Judaism III: Culture and Modernity (RM Die Religionen der Menschheit) 9783170325876, 9783170325883, 9783170325890, 9783170325906, 3170325876

Table of contents :
Cover
Titlepage
Imprint
Content
Foreword
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
Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture
1 The challenges of modernization
2 Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection
3 From Berlin to Tel Aviv and Los Angeles: The internationalisation of Jewish modernity
4 After the Holocaust: Has modernity betrayed Jewish culture?
For further reading
Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism
1 Napoleon and the Functioning of Jewish Law in Enlightenment Countries
2 Jewish Legal Theories in Response to Living in Countries with Freedom of Religion
3 The Authority of Jewish Law
4 Jewish Identity: Who Is a Jew?
5 Moral Issues: Bioethics
5.1 The Beginning of Life: Generating Pregnancy
5.2 The Beginning of Life: Preventing Pregnancy
6 Moral Issues: Interpersonal Relations
7 Moral Issues: Social Justice and Environmental Ethics
8 Jewish Dietary Laws (Kashrut, or the Kosher Laws)
9 The Life Cycle
10 Marriage and Weddings
11 The Seasonal Cycle: The Sabbath, High Holy Days, and Festivals
12 A Gift of Love
For further reading
Languages of the Jews
Prolegomenon
1 Mono-, Bi-, and Multilingualism
2 Hebrew
2.1 Ancient Hebrew
2.2 Postbiblical Hebrew
2.3 Rabbinic or Mishnaic Hebrew
2.4 From Ancient Hebrew to Medieval, Sephardic Hebrew
2.5 Ashkenazic Hebrew
2.6 Israeli Hebrew
3 Aramaic
3.1 Imperial Aramaic
3.2 Jewish-Palestinian Aramaic
3.3 Christian-Palestinian Aramaic
3.4 Jewish-Babylonian Aramaic
3.5 Jewish neo-Aramaic dialects
4 Greek
5 Judeo-Arabic
6 Ladino
7 Yiddish
7.1 The Origins of Yiddish
7.2 A Language with many Dialects
7.3 From Jewish-German to Yiddish
7.4 The Yiddish of the Pious
8 Judeo-Persian
9 Conclusion
For further reading
Jewish Philosophy and Thought
1 The Concept of »Jewish Philosophy«
2 Between Palestine and Babylon: Philosophical Potential in Traditional Literature (2nd to 11th cent.)
3 Hellenistic Judaism: Alexandria
4 Under Islam in the East: Baghdad and Kairouan
5 Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus
6 Under Christianity in the West: Southern France, Spain, Italy
7 Ottoman Empire: Thessaloniki, Istanbul
8 The Reconfiguration of »Jewish Philosophy« in the Context of Modernity: Amsterdam, Berlin Haskalah, and Wissenschaft des Judentums
9 Jewish Diaspora and Israeli Thought after the Holocaust
For further reading
Modern Jewish Literature
1 Concept
2 Pioneers and Beginnings
3 On »German-Jewish Literature«
4 Yiddish Literature
5 English-language Literature
6 Hebrew Literature
7 Drama
8 Lyric Poetry
For further reading
Judaism, Feminism, and Gender
1 1970s Jewish Feminism: Coming out Fighting
2 1980s: Toward Finding the Right Question(s)
3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies
3.1 Feminist Scholarship; Gender and Jewish Studies
3.2 Jewish Women’s Writings: Memoirs and Midrash; Commentaries and Anthologies
3.3 Bridges, Feminist Organizations and Social Justice Work
4 21st Century: »New« Jewish Feminism
5 Conclusion
For further reading
Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II
1 Historic overview
2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue
2.1 Beginnings
2.2 The World Council of Churches until Sigtuna (1988)
2.3 Articulating a Jewish Response
2.4 The Roman Catholic Church
2.5 The World Council of Churches after Sigtuna (1988)
2.6 Individual non-Roman Churches
2.7 Orthodox Churches and the Demise of Communism
2.8 Some Recent Statements
2.9 Israel and Interfaith Dialogue
2.10 Jewish Responses
3 Other Religions
3.1 Dialogue with Islam
3.2 Non-Abrahamic Religions
4 New Horizons: Scholars and Theologians
4.1 Covenant Theology
4.2 New Theologies: Feminism, Liberation, Creation
4.3 The Global Context of Dialogue
4.4 Academic Developments
4.5 Dialogue Moulds Theology
5 The Popularization and Secularization of Dialogue
6 Conclusion
For further reading
Index
1 Sources
1.1 Biblical Sources
1.2 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
1.3 Rabbinic Sources
2 Names
3 Keywords

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 27,3

Michael Tilly/Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.)

Judaism III Culture and Modernity

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 Alle Rechte vorbehalten © W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart Gesamtherstellung: W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart Print: ISBN 978-3-17-032587-6 E-Book-Formate: pdf: ISBN 978-3-17-032588-3 epub: ISBN 978-3-17-032589-0 mobi: ISBN 978-3-17-032590-6 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.

Content

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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 . . . .

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

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joachim Schlör 1 The challenges of modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection . . . . . . . . . 3 From Berlin to Tel Aviv and Los Angeles: The internationalisation of Jewish modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 After the Holocaust: Has modernity betrayed Jewish culture?

. . . . . . .

9 10 11 12 12 13 14

......

16

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

16 21

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

30 36

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elliot N. Dorff 1 Napoleon and the Functioning of Jewish Law in Enlightenment Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Jewish Legal Theories in Response to Living in Countries with Freedom of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Authority of Jewish Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Jewish Identity: Who Is a Jew? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Moral Issues: Bioethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Beginning of Life: Generating Pregnancy . . . . . . . . . 5.2 The Beginning of Life: Preventing Pregnancy . . . . . . . . . 6 Moral Issues: Interpersonal Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Moral Issues: Social Justice and Environmental Ethics . . . . . . . . 8 Jewish Dietary Laws (Kashrut, or the Kosher Laws) . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Life Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Marriage and Weddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The Seasonal Cycle: The Sabbath, High Holy Days, and Festivals 12 A Gift of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

. . . . . .. ..

....

44

....

44

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

46 48 49 52 52 55 55 57 58 59 62 65 71

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

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

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

6 Languages of the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stefan Schreiner Prolegomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Mono-, Bi-, and Multilingualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Ancient Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Postbiblical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Rabbinic or Mishnaic Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 From Ancient Hebrew to Medieval, Sephardic Hebrew 2.5 Ashkenazic Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Israeli Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Aramaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Imperial Aramaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Jewish-Palestinian Aramaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Christian-Palestinian Aramaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Jewish-Babylonian Aramaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Jewish neo-Aramaic dialects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Judeo-Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Ladino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Yiddish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 The Origins of Yiddish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 A Language with many Dialects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 From Jewish-German to Yiddish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 The Yiddish of the Pious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Judeo-Persian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Content

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

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

. 72 . 73 . 75 . 77 . 78 . 79 . 80 . 82 . 83 . 84 . 85 . 85 . 86 . 86 . 87 . 88 . 89 . 93 . 95 . 95 . 97 . 98 . 101 . 102 . 104

Jewish Philosophy and Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ottfried Fraisse 1 The Concept of »Jewish Philosophy« . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Between Palestine and Babylon: Philosophical Potential in Traditional Literature (2nd to 11th cent.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Hellenistic Judaism: Alexandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Under Islam in the East: Baghdad and Kairouan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Under Christianity in the West: Southern France, Spain, Italy . . . . . . 7 Ottoman Empire: Thessaloniki, Istanbul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Reconfiguration of »Jewish Philosophy« in the Context of Modernity: Amsterdam, Berlin Haskalah, and Wissenschaft des Judentums 9 Jewish Diaspora and Israeli Thought after the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . .

. 106

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

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

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

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

72

. 106 . . . . . .

109 110 111 117 127 132

134 . 136

Modern Jewish Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Matthias Morgenstern 1 Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

7

Content

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Pioneers and Beginnings . . . . On »German-Jewish Literature« Yiddish Literature . . . . . . . . . English-language Literature . . Hebrew Literature . . . . . . . . . Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lyric Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

140 141 144 145 149 158 163

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gwynn Kessler 1 1970s Jewish Feminism: Coming out Fighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1980s: Toward Finding the Right Question(s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Feminist Scholarship; Gender and Jewish Studies . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Jewish Women’s Writings: Memoirs and Midrash; Commentaries and Anthologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Bridges, Feminist Organizations and Social Justice Work . . . . . 4 21st Century: »New« Jewish Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II . . . . . . . Norman Solomon 1 Historic overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The World Council of Churches until Sigtuna (1988) 2.3 Articulating a Jewish Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The Roman Catholic Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The World Council of Churches after Sigtuna (1988) 2.6 Individual non-Roman Churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Orthodox Churches and the Demise of Communism 2.8 Some Recent Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 Israel and Interfaith Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.10 Jewish Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Other Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Dialogue with Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Non-Abrahamic Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 New Horizons: Scholars and Theologians . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Covenant Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 New Theologies: Feminism, Liberation, Creation . . . 4.3 The Global Context of Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Academic Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Dialogue Moulds Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

169 173 181 182 189 192 194 197

. . . . . . . . . 198 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

198 202 202 204 206 207 208 209 211 211 213 215 217 217 219 221 222 222 223 225 226

8

Content

5 6

The Popularization and Secularization of Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Biblical Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha 1.3 Rabbinic Sources . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

231 231 231 232 232 232 237

Foreword

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 Second Temple period (516 BCE–70 CE) drew to a close, the biblical canon took its final shape, and a world-wide Jewish community—no longer Israelite—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. 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 Foreword, we the editors: an American rabbi-professor and an

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: SCM Press, 1992) and embraced as a scholarly consensus in Adele Reinhartz and Wayne McCready, eds., Common Judaism: Explorations in Second Temple Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). 2 See, inter alia, Timothy Lim, The Formation of the Jewish Canon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

10

Foreword

ordained German Protestant university professor, will discuss what led us to choose the chapters in this compendium. Obviously three volumes, even totaling 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 Judentums.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. Zunz solidified his methods and his agenda in 1832, when he published Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, historisch entwickelt (The Sermons of the Jews

3 Ismar Schorsch, Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 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 42.

2 World War II and Vatican II

11

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. 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 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.

6 Berlin: Asher Verlag. The work was translated into Hebrew by M. Zack and expanded by Hanokh Albeck as HaDerashot BeYisrael (Hebrew, reprinted many times by Bialik Publishing: Jerusalem). 7 Berlin: Julius Springer Verlag, 1855.

12

3

Foreword

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 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

8 See Aaron W. Hughes, Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast (New York: NYU press, 2016). 9 Leiden: Brill, 1962. 10 Leiden: Brill, 1970. 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: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964).

5 The New Academy

13

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 seed-bed 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. 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 of the Association for Jewish Studies, Prof. Christine Hayes of Yale University, is the first non-Jew to lead the organization in its 51year 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 12 See James Dunn, The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity (London: SCM, 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 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003. 13 M. Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jahrhunderts vor Christus (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 10) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1969). 14 Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1942) and idem., Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1950).

14

Foreword

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.

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 (ca. 500 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. In its current iteration, twenty-five years later, this edition of Judaism is a threevolume, 1000-page compendium with contributions by thirty experts in all 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.

6 Kohlhammer’s Die Religionen der Menschheit

15

The relative paucity of Europeans indicates the slow recovery from World War II, even as we celebrate the reinvigoration of Jewish Studies in Europe. In this volume devoted to Culture, we survey the cultural movements that have affected Jewish identity development over recent times. Much of what we can discern regarding Jewish culture in antique and medieval times necessarily is found in the literature that survives. But more recently, in addition to literary evidence, the scholar of Jewish culture can turn to other artifacts and evidence to write a fuller appreciation of the various Jewish cultural environments. We have chosen cultural moments that are readily discernable through the existence of scholarly disciplines devoted to them. It is not our intention to express preferences for one form of culture over another. Rather, we are attempting to draw a map of the various forms and movements of Jewish culture in the premodern and modern periods. We cannot be all inclusive, as Judaism has been blessed with a surfeit of cultural movements and expressions in the past century. We hope this volume celebrates that abundance. Michael Tilly / Burton L. Visotzky, January 2020

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture Joachim Schlör

1

The challenges of modernization

Looking back at the documented history of mankind, we find in any given society individuals or smaller groups who were ahead of their contemporaries, more daring, more adventurous, more interested in the world beyond the confines of their respective communities. Modernity, understood as a conscious departure from tradition, has always been there. In the context of Jewish history, we can identify many instances where traditional customs and values have been replaced by more modern ones, from biblical times onward. In general terms, political upheaval, war, and forced emigration necessarily challenged individuals and communities to rethink traditional forms of living and to adapt to new circumstances. The Babylonian exile and the emergence of an exilic identity among those removed from Jerusalem and the Land of Israel, for example, could be usefully analysed and discussed in a context of modernisation. Given the mainly diasporic character of Jewish life and culture from the 6th century BCE on, and even more so after the destruction of the Second Temple, such periods of modernisation were often the product of an encounter—in contact, cooperation, or conflict—with the non-Jewish world: in Babylon, in Athens and Alexandria, in Rome1, from the cities along the North African coast to the centres of Jewish life under Muslim2 and Christian rule in »Sepharad« as well as in the settlements along the Rhine river in what was to become »Ashkenas«3. Traditional Jewish communities acquired new languages4, Spanish or Middle High German, new customs, new forms of food or dress, and were influenced by different philosophical and scientific developments long before the dates that are usually noted as markers of the onset of modernity—be it 1492, with the discovery of a world beyond former conceptions of the earth, or 1789, when the French Revolution shattered the feudal societies all over Europe. Still, with this reservation, it is fair to say that the enlightenment in the late 18th century opened up the world 1 See Levine, The Resilience of Jews and Judaism in Late Roman-Byzantine Eretz Israel, in: Visotzky/Tilly (Eds.), Judaism I. History (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020). 2 See Lieberman, Jews and/under Islam, in: Visotzky/Tilly (Eds.), Judaism I. History (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020). 3 See Chazan, Judaism in the Middle Ages 1000–1500, in: Visotzky/Tilly (Eds.), Judaism I. History (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020). 4 See Schreiner, Languages of the Jews, below, 72–104.

1 The challenges of modernization

17

of thought to a wider degree than ever before, and in its wake the industrial revolution with all its consequences changed the world of traditional communities, including that of the Jews, to such an extent that it makes sense to concentrate on the period that most researchers regard as modernity: from the end of the 18th through the 19th and 20th centuries, and to formulate questions that are of importance until the present day. For the purposes of this text, we agree on some simple and basic assumptions. Culture is different from nature. Culture begins when people »do something« with nature, when they start to change the given landscape by working on it, by moving through it, by regarding, describing or studying it, by making their imprint on it. Culture, furthermore, is practice. In a narrow sense, we refer to practices such as writing, painting, making music or building houses as »cultural«. In a wider sense, practices such as inhabiting places, making clothes and dressing, eating and drinking, believing in natural or supernatural powers and giving form to such belief, in prayer and ritual, conceiving and rearing children, and educating them, are no less cultural, especially when they form part of processes of change and development— and when they become topics of reflection and forms of cultural production. In our context, »modern culture« evolves continually and offers new perspectives beyond traditional ways of living and thinking. It also needs to be noted that modernity, once set in, did not necessarily move forward unhindered. On the contrary, whenever and wherever individuals tried to depart from traditional ways of life, they met with resistance. In the history of Judaism, the most famous case in point is the fate of Baruch Spinoza (1632‒1677) who can be regarded as a precursor of later developments. Born in 1632 in Amsterdam to a Portuguese-Jewish family, the intellectually highly gifted thinker »was issued the harshest writ of herem, ban or excommunication, ever pronounced by the Sephardic community of Amsterdam«. In his works, Spinoza »denies the immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of a transcendent, providential God—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the Law was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews«.5 He clearly was an early moderniser, but his departure from traditional values and rituals was regarded as damaging for his community. The case of Moses Mendelssohn (1729‒1786) is not so completely different as one might assume, given the relative success of the Jewish enlightenment—the Haskala— that his life and work initiated. But the idea, and ensuing practice, to open the Jewish community of Berlin to the new horizons offered by the translation of the Hebrew Bible into German, the use of the German language in daily encounters, the creation of a »free school«—Jüdische Freischule, founded in 1778 by David Friedländer with Isaak Daniel Itzig and Hartwig Wessely—that offered instruction in worldly topics, and a thorough reform programme concerning synagogue services, a weakening of rabbinical authority, and the discontinuation of certain rituals, again provoked

5 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. Baruch Spinoza; https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ spinoza/ [25/05/2018].

18

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

resistance within the community: »Reform«, in a way, created »Orthodoxy« as a (modern and anti-modern) response, and the path of German Jews towards modernity has been a troubled, ambivalent, and difficult one from the very start. This can be illustrated with an example from those regions that Prussia acquired during the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century (1772‒1795). When Prussian reformers, enlightened and carried on by the ideas of tolerance and a—controlled— emancipation of the minorities arrived in those regions, one of their first activities was to tear down old city walls and to make way for traffic and economic development: an act of modernization. By doing this, they unknowingly also destroyed parts of the traditional eruv6, the Sabbath border of observant Jewish communities beyond which, according to Talmudic laws, Jews were not allowed to carry things on their holy day of the week. An interesting collection of documents, kept in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, shows how the rabbis and representatives of those communities, in the years between 1822 and 1835, applied to the authorities in Berlin to be allowed to reconstruct their eruvim, their »borders« that, for them, symbolized the continuity of a specific religious tradition and way of life. Permission then partly had been granted, but while some communities decided to re-erect the symbolic »walls« and »gates«, others opted for their abolition and thus opened the path for the members of their congregation: into modernity. In many cases, this initiated the beginning of a large-scale migration process from the smaller towns in Eastern and Central Europe—and similarly from the rural communities in South-West Germany—to the larger cities, most importantly to Berlin from where the heralds of enlightenment, the »Berliners«, had come with such promising news about a new future of emancipation and integration. Confronted with modernisation, those communities saw themselves challenged in two main areas: the tension between traditional religious practice and the culture of their host societies and, in more general terms, the relation between their existence in exile and the no less traditional longing for a return to the land of Israel. As Rabbi David Ellenson, the eighth president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), has argued, the advent of modernity led to radical political and legal changes for Jewry, particularly in the West. Coercive belonging to a community was replaced by voluntary adherence to what might best be called a congregation. [...] Modernity has affected many disparate areas including new forms of Judaism, opting out, Jewish identity, marriage, gender relations and expression, interfaith dialogue, attitudes toward universalism and particularity, and so on. Modernity has stimulated assimilation but also has fostered new ways of expressing Jewish identity.7

Modernity for Jews, Ellenson argues further, »begins first and foremost when the governmental structures that formerly marked the medieval kehila (community)

6 See Dorff, Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism, below, 44–71. 7 David Ellenson, »How Modernity Changed Judaism,« in: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs no. 36: September 15 (2008), http://jcpa.org/article/how-modernity-changed-judaism-in terview-with-rabbi-david-ellenson/. Interview by Manfred Gerstenfeld.

1 The challenges of modernization

19

collapsed«. The American and French revolutions also brought with them the separation of religion and state. Ellenson’s teacher, the eminent historian Jacob Katz, contended that a major criterion for determining when modernity began was to analyze the moments when Jews began to think in cultural patterns taken from the non-Jewish world8.

We can see this development in France, shown by Frances Malino’s work on the Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux9 where he describes the high degree of acculturation of their mores and manners. Similarly, Todd Endelman’s book on the Jews of Georgian England10 tells how Jews began to adapt and live like non-Jewish people. But, Ellenson concludes, if one wants to understand the essence of how modernity influenced Judaism, one has to study the developments in German Jewry. That was the only country where the changes in Jewish life were based on ideological justifications.

While this chapter will indeed concentrate on developments in Berlin, different paths to modernity need to be considered as well. As Lois Dubin and David Sorkin have shown, Sephardic trading families and communities—whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496—in the Early Modern Period had been allowed to settle in a string of port cities that reaches from Amsterdam, London and Hamburg in the North via Bordeaux, Bayonne, Livorno, Venice, and Trieste down to Sarajevo, Sofia, and Constantinople.11 Even without an enlightenment »ideology«, practical life that required international contacts and cultural exchange enabled the »Port Jews« in those cities to establish a comparably important network of reformed communities with an equally strong interest in education and integration: again, in the context of urban societies which often were marginal in relation to their respective countries, but central for the creation of international trading routes and for the emergence of cultural practices related to the economy: cartography, translation, printing, activities that enabled them to participate in modern culture of a different kind. A newly founded city on the shores of the Black Sea, Odessa, which was neither »ashkenazi« nor »sephardic«, maybe best represents the ambivalence between the positive and the negative aspects of Jewish urban fantasies during the 19th Century. Free of settlement restrictions, able to vote and even to be elected, Odessa’s Jews, invited by Catherine the Great in 1794 and growing into the city’s largest ethnic group in the course of the 19th century, experienced everything »modernity« had on offer: a relatively high

8 Ibid. 9 Frances Malino, The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux: Assimilation and Emancipation in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1978). 10 Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714‒1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1979). 11 David Cesarani, »Port Jews. Concepts, Cases, and Questions,« Jewish Culture and History, vol. 4.2 (2001), Special Issue: Port Jews. Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, ed. David Cesarani, 1‒11; 1; David Sorkin, »Port Jews and The Three Regions of Emancipation«, ibid, 31‒46; Lois Dubin, »Researching Port Jews and Port Jewries: Trieste and Beyond«, ibid, 47‒58.

20

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

level of equality and violent outbreaks of anti-Semitism; amazing wealth in the case of some entrepreneurial families and great poverty among the working class; a high degree of cultural exchange with Greek, Armenian, Bulgarian, Italian, and Russian neighbours and the emergence of nationalist movements (as a response they created their own national movement, Zionism12, with a »practical« fraction initiated by Leon Pinsker and the Hoveve Zion, and a very influential »cultural« fraction, supported by Achad Ha’am and Chaim Nachman Bialik). Odessa became the creative centre for the development of modern Jewish literature13 not just in Yiddish (Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Moikher Sforim) and in Hebrew (Bialik, Shaul Tchernichowsky) but also in Russian (Vladimir Jabotinsky, Isaak Babel), and ideas that were born in Odessa travelled the Jewish world, from Warsaw to Berlin and Paris, London and New York, Buenos Aires and of course Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Urbanization, then, in different forms, has been the most important factor for the modernization process and for the Jewish encounter with modern culture. But again, the ambivalent character of modernity and modernization needs to be considered. The big and growing city is a theatre of opportunities. Life in an urban and ever urbanizing context offers new forms of education and cultural activity unheard of in the places of origin: free schools, access to libraries and museums, theatre and concerts far beyond any religious content, and—maybe most importantly—the chance to make one’s life outside of the traditional framework of the community. In Berlin more than elsewhere, this chance has been taken by the majority of those who became »German Jews« and saw themselves on the path to emancipation and integration within the wider society. Alongside the traditional institutions, synagogues, schools, hospitals, and charitable organisations, they created German-Jewish societies, from the »Gesellschaft der Freunde« to the bibliophile »Soncino-Gesellschaft«, as a means of integrating Jewish initiative with German culture, language, and lifestyle. At the same time, the city provided the immigrant communities from Russia and Eastern Europe, not least Ḥasidic groups who had already rejected traditional rabbinical authority in their very own way, with the space to build up their own institutions, shtiblech and private synagogues, aid societies, landsmanshaftn (to use a Yiddish notion that gained most prominence in New York and other North and South American cities), areas of retreat and reclusion where members of those traditional groups could lead non-modern lives within the framework of modernity. This contrast has become obvious in Berlin, where the liberal Neue Synagoge of 1866 on Oranienburger Straße, a symbol of belonging and self-confidence, with a widely visible golden cuppola, stands not more than 200 yards away from the orthodox synagogue of Adass Jisroel, that opened in 1869 in a backyard on Artilleriestraße (today Tucholskystraße). German-Jewish history in the following period would be characterized by this duality, and other tensions would follow—between the more established community that regarded itself as German, and the new arrivals that

12 See Kloke, Zionism and the state of Israel, in: Michael Tilly, Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.), Judaism I. History (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020). 13 See Morgenstern, Modern Jewish literature, below, 139–168.

2 Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection

21

were regarded as »Ostjuden.« Later, the struggle was between those who in 1893, as part of their fight against emerging anti-Semitism, formed the »Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens« (CV) and new movements such as Jewish renaissance and, most importantly, Zionism.

2

Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection

While these ambivalences have principally been based in a religious context, they have often been played out and made visible by different attitudes towards modern culture. One important and very urban cultural practice of »belonging« among those who saw their place firmly established within the modern European societies was the support given by prominent Jewish individuals and families to the institutionalisation of modern culture in art museums and archaeological collections, in concert halls and opera houses. The author Theodor Fontane who, with his later novels, became a representative of Berlin’s culture and identity towards the end of the 19th century, conceded in an article of 1878 for the aptly-named journal Die Gegenwart, that the Prussian aristocracy (whom he used to admire and praise in his early works) had nothing more to contribute to the new times, to sciences and the arts. They were too poor in spirit, too provincial, not cosmopolitan enough, whereas the new and emerging bourgeois society, and specifically the Jews, began to step in: Here then is superiority, while narrowness unfolds and the provincial is stripped off. Great interests are negotiated, the gaze has expanded, it goes across the world. Customs are refined, purified, improved. Especially Taste . . . The arts and the sciences, which otherwise went begging or were dependent on themselves, here have their place. Instead of stables, observatories are built. Instead of images in blue and yellow and red, the works of our masters now hang in rooms and galleries. The state may have lost, the world has won.14

Whether the »exposure to the modern world« was »forced« (Pierre Nora15) or voluntary, its result was a profound change to the traditional ways of Jewish life. Generations of scholars have debated the question of whether modern art—music, literature, fine and graphic arts, photography, film, popular culture—created or

14 Theodor Fontane: »Adel und Judenthum in der Berliner Gesellschaft«. Mitgeteilt und kommentiert von Jost Schillemeit unter dem Titel »Berlin und die Berliner. Neuaufgefundene Fontane-Manuskripte« in Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft, Band XXX/1986: 35‒82, here 37f.: »Hier entfaltet sich eine Ueberlegenheit und das Enge, das Provinziale ist abgestreift. Große Interessen werden verhandelt, der Blick hat sich erweitert, er geht über die Welt. Die Sitten sind verfeinert, geläutert, gebessert. Vor allem der Geschmack. (...) Die Kunst, die Wissenschaft, die sonst betteln gingen oder auf sich selber angewiesen waren, hier haben sie ihre Stätte, statt der Pferdeställe werden Observatorien gebaut und statt der Ahnenbilder in Blau u. Gelb und Roth hängen die Werke unserer Meister in Zimmern und Galerien. Der Staat mag verloren haben, die Welt hat gewonnen.« 15 Pierre Nora, »Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Mémoire,« Representations 26, no. Special Issue: Memory and Counter Memory (Spring 1989): 8.

