת בפני החכמים בעיר כגון קיסריה כאשר המעיין במקרה נוכח לדעת כי מדובר ביהודי שהקריב את הדם ואת החלב לאלים .במילים אחרות ,אף אם מלכתחילה חשב
לא לאיסור ולא להיתר]".וראו ביחוסי תנאים ואמוראים לרבינו יהודה בר' קלונימוס ,ערך 'חייא רב חייא בריה דרב נחמן', )מהדורת מימון ,עמ' רפז(" :לפי שבכל מקום התוספת' והירושלמ' שוין" וכן בשיטה מקובצת לרבינו בצלאל אשכנזי לבבלי כתובות כא ע"א ,ד"ה' :עד ודיין -ובירושלמי' )מהדורת מצגר ,עמ' צג(" :ובקיאין היו בעלי תלמוד ירושלמי בתוספתו' שבידינו כי הם מצויות בירושלמי באותו הלשון בעצמו"; אלבק) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(14עמ' [57עולה אפוא מכאן שהיהודי שחט תחילה שחיטה כשרה ובשלב שני זרק את הדם והקטיר את החלב לעבודה זרה. .39ליברמן ,תוספת ראשונים ,שם. .40ירושלמי ,גיטין )לעיל ,סוף הערה .(38עם זאת ,מודע אני לכך כי הפירוש המסורתי של המקור אינו בדיוק כך וחשוב להביאו כדי להבין את מהות הדיון ההלכתי וההקשר ההיסטורי הארצישראלי שבדיון האמוראי .העניין המרכזי הנדון בסוגיה זו נעוץ בשאלה האם מחשבה לעבודה זרה בשעת קיום פעולה הלכתית כגון שחיטה יש בה כדי לפסול את השחיטה? יתירה מזו אם ראשית הפעולה הייתה כשרה לכל דבר וסוף הפעולה הייתה לעבודה זרה האם הסיפא משפיעה על הרישא? וכך מובא בירושלמי ,שם" :שחטה )= בהמה כדת וכדין והרהר( לזרוק דמה לע"ז ולהקטיר חלבה לע"ז .ר' יוחנן אמר מחשבה פוסלת )שכן מחשבים מעבודה לעבודה( ריש לקיש אומר :אין המחשבה פוסלת )כי לא מחשבים מעבודה לעבודה( ".לגבי תמיהתם של אמוראי ארץ-ישראל על החלטת התנאים לא לאסור וגם לא להתיר את השחיטה במעשה שארע בקיסריה ,פירשו מפרשי הירושלמי גיטין )הרמב"ן בחידושיו לבבלי ,חולין לט ע"ב דן בברייתא שבירושלמי ,ראו :י' פלורסהיים ,פירושי הרמב"ן לירושלמי סדר נשים ,ח"ב ,ירושלים תשס"ה ,עמ' רמ-רמא; פני-משה ,על אתר; קרבן העדה ,שם( על-סמך הדיון המובא בקרב אמוראי בבל בבבלי ,חולין לט ע"ב ,שמשום שחששו לכבודו של התנא רבן שמעון בן גמילאל לא הורו להיתר .שכן הלה סבור שסוף מעשה מוכיח על תחילתו ]משנה ,גיטין ו ו; תוספתא בבא בתרא פ"ח ה"א )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' ,[(156 ומכאן שבארוע שארע בקיסריה ,היות ופעולות הזריקה וההקטרה היו לעבודה זרה הרי שגם השחיטה היתה מלכתחילה לשם עבודה זרה .מאידך ,גם לא אסרו התנאים את השחיטה מפני כבוד חכמים )עפ"י משנה ,חולין ב ז( הסבורים שאין סופו מוכיח על תחילתו ,וראו את הדיון בבבלי ,שם" :אמר רב חסדא לא אמרו בה איסור משום כבודן דרבנן לא היתר משום כבודו דר' אליעזר ]לאחר שנדחו הנימוקים שהובאו לראיה מובא כדלהלן[… אלא אמר רב שיזבי :לא אמרו בה היתר משום כבודו דרשב"ג…" ואולם ,הסברים אלה מופיעים רק בבבלי ומפרשי הירושלמי גיטין התבססו כולם עליו .אף ר' דוד פארדו מפרש את ההלכה בתוספתא חולין )ירושלים תשנ"ד ,עמ' נא; נג( על סמך הדיון שבבבלי .ואולם ,בלשון התוספתא הסיבה לפסיקה ההלכתית של התנאים שלא להתיר ולא לאסור אינה מפורטת כלל ובירושלמי גיטין הדיון האמוראי אף לא רומז שפסיקת התנאים נבעה מרצונם לכבד את דעתם של האוסר )רשב"ג( והמתיר )חכמים(! אדרבה ניסוח הדברים מוכיח כי אמוראי ארץ-ישראל לא מצאו שום פתרון לעניין כי הסוגיה נותרה בצריך עיון ,ראו שם" :ר' חנינה בשם רב חסדא זאת אומרת לא חשו אין תימר חשו היה להם להורות איסור! ר' יוסי בשם רב חסדא זאת אומרת שחשו אין תימר לא חשו לא היה להן להורות?" ]מעניין כי דברי רב חסדא המופיעים בבבלי ,חולין לט ע"ב" :לא אמרו בה איסור משום כבודן דרבנן" אינם מופיעים בירושלמי גיטין ,שבו הדברים המיוחסים לרב חסדא נותרו בגדר התמיהה ללא נסיון לתרץ[ .מה עוד שבענין כה גורלי כעבודה זרה היינו מצפים למצוא הכרעה הלכתית ולא להשאיר את העניין עומד ותלוי לא בימי התנאים ולא בדיון האמוראים בסוגייה זו! ולפיכך נראה כי ההסבר לתמיהה זו וגם לפסיקה ההלכתית שלא לאסור ולא להתיר מתפרשת על רקע המציאות החברתית הבעייתית ביותר ששררה בקיסריה במאה השנייה לסה"נ. ברור כי לפנינו מקרה יחיד במינו של יהודי קיסריני ששחט בהמה כדת וכדין וכן לא השתמש בחלבה ובדמה שעל אכילתם חל חיוב כרת מן התורה ]ראו למשל :ויקרא ,ז כג-כז[ ,אך זרק והקטיר אותם לעבודה זרה!? ייתכן כי מדובר ביהודי שלא היה מעוניין להפסיד כספית חלקים מן הבהמה בבחינת 'זה נהנה וזה לא חסר' ,שחיטה ליהודים ודם וחלב לדתות הנכר .או שמא מדובר ביהודי שסגד בעצמו לעבודה זרה כפי שעולה מדברי התוספתא )לעיל ,הערה " :(38וזרק את דמה לעבודה זרה והקטיר חלבה לעבודה זרה" ,כלומר הלה לא מכר את האיברים אלא באמצעותם סגד לאלים או קיים טקסים סינקרטיים שבהם היו מעורבים שחיטה כהלכה וטקסים אליליים! והשוו שוב לדברי ס' שוורץ) ,לעיל ,הערה .(35
יג
עמנואל פרידהיים ג .דילמת החכמים בענין מעשה אלילי בקיסריה: בקיסריה אנו גם עדים למקרה יחיד במינו של קיום טקס אלילי על-ידי יהודי שזכה לדיון הלכתי סביב השאלה התמוהה לכאורה :האם מעשיו אסורים או מותרים?! והנה לשון התוספתא: "השוחט את הבהמה לזרוק דמה לעבודה זרה ולהקטיר חלבה לעבודה זרה הרי זה בשר זבחי מתים .אם מששחטה וזרק את דמה לעבודה זרה והקטיר חלבה לעבודה זרה ,זה היה מעשה 38 בקיסרי ובאו ושאלו את חכמים ולא אמרו לא אסור ולא התר".
הרומיות ,ושלא היו להם אמות מידה אחרות של הגדרה דתית פרובינקיילית בעניין ההקדשה לאלים ]ראו מאמרי' ,בית המרחץ הציבורי הרומי בארץ-ישראל דילמות מחקריות בשאלת הגדרתו כמוסד מקודש' ,קתדרה) 119 ,תשס"ו( ,עמ' ,180 173 וכן בלאיש) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(4עמ' Pagan cults had no dogma, even less a sovereign sacerdotal authority. " :30 ,[« … Each individual chose his gods and, since there was no « catechism », he gave his own definition ומכאן שלא מן הנמנע שההיתר שחלק מן החכמים נתנו לפסלי נוי ,לא נבע מאי סגידה לפסלים אלה על-ידי מקומיים )שכן, אפשר שראו בהם פסלי פולחן על-פי מנגנון הקדשה מקומי( ,אלא מכך ,שלאור תפוצתם הרבה של פסלים בארץ-ישראל לא התאפשר לאסור את כולם ,ולפיכך היו חכמים שהבחינו בין אלה שהיו יותר פולחניים )או מקודשים עפ"י הנוהג הרומי( שאותם אסרו ,לבין אחרים שבעיניהם היו פחות פולחניים )או מקודשים לפי נוהג מקומי גרידא( ,שאותם התירו .אך עדיין, אפשר שהתירו עבודה זרה שעה שלא יכלו לעמוד מול לחצים חברתיים ותרבותיים המוניים .וצריך עיון. .37בדומה לכך ניתן להבין את הביטוי התלמודי 'מוטב שיהיו שוגגין ואל יהיו מזידין' שמבטא השלמה עם מציאות בלתי-רצויה מעיקר הדין ,וגם התחשבות במגבלות הציבור בקיום מספר הלכות שידוע בוודאות שלא יקיימן בשום אופן ,ולפיכך עדיף שלא לפסוק רשמית לאיסור ,וראו :ירושלמי עירובין פ"א ה"א )יח ע"ג ,טור ;(453שמות רבה מג א; בבלי ,שבת קמח ע"ב …" :אלא :הנח לישראל ,מוטב שיהו שוגגין ואל יהו מזידין"; ביצה ל ע"א; בבא בתרא ,ס ע"ב .ושוב על העיקרון המחשבתי העומד מאחורי כלל זה ,עיינו :רמב"ם ,הלכות שביתת עשור ,פ"א ה"ז )דפוס קושטא ,רס"ט( …" :שהרי אי אפשר שיהיה שוטר בבית כל אחד ואחד להזהיר נשיו ,והנח להן שיהיו שוגגין ואל יהיו מזידין ,וכן כל הדומה לזה". בהקשר לכך אי אפשר לומר כי החכמים מקלים בהלכות הקשורות לשימוש בשפה היוונית משום שהיא פחות מצויה .הרי ברור כי השפה היוונית קיימת בארץ-ישראל בתקופה הרומית ,ולפיכך מובן כי ההיתרים מבטאים התמודדות הלכתית שונה מן האיסור נוכח מציאות גורפת זו. .38תוספתא חולין ,פ"ב ה"יג )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' .