Judaism I: History (Die Religionen Der Menschheit) (German Edition) 9783170325791, 9783170325807, 9783170325814, 9783170325821, 3170325795

Table of contents :
Cover
Titlepage
Imprint
Contents
Editors’ Introduction
1 Die Wissenschaft des Judentums
2 World War II and Vatican II
3 Jacob Neusner resets the agenda
4 Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (Judaism and Hellenism)
5 The New Academy
6 Kohlhammer’s Die Religionen der Menschheit
7 What is not featured in these volumes
8 What is in these volumes
8.1 Judaism I: History
1 Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees
2 Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great
3 The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel
4 Judaism in Babylonia
5 Jews and/under Islam, 650-1000 CE
6 Judaism in the Middle Ages 1000-1500
7 Judaism During and After the Expulsions 1492-1750
8 Modern Judaism 1750-1930
9 The Holocaust and Antisemitism
10 Zionism and the State of Israel
11 Judaism in America
12 Judaism in Europe after the Second World War
8.2 Judaism II: Literature
13 The Jewish Bible: Traditions and Translations
14 Jewish Literature in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (350 B.C.E. -150 C.E.)
15 Tannaitic Literature
16 Amoraic Literature (ca 250-650 CE): Talmud and Midrash
17 Rabbinic-Gaonic and Karaite Literatures (ca. 650-1050 CE)
18 Legal Commentary, Responsa, and Codes Literature
19 Medieval Biblical Commentary and Aggadic Literature
20 Piyyut
21 Jewish Liturgy
22 Jewish Mysticism
8.3 Judaism III: Culture and Modernity
23 Jewish Philosophy and Thought
24 Judaism, Feminism, and Gender
25 Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism
26 Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture
27 Languages of the Jews
28 Modern Jewish Literature
29 Judaism and Inter-faith Relations since World War II
9 Conclusion
Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees
1 The Hellenization of Ancient Judaism—Preliminary Notes
2 Judaism and Hellenism in the Land of Israel/Judea—»Palestinian Judaism« as »Hellenistic Judaism«
2.1 The reception of Greek/Hellenistic culture in Judea
Greek language
Greek education and training
Greek literature and philosophy in Jewish Palestine
Greek translations of Jewish Hebrew works, taking Jesus ben Sirach as an example: The prologue of the grandson as a translator
3 The LXX as a Translation
3.1 The special features of the LXX as a translation
3.2 On the origins of the LXX—legend and history
Letter of (Pseudo-)Aristeas
Philo
Josephus
The Torah for King Talmai
4 The Temple Conflict under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean Revolt
4.1 Preliminary remarks
4.2 History of research
4.3 The events
4.4 Reception of the martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons
Ancient Judaism
5 The Samaritans
5.1 On the history of the Samaritans
5.2 Basic features of Samaritan theology in Antiquity
6 The Temple in Jerusalem, Other Jewish Temples, and Communities without a Temple
6.1 The temple in Jerusalem and other Jewish temples
6.2 Judaism without a temple
The Yahad of Qumran
Atonement for the land
Polemic against the »Wicked Priest«: date of the Day of Atonement
Distance from sacrifices among the Essenes
6.3 Guide to a Judaism without a temple—the Pharisees
6.4 The followers of Jesus of Nazareth
7 The synagogue—History and Significance
7.1 The emergence of the synagogue
7.2 The functions of the synagogue
7.3 Synagogues in the Diaspora
Egypt
Rome
Outlook
8 Sacred Writings in Judaism of the Hellenistic-Roman Period
9 The Emergence of the Canon of Biblical Writings in Alexandria and Judea—Concluding Remarks
10 Final Reflections on Judaism and Hellenism
For further reading
Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great
1 Introduction
2 Herod (37-4 BCE)
3 Herodian Dynasty (4 BCE-66 CE)
4 Flavius Josephus
5 Roman Administration and the Run-up to the War
6 Jewish Identity and Jewish Extremism
7 The Jewish War (66-73 CE)
8 The Interbellum and Bar Kokhbah (73-136 CE)
9 The Legal Status of Jews under Roman Rule
9.1 Jews in the Roman Diaspora
9.2 Diaspora Uprising 115-117 CE
9.3 Jewish Alexandria
9.4 Jews of Rome
10 Pagan Perspectives on Jews and Judaism
11 The Jesus Movement and Early Christianity
12 The Rabbinic Movement
13 Conclusion
For further reading
Primary sources in English Translation
Secondary Reading
The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel
1 Introduction
2 Developments in the History of Palestine in the Late Roman Era (Second and Third Centuries)
3 Within the Byzantine-Christian Orbit
4 Synagogues
4.1 Capernaum
4.2 Hammat Tiberias
4.3 Sepphoris
4.4 Huqoq
5 Remains from the Cairo Genizah
6 The Flourishing of Jewish Culture in Late Antiquity
6.1 Burgeoning synagogue Construction
6.2 The Appearance of Piyyut in Jewish Liturgy
6.3 Aggadic Midrashim: A New Creation
6.4 Jewish Art in Late Antiquity
7 Jewish »Late Antiquity« in its wider Cultural Context
8 Conclusions
For further reading
Judaism in Babylonia: 226-650 CE
1 Jewish settlement, community, and daily life
2 Under the Arsacid and Sasanian Empires
3 Jews and Persians
4 The Babylonian Legacy
5 Rabbis and Rabbinic Schools
6 The Exilarchate
For further reading
Jews and/under Islam: 650-1000 CE
1 General Conditions
2 The Pact of ʿUmar
3 Communal Organization
4 Daily Life
5 The Karaite Schism
6 Religious Life
7 Regional Life
For further reading
Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000-1500
1 Introduction
2 Northern Europe Jewry: Beginnings
3 Northern European Jewry: Maturation
4 Northern European Jewry: Accelerating Pressures
5 Southern European Jewry
6 Conclusions
For further reading
Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492-1750
1 The »Early Modern« Period
2 The Catastrophe: Expulsion from Spain
3 The Recovery of Judaism 1492-1618
4 Early Modern Judaism
4.1 The Formation of Early Modern Judaism
4.2 Printing and Literacy
4.3 Kabbalah
5 The Seventeenth Century
5.1 The Jews in the Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (1618-1676)
5.2 The Spiritual Crisis of the Mid-Seventeenth Century: Baruch Spinoza and Shabbetai Tsvi
5.3 New Centers and New Peripheries 1675-1750
6 Hasidism and its Opponents: 1740-the Present
For further reading
Modern Judaism: 1750-1930
1 When did »Modern Judaism« begin?
2 Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah)
3 Jewish Enlightenment in Europe
4 The Birth and Solidification of Hasidism
5 Ostjuden
6 Wissenschaft des Judentums
7 The Debate between Orthodoxy and Reform
8 Modern American Judaism
9 The Emergence of Zionism
For further reading
The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism
1 The Rise of the Nazi Movement
1.1 Adolf Hitler—Evolution of an Anti-Semite
1.2 Roots of Anti-Semitism
1.3 Nazi Rise to Power
1.4 The Fragility of Democracy
1.5 Nazis in Power
1.6 German Jewish Reaction
1.7 The 1936 Olympics
2 1938—The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End
2.1 The »Anschluss« of Austria
2.2 Evian and the Refugee Crisis
2.3 The Kristallnacht Reich’s Pogrom, the Night of Broken Glass
2.4 The American Reaction
3 The Beginning of World War II
3.1 German Conquests
3.2 The Ghettos
3.3 Resistance in the Ghettos
3.4 Jewish Life in Western Europe
3.5 Theresienstadt
4 The Final Solution
4.1 The Killers
4.2 Situation in the Baltics
4.3 The Wannsee Conference
4.4 »Liquidation« of the Ghettos
4.5 Deportation by Rail
4.6 Death Camps
4.7 Death Marches
5 The Aftermath of World War II
5.1 Liberation
5.2 Return to Life
5.3 Nuremberg Trials
5.4 Genocide: The Word and the Crime
6 Anti-Semitism after World War II
6.1 Eroding the Foundations of Christian Anti-Semitism
The Catholic Church
The Protestant Churches
6.2 Jewish Life in Israel
6.3 Anti-Semitism in North America
6.4 Anti-Semitism in Europe
Eastern Europe
7 Survivors and Memory
7.1 Survival and Survivors
7.2 Holocaust Memory in the Contemporary World
For further reading
Zionism and the State of Israel
1 »By the Rivers of Babylon«: The Early History of Zionism
2 Jewish Palestine before the First World War
3 The First World War and the Balfour Declaration, 1917
4 Consolidation and Advances: The Zionist Project under the British Mandate
5 In the Shadow of the Shoah: Jewish Mass Immigration, the Arab Uprising and, the Second World War
6 Partition Plans in Context: En Route to the State of Israel
7 War and Terrorism: Signs of a Violent Relationship between Israel and Palestine
8 The Founding of the State of Israel
9 Foundations of State and Society
10 The Israelis: A Migrant Society in Flux
11 Israel in the Middle East: Between War and Peace-Process
12 Democracy under Stress
13 The Israeli Economic Miracle and the Nuclear Nightmare
14 Israel’s Image in the World
15 Future Prospects: Looking Ahead
For further reading
Judaism in America
1 A Revolution in American Judaism
2 Conflict and Competition
3 Americanizing Jewish Culture: Capitalism and Gender
4 Jewish Communal Organizations
5 New Religious Movements
6 Postwar Religion and Politics
7 American Jews with American Values
8 Diversity and Dissent
For further reading
Judaism in Europe after the Second World War
1 Displaced Persons
2 The Soviet Union and Successor States
2.1 The Situation of the Jewish Population in the Post-War Decades
2.2 Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union
2.3 Developments since Perestroika
3 Poland and Hungary
4 Germany
5 Great Britain
6 France
7 Southern Europe
7.1 Italy
7.2 Spain
7.3 Greece
8 Judaism in Europe: Organizations, Plans, and Discussions
For further reading
Index
1 Sources
1 Hebrew Bible
1.1 New Testament
1.2 Deuterocanonical Works and Septuagint
1.3 Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
1.4 Dead Sea Scrolls
1.5 Philo of Alexandria
1.6 Flavius Josephus
1.7 Rabbinical Sources
1.8 Classical and Ancient Christian Writings
2 Names
3 Keywords
Maps

Citation preview

Die Religionen der Menschheit Begründet von Christel Matthias Schröder Fortgeführt und herausgegeben von Peter Antes, Manfred Hutter, Jörg Rüpke und Bettina Schmidt Band 27,1

Michael Tilly/Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.)

Judaism I History

Verlag W. Kohlhammer

Translations: David E. Orton, Blandford Forum, Dorset, England.

Cover: The Duke of Sussex’ Italian Pentateuch (British Library MS15423 f35v) Italy, ca. 1441–1467. 1. Auflage 2021 Alle Rechte vorbehalten © W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart Gesamtherstellung: W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart Print: ISBN 978-3-17-032579-1 E-Book-Formate: pdf: ISBN 978-3-17-032580-7 epub: ISBN 978-3-17-032581-4 mobi: ISBN 978-3-17-032582-1 All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, microfilm/microfiche or otherwise—without prior written permission of W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany. Any links in this book do not constitute an endorsement or an approval of any of the services or opinions of the corporation or organization or individual. W. Kohlhammer GmbH bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external site or for that of subsequent links.

Contents

Editors’ Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Burton L. Visotzky Michael Tilly 1 Die Wissenschaft des Judentums . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 World War II and Vatican II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Jacob Neusner resets the agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (Judaism 5 The New Academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Kohlhammer’s Die Religionen der Menschheit . . . . 7 What is not featured in these volumes . . . . . . . . 8 What is in these volumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Judaism I: History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Judaism II: Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Judaism III: Culture and Modernity . . . . . 9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

...............

11

............ ............ ............ and Hellenism) ............ ............ ............ ............ ............ ............ ............ ............

12 13 14 14 15 16 17 18 19 27 35 40

... ... ... .. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hermann Lichtenberger 1 The Hellenization of Ancient Judaism—Preliminary Notes . . . . . . . 2 Judaism and Hellenism in the Land of Israel/Judea—»Palestinian Judaism« as »Hellenistic Judaism« . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The reception of Greek/Hellenistic culture in Judea . . . . . . . 3 The LXX as a Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 The special features of the LXX as a translation . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 On the origins of the LXX—legend and history . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Temple Conflict under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean Revolt . 4.1 Preliminary remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 History of research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Reception of the martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons 5 The Samaritans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 On the history of the Samaritans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Basic features of Samaritan theology in Antiquity . . . . . . . . . 6 The Temple in Jerusalem, Other Jewish Temples, and Communities without a Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 The temple in Jerusalem and other Jewish temples . . . . . . . .

..

42

..

42

. . . . . . . . .

.. .. ..

43 43 47 47 47 50 50 51 52 54 56 56 58

.. ..

59 59

. . . . . . . . .

6

7

8 9 10

Contents

6.2 Judaism without a temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Guide to a Judaism without a temple—the Pharisees . . . . . 6.4 The followers of Jesus of Nazareth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The synagogue—History and Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 The emergence of the synagogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 The functions of the synagogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Synagogues in the Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sacred Writings in Judaism of the Hellenistic-Roman Period . . . . . The Emergence of the Canon of Biblical Writings in Alexandria and Judea—Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final Reflections on Judaism and Hellenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great Natalie B. Dohrmann 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Herod (37–4 BCE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Herodian Dynasty (4 BCE–66 CE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Flavius Josephus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Roman Administration and the Run-up to the War 6 Jewish Identity and Jewish Extremism . . . . . . . . . 7 The Jewish War (66–73 CE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Interbellum and Bar Kokhbah (73–136 CE) . . . 9 The Legal Status of Jews under Roman Rule . . . . . 9.1 Jews in the Roman Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Diaspora Uprising 115–117 CE . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Jewish Alexandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Jews of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Pagan Perspectives on Jews and Judaism . . . . . . . 11 The Jesus Movement and Early Christianity . . . . . 12 The Rabbinic Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

60 65 65 66 66 66 67 71

.... ....

73 74

...............

76

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. 76 . 78 . 81 . 81 . 83 . 84 . 87 . 90 . 92 . 93 . 93 . 94 . 95 . 96 . 99 . 100 . 104

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel Lee I. Levine 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Developments in the History of Palestine in the Late Roman Era (Second and Third Centuries) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Within the Byzantine-Christian Orbit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Synagogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Capernaum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Ḥammat Tiberias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Sepphoris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Ḥuqoq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Remains from the Cairo Genizah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

106 106 107 110 112 112 113 113 114 114

7

Contents

6

7 8

The Flourishing of Jewish Culture in Late Antiquity . 6.1 Burgeoning synagogue Construction . . . . . . 6.2 The Appearance of Piyyut in Jewish Liturgy . 6.3 Aggadic Midrashim: A New Creation . . . . . . 6.4 Jewish Art in Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . Jewish »Late Antiquity« in its wider Cultural Context Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE . . . . . . . . . . . Geoffrey Herman 1 Jewish settlement, community, and daily life 2 Under the Arsacid and Sasanian Empires . . 3 Jews and Persians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Babylonian Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Rabbis and Rabbinic Schools . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Exilarchate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE Phillip Issac Liebermann 1 General Conditions . . . . . . . . 2 The Pact of ʿUmar . . . . . . . . 3 Communal Organization . . . . 4 Daily Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Karaite Schism . . . . . . . 6 Religious Life . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Regional Life . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

114 115 115 116 117 117 118

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

122 124 127 130 131 135

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500 . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Chazan 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Northern Europe Jewry: Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . 3 Northern European Jewry: Maturation . . . . . . . . 4 Northern European Jewry: Accelerating Pressures 5 Southern European Jewry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750 Joseph M. Davis 1 The »Early Modern« Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Catastrophe: Expulsion from Spain . . . . . . 3 The Recovery of Judaism 1492–1618 . . . . . . . . . 4 Early Modern Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Formation of Early Modern Judaism 4.2 Printing and Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Kabbalah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

139 144 147 150 154 157 158

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

162 165 171 178 184 192

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

194 195 199 201 201 203 205

8 5

6

Contents

The Seventeenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Jews in the Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (1618–1676) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 The Spiritual Crisis of the Mid-Seventeenth Century: Baruch Spinoza and Shabbetai Tsvi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 New Centers and New Peripheries 1675–1750 . . . . . . . . . . . Hasidism and its Opponents: 1740–the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dominique Bourel 1 When did »Modern Judaism« begin? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) 3 Jewish Enlightenment in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Birth and Solidification of Hasidism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Ostjuden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Wissenschaft des Judentums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Debate between Orthodoxy and Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Modern American Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Emergence of Zionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . 207 . . . 207 . . . 208 . . . 213 . . . 215

. . . . . . . . 219 .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Berenbaum 1 The Rise of the Nazi Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Adolf Hitler—Evolution of an Anti-Semite . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Roots of Anti-Semitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Nazi Rise to Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 The Fragility of Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Nazis in Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 German Jewish Reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 The 1936 Olympics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1938—The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End . . . 2.1 The »Anschluss« of Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Evian and the Refugee Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Kristallnacht Reich’s Pogrom, the Night of Broken Glass 2.4 The American Reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Beginning of World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 German Conquests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Ghettos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Resistance in the Ghettos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Jewish Life in Western Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Theresienstadt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Final Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 The Killers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Situation in the Baltics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The Wannsee Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

219 220 223 226 227 229 232 235 237

. . . . 242 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

242 242 245 246 247 247 248 250 251 251 252 252 254 255 255 256 257 258 259 259 260 261 262

9

Contents

5

6

7

4.4 »Liquidation« of the Ghettos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Deportation by Rail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Death Camps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Death Marches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Aftermath of World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Liberation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Return to Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Nuremberg Trials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Genocide: The Word and the Crime . . . . . . . . . . . . Anti-Semitism after World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Eroding the Foundations of Christian Anti-Semitism 6.2 Jewish Life in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Anti-Semitism in North America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Anti-Semitism in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Survivors and Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Survival and Survivors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Holocaust Memory in the Contemporary World . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Zionism and the State of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Martin Kloke 1 »By the Rivers of Babylon«: The Early History of Zionism . . . . . . . . . . 2 Jewish Palestine before the First World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The First World War and the Balfour Declaration, 1917 . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Consolidation and Advances: The Zionist Project under the British Mandate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 In the Shadow of the Shoah: Jewish Mass Immigration, the Arab Uprising and, the Second World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Partition Plans in Context: En Route to the State of Israel . . . . . . . . . . 7 War and Terrorism: Signs of a Violent Relationship between Israel and Palestine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Founding of the State of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Foundations of State and Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 The Israelis: A Migrant Society in Flux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Israel in the Middle East: Between War and Peace-Process . . . . . . . . . 12 Democracy under Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Israeli Economic Miracle and the Nuclear Nightmare . . . . . . . . . . 14 Israel’s Image in the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Future Prospects: Looking Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

Judaism in America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deborah Dash Moore 1 A Revolution in American Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Conflict and Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Americanizing Jewish Culture: Capitalism and Gender 4 Jewish Communal Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

263 264 265 268 268 268 269 271 272 273 273 275 276 277 280 280 280

. 282 . 282 . 284 . 285 . 289 . 292 . 295 299 300 301 304 305 313 314 316 317

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

322 327 329 333

10 5 6 7 8

Contents

New Religious Movements . . . . . . . Postwar Religion and Politics . . . . . American Jews with American Values Diversity and Dissent . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

334 337 344 347

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kerstin Armborst-Weihs 1 Displaced Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Soviet Union and Successor States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Situation of the Jewish Population in the Post-War Decades 2.2 Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Developments since Perestroika . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Poland and Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Great Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Southern Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Judaism in Europe: Organizations, Plans, and Discussions . . . . . . . . . .

. 351 . 352 352 . 358 . 360 . 361 . 364 . 367 . 368 . 371 . 371 . 372 . 373 . 373

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Hebrew Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Deuterocanonical Works and Septuagint 1.3 Old Testament Pseudepigrapha . . . . . . 1.4 Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Philo of Alexandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Flavius Josephus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Rabbinical Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 Classical and Ancient Christian Writings 2 Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. 350

377 377 377 377 377 378 378 378 378 378 379 379 382

Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

Editors’ Introduction Burton L. Visotzky Michael Tilly

In the beginning, the Hebrew Bible was formed as an anthology of Jewish texts, each shaping an aspect of Jewish identity. As the Israelite community and its various tribes became two parts: a Diaspora and its complement, the community in the Land of Israel—competing interests formed a canon that represented their various concerns. Over time, the communities grew, interacted, and focused on local religious needs, all the while ostensibly proclaiming fealty to the Jerusalem Temple. Even so, some communities rejected the central shrine that the Torah’s book of Deuteronomy proclaimed to be »the place where the Lord chose for His name to dwell« (Deut. 12:5, et passim). Still other Jewish communities had their own competing shrines. Yet for all their dissentions, disagreements, and local politics, there was a common yet unarticulated core of beliefs and practices that unified the early Jewish communities across the ancient world.1 As the most important prerequisites and foundations of all areas of their lives—and irrespective of all pluriformity or heterogeneity—strict monotheism and the central importance of the Torah, which was considered to be directly inspired by God, shaped the contours of what can be perceived in manifold forms as »Judaism«. As the Second Temple period (516 BCE— 70 CE) drew to a close, the biblical canon took its final shape, and a world-wide Jewish community emerged as a moral and spiritual power.2 That canon, by definition, excluded certain Jewish texts, even as it codified others. And the political processes of the Persian and Hellenistic empires confined and defined the polities of their local Jews. From east to west, at the very moment in 70 CE when the centralized Jerusalem cult was reduced to ashes, Judaism, like the mythical phoenix, emerged. Across the oikumene, with each locale finding its own expressions, communities that had formed around the study of the biblical canon produced commentaries, codes, chronicles, commemorations, and compendia about Judaism. Some of these were inscribed on stone, others on parchment and paper, while still others were committed to memory. The devotion to this varied literature helped shape a Jewish culture and history that has persisted for two millennia.

1 The idea of a »common Judaism« remains debated but was introduced by Ed P. Sanders in his Judaism: Practice and Beliefs, 163 BCE–66 CE, London 1992, and embraced as a scholarly consensus in Adele Reinhartz and Wayne McCready, eds., Common Judaism: Explorations in Second Temple Judaism, Minneapolis/MN 2008. 2 See, inter alia, Timothy Lim, The Formation of the Jewish Canon, New Haven/CT, 2013.

12

Editors’ Introduction

This three-volume compendium, Judaism: I. History, II. Literature, and III. Culture and Modernity, considers various aspects of Jewish expressions over these past two millennia. In this introduction we the editors: an American rabbi-professor and an ordained German Protestant university professor, will discuss what is to be found in these three volumes, as well as what is not found here, or what is minimized. Obviously three volumes, even a thousand pages, cannot include consideration of all aspects of a rich and robustly evolving two-thousand-year-old Jewish civilization. And so, we will assay to lay bare our own biases as editors and acknowledge our own shortcomings and those of these volumes, where they are visible to us. To do this we need to have a sense of perspective on the scholarly study of Judaism over the past two centuries.

1

Die Wissenschaft des Judentums

Dr. Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) began the modern study of Judaism by convening his Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (the Society for the Culture and Critical Study of the Jews) exactly two hundred years ago, in late 1819 in Berlin.3 Although the Verein was small and lasted but five years before disbanding, it included such luminaries as co-founder Eduard Gans, a disciple of Hegel, as well as the poet Heinrich Heine.4 The scholarly Verein failed to gain traction in the larger Jewish community. None-the-less, Zunz and his German Reform colleagues introduced an academic study of Judaism based upon comparative research and use of non-Jewish sources. Their historical-critical approach to Jewish learning allowed for what had previously been confined to the Jewish orthodox Yeshiva world to eventually find an academic foothold in the university. In that era, history was often seen as the stories of great men. Spiritual and political biographies held sway. Zunz accepted the challenge with his groundbreaking biography of the great medieval French exegete, »Salomon ben Isaac, genannt Raschi.« The work marked the end of the Verein and was published in the shortlived Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums.5 The monographic length of the article and its use of what were then cutting-edge methods ironically helped assure the journal’s demise. Further, the attempt to write a biography that might assay to peek behind the myth of the towering medieval figure, assured that the orthodox yeshiva scholars who passionately cared about Rashi would find the work anathema. Nevertheless, the study was a programmatic introduction not only to Rashi, but to the philological and comparative methods of Wissenschaft des Judentums. It would set a curriculum for critical study of Judaism for the next century and a half.

3 Ismar Schorsch, Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity, 2016, 29ff. 4 Both Gans and Heine subsequently converted to Christianity for the ease of cultural assimilation. Schorsch, ibid. 5 ZWJ (1823): 277–384; Schorsch, ibid., 42.

2 World War II and Vatican II

13

Zunz solidified his methods and his agenda in 1832, when he published Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, historisch entwickelt (The Sermons of the Jews in their Historic Development).6 Here, Zunz surveyed rabbinic exegetical and homiletical literature, and by focusing on this literature, he conspicuously avoided both the study of the Talmud and Jewish mysticism. Zunz began his survey in the late books of the Hebrew Bible and continued to review the form and content of the genre up to German Reform preaching of his own day. His work was not without bias. Zunz separated what he imagined should be the academic study of Judaism from both the Yeshiva curriculum—primarily Talmud and legal codes—and from the Chassidic world, which had a strong dose of mysticism. Zunz’s acknowledgement of the mystic’s yearning for God came in his masterful survey of medieval liturgical poetry, Die Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters.7 Indeed, Jewish mysticism only finally came to be acknowledged in academic circles a century later by the efforts of Gershom Gerhard Scholem (1897–1982). Leopold Zunz essentially set the curriculum for the academic study of Judaism until the horrible events of World War II irreparably changed the course of Jewish history and learning. Even so, Zunz’s agenda still affects Jewish studies to this day and has influenced the content choices of these volumes.

2

World War II and Vatican II

The world of Jewish academic study had its ups and downs in the century following Zunz. A year after his death, the Jewish Theological Seminary was founded in New York. It continues to be a beacon of Jewish scholarship in the western world. But the shift to America was prescient, as European Jewry as a whole suffered first from the predations of Czarist Russia, then from the decimation of World War I, and finally from the Holocaust of World War II. These moments are described in detail in the following chapters of this work. The absolute destruction that the Holocaust wrought upon European Jewry cannot be exaggerated. Much of what is described in these volumes came to an abrupt and tragic end. Yet following World War II, two particular events had a dramatic effect on the future of Judaism. Both have some relationship to the attempted destruction of Jewry in Germany during the war, yet each has its own dynamic that brought it to full flowering. We refer to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the declaration of the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate document in 1965. The former has been a continual midwife for the rebirth of Jewish culture and literature both within and outside the Diaspora. Of course, there is an entire chapter of this compendium devoted to Israel. The Vatican II document, which

6 Berlin: Asher Verlag. The work was translated into Hebrew by Moshe E. Zack and expanded by Ḥanokh Albeck as HaDerashot BeYisrael (reprinted many times by Bialik Publishing, Jerusalem, 1954–). 7 Berlin, 1855.

14

Editors’ Introduction

revolutionized the Catholic Church’s approach to Jews and Judaism, is reckoned with in the final chapter of this work, describing interreligious dialogue in the past seventy years. There will be a bit more description of these historical monuments in the paragraphs below.

3

Jacob Neusner resets the agenda

A graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s rabbinical school, Jacob Neusner (1932–2016) earned his doctorate with Prof. Morton Smith, who was a former Anglican cleric and professor of ancient history at Columbia University.8 Although they broke bitterly in later years, Neusner imbibed Smith’s methodology, which served to undermine the very foundations of Zunz’s Wissenschaft curriculum. Neusner was exceedingly prolific and succeeded in publishing over 900 books before his death. Among these was his A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai: 1–80 CE.9 This work was a conventional biography of one of the founding-fathers of rabbinic Judaism, not unlike Zunz’s much earlier work on Rashi. Yet eight years after the publication of the Yohanan biography, Neusner recanted this work and embraced Smith’s »hermeneutic of suspicion,« publishing The Development of a Legend: Studies in the Traditions Concerning Yohanan ben Zakkai.10 With this latter work, Neusner upended the notion of Jewish history as the stories of great men and treated those tales instead as ideological-didactic legends which exhibited a strong religious bias. He and his students continued to publish in this vein until they put a virtual end to the writing of positivist Jewish history. This revolution came just as Jewish studies was being established as a discipline on American university campuses. For the past half-century, scholars have been writing instead the history of the ancient literature itself, and carefully limning what could and could not be asserted about the Jewish past. Due to Neusner’s polemical nature, there has been a fault line between Israeli scholars and those in the European and American Diasporas regarding the reliability of rabbinic sources as evidence for the history of the ancient period, describing the very foundations of rabbinic Judaism.

4

Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (Judaism and Hellenism)

Even as this monumental shift in the scholarly agenda was taking place, another significant change affected our understanding of Judaism. This transformation followed from the theological shift evinced by Vatican II and was apposite to the 8 See Aaron W. Hughes, Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast, New York, 2016. 9 Leiden, 1962. 10 Leiden, 1970.

5 The New Academy

15

ending of what has been characterized as the Church’s millennial »teaching of contempt« for Judaism.11 European-Christian scholarship had, from the time of the separation of Church and synagogue,12 characterized Christianity as the direct inheritor of Greco-Roman Hellenism while Judaism, often derogated as Spätjudentum, was portrayed as primitive or even barbarian. In 1969, Martin Hengel (1926–2009) wrote a pathbreaking work of heterodox scholarship exploring the Hellenistic background of Judaism and how it was a seedbed for subsequent Christian Hellenism.13 Hengel himself was relying in part on Jewish scholars such as Saul Lieberman, who wrote in the decades before him of Greek and Hellenism in Jewish Palestine.14 Lieberman, however, wrote particularly of influences on the literature of the ancient rabbis and targeted his work to scholars of Talmudic literature. Hengel, a German Protestant scholar, wrote for scholars of New Testament, and achieved a much broader reach and influence. Finally, one hundred fifty years after Zunz gathered his Berlin Verein, Hengel granted Jewish studies and Judaism itself a seat at the table of Christian faculties, even as he felt that Jewish theology of the ancient period erred in rejecting Jesus.

5

The New Academy

Since Hengel, there has been a vast expansion of Jewish Studies in universities in North America and throughout the world. Today, there is nary a university without Jewish Studies. In part this waxing of Judaica was due to the theological shifts in the Catholic Church and Protestant academy. In part, especially in the US, the explosion of Jewish studies departments was due to a general move towards identity studies that began with women’s studies and African-American studies, expanded to include Jewish studies, and other ethnic and religious departments, majors, or concentrations. In almost every university community in North America, fundraisers were able to find willing partners in the local Jewish communities to endow a chair of Jewish learning. Thus, Jewish Studies persists even as many ethnic and religious studies programs wither with the general contraction of the humanities. But Jewish Studies itself has changed in many profound ways. To wit, Christian scholars have also excelled in the field. At the time of this writing, the president

11 The phrase was the title of the book by Jules Isaac in the context of Vatican II, idem, The Teaching of Contempt: The Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism, New York, 1964. 12 See James Dunn, The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity, London, 1991 and in response Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, TSAJ 95, Tübingen, 2003. 13 Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jahrhunderts vor Christus, WUNT 10, Tübingen, 1969. 14 Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, New York, 1942; idem., Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, New York, 1950.

16

Editors’ Introduction

of the Association for Jewish Studies, Prof. Christine Hayes of Yale University, is the first non-Jew to lead the organization in its 51–year history. Similarly, Peter Schäfer served as Perelman professor of Judaic Studies at Princeton University for fifteen years, having previously served as professor for Jewish Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin (1983–2008). Both Schäfer and Hayes specialize in Talmud scholarship. By this focus, we highlight not so much the anomaly of a gentile studying Talmud, as it is a sign of the integration of Jewish Studies into the broader academy. Indeed, as early as 1961, the late Rabbi Samuel Sandmel served as president of the otherwise overwhelmingly Christian membership of the Society for Biblical Literature. Today, the field has been leveled in both directions. Unfortunately, this apex has been reached just as Jewish studies, like the rest of the humanities, is contracting and diminishing not only in the United States, but even in Israel.

6

Kohlhammer’s Die Religionen der Menschheit

Since 1960, Kohlhammer in Stuttgart has published the prestigious series Die Religionen der Menschheit (The Religions of Humanity). While the series was originally conceived of as thirty-six volumes almost 60 years ago, today it extends to fifty plus volumes, covering virtually all aspects of world-religions. That said, a disproportionate number of the volumes (often made up of multi-book publications) are devoted to Christianity. This is unsurprising, given Kohlhammer’s location in a German-Lutheran orbit. In the earliest round of publication, Kohlhammer brought out a one-volume Israelitische Religion (1963, second edition: 1982), which covered Old Testament religion. This also demonstrated Kohlhammer’s essentially Christian worldview. By separating Israelite religion from Judaism, it implies that Israelite religion might lead the way to Christianity; viz. that the Old Testament would be replaced by the New. Its author was Christian biblical theologian Helmer Ringgren. In 1994, though, Kohlhammer began to address the appearance of bias with its publication of a one-volume (526 pp) work Das Judentum, Judaism. Although it was edited by German Christian scholar Günter Mayer, (who specialized in rabbinic literature), and had contributions by Hermann Greive, who was also a non-Jew; the work featured contributions by three notable rabbis: Jacob Petuchowski, Phillip Sigal, and especially Leo Trepp. German born, Rabbi Trepp was renown as the last surviving rabbi to lead a congregation in Germany. Trepp was arrested on Kristallnacht (Nov. 9, 1938) and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Post-World War II, Rabbi Trepp was a leader in restoring Jewish life in Germany.15 Thus, his participation in the Judentum volume made clear Kohlhammer’s bona fides in publishing the volume. In its current iteration, twenty-five years later, this edition of Judaism is a three-volume, 1000-page compendium with contributions by thirty experts in all 15 Cf. Gunda Trepp, Der letzte Rabbiner: Das unorthodoxe Leben des Leo Trepp, Darmstadt, 2018.

7 What is not featured in these volumes

17

areas of Judaism, from the destruction of the Second Temple and the advent of rabbinic Judaism, until today. We, the co-editors, are Dr. Burton L. Visotzky, Ph.D., a rabbi who serves as the Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary. The other co-editor is Dr. Michael Tilly, a Protestant minister, Professor of New Testament and head of the Institute of Ancient Judaism and Hellenistic Religions at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. Further, the individual chapter authors are a mix, albeit uneven, of men and women (our initial invitations were to the same number of women as men, but as will be apparent, the final number favors men over women). And there are more Jews than Christians writing for these three volumes, although we confess to not actually knowing the religion of each individual participant. Scholars from seven countries make up the mix, with a preponderance of North-Americans; there are also many Germans, Israelis and then, scholars from England, France, Austria, and Poland. We are not entirely sure what this distribution means, except perhaps that the publisher and one of the editors is German, the other editor is American, and the largest number of Jewish studies scholars are located in America and Israel. The relative paucity of Europeans indicates the slow recovery from World War II, even as we celebrate the reinvigoration of Jewish Studies in Europe.

7

What is not featured in these volumes

Even given the diversity and number of exceptional scholars writing for this threevolume compendium—we will detail their contributions below—there are areas of Judaism that are less thoroughly covered than we might have wished, had we neither time nor word limits. An example would be a section on modern Jews of Color, who are gaining significance in both the U. S. and Israel. We recognize the rise in awareness and importance of non-white Jewish communities and look forward to there being a significant body of scholarship on their social and historical experiences as »a minority of a minority« in the years ahead, enough that it will become recognized as an academic specialization. Half a century after the advent of feminist scholarship in Jewish studies, we still struggle to chart women’s normative experiences in every era. While our chapters, particularly those devoted to history, are no longer the stories of great men, there remains an insufficiency of both primary evidence and current history writing to address this lack. The abundance of feminist scholarship is addressed in a chapter by Prof. Gwynn Kessler that focusses on the literature on Jewish women, feminism, and gender studies in the past half-century. But the absence of women throughout these volumes remains a problem in addressing the entirety of Judaism while still ignoring half the Jewish population, even if less so than before. We do not wish to commit the error of what is archly called, »add women and stir,« as though by simply dedicating one chapter out of thirty, the issue is then addressed. But we recognize that even with the wonderful scholarly works

18

Editors’ Introduction

that Kessler records, there is yet much work to be done to have adequately redressed this problem. The worldview of the editors has also skewed these volumes towards what is today labeled »Ashkenormativity.« That is to say that while there certainly is in these volumes some consideration of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry—viz. the recognition of Jews from Arab or Muslim majority countries—the work as a whole tends to be Eurocentric. This perhaps is to be expected in a work published in Germany post-Holocaust. But given the concomitant exodus of modern Jewry from Muslim majority countries following World War II and given their political power (albeit exercised as a minority in coalition governments) in modern Israel, our lack of scholar-authors from and explicit chapters on those communities only exacerbates the lacuna. We hope this »nostra culpa« is accepted as a step in recognizing our omission, on the way to repairing it in any subsequent editions. Other areas where scholarship is beginning to have sufficient depth to merit inclusion in any subsequent iteration of this work, while not yet being sufficiently mainstream for entire chapters now, might be: studies of the various Jewish disability communities, the recognition of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) Jews, the phenomenon of intermarriage (which, while much studied statistically, has no consensus of opinion across either Jewish scholarship or in Jewish communities at large). As a final issue in our study of Judaism, we have neglected the persistence of poverty in the global Jewish community. This latter issue is dispiriting, for one might have hoped that as the Jewish community recovered from the depredations of the Second World War and that as there was substantial regrowth of the Jewish communities in America and Israel, poverty might have receded. But as the Bible itself prophesies, »the poor will never cease from the land« (Deuteronomy 15:11). Sadly, the disparity between rich and poor in the modern State of Israel is disturbingly high. But the poor are further disenfranchised by the fact that it is the wealthy and the well-educated who write the histories and the sociological studies. Thus, the poor remain largely invisible within the broader world of Jews and Judaism.

8

What is in these volumes

We turn now to examine what is in these three volumes, briefly epitomizing each chapter in its author’s words. This overview will show the groupings of essays into Jewish history, literature, and culture. Here it is helpful to note that for this three-volume compendium, »Judaism« is essentially Rabbinic Judaism. This will include Rabbinic Judaism’s immediate forebears, opponents, and even modern cultural manifestations. Thus we begin with »Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees.«

8 What is in these volumes

8.1

Judaism I: History

1

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

19

In this chapter Dr. Hermann Lichtenberger of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, covers many aspects of the history of the period from the onset of Hellenism in the fourth century BCE and continues up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. He begins by invoking the landmark research of Martin Hengel, already fifty years ago, which proved that Palestinian Judaism of the ancient period is, in fact, Hellenistic Judaism. Dr. Lichtenberger then surveys Greek language usage and education within the Jewish community, along with an overview of Greek philosophy and literature in Jewish Palestine. The chapter considers Greek translations of Jewish works, such as the Bible, with particular attention to traditions regarding the Septuagint (LXX) translation of the Torah into Greek. Lichtenberger then turns to the history of the Maccabean revolt, and how historiography of the period has changed in the half-century since the work of Elias Bickermann. The events of Hasmonean history are reexamined in detail. The debate regarding the internecine conflict over Hellenization is considered. Finally, there is a section of this part of the discussion dedicated to the various narratives of the »mother and her seven martyred sons.« Lichtenberger reviews the place of the Samaritans during this period and their relations with the Jewish community. He then turns to the place of the Jerusalem Temple in Jewish life and contrasts it with those Jewish communities—among them the Samaritans—that did not share the Jerusalem cult as constitutive of their Jewish identity. This sets the stage not only for the Dead Sea Scroll community of Qumran, but also for post-70 CE (rabbinic) Judaism. The community of Qumran and its leadership is discussed along with the role of the biblical and non-biblical writings discovered there. Lichtenberger then turns to the early synagogue and its various roles in Jewish practice. He concludes with an overview of Sacred Writings in Judaism of the Hellenistic-Roman Period, and the emergence of the biblical canon as an anchor of Judaism. 2

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

The story of the Jews from the Herodian kings until the advent of Constantine is explored by Dr. Natalie Dohrmann of the University of Pennsylvania. She looks at the rise of Judea as a Roman client kingdom under Herod the Great and the loss of Jewish political autonomy under the procurators, culminating in two devastating wars against Rome. She traces Jewish responses to the loss of the Jerusalem Temple, the priestly aristocracy, and the cult. The chapter also examines the Jewish diaspora, parts of which fared poorly in this era. The Jewish community of Alexandria was destroyed in the early 2nd century—along with several other diaspora communities—when a wave of revolts in

20

Editors’ Introduction

Jewish Mediterranean communities failed to defeat Trajan’s forces. Yet Jews continue to live and fare well in Rome, Antioch, and elsewhere. In Palestine, scholars are divided about the nature of the relationship between rabbinic Judaism and the Roman world. For the remainder of events described in this chapter, we do not have access to any Jewish source comparable to Josephus. Dohrmann reconstructs events from other people’s history, fragmentary material remains, documents, polemical materials by non-Jews, and religious, legal, liturgical, and other genres of literature never meant to tell history. Dohrmann takes up the events between the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE and the Bar Kokhbah revolt of 132–135, considering the legal status of the Jews under Roman rule thereafter. She considers the role of Jews in the western Diaspora, describes the great Jewish centers in Alexandria and in Rome, and offers pagan perspectives on Jews and Judaism. She shares an aside on the Jesus movement and early Christianity, but then sharpens her narrative with the emergence of the rabbinic movement. Dr. Dohrmann concludes that Jewish history under pagan Rome represents perhaps the most radically transformative period in the history of the faith. Judaism shifted from a temple-based nation ruled by client kings and priests to a religion based on a sacred text, beginning to reorganize itself around a lay leadership in the form of the nascent rabbinic movement. 3

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

Prof. Dr. Lee I. Levine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discusses the rabbinic movement and the Jews in the Land of Israel, challenging the traditional view of decline with an exposition of the vibrance of Judaism, as Christianity emerges in the Byzantine Empire. Levine explains that two phenomena from the Late Roman period have gained wide acceptance over the past generation and have revised our understanding of Jewish history. The first is a reassessment of the economic, political, and cultural situation in the province generally and of the Jews in particular. The second and third centuries—the Judea-based Bar-Kokhbah revolt notwithstanding—were a period of peace and stability throughout the province. Not only did the Jewish cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris expand in this era, but synagogue buildings were constructed in the third century following a hiatus of several centuries. The second phenomenon that has revolutionized our understanding was the establishment of the Jewish Patriarchate, a new political-communal office recognized by Rome and intended to instill a sense of autonomy and confidence within the Jewish community. Rome, for its part, welcomed Jews into the municipal curiae with the provision that nothing was to interfere with their religious observance. Traditions reflecting sympathetic relations between Severan emperors on the one hand and the Jews and Judaism on the other are noted in the fourth century. The third century also marked a new stage in the development of art as a form of religious expression, appearing on mosaic floors, walls, and architectural ele-

8 What is in these volumes

21

ments in pagan and Jewish contexts. Literary activity among the rabbis found expression in the compilation of tannaitic halakhic and midrashic treatises, including at least one that was influenced by a genre known in the Roman world. The archaeological finds from more than one hundred synagogues in ancient Palestine, almost all in the Galilee and Golan dating to Late Antiquity, in addition to the rich variety of artistic and epigraphic remains, demonstrate the multifaceted cultural and religious components within these communities. The construction of monumental synagogue buildings points to political standing and economic means of these Jewish communities. 4

Judaism in Babylonia

Dr. Geoffrey Herman, of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, surveys Judaism in Babylonia from 226–650 CE. Our foremost source is the Babylonian Talmud. Indirect sources are classical authors, Persian epigraphic sources, or Syriac-Christian literature. Jewish communities were found from the southern boundary of Mesene to Anbar in the North and were dotted along the Euphrates and Tigris, and beside the canals that crossed between the two rivers. The Jews were an agrarian society. Others worked in linen, flax, or silk, in live-stock, or vegetable gardening. Jews maintained synagogues where they gathered on Sabbath mornings. Women had a subordinate role in public society. Most of the occupations of women were not different than in other ancient societies. Family structure was traditional. A young age for marriage was encouraged. Jews encountered the Persian administration through the occasional billeting of soldiers or the presence of Persian nobles and overseers. Taxation also brought the Jews into direct contact with the administration. As inhabitants of a Persian empire, Jews in Babylonia came into regular contact with Persian language and culture, which left its mark on Jewish thought. The dominant religion in the Sasanian Empire was Zoroastrianism, and some of its more pronounced features were known to the Jews. Magical practice was known to all. The Talmud is brimming with material of a magical nature. The biblical legacy was of greatest importance for the identity of Babylonian Jews. The Rabbis emerged as the major intellectual force, transforming not only the lives of Babylonian Jews, but Jewish religion and culture until today. The Rabbinic revolution was achieved through education. The Rabbis maintained the supreme value of the study of the Torah, and Rabbinic students were expected to subordinate themselves to a master and dedicate themselves to study. There are signs of friction between Rabbis and other Jews. Leadership known as the resh galuta or Exilarch emerged, who professed to be the scion of the House of David. The Exilarchate could function as a source of immense prestige. As Babylonian Jewry grew in importance, a dynamic of regional rivalry developed between it and the Jews of Palestine. The Exilarch symbolically embodied Babylonia’s alleged ascendancy over the Jewish center in Palestine and the rest of the Jewish world.

22 5

Editors’ Introduction

Jews and/under Islam, 650–1000 CE

Dr. Phillip Lieberman of Vanderbilt University writes that with the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE, Jews were concentrated in oases such as Yathrib (later called Medina) and Khaybar. Some, like their brethren in Babylonia and the Land of Israel, were involved in agriculture. Others were involved in trading and crafts. Islamic histories may have set up Jews as mighty imagined enemies even where the actual number of Jews may have been small. The Jewish population in North Africa is known from Roman history and the presence of Jews is well-attested across the southern Mediterranean. The Pact of ʿUmar served as a contract between Muslim rulers and subject peoples. This agreement offered dhimmī peoples relative stability and security, even if its provisions might have hampered their upward mobility. Rabbinic academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel provided succor to the Jews of the Mediterranean Basin and the Iberian Peninsula, offering legal opinions on all aspects of daily life. There was competition between the academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel for the loyalty of communities in the Diaspora. Jewish courts adjudicated matters, although Jews also had the ability to seek recourse in Islamic courts. The Cairo Genizah provides much detail about urban life in Fusṭāṭ and other cities. Genizah documents suggest a population well integrated socially and economically into Islamic society. There is evidence of prominent women who served at the hub of trading networks, yet much of women’s economic and social activity was centered on the home. In contrast with Christian Europe, the practice of polygyny persisted in the Jewish community. A dispute concerning the succession of the Jewish Exilarch in 760 CE led to a schism by Anan b. David. The rejection of rabbanite exegesis and a scripturalist approach to the Bible of these »Karaites« was part of a long-standing internal dispute. Religious and communal life was organized around the synagogue. In Fusṭāṭ, there were distinct synagogues for those adhering to the rabbis’ Palestinian rite, the Babylonian rite, and the synagogue of the Karaites. 6

Judaism in the Middle Ages 1000–1500

Dr. Robert Chazan of New York University covers Judaism’s shift from its Mediterranean orbit to Europe. The small Jewish community in Northern Europe around the year 1000 became a vigorous branch of the Jewish people. Christian rulers perceived Jews as useful for economic improvement. Anti-Jewish animosity and violence was manifest. In 1095, Pope Urban II announced an undertaking to recapture the sites of Christianity in the Holy Land. Anti-Jewish crusading violence reflected popular resistance to Jewish settlement in northern Europe. Yet French Jewry produced the first major classics of literature to emerge in Europe. The Church prohibited Christians taking interest from other Christians, so finance became a Jewish specialty. Allegations of Jewish murder of Christian youngsters began to spread during the twelfth century. King Philip Augustus of France

8 What is in these volumes

23

instituted a new policy toward his Jews: confiscation of Jewish goods; a remission of debts owed to Jews; and finally, expulsion. In the 1230’s, Pope Gregory IX sent letters to the authorities of Christendom with the allegation that the Talmud contained demeaning references to Christianity. King Louis IX of France convened a court where Rabbi Yehiel of Paris defended the Talmud, while scholars from the university of Paris constituted the jury. They found the Talmud guilty and its manuscripts were burned. The Jews expelled from northwestern Europe proceeded eastward to economically less developed areas. By the end of the first Christian millennium, the Jewish communities of Southern Europe were well rooted, especially on the Iberian Peninsula. Jews immigrated to Christian Spain and southern France as a result of the twelfth century invasion of the Almohade Muslims of North Africa. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, who was born and studied in Muslim Spain left as a result. He was one of the towering intellects of all Jewish history. Major stimuli for Jewish creativity across medieval southern Europe came from the Islamic sphere. In the thirteenth century, inquisitorial courts played a significant role in the Roman Church. The claim of heresy among the New Christians was a major factor in the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Jews made their way eastward into the Ottoman Empire. 7

Judaism During and After the Expulsions 1492–1750

Dr. Joseph Davis of Gratz College in Philadelphia writes that between 1492 and about 1750, when Moses Mendelssohn began the Jewish Enlightenment, Jews and Judaism remained in some ways »medieval,« while in other ways, they became cautiously and even precociously »modern.« As expulsions of Jews from European countries continued, Jewish life in 1570 was at its lowest ebb in Western Europe. Recovery in the sixteenth century was remarkable. Ottoman authorities were eager to repopulate Istanbul, which eventually had a community of 40,000 Jews. The emigration of Jews from Western Europe also helped repopulate the Jewish communities of the land of Israel. In Istanbul, Salonika, Safed, and throughout the Mediterranean, the new Jewish communities were divided into ethnic subgroups of Jews. In Poland, Jews also found policies of religious toleration. The Protestant Reformation, and the failure of Protestants and Catholics to convince one another, made Jewish »stubbornness« seem less exceptional. The expulsions from Western Europe ran their course, and about 1570 the tide of migration began to shift. The sixteenth and early seventeenth century was an era of rabbis who adapted Jewish law to new circumstances, publishing responsa, commentaries, and codes of Jewish law. Poland and the Ottoman Empire stood out as major centers of Talmud study and halakhic creativity. Jewish mystics and Kabbalists immigrated to the land of Israel and settled in Safed. It and Jerusalem continued to attract great scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alongside of halakhah and rabbinic

24

Editors’ Introduction

literature, and sometimes in tension with it, kabbalah was the second great pillar of early modern Judaism. Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov (»Master of the Good Name«) preached a new, spiritually democratic version of Judaism. He had a religious insight of enormous importance, »No place is empty of [God].« Besides its theology of radical Divine immanence, Hasidism introduced a variety of changes into Jewish life. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a period of crisis in Jewish theology. However, the period was also one of increased political stability, compared to the war-filled mid-seventeenth century. 8

Modern Judaism 1750–1930

In this chapter, Dr. Dominique Bourel of the Centre Roland Mousnier at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (Sorbonne), considers Jewish modernity from the time of Spinoza (1632–77) until the post-World War I period. He writes of five changes of paradigm after the cultural revolution of the Eighteenth Century in Europe: 1) Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah), 2) the birth and solidification of Hasidism, 3) Wissenschaft des Judentums (Jewish studies), 4) the debate between Orthodoxy and Reform, and 5) the emergence of Zionism. These paradigms also operated in cultures of the Jews in the East, in Poland and in Russia. They were a new attempt to negotiate entry into European modernity. Bourel sees a strong cultural hegemony in German-Jewish institutions and leadership. He describes how they navigated from an inner-focus on Judaism to a postEnlightenment movement toward the non-Jewish world. Although these attempts at modernity did not succeed in integration into the German milieu (witness the Shoah), nevertheless, the five paradigmatic shifts sufficed to bring Judaism into modernity in the United States and the State of Israel. Bourel also briefly considers the role of Jewish women in advancing the community to modernity. 9

The Holocaust and Antisemitism

Dr. Michael Berenbaum of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles surveys the years before and during the Holocaust. Economic, social, populist, religious, and governmental conditions facilitated Hitler’s rise. Enmity toward the Jews was expressed by the church’s teachings of contempt. The Nazis’ racial definition meant Jews were persecuted not just for their religious practices, but because of their socalled racial identity. The Nazi Party destroyed democracy from within. By the time emigration was prohibited, more than six in ten German Jews had fled into exile. In March 1938, German troops entered Austria. The persecution of Jews began the night of 9‒10 November 1938, known as Kristallnacht. More than a thousand synagogues, their Torah scrolls, bibles, and prayer books were burned. 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps in Germany. In 1940, Germany attacked Belgium, France, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway. With each conquest, more Jews came under German control. With the exception

8 What is in these volumes

25

of Amsterdam, ghettos were not present in Western Europe. Further east, after June 1941, ghettos were imposed after the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units, had done their murderous work. Except for Denmark, western Jews were persecuted, rounded up, incarcerated in transit camps, and sent to death camps in occupied Poland. The Final Solution became policy in 1941. Six »death factories« allowed the Nazis and their collaborators to murder Jews, confiscate their goods, and dispose of the bodies to hide their crimes. The final stage was an attempt by the perpetrators to evacuate the Jews from the most horrific concentration camps—where German troops and their collaborators could be caught in war crimes. In the waning days of World War II American troops discovered the concentration camps of Ohrdruf, Mauthausen, Nordhausen, Buchenwald, and Dachau. The Nuremberg Trials, convened by President Harry S. Truman, were undertaken by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish émigré to the United States and international lawyer, wrote of the need to name and outlaw the crime. The word he chose was »genocide«—the murder of a people. He pushed The Convention on Genocide through the United Nations in December 1948. 10

Zionism and the State of Israel

Dr. Martin Kloke of Cornelsen Publishing, Berlin, notes the biblical roots of Zion before considering nineteenth-century Zionism and Herzl’s vision. Between 1882 and 1903, twenty- to thirty-thousand Jews came to Palestine. This number doubled between 1904 and 1914. Ottoman pressures radicalized Jews. Chaim Weizmann lobbied for British recognition. Following World War I, in which the Ottomans aligned with Germany, the Zionist-friendly Balfour declaration was promulgated. The British invasion of Palestine in 1918 ended the four-hundred-year reign of the Turks. In 1919, Emir Feisal of Mecca accepted Jewish immigration to Palestine. But by 1928, the economic recovery of the Jewish Yishuv caused fear among the Arabs. Muslims and Jews engaged in street battles, while the authorities stood aside. Organized labor was important for the socio-economic development of the Yishuv. When in 1933, the Nazis began systematic discrimination against Jews, around 38,000 new immigrants came to Palestine. They were followed by 197,000 refugees from Poland. Zionists intensified efforts to smuggle Jewish refugees. World opinion could no longer overlook the murder of six million European Jews. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly partitioned the land into Jewish and Arab states. Immediately after the resolution, an Arab uprising tried to prevent the Jewish state. The Haganah fought to secure the areas that the UN allocated to the Jews. When the Palestine Mandate expired without an agreement, on 14 May 1948, the Jewish National Council proclaimed the State of Israel. The declaration resulted in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948–49, in which between 600,000 and 750,000 Arabs fled or were driven from their homes. In the face of hostilities in Palestine between 1945 and 1952, more than 600,000 Jews fled from

26

Editors’ Introduction

Arab countries to the Jewish state. The so-called law of return allowed all Jews and their non-Jewish partners or children to immigrate to Israel as citizens. In 70 years, Israel’s population multiplied from approximately 800,000 to 9 million. Although Israel defines itself as »Jewish and democratic,« the Jewish majority accounts for 75 percent of the population, while the Arab minority constitutes 20 percent. Integration of the territories conquered in 1967 will either lead to Jewish minority rule over a majority Palestinian population or to a binational community. 11

Judaism in America

University of Michigan Professor Deborah Dash Moore begins in 1654, when Governor Peter Stuyvesant received orders from the Dutch West India Company to allow Jews in the colony. Before the century ended, New York Jews created the first synagogue. During the early republic, Charleston, South Carolina attracted the largest concentration of Jews. In 1824, a group of young Jews there petitioned for shorter services, explanations of Hebrew prayers, and a sermon in English. When the leaders rejected their requests, the young men and women established a Reformed Society of Israelites. They introduced female voices, instrumental accompaniment, and revised the prayer book. After the Civil War, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise established the Hebrew Union College to train Reform rabbis. But at the 1883 banquet honoring the first graduates, non-kosher shellfish was served, infuriating several rabbis. They guided congregants away to establish the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), which shaped Conservative Judaism. As a generation of American Jewish women matured, they initiated activism. Occupying pews with their husbands, women began synagogue attendance. Hannah Greenberg Solomon organized Jewish women for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. She recruited for a Jewish Women’s Congress. The National Council of Jewish Women embodied a politicized conscience. The American Jewish Committee was formed to »prevent infringement of the civil and religious rights of Jews …« Mordecai Kaplan organized Friday night lectures on the Lower East Side that attracted modern Orthodox Jews. Within a year that congregation became Young Israel. It received guidance from Rabbi Bernard Revel, who came to lead immigrant religious educational institutions, which reorganized as Yeshiva College. Kaplan also established the Society for the Advancement of Judaism and its movement, Reconstructionism. He had already introduced the Bat Mitzvah to mark the equality of Jewish girls. American Jews emerging from World War II created »a culture of commemoration« memorializing the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis and turned to Zionism, partly in response to the suffering of survivors. They integrated Israel into their consciousness. The three Jewish movements all included youth groups, summer camps, and sisterhoods. By the end of the postwar period, over five and a half million American Jews had transformed Judaism.

8 What is in these volumes

12

27

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

Dr. Kerstin Armborst-Weihs of the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Education (Pädagogische Hochschule) Karlsruhe writes on Judaism in Europe and the former Soviet Union post-World War II. She charts the after-effects of the murder and deportations of Jews that took place. Many survivors could scarcely imagine rebuilding Jewish life. Zionism was attractive to a large proportion of those who had been uprooted. Those who stayed in Europe faced reintegration into society depending on national contexts. The immigration of Jews from North Africa and the Soviet Union changed European Jewish communities fundamentally. Armborst-Weihs considers displaced persons in the years following the war. She turns to the exodus of Jews from the former Soviet Union, that unfolded in the 1960s through the 1970s. Much of the emigration was directed to settling in the State of Israel, changing its social and political complexion. In Poland, the effects of the Holocaust continue to stunt the small Polish Jewish population—once a community of 3.5 million Jews. Today, there is an appreciation of the legacy of Polish Jewry, with a museum, kosher restaurants, and klezmer music concerts—but not very many Jews. Hungarian Jewry was similarly annihilated. Its slow recovery has recently been checked by rising anti-Semitism and government opposition. Germany slowly began a resurgence of Jewish life, buttressed by a huge influx of Soviet Jews. It recently opened both liberal and orthodox rabbinical schools to provide leadership for the burgeoning Jewish population. The German government has been supportive of this renaissance. Great Britain’s Jewish population was not appreciably affected by the Holocaust. In the post-war decades, British Jewry was characterized by social mobility. Contrary to pessimistic forecasts of demography of British Judaism for the late 20th century, recent figures indicate a growth in population. Zionism found widespread approval in French Jewish society. Despite some emigration from France to Israel in recent years, the Jewish community in France is the third largest in the world. This is in part due to an influx of North African Jewish immigration, which changed the social make-up. Armborst-Weihs concludes with surveys of the Italian, Spanish, and Greek Jewish communities. Owing to the diversity of traditions and interests within Judaism in Europe, many different Jewish identities have developed.

8.2

Judaism II: Literature

13

The Jewish Bible: Traditions and Translations

Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Emanuel Tov describes the TaNaKh, Torah (Pentateuch), Nevi’im (Prophets), Ketuvim (Writings) as Jewish Scripture that has come down from antiquity in complex ways. The traditional

28

Editors’ Introduction

Jewish Bible, or Masoretic Text (MT) represents only one of the early text traditions, but is accepted by all streams of Judaism since the first century CE. The oldest source of MT is the Aleppo Codex, ca. 925 CE. All the printed editions of the Hebrew Bible and most of its modern translations present a form of MT. The main site of ancient biblical manuscripts is in the Judean Desert near Khirbet Qumran, south of Jericho near the Dead Sea. There, remnants of some 950 biblical and non-biblical scrolls were found in eleven caves. Twenty-five texts found in the Judean Desert at sites other than Qumran display almost complete identity with the medieval texts. The Qumran biblical texts themselves, however, depart from MT. In view of this disparity, we conclude that for the Qumran community, the various Scripture texts were equally authoritative. Most likely, the biblical text was known in different ways not only in Qumran, but throughout Israel. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars were not aware that MT existed in the same consonantal form as early as the last centuries BCE. The Hebrew and translated texts used within rabbinic Judaism only reflect MT. Most scholars are now of the opinion that LXX manuscripts derive from a single translation into Greek that was repeatedly revised to conform to the proto-MT. In the first century CE, when the Christian New Testament writers quoted the earlier scripture, they used the wording of the LXX, since the NT was written in Greek. Skilled persons have been translating the Bible for more than two millennia. Except for the LXX translation, some version of the MT has been the basis of virtually every translation of the Hebrew Bible. Of the ancient translations, the Aramaic Targumim reflect the views of the rabbis. 14

Jewish Literature in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (350 B.C.E. –150 C.E.)

Dr. Michael Tilly of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen surveys Jewish literature from the close of the Hebrew Bible up to rabbinic literature. Koine Greek was the lingua franca throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Jewish writings from Hellenistic-Roman times comprise different genres, styles, and linguistic levels. These texts were composed primarily in the three centers of ancient Judaism: the Land of Israel, Egypt, and Babylonia (Iraq). The rabbis did not hand down Hellenistic-Jewish literature. Rather, Greek Jewish literature was handed down, translated, revised, and supplemented exclusively by Christianity. Historical and legendary texts are considered, such as: 3 Ezra, 1–3 Maccabees, Judith, Greek Esther, the Greek Daniel traditions: Susanna; Bel and the Dragon; Prayer of Azariah; the three men in the fiery furnace. Dr. Tilly also surveys: the Paraleipomena Jeremiou and Vitae Prophetarum, Hellenistic-Jewish historians, whose work is often fragmentary including Eupolemus, Artapanos, and the works in Hecataeus of Abdera. Dr. Tilly turns next to teachings in narrative form such as: Tobit, the Letter of Aristeas, which recounts the legend of the commission and translation of the LXX, the Book of Jubilees, Ascensio Isaiae, as well as a Life of Adam and Eve (in Latin) or Apocalypse of Moses (Greek). The Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum was falsely attribut-

8 What is in these volumes

29

ed to Philo in the Middle Ages. The Hellenistic novel Joseph and Asenath is also reviewed. Other works such as the Teachings of Ben Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, Book of Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, 4 Maccabees, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Testament of Job are included. The thoroughness of the survey is indicated by Dr. Tilly’s inclusion of the Hellenistic-Jewish exegetes Demetrios, Aristobulus, and another exegete called Aristeas (not the one already mentioned). A section follows on poetry: Psalm 151, the Psalms of Solomon, Pseudo-Phocylides, and Ezekiel the Tragedian’s Exagogé. The chapter continues with Greek Apocalyptic works such as the Greek and the Syriac Apocalypses of Baruch, the Ascension of Moses, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse of Abraham, 1–2 Enoch, and the Sibylline Oracles. Dr. Tilly briefly surveys the various non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, before concluding with the works of Philo and Josephus. 15

Tannaitic Literature

Professor Emeritus at the University of Vienna, Günter Stemberger writes that the first generations of the rabbis, from 70 CE to the early third century, are called tannaim (plural), derived from Aramaic tanna, ›to repeat, learn.‹ Traditionally, these masters begin with Hillel and Shammai in the first century CE, and their ›houses‹ or schools. They were followed by masters of Yavneh after 70 CE: Yoḥanan ben Zakkai, Rabban Gamaliel, Rabbis Yishmael and Aqiva. The Tannaim continued through the rabbis of Usha, after the Bar Kokhbah-revolt (132–135): Simeon ben Gamaliel, and R. Meir, culminating with Yehudah ha-Nasi, called Rabbi (ca. 200 CE). Rabbi edited the Mishnah, the most important literary product of the rabbis. It consists of six ›orders‹ (seder, plural: sedarim), each divided into tractates. The work used pre-existing sources and traditions and was ›published‹ in oral form. Some of mishnaic halakhah is from the Bible, but the relationship of the Mishnah to Scripture does not imply a direct line of development from biblical times. Many tractates of the Mishnah depict rituals of the Temple. R. Yehudah and his co-workers reformulated the traditions they received. Repetitions and contradictions within the book and the inclusion of opinions with which Rabbi does not agree, led scholars to consider the Mishnah as a collection or a teaching manual. The Tosefta (Aramaic) means ›supplement.‹ It denotes additional teachings supplementing the Mishnah, having the same six orders and tractates. The Tannaitic halakhic midrashim are on Exodus through Deuteronomy, interpreting their biblical texts verse by verse and often word by word. Their main interest is halakhah, which they derive from Scripture instead of independently, as do the Mishnah and Tosefta. They do not bypass the narrative parts of biblical sections and therefore are also haggadic. Baraita de-melekhet ha-mishkan, a work in Mishnaic Hebrew quoting Tannaitic masters, describes in the construction of the tabernacle, the dimensions and history of the ark, the placement of the tablets and Torah scrolls, the showbread table, and other items of the sanctuary. The last work to be considered is Seder ʿOlam, a midrash whose main interest is chronographic.

30 16

Editors’ Introduction

Amoraic Literature (ca 250–650 CE): Talmud and Midrash

Dr. Carol Bakhos of UCLA surveys the period of the Amoraim (»expositors of tannaitic tradition,« »those who say«). These rabbis lived in Palestine (The Land of Israel) and Babylonia (Iraq), and their teachings serve as the basis of both the Palestinian Talmud (also known as the Talmud Yerushalmi or the Jerusalem Talmud), and the Babylonian Talmud (or Bavli). The explanation, qualification, and amplification of the Mishnah is at the heart of the Talmuds. The Palestinian Talmud is a shorter work redacted about two to three centuries before the Bavli. It came together within a Byzantine Roman milieu that included pagans and Christians. The Bavli developed within a Sasanid context, primarily among Zoroastrians. Scholars today pay a great deal of attention to the ambient religions and cultures, as well as social and political forces, to explain halakhic discrepancies between the two Talmuds. There are five generations of Palestinian Amoraim and six generations of Babylonian Amoraim. Travel between the two centers of learning took place. In both Palestine and Babylonia, rabbinic schools were small and loosely structured groups of students who studied with individual sages. Disciples were free to move from one teacher to another. By the sixth century, these master-disciple circles gave way to more organized rabbinic academies. The Talmuds recount didactic stories about the lives of amoraim and convey snippets of biographical detail. The Babylonian Talmud paints a picture of their insular world and what was required of them to pursue the study of Torah. The rabbis produced works of biblical exegesis: Midrash, (Hebrew root drš, »to investigate, seek out«) which is a process of scriptural interpretation. The Amoraim also produced several compilations of aggadic scriptural interpretation: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Pesikta de Rav Kahana (organized around the synagogue Torahreading cycle), and Lamentations Rabbah. These rabbis are also mentioned in later collections of midrash, such as Song of Songs Rabbah. The aggadic midrashim of the amoraic period deal primarily with the narrative portions of the Hebrew Bible.

17

Rabbinic-Gaonic and Karaite Literatures (ca. 650–1050 CE)

Rare is the scholar who can write with expertise about the literature of both the rabbis and the Karaites. Dr. Ilana Sasson was such a scholar, but she left us at a tragically young age. Dr. Burton Visotzky, of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary and Dr. Marzena Zawanowska of the Institute of History, University of Warsaw, and Jewish Historical Institute, join together to offer this two-part chapter, dedicated to Ilana’s blessed memory. Visotzky writes about the period ca. 650–1050 CE, which encompasses shifts in the genres of rabbinic literature. As the Babylonian Talmud coalesced into its current form, rabbis in Jewish Babylonia and elsewhere (called Geonim) wrote introductions to and commentaries on the Talmud. The Geonim wrote responsa

8 What is in these volumes

31

to halachic questions. The era was fruitful for new genres of midrash (biblical interpretation). The rabbis who attended to the minutiae of the biblical text are called Masoretes (masters of tradition). The Geonic era was a rich time for rabbinic philosophy as well as a flowering of Jewish mysticism. Some of the earliest post-biblical poetry was composed then. Sherira Gaon’s »History of Rabbinic Literature,« covered from the time of the Mishnah unto his day, attempting to trace an unbroken chain of rabbinic tradition as a response to Karaites. Zawanowska explains that Karaism, aimed at bringing the Jews back to the Written Torah, appeared as a separate branch in Judaism in the second half of the ninth or at the early tenth century C.E., in Persia and Iraq. The messianic-Zionistic branch, known as the Mourners of Zion, moved to Palestine and established a leading Karaite community. The emergence of a thriving community in Jerusalem resulted in an efflorescence of Karaite literature (the so-called »Golden Age«) during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Its sudden end was caused by the first Crusade in 1099. Zawanowska surveys Karaite legal texts and especially Scriptural exegesis. The first exegetical compositions were composed in the ninth century. There was a gradual shift in the focus of exegesis from the non-literal, de-contextualizing tendencies of rabbinic midrash towards the present, but still largely marginalized, literal-contextual approach to Scripture. The most important representative of this formative period was the Karaite Daniel al-Qūmisī. He may have been the first Jewish exegete to leave midrash behind and write continuous Bible commentaries. Zawanowska also considers Karaite works on biblical masorah (tradition), grammar, philosophy, polemic, homilies, Karaite liturgy, and poetry. 18

Legal Commentary, Responsa, and Codes Literature

Dr. Jonathan Milgram, of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, covers rabbinic legal literature from Sheiltot to Shulchan `Arukh, (mid-8th—16th century CE). Milgram traces commentaries on the Babylonian Talmud, responses of the Geonim (leaders of the rabbinic academies of Jewish Babylonia/Iraq from the 6th to the 11th century) to legal inquiries sent from across the Jewish world, and the concretization of these two genres into codes of Jewish law. The chapter also focusses on the writings of the group of rabbis called the Rishonim (earlier authorities), who flourished from the 11th century until printing began in the 16th century. These rabbis lived in Ashkenaz (Franco-German Europe), Christian and Muslim Spain, and North Africa. Among the rabbinic authorities that Milgram discusses is Maimonides (1138–1204), who lived in Muslim Spain, Egypt, and the Land of Israel. He wrote commentary, authored responsa, and produced a code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, that is used in legal consideration even today. Milgram considers the contributions of Rashi (1040–1105), and his sons-in-law and their children, the »Tosafists« in Northern Europe. They all wrote commentaries and responsa. Milgram also discusses Rabbenu

32

Editors’ Introduction

Gershom (d. 1028), who was a prolific decisor of Jewish law in Mainz. Further in Germany, the works of Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel (d. 1327) are described, as is the monumental work of his son Jacob, who authored the legal code called the `Arba`ah Turim (Four Pillars). That work served as the basis for two epic works of Jewish law, the influence of which persists to this day. Rabbi Joseph Caro (1488–1575), who spent his adult life in Turkey and Safed, Israel, wrote a Sefardic commentary on the `Arba`ah Turim called the Bet Yosef. He then excerpted it as a succinct code called the Shulchan `Aruch (Set Table). In turn, his Ashkenazic contemporary in Poland, Rabbi Moses Isserles (1530–72), wrote his commentary on the `Arba`ah Turim, which he revised to be a gloss on the Shulchan `Aruch, making the combined works the most important source of Jewish law unto this very day. 19

Medieval Biblical Commentary and Aggadic Literature

Dr. Rachel Mikva, of the Chicago Theological Seminary, explores the emergence of biblical commentary and the multiplication of aggadic (narrative) forms during the Middle Ages. Qur’anic study inspired interest in biblical exegesis. Muslim concerns about describing God in anthropomorphic terms revived questions about such uses in midrash. Rationalism brought philosophy to bear on biblical study. Arabic grammar and lexicography helped cultivate a scientific approach to Hebrew. Muslim collections of hadith, and tafsir provided models for rabbinic anthologies. Biblical commentary (parshanut) arose among the Geonim of Babylonia in the ninth century, employing methods of critical and linguistic analysis that differed from earlier rabbinic hermeneutics. It dominated exegesis with Rashi and his »school« in northern France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The work of his grandson, Rashbam, is the pinnacle of peshat (contextual) exegesis. Abraham Ibn Ezra’s exegetical perspective was shaped in Spain, the epicenter of Judeo-Arabic grammatical scholarship. He disseminated it throughout Christian Europe. The »plain sense« of Peshat did not suffice and became one stage in biblical hermeneutics. During the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, scholars integrated philosophy, narrative analysis, and mysticism within their writings. Through the works of Maimonides, Gersonides, David Kimḥi, and Naḥmanides, Peshat continued to be of value, but was contingent on historical context and individual perspectives. By the fourteenth century, approaches could be categorized by the acronym PaRDeS (paradise): Peshat, Remez, Derash, and Sod, representing plain sense or context, typology or allegory, midrash, and mystical interpretations. »Aggadah« delineates Jewish prose related to Scripture, but not necessarily exegetical. Aggadah does not always take the form of story. It may contain admonitions to ethical conduct, theological reflection, historiography, exegesis, and other material. Five developments receive attention: innovation within midrash, narrative, historiography, ethical literature, and anthologies. The historical processes of textualization and re-oralization complicate analysis. Much of the literature was composed under anonymous or collective authorship.

8 What is in these volumes

33

Material was orally reenacted within the synagogue and study-house. Each performance could reshape the text. Works were assembled from earlier sources, leading some scholars to characterize it as »mere technical arrangement.« However, redactors exerted editorial control that revealed their own creativity, context, and purposes. 20

Piyyut

Dr. Elisabeth Hollender of Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main describes piyyut (Jewish liturgical poetry) from its origins to the modern era. Given the considerable passage of time, older liturgical poetry like the Psalms could only serve as conceptual models. A need for an aesthetic form of worship in the area between spontaneous and improvised prayer and the need for fixed texts led to the introduction of texts in verse and liturgical poetry. In 1972, Ezra Fleischer presented a division of the history of the genre which remains valid today: pre-classical piyyut (up to the 6th. cent. CE); classical piyyut (late 6th to 7th cent. CE); post-classical piyyut (8th–10th cent. CE); Sephardic piyyut (from 10th cent. CE): divisible into Andalusian piyyut (10th–12th cent. CE), and piyyut from Christian Spain (13th–15th cent. CE), with variants on the margins of the Iberian Peninsula; the Italo-Ashkenazic school of piyyut (9th–14th cent. CE): divisible into south-Italian piyyut (9th cent,), Italian piyyut (10th–14th cent. CE), Ashkenazic piyyut (11th–14th cent. CE). Also worthy of mention are Romaniote piyyut (12th –14th cent. CE), Karaite liturgical poetry (12th–17th cent.), North-African piyyut (15th–19th cent.), as well as the poetic tradition in Yemen, and Hebrew poetry in the Ottoman Empire, used liturgically and para-liturgically. The new interest in the oriental piyyut evident in 21st-century Israel has led to texts being written down once again, so that contemporary piyyut is a new category. Types of liturgical poetry are distinguished according to their function and place within worship, and as the genre has developed, formal rules for individual types have been subject to alteration. In morning worship, the »Hear O Israel« prayer is surrounded by three benedictions. The poetic embellishment of this complex is called yotser. For the various forms of ʿAmidah (the standing prayer) there are different forms of poetic embellishment. In the Middle Ages, additional moments in worship were identified that could be embellished with piyyutim. The long history of liturgical poetry may be divided into individual strands, which are often geographically linked. Criticism of piyyutim had an effect on liturgy in the modern era. 21

Jewish Liturgy

Dr. Dalia Marx of Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, first surveys spontaneous personal prayer and Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, noting that the majority of prayers are event specific. Marx describes the Second Temple period (538 BCE through 70 CE) as the incubation period for Jewish liturgy. With the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the rabbis substituted prayer for sacrifices. The Mishnah considers

34

Editors’ Introduction

essential Jewish liturgical practices: the recitation of the Shemaʿ, and the ʿAmidah prayer, as well as prayers for eating. The formula, »Blessed are you O Eternal, Our God, king of the world…« opens or closes rabbinic blessings. We do not know when rabbinic prayer was first written down, as the rabbis opposed this practice. Joseph Heinemann contended that from its outset the structure and content of prayer, the number and order of the blessings were all determined, yet there was no single original text fixed by any central body of rabbis. In contrast, Ezra Fleischer held that the liturgy was created in the court of Rabban Gamaliel in Yavneh at the end of the first century CE. During the seventh century and the years that followed, the first prayer-books were created. The earliest manuscripts of Jewish liturgy also can be dated to the end of this period. Rav Amram (d. ca. 875) of Babylonia responded to a legal inquiry sent to him with the first complete prayer-book that has come into our hands. The liturgical customs of the Babylonians were more crystallized than those of the Land of Israel. From the 11th century until the advent of printed prayer-books in the 16th century is an era of local custom. As the grip of Babylonian Jewry weakened, communal customs grew. The rabbis of Sefarad (Spanish-Portuguese) attended to the Babylonian Gaonate regarding the prayer-book. The permeation of Kabbalistic ideas into prayer marked an important trend. Jewish demographics changed repeatedly as the result of forced and willing migrations. The printing of prayer-books in Ashkenaz, Sefarad, and Italy in the 16th century allowed for more plentiful copies of these works. The current era has brought major shifts in every aspect of Jewish liturgy. 22

Jewish Mysticism

Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main’s Dr. Elke Morlok writes of the Hebrew Bible as an inspiration for Jewish Mysticism. The transmission of mystical content and exegetic methods was kept within elite circles. »Kabbalah« (Hebrew q-b-l, to receive) designates different forms of Jewish esotericism, emphasizing intense religious experience. »Hekhalot-literature« (hekhal, palace) and Merkavah speculations (merkavah, chariot; Ez. 1:8), date 200–800 C.E. and describe ascent through the heavenly realms, culminating in a vision of God’s form upon His throne. Shiʽur Qomah traditions describe the limbs of the enthroned divine figure in unfathomable dimensions. Secrets are revealed by Metatron, the »angel of the divine countenance.« The demiurgic status of Metatron as »lesser YHWH« is fiercely debated in recent scholarship. Sefer Yezirah (Book of Creation) discusses the creation of the cosmos using the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Ḥasidei Ashkenaz emphasized ascetic renunciation and ethical discipline. Sefer haBahir, »The Book of Brightness,« includes an image of God in a male-female polarity and theurgical understanding of halakhic practices. The Bahir focusses on ten sefirot, luminous emanations of God that reveal inner divine life. Between 1210 and 1260, Kabbalah developed in Castile. During the 1290’s, a kabbalistic commentary on the Torah, Sefer haZohar (The Book of Splendor) had a

8 What is in these volumes

35

transformative impact on Judaism. Abraham Abulafia (born 1240) propounded a Kabbalah to bring one to a state of ecstatic union with God. According to his own testimony, Abulafia wrote 26 books of prophecy based on his mystical experiences. The exile of the Spanish Jewish community facilitated the expansion of kabbalistic texts around the Mediterranean. Isaac Luria had an enormous impact on the Safed kabbalists. The charismatic figure Sabbatai Zevi was born in Smyrna (Turkey). Zevi’s purported messianism gained sufficient momentum to break through social groups. In 1666, Sabbatai Zevi converted to Islam. This devastating disappointment brought the movement to a catastrophic end. In the 18th century, a new social phenomenon took root in Poland-Lithuania, centered around kabbalistic traditions and the teachings of Israel Baʽal Shem Tov. His Hasidic movement emphasized a democratic religious ideal, wherein spiritual achievement is attainable through sincerity, piety, and joyful worship.

8.3

Judaism III: Culture and Modernity

23

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

Dr. Ottfried Fraisse of Martin Luther University at Halle-Wittenberg surveys Jewish thought beginning with the second century BCE through the eleventh century CE. Starting in Alexandria, Egypt, Fraisse considers the work of Philo and situates it within Hellenistic Platonism. In the footsteps of Plato’s Timaeus, Philo understands God as the first cause by which universe exists. Fraisse leaps ahead to ninth century CE Baghdad. There, Muslim traditions provided space for Islam, for Christianity and Judaism, but also for the philosophical literature of Greek authors. Still, Jewish thought was not always receptive towards Muslim thought: occasionally it was an independent force. Nevertheless, Muʿtazilite kalām was used by Sa‘adia Gaon (died 942), his successor in the academy of Sura, Samuel Ben Hophni (died 1013), and also by Karaite opponents like Yūsuf al-Baṣīr (died 1014) in Jerusalem. Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), known as Maimonides, had standing as a thinker and as a scholar of halakhah. This made him the most important reformer of Jewish tradition. The threefold claim of his work is (1) to re-shape the self-image of Jews through philosophical spirituality, (2) to make non-Jewish philosophical knowledge an integral part of Jewish tradition, and (3) to insist upon the notion of causal reality as a central medium of divine revelation. According to Maimonides, philosophical rationalism should be an integral part of man’s quest for the salvation of his soul. The sharpest philosophical attack on Maimonideanism came through Ḥasdai Crescas (died 1410), in Saragossa. Crescas attacked (1) Aristotelian philosophy and (2) Maimonides’ theory of human happiness. For Sephardic Jews coming into the Ottoman Empire in the course of the 16th century, secular sciences were so important that Aristotle continued to be studied. Increasingly, philosophy became an aid to kabbalistic theology, with a special interest in the mystical »cleaving« (devequt) of the human soul to God. From the 17th

36

Editors’ Introduction

century onwards, the concept of Jewish philosophy changed in Europe. Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and Salomon Maimon (ca. 1753–1800) combined an internal with an external perspective: between German and Hebrew. Jewish self-understanding and extra-Jewish perspectives have multiplied in the past 200 years. 24

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

Dr. Gwynn Kessler of Swarthmore College provides a literary history of feminist Judaism in the U.S., beginning in the early 1970s. During this time, the first American female rabbis were ordained. Response: A Contemporary Jewish Review (Summer, 1973) and The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives (1976), represent watersheds in feminist Jewish scholarship, incorporating sections on »History,« »Community,« »Life Cycle,« »Women and Jewish Law,« »Israel,« and »Jewish Texts.« In Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (1979), Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow write, »The image of God as male was at once the most obvious and most subtle sexist influence in religion.« Throughout the 1980s, Jewish feminists developed theologies, rituals, examined women in halakhah, redeemed marginal figures from the Bible, confronted antisemitism in the larger women’s movement, and incorporated diverse feminist Jewish identities. Scholarly books about Judaism, women, and gender published in the 1990s heralded the achievement of the goals of Jewish feminism—acknowledging women’s existence in, and contributions to Jewish history, literature, and culture. By the end of the decade, no field within Jewish Studies remained untouched. During these years, men wrote scholarly monographs that built on and reflected tensions with Women’s Studies and feminist theories. The field increased focus on gender (as opposed to women) as a social construct. Women’s Studies and the developing Masculinity, Gay and Lesbian, Gender, and Sexuality Studies grappled with the »history of sexuality.« Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (1997) contains eight-hundred biographies of individual Jewish women and 110 topical essays. In 1998, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues published its inaugural issue, displaying multidisciplinary breadth. Nashim stands alongside Lilith magazine and Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and our Friends as anchors of Jewish feminist scholarship. Concurrent with the growth in feminist Jewish scholarship, the 1990s witnessed an expansion of Jewish feminist organizing. At the beginning of the 21st century, women, among them women of color, »out« lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews have been ordained as rabbis in all progressive denominations. Nevertheless, struggles for justice and equality persist. 25

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

Dr. Elliot Dorff of the American Jewish University, Los Angeles, describes the changes that the Enlightenment brought to the authority of Jewish law, the legal theories of modern Jewish movements, and specific examples of moral and ritual

8 What is in these volumes

37

issues shaped by Jewish law. He considers medical ethics, interpersonal relations, social justice, environmental ethics, dietary laws, and ways of marking the Jewish life cycle and calendar. Jews were expelled from Western Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. From then until the twentieth century, most of the world’s Jews lived in Eastern Europe and in Muslim lands. Jews in those areas were governed by Jewish law, enforced by Jewish courts, backed up by governments. When the Enlightenment philosophy of individual rights became the governing philosophy in Western Europe and America in the late eighteenth century, most of the world’s Jews did not live in such countries. In the first half of the nineteenth century, all three of the modern Jewish movements—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform—developed in Germany, each with its distinctive approach to how Jews should live. Now, Jews had to repair to the civil courts for justice, while marriage and divorce were subject to civil law. The early Reform movement maintained that Jewish law was authoritative only for the Jewish people living under Jewish rule in ancient Israel. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, founder of Modern Orthodox Judaism, asserted that young Jews in Germany were not obeying Jewish law because they did not know much about it. He established schools for adult education, translated the Bible into German, and wrote books to describe and justify Jewish law. What is now called the Conservative Movement or »Masorti,« began when Rabbi Zacharias Frankel and his colleagues left the organization of Reform rabbis in 1845. They believed that Jewish identity is not solely a matter of religion and morals, but also of community. Their emphasis was to become important as Conservative Judaism took root in America and became a movement that focused on the communal aspects of identity, including commitment to Jewish law. 26

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

Dr. Joachim Schlör of the University of Southhampton writes that modern culture offers perspectives beyond traditional ways of living and thinking. The idea to open the Jewish community of Berlin to new horizons by the translation of the Hebrew Bible into German, the daily use of the German language, the creation of a »free school« with instruction in worldly topics, reform of synagogue services, and a weakening of rabbinical authority, provoked resistance within the community. Jacob Katz contended that a major criterion for determining when modernity began was when Jews began to think in cultural patterns taken from the non-Jewish world. »Port Jews« from Amsterdam, London, Hamburg, Bordeaux, and Venice, down to Sarajevo and Constantinople established reformed communities with an interest in education and integration. Odessa became a creative centre for modern Jewish literature not just in Yiddish and in Hebrew, but also in Russian. Ideas born in Odessa travelled from Warsaw to Berlin, New York, Buenos Aires, and Tel Aviv. Urbanization was most important for Jewish encounters with modern culture: free schools, access to libraries and museums, theatre and concerts, and the chance

38

Editors’ Introduction

to make one’s life outside of the traditional community. In Berlin, this chance was taken by those who became »German Jews« and saw themselves on the path to emancipation and integration within wider society. The city provided the immigrant from Russia and Eastern Europe, not least Hasidic groups with the space to build up their own institutions. Two main areas of engagement were religious and cultural practice on the one hand, and the question of national identity, on the other. Modernity came at a price for each individual and his or her relationship with others, and with the self. Modern Jewish engagement with urban culture and the experience of immigration found a new American outlook. With the foundation of a Jewish State in 1948, yet another form of Jewish engagement ensued. While the State of Israel was made by the experiences of immigrants from more than a hundred countries, a new Israeli and Hebrew engagement with modernity and modern culture emerged. 27

Languages of the Jews

Dr. Stefan Schreiner, Senior Professor at the University of Tübingen, surveys languages that Jews have adopted. When the Jewish Diaspora began, the history of a »language shift« also began: from Hebrew to Aramaic, to Greek, to Arabic—to the languages spoken in the relevant area. What makes a language a »Jewish« language? The Handbook of Jewish Languages distinguishes, »those languages that are written with Hebrew letters are called ›Judeo-languages‹, while those languages that are not normally written with Hebrew letters are called ›Jewish languages.‹« Hebrew has a history of around three millennia. Ancient Hebrew refers to the language of the Bible and of inscriptions. The development of Ancient Hebrew over roughly a millennium reflects the consonantal text of the biblical books. Ancient Hebrew was superseded by Aramaic in everyday life but lived on in the synagogue. Hebrew persisted in the oral and written discourse of the rabbis. The wide spread of Aramaic is why we encounter it in geographically and chronologically distinct dialects. It lived on in the eastern and western Diasporas as the literary language of scholars. With the conquests of Alexander, Greek gained significance among Jews in the Levant and North Africa. Ultimately, the use of Greek was limited by external factors: in the east by the spread of Islam and Arabization, in the west by the dominance of Latin. With the expansion of Islamic rule, Arabic displaced Aramaic. JudeoArabic experienced its heyday between the 10th and 14th centuries, first in the Arabic-speaking east of the Islamic world, then in the Maghreb, and finally in Egypt and Yemen. Sephardic Hebrew was cultivated in the context of Arabic. Ashkenazi Hebrew grew in the lee of Jewish-German and Yiddish. Ǧudezmo—a Judeo-Romance language of Sephardic Jews also called Ladino—emerged on the Iberian Peninsula. Between the ninth and the eleventh century the language called loshn ashkenaz (language of Ashkenaz) developed. Since the 13th/14th century it’s been called yi-

8 What is in these volumes

39

dish-taytsh (Jewish German), and from the 17th/18th century in Central and Eastern Europe: yidish. Yiddish was the everyday and literary language of Ashkenazic Jews. What makes a language »Jewish?« This remains an open question. 28

Modern Jewish Literature

Dr. Matthias Morgenstern, of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen surveys modern Jewish writing primarily from the late-nineteenth century through the present. First defining what constitutes »Jewish« writing, Morgenstern dips back into earlier centuries to trace its development. He argues that the Berlin Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) was the starting-point for modern Jewish literature. Preferred genres in Jewish writing in the German-speaking realm of the 19th century were satire, jokes, and pamphlets. Yiddish literature was involved in intense exchanges with the literature of the German-speaking world. Ultimately, the parade example of Yiddish literature would be the work of Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer. When Morgenstern turns to English Jewish writing, he notes American-Jewish literature of the Yiddish narrative tradition. For America, the problem of assimilation erupts fully in the work of Nobel Prize laureate Saul Bellow. Turning to Hebrew writing, Morgenstern comments that with a new appreciation of biblical Hebrew during the Enlightenment, Jewish writers developed Meliza style, which detached itself from rabbinic Hebrew of the medieval Talmud and integrated biblical vocabulary, word-links and verse parts, as a way of renewing Hebrew language. In the last decades of the 19th century there was a decisive turning away from the Meliza style. Shmuel Josef Agnon (born Samuel Josef Czaczkes, 1888–1970) was the first Hebrew language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966, together with the German-Jewish lyricist Nelly Sachs (1891–1970). While Agnon was a master of rabbinic tradition, the development of Israeli Hebrew as a spoken language can be observed in the writers that came to Palestine in the first Aliyah (1892 to 1903). The use of linguistic models from ancient Jewish literature to describe the Land of Israel were now felt to be antiquated, inappropriate, and comical. Hebrew became mixed with Arabic expressions—and no longer with Yiddish. Morgenstern surveys Hebrew writing up to today. He includes writers in Israel, Europe, North and South America as he reviews Jewish fiction. He turns to drama and lyric poetry to round out his treatment of modern Jewish literature. 29

Judaism and Inter-faith Relations since World War II

Dr. Norman Solomon of Oxford University reviews interfaith dialogue between Jews and Christians. The London Society of Jews and Christians, the oldest interfaith organization of its kind in the United Kingdom, was founded in 1927 by leaders of the Liberal Jewish synagogue and Westminster Abbey (Anglican). It aims »to in-

40

Editors’ Introduction

crease religious understanding and to promote goodwill and co-operation between Jews and Christians, with mutual respect for the differences in faith and practice.« In 1927, the National Coalition of Christians and Jews was founded in the United States. In 1938, Rabbi Louis Finkelstein at the Jewish Theological Seminary, together with Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary, and anthropologist Margaret Mead at Columbia, founded the Institute for Religious and Social Studies (now the Louis Finkelstein Institute, and since 2011, complemented by the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue). Following World War II, under the impact of the Shoah (Holocaust) and the establishment of the State of Israel, Christians in the West reassessed their relationships with Jews and repudiated antisemitism. Distinguished French historian Jules Isaac devoted his life to combating antisemitism, which he saw rooted in the Christian »teaching of contempt«. Isaac described a »private« meeting with John XXIII in June 1960, which contributed to Pope John’s decision to direct Cardinal Bea to draft »a declaration on the Catholic Church’s relationship to the Jewish people for the upcoming Second Vatican Council.« This became Note 4 of the Declaration Nostra Aetate; in which the Church distances itself from the »teaching of contempt.« The World Council of Churches, which includes primarily Protestant Churches, also redefined attitudes to Judaism. The International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) was formed in 1969 to facilitate relations between the world-wide Jewish community and both the Vatican and World Council of Churches. IJCIC includes leaders from Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism, from Israel, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere, who work together towards interfaith understanding. The growing presence of Muslims on the world stage has heightened the need for broader dialogue of »Abrahamic Religions.« In Israel, the need for dialogue between Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians, has always been obvious.

9

Conclusion

In these volumes, we trace the aftermath of the vanishing of Israelite religion and its transformation into Judaism following the inevitable acculturation processes caused by the Hellenization of the eastern Mediterranean. From the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the Bible became the central focus and authority for Jews of the whole oikoumene, replacing the Temple and its cult. Judaism became—and still is—a religion of the book. As such, we examine the Bible in its different versions and its transmission. The differences between the Hebrew Bible and its early Greek translations reflect the Hellenization of rabbinic religion. Clear evidence of this can already be found in the Bible text. In Hebrew, the book of Genesis begins with the announcement that when God began to create heaven and earth, the earth was as yet unformed. In Greek, the translation offers creatio ex nihilo, in which God creates something from nothing: »In the beginning, God created …« (Gen. 1:1). This embrace of Hellenistic cosmogony marks a strategy of engagement with the broader world, imbibing what

9 Conclusion

41

it has to offer, while emphasizing the distinctiveness of that culture in its Jewish iteration. In these volumes, our primary concern is to perceive Jewish history, literature, and life as living—and still evolving—expressions of the immense creative contribution of Jewish religion to the lasting achievements of global intellectual and cultural history. Therefore, while we explore the vicissitudes of the Jewish past, we have eschewed the »lachrymose theory« of that history, which sees Judaism as merely one disaster following another. Instead, we offer three volumes that celebrate a long and complex history of Judaism in all its manifestations and expressions of life—which while not free from terrible sorrows and destruction, nevertheless also notes triumphs and progress. Since antiquity, Judaism has continually endeavoured to ascertain its existence and the obligatory character of its election. Therefore, a broad survey presents important Jewish documents of faith and literary works over the past two millennia, which show the fascinating diversity and liveliness of Jewish religion. And finally, our third volume seeks to describe and analyze the rich and important cultural contributions of Judaism: what it shares with other religions and cultures, and what makes it distinctively Jewish. In the next thirty chapters, each written by recognized authorities in his or her field, we offer our range of views of Judaism. Let us start »in the beginning.«

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees Hermann Lichtenberger

50 Years of Martin Hengel’s Judentum und Hellenismus, 19691 45 Years Judaism and Hellenism 1974

1

The Hellenization of Ancient Judaism—Preliminary Notes

The Hellenization of ancient Judaism was a process that took place over a long period of time, from the beginning of the 4th century onwards, and largely without conflict, until a crisis situation came to a dramatic climax in the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE) (2 Macc 4:13), leading to resistance and revolt. At this point the practice of Jewish religion in Jerusalem seemed in doubt. Hellenismos is a polemical term coined in 2 Maccabees (2:13) as a counterpart to the term Ioudaismos (2 Macc 2:21; 8:1; 14:38). The fight for the uniqueness of the God of Israel and his worship in Jerusalem, called the »Maccabean War,« did not lead to a general suppression of Hellenistic education, culture, technology, and way of life. The Maccabean/Hasmonean rulers were Hellenistic High priests, and from 103 BCE also Hellenistic kings. It was only in their minting of coins that they took account of the prohibition of human iconography.2 The narrow focus on the few years between 167 and 164 BCE and the recovery of the Temple of Jerusalem as the exclusive place of worship of the God of Israel is rightly countered with the point that, as the Dead Sea scrolls show, Judaism in the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE was occupied with other matters than confrontation with Hellenism.3 Other contentious issues included the calendar and the points mentioned in 4QMMT. »So we have to say that no Qumran text certainly deals with the events under Antiochus IV, nor does any Qumran text show signs of a confron1 Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh.s v.Chr., WUNT 10, Tübingen, 1969, 2nd ed. 1973, 3rd ed. 1988; Engl. transl.: Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, London/Philadelphia/PA, 1974. 2 Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum: The Collection of the American Numismatic Society, Part 6: Palestine – South Arabia, New York, 1981, plates 2–5. 3 Johann Maier, »Israel als Gegenüber der Diadochenreiche,« in Israel als Gegenüber: Vom Alten Orient bis in die Gegenwart. Studien zur Geschichte eines wechselvollen Zusammenlebens, ed. Folker Siegert, SIDL 5, Göttingen, 2000, 53–72.

2 Judaism and Hellenism in the Land of Israel/Judea

43

tation between Judaism and Hellenism.«4 This means, however, that a Hellenization had already taken place from the late Persian or early Hellenistic period onwards and also that in many areas it was accepted without conflict. Hengel is even able to show this for Qumran and the community of the yahad. 5

2

Judaism and Hellenism in the Land of Israel/Judea— »Palestinian Judaism« as »Hellenistic Judaism«6

2.1

The reception of Greek/Hellenistic culture in Judea7

Greek language The final establishment and dissemination of the Koinē was probably the most valuable and the most permanent fruit of Alexander’s expedition.8

Greek became the primary language of writing not only in Egypt. Thus, among the two thousand or so documents of Zenon correspondence, just a few are Demotic, and none Aramaic.9 The triumphant march of Greek was unstoppable in Palestine, and it stood alongside Aramaic, which had been introduced in Persian times. The two letters of Tobias of the 10th of Xandikos of the 29th year of Ptolemy II (12 May 257 BCE) to Apollonius are written »in a beautiful large hand, no doubt by a Greek scribe.«10 Joseph, son of Tobias, became chief Ptolemaic tax farmer in Syria and Phoenicia. A legendary encounter took place between Aristotle and a Jew from Coele Syria, who »not only spoke Greek, but had the soul of a Greek,«11 but this is a witness to the period around 300 BCE. The oldest Greek inscription in Jerusalem can be found at Jason’s grave from the time of Alexander Jannai (103–76 BCE) with its call to enjoy life.12 A clear indication of the adoption of Greek is found in Greek names. In the 3rd century BCE this occurred more frequently in Egypt than in Palestine, and the sources are more plentiful there as well.13 This changed in the time of the Maccabees, when the three High priests bore Greek names: Yeshua-Jason, Menelaus, and Elyakim-Alkimos.14

4 Maier, »Diadochenreiche«, 57. 5 Martin Hengel, »Qumrân und der Hellenismus,« in Qumrân: Sa piété, sa théologie et son milieu, ed. Mathias Delcor, BETL 46, Paris/Leuven 1978, 333–72, reprinted in idem, Judaica et Hellenistica. Kleine Schriften I, WUNT 90, Tübingen,1996, 258–94. 6 Hengel, Judentum, 191–95; Judaism, 103–6. 7 Hengel, Judentum, 108–95; Judaism, 58–106. 8 Hengel, Judentum, 108f.; Judaism, 58. 9 Hengel, Judentum, 109; Judaism, 58 10 CPJ 1, 128 (C.C. Edgar 1918). 11 Clearchus of Soli, in Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism I, Jerusalem, 1976, 49f. 12 Hengel, Judentum, 112.; Judaism, 60. 13 Hengel, Judentum, 117f.; Judaism, 61–63. 14 Hengel, Judentum, 120.; Judaism, 64.

44

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

Greek education and training »The Hellenistic period was a period of education.«15 Paideia became the dooropener for Greek culture and for participation in it in the full sense. Attendance at a gymnasium provided not only sporting and physical training but also musical, philological, and mythological education, which were given »canonical« expression in the Homerian epics. The establishment of a gymnasium by the High priest Jason in Jerusalem—possibly immediately after Antiochus IV’s accession to power in 175 BCE—is the first attestation of a gymnasium in the land of Israel/Palestine (1 Macc 1:14f.; 2 Macc 4:9–14; Josephus, Ant. 12.251). Precisely what Jason really had in mind when he gained approval for the establishment of a gymnasium, by means of substantial sums of money, is a matter of scholarly dispute. This will be discussed in the context of the Maccabean Revolt. In its content, it was a matter of renunciation from a Jewish paideia as found, for instance, in the book of Sirach. With ephebeia as a condition of membership of the polis of the Antiochenes of Jerusalem, a step was taken from educational competency to political.

Greek literature and philosophy in Jewish Palestine As works of Judean literature and historiography, Martin Hengel includes the works of the so-called Anonymous Samaritan (Pseudo-Eupolemus) and Eupolemus, as well as Jason of Cyrene.16 The Anonymous Samaritan, transmitted by Alexander Polyhistor as from Eupolemus and passed on by Eusebius Praep. ev. IX 17.2–9,17 clearly betrays a Samaritan author, as he moves Melchizedek (Gen 14) to Mount Gerizim (Praep. ev. IX 17.5–6). It is clear that he uses the LXX and is familiar with the punishment of Pharaoh for taking Sarah from Abraham, as mentioned in 1QGenApoc 20.17. Nonetheless, it is not appropriate to count him as one of the Greekwriting authors in Judea.18 Jason of Cyrene was »not a real Palestinian«19 and apparently gained his elevated Greek education in Alexandria. He wrote a five-volume work in the style of Greek pathetic historiography on the background and history of the Maccabean uprising under Judas (ca. 175–160 BCE), which the author of 2

15 Hengel, Judentum, 121; Judaism, 65. 16 Hengel, Judentum, 161–83; Judaism, 65. For many of the Greek works cited here, see also Michael Tilly’s chapter in volume II. 17 See Nikolaus Walter, »Pseudo-Eupolemos (Samaritanischer Anonymus),« in idem, Fragmente jüdisch-hellenistischer Historiker, JSHRZ I,2, Gütersloh 1976, 137–43, 137. 18 A different view is taken by Robert Doran, »Pseudo-Eupolemus,« OTP II, 873–82, 873–76, who attributes Praep. ev. IX, 17.2–9 to Eupolemus. See also John J. Collins, »Cult and Culture. The Limits of Hellenization in Judea,« in Hellenism in the Land of Israel, ed. idem and Gregory E. Sterling, CJAS 13, Notre Dame/IN, 2001, 38–61, 57 n. 35. 19 Hengel, Judentum, 176; Judaism, 95.

2 Judaism and Hellenism in the Land of Israel/Judea

45

Maccabees claims to have abridged as a single book.20 Whether the latter wrote in Judea or in the (Egyptian) diaspora is a matter of controversy.21 Finally, there is Eupolemus,22 a chronicler of history from Adam to his own day (Demetrius I, 162–150 BCE) and probably identical to the Eupolemus whom Judas Maccabee sent on a diplomatic mission to Rome in 160 BCE (1 Macc 8:17f.; 2 Macc 4:11). He used the LXX but also knew the Hebrew text.23 Moses was the »first sage« (Praep. ev. IX 26.1), who gave the Jews writing and the laws. The Phoenicians took writing from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians. The account of Israel’s history is marked by »true inner commitment« and »occasional excesses. There is unmistakable pride in the way he describes the splendor of the temple construction under Solomon.«24 »So Eupolemus is the oldest Jewish25-Hellenistic historian in the narrower sense of the word (...) a first precursor of Josephus, like the latter a Palestinian and equally—but in a different historical situation—at pains to give a readable survey of his people’s history for a Greek-speaking readership.«26

Greek translations of Jewish Hebrew works, taking Jesus ben Sirach as an example: The prologue of the grandson as a translator This prologue is »unique in the LXX, the only place where an LXX translator makes an explicit statement about the translation and its problems.«27 LXX: You are invited therefore to read it with goodwill and attention, and to be indulgent in cases where, despite our diligent labour in translating, we may seem to have rendered some phrases imperfectly. For what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language (Prologue 15–22, NRSV).28

20 On the question of the correctness of this self-witness (2 Macc 2:23) see Hermann Lichtenberger, »History-writing and History-telling in First and Second Maccabees,« in Memory in the Bible and Antiquity, ed. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Stephen C. Barton, and Benjamin G. Wold, WUNT 212, Tübingen, 2007, 95–110, 106–9. 21 See Daniel R. Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, CEJL, Berlin/New York, 2008, 45: »Maccabees is a diasporan book.« 22 Whose work was also transmitted by Alexander Polyhistor and is preserved in Eusebius, Praep. ev. IX 26.1; 30.1–34.18; 34.20; 39.2–5. Clement of Alexandria, Strom I, 141.4–5 comes from another source. Walter, »Eupolemos,« 94. 23 Hengel, Judentum, 170. 24 Walter, »Eupolemos«, 96. 25 It would be more accurate to use the term »Judean.« 26 Walter, »Eupolemos,« 97. 27 Peter Prestel, »Die Diversität des Griechischen in der Septuaginta,« in Die Sprache der Septuaginta. The Language of the Septuagint, ed. Eberhard Bons and Jan Joosten, Handbuch zur Septuaginta. Handbook of the Septuagint 3, Gütersloh 2016, 39–68, 39. 28 The Latin translation from the Greek also begins by asking for the reader’s indulgence. Vulgate: »Hortor itaque venire vos cum benevolentia et adtentiore studio lectionem facere, et veniam habere in illis in quibus videmur sequentes imaginem sapientiae et deficere in verborum conpositione. Nam deficiunt verba hebraica quando translata fuerint ad alteram linguam.«

46

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

While the Greek text speaks of the fact that the Hebrew »does not have the same sense (lit. strength)« (isodynamei) when translated into another language, the Latin translation speaks clearly of loss, lack, weakness (deficiunt). Regardless of whether we look at the Greek or the Latin text of the translator’s foreword, this prologue is a unique document. It talks about the difficulties of translation and the translator’s awareness that he has not been able to do full justice to his task. Here the grandson asks the reader to have understanding for his efforts. But he writes his prologue in elegant style: »A passage for the manual of both literary (Asian) artistic prose and rhetoric.«29 »The translator shows in the prologue, therefore, what he is actually capable of in the target language, and points out what he is setting aside.«30 He is setting aside his virtuosity in Greek, because he is translating, and he does not want his readers to forget the fact. The grandfather’s Hebrew text should shine through in the Greek. The grandson’s admission is striking, particularly in comparison with the legends about the origin of the Torah/LXX. It should, however, be noted that the grandson is not yet translating an authoritative or »canonical« text but his grandfather’s book of wisdom, which, although based on »the law and the prophets,« is not intended to be equal to them. The »canonicity« of the book of Sirach was still a matter of dispute in rabbinic times (»defiling the hands,« t. Yad. II, 13). The question could also be viewed differently, as the discoveries of Sirach manuscripts show, in the Cairo Genizah (1896) (6 medieval Mss.), at Qumran (Sirach in 2 ancient Mss.), and at Masada (1 ancient Ms.). The grandson translator of the author of Hebrew Sirach (ca. 190–175 BCE) can be dated to 132–117 BCE, when there was already an established tradition of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek. So, he was able to consult Hebrew-Greek translation equivalents that had already been introduced. To cite one example, for him Greek doxa, common Greek for »opinion,« which can even mean falsity, is equivalent to the Hebrew kavod, »glory, divine power and appearance« (e.g. in Sir 6:31; 42:27, while in 8:14 the common Greek meaning of doxa is used). Following Martin Hengel’s Judentum und Hellenismus, it is no longer possible to separate »Palestinian Judaism« from »Hellenized Judaism.« Not only because a geographical category and a cultural category are being compared but because Palestinian Judaism is also Hellenistic Judaism.31 For the period from third century BCE to the First Jewish War (68–73 CE) it may be assumed that the educated population were trilingual, with Aramaic as the colloquial language, Hebrew as the language of the Jerusalem cult and scribal activity, and Greek as the language of education. Hebrew/Aramaic and their cultural

29 Prestel, »Diversität,« 41. 30 Ibid., 42. 31 Hengel underlines this in his opening article, »Judaism and Hellenism Revisited,« in Collins/Sterling, Hellenism in the Land of Israel, 7: »It is misleading to distinguish fundamentally between a ›Palestinian Judaism‹ in the motherland and ›Hellenistic Judaism‹ in the Diaspora.«

3 The LXX as a Translation

47

and religious ramifications were in competition only in times of conflict with the Greek language and culture, but then with the full weight of bias as in the Maccabean uprising.

3

The LXX as a Translation

3.1

The special features of the LXX as a translation

The LXX is special in two respects: first, the fact that translation was made into Greek, and second the way the translation was made. To reach a Greek audience, non-Greeks also wrote in Greek (Manetho, Berossus, Josephus), or texts were translated from Greek. Generally, Greek was the original language.32 The Romans translated from Greek to Latin. »However, by today’s standards one would not call these texts translations but free revisions.«33 In this type of »translation,« Latin language and culture sought to connect with the superior Greek, and to some extent entered into competition with it (the keyword is aemulatio). But this is precisely what the LXX translators do not do. The Greek idiom into which they translated was not the language of literature but the non-literary colloquial, Koine. This allows us to pinpoint the target group. This was not the literary world of the Alexandrian schools but that of the Jewish communities of Alexandria, who generally did not speak Hebrew, but were offered something like an »imitation« of the Hebrew. That is why the LXX is a very literal translation. The character of this literal translation is evident in comparison with Josephus’s revisions and renderings of biblical history in his Antiquities.

3.2

On the origins of the LXX—legend and history34

Letter of (Pseudo-)Aristeas According to the account in the Letter of (Pseudo-) Aristeas, the initiative for the translation of the Torah came from King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283–246 BCE) or his librarian Demetrius of Phaleron. This attribution is continued into rabbinic times, when there is talk of the Torah of »King Talmai«. The connection with Ptolemy II is likely to be correct only in terms of the date, the mid-third century BCE. If, as the Letter of Aristeas claims, it was translated for library purposes, the Greek literary language would have been used, not Koine.

32 Prestel, »Diversität,« 42. 33 Ibid., 43. 34 See Michael Tilly, Einführung in die Septuaginta, Darmstadt 2005, 26–35; Siegfried Kreuzer, »Entstehung und Überlieferung der Septuaginta,« in idem, ed., Einleitung in die Septuaginta, Handbuch zur Septuaginta. Handbook of the Septuagint 1, Gütersloh 2016, 29–88.

48

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

In a letter to his brother, the narrator, »Aristeas,« tells of an event at the time of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283–246) and his librarian Demetrius of Phaleron (died 282), which begins with the request to the Jerusalem High priest to send Greek expert translators to translate the Torah into Greek in Alexandria. Thereupon, the High priest sent six translators from each tribe, a total of 72 (Let. Aris. 47–50). The author claims to be a contemporary Greek witness at the Ptolemaic court, but he is a second-century Jew telling Alexandrian Jewry and their nonJewish contemporaries of the excellence of Jewish law. At the conclusion, the author puts his own question on the lips of the king: »How have none of the historians and poets undertaken to make mention of these enormous achievements (i.e. as the Jewish law, the Torah)?« (312).35 The answer is given by the librarian: »Because the legislation is sacred and has come about through God!« (313). He gives an account of Theopompus (born 377 BCE), who for more than thirty days was out of his mind when he used in his history something that had already been translated earlier, as he had presumed to share the divine with impure people (314f.). Further, the tragic poet Theodectes (ca. 377–336) was struck blind because he had wanted to use something from it in a drama. Two aspects deserve to be highlighted: first, the authority to use and interpret the Torah is given only to Jews. Second, the use of earlier, imprecise translations leads to trouble; but now there is one correct and authorized translation. After its completion, it was confirmed by the priests, the elders of the translators, the representatives of the Jewish politeuma, and the leaders of the congregation, and protected against changes by curses: ›Since the exposition has been made well, piously and accurately in every respect, it is good that it remains just as it is and there be no revision at all.‹ And then all assented to what had been said. They ordered that there be a curse, just as is their custom, upon anyone who might revise (scil. the translation) by adding or changing anything at all of that had been written or by making a deletion (310f.).36

This corresponds to what later became known as the »canonization formula.« The intention was that this would protect the wording of the Greek translation. This is confirmed in the final exhortation of the king, »that great care be taken of the books and that they be preserved reverently« (317).37 Philo In the work of Philo of Alexandria, the translation legend is developed further. Judging this (scil. The island of Pharos) to be the most suitable place in the district, where they might find peace and tranquillity and the soul could commune with the laws with

35 Transl. Benjamin G. Wright III, The Letter of Aristeas, »Aristeas to Philocrates« or »On the Translation of the Law of the Jews«, CEJL, Berlin/Boston/MA, 2015, 441. 36 Ibid., 441. 37 Ibid., 453.

3 The LXX as a Translation

49

none to disturb its privacy, they fixed their abode there; and, taking the sacred books, stretched them out towards heaven with the hands that held them, asking of God that they might not fail in their purpose. And He assented to their prayers, to the end that the greater part, or even the whole, of the human race might be profited and let to a better life by continuing to observe such wise and truly admirable ordinances. Sitting here in seclusion with none present save the elements of nature, earth, water, air, heaven, the genesis of which was to be the first theme of their sacred revelation, for the laws begin with the story of the world`s creation, they became as it were possessed, and, under inspiration, wrote, not each several scribe something different, but the same word for word, as though dictated to each by an invisible prompter. (De vita Mosis II, 36–37).38

This then became the 72 cells of the Christian and rabbinic legend, according to which each of them translated the Torah from Hebrew into Greek in identical text. Josephus In his own historical account of the time of the Diadochi (322–275 BCE), after Ptolemy I Lagus, Josephus comes to speak of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and reports on the king’s initiative on the translation of the Torah (Ant. 12.11–118). In Josephus, too, the translation took place on the island of Pharos in a house built near the beach (Ant. 12.103), by 72 translators (Ant. 12.39, 56). »Then he (Demetrius of Phaleron) entreated them (now they had everything they needed) to begin the work right away. The elders they made an accurate interpretation, with great zeal and great pains, and this they continued to do until the ninth hour … In all, the writing down and translation of the laws took seventy-two days« (Ant. 12.103–107).39 The representatives and officials of the Jewish community expressed their agreement and the wish that »since the interpretation was happily finished, it might continue in the state it now was, and might not be altered« (Ant. 12.108).40 The Torah for King Talmai41 The story of the 72 translators is also in b. Meg. (8b-9b), but rather differently: Once again, it happened that King Talmai assembled seventy-two elders and had them live in seventy-two houses. He did not reveal to them the purpose for which he had assembled them. He went to see each of them and said to them: ›Write me the Torah of Moses, your

38 Transl. Francis H. Colson, Philo vol. VI, LCL 289, London/Cambridge/MA 1935, 467. 39 Translation from Wiliam Whiston, The Works of Flavius Josephus, London/New York, n.d.; for German transl. cf. Heinrich Clementz, Flavius Josephus: Jüdische Altertümer, Berlin, 1923, repr. with paragraph numbering by Michael Tilly, Wiesbaden, 2018, 539f. 40 Transl. Whiston. 41 Giuseppe Veltri, Eine Tora für den König Talmai, TSAJ 41, Tübingen 1994, 22–112; Folker Siegert, Zwischen Hebräischer Bibel und Altem Testament: Eine Einführung in die Septuaginta, 2 vols., Münster, I: 2001, II: 2003, esp. II, 346–49.

50

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees teacher.‹ God gave insight into the heart of every individual, and they agreed in their judgment; each wrote him a Torah in which they changed thirteen passages.42

These passages from the Torah are then listed where the Greek translation supposedly diverges from the original Hebrew text.43 The extra-talmudic tractate Soferim 1.744 declares the day on which the LXX was completed to be as fateful a day for Israel as that of the Golden Calf: It happened that five elders had written the Torah in Greek for King Talmai. This day was as consequential for Israel as the day when the Calf was made. For the Torah could not be translated adequately.

The LXX translation was therefore idolatrous. A clear departure from the »classical« LXX legend is evident here. While »the 72« independently translated from Hebrew to Greek identically in their cells, in the rabbinic perception it was the 13 divergences on which the 72 translators agreed. In fact, there are countless deviations from the Hebrew in the LXX, in the Torah and in all the writings of the Hebrew Bible. Thus, for instance, the text of the book of Jeremiah in the LXX is one-eighth shorter than in the MT (although this short version was found in Hebrew at Qumran).45 On the other hand, in Psalm 151 the LXX Psalter presents one psalm more than the MT Psalter. So, the rabbis’ list is actually a reminder that a translation can never adequately render what is written in the source language.

4

The Temple Conflict under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean Revolt

4.1

Preliminary remarks

The history of the Maccabees covers a century. It begins in the year 167 BCE, at a time when Mattathias, a priest from the ›House of the Hasmoneans,‹ took up arms for the sake of the Torah against foreign rule, and it ends on the Sabbath in the fall of the year 63 BCE, when Roman legionaries stormed the temple mount and the Roman commander entered the holy of holies. The person who had led him and his troops to Jerusalem was a greatgrandson of Mattathias’s, Hyrcanus II, who was fighting his own brother Aristobulus for the Jewish crown.46

42 43 44 45

Following the translation of Veltri, Talmai, 114. See Veltri, Talmai, 22–112; Siegert, Bibel, 348. Transl. Veltri, Talmai, 114. 4QJerb (4Q71); see Armin Lange, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer, vol. I, Die Handschriften biblischer Bücher von Qumran und den andern Fundorten, Tübingen, 2009, 300f., 306–14. 46 Elias Bickermann, Die Makkabäer: Eine Darstellung ihrer Geschichte, Bücherei des Schocken Verlages 47, Berlin, 1935, 7: Engl. transl.: idem, The Maccabees, New York, 1947. The quoted Paragraph is not in the English publication.

4 The Temple Conflict under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean Revolt

51

The Maccabean Revolt against Seleucid rule in 167–164 BCE and Rome’s move on Syria-Palestine in 64 BCE mark the beginning and end-points of the history of Judea in the second and first centuries BCE. This is the century of Judea’s independence as a Temple state with Jerusalem as its capital. The Maccabean Revolt is well documented by relatively close sources (Daniel and 1 and 2 Maccabees), although the two books of Maccabees manifest their own different interests. These must always be considered in the question of the historical events.

4.2

History of research47

In the question of the causes of the Maccabean uprising, a key role was played by two components, and their weighing has led to divergent, often contradictory views: the role of King Antiochus IV and that of the Jerusalem temple aristocracy in the abolition or transformation of the Judaic religion at the Jerusalem temple. While earlier research48 saw in Antiochus IV the driving force in the replacement of the God of Israel by Zeus Olympios at the Jerusalem temple, this view was completely overturned by Elias Bickermann.49 Because of the Hellenization of Judea, already of long duration, the reform of the Jerusalem cult started in High priestly groups associated with Jason, who bought his High priesthood and the establishment of a gymnasium from the king with ephebeia. The High priest Menelaus took the Hellenization of the cult to a radical conclusion. The God of Israel was equated with the Syrians’ Baal Shamem and the Greeks’ Zeus Olympios: Just like the uncorrupted children of nature of Greek theory, the ›sons of the Acra,‹ i.e. Menelaus and his partisans, thus worshipped the heavenly god of their ancestors without temple and images, under the open sky upon the altar which stood on Mt. Zion. They were free from the yoke of the law, and in mutual tolerance they were united with the Gentiles. What could be more human, what could be more natural, than their desire to force this tolerance also upon those of their coreligionists who were still unenlightened? That was the persecution of Epiphanes.50

The resistance of the Hasmoneans had then been directed against these reform efforts of the Jerusalem temple aristocracy. Victor Tcherikover51 adopted this assessment of the Hellenization of the Jerusalem aristocracy, who came into conflict with the still tradition-minded people, leading to civil war. With the help of a

47 See the monograph of Johannes C. Bernhardt, Die jüdische Revolution: Untersuchungen zu Ursachen, Verlauf und Folgen der hasmonäischen Erhebung, Klio.B. n.s. 22, Berlin/Boston/MA, 2017, with a short overview of the history of research on 12–34. 48 See Bernhardt, Revolution, 18. 49 Bickermann, Maccabees; idem, Der Gott der Makkabäer: Untersuchungen über Sinn und Ursprung der makkabäischen Erhebung, Berlin, 1937; Engl. transl.: idem, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabean Revolt, SJLA 32, Leiden 1979. 50 Bickermann, God, 88. 51 Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, Philadelphia/PA/Jerusalem, 1959.