22

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

supported by Jewish individuals can be regarded as »Jewish«.16 Would such a description not be essentialist or even exclusive? Has it not been a consistent strategy of anti-Semites to denounce creations or ideas »as Jewish« (and therefore, by conclusion, not »German« or »French« or »Polish« enough)? Following Karl Popper, cultural identity should not be imposed on a person or on their work, and selfidentification is the important criterion for our contemporary assessment of these contributions. Individual Jews regarded the opportunities offered by modernization as a chance—and often enough as a risk—to participate in and to contribute to the emergence of a civic society in many areas, from natural science to urban sociology, from entrepreneurship to banking, from education to modern art. A key figure in this context is James Henry Simon (1851‒1932), who was born in Berlin. His father Isaac and uncle Louis had arrived there in 1838 and built up a cotton trade company. James went to school in the renowned Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin where he developed an interest in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History. He played the piano and the violin and would have loved to study classical languages. Instead, he joined the family business and became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the city. His house, a villa in Tiergartenstraße 15a, was regarded as one of the finest addresses in Berlin, filled with an art collection for which he received advice from Wilhelm von Bode, the central personality for the development of Berlin’s museums. In 1900, Simon donated his collection of Italian Renaissance art to the newly founded Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (today’s Bode-Museum). He supported the »Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften« and the »Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft«, founded in 1898, and he financed the archaeological excavations at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt which brought the famous bust of Nefertiti to Berlin. It has been said that Simon donated about one third of his yearly income, not just for the creation of museums and scientific institutions but also for social projects such as hospitals, public baths, children’s homes, or »start-ups«, as we would say today, for Eastern European Jewish immigrants. While he was not an observant Jew, his public engagement has been grounded in the Jewish tradition of Zedakah and in the civic spirit that began to develop in imperial Germany. This tradition contributed to progress in science and technology, as well as the arts, and turned the formerly provincial Prussian capital into the modern metropolis before World War I and during the seemingly »Golden Twenties«. Simon, who died shortly before the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany, was part of a world that Thomas Mann summed up in a letter to his brother Heinrich, after a first visit with his future Jewish father-in-law: »One is not at all reminded of Judaism among those people: one feels nothing but culture.«17 Simon’s engagement with modern culture had contemporary alternatives. Here, we consider the contribution of Jewish folklorists, both in the Russian Empire and in Germany, such as Solomon An-ski (Shloyme Zaynvl Rapoport), or Rabbi Max Grünwald.

16 See Morgenstern, Modern Jewish literature, below, 139–168. 17 Thomas Mann to Heinrich Mann, 27 February 1904, in Briefwechsel, 1900‒1949 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1968) 27; see Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press 1996).

2 Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection

23

Between 1912 and 1914, An-ski headed ethnographic expeditions to the Pale of Jewish Settlement. In his view, »only folklore would be the basis for creating a contemporary Jewish culture«.18 His was a different, but no less valid, response to modernity than that of his contemporaries who opted for linguistic and cultural assimilation, not just in the sense of an »embourgouisement« as in Germany, but also in a proletarian context. The Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeyter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland (The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), known simply as »the Bund,« was founded in Vilna in October 1897 by a group of Jews who were profoundly influenced by Marxism and intended »to attract East European Jews to the emergent Russian revolutionary movement«.19 In a distinct alternative to such assimilationist programmes, An-ski looked for a specifically Jewish response to modernity, and he found it in »tradition«. The folkloristic material itself that was collected during the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society’s expeditions in Volhynia and Podolia can be regarded as the material expression of traditional religious practice (often made of wood, leather, and other simple fabrics)—but its collection, and its representation in exhibitions and museums, for example in St. Petersburg in 1917 and again between 1923 and 1929, was an act of modern cultural politics: to preserve local customs and surviving material objects in the face of modernisation and of potential loss. With a comparable intention, Max Grünwald (1871‒1953), an alumnus of the JüdischTheologisches Seminar in Breslau, whose PhD thesis had been dedicated to Baruch Spinoza, and who officiated as a rabbi in Hamburg from 1895, founded the Gesellschaft für jüdische Volkskunde in 1898. Until 1929, he edited the »Mitteilungen« of this society that intended not only to preserve and to exhibit monuments of the Jewish past but to use them as a means of Jewish self-understanding and self-confidence in view of modernity and its challenges. Both initiatives inspired an eclectic movement, mostly in Germany, that has been termed »Jewish Renaissance«, an attempt on many artistic levels to both safeguard Jewish cultural heritage and to adapt it to the new realities. Advocates of this movement who lived through a first creative period between 1900 and 1914 and a second during the interwar years, reacted to similar tendencies in different European societies and tried to work out the specifically Jewish potential of a return to the roots which ideally functioned, at the same time, as a step towards the future. Two longer quotations by Martin Buber can illustrate the ideas of this movement, since they discuss, importantly, tradition and modernity in dialogue rather than in opposition to each other: So we see universal and national cultures melt together in the deep unity of becoming. The best spirits of our time are illuminated by the idea of a human life saturated by beauty and benign strength, created and enjoyed by every individual and every people, each according to their ways and their values. That part of the Jewish tribe that understands itself as the Jewish people is placed within this new development and set aglow by it just like any other group. Still, its national participation in this development has a very distinct character: that

18 Benyamin Lukin, (2017). An-ski Ethnographic Expedition and Museum. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/An-ski_Ethno graphic_Expedition_and_Museum. 19 Daniel Blatman, (2010). Bund. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. http://www.yivo encyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Bund [25/05/2018].

24

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture of a contraction of muscles, a looking up, an elevation. The word »resurrection« forces itself on one’s lips: an awakening that is a miracle. History, however, does not want to know miracles. But history does know the streams of popular life that, seemingly run dry, continue to flow underground and break forth after millennia, and history knows the grains of nationhood that conserve their power to germinate over thousands of years. A resurrection from half-life to full is imminent for the Jewish people. Therefore we may call its participation in the modern national and international cultural movement a renaissance.20

As noted above, the two main areas of engagement were religious and cultural practice on the one hand and the question of national identity, between exile and diaspora on the other: It will be more difficult for the Jewish people than for any other to enter into this renaissance movement. Ghetto and Golus, not the external but the internal enemy powers that bear these names, keep it back with iron shackles: Ghetto, the unfree intellectuality and the coercion of a tradition divested of all significance, and Golus, the slavery of an unproductive monetary economy and the hollow-eyed homelessness that undermines all unitary intent. Only through a fight against these powers can the Jewish people be born again. The outer redemption from Ghetto and Golus, which can only happen in a revolution far beyond anything granted today, needs to be preceded by an internal one. The fight against the pathetic episode of »assimilation«, which lately has degenerated into a wordy banter poor in substance, needs to be replaced by a fight against the deeper and more powerful forces of destruction.21

20 Martin Buber, Die Jüdische Bewegung 1900‒1914 (1920); http://www.lexikus.de/bibliothek/Die-Jue dische-Bewegung-1900‒1914 [25/05/2018]. The German original reads: »So sehen wir in der tiefen Einheit des Werdens allgemeine und nationale Kultur verschmelzen. Was den besten Geistern unserer Zeit vorleuchtet, ist ein von Schönheit und gütiger Kraft durchtränktes Menschheitsleben, in dem jeder Einzelne und jedes Volk mitschafft und mitgenießt, ein jedes in seiner Art und nach seinem Werte. Jener Teil des jüdischen Stammes, der sich als jüdisches Volk fühlt, ist in diese neue Entwicklung hineingestellt und wird von ihr durchglüht wie die anderen Gruppen. Aber seine nationale Teilnahme an ihr hat einen ganz eigenen Charakter: den der Muskelanspannung, des Aufschauens, der Erhebung. Das Wort »Auferstehung« drängt sich auf die Lippen: ein Erwachen, das ein Wunder ist. Freilich, die Geschichte will keine Wunder kennen. Doch sie kennt Ströme des Volkslebens, die zu versiegen scheinen, aber unter der Erde weiterfließen, um nach Jahrtausenden hervorzubrechen; und sie kennt Samenkörner des Volkstums, die sich Jahrtausendelang in dumpfen Königsgräbern ihre Keimkraft bewahren. Dem jüdischen Volke steht eine Auferstehung von halbem Leben zu ganzem bevor. Darum dürfen wir seine Teilnahme an der modernen national-internationalen Kulturbewegung eine Renaissance nennen.« 21 Ibid. The German original reads: »Schwieriger als jedem anderen Volke wird es dem jüdischen werden, in diese Wiedergeburt einzutreten. Ghetto und Golus, nicht die äußeren, sondern die inneren Feindesmächte dieses Namens halten es mit eisernen Fesseln zurück: Ghetto, die unfreie Geistigkeit und der Zwang einer ihres Sinnes entkleideten Tradition, und Golus, die Sklaverei einer unproduktiven Geldwirtschaft und die hohläugige Heimatlosigkeit, die allen einheitlichen Willen zersetzt. Nur durch einen Kampf gegen diese Mächte kann das jüdische Volk wiedergeboren werden. Der äußeren Erlösung von Ghetto und Golus, die nur durch eine weit über das heute Gewährte hinausgreifende Umwälzung geschehen kann, muss eine innere vorausgehen. Den Kampf gegen die armselige Episode »Assimilation«, der zuletzt in ein wortreiches und inhaltsarmes Geplänkel ausgeartet ist, soll ein Kampf gegen tiefere und mächtigere Zerstörungskräfte ablösen.«

2 Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection

25

The crisis of modern culture, in a wider perspective, had affected not just European society as a whole, but also individuals and their relationship to traditional concepts such as the family, generation, gender—and even the self, both in body and soul. The following discussion will also widen the perspective from the situation in Germany to Central Europe. Two distinct authors whose language was German but who lived in two of the main cities of the Habsburg Empire, and later in the capital cities of newly emerged independent states, Prague (Czechoslovakia) and Vienna (Austria), need to be considered: Franz Kafka (1883‒1924) and Sigmund Freud (1856‒1939). In his recent biography of Sigmund Freud, Adam Phillips discusses the question »how Jewish« Psychoanalysis was. He calls it »a story about acculturation; about how individuals adapt and fail to adapt to their cultures, and about the costs of such successes and failures.«22 European Jews, living as a minority in different societies, experienced the ambivalence of modernisation—the »Dialectics of Enlightenment«—more deeply than most of their contemporaries. »Now two things seem to be going on here: Jews are going to know about assimilation and adaptation. And they are going to know about the cost of assimilation. But that is also true of any colonized group. It knows it has to adapt in order to survive. And that adaptation is going to make you feel a lot of things very intensely.«23 Phillips finds a convincing way to place this Jewish experience in its wider context: Yes, it is Jewish in the sense that it’s bound up in Jewish history. But it’s also to do with modern history, where there have been generations of colonial and imperial invasions. That said, it does want to make a different kind of Jewish life possible. It’s a kind of democratic wish: that as Jews you can be citizens and that you can politically participate. But at the same time that you could be more self-defining, and less defined than the people who are hostile to you.24

In an atmosphere of growing anti-Semitism, particularly in Vienna, Freud’s work and public eminence created a counter-narrative to the seemingly successful history of modernisation. Modernity came at a price for each individual and his or her relationship not just with others, but with the self. Family and gender relations, sexuality, and the mechanisms of remembering and forgetting could now be discussed in public. Loneliness, melancholy, depression, and ill health came to be regarded—and researched—in their relation to the society and its apparent progress. Failing father-son relations, insecurities about love and marriage, the challenges of bureaucracy and modern technology, or in more general terms, the »indecisions« of identity and belonging are central themes in the work of Franz Kafka whose short life has been marked by so many experiences of loss and failed attempts at belonging. Neither the Jewish family heritage, nor the promised home-

22 J.P. O’Malley, Jews and the »mad science« of psychoanalysis. Adam Phillips’ biography of Sigmund Freud explains the creative thinker’s ideas in layman’s terms. Times of Israel, 11 July 2014. https://www.timesofisrael.com/jews-and-the-mad-science-of-psychoanalysis/ [25/05/2018]. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.

26

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

liness of Yiddish theatre, nor the promised future of a new life in the Hebrew language could offer security for a writer who in his professional life absurdly acted as an expert in life insurance for workers in his native Bohemia. For a short while, the diversity offered by the city of Berlin in the early 1920s, damaged and torn by war and revolution, but more creative and more open to creativity than any other place at the time, offered a temporary refuge, and we can today follow the traces of Kafka through the streets of Berlin, to coffeehouses25 and places of learning, and we can read his novels and short stories as broken mirror of the hopes and the disappointments of modern culture. Zionism offered a seemingly easy solution, the national one, that was rejected both by the »orthodox« and by the »assimilationist« elements of the Jewish community. Artists involved in the Renaissance movement created an area of in-between-ness, with translations of Ḥasidic tales (Martin Buber) into German,26 with the creation of modernist journals in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and German, and with old-new experiences on the theatrical and musical stages. Recent research in the area of »cultural change« and its consequences for the Jewish community in Europe and the United States has tried to go beyond the »dichotomy between the traditional and the new.« Instead of looking at overly simplified attributions such as traditional vs. modern, or reform vs. orthodox, or indeed German vs. Jewish, scholars in Jewish Studies have begun to study areas and instances of negotiation and translation, and of »co-construction« where such boundaries are crossed and, if possible, overcome. The study of responses to different forms of cultural change—to modernization—allows for a discussion of questions »about the resilience and coping strategies that groups develop when confronted with deep-reaching, sometimes existence-threatening social change in an increasingly complex world«.27 Modern culture can be regarded as one such area where religious and linguistic practices, forms of knowledge-transfer, translation, and representations of what »self« and »other« mean both for the majority and the minorities, are being made public: visible, audible, touchable. Can Jews, in a modernizing society, be part of this development? This, albeit in a less contemporary wording, was the question put forward by a young man named Moritz Goldstein in 1912. Born in Berlin, in 1880, Goldstein grew up in a family that had »made it« in the big city, moving from its Western outskirts right into the very centre of Berlin’s urban culture, the Passage—a department store and an arcade following the famous examples of Paris, at the corner Unter den Linden and Friedrichstraße—where his father worked as a financial director. Having earned a PhD in German literature, Moritz Goldstein worked as an editor of German

25 For the role of the coffeehouse in modern Jewish culture, see Shachar Pinsker, Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture (New York: NYU Press 2018). 26 Martin Buber, Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten und Loening, 1906); idem, Die Legende des Baalschem (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten und Loening, 1908). 27 German Historical Institute of Washington, D.C. conference on »Agents of Cultural Change: Jewish and other Responses to Modernity, ca. 1750‒1900« scheduled for October, 2018.

2 Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection

27

classical literature in Bong’s publishing house. How much further can one get? And yet, prevailing anti-Semitism in the business made him doubt his own role and write down a sentence that needs to be quoted here: »We Jews manage the intellectual property of a people who deny us both permission and the ability to do so.«28 This sentence, and the whole article to which it belongs, Goldstein’s »Deutschjüdischer Parnass« in the journal Der Kunstwart, has been discussed widely. In our context it is important because it sums up the ambivalent atmosphere shortly before World War I—in which German Jews eagerly showed their loyalty to the country and were later bitterly disappointed by the lack of acceptance and by the continuity of prejudice and mistrust. With the collapse of the Kaiserreich and the establishment of a democratic republic, this ambivalence reached new heights. With all formal restrictions gone, the Weimar Republic witnessed an unprecedented degree of Jewish integration into all spheres of German life and, at the same time, the growth of political and cultural anti-Semitism. It would surely be wrong to judge the democratic experiment from its horrible ending, but still, the shadows of violence and destruction loomed over this short period that saw an outbreak of creativity in all areas of culture like none before. As one of the correspondents for the Gedenkbuch der ermordeten Juden Berlins wrote in a letter to a research group at Berlin’s Freie Universität: It was perhaps symbolic that my childhood began with the rise of the Weimar Republic and ended with its decline. The bloody riots that broke out at the beginning of the Weimar Republic were the precursors of that hell, which in 1933 brought a terrible end to the first democratic German republic and also swept my family away.29

The German Jew Hugo Preuss drafted the constitution of the Weimar Republic, Hugo Haase and Walter Rathenau played an active part in its first government. The Berlin-born painter Max Liebermann’s work for the acceptance of modern impressionist painting earned him the Presidency of Berlin’s Academy of Arts. Lesser Ury’s urban street scenes illustrated the specific atmosphere of the new metropolis. Max Reinhardt was the central figure of theatre life, while Arnold Schönberg revolutionized modern music. Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922, and among the Nobel prize winners in Germany up to 1938, 24 percent were Jews (nine out of thirty-eight). Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Gabriele Tergit, Arnold Zweig and many other writers contributed to the creation of a new and modern (and urban) German literature. Publishers such as Samuel Fischer and art dealers like Alfred Flechtheim or Paul Cassirer provided

28 Moritz Goldstein, Deutsch-jüdischer Parnaß. Der Kunstwart 11/1912, 281–294. »Wir Juden verwalten den geistigen Besitzstand eines Volkes, das uns die Berechtigung und die Fähigkeit dazu abspricht«. 29 Leo Eisenfeld, CJA 5CZ, Nr. 7, Bl. 115‒144. »Es war vielleicht symbolisch, daß meine Kindheit mit dem Entstehen der Weimarer Republik begann und mit ihrem Untergang endete. Die blutigen Unruhen, die am Anfang der Weimarer Republik ausbrachen, waren die Vorgänger der Hölle, die 1933 der ersten demokratischen Deutschen Republik ein schreckliches Ende bereitete und auch meine Familie dahinfegen sollte.«

28

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

the artists with a growing network of contact and exchange. In popular culture, the 1930 premiere of the operetta »Im weißen Rössl« in Berlin’s Großes Schauspielhaus, written by Ralph Benatzky and including songs by Robert Gilbert, became a symbol for the successful cooperation of Jewish and non-Jewish artists (and even managed to put a Jewish figure on stage who was neither a »Nathan the Wise« nor a »Shylock«). But what does all this really mean? For the anti-Semites, including the growing National Socialist movement, these were signs of a dangerous »Judaization« of German culture. From within the Jewish community, critical voices could be heard that saw in this form of acculturation a kind of weakness, a loss of Jewish selfawareness, an illusion of belonging. They argued for a continuation of the Jewish Renaissance, a return to the sources that Judaism provided (biblical literature, the Hebrew language, the history of the Jewish diaspora) as topics for creative work. They also partly supported the small but growing and internationally very relevant German Zionist movement, without intending to join the new project in Palestine, though. In fact, only around 2,000 German Jews contributed to the construction of a new Jewish society in Palestine, albeit important thinkers and writers among them such as Gershom Scholem (for whom a chair in the study of Jewish Mysticism was created at the Hebrew University), the medical doctor Elias Auerbach, or the architect Lotte Cohn. But the large majority of German Jews remained in a Germany they regarded as their home. Diana Pinto has coined the term »Jewish Space« for cultural activities in post-1990 Europe that brought Jews and non-Jews together in a common interest to save the European Jewish cultural heritage—or rather, what was left of it after the destructions brought about by the Holocaust and later, in Eastern Europe, under Stalinism—and to create new forms of Jewish culture. Can this notion (which will be discussed in detail below) be also used for the period before 1933? Can we imagine the Weimar Republic, at least in parts, as a kind of »Jewish Space«, a »Jewish Landscape« (Ellenson)? How have »Jewish« places been constructed and negotiated, and what was the role of languages and of translations in these processes? David Roskies has described the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as a »market place of voices«.30 Research in this area means trying to make sense of the »discourses« acted out in such places, to analyze the importance of translation and transfer in Jewish/non-Jewish relations, to consider the significance of »place« in such relations from a geographical, historical, and cultural point of view, and to address questions of authenticity and appropriation in acts of cultural transfer and exchange.31 Berlin shortly before the Nazi’s rise to power, Vienna between 1933 and 1938, Paris before the outbreak of World War II, New York during the war years, but also

30 David Roskies, »The Task of the Jewish Translator: A Valedictory Address«. Prooftexts, 24, (2004): 263‒272. 31 Julia Brauch et al. (eds.), Jewish Topographies. Visions of Space, Traditions of Place (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008); Barbara Mann, Space and Place in Jewish Studies (Rutgers University Press, 2012).

2 Hopes of belonging and experiences of rejection

29

the cities of post-War Europe can be regarded as very specific »arenas«, locales where ethnic and religious boundaries are challenged and crossed. For example, Robert Gilbert’s life and work can illustrate this discussion. Robert David Winterfeld was born in the poor eastern part of Berlin in 1899. He was the son of Max Winterfeld, a circus orchestra conductor and composer, who already had changed his name to Jean Gilbert—in a city that aspired to become a European metropolis and, in those years, saw Paris as its role model. With one successful operetta (Die keusche Susanne, 1912), containing the hit song, »Püppchen, Du bist mein Augenstern«, Jean Gilbert managed to fulfil for his family the Berlin dream of moving westward and living in a villa on the Wannsee shore. After fighting in World War I, Robert returned a pacifist and a socialist. He had inherited his father’s musical talent and hoped to put it to use supporting the political left in Weimar Germany. His song »Stempellied«, composed by Hanns Eisler and interpreted by Ernst Busch, became an icon for Germany’s worker’s movement, an indictment of the capitalist system, and of »those above« (»die da oben«) for sending the unemployed masses into misery and despair. Gilbert collaborated with Hanns Eisler and performed at festivals for New Music, for example in Baden-Baden 1927. When he married and felt the need to earn serious money, Gilbert started to work for movies and operettas, and within a very short time he became Germany’s most prolific and highestearning songwriter. With Werner Richard Heymann (1896‒1961), Gilbert wrote the songs for Die drei von der Tankstelle, for Der Kongreß tanzt, and for Ralph Benatzky’s operetta Im weißen Rössl32 he wrote the songs that made the play so successful. In the period that ended so abruptly in 1933, Gilbert was a major actor in, and contributor to, Germany’s popular music industry. Recent research has shown that a musical dialogue and exchange between Europe and the United States had taken place in the early decades of the 20th century and partly replaced Berlin’s love-affair with Paris and everything Parisian (the reason the Winterfeld family had changed their name to Gilbert); while shows and plays on Broadway had drawn from the European (particularly Austrian) operetta, the new American musical innovations in turn influenced and inspired this shortlived but intense heyday of ambitious and sophisticated German popular and entertaining culture; already a two-way street of transatlantic contact and exchange before 1933. Erik Charell, the director of Im weißen Rössl, had visited the United States in the 1920s where he saw the »Ziegfeld follies« on Broadway and imported the ideas of big revues, chorus lines, and dancing troops back to Germany. In a convincingly pragmatic way, Swiss researcher François Genton sums up: »Around 1930, a popular culture emerged in Germany which was modern, part of the avantgarde, but at the same time conscious of tradition, and leading the field in Europe.

32 Premiered on 8 November 1930 in Berlin’s Großes Schauspielhaus, Director Erik Charell, starring Max Hansen and Camilla Spira. See Helmut Peter, Kevin Clarke: Im weißen Rössl— Auf den Spuren eines Welterfolgs. (St. Wolfgang 2007); Ulrich Tadday (ed.): Im weißen Rössl. Zwischen Kunst und Kommerz. Musik-Konzepte 133/134 (München: Edition Text & Kritik 2006).

30

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

Many of the protagonists of this culture were educated and qualified German Jews.«33 While being Jewish or of Jewish origin had meant little for Robert Gilbert during this most creative period of his life, it became the defining factor of his future after January 1933.

3

From Berlin to Tel Aviv and Los Angeles: The internationalisation of Jewish modernity

This culture was destroyed by the National Socialists—in Germany and later in Austria. Jewish artists were excluded from public appearances and forced into the ghetto of the »Jüdischer Kulturbund«. The photographer Abraham Pisarek (1899‒ 1982) has documented the attempts of the Kulturbund organisations, not just in Berlin, but all over Germany, to provide Jewish artists with work opportunities and to maintain their close relationship with the musical and theatrical works of the German and European tradition. In general, Pisarek’s photographs illustrate the »shrinking world of German Jewry« (Jacob Boas) and the Nazi policy of marginalisation and exclusion. Beyond that they also show the admirable efforts of the remaining Jewish community to »keep up the spirit«, to re-assemble in synagogues and hospitals, in libraries and concert halls, and to prepare at least the young generation for an emigration out of Germany. Since many of Weimar culture’s Jewish protagonists, Robert Gilbert and his composer Werner Richard Heymann among them, managed to escape Germany and to find refuge in different countries of exile, elements of this culture survived and entered into a new exchange—and coconstruction—with Jewish and non-Jewish artists: in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in Melbourne and Sydney, in Cape Town, in Buenos Aires and São Paolo and, most importantly, in New York and Los Angeles. This transatlantic dialogue already existed before 1933. Now this network became vital: writers and composers received affidavits and invitations to North American universities and, for a relatively large number of them, to Hollywood. Both in New York and in Los Angeles a much larger and more diversified »Jewish Space« had already been created through the waves of immigration that reached the United States from the 1880s on. Those who represented the German-Jewish traditions of an engagement with modern culture had to find their way into this existing network. Werner Richard Heymann wrote the music for eight films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, while Robert Gilbert, less successful, spent his years in New York as a part of the small but certainly very creative German and Austrian exile »scene«, writing poetry and popular songs. Among

33 François Genton, »Ein Freund, ein guter Freund … oder: Freundschaft in Krisenzeiten. Zur Geschichte eines Motivs in der Unterhaltungskultur Deutschlands, Frankreichs und Nordamerikas (1930–1938)«, in Lied und populäre Kultur. Song and Popular Culture. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Volksliedarchivs Freiburg, (eds. M. Fischer and F. Horner, 57. Jahrgang 2012: Deutsch-französische Musiktransfers. German-French Musical Transfers; Münster, New York: Waxmann, 2012): 311‒325; here 325 [my translation, JS].

3 From Berlin to Tel Aviv and Los Angeles

31

them, with Hermann Leopoldi, was a song that makes the situation of living in exile and the need to acquire the new language its very topic: »Da wär’s halt gut, wenn man Englisch könnt.« Even the famous play to which he had contributed in 1930 arrived in exile, in the form of a short operetta, »Im weißen Rössl am Central Park«, created by Jimmy Berg and staged in 1941. It is nearly inevitable that one comes across a wide range of anti-Jewish prejudice and even conspiracy theories when researching Hollywood as a »Jewish Space«. Fortunately, Norman L. Friedman has found an interesting way to discuss »Jews in Hollywood,« 1930‒1950. American Jews and the making of the movie industry. »There has been,« Friedman says, a »group of top-level Jewish-born entrepreneurs who fashioned the [Hollywood] dream factories, Marcus Loew, Adolph Zukor, Sam Goldwyn, Carl Laemmle, the Selznicks, Jesse Lasky, William Fox, the Warner Brothers, Louis B. Mayer, B. P. Schulberg and Harry Cohn. Having either been born in America or come from Europe in their childhood or youth, most of the moguls could be classified as second-generation American Jews, from poor or modest-income families. They were exceptionally industrious and ambitious, and, interestingly, quite a few came to the motion picture industry from various retail trades, particularly the garment industry.« During this period, six of the eight major studios were »Jewishly controlled and managed,« but again: What does this mean? Friedman argues: What was the shape of the formal or explicit religious Judaism and ethnic Jewishness practiced and expressed by Jewish Hollywood? During this period, almost no films were made about specifically Jewish settings, experiences, or characters. Though most of the moguls came from observant Jewish homes and learned some Hebrew and/or had been bar mitzvahed; they tended, as adults, to live and think in a culturally assimilated lifestyle removed from the cultural content, activities or practices of the Jewish heritage, or of the affairs of the larger Los Angeles Jewish community. Theirs was a somewhat passive though unashamed Jewishness, comprised usually of the use of some Yiddish words, temple membership but infrequent attendance, and support for Jewish philanthropy.34

A factor that Friedman puts greater emphasis on is »The Importance of Being an Immigrant«. While Jewish Hollywood »had little explicit Judaism or Jewishness to contribute to those foundation years of sound films«, there was »something about its »immigrant-ness« that lay behind the achievements, strengths, and shortcomings«, namely a desire to be fully accepted as Americans, an enthusiasm for the transmission and creation of American popular culture, and a special sense for what the movie-goer wanted and liked. This can be shown with the example of the movie Casablanca (1942). The role of the imagined resistance hero Victor Laszlo was played by Paul Henreid. He was not Jewish himself, but left Austria and Germany because of the prevalent anti-Semitism in the film industry after 1933. In 1940, after some years of work in the United Kingdom, Paul Georg Julius Hernried Ritter

34 Norman Friedman, »Jews in Hollywood,« reprinted in https://www.myjewishlearning. com/article/jews-in-hollywood-1930‒1950/ Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought.