(502במקרה השני של התוספתא "אם מששחטה" עולה בברור כי היהודי שחט סתם שחיטה כשרה ורק בשלב שני הקדיש את הדם והחלב לעבודה זרה ]וראו בנוסח כ"י לונדון על אתר":אם משנשחטה זרק את דמה… "; ש' ליברמן ,תוספת ראשונים ,ח"א ,ניו-יורק וירושלים תשנ"ט ,3עמ' ,[225והשוו ללשון הברייתא בבבלי ,חולין לט ע"ב …" :השוחט את הבהמה לזרוק דמה לעבודה זרה ולהקטיר חלבה לעבודה זרה הרי אלו זבחי מתים; שחטה ואח"כ חישב עליה )כך לפי דפוס וילנא ,דפוס שונצינו רמ"ט וכ"י מינכען ,95וטיקן 121והמבורג ,(169זה היה מעשה בקיסרי…" .ומכאן שבשני שלבים עסקינן .מקרה זה בא בניגוד למקרה הראשון שבתוספתא ]שם: "השוחט את הבהמה לזרוק דמה לעבודה זרה ולהקטיר חלבה לעבודה זרה הרי זה בשר זבחי מתים"[ שבו יהודי שוחט בכוונה תחילה לעבודת האלילים ועל כן הבשר הנשחט הינו "בשר זבחי מתים" ]על-סמך תהלים ,קו כח[ כיוון שמלכתחילה מעשיו כוונו מן-הסתם לעבודת אלילים .בעניין אחר ,לא ברור לכאורה מה התרחש בדיוק בקיסריה ,שכן לפי הברייתא שבתוספתא עניינו של המקרה הוא זריקה של הדם והקטרה של החלב ממש לאלים ]ושם" :אם מששחטה וזרק את דמה לעבודה זרה והקטיר חלבה לעבודה זרה ,זה היה מעשה בקיסרי…[ ,כלומר מדובר ביהודי שעבד באמת עבודה זרה, ואילו לפי לשון הברייתא שבבבלי ,עולה כי אחרי שהיהודי שחט שחיטה כשרה ,הוא חשב להקריב את הדם ואת החלב לעבודה זרה בלבד ,אך לא עשה זאת ]בבלי ,שם" :שחטה ואח"כ חישב עליה ,זה היה מעשה בקיסרי…"[ נשאלת אפוא השאלה מה באמת ארע בקיסריה? האם היהודי הנידון עבד עבודה זרה ממש כלשון התוספתא או שמא רק חשב ,והצהיר על כוונותיו לעבוד עבודה זרה כלשון הברייתא שבבבלי ותו לא! לא מסתבר לומר כי היו שני מקרים ,ראו :ר' דוד פארדו )חסדי דוד( על תוספתא חולין ,ירושלים תשנ"ד ,עמ' נא] ,מבחינה הלכתית נעיר אגב ,כי במקרה של החשיבה בלבד, מתברר כי לשיטתו של ר' יוחנן די במחשבה לעבודה זרה בסוף ההליך כדי להוכיח שגם בתחילת ההליך ,כבר התכוון היהודי לשחוט לעבודה זרה )וראו להלן בהערה (40ועל-כן שחיטתו פסולה .אף שבקרב הראשונים ניתן למצוא שלל דעות הלכתיות בנושא זה לכאן ולכאן נסתפק כאן בדברי הרמב"ם ]משנה תורה הלכות שחיטה ,פ"ב הט"ז )עפ"י דפוס קושטא ,רס"ט([ שפסק" :השוחט ואחר כך חשב לזרוק דמה לעבודה זרה או להקטיר חלבה לעבודה זרה הרי זו אסורה מספק שמא סופו הוכיח על תחילתו ובמחשבה זו שחט"[ ואולם דומני בפשטות כי הגרסה הארצישראלית של הברייתא בתוספתא מיהמנה יותר מבחינה היסטורית מאשר מקבילתה שבבבלי ,שכן הירושלמי גיטין ,פ"ו ה"ו )מח ע"ב ,טור [(1082גורס קרוב ללשון התוספתא ,ושם" :שחטה וזרק דמה לע"ז והקטיר חלבה לע"ז זה היה מעשה בקיסרין ולא אמרו
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עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י בעייתית ביותר בעיניהם ,שבה יהודים בלאו-הכי מדברים יוונית אך עדיין מגיעים לבית הכנסת ואומרים את קריאת שמע ,מציאות שבה יהודים חפצים להשתתף במשתה אלילי של נכרים ,אך עדיין מבקשים לברר דעת חכמים בנושא 35.שתי אופציות עומדות אפוא בפני חכמי ארץ-ישראל .האם לאמץ גישה עקרונית -וסבירה מבחינה הלכתית -ובתור כך לאסור ולגזור מול התופעה התרבותית הנוכרית המסכנת את אורח-החיים היהודי? או שמא ,להתחשב במורכבות הפרגמטית של המצב ואולי לעתים להתפשר ולהשלים עם המצב החדש ודווקא בגלל חומרתו? אך חשוב ביותר להדגיש שאם האיסור הוא תגובה מיידית למציאות בעייתית בעיני חז"ל גם ההיתר ,או הרצון להתיר באותו עניין ,הנו תולדה ישירה לאותה מציאות קשה. החכמים הבינו היטב את כוחו של הציבור ואת הצורך להגמיש לעתים את עמדותיהם ההלכתיות על-מנת להתחשב בו 36,נוכח הסכנה הדתית והחברתית של התרבות היוונית-רומית לגווניה שבלאו-הכי לא ניתן 37 היה יותר למגר כליל. .35אף שהיו יהודים עובדי עבודה זרה בארץ-ישראל התלמודית )ראו לעיל ,הערה ,(6הגדרתו של ס' שוורץ ולפיה מרבית יהודי ארץ-ישראל חיו כפגאנים ]ראוS. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E to 640 C.E., : ,[Princeton 2001, p. 176נראית לי רחוקה .יחד עם זאת ,יש להסכים להמשך דבריו ,ושםOthers (= Jews) may …" : have been eclectic, living in some respects as pagans and in others as Jews, occasionally supporting and consulting rabbinic figures for some purposes, perhaps by the third century helping in the construction "of synagogues but most often ignoring them. .36וראו בהקשר זה הטיפול בשמן של נכרים שנאסר בימי בית שני והותר בימי ר' יהודה נשיאה הראשון ,ראו :משנה, עבודה זרה א ו; תוספתא שם ,פ"ד )ה( הי"א )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' ;(467ירושלמי ,שם ,פ"ב ה"ו )מא ע"ד ,טור ;(1392 בבלי ,שם ,לז ע"א .במקרה דנן מקורות אמוראיים מפרשים בפירוש את סיבת ההיתר ,ראו :ירושלמי שבת פ"א ה"ד )ג ע"ד ,טור )" :(372ו( ]ד [2מר ר' יוחנן בשם ר' לעזר בר' צדוק מקובל אני שכל גזירה שבית דין גוזרין על הציבור ולא קיבלו רוב הציבור עליהן אינה גזירה ובדקו ומצאו גזירה שלשמן ולא קיבלו רוב הציבור עליהן"; ירושלמי ,עבודה זרה ,שם; בבלי עבודה זרה ,לו ע"א .האם נלמד מכך גזרה שווה שחז"ל מקלים בענייני עבודה זרה ומבטלים איסורים עד למינימום משום שלא 'קיבלו רוב הציבור עליהן' את הלכות עבודה זרה בשעה שהפגאניות חזקה במיוחד?! ועל העיקרון ולפיו הטלת גזרה תלויה במידת הקושי שבקיומה על-ידי הציבור ,ראו עוד :בבלי ,בבא קמא עט ע"ב; בבא בתרא ,ס ע"ב .וראו בהקשר זה את דבריו המאלפים של הרמב"ם ,משנה תורה -הלכות ממרים ,פ"ב ה"ה )עפ"י דפוס קושטא ,רס"ט(" :בית דין שנראה להן לגזור גזירה או לתקן תקנה… צריכין… לידע תחלה אם רוב הצבור יכולין לעמוד בהן או אם אין יכולין לעמוד ולעולם אין גוזרין גזירה על הצבור אלא אם כן רוב הצבור יכולין לעמוד בה ".תלותם של חכמים בציבור במאה השלישית באה לידי ביטוי גם בתמיהתו של ר' שמלאי בדבר פת של גוים שאינה מותרת ובתשובת ר' יהודה נשיאה אליו בבבלי ,עבודה זרה לז ע"א )עפ"י כ"י פיזרו ,1511כ"י ספרדי ודפוס וילנא(" :א"ל :שמלאי ,לא היית ]"עמנו" לפי כ"י פריס 1337ועוד[ אמש בבית המדרש כשהתרנו את השמן ,אמר לו :בימינו תתיר אף את הפת .אמר לו :א"כ ,קרו לן בית דינא שריא ]כ"י פריס 1337גורס" :בי דינא שריא" ,ועוד["; ירושלמי ,שבת ,שם .בית דינו של הנשיא התחשב אפוא בדעת הציבור להתיר או לאסור לפי הנסיבות ,שלא ייחשב מחמיר מדי בעני הציבור או מקל מדי בעיני חלק מן החכמים .ועל הרקע ההיסטורי שעמד מאחורי נוהג הציבור שלא להמנע משימוש בשמן ופת של נכרים ,ראו :ר' ינקלביץ' ,פיתן…מהלכות של עמעום הוא' ,סיני ,פז )תש"ם( ,עמ' נד .מי שנותר בעמדה עקרונית האוסרת בניגוד לרצון הציבור שביקש להקל עלול היה לעתים להפגע כגון ר' שמעון ספרא )= מורה( דטרבנת שבעמק יזרעאל שפוטר מתפקיד הוראה על-ידי הציבור ובשל כך ירד לבבל במאה השלישית לסה"נ ,ראו :ירושלמי ,מגילה פ"ד ה"ד )עה ע"ב ,טור .(772גם כאן הרצון לאסור אך גם להתיר ולהקל בהלכות עבודה זרה ובתחומים רבים שבתרבות יוון רומא ,שעה שתרבות זו לגווניה נמצאה בעימות פרונטאלי עם היהדות ,נבע במידה רבה מאי-יכולתו של הציבור היהודי להתנגד לה ,וראו בהקשר זה ,ירושלמי עבודה זרה ,פ"ג ה"א )מב ע"ג ,טור " :(1394ר' נחום בר' סימאי… ולמה נקרא שמו נחום איש קודש קדשים? שלא הביט בצורת מטבע מימיו"; בבלי ,פסחים קד ע"א" :מאן ניהו בנן של קדושים? רבי מנחם בר סימאי ]דפוס ונציה ר"פ גורס" :ר' מנח' בר סומאי" .