52

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

Syrian military settlement on the Akra, who were worshiping the Syrian God of heaven, Baal Shamem, Antiochus IV then reacted. Antiochus IV took the religious resistance of the Hasmoneans to be directed against his rule and therefore prohibited the Jewish religion. In the conflict between Antiochus IV, the Jerusalem aristocracy, and Hasmoneans, further variants may be identified. Jochen Gabriel Bunge52 thinks what triggered the Maccabean revolt was the self-deification of Antiochus IV and the compliance of the Hellenized Jerusalem upper class. Klaus Bringmann,53 on the other hand, blamed the religious prohibition of the king on political squabbles between the High priests Jason and Menelaus. Further research54 has produced different evaluations of the political and religious aspects and turned increasingly to assessments of the source situation. First Maccabees can be seen as »narrative composition with an intentional reference to reality«55 and the religious persecution as a myth, behind which stands the violent suppression of a popular uprising.56 For Sylvie Honigman, elements of the sources that may lie behind the historical events do not amount to much: the naming of the temple after Zeus Olympius, the desecration of the altar, the suspension of the daily sacrifices and sabbaths and festivals, the »abomination of desolation« taking the place of the sacrifices, the monthly sacrifice in honor of the king, pagan altars in the city and countryside, the killing of those who resisted land expropriation. »The rest (…) is literary embellishment.«57

4.3

The events58

In the year 175 BCE, Antiochus IV Epiphanes was released from Roman captivity and became the Seleucid king. Jason, brother of the incumbent High priest Onias III, then turned to the king to confer on himself appointment as High priest, in return for raising Judea’s annual tribute to 360 talents and an extra payment of 80 talents. On payment of a further 150 silver talents he received permission to build a gymnasium and an ephebeia in Jerusalem (2 Macc 4:11–15). He also gained the right to convert Jerusalem into a Greek polis, in which not all inhabitants of Jerusa-

52 Jochen G. Bunge, Untersuchungen zum zweiten Makkabäerbuch: Quellenkritische, literarische, chronologische und historische Untersuchungen zum zweiten Makkabäerbuch als Quelle syrischpalästinischer Geschichte im 2. Jh. v.Chr., Cologne, 1971. 53 Klaus, Bringmann, Hellenistische Reform und Religionsverfolgung in Judäa: Eine Untersuchung zur jüdisch-hellenistischen Geschichte (175–163 v. Chr.), Göttingen, 1983. 54 See Bernhardt, Revolution, 20–34. 55 Michael Tilly, 1 Makkabäer, HThKAT, Freiburg, 2015, 43. 56 Sylvie Honigman, Tales of High priests and Taxes: The Books of the Maccabees and the Judean Rebellion against Antiochus IV, Oakland/CA, 2014. 57 Honigman, Tales, 399. 58 On this overview see Peter Schäfer, Geschichte der Juden in der Antike, UTB 3366, 2nd ed. Tübingen, 2010, 42–76; Michael Tilly, »Die Religionsverfolgung unter Antiochos IV.,« in Geschichte Israels von den Anfängen bis zum 3. Jahrhundert n.Chr., ed. Wolfgang Oswald and idem, Geschichte kompakt, Darmstadt, 2016, 117–25.

4 The Temple Conflict under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean Revolt

53

lem were admitted as citizens. These moves towards Hellenization were prompted by the Judean priestly aristocracy, behind which there was a power struggle between priestly Oniads and aristocratic, wealthy Tobiads, with alternating loyalties to Ptolemies and Seleucids. In 173/2 BCE, Antiochus IV was received with great pomp in Jerusalem. In 171 BCE, Menelaus, sent by Jason to bring tribute, succeeded in buying the High priesthood from Antiochus IV by raising a further 300 talents. As an Oniad, Jason came from the Zadokite line, and when Menelaus became High priest the High priesthood passed to a non-Zadokite for the first time. Jason had to flee, and after luring him from his asylum in Daphne, Menelaus had Onias III murdered. Menelaus was accused of having plundered the Temple treasures to pay the tribute. On his return from Egypt in 169 BCE, Antiochus IV had looted the Temple of Jerusalem (1 Macc 1:22). When Antiochus IV was forced by the Roman Popillius Laenas to withdraw from Egypt, the Oniad Jason attacked Jerusalem and expelled from the city Menelaus and the Tobiads who supported him. On his return from Egypt, Antiochus IV took Jerusalem, with murders and enslavements. As things did not quiet down, in 167 BCE Antiochus IV again sent an army to Jerusalem. His commander Apollonius conquered Jerusalem on a Sabbath and proceeded to raze the city walls and set up the fortified Akra, reinforced with non-Jewish military. With their presence in Jerusalem, non-Jews lived in the city and practiced their cults. The inclination of the Judean priesthood towards heathen cults was evident in the planned but then abandoned sacrifice to Hercules (2 Macc 4:18–20). The situation worsened when Antiochus issued an edict to be implemented by force (1 Macc 1:41–51): And the king issued an edict in all his whole realm that all should become one people, and that everyone should give up their customs. And all the nations accepted it in accordance with the king’s order. And many from Israel were pleased to worship him and sacrificed to the gods and desecrated the Sabbath. And the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah saying that they were to follow customs that were foreign to the land and institute burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, and desecrate Sabbaths and feast days and render sanctuary and saints impure, and erect altars, temple areas and idol sanctuaries and sacrifice pigs and impure animals, and leave their sons uncircumcised, so that they blemished themselves with every kind of impurity and abomination, so that they forgot the law and perverted all the commandments. And anyone who did not follow the king’s order was to die. Writings of this sort he sent to his whole kingdom.59

Doubts have rightly been cast on the validity of this edict. The more fundamental question is whether it may reflect the internal Jewish disputes between radically Hellenistic reformers and traditionalists. A strictly traditionalist family of this kind is introduced in 1 Maccabees (2:1) in that of Mattathias, whose father was apparently a Hasmon, which is why the family are called Hasmoneans. With his sons, he supposedly resisted the religious reformers in a guerrilla campaign. As 2 Maccabees does not mention a Mattathias, his existence lies in a legendary, gray area. Judas Maccabeus, apparently a son of Mattathias, regained the Temple in 164 BCE in a

59 Translation follows the German translation by Tilly, Geschichte Israels, 119.

54

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

three-year campaign; he had it re-consecrated and had traditional sacrifices offered. Antiochus IV had died shortly beforehand. Judas’s successor, his brother Jonathan, was appointed High priest by the Seleucid Demetrius II in 152 BCE. It was only Simon, the last surviving brother, who attained political autonomy from Syrian rule in 139/138 BCE. He was murdered by his son-in-law in 135 BCE. From this point on, rule was handed down in the line of Simon, until the great-grandson of Mattathias and grandson of Simon led the Roman commander Pompey into the city of Jerusalem in 64 BCE.60 Second Maccabees describes the measures of Antiochus IV even more drastically than the edict of 1 Macc 1:41–51, as a horrific persecution with numerous martyrdoms (4:10; 6:18–29; 7:1–42; 14:37–46). In the martyrdom of the »mother with her seven sons« (7:1–52), the king himself is a key figure. The seven who refused to eat pork were cruelly tortured and killed, one after the other. In expectation of resurrection to eternal life (7:9, 11, 14, 36; cf. the mother’s words in 7:23, 29), in speeches contemptuous of Antiochus IV, they displayed their »manly courage before kings’ thrones« and announced God’s judgment and eternal punishment upon him. »The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honourable memory. Although she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord« (7:20).61 This hope is based on the recognition »that God did not make them out of things that existed« (7:28) and will therefore grant them eternal life after death. As in Dan 12:2f., in 2 Macc 7 we find the explicit expectation of the resurrection of the dead. The meaning attributed to the martyrdoms of the mother with her seven sons is placed on the lips of the last and youngest son, namely that this will »bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty.« And in 8:1ff. the turning point arrives with the appearance of Judah, the Maccabee.

4.4

Reception of the martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons

Ancient Judaism Fourth Maccabees, which came into being around two centuries after 2 Maccabees, takes up the martyrdoms of 2 Macc 6:18–7:41 but places them in a new context, namely the philosophical context that »devout reason (eusebes logismos) is absolute master of the passions« (4 Macc 1:1). In the historical examples for this thesis, Eleazar and the seven brothers and their mother are mentioned (2 Macc 6:18–7:41): »Taking no account at all of the sufferings that brought them to their death, they all proved that reason is lord of the passions« (4 Macc. 1:9). In contrast with the historical-theological concept of the martyrdoms of 2 Macc 7:38, 4 Maccabees devel60 Bickermann, Die Makkabäer, 7. 61 Translation now and below NRSV. Cf. Gerson D. Cohen, »Hannah and her Seven Sons in Hebrew Literature,« in Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume, ed. Moshe Davis, New York, 1953, 109–22.

4 The Temple Conflict under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean Revolt

55

ops an atonement-theological one, which comes to expression in Eleazar’s last words: »Make my blood (haima) their purification (katharsion) and take my life (psychen) as a ransom for theirs (lit. ›for them‹)« (4 Macc. 6:29). In their death, the seven sons and their mother became »as it were, a ransom (antipsychon) for the sin of our nation. Through the blood of these righteous ones and through the propitiation of their death the divine providence rescued Israel« (17:21–22). Although it is true that the books of the Maccabees were handed down exclusively in the Christian churches and the Maccabean martyrs were venerated as precursors of the Christian martyrs, the rabbinic tradition also guarded their memory, erroneously dating it to the time of Hadrian, more precisely to the time of the Second Jewish Revolt. The version in b. Git. 57b reads: »Because of you we are being killed all day long and accounted as sheep for the slaughter« (Ps 44:23). R. Judah says: »This refers to the woman and her seven sons. They brought the first before the Emperor and said to him: Serve the idol. He said to them: It is written in the Law: ›I am the Lord thy God‹ (Ex 20:2). So, they led him away and killed him. They then brought the second before the Emperor and said to him: Serve the idol. He said to them: It is written in the Law: ›Thou shalt have no other gods before me‹ (Ex 20:3). So, they led him away and killed him.

It continues, each time a call to worship the idol being followed by a text from Scripture with the confession of the oneness of God. On being required to worship the idol, the last of the brothers quotes Deut 26:17–18: »Thou hast avouched the Lord this day ... and the Lord hath avouched thee this day.« We have long ago sworn to the Holy One, blessed by He, that we will not exchange Him for any other god, and He also has sworn to us that He will not change us for any other people. The Emperor then said to him: I will throw down my seal before you and you can stoop down and pick it up, so that they will say of you that you have conformed to the desire of the king. He replied: ›Fie on thee, Caesar, fie on thee, Caesar; if thine own honour is so important, how much more the honour of the Holy One, blessed be He!‹ They were leading him away to kill him when his mother said: ›Give him to me that I may kiss him a little.‹ She said to him: ›My son, go and say to your Father Abraham: Thou didst bind one [son to the] altar, but I have bound seven altars.‹ Then she also went up on to a roof and threw herself down and was killed. A voice thereupon came forth from heaven saying, ›A joyful mother of children.‹ (Ps 113:9).62

The dating of the narrative is close to the time of composition of 4 Maccabees and should be regarded as an updating of the old tradition during the Hadrianic persecution. The heavenly voice proclaims the justification of the martyrs who died for the sake of the oneness of God.63

62 Soncino Babylonian Talmud Gittin, trans. Maurice Simon and ed. Isidore Epstein, London, 1935–52, accessed online at www.halakhah.com. For other versions in Pesiq. Rab. 43 and Lam. Rab. 1:16. see Jan. W. van Henten and Friedrich Avemarie, Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity, London/New York, 2002, 145–51. 63 See the martyrdom of R. Aqiva according to b. Ber. 61b; apud van Henten/Avemarie, Martyrdom, 153–57; also, according to b. Avod. Zar. 17b–18a in the martyrdom of Haninah ben Teradion; see van Henten/Avemarie, Martyrdom, 159–66.

56

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

5

The Samaritans

5.1

On the history of the Samaritans

In the Maccabean period, a community geographically and religiously close to Judea came into disagreement and competition with Jerusalem and its cult: the Samaritans, whose center lay in Shechem (old Samaria), who worshiped YHWH on Gerizim. Since the excavations by Yitzhak Magen64 there is no doubt that a temple stood there.65 They have the Pentateuch in common with the Judeans, although in its own paleo-Hebrew form of writing, with specific deviations in content substantiating their sole legitimacy as followers of the Torah over against the Judeans. The question of their historical background is complex and must be considered within the context of the history of Samaria. The starting point is the subjugation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 721 BCE and the deportation of part of the population of Samaria and the resettlement of foreign peoples: The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and he settled them in the towns of Samaria in place of the Israelites; they took possession of Samaria, and dwelt in its towns (2 Kgs 17:24 JPS).

This looks like a complete population exchange, but such was not really the case. The report in 2 Kgs 17:25f. continues saying that those peoples brought their own gods with them and worshiped them instead of YHWH, whereupon the latter sent a plague of lions. To avoid this, the king of the Assyrians sent an exiled priest back, who taught the worship of YHWH in Bethel (2 Kgs 17:27f.). But this did not make the inhabitants of Samaria worshipers of YHWH exclusively; rather, the new settlers worshiped him alongside their own gods. Those nations worshiped YHWH, but they also served their idols. To this day their children and their children’s children do as their ancestors did (2 Kgs 17:41).

This gave rise to the theory that the Samaritans of the Hellenistic-Roman period were the product of this syncretism. This view is not tenable, as the (supposed) Samaritan mixture of religions from the eighth century had nothing to do with the Samaritans’ strict faithfulness to the Torah from the second century BCE onwards. A more realistic hypothesis starts with the deportation of the indigenous population and the resettlement of foreign peoples, but rightly acknowledges that this population exchange was only partial, and that some YHWH-worshipers had remained in their land. Afterwards, the practice of religion in the cities of Bethel and Samaria gained syncretistic features, but YHWH-worship had remained in effect in

64 Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations, vol. II, A Temple City, JSP 8, Jerusalem, 2008. 65 See Benedikt Hensel, Juda und Samaria. Zum Verhältnis zweier nach-exilischer Jahwismen, FAT 110, Tübingen 2016, 35–50; contra e.g. Ferdinand Dexinger, »Samaritaner,« TRE 29 (1998): 750–56, 752.

5 The Samaritans

57

the countryside.66 But this did not lead to the shape of Samaritan YHWH-worship in the Hellenistic-Roman period either. A fundamental paradigm shift is called for. Samaritan Torah religion did not emerge from the (possible) syncretism of the early period but after Alexander, primarily in the Maccabean period. Hans Gerhard Kippenberg pioneered this theory: The Samaritan sect seems to have constituted itself essentially in the second century BCE. The sect was born of Israelite priests who understood themselves as sons of Eleazar and denied the office of High priest to Zadokites, Elides and Levites. During the third century BCE the rivalry of two priesthoods in Shechem and Jerusalem does not seem to have been understood as a definitive antithesis. It was not until the second century BCE, when the Jerusalem High priestly succession collapsed, that there was dispute over the legitimate cult.67

The Torah manuscripts found at Qumran are also significant in this regard, as a number of them display (proto-) Samaritan variants.68 A key part in the background of the Samaritan Pentateuch was certainly played by the destruction of the temple under John Hyrcanus I, »but the pre-Samaritan material will have been much older.«69 Hyrcanus I destroyed the Samaritan temple in 111/110 BCE (not 128 BCE as previously thought).70 Since then, the Samaritans have had no sacrificial cult, except for the Passover lamb, which lives among the Samaritans, even after the destruction of their temple, on to the present day.71 Half a century earlier, however, there was a confrontation when, in the process of Hellenization efforts in Jerusalem and on Gerizim, the YHWH-cult was opened to heathen variants—in Jerusalem for Zeus Olympios, on Gerizim for Zeus Xenios. In this context the Samaritan supplicants declared to King Antiochus IV Epiphanes that they were not related to the Judeans (i.e. the Jews) in Jerusalem. Their hope was that this would give them greater recognition on the part of the Seleucid king. The conflict or quarrel between Jews and Samaritans took grotesque forms in the first century CE, when at Passover of the year 6 or 7 CE bones were scattered by Samaritans in the area of the Jerusalem Temple in an attempt to defile it (Josephus, Ant. 18.29f.) or when under Pilate in 35/36 CE the Samaritans led a revolt, the cruel suppression of which eventually cost Pilate his office (Ant. 18.18–89).

66 Ferdinand Dexinger, »Der Ursprung der Samaritaner im Spiegel der früheren Quellen,« in Die Samaritaner, ed. idem and R. Pummer, Darmstadt, 1992, 67–140, 79. 67 Hans G. Kippenberg, Garizim und Synagoge: Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur samaritanischen Religion der aramäischen Periode, RGVV 30, Berlin/New York, 1971, 92. 68 Lange, Handbuch, 169f. n. 45. 69 Ibid. 170. 70 Dexinger, »Samaritaner,« 752. The destruction of 111/110 BCE has been confirmed archaeologically; see Magen, Mount Gerizim, 178f. 71 On the Passover festival among the Samaritans see Shemaryahu Talmon, »Die Samaritaner in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart,« in Dexinger/Pummer, Die Samaritaner, 379–92.

58

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

5.2

Basic features of Samaritan theology in Antiquity

The fundamental element is the link to the Torah of Moses. The Samaritans held to the Torah alone, not recognizing the »Prophets and Writings« which came into the canon in the two centuries on either side of the turn of the era. In this regard the Samaritans were closer to the Sadducean wing of Judaism than the Qumran Essene wing or even the Pharisaic. In their exclusive observance of the Torah, they are best comparable to the Karaites.72 Their Torah loyalty did, however, display features in which self-interest is also apparent. The most important change was made, of all things, to the Decalogue, where as a tenth commandment, the building of an altar on Mount Gerizim was added following Deut 27:4–7. This passage also altered vis-à-vis the MT: (4) When you cross the Jordan, you shall set up these stones (cf. Deut 27:2f.), which I command you this day to set up, on Mount Gerizim (MT: Mount Ebal). You shall brush them with lime. (5) There you shall build an altar to Yahweh, your God, an altar of stones. You shall not work it with iron tools. (6) You shall build the altar of Yahweh, your God, of unhewn stones, and on it you shall offer burnt offering sacrifices for Yahweh, your God. (7) There you shall slaughter and consume salvation sacrifice animals and celebrate before Yahweh, your God.73

This is the legitimation of an exclusively Samaritan YHWH-cult on Mount Gerizim. Whether Samaritan synagogues were already formed at the time when the temple on Mount Gerizim existed or only after its destruction, remains an open question. »Next to nothing is known of the origins of the Samaritan synagogue.«74 It is only very recently that interest in the current history of the Samaritans has resurfaced.75 To summarize: The Samaritans were not a »Jewish sect«—as strictly speaking Jewish sects did not exist before the canonization of rabbinic Judaism in the second century CE—and they never saw themselves as such. They are an Israelite community focused on Torah alone, whose background may indeed be influenced by northern Israelite syncretistic elements, but which committed itself to exclusive Torah observance from the third or second century BCE. In the Samaritan Pentateuch we meet scripture that is strictly focused on the Mosaic Torah and which deviates from the »Judean« Pentateuch at specific points. These divergences are part of the self-portrayal of the Samaritan religious self-understanding. As »Samaritans« they are not »Judeans.« Whether they are »Jews« is a matter of debate. Josephus tells us that the Samaritans presented themselves as Jews when it suited

72 See Burton L. Visotzky and Marzena Zawanowska, »Rabbinic-Gaonic and Karaite Literatures,« in volume II. 73 Quoting from Jürgen Zangenberg, ΣΑΜΑΡΕΙΑ: Antike Quellen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Samaritaner in deutscher Übersetzung, TANZ 15, Tübingen, 1994, 183. 74 Gottfried Reeg, Die antiken Synagogen in Israel, Teil II, Die samaritanischen Synagogen, BTAVO.B 12/2, Wiesbaden, 1977, 535. 75 Talmon, »Samaritaner,« 379–92.

6 The Temple in Jerusalem, Other Jewish Temples, and Communities without a Temple 59

them and as non-Jews when being Jews would have been harmful to them (cf. Ant. 12.257–264). This is made especially clear in relation to the oppression of the Jewish cult in Jerusalem under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean uprising. Josephus reports (Ant. 12.257–264, excerpts): (257) When the Samaritans saw the Jews under these sufferings, they no longer confessed that they were of their kindred, nor that the temple on Mount Gerizim belonged to Almighty God … And they now said that they were a colony of Medes and Persians; and indeed they were a colony of theirs. So, they sent ambassadors to Antiochus, and an epistle, whose contents are these: »To king Antiochus the god, Epiphanes, a memorial from the Sidonians, who live at Shechem. (259) Our forefathers, upon certain frequent plagues, and as following a certain ancient superstition, had a custom of observing that day which by the Jews is called the Sabbath. And when they had erected a temple at the mountain called Gerizim, though without a name, they offered upon it the proper sacrifices. (260) Now, upon the just treatment of these wicked Jews, those that manage their affairs, supposing that we were of kin to them, and practiced as they do, make us liable to the same accusations, although we be originally Sidonians ... (261) We therefore beseech thee, our benefactor and Savior, to give order to Apollonius, the governor of this part of the country, and to Nicanor, the procurator of thy affairs, to give us no disturbance … ,since we are aliens from their [i.e. the Jews’] nation, and from their customs; but let our temple, which at present hath no name at all be named the Temple of Jupiter Hellenius.76

Antiochus acquitted the Samaritans of the allegations and granted that their sanctuary should be named after Zeus Hellenius (Ant. 12.262–264). The period following this was not free of conflicts with Jerusalem and the Judeans either. The most important event was the above-mentioned destruction of the sanctuary on Gerizim by the Hasmonean Hyrcanus I. Herod sought peace by rebuilding Samaria as Sebaste (Ant. 15.296–298; J.W. 1.403) and the marriage of the Samaritan woman Malthake (Ant. 17.20; J.W. 1.562f.). Enmity was inflamed by the desecration of the Temple of Jerusalem by Samaritans strewing human bones in the Jerusalem temple (Ant. 18.29) and the murder of Galilean Passover pilgrims (Ant. 20.118–136; J.W. 2.232–247). At the beginning of the Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–74 CE), the rebels destroyed Sebaste (J.W. 2.458–460).77

6

The Temple in Jerusalem, Other Jewish Temples, and Communities without a Temple

6.1

The temple in Jerusalem and other Jewish temples

The rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem after the return of the exiles in the years 520 (Hag 1:14f.) and 515 BCE (Ezra 6:15) placed the Temple and its cult to the center of religious life in Judea. That Jewish military settlers had a YHWHtemple in Elephantine in Upper Egypt in the fifth century BCE is not mentioned 76 Translation from Wiliam Whiston, The Works of Flavius Josephus, London/New York, n.d. 77 Cf. Zangenberg, ΣΑΜΑΡΕΙΑ, 68–89.

60

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

in any biblical account, as a female deity, Anath-Bethel or Anat-Yahu, was also worshiped there. The temple was destroyed at the instigation of Egyptian priests in 410 BCE, whereupon those affected appealed to the governor in Judah and were given permission to rebuild it, although animal sacrifices and burnt offerings were prohibited.78 The existence of this temple was a blatant violation of the claim to the exclusivity of Jerusalem in Deut 12, but it was consented to by Judea. While the first Temple, the temple of Solomon (10th cent. BCE), was a royal temple, the Second Temple was the temple of the Judean priestly aristocracy and of the Judean people. It was attended and provided with sacrifices by the people of Jerusalem and Jews from all over the country and increasingly from the Diaspora flocked there for the pilgrimage festivals: Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Tabernacles. It became a symbol of Judaism under Persian, Seleucid, and Roman rule. In the year 167 BCE, in the interplay of the High priest and Jerusalem temple aristocracy with the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE) and the temple’s transformation into a temple to Zeus Olympios was deemed very serious. It led to the Maccabean Revolt, with the restoration of the cult of the God of Israel in 164 BCE. The preceding years saw the founding of the YHWH-temple in Leontopolis in Lower Egypt by Onias IV, who had been exiled to Egypt. At the same time as the Second Temple, there was the temple of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim.79 So it is all the more astonishing that before the destruction of the temple in the year 70 CE there were Jews without a temple.80

6.2

Judaism without a temple

The Yahad81 of Qumran The »pious« (Ḥasidim) of the Maccabean period and their temporary support of the insurgents developed into a strictly religious group, separate from the Hasmonean High priests, whose theological thinking and lifestyle is described in texts found at Qumran, and who called themselves Yahad, »community.« (This selfdesignation of the community will be retained as a technical term so as to avoid possible associations with Christian monastic communities or modern church structures.) The broad consensus is that the community of the Yahad—the Qumran texts being viewed generally as its legacy, the center of their community being very

78 Texts in Cowley, Aramaic Papyri; see Wolfgang Zwickel, »Elephantine«, in CBL 1 (2006): 285. 79 The archaeological witnesses from the excavations by Yitzhak Magen confirm this; see Magen, Mount Gerizim, 167–69. 80 See Beate Ego, Armin Lange, and Peter Pilhofer, eds., Gemeinde ohne Tempel – Community without Temple: Zur Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum, WUNT 118, Tübingen, 1999. 81 See Armin Lange and Hermann Lichtenberger, »Qumran,« TRE 28 (1997): 45–79.

6 The Temple in Jerusalem, Other Jewish Temples, and Communities without a Temple 61

close to the caves where the manuscripts were discovered—belonged to the Essene movement, which is known from ancient Jewish and non-Jewish sources.82 However, not only do the ancient reports of the Essenes display differences between them, but also the texts found at Qumran are highly disparate. Even if one disregards the manuscripts of writings which were later included in the Hebrew canon or are part of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the extant material cannot all be ascribed to the production and/or copying activity of the members of the Yahad. Archaeological, paleographic, and historical criteria, as well as correspondences in content suggest there is good reason to see the community of the Yahad as part of the broader Essene movement. This is indicated by community meals, hierarchy, community property (»community of goods«), the probation period for novices, the tense, polemic-filled relationship with the Jerusalem temple and its High priest, the significance of cultic purity, and the 364-day solar calendar. On these points the ancient accounts of the Essenes, the genuine writings of the Yahad, and archaeological finds from the settlement appear to agree, although the connection between them remains a matter of debate. There is no consensus on the history of the Yahad. A widespread view is that the founder of the community was the »Teacher of Righteousness,« a (high) priest expelled from the Jerusalem temple. He formed the Yahad from a lay group emerging from the Ḥasidim, together with his priestly followers, in the time of the Hasmonean High priest Jonathan (153–143 BCE)—his counterpart, referred to as the »Wicked Priest.« Hartmut Stegemann,83 on the other hand, represented the view that the Teacher of Righteousness was not the founder of the Yahad, but came into an already existing community and claimed leadership on the basis of his divine legitimation. His appearance led to division. The original community, which belonged to the Hasidic movement but had a strong priestly orientation, was reconstituted in an even more emphatically priestly way by the »Teacher of Righteousness«, with the priests (»Zadokites«) who fled Jerusalem with him. Its claim was that it represented the true divine covenant, unlike the Judaism associated with the Jerusalem temple, which had gone astray. This thesis has not met with universal acceptance. Some see the Yahad community as a group of late returnees from the Babylonian Exile, while others prefer not to see the »Teacher of Righteousness« as a unique historical figure but as a type of the teacher of the Yahad. With its strong priestly orientation, yet others see the background of this community in the Sadducees, rather than the less strict Pharisees. The latter position, however, tends to confirm the old thesis that the Yahad came about as the result of a revolt by traditionally priestly groups against the Hasmonean usurpation of the High priesthood.

82 See Alfred Adam and Christoph Burchard, Antike Berichte über die Essener, KlT182, 2nd ed., Berlin/New York, 1972. 83 Hartmut Stegemann, »Die Entstehung der Qumrangemeinde,« PhD diss., Bonn, 1971; idem, Die Essener, Qumran, Johannes der Täufer und Jesus, Freiburg, 1993 (several reprints and English translation).

62

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

Their rejection of the Jerusalem temple and its priesthood is expressed in two lines of argument: in the rejection of the incumbent Jerusalem High priest, the »Wicked Priest«, as is clear in 1QpHab, and in the associated non-participation in sacrifices at the Jerusalem temple and its replacement by worship and complete obedience to the Torah. Atonement for the land84 The key text for the self-understanding of the community, the Yahad, which lies behind the Community Rule, 1QS (including the fragments from Cave 4), is »to atone for the land.«85 In the context of 1QS 8.1–10 the expression occurs twice: (1) In the council of the Yahad there shall be twelve men and three priests, perfect in everything that is revealed from the whole (2) Torah, to do truth and justice and right judgment and compassionate love and a humble walking, each one with his neighbor, (3) to maintain faithfulness in the land with a firm purpose and a broken spirit and to atone for sin by doing justly, (4) and (to bear) affliction and to walk with everything according to the measure of truth and the regulation of time. When this happens in Israel, (5) the council of the Yahad stands firm in truth as an eternal planting, a holy house for Israel and a foundation of a holy of holies (6) for Aaron, witnesses for right judgment and chosen ones of (God’s) goodwill, to atone for the land and to render retribution to the wicked. This is the proven wall, the precious cornerstone, (8) whose foundations do not waver or tremble in their place. A most holy dwelling (9) for Aaron in all knowledge, for a covenant of justice, and in order to bring a sweet-smelling sacrifice, and a house of perfection and truth in Israel, (10) to establish a covenant in accordance with the everlasting laws. And they are agreable, to atone for the land86 and to establish judgment on iniquity; and there shall be no more iniquity.87

As temple, the community took over the atonement function that the sacrifices had in the Jerusalem Temple: the community saw itself as the temple. It performed its function of atonement in perfect behavior and in praise. In one extraordinary phrase there is even talk of »a temple (consisting) of people« (4Q174 1–2 I 6). The idea that worship can take the place of sacrifices in the temple is expressed in cultic language, which speaks of a »heave offering of the lips« (1QS 9.4; 10.6, 14). 1QS 9.3–6: (3) When these things occur in Israel in accordance with all these provisions, (these men) become a foundation of the Holy Spirit in (4) eternal truth, to atone for wickedness and the sin of apostasy and for goodwill for the land, without the flesh of burnt offerings and

84 Thomas Knöppler, Sühne im Neuen Testament: Studien zum urchristlichen Verständnis der Heilsbedeutung der Todes Jesu, WMANT 88, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 2001, 78f. 85 Still fundamental: Günter Klinzing, Die Umdeutung des Kultus in der Qumrangemeinde und im Neuen Testament, StUNT 7, Göttingen, 1971, 50–93. 86 Inserted above the line, »And they are for goodwill, to atone for the land and to establish judgment on iniquity; and there shall be no more iniquity.« 87 English translation follows the German translation by HL.

6 The Temple in Jerusalem, Other Jewish Temples, and Communities without a Temple 63 without the fat of animal sacrifices, for a heave offering (5) of the lips in accordance with the decree is like a just appeasement and a perfect way (derekh) is like a pleasing freewill offering. At this time the men of the Yahad are to set themselves apart (6) as a holy house for Aaron to unite as a holy of holies and a house of Yahad for Israel, of those that walk perfectly.88

The petitioner vows to present his »offering of the lips« at all prayer times during feasts and during the day (1QS 10.6, 14). The 15 men of 1QS 8.1 are also found in 4Q265,89 which displays a remarkable variety of themes and literary genres in fragment 7. Of these, Joseph Baumgarten notes: orders for the Sabbath, prohibition of priests performing sprinklings on the Sabbath, permission to walk two thousand cubits on the Sabbath for pasturing animals, the eschatological council of the Yahad, Adam and Eve in paradise, and purification after birth.90 The important passage in the present context is found in lines 7–9 of fragment 7: (7) [When] there will be the council of the Yahad fif[teen men, as God foretold through his servants, the pr]ophets, the Council of the Yaha[d ] will be established [in truth as an eternal plant, truthful witnesses, and chosen by] (divine) will, and sweet odour to atone for the [l]and, an off[ering (?) (10) and the periods of deceit will come to an end by judgment and the [...].

Here too, as in 1QS 8.1–10, we find the atoning function of the Yahad with its core of twelve laymen and three priests. The number fifteen in 4Q265 fragm 7.7 looks like a quotation from 1QS 8.1. Polemic against the »Wicked Priest«: date of the Day of Atonement 1QpHab 11.4–8 proves, first, that the group around the Teacher of Righteousness celebrated the Day of Atonement, and secondly, that it did so on a different date from the temple in Jerusalem. With this discovery, Shemaryahu Talmon contributed to the historical and theological classification of the Dead Sea finds.91 His remarks on the calendar were confirmed by subsequent discoveries. The drama of the incident in which, on the day the community around the Teacher of Righteousness celebrates the Day of Atonement, the serving Jerusalem High priest pursued him to the place of his exile and tried to destroy him on the Day of Atonement, points to the well-documented difference between the calendar of the Jerusalem temple and that of the Yahad of the Teacher of Righteousness.92

88 89 90 91 92

English translation follows the German translation by HL. Text in Baumgarten, Qumran Cave 4, XXV, 57–78. Baumgarten, Qumran Cave 4, XXV, 58. Shemaryahu Talmon, »Yom Hakkipurim in the Habakkuk Scroll,« Biblica 32 (1951): 549–63. On this and the resulting consequences see Gerd Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit, StUNT 2, Göttingen, 1963,140–46; Stegemann, Entstehung; idem, Essener, 205f. A vivid insight into its indispensability is given in the Mishnah tractate Yoma for the preparation (1.1–8) and then in the implementation of the rite.

64

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

Distance from sacrifices among the Essenes93 The most important testimony is given by Philo (Prob. 75), when he says that the Essenes do not offer animals for sacrifice, but seek to equip their souls as befitting for holiness.94 Josephus makes a similar, if somewhat less clear, statement in Ant. 18.19: Although they send votive gifts to the temple, they do not perform sacrifices (there) because of the difference in the purifications that are their custom. They have therefore also separated themselves from the common sanctuary and perform their sacrifices on their own.95

After a careful examination of the findings, Georg Klinzing comes to the conclusion that: »Taken as a whole it remains a remarkably little emphasized, but still sufficiently documented, indication that the Essenes did not participate in temple sacrifice.«96 In the Essenes we meet a Jewish community at the time of the existence of the temple, which may not have been a »community without a temple,« but a community without sacrifice. The broad consensus that the Yahad community by the Dead Sea had not only declared its separation from the Jerusalem temple cult and ceased to offer animal sacrifices there, has been contradicted by Jodi Magness97 on the basis of the deposits of animal bones and an altar within the settlement complex (L130). On the one hand, the animal bone deposits at Qumran resemble those of comparable ancient sanctuaries,98 but on the other hand in the area of L130 we find a free-standing altar in the first century BCE.99 A series of texts from the Qumran discoveries, such as the Temple Scroll, 11QPsa 27,4–7, 4Q394(MMT) and the Damascus Document pointed to a sacrificial practice on the part of the Yahad.100 It should be remembered that both the Temple Scroll and the Psalms Scroll 11QPsa are pre- or extra-Qumran Essene, that 4QMMT apparently comes from the early days of the Yahad, and also that the Damascus Document has the early days of the Yahad in view. So it seems entirely possible that into the first century BCE, animal sacrifices were performed at Qumran, and »that the Qumran sect observed the laws and lifestyle of the desert camp with the tabernacle in its midst, including offering animal sacrifices as mandated by biblical law.«101 But this does not alter the concept of cultic sacrifice transposing into rules and praise, as witnessed to in 1QS for the late second century BCE.

93 94 95 96 97

98 99 100 101

See Klinzing, Umdeutung, StUNT 7, Göttingen, 1971, 44–49. Ibid., 44. For the problems of the texts see ibid., 45f. Ibid., 49. Jodi Magness, »Were Sacrifices Offered at Qumran? Animal Bone Deposits Reconsidered,« in The Eucharist – Its Origins and Contexts: Sacred Meal, Communal Meal, Table Fellowship in Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, vol. I, ed. David Hellholm and Dieter Sänger, WUNT 376, Tübingen, 2017, 131–55. Magness, »Sacrifices,« 142–45. Ibid., 147–49. Ibid., 149–53. Ibid., 153.

6 The Temple in Jerusalem, Other Jewish Temples, and Communities without a Temple 65

6.3

Guide to a Judaism without a temple—the Pharisees

The Pharisees, who came into being in the context of the Maccabean Revolt, were a lay movement who were not, like the priests, tied to the Temple by regular service. They set their focus on fulfillment of the commandments and prohibitions of the Torah, and transferred ideas of purity and holiness from the priestly Temple service to everyday life. The Pharisees argued (...) that one should observe the laws of ritual purity even outside the temple, at home, precisely at the place where they were applicable, namely at the table. (…) The table in the house of any Jew is like the table of the Lord in the temple of Jerusalem. The commandment, ›You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation‹ was taken literally. The whole land was considered sacred.102

In transferring ideas of the holiness of the Temple to everyday life, the Pharisees laid a foundation on which rabbinic Judaism could build following the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 CE, in a time without a Temple. A late legend, about the teacher with whom the reorganization and reconstruction of post-70 Judaism is most closely associated, may illustrate this: Once, when Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai came from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed him and saw the temple in ruins. ›Woe to us,‹ cried Rabbi Joshua, ›that this, the place where the sins of Israel are atoned for, lies waste.‹—›My son,‹ replied Rabban Yoḥanan, ›do not be concerned. We have another atonement which is as effective as this one: That is deeds of mercy, as it says: ›I desire mercy, not sacrifice‹ (Hos 6:6).103

The teacher solves the central problem: how can life go on after the destruction of the Temple? Without the daily sacrifices in the Temple, the world ought to perish because of the sins of the people. We note that in his answer to the student the teacher quotes the Scripture, which now becomes an all-determining entity in a still greater and more comprehensive way. It, and especially the Torah within it, were the only thing that remained after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. And so, eighteen centuries later, Heinrich Heine could call the Torah the »portable fatherland« of the Jews.104

6.4

The followers of Jesus of Nazareth

When the Jerusalem temple was still in existence, the Jesus movement came into being, worshiping Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah, who after his death, resurrection, and ascension, would return. Jesus’ death on the cross is interpreted

102 Jacob Neusner, »Formen des Judentums im Zeitalter seiner Entstehung,« in idem, Das pharisäische und talmudische Judentum, ed. Hermann Lichtenberger, Tübingen 1984, 3–32, 25. 103 ʾAvot de Rabbi Natan A, IV. 104 Heinrich Heine, »Geständnisse,« in idem, Sämtliche Werke, vol. II, Dichterische Prosa, Dramatisches, Munich 1972, 741–95, 79.

66

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

as atonement for sin, in line with Isa 53:5, so that no more animal sacrifices are needed. The Jewish followers of Jesus may initially have withdrawn from the sacrificial cult, not temporarily as with the community of the Yahad or the Essenes until a Torah-compliant temple service is possible, but in principle because all sacrifices have become obsolete following the death of Jesus. According to the book of Revelation, there will be no temple in the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:22).

7

The synagogue—History and Significance

7.1

The emergence of the synagogue

The beginnings of the synagogue are unclear. Some theorize that in the Babylonian Exile, far from the (destroyed) temple of Jerusalem, a sacrifice-less service developed which was held at certain localities or buildings, which were later called synagogues. The returnees from the Babylonian Exile would have returned to the old order after the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem and the associated sacrificial service. The »synagogue« would have been a sort of stand-in for the temple and would therefore have had religious significance. However, there is no literary or archaeological evidence for such assumptions. Rather, first-century witnesses lead us to believe that synagogues served community purposes in the broadest sense, including religious ones. These are functions of the ancient city gate. According to Neh 8:1–4, Ezra reads the Torah, which is then explained (Neh 8.7f.), in the square in front of the Water Gate. Even if various functions of the city gate were transferred to the synagogue, the religious aspect certainly gained more importance as time went on. It was unique in its religious form of expression. Neither sacrifices nor cultic images or ritual processions took place there, but rather the reading and study of Scripture. The synagogue may have been first and foremost a communal institution, but its religious component was uniquely Jewish.105

7.2

The functions of the synagogue

The emergence of the Jewish synagogues has nothing to do with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, but the latter strengthened their religious function. There are literary references to upwards of a dozen synagogues in Judea and Galilee before the destruction of the Temple: in the New Testament, in Josephus, in the Damascus Document, and in early rabbinic literature. There is archaeological evi-

105 Lee I. Levine, »Synagoge,« TRE 32 (2001): 499–508, 500; idem, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, New Haven/CT, 2000.

7 The synagogue—History and Significance

67

dence for Gamla, Masada, Herodion, Jerusalem, and probably Capernaum.106 A political and social component may be deduced from the archaeological findings as well. An impressive testimony is the Theodotos inscription in Jerusalem, a founder inscription which also lists the functions of the building complex:107 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Theodotos, son of Vettenos, priest and synagogue ruler, son of a synagogue ruler, grandson of a synagogue ruler, built the synagogue for the reading of the law and for the teaching of the commandments and the hostel and the side rooms and the water installations for lodgings for those from afar, who have need (of these facilities). It (the synagogue) was built by his fathers and the elders and Simonides.108

The buildings-complex comprised the actual synagogue building for the reading of Torah and teaching the commandments, residential facilities for pilgrims, and the water installations for cultic purification. For officers in the synagogue (congregations) only the »ruler of the synagogue« is mentioned, an office known from the New Testament (Galilee: Mark 5:22, 35, 36, 38; Luke 8:49; 13:14; Asia Minor: Acts 13:15). In summary, »Before 70, the synagogue in Judea certainly did not replace the Temple as the central institution; but with its new tasks the synagogue became a key pillar of local Jewish life. The basis for continuity in the time of the destruction of the Temple had thus already been laid in the generations before.«109

7.3

Synagogues in the Diaspora

Two outstanding examples may be mentioned: Egypt and Rome Egypt The synagogue became a key factor in the preservation of Jewish identity in the Diaspora. The Egyptian diaspora became especially important in the third century BCE, but goes back much further. Already in the time of Jeremiah (ca. 645–580 BCE), we learn of a Jewish diaspora in Egypt (Jer 43:1–7). In the fifth century BCE, a Jewish military colony protected the southern border of Egypt on the island of Elephantine in the Nile, and a variety of Aramaic documents (marriage contracts,

106 Leister L. Grabbe, »Synagogues in Pre-70 Palestine: A Re-assessment,« in Daniel Urman and Paul V. McCracken Flesher, eds., Ancient Synagogues. Historical and Archaeological Discovery, vol. 1, SP-B 47,1, Leiden/New York/Cologne, 1995, 17–26, 21f.; Flesher, »Palestinian synagogues before 70 CE: A Review of the Evidence,« ibid., 27–39. 107 Hüttenmeister, Jüdische Synagogen, 192–95. 108 Translation of the Greek text follows the German translation by Hüttenmeister, Jüdische Synagogen, 194. 109 Levine, »Synagoge,« 501.

68

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

property transfers, loan agreements, freeing of slaves) provide an insight into their lives.110 The Jewish military colony had built a temple for their God Yahu. There were economic reasons for Jews to have emigrated to Egypt. In addition, there were deportations due to armed conflict. When Ptolemy I Soter took Jerusalem in 302 BCE, by subterfuge on the Sabbath—a day when the Jews offered no defense for religious reasons—he deported a large part of the population to Egypt. The second Ptolemy, Philadelphus, is supposed to have ordered a generous release of Jewish slaves abducted by his father, in which context the Letter of Aristeas mentions the exaggerated number of 100,000 (Pseudo-Aristeas 12). The so-called Zenon archive (mid-3rd cent. BCE) gives insight into everyday Jewish life and mentions, in addition to Jewish domestic slaves, free Jewish laborers of the lowest social level: vintners, shepherds, dog wardens, and brickmakers.111 Jewish identity is testified to in a brick invoice, which gives an exact account of delivery on individual days of the week, but indicates sabbata on the seventh day.112 There is evidence of synagogue buildings in Egypt from the latter third century BCE.113 We may take as an example the inscription of Shedia, from 246–221 BCE: »On behalf of king Ptolemy and queen Berenice his sister and wife and their children, the Jews (dedicated) the proseuche.«114 It is notable that synagogues in Egypt (and elsewhere in the Greek-speaking diaspora of the East)115 are generally called proseuche. Proseuche, »prayer,« here means the building or the place, or what takes place there: prayer. The term »synagogue,« on the other hand, became widely established in the land of Israel and in the western Diaspora. Martin Hengel116 explains the difference on the basis of the deliberate distinction in Judea between the Temple and the synagogue (»assembly [house]«).117 It might also be the case that the synagogue in the land of Israel developed from the assembly at the city gate and gained this name in line with the secular character of those assemblies. Rome After 41 CE, following the anti-Jewish pogrom of 38 BCE in Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria wrote in his Legatio ad Gaium (Caligula) about the counter-image of imperial magnanimity and care for the Jews, Augustus:

110 Texts in Arthur Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., Oxford, 1923. 111 Victor A. Tcherikover and Alexander Fuks, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum I, Cambridge/MA, 1957. 112 Ibid., 136f. 113 See Wiliam Horbury and David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt with an Index of the Jewish Inscriptions of Egypt and Cyrenaica, Cambridge, 1992. 114 Translation in Horbury/Noy, Jewish Inscriptions 22 (=CIJ II 1440), 35. 115 Martin Hengel, »Proseuche und Synagoge. Jüdische Gemeinde, Gotteshaus und Gottesdienst in der Diaspora und Palästina,« in idem, Judaica und Hellenistica: Kleine Schriften I, WUNT 90, Tübingen 1996, 171–95, 184–91. 116 Ibid., 191. 117 Ibid.

7 The synagogue—History and Significance

69

He was aware that the great section of Rome on the other side of the Tiber is occupied and inhabited by Jews, most of whom were Roman citizens emancipated. For having been brought as captives to Italy they were liberated by their owners and were not forced to violate any of their native institutions. He knew therefore that they have houses of prayer and meet together in them, particularly on the sacred sabbaths when they receive as a body a training in their ancestral philosophy. He knew too that they collect money for sacred purposes from their first-fruits and send them to Jerusalem by persons who would offer the sacrifices. Yet nevertheless he neither ejected them from Rome nor deprived them of their Roman citizenship because they were careful to preserve their Jewish citizenship Also, nor took any violent measures against the houses of prayer nor prevented them from meeting to receive instructions in the laws nor opposed their offerings of the firstfruits. 118

Of the numerous pieces of information about Jews in Rome at the time of Augustus we may pick out two areas: the synagogue communities known from the time of Augustus, and the question of their organization, structure, and offices. Most of the witnesses concerning the Jews of Rome in the early imperial period come from the tomb inscriptions in the Jewish catacombs of Rome.119 We know of at least 11 (possibly 13) synagogues in early imperial Rome. In all probability, three of these were in existence in the time of Augustus. First, the synagogue of the Augustans (synagoga Augustensium), who evidently derived their name from Augustus, who was positively disposed toward the Jews. Second, the synagogue of the Agrippans (synagoga Agrippensium), named for the son-in-law of Augustus, Marcus Vipsanius120 Agrippa, who was well known for his good relations with Jews. Third, the synagogue of the Hebrews: In the view of H.J. Leon,121 this synagogue is one of the oldest in Rome: »The first group of Jews to form a congregation at Rome would naturally have called itself the Congregation or synagogue of the Hebrews, as different from other religious or ethnic groups.«122 By law, since the time of Caesar the synagogues in Rome were collegia licita so they remained unaffected by the various measures taken against associations. The communities each had their own administration and offices; there was no central organization to which all synagogues were subject. The offices mentioned in the

118 Philo, Legat. 155–57; translation Francis H. Colson, The Embassy to Gaius, Philo vol. X, LCL 379, London/Cambridge/MA, 1962, 79, 81. 119 Fundamental still is Jean-Baptiste Frey, Corpus of Jewish Inscriptions: Jewish Inscriptions from the Third Century B.C. to the Seventh Century A.D., vol. I, Europe, prolegomenon by Baruch Lifshitz, New York, 1975 (first published 1936). Now: David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 2, The City of Rome, Cambridge, 1995. 120 Bernadette Brooten, Women Leaders in Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues, 2nd ed., Chico/CA, 1987. 121 Harry J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, Philadelphia/PA, 1960, 149. Leonard V. Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora, Leiden, 1995. 122 Leon, Jews, 149. For the other synagogues of Rome see the summary by Hermann Lichtenberger, »Organisationsformen und Ämter in den jüdischen Gemeinden im antiken Griechenland und Italien,« in Jüdische Gemeinden und Organisationsformen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Robert Jütte and Abraham P. Kustermann, Vienna et al., 1996, 11–27, 18f.

70

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

catacomb inscriptions (and elsewhere) show that the communities were influenced by the constitutions of the poleis of Asia Minor (»archons«) and by the Palestinian presbyterial structure. It is fair to conclude that immigrants from the land of Israel and Asia Minor had found a home in the Jewish communities of Rome. Unlike in Alexandria, where the presence of the Jews had been an integral and significant political and economic component since the founding of the city, and where there was a chief representative of the Jews: the ethnarch, the Jews of Rome evidently did not have a chief representative vis-à-vis the emperor, the senate, and the public. Each community had its own administrative organization with offices reiterated in the various communities, such as the archisynagogos, the ruler of the synagogue, who held the highest office. Whether this was exclusively religious (organization of prayers, appointment of readers of Torah, etc.) or simultaneously political or exclusively political, is a matter of debate. The title we encounter most frequently is archon, »leader« (the title is known from eight communities of Rome), but it is not clear whether one community had several archons or whether the period of office was set for one year so that several archons are attested for one community. Their duties will have been administrative. Designated archons were called mellarchon. The next-frequent title in Rome after the archon is the grammateus. Whether he was a scholar and teacher or secretary to his community cannot be determined with certainty.123 The »father« and »mother of the synagogue« are mentioned as honorary offices. Even if we cannot identify all offices and functions, the Jewish communities of Rome display an organizational structure whose officials saw to internal order and external representation. Besides religious needs, the synagogue served social and communication needs. Meals had an important, identity-forming social function, especially in the Diaspora. Community events were not confined to the Sabbath service with reading of the Torah, instruction, and prayer, but had a wide variety. In Ostia, near to the synagogue, we find lodgings with dining-beds, and a matzah bakery. Besides teaching and prayer, the synagogue was also the place for court judgments (temporary exclusion, physical punishment), job placements (for Alexandria: b. Sukk. 51b), and Kosher food, although this was possible only to a limited extent. Outlook In Late Antiquity, the synagogue continued its identity-forming and representative function both in Palestine and the Diaspora. In the case of Palestine: »Literary and archaeological sources show that it (the synagogue) continued to serve as a central public framework for each Jewish community. Rabbinic literature mentions no other public institution of the community.«124 From the third century CE, synagogues were mostly oriented architecturally toward Jerusalem. »Prayer became an increas-

123 On the other offices see Lichtenberger, »Organisationsformen,« 22f. 124 Levine, »Synagoge,« 502.

8 Sacred Writings in Judaism of the Hellenistic-Roman Period

71

ingly important part of the synagogue activities in Roman Palestine, as had been the case earlier in the Diaspora.«125 There are also reports of smaller localities in Judea and Galilee with several synagogues. There is archaeological evidence of synagogues in most parts of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. Symbols, the Menorah in particular, represent Jewish identity.

8

Sacred Writings in Judaism of the HellenisticRoman Period

When did the Pentateuch become holy, immutable Scripture? Even for Judea it is difficult to say with any certainty when the biblical canon closed. The diversity reflected in the Qumran discoveries does not allow for certainty before 68 CE. Not before the manuscripts of Murabba‘at (135 CE) did the (pre-)Masoretic Text become the dominant form of the Bible.126 The extent of the canon is given in numeric terms in 4 Ezra 14:13–48 as 24 writings, and Josephus (Ag. Ap. 1.37–41) lists them. Both texts require closer examination. 4 Ezra 14:37–48 is a Jewish apocalypse from the late first century CE and describes the restoration of the Holy Scriptures destroyed in the Temple fire in 70 CE. By divine inspiration they were dictated by Ezra in 40 days and 40 nights and written down by five scribes in Hebrew characters, which they did not know. Of the 94 books written, 24 were intended for publication and should be made known to both the worthy and the unworthy; however, 70 were to be accessible only to the wise. Josephus argues against the large number of writings among the Greeks and their mutual contradictions with the small number, 22, among the Jews, which span three thousand years of history. The two witnesses do not form the conclusion of the canon, as discussions into the Talmud show. Rather there is a basis for further arguments, in particular on the fringes of the canon (»rendering the hands impure« in relation to Esther and Sirach; t. Yad. II.13). Early Christian writings of the first century CE also indicate that besides the texts fixed in the later canon of the Old Testament they know of others that were authoritative for some authors or groups. For instance, unidentified texts are quoted as Scripture, like 1 Cor 2:9 (»What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him«) and John 7:38 (»Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water«).127 Or when Ethiopic Enoch (1 Enoch) is quoted as Scripture (Jude 14f. ). Our knowledge of the use and ranking of the scriptures that belong to the Hebrew canon entered a new stage with the Dead Sea discoveries (1947–1956). The

125 Ibid., 503. 126 See Emanuel Tov’s chapter in volume II. 127 Further examples in Hermann Lichtenberger, »Der biblische Kanon und die außerkanonischen Schriften,« in Jewish Lifeworlds and Jewish Thought. Festschrift presented to Karl E. Grözinger on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, ed. Nathanael Riemer, Wiesbaden, 2012, 15–25, 17f.

72

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

approximately 200 manuscripts representing the books that belong to the Hebrew Bible all come from the pre-68 CE period. They are accompanied by hundreds of texts that did not find their way into the canon, some of them represented in more numerous copies than any biblical books, such as the book of Jubilees (16 Mss.) and the Enoch tradition (11 Mss.). The book of Tobit, also not adopted in the Hebrew canon but represented in the Christian Greek canon, is preserved in four Aramaic manuscripts and one Hebrew. Cautious conclusions are possible: The Pentateuch, Psalms, and Isaiah are held in the highest regard; they are followed by the Twelve Prophets, Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah from the Prophets, and Job from the Writings.128 Apart from the Psalms and Job, the so-called »Former Prophets« and the »Writings« do not have the same rank. We must take into account that an unknown number of scrolls have disappeared, but the relatively high number of references (ca. 1,000 Mss.) may provide indications. There is a remarkable consistency with quotations of these writings in the New Testament. The top rank is held by Psalms, Isaiah, and the Pentateuch, especially Exodus and Deuteronomy. Also in the top group are Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Book of the Twelve. The high regard in which these texts were held in two different communities, namely the group behind the Dead Sea scrolls and early Christianity, demonstrates their authority in the first century before and after the turn of the era. Even before a thorough standardization of a Torah text type had been achieved in Jerusalem and Judea, in Alexandria the wording of the LXX Torah was »canonized.« The account in Aristeas of course idealizes this process, but the claim it raises is remarkable. In the Letter of Aristeas we find a linguistic approach to what we call »Holy Scripture(s)« when the king orders that the books should be held »sacred.« In Philo, not only is Moses the most sacred of all who came into being, but the book of Exagoge (Exodus) is »a wholly sacred book of his lawgiving«129 or »Holy Scripture.«130 Since Demetrius, the earliest Jewish-Hellenistic exegete in Alexandria (late 3rd century BCE), the interpretive treatment of the Torah as a binding text, but one requiring explanation, is tangible. Centuries earlier, Homer had been the object of, and problem for, interpretation for the non-Jewish Hellenistic world. We also find the hermeneutic of allegorical interpretation applied to the work of Hesiod and to the verses ascribed to Orpheus, e.g. in the Derveni papyrus.131 Jewish-Hellenistic exegetes adopted the methods of allegorical interpretation elaborated there and applied them to the Torah. They could even apply this hermeneutic to Homer, using it to support the truth of the Torah. The inclusion of Homer in the self-presentation of Judaism stands in the grand narrative of positive pagan testimonies about Jews and Judaism in Jewish self-

128 Details in Lange, Handbuch, passim. 129 Translation follows Nesselrath, in Abrahams Aufbruch. Philon von Alexandria, De migratione Abrahami, ed. Maren R. Niehoff and Reinhard Feldmeier, SAPERE 30, Tübingen 2017, 33. 130 De vita Mosis II, 84 (IV 220–317). 131 See now Mirjam E. Kotwick, Der Papyrus von Derveni, Berlin/Boston/MA, 2017.

9 The Emergence of the Canon of Biblical Writings

73

representation and apologetics. The Iliad and the Odyssey in the Hellenistic period were also read by Jews and drawn upon for their own purposes. But they did not become »holy scriptures,« not even when they could be used to support the truth of Judaism. The fact that the writings of Homer were known in the Palestinian motherland is evident from the discussions in the Mishnah (m. Yad. 4:6): whether they »defile the hands,« i.e. were regarded as holy scriptures. One has to be careful not to draw far-reaching conclusions, but the facts of this discussion show that the writings of Homer were disseminated among Jews in the Land of Israel and were held in esteem in certain circles.

9

The Emergence of the Canon of Biblical Writings in Alexandria and Judea—Concluding Remarks

Thanks to the Dead Sea discoveries we have gained an insight into how texts became authoritative and absolutely binding in Judea. However, the process of canonization and the development into what we commonly call »holy scripture(s)« took place after the end of Qumran (68 CE). There are several indicators pointing to the binding nature of a writing. Among these are: the number of manuscripts of a text, the number of quotations of a text, and the existence of commentary-style expositions. With regard to the place of a writing in Judaism, the two last aspects are especially relevant: quotation and exposition of a text. The significance of the Pentateuch in Judea is evident in part from the number of copies in the Qumran finds. This is the starting point for expository paraphrases (»rewritten Bible,« »parabiblical texts«) which stand alongside an increasingly standardized (proto-Masoretic) text. The first expositions of Genesis (4Q252, 253, 254, 254a) are also found, in 4Q252 in cols. I–III as a kind of »rewritten Bible,« and in IV–VI in pesher style.132 Translations into Aramaic are documented by 4Q156 Targum Leviticus for the Pentateuch, and into Greek by pap4Q127. Writings outside the Pentateuch were also expounded in commentaries, whether in continuous pesharim (Habakkuk, Hosea, Isaiah, Nahum, Micah, and Psalms) or in thematic ones (Melchizedek 11Q13, Florilegium 4Q175, and Catenaa 4Q177). In summary, from what the Qumran discoveries tell us, in Judea in the two centuries around the turn of the era, there were indications of the authoritative character of writings which were later admitted to the canon of Palestinian Judaism. It should be added, however, that there were writings that had a similarly authoritative character but did not make it into this canon (e.g. Sirach, Jubilees, Enoch, Tobit). It is notable that although a particular Greek version was fixed in Alexandria in the second century BCE, this was not the case for the Hebrew text in Jerusalem/

132 See Lange, Handbuch, 151.

74

Judaism, Hellenism, and the Maccabees

Judea. Even if a normative text version might have established itself already at the Jerusalem temple, the Dead Sea finds show that alongside this there were other text traditions up to the time of the destruction of the Temple, such as the protoSamaritan or quite independent ones that cannot be attributed to hitherto known groups.133

10

Final Reflections on Judaism and Hellenism134

Jewish Hellenism is often seen by Christian scholars as a Praeparatio Evangelica, a preparation for Christianity. It is true that both literature and theological conceptions of Hellenistic Judaism were of eminent meaning for the formulation of Christian beliefs, especially in the 2. and 3. centuries CE when philosophical concepts were used to prove the truth of Christian faith. But two or three centuries earlier Jews already had argued that Jewish belief is not in contradiction to the Greek tradition from the very beginning in Homer and Hesiod. Especially Philo makes Homer a witness for the truth of Moses. And this is a most remarkable development: Greeks are no longer idolatrous pagans, but witnesses for the truth of Judaism. The presence and reception of Greek culture is not only true for the Diaspora but also for Judea as we can learn from the spread of Greek in Judea by inscriptions, Greek names, the knowledge of the Greek language, e.g. Josephus and the rabbinic discussions on the teaching of Greek. Hellenistic Judaism is not the little unsightly sister of Palestinian Judaism, but they are twins with equal right and beauty. For further reading Avemarie, Friedrich, Pedrag Bukovec, Stefan Krauter, and Michael Tilly, eds., Die Makkabäer, WUNT 382, Tübingen, 2017. Bernhardt, Johannes Christian, Die jüdische Revolution: Untersuchungen zu Ursachen, Verlauf und Folgen der hasmonäischen Erhebung, Klio n.s. 22, Berlin/Boston/MA, 2017. Bickermann, Elias, Der Gott der Makkabäer: Untersuchungen über Sinn und Ursprung der makkabäischen Erhebung, Berlin, 1937; Engl. transl.: idem, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabean Revolt, SJLA 32, Leiden 1979. Bringmann, Klaus, Hellenistische Reform und Religionsverfolgung in Judäa: Eine Untersuchung zur jüdisch-hellenistischen Geschichte (175–163 v. Chr.), AAWG.PH 3rd ser. 132, Göttingen, 1983. Hengel, Martin, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jh.s v.Chr., WUNT 10, Tübingen, 1969, 2nd ed. 1973, 3rd ed. 1988.; Engl. transl.: Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, London/Philadelphia/PA, 1974.

133 Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Assen/Minneapolis/MN, 1992; idem, Der Text der Hebräischen Bibel. Handbuch der Textkritik, Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne, 1997; and see Tov’s chapter in volume II. See also: Lange, Handbuch, 155. 134 See my forthcoming article on »Heilige Texte im hellenistischen Judentum: Mose und Homer?«, in Lesen, Deuten Verstehen!? Debatte über Heilige Texte in Orient und Okzident, eds. Sebastian Günther and Florian Wilk, Seraphim 10, Tübingen, 2020.

10 Final Reflections on Judaism and Hellenism

75

Hensel, Benedikt, Juda und Samaria: Zum Verhältnis zweier nach-exilischer Jahwismen, FAT 110, Tübingen, 2016. Honigman, Sylvie, Tales of High Priests and Taxes: The Books of the Maccabees and the Judean Rebellion against Antiochos IV, Oakland/CA, 2014. Kreuzer, Siegfried, »Entstehung und Überlieferung der Septuaginta,« in: idem, ed., Einleitung in die Septuaginta, Handbuch zur Septuaginta (Handbook of the Septuagint) 1, Gütersloh, 2016, 29–88. Lange, Armin, Handbuch der Textfunde vom Toten Meer, vol. I: Die Handschriften biblischer Bücher von Qumran und den andern Fundorten, Tübingen, 2009. Lichtenberger, Hermann, »Der biblische Kanon und die außerkanonischen Schriften,« in Jewish Lifeworlds and Jewish Thought. Festschrift presented to Karl E. Grözinger on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, ed. Nathanael Riemer, Wiesbaden, 2012, 15–25. Magen, Yizhak, Mount Gerizim Excavations, vol. II: A Temple City, JSP 8, Jerusalem, 2008. Mittag, Peter Franz, Antiochos IV. Epiphanes: Eine politische Biographie, Klio n.s. 11, Berlin, 2006. Oswald, Wolfgang and Michael Tilly, Geschichte Israels von den Anfängen bis zum 3. Jahrhundert n.Chr., Geschichte kompakt, Darmstadt, 2016. Prestel, Peter, »Die Diversität des Griechischen in der Septuaginta,« in Die Sprache der Septuaginta. The Language of the Septuagint, ed. Eberhard Bons and Jan Joosten, Handbuch zur Septuaginta (Handbook of the Septuagint) 3, Gütersloh, 2016, 39–68. Schäfer, Peter, Geschichte der Juden in der Antike, UTB 3366, 2nd ed., Tübingen, 2010. Schwartz, Daniel R., 2 Maccabees, CEJL, Berlin/New York, 2008. Stegemann, Hartmut, Die Essener, Qumran, Johannes der Täufer und Jesus, Freiburg, 1993.

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great Natalie B. Dohrmann

1

Introduction

This chapter will look at three momentous centuries of Jewish life in the Roman Empire. The story of the Jews from the Herodian kings until the rise of Constantine is made up of many strands connecting several centers. It is an era that encompasses a disproportionate amount of political and social upheaval, violence, and religious evolution. Judea/Palestine with its geographical, historical, and cultural imperatives is the setting for an era marked by the rise, fall, and transformation of a series of empires: it opens with final gasps of the Ptolemaic Empire under Cleopatra VII, the messy demise of the Roman Republic, and the occasional incursions of unrealized Parthian ambition.1 The bulk of the period maps the explosion into history of the Roman Empire. At its end, in the fourth century, Rome refigures itself, portentously for Jews, as a Christian Empire—Christianity comes into being in this period, as does what we now recognize as »normative« or rabbinic Judaism.2 Jewish national and political history is bound to the particular destiny that is geography. The territory that Jews understood to be their God-given homeland stretched from the Negev to the Golan Heights—a small but strategically vital spit of land. Bound on the west with a largely port-free Mediterranean coast and to the east by mostly impassable desert, the land of Judea3 was at once the trade bridge connecting Mesopotamia and Egypt, and a strategic buffer zone between empires. As the bottle-neck of a series of lucrative trade routes, the inhabitants of this land had always to weigh their politics against the relative strengths and motivations of much larger neighbors. Strategic alliances might catapult Jews to positions of power, autonomy, and even expansion; unwise alliances could spell devastation. Indeed, other people’s empires have been determinative for the history of Judaism since its inception; and Jewish history cannot be told apart from the history of the dominant societies within which Jews were nearly always a minority or a subject people. Beyond economics and military pressure, a third factor having an impact upon the history of Judaism came from the »soft« power of culture. Politically dominant

1 For Jewish life in the East (Mesopotamian lands) in this period and beyond, see the chapter by Geoffrey Herman in this volume. 2 See the chapter by Lee I. Levine in this volume. 3 The land had a range of names over time, but I will refer to it mostly as Judea.

1 Introduction

77

neighboring or colonizing powers such as Persia, Syria, Greece, and Rome, often determined the vocabularies that the conquered used to define themselves: languages, materials, conceptual paradigms, aesthetics, and more. Jews were always part of these cultures: adapting, absorbing, and rejecting pieces of them in order to build their own distinctive identity. Even in the political cauldron of the Hellenized East, the predominant reality that Judaism had to navigate politically, and with which all forms of Judaism had in some ways to engage conceptually, was Rome. The story of the Jews from the Herods until the rise of Constantine is incomprehensible outside of the context of Rome. As was shown in the previous chapter, Romans were as instrumental to the rise and success of the Hasmoneans (both actively as allies and passively in their weakening of the Seleucid hold on the region) as they were to the collapse of that dynasty under Pompey. Roman ambitions fueled Herod’s success, and so helped bankroll his massive expansion of the Jerusalem Temple. Less than a century later, Rome would raze that same Temple to the ground and enslave thousands of Jews. The Roman Empire was the soil from which both the rabbinic and Christian movements would grow. In this chapter we will look at the rise of Judea as a Roman client kingdom under Herod the Great and the loss of Jewish political autonomy under the procurators, culminating in two devastating wars against Rome. It will trace the various Jewish responses to the loss of the Jerusalem Temple, the priestly aristocracy, and the cult, the most enduring of which finds it voice in rabbinic Judaism. It will also look at the fate of the Jewish diaspora, parts of which fared poorly in this era. The centuries-old, wealthy, religiously vibrant, and literarily productive Jewish community of Alexandria was destroyed early in the 2nd century—along with several other thriving diaspora communities—when a wave of revolts in Jewish Mediterranean communities failed to defeat Trajan’s forces. Yet Jews continue to live and fare well in Rome, Antioch, and elsewhere. In Palestine, scholars are divided about the nature of the relationship between rabbinic Judaism and the Roman world.4 While clearly deeply embedded in a Roman cultural sphere, rabbinic literature signals on a range of levels a different set of strategies for relating to the imperial environment than those we find reflected in the texts emerging from Greek-speaking Jewish worlds. By the end of this era, the Jewish sect we might label the Jesus movement takes root among predominantly Greek speaking populations, and as it grows and divorces itself from »Judaism« (and vice versa), the two religions reify around a set of defining and interrelated attributes that adhere and inhere even still.

4 For just a sample, see Burton L. Visotzky, Aphrodite and the Rabbis: How the Jews adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism As We Know It, New York, 2016; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, »Was the Mishnah a Roman Composition?« in The Faces of Torah, ed. Christine Hayes, Tzvi Novick and Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, JAJSup 22, Göttingen, 2017; Seth Schwartz, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society?, Princeton/NJ, 2010; Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, New York, 2012.

78

2

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

Herod (37–4 BCE)

The Hasmonean dynasty fell victim to a toxic confluence of internal dissent and Roman might. In 63 BCE, in response to internal Hasmonean battles over succession to the throne, Roman general Pompey sacked Jerusalem and deposed the Hasmonean kings. He later reestablished Hasmonean leadership with Hyrcanus II as high priest, now significantly stripped of his royal title king (basileos) and much reduced in scope and power. Chaos prevailed in the region in the middle decades of the 1st century BCE, exacerbated by the years-long Roman civil wars leading up to and in the aftermath of the assassination of Caesar in 44 BCE. Roman triumvir Marc Antony was based in Egypt and closely allied with Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra. They shared interests in Judea, which fell into their sphere of influence. Octavian was expanding his power base from the west. From the east the Parthians were looking for an opportunity to exploit this confusion to claim the rich territories of Judea for themselves. Herod was an ambitious Jewish courtier who advanced amidst and because of this chaos. He was the son of Antipater I, a Jew of Idumean stock, whose father was forcibly converted under Hasmonean ethnarch and High priest John Hyrcanus. Antipater had effectively run the country for the Hasmonean weakling Hyrcanus II, the High priest and later titular head of the Hasmonean dynasty (ethnarch) even after it was subsumed under Rome. Like his father, Herod was a savvy political operator who understood that Rome was vital not only to his own success but to the stability and prosperity of Judea. He began his career in 47 BCE as a governor of the Galilee, a hotbed of banditry—allowing Herod to prove himself tough on crime. His successes there and his carefully cultivated relationships with local Roman officials led to the expansion of his realms. In 40 BCE, simmering Jewish resentment against Roman rule propelled the ambitions of Hyrcanus II’s nephew Antigonus II, who, backed by the Parthians and popular with Judean Jews, rose to claim the Hasmonean throne. This apparent set back, one that left his brother dead and patron maimed, was Herod’s big break. Herod fled to Rome before the encroaching Parthian troops, and in that same year, backed by Marc Antony who recognized in him a strong ally in the region, was named king of Judea by the Roman senate (Rex socius et amicus populi Romani). His prime aim was ousting the Parthian-backed Antigonus and protecting Roman hegemony in the region. Herod returned to Judea in 39 and defeated Antigonus, whom Antony then executed in 37 BCE.5 Herod was now king of the Jews in more than just name. As a client king, Herod was part of a recognized system of Roman rule of subordinated peoples. He had autonomy to rule more or less as he wished but had no freedom to execute his own foreign policy or keep a large standing army.

5 Josephus, War 1.357 (all translations of the Jewish War infra by Martin Hammond, ed. Martin Goodman, Oxford, 2017); Ant. 14.490; Ant. 15.8f.; Plutarch, Antony 36.2; Cassius Dio, Hist. Rom. 49.22.

2 Herod (37–4 BCE)

79

By most measures Herod was a successful minor potentate. Vitally, he stabilized the region. Indeed, he was so effective that when Antony and Cleopatra fell to Octavian (soon to become the emperor Caesar Augustus) at Actium in 31 BCE, Herod convinced Octavian to keep him in power. He argued that his loyalty to Rome was proven, his effectiveness a fact, and his raw ambition should be enough to satisfy Octavian that he would fight on his behalf no less than he had for Antony. Josephus writes in his Jewish War: I [Herod] share Antony’s defeat, and with his fall I relinquish the diadem of kingship. I come to you [Octavian] with honesty as my hope of salvation and trusting that what you will want to examine is not whose friend I have been, but how good a friend I was.« To this Caesar replied: »Well, consider yourself safe, and your position as king now more secure. The premium you set on friendship enhances your right to rule a nation […] I have the brightest hopes for the quality I see in you.6

In his decades on the throne, Herod made himself both famous and notorious. Domestically, Herod succeeded in expanding the borders of Jewish lands (not through conquest, but through gifts of land from Augustus), and in suppressing the lawlessness and banditry that unsettled it. He executed large-scale building projects, elaborately refurbishing the Jerusalem Temple, erecting magnificent palaces and fortresses—notably Masada, Herodium, and the rebuilt city of SamariaSebaste—as well as creating the harbor and port city of Caesarea—a place that would become an exposed Roman nerve center in the region in the century ahead. He also dotted the land with Roman-style theaters, arenas, and markets. Herod raised the profile of Judea across the greater Roman Empire through generous acts of euergetism. He endowed the Olympic games, among other things, and was by no means restricted by Jewish squeamishnehss about honoring foreign gods: After all this building, Herod extended examples of his generosity to numerous cities outside his borders. He provided gymnasia for Tripolis, Damascus, and Ptolemais, a wall for Byblus, halls, arcades, temples, and public squares for Berytus [Beirut] and Tyre; and then theatres for Sidon and Damascus, an aqueduct for the coastal city of Laodicea, and for the people of Ascalon baths, grand fountains, and colonnades of remarkable quality and size; and elsewhere he made dedications of parks and green spaces. […] He supplied corn to all who needed it. Time and again he contributed funds for shipbuilding at Rhodes, and when the temple of Apollo there was burnt down he rebuilt a better temple at his own expense.7

Conforming to the role of client king in nearly all respects, Herod yet preserved his own ethnic particularity. He seems not to have funded pagan temples in heavily Jewish territories (cf. War 2.266); archaeological excavations of his palaces show evidence that in his Roman-style baths he included Jewish ritual baths (mikvahs); and the kitchenware from the sites suggest that he or members of his household followed Jewish dietary laws.8 He was apparently concerned that the family marry

6 Josephus, War 1.390f. 7 Josephus, War 1.422–25. 8 Eyal Regev, »Herod’s Jewish Ideology Facing Romanization: On Intermarriage, Ritual Baths, and Speeches,« JQR 100,2 (2010): 197–222.

80

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

according to Jewish custom and blocked the marriage of his sister Salome to the Nabatean Syllaeus because he refused to get circumcised (Ant. 16.225). Yet Josephus depicts Herod as broadly unpopular with Jews, not infrequently intermingling his unorthodox Jewish genealogy (descendent of Idumean converts) and remarks about his brutality. It is hard to know how seriously to read these insinuations; it is not irrelevant in this debate to note that Agrippa I, Herod’s grandson, was embraced fully by Jews as a Jewish king. Herod was rightly paranoid about Hasmonean traditionalists within the Hasmonean family, who saw him as an upstart who had, along with his father, usurped Hasmonean prerogatives. They fought for decades to oust him and reinstate their own. He may have hoped his marriage to a Hasmonean princess would solidify his local legitimacy, but his union with Mariamme I—granddaughter of Aristobolus II and Hyrcanus II—was a fraught one. Herod struggled to be embraced not only by the royal family—who taunted him for, among other things, being uncouth, uneducated, and using a cheap hair dye (War 1.490)—but by traditional Jews and Hasmonean loyalists alike. Although he desired the imprimatur of the Hasmoneans, he also feared them. Mariamme’s hatred of him [Herod] was as deep as his love for her. With good reason to hate him for what he had done, and his devotion as her license to speak her mind, she would explicitly bring up against him the business of her grandfather Hyrcanus [whom Herod executed] and her brother Jonathan. Even he, though still a young lad, had been given no mercy by Herod. He was 17 when Herod made him High priest, and then killed him immediately after this appointment—and all because when the boy had donned the priestly vestments and was approaching the altar at one of the festivals, the whole attendant crowd had wept tears of joy. And so the boy was sent by night to Jericho, and there, on instructions, the Gauls drowned him in a swimming pool.9

The tragic paranoia and brutality of this scene encapsulates Herod’s bind and the too-blunt force he often used to manage it. To counter Hasmonean resistance, he appointed high priests from families unconnected to the Hasmoneans and systematically dismantled other entrenched and hostile elites. He ignored and may have disbanded the Sanhedrin (a tribunal made up hierocrats), enriching a new aristocracy loyal to him. His personal guard was made up of foreign solders (War 1.397). Herod’s policies saw short term benefits, but seeded problems that would bloom down the line. For centuries the largely priestly Judean elite had helped to mediate between foreign rulers—Persian, Greek, and Roman—and the less cosmopolitan Jews. The faith instilled by the people in the priesthood and other culturally bilingual elites allowed them to translate between the cultures of Judaism and those of foreigners, they eased the acceptance foreign domination. By empowering a new elite without influence over or legitimacy in the eyes of the Jewish masses, the region lost a vital mechanism for managing conflict. Regional unrest was often fueled by economics, and the costs of Herod’s expensive ambitions were borne by his increasingly disenfranchised subjects. Another

9 Josephus, War 1.437.

4 Flavius Josephus

81

source of unrest, intertwined with economic factors, was cultural insensitivity. While Herod seems to have made many decisions based on Jewish law and practice, his reign’s impact was to overwhelmingly Hellenize the Jewish landscape and so, visibly plight Judea’s troth to Rome.

3

Herodian Dynasty (4 BCE–66 CE)

After his death in 4 BCE, Herod’s realm was divided among three of his children, and the Romans downgraded their authority. Of the three, Philip and Herod Antipas were demoted to the rank of tetrarch. They ruled the peripheries of Herod’s kingdom much as their father had—interested in building infrastructure and maintaining loyalty to Rome, while being attentive to local mores. Herod Antipas ruled the Galilee and Peraea (cf. Mark 6:14–16), and Philip ruled in the north. Only Archelaus held the title ethnarch, and he dramatically failed. He ruled Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, which included Jerusalem and Caesarea. He proved a tyrant, whom Augustus removed from power in 6 CE, replacing him with a Roman prefect under direct Roman control. The swan song of the Herodian dynasty was the reign of King Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, who ruled from 41 to 44 CE. Agrippa was educated in Rome with the city’s highest elite; he was a favorite of emperors Caligula (37–41 CE) and Claudius (41–54 CE). Supported by these relationships, in 41 Agrippa gained control of the bulk of Herod’s territories. He was by nearly all accounts a popular Jewish king, able to balance his Herodian blood, Roman ties, and eugertistic practices with piety and a steady ruling hand. Agrippa died in 44 at the height of his popularity, but the Roman emperor Claudius did not appoint his son, Julius Marcus Agrippa, better known as Agrippa II, in his stead. So reduced, Agrippa II, the last of the Herodian kings, was given control over a smaller more peripheral realm that included Chalcis, Batanea, and Lebanon, among other small fiefdoms (ca. 48–66 CE); he later acquired parts of Galilee and Peraea. He was also granted the authority to appoint the high priest. The core territories of Judea and Samaria that his father had ruled devolved to direct Roman rule as an equestrian province under the aegis of the Syrian legate. In the two decades from the death of Agrippa I in 44 CE to the outbreak of rebellion in Judea in 66, lawlessness and widening economic disparities between the urban elite and the rural poor intensified. Alongside these trends was a set of volatile religio-political ideas that finally erupted into war.

4

Flavius Josephus

Josephus is the historian from whom we learn nearly everything we know about the Jewish rebellion against Rome in 66 CE and the lead up to it. The name Flavius Josephus was taken late in life by Judean born historian Yosef ben Matityahu, Jose-

82

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

phus was of priestly and royal heritage, and he describes his own precocious Torah learning gleaned at the feet of Pharisaic sages.10 He was born in Jerusalem and came of age with the war itself, experiencing life in Judea under Roman procuratorial rule first-hand. He would have had intimate knowledge of the political opinions of the Judean elite. He tells us he was widely Jewishly educated, not only in Torah and its laws. He was a sort of ethnographer of his people, embedding himself in the major Jewish religious parties (sects, philosophies)—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, as well as what he describes an extremist group that he calls »the fourth philosophy.« His writings, among other things, sought to teach Jewish history to and translate Jewish belief for a Roman readership. Josephus was an unapologetically pro-Roman Jewish patriot. In other words, he was a proud Jew who thought Roman rule was divinely ordained; acquiescence was thus the best political course for the nation. As the war erupted, Josephus reports that he was swept up in it. In 66 CE he became a general of the Judean troops mustering in the Galilee (War 2.568). As the northern-most region of the land, the Galilee was the first to face the Roman armies who came overland to quell the rebellion in 66 under Nero’s general Vespasian. Josephus was quick to surrender (War 3.355–91). Vespasian took the Greek-speaking aristocrat prisoner, then, thanks to his prophecy of Vespasian’s accession to the Roman throne (War 3.399–402), Josephus was upgraded to guest of the soon-to-be emperor. As such, Josephus had a front row seat for the war. After the war Josephus settled in Rome where he wrote The Jewish War. This work was written (in Aramaic then Greek, in which it is preserved11) under Titus Flavius Vespasianus’s patronage (so explaining Josephus’s pen name: when Vespasian emancipates him, he becomes a citizen and member of the Flavian gens).12 Josephus is a remarkable and important Roman historian, but like the rest of his guild he has a strong agenda and needs to be read critically. He believed in Rome’s rightful dominion over the Jews and understood it to be God’s will—although just whose god he keeps strategically vague. Josephus, for example, puts in Agrippa II’s mouth a speech to the Jewish rebels that argues that Rome’s dominion is her destiny and that »God« is fighting on the Roman side (cf. War 2.380)—a discourse intended to resonate with right-thinking Jewish and Roman readers both. Josephus believed that Rome and Judaism can get along brilliantly, to each’s benefit and in accord with the divine plan. However, as he sees it, perversions on each side combined tragically to incite the devastating rebellion. In order to understand what Josephus thought the ideal essence of each civilization, we can look to the depictions of and several speeches delivered by the characters of Agrippa II or Josephus himself to exemplify Judaism. On the Roman side, the speeches of Vespasian and Titus are exemplary in this regard. Yet the virtues embodied by these men, as Josephus describes it, were polluted by two groups to

10 Josephus, Vita 1.1ff. 11 See Josephus’s preface to the War, 1. 12 For more on Josephus’s writing, see the chapter by Michael Tilly in volume II.

5 Roman Administration and the Run-up to the War

83

whom responsibility for the war can be attributed: Roman procurators and Jewish extremists (Zealots).

5

Roman Administration and the Run-up to the War

Though Josephus places much of the blame for the war on Jewish extremists, he does not exempt the Romans, despite the fact that he was on the Roman payroll. Though a defender of Rome’s right to rule, and a champion of the Flavian dynasty and aristocratic Romanitas in general, Josephus identifies a group of »false Romans« analogous to his zealous »false Jews«: the procurators.13 In the second half of the first century, Josephus opines, Judea had the devastating misfortune of being ruled by crooks. From 63 BCE, when Pompey set siege to Jerusalem marking an end to Judean political independence, the region had in one way or another been under Roman authority. Herod and Agrippa I as client kings had the widest freedoms and autonomy, but even these powerful Herodians served Rome. Rome applied a range of governing structures over the territories ruled by Herod’s offspring, from local tetrarchs to direct rule. After the death of Agrippa I in 44 CE, Rome seemed to lose interest in outsourcing control of the central parts of Judea to Jewish intermediaries: instead seven Roman procurators ruled between 44 and 66.14 In the run up to the war, Judea and environs fell under the aegis of the imperial province of Syria, whose capital was in Antioch. Imperial provinces were ruled de jure by the emperor, but de facto by a »legate,« of senatorial rank, someone from the highest circles of the Roman aristocracy and with a distinguished record of public service. Legates had legions under their command and reported directly to the emperor. Since Judea held a lower status, it was ruled by a procurator. This was an officer drawn from Rome’s equestrian class—wealthy Romans not among the highest aristocratic-senatorial families. The procurator had limited auxiliary forces under his control but no legions. Under the best of circumstances, procuratorial rule in Judea faced structural challenges. Procurators served short terms, often only two years. This meant that office holders had little time or incentive to learn about the people under their rule, and often acted insensitively in the face of Jewish custom. One exception to this perhaps was the rule of Tiberias Julius Alexander, procurator from 46 to 48 CE. He was a Jew by birth, being a relative of the Alexandrian philosopher-statesman Philo of Alexandria. Josephus describes him as sensitive to Jewish mores and as a scourge of Jewish zealots (War 2.220; Ant. 20.100–102).

13 In some sources prefect. 14 The Roman procurators after Agrippa II: Cuspius Fadus (44–46 CE); Tiberias Alexander (46–48 CE); Ventidius Cumanus (48–52 CE); Felix (52–60 CE); Porcius Festus (60–62 CE); Albinus (62–64 CE); Gessius Florus (64–66 CE).

84

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

In addition to being prone to religious and cultural gaffes, Roman procurators were responsible for tax collection—never a popular way to ingratiate oneself with the people. Another challenge was that the troops at their disposal were but a handful of auxiliary units drawn mainly from non-Jewish local Syrian populations. This meant that local ethnic tensions often exaggerated what might have been simple law enforcement (War 2.268–69). Additionally, the number of auxiliary soldiers was inadequate to control the region. A pervasive sense of lawlessness spread across the land, with a range of effects. It demoralized the local populations and undoubtedly radicalized some. It emboldened political extremist groups, who could operate without check, and probably reinforced the sense that they were living in the end of days. Finally, the chaos of the era seems to have provoked a malignant culture of corruption. Yet the chasm that opened between the procurators and the Jews was partly the fault of events set in motion earlier in the century. Herod, in an attempt to insulate himself from Jewish detractors among Hasmonean loyalists, dismantled and destabilized not only the Judean hierocracy but related institutions representing indigenous order, such as the Sanhedrin. The priestly establishment had been a vital buffer between imperial rule and the Jews for centuries. Direct Roman control continued the erosion of the social and economic elite of Judea. Their influence dwindled in the eyes of the ruling Romans and the disillusioned masses, with dire consequences. The political situation in Judea was structurally friable and procuratorial intentions were far from noble. Even discounting Josephan exaggeration, the later procurators used their time in Judea to enrich themselves through a mixture of heavy taxation and graft. The economy was in shambles, the tax burden high, banditry was on the rise, as was apocalyptic rhetoric. »Terrorists« and »charlatans« says Josephus, »threatened with death anyone who kowtowed to the dictates of Roman rule.« To the point of class warfare, they fanned out over the country and »ransacked the estates of the powerful [and] murdered the owners« (War 2.264–65). Ignoring the input and plight of Judean elites, often manipulating and humiliating them, the Romans further diminished any cultural capital these moderates may have possessed, and pushed some even among them to radicalize. Yet Josephus did not blame Roman procurators alone for the deterioration of Judea’s politics. While corrupt Roman rule played a central role, certain Jews, he makes clear, were equally culpable for the region’s descent into violence.

6

Jewish Identity and Jewish Extremism

No one set of beliefs and ideas constituted »Judaism« in antiquity. A range of ideologies were in circulation and in flux. The canon itself was not yet fixed early in the first century CE and various Jewish groups cleaved to different constellations of practices, texts, and oral traditions. Jewishness was not a religion of the book in the years before the war but was based primarily on a set of non-textual pillars. Jewishness had a few core elements. One was ethnicity. Religious belonging and

6 Jewish Identity and Jewish Extremism

85

ethnic or national identity were hard to disentangle, and though conversion existed, birth family was the primary indicator of God-allegiance. Second was what E. P. Sanders has termed »covenantal nomism«. By this he means that Jews shared in common an idea that God has chosen the Jewish people, Israel, as God’s own and bound them into a covenant that entailed a set of divinely ordained obligations. Though there was a potent idea of Torah, the word itself indicated both a text and a way of behaving Jewishly in the world (law). Jews may have agreed that they were bound to God’s law, but they were far from in agreement as to what this meant. At a minimum it included the maintenance of a sacrificial cult and the sanctity of a ruling priesthood. It meant adherence to some sort of sacred calendar, Sabbath observance, and dietary restrictions of some kind. It meant monotheism and an aversion to idolatry. Jews also shared foundation narratives and forefathers. But no single one of these baselines was interpreted uniformly across groups, and many were hotly disputed. However, although the spectrum of Jewish belief was not linear, we can plot a set of points around which various groups clustered politically and ideologically. Jewish elites tended to come from the priestly families and affiliate primarily as Sadducees. Wealthy and international, the hierocracy had a history of accommodation to imperial demands and found ways to adapt Jewish ideals in the face of external threat or opportunity. On the other side of the spectrum cluster more conservative Jewish interpreters of tradition—groups less willing to adapt to foreign rule or culture, and committed to a rhetoric of religious purity and separation. Among these groups we can count groups the sources call Ḥasidim (or Essenes, (»pious ones«), and others from the earliest Maccabean rebels to the Dead Sea Sectarians. Jewish religious conservatism and pietism took a range of forms and claimed a range of theological genealogies. While it is difficult to extrapolate from individual, unprovenanced texts to social movements, we can read in the preserved Jewish materials of the late Persian and Hellenistic periods a set of significant theological innovations, introducing several ideas generally not found in the biblical canon. The Deuteronomic (Sinaitic) covenant and Pentateuchal theology in general presume a just and legible cosmos. Obedience to God’s law would have left visible traces in the world. Deuteronomy 28 promises an almost Edenic fecundity, prosperity, and peace to those who obey the covenant. God and Israel meet and engage in this world—impiety and disobedience activate natural disasters and empower Israel’s enemies. There is no idea of heaven and hell in the core texts of the Hebrew Bible. God’s justice played out in history. At some point, for some Jews, this theology and theodicy failed to meet the needs of a people in extremis—surely the evil prosper! Not satisfied to believe either that the suffering they endured was in any way just or that God was unjust and the world meaningless, they developed new (apocalyptic) interpretations of the covenant that allowed it to console in times of crisis. Two such innovations had enormous impact: the first is eschatology, according to which divine justice was deferred to an end time (eschaton) determined by God. Cognate to this is the development of a concept of an afterlife, especially one where the righteous are

86

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

rewarded and the wicked punished. A second related set of ideas can be gathered around the idea of messianism, a belief that a divinely anointed leader or leaders would arise and bring about not only the end of current historical trials, but usher in a new age of divine dominion, piety, and peace. Though nowhere uniformly systematized, these ideas were in broad circulation in first-century Judea. In the violent years leading up to the outbreak of the war against Rome, Josephus identified certain rebels on whom he placed blame for the conflict. He calls some Zealots, others Sicarii, and he derides these agitators collectively and individually with a colorful vocabulary meant to depict them as self-serving charlatans. Josephus wants his Roman and Jewish readers to believe that Jewish rebels were not animated by authentic Jewish ideas but were instead power-hungry regional strong men and pretenders who betrayed true Judaism. As well as these, another group of criminals came into being, less bloodstained in action but with a more blasphemous agenda, who ruined the calm of the city just as much as the assassins. These were the cheats and imposters, peddling revolution and political change under the guise of divine inspiration. They managed to excite the people to a frenzy and had them trooping out into the desert in the belief that God would there reveal to them signs presaging their liberation [… another was an] Egyptian false prophet. This man was a charlatan who presented himself as a prophet of proven accuracy. On arrival in the country he gathered a following of about 30,000 who fell for his propaganda and led them out of the desert by a route which brought them to the Mount of Olives [… from there] to force entry into Jerusalem, overpower the Roman garrison and any resistance from the people, and establish himself as an absolute ruler.15

It is clear that a set of religious ideas with an apocalyptic bent lurk beneath Josephus’s bias. While Judea was in economic crisis in the middle of the first century, it is also clear that the Jewish rebels were catalyzed by an ardent and authentic theology. Reading between the lines in Josephus and with the literary texts we have from this era, we can surmise that many rebel groups had taken apocalyptic ideology and translated it into manifestos of political action. Refusing to bow to foreign power, as to idols, and clinging to the freedom promised by God and covenant, the rebels hastened a war in which foreign dominion would be ended once and for all. In the crosshairs of this religio-political ire was not only Rome, but also priestly and other Judean elites whom the rebels saw as selling Judaism out, literally, through taxation and economic exploitation, and figuratively by backing Roman interests. The set of religious ideas inciting the actors behind Josephus’s words, and also in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Daniel, 1 Enoch, and other Hellenistic Jewish texts, are not only part of the explanation for the war of 66, but they have a durable and significant afterlife, critical to understanding the rebellions of the second century, the Jesus movement, and even rabbinic theology.16

15 Josephus, War 2.258–63. 16 Cf. Michael Tilly, Apokalyptik, UTB 3651, Tübingen/Basel, 2012.

7 The Jewish War (66–73 CE)

7

87

The Jewish War (66–73 CE)

In his rogues’ gallery of procurators, Josephus highlights two stand-outs whose corruption and incitement seem to render the war all but inevitable: Albinus and Gessius Florus. Albinus’s administration (62–64 CE) was »characterized by every possible form of corruption«: This was not only in his official capacity, which he used both to steal and loot private property and to impose crippling taxes on the whole nation; but he also took ransom money from their relatives for the release of men imprisoned for terrorist activities by […] previous procurators, so the only prisoners left in prisons were those who did not come up with the cash.17

This passage is one of several in which Josephus mutually implicates Jewish radicalism and Roman dishonesty. Albinus’s successor Gessius Florus made him seem an innocent by comparison. Josephus describes Florus (64–66 CE) as vicious and disrespectful of Judean norms, going so far as to accuse the Roman of intentionally starting the rebellion as a way to cover his crimes. When Florus’s superior, the moderate Syrian legate Cestius Gallus, visited Jerusalem right around Passover in 66 CE, the Jews came to him en masse demanding relief. Sitting beside the legate, Florus mocked them. In another instance, Florus took the Greek side in a dispute between a synagogue in Caesarea and Greek neighbors who were provoking them. Ethnic tensions in Caesarea were high, culminating in a massacre of the Jews of the city (War 2.457). Given the collapse of the Judean economy, moreover, in addition to lining his own pocket, the procurator was likely under pressure to meet his Roman tax quotas. When Florus brazenly robbed the Temple treasury in May of 66 (War 2.293), open hostilities ensued. Even Agrippa II’s intervention, attempting to dissuade the angry Jews from rashly taking up a cause they were sure to lose, could not quell the rising tide. When the high priest’s son Eleazar suspended the daily sacrifice on behalf of Rome, he effectively declared war: Eleazar, the son of the High priest Ananias, a young radical who was Captain of the Temple at the time, persuaded the ministers in charge of the temple to accept no gift from a foreigner or any sacrifice on behalf of a foreigner. This laid the foundation for war with Rome, as it meant rejecting the sacrifices offered for the Roman people and the emperor. The chief priests and other notables made earnest appeals for the retention of these customary offerings on behalf of their rulers, but the rebel ministers would not give way.18

Late in the fall of that same year, Cestius Gallus returned from Antioch, leading a legion to the region in attempt to calm things down. The Jews attacked and rather unexpectedly defeated him in Beth Horon, emboldening them to believe victory possible. In 67 CE, Nero deployed an army under the command of Vespasian to quash the rebellion. As he moved south through the land, Vespasian faced little

17 Josephus, War 2.273f. 18 Josephus, War 2.409.

88

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

resistance and soon quieted the Galilee (where he picked up Josephus as a willing prisoner cum embedded chronicler of the war). Vespasian conquered much of Samaria, Judea, Peraea (the Transjordan), and Idumea. This effectively consolidated resistance in Jerusalem and a few fortified locations, such as Herod’s fort at Masada, which had been taken by the rebel group known as Sicarii at the outset of the fighting. Nero died ignominiously in 68 CE, and the war went on hold as Vespasian hurried back to fight for and ultimately claim the imperial throne, leaving his son Titus in command. The war’s most momentous chapters took place inside besieged Jerusalem during this relative calm. The pause in fighting was squandered by the rebels. Instead of preparing for the inevitable renewal of the Roman assault, Jewish factions turned on each other, and the year was spent in bloody civil battle. The dynamic in the city itself unfolded in stages. When the Romans took the Galilee and other parts of the land, many Jews fled the countryside for the heavily fortified capital. The crowds in the city heightened the tensions of the previous decade or so: »there was bitter contest between the militants and the advocates of peace« (War 4.131). A protagonist of the war, and key player in the events playing out in Jerusalem was one John of Gischala, who led an extremist Zealot faction based in the north, many of whose members were now in Jerusalem. He was a bitter rival of Josephus both ideologically and on account of his authority and popularity in Josephus’s own military theater: Galilee. For this reason, it is hard to get an accurate picture of the man from Josephus, who depicts the influx of John’s rural extremists in the darkest light, calling them more vicious than the Romans. Of Gischala’s men, he writes, there was no limit to the atrocities they would commit. No longer confining their criminal activities to robberies and muggings, they graduated to murder: and these were not runof-the-mill killings under cover of darkness, but open murder in broad daylight, with the most eminent citizens as their initial targets.19

In this passage greed and class war eclipse principled resistance to Rome. The first stage of battle pitted the extremists against a more moderate group of the highborn, among them the high priestly elite (High priest Ananus ben Ananus was murdered), royalty, and the head of the treasury, whom the rebels describe collectively as »traitors to the freedom of their nation« (War 4.146). No doubt economic factors were in play and Josephus tellingly describes the rebels’ early destruction of debt records in the city archives (War 2.427). The removal of moderates did not end the violence however, and two other rebel factions continued infighting, securing strongholds in different parts of the city. The rural quasi-messianic leader Simon bar Giora was welcomed with his men into Jerusalem in 69 to depose John. Instead he made things worse. Eleazar ben Simon led a party of disenfranchised and radicalized priests. Eleazar was killed by John in the spring of 70, leaving Simon and John to fight one another in a city in the grip of famine.

19 Josephus, War 4.138–40.

7 The Jewish War (66–73 CE)

89

Titus made his definitive assault on Jerusalem in the summer of 70 CE. By August he had breached the walls and sacrifice was suspended. The Jerusalem Temple was burned to the ground early in August, a date still commemorated by Jews late each year on the Ninth of Av. John and Simon were taken as prisoners to Rome. Josephus is anxious to describe his imperial patron, Titus, trying to protect the Temple, and blames its destruction instead on a combination of rebel impiety and overly excited Roman troops. Surely no Roman would have relished destroying a holy site of any sort, especially one of such grandeur … but after such a long war, who is to say? It took three more years for the Roman forces to rid the region of rebels and Josephus ends his own chronicle by describing the mass suicide of the Sicarii in 73 CE. This group that had caused much trouble in the years leading up to the war (War 2.254; 2.425–27) had been holed up for the course of the Jerusalem siege at Herod’s fortress Masada (War 4.398–405). The Romans set siege to Masada. In Josephus’s romanticized telling, following the impassioned leadership of Eleazar ben Ya’ir, they chose collective death over Roman enslavement.20 Oddly, this last stand is glorified by Josephus, a jarring reversal of how this sort of theological rhetoric and zero-sum extremism is depicted in the rest of his work. The defeat of the Jews plays a central role in the legitimizing narratives of the Flavians and thus the war left an outsized impression on the city of Rome itself, today as yesterday. There are two major triumphal arches in the Italian capital, one still stands in the Forum, famously depicting the Triumph itself, including the menorah and other treasures stolen from the Temple. The second arch is currently being excavated at the eastern-most end of the Circus Maximus. Its inscription underscores how Flavian propaganda exaggerated their Judean victory: Because […] he [Titus] subdued the Jewish people and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, which all generals, kings, and peoples before him had either attacked without success or left entirely unassailed.

Construction of the Roman Colosseum was financed in part by riches gained from Judea, as was Rome’s Templum Pacis, where the menorah, temple vessels, and other prizes from the war were displayed. 70 CE is often used as shorthand in current parlance for the end of sacrificial religion, marking a symbolic pivot around which Jewish religious consciousness turns from priest-centered Temple-based religion to Torah-centered rabbinism. It is hard to imagine that most Jews would have seen the destruction of the Temple as final. A temple had been destroyed before yet the Babylonian exile of 587 BCE turned out to be but a minor hurdle. Construction on a second temple began by 520 BCE. That said, the events of 70 allowed a set of religious experts unaffiliated with priesthood to begin to assert broader authority and culminated for others the capstone of a persistent critique of priestly abuses and corruption.

20 Shaye J. D. Cohen, »Masada: Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains, and the Credibility of Josephus,« JJS 33:1–2 [=Yigael Yadin Festschrift] (1982): 385–405.

90

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

For the remainder of events described in this chapter, we don’t have access to any Jewish source comparable to Josephus. Detailed narrative history does not appear from Jewish pens again until the Early Modern era, and so we reconstruct events from other people’s history, more fragmentary material remains, documents, polemical materials by non-Jews, and religious, legal, liturgical and other genres of literature never meant to tell history.

8

The Interbellum and Bar Kokhbah (73–136 CE)

The Jerusalem temple was burned to the ground by Titus’s army in August of 70, and the land was fully subdued soon thereafter. Any recognizable Jewish infrastructure was gone and a Roman garrison was stationed in Jerusalem. The number of Jewish casualties, of death and enslavement, was enormous. Moreover, vast tracts of Jewish lands were turned over to the direct ownership of the emperor, rendering Jews tenant farmers, working what had in many cases been their own land. All Jews were made to pay a new tax, the fiscus Judaicus. This punitive measure regulated that the annual half-shekel that all Jews had previously paid to maintain the Temple cult, now be paid to the cult of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome. While not economically burdensome, it galled. Though many thousands of those Jews who survived were sold into slavery (Josephus reports some 97,000) and the land was in shambles, Rome did not exact exceptional retributions, and in some ways, Judea emerged in better shape in the war’s aftermath. Most Jewish rights were reinstated, and the unrest inspired the Romans to upgrade the provincial status of Judea. Perhaps having learned from the disastrous mismanagement of the procurators, after the war Judea became an imperial province, ruled by a governor of senatorial class with a legion at his disposal (in the coming decades Judea would be made a Consular Province called Syria Palaestina). As before the war, the seat of the provincial government was Caesarea. What this meant in quotidian terms for Jews was that the province was better run. Law and order could be maintained, among Jews no less than among the Roman leadership, retarding at least one of the accelerants of the uprising. The influx of Roman soldiers and their salaries would have been a boon to the economy as well. Jewish sources for the interbellum are sparse, but we know that enormous changes took place in Judaism between the war and the appearance of the Mishnah at beginning of the 3rd century. The theological and political extremism of the Zealots and other messianic groups did not vanish, though it was subdued. Apocalyptic texts such as 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch were likely composed late in the first or early in the second century and communicate both a despair over foreign rule and a cautious hope for eschatological judgement. Dreams of liberation and vindication lingered. Without the temple’s infrastructure, the priestly class seem to have vanished as a leadership force. Surprisingly, there is no record of a new high priest being anointed; the Sadducees leave no records. The Pharisees, whose authority, according to Josephus and the Gospels was based in their religious and Torah ex-

8 The Interbellum and Bar Kokhbah (73–136 CE)

91

pertise and popularity with the people, more than in than temple proper, survive and reemerge, altered, in what becomes the rabbinic movement. If there were Jewish attempts to rebuild the temple in the immediate aftermath of the destruction, there is no record of it. This did not mean that statist or revolutionary thinking vanished, rather that the land and its people were, for a time, exhausted. The claims of Hasmomean-Herodian royal lineage whether real or symbolic, which was so highly prized by Josephus and his ally Agrippa II, makes its final stand in the Bar Kokhbah rebellion of 132–36 CE. The causes of revolt are murky. The main sources upon which scholars have relied are found in Roman histories: a passage in Historia Augustus (v.Had 14.2, late 3rd–early 4th c.) blames the war on a Hadrianic ban on circumcision; Cassius Dio (3rd c.) says Emperor Hadrian’s (117–138 CE) decision to make Jerusalem a Roman colony, Colonia Aelia Capitolina, sparked war (Hist.Rom. 69.12). Though both sources have problems, recent scholarship agrees that the ban on circumcision cannot have been the cause of the rebellion.21 More likely, for Jews imagining that their temple would ever be revived, the erection of a pagan altar in its precincts may have driven the pious among them to action. To learn about the events of the war itself, we have a trove of letters and documents relating to the revolt that was discovered in 1960s in a cave near the Dead Sea, as well as coins and archaeological remains from Judea and the Galilee. Other evidence for the uprising comes from Christian polemical materials and equally biased rabbinic mentions. Whatever the precise causes, in 132 CE a man named Shimon bar/ben Kosibah led a rebellion against Rome. Bar Kosibah’s movement was inspired both by the messianic ideologies of the late 1st century CE and by Hasmonean symbolism. Carefully foregoing the title king (melekh), Simon bar Kosibah adopts the title nasi (prince, leader)—a title with biblical roots, which evades the Bible’s explicitly antimonarchic ideology, and sets him as Israel’s charismatic »redeemer« in pious subordination to religious sensibility. Nonetheless, despite the avoidance of the title king, monarchic ideology suffuses his rule. Schäfer traces the title’s possible messianic genealogy through prophetic and late second temple sources such as those found at Qumran.22 Bar Kokhbah, »son of a star« is a messianic play on his name that casts him as the fulfillment of certain messianic prophecies: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites. (Numbers 24:17, NRSV)

Words on the coins minted during the rebellion such as »redemption« and »freedom« signal ideological sympathy with the extremists of the first rebellion. A tem21 Peter Schäfer, ed., The Bar Kokhbah War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, TSAJ 100, Tübingen, 2003, especially the essays there by Aharon Oppenheimer and Benjamin Isaacs. 22 Peter Schäfer, »Bar Kokhbah and the Rabbis,« in idem, Bar Kokhbah War Reconsidered, 1–22.

92

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

poral monarchic ambition is visible as well; Bar Kokhbah coinage adopts distinctly Hasmonean symbols of the lulav and Temple as well as their use of paleo-Hebrew on their coins—a self-consciously archaizing choice, being neither the current Aramaic letter forms nor the commonly-spoken Aramaic of the rebels. Bar Kosibah is the new Judah Maccabee, harnessing his revolutionary credentials and the promise of dynasty. The war itself was hard fought and at first the Jews met with military success unanticipated by the Romans (perhaps even by the Jews themselves). Coins audaciously proclaim sovereignty and the beginning of a new era; one reads: »Year two of the freedom of Israel.« When the Roman army under General Sextus Julius Severus finally put down the last of it, the devastation to Judea was utter. Hadrian instituted harsh anti-Jewish policies that lasted as long as his reign (most were rescinded by his successor, Antoninus Pius, 138–161 CE). In the years that followed, the land and cities of Judea, emptied of Jewish bodies, were refilled with Roman colonies and reshaped as a Hellenized landscape, replete with images of pagan gods.23 Hadrian, in a final coup, wiped the name Judea off the map calling the region instead Syria Palaestina. Despite the prominent place of halakhic observance in his correspondence and the possibility of sympathy felt for the struggle by Rabbi Akiba24, Bar Kosibah was not an early politically-ambitious harbinger of the rabbinic movement. The uprising was instead, Peter Schäfer argues25, the last gasp of temple-based Judaism. Only in the smoldering aftermath of the Bar Kokhbah rebellion do Judean Jews begin to digest the possibility of Judaism without animal sacrifice.

9

The Legal Status of Jews under Roman Rule

Amnon Linder describes three arenas regarding legal status of Jews and Jewish communities in the Roman Empire prior to its Christianization in the fourth century.26 The baseline for individuals and local communities derived from Roman law—which would have had set procedures and categories for Jews merely as members of the greater Roman empire, not different in kind from any other ethnic community or individual. The relevant classifications from this perspective would not have been Jew or non-Jew, but imperial classifications such as citizen and non-citizen, territorial considerations, etc. These were the legally significant assessments of status and belonging that had determinative effects on jurisdiction. Individual Jews and regional collectives held a range of legal classifications. At the other end of the spectrum was Jewish law

23 24 25 26

Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE, Princeton/NJ, 2001. y. Ta‘an 4.8.68d. Schäfer, »Bar Kokhbah and the Rabbis.« Amnon Linder, »The Legal Status of the Jews in the Roman Empire,« in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. IV: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven Katz, Cambridge, 2006, 128–73.

9 The Legal Status of Jews under Roman Rule

93

(halakhah), such as we can reconstruct it for this period—an arena to which the empire would have accorded jurisdiction for some religious law and to a more limited extent to civil arbitration.27 The empire generally would not have interfered in these areas of inner Jewish concern. And a third legal zone was Roman law explicitly to do with Jews as Jews—such law could confer rights or privileges (such as exemption from military duty, permission to circumcise, or to convene), or restrict Jewish freedoms (such a laws against proselytism, or the construction of synagogues, or the exaction of special taxes). At least until the 5–6th century, Jews mostly operated under the Roman common law, as provincials representing a range of class and status orientations. Their own internal courts would have had the status of arbitral only, their authority dependent on the voluntary acceptance of both parties. Legal and social questions of Jewish status must be attentive to the many ways these arenas would have overlapped, how the laws would have changed to meet historical contingency and local situations, and how codified law may never have been enforced at all, not to mention how literary sources may distort the evidence. The legal status of the Jews under Rome in the 2nd and 3rd centuries can only be answered by first by asking, which Jews? Where? When? And according to what sources?28

9.1

Jews in the Roman Diaspora

Before tracing the long aftermath of the two Judean rebellions for Jews and Judaism, let us turn our gaze to Jewish life in the Roman world outside of the land of Judea in the first century or so of the Common Era. Jews may have been concentrated in Judea and environs, but there were thriving Jewish populations in the diaspora as well, the most vibrant in Alexandria and Babylonia.29 Jews had also settled across the Mediterranean, and show up in numbers in Rome, Cyprus, the Levant and elsewhere, even at far west as modern-day Spain.30

9.2

Diaspora Uprising 115–117 CE

Another set of Jewish rebellions against Rome, known collectively as the »Qitos War« raged between 115 and 117 CE, a decade and half before the Bar Kokhbah uprising. The war is likely named for Lusius Quietus, the Roman general credited 27 CTh 2.1.10 (see Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, 207–9). 28 E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule, From Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Political Relations, Leiden, 1981; Tessa Rajak, »Was There a Roman Charter for the Jews?« JRS 74 (1984): 107–23. Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, »Jewish Rights in the Roman World: New Perspectives,« in Studies on the Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, ed. Benjamin H. Isaac and Aharon Oppenheimer, Tel-Aviv, 1996, 39–53. 29 For more on the latter, see the chapter by Geoffrey Herman in this volume. 30 W. Paul Bowers, »Jewish Communities in Spain in the Time of Paul the Apostle,« JTS 26,2 (1975): 395–402.

94

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

with putting down these revolts. He became governor of Syria Palestina as a reward. We must rely on meager and difficult sources: Roman historian Cassius Dio, Christian historian Eusebius, and hints in rabbinic sources and elsewhere. While there is little evidence that diaspora communities were actively involved in the Judean unrest of 66 CE, a generation later, Greek speaking Jews across the empire rose under Trajan (98–117 CE), emboldened perhaps by the emperor’s extended military campaigns in the distant East. A series of outbreaks of ethnic violence took place in Jewish communities across a broad swath of the Greek speaking Mediterranean: Egypt, Cyrenaica (the coastal region of modern-day Lybia), Cyprus, and also in Mesopotamia.31 Cassius Dio reports that Jews massacred thousands of their gentile neighbors. It seems that messianic hopes had turned up the heat on simmering economic and cultural tensions. In a chronicle of Trajans’s eastern campaigns, Cassius Dio writes: Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two, from the head downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished. For this reason, no Jew may set foot in that land, even if one of them is driven upon the island by force of the wind, he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan.32

While the gruesome and exaggerated rhetoric here masks actual events (note the barbarity attributed to the crime of making Romans fight as gladiators), Dio reveals that the revolts were not minor local skirmishes; they left an impact on the region. Jews, he says, were henceforth banned from setting foot in Cyprus, even if shipwrecked there.

9.3

Jewish Alexandria

Perhaps the greatest loss of this war was of the Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt—it was wiped out by Trajan’s army and never recovered. Jews had lived in Alexandria almost since the city’s founding by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE and it became a place of Jewish cultural flourishing. Jews were in nearly all professions and walks of life and occupied two of the city’s five geographical sectors. Pious Jewish intellectuals from this community had the five books of the Torah translated into Greek (the Septuagint; 3rd–2nd c. BCE), and created institutions that are among the earliest evidence we have of synagogues—communal organizations which served a range of functions, among them the teaching

31 It is possible that some Judean Jews were involved, but the evidence is thin and debated. 32 Hist. Rom. 68.32 (Dio, vol. IX, trans. Earnest Cary, LCL 177, Cambridge/MA, 1925, 2nd ed., 1982).

9 The Legal Status of Jews under Roman Rule

95

and dissemination of Torah.33 While Alexandrian Jews sent money to support the Jerusalem Temple, it is clear from texts such as the Letter of Aristeas, that at least the highly-educated among this community felt fully at home in Egypt—diaspora was not experienced as »exile.« Aristeas and later Philo tells us that the Greek Torah was itself divinely inspired. In the Roman period, we may point to the career and output of philosopher, exegete, and statesman Philo of Alexandria. He was prominent in the Jewish community and a prolific author of more than thirty preserved works. He depicted Judaism as a religion in harmony with philosophical wisdom, and as a faith that wrestled with the same metaphysical questions, and held the same ethical ideals as their Greek neighbors: virtue, moderation, the good.34 In 38 CE, violence broke out in Alexandria between the local Greeks and the Jews. Philo was part of an embassy that in 40 CE reached out to Emperor Gaius Caligula (37–41 CE) to intervene with the Egyptian governor Flaccus on behalf of the Jews. Philo’s historical works offer insight into the Jewish place in the city and empire. They show an ethnic community with unique history, privileges, and challenges, even as they remind us that Jews were like any other subject peoples working to adapt and thrive within empire.

9.4

Jews of Rome

Alexandrian Jews left a remarkable literary legacy, unmatched in the rest of the diaspora, however, archaeological remains help to sketch the contours of Jewish life in other regions outside of the land. Burial inscriptions from Rome and other parts of the Italian peninsula paint an especially tantalizing portrait of the Jewish communities there.35 Jews existed in substantial numbers in Rome and Italy, these Jews may well have been populations originally brought as prisoners by Pompey and later Vespasian (several individual inscriptions identify Jews as freed slaves). Leonard Rutgers cautions scholars from attributing the apparent spread of Jewish communities to proselytization, as has long been the norm, but instead to see migration and other factors at work. Inscriptional evidence tells us that Roman Jews supported synagogues across the city and region and felt obvious pride in communal involvement—however, details about Jewish life in Italy elude us. Communal cohesion is reinforced by the fact that Jews buried their dead together

33 Aryeh Kasher, »Synagogues as ›Houses of Prayer‹ and ›Holy Places‹ in the Jewish Communities of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt,« in Urman/Flesher, The Ancient Synagogue, 205–20. Major synagogue construction does not occur in Palestine until the 4th–7th century (see chapter by Lee Levine in this volume). 34 For more on the works of Philo, see the chapter by Michael Tilly in volume II. 35 A fourth-century legal work known as the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum compares Mosaic and Roman legislation and may have been written by a Jew. See Robert M. Frakes, Compiling the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum in Late Antiquity, Oxford, 2011.

96

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

in exclusively Jewish catacombs, and by the fact that amidst decorative imagery indistinguishable from their pagan neighbors, Jewish burial sites show a proliferation of Jewish images, especially menorahs. That said, the language of the inscriptions was Greek and Latin, not Hebrew or Aramaic, and the names and naming conventions are distinctly local. On account of the lack of mentions of any afterlife in the funerary texts, Rutgers also surmises that Roman Jews were not of an apocalyptic or messianic bent but were contentedly ensconced in this world.36 Nevertheless, Jewish culture was strange to most Romans (and perhaps for that reason attractive to some). We have evidence of periodic expulsions of Jews from the city under Tiberias, and again in the 40s CE by Emperor Claudius37, related to unrest surrounding the nascent Jesus movement. Still, scant as the evidence is, we have a picture of a culturally embedded Jewish community.

10

Pagan Perspectives on Jews and Judaism

The Jewish experience under Rome, as is by now clear, was widely divergent, ranging from deep acculturation to pagan ideas and political organization, to stubborn resistance. The Jewish rejection of the Roman cult was respected by Rome on account of Judaism’s antiquity; but this erected a civic barrier between Jews and Romans no less than a religious and cultural one. Still, Jews performed in a range of ways to make the empire work in their favor. Their position was nonetheless vulnerable, and the empire’s aims and those of any given Jewish community did not always align, sometimes with violent results. Pagan writings about Judaism reflect this range.38 Some gentile authors found much to admire about Judaism, drawn especially to its monotheism—lauded as devout and philosophically sophisticated—as well as

36 Leonard V. Rutgers, The Hidden Heritage of Diaspora Judaism, Leuven, 1998; idem, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora, Leiden, 1995; David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. I: Italy (Excluding the City of Rome), Spain and Gaul, Cambridge, 1993; idem, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. II: The City of Rome, Cambridge, 1995; Margaret H. Williams, ed., The Jews among the Greeks and Romans. A Diasporan Sourcebook, Baltimore/MD, 1998; Amnon Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, Detroit/MI, 1987; Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, Jewish Rights in the Roman World: The Greek and Roman Documents Quoted by Josephus Flavius, TSAJ 74, Tu¨bingen, 1998. 37 Leonard V. Rutgers, »Roman Policy towards the Jews: Expulsions from the City of Rome during the First Century CE« ClA 13,1 (1994): 56–74, and sources cited there. 38 Many books are devoted to this topic. See Greek and Latin authors on Jews and Judaism, ed. Menahem Stern, Jerusalem, 1974–84. Several anti-Jewish tropes are catalogued and countered in Josephus’s apologetic Against Apion. For scholarly treatments, see John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, New York, 1983; Peter Scha¨fer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Cambridge/MA, 1997; and bibliographies there.

10 Pagan Perspectives on Jews and Judaism

97

Judaism’s piety, and antiquity.39 More, however, were off-put by Judaism’s alien ways. Pagan authors seem to fixate on a rather short (and oft-recycled) list of Jewish practices that seemed to them especially strange: circumcision which piqued Roman abhorrence of castration40; dietary laws (especially the refusal of pork) which transgressed the bedrock Mediterranean value of hospitality; Sabbath observance, which was seen to enshrine laziness. They added up to a broad impression of Jewish misanthropy. The early second-century Roman historian Tacitus (d. c. 120 CE) penned a wellknown description of the Jews in book 5 of his Histories calling the religion »sinister and revolting,« and accusing Moses of inventing a religion in which »everything that we hold sacred is regarded as sacrilegious; on the other hand, they allow things which we consider immoral.«41 If we read this and other anti-Jewish writing by Greek and Roman authors out of context, it can easily make us think that Romans reserved a special bile for the Jews, but this reductive and anachronistic take misses much. Interest in Jews tended to accompany political or military conflict, and so virtually no pagan writing on the Jews happens in an objective or context-free condition. Moreover, as scholars of the so-called »rhetorical Jews« of Patristic polemic make clear,42 Jews served a range of functions for non-Jewish writers—standing in for everything from the embodiment of Roman anxiety about empire, to a range of Christian heresies, to a competitive foil in the eyes of other provincial elites. For some others, Jews served as an idealized ethnic exemplar. While it may not yet have penetrated popular perception, scholarship has largely decoupled anti-Jewish writing of the pre-Christian Roman period from the label of AntiSemitism, with its weighty and anachronistic baggage.43 One must read pagan writings about Jews in the context of imperial reflections on a range of conquered and absorbed peoples and assess the content against the particular rhetorical aims of each given source. Romans understood themselves to be deeply pious, and their sanctity (pietas) was tightly linked to a conservative embrace of tradition and loyalty to the state. Foreign cults were tolerated when ancient and untroublesome but could become enemies of the state when they breached established boundaries and practices or otherwise offended Roman sensibilities. As such, religious communities could pro-

39 See, Louis H. Feldman, »Philo-Semitism among Ancient Intellectuals,« Tradition 1,1 (1958): 27–39. 40 Ra’anan Abusch (Boustan), »Circumcision and Castration under Roman Law in the Early Empire,« in The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite, ed. Elizabeth Wyner Mark, Hanover/NH, 2003. 41 Tacitus, Histories 5.5,4. Translation K. Wellesley, London, 1995. 42 Paula Fredriksen, »What ›Parting of the Ways‹? Jews Gentiles and the Ancient Mediterranean City,« and the other essays collected in The Ways That Never Parted, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Y. Reed, TSAJ 95,Tu¨bingen, 2003; See also David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, New York, 2013. 43 Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia.