32

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

von Wassel-Waldingau and his wife Lisl went to the United States where he »quickly established himself on Broadway with »Flight to the West« as a Ribbentrop-type Nazi consul (and lost his long name on the way). In hindsight, he did not have too many positive things to say about the movie: I played the part of Victor Lazlo [sic], Ingrid Bergman’s husband, a leader of the Resistance who is trying to leave Casablanca. Ingrid, my wife, had fallen in love with Bogart when she thought I was dead, and now she falls for him again. In the end she gives him up to leave with me while Bogart goes off with Claude Rains to join the French army. It was all overblown melodrama and romance, but somehow it worked, even though I, as a fugitive leader of the Resistance, had to wear an immaculately white suit through most of the picture. I am described by the Germans as a great leader of the masses, a man who can command obedience. That’s the reason the Germans don’t want to see me leave Casablanca, and it’s also the plot hinge.35

Conrad Veidt, a good friend of Paul Henreid’s, plays the Nazi Strasser very convincingly, maybe fuelled by his anger about the politics in Germany that had made him an emigrant in 1933—he had been famous in Germany for his role in Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). Peter Lorre (who plays the thief Ugarte), born Laszlo Löwenstein, equally famous for his role as a murderer in Fritz Lang’s M—Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931), arrived in Hollywood via Paris and London in 1935. Szöke Sakall (Carl, the head waiter in Rick’s Café Américain), born in Hungary, escaped Germany in 1939 while many of his family members were murdered in concentration camps. Leonid Kinskey (Sasha, the barkeeper) has fled Russia after the revolution. Curt Bois has only a tiny scene as the pickpocket who runs in Carl’s way, but he can also be counted among those German-Jewish actors who have found refuge in Hollywood, as did Marcel Dalio, Helmut Dantine, Lutz Altschul and Trude Berliner, Lotte Palfi-Andor, Wolfgang Zilzer, Ilka Grüning (Frau Leuchtag), Ludwig Stössel (Herr Leuchtag) and even Strasser’s adjoint, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski. They were all emigrants, and their energy made Casablanca what it became—a memory of a lost Europe, a symbol for the fight against Nazism, and (although the persecution of Jews in Europe is not even mentioned) a plea for the support of refugees. Anthony Heilbutt and Cornelius Schnauber have studied »Exile in Paradise«36 and Doris Berger curated an exhibition »Light and Noir: Hollywood and the Emigrés« at the Skirball Centre in Los Angeles in 2014. Werner Richard Heymann has described their situation in a letter to his relatives: You are inquiring how the conquest of France and Austria affected my work. Well to tell you the truth, it just wiped me out completely. I had to start all over again, from scratch, as they say here. Because, in this town, your salary depends not on what you are worth but on what you can refuse. So, if you have to take $50 a week which here is a little bit better than starving, that’s what you get. It took as many years to get back on our feet

35 Ladies’ Man. An autobiography by Paul Henreid with Julius Fast (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1984), 121f. 36 Anthony Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise. German refugee artists and intellectuals in America from the 1930’s to the present. (New York: Viking 1983); Cornelius Schnauber, Spaziergänge durch das Hollywood der Emigranten (Zürich: Arche, 1992).

3 From Berlin to Tel Aviv and Los Angeles

33

again [...]. But with hard work of everybody concerned (Eva [the third wife] has been riveting in an airplane factory, playing secretary to psychoanalyists, and even driving a taxi for almost a year and a half), it looks better now.37

Hollywood gave them a chance to re-invent themselves and to create works that were not »Jewish« but inspired by the hopes and the dreams of (mostly) Jewish refugees. In a way, the two traditions of Eastern European and of German Jewish migration experiences—often regarded as divisive, competitive, and marked by mutual mistrust—came together, resettled on American soil, took on an American character and entered into a dialogue with other, non-Jewish, cultural aspirations, from jazz to musical comedy, and from film-making to modern art. The United States became the central place for »The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times.«38 While the post-War period is characterized by this multi-faceted exchange, it helps to look at the different experiences of the United States and Europe. While Jewish actors, writers, musicians, and artists were relatively free to join and to contribute to American culture in so many ways, those who had survived the Holocaust and those who had returned to Europe lived on different planets. In an American context, we can trace the careers of writers such as Saul Bellow or Philip Roth, or filmmakers such as Woody Allen or later Steven Spielberg, and discuss the »Jewishness« of their contributions. Doctor Spielvogel, this is my life, my only life, and I’m living it in the middle of a Jewish joke! I am the son in the Jewish joke—only it ain’t no joke! Please, who crippled us like this? Who made us so morbid and hysterical and weak? Why, why are they screaming still, »Watch out! Don’t do it! Alex—no!« and why, alone on my bed in New York, why am I still hopelessly beating my meat? Doctor, what do you call this sickness I have? Is this the Jewish suffering I used to hear so much about? Is this what has come down to me from the pogroms and the persecution? From the mockery and abuse bestowed by the goyim over these two thousand lovely years?39

This extract from Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) may stand symbolically for the provocation that Philip Roth’s early work represented—both for the narrative of a successful arrival of Jews from Eastern Europe in the United States and for the American success story in general. Was Roth (1935‒2018), asks Sanford Pinsker, A Jewish Writer«? His characters, »like Roth himself, often seem cut off from the wellsprings of Jewish identity. They know just a little Yiddish (almost exclusively vulgarisms) and even less Hebrew; they are, for the most part, thoroughly assimilated Americans who could thoroughly explain baseball’s infield fly rule but not a single page of Talmud.«40

37 Werner Richard Heymann on 20 June 1945 to Evalore und Leo Heymann. The letter is kept in a private archive in Berin, many thanks to Elisabeth Heymann-Trautwein for making it accessible to me. 38 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp, eds.; The Art of being Jewish in Modern Times. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 39 Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint (London: Jonathan Cape 1969), 36f. 40 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/philip-roth/ [24/05/2018].

34

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

In his long writing career, Roth became a master of the »Great American Novel«, most particularly with American Pastoral (1997) and The Human Stain (2000), but he still went on to discuss questions of identity and belonging, of the relationship between individual and society, of tradition’s chances of survival in modern society, the hot topics once debated at the coffeehouse tables of Prague, Vienna, and Berlin. With his work, these debates acquired an American accent and a new colour marked by the author’s interest in the material of popular culture, food, baseball, and the breaking of taboos concerning sexuality. Saul Bellow (1915‒2005) has been described as the »chief intellectual« of JewishAmerican modernism in mid-20th century, »its battered heart, and its conscience«, working his way through the ideologies of his time, »from Trotskyism to neoconservatism, from realism to his own brand of near-tragic comedy«.41 While Philip Roth’s place of reference was Newark (in its relation to New York), »Chicago was in Bellow’s bones—both the hardscrabble Jewish immigrant neighbourhoods of his early years, and the glittering lakefront and downtown districts where the ambitious and the well-connected thrived«.42 In both cases the modern Jewish engagement with urban culture and the experience of immigration and arrival found a new—American—outlook. This particular American modernism has a deep interest in perplexing questions and in the wide variety of responses offered, from Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy to Wilhelm Reich’s psychology, from Karl Marx’ communism to the more recent attractions of a neo-conservatism, and maybe—if something like a thesis can be developed in the framework of this contribution—the Jewishness of all this can be identified exactly within this deep involvement and engagement with the challenges, and the desperations, brought about by modern culture. And the European past looms largely over all these American stories. This can also be said about the work of Cynthia Ozick (born 1928) who developed her »skepticism, rationalism, and antimysticism« in opposition to the »exuberant emotionalism of the Ḥasidic community« where her family had come from, and her feminism as a response to the lack of education for girls within this community.43 And it is even true for Woody Allen (born 1935), who, »along with his generation of American Jews, was traumatised by the knowledge of what was going on in Europe while they were selling lemonade in the Bronx«. While Allen’s latest work has been found to be full of the clichés that he once managed so well to play with,44 films like Annie Hall (1977) or Manhattan (1999) remain classic examples for the amazing amount of creativity and aesthetic sensibility that can emerge out of an individual’s grappling with modern life—and with the big city as its very center. This has not just been a North American experience, as the work of Clarice Lispector can illustrate. Born in 1920 »to a syphilitic mother in minus 20 degrees in the Ukrainian village of Chechelnik, a region famous for its Jewish

41 42 43 44

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/saul-bellow/ [24/05/2018]. Ibid. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ozick-cynthia [24/05/2018]. Zoe Strimpel, »Jews deserve better than the crude and offensive clichés rolled out in Woody Allen’s Café Society«. The Guardian (6th September 2016).

3 From Berlin to Tel Aviv and Los Angeles

35

mystics«, she fled with her family to Brazil in 1922. Lispector has been hailed as »one of the symbols of modern Brazil«, celebrated for her resistance against the dictatorship in this country, »as someone who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf«, an heir both to Eastern European tradition and its broken survival in exile.45 Can all these artists, as Ivan Kalmar suggested, be classified as »eji [embarrassed jewish individuals]«? And has their time passed? »The culture of the eji has had its day«, says Kalmar, its originality is gone, as is that of the age in which it flowered, the age of what we now call »modernity.« Freudiana, Wittgensteiniana, Kafkiana, are to be had abundantly in better bookstores everywhere. What once inspired passionate devotion, now brings forth nostalgia. We are becoming »post-modern.« Is the modern period over? To some, it ended soon after World War II, or even before. To others, we are still living in it.46

Kalmar’s maverick portrait is quoted here because despite all the criticism his work merits, he has put the central question more clearly than anybody else: This time we were coming from a position of fear, confusion, decadence—but also great hope—characteristic more of the people at the foot of Mt. Sinai than the prophet on top. The root of the modern Jewish efflorescence is, I argue, a kind of neurosis, an edginess, an embarrassment, about being Jewish in a largely hostile, and often violently hostile, social environment—and the need to cope with it.47

Back to Germany, then (if only shortly, but to mark the contrast), where a young man who had survived in hiding in Nazi Berlin, Hans Rosenthal, was one of the few visible remnants of a once-blossoming culture. Even at the times of his greatest successes as a gameshow host in German television not many Germans knew that he was Jewish. Some of the emigré intellectuals had returned, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, but Jewish life in post-Holocaust Germany was fractioned and rudimentary, the communities in Berlin or Frankfurt consisting mostly of »displaced persons« who had somehow not managed to leave the country and sat, for decades, on their packed suitcases. In Poland, once the home of the largest Jewish community in the world, returning Jews experienced the continuity of anti-Semitic prejudice and even violence—and subsequently left the country; mostly for Israel. With the foundation of a Jewish State in Palestine in May 1948, yet another form of Jewish engagement with modernity and modern culture needs to be considered. While the State of Israel was partly made up by the experiences of immigrants from more than a hundred countries, in many ways a new Israeli and Hebrew response to and engagement with modern culture emerged. Urban experiences of the Diaspora, Odessa in 1919, Warsaw in 1924, Berlin in 1933, arrived in Tel Aviv and helped to create a city that developed into a kind of reservoir for European modernism, with its International style (Bauhaus) architecture and its Philharmo45 Nicholas Shakespeare, Clarice Lispector: »Morbidly insensitive,« The Telegraph (01/02/ 2014). 46 Ivan Kalmar, The Trotskys, Freuds, and Woody Allens: Portrait of a Culture (New York: Viking Press, 1994), 28. 47 Ibid.

36

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

nic Orchestra, but also with the bookshops, galleries and coffeehouses where immigrants could take a break from the daily challenges the Zionist endeavour demanded from them. After 1948, immigrants from Baghdad, Tehran, or Damascus, with their very own urban experiences, joined the effort to merge »oriental« Jewish traditions with modern (Israeli) culture. In this context, it is useful to discuss the work of Ruby Namdar born in Jerusalem to Persian parents in 1964 and came to New York in 2000. In 2013 he published the first great Hebrew-language American Jewish novel, The Ruined House, and his work has been interpreted as »a bridge between American Jews and Israelis«. »It was a double love story,« he said: »I also fell in love with the city. This was the winter of 2000. I was walking the streets of Manhattan, taking it all in. The vastness of it. The duration of it. The whole mess of the city.« You can hear the love in his book. From the beginning of Chapter 2: »O Manhattan, isle of the gods, home to great happenings of metal, glass, and energy, island of sharp angles, summit of the world!« And here comes the other answer to the question of what makes him a bridge. Growing up in Jerusalem, the child of Iranian immigrants, »the Jewish component of my identity was always very strong,« he said. »I always felt more Jewy than my friends the sabras, who were more Israeli in the way they saw the world. For me, the Jewish angle was always more vital, more crucial.«48 There is no way to summarize all this (and so much more, when adding the continuity of European Jewish culture in South Africa, in Australia, or in South America) under the heading of »(modern) Jewish culture«. Cultures in plural and diversity, in the period between 1945 and 1990, are marked by so many contexts: post-colonialism, the rise and fall of communism, the Cold War until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the conflict in the Middle East, the complex relations between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, that it seems impossible to find a common heading for them. Individual Jews have been engaged and active on all sides, but none of these developments can be simply called »Jewish«. With the arrival of post-modernity, or the growing awareness in intellectual circles both in the Western and the Eastern world—and even in this one place that seems to belong neither here nor there, Israel—that there is no longer a convincing and continual narrative to adhere to, the field of Jewish responses to modern culture has become as diversified, uncertain, and fragmented as the world around it. Yet it might be the case that one can write the cultural history of more recent developments based exactly on that fragmentation.

4

After the Holocaust: Has modernity betrayed Jewish culture?

One of the topics omitted so far has been called »The Goldhagen effect« and the »Holocaust Industry«. Has the Holocaust, in all its incomprehensibility, become a

48 http://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/the-reincarnation-of-ruby-namdar/ [24705/2018].

4 After the Holocaust: Has modernity betrayed Jewish culture?

37

focal point around which Jewish responses to contemporary modern culture now evolve in Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora? Is it possible to talk or write about Jewish engagement with modern culture without a reference to the industrialized form of mass murder, executed in Poland and Eastern Europe, but initiated, planned, and organized—of all places—in Berlin, the city that seemingly embodied the successful marriage between modern Jewish and modern urban cultures right up to the beginning of the catastrophe in 1933? Put differently: Is the Holocaust part of modern culture? A discussion of the historical events that led to the destruction of Jewish life and culture in Europe in the context of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment must include the question to what extent the forces of modernization have broken down earlier borders of humanism and unleashed hatred and aggression in ways unexperienced before. And what could, and can, a Jewish response to this form of modern enmity be? In 1945, or 1948, and specifically from the point of view in Tel Aviv—the city where the State of Israel was founded—the answer seemed obvious: Europe was a cemetery. Germany would never see Jewish life again, at least before the work of generations would help it to return to the human family. Instead, Jewish culture would blossom in the Hebrew language, in Israel, and maybe in other languages, in the United States or wherever European Jews had found refuge. Moreover, the very problematic domination of Jewish culture (and the definitions of what it meant to be) by European and, most of all, German traditions would now be replaced by a more universal approach that could integrate Jewish experiences and Jewish cultural creativity based, for example, in Arab countries such as Morocco, Egypt, or Iraq. Political developments in the Middle East have partly undermined such hopes. Still, Tel Aviv, the secular city in Israel, and Jerusalem as its religious—and disputed—centre form (together, in all their difference) an important vantage-point from which to look at Jewish responses to modern culture worldwide. And both cities have contributed intensely—in the arts, in music, in literature—to a contemporary Jewish culture with a Hebrew accent. For an understanding of Jewish individuals and families confronting modernity, there is Philip Roth, yes, but there is also Amos Oz. For a depiction of Jewish worlds lost and preserved in painting, there is Marc Chagall, yes, but there is also Reuven Rubin. And there is, somewhere in between, Amos Kitaj, who will be discussed below. With the development of Israel into a nation state and all that comes with it, wars, the occupation of Palestinian territory, and internal dispute about the future of the country, the idea of a new »Diasporism« has challenged the dominating narrative of Zionism. Jewish responses to modern culture can now be expressed in modern Hebrew—but not only. They can be expressed in English as well, in Spanish, in Russian, or even in Polish. Or even in German, and it is maybe no wonder that some of the most creative minds in Israeli culture have initiated and participated in a new dialogue with Germany, as Yoram Kaniuk did in his book »Der letzte Berliner«,49 or 49 Yoram Kaniuk, Der letzte Berliner (Munich: List 2001).

38

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

with Poland, as Etgar Keret in the description of his stay in the »smallest house« in Warsaw.50 Jewish life in the United States seemed to have become »normal«—whatever that is—in the decades after World War II, a part of the ethnic composition of the country alongside many others. Memories of the origins of most American Jews had slowly become a matter of archives and nostalgic publications about the lost culture of the shtetl. New cultural developments and the engagement of individual Jews in the Civil Rights movement or in Feminism owed their impact to the Americanness they expressed. These activities can be read as a response to the shortcomings of modernity, the as yet unfulfilled promises of liberty, of equality, and of brother- and sisterhood. The work of Americans Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Hélène Cixous in France, is rooted as much in the American constitution or the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, as it is in the tradition of Jewish ethics. The memory of the destruction of European Jewry has only become a focal point of reference from the early 1980s on, and it was often the case that media events such as the series »Holocaust« (1979) or the »Goldhagen debate« (1996) paved the way for a new awareness of the continuous impact of the Holocaust on Jewish self-understanding and on Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the United States. While the notion of an alleged »Holocaust industry« must be questioned, there is no doubt that Holocaust memory has entered and influenced popular culture, in movies and plays, in graphic novels, in museums and memorials. In his review of the »Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture«51, Donald Weber rightly asks, »how can a single volume do justice to the rich pantheon of actors, writers, films, composers, and entertainers who helped shape what is, perhaps, the most enduring contribution by Jews to modern and contemporary American culture?« The editors of the encyclopedia argued that »the contribution Jews made to American popular culture was a mix between those whose ›Jewishness‹ was incidental to their work (Jack Black, Carole King, any number of Rock performers), and those whose Jewish roots were at the heart of their contributions (Leon Uris, Herman Wouk, Chaim Potok, many others)«. The word »mix« is crucial here—the contemporary world of modern culture is a fragmented one, and questions of longing and belonging are as central to it as they were in the time of the Enlightenment. And yet another notion seems problematic: »contribution.« As Moritz Goldstein experienced in 1912, his work dedicated to the preservation of German classical literature has been regarded as a—welcome or unwelcome—contribution to something larger, the »culture« or even the »nation.« Nobody asked what the »contribu-

50 See http://www.kerethouse.com/ [25/05/2018]. See Morgenstern, Modern Jewish literature, below, 139–168. 51 https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/encyclopedia-of-jewish-american-popular-cultu re Jack Fischel, ed.; with Susan M. Ortmann, Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood 2008.

4 After the Holocaust: Has modernity betrayed Jewish culture?

39

tion« of, for example, the German language was or meant for him. In his discussion of New York’s Jewish Museum, art critic Harold Rosenberg argued in 1966 that the work of »artists like Rothko, Newman, Gottlieb, Nevelson, Guston, Lassaw, Rivers, Steinberg and many others helped to inaugurate a genuine American art by creating as individuals«, and that »this work, inspired by the will to identity, has constituted a new art by Jews which, though not a Jewish art, is a profound Jewish expression, at the same time that it is loaded with meaning for all people of this era.«52 Jewish studies as an interdisciplinary research area began to go beyond such traditional topics and approaches (and beyond the traditional research areas of Religion and History). Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin, David Biale, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Simon J. Bronner contributed to the development of Jewish Cutural Studies in many different ways, including the study of folklore, performance, gender, sexuality, migration, transnationalism, and Jewish/non-Jewish relations.53 And then, at a critical time marked by the beginning collapse of the Soviet regime and by the development of a civil society in Central and Eastern Europe, some intellectuals in Poland, such as Stanisław Krajewski and Monika Krajewska started to document Jewish cemeteries or former synagogues and found this work to be an example of resistance against the prevailing (not only Communist) narrative of Polish victimhood. They also discovered Jewish culture, specifically Jewish music, Klezmer music, as a cultural device to counter the idea of a unified, catholic-only Polish culture. There was, they thought, more to Polish culture than Catholicism and nationalism. But this »more« had been lost, and they ventured to retrace it. The most important example of this cultural activity is the yearly festival of Jewish music held in Krakow, described and analyzed in detail by the fine work of Magdalena Waligórska.54 What happened in those years, from 1987 or 1988 on, across the official dates of the radical political change in Europe in 1989/90, has been described by Ruth Ellen Gruber as the »re-invention« of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe.55 Her definition of this development as »Virtually Jewish« has often been misunderstood—it was »virtual« in some ways, yes, since at the beginning some of the musicians who played the Klezmer music were, as were large parts of the audience, not Jewish. But they together re-instated the presence of Jewish culture in Poland and made the »virtual« become, partly and in a period of transition, real again.

52 Harold Rosenberg, »Is there a Jewish art?« Commentary (July 1966), 57‒60. 53 Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin, eds., Jews and Other Differences. The New Jewish Cultural Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996); David Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews. A New History (New York: Schocken 2002); Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp, eds., The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times; Simon J. Bronner, ed., Jewish Cultural Studies (Oxford: Litttman’s Library of Jewish Civilization 2008). 54 Magdalena Waligórska, Klezmer’s Afterlife. An Ethnography of the Jewish Music Revival in Poland and Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 55 Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish. Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press 2002).

40

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

This is the mental topography that Diana Pinto defined as the new »Jewish Space« in Europe.56 It is precisely due to the fact that the Holocaust is not forgotten, that initiatives to remember persecution and deportation, based on the everyday experience and represented in everyday surroundings, assert that there was, or is, an opportunity to do—show, act, sing, write, paint—things »culturally Jewish« in a new context, be it in more traditional forms such as the theatre or the concert hall, or even in forms that we would call »popular culture«. Similar initiatives have taken place in Ukraine, in the Baltic States, most particularly Lithuania, in the Czech and Slovak Republics, in Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, and while many of these projects have been originally based in Jewish heritage—as documented by the online resource centre »Jewish Heritage Europe«57—and in Holocaust commemoration; in the meantime they have also opened up a dialogue with the cultural environment of these countries. These new developments in Europe have been discussed under the heading of a new »Diasporism«. An important document for the re-awakening of an exilic mindset, or a »Jewish exilic cultural identity,«58 among Jewish intellectuals is indeed painter R.B. Kitaj’s »Diasporist Manifesto,« first published in 1988. It projects the outsider, the marginal existence, in contrast to Zionism, as a genuinely Jewish experience that should not be overcome but used creatively and most specifically in the arts. For Kitaj, art and Jewishness come together in the diasporic mind-set: »If it was Jewishness and not Judaism (the religion) that condemned one to death, then such ›Jewishness‹ could be depicted as a variety of qualities, a force that could be present in Art and Life.«59 Philip Roth, in his novel »Operation Shylock,« (1993) continued this discussion and imagined a possible return of the Jews to Poland as a way to escape from the conflict in the Middle East. This, of course, has been heavily disputed, but it has also resonated within Israeli society. The artist Yael Bartana created a series of projects, documented on video, that imagine such a return to Europe, and the impressive number of young and creative Israelis now residing in Berlin and Warsaw—or maybe rather in a constant movement between Tel Aviv and those European cities—seems to confirm Diana Pinto’s idea of Europe as a third pillar of contemporary Jewish existence; were it not for the new rise of xenophobia and anti-Semitism within those European societies in our own times. As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Karp put it, »clearly no single formula for defining Jewish art in the diaspora will suffice.« Studying and analyzing »modern Jewry’s engagement with the arts as a whole, including music, theater, dance, film, museums, architecture, painting, sculpture, and more«, editors and authors of their

56 Diana Pinto, »The Third Pillar? Toward an European Jewish Identity,« Jewish Studies at the Central European University: Public Lectures 1996‒1999 (Budapest: Jewish Studies Program, 2000), 177‒201. 57 http://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/ [25/05/2018]. 58 E.g. the conference, »Rethinking Exile, Centre and Diaspora in Modern Jewish Culture,« Cambridge University, May 2‒4, 2016. 59 R.B. Kitaj, First Diasporist Manifesto (London: Thames & Hudson 1989).

4 After the Holocaust: Has modernity betrayed Jewish culture?

41

published volume illuminated »how the arts have helped Jews confront the various challenges of modernity, including cultural adaptation and self-preservation, economic diversification, and ritual transformation.«60 While this seminal work still concentrates on established areas of culture in recent years, new developments need to be noted. Among them is the emergence of a new Jewish »popular culture.« Caspar Battegay, in his Judentum und Popkultur,61 has brought attention to cultural activities in contemporary art, film, music, popular magazines, humour, comedy, street art and other related fields, initiated by Jewish artists or »dealing with« Jewish topics, all of which cross traditional boundaries and look at the interactions between people in their everyday activities: styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals and the foods that people eat, as examples of popular or, in more avant-garde ways, of »pop« culture. What is scandalizing and marginal today, might become part of the global mainstream tomorrow. The discourse on (and of) pop culture mirrors such dialectics, it follows and produces formations and constructions of identity (Jewish in some ways, and/or a result of the co-construction emerging from Jewish/non-Jewish relations in others) in different media and on different stages. This seems far away, on the one hand, from the questions about the place of Jewish life and culture in the processes of modernization, questions that Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, or Moritz Goldstein discussed in their time. On the other hand, there is a surprisingly close relationship. In what ways is Jewish cultural practice, as a particular way of writing, painting, making music or building houses, inhabiting places, making clothes and dressing, eating and drinking, believing in natural or supernatural powers and giving form to such belief, in prayer and ritual, conceiving and rearing children, and educating them, translatable to and open for a dialogue with the non-Jewish world? Ironically, anti-Jewish stereotypes and creative ways of opposing them are central to the performance of various Jewish comedians such as Moshe Kasher, Sacha Baron Cohen, or Sarah Silverman—as innovative and original as their performances might seem, older challenges are never far away. Artists such as Doug Fishbone, Deborah Kass, Suzanne Treister, or Kathy Beinart create works that include »selfformed repositories of motifs for specific conceptual purposes,« as Rachel Garfield has argued;62 but what they really do is to create new archives of Jewish knowledge. Singers such as Orthodox rapper Matisyahu, actors such as Jerry Seinfeld, and comedians like Adam Sandler create new figures, from the »funny Jew« to the »nebbish«, but what they also do is to ask new questions about contemporary Jewish identities. In the academic arena, Simon J. Bronner’s initiative to create a forum for »Jewish Cultural Studies« has opened the field of Jewish Studies for a dialogue

60 http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14382.html. 61 Caspar Battegay, Judentum und Popkultur. Ein Essay (Bielefeld: Transcript 2012). 62 Rachel Garfield, »Deflationary tactics with the archive of life: contemporary Jewish art and popular culture«, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Special Section: A Nebbish, a Gonif, a Schlemiel and a Schnorrer Walk Into a Bar… New Research in Jewish Popular Culture, 1/16, 2017 (ed. Joachim Schlör), 38‒65.