כ"י ששון-לונצר מוסיף" :ורבי יוסי ברבי סימאי"[ .ואמאי קרו ליה בנן של קדושים? דלא איסתכל בצורתא דזוזא ".בכמה עדי-נוסח מופיעה תוספת חשובה עם המילה" :אפילו" ]כ"י אוקספורד ;OPP. ADD. FOL. 23666כ"י בית המדרש לרבנים ) ;ENA (1608 850כ"י וטיקן " :109דאפילו בצורתא דזוזא לא הוה מסתכל"; כ"י וטיקן ;125כ"י וטיקן ;134 כ"י מינכען [95ללמדך שגם בעיני המספר התלמודי )הבבלי?( ר' מנחם/נחום בר סימאי היה יחיד במינו גם בקרב חכמים. עולה אם כן שהמוני-העם אכן הסתכלו על דיוקני האלים והקיסרים על מטבעות הערים בארץ-ישראל הרומית כי לא יכלו לעמוד באיסור 'אל תפנו אל האלילים' )ויקרא יט ד( על-אף מסרן האלילי המובהק של דמויות אלו .בהקשר לכך ולגבי הנחת החוקרים )לעיל הערה ,(17שיהודי ארץ-ישראל וחכמיהם ידעו להבחין בין פסל נעבד לבין פסל שלא נעבד כפי שהיה נהוג בקרב הרומאים ,עוד נוסיף כדלהלן :העובדה שהמשפט הרומי הבחין בין מה שהיה מקודש לאלים לבין מה שהיה סקולארי אינה מוכיחה כי תושביה של ארץ-ישראל ,נכרים ויהודים כאחד ,הכירו את ההבחנות המשפטיות הרשמיות
יא
עמנואל פרידהיים להזכיר את הפרשה הראשונה של קריאת שמע שנחרטה כולה במאה השלישית לסה"נ על משקוף דלת בפלמירה ,עיר המדבר הסורי שבקצה המזרחי של הקיסרות הרומית .הכתובת נתגלתה בשנת 1840 ומוכיחה כי בפלמירה שבה דיברו ארמית-תדמורית ויוונית כאחת יהודים שהתגוררו בעיר שהייתה כולה פגאנית ,שבה התקיימו יותר פולחנים פגניים מאשר בקיסריה ,ראו צורך להדגיש את האמונה 28 באלוהי ישראל האחד והיחיד וקראו את קריאת שמע כשיטת ר' יהודה הנשיא ,דהיינו בשפת המקור, בעוד אמירת 'שמע ישראל' ביוונית בקיסריה באותה תקופה מעידה על הלניזציה עמוקה הרבה יותר בקרב יהודי העיר מאשר בקרב יהודי תדמור .צא ולמד אפוא עד כמה חכמי קיסריה היו צריכים להתמודד עם מצב תרבותי מורכב ,ובלתי-רצוי מבחינתם ,שבו הקהילה היהודית המקומית הושפעה עמוקות על-ידי תרבות יוון ורומא לגווניה ובלית-בררה החליטו להקל! דומה כי מציאות זו השוררת בקיסריה בימי התלמוד גם הביאה את ר' אבהו להקל בצורה מרחיקת-לכת בעניינים הקשורים במפגש שבין לימוד השפה היוונית לבין ההלכה ,כדבריו הבאים" :רבי אבהו בשם רבי יוחנן מותר לאדם ללמד את בתו יוונית מפני שהוא תכשיט לה" 29.יצוין כי כל המקורות שעליהם הסתמכו במחקר ההיסטורי כדי ללמוד שאין איסור הלכתי גורף על לימוד יוונית משיחים לפי תומם 30,ואילו המקור היחיד המדבר במפורש על היתר מובא בעילום-שם ומיועד לבית הנשיא בלבד עקב קרבתו לשלטון הרומי 31.למעשה, הפסק היחיד שמתיר מפורשות לאדם מן השורה שאיננו מבית-הנשיא ללמוד יוונית בשל יופיה של השפה )'מפני שהיא תכשיט לה'( מצוי בדברי ר' אבהו 32,שכן במציאות ששררה בעיר כגון קיסריה אי-אפשר שלא ללמד את הילדים יוונית ,ואם היה איסור הרי שהוא ממוקד בלימוד הבן כפי שהוכיח ש' ליברמן 33.ר' אבהו הקל עוד יותר כאשר התיר בפירוש ללמד את הבת 34.הפסיקה ההלכתית של ר' אבהו שמציגה מתירנות רחבה ,ואף רצון למצות את מגבלות האיסור עם שמירה על האיסור המקורי בצורה המינימאלית ביותר ,מבטאת את צורך השעה ומהוויי המקום .הקלת החכמים בנידון ,בדומה לעמדתו מלכתחילה של ר' אמי בגדרה/חמת-גדר ,מבטאת את רצונם להתחשב במציאות משתנה,
.28על הכתובת ראו Ph. Berger, ‘Les inscriptions hébraïques de la synagogue de Palmyre’, Mémoires: de la société de linguistique, 7 (1892), p. 66; E. Mittwoch, ‘Hebräische Inschriften aus Palmyra’, Beiträge zur Assyriologie, 4/2 (1900), pp. 203 206; Répertoire d’épigraphie sémitique, III, Paris 1916, no 1279; S. Krauss, Synagogale Altertümer, Berlin 1922 [rep. Hildesheim 1966], p. 226ff; J. B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum - Recueil des inscriptions juives qui vont du IIIe siècle avant Jésus-Christ au VIIe siècle " : de notre ère, I, Syrie septentrionale et Transjordanie, Rome 1936, pp. 68 69 no 821שמע ישראל א]דוני[ אלהינו אדוני אחד .ואהבתה את אדוני אלהיך בכל לבבך ובכל ]נפשך ובכל מאדך והיו[ הדברים האלה אשר אנכי מצוך היום על ]לבבך[ ושננתם לבניך ודברת בם…"אולי היה זה שער מבית-כנסת ,ראו :ל' רוט-גרסון ,יהודי סוריה בראי הכתובות היווניות, ירושלים תשס"א ,עמ' .280 277 .29ירושלמי פיאה ,פ"א ה"א )טו ע"ג ,טור ;(79סוטה ,פ"ט הי"ד )כד ע"ג ,טור " :(950ר' אבהו בשם ר' יוחנן מותר לאדם ללמד את בתו יוונית מפני שהיא תכשיט לה" וראו :ליברמן )לעיל ,הערה ,(4עמ' .228 225 .30משנה ,סוטה ט יד; תוספתא עבודה זרה ,פ"א ה"כ )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' ;(461ירושלמי ,פיאה ,שם; סוטה, שם; בבלי ,מנחות צט ע"ב; סוטה מט ע"ב. .31תוספתא סוטה ,פט"ו ה"ח )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' 242לפי כ"י וינה(" :התירו להם לבית רבן גמליאל ללמד את בניהם יונית ,מפני שהן קרובין למלכות"; שם ,עמ' 241לפי כ"י ערפורט; ירושלמי שבת ,פ"ו ה"א )ז ע"ד ,טור ;(395עבודה זרה פ"ב ה"ב )מא ע"א ,טור ;(1386בבלי ,בבא קמא פג ע"א; סוטה מט ע"ב. .32ניסיונו המאולץ של ר' אבהו לתלות את פסיקתו בזו ההיפותטית של ר' יוחנן ,מוכח מהמשך הדברים של ר' שמעון בר אבא בירושלמי על אתר ,ושם" :בגין דו בעה מלפה בנתיה ,הוא תלי ליה בר' יוחנן" )= מפני שהוא מבקש ללמד בנותיו )יוונית( ,הוא תולה אותו היתר בר' יוחנן( .ולראיה עיינו גם :פרקי דרבי )מהדורת גרינהוט ,עמ' " :(58אמר ר' יוחנן… ולא ילמד אדם את בתו יונית ואסור לו שילמד יונית"; ליברמן) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(4עמ' 18והערה .56דומה אפוא שדווקא המצב התרבותי המורכב ביותר ששרר בקרב הקהילה היהודית בקיסריה ,הביא את ר' אבהו לתלות ,בצורה פתטית כמעט, את היתרו בדברי גדול האמוראים ר' יוחנן ,אעפ"י שידע קרוב לוודאי שר' יוחנן לא סבר כך. .33ליברמן) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(4עמ' .226 .34ההיגיון ההלכתי צריך להיות שאסרו את הלימוד לבן ,משמע שמותר ללמד את הבת .יתירה מזו ,הרתיעה ללימוד עצמי של השפה היוונית וחכמתה נעוצה בין-השאר גם בעניין ביטול תורה )ראו :ליברמן ,שם( והלא נשים פטורות מתלמוד תורה! ]ראו :בבלי ,עירובין ,כז ע"א; קידושין לד ע"א[ ומכאן שהותר ללמדן יוונית.
י
עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י מעניין שחכמי קיסריה מקלים בצורה משמעותית בנושאים הקשורים במפגש שבין ההלכה התנאית לבין השפה היוונית .כך למשל שנינו במשנה: "אלו נאמרין בכל לשון פרשת סוטה ווידוי מעשר קריאת שמע ותפלה וברכת המזון ושבועת 24 העדות ושבועת הפקדון".
ר' יהודה הנשיא ) 222-180לסה"נ בקירוב( פסק שיש לקרוא את קריאת שמע דווקא בלשון הקודש, אפילו אם המתפלל לא יבין את הפסוקים: "ר' אומ' אומ' אני שאין שמע נאמ' אלא בלשון הקדש שנ' והיו הדברים האלה".
25
אלא שמספר דורות לאחר מכן ,אחרי ששמעו יהודים בקיסריה קוראים את קריאת שמע ביוונית ,גם ר' יוסי גם ר' מנא ,אמוראים ארצישראליים בני המאה השלישית-רביעית לסה"נ ,מתירים את הדבר כדעת המשנה ,חרף איסורו המפורש של ר' יהודה הנשיא ,בנימוק המאלף: "כך או' אני :מי שאינו יודע לקרות אשורית )כלומר כלשון התורה( לא יקרינה כל עיקר? אלא 26 יוצא בכל לשון שהוא יודע".
במילים אחרות ,אי אפשר להסיק כי ההקלה ההלכתית בנושא הנידון היא תוצאה של העובדה ההיפותטית שהיהודים אמרו כולם את קריאת שמע בעברית ושאף אדם לא התפלל יותר ביוונית! הלא בדיוק ההפך ארע במציאות כאשר חכמים מקלים בשעה ששמעו "קלון קריין שמע אלוניסתין" 27.לשם השוואה ,מן הראוי .23שיר השירים רבה ,א לט )ו( )מהדורת דונסקי ,עמ' לב(; ילקוט שמעוני על ויקרא ,רמז תשס"ד )מהדורת הימן ,עמ' .(442 עולה מסיפור זה שהמחרפים והמגדפים הינם יהודי קיסריה כפי שמוכח מתשובת ריש לקיש בסיפא .וראו בשינוי נוסח מעניין אך קרוב לוודאי משובש כמו כמעט בכל מקום שבו מוזכר ר' שמעון בן לוי במקום ריש לקיש] ,ראו :א' הימן ,תולדות תנאים ואמוראים ,ח"ג, לונדון תר"ע ]נדפס מחדש ירושלים תשמ"ז[ ,עמ' [1193ילקוט שמעוני על מלכים ,רמז ריח )מהדורת הימן ,עמ' " :(498ר' אבהו ור' שמעון בן לוי הוו עלין להדין קסרין אמר ליה ר' אבהו לר"ש בן לוי מה אנן עלין למדינתהון דמחרפיא ומגדפיא ]ראו שם ,עמ' 499הערה …" :18של מחרפים ומגדפים )של עובדי ע"ז(…"[ …" ושוב אין הכוונה לגויים כי אם ליהודים. .24משנה סוטה ,ז א; בבלי ,ברכות מ ע"ב; שבועות לט ע"א .ובהקשר זה ,ראו גם :משנה שבת טז א" :כל כתבי הקודש מצילין אותן מפני הדליקה… ואף על פי שכתובים בכל לשון טעונים גניזה…"; משנה מגילה א ח" :אין בין ספרים לתפילין ומזוזות אלא שהספרים נכתבין בכל לשון … רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומר אף בספרים לא התירו שיכתבו אלא יונית"; משנה מגילה ב א…" :אבל קורין אותה )= מגילת אסתר( ללועזות בלעז והלועז ששמע אשורית יצא". .25תוספתא סוטה ,פ"ז ה"ז )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' " :(193 192ברכות הלל ושמע ותפלה נאמרין בכל לשון ר' אומ' אומ' אני שאין שמע נאמ' אלא בלשון הקדש שנ' והיו הדברים האלה"; ירושלמי סוטה פ"ז ה"א )כא ע"ב ,טור " :(933וקרית שמע דכת' ודברת בם ר' או' :אומר אני קרית שמע אינו נאמ' אלא בלשון הקודש…"; בבלי ברכות ,יג ע"א" :תנו רבנן :קריאת שמע ככתבה ,דברי רבי ]כ"י פריז 671גורס" :רב"[; וחכמים אומרים :בכל לשון .מאי טעמא דרבי ]כ"י פריז ,שם" :דרב"[? אמר קרא והיו -בהוייתן יהו .ורבנן מאי טעמייהו? אמר קרא :שמע -בכל לשון שאתה שומע"; מגילה יז ע"ב; סוטה לב ע"ב. .26ירושלמי ,סוטה ,שם" :ר' לוי בר חיתה אזל לקיסרין שמע קלון קריין שמע אלוניסתין ]= שמע קריאת שמע נאמרת ביוונית[ בעא מעכבתון ]= ביקש לעכבם ,עקב פסק ההלכה של ר' יהודה הנשיא[ שמע ר' יוסי ואיקפד ]הקפיד שלא לעכבם[ אמ' :כך או' אני :מי שאינו יודע לקרות אשורית לא יקרינה כל עיקר? אלא יוצא בכל לשון שהוא יודע .השיב ר' ברכיה הרי מגילת אסתר היה יודע לקרותה אשורית ולעז ]= קרא אותה ביוונית[ אינו יוצא בה אלא אשורית?! אמ' ר' מנא )עפ"י משנה מגילה ב א( מגילת אסתר היה יודע לקרותה אשורית ולעז אינו יוצא אלא אשורית ,בלעז יוצא בה בלעז וכן יוצא בה בכל לשון שהוא יודע .ותפילה כדי שיהא יודע לתבוע צרכיו וברכת המזון כדי שיהא יודע למי מברך ושבועת העדות ושבועת הפקדון משביעין אותו בלשונו השביען שלא בלשונן ואמרו אמן הרי אילו פטורין ".ר' לוי בר חיתה החמיר אך למעשה ר' יוסי וגם ר' מנא הקלו בנושא וכך היא גם המסקנה ההלכתית של הירושלמי על אתר .נאמר שוב שבמידה והחומרה שר' לוי בר חיתה ביקש להנהיג הייתה תוצאה של מציאות שבה יהודי קיסריה אמרו קריאת שמע ביוונית כפי שנאמר במפורש במקור ,אזי גם ההקלה של ר' יוסי ואמוראים אחרים הינה תוצאה של אותה מציאות. .27י' גייגר ' ,קולון קריין 'שמע אלוניסתין' יהודים ,נכרים וחכמת יוונית בקיסריה' ,קתדרה) 99 ,תשס"א( ,עמ' .47
ט
עמנואל פרידהיים לו :אהובי יודע שעל יראי האל לציית למצוותיו… ויש לנו צו אלוהי ,מסורת אבותינו ,שבשום 20 פנים לא נשתתף בחגיגות הפגאנים".
חכמי התלמוד וראשי הנוצרים אסרו אפוא את ההשתתפות במשתה של עובדי אלילים כי מדובר בעבודה זרה של ממש .עולה אם כן שנסיונו של ר' אמי להתיר מלכתחילה אינו יכול להעיד על כך ש' -יום משתה שלגוים' לא היה טקס פגאני פולחני! אלא ההיתר הנידון מבטא נסיון להתמודדות שונה מול סכנה חברתית ודתית מאיימת כאשר נימוקים כבדי-משקל אחרים נלקחים בחשבון כגון' :מפני דרכי שלום' מול 'עבודה זרה' וגם נסיון להשלים עם יהודי גדרה שבלאו-הכי נמשכים אחרי משתאות אלו .דומני כי ברמת העקרון סבר ר' אמי כי 'כח דהיתרא' )= כח ההיתר( עדיף במקרים כגון אלה ,ולראיה דברי הירושלמי: "חלוט שלהן מהו? )'פני משה' שם ,ד"ה' :חלוט שלהן מה הוא'" :חלוט הוא מים רותחין על גבי הקמח" ויש חשש לבישולי נכרים( נישמעינה מן הדא ר' אמי סלק עם ר' יודן נשייא לחמתא דגדר והתיר חלוט 21 שלהן ]כפי הנראה כי לא חששו יותר מבישולי נכרים כיוון שהתבשל באור השמש["
ר' אמי התיר ליהודי חמת-גדר/גדרה -הפעם בהצלחה ובתמיכת הנשיא -שימוש במאכל של נכרים שמלכתחילה נאסר ,ללמדך שהקהילה היהודית המקומית בלאו-הכי נמשכה אחרי המנהגים 'הקולינאריים' של הנכרים )משתה של גוים וחלוט שלהן( ושר' אמי החליט בשני המקרים ללכת 22 לקראתה שעה שפסק לקולא עקב הלחץ החברתי. נסכם אפוא כדלהלן :עמדתו המתפשרת מלכתחילה של ר' אמי נבעה כמסתבר מעניינים אחדים :א( מרצון עז לשמור על יחסים תקינים עם הנכרים בעיר שבה הם מהווים קרוב לוודאי את הרוב במאה השלישית לסה"נ ,על-אף התרחשויות פגאניות פולחניות המחייבות איסור הלכתי ברמה העיקרונית ב( מתוך הדילמה כיצד לשמור על אימונם של יהודי המקום )גירדאי( בסמכות ההלכתית המקומית, שכן מי ששואל לגבי האפשרות ההלכתית להשתתף במפגן אלילי שכזה ,עדיין חפץ ,מחד גיסא, לקבל את ההנחיה הרבנית .מאידך גיסא ,עצם הצגת השאלה מוכיחה ,כי הוא מעוניין לקבל היתר. ב .חכמים והשפה היוונית בקיסריה: תופעה זו קיימת גם בקיסריה-מאריטימה .במאה השלישית והרביעית לסה"נ הקהילה היהודית בקיסריה נתפסת על-ידי החכמים בתור קהילה של אנשים המחרפים והמגדפים את היהדות כפי שעולה מדו-שיח בין ר' אבהו ,מגדולי חכמי קיסריה במאה השלישית-רביעית לסה"נ ,לבין ר' שמעון בן לקיש: ר' אבהו וריש לקיש הוו עללין להדא מדינתא דקיסרין אמר ליה ר' אבהו לריש לקיש :מהו כן עלינן למדינתא דחירופיא וגידופיא? נחת ליה ריש לקיש מן חמריה וספא חלא ויהב בפומיה, 23 א"ל :מהו כן? א"ל :אין הקב"ה רוצה במי שאומר דילטוריא על ישראל. .20דן) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(5עמ' .28 .21ירושלמי ,עבודה זרה פ"ב ה"ו )מב ע"א ,טור .(1392 .22אף אם לאנשי ביתו הורה ר' אמי לא לגמרי להקל באמנות הדמות ,ראו :ירושלמי ,שם ,פ"ד ה"א )מג ע"ד ,טור :(1401 "ר' אמי מפקד לאינשי ביתיה כד תהוון נפקין לתעניתא לא תהוון רבעין כאורחכון ]= לא תשתחוו כדרכיכם קרוב לוודאי עקב הפסיפסים[ .ר' יונה רבע על סיטריה ]= השתחווה על צדו[ .ר' אחא רבע על סיטריה" ,ועיינוG. Blidstein, ‘Prostration : ,and Mosaics in Talmudic Law’, Bulletin of the Institute of Jewish Studies, 2 (1974), pp. 19 39אף כי לא מדובר וודאי בחומרה גורפת ,שהרי לא אסר עליהם להכנס למקומות אלה .מעניין כי בנושאים הלכתיים פנים-יהודיים יותר ,כגון התנהגותם של גדולי החכמים והנשיא ,ביקש דווקא ר' אמי להחמיר ,ראו למשל :בבלי ,מועד קטן יב ע"ב" :שמע ר' אמי איקפד"; בבלי ,שבת נא ע"א וכן בעניינים אחרים כגון הלכות ממזר ,ראו למשל :ירושלמי ,יבמות פט"ו ה"ד )טו ע"א ,טור (899 המביא את דברי 'הקילוס' שהשמיע ר' זעירא על עמידתו העקרונית האיתנה של ר' אמי שידע להעמיד דבר על בוריו" :והוה ר' זעירא מקלס ליה דו מקים מילתא על בר)ר(א" .ואולם ,ככל הידוע ,בנוגע ליחסו לתרבות היוונית-רומית ,אימץ ר' אמי -או ביקש לאמץ מלכתחילה -פסיקה מקלה ,כפי הנראה ,דווקא בשל מימדיה המדאיגים של התופעה .וראו להלן.
ח
עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י 'סבר מישרי לון' ,דהיינו :סבר מלכתחילה להתיר להם ,משום שהיה כאן נימוק אחר 'מפני דרכי שלום'. לבסוף ההיתר לא יצא לפועל כיוון שהובהר לו לר' אמי שכבר תנאים אסרו את העניין 18.ואולם, עמדתו הראשונה של ר' אמי מעוררת עניין רב .מסיפור זה מוכח שהיתר ,או הכוונה להתיר השתתפות באירוע אלילי מובהק שנאסר כבר בדור התנאים ,איננו פועל יוצא של היעלמות המרכיב הפגאני בתוך המשתה ,אדרבה המהות הפנימית והחיצונית האלילית של הארוע בולטת לעין 19.לשון אחר ,האיסור הסופי נבע ממהותו האלילית של הארוע ,וההיתר שר' אמי ביקש מלכתחילה לתת הנו אפוא גם פונקציה של אותה מציאות .חשוב כאן להעיר כי בשאלות ותשובות בקובץ נוצרי של שני נזירים וארסאנופיוס ויואנס שחיו במאה השישית לסה"נ בקרבת עזה, נתקלים במקרה זהה כמעט לחלוטין לזה שארע בגדרה במאה השלישית לסה"נ עם ר' אמי: "אם יהודי או פגאני שולח לי הזמנה לסעודה במהלך חגו או אם הוא שולח לי מתנות ,האם עליי לקבלן או לא? אל תקבל כי הדבר מנוגד למצוות הכנסיה הקדושה .ומה אז? אם חברי הוא אדם נכבד ]וישלח לי מתנות או יזמין אותי לסעוד על שולחנו[ ועלול להצטער אם אדחה ]את הזמנתו[ )השוו לנימוק של ר' אמי כדי להתיר" :סבר מישרי לון… מפני דרכי שלום"( ,מה אגיד לו? אמור
בין שאינו נוהג בו לשום אלוה אסור ".ולפי דעה זו )שהיא וודאי מנוגדת לדעת רבן גמליאל גם בתוכן גם בניסוח הדברים( ,עולה שגם להלכה וגם למעשה אין הבחנה .רבן גמליאל מתיר כל פסל בין פולחני בין עיטורי ואילו התנא עלום-השם אוסר כל פסל בין פולחני בין עיטורי .באופן פרדוקסלי למדי ,אפשר היה אפוא להתיר עבודה זרה של ממש ולאסור דבר עטורי של ממש!? אלא שעמדות אלו קשורות בהגדרה של 'מהו פולחני ,אלילי ומקודש?!' .לפי חכמים מחמירים ,מה שנראה לאחרים כעיטור ,נחשב בעינהם לפולחן ,ואילו לפי המקלים ,מה שנראה לאחרים כפולחן ,נחשב בעיניהם לעיטור סתמי) .וראו עוד להלן ,הערה (36 דברים אלה מצטרפים לפסיקתו של ר' אמי שמוכן מלכתחילה להתיר 'יום משתה שלגוים' כשידע שבעיני הרוב מדובר בעבודה זרה לכל דבר ועניין. .18למעשה פסיקתו המקלה הראשונית של ר' אמי מעוגנת כבר בתורת התנאים ,ראו :תוספתא ,עבודה זרה פ"א ה"ג )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' " :(460שואלין בשלום הגוים באידיהן מפני דרכי שלום" ובקשר להשתתפות בשמחה של גויים שהיא כפי הנראה קשורה במשתה ,ראו :ירושלמי עבודה זרה פ"א ה"א )לט ע"ב ,טור ] 1376עפ"י תוספת של הסופר[(" :תני נכנס לעיר ]בחידושי הרמב"ן למסכת עבודה זרה יג ע"א )מהדורת שעוועל ,עמ' יח( ,גרסינן" :תני נכנס למדינה" וראו שם בהערה [187ומצאן שמחין שמח עמהן מפני שאינו אלא כמחניף להן" הביטוי "כמחניף להן" הוא אקוויולנטי לביטוי "מפני דרכי שלום", ראו :ר' ינקלביץ ,יהודים ונכרים בארץ-ישראל בתקופת המשנה והתלמוד ,דיסרטציה ,רמת-גן תשל"ה ,עמ' 189ואילך .וראו את דברי בעל 'מראה הפנים' בפירושו לדברי ר' אמי ששם לב לסתירה שבין האיסור הסופי של ר' אמי לבין הברייתא שבירושלמי )ומצאן שמחין שמח עמהן( ,ומביא את דברי הרמב"ן ]שם[ שמבין את המילים 'שמח עמהן' כהיתר להשתתף בסעודתם .מה עוד שבדור אושא לא נמנעו תנאים ]המובאים אמנם במקורות מאוחרים[ מלהשתתף בסעודות של נכרים .אף שר' מאיר הכיר את הבעיתיות שבמשתאות הגויים] ,ראו :ספרי דאגדתא על אסתר מדרש פנים אחרים ,ב ו )מהדורת בובר ,מא ע"א([ הרי שלא נמנע בעצמו מלשהתתף בהם ]ראו :פסיקתא דרב כהנא ,ו ב )מהדורת מנדלבוים ,עמ' 115ומקבילות(; ינקלביץ ,שם ,עמ' 188 הערה .[3גם ר' שמעון בר יוחאי ,על-אף אדיקותו המפורסמת ,לא נמנע מלהשתתף בסעודות נכרים ,ראו :אסתר רבה ,ב ד ולמעשה גם ר' חייא) ,ראו לעיל ,הערה .(14כלומר ,ר' אמי יכל להסתמך על תקדימים תנאיים כדי להתיר על-אף התכנים הפגאניים המוצהרים של המשתה ,ובכל זאת אסר ,אולי משום שלא הכיר את המסורות התנאיות הנ"ל למעט הברייתא שעניינה 'מפני דרכי שלום' ]על-אף היותו ריש מתיבתא דטבריא אחרי מותו של ר' יוחנן ,ראו באגרת רב שרירא גאון) ,מהדורת ב"מ לוין, עמ' …" :(84איפטר ר' יוחנן… ומלך ר' אמי" )נוסח צרפת([ כשם שלא נזכר )או הכיר( בברייתא המיוחסת לר' חייא ]ראו, ירושלמי ,שם :אמר לון ר' בא :והתני ר' חייא יום משתה שלגוים אסור! אמ' ר' אימי :אילולי ר' בא היה לנו להתיר ע"ז שלהן[ ואולי בעיקר משום שנרתע מלהתנגד לחברו/רבו)?( ר' אבא ]ושם בירושלמי :אילולי ר' בא[ שמיוחס לר' אמי ]ובכ"י פירנצה " :II-I-9רב אסי"[ שכינהו "רבותינו שבארץ-ישראל" )בבלי ,שבועות מז ע"א עפ"י דפוס וילנא ,כ"י וטיקן 140ופיזרו (1511 שהביא את הברייתא המיוחסת לר' חייא לגבי "יום משתה שלגוים אסור". .19חקר הדתות הפגאניות דן בהרחבה בתפיסת המרחב שבו התקיימו טקסים אליליים לרבות המשתה האלילי. מתברר כי לא בכל מקום אפשר היה לערוך משתה כי אם לרוב בחדרי אוכל שייועדו לכך במקדשים ,ובייחוד במזרח פרסום שני( ,עמ' 378הערות הרומי ,כגון במקדשים שבדורה-אורופוס ,ראו :פרידהיים) ,לעיל ,הערה 6 .1507 1504מסתבר אפוא שיהודי גדרה ביקשו להשתתף במשתה של נכרים שהתקיים בתוך מקדש של אחת האלוהויות המקומיות וחשב ר' אמי להתיר! על הפולחנים הפגניים שהיו בעיר זו בימי רומא ,ראו :פרידהיים )לעיל ,הערה 5 פרסום ראשון( ,עמ' ,237ערך' :גדרה-גדר'.
ז
עמנואל פרידהיים תושביה היהודיים של חמת-גדר או גדרה שאלו את ר' אמי ,בן המאה השלישית לסה"נ ,האם מותר להשתתף )או לנהל משא ומתן( במשתה של גוי אם לאו .נאמר מיד כי שאלה זו אופיינית למקום שמאוכלס בנכרים רבים וביהודים שבו התקיימו פולחנים פגניים רבים .אין ספק שר' אמי ידע כי המשתה הנידון היה פולחני ומוקדש לעבודה זרה כפי שעולה בברור מן הסיפא של המקור ]א"ר' אימי :אילולי ר' בא היה לנו )ובמקבילה :היינו באין( להתיר ע"ז שלהן[ 17ובכל זאת ר' אמי
הדברים המודגשים מוכיחים כי גוי מבית-שאן הזמין את ר' חייא לסעודתו ושהלה השתתף בה ,ואין לומר שקיים הבדל פולחני בין סעודת נכרים שבה השתתף ר' חייא לבין 'יום משתה של גוים' שאיסורו מיוחס לו בברייתא שמביא הירושלמי ,שכן כל סעודה לוותה ,בעיקר בסוריה וסביבותיה ,בתפילה פגאנית ,ואולי יש בכך כדי לחזק את ההנחה שהברייתא אינה מדברי ר' חייא .נזכיר גם שמספר ראשונים סבורים שהברייתות שבירושלמי ובמיוחד הברייתות מסוג' :תני ר' חייא' שלא נזכרו בבבלי משובשות הן ,כך למשל הרי"ץ אבן גיאת ,הרי"ף ,הרא"ש והראב"ן ,ומנגד ראו :ב' ראטנער ,ספר אהבת ציון וירושלים כולל שינויי נוסחאות וגירסאות מתלמוד ירושלמי ,וילנא תרע"א ]נדפס מחדש ירושלים תשכ"ז[ ,עמ' :79 78 "מדוע לא מובא בבבלי 'תני ר' חייא' … אינה קושיא כלל כי דוגמאות כאלו מצינו למאות שהבבלי לא זכר הברייתות ומאמרי אמוראים שנזכרו בירושלמי…המעיין בירושלמי ובבבלי בכל דף יראה שהבבלי לא ראה את הירושלמי והירושלמי לא ראה את הבבלי וזה ברור כשמש ואין להאריך בזה" ]ולהסבר משלים ,ראו :ח' אלבק ,מבוא לתלמודים 3,ירושלים תשמ"ז ,עמ' .[67 59דומני אמנם כי במקרה דנן ,אף שגוף הברייתא אינו משובש ,די בנימוקים שהובאו לעיל כדי לא לייחס את מקורה של ברייתא ספציפית זו לר' חייא. .15פני-משה ,שם ,ד"ה' :אילולא ר' בא'" :שהזכיר לנו ברייתא דר"ח ]= ר' חייא[ כבר היינו באין להתיר חלילה ע"ז שלהן ,דחכמים אסרו משום דאזיל האי ומודי לע"ז דיליה וברוך המקום שריחקנו והבדילנו מהם …" .16ירושלמי ,דמאי פ"ד ה"ד )כד ע"א ,טור ;(130גיטין פ"ה ה"ח )מז ע"ג ,טור " :(1078גירדאי שאל לר' אימי יום משתה שלגוים מהו?… אמר ר' אימי אילמלא ר' אבא כבר היינו באין להתיר ע"ז שלהן וברוך שהבדילנו מהן"; עבודה זרה פ"א ה"ג )לט ע"ג ,טור .(1378 .17יש לדייק ולומר כי הברייתא המיוחסת לר' חייא אינה מדברת ישירות על עבודה זרה כי אם על משתה .אלא שהמשתה ועבודת האלילים חד הם ]"עבודה זרה שלהן" = "יום משתה שלגוים"[ ולכן ודאי שר' אמי הבין מלכתחילה את שאלתם של הגרדאים כבקשה להשתתף במפגן אלילי מובהק וחשב להתיר .סבורני ככלל שעמדת החוקרים הטוענים כי לא יכלו חכמים להתיר חפץ פולחני או דבר 'שנעבד' ]ראו למשל :לוין) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(2עמ' ;93שטרן) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(2עמ' ;408 ,404אליאב) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(2עמ' ;433 S. Fine, Art and Judaism in the Graeco-Roman World Toward a New Jewish Archaeology, Cambridge 2005, p. 118: "… Rabbinic literature presents Jews participating fully in the art of late antiquity, so long as " [art was not "idolatrous.דורשת בחינה מחודשת ,כפי שמוכח מן המקרה של ר' אמי שסבר להתיר עניין פולחני אלילי מובהק ,וכן כפי שמוכח מתוך מעשה אלילי בקיסריה ,שיידון בפיסקה ג' של המאמר .הטענה בפי החוקרים )למשל דברי שטרן ,שם" :סביר להניח… שיהודי העולם העתיק ידעו להבחין ,הן בתיאוריה והן למעשה ,בין דמויות נעבדות לבין דמויות שלא נעבדו ולא הוקדשו לכך .הבחנה זו חשובה ביותר בהלכה של חז"ל"; אליאב ,שם; הנ"ל' ,על עבודה זרה בבית המרחץ הרומי שתי הערות' ,קתדרה) 110 ,תשס"ד( ,עמ' (180 173כי החכמים הבחינו בברור בין עניין פולחני/מקודש לעניין שאינו פולחני/מקודש על-סמך דברי רבן גמליאל בשעת הימצאותו בבית-המרחץ של אפרודיטי בעכו המובא במשנה עבודה זרה ג ד-ה )עפ"י כ"י קופמן( …" :לא נאמר אלא אלהיהן את שהוא נוהג משם אלוה אסור ואת שאינו נוהג משם אלוה מותר" ,אינה מחויבת המציאות )וראו עוד להלן הערה ,(36שכן בבית המרחץ הרומי אנשים עומדים תמיד בערום ]ראו למשל :תוספתא ברכות ב כ )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' ;(10ש' ליברמן ,תוספתא כפשוטה סדר זרעים ,א ,ירושלים תשנ"ג,2 עמ' 26שורה ;66תוספתא דרך ארץ ד )פרק הנכנס( ,א )מהדורת היגער ,עמ' ;(298 296שם ,ג )מהדורת היגער ,עמ' ;(303 302מסכת תפילין יז )מהדורת היגער ,עמ' מז-מח([ ולפיכך זלזלו בפסל האלוהות לשיטת רבן גמליאל )משנה ,שם: "…)אי( אתה נכנס לעבודה זרה שלך ערום ובעל קרי…"( ומכאן שאליבא דרבן גמליאל תמיד אפשר יהיה לרחוץ בבית המרחץ ולא חשוב אם הפסל נעבד אם לאו ,כי בלאו-הכי הרוחצים ערומים! ]וראו :ע' פרידהיים' ,מעשה רבן גמליאל במרחץ של אפרודיטי בעכו עיון בראליה ארץ-ישראלית' ,קתדרה) 105 ,תשס"ג( ,עמ' 28הערה [106עולה אפוא ,שרבן גמליאל חשב למעשה שאין הבחנה בין 'נעבד' לבין 'לא נעבד' לגבי פסלי המרחץ ,שכן אף אם בבית מרחץ סגדו מפורשות לפסל ,הרי שעמידתם בערום של הנוכחים ביטלה את העניין הפולחני והתירה ליהודי להימצא שם! דהיינו ,באומרו דבריו )את שנוהג בו…( רבן גמליאל כביכול הבחין בין הדברים ,אך לא שינה למעשה את עמדתו העקרונית כאשר התיר בכל מצב להימצא בבית המרחץ אף אם סגדו לפסל שעמד במקום .ושמא באופן רדיקאלי ,נוכל לטעון שאף בקשר לפסל פולחני שמחוץ למרחץ, יכול היה רבן גמליאל להתירו בנימוק שהפסל פלש לגבולו ולארצו בדומה לתרבות היוונית בכללותה )ראו משנה עבודה זרה, שם" :לא באתי בגבולה היא באת בגבולי"( ואילו ,היו גם אחרים שחשבו שאין הבחנה כזו ,אך מכיוון הפוך ,שבכל מצב בין 'נעבד' בין 'לא נעבד' נחשב הפסל לעבודה זרה גמורה ועל-כן נאסר בכל מצב ,ראו :תוספתא ,עבודה זרה פ"ה ה"ו )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' " :(468יכול עבו' זרה שביטלה גוי תהא מותרת? תל' לומ' 'פסילי אלהיהם' ,שלהם ,את שנוהג בו לשום אלוה
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עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י א .ר' אמי והמשתה של גוים: מובא בירושלמי כדלהלן: "גירדאי שאלון לר' אימי :יום משתה שלגוים מהו? 12סבר מישרי לון מן הכא מפני דרכי שלום 13.אמ' לון ר' בא :והתני ר' חייא יום משתה שלגוים אסור! 14אמ' ר' אימי :אילולי ר' 16 בא היה לנו להתיר ע"ז שלהן 15,וברוך שריחקנו מהם". .12גדול מפרשי הירושלמי ר' משה מרגלית ,בעל 'פני משה' ]על החשיבות שבפירושו להבנת הירושלמי ,ראו :ל' גינצבורג ,פירושים וחידושים בירושלמי ,ניו-יורק תש"א ,עמ' LVI: «… No student of the Palestinian Talmud is [« …able to dispense with his commentaryמפרש על אתר ,שם ,ד"ה' :יום משתה של עכו"ם'" :מהו לבקר אותן דאילו לשאת ולתת בהדיא תנן התם ]= באותה משנה שם[ דבאותו האיש אסור" .ברם ,נראה שהשאלה קשורה גם לאפשרות לנהל משא ומתן מסחרי עם הגוי ביום המשתה שלו ,על-אף משנה עבודה זרה א ג ]ב בכ"י קופמן[ שאליה התייחס 'פני-משה' ולפיה" :ואילו אידיהן של גוים… יום שעלה בו מן הים …וגוי שעשה משתה לבנו אינו אסור אלא אותו היום ואותו האיש בלבד ".שכן שאלתם של יהודי גדרה ]המונח "גרדאי" אינו מתייחס כאן למי שאורג כנהוג בארמית תלמודית כי אם לתושבי גדרה שבעבר הירדן המזרחי ,ראו :א' דבורז'צקי ,חמי-מרפא בארץ-ישראל בימי בית שני המשנה והתלמוד ,דיסרטציה ,ח"א, ירושלים תשנ"ב ,עמ' [55אינה קשורה למשנה זו ,גם מפני שאפשר שלא הכירוה ]ראו בהמשך[ ,וגם מפני שמדובר במקרה שונה .המשנה מדברת על גוי שעשה משתה לבנו לרגל נישואיו ]גם כאשר חז"ל מדברים על יהודי שעושה משתה לבנו הכוונה לחתונה ,ראו :משנה ,חלה ב ז; כריתות ג ז; נגעים ג ב; תוספתא שביעית ,פ"ה ה"י )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' ;(188 187שבת פ"ז ה"ט )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' ;(26בבא קמא ,פ"ח הי"א )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' ;(39ירושלמי ,ברכות פ"ו ה"ח )י ע"ד ,טור ;(55ועוד [.ואילו הגרדאים שאלו לגבי המשתה שהגוי עושה ]'יום משתה שלגוים'[ ללא זיקה לחתונה ,דהיינו מדובר במשתה אלילי גופא ,כפי שמוכח מדברי ר' אמי עצמו בסיפא ]על המשתה בפולחנים השונים ,ראו :פרידהיים) ,לעיל ,הערה 6פרסום שני( ,עמ' 378 375והערות [1510 1496כי אז במקרים שונים עסקינן ואולי משום כך לא יצר ר' אמי זיקה בין משנה, עבודה זרה א ג ]ב בכ"י קופמן[ לבין המקרה שהתעורר בגדרה .מה עוד שייתכן כאמור כי הפיסקה במשנה הנ"ל אודות 'גוי שעשה משתה לבנו' לא הייתה מוכרת להם ,שכן היא נעדרת מכ"י קופמן ,המשקף את הנוסח הארצישראלי המהימן ביותר למשנה עבודה זרה ]ראו :ד' רוזנטל ,משנה עבודה זרה מהדורה ביקורתית ,דיסרטציה ,ירושלים תשמ"א ,עמ' [10ונראה שהתוספת אודות משתה הבן מופיעה בנוסחאות הבבליים של המשנה בלבד ,ראו שם בחילופי הנוסחאות. .13לאיזה מקור מתייחס הביטוי 'מן הכא ]= מכאן ,כלומר ממקור זה['? מסתבר לומר כי התבסס ר' אמי על מקור תנאי שכן לפני המעשה עם תושבי גדרה ,מביאות כל המקבילות לירושלמי )ראו להלן הערה (16את הברייתא הבאה" :תני עיר שיש בה גוים …ומפרנסין עניי ישראל ועניי גוים ומבקרין חולי ישראל וחולי גוים …מפני דרכי שלום גירדאי שאלון לרבי אימי יום משתה של גוים מהו? סבר מישרי לון מן הכא מפני דרכי שלום…" ]המקור עפ"י ירושלמי דמאי )להלן הערה (16וכן בכל המקבילות שבירושלמי בשינויי נוסח קלים )שם([ הברייתא הפותחת במילה 'תני' מקורה מן-הסתם בתוספתא גיטין פ"ג הי"ג-י"ד )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' " :(259עיר שיש בה ישראל וגוים הפרנסין גובין מישראל ומגוים ,מפני דרכי שלום .מפרנסין עניי גוים … מפני דרכי שלום .מספידין וקוברין מיתי גוים מפני דרכי שלום .מנחמין אבילי גוים ,מפני דרכי שלום ".סביר אפוא להניח שבביטוי "סבר מישרי לון מן הכא מפני דרכי שלום" ,גם ביקש ר' אמי להתאים את הכלל התנאי 'מפני דרכי שלום' למציאות שהתעוררה בגדרה ,אלא שפסיקתו התבססה כפי הנראה על מקור תנאי אחר מזה שהובא בברייתא הנ"ל ,שכן זו אינה מזכירה את העניין של 'יום משתה של גוים' בין הדברים שיש לעשותם 'מפני דרכי שלום'! מקורות תנאיים מדברים על אמירת שלום לנכרים )ראו למשל :משנה ,שביעית ד ג; ה ט; גיטין ,ה ט .אך ,לא מדובר בהם בימי אידם( ובקשר לחגי הנכרים ,ראו :תוספתא ,עבודה זרה פ"א ה"ג )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' " :(460שואלין בשלום הגוים באידיהן מפני דרכי שלום" .על ברייתא אחרונה זו התכוון כפי הנראה הירושלמי באומרו שר' אמי סבר להתיר להם "מן הכא/הדא מפני דרכי שלום". ' .14פני-משה' ,שם ,ד"ה' :והתני ר' חייא יום משתה של עכו"ם אסור'" :לבקרו דשמא מתוך כך יבא לישא וליתן עמו". בהמשך להערה ,12נציע גם הפעם כי האיסור של ר' חייא קשור אף הוא למשא ומתן של ממש ולא לביקור בעלמא ,כיוון שברייתא זו מופיעה במקורה בתוספתא עבודה זרה פ"א ה"ד )מהדורת צוקרמנדל ,עמ' (460בהקשר ישיר למשא ומתן במהלך החגים הציבוריים והפרטיים ובתור כך התכנים ההלכתיים של הברייתא ומשנה עבודה זרה א ג )ב בכ"י קופמן(, שקשורה בפירוש בשאלת המשא ומתן ,זהים .וראו שם בתוספתא …" :קלנדא אף על פי שהכל עושין אין אסור ]משמע לנהל משא ומתן[ אלא לפולחין בלבד… יום המשתה שלו ויום שנעשה בו שלטון … אסור ]כלומר במשא ומתן[ ".זהו כנראה מקור הברייתא שמייחס הירושלמי לר' חייא ]כך גם סבר כפי הנראה מ' היגער ,אוצר הברייתות ,ח"ב ,ניו-יורק תרצ"ט ,עמ' ,146י"ג[ .ספק אגב אם הברייתא מדברי ר' חייא היא ,שכן ההלכה מובאת בעילום שם בתוספתא ]שם[ וגם משום שר' חייא בעצמו השתתף בסעודת נכרים בבית-שאן ,כדאיתא באסתר רבה ב ד" :רבי חייא הוה ליה חד רחים באשנא ]= בית-שאן ,ראו :ש' קליין ,ספר היישוב ,ירושלים תש"ד ,עמ' 7 ,17ג[ ועשה לו סעודה… אמר ליה מה אלהכון עתיד דעביד לכון יותר מכאן ,אמר ליה סעודתך יש לה קצבה אבל סעודת אלהינו … לעתיד לבא אין לה קצבה…"
ה
עמנואל פרידהיים משמעותי ,כדבריהם של התנאים" :משרבו עוברי עבירה חזרו לאסר 8".ואולם כאמור ,לעתים ת ופע ה מ ג ונ ה מבי א ה ב מפת יע לי די בי ט ו ל האי ס ו ר א ו הש הי ית הפע ו ל ות שיי ע וד ן ל הר תיע ו ל היל ח ם בת ו פע ה ה שלי לית ,כ פי ש מ ש תמ ע מ ת וך מ ש נ ה ס וט ה ט ט " :מ ש רב ו ה מ נא פים פ סק ו ה מי ם ה מ רים ו רב ן י ו חנ ן ב ן ז כ אי הפ סי ק ן … " .אם ח ס רי ם הי ו הבי ט ו ים ' מ ש רב ו המנאפים/ן' ו' -עכשיו כבר רבו הרואין בגלוי' כפי שעולה מתוך נוסח התוספתא 9,היינו מסיקים שהפסיקו מי סוטה משום שפסקו הניאופים בחברה היהודית בשלהי תקופת הבית השני!? ואולם הביטוי הנידון ,בליווי ההסבר של התוספתא ,מוכיח בדיוק את ההיפך .עלייה במעשי הניאוף הביאה את רבן יוחנן בן זכאי ,או חכם אחר ,להפסיק מי סוטה! כמו כן מצינו בתלמודה של ארץ-ישראל" :מהו לקרוע בזמן הזה? ר' יוסה ]יוסי[ ר' ירמיה בשם ]…[ ר' יוחנן :משרבו הגודפנין ]הגדפנין[ פסקו מלקרוע" 10.דהיינו אם הירושלמי היה רק מוסר כי בימי ר' יוחנן )נפטר בשנת 279לסה"נ( הפסיקו לקרוע את הבגד בהישמע גידוף ,היינו מסיקים כי יהודים הפסיקו לגדף ולחרף במאה השלישית!? ואולם גם הפעם הביטוי 'משרבו הגודפנים )= מגדפים(' מוכיח בדיוק את ההיפך .דווקא חיזוקה של התופעה גרם לחכמים להקל ולהתאים את ההלכה למציאות החדשה והמשתנה 11.לא מן הנמנע אפוא כי ההיתרים שחידשו חכמי ארץ-ישראל בהלכות עבודה זרה שייכים למסגרת הנידונה ,כאשר התברר שאין בהטלת איסורים וגזירות כדי למנוע השפעה של הפגאניות על יהודי ארץ-ישראל שהלכה וגברה .ההיתרים הנם צורה חדשה של מאבק נגד הפגאניות כאשר מתוך מצב של היתר ניתן לפעמים לרסן טוב יותר את הנעשה כאשר האיסור מיצה את עצמו או כאשר התברר לחכמים -בהכרם את החברה היהודית -כי האיסור לא ישיג בלאו-הכי את מטרתו ולכן דרושה אכיפה מסוג אחר לפתרון המצב הבעייתי ,על-מנת להישאר קרובים לחברה היהודית. כפי שנראה להלן ,תופעה זו קיימת גם לגבי יחס החכמים אל התרבות היוונית בכללה ולא רק ביחס אל עבודת אלוהי הנכר .כדי להוכיח את התזה הנידונה נעיר שדווקא בערים מיוונות בארץ-ישראל שבהן התגוררו יהודים ונכרים ,שבהן היינו מצפים למצוא חומרות הלכתיות, ביקשו חכמים -לרוב בלית-בררה -להקל בעניינים הנוגעים במגע שבין תרבות הנכר לבין היהדות .ולהלן מספר דוגמאות:
במקבילה שבתוספתא ,שביעית פ"ג ה"ט )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' " :(176בראשונה היו אומ' מלקט אדם צרורות וחרסין מתוך שלו… משרבו עוברי עבירה חזרו לאסור"; משנה שקלים א ב. .8ראו למשל :תוספתא שביעית )לעיל ,הערה ;(7תוספתא שבת ,פ"ג ה"ג )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' .(12 .9סוטה פי"ד ה"א-ב )מהדורת ליברמן ,עמ' " :(236 235רבן יוחנן בן זכיי אומ' משרבו הרצחנין בטלה ערופה לפי שאין עגלה ערופה באה אלא על הספק עכשיו רבו ההורגין בגלוי .משרבו המנאפין פסקו מי מרים לפי שאין מי מרים באין אלא על הספק עכשיו כבר רבו הרואין בגלוי". .10ירושלמי ,מועד קטן פ"ג ה"ז ,פג ע"ב] ,עפ"י כ"י ליידן ,מהדורת האקדמיה ללשון העברית ,ירושלים תשס"א, ההפניות הבאות לירושלמי הן לפי מהדורה זו[ ,טור ] 821העתקה ראשונה[ ומקבילות. .11ועל תופעת החירוף והגידוף בקרב יהודי קיסריה במאה הג'-ד' לסה"נ ראו למשל את דברי ר' אבהו ]להלן ,הערה 23ובנוסח הפנים[" :מהו כן עלינן למדינתא דחירופיא וגידופיא?" ושימו לב בהקשר לכך למסר הפשרני והפייסני של ריש לקיש ,שם.
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עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בא”י מקום חשוב ביותר בעולמה הדתי של ארץ-ישראל 5,וכי יהודים עבדו בה עבודה זרה בימי המשנה והתלמוד 6.העובדה שחלק מן החכמים הפכו למקלים יותר ויותר בענייני עבודה זרה אינה יכולה אפוא עוד להסתמך על הטיעון המוטעה הדן בהיעלמותה ההיפותטית של עבודת האלילים .יש להעיר כי לפעמים אין בהיתר כדי להעיד בהכרח על מיגור תופעה בלתי רצויה .כפי שננסה מבטא לעתים השלמה עם מציאות מסוימת או או ביטול איסור להראות להלן היתר צורה חדשה של מאבק ,כאשר התברר שאין די באיסור ובמערכת ההרתעה ההלכתית כדי למגר תופעה שלילית ההולכת וגוברת .לפעמים האיסור וההיתר מייצגים שני צדדים בלתי נפרדים של אותו מטבע ,המציאות ההיסטורית .חיזוקה וגידולה של התופעה המגונה גורמים לעתים לחכמים לאסור אך לעתים גם להקל ולהתאים את ההלכה למציאות החדשה .כך למשל ,בהלכות שביעית שבהן הקלו חכמים בתקופה מסוימת חזרו לאסור עקב חילול קדושת שביעית 7,ומובן לחלוטין שהתחזקותה של תופעה מגונה בעיני חכמים מביאה מצדם לאיסור
לזכרו של מנחם שטרן ,ירושלים תשנ"ו ,עמ' 442הערה ;26לוין) ,לעיל ,הערה ,(2עמ' " :115ההנחה הרווחת ,בעיקר בחוגים לא אקדמיים ,היא שהתחום האחד בחיי היהודים שלא הושפע מהתרבות היוונית-הרומית הוא דווקא תחום הדת… אם הדת נתפסת במובנה הצר ,דהיינו עבודת אלילים ,הקמת מקדשים והשתתפות בפולחן פגאני ,אין ספק שקביעה זו היא אמת לאמיתה"; צ' גרוסמרק' ,הלכות עבודה זרה בתכשיטים כבבואה ליחסי יהודים ונכרים בארץ-ישראל בימי הבית השני המשנה והתלמוד' ,בתוך :א' אופנהיימר ואחרים )עורכים( ,יהודים ונוכרים בארץ-ישראל בימי בית שני ,המשנה והתלמוד, ירושלים תשס"ג ,עמ' M. Halbertal & A. Margalit, Idolatry, Cambridge (Mass.) 1992, p. 2; N. Belayche,; 1 Iudaea-Palaestina, Tübingen 2001, p. 35; Z. Weiss, The Sepphoris Synagogue Deciphering an Ancient Message through its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts, Jerusalem 2005, p. 235 & .n. 69ועוד. .5על כוחה של האלילות בתקופה החשמונאית הקדומה ,ראו במאמרו המרתק של א' כשר' ,המלחמה בעבודה זרה מחקרים בתולדות ישראל בעת העתיקה בדור הראשון של בית חשמונאי' ,בתוך :מ' מור ואחרים )עורכים( ,לאוריאל מוגשים לאוריאל רפפורט ,ירושלים תשס"ו ,עמ' .181 167נמצאו עדויות ליותר משמונים פולחנים מוגדרים בארץ-ישראל הרומית וסביבותיה בימי המשנה והתלמוד ,ראו :ע' פרידהיים ,פולחנים פגאניים בארץ-ישראל הרומית, עבודת מוסמך ,אוניברסיטת בר-אילן ,רמת-גן תשנ"ה ,עמ' .240 236הפגאניות חיה בקרב הנכרים לפחות עד המאה השישית לסה"נ בארץ-ישראל ומסביב לה ולפעמים עד המאה השמינית והתשיעית ,וראו גם :י' דן ,עיונים בתולדות ארץ-ישראל בתקופה הרומית-ביזאנטית ,ירושלים תשס"ו ,עמ' P. Chuvin, Chronique des derniers ;31 22 païens La disparition du paganisme dans l’empire romain du règne de Constantin à celui de Justinien, Paris 19912, pp. 143 144; 145 147; R. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to ;Eighth Centuries, New Haven 1997ע' פרידהיים וש' דר' ,מתי פסקה הפגאניות בארץ-ישראל?' ,בתוך :י' פטריך ,ל' די-סגני ור' טלגם )עורכים( ,ספר יורם צפריר )בדפוס( .ועל ניסיון לשחזר את פולחנות הנכר בערים שומרון ,אשקלון ,שכם, עכו ,אליה קאפיטולינה ובית-שאן בתקופה הרומית ראו :ע' פרידהיים' ,הפולחנים הפגניים של שומרון-סבסטיה בתקופה ההלניסטית והרומית והרכבה האתני של האוכלוסייה המקומית' ,בתוך :י' אשל )עורך( ,מחקרי יהודה ושומרון ,ו ,קדומים איראל תשנ"ז ,עמ' ;170 157הנ"ל' ,לשאלת קיומם וחשיבותם של פולחנות סוריה בניאפוליס-שכם בתקופה שלאחר מרד בר-כוכבא' ,שם ,ז ,קדומים-אריאל תשנ"ח ,עמ' ;153 141הנ"ל' ,הפולחנים הפגניים של אשקלון בתקופה הרומית', בתוך :א' ששון ,ז' ספראי ונ' שגיב )עורכים( ,אשקלון עיר לחוף ימים ,אשקלון תל-אביב תשס"א ,עמ' ;174 147 הנ"ל' ,הפולחנים הפגניים הסוריים בפטולמאיס-עכו בתקופה ההלניסטית והרומית' ,בתוך :י' שוורץ ,י' כץ וע' ציפר תל-אביב תש"ס ,עמ' E. Friedheim, ;100 89 ספר אריה קינדלר ,רמת-גן )עורכים( ,ירושלים וארץ-ישראל ‘The Religious and Cultural World of Aelia Capitolina A New Perspective’, Archiv Orientální, ;75/2 (2007), pp. 125 152ג' פוקס ,יוון בארץ-ישראל בית-שאן )סקיתופוליס( בתקופה ההלניסטית והרומית, ירושלים תשמ"ג ,עמ' .88 75ועוד. .6ע' פרידהיים' ,יהודים עובדי עבודה זרה בארץ-ישראל בתקופת המשנה והתלמוד' ,דברי הקונגרס העולמי השנים-עשר למדעי היהדות ,חטיבה ב )תש"ס( ,עמ' E. Friedheim, Rabbinisme et paganisme en Palestine ;44 21 ;romaine Étude historique des Realia talmudiques (Ier-IVème siècles), Leiden Boston 2006, pp. 25 67 R. Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine, Oxford 2006, pp. 103 120; 223 .7משנה שביעית ,ד א" :בראשונה היו אומרים מלקט אדם עצים ואבנים ועשבים מתוך שלו כדרך שהוא מלקט מתוך של חבירו את הגס הגס ,משרבו עוברי עבירה ]= היו מלקטים בשדותיהם לא רק את הצמחים הגסים אלא גם את הדקים ,ועל כן היו עוברים על איסור ליקוט בשביעית[ התקינו שיהא זה מלקט מתוך של זה וזה מלקט מתוך של זה…" האיסור מופיע במפורש
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עמנואל פרידהיים ומגוונים כגון :השפה ,הדת ,הצבא ,המשפט ,האמנות הויזואלית וכיוצא באלה .רבות נכתב בספרות המחקר אודות המפגש שבין היהדות לבין התרבות ההיא לגווניה מן התקופה ההלניסטית ועד ימי ביזנטיון ,כולל נקודות המגע בין עולמם של חכמים לבין היוונות במובנה הרחב .אולם ,לאור היקפה של התופעה דומה שמלאכת המחקר טרם הושלמה .מאמרנו דן בהיבט ההלכתי-מעשי של תגובת החכמים מול התרבות היוונית-רומית שפגשה בהם בתחומי החיים השונים ומנסה לגלות דפוסי התמודדות עקביים שעל-פיהם הגיבו החכמים בימי המשנה והתלמוד לאור מציאות היסטורית וחברתית בלתי-יציבה ומשתנה ,שבה שולבו גורמים מדיניים ,חברתיים-כלכליים ,דתיים ותרבותיים שעיצבו את אתגרי השעה .יוצע להלן כי איסורים והיתרים הלכתיים בעולמם של חז"ל ,כלפי תופעות המפגישות בין תרבות הנכר לבין דת ישראל ,מהווים שני צדדים 2 בלתי-נפרדים של מציאות היסטורית מוגדרת ,המאתגרת את אורח-החיים היהודי. את ההקלות ההלכתיות מזה שנים רבות בחקר הלכות עבודה זרה הדגישו החוקרים המרובות שחלו בעניין אמנות הדמות ועבודת האלילים .הטענה העיקרית הרווחת לתופעה זו הייתה כי האלילות לא סיכנה יותר בימי המשנה והתלמוד את עם ישראל מבחינה דתית וחברתית ,שכן 'יצרא דעבודה זרה' 3נעקר בראשית ימי הבית השני ,ושלא היה חשש שמא יהודי יעבוד עבודה זרה 4.הוכח אמנם במספר הזדמנויות כי עבודת האלילים תפסה עדיין
לעריכה ,כך שאפשר לייחס להם מהימנות היסטוריוגרפית גבוהה יותר מאשר אולי מקורות תנאיים ,ראו למשלC. Hezser,: .The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, Tübingen 1997, pp. 43, 46 47 ועוד. .2ככל הידוע לי ,טרם נעשה ניסיון מחקרי מקיף להבליט שיטה הלכתית של החכמים ביחס למירב הנושאים הקשורים בתרבות יוון ורומא בימי המשנה והתלמוד בראי המציאות התרבותית ששררה בארץ-ישראל הרומית ,ומכאן ייחודיותו של המאמר .על נסיונות חשובים אך נקודתיים ,ראו למשל :מ' ד' הר' ,ההלניסמוס והיהודים בארץ-ישראל' ,אשכולות ,סדרה חדשה) (10 9) 2 3 ,תשל"ז-ח( ,עמ' ;27 23הנ"ל' ,השפעות חיצוניות בעולמם של חכמים בארץ-ישראל קליטה ודחייה' ,בתוך :י' קפלן ומ' שטרן )עורכים( ,התבוללות וטמיעה קובץ המשכיות ותמורה בתרבות העמים ובישראל מאמרים ,ירושלים תשמ"ט ,עמ' ;102 83י' שטרן' ,אמנות הדמות בהלכה בתקופת המשנה והתלמוד' ,ציון ,סא )תשנ"ו(, עמ' ":403רצוני לטעון ,שהפרדה זו )בין דמות נעבדת לדמות לנוי ,ע"פ( אפשרה שימוש בדמויות ,אפילו מיתולוגיות או בעלות אופי 'פגאני' ,כאשר לא יועדו לפולחן פגאני בבתי כנסת ,אלא רק לקישוט ולנוי"; י' ל' לוין ,יהדות ויוונות ,עימות או מיזוג? ,ירושלים תש"ס ,עמ' …" :94 ,95 91בחוגי החכמים היה מגוון רחב של גישות כלפי העולם החיצוני .בשאלות שהיו לעתים קיומיות באופיין רווחו דעות מנוגדות ואף סותרות"; M. Hadas-Lebel, ‘L'attitude rabbinique à l’égard de la culture grecque (IIe et IIIe s.): Marques de résistance à Rome’, in: C. Iancu & J. M. Lassère (eds.), Juifs et judaïsme en Afrique du Nord dans l'Antiquité et le haut Moyen-âge, Montpellier, 1985, pp. 1 12; G. J. Blidstein, ‘Rabbinic Judaism and General Culture Normative Discussion and Attitudes’, in: J. J. Schacter (ed.), Judaism's Encounter with Other Cultures Rejection or Integration?, Northvale 1997, pp. 55 56: "All in all, the Sages devote minimal attention to the question of whether gentile materials are fit for Jewish use; the issue was not terribly pressing and perhaps not terribly significant, either."; Y. Z. Eliav, ‘Viewing the Sculptural environment Shaping the Second Commandment’, in: P. Schäfer (ed.), The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, .III, Tübingen 2002, pp. 432 433ועוד. .3בבלי ,יומא סט ע"ב; סנהדרין סד ע"א. .4ז' יעבץ ,תולדות ישראל ,ח"ה ,ירושלים-תל-אביב תרפ"ח ,עמ' ;197א"א אורבך' ,הלכות עבודה זרה והמציאות הארכיאולוגית וההיסטורית במאה השנייה ובמאה השלישית' ,ארץ-ישראל ,ה )תשי"ט( ,עמ' =] 198הנ"ל ,מעולמם של חכמים קובץ מחקרים ,ירושלים תשמ"ח ,עמ' ;155מחקרים בתולדות ישראל בתקופת המשנה והתלמוד ,י' גפני )עורך( ,ירושלים תשנ"ד ,עמ' ;[401ש' ליברמן ,יוונית ויוונות בארץ-ישראל ,ירושלים תשמ"ד ,2עמ' M. Hadas-Lebel, ‘Le paga- ;240 nisme à travers les sources rabbiniques des IIe et IIIe siècles Contribution à l’étude du syncrétisme dans l’empire romain’, W. Haase & H. Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt .II, 19. 2, Berlin New York 1979, pp. 413 414א' אופנהיימר דיבר על 'הירידה ההולכת וגוברת בכוח המשיכה של העבודה הזרה' במאה השלישית לסה"נ ,ראו :הנ"ל ,הגליל בתקופת המשנה ,ירושלים תשנ"א ,עמ' ;138מ' בר' ,חורבן בית שני בהגות היהודית הקדומה' ,בתוך :א' אופנהיימר ,י' גפני וד' שוורץ )עורכים( ,היהודים בעולם ההלניסטי והרומי מחקרים
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א יח AJS Review 33:2 (November 2009), © Association for Jewish Studies, 2009 doi:10.1017/S0364009409990262
עיונים היסטוריים בשאלת ההתמודדות ההלכתית של החכמים עם תרבות יוון ורומא בארץ-ישראל בימי המשנה והתלמוד* מאת
עמנואל פרידהיים
מטרת המחקר שלפנינו לבחון את התמודדותם של חכמי ארץ-ישראל עם תרבות הנכר ,בעיקר התרבות היוונית-רומית ,בימי המשנה והתלמוד מזווית הלכתית בראי המציאות ההיסטורית ששררה במאות הראשונות לסה"נ 1.התרבות היוונית והרומית הקיפה כידוע תחומים רבים * עיקרי הדברים הושמעו לראשונה בכינוס חוקרים בנושא ′עיונים היסטוריים בחקר החברה והנהגתה בישראל בימי הבית השני המשנה והתלמוד ′שהתקיים באוניברסיטת בר-אילן ביום ב ′י"א בכסלו תשס"ט ) (8.12.2008והורחבו לאחרונה בהרצאה שנישאה בקונגרס העולמי ה 15-למדעי היהדות שהתקיימה באוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים ביום ב ′י"ג באב תשס"ט ) .(3.8.2009תודתי העמוקה לקוראים עלומי-השם מטעם המערכת על הערותיהם והארותיהם המקצועיות והביקורתיות .עם זאת ,האחריות לדברים כולה שלי. .1אף שהשימוש בספרות התלמודית כמקור היסטורי ,לגבי תקופות שקדמו לעריכתה ,מעורר כידוע בעיות מתודולוגיות סבוכות ,כפי שהראו י' ניוזנר ותלמידיו לאורך שלושה עשורים ]ראו למשלJ. Neusner, ‘Rabbinic : Sources for Historical Study A Debate with Ze'ev Safrai’, in: J. Neusner & A. J. Avery-Peck (eds.), Judaism in Late Antiquity - Where We Stand, Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, III/1, Leiden Boston Köln 1999, pp. 123 142, esp. 123; 125; Idem, ‘From Biography to Theology: .Gamaliel and the Patriarchate’, Review of Rabbinic Judaism, 7 (2004), pp. 54; 55ועוד בשפע[ ,אנו מחזיקים בדעה שהספרות התלמודית לתקופותיה מבוססת על יסוד ריאלי-היסטורי איתן ,ובעיקר מקורותיה ההלכתיים, שאסור לנו להתעלם מהם .עם זאת ,גם מי שדוגל בשיטת "הגרעין ההיסטורי" לא יוכל להשתמש בספרות זו מבלי לגלות בקורתיות ערנית כבכל ניתוח היסטורי הנדרש מכל עדות ספרותית אחרת ,ראוZ. Safrai, ‘Rabbinic Sources as His- : torical A Response to Professor Neusner’, Ibid., p. 167: "The study of the sources must be careful and critical, but excessive critical inquiry is to be discouraged. A critical approach must lead to careful research and not to an excuse in futility dead-end criticism. Most importantly, fundamentalism, which accepts the source uncritically, is to be opposed-along with the scholar who is fundamentally ".critical and believes in criticism for its own sakeוראו גםG. Stemberger, ‘Rabbinic Sources for His-: torical Study’, Ibid., p. 186: "There is no general procedure advisable: a certain measure of personal judgment remains in every historical reconstruction. But although it is no longer possible to use Rabbinic sources in a naïve way for reconstructing history, it is still extremely useful for historical questions. It would be the greatest damage to the History of Judaism if the Rabbinic texts were " neglected in the historical enterprise.יצויין כי בשנים האחרונות ,המחקר ההיסטורי האירופאי מכוון אף הוא לכיוון זה ראו למשלD. Jaffé, Le Judaïsme et l'avènement du christianisme Orthodoxie et hétérodoxie : dans la littérature talmudique (Ier-IIe siècle), Paris 2005, pp. 70ff; Ch. Batsch, ‘La littérature tannaïtique comme source historique pour l’étude du Judaïsme du deuxième temple’, Revue des études juives, .166 [1 2] (2007), pp. 1 15אחת הדרכים המתודולוגיות להוכיח את קדמותן ואמינותן ההיסטורית של המסורות התנאיות על-אף עריכתן המאוחרת ,נעוצה בהצלבתן עם מקורות ארכיאולוגיים ,אפיגרפיים ,ספרותיים רומיים או/ו נוצריים וכדומה ,עד לכדי התאמה קרובה .לניסיון אחד מני רבים ראו לאחרונה :ע' פרידהיים' ,עיון ראלי-היסטורי במשנה ראשונה דפרק 'לפני אידיהן" ,ציון ,עא/ג )תשס"ו( ,עמ' .300 273באשר לחקר ימי התלמוד במיוחד ,המקורות קרובים יותר
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