98

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

voke Rome by subtler assaults than armed conflict—such as proselytization, sacrilege and other perceived threats to Roman mores. Tacitus weaves these themes together in all of their complexity. As anticipated, Tacitus is inspired by an instance of military conflict. In the middle of his account of Titus’s leadership in the Judean war of 66–73 CE, the Roman historian takes the opportunity to introduce his Roman readers to the Jews. The author packs his text with information, and the few pages provide us a masterclass in the multiple tropes, conventions, and functions of ancient ethnography. Tacitus serves up several theories on the origins of the Jews, affording us a glimpse into the sources circulating in elite Roman circles. It is notable that these sources include neither the Greek Torah (Septuagint) nor Josephus. His sources were primarily polemical anti-Jewish texts: Some say the Jews were refugees from the island of Crete who settled in the remotest parts of Libya […] Others believe that in the reign of Isis the surplus population of Egypt was evacuated to neighbouring lands under the leadership of Hierosolymus and Juda. Many think that the Jews are descended from those Ethiopians who were driven by fear and hatred to leave their homes during the reign of Cepheus. Some say that a group of Assyrian refugees, lacking their own land, occupied a part of Egypt […]. Others again posit a famous ancestry for the Jews in the Solymi, a tribe celebrated by Homer in his poems: these people allegedly founded Jerusalem and named it after themselves.44

The grab-bag of theories is collectively incoherent and without basis, so why include them? With its use of »some say,« »others believe,« and the like, Tacitus flags that he is going to reject these positions, but intends a residue of their innuendo to remain. We get a better sense of Tacitus’s purpose as the text progresses. Whatever their origin, these observances are sanctioned by their antiquity. The other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting, and have entrenched themselves by their degeneracy. All the worst types abandoned the religious practices of their forefathers and donated tribute and contributions to the Jews in heaps. That is one reason why the resources of the Jews have increased, but it is also because of their stubborn loyalty and ready benevolence towards fellow-Jews. Yet they confront the rest of the world with a hatred reserved for enemies. They will not eat or sleep with gentiles, and despite being a most lecherous people, they avoid sexual intercourse with non-Jewish women. Among themselves nothing is barred. They have introduced the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Converts to Judaism adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despise the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable.45

Tacitus’s frontal assault claims that Jews are the pure opposite of Romans. Yet a closer reading of these two passages shows a different dynamic at work. In the early 2nd century, Rome was a sprawling empire and ethnic patchwork. With so many foreign peoples as part of the empire, gaining success, citizenship, and other types of enfranchisement, what is a »Roman« anymore? This anxiety drives Tacitus, an aristocrate of senatorial family. From this angle the Jew—with his Cretan, Ethio44 Tacitus, Histories 5.2. Adapted translation. 45 Tacitus, Histories 5.5.

11 The Jesus Movement and Early Christianity

99

pian and Syrian origins—stands in for all of the foreignness in the empire bundled into one. The final sentence quoted lets us know that the problem for Tacitus is less Jews as Jews. His problem, instead, is with Romans who are drawn to Judaism: »Converts to Judaism adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despise the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable.« For Tacitus, Jewishness stands for the permeability, and thus fragility, of what he values in Romanness. Tacitus’s depiction of the Jews sits adjacent to his ethnography of the Germans tribes against whom the Flavians were also fighting (Tacitus admires the German character), allowing us to see in even sharper relief how Jews and other ethnic enemies function to define Roman’s own self-understanding.46 For Christian polemicists, Jews are not just one religious group among many, but Judaism was precisely that against which many Christian authors define themselves. As such »real Jews« vanish ever more deeply behind »rhetorical Jews«— meaning Jews as depicted in polemical writing, created by authors to serve arguments that have little or nothing to do with actual Jews.

11

The Jesus Movement and Early Christianity

At some point in the first century, a movement of Jews, then increasingly of gentiles, found themselves attracted to the teachings of a Judean Jew named Jesus of Nazareth and his followers. Jesus emerged from the theological and political cauldron of the first century, and his reformist thought, such that it can be reconstructed, is run through with apocalyptic ideas with a political bent, much like other charismatic religio-political figures depicted (and derided) by Josephus (see section on Zealots and Jewish extremism above). The history of early Christianity has no shortage of chroniclers.47 Though the movement collected Jewish followers, at some point around the turn of the second century, its rapid growth shifted to gentile populations, as is chronicled in Acts of the Apostles, for example, as well as the letters of Paul.48 Despite this evolution, outside of polemical literature there was no hard and fast line separating »Christianity« from »Judaism« until rather late.49 Indeed Christian texts that vociferously proclaim the distinction (such as Justin Martyr in the second century, church fathers Ter-

46 Natalie B. Dohrmann, »Not There: Empire, Intertextuality, and Absence,« in Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235 CE: Cross-Cultural Interactions, ed. Alice Ko¨nig, Rebecca Langlands and James Uden, Cambridge, 2020, 344f. 47 Inter alia, those charted in Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, New York, 2016. 48 Ed P. Sanders, Comparing Judaism and Christianity, Minneapolis/MN, 2016. 49 See Fredriksen, »What ›Parting of the Ways‹?«; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia/PA, 2004; also Shaye J.D. Cohen »The Ways That Parted: Jews, Christians, and Jewish-Christians, ca. 100–150 CE,« in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70–132 CE, ed. Joshua J. Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson, CRINT 15, Leiden, 2017, 307–39.

100

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

tullian, third c., and fourth c. John Chrysostom) offer evidence that their audiences were not yet clear on the lines dividing Jew from Christian. Though they share cities and towns with the growing Christian movement in the Galilee and elsewhere, 2nd–3rd century rabbis are virtually silent on the topic of Christianity.50

12

The Rabbinic Movement

The second century is thin on primary sources in Hebrew or Aramaic, and it is difficult to know what most Jews were thinking and doing in this post-war period in Judea/ Palaestina. Seth Schwartz argues that the majority assimilated into an increasingly Hellenized landscape, becoming unremarkable Roman provincials who wore their Judaism lightly.51 A small group of Jews however, the earliest rabbis (rabbi = my teacher, master), was wrestling with the problem of how to understand Judaism without a temple, and how to live and thrive as Jews under foreign domination. At the turn of third century these Jewish intellectual elites emerge on the scene as the creators of an extraordinary document known as the Mishnah (ca. 200 CE). The Mishnah will become, alongside Scripture itself, the core articulation of the movement, the basis of both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, and the deep architecture of rabbinic Judaism— what to this day is thought of as normative Judaism.52 Rabbinic Judaism grew out of the sun-bleached landscape of the Roman Empire, and this imperial context was formative. Rabbinic Judaism sets Rome at the center of its own creation myth. A few rabbinic sources say that the movement was authorized by none other than Vespasian himself. According to one well-known version, while Vespasian was besieging Jerusalem during the Jewish War, one Yohanan ben Zakkai, having failed to moderate the Zealot factions controlling the city, escaped and beseeched the soon-to-be emperor to grant him and his fellows a quiet vineyard in a place called Yavneh, in which he could »teach his disciples, establish a house of prayer, and perform all the commandments.«53 Rabbinic Judaism, thus, bears deep scars left by the tumultuous history that preceded it. While the story of the founding of Yavneh may not be historically accurate,54 it tells us a great deal about how the rabbis imagine themselves. Unlike

50 Joshua Levinson, »There Is No Place Like Home: Rabbinic Responses to the Christianization of Palestine,« in Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity, ed. Nathalie B. Dohrmann and Annette Y. Reed, Philadelphia/PA, 2013, 99–120. And see Burton Visotzky, »Jesus in the Rabbinic Tradition,« in Jewish Annotated New Testament, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler, Oxford, 2011, 580f. (= 2nd rev. ed., 2017, 734), »less than one half of one percent of rabbinic literature concerns Jesus or Christianity.« 51 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E to 640 CE, Princeton/NJ, 2001. 52 See the chapter by Günter Stemberger in volume II. 53 ARNA, ch. 4. Cf. Daniel Boyarin, »A Tale of Two Synods: Nicea, Yavneh, and the Making of Orthodox Judaism,« Exemplaria 12 (2000): 21–62. 54 Catherine Hezser, »Uncertain Symbol: The Representation of Yavne in the Talmud Yerushalmi,« in Schwartz / Tomson, Jews and Christians, 176–95.

12 The Rabbinic Movement

101

the Zealots in Jerusalem, or the more proximate Bar Kokhbah insurgents, the movement signals from the start that is not in the bloody business of rebellion. Yohanan ben Zakkai requests permission to found something akin to an academy, where obedience to Jewish law, as well as Jewish institutions, can peacefully coexist with obedience to Roman law. This posture is reflected throughout the sources produced by the first generations of rabbis known as the tannaim.55 Apocalyptic thought, eschatological anticipation, and messianic hopes, had proven, as we saw above, devastating for Jews. The rabbis create a vibrant thought system that rejects apocalyptic thinking, domesticates and softens messianic expectations, and grounds Jewish meaning in halakhah—the proper understanding of and conformity to God’s law. The Mishnah and Tosefta are two major tannaitic collections of laws arranged by topic—among them agriculture, the sacred calendar and holy days, purity laws, laws concerning women and marriage, civil and criminal law, and laws concerning the Temple its tithes, and holy objects. The laws are stated and debated in detail, mostly without reference to Scripture. The tannaim also produce several line-byline commentaries on the Torah known as midrash which include sage stories, parables, and explications of the biblical text. The final stages in the canonization process of the Hebrew Bible in its current form happens under the rabbis (cf. mYad 4.5). The early rabbis also saw to the development and increasing regularization of liturgical structures and rubrics. The story of Yohanan ben Zakkai notwithstanding, rabbinic literature is emphatically a-historical, even counter-historical. The material goes out of its way to avoid reference to present-day events, and thus learning history from the rabbis is extremely difficult and a task that must be approached with caution. Identifiable Romans are barely mentioned; and one would be hard pressed to know the burgeoning Christian movement in Palestine was happening at all were we to rely solely on rabbinic sources. Interestingly this a-historicity is not atypical of provincial thought in the 2nd century; rabbinic texts like those of the Greek Second Sophistic among others, »defined their place in the empire by projecting an artificial sense of isolation from others«—self-consciously creating a rhetoric of isolation meant to mask the fact of their deep embeddedness in and indebtedness to the Roman world. In this the rabbis are, in significant ways, enacting a provincial script.56 While the rabbis maintain that they are carrying forward a tradition reaching back to Moses and Sinai,57 there is much that is new and fascinatingly perplexing about this movement. In an age in which the main spoken Jewish languages were

55 Sing. tanna; the next generations of rabbis, known as the amoriam—sing. amora—who produce the two Talmuds and much biblical commentary and midrash, will be profiled in chapters by Levine, Stemberger, Bakhos, and Herman in these volumes. 56 James Uden, »The Noise-Lovers: Cultures of Speech and Sound in the Second Century,« in König/Uden/Langlans, Literature and Culture, 96–235; cf. Seth Schwartz, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society?, Princeton/NJ, 2009. 57 m. Avot 1.1.

102

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

Aramaic and Greek, the rabbis worked in Hebrew; in a time marked by the explosion of books and writing among pagan and Christian intellectuals58, the rabbis choose oral transmission; from a Jewish literary past that was largely devoted to extended narrative forms, they choose law and exegesis. The rabbis indeed set law—its study, application, and embodiment—at the core of their religiosity. This too is surprising. In the late second century, Jews had no legal jurisdiction. Roman rule over Palestine was direct and Roman law normative and increasingly centralized. Jews were not forbidden from consulting local sages (including rabbis) to arbitrate civil disputes, but these decisions had no legal standing, and most Jews used Roman courts, as did provincials across the empire.59 The following rabbinic text imagines a competition between Jewish obligations (to recite certain prayers daily) and those of the Roman law in the form of edicts posted in the town square. »[The daily prayer the Shema‘] should not be in your eyes like some antiquated edict to which no one pays any attention, but like a new edict which everyone runs to read.«60 The ostensibly counterintuitive efflorescence of legalism in a world without empowered Jewish courts or enforcement mechanisms might be traced to a number of factors. Rabbis themselves descended intellectually from the Pharisees, a class of legal and scribal experts who were active in the Second Temple period. Some of what they set down may be old legal traditions that had been passed on orally. Rabbinic legalism was more encompassing than pharisaic legalism however, claiming expansive authority over all Jews, among them the priestly class and the temple itself (cf. m.Yoma). This represented an audacious theological innovation that allowed Jews to understand themselves in a temple- and sacrifice-free world. Substituting domestic piety, purity, Torah study, and prayer for blood sacrifice was a way to keep biblical religion (Torah) alive and relevant for 2–3rd century Jews, even while it made the rabbis themselves as the authorized brokers of Torah’s meaning. Another factor that may have influenced the rabbinic turn to law was its centrality in Roman imperial policy and provincial culture, and the rising status of jurist interpreters.61 Another event, whose impact on rabbinic law scholars continue to debate, is the decision by Emperor Caracalla in 212 CE to extend citizenship to the entire empire (the Antonine Constitution).62 At issue is not only the

58 Jason König and Greg Woolf, eds., Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Cambridge, 2013, editors’ introduction. 59 Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE, Oxford, 2012, esp. ch. 4; Katell Berthelot, Nathalie B. Dohrmann, and Capucine Nemo-Pekelman, eds., Legal Engagement: The Reception of Roman Tribunals and Law by Jews and Other Provincials of the Roman Empire, Rome, forthcoming. 60 SifreDt § 33. 61 Natalie B. Dohrmann, »Can ›Law‹ Be Private? The Mixed Message of Rabbinic Oral Law,« in Ando/Rüpke, Public and Private, 187–216. 62 Clifford Ando, »Law, Citizenship and the Antonine Revolution«, in idem, Imperial Rome AD 193 to AD 294: The Critical Century, Edinburgh, 2012, 76–99.

12 The Rabbinic Movement

103

extent to which rabbinic legalism, even in internal Jewish forms, represents a borrowing of Roman imperial vocabularies, but also the extent to which specific Roman laws find echoes in the rabbinic corpus. On the one hand citizenship would have offered a proximate model of membership that the rabbis may have imbibed and recreated in Jewish guise, but from another angle, citizenship meant Jews had much easier access to Roman legal tribunals, posing a direct challenge to rabbinic influence. Halakhah may have developed in part as a way to counter this threat.63 In terms of their organization, the rabbis might be best described as members of disciple networks, not dissimilar to Greek philosophical schools. They did not have central institutions outside of local teachers and their students. Among themselves, these local schools made up loose networks of like-minded Jews. The early generations seemed to make few gestures toward the common everyday Jew; the tannaim, for example, did not to control the synagogues, or leave prose sermons. There is no evidence that they had mass followings. They breathed instead the high ether of scholastic debate. Nowhere are they recognized as leaders or judges of the Jews in Roman sources. The early third century introduces us to a figure with close ties to the rabbinic movement: the patriarch. The patriarch was the hereditary head of the Jewish community, and while his influence varied over the era in question, Rabbi Judah haNasi (prince) rose to special prominence.64 A descendent of first-century Pharisee Gamaliel the Elder, Judah was a scholar and patron of the tannaim, and seems to have been instrumental in the collocation and redaction of the Mishnah (200 CE), in which he is known simple as »Rabbi.« We know that early in the third century Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi owned estates as well as substantial wealth gained from trade. Under Judah, the house began to claim King David in its genealogy, and this sort of royal self-regard gets reflected in a range of functions that accrued to the office.65 The sources tell us that at various times the patriarchs kept a court of advisors and delegates; filled a judicial role, including appointing judges to local tribunals; collected taxes (and gifts) locally and abroad, set the Jewish festal calendar, and had some authority over synagogues—all apparently without Roman inter-

63 Though the following scholars all see the rabbis as shaped by their relationship with Rome, those such as Rosen-Zvi, »Was the Mishnah a Roman Composition?« stress a defiant rabbinic isolation from Roman laws, while others such as Yair Furstenberg, Orit Malka, and Yakir Paz think there is more direct borrowing of Roman law in tannaitic sources than is immediately apparent, and thus more legal contact between rabbis and Romans. Cf. Orit Malka and Yakir Paz, »Ab hostibus captus et a latronibus captus: The Impact of the Roman Model of Citizenship on Rabbinic Law,« JQR 109,2 (2019): 141–72; Yair Furstenberg, »The Rabbis and the Roman Citizenship Model,« in Citizenship(s) and Self-Definition(s) in the Roman Empire: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Perspectives, ed. Katell Berthelot and Jonathan Price, Leuven, 2018. 64 Lee I. Levine, »The Jewish Patriarch in Third-Century Palestine« in ANRW 19.2.2 (1979): 649–88. 65 David Goodblatt, The Monarchic Principle, Tu¨bingen, 1994, 141ff.

104

Jews in the West: From Herod to Constantine the Great

ference. Seth Schwartz has traced the relationship forged between the patriarch and diaspora Jews who may have been seeking, in exchange for financial support, someone to represent the collective interests of diaspora Jews before Rome.66 Despite the evidence we have in rabbinic sources and Roman legal sources, it is not at all clear if the office and family remain strong and prominent, nor even how official their role was from Roman perspective.67 The rabbis grant the patriarchs leave to learn Greek, even as they seem to have officially discouraged Greek learning among themselves. The tombs of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi in Beth She’arim show how he moved between worlds: the sarcophagi are decorated with a mixture of pagan and Jewish motifs, and Hebrew and Greek inscriptions, befitting a provincial grandee. Despite the great respect they accorded to Rabbi, the sages over time become increasingly critical of the patriarch’s potentially corrupting wealth, cultural assimilation, and lack of purity of mission as they saw it. The patriarch was a link between Palestinian Jews and the diaspora. For reasons not entirely clear, the office disappeared sometime in the early 5th century CE,68 no doubt under pressure from Christians. The last Palestinian patriarch died in 425 CE.

13

Conclusion

Jewish history under pagan Rome represents perhaps the most radically transformative period in the history of the faith. In this era, Judaism shifted from a temple-based nation ruled by client kings and priests to a religion grounded in a sacred text, beginning to reorganize itself around a lay leadership in the form of the nascent rabbinic movement. The second century forces Jews to confront the stakes of apocalyptic thought, to experience sovereignty and its loss, to determine how to navigate a world over which they had little control. Though not widely influential in their own age, the tannaim sketched the blueprint with which Judaism rebuilt itself in the aftermath of a string of devastating defeats at the hands of Rome. But Rome’s impact on Judaism stretched far beyond military might—and Roman concepts of law, power, political influence, architecture, and much more, left a deep impact on Judaism, then as now.69 A century after the Antonine Constitution grants citizenship to Jews, a more momentous imperial change rocks their world: the early fourth-century conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity.

66 Schwartz, Imperialism, 110–16. 67 Ibid., 103–28, and see Martin Jacobs, Die Institution des jüdischen Patriarchen: Eine quellenund traditionskritische Studie zur Geschichte der Juden in der Spätantike, TSAJ 52, Tübingen, 1995. 68 See CTh 16.8.22 (415 CE). 69 Annette Y. Reed and Natalie B. Dohrmann, »Rethinking Romanness, Provincializing Christendom,« in eaedem, Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire, 1–21.

13 Conclusion

105

For further reading Primary sources in English Translation Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. Martin Hammond, with an introduction and notes by Martin Goodman, Oxford, 2017. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols., ed. with introductions, translations and commentary by Menahem Stern, Jerusalem, 1974–84. The Mishnah, translated from the Hebrew, with introduction and brief explanatory notes, by Herbert Danby, Oxford, 1972. Philo of Alexandria, The Embassy to Gaius (vol. 10, LCL 379, 1962, repr. 1971), and Flaccus (vol. 9, LCL 363, 1962, repr. 1985), trans. Francis H. Colson, Cambridge. Margaret H. Williams, ed., The Jews among the Greeks and Romans. A Diasporan Sourcebook, Baltimore/MD, 1998.

Secondary Reading Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties, Berkeley/CA, 1999. Natalie B. Dohrmann, »Can ›Law‹ Be Private? The Mixed Message of Rabbinic Oral Law.« In Public and Private in Ancient Mediterranean Law and Religion, ed. Clifford Ando and Jörg Rüpke. RVV 65, Berlin, 2015, 187–216. Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, London, 2007. Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 66, Tu¨bingen, 1997. Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Cambridge/MA, 1997. Peter Schäfer, ed., The Bar Kokhbah War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, TSAJ 100, Tu¨bingen, 2003. Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E to 640 CE, Princeton/NJ, 2001. L. Michael White, »Epilogue as Prologue: Herod and the Jewish Experience of Augustan Rule,« in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, ed. Karl Galinsky, Cambridge, 2007, 361–87.

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel Lee I. Levine

1

Introduction

No period in Jewish history has undergone as radical a transformation in modern scholarship as Late Antiquity, an era spanning the third–fourth to seventh centuries and culminating with the Arab conquest in 640 CE, which has been traditionally characterized as one of decline and contraction. Beforehand, beginning with the failure of three Jewish revolts in the late first and early second centuries CE (the revolt against Rome, 66–74; the Diaspora revolts, 115–117; and the Bar-Kokhbah rebellion, 132–135), the Jews were regularly depicted as having suffered economic and political decline in the third century and unprecedented discrimination and delegitimization under Byzantine-Christian rule in the fourth century that intensified thereafter. The disappearance of Palestinian rabbis from the literary sources following the editing of the Jerusalem Talmud at the end of the fourth century, followed by the cessation of the Patriarchate in the early fifth (ca. 425), were considered the final blows to Jewish communal life that then sank into relative oblivion. Indeed, even the eminent historian Salo Baron, writing in the middle of the 20th century, refers to this era as »incipient medievalism.«1 This historic overview was buttressed theologically in both Jewish and Christian traditions via the guilt assumed by the former owing to their sins which caused the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and by the latter owing to the blame foisted on the Jews for their rejection of Jesus and their role in his crucifixion by the Romans. Each of the above-noted claims was based on the testimony of ancient Jewish and Christian sources that have held sway until recently. A very different model, as reflected in the title of this chapter, acknowledges that this negative depiction requires considerable modification, suggesting that a very basic transition transpired in the third and fourth centuries CE, when the Jews had already begun to recover in a remarkably robust fashion from the earlier debacles. This transition was inextricably intertwined with the Jewish standing visà-vis the Imperial government and its implications for the future, in the era of Christian rule. The crisis and trauma caused by the triumph of a hostile Christianity in the latter era were mitigated, in part by the resilience and vitality of Jewish communal and religious life, and in part by the Imperial government’s overall preservation of the Jews’ communal integrity and fundamental legal rights—despite

1 Salo W. Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, 18 vols., 2nd ed., New York, 1952–93, 2.172.

2 Developments in the History of Palestine in the Late Roman Era

107

the pressures exerted by ecclesiastical circles. This new understanding, presented below, is based on the integration of the available literary and archaeological data known to date.

2

Developments in the History of Palestine in the Late Roman Era (Second and Third Centuries)

Two phenomena from the Late Roman period have gained wide acceptance over the past generation and have subsequently revised our understanding of Jewish history at this time. The first is a very different assessment of the economic, political, and cultural situation in the province generally and of the Jews in particular. It is clear today that the second and third centuries—the Judea-based Bar-Kokhbah revolt and its consequences notwithstanding—were a period of peace and stability throughout the province, characterized by the expansion and fortification of cities, increased agricultural productivity, and an impressive array of new local building projects. Evidence of such prosperity abounds with regard to the Jewish community as well.2 Not only did the Jewish cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris expand in this era (and beyond), but synagogue buildings began to be constructed in the third century following a hiatus of several centuries.3 Similarly with regard to several impressive Jewish necropoleis in Bet She‘arim and Jaffa, where the appearance of a large number of Greek inscriptions (80 and 90 percent of the total, respectively) is best explained as a statement of cultural vitality and acculturation rather than of extreme Hellenization or assimilation. The third century also marked a new stage in the development of art as a form of religious expression, appearing on mosaic floors, walls, and architectural elements in both pagan and Jewish contexts. In the Jewish realm this included, for the first time, the use of religious symbols (e.g., Bet She‘arim) and biblical motifs (e.g., the synagogue at Khirbet Ḥamam, north of Tiberias). The art of pagan Palestine expressed its intellectual and religious vitality not only in diverse temples and pagan cults,4 but also in the impressive number of Second Sophistic intellectuals hailing from the province.5 Here, too, for the first time, literary activity among the rabbis found expression in the compilation of tannaitic halakhic and midrashic

2 Doron Bar, »Was There a 3rd-c. Economic Crisis in Palestine?« in The Roman and Byzantine Near East, vol. 3, ed. John H. Humphrey, JRASup 49, Portsmouth/RI, 2002, 43–54; Zeev Weiss, Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine, Cambridge/MA, 2014, 57–116. 3 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed., New Haven/CT 2005, 174–209. 4 See Nicole Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina: The Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine, Second to Fourth Century, RRP 1, Tübingen, 2001, 49–81. 5 Joseph Geiger, »Notes on the Second Sophistic in Palestine,« Illinois Classical Studies 19 (1994): 221–30.

108

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

treatises, including at least one that appears to have been clearly influenced by a genre known in the wider Roman world.6 The second significant phenomenon that has revolutionized our understanding of the Late Roman period relates to the establishment of the Patriarchate, a new political-communal office of the Jews that was recognized by Rome and was intended to instill a sense of autonomy and confidence within the Jewish community. The Severan dynasty (193–235), corresponding to the time of R. Judah I, was instrumental in the creation of the office that became the primary Jewish communal institution in the Roman Empire. This suggestion rests on three third–century archaeological finds: (1) the Patriarchal cemetery in Bet She‘arim; (2) an inscription dating to 197 or 198 CE from the northern Galilean village of Qatzion recording the dedication of a building to the emperor Septimius Severus and his family by the local Jewish population; and (3) coins minted in Sepphoris bearing the image of the emperor Caracalla and boasting an alliance between the local city council (curia) and the Roman senate.7 These Severan contexts are corroborated by a comment made by the church father Origen mentioning the Patriarch (or his equivalent Roman title, »ethnarch«): Now, for instance ... how great is the power wielded by the ethnarch, granted by Caesar ... he differs in no way from a king of a nation (ethnos). Secret trials are held according to the Law, and some people are condemned to death—neither with explicit permission nor without the knowledge of the rulers. And this we learned in the land (chora) of this nation (ethnos), where we spent much time and were fully convinced.8

The implications of Origen’s statement are far-reaching. The ethnarch (= Patriarch), is said to have wielded a great deal of power and is compared to a king; he adjudicates according to Jewish law and has the judicial authority to sentence people to death, de facto though not de iure. This testimony is especially poignant, given the fact that it was transmitted by a figure who was generally unsympathetic to the Jews. Having spent decades in Caesarea, Origen was, however, clearly aware of contemporary Jewish society and claimed to be a reliable witness, quite justifiably it would seem, given the specific issue in question. These judicial powers granted to the Patriarch de facto in the third century may have continued later on as well, although there is no evidence for this in subsequent years. Thus, after several generations of hostility between Rome and the Jews, a new era of rapprochement engendered the emergence of a series of significant developments. Rome, for its part, welcomed Jews into the municipal curiae with the provision that nothing was to interfere with their religious observance,9 and traditions

6 On the mishnaic tractate »Ethics of the Fathers,« see Amram Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography: Tractate Avot in the Context of the Graeco-Roman Near East, Oxford, 2004, 136‒ 240. 7 See Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art, New Haven/ CT, 2012, 84f. 8 Origen, Letter to Africanus 14, SC 14; translation with a few modifications by the author. 9 Amnon Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, Detroit/MI, 1987, no. 2.

2 Developments in the History of Palestine in the Late Roman Era

109

reflecting sympathetic relations between Severan emperors on the one hand and the Jews and Judaism on the other are noted in the fourth-century Scriptores Historiae Augustae (admittedly a problematic historical source).10 A second source, from 293 CE, is an Imperial rescript issued by Diocletian supporting the judicial authority of one Judah, almost assuredly the late third-century Patriarch Judah III (commonly known as Nesiah II): The same two Augusti and Caesars to Iuda. The agreement of private individuals does not make one a judge who is not in charge of any jurisdiction, neither has his decision the force of legal verdict. Written on the sixth day before the kalends of January, in the consulate of the two Augusti.11

This rescript confirms the authority of an officially appointed judge and of a recognized judicial system over any private arrangement between individuals. It is probable that the addressee, Iuda (= Judah) was acknowledged as an officially designated judge who stood at the head of a court. Given the fact that Judah III Nesiah functioned at this time, enjoying considerable influence if not de facto control over internal judicial affairs, it would be remiss to assume that this source refers to the existence of some other high-ranking figure by that name. Thus, this rescript further exemplifies and confirms Roman recognition of Patriarchal status toward the end of the third century CE. The Jews, for their part, honored the Severan emperors in several inscriptions appearing on buildings and coins, as noted above. R. Judah himself is credited with issuing a number of legal decisions that attempted to change Jewish attitudes toward settlement in the mixed coastal cities of Palestine, as well as with encouraging an overall rapprochement with Rome, the most famous decision being his attempt to abolish two fast days commemorating Rome’s destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (y. Ta‘an 4.7.69c; b. Meg 5a–b). Moreover, the Bet She‘arim necropolis, for centuries closely associated with R. Judah and the subsequent Patriarchal dynasty, displays a wide range of data connecting those interred there with current GrecoRoman practice, such as the overwhelming use of Greek, an appropriation of pagan mythological motifs, and the earliest use of a cluster of religious symbols also appearing elsewhere in the Roman East.12 The critical use of selected rabbinic traditions corroborates the existence of a publicly recognized Patriarchate at this time. It is far from coincidental that rabbinic sources relating to Patriarchal authority over taxation, judicial appointments, religious decrees, calendrical determinations, and educational supervision invariably date to the third and fourth centuries, and although the historical accuracy of

10 See Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Alexander Severus 28.7, 29.2, 45.7. 11 Codex Justinianus 3.13.3 (Linder, Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, no. 5, and bibliography there). 12 See Lee I. Levine, »The Emergence of the Patriarchate in the Third Century,« in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, eds. Ra’anan Boustan et al., Tübingen, 2013, 237–43; Levine, Visual Judaism, 81–91.

110

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

these traditions cannot be fully confirmed by non-rabbinic sources, the cumulative evidence is nevertheless compelling. Moreover, several non-rabbinic sources indicate the international stature of the third-century Patriarch. A synagogue inscription dating to 281 CE, discovered in Stobi, Macedonia, names the Patriarch as the beneficiary in an agreement between a wealthy member of that community and the community at large. It stipulates that whichever side violates the agreement has to pay an onerous fine to the Patriarch.13 It is important to point out in this regard one rabbinic tradition that attests to the Patriarch’s strong ties with and influence on Diaspora communities: R. Ḥiyya bar Abba came to R. Lazar and said to him: »Persuade R. Judah the Patriarch on my behalf to write a letter of recommendation for me to go abroad and make a living.« He (R. Lazar) persuaded him (i.e., the Patriarch) and he (R. Judah) wrote for him (the following): »Behold we have sent you a great man. He is our envoy and represents us until he returns to us.« (y. Ḥag 1.8.76d)

Isaiah Gafni has suggested that the phrase »to make a living« may have referred to R. Ḥiyya’s responsibilities as a Patriarchal apostolos, one dispatched to Diaspora communities to collect funds and oversee certain local arrangements.14 If Gafni is correct, then this story attests not only to Patriarchal ties with the Diaspora, but also to the existence of the apostolic system, which is well documented for the early fourth century by, inter alia, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and the Theodosian Code.15 The above sources clearly confirm the emergence of an officially recognized Patriarchate in third-century Eretz Israel.

3

Within the Byzantine-Christian Orbit

For centuries, the Byzantine-Christian period (from 324 CE onward) has been characterized as an extension of an already existing crisis now exacerbated by severe restrictions on Jewish rights and privileges imposed by Imperial legislation, as well as extremely hostile and belligerent polemical statements made by a host of ecclesiastical figures. Moreover, the message of discrimination, exclusion, and delegitimization was at times aggravated by recurring Christian violence predominantly against Diaspora Jews and their public space—the synagogue. Based primarily on non-Jewish literary material, this scenario has played a pivotal role in defining Jewish-Christian relationships throughout this era, especially with respect to the status of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity. However, the historical credibility of these sources has become a serious issue, creating a large measure of skepticism today regarding their historical accuracy. For instance, while Imperial

13 For a fuller discussion of this source, see Levine, »Emergence« 249–54. 14 Isaiah M. Gafni, »Epistles of the Patriarchs in Talmudic Literature,« in »Follow the Wise«: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al., Winona Lake/IN, 2010, 3–10, esp. 8–9 (Hebrew), and bibliography there. 15 Levine, »Emergence,« 256.

3 Within the Byzantine-Christian Orbit

111

laws were most likely enacted in response to real situations, be they on the local, provincial, or Imperial level, serious questions remain as to how efficacious such legislation was, who exactly was affected, and to what degree.16 Moreover, this legislation was far from monolithic. Not infrequently contradictory orders were issued at one and the same time, even on one very specific matter. Whatever pressure groups may have been at play within the various power structures in the Byzantine orbit, the fact remains that emperors often responded to them or to other local concerns, thereby undermining any impression of a stable and consistent policy.17 Similar questions have been raised with regard to the enforcement of these laws. Was a law just a rhetorical statement of what a ruler or a specific lobby wished to see or did it indeed effect lasting change? Was the reappearance of a particular law by successive emperors merely a reflection of the conservative nature of such legal corpora or a determined policy of enforcement through reissuance, or was it a sign of the failure of implementation, thereby clearly demonstrating a significant gap between law and reality? In the words of Ramsay MacMullen: »Laws repeated are laws unenforced.«18 One particular case, with clear implications for understanding the status of Jews and Judaism in this era, has to do with laws concerning the building of new synagogues or the repair of old ones. Byzantine legislation explicitly and repeatedly prohibited these activities but, in fact, archaeological finds from both Palestine and the Diaspora clearly attest to the opposite, that synagogues were regularly being built, repaired, and maintained throughout Late Antiquity.19 In short, while Christian and Imperial literary sources indicate stagnation, archaeological data provides concrete evidence of a flourishing in this regard. Indeed, the anti-Jewish material emerging from Christian sources conveys, in fact, a dual and often dissonant message. While the main thrust of this material was clearly to denigrate the Jews and separate them from Christians, such laws could, in fact, easily (and perhaps justifiably) be understood as evidence of the exact opposite, i.e., the objectionable behavior criticized in these ecclesiastical works—amicable relations between Christian and Jew—may indeed highlight the accommodating and perhaps even friendly relations that in reality existed between these two groups. The extent of such relations is, of course, impossible to gauge, although it should be noted that the fifth-century Christian historians Socrates and Sozomen knew of instances in which Jews and Christians intermingled. Other sources, noted by Fergus Millar and Stephen Mitchell, attest to Jewish practices that influenced not only Christians in Antioch and Aphrodisias, but also certain heretical groups in Asia Minor such as the Quartodecimans, Novatians, and Montanists.20

16 17 18 19 20

Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, 1999, 77–98. See, e.g., Linder, Jews in Roman and Imperial Legislation, nos. 30, 34. Ramsay MacMullen, »Social Mobility and the Theodosian Code,« JRS 54 (1964): 53. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 210–14, 316–26. Fergus Millar, »Repentant Heretics in Fifth Century Lydia: Identity and Literacy,« SCI 23 (2004): 111–30; Stephen Mitchell, »An Apostle to Ankara from the New Jerusalem: Montanists and Jews in Late Roman Asia Minor,« SCI 24 (2005): 207–23.

112

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

Moreover, even the ecclesiastical literary material has prompted us to reassess Jewish-Christian relations on an entirely different plane. Over a century ago, Adolf von Harnack claimed that Christian assaults on the Jews and Judaism were merely theoretical and rhetorical exercises on the part of church fathers and, in fact, had nothing to do with contemporary Jewish communities.21 In contrast, Marcel Simon posited that such polemics were intended to address real-life situations and were to be perceived as genuine social, theological, and religious threats to Christian communities on the part of the Jews.22 This reevaluation of earlier evidence might have, in and of itself, led to a dramatically revised historical perspective. However, since the mid-20th century, two additional corpora of information have shed substantial light on many facets of Jewish life, vastly enriching and revamping our view of Jewish society in this era: (1) the large and ever-growing number of archaeological finds, particularly from synagogues in ancient Palestine; (2) the ongoing publication of a trove of texts from the Cairo Genizah which apply to the Byzantine era.

4

Synagogues

The archaeological finds from more than one hundred synagogues in ancient Palestine, almost all dating from Late Antiquity and specifically in the Galilee and Golan, in addition to the rich variety of artistic and epigraphic remains found therein (including several impressive necropoleis), demonstrate the multifaceted cultural and religious components within these communities. Moreover, the construction of monumental synagogue buildings, a few even beside sites considered holy by Christians, points to a significant degree of political standing and economic means among these Jewish communities. The turn of the fourth to fifth centuries thus witnessed the erection of synagogue buildings, each in its own way demonstrating the political, financial, and social clout of the local Jewish community.

4.1

Capernaum

The uniqueness of this synagogue building is expressed first and foremost by its monumental size; located beside a Christian pilgrimage site, it dwarfed the remains of an octagonal church built soon thereafter. The richly decorated synagogue was built in the late fourth century of white limestone—in contrast to the surrounding buildings, including the church, that were constructed of black basalt. Built on an artificial platform and consisting of three parts, the synagogue sanctuary contains 21 Adolf von Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, New York, 1962, 57–70, 487. 22 Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425), New York, 1986, 135–78.

4 Synagogues

113

16 columns and was divided into a nave and three aisles, stone benches line three sides of the room, and its floor was paved with large flagstones; a courtyard lies to the east, and a portico (= porch) is located in front of the building.23

4.2

Ḥammat Tiberias

This synagogue has been identified with the Patriarch via Greek inscriptions found therein mentioning one Severus, his protégé or disciple (Greek θρεφτός), and the synagogue’s benefactors who hailed from the wealthy Tiberian Jewish aristocracy. The most striking feature of this building is its exquisite mosaic floor featuring, for the first time in ancient Palestine, a panel with a cluster of Jewish symbols (a Torah shrine as well as pairs of menorot, lulavim, ethrogim, shofarot, and incense shovels); the largest panel contains, also for the first time in Jewish art (and repeated in another six buildings thereafter), a representation of the sun god Helios surrounded by a zodiac and symbols of the four seasons.24

4.3

Sepphoris

Discovered in 1993, this building also contains some unusual features. It is longer and narrower than the others, having only one side aisle instead of the usual two. Moreover, it faces northward, unusually oriented away from Jerusalem. The building has an impressive and intricate mosaic floor; compared to other ancient synagogues, it boasts seven registers (with some even subdivided) instead of the usual three. These include: a panel with a dedicatory inscription flanked by two lions; one with the cluster of Jewish symbols similar though not identical to the panel at Ḥammat Tiberias; two panels displaying details from the Desert Tabernacle, including a portrayal of Aaron (almost entirely destroyed); the zodiac theme with the sun replacing the figure of Helios; and, finally, two partially preserved scenes drawn from the book of Genesis—Sarah standing at the entrance to her tent and the ‘Aqedah (The Binding of Isaac). Assuming that an overriding programmatic theme is depicted here, the following interpretations have been offered: highlighting the ideas of promise and redemption, reflecting an anti-Christian polemic, featuring themes found in early piyyutim;25 and emphasizing priestly traditions that reflect the presence of priests in the city.26

23 Gideon Foerster, »Notes on Recent Excavations at Capernaum« in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by L. I. Levine. Jerusalem, 1981, 57–59; Michael Avi-Yonah, »Some Comments on the Capernaum Excavations« in Levine, Ancient Synagogues Revealed, 60–62. 24 Moshe Dothan, »The Synagogue at Hammath-Tiberias« in Levine, Ancient Synagogues Revealed, 63–69. 25 Levine, Visual Judaism passim. 26 Ibid.

114

4.4

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

Ḥuqoq

Ongoing excavations of the recently discovered synagogue at Ḥuqoq, located on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, north of Tiberias, have produced in a few short years a wide range of biblical mosaic depictions, including several scenes from the Samson narrative, the Tower of Babel, Noah and the ark, the splitting of the Red Sea, and Jonah and the whale. Additional mosaics at the site include the zodiac and Helios, as well as a post-biblical scene of a Greek general or king accompanied by Greek soldiers meeting (in what appears to be a friendly encounter) a Jewish leader (probably a High priest) and Jewish soldiers.27

5

Remains from the Cairo Genizah

Tens of thousands of documents, fragments, and even entire books have been retrieved from this Genizah, some of which have been identified as copies of earlier Byzantine works, telling us much about the cultural and religious life of the Jews living in this period. The various aspects of culture at this time include: the unprecedented flourish of art; the production of magical, mystical (Hekhalot), religious poetic (piyyut), and apocalyptic texts; as well as the emergence of a new rabbinic genre—the aggadic midrash.28 As a result of this new data, the earlier picture of Jewish life in Palestine of Late Antiquity as a cultural wasteland devoid of any creativity now requires substantial reassessment and revision. As a result, Late Antiquity can no longer be viewed merely as the nadir of the ancient period or a foreshadowing of the Middle Ages; rather, it has become evident that, despite whatever pressure and hostility existed under Byzantine-Christian rule, many aspects of Jewish society and culture exhibited a significant degree of resilience and creativity. With the availability of this newly discovered material, we are becoming fully aware of the growth and development of Jewish culture in a range of areas often resulting from positive contact of the Jews’ with their Christian surroundings and the continued development of a vigorous communal life.

6

The Flourishing of Jewish Culture in Late Antiquity

To illustrate the flourishing of Jewish culture in the context of simultaneous developments in Christian society, we will note four of the above-mentioned phenomena drawn from Jewish society in Late Antiquity—the burgeoning construction of syna-

27 Jodi Magness, et al., »Inside the Huqoq Synagogue,« Biblical Archaeology Review 45/3 (2019): 24–38. 28 For an expanded discussion of these matters, see Levine, Visual Judaism, 210–21.

6 The Flourishing of Jewish Culture in Late Antiquity

115

gogues, the appearance of piyyut in Jewish liturgy, the creation of aggadic midrash, and the dramatic increase in Jewish artistic expression.

6.1

Burgeoning synagogue Construction

Comprising the overwhelming majority of synagogue remains from Late Antiquity, Byzantine synagogues date from the fourth and fifth to seventh centuries, and have generally been discovered in rural settings. Perhaps not coincidentally, the construction of public buildings by Christians as well as Jews took place almost simultaneously in such areas, and there seems to be a correlation between the erection of impressive synagogue buildings in the central and eastern parts of the Galilee and the building of churches in the western sector. The same holds true for the Golan, where virtually all synagogues and churches also date to the Byzantine era. What remains unclear is whether the building of synagogues at this time was a direct result of Christian activity, of a flourishing economic situation that encouraged such construction by both populations (and for a time the Samaritans as well), or a combination of the two. Synagogues have also been found in the Bet Shean region, on the periphery of Judea to the south and east, and in the nearby coastal area. The overwhelming majority of these synagogues likewise date to Late Antiquity, and thus, despite the restrictions of Imperial laws, the Jews in Byzantine Palestine continued to build new communal institutions (Merot, Capernaum, Bet Alpha, and in the south), repair those already standing (Ma‘oz Ḥayyim, Ḥammat Tiberias, Ḥammat Gader, ‘En Gedi), and rebuild and refurbish others after a period of abandonment or neglect (Nevoraya). In fact, it was precisely at the end of this era, in the sixth and seventh centuries CE, that the number of synagogue buildings in ancient Palestine (Ḥammat Tiberias, ‘En Gedi, Nevoraya, Ḥorvat Rimmon, Ma‘oz Ḥayyim) peaked.

6.2

The Appearance of Piyyut in Jewish Liturgy

Religious poetry was a liturgical innovation in the Byzantine synagogue that flourished in the sixth and seventh centuries, although it may have already surfaced a century or two earlier. While the language and content of this literary genre drew heavily on the Bible and earlier midrash, its very appearance in Late Antiquity is significant. Although ancient sources offer no solid information as to why piyyut appeared at this time, several medieval texts have attributed its creation to times of persecution and crisis, when communal prayer was ostensibly forbidden. Modern scholars have suggested that this genre might have evolved from communal prayer, early Hebrew poetry, or even the synagogue sermon, but all such suggestions remain hypothetical, at best. However, the wider Byzantine setting must also be taken into account, as liturgical poetry flourished in contemporary Christian as well as Samaritan contexts. Even the Hebrew words for this type of poetry (piyyut) and for its poet (paytan) are Hebraized terms taken from the wider

116

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

Greek milieu. Recently, Ophir Münz-Manor has persuasively argued29 that the fourth and fifth centuries witnessed the simultaneous emergence of Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian religious poetry (the latter in both Syriac and Greek) and that they share many poetic, thematic, and conceptual characteristics. The range of similarities clearly indicates that such parallels were part of a common religious creativity in Late Antiquity that broke from all antecedents, be they ancient Mesopotamian, biblical, rabbinic, or Greek. Specifically, Romanos’s poems from the sixth century, especially his kontakia, have been compared to Yannai’s Qedushta that also appeared at about this time. Such parallels indeed suggest indirect if not more substantive contact between these contemporary phenomena. One wonders if synagogue piyyut would have emerged at this time without the existence of a similar Christian or Samaritan genre. While a definitive answer to this question is presently beyond the purview of our extant sources, I would suspect not.

6.3

Aggadic Midrashim: A New Creation

The Byzantine period witnessed the appearance of a new rabbinic genre—the aggadic midrash—the earliest appearance of which dates to the fifth–sixth centuries: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Pesiqta d’Rav Kahana, Lamentations Rabbah, and perhaps others.30 Practically all we know about Palestinian rabbinic culture at this time comes from such midrashim (the only halakhic midrash being the Ma‘asim, a collection of court decisions and responsa), indeed a far cry in content and quantity from most of the halakhic works of the third and fourth centuries. The emergence of this literary genre at this time can be explained as collections of commentaries and sermons focusing on the Bible that parallel the commentaries and sermons (catena) of contemporary church fathers. Is it possible that this type of Jewish creativity was influenced by Christian practice? Alternatively, were these parallel genres of literary works among Jews and Christians the product of a common zeitgeist that yielded similar responses in both religions?31 Indeed, aggadah may well have been a Jewish response to the changing circumstances of Jewish life in the fifth—seventh centuries. This may be evidenced in Pesiqta d’Rav Kahana, which quotes third-century R. Isaac as follows: At first, when there was ample money, a person would want to learn Mishnah or Talmud (lit., halakhic material); now, when money is not available and, moreover, we suffer [oppression] from the [gentile] kingdoms, a person wants to learn Bible or aggadah. (12, 3, ed. Mandelbaum, 205 [Hebrew])

29 Ophir Münz-Manor, »Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East: A Comparative Approach,« JAJ 1 (2010): 336–61. 30 Hermann L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, Minneapolis/MN, 1992, 300–22; Avigdor Shinan, »Late Midrashic, Paytanic, and Targumic Literature,« in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. IV, ed. Steven T. Katz, Cambridge, 2006, 678–91. 31 See Marc Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity, Albany/NY, 1995.

7 Jewish »Late Antiquity« in its wider Cultural Context

117

Assuming the authenticity of this attribution, whatever third-century situation R. Isaac might have envisioned was very apt for this fifth- to sixth-century composition. The pressures of Christian rule at the time may have been an important catalyst in the rise of aggadic study and the production of aggadic compilations, and if this line of reasoning be granted, then the change in the rabbinic agenda toward the end of Late Antiquity was very much tied not only to Jewish circumstances but also to the Byzantine context and the literary practices among church fathers.

6.4

Jewish Art in Late Antiquity

Although the use of art in Jewish contexts already existed in the third century, a far wider range of themes and art forms gained popularity in Late Antiquity; many of the most common motifs in Jewish art found their parallels in the ByzantineChristian world.32 For example, the widespread use of the menorah throughout the Jewish world—in synagogues, cemeteries, and domestic settings—was in no small measure a reaction to Christianity. Most striking in this respect is the menorah’s appearance on objects precisely where the cross appears in a Christian context. Given the revolution transpiring under Byzantine rule, when the territorial empire of Rome was becoming a religious realm centered in Constantinople, religious identity emerged as a primary factor in the art of Late Antiquity. Consequently, Jews began using symbols and creating artistic forms in sync with their neighbors, and in their case it undoubtedly served to bolster their self-identity. This would demonstrate that the surrounding society in large part stimulated Jewish creativity and innovation in Late Antiquity. While this process had only begun to develop as part of the religious ferment in the third century, under Byzantine rule—both in the face of a hostile Christianity and, perhaps ironically, motivated by Christian artistic motifs—Jews nurtured them far more extensively in Late Antiquity.

7

Jewish »Late Antiquity« in its wider Cultural Context

Scholarly opinion of the Byzantine-Christian era as a whole has undergone a tidal change in the last generation. The reigning narrative for several centuries had been Edward Gibbon’s magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,33 but has been challenged of late by a number of scholars, foremost among whom is Peter R. L. Brown, who is credited with having played a pivotal role in redefining, reassessing, and renaming these centuries as »Late Antiquity.«34 Rather

32 See Levine, Visual Judaism, 179–475. 33 6 vols., London, 1962–66. 34 See, e.g., Peter R. L. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity AD 150–750, London, 1971; idem, The Making of Late Antiquity, Cambridge/MA, 1978.

118

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

than viewing this period as inferior to the high culture of the Roman Empire in the first century CE, Brown asserts that it should be appreciated for its own unique vitality and creativity, as well as by an economic boom resulting from centuries of relative peace. The cultural vitality evidenced in Jewish literary productivity in the fourth through sixth centuries, as reflected in the remains from the Genizah, also may have been influenced, at least in part, by the creation of the province of Palaestina Secunda, which was the main area of Jewish settlement in the country throughout Late Antiquity and included the central and eastern Galilee, the central and southern Golan Heights, the Jezreel and Bet Shean Valleys, northern Gilead, and the Jordan Rift Valley in Transjordan.35 Moreover, the emphasis on holiness within contemporary Christianity also seems to have played an important motivating role in the creation of not only religious art among Jews (both symbols and biblical themes) but also in facilitating the transformation of the synagogue into a decidedly religious institution. These common developments within Judaism and Christianity are symptomatic of the degree to which Christian cultural expression affected Jewish creativity and innovation in Late Antiquity. The final centuries of Late Antiquity (fifth—seventh) seem to have largely preserved the status quo of the earlier ones, although our sources are less forthcoming with details. We learn of no direct attacks on the Jews in Palestine itself, other than certain pressures initiated in response to the more tolerant stance toward Jews of Theodosius II’s wife Eudocia ca. 444 CE regarding their access to the Temple Mount area and praying there to commemorate its destruction in 70 CE. Despite a slew of anti-Jewish legislation in the last years of Theodosius II’s reign c 430–440, and then sporadically a century later under Justinian, it is difficult to assess the effect of such laws in Jewish life, particularly in light of the reservations noted above relating to the effect of Imperial legislation in earlier times. In contrast to the Samaritans, who initiated a series of rebellions against the Byzantine-Christian authorities in the late fifth and sixth centuries and subsequently suffered immensely, the Jews seem to have remained relatively quiescent. Contrary to whatever legal or rhetorical pressures might have been initiated by Christian authorities, the fact remains that Jewish creativity (the building of synagogues and cultural-religious productivity) continued throughout these years.

8

Conclusions

The rise of Christianity in the fourth century CE inaugurated a new era for the Jews, one that continued for some three hundred years until the Arab conquest in

35 Levine, »Palaestina Secunda: The geohistorical Setting for Jewish Resilience and Creativity in Late Antiquity,« in:. Strength to Strength: Essays in Appreciation of Shaye J. D. Cohen, ed. Michael L. Satlow, Providence 2018.

8 Conclusions

119

the mid-seventh century. Throughout this period, Jews were actively engaged in a broad range of cultural realms that were often stimulated by the dominance of Christianity and its penetration into all corners of the empire. Despite the church’s drive for compliance and unity, the Byzantine Empire remained fairly heterogeneous, not only among Christians but others as well. J. Hillis Miller has aptly noted: »Periods differ from one another because there are different forms of heterogeneity, not because each period held a single coherent view of the world.«36 The unique diversity of this era accorded it a special character; it was a Roman culture under Christian rule, but still less rigid and ideologically driven than what was to crystallize in the Middle Ages. It is only when the entire range of evidence for this period is taken into consideration—the artistic and archaeological remains and the literary traditions of the intellectual and religious elites—that we can gain the fullest possible appreciation of Jewish history at this juncture, affording valuable insights into the many religious and cultural preferences among the various Jewish communities. This material, in turn, attests to the degree of the Jews’ openness and willingness to absorb influences from the surrounding society. If Brown’s term »Late Antiquity« points to processes of renewal, vitality, and creativity in the society of the third—seventh centuries, then it is not difficult to identify similar developments within the Jewish sphere as well. Instances of Jewish creativity in both the material and literary realms can be fully understood and appreciated only if viewed in the wider historical context in which they coalesced, namely, the Byzantine-Christian orbit. The creativity and resilience reflected in these sources, even as the vulnerability and hostility now being promoted by the Church was beginning to affect Jewish life, can best characterize this particular era of Jewish history. For further reading Alexander, Philip S., »Incantations and Books of Magic,« in E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135). Edited by G. Vermes et al. Edinburgh, rev. ed. 1987, 3.342–379. Brown, Peter R. L., »The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,« Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–101. Elior, Rachel, »Early Forms of Jewish Mysticism,« in The Cambridge History of Judaism. Edited by S. T. Katz. Cambridge, 2006, 4.749–791. Gruenwald, Itamar, From Apocalypticism to Gnosticism: Studies in Apocalypticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Gnosticism. Frankfurt am Main, 1988. Irshai, Oded, »The Priesthood in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity,« in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine. Edited by L. I. Levine. Jerusalem, 2004, 67–106 (Hebrew). Macmullen, Ramsey, »The Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire,« American Journal of Philology 103 (1982): 233–246.

36 Joseph Hillis Miller, »Deconstructing the Deconstructors,« Diacritics 5,2 (1975): 31.

120

The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel

Markus, Robert A., »How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places,« Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 257–271. Neusner, Jacob, Judaism in the Matrix of Christianity. Atlanta 1992. Price, Jonathan J. and Haggai Misgav, »Jewish Inscriptions and Their Use,« in Literature of the Sages. Edited by S. Safrai et al. Assen and Philadelphia 2006, 2.461–483. Reeves, John C., Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader. Atlanta, 2005. Rubenstein, Jeffrey L., »Talmudic Astrology: Bavli Šabbat 156a–b,« Hebrew Union College Annual 78 (2007): 109–148. Runesson, Anders, »Architecture, Conflict, and Identity Formation: Jews and Christians in Capernaum from the First to the Sixth Century,« in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee. Edited by J. Zangenberg, H. W. Attridge, and D. B. Martin. Tübingen, 2007, 231–257. Schäfer, Peter, »Jewish Magic Literature in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages,« Journal of Jewish Studies 41 (1990): 75–91. Scholem, Gershom, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York, 1941. Schwartz, Seth, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. Princeton, 2001. Stemberger, Günter, »Exegetical Contacts between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire,« in Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Edited by M. Saebø. Göttingen, 1996, 1.569–586. Stemberger, Günter, »Jewish-Christian Contacts in Galilee (Fifth to Seventh Centuries),« in Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land: First–Fifteenth Centuries CE. Edited by A. Kofsky and G. G. Stroumsa. Jerusalem, 1998, 131–146. Stroumsa, Guy G., »Religious Dynamics between Christians and Jews in Late Antiquity (312–640),« in The Cambridge History of Christianity. Edited by A. Casiday and F. W. Norris. Cambridge, 2007, 2.151–172. Tsafrir, Yoram, »The Byzantine Setting and Its Influence on Ancient Synagogues,« in The Synagogue in Late Antiquity. Edited by L. I. Levine. Philadelphia, 1987, 147–157. Vilozny, Naama, »Figure and Image in Magic and Popular Art: Between Babylonia and Palestine, during the Roman and Byzantine Periods,« Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010 (Hebrew).

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE Geoffrey Herman

The history of Babylonian Jewry, from the beginning of the first millennium CE until the arrival of Islam, is the story of the emergence of an ancient community from relative obscurity to a leading position in the Jewish world. Its contribution to the Jewish literary and spiritual heritage has hardly been surpassed by any other Diaspora community in the course of Jewish history as a whole. This chapter will describe the main features of this community and trace its key historical, intellectual, and socio-cultural developments in the course of the Parthian and Sasanian eras. Traditionally »Babylonia« is also known in ancient sources as Āsōrīstān and Beit Aramaye. It was the region defined by the two mighty rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, but more specifically, the stage in their course below the highlands of modern-day Iraq, where they are slow and wide, and steadily begin to converge. To the south it extended into the region of Zabē, the lowlands of Babylonia. Close to the point where the two rivers join, a marshy land just beyond the region of Kashkar, we reach the end of the province. To the east of the Tigris it stretches until the mountains of Media; and west of the Euphrates, to the desert. To the north it was bordered by the Sasanian provinces of Arbāyistān (‘Arab, Beiṯ ‘Arbaye), Nōd-Ardaxšīragān (Adiabene, Hadyab) and Garmegan (Beit Garmai); and to the south the province of Mesene that meets the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Although Babylonia was by nature a dry land, it was »rich since it can yield harvest without rain« (b. Ta‘anit 10a). This refers not just to the two great rivers which directly facilitated intensive agriculture within its alluvial plain and determined the manner of farming, but also to the numerous man-made canals. Some of these were of great antiquity and maintained at great effort by the rulers, which drained off the major rivers for a distance, considerably expanding the fertile area for irrigation and creating arteries for transportation and settlement far beyond the immediate riverbed. On account of the richness of the soil and agrarian potential, Babylonia was a desirable province, densely populated, farmed intensively, and producing abundant yields. Jewish settlement in this region dates back to the major migration of Jews around the time of the destruction of the First Temple. The biblical sources inform us of two principal waves: the exile of »the craftsmen and the artisans« of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in 597 BCE (2 Kings 24, 12–14); and the subsequent deportation of the remnant after the destruction of the First Jerusalem Temple in 587/6 BCE. Archaeological evidence in the form of cuneiform tablets recording diverse economical contracts and receipts, alongside the late biblical accounts, confirm the

122

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

settlement of communities of Judean exiles in various parts of Babylonia shortly after their arrival and during the Achaemenid era (550–330 BCE). Our foremost source of knowledge about the Jews in Babylonian in this period is the comprehensive and voluminous Babylonian Talmud. Composed by the Rabbis of Babylonia, it encompasses the traditions, popular wisdom, legends, and legal deliberations amassed and valued by this community over many centuries. Its main focus lies between the third and fifth centuries CE, although the exact date when it reached final completion is the topic of considerable debate among scholars.1 For the earlier period of Arsacid rule over Babylonia (131 BCE–224 CE), our most significant source is the first century Jewish author, Josephus Flavius. Rabbinic sources composed in Palestine, such as the Jerusalem Talmud and midrashim are also rich in information about this community, including many of the teachings of the Babylonian Rabbis, and they also offer nuggets of information dating back to the Arsacid era.2 Another source of information of inestimable value about this Jewish community is incantation bowls. These are magical texts inscribed, mostly on clay bowls, in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic. Written by Jewish scribes for clients, many who were non-Jewish, they served as a means of protection from perceived demonic harm, health problems, or as charms for success in business, or love. A few were drafted with the objective to harm others.3 Indirect sources of information on Jewish life in Babylonia are contemporary non-Jewish sources, such as the works of classical authors, Persian epigraphic sources, or Syriac-Christian literature. Although Jews are mentioned only sparingly in such sources, information garnered from them tell us about the milieu in which the Jews lived, and relate to matters that were also part of the experience of the Jewish population, such as politics, the administration, and religious practice.

1

Jewish settlement, community, and daily life

Large Jewish communities were found throughout Babylonia in this period, from the region of Kashkar and Nippur near the southern boundary of Mesene to Anbar in the North.4 Jewish communities were dotted along the Euphrates and Tigris and

1 See the discussion in the chapter by C. Bakhos in volume II. 2 See the discussion in Geoffrey Herman, »The Jews of Parthian Babylonia,« in The Parthian Empire and Its Religions: Studies in the Dynamics of Religious Diversity, ed. Peter Wick and Markus Zehnder, Pietas 5, Gutenberg, 2012, 141–50. 3 For a recent overview to the field see Shaul Shaked, James Nathan Ford, and Siam Bhayro (with contributions from Matthew Morgenstern and Naama Vilozny), Aramaic Bowl Spells, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Bowls, vol. 1, Leiden/Boston/MA, 2013, 1–27. 4 For detailed information on the Jewish settlement in Sasanian Babylonia, see Aharon Oppenheimer, Babylonia Judaica, Wiesbaden, 1983; Geoffrey Herman, »Babylonian of Pure Lineage: Notes on Babylonian Jewish Toponymy,« in Sources and Interpretation in Ancient Judaism, Studies for Tal Ilan at Sixty, ed. Meron M. Piotrkowski, Geoffrey Herman and Saskia Dönitz, AJEC 104, Leiden/Boston/MA, 2018, 191–228.

1 Jewish settlement, community, and daily life

123

beside the many canals that crossed between the two rivers, such as the Royal Canal (Nehar Malka). There were also Jewish communities to the east of the Tigris such as Neharbel, Ctesiphon, and in the Gaukhay and Nahrawan areas. Many different religious and ethnic population groups inhabited Babylonia besides Jews, including Arabs, Christians, Mandeans, Manichaeans and Zoroastrians and no religious community was totally isolated from the others. Typically, towns are described in the Talmud as either mostly Jewish or mostly Gentile. Larger urban centers often had a substantial Jewish component, including the grand cities of Neharde’a and Mehoza. A city said to have been entirely Jewish is described by the Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae XXV, 4, 1), who recorded the progression of the Roman army during Julian’s campaign through Mesopotamia in the mid-fourth century CE. The Jews of Babylonia in this period were essentially an agrarian society. The majority were engaged in the various forms of agriculture typical to the region; the cultivation of date palms, crops, and fishing and fish breeding. Sesame was a valuable crop. Others worked, for instance, in the production and trade in linen, flax, or silk, in life-stock rearing, or in vegetable gardens. Some Jews were wealthy land-owners. A few just had their own plot of land to cultivate. Many were tenant farmers or crop sharers in larger enterprises, including royal or temple estates. Slavery was also known, including Jewish slaves. More than any other ancient source from this period and region, the Babylonian Talmud, filled with exhaustive discussion on issues and challenges affecting the daily preoccupations of the Jewish farmers, offers vivid testimony to such an agrarian lifestyle.5 Jewish communities would maintain a synagogue where the Jews would typically gather together on Sabbath mornings (b. ‘Eruvin 59a). Community leadership is little mentioned in the Rabbinic sources, which tend to ascribe a leading role to the Rabbis themselves in administrating communal matters, including caring for orphans, charity, and education. This is probably not the whole picture. Women would seem to have had a subordinate role in public society to that of men. Most of the occupations of women were not different than in other ancient societies. They worked in domains that were mostly extensions of domestic activities performed by women, including spinning and weaving, hair-dressing, and caring for infants and children.6 The incantation bowls, however, provide multiple examples of the initiative of female clients, many of them Jewish. Here then, the wife has employed the services of the magician to write spells for her welfare, and for the concerns of her family. On the place of women in Jewish society we are largely limited to the information but also to the perspective provided by the literature produced within Rabbinic society, which was dominated by males.

5 On agriculture among the Jews in Babylonia see Julius Newman, The Agricultural Life of the Jews in Babylonia between the years 200 C. E. and 500 C. E., London, 1932; and in Hebrew, Moshe Beer, The Babylonian Amoraim, Aspects of Economic Life, 2nd ed., Ramat-Gan, 1982. 6 See Eliyahou Ahdut, »The Status of the Jewish Woman in Babylonia in the Talmudic Era,« PhD diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1999 (Hebrew with English abstract).

124

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

Family structure would appear to have been traditional. A young age for marriage was encouraged for both men and women. Polygamy certainly existed in theory, even as there is less evidence of it in practice. A »good birth« was highly prized in Babylonian Jewish society. This meant, for instance, that descent from the biblical Levitical or Aharonic (priestly) stock was esteemed. Such considerations feature in marriage choices and may have been important qualities sought after among leaders, including Rabbis. Converts to Judaism, for which there is some evidence in this period, would appear low in such a scale. The question of lineage was not, however, limited to the genealogy of individuals alone, but took on a broad geographical quality. It was asserted that the pedigree of the Jews in Babylonia was purer than that of Jews from other places in the world. But within Babylonia itself, too, geographical locales were compared and contrasted according to a scale of perceived lineage purity, some towns or even entire regions were alleged to be better than others. Thus, employing a medical prognosis to compare the purity of ancestry of the Jewish population in the major Sasanian provinces, we find the following: »Rav Papa the elder said in the name of Rav: Babylonia is healthy; Mesene is dead; Media is sick, and Elam is dying« (b. Qidushin 71b).7

2

Under the Arsacid and Sasanian Empires

The Parthian Arsacid dynasty (131 BCE–224 CE) had initially captured Babylonia from the Seleucids in the second century BCE, absorbing it into their domain, yet by 224 CE their empire had been seized by the Persian Sasanids (224–651 CE). The latter held it until the Arab conquest in the course of the seventh century. Set on the western edge of this vast kingdom facing the Roman empire, Babylonia was directly affected by the many conflicts fought between the two empires in the course of the centuries. The Jews constituted a small component of the population of the empire as a whole, although they were far more numerous in Babylonia. For much of the Parthian period we have but little information on the Jews. A noteworthy exception is an account provided by Josephus on the rise and fall of a short-lived bandit kingdom set up in the heart of Babylonia in the course of the first century CE. Two Jewish brothers, Anileus and Asineus established a militia and began to dominate the local area close to Neharde’a beside the Euphrates. They soon earned the support of the Arsacid ruler, Artabanus II (10–35, 36–38 CE), who saw them as a valua7 On marriage in rabbinic sources see Isaiah M. Gafni, »The Institution of Marriage in Rabbinic Times,« in The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory, ed. David Kraemer, New York/ Oxford, 1989, 13–30 [= in idem, Jews and Judaism in the Rabbinic Era: Image and Reality – History and Historiography, TSAJ 173, Tübingen, 2019, 343–57]; Ahdut, »The Status«; Adiel Schremer, Male and Female He Created Them, Jewish Marriage in the Late Second Temple, Mishnah and Talmud Periods, Jerusalem, 2003 (Hebrew); Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity, Oxford/Princeton/NJ, 2001. On lineage issues in a geographical context see, with references to earlier scholarship, Herman, »Babylonian of Pure Lineage.«

2 Under the Arsacid and Sasanian Empires

125

ble ally in his own internal power politics (Josephus, Ant. 18 310–379). These Jews, however, were ultimately defeated, ostensibly after committing a series of religious and political blunders. These included the marriage by one of the brothers with the Gentile wife of a Parthian general, and the humiliation of a member of the Arsacid royal family. The image of the Jewish community offered in this account is of one strict in the observance of the Sabbath and advocating the avoidance of idolatry and intermarriage. These Jews were also portrayed as capable of acting with the equestrian military prowess worthy of the Parthian cultural milieu in which they resided. At this time there was also a sizeable Jewish population in the major Hellenistic city of Seleucia, across from the Parthian city of Ctesiphon, which was compelled to flee in the wake of civil strife. This account, while written by Josephus as a religious didactic piece, reveals something of the ongoing inter-ethnic tension between Jews and other population groups of the region, in particular the Babylonian Gentile population and the Greeks living there.8 Under the Sasanians, for the most part, life for the Jews was peaceful and stable. As non-combatants they did not participate actively in the imperial conflicts, but might still have been caught in the crossfire. We hear of the anguish of the Babylonian Rabbis over the destruction of the Jewish community of Caesarea-Mazaca in Roman Cappodocia by the army of the Sasanian king, Shapur I (240–271 CE) during his campaign of 260 CE (b. Mo‘ed Qatan 26a). The loss is, nevertheless, regarded as the non-deliberate cost of his war of conquest rather than purposeful destruction aimed against Jews. If the fiery political events of the times between Rome and Persia were inevitably eyed through the prism of Scripture, they were invariably lacking in portentous excitement. For instance, the scriptural verse from Daniel (7:5), »and three ribs in its mouth between its teeth« is interpreted as follows: »This is Harran, Adiabene, and Nisibis, which on occasion it swallows and on occasion it spits out (b. Qidushin 72a)«. Although the frightful image of ancient Persia as the bear of Daniel is identified with contemporary Persia, and the ribs symbolically located as toponyms within the region that was the center of ongoing conflict between the two empires, there is no sense of apocalyptic times. No-one is being called upon to pack their bags and repent. The sense is rather of an ongoing conflict between Persia and Rome. The question whether Persia would ultimately defeat Rome or the opposite occupied the Rabbis, but the issue was not pressing. In a few cases, however, Jews in Babylonia suffered directly from political conflicts, such as the incursion by the Palmyrean army in the mid-third century, which is apparently connected to the destruction of Neharde’a.9 The Jews also suffered during the invasion of the Roman emperor, Julian, in the middle of the fourth century, which reached the Sasanian capital. The impact of these events on Jewish

8 On this episode see Geoffrey Herman, »Iranian Epic Motifs in Josephus’ Antiquities, (XVIII, 314–370)«, JJS 57,2 (Autumn 2006): 245–68; and David Goodblatt, »Josephus on Parthian Babylonia (Antiquities XVIII 310–379)« JAOS 107,4 (1987): 605–22. 9 The only explicit source on this event is a line in the Geonic Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon. See Benjamin Lewin, Iggeret R. Scherira Gaon, Haifa, 1921, 82.

126

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

life must have been considerable but has unfortunately left little trace in our extant sources. The Talmud itself attests occasionally to the larger political changes, speaking of the kings Shapur I (240–270 CE), Shapur II (307–379 CE), and Yazdgird I (399–420 CE), threats of invasion, the relative strengths of Rome against Persia, or the need to redeem captives. Audiences between the kings and some of the foremost Rabbis are recounted, and a fourth century rabbi, Rava, is said to have engaged in conversation with the »mother of Shapur,« named Ifra Hormiz. Even as the historicity of such accounts would be hard to demonstrate, they do tell us about the general feeling. With some exceptions, the pervading mood in such sources is of a sense of belonging and acceptance of their lot under the Persian empire. The Jews saw themselves to be a natural rooted part of the Babylonian scenery, and embraced their role as loyal subjects within a broader Persian empire. It was judged a great honor to get to see the gentile king, whom, we are repeatedly reminded, deserves the utmost respect both in public and in private.10 Jews encountered the ruling Persian administrative mechanism and its servants through the occasional billeting of soldiers among the civilian population, or the presence among them of Persian nobles, and high and low overseers. Matters of taxation brought the Jews into direct contact with the Sasanian administrative mechanism, typically under the jurisdiction of Persian officials. The Sasanian administration was typically organized according to proximity to the main cities and Jews, as others, paid taxes on the basis of their regional affiliation. The degree to which the Jews were bound by the Persian legal system is complex. The Rabbis would seem to have been familiar with Persian legal terminology and practice, and have had faith in the Persian legal system, acknowledging that it was regulated. Indeed, it relied upon registers, records of court proceedings, and due process. At the same time, Jews preferred to turn to Jewish judges, Rabbis and others, to resolve their judicial issues, whether these be formally appointed judges or those who acted as arbitrators. The famous legal ruling, attributed to the leading third century Rabbi, Samuel, that »the law of the kingdom is binding« (e.g. b. Bava Batra 55a), symbolically reflects acceptance of the authority of the Sasanian legal system for the Jews, at least, in certain branches of civil law. This would certainly allow that Sasanian laws were mediated through Jewish legal channels.11 One notable example is the Persian legal stipulation evoked in the Talmud, relating to the boundary of land ownership on the riverbank. Ownership of a field beside a river did not include the riverbank itself. If another person came and took possession of the actual riverbank, Rabbinic law initially disapproved of such

10 Geoffrey Herman, »›In Honour of the House of Caesar‹: Attitudes to the Kingdom in the Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and other Sasanian Sources,« in The Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and its Cultural World, ed. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein and Geoffrey Herman, Providence/RI, 2018, 103–23. 11 For general discussion see Geoffrey Herman, A Prince without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasanian Era, TSAJ 150, Tübingen, 2012, 194–209.

3 Jews and Persians

127

behavior, but it was not legally forbidden. Subsequently, however, it was learned that »the Persians write, ›It is acquired by you as far as the depth of the water reaching up to the horse’s neck‹« (b. Bava Metsia 108a). This law, brought in the Talmud as if it is a citation from Persian land acquisition contracts, provided the legitimacy to change the Rabbinic law and legally remove such an interloper.12 Thus, the Rabbinic court system apparently needed to follow the rules of the state relating to land law, to respond to its laws, and reconcile and refine these with the Jewish legal traditions. These included laws inherited from the Rabbinic schools in Palestine and those constantly being developed in the Rabbinic schools of Babylonia.

3

Jews and Persians

As inhabitants of a Persian empire, Jews in Babylonia came into regular contact with Persian language13 and culture. Persian carried with it a marked prestige, being the language of the ruling elite, and Persian culture inevitably left its mark on the Jews’ own modes of thought and expression. Thus, while the vernacular employed by the Jews remained Aramaic, numerous Persian loanwords entered their diction, often for luxury items, administrative and legal expressions, but also for words in everyday use. The Rabbis could make Persian wordplays. For instance (b. ‘Avodah Zarah 24b): »Rava said: on what basis do the Persians refer to a scribe as dibīr? From here: ›and the name of Debir before was Kiryath Sepher‹ (Judges 1, 11)’«. This witty remark plays on the similarity between the Middle-Persian term for scribe, dibīr, and the toponym Kiryath Sepher, which means literally ›the city of the scribe/book‹. Themes current in the Persian milieu entered the common pool of imagery which the Talmud occasionally employs. One discerns a trend to imitate elite Persian society in its portrayals of contemporary Rabbinic society or biblical exegesis. The head of the Rabbinic academy is described mounted upon multiple cushions in the style of the Persian royals, as the latter are typically depicted on contemporary Sasanian artifacts.14 The Palestinian patriarch, is reckoned as possessing so much wealth that »the stable-master of Rabbi was richer

12 See the detailed analysis of this case, with reference to the Sasanian legal tome, Mādayān ī hazār dādestān (Book of a Thousand Judgements), Yaakov Elman, »Up to the Ears in Horse’ Necks (B. M. 108a): On Sasanian Agricultural Policy and Private ›Eminent Domain‹,« JSIJ 3 (2004): 95–149. 13 See, Stefan Schreiner, »Languages of the Jews«, in volume III. 14 Daniel Sperber, »On the Unfortunate Adventures of Rav Kahana: A Passage of Saboraic Polemic from Sasanian Persia,« in Irano-Judaica, vol. 1, ed. Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer, Jerusalem, 1982, 83–100 [= idem, »The Misfortunes of Rav Kahana. A Passage of PostTalmudic Polemic«, in Magic and Folklore in Rabbinic Literature, ed. Daniel Sperber, Ramat Gan, 1994, 145–64.]

128

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

than King Shapur« (b. Shabbat 113b, Bava Metsia 85a).15 This statement depends on the common reputation of the stable-master in Sasanian culture as the lowest of the court employees. Expanded biblical episodes imagine King David falcon hunting—a sport associated with the Persian nobility.16 Eschatological notions might take up a Persianized flavor. It is said that the messiah will come riding, not just any donkey, but »a donkey of a thousand colors« (xar hazār gonag) (b. Sanhedrin 98a). Here the Talmud uses a Persian phrase, suggesting an evocative Persian image. The dominant religion in the Sasanian Empire, the religion of the ruling Persians, was Zoroastrianism, and some of its more pronounced and distinctive features were known to the Jews. Zoroastrian veneration of fire and water, their burial practice, the mode of ritual recitation of holy texts by the Zoroastrian magi, and ritual silence during meals, are all mentioned in the Talmud. The impact of Zoroastrian religious ideas and practices on Judaism remains unclear, but there would seem to be areas where Jews and Zoroastrian practice was similar in some ways. This includes prayer gestures, modesty, conduct during meals, and some shared notions of purity and impurity.17 There was daily interaction between Jews and Persians on many levels, and the predominance of Persian, and particularly Zoroastrian theophoric names of clients in the incantation bowl corpus written by Jewish magicians, offers tangible testimony to this interaction.18 There are some indications of religious polemics between Jews and Zoroastrians. While explicit anti-Jewish views in Zoroastrian sources only appear after the Sasanian era, the Rabbis polemicize, both overtly and covertly with various tenets or practices of the Zoroastrian faith. For instance, aware that Zoroastrian priests recite ritual formulae in Avestan, and furthermore, cognizant of the fact that it was already at that time a little understood ancient Persian language, they could observe that »the Magus speaks but knows not what he says« (b. Sotah 22a). Elsewhere, a Magus is said to explain to a Rabbi, »the upper half (of your body) belongs to Hormizd; the lower half belongs to Ahreman« (b. Sanhedrin 39a). By speaking of the supreme deity of Zoroastrianism, Hormizd (= Ahura Mazda) and its foremost evil antithesis, Ahreman (= Angra Mainyu), the Magus alludes here to the notion of a separation between the realms of good and evil in Zoroastrianism. This would seem

15 Geoffrey Herman, »Ahasuerus, the Former Stable-master of Belshazzar and the Wicked Alexander of Macedon: Two Parallels between the Babylonian Talmud and Persian Sources«, AJSR 29,2 (2005): 283–97. 16 Idem, »One Day David Went out for the Hunt of the Falconers: Persian Themes in the Babylonian Talmud«, in Shoshanat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman, ed. Shai Secunda and Steven Fine, Leiden, 2012, 111–36. 17 For a broad discussion on the commonalities cf. Yaakov Elman, »Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accommodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition,« in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee, Cambridge, 2007, 165–97. 18 The most complete collection of these names can be found in Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part IV: The Eastern Diaspora 330 BCE–650 CE, TSAJ 141, Tübingen, 2011.

3 Jews and Persians

129

to point to the Zoroastrian custom of donning a kustīg, a ritual belt. The Rabbi then mocks the Magus by asking in response, »If so, how does Ahreman allow Hormizd to transfer water through his land?!« His rebuttal, alluding to passing urine through the body and identifying cooperation between these two powers, essentially undermines the absolute dualism fundamental to Zoroastrianism. Elsewhere Ahura Mazda as degraded and depicted as Hormiz the son of Liliths (b. Bava Batra 73a) and then revealed in burlesque style as playfully »leaping over the domes of Mehoza.«19 Kinship combinations, presented in the Talmud as challenging witty riddles, might perhaps covertly reference the next-of-kin marriage customs (xwēdōdah) viewed in Zoroastrianism as highly meritorious. An example is as follows: A woman who declares that someone is both her brother and her son— this is resolved as the result of a man begetting a son from his daughter (b. Yevamot 97a–b). If we have little evidence of an active polemic against Jews, such as existed at the same time in the Christian Roman empire, this does not indicate that Jewish life was entirely free from religiously motivated friction. There were occasional instances when Jews were subject to religious harassment by Zoroastrians. There is no contemporary source that speaks of efforts by Zoroastrians to convert Jews, neither by persuasion nor by force. We hear, however, of interference relating to Jewish burial customs, ritual immersion, ritual slaughter, and matters relating to the use of light or fire. Anecdotes describe, for instance, how a Magus seeks to exhume Jewish corpses, or enters a Jewish home to seize a lit lantern. Although in the Talmud itself such actions are portrayed as persecutory »decrees,« and may have been experienced by the Jews as such, the common denominator to all these cases is that they reflect areas of ritual practice or actions that were habitual to the Jews, but which evidently offended particular Zoroastrian religious sensibilities. There is no sign of any of this being the result of deliberate antagonism by either side. The ultimate purpose of this interference then, was not so much to afflict Jews than to preserve what was perceived by Zoroastrians to be the purity of the key elements—earth, water, and fire. They sought to protect the earth from the ritual pollution of corpse impurity. Water was perceived as a pure element and contact between females shortly after their menstrual cycle with water was likewise viewed as ritual contamination. The methods of ritual slaughter practiced by Jews may have similarly offended certain Zoroastrian beliefs. The anecdotes relating to fire are more opaque but should probably be read in view of the sacral properties of fire in Zoroastrianism. While it seems clear that the Jews were not singled out qua Jews, there are two exceptions to this state of affairs. Persian antagonism towards Jews albeit alongside other non-Zoroastrian faiths, finds explicit expression on the

19 Reuven Kiperwasser and Dan D.Y. Shapira, »Encounters between Iranian Myth and Rabbinic Mythmakers in the Babylonian Talmud,« in Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations Between Jews, Iranians and Babylonians in Antiquity, ed. Uri Gabbay and Shai Secunda, TSAJ 160, Tübingen, 2014, 292f.

130

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

monumental inscriptions of the Zoroastrian high ranking Magus, Kerdīr, from the late third century, in which he boasts of »smiting« Jews. The other exception is found in sources from the later Geonic era which mention more severe persecutions in the course of the late fifth century.20

4

The Babylonian Legacy

The impact of ancient Babylonian civilization, both the vestiges of the past and its contemporary pagan heirs, was considerable. The Aramaic spoken by the Jews is greatly influenced by Akkadian. There is also evidence of Akkadian medical, scientific and astrological traditions in the Talmud. It is likely that much of this legacy, in various new forms, was alive at the time of the Rabbis.21 The Talmud knows of pagan temples in the cities of Borsippa and Babylon, and mentions a certain pagan called Ablat as an interlocuter of the third century Rabbi, Samuel, on issues of an astrological nature. This would provide a pointed example if the name Ablat should in fact ultimately reflect, in some way, an Akkadian name such as Ea-uballit, as has been proposed.22 Furthermore, the »Chaldean« sages whom Rabbis encounter occasionally, and whose enigmatic predictions invariably prove accurate, would seem to be local masters of the traditions of ancient Babylon. Magic practice and belief were not on the periphery of Jewish life, and were known to all, including the Rabbis. The Talmud, in fact, is brimming with material of a magical nature, alongside discussions about demons and how to offer protection from them. Incantation spells in use and copied by Jewish magician scribes on clay bowls often employ more ancient formulae, some remarkably close to Akkadian witchcraft traditions. In addition, Babylonian pagan deities, demons, expressions and modes of thought of great antiquity appear frequently in bowl texts written by Jewish scribes.

20 For the arguments presented here see Robert Brody, »Judaism in the Sasanian Empire: A Case Study in Religious Coexistence,« in Irano-Judaica, vol. 2, ed. Shaul Shaked and Amnon Netzer, Jerusalem 1990, 52–62; and Geoffrey Herman, »›Bury my Coffin Deep!‹: Zoroastrian Exhumation in Jewish and Christian Sources« in Tiferet leYisrael: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Israel Francus, ed. Joel Roth, Menahem Schmeltzer and Yaacov Francus, New York, 2010, 31–59; and Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine, New York, 2006, 121–47. 21 Markham J. Geller, »Akkadian Medicine in the Babylonian Talmud,« in A Traditional Quest: Essays in Honour of Louis Jacobs, ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Sheffield, 1991, 102–12. For links between Manichaeism, a religion which began in Babylonia in the third century CE, and Judaism see, for example, Burton L. Visotzky, »Rabbinic Randglossen to the Cologne Mani Codex,« ZPE 52 (1983): 295–300, and now Geoffrey Herman, »The Talmud in its Babylonian Context: Rava and Bar Sheshakh; Mani and Mihrshah«, in Between Babylonia and the Land of Israel: Studies in Honor of Isaiah M. Gafni, ed. idem, Meir Ben Shahar and Aharon Oppenheimer, Jerusalem, 2016, 79–96 (Hebrew). 22 Markham J. Geller, »The Last Wedge,« ZA 87 (1997): 43‒95.

5 Rabbis and Rabbinic Schools

131

The Babylonian biblical legacy was of great importance for the sense of identity and pride of the Babylonian Jews. Sites of many biblical episodes were identified with contemporary places. These included the Tower of Babel, Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, the furnace into which the three youths were caste, the lions’ den, and a »synagogue of Daniel« could be found in Babylon. Later tradition knows also of a synagogue of Ezekiel, who prophesied in Babylonia and of the Study House of Ezra the Scribe. The Divine Presence was said to reside in the synagogues of Hutsal, or alternatively in the Shaf ve-Yativ synagogue in Neharde’a.23 Not only were the origins of Babylonian Jewry in the exile conducted under an ancient Babylonian kingdom, but the identity and consciousness of this community was shaped by these biblical events.

5

Rabbis and Rabbinic Schools

In the course of the Sasanian era the Rabbis would emerge as the major intellectual force in Babylonia, transforming not only the lives of ancient Babylonian Jews but Jewish religion and culture until today. It is however not easy to trace with confidence the initial steps in this transition. Admittedly a handful of Rabbis from second century Palestine and earlier are associated with Babylonia. Hillel the Elder, R. Hiyya, and R. Nathan, for instance, are Rabbis who flourished in Palestine but are said to have had Babylonian origins.24 However, we lack reliable knowledge on the situation in Babylonia during their lifetimes. Although we hear of R. Hananya, the nephew of R. Joshua, an important Palestinian Rabbi establishing himself in Babylonia in the late second century, we can only confidently speak of a fully-fledged Rabbinic movement in Babylonia starting from the third century, when our contemporary Babylonian sources really take shape. Furthermore, it is only from the early third century that we have the names of many Rabbis in Babylonia, and the total number of named Babylonian Rabbis in our sources reaches many hundreds. Of particular note is the third century amora, Rav, who is seen as a major link between the flourishing Rabbinic movement in the Galilee and the emerging Rabbinic center in southern Babylonia. The Rabbinic revolution in Babylonia was achieved through education. Education, and Rabbinic education in particular, was in this period a male domain. Elementary education for Jewish children focused on the recitation and study of the Hebrew Bible, although we lack the ability to assess the degree of literacy among 23 For discussion see Aharon Oppenheimer, »Babylonian synagogues with Historical Associations,« in Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society, ed. idem and Nili Oppenheimer, TSAJ 108, Tübingen, 2005, 394–401. 24 On the rabbis of Babylonian origin in Palestine prior to the third century C. E. and the situation in Babylonia in this period see, with references to other studies, Herman, »The Jews of Parthian Babylonia.« See, too, David M. Goodblatt, »The Jews in the Parthian Empire – What we don’t know,« in Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity, ed. Benjamin Isaac and Yuval Shahar, TSAJ 147, Tübingen, 2012, 263–78.

132

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

the Jewish population as a whole. Reports of women knowledgeable in the Bible and in Rabbinic tradition are few and far between. One exception is the character named Beruriah. She is described as the wife of the second century Palestinian Rabbi Meir, but she is spoken about mostly in the Babylonian Rabbinic sources which seem to have shaped her image is something of a female scholar. At any rate, notwithstanding the presentation of her as studious, she features in Rabbinic culture less as an example than as an aberration.25 To be a Rabbi was not a vocation in antiquity, and Rabbis did not have a position within the Jewish communities of the time. It was rather something like membership of an elite religious intellectual stream within Jewish society, with some of the characteristics one might associate with affiliation to a sect. The Rabbis saw themselves as distinctive, somewhat aloof from the lay people, but were otherwise fully integrated within all aspects of society. As sages, little pertaining to the current human knowledge available at the time was alien to them, and their traditions in the Babylonian Talmud comment on diverse topics in fields such as medicine, magic, astrology, anatomy, zoology, and botany. Their primary expertise, however, was knowledge of the Oral Law, the transmission and analysis of the Rabbinic traditions received from their Rabbinic teachers and colleagues. Emphasis was placed on the memorization of these earlier Rabbinic traditions, since the method of study, and indeed the method of the transmission and preservation of teachings was oral. This practice was not in any way on account of a lack of literacy, but rather due to the zeitgeist, particularly pervasive in the east, that idealized orality as the medium for the transmission of material of religious content.26 The Rabbis maintained the supreme value of the study of the Torah, as they perceived it, and Rabbinic students in Babylonia, as in Palestine, were expected to subordinate themselves to a master, and to dedicate themselves to such study. Financial support for them was encouraged as a religious virtue. They often left their homes and wives for long periods, but at the same time a leading teacher, Rava, is recorded saying to his students: »I ask of you not to appear before me in the days of Nisan and Tishrei, so that you will not be preoccupied with your sustenance during the entire year« (b. Berakhot 35b). They were advised to return home to work during the harvest season. Not all Jews identified with the Rabbinic agenda, and there are some signs of friction between Rabbis and other Jews. A number of incantation bowls contain spells that would not have been approved of by the Rabbis. One encounters mockery of the Rabbis, too, but it is not possible to pinpoint any clearly defined Jewish ideological current during the Sasanian era that presented itself as an alternative to the Rabbis.

25 For analysis of the topic see David Goodblatt, »The Beruriah Traditions«, JJS 26 (1975): 68–85; and see, too, Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature, Leiden, 1997, 288f. 26 For a useful recent discussion on the issue see Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, »The Orality of Rabbinic Writing,« in Fonrobert/Jaffee, Cambridge Companion, 38–57.

5 Rabbis and Rabbinic Schools

133

Rabbis lived in many towns and cities of Babylonia, and Rabbinic activity is attested in numerous locations throughout Babylonia, including the towns of Sura, Mata Mehasya, Pumbedita, Naresh, and the cities of Mehoza and Neharde’a. By the Geonic period, however, only two Rabbinic academies are referred to geographically— those of Pumbedita and Sura. Occasionally the Rabbis of a certain town appear collectively. Far more often, the Talmud prefers to highlight the activities of individual named Rabbis rather than places or schools, in the sense that it is the person that imparts authority rather than the place. It would seem that even on the assumption of some scholars that established academies developed very late (see below), one can speak of distinctive regional schools of thought at a very early date. There was competition between the schools, as various masters offered differing intellectual and economic attractions, and students might be tempted to move from one master to another. This reality finds graphic expression in the words of counsel, »Sit upon the dungheaps of Mata Mehasya and do not sit in the mansions of Pumbedita!« (b. Horayot 12a, Keritot 6a). The institutional framework under which the Rabbis of Babylonia functioned has been the focus of considerable debate among scholars. The reason for the scholarly uncertainty is that the only unambiguous and detailed descriptions of Rabbinic institutions we possess were composed in the Geonic era, many centuries after the Talmud was complete. They describe established Rabbinic academies, but as they speak either of circumstances in their own time or during the Sasanian era (and prior), their rendering of the situation under the Sasanians is strikingly close to their own institutional reality. Even assuming traces of continuity in practice, the assumption of such an absolute unchanging reality over so many centuries would seem unlikely. The question that has occupied scholars, then, is whether there existed established Rabbinic academies also or already during the Sasanian era.27 When one explores the references in the Babylonian Talmud for the institutions of Rabbinic activity in Babylonia, be it study, ajudication, or instruction, we find a number of different terms. The terms for the more significant fixed settings are bei rav (or bei rav X) and metivta—or its Hebrew cognate, yeshivah. The exact meaning of these terms in the contemporary setting of Sasanian Babylonia has been the focus of some scholarly debate, but the recent tendency among scholars has been to view the development of institutions of study to be gradual. Two other terms refer to less permanent occasions of study: pirqa, and kalla. The term bei rav, literally, the »house of the master,« might be understood in the limited sense as reflecting a small group of disciples studying with a master, a Rabbi, perhaps at his home, as it probably did mean originally. It has been argued that the frequent use of this term points to the lack of established Rabbinic academies known as the yeshivah/metivta, in this period, the latter defined as institutions

27 For a valuable overview of the subject see David Goodblatt, »The History of the Babylonian Academies«, in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz, Cambridge, 2006, 821–39.

134

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

which possess a corporate identity, with staff, that is not dependent on the presence of any given individual teacher. The term metivta or yeshivah appears in the sources in more than one sense, sometimes with the meaning of a study session, or the unity of study covered in such a session. These sessions can be temporary, such as a special session in memory of someone, or for the purpose of returning someone sick to health. In a few instances it would appear to relate to a school in the sense that the term acquired in later (Geonic) sources. Some scholars have proposed that such references belong to the latest stratum in the redaction history of the Talmud, others, that it attests the existence of established academies. Accounts of Rabbinic activity found in the Talmud mostly involve merely a handful of participants. They are nevertheless described as seated in rows hierarchically ordered one behind the other in a highly formal setting. The interaction between those present is also regimented in strict hierarchical fashion. This suggests, perhaps, an attendance that is greater than merely the few named students in such accounts, and recalls the Geonic portrayals of academies that also attest to the arrangement of the students in rows. Against the modest numbers of students in such accounts, some of the terminology employed when describing the study setting deliberately evokes the grandeur of the royal court, with palatial imagery that would probably suggest more than merely a circle of disciples. Thus, Rabbinic leaders are said to »rule« (malakh), to be seated on luxurious seats or multiple cushions, as indeed kings are shown in contemporary material sources; and in one case, with a coiffure suitable for a Persian royal.28 The other two terms, pirqa and kalla differ from the above, in that they seem to refer to a more seasonal school. The term pirqa features in the Talmud as a form of public lecture which was typically held on Sabbaths and festivals. Stipulations concerning the suitable contents of such lectures, and reference to the obligatory attendance of the Rabbinic students and Rabbis, point to its perceived role as the dissemination of Rabbinic teachings to the broader public. Hence, the advice given in the Talmud that it be confined to »one-third halakhic tradition, one-third aggada, and one-third parables« (b. Sanhedrin 38b).29 The kalla, would also apparently refer to some form of public lecture, or a period of lectures. The phrase found in the Geonic sources, »kalla months« is not attested in the Talmud, which mentions kalla days, referring to a period designated for study. It would seem, however, to be more focused on the Rabbinic students than the general public, since we hear of a kalla tractate, a particular tractate of law studied in this period.

28 Geoffrey Herman, »Insurrection in the Academy: The Babylonian Talmud and the Paikuli Inscription,« Zion 79 (2014): 377–407 (Hebrew). On the study culture reflected in the Talmud see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, London/Baltimore/MD, 2003. 29 See Isaiah Gafni, »Public Lectures in Talmudic Babylonia: The Pirqa,« in idem, Jews and Judaism in the Rabbinic Era: Image and Reality – History and Historiography, TSAJ 163, Tübingen, 2019, 281–91.

6 The Exilarchate

6

135

The Exilarchate

In the course of the Sasanian era a Jewish leadership emerged known as the resh galuta or Exilarch. The Exilarchs professed to be scions of the biblical House of David. Although they were not themselves Rabbis, our information on the Exilarchate in this period is completely dependent upon Rabbinic sources, reflecting their own, often highly critical perspective on this leadership institution. It is unclear exactly how and when the Exilarchate began. Rabbinic literature, accepting their claim to Davidic descent from Zerubavel in uninterrupted succession, does not broach the subject. The Exilarchs seem however, to make their presence felt in the sources beginning in the middle of the third century. It may have begun with the advancement of a rich and well-placed Jewish clan to a position of influence during the reign of Shapur I (240–71 CE), a king with a reputation for being tolerant of non-Zoroastrian minorities.30 Location played a key role in both the emergence and sustained authority of the Exilarchate. Two Babylonian cities, Neharde’a and Mehoza, are closely associated with the Exilarchate. Both these cities were important administrative hubs. Mehoza (also referred to in some sources as Seleucia), founded in the early third century was both the provincial capital and the royal winter capital city. The Sasanian king resided here for much of the year, hence the Exilarchs were »close to the kingdom« (b. Gittin 14a–b)—in physical proximity to the palace. A similar development seems to have occurred with the Sasanian Christian community. Here too, the local bishop of Seleucia emerged as the foremost cleric, the catholicos of all of Persian Christianity. Neharde’a, a more ancient city, was in the vicinity of Peroz Shapur, the next most important administrative and military city in the region. Neharde’a and Mehoza were linked by the Royal Canal (Nehar Malka) and probably belonged within the same Sasanian administrative district (šahrestān) called Weh-Ardašīr, which extended along the Royal Canal. The Exilarchs may then have enjoyed some direct domination over the affairs of the Jewish communities within the šahrestān of WehArdašīr. The position of Weh-Ardašīr as the royal capital might at the same time have facilitated broader influence over the entire Babylonian Jewish community. The Exilarchs asserted exclusive judicial hegemony over the Jewish population. In addition, we hear echoes of Exilarchal prerogatives in the realm of corporal and even capital punishment. The royal patronage apparently enjoyed by the Exilarchate may have favored both this judicial claim and acquiesced to the punitive powers exercised by the Exilarchate. In this context one should note that the above-mentioned ruling, »the law of the kingdom is binding« (b. Bava Batra 55a), although attributed to the third century Rabbi, Samuel, is actually transmitted through an Exilarch named Uqban bar Nehemiah. In reality, the claim to judicial power made by the Exilarchate was most likely part of an ongoing polemic over hegemony 30 For the following discussion on the Exilarch see, in detail, Herman, A Prince without a Kingdom.

136

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

within Babylonian Jewry and was contested, perhaps with Rabbis. The punitive powers described in the sources, often against Rabbis, seem extra-judicial, and may actually have been limited. Less contested is the reputation that the Exilarchs acquired for enjoying a luxurious lifestyle, thoroughly characteristic of Persian nobility. Rabbinic sources reflect and comment upon this reality, both subtly through the incorporation of Persian loanwords in Exilarchate-related traditions, and directly through stories and anecdotes. The trappings of nobility are evoked in all that pertains to the Exilarchs. Their world included horses, golden carriages, silk garments, gardens, and servants. Food is central to this image. Wild prey was served on their tables. They are depicted as hosting banquets with multiple courses for large numbers of guests. They were also seen to be close to the dominant Persian culture, hence we find them and their circle as possessing Persian names, using Persian language, wearing Persian dress, and preferring Persian table etiquette. Indeed, their duties would have assumed a reasonable acquaintance with Persian language and culture and a capacity to function in Persian high society. Their location in the more urbanized setting of the capital city also supports this characterization. The Rabbis’ attitude towards the Exilarchate was not uniform. Some, including leading figures such as Rav Huna and Rava, would frequent his home. But only a few Rabbis are regularly associated with the Exilarch, and fewer still treat the Exilarch in an affable and positive manner. A number may have been under the employ of the Exilarchate, possibly as judges who made halakhic rulings for them. Alongside neutral discussion relating to the Exilarch, and even expressions of pride and enthusiasm, one encounters far more critical and hostile comments. Many anecdotes portray the Exilarch as antagonistic towards the Rabbis and their knowledge, and as treating them in a high-handed manner. This criticism takes on many forms and its motivation was varied. There was, for instance, criticism based on regional and halakhic differences with the Exilarch symbolizing the local Rabbinic law, or where representative Rabbis from that region, such as Rav Nahman, were treated as representing the Exilarch. Disparaging anecdotes originating in places such as Kafri, Pumbedita, and Neharde’a, were aimed against Mehoza. The focus was halakhic and the association between the local Rabbinic school and the Exilarchate was intended to delegitimize the Rabbinical traditions of the locale. Another target for condemnation was the perceived Persian life-style of the Exilarchs and their ostentatiousness. This criticism reflected a broader cultural conflict between Rabbinic and non-rabbinic value systems, and of varying approaches towards the assimilation of Persian cultural traits. The social differences between urban Meḥoza and the more peripheral Jewish centers accentuated the halakhic differences between the distinct geographical regions. More fundamental was the religious criticism, based on the conviction that the Exilarchs did not conform to the Rabbinic lifestyle, rules, and values. They were judged as lax in the observance of Sabbath and dietary laws. Religious and social censure merged in the allegations that their lifestyle was not commensurate with the sober condition of post-destruction exile and expectancy for redemption.

6 The Exilarchate

137

Finally, one sees ideological criticism articulated through a challenge to the leadership claims of the Exilarchate. It appears to have been rooted in the anti-rulership tradition prevalent in Rabbinic literature, that has biblical roots. This polemical tradition expressed particular reserve concerning gentile court affairs. It focused on the Exilarchs’ use and abuse of power, especially towards Rabbis, often drawing allusions from the Bible. It also questioned, from a theological perspective, the existence of a kind of Jewish »king« before the redemption. An Exilarchate, it was argued, was not legitimate before the redemption, or actually impeded this redemption (b. Sanhedrin 38a). This criticism is articulated through creative anecdotes describing encounters between Rabbis and Exilarchs, or through the exegesis of suggestive scriptural verses. For instance, the banquet being a common setting for the interaction between Rabbis and Exilarch, Rav Sheshet is called upon to respond when an Exilarch declared before him: »You sages might be wise, but the Persians are more expert than you in table etiquette« (b. Berakhot 46b). Rav Hisda (y. Sotah 9: 15 (24c); b. Gitṭin 7a) evokes a verse from Ezekiel 21, 31 ›Thus says the Lord, remove the turban and lift off the crown‹ in what seems as a challenge to the monarchical aspirations of the Exilarchate. Rav Ḥisda, a Rabbi of priestly descent, interprets »turban« as symbolizing the High priesthood, and »crown« for the monarchy. He asserts that the Exilarchate is advancing its »monarchic« pretentions despite the absence of an accompanying High priesthood, but, he maintained, monarchy and High priesthood must rise or fall together. The Exilarchate could also however, function as a source of immense pride and prestige for the Jews of Babylonia. As Babylonian Jewry steadily grew in importance, a dynamic of regional rivalry developed between it and the Jews of Palestine. The Babylonians began to view themselves as equal or superior to the Jewish center in Palestine. This found expression in many forms, including alleging their ancestry was better or their level in the study of the Torah. The comparison between the representative leaders of the two Jewish communities now also entered the fray. While both the patriarchal Jewish leadership of Roman and Byzantine Palestine and the Exilarchs were believed to descend from the ancient Judahide royal line, the Davidic ancestry of the Exilarchs was said to be better. The Exilarch would now symbolically come to embody Babylonia’s alleged ascendancy over the Jewish center in Palestine and indeed, the rest of the Jewish world.31 For further reading Elman, Yaakov, »Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accommodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition,« in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee, Cambridge, 2007, 165–97.

31 On the lively competition between the rabbinic centers in Babylonia and Palestine see Isaiah M. Gafni, Land, Center and Diaspora, Jewish Constructs in Late Antiquity, Sheffield, 1997, 58–117.

138

Judaism in Babylonia: 226–650 CE

Gafni, Isaiah M., Land, Center and Diaspora, Jewish Constructs in Late Antiquity, Sheffield, 1997. Gafni, Isaiah, Jews and Judaism in the Rabbinic Era, Image and Reality: History and Historiography, TSAJ 173, Tübingen, 2019. Goodblatt, David, »The History of the Babylonian Academies«, The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz, Cambridge, 2006, 821–39. Herman, Geoffrey, A Prince without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasanian Era, TSAJ 150, Tübingen, 2012. Ilan, Tal, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part IV: The Eastern Diaspora 330 BCE–650 CE, TSAJ 141, Tübingen, 2011. Kalmin, Richard, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine, New York, 2006. Neusner, Jacob, A History of the Jews in Babylonia, vols. 1–5, Leiden, 1965–70. Oppenheimer, Aharon, Babylonia Judaica, Wiesbaden, 1983. Rubenstein, Jeffrey L., The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, London/Baltimore/MD, 2003.

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE Phillip Issac Liebermann

1

General Conditions

At the time of the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE, the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa were primarily involved in agriculture.1 The Talmuds, the great literary-legal compendia of the Land of Israel and of Babylonia/Iraq, reflect a much greater interest in agrarian life than the life of a commercial, mercantile urban setting.2 The Byzantine and Sasanian Empires under which the Jews of the Middle East were living provided no particular incentive for the Jews to give up settlement and economic patterns which had held since late antiquity. The demographic center of the Jewish population was Iraq/Babylonia. The history of Jewish settlement in Babylonia extended all the way back to the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and the concomitant exile of Israelites to Mesopotamia. Although these exiles were given the opportunity to return to the Land of Israel with the ascension of Cyrus to the Persian throne in 539 BCE, it would seem that some of the Israelites (perhaps the wealthy) remained in Babylonia (cf. Ezra 1:5–6). In the centuries that followed, the Land of Israel would gain ground, although Babylonia would retain its place of prominence in terms of Jewish settlement. Indeed, the destruction of the Second Temple and the razing of much of the city of Jerusalem by Roman forces in 70 CE led to a further wave of exile from the Land of Israel.3 Although some of the Jewish population undoubtedly remained in the Land of Israel—as there was another Jewish revolt

1 Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture, New Haven/ CT, 1998, 43, 63. 2 As Yaakov Elman points out, »…since like all other ancient texts, the Bavli is very short on statistics, the exact degree of integration in various areas is not clear. Thus, though most scholars agree on the importance of farming in the economic life of the Babylonian Jews of Late Antiquity, there has been some dispute over the extent to which Babylonian Jews engaged in commerce.« (Yaakov Elman, »Babylonian Jews at the Intersection of the Iranian Economy and Sasanian Law,« in The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics, ed. Aharon Levine, New York, 2010, 545.) While rabbinic literature tends to over-sample the experience of the urban rabbinic elite, Jews are widely understood to have had significant penetration into the rural periphery in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valleys; see in particular Michael G. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim Conquest, PSNE, Princeton/NJ, 1984. 3 Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book, Philadelphia/PA, 1979, 4.; see also Gordon D. Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia, Columbia, 1988, 32: »While Jews were present in the peninsula prior to the events of 70 CE and 135 CE, it is after this that Arabian Judaism begins to flourish.«

140

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

against Roman authorities some 60 years later, successive waves of exiles from the Land of Israel are understood to have been the forebears of the Jewish population in the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. It is in this moment that the Prophet Muḥammad (570–632 CE) came of age and encountered Jewish populations in his birthplace, Mecca. It is difficult to say much about the precise number of Jews in the Ḥijāz, the region of the Arabian Peninsula which includes the important early Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina and from which the first converts to Islam would come. The materials that survive from the location and period are literary in nature and do not necessarily preserve details that may be confirmed through external materials or archaeology. At the same time, we can say that Jews were a significant enough presence that they feature prominently in the narratives of earliest Islamic history.4 Not only does the Qurʾān include material redolent of the characters and themes of both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels, but both scripture (that is, the Qurʾān) and the early narratives about the Prophet, his companions, and his followers which would come to be known as the ḥadīth evoke motifs found in rabbinic literature.5 The presence of these materials, referred to by Islamic writers as »Isrāʾīliyyāt«,6 suggests some penetration of a Jewish populace in the Arabian Peninsula. This may have included a kingdom known as Ḥimyār in ancient Yemen in which the monarchy converted to Judaism towards the end of the fourth century CE.7 Rabbinic legends and lore, then, would have been in circulation throughout the region in which Muḥammad was reared. The Jews with whom Muḥammad would have been in daily contact were concentrated in oases such as Yathrib (later called Medina) and Khaybar. Some of these individuals, like their brethren in Babylonia and the Land of Israel, were involved in agriculture which may have contributed to their stability and economic strength as a community. Others were certainly involved in trading and crafts.8 At

4 Of course, while these narratives might describe early Islamic history, they may have been composed substantially after the events they describe and therefore might not accurately represent the presence of Jews at the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. (cf. Wim Raven, EWRI, s.v. »sira«) 5 Cf. Abraham I. Katsh, Judaism in Islam: Biblical and Talmudic Backgrounds of of the Koran and Its Commentaries, New York, 1980; Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?, Leipzig, 1902. For a challenge to traditional scholarship regarding the relationship of early Islamic literature to the Bible, see Michael Pregill, »The Hebrew Bible and the Quran: The Problem of Jewish ›Influence‹ on Islam,« Religion Compass 1,6 (2007): 643–59. As to the question of the authenticity of the ḥadīth as a record of events in the life of the Prophet et al., see Jonathan A. C. Brown, »Did the Prophet Say It or Not? The Literal, Historical, and Effective Truth of Ḥadiths in Early Sunnism,« JAOS 129 (2009): 279–85, and for a discussion of the various approaches of the early narrative material, see Fred McGraw Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, SLAEL 14, Princeton/NJ, 1998, 1–31. 6 For an introduction to the Isrāʾīliyyāt literature, see Reuven Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis, Albany/NY, 1990. 7 Newby, History, 38ff. 8 See ibid., 49ff.

1 General Conditions

141

the same time, it is difficult to determine how large this population was, and in portraying Jews as numerically significant and politically powerful, the narratives of early Islamic history may well have set up Jews as mighty and numerous imagined enemies even where the actual number of Jews may have been quite small. Likewise, the Jewish population in North Africa is well-known from Roman history and the presence (if sparse) of Jews is well-attested across the southern Mediterranean in two chains of settlement along the coastline: one along the littoral caravanroute and one farther inland spanning from Alexandria to Sijilmasa—the latter designed to avoid onerous duties imposed on caravans along the coastal route.9 This population may also have its ultimate origins in the exiles from the Assyrian conquest,10 and certainly penetrated as far south along the Nile as the island of Elephantine, where a significant cache of Aramaic documents dating to the fifth century BCE were found and where a cultic site similar to the Jerusalem Temple was established.11 The connections between these communities and the rabbinic centers in the Land of Israel and Babylonia were likely somewhat attenuated, although the spate of local Jewish revolts in North Africa in 115–117 CE suggests some level of coordination and connection among the Jews of Cyrenaica (modern-day Libya), Cyprus, and Egypt. Although scholars perceive a »dark period« between late antiquity and the rise of Islam for which there is little evidence of Jewish settlement in North Africa, Jews may well have continued to dwell in these areas even if in small numbers. As we will see, there are similar problems describing the nature of the Jewish presence in Iberia during this »dark period«, although Visigothic legislation gives some scholars reason to discern the presence of such a population. Under Roman rule, this Jewish population was largely Greek-speaking, and the crowding-out of Hebrew and Aramaic by Greek had spurred the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek already in the Hellenistic Period.12 At the other end of the Mediterranean, we may surmise a Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula from study of Visigothic legal codes which proscribe marriage between Christians and Jews or Judaizing behavior among Christians.13 Of course, such legislation does not necessarily demonstrate the reality of a Jewish presence in Iberia so much as the idea of Jews and Judaism present in the Visigoth mindset.14 Furthermore, the promi-

9 Cf. Haim Z. Hirschberg, »The Problem of the Judaized Berbers,« Journal of African History 4 (1963): 319f. 10 Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism, Hoboken/NJ, 1991, 82. 11 Yochanan Muffs, Studies in the Aramaic Legal Papyri from Elephantine, Leiden 1969, XIII; and Bezalel Porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change, Leiden, 1996. 12 Abraham Wasserstein and David Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint: From Classical Antiquity to Today, Cambridge, 2009. 13 Cf. Jacob Rader Marcus, ed., The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book 315–1791, Cincinnati/ OH, 1999, 20. 14 Solomon Katz, The Jews in the Visigothic and Frankish Kingdoms of Spain and Gaul, Cambridge/ MA, 1937.

142

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

nence of Jews in Visigothic legislation says little about precisely where those Jews may or may not be found. While there are specific references in the documentary record of Jewish (or formerly Jewish) populations in cities,15 the lack of attention in such materials to life in the rural periphery makes it difficult to say anything about the presence or absence of Jews outside urban areas. Likewise, the perceived presence of Jews in urban areas which may be adduced from Visigothic legislation says little about the actual number of Jews even where we may believe they were found. This is a fundamental problem in medieval Jewish demographic history, and it stymies positivist historians who rely on literary materials no less than legal materials. For instance, the early chronicle of the rise of Islam known as the Sīra of Ibn Iṣḥāq (as edited by Ibn Hishām in the 9th century CE) records the presence of Jewish tribes Banū al-Naḍīr, Banū Qurayẓa, and Banū Qaynuqāʿ in Medina/Yathrib at the time of Muḥammad’s arrival, and even recounts the number of Jews from these tribes killed in early skirmishes as the Prophet established a following there. Yet the pious bent of this material, and as questionable historicity of the other early Islamic sources which might support such detail, preclude us from drawing reliable conclusions about the nature and size of this settlement.16 If the use of typological numbers by the sources was not problem enough, the variability of numbers found in medieval manuscripts is equally difficult to overcome. Similarly, there is no reason to believe that modern maps drawn using descriptions from traditional sources can be used effectively in tandem with demographic methods calculating population density or environmental carrying capacity to calculate population size, since the data upon which those modern maps rely may well be flawed. What can be said, however, is that the Jewish population in the Ḥijāz was significant enough to expose Muḥammad to some of the fundamentals of biblical literature and rabbinic midrash, and for him to have a familiarity with some Jewish practices.17 The aforementioned tribes may indeed have controlled substantial swaths of Medina, but the order of magnitude of these populations cannot be determined with any confidence. The situation in Babylonia/Iraq may have been different. Talmudic literature mentions a host of Jewish settlements;18 many of these are understood to have been substantial in size, including Pumbedita, Nehardea, Mahoza, Kutha, Sura, and Naresh. The countryside surrounding these cities were mainly Jewish as well; and there were clusters of Jewish settlements throughout Iraq in the Sasanian period.19 Estimates as to the total size of the Iraqi Jewish population range as high as two million by the year 500 CE.20 However, the population likely receded from this highwater mark in the sixth and early seventh centuries CE as conversion to Christiani-

15 See, for example, the »Memorial of the Jews Presented to the King« from the converted Jews of Toledo, in Marcus, The Jew, 20–22. 16 Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, s.v. »Hijaz« (Shari Lowin). 17 Newby, History, 32. 18 Cf. Jacob Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia, BJS, Atlanta/GA, 1965–70, II:246. 19 Morony, Iraq, 307. 20 Ibid., 308, citing Solomon Grayzel.

1 General Conditions

143

ty and agricultural decline led to atrophy.21 Despite this, demographers place the center—some argue as high as 90%—of the world Jewish population at the time of the rise of Islam in Iraq.22 Tax receipts from early Islamic rulers confirm the order of magnitude of the Jewish population, although prior to the early eighth century CE the terms used by Muslims for land and poll taxes were interchangeable. Further, as explained by the Talmud, levies have often been imposed on entire towns rather on the shoulders of individuals, suggesting further that tax revenues were not necessarily strictly correlated with population size. The shifting seat of the caliphate from Damascus under the Umayyads (r. 661–750 CE) to Iraq under the ʿAbbāsids (r. 750–1258 CE) is seen as having strengthened the position of the Iraqi Jewish community vis-à-vis the outlying communities. From late antiquity, Iraq and the Land of Israel were perceived as centers of Jewish spiritual and literary activity, maintaining academies of Jewish learning (subsequently called in Hebrew, yeshiva, pl. yeshivot) from which the two Talmuds—the Babylonian Talmud (ca. 6th century) and the Talmud of the Land of Israel (ca. early 5th century)—emerged. The Jewish community of Iraq also maintained an Exilarch, the putative head of the Diaspora (Aramaic, resh galuta) whose formal office had been long established and in place at least from late Parthian times.23 With the establishment of Baghdad by the early ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 754–775 CE) in 762 CE, the Babylonian Exilarch had much closer access to the corridors of Islamic power than under the ʿAbbāsids. The development of Baghdad and garrison cities such as Kūfa and Baṣra with the early Islamic conquests created new opportunities for urban life in Iraq, and some scholars believe that this encouraged migration from the rural periphery to the cities and an occupational shift out of agriculture into urban crafts and trade.24 A palpable presence of Jews may be discerned in Baghdad itself under the early ʿAbbāsids, including the heads of the talmudic academies and the Exilarch, as well as an important family of bankers responsible for creating the financial liquidity necessary for the expansion of ʿAbbāsid empire.25 At least one of the academies is seen as having relocated to Baghdad at some point in the late 9th century CE, with the other moving in the late 10th.26 There also may 21 For this agricultural decline, see Robert McCormick Adams, Land Behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains, Chicago/IL, 1965, 80–83. 22 Sergio Della Pergola, »Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History,« in Papers in Jewish Demography: 1997, ed. Sergio Della Pergola and Judith Even, Jerusalem, 2001. Note that Botticini and Eckstein place only 75% of the world Jewish population in Mesopotamia, Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70–1492, Princeton/NJ, 2012, 4. 23 Morony, Iraq. For more on the Exilarch, see the chapter by Geoffrey Herman, in this volume. 24 E.g. Botticini/Eckstein. 25 For a discussion of the Neṭira Family of bankers, see Walter Joseph Fischel, Jews in the Economic and Political Life of Mediaeval Islam, Royal Asiatic Society Monographs 22, London, 1937, 34–44. 26 Brody, The Geonim, 36. See also David Eric Sklare, Samuel ben Ḥofni Gaon and His Cultural World: Texts and Studies, Leiden, 1996, 71.

144

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

have been a significant Jewish presence in the Baghdadi neighborhoods of al-Karkh and ʿAtīqa.27 Despite the opportunities afforded by the rise of cities for economic growth and political influence, there is every reason to believe that the rural periphery also presented opportunities for Jews not wishing to leave agriculture. The flood of soldiers to Baghdad, part and parcel of ʿAbbāsid conquest and rule, vastly increased the importance of farming in the region in order to provision the new residents.28 Farming, the processing of agricultural products, and the transit trade all grew by leaps and bounds. While Jewish elites—financial and political—may have migrated to the cities, it would seem that much of the Jewish populace continued to pursue agriculture and remained living outside the cities.29 The talmudic academies may even have operated at full strength only seasonally in order to accommodate the needs of farmers.30 At the same time, differential taxation policies of early Islamic rulers towards Jews and Christians, levying both a land tax (initially known as ṭasq) and a head-tax (Arabic, jizya),31 might have encouraged some Jews to convert to Islam. Detail concerning the head tax is often tied to the Pact of ʿUmar, a writ of protection understood to have been endorsed by Islamic rulers safeguarding the lives and property of so-called »protected peoples«.32

2

The Pact of ʿUmar

The Pact of ʿUmar serves as a contract between Muslim rulers and subject peoples (Arabic, dhimma); the latter being guaranteed life and protection of property in return for the jizya-tax and subjection to the limitations of the Pact. The structured nature of this agreement offered dhimmī peoples relative stability and security, even if its provisions might have hampered the social, political, and economic upward mobility of dhimmīs. Indeed, when the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Muʿtaḍid (r. 858–902 CE) suspended the jizya, the Jewish notable Neṭira b. Sahl objected on the grounds that the poll tax guaranteed the Jews’ security. The history of the Pact is complicated and has spurred a literature of its own.33 It seems that from the earliest conquests, Islamic conquerors entered into agreements that aimed to structure future rela-

27 Cf. ibid., 72, Joel L. Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival During the Buyid Age, Leiden, 1992, 79. 28 Hugh Kennedy, »Feeding the Five Hundred Thousand: Cities and Agriculture in Early Islamic Mesopotamia,« Iraq 73 (2011): 177–99. 29 Cf. Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman, »Revisiting Jewish Occupational Choice and Urbanization in Iraq under the Early Abbasids,« Jewish History 29,2 (2015): 113–35, pace Botticini/ Eckstein. 30 Brody, Geonim, 43. 31 Moshe Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, Leiden, 2004, 287. 32 Cf. Stillman, The Jews, 25–27, 157–58. 33 See, for example, Mark R. Cohen, »What Was the Pact of ʿUmar? A Literary-Historical Study,« JSAI 23 (1999): 100–57.

2 The Pact of ʿUmar

145

tions between Muslim rulers and subject peoples. The first of these agreements would be the so-called Constitution of Medina,34 understood to have been contracted shortly after the Prophet Muḥammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE, between the Prophet and the Jews. The Pact of ʿUmar itself is often pseudepigraphically attributed to the second caliph, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 634–644 CE), who was responsible for the conquest of Jerusalem, although some scholars attribute it to ʿUmar (II) b. al-ʿAzīz, an Umayyād caliph (r. 717–720 CE). The function of the Pact is also a matter of some controversy, owing to a seemingly-explicit Qurʾānic statement (9:29) that the jizya itself is to be paid as an act of humiliation for the Peoples of the Book. Some have argued that the social function of the prohibitions of the Pact of ʿUmar was simply the differentiation (Arabic, ghiyār) of the small coterie of Islamic conquerors and administrators from a broader populace of conquered people. Yet whatever its initial purpose might have been, the impress of the Pact’s ghiyār restrictions in preventing non-Muslims from ascending to prominence over Muslims (the Pact demands that dhimmīs »show deference to the Muslims«), and the direction of the Pact against public displays of religious expression by nonMuslims (extending to prohibitions against public funerals or ringing church bells) cannot be gainsaid. Other documents describing the official relationship between dhimmīs and Muslim authorities explicitly prohibit non-Muslims from occupying government positions whereby they might have any authority over Muslims.35 Amidst the complex of ghiyār restrictions, one central question for scholars of the relationship between Jews and Muslims is the extent to which these restrictions were implemented in practice. Periodic attacks on Jews and Christians under the auspices of the Pact of ʿUmar such as those under the Fāṭimid imām al-Ḥākim in the year 1009 CE in Fusṭāṭ are notable for being seen as relatively infrequent.36 Furthermore, even in the face of explicit prohibitions on rising to high government office, Islamic Spain (Arabic, al-Andalus) certainly saw the rise of individual Jews to prominence such as Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprūṭ (905–975 CE) and Samuel Ibn Naghrilla (993–1056 CE), who occupied critical positions in Islamic administrations. Ḥasdai served not only as head of the Jewish community (Hebrew, nasi) of Cordoba, but he also served as a courtier and diplomat for the Umayyad caliph. Following the disintegration of the Umayyad caliphate, Samuel ascended to a political and military role in the city-state of Granada as vizier, just below that of the local Muslim king. His son Joseph succeeded to the role after his father’s death in 1055 CE although anti-Jewish riots erupted in 1066 CE which resulted in the assassination of the son. Amidst this popular uprising, the Jewish quarter of 34 See Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries, 21–45. 35 Cf. Ṭabarī’s Taʾrikh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, vol. 3, ed. De Goeje et al., Leiden, 1879, excerpted and translated in Stillman, The Jews, 167f. 36 For a discussion of al-Ḥākim’s attacks on Jewish and Christian sites which challenges the received wisdom of these attacks as a »psychotic« aberration, explaining them instead as a manifestation of sectarian identity under the relatively-new rule of the Fāṭimids, see Jennifer Pruitt, »Method in Madness: Recontextualizing the Destruction of Churches in the Fatimid Era«, Muqarnas 30 (2013): 119–40.

146

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

Granada was destroyed and its inhabitants slaughtered. The ascent of individual Jewish notables to elite circles was by no means restricted to al-Andalus: the Karaite al-Tustarī family included long distance merchants, bankers, courtiers, and scholars of Persian origin who served the Fāṭimid caliphs in Egypt. Although two of the scions of this family would fall victim to court intrigue just before 1050 CE, this incident did not trigger a broader attack on Jews as did the events surrounding Joseph Ibn Naghrilla. The accounts of these attacks differ, but they suggest both that some Jews had climbed to positions of great power and even participated in court affairs, and that a strand of popular sentiment existed which (in accordance with the Pact of ʿUmar) abjured the idea that non-Muslims might occupy positions of power over Muslims. It cannot be said that the prohibitions of the Pact were implemented by Muslim rulers or that such compliance was even expected by the broader public with any degree of consistency across geographical regions or time periods, but the provisions of the Pact were certainly used as a pretext for destruction of Jewish property and the murder of Jews from time to time. Even when caliphs might affirm the provisions of the Pact,37 it is difficult to say that these provisions were implemented. Yet, while some Islamic regimes turned a blind eye to the Pact with a liberalizing tendency, others turned to the pact with a mind towards persecuting dhimmī peoples. Perhaps the best-known of these regimes was the North African Berber movement known as the Almohads, who ruled al-Andalus from 1130 to 1269 CE. To confirm their rights to protection of life and property, some Jews may have carried a copy of the Pact of ʿUmar on their person; documentary evidence reveals Jewish versions of the Pact, some of which were written in Judeo-Arabic (a Jewish ethnolect of Arabic, generally written in Hebrew characters).38 Documentary evidence from the Cairo Genizah, the treasure trove of documents from daily life discovered in the »synagogue of the Palestinians« in Fusṭāṭ, Old Cairo, primarily dating from the 11th to the 13th centuries CE, records that dhimmīs also received a document from local tax authorities confirming where and when they paid the jizya (also called jāliya).39 In Egypt in the classical period of the Genizah, at least, the jizya seems to have been collected with some consistency, even if the other provisions of the Pact of ʿUmar were observed only in the breach. Early Islamic legislation established three levels of jizya, dependent upon one’s financial sta-

37 See, for example, the statement in the Taʾrikh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk of al-Ṭabarī (839–923 CE) that the caliph al-Mutawakkil »ordered that the Christians and all the rest of the ahl aldhimma be made to wear honey-colored ṭaylasāns [scarves P.L.] and the zunnār belts« (translated in Stillman, The Jews, 167.) 38 Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman, »The Muḥammadan Stipulations: Dhimmī Versions of the ›Pact of Umar‹,« in Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times, ed. Arnold Franklin, Roxani Eleni Margariti, Marina Rustow and Uriel Simonsohn, Leiden, 2014, 197–206. 39 See, for example, Shlomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Berkeley/CA, 1967, I:384.

3 Communal Organization

147

tion,40 and apparently these various tax brackets were maintained in the medieval period. The jizya was the primary impost levied upon dhimmī peoples by Muslim rulers, although the Jewish community also enforced various types of taxes which facilitated the maintenance of the community and supported the services it provided.

3

Communal Organization

The rabbinic academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel provided spiritual succor to the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean Basin and the Iberian Peninsula. This involved providing legal opinions (Hebrew, teshuvot) on all aspects of daily life, sacred and profane. Among these was the first prayer-book, sent from ʿAmram b. Sheshna (d.875 CE), gaon (principal, pl. geonim) of the Babylonian academy of Sura, to Spain. The geonim also addressed commercial questions, theological matters, and difficulties in interpreting the Talmud. The academies administered by the geonim produced judges for local Jewish communities under their authority. The two primary Babylonian academies (Sura and Pumbedita) and the Exilarch each maintained putative sway over a distinct swath of the Jewish world. In return for their services providing legal counsel and perhaps also support promoting the interests of these distant communities before the ʿAbbāsid caliph, the academies exacted imposts from the community at large, which may have included a tax as high as 20 percent on income.41 In addition to these taxes, the academies received voluntary gifts from their supporters which were often sent along with legal queries. The academies maintained relations with the Diaspora communities not only through their judges, but also through a network of notables often given honorifics reflecting their loyalty (and perhaps their largesse) towards one or another academy. There was a measure of competition between the academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel for the loyalty of communities in the Diaspora, in that legal queries were sent to both places, and the responsa of the various academies were disseminated throughout the Mediterranean by copyists even while those responsa were enroute to their ultimate destinations. In any given location, one might find competing synagogues utilizing the rite of one or another tradition; for example, the Jews of Fusṭāṭ purchased land from the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria in 882 CE in order to build a synagogue following the Babylonian rite, as opposed to that of the so-called Shāmiyīn (»Jerusalemites«) which had already been in place. There was also competition between the academies for prominence and control over the rabbinic leadership itself. For instance, in summer of 921 CE, Meir—a gaon of the academy of the Land of Israel—arrogated to himself the power to establish the months of the Jewish calendar over the objections of the Iraqi/Babylonian authorities. The calendar had

40 Cf. Moshe Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza, Leiden, 1976, 106–07. 41 Brody, Geonim, 73.

148

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

previously been established independently by the Iraqi geonic authorities.42 For at least a year, Diaspora communities in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq were divided over this calendrical difference while apparent Iraqi hegemony in this area was challenged.43 Further, although the academies and the Exilarch exercised a modicum of influence and control over the Diaspora communities, that control was certainly attenuated by the vast distance; and Jewish life in the far-flung communities may or may not have been in line with the geonic ideal. In his Sefer ha-Qabbalah, Abraham Ibn Daʾud (ca. 1110–1180 CE) of Spain describes a Jewish community in Cordoba not quite able to understand the Talmud in all its intricacy, until the chance arrival of a sojourning rabbi. He brought a robust tradition of talmudic knowledge to al-Andalus under the rule of the Umayyads of Spain in the tenth century CE.44 Thus, despite the flow of geonic responsa from East to West, the academies themselves may not have had a determinative influence on daily life. However, local Jewish communal authorities did have some of the formative influence denied the geonim, and where resident notables maintained relationships with the academies, the long arm of the geonim could be felt. Local communities were responsible for negotiating with Islamic overlords and collecting the jizya, as well as for sustaining the community through synagogues, courts, and social welfare institutions. These included care for the sick and poor and feeding the hungry. Courts adjudicated matters between Jews, although it seems that Jews also had the ability to seek recourse in Islamic courts. At times, this could generate juristic competition and chip away at the authority of Jewish institutions. In the first half of the seventh century CE, geonim implemented changes in divorce law »motivated by the fear that Jewish women…might seek the assistance of Islamic authorities and possibly even convert to Islam in order to dissolve their marriages without delay.«45 The documents of the Genizah also demonstrate clearly that Jews did not hesitate to seek recourse in Islamic courts, as Jewish courts recognized documents written in Arabic which came from Islamic courts and as the Jewish court produced documents designed to hold up in Islamic courts.46 Legal cases were handled in

42 The Jewish calendar is a modified lunar calendar, designed to situate holidays established by the appearance of the moon in the proper seasons (established by the sun). Since the lunar calendar is only 354 days long, retaining the alignment of holidays with agricultural seasons requires periodic »intercalation«, or insertion of extra days. To this end, the intercalation of the Jewish calendar involved insertion of an extra month (»Adar II«) before the very end of the ancient calendar in the late winter in order to push off the celebration of Passover to the spring (cf. Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin, 10b ff.). 43 For a discussion of the »calendar controversy«, see Marina Rustow and Sacha Stern, »The Jewish Calendar Controversy of 921–22: Reconstructing the Manuscripts and Their Transmission History,« in Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition, ed. idem and Charles Burnett, Leiden, 2014. 44 For Ibn Daʾud narrative, see Abraham ben David Ibn Daʾud, Sefer Ha-Qabbalah: A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of the Book of Tradition, ed. Gerson D. Cohen, Philadelphia/PA, 1967, 63ff. 45 Brody, Geonim, 62f. 46 Ackerman-Lieberman, »Legal Pluralism among the Court Records of Medieval Egypt.«

3 Communal Organization

149

fixed courts which in at least some cases were situated in synagogues, such as the fixed court of Fusṭāṭ from which many of the Genizah documents emerged. Local jurisprudents wrote opinions which, along with the responsa of the geonim, were utilized by judges in the courtroom; this bifurcation of the judiciary mirrors that of classical Islamic law, in which judges (Arabic, qāḍīs) are distinct from jurisprudents (Arabic, muftīs). Local Jewish administration seems to have come under the purview of a Jewish leader called the nagid (Hebrew, »prince«), and at times called the raʾīs al-yahūd (Arabic, »head of the Jews«). The precise role played by the raʾīs and the nature of his appointment to that office has been under contentious debate by scholars for more than half a century,47 with some scholars arguing that the formal office of raʾīs was established by the Fāṭimids (r. 909–1171 CE in North Africa as a whole; in Egypt from 967–1171 CE). The nagid/raʾīs may well have served as an intermediary between the Jewish community and the local Islamic authorities, although individual Jews also seem to have pressed Muslim notables for assistance and influence.48 Thus, Jewish authority was always circumscribed by the possibility of an end-run by individuals around Jewish courts and leaders. At times, there were also Jewish notables of significance, some of whom became involved in court intrigue—including the Jewish apostate Yaʿqūb Ibn Killis, who served as a vizier under the Fāṭimids; as well as the aforementioned Tustari Family, whose member Abū Saʿd (also known as Ibrāhīm) sold the imam a Sudanese slave-girl. This woman eventually ascended to the regency as queen mother when her infant son al-Mustanṣir became imām in 1036 CE. Although Abū Saʿd and his brother Abū Naṣr (also known as Ḥesed) would both be assassinated before 1050 CE in the wake of court intrigue, they both rose to positions of great influence in the Fāṭimid court. Individual Jews could appeal to these notables, but the Jewish community itself did have putative and at least a modicum of actual control over their constituents; leaders were able to exact imposts from the Jewish community above and beyond the jizya, including taxes on consumption and even income in certain professions. In addition to the raʾīs, the leadership of the Jewish community included parnasim or notables who managed pious foundations (Arabic, waqf, pl. awqāf; Hebrew, heqdesh or qodesh) which served many social welfare functions including care for the poor, health care, and schooling.49 Parnasim also collected taxes and charitable gifts, helped maintain communal institutions, and served in many other functionary roles. There is no evidence before the 12th century that these individuals were paid for their services.

47 See the brief survey of this scholarship in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, s.v. »Nagid« (Elinoar Bareket). 48 For the relationship of Islamic authorities to individual Jews in a later period, see Marina Rustow, »At the Limits of Communal Autonomy: Jewish Bids for Intervention from the Mamluk State,« Mamluk Studies Review 13,2 (2009):133–59. 49 The classic study of awqāf in the Jewish community of medieval Egypt is Gil, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza.

150

4

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

Daily Life

The literary and documentary record has largely shaped both the scholarly and popular conception of Jewish life under Islam. The tiny cadre of Jewish notables who were mentioned by Arabic chroniclers—whether the Neṭira Family in Iraq or the Ibn Naghrilla Family in Spain—have contributed to the understanding that Jews were concentrated in cities and that Jews often flourished under Islam.50 The documentary material from the Cairo Genizah also provides much detail about urban life in Fusṭāṭ and other cities in the Egyptian orbit, likely oversampling urban crafts and trade as the primary economic pursuits of the Jews of the medieval Islamic world. Yet at the time of the rise of Islam most Jews were involved in agriculture, and the Genizah offers some evidence that there was continued agricultural activity in the Nile Delta and the Nile River Valley throughout the medieval period. Geonic responsa also suggest the same for Iraq and points East, although responsa do not always indicate the precise location of either the questioners or the respondent. The arrival of Islam did herald an expansion in urban activity and many Jews probably did move to the cities to take advantage of opportunities in urban crafts and trade. This urbanization might have weakened the institutional infrastructure of Jewish life in rural Iraq as once-robust communities began to become depleted. The academies had long drawn upon the learned elites among the rural population during the so-called kallah (conclave) months during which the academies were at full strength and those students who were otherwise involved in agriculture left their towns and villages to study at the academies. But the economic opportunities presented by the cities and their proximity to the nascent seats of Islamic power would have sapped the strength of the periphery as the institutions of Jewish learning and leadership relocated to the cities; and the cities offered new economic opportunities for those willing to urbanize. Without these elites, towns and villages would have had difficulty maintaining the institutions of the rabbinic community such as synagogues or courts which had long been the focus of Jewish life. The disintegration of these institutions would have made it difficult for communal Jewish life to continue even if much of the population remained in rural areas. At the same time, the development of Islamic culture as a force unifying the areas brought under the political authority of caliphs and their governors presented an additional challenge to the Jewish population of the periphery. To the extent that Jews were involved with this burgeoning new culture, the hold of their own distinctive cultural patrimony would have lessened. In the early generations following the conquests, populations of »believers« who retained their Jewish culture yet also absorbed some of the nascent ideas of the developing culture of their new overlords may well have borne simultaneous overlapping identities not unlike those of our own day where allegiances to a nation-state overlap those to a confessional

50 Indeed, Norman Stillman titles his chapter describing Mediterranean Jewry in the Islamic High Middle Ages »The Best Years,« in Stillman, The Jews, 40–63.

4 Daily Life

151

community.51 The emergence of Islam as a distinct religion would have come about at the same moment as the aforementioned atrophy of Jewish communal institutions, leaving many with little incentive to retain the trappings of their Jewish identity while there were strong incentives to take on the identity of Muslim rulers who established the social and cultural primacy of Islam. Geonic responsa mention apostasy, and geonic literature also informs us that Jews used Islamic courts instead of Jewish courts when doing so was to their legal advantage.52 In addition to the ghiyār restrictions on non-Muslims, differential taxation rates provided an incentive for Jews to convert to Islam. Jews who had been landholders could overcome this problem by nominally converting or by registering their land in the name of a Muslim. In the early generations following the conquest such conversions might have been nominal or formulaic in the hopes of retaining Jewish culture while avoiding the additional tax burden; there is evidence from geonic responsa that some »apostates« returned to Judaism, suggesting that the boundary between Judaism and Islam was somewhat permeable, at least in Iraq in the early centuries of Islam.53 But over time the assimilation to Islamic culture as the institutions of Jewish community faded would have contributed to the softening of Jewish communities in the rural periphery of Iraq. The reduction in these communities through apostasy, urbanization, and the atrophy of the population in general due to a decaying irrigational infrastructure shifted the center of gravity towards the West; and as opportunities for long-distance trade expanded across the Islamic Mediterranean, North African Jewish communities were sprinkled with merchants and scholars who had come from the East.54 One such group believed to come from the East and to have plied the trade routes of the Mediterranean was the Radhanites (Ar. al-Radhāniyya), understood to have originated in southern Iraq and to have traveled trade routes extending from China to the Iberian Peninsula.55 Mentioned by the ninth-century Persian geographer Ibn Khurradādhbih, their commodities of choice included slaves, silk, furs, and swords, as well as musk, aloeswood, camphor, and cinnamon. Long believed to have come from Western Europe, the Radhanites should instead be seen as part of an emerging class of merchants from the Islamic world found in the Mediterranean in the early medieval period. The Genizah documents record such trade from a

51 For an approach to the rise of Islam relying on just such a narrative of broad-based assimilation of nascent »Islamic« norms, see Fred McGraw Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, Cambridge, 2010. 52 Brody, The Geonim, 62f. 53 See in particular the work of Uriel Simonsohn on conversion and intercommunal boundaries, including Uriel Simonsohn, »Are Geonic Responsa a Reliable Source for the Study of Jewish Conversion to Islam? A Comparative Analysis of Legal Sources,« in Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Festschrift in Honor of Mark R. Cohen, ed. Arnold Franklin et al., Leiden, 2014, 121–38. 54 Eliyahu Ashtor, »Un mouvement migratoire au haut Moyen Âge: Migration de l’Irak vers les pays méditerranéens,« Annales 27,1 (1972): 185–214. 55 Gil, Jews, 615–38.

152

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

slightly later period; the merchants whose materials are preserved there are primarily focused on the Mediterranean in the eleventh century and the Red Sea route towards India in the twelfth. Data from Genizah documents suggests a population very well integrated socially and economically into Islamic society. The classical period of the Genizah does not indicate residential segregation between Jews, Christians, and Muslims;56 rather, neighborhoods in the new city of Cairo were more expensive than those in Fusṭāṭ and economics rather than religious affiliation dictated one’s domicile. Indeed, where houses were arranged into apartments around a common courtyard, dhimmīs seem even to have shared houses with Muslims. Business transactions also seem regularly to have taken place between Jews and Muslims, with them even participating in partnerships together. This included, but was certainly not limited to, agreements whereby a Jewish merchant ceded all profits earned on the Jewish Sabbath to a Muslim partner, who in turn gave over the profits earned on Friday to the Jewish partner. The documents of the Genizah indicate that Jews participated in a broad range of urban and rural occupations. This included all manner of crafts, from needle-making to apothecary. Cities seemed to be arranged around market-places which concentrated in one or another commodity (such as the Spice Market).57 Yet the sort of specialization found in crafts was very different from that of long-distance traders; while such traders do seem to have had expertise in one or another commodity,58 they also seem to have taken advantage of whatever opportunities for profit were presented to them in their peregrinations. Bills of lading reflect the large variety of commodities which were traded. Traders’ letters also reflect the wide-ranging, overlapping networks maintained by traders, as sedentary traders throughout the Mediterranean relied on business contacts as far afield as the Malabar Coast of India on the one hand and Spain on the other. These relationships were often called »formal friendships« (Judeo-Arabic, ṣuḥba), whereby associates performed favors for one another without being explicitly compensated for their efforts.59 Some scholars, notably Avner Greif, believe that merchants whose letters are preserved in the Genizah formed a collective or coalition of sorts. Members who misbehaved would be booted out of the coalition, and the threat of ejection encouraged traders who were far afield from one another to serve

56 Cf. Shlomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols., Berkeley/CA, 1967, esp. IV:21. 57 Ibid., I:83. 58 Ibid., I:153. 59 There is an extensive literature on formal friendship, the locus classicus for the matter being Shlomo D. Goitein, »Formal Friendship in the Medieval Near East,« PAPS 115,6 (1971): but the ṣuḥba has also been treated by Abraham L. Udovitch, »Formalism and Informalism in the Social and Economic Institutions of the Medieval Islamic World,« in Individualism and Conformity in Classical Islam, ed. Amin Banani, Wiesbaden, 1977; Jessica Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and Their Business World, Cambridge/MA, 2012; and Mark R. Cohen, Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World, Philadelphia/PA, 2017.

4 Daily Life

153

their fellows faithfully.60 However, in addition to these »flexible« relationships, merchants also made recourse to structured partnerships whose details were laid out in legal agreements.61 The specific language of those agreements reflects a number of common concerns in long-distance trade—the nature of the commodities to be traded, the division of profits and losses between the partners, the bounds of one or another partner’s liability in the case of unavoidable loss such as shipwreck, and the like—but scholars are in dispute as to whether the legal structures implemented by those merchants reflect Jewish law, Islamic law, or some sort of common mercantile practice defined of these systems.62 Jewish merchants did have access to both Jewish and Islamic courts, although the extent to which Jewish courts which were aware of their constituents’ ability to forum-shop specifically implemented Jewish law is unclear.63 Although much has been made of the Genizah documents’ contribution to our understanding of the role of Jewish merchants and craftsmen in medieval Islamic society, the documents are also an unparalleled source for life in the home, including the lives of women. Although there is some evidence of prominent women who served at the hub of trading networks,64 much of women’s economic and social activity was centered on the home. Clothing and bedding were a sign of wealth and were often transmitted intergenerationally through wedding trousseaux, and women were often responsible for the production of embroidery. Women would sometimes be responsible for the selling and buying of textiles due to their expertise in this area, and the linen and flax trade was a bulwark of the medieval economy. In contrast with Christian Europe, the practice of polygyny persisted in the Jewish community of the medieval Islamic world.65 This included not only the traditional Jewish and Islamic framework whereby men were allowed to have more than one wife in a single locale, subject to their having separate residences, but also Jewish absorption of the Muslim institution of mutʿa, or »temporary marriage«.66 While some Jewish

60 There is an extensive literature on this matter; Avner Greif lays out much of his project in Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy, Cambridge, 2006. Although Greif ’s work has been challenged, he has parried many of these claims in »Contract Enforcement and Institutions among the Maghribi Traders: Refuting Edwards and Ogilvie,« in CESifo Working Paper #2350 (2008) 61 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions; Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman, The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt, Palo Alto/CA, 2014. 62 Abraham L. Udovitch, Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam, PSNE, Princeton/NJ, 1970; Ackerman-Lieberman, The Business of Identity; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions; Cohen, Maimonides and the Merchants. 63 Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman, »Commercial Forms and Legal Norms in the Jewish Commuity of Medieval Egypt,« Law & History Review 30,4 (2012): 1007–52. 64 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society. 65 Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Ribui Nashim be-Yisraʾel: Meqorot Ḥadashim mi-Genizat Qahir, Jerusalem, 1986. 66 Cf. EWRI2, s.v. »mutʿa« (Wiliam Heffening). There is a version of temporary marriage known in the Babylonian Talmud, cf. Lena Salaymeh and Zvi Septimus, »Temporalities of Marriage: Jewish and Islamic Legal Debates,« in Talmudic Transgressions: Engaging the Work of Daniel Boyarin, ed. Charlotte Fontrobert et al., Leiden, 2017.

154

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

authorities prohibited Jewish practice of mutʿa,67 some Jewish merchants temporarily residing in trading disaporas far afield from their permanent families and homes took on local slave girls or engaged in mutʿa with local women.68 The Geniza reflects the periodic presence of slaves in the home, but the insistence of Jewish law that male slaves be circumcised may have limited the use of male slaves. The aforementioned example of Abū Saʿd al-Tustarī providing a Sudanese slave-girl to the Fāṭimid imām aside, Jews seem not to have generally been involved in the slave trade—although slaves may have been provided by Jewish merchants along with other high-value commodities when intimately involved with Muslim elites.69 The modicum of social, political, and legal autonomy afforded the Jewish communities of the medieval Islamic world meant that daily life was often structured by Jewish traditions, and those traditions developed in a number of complicated directions after the close of the Talmuds. The early centuries of Islam saw the formation of distinct Islamic legal schools, and the development of these legal tendencies influenced the Jewish community. A dispute concerning the succession of the Exilarch in 760 CE led to a schism founded by one ʿAnan b. David. ʿAnan’s conflict with the Jewish authorities is said to have been seen by the ʿAbbāsid caliph as a revolt against the caliphate, and ʿAnan was supposedly imprisoned. In prison, he is said to have met the jurist Abū Ḥanīfa (699–767 CE), eponymous founder of the Ḥanafī school of Islamic jurisprudence. Ḥanafī emphasis on analogy (Arabic, qiyās) in legal exegesis seems to have shaped ʿAnan’s interpretation of Scripture— rather than talmudic methods of analogy.70 ʿAnan also seems to have been open to the law as understood by the rabbinic authorities of the Land of Israel, while his Iraqi rabbinic interlocutors generally were not. In the period following ʿAnan, the schism set into motion by his rejection of rabbinic methods would develop into a full-blown sectarian division between Rabbanites, who accepted the normative nature of rabbinic exegesis, and Karaites, who did not.

5

The Karaite Schism

Even if Karaism did not emerge directly from ʿAnan, the rejection of rabbanite exegesis and a scripturalist approach to the Bible was part of a long-standing internal Jewish dispute; later Karaite writers such as Jacob al-Qirqisānī (fl. first half of the 10th century CE) dated the schism as far back as the late First Temple Period, although others assigned it to the Second Temple Period. Karaites described their

67 Cf. Shlomo D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza: India Book, Part One, EJM 33, Leiden, 2008, 633 n. 6. 68 Ibid., 633. 69 Cf. Craig Perry, »The Daily Life of Slavery and the Global Reach of Slavery in Medieval Egypt, 969–1250 CE«, PhD diss., Emory University, 2014, 62, citing Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, 98. 70 Cf. EJIW, s.v. »ʿAnan b. David« (Yoram Erder).

5 The Karaite Schism

155

approach as more loyal to the text of the Written Torah and the original meaning of the biblical commandments, rejecting what they saw as Rabbanite »perversion of the holy text«.71 Although Karaite practices of legal exegesis have much in common with Islamic legal systems, these commonalities might come from a shared pre-Islamic source. Likewise, Karaite prayer practices such as removing one’s shoes, full prostration, and sitting on the floor; and calendrical procedures, such as fixing the new lunar month through actual observation rather than mathematical calculation have ancient Jewish and Islamic parallels. The schism solidified under Jacob al-Qirqisānī, whose Kitāb al-anwār wa-l-marāqib (Book of Lights and Watchtowers) presented a comprehensive guide to Karaite practice. By this time, Karaism had gained momentum in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora communities, in Iran and Iraq which were the cradle of the sect, and throughout the Mediterranean. A movement in the first half of the ninth century known as the Mourners of Zion (Hebrew, Avele ṣiyyon) led to a concentration of Karaites in Jerusalem; and Saʿadya b. Joseph al-Fayyūmī (882–942 CE), head of the Babylonian academy of Sura from 928–942 CE, encountered a significant Karaite population in his native Fayyūm in the Nile Valley. The penetration of Karaism into al-Andalus in its early centuries is not clear, but this population was certainly substantial following our period in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and so it seems likely that the Karaite community may well have been developing in the tenth century.72 Part of Saʿadya’s polemical response to Karaism was his Explanation of the Seventy Isolated Biblical Words, an explanation of rare biblical words which demonstrates the centrality of Rabbanite interpretation by connecting these words in biblical Hebrew with parallels in Rabbinic Hebrew or Aramaic—parrying the Karaite claim treating Scripture as a self-contained and self-explanatory corpus.73 This may suggest the prominence of Karaism in Egypt even at the time of Saʿadya’s early life there. Muslim readers saw the Qurʾān as revealed in a perfectly eloquent (faṣāḥa) Arabic, demanding the study of grammar as a key to understanding Scripture. Karaites’ attentiveness to the biblical text (to the exclusion of the so-called Oral Torah) led to a parallel focus on grammar and the related areas of orthography, vowel pointing, and even rhyme. Karaite grammar reflects a close affinity with Masoretic activity establishing the proper reading of the Bible, which itself developed apace in the ninth and tenth centuries both in Iraq and the Land of Israel. In the first half of the tenth century, the Tiberian masora of the Ben Asher Family had emerged as authoritative; and alternative models of vowel pointing and biblical orthography and punctuation faded from view. Biblical interpretation was also transformed in the Islamic milieu in the ninth and tenth centuries, as oral homiletical interpretations of biblical pericopes gave way to

71 EJIW, s.v. »Karaism« (Daniel Lasker & Joel Beinin). 72 Cf. »Karaites in Spain« in From Judah Hadassi to Elijah Bashyatchi: Studies in Late Medieval Karaite Philosophy, ed. Daniel J. Lasker, Leiden, 2008, 123–40. See also the chapter by Marzena Zawanowska and Burton Visotzky in volume II. 73 Brody, Geonim, 323.

156

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

written verse-by-verse commentaries of entire biblical books, often accompanied by a methodological introduction.74 The latter may be seen as a Karaite adaptation of Arabic models of Qurʾānic commentary, which subsequently found its way into Rabbanite literature. Perhaps the most outstanding exponent of this method was the Karaite Japheth b. Eli, whose work also influenced Rabbanite exegesis via Byzantine Hebrew translations of his commentaries.75 The study of grammar was a correlative to the establishment of the correct biblical text, much as the study of Arabic grammar had developed in the eighth century out of an understanding of the perfection of the Qurʾānic text. Karaite attention to this field helped spur Rabbanite interests as well. In the tenth century, Hebrew grammatical treatises begin to appear in the East—including those of Saʿadya—and the West—including those of Menaḥem Ibn Sarūq; Dunash ben Labraṭ, and Judah Ḥayyūj, who identified the triliteral system for the Hebrew verb. Menaḥem and Dunash are best-known for their quarrel on the question of whether or not Arabic poetic meter could be adapted to Hebrew. Jewish litterateurs wrote both sacred and secular poetry in Hebrew, which was a language chosen for its »exalted« or »festive« function—as opposed to Judeo-Arabic, which was a language of functional communication.76 Although liturgical poetry (piyyuṭ) would change as the turn of the millennium approached—including the adoption of Arabic meter and the deployment of biblical language—piyyuṭ of the early tenth century CE largely drew on classical tendencies. Karaite literature, philosophy, law, and ritual practices continued to animate Jewish life in the medieval Islamic world from the emergence of the movement to well beyond the year 1000 CE. Karaites also represented a prominent segment of Jewish society. A call for Karaite migration to Jerusalem on the part of religious leaders in the ninth century led to a concentration of Karaites in the Land of Israel in the tenth century, and communities also sprouted up in Cairo and Alexandria under Fāṭimid rule. There was a Karaite synagogue in Fusṭāṭ, likely from the tenth century, although Karaites also frequented the Rabbanite synagogues, as attested by documents from the Cairo Genizah. Despite differences in ritual calendars, holiday observance, prayer, and the like, Karaites and Rabbanites married one another and worked out their differences. The Genizah reveals agreements for many such marriages.77 At the same time, the communities often squabbled bitterly and Ibn Daʾud explained that the Rabbanites would pronounce a ban on the Karaites every year on the Mount of Olives during the festival of Sukkot.78

74 Rina Drory, Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and Its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture, Leiden, 2000, 137. 75 EJIW, s.v. »Japheth b. Eli« (Michael Wechsler) and the bibliography cited there, as well as Ilana Sasson, The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ʿEli on the Book of Proverbs, Leiden, 2016. And see the chapter on Gaonic-Rabbinic and Karaite Literatures by Burton Visotzky and Marzena Zawanowska published in volume II. 76 Drory, Models and Contacts, 173ff. 77 Oszowy-Schlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza. 78 Ibn Daʾud, 68, 94.

6 Religious Life

6

157

Religious Life

The talmudic academies of Babylonia and the Land of Israel provided support to the communities in the West not only through the judges they educated and the responsa they promulgated, but also through the production of Talmud itself. At the same time, it is not clear that the Talmuds were studied extensively in the Diaspora.79 Early digests of the Talmud were supplemented by the aforementioned responsa of the geonim, which addressed all manner of questions surrounding daily life. The responsa also filled a role educating a distant populace as to Jewish practices as understood by the geonim. The aforementioned prayer-book of ʿAmram was composed in this genre. However, Saʿadya Gaon introduced a new genre, the halakhic monograph, as a tool for educating judges and other scholars in the Jewish diaspora. These monographs were composed under the influence of their Islamic counterparts.80 They provided concrete guidance on a narrow range of topics and distributing such works tied the diaspora to the geonic centers. But the geonim of Babylonia did not only respond to questions of Jewish law and prepare handbooks for the local communities: they played an intimate role in the daily lives of those communities by educating judges who served the local communities yet also maintained ties to the Babylonian center. Additionally, local representatives of the Babylonian academies raised money for the academies and roused local support for the distant academies. Iraqi elites may have been responsible in part for the establishment of a »synagogue of the Babylonians« in the local communities—such a synagogue was founded in 882 CE in Fusṭāṭ—but adherents to the Babylonian rite were surely drawn in part from denizens who preceded the appearance of those Babylonian authorities. Religious and communal life was organized around the synagogue, where the court was also located. In Fusṭāṭ, there were distinct synagogues for those adhering to the Palestinian rite (al-Shāmiyyin), the Babylonian rite (al-ʿIrāqiyyin), and Karaites—established after the Babylonian synagogue. While these three groups differed in their practices, evidence of intermarriage and use of each other’s courts suggests that sectarian divides were less than stark at times—although tensions could also run high—note the aforementioned ban on the Karaites. synagogue buildings were an important piece of communal architecture and despite the ban on dhimmis constructing new religious buildings, they seem to have dotted the landscape wherever there were substantial Jewish settlements. synagogues seem to have had a women’s gallery on the second floor;81 this feature was shared by churches, though not by

79 For a challenge to the traditional historiography that the Talmud was widely disseminated in the geonic period, see Talya Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud, Philadelphia/ PA, 2013. 80 Brody, Geonim, 252. 81 See Sara Reguer, »Women and the synagogue in Medieval Cairo,« in Daughters of the King: Women and the synagogue, ed. Susan Grossman and Rivka Haut, Philadelphia/PA, 1992, 51–57.

158

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

mosques—which seem not to have suffered the presence of women generally. Rather than having fixed seating, worshippers brought cushions and mats to sit or recline on; and apparently some members held booklets including the weekly lection rather than codices containing the entire Torah.

7

Regional Life

The aforementioned tale of the sojourning rabbi ending up in Islamic Spain points to the rise of the communities of the Islamic Mediterranean; in the same story, rabbis headed eastward for a convocation are captured and redeemed by communities in Egypt, Ifrīqiya (modern day Tunisia), and Cordoba. The communities of Babylonia, the Land of Israel, Sicily, Egypt, Northwest Africa, and Spain all maintained distinct features, even though they were all connected in various ways as well. Egypt in the eleventh century was one of two hubs for the Mediterranean trade, and in the twelfth century it became a hub for trade overland to the Red Sea and then afloat (often via the port of ʿAden in Yemen) in the direction of the Malabar Coast of India. As mentioned, the Egyptian population in the medieval period traced its roots back to antiquity and seems to have accommodated a Karaite population quite early in the development of the schism. This may have been due to the importance of the Land of Israel in Karaite theology and practice; the Land of Israel served in many ways as an economic hinterland subordinate to Egypt, and Karaites in the Land of Israel might have traveled to, developed connections with, and perhaps even settled in Egypt. Fusṭāṭ itself was founded in the seventh century and eventually sustained a substantial Coptic population as well as congregations of Jews following the Karaite, Babylonian, and Palestinian (»Jerusalemite«) rites. The centers of Alexandria and Fusṭāṭ were connected, particularly in the later eleventh century, with Jewish settlements dotting the countryside, the so-called rīf. Lower Egypt (that is, the Nile Delta) in particular, supported many such small Jewish settlements. As the eleventh century progressed, economic activity in rural areas developed apace as merchants in the cities deepened their regional networks.82 Some of these merchants also journeyed as far south as the Sudan in search of commodities to bring back to market. Merchants also served at times as cultural brokers; the famous Nahray b. Nissim (ca. 1025–1098 CE) functioned as a communal leader and also as a local representative of the Babylonian academies, although over time local centers of talmudic learning would emerge as prominent and soften the influence of the academies on the communities of the Mediterranean. In many ways, the Land of Israel was a satellite of Egypt and Syria. Commodities and people traveled in both directions, but the wealth of the Nile Valley and the importance of Alexandria as a trading hub left the Land of Israel in a subsidiary 82 Goldberg, Trade and Institutions.

7 Regional Life

159

position. Indeed, throughout the medieval period the Land of Israel was seen as part of al-Shām, Greater Syria, pointing to the other major city for which the Land of Israel was a crossroads—Damascus (also known as al-Shām, a metonym for the region). Yet while it was a bit of an economic backwater, the Land of Israel occupied an important cultural and religious place in the Jewish communities of the Lands of Islam. First, the place of Jerusalem in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam gave it a certain religious prominence—even though it was Ramla (founded in the year 717 CE) rather than Jerusalem from which Islamic rulers governed the region. Indeed, the population of Ramla eclipsed that of Jerusalem in the medieval period.83 Yet as the Karaite schism developed, both Jerusalem and Ramla became centers for Jewish migration. As part of ascetic practices for which they dubbed themselves »Mourners of Zion« (Heb., Avele ṣiyyon), Jerusalem was a spiritual center to the Karaites from the first half of the ninth century. Ramla was a center presumably because of its proximity to Muslim authorities who could protect the interests of the Karaite community. Other important sites included Tiberias, en route to Damascus and a Muslim administrative center. Tiberias also was an important center of Masoretic activity in the ninth century, as well as a center of rabbinic learning and home to the academy of the Land of Israel up to the first quarter of the tenth century, following the aforementioned calendar controversy. The Mediterranean coast also sustained a number of cities of important Jewish settlement, including Tyre—which would eventually become the home of the academy of the Land of Israel in the late eleventh century. Tyre had settlements of both Karaites and Rabbanites and was an important entrepôt linking Damascus to the Mediterranean and also to Ramla via the overland route. From the seventh century to the middle of the eleventh, Qayrawān in Ifrīqīya (modern Tunisia) functioned as an economic and cultural center, which would come to have its own rabbinic academy and a mercantile elite which spanned from al-Andalus to Iraq in the eleventh century. A mercantile collective of sorts even formed which included traders centered on both Qayrawān and Fusṭāṭ. These traders called themselves asḥābunā (»our fellows«) and Goitein gave them the epithet »the Maghrebis« (»the Westerners«).84 Qayrawān had strong ties to the academies of Babylonia, perhaps due to migration of judges and other urban elites from the East but certainly due to the activities of figures such as Jacob Ibn Shāhīn and Nahray b. Nissim in collecting donations for the academies and sending them along with »religious« questions to the authorities in Baghdad. The redemption of a captive rabbi by the community in Ifrāqīya mentioned by Ibn Daud is likely a folk etiology of the development of independent centers of Jewish learning which may have been seeded by former students of the Babylonian academies. Yet eventually

83 EJIW, s.v. »Ramla« (Miriam Frenkel). 84 Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, I:21 et passim. Expanding on Goitein’s ideas, Avner Greif determined that aṣḥābunā formed a hard-and-fast coalition that controlled unobserved fellows’ behavior through a »multilateral punishment strategy«, an argument that has been challenged in Ackerman-Lieberman, The Business of Identity.

160

Jews and/under Islam: 650–1000 CE

a local academy in Qayrawān flourished in the late tenth century and came to produce scholars of its own, including Ḥananel b. Ḥushiel (son of the scholar Ḥushiel b. Elḥanan who may have migrated to North Africa from Bari in southern Italy), and Nissim b. Jacob Ibn Shahīn (author of the first systematic commentary on the Talmud). Other leading lights of the North African community of the period include Isaac al-Fasi (1013–1103 CE), who was born in Qalʿat Banī Ḥammād in central Maghrib (now Algeria) and studied under Ḥananel. Al-Fasi is an important figure not only because of his composition of a digest of the Talmud known as Halakhot Rabbati (»The Great [Book of] Laws«) but because of his eventual migration to al-Andalus in the wake of a Berber attack on the Jews of Fes in 1033 CE, where he would come to head a local academy in Lucena, a Jewish settlement in the orbit of Cordoba. AlFasi’s move west points to the fact that the Maghrib (that is, Northwest Africa in general, from Tunisia to Morocco—the term Maghrib also being the modern Arabic name for Morocco) retained not only myriad trading connections with Egypt to the east, but also al-Andalus to the north and west. The distance from the Maghrib to Spain suggests a cultural, economic, and often political continuity. The Maghrib was not only the cradle of the Shiʿī Fāṭimids but also the Berber al-Murābiṭūn (»Almoravid«) and Almohad movements. While the Fāṭimids would expand East and eventually found Cairo in 969 CE, the latter would move north into al-Andalus in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, respectively, making daily life progressively worse for dhimmīs. Yet prior to the rise of the Berber regimes, Jewish high culture (at least) flourished in al-Andalus, as has already been mentioned. Qayrawān was also not far from Sicily, which had been in and out of Islamic hands since the early conquests of North Africa until it was captured by Norman mercenaries in 1071 CE and definitively fell under Christian rule. The Genizah documents reveal Sicily as a trading destination and indeed Jewish settlement in Palermo preceded Islamic conquest.85 While under Aghlabid rule (controlled from Ifrīqīya from 800 to 909 CE), the Jews of Sicily may have been subject to some of the ghiyār restrictions, although this is uncertain. The rise of the Jewish community of the North African littoral up to the year 1000 CE set the stage for future important developments, in particular a burgeoning merchant culture throughout the Islamic Mediterranean in the eleventh century that shifted to extend from the Red Sea to the Malabar Coast of India in the twelfth. It is also roughly at the turn of the millennium that the expansion of the Jewish communities of Christian Europe begins apace, shifting the demographic balance again. The Jewish engagement with early Islam leading up to the high middle ages saw both communities significantly re-shaped through that engagement: Islam blossomed from its early foundations in ascetic Judeo-Christian practice in the Arabian Peninsula to a religious and cultural frame reaching from al-Andalus in the west to Transoxania in the East and beyond. The Jewish community, on the other hand, shifted from east to west as the talmudic academies gave ground to the communi85 EJIW, s.v. »Palermo and Sicily« (Nadia Zeldes).

7 Regional Life

161

ties of the Mediterranean diaspora. Judaism had a formative influence on early Islam, but with the rise and expansion of Islamic empire, the direction of influence shifted and it was medieval Islam that lent its impress to medieval Judaism in the southern Mediterranean. Jews throughout the medieval Islamic world engaged their broader environment in a number of ways: at times by taking on Islamic practices and making them their own and at others by rejecting them. At the same time, the community maintained its distinctiveness in ways ranging from the quotidian to the holy. At times, these distinctive practices were forced or encouraged as part of the ghiyār restrictions, but at others they simply represented the desire among the community to retain its own distinct identity amidst a broader culture that in many ways welcomed their participation. For further reading Ackerman-Lieberman, Phillip I., The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt, Palo Alto/CA, 2014. Brody, Robert, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture, New Haven/ CT, 1998. Cohen, Mark R., Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World, Philadelphia/PA, 2017. Donner, Fred McGraw, Muhammad and the Believers, Cambridge/MA, 2010. Elman, Yaakov, »Babylonian Jews at the Intersection of the Iranian Economy and Sasanian Law,« in The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics, ed. Aharon Levine, New York, 2010, 545–63. Gil, Moshe, Documents of the Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza, Leiden, 1976. idem, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, Leiden, 2004. Goitein, Shlomo D., A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols., Berkeley/CA, 1967–88. Goldberg, Jessica, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and Their Business World, Cambridge, 2012. Ibn Daʾud, Abraham ben David, Sefer Ha-Qabbalah: A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of the Book of Tradition, ed. Gerson D. Cohen, Philadelphia/PA, 1967. Katsh, Abraham Isaac, Judaism in Islam: Biblical and Talmudic Backgrounds of of the Koran and Its Commentaries, New York, 1980. Newby, Gordon D., A History of the Jews of Arabia, Columbia/SC, 1988. Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith, Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza: Legal Tradition and Community Life in Mediaeval Egypt and Palestine, EJM 20, Leiden, 1998. Rustow, Marina, »At the Limits of Communal Autonomy: Jewish Bids for Intervention from the Mamluk State,« Mamluk Studies Review 13,2 (2009): 133–59. Sasson, Ilana, The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben ʿEli on the Book of Proverbs, Leiden, 2016. Simonsohn, Uriel, »Are Geonic Responsa a Reliable Source for the Study of Jewish Conversion to Islam? A Comparative Analysis of Legal Sources,« in Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Festschrift in Honor of Mark R. Cohen, ed. Arnold Franklin et al., Leiden, 2014, 121–38. Sklare, David Eric, Samuel ben Ḥ ofni Gaon and His Cultural World: Texts and Studies, Leiden, 1996. Stillman, Norman A., The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book, Philadelphia/PA, 1979.

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500 Robert Chazan

1

Introduction

During the first half of the Middle Ages, from c. 500 through c. 1000, western Christendom was the weakest of the three major Western religio-political blocs, lagging far behind the larger and more powerful Islamic bloc and the Byzantine bloc. Its Jewish population was miniscule compared to the Jewish population of the Islamic sphere and Byzantium. This tiny Jewish population was located in the slim areas of northern Iberia that remained under Christian control, across southern France, and in small pockets on the Italian peninsula. Jewish settlement in these areas was ancient, tracing back to the spread of the western Jewish diaspora throughout the Mediterranean Basin during antiquity. The longevity of these small Jewish communities suggests a considerable measure of integration into their majority environment. To be sure, little is known of these venerable and small communities. Whatever their Jewish cultural creativity might have been, it has left no tangible imprint on later Jewish life in western Christendom. The second half of the Middle Ages, normally identified as c. 1000 to c. 1500, shows remarkable change in western Christendom overall and parallel change in its Jewish minority.1 By the year 1500, Latin Christendom had been transformed into the dominant religio-political bloc in the West, far more powerful than its Islamic and Byzantine rivals. By 1500, western Christendom was militarily stronger, economically more successful, politically better organized, and culturally more advanced than its competitors.2 Indeed, the dominance of Latin Christendom achieved during the second half of the Middle Ages lasted well into the modern period, until the role of Europe was usurped by the United States during the twentieth century. To a significance extent, the United States in fact reflects ongoing European domi-

1 The boundaries commonly projected for the Middle Ages are 500 through 1500, based on the sense that the emergence of new ideas and ideals during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries signaled the onset of modernity and the end of the medieval era. The French Annales school extends the Middle Ages down through the end of the eighteenth century, arguing that only at that point did the new ideas and ideals begin to make themselves felt in political and societal realities. 2 For two major analyses of this vitalization, see Richard W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, New Haven/CT, 1953, and Johannes Fried, The Middle Ages, trans. Peter Lewis, Cambridge, 2015.

1 Introduction

163

nance, since its population and culture have been so thoroughly shaped by the population and culture of Europe. The remarkable vitalization of Latin Christendom during the second half of the Middle Ages resulted in major expansion of its Jewish minority. The Jewish population of western Christendom grew steadily, to the point that what was once a minuscule percentage of world Jewry came to dominate world Jewish population. The growth in numbers was paralleled by the augmentation of the creativity and influence of European Jewry. In effect, the Jews of Latin Christendom came to dominate world Jewry in more than numerical terms; these Jews came to lead world Jewry in every way—politically, economically, religiously, and culturally. In effect, the growing dominance of western Christendom on the world scene was paralleled by the dominance of its Jewish component on the Jewish world scene.3 The growth of the Jewry in western Christendom took place in two quite different sectors of Europe—the south and the north. Jewish presence in southern Europe long predated the vitalization of Latin Christendom. Jews had settled all around the Mediterranean Basin throughout antiquity; by the end of the first Christian millennium, the small Jewish communities of southern Europe were well rooted and well integrated in their environment. The first stage in the expansion of southern European Jewry was the result of the expansion of Christian territory in the south, especially on the Iberian Peninsula. Early in the Middle Ages, Muslim armies had conquered almost the entirety of Iberia, leaving only small and weak Christian principalities in the northern areas. These losses were deeply resented by Europe’s Christians. As soon as western Christendom began its remarkable vitalization, one of its earliest commitments was to retake the areas of Spain that it saw as rightfully Christian. Under Muslim rule, the Jewish population of Spain grew considerably, and Jews imbibed the rich culture created on the peninsula. Thus the re-conquest of Iberia brought under Christian rule large and important territory and a set of well-established and vibrant Jewish communities. Moreover, the vitalization of western Christendom convinced Jews living in other sectors of the Mediterranean Basin to make their way into the newly flourishing sectors of southern Europe, especially southern France. The Jewish population expanded across southern Europe; new cultural patterns were imbibed from the increasingly active Christian majority; the fruits of the rich culture of the Muslim areas of the Mediterranean Basin were introduced as well. The Jews of southern Europe flourished economically and culturally. Since the roots of Jewish presence were well established, there are few signs of significant opposition to the expanding Jewish presence. By the twelfth century, southern European Jewry was considerably larger and perceptibly more vigorous than it had been at the turn of the millennium.

3 For lengthier treatment of the Jewish experience in medieval western Christendom, see Robert Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks, Cambridge, 2006; idem, Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe, Cambridge, 2010; and idem, ed., The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 6: The Middle Ages: The Christian World, Cambridge, 2018.

164

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

There was a second area of growth of Jewish population and life in Latin Christendom, and the dynamic of growth in this second area was quite different. Northern Europe had long been part of western Christendom, but had contributed little to its strength before the end of the first millennium. It was essentially a barren area, limited in population, low in productivity, and primitive in governance. Remarkable vitalization of northern Europe during the second half of the Middle Ages constituted a key ingredient in the leap forward of western Christendom. For reasons that are not at all clear, the backwardness of northern Europe began to give way at the turn of the millennium. Forests were cut down; arable land expanded; more food was produced; trade proliferated; old urban areas grew, and new towns were created; effective governance appeared; the role of the Church strengthened; cultural creativity emerged. A vast area that had essentially lain fallow was transformed into a vibrant and creative center of the West. As a simple indication of this process, let us note that all through the first half of the Middle Ages, the polities of northern Europe were small, primitive, and weak. However, by the twelfth century, two strong new monarchies had appeared—one in England, the other in France. These two states became increasingly powerful and influential over the ensuing centuries. They symbolize effectively the new-found vigor and strength of northern Europe. Up through the end of the first half of the Middle Ages, there was no real Jewish presence in northern Europe. As noted, the Jewish population of western Christendom altogether was very small; the Jewish population of the northern sector of western Christendom was nearly non-existent. With the vitalization of northern Europe—initially in the westernmost sectors and then moving eastward, some southern European Jews were attracted to the burgeoning opportunities manifest in the north. To be sure, most southern European Jews were engaged in economic activities that precluded migration. Jews for whom relocation was possible were largely merchants, and it is clear that the initial Jewish settlers in the north came as merchants, by and large with strong support from the active and aggressive rulers in the north. Settling in northern Europe was no easy process. There was a sense of economic opportunity associated with the rapid rate of change; there was also the support of rulers who saw the Jews as useful resources for the improvement of the economies over which they presided. However, the Jewish immigrants were resented by the indigenous Christian population at large. The key element in this resentment was simply the newness of the Jewish settlers. As is true almost universally, the Jewish newcomers were deeply resented qua newcomers. While the rulers saw the Jews as economic resources, the populace at large saw them as intruders and competitors. Moreover, the population of northern Europe was almost entirely devoted to the Roman Church. Thus, Jews were both newcomers and religious »others.« Indeed, not only were these Jews religiously different, they were in fact the descendants of those who had opposed Jesus most vehemently and were responsible— according to the Gospels—for his death. These multiple negative impressions strongly reinforced one another. As a result, the Jewish immigrants to northern Europe encountered considerable resistance. To an extent, this resistance involved

2 Northern Europe Jewry: Beginnings

165

limitation of Jewish economic diversification. From the outset, northern European Jewry—unlike Jews elsewhere—were highly limited in their economic pursuits. In addition, the new Jews of northern Europe were subjected to occasional violence. However, their overlords were seriously committed to protecting their Jewish clients and were by and large successful. Given this wide-ranging popular resistance and the complications it entailed, the prospects for this young Jewry would seem to have been tenuous. Nonetheless, the new Jewry successfully implanted itself in northern Europe. The Jewish population grew steadily across northern Europe, in part through ongoing immigration and in part through natural increase. By the end of the second half of the Middle Ages, Jewish population in northern Europe had likely outstripped the Jewish population of southern Europe and was approaching parity with the Jewish population of the Islamic world. During the early modern period, the Jews of northern Europe became the dominant element in world Jewish population. What began around the year 1000 as a small Jewish immigrant community had become a new and vigorous branch of the Jewish people. The new northern European branch of the Jewish people came to dominate world Jewry in more than simply numbers. This young Jewry fashioned a new Jewish culture as well. To be sure, the culture of northern European Jewry was grounded in earlier Jewish tradition—the Hebrew Bible, the Mishnah as the first authoritative classic of rabbinic Judaism, and the Babylonian Talmud as the authoritative commentary on and expansion of the Mishnah. This tradition assumed and necessitated ongoing interpretation and expansion. The new Jewry of northern Europe created early on innovative patterns of interpretation and expansion. Indeed, rather early in its history this young Jewry saw the emergence of works of interpretation and expansion of Jewish law and lore that quickly became classics, have been studied regularly by Jews all over the world ever since, and have shaped the religious perspectives of global Jewry over the succeeding centuries. Given the differences between the older Jewry of southern Europe and the new Jewry of northern Europe, it is useful—indeed necessary—to treat the two Jewries separately. Although it might seem wisest to begin with the older Jewry of southern Jewry, we shall begin with the north. The reason for this sequencing is that, with the passage of time, a number of the innovative features of northern European Jewish life made their way to the south, sometimes as positive developments but more often as negative developments. For this reason, we shall begin with the new Jewry of the north.

2

Northern Europe Jewry: Beginnings

During the first half of the Middle Ages, Jewish merchants traversed northern Europe as part of their trade, buying up some of the natural products of the north in order to sell them in the better developed markets of southern Europe and the Middle East. Settling in northern Europe seemingly made little sense to these Jewish merchants, given the overall backwardness of the area. As northern Europe

166

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

made its extraordinary leap forward, beginning toward the end of the tenth century, Jewish perceptions began to change. Just as the broad process of vitalization in northern Europe is shrouded in obscurity, so too the details of the emergence of a new branch of the Jewish people in this area are unclear. The first trustworthy evidence of this new Jewry reflects the creation of new Jewish settlements in a variety of towns across the north. The firmest evidence of the establishment of new Jewish settlements in northern Europe comes from the town of Speyer in the year 1084. At that time, the bishop of Speyer, who was the secular ruler of the town as well, chose to invite Jews to settle in the town. Fortunately, two very different sources have survived for this event—a Latin charter of invitation issued by the bishop and a Hebrew narrative account of the founding of the Jewish settlement that was composed not too long after 1084. The two accounts agree on the key issues; at the same time they supplement one another, with each providing useful details.4 The Hebrew account indicates that by 1084 there was already an established Jewish community in nearby Mainz. Indeed, the life of the very important French Jewish exegete R. Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi) of Troyes (the Champagne area of France) indicates that, prior to 1084, he had visited a number of Rhineland Jewish academies to study, including the academy of Mainz. There is evidence—limited to be sure—of a major rabbinic figure in Mainz named R. Gershom early in the eleventh century. In 1084, this venerable Jewish community suffered violence. All the Jews’ quarter and their street was burned, and we stood in great fear of the burghers. At the same time, Meir Cohen came from Worms, bearing a copy of Torat Cohanim. The burghers thought that it was silver or gold and slew him […] We then decided to set forth from there and to settle wherever we might find a fortified city.5

Mainz and Worms already harbored Jewish communities (Rashi had studied in both); in 1084, the Mainz community suffered a triple blow—a fire, burgher resentment of the conflagration, and the murder of a visiting Worms Jew. Some of the Mainz Jews—clearly not all of them—decided to seek safer circumstances. This brief Hebrew account notes and praises the support offered by the bishop of Speyer, which enabled the Mainz Jews in transit to resettle securely in Speyer. The charter of invitation issued by Bishop Rudiger fleshes out the support offered to the relocating Mainz Jews. The bishop provided for these Jews an area of the town for their settlement. Given the insecurity that had set these Mainz Jews in motion, he surrounded this area of settlement with a protective wall. He also provided them with land for a Jewish burial ground. In addition, Bishop Rudiger granted these Jews important business rights: I have accorded them the free right of exchanging gold and silver and selling everything they use both within their residential area and outside it, beyond the gate down to the

4 These two sources can be found in English translation in Robert Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, New York, 1980, 58f. 5 Ibid., 59.

2 Northern Europe Jewry: Beginnings

167

wharf and on the wharf itself. I have given them this same right throughout the entire town.6

Further, Bishop Rudiger promised them judicial independence up to a point. They could adjudicate their internal quarrels in their own court. When a non-Jewish court setting would be required, that non-Jewish court would be that of the bishop. The Jews would not be required to appear in the local municipal court. Finally, the bishop removed a number of irksome ecclesiastical impingements on Jewish life.7 The generosity of this charter is patent and explains the Jewish sense of gratitude to Bishop Rudiger. Why was such generosity extended to the Mainz Jews seeking new homes? Bishop Rudiger provides an answer at the very outset of his charter: When I wished to make a city out of the town of Speyer, I Rudiger, surnamed Huozmann, bishop of Speyer, who thought that the glory of our town would be augmented a thousandfold if I were to bring Jews.8

Jews were perceived as a boon by the bishop, and this surely meant an economic boon—they would enhance the economy of Speyer considerably. Bishop Rudiger indicates clearly that the technique he used for improvement of the Speyer economy was the granting of this generous charter to the Mainz Jews. A few further sources reflect the founding of new Jewish communities in other areas of northwestern Europe, for example the establishment of new Jewish settlements in Flanders and England.9 In all these instances, the establishment of the new Jewish settlement was set in motion by secular rulers. One of the elements in the rapid development of northern Europe was a ruling class that aggressively engineered economic progress. Many of these rulers perceived Jews as a useful tool in the move toward economic improvement. Such perceptions were key to the successful immigration of new Jewish settlers; the same perceptions undoubtedly fed the animosity of resentful Christian burghers. The Speyer data provide useful indications of key aspects of burgeoning Jewish life in northern Europe. The most obvious is the role of support by the ruling class in successful Jewish settlement, expressed in Speyer in multiple ways. Also patent in the Speyer material is evidence of Jewish economic activity. The Jews invited to Speyer were clearly merchants, who were accorded the right to buy and sell throughout the town. The eleventh-century Jewish responsa literature, which provides questions posed to rabbinic authorities and their answers, opens a different

6 7 8 9

Ibid., 58. Ibid., 58f. Ibid., 58. A curious Hebrew narrative that depicts the efforts of a wealthy Jew to protect the endangered Jews of northern France ends with a brief report of the invitation extended to him by the count of Flanders to bring Jewish associates and settle in the county; the twelfthcentury English chronicler William of Malmesbury mentions in passing in his history of the kings of England an invitation extended by William the Conqueror to Jews of Normandy to settle in England.

168

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

kind of window on early Jewish life in northern Europe, and this literature reinforces the sense of the early Jews of northern Europe as merchants.10 Capable merchants were obviously viewed by the ruling class as a useful commodity, which led to the support of Jewish settlement. From the Speyer material we also glean valuable evidence of the topography of Jewish life in northern Europe during this initial stage in the history of Jewish settlement. The Jews of Mainz lived in an identifiable sector of the city, and the Jews of Speyer were provided with a similar sector for their settlement. Indeed, the bishop of Speyer constructed a wall around this Jewish neighborhood. Precisely how exclusively the Jewish neighborhoods were Jewish is often not at all clear. What is clear is that all or almost all of the Jews of any given town would choose to live in an identifiably Jewish neighborhood. This was partially a reflection of concerns with anti-Jewish violence, as was true for the establishment of the Jewish neighborhood of Speyer. It also reflects a simpler desire of like-minded and similarly behaving people of all kinds to live in homogeneous settings. The towns of medieval Europe were filled with neighborhoods that reflect homogeneity of economic activity, for example. In this sense, Jews were hardly exceptional, although the Jewish thrust toward neighborhood homogeneity may have been unusually intense. Anti-Jewish animosity and the potential of such animosity to break into violence is richly manifest in the Speyer material. The story of Jewish settlement in Speyer began with an outbreak of violence in the neighboring town of Mainz. The antiJewish violence in Mainz was entirely local, was set in motion by a fire, and included robbery that devolved into murder. The settlement of Jewish newcomers in Speyer undoubtedly aroused burgher antipathy. The Mainz Jews were newcomers to Speyer, and newcomers are rarely greeted with warmth; most often, they are resented simply for being new. This normal antipathy was in all likelihood augmented by the bishop’s generous support of the Jewish newcomers, which included a gift of land and removal of the Jews from the jurisdiction of the municipal court. The bishop as secular ruler was supportive of the immigrating Jews, and the bishop as ecclesiastical leader was surely cognizant of the traditional Church insistence on the right of Jews to safe and secure existence in Christian societies. On the other hand, the burghers of Speyer were in all likelihood opposed to the arrival of a new set of Jews, partly out of the normal resistance to newcomers and partly out of fear of economic competition. In effect, economic considerations played a role in the bishop’s support of the Jews and in the burghers’ opposition to them. The Speyer data open a valuable window on the dynamic of early Jewish life in rapidly developing northern Europe—ruler support; Church insistence on safe and secure circumstances for Jewish life; the opposition of the populace at large. This pattern was repeated all across northern Europe during the early centuries of the

10 Early European responsa have been collected by Irving A. Agus, Urban Civilization in PreCrusade Europe, 2 vols., New York, 1968. Section IV of the collection presents responsa focused on Jewish business.

2 Northern Europe Jewry: Beginnings

169

second millennium. Less than a decade after 1084, the Church introduced a strikingly innovative program—crusading—that ostensibly had no relation to Jews whatsoever. However, this new program set the stage for an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence that was grounded in the popular negativity toward the new Jews of northern Europe. In late 1095, Pope Urban II announced a new Church undertaking—a campaign to recapture the sacred sites of Christianity in the Holy Land. The aggressiveness of rapidly developing western Christendom was manifest earlier in the eleventh century in the drive to retake what was perceived as lost Christian territory on the Iberian peninsula. The call to the crusade represented intensification of this aggressiveness. The crusade was advanced as an ecclesiastical undertaking, with multiple Church benefits extended to the warriors and their families who would take on the sacred mission. Moreover, while the battling in Iberia involved invading contiguous European territory, the crusade required traveling long distances through hostile lands to reach the objective of the mission. The augurs for such an enterprise were daunting. The papal call elicited a wide range of responses. From the papal perspective, the most important response was the readiness of a number of major European barons to lead their well-armed and well-organized militias eastward toward the Land of Israel. These militias encountered spirited Muslim resistance across the vast area they traversed, but in 1099 they reached Jerusalem and conquered it. The stunning victory was widely viewed in Christian circles as the result of divine support. There were less organized and less effective responses to the papal call as well. Popular preachers organized poorly trained and poorly equipped mobs to proceed eastward, again with high hopes of divine support. These bands were utterly ineffective militarily, and many of them were wiped out as they first entered Muslim territory. Indeed, some of these bands were so disorganized and dangerous that they were destroyed by Christian rulers as they moved across Christian territory, pillaging and killing. The well-organized militias that conquered Jerusalem inflicted no harm on the Jews of western Christendom; the disorganized bands in a few places in north-central Europe interpreted their mission as including baptizing or killing Jews. The anti-Jewish crusading violence of 1096 elicited a number of dramatic and inspirational Jewish accounts that have had enormous impact on subsequent Jewish historical thinking. It is even depicted—albeit in far more limited fashion—in a few of the Christian chronicles of the First Crusade. What has emerged in popular Jewish thinking and some scholarly circles is the sense of a major catastrophe for Jewish life in medieval western Christendom, even perhaps a watershed in the history of the Jews in medieval western Christendom. These views are grossly exaggerated. Again, the violence was perpetrated by rogue bands and not by the genuine and successful crusading militias; moreover, the violence was vigorously opposed by the established authorities of church and state. The assaults were carried out in a very restricted area of northern Europe and involved a limited number of victims. The overall number of victims of the 1096 violence was something on the order of three thousand Jews. While the loss

170

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

of three thousand lives is deeply lamentable, this number pales in comparison with later medieval tragedies, such as the anti-Jewish violence of 1348–9 and 1391. The violence of 1096 in no sense impeded the ongoing growth of medieval European Jewry or more specifically the growth of northern European Jewry. The broader Jewry of medieval western Christendom and the Jewry of northern European both continued their remarkable growth all through the ensuing centuries. Even the small number of affected Jewish communities were quickly rebuilt and repopulated.11 The 1096 assaults reflect the popular resistance to Jewish settlement in northern Europe that was manifest in the local Mainz violence of 1084. While crusading forces were organized all across western Christendom, it was only in northern Europe that popular bands distorted the call to retake the sacred sites of Christianity from the Muslims into unwarranted justification for forcibly baptizing or killing Jews. Additionally, the crusade-related violence of 1096 and the Jewish responses to it indicate the extent to which the new Jews of northern Europe absorbed the thinking of the surrounding Christian society. In effect, the 1096 Jews of the Rhineland responded to the extreme Christian religious bellicosity with parallel intensity. The Jews challenged by the demand to convert or die rejected conversion and accepted death, sometimes at the hands of the Christian attackers and sometimes even at their own hands. In stunning episodes, parents slaughtered their children, rather than allow them to be forcibly baptized. The subsequent Jewish narrators of these events projected them as unparalleled examples of religious devotion and heroism, in much the same way as Christian chroniclers portrayed their crusading warriors.12 Slightly before, during, and after the brief period of crusade-related anti-Jewish violence in the Rhineland, French Jewry produced the first major classics of medieval Jewish literature to emerge from northern Europe. The small Jewish community of Troyes in the county of Champagne housed a scholar named Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi) and his school of students. Rashi, as already noted, had left his native Champagne to study in the Rhineland academies. He returned to his home territory prior to the outbreak of the First Crusade violence and seems to have founded a school of advanced Jewish studies. As a result of his teaching efforts, Rashi composed two extensive commentaries—one on the Hebrew Bible and the second on the Babylonian Talmud. Both quickly became classics, widely copied and studied across northern Europe and eventually throughout the Jewish world. These two commentaries remain central to traditional Jewish Bible and Talmud study even

11 On the fate of European Jews during the First Crusade, see Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, Berkeley/CA, 1987. While the book focuses on the events associated with the First Crusade and argues their significance, it rejects the notion of the First Crusade as a major catastrophe in medieval Jewish history or a turning point in that history. 12 For these reflections by the medieval Jewish chroniclers, see the translations of two of the Hebrew narratives in ibid., 225–97.

3 Northern European Jewry: Maturation

171

today. In traditional Jewish circles, to study the Hebrew Bible means to study it with Rashi’s commentary, and to study the Babylonian Talmud means to study it with Rashi’s commentary. Moreover, Rashi set in motion schools of biblical and talmudic commentary that produced further classical commentaries during the course of the twelfth and on into the thirteenth centuries. Rashi’s Bible commentary includes clarification of the simple meaning of the biblical text and elucidation of the broader meaning of passages, often achieved through citation of selections from classical rabbinic sources. The overall result is clarification of the biblical source and its implications for subsequent Jewish life. It is this breadth that has made it so widely utilized throughout the subsequent centuries. The Talmud commentary is somewhat different. It is essentially a beginner’s guide to the intricacies of the Talmud, which can be extremely difficult. Rashi’s fairly brief observations serve to clarify the talmudic terminology and at the same time to lead students through the complications of often convoluted argumentation. The success of this clarification of a dense text has made it indispensable to Talmud students over the ages.

3

Northern European Jewry: Maturation

The twelfth century was a century of remarkable growth and development across western Christendom and especially in its northern areas. The economic vitalization proceeded apace, and urban expansion was prominent. By the end of the twelfth century, two well-organized monarchies had emerged in the northwest— one in England and one in France. These two young monarchies were destined to function as powers in the West all the way down to the present. They introduced a new style of political organization and thinking into western Christendom. The Church as well exhibited enhanced organizational vigor, creating new structures and new forms of Christian spirituality. At the same time, western Christendom— again especially its northern sectors—exhibited new forms of animosity toward groups perceived as different and threatening—lepers, gay people, women, and especially Jews. Deteriorating perceptions of these »others« and arrangements for their marginalization multiplied.13 For the Jews of northern Europe, there was a major Church-related change, which bore both positive and negative implications. The much stronger Roman Church felt itself obliged during the twelfth century to address traditional ecclesiastical demands that had long been neglected. Prominent among these traditional demands supported with new fervor was the biblically grounded prohibition of Christians taking interest from other Christians. Paul had annulled for gentile Christians the ritual commandments of the Hebrew Bible; ethical commandments

13 For a path-breaking study of this new anti-»other« sentiment, see Robert I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250, 2nd ed., Oxford, 2007.

172

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

remained in full effect, however, and the prohibition of taking interest from fellow Israelites/Jews/Christians was perceived in all these traditions as a moral demand to assist the needy in one’s society. To be sure, the prohibition had not been carefully enforced in medieval western Christendom; this laxness was now to be undone. The biblical injunction makes a clear distinction between taking interest from a fellow-countryman and taking interest from a stranger—the former was prohibited, and the latter was allowed.14 What this distinction was generally taken to mean was that Christians could take interest from Jews and Jews could take interest from Christians. This seemingly arcane issue had important implications for the Christian majority of northern Europe and for the Jewish minority. For the Christian majority, which was in the midst of remarkable economic and political vitalization, diminishing severely the flow of capital would have had disastrous results. Business and governmental projects were increasingly ambitious and required capital for their realization. To the extent that the Church was successful in impeding Christian taking of interest from fellow-Christians, the remarkable progress would have been seriously threatened. Fortunately, there was a small but active community of Jewish businesspeople who could take up the slack. The Jewish turn to moneylending and banking was a boon to majority society in western Christendom, especially in its northern sector, The new economic specialization was in many ways a blessing to the Jews of northern Europe. Given the popular resistance to the new Jewish population of northern Europe, the opening of a new and lucrative field of economic activity was clearly a boon. Indeed, the same governmental authorities that had earlier supported Jewish trade out of a commitment to enhancing the economy of northern Europe now offered considerable support for Jewish moneylending and banking. The considerations behind the new support were parallel to the considerations behind the earlier support. On the one hand, the rulers of the north were concerned for the economic wellbeing of their realms; on the other hand, they were also concerned for the taxes that successful Jewish economic activity—whether from trade or moneylending—would produce, and the revenue for the latter was often considerable. There is widespread and erroneous belief that Jews have been occupied throughout their history in finance. This view is strongly entrenched in popular circles, has often been supported by scholars, and formed an important component in modern Anti-Semitism. As a result of the rich treasure trove of quotidian materials found in the Cairo Genizah and the remarkable research of Shlomo D. Goitein and his students, this view of past Jewish economic activity is no longer tenable. The Cairo Genizah held thousands of everyday documents concerning Jewish economic activities in the eastern Mediterranean Basin toward the end of the first millennium. These documents indicate that the Jews of this area and time period were involved in every kind of economic activity, from the most to the least remunerative. Jews were involved in finance, but this involvement was by no means a Jewish 14 See Deuteronomy 23:20f.

3 Northern European Jewry: Maturation

173

specialty.15 Finance became a Jewish specialty under the special circumstances of medieval northern Europe—a new Jewish community encountering considerable popular resistance; limited economic opportunities as a result of this resistance; the Church campaign against Christian usury; the importance of legitimate Jewish financial activity under these unique conditions. Jewish moneylending became a central Jewish economic activity across northern Europe, assisting in the maintenance of the economic progress in the north and providing Jews with a lucrative and useful place in the general economy. Jewish lending came in two identifiably different varieties. The difference lay in the level of governmental sophistication. Where governments were still rather primitive, Jewish moneylending too was rather primitive. That is to say that Jewish lenders assured the return of the sums they disbursed through the depositing by the borrower of objects equal to or greater than the sums they lent plus the anticipated interest on the loan. This was a simple and effective technique for insuring loans. It was, however, somewhat cumbersome and by and large limited loans to small to medium sums. Rarely were there objects of great value that could be deposited with Jewish lenders.16 The rulers of north-central and northeastern Europe regularly supported this rather primitive Jewish lending, as indicated in a range of charters they provided for their Jewish clients.17 In the more advanced areas of northwestern Europe, the ruling authorities supported more sophisticated Jewish lending and assured through their support the return of the sums disbursed by the Jewish lenders. What emerged across England and France was a sophisticated system of governmental enrollment and enforcement of Jewish loans. Thus, the sums disbursed could be quite large and the guarantees advanced could include land. Land of course could not be taken directly into Jewish control as movable objects could be; governments, however, could assure Jewish lenders of access to land or its value in case of default. This governmentally-backed lending had many positive implications for the Jewish financiers of northwestern Europe. The most obvious was augmented Jewish business and wealth. During the twelfth century, a cluster of wealthy Jewish bankers emerged in both England and France. The twelfth-century English Jew Aaron of Lincoln was reputed to be the wealthiest individual in the kingdom, except for

15 Shlomo D. Goitein mined the rich trove of quotidian documents in the Cairo Genizah in order to illuminate a number of major facets of Jewish everyday life in the eastern Mediterranean Basin late in the first millennium and early in the second. The first volume of his five-volume masterpiece is devoted to Jewish economic activity, which emerges as highly diversified. See Shlomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Genizah, 5 vols., Berkeley/CA, 1967–88, vol. 1. 16 Joseph Shatzmiller has studied unusual instances of extremely valuable objects deposited with Jewish lenders. See his Cultural Exchange: Jews, Christians, and Art in the Medieval Marketplace, Princeton/NJ, 2013. 17 For two major examples of these central and eastern European charters, see Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 88–93.

174

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

the king. These wealthy Jews used their riches to assist their co-religionists in multiple ways and likewise utilized their political connections for interventions on behalf of their fellow Jews. The new and more sophisticated Jewish lending certainly had positive results for Jewish life. This new economic activity also had negative results as well. The first was Church attention to the new Jewish lending, concern over it, and demands for limiting it. The Church—which had established the conditions for the new Jewish specialization through its campaign to eliminate Christian usury—became increasingly concerned during the ensuing centuries with the harm that it had thus inflicted. The Church had long functioned as the protector of the weak and defenseless in Christian society, and it became increasingly distressed over the impact of Jewish moneylending on these weak and defenseless Christians. Church leaders demanded a range of limitations on Jewish moneylending. These included restrictions on those who might borrow from Jewish lenders, restrictions on the objects that might be deposited with Jewish lenders, and perhaps most significantly limitations on the rate of interest that Jewish lenders might charge. Slowly, many of these ecclesiastical demands were implemented by major rulers of Jews, with considerable impact on the Jewish moneylending business.18 While the ecclesiastical demands and their introduction into law were significant developments for Jewish life across northern Europe and eventually throughout western Christendom in its entirety, there were yet further negative results. Extremely important was the impact on public perceptions of Jews. While there is recognition of the need for banking in all societies, those performing the tasks of banking are universally disliked. Thus, to the initial hostility toward Jews grounded in the sense of Jews as newcomers, as religious dissidents, and as the descendants of Jesus’ fiercest enemies was now added the hostility that is the normal lot of those in the money trade. Indeed, the money trade was projected as yet one more way in which Jews attempted to bring harm upon their Christian neighbors. During the course of the twelfth century, the sense of Jews as animated by antipathy toward Christianity and Christians resulted in the emergence of a series of images of Jews that identified them as steeped in hatred of Christianity and Christians and determined to inflict harm on their Christian neighbors whenever possible.19 To be sure, as a small and weak minority Jews could not overtly exhibit this hatred. Rather, they had to take advantage of opportunities to vent their hatred surreptitiously, in ways that would not be detected and would not entail repercussions. The initial imagery of Jewish malevolence and harmfulness was that Jews took advantage of opportunities to murder surreptitiously and groundlessly their Christian neighbors. Violence is often aroused in the course of inter-human activities, and there is not surprisingly evidence of Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors

18 See ibid., 205–20. 19 On these calumnies, see Gavin I. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Anti-Semitism, Berkeley/ CA, 1990; idem, Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism, Berkeley/CA, 1990; Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Anti-Semitism, Berkeley/CA, 1997.

3 Northern European Jewry: Maturation

175

involved in conflict that led to violence between them. What the new claim suggested, however, is that Jews inflicted violence on their Christian neighbors gratuitously, simply because these neighbors were Christians. This sense of groundless Jewish murder lent itself to a variety of damaging embellishments. The notion of groundless Jewish murder quickly gave rise to the sense that the Christian victims were often youngsters, children incapable of defending themselves and obviously not at all guilty of inflicting harm on their Jewish killers. Allegations of Jewish murder of Christian youngsters began to multiply during the middle and closing decades of the twelfth century. The purported Christian victims were often revered as martyrs who died for their Christian faith and had shrines erected to them by local churches. By and large, the rulers of northern Europe rejected this charge and protected their endangered Jewish clients.20 An egregious exception to the norm of ruler protection occurred in 1171, when the Count of Blois accepted the allegation and executed more than thirty Blois Jews on charges of child murder. What made this exceptional behavior all the more stunning was the fact that no cadaver of a Christian victim was ever discovered. The unusual nature of this incident aroused the Jews of northern France to undertake vigorous efforts to rebute the allegation of gratuitous child murder. A number of high-ranking northern-French churchmen rejected the claim and denounced the behavior of Count Theobald of Blois. Most strikingly, a deputation of northern-French Jewish leaders met with King Louis VII of France. The king assured them that he rejected the allegation of child murder, excoriated the count, and assured the Jewish leaders that the allegation of child murder would never be heard in any of his courts.21 The charge of child murder encouraged the proliferation of further embellishments. In the English town of Norwich, discovery of the mutilated body of a young Christian tanner in 1140 evoked diverse reactions among the burghers. Some were convinced that the Jews of Norwich had murdered the lad; others were equally certain that the Jews had not been at all involved. In any case, a shrine was established in honor of the youngster. Some years later, a newly arrived cleric composed a lengthy treatise supporting the sainthood of the Norwich lad William. In this treatise, Thomas of Monmouth claimed that a Christian eyewitness had seen the Jews kill the young tanner by crucifying him. Death by crucifixion substantiated the case for sainthood, as did the miracles purportedly performed at the shrine of William. For Thomas of Monmouth, the combination was irrefutable—William of Norwich was a bona fide saint. In the process, a new calumny about the Jews was created: Medieval Jews allegedly repeated regularly the historic sin of their ancestors by crucifying innocent Christian children.22

20 See Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Anti-Semitism, ch. 4. 21 For first-hand depictions of some of these Jewish initiatives and the positive responses to them, see Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 114–17. 22 See the classic study by Gavin I. Langmuir, »Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder,« Speculum 59 (1984): 822–46, reprinted in idem, Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism, 209–36.

176

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

The spread of these allegations, the acceptance of the murdered children as martyrs in many Christian churches and communities, and the emergence of moneylending as a Jewish economic specialization combined to create a broad sense of Jewish hatred of all things Christian and the Jewish desire to inflict harm on Christianity and Christians in all way possible—physical violence and economic harm. This sense was destined to intensify during the course of the thirteenth century, as we shall shortly see. Such broad societal convictions are extremely difficult to combat. The leadership of church and state made repeated efforts to rebut the allegations of Jewish malevolence and harmfulness, but these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. The hostility toward the early Jewish settlers did not abate with the passage of time. Arguably, it in fact intensified. Toward the end of the twelfth century, the young king of France instituted a new policy toward his Jews that was destined to have little immediate impact, but great eventual influence. Young King Philip Augustus came to the throne upon the early death of his father Louis VII (whom we have already met as a staunch protector of his Jewish clients). Young Philip came to power under very threatening circumstances; it seemed entirely possible that he might be deposed. There certainly was little anticipation that he would emerge as one of France’s most powerful monarchs, setting the French kingdom on its course of European power. The decisive and innovative thinking of King Philip Augustus was revealed early in his reign through a series of steps he took with respect to to his Jews. In effect, the young king exploited the Jewish resources accruing from the new economic activity and the anger over this moneylending to achieve a number of objectives through a series of three anti-Jewish actions. During the first years of his reign, the young monarch enacted the following: an initial confiscation of Jewish goods; a remission of debts owed to Jews with one-fifth of the obligations paid to the royal treasury; and finally, expulsion of the Jews with their immovable property and loans escheating to the king’s coffers. Given the strict Church insistence that Jews were entitled to safe and secure existence in Christian society, these royal assaults on Jewish security had to be justified by appeal to Jewish misdeeds that legitimized the actions. This legitimization involved the issue of Jewish moneylending, more specifically the claim that Jewish lenders were mistreating their Christian debtors. While Jewish crimes were invoked to justify the anti-Jewish actions, in fact they were the justifications and not the motivations for the actions. Through these initiatives, the endangered young monarch enriched his depleted treasure considerably, thus providing himself with the material resources to meet the challenges threatening him. Moreover, his moves were appealing to many churchmen who were deeply distressed over Jewish moneylending. The royal biographers—churchmen all—waxed lyrical in their praise for »the most Christian king.« Winning Church backing was a major achievement for the struggling young monarch. Finally, Philip Augustus won popular approbation. Those saddled with debt to the Jews were relieved of four-fifths of their indebtedness, obligated to repay only one-fifth to the royal treasury. This was a harvest of major benefits—achieved of course at the expense of the Jews of the royal domain of France.

3 Northern European Jewry: Maturation

177

These Jews suffered badly. However, their numbers were rather small, since at this point in time the royal domain was quite restricted. Moreover, those Jews expelled in 1182 did not have to travel far to find new homes for themselves. Again, the small size of the royal domain was important, since it meant that Jews could find nearby neighboring territories in which to resettle themselves. While the tangible results of the royal actions were somewhat limited, the eventual influence was far more significant. The figure destined to become one of the most powerful monarchs in French history introduced into France and Europe a new action against the Jews—the edict of expulsion, and this new action was destined to play a major role in subsequent French and European Jewish history. Strikingly, King Philip Augustus reversed himself rather quickly. In 1198, with yet more Jews expelled from French baronies as a result of popular anti-usury preaching, King Philip Augustus exploited the reality of Jews in flux to invite some of them to settle in the royal domain—much to the chagrin of the churchmen who had so lavishly praised his earlier anti-Jewish actions. With Jews once again a tax resource, the innovative Philip Augustus insisted that the new Jewish settlers were his own clients/possessions, taxable only by him and limited in their possibility of movement. Other rulers were not to take possession of the king’s Jews, and he would not take possession of their Jews. Limitation of Jewish movement in order to maximize governmental revenues was yet another new feature of European Jewish life introduced by the resourceful King Philip Augustus.23 On the material plane, Jewish life in northern Europe changed markedly during the twelfth century. Some of the change was positive from the Jewish perspective; much of it was negative. On the spiritual plane, the changes were decidedly positive. The innovative directions notable in the oeuvre of Rashi were expanded and deepened over the course of the twelfth century by his students and his students’ students. The focus of their scholarly and spiritual activity remained the Bible and the Babylonian Talmud. With respect to the Bible, Rashi’s occasional insistence on clarifying the simple and direct meaning of the biblical text was erected into a more consistent system by his twelfth-century followers, led by one of the Rashi’s own grandsons, R. Solomon ben Meir (Rashbam). Rashbam insisted on a full-blown search for the straightforward meaning of biblical passages, which meant rejection of much of the earlier rabbinic expansion of the meaning of biblical materials. Some modern scholars see this insistence on the straightforward meaning of the biblical text as a Jewish response to the more elaborate modalities of Christian biblical exegesis and their central role in Christian anti-Jewish polemics. The second element in Rashi’s remarkable oeuvre was his Talmud commentary, and here too his twelfth-century followers elaborated on the directions he had set forth. As noted, Rashi’s commentary is essentially a guide to the simple level of

23 On the early anti-Jewish activities of Philip Augustus, see Robert Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France: A Political and Social History, Baltimore/MD, 1973, ch. 3, and William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians, Philadelphia/PA, 1989, ch. 1.

178

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

study. His twelfth-century successors were once again led by a grandson, R. Jacob ben Meir often identified as Rabbenu Tam. The twelfth-century northern European Talmud exegetes moved to a different level of talmudic study. They sought to treat the entire talmudic corpus and indeed current Jewish practice as a unified and consistent body of knowledge. Passages in one section of the vast talmudic corpus cannot contradict passages in a distant section of the Talmud. Seeming contradictions must be exegetically resolved. Likewise, contradictions between the Talmud and current Jewish practice can also not exist; seeming contradictions must and can be exegetically resolved.

4

Northern European Jewry: Accelerating Pressures

The thirteenth century saw the maturation of the vitalized society of western Christendom and especially its newly emergent northern sectors. During the thirteenth century, the Roman Church reached new heights of organizational effectiveness, with powerful popes, major councils, and enhanced articulation of behavioral and intellectual norms. Major new institutions appeared, including preaching orders designed to foster orthodoxy, battle heresy, and convince non-Christians of Christian truth. Universities were founded as centers of these important activities. The major states of the northwest—England and France—reached pinnacles of power, and the smaller principalities of north central Europe were stabilizing to a significant extent. Northeastern Europe lagged well behind, but its rulers were determined to introduce many of the measures that had worked so well further westward—strengthening trade and urban life through the introduction of experienced urban dwellers, including Jews. These developments posed new challenges and opportunities for the Jews of northern Europe. From the beginnings of their migration into northern Europe, Jews had encountered stiff popular resistance. Rather than abating, this popular resistance intensified, in part as a result of the new Jewish economic specialization in moneylending. Popular hostility against Jews resulted in the crystallization of a series of stereotypes of Jewish malevolence. These stereotypes began with the notion of gratuitous murder of Christians simply because of their Christian identity. During the twelfth century, this stereotype focused on alleged Jewish murder of Christian children, who were innocent of any wrongdoing against their Jewish murderers and were defenseless against the power of adult attackers. During the thirteenth century, this allegation of child murder took on a new form, destined to a very long life in the West. The twelfth century motif of child murder took on ritualized overtones in the claim of Thomas of Monmouth that the Jews of Norwich killed Saint William by crucifying him. This alleged crucifixion took place during the Easter season, infused with special Christian sensitivity to the Jewish role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Both Easter and the springtime Jewish festival of Passover occur at roughly the same time and on occasion even coincide exactly. In the 1240’s, the charge that Jews crucify innocent Christian youngster at Easter time morphed into the notion that

4 Northern European Jewry: Accelerating Pressures

179

Jewish murder was related to the holiday of Passover. Specifically, the new charge was that, in order to bake the matzot—the unleavened breads—that are the central ritual symbol of Passover, Jewish law requires that these special breads include Christian blood.24 For reasons that are not entirely clear, this embellishment of the gratuitous murder allegation proved enduring. The blood libel was carefully examined by a number of medieval popes, often calling on the services of converts from Judaism. These converts were knowledgeable in Jewish law and could not be suspected of undue sympathy for the religious community they had abandoned. They regularly attested to the fact that Jewish law includes no such ritual demand, and the popes who empaneled them publicly and vigorously repudiated the blood libel, as did a number of major secular rulers. These denials were of course important, but they were not successful in uprooting the slander, which continued to affect Jews over the course of the medieval and modern centuries.25 Yet another powerful image of Jewish malevolence surfaced during the thirteenth century. During the course of this century, the Roman Church emphasized with increasing intensity the ritual of the host, that is to say the transformation of the host wafer into the body of Jesus, which is absorbed by the Christian participant in the ritual. Toward the very end of the century, the claim surfaced in Paris, that a Jewish moneylender exploited his power over a Christian debtor to gain possession of a host wafer. The malevolent Jew then allegedly subjected the wafer to a series of abuses, which the wafer was successful in evading. Eventually, the wafer fled the Jewish abuser and alerted Christians who found it to what had happened. The guilty Jew was slain, while the members of his family—stunned by the miraculous divine intervention they had witnessed—converted publicly. This event was quickly commemorated in one of the nearby churches, and the miracle of the host became yet another element in the burgeoning set of anti-Jewish stereotypes that had first spread across northern Europe and then moved southward.26 Once again, the authorities of church and state by and large protected the Jews from this set of dangerous allegations. Although the miracle of the host and its attendant projection of hostile Jewish behavior was not repudiated, most other elements in the anti-Jewish portfolio were actively challenged. In any case, the growing corpus of anti-Jewish allegations—as dangerous as they were—by no means slowed the growth of the young new branch of the Jewish people that was developing across northern Europe. These allegations buttressed popular resistance, but did not slow the process of expansion.

24 On the origins of the blood libel within intra-Christian polemics, see Burton L. Visotzky, »Overturning the Lamp,« in idem, Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literature, WUNT 80, Tübingen, 1995. 25 See Alan Dundes, ed., The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore, Madison/ WI, 1991. 26 See Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews, New Haven/CT, 1999.

180

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

The maturation of the Church likewise posed problems for the growing Jewish population of northern Europe. To be sure, the Church by and large remained faithful to its traditional demands for Jewish safety and security. At the same time, it also pursued intensely the other two elements in its traditional policy—insuring that Jews do no harm to the Christian host society and bringing the message of Christian truth warmly and sympathetically to the Jews. We have already noted the ways in which the Church’s anti-usury campaign created the new Jewish specialization in moneylending and the subsequent Church efforts to limit the harmfulness of this new Jewish specialty. These efforts were maintained all through the thirteenth century, reaching a high-water mark in the 1215 pronouncement of the important Fourth Lateran Council limiting the rate of interest that Jews might charge.27 There were individual churchmen who raised challenges to the Jewish right to take interest from Christians altogether, but these challenges did not become broadly accepted ecclesiastical law. There were ecclesiastical leaders who embraced this view and occasional secular authorities that enforced it. Church policy had always been concerned with obviating any possibility of Jewish religious influence on Christian neighbors. This traditionally led to prohibiting Jews from holding power over Christians, since power often involves the likelihood of influence. Toward the end of the twelfth century, the concern with potential Jewish influence extended to limiting excessive contact between Jews and Christians. The edicts of the Third Lateran Council of 1179 prohibited Christians working in Jewish homes; it seems clear that this prohibition was regularly flouted. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 introduced a new and extreme measure for limiting Jewish-Christian contact—the demand for special garb that would make the Jews readily identifiable as such wherever they might encounter Christians.28 This demand had to be instituted by the secular authorities under whom Jews lived. Over the course of the thirteenth century the identifying Jewish badge was introduced widely and became a standard feature of late-medieval and early-modern Jewish life. Yet another standard feature of traditional Church policy that was markedly intensified during the thirteenth century involved the demand that Jews in no way insult the ruling faith. In the 1230’s, a convert from Judaism to Christianity named Nicholas Donin made his way to the court of Pope Gregory IX with the allegation that the Jews’ Talmud contained demeaning references to Jesus, Mary, and the Christian faith. The pope was sufficiently impressed and concerned to send out letters to the major ecclesiastical and secular authorities of western Christendom ordering investigation of the charges. In the event, only the very pious King Louis IX of France pursued the issue. A court was convened in Paris to examine the charges against the Talmud. Donin brought the charges; a major French rabbinic authority—Rabbi Yehiel of Paris—

27 See Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 198. 28 See Solomon Grayzel and Kenneth R. Stow, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century, 2 vols., Philadelphia/PA/New York 1933–89, 1:306–9.

4 Northern European Jewry: Accelerating Pressures

181

defended the Talmud; distinguished scholars from the great university of Paris constituted the jury. The evidence was presented at great length by Donin, with extensive quotations from the Talmud presented in Latin translation. At the end of the trial, the jury found the Talmud guilty as charged; massive quantities of Talmud manuscripts were publicly burned in one of the major Parisian squares; and the Jews were prohibited from utilizing their sacred book. This prohibition of the Talmud remained in force in France during the remaining period of Jewish life in the realm, although it was clearly almost impossible to enforce.29 Prohibition of the Talmud in effect made Jewish religious life impossible, and Jewish leaders were well aware of the traditional Church policy that guaranteed to Jews the right to live according to their own religious tradition. Armed with this awareness, a group of rabbinic leaders met with the new Pope Innocent IV and insisted that prohibition of the Talmud was tantamount to denying Jews the opportunity to live according to their religious tradition. Pope Innocent IV was responsive to the Jewish argument and altered the results of the Paris deliberation. He ordered that the Talmud be re-examined, that inoffensive portions of the Talmud be returned to the Jews, and that offensive portions be censored out of the Talmud. The Parisian authorities refused to follow the papal orders, and prohibition of the Talmud remained in effect in the French kingdom.30 Elsewhere in western Christendom, however, prohibition of the Talmud was replaced by censorship. Indeed, from within the Jewish community there was considerable self-censorship of Talmud manuscripts, even before they were submitted to Christian examination. The third pillar of traditional Church policy vis-à-vis Judaism and Jews was the requirement that Christians bring to Jews the message of Christian truth in a peaceful and sympathetic way. Over the ages, Christian thinkers had regularly composed tracts against Judaism that sought to expose the errors of the Jews and contrast them with Christian truths. These tracts were written largely for Christian readers, and there was little genuine outreach to Jews themselves prior to the thirteenth century. During the thirteenth century, several factors combined to set in motion serious missionizing among the Jewish minority of western Christendom. The first factor was growing disenchantment with military engagement with the world of Islam. The early successes of crusading were succeeded by regular setbacks and a developing sense that the proper mode of engaging the Islamic foe was through spiritual and intellectual battle. Moreover, a serious outbreak of Christian heresy necessitated the training of specialists in presentation of Christian truth to Christian dissidents. Once such specialists were available, they could readily be deployed against non-Christians as well. Finally, the thirteenth century saw the emergence

29 For the Hebrew and Latin sources on the trial and prohibition of the Talmud, see John Friedman, Jean Connel Hoff, and Robert Chazan, The Trial of the Talmud, Paris 1240, Medieval Sources in Translation 53, Toronto, 2012. 30 For the letter of Innocent IV, see Grayzel/Stow, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century, 1:119, 275–81; for the dissent of the Parisian authorities, see the notes on the papal letter on the same pages.

182

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

of learned converts from Judaism to Christianity. We have already encountered one such convert, Nicholas Donin, who utilized his Jewish knowledge to attack the Talmud. A slightly later thirteenth-century convert, who became a member of the Dominican Order, took the name Friar Paul and used his Jewish knowledge to proselytize among his former co-religionists. Converts like Friar Paul brought to their missionizing effort knowledge of Judaism and Jews that included several elements—awareness of Jewish sensitivities and vulnerabilities (including the vulnerabilities that had led to their own conversion); knowledge of Hebrew that enabled them to fend off the standard Jewish reaction to Christian citation of biblical passages that they were being presented in mistranslations; and knowledge of talmudic texts that might be introduced into the Christian case. Friar Paul preached widely in the synagogues of his native southern Europe, engineered a major encounter with the distinguished Spanish Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, and eventually won support of the pious King Louis IX to proceed northward and preach to the Jews of northern France. He was truly a pan-European figure. The new missionizing effort among the Jews won the backing of many rulers and presented a major new challenge to the Jewish leadership.31 As had been true from the onset of Jewish immigration into northern Europe, despite the importance of popular and ecclesiastical perspectives on the Jews, the critical factor in Jewish fate remained the stance of the secular authorities. The rulers of northern Europe had many reasons to support Jewish settlement and presence and often did so; there were also many considerations that led to flagging support or even abandonment of this support. The stance of the populace and the Church constituted important considerations, as did financial exigencies. Governmental policies were—as always—the result of complicated considerations of advantages and liabilities. On occasion there were good reasons to oppose ecclesiastical and popular pressures; on occasion there were good reasons to accede to them; regularly there were self-serving economic considerations that played into the thinking of the ruling class. Governmental policies were the result of balancing these multiple considerations. Review of the intensifying ecclesiastical programs regarding Jewish lending, segregation of Jews, limiting Jewish religious literature, and missionizing has indicated that in all these areas Church leadership could articulate new policies, but could not enforce these policies on the Jews. For the new policies to take effect, they had to be ordered by the rulers under whose jurisdiction the Jews of western Christendom lived. Limitations on Jewish moneylending had to be enforced by the ruling class; the wearing of distinguishing garb had to be ordered by the rulers; policy regarding the Talmud had to be instituted by the secular authorities; Jews could be forced to attend missionizing sermons or debates only by their overlords. The rulers of western Christendom reacted to the demands of the ever more vigorous and vigilant Roman Church in multiple ways. Some rulers chose to reject overtly

31 On this new Church initiative, see Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response, Berkeley/CA, 1989.

4 Northern European Jewry: Accelerating Pressures

183

the demands of the Church, while others simply turned a deaf ear. Some rulers enforced Church demands selectively, enforcing those that involved little or no loss to themselves. For example, ordering Jewish attendance at missionizing sermons was relatively easy to do; enforcing limitations on Jewish moneylending would likely entail a loss of revenue, which might be significant. There were instances when ecclesiastical policies could be exploited to the advantage of the ruling authorities. Thus, for example, some rulers imposed on the Jews of western Christendom the required distinguishing garb and then permitted suspension of the requirement for a specified payment. In the process, such rulers fulfilled Church obligations and profited at the same time. To the extent possible, rulers attempted to project themselves as pious upholders of the Church, while occasioning as little damage as possible to their material needs and interests. The Jewish subjects of course were very much at the mercy of their overlords and the difficult calculations they had to make. On occasion, rulers were deeply and genuinely devoted to the Church, with a very prominent example offered by King Louis IX of France, sanctified not long after his death as Saint Louis. King Louis IX was renowned in French—indeed European—history for his personal piety and his efforts to translate that piety into his governance. His commitment to all facets of Church policy was legendary, and his stance on Judaism and Jews was extreme. Louis’s biographer Jean of Joinville, who knew him well, depicted him as viscerally hating Jews and even advocating violence against them. Joinville quotes the pious king as telling the story of an invitation to Jews to the abbey of Cluny for religious debate, which ended quickly with a knight physically attacking the Jews who had been invited to the abbey. According to Joinville, King Louis IX closed this disturbing story approvingly by urging: »I agree myself that no one who is not a very learned cleric should argue with them [Jews]. A layman, as soon as he hears the Christian faith maligned, should defend it only by the sword, with a good thrust in the belly, as far as the sword will go.«32 This is a remarkable statement from the monarch well known and widely respected for his commitment to resolving disputes in non-violent ways. Faced with a range of Church views on policies toward the Jews, King Louis IX invariably opted for the more extreme anti-Jewish position. Thus, with respect to Jewish moneylending Louis opted for the view that it was inherently wrong and ordered his Jews to cease their lending or leave his kingdom. When Pope Gregory IX ordered the investigation of the Talmud, it was only in Louis’s France that the investigation and trial of the Talmud was actually held. When Pope Innocent IV rejected the total prohibition of the Talmud and ordered instead censorship, Louis followed the dictates of his University of Paris advisors and continued to enforce total prohibition of the Jews’ sacred literature.33 Toward the end of the twelfth century, Louis’s grandfather Philip Augustus had introduced into the repertoire of European governmental behaviors expulsion of

32 John of Joinville, The Life of St. Louis, trans. Rene Hague, London, 1955, 35f. 33 On Louis IX and the Jews, see Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France, ch. 4, and Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, ch. 9.

184

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

the Jews. This innovation was justified by Jewish moneylending and its alleged harmfulness, but was motivated by a complex combination of considerations oriented to royal profit and advantage. As noted, this innovative policy was quickly reversed by King Philip Augustus. At the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century, the kings of England and France—the two most advanced states of northern Europe—repeated the edict of expulsion, this time with far more lasting consequences. The banishment from England in 1290 was not undone for many centuries. The banishment from France in 1306 was followed by recalls of limited numbers of Jews during the fourteenth century, with final banishment enacted in 1394 and lasting until the enormous changes introduced by the French Revolution.34 Strikingly, the Jews expelled from the advanced states of northwestern Europe did not return to the southern areas from which their ancestors had originated. They had clearly acclimated to their new environment of northern Europe. Rather, they proceeded eastward to the economically less developed sectors of northern Europe, where they could maintain their well-established economic patterns and thus gain the all-important support of the ruling authorities of these less developed areas. The Jewish refugees moving into north-central and northeastern Europe were accorded much the same kind of charters of invitation that Bishop Rudiger had extended to the Mainz Jews moving to Speyer in 1084. The major difference was the economic activities expected of these Jews and protected by their new rulers. In 1084, the economic activities had involved trade; in the fourteenth century the Jewish economic activity expected and protected was moneylending.35 The rulers of north-central and northeastern Europe clearly perceived this moneylending to constitute a useful resource in their efforts to follow the pattern of economic growth that had earlier taken place in the states of northwestern Europe. In the event, the states of northeast Europe did not eliminate the gap between themselves and their northwestern peers. However, the Jewish communities they encouraged emerged by the year 1500 as the growing reservoir of Jewish population across northern Europe and were well on their way to dominating world Jewish population

5

Southern European Jewry

Northern Europe was the site of rapid and enormous change in Jewish life. A small community emerged during the late tenth and early eleventh century; by the end of the fifteenth century it had expanded into the largest element in the Jewry of

34 For the edict of expulsion from England, see Chazan, Church, State, and Jews in the Middle Ages, 318f. For broad depiction of this expulsion, see Robin R. Mundill, England’s Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290, Cambridge, 1998. On the expulsion from France, see Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France ch. 6, and Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, chs. 11–13. 35 See again two major charters in Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 88–93.

5 Southern European Jewry

185

western Christendom and—despite a variety of obstacles—was well on its way toward becoming the dominant element in all of world Jewry. The trajectory of southern European Jewish life was flatter. Southern European Jewry was far older and did not change at anything like the rate of change in the north. Indeed, the most significant changes in southern European Jewish life involved the introduction into the south of elements of northern European Jewish experience. Southern European Jewry could trace its origins well back into antiquity, when Jews had left their homeland in Canaan to settle all across the Mediterranean Basin. Not much evidence of Jewish life in the Mediterranean diaspora during antiquity has survived. Major changes in Jewish life in this area resulted from the conquests of the Muslim armies. These armies took the bulk of the territory that ringed the Mediterranean Sea. Christian rulers lost all of the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and much of the Iberian Peninsula that formed the western shore of the sea. Western Christendom was reduced to a sliver of northern Spain, southern France, and Italy. With the onset of the vitalization of western Christendom during the eleventh century, Christian militia began what they considered the re-conquest of Spain, a process that would take most of the second half of the Middle Ages. Thus, during the period between the years 1000 and 1500 the Jewish population of southern Europe would consist of the augmented Jewry of Spain, the ongoing Jewry of southern France that came under the control of the northernbased French monarchy, and the small, fragmented, and ongoing Jewry of Italy. The old and established centers of Jewish life across southern Europe have left limited evidence of their patterns of living during the first half of the Middle Ages and the early stages of the second half. It is reasonable to assume that there was nothing like the population growth attested in the north. The Jewish population of Christian Spain grew, largely as a result of the expansion of Christian territory. There is also evidence of Jewish immigration into sectors of Christian Spain and southern France as a result of the instability created on the Iberian Peninsula during the twelfth century by the invasion of the Almohade Muslims of North Africa. Despite the modest growth of the Jewish population of southern Europe, there is no sense of the emergence of resistance to the Jews akin to what took place in the north. While Jewish numbers were augmented, the Jews were a traditional element in southern Europe, and the immigrants aroused no undue attention and opposition. The rootedness of the Jews across southern Europe in all likelihood perpetuated a prior pattern of economic diversification, along the lines that have been documented by Shlomo D. Goitein for the eastern Mediterranean Basin.36 There is no basis to postulate early on the kind of economic specialization that resulted in the north from the popular opposition to the Jewish newcomers. As a result of the well-established roots of Jewish life in the south, there is no evidence of an unusual level of antipathy to the Jews or the outbreak of resultant violence early on. Jewish life across southern Europe seems to have been relatively stable—at least for a 36 Shlomo D. Goitein cited above in no. 15.

186

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

time, with the eventual intrusion of two externally introduced changes. The first intrusion involved the addition of Spanish Jews and their culture through the addition of territories in Spain conquered by the Christian armies and the addition of Jews migrating from Spain to southern France. The second externally introduced change involved the movement of some of the new patterns of Jewish life fostered across northern Europe into the south. During the first half of the Middle Ages, Jewish life in the realm of Islam evolved in new directions, stimulated by the remarkable cultural surge evidenced all across the Islamic world. Jews had full access to this renaissance, because Islamic society was monolingual, utilizing Arabic for both spoken and written communication. Jews used Arabic for their oral communication with non-Jewish neighbors and among themselves. Literary materials, for example in science and philosophy, were thus open to these Jews, and they made full use of the efflorescence of literary creativity in their Islamic environment. Jewish cultural creativity involved the traditional fields of biblical studies, rabbinic studies, and liturgical poetry and the innovative fields of science, philosophy, and secular poetry. The Jews added to, or migrating into the Christian areas of southern Europe brought, with them into the Christian territories of southern Europe a rich legacy of traditional and innovative Jewish culture. Out of this new cultural stimulation, cultural and literary vitality emerged across southern Europe. Much of this vitality was centered in the traditional fields of biblical and rabbinic studies. Major academies and scholars emerged across the south. Equally impressive was the cultivation of the newer fields of Jewish cultural creativity, including science, philosophy, mystical speculation, and secular poetry. This cultural creativity was enriched by the legacy of Arabic writings, which made translation a major Jewish cultural activity. Translators active across southern Europe made available to the Jews of western Christendom—especially its southern sectors—the rich legacy of Jewish cultural creativity in the Islamic lands. On occasion, these new cultural interests created internal conflict and turmoil among the Jews of western Christendom. Especially noteworthy are the episodes of conflict over the writings of Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Rambam). Rambam was born and studied in Muslim Spain and then left as a result of the Almohade incursion into his home area. Rambam was one of the towering intellects of all of Jewish history. He was a master of rabbinic literature, composing the Mishneh Torah, a vast compendium of Jewish law that became an instantaneous classic and has remained a venerated text over the ages. He was also a practicing physician and a medical scientist, familiar with and a contributor to ongoing medical research. Finally, he was one of the most insightful philosophic thinkers and investigators in all of Jewish history. His philosophic-theological masterpiece, the Guide for the Perplexed, has served—like the rest of his oeuvre—as an ongoing focus of study and contemplation from his days to the present. While there was widespread admiration for the rabbinic expertise of Rambam, his observations on key aspects of Jewish belief in the early sections of the Mishneh Torah and even more so in his Guide aroused considerable controversy. Rambam himself was keenly aware of the need to keep the Jewish masses removed from

5 Southern European Jewry

187

complex philosophic issues and problems. He understood that popular exposure to these issues and problems could prove destructive. Thus, while he was a master of lucid explication in his Mishneh Torah, he purposely composed his Guide in convoluted ways, in order to make it accessible to only the most limited cadre of Jewish readers. The Guide for the Perplexed, written in Arabic, was translated a number of times into Hebrew for the Jews of southern Europe, for whom Arabic was no longer accessible. As is generally the case, one of the objectives of translators is to make the translated text as clear as possible. Thus, to an extent, the translators contravened the efforts of the author to make his teaching opaque and thus unapproachable by most Jewish readers. Beginning early in the thirteenth century, traditional Jewish thinkers in southern France took umbrage at some of the Maimonidean positions and sought to have the Guide banned by major rabbinic authorities. The conflict quickly escalated, as the anti-Maimonideans and the pro-Maimonideans reached out to rabbinic leaders in Spain and even up into northern Europe (where the rabbinic leaders had had little grasp of the issues being raised). The conflict over Maimonidean thinking resurfaced several times during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. While this conflict is often treated as a lamentable development on the medieval Jewish scene, it in fact suggests a Jewish community set in a vigorous environment and wrestling with difficult issues in ways that cannot produce neat and comfortable solutions.37 Southern Europe also became the scene of new and creative mystical speculation during the late twelfth and on into the thirteenth century. Mystical thinking had long percolated relatively quietly under the surface of traditional Jewish thinking. Stimulated by the diverse and creative ambience of invigorated western Christendom and with the additional stimulation provided by the legacy of the earlier Jewish experience in the Islamic world, a number of schools of mystical thinking emerged across southern Europe. These new inclinations resulted during the thirteenth century in the composition of the most prominent and influential of the medieval masterpieces of mystical literature, the Zohar. This difficult work became the central text for much of subsequent Jewish mystical reflection and investigation.38 The major intellectual stimuli for Jewish creativity across medieval southern Europe came from the legacy of the Jewish experience in the medieval Islamic sphere, and the cultural explosion was positive. The major changes in the material circumstances of southern European Jewry came from the spread of many of the new features of Jewish life in northern Europe into the south, and most of these

37 For an overview of the early stages of this turmoil, see Daniel Jeremy Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 1180–1240, Leiden, 1965. 38 For an overview of Jewish mysticism in antiquity and the Middle Ages, see Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 2nd ed., New York, 1946, chs. 2–6. More recently, see Frederick E. Greenspan, ed., Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah: New Insights and Scholarship, New York, 2011.

188

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

changes were ultimately harmful to the Jews. The new developments across the north impacted the three critical factors in medieval Jewish life—the Church, the populace, and the all-important ruling authorities, whose stances toward their Jews ultimately made Jewish life possible or impossible. The Jewish specialization in the money trade that first emerged in northern Europe as a result of the Church’s serious commitment to ending Christian usury eventually spread southward, distorting what had earlier been a more diversified Jewish economy in the south. This new economic pattern took hold in part because of the successes enjoyed by the Jews of the north from their new specialization; once again, many rulers encouraged this new specialization out of the need to maintain economic progress and out of a desire for part of the profits that Jewish lending would produce. The new specialty may well have resulted in material rewards, but it also aroused Church concern with Jewish economic activities and created new social tensions between the Jews and their Christian neighbors. The other ecclesiastical concerns noted in the north were manifest in the south as well. These include the new desire to segregate Jews more effectively from their Christian neighbors. This thrust of ecclesiastical policy may well have had more impact in the south, where Jewish-Christian contact was more regular and common than in the northern areas where Jews were newcomers and somewhat distanced from their Christian neighbors. Another new area of Church concern prominent in the south was the aggressive missionizing that began in the thirteenth century. The Christian heresy that sparked the formation of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders emerged in the south, and thus the preaching efforts of the two new orders tended to appear first in the south. Friar Paul, who introduced major innovations in Christian argumentation to Jews, was originally a Jew of the south, and his proselytizing campaign was initially centered in the southern sectors of Europe. In addition to pioneering in preaching to Jews in their synagogues, Friar Paul also innovated the technique of winning the backing of the secular authorities for debates between Christian preachers like himself and major rabbis. The theory of these debates was simple. If major rabbis could be shown to experience difficulty in responding to the new lines of Christian argumentation, Jews might be moved to abandon their faith and community. The first major forced disputation took place in Barcelona in 1263, with the backing of King James the Conqueror of Aragon. As indicated by his widely used title, King James was a very effective warrior king, who added important new territory to the Christian holdings in Iberia. He was also a supporter of spiritual engagement with non-Jews and was thus responsive to the request of Friar Paul to force a distinguished rabbi—Moses ben Nahman of Girona (Ramban)—to debate with him. Terminology like »debate« and »disputation« is potentially misleading, since these terms suggest intellectual give-and-take, with both sides on equal footing. Such was not the case in the Barcelona disputation and others like it. These were unequal missionizing confrontations, with the Christian side setting the agenda and taking the initiative from the outset. The Jewish participants were restricted to responding to the Christian thrusts. At no point were the Jewish participants in

5 Southern European Jewry

189

these encounters permitted to take any initiative, and they were certainly prohibited from making any negative observations about Christianity. What then were the results of this initial missionizing encounter, with the distinguished rabbi of Girona as the Jewish protagonist? From 1263 on through the ages, each side has claimed victory—the Christian side initially in a fairly brief Latin account and the Jewish side in a lengthy and dramatic account penned by the Ramban himself. In fact, however, this initial encounter was a standoff, with neither side achieving clear victory and each savoring a measure of satisfaction. Friar Paul and his Dominican confreres did not achieve their goal of converting Jews; nonetheless, they seemingly emerged with the sense that the new approach was promising. This sense moved a younger colleague of Friar Paul—Friar Raymond Martini, who had mastered Hebrew—to compose in the 1260’s a massive missionizing manual based on Friar Paul’s technique of using rabbinic sources to argue Christian truth. Friar Raymond’s Pugio fidei treated a broad spectrum of Christian practices and beliefs and cited hundreds of rabbinic sources to buttress them. From the Jewish side, Rabbi Moses could not assert the victory of dismantling the new Christian missionizing technique; he could, however, claim the satisfaction of adumbrating useful lines of Jewish counter-argumentation. His narrative account of the proceedings circulated widely and served in effect as a guide to the new missionizing and its rebuttal.39 The Jews immigrating into northern Europe encountered serious resistance, which did not abate; indeed, this resistance intensified with the Jewish turn to the money trade. Over time, the northern Christian opposition to the new Jews of the north took the form of a series of negative stereotypes of Jewish malevolence and harmfulness, with several damaging embellishments. Eventually, these negative stereotypes made their way into southern Europe. Indeed, the most long-lasting of the embellishments—the claim that Jewish murder of Christian youngsters was necessitated by the Jewish need for Christian blood for the baking of the Passover matzah—first appeared in the southern European area of Italy. These harmful stereotypes reflected Christian disquiet over Jewish neighbors and paved the way for violence, which appeared in the south as well. In 1348–49, the outbreak of the bubonic plague devastated the population of Europe, with incredibly high casualties—estimates range between one quarter to one third of the European population perishing. Thoroughly disoriented by this catastrophe, frazzled Europeans sought to understand the mechanisms of the plague, often seeking potential human agents that had brought it about. High on the list of suspects as potential agents of the plague were the Jews, already envisioned by many European Christians as committed to harming their Christian neighbors in whatever ways possible. The notion emerged in some circles that the malevolent Jews had poisoned the water supplies of Europe as a way of killing off large numbers of Christians. This conviction led to assaults on a number of Jewish

39 On this important episode, see Robert Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath, Berkeley/CA, 1992.

190

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

communities, especially across the south where the toll of the plague was most pronounced. Once again, the authorities of church and state denounced the allegations and attempted to defend the Jews—with only a measure of success. The year 1391 saw a major outbreak of violence across the Iberian peninsula. At this point in time, socio-economic discontent combined with governmental weakness to bring about wide-ranging societal disorder.40 A key element in this disorder was violence against the Jews of Spain. Once it became clear that the secular authorities were incapable of stemming the violence, it intensified markedly. Large numbers of Jews lost their lives or were severely injured; many Jews facing death opted to convert, assuming that the insincere conversions would be undone once normalcy returned; Jewish property was pillaged; entire Jewish communities disappeared, with some subsequently rebuilt and others disappearing for all times. The insincere conversions in order to avoid death were ultimately not undone, resulting in a large population of formerly Jewish New Christians. The large population of New Christians posed a serious problem for the Church, concerned with effective absorption of this new group into Christian life. Over the course of the Middle Ages, there were numerous instances of Jews converting. However, in most of these cases the conversion was voluntary, and the number of converts was small. Thus, integration into the Church and into Christian society was smooth. In effect, these converts had no alternative but to integrate. In post1391 Spain, the circumstances were new and different—the numbers were large, and the conversions were often involuntary. The large numbers meant great difficulties in integration. In effect, the New Christians could create a society of their own. The involuntary nature of the conversions meant significant religious questioning on the part of many New Christians. As the Church grappled with the difficulties of integrating the large number of newly converted former Jews and as many churchmen became convinced of significant backsliding, the Church already had at its disposal a vehicle for dealing with such backsliding, which it defined simply as heresy. In the thirteenth century, the inquisitorial courts had begun to play a significant role in the Roman Church. By the fifteenth century, these courts were well established and effective. The ecclesiastical and secular authorities of Spain introduced inquisitorial courts into Iberia out of a sense of accelerating heresy, manifested prominently in the community of New Christians. Exactly how much heresy these courts discovered in Spain of the 1470’s has been a point of dispute. Suffice it to note that the claim of major heresy among the New Christians and the role of Jews in fostering such heresy among their former brethren played a major role in the expulsion of 1492. Not only the Church wrestled with the problem of integrating the New Christians. Christian society wrestled with its integration of the New Christians as well, but from a different perspective. Old Christians were distressed at seeing their formerly Jewish neighbors now enjoying opportunities in the economy and in edu-

40 On this violence, see Benjamin R. Gampel, Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392, New York, 2016.

5 Southern European Jewry

191

cation long denied to them as Jews. Disquiet over this new access to benefits long denied led to the creation of rules that emphasized »pure blood«. These rules were instituted in many areas of Spanish social and economic life in order to keep the News Christians at a distance. They reflect serious social animosity toward the New Christians. For the New Christians themselves, this social animosity made the process of integration yet more difficult. As was true in northern Europe, Jewish fate across the south was ultimately decided by the secular authorities. The Jewish communities of southern France were by and large part of royal France and thus had suffered the expulsions of the fourteenth century, culminating in the final expulsion of 1394. By the fifteenth century, the Jewish communities of Italy remained fragmented and small. Thus, the remaining Jewish community of significance in the south was on the Iberian Peninsula. Hanging over the heads of these Jews was the northern-European innovation of full-scale expulsion of Jews. This new reality—first evidenced briefly at the end of the twelfth century and then more regularly at the end of the thirteenth century and on into the fourteenth—involved well organized polities, grounds for justifying expulsion, and motivations for doing so. In the Spanish kingdoms of the late fifteenth century, all three ingredients were in evidence. The monarchies of Spain were by this time well organized—in fact the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile had been united effectively through marriage; there were ecclesiastical issues that could be used to justify expulsion of the Jews; there were considerations that led the rulers of the various states of Spain to decree expulsion. The rulers of Aragon and Castile—King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella—were profoundly devoted to the Catholic Church and could readily claim to be acting out of genuine concern for the religious wellbeing of their realm. The justification for expelling the Jews of Aragon and Castile lay in the alleged difficulties of integrating the New Christians. The claims were that there was rampant heresy among the News Christians and that this backsliding was very much influenced by the Jews of Spain, who maintained contact with their former co-religionists and attempted to bring them back into the Jewish fold. Thus—it was asserted—effective integration of the New Christians could only be achieved upon the removal of the disruptive Jews.41 Most recent scholars have concluded that the justification advanced for the expulsion of 1492 was in fact not the genuine motivation of the banishment. As was true in the north, justification and motivation did not coincide. Rather, contemporary scholars have identified the desire for a homogeneous population as the underlying motivation for expelling the Jews from Aragon and Castile in 1492.42 There was a related expulsion from Portugal five years later, with very different motivation. Of the refuges available to the Jews set in motion by the expulsion of 1492,

41 For a comprehensive overview of the expulsion of 1492, see Haim Beinart, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, trans. Jeffrey M. Green, Oxford, 2002. 42 For observations on the new-style motivations of European expulsions from the late fifteenth century onward, see Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation, Cambridge, 2015.

192

Judaism in the Middle Ages: 1000–1500

the most accessible was Portugal, and many Jews unwilling to convert to escape banishment chose that route. For the king of Portugal, the immigrating Jews represented a major boon, as they brought with them their business acumen. But in 1497, a marriage was arranged between the king of Portugal and a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. The price for the match, however, was imitation of the policy of expelling Jews. King Manuel acceded to the demand, but at the same time precluded his Jews from leaving. Thus, there was a formerly Jewish but now Christian population in Portugal that was more committed to remaining Jewish than had been the case in Aragon and Castile, where Jews unwilling to convert chose exile.43 Unlike the situation in the north, there were few options for relocating into Christian territory in Europe for the Jews expelled from Aragon, Castile, and Portugal. While the Jews who suffered expulsion from the states of northwestern Europe were able to find new homes within northern Europe, the Jews expelled from Spain had only the slimmest refuge options—essentially in a few small Italian polities. The majority of the Spanish Jews made their way further eastward into the Ottoman Empire. The rulers of this aggressively developing empire saw the Jews in motion yet again as valuable urban settlers and welcomed them. The sense of Ottoman Jewry as Sephardic does not reflect the actual demographic numbers in Ottoman Jewry; rather, this sense derives from the leading role that the immigrants from Iberia played in their new setting.44

6

Conclusions

The story of European Jewry during the second half of the Middle Ages is complicated. The Christian areas of Europe expanded considerably as a result of Christian military successes on the Italian and Iberian peninsulas. Even more impressive were the changes that took place across northern Europe, where a hitherto backward area developed strikingly in every sense—demographic, economic, political, ecclesiastical, and cultural. The military conquests—especially in Spain—expanded the Jewish population of western Christendom and introduced new cultural activities and achievements. The changes in Jewish life in the north were even more striking. In effect, the vitalization of northern Europe resulted in the creation of a new branch of the Jewish people. Initially, small numbers of Jews were attracted to the north by the newly emergent economic possibilities. Over time, the Jewish population of northern Europe grew steadily, eventually achieving parity with the Jewish population of the south and then exceeding it. By the end of the Middle Ages, the new Jewish population of the north was moving toward parity with the Jewish population of the Islamic

43 See Francois Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496–7), Leiden, 2007. 44 See Jonathan Ray, After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry, New York, 2013.

6 Conclusions

193

world and eventually exceeded it as well. This remarkable growth was achieved in the face of daunting popular resistance to the innovative Jewish presence. Despite the obstacles, the new Jewry of the north slowly asserted itself as the dominant element in the Jewish world. The difficulties encountered in northern Europe perhaps fostered a resilience that enabled modern northern-European Jewry to achieve even greater heights. Jewish fate in modernity was very much shaped by the medieval experience of their forebears in medieval Europe—both for good and for ill. For further reading Baer, Yitzhak, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. trans. Louis Schoffman et al., 2 vols., Philadelplhia, 1961–66. Beinart, Haim, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, trans. Jeffrey M. Green, Oxford 2002. Chazan, Robert, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response, Berkeley/CA, 1989. idem, European Jewry and the First Crusade. Berkeley/CA, 1987. idem, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, Cambridge/MA, 2006. Friedman, John. Hoff, Jean Connel, and Chazan, Robert, The Trial of the Talmud: Paris 1240, Toronto, 2012. Gampel, Benjamin R., Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392, New York, 2016. Jordan, William Chester, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians, Philadelphia/PA, 1989. Mundill, Robin R., England’s Jewish Solution: Experiment and Expulsion, 1262–1290, Cambridge, 1998. Rubin, Miri, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews, New Haven/CT, 1999. Richardson, H. G., The English Jewry under Angevin Kings, London, 1960. Soyer, Francois, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496–7), Leiden, 2007.

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750 Joseph M. Davis

1

The »Early Modern« Period

During the period between 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, and about 1750, when Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) began his career as the founder of the Jewish Enlightenment, Jews and Judaism remained in some ways stubbornly »medieval,« while in other ways, they became cautiously and sometimes even precociously »modern.« In many respects, however, during this same period, while the conquistadors were conquering the New World, Shakespeare wrote his plays, and Newton discovered the laws of gravity, Judaism and Jewish life developed in directions that were not continuations of medieval patterns, nor what anyone would recognize today as »modern.« Rather, Judaism developed into a distinctive pattern, which academics sometimes label »early modern Judaism.« For Jews, the Middle Ages did not end in 1492. Jews continued to live in local Jewish communities, called kehilot in Hebrew or kehilot kedoshot, »sacred communities,« which had a measure of autonomy and some power to coerce their members. Jewish life continued to be governed, for the most part, by Talmudic interpretations of Biblical law. The Jews continued to have no independent Jewish kingdom or republic; they continued to believe in Biblical prophecies and to wait for the Messiah1. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain did not end the religiously inspired persecution that is so frequently taken, rightly or wrongly, as the very hallmark of the Middle Ages; indeed, in 1492, the anti-Jewish violence of the Spanish Inquisition had barely begun. At the same time, traces of incipient modernity are visible throughout Jewish life in this period. For example, in the early and mid-seventeenth century, major synagogues in Amsterdam and elsewhere began to be built with galleries for women, allowing increased participation by women in the prayer service. Jews began to have their portraits painted in the sixteenth century; in the mid-seventeenth century, the Amsterdam rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel (d. 1657) was sketched by Rembrandt himself. As will be discussed later, even before the expulsion from Spain, Jews had been very quick to adopt the new technology of printing. Medieval Jews were in any case already precociously modern in many ways: they were an urban

1 There were exceptional Jewish communities, such as the Karaites and the Ethiopian Jews, who did not use Talmudic law, and after 1665, there were Jews, who will be discussed later, who believed that the Messiah had already come.

2 The Catastrophe: Expulsion from Spain

195

minority, relatively literate, tied to the money economy. As the world became gradually more urban, more literate, and as the global economy gradually became a money economy, the Jews stood out less than they had in the Middle Ages—or at least, they stood out in different ways. Many changes in Jewish life during this period, however, which in retrospect appear modern, were episodic and did not mark permanent changes. In Mantua in the 1590’s, the playwright and theatre director Leone de Sommi (d. c. 1592) wrote some of the first Hebrew comedies, but they were also the last Hebrew comedies for centuries.2 In the previous generation, also in Italy, the »Ten Questions« of Eliezer Eilburg (fl. 1560) anticipated many of the skeptical questions that Jews would ask in the modern era, especially the question, why should I believe in the Torah?—but Eilburg had few readers and no obvious successors. The Tuesday and Thursday Courant was the first Yiddish newspaper, a semi-weekly as the name would suggest, in Amsterdam in the 1680’s; but it ceased publication after about a year, and Yiddish journalism would wait another one hundred fifty years. In Prague in the seventeenth century, annual elections for the Jewish communal government were contested within a well-developed two-party system, but the elections were ended in the early eighteenth century, and Prague’s Jewish parties disappeared. The weight of traditionalism and medievalism often negated efforts at innovation and modernization throughout this period. Rather than looking only for signs of modernity, early modern Judaism can be appreciated in its own terms. No culture, however traditionalistic it may be, can remain static, and as many of the characteristic Jewish religious expressions of the Middle Ages changed or disappeared, Judaism developed distinctive new forms.

2

The Catastrophe: Expulsion from Spain

On 1 May 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, the monarchs of the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, decreed that all Jews must depart Spain (and also Sicily, then ruled by Aragon), on pain of death. The final date by which all Jews were commanded to depart, July 31, coincided with the 7th of Av in the Hebrew calendar, close to the 9th of Av, a traditional date of misfortune in Jewish tradition. Only Jews who converted to Christianity were permitted to stay. Scholars do not know how many Jews stayed or left. There are only very rough estimates of the total Jewish population of Spain in 1492. A careful estimate of the Spanish Jews who emigrated overland to Portugal puts their number at about 25,000. It is difficult even to estimate the number of Jews who left by ship, whether to nearby North Africa or Italy, or to more distant locations in the eastern Mediter-

2 Among Yiddish-speaking Jews, there were Yiddish comedies acted on Purim, Purim-shpiln. The decline of Hebrew literature will be discussed below.

196

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

ranean. At a minimum, however, many tens of thousands of Jews left Spain, while many tens of thousands more became Christian conversos, as they are called.3 The motives that led the Spanish monarchs to expel the Jews from Spain, where they had lived more than 1000 years, are debated. Before 1492, Spain already had a very large population of conversos. Beginning during the anti-Jewish massacres of 1391 and throughout the fifteenth century, Spanish Jews converted to Christianity for a mix of reasons, some doubtless out of sincere religious conviction, others out of fear or self-interest, or for mixed motives. The writ of expulsion stressed the spiritual danger that the Jews who had not converted posed to their converso cousins and neighbors, offering as they did, by their mere presence, an example of the rejection of Christian beliefs and practices. Expulsion removed this example. The further work of forcing conversos to conform to Christian norms and beliefs would be performed by the Inquisition. However, it is not clear that these special circumstances in Spain, or other special circumstances that are sometimes mentioned, such as the war against Granada which had just concluded, were necessary to convince the »Most Catholic« Monarchs of Spain to expel the Jews. After all, throughout Western Europe, for more than two centuries, many kings, noblemen, and local governments had gradually come to the decision that Jews must not be tolerated.4 As early as the late twelfth century, Jews had begun to be expelled from parts of France. In 1290, the Jews were expelled from England, and in the fourteenth century from most of France. Furthermore, in the Holy Roman Empire, to mention only three examples, Jews were massacred, and the survivors expelled from Vienna in 1421, as well as from Augsburg in 1440, and from forty towns and villages in Upper Bavaria in 1442. Spain, with its traditions of religious tolerance and convivencia, had long been a hold-out against this gradual wave of expulsions of Jews. While the decision to expel the Jews in 1492 was far from inevitable— the Popes, for example, never expelled the Jews from Rome (although they confined them after 1555 to a small ghetto)—neither should it occasion too much surprise. After 1492, the troubles of the Jews of Western Europe were far from over. The Jews were expelled from Provence between 1493 and 1501. The small Spanish kingdom of Navarre completed the expulsions from Iberia in 1498. When Spain conquered Naples and southern Italy in 1541, those Jews were also expelled. Genoa expelled its Jews in 1550. In 1569, the popes expelled the Jews from Bologna and most of the other papal cities, except for Rome itself. In Germany, during the period between 1492 and 1517, Jews were expelled from, among other places, Halle and Magdeburg in 1493, Württemberg in 1498, Brandenburg in 1510, after a Host Desecration libel in which dozens of

3 They are sometimes called Marranos, or New Christians, or in Hebrew, anusim. Each term is problematic for different reasons. »Marranos« or »Marrãos« means »pigs«. The descendants of conversos, who were baptized at birth and did not »convert« to Christianity, are also called conversos by historians. 4 The distinction between Western and Eastern Europe may be somewhat confusing here. Poland tolerated Jews throughout the early modern period, while Muscovy did not. For more detail on the earliest expulsions, see Robert Chazan’s chapter in this volume.

2 The Catastrophe: Expulsion from Spain

197

Jews were burned at the stake, also in 1510; and Regensburg in 1519. Martin Luther, by the end of his life, was highly opposed to the toleration of Jews, and wrote a diatribe against Judaism, On the Jews and their Lies (1543). At Luther’s advice, Protestants expelled Jews from electoral Saxony in 1537, and later from Brunswick and elsewhere, while Catholic Bavaria expelled its remaining Jews in 1551. Jewish life in 1570, at its lowest ebb in Western Europe, was confined to a small number of places: only northern Italy, and some cities and villages in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, such as Frankfurt, Worms, and Prague. The Jews of Venice are famous on account of Shakespeare’s play. The other major center of Jewish life in Italy at the time was Mantua; there were also significant Jewish communities in Florence and in Rome, while Ferrara became a haven for Spanish and Portuguese conversos fleeing from Iberia. The Jews of Rome had already been confined to a small ghetto, and gradually over the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries nearly all of the remaining Jews of Italy would be confined in local ghettos. In the meantime, in December 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal, newly arrived on the throne, had decided to end Jewish life in Portugal as well. Unlike the monarchs of Spain, however, King Manuel did not encourage the Jews, including the many thousands of new arrivals, to leave the country; rather, he took steps to ensure that they would eventually all convert. Many of the Jews were baptized, while others were massacred. More than a thousand Jewish children were taken from their parents and sent to colonize the Canary Islands, off of Africa. Henceforth, it was decreed, all Jewish children must be baptized, and thus within a generation at the most, Judaism would disappear in Portugal. Since the new Portuguese Jews had already left their homes in Spain at great cost and great risk to themselves expressly to remain Jewish, it was hardly to be expected they would now be eager to become Christians. Many left. However, King Manuel assured the Jews that there would be no Inquisition; the public practice of Judaism would be prohibited, but private conformity to the norms of Christianity would not be rigorously enforced. Portuguese conversos therefore remained a group who were, by comparison with Spanish conversos, relatively attached to Judaism. In spite of the assurances given by the Portuguese monarchs at the outset, the Inquisition was introduced to Portugal in 1536, Christian beliefs and practices imposed, and secret Jews punished. Still, the practice of secret, crypto-Judaism, had taken root, and in some cases Jewish practices were continued for generations, even (at least in the town of Belmonte) into the twentieth century. Other conversos maintained a secret inner faith in Judaism, unexpressed by outward rituals. Yet over time, the efforts at coercion were successful; the vast majority of Portuguese conversos and their descendants became devout Catholics and their connection to Judaism became only a genealogical or sort of ethnic tie. Both in Spain, and after 1536, in Portugal as well, the Inquisition stood ready to order »Judaizing« conversos to be burned at the stake.5 For example, Inés, the daugh-

5 The conversos are a controversial topic. Historians debate the degree to which they maintained any Jewish practices or beliefs, or regarded themselves as Jewish. The approximate number of conversos punished by the Inquisition is also uncertain.

198

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

ter of Juan Estevan, a cobbler of Herrera, a small town in the province of Extremadura in Castile, was put to death in 1500 at the age of twelve, together with her step-mother and at least ten other conversos and conversas of Herrera and neighboring towns. Inés, so the Inquisition charged, had claimed that she had dreamt that her mother, who had passed away, told her that Elijah the Prophet would soon arrive to transport the Spanish conversos to safety in the land of Israel. From the point of view of the Jews, the expulsion of 1492 was a catastrophe of historic proportions. The Jews of Spain were by far the largest community of the late Middle Ages. Practically overnight, all that was left of that community were masses of Jewish refugees, many of them penniless (they were not permitted to take any silver or gold with them), who turned up at the doors of the Jews of North Africa, Italy, and the Balkans. No Jewish community was prepared for such a flood of indigents. The Spanish Jews would be succeeded by further waves of Jewish refugees from Portugal, Southern France, Germany, and Italy. To these misfortunes, grave as they were, one must add the spiritual catastrophe that the event represented to Jews. Tens of thousands of Jews, and perhaps many more than that, had converted to Christianity, if not voluntarily, then at least semivoluntarily. Some of the wealthiest Jews of the time, leaders of the Jewish community of Spain, such as Abraham Senior, men who certainly could have emigrated had they chosen to, chose to convert to Christianity instead. Christianity had not merely developed an aversion to religious tolerance. The Church had also developed a sophisticated and detailed set of arguments against Judaism, to which Jews, increasingly, had no adequate response. In 1263, in Barcelona, Rabbi Moses Nahmanides had defended Judaism ably; in 1413–14 at the Tortosa disputation, the Christian debaters were better prepared, and the Jewish spokesmen, no less intelligent than Nahmanides, were much less successful. Anyone who witnessed the mass conversions of Spanish Jews in the fifteenth century would have asked: had Christianity finally defeated Judaism in their millennial debate? With the hindsight of later centuries, these fears, or from a Christian point of view these hopes, seem excessive. But who could have known in 1492 that the Jews would survive as more than a tiny sect in Rome, or in a few towns or cities? A legend told by Solomon ibn Verga, who escaped from Spain to Portugal in 1492 and then to Italy, dramatizes the religious despair of the exiles. I heard from the old exiles from Spain that on one ship, the plague broke out, and the shipowner abandoned them on deserted territory, where most of them perished of hunger. A few managed to walk until they came to human habitation. One of the Jews, together with his wife and two sons, made the effort to walk, but as his wife set out, she fainted and died. The man … also fainted, and … when he regained consciousness, he found that his two sons had died. … He rose to his feet and cried, »Lord of the Universe, much are you doing so that I should abandon my faith, but know Thee well that despite the will of those on high, a Jew I am and a Jew I will remain.«6

6 Quoted from ibn Verga, Shevet Yehudah, in The Sephardi Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart, Jerusalem, 1992, 2:37f.

3 The Recovery of Judaism 1492–1618

3

199

The Recovery of Judaism 1492–1618

From the point of view of 1492, the recovery of Judaism in the sixteenth century was remarkable. The recovery had both a demographic and political aspect, as well as a cultural and religious one. Politically, the Jews who were expelled from Spain were welcomed by the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman authorities were eager to repopulate Istanbul, and this eventually became a community of 40,000 Jews, by far the largest Jewish community of the time, and perhaps larger than any Jewish community of the later Middle Ages. A rare physical artifact that bears witness to the migration of Spanish Jews into the Ottoman Empire is a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, now in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, of which the opening colophon testifies that the scribe, Abraham Khalifa, began writing it in Toledo in April 1492, while the final colophon attests that the manuscript was completed in Istanbul in 1497. Nearby Salonika (Thessaloniki) had another 20,000 Jews, who comprised the largest religious group in the city; thus Salonika became a »Jewish city« of a type that had hardly been known during the Middle Ages, and that anticipated the later Jewish small towns (shtetls) of Eastern Europe. A highly dramatic story, representing the continuing current of immigration in the following generation, is the journey of the wealthy businesswomen Gracia Mendes Nasi (d. 1569) from Portugal to Turkey. Gracia grew up in a converso, cryptoJewish family; when the Inquisition began its work of persecution in Portugal in 1536, she escaped to Antwerp, and from there to Venice. In Italy, Gracia returned openly to Judaism, but fearing punishment, she and her family moved in 1552–3 to Istanbul. Gracia’s nephew and son-in-law, Joseph Nasi (d. 1579), became a powerful figure at the Ottoman court, and was named lord of Naxos and some other Greek islands. The emigration of Jews from Western Europe towards the Ottoman lands of the eastern Mediterranean also helped repopulate the Jewish communities of the land of Israel. Safed in the Galilee became a major Jewish community after the Ottoman conquest in 1517 and continuing into the seventeenth century.7 In Istanbul, Salonika, and Safed, and throughout the Mediterranean, the new Jewish communities were divided into ethnic subgroups of Jews, and included separate synagogues and congregations of Jews from different places. There were Jews from Spain, called »Sefardim,« from »Sefarad,« the Hebrew name for Spain (cf. Obd 20), Jews from Germany, called »Ashkenazim« (cf. Gen 10:3), as well as other, smaller groups of Jewish immigrants from Italy, Provence, Hungary, and elsewhere. There were also local Greek-speaking (»Romaniot«) Jews in Istanbul and Greece, and Arabic-speaking Jews in Safed, the Middle East, and North Africa. The Sefardim quickly estab-

7 This is another example of an early modern trend that resembles a modern trend, but is not continuous with it. The Jewish population of the Land of Israel, as we will see, experienced another era of decline in the seventeenth century before the mass immigration of Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

200

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

lished themselves in most of these places as the largest and dominant Jewish group, and often gradually absorbed some of the smaller groups. Wherever Sefardic Jews immigrated during the early modern period, from Morocco to Syria to Iraq, there was a complicated interaction between the local Jewish culture and the Spanish traditions of the new immigrants. Looking only at the question of language, Spanish—that is, Judeo-Spanish, Ladino—became the predominant Jewish language8 in some communities, particularly in Salonika, whereas in other places it failed to displace Arabic. Sefardic Jews maintained a complex culture of Hispanicity, passing on to their children, for example, Spanish ballads such as »Meliselda,« about a princess and her lover, and »The Death of Don Juan,« the story of a Spanish prince. In Poland (post 1569: the »Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,« encompassing modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine), Jews also found a friendly regime. Here too, as in the Ottoman Empire, religious diversity seems to have worked to the advantage of the Jews, and general policies of religious toleration helped ensure that Jews too would be tolerated. Poland, whose Jewish community throughout the Middle Ages had been quite small and quite peripheral to Jewish life and culture, now became one of the centers of Jewish life. The Jews both in Poland and in the Ottoman Empire were also able to establish new and sophisticated systems of self-government and communal organization. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, local communities sent delegates to regional councils, which in turn joined together in meetings of the so-called Council of Four Lands, which was modeled loosely on the Polish parliament, the Sejm. The councils divided tax assessments among local communities and made efforts to set policy for the entire Jewish community of Poland-Lithuania. Synods of the rabbis also took place in eastern Europe on a regular basis, and the rabbinic and lay leadership of the Councils cooperated closely. In the Ottoman Empire and in many Italian Jewish communities, the communal organization of early modern Jews developed in a different direction. Here in the early modern period there was a major departure from the medieval principle (not always perfectly observed, even in the Middle Ages) that one locality or town should have only one, united Jewish communal structure. Instead, both in very large communities such as Istanbul, and in midsized communities such as Rome, and even in some quite small communities, the same city was divided among multiple Jewish communities, with limited coordination even on a local basis. The Council of Four Lands was dissolved in 1764, but each of these set-ups: regional organization on the one hand, and local fragmentation on the other, would have echoes among modern Jews as well. It was not only the demographic and political situation of the Jews that improved during the sixteenth century. Its situation relative to Christian argument and polemic also improved. The mass conversions of fifteenth century Spain were followed by three hundred years during which a steady stream of Spanish and Portuguese conversos and crypto-Jews left Iberia and returned to Judaism. Contemporary Jews were inspired by figures such as the converso martyr Solomon Molcho, 8 See: Stefan Schreiner, »Languages of the Jews,« in these volumes: III, 72–105.

4 Early Modern Judaism

201

born Diogo Pires, who moved to Salonika and embraced Judaism there but returned to Christian Europe, and was burned at the stake in Mantua in 1532. A century later Lope de Vera y Alarcon, called »Judah the Believer,« Judas el creyente, was not even from a Jewish (that is, converso, or New Christian) family, but his study of the Bible convinced him of the truth of Judaism and the falsity of Christianity. He circumcised himself before being burned at the stake by the Inquisition, in 1644, at the age of twenty-four. For those more swayed by the prospects of success and wealth than by examples of Jewish self-sacrifice and faithfulness unto death, there were Gracia Mendes and her son, Joseph Nasi, who have already been mentioned. At the same time, the Protestant Reformation, and the singular failure of Protestants and Catholics to convince one another, made Jewish »stubbornness« seem less exceptional. Tolerance for Jews slowly grew in Western Europe. The expulsions from Western Europe ran their course, and about 1570 the tide of migration began to shift. Expulsions of Jews did not cease entirely; the Jews were expelled from Spanish-ruled Milan in 1597, and from Vienna, a second time, as late as 1670. These later expulsions, however, were more than balanced by the reentry of Jews to cities and regions from which they had earlier been expelled. In some places, such as Bordeaux in southern France, Spanish and Portuguese conversos established communities free from the Inquisition but remaining for a long time officially Christian—the converso community of Bordeaux became officially Jewish in 1723. Puritan England under Oliver Cromwell readmitted Jews in 1655. After 1600, the Netherlands became a major center of Jewish life, as will be discussed further below.

4

Early Modern Judaism

4.1

The Formation of Early Modern Judaism

Many Jewish historians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries regarded Judaism and Jewish culture after 1492 as inferior to the Jewish culture of medieval Spain. They saw it as uncreative and debased, a culture of epigones in an era of oppression and obscurantism. It is certainly true that the religious culture that developed after 1492, especially during the seventeenth century, was very different from medieval Judaism; and many modern Jews have found it less attractive. There are indeed a number of major cultural and religious traditions that were characteristic of medieval Judaism, and that declined or were not maintained or at least did not inspire new religious creativity, after the expulsion from Spain. These included the literal or contextual (Heb. peshat) interpretation of Scripture and the associated study of Hebrew grammar. The Bible commentaries of Isaac Abarbanel, written in Italy soon after his arrival from Spain in 1492, were innovative and penetrating, and show a keen sense of history. Nevertheless, Abarbanel’s commentaries must be seen as the finale of the medieval Spanish school rather than the beginning of a modern school of Jewish Bible commentary. Nor was the early modern period a high point of Hebrew poetry. There was, indeed, no generation without its Hebrew poets. Joseph Nasi patronized Hebrew

202

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

poetry in his court in Istanbul. Joseph Sarfati (d. 1527) in early sixteenth century Rome, Israel Najara in sixteenth century Damascus, and Zechariah al-Dahari in late sixteenth century Yemen, among others, were poets of real merit. Later, there was a significant school of Hebrew poets influenced by kabbalah in Morocco, and another influenced by Baroque forms in Italy. Still, no one has ever pretended that the Hebrew poets of the Baroque era matched those of medieval Spain.9 Jewish rationalist philosophy, and especially the Jewish Aristotelianism of the school of Maimonides, also gradually declined during the early modern period. The most widely read Jewish rationalist thinker of the sixteenth century was Isaac Abarbanel’s son, Judah Abarbanel (d. 1535), a refugee from Iberia to Italy, like his father. His neo-Platonic Dialogues of Love were published in Italian for a non-Jewish as well as Jewish audiences. However, as the sixteenth century progressed Greek philosophy fell out of favor among Jews. Since Bible commentary, Hebrew poetry, and Jewish rationalism were the medieval traditions that were most prized by most nineteenth and twentieth century Jewish scholars, it is not surprising that they sometimes saw the entire post-expulsion period in a negative light. It would be a mistake, though, to measure the Jewish culture and Jewish learning of the era by what Jews did not do, or to focus only on the traditions that the Jews of the time were not successful in maintaining, or perhaps had little wish to maintain. One must also focus on the traditions that they did cultivate. First and foremost was halakhic literature. In spite of their propensity towards commentary-oncommentary, the sixteenth and early seventeenth century was an era of major rabbis and halakhists, who creatively adapted and applied Jewish law to new circumstances, publishing collections of responsa, as well as commentaries and codes of Jewish law. Poland and the Ottoman Empire particularly stood out as major centers of Talmud study and halakhic creativity. In Poland, Rabbis Moses Isserles (d. 1572), Solomon Luria (d. 1573), and Joel Sirkes (1561–1640), and in the Ottoman Empire, rabbis such as David ibn Abi Zimra (1479–1573), Samuel de Medina (1505–1589), and above all Joseph Karo (1488–1575) were all major religious leaders. Many rabbis of the period also excelled as preachers, for example Ephraim of Luntshits (1550–1619) in Poland, later rabbi in Prague; Judah Loewe (d. 1609), also in Prague; and Judah Moscato (1533–1590) in Mantua. Some rabbis, such as Judah Loewe, strived to create an activist model of the communal rabbi, who would go beyond the twin official duties of teaching Talmud to adolescent boys and judging cases on a rabbinic court; but would act as a spiritual leader for the community, and even help to direct communal governance, to shape local Jewish institutions, and to foster piety and good morals. Joseph Karo (more properly Caro, from the Spanish name Castro) was one of the great figures of Jewish law of any age. Born in Spain just a few years before the Expulsion, his family emigrated first to Portugal, and then after Judaism was prohibited in Portugal, to the Ottoman Empire. Karo’s knowledge of Jewish law was

9 There was a series of almost ten major Hebrew prose chronicles during the sixteenth century, but after 1600, this type of Hebrew writing also became scarcer.

4 Early Modern Judaism

203

astonishing and comprehensive, and his magnum opus, called Beit Yosef, »the House of Joseph,« summarizes the range of medieval rabbinic opinions on almost every topic in the corpus of Jewish law. Having finished the Beit Yosef, Karo then summarized all of Jewish law as it was practiced in his day in a brief law code called the Shulḥan Arukh, published in Venice in 1565. Being a Sefardic Jew, Karo naturally favored the customs and legal traditions of Spanish Jewry. Rabbi Moses Isserles, an Ashkenazic rabbi in Cracow (Poland), added a commentary to Karo’s code, indicating all of the places in which the customs of Ashkenazic Jews, and particularly the Jews of Poland, as well as the legal traditions deriving from Rashi and his school, differed from the rulings that Karo had codified. Over the course of the seventeenth century, the Shulḥan ʿArukh, with or without Isserles’s additional commentary, became accepted as the authoritative statement of Jewish law for Ashkenazic and Sefardic Jews respectively. This bifurcated reception of the Shulḥan ʿArukh helped to create the impression that Jewish law, and indeed Judaism, exists in precisely two variant interpretations, namely Ashkenazic and Sefardic. Many groups of Jews, such as Italian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Iranian Jews, and others, would of course have been surprised to hear that anyone would ever suppose that they were either »Sefardim« or »Ashkenazim,« and indeed Karo and Isserles themselves had no such thought in mind.

4.2

Printing and Literacy

All of these genres of legal writing, as well as other genres of Jewish writing, benefited from one of the major technological changes of the era, namely the invention of printing. Jews proved themselves to be very eager to adopt the new technique. The first printed Hebrew books appeared in Italy about 1470, scant years after Gutenberg. Jewish printing presses were established in Spain before the expulsion, and immediately after 1492 Jewish printing was reestablished in Istanbul and soon afterwards in Salonika. During the sixteenth century, Venice became the center of Hebrew printing, publishing as many as twenty Hebrew titles a year, by authors from around the Jewish world. In spite of efforts of some powerful church leaders, Hebrew presses were also established elsewhere in Italy, in Prague, and in Poland. Later in the eighteenth century, Amsterdam became the center of Jewish printing; while Jewish printing in Istanbul was also revived at that time, after a century of decline. One could speak of a new Jewish literacy. To own a Jewish prayer book or a Pentateuch was no longer a mark of wealth. Although we do not have reliable statistics, it seems safe to assume that as the amount of reading matter increased, the ability to read also became more common among Jews. There is also reason to think that the ability to write spread as well, on account of the gradual rise of another early modern technology: a regular postal service. Until the rise of the Internet just a few years ago, most people who knew how to write generally wrote letters. In the early modern period, some learned Jews wrote Hebrew letters, but most wrote personal and business letters in their local vernacular.

204

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

Jewish women also increasingly learned how to read and to write, especially how to write letters. There is very little extant writing by Jewish women from the Middle Ages before 1492. The first books written by Jewish women are from the early seventeenth century. Devorà Ascarelli was the first Jewish woman to publish a book of her own writings, and she was perhaps, in fact, the first Jewish woman to write a book. It was mainly a book of translations of Hebrew poetry into Italian, but it also included two sonnets that she wrote herself, one on the story of Susanna, and one called »Whatever of me is in Heaven.« Meineket Rivkah by Rebecca Tiktiner (d. 1605), a learned Jewish woman in Prague, which was published posthumously in 1615, was a Yiddish guide of principles of proper behavior for housewives. In Venice, Sarra Copia Sullam (c. 1592–1641) wrote a set of four Italian poems and a defense of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Glikl bat Judah Leib (Glückel of Hameln; 1646–1724) was the first Jewish women to write a memoir of her life, a lively picture of her time: unceasing efforts to find suitable matches for her children, to avoid the plague, to succeed in trade, and to cope in the face of personal losses and death. Glikl wrote in Yiddish, addressing her children. I began writing this, with the help of heaven, after the death of your pious father, to stifle and banish the melancholy thoughts which came to me during many sleepless nights. … I rose in the wakeful hours and spent the time writing this.10

It is clear that Glikl had been prepared for her unanticipated task, not only by a lifetime of telling and retelling anecdotes and stories, but also by the experience of writing frequent letters to her family. In the 1620’s, Alexander Pfaffenhofen wrote a long bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish poem, expressing the complaints of poor Jews against rich ones. In the sixteenth century and beyond, many genres of Yiddish writing and of Jewish writing in other vernaculars— particularly in Spanish—were being published in profusion. Some were written specifically for Jewish women, and some for a mixed readership of men and women. There were Yiddish poems, stories, prayer-books, and above all Jewish vernacular translations of the Bible. Among the most popular Yiddish books of the period was Tsene-Rene, by Jacob of Janów, written probably in the early years of the seventeenth century. Tsene-Rene is a Yiddish adaptation of the sections of the Bible that are read in synagogue (the Pentateuch, Five Scrolls, and Haftarot). Some sections are mainly literal translations into Yiddish; the main section, on the Pentateuch, is an anthology of comments from ancient midrashim and medieval Jewish commentaries, particularly Rashi. The Bible was also translated into other Jewish vernacular languages, including Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). Me-‘Am Lo`ez, begun by Jacob Culi (d. 1732) and continued by others, accomplished for Sefardi Ladino readers what Tsene-Rene had done for Ashkenazic Yiddish-speakers, combining literal translation with midrashic elaboration. If the Jewish scholarship of the period added a layer of distance between the reader and the Bible, the vernacular Bibles did the opposite and shrank that distance.

10 Glikl bat Judah Leib, The Life of Glückel of Hameln 1646‒1724: Written by Herself, trans. BethZion Abrahams, New York, 1963, 2.

4 Early Modern Judaism

4.3

205

Kabbalah

A powerful religious event occurred on the festival of Shavuot, perhaps in 1534, possibly in Salonika, or else in Nikopol (today in Bulgaria). Joseph Karo and a group of kabbalists who were with him kept vigil and stayed up all night studying Torah, and specifically studying the Mishnah, which is the ancient Jewish law code. Shavuot is the Jewish festival that celebrates God’s revelation at Mount Sinai. The kabbalist Solomon Alkabetz, who was present, tells the story. No sooner had we studied two tractates of the Mishnah than our Creator smote us so that we heard a voice speaking out of the mouth of the saint [= Joseph Karo], may his light shine. … It was an exceedingly pleasant voice, becoming increasingly strong. … The voice began to address us, saying, »Friends, … peace to you, beloved companions. … Behold, I am the Mishnah, the mother who chastises her children and I have come to converse with you.«11

The Voice that was speaking through Karo’s mouth was the personification of the Mishnah, and a sort of instructing angel. She spoke often to Karo, over many years, but usually only in private. However, Alkabetz and the others who were present, and apparently Karo as well, seem to have interpreted the voice, indeed to have experienced the voice, not merely as the voice of an ancient book, however astonishing that might be in itself, or even as the voice of an angel. Rather, this voice was identified by them as the Divine Voice, that is, the voice of the Divine Mother, the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, often imagined as a woman. It was an extraordinary moment in Jewish religious history. God Herself, as it were, was speaking to them through the mouth of Karo. Among the commandments that the »Mishnah« declared to those present was that they must immigrate to the land of Israel, and Alkabetz and Karo, and perhaps others in the group, did so, and settled in Safed, in the Galilee. Safed has been mentioned already as a town that grew enormously after the Ottoman conquest of the Land of Israel and it attracted many Jewish immigrants. It also became the home to an almost unparalleled group of Torah scholars. They arrived from many parts of the Jewish world. Karo was born in Spain, and grew up in the Balkans. Alkabetz came from Salonika; he was the author of the Sabbath hymn, »Lekhah Dodi«: »Come, my beloved, let us greet the Sabbath Bride!« Moses Alshekh (d. 1593), a student of Karo’s, from Salonika or Adrianople, was the author of a series of Bible commentaries. David ibn Abi Zimra arrived from Egypt; he was the author of a great collection of legal responsa. The kabbalist Moses Cordovero (d. 1570), also perhaps from Salonika, inspired a cadre of young kabbalists, including: the moralist Elijah da Vidas, Abraham and his brother Moses Galante (d. c. 1614) from Italy, Mordechai Dato from Italy; and others. The poet Zechariah al-Dahari came from Yemen; the polemicist and Talmudist Joseph Ashkenazi from Poland; the kabbalists Joseph ibn Tabul and Abraham Berukhim from Morocco. This group of scholars

11 Louis Jacobs, Jewish Mystical Testimonies, New York, 1977, 100.

206

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

identified strongly with the ancient rabbis, the Tannaim, who had lived in the Galilee region in the time of the Mishnah, that is, during the second century CE, during the Roman period. Some kabbalists actually considered themselves reincarnations of ancient rabbis. In a strange moment of fact imitating fiction, the kabbalists of Safed modeled themselves on the Tannaim as they are depicted in the medieval Jewish mystical classic, the Zohar. Mimicking the Zohar’s kabbalists, those of Safed in the sixteenth century ventured out of the synagogue and welcomed the Sabbath outdoors, reciting Psalms and singing hymns. In the Zohar’s telling, the head of the group of ancient Galilean mystics was Rabbi Simeon bar Jochai, whose traditional burial site is near Safed. The sixteenth century kabbalists of Safed seem to have felt the need for someone who could fill Rabbi Simeon’s role of mystical leader and guide. Karo, in spite of his brilliance as a legal scholar, apparently did not strike his peers in this way. It was instead a young kabbalist, who immigrated from Egypt in 1569, an Ashkenazi Jew named Isaac Luria (1534–1572), who was acclaimed as their charismatic leader. Luria died only three years later in 1572, but immediately became a figure of legend, credited with miraculous or magical powers. His innovative system of meditations (kavvanot) and his astonishing retelling of the story of Creation and of the universe, gradually spread throughout the Jewish world. In Luria’s vision, Creation began with a catastrophic »Breaking of the Vessels,« when the Divine Light shattered the »vessels« into which it had been poured, and the ensuing »sparks« spread out into the world, where they were covered by dark »shells.« Each good deed, each mitzvah that is performed, »repairs« or »raises« a divine spark from its shell, in a redemptive process that will culminate in messianic times. Safed and also Jerusalem continued to attract great scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Isaiah Horowitz (d. c. 1630) arrived from Prague in 1621; Abraham Azulai (d. 1643) from Morocco a few years earlier. The teachings of Luria and of the other Safed kabbalists spread throughout Europe in many different versions, each one adapted to a different Jewish group and culture. Abraham Herrera (d. 1635), in Amsterdam, reinterpreted Luria in a philosophical, neo-Platonic vein. Isaiah Horowitz helped weave kabbalah into the basic fabric of Ashkenazi piety and halakhah. Apostles and fund-raisers from the Land of Israel in the seventeenth and eighteenth century helped popularize kabbalah in Morocco. Alongside of halakhah and rabbinic literature, and sometimes as we will see, in tension with it, kabbalah was the second great pillar of early modern Judaism. The great development of the period was the creation of a rabbinic-kabbalistic synthesis. The effort to spread kabbalistic teaching and practices, and to popularize kabbalah, was based in the notion that the essential truth of Judaism is kabbalistic, and that kabbalah, the hidden teachings of Judaism, are not in essence any different from the outward manifestations of Judaism, namely its rituals and its practice, and its public teachings, such as the Bible and halakhah and midrash. The hidden teachings deepen the outward teachings and practices; the practices of Judaism, in this view, are merely the physical manifestations of its kabbalistic spirituality. Just as every Jew, in this conception of things, is required to observe the commandments to the best of his or her ability, just as every Jew is required to study Torah

5 The Seventeenth Century

207

and to have faith in God to the fullest extent that is possible for them, so too are they required to study and believe in kabbalah, to whatever degree is possible. In this view, every aspect of Judaism, when seen truly and through the eyes of faith, is kabbalistic. Even the basic doctrine of monotheism could be given a kabbalistic interpretation, as it was, for example, by Isaiah Horowitz, in his comments on Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith. God is one, but His Unity, like all unity, is hidden, and He is manifested in the diversity of the Ten Sefirot. This imperialistic view of kabbalah and its role in Judaism remained controversial throughout the early modern period. Rabbis such as Leon Modena (1571–1648) in Venice and his contemporary Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (1578–1654) in Prague argued that kabbalah, although legitimate and true as an esoteric doctrine, should not be allowed to influence, let alone dominate, the public teaching and practice of Judaism. However, hardly any Jew in their day was going to argue that kabbalah was illegitimate or untrue. Quite the contrary as would become clear in the next generation, Judaism at the time was far more open to the idea that kabbalah was true, but that physical observance of the commandments was not truly required. Isaiah Horowitz, commenting on the Jewish doctrine of the coming of the Messiah, remarked that in the time of the Messiah, the physical commandments will be nullified, and they will be observed on a much higher spiritual plane. This interpretation, whose Christian overtones are surely clearer to us than they were to Horowitz, would become very important a generation after Horowitz’s death, when the coming of the messianic era was indeed acclaimed throughout the Jewish world.

5

The Seventeenth Century

5.1

The Jews in the Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (1618–1676)

The mid-seventeenth century was a time of global crisis. During this half-century, the Jews continued, for the most part, on the path towards demographic and political recovery. The global crisis affected different Jewish communities in very different ways, and the period culminated, for Jews, with the brief messianic career, during the years 1665 and 1666, of the apostate-Messiah, Shabbetai Tzvi. Recent historians have argued that climate change, the so-called »Little Ice Age,« caused agricultural shortages that in turn sparked political crises and wars throughout the world. The Thirty Years War (1618–48) is perhaps the best known of these wars. For Jews, the global crisis produced both catastrophes and opportunities. The disaster fell mainly on the Jews of Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania, who were massacred by Cossack armies in 1648 and 1649, during the war between the Orthodox Christian Cossacks and the Catholic Poles. The massacres of 1648–49 were then followed by additional massacres and persecutions of Jews by Polish and Muscovite armies; there were also massacres of Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and others during this period of chaotic violence, »the Flood,« as it is called in Polish history. The massa-

208

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

cres of 1648–49 poisoned relations between Jews and Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, and echoes of the events could be heard in the pogroms and mass violence in Ukraine in the modern period, including the Holocaust. Other calamities, less massive than the massacres in Eastern Europe, befell other Jewish communities in this period of turmoil and warfare. There was anti-Jewish rioting in Fez between 1646 and 1651, and forced conversions to Islam in Iran in 1656–1662. In Yemen, the successful revolt against the Ottomans in 1630 led to the persecution of Jews. The ghetto of Mantua was sacked in 1630 after a long siege, and the community never fully recovered afterwards. Political and economic disorder in the land of Israel in the mid-seventeenth century led to the decline of the Jewish communities there as well. During the 1650’s, Safed briefly had no Jews at all. For other Jews, the global crisis produced political openings and opportunities. The Jews of Central Europe, while maintaining their allegiance to the Habsburg emperors of Austria, were courted and typically treated well by both sides in the Thirty Years War. The war produced divisions, however, within Jewish communities, and both of the major Jewish communities in the Empire, Frankfurt and Prague, were shaken by internal dissent. The Portuguese conversos, meanwhile, expanded their influence at the cash-strapped Spanish court, during the rule of the powerful court favorite, the Count-Duke of Olivares, who worked to protect them from the Inquisition. After the fall of the Count-Duke in 1643, however, there was a backlash and additional burning at the stake and martyrdom. No European nation enjoyed better fortune during this period than the Dutch Republic, which emerged from the crisis as a world power nearly equal to Spain. Increasingly, together with London, the Dutch Republic was the center of world trade, the nexus of world information, and the center of a global empire. The Dutch Jewish community, mainly in Amsterdam, was initially mainly a community of Sefardic conversos who had left Iberia, immigrated to Holland, renounced Christianity, and embraced Judaism. Later these Sefardic Jews were joined and eventually outnumbered by Ashkenazi Jews who came to Amsterdam from Germany and Poland. The Dutch authorities offered the Jews religious toleration; and the community flourished economically and grew throughout the seventeenth century. The Amsterdam Jews, free to live anywhere in the city, free to trade, in many ways equal to their Christian neighbors, became the new »gold standard« of religious toleration, displacing the Venice Jews in their walled ghetto. The portraits of Amsterdam Jews done by Rembrandt, and especially the portrait of Dr. Ephraim Bueno (d. 1665), exhibit their self-confidence and their dignified Iberian bearing.

5.2

The Spiritual Crisis of the Mid-Seventeenth Century: Baruch Spinoza and Shabbetai Tsvi

Whether by coincidence or not, the mid-seventeenth century period of global crisis was also a period of spiritual crisis for Judaism. Indeed, there were twin crises, one of Jewish rationalism in the West, and one of Jewish mysticism and kabbalah in the East.

5 The Seventeenth Century

209

The crisis of Jewish rationalism played out mainly in Amsterdam and its central figure was Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). Descartes had accomplished a revolution in Western philosophy; Spinoza was Descartes’s greatest Jewish adherent, and one of the most brilliant minds ever to appear in Judaism. Like many other Amsterdam Jews, his parents were conversos who had fled the Inquisition. Spinoza’s rationalism led him early to radical conclusions; even as a very young man, it appears, he denied miracles, denied the existence of angels, and perhaps denied the resurrection of the dead. This brought him into conflict with the leaders of the Jewish community of Amsterdam, who excommunicated him (in Jewish terminology: put him into ḥerem). The year was 1656; Spinoza was twenty-four years old. Apparently, the intention of the Jewish city fathers was for Spinoza to recant his heretical views, but instead, he turned his back on the Jewish community, and developed his ever more radical thoughts into a new philosophy. Spinoza’s philosophy can hardly be called a Jewish philosophy; Spinoza rejected Judaism entirely, and criticized every major aspect of the religion. He had no contact with the Jewish community after his ḥerem. He did not observe any Jewish practices, and he did not believe that Jews ought to hold onto any distinctive beliefs. Not only did he singularly fail to offer a new harmonization of rationalism and Judaism, he spent his vast talents arguing that no such harmonization was possible in his time. Although Spinoza argued that no one should be persecuted on religious grounds—indeed, he was one of the first major philosophers to argue for freedom of conscience and free speech—he did not suggest that there was any defensible or useful type of Judaism that was possible, unless or until the Jews reestablished an independent republic or kingdom. Were it not that the principles of their religion weaken their courage, I would believe unreservedly that, at some time, given an opportunity, since all things are changeable, [the Jews] might reestablish their state, and God may choose them again.12

Events of the same years showed that Jews were unlikely, and indeed unable, to do that very thing. The messianic career of Shabbetai Tzvi (1626–1676) raised Jewish hopes of apocalyptic victories and return to the land of Israel. Those hopes were quickly dashed. The excommunication of Spinoza, however pregnant of meaning for later Jews, was at the time hardly more than a local scandal. The rise and fall of Shabbetai Tzvi, however, echoed throughout the Jewish world. It was perhaps the first event ever that Jews in every part of the world participated in and followed as »news.« The full saga of Shabbetai, and of Sabbatianism, as the movement of his followers is called, is too long to be told here; we will focus only on a few crucial elements. First, Shabbetai’s claim to be the Messiah was believed by Jews practically everywhere that the news was carried. Shabbetai is the only person in all of Jewish history, before or after, to be so widely and so authoritatively proclaimed by the

12 Benedict Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Jonathan Israel, Cambridge, 2007, 55 (ch. 3).

210

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

Jewish people to be the Messiah. Shortly after the festival of Shavuot, 1665, Shabbetai, who was living then in Jerusalem, was convinced by the young kabbalist Nathan of Gaza (1644–1680) that he was indeed the Messiah—as Shabbetai himself had often suspected, but without real certainty. Together, he and Nathan announced Shabbetai’s advent to the Jewish world. Surprisingly, the Jewish world assented. At the time, however, the Jerusalem rabbinate was unimpressed, and put Shabbetai into ḥerem. Shabbetai was a Sefardic Jew and a native of Izmir (Smyrna) in Turkey; he left the land of Israel and returned to his hometown of Izmir. This eventual assent to Shabbetai’s messianic claims is more surprising when one considers that both before his announcement and afterwards, Shabbetai was inclined to behave rather strangely. However, it is clear that this confirmed rather than contradicted his Messiahship in the eyes of most Jews of the time. Consider this contemporary Jewish account of events that describes the events of a Sabbath in Izmir, during the winter months of 1665, while Shabbetai was living there. On the Sabbath day … after [he] had spent a long time over the morning hymns, [Shabbetai] proceeded to the Portuguese synagogue, accompanied by everyone who was in trouble and distress and all vain and light persons. The members of the Portuguese congregation did not believe in him, and as they were greatly afraid that the embittered crowd might strike at them, they locked the doors of the synagogue. Thereupon in his wrath [Shabbetai] asked for an ax and began to smash the doors on the Sabbath. When they [in the synagogue] beheld this, they opened the doors and he entered the synagogue just as they were reciting the Nishmath [hymn]. He interrupted their prayer and began to preach a blasphemous sermon,13 continuing with more hymns and until the [prescribed] time for the statutory morning prayer had elapsed. Then he announced: »Today you are exempt from the duty of prayer,« and took a printed copy of the Pentateuch from his bag, declaring that it was holier than the Torah scroll. He read the pentateuchal lesson, calling his elder brother first [as if he were] a Kohen and making him king of Turkey. His second brother he appointed emperor of Rome. He called none of the many Kohanim and Levites present in the synagogue to the reading of the Torah, but he called many other men and even women, to whom he distributed kingdoms, and he forced all of them to pronounce the Ineffable Name [of God.]14

Just to be clear about the issues of Jewish law that were at play here: the Torah (Pentateuch) is traditionally read on Sabbath from a scroll, not a printed book; the Ineffable Name of God is never spoken by Jews; women were not traditionally called to the reading of Torah; and smashing the door of a synagogue, with or without an ax, is certainly discouraged, and is also probably a violation of the Sabbath. But one should not expect the Messiah to behave like the local tailor. Shabbetai’s »strange actions« when he took charge of the Portuguese synagogue in Izmir, his self-confidence, and his combination of mystical piety and lawlessness, all helped establish his claim to be the Messiah. Rabbi Hayyim Benveniste (1603–1673), a major Talmudist, who had been one of Shabbetai’s opponents in Izmir, became one of

13 Shabbetai concluded the sermon by singing his favorite ballad, »Meliselda.« 14 Quoted from Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, Princeton/NJ, 1973, 396–97.

5 The Seventeenth Century

211

his supporters. Shabbetai was also aided by outbreaks of prophecy or at any rate automatic speech, among the Jewish men and women of Izmir and other places, similar to the Shavuot episode involving Karo and Alkabetz, discussed above. The return of prophecy to the Jewish people was one of the classic biblical signs of the messianic age. The great scholar and biographer of Shabbetai Tzvi, Gershom Scholem, concluded from Shabbetai’s performance in the Portuguese synagogue of Izmir, and from other evidence, that Shabbetai suffered from bi-polar (manic-depressive) syndrome. In Izmir we see Shabbetai in his manic phase: uninhibited, charismatic, creative, intuitive. However, Shabbetai also suffered, throughout his life, from depressive episodes as well. Scholem argued that, within a kabbalistic frame of Judaism, a manic-depressive Messiah makes a great deal of sense. Kabbalah is built around a dialectic of distance from God and attachment to Him. A kabbalistic Messiah must be someone who has experienced both extremes, and who is willing to plum the lowest depths of darkness and sadness, anger, and even perhaps law-breaking, in order to bring himself, and with him the Jewish people, to renewed heights of redemption, revelation, and union with God. In February 1666, Shabbetai moved from Izmir to Istanbul, and was quickly imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities. The move to Istanbul also followed some apocalyptic scenarios, in which the Messiah first brings the leader of the Muslim world over to his cause—here that would be the Ottoman sultan, and then together they defeat the kings of the Christian world and the Pope. Imprisonment did not figure explicitly in these traditional messianic predictions, but was by no means hard to incorporate within them. The Messiah is after all bound to encounter opposition, as many Biblical verses, well known to Christians, indicate. In September 1666, the drama of Shabbetai Tzvi approached its climax. Shabbetai was taken from prison and brought to an audience, not with the Sultan himself (legend would soon make it an audience with the Sultan himself), but at least with major figures of the Ottoman court. Alas, rather being converted into believers, as had happened so notably to the rabbis and Jewish leaders of Izmir, the Ottoman authorities demanded instead that Shabbetai convert to Islam. Perhaps Shabbetai was not feeling charismatic that day; perhaps his charisma failed to carry it off. They threatened him with death should he refuse. He did not refuse; he took the oath of conversion to Islam, and donned the Muslim turban. The time from Shabbetai’s announcement that he was the Messiah until his apostasy had been a little more than a year. Shabbetai’s apostasy naturally provoked a crisis within Judaism. Most of the Jews who had believed that Shabbetai was the Messiah quickly or eventually reconciled themselves to the bitter truth. Some, however, including Shabbetai himself, as well as his first and most talented supporter, Nathan of Gaza, and many other pious Jews and great scholars, continued to believe that he was the Messiah. Like breaking the doors of the Portuguese synagogue, they all argued, like being imprisoned, like his private bouts of depression and deep sadness, Shabbetai’s forced conversion to Islam was merely one final depth that the Messiah had to plumb, in order to achieve his messianic destiny. Indeed, many of Shabbetai’s followers converted to

212

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

Islam with him. Nathan did not convert, but he preached a radical new vision of messianic Judaism, in which what was formerly prohibited was now permitted. Had not Shabbetai himself publicly cancelled the fast day of the Ninth of Av? Why should other laws not be cancelled as well? This was the crisis. After Shabbetai’s apostasy, kabbalistic theology was used explicitly to recommend the violation of Jewish law and even apostasy. From a purely kabbalistic point of view, the exegetical and theosophical logic of lawbreaking was impeccable. But no traditional Jewish community could possibly accept conversion to Islam, or later conversion to Christianity, or antinomian rituals, as acceptable Jewish practices. Thus in the mid-seventeenth century, on one hand rational philosophy and science had been declared, not only by its opponents, but also by its major Jewish proponent, namely Spinoza, to be incompatible with Judaism. Kabbalah, on the other hand, had been declared by no less a figure than the Jewish messiah himself to lead to apostasy. For a century after Shabbetai’s apostasy in 1666, and his death in 1676, many Sabbatians continued to hold fast to their beliefs and hopes. Those Sabbatians, mainly in Salonika and Izmir, who had followed Shabbetai’s example and converted to Islam, developed into a crypto-Jewish sect, later called the Dönmeh, that spanned the Islamic-Jewish divide. Beginning in 1755, the Polish Jew Jacob Frank (d. 1791), influenced by the Sabbatian Jews of Salonika, claimed to be the spiritual heir of Shabbetai, who would lead the world into a new era; he led his followers to convert to Catholicism. Other Sabbatians who spurned conversion developed their own sort of internal crypto-Judaism, hiding their Sabbatian beliefs and practices from the communal leadership and the rabbinate. Beginning about 1714, coordinated efforts were made by the rabbinate to suppress Sabbatianism within Judaism and to silence new and radical voices. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, (1707–1747), was one of the most deeply spiritual Jewish voices of the entire eighteenth century, but he was persecuted by Jewish heresyhunting rabbis, who suspected him of belief in Shabbetai Tzvi and who were disturbed by his claim of angelic revelations. In 1750, Jonathan Eybeschütz (c. 1694–1764), the learned rabbi of Hamburg, was accused of secret belief in Shabbetai Tzvi, and of practicing ritual sins. The accusations were almost certainly correct, at least as to his beliefs, but Eybeschütz successfully obfuscated the issues and avoided Luzzatto’s tragic fate; his unimpeachably orthodox legal writings and sermons, and the prestige of Eybeschütz’s students, many of them important rabbis, stood him in good stead. There were certain efforts in this period to bridge Sabbatian and non-Sabbatian Judaism, by letting go of some of the more extreme claims about Shabbetai (say, that he was an incarnation of God) and creating a non-Sabbatian Sabbatianism, as it were. There were also scattered efforts throughout the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in the generations after Spinoza, to propose interpretations of Judaism that would incorporate elements of rationalism and the new sciences, in a Maimonidean model of the harmonization of reason and Judaism. Most of these efforts were either sufficiently orthodox or sufficiently discrete to avoid controversy. Nevertheless, the rise of Descartes and modern science had put paid to

5 The Seventeenth Century

213

any effort to maintain or revive the dogmatic Jewish Aristotelianism of an orthodox Maimonidean type, and no powerful new synthesis of rationalism and Judaism would be proposed until Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem in 1781. In 1750, the status of kabbalah and the Zohar, on the one hand, and of Maimonides and Jewish rationalism, on the other, were still very different. A significant fraction of Jewish leaders were entirely opposed to Jewish rationalism, and regarded it as either heretical or leading to heresy. That opposition did not prevent moderate rationalists of the early eighteenth century, such as David Nieto in London, from expressing their views, or even from rising to positions of leadership in the Jewish community and even in the rabbinate. The situation of kabbalah was entirely different, almost the reverse. There was virtually no major Jewish figure who claimed, at the time, that Judaism does not have a secret doctrine; and very few who denied that the secret doctrines of Judaism are expressed canonically in the Zohar. Kabbalistic practices remained typical items of individual Jewish piety, and also of public Jewish liturgy. In the central Sefardic and Ashkenazic communities, as well as in more isolated communities in Muslim lands, such as Yemen and Iran, a kabbalistic-rabbinic interpretation of Judaism reigned supreme. In Muslim lands, this corresponded to the high status of Sufis and Sufi brotherhoods in this period; in Catholic lands, to the high public status of Counter-Reformation mysticism and spirituality; even in Protestant lands, such as the Netherlands, mystical spirituality continued to be highly regarded. In this context, it is hardly surprising that the Sabbatian crisis did not produce any immediate or widespread Jewish rejection of kabbalah.

5.3

New Centers and New Peripheries 1675–1750

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, from Shabbetai Tzvi until the Baal Shem Tov and the beginnings of Hasidism, and from Spinoza to Moses Mendelssohn and the beginnings of the Jewish Enlightenment, were a period of crisis in Jewish theology, even a period of a sort of a theological eclipse. However, the period was also one of increased political stability, compared to the war-filled mid-seventeenth century, and in some respects it was a period of Jewish growth. There was continued Jewish demographic growth. The population of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth increased many-fold, to more than half a million; indeed, by 1750, as many as one third of all the Jews in the world lived in PolandLithuania. In Western Europe as well, the new Jewish communities founded in the early and mid-seventeenth century, and especially Amsterdam, continued to grow. German Jews also emerged after the Thirty Years War as a relatively secure, wealthy, and growing community. The perception of German Jews as wealthy, and of Polish Jews as poor, began during this period. It was not that all Polish Jews were actually poor, but the ones who emigrated to Germany tended to be. Some of these Jews were simply beggars; in the previous century, the relationship had been the opposite, and exiled German Jews would seek their fortunes in Poland and Ukraine. The communities of Muslim lands were demographically more stable, and

214

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

some of them may have shrunk; some Italian Jewish communities shrank during this period, but overall the number of Jews in the world continued to rise. The Jewish population in the land of Israel, which had declined during the seventeenth century crises, began to grow again after the turn of the eighteenth century. In 1700, a group of about fifteen hundred Jews, headed by the Sabbatian leader Judah Hasid (Segal), immigrated to Israel. Although Judah himself passed away only days after the group’s arrival, and although the messianic goals of the immigrants were of course not achieved, the number of Jews in the land of Israel seems to have risen steadily from that time until the present day. During this period, Amsterdam became the center of the world, in a certain sense, and also, the center of the Jewish world. It was a crucial nexus for networks of Jewish traders, both in Europe and throughout the globe, and it became the major center of Jewish printing in general, and of Yiddish printing in particular. Jewish philanthropists in Amsterdam took a leading role in support for the Jews of the land of Israel, supplementing the important work that the Jews of Istanbul had long done. The Amsterdam community also established daughter communities overseas, both across the English Channel, where after 1655, England readmitted Jews, and also in the New World, first briefly in Brazil in 1624, and then permanently in Surinam and Curaçao. In 1654 the first Jews arrived in New Amsterdam (that is, after 1664, New York) , and both the Anglo-Jewish community and the small Jewish communities of the New World grew quickly.15 The same shift of trade routes that favored the Netherlands, turned some of the Jewish communities of Asia into peripheries, or even into islands of Jewish culture. The Jews of Kaifeng, China, lost contact with the Jews of Iran and the rest of the Jewish world, apparently about the sixteenth century. They were »rediscovered« by the Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci in 1605. The Iranian Jews themselves, who suffered persecution and forced conversion from 1656 until 1662, seem not to have recovered quickly in the eighteenth century, and it appears that their contacts with Jewish centers such as Istanbul diminished. Yemenite Jewry also appears, beginning in the eighteenth century, to have become more isolated culturally, and increasingly idiosyncratic in its traditions and customs. Ethiopian Jews, by contrast, were »discovered« by the Jews of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century, and Rabbi David ibn Abi Zimra speculated that they must be descendants of the tribe of Dan. Nevertheless, until the twentieth century, there were no sustained contacts between the Jews of Ethiopia and the rest of the Jewish world; they too remained a sort of Jewish island. The century after Shabbetai Tzvi, and especially the half-century from 1675 to 1725, is often portrayed in Jewish scholarship as a period of decline. Indeed, some communities did decline. The Sefardim of Amsterdam, who had been notable for their wealth during the mid-seventeenth century, became less wealthy; the Jewish community of Venice shrank, and the Roman Jews became both poorer and fewer.

15 In 1663, the Dutch established a protectorate on the Malabar coast of India and took over rule of the ancient community of Jews there as well.

6 Hasidism and its Opponents: 1740–the Present

215

Even in the growing Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine, the period was not necessarily one of great new intellectual accomplishments. Anyone looking for a Jewish Isaac Newton in this period will be disappointed.16 Still, during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, Jews did produce some enduring monuments of religion and culture. Many great works of Jewish art and architecture were created in this period. Beautiful synagogues were built in Amsterdam, Gwoździec (Ukrainian, Hvizdets), and many other small towns in Poland and Ukraine. Jewish artists in Iran produced magnificent illuminated manuscripts of the late medieval Judeo-Persian Biblical epics of Imrānī and Shāhīn. It would take the events of the 1780’s to launch the Jewish Enlightenment (in Hebrew the Haskalah) as a major Jewish movement, and to make Moses Mendelssohn and his fellow Enlighteners, both Jews and Christians, a major factor in Jewish life. But half a century earlier, by the 1740’s, perhaps even the 1730’s, the outlines of the Jewish Enlightenment, a sort of proto-Haskalah, began to appear. In 1742, Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed was printed in Jessnitz (Saxony-Anhalt), near Leipzig, the first time that controversial book had been published since 1553. Rationalistic Jews began to suggest reforms of the Jewish community, as Isaac da Pinto (1715–1787), later an important economic thinker, did in Amsterdam in 1748. The 1748/49 book, Libes Briv of Isaac Wetzlar (d. 1751) in Germany was more pious than da Pinto’s tract, but its program of Jewish moral and educational reform was more sweeping, and the author recommended some characteristic modern elements, such as Hebrew language instruction for girls, and study of the natural sciences. In Italy, Joseph Attias (1672–1739) had no plan of Jewish reform at all, but he rejected kabbalah as superstition, and he was reading French and English as well as Italian Enlighteners. In England, in 1746, Meyer Schomberg (1690–1761) set out an enlightened version of Jewish faith in his Hebrew essay, »A Physician’s Faith.«

6

Hasidism and its Opponents: 1740–the Present

At the same time, another major new interpretation of Judaism, which would infuse traditional practices with joy and with the energy or light of God’s immanent presence was being proposed. That interpretation, similar to the kabbalistic interpretations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but more radical, arose not in any of the great centers of Jewish life, but on the southeastern marches of the Polish state, in the small town of Medzhybizh (Polish, Międzybóż). There, Israel ben Eliezer, called the Baal Shem Tov (»Master of the Good Name« i.e. God’s name), preached a new, spiritually democratic version of Judaism. The Baal Shem Tov was not an exceptionally learned Jew, but he had a religious insight of enormous importance. His religious motto, from Tikkunei ha-Zohar, was »No place is empty of

16 Newton himself showed considerable interest in Judaism, and criticized the doctrine of the Trinity. But there was no one who was born Jewish who was in the first rank of modern scientists until well into the 19th century.

216

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

[God].«17 The fullness of God’s presence can be felt not only in the land of Israel, not only on the festival of Shavuot, not only by the greatest rabbis of their generation, not only in presence of the messiah, but in every place, at any time, by anyone who turns and looks.18 The story of Hasidism after the death of the Baal Shem Tov in 1760, its rise, its conflicts, its long decline, and its rebirth in our own day, belongs properly to the »modern« period of Jewish history. At its peak in the nineteenth century, perhaps about a third of eastern European Jews, hence about a quarter or a fifth of all the Jews in the world, were Ḥasidim. The Jewish political party that the Ḥasidim helped launch in 1916, Agudas Yisroel, won Jewish communal elections in the twentieth century in interwar Poland, and continues to play a significant role in politics today in Israel, where Ḥasidim are the fastest growing group of Jews. Hasidism, in short, should on no account be relegated to the pre-modern world, but has played a major role in Judaism in the modern age—and only in the modern age. When the Baal Shem Tov died, it was barely a movement at all, hardly more than a collection of his students in the vicinity of Medzhybizh. Nevertheless, since Hasidism as a movement is so deeply rooted in early modern Judaism, and since modernizing changes overtook the Jews of eastern Europe so suddenly and so dramatically after about 1860 or 1870, and so slowly and gradually before that, Hasidism has often seemed an aspect of pre-modern rather than of modern Judaism. Besides its theology of radical Divine immanence, Hasidism introduced a variety of changes into Jewish life. Among the innovations of Hasidism was a new emphasis on joy. »All their days are like holidays,« complained some of their opponents.19 Sadness was discouraged. Dance helped banish melancholy; the Hasidic use of dance, which until then had never been a major element of Judaism at all, perhaps shows the influence of Muslim Sufism, as do some other aspects of Hasidic practice and theology. The development of an extensive body of hagiographic tales concerning the Baal Shem and all of the later Hasidic leaders (called rebbes or tsaddikim, literally »righteous men«) paralleled medieval Christianity, but was an innovation into Judaism. It expressed a theological emphasis on faith in the tsaddikim, who were believed to able to perform miracles, again in a way reminiscent of medieval Christianity, or Sufism, but otherwise foreign to medieval Judaism. Certain rituals, which were minor rituals of Judaism before the advent of Hasidism, took on newly heightened importance within Hasidism: for example, the »third meal« on Saturday (Sabbath) afternoon. Other practices, such as shaving the heads of new brides, seem to have developed newly and exclusively within Hasidism.

17 Quoted in David Biale et al., Hasidism: A New History, Princeton/NJ, 2017, 161. 18 Some versions of Hasidic thought are highly particularistic, and largely exclude the possibility of Divine contact with non-Jews. It is unclear what the Baal Shem Tov himself believed concerning this question. He wrote no books, and his oral teachings, as transmitted, are unclear on this point. 19 Quoted in Gershon Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity, Berkeley/CA, 2004, 201.

6 Hasidism and its Opponents: 1740–the Present

217

Hasidism also developed a characteristic institution that was new to Judaism, although reminiscent once again of Sufism: the Hasidic »court« and dynasty. The Hasidic tsaddik held court, so to speak; some tsaddikim, such as Israel of Ruzhin (1796–1850), were explicit in comparing themselves to kings and noblemen. Access to the tsaddik was controlled by designated »courtiers,« and often the tsaddik would not see the supplicant in person, but only receive a written request for prayers or for miracles, often accompanied by a small donation of money. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Hasidic tsaddikim were often succeeded by their sons, and their Ḥasidim would be loyal to and have faith in not only a particular charismatic tsaddik, but in a whole local dynasty or tradition of Hasidic leaders. Local variations in Hasidism appeared, including special local melodies, rituals, and in some places, distinctive theologies. At the same time, other Jewish practices and institutions were deemphasized in Hasidism. The local Hasidic court, in some small towns, eclipsed and controlled the local communal government, the kehilah. Ḥasidim were less likely to attend or support yeshivot, Talmud academies; many Hasidic tsaddikim, including Israel of Ruzhin, and also, for that matter, the Baal Shem Tov himself, were not notable Talmud scholars. All of these changes were upsetting to many of the Jews of the time, and during the 1780’s and 1790’s, bans against Hasidism were issued by Jewish communal authorities in Cracow, Vilna and elsewhere. The opponents of Hasidism were called Misnagdim. Under the leadership of Elijah ben Solomon (1720–1797), the so-called »Gaon of Vilna,« the Misnagdim developed a counter-conception of Judaism, focused heavily on intensive study of Talmud and punctilious observance of rituals, and organized around the institution of the yeshivah, under the leadership of great Talmudists and the heads of yeshivot. Of the two »pillars« of early modern Judaism, one might say, the Misnagdim emphasized halakhah and limited kabbalah, opposing its popularization, while Hasidism emphasized kabbalah in a popularized form, and denigrated the importance of Talmud study. Over the course of the nineteenth century, most Hasidic groups, in Poland and elsewhere, abandoned certain aspects of earlier Hasidism, including particularly some of its antinomian and unorthodox aspects. Ḥasidim and Misnagdim gradually mended their fences, never entirely but to a large degree, and became allies in the struggles against liberal Judaism, the modernization of Jewish life, and secularism. By the same token, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modernizing Jews in central and eastern Europe often regarded Hasidism as their special enemy, because the Ḥasidim seemed to them to be the most traditionalist and hence most benighted and intransigent of all Orthodox Jews. Hasidism had indeed always been a traditionalistic movement. It couched all of its innovations in the language of tradition. The traditionalism of today’s Hasidic communities fosters, perhaps deliberately, an illusion that they have preserved the early modern, traditional forms of Judaism intact and unchanged. This is of course not true. It is not possible to make Hasidic neighborhoods in the ultra-modern metropolis of New York City, still less the suburbs of Tel Aviv, resemble the small towns of eighteenth century Poland and Ukraine. But Hasidism has preserved and maintained to the present day important aspects of early modern Jewish culture.

218

Judaism During and After the Expulsions: 1492–1750

In addition to the general pattern of life lived in accordance with the laws set down in the Shulḥan Arukh, a pattern shared by all Orthodox Jews, Ḥasidim have preserved other aspects of early modern Jewish culture as well. The Yiddish language is spoken today as a native language almost exclusively by Ḥasidim. Hasidic styles of clothing and dress, now distinctive and sanctified, were originally clothing that was normal rather than normative. Ḥasidim have continued to practice many elements of kabbalistic piety, and in that respect and others, they are the main heirs of the popularized kabbalistic-rabbinic Judaism of the early modern period. From Inés of Herrera, who dreamed of Elijah the Prophet in the 1490’s, to Jacob Frank, who announced in the 1760’s that he came to destroy all religion, early modern Jews thirsted for redemption. However, as the long-delayed day steadily and stubbornly receded into the future, the structures of rabbinic and medieval Judaism, such as halakhah and daily prayer, continued to show their strength and durability. In a period marked by calamity at its beginning, and controversy at its end, new structures also appeared, such as forms of communal governance and kabbalistic piety. There were as well as new structures of Jewish messianic expectation. In the new era of modern Judaism, all of these would be radically challenged. For further reading Bell, Dean Phillip, Jews in the Early Modern World, Lanham/MD, 2008. Bodian, Miriam, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam, Bloomington/IN, 1997. Fine, Lawrence, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic Fellowship, Stanford/CA, 2003. Goldish, Matt, ed. and trans., Jewish Questions: Responsa on Sephardic Life in the Early Modern Period, Princeton/NJ, 2008. Israel, Jonathan, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1750, rev. ed., Oxford, 1989. Karp, Jonathan and Adam Sutcliffe, eds., The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 7: The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, Cambridge, 2018. Nadler, Steven, Spinoza: A Life, Cambridge, 2009. Rosman, Moshe, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov, 2nd ed., Oxford, 2013. Roth, Cecil, The House of Nasi: Doña Gracia, Philadelphia/PA, 1947. Ruderman, David, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History, Princeton/NJ, 2010.

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930 Dominique Bourel

1

When did »Modern Judaism« begin?

When did the Jews meet modernity? Was it with early Christianity? With the debate with Islam? When they began to live »out of the Ghetto?« Or when Jews reflected not only upon the modern world, but on their own history? There are libraries on this topic, particularly after the Shoah—when surreptitiously one began to think that this meeting with modernity led to catastrophe! Some figures1 will help explain the demographic explosion of the Jewish population that characterize this period: In 1700: the European Jewish population was approximately 716,000, in 1825: 2.7 million, 1850: 4.1 million, 1900: 8.7 million, 1935: 9.5 million. In 1933, ca 15.3 million Jews lived in the world. There are a lot of explications: young marriages, sheltered lives, religious habits, and better medicine are the most evident. This multiplication of the Jewish population was a manifestation of the vitality of the Jews in Europe. After the Shoah (1945), the European Jewish population was only 3.8 million. Modernity truly began when Spinoza (1632–1677) wrote his Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus (1670), although a first hint of the new age could be discerned in some Italian cities during the Renaissance, a movement that included, as happened in the Reformation, a (re)discovery of Hebraism. The Herem (condemnation) of Spinoza could epitomize a condemnation of modernity but in the case of the rich history of Jewish Spinozism equally could illustrate the opposite! The history of Spinozism in Jewish culture could be interpreted as a new marker in the history of the community, at least in Europe. We have at least five changes of paradigm after the cultural revolution of the Eighteenth Century in Europe: 1) Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah), 2) the birth and solidification of Hasidism, 3) Wissenschaft des Judentums, 4) the debate between Orthodoxy and Reform and 5) the emergence of Zionism. These paradigms also are operating in cultures of the Jews in the East, in Poland and in Russia. They were a new attempt to negotiate entry into European modernity. We must take seriously not only the (male) actors but also the actresses, longtime an unnoticed aspect of this history, from Glikl von Hameln to Hannah Arendt2,

1 Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr; The Jew, 701–4. 2 See: Picard et al., Makers of Jewish Modernity, 436–49.

220

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

from the salonnières in Berlin3 to Henrietta Szold in USA. We also consider the problem of cultural and social transfers at stake, from the middle of the 18th century: ideas, texts, and personalities which traveled throughout Europe and then USA, and were given another »color« depending on the host country. New languages, new clothes, new liturgies are also to be traced, following the different adaptations to the surrounding societies. The European side of Jewish history traveled to USA and to Palestine/ Israel. These five paradigms will be challenged with the physical and political realization of Zionism, which tentatively built a rejuvenation of Judaism all over the world in the aftermath of the Shoah, the unique tragedy annihilating a huge part of the Jewish people.

2

Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah)

Moses Mendelssohn (1728/29–1786) is credited as one of the first modern Jews. We know today that the Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment,4 was a multifaced phenomenon, from Jewish Wolffianism (Christian Wolff [1679–1754]5 philosopher of early German Enlightment) to the encounter with German philosophy and culture. One of the most well-known cases would be the Jewish Kantianism, which lasted till the creation of the philosophy department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before his passing (2018) Prof. Yirmyahu Yovel completed the second translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.6 Before Mendelssohn, Court Jews, erudite rabbis, printers (e.g. the new edition of the Guide of Perplexed 1742 in Jessnitz) and preHaskalah scientists were part of the road of this first modernity. The modernity of Moses Mendelssohn is based on two conformities: his observant Jewish life and his »Leibniz-ism« (although an original one). About Leibniz (1646–1716) who has also a Jewish history of interpretations, the legend says that the sole participant at his burial was a Jew, the philosopher and mathematicians Raphael Levi (1685–1779). Mendelssohn’s multi-oriented oeuvre was a new mode of thinking: simultaneously reflecting on Jewish Thought (Jerusalem), translating the Bible (Sefer Netivot ha-Shalom), involved in the socio-political life of his time (emancipation), the creation of a school, or instigation of a movement (Haskalah), with a gift for writing in the language of his homeland. This model will last till Martin Buber, through Franz Rosenzweig and Leo Baeck. Mendelssohn’s Phaedo, or On the Immortality of the Soul (1767)7 was a best seller in Europe and is still considered a readable testimony of rational psychology. It

3 See: Bilsky/Braun, Jewish Women and their Salons, 149–57. 4 See: Friesel, Atlas, 48f. 5 See: Mendelssohn/Breuer, Hebrew Writings, 25; Mendelssohn/Altmann, Jerusalem, 166f., 173–80, 183f., 191. 6 Kant’s Philosophical Revolution: A Short Guide to the Critique of Pure Reason, Princeton/NJ, 2018. 7 Moses Mendelssohn, Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, Berlin/Stettin, 1767.

2 Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah)

221

served as a confirmation of his skill to write in a language that was not his native one. Mendelssohn—an autodidact—won the first prize of the philosophical class of the Academy in Berlin (1763), when Kant was happy to win the second prize! Both wrote far-reaching articles about the question ›What is Enlightenment?‹ in 1784. At that time, a young Prussian civil servant, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751–1820), a friend and sometimes an interlocutor of Mendelssohn, published a pamphlet, Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews (1781/1783)8. Some sentences were truly revolutionary: »Certainly, the Jew will not be prevented by his religion from being a good citizen, if only the government will give him citizen’s rights ...The hard and oppressive conditions under which the Jews live almost everywhere would explain, although not justify, an even worse corruption that they actually can be accused of.« And further, »Everything the Jews are blamed for is caused by the political conditions under which they now live, and any other group of men, under such conditions, would be guilty of identical errors«. His thesis was clear: No humiliating discrimination should be tolerated, no way of earning a living should be closed to them, other than the regular taxes demanded of them.

And the text detailed some technical problems affirming that »an important part of civil rights would be the right for the Jews in all places of free worship, to build synagogues and employ teachers at their own expense.« It was (The Jew, 34 n.19) said that the translation of the title of Dohm’s essay may also be translated as »On the Civil improvement of the Jews.« But in French the difference is more striking: the translator Jean Bernoulli (1744–1807) spoke of Révolution and Politique. And it is evident that the question would be: what kind of amelioration? And why only civil? With his Jerusalem (1783)—a book that Kant really admired—Mendelssohn gave a sort of charter of Jewish modernity and a plea for the liberty of conscience. It was now possible to be a good (observant) Jew and to live within surrounding society. Judaism was an orthopraxy and in conformity with the teachings of reason. We may quote a few lines, still relevant today, »The state gives orders and coerces, religion teaches and persuades. The state prescribes laws, religion commandments. The state has physical power and uses it when necessary; the power of religion is love and beneficence«. In his book we have one of the first attempts to have a separation between state and religion. »Hence neither church nor state has a right to subject men’s principles and convictions to any coercion, whatsoever. Neither church or state is authorized to connect privileges and rights, claims on persons and title to things, with principles and convictions, and to weaken through outside interference the influence of the power of truth upon the cognitive faculty.« The theory of Judaism was discussed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and is still discussed and sometimes contested today. Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation, of no revealed religion in the sense in which that term is usually understood. Revealed

8 Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 28–36. 9 All quotes after: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew.

222

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

religion is one thing and revealed legislation, another. The voice which let itself be heard on Sinai on that great day did not proclaim: ›I am the Eternal, your God, the necessary, independent being, omnipotent and omniscient, that recompenses men in a future life according to their deeds‹. This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism; ...And now the divine voice proclaimed: ›I am the Eternal, your God, who brought you out of the land of Mizrayim, who delivered you from bondage, etc‹.10

Problematic for the Jewish public was the well-known sentence: »I acknowledge no immutable truths, but such as not only may be made conceivable to the human understanding, but also admit of being demonstrated and warranted by human faculties«. Mendelssohn explains this with the distinction between religious dogmas and propositions of »immutable truths of God, historical truths and laws, judgments commandments, rules of life, which were to be peculiar to that nation«. With its refusal to proselytism, Judaism is a tolerant religion, excluding nobody from the eternal salvation. Kant was surprised and very impressed to read this book which is a perfect product of the Enlightenment, but not of the Siècle des Lumières. Mendelssohn’s relationship with leading Berlin intellectuals (Nicolai and Lessing) presented for the first time a Jew who was a profound philosopher, a good critic, and a ›public‹ Jew. His pathbreaking translation of the Bible, into Hochdeutsch with Hebrew letters, but with Hebrew commentary, intended to give the occasion and possibility for Jews to learn the language of the society where they wanted to live. Also the history of German Jewish translations of the Bible is a fascinating indicator of German Jewish modernity. Abigail Gillman distinguishes four waves, but each generation wanted to have a new translation.11 For Mendelssohn and his group (the Biurists) the challenge was the production of a book that serves as a medium to enter non-Jewish society, with a latent debate of the Lutheran and sometimes with the Calvin translation. In order to be modern, Jews needed to speak one (or more) European languages. With Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, the aim was the contrary: translate in German in order to give the possibility to hear Hebrew. The debate was then not only with Luther and Mendelssohn, but also with the translations between Leopold Zunz, Samson Raphael Hirsch, und Ludwig Philippson. Before the First World War, Martin Buber wanted to translate the Bible with a tiny group of scholars. In 1925, the young catholic editor Lambert Schneider wrote to Buber proposing to publish a new translation. Buber accepted under the condition that Franz Rosenzweig do it with him. Some volumes were published between 1925–1929 (when Rosenzweig died). Buber completed the translation in Jerusalem in 1960. The history of the Mendelssohn legend is part of the history of Jewish modernity. There are very few who do not love Mendelssohn. Yet one must correct the idea that the core of his teaching was the saying, »Be a Human outside and a Jew inside your tent.« Mendelssohn also initiated a ›re-judaization‹ of Jesus, anticipated in

10 Quoted after: Mendelssohn/Altmann, Jerusalem, 97f. 11 Abigail Gillman, A History of German Jewish Bible Translation, Chicago/MI, 2018.

3 Jewish Enlightenment in Europe

223

the Hizuk Emunah (1572) with the ›benediction‹ of Jacob Emden (1697–1776).12 The different ›Mendelssohn Celebrations‹ (1829, 1878, 1929) are an excellent indicator of the self-perception of the Jews and of his impact on surrounding history.

3

Jewish Enlightenment in Europe

The Jews in France had another way to negotiate modernity. The French translation (1782) of Dohm’s treatise circulated in the discussion of the prize question, ›Est-il des moyens de rendre les Juifs plus utiles et plus heureux?‹ (»Are there ways to make the Jews more useful and happier?« The prize was awarded to Abbé Henri Grégoire, Zalkind Hurwitz, and Antoine Thiery) as well as in the biography of Moses Mendelssohn by Comte Mirabeau.13 In France the case of the Jews, rather of the Judaism was settled by two decrees, (29 January 1790 and 27 September 1791) that without substantial discussion gave the complete social and political emancipation to the Jews. This followed the well know dictum: don’t give the Jews something as a nation, but all as individuals. Bonaparte¸ after some hesitation following the Assemblée des Notables et le Grand Sanhédrin (1807–1808) followed the path of the Revolution and asked 12 questions to the Jews. The Jewish »Kantian« Lazarus Bendavid (1762–1832 commuting between Berlin and Vienna) translated all the relevant pamphlets in German, but emancipation after the French model was untenable for German Kings and Princes. Marcus Herz (1747–1803), another Jewish disciple of Kant, was not elected in the Berlin Academy of Sciences because it would have been ›trop en faveur des idées nouvelles‹ (too much for the new ideas). The new French Jewish society began with a tiny group of individuals; above all … male. But in Germany there was a specifically German Jewish female tradition of Salons as an agent of ›semi-neutral society‹ where Jews could meet non-Jews and talk about contemporary issues and play music. Henriette Herz (1764–1850, Marcus Herz’ wife)14, Rahel Varnhagen von Ense (née Levin 1771–1833)15, Amalie Beer (1767–1857)16, Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn 1805–1847)17, are well known. France ultimately would have a similar ›institution‹ in the third Republic with such luminaries as Madame de Caillavet (1844–1910)18, Geneviève Straus (née Halévy, 1840–1926)19 or the American born Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)20. French Jewry during Napoléons’ times numbered ca 40,000, which was nothing in comparison with the million in Russia, the 500,000 in the Habsburg Reich, and 100,000 Jews in Prussia! 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

See: Mendelssohn/Breuer, Hebrew Writings, 266. Honoré-Gabriel de Riquetti de Mirabeau, Sur Moses Mendelssohn, London, 1787. See: Bilski/Braun, Jewish Women, 197f. Ibid., 208f. Ibid., 195f. Ibid., 196f. Ibid., 63f. Ibid., 206–8. Ibid., 203–5.

224

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

What was new was the public presence of Jews in non-Jewish culture, causing a modification of the status of the Jews: they are no longer considered as ›would-be Christians‹. The discreet reform of Gustav III in Sweden and the first Toleranzpatent of Joseph II (1782)21; the discussion of Dohm’s book (1782)22 not only in Germany, the French Revolution (1791)23, Holland (1796), Great Duchy of Hesse, Kingdom of Westphalia (1808), Frankfurt/Main (1811), Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Prussia (1812)24, Kingdom of Wuertemberg (1828), Belgium (1830), Greece (1830), and Holland (1834) are road signs of the entry of the Jews into these different societies and the long protracted diffusion of tolerance, beginning with a new Humanism in Europe. Germany would wait till unification (1871) and Russia until 1917 with the Kerenski program. There are no more Hofjuden or ›imaginary Jews‹, or merchants accepted for some few weeks of the fair. After the beginning of the 19th century, Jews are now visible, eloquent, and sometime challenging. The extreme diversity of Jewish people from the aristocratic merchants of Hamburg or of Bordeaux and the observant Jews of Italy and North Africa must not overshadow a common rabbinic culture, oft a common language (Hebrew and or Yiddish), and exchanges regarding the relation with Palestine, specially the four holy cities (Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed). One of the collateral effects of Bonaparte’s expedition of Egypt was the ›invention of the Holy Land‹, the birth of a European orientalism and, after 1838, the ›consularization‹ of Jerusalem25. The foundation of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (1860)26 and the school Mikwe Israel (1870)27 was also an attempt to promote the relationship and enrichment between modern European Judaism and French universalism. There are then two paths: The Political, French model and the German Cultural and Social model. In the German process, social and cultural emancipation precedes administrative-political equality, while in the French, this equality is granted before social and cultural emancipation begins. One of the major achievements in the historiography of Jewish modernity is knowledge about the Haskalah. Thanks go to Shmuel Feiner28, David Sorkin29, Ed-

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 36–41. Ibid., 42–49. Ibid., 118. Ibid., 141–43. Mochon Jean-Philippe, »Le Consul Général de France à Jérusalem: aspects historiques, juridiques et politiques de ses fonctions,« Annuaire français de droit international 42 (1996): 929–45. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 316–21. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 321. Author of Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness (Hebrew 1995; English 2002), The Jewish Enlightenment (Hebrew 2002; English 2004); Moses Mendelssohn (Hebrew 2005; German 2009; English 2010). Author of The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (1987, 1999); Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought: Orphans of Knowledge (1999); The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna, Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (2008); Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (2012).

3 Jewish Enlightenment in Europe

225

ward Breuer30, Christoph Schulte31, Moshe Pelli32 and Natalie Naimark-Goldberg33. With modern tools we have now all of the texts of that period, on-line and published. There is a true ›République des Lettres‹ in Hebrew and in German, following the first issue of Kohelet Mussar (1755); and a map with publishing houses, editors, a market, and an interest in Jewish books. The Haskalah was diverse and disparate because there were personalities who didn’t care to address the emancipation of Jews. Among them were Salomon Maimon34 and others who were at the fringes of the conversion, like David Friedländer35. Still others wanted to change Judaism from within, like Lazarus Bendavid36; or to produce a new political discourse, like Saul Ascher37. In all the domain of the culture, young Jews wrote and translated, particularly medical doctors, but also economists and philosophers. In politics there were reflections inside the Judaism in the decades following the French revolution. Some adversaries spoke disrespectfully about secularization, while others sympathetically understand modernization. In Germany a group of young Jews, the meassfim (gatherers), contributed to HaMeassef (collector, or gatherer), between 1784 to 1811, but irregularly38. This was a

30 Author of The Limits Of Enlightenment: Jews, Germans, And The Eighteenth Century Study Of Scripture (1996); Studies in Mendelssohn (2010); Moses Mendelssohn’s Hebrew Writings (2018). 31 Author of Die jüdische Aufklärung: Philosophie Religion Geschichte (German 2002); Leibniz und das Judentum (German 2008); Moses Mendelssohn: Ausgewählte Werke (German 2009); Isaac Euchel: Der Kulturrevolutionär der jüdischen Aufklärung (German 2010). 32 Author of The impact of deism on the Hebrew literature of the Enlightenment in Germany (1969, 1973); The age of Haskalah: studies in Hebrew literature of the Enlightenment in Germany (1979, 2006); Haskalah and beyond: the reception of the Hebrew Enlightenment and the emergence of Haskalah Judaism (2010, 2012); The journals of the Haskalah in mid-nineteenth century: heHalutz (1852–89), Bikurim (1864–65) (Hebrew 2015); Kochvei Yitzhak, the journal of the Haskalah in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1845–73) (Hebrew 2016). 33 Author of Cultural revolution in Berlin: Jews in the Age of Enlightenment (2011); Jewish Women in Enlightenment, Berlin, 2012/16; The Library of the Haskalah: the Creation of a Modern Republic of Letters in Jewish Society in the German-speaking Sphere (Hebrew 2014). 34 Versuch über die Transscendentalphilosophie, Berlin, 1790; Philosophisches Wörterbuch, Berlin, 1791; Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte, Berlin, 1792/93; Streifereien im Gebiete der Philosophie, Berlin, 1793; Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens, Berlin, 1794; Die Kathegorien des Aristoteles, Berlin 1794; Kritische Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Geist, Leipzig, 1797. 35 Ueber die durch die neue Organisation der Judenschaften in den preußischen Staaten nothwendig gewordene Umbildung 1) ihres Gottesdienstes in den Synagogen, 2) ihrer Unterrichts-Anstalten und deren Lehrgegenstände und 3) ihres Erziehungwesens überhaupt: Ein Wort zu seiner Zeit, Berlin 1812. 36 Etwas zur Charakteristik der Juden, Stahel, 1793; Ueber die Religion der Ebräer vor Moses, Berlin, 1812; Zur Berechnung und Geschichte des jüdischen Kalenders, Berlin, 1817. 37 Leviathan oder über Religion in Rücksicht des Judentums (1792); Philosophische Skizzen zur natürlichen Geschichte des Ursprungs, Fortschritts und Verfalls der gesellschaftlichen Verfassungen (1801); Ideen zur natürlichen Geschichte der politischen Revolutionen (1802); Napoleon oder über den Fortschritt der Regierung (1808); Die Germanomanie (1815); Idee einer Preßfreiheit und Censurordnung (1818); Die Wartburgsfeier (1818). 38 Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 55.

226

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

publication of the ›Society of the Friends of the Hebrew Language‹ founded in Königsberg. The me’assfim are the symbol of the vanguard of the modernization of Judaism and the promotion of Hebrew. Interestingly, there were some articles also written in German. The second journal (also irregularly published), was Sulamith. A periodical for the Promotion of Culture and Humanism among the Jewish Nation (Eine Zeitschrift zur Beförderung der Kultur und Humanität unter der jüdischen Nation) edited between 1806–1833 by David Frankel (1779–1865) and Joseph Wolf (1762–1826)39. In a parallel way the new generation began to find a place in university culture, particularly in Germany. They were journalists, doctors of all kinds, and successful entrepreneurs, like the Mendelssohn family, not to speak of the Rothschild, Oppenheim, and Warburg families. In France, the Jews are totally integrated from the outset of the 19th century; and they will reach the top of the society, not only bankers or businessman, but also professors and generals. Pierre Birnbaum call them the Juifs d’état, at least until the Dreyfus affair. But the Israélites Français are still today an important piece of the social and political construction of French society.

4

The Birth and Solidification of Hasidism

The emergence of Hasidism40 was also another way to negotiate entry into the modern world, without rejecting the classical Judaism of the rabbis and the political control of the Jewish aristocracy. As Rachel Elior wrote,41 The Hasidic phenomenon is not easily characterized. It encompasses mystical arousal and spiritual revival; a historical turning point and a polemical background; an original spiritual world, new conceptual vocabulary and social phenomena. It implies both continuity with kabalistic tradition and ideological innovation. It owes its origin to a variety of creative personalities—mystically inspired charismatic leaders and socially innovative and productive religious thinkers who, from the eighteenth century on have produced a rich and multifaceted literature that to this day continues to attract followers to the Hasidic way of life.

Israel Baal Shem Tov, the Besht (1698–1760)42 and his great grandson Rabbi Nachman (1772–1810) offered a sort of counter-Enlightenment in Eastern Europe. The crucial text: In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov, was published in Hebrew (Shivhei HaBesht, 1814) and in Yiddish (1815).43 Not that the Zaddik (righteous one) was an Enlightener, per se, but the alternative society inaugurated by hundreds of Hasidic leaders represented the hope of millions of the Jews. The importance of Hasidism began

39 40 41 42

Ibid., 56. See: Friesel, Atlas, 50f. Elior, The Mystical Origins, viii. See: Immanuel Etkes, The Besht: Magician, Mystic, and Leader, Waltham/MA. 2005; Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, Oxford/Portland/OR, 2013. 43 See: Etkes, The Besht, 203–48.

227

5 Ostjuden

at the end of 18th century with rude opposition and a condemnation in Shklov in 177244. Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna (1720–1797), who led the opposition to Hasidism, his misnagdim (opponents to Hasidism), the mockery of the Haskalah, and the disdain of Wissenschaft, created many intellectual and social challenges. Hasidic culture from the 19th century until 1933 was at its glory and effectiveness. The paradox is that this huge part of Jewish culture was annihilated in the Second World War (Shoah and Communism)45 but not only still exists today but is flourishing through the Habad movement of Hasidism. Habad is an acronym of Hochma, Bina, Da`at (Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding)46. Originating of in the works of Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812), Habad is present today in virtually all countries, with 4000 Habad emissaries around the world. Hasidism is not just ›lost in translation‹ because they spoke and prayed in Yiddish—it was another way to be Jewish in a changing world. It began in Ukraine and was a challenge against the rigidity of the orthodox Judaism and a victory against assimilation. It had also social implications and an assertion of the need for a spiritual revival. Praying and rebelling, Ḥasidim are also a community, a group of believers who bridge between secularism and sanctity. Two kinds of texts constituted their corpus: the tales and legends and then the theoretical, speculative books. Nurtured in the Kabbalah, Hasidism was also an innovation, a true revolution with old texts, provoking ecstasy, magic, special prayers and theoretical texts intertwined with old legends. Like the Haskalah and the Wissenschaft, it was a new culture in Poland, Russia, Hungary, Romania standing against or adapting those two former paradigms. Historians such as Simon Dubnow47, Ben-Zion Dinur48, and Samuel Horodezky49 gave us a description of this phenomenon, provoking criticism of modern exegesis. And today we have new documents, including some from the non-Jewish world, which help us to describe Hasidism more precisely. The language was new, as the idea of the Zaddik, a charismatic figure, leading to the presence of dynasties from the various locales of the original Hasidic leaders, e.g. Karliner, Chernobyl, Rushim, Sadagora, Kotzk, Belz, Munkas, Satmar, Ger, Bobov etc.

5

Ostjuden

Here, we enter the mental geography of the Ostjuden. Poland was divided three times, in 1772, 1793, and 1795. This division affected the Jewish population. Polish 44 45 46 47 48

Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 390f. See: Friesel, Atlas, 57. See: Elior, The Mystical Origins, 108–14. Geschichte des Chassidismus, Berlin, 1931. »The Beginnings of Hasidism and its Social and Messianic Foundations,« in idem, At the change of generations: Studies and research on the beginnings of the modern era in Jewish history, Jerusalem 1955, 83–227 (Hebrew). 49 Rabbi Nachman von Brazlaw (German 1910); Hasidism and the Hasidim (Hebrew 1922, 1953); Leaders of Hasidim (English 1928, 1958; Yiddish 1937, 2000).

228

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

Jews became subjects of Russia, Prussia, and the Habsburg Reich. After the new independence of 1928, Polish Jews numbered 3,500,000 (10% of the population). Warsaw was in the middle between Berlin and Moscow, so that this country was a kind of hub of many Jewish ideologies. At the end of the 18th century, Jacques Calmanson wrote about them, in French, Essai sur l’état actuel des Juifs en Pologne et leur perfectibilité (Essay on the current state of the Jews, and their perfectability, Warsaw 1796). Tarnopol, Brody, Lemberg, Odessa were centers of the Maskilim. The Rabbinerseminar of Warsaw was very well known, Lodz was a huge industrial and commercial center. The history of the Jews in Russia is a tragedy. At the end of the 18th century there were probably more than 4 million of Jews in the Pale of Settlement, delimited in 1791 by Catherine. A committee for the advancement of the Jews was set up in 1802, and 1835 a ›Guidelines‹ was published in favor of the Jews. The Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung der Aufklärung unter den Juden in Russland (Society for the Promotion of the Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia) was created in 1863 in Petersburg50. But between 1881 (assassination of the Tsar Alexander II) and 1884, the number of pogroms was very high, as it was between 1903–1906. In 1891, the Jews were expelled from Moscow. The first census of 1897 estimated the number of the Jews ca. 5 million. After the revolution of 1905, Nicholas II promised liberty. But the April 1903 Kishniev massacre was just one of a series. Herzl was in Russia in the summer of 1903 and saw the disastrous situation. More than two million Jews had already emigrated. The Kerenski regime suppressed the Pale and gave political liberty to the Jews for a short time. Oral transmission, diversity of the schools, and exchanges of letters produced a written and an unwritten history of Hasidism that proclaimed that there is an essential unity of the divine and the human world, and truth is paradoxical. Salomon Dubnow, Abraham Joshua Heschel51, and naturally Martin Buber52 did a lot to popularize this new model of being Jewish. For a long time, the historiography was rigid; it was taken for granted that Hasidism against the Haskalah was the basic narrative and was very simple to establish. However, since the rediscovery of Martin Buber, the polemics with Gershom Scholem53, the critiques of Moshe Idel54, and the precise monographs of David Assaf55 and others, there is a new questioning (Ada Rapoport-

50 See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 402 n. 1. 51 God in Search of Man, 1955. 52 Deutung des Chassidismus – drei Versuche (German 1935); Der Weg des Menschen: nach der chassidischen Lehre (German 1948); Die Chassidische Botschaft (German 1952). 53 Gershom Scholem, »Martin Bubers’s Hasidism,« Commentary 32,4 (1961): 305–16. 54 Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, Albany/NY, 1995. 55 The Way of the Kingdom: Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin and his place in the History of Hasidism, Jerusalem, 1997 (Hebrew); The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin, Stanford/ CA, 2002; Caught in the Thicket: Chapters of Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidism, Jerusalem, 2006 (Hebrew); Untold Tales of the Hasidim: Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidism, Waltham/MA, 2010; Beguiled by Knowledge: Anatomy of a Hasidic Controversy, Tel Aviv, 2012 (Hebrew).

6 Wissenschaft des Judentums

229

Albert56, David Biale57, Ron Margolin58). This has been accompanied by new texts, schools, and representatives of schools. Gershon David Hundert59 offered to us a view of this transnational history. In the USA and in Israel we see in the daily life a harmonization between the ›old‹ Hasidic tradition and differing ›modern‹ societies.

6

Wissenschaft des Judentums

The Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism)60 reifies one of the channels of European modernity. The idea was to transfer the tools to interpret the tradition, oral and textual, like other traditions, such as Greek or Latin. This kind of secularization (through philology, history, and philosophy) was not only a revolution in Judaism, but also in Islam and in Christianity. The proof also ›scientifically‹ established that Judaism was an important religion and a great culture like others. The Wissenschaft wanted to fight against Anti-Semitism and give the Jewish community a sense of the importance of Jewish tradition against secularism and indifference. It showed the importance of Jewish culture and civilization in the broader, secular world. The ›Verein für Cultur and Wissenschaft der Juden‹ (Society for Culture and Science of the Jews) was established in Berlin in 1819 by Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), who delineated the program, The ›Society for the Culture etc.‹, »should endeavor to influence the world-view of different social classes (among the Jews) through the dissemination of a clear, objective knowledge.«61 Zunz wrote pathbreaking books such as Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden (The Religious Sermons of the Jews, 1832), Die Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters (synagogue Liturgical Poetry, 1855).62 Heinrich Heine (1787–1856)63, Eduard Gans (1797–1839)64, and Immanuel Wohlwill (1799–1847)65 joined him in this movement. With the ›scientification‹ of Judaism, a new Jewish conscience was born. Isaak Markus Jost (1793–1860) initiated his Geschichte der Israeliten (History of the Israelites, 1820)66 and Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) began in 1853 his eleven volume History of the Jews67—the first compre56 Hasidism Reappraised, London/Portland/OH, 1996, pb 1998; Hasidic Studies: Essays in History and Gender, Oxford/Portland/OR, 2017. 57 David Biale et al., Hasidism. 58 Ron Margolin, The Human Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism, Jerusalem, 2006. 59 Gershon David Hundert, ed., Essential Papers on Hasidism: Origins to Present, New York, 1993. 60 See: Friesel, Atlas, 62. 61 Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 213f. 62 Leopold Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, historisch entwickelt, Berlin, 1832; idem, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, Berlin, 1855. 63 See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 210. 64 Ibid., 215–19. 65 Ibid., 219–21. 66 See: Liedtke/Rechter, Towards Normality, 64–69. 67 Ibid., 25, 62–64.

230

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

hensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective, today still relevant. A year later (1854), the Jewish Theological Seminary was created in Breslau, publishing its Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums from 1851 to1938. Each volume is a font of science. The second generation, with Zacharias Frankel (1801–1875)68 and Abraham Geiger (1810–1874)69, were more interested in the Bible. Frankel, born in Prague and after yeshiva education, was the first rabbi in Bohemia with a modern education. After his stay in Dresden (1836–1854), he came to Breslau until his death In Breslau he was an erudite reform rabbi. At the end of his life he co-founded the Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar in Berlin. His so-called ›historical-positive Judaism‹ wanted to fight against two fronts: ultra-reform and ultra-orthodoxy and it is possible to see in him the ›progenitor of conservative Judaism‹. His Darkei ha-Mishnah (The methodology of the Mishnah, 1859) is an history of the Halacha. He was influential in the revival of the interest on the Jerusalem Talmud (Mavo ha-Yerushlami, 1870). Frankel was the first editor of the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (Monthly-Journal for the History and Science of Judaism, 1851–1938). One may say that from Frankel to Isaac Nahum Epstein (1878–1952), i.e. from Breslau to Jerusalem, there was a tradition of critical Talmudic research. Abraham Geiger wrote Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (What did Mohamed take from Judaism?)70, which is the begin of the Jewish orientalism. His Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der inneren Entwicklung des Judentums (The Original Scripture and its Translations in the Inner Development of Judaism, 1857, second edition 1928, on which the Hebrew translation was done—with an introduction by Joseph Klausner) argues that Pharisees wanted a liberalization of the law against the conservative Sadducees. Geiger was rabbi in Wiesbaden (1832–1838), and then in Breslau (1838–1863), in Frankfurt/ Main (1863–1869), and finally in Berlin (1870–1874). By 1837, he organized a meeting in Wiesbaden of reform minded rabbis. But he did not want to create a separated community (as Samuel Holdheim [1806–60]71 wanted to do, and Samson Raphael Hirsch did). Geiger thought that although there are dogmas in Judaism, there is no creed as a condition of salvation. Jewish scholarship was an instrument of religious reform: »The Talmud, and the Bible, too, that collection of books, most of them so splendid and uplifting, perhaps the most exalting of all literature of human authorship, can no longer be viewed as a divine origin«72. One of the last luminaries and the paragon of the Wissenschaft was Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1891). He taught at the Veitel-Heine-Ephraïmische Lehranstalt for forty-eight years. Assistant at the Royal Library of Berlin (1869), and like Zunz a »private scholar,« he edited the Zeitschrift für hebräische Bibliographie

68 69 70 71 72

See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 194–97. See: Liedtke/Rechter, Towards Normality, 88. Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?, Bonn, 1833. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 186f. Quoted after: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 233.

6 Wissenschaft des Judentums

231

(1858–1882). For him Jews are a religious confession and a nation. He describes the relationship between science and reform:73 During the last half-century greater and lesser results have been achieved by Jewish science. For a long time, this endeavor was influenced, externally, by the so-called ›question of Jewish emancipation‹ and, internally, by the various attempts at religious reform. Jewish science has gained from both, and—where it has depended and clarified the understanding (of Judaism)—it, in turn, has had a salutary influence on the external position of the Jews and on their religious situation as well.

He offered propositions:74 First and foremost, the debates over the establishment of new, modern institutes refer to the training of rabbis and teachers of religion; opinions differ according to religious affiliations. In this context, the Science of Judaism is largely considered in term of its pertinence to (religious) cult and pedagogy. This practical point of view is certainly justified, but is it the only feasible approach? What about Jewish history as a link and source of cultural history in general? Is the Science of Judaism a part of theology? What will become of it if the universities, according to the Dutch example, leave theology, as a practical science, to the care of the various religious communities? It could be argued that the Jews, as a religious community, have no particular reason to take care of a science which goes beyond their religious needs, unless this science is created by Jews and can thus only be transmitted by Jews. The state and its scientific institutions must undertake and foster scientific investigations of Jewish works contained in their libraries, just as they are investigating the pyramids, the ruins of Pompeii and of Niveveh.

Steinschneider was more than the ›father of Jewish bibliography‹. His catalogues of the Hebrew manuscripts of important libraries in the world (Bodleian 1852–1860, Leiden 1858, Munich 1875, Hamburg 1878, Berlin 1897–1901) are a testimony of his protean interests and his extensive knowledge. The paradox is that all the instigators of the science of Judaism did not succeed in installing Wissenschaft in a German university, but the German university was still the model of this science. The foundation of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for the Scientific Study of Judaism, 1872) in Berlin was a great achievement. The Hochschule wanted complete academic freedom and was a meeting and reference point for liberal Jews. The Rabbinerseminar (1873), also in Berlin, wanted to give an alternative to the Hochschule. Similar institutions in Budapest (1877) and Vienna (1893) were an institutionalization of this kind of tradition, exported to England (Jew’s College, Rabbinical Seminary 1855), the United States (JTS and HUC), and Palestine (Hebrew University, 1925). For one of the last representatives of European born scholars, Ismar Elbogen, Wissenschaft des Judentums was Jewish theology. The modern critical study of Jews and Judaism »is ...a critical inquiry to serve the Jewish faith and the Jewish people.«75

73 Ibid., 230. 74 Ibid., 231. 75 Michael Meyer, in Gotzmann/Wiese, Modern Judaism, 73.

232

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

Is Wissenschaft a religious or a nationalist quest, or is it the possibility to extend our knowledge of other cultures, for the comparative examination of the history of the humanity? Was Wissenschaft theology, philology, philosophy, sociology, or ›pure‹ history? We have the same questions now. For Geiger there were no limits to the historical criticism. Leopold Zunz, Abraham Geiger, and even Moritz Steinschneider failed to implant that kind of Jewish studies in universities. In France, it was possible without much difficulty (but it was still risky, we see that with Ernest Renan76) in the Collège de France that was founded in 16th century against the Sorbonne, in order to teach precisely Hebrew and Greek against the theologians of the Sorbonne—or later, in the Sorbonne at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in 19th century and today. That is the reason why we found German- Jewish scholars in France (e.g Michel Bréal, Salomon Munk, father and son Derenburg, Julius Oppert, the Reinachs family). In Germany the Gesellschaft für Foerderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums was organized in 1902, then in 1905 the general archives, in 1919 the Academy for the Science of Judaism. In Berlin the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was founded in 1925, it moved to Vilna and after 1940 to New York. The modernity of Judaism was also visible in the in image of the rabbi in the west, how they wore new suits imitating the model of protestant pastors. Also, the liturgy became politicized to serve emancipation. The ›academization‹ of rabbis, the birth of the »Rabbiner Doktor« was totally unknown in France. Although Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1883)77 was against ›Wissenschaft‹ and at the beginning was a friend of Geiger, nevertheless scholars such as Azriel Hildesheimer78, David Zvi Hoffmann79 and Franz Rosenzweig80 would be convinced by the necessity to debate, if not to refute, the results of Wissenschaft.

7

The Debate between Orthodoxy and Reform

In the United States, the creation of scientific institutions to serve Judaism bore the stamps of German Wissenschaft. The same people active in Germany continued their work across the ocean: Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926)81 for the Reform, Isaac Leeser (1806–1868)82 opposed to Reform. The bulk of German emigration in USA (1860–1880) resulted in more than twenty German rabbis having pulpits in the most important towns of America by 1870. The Germans also served as lay-heads of the congregations.

76 77 78 79 80 81 82

See: See: See: See: See: See: See:

Henry Laurens, Ernest Renan: La science, la religion, la République, Paris, 2013. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 234f.. Ellenson, After Emancipation, 172–81. Ellenson, After Emancipation, 121f. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 282–84. Ellenson, After Emancipation, 312–19. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 461–63.

7 The Debate between Orthodoxy and Reform

233

A collateral effect of Wissenschaft was a conflict between old and modern, between Reform and Orthodox. In 1810, the first Reformtempel was established in Seesen, Lower Saxony, by Isaac Jacobson (1768–1828) and in Berlin (1815) in the house of the bankers Jacob Hertz Beer (but it closed in 1817)83. In Hamburg84, the Tempelstreit (1818) and the Reform movement exemplified a lavish progression from Berlin, to Breslau, Wuerzburg, as far as Lemberg, and eastward. Orthodoxy reacted aggressively. The well-known Rabbi Moses Sofer (Hatam Sofer 1762–1839)85, head of the Pressburg Yeshiva, wrote the oft quoted sentence: »Do not touch the books of rabbi Moses from Dessau«. Mendelssohn was nicknamed as Moshe Fresser (»glutton,« and not Moshe Desser i.e from Dessau). Heated polemics arose between Abraham Geiger and Rabbi Solomon Tiktin in Breslau in 1838. In Lemberg, a rabbi was poisoned and in Braunschweig the first Rabbinerversammlung (Rabbinical conference, 1844)86 crystalized the asperity of the exchanges. The war of Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) against lenient conceptions of Judaism that provoked a seismic catastrophe leading to an independent tradition originated in Frankfurt (after 1851) and his school, torah im derech erez (Torah with secular studies)87 was carried on by his descendants (the Hirsch and the Breuer families). Hirsch’s Nineteen Letters on Judaism (1836) and Horeb: Essays on Israel’s Duties in the Diaspora (1837)88 created a ›neo-orthodoxy‹ still active today, attacking both Wissenschaft and Haskalah. Entry into the bourgeoisie was one of the radical phenomena in the history of the Jews of Europe. Jewish Intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and workers emerged as highly visible promoters of cultural and social transfer. Social mobility is also a characteristic of this group, the nucleus of a scientific European culture. The German Jews in France are a wonderful case-study, with Karl Marx89 and Heinrich Heine, Jacques Offenbach and Giacommo Meyerbeer as parade examples. After Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem (1783) and Zunz’s Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur (»On rabbinical literature,« 1818)90, the Rabbinical conferences (1844–1846) tried to bridge the two ways of Jewish modernity: the orthodox (or new orthodoxy) and that of emancipation. Once again, Geiger was the chief inspiration, already in 1837 calling for a rabbinical gathering. Liturgical, political, and theological questions were at stake in Brunswick91, Frankfurt/Main92, and Breslau (1844, 1845, 1846).

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

See: Liedtke/Rechter, Towards Normality, 110f. See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 161. Ibid., 169–73. Ibid., 177f. See: Ellenson, After Emancipation, 71–78. Samson Raphael Hirsch (Ben Usiel), Neunzehn Briefe über Judenthum, Altona, 1836; Horev, oder Versuche über Iissroéls Pflichten in der Zerstreuung, Altona, 1837. See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 324–27. Ibid., 221–30. See: Ibid., 177f. Ibid., 178–85.

234

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

Certain issues were confronted: from the necessity of Hebrew language in religious services, the dogma of the messiah, the use of a musical organ on the Sabbath, and some questions related to the life of the congregations. That means that we have not only a social and economic progression toward ending Jewish poverty in Europe, but also a cultural discussion about the meaning of being and acting as a Jew in a modern Europe. Is it allowed to separate essential and non-essential laws? What is the price to be paid in order to rescue and protect Judaism? The Berlin reform congregation was founded in 1845. At the Conference in Frankfurt (1845) Einhorn said explicitly:93 But now our concept (of the Messiah) have changed. There is no need any longer for an extended ceremonial law. The earlier approach restricted divine guidance to the land (of Israel) and the people; the deity, it was believed, enjoyed bloody sacrifices, and priests were needed for penance. (…..). I vote for the renunciation of all petitions for the restoration of the sacrifices and our political independence. I should prefer our prayers for the Messiah to express a hope for a spiritual renaissance and the unification of all men in faith and in lore through the agency of Israel.

For Holdheim, »the wish to return in Palestine in order to create there a political empire for those who are still oppressed because of their religion is superfluous. The wish should rather be for a termination of the oppression, which would improve their lot as it has improved ours.«94 There was a sort of unification of the Jewish question in Germany and in Europe at least until 1933, a de-regionalization of the Jews, urbanization, concentration around economic opportunities, and a concentration around certain professions (medicine, journalism, banking). Simultaneously, we see the emergence of national Jewishness, (Israélite-Français, Jude, Italian-Ebreo). Cultural and political leaders, not always rabbis, were publishing and eloquently talking within and outside the community. The Jews were represented in the national congress in Frankfurt (1848)95. Gabriel Riesser (1806–1863)96 was the first judge in Hamburg, and Moritz Elstätter (1827–1905) was minister of finance of Baden in 1868. Two élites, economic and political, were growing up until the Weimar Republic. Hugo Preuss (1860–1925) wrote the text of the constitution and Walter Rathenau (1867–1922)97 was the voice of Germany in the international arena. The story is well known: The Weimar Republic was one of the most targeted systems, from right and from left. ›Republicans of reason‹ were a minority. The assassination of Rathenau was the logic of the growing anti-semtism bourgeoning in Germany, (exemplified by the antisemitic cry »Hep Hep« 1818, and riots under that cry in 181998) and a newer more racial Anti-Semitism promoted by with Wilhelm Marr (1879, Der Sieg des Judentums)99 und the ›Berliner Anti-Semitismusstreit.‹ The census of the Jews

93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Quoted after: Ibid., 183f. Ibid., 184. Ibid., 150f. See: Schorsch, Leopold Zunz, 68f. See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 267f.; Picard et al., Makers of Jewish Modernity, 126–43. See: Friesel, Atlas, 60. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 331–33.

8 Modern American Judaism

235

in the German army in 1916 to confine their growth, would confirm the impossibility of a real emancipation there. The Dreyfus case (1894–1906)100 was a signal for French society that Jewish emancipation would not be realized there either.

8

Modern American Judaism

The conflicts between orthodoxies and modernities that originated in Germany was transplanted to the United States. Like Wissenschaft, it had also an institutional tradition which might be characterized as Hebrew Union College versus Yeshivah and to a lesser extent, the centrist Jewish Theological Seminary101. Geiger’s and Holdheim’s friend David Einhorn (1809–1879)102 would become a Reform rabbi in Baltimore, as would their colleague Bernhard Felsenthal (1822–1908) in Chicago (he was in Germany until 1854). The two sons-in-law of Einhorn were also important figures, Kaufmann Kohler and Emil G. Hirsch (1851–1923). Kohler was in the USA in 1869, and became president of the Hebrew Union College in 1903. His major opponent, Isaac Wise (1819–1900) who came from Bohemia, was a yeshiva boy near Prague and wanted to fight German influence. He also served as the president of the Hebrew Union College. What was at stake was not an americanisation of German Judaism, but the creation of an American Jewish culture. Wise published his Minhag America (American Custom) against Einhorn’s Olat Talmid (Perpetual Ritual Sacrifice). But very early on, Hebrew Union College was associated with the Reform Judaism. At the end of the 1870, we have the first generation in America that promoted a cultural autonomy with strong ties in Germany But after 1881/82 they became a minority because of the emigration from Russia, Poland, and Central Europe. These immigrants spoke Yiddish and they promoted ›degermanisation‹, i.e. an English-speaking, cultural ›new‹ Judaism. The first manifestation was the Reform’s well-known Pittsburg Platform (1885)103. The reaction was immediate and the Italian Rabbi Sabato Morais (1823–1897) and the Hungarian Alexander Kohut (1842–1904) created of the nucleus of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1886104. A chain of institutions marked the end of the 19th century: American Jewish Historical Society (1892), Gratz College (1893), Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (1897) which was the nucleus of Yeshiva University, the reconstituted Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS, 1903)105, Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning (1907, today integrated into the University of Philadelphia). Cyrus Adler (1863–1940) was the head of Dropsie (1808–1940) and simultaneously president at JTS

100 101 102 103 104 105

See: Ibid., 351–56. See: Ellenson, After Emancipation, 280–319. See: Gotzmann/Wiese, Modern Judaism, 126–44. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 468f. See: Ellenson, After Emancipation, 280–319. Ibid., 310–12.

236

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

between 1915–1940106. In the process of the academization of US Judaism there were nevertheless some doubts about Wissenschaft: Higher Biblical criticism was interpreted by JTS president Solomon Schechter as »higher Anti-Semitism.«107 The role of the Jewish Publication Society108 was also very important. Its spiritual soul, Henrietta Szold (1860–1945), got permission to attend lectures at JTS, where the curriculum included translations of German books like Graetz’s History. Originally Louis Ginzberg’s Legend of the Jews was written in German. Szold translated the first volumes into English for publication by the Jewish Publication Society. In Baltimore, Congregation Har Sinai (1842) and in New York, Temple Emanuel-El (1845) were founded upon a strong Germanic foundation. An easier cultural transfer was between the United States and England, where the Jews’ College was founded in 1855. The Jewish Quarterly Review stopped its publication in England in 1908 and began a new series at Dropsie College in 1910. Solomon Schechter (1847–1915)109 left Cambridge where he taught Rabbinics, in order to come to New York where he was president of JTS from 1902–1915. His recruitment of Louis Ginzberg (1873–1953), Alexander Marx (1878–1953), and Israel Friedländer (1876–1920) was important to the promotion of Wissenschaft des Judentums at JTS, although they came from Europe and began their teaching in New York in German.110 The Jewish Encyclopaedia (1901–1906) was the flagship of the American version of the Wissenschaft. It presented the German Wissenschaft but went further. The initiator Isidor Singer (1859–1938) came from Moravia and in 1895 went to the U. S. Christian Wiese who is one of the best experts on the history of the Wissenschaft not only in Germany but also in the new world saw here an departure from the German scientific tradition.111 After the First World War, a new generation of institutions was born, including the American Academy for Jewish Research (1920) and the Jewish Institute for Religion (1922). Harry A. Wolfson held the first chair of Jewish Philosophy in the U.S., at Harvard University (1925) and Salo W. Baron held a chair for Jewish history at Columbia University (1929). Jewish studies in the U.S. took advantage of the boom at American universities, like the Wissenschaft in German Universities some decades before. The post 1933 emigration from Germany and East Europe played a pivotal role, providing a second wave of research scholars. The major actors of the field in the last decade of the former century and through the post-World War II period were still born in Germany, e.g. Gershom Scholem and Michael Meyer in Berlin, Ismar Schorsch in Hannover. The history of the emigration of Wissenschaft des Judentums in USA after 1933, however, is another chapter.

106 107 108 109 110 111

Ibid., 307–10. Ibid., 297–307. See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 461–63. See: Ellenson, After Emancipation, 297–307. Ibid., 301. See: Shuly Rubin Schwartz, The Emergence of Jewish Scholarship in America: The Publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia, Cincinnati/OH, 1991.

9 The Emergence of Zionism

9

237

The Emergence of Zionism

The beginning Theodor Herzl’s major affirmation in Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896) is not only that the Jews need implantation in the land of the forefathers, but that Jewish people is one people (1896), as was exemplified in the first Zionist congress in Basel 1897 and tragically confirmed by subsequent history. In his article in Jewish Chronicle 17 January 1896 Herzl wrote: »Shall we choose (the) Argentine (Republic) or Palestine? We will take what is given us and what is selected by Jewish public opinion«. The paragraph describes the advantages of Argentina, but the next paragraph, he argues, »Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of extraordinary potency«. We find the same sentences later that year in his The Jewish State.112 Proto-zionism began with rabbis like Elia Gutmacher (1795–1874), Yehuda Alkalai (1798–1878), and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874).113 The establishment of European consulates in Jerusalem after 1838 brought the land closer, and the different religious affiliations of the diplomats (Protestants, Catholics, Christian Greek-Orthodox) was also an indicator of the treatment of the Jews and Judaism. The next step was three publications of Moses Hess (1812–1875)114, Leo Pinsker (1821–1891)115, and Isaak Rülf (1831–1902)116. »It is more than extraordinary,« writes Julius Schoeps, »that it was a German Jew of all people and not a representative of the barely assimilated Eastern European Jewry who was one of the first to propagate the idea of a modern Jewish national movement«117. Hess published his Rome and Jerusalem118 in 1862, the year of Pinskers’ ‘Autoemancipation.119 »An appeal to his people by a Russian Jew’; (1883) came out as Rülfs Prussian-Hebrew titled, ‘Aruchas Bas Ami: A remedy for Israel’120. For him, the homeland should be Palestine and the language Hebrew. The very first ›modern‹ city in Palestine, Petah Tikva (1878), was established with the conjunction of immigrants and Jews who wanted to live outside of the old Jerusalem, but was so difficult to establish, that the real first modern colony was Rishon le-Zion (1882). The term Zionist was probably coined by Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937)121. The first wave of new immigrants was the Biluim (=Bilu = Beth Ya’akov lechu ve nelcha, Isa 2,5) founded by Israel Belkind (1861–1929), who also was the founder of the first Hebraic school.122

112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

See the chapter on »Zionism and the State of Israel« by Martin Kloke in this volume. See: Schoeps, Pioneers of Zionism, 1f. Ibid., 11–33. Ibid., 34–49. Ibid., 50–73. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 108–13. Ibid., 114–19. Ibid., 120–25. See: Liedtke/Rechter, Towards Normality, 46f.; Gotzmann/Wiese, Modern Judaism, 257f. Quoted after: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 532.

238

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

What we want: (1) A home in our country? It was given to us by the mercy of God; it is ours as registered in the archives of history. (2) To beg it of the Sultan himself, and if it be impossible to obtain this, to beg that at least we may be allowed to possess it as a state within a larger state; the internal administration to be ours, to have our civil and political rights, and to act with the Turkish Empire only in foreign affairs, so as to help our brother Ishmael in his time of need. In Europe different groups of Hovevei Zion (lovers of Zion)123 began to emigrate to Palestine. But we must bear in mind that there was Jewish migration, albeit irregular, to Palestine for 2000 years. In 1889, the ›Russisch-jüdisch Wissenschaftliche Verein‹ (Russo-Jewish Scientific Society) was founded in Berlin as the beginning of Zionism there. Theodor Herzl (1860–1904)124 was born in Budapest, lived in Vienna, and was a well talented celebrated journalist who happened to be in Paris when Dreyfus was degraded and condemned. He was aware of European Anti-Semitism much earlier. That is the reason why the subtitle of State of the Jews (better translation than the published, The Jewish State) is ›A proposal for a modern solution for the Jewish question.‹ In Herzl’s utopian novel Altneuland (The Old New Land, 1902) he gave his view of the future of the Palestine. The first Zionist congress in August 1897, was a crucial event in the history of modern Judaism: for the first time 196 delegates from 16 different countries gathered together. It was in Basel instead of Munich (where it had been planned to take place) because the ›Protestrabbiner‹ there were opposed to this congress. The German Rabbinical Association led by Siegmund Maybaum (1843–1910)125 issued a statement in which it said: »The aspiration of so-called Zionists to found a Jewish nation state in Palestine, contradicts the messianic promise of Judaism as it is written in the Holy Scripture and in later religious sources.« (J. Schoeps126). The Basle Program (1897) is still impressive today:127 The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law. The congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end: 1. The promotion, on suitable lines, of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers. 2. The organization of all Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country. 3. The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and consciousness. 4. Preparatory steps towards obtaining government consent, where necessary, to the attainment of the aim of Zionism. The foundation of the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland (Zionist Union for Germany in 1897) came after the creation of the National-Jüdische Vereinigung 1894

123 124 125 126 127

See ibid., 529. Picard et al., Makers of Jewish Modernity, 46–60. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 538–40. Schoeps, Pioneers of Zionism, 69. Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 540f.

9 The Emergence of Zionism

239

in Köln. The movement was growing, managed by Russian and German enthusiasts in the circle of Chaim Weizmann. Another Hungarian born philosopher and doctor, Max Nordau (his former name was Simon Maximilian Südfeld, 1849–1923) was very instrumental in building the Zionist movement and chairing the first congresses. He was scandalously ill-treated in Zionist historiography. We have now an excellent biography by Christoph Schulte128. Nordau’s letters are scattered in many libraries in Europe in many languages. The Zionist ideal was split very early on into different currents: political, cultural, nationalist. The names of Ahad Ha-Am (Ascher Ginsberg 1856–1927)129, Martin Buber (1878–1965)130, and Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952) emerge. In 1902, the project of a Hebrew university (1902) emerged, following the first idea of Hermann Shapira (1840–1898), a professor in Heidelberg and who was also known as the initiator of the Jewish National Fund. He made the first proposition of this kind at the first Zionist congress in 1897; the first stone was laid in 1918, and the inauguration of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was on April 1, 1925 (following the opening of the Institute for Jewish Studies, at Hanukkah; December 1924). Ahad Ha-Am was a Russian Jew, leading one of the Hibbat Zion sections—a movement born in Russia after the first pogroms there (1881). He was a Hebrew essayist, for whom Palestine would have been a spiritual center of the diaspora. He tirelessly promoted a humanistic non-chauvinist Zionism. And so we did not come to Basle to found the Jewish state today or tomorrow. Rather we came to issue a great proclamation to all the world: The Jewish people is still alive and full of the will to live. We must repeat this proclamation day and night, not so that the world will hear and give us what we desire, but above all, in order that we ourselves will hear the echo of our voice in the depths of our soul. Perhaps in this way our soul will awaken and cleanse itself of its degradation. 131

In a very well-known article (1891)132, Ahad ha-Am spoke very positively about the Arab people, who were the majority of inhabitants in Palestine at the time. Itzhak Epstein wrote (1907) in the same vein133. They were severely attacked by Zeev Smilansky (1908). Cultural, or spiritual Zionism was also in the center of the thought of Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), one of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv. Ruppin was the director of the Palestine Office of the Zionist organization in Jaffa and of the Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace, see below), conceived in 1925 and officially founded in 1926. Ruppin figured in the activity and discourses of Martin Buber and Leon Jehuda Magnes (1877–1948), the first head of the Hebrew University.134 This small group of intel-

128 Christoph Schulte, Psychopathologie des Fin de Siècle: Der Kulturkritiker, Arzt und Zionist Max Nordau, Frankfurt/Main, 1997. 129 See: Gotzmann/Wiese, Modern Judaism, 335. 130 See: Picard et al., Makers of Jewish Modernity, 187–203. 131 Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 542. 132 See: Schoeps, Pioneers of Zionism, 85f. 133 Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 558–62. 134 See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 625.; Picard et al., Makers of Jewish Modernity, 200f.

240

Modern Judaism: 1750–1930

lectuals, from Germany and Middle-Europe, wanted to acknowledge publicly »the Arab problem« in Palestine, and before the foundation of the State of Israel as a binational state. Ruppin was a central figure of this little galaxy. At that time the Jews were still a minority in the country. After the end of the Brit Shalom (1929) a league for Jewish-Arab rapprochement and cooperation (1939) and the Ihud (»unity«, 1942), the journal Ner tried to continue this tradition. But the idea of bi-nationality did not carry the same meaning in 1914, 1929–1940, and naturally in 1948. The Zionist Federation of Germany numbered 10,000 members in 1914, who believed that the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (1893) was not really able to protect the Jews in Germany. German culture gave a major contribution to world Zionism. The series of Zionist congresses are a superb chronicle of the preparation of a new culture which resulted in the construction of a Jewish State. In 1897, the General Jewish Labour Bund was founded in Vilna, Lithania, Poland, and Russia (Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Litah, Polyn un Rusland).135 It was conceived as the supra-territorial organization of the proletarian population at the beginning against the October Revolution, but after its recognition, supported the Bolshevist revolution. At the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the »Balfour declaration«136 was signed. It was an essential step for the birth of the State of Israel. Secularism, internationalism, socialism, and opposition to Zionism were the most important characteristic of this cluster that made up Yiddish culture. In 1948 after the Shoah, the State of Israel was created, considerably changing the course of the Jewish history. In contrast to Jerusalem, which had a Jewish majority from the middle of the 19th century, Palestine in the Ottoman Empire and the Mandate period had a minority of Jews. At that time the binational idea was but a dream. Only after the rise of Anti-Semitism in Europe in the nineteen-thirties does the idea to create shelter and refuge for the victims turn out to become a state with the challenges and the problems of life. When modernity means fragmentation, Zionism means unity (although with the mask of diversity or fluidity). Zionism was not the only one of European nationalisms of the end of the 19th century, but it managed to reinsert the Jews into world history, with the European modernity taking for granted Jewish compatibility. Zionism was also a humanistic project. But the Jews of Eastern Europe knew that respectful emancipation was impossible. The eloquent tradition of texts from Zvi Hirsch Kalischer137, Moses Hess, and Pinskers’ Autoemnancipation paved the way to the Judenstaat and the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel in 1948 (N.B. that this declaration is not a constitution) with a new political geography after the Balfour declaration (1917), some weeks before the Bolschevik revolution, and the English take-over of Palestine. The different schools of Zionism reworked the four paradigms of Enlightenment, Hasidism, Wissenschaft, and Orthodoxy vs. Reform, and so is also an integral part of modern Judaism.

135 See: Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 419–23. Friesel, Atlas, 68f. 136 Reinharz/Mendes-Flohr, The Jew, 582. 137 See: Schoeps, Pioneers of Zionism, 1f.

9 The Emergence of Zionism

241

Today—after the Shoah—history is inclined to see the bad side of the story: the enlightenment was ambiguous, modernity was a trap, and nationalism a temptation for the desperate. Gershom Scholem himself regretted that Kabbalah somehow became the official theology of Judaism. One of our best scholars asks ›how Jewish is Jewish history?‹138 We see a new communitarian ghettoization in Judaism, in the United States, in Europe, and in Israel. After so many turns: social, cultural, linguistic, gender, ideological, symbolic, and such, we can say that all is a construct. After a pious Haskalah, Judaism now has a maskilic Halacha. And legal and political egalitarianisms are but different forms of social acceptance. But it is not possible to forget the success story of a considerable part of the Jews in the modern world nor can we imagine this modern world without the Jews. Or the Jews without the non-Jewish modern world! Judaism had in itself the capacity to deal with the alien presence. Since it is older than Christianity and Islam, it cultivated the ability to live with others, absorbing, rejecting, and transforming. Even Jewish life after its different exiles proves the capacity of the Jews to overcome the dangers of the dark sides of different modernities. For further reading Seven E. Aschheim and Vivian Liska, eds., The German Jewish Experience Revisited, Berlin, 2015. David Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews: A New History, New York, 2002. Emily Bilsky and Emily Braun, eds., Jewish Women and their Salons: The Power of Conversation, New Haven/CT/London, 2005. Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman, Rethinking European Jewish History, Oxford/Portland/OR, 2009. Rachel Elior, The Mystical Origins of Hasidism, Oxford/Portland/OH, 2006. David Ellenson, After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity, Cincinnati/OH, 2004. Immanuel Etkes, The Besht: Magician, Mystic, and Leader, Waltham/MA, 2005. Evyatar Friesel, Atlas of Modern Jewish History, New York, 1990. Andreas Gotzmann and Christian Wiese, eds., Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness, Leiden/Boston/MA, 2007. Rainer Liedtke and Daniel Rechter, eds., Towards Normality? Acculturation and Modern German Jewry, Tübingen, 2003. Mendelssohn, Moses, Jerusalem: or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush, introduction and commentary by Alexander Altmann, Hanover/NH/London, 1983. Moses Mendelssohn’s Hebrew Writings, ed. and trans. Edward Breuer and David Sorkin, New Haven/CT/London, 2018. Jacques Picard et al., eds., Makers of Jewish Modernity: Thinkers, Artists, Leaders and the World They Made, Princeton/NJ, 2016. Jehuda Reinharz and Paul Mendes-Flohr, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, Oxford, 1980, 3rd ed., 2010. Moshe Rosman, The Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov, Berkeley/CA, 1996 (pb 2013). Idem, How Jewish is Jewish History?, Oxford, 2008 (pb 2009). Julius H. Schoeps, Pioneers of Zionism: Hess, Pinsker, Rülf: Messianism, Settelment Policy and the Israel Palestinian Conflict, Berlin, 2013. Ismar Schorsch, Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity, Philadelphia/PA, 2016.

138 Moshe Rosman, How Jewish is Jewish History? Oxford 2008.

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism Michael Berenbaum

»Holocaust« a word derived from the Greek ὁλοκαύτωμα (holokautoma) (translated from the Hebrew word olah: »a completely [holos] burnt [kaustos] sacrificial offering,« or »a burnt sacrifice offered to God«), is the word most of the English-speaking world uses to describe the systematic state-sponsored murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, its allies and collaborators during World War II. The Nazis preferred another term: »Endlösung der Judenfrage [The Final Solution to the Jewish Question]« Systematic murder, the annihilation of an entire people—men, women and children—is indeed final. By casting the fate of the Jews as a question, the Nazis invited an answer. Yiddish-speaking Jews called it the Churban, the word used to describe the destructions of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE by the Romans. Shoah, catastrophe, is the term preferred by Israelis, people who speak Hebrew and those uncomfortable with the religious connotations of the word Holocaust. Less universal and more particular, Shoah emphasizes the annihilation of the Jews, not the totality of Nazi victims. Raul Hilberg called his pioneering work The Destruction of the European Jews.1 Lucy Dawidowicz wrote a major book on the Holocaust entitled The War Against the Jews.2 In part she showed how Germany fought two wars simultaneously: World War II and the racial war against the Jews. The Allies fought only the World War.

1

The Rise of the Nazi Movement

1.1

Adolf Hitler—Evolution of an Anti-Semite

It is axiomatic among Holocaust historians: »No Hitler, no Holocaust.« Yet Adolf Hitler (1889‒1945) did not operate alone. Economic, social, populist political, reli-

1 There were three English language editions to Hilberg’s magisterial work, each uses the same title, The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago/IL, 1961; rev. and definited ed., New York/London, 1985; 3rd ed., New Haven/CT/London, 2003. 2 Lucy Dawidowicz. The War Against the Jews, New York, 1975. Hilberg devotes a section of his work The Politics of Memory, Chicago/IL, 1996, to his feud with Dawidowicz and her battles with him.

1 The Rise of the Nazi Movement

243

gious, and governmental conditions facilitated his rise to power. Once in office, his lies, manipulation of propaganda, denigration of »the other,« and delegitimization of journalism allowed the Nazis to legally end Parliamentary checks, demolish democracy from within, and put the machinery of murder in place. Hitler’s word was final, but many of the initiatives for the Holocaust and virtually all its implementation came from others. Born in Braunau, Austria on April 20, 1889, Hitler did not become a German citizen until 1932. The family moved to Linz, where Hitler attended a Roman Catholic school. There was a Jewish community in Linz, unnoticed by Hitler. Some psychologists attributed Hitler’s hatred of Jews to the breast cancer treatment his mother received from her Jewish physician, Dr. Bloch. In fact, Hitler praised the doctor and in 1940 personally allowed him to leave Germany for the United States.3 Hitler moved to Vienna in 1908 to pursue artistic interests but failed the entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts. He sustained himself by painting houses and sketching for tourists. His time in Vienna shaped Hitler’s worldview. Almost exclusively white, its sizeable Jewish community was prominent. Vienna was where Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, while Karl Lueger, the anti-Semitic founder of the Austrian Christian Social Party, was elected mayor five times. Lueger used Anti-Semitism as a political weapon to unite the lower and upperclasses against its large and influential Jewish community; his party’s populist and anti-Semitic politics were likely the model for Hitler’s Nazism. Hitler described it as: »…the time of greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite.«4 And he became an expert in the use of Anti-Semitism as a political tool in his political campaigns. In May 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, Germany. Volunteering for the German Army in World War I, he served on the Western front, where he fought alongside Jews,5 and even in the late 1930s conceded there were brave Jewish soldiers—even officers. Decorated for bravery, he achieved the rank of lance corporal. When Hitler became the German Fuehrer, snobbish German generals disparaged him behind his back even as they publicly exalted him and—most importantly—obeyed him. After a British gas attack in November 1918, Hitler suffered temporary blindness and hallucinations, and was still hospitalized when Germany surrendered. Asked why Germany lost the war, Hitler blamed the Jews and called them tuberculosis, a medical metaphor, one that implied quarantine. Later, cancer was his preferred term. Bitter and disillusioned Hitler felt Germany was »stabbed in the back,« by the home front, socialists, liberals, and Jews; the Allied terms of the Versailles

3 Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, New York, 1992, 6. After an article was published by Sybil Milton on the question of Dr. Bloch, his family contacted the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and shared his correspondence with Hitler. 4 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf: Complete and Unabridged Fully Annotated, New York, 1939, 66. 5 Almost one in five German Jews fought in World War I. 12,000 Jews were killed and many were awarded the Iron Cross and other military medals.

244

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

Peace Conference—ceding territory, requiring reparations and limiting the German military were regarded as a national humiliation, and the German leaders who signed it as traitors. Just after World War I Hitler discovered a small political party he would soon dominate: the German Workers’ Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi Party). As early as 1919 he wrote: »Rational Anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition. Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.«6 By 1923 he and the Nazis staged a military coup in Munich, the »Beer Hall Putsch.« Quickly crushed, Hitler was arrested for treason. He used his trial as a soapbox and became a household name. Sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison, he served just 18 months and used his time to shape and articulate his political views in his autobiography, Mein Kampf [My Struggle], published in 1925. He wrote: • »It is the »sacred mission of the German people ...to assemble and preserve the most valuable racial elements ...and raise them to a dominant position.«7 • »All who are not of a good race are chaff.« The Aryan race was destined to be superior; therefore, the German people »are the highest species of humanity on earth.« In the racial struggle of history, the »master race« would dominate if it preserved its purity. Otherwise, it would be polluted, corrupted and destroyed by inferior races.8 • »Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: ›by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.‹«9 • »[Germany] must [...] lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.«10 Short and dark, Hitler nevertheless evoked the image of a tall and blond »Aryan« and instilled the German people with national pride and purpose. A spellbinding orator, he greatly appealed to German youth, including university students and the insecure middle class. He offered them links to their mythic and much celebrated past and instilled in them a vision for a glorious German future. Hitler’s worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion (i.e. greater Lebensraum—living space—for the German people) and racial supremacy. The Allies denied Germany colonies in Africa, so Hitler sought to expand German territory and secure food—scarce during World War I—in Europe itself. In the words of historian Timothy Snyder, Hitler’s program was for not just »living space—but 6 Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 17. Hitler was speaking in societal and territorial terms, not in terms of total annihilation. Methodologically, scholars are cautious not to read back into his early utterances the full realization of the Nazi program that developed more than two decades later. 7 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 601. 8 ibid., 406. 9 ibid., 84. 10 ibid., 939f.

1 The Rise of the Nazi Movement

245

also for space to live well.«11 Snyder argues that Hitler opposed Jews for the values they brought into the world. Social justice and compassionate assistance to the weak stood in the way of the natural order in which the powerful exercise unrestrained power. For Hitler, an extreme Social Dawinist, Jewish values, spread so widely by Christians who revered Jesus, were abominable.12

1.2

Roots of Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism was not a randomly chosen hatred. Well-rooted in European Christian soil, it reached a unique expression under Nazism, as religious Anti-Semitism and political Anti-Semitism were joined with racial Anti-Semitism. Historically, the Jews occupy an all too central role in the Christian drama. Jesus of Nazareth was born a Jew, lived and preached as a Jew and was crucified in first century Palestine by the Romans. His early followers were Jews and only after Jesus’ death, the mission of his followers expanded beyond the Jewish community. For Christians, Jewish exile was Divine punishment for the crucifixion and denial of Jesus’ mission. The Temple in ruins was demonstrable proof God had abandoned the Jews. The Gospels emphasize Jewish culpability and diminish Roman responsibility. Jews were cast as the murderers of the son of God. As the rivalry between the two religions developed, Christianity viewed itself as the fulfillment of Judaism, making the particular Jewish message a universal one. The New Testament had come to complete the Old Testament. According to some early Church fathers, the mission of the Jews had been completed; mission fulfilled, the Jews should have disappeared from the Earth. Continued Jewish survival seemed to be a despised act of stubborn defiance. St. Augustine was considered a moderate on the Jewish question. His explanation for ongoing Jewish survival was that Jews were a »witness people,« who must survive to bear witness to the return of Jesus as the Christ, as the Messiah. While persecution might be acceptable, annihilation was not permissible, as it would deny the Jews their final mission. Enmity toward the Jews was expressed most acutely by the early church’s teachings of contempt. It taught its followers that a people capable of denying Jesus and then murdering him were damned. Religious antagonism thus led to social ostracism and economic restrictions. During the Middle Ages Jews were accused of poisoning water supplies and causing the Black Plague, among other crimes; blood libels, accusing Jews of killing children for their blood for use during Passover, were common. All were used to denigrate and ultimately kill Jews.13 By transforming religious Anti-Semitism into racial Anti-Semitism since at least the end of the 19th century, Jews were hated for despoiling the perfection of the Aryan bloodline. Historian Saul Friedlander argued persuasively that one should

11 Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, New York, 2013, 14. 12 Snyder, Black Earth, 5‒8. 13 Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: Jews in the Middle Ages, Princeton/NJ, 1994.

246

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

consider Nazi Anti-Semitism as redemptive Anti-Semitism.14 The elimination of the Jews was essential to the well-being of German society, redeeming it from its ills, ridding it of a cancer on the body politic. Timothy Snyder sees the struggle as even more elemental, as »zoological,« and »ecological« a struggle of the species.15

1.3

Nazi Rise to Power

After the failed coup of 1923, the Nazis entered electoral politics, using the tools of democracy to undermine it. As German governments had been unstable—the Nazi party initially was a fringe factor until the Great Depression.16 They opposed the Weimar Republic and Communists, and reached an increasingly wide audience, especially among the lower-middle classes. Violence by the Sturmabteilung (SA— paramilitary units of the Nazi Party) promoted the party’s agenda. Massive inflation in Germany wiped out the middle classes and the worldwide depression at the end of the decade made matters significantly worse. Anti-Semitism alone did not draw German voters to the Nazi party, though it attracted some. More importantly, it did not disqualify Hitler in the eyes of his seemingly non-anti-Semitic supporters. Some voted for him because he was an anti-Semite; others despite it. German politicians and businessmen assumed that once in power, the responsibilities of office or its majesty would force Hitler toward the center. Conservative political leaders assumed that they could control him and exploit his supporters fear to push their agenda. Most who voted for him were far more interested in an end to the instability, chaos, and violence. In the March 1932 election, a month after he became a German citizen, Hitler lost the popular vote in the presidential election to Paul von Hindenburg, a World War I general and military hero. So why was Hitler appointed Chancellor by a President who, according to reports, distrusted and despised him? The powers that be felt that he would do less damage from within the government than outside of it. But once he was in power, Hitler’s racism was the dominant theme of German social policy. It was a major factor in the conduct of World War II and drove German policy in the occupied territories. Though none could imagine it at the time, it gave rise to the Holocaust, because wherever Germany expanded, it captured more Jews. Getting rid of them became ever more complicated.

14 Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933‒1945: The Years of Extermination, New York, 2007, xviii-xxi. 15 Snyder, Black Earth, 4f., 8. 16 In the election of May 4th 1924: the Nazis (standing as the National Socialist Freedom Movement) received 6.5% of the popular vote and 32 seats in the Reichstag out of a total of 472 seats. In the election of December 7th 1924: the Nazis received 3% of the popular vote and 14 seats in the Reichstag out of a total of 493 seats. In May 1928 the Nazis received 2.6% of the popular vote and 12 seats in the Reichstag out of a total of 491 seats, a decline of more than half in four years. Yet in the election of September 14th 1930: the Nazis received 18.3% of the popular vote and 107 seats in the Reichstag out of a total of 577 seats.

1 The Rise of the Nazi Movement

1.4

247

The Fragility of Democracy

The Nazi Party’s initial years in government are a vivid example of how to destroy democracy from within. After von Hindenberg died in August 1934, Hitler consolidated the office of Chancellor and President. Beginning with the Emergency Decree passed by a two-thirds majority of those »present and voting« after the February 1933 Reichstag fire, Hitler could govern without the parliamentary restraint. The Nazi party set about controlling society from the cradle to the grave, from the media to the universities, creating a nazified society with youth movements, a women’s league and organizations for elderly, all backed by the power of the state and the party, the Schutzstaffel (SS—from 1929‒45, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary security, surveillance, and terror unit) and the SA. The Ministry of Propaganda popularized the Nazi message. Radio, then the most advanced of technological communication, broadcast news and stories favorable to the regime and party; newspapers were controlled, and the Party used the power of film to advance its interests. Concentration camps were used to incarcerate political opponents, real or imagined, and to intimidate would-be opponents. They were zones of lawlessness, where guards could operate almost without restraint. Hitler achieved greater international legitimacy with an early concordance with the Vatican, negotiated with the participation of Cardinal Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, who in 1939 was elected Pope Pius XII and who had served for more than a decade as the Papal Nuncio in Munich and Berlin. As an understanding was established between the Nazi State and the Church, Roman Catholic opposition was diminished and the prestige of the new government grew. Periodically intense, the Nazi campaign to separate Jews from German society and German political and economic life was followed by lulls. That allowed the »new reality« to become »the new normal.« And then, in the calm, the Nazis would strike again. They told the Jews and the world what they were doing and waited for reactions. When they got little or no reaction, they proceeded to the next step, seemingly with impunity.

1.5

Nazis in Power

Once in office, Hitler moved swiftly to consolidate his power, to weaken and eliminate his enemies. He could not be controlled, certainly not by the men of experience who put him into office. The Reichstag fire of February 1933, ostensibly set by a Dutch Communist, gave Hitler the excuse to implement the Enabling Act, an emergency decree that suspended the constraints of the Reichstag, the German Parliament.17 On March 17 A fatal flaw in the Weimar Constitution was the source of its own destruction. Two emergency provisions—articles 25 and 48—allowed the President to usurp the powers of the state governments, suspend the constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, and dissolve the Reichstag. The Reichstag could also grant temporary legislative power to the chancellor by a two-thirds majority of those present and voting. The Nazis used this opening to consolidate power in Hitler’s hands.

248

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

22, the first concentration camp for political enemies was opened at Dachau. By July 14, all other political parties were deemed illegal and a plebiscite later that year confirmed Nazi Party rule. A boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933 began the direct attack on Jews. Signs posted outside of Jewish shops said, »Buy only from Germans.« It was the first of many steps taken to eliminate Jews from German economic life. Stationed outside businesses, SA troops intimidated patrons. Still, some Germans made it a point of honor to patronize Jewish shops and call on Jewish friends. On April 7, Jews were expelled from Civil Service, including judges and lawyers, physicians working in state hospitals, professors teaching at state universities, teachers and ordinary civil servants. Two weeks later, Jewish religious life was attacked when the ritual slaughter of animals required by Jewish dietary law was forbidden. Some German Jews evaded the law and continued to perform kosher slaughtering clandestinely. Others paid the higher prices for imported kosher meat. On April 25, 1933, the Law Preventing Overcrowding of Schools and Schools of Higher Education restricted Jewish enrollment in German schools. The Jewish community responded by expanding existing or creating new schools. On May 10, on Hitler’s 100th day in office, Nazi students and their professors burned books by Jewish authors and those deemed un-Germanic in bonfires throughout Germany. The situation of German Jews deteriorated as the year progressed. On September 22, 1933 Jews were banned from journalism, theater, music, art, literature, and broadcasting in order to eradicate Jewish influence on German society. A week later, they were banned from farming.

1.6

German Jewish Reaction

Flight was the predominant reaction of the Jews. By the time emigration was prohibited, more than six in ten German Jews had gone into exile. Of necessity, the community also turned inward. Jewish space was, relatively speaking, a safe space— at least for a time. Two groups of Jews dissented: Zionists who perceived the Jewish future in a Jewish homeland in Palestine and rejectionist Orthodox Jews who were less enamored with German culture and merely sought space in which to worship, study and live without making claims upon or identifying with the larger society. Both acted. It was in the self-interest of the Jews to leave and in the interest of the Nazi State to be rid of the Jews, so the Zionists developed the Haʿavarah Agreement. Jews who left Germany for Palestine could receive some of their assets in the form of German goods delivered to them in British Mandate Palestine while forfeiting the rest of their possessions. Under this agreement, some 60,000 German Jews made their way to Palestine. Their presence in Palestine as a nonagrarian, urban middle-class altered the pioneering community.

1 The Rise of the Nazi Movement

249

In October 1933, the Orthodox community sent Hitler a petition. They pledged loyalty to the State and rootedness in Germany.18 They sought to explain the distinction between Orthodox Jews and assimilated ones. They sought to carve out their own space within Germany, even Nazi Germany: We do aspire to living space within the living space of the German people, the possibility of practicing our religion and carrying out our occupations without threats and without abuse.

In 1933, they, like almost all German Jews, couldn’t grasp the dimension of evil that awaited them. Orthodox Jewry is unwilling to abandon the conviction that »it is not the aim of the German Government to destroy the German Jews ... We do not believe that it has the approval of the Führer.« 19 Over time, they and all Jews who assumed that the persecution might pass came to understand how wrong they were. On April 4, 1933, Robert Weltsch, editor of a German Zionist weekly newspaper, Jüdische Rundschau, published »Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride,«20 urging German Jews to take pride in their Judaism and reject the Nazi attempts to defame them. On April 13, 1933, the Central Committee of German Jews for Help and Reconstruction was established to coordinate economic and social assistance. They also filed law suits against the government to have dismissals of Jews declared legal, and to force the government to comply with legally stipulated compensation benefits. Alternative institutions were formed. The Jewish Cultural Association (Kulturbund) was created in June 1933 to enable Jewish artists and audiences excluded from public cultural life to continue their cultural activities in new Jewish theaters and orchestras throughout Germany. By September 17, 1933, the Central Organization of German Jews (Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden), led by Rabbi Leo Baeck, was founded, uniting often-conflicting Jewish ideological groups under a single umbrella organization, to serve as liaison to the hostile German government and as a source of material aid, education, and emigration assistance. Those with mobile professions were more willing to take flight. Pessimists left before optimists; the young before the old. Businessmen who worked in international companies sought assignments abroad. Political leaders or cultural figures barred from their fields got the message that their very existence was perilous and therefore took flight. The dilemma played out in every family, between parents and children. Henry Kissinger, whose family left his native Fuerth in 1938 before

18 »In accordance of our religious duties, we will always remain loyal to the Government of the State.« They also expressed a kinship for Germany: »We have learned to love the German soil ... We have learned to love the German people. We feel closely linked to its culture. It has become part of our intellectual being and given us German Jews a stamp of our own.« Yad Vashem Archives JM/2462 see, idem, Documents of the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of Jews from Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union, Jerusalem, 1981, 59‒63. 19 Idem, Documents, 61. 20 Robert Weltsch, »Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride,« Jüdische Rundschau (April 4, 1933); Documents, 46.

250

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

Kristallnacht, once said that »When my parents left Germany it took no foresight, merely opportunity.«21 But in the early years, it also took foresight and internal and monetary resources. Discrimination and persecution proceeded apace, but to have it truly take root against the Jews, to enshrine it in law, Germany required a legal definition of »Who is a Jew.« At a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935, two laws were promulgated: The Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor. Under the provisions of the Citizenship Law, »A Reich citizen is a subject of the state who is of German or related blood« and »The Reich citizen is the sole bearer of full political rights in accordance with the law.« Jews could not be citizens, even those who had served with distinction in the German military. To protect German blood and honor, sexual relations between Jews and »citizens of German or cognate blood« were forbidden. »Aryan« women under the age of 45 could not work in Jewish households. As Raul Hilberg noted, »categorization had consequences,« and was the first step toward destruction.22 This racial definition of a Jew meant Jews were persecuted not just for their religious beliefs and practices, but because of their so-called racial identity, irrevocably transmitted through the blood of their grandparents. Once the question of definition was closed, it became precedent, later imposed on lands occupied by the Germans and also served as a model for the treatment and eventual murder of Sinti and Roma. Although the Nuremberg Laws divided the German nation into Germans and Jews, the term »Jew« and the phrase »German or kindred blood« were not yet defined. Two basic Jewish categories were established. A full Jew was anyone with three Jewish grandparents. The definition was simple. Defining part-Jews—Mischlinge (mongrels)— was more difficult. The Nuremberg Laws set up a conflict between the Church’s definition of a Christian—those who had been baptized—and the State’s definition of who was a Jew, a definition by blood and not religion. Thus, some Churches protested only on behalf of Christians whom the laws had defined as Jews, including ministers, priests and nuns. Their limited protest, even if undertaken for the purest of motives, tacitly accepted that full Jews could be persecuted.

1.7

The 1936 Olympics

The 1936 Olympics, assigned to Germany well before the Nazi rise to power, was the crowning opportunity to showcase the new Germany. Before the Olympics, there was a fierce debate about whether or not the United States should participate and thereby legitimate the Nazi regime.

21 About Face: The Story of German Jewish Refugee Soldiers of World War II, film by Steve Karras, 2004. 22 Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, rev. and def. ed., 53‒55.

2 1938—The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End

251

In advance of the Olympics, anti-Semitic signs and graffiti were removed from Berlin, albeit temporarily, and Roma and Sinti (pejoratively known as Gypsies) were taken out of the city. While the triumph of the Afro-American sprinter Jessie Owens became the major international story of newsreel coverage, two American Jewish Olympic runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, were benched by Avery Brundage at the last moment despite Owens’ protest. Nevertheless, the Olympic pageantry and the suspension for a time of antiJewish action did their jobs. President Roosevelt reported to Rabbi Stephen Wise that he had been told that there was no visible Anti-Semitism and the synagogues were full. Following the games, the Nazi State proceeded with the process of Aryanization and the transfer of Jewish owned property to German citizens—contributing to the Jewish community becoming increasingly impoverished. Historian David Marwell has argued that »just because Jews were powerless did not mean they were passive.«23 Jews established alternative institutions, welfare and cultural institutions, jobs and language training, emigration offices and schools. The synagogue served as a center of Jewish life. synagogue services were also full. Jews were drawn to each other even if they had not previously routinely attended services. Although monitored by Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo—state secret police) agents, the synagogues of Germany became for a time »safe spaces« for the beleaguered community.

2

1938—The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End

2.1

The »Anschluss« of Austria

In March 1938 German troops entered Austria. They were warmly welcomed by significant segments of the Austrian population and faced little or no opposition. Austria was incorporated into the Reich and the persecution of Jews began with a series of public attacks. As German law replaced the Austrian state, discriminatory laws against the Jews were automatically introduced. Austrian Jews got the message and sought refuge elsewhere. German policy at that time wanted the forced emigration of Jews, so Nazi SSObersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Adolf Eichmann was assigned to Vienna to head the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration. By September 1939, more than six out of ten Austrian Jews left the Reich. Inevitably, German policy toward the Jews created a refugee crisis. Sigmund Freud found refuge in London after his office had been searched and his daughter arrested. Gathering his disciples, he recalled Yochanan ben Zakkai, who escaped

23 David Marwell in »Masters of Death,« National Geographic (2009).

252

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

besieged Jerusalem to found a Torah academy in coastal Yavneh. The »Torah of Psychoanalysis« in exile would have to do the same. Before leaving Freud was forced to sign a statement saying how well he had been treated and added his own benediction, »I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.«24

2.2

Evian and the Refugee Crisis

In July 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt convened, but did not attend, an international conference on the growing refugee crisis in the resort town of Evian, France. Thirty-two nations were invited to attend; each was assured that they would not have to change their laws or expend public funds for the resettlement of refugees. Great Britain received an additional assurance that Palestine—the resettlement of Jewish refugees in British mandate Palestine—would not be on the agenda. The refugee problem was acknowledged but no significant action was forthcoming. Only the Latin American countries Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic were willing to accept significantly more Jews. The United States was unprepared to relax quotas or expend public funds. Hitler taunted the conferees: »I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.«25 Ten months later, his words appeared prophetic when the luxury liner MS St. Louis carrying Jewish refugees was turned away from Havana and Miami and forced to return to Europe. Dire circumstances ensued when Hitler threatened to annex the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland with its significant ethnic German population and promised it would be the »last territorial demand in Europe.« France and Germany appeased Hitler. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to London and promised »peace in our time.« By March 1939, as German troops entered the rest of Bohemia and Moravia, Chamberlain’s policy was in ruins. Without the assent of its government, Czechoslovakia was dismantled, with Slovakia becoming an independent state under the leadership of Father Jozef Tiso, an anti-Semitic Roman Catholic prelate.

2.3

The Kristallnacht Reich’s Pogrom, the Night of Broken Glass

In October 1938 conditions deteriorated even further. The Swiss Foreign Ministry requested that Germany mark Jewish identity cards with the letter J to distinguish 24 David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish mystical tradition, New York, 1965. 25 Hitler’s speech at Koenigsberg responding to Kristallnacht.

2 1938—The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End

253

between German non-Jews who were welcome in Switzerland and Jews seeking refuge. Later that month, an increasingly anti-Semitic and ethnocentric Polish government announced they were invalidating the passports of Jews living in Germany. The crisis intensified when Germany expelled these Polish Jews living, dumping them on the Polish-German border. Cast out of Germany and unable to enter Poland, the Jews lived in deplorable conditions in no-man’s land in Zbąszyń. Among those expelled was the Grynszpan family whose son, Herschel Grynszpan, was living in Paris. Distraught by what had happened to his parents, Herschel took matters into his own hands and entered the German embassy in Paris to assassinate the Ambassador, but instead shot the Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. The murder was used to launch the infamous Reich pogrom on the night of 9‒10 November 1938 that became known as Kristallnacht. At 11:55 on the night of November 9, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller sent a telegram to all police units: In shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all Germany. These are not to be interfered with.

The police were ordered to arrest the victims. Fire companies were instructed to ensure the flames did not spread to adjacent Aryan property—not to protect the synagogues. Within 48 hours, more than a thousand synagogues were burned, along with their Torah scrolls, bibles and prayer books; 30,000 Jewish men—aged 16‒60—were arrested and sent to newly expanded concentration camps in Germany, among them Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen, all crowded with the newly arrested Jews; 7,500 businesses were smashed and looted. Dozens of Jews were killed. Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were destroyed. In most cases, these acts of terror were carried out by the Jews’ neighbors. In the aftermath, the Jews were left without synagogues, many Jews lost their businesses and homes. Above all, any hope that their situation could be managed literally went up in smoke. As the fury subsided, the pogrom was given a fancy name: »Kristallnacht«—Crystal Night, Night of the Broken Glass. Contemporary German historians now call it the Reich Pogroms of November 1938. Because of the bourgeois sensibilities of the urbanized Germans, many of them were uncomfortable with the events of Kristallnacht. The sloppiness of the pogroms and the explosive violence of the SA, were soon replaced by the cold, calculated, disciplined and controlled violence of the SS. They decided to dispose of the Jews out of public view. On November 12, 1938, Hermann Göring convened a meeting of German officials to deal with the problems that resulted from the pogrom. Göring was upset by the damage of the two-day rampage—not to Jewish shops, homes or synagogues, but to the German economy. The insurance industry stood to lose huge sums of money if it paid off thousands of Jewish claims caused by Nazi vandalism. Instead, it was decided, the victims would be responsible for repairing all the damage at their own expense. A collective fine of one billion Reichsmarks ($400,000,000) was imposed on the Jewish community. Jews of German nationality could not file for damages.

254

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

On November 15th, Jews were barred from schools. Two weeks later, authorities were given the right to impose a curfew. By December, Jews were denied access to most public places.

2.4

The American Reaction

No event in Hitler’s rise to power triggered a greater response in the United States than the Kristallnacht pogroms. Despite widespread Anti-Semitism, freedom of religion and interreligious civility were becoming the norm in American life. Politicians from both parties at state and national levels, ministers and parish priests, as well as bishops and cardinals joined rabbis in robust denunciation. President Roosevelt was scathing: »The news of the last few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United States. Such news from any part of the world would produce a similar profound reaction among American people in every part of the nation. I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century civilization.«26 He recalled his ambassador, who was never to return to Germany, but did not sever diplomatic relations. Despite the intensity of the American outrage, public support for intensifying immigration barely increased. After Kristallnacht, concerned Britons pressed for action. Between December 1938 and September 1939, Britain offered homes to 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. An effort to receive 20,000 Jewish children in the United States, known as the Wagner-Rogers Bill, did not even get out of Committee. Even with rescue on the horizon, Jewish parents in the Reich faced an impossible decision: endure an unknown fate together as a family or send their children to potential safe-haven in England. Jewish leaders in Germany were forced to make the life and death choices about who to accept and reject. In England, Jewish leaders struggled to find Jewish homes to take in the Jewish children. Eva Hayman, who was a Kindertransportee, recalled: We had about a fortnight [two weeks] before we left. And into that fortnight, both mother and father were trying to give the instructions, the guidance that they hoped to have their whole life to give.27

Those arrested in the Kristallnacht pogrom could be freed from concentration camps if they could prove they would leave the Reich within a fortnight. Since anywhere was better than concentration camps, Jews went wherever they could go. Some German Jews immigrated to Shanghai. The US quota for Jews from Germany and Austria was filled for the first time since 1933.

26 www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday/resource/november-1938–2/ FDR Day by day, Statement of November 15, 1938. 27 Scott Chamberlin and Gretchen Skidmore, Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, A Study Guide, Burbank/CA, 2001, 22.

3 The Beginning of World War II

3

255

The Beginning of World War II

Shocking the world, in August 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact that allowed Germany to attack Poland without a Soviet response. A secret codicil provided for the division of Poland between the Germans and Soviets. On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland with overwhelming force. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded from the East. By the end of September, Poland was defeated and would remain divided for the next 19 months. Britain and France declared war yet did nothing in what became known as the phony war (French: »drôle de guerre«). Each territory Germany invaded contained more and more Jews, and if his goal was to get Jews off German lands, then expanding into areas that contained more Jews made the problem ever more acute. Poland was home to 3.3 million Jews, the largest concentration of Jews in Europe, second only to the Jewish population in the United States. One in ten residents of Poland were Jews. If the lessons of past behavior were to be trusted, a Jew might gravitate toward German-occupied territory as Germany had been a benign occupier during World War I. But if one understood the unique menace of Nazi Germany, then Sovietoccupied territory was preferable. Under Soviet occupation, Jews were not persecuted as Jews but as capitalists and cosmopolitans. The Soviet Union was hostile to all religions, Judaism among them, so while Judaism was being attacked, much of the Jewish population was relatively safe. A Soviet offer of citizenship in 1940 led to an anomalous situation as those who accepted Soviet citizenship were allowed to stay and those that turned down that were shipped to Siberia where they struggled to survive but did not face systematic murder. »Safe« Jews in Soviet-occupied territory were attacked by Germany in June 1941 and mass-murdered by Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads) and their collaborators.

3.1

German Conquests

In the spring of 1940 Germany attacked Belgium and France, Denmark and Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway. It captured and occupied each country with relative ease. The French surrender took place in the very same train where German leaders signed the »shameful« surrender ending World War I. The lighteningspeed victories reinforced a sense of German invincibility. With each conquest more and more Jews who had to disappear came under German control. Still, as late as fall 1941, German policy toward the Jews remained one of resettlement and isolation, the containment and the concentration of Jewish communities and their eventual shipment to far off areas like the African island of Madagascar, not yet possible since Britain’s navy controlled the seas.

256

3.2

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

The Ghettos

As Dan Michman argues, ghettos must be spoken of in the plural. Each ghetto was different in origin, in concept, in reason for being, in who established the ghetto and why. Yet there is no denying the general phenomena of ghettoization.28 The word ghetto was originally the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice. Ghettos were traditionally walled and gated permanent places of Jewish residence, but in occupied Poland, formed soon after the German invasion, ghettos were used by Nazis as a transitional measure. From the German point of view, ghettos—or »Jewish residential quarters,« as they were euphemistically called—were holding pens for a subjugated, incarcerated population with no rights. Jewish labor was exploited, goods and property were confiscated and conditions were endured until the policy of annihilation was firmly in place and the instruments of destruction—the killing centers—were established. Hitler was not responsible for ghettoization. Local officials responding to local needs could create their own sorts of ghettos. Placing ghettos in the poorest section of a town was in part the work of »Professor« Peter-Heinz Seraphim, whose 1938 work, Jewry in the Territory of Eastern Europe, was influential in shaping the perception of Jews and Nazi policy. The Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto, established on October 28, 1939, was the first. Łódź, Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Lwów (Ľviv) soon followed. By 1942, all the Jews of Poland and the German-controlled territories of the Soviet Union were confined to ghettos, living in hiding, or on the run. Some ghettos were closed, while others were relatively open. The Warsaw Ghetto was enclosed by eleven miles of walls; Cracow, too, was walled; and the Łódź Ghetto was sealed, enclosed by wooden fences and barbed wire. No sewer system connected it to the outside world. Piotrków Trybunalski, Radom, Chełm, and Kielce were open ghettos. Poles could enter and leave, and at first Jews had little difficulty leaving. Before the final deportations, however, all the ghettos were sealed. With the exception of Amsterdam, ghettos were not present in Western Europe, though Jews were sometimes confined to Jewish streets and Jewish buildings. Further east, in areas conquered by Germany after June 1941, ghettos were imposed after the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units, has already done their murderous work. In Hungary, ghettos were used as transit camps in the weeks between the expulsion of Jews from their homes and their deportation to Auschwitz. In Skopje, Macedonia, the Bulgarians established a ghetto in Monopol, confining Macedonian Jews for less than a fortnight before deportation to Treblinka. Moving large numbers of widely dispersed people into ghettos was a chaotic and unnerving process. In Łódź, an area housing 62,000 Jews was designated as the ghetto, and an additional 100,000 Jews were crowded into the quarter from other sections of the city. In Warsaw, the decree establishing the ghetto was announced on October 12, 1940—Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, a date deliberately chosen to demor28 Dan Michman, The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos During the Holocaust, New York, 2011.

3 The Beginning of World War II

257

alize Warsaw’s Jews and defile Judaism’s most sacred day. In Warsaw, during the last two weeks of October 1940, 113,000 Christian Poles and 138,000 Jews had to be relocated, taking with them whatever belongings they could pile into a wagon. In every Polish city, the ghettos were overcrowded. The Warsaw ghetto, which occupied only 2.4 percent of the city’s land, contained 30 percent of the city’s population. Ghetto life was one of squalor, hunger, disease, and despair. Rooms and apartments were overcrowded, with ten or fifteen people typically living in a space previously occupied by four. Daily calorie allotments, even with smuggling, seldom exceeded 1,100. Without smugglers who brought in food, starvation would have been rampant. The smugglers’ motto, »Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,« was only too apt. Epidemics were a threat; typhus was the most dreaded. During the height of the epidemics, dead bodies were often left on the street until the burial societies could get to them. Only one thing was certain: yesterday was less difficult than today, tomorrow would be worse. Governance of the ghettos rested with the Judenrat (the Jewish Councils), German-appointed officials selected from the local community. Appointed within weeks of occupation, they served as go-betweens, representing Jewish interests to the German masters and passing on German demands to desperate Jewish residents. Raul Hilberg described them as mayors of besieged cities, working to provide sanitation, food, jobs, welfare, heat, water, and police.29 To make that happen, they taxed those who still had some resources and worked those who had none. They practiced the time-honored traditions of their people, honed by centuries of exile and persecution. Rabbi Yitzhak Nissenbaum, argued that in all previous struggles, the enemy wanted to destroy the Jewish soul, however, the Nazis wanted to destroy the entire Jewish body. Therefore, the Nazis had to be denied their victory and the Jews were commanded to sanctify life.30 In retrospect—but only in retrospect—ghettos were temporary spaces to confine the Jews until the infrastructure for their destruction was in place. Once death camps were activated in December 1941, and throughout the winter and early spring of 1942, the ghettos of occupied Poland were emptied. By February 1943, four of five Jews who were to die in the Holocaust were already murdered.

3.3

Resistance in the Ghettos

Survival in the ghetto was a daily challenge.31 People struggled for the bare necessities: food, warmth, sanitation, shelter, and clothing. Despite the attempt to dehumanize the

29 Raul Hilberg, »The Ghetto as a Form of Government« in The Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications, ed. John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum, New York, 1989. 30 Shaul Esh, »The Dignity of the Destroyed« Jdm 15,1 (Winter 1966): 100–11. 31 Yehuda Bauer has suggested a broader understanding of resistance in The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness, Toronto, 1979. Swiss historian Werner Rings has argued that three forms of resistance throughout German occupied territory preceded armed resistance: symbolic resistance, polemical resistance, and self-help.

258

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

Jews, clandestine schools educated the young. Religious services were held even when outlawed. Cultural life continued with theater and music, poetry and art offering temporary respite from squalor. Prior to an armed uprising, which occurred later in some ghettos, Jews defied the Nazis and their collaborators with non-military forms of resistance—symbolic and polemical resistance, written or oral protests, the keeping of diaries that documented their fate. And much to chagrin of the enemy, who wanted them to savage each other, the Jews helped one another with soup kitchens and charity drives. In Warsaw, Emanuel Ringelblum, a young academically-trained Jewish historian, organized Oyneg Shabbos (joy of Sabbath), a group of historians and poets, musicians and scientists, rabbis and writers united in a clandestine operation to document ghetto life from a Jewish perspective so that future generations would know how Jews lived and how they died without relying on the perpetrators’ records. The documents were stuffed into milk cans and buried. Two of them were found after the war. The contributors weren’t sure they would survive—indeed few did—but they were sure Jewish history would survive and their writings would survive to tell the story. Hasidic masters, such as Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, transcribed their teachings in the Warsaw Ghetto. Rabbi Shapira used his commentary on the weekly Torah portion to instruct his community.32 In Kovno, Lithuanian Rabbi Ephraim Oshry was asked religious questions by pious Jews seeking traditional guidance. He answered their questions and buried his answers. Because he survived, they survived.33 In the summer of 1942, the Germans began »liquidating« the ghettos of Eastern Europe. Within eighteen months, almost all the ghettos of occupied Poland were emptied, and the death camps of Sobibór, Treblinka, and Bełżec were shut down. By late summer 1944, nearly three million Jews had been transported to concentration camps and killing centers.

3.4

Jewish Life in Western Europe

German policies in conquered Western Europe differed significantly from their policies in Eastern Europe. Even under occupation, Western Europeans were less disrespected by the Germans than were Eastern European Ostjuden. Anti-Semitism while prevalent was less virulent. Yet the fate of the Jews in each Western European country depended on the type of occupation (military or civilian), the commitment of occupying forces, German attitudes toward the local population, and the local population’s commitment toward democracy and solidarity with their Jewish residents, citizens, legal aliens or refugees.

32 Nechemia Polen, The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, Northvale/NJ, 1994. R. Kalonymos K. Shapira, Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years 1939‒1942, Northvale/NJ, 2000. 33 Ephraim Oshry, Responsa from the Holocaust, New York, 1983 is a selected and abbreviated collection of the responses he gave to Jews. His five volumes were first published as Questions and Answers from Deep, 5 vols., 1963 (Hebrew); later: trans. rev. ed. Responsa from the Holocaust, New York, 2001.

4 The Final Solution

259

With the noted exception of Denmark, western Jews were persecuted, rounded up, incarcerated in transit camps and sent to death camps in occupied Poland. Transit camps were established in Western Europe. Local police rounded up Jews. The camps functioned as holding pens for Jews until a train could be secured and filled. Then, the Jews were deported directly to death camps.

3.5

Theresienstadt

Theresienstadt, Terezín in Czech, was an anomaly among German camps, sometimes considered a ghetto, sometimes a concentration camp, and sometime a transit camp for prominent Jews from Germany and Austria, whose presence might be missed by Germans of significance. It was used as a showcase in 1944 for a Red Cross visit, designed to show the benign treatment of Jews in concentration camps. The concentration of prominent Jews brought together talented Jews in art and music, philosophy and theater, and a remarkable cultural life ensued. Frieda Dicker Brandeis educated the children, who wrote poetry and drew paintings that depicted their condition. An underground student newspaper was published and a lending library of 66,000 books was established. Verdi’s Requiem was performed multiple times, complete with chorus and orchestra, and the children’s opera, Brundibar, was composed and performed. None of this obscured the primary function of the camp. Of its 144,000 prisoners, 88,000 were transported to Auschwitz, 33,000 died in the camp. Of its 15,000 children under the age of 16, fewer than 100 survived the war.

4

The Final Solution

The Final Solution became operational State policy in 1941. At first Einsatzgruppen were sent to stationary Jews and murdered them near their homes. This proved too cumbersome for the killers so they reversed their methods. Instead of sending killers to their victims, victims were sent to killing centers. The process of killing was intensified and depersonalized so as to be more efficient, cost effective and less psychologically taxing on the killers. On June 22, 1941 Germany broke its treaty with Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union with overwhelming force. Three thousand men—Einsatzgruppen, the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht—entered the Soviet Union with other Axis armies. Their assignment was to round up Jews, Soviet Commissars, Roma and Sinti (pejoratively known as Gypsies), confiscate their property and systematically murder them in cities and town, villages and hamlets. They could not and did not operate alone. Local Gendarmeries, native anti-Semitic and nationalist brigades, and ordinary citizens assisted them in their task. One can plot their progress week by week. Reports were written to their superiors, maps were drawn to illustrate their accomplishments with little coffins to represent the numbers of Jews killed. Sometimes, the mere presence of German troops in the vicinity was sufficient to spur a massacre. One example is what happened in the Polish village of Jedwab-

260

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

ne, where neighbors murdered their Jewish neighbors. For years the massacre was blamed on the Germans when everyone knew the local population had turned against its own Jews.34 Recent research in Ukraine, including interviews with the local population and archaeological digs of the killing fields revealed who the killers were.35 Sometimes, it was the Wehrmacht. Some were Romanian troops accompanying the German Army. Other villages were killed by Einsatzgruppen, still others by the local police or armed villagers. There are killing fields and execution sites adjacent to major cities. In Babi Yar near Kiev, now in Ukraine, 33,771 Jews were murdered on September 28‒29, 1941, the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; in the Rumbula Forest outside Riga, Latvia, 25,000‒28,000 Jews were murdered on November 30 and December 8‒ 9; in Ponar, the killing fields adjacent to Vilna (Vilnius) , Lithuania, more than 60,000 Jews were murdered; at the Ninth Fort adjacent to Kovno (Kaunus), 9,000 Jews, more than half of them children, were killed in one day, on October 28, 1941. When the killing ended in the wake of a Soviet counter-offensive, special units returned to dig up the dead and burn their bodies to destroy the evidence of their war crimes and create plausible deniability. Kommando 1005, under Paul Blobel, was called »Operation Blot Out.« It is conservatively estimated that approximately 1,400,000 Jews were killed by these shootings. Recent forensic evidence unearthed by a dedicated French priest, Father Patrick Debois, suggests that there were many more sites than originally assumed and many more victims.

4.1

The Killers

Who were these men? What were their motivations? After the war, many claimed that they were merely following orders. Raul Hilberg, the preeminent Holocaust historian, described them: The great majority of the officers of the Einsatzgruppen were professional men. included a physician, a professional opera singer and a large number of lawyers. were in no sense hoodlums, delinquents, common criminals or sex maniacs. Most intellectuals … they brought to their new task all the skills and training that they capable of contributing. In short, they became efficient killers.36

They They were were

Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, described members of Reserve Battalion units who participated in the killings as ordinary men placed in extraordinary circumstances. The need to conform, peer pressure, careerism, obedience to orders, and group solidarity gradually

34 Jan Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, New York, 2002. 35 Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews, New York, 2008. 36 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, rev. and def. ed., 288f.

4 The Final Solution

261

overcame their moral inhibitions. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners triggered discussions on three continents, disputing Browning’s account and views them as ordinary Germans who embraced Hitler’s vision of »eliminationist« Anti-Semitism and were able to embrace its next phase, »exterminationist« AntiSemitism. Recent research emphasizes the national diversity of the killers that challenges the singular interpretation that the killings were dependent on a specifically German Anti-Semitism and Nazi orientation.37 Yet Browning and Goldhagen concur that no member faced punishment if he asked to be excused. The SS remained proud of its achievement. In a speech to SS officers at Poznan on October 4, 1943 Heinrich Himmler spoke openly and directly. »The Jewish people is going to be annihilated.« He spoke but urged silence. »This is an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory [in German history].«38 The experience of Jews in the territories where the Einsatzgruppen engaged in mass killing differed from the Jews of Poland in two major respects: Ghettoization in the areas of initial German occupation preceded the mass killing. Further to the east, killing came first. There ghettoized Jews had no doubt of German intentions; they knew they were intent on killing. Some ghettos were surrounded by large forests that facilitated escape because there was somewhere to go and hide and also served as a base for some partisan groups. Murder in these areas began in 1941, 18 months after Jews in occupied Poland had been incarcerated in ghettos.

4.2

Situation in the Baltics

Mobile killing in the Baltics were, in part, a consequence of the transition from Soviet to German occupation in 1941. As Germany invaded Western Europe, the Soviet Union entered the Baltics and occupied Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and annexed them in August 1940. Many local nationalists, but certainly not Jews, viewed German troops as liberators, and hoped to regain their national independence. While Soviet occupation was problematic for the Jews, German occupation was catastrophic. Timothy Snyder notes the role of the double occupation, double destruction, double genocide, and introduces the notion of double collaboration—the participation of the local population in the Soviet enterprise of state destruction and then in the German occupation. Jewish booty was confiscated twice, first by the Soviet Union, which never recognized Jewish property rights, and then under the Germans, where non-mobile possessions they could not ship back to Germany were given to locals as spoils of war.39

37 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York, 1993; Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, New York, 1996. 38 Heinrich Himmler, »Speech at a Poznan Meeting of SS Major Generals, October 4, 1943« in Witness to the Holocaust: An Illustrated Documentary History of the Holocaust in the Words of its Victims, Perpetrators and Bystanders, ed. Michael Berenbaum, New York, 1997. 39 Snyder, Black Earth, 117‒43.

262

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

In lands of double occupation and double destruction, the involvement of local populations in the murder and looting of the Jews was minimized—then and now— yet the role of locals who were indispensable to the Nazi enterprise. Latvians joined the Arajs Kommando, headed by Viktors Arajs. They helped murder nearly half of Latvia’s Jews. Promised restored independence by the Germans, many Kommando members were Latvian soldiers, then Soviet collaborators, then switched sides again, proving their loyalty and utility to the Germans. In 1941 and 1942, Germany deported thousands of Jews from the Reich to Riga, Latvia to make the Reich judenrein, without Jews. On November 30 and December 8‒9, 1941, the Einsatzgruppen and Arajs Kommando shot at least 26,000 Riga Jews in the Rumbula Forest, near Riga. No Estonian Jews were murdered by Germans; the Estonians murdered their own Jews. By January 1942, the country was judenrein—free of Jews (lit.: »clean of Jews«). In Lithuania, local violence against Jewish neighbors happened before and after German troops arrived. The murders were a joint effort of Einsatzgruppen and Lithuanian auxiliary forces in July and local Jew-hating gangs. Before August ended, most rural Lithuanian Jews were dead. Elsewhere in former Soviet territories, Jews in Belarus were murdered by mobile killing units, the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and the Romanian army. When Germans complained of the psychological difficulty in killing German Jews, especially those who’d won the Iron Cross and the women and children, the process was depersonalized and the murders continued in mobile gas vans brought to the Minsk Ghetto.

4.3

The Wannsee Conference

A meeting of fifteen men, on January 20, 1942, in a fashionable, confiscated lakeside villa in Berlin, was critical to the fate of the Jews. When they met, between 75%‒ 80% of the Jews who were to die in the Holocaust were still alive; thirteen months later, four of five were dead. The men were senior representatives of the German State Ministries. Three senior SS representatives—from the Party Chancellery, the Race and Resettlement office, and the Reich Commissar for Strengthening Germandom—were also at Wannsee. Reinhard Heydrich was joined by his own staff, including Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller and his specialist on Jews Adolf Eichmann. Representatives of German forces in the occupied territories were invited as well, after they pressured higher authorities to do something about the dire conditions in the ghettos, where epidemics threatened to spread beyond ghetto walls. Two out of three Wannsee attendees were university graduates: half had doctorates, mostly in law. They were remarkably young—half were under 40 and only two were over 50. They were the »best and the brightest« Nazis.40

40 For the Wannsee Conference see Mark Roseman, The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration, New York, 2002.

4 The Final Solution

263

Racial purists in the Nazi party wanted to eliminate all Jewish blood, even among the Mischlinge, while the German state ministries felt duty bound to protect all German blood. Erich Neuman pointed out the serious economic consequences of eliminating a labor force because the war had taken a turn for the worse. Josef Buhler, representing the General Gouvernment (the German zone of occupation in Poland) pleaded for speed. »Jews should be removed ... as fast as possible, because it is precisely here that the Jew constitutes a substantial danger as carrier of epidemics ...« They were not there to decide to kill Jews. That decision was already made by Hitler himself. Odilio Globočnik, who had worked with staffers of the pre-war German T-4 project (the systematic killing of incurably mentally or physically ill. The Nazis justified T4 as »Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens«—lit. »extinction of life not worth living«) already responsible for the deaths of more than 200,000 Germans, would take some credit as originator of the concept of mass murder in industrialized extermination camps.41 In October 1941, he met with the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and was ordered to expand his gassing experiments and to establish killing centers in the General Gouvernment. Mobile gas vans were used at Chelmno when German Jews arrived in Łódź and the overcrowded ghetto was »thinned out.« Experiments were conducted in Mogilev and Minsk. After Wannsee, gas was the preferred method of death at the six killing centers created in Germanoccupied Poland. The Final Solution logistics were assigned to bureaucrats. Scholars suggest Heydrich accomplished three things: First, there was collective acknowledgement of »the Final Solution«; that murdering Jews was official German policy, and that all those present—and the institutions they represented—were complicit in mass murder. Heydrich’s second achievement was SS control over the Jewish question. Civilian bureaucrats dared not challenge their authority, and those responsible for the occupied territories, including the military, recognized the SS’ primacy. And finally, all the ingredients for centralization were set in place and swiftly implemented. That spring the death camps came online. By mid-summer, the deportations of ghettoized Polish Jews were underway, and by March 1943, 14 months later, Polish Jewry was mostly annihilated. After Wannsee, the machinery of death and slavery swung into high gear in the East and the West, marking 1942—5702 on the Jewish calendar—as the worst year in Jewish history.

4.4

»Liquidation« of the Ghettos

There were three stages of ghetto life in German-occupied Poland. After an initial period of adjustment, Jews settled into the ghetto and struggled daily for food, shelter, heat, and health. They hoped to outlast the Nazis, in Yiddish iberleben. Then

41 Berndt Riegner, Creator of the Death Camps: The Life of Odilio Globocnik, London / Portland/ OH, 2007.

264

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

came the period when rumors of deportation were rampant. As rumors spread, anxiety increased and panic set in. For some Jews, it was time to go into hiding. There were two types of hiding: hiding in plain sight, passing as a non-Jew, or finding a person or persons offering shelter and living clandestinely. Those whose appearance was not particularly Jewish had an easier time hiding in plain sight. But they had to speak the native language fluently, without an accent, putting observant Jewish males who primarily spoke Yiddish at a disadvantage, while religious women, who went to secular schools, had greater fluency. Men were also at a disadvantage because they were circumcised, a procedure not practiced among non-Jews in those days, and it marked them for murder. While women were more vulnerable to sexual abuse, they had an easier time passing as non-Jews. One also needed resources, financial and emotional, to survive and, more than anything else, luck—because anyone who once knew them could recognize them, report them to authorities and be rewarded for betrayal. Topography and geography were vital in determining where to hide. In some sections of Eastern Europe, the forests are dense and near cities or towns. Two examples: in Vilna, Abba Kovner led a group of resistance fighters into the forest when he could not convince Vilna’s Jews to resist; his group hid and fought back until the war’s end. Tuvia Bielski led a partisan brigade in the Naliboki forest, then in Poland, now in Western Belarus. He went to the Nowogrodek Ghetto and encouraged Jewish men, women and children, old and young, to join him. Remarkably, they formed a family camp that was a fighting and rescue unit able to sustain life in the dense forests despite German efforts to hunt them down. This was possible only because the forests were not far from the ghetto and the Bielskis knew the forest well. Jews who could not pass and went into actual hiding were dependent on a rescuer or rescuers, who often at great personal risk offered them shelter. The motivations of the rescuers: some were driven to act by religious faith. Others were motivated by humanitarian concerns, human solidarity, and some by friendship for Jews. Yet even some anti-Semites saved Jews because even while they did not like Jews and regarded their religion as abhorrent, they could not support Nazi behavior. Some were motivated by romance or reward, but each action was essential if a Jew was to survive. Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust Authority, moved by the nobility of their deeds, honors these rescuers as »righteous among the nations of the earth.« But the nobility of the act should not obscure its simplicity. Rescuers were a cross section of humanity, from every country and every class, every economic background and religion, ordinary men, women, and children, whose deeds were often quite ordinary, but their outcome most noble.

4.5

Deportation by Rail

Railroads were indispensable to the killing process. Instead of going to the Jews and killing them where they lived, trains allowed Jews to be shipped to killing centers, like cattle to the slaughter.

4 The Final Solution

265

Five death camps were situated on major railway lines. In his major study of railroads Raul Hilberg noted that Auschwitz was a major hub with 44 parallel railway tracks, ideal for transporting Jews from throughout Europe. Yaron Pasher detailed the tension between the Wehrmacht and the SS over scarce rail resources, whose peak periods of use for deportations in 1942 and in the spring and early summer of 1944 coincided with peak periods of the war effort. Even so, Jewish death was rated more important than troop movement.42 In the west, ordinary passenger trains were often used. In the east, Jews were transported in cattle cars or even open cars. No provision was made for food; a bucket was provided for sanitation. If water was provided, it was only at infrequent stops. The Holocaust in Hungary, which began in the spring of 1944, was swift and extraordinary. By then the Nazis had the process down to a science. Fearing that Admiral Horthy, the Hungarian ruler, would negotiate a separate peace with the Allies, Germany invaded in March 1944. In April Jews outside of Budapest were ghettoized and between May 15th and July 8th some 437,402 Jews were deported primarily to the Auschwitz death camp, Birkenau. On July 8th 1944 deportations to Auschwitz were halted. On July 9, Raoul Wallenberg came to Budapest, ostensibly as a Swedish diplomat, but who operated with funds supplied by the U.S. War Refugee Board to rescue what remained of Hungarian Jewry.

4.6

Death Camps

The six »death factories« allowed the Nazis and their collaborators to efficiently murder Jews in assembly-line fashion, confiscate their worldly goods in the process, and dispose of the bodies to hide their crimes. Their design was based on the combination of concentration camps and gassing installations built by and for Germans in Germany. The first concentration camps—primitive, harsh punishment detention centers— were opened as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933. Death was a by-product of difficult conditions, not its goal. They were »zones of lawlessness« with few limits on the perpetrators and hence an opportunity for medical experiments and all types of sadism. The death camps combined the worst of all worlds. Chelmno, on the Ner River, 30 miles from Łódź, gassed Jews in disguised killing vans. The murders began on December 8th 1941 and continued through March 1943. With no rail access, Jews were trucked to »The Schloss,« a palace, were stripped naked, valuables surrendered, and sent down a ramp to the basement area marked »Washrooms«—whose doors disguised the killing vans.

42 Yoram Pasher, Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler’s »Final Solution« Undermined the German War Effort, Lawrence/KS, 2014.

266

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

Exhaust from the engine was fed into the back by a flexible hose, and death took as long as it took to drive 2.5-miles to the Waldlager in the Rzuwowski Forest. The bodies were buried or thrown into open flames. In June-July 1944 as the final destruction of the Łódź ghetto was taking place, the camp was reopened to kill 7,000 additional Jews from Łódź. In the fall of 1944, Aktion 1005 troops tried to get rid of all evidence of their crime by digging up the bodies and cremating them. Fewer than 20 SS men and about 120 German police murdered at least 160,000 prisoners in Chelmno, including 60,000 Jews from Łódź and 11,000 West European Jews. Also gassed were 5,000 Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) and 88 children from Lidice, Czechoslovakia, a city eradicated by the Germans because of its proximity to the site where Heydrich was assassinated in 1942. Only two Jews survived, and one escaped. Jacob Grojanowski fled to Warsaw and told his story to Jewish leaders who could not believe him. Note the word »could not.« The information he brought was incredible. Belzec was a regional center for »cleansing« surrounding ghettos in Galicia of their Jews. Conveniently located on the Lublin–Lvov railway, between February and December 1942, 14 Germans and 90 Ukrainians used carbon monoxide to kill close to half-a-million Jews, most from Galicia, some from Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Once they finished, Belzec was dismantled. All that remained were mass graves. There were only two known survivors: Rudolph Reder of Lublin gave extended testimony; a second survivor, Chaim Hirszman, was murdered after his first day of testimony. Treblinka was hidden in the woods approximately 62 miles northeast of Warsaw on the Warsaw-Bialystok railway. Opened on July 22nd 1942, the next day, masses of Jews deported from Warsaw were murdered. The camp was run by some 30 Germans and 90 Ukrainians. Treblinka consisted of three sections: the reception area, the killing area, and the living area. The killing area had two buildings. One contained three older gas chambers and another with 10 more. To deceive the Jews, the larger building was emblazoned with a Jewish star. The Jews were gassed with carbon monoxide via pipes hooked up to a captured Russian tank engine. Gold was removed from their teeth. Mass burial followed, but later the bodies were burned in open pits. Some Jews escaped and gave testimony to Oyneg Shabbos in the Warsaw Ghetto, and died in the Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. Inspired by what happened, in August, Jews in Treblinka revolted. They killed German and Ukrainian guards and stormed the gates. Although 300 escaped, by war’s end less than one in three survived. Sobibor, three miles west of the Bug River and five miles south of Wlodawa, was semi-hidden in woods in the Lublin District, on the Chelm-Wlodawa railway. The small camp was surrounded by a 9.5-foot high barbed-wire fence and a minefield.

4 The Final Solution

267

The Germans began construction in March 1942 using Jewish slaves. Under 30 SS men and about 100 Ukrainians, functioned at Sobibor from May 1942 until October 1943, with peak killings taking place between July-October 1942, after three more gas chambers were built and doubled the killing capacity to approximately 1200 people per shift. Once stripped of their possessions and clothing, and the women shorn of their hair, the Jews were pushed into five gas chambers that could hold up to 600 persons and gassed with carbon monoxide for 15 minutes. Most of the Jews came from German-occupied eastern Poland and occupied parts of the Soviet Union. Others were deported to Sobibor from Czechoslovakia, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and France. Some were non-Jewish prisoners of war. The total number of victims is estimated at 200,000‒250,000. In November 1943 the working inmates staged an uprising led by a Jewish Soviet POW and veteran inmates. Guards were killed and prisoners escaped to the woods. Approximately 100 Sobibor survivors were alive at war’s end. Majdanek is in a valley just outside of Lublin, off the major Lublin-Lvov highway, and near Little Majdan for which it is named. It was a multi-purpose death camp. In addition to murdering Jews, it was where the »Aktion Reinhard« (The Final Solution) warehouses were filled with stolen Jewish loot to be sorted and shipped back to Germany. It was also headquarters for the destruction of regional ghettos and head office for the supervision of Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka. Jews were the overwhelming majority of those murdered there. They were deported to Majdanek from Slovakia, Theresienstadt and Germany in 1942, and later from the Lublin and Warsaw Districts of Poland and Bialystock. Between October 1942 and September 1943, the SS built two and possibly three gas chambers at Majdanek. Modeled on the never-used gas chambers at Dachau, they could use either carbon monoxide or Zyklon B. Some 74,000 Jews arrived there in deportations, and 15,000 were then deported to other death camps, leaving some 59,000 murdered within sight of Lublin. It is likely that one out of three Jews were murdered on November 3rd 1943, in a »Harvest Festival.« Majdanek was captured by the Soviet Union in July 1944, its liberation was a front-page story in the New York Times. Auschwitz was a complex, multi-dimensional series of camps and sub-camps. Auschwitz I was a German prison camp for Polish prisoners perceived as threats to Nazi domination. Auschwitz II, known as Birkenau, was the killing center. Auschwitz III, also known as Buna-Monowitz, was the slave labor complex of some 50 subcamps. Germany’s most prominent corporations invested close to 700 million Reichsmarks ($400 million then) in 1942 in Auschwitz because they assumed slave labor would be a permanent part of the German economy. Arriving prisoners faced Selektion upon arrival. The young and the able-bodied were sent to Buna-Monowitz to work. Children and the old, women with children and those incapable of working, were immediately sent to the gas chambers. The

268

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

slaves, who were also sent to other work camps, were worked to death; those who lost the capacity to work were sent to Birkenau and replaced by new arrivals. The gas chambers operated on Zyklon B [Prussic Acid], delivered in trucks marked with a Red Cross. The SS fed gas into the mechanisms, and physicians would pronounce the dead dead. Prison inmates, known as Sonderkommando, took the bodies out of the gas chambers and burned them in crematoria. On January 16th 1945, 66,000 prisoners were taken from Auschwitz in death marches. They walked in the dead of winter without provisions or shelter. Stragglers were shot. In some marches, three out of four people died. Those who remained behind were liberated by the Soviet Union on January 27th 1945.

4.7

Death Marches

Called »forced evacuations« by the Germans and »death marches« by those who endured them, the final stage of killing was a desperate attempt by the perpetrators to evacuate the Jews from the most horrific concentration camps—where German troops and their collaborators could be caught red-handed in despicable war crimes by Allied troops. In retrospect, the death marches reveal the scope of the impending German defeat. For 12 years, the German goal was to get the Jews off German land and out of German territory. In the hour of their defeat, they were bringing Jews back to Germany on foot. Because of prisoner overcrowding in concentration camps in Germany and Austria, the camp system broke down and it became difficult to feed the prisoners, to provide sanitation and even collect and bury the bodies. Epidemics were rampant in the final days of the concentration camps and many survivors report that they were on the brink of death when their liberators arrived. Given that 13,000 inmates died at Bergen Belsen after liberation despite herculean efforts by the British medical staff and personnel, this is no exaggeration.

5

The Aftermath of World War II

5.1

Liberation

In the waning days of World War II, American troops discovered the concentration camps of Ohrdruf, Mauthausen, Nordhausen, Buchenwald, and Dachau. They had not intended to liberate the camps. They came to conquer a country and to defeat the enemy. The encounter with the camps and their inhabitants was as accidental as it was decisive. The camps liberated by American and British soldiers were not the worst of the Nazi concentration camps. Yet, prisoners arriving from death marches had overrun these camps and they were collapsing under the weight of their prisoner population just as the Allied armies entered. To the uninitiated, the conditions they encountered were unimaginable.

5 The Aftermath of World War II

269

The Soviet Army liberated the death camps. Majdanek had been captured whole almost ten months earlier. Auschwitz had been abandoned in January. Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor had been destroyed. Battle weary veterans, they had fought their way from France through the German cities. These soldiers were intimate with death; they had killed and they had seen comrades die. They knew the war would soon be over and they were the victors. They thought they had endured the worst. And then they entered the camps. It was a moment that transformed the liberator and the liberated. Help was needed urgently; medics to deal with the sick and the dying; chaplains to deal with the dead and to speak with the living. Engineers were required to purify the water. Sanitation crews were needed to deal with the filth. Military reinforcements were required to continue the fight. Food was desperately needed. Many in the camps could not remember when they had their last meal. When food was first provided some could not resist the temptation and gorged themselves. Many who reached the moment of liberation died from the richness of their first food. Liberation took time—much time. It was the moment bystanders caught a glimpse, in vivid images, of what evil people did to the Jews. Conditions in the camp were filmed and shown in newsreels. Susan Sontag was a 12-year-old when these newsreels were screened between the double features that were common in movie houses in those days. She wrote: Nothing I have seen … ever cut me as sharply, deeply, instantaneously … When I looked at these photographs something broke … I felt irretrievably grieved, wounded, but part of my feelings started to tighten; something went dead; something is still crying.43

America no longer had information—they had knowledge—real knowledge. The knowledge was visual, visceral.

5.2

Return to Life

Ten million people who found themselves on German soil in a country not their own wanted to return home. But the Eastern European Jews did not have that option. They had no homes to go to, and if they returned, they were most unwelcome, often endangered. The July 4th 1946 pogrom in Kielce, Poland was the most famous of the assaults against returning Jews. People who materially benefitted from property that they claimed as their own after deportations or mass murders assumed that the Jews would not return and when a few did, they were regarded as interlopers wanting to steal what had been stolen from them. Forced to live in Displaced Persons camps, some in the very places where they had been imprisoned, Jews were lumped together with other populations, including their tormentors and killers.

43 Susan Sontag, On Photography, New York, 1978, 19f.

270

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

Most survivors were young and faced the daunting question of their futures. Education had been interrupted, careers shattered, family life ended; they faced most basic question what to do, where to go? Marriage and new families were established in the camps, often out of despair and loneliness. Love came later, if at all. Rabbis were compassionate, lenient in allowing Jews to remarry. Baby boys were circumcised in a remarkable perhaps unwarranted act of faith in the future. For four long years, any Jewish male could have been asked to lower his trousers—the indelible sign of the covenant meant certain death. Children hidden during the war were reunited with their families, if someone survived. And what should be told to those children whose parents did not return? It was understandable that during the war they were not informed of their Jewish origin. Such information was lethal to them—and to those who had sheltered them. But what about after the war? Religious Jewish organizations and Zionist groups sought to reunite Jewish children with the Jewish people. This presented an opportunity: Palestine would welcome these unwelcome Jews. The murder of the European Jews seemed to vindicate the Zionist argument that there was no future for Jews in Europe. Not all survivors chose to resume their Jewish life. Some considered Jewish life too risky and availed themselves of the opportunity to shed their Jewish identity. When names were changed in the new world, identities were also changed. Under communism in Eastern Europe, many Jews intermarried and deliberately decided not to reestablish a connection with the Jewish people. In the post-communist era, even two generations later, some of their children’s children are deliberately reasserting their Jewish links. As Jonathan Ornstein who directs the Jewish Community Center in Krakow and is struggling to rebuild Jewish life in Poland put it: »If Jews had returned to Spain in 1562 (70 years after the Expulsion) imagine how many Jews, half Jews, partial Jews or Jews secretly practicing their faith, they would have found.«44 In 1945 President Harry S Truman dispatched Earl Harrison, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, to report on the Displaced Persons camps. Harrison’s recommendation transformed the Jewish landscape of Europe. Jews should be separated from non-Jews in the DP camps. The British should be pressured to allow 100,000 Jews to come to Palestine immediately. He warned: As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops. One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy.45

Truman responded immediately writing a personal letter to General Eisenhower. As Jews were separated from the other Displaced Persons, they established an intense community spirit. The State of Israel was founded in May 1948 and welcomed the survivors to their new home, until President Truman relaxed American quotas 44 Jonathan Ornstein, director of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, interview with the author. 45 »Report by Earl G. Harrison to President Harry S Truman« in Berenbaum, Witness to the Holocaust, 317.

5 The Aftermath of World War II

271

and belatedly welcomed survivors. Many went from Displaced Persons, to Delayed Pilgrims, to their new homes in lands of freedom. In 1946 and again in 1949, the rigid U.S. quota system was relaxed for immigration and most survivors chose either Israel or North America as their home. In 1945, the American Jewish community was the only major Jewish community left to assume responsibility for their future. Europe was decimated. Palestine was under siege, its future uncertain, statehood and survival not guaranteed. The half century that followed was the half century when American Jewry came of age and assumed responsibility for the leadership of world Jewry, supporting Israel in an unprecedented and effective manner, working to liberate Soviet Jewry and rescue Ethiopian Jewry and receiving—as did Israel—endangered Jews from Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and South Africa.

5.3

Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials, formally known as the International Military Tribunals, were convened at the American initiative led by President Harry S. Truman, and undertaken by the four victorious allies—the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. The trials were, in the words of Justice Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor: »[…] four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay[ing] the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit[ting] their captive enemies to the judgment of the law …one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.« The trial was held at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, one of the few buildings not destroyed in Allied bombing of Nuremberg. The site was both practical and symbolic. Nuremberg hosted many Nazi party rallies and the name given to the infamous 1935 laws. An adjacent jail was available to house prisoners. Despite popular misconceptions, the Nuremberg Trials did not deal with the Holocaust, per se, but with four categories of crimes: Crimes against Humanity, Crimes against the Peace, War Crimes, Planning and Initiating Wars of Aggression. The trial was a trial of documents; the voices of the victims were not heard. The subsequent Doctors’ Trial had a significant impact as the judge felt compelled to establish basic principles that became the foundation of contemporary Medical Ethics, known as the Nuremberg Code. The most important of its ten principles reads: »The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential …« Nazi doctors were tried for the medical experiments they conducted. Overlooked at the time was the entire T-4 Operation that implicated Germany’s psychiatric community. The Einsatzgruppen Trials firmly established principles of individual responsibility, denying the defendants the oft repeated excuse that they were just following orders. The 28-year-old prosecutor, Benjamin Ferencz, conducted the prosecution in just two days. Documents signed by the defendants incriminated them in the murder of more than one million Jews, Soviet Commissars, and Gypsies.

272

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

The Nuremberg Trials set the precedent for how the world grapples with mass murder and genocide and restores the scaffolding of Justice, even the illusion of Justice, in a world where there can be no justice for crimes of this magnitude. The model was used to try the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and elsewhere, and serves as one of the two models for restorative justice alongside the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions established in South Africa.

5.4

Genocide: The Word and the Crime

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish émigré to the United States and international lawyer, wrote compellingly of the need to name the crime and once named, to outlaw it. The word he chose was genocide geno— genus—and cide—murder—the murder of a people. He pushed his agenda, The Convention on Genocide, through the United Nations, which approved it in December 1948. He believed that if the crime were defined and outlawed, it would not be tolerated by the civilized world. The Genocide Convention prohibits the killing of persons belonging to a group (the »Final Solution«) ; causing grievous bodily or mental harm to members of a group; deliberately enforcing upon the group living conditions that could lead to complete or partial extermination (ghettoization and starvation); enforcing measures to prevent births among the group (sterilization); forcibly removing children from the group and transferring them to another group (the »Germanization« of Polish children such as what occurred in Zamosc). The United States did not ratify the treaty for four decades until, under the presidency of Ronald Reagan and Foreign Relations Chairman Senator Jesse Helms, conservatives could overcome the argument that it infringed on national sovereignty. And often governments have been reluctant to use the »G« word for fear that it imposes an obligation to intervention. Outlawing the crime is neither sufficient to prevent genocide or combat it. A second more aspirational document was also approved by the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among its champions was a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Holocaust survivor, René Cassin, the French jurist, law professor and judge, who teamed up with Eleanor Roosevelt, the former American First Lady and humanist. Passed by the United Nations in December 1948, it contains 30 bold and progressive articles; it has been repeatedly violated by the very nations who voted for its passage including a still segregated United States. It is now foundational in the global discussion of human rights. Germany also had to come to terms with the past, albeit belatedly. Initiated by Germany and, committed in the name of the German people and for the sake of German civilization, the Final Solution was supported enthusiastically by many and acquiesced to by so many more. Nearly every German institution was complicit at best and the foundations of the German state and society were implicated directly. Beginning in the 1950s, the Germans understood that in order to reclaim a place in the Western community they had to assume responsibility for what happened

6 Anti-Semitism after World War II

273

and make amends. Both through reparations and other measures of support for Israel and for Jews, they did precisely that. David Ben Gurion understood how explosive the issue was and allowed Nahum Goldman, President of the World Jewish Congress, to assume the lead as he faced fewer political obstacles and was answerable to only a few people. In Israel, Menachem Begin stormed the Knesset when an agreement with Germany was announced. He called it »absolution.« Decades of support for the State of Israel, reparation for Holocaust survivors and even the rebirth of a Jewish community in Germany vindicated Ben Gurion’s decision as Germany’s attitude toward Jews and toward Israel, at least until the time of this writing, is a direct repudiation of Nazism. In the German Democratic Republic (GDR/DDR)—East Germany—which portrayed itself as victims of Nazism because the Nazis victimized communists, no such efforts at rehabilitation and responsibility were undertaken until after Communism collapsed.

6

Anti-Semitism after World War II

6.1

Eroding the Foundations of Christian Anti-Semitism

Christianity faced a crisis in the aftermath of the Shoah, no less severe than the one Judaism faced, even if unrecognized. The Holocaust poses questions to Christians and to Christianity: How was it possible for Christians to perpetrate such an evil? Why did so few protest or offer shelter? More Church leaders were silent than protested, more were complicit than resisted. Was Christianity responsible for the foundations of Anti-Semitism? And how was it possible for Christians not to understand that if Jesus of Nazareth had been alive during World War II, his place would have been among the victims, not with the perpetrators. The Catholic Church While Pius XII, the wartime Pope, was alive until 1958, there was little effort within the Roman Catholic Church to come to terms with the Holocaust. As Pope, he maintained »judicious silence« when it was taking place. And the historical record has documented that individual churches, monasteries and convents were more responsive to desperate Jews than the Vatican itself.46 Historians wonder, given the fact that priests were present in every theater of war, with Axis and Allied armies, and the Vatican had neutral diplomats in countries throughout Europe, what did the Vatican know and when did it know it?

46 See Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy, New Haven/CT/London, 2000 for a careful and balanced consideration of the Vatican.

274

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

His successor, Pope John XXIII took a radically different turn. As Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul during the war, he came to the aid of the Yishuv (the Jews of Palestine) in efforts to assist Hungarian Jews. Prior to his service in Turkey he had been posted to Bulgaria and wrote to King Boris VI to protest the possible expulsion of Bulgarian Jews. After the war, when stationed in France, he, unlike Pope Pius XII, assisted in the return of Jewish children to the Jewish people. He studied the problem of Anti-Semitism with the French Jewish scholar Jules Isaac. As Pope, he took radical steps to modernize the Church, convening the Second Vatican Council (1962‒1965), whose most important accomplishment as far as Jews were concerned was Nostra Aetate, which absolved the Jews of responsibility for the Crucifixion. If Christ died for our sins, it was argued, then human iniquity was responsible. The Pope spoke of Jews as older brothers and over time, Roman Catholic liturgy, catechism and Scriptural readings were changed so that Roman Catholics no longer prayed using such terms as perfidious Jews. Pope John Paul II built on John XXIII’s legacy—both Popes have now been named Saints while Sainthood for Pope Pius XII has been stalled. Born in Poland, Pope John Paul II grew up with Jews among his closest friends in both the University and the theater. He experienced the Holocaust directly and saw some of these friends deported and murdered. As a young Parish priest, he insisted that before a Jewish child, who had been hidden by Christian Poles during the war and whose parents did not return to reclaim the child, could be baptized, the child had to be told the truth of his/her origins. Later, as Pope, he accorded diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel and his Papal pilgrimage to Jerusalem was filled with great symbolic significance and included a visit to Yad Vashem and prayer at the Western Wall, which for many Christians had been the proof that God had abandoned the Jews. For John Paul II, it was a sacred site. Following local custom, he inserted his prayer, written on a piece of paper, between the stones: God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring Your name to the nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of Yours to suffer, and asking Your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant. Jerusalem, 26 March 2000. Joannes Paulus II47

A man of the theater, John Paul II understood the symbolism of the occasion. While his words were diplomatic and he certainly did not quite say everything that could have been said, his gesture impressed even the most skeptical Israeli critics.48 47 http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA-Archive/2000/Pages/Letter%20Placed%20by%20Pope%20John %20Paul%20II%20at%20the%20Western.aspx 48 One must also be careful not overstate the case. During his papacy there were two controversies that threatened to overshadow the progress in Catholic-Jewish relations. Both involved Auschwitz. After Pope John Paul II triumphantly visited Poland in 1979 and celebrated Mass at Auschwitz I, the concentration camp, there were fears within the Jewish community that the Pope was seeking to Christianize the Holocaust. Those fears were inflamed by the controversy concerning the convent on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

6 Anti-Semitism after World War II

275

His successor Pope Benedict XVI, a German-born Pope who lived as a young man in Nazi Germany, built on this foundation. A scholar before he assumed the throne of St. Peter, he engaged in a serious, sustained and mutually respectful dialogue with Rabbi Jacob Neusner, an influential Jewish scholar.49 His successor, Pope Francis, a native Argentinian and the first of the Popes since 1939 untouched by the Holocaust, was close to the Argentinian Jewish community. He took a significant step by acknowledging the Jewish covenant with God and removed the mission to proselytize Jews. Given this post-Holocaust papal history, it is fair to say that the Roman Catholic Church has gone a long way toward uprooting important sources of Christian AntiSemitism in what could be considered an act of atonement. The Protestant Churches Influential Protestant thinkers in the United States and elsewhere also sought to confront the Holocaust. The American dialogue between Christians and Jews reflected in the work of such theologians as Franklin Littell, A. Roy and Alice Eckhart, Robert Mcafee Brown, Hubert Locke and John K. Roth have gone far to root out potential Christian sources of Anti-Semitism.

6.2

Jewish Life in Israel

Even as its very existence was fragile, Israel became a haven for hundreds of thousands of survivors, who found a home in Israel though they were not always treated well and their experience during the Shoah was not initially respected. Jews learned from the Holocaust that »powerlessness invites victimization.« The past 73 years have been years of empowerment for the Jewish community in Israel, in the United States, and in the global community. Yet power, even nuclear power, has not ended Israel’s sense of vulnerability—real and imagined. One example: in the aftermath of the Hyper Cacher terror attack in Paris (2015), Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, spoke at the Main synagogue in Paris and pledged, »We are here to protect you,« inviting French Jews to return home where they could be safe. On the one hand, Israel is there to protect the Jews. On the other hand, the Jews of Israel face annihilation. Israeli leaders regard many issues as existential threats to Israeli survival. No matter how significant their power, it has not ended their sense of vulnerability. And sadly, even as Israel rightly proclaims that if offers Jews

49 Former Pope Benedict XVI’s stance toward the Jew has been summarized by Christian Rutishauser as »The Jews are God’s People, but the Truth Lies in Christianity«. See »There is No Way Around Christ: Benedict XVI reaffirms his stance: The Jews are God’s people, but the truth lies in Christianity«, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (July 7, 2018).

276

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

protection, in recent years more Jews have been killed per capita for being Jews in Israel than anywhere else on the globe.

6.3

Anti-Semitism in North America

In 1980, Earl Raab, one of the most astute late 20th century observers of Jewish life, wrote that if one were to ask Jews if Anti-Semitism was on the rise, the answer would overwhelmingly be yes. But if one examines empirical data, the evidence indicates Anti-Semitism is on the decline, meaning that a smaller segment of the population was anti-Semitic and that their hatred of Jews posed little to no obstacle to the advancement and safety of Jews.50 How then can one account for the perception that Anti-Semitism is on the rise? Raab indicated that for decades after the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism was self-censored even by anti-Semites who were reluctant to express what they felt because they did not want to be associated with the social approbation that comes with anti-Semitsm. What the Nazis had done gave Anti-Semitism and anti-Semites a bad name. By the 1980s, that barrier was broken, first by segments of the African American community who targeted Jews because they were familiar and white, and later in response to the oil crises and the war in Lebanon, which made Israel, and by association all Jews, fair game. It was less an increase in Anti-Semitism than it was an increase in the social permissibility of expressions of Anti-Semitism that triggered the feelings of insecurity even as barrier after barrier to Jewish advancement were being broken. Raab’s words are instructive especially today. Jews again believe that Anti-Semitism is on the rise; their perception is supported by the media and the general public and yet there is ample evidence to dispute that perception. What is to account for the discrepancy in perceptions? Three factors seem persuasive: First, the expression of all hatreds is now permissible, among them Anti-Semitism. Beginning with the election of Barack Obama as President, the expression of racism in America has increased dramatically, whether masked as criticism of the President or direct racism. In the 2016 election, anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, and anti-Muslim expressions of hatred fueled the election of Donald J. Trump. The President’s tweets and statements and the policies of his administration have weakened the general sense of civility in American national discourse. This has continued in his presidency and the vociferousness of White Supremacists has only added to the disquiet. Events at Charlottesville, where Nazis marched, a woman was murdered, a synagogue was surrounded by AR15-carrying thugs, and a black man was beaten, only deepened the feeling of angst. And the President

50 Earl Raab, »The Black Revolution and the Jewish Question,« Commentary 47,1 (January 1969) and »Is There a New Anti-Semitism?« Commentary 52,5 (May 1974).

6 Anti-Semitism after World War II

277

said there were good people on both sides, while blaming protestors against racism for the violence. Secondly, social media and the world-wide web have given these hatreds a megaphone so that these voices are heard as never before and are reinforced in their views by the communities they form with mutual support systems. Social media also empowers an avalanche of vitriol and the opportunity for anonymous expression. It has particularly affected journalists and other writers who, immediately after publishing their work, are subjected to vitriol directed at them on line and in their emails. Thirdly, because Jews are now perceived as a privileged part of the white majority, expressions of Anti-Semitism are no longer disqualifiers of people from taking positions of leadership in social movements. The refusal of the Women’s March leaders Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour to disavow the rabidly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, is but one example. Still, Jews are not the first or principle target of contemporary expressions of hatred. Other segments of American society are far more endangered and to some, cries of Anti-Semitism seem like special pleadings for what others perceive as a marginal problem. Because of widespread Jewish political support, AntiSemitism is condemned far earlier and far more routinely than other expressions of hatred.

6.4

Anti-Semitism in Europe

One would be wise to introduce a distinction between Anti-Semitism in Europe and Anti-Semitism of Europe. To consider contemporary Anti-Semitism in Europe we must divide Western Europe from Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, the presence of numerically substantial non-assimilated Islamic communities is a significant factor contributing to the endangerment of Jews. France provides an instructive example. If one accepts the values of France—Liberty, Equality and Fraternity—then one feels comfortable with presence of Jews and Muslims along with Catholics, Protestants and secularists in contemporary France. In response to the Hyper Cacher terror attack, the President of France and its Prime Minister both reaffirmed the presence of Jews as an integral part of what makes France. »France without Jews is not France,« they said, and yet the French Jewish community feels endangered. Some have chosen to emigrate from France to Israel: others have purchased apartments there as some sort of insurance policy. Why? At least 10%, perhaps more, of the French population comes from Arab countries, and they have not been integrated into France. They respond to events in the Middle East more dramatically than they do to events in France. That’s why the spike in anti-Semitic activity in early 21st century France correlates directly with events in the Middle East that have affected Muslim acts against Jews in France. These groups regard French governmental, media, and left-wing criticism of Israel as license to attack local Jews. Those who have been attacked were often Jews who themselves are from the Middle East and Algeria and live among the

278

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

Muslim populations. Until recently, however, France did not have any concept of »hate crimes,« so many attacks against Jews were regarded as petty crimes. Painting a swastika on a synagogue was treated as if it were ordinary graffiti. Similarly, attacking a rabbi or pious Jews dressed in traditional garb on the way to synagogue was treated as a simple assault, with no societal implications, unless the injuries were extensive. At the same time, the French government strongly and manifestly opposes Anti-Semitism and Jewish institutions are guarded by the French police and soldiers to protect against terrorism. The leaders of Europe marched against Anti-Semitism, a step unimaginable 70 years ago. Conditions in France are mirrored in other European countries. In Sweden, which once welcomed Jewish refugees from Denmark, the Malmo Jewish community feels endangered by the presence of a large and intimidating Muslim population. In Denmark, synagogues in Copenhagen have armed guards to protect against terrorist attacks that took place in a country revered by Jews for the rescue of its Jews during the Holocaust. In England, a native Muslim population feels alienated from mainstream English society and been radicalized to attack Jews and commit acts of terrorism on the streets of London and other British cities. Jews are feeling less safe and more beleaguered in Britain than they did a decade or two ago because the leader of the British Labor Party is openly anti-Israel and often in league with anti-Semites he refuses to condemn. To the nationalistic pro-Brexit right, Jews are agents of globalization and beneficiaries of the European Union. Corbyn has paid no political price for his anti-Semitic expressions and thus feels no need for restraint. All this comes when barriers to the advancement of Jews in British society have diminished and where the former chief rabbi is regarded as a compelling moral voice of England, not just British Jewry. In Belgium, prominent pockets of radical Islamic support give Belgian Jews, who are very visible in Brussels and Antwerp, a feeling of unease. An attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels (2014) intensified governmental support for the Jewish community, but such support may not be sufficient to assure Jewish security. In Germany, the government is deeply committed to the security of its Jewish community and while there have been incidents in Germany, and the far right is rising there as elsewhere, the memory of the Holocaust still looms large. A 2018 story is instructive. The head of the German Jewish community announced that Jews in Germany would be wise not to publicly wear a kippah, a skull cap, for their own safety. The following day there was a parade of German non-Jewish citizens wearing kippot in a demonstration of solidarity. Still for the first time, a right-wing populist party serves in the Bundestag, much to the embarrassment of those who serve with them. Eastern Europe During the Holocaust, Eastern Europe was a hotbed of Anti-Semitism. Under Communism, Anti-Semitism remained prevalent from Communists and Nationalists.

6 Anti-Semitism after World War II

279

Jews were purged in Poland in 1957 and 1968. After the Six-Day War, with the exception of Romania and Yugoslavia, Communist countries severed relations with Israel. At the time, it seemed the Soviet Union and its allies had joined the Arab world as the major source of post-war Anti-Semitism. The situation of the Jews relaxed with glasnost (the Soviet adoption of a more open government), as the Iron Curtain fell and the Eastern European countries became democratic. Then came a marked decline in official Anti-Semitism. On the positive side: the more a society embraces democratic values, the greater the respect for minorities. As these societies moved closer to the West, and most especially to the United States, they seemed to accept the notion that how they treated their Jewish populations was a litmus test for acceptance by the West, especially if they wanted to join NATO. The demise of Communism in the early 1990s, the Oslo Peace Process and the rise of democracies in Eastern Europe led to a dramatic decrease in Anti-Semitism. Throughout the last decade of the 20th century and the early 21st, there were significant efforts to address the question of national responsibility for the treatment of Jews in various countries. Because of collaborationist trials and the work of French historians and social activists like Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, France began addressing the issue of collaboration and not just the record of resistance and the liberation seemingly led by General Charles De Gaulle. In Romania, a presidentially appointed commission chaired by Rumanian survivor Elie Wiesel gave a detailed, direct and hard-hitting record of the Holocaust in Romania and Hungary. German corporations were issuing truthful and indicting reports. The Swiss bank settlement forced a confrontation with the myth of Swiss neutrality. Ironically, having to swallow their complicity with the Nazis led to a rise in Anti-Semitism rather than remorse. In Stockholm, the Swedish Prime Minister convened an international gathering attended by many heads of state to consider the responsibility, globally and country-by-country, for Holocaust Education. In Poland, museums and memorials were rewriting their texts and reconsidering their exhibitions to reflect accurately the victimization of the Jews. Yet since 2008, right-wing nationalism has taken hold in Poland and in Hungary and with it a desire to rewrite Holocaust history again—to make collaborators and murders look innocent. So while Poland has shown a marked growth in Jewish life, the current government makes Jews uneasy and they worry the government’s attitudes will undo the progress of the post-Communist era. The same is true in Hungary, where the Jewish community has refused to participate in government-led efforts to redo memorials to the Holocaust and objected to the concerted effort to rewrite that history. Jews are viewed as purveyors of globalism and enemies of resurgent nationalism. This essay has deliberately not considered Anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world, which is where it is most pervasive. That would require an essay all its own.

280

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

7

Survivors and Memory

7.1

Survival and Survivors

Survivors were careful not to valorize their own survival. As Eli Pfefferkorn, an astute observer of human behavior in the camps, said: Suffering is not necessarily a morally refining agent that turns apathy into compassion, greed into generosity, meanness into graciousness and ambition into humility. With few exceptions, the good did not become better and the bad might have become worse. Few survived to bear witness, most merely wanted to live.51

Only later, for some much later, did bearing witness endow their survival with deep meaning. Holocaust survivors were a small minority of the victims—many more were murdered than survived. The question they faced was what to do with the accident of their survival. They, too, had to rebuild their lives in the aftermath. Over time they came to answer the question: »Why did I survive?« not by a statement about the past but by what they did with their lives after liberation. Because they faced death, many learned what is most important in life. Life itself, love, family and community, and what Holocaust survivor and Academy Award-winner Gerda Klein called »a boring evening at home« are the things that matter most. For Jewish survivors, the survival of the Jewish people became paramount. The final statement of Jewish history and Jewish memory is about life and not death, no matter how pervasive death is. For many survivors, bearing witness later in life conferred upon them a sense of meaning in light of the atrocities they suffered. They have told the stories of what happened to them to keep a promise they made to those they left behind. More importantly, they hope—however slim that chance is—that their stories can transform the future.

7.2

Holocaust Memory in the Contemporary World

The leaders of European nations have rediscovered the importance of the Holocaust for contemporary moral education. This may also be the reason why it becomes the focal point for Papal visits to Israel, for German society, and for American society. If studied properly, it can also teach us to read the warning signs when a democracy begins to fall apart and heads toward mass killings of »the other.« Consciousness of the Holocaust has moved well beyond the Jewish community, In the past half century, the bereaved memories of a parochial community have been transformed into an act of conscience. Survivors have responded by remembering suffering and transmitting that memory in order to fortify conscience, to plead for decency, to strengthen values, and thus to intensify a commitment to 51 Eli Pfefferkorn, The Musselman at the Water Cooler, Boston/MA, 2011.

7 Survivors and Memory

281

human dignity. That is how the Bible taught Jews to remember that they were slaves in Egypt and that is why the Biblical experience has framed the struggle for freedom ever since. For further reading Berenbaum, Michael, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust As Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2nd ed., Baltimore/MD, 2006. Browning, Christopher, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York, 1993. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, New York, 1996. Gutman, Yisrael and Berenbaum, Michael, eds., Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Bloomington/NJ, 1994. Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd ed., New Haven/CT/London, 2003. Hilberg, Raul, Pepertrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, New York, 1992 Friedlander, Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933–1945: The Years of Extermination, New York, 2007, xviii-xxi. Michman, Dan, The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos During the Holocaust, New York, 2011. Lindemann, Albert S. and Richard S. Levy, eds., Anti-Semitism: A History, Oxford/New York, 2010. Snyder, Timothy, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, New York, 2013. Wistrich, Robert, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism – From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, New York, 2010.

Zionism and the State of Israel Martin Kloke

1

»By the Rivers of Babylon«: The Early History of Zionism

In the centuries following the destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE), Jews settled in many parts of the Middle East and then Europe. But their yearning for Zion remained undiminished. The lament of the deported Jews was taken up already in a late biblical writing: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion. […] If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.1

Regardless of their integration into their host countries, many Jews held firm to their ancestors’ religious traditions and to Hebrew as the language of worship. In the first Christian centuries there were still 373 Jewish villages and cities in Palestine. While Galilee remained under Jewish influence even in the period after the Bar Kokhbah revolt (135 CE), Jews were refused permission to stay in Jerusalem from that time on. It was only toward the end of the Roman-Byzantine epoch that they were once again allowed to live in Jerusalem. In the 9th century Jerusalem became a Jewish »capital« once again.2 The Holy Land remained a spiritual center of Judaism—a beacon radiating out to the diaspora communities.3 From the 7th century on, Arabization and Islamization trends were certainly a serious worry to the communities. But not even the 11th- and 13th-century Christian crusades were able to extinguish the Jewish presence in Palestine completely. New small waves of immigration linked with messianic hopes on the part of their adherents, strengthened the Jewish-Palestinian communities after the fall of the Crusader state. Spanish Jewish refugees followed in the 16th century, settling in Jerusalem and Safed in particular. From the 17th century, there followed, among others, Hasidic immigrants from Eastern Europe, so that

1 Ps 137:1, 5 (quoted from the JPS Bible). 2 Cf. Jacob Allerhand, »Juden im Heiligen Land: Gelebter Zionismus zwischen Tempelzerstörung und Staatsgründung,« in Zionismus: Befreiungsbewegung des jüdischen Volkes, ed. Peter von der Osten-Sacken, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1986, 30–33. 3 For an example we might refer to the petition contained in the Passover liturgy: »This year we are here, next year we will be in the Land of Israel. This year we are slaves, next year we will be free. Next year in Jerusalem.« Cf. Shalom Ben-Chorin, Narrative Theologie des Judentums anhand der Pessach-Haggada : Jerusalemer Vorlesungen, Tübingen, 1985, 155f.

1 »By the Rivers of Babylon«: The Early History of Zionism

283

by the middle of the 19th century, before the beginning of the Zionist immigration movement, Jerusalem once again had a Jewish majority.4 Even the a-religious socialist Zionist Moses Hess (1812–1875) was able to report on the vitality of those national-religious traditions retained in the collective memory of the Jewish presence in the ancient Near East: My grandfather once showed me olives and dates: ›These fruits,‹ he taught me, eyes glistening, ›grow in Eretz Israel‹ (in Palestine). Everything that is a reminder of Palestine is viewed by pious Jews with the same feeling of love and devotion as the ancient memories of the paternal household.5

In the last third of the 19th century, Anti-Semitism was no longer just religiously and socio-economically motivated, but increasingly racially so as well. It shattered Jewish hopes of assimilation and integration in the emerging societies of Europe. While many Jews fought indefatigably for social recognition,6 a minority, reacted with skepticism and began to see the renaissance of hostility to Jews as grounds for a Jewish national mobilization. In the context of bloody pogroms in Eastern Europe, with his 1882 book »Autoemancipation,« the Russian doctor Leon Pinsker (1821–1891) showed himself a spiritual pioneer for a secularized Jewish hope of a national territory of their own. In 1882, in a first Aliyah,7 small groups of Russian Jews immigrated to Palestine. Although these groups inherently shared Orthodox Judaism’s longing for Zion, in breaking out of the ghetto, their early Zionist ideas and practices also implied a revolt against the religious tradition. Behind their »pioneering« activities laid the notion that the »Jewish question« would only be solved by the overturning of the social structure of Diaspora Judaism, in favor of a form of society shaped by peasant and proletarian strata.8 The Austrian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) is regarded as the founder of political Zionism. From 1891 to 1895 he worked as Paris correspondent for the Viennese Neue Freie Presse. While he initially saw Anti-Semitism and the »Jewish question« as simply a social challenge, by the time of the anti-Semitic Dreyfus affair he was lending his support to the idea of a national Jewish »Return.« In his work, »Der Judenstaat« (The Jewish State), published in 1896, Herzl argued for the need for political Zionism:

4 Cf. Jacob Allerhand, »Juden im Heiligen Land,« 333ff. 5 Moses Hess, »Rom und Jerusalem, die letzte Nationalitätenfrage. Briefe und Noten (Leipzig 1862),« in Moses Hess: Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Horst Lademacher, Cologne, 1962, 257. 6 An example one might point to the untiring but ultimately unsuccessful defensive struggle of the »Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith.« For more detail see Arnold Paucker, »Die Abwehr des Anti-Semitismus in den Jahren 1893–1933,« in Antisemitismus: Von der Judenfeindschaft zum Holocaust, ed. Herbert A. Strauss and Norbert Kampe, Frankfurt, 1984, 143–71. 7 »Aliyah« (pl. »`Aliyyot«, »ascent [to Zion]«) is the term used for the waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine (Eretz Israel). 8 For the historical and ideological background to these attempts to re-stratify the social structures cf. Tamar Bermann, Produktivierungsmythen und Anti-Semitismus: Eine soziologische Studie, Vienna, 1973, 69–140.

284

Zionism and the State of Israel

We are a people—one people. We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes super-loyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or their wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country. Who is the alien in the land can be decided by the majority: it is a question of power, like everything in relations between peoples. […] If only we were left in peace […] But I do not believe we will be left in peace.9

In 1897, together with dedicated companions and supported by Jewish philanthropists, in the face of resistance Herzl organized the first Zionist World Congress in Basel, Switzerland. There, representatives of Jewish communities from all over the world pleaded for the »creation of a publicly and legally secured homeland in Palestine for those Jews who have not been able, or who have not wished, to assimilate elsewhere.« A short time later, Herzl made the following assessment: At Basel I founded the Jewish state. If I said this aloud today I would be greeted with universal laughter. In five years perhaps, or certainly in fifty, everyone will perceive it.10

Herzl soon sought political backing for his concerns on the part of the competing Ottoman and European powers. During the German Kaiser’s stay in Palestine in 1898 he asked him for his support. But despite the Zionist Congresses, now organized every year, which attracted considerable public attention as political events, the success of Herzl’s diplomatic campagne was initially confined largely to the literary sphere. In 1902 he published his novel »Altneuland«, in which he describes the utopia of a liberally and cooperatively organized Jewish social order in Palestine.

2

Jewish Palestine before the First World War

By comparison with the more than two million Eastern Jewish immigrants who had reached North America since the 1890s, the volume of European Jewish immigration to Palestine, which belonged to the Ottoman province of Damascus, was only modest. Between 1882 and 1903, in the the first wave of immigration, approximately 20,000 to 30,000 people came to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan. While the first `Aliyah was principally marked by the economic interplay between private capitalist plantation owners and Arab agricultural workers, the second `Aliyah (1904–1914) began with different ideological features: Many of the 35,000–40,000 immigrants were motivated by a romantic mix of Zionist,

9 Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat, 51. 10 Theodor Herzl, »September 3, 1897,« in idem, Briefe und Tagebücher, ed. Alex Bein et al., Berlin, 1983, 538f.

3 The First World War and the Balfour Declaration, 1917

285

socialist, and anarchist ideas. All sorts of economic and social experiments in the setting-up of largely agrarian community settlements bore testimony to this. The anti-capitalist thinkers behind the Jewish labor movement included such varied protagonists as Ber Borochov (1881–1917), co-founder of the Russian »Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ Party Poale Zion,« and the eco-religious socialist and practical Zionist Aharon David Gordon (1856–1922). Disappointed with the failed Russian Revolution of 1905–1907, which was unable to bring an end to the pogroms, those immigrants who came from the eastern Jewish precariat, fighting for their survival, were particularly open to the ideas of Zionism. The young pioneers (chalutzim) began with the agricultural development of Palestine. Their goal was to »normalize« the social structure of Jewish society, to become a people and a nation like any other. With the slogan »conquest of labor,« the establishment of cooperative production and distribution structures—in particular the establishment of collective farming villages (kibbutzim)—formed the economic basis of socialist Zionism in Palestine. As the pioneers worked cooperatively on the land actively acquired by the Jewish National Fund since 1909, they were able to keep the capitalist wage labor they despised to a minimum. Between 1904 and 1914, the number of Jewish settlers and settlements in Palestine had doubled but given the difficult economic and health situation, it was not long before some of the immigrants left the country or moved on to America. The vast majority of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and America showed little interest in the Zionist project. It was not Jewish nationalism and Zionism, but assimilation and integration into the respective nation states that were the key concerns of an increasingly secular Judaism. On the other hand, despite the fact that capital investments were still barely lucrative, private investors invested 100 million francs in Palestine. In 1908, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) set up a so-called Palestine office under the leadership of Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943). Between 1907 and 1912, the German-Jewish philanthropist Paul Nathan (1857–1927) made preparations for the establishment of a Technological Institute (Technion) in Haifa.11 In 1909, in the sand dunes of the Mediterranean, the city of Tel Aviv (»Spring Hill«) had its beginnings—the first founding of a Jewish urban center in modern times.

3

The First World War and the Balfour Declaration, 1917

When the Ottoman Empire aligned itself with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War, the struggle of the great powers for supremacy in the Middle East came to a head. Against all expectations, the Ottomans did not collapse, but—with German support—advanced as far as the Suez Canal. Against this background, the United Kingdom used a dual strategy by feeding both Jewish/Zionist and Arab

11 In fact, however, the regular operation of the university began only in 1924.

286

Zionism and the State of Israel

hopes. In order to motivate the Arabs to revolt against the Turkish sultan, in 1915 British High Commissioner Sir Henry Arthur McMahon (1862–1949), promised the grand ruler of the Hijaz and Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali Ifen (1853–1931), the independence of the eastern Arab territories within the framework of a great Arab empire, as soon as the Ottoman Empire was destroyed. »There was, however, no explicit talk of Palestine.«12 Regardless of the pro-Arab rhetoric of this letter—and also contrary to the Zionism-friendly Balfour Declaration of 191713—Great Britain and France concluded secret agreements which led to the Sykes–Picot Agreement (16 May 1916). They divided up the areas promised to the Arabs, of present-day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine, into spheres of influence. The core areas of Palestine with the religious holy sites were to be internationalized. The Russian origins of many Jewish immigrants provided the Turkish authorities with an excuse to harass them as »enemy aliens.« Many of the approximately 18,000 Jews expelled sought refuge in the United States, including the Zionist activists David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (1884–1963) of the »Poale Zion« party. Even immigrants with an Austrian background suffered reprisals, having to provide forced labor in railway construction. Ottoman pressure on the immigrants provided a boost to radicalization among the Jewish workers. A minority group associated with Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky (1880–1940) and Josef Trumpeldor (1880–1920) sympathized with terrorist forms of resistance and campaigned for the establishment of a Jewish legion. In the USA, Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi also agitated for such a unit. In 1917 the British government began to countenance the formation of a »Jewish regiment,« with a menorah as its battle emblem. The majority of the workers made a »Zionist« response to the Turkish reprisals by putting into practice what Borochov in 1918 narrowed down as a practical Zionist program: Create facts, [...]—that is the foundation stone of political wisdom. Facts are more persuasive than ideas. Deeds have a more enduring effect than solutions. Victims have greater promotional power than resolutions. [...] A fallen watchman has a greater share in the realization of Zionism than all our declarations.14

American Jews had shown little interest in or enthusiasm for Zionism before the war, but the persecutions in Eastern Europe and Palestine prompted sympathy and solidarity. The relief committee was able to gain the support of the popular Jewish anti-corruption prosecutor, Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856–1941), as their president. After U.S. President Woodrow Wilson appointed the secular Brandeis as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1916, the latter intervened successfully in Constantinople and Berlin for the benefit of the Palestinian Jews.

12 Cf. Hermann Meier-Cronemeyer, Die Geschichte des Staates Israel, vol. 1: Entstehungsgeschichte, 3rd rev. ed., Schwalbach, 1997, 50. 13 See below. 14 Cited from Meier-Cronemeyer, Geschichte, 47.

3 The First World War and the Balfour Declaration, 1917

Map 1: The Sykes-Picot-Agreement.

287

288

Zionism and the State of Israel

The World Zionist Organization (WZO) activists lobbied the governments of Germany and Austria as well those of the Entente to support their territorial aspirations. German Zionist groups under Max Bodenheimer (1865–1940) went a step further and openly sided with the Central Powers. Their hopes were set on the liberation of the Russian Jews. During the world war, the chemist and long-time Zionist activist Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952) advanced to become the figurehead of Zionism in the United Kingdom. In 1907, at the Eighth Zionist Congress in The Hague, he had argued strongly for a combination of political and practical Zionism. His »synthetic Zionism« met with broad support in the movement, because it linked politico-diplomatic activities with the practical work of colonization in Palestine. Weizmann’s ability to make Zionist claims look compatible with the imperial foreign-policy interests of Great Britain was also to prove beneficial. In 1915, Weizmann wrote to the Manchester Guardian: The Jews are taking over the land, and the entire burden of administration falls to them, but for the next ten or fifteen years they will work under a temporary British protectorate.15

In British aristocratic circles, Zionism had become not only socially acceptable but a popular topic of conversation. In unofficial negotiations with British government representatives—most importantly Mark Sykes (1879–1919), general secretary of the war cabinet—Weizmann lobbied for British recognition of Zionist aspirations. In return, the British were to be entrusted with the protectorate of Palestine and thus impinge not only on the heritage of the Turks but also push back the French influence sanctioned in the Sykes-Picot agreement. Representatives of assimilated British Jewry had no objection in principle to the Zionist project; but they were against any formulation that would appear to give recognition to a Jewish »nation.« The British government representatives therefore urged that the historically metaphysical »reestablishment of Palestine as the national home« be reduced to the more modest and pragmatic »establishment of Palestine as a national home.« When the negotiations were concluded, on 2 November 1917 foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) wrote the Balfour Declaration: His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation. 16

Even though this declaration was little more than a non-binding declaration of intent, it nonetheless formed the first legal grounding of the Zionist project in Palestine in terms of international law. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding,

15 See Chaim Weizmann, Das Werden des Staates Israel, Zürich, 1953, 263f. 16 Tophoven, Der israelisch-arabische Konflikt, 24.

4 Consolidation and Advances: The Zionist Project under the British Mandate

289

the document did not have the prospect of a Jewish state in view but simply the formation of a national »home«—taking into consideration the rights of non-Jewish communities. Zionist interpreters however soon derived more far-reaching visions from this: »By a Jewish national home, we understood the creation of such conditions in Palestine that would enable us to bring 50,000 to 60,000 Jews to the land each year and settle them there, develop our institutions, our schools, and the Hebrew language and, finally, to create such conditions that Palestine would be as Jewish as America is American and England is English.«17

4

Consolidation and Advances: The Zionist Project under the British Mandate

On 9 December 1917, British troops under General Edmund Allenby (1861–1936) marched into Jerusalem. The British invasion of Palestine and other Arab regions in 1918—together with French allies—brought the four hundred year reign of the Turks in the Middle East to an end. In January 1919, on the margins of the Paris Peace Conference, hopes for a Jewish-Arab agreement emerged. In a treaty of friendship with Chaim Weizmann, Emir Feisal (1835–1933), a son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, accepted Jewish immigration to Palestine under the auspices of a Zionist »corporation.« Feisal and Weizmann explicitly referred to the Balfour Declaration in their agreement. In a handwritten note, however, Feisal gave his assent only on condition of the realization of Arab independence in the Arabian Peninsula and Syria.18 But as the French insisted on the observance of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, in December 1919 the British withdrew from the Lebanon, to be immediately replaced by French troops. An explosive mood now spread among the Arabs. In March 1920, the »Syrian National Congress« proclaimed Emir Feisal king—on condition that he distanced himself from the agreement with Weizmann. Feisal conceded, and the Arabs of Palestine, too, were then gripped by a wave of national enthusiasm. Palestine should not only not become Jewish but be integrated into Arab Syria as a southern province. On 4 April 1920, with such slogans as »Death to the Jews« and »Long live Feisal,« fanatical Muslims forced their way into the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. In full view of British soldiers, who did nothing to stop the pogrom, seven Jews were killed and 200 injured. Nonetheless, in April 1920, the victorious powers of World War I prepared a political restructuring of the Middle East: Syria and Lebanon became a French »mandate.« On 20 July 1920, French troops expelled King Faisal from Damascus.

17 Chaim Weizmann during the Paris Peace Conference on 23 February 1919. Quoted after Arno Ullmann, Israels Weg zum Staat: Von Zion zur parlamentarischen Demokratie, München, 1964, 265. 18 For the text of the Agreement see Tophoven, Der israelisch-arabische Konflikt, 24.

290

Zionism and the State of Israel

Great Britain was granted control of Palestine19 and Iraq. The Allies not only incorporated the Balfour Declaration into the peace treaty with Turkey, but also into the League of Nations Mandate for Iraq and Palestine. On 24 July 1922, the Council of the League of Nations officially entrusted the British with the mandate for Palestine. In 1920, Great Britain sent its first »high commissioner« to Palestine. Herbert Louis Samuel (1870–1963) arrived in Jaffa on 1 July. He was the first Jew to rule Palestine, the historic »Land of Israel,« for 2,000 years. He strove for a balance of interests between Jews and Arabs. Bloody clashes between the two ethnic groups broke out in Jaffa on 21 May 1921, in which 47 Jews were killed. Bloody riots also took place in Haifa, Hadera, Petach Tikva, Rechovot, and Jerusalem—an Arab response to »revolutionary« May Day demonstrations on the part of the socialist Zionists. However, Samuel succeeded in calming down the excited minds in the parallel societies of Palestine; temporarily the high commissioner imposed immigration restrictions on Jews. In addition, he appointed Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (1893–1974) as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. When Winston Churchill (1874–1965) visited Palestine as colonial secretary in 1921, it was his declared intention to safeguard British interests. On the one hand, Churchill made no secret of his sympathies with Zionism; but on the other hand, he saw the need to compromise with the Arabs. He suggested dividing the country. In 1922/23 all areas east of the Jordan—four-fifths of Palestine—were separated and converted into a semi-autonomous territory under the rule of Emir Abdallah, Hussein’s second son. Formally, »Transjordan« remained part of Palestine in accordance with the provisions of the League of Nations Mandate;20 but politically it was now a quasi-independent entity.21 The British introduced a further change in 1923, when they made the Golan Heights subject to the French authorities. In addition, the British set immigration limits. In a declaration of principles (the Churchill White Paper, June 1922), they announced their intent from now on to adapt the economic capacity of the country and establish an ultimately binational »Arab Jewish Palestine.«22 The Zionists were disappointed by these developments, seeing their territorial and demographic hopes dwindle. They were concerned for the long-term development opportunities of the Jewish »home,« including a secure water supply. But the leading pioneers refused to be discouraged by external limitations, instead concentrating their efforts on the consolidation and institutionalization of their project. As early as 1920, they had founded the Jewish trade union center (Histad19 At the time, this area also included present-day Jordan and the Golan Heights. 20 Cf. article 25 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ 20th_century/palmanda.asp); cf. also Ernst Marcus, »Palästina – ein werdender Staat,« in Frankfurter Abhandlungen zum modernen Völkerrecht 16 (1929): 262–69. 21 In 1946, two years before the foundation of the state of Israel, eastern Palestine—Transjordan—gained its full independence, and Abdallah I assumed the title of king. 22 Cf. Michael Wolffsohn, Wem geho¨rt das Heilige Land?: Die Wurzeln des Streits zwischen Juden und Arabern, München, 1992, 254.

4 Consolidation and Advances: The Zionist Project under the British Mandate

291

rut). In 1921, in the face of the Arab riots, they brought the Haganah into being, an underground military organization which questioned the monopoly of power held by the British. In 1924/25, with British consent, education-oriented representatives of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, founded the Hebrew University and the Technical University, Technion. In 1919–23, the time of the third Aliyah, 37,000 Eastern European Jews streamed into the country. Many of them had already been active in socialist-Zionist youth organizations in their countries of origin.23 It was to be the last generation of immigrants wanting to change Palestine into a homogeneous socialist society. Many of the pioneers had already gained agricultural education and training in Europe in the context of Jewish blue-collar cooperatives. Motivated by the principles of community of goods and social equality, the revolutionaries were determined to use their skills for the Jewish-socialist project in Palestine. Among the new immigrants were also the first members of Hashomer Hazair (»The Young Guardian«), a youth movement formed in Galicia, whose adherents wished to lead a revolutionary existence free from familial or other social bonds. Their spiritual mentors were Marx and Freud, but also Nietzsche and Buber. In 1930 Hashomer Hazair had 34,000 members worldwide and promoted the kibbutz idea in its economic and social manifestations. In the fourth Aliyah, tens of thousands of Polish Jews flooded into the country, led less by Zionist than by utilitarian motives, as in 1924, the USA—at that time still the preferred destination for Jewish migrants—had issued a block on immigration. Many of them, wanting to escape the anti-Semitic harassment in Poland, were no idealistic pioneers but members of the middle class; they contributed significantly to the industrial, commercial, and cultural upsurge of the Yishuv. In Tel Aviv alone, between 1921 and 1925 the population rose from 3,600 to 40,000. At the same time, bourgeois right-wing parties were able to gain influence. The Revisionists associated with Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky, wanted to »revise« the British decision of the separation of Transjordan, especially their youth organization Beitar, committed themselves to a hard-line stance vis-à-vis the Arabs. On the surface, the situation between Jews and Arabs was quiet. Even the economic crisis of 1926–1928, when for a time (1927) emigration exceeded immigration, did nothing to change that. But in the fall of 1928, the emerging economic recovery of the Yishuv caused fear to grow among the Arabs that the Zionist project might be intended for the long term. The Grand Mufti instigated violent attacks at the Western Wall of the Temple area, the so-called Wailing Wall, praying Jews were harassed—verbally and with stone-throwing. When, in the summer of 1929, flag-waving Beitar adherents demonstrated, marching to the Wailing Wall and striking up the Zionist anthem Hatikvah (»Hope«), the situation escalated. A week later, Muslims and Jews engaged in fierce street battles, while the British police authorities stood aside. In Hebron, where the rumor circulated in the Arab community that »the Jews« had taken control of the Islamic sites in Jerusalem, Muslims killed 67 men, women, and children. The survivors 23 Walter Laqueur, Der Weg zum Staat Israel, 1975, 312.

292

Zionism and the State of Israel

of the massacre, some of whom had found refuge with Arab neighbors, abandoned the centuries-old Jewish Quarter of Hebron and fled the city. The Zionist side was shocked by the wave of violence. The Revisionists relied on counter-terrorist methods to curb the attacks and, in the longer term, on the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. At the far-left pole of the Zionist spectrum, academics and left-wing socialists founded a »covenant of peace,« advocating the development of Jewish and Arab »cantons«—in the framework of a binational state. The majority of the socialist-oriented groups, advising against unbridled violence and illusory dreams of peace, argued in favor of moderate reactions, with the goal of stopping the spiral of violence without endangering the Zionist project as a whole. The pragmatic politics associated with David Ben-Gurion carried the day. Recognizing that Jewish and Arab aspirations were mutually incompatible, it was still possible to negotiate with the Arabs. Dialogue should be conducted without illusions but in the hope of being able to explore areas of flexibility and so contain and defuse the conflict. Between 1932 and 1939, the Histadrut gained 73,000 new members, and organized labor was becoming increasingly important for the socio-economic and political development of the Yishuv. The Zionist infrastructure of Palestine expanded and became increasingly consolidated.

5

In the Shadow of the Shoah: Jewish Mass Immigration, the Arab Uprising and, the Second World War

In 1933, the Nazis began with the systematic discrimination against and persecution of Jewish citizens. German Jews left their home country in droves; in 1933 alone around 38,000 new immigrants came to Palestine. They were followed by refugees from Poland—during the fifth Aliyah (1932–1938), a total of 197,000 Jews flocked to Palestine. As other potential refugee countries such as the United States remained largely closed to them, they had no alternative but to settle in hot, underdeveloped Palestine. While the German refugees (Jeckes) were more liberaldemocratic in orientation, the Polish Jewish immigrants reinforced the Revisionist currents in the Zionist spectrum of parties. After traumatic experiences in Poland, they were no longer willing to accept political and social heteronomy. They demanded a harder line vis-à-vis the Arabs of Palestine. Tel Aviv and other cities on the Mediterranean were beginning to boom; witness to the unmistakably German and Central European roots of their builders and operators. In August 1933, Zionist representatives under Chaim Arlosoroff (1899–1933) concluded a capital transfer agreement with the economic ministry of the Reich, to accelerate the emigration of German Jews from Germany to Palestine. The so-called Ha`avarah agreement made it possible for Jewish refugees to transfer portions of their assets to the new homeland. The transfer was linked to imports of German goods to Palestine. With the proceeds from the sale of the goods, even Jews without means could raise the

5 In the Shadow of the Shoah: Jewish Mass Immigration, the Arab Uprising

293

funds needed to satisfy the requirements of the British: 1,000 Palestinian pounds. The agreement was controversial for a variety of reasons. While critics suspected that the agreement undermined sanctions against Nazi Germany by providing them with the foreign exchange they urgently needed, Nazi government circles feared that Zionist aspirations in Palestine were being subsidized. From 1937, the Nazi regime limited the scope and modalities of capital transfers, while at the same time intensifying persecution of the Jewish minority that had not left. However, in the context of Ha`avara, by 1939 more than 50,000 German Jews had managed to emigrate to Palestine. They succeeded in rescuing assets of approximately 140 million Reichsmarks—corresponding to an average transfer rate of approximately 2,800 RM per immigrant.24 The agreement was not officially curtailed until 1941, although no capital transfers had taken place since the beginning of the Second World War. The Nazi interest had shifted and became radicalized long before: it was no longer the expulsion of Jews, but their systematic mass murder that determined the agenda. While the Jewish population had doubled between 1932 and 1935, and Jewish land purchases had generated a growing feeling among the Arabs of Palestine that they were being swamped by foreigners, the Palestinian Arab national movement became entangled in a process of radicalization that went hand-in-hand with panIslamic tendencies. In addition, a short-lived pro-Zionist turn in British Palestine policy gave the impression of a fickle British foreign policy. Under the auspices of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in December 1931 the first Islamic World Congress took place in Jerusalem. The unanimous call to defend the »sanctity of the wall« and establish an al-Aqsa Mosque University ensured that the role of Jerusalem entered the consciousness of the Muslim world outside Palestine. In parallel with this, paramilitary Arab youth associations mutated into terrorist underground militias: Abdel Kader al-Husseini founded the group »Holy War for the Holy Land.« In Haifa and Galilee, a terrorist group led by Sheikh Is Ad-Din alKassam began operations. Both leaders are still venerated as »martyrs« by Palestinian organizations; their groups formed the organizational backbone of the Arab rebellion against the British and Jews, which began in April 1931. The uprising led to massacres of Jews and the looting or destruction of fields, plantations, shops and factories. In contrast to the more defensive Haganah, the semi-official underground army of the Yishuv, revisionist Jewish militias also relied unashamedly on terrorist methods from 1938. Ultimately, however, the fierce operations of British military units and internal disagreements among the insurgents put an end to the unrest. The Arab Revolt had unexpected consequences: paradoxically, it advanced the Zionist project. What its protagonists had so far only warned of, now became reality—the disintegration of the Palestinian economy along ethnic-national and religious lines. Although traditionally »Jewish labor« was more expensive than Arab workers, in a short

24 Cf. Werner Feilchenfield et al., Haavara-Transfer nach Palästina und Einwanderung deutscher Juden 1933–1939, Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo-Baeck-Instituts 26, Tübingen, 1972.

294

Zionism and the State of Israel

period of time the labor market of the Yishuv lost its Arab competition. When the Arabs prohibited use of the port of Jaffa by Jews, the Jews built their own port in Tel Aviv— larger and more modern than the neighboring port. Before the uprising, the Zionists still had to hide their paramilitary ambitions from the British; now the Zionist militias dared to become professional and commit openly to their defense efforts by strengthening their villages and cities as »fortified settlements.« The Jewish kibbutznik was not just a farmer, but also a combat-ready soldier. From 1933 on, many Arabs sympathized with German National Socialism, which was viewed as a model of national liberation and the anti-Jewish struggle. In 1937, while the Arab uprisings were still in full swing, the Jerusalem Grand Mufti presented the Nazi regime with a draft contract of cooperation. He asked for weapons and other relief supplies for his nationalists; in return he offered the dissemination of Nazi propaganda in the Islamic region, even in circumstances of war. Jewish trade had to be boycotted, the »terror« in the mandate countries stepped up, and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine be blocked »by all means.« In late 1941, in a personal encounter with the Grand Mufti, Adolf Hitler informed him of his intention to »solve« the »Jewish question« in the British Mandate, as well. SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler told the Grand Mufti in mid-1943: »So far we have annihilated about three million Jews.«25 In the summer of 1942, the Yishuv found itself dangerously encircled: the German army advanced from the Caucasus and from Egypt to Palestine. With English toleration and ad hoc support, units of the Haganah (Palmach) prepared for defense, conducting guerrilla warfare against the advancing German-Italian Africa corps of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Within the framework of a Jewish brigade, Palmach units participated directly in the war against Hitler’s Germany in other places as well. In late 1942, British troops succeeded in bringing the advance to a halt in Egyptian El-Alamein; the danger of a Shoah in the Middle East had been removed. As news of Germany’s mass war crimes came in, Zionist politicians made dramatic appeals to American and British government agencies to bomb the death camps— but in vain. In the framework of the so-called Biltmore program, in May 1942, in New York several hundred American, European, and Palestinian representatives of Zionist organizations demanded the »founding of a Jewish community« and the opening of the borders of Palestine to refugees.26 The majority of the Zionist parties supported the British in the fight against Nazi Germany. But in early 1944, as the Allies were managing to tip the course of the war in their favor, Menachem Begin (1993–1992), commander of the militant Ezel group, called for a »revolt« against the British occupiers in Palestine. The Jewish terrorists tried to bomb the British out of the country. Left-wing Zionists organized in the Haganah then

25 Wolfgang Schwanitz, »Hitlers Mann in Jerusalem,« Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2 June 2008; see also Gensicke, Mufti; Matthias Küntzel, Djihad und Judenhass: Über den neuen antijüdischen Krieg, Freiburg i. Br., 2003. 26 Cf. Schreiber/Wolffsohn, Nahost, 118.

6 Partition Plans in Context: En Route to the State of Israel

295

started a hunt for the renegade Ezel fighters, who were threatening to squander the moral reputation of Zionism. In the spring of 1945, when Germany surrendered to the Allies, the Haganah relented, joined forces with the Ezel organization and the small terrorist splinter group Lehi in a united »Jewish resistance movement,« in armed struggle against the British. Ezel drew attention to itself with its spectacular actions: in July 1946, a terrorist commando blew up the British Military Headquarters in the south wing of the Jerusalem luxury »King David« hotel. 91 people died in the rubble. Thereupon, the Haganah ended its alliance with Ezel.

6

Partition Plans in Context: En Route to the State of Israel

In the time of the Mandate, the British were increasingly confronted with the fact that the Jewish immigration west of the Jordan was meeting bitter Arab resistance. In 1936, the London government imposed drastic entry restrictions for Jewish refugees. At the same time the British pondered a politico-diplomatic solution of the nationalities conflict. A commission was set up under the chairmanship of Lord William Peel (1867–1937) to prepare an analysis of the conflict. They interviewed 120 Arab and Jewish witnesses and in July 1937, presented a report with the recommendation that western Palestine should be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state. They allocated around 20 percent of the area to the Jews, and 80 percent to the Arabs. The British claimed a connecting corridor between Jaffa and Jerusalem.27 The Arab world rejected the partition plan, although with competing interests: while Abdallah of Transjordan welcomed the extension of his dominion recommended by the Peel Commission, the »Arab Higher Committee« protested especially against the separation of the Arabs of Galilee into the Jewish state. As early as September 1937, a pan-Arab congress in Syria called for military resistance to »world Jewry« and the Zionist movement. On the Jewish side, too, the Peel plan met with unease—the partition modalities were received with disappointment, especially as not a few of the Jewish immigrants were inspired by the idea of having come to a »land without a people« as a »people without a land.«28 However, pragmatism proved stronger than ideological principles: at the 20th Zionist Congress in Zurich in August 1937 a majority emerged prepared to make compromises. The »Revisionists« still insisted on rejecting any territorial compensation. Their slogan was not »land for peace« but »peace for peace«; for according to the right-wing Zionist camp, the historical land of Israel was identical

27 Report of the Peel Commission, July 1937 (excerpts), in Tophoven, Der israelisch-arabische Konflikt, 26f. 28 This play on words, still common in anti-Zionist narrative, goes back to a Scottish Protestant preacher in 1834. One of the few Jewish voices to appeal to this formula, however, in 1901, was the author Israel Zangwill, living in London.

296

Zionism and the State of Israel

with the whole of Palestine—on both sides of the Jordan. In the establishment of the Trans-Jordanian Kingdom (with its high Palestinian proportion of the population) the Revisionists saw the historical compromise long ago anticipated. In January of 1938, the British government distanced itself again from the partition idea. The outbreak of the Second World War changed all previous options. The British now referred to the Balfour Declaration as an »error« and decided to place drastic restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine. For tactical reasons, this cabinet decision was initially kept confidential. The British government felt Zionism was a political liability; in the strategic fight against the supposedly pro-Arab Axis Powers Germany and Italy, they now sought the favor of the Arabs. In May 1939, a British White Paper was published, by which Palestine was to become an independent state within ten years. For the period between 1939 and 1945, the White Paper stipulated that Palestine should take in a total of only 75,000 more Jews; thereafter all immigration should be stopped. Furthermore, Arab land should no longer be allowed to be sold to Jews.29 This development marked a major setback for Zionism. Given the worsening persecutions, for many Jews the White Paper amounted to a death sentence. When even the United States sent a ship laden with Jewish refugees—the St. Louis—back to Germany, the Zionist Executive announced their intent to work for the »illegal« admission of Jewish refugees in Palestine at any cost. David Ben-Gurion, leader of the social democratic Mapai Party and executive chairman of the Jewish Agency, shaped the wordplay: We shall fight together with England against Hitler as if there were no White Paper; and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war.30

Despite the pro-Arab White Paper policy of the British, the leading Arab forces— with the exception of the emir of Transjordan—sympathized with Nazi Germany and its allies. The Palestinian leadership under the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem openly allied itself with the Nazi regime—a decision that was not only an expression of ideological affinity but was also strategically directed against British colonial policy. Even after the end of the war the British continued their pro-Arab policy out of colonial and economic (oil) motives, maintaining the immigration restrictions and not letting so-called Displaced Persons, Shoah survivors stranded in the western occupation zones of Germany, into the country. In response, the Zionists intensified their efforts to smuggle Jewish refugees into Palestine illegally. Heart-rending reports of forcibly returned refugees seeking a new homeland as Holocaust survivors, went around the world. The two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, called increasingly for a change in British Palestine policy. The American public and sections of the political establishment put pressure on the financially dependent British. In April 1947, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Andrei Gromyko, delivered a powerful pro-Zion-

29 Excerpts from the White Paper can be found in Schreiber/Wolffsohn, Nahost, 109. 30 Rolf Steininger, Der Nahostkonflikt, Frankfurt am Main, 2003, 26.

6 Partition Plans in Context: En Route to the State of Israel

297

ist speech.31 In July 1947, the British navy captured the Jewish refugee ship Exodus before the coast of Palestine, forcibly overpowering passengers and crew and directing them to the port of Haifa to return them to an internment camp in Germany. These events prompted worldwide indignation. Now the British began to relent, especially as they were steadily losing control of affairs with both Arabs and Jews striving for independence. What the British had failed to achieve in the 30-year mandate period was now to be sought by the newly founded United Nations: a permanent solution to the Palestine problem. World opinion could no longer overlook that Nazi Germany had systematically murdered six million European Jews. On 29 November 1947, by a two-thirds majority, the UN General Assembly decided to partition the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The two states were each to consist of three major enclaves which were to be linked together via extraterritorial roads as an economic union. The plan also provided for the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem to be placed under international administration on account of their religious importance.32 In the territorial division, the UN was careful to ensure that in the one state the Jews would form the majority and in the other the Arab people. In fact, according to the Jewish immigration authority in the Jewish state (56 percent of western Palestine) had a population of 498,000 Jews and 407,000 non-Jews (mainly Arabs); in the Arab state lived 725,000 non-Jews and 10,000 Jews, and in the international zone 105,000 non-Jews and 100,000 Jews:33

31 »The fact that no western European State has been able to ensure the defense of the elementary rights of the Jewish people, and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners, explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own State. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration. It would be unjustifiable to deny this right to the Jewish people, particularly in view of all it has undergone during the Second World War« (United Nations. General Assembly. Official Records/ UNGAOR 1947, First Special Session, vol. I. New York/ Geneva, 1947, 132). 32 For the text of the Partition agreement see Tophoven, Der israelisch-arabische Konflikt, 28f. (excerpts). 33 Statistics taken from Glasneck/Timm, Israel, 54.

298

Map 2: The UN Partition Plan 1947.

Zionism and the State of Israel

7 War and Terrorism: Signs of a Violent Relationship between Israel and Palestine

299

However, the fateful set of circumstances that had previously prevented a balance of interests in 1937 was repeated. The Arab world rejected the plan for the partition of Palestine into two states more vehemently than ever. Assam Pasha Abdur Rachman, Secretary General of the Arab League, threatened the Jews that in the event that a state was founded there would be a »massacre that will one day be spoken of in the same way as the Mongol massacres and the Crusades.«34 Although the parties of the Yishuv had hoped they would be given a more generous allocation of territory, the majority recognized the unique opportunity in history to create a Jewish nation state. Shortly after the UN vote collective jubilation broke out in the Jewish cities and villages, with people dancing in the streets.35

7

War and Terrorism: Signs of a Violent Relationship between Israel and Palestine

Immediately after the UN Palestine resolution an Arab uprising began against the Jewish/Zionist presence in Palestine. The armed activists aimed to prevent the founding of a Jewish state by all means at their disposal. In October 1947, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had demanded: [...] The Arabs should together fall upon the Jews and destroy them, as soon as the British armed forces have withdrawn.36

In early 1948, the Palestinian Arabs were supported by volunteer militiamen from Syria, Transjordan, and Iraq. In the so-called »street war« they blockaded transport connections between the Jewish settlements and besieged Jerusalem. The British were caught between the fronts. Increasingly, their concern was only about how they might be able to withdraw from the mandated territory relatively unscathed. When they abandoned their army camps, police stations, and government buildings, the battles were focused on these ownerless symbols of rule. Up to early April 1948, the Zionists behaved defensively. The Yishuv in Palestine long had recourse to semi-public structures and armed militias. There was a countrywide general staff of the Haganah in the months prior to the founding of the state. At the end of 1947, the Haganah had had both artillery and the beginnings of an air force and a navy at its disposal. From January 1948, the Zionists bought weapons in Czechoslovakia, including thousands of guns and bombs as well as dozens of fighter planes. On 1 April 18, 1948, the Haganah went on the offensive with »Operation Dalet.« Its primary objective was to secure all the areas that the UN had allocated to the Jewish side—and if possible the Jewish settlements beyond that line as well. In addition, the

34 Cited from Schreiber/Wolffsohn, Nahost, 146. 35 As an example, see the autobiographical novel by Amos Oz, Eine Geschichte von Liebe und Finsternis, Frankfurt/Main, 2004. 36 After Nicholas Bethell, Das Palästina-Dreieck: Juden und Araber im Kampf um das britische Mandat 1935–1948, Berlin, 1979, 381.

300

Zionism and the State of Israel

Zionists wanted to re-open the connecting roads between their settlements and achieve access to Jerusalem. On the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem there was fierce fighting. On 8 April 1948, a division of the Ezel militia perpetrated a massacre in the Arab village of Deir Yassin (present-day Givat Shaul, a Jerusalem suburb). Using terrorist methods, the Lechi group spread horror and boosted the mass flight of Arabs from the areas under Jewish control. The goals of »Operation Dalet« were realized almost completely: the geographical cohesion and the defense capability of the Jewish-settled zones of Palestine within the borders of the UN Partition plan. Arab insurrectionists showed little squeamishness. A trail of blood runs from the massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929, through the raids on Jewish settlements during the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939, and on to the attack on a convoy of Jewish wounded, doctors and nurses on the way to Jerusalem, in which about 80 people were killed in April 1948.

8

The Founding of the State of Israel

When the Palestine Mandate expired without an agreement, on 14 May 1948, the Jewish National Council proclaimed the state of Israel in Tel Aviv: »Not in Europe—but of Europe.«37 The declaration resulted in a major military conflict—on 15 May five armies of the Arab League crossed their borders to wipe out the »Zionist entity.« The Egyptians conquered the Gaza Strip and the Jordanians the West Bank including East Jerusalem, together with the religiously significant sacred sites. But the young state of Israel was able to assert itself against its neighbors: in numerical terms, the Israeli side was clearly inferior, and militarily as well. But the Israelis knew their precarious situation. In a confidential communication, General Yigael Yadin, head of Israeli military operations, initially estimated Israel’s chances of survival at »fifty-fifty.« British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery gave Israel »three weeks« before it would perish. In addition, Zionist intelligence was completely in the dark—they did not even know whether or when the Arabs would attack. Only from the summer of 1948, the Israelis were able to push back the Arab armies and expand the territory assigned to them by the UN. The dividing line, known as the »Green Line,« was fixed at the ceasefire agreement of Rhodes in 1949. But this certainly did not mean that the Arabs recognized the state of Israel. For them it was simply a ceasefire line, which claimed validity only until the next hostilities. In this first Arab-Israeli War of 1948/49 between 600,000 and 750,000 Arabs either fled or were driven from their homeland. Research by the so-called new historians Benny Morris38, Avi Shlaim39 and Tom Segev40 attempted to refute the Israeli narrative ac-

37 Dan Diner, Kreisläufe: Nationalsozialismus und Gedächtnis, Berlin, 1995, 125. 38 Cf. Morris, The Birth. 39 See Avi Shlaim, The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine 1921–1951: A Concise History, Oxford, 1990. 40 Cf. Segev, The First Israelis.

9 Foundations of State and Society

301

cording to which the Arab refugees all left their homeland voluntarily, triggering vigorous internal debate about the traditional founding myth of Israel. 41 It seems clear that there were no state directives for the expulsion of the Arabs.42 David Ben-Gurion, prime minister of the State of Israel, swung between moral and security-motivated considerations—his advisors provided him with highly ambivalent recommendations. The army instructed Israeli troops not to conduct any expulsions outside the immediate areas of fighting.43 Locally limited expulsions did, however, take place. On the one hand, some individual Jewish mayors and local commanders called upon the Arabs to stay; on the other hand, roughly a third of the Arab refugees were driven from the Jewish-controlled areas in the course of the fighting. A further third of the Arabs panicked and fled in the face of the psychological warfare of the Israelis—also frightened by alarmist calls on the part of Arab notables. The final third of the refugees evacuated the disputed areas »voluntarily,« as it were (although they did not live in the combat zones)—they became victims of Arab propaganda, which had prompted the refugees to leave their homeland »temporarily,« presenting them with the prospect of a glorious return following »victory over the Zionists.« The Arab side also conducted ethnic cleansing in this war. On 13 May 1948, Arab Legion troops participated in a massacre at the Kfar Ezion kibbutz south of Jerusalem. More than 120 captive Jews were shot with machine guns. Gush Ezion, four settlements between Jerusalem and Hebron, was razed to the ground. At the end of May, the Arab Legion of Transjordan conquered East Jerusalem, destroyed the Jewish quarter of the old city including all the synagogues, plundered it, and drove out the inhabitants, killing all the remaining Jews. In the face of fierce hostilities in Palestine, between 1945 and 1952 more than 600,000 Jews fled from Arab countries to the newly established Jewish state44— numerically, within the space of a few years there was an almost complete population exchange.

9

Foundations of State and Society

Israel as both a Jewish and a democratic state still has no constitution—there is no consensus in society as to what such a constitution would look like. While the orthodox religious minority parties view the Halacha, the Jewish religious law, as the supreme authority; liberal, left-wing, and national conservative modernists prefer a liberal-secular constitution. As an interim solution the Knesset, the Israeli

41 See Efraim Karsh, »Rewriting Israel’s History,« Middle East Quarterly 3 (1996): 19–29 (http:// www.meforum.org/302/rewriting-israels-history). 42 Cf. Morris, The Birth; Segev, The First Israelis. 43 Cf. ibid., 60f. 44 See e.g. Shlomo Hillel, Operation Babylon: Israels Geheimdienst im Irak, Neuhausen, 1992; cf. also the internationally decorated film The Forgotten Refugees by Michael Grynszpan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHuo0Bw3tgQ).

302

Zionism and the State of Israel

parliament has passed 15 so-called basic laws which set out the basic rules of Israeli policy and state order. Another legally significant reference point is the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which the Jewish People’s Council proclaimed on 14 May 1948. Here the new state grants »all its citizens social and political equality, without distinction of religion, race, or sex.«45 In contrast, the nationality law passed by the Knesset in July 2018, by a narrow majority, by which Arabic is no longer to be one of the two official languages of Israel, reflects a change of direction which places a question mark against a fair balance between Jewishness and democracy.46 Until recently equal rights did not apply in family law, which has been firmly in the hands of men since the founding of the state. This is in part a consequence of the centuries-old Millet system in the multi-religious Ottoman Empire, where the different religious communities were assigned a dominant role in state, tax, and family law. Neither the British Mandate authorities nor the state of Israel ever fundamentally questioned this normative power of the status quo. Even today, there are no state registry offices, and the religions and are responsible for marriages and divorces. Anyone wanting a civil marriage must marry abroad. 2018 was the year in which for the first time, women gained access to the Rabbinical Court. After years of debate, Israel’s supreme court has instructed the state to ensure that women also are employed at all levels in the rabbinic courts.47 Parliamentary democracy is extremely important in Israel’s political life. Despite the raising of the electoral threshold to 3.25 percent (2015), in the present Knesset eight parties are represented, which reflect on the one hand the political, ethnic, and religious plurality of the country, while on the other hand they are responsible for a high degree of instability. The activities of the parliament are primarily in the field of legislation; it controls the government, votes it down at times, and appoints the state president who is restricted to representative functions. While for the first 29 years the Labor parties ruled without interruption in a variety of compositions and coalitions, the supremacy of the political left has been a thing of the past since 1977. Since then, the government has been formed mostly by the Likud Bloc—an alliance of parties of national conservative hue, which tends to enter into coalition with religious/orthodox parties. The dominant organ of state in Israel is the government. For reasons of security policy, it is able to make far-reaching decisions about war and peace without having to consult parliament in advance. The secret services and the Atomic Energy Com-

45 The Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel. Quoted from the translation of HaGalil online (http://www.hagalil.com/israel/independence/azmauth.htm, accessed on 1 April 2018). 46 See Raoul Wootliff, Final text of Jewish nation-state law, approved by the Knesset early on July 19, The Times of Israel, 18 July, 2018 (https://www.timesofisrael.com/final-text-ofjewish-nation-state-bill-set-to-become-law/). 47 Gil Yaron, »Wo nur Männer für Scheidungen zuständig sind,« Die Welt (12 September 2017) (https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article168391468/Wo-nur-Maenner-fuer-Scheidung en-zustaendig-sind.html?wtmc=socialmedia.twitter.shared.web, accessed 22 April 2018).

9 Foundations of State and Society

303

mission are responsible to the prime minister personally; in addition, he or she has the power to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections. The third power comprises justice. At its head is the Supreme Court, the members of which are elected by a professionally dominated committee and retire only when reaching the age of 70. By virtue of its non-political composition, not only is the Supreme Court relatively corruption-free, but it regularly corrects disputed political decisions of the executive and the legislative. This democratic watchdog function is supplemented by the so-called »state control« which is employed by the parliament and, as an informal »fourth power,« tests and scrutinizes all politically relevant decisions by ministries, authorities, and publicly financed institutions. Israel is a country that has had to fight for its survival; and as decades have passed has been repeatedly embroiled in armed conflicts. Without a professional army with a modern security structure there would no longer be any Jewish state. Zahal, the »defense army of Israel,« is Israel’s largest and most important state institution. Military service lasting up to three years is the duty of all the country’s young men and women; the only people excused mandatory military service are ultra-Orthodox Jewish and also Arab citizens. Zahal emerged partly from the Haganah, the military wing of the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine, and partly from the reservoir of Jewish soldiers who served in the British Army during the Second World War. In view of its precarious geopolitical and demographic situation, Israel places the greatest importance on military doctrine. Elements of this are the ability to retain the initiative in case of war and make quick decisions, a credible nuclear deterrent, and alliance with a Great Power (France until 1967, since then the United States). In this extensively tested scenario—for example during the Six-Day War of 1967—the air force has a prominent role to play, given its technologically based fire power. The 1967 conquests dramatically changed the army’s remit. In the West Bank especially, Zahal now also exercises the functions of an occupying force. Since 1973, Israel has not had to wage any further war against state armies, not least because of the peace agreement with Egypt and Jordan. New threats result from the activities of paramilitary units such as the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, boosted by the threats of destruction associated with Iran’s nuclear policy. Four times between 2006 and 2014, Israel waged war against these militias, which had previously launched massive rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages. The costly »Iron Dome« missile defense system developed with American support allowed the Israelis to limit their losses in terms of human casualties and material damage. In the years before and after the founding of the state, the kibbutzim fulfilled outstanding social functions, which—partly thanks to socialist-Zionist narrative –fed the aura of a social »elite,« capable of promoting the settlement and development of Israel’s rural regions. They made an important contribution to the military security of mainly Jewish settlement areas, especially in the border regions. With their cooperative and egalitarian forms of organization, the kibbutzim have contributed a disproportionately large share of the integration of European refugees,

304

Zionism and the State of Israel

by forming a kind of demographic funnel that offered newcomers a place in society and basic security. Nonetheless, the roughly 270 kibbutzim that exist today have lost significance on all levels of society. The consumerist lifestyle of the younger generation replaced the traditional utopianism of the older generation both internally and externally.

10

The Israelis: A Migrant Society in Flux

Modern Israel has always been a society of migration. Its members’ self-understanding as »returnees« from the Diaspora was anchored in 1950 in the so-called law of return, liberalized in 1970. According to this, all Jews and any non-Jewish partners or children have the right to immigrate to Israel and take Israeli citizenship. But the Zionist project was initially a European undertaking, as it was primarily European Jews (Ashkenazim) who came to the land in the first 50 years of Zionist immigration—they were to place their unmistakable stamp on the Yishuv, both politically and culturally. In the course of the founding of the state many other Jews made their way to Israel from Arab countries (Mizrachim or Sephardim). The Ashkenazi establishment expected eastern newcomers to catch up and »modernize« as they assimilated their living habits to the European lifestyle. But different cultural traditions and socio-economic living conditions led to tensions between the two similar-sized population groups. While the Ashkenazim belong mainly to the middle or upper classes, the Mizrachim are concentrated in the lower half of the Israeli social pyramid, not unlike many Arab Israelis, who make up roughly 20 percent of the population. In recent decades, differences have begun to dissolve. The current populace is a melting pot, given the shared experience of the »army« and the increasingly intercultural nature of new families, whose hybrid identities relativize traditional ascriptions of identity. An even deeper divide within Israeli society is the antagonism between secular and religious environments. In Israel’s founding phase the two political camps agreed to a compromise, by which the leading workers’ parties claimed responsibility for foreign, economic, and security policy, while the orthodox religious parties were granted rights in education and secured a monopoly in matters of civil status legislation. This allocation of responsibilities contributed significantly to the development of a parallel religious society, whose anti-secularist core identity is an increasing challenge to Israeli democracy. Since the Six-Day War, the historic compromise between the two camps has eroded, because religious-nationalist groups attach religious significance to the conquest of East Jerusalem and other biblical sites in the West Bank, putting the secular majority on the defensive. Buoyed by their demographic growth, religious Zionists are at the spearhead of the settler movement in the occupied territories—extending to the very top of state and government. Secular Israelis fear an »advance« of the ultra-orthodox Charedim, which could slow down the secularization trends of recent years. In the past 72 years, Israel’s population has multiplied from initially less than 800,000 to more than 9 million people today. Although in its political structure

11 Israel in the Middle East: Between War and Peace-Process

305

Israel defines itself as »Jewish and democratic,« Israeli society has binational characteristics. The Jewish majority accounts for almost 75 percent of the population, while the Arab minority, more than four-fifths of whom are Sunni Muslims, constitutes 20 percent. The number of Christians and Druze each represent a singlefigure percentage. The remaining ca. five percent are members of immigrant minorities such as Armenians, Circassians, and non-Jewish family members from the former Soviet Union. Then there are hundreds of thousands of temporary labor migrants from Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, but also tens of thousands of »illegal« immigrants, mainly from Eritrea and the Sudan. As a consequence of the Jewish-Arab conflict, between 1945 and 1955 at least 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries. More than 600,000 of these Mizrachim immigrated to the young state, changing the previously European (Ashkenazi) character of the country’s demographics and culture. After the founding of the state hundreds of thousands of surviving victims of the Shoah also flocked to Israel. Owing to international pressure, in the early 1970s the first 100,000 Jews from the Soviet Union managed to immigrate to Israel. This migration movement became a mass exodus in the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union collapsed, and more than one million Jews immigrated to Israel. From the 1980s onwards, the state of Israel organized the »bringing-home« of tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews in the context of several exodus operations. Because of the increase in antiSemitic attacks in France, in recent times thousands of French Jews have moved to Israel each year. The strong growth of the Israeli population has been a boost to the infrastructural dynamics of Israel. What were once small towns have become major cities. The transformation of the settlement founded in the sand dunes of Tel Aviv in 1911 into a bustling metropolis of millions underlines that the former developing country has become highly developed. Almost half of Israelis live in large cities; in greater Tel Aviv alone there are almost 4 million. Around 900,000 people live in Jerusalem; the conurbations of Jerusalem (including the eastern part) and even the northern port city of Haifa have also passed the one million mark. The pressure of population growth has heated the real estate market in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Part of the settlement issue in the West Bank has its roots here, because not a few of the more than 500,000 Israelis have moved to the West Bank for economic reasons.

11

Israel in the Middle East: Between War and PeaceProcess

The Arab world, which had expressed its rejection of the Yishuv long before, did not give up its claim of sole right of representation to Palestine, even after the UN Partition plan (1947) and the proclamation of a Jewish nation-state (1948). The Jordanian and Egyptian occupiers made no attempt to facilitate or even tolerate the founding of a further Arab state in the parts of Palestine under their control

306

Zionism and the State of Israel

in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In addition, because of the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, in Lebanon especially, as well as in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, a Palestinian diaspora emerged. When, in 1949, in the context of a desired peace settlement, Israel offered the return of 100,000 refugees, the Arabs dismissed the idea; instead, Egypt and Syria decided to take in the disenfranchised Palestinians as stateless persons and use them as a »fifth column for the day of vengeance« in the fight against Israel. Jordan, on the other hand, with its already mainly Palestinian population, integrated the refugees—and in 1950 annexed the West Bank including East Jerusalem; world opinion did not object. Under president Gamal Abdel Nasser, in July 1956 Egypt nationalized the mainly British-French Suez Canal society and blocked passage to Israeli ships through both the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran in the Gulf of Aqaba. In reaction to this, in October of the same year, France, Great Britain, and Israel launched a military attack on Egypt, in which the Israelis took the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. However, the invaders soon found themselves isolated internationally and were forced to withdraw from the occupied territories a few weeks later. For Israel politically, the invasion was a success to the extent that the Egyptians had to lift their naval blockade and the UN troops stationed in the Gaza Strip ensured a reduction of terrorist attacks on Israel. In the 1950s, Palestinian Arabs began to organize as a national »liberation movement.« Those groups which came together under the umbrella of the PLO in 1964 were united in their determination to set up their own Palestinian state on the ruins of Israel. In May 1967, the situation threatened to escalate again: Egypt concluded a military alliance with Syria and Jordan, brought about the withdrawal of the UN peace-keeping troops from the Sinai Peninsula, and imposed a new naval blockade against Israel on the Straits of Tiran to the Red Sea. In Cairo, then PLO chairman Ahmed al-Shukairi added his voice to the anti-Israel propaganda with the battle cry: »We will drive the Jews into the sea!« But in early June 1967, Israel managed to defend itself preemptively against the strategy of escalation on the part of the bordering Arab states. In six days Israel’s troops conquered the West Bank with East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrian Golan Heights. By conquering the West Bank, Israel took possession of all the religiously significant sites of ancient biblical Judaism—»Judea« and »Samaria.« The Israeli government under the leadership of the left-wing Labor Party hoped initially to be able to use the occupied territories as a bargaining chip for a peace treaty with the Arabs. The longings of Israeli pragmatists came together in the formula, »land for peace.« But the hoped-for »call« from an Arab capital never came—the Arab League was still incapable of or unready for any Realpolitik. It hurled its triple »No« at the Israeli side at the Khartoum summit in late August 1967: »No to recognition of Israel! No to negotiations! No to peace with Israel!« Before the UN General Assembly, in September 1969, foreign minister Abba Eban reiterated in vain Israel’s offer to the Arabs to discuss and negotiate »everything.« The temptation for the Israelis was to view the West Bank as a further Zionist project—the left wing more for security reasons, the right wing inspired additional-

11 Israel in the Middle East: Between War and Peace-Process

307

ly by national religious motives. After 1968, convinced of the inability of the Arab side to seek peace, Israelis began settling in the occupied territories. In just a few years, tens of thousands of Israelis, attracted in part by state subsidies, settled in the greater Jerusalem area. After 1967, the PLO was able to establish itself as an independent power center, initially in Jordan. At the end of the 1960s it succeeded in drawing the political attention of the world to the situation of the Palestinians in the Middle East, by means of targeted terrorist attacks and hijackings. On 6 October 1973—on the most important Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur—Egyptian and Syrian forces overran the Israeli ceasefire lines in a surprise attack. As never before in its history, the State of Israel found itself in dire straits, suffering heavy initial losses. It was nineteen days before the Israelis were able to fully repel the attack. At the instigation of the superpowers USA and USSR, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire, which spared the Arabs the humiliation of a repeated Israeli victory and led to bilateral troop-separation agreements. The Egyptian side saw the war as a political and psychological success, which seemed to compensate for the »shame« of 1967. In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat found the courage to enter what was initially a bilateral peace process with Israel under Prime Minister Menachem Begin. With the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, for the first time in the history of the conflict in the Middle East a gateway to peace had opened. Israel’s conservative Likud government acknowledged »legitimate and justified claims« of the »Palestinian people.« Nonetheless, the peace agreement signed in 1979, which followed the »land for peace« principle, met bitter resistance from the Palestinians and almost all other Arabs. In the 1970s, however, voices in the PLO sought dialog with »progressive« Israelis and saw themselves as paving the way for a peaceful coexistence between Israel and the future Palestinian state. The most important representative of the new realistic school of thought was Issam Sartawi, a member of the Palestinian National Council. But during an international congress in Albufeira, Portugal in 1983, Sartawi was murdered by Palestinian extremists. In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army crossed the Lebanese border in order to smash the PLO, which had moved its military and political activities to Lebanon after expulsion from Jordan and had been sporadically attacking Israel from there. This war ended with the withdrawal of the PLO leadership to Tunis after the weekslong siege of West Beirut and a massacre of phalangist militiamen perpetrated under the eyes of Israel troops in the Palestinian camps Sabra and Shatila. These actions met with worldwide condemnation, including in Israel. By the 1980s, many Palestinians had to recognize that there had not been much to show for the use of terror and violence. It was only the Intifada of 1987, a broad and largely civilian movement of Palestinians uprising in the occupied territories, that seemed to promote Palestinian concerns. It also brought many Israelis to the conviction that the conflict in the Middle East needed a political and diplomatic solution in line with a two-state solution. The PLO’s fatal solidarity with the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein during the second Gulf War of 1991 did nothing fundamental to change this view—espe-

308

Zionism and the State of Israel

cially since the Israelis had learned that they were defenseless against Iraqi rocket attacks. After the war, Israelis and Palestinians seemed ready to open a new chapter in relations between their peoples. The American-inspired peace talks in Madrid (1991) and the secret negotiations in Oslo (1993) paved the way to direct and official contacts between Israel and the PLO. The negotiations achieved the first tangible results with the Gaza-Jericho Agreement. In a plan by which parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were entrusted to Palestinian autonomy in stages, the historic compromise that the Arab side had blocked for decades now seemed to be within reach. In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty which has held until the present day, alongside the peace of Israel and Egypt. In the mid-1990s, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres toiled in Brussels and other Western capitals for political and economic support for the peace process. Peres encouraged Israeli and international investors to get involved in the autonomous Palestinian territories. The cross-border free-trade zones and »industrial parks« earmarked for Gaza or West Bank (Jenin) raised hopes of a lasting guarantee of Israeli-Palestinian understanding. The expectation was that the terrorist swamp would be drained as a result of the mass creation of jobs. A prosperous Palestinian society could surely not be interested in swapping affluence and peace for a return to violence and economic decline. The mood of optimism was short-lived. After each partial territorial withdrawal of Israelis, Palestinian extremists responded with murderous attacks on civilian targets, crowded buses and busy restaurants, in particular. Despite all the expressions of allegiance to the »peace process,« no Israeli government of any stripe dared agree to further confidence-building gestures toward the Palestinians, such as the freezing of settlement activities in the disputed areas. The mood hit rock bottom after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish Israeli extremist in 1995. There was a growing suspicion that the PLO leadership, now returned from Tunis, was encouraging the terrorist activities, despite its condemnation of them in public statements. Speaking to an Arab audience, Arafat called for jihad for the »liberation« of Jerusalem, reminding his audience that Mohammed had also agreed (temporary) peace treaties with unbelievers—as a prelude to military conquest.48 While the Israeli public was still passionately discussing what territorial compromises would be justified from the security point of view, Palestinian discourse in the second half of the 1990s was increasingly preoccupied with other matters: »We are dealing with an enemy who is a Shylock,« was the message of the official radio station of the Palestinian Authority »Kol Falastin.« Palestinian reports (as previously in other Arab media) now carried anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and secularized legends of ritual murder (»Israelis infect Palestinian children with the Aids

48 Cf. »The agreement with Israel is not more than the agreement between Mohammed and the Beni Qureish.« Excerpts from the speech of Arafat in Johannesburg, Israel & Palästina 3 (July 1994): 22ff. (following Haaretz, 23 May 1994).

11 Israel in the Middle East: Between War and Peace-Process

309

virus«). Education to hatred against Israel and the Jews did not draw the line at TV programs for children and schoolbooks.49 The final status negotiations at Camp David and Taba (2000/01), in which the Israeli government under Prime Minister Ehud Barak was ready to make concessions even on the Jerusalem question, failed due to the refusal of Arafat to drop the demand for an unlimited »return« of Palestinian refugees to Israel. This would ultimately have marked the end of the Jewish State. The ultimatum-linked proposals of the American president—which tested the patience of the Israeli delegates as well as the Palestinians—were circumvented by Arafat, who failed to explore potential compromises or put forward counter-proposals.50 We now know that the Palestinian side had already abandoned the underlying principles of the peace process in mid-2000. At this time, Barak had ordered the withdrawal from the security zone of south Lebanon that had been promised in the election campaign in 1999—but without the anticipated agreement with the Lebanese government. The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah celebrated this »triumph« as the result of its continued terrorist activities against Israel—an interpretation of events that was to become increasingly popular among the Palestinians. Even the Palestinian communications minister Imad Al-Faluji contradicted the popular version, according to which the terrorist Intifada had been sparked by Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount51—especially as the controversial visit by the then opposition politician had been agreed to even by Arafat’s security forces. In September 2000, with the patronage and support of the Autonomous Authorities, Palestinian groups commenced a new »Intifada«—this time equipped with the fire power of tens of thousands of armed »activists,« who were to shoot and bomb Israeli society. An informal coalition of »holy warriors« (e.g. Hamas), as well as secular terrorists (especially the Arafat-related »Tanzim militias« and »al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades«), brought horror upon the Israeli population—with suicide bombings in buses, restaurants, and public places. The Israeli government countered the wave of Palestinian attacks with military operations and targeted killings of terrorists and their ringleaders. At the same time, in Israeli society voices multiplied of those who saw the heart of the Middle East conflict in the refusal of the Palestinians to accept the existence

49 Examples are regularly documented on the website of the MEMRI media translation service (www.memri.org). 50 Thus Dennis Ross, chief negotiator in the Middle East peace process under President Clinton, in an interview with Foreign Policy, July/August 2002. 51 »Anyone who thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the visit of the despised Sharon to the al-Aqsa mosque, is wrong, even if this was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. The Intifada had been planned for a long time, since President Arafat had returned home from the negotiations at Camp David, where he had overturned Clinton’s table. Arafat remained firm and attacked Clinton. He rejected the American conditions and he did this in the heart of the USA.« (Imad Al-Faluji on 3 March 2001 at the Ein Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon, documented by the MEMRI translation service (www.memri.org, 9 March 2001).

310

Zionism and the State of Israel

of Israel. In the words of Ariel Sharon: »The Arabs don’t want the Jews to be here. That is the secret of this whole story.«52 Even the former Palestinian minister Faisal al-Husseini, viewed in the West as a »moderate,« called in the spring of 2001 for the step-by-step destruction of Israel. There is a difference between the strategic objective of the Palestinian people, which is not prepared do give up even a crumb of Palestinian land, and the political objective, which derives from the balance of powers and the nature of the current international system. [...] We may win or lose, but our eyes will continue to pursue the strategic goals, namely a Palestine from the river to the sea. Whatever we are now able to have will not let us forget this highest truth.53

In the meantime the building of fences and barriers between Israel and the Palestinian areas—in some cases beyond the »green« ceasefire lines of 1949—was mitigating violence. The fence is a sign of the strategic conception which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon initiated in 2003—a policy of unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians. Its most important fruit to date is Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and the closure of some settlements in the north of the West Bank. This step triggered violent protests among forces close to settlers. In a speech in the Knesset in October 2004, Sharon directly addressed his critics, saying: You are wonderful pioneers, builders of the land, settlers on barren soil, in rain and through winter, through all difficulties. However, you have one weakness—you have developed among yourselves a messianic complex.54

This speech marked a beacon—for the strategic about-face of Sharon, who had always been regarded as a hard-liner and old soldier, celebrated by his adherents as »father of the settler movement.« Since Israel withdrew from the southern Lebanese security zone in 2000 and from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israeli towns and villages in the border regions as far as well beyond Ashkelon have been hit by rocket attacks at irregular intervals. »We give land and get rockets«—such is the perception of the Israelis, whereas the Palestinians perceive the Israeli presence and military superiority as a violation of their collective rights. The militant »neighbors« in Gaza and in southern Lebanon do a fair bit to confirm the alarmist fears of the Israeli right, according to which the Arab side misinterprets any concession by the peace-hungry Israelis as »capitulation.« In recent years Mahmoud Abbas, directly elected as Arafat’s successor, seems unable, unwilling, or not assertive enough to do anything about this misery. Even the anti-Israeli and sometimes also anti-Semitic agitation in the media and in 52 Jeffrey Goldberg, »Arafat’s Gift,« The New Yorker (29 January 2001). 53 Faisal al-Husseini in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir, 21 March 2001, quoted from the MEMRI translation service’s »Special Dispatch no. 197« (https://www.memri.org/reports/ faysal-al-husseini-sharon-must-not-get-chance). 54 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s address to the Knesset prior to the vote on the Disengagement Plan, 25 October 2004. in https://www.Knesset.gov.il/docs/eng/sharonspeech04.htm

11 Israel in the Middle East: Between War and Peace-Process

311

schoolbooks, indirectly financed by EU funds, went on unchecked during his time in office—Palestinian society is a long way from cultural change. In the parliamentary elections in January 2006, the majority of Palestinians opted for Islamist Hamas. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas was then able to forcibly suppress adherents of their rival, Fatah. As a result, the Palestinian territories are sealed off from each other, not only geographically but also politically, ideologically, and economically. Since that time there have been no more elections. In the first decades following its founding, Israel maintained close relations with non-Arab Muslim countries such as Turkey and Iran. Both countries had recognized Israel in 1948, and political, economic, and military cooperation had developed between them. But in the course of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, under the leadership of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, all relations with Israel were broken off. Since the 1980s Iran has been supporting anti-Israeli terrorist groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah; the country is also working on a nuclear program and is openly threatening Israel with annihilation. Under President Recep Erdoğan, who has led Turkey on an autocratic Islamic path, relations have hit a state of severe crisis since his second term of office in 2007. In inflammatory speeches, Erdoğan has equated Zionism with fascism, and he has made approaches to Islamist movements. Bilateral relations between Israel and Turkey are at a new low.

312

Zionism and the State of Israel

Map 3: Israel and occupied Territories (without taking account the geographical changes starting in the 1990s)

12 Democracy under Stress

12

313

Democracy under Stress

For the first quarter of a century after its founding, the spectrum of left-wing parties dominated Israel virtually unchallenged—the social-democrat and socialist parties Mapai and Mapam were viewed as tantamount to state parties. The Histadrut trade union was the largest employer in the country at this time and key sections of the social elite in politics, the economy, and the military were recruited from the kibbutzim. Together with the state-supporting parts of religious orthodoxy, the religion-indifferent social-democrats contributed to that conflict-prone mixture of secular and religious determinants that still characterizes Israel’s society and politics today. Already prior to 1967, politically organized segments of religious orthodoxy succeeded in softening the Western attributes of Israeli society, although they could at most gain the support of fifteen percent of the electorate. This success came from their skill in fulfilling their religion-political interests within the framework of a power- sharing coalition strategy.55 Biblical traditions associated with the term »Eretz Israel,« which suggest a Jewish claim to all of Palestine—including the eastern bank of the Jordan—triggered no more than nostalgic memories in the mainstream Jewish society in the 1950s and early 1960s; imperial ambitions were not part of the picture. Ostracized by the Zionist establishment as the »incarnation of ›Jewish fascism‹,«56 party supporters of the Herut party, led by the later Prime Minister Begin, always made do with less than fourteen percent of the votes of the electorate.57 This power-political structure began to change after the Six-Day War of 1967. The conquest of the West Bank in particular, with the territories of »Judea« and »Samaria« familiar from the Bible, prompted in parts of the Israeli population a »messianic,« nationalistically charged enthusiasm which was to bring a marked change to the political culture of the country. The internal Zionist debate about a legitimation of the Jewish state on religious policy lines was lent a new realpolitisch explosiveness. In the eyes of revisionist and national religious figures, the Hebrew Bible is not a historical and spiritual document of the Jewish people but a binding guide, normative for all areas of life. One of the political consequences of this theologicization of Zionism is that groups such as Gush Emunim58 reference the Bible as a land registry deed for the territorial expansion of Israel.59 The figureheads of the settler movement are recruited from their ranks. Convinced of

55 Cf. Morgenstern, Kampf um den Staat. 56 Cf. Nachum Orland, Israels Revisionisten: Die geistigen Väter Menachem Begins, Politologie/ Soziologie 5, Munich 1978, 110. 57 See the overview of election statistics in Wolffsohn, Israel, 80f. 58 Literally, »Block of the faithful.« 59 See e.g. Num 33:53: »And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have assigned the land to you to possess.« This movement often envisages biblical Israel at its moment of largest territorial expansion.

314

Zionism and the State of Israel

the inability of the Arab side to seek peace, in 1968 Israel began settlement in the occupied territories. While up to the mid-1970s fortified villages were still formed mainly for military and strategic purposes, the Likud Bloc which had come to power under Begin drove the Jewish settlement program forward on a religious and ideological basis, especially in the West Bank. Despite several changes of government and a peace process in the 1990s, which led to partial territorial withdrawals including the evacuation of isolated outposts and settlements, the basic circumstances have still not changed. Those Arabs who did not leave the territory of Israel in 1948 have officially enjoyed the same citizens’ and democratic rights as the Jewish majority population, since the lifting of the military administration in 1966. With the exception of parts of the government coalition under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all of the governments of Israel have emphasized that Arab citizens are integral parts of the multi-cultural and multi-religious society of Israel and that the Israeli state must protect its minorities (a policy grounded in part in the historical experiences of Jews in Europe). Thus, there have always been Arab delegates to the Israeli parliament. However, young Arabs do not have a duty of military service—a »privilege« which takes account of a potential conflict of loyalties but has disadvantages in terms of social and professional career opportunities and claims to state social benefit. Despite the promises of equality and equal rights in Israel’s Declaration of Independence,60 in everyday life Israeli Arabs encounter institutional and individual discrimination, which is an impediment to their integration into society as a whole. Many Arabs identify as Palestinians with an Israeli passport, thereby expressing distance from their Jewish-majority state. Few Arab Israelis see themselves as bridge-builders between Jewish Israelis and Muslim Arabs in the Palestinian Authority areas. As prospects of a two-state solution fade, Israel today stands at a crossroads between democracy and autocracy. Because of relevant demographic trends, in the course of a few decades, integration of the territories conquered in 1967 will either lead to Jewish minority rule over a majority Palestinian population or to a binational community—and thus to the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish democratic state.

13

The Israeli Economic Miracle and the Nuclear Nightmare

Although two-thirds of the country consists of desert and mountains; by the end of the 20th century the immigrant »pioneers« (chaluzim) had rendered one-quarter of the surface useful for agriculture. Difficult geoclimatic and geopolitical conditions compelled the immigrants at an early stage not to count on foreign aid but

60 See above.

13 The Israeli Economic Miracle and the Nuclear Nightmare

315

to rely on their own knowledge, skills, and constant innovation. Israel has long ceased to be the land of oranges and avocados; only a fraction of Israeli exports today consists of agricultural products. Poor in natural resources but rich in flexible human resources, Israel has developed into a global economic center. At the top of the »economic miracle« stands its knowledge-based hi-tech industry with numerous startups in clusters around Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, which form the »Silicon Wadi« of the country. In proportion to population size, no country in the world has more engineers and scientists than Israel. In 2011, the IT company, Apple, opened its first research site outside California, in Herzliya, Israel. Samsung, Google, and Microsoft also founded branches in Israel. Of the goods and services exported in 2016, hi-tech exports alone accounted for 41 billion dollars.61 In 2017 the volume of Israel’s exports exceeded the 100-billion-dollar level for the first time, thanks to soaring hi-tech exports.62 Israel is one of the few states in the world to have a free trade agreement with both the European Union and the United States, as well as with numerous other countries. The United States, China, and Germany are Israel’s most important trading partners. The second Intifada negatively influenced economic growth in Israel for years around the turn of the millennium. But since 2004, the country has managed to regain a foothold in security and the economy—possibly also a result of the controversial barrier that now separates large parts of Israel from the Palestinian territories. Despite the political tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, the economic coordinates have developed better in Israel than in many other regions of the world, even if the collateral damage of the boom such as growing social inequality and corruption prompts social protests from time to time. Since 1966/67, Israel has been a nuclear power, thanks partly to French start-up assistance. Israel’s single nuclear reactor is situated near Dimona, in the Negev desert. It may be presumed that weapons-grade nuclear material is also being produced in the complex, which is well screened off. Officially Israel does not confirm or deny related media and intelligence information.63 Super-modern submarines, which the country has received from Germany in recent years, could also be equipped with nuclear warheads, so as to have a credible deterrent capacity at its disposal. Israel does not see the nuclear arming of India or Pakistan as a danger, as neither the (Hindu) Indians nor the (Muslim) Pakistanis are threatening to destroy Israel. Things are different with regard to the nuclear ambitions of Iran. In Israel’s view,

61 See Globes Publisher Itonut: The Israel Export Institute predicts 6 % export growth in 2017, December 27, 2016. in http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israels-exports-up-3-in-2016-100 1169096. 62 Idem, Israel’s 2017 exports exceed $100b, January 2, 2018. in https://en.globes.co.il/en/ article-israel-2017-exports-exceed-100b-1001217855. 63 Cf. Shavit, My Promised Land, 249–80.

316

Zionism and the State of Israel

Iran itself fuels their fears.64 Since 2002, there have been growing indications that Iran’s nuclear ambitions could also have a military dimension. But it is only since 2011 that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been concerned about Iran’s nuclear efforts. Politicians, military, and secret service people do not doubt the threat from Tehran; however, there is no operational consensus, as to how best to tackle this challenge. In 2015, in a multilateral treaty, the Iranian regime committed itself to accepting controls of its nuclear facilities and to reducing its nuclear capacities in the next ten years. In return, the United States, the EU and other contractual partners agreed to lift sanctions against Iran. Whether this agreement could have provided détente in the region, is a matter of dispute. It is not only the Israelis who see Iran’s new Syrian Lebanese axis of expansion in support of Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Israel as a strategic threat; Iran’s Sunni rivals, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, feel also threatened by Iran and since 2017 have been seeking a rapprochement with Israel. Whether the termination of the agreement by US President Donald Trump will cause more destabilization and nuclear armament in the region or bring chances of a better »nuclear deal« is unclear.

14

Israel’s Image in the World

Perceptions of Israel in the world are highly contradictory. The image of the Jewish state is still marked by both anti-Semitic resentment and defense against the resulting dangers. At the same time, the perception-paradoxes are due to an objectively difficult conflict situation: Israel is the only Western state that is keeping another people under occupation. But Israel is also the only Western state whose existence is under threat.65

Israel is a geopolitical and spiritual center of Jewish existence today—the country is the visible expression of Jewish state sovereignty. Despite all external dangers, Israel is a prosperous democratic state in a region dominated by turmoil, despots, and Islamist militias. Around the world, especially in the United States, but also in other Western countries, in addition to Jewish communities, there are allies on Israel’s side that appreciate the Zionist success story. The United States in particular, but also such countries as today’s Germany, are giving the Jewish state economic and financial assistance, and sometimes also moral and foreign-policy support. 64 »If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.« (Thus Ayatollah and former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in his Al-Quds Day speech of 14 December 2001), http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2001/011214-text.html. 65 Ibid.

15 Future Prospects: Looking Ahead

317

This does not rule out differences with Israel in regard to the settlement policy in the West Bank. Israel’s friends around the world want the country to blossom and flourish side-by-side with the Palestinian neighbors—they work to ensure that the post-Shoah world does all it can to secure the existence of Israel and the Jewish people. Russia, China, India, but also some African and even Arab countries have recently, after decades of distance or even hostility to Israel, have embarked on a course of easing relations with Israel—not least because Israel as a hi-tech superpower with its ambitious technology-based agriculture, and its water management makes it a promising partner for joint development projects. But there are also opposing currents. In significant parts of the Islamic world, in parts of the Western world, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, many people, political and/ or religious groups see Israel as an »outpost of US imperialism« or as an »apartheid state.« In the United Nations and its specialized agencies, a phalanx of Israel-critical and anti-Zionist states has long enjoyed a majority. The UN General Assembly has so far issued more than 200 anti-Israeli resolutions. Hostility to Israel brings together things that do not normally fit—when even proven dictators discover international law or pay attention to human rights. Given resentment that has lasted for millennia, is it any wonder that anti-semitic fury is today directed against the Jewish state? Does the Anti-Semitism of former times have a new label— containing the inscription »criticism of Israel«? With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there is an increase worldwide in those voices laying responsibility for the lack of progress in the negotiations at the door of the Israelis. Anti-Israeli initiatives such as BDS66 call for a comprehensive economic and cultural boycott of the Jewish state. Voices calling »only« for the labeling of products produced in Jewish settlements in the West Bank sound more moderate. What is overlooked here is the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians work in the Jewish settlements, where they earn more than elsewhere in Palestine and would be hit hard by a boycott of their employers. It is not only Israeli critics who accuse the boycotters of double standards, as for example, there are no comparable labeling or boycotting initiatives against Moroccan products from Western Sahara, against Indian products from the Kashmir, or against Chinese products from Tibet. Some observers also ask why only Jewish settlements can represent an impediment to peace, but not the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. One may fairly ask whether Israel’s actions are measured by other and more stringent standards than are internationally customary. Are we confronted again with indications of the continued existence of anti-semitic resentment?

15

Future Prospects: Looking Ahead

The demise of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Syria, and other Muslim-majority neighbors of Israel, which is accompanied in individual regions with symptoms of violent 66 Abbreviation for »Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.«

318

Zionism and the State of Israel

state disintegration, contrasts with the image of the modern Israel as a thriving, if largely isolated and ultimately precarious existence as a »villa in the jungle« (Ehud Barak). A historic compromise between Israelis and Palestinians remains a distant dream. Israel’s borders are neither fixed nor recognized, and its collective selfunderstanding is in a state of limbo. Are perspectives conceivable in which the Israelis and their neighbors enjoy »freedom, justice, and peace in accordance with the visions of the prophets of Israel« as well as »social and political equality«—»without distinction of religion, race, and sex,« as the Israeli Declaration of Independence of 1948 says? »If you wish, it is no legend!« Theodor Herzl would probably have exclaimed. For this »legend« to come true, there is a need on the Israeli, as well as the Palestinian side, for courageous and capable figures, as well as strong international support, supported by trust-building measures. But the violent circumstances in the Middle East and the crisis-ridden upheavals in Europe and the United States do not inspire optimistic scenarios. The dream of an Israel that together with its Arab neighbors becomes an integral component of a European-Mediterranean economic, security, and peace zone will likely for a long time remain a utopian legend. For further reading Brenner, Michael, Israel: Traum und Wirklichkeit des jüdischen Staates: Von Theodor Herzl bis heute. Munich, 2016. Dachs, Gisela, ed., Länderbericht Israel, bpb Schriftenreihe 10000, Bonn, 2016. Flug, Noah and Martin Schäuble, Die Geschichte der Israelis und Palästinenser, München, 2007. Gensicke, Klaus, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten: Eine politische Biografie Amin el-Husseinis, Frankfurt/Main, 1998, repr. Darmstadt, 2007. Glasneck, Johannes and Angelika Timm, Israel: Die Geschichte des Staates seit seiner Gründung. Bonn, 1992. Herzl, Theodor, Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage, Leipzig/Vienna, 1896. Meier-Cronemeyer, Hermann, Geschichte des Staates Israel, vol. 1: Entstehungsgeschichte: Die Zionistische Bewegung, 3rd rev. ed., Schwalbach am Taunus, 1997. Morgenstern, Matthias, ed., Kampf um den Staat: Religion und Nationalismus in Israel, DIAK-Schriftenreihe 18, Frankfurt/Main, 1990. Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Cambridge, 1987. Rubin, Barry, Israel: An Introduction, New Haven/CT/London, 2012. Schreiber, Friedrich and Michael Wolffsohn, Nahost: Geschichte und Struktur des Konflikts, 4th rev. ed., Opladen, 1996. Segev, Tom, 1949: The First Israelis, New York, 1986 (pb 2018). Shavit, Ari, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, New York, 2013. Timm, Angelika, Israel: Gesellschaft im Wandel, Opladen, 2003. Tophoven, Rolf, Der israelisch-arabische Konflikt, 5th updated ed., Bonn, 1999. Wolffsohn, Michael, Israel: Geschichte – Wirtschaft – Gesellschaft – Politik, Grundwissen Länderkunde, Opladen, 3rd ed., 1991.

Judaism in America Deborah Dash Moore

Historians usually begin their account of Judaism in America in the fall of 1654 when a group of twenty-three Jewish refugees from Recife, Brazil disembarked at the foot of Manhattan island. There is good reason to start an historical narrative with this group of men, women, and children, although they were not the first Jews to come to New Amsterdam. Earlier that year, several Jewish merchants entered the modest seaport. Motivated by both commerce and a messianism that was sweeping the Jewish world in the mid-17th century, they sought to establish a Jewish presence in what they viewed as one of the four corners of the earth. They hoped for fulfillment of messianic prophecies that would return Jews to the land of Israel. The saga of twenty-three refugees attracted historians for several reasons. First, they came as family members: men, women, and children. Their arrival thus anticipated the family character of Jewish immigration in future centuries. Second, they constituted a visible Jewish community by virtue of their numbers. Indeed, shortly after they disembarked, they observed the Jewish new year (Rosh Hashanah), another sign of their collective presence as Jews. Third, due to complicated circumstances, they accepted help from local Christians and fellow Jews in New Amsterdam to pay for their passage. Fourth, their needs precipitated a response by the governor of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant (1612–1672). Stuyvesant immediately sought permission from his employers at the Dutch West India Company to eject the newcomers on religious grounds. He wrote to his superiors that the struggling colony could ill afford to make room for Jews, members of a »deceitful race.« Finally, fifth, Stuyvesant’s efforts to expel these refugees, who wanted to remain, prompted the Jewish merchants to write to their friends in Amsterdam who also served on the board of the Dutch West India Company. In this instance, their connections blunted the thrust of Stuyvesant’s anti-Judaism. He received orders that these Jews were to be allowed to dwell in the colony, that they could live and trade where they wished, just as other members of their nation did in Amsterdam. The only restriction placed upon them was that »they were not to become a public charge.« While sympathetic to Stuyvesant’s dislike of Jews, the company officers weighed these sentiments against the contributions of Portuguese Hebrews in defending the Dutch city of Recife as well as their financial stake in the company.1

1 For a detailed account see Deborah Dash Moore et. al., Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People, New York, 2017, 11–16, 14f.

320

Judaism in America

So while 1654 is an excellent starting point for a history of American Judaism, a significant backstory lurks behind this date. Indeed, it requires an explanation of what Jews were doing in Recife, a Dutch port in northern Brazil. Jews from Amsterdam had migrated there in order to enter the sugar trade. They constituted roughly half of the town’s white population. Jews built a synagogue in Recife, imported a distinguished rabbi from Amsterdam, and flourished for several decades. War with Portugal and the city’s capture sent most of these Jews fleeing either back to Amsterdam or to one of the Dutch Caribbean islands. Yet the story of Recife doesn’t quite explain the different language used by Stuyvesant and his superiors to describe the refugees. Stuyvesant employed the language of race; the Dutch West India company referred to Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, a phrasing that identified these Jews as members of a religious and national group. They were, in fact, Sephardic Jews, descendants of Iberian Jews who fled Spain (1492) and Portugal (1497) rather than convert to Catholicism. Some descended from conversos, men and women who did convert but retained a secret Jewish identity. When the Netherlands revolted from Spain and became a Protestant country, conversos living in Amsterdam discovered that they suffered less discrimination as Jews than as Catholics. Sephardic Jews became a significant minority in the Dutch republic during the seventeenth century, prospering in trade. In many ways the beginnings of American Judaism might be traced to the fateful year of 1492, the year of expulsion and of Columbus’s journey. Although Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) could not anticipate the conjunction of his voyage of discovery with the transformation of the Jewish world, historians of American Judaism recognize an important conjunction of events. While most Jews left New Amsterdam well before 1664, when the British took over the seaport they called New York, Asher and Miriam Levy stayed. Asher Levy, a butcher, continued the fight for recognition and rights, setting important precedents subsequently accepted by the British. Levy won the right to stand guard rather than paying a tax that relieved him of that duty. Even though his fellow Christian burghers didn’t really care to have a Jew as part of the militia, they acceded to the decisions of the Dutch West India Company. Jews also secured rights to worship privately and to purchase property, civic rights they possessed in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, rights did not provide a livelihood, so most Jews left for more promising port cities in North America, notably Charleston and Newport. New York did not have a Jewish cemetery until 1683, a sign of how long it took before a small functioning community was established. Still, New York Jews inaugurated key features of a colonial Judaism that exerted influence on Jews throughout North America. As the seaport flourished under British colonialism, its population grew, including its Jewish population. Before the seventeenth century ended, they had created the first synagogue in North America. Shearith Israel [Remnant of Israel], expressed in its name messianic desires. Its first building on Mill Street stood by a stream to facilitate mikveh (ritual bath) observance by married women. On the New Year holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the synagogue attracted Jews from throughout the Atlantic seaboard. Although the congregation followed Sephardic ritual practices, its members included substantial numbers of Ashkenazi Jews. The

Judaism in America

321

latter hailed from German and Polish lands. Unlike Sephardic Jews who spoke Ladino, a Jewish language reflecting their Spanish past, Ashkenazi Jews spoke Yiddish, a Jewish language that drew upon German and Slavic elements. Bitter disputes regularly disrupted congregational comity even as intermarriage between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews gradually cemented communal bonds with family ties. A small and contentious community, Shearith Israel possessed too few honors available to mollify its most prosperous members’ ambitions. The congregation assumed responsibility for almost all communal aspects of Jewish life: education, provision of kosher food, circumcision, burial, and marriages. It cared for the poor and widowed. Such charitable disbursements often consumed half of its modest budget. In 1768 Shearith Israel hired its first native-born religious leader, Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745–1816). This decision announced the accomplishment of local Jews in educating one of their own, despite modest resources. Seixas embraced his position as hazzan (congregational leader) with enthusiasm. On the eve of the Revolution he prayed for King George III not to push the colonists into war. But when war came, he joined the revolutionaries. As the British occupied New York in the summer of 1776, Seixas and most of the members of Shearith Israel, fled. Seixas carried most of the Torah scrolls with him, a symbolic gesture that suggested the exile not just of New York Jews but also of their religious community. Eventually, he relocated to Philadelphia, as did other former congregants. They joined Mishkan Israel, Philadelphia’s congregation, and immediately began to remake it in New York’s image. They raised funds for a synagogue building and hired Seixas as hazzan to lead the congregation. When peace was declared in 1783, many New Yorkers returned to the city and their former congregation, enticing Seixas back to his previous post with a generous salary that placed him firmly in the middle class. The revolutionary war years extended New York’s influence on the new nation. In 1777, New York State became the first state to grant Jews complete political and religious equality. John Jay (1745–1821), future chief justice of the Supreme Court, lauded Jews and urged fellow members of New York’s constitutional convention to resemble them. Jews, claimed Jay, resisted tyranny and always fought for freedom. But none of the other twelve states followed New York’s lead; they all retained religious restrictions either on voting or holding office or both. The revolution, however, empowered Jews, who demanded their rights as Americans. They petitioned, albeit unsuccessfully, to obtain rights from Pennsylvania and they requested that the Constitutional Convention meeting in Philadelphia eliminate any religious tests for office. When George Washington (1732–1799) was elected president, Jews in Newport sent him a letter, praising him and describing the new United States of America as a country that gives »to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.« Washington reiterated the same language in his reply, an important presidential imprimatur. Then he added: The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

322

Judaism in America

He went on to refer to Jews as »children of the stock of Abraham« and expressed the hope that »every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid,« a biblical phrase.2 Washington’s language and adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights with its articulation of religious freedom effectively emancipated Jews in the United States. European Jewish men who immigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century exchanged their restricted political status for that of unencumbered free men. Jewish women remained unemancipated, like other women.

1

A Revolution in American Judaism

During the early republic, Charleston, South Carolina attracted the largest concentration of Jews in North America. Charleston Jews, like New York Jews of the colonial era, initiated important innovations. In this southern city, African American slaves constituted more than half of the total population. At close to five percent of the white population, Jews possessed a significance lacking among the more religiously and ethnically varied residents of New York and Philadelphia. As in these other cities, however, Jews participated actively in Charleston’s society and economy. Charleston’s Jews received the vote and ran for office. Several achieved renown as patriots who died for the revolutionary cause. In 1794, with the city’s economy booming, Jews built a synagogue, Congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (Holy Congregation House of God or KKBE), that expressed their communal presence. Unlike Newport’s modest synagogue that resembled a prosperous colonial house and blended unobtrusively into the town, KKBE’s building boasted a steeple. With this design, KKBE joined Charleston’s religious landscape, resembling a more modest version of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, which dominated the city’s skyline. In yet another sign of Jewish integration into Charleston’s white Christian society, Jews organized a Hebrew Orphan Asylum in 1801. The first such Jewish institution in the U.S., it adopted a Christian model that Charleston Jews admired and knew. Jewish self-confidence also registered in a remonstrance sent to the governor of South Carolina protesting his proclamation of a day of Thanksgiving for »all Christian denominations.« The governor apologized in recognition of Charleston’s Jewish community3. Then, in 1824, a group of young men, members of KKBE, petitioned its leaders for changes in worship. They requested shorter services, explanations of Hebrew prayers, a sermon in English, more decorum in the synagogue, and an end to

2 George Washington, »From George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 18 August 1790,« Founders Online (18 August 1790): https://founders.ar chives.gov/documents/Washington/05–06–02–0135 (6 May 2019). 3 Deborah Dash Moore, »Freedom’s Fruits: The Americanization of an Old-time Religion,« in A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life, ed. Theodore Rosengarten and Dale Rosengarten, Columbia/SC, 2002, 11.

1 A Revolution in American Judaism

323

bidding for the honor of being called to the Torah. Their requests reflected a mix of discomfort in services, which often lasted hours, as well as some knowledge of Protestant liturgical practices. Their desire for sermons in English and explanations of Hebrew prayers indicated both an admitted lack of Judaic knowledge and hopes for learning Jewish ritual. The appeal for decorum registered the young men’s discomfort at services where every worshipper prayed at his own pace rather than the entire congregation saying the same prayers in unison. Although churches solicited money at services, competitive bidding for Torah honors appeared an unseemly means of raising funds in the petitioners’ eyes. Despite the fact that many of these petitioners were their sons (or perhaps because they were their sons), the leaders of KKBE rejected their requests. In response, the young men, joined by young women, established a Reformed Society of Israelites. Although they began modestly, meeting only monthly to hear an edifying lecture, they soon became more ambitious. Rather than just focus on the character of Sabbath services, they also challenged Jewish religious practices. They introduced mixed voices, male and female, in choral singing and added musical accompaniment. They produced a revised prayer book. They gave women a voice in wedding ceremonies and created a new ritual to welcome baby girls to the covenant. Penina Moise (1797–1880), sister of one of the organizers and a poet, wrote hymns for Sabbath services. Subsequently her poems were featured in a new reformed prayer book.4 This revolt of sons against their fathers occurred as slave unrest produced a defensive posture by Christian white society. Support for a multicultural and multireligious society in the city declined. Simultaneously, Jews faced economic hurdles as Charleston encountered competition from such other port cities as Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. The young men who challenged KKBE stood on the margins of the community, neither wealthy nor Jewishly educated. They turned to KKBE and their »fellow« Jews in part because they felt increasingly isolated from white Christians, even though they modeled their Reform Society on Christian »religious« societies. Their experiment lasted until 1838 when the men who remained in the city (many had left for more promising towns) rejoined KKBE. When KKBE’s synagogue burned that year, construction of a new one allowed the congregation to modify its practices. Reform took hold under rabbinic leadership. Gustavus Posnanski (c. 1805–1879), chosen as rabbi of KKBE, declared at the dedication of its new temple in 1841: This synagogue is our temple, this city our Jerusalem, this happy land our Palestine, and as our fathers defended with their lives that temple, that city, and that land, so will their sons defend this temple, this city, and this land.5

A bold statement, it anticipated the thrust of religious reformation of Judaism in America that gathered momentum as the century progressed.

4 Moore, »Freedom’s Fruits,« 13–17. 5 Quoted in Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, New York, 1988, 234.

324

Judaism in America

But by the 1840s, creation of an American Judaism had shifted away from Charleston. A rapid increase in Jewish immigration in the 1840s and 1850s irrevocably changed the direction and character of Judaism in America. Migration transplanted clusters of Jews from diverse German towns, who regrouped in such cities as Cleveland and Atlanta, Rochester and St. Louis, Cincinnati and Chicago. Dispersion strengthened the voluntary structure of Jewish communal life, making it dependent on individual initiative, as for example, in New Orleans. Its first congregation was established when Jacob Solis traveled from New York to New Orleans on an extended business trip in 1827. While a revolt of sons against fathers animated the initial crisis over reform in Charleston, different conflicts spurred future developments in Jewish religious life. In 1825, one year after Charleston Jews formed the Reformed Society of Israelites, dissident Jewish immigrants in New York walked out of New York’s only synagogue, Shearith Israel, and established another one, B’nai Jeshurun. Theirs was a revolt of newcomers against old-timers, immigrants against natives, workers against merchants: a revolt based on class, status, and foreignness, not over how to practice Judaism. But the creation of a second, competing synagogue decisively ruptured the unity of community and synagogue. Democracy in Jewish life meant the freedom to form a congregation (only ten men needed, the quorum for a minyan), to incorporate and acquire legal status, and to practice Jewish ritual as desired. Democracy subsequently also came to mean that men and women could create Jewish alternatives to the synagogue and new ways of being Jewish in America. Soon religious and ethnic innovations multiplied. In America, one could be a Jew and not go to synagogue, not pray three times a day, not observe kosher laws. Choice in religious practices and beliefs co-existed with ongoing possibilities of belonging to a Jewish collectivity, as Jews increasingly organized many aspects of Jewish life apart from any congregational authority. Each area of Jewish life once under Shearith Israel’s control—from education to poor relief, marriage to burial, kosher food to circumcision—gradually succumbed to new Jewish initiatives. Congregations competed with each other for members. In the 1840s and 1850s, New York City alone saw an average of one new congregation organized per year. Capitalism also disrupted communal cohesiveness and introduced elements of competition for patronage by individual Jews, especially visible in the increasing number of kosher butchers unaffiliated with congregations. Women discovered that they, too, could participate in shaping American Judaism. Jewish women adapted Christian models of religious organizing. Rebecca Gratz (1781–1869), a wealthy Philadelphia woman who never married, created multiple organizations that inspired emulation. A pioneer Jewish charitable worker and religious educator, Gratz established and led America’s first independent Jewish women’s charitable society, the first Jewish Sunday school, the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum, and the first Jewish Foster Home in Philadelphia. Worried about Christian evangelists’ deployment of charity to win souls, she mobilized the women of her congregation, Mikveh Israel, to form a non-congregational free-standing Female Hebrew Benevolent Society (FHBS) in 1819. The group assisted Jewish women and children, and endured as an independent organization until the late twentieth century.

1 A Revolution in American Judaism

325

In 1838 Gratz recruited other women to join her as teachers in the Hebrew Sunday School. Together they fashioned primers for the children, both boys and girls, by pasting over inappropriate material in Christian catechisms. Like the FHBS, the Hebrew Sunday School endured as an independent institution. Devoted to Judaism and to her religious leader, Isaac Leeser (1806–1868), hazzan of Mikveh Israel, Gratz seemed unaware of how radical her efforts were to teach children Judaism. Although Jewish men had developed extensive educational networks of schools, all of them focused on boys and none of them included women as teachers. Both the Sunday School and the Benevolent Society inspired imitation.6 Gratz loathed Judaism’s nascent Reform movement, believing that Jews needed to become more religiously knowledgeable and observant to gain the respect of their Christian fellow Americans, but other Jewish women embraced religious participation offered by Reform. Reformers challenged traditional understandings of women’s roles in Judaism and championed gender equality. Most Reform Jewish rabbis did not advocate equal rights and suffrage for women, but they did abolish separate seating in the synagogue, interpreted as a mark of Jewish women’s inferior status. Mixed or family pews signified an important change in Judaism, distinguishing Reform in the U.S. from its liberal counterparts in Western Europe. Encouraged to occupy pews with their husbands and sons, women soon developed patterns of synagogue attendance. As Central European Jewish immigrants achieved socioeconomic security and success, many of them in merchandizing and retail, they joined congregations, or »temples« as Reform synagogues were often called, to mark their respectability. But pressures of a six-day work week, with Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, often the busiest day for merchants, prevented Jewish men from attending services. Increasingly, they left that responsibility to their wives, who adopted prevalent American Christian patterns of participation by women in religious life. These shifting gendered expectations shaped Judaism in America and contributed to liturgical changes, such as eliminating Hebrew prayers.7 As Jews transformed their religious identity in the United States, mobility and voluntarism undermined assumptions of the importance of religious belief and practice. Yet voluntarism also energized Jews to fashion new ways to bind Jews together, as happened one Sunday in October of 1843. That day, after the autumn holy days, a small group of men congregated at a favorite meeting place, Isaac Sinsheimer’s saloon in lower Manhattan. Talk turned to the internecine debates that characterized congregational life, especially among the leadership. By contrast, the fellowship the men enjoyed as members of a nonsectarian fraternal society like the Freemasons or Odd Fellows seemed notably free of conflict. Why not create a Jewish version of this non-sectarian fraternalism,

6 On Rebecca Gratz see Dianne Ashton, Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America, Detroit/MI, 1998. 7 See Karla Goldman, Beyond the synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism, Cambridge/MA, 2000.

326

Judaism in America

where debates over religion would be out of bounds, where shared Jewish fraternal values would reign? The Independent Order of B’nai B’rith [Sons of the Covenant] emerged from this Sunday saloon gathering. It soon exemplified the intriguing power of democratic initiatives as it spread beyond New York to other cities in the U.S. The men who established B’nai B’rith imagined the lodge room as a modern version of the synagogue: a homosocial space where Jewish men could meet, share news, find friendship and succor in times of trouble. Membership in B’nai B’rith enticed men with medical benefits as well as life insurance and a stipend for widows and burial costs. B’nai B’rith members embraced learning and self-improvement. The fraternal order sponsored a lending library, and eventually built Maimonides Hall for lectures, concerts, and other performances. Like congregations, lodges accepted responsibility for charity, but unlike most congregations, B’nai B’rith lodges regularly raised funds to help other non-Jewish Americans who suffered from natural catastrophes such as fires and floods. Their philanthropy extended beyond assistance for Jewish orphans and the elderly. The order grew rapidly, establishing lodges outside of the United States in Germany, Austria, and Palestine, in the 1870s and 1880s. B’nai B’rith was one of the first innovations by American Jews exported back to Europe.8 The congregational conflict the men of B’nai B’rith sought to avoid did not cease; but new allegiances developed as more rabbis immigrated. Despite their positions as paid employees of congregations, rabbis gradually steered their congregants toward liturgical reforms. Many Jews contributed funds to build new synagogues in cities across the United States. The most distinctive ones featured a Moorish style, chosen for its singularity relative to American churches. The look of these synagogues, gesturing to mosque-like minaret spires and bulbous cupolas, proclaimed simultaneously the arrival and respectability of Jews on the streets of American cities. Christians tolerance of Jewish difference as a feature of America’s urban fabric enabled construction of these synagogue buildings. Perhaps no city broadcast this message of Christian-Jewish accommodation and equality more strongly than Cincinnati. There, at the corner of Plum and 8th Street, a visitor could marvel at the physical fruits of American democracy and religious freedom. On one corner stood City Hall, representing civic democracy; on another loomed the huge, Catholic Cathedral, St. Peter in Chains; down the street rose the elegant Protestant Episcopal Church; while the Moorish-style Plum Street Temple, a prominent Reform Jewish synagogue led by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900), occupied another corner. Christian visitors who entered the distinctive Plum Street Temple discovered a space far more familiar than earlier colonial synagogues despite its exuberant external difference from churches. Colonial synagogues featured a balcony for women, an ark to hold the Torah scrolls at one end of the room and a platform (bima) to read them in the middle of the room. Benches for men flanked three sides of 8 See Deborah Dash Moore, B’nai B’rith and the Challenge of Ethnic Leadership, Albany/NY, 1981.

2 Conflict and Competition

327

the platform. By contrast, Plum Street Temple oriented all of the seats, theaterstyle, facing forward toward the ark. The rabbi stood in front of the ark, basking in its aura. The Torah scroll was placed on a table in front of the ark when it was read. Men and women sat together in family pews. An organ provided music along with a choir of mixed voices of men and women. Brilliantly painted designs ornamented the arched ceiling, from which multiple hanging candelabras illuminated the space. Worshippers prayed in unison, rather than at their own pace. Few wore any religiously distinctive garb. Most Reform Jews discarded both the prayer shawl (tallit) and head covering (kippah) that traditionally set Jews apart from Christians during religious services.

2

Conflict and Competition

American Jews struggled against disruptive forces, both Jewish and American. The Civil War produced fratricidal conflict among Jews as it did among all Americans. Jewish loyalties to the Union or the Confederacy outweighed solidarities with other Jews, foreshadowing similar battles in Europe during World War I. Anti-Jewish prejudice flourished during the Civil War, with Jews accused of profiting from mobilization. General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) expelled Jews as a class from the area under his command. Although Jews quickly secured President Abraham Lincoln’s countermanding of the order, the incident revealed the pervasiveness of anti-Jewish assumptions. In these years Americans vilified Jews far less than they did Irish immigrants, but Christians repeatedly sought to convert Jews. Ongoing Jewish immigration shifted from Central to Eastern Europe in the decades after the Civil War making American Jews even more diverse. Institutional innovation repeatedly fractured Jewish communal bonds as Jews emulated aspects of Christian religious organizations. For example, Jews established Young Men’s Hebrew Associations (YMHA). B’nai B’rith enjoyed only a few years as the sole Jewish fraternal order before it faced competition from other fraternal societies. Charitable activities stimulated organizational initiative. Gradually, some aid organizations joined forces to create associated charities that cooperated in fundraising. These combined philanthropies or federations of charitable societies connected Jews based on class rather than religious affiliation. As more congregations adopted reforms designed to modernize their religious worship, rabbis tried to coordinate these efforts. They aimed to unite reform congregations into a union and to articulate an American mode of prayer that would overcome different practices among Central European immigrants. Reform rabbis even thought to establish a rabbinical seminary to train a native-born generation as future congregational leaders. In 1873 Reform leaders established the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) with wide support across the United States. Coming less than a decade after the Civil War ended, the UAHC helped heal painful divisions inflicted on Jews by that fraternal conflict. Two years later, Isaac Mayer Wise established the Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Cincinnati to train rabbis. But at the 1883 celebration banquet honoring the first graduates, seafood

328

Judaism in America

was served, infuriating several rabbis who stormed out of the fancy catering hall. Dubbed »the trefa banquet« (unfit banquet), the violation of kosher practices reflected ignorance on the part of the caterers, who had been careful to exclude pork and didn’t realize that seafood was also not kosher. Wise, who may not have known particulars of the menu before the event, subsequently championed the rejection of kosher food as part of new American reforms.9 Wise’s combative stance regarding the banquet made it clear that his movement would promulgate an American-style denominationalism. Subsequently, practice and ideology sharply separated American Reform Judaism from a range of traditional Jewish religious institutions. Provoked, rabbis committed to Jewish traditional practices challenged the reformers. In 1884 Alexander Kohut (1842–1894) came from Hungary to serve as rabbi of New York’s Ahawath Chesed (later known as Central synagogue). He guided his new congregants away from Reform toward a moderate traditional path. Kohut subsequently joined with other traditional rabbis to establish the predecessor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), which would become the flagship institution shaping Conservative Judaism in America. In 1885 Reform Rabbi Kaufman Kohler (1843–1926) invited other Reform rabbis to craft a statement of principles after his series of vigorous debates with Rabbi Alexander Kohut in New York. Over the course of four days in November 1885, a small rabbinic conclave articulated eight principles to guide the Reform movement in Judaism. Known as the Pittsburgh Platform, it claimed for Judaism the honor of introducing, defending, and holding fast to »the highest conception of the Godidea.« Ethical monotheism guided Judaism in the past and continued to define Judaism in the present. However, what was appropriate in Biblical or Talmudic times, no longer necessarily needed to be observed. The Pittsburgh Platform specifically disavowed rules of kosher food, priestly purity and dress. It acknowledged »as binding« only the Bible’s »moral laws.« Its eighth principle specifically affirmed »our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.« Recognizing Judaism as a »progressive religion,« evolving in the current era of »universal culture,« the rabbis extended a hand of fellowship to Christians and Muslims. The platform envisioned messianism as the establishment of justice and truth among all. However, Reformers decisively rejected the idea of Jews as a nation. The Pittsburgh Platform consolidated a major segment of American Jews, mostly prosperous Central European Jews.10 Promulgation of the Pittsburgh Platform incited those who rejected its principles, primarily Eastern European Jews, to organize alternative religious positions within American congregational contexts. Two years after Pittsburgh, traditionalist

9 Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History, New Haven/CT, 2004, 144–51, has a good account of the »trefa« banquet and its implications. 10 Mitchell G. Bard, »Reform Judaism: The Pittsburgh Platform,« January 2016, https://www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-pittsburgh-platform (14 May 2019).

3 Americanizing Jewish Culture: Capitalism and Gender

329

New York Jewish lay leaders of fourteen congregations on the Lower East Side of Manhattan banded together to bring a distinguished Vilna rabbi, Jacob Joseph (1840–1902), to New York as the city’s »Chief Rabbi.« These prosperous Ashkenazi immigrants drew upon a form of rabbinic leadership known to them from Russia. Unlike rabbis in the U.S., who were paid employees of congregations which they served exclusively, Rabbi Jacob Joseph assumed responsibility for broad Jewish communal needs, especially the supervision of a chaotic, rapidly expanding kosher meat industry. However, on the American, not the European model, he received his salary from lay leaders, not from the state. The men who sponsored Rabbi Joseph hoped he would bring prestige to traditional Judaism in New York City, inspiring immigrant Jews to practice Judaism and observe the Sabbath, which most immigrants neglected due to pressures to earn a livelihood. However, although they could import the rabbi and offer him a handsome salary, they could not import Eastern European communal structures.11

This became apparent when the leaders decided to tax kosher meat, a standard practice in Eastern Europe, to raise funds to pay Rabbi Joseph’s salary. The plan backfired. Immigrant Jews protested vigorously. They had hated the tax in Europe and fought its return in New York. A spirit of competition soared. Rival rabbis began to dub themselves »chief rabbi.« Any hopes for an Orthodox communal structure in New York evaporated. However, Orthodox Jewish immigrants succeeded in establishing Yeshiva Etz Chaim (Tree of Life, an elementary school) and a rabbinical training school, Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elchanan (later Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Rabbinical Seminary). Both laid the foundation for the institutionalization and growth of Modern Orthodox Judaism in America. In 1896, the formation of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations presaged an alternative form of cooperation among traditionally religious Jews, who were coming to be known as Orthodox Jews.

3

Americanizing Jewish Culture: Capitalism and Gender

Ironically, Rabbi Joseph achieved his greatest influence upon his death. His funeral lured tens of thousands of mourners onto the streets of Manhattan, inaugurating public »rites of community« among Jews in New York. The honor that diffidently religious Jewish immigrants refused him in life, they bestowed upon him in death. The funeral procession announced a civic dimension for American Judaism. This aspect of identity among Jewish Americans was no longer confined to synagogue observances or private practices at home. »Public funerals, viewed as communal 11 Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840–1920, New York, 2012, 94.

330

Judaism in America

observances, were rituals of collective affirmation. They extended the boundaries of private grief and adoration—and often guilt—to embrace the kinship of community,« writes historian Arthur Goren.12 Such sacred customs were often supplemented by American expressions of honor, such as the sale of photographs of the deceased along the streets of the funeral procession. The rise of Jewish public funerals accompanied the unavoidable commercialization of Jewish deaths. Urban growth necessitated hired transportation to reach cemeteries. Communal practices that had taken care of interment through the hevre kadisha (holy association) struggled to keep up with a burgeoning Jewish population. In conjunction with Jewish delivery drivers, who carried bodies across the city to Jewish cemeteries for burial, other American jobs, such as undertakers, gradually expanded their activities into funeral parlor businesses serving Jewish families. They handled municipal details regarding a death and Jewish requisites of purifying and preparing the body for burial. By 1900, Jews could bypass synagogue, hevre kadisha, or even fraternal lodge, and go directly to a funeral director who would provide needed services, arrange for purchase of a burial plot, and secure ministrations of a rabbi or cantor for the funeral. Handling Jewish deaths became a business in America, largely modeled on Christian funeral homes.13 Religious services may have been under the authority of male rabbis, but as a native-born generation of American Jewish women matured, they initiated new modes of Jewish activism separate from congregational and male auspices. With excitement brewing around the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Hannah Greenberg Solomon (1858–1942) agreed to organize Jewish women for the fair. She chose to do so under the auspices of the World Parliament of Religions not the Women’s Pavillion. A feminist, she thought it crucial that Judaism be represented not only by men. When the rabbis refused to accommodate women on their program, Solomon recruited women for a separate Jewish Women’s Congress. Women packed the hall to hear other women speak about Judaism. It was exhilarating. »Friends, a great opportunity is ours,« declaimed Sadie American (1862–1944) on the last day of the Congress. »Let us understand it. Let us live up to it. Others have died for Judaism—let us live for it, a harder task.« Emboldened by the heady experience, Solomon took the gavel and turned the last session into a business meeting. Inspired by American’s rhetoric, »let us be the first to do and to dare,« the women created the first national Jewish women’s organization in the world.14 The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) embodied a newly politicized conscience among American-born Jewish women who possessed the means and education to organize. They drew upon experiences of club women in such cities as Chicago and

12 Arthur A. Goren, »The Rites of Community,« in idem, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews, Bloomington/IN, 2000, 49. 13 Arthur A. Goren, »Traditional Institutions Transplanted: The Hevra Kadisha in Europe and America,« in The Jews of North America, ed. Moses Rischin, Detroit/MI, 1987, 62–78. 14 Faith Rogow, »Gone to Another Meeting«: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893–1993, Tuscaloosa/AL, 1993, 9–23, 22.

3 Americanizing Jewish Culture: Capitalism and Gender

331

quickly recruited thousands. Like the B’nai B’rith, which refused to accept women in those years, NCJW encouraged homosocial bonds to motivate women’s activism. They also modified popular American practices, such as literary circles, into a means to educate their members. Although NCJW began with study circles that aimed to compensate for women’s lack of opportunity to attend college, it soon shifted to political action on behalf of female Jewish immigrants. Members became outspoken advocates of single Jewish women traveling alone and staunch opponents of the white slave trade. When Jewish men would not address the role of Jews as pimps and procurers of Jewish women, the NCJW stepped forward to place the issue on the Jewish communal agenda. NCJW espoused a pluralist vision of Judaism and accepted responsibility for passing a Jewish heritage to the next generation. Christian America had long viewed religion as the domain of women led by men. NCJW shared this perspective and initiated a process of change in »proper« gender roles for Jews that »included a new vision of women as active public participants in their religion and their communities.«15 By the 1920s, NCJW had introduced »Council Sabbaths« at countless Reform synagogues across the country. Once a year, Jewish women ascended to the bima, a place of prominence before the ark, and led services that included tributes to the Council’s work. Often these sabbaths represented the only time women could exercise a leadership role in the synagogue. NCJW also worked outside of the synagogue. Its members encouraged transmission of contraceptive knowledge, helping married Jewish women control how many children they wanted. Their understanding of reproductive rights »embodied personal politics.«16 Here was a new American Judaism indeed! The NCJW helped swelling numbers of immigrant women from the Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires and from Romania. Approximately two and a half million Jews immigrated until 1924, when Congress restricted immigration of Jews and Italians. Over eighty-five percent of Jewish immigrants entered via New York harbor. After 1886, arriving immigrants could view the Statue of Liberty, a French gift to the United States on its centennial. The poem on its base welcomed immigrants. Written by the Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887), »The New Colossus« gave fresh meaning to the French statue as, in the poem’s words, a »Mother of Exiles.« »Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,« wrote Lazarus. »Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.«17 A life-long New Yorker, Lazarus descended from an old Sephardic family with American roots from the eighteenth century. She meant what she wrote in her

15 Faith Rogow, »National Council of Jewish Women,« in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, 20 March 2009, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/national-council-ofjewish-women (Jan 8, 2019). 16 Melissa R. Klapper, Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890–1940, New York, 2013, 11. 17 Emma Lazarus, »The New Colossus,« (November 1883), https://www.libertyellisfounda tion.org/the-new-colossus (8 May 2019).

332

Judaism in America

poem. She had gone downtown to Castle Garden at the foot of Manhattan where immigrants entered the U.S. to see the most recent arrivals. Moved by the plight of Russian Jews, especially after hearing news of violent pogroms, Lazarus imagined all immigrants in their likeness as homeless. Most immigrants were not homeless; many Italians, for example, planned to work for several years before returning home. But Jewish immigrants did not intend to return to Europe. Men, women, and children migrated, yet another wave of diaspora Jews, some fleeing violence, some seeking opportunities. Jewish religious tradition interpreted their condition not merely as dispersion, but as exile. As such, it was exile from exile. Lazarus dubbed New York the »golden door.« The city, her city, promised Jewish newcomers unprecedented opportunities. Roughly seventy-five percent of Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York harbor chose to stay in the city. Most made their way to the Lower East Side of Manhattan. By 1890, the immigrant neighborhood sweated humanity. With over 300,000 crammed into brick tenements, the population density rivaled Bombay. New York City was growing at a breakneck pace. It became the largest city in the United States, far surpassing its closest rival, Chicago. At the same time, New York became the largest Jewish city in the world, overshadowing Warsaw, its closest competitor. Over a million Jews lived in New York by 1920, and almost 2 million by 1940. At the outbreak of World War II, Jews were the largest single ethnic group in the city, roughly thirty percent of the population; but Catholics were the largest religious group. New York Jews dominated American Jews. With approximately forty percent of the American Jewish population, they established New York as the United States’ Jewish and Judaic capital city. Immigrant Jews transformed the city even as it changed them into a contentious working class. The diversity of Jewish immigrants produced alternative modes of organization. Jews formed landsmanshaftn, associations of fellow immigrants from the same home towns. Many embraced socialism, seeing it as akin to an alternative religion that espoused equality and justice as it rejected capitalist exploitation. When Jewish cloak makers walked out in July 1910 on a general strike, a union organizer recalled, »In my mind I could only picture to myself such a scene taking place when the Jews were led out of Egypt.«18 Seeking fellowship, Jewish socialists established the Workmen’s Circle, a fraternal order. Seeking fair wages and just working conditions, they started garment workers’ unions. Both forms of organization helped Jewish immigrants pursue an Americanism that accepted Jews and rejected prejudice and discrimination. In an American context, even Zionism, an ideology associated with rescuing diaspora Jews and rebuilding the land of Israel, acquired progressive attributes. When Henrietta Szold (1860–1945) organized the first group of women into Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization, she fostered a commitment to progressive American principles of equality, irrespective of race or religion.

18 Abraham Rosenberg quoted in Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made, New York, 1976, 301.

4 Jewish Communal Organizations

4

333

Jewish Communal Organizations

New York attracted not just hundreds of thousands of immigrants; it also drew second-generation children of immigrants from across the country. They settled in the city, many excited by opportunities to define a new American Judaism. Prior to World War I, a cluster of men and women gathered to experiment with forms of religious leadership that would unite the masses with the classes. Aware that »no era in Jewish history exceeds the present in importance and solemnity«, and convinced that »to play a proper role therein is a high privilege and a higher duty,« they resolved to develop fresh strategies to coopt immigrants through new communal organizations and advance the cause of Judaism in America.19 Anticipating the transfer of Judaism’s center of gravity from Europe to the United States, they sought to foster a broad religious consensus as an alternative to religious denominationalism. Despite extraordinarily diverse backgrounds and varied ideological commitments, they cooperated in building schools, settlement houses, modern synagogues, and Jewish communal organizations. In the process they challenged older Jewish organizations—the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the B’nai B’rith in Chicago, the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia. The absence of a national Jewish organization that could provide leadership for American Jews and speak on their behalf to Congress and the President, especially on matters involving Jews abroad, rankled a cohort of prominent, wealthy Jewish New Yorkers. Violence against Jews in Russia, especially in the wake of the 1905 Revolution, sharpened their resolve to act. Meeting on November 1906, they formalized their commitment and concern. They called their group, American Jewish Committee (AJC), dedicated to »prevent infringement of the civil and religious rights of Jews and to alleviate the consequences of persecution.« In 1912 the lawyer, Louis Marshall (1856–1929), who had married into a circle of prosperous Central European Jews, became president. Under Marshall’s guidance, which lasted until his death, the AJC achieved ever greater prominence. So much so that American Jews joked they lived under »Marshall Law.« The AJC provided an alternative form of Jewish leadership to rabbis. It derived its prominence from the men associated with it and their ability to speak with politically influential figures in the United States20. The B’nai B’rith responded with several new programs that asserted its significance for American Jews in the twentieth century. When in 1913, the head of its Atlanta lodge, Leo Frank, was falsely convicted of murdering a teenage girl who worked in the pencil factory he managed, B’nai B’rith leaders established the AntiDefamation League (ADL). Its initial mandate covered defamation of Jews on stage,

19 Leo N. Levi quoted in Deborah Dash Moore, »A New American Judaism,« in Like All the Nations? The Life and Legacy of Judah L. Magnes, ed. William M. Brinner and Moses Rischin, Albany/NY, 1987, 42. 20 For a history of the American Jewish Committee see Naomi W. Cohen, Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee 1906–1966, Philadelphia/PA, 1972.

334

Judaism in America

screen, and in the press. Gradually ADL expanded to focus on combatting AntiSemitism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination in the U.S. Eventually, ADL’s impressive accomplishments led to independence from B’nai B’rith. Similarly, in 1924 B’nai B’rith adopted the recently established Hillel at the University of Illinois. As increasing numbers of Jews attended university, this religiously pluralist campus organization for Jewish college students multiplied its branches, until it, too, achieved independence. Communal activism also produced a reorganization of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in 1902. Wealthy immigrant philanthropists, like the banker Jacob Schiff (1847–1920), provided funds to entice the scholar Solomon Schechter (1847–1915) from England to lead a rejuvenated Seminary. Schechter, in turn, recruited a cluster of young men as faculty members who attracted talented students, many of them the children of immigrants. JTSA offered an alternative to both Reform and traditional Judaism. It provided instruction in classic Jewish texts as well as such modern modes of study as Jewish history. Committed to observing Jewish law (halachah), JTSA scholars accepted as irreversible that Jewish religious practices had changed and could continue to evolve. In the U.S., that evolution involved finding ways to address such challenges as Sabbath observance. One innovation, the late Friday evening service, attracted Jews to a new ritual that incorporated elements of learning, through a sermon, accompanied by songs, such as might have been sung around the Sabbath eve dinner table. As JTSA’s rabbinical graduates found pulpits in congregations throughout the country, these alumni became the nucleus of a new religious movement, Conservative Judaism. They formed a congregational union, United Synagogue of America (1913) followed by a Rabbinical Assembly (RA, 1918).

5

New Religious Movements

JTSA and Conservative Judaism represented one way forward, but other paths enticed enthusiastic adherents in New York. One JTSA graduate, Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881–1983), together with Israel Friedlaender (1876–1920), a JTSA professor, organized a series of Friday night lectures on the Lower East Side that attracted modern Orthodox Jews. Within a year a congregation formed that became the nucleus of what became Young Israel, initially a loosely affiliated group of congregations largely led by their male members in a democratic style of prayer. Formally incorporated in 1926, Young Israel articulated in its charter characteristics it deemed critical to Modern Orthodox Judaism in America: separation of men and women during prayer, Torah study, and regular sabbath services. With New York as its home base, the movement gradually spread beyond the city after World War II. Young Israel received help and guidance from Rabbi Bernard Revel (1885–1940), who came to New York from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to assume leadership of several immigrant religious educational institutions. Revel reorganized these schools, using his position as head of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) as a base, and integrated them with an American model of a liberal arts college. At Yeshiva College

5 New Religious Movements

335

(1925) Revel wed advanced traditional Jewish learning with modern secular education. The motto of »Torah U’Madda« exemplified this marriage, which drew on curricular practices of European yeshivot, albeit from an American perspective. Revel constructed a new campus for Yeshiva College uptown in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, a long subway ride from the Lower East Side. The fundraising drive to build the new campus brought Yeshiva out of obscurity. Orthodox Jews, often divided among themselves over religious issues, found themselves united in the Yeshiva College campaign. It recruited immigrant and second-generation Orthodox Jews into a fundraising network of Jewish leaders. Yeshiva’s physical size and beautiful surroundings in a high-status neighborhood with prestigious universities nearby all pointed to Modern Orthodox Judaism’s arrival as an American Judaism. The articulation of an Orthodox American Jewish educational synthesis provoked widespread debate. Was Yeshiva College »a glorified Ghetto?« Or did it encourage an educated Jewish laity? How different was it from colleges sponsored by Methodists? Yeshiva College offered something different from European yeshivas or Jewish studies in American universities. Revel insisted it was to be a house of learning to represent the Orthodox ideal of Torah and not like JTSA, a place to train rabbis. The Seminary required a B.A. to enter, ensuring its students studied at an American college, which meant, in Revel’s view, that they would lack Jewish textual knowledge. The subsequent expansion of Yeshiva College to Yeshiva University with multiple schools of advanced study, including law, medicine, social work, and business, reflected his understanding of the place of Orthodox Judaism in America.21 Religious movements within Judaism did not develop exclusively in the context of educational enterprises. In the fecund American religious marketplace, Christian denominations frequently begot other denominations, their mitosis fueled by volatile admixtures of voluntarism and competition. Jewish Americans, too, were tempted and inspired by the open-ended character of available religious expressions. Tehilla Lichtenstein (1893–1973), for example, fashioned a version of Christian Science that she called Jewish Science in part to entice Jews who had joined the former to ally with a Jewish version that paid attention to the relation of spirit and health. Felix Adler (1851–1933) rejected his rabbi father’s Reform Judaism and articulated a humanistic and non-particularistic faith that he called Ethical Culture. Adler’s rationalism attracted many second-generation Jews of Central European background who liked his commitment to social ethics and reform. Disturbed by growing gaps between rich and poor in Gilded Era New York, some of these Jews combined support for Ethical Culture with membership in a Reform congregation. However, after this founding generation, adherents of Ethical Culture largely withdrew from engagement with Judaism. An enduring new form of American Judaism emerged in interwar New York when Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan established the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ, 1922). Kaplan taught at JTSA despite his increasingly radical theology, which received its fullest articulation in his magnum opus, Judaism as a Civilization:

21 For a discussion of the fund-raising campaign and debates, see Deborah Dash Moore, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews, 1920–1940, New York, 1981, 178–99.

336

Judaism in America

Toward a Reconstruction of American Jewish Life (1934). Kaplan argued that Judaism was not merely a religion (nor, implicitly, an ethnicity) but included an entire culture of literature, art, music, and other elements. Kaplan considered Jews a people, not a nation, and they faced the challenge of living in two civilizations, American and Jewish. Jewish peoplehood linked Jews in America to Jews throughout the world, but Jewish peoplehood did not imply that Jews were chosen. Kaplan interpreted Jewish bonds as self-created; he rejected any exclusive Jewish sacred calling. Judaism as a Civilization mobilized a nascent movement called Reconstructionism that aimed to overcome divisions among American Jews. By the time he published the book, Kaplan had already introduced a new religious ritual, the Bat Mitzvah, to mark the equality of Jewish girls and their membership in the Jewish people just as the Bar Mitzvah did for Jewish boys. As a boy at age thirteen was called during services to read from the Torah on his Bar Mitzvah, so Kaplan in 1922 had his oldest daughter Judith come up to read from the Torah. He had also experimented with alternative forms of synagogues, championing the synagogue center as an appropriate American replacement for both the typical immigrant male homosocial space for prayer and the formal heterosocial Reform temple. The synagogue center appealed to the entire family. It included a school for children and even a swimming pool for members, combining recreation with learning and worship. It was a shul with a school and a pool. However, as Reconstructionism expanded into the arena of liturgy, with the publication first of The New Haggadah (1941) and then the Sabbath Prayer Book (1945), its radical theology outraged Orthodox opponents. Although the Reform Union Prayer Book (1894) excised far more text, Kaplan’s version, which in some respects seemed almost traditional, nevertheless incited members of the Agudath Harabannim (Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada), an organization of Yiddish speaking traditionalists. On 12 June 1945 a group of these Orthodox rabbis assembled at the McAlpin Hotel in mid-Manhattan.22 Americans, and especially Jews, had celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany on Victory over Europe day only a month earlier. But the end was not yet in sight. World War II still raged against Japan. Yet a decision to pass judgment on Kaplan could not wait for peace. None of his books nor the establishment of the Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation to promote his philosophy of Reconstructionism merited a court of judgment despite their radical ideas. However, when Kaplan published a version of the Sabbath Prayer Book, he crossed a line. The solidarity the war had produced among Americans of all faiths and of no faith inspired Kaplan and his co-editor. »Modern-minded Jews,« they wrote in the prayer book’s introduction »can no longer believe, as did their fathers, that the Jews constitute a divinely chosen nation.«23 The

22 Joshua Trachtenberg, »Review of the Year 5706, Part One: The United States, Religious Activities,« American Jewish Year Book 47 (1945–46): 217. 23 Mordecai M. Kaplan and Eugene Kohn, »Introduction,« in idem, eds., The Sabbath Prayer Book, New York, 1945, 24. Other rejected beliefs included the following doctrines: revelation, personal messiah, restoration of the sacrificial cult, retribution, and resurrection.

6 Postwar Religion and Politics

337

Agudath Harabannim violently disagreed. They opposed such heretical accommodations to democratic ideals. Interpreting a challenge to their authority, they felt compelled to act. In their eyes, changes in prayers still clothed in traditional garb threatened to mislead unwary Jews. Kaplan’s Sabbath Prayer Book was heretical and dangerous. They voted to excommunicate Kaplan. Then they burned the prayer book. Shock and outrage greeted their act. But so did approval.

6

Postwar Religion and Politics

The first formal Jewish excommunication in the United States of the founder of the first indigenous American Jewish religious movement exemplifies interlocking trends of the postwar period. A militant Jewish traditionalism in the United States, including the growth of Hasidism (pietism) encouraged by Jewish refugees from Nazism, emerged simultaneously with a flourishing of Americanized forms, especially Conservative and Reform Judaism. These years prepared the ground for other American Jewish religious movements. Yet this thriving pluralism practiced by American Jews did not win adherents as a consensual ideal. Dissent and criticism divided Jews. In part these bitter recriminations reflected the impact of politics and the need to choose sides on pressing issues facing Jews in the United States and abroad. In part they expressed struggles for power and influence. In part they stemmed from genuine disagreements about fundamentals of Jewish life, including what meaning God, Torah, and the Jewish people could have in the wake of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Individually, American Jews increasingly identified themselves as belonging to a religious group, but collectively they behaved as members of an ethnic group. Mobilization of over half a million American Jews during World War II taught these men and women that the US Armed Forces recognized Judaism as a religion. Judaism acquired respect alongside Protestantism and Catholicism as one of the three »fighting faiths« of democracy. Jewish chaplains discovered their respected status as military officers as well as the armed forces’ commitment to equal representation of Judaism. A new appreciation of what the three great religious traditions shared, often called the »Judeo-Christian tradition,« animated the military chaplaincy and pointed to a common religious worldview that sustained American democracy. Jewish chaplains also gained new respect for each other, even adopting a common prayer book. Rabbis from Reform, Conservative, and modern Orthodox backgrounds tried to focus on similarities that united them. This spirit of cooperation endured after the war. The Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), which guided chaplains during the war, institutionalized a tripartite denominational division of Judaism in order to develop consensus on religious matters. American Jews emerged from World War II acutely aware that, while Americans had acquitted themselves well throughout the conflict, Jews had suffered ghastly, crushing defeats. The Allies had won the war against Hitler too late to rescue most European Jews. Only when American Jews saw the photographs and newsreels of living human skeletons, mountains of dead bodies, bulldozers pushing corpses into

338

Judaism in America

mass graves, enormous piles of human hair, eyeglasses, and baby clothes—only then did they really realize, most for the first time, what had actually happened. Liberation not only came too late for European Jews, it also failed to liberate survivors. Instead they congregated in displaced persons camps, unwilling to go back to their former homes where Anti-Semitism was rampant, unable to immigrate to the Jewish settlement in Palestine due to restrictions imposed by the British, unwanted as refugees by victorious Allies, including the United States. Four and a half million American Jews, now the largest population of Jews in the world after the murder of six million European Jews, recognized and accepted the demands and burdens of leadership. Victory even exacted a price among Americans: malaise and doubts about the meaning of life. Joshua Loth Liebman (1907–1948), rabbi of Reform Temple Israel in Boston, responded by affirming, with Kaplan, »God is the Power for salvation revealing Himself in nature and in human nature.« Part of the postwar religious revival that made celebrities of some Christian religious leaders, Liebman merged a tradition of Jewish ethical literature with Freudian psychology to champion »life-affirming« beliefs. His 1946 book Peace of Mind quickly vaulted to the best-seller lists, making religious publishing history. Liebman preached a Jewish message of love, »the chief intimation of our immortality.« But he also polemicized against aspects of Christianity, claiming that it burdened people with useless guilt. Responding to atheism and despair in the postwar world, to pessimism, defeatism and existentialism, Liebman offered inner peace not as a spiritual end in itself but as a means to the transcendent goal of the American pursuit of happiness. He prophesied »that from the democratic experience of our century … mankind will first learn its future dignity as independent and necessary partners of God.« This was the Jewish way.24 American Jews sought to memorialize the six million and create »a culture of commemoration« to honor those who had died in diverse ways. Facing an unprecedented tragedy, American Jews experimented with rituals and liturgy, pageants and dramas, art and literature. In their private lives, many boycotted Germany, refusing to purchase German products or visit Germany. On the public stage they used mass media, including radio and television, to reach Americans of all religious backgrounds.25 They published testimonies of survivors and memorial books, compilations of data on European towns that were destroyed along with stories about men and women who had lived there. These collaborative efforts, often written in Yiddish, addressed survivors and Jews who had emigrated before the war began. Translations of Yiddish literature accelerated in the postwar period to bring the literary culture of Eastern European Jews to their American Jewish kin. Editors of new prayer books for Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) for both Reconstructionist and Conservative movements integrated a number of Holocaust poems into the traditional martyrology recited during services.

24 Joshua Loth Liebman, Peace of Mind, New York, 1946, 171f., 59, 141. 25 Hasia R. Diner, »Before ›The Holocaust‹: American Jews Confront Catastrophe, 1945–62,« in American Jewish Identity Politics, ed. Deborah Dash Moore, Ann Arbor/MI, 2008, 83–116, 84.

6 Postwar Religion and Politics

339

However, Anne Frank achieved most renown as the female figure identified with the Holocaust. Her death at age fifteen in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945 and the subsequent discovery, translation, and publication of her diary in 1952 brought her years in hiding to large audiences. A dramatization of the diary premiered on Broadway in 1955; four years later it appeared as a Hollywood film. Representations presented Anne Frank as a subject of triumphant humanity, universalizing her experiences of suffering rather than dwelling on her Jewish identity. Americans of all backgrounds identified with her adolescent dreams and her endurance, rather than her pitiful death. Most American Jews turned to Zionism during the postwar period largely in response to the suffering of survivors stranded in DP camps, a political solution with spiritual dimensions to a religious and humanitarian problem. American Jews recognized Jews’ need for an independent state, for political power. Fighting in the United States armed forces empowered over half a million American Jews; they had been taught to fight back. At the United Nations meeting in Lake Success in 1947, Reform Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver (1893–1963), representing the Zionist Jewish Agency, eloquently expressed the justice of the Jewish people’s cause. When the United Nations voted for partition on November 29th, Jews all over the world celebrated. But some Jews dissented. They opposed the establishment of a Jewish state. This small minority came from opposite ends of the religious spectrum: from Reform and Orthodox Judaism. United in their rejection of Zionism, they proffered different reasons to explain their position. Some Orthodox Jews believed that »hastening the end« by establishing a state before the Messiah arrived was forbidden. Reform Jews, especially those identified with such »classic Reform« practices as Sabbath worship services on Sunday, insisted that Jews were exclusively a religious group, not a political or ethnic one. Establishing a Jewish state threatened the civic equality and security of Jews throughout the world, including the United States.26 Most American Jews exulted in the miracle of Israel’s establishment, considering such dissenting voices »unjewish«. After supporting the establishment of Israel in its 1948 war for independence, many American Jews integrated Israel into their consciousness of what it meant to be Jewish. Then they turned to building Jewish life in the United States, mostly in the suburbs but also in new cities like Los Angeles and Miami. Jews participated in the postwar expansion of religion, adopted Protestant middle-class patterns of religious organization, and confirmed congregations as the primary unit of Jewish identification. In the mid-1960s, 800 new congregations affiliated with Conservative Judaism. Similarly, Reform’s congregational union reached 664 members compared with 334 in 1948.27 Postwar expansion transformed Conservative Judaism into the largest single Jewish religious movement in the Unit-

26 Thomas A. Kolsky, Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 1942–1948, Philadelphia/PA, 1990. 27 Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America, New York, 1993, 4–9.

340

Judaism in America

ed States. Orthodox congregations also multiplied, but failed to keep pace with Reform and Conservative groups. Orthodoxy gradually became a minority movement among American Jews, despite the growth of Hasidic sects and pious Orthodox, rejuvenated by refugee religious leaders who fled Nazi Europe. Their escape to America was a Hobson’s choice. The United States was, to most ultra-Orthodox Jews, a country where all traditions were routinely dishonored. Americans just made it up as they went along. Conservative rabbis championed a seven-day-a-week synagogue center program that included Hebrew schools for boys and girls three days a week, a youth movement for the best students, and summers at a Ramah camp. Spoken Hebrew practice and religious observance defined the Ramah experience. Conservative worship services remained traditional, resembling those of modern Orthodox Jews. But a 1950 decision by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards permitted Conservative Jews to drive to services without violating Sabbath laws against working. Men sat together with their families in synagogue, a measure of egalitarianism rejected by modern Orthodox Jews, who adhered to separate seating. Modern Orthodox Jews insisted that cantors face the Holy Ark during prayers and not use a microphone, rejecting Conservative innovations that allowed cantors to face the congregation during services and to amplify their voices for comfort and clarity. Both questions revisited issues of cantor as performer, most famously, the great Yossele Rosenblatt (1882–1933). In addition to pragmatic differences between Orthodox and Conservative Jews, each movement reflected values identified with two leading rabbis: Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) and Louis Finkelstein (1895–1991). Soloveitchik emerged in the postwar years as »American Orthodoxy’s ideological standard-bearer and spiritual guide.«28 Born in Lithuania, he received a traditional Jewish and advanced secular education, taking a degree in philosophy. He immigrated to Boston in 1932 and succeeded his father on the faculty of Yeshiva University in 1941 as head of its rabbinical school. Called »the Rav,« rabbi par excellence, Soloveitchik helped to delineate possible changes in Jewish practice within the boundaries of Jewish law. But he also wrote works that combined a deep knowledge of Jewish sources with mastery of western philosophy. Soloveitchik’s pioneering attempt to formulate a philosophy of Jewish law included a stringent critique of mysticism and romantic religion, identified in part with Christianity. Under his leadership, over two thousand men received ordination, strengthening a modern Orthodox rapprochement between secular learning and devout observance. Louis Finkelstein ascended to the presidency of the Jewish Theological Seminary in May 1940, and quickly established his priorities, especially discussion across theological barriers. Born and raised in the United States, Finkelstein followed his father into the rabbinate. His traditional Jewish and advanced secular education resembled Soloveitchik’s. Finkelstein was committed to making religion vital in American society and in the lives of American Jews. Too many young Jews, in his 28 Jeffrey S. Gurock, Orthodox Jews in America, Bloomington/IN, 2009, 207.

6 Postwar Religion and Politics

341

opinion, espoused secularism and saw Judaism as »singular and queer.« But Judaism had a place in the modern world. Finkelstein thought that convincing non-Jewish Americans of Judaism’s contemporary significance would ultimately help Jews feel comfortable in the United States. In 1951, Time magazine featured him on its cover, paying tribute to his role in the emerging interfaith movement and his achievement in gaining recognition for Jews and Judaism as part of the religious fabric of the United States. As Finkelstein worked to expand Conservative Judaism, he reached regular listeners through a weekly radio program, The Eternal Light (which later moved to television), and an educated elite through The Jewish Museum.29 Jewish ecumenism received pragmatic expression in rabbinical councils organized in cities throughout the United States as well as in a coordinating body, the Synagogue Council of America (1926). The Council combined representatives of modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism’s rabbinical associations and congregational unions. It operated through consensus. In 1949–1950, the Council issued statements on behalf of »organized American religious Jewry« in favor of international peace and American democracy.30 The Council also defended Jews against defamation and continued the momentum of broad religious cooperation encouraged by military service. Nevertheless, in 1956 the Council of Torah Sages of the Agudath Israel and eleven heads of rabbinical academies, issued a ban prohibiting Orthodox rabbis from participating in groups that involved rabbis from non-Orthodox movements. Soloveitchik declined to sign their edict. Most modern Orthodox rabbis of the Rabbinical Council of America refused to honor the ban, but they recognized its challenge to Jewish unity and cooperation. Each of the three major Jewish religious movements in the United States charted different paths in the postwar years but all expanded their organizational reach to include youth groups, summer camps, sisterhoods, and brotherhoods. Reform Judaism welcomed unaffiliated Jews and introduced more rituals. It reinstated the Bar Mitzvah, which it had eliminated in favor of confirmation. Both Reform and Conservative seminaries expanded, building branches in Los Angeles, the second largest city in Jewish population after New York; later they also constructed branches in Jerusalem. Reform also amalgamated with the liberal but unaffiliated Jewish Institute of Religion (JIR) in New York City. Orthodox Judaism diversified. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Hasidism took root in America. Leaders of various ultraOrthodox sects established enclaves in Brooklyn and other cities where they built a network of religious institutions. Under the leadership of Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath (1902–1973), the Reform congregational union turned to social action. It formed the Religious Action Center (RAC) in 1961. Eisendrath encouraged Reform congregations to create social action committees and called on Reform Jews »to apply the precepts and practices of

29 Michael B. Greenbaum, »The Finkelstein Era,« in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, ed. Jack Wertheimer, New York, 1997, 163–232, quote from Finkelstein: 166. 30 Sarna, American Judaism, 307.

342

Judaism in America

prophetic Jewish faith in combating all forms of injustice and bigotry.«31 The message took hold. Sociologists studying suburban Jews in the 1950s reported that leading »an ethical and moral life« ranked first when Jews were asked what it meant to be Jewish. Jews considered other items, such as observing the Sabbath or supporting Israel, less important.32 Eisendrath particularly favored integration of African Americans as equal members of American society despite opposition from some Reform rabbis in the South. Conservative Jews emphasized Jewish peoplehood, stressing ethnic dimensions of Judaism and Zionism. Elements of modern Israeli culture, including art objects, dance, music, and Sephardic pronunciation, entered Conservative synagogues, supplementary religious schools, and summer camps. Afterschool programs particularly employed Israel as a way to strengthen Jewish identity. Women’s position in Conservative Judaism improved. In 1955 the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards voted in favor of women being called to the reading of the Torah. And it added a clause to the Jewish marriage contract that equalized women and men in marriage and divorce, giving women a means to initiate divorce. Conservative congregations also introduced the Bat Mitzvah ceremony for girls to mark their entry into religious adulthood as Bar Mitzvah did for boys. Gradually Bat Mitzvah became popular. However, unlike the Bar Mitzvah ritual, which occurred during Sabbath morning services and involved a boy’s reading a portion from the Torah and Haftorah, Bat Mitzvah rituals usually occurred on Friday evening.33 Orthodox Jews turned increasingly to expanding parochial education. The Torah U’Mesorah movement (1944) aimed to connect all Orthodox day schools and to stimulate their growth. By 1962 eighty-five percent of all Jewish parochial schools in the United States were under Orthodox auspices. Slowly the character of Orthodoxy shifted. The numbers of nominally Orthodox Jews declined steadily, leaving the more observant and pious. Families placed a high priority on yeshiva education for their sons, and increasingly, for their daughters. In 1956 Yeshiva University opened Stern College for Women, offering both secular and religious studies. These years of transition to a new norm of parochial education through high school also marked acceptance of greater religious stringency as a feature setting Orthodox Jews apart from other American Jews. High standards of piety set by refugees and survivors of Nazism and the Holocaust stemmed in part from their commitment to reconstruct the religious civilization destroyed before their eyes. Despite their many differences, as refugees they shared an enthusiasm not previously seen in the United States for the Old World that they had been forced to flee. They introduced increased stringency in kosher food products,

31 Quoted in Marc Lee Raphael, Profiles in American Judaism, New York, 1984, 74. 32 Marshall Sklare, »The Image of the Good Jew in Lakeville,« in Observing America’s Jews, ed. idem and Jonathan D. Sarna, Hanover/NH, 1993, 206–214, 208. 33 Paula E. Hyman, »Bat Mitzvah,« Jewish Women in America: A Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore, New York, 1997, 126–28.

6 Postwar Religion and Politics

343

disrupting longstanding mimetic traditions. They worked to restrict the influence of American values and built a network of schools to keep their children out of American public education systems. Ninety-five schools in 1946 grew to 330 by 1970. Such religious leaders as Rabbi Aaron Kotler (1891–1962) also built advanced yeshivas for adult men to continue their studies even after ordination. These graduates became the vanguard of a more militant separatism within Orthodoxy.34 How did post-war Americans, Jews and Gentiles, square news of the Holocaust and the early years of Israel’s existence? Zionism developed prior to the Holocaust, but after WWII Israel understandably came to be seen as a providential intervention within history. Many Jews who had been non-Zionists strongly supported the State of Israel. A best-selling novel and two blockbuster movies framed American public perceptions. The 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959) was a biblical epic tailored for American audiences. Before the film begins, DeMille announces portentously that it tells the story of »the birth of freedom.« Leon Uris (1924–2003) recounted Israel’s creation in his epic novel Exodus (1958). This story of Jews as fighters captured Americans’ imagination, transforming Jews struggling for their own state into American-style heroes far removed from negative stereotypes of Jews as materialistic, weak, and overly intellectual. Two years later Otto Preminger’s (1905–1986) movie, Exodus, was released. Handsome, blue-eyed Paul Newman embodied the hero, Ari Ben Canaan. The movie combined the sweep of a modern biblical epic about the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland with the excitement of a swaggering western, with derring-do and a damsel too. Exodus linked Israel with the rescue of Holocaust survivors. It showed pitiful victims transformed overnight into brave pioneers. »These were the ancient Hebrews«, the American Christian nurse Kitty realized, »the army of Israel, and no force on earth could stop them, for the power of God was within them.« The plucky little Jewish state fighting for its freedom became a Hollywood legend, part of the faith and lore of American Jews.35 Rabbis focused on human behavior and belief in their philosophical writings. In 1955 Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) published God in Search of Man, a comprehensive treatment of Judaism. Discussing reasons for Jewish religious observance, Heschel emphasized the importance of divine meaning. Neither moral, aesthetic, sociological or dogmatic reasons explained Jewish behavior. »Judaism is concerned with the happiness of the individual,« he wrote, »as well as with the survival of the Jewish people, with the redemption of all men and with the will of one God.« However, Heschel insisted that happiness depends on »faithfulness to God.« Jewish survival mattered because Jews were partners in covenant with God. Heschel urged American Jews to earn a spiritual living, not just a material one.36

34 Gurock, Orthodox Jews, 209–20. 35 Deborah Dash Moore, »Israel: Real to Reel to Real,« in Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting, ed. J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler; Princeton/NJ/Oxford 2003, 207–19, 212, 214. 36 Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, 1955; repr. New York/Philadelphia/PA, 1962, 349.

344

Judaism in America

Many American Jews coming of age in the postwar period grew up in a very different world from one their parents had known: as suburban, middle-class children they attended congregational school, celebrated a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, enjoyed summers at Jewish camp, and anticipated going to college upon graduation from high school. They assimilated the complex idea that Jews were simultaneously just like other white Americans and different from them. Jewish American similarities and contrasts could be found in their embrace of Israel, in complex association with suffering and martyrdom endured during the Holocaust, in intellectual traditions celebrating American pluralism and consensus, in consciousness of the dangers of racism and Anti-Semitism, in commitments to social justice, in belief in the sanctity of separation of church and state, even, for some, in the refusal to cross a picket line or purchase German products (heritage of union organizing and the Holocaust). By the end of the postwar period, over five and half million American Jews had transformed American Judaism, reworking elements of faith into a new symbol system. The shtetl, six million lives, and Israel represented values espoused by American Jews. They integrated the staggering events these symbolized into convictions about Judaism as a religion expressing universal liberalism, embodying intimate bonds of family, and comprising a distinctive corpus of behaviors. Many American Jews ignored commandments to observe Jewish rituals, quarreled with family members, and occasionally reneged on their liberal commitments, yet they recognized the combination as a Jewish one. Despite bitter struggles over religious authority and authenticity, despite criticism that their culture was shallow and their Judaism banal, Jewish Americans responded to difficult, shifting, overlapping challenges. Jews who assumed that the terms of their responsibilities would become less troubling were wrong. Like Christian Americans, roughly half of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews left the denomination of their parents. Some moved to another branch of Judaism; others departed the fold altogether.

7

American Jews with American Values

By the late 1960s, young Jewish men and women coming of age after World War II launched devastating attacks on what they perceived to be failings of their parents’ generation: the superficiality of its Judaism, their patriarchal families, their smug suburban liberalism. They attacked their parents’ behaviors during World War II, demanding to know why they failed to rescue European Jews. They challenged their parents’ priorities in philanthropy, raising money for hospitals rather than Jewish education. They questioned their parents’ values, placing American liberalism ahead of Zionist dedication to Israel. Critical of American society, especially in the contexts of the Vietnam War and rise of Black Power, they folded their critique of the United States into a dismissal of their parents’ generation. So they walked out of the synagogues and scorned rabbinic leaders, preferring to form small groups of peers (havurah) to pray and study together. These were among the ›family‹ issues that aggravated overlapping segments of this younger generation.

7 American Jews with American Values

345

In fact, Judaism in America was undergoing dramatic change. Jewish American women energized a feminist movement in the 1960s that pushed for legal recognition of women’s equality with men. In response, the two most liberal wings of Judaism—Reform and Reconstructionism—admitted women into their rabbinical schools. In 1972 Sally Priesand graduated from HUC, the first woman ordained a rabbi in the United States. Two years later, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso graduated from the recently established Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (1968). Gradually other women followed in their footsteps. The issue of ordaining women generated anguished debates within JTSA and the Conservative movement that sought to balance Jewish law (halachah) with American democracy. In 1972 Ezrat Nashim, a group of young New York Jewish feminists, petitioned the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly to present their »call for change« to the rabbis at their annual convention in the Catskills. Denied a place on the program, these feminists met informally, mostly with rabbis’ wives, to explain why women should be granted membership in synagogues not dependent on their husbands, counted in a quorum (minyan) for prayer, allowed to initiate divorce, recognized as witnesses in court, and encouraged to participate as leaders in Jewish organizations. Their call for change also demanded that women be permitted to attend rabbinical and cantorial schools and fulfill those roles in synagogues. »It is now universally accepted that women are equal to men in intellectual capacity, leadership ability and spiritual depth,« they wrote.37 Eleven years later, the Conservative JTSA opened its doors to women studying for the rabbinate. Amy Eilberg became the first woman ordained by the Conservative movement. Feminism not only opened doors to leadership positions for women, it also challenged Jewish interpretations of sacred text. New forms of midrash and commentary by women exposed patriarchal assumptions in Jewish theology. Feminist consciousness encouraged revised English translations of prayers with gender neutral language. Instead of male referents for God, new prayer books opted for alternative terms that radically re-envisioned the deity. Some prayer books integrated poetry by women, occasionally with a specifically feminist slant. Matriarchs—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah—were added to patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—in the central ʿAmidah (standing) prayer. As more women pursued advanced Jewish educations, a generation of well-educated women sought to participate in religious life. Some proposed new religious rituals, such as a naming ceremony for baby girls. Others encouraged women to reclaim the ancient holiday of Rosh Hodesh (new month) as a time for women to meet and study together. Perhaps most popular were women’s seders, often held prior to the Passover holiday, where women incorporated Miriam’s cup, filled with water, into the ritual and read from a revised Haggadah that included women. American values influenced Orthodox Jews as well. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s establishment of a Peace Corps to foster practical self-help programs

37 »Jewish Women Call for Change,« in The American Jewish Woman: A Documentary History, ed. Jacob R. Marcus, New York, 1981, 894–96.

346

Judaism in America

in underdeveloped countries, Menachem M. Schneerson, the rebbe of Lubavitch Ḥasidim headquartered in Brooklyn, decided to adapt a program of service to reach all Jews, but especially unobservant ones. Schneerson recruited an army of emissaries to spread the possibility of doing a single mitzvah [commandment]. He sponsored »mitzvah mobiles« (stepvans) on the city’s streets. Soon distinctively dressed young Hasidic men fanned out from Wall Street to Midtown Manhattan accosting male passersby. »Are you Jewish?« they inquired. When the answer was affirmative, they offered an opportunity to step inside the van to put on phylacteries (tefillin). A man did not need to know how to do this basic daily mitzvah since a Hasid would guide him in placing the small black box on his forehead and wrapping the leather straps on his arm and hand. From New York, these emissaries traveled to other cities and then throughout the world, seeking to transform and redeem Jews. Lubavitch Hasidism, often called Chabad, became an American Jewish export. Enthusiastic Ḥasidim built replicas of Chabad’s Brooklyn headquarters in cities around the globe, including in Israel. Messianic impulses drove their ambitious project to entice, persuade, and welcome Jews to observe a mitzvah that potentially would not only change their lives but also hasten the coming of the Messiah. In fact, until his death (and even afterwards) some believed that the Rebbe was the messiah. Cultural movements sweeping the United States influenced Judaism. Jewish versions of egalitarianism and do-it-yourself elements of the counterculture flourished in the Havurah (fellowship) movement. These small communal groups, initially outside of synagogue auspices, increasingly found homes within synagogues seeking to replace lost members. Havurot (fellowships) offered alternative modes of spirituality. Spurning formal worship services, Havurah experimentation enlivened Judaism and fostered a growing interest in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. Some Havurot formed around charismatic figures but others adhered to egalitarian models of shared leadership. In the 1970s members of the Havurah movement began to meet annually, usually during the summer, for study and worship. Gradually institutionalization occurred. A mix of accessible Hasidic-style spirituality, feminist principles, and countercultural ethos came together to shape a movement of Jewish renewal. The sounds of prayer also changed as cantors and composers set texts to new liturgical melodies. Often a small gathering sang together, intimately accompanied by a member who played guitar. Choirs and organs seemed inappropriate, something from another time. As the movement for gay liberation gathered supporters, gay and lesbian Jews came out of their Jewish closet as well. They first established congregations in large cities like New York and San Francisco that supported flourishing gay communities. These congregations welcomed Jews irrespective of their sexuality or gender. Gradually, they also succeeded in hiring gay or lesbian rabbis as both Reform and Reconstructionist rabbinical seminaries ordained them. Eventually, as with women, Conservative Jews accepted homosexual rabbis. The increasing diversity of Judaism in America reflected the integration of Jews into the religious milieu of the United States. That context allowed not only for liberal and radical modes of experimentation but also sustained varieties of ultra-

8 Diversity and Dissent

347

orthodoxy that rejected enticements of the larger society. The visibility of Hasidic and Yeshivish orthodoxy attracted Jewish seekers dissatisfied with their lives as modern, often unobservant Jews. A movement of return to Judaism (Ba’al Teshuva) provided an alternative to countercultural experimentation. Living a strictly observant Jewish life appealed to young Jewish men and women who disliked the competitiveness and anomie of contemporary society. The strong bonds of family and community of Orthodox Jews attracted them. Those who returned to Judaism usually chose to live near settled communities of Orthodox Jews, either in large cities or occasionally in religious towns rather than in suburbs. They contributed to the vitality of Orthodoxy in the United States. These newcomers to Orthodox practice also expanded an audience for the many new books on Judaism that explained, in English, how to follow the Jewish commandments and live an observant Jewish life. The ruptures of the Holocaust and migration of pious Jews to the United States disturbed the informal, oral transmission of Judaism that traditionally guided Jewish home practice. Turning to books for guidance rather than their mothers and fathers, young Jews adopted increasingly stringent guidelines of observance. Their obsession with following rules set them apart not just from non-Jews but also from other Jews. They also increasingly accommodated religious decisions from chief rabbis in Israel and leading sages of Torah in the U.S., challenging patterns of rabbinic authority adopted by American Jews. Instead of being employed as congregational rabbis, the sages headed yeshivas of advanced learning (kollels) that paid their salaries. They achieved a respect that immigrant Jews had hoped would be accorded Rabbi Jacob Joseph.

8

Diversity and Dissent

Reform Jews moved simultaneously toward greater religious observance and increased diversity. In response to rising numbers of intermarriages, Reform leaders adopted the principle of patrilineal descent that accepted as Jewish a child born of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother if the child received a Jewish education. This shift, shared by Reconstructionist Jews, welcomed intermarried families, inviting them to join the Jewish people and affiliate with a Reform congregation. By the 21st century, Reform had outstripped Conservative as the largest Jewish religious movement in the U.S. As Reform rabbis encouraged non-Jews to learn about Judaism and to convert, they also reintegrated elements of Judaism they had previously rejected. Reform Jews embraced the State of Israel and added Hebrew into worship services, usually employing the Israeli Sephardic pronunciation. Prayer shawls and covered heads returned to many Reform congregations, adopted by rabbis and increasingly by congregants. The movement issued revised prayer books that restored prayers it had excluded and introduced extensive transliteration of Hebrew along with English translations. Even before the United States revised its immigration laws in 1965, Cuban Jews fled the island after Fidel Castro’s victory. Soviet Jews began to immigrate after securing the right to leave in the late 1960s. American Jews championed the exodus

348

Judaism in America

of Jews from the Soviet Union but clashed with Israelis on where these Jews should live. Israelis wanted them to settle in Israel to expand its Jewish population; American Jews thought that free emigration should include the right to choose where one wanted to reside. In the end, the vast majority settled in Israel. Then in 1979 the Iranian Revolution propelled many Iranian Jews to the U.S. Political instability in South American countries, including Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina, also spurred Jewish immigration into the United States. Enough Jews immigrated to constitute around ten percent of the Jewish population. They also contributed to American Jewish diversity with respect to cultural and political expectations and the range of Judaic practices. Jewish multiculturalism increasingly focused on smaller clusters of immigrant Jews who stood out relative to the majority of Ashkenazi Jews, who were often the grandchildren or great grandchildren of immigrants. On the one hand, the American multicultural paradigm labeled Jews as white, Euro-Americans. Scholars pointed to the postwar period as the years when »Jews became white folks.«38 On the other hand, more old-line Jews finally noticed that there were already more Jews of color, and Sephardic Jews, than they had previously realized. In the 21st century, the diversity of Jews could not be ignored, including Black Jews and Syrian Jews. Articulate Jews of color brought their perspectives to ongoing debates regarding congregational values, practices, and politics. Growing rapprochement between Jews and Christians highlighted their commonalities while also indicating deepening divisions among Jews. Ultra-Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians often found themselves advocating for similar political programs. Liberal Jews and their liberal Christian counterparts shared many commitments in common. In 2000, an interdenominational group of Jewish scholars issued a statement, Dabru Emet (Speak the Truth) that affirmed »we believe it is time for Jews to learn about the efforts of Christians to honor Judaism« since the Holocaust. The statement’s principles included: Jews and Christians worship the same God and seek authority from the same holy scriptures, Jews and Christians accept the moral principles of Torah, Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon, Christians can respect the claim of the Jewish People on the Land of Israel, Jews and Christians can work together for Justice and Peace. Perhaps most significantly, it declared »The Humanly Irreconcilable Difference between Jews and Christians Will Not Be Settled until God Redeems the Entire World as Promised in Scripture.«39 This statement came a year before the attacks on September 11, 2001 propelled Muslims into a new prominence in American society and introduced compelling questions about Jewish-Muslim relations. Those questions have received very dif-

38 Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What that Says about Race in America, New Brunswick/NJ, 1998. 39 Herbert Schlossberg, »Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity,« in First Things, November 2000, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/11/dabru-emet-ajewish-statement-on-christians-and-christianity (May 7, 2019).

8 Diversity and Dissent

349

ferent answers from various Jews depending on how they have identified with respect to diverse political and religious issues. An absence of consensus, extraordinary diversity, ongoing religious innovation, and responsiveness to American social, religious, cultural, and political changes continue to shape American Judaism. At the same time, Jewish Americans remain deeply connected to Jews throughout the world and especially to Israel. In many respects, American Jews, the largest diasporic population of Jews in the 21st century, live Jewish lives even if they don’t observe Judaism. For further reading Dash Moore, Deborah, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation, Cambridge, 2004. Diner, Hasia R., Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers who Forged the Way, New Haven/CT, 2015. Kranson, Rachel, Ambivalent Embrace: Jewish Upward Mobility in Postwar America, Chapel Hill/NC, 2017. Lederhendler, Eli, American Jewry: A New History, Cambridge, 2016.

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War Kerstin Armborst-Weihs

Up to the Second World War, the main center of Jewish life was in Europe. After the murder of two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe and the destruction of almost all important centers of European Jewry, Europe was no more than a side-show of Jewish life. Of the nine and a half million Jews living in Europe in 1939 (forming 57 percent of world Jewry) after the war fewer than four million lived on the European continent. The proportion of European Jews in global Judaism had fallen to 35 percent. After the creation of the State of Israel and the adoption of the Israeli Law of Return, by 1960 the proportion had reduced to less than 27 percent.1 In the post-war years, given the reality of annihilation and destruction, many survivors could scarcely imagine how they might be able to rebuild Jewish life on the European continent. The Zionist idea was therefore highly attractive to a large proportion of those who had been displaced and uprooted. But those who stayed in Europe faced the challenge of reintegration to the society of their environment, which took a wide variety of forms depending on the national context. This reintegration meant more than just the regaining of citizens’ and property rights; it meant a cultural and psychological recovery, as Jewish individuals and institutions had to rediscover their place and role in their national context. The European Jewish history of the post-war period is not, however, only a history of emigration and of survivors wanting to stay in their home country; it is also a history of immigration and integration. The immigration of Jews from North Africa and the Soviet Union changed Jewish communities fundamentally, especially in France and Germany, giving European Judaism an especially multicultural stamp. With the mass exodus of Jews from the former Soviet Union after 1989, the focus of Jewish life in Europe shifted from East to West. In recent decades, various factors have contributed to the fact that Judaism in Europe has seen a strong recovery. The huge growth is seen in many ways as a new chance for the revitalization of Jewish life in Western Europe. But this has been accompanied by concerns about a renewed strengthening of nationalism and Anti-Semitism in many European countries.

1 Cf. Sergio Della Pergola, »An Overview of the Demographic Trends of European Jewry,« in Jewish Identities in the New Europe, ed. Jonathan Webber, London, 1994, 62, table 1. See, too, the chapter by Michael Berenbaum in this volume.

1 Displaced Persons

1

351

Displaced Persons

When Allied forces freed millions of people from the concentration camps at the end of the Second World War, there were relatively few Jewish survivors among their number. The number of Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) liberated in Germany was between 50,000 and 75,000.2 The number of Jewish refugees residing outside their home countries by the end of the war was far higher. For most of the Jewish concentration camp survivors and refugees there was no possibility of returning to their former homes, nor could they emigrate to other countries. In the early years after the end of the war, European societies were primarily occupied with the consequences of the turmoil of war and the challenges of reconstruction, so that the survivors of the genocide received little in the way of sympathy or solidarity.3 Liberation by Allied troops from the concentration and extermination camps, from the ghetto, the hiding-places, and from forced labor, was followed by a realization on the part of most Jewish survivors that they were not welcome in their home countries—regardless of whether they came from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary or Romania. So, they gathered in the DP camps of the Western occupied zones in Germany, Austria, and Italy. DP status meant accommodation and attention in specially built camps as well as distribution of additional provisions and clothes. As the restrictive immigration policy of many states hindered a quick resolution of the refugee problem for these people and the founding of the state of Israel had not yet been completed, in many cases Jewish refugees spent years in the DP camps. Housing allocation was arranged in principle according to nationality, which had the consequence that Jewish survivors sometimes lived side-by-side with Polish, Lithuanian, or Ukrainian nationals who had until quite recently been willing helpers of the Nazis. It was only when in the fall of 1945 a Jewish DP status was introduced, that camps were created exclusively for Jewish DPs, at least in the American zone.4 Following anti-Jewish rioting in East-Central and Eastern Europe in the summer of 1946, a mass influx of Jewish refugees flooded into the Western occupied zones of Germany and Austria. Within a few months, the number of Jewish DPs had tripled, and aid organizations and the military government were faced with great challenges. Because of the restrictive British DP policy, Jewish refugees were concentrated in the US zone.5

2 Cf. Juliane Wetzel, »Die Lager für ›jüdische Displaced Persons‹ in Deutschland nach 1945,« in Forschungen zum Nationalsozialismus und dessen Nachwirkungen in Österreich: Festschrift für Brigitte Bailer, ed. Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands, Vienna, 2012, 157. 3 See Pieter Lagrou, »Return to a Vanished World. European Societies and the Remnants of their Jewish Communities, 1945–1947,« in The Jews are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to their Countries of Origin after WW II, ed. David Bankier, Jerusalem, 2005, 1–24. 4 Cf. Tamar Lewinsky, »Kultur im Transit. Osteuropäisch-jüdische Displaced Persons«, Osteuropa 8–10 (2008): 267. 5 Cf. Juliane Wetzel, »Jüdische Displaced Persons: Holocaustüberlebende zwischen Flucht und Neubeginn«, Deutschland Archiv (6.9.2017): 9 (www.bpb.de/255388).

352

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

There was great uncertainty among Jewish DPs as to whether they would be able to settle in their former home localities, in other countries on the European continent, in the United States, or in Palestine. The camps developed into semi-permanent settlements. People slowly made themselves at home, creating an infrastructure for Jewish communal and cultural life, constructing political organizations and founding families. Care and the education of children and young people was at the center of the work of relief organizations such as the Jewish Relief Unit or the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. One of the important educational goals was preparation for emigration to Palestine. In many cases, Jewish DPs encountered prejudice on the part of the local population. Because of language barriers, the large number of DPs from East-Central and Eastern Europe were regarded as foreigners, which provided fertile ground for persistent anti-Semitic stereotypes. In the crisis situation of the post-war period tensions grew between camp occupants and indigenous populations, whose negativity was revived because of envy of the supposed preferential treatment of DPs, but also because of shame for the extermination of Jews. By accusing Jewish DPs of black-market trading, profiteering, and engaging in unproductive work, they were blamed for Anti-Semitism, as if their own behavior had brought it upon them. The widespread refusal to deal with the genocide against the Jews quickly led to a perpetrator-victim reversal and to the projection of blame onto the ›alien group,‹ ›the Jews.‹6

With the declaration of the independent State of Israel and the gradual relaxation of American immigration policy, the opportunity dawned for many DPs to leave Europe. Between 72,000 and 77,000 Jewish DPs immigrated to the United States, and between 100,000 and 142,000 settled in Israel. Other target countries for Jewish emigration from Europe were Canada, various Latin American states, Australia, and South Africa. Within Europe, a number of countries each took several thousand refugees. With the »Law for the Legitimization of Stateless Foreigners,« DPs still living in Germany were equated in many regards with German nationals. Most Jewish DP camps were closed in 1951; only the Föhrenwald (near Munich) Jewish DP camp continued to exist until 1957.7

2

The Soviet Union and Successor States

2.1

The Situation of the Jewish Population in the Post-War Decades

Very few of the Soviet Jews who came under the control of German forces during the Second World War survived the Holocaust. Estimates suggest that at the end

6 Ibid., 8. 7 Cf. Atina Grossmann and Tamar Lewinsky, »Erster Teil: 1945–1949. Zwischenstation«, in Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart: Politik, Kultur und Gesellschaft, ed. Michael Brenner, Munich, 2012, 139–52.

2 The Soviet Union and Successor States

353

of the war there were about 2,300,000 Jewish survivors—among them approximately 200,000 repatriated Jews returning to Poland.8 In the Soviet Union, the fact that a person was Jewish was documented in the nationality entry in their passport; Soviet law stipulated that children of 16 and above from mixed marriages could choose between their parents’ nationalities. There was no possibility of changing the entry at a later date. The number of citizens whose nationality was indicated to be »Jewish« in their passports was not, however, published. There are also no data as to the number of Jews by descent. Contrary to traditional Jewish teaching, in the Soviet Union anyone who had at least one Jewish parent or grandparent counted as Jewish. Observation of the development of the Jewish population in the Soviet Union is reliant on data from the censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979 and 1989. However, these data are very inaccurate, as the census questionnaire was filled in by the individuals themselves, who did not have to provide documentary proof. So it was possible for a Jew to indicate another nationality out of fear of discrimination, or because he or she wished to assimilate, or had already become assimilated. It has to be assumed that the number of citizens indicating Jewish nationality in the population censuses is far lower than the actual number of Jews living in the Soviet Union, even if the persons concerned were not registered as Jews. According to the results of the 1959 census, 2,255,128 Jews lived in the USSR, 875,307 of whom lived in Russia, 150,084 in White Russia and 840,413 in Ukraine. By 1979, the Jewish population had shrunk to 1,798,002, and in 1989, only 1,437,259 Jews remained in the Soviet Union.9 In 1959, roughly 95.3% of Jews lived in cities, in 1970 as many as 97.9%, while the Soviet average in 1959 was 48%, and in 1970 56%. In 1970 approximately 50% of the Jewish population was concentrated in about 20 cities; roughly one fourth of Soviet Jews lived in the three major cities of the USSR—Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev.10 Among the 100 nationalities in the Soviet Union, the Jews were in twelfth place at the 1970 census. Despite this population size, in the post-war decades Jews in the Soviet Union were left without important minority rights. The autonomous area for Jews, Birobidzhan, founded in 1934, lay on the Chinese border far from the Jewish settlement areas, and was little more than a token.11 In the decades before the Second World War, Soviet Jews had experienced a very tumultuous history: phases of cultural flourishing and acceptance by the state, as well as times of radical curtailment of national rights, repression and persecution. Internal and foreign policy calculations on the part of the Soviet government had a considerable impact on the status of 8 Gert Robel, »Sowjetunion«, in Dimensionen des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Munich, 1996, 559f. 9 Figures according to Lothar Mertens, Alija: Die Emigration der Juden aus der UdSSR/GUS, Bochum, 1993, 36. 10 Cf. Daniela Bland-Spitz, Die Lage der Juden und die jüdische Opposition in der Sowjetunion 1967–1977, Diessenhofen, 1980, 42–44. 11 Cf. Antje Kuchenbecker, Zionismus ohne Zion: Birobidžan: Idee und Geschichte eines jüdischen Staates in Sowjet-Fernost, Berlin, 2000, 240–44.

354

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

the Jewish minority. In the early years of the Soviet Union, the Jewish minority had had benefited from its own education system and national cultural facilities; but under Stalin these basic amenities had been gradually dismantled.12 The Second World War ironically had the effect of delaying the destruction of Jewish culture by the Stalin regime that had begun in the 1930s. When German troops invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, however, there was no effort on the part of the Soviet government to secure the safety of the Jewish population. And the murder of innumerable Jews often took place with the support of the Soviet population. The Soviet government took no steps to counter the Anti-Semitism that was rekindled by National Socialist propaganda; instead, it endeavored to cover up the fact that the victims of German atrocities were primarily Jews. Similarly, the main task of the »Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee« founded in 1942 was not a matter of fighting Anti-Semitism but rather of calling on Jews around the world to support the USSR against the common enemy.13 For the Soviet Jews, however, the setting-up of the committee provided a glimmer of hope, along with the fact that after the war the Soviet Union initially promoted the founding of the state of Israel. But the anti-Jewish line taken by the Stalin regime visibly hardened soon after the end of the war. Already from the late 1930s, there had been a reduction in the proportion of Jewish members of the political elite. The Jewish internationalism so esteemed by Lenin was labeled by Stalin as suspicious and not to be trusted, given the new objective of »Socialism in one country.« The emergence of the state of Israel and its positive echoes among Soviet Jews added to Stalin’s suspicions as to the disloyalty of the Jewish population.14 The »Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee« was disbanded, and the Yiddish periodical Ejnikejt (»unity«) and the Jewish publishing house Emes (»truth«) were closed. Numerous Jewish officials and intellectuals, especially from the world of culture, were branded as »cosmopolitans« and accused of alleged anti-Soviet activities and connections with the West. In the course of this anti-Jewish wave, which also spread to the countries of East-Central Europe under communist control, there were numerous deportations and executions.15 The climax of the anti-Jewish campaign in the Soviet Union was the »uncovering« of the alleged conspiracy of a group of mainly Jewish doctors. In January 1953, the Soviet media spread the claim that the doctors had pursued the objective of murdering the leaders of the Soviet Union, Stalin being the prime target. Those accused of being instigators of this plot were the American Secret Service and international Jewish organizations. The doctors arrested faced execution: however, after Stalin’s death on 5 March

12 Cf. Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority, Cambridge, 1988, 106–37. 13 Cf. Louis Rapoport, Hammer, Sichel, Davidstern: Judenverfolgung in der Sowjetunion, Berlin, 1992, 74–78. 14 Cf. Viktor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym, Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Soviet Nationality Policy, London, 1983, 91. 15 Cf. Bland-Spitz, Die Lage der Juden, 177.

2 The Soviet Union and Successor States

355

1953 they were released and rehabilitated. And Stalin’s planned deportations of Soviet Jews to concentration camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and Birobidzhan were not carried out.16 Stalin’s death did not mean the end of anti-Jewish measures. Not mentioned in the list of Stalin’s crimes (which Khrushchev announced at the XXth annual conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February of 1956) were the liquidation of Jewish culture and of many Jewish personalities, as well as other attacks on Jews. In the course of the 1950s to the mid-1960s, various campaigns spread hatred and mistrust of Jews and the Jewish religion.17 Khrushchev’s antireligion campaign, which predicted the destruction of religion in the name of a scientific atheism, was not directed solely against Judaism, but the Jewish population was particularly affected by this policy. Heavier restrictions were placed on the publication of Jewish religious literature than on other faith communities; under Khrushchev, the number of synagogues was reduced from 450 in 1956 to 70 in 1965.18 Although Khrushchev distanced himself from the open Anti-Semitism of the Stalin period, his anti-religious campaign was clearly anti-Semitic in flavor. Harsh steps were taken against the newly forming Zionist groups in cities like Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk, Riga and Vilnius, but a wave of arrests was unable to stop the growth of this movement. Instead of the political accusations raised against Jews in the Stalin period, under Khrushchev’s government the main charge by the authorities was the accusation of economic crime, with Soviet propaganda resorting in particular to traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes. In the course of this campaign many mass protests were carried out and many Jews were executed.19 In the decades following the Second World War, the Soviet leadership claimed that the Jewish population in the Soviet Union had already acculturated to the extent that in a short time they would have been completely absorbed in the Soviet population. Jewish culture was regarded as about to die out and there should be no attempted »artificial resuscitation.« The Jewish cultural amenities and schools closed under Stalin were therefore not reopened in the Khrushchev era. Under Brezhnev as well, little scope was left for the maintenance of Jewish culture and languages. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was no school in the entire Soviet Union that had Yiddish as its language of instruction. In Birobidzhan in early 1981, Yiddish was again offered on an experimental basis as an elective subject. Here, too, there were limited opportunities to maintain Yiddish culture, with a Yiddish-language newspaper, a Yiddish theater, and a library with Yiddish literature. However, as 16 Cf. Rapoport, Hammer, Sichel, Davidstern, 181–259. 17 Cf. Moshe Decter, »The Terror That Fails: Anti-Zionism as the Leitmotif of Soviet AntiSemitism«, in Let My People Go! Today’s Documentary Story of Soviet Jewry’s Struggle to Be Free, ed. Richard Cohen, New York, 1971, 189f. 18 Data on the number of synagogues published in the West vary widely. Details of the closure of synagogues and the anti-Jewish policy under Khrushchev are given in Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917: Paradox of Survival, New York, 1988, 622–24. 19 Cf. Decter, »The Terror That Fails,« 190f.

356

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

only a small percentage of the Soviet Jewish population lived in Birobidzhan, these institutions functioned as little more than a token.20 With few exceptions, there were no official facilities to enable the learning of the Hebrew language. Books in Yiddish were published only to a very limited extent in the post-war Soviet Union; in the 1970s the number of Yiddish publications was between three and eight titles a year. Apart from the Birobidzhan daily newspaper, the only publication worthy of mention is the literary periodical Sowjetisch hejmland (»Soviet homeland«), which published texts by contemporary Soviet authors. In the course of the 1960s, however, participation in current politics expanded, with its publisher Aron Vergelis endeavoring to pursue the line of the anti-Zionist campaign. Books about Jewish history and culture were not available in Soviet bookshops, either in Russian or any other language. In libraries, the publication of Jewish literature was subject to heavy restrictions, and Judaica in private ownership—both pre-revolutionary, Soviet and also foreign publications—were often branded »anti-Soviet« and confiscated.21 After Khrushchev stepped down there were no fundamental changes in policy in relation to the Jewish religion. Although propaganda was now mainly directed against Zionism, there were repeated attacks on Judaism. There was no discernible improvement with regard to the institutional situation of Judaism in the 1970s, either. Soviet data on the number of synagogues vary widely for the 1970s and 1980s. Estimates suggest that the number of 67 synagogues in 1965 had reduced to 60 in 1980 and around 50 in 1983.22 As there was no official registration of adherents, data on the number of religious Jews are difficult to come by. In 1960 Soviet sources put the number of religious Jews at 500,000, while later studies indicate numbers between 60,000 and 150,000.23 In the 1970s, although they were the third-largest Jewish community in the world, Soviet Jews were served by less than ten rabbis, all of whom were advanced in years; some of them were not adequately qualified or prepared for their task. By comparison with the status of other religious communities, the Jewish communities were at a distinct disadvantage: they had no permission to convene a conference to form an umbrella organization. According to Soviet law, however, this was a precondition for the right to produce religious objects, build houses, publish religious literature, set up religious schools, and for foreign relations. All of this was denied to the Jewish communities. Similarly, there was no functioning seminary for the training of rabbis.24 The 1960s ban on the production of mazzot was later relaxed. Attached to the Moscow Choral synagogue was a bakery, which could also distribute loaves to other

20 Cf. Otto Luchterhandt, »Die Rechtsstellung der jüdischen Minderheit«, in Die Minderheiten in der Sowjetunion und das Völkerrecht, ed. Georg Brunner et al., Cologne, 1988, 80. 21 Cf. Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet Union, 273–80. 22 Cf. ibid., 295. 23 Cf. Bland-Spitz, Die Lage der Juden, 107ff. 24 Cf. Luchterhandt, »Die Rechtsstellung der jüdischen Minderheit«, 94.

2 The Soviet Union and Successor States

357

municipalities of the USSR; but this fell well short of meeting demand. Celebration of the various religious ceremonies and rituals was not directly banned by Soviet law but, by means of a corresponding interpretation of other provisions, for example of Article 227 of the penal code of the RSFSR concerning the »attack on the personality or on civil rights under the guise of the exercise of religious acts of worship,« it was liable to prosecution. By the hint of reprisals and the prohibition of religious instruction of children, certain customs and traditions were rendered effectively illegal.25 While the number of those attending synagogue on the Sabbath was rather small and it was mainly older people who congregated for prayer, on High Holidays attendance numbers were very high. On those days, synagogue was also attended by large numbers of non-religious Jews who felt the need to demonstrate their Jewishness. The Jewish religion in general, and the synagogue in particular, as the only officially recognized Jewish institution in the Soviet Union, thus had a new role.26 The results of the census show that the relative share of the Jewish population in the total population decreased from 1.1% to 0.5% between 1959 and 1989. There are several reasons for this decline. The assimilation demanded by the government is one very important reason; it must also be assumed that there was a natural reduction in the Jewish population. Another possible explanation is the desire of many Jews to hide their Jewish identity, given the difficulties and an atmosphere of Anti-Semitism. A large proportion of Soviet Jews had already become largely assimilated in the post-war decades. Full adaptation to mainstream society, however, was often hampered by the alienation of Jewish identity in the nationality entry in passports, which could be an impediment to a professional career in certain areas. For various reasons, this period also saw a »national awakening« in sections of the Jewish population, which took a variety of forms: the spectrum ranged from efforts to preserve Jewish identity to a rediscovery of national self-confidence, especially among the younger generation. Already fully or partially assimilated or Russified Jews sought their ethnic and religious roots again and endeavored to preserve national linguistic and cultural elements. The state-authorized suppression of the fate of the Jewish population in the Second World War was also very important for the emerging »national awakening« within the Jewish population in the post-war decades.27 Associated with the reawakening of the Jewish national consciousness and the rediscovery of Jewish identity was the desire, among a section of Soviet Jews, to learn Hebrew, from the late 1960s onwards. Many now considered the language of the State of Israel, to be their national language and mother tongue. Small groups

25 Cf. Bland-Spitz, Die Lage der Juden, 128f. 26 Cf. Zeev Katz, »The Jews in the Soviet Union,« in Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities, New York, 1975, 125. 27 Cf. Benjamin Pinkus, »National Identity and Emigration Patterns among Soviet Jewry,« in Soviet Jewish Affairs 15,3 (1985): 3–28.

358

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

formed to teach and learn Hebrew in private courses. It is estimated that several thousand Jews participated in these private language courses in Moscow and other cities. In view of these developments, in parts of the Jewish population the question of emigration from the Soviet Union became increasingly important, leading to confrontation with the Soviet state.

2.2

Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union

Since the founding of the Soviet Union the state’s policy had been resolutely against any emigration.28 The emigration of Soviet citizens was regarded as a threat to the Soviet regime; leaving the USSR was interpreted as an act of disloyalty, often even as treason, an attack on the Soviet authorities. However, in the post-war decades Jews were among the few population groups in the multi-ethnic state of the Soviet Union who had any chance of emigrating, on the grounds of family reunification. From the late 1960s, a growing number of members of the Jewish minority sought permission to emigrate on this basis. In all, between 1968 and 1986 about 266,000 Jews were able to emigrate from the Soviet Union. As their prime motive for emigration, Jews hopeful of leaving the country indicated their religious and traditional ties to the State of Israel. Like Jews from other countries, they, too, wanted to have the opportunity to build up their own state and live among the Jewish nation. After the founding of the State of Israel and its immediate recognition by the USSR, the new state became the symbol and hope for a solution to the problems of Soviet Jews. Besides ethnic and religious reasons, family, economic and political motives also moved people to emigrate. Jewish emigration from the USSR can be divided into two phases: up to 1973 Jews emigrated from the former Soviet Union mainly to Israel, after which the number of those emigrating to the USA rose sharply. In this second phase, emigrants came increasingly from the heartland of the USSR, from the areas where many Jews had become assimilated. At about the same time a shift in emigration motives could be observed: to an increasingly degree, people wanted to emigrate for pragmatic reasons, such as the desire to live in a democracy, or in a country where one could enjoy cultural freedom or a higher standard of living. Attractive features of the destination country in each case were also significant motives for emigration.29 The number of applicants was always far higher than the number of emigrants, as the granting of exit permits was to some extent a concession on the part of the authorities, which was dependent on various factors in foreign and domestic policy. The application procedure was not designed to achieve a speedy, smooth processing of emigration matters; rather, those involved found many obstacles placed in their

28 Fundamental, in the context of this section, is: Kerstin Armborst, Ablösung von der Sowjetunion: Die Emigrationsbewegung der Juden und Deutschen vor 1987, Münster, 2001. 29 Cf. Zaslavsky/Brym, Soviet-Jewish Emigration, 131f.

2 The Soviet Union and Successor States

359

way, making even just the application for permission to emigrate feel like an almost insurmountable hurdle. The very application itself could, in varying degrees, have a negative impact on the living circumstances of those concerned. The rejection of an exit application, which was often given verbally and without reasons, was often associated with attempts to pressure applicants into discontinuing their efforts to emigrate. As the Soviet authorities made arbitrary decisions on the exit applications, almost every applicant could expect reprisals and rejection of the application. The restrictive handling of the emigration question on the part of the Soviet government had, on the one hand, a deterrent effect, but on the other hand, it had the effect that from the group of Jews wanting to emigrate, particularly unsuccessful applicants, a protest movement formed. Following the example of the Soviet human rights movement, those seeking emigration sent collective and individual petitions to addressees within the Soviet Union and the West, trying by means of protests, in particular in Moscow to draw public attention to their cause both in the Soviet Union and abroad. With hunger strikes, the demonstrative renunciation of Soviet citizenship, and conscientious objection to military service, they underlined their growing distance from the Soviet state. They received widespread support from Western countries. There, many government agencies, NGOs, and groups campaigned for the improvement of the cultural and religious rights of Soviet Jews, as well as for their ability to emigrate. Among the Jews whose applications were rejected were many academics who were denied consent to practice their profession because of their emigration endeavors and who were active in the Jewish movement in different ways. In many samizdat30 writings, activists tackled the problems of Jews in the Soviet Union, the emigration movement, and the question of Jewish identity, as well as cultural issues. With such underground periodicals, Jewish intellectuals created an important basis for the Jewish national movement. Other unofficial cultural activities, such as Hebrew courses and seminars on Jewish history and culture, were used to try to remedy the lack of an official Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. Even though only a small proportion of Jewish emigration applicants belonged to the groups involved with samizdat publications or were active in the cultural field, these activities nonetheless had a considerable impact on the Jewish emigration movement. They both contributed to the development and preservation of Jewish identity and were an expression of protest against living conditions in the Soviet Union, that is to say against the restrictions on Soviet Jews’ right to emigrate and their cultural rights.31 The language and cultural seminars, as well as the unofficial activities in the scientific field within the community of Jews refused permission, represented a unifying element, which could be built upon in the late 1980s, when, under the policy of perestroika, conditions for a Jewish cultural life improved.

30 Samizdat (sam = self-, izdat' = publish) is the term used for writings that were produced and distributed by bypassing the state publication system. 31 Cf. Armborst, Ablösung von der Sowjetunion, 254–64.

360

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

The new policy brought in under the Gorbachev government was slow in affecting the situation of the Jewish population in the Soviet Union.32 When a new exit scheme came into force in 1987, there was a change in the way the Soviet authorities dealt with approvals. Numerous applicants who had been refused for many years were now able to leave the country. Despite the slow promise of changes in the Soviet Union, Jews emigrated in growing numbers.33 A clearly decisive factor affecting Jewish emigration in the late 1980s, was the spreading Anti-Semitism of the nationalist right.34 However, the instability of intra-Soviet development, the economic situation, and the social and political climate, moved large parts of the Jewish population to leave the country. In just the three years between 1989 and 1991, approx. 448,000 Jews left the USSR, mainly for Israel, the USA, and Germany.

2.3

Developments since Perestroika

After decades of discrimination, since Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform policies of glasnost and perestroika a renaissance of Jewish life in the countries of the former Soviet Union has occurred. In spite of heavy emigration, an active community life has developed with religious community organizations, schools, media, cultural facilities, and associations representing Jewish interests. According to estimates by Sergio Della Pergola in 2016, there were 179,500 Jews living in Russia,35 and there is now an almost seamless Jewish education system. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jewish studies in Russia experienced an upswing, which is also reflected in the establishment of numerous schools and institutions of adult education. Various publications, scientific institutes, and information centers began dealing with Jewish themes.36 In recent years, Jewish studies has been established in the world of Russian scholarship. In Ukraine and Belarus institutions of Jewish studies have come into being.37 In particular, Holocaust research, which did not exist, now forms an important focus of research on the history of the Jews in the Soviet Union. The Holocaust information center set up in Moscow in 1992 has the goal of keeping the memory of the victims of the Holocaust alive, building up museums and exhibitions, organizing commemorative events, erecting monuments to the victims, as well as compiling 32 Cf. Zvi Gitelman, »Gorbachev’s Reforms and the Future of Soviet Jewry,« Soviet Jewish Affairs 18,2 (1988): 3–15. 33 Cf. Mordechai Altshuler, »Soviet Jewry: A Community in Turmoil,« in Terms of Survival: The Jewish World since 1945, ed. Robert S. Wistrich, New York, 1995, 220–24. 34 Cf. Matthias Messmer, Sowjetischer und postkommunistischer Anti-Semitismus: Entwicklungen in Russland, der Ukraine und Litauen, Constance, 1997, 271–79. 35 Cf. Sergio Della Pergola, »World Jewish Population, 2016«, Current Jewish Population Reports 17 (2016): 58. 36 Cf. Semen Čarnyj, »Integration und Selbstbehauptung: Die jüdische Gemeinschaft in Russland,« Osteuropa 8–10 (2008): 437–44. 37 Cf. Dmitrj Eljaševič and Maksim Mel’cin, »Stürmischer Aufschwung. Jüdische Studien in Russland,« Osteuropa 8–10 (2008): 419–36.

3 Poland and Hungary

361

documents, testimonies, and memories. Corresponding educational and memorial centers have also emerged in Ukraine and Belarus. Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Center of Tolerance opened its doors to visitors in 2012, as one of the largest Jewish museums in the world. It tells visitors the story of the Jews in Russia from the 18th century to the present and provides general information about Jewish culture and history. Between 1989 and 2002, some 940,000 Jews and their non-Jewish relatives moved from the Commonwealth of Independent States to Israel, where they now form the largest minority.38 The religious authorities in Israel sometimes query the Jewish identity of some of the emigrants from the former Soviet Union, as the attribution of Jewish nationality in the Soviet Union was not made conditional on the matrilinear descent required in traditional halakhah. Owing to the very high average education level of Russian-speaking Jews, the Israeli economy and some research disciplines experienced a considerable boost in the 1990s.39 In Israeli cultural and artistic life, too, Russian-speaking Jewish artists provided new inspiration. Since many Russian-speaking Jews laid great emphasis on cultural cohesion, numerous Russian interest groups, umbrella organizations, cultural institutions, and media came into being, which are now helping to ensure that the Russian cultural and educational heritage is maintained. With the founding of »Israel Ba-Aliyah« (Israel in Immigration) and »Israel Beiteinu« (Israel our Home) in the 1990s, two parties of Russian-speaking immigrants made it into the Knesset and have also participated in government coalitions. In many areas of social life in Israel, Russian-speaking immigrants now help determine developments and are heavily involved in social processes affecting the country as a whole.

3

Poland and Hungary

The Holocaust virtually wiped out Jewish life in Poland. Only a few hundred thousand of the approximately 3.5 million Jews in the country survived.40 When people returned from the camps, from abroad, or from their hiding-places to their hometowns in Poland, they had to come to terms quickly with the fact that they were not welcome. In the heated mood caused by clashes between Communists and their opponents, the discontent of the population was directed against the Jewish returnees. In 1945 and 1946 large numbers of Jews fell victim to anti-Jewish riots in Cracow, Parczew, Kielce and other places, some of which had been triggered by 38 Cf. Mark Tolts, »Demographische Trends unter den Juden in der ehemaligen Sowjetunion,« in Russische Juden und Transnationale Diaspora, ed. Julius H. Schoeps et al., Berlin, 2005, 26. 39 Fundamental reading in relation to the following section: Eliezer Ben Rafael et al., eds., Building a Diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany and USA, Leiden, 2006; and Larissa Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration and Conflict, New Brunswick/NJ, 2007. 40 On this see Frank Golczewski, »Polen«, in Dimensionen des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Munich, 1996, 411–97. See, too, Michael Berenbaum’s chapter in this volume.

362

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

rumors of ritual murder. As a result of the pogrom fever in the country, many Polish Jews decided to emigrate. The export of the Soviet system to the countries of Central Eastern Europe influenced the way in which they dealt with the Holocaust and with returning or surviving Jews in that its marginalization was officially endorsed using arguments similar to those used in the Soviet Union.41

In the various countries of Central and Eastern Europe, however, national variants are discernible. In the hope that socialism would enable the integration of the Jewish population into Polish society, many Jews had joined the Communist Party. But even in the course of Stalin’s policies, Jewish party officials sometimes suffered exclusion. Anti-Jewish policies came to a head again in 1968, when, under the Gomułka regime, the Israeli-Arab war of 1967 was taken as an opportunity to present the Jews in Poland as supporters of a policy of aggression. As a result, measures were taken first against Jews in the Communist Party and then also in other areas of society, especially in science and the arts, with redundancies, interrogations, and arrests. The Polish Jews responded to the anti-Jewish policy with emigration, so that in the end only a few thousand Jews remained in Poland.42 It was only in the course of the slow political changes that began in the late 1980s that the official line toward the Jews changed so that discrimination weakened and Jewish institutions received state support. Although Anti-Semitism was rekindled, at the same time, vibrant Jewish life could flourish in Poland. Many people who did not confess Judaism during the period of communist rule returned to Judaism. Slowly, people began to come to terms with the Holocaust on Polish soil and deal with the tangled history of the Polish Jews in the war and the post-war period. Though the mass murder of Jews was never denied, up until the 1990s, the main focus of remembrance policy was always the suffering of Poles and Catholics, even in Oświȩcim (Auschwitz).43 The year 2014 saw the opening of Warsaw’s museum of the history of Polish Jews, which had been in planning since the mid-1990s. The aim of the exhibitors from Poland, Israel, and the United States, was to convey the wealth and diversity of Jewish culture and tradition in Poland. The preservation of the remaining traces of Jewish life in Poland is not only a concern of the few Jews who still live there. In fact, more and more non-Jewish Poles are discovering a new interest in their country’s Jewish heritage.44 Since the late 1980s, this steadily growing interest is

41 Dietrich Beyrau, »Katastrophen und sozialer Aufstieg. Juden und Nicht-Juden in Osteuropa,« Osteuropa 8–10 (2008): 48. 42 Cf. Heiko Haumann, »Polen und Litauen,« in Handbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Europa, ed. Elke-Vera Kotowski et al., Darmstadt, 2012, 273f. 43 Cf. Katrin Steffen, »Formen der Erinnerung,« Osteuropa 8–10 (2008): 367–86. 44 Cf. Sonia Misak, »The Jewish Communities of Vienna and Cracow Communities against All Odds,« in Jewish Centers & Peripheries: Europe between America and Israel Fifty Years After World War II, ed. S. Ilan Troen, New Brunswick/NJ, 1999, 169–72. See also, especially, Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe, Berkeley/CA, 2002.

3 Poland and Hungary

363

reflected in Jewish culture festivals, the renovation of Jewish neighborhoods, and the increasing popularity of klezmer music. The Jewish Festival in Cracow, which has taken place annually since 1988 in the former Jewish district of Kazimierz, is the largest festival of its kind in Europe. At festival time up to 30,000 participants come to the former center of Jewish life, in which the Jewish community now numbers only about 120. With its seven refurbished synagogues, the Center for Jewish Culture, and numerous kosher cafés and restaurants, Kazimierz gives visitors more the impression of a Jewish open-air museum. In the face of this revival of Jewish culture without Jews, many Jews are skeptical and are offended by the commercialization of their culture. Others are receptive to this development, seeing the new interest in Jewish culture as a positive sign for coming to terms with Poland’s past. However, in recent years, the Polish national-conservative government proceeded to actively pursue the politics of memory in the name of historical justice. Attempts to regulate public memory through law have led to an everdeepening polarization in Polish society on the subject of Polish-Jewish relation. Large parts of Hungarian Jewry were also murdered during the Holocaust. Out of approximately 825,000 Jews living in Hungary in 1941 only about 200,000 survived the genocide; when the war ended, more than 140,000 of them were living in Budapest. Membership figures of Jewish communities in the provincial towns, on the other hand, had declined to just a few dozen. In the two major waves of emigration from 1945 to 1948 and 1956 to 1957, between 30,000 and 60,000 Jews left the country. At the beginning of the 21st century, estimates put the number of Jews still living in Hungary at between 60,000 and 150,000.45 With the political and social upheaval after the Second World War, many Hungarian Jews had high hopes of new opportunities in the communist system. Giving up their cultural traditions and their religious affiliation, they joined the Party and in some cases, made it into middle or higher-level positions. However, the Jewish middle class and the petite bourgeoisie soon found themselves affected by government measures against religion and the bourgeoisie. In addition, Hungary’s Jewish population suffered under an anti-Zionist campaign. In the face of the Stalinist reality, many Jewish members of the Party joined the opposition movement and actively supported the uprising of 1956. In the following period, the Communist Party endeavored to suppress the participation of Jews in political life. Religious life was initially able to develop in the immediate post-war period, but with the establishment of two umbrella organizations with loyalties to the political system, local community work was heavily steered and restricted. The schools of the Jewish community were nationalized in 1948. Only a high school and the rabbinical seminary remained in place under the supervision of the »State Office of Religious Affairs;« however, enrollment numbers were very low.46 From the mid-1960s, there was an improvement in the conditions for Jewish life to flourish in Hungary, and since the late 1980s, there is evidence of a growing

45 Cf. András Kovacs, »Ungarn«, in Kotowski, Handbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Europa, 160. 46 Cf. Kovacs, »Ungarn,« 161f.

364

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

interest in Jewish culture, religion, and traditions. This is reflected in the emergence of cultural, religious and Zionist organizations, in a comparatively broad media landscape, and in growing diversity in schooling. After the fall of communism in 1989, the democratically elected government expressed for the first time its regret at the suffering inflicted on the Jews during the Second World War. On the basis of laws adopted by the Hungarian Parliament in the early 1990s, approximately 30,000 Hungarian Jews received compensation in the years that followed. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a noticeable reemergence of Anti-Semitism, which has appeared openly in extreme right-wing political movements in particular.47

4

Germany

After the Holocaust, the Jewish world was of the opinion that no Jewish life could or should never again arise »in the land of the murderers.« Although a permanent Jewish presence established itself in Germany just a few years after the end of the war, into the 1960s many international Jewish organizations were still refusing to recognize the German Jewish community. It was only slowly that the realization sank in that, with the emergence of a new generation, Jewish life was possible in Germany as well.48 Aid for surviving Jews that started soon after the war was very uncoordinated and regionally limited. The laws and regulations issued by the occupying forces between 1947 and 1949 concerning the restitution of assets robbed or lost by »forced sales« under the Nazis were first steps on the path to the restoration of rights. The legal processing of Nazi crimes was conducted only hesitantly in postwar Germany. In the first two post-war decades there was no real attempt on the part of German society to deal with the legacy of the Nazi period. Indeed, many former NSDAP members were able to continue their professional careers, often making it to top positions. Against this background, Jews living in Germany kept wondering to what extent they could rely on a future in Germany. The feeling of »sitting on packed suitcases« in the country of the perpetrators was commonplace for many Jews in Germany then. In the post-war decades, the Jewish population in Germany was made up of different groups from various backgrounds. The large group of Displaced Persons originating from Eastern Europe was in transit; and it saw its presence in Germany as only provisional. Most moved on, often after years of living in Germany, in the direction of Israel and the United States. Still, for a variety of reasons, a proportion

47 On this see Robert S. Wistrich, »The Dangers of Anti-Semitism in the New Europe«, in Jewish Identities in the New Europe, ed. Jonathan Webber, London, 1994, 62, 221. 48 Fundamental reading for this and the following discussion is: Michael Brenner, ed., Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart: Politik, Kultur und Gesellschaft, Munich, 2012.

4 Germany

365

of them remained »stuck« in Germany. The second group was formed by German Jews returning from exile to Germany after the end of the war, who had survived in the camps or in hiding. From the 1950s, various immigrant groups came to the Federal Republic of Germany from countries like Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Returnees from Israel also sought a new home here. While a large proportion of members of the first post-war communities in northern and western Germany came from Germany itself, Eastern European Jews formed the majority in communities in southern Germany. This led to many German Jews being afraid for their religious traditions and to the outlook of the local community becoming a key point of conflict. With the establishment of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in Frankfurt/Main in July 1950, representatives of the Jewish community created a democratically legitimized general Jewish representation in West Germany. Although the Central Council soon moved its headquarters to Düsseldorf, as an intellectual and economic center for Jewish life, Frankfurt continued to play a major role in the Jewish history of the Federal Republic. The vast majority of members of the community lived in urban communities, especially in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich. By 1990, the number of members represented by the Central Council in more than 60 communities grew to some 28,000.49 In the 1980s, a new political self-confidence developed in the German-Jewish communities, and the latter began increasingly to make their mark in public life in the Federal Republic. Parallel to this, a growing public interest in Jewish themes arose. Inspired by the American television series »Holocaust« (German television premier in January 1979), the younger generation became occupied with the extermination years and tried in many places to reconstruct the Jewish past.50 Within the Jewish community people talked more openly about a future in Germany. Already in the early 1970s there was discussion of creating a Jewish training facility to redress the lack of rabbis, cantors, and religion teachers in the communities. With the founding of the College of Jewish Studies (Hochschule für Jüdische Studien) in Heidelberg in 1979, the Central Council put this idea into effect, although the interest of potential students was rather thin.51 In the German Democratic Republic there was only a very small Jewish community.52 Shortly after the liberation of Berlin in 1945, many German Jews had returned to Berlin. A large proportion settled in the eastern part of the city, where the most important Jewish institutions and sites had stood before the war. Often, a desire to participate in the development of the socialist society was also a factor. Initially, Jewish victims of the Nazis met with a sympathetic attitude on the part

49 Cf. Constantin Goschler and Anthony Kauders, »Dritter Teil: 1968–1989. Positionierungen«, ibid., 297. 50 Cf. Michael Brenner, »Die jüdische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland nach 1945,« Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 50 (2007): 15. 51 Cf. Goschler/Kauders, »Dritter Teil: 1968–1989. Positionierungen«, 310f. 52 On this and the following discussion see: Michael Brenner and Norbert Frei, »Zweiter Teil: 1950–1967. Konsolidierung«, in Brenner, Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, 175–82.

366

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

of the SED (Socialist Unity Party). But soon, the Jewish community in the GDR was exploited for propaganda purposes, to emphasize the anti-fascist character of the East German state. In the course of the forced Stalinization and the show trials in Eastern Europe with their anti-Semitic connotations, many Jewish citizens of the GDR found themselves in such distress that by late 1952 to early 1953 more than 500 members of Jewish communities in the GDR had fled to the Federal Republic. During the deStalinization phase, the way in which the GDR leadership dealt with the small remaining Jewish community changed, from repressive exclusion to limited support, expressed, for example, in the refurbishment of synagogues or the maintenance of an old people’s home. The SED refused to recognize pan-German responsibility for the Holocaust and saw no reason for compensation to be paid to the Jews. It was only after the fall of the Berlin wall that the GDR government confessed to shared responsibility for the murder and persecution of the Jews under National Socialism. While in 1955 the Jewish community still had 1,715 members, in 1976 there were no more than 728. In 1989 the few Jewish communities in the GDR had a total of around 350 members, the majority of them living in East Berlin. In the last few months of the existence of the GDR, more than 2,500 Jews traveled to East Berlin from the Soviet Union, when in the face of media reports on anti-Semitic persecution in the Soviet Union, the GDR agreed to grant admission to the persecuted.53 This was the beginning of a major wave of emigration from the USSR to Germany. From the beginning of 1991, Jews were able to enter reunified Germany from the Soviet Union as »Jewish contingent refugees.« In the course of this wave of immigration, by 2010 between 170,000 and 300,000 people, including non-Jewish family members, had arrived in Germany from the Soviet Union and the former Soviet states.54 For Judaism in Germany this influx from the former Soviet Union meant major changes. Although a large number of Jews living in Germany did not join congregations, in 2010 the more than 100 Jewish congregations had around 105,000 members, more than 90 percent of whom were Russian-speaking Jews. The immigration from Eastern Europe put a stop to a demographic development which could otherwise, given the aging of the Jewish communities in post-war Germany, have led to the closure of congregations, bringing Jewish life in reunified Germany to a standstill. However, in the past two decades not only has the Jewish community in Germany grown in numbers and become more visible, but in the course of the integration of immigrants, a cultural and religious pluralization has developed.55 This is also evident in the increasing number of Jewish educational institutions and in the existence of two new rabbinic seminaries, the liberal Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam and the Orthodox Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin. While in the 1990s rabbis always had to be imported to Germany, in 2006 for the first time since the Holocaust, a rabbinic ordination ceremony took place in Germany.

53 Cf. Yfaat Weiss and Lena Gorelik, »Vierter Teil: 1990–2012. Aufbrüche«, ibid., 382f. 54 For the different estimates of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants, see: ibid., 492 n. 64. 55 Cf. ibid., 428–32.

5 Great Britain

5

367

Great Britain

British Judaism was the only major Jewish community in Europe not to be directly affected by the Holocaust. After the end of the war it therefore had a special responsibility toward fellow believers on the continent of Europe. In addition, as the Mandate power in Palestine and as one of the Allied occupation forces in Germany and Austria, the British government held key functions in shaping the fate of the Jewish community in Europe. The Jewish population of the United Kingdom grew between 1933 and 1939 from 300,000 to 360,000–370,000 people; by the mid-1950s it is estimated that only 10,000 to 15,000 more people had joined them. Growth by immigration remained very low—only about 3,000 Holocaust survivors settled in Britain after the war. The fact that the number of Jewish residents in the UK had decreased significantly by the 1980s was partly due to the low birth rate and the increasing proportion of mixed marriages. But another factor was the emigration of British Jews—often for professional reasons—to Israel and other parts of the English-speaking world.56 In the years 1945–1948, in various ways the British Jewish community was negatively affected by political battles on the Palestinian question. When it came to a Zionist revolt in Palestine against the restrictive immigration policies of the British Mandate government, a wave of anti-Semitic riots broke out in the UK. Although the situation was soon to calm down, British Jewry maintained a cautious, defensive attitude toward society as a whole. While before 1948 many, especially well-established, British Jews were still opposed to political Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state, this attitude changed following the founding of the State of Israel: the majority now supported the state, recognizing its key significance for contemporary Jewish life. In the post-war decades, British Jewry was characterized by great social mobility. The initially still very broad working class became smaller and the proportion of Jewish university graduates grew steadily. While the majority of British Jews were middleclass already at the beginning of the 1960s, their economic improvement continued over the coming decades. Increasing prosperity was reflected in the changing political orientation and an increased affiliation with the Conservative party.57 The majority of religious British Jews in the post-war period belonged to one of the »Central Orthodox« synagogues—the United synagogue, the Federation of synagogues, or other independent Orthodox synagogues. A small but steadily growing proportion turned to the more strictly Orthodox synagogues or to the liberal or Reform congregations. Although synagogue membership grew in the post-war decades, loyalty to the religion weakened. It was only in dense Jewish population centers that formal Jewish religiosity remained largely intact. In Stamford Hill in

56 Cf. William D. Rubinstein, »Großbritannien und Irland«, in Kotowski, Handbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Europa, 482. 57 Cf. Bernard Wasserstein, Europa ohne Juden: Das europäische Judentum seit 1945, Munich, 2001, 117f.

368

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

north London, an ultra-Orthodox district came into being, which has become a major center of the Haredim in Europe.58 The Board of Deputies of British Jews, founded in the middle of the 18th century, was the most important secular institution of British Jewry in the post-war decades. The almost 300 delegates, directly elected by synagogues and local Jewish organizations, represent their interests vis-à-vis the British government and a wider public. In 1974, the Board of Deputies of British Jews became affiliated to the World Jewish Congress. The common commitment to the freedom of Soviet Jews in the period from the mid-1960s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was of great importance for cohesion within British Jewry. Activists played a key role in the internationally organized struggle for the right of the so-called »Prisoners of Zion« to emigrate. With the demise of the Soviet Union and the mass emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union, for Jews in the Diaspora, in particular for British Jews, an important unifying element was lost.59 Contrary to the pessimistic forecasts of the demographic development of British Judaism that drew attention in the late 20th century, more recent figures now indicate a growth in population, the reasons for which lie especially in the higher birth rate of members of the strict Orthodox congregations. At the beginning of the new millennium, the Jewish population in the UK was estimated at about 300,000. Two-thirds live in Greater London and the adjacent home counties; about ten percent live in Greater Manchester. There was also growth in the number of students in Jewish schools in the UK. About two-thirds of Jewish children now attend a Jewish day school. The Jewish community in Great Britain maintains a highly developed welfare system and a multifaceted cultural life. The close relationship of many British Jews to Israel is evident in the large number of Zionist and Israel-related organizations.60

6

France

At the end of the war only 180,000 to 200,000 Jews were living in France. More than one-third of the Jewish population of France had died in the deportations, the concentration camps, and as a result of the hostilities. An urgent task after the end of the war was to return children to their parents and to take care of the many orphans. In 1947, there were around 60 children’s homes, which accommodated roughly 3,000 orphans and 1,000 young concentration camps survivors.61

58 Cf. William D. Rubinstein, A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain, Houndmills, 1996, 414–16. 59 Cf. Rubinstein, A History of the Jews, 380f. 60 Cf. Marlena Schmool, »British Jewry: Prospects and Problems«, in Troen, Jewish Centers & Peripheries, 228–37. 61 On the present and following discussion see: Esther Benbassa, Geschichte der Juden in Frankreich, Berlin, 2000, 225–28.

6 France

369

Since the majority of survivors decided against emigration to America or Palestine and decided to remain in France, the Jewish organizations saw the restructuring of the Jewish communities as their main task. The work of these organizations was complicated, however, by the destroyed infrastructure, by a lack of management staff, and by old and new internal disagreements. In 1944, when it was still illegal, the Conseil représentatif des Israélites de France (CRIF) was founded, which incorporated various ideological currents within French Judaism and claimed to represent French Jews politically vis-à-vis the French state. As a social counterpart to the CRIF, in 1945 the Comité juif d’action sociale et de reconstruction (COJASOR) came into being, and in 1949 the Fond sociale juif unifié (FSJU), which were responsible for the collection and distribution of funds that came from the American Joint Distribution Committee (Joint). The FSJU did not act only as a social relief organization but was also engaged in cultural and educational work. The returning deportees worked toward reintegration into French society. In many cases, they chose the path of distancing themselves from their Jewish background, which was often also apparent externally as well, in a change of name: between 1947 and 1950, five percent of the Jewish population in France changed their family name. At the same time, however, a renewal of traditional Judaism occurred, which took place in particular among young people and was accompanied by an effort to deepen knowledge about Judaism. The establishment of meeting places, schools, and finally in the 1950s the Centre universitaire d’études juives de Paris (CUEJ) was intended to serve this objective. In addition, a Jewish media landscape emerged, existing libraries were further developed, and new ones created.62 Unlike the pre-war period, after the war Zionism found widespread approval in French Jewish society. Zionism now met with broad sympathy even among the nonJewish population, and the majority of Jews regarded the founding of a state in Palestine as a necessity, even if some welcomed the Jewish state only as a haven for refugees from Central and Eastern Europe. The solidarity of French Jews with the young State of Israel grew—especially in the course of the Six-Day War of 1967, when many saw a potential new genocide approaching. As after the Six-Day War many non-Jews also developed greater sympathy for the Israeli state, it became easier for French Jews to be open about their attitude to Israel and their own Jewish identity.63 The post-war history of French Jewry was markedly affected by immigration. When, in post-war years, refugee camps in Germany and Austria gradually closed, a few thousand Jewish Displaced Persons settled in France. Refugees also came to France from Central and Eastern Europe, where they had been subject to Soviet rule. However, the French Jewish community experienced large-scale immigration only after Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria became independent in 1956 and 1962 and many Maghreb Jews left their homeland, fearful of an uncertain future. Between

62 Cf. ibid., 229f. 63 Cf. Ester Benbassa, »Frankreich«, in Kotowski, Handbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Europa, 415.

370

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

1956 and 1967 about 235,000 Jews from North Africa settled in France, in particular in the Paris region and in the south.64 The immigrants were a largely urbanized population group, most of whom could read and write French and were therefore able to integrate quickly into French society. Following the Suez campaign of 1956, relations between Jews and Arabs in Egypt deteriorated. In the late 1950s, therefore, Jewish refugees also came to France from Egypt. The roughly 7,000 people, most of them destitute on arrival, were helped by government agencies and institutions of the organized Jewish communities.65 In the wake of North African Jewish immigration, the Jewish community in France changed fundamentally, as the immigrants brought with them a broader form of religiosity. Their traditional understanding of Judaism covered all sectors of social life and so differed significantly from the religious practice of indigenous French Jews, which tended to be limited to the private sphere. The immigrants formed new communities, invigorated existing ones, and created a Jewish life which was visible to outsiders as well. Through immigration, French Jewry, which was decimated by the war and was disproportionately elderly, underwent a crucial revitalization. Similarly, North African Jewish immigration had a great influence on the identity-formation of French Jews in the post-war period. Jewish self-understanding emerging in many communities had little left in common with the francojudaїsme that was characteristic of Judaism in France in the pre-war period.66 In the early 1980s, the Jewish community in France numbered approximately 535,000, accounting for approximately 1% of the total French population. Quantitatively French Jewry was in second place in Europe, behind the Jewish community in the USSR. In its socio-professional structure, the Jewish population belonged to a large degree to the middle-class and the intellectual bourgeoisie, unlike the general urban population. For many French Jews, community life lost importance in the course of the post-war decades. However, an increasing relevance of Jewish educational institutions is evident for this time; many new Jewish schools and study groups formed, and a versatile Jewish press and media landscape developed. The search for identity increasingly observed in the 1970s and 1980s led many Jews to a new religiosity. Alongside allegiances to Orthodox Judaism, the significance of the various currents of Reform Judaism increased steadily. Various secular trends also developed. Between extreme Orthodox groupings on the one hand and organizations advocating a Judaism without rabbis and without religion on the other, different ways of being Jewish began to flourish.67 Although emigration to Israel has increased steeply since the turn of the millennium largely because of the growing Anti-Semitism in France—between 2001 and 2015 over 38,000 people emigrated

64 Cf. ibid., 416. 65 Cf. Benbassa, Geschichte der Juden in Frankreich, 237. 66 Cf. Régine Azria, »A Typological Approach to French Jewry«, in New Jewish Identities: Contemporary Europe and Beyond, ed. Zvi Gitelman, Barry Kosmin, and András Kovacs, Budapest, 2002, 65; cf. Benbassa, Geschichte der Juden in Frankreich, 236f. 67 Cf. Benbassa, »Frankreich,« 417f.

7 Southern Europe

371

from France to Israel—the Jewish community in France is now the third largest in the world.68

7

Southern Europe

7.1

Italy

Italy’s Jewish community had lost around 40 percent of its members during the time of persecution. While in the pre-war period the community had about 47,000 members, after the Second World War there were only about 30,000. Many died or emigrated in the course of the deportations and the hostilities. Of those who had abandoned their faith in the wake of fascist racial legislation, only a few returned to Judaism after the war. Between 1945 and 1948, Italy was an important focal point for about 30,000 Jews from Eastern Europe. Most of them were in transit to Palestine, or Israel, but some stayed in Italy for several months or years.69 In the post-war decades the Jewish population moved increasingly to the big cities, so that the number of communities in rural areas declined sharply. The most important centers of Italian Jewry were Rome and Milan. The process of reintegration proved difficult and tedious for Italian Jews. The race laws of 1938 were repealed in 1947 and full civil and political rights were restored to the victims. However, the concordat drawn up by the fascists had been adopted in the constitution of the new republic in 1929, confirming the disadvantaging of the Jewish religious community.70 Similarly, fascist legislation concerning the organization of the Jewish communities was retained. The reintegration of those dismissed from their jobs in administration and the economy in 1938 took place only at a very slow pace and the restitution of confiscated property was also often a lengthy process, the dispossessed often recovering their property only after legal disputes.71 Various political forces in post-war Italy tried to avoid a clear break with the past, which meant that many officials from the fascist period were also employed in the civil service, the military, and the courts in the new republic. Little or no account was taken of the tragedy of the Jewish people and the feelings of the Jewish population, now heavily depleted by persecution. Rather, it was part of the founding myth of the new republic that there was little collective responsibility for the fascist past and no responsibility for the racist policies. In the hope of speedy reintegration into Italian society, many Italian Jews followed this myth.

68 Cf. Della Pergola, »World Jewish Population, 2016,« 38f. 69 Cf. Guri Schwarz, »The Reconstruction of Jewish Life in Italy after World War II,« JMJS 8,3 (2009): 360–63. 70 Cf. Mario Toscano, »The Abrogation of Racial Laws and the Reintegration of Jews in Italian Society (1943–1948)«, in Bankier, The Jews Are Coming Back, 158. 71 Cf. Alessandro Guetta, Michele Luzzati and Roni Weinstein, »Italien«, in Kotowski, Handbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Europa, 365.

372

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

They tended to play down the importance of racism and Anti-Semitism, as well as Italian responsibility for the persecutions of 1938 to 1943, as well as for the time of mass killings and deportations under the governance of the Allies. »Reminding the nation of the Jewish plight would have contributed to the confirmation of a separateness, a distinction which most Italian Jews simply wished to erase as rapidly as possible.«72 Within the generation that molded the reconstruction of Jewish communal life in the post-fascist period, this attitude was so dominant that it influenced political, cultural, and historiographical debate for a lengthy period.73 Until the late 1950s, institutional life of the Jews in Italy was led by a group of people who had been active already in the time of persecution, especially in refugee relief. With their openly pro-Zionist attitude, they became more and more influential. The national federation of local communities, the Unione delle comunità israelitiche italiane (UCII; since 1987 Unione delle comunità ebraiche italiane, UCEI) supported the newly founded state of Israel and endeavored to raise awareness for the new state among the Italian public.74 In the following decades, the Jewish community in Italy slowly assumed a more active role. A change of attitude on the part of the Catholic Church and a modification of the concordat, which now gave greater scope for non-Catholic religious communities, were contributive factors.

7.2

Spain

In Franco’s Spain, Roman Catholicism was regarded as the sole official religion until the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). In the post-war period, the government tried to give the impression that during the Second World War Spain had offered protection to all Sephardic Jews, regardless of nationality, even though the number of those who had found refuge in Spain was limited to a few hundred.75 Only slowly, in the post-war period, were Spanish Jews granted equal citizens’ rights with regard to religious practice. The government signaled a greater openness in dealing with the country’s Jewish past with its 1964 initiative to create a Sephardic museum in Toledo. The first synagogue since the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 was opened in Madrid in 1968. With the democratic change in the country, the exclusivity of Catholicism was finally also lifted. On 1 April 1992, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the edict of banishment, King Juan Carlos I visited the synagogue

72 Schwarz, »The Reconstruction of Jewish Life,« 369. 73 Cf. Claudio Natoli, »Der italienische Faschismus und die Judenverfolgung zwischen Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung,« ZfG 66,12 (2018): 1016–28. 74 Cf. Guri Schwarz, »Der Wiederaufbau jüdischen Lebens in Italien,« APuZ 50 (2007): 24. 75 Cf. Bernd Rother, »Wiederentdeckung, Annäherung, Normalität? Die spanische Politik und die Sepharden im 20. Jahrhundert«, in Spanien und die Sepharden: Geschichte, Kultur, Literatur, ed. Norbert Rehrmann and Andreas Koechert, Tübingen, 1999, 110.

8 Judaism in Europe: Organizations, Plans, and Discussions

373

in Madrid and, in a solemn act, apologized for the barbarity committed by his predecessors and rescinded the expulsion edict.76 By the mid-1990s, the number of Jews living in Spain had grown to about 20,000, most of them living in Madrid, Barcelona, and southern Spain.77 The Spanish parliament passed a law in 2015 which allowed the descendants of the Sephardic community of Spain the opportunity to gain Spanish citizenship. By the spring of 2018, over 6,000 Jews had obtained Spanish nationality on this basis. In the meantime, the Sephardic heritage is regarded as an integral part of Hispanic culture.78

7.3

Greece

The Greek center of the Sephardic Jews in Thessaloniki was completely destroyed by the Holocaust. In the Jewish quarter of the city, previously of about 50,000 people, only a few hundred were still alive after the war.79 Among Jews in Greece there was a strong desire to emigrate after the Second World War. After the founding of the State of Israel, about 1,500 Greek Jews chose to emigrate there, while approximately 1,200 emigrants went to the United States, and several hundred to Latin America and Europe. Only a few thousand Jews remained in Greece. The largest communities are in Athens and Thessaloniki. According to estimates by the demographer Sergio Della Pergola, between 4,300 and 6,000 Jews were living in Greece in 2016.80 Since 2015, there is again a faculty for Jewish studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The university campus of this largest Greek university is located on the grounds of the former, four century-old Jewish cemetery. After decades in which permission to place a plaque at the university commemorating the cemetery destroyed in 1942 was denied, on 9 November 2014 a memorial was dedicated on the campus.

8

Judaism in Europe: Organizations, Plans, and Discussions

As we have seen, the European diaspora consists first and foremost of congregations and communities embedded in their respective national contexts, each one independently organized. In many cases their reconstruction succeeded only with the support of Jewish organizations from non-European countries. In addition, in 76 Cf. Georg Bossong, Die Sepharden: Geschichte und Kultur der spanischen Juden, 2nd rev. ed., Munich, 2016, 114. 77 Cf. Bernd Rother, »Die Iberische Halbinsel«, in Kotowski, Handbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Europa, 349. 78 Cf. World Jewish Congress, »Spain«, http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/com munities/ES (9.2.2019). 79 Cf. Bossong, Die Sepharden, 110–13. 80 Della Pergola, »World Jewish Population, 2016,« 57.

374

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

the past decades Jewish institutions and organizations have been established at the European level, acting as joint, transnational organizations representing the interests of Jews living in Europe. Since the early 1960s, intellectuals from the United Kingdom and France have been intensively occupied with the question of a specifically European Jewish identity. The journal European Judaism, founded in 1966, called on contributors and readers to explore the specific place of the Jews in Europe and of European Jewry in the world. Underlying this was an understanding of the Judaism of the European continent as the »third way«. However, the immense intra-European tensions of this period prevented the development of a corresponding perspective for the future.81 At the organizational level, efforts were made to overcome tensions and create agencies for European and Jewish interests vis-à-vis the institutions of the European Union and other European organizations. As a bridge between Eastern and Western Europe, in 1968 the European Council of Jewish Communal Services (ECJCS) was founded. It was renamed after its reorganization in 1989/90 as the European Council of Jewish Communities (ECJC). While initially there were only a few national member organizations working together in the areas of education, social wellbeing, and culture, now most European countries are represented by member organizations. The responsibilities of the Council were expanded, in the areas of community development and international representation of European Jewry. The networking of Jewish congregations and communities, the resolution of shared problems, and the representation of Jewish compensation claims are in the foreground of their cooperation.82 Since 1986, the European Jewish Congress (EJC) has represented the interests of its member associations on the political level, in cooperation with institutions and representatives of the European Union, the Council of Europe, and national governments and parliaments. The main objectives of the EJC include participation in the formation of a democratic and cohesive Europe, as well as the fight against racism, intolerance, and Anti-Semitism. Numerous other organizations, such as the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS), the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), the European Union for Progressive Judaism (EUPJ) and the European Association of Jewish Community Centers (EAJCC), provide transnational efforts on behalf of certain groups and movements, an indispensable contribution to strengthening Judaism in Europe.83 In the scholarly field, since 1981 the European Association of Jewish Studies (EAJS) has made a special contribution, promoting research and teaching of Jewish studies in Europe

81 Cf. David Weinberg, Recovering a Voice: West European Jewish communities after the Holocaust, Oxford et al., 2015, 349f. 82 Cf. Jörg Kohr, »Europäische Integration – ›europäisches Judentum‹« in Politik und Religion in der Europäischen Union: Zwischen nationalen Traditionen und Europäisierung, ed. Hartmut Behr and Mathias Hildebrandt; Wiesbaden, 2006, 125. 83 Cf. Kohr, »Europäische Integration,« 126–29.

8 Judaism in Europe: Organizations, Plans, and Discussions

375

and, since 2007, publishing in the European Journal of Jewish Studies an academic journal that is open to contributions on all aspects of Jewish studies.84 In the conclusion to his study on the development of European Judaism after 1945, Vanishing Diaspora, British historian Bernard Wasserstein arrives at the assessment that on the basis of aging of the population, low birth rates, and strong assimilation trends, Judaism in Europe is on the point of self-dissolution. Others, meanwhile, see the Jewish community in Europe as facing a »Jewish Renaissance.« They link this to the socio-cultural development of European Judaism, the revival of Jewish education, art, and culture, as well as to the emergence of Jewish political and social movements in Western and Eastern Europe. Wasserstein sees a demise of traditional scholarship and authentic Jewish culture in Europe and concludes that Judaism is ceasing to be a religious force in the everyday life of the majority of Europe’s Jews.85 Diana Pinto, on the other hand, recognizes the most important cultural and religious challenge for the European Jews in giving creative shape to the Jewish ›spaces‹ that are distributed over the entire continent, and she stresses that »there have never been such favorable conditions for a Jewish renaissance on the European continent.«86 But in the face of right-wing populism and anti-Semitic tendencies in many European countries, the »stay or go« question is being discussed again within European Judaism. What tasks Europe’s Jews can take on in the fight against racism and intolerance, or whether it is not rather the task of European society as a whole to counter these developments resolutely and enduringly is a Europe-wide debate. Within Judaism itself, discussion of the question whether the Jews are (still, or once again) a European people, and whether Judaism in Europe can be or already is a »third pillar« alongside Israeli and North American Judaism is significant.87 Owing to the diversity of traditions, ways of life, and interests that have formed within Judaism in Europe in the face of very different historical experiences and preconditions, as well as specific political and social conditions, many Jewish identities have developed in the European context.88 The process of European Jewish self-discovery is far from complete. For further reading Banker, David, ed., The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to their Countries of Origin after WW II, New York, 2005. Benbassa, Esther, Geschichte der Juden in Frankreich, Berlin, 2000.

84 Cf. European Association of Jewish Studies, »History and Aims of the EAJS«, https://www. eurojewishstudies.org/about-us/history-and-aims/ (9.2.2019). 85 Cf. Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora, 391–93 (refs. to German ed.). 86 Diana Pinto, »Europa –ein neuer ›jüdischer Ort‹,« Menora: Jahrbuch für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte (1999): 33f. 87 Cf. Sandra Lustig and Ian Leveson, eds., Turning the Kaleidoscope: Perspectives on European Jewry, New York, 2006. 88 Cf. the collective volume by Webber, Jewish Identities in the New Europe.

376

Judaism in Europe after the Second World War

Brenner, Michael, ed., Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart, Munich, 2012. Lustig, Sandra and Ian Leveson, eds., Turning the Kaleidoscope. Perspectives on European Jewry, New York, 2006. Osteuropa 58,8–10 (2008): »Impulse für Europa. Tradition und Moderne der Juden Osteuropas.« Pinkus, Benjamin, The Jews of the Soviet Union. The History of a National Minority, Cambridge, 1988. Pinto, Diana, »Europa – ein neuer ›jüdischer Ort‹«. in Menora. Jahrbuch für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte, ed. Julius Schoeps et al., Berlin, 1999, 15–34. Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDES 1 (2010): »Jews in Europe after the Shoah. Studies and Research Perspectives«, http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/in dex.php?issue=1. Rubinstein, William D., A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain, Houndmills, 1996. Troen, S. Ilan, ed., Jewish Centers & Peripheries. Europe between America and Israel Fifty Years after World War II, New Brunswick/NJ, 1999. Wasserstein, Bernard, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945, London, 1996. Webber, Jonathan, ed., Jewish Identities in the New Europe, London, 1994. Weinstein, David, Recovering a Voice. West European Jewish Communities after the Holocaust, Oxford, 2015.

Index

1

Sources

1

Hebrew Bible

Genesis 14 44

2 Kings 24:12–14

Numbers 24:17 91

Ezra 1:5–6

Jeremiah 43 67

121

Ezekiel 21:31 137

139

Deuteronomy 26:17–18 55 27:4–7 58

Nehemiah 8:1–4 66

Daniel Dan 51, 86 7:5 125 12:2 54

Judges 1:11 127

Isaiah 53.5 66

Hosea 6:6 65

1.1

New Testament

Mark 5 67 Mark 6 81 Luke 8 67 John 7:38 71

1.2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Macc Macc Macc Macc Macc Macc Macc Macc Macc Macc Macc

Acts 13 67 1 Cor 2:9 71 Jude 14–15 71 Rev 21:22 66

Deuterocanonical Works and Septuagint 51–54 1:14–15 44 4:10 54 6:18–29 54 7:1–42 54 7:1–52 54 7:20 54 7:28 54 7:9–36 54 8:17–18 45 14:37–46 54

2 Macc 42, 45, 51, 53–54 2 Macc 2:21 42 2 Macc 4:9–14 44 2 Macc 4:11 45 2 Macc 4:13 42 2 Macc 6:18–7:14 54 4 Macc 54–55 4 Macc 17:21–22 55 Ps 151 50 Sir 44, 46 Sir 6:31 46

378

1.3

Index

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

Aris 47–50 48 2 Bar 90 1 En 71, 86

1.4

Dead Sea Scrolls

1QHab 62 1QHab 11 63 1QGenApoc 20:17 1QS 62, 64 1QS 8 62–63 1QS 9:3–6 62 1QS 10 63 4Q127 73 4Q156 73

1.5 Prob 75

1.6

4 Ezra 90 4 Ezra 14 71

44

Philo of Alexandria 64

Flavius Josephus

Ag Ap 1 71 Ant 12 59 Ant 12:11–118 49 Ant 12:39, 56 49 Ant 12:103 49 Ant 12:251 44 Ant 15 59 Ant 16 80

1.7

4Q174 62 4Q175 Florilegium 73 4Q177 Catenaa 73 4Q252 73 4Q256 63 4Q265 63 4Q394 (MMT) 42, 64 11QPsa 27 64 11Q13 73

Ant 18 59, 64 Ant 18:29 57 Ant 18:310–379 Ant 20 59 War 1 80 War 2 59 War 2:266 79

125

Rabbinical Sources

m.Yad 4:6 73 m.Yoma 102 b.‘Avodah Zarah 24b 127 b.Bava Batra 55a 126, 135 b.Bava Batra 73a 129 b.Bava Metsia 85a 128 b.Bava Metsia 108a 127 b.Berakhot 35b 132 b.Berakhot 46b 137 b.‘Eruvin 59a 123 b.Git 7a 137 b.Git 14a–b 135 b.Git 57b 55 b.Horayot 12a 133

b.Meg 5a–b 109 b.Meg 8b–9b 49 b.Mo‘ed Qatan 26a 125 b.Qidushin 71b 124 b.Qidushin 72a 125 b.Sanhedrin 38a 137 b.Sanhedrin 39a 128 b.Sanhedrin 98a 128 b.Sotah 22a 128 b.Ta‘anit 10a 121 b.Yevamot 97a–b 129 y.Sotah 9:15 137 y.Ta‘an 4:7 109 t.Yad II 71

379

2 Names tg.Lev 73 Gen Rab 116 Lam Rab 116

1.8

116

Classical and Ancient Christian Writings

Hist.Rom 69:12 91 Praep.Ev. IX 26:1 45

2

Lev Rab 116 Pesiqta d’Rav Kahana Shabbat 113b 128

vHad 14:2

91

Names

Aaron of Lincoln 173 Abarbanel, Isaac 201–202 Abarbanel, Judah 202 Abbas, Mahmoud 310 Abraham Ibn Daʾud 148, 156 Abū Ḥanīfa 154 Adler, Cyrus 235 Adler, Felix 335 Agrippa I 80, 82–83 Agrippa II 81–82, 87 Alexander Jannai 43 Alexander Polyhistor 44 Alkabetz, Solomon 205 Alkalai, Yehuda 237 al-Manṣūr 143 al-Muʿtaḍid 144 Alshekh, Moses 205 al-Tustari, Abū Naṣr (Ḥesed) 149 al-Tustari, Abū Saʿd (Ibrāhīm) 149, 154 ʿAmram ben Sheshna 147 ʿAnan b. David 154 Antiochus IV Epiphanes 42, 52, 57, 59–60 Arafat, Yasser 308–310 Aristobulus 50 Arlosoroff, Chaim 292 Artabanus II 124 Ascarelli, Devorà 204 Attias, Joseph 215 Azulai, Abraham 206 Baal Shem Tov 24, 213, 215–217 Baeck, Leo 220, 249 Bar Kokhbah 91, 101 Barak, Ehud 309, 318 Baron, Salo Wittmayer 236 Beer, Amalie 223 Beer, Jacob Hertz 233 Begin, Menachem 273, 294, 307 Ben Gurion, David 273, 286, 292, 296, 301 Bendavid, Lazarus 223, 225

Benedict XVI (Pope) 275 Benveniste, Hayyim 210 Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak 286 Bernoulli, Jean 221 Bielski, Tuvia 264 Bodenheimer, Max 288 Borochov, Ber 285–286 Brandeis, Louis Dembitz 286 Buber, Martin 220, 222, 228, 239 Bueno, Ephraim 208 Caligula (Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Roman Emperor) 81, 95 Cassius Dio 91, 94 Chamberlain, Neville 252 Churchhill, Winston Spencer 290 Cleopatra VII 76 Cordovero, Moses 205 Crescas, Ḥasdai 35 David ibn Abi Zimra 202, 205, 214 Debois, Patrick 260 Demetrius of Phaleron 47, 49 DeMille, Cecil Blount 343 Dicker-Brandeis, Frieda 259 Dohm, Christian Wilhelm von 221, 223 Donin, Nicholas 180, 182 Dreyfus, Alfred 226, 235, 238, 283 Dubnow, Salomon 227–228 Dunash ben Labraṭ 156 Eichmann, Adolf 251, 262 Eilberg, Amy 345 Eilburg, Eliezer 195 Einhorn, David 234–235 Eisendrath, Maurice 341 Elijah ben Solomon 217 Elstätter, Moritz 234 Emden, Jacob 223 Ephraim of Luntshits 202 Epstein, Isaac Nahum 230 Epstein, Itzhak 239

380 Eusebius of Caesarea 44, 94, 110 Eybeschütz, Jonathan 212 Felsenthal, Bernhard 235 Ferdinand II (King of Aragon) 191 Finkelstein, Louis 340 Flavius Josephus 122 Francis (Pope) 275 Frank, Anne 339 Frank, Jacob 212, 218 Frank, Leo 333 Frankel, David 226 Frankel, Zacharias 230 Freud, Sigmund 251 Friar Paul OP 182, 188–189 Friedlaender, Israel 236, 334 Galante, Moses 205 Gans, Eduard 12, 229 Geiger, Abraham 230, 232–233 Ginzberg, Louis 236 Glikl bat Judah Leib (Glückel of Hameln) 204, 219 Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah 261 Gordon, Aharon David 285 Göring, Hermann 253 Gracia Mendes Nasi 201 Graetz, Heinrich 229 Gratz, Rebecca 324 Greenberg Solomon, Hannah 330 Grynspan, Herschel 253 Gutmacher, Elia 237 Ha-Am, Ahad 239 Hadrian (Roman Emperor) 55, 91–92 Ḥananel ben Ḥushiel 160 Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprūṭ 145 Heine, Heinrich 229 Heller, Yom-Tov Lipmann 207 Hengel, Martin 15, 43 Hensel, Fanny 223 Herod I, the Great 19, 77–78, 81 Herrera, Abraham 198, 206 Herz, Henriette 223 Herz, Marcus 223 Herzl, Theodor 25, 228, 237–238, 283–284 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 228, 343 Hess, Moses 237, 240, 283 Heydrich, Reinhard 262–263, 266 Hilberg, Raul 257, 260, 265 Hildesheimer, Azriel 232 Hillel the Elder 131 Himmler, Heinrich 261, 263, 294 Hirsch, Emil Gustav 235 Hirsch, Samson Raphael 222, 230, 232–233

Index Hitler, Adolf 242–244, 246–247, 252 Hoffmann, David Zvi 232 Horowitz, Isaiah 206–207 Ḥushiel ben Elḥanan 160 Hussein ibn Ali Ifen 286 Innocent IV (Pope) 181, 183 Isaac al-Fasi 160 Isaac, Jules 274 Isabella I (Queen of Castile) 191 Israel Baal Shem Tov (Besht) 226 Isserles, Moses 203 Isserles, Moses (Rema) 202 Jabotinsky, Vladimir Zeev 286, 291 Jacob al-Qirqisānī 154–155 Jacob ben Meir (Rabbenu Tam) 178 Jacob Ibn Shāhīn 159, 215 Jacob of Janów 204 Jacobson, Isaac 233 James I., the Conqueror (King of Aragon) 188 Japheth ben Eli 156 Jason of Cyrene 44 Jesus of Nazareth 65, 99, 245, 273 John Paul II (Pope) 274 John XXIII (Pope) 274 Joseph Ibn Naghrilla 146, 150 Joseph, Jacob 329, 347 Jost, Isaac Markus 229 Judah Hayyuj 156 Judah Loewe 202 Kalischer, Zvi Hirsch 237, 240 Kant, Immanuel 220–222 Kaplan, Mordecai 26, 334–336, 338 Karo, Joseph 202, 205–206, 211 Kohler, Kaufmann 232, 235, 328 Kohut, Alexander 235, 328 Kotler, Aaron 343 Kovner, Abba 264 Lazarus, Emma 331 Leeser, Isaac 232, 325 Leone de Sommi 195 Levi, Raphael 220 Levin, Hanoch 223 Levy, Asher 320 Lichtenstein, Tehilla 335 Liebmann, Joshua Loth 338 Lope de Vera y Alarcon (Judah the Believer) 201 Louis IX (King of France, Saint Louis) 180, 182–183 Louis VII (King of France) 175–176 Lueger, Karl 243

2 Names Luria, Isaac 206 Luria, Solomon 202 Luther, Martin 197 Luzzato, Moses Hayyim 212 Magnes, Judah 239 Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, Rambam) 23, 31–32, 35, 152–153, 161, 186, 202, 207, 213, 215, 326 Manuel I (King of Portugal) 197 Marc Antony 78 Marshall, Louis 333 Martini, Raymond 189 Marx, Alexander 236 Maybaum, Siegmund 238 McMahon, Henry Arthur 286 Menaḥem Ibn Sarūq 156 Menasseh ben Israel 194 Mendelssohn, Moses 24, 194, 213, 215, 219–223, 233 Modena, Leon 207 Moise, Penina 323 Morais, Sabato 235 Moses ben Nahman (Ramban) 182, 188, 198 Muḥammad 140, 142, 145 Munk, Salomon 232 Nahray ben Nissim 158–159 Najara, Israel 202 Nasi, Gracia Mendes 199 Nasi, Joseph 199, 201 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 306 Nathan of Gaza 210–211 Nathan, Paul 285 Nebuchadnezzar 131 Neṭira ben Sahl 144 Netanyahu, Benjamin 275, 314 Neusner, Jacob 14, 275 Nissenbaum, Yitzhak 257 Nissim ben Jacob Ibn Shahīn 160 Obama, Barack 276 Octavian/Augustus 78–79 Origen 108 Oshry, Epraim 258 Peel, William 295 Peres, Shimon 308 Pfaffenhofen, Alexander 204 Philip II Augustus (King of France) 176–177, 183 Philippson, Ludwig 222 Philo of Alexandria 35, 64, 68, 72, 74, 83, 95 Pinsker, Leon (Yehudah Leib) 237, 240, 283

381 Pinto, Isaac da 215, 375 Pius XII (Pope) 247, 273–274 Posnanski, Gustavus 323 Preuss, Hugo 234 Priesand, Sally 345 Pseudo-Eupolemus 44 Ptolemy I Soter 68 Ptolemy II Philadelphus 43 Qayrawān 159 R. Akiba 92 R. Gershom 166 R. Hananya 131 R. Hiyya 131 R. Isaac 116–117 R. Joshua 131 R. Nathan 131 R. Yehuda ha-Nasi (Rabbenu ha Qadosch) 103–104 Rabin, Yitzhak 308 Rathenau, Walter 234 Rav Huna 136 Rav Ḥisda 137 Rav Nahman 136 Rav Sheshet 137 Renan, Ernest 232 Revel, Bernard 334–335 Riesser, Gabriel 234 Ringelbaum, Emanuel 258 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 251–252, 254 Rosenzweig, Franz 220, 222, 232 Rülf, Isaac 237 Ruppin, Arthur 239, 285 Saʿadya Gaon 155, 157 Sadat, Anwar El 307 Samuel de Medina 202 Samuel, Herbert Louis 290 Samuel Ibn Naghrilla 145 Sarfati, Joseph 202 Sasso, Sandy Eisenberg 345 Schechter, Solomon 334 Schelomo Yitzchaki (Rashi) 203–204 Schiff, Jacob 334 Schlechter, Solomon 236 Schneerson, Menachem Mendel 346 Schneur Zalman of Liadi 227 Scholem, Gershom 228, 236, 241 Schomberg, Meyer 215 Seixas, Gershom Mendes 321 Shabbetai Tzvi 212 Shapira, Hermann 239 Shapira, Kalonymous Kalman 258 Shapur I 125–126, 135

382

Index

Shapur II 126 Sharon, Ariel 309–310 Silver, Abba Hillel 339 Sirkes, Joel 202 Slimansky, Zeev 239 Sofer, Moses 233 Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi) 166, 170–171, 177 Solomon ben Meir (Rashbam) 177 Solomon ibn Verga 198 Solomon Molcho (Diego Pires) 200 Soloveitchik, Joseph Ber 340–341 Spinoza, Baruch de 24, 209, 212–213, 219 Stein, Gertrude 223 Steinschneider, Moritz 230–232 Straus, Geneviève 223 Sullam, Sarra Copia 204 Sykes, Mark 288 Szold, Henrietta 220, 236, 332 Tacitus 97–99 Thomas of Monmouth 175, 178 Tiktiner, Rebecca 204 Truman, Harry S 270–271 Trump, Donald John 276, 316 Trumpeldor, Josef 286

3

Tzvi, Shabbetai 35, 207, 209–214 ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb 145 ʿUmar (II) b. al-ʿAzīz 145 Uqban bar Nehemiah 135 Urban II. (Pope) 169 Varnhagen, Rahel 223 Vespasian (Roman Emperor) 82 Wallenberg, Raoul 265 Weizmann, Chaim 239, 288–289 Wetzlar, Isaac 215 Wiesel, Eli 279 William of Norwich 175 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow 286 Wise, Isaac Mayer 235, 326–327 Wise, Stephen 251 Wohlwill, Immanuel 229 Wolf, Joseph 226 Wolfson, Harry Austryn 236 Yadin, Yigael 300 Yazdgird I 126 Yohanan ben Zakkai (Ribaz) 65, 100–101, 251 Zechariah al-Dahari 202, 205 Zunz, Leopold 12–13, 222, 229–230, 232–233

Keywords

ʿAbbāsids 143 Acculturation 96, 107 Achaemenid Era 122 Aggadah 32, 116 Akedah (Binding of Isaac) 113 Al-Andalus 145–146, 148, 155, 159–160, 163 Alexandria 47–48, 68, 70, 77, 93–95, 105, 156 Aliyah 283–284, 291–292 Almohad Caliphate 160 American Jewish Committee (AJC) 333 ʿAmidah 33–34, 345 Amsterdam 194–195, 203, 206, 208–209, 213–214, 256 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) 333 Anti-Semitism 27, 68, 97–98, 111, 118, 128, 145, 164, 168–170, 175–179, 183, 190, 194, 196, 208, 236, 240, 243, 245, 251, 254, 258–259, 261, 274, 276–278, 283, 294, 327, 351, 354–355, 361–362 Arab Conquest 106, 118 Aramaic 38, 46

Arsacid Era 122, 124 Ashkenas, Ashkenazim 18, 38, 199, 203, 208, 213, 304, 320 Assimilation 39, 104, 107, 136, 151, 227, 283, 285, 357, 375 Auschwitz 256, 259, 265, 267–269 Babi Yar 260 Babylon 56, 130–131 Babylonia 21, 30, 93, 121–122, 124–125, 127, 142 Balfour Declaration 240, 286, 288–290, 296 Bar/Bat Mitzvah 26, 336, 341–342 Bar Kokhbah Revolt 20, 91, 101 Basle Program 238 Belzec 258, 266–267, 269 Berber 146 Bergen-Belsen 268 Berlin 12, 221–222, 231, 233–234, 238, 251, 262 Bet She‘arim 107–109 Birobidzhan (Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia) 353, 355–356

3 Keywords Bnai Brith 326–327, 333 Breslau 233 Buchenwald 253, 268 Budapest 231 Burnt Offerings 53, 60, 62 Byzantium 106, 110–112, 115–116, 118–119, 139 Caesarea Philippi 79, 81 Cairo Genizah 22, 46, 112, 114, 118, 146, 150, 152, 156, 172 Canon 58, 61, 71–73, 84 Catacomb 69–70, 96 Centre Universitaire d’Ètudes Juives de Paris (CUEJ) 369 Chabad 346 Chaluzim 314 Chelmno 263, 265–266 Chełm 256 Circumcision 91, 97–98, 270 Client King 77–79, 104 Comité juif d’action sociale et de reconstruction (COJASOR) 369 Commerce 151, 153–154, 158, 164–165, 224, 325 Community Rule (Qumran) 62 Concentration Camp 24, 247–248, 253–254, 258–259, 265, 268 Conference of European Rabbis (CER) 374 Conservative 37, 328, 334, 337, 339–342, 345 Conversion 85, 142, 151, 170, 190, 195, 214 Court Jew 220 Covenant 85 Cracow 217, 256 Crusade 169–170 Crusader State 282 Ctesiphon 123, 125 Cult 11, 19, 46, 51, 56–60, 64, 66, 85, 90 Dabru Emet 348 Dachau 248, 253, 267–268 Damascus 79, 143, 202 Damascus Document (Qumran) 66 Dead Sea Scrolls 19, 28, 42, 46, 50, 57–58, 60, 64, 71, 73, 86, 91 Death March 268 Declaration of Human Rights 272 Deir Yassin 300 Deportation 56, 121, 256, 264 Derveni Papyrus 72 Dhimmī 22, 144, 146–147

383 Diaspora 11, 13, 19, 60, 67–68, 70, 74, 77, 93–95, 104, 110–111, 143, 147, 155, 157, 162, 185, 282–283, 332, 349, 373, 375 Discrimination 106, 110, 221, 292, 314, 332, 353 Displaced Persons (DP) 27, 269–270, 338, 350–352 Dominicans 178 Education 19, 42, 44, 46, 131, 304, 335, 343, 347, 374–375 Einsatzgruppen 255–256, 259–262, 271 Elephantine 59, 67, 141 Emancipation 38, 220, 223–225, 232–233, 235, 240 Enabeling Act 247 »Endlösung der Judenfrage« (The »Final Solution to the Jewish Question«) 242, 259, 272 Enlightenment/Haskalah 24, 36, 39, 194, 213, 215, 219–222, 224, 227, 233, 240–241 Eretz Israel 11, 143, 155–156, 158, 290 Essenes 61, 64, 66, 82, 85 Estonia 261 Ethnarch 70, 81, 108 Ethnicity 84 European Association of Jewish Community Centers (EAJCC) 374 European Association of Jewish Studies (EAJS) 374 European Jewish Congress (EJC) 374 European Union for Progressive Judaism (EUPJ) 374 European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) 374 Evian Conference 252 Exilarch (Resh Galuta) 21–22, 126, 135–138, 143, 147–148, 154 Exile 95, 121, 131, 136, 245, 332 Exodus (Ship) 297 Expulsion 177, 184, 196, 201, 270, 320 Fāṭimids 149, 160 Female Hebrew Benevolent Society (FHBS) 324–325 Feminism 345 Finance 172–174, 176, 178, 180, 182–184 Fond Sociale Juif Unifié (FSJU) 369 Franciscans 178 Frankfurt 197, 208, 233–234 Fusṭāṭ 145–146, 150, 152, 156–158 Gaon 147 Gaon/Geonim 30, 157 Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) 251

384 Genocide 25, 261, 272, 363, 369 Ghetto 196–197, 208, 219, 256–259, 261–264, 266, 272, 283, 335, 351 Glasnost 279, 360 Ǧudezmo (Ladino) 38, 200, 204, 321 Guide for the Perplexed 186–187 Haʿavarah Agreement 248, 292 Hadassah 332 Hadīth 140 Haganah 291, 293–294, 299, 303 Halakhah 93, 101, 206 Hamburg 233 Hashomer Hazair (»The Young Guardian«) 291 Ḥasidism 24, 35, 61, 85, 213, 216–217, 219, 226–228, 240, 258, 337, 340–341, 346–347 Hasmonean 50–51, 53, 77, 80 Havurah Movement 346 Hebrew Union College (HUC) 327, 345 Hebron 224 Hekhalot 114 Hellenization 19, 42–43, 51, 53, 57, 107 Holocaust/Shoah 13, 24, 40, 242, 246, 257, 262, 265, 271, 273, 275, 278, 280, 305, 361, 363, 371, 373 Hovevei Zion 238 Hyper Cacher Terror Attack 275, 277 Incantation Bowls 122–123, 132 Inquisition 190, 194, 196–197, 199, 201, 208 Integration 16, 38, 162, 190, 282–283, 285, 303, 322, 346, 366 Intifada 307, 309, 315 Islamization 282 Israel Ba-Aliyah (Party) 361 Israel Beiteinu (Party) 361 Israel (State) 13, 18, 25, 27, 38, 40, 238, 240, 270, 274, 300, 307, 309, 344, 352, 367, 369, 373 Israeli Declaration of Independence 302, 318 Istanbul 199, 203 Jedwabne 260 Jerusalem 11, 42–44, 46, 51, 54, 56–57, 59, 68, 78, 81, 83, 88–89, 91, 100–101, 111, 145, 155–156, 159, 169, 206, 220, 224, 237, 240, 282, 289, 291, 297, 300, 304–307, 315 Jesus Movement 65, 77, 86, 96 Jewish languages 101 Jewish National Council 300 Jewish Publication Society 236, 333

Index Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) 13–14, 26, 235, 328, 334–335, 340, 345 Judenrat (Jewish Councils) 257 judenrein 262 Judeo-Christian tradition 337 Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural Association) 249 Kabbalah 24, 34, 202, 206–208, 212–213 Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (Holy Congregation House of God or KKBE, Charleston SC) 322–323 Kallah 133–134, 150 Karaism 22, 31, 154–156, 158–159 Kfar Ezion 301 Kibbutz 291, 294, 301 Kielce 256, 269 Kindertransporte 254 Knesset 273, 301–302, 310, 361 Koinē 43 Kovno 258, 260 Krakow 270 Kristallnacht 24, 250, 253–254 Latvia 261 Letter of Aristeas 47, 68, 72, 95 Likud Bloc 302, 307, 314 Lithuania 261 Łódź 256, 263, 265–266 Lubavitch Ḥasidim 346 Lublin 256, 267 Lwów (Ľviv) 256 Ma‘asim 116 Maccabean Revolt 42, 51, 59–60, 65 Maccabees 43, 50, 54–55 Maghrib 160 Mainz 166–168, 170, 184 Majdanek 267, 269 Mapai Party 296, 313 Maranos, Conversos 190, 196–198, 208–209 Masada 46, 67, 79, 88–89 Maskilim 228 Masoretes 31, 155 Massacre 259, 292, 300–301 Mauthausen 268 Mehoza 123, 129, 133, 135–136 Messiah 35, 65, 88, 91, 94, 96, 101, 194, 207, 209–211, 218, 245, 346 Midrash 30–32, 101, 114–116, 142, 206, 345 Migration 23, 38, 95, 121, 143, 156, 159–160, 164, 178, 199, 201, 238, 251, 296, 304–305, 332, 347 Mishnah 29–31, 33, 73, 90, 100–101, 103

3 Keywords Mishneh Torah 31, 186 Mizrachim 304–305 Moneylending 172–174, 176, 182–184 Monotheism 11, 85, 96, 328 Mount Gerizim 44, 57–60 Mourners of Zion (Avele ṣiyyon) 155, 159 Nagid 149 National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) 330–331 Neharde’a 123–125, 131, 133, 135–136 New York 214 Ninth of Av 89, 212 Nostra Aetate 13, 40, 274 Nuremberg Laws 250 Nuremberg Trials 25, 271–272 Odessa 228 Oral Torah 132, 155 Orthodox 12, 24, 37, 217–219, 227, 233, 240, 248, 340, 342 Ostjuden 258 Ottoman Empire 199 Pact of ʿUmar 22, 144–146 Palestine 20, 25, 43, 70, 73, 101–102, 104, 111–113, 115, 237–238, 240, 270–271, 282–285, 288–290, 292–293, 295–296, 300–301, 305, 307, 313, 338, 369, 371 Palmach 294 Parthian era 76, 78, 121, 124, 143 Partition Plan 295–297, 299, 339 Patriarchate 106, 108–110 Perestroika 359–360 Peshat 32, 201 Petah Tikva 237 Pharisees 61, 65, 82, 90, 102 Piotrków Trybunalski 256 Pirqa 133–134 Piyyut 33, 113–115 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) 306–308 Poale Zion (Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ Party) 285–286 Polygamy 124 Prague 195, 197, 202, 206, 208 Proselytism 93, 222 Pumbedita 133, 136, 142, 147 Qumran 28, 42, 46, 50, 57–58, 60, 64, 71, 73, 91 Qurʾān 140, 155 Rabbinic Judaism 100 Rabbinic Literature 24, 28, 30, 77, 101, 140 Racism 245, 283 Radhanites 151

385 Radom 256 Reconstructionism 26, 336 Reform 12, 24, 26, 37, 219, 232–233, 235, 240, 325–328, 337, 339, 341, 347, 367, 370 Reich Citizenship Law 250 Reichstag Fire 247 Reichsverwaltung der Deutschen Juden 249 Responsa 23, 30–31, 116, 147, 149–151, 157, 167, 202 Rhineland Academies 170 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact 255 Riga 260, 262 ritual murder libel 175, 179, 245 Romaniotes 199 Rome 196–198 Rumbula Forest 260, 262 SA (Sturmabteilung) 246–248, 253 Sachsenhausen 253 Sacrifice 33, 52–54, 58–60, 62–64, 66, 284 Sadducees 61, 82, 85, 90 Safed 199, 205, 208, 224 Salonika 203 Samaritan Pentateuch 57–58 Samaritans 19, 56–60, 115, 118 Sanhedrin 80 Sasanian Era 21, 121, 124–126, 128, 131–133, 135, 139, 142 Schorsch, Ismar 236 Second Vatican Council 13, 40, 274, 372 Secularization 225, 229, 285, 370 Selektion 267 Seleucid Era 51–52, 54, 57, 60, 77 Sepharad, Sephardim 34, 38, 192, 199, 203, 208, 213–214, 304, 320, 372–373 Sepphoris 107–108 Septuagint (LXX) 19, 28, 45–47, 50, 72, 141 Shearith Israel (New York) 320–321, 324 Shemaʿ 34 Shoah/Holocaust 13, 24, 40, 242, 246, 257, 262, 265, 271, 273, 275, 278, 280, 305, 361, 363, 371, 373 Shulchan ʿAruch 32, 203 Sicarii 86, 88–89 Six-Day War 303–304, 306, 313, 369 Sobibór 258, 266–267, 269 Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) 335 Soviet Union (USSR) 27, 255, 259, 261, 353, 358, 370 Sowjetisch hejmland 356 Speyer 166–168, 184

386 SS (Schutzstaffel) 247, 253, 259, 261–263, 266–268 State of Israel 273 stereotypes 189, 245 Sudetenland 252 Sura 133, 142, 147, 155 Sykes–Picot Agreement 286, 289 synagogue 58, 66–70, 107, 112–115, 118, 123, 157, 251, 253, 320, 367, 372 Tallit (Prayer Shawl) 327 Talmud 21, 23, 126, 128–130, 133–134, 143, 147, 157, 180–183, 202, 217 Talmud Bavli 21, 30–31, 100, 122–123, 132–133, 143 Talmud Yerushalmi 30–31, 100, 106, 122 Tannaim 29, 101, 103–104 Teacher of Righteousness 61, 63 Tefillin (Phylacteries) 346 Tel Aviv 239, 285, 291–292, 294, 305, 315 Temple (Jerusalem) 11, 19, 33, 42, 53, 57, 59–60, 62, 65–66, 89–90, 92, 95, 106, 245 Temple Treasury 87, 89 Tetrarch 81 Theresienstadt/Terezín 259, 267 Thessaloniki 199, 373 Tiberias 107, 159, 224 Torah for King Talmai 47, 49–50 Torah U’Mesorah 342 Tosefta 29, 101 Tower of Babel 114, 131 Treblinka 256, 258, 266–267, 269 Troyes 166, 170 Ultra-Orthodox 303, 340–341, 347–348, 368 Umayyads 143, 148 Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) 327 Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations 329 Unione delle Comunità Ebraiche Italiane, (UCEI) 372 Unione delle Comunità Israelitiche Italiane (UCII) 372

Index Venice 203, 208 Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden 12 Vienna 196, 201, 231 Vilna 217, 260, 264 Violence 68, 94, 165–166, 168–170, 175, 185, 189–190, 196, 208, 228, 253–254, 262, 269, 292, 362 Wailing Wall 291 Wannsee Conference 262–263 Warsaw 228, 256, 258, 266 Weimar Republic 234, 246 William of Norwich 178 Wissenschaft des Judentums 12, 219, 227, 229, 232–233, 236 World War II 40, 242 World Zionist Organization (WZO) 285, 288 Worms 166, 197 Yad Vashem 264, 274 Yahad (Qumran) 60–64, 66, 72 Yellow badge (Judenstern) 249 Yeshiva 133–134, 217 Yeshiva College 26 Yeshiva University 335 Yiddish 38–39, 195, 224, 235, 321, 355 Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut (YIVO) 232 Yishuv 25, 274, 291–294, 299, 304 Yom Kippur War 307 Yotser 33 Young Men’s Hebrew Associations (YMHA) 327 Zahal (Israeli Defence Forces IDF) 303 Zealots 83, 86, 90, 99, 101 Zenon 43 Zionism 24–25, 27, 219, 237–240, 248, 270, 283–286, 288, 290, 293–296, 304, 311, 313, 316, 332, 339, 342–343, 350, 367, 369, 372 Zionist World Congress 284 Zohar 187, 206, 213 Zoroastrianism 21, 128–129

Maps

Map 1: The Sykes-Picot-Agreement (Peter Palm, Berlin) page 287 Map 2: The UN Partition Plan 1947 (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/UN_Palestine_ Partition_Versions_1947.jpg/1200px-UN_Palestine_Partition_Versions_1947.jpg) page 298 Map 3: Israel and occupied Territories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borders_of_Israel#/media/File:Israel_and_occupied_ territories_map.png) page 312