42

Jewish engagement(s) with Modern Culture

with Diaspora Studies, Transnational Studies, Gender Studies, and more. The topics discussed in this important series of yearbooks sound very familiar: Community. Ritual. Home. Family.63 This brings us back to the beginning. Can there ever be, or have been, historically and contemporary, a »Jewish response to modern culture?« Surely not one single response, which should be obvious by now. There has been, and still is, a wide array of possible responses, and most of them have been formulated in contact, and often conflict, with the non-Jewish world. At the time of writing, anti-Semitism seems to be as virulent, and dangerous, as it ever was. Can we turn the title of this discussion around? How has »modern culture«—in the form of the national state or in the form of civic society around the globe—responded to Judaism and Jewish culture, and how will it respond in the future? For further reading Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew (Berkeley etc.: University of California Press 2000). Emily D. Bilski (ed.), Berlin Metropolis. Jews and the New Culture, 1890–1918. Berkeley etc.: University of California Press 2000). Simon J. Bronner (ed.), Jewish Cultural Studies. The Littmann Library of Jewishg Civilization (vols. 1–4 Oxford and Portland, Oregon, vols. 5–6 in association with Liverpool University Press 2008–2018, to be continued). Brian Cheyette, Laura Marcus (eds), Modernity, Culture, and ›the Jew‹ (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press 1998). Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany, 1743–1933 (New York: Schocken Books 2002). Sander L. Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York, London: Routledge) 1991. Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Berkeley etc.: University of California Press 1993). Susannah Heschel, ›Jewish Studies as Counterhistory‹, in David Biale, Michael Galchinsky, and Susannah Heschel (eds), Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (Berkeley etc.: University of California Press 1998): 101–115. Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1995). Noah Isenberg, Between Redemption and Doom. The strains of German-Jewish Modernism (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press) 1999. Simone Lässig, Miriam Rürup (eds), Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History. New German Historical Perspectives, vol. 8 (New York, Oxford: Berghahn 2017). Ezra Mendelsohn (ed.), People of the City. Jews and the Urban Challenge. Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. XV. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press 1999). Michael A. Meyer (ed.), German-Jewish History in Modern Times, 4 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–1998). Uzi Rebhun, Chaim I. Waxman (eds), Jews in Israel: Contemporary Social and Cultural Factors (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press 2004).

63 Jewish Cultural Studies, ed. Simon J. Bronner, https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/collec tions/series-jewish-cultural-studies.

4 After the Holocaust: Has modernity betrayed Jewish culture?

43

Gideon Reuveni, Nils Roemer (eds), Longing, Belonging, and the Making of Jewish Consumer Culture (Leiden: Brill 2010). Nils Roemer, ›Between Hope and Despair: Conceptions of Time and the German-Jewish Experience in the 19th Century‹, Jewish History, 14 (2000): 345–363. Shulamit Volkov, »The Jewish Project of Modernity: Diverse or Unitary«, in Hartmut Kaelble (ed.), The European Way. European societies in the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: Berghahn 2004): 226–252. Magdalena Waligórska, Klezmer’s Afterlife. An Ethnography of the Jewish Music Revival in Poland and Germany (Oxford University Press 2013).

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism Elliot N. Dorff

From the early collections of laws and precedents in the Torah to the Rabbinic development of those laws in late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period, Jewish law has played a critical role in defining what Jews believe and do. In this chapter, I will first describe the changes that the Enlightenment brought to the authority and nature of Jewish law, the legal theories of the modern Jewish movements, and then some specific examples of moral and ritual issues shaped by Jewish law. As an example of the former, we consider topics in the ethics of medicine and interpersonal relations and, as examples of the latter, Judaism’s dietary laws and Jewish ways of marking the life cycle and the seasonal cycle.

1

Napoleon and the Functioning of Jewish Law in Enlightenment Countries

Jews were expelled from much of 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. In such countries Jews continued to be at best a tolerated minority and at worst a persecuted one into the twentieth century. This also meant, however, that Jews in those areas of the world were governed by Jewish law, enforced by Jewish courts backed up by governments that demanded taxes and men for the army, but did not want to deal with the Jews directly any more than necessary. 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. The one country that was far enough east to have a substantial population of Jews and was yet far enough west to be influenced by the Enlightenment was Germany. It is not surprising, then, that in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was in Germany that all three of the modern Jewish movements—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform—developed, each with its distinctive approach to how Jews should live by Jewish law. The blessings of living in countries that, at least in theory, saw Jews as individual citizens was that they were treated as full citizens. The price for that new status, however, became apparent when in 1806, Napoleon convened an Assembly of Jewish Notables that appointed a »Grand Sanhédrin,« which met in 1807–1808. It consisted of the rabbinic and lay leaders of France and the nations Napoleon

1 Napoleon and the Functioning of Jewish Law in Enlightenment Countries

45

had conquered, including Germany and Italy. He posed to them questions that tested the degree to which they were willing to integrate into the French nation on an equal par with other citizens. As Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, one of the major ideologues of the French Revolution and a member of its Constituent Assembly, said to that body in December 1789, »Jews should be denied everything as a Nation, but granted everything as individuals.«1 Napoleon’s questions tested the degree to which the Jews were ready to give up their distinctive Jewish identity, renounce being shaped by Jewish law, and become simply Frenchmen. Here were the questions, many of which affect Jews living in free societies to this day:2 1. Is it lawful for Jews to have more than one wife? 2. Is divorce allowed by the Jewish religion? Is divorce valid, although pronounced not by courts of justice but by virtue of laws in contradiction to the French code? 3. May a Jewess marry a Christian, or [may] a Jew [marry] a Christian woman, or does Jewish law order that the Jews should only intermarry among themselves? 4. In the eyes of Jews, are Frenchmen not of the Jewish religion considered as brethren or as strangers? 5. What conduct does Jewish law prescribe toward Frenchmen not of the Jewish religion? 6. Do the Jews born in France, and treated by the law as French citizens, acknowledge France as their country? Are they bound to defend it? Are they bound to obey the laws and follow the directions of the civil code? 7. Who elects the rabbis? 8. What kind of police jurisdiction do the rabbis exercise over the Jews? What judicial power do they exercise over them? 9. Are the police jurisdiction of the rabbis and the forms of the election regulated by Jewish law or are they only sanctioned by custom? 10. Are there professions from which the Jews are excluded by their law? 11. Does Jewish law forbid the Jews to take usury from their brethren? 12. Does it forbid, or does it allow, usury in dealings with strangers? In some of their answers, the Jewish leaders were able to give Napoleon the response they knew he wanted without stretching Jewish law (e.g., that Jews may engage in manual labor), but in others they skirted the issue (e.g., that an interfaith marriage involving a Jew is binding in civil law even though it cannot be celebrated in Jewish religious forms and therefore would be discouraged in the Jewish community, that rabbis have authority only to the extent and in the areas that the govern-

1 Emanuel Beeri, »Clermont-Tonnerre, Count Stanislas De,« Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007), 4:755. 2 For an historical treatment and analysis of why Napoleon convened the Sanhédrin and how the Jewish leaders responded, see Gil Graff, Separation of Church and State: Dina demalkhuta dina in Jewish Law, 1750–1848 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985).

46

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

ment permits) and in yet others they either invented new interpretations of Jewish law (e.g., that a civil marriage license must precede a Jewish wedding, and a divorce in civil law must precede a divorce in Jewish law) or misrepresented it outright (e.g., that Jewish law imposes the same duties on Jews to non-Jews as it does to fellow Jews, and that Jews may not charge interest on loans to non-Jews) unless they were asserting what would be required of Jews under civil law rather than Jewish law. These answers represent how Jews living in countries influenced by the Enlightenment had to struggle to be faithful to their own Jewish tradition and identity, on one hand, and to be fully part of modern society, on the other—a struggle that continues to this day.

2

Jewish Legal Theories in Response to Living in Countries with Freedom of Religion

The critical part of this struggle for Jewish law was the undermining of rabbinic authority in favor of civil law. No longer did Jewish law govern every aspect of the lives of Jews, including commercial and criminal matters, as well as family law and rituals. Now Jews had to repair to the civil courts for justice, even among Jews; and marriage and divorce, which until the Enlightenment had been governed exclusively by religious authorities for people of all religions, were now subject to civil law. Generally, Jews could determine their own ritual behaviors without legal interference by the state, but integrating into the social and commercial life of the nation effectively weakened the authority of those areas of Jewish law. So, for example, Jewish law requires Jews to observe the dietary laws and the Sabbath, but how could they do that if being successful in business required eating at all sorts of restaurants with both Jewish and non-Jewish customers and keeping their business open on Saturday? And how could Jews become lawyers or doctors and still adhere to Jewish law if they had to attend classes in law school or medical school on Saturday and other Jewish holy days and subsequently work on those days? Jews found that non-Jews were willing to do business with them and treat them as equals only if they forgot about their Jewish identity (or at least hid it) and acted like any other citizen. It was in response to these dilemmas that the three modern movements emerged in Germany in the early nineteenth century, all three of them embodying attempts to preserve Jewish identity while taking advantage of Jews’ newfound freedoms. Rabbi Abraham Geiger and the others of the early Reform movement maintained that Jewish law was intended to be authoritative only for the Jewish people living under Jewish rule in ancient Israel. Now, rabbis living under new Enlightenment conditions of freedom should reform Judaism to return it to what Reform thinkers interpreted the biblical Prophets to want, namely, ethical monotheism. This entailed preserving the theology and moral norms of Judaism but observing only those rituals that modern Jews find meaningful. Most importantly, it is the individual Jew who should decide what parts of Jewish ritual laws to observe and how.

2 Jewish Legal Theories in Response to Living in Countries with Freedom of Religion

47

These beliefs coincided with the individualism of Enlightenment ideology—that, to quote Locke there are self-evident truths that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and property.3

This reformation of Judaism also accorded with the claims of the late-eighteenth century philosopher, Immanuel Kant, whose views were popular in Germany when Geiger was writing in the first half of the nineteenth century—specifically, that reason could prove God and generate a system of ethics. So every person should both believe in God and act in accord with moral norms. The Reformers were saying that Jews need not abandon Judaism to be modern; on the contrary, the Prophets realized the importance of ethical monotheism centuries before Kant did, and so Jews should be proud to be Jews. These tenets were also later embedded in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of the Central Conference of American [Reform] Rabbis as follows: 3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the view and habits of modern civilization. 4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state…. their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.4

The most recent, 1999 platform statement of that same organization of American Reform Rabbis affirms a much more positive attitude toward Jewish rituals, but individual autonomy remains a central doctrine of Reform Judaism. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, founder of Modern Orthodox Judaism, asserted that there was nothing wrong with traditional Judaism; the only reason young Jews in Germany were not obeying it is because they did not know much about it. So he established schools for adult education, translated the Bible into German, and wrote books to describe and rationally justify Jewish law to Jews. What makes his approach »modern,« though, is that he maintained that Jews could fully participate in the universities and professions of Germany; they just needed to recognize that if something they learned from those sources contradicted Judaism, then Judaism, as the product of God, had to take precedence.5 To this day, Modern Orthodox Jews maintain the full authority of Jewish law without changing anything in it while yet also affirming the desirability of participating in the modern world. In contrast, Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) think that because Jewish law is fully authoritative,

3 John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, section 85. 4 To see all four platform statements of the Central Conference of American Rabbis—in 1885, 1937, 1976, and 1999—see http://www.ccarnet.org/rabbis-speak/platforms/. 5 Samson Raphael Hirsch, Judaism Eternal, Isidor Grunfeld, trans. (London: Soncino Press, 1956), Volume II, 221–223 on the permission and even desirability of learning disciplines outside of Judaism; 213–251 generally on the imperative to obey Jewish law.

48

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

Jews should isolate themselves as much as possible from modernity, which tempts Jews to disobey it. What is now called »the Conservative Movement«—or »Masorti«—began when Rabbi Zecharias Frankel and those who agreed with him left the organization of Reform rabbis in Germany in 1845 when the latter voted to replace the traditional form of Jewish liturgy in Hebrew with a German translation. In some ways splitting from the Reform rabbis over this issue was ironic, because according to Jewish law one may fulfill one’s obligations to pray in any language.6 The refusal of Frankel and his followers to substitute the vernacular for Hebrew in the liturgy, however, indicated their conviction that Jewish identity is not solely a matter of religion and morals, as the Reformers saw it, but also of community. This emphasis was to become ever more important as Conservative Judaism took root in America and became a movement that focused on the communal aspects of Jewish identity, including commitment to Jewish law. Unlike the Orthodox, however, Conservative/Masorti leaders studied and interpreted Judaism in general, and Jewish law in particular, in their historical context, learning from that research that Jewish law developed over time as Jewish communities needed to revise it or add to it to meet the exigencies of their circumstances. To do so is also to continue what the classical Rabbis of the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash understood God to want Jews to do in each generation.7 In contrast to Reform ideology, however, Conservative Judaism asserts that Jewish law remains binding even if the substance of Jewish law is subject to change. Furthermore, making any changes in Jewish law must be a communal decision, made by rabbis with their communities, rather than one that each individual Jew could determine for himself or herself.

3

The Authority of Jewish Law

Because the Orthodox and Conservative movements affirm the authority of Jewish law, they ask: how can Jewish law be authoritative for Jews when it will not be enforced by the government in societies shaped by Enlightenment principles including freedom of religion and freedom from religion? Indeed, without government enforcement, how can Jewish law be »law« in the usual sense of the word as an enforced norm of society? One answer is that even if the government will not enforce Jewish law, God will. The efficacy of this answer depends, of course, on each individual Jew’s understanding of God in general and God’s role in enforcing the law, in particular. One problem, recognized by the biblical books of Job and Qohelet (Ecclesiastes), is that bad

6 Mishnah m. Sot 7:1; see Babylonian Talmud b. Ber 13a, 15a, 40b; b. Meg 17b; b. Shevu 39a; Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (hereinafter M.T.), Laws of Reciting the Shema 2:10; Laws of Blessings 1:6; Joseph Karo’s Shulḥan Arukh (hereinafter S.A.), Oraḥ Ḥayyim 62:2, 101:4. 7 See, for example, b. BB 12a and b. BM 59b, See Elliot N. Dorff, For the Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2007), Chapter Five.

4 Jewish Identity: Who Is a Jew?

49

things often happen to good people and good things to bad—or, as the Rabbis of the Talmud put it, »A righteous person suffers, and an evil person prospers.«8 How can a morally good God let such things happen? Moreover, if such things happen, how can God be trusted to enforce the law at all, let alone fairly? An answer is already recognized in the Torah—that the authority of the Jewish legal system rests not primarily on enforcement, but rather on a whole host of other motivations to obey the law. The Torah recognized this, for God’s patent power, evidenced by thunder, lightning, and earthquakes on Mount Sinai, was not enough to deter the Israelites from creating and worshipping the Golden Calf. Thus the Bible provides many other reasons to obey the law: that it is a wise way to live; that the Israelites promised to do so, and their descendants are bound by the same promise; that it is part of the ongoing Covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people; that it informs people as to how to be moral and exemplary, »a light to nations«; that it enables people to aspire to be holy (God-like); and that Jews should do so out of love for God, just as people do many things for those they love.9 Thus Jewish law can be authoritative for any or all of these reasons even if it is not enforced by some external authority, whether the government or God. One other general point should be made before we describe some specific areas of Jewish law. Within each of these three movements there is a spectrum of opinion. As a result, readers should expect differences of opinion not only among adherents of different movements, but sometimes even among those within a given movement.

4

Jewish Identity: Who Is a Jew?

Unlike Christianity and Islam, Jewish identity is not a matter of affirming specific beliefs. It is instead a function of birth. Jewish identity is not determined by the place of birth, but by the bearing woman: if she was Jewish, her children are as well, no matter what they later know about Judaism and how much or little they obey its laws. If she was not Jewish, then they are not Jewish, no matter how much they know about Judaism or engage in its practices.10 This explains a fact about Jews that Christians and Muslims, in particular, find mystifying about the Jewish community—the existence of secular or cultural Jews.

8 b. Ber 7a. In Qohelet see 7:15–18; 8:10–14. Job chapter 9. 9 Dorff, For the Love of God and People, Chapter Four. 10 This legal determination of Jewish identity took some time to develop. In biblical times, a person’s father and tribe determined his or her identity as part of the People Israel. The Mishnah (edited c. 200 C.E.) records two opinions. According to one (m. Yev 7:5; see also b. Yev 45a, 70a), the child of a Jewish woman and a non-Jewish man is illegitimate (mamzer) and, in accordance with Deut 23:3, may not marry a Jew for ten generations. According to the other (m. Qid 3:12; b. Qid 68b), such a child is a Jew, and that is the ruling that later Jewish law adopted: M.T. Laws of Forbidden Intercourse (Issurei Biʾah) 15:3–4; S.A. Even Ha-Ezer 4:5.

50

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

These people identify as Jews and may know quite a lot about Jewish culture or be fairly active in Jewish communal activities, but do not believe in God, do not practice Judaism’s ritual commandments, and step foot in a synagogue only for a family or communal event, but not for worship. According to the 2013 Pew Report about American Jews, a quarter of America’s Jews are secular.11 This can happen because legal Jewish identity is conveyed by being born to a Jewish woman, not by an affirmation of a faith. One must immediately add here that Judaism definitely has beliefs. There have been a number of formulations of those beliefs during the history of Judaism. Perhaps most famous among them is Maimonides’ list of thirteen, but Joseph Albo narrowed that down to three. A popular medieval phrase is that »Israel, Torah, and the Holy One are one,« indicating that Jewish belief can be summarized as belief in the people and land of Israel, the written and oral Torah, and ethical monotheism. People, however, can be Jews without affirming those beliefs in any form. Although Jews need not assert any particular beliefs to be Jews, some beliefs will exclude them from being counted as Jews by the Jewish community. The Torah itself is filled with admonitions against idolatry, including some verses in the Decalogue.12 In both the Torah and the biblical Prophets, the punishment for worshiping idols is severe: God will abandon the Jewish people and enable its enemies to conquer and enslave it. These laws against idolatry are developed further in a full tractate of the Mishnah and the Talmud, Avodah Zarah. Historically rabbis needed to determine whether the Christians or Muslims among whom Jews lived counted as idolaters. If so, Jews could not engage in commerce or any other activity with them. Rabbis were virtually unanimous in ruling that Muslims were monotheists, but the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the relics that Christians kissed, and the statues to which they bowed down made most medieval rabbis see Christians as idolaters. Even those who ruled otherwise never considered it permissible for a Jew to worship Jesus or become a Muslim and still remain Jewish, and so in our own time Jews consider »Jews for Jesus« or »Messianic Jews« as Christians. Even if a person was born to a Jewish woman and therefore Jewish by birth, worshiping Jesus or taking on some other religion makes the person an apostate, one who is now outside the Jewish community and ineligible for most of the privileges of Jewish life.13 So, no beliefs are required to establish Jewish identity, but some beliefs can undermine one’s claim to be a Jew, even if one was born to a Jewish woman.

11 22% of all American Jews identify as »Jews of no religion.« Among millennials (born in 1980 or thereafter), that percentage is higher: 68% are »Jews by religion« and 32% are »Jews of no religion,« where ethnic, social, or cultural factors are the source of their Jewish identity. This is in marked contrast to previous generations. http://www.pewforum. org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/ 12 Exod 20:4–6. Some other places where the Torah forbids idolatry: Exod 34:10–16; Lev 26:1–2; Num 25:1–5; Deut 9:11–21. 13 For a summary of the laws affecting apostates, see the article »Apostasy« and its subsection »In Jewish Law« in Encyclopaedia Judaica, first edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972) 2:211–214.

4 Jewish Identity: Who Is a Jew?

51

However, someone not born to a Jewish woman can convert to Judaism. Exactly what is required to do so depends on the denomination of Judaism to which one wants to convert and even, to an extent, on the rabbi supervising the conversion. Typically the conversion process involves at least several months to learn about Judaism, to acquire the skills to practice it, and to gain some experience of living within a Jewish community. Then, all Orthodox and Conservative rabbis and many Reform rabbis insist on the traditional rituals of conversion—circumcision for males and, for both males and females, immersion in a natural body of water or a mikveh, a specially constructed pool of water. (If a male converting to Judaism has been circumcised before becoming interested in conversion, a drop of blood is extracted from the head of his penis as an emblematic circumcision.) The person is thus symbolically reborn into Judaism, as if he or she had been born to a Jewish woman, for immersion in water is reminiscent of the bag of water that breaks within a woman when she is about to give birth,14 and the circumcision is what is required of every Jewish male eight days after birth. The person is also reborn into the Jewish Covenant with God, for Just as the People Israel were initiated into the covenant by three precepts, so proselytes are initiated by circumcision, immersion, and a sacrifice. [The omission of] the first two debars him [from becoming a proselyte], but omission of the third does not.15

Determining who is a Jew today, though, is fraught with difficulty. Few people have the Jewish marriage contract (ketubbah) of their mother and maternal grandmother to prove that they are Jewish for three generations, and that is what Israel’s Chief Rabbinate officially requires in order to authorize the person to marry as a Jew in Israel. Israel’s Chief Rabbinate also decides which rabbis are trusted to convert people to Judaism. On the other hand, to immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen under Israel’s Law of Return one need have only one Jewish grandparent because that is what determined for the Nazis whether you were a Jew. As one might imagine, these conflicting standards of Jewish identity in Israel have led to multiple court cases, some of them reaching Israel’s Supreme Court. Traditionally, communities simply take the person’s word that he or she is Jewish—or ask a few questions and then accept the person as Jewish—unless there is reason to suspect that the person is claiming to be Jewish for some ulterior motive. This is stance of traditional Jewish law, and it has been reaffirmed recently by the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, even with regard to the million Russian Jews who have immigrated to Israel without clear evidence of being Jewish.16

14 m. Ger 2:6: »Rabbi Judah said: [The proselyte] … is like a new-born child.« 15 m. Ger 2:5. The entrance of the People Israel through circumcision: Gen 17:11–14. Through immersion: Exod 14:22, 29–31; 15:19. Through sacrifice: Gen 15:7–21. 16 Rabbi Reuven Hammer, »On Proving Jewish Identity,« https://www.rabbinicalassembly. org/sites/default/files/assets/public/halakhah/teshuvot/2011-2020/ JewishIdentity6.2011.pdf

52

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

The large number of interfaith marriages in Western countries and in the Former Soviet Union further complicates the question of who is a Jew, however. In response to increasing numbers of interfaith marriages the Reform rabbinate in 1983 voted to recognize as Jews children of Jewish fathers but not Jewish mothers (»patrilineal descent«) as long as the parents took specific steps to raise their children as Jews.17 As a result, some people who are Jewish by Reform standards and have always thought of themselves as Jews must undergo conversion procedures if they want to be married by a Conservative or Orthodox rabbi. If they themselves have become Conservative or Orthodox, they usually understand and accept the need to go through conversion rites to affirm their Jewish identity. If, however, they are asking a Conservative or Orthodox rabbi to officiate only because their intended spouse is Conservative or Orthodox, they are often angry that anyone doubts their Jewish identity. In vitro fertilization is another factor that muddies the waters regarding Jewish identity. The Conservative movement has approved a ruling that the religion of the bearing mother determines whether the child is Jewish by birth, no matter the religious identity of the people whose sperm and egg produced the child.18 When the ruling was adopted in 1995, this was the dominant position within the Orthodox community as well. Since then, however, some Orthodox rabbis have maintained that the religion of the people who contributed the gametes determines the child’s religion. Other Orthodox rabbis maintain that both the bearing mother and the biological parents must be Jewish for the child to be Jewish.19 These differing standards of who is Jewish make for great confusion and controversy within the contemporary Jewish community with regard to defining eligible marital partners, the identity of people who may be buried in a Jewish cemetery, and other issues.

5

Moral Issues: Bioethics

5.1

The Beginning of Life: Generating Pregnancy

The very first commandment in the Torah is »Be fruitful and multiply.« (Gen 1:27) The Rabbis, in their typical style, then define exactly what is necessary to fulfill the commandment. They surely knew that both a man and a woman are necessary for procreation, but they determine that the commandment applies only to the man. They provide an exegetical reason for this—that the remainder of that verse is 17 American Reform Responsa, »Appendix: Report of the Committee on Patrilineal Descent on the Status of Children of Mixed Marriages,« Adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis at its 94th Annual Convention, March 15, 1983, http://www.ccarnet.org/re sponsa/arr-appendix/ 18 Rabbi Aaron L. Mackler, »In Vitro Fertilization,« https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/ default/files/assets/public/halakhah/teshuvot/19912000/mackler_ivf.pdf, esp. 521–524. 19 See Avraham Steinberg, Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, Fred Rosner, trans. (Jerusalem and New York: Feldheim, 2003), vol. II, 577–580.

5 Moral Issues: Bioethics

53

»and fill the earth and conquer it,« and, at least in their times, conquest of the earth is what men did, not women (b. Yev 65b-66a). They undoubtedly chose to interpret the commandment that way for both medical and economic reasons: medically, giving birth, especially before safe Caesarian sections became possible in the 1950s, was very dangerous, and they did not want to impose that danger legally on women; and economically, because a man was legally responsible to support his children, it was against his economic interests to have them, and therefore he needed to be commanded to procreate. This feature of Jewish law makes it much easier to justify women using contraceptive devices than men doing so, for women are not commanded to procreate and men are. How many children must one have to fulfill the commandment? The law is according to the School of Hillel, who argued that it required that one have a boy and a girl to imitate God’s creation—just as God created the human being, »male and female God created them,« (Gen 1:28) so too should Jews produce at least one child of each gender.20 This means that even if a man begets ten children of either gender but not one of the opposite one, he has not fulfilled the law. Ironically, it is only in modern times, when medicine has advanced to the point of enabling couples to determine the gender of their offspring, that Conservative rabbis have ruled that two children, regardless of their gender, fulfill the commandment.21 Based on a verse in Isaiah (45:18—»Not for void did He create the world, but for habitation did He form it«) and another in Ecclesiastes (11:6—»In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not withhold your hand,« interpreting »morning« as one’s youth and »evening« as later in life), however, the Rabbis ruled that although a minimum of two children fulfils the commandment, those who can procreate should have as many children as they can (b. Yev 62b). In addition, beginning with God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Jewish tradition sees children as a great blessing.22 So the ideal is to have many children. Because many young Jews are postponing marriage and the attempts to have children, many experience problems with infertility. Difficulty having children harks back to the biblical stories of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, and Hannah.23 Today, however, infertile couples can and do avail themselves of artificial reproductive techniques, including artificial insemination using the sperm of either the husband or a donor, in vitro fertilization using the gametes of the two people who intend to raise the child or donors, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), surrogate mothers, etc. Rabbis have responded to the use of these techniques across a wide spectrum of opinion, with most endorsing any method of aiding the couple to use their own gametes to

20 m. Yev 6:6; M.T. Laws of Marriage 15:4; S.A. Even Ha-Ezer 1:5. 21 Kassel Abelson and Elliot N. Dorff, »Mitzvah Children,« https://www.rabbinicalassembly. org/sites/default/files/assets/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/mitzvah_children.pdf 22 God’s blessings of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs includes many children: Gen 15:5; 17:4–21; 18:18; 26:4–5; 28:13–15; 32:13. Children figure prominently in the description of life’s chief goods in Lev 26:9 and often in Deut (e.g., 7:13–14; 28:4, 11) and in Ps (e.g., 128:6). 23 Gen 15:2–4; 18:1–15; 25:21; 30:1–8, 22–24; 35:16–20; I Sam 1:1–20.

54

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

produce a healthy child and some endorsing the use of donor gametes, PGD, and surrogacy as well, at least under certain circumstances.24 Like all other commandments, the commandment to procreate applies only to those who can fulfill it. Couples who cannot are exempt from this commandment. Rabbis differ as to which artificial reproductive techniques infertile couples may use in an attempt to have their own biological children if they choose to try them; most rabbis across the movements in Judaism allow any method using the couple’s own gametes but differ about the use of donor sperm and eggs.25 Adoption is also an honored option for any Jewish adult, fertile or infertile, married or single.26 In modern times, this commandment to procreate has taken on new importance for the Jewish community worldwide. The Jewish community numbered approximately 18 million before the Holocaust, 12 million thereafter, and currently it is about 13.8 million.27 Jews outside of Israel are marrying people of other faiths in high percentages, and the chances of interfaith couples raising their children as Jews is, depending on the study, somewhere between twenty and thirty-three percent.28 Further, Jews go to college and graduate school in far higher percentages than the general population,29 and so they postpone marriage and the attempt to have children until their late twenties, thirties, or even forties, by which time they are much more likely to have infertility problems. So the contemporary Diaspora Jewish community is consumed by efforts to encourage endogamy, conversion to Judaism of a non-Jewish spouse, making Jewish education of their children financially feasible for couples, involving grandparents in providing Jewish models for their grandchildren and in financing their Jewish education and involvement, and enabling Jewish singles to meet each other after their time in college leaves them without a natural place to meet other Jews.

24 See Elliot N. Dorff, Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998), Chapters Three and Four; Avraham Steinberg, Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics (New York: Feldheim Publishers, 2003), Volume II, 571–586; and Emanuel Feldman and Joel B. Wolowelsky, eds., Jewish Law and the New Reproductive Technologies (Hoboken: Ktav, 1997). 25 Dorff, Matters of Life and Death, chapters 3 and 4. 26 Adoption, as if giving birth to a child (b. Meg 13a) and doing right at all times (b. Ket 50a). 27 Pew Research Center, »The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections 2010–2050,« April 2, 2015, http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections2010-2050/ 28 The National Jewish Population Survey of 2000–2001, p. 18, maintained that 33% of children of interfaith marriages involving a Jew and a non-Jew were being raised as Jews: http://www.jewishdatabank.org/studies/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=1490. The Pew study of American Jews, dated October 1, 2013, asserts that 96% of endogamous Jewish couples raise their children as Jews, but only 20% of Jews married to non-Jews do. Pew Research Center, »A Portrait of American Jews,« http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewishamerican-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/. 29 The Pew study of American Jews, ibid., says that 58% of American Jews have a college degree, in comparison to 29% of Americans generally, and 28% of Jews have a post-graduate degree, compared to 10% of Americans generally.

6 Moral Issues: Interpersonal Relations

5.2

55

The Beginning of Life: Preventing Pregnancy

Jewish sources and contemporary rabbis are reticent to permit both contraception and abortion. That said, an early rabbinic source says that children (that is, girls less than twelve years old), pregnant women, and nursing women »use« contraception. Later sources divide on whether that means that only categories of women whose pregnancy would pose a danger to them (e.g., children), to their fetus (pregnant women), or their nursing child may use contraception while others may not, or whether those three categories of women must use contraception, while other women may. The latter permission to use contraception not only to avoid danger but for purposes of family planning must, however, be seen in the context described above of a tradition that encourages and needs procreation. The forms of contraception available in ancient times were probably not very effective. Rabbinic sources describe a mokh, a cloth that was inserted in the vaginal canal, and a »cup of roots,« presumably a potion taken by mouth that they thought would prevent pregnancy. Abortion was known and allowed in order to save the life of the mother. This ruling is based on Exod 21:10, which distinguishes between the legal status of a miscarried fetus, for which only monetary compensation is to be paid, and the legal status of the mother, for whom injuries in such circumstances are »life for life, eye for an eye…« Later the Rabbis interpreted »eye for an eye« to require only monetary compensation as well, but the Torah makes it clear that the fetus is not seen as a full human being while the mother is. According to the Talmud, the fetus is »simply liquid« (b. Yev 69b) during the first forty days of pregnancy and »like the thigh of its mother«30 from then until birth. The Mishnah therefore rules that if a woman has difficulty in childbirth, those attending her should go into the womb and dismember the fetus in order to save the life of the mother (m. Ohal 7:6)31 just as one should amputate a person’s thigh if it had turned gangrene and was threatening that person’s life. Later sources then argue whether only saving the life of the mother is an acceptable justification for abortion, or whether saving her limbs or even her mental health would also justify an abortion. »Mental health« in this context, however, does not extend for most contemporary rabbis to not wanting to have a child; that is a good reason for using contraception but not for an abortion after becoming pregnant. It instead justifies abortion for women who were impregnated by rape or who become aware that their fetus will have a lethal genetic disease.

6

Moral Issues: Interpersonal Relations

Jewish law seeks to govern not just what is typically seen as the religious aspects of life—our relationships to God, rituals, and family law—but literally every aspect of 30 b. Ḥul 58a; b. San 80b. 31 m. Ohal 7:6. j. Shab 14:4 reads »its greater part;« t. Yev 9:9 and b. San 72b have »its head;« and j. San 8, end, has »its head or its greater part.«

56

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

life. Thus, Jewish law encompasses norms about civil and criminal law and court procedures. Even though, since the Enlightenment, Jews are governed on both criminal and civil issues by the government’s laws, that has not stopped Jewish legal authorities from all of the modern movements from discussing many issues that should govern Jews’ conduct of business. So, rabbis have issued rulings on such topics as intellectual property, whistleblowing, unions, etc. These are based on a long history, beginning with the Torah itself, of rules governing business to make sure that it is honest and fair. The Torah requires, for example, that one have honest weights and measures (Lev 19:35–36; Deut 25:13–16), that one take responsibility for damage done by one’s animals (Exod 21:28–36), and that one give even one’s slaves a day of rest on the Sabbath (Exod 20:8–11). The Mishnah and Talmud expand on the Torah’s concern to assure honest and fair business practices, primarily in the Talmud’s tractates Bava Metziʿa and Bava Batra. During the Middle Ages multiple rulings deal with business matters, including, for example, shipping insurance.32 Before the Enlightenment these were enforced law by Jews on Jews, but even during those centuries Jews had to recognize the authority of governments on business law. The dictum of Samuel in the early third century that in business matters »the law of the land is the law« (dina dʾmalkhuta dina)33 required that civil law should be enforced in Jewish courts. After the Enlightenment the authority of civil law on business expanded much further, with Jews regularly going to civil courts to settle their disputes. Nevertheless, Jews in business see rabbinic rulings on business practices minimally as standards to which they should aspire beyond the requirements of civil law and, for some, religiously required even if not civilly so. Jewish legal authorities in all the modern movements have similarly addressed the ethics of language. Jewish law has a very sophisticated and nuanced treatment of how to talk to and about each other. It prohibits all of the following: lying; misleading other people; slurs—that is, telling negative truths about others to people who do not need to know them for practical reasons (e.g., potential employers or schools to which an individual is applying); »the dust of slurs«—that is, saying something truthful and ostensibly positive about a person that implies something negative—e.g., »This time he got it right«; gossip—that is, truths about other people that are private and should not be shared; and shaming another person, including what lawyers distinguish as slander and libel. In modern times these norms are not enforced in courts, but they are taken very seriously. They are taught to both children and adults, and people who violate these norms are identified and told to act more appropriately.34 Another important area of interpersonal relationships governed by Jewish law is sexual activity. Rabbis in all of the modern movements have written both educational

32 E.g., Steven Passamaneck, Insurance in Rabbinic Law (Edinburgh, University Press, 1974). 33 b. Ned 28a; b. Git 10b; b. BQ 113a; b. BB 54b–55a. 34 For further discussion of these Jewish norms of speech, Alyssa Gray, »Jewish Ethics of Speech,« in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality (eds. E. N. Dorff and J. K. Crane; New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

7 Moral Issues: Social Justice and Environmental Ethics

57

materials and rabbinic rulings on what is, and what is not, appropriate sexual activity, with whom, and under what circumstances.35

7

Moral Issues: Social Justice and Environmental Ethics

The Torah is concerned with issues of social justice, bidding Jews, among other things, to take care of the poor by leaving the edges of one’s fields and dropped sheaves or grapes when harvesting for them (Lev 19:9–10; Deut 25:19–22), lending them money without interest (Exod 22:24; Lev 25:35–37; Deut 23:20), and preserving their dignity by standing outside their home when collecting a debt (Deut 24:10–11). It also provides that every third year people give a tenth of their incomes to the poor (Deut 14:27–29; 26:12–15). The Prophets rail against the Israelites for neglecting and denying justice to the poor, the orphan, and widow.36 The Rabbis of the first centuries C.E. established that every community must have a soup kitchen and a communal fund for the poor (t. Pea 4:9). Maimonides later describes eight different levels of helping the poor, the highest of which is helping them support themselves by lending them money and teaching them skills. The second highest on his list is giving them money in such a way that neither the donor nor the recipient know each other, thus preserving the recipient’s dignity.37 In a famous passage the Mishnah states, »The world depends on three things, on study of Torah, on worship, and on acts of loving kindness (gemillut ḥasadim).«38 Modern Jews often speak of the last of those as tikkun olam, repairing the world. That term, first used in the Mishnah to refer to rulings ensuring that people are not harmed by loopholes in the law, has been used over the centuries with several other meanings. In contemporary times even Jews who do not follow Jewish ritual laws, believe in God, or engage in Jewish communal prayer (»secular Jews«) are often involved in acts of tikkun olam as a primary expression of their Jewish identity.39 Some Jews focus on »fixing the world« in its environmental sense. Jewish concerns with the environment begin with the Torah, in which Adam is »to work the land and preserve it« (Gen 2:15). The Torah includes specific commandments as to how to preserve it, including that even in war Jews not cut down fruit trees to

35 Elliot N. Dorff, »This Is My Beloved, This Is My Friend«: A Rabbinic Letter on Human Intimacy (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1996); and see Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way of Love and Marriage (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980). 36 E.g., Is 1:22; Jer 5:28; 22:3–5; Am 2:6–16; 8:4–10. 37 M.T. Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:7–14. 38 m. Av 1:2. 39 Jill Jacobs, There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2009); Albert Vorspan and David Saperstein, Tough Choices: Jewish Perspectives on Social Justice (New York: UAHC Press, 1992).

58

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

build siege works (Deut 20:19–20) and that one let the land lie fallow for one year out of every seven and on the fiftieth (»jubilee«) year as well (Lev 25:1–24). The Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, as do those of the Middle Ages, enact laws to minimize pollution of the air and water. In contemporary times, Jews across the religious spectrum from Orthodox to secular are involved in many kinds of efforts to preserve the environment, including advocating legislation for that purpose and creating educational materials that educate and motivate Jews to act on the commitment to preserve God’s world.40

8

Jewish Dietary Laws (Kashrut, or the Kosher Laws)

To be ritually fit (»kosher«) for consumption by Jews, food must satisfy the following four sets of rules: 1. Choice of animals: only the animals that fulfill the requirements of Lev 11 and Deut 14 may be eaten—namely, mammals that chew their cud and have split hooves (but even of those animals Jews may not eat their thigh tendon, in accord with Gen 32:33), fish that have scales and fins, and a list of birds, generalized in Rabbinic tradition as domestic birds rather than birds of prey (m. Hul 3:6). 2. Mode of slaughter (sheḥitah): animals and fowl must be slaughtered at the gullet with a knife with no nicks by a person trained to slaughter animals swiftly in this way, so as to minimize pain to the animal. This is based on Deut 12:21, where God tells us to slaughter animals »as I have instructed you,« but the details of that are spelled out only in Rabbinic literature.41 3. Draining the blood: the blood must be drained from the meat of animals or fowl, in accordance with Gen 9:4, Lev 17:13–14, and Deut 12:16. 4. Separating meat and dairy meals: meat and dairy foods must be separated in their preparation, serving, and eating, including different pots, pans, utensils, and dishes for preparing and serving meat and dairy meals, not eating meat with dairy, and separating meat meals from dairy meals by some time, the amount ranging from one hour to six, determined by local custom. Grains, fruits, and vegetables are neither meat nor dairy (they are pareve) and may be eaten with meals of either type. The requirement to separate meat from milk meals is based on the three verses that say »You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.«42

40 Arthur Waskow, ed., Torah of the Earth: Exploring 4000 Years of Ecology in Jewish Thought (Woodstock: Jewish Lights, 2000), 2 vols. 41 That the details of the mode of slaughter were an oral tradition is the view of Rabbi Judah: SifDev 12:21; b. Hul 28a. Jacob Milgrom argues that there is textual evidence in the Torah itself, based on the meaning of the Hebrew verb shaḥat, that the method was slitting the throat; see Jacob Milgrom, Lev 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday [Anchor Bible], 1991), 715–718. 42 Exod 23:19; 34:26; Deut 14:21.

9 The Life Cycle

59

So the limitations on which animals Jews may eat serve to separate Jews from other peoples and identify them as Jewish, which they still powerfully do. Separation, though, means not only separation from, but also separation to—specifically, to separate oneself from certain behaviors to be like God and to confirm God’s creation of, and continued interest in, life. This is clearly in evidence in the requirement to remove blood from meat, as blood is the sign of life (Lev 17:14). It is also in evidence in distinguishing meals using the paradigmatic life-giving substance for mammals, milk, from those in which one had to take an animal’s life.43 The other clear theme in these laws is to minimize pain to animals, both by severely restricting the ones Jews may eat, and by the method of slaughter prescribed. This concern is manifest in other of the Torah’s laws as well (e.g., Deut 5:14; 22:6–7, 10; 25:4), leading to the general concern in Rabbinic law about the »pain of animals« (tzaʿar baʿalei ḥayyim). In contemporary times, this has led to some questions by Jews and others about whether the traditional mode of Jewish slaughter is indeed the least painful now available, with some European countries banning it as inhumane. The evidence that it is less humane than the available alternatives is at best, however, questionable, which raises questions as to whether the motivation for such bans is really concern for animal welfare.44 The ill treatment of animals before slaughter in factory farming, however, has led an increasing percentage of Jews to restrict further what are acceptable practices in Jewish ritual slaughter,45 to maintain that some otherwise kosher meat (e.g., veal) should not be eaten because of the way that calves are treated to produce it,46 or to be vegetarian altogether.

9

The Life Cycle

Judaism, like other religions of the world, has rituals to mark the passages of life because they are inherently meaningful for the individuals going through them, for their families, and for their communities. Each marks a change in status and the responsibilities of all concerned. Judaism seeks to articulate its beliefs and values through the rituals it has designed to mark these stages. Birth rituals: Brit Milah and Simḥat Bat. After a woman has given birth, a prayer for her recovery is recited in the next synagogue service at which there is a Torah

43 Paul Drazen, »The Dietary Laws,« in The Observant Life (ed. Martin S. Cohen; New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 2012), 305–338. 44 For two fairly balanced, comparative analyses, see »Schechita,« https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Shechita#Animal_welfare_controversies, and Brian Tomasik, »Is Kosher Slaughter Humane?« http://reducing-suffering.org/kosher-slaughter-humane/ 45 See, for example, Elliot Dorff and Joel Roth, »Shackling and Hoisting,« https://www.rabbini calassembly.org/sites/default/files/assets/public/halakhah/teshuvot/19912000/dorffroth_ shackling.pdf. 46 See, for example, Pamela Barmash, »Veal Calves,« https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/ sites/default/files/Veal%20teshuvahfinal%2Bpic%20%20NB%20%20Job%20%201.pdf.

60

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

reading (Saturday mornings and afternoons and Monday and Thursday mornings). The father (or the mother if she has sufficiently recovered) is called up to the Torah to recite blessings over the Torah reading, and then a prayer for the birthing woman is recited. In addition, the traditional rites of circumcision with its accompanying rituals are used to celebrate the birth of boys, and couples have created newer welcoming ceremonies for newborn girls. In the ceremonies for children of both genders, the child is named in both Hebrew and vernacular, and the parents often explain the names they have chosen for the child. The ceremony is often followed by a festive meal, with special blessings in the liturgy following the meal for the mother and the newborn. Males: As per Gen 17:12 and Lev 12:3, boys are to be circumcised on the eighth day of their lives. Because saving a life supersedes most other commandments, however, if a newborn boy has a medical condition that requires postponing the circumcision (e.g., jaundice) or not doing it altogether (e.g., hemophilia), then the circumcision should be postponed until it is safe or not done. The vast majority of Jewish males, however, are indeed circumcised on the eighth day of their lives, even if it is a Sabbath, a Festival, or the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). The symbolism of the circumcision is made clear in the liturgy: it seals into the boy’s flesh the Covenant between God and Abraham and his descendants. It is called in Hebrew, brit milah, the Covenant of circumcision (or simply »brit« or »bris,« Covenant). Brit milah is done on the male’s generative organ to symbolize that this Covenant is everlasting through the generations, and he is now part of that chain of the Jewish tradition. It is irreversible, indicating that no matter what he does in life, he is still part of the Jewish People and responsible to carry on its legacy. Thus circumcision also symbolizes the fact that males born to a Jewish woman, or those who choose Judaism and undergo its rituals of conversion, are in it for life; the Covenant is sealed indelibly in their flesh. The boy’s father has primary responsibility to circumcise his sons. He may, and typically does, appoint an agent, a Jewish man (mohel) or woman (mohelet) trained to do the medical procedure. The accompanying liturgy includes naming the child. If the father fails to arrange for his son’s circumcision, the boy’s mother may assure that it is done. If both fail to fulfill this duty, then the community is responsible to arrange for it to be done.47 A very large segment of Jewish men who moved from the Former Soviet Union to Israel, the United States, or Canada, primarily in the 1980s and 1990s, were uncircumcised because of the persecution of Jews there and had to make these arrangements as adults when they immigrated to those countries. The religious reasons for circumcision remain cogent to this day, but in contemporary times, especially in Europe but also elsewhere, some Jews are questioning whether they should circumcise their sons at birth and thus deprive them of the decision as to whether they want to be circumcised or not. Some also see it as actually injuring the child. On the other hand, studies have shown that circumci47 b. Qid 29a.

9 The Life Cycle

61

sion has important medical benefits in preventing urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases (especially AIDS), and penile cancer in men and cervical cancer in their sexual partners.48 This entire discussion, of course, is irrelevant for those who circumcise their sons for the religious reasons described above. Females: Because there is no parallel operation involved with girls, the traditional way of welcoming Jewish girls into the Jewish community is for the father or mother to be called up to the Torah during one of its public readings, usually Saturday morning. After reciting the blessings over a section of the Torah, a special prayer is recited that blesses the mother and the newborn child and then names her. Since the early 1970s, however, more and more couples are choosing to celebrate the birth of their newborn daughters in a separate ceremony in their home or synagogue. Because there is no traditional liturgy for this, couples have been very creative in determining what is said at these ceremonies and who says it. Adolescence: Bar/Bat Mitzvah. In its description of what is appropriate at various ages for a male, the Mishnah says, »At thirteen, responsibility for the commandments« (m. Av 5:23). For purposes of being obligated for the commandments, majority is thirteen-and-one-day for a boy and twelve-and-one-day or twelve-and-a-half for a girl.49 This certainly was not adulthood for other purposes, for that very same Mishnah says that fifteen is that age at which one should begin studying Talmud and eighteen is the age for a man to marry. Furthermore, the Torah itself declares that twenty is the minimum age for being counted in the census and fighting in a war (Exod 30:14; Num 1:3, 26:2), and it sets thirty as the minimum age for descendants of Aaron to serve in the Temple (Num 4:2).50 The ceremony for a Bar Mitzvah (literally, »son of the commandment«) was traditionally that the young man was called to the Torah to recite the blessings over its reading. Over time this expanded to his chanting part or all of the Torah reading of the day, to chanting the selection from the Prophets for that day, and, in some communities, to giving a homily about it. More recently, in the year or two before their Bar Mitzvah day young people would take on new commandments, including ritual ones like donning the prayer shawl (tallit) and phylacteries (tefillin), as well as moral ones like volunteering in a soup kitchen or home for the elderly. In all of these ways, the message of the day was clearly communicated: being a Jewish adult involved learning the tradition throughout one’s life and acting in accord with it. Even though, as indicated above, girls became responsible for obeying the commandments even before boys were, there was no ceremony to mark that fact until 1922, when Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan arranged for a Bat Mitzvah (lit. »daughter of the commandment«) ceremony for his daughter. The lack of such a ceremony until

48 For the medical benefits of circumcision, see http://www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/ guide/circumcision. 49 M.T. Laws of Marriage (Ishut) 2:2, 10; S.A. Even Ha-Ezer 616:2. 50 Twenty for the census and war: Exod 30:14; Num 1:3; 26:2. Thirty for service in the Temple: Num 4:2.

62

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

then was probably due to the fact that only men were counted as part of the prayer quorum and only men could lead the prayers, a practice that changed only in the last half of the twentieth century and then only in Conservative and Reform synagogues. With the spread of egalitarianism in Conservative and Reform synagogues, Bat Mitzvah girls do everything that boys are expected to do on their Bar Mitzvah day. Some Modern Orthodox synagogues are experimenting with ways to mark this time in a girl’s life while still restricting most liturgical roles to men.

10

Marriage and Weddings

Judaism’s conception of marriage. Jewish law and customs governing weddings are a good basis for discerning Judaism’s understanding of marriage. The Torah includes a list of sexual partners who are forbidden in Lev 18 and 20, but it also includes two positive commandments regarding marriage. One is the very first commandment in the Torah—»Be fruitful and multiply,« said to the first man and woman (Gen 1:28). The other commandment requires every man to provide for his wife »her food, her clothing, and her conjugal rights« (Exod 21:10). Thus marriage for the Jewish tradition has two distinct purposes: to procreate, and to satisfy the needs, including the sexual needs, of the members of the couple. The list of forbidden relationships in Lev 18 and 20 primarily defines incest and adultery. The Rabbis added other relatives to the list of forbidden sexual relations.51 Neither list explains why such sexual partners are forbidden, except to say that obeying these restrictions separates the Israelites from the other nations and ensures that the Land of Israel »will not spew you out.«52 For both the Torah and the Rabbis marriage between first cousins is permitted. In the small Jewish communities of Europe into the early twentieth century, such marriages were actually common, undoubtedly because of the paucity of other potential Jewish mates in those villages One other element of that list—that sex between two men is forbidden—has been thoroughly discussed in the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, with the result that the Reform, Reconstructionist, and the more traditional Conservative movements now allow their rabbis to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples. Orthodox rabbis to varying degrees have wrestled with how to respond to this phenomenon, even though none will officiate at the wedding of a same-sex couple. The fact that all Jewish men are commanded to procreate means that intentional celibacy was never an ideal, as it is for Catholic and Buddhist priests and monks. Even though only men have the duty in Jewish law to procreate, women were not supposed to strive to be celibate either. On the contrary, marriage has always been

51 m. Yev 3:4; 10:3. b. Yev 20a-22a, 40b, 84a-85b; b. Ket 35b-36a. M.T. Laws of Marriage (Ishut) 1:6 (which contains the entire list of twenty such relatives). S.A. Even Ha-Ezer 154:20. 52 See especially Lev 20:22–26.

10 Marriage and Weddings

63

the ideal in Judaism. Thus, the Talmud says that »he who is without a wife lives without joy, without blessing…without peace« (b. Yev 62b). The very name of the beginning of the wedding ceremony, Kiddushin (holiness), indicates that holiness adheres to marriage, not to celibacy, and demands of celibacy were included neither among the acts of self-denial imposed upon the Nazarite (Num 6:1–21) nor on the priesthood (Lev 21:1–15). On the contrary, the High Priest could officiate in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year, only if married.53 Other public offices were also open only to married people, notably judges and readers of the Torah in synagogue worship.54 Jewish weddings: The Jewish wedding ceremony consists of two parts—kiddushin, betrothal, and nissuʾin, marriage. Originally separated by a year, since the Middle Ages the two have been conflated into one ceremony, usually with the reading of some or all of the Jewish marriage contract and remarks by the officiating rabbi in between them to mark that they were originally separate. All of this takes place under a canopy (ḥuppah), which can be made of anything but often is a prayer shawl (tallit) that has significance in the groom’s or the extended family’s lives. Kiddushin consists of two blessings, one over wine to signify the joy of the day, and the other reminding the couple that they may engage in sexual relations only as a married couple. The wedding ceremony, nissuʾin, consists of seven blessings that connect the couple to the first man and woman and to Jewish messianic hopes for a restored Jerusalem with joy and gladness filling their lives.55 As part of the Jewish wedding ceremony, couples procure a Jewish writ of marriage, a ketubbah. The traditional ketubbah does not speak of love per se; it instead identifies the couple and the place and date where the wedding is taking place, spells out the promises of the groom to the bride to support her, and indicates her consent to the marriage. It is signed by two witnesses, and many couples have the traditional text embedded in art work that includes symbols meaningful to the couple. The traditional text speaks of the husband acquiring his wife, and so in modern times some rabbis and couples have used new texts that are more egalitarian. The traditional text is in Aramaic, but with the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern language, some couples use a Hebrew version of either the traditional text or a new one. A common custom is an aufruf (Yiddish/German for »calling up«). Traditionally the groom, and now sometimes the bride and the groom, are called up to the Torah to make the blessings for a Torah reading, and then a special blessing is recited to wish the couple well. As a matter of custom and not law, on the day of the wedding some couples fast from sunrise until after their wedding ceremony to symbolize that they are now entering a new phase of their lives. In the hour or so before the wedding, the groom may have a

53 Lev 21:13; m. Yom 1:1, based on Lev 16:6, 11, and 17. 54 Judges: b. San 36b. Synagogue readers: Sof 14:17; S.A. Orah Ḥayyim 53:9. 55 Michael Morgan and Steven Weitzman, eds., Rethinking the Messianic Idea in Judaism (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2014).

64

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

groom’s table (Yiddish: hasan’s tisch), in which he gives a homily that everyone present interrupts with singing. The ketubbah is signed, and he is danced to where his bride is sitting—where now she too may have just had a bride’s table (Yiddish: kallah’s tisch), where she did the same thing. The groom then puts the veil over his bride’s face (Yiddish: bedeken) and blesses her to be the mother of many. Accompanied by instrumental music and/or someone singing Hebrew love songs, a procession to the ḥuppah (canopy) follows, symbolizing the first roof they will be under as husband and wife and the symbol of their future home together. At the end of the ceremony, the groom breaks a glass, and upon hearing the noise of the breaking glass, everyone says »Mazal Tov« (literally, good luck, but in context, congratulations!). Various interpretations have been offered for this custom, but the most common is that even at the height of one’s joy, one must remember the tragedies of Jewish history. Following the ceremony, the couple goes into a room together alone (yiḥḥud), where in centuries past they had their first sexual relations. Nowadays, they have a moment alone together, often with some food, before they meet all their guests for lively dancing, followed by a sit-down dinner. After the meal, the Blessings Over Food include special blessings for the bride and groom mirroring the seven blessings of the wedding ceremony. Funerals and Mourning: In contrast to the numerous laws governing worship and Judaism’s ordered liturgy throughout the year, and in contrast to the relatively explicit instructions for ceremonies marking the beginning of life and marriage, Jewish law and liturgy governing funerals is remarkably sparse. The only set parts of Jewish liturgy for a funeral are for the seven classes of mourners—mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister, and spouse—to tear their garment (or a ribbon attached to their garment) and recite (in Hebrew, if possible), »Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of the universe, righteous judge,« followed by »The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; praised is the name of the Lord« (Job 1:21). The only other standard elements of a Jewish funeral are one or more eulogies, followed by a prayer asking for God’s mercy on the deceased. Everyone present then accompanies the deceased, enclosed in shrouds or a plain wooden coffin to the grave site, with the rabbi uttering a special prayer accepting the judgment of God along the way. The body is buried, and everyone present is encouraged to shovel some dirt into the grave, as a final act of love to the deceased. The members of the seven classes of immediate relatives say a special Kaddish prayer for graveside. Those attending then form two lines, through which the mourners go while those present say, »May God comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.« During the next seven days (including the day of the funeral) people come morning and evening to console the mourners. People are encouraged to come to the mourner’s home also to help with practical matters (bring food, take care of the carpool for children, etc.) but primarily to enable the mourners to recall memories of the deceased. Talking about the deceased is the Jewish way of honoring him or her as well as enabling the mourners to complete the work of separating from the deceased not only physically (through the burial) but also psychologically (through recalling memories of him or

11 The Seasonal Cycle: The Sabbath, High Holy Days, and Festivals

65

her). A period of semi-mourning lasts until thirty days after the burial for most relatives but for eleven months for children mourning their parents. During these periods, mourners are not supposed to attend happy events and continue to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish at morning, afternoon, and evening services. At every anniversary of the death, those in the seven categories of mourners say Mourner’s Kaddish for the deceased and often light a 24-hour candle.

11

The Seasonal Cycle: The Sabbath, High Holy Days, and Festivals

The Sabbath (Shabbat in Hebrew). The only Jewish holy day that made it into the Decalogue is the Sabbath. It is also the one that most affects Jewish life, if only because it happens one day out of every seven. Furthermore, its legal structure became the basis for the other biblical holy days, one (Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement) involving yet more restrictions and the others (Passover, Shavuʿot, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot) involving fewer. Because Gen 1 describes each day as »and there was evening, there was morning, the x day,« days in the Jewish calendar begin at sunset and last until the following sunset.56 Thus the Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday and extends until sunset on Saturday. In order to make sure that Jews do not violate its laws, the Rabbis decreed that one should begin the Sabbath at a minimum of eighteen minutes before sunset on Friday night (»candle lighting time«), and end it only after three stars appear in the night sky on Saturday night. The restrictions on what one may do on the Sabbath that are mentioned in the Decalogue (Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15) are that no member of one’s household, including slaves, »strangers,« and animals, may do melakhah, commonly translated as »work,« on the Sabbath.57 The Rabbis later sought to define exactly what melakhah entails, and they did so by finding the word used in the description of what had to be done to construct the tabernacle in Exod 31:1–17, 35:1ff., a total, by their count, of 39 types of activity, which are the principal categories of prohibited melakhah.58 Other activities analogous to, although not the same as, these 39 are prohibited as »derivatives.«

56 Lev 23:32 specifies that the Day of Atonement lasts »from evening to evening.« 57 The same word is used in Exod 31:14–15, 35:2, and Lev 23:3. Exod 23:12, however, uses maʿsekha, literally, »your deeds,« from the Hebrew root meaning to do, so perhaps »what you need to do« [to live]. 58 m. Shab 7:2: ploughing, sowing, reaping, sheaf-making, threshing, winnowing, selecting, sifting, grinding, kneading, baking, sheep-shearing, bleaching, combing raw materials, dyeing, spinning, three forms of weaving operations, separating into threads, tying a permanent knot, untying a knot originally intended to be permanent, sewing, tearing, trapping or hunting, slaughtering, skinning, tanning, scraping pelts, marking out, cutting to shape, writing, erasing, building, demolishing, kindling a fire, extinguishing a fire, the »final hammer blow« (putting the finishing touch to a newly manufactured article), and carrying from the private to the public domain or the opposite.

66

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

Included in these lists are a few activities specifically prohibited by the Torah— namely, cooking (Exod 16:23–24); »leaving one’s place« (Exod 16:29)—that is, walking beyond a certain distance; lighting a fire (Exod 35:3); and gathering wood (Num 15:32–36). In addition, prophetic literature includes a passage from Jer (17:19–27) forbidding carrying burdens on the Sabbath and another from Second Isaiah (58:12–14) prohibiting business activity on the Sabbath. The paucity of specific biblical laws about the Sabbath and the abundance of Rabbinic laws led the Rabbis of the Mishnah to say that »The laws of the Sabbath … are like mountains hanging by a hair, for they consist of little Bible and many [Rabbinic] laws« (m. Hag 1:8). Rabbinic literature itself and contemporary rabbinic rulings vary widely as to what is included in these prohibitions and what is not. One of the most contentious issues is the use of electricity on Shabbat. Some Conservative Jews and most Orthodox Jews do not use electricity on the Sabbath. Along these lines, a Jewish group called Reboot encourages »a national day of unplugging« all electronic devices from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday by sending people a bag in which to store their cell phones during that day.59 There are two versions of the Decalogue in the Torah—Exod 20 and Deut 5—and they vary in two respects with regard to the Sabbath. Exod 20:8 says that one should »remember« the Sabbath day, while Deut 5:12 requires Jews to »observe« it. In Jewish law, the latter is the basis for the prohibitions governing the day. The former is the basis for positive requirements attached to the day, including making special meals for the day, dressing up, praying, studying, and spending time with family and community. So, for example, the Talmud says that whenever one finds a particularly fine object or food during the week, one should put it aside for the Sabbath (b. Bets 16a). The Sages also interpret »remember« to require lighting candles and reciting Kiddush (toasting the Sabbath over a glass of wine by blessing God) on Friday night and chanting Havdallah on Saturday night to distinguish the Sabbath from weekdays.60 Positive aspects of the day are also motivated by Isa 58:13, which calls for us to delight in the Sabbath, so enjoying the Sabbath motivates many of the ways the Sabbath is celebrated, including singing Sabbath songs, enhanced meals, a Sabbath nap on Saturday afternoon, etc. The second difference between the commandment about the Sabbath in the two versions of the Decalogue is that Exodus ties it to the creation of the world in Gen 1-2, while Deuteronomy connects it to the Exodus from Egypt. These are different, but complementary themes of the day. The Jewish Calendar: With the exception of the Sabbath, which occurs every seven days, Jewish holy days and historical remembrances are scheduled according to the Jewish calendar. It is a lunar calendar, with each month consisting of 29 or 30 days,

59 http://nationaldayofunplugging.com/ 60 Lighting candles: m. Shab, Chapter 2. Kiddush: b. Pes 106a. Havdallah: M.T. Laws of Shabbat 29:1. That chapter in M.T. delineates a number of positive actions required to fulfill the commandment to remember the Sabbath.

11 The Seasonal Cycle: The Sabbath, High Holy Days, and Festivals

67

depending, in ancient times, on when the new moon was seen by witnesses who testified to that fact the next day to the Jewish court in Jerusalem. Because of this ancient phenomenon, Diaspora communities (where the news of the moon’s sighting was slow in coming) keep two days for every one day of holy convocation in the Land of Israel, and thus treat the additional days as holy, with all of the same restrictions involved. The two days of holy convocation at the beginning of Passover in the Diaspora also mean that Diaspora Jews have a Seder on each of Passover’s first two nights, while in Israel there is only one. Reform synagogues and their members generally follow the calendar of Israel, and a small number of Conservative synagogues do as well. The lunar year usually consists of twelve months of 29 or 30 days. This means that, as happens in the Muslim lunar calendar, holidays might occur at any season of the year as there are 354 days to the lunar year, so the calendar regresses by 11 ¼ days per year. Because the Torah specifies that Passover is »the spring holiday« (Exod 23:15; 34:18; Deut 16:1), however, an extra month was interposed (Adar II) in seven out of every nineteen years, and this means that not only Passover, but the other holidays always fall in their proper season. The Pilgrimage Festivals: Passover, Shavuʿot (the Feast of Weeks), Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). Differing aspects of each of these three festivals are described in several places in the Torah: Exod 23:14–17; 34:18–24; Lev 23:4–44; Num 28:16–31, 29:12–39; Deut 16:1–17. The prohibitions of work on all three of them are the same as those for the Sabbath, except that on all of these festivals, unlike the Sabbath, one may carry outside the bounds of one’s house and may cook. That is because the Torah prohibits on the Sabbath »all work,« while on the Festivals only »work for the sake of work,«61 and cooking and carrying would be done for the sake of the holiday. The Torah provides an agricultural meaning to all three—Passover as the spring festival, Shavuʿot (The Feast of Weeks) seven weeks later, as the festival marking the harvest of the first fruits of the season, and Sukkot as marking the autumn harvest. The Torah also provides an historical meaning for Passover (celebrating the Exodus from Egypt—e.g., Deut 16:1) and Sukkot (because our ancestors lived in huts when they left Egypt—Lev 23:42–43), but none for Shavuʿot. The Rabbis, however, asserted that Moses received the Torah at Mount Sinai on Shavuʿot, so it too has an historical meaning. The laws and customs special to each of these three festivals include, but are not limited to the following: Passover: ridding the house in the weeks before the holiday of all leavened foods (hametz); making or buying the materials for the Passover Seder(s), including a shank bone (pesaḥ) to symbolize the ancient paschal lamb offering in the Temple, unleavened bread (matzah), and bitter herbs (marror), as well as the fixings for the

61 All work prohibited on the Sabbath: Exod 20:10; Lev 23:3; Deut 5:12. See also Exod 31:14–15; and 35:2, where simply »work« is prohibited. Only work for the sake of work is prohibited on the Festivals: Lev 23:7, 21, 25, 35–36; Num 28:18, 26; 29:1.

68

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

evening’s Seder meal; buying or creating copies for each guest on Seder night of the family’s chosen version of the Passover haggadah, the script for telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt; holding a Seder, a fixed order of fifteen parts that include sanctifying the day and a series of steps to tell the story of the Exodus and its modern implications, recite the blessings before and after the meal with special insertions for the holiday, recite or sing Hallel (Ps 113–118), sing songs for the holiday; and end with the hope for returning to Jerusalem in the coming year. Throughout the seven (in Israel) or eight (in the Diaspora) days of the holiday, no leavened foods (or legumes, for some Jews of Franco-German origins) may be seen or eaten, and special insertions are added to the daily services. On the first day, a prayer for dew is inserted because in Israel the rainy season ends around this time. On the Sabbath of Passover, the Book of Song of Songs is read in addition to the special readings from the Torah and Prophets for the day. Shavuʿot: A product of Jewish mysticism is the tikkun lael shavuʿot, an all-night study session in honoring the day in which the Torah was given, followed by morning services at dawn. The services include the usual additions to the services for Festivals, and the Book of Ruth is read. It is customary to eat dairy dishes on Shavuʿot. Sukkot: In preparation for the holiday, synagogues and, increasingly, private homes build a sukkah, a hut, following the command to do so in Lev 23:42. The hut must be temporary and made out of materials that grow from the ground. People eat their meals there, and some sleep there at night, throughout the seven days of the holiday unless the weather is too cold or inclement to do that. People also buy a citron (etrog) and a palm branch (lulav), with its accompanying myrtle (hadasim) and willow (aravot) branches, in accordance with Lev 23:40, and those are waved in all directions at various points in the worship service. The Book of Ecclesiastes is read on the Sabbath that falls on Sukkot, in addition to the special readings from the Torah and Prophets for the day. Shemini Atzeret/Simḥat Torah: On the first of these days, Shemini Atzeret (the eighth day of assembly, following the seven of Sukkot) the prayer for rain is recited as part of the service because in Israel the rainy season begins shortly after this holiday. Otherwise the day is simply a Festival day, with the usual insertions in the service for Festivals, special readings from the Torah and Prophets, and the addition of a prayer (Kiddush) over wine to sanctify the day at the beginning of both the evening and noon meals, as is also done on every Sabbath and on the days of holy convocation of all of these biblical Festivals. The second of these days (in the Diaspora—in Israel these two days are celebrated as one, together) is called Simḥat Torah, the Joy of the Torah. As part of both the evening and morning service people sing and dance with the Torah scrolls, the last section of Deuteronomy is read, and during the morning service the first section of Genesis is then read, thus beginning the yearly reading of the Torah in the synagogue anew. The High Holy Days: Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). On the first day of the seventh month, the Torah (Lev 23:23–25; Num 29:1) requires »a holy convocation« on which no work for the sake of work may be done, and it is a »day of blowing loud blasts.« Later tradition dubbed this Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the

11 The Seasonal Cycle: The Sabbath, High Holy Days, and Festivals

69

year, and it introduces a ten-day period of repentance, culminating on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The liturgy is special on Rosh Hashanah, designed to call people’s attention to the need to evaluate what they have done in the previous year, especially in their relationships to God and to other people, and how to improve in both areas in the year to come. A ram’s horn, shofar, is blown at various parts of the service, for a total of one hundred times. Apples and honey are customarily eaten on Rosh Hashanah, with the prayer that the coming year be a good and sweet one. Rosh Hashanah takes place on the first day of the lunar month. Because in ancient times nobody, even in Jerusalem, knew if the new moon would be sighted on the 29th or 30th day of the previous month, Jews even there would observe all of its restrictions on both days so as not to violate the laws governing the day. As a result, Rosh Hashanah became a two-day holy day in Israel as well as the Diaspora and remains so to this day. Special prayers of repentance are introduced into the liturgy during the month before Rosh Hashanah and the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. People are encouraged to apologize to those they may have wronged during the previous year. The tenth day of that month is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, marked by the fact that it is described as »the Sabbath of Sabbaths« (Lev 16:31; 23:32) on which all of the restrictions of the Sabbath apply and people are also supposed to fast, eating and drinking nothing, from sunset the night before to after sunset on that day. Conjugal relations and bathing are also forbidden on that day, and the Mishnah commands Jews not to wear leather shoes then, because they denote luxury. The service of the evening of Yom Kippur lasts two to three hours, and the following day religious Jews spend most of the day in the synagogue, going through the liturgy of four separate services. The day ends with a long blast of the shofar. Rosh Ḥodesh. The one special day listed in the Torah (Num 28:11–15) that does not entail the prohibitions and positive obligations of the holidays described above is Rosh Ḥodesh, the beginning of each lunar month (except for the month of Tishrei, which has Rosh Hashanah at its beginning). The day or days marking the beginning of a new month are announced in the synagogue on the Sabbath before it occurs with a special prayer, and the day itself includes recitation of Hallel (Ps 113–118), a special Torah reading, and an additional service (Musaf). In modern times, some women have invested Rosh Ḥodesh with feminist meanings, symbolic of their monthly menstrual cycles. The Historical Remembrances: Purim, Ḥanukkah, Tisha BʾAv, the Minor Fasts, Yom HaShoʾah, Yom Ha-Atzmaʾut. In addition to the holy days listed in the Torah and described above, Jews observe other days based on historical events. Because none of these remembrances is based on the Torah, the prohibitions and positive obligations associated with the Torah’s holy days do not apply to these holidays, so people may go to work on these days. They all, though, have rituals of their own to mark the occasion. Purim, which occurs in February or March, is based on the story in the biblical Book of Esther. It includes reading of the Book of Esther during the evening and

70

Halakhah (Jewish Law) in Contemporary Judaism

morning services, during which every time the name »Haman« is mentioned people boo or make loud noises in disgust. »Hamantashchen,« three-cornered baked pastry pockets (tashchen) filled with poppy-seeds (mohn), supposedly reminiscent of Haman’s hat, are the distinctive food of the day. Many dress up in costumes on that day. Jewish law requires that one give gifts to one’s friends and alms to the poor, in accordance with Esth 9:22. People often have a luncheon meal together (seʿudat purim). Ḥanukkah: Beginning with one candle and adding one each day for eight days, usually in December, Jews light candles to commemorate the victory of Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks, c. 165 B.C.E. in a fight for religious freedom. The Talmud tells the story that once they cleansed the Temple from the Greek idols, they had oil to light the Temple’s candelabrum to last only one day, but it miraculously lasted eight. There is an additional paragraph marking these events that is added in the services and in the Blessings after Meals throughout the eight days, and Hallel is recited as well in their celebration. Foods made with oil are popular, especially potato pancakes in the Diaspora and doughnuts in Israel. Children play a game of chance with not much at stake with a spinning top (dreidel). Tisha BʾAv, the Ninth of [the Hebrew month of] Av. Taking place in July or August, this is the only full day’s fast (that is, from sunset to sunset) other than Yom Kippur. It marks the destruction of both the First Temple (586 B.C.E.) and the Second (70 C.E.) and is associated with other tragedies in Jewish history. The biblical Book of Lamentations is read as a dirge in both the evening and morning services, and other medieval mourning readings (kinot, lamentations) and contemporary ones are read as well. The full rules of fasting, described above, apply, but people may and usually do go to work. If the Ninth of Av occurs on a Friday or Sabbath, it is postponed until Saturday night and Sunday so as not to interfere with full observance of the Sabbath. Minor Fasts. There are several »minor fasts« in the Jewish calendar—minor by virtue of imposing the fasting rules only from sunrise to sunset (or, for some, from sunrise to the afternoon prayer) rather than from sunset to sunset. Three of them (the Tenth of Tevet, the Seventeenth of Tammuz, and the Fast of Gedaliah) are also connected with events surrounding the destruction of the First Temple. One of them, the fast of Esther, is in memory of the fast that Esther asked the Jews to hold before she went uninvited to plea for the Jewish people to King Ahashverosh (Esth 4:16); it takes place on the day before Purim. The last is the Fast of the First Born, held the day before Passover for first-born males in memory of the Tenth Plague, the death of the first-born Egyptian males. The first three of these fasts are not observed by many otherwise observant Jews in honor of the establishment of the State of Israel, for they maintain that Tisha BʾAv is a sufficient reminder of past tragedies and to do more would undermine proper honor for the modern State of Israel. Yom Ha-Shoʾah. Many Jews now observe Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the day of the Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis. Educational and artistic programs about the Shʾoah (Holocaust) take place.

12 A Gift of Love

71

Yom Ha-Atzmaʾut, Israel’s Independence Day. Scheduled on the fifth of the Hebrew month of Iyyar, which corresponded to May 14, 1948, when the State of Israel was declared, Jews all over the world sing Israeli songs, engage in educational and artistic programs about Israel, and participate in marches to celebrate the establishment of the State. In Conservative synagogues and in some synagogues in the other movements, Hallel is added to the morning service, as well as special readings from the Torah and Prophets.

12

A Gift of Love

It is appropriate to note at the end of this description of Jewish law that Jews see it not as some Christian sources depict it—as a set of burdensome and nitpicky rules that tempt Jews to sin and blind Jews to what is really important in human relationships and in life in general62—but rather as God’s gift to Jews that teaches them how to live morally and meaningfully. Just as parents express love for their children by establishing reasonable rules for them and enforcing them, so too God does this for Jews by giving them Jewish law. Twice each day, in both the evening and morning service, Jews therefore thank God for the great and everlasting love that God has shown in giving the commandments. In the words of the evening service: With constancy You have loved Your people Israel, teaching us Torah and commandments, statutes and laws. Therefore, Lord our God, when we lie down to sleep and when we rise, we shall think of Your laws and speak of them, rejoicing in Your Torah and commandments always. For they are our life and the length of our days. We will meditate on them day and night. Never take away Your love from us. Praised are You, Lord, who loves His people Israel.63

For further reading Elliot N. Dorff and Arthur Rosett, A Living Tree: The Roots and Growth of Jewish Law (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988). Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, Bernard Auerbach and Melvin J. Sykes, trans. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 4 volumes. George Horowitz, The Spirit of Jewish Law (New York: Central Book Company, 1973). Shimon Shetreet and Walter Homolka, Jewish and Israeli Law—An Introduction (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2017).

62 For example, Matt 23; Rom 7–11; Gal 3. 63 Jules Harlow, ed., Siddur Sim Shalom (New York: Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of America, 1985), 200.

Languages of the Jews Stefan Schreiner

Prolegomenon According to William M. Schniedewind, the classification and designation of languages are determined not by the results of linguistic research but by »linguistic ideologies.«1 This also applies to »Jewish« languages, that is, languages which Jews have adopted in the course of their history, including the scripts they use, the choice of which follows no less »ideological« principles. Mar ‘Uqba (3rd cent.) already was of the opinion that »the Torah was originally given in Hebrew writing (bi-khtav ‘ivri) and language (lešon ha-qodeš), but renewed in the days of Ezra, in Aramaic writing (ketav ašuri)2 and language (lašon arami)« (b.Sanh. 21b). This writing was called »Assyrian« (ašurit) because it had been brought back »from Assyria« (b.Sanh. 21a). That it was Ezra who replaced the archaic Hebrew script by the »Assyrian« (Aramaic) became opinio communis in rabbinic tradition. Already R. Yehudah ha-Nasi (2nd/3rd cent.), to whom the editing of the Mishnah is ascribed, had declared: »The Torah was originally given to Israel in Aramaic writing (ketav ašuri),« not in Hebrew writing (ketav ‘ivri), so as to distinguish it »from the Torah of the Samaritans,« which is written in the Old Hebrew script (ketav ‘ivri), called the ketav ra‘aṣ (»crumpled script,« b.Sanh. 21a).3 Later writers agreed. Thus Rav Hai Gaon (939–1038) quoted in his commentary on m.Yad. 4:6: »Rabbi (= Yehudah ha-Nasi) taught: The Torah was given to Israel in Aramaic script; but when they [the Israelites] had sinned, it was transformed into Old Hebrew (ra‘aṣ). But the one [script] we now have is Aramaic; the one the Samaritans have and which is found on Israel’s coins [of the Bar Kokhba period], is Old Hebrew (ra‘aṣ).« Similarly, Maimonides (1138–1204) in his Arabic commentary on the same Mishnah: »Hebrew script (ḫaṭṭ ‘ivrī), that is the script with which the Samaritans write the Torah.« Time and again, the importance of the use of a particular alphabet became an issue that could even have political implications. With the spread of Islam, as Arabic became the lingua franca of Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims, the prohibi1 William M. Schniedewind, A Social History of Hebrew. Its Origins through the Rabbinic Period (New Haven, 2013). 2 Cf. Ezra 4:8; Dan 5:8; Dtn 17:18; Menahem M. Kasher, Tora šelema, XXIX: ketav ha-Tora weotiyoteha (Jerusalem, 1992), 1–74: Sefer Tora bi-khtav ‘ivri we-ašuri. 3 ra‘aṣ, along with Aramaic-Syriac da‘aṣ, a pejorative term for the Old Hebrew script; see Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem and Haifa, 1987), 128c, 623b.

1 Mono-, Bi-, and Multilingualism

73

tion by the »Pact of ‘Umar [ibn al-Ḫaṭṭāb]« against »using Arabic script on seal rings« developed into the fundamental question of whether non-Muslims should be allowed to use the letters of the holy book of Islam at all. After all, the characters used were surely also an expression of religious and cultural identity. As Syrian Christians write »their« Arabic in Syriac script (Garshūnī or Karshūnī),4 Christians in the Byzantine tradition write »their« languages with Greek characters—or the Cyrillic script derived from them—and in the West Roman tradition Christians write »their« languages with Latin letters—so too, Muslims write »their« languages with Arabic characters, regardless of whether they are suitable for nonSemitic languages such as Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and others.5 The same applies to the Jews. With the letters with which the Torah was given, they not only wrote »their« Arabic,6 but also others of »their« languages, equally regardless of whether they are suitable for rendering them.7 In view of the link between (a) language and the characters used for its committal to writing and (b) religious and cultural identity,8 the script used can also provide information on the extent to which a language is felt to be ones »own.«

1

Mono-, Bi-, and Multilingualism

When the history of the Jewish Diaspora begins, the history of a »language shift«9 also begins: from Hebrew to Aramaic, to Greek, to Arabic—in short, to the languages spoken in the relevant Diaspora area. This language shift often entailed a rejection of monolingualism and a turn to bilingualism or multilingualism, producing a speaker whom François Grosjean called »bicultural bilinguals.« This continuous development through the centuries experienced (a) its conclusion and (b) its conversion in the 19th/20th century. (a) Its conclusion, in that in the context of emancipation and assimilation Jews not only used the dominant

4 Alessandro Mengozzi, »Garshuni,« in: Sebastian P. Brock, Aaron Michael Butts, George Anton Kiraz, and Lucas van Rompay, eds., The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (Piscatawny, NJ, 2011). 5 See Mikhail Tarelka: »Adaptacyja arabskaga pis’ma dlja peredačy slavjanskich (belaruskich i pol’skich) tekstav,« in: Vittorio Springfield Tomelleri and Sebastian Kempgen, eds., Slavic Alphabets in Contact (Bamberger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 7; Bamberg, 2015), 263–290. 6 Wilhelm Bacher: »Abulwalīd schrieb seine Werke mit hebräischen, nicht mit arabischen Buchstaben,« Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 42 (1888): 305–306. 7 Benjamin Hary: »Adaptations of Hebrew Script,« in: Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., The World’s Writing Systems (New York, 1996), 727–742. On the development of the Hebrew script and its cursive forms: Salomo A. Birnbaum: The Hebrew Scripts, vol. I: The Text, vol. II: The Plates (Leiden, 1957–1971); Ada Yardeni, The Book of Hebrew Script: History, Palaeography, Script Styles, Calligraphy/Design (Jerusalem, 2002, ²2010). 8 Still worth reading: Matthias Mieses, Die Gesetze der Schriftgeschichte. Konfession und Schrift im Leben der Völker (Vienna and Leipzig, 1919). 9 Bernard Spolsky, The Languages of Diaspora and Return (Multilingualism and Second Language Acquisition, vol. 1 [2–3]) (Leiden and Boston, 2016).

74

Languages of the Jews

vernacular languages of their environment (English, German, Polish, Russian, Hungarian etc.), but made them their own, sometimes with a forceful rejection of their traditional »Jewish« language, stamping their mark on it, so that such language forms as »Jewish English«10, »Jewish Russian«11, »Jewish Hungarian«12, »Jewish Polish«13, »Jewish Swedish«14 and numerous other forms of »modern« Jewish languages came into being. This was quite apart from those emerging from other linguistic symbioses such as »Jewish Amharic«15, »Judeo-Slavic«16, »Judeo-Syrian«17 or »Jewish Malayalam«18, the language of Jews on the Malabar coast (Cochin, Cranganore), where from the 9th century to 1340 there was a Jewish principality,19 and many more. (b) Its conversion, in that at the same time as the revitalization and revernacularization20 of Hebrew in parts of the Diaspora on the one hand and the founding of the State of Israel and the immigration of Jews from all parts of the Diaspora to Israel on the other, a new language shift began, from the languages spoken in the relevant Diaspora to Hebrew, group-specific homeland languages sometimes also being maintained (»rediasporization in Israel«). This language shift contrasts with a further language shift in the growing present-day Israeli Diaspora (»tertiary diaspora«) in many parts of the world, this time away from Hebrew.21 This raises the question of whether (and to what extent) languages acquired by Jews in the course of history have become »Jewish« languages only by virtue of the fact of their being acquired. In other words: What makes a language a »Jewish« language?

10 David Gold, »Jewish English.«, in: Joshua A. Fishman, ed., Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages (Leiden, 1985), 280–298. 11 Anna Verschik, »Jewish Russian,« in: Lily Kahn and Aaron D. Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages (Brill’s Handbooks in Linguistics) (Leiden and Boston, 2015), 593–598. 12 Judith Rosenhouse, »Jewish Hungarian,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 226–233. 13 Edward Stankiewicz, »Jewish Polish,« in: Paul Wexler, ed., Studies in Yiddish Linguistics (Tübingen, 1990), 155–165; for the fullest discussion see Maria Brzezina, Polszczyzna Żydów (Warsaw, 1986). 14 Patric Joshua Klagsbrun Lebenswerd, »Jewish Swedish,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 618–629. 15 Anbessa Teferra, »Jewish Amharic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 8–21. 16 Brad Sabin Hill, »Judeo–Slavic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 599–617; Ondrej Bláha and Robert Dittmann, eds., Knaanic Language: Structure and Historical Background: Proceedings of a Conference Held in Prague on October 25‒26, 2012, (Prague, 2013); Robert Dittmann, »West Slavic Canaanite Glosses in Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts,« Judaica 73 (2017): 234–283. 17 Siam Bhayro, »Judeo–Syriac,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 630–633. 18 Ophira Gamliel, »Jewish Malayalam,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 503–516. 19 Ken Blady, Jewish Communities in Exotic Places (Northvale, NJ, 2000), 115–130. 20 Spolsky, Languages of Diaspora, 1. 21 Ibd., 78–97; Bernard Spolsky, The Languages of the Jews. A Sociolinguistic History (Cambridge and New York, 2014).

75

2 Hebrew

The Handbook of Jewish Languages makes a distinction between languages prefixed by the adjective »Judeo-« and those with the adjective »Jewish« in front of them. We are told that »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‹.« While Judeo-languages mark themselves as »Jewish« by the language of their script, Jewish languages are those which have taken the place of Hebrew as the vernacular and display, as a minimum, the common feature of a Hebrew lexical component which shows it is »Jewish.« This Hebrew lexical component is owed to the circumstance that »the use of Hebrew as a written and liturgical language is [was] always common to all Jewish communities, regardless of their location and the language spoken there.«22 At the same time, the integration of Hebrew (and Aramaic) words into the local vernacular served as a demarcation from the non-Jewish environment.23 Consequently, languages defined as »Jewish,« include not only those which are customarily described as ethnolects, but also those that come under the heading of religiolects.24 Of the 23 languages in the above-mentioned Handbook, there are only two that have neither the Judeo- nor the »Jewish« attribute, because they are regarded as »Jewish« languages in their own right: ǧudezmo (ladino), the language of Sephardi Jews, and yidish (idish), the language of Ashkenazi Jews.

2

Hebrew

With Aramaic (see below), Hebrew is one of those languages that have the longest documented history, at around three millennia.25 Even though Hebrew stopped being the vernacular in the 2nd/3rd century, it continued as a literary language, cultivated in academic discourse, but especially as liturgical language, until it experienced a revival in the 19th century in the, the eastern Jewish Enlightenment and its programmatic re-Hebraization (see below). 22 Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 3. 23 See Frank Alvarez-Pereyre, »Hebrew and the Identity of the Jewish Languages,« in: Shlomo Morag, Moshe Bar-Asher, and M. Mayer-Modena, eds., Vena Hebraica in Judaeorum Linguis (Milan, 1999), 15–37; David M. Bunis, »Characteristics of Jewish Languages,« in: M. Avrum Ehrlich, ed., Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, I: Themes and Phenomena of the Jewish Diaspora (Santa Barbara, CA, 2009), 167–171. 24 Benjamin Hary, »Religiolect,« in: Joshua L. Miller and Anita Norich, eds., Critical Terms in Jewish Language Studies (Frankel Institute Annual, 2011), 43b–45b; Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, »Hebrew as the Language of Judaism,« in: Stefan Weninger, ed., The Semitic Languages. An International Handbook (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft/Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science, 36; Berlin and Boston, 2012), 537–546; and Anna Verschik, »Ethnolect Debate: Evidence from Jewish Lithuanian,« International Journal of Multilingualism 7 (2010), 285–305. 25 Geoffrey Khan, ed., Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, 4 vols. (Leiden and Boston, 2013). On the history and development of Hebrew: Chaim Rabin, Die Entwicklung der hebräischen Sprache (Wiesbaden, 1988).

76

Languages of the Jews

With regard to classification, Heinrich Eljakim Loewe (1869–1951) wrote in the context of the internal Jewish »languages controversy« as to whether Hebrew or Yiddish is the national language of the Jews,26 that Hebrew was »the language of the homeland,«27 while he called all other languages ever acquired by Jews »the languages of foreign lands.«28 The Handbook makes a similar distinction between Hebrew and the rest of the Jewish languages: Despite its broad scope, it does not contain an article on Hebrew, presenting only »the languages of foreign countries.« However, the Hebrew that Loewe calls »the language of the homeland« was given its name ‘ivrit only when the majority of Jews were no longer resident »in the homeland« and it was no longer their spoken language, as the languages of their respective new environments had long since taken its place. According to biblical and early postbiblical tradition, Jews presented themselves to non-Jews as Hebrews (‘ivrim), or were addressed as such (cf. Gen 40:15 etc.; Jonah 1:9; 2 Macc 7:31 etc.). Leo Baeck29 already observed, ‘ivrit is not found as a term for their language before m.Git. 9:6, 8 and m.Yad. 4:5 (1st half of 3rd cent.). In Greek, on the other hand, the term seems to have been common at an early stage, as is evident from the prolog to Ben Sira (3), according to which »what is said in Hebrew (Ebraïstì legómena), translated into another language, can have another meaning.«30 When the Bible does not call languages the »language of the land or the city [in question]« (e.g. Isa 19:18: sefat kena‘an »the language of Canaan«), they are— as remains customary today—named after their speakers: Just as the language of the people of Ashdod is called ašdodit (»Ashdodian«—Neh 13:24 = 2 Esdras 23:24: Azōtistí), so too the languages of the people of Judah are called yehudit (Judean) in distinction from aramit (Aramaic) or other languages (cf. 2 Kgs 18:26–28 = Isa 36:11, 13; Neh 13:24; 2 Chr 32:18). It is not clear, however, whether sefat kena‘an, yehudit and Ebraïstí mean the same language.31 For while the Septuagint renders yehudit by Ioudaïstí/Ιoudaïkē, for aramit we have not Aramaïstí/Aramaïkē but the Koinē-Greek Syristí/Syriakē (Syriac) (thus 2 Kgs 18:26 = Isa 36:11; 2 Esdras 23:24). It is also a matter of controversy whether Ebraïstí in the New Testament (John 5:2 etc.) means »Hebrew« or can also signify »Aramaic.«32 There is, however, a broad

26 27 28 29

See below, 7. Heinrich Eljakim Loewe, Die Sprachen der Juden (Cologne, 1911), 9–21, 140–149. Loewe, Sprachen der Juden, 22–34. Leo Baeck, »Der Ibri,« Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 83 (1939), 66–80. 30 Cf. James K. Aitken, »Hebrew Studies in Ben Sira’s Beth Midrash,« in: William Horbury, ed., Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben–Yehudah (Edinburgh, 1999), 27–37. 31 Edward Ullendorff already had his doubts about this: »Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?« Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 34 (1971): 241–255 = in: Edward Ullendorff, Is Biblical Hebrew a Language? (Wiesbaden, 1977), 3–17. 32 Randall Buth and Chad Pierce, »Hebraisti in Ancient Texts: Does Ebraïstí Ever Mean ›Aramaic‹?« in: Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley, eds., The Language Environment of First Century Judaea (Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels, 2; Leiden and Boston, 2014), 66–109, give a clear answer: »Ebraïstí means ›Hebrew,‹ Syristí means ›Aramaic‹.« (109).

77

2 Hebrew

consensus on the division of the history of Hebrew into: ancient Hebrew, postbiblical Hebrew, rabbinic Hebrew, medieval Hebrew, and modern Hebrew.

2.1

Ancient Hebrew

Ancient (also: Biblical or Classical Hebrew) refers to the language documented in the books of the Bible and in inscriptions, which developed from the Late Bronze Age onwards (1550–1200) in tandem with state formation in the Palestinian area; and is listed with the related Phoenician, Moabitic, Ammonite, and Edomite in the Canaanite branch of Central Semitic languages.33 Ancient Hebrew,34 written with 22 characters (consonants) borrowed from the Phoenician alphabet, gained standardization in the Hebrew of the Northern (»Israelite«) and Southern (»Judahite«) Kingdoms of biblical Israel, remaining the language of administration and literature up to the Babylonian Exile, before being replaced by »Imperial Aramaic« in the establishment of the Achaemenid administrative system, which in turn found its way into biblical books (see below) and had an influence on the development of Hebrew (»Aramaisms«),35 just as the Greek spoken increasingly from Hellenistic times in urban centers has left traces in Hebrew. One question that remains open is whether alongside the »elevated« Hebrew of the Bible (written and handed down by professional scribes) there was also a Hebrew vernacular which lived on in postbiblical and rabbinic Hebrew, a consideration Chaim Rabin was right to raise.36 The development of Ancient Hebrew, lasting roughly a millennium, reflects the consonantal text of the biblical books, which, despite all revisions, copies recognizably different language forms, whose differences were not fully eliminated even by the Masoretic vocalizations and efforts toward uniformity which document far more recent linguistic stages.37 Linguistically distinguishable from each other, the forms of Ancient Hebrew can be subdivided both geographically according to regional dialects (»Israelite,« »Judahite«) and chronologically, as archaic, pre-exilic, and post-exilic Hebrew.38 Although the authors of post-exilic books (e.g. Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles) endeavored to copy the language and style of pre-exilic Hebrew (not least by means of quotations), they were only partially successful; and 33 Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde (Cambridge, 1993), 1–49; Weninger, ed., The Semitic Languages, 425–515. 34 Christopher A. Rollston, Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel. Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (Archaeology and Biblical Studies, 11; Atlanta, 2010). 35 Max Wagner, Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentalischen Hebräisch (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 96; Berlin, 1966); Christian Stadel, »Aramaic Influence on Biblical Hebrew«, in: Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, Consulted online on 24 January 2018 . 36 Rabin, Development of the Syntax, 1–7. 37 Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, 76–111. 38 Ibd., 50–75, 112–129.

78

Languages of the Jews

if unlike Qohelet and Esther, they were still far from postbiblical Hebrew, grammar and syntax betray the fact that they come from authors who had learned this language but did not (any longer) speak it.39 The same applies to the Hebrew book of Ben Sira and the Hebrew parts of the book of Daniel, in which »the Mishnaic colloquialism of their authors shines through in almost every sentence.«40 Further, despite the volume of biblical and extrabiblical witnesses, Ancient Hebrew has only a fragmentary character, as Edward Ullendorff has pointed out (see n. 31); the vast majority of these texts are of course religious in content and written in elevated literary, liturgical language, while non-religious texts, testifying to colloquial language, are extant only in limited numbers. As examples of non-religious Ancient Hebrew poetry we have only the 24 love and wedding songs collected in the Song of Solomon, the language of which differs clearly from other poetic texts (e.g. Psalms) in both grammar and vocabulary.41 William Chomsky called them a »prime example« of colloquial Ancient Hebrew.42 That there must have been far more Ancient Hebrew colloquial poetry is evident from those Psalm superscriptions which refer to songs—once no doubt commonly known and popular, but no longer extant— to the melodies of which Psalms should be performed (thus, Psalms 22, 45, 60, 69 and 80; cf. the quotation from a »song of the whore« in Isa 23:16).

2.2

Postbiblical Hebrew

Since the Achaemenid period, Ancient Hebrew was increasingly superseded by Aramaic in everyday life, but lived on partly in the liturgy of the synagogue (recitation of Torah, prophetic texts, and Psalms) and the associated religious poetry, according to which it became the »sacred language,« and partly in the literature of dissident groups, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, documented in the Judean Desert and elsewhere, and finally, in another form again, in the initially oral and later written theological (haggadic) and religious law (halakhic) discourse of the rabbinic sages.43 Recognizable morphological and syntactic, phonological and lexicographic differences from biblical Hebrew in its various stages show this postbiblical Hebrew to be a separate language form. Like all other forms of Hebrew, it does not constitute a monolithic block but is found, both chronologically and geographically, in forms that have been subject to dialectical variation.

39 Arno Kropat, Syntax des Autors der Chronik verglichen mit der seiner Quellen (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 16; Giessen, 1909). 40 Rabin, Development of the Syntax, 5. In addition, Rabin pointed out that Daniel’s Prayer (9:4–20) is the only text in the book of Daniel which is not reminiscent of rabbinic Hebrew, but instead consists almost entirely of quotations from older texts. 41 See Stefan Schreiner, Das Hohelied—Lied der Lieder von Schelomo. Mit 32 illuminierten Blättern aus dem Machsor Lipsiae (Verlag der Weltreligionen, Taschenbuch, 1; Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig, 2007 [²2008]), 71–73, 86–92. 42 William Chomsky, Hebrew—the Eternal Language (Philadelphia, 1975), 160–161. 43 Günter Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch (Munich, 92011), 43–58.

79

2 Hebrew

Qumran Hebrew, which displays features of standardization (e.g. use of aleph, he, waw, and yod to indicate unwritten vowels) can thus—alongside the scrolls from the Judean Desert, the Hebrew of which is far less standardized, and Samaritan Hebrew,44 which represents yet another written form of postbiblical Hebrew—be viewed as a separate written form of postbiblical Hebrew.45

2.3

Rabbinic or Mishnaic Hebrew

Postbiblical Hebrew finds its continuation in the language of the sages.46 As the Aramaisms in Hebrew biblical texts, the circumstance that many Qumran texts (e.g. Enoch, Tobit) are transmitted in both Hebrew and Aramaic, the coexistence of Hebrew and Aramaic in rabbinic literature, and not least (a) the emergence of the Targumim and (b) the growing number of Greek texts written by Jews and Greek and Latin loanwords and foreign words in Palestinian rabbinic Hebrew attest, from the Second Temple period onwards Hebrew was largely replaced as the spoken language by Aramaic as well as by Greek. Hebrew was further cultivated as a literary language, as is proved by the »language of the sages« (rabbinic Hebrew). Whether those who wrote this Hebrew had their own term for it, is unknown. The term lešon ḥakhamim (»the language of the sages«) is first found at the end of the third century CE on the lips of R. Yoḥanan (b.AZ 58b; b.Ḥull 137b), just as in the case of the term ‘ivrit only in retrospect, at a time when Hebrew was no longer a spoken language but only written.47 Here too, however, there are regional variations; for the division of the Diaspora into a western (in the Palestinian-Byzantine area) and an eastern Diaspora (in the Babylonian-Persian area),48 and then a third, the southern, Yemeni Diaspora, has left its traces in the language as well (in morphology, syntax, and lexicography). Just as in the rabbinic Hebrew of the Palestini-

44 Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, 147–160; Ze’ev Ben-Hayyim, A Grammar of Samaritan Hebrew (Jerusalem, 2000); Moshe Florentin, Late Samaritan Hebrew: A Linguistic Analysis of Its Different Types (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Series, 43; Leiden and Boston 2005). 45 Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, 130–146; Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Harvard Semitic Studies, 29; Atlanta, 1986); Elisha Qimron, A Grammar of the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Jerusalem, 2018); Jan Joosten, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek in the Qumran Scrolls (The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Oxford, 2010); Eric D. Reymond, Qumran Hebrew. An Overview of Orthography, Phonology, and Morphology (Resources for Biblical Study, 76; Atlanta, 2014). 46 Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, 161–201; Moshe Bar-Asher, »Mishnaic Hebrew,« in: Weninger, ed., The Semitic Languages, 515–523. 47 Rabin, Development of the Syntax, 7–8; Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, 179–201; Miguel Pérez Fernández, An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew (Leiden and Boston, 1999). 48 See Doron Mendels and Arye Edrei, Zweierlei Diaspora. Zur Spaltung der antiken jüdischen Welt (toldot, 8; Göttingen, 2010).

80

Languages of the Jews

an-Byzantine area49 Greek and Latin loanwords and foreign words have their counterpart in East Aramaic/Syriac, and occasionally Persian loan and foreign words in the Babylonia-Persian area, so too, Yemeni Jews produced »their« Hebrew, which they have continued to cultivate and further develop to the present day. The bulk of witnesses to this rabbinic, mishnaic Hebrew is formed by the corpus of early rabbinic, tannaitic, and to some extent also amoraic literature: Mishnah and Tosefta, the Hebrew parts of the early halakhic and haggadic midrashim, the Talmud Yerushalmi and Talmud Bavli etc.50

2.4

From Ancient Hebrew to Medieval, Sephardic Hebrew

It is difficult to give an exact date for the period of the paiṭanim (> Greek poiētēs, »poets«), but piyyuṭ (> Greek poíēsis, »poetry«), the religious, liturgical poetry first created during Late Antiquity in Eretz Israel and long regarded as specific to it, was cultivated across the centuries in many parts of the Jewish world.51 Piyyut marks a new chapter not only in the history of Jewish literature,52 but also in the development of Hebrew. This development led to the emergence of a separate form of Hebrew and permanently influenced the language of Hebrew poetry blossoming in the Middle Ages. With piyyuṭ a first renaissance of Hebrew also began, which further developed biblical Hebrew morphologically and lexicographically, while in syntax it followed mishnaic Hebrew.53 In parallel with Hebrew religious poetry, between the ninth and the twelfth century a new Hebrew midrash literature came into being, the prose of which was influenced grammatically, syntactically, and in many cases lexicographically by contemporary Aramaic, as Leopold Zunz observed long ago.54 It was enriched by exegetical and theological/philosophical works, by halakhic responses, and then by 49 Nicholas de Lange, »Greek Influence on Hebrew: Late Antiquity,« in: Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics (Leiden and Boston, 2013), II, 146–147; S. Heijmans, »Greek Loanwords,« in: Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics (Leiden and Boston, 2013), II, 148–151; Samuel Krauss, Griechische und lateinische Lehnwörter in Talmud, Midrasch und Targum, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1898–1899; reprint Hildesheim, 1964); Daniel Sperber, A Dictionary of Greek and Latin Legal Terms in Rabbinic Literature (Ramat Gan, 1984). 50 Especially in manuscripts of these works. We omit bibliographic references to relevant text editions and translations. See the relevant chapters on these literatures in this threevolume compendium. passim 51 See Elisabeth Hollender, Piyyut, in: Michael Tilly, Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.), Judaism II. Literature (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020). 52 Leopold Zunz and Aron Freimann, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main, ²1920; reprint Hildesheim, 1967); Aharon Mirsky, ha-piyyuṭ—hitpatḥuto be-ereṣ yisra’el u-vagola (Jerusalem, 1991). 53 Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, 209–214; Rabin, Development of the Syntax, 11–19. 54 Leopold Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden historisch entwickelt, ein Beitrag zur Altertumskunde und biblischen Kritik, zur Literatur- und Religionsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, ²1892; reprint Hildesheim, 1966).

2 Hebrew

81

the pilgrimage and travel accounts emerging in the Middle Ages, the language of which took its orientation largely from rabbinic models. A Hebrew philology emerged,55 under the influence of Arabic as the lingua franca of Jews in the Islamic world and the influence of Arabic philology in the Masoretes’ efforts to unify the biblical tradition by vocalizing the text of the Bible and developing a Masoretic grammar.56 This produced early fruit in grammars and dictionaries by Sephardic authors in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, in particular Abū l-Walīd Jona Ibn Ǧanāḥ.57 A further product was a Hebrew that in many cases follows Arabic models in prose and poetry.58 As can be gleaned from so-called language comparisons,59 Jewish (and Muslim) philologists were convinced that not only were Hebrew and Aramaic »twins« (diglossia) while Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic were »triplets« of one language (triglossia), but »that Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic were basically one and the same language.«60 This can be discerned among other things from the trilingual, four-line poems known from Al-Andalus and—at another time—from Yemen,61 the first line of which is in Hebrew, the second in Aramaic, the third in Arabic, and the fourth once again in Hebrew. Yehudah b. Shelomo (Yaḥyā b. Sulaimān b. Sha’ul Abū Zakaryā) al-Ḥarīzī (1160–1225/30), who translated—inter alia—Mose b. Maimon’s

55 Wilhelm Bacher, Die hebräische Sprachwissenschaft vom 10. bis 16. Jahrhundert, mit einem Einleitenden Abschnitt über die Masora (Trier, 1892; new edition [Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series III: Studies in the History of Linguistics, 4]; Amsterdam, 1974; ²2010); Nicholas de Lange, ed., Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World (Cambridge, MA 2001). 56 See Stefan Schreiner, »Oralität und Literalität. Mündliche Überlieferung und ihre Verschriftung,« in: Micha Brumlik and Christina von Braun, eds., Handbuch Jüdische Studien (Cologne, 2018), 147–171, esp. 155–163; cf. also the overview of research on Masoretic grammar by Elvira Martín Contreras, »The Current State of Masoretic Studies,« in: Sefarad 73 (2013): 423–458. 57 Adolf Neubauer, ed., Kitāb al-Uṣūl. The book of Hebrew roots/by Abuʾl-Walîd Marwân Ibn Janâh, otherwise called Rabbî Jônâh, with an appendix, containing extracts from other Hebrew-Arabic dictionaries (Oxford, 1875; reprint Amsterdam, 1968); Wilhelm Bacher, ed., sefer ha-šorašim—Wurzelwörterbuch der hebräischen Sprache. Aus dem Arabischen ins Hebräische übersetzt von Jehuda b. Tibbon […] zum ersten Male herausgegeben […], sowie mit einer Einleitung über das Leben und die Schriften Abulwalid’s und mit Registern und Textberichtigungen zum Sepher Harikma versehen (Berlin 1896; reprint Amsterdam, 1969); Jona Ibn Ǧanāḥ, sefer hariqma, ed. David Tene, I: guš ha-sefer u-ferušo; II: mafteḥot, tiqqunim, nosafim, he‘arot ḥadašot we-nispaḥot (meḥqarim u-meqorot, 5; Jerusalem, 1964). 58 Rina Drory, »Literary Contacts and Where to Find Them: On Arabic Literary Models in Medieval Jewish Literature,« Poetics Today 14/2 (1993): 277–302; Ángel Sáenz-Badillos and Judit Targarona Borrás, Poetas Hebreos de al-Andalus (Siglos X–XII) (Estudios de Cultura Hebrea, 4; Córdoba, ²1990); Jefim Hayim Shirman, toldot ha-šira ha-‘ivrit bi-sfarad ha-muslemit, ed. Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem, 1995); Jefim Hayim Shirman, toldot ha-šira ha-‘ivrit bisfarad ha-noṣrit u-vi-drom ṣarfat, ed. Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem, 1997). 59 Begun by Yehudah b. Quraish, ha-‘risāla’, ed. Dan Becker (Texts and Studies in the Hebrew Language and Related Subjects, 7; Tel Aviv, 1984). 60 Shlomo Dov Goitein, Jews and Arabs—Their Contacts through the Ages (New York, 1955; reprint 1964 etc.), 131–140 (137). 61 Wilhelm Bacher, Die hebräische und arabische Poesie der Juden Jemens (Budapest, 1910).

82

Languages of the Jews

(1138–1204) Dalālat al-ḥā’irīn62 and Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim b. ‘Alī b. Muḥammad b. ‘Uṯman b. al-Ḥarīrīs’ (1054–1122) Maqāmāt from Arabic into Hebrew,63 composed bilingual poems (Hebrew-Arabic/Arabic-Hebrew).64 And not only that, but in the eleventh maqāmah of his Sefer Taḥkemoni, al-Ḥarīzī achieved the masterpiece of documenting triglossia in each seven-word line of his maqāmah: In each line, he wrote the first two words in Hebrew, the next three in Arabic, and the last two in Aramaic, observing the rules of morphology and syntax as well as metre.65

2.5

Ashkenazic Hebrew

Unlike Sephardic Hebrew, cultivated in the context of Arabic, Hebrew in the Ashkenazi realm lived largely in the lee first of Jewish-German and then, in Eastern Europe, increasingly of Yiddish (see below), with its own grammar and to some extent its own vocabulary.66 The Ashkenazi grammarian Shlomo Zalmen b. Yehudah Leib Katz (1687–1746),67 recognized this and distinguished Sephardic and Ashkenazic Hebrew and grammarians. Subsequent studies were to confirm his distinctions.68 The influence of Jewish German and Yiddish is most clearly evident in phonetics, according to which Ashkenazic Hebrew is no longer a perceptibly Semitic language, but follows the local Jewish German, Yiddish dialect.69 Among the significant features of Ashkenazic Hebrew are: the shift of emphasis on the penultimate syllable while weakening the vowel of the final syllable; the pronunciation of the long ā as o (or e in an unemphasized final syllable; e.g. shólem for shalóm); the diphthongization of the long ō to au or oy (e.g. taúro or toýre for torá), and the long ē to ey (e.g. séyfer for séfer); the pronunciation of the taw at the end of a syllable as -s (e.g. shábbos or shábbes for shabbát); the phonetic loss of meaning of specifically Semitic consonants like aleph and ‘ayin; the dropping of the difference between ḥet and ḫa or kha (ḫ or kh), between ṭet and taw, and the pronunciation of the ṣade as ts (tz) instead of the emphatic ṣ. 62 moreh nevukhim, ed. Leon Schlossberg, 3 vols. (Wilna, 1912; reprint Jerusalem, n. d.). 63 sefer maḥberot Iti’el, ed. by Thomas Chenry (London, 1872). 64 See Samuel M. Stern, »Some Unpublished Poems by al-Harizi,« Jewish Quarterly Review 50 (1960): 346–364, esp. 349–353. 65 Last edition: taḥkemoni o maḥberot heman ha-ezraḥi, ed. Yosef Yahalom (Jerusalem, 2010); English: The book of Tahkemoni, Jewish tales from medieval Spain, translated and explicated by David Simha Segal (London and Portland, OR, 2001; ²2003), 111–118, 482–487; on this subject: Rina Drory, »Al-Harizi’s Maqamat: a Tricultural literary product?,« in: The Medieval Translator 4 (1994): 66–85. 66 Lewis Glinert, ed., Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A Language in Exile (New York, 1993). 67 See his grammar Sefer ṣoher ha-teva ‘im mikhseh ha-teva, which appeared in many printings (Frankfurt am Main 1724 etc., last new edition: Jerusalem, 1971). 68 Lily Kahn, The Verbal System in Late Enlightenment Hebrew (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 55; Leiden and Boston, 2009); eadem, A Grammar of the Eastern European Ḥasidic Hebrew Tale (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 77; Leiden, 2014). 69 Lewis Glinert, »Hebrew-Yiddish Diglossia, Type and Stereotype: Implications of the Language of Ganzfried’s ›Kitzur‹,« International Journal of the Sociology of Language 67 (1987): 39–55.

83

2 Hebrew

Nothing changed when, with re-Hebraization by 19th-century Jewish Enlightenment figures of Central and Eastern Europe (Maskilim),70 the systematic revival of Hebrew began as the colloquial language and as literary language. This was first tested on the basis of Hebrew translations of (ancient) Greek and Latin and (medieval) Arabic works as well as contemporary literature in the belles lettres71 and science written in Western and Eastern European languages. They wrote their own works in Hebrew: poems, novels,72 and dramas and by treatises on all fields of the modern sciences, all manner of Hebrew newspapers and magazines,73 by philological studies, grammars, and dictionaries of the revitalized Hebrew,74 grammars of modern European languages,75 which paved the way for contemporary Israeli Hebrew. This revitalized Hebrew reached a first climax with Eli‘ezer b. Yehudah’s (1855–1922) thesaurus of the Hebrew language.76

2.6

Israeli Hebrew

Israeli Hebrew, however, is far more than a revived »traditional« Hebrew and certainly not an »extended« Ashkenazi Hebrew. Linguistically, linked especially phonetically to Sephardic Hebrew,77 it presents as a mixture of traditionally transmitted Hebrew, adoptions (loan translations) from Yiddish with admixtures from numerous European, especially Eastern European, languages. Today, in its second phase, it is no longer mainly immigrants from Europe but indigenous, immigrants from Arab-Islamic countries and their descendants who play the leading role. It is experiencing a new linguistic shift from Hebrew (with Russian contributions) to Israeli.78 However, it remains to be seen

70 See Isaak Ber Lewinsohn’s (1788–1860) programmatic writing new edition with detailed introduction: Emanuel Etkes, te‘uda be-yisra’el ben temura le-masoret—mavo le-ribl te‘uda be-yisra’el (Jerusalem, 1977); on this subject: Stefan Schreiner, »Aufklärung als Re-Hebraisierung—Anmerkungen zu Isaak Ber Lewinsohns Haskala–Programm,« Studia Judaica 5 (Cracow, 2002): 69–83. 71 See e.g. Lily Khan, The First Hebrew Shakespeare Translations (n. p., 2017). 72 The first modern Hebrew novel was presented by Abraham Mapu (1808–1867) with his Ahavat Ṣiyon (1849); see, Verena Dohrn, »Abraham Mapus ›Zionsliebe‹: die Geburt einer neuen Zionsidee in Osteuropa,« in: Heiko Haumann, ed., Der Traum von Israel. Die Ursprünge des modernen Zionismus (Weinheim, 1998), 108–139. 73 See the bibliographies of Matisjohu (Matthias) Strashun (1817–1885): liqquṭe šošannim (Berlin, 1889), and William Zeitlin, Bibliotheca hebraica post-Mendelssohniana. Bibliographisches Handbuch der neuhebräischen Literatur (Leipzig, ²1891–1895; reprint Hildesheim and New York, 1983). 74 See for instance the Hebrew—Russian—German dictionary of Shmuel Josef Fuenn (1818–1890), ha-oṣar—oṣar lešon ha-miqra we-ha-mišna, 4 vols. (Warsaw 1887–1913). 75 See the Russian grammar in Hebrew by Shmuel Josef Fuenn, talmud lešon russiya (Vilnius, 1847). 76 Eli‘ezer ben Yehudah, millon ha-lašon ha-‘ivrit ha-yešana we-ha-ḥadaša—Thesaurus totius hebraitatis et veteris et recentioris, 16 vols. (Berlin, 1908–1959; New York, ²1960). 77 Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change, 1; London, 2003). 78 Edit Doron ed., Language Contact and the Development of Modern Hebrew (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 84; Leiden, 2015).

84

Languages of the Jews

whether this Israeli, as was assumed in the Middle Ages, can become part of a triglossia of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, or at least of a diglossia of Israeli and Arabic.79

3

Aramaic

»Aramaic is the only Semitic language for which there is evidence of continuous, uninterrupted speech since the beginning of the first millennium BCE.«80 Aramaic, which emerged between the tenth and sixth centuries in the area of present-day Syria, quickly disseminated as an international trading language in the entire Near and Middle East, remaining so for centuries. Still today, in some Eastern Christian and Jewish communities it lives on, mainly as a liturgical language. Jewish Aramaic has much closer links to Hebrew than does Christian or Mandaic Aramaic. Its alphabet, which like the Ancient Hebrew alphabet derives from the Phoenician alphabet, with 22 consonants, is attested in inscriptions since the 11th/10th century BCE and in various scripts, the most widespread form of which since the seventh/ sixth century BCE was the square script derived from the ancient Aramaic script.81 One of the features of Aramaic is that, even though it is a consonantal script, it was from early times familiar with the consonants aleph, he, waw, and yod to indicate primarily long vowels. The wide dissemination of the Aramaic language and script had the additional consequence that the Aramaic square script (with cursives) was adopted for other languages at home in each neighborhood. In the sixth century BCE for Hebrew and since the third century BCE for Nabataean Aramaic,82 from whose alphabet came the Arabic alphabet, which gradually took the place of ancient Arabic scripts,83 and additionally for Palmyrene,84 Syriac, and Mandaic.85 The wide spread of Aramaic is a reason also that over time we encounter it in different geographically and chronologically distinct dialects, which reveal the

79 See Yuval Evri, Translating the Arab-Jewish Tradition: From Al-Andalus to Palestine/Land of Israel (Essays of the Forum Transregionale Studien, 1; Berlin, 2016). 80 Steven E. Fassberg, »Judeo-Aramaic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 64–116; Holger Gzella, A Cultural History of Aramaic. From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam (Handbuch der Orientalistik, I, 111; Leiden, 2015). 81 Peter D. Daniels, »Aramaic Scripts for Aramaic Languages,« in: Daniels and Bright, eds., The World’s Writing Systems, 499–505. 82 Peter Flint, Matthew Morgenstern, Hannah M. Cotton, and M. Segal, »Naḥal Ḥever/Wadi Seiyal,« in: James Charlesworth et al., eds., Miscellaneous Texts from the Judaean Desert (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. 38; Oxford, 2000), 133–200; Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic, Hebrew and Nabataean Documentary Texts from the Judaean Desert and Related Material, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 2000). 83 Peter Stein, »Ancient South Arabian,« in: Weninger, ed., The Semitic Languages, 1042–1073; Norbert Nebes and Peter Stein, »Ancient South Arabian,« in: Roger D. Woodard, ed., The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (Cambridge, 2008), 145–178. 84 Delbert R. Hillers and Eleonora Cussini, Palmyrene Aramaic Texts (Publications of The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project; Baltimore, 1996); Gzella, Cultural History of Aramaic, 248–256. 85 Rudolf Macuch, Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic (Berlin, 1965).

85

3 Aramaic

influence of local colloquial languages, as well as having a converse influence on the latter (Aramaisms). Distinctions are made between: Old Aramaic, Imperial Aramaic, Old Eastern and Old Western Aramaic, Middle Eastern and Middle Western Aramaic, as well as Neo-Eastern and Neo-Western Aramaic. All these dialects stand in turn for a multiplicity of forms of Aramaic distinguishable from each other in terms of their number and dissemination as well as their »lifespan.«86 In the Dead Sea Scrolls alone more than a dozen Aramaic dialects can be identified.87

3.1

Imperial Aramaic

While early Old Aramaic witnesses are essentially limited to tenth to seventh-century BCE inscriptions and documents from chancelleries of Aramaean city states in the area of present-day Syria and southeastern Turkey,88 Aramaic advanced in the NeoAssyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid Empire to become one of the four official languages (hence Imperial Aramaic). The (post-)Achaemenid »Jewish« form of Imperial Aramaic is documented on the one hand by the consonantal text of the Aramaic passages in Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26; Dan 2:4–7:28; Gen 31:47; Jer 10:1189 and in the Dead Sea Scrolls,90 and on the other by the consonantal text of the Babylonian Targumim Onqelos (Gen to Deut) and Jonathan (Josh to Mal), which were known in northern Mesopotamia (Nehardea) as early as the mid-third century CE. This Aramaic is now brought together under the term Jewish Standard Literary Aramaic.

3.2

Jewish-Palestinian Aramaic

Aramaic asserted itself as the colloquial language in Palestine, first in Transjordan and then the West Bank, from the fourth century BCE and remained in use there on into the third century CE and beyond as witnessed by Palestinian late-Amoraic and Gaonic rabbinic literature, inscriptions in Byzantine synagogues as well as Aramaic acrostic piyyutim from that and even a slightly later period (600/700 CE?). An early literary witness to Jewish Old Palestinian Aramaic is the oldest preserved manuscript of the Book of Enoch (ca. 170 BCE), the language of which is found in the Aramaic city and regional dialects forming since Hasmonaean rule, as is evident from inscriptions and documents from the period of the end of the first century BCE. The most important literary witnesses of this Judeo-Palestinian (Galilean and 86 See the overview of Klaus Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer, 2 vols. (Göttingen, 1984), Supplementary volume (1994), I, 23–71. 87 Takamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Qumran Aramaic (Leuven, 2011). 88 Stanislav Segert, Altaramäische Grammatik (Leipzig, 41990); Volker Hug, Altaramäische Grammatik der Texte des 7. und 6. Jhs. v. Chr. (Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient, 4; Heidelberg, 1993). 89 Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, n. s. 5; Wiesbaden, 72006). 90 Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer.

86

Languages of the Jews

Judean) Aramaic,91 generally divided into three layers, are (a) the Aramaic sections transmitted in rabbinic midrashim92, (b) the Talmud Yerushalmi, and (c) the Palestinian Targumim93.

3.3

Christian-Palestinian Aramaic

As Jewish Palestinian (Judean and Galilean) Aramaic was probably the dominant language in New Testament times, it also became the language of the early Christians, although their use of it gradually developed its own stamp, which allowed it to become a specifically Christian Palestinian Aramaic,94 which was to blossom fully in Syriac (which, however, shows close affinities with Jewish-Babylonian Aramaic).95 Syriac was originally the (literary) language of the city of Edessa in northern Mesopotamia (present-day Urfa in southeastern Turkey), the Estrangelo script of which (from Gk strongýlos, »rounded«) is one of the numerous variants of Aramaic script, the oldest witnesses of which date from the beginning of the first century CE.96 The Bible was translated into Syriac already in the third century, and Christian theological treatises were written in Syriac; Syriac has remained a language of the Eastern churches to this day.

3.4

Jewish-Babylonian Aramaic

In the course of the eastward spread of the Jewish Diaspora and the shift of the most important centers of Jewish scholarship geographically to the MesopotamianPersian and linguistically to the Syrian-Persian influenced realm, Middle Eastern or Babylonian Aramaic increasingly gained importance and for a number of centuries became a primary language of the rabbinic sages.97 This is evident from the Aramaic

91 Michael Sokoloff, »Jewish Palestinian Aramaic,« in: Weninger, ed., The Semitic Languages, 610–619; Fassberg, »Judeo-Aramaic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 67–89. 92 BerR; WayR; PesRK; DevR; EstR; ShirR; RutR; EkhaR; QohR; MSam; MTehil; MYelam; QohZ; MHG etc. 93 TNeofiti, FragT, and Targum fragments from the Cairo Geniza. 94 Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Christian Palestinian Aramaic (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 234; Leuven, 2014). 95 Sebastian P. Brock, An Introduction to Syriac Studies (Piscataway, NJ, 2006); Takamitsu Muraoka and Sebastian P. Brock, Classical Syriac: A Basic Grammar with a Chrestomathy (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, N.S. 19; Wiesbaden, 1997). 96 Peter D. Daniels, »Aramaic Scripts for Aramaic Languages,« in: Daniels and Bright, eds., The World’s Writing Systems, 499–505. 97 Fassberg, »Judeo-Aramaic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 76–89. Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal, Introduction to the Grammar of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (Lehrbücher orientalischer Sprachen/Textbooks of Near Eastern Languages, Section III: Aramaic, 3; Münster, 2013); Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Dictionaries of Talmud, Midrash and Targum III; Ramat-Gan, Baltimore, and London, 2002).

87

3 Aramaic

parts of the Talmud Bavli and numerous gaonic responses, documents, halakhot books, theological and magical treatises98 as well as paragraphs written in corresponding Aramaic in some later midrashim such as Midrash ha-Gadol (MHG), Seder ‘Olam Zuṭa and Sefer ha-Ma‘asiyyot, the reliability of which, however, is questioned. A special form of Babylonian Aramaic developed among the Jews of Yemen, not least as a consequence of their trilingualism of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic (see below).99 In parallel to this, Mandaic100 and Samaritan Aramaic experienced their heyday.101 Even though with the expansion of Islamic rule Arabic displaced Aramaic as the spoken language, it lived on in the eastern and western Diasporas as the literary language of scholars. Outstanding witnesses of this Jewish literary Aramaic of the eastern Diaspora are the earlier Targum Yerushalmi, now called Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (TPsJon) on the Pentateuch, the Targumim on the Psalms, Job, the Five Scrolls (TShir; TRut; TQoh; TEkha; TEst), and on Chronicles, as well as Tobit and Proverbs, Targum Sheni on Esther, and others. In addition, there are numerous fragments from the Cairo Geniza (especially magical texts) and Piyyutim. In the western Diaspora, in the Sephardic as well as the Ashkenazic realm, Aramaic flourished into the early modern period as a literary language, in halakhic and related exegetical literature, in religious poetry and prayer (Machsor Vitry), but also in secular poetry. The most important memorial to this literary Aramaic from the western Diaspora is the Zohar, the main work of early Kabbala ascribed to R. Shim’on bar Yohai (2nd cent. CE) but written in late-medieval post-gaonic Aramaic by Mose de León (1240–1305).102

3.5

Jewish neo-Aramaic dialects

From the middle of the first millennium BCE, Aramaic was the lingua franca in many parts of the Near and Middle East, coinciding with the beginning of the history of the Jewish Diaspora in the Babylonian-Persian realm. As a result, at an early stage special forms of Aramaic (dialects) emerged which were used for centuries as colloquial languages but were also cultivated and further developed in literature. They have been preserved as so-called neo-Aramaic city dialects in the Kurdish-Jewish Diaspora communities, some living in isolation, in the area of present-day southeastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq, and northwestern Iran, in some cases on into the middle of the 20th century. In recent decades these dialects have become the 98 See Burton L. Visotzky and Marzena Zawanowska, in: Michael Tilly, Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.), Judaism II. Literature (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020). 99 Shlomo Morag and Yeḥiel Qara, aramit bavlit be-masoret teman—Babylonian Aramaic in Yemenite tradition (‘eda we-lašon, 24; Jerusalem, 5762 [2002]). 100 Rudolf Macuch, Handbook of classical and modern Mandaic (Berlin, 1965). 101 Rudolf Macuch, Grammatik des samaritanischen Aramäisch (Studia Samaritana, 4; Berlin, 1982); Abraham Tal, Samaritan Aramaic (Lehrbücher orientalischer Sprachen/Textbooks of Near Eastern Languages, Section III: Aramaic, 2; Münster, 2013). 102 Yehudah Liebes, »Hebrew and Aramaic as Languages of the Zohar,« Aramaic Studies 4 (2006): 35–52; Fassberg, »Judeo-Aramaic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbok of Jewish Languages, 96–99.

88

Languages of the Jews

special focus of Aramaic studies and have led to the emergence of numerous »dialect grammars« and corresponding dictionaries.103

4

Greek

With the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Diadochi states (Ptolemaic and Seleucid) from the late fourth century BCE, Greek gained increasing significance among Jews, in the Levant and in North Africa. Even though the scholars viewed the »language and wisdom of the Greeks« with some reserve, if not dismissively,104 they could not prevent Greek quickly becoming one other language of the Jews. This is shown by the emergence of the Greek Bible (Septuagint), the total of 27 Greek texts on scrolls from the Qumran caves, as well as further Greek manuscripts from finds in the Judean Desert, in addition to the translation of the book of the Twelve Minor Prophets found at Naḥal Ḥever from the first century CE. There are further Greek texts, not to mention Jewish authors who—like Philo of Alexandria (15/10 BCE–after 40 CE), Flavius Josephus (37/8–after 100 CE), and others—wrote in Greek only. As their Greek does not differ from the Koinē, the »common language« of the post-classical, Hellenistic, and Roman world, it is hard to classify it as a »Jewish« language or even »Judeo-«Greek. Over the centuries, however, as a consequence of continuous use in the Jewish Diaspora in Asia Minor, on the Aegean islands and the Greek mainland, but also in Egypt and Syria, where Jews under Hellenistic-Byzantine rule went over increasingly to Greek, different forms of Greek emerged for which both Greek and Hebrew scripts were used.105 The degree to which Greek was adopted is documented not only by the thousands of Greek (and Latin) foreign and loan words in rabbinic literature, but also by Greek translations of religious texts, though few only, but including the Bible (»Constantinople Pentateuch« 1546/7). Numerous examples of Judeo-Greek literature are found among the texts from the Cairo Geniza,106 which also testify to the shift in writing, from Greek to Hebrew characters. 103 See for instance Geoffrey Khan, »The North–eastern Neo–Aramaic Dialects,« Journal of Semitic Studies 52 (2007): 1–20; idem, »North-Eastern Neo–Aramaic,« in: Weninger, ed., The Semitic Languages, 708–724; Fassberg, »Judeo–Aramaic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 100–108; Yona Sabar, A Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dictionary: Dialects of Amidya, Dihok, Nerwa and Zakho, Northwestern Iraq (Wiesbaden, 2002); Arthur John Maclean, Grammar of the Dialects of vernacular Syriac: as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, North-West Persia, and the Plain of Mosul: with notices of the vernacular of the Jews of Azerbaijan and of Zakhu near Mosul (Piscataway Township, 2003); Mordechai Yona: millon ‘ibri-arami-kurdi/millon arami-‘ivri-kurdi, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1999). 104 See Raphael Jospe, »›Jafet in Šems Zelten‹ oder was die Talmudweisen und jüdischen Philosophen unter ›Weisheit des Griechischen‹ (ḥokhmat yewanit) verstanden,« Judaica 65 (2009): 281–322. 105 Julia G. Krivoruchko, »Judeo-Greek,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 194–225; Mary C. Connerty, Judeo-Greek: The Language, the Culture (n. p., 2003). 106 Nicholas R. M. De Lange, Greek Jewish Texts from Cairo Genizah (Tübingen, 1996).

5 Judeo-Arabic

89

Ultimately, the use of Greek was limited by external, political factors: in the east and southeast by the spread of Islam and the associated Arabization (see below), in the west of the former Roman Empire by the growing dominance of Latin. The two caused an increasing loss of importance for Greek in the west, causing Jews as well to move over to Romance languages,107 which eventually produced the Judeo-Romance languages (now extant, if at all, mainly only in rudimentary form) such as Judeo-Latin (lo‘az) and Judeo-Italian,108 Judeo-Catalan (qaṭalanit or Catalànic) and Judeo-Aragonese, Ladino (see below, section 6), Shuadit or Judeo-Occitan (Judeo-Provençal),109 Judeo-Portuguese110 and Judeo-French (ṣarfatit) etc. In the Byzantine »heartland«, however, Greek lived on not only as a language spoken by Jews but also as a »Jewish« language named after its speakers, the Romaniotes (Rōmaniōtes, romanyoṭim),111 still today known as Romaniotic or Yavanic (yawan »Greece«). While spoken Romaniotic was also understood, apart from its Hebrew elements,112 in the non-Jewish environment, and still is today; unlike non-Jewish Greek, it is written in its own version of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Ottoman Empire, the Romaniotes, alongside Sephardic, Ashkenazic, oriental or Arabic-speaking and Yemenite Jews, were regarded as one of the five religious movements within Judaism. From the 16th century on, however, with the immigration of exiled Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, with their cultural and economic dominance, the Romaniotes quickly lost significance and finally were reduced to a few—old—Jewish Diaspora communities (Crete, Euboea, Epirus).

5

Judeo-Arabic

Whenever the history of the Jews on the Arabian Peninsula began—according to Yemenite-Jewish legend transmitted by R. Shlomo ‘Adanī (1567–1630) in his commentary on the Mishnah, the origins of this Diaspora go back to the time after the destruction of the first Temple113—it enjoyed an early blossoming between the third and sixth centuries, with the significant conversion of the Ḥimyar, the Kindā,

107 Paul Wexler, Judeo-Romance Linguistics: A Bibliography (New York and London, 1989). 108 Aaron D. Rubin, »Judeo-Italian,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 297–364. 109 Adam Strich and George Jochnowitz, »Judeo-Occitan (Judeo–Provençal),« in: ibid., 517–551. 110 Steven Strolovitch, »Judeo-Portuguese,« in: ibid., 552–592. 111 Nicholas R. M. De Lange, »Hebrews, Greeks or Romans? Jewish Culture and Identity in Byzantium,« in: D. C. Smythe, ed., Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider (Aldershot, 2000), 105–118. 112 Julia G. Krivoruchko, »The Hebrew/Aramaic Component in Romaniote Dialects,« in: World Congress of Jewish Studies 13. http://www.lekket.com/articles/003000104.pdf. 113 mišnayot zekhar ḥanokh, ed. Menahem Vagshal, Zalman Shternlicht, and Yosef Glick (Jerusalem, 2000), I: zera‘im, introduction to melekhet shelomo.

90

Languages of the Jews

and other Arab tribes to Judaism, and with the establishment of a Jewish kingdom in the area of present-day North Yemen and the southwest of Saudi Arabia.114 Some of the finds produced by excavations in North Yemen, as well as grave inscriptions of Yemenite Jews buried in Israel document the presence of Hebrew-Aramaic names (including the use of the Aramaic raḥmana > ar-raḥmān as the divine name) and knowledge of both languages in this area.115 However, the sparse literary witnesses from that time reveal that neither Hebrew nor Aramaic was the language of these Jews, but Arabic. This applies, at any rate, to those Jewish poets of the sixth/ seventh century who are not only known by name, but whose works are at least partially preserved. There is nothing Jewish at all about them, either in language or content, and in no respect do they differ from the other poetry of the time, with its praise for the virtues and heroic deeds of the ancient Arabs.116 The Arabic of the Jews must, however, have differed in some way from the language of their non-Jewish environment. How else are we to explain the fact that in non-Jewish tradition their language was not called Arabic but »Jewish« (al-yahūdīya or alisrā’īlīya)?117 With the expansion of Islam, between the seventh and ninth centuries, most Jewish communities and centers of Jewish culture and science found themselves under Muslim rule. Even if the expansion of Islamic rule was not in itself the same thing as Islamization of the subjected areas, still Arabization was a consequence which prompted a language change among Jews as well. In just a few generations post-Quranic Arabic became the lingua franca in all parts of the Islamic world (apart from the Persian realm).118 By the ninth/tenth century important works of Jewish literature were written in Arabic and key parts of the Jewish tradition, starting with the Hebrew Bible, were translated into the language of

114 Gordon Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam (Columbia, SC, 1988); Reuven Ahroni, Yemenite Jewry—Origins, Culture, and Literature (Bloomington, IN, 1986), 20–48. 115 Joseph Naveh, »Aramaic Tombstones from Zoar,« Tarbiẓ 64 (1995): 477–497 (Heb.); Joseph Naveh, »Seven New Epitaphs from Zoar,« Tarbiẓ 69 (2000): 619–636 (Heb.); Georg Wilhelm Nebe and A. Sima, »Die aramäisch/hebräisch-sabäische Grabinschrift der Lea,« Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 15 (2004): 76–83. 116 See e.g. Joachim W. Hirschberg, Der Diwan des As-Samau`al ibn Adija und die unter seinem Namen überlieferten Gedichtfragmente übersetzt und erläutert (Cracow, 1931); Gershon Shaked, »As-Samau’al bin Adiya’ and the Poetry of the Jews in Ancient Arabia,« Ariel: A Quarterly Review of Arts and Letters in Israel (1976), no. 42. 117 For discussion of the yahūdīya see Leonard C. Epafras, »Judeo-Arabic: Cultural Symbiosis of the Jews in the Islamicate Context,« Insaniyat—Journal of Islam and Humanities 1 (2016): 1–13. 118 Cf. e.g. Ross Brann, »The Arabized Jews,« in: María Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells, eds., The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge, 2000), 435–454; Geoffrey Khan, »Judeo–Arabic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 22–63; Norman A. Stillman, »Judeo–Arabic—History and Linguistic Description,« in: Norman A. Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, 5 vols. (Leiden and Boston, 2010), III, 54v–58b.

5 Judeo-Arabic

91

Islam.119 In this way, an Arabic language came into being120 that differs from contemporary non-Jewish Arabic in that it is not only written in Hebrew-Aramaic square script,121 but has also been supplemented by Hebrew and Aramaic elements (words), albeit adjusted to Arabic morphology (ha-pasuq »Bible verse« becomes al-fasūq with the appropriate plural al-fawāsīq). Conversely, the Arabic of non-Jews also influenced Hebrew and Aramaic. Numerous Arabic terms, especially terms belonging to religious vocabulary or theological/philosophical terminology, were adopted into Hebrew (either as loan words or as loan translations) (mattan tora »gift of Torah« becomes at-tanzīl »the sending-down,« tora becomes kitāb attanzīl »the book of the sending-down,« etc.).122 The view mentioned above, according to which Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic are essentially one language, or at least three dialects of one language, did something else for the development of Judeo-Arabic: Hebrew and Arabic words that display the same consonants were identified with each other and thus acquired additional meanings which enriched the Hebrew and Arabic dictionary. In the same way, numerous Arabisms found their way into Hebrew grammar, especially in its syntax.123 Judeo-Arabic experienced its heyday between the 10th and 14th centuries, first in the Arabic-speaking east of the Islamic world, especially in Iraq, from the tenth/ eleventh century in the Maghreb, Morocco, and al-Andalus, after that in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt, and finally in Yemen. Its Jewish community not only maintained the trilingualism of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, in poetry with their biand trilingual poems,124 but also in exegetical, philosophical, and halakhic literature.125 In Yemenite synagogue services, the Torah was, and still is, read verse-byverse first in Hebrew, then in Aramaic [Targum Onqelos], and finally in Arabic [Saʿad119 Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic. The Scriptures of the »People of the Book« in the Language of Islam (Princeton and Oxford, 2013), esp. 155–174; Ronny Vollandt, Arabic Versions of the Pentateuch. A Comparative Study of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Sources (Leiden and Boston, 2015); cf. Hava Lazarus–Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds—Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton, 1992). 120 Joshua Blau, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic (Jerusalem, ³1999); idem, Studies in Middle Arabic and its Judaeo-Arabic Variety (Jerusalem, 1988); idem., diqduq ha-‘aravit-ha-yehudit šel yeme ha-benayim—A Grammar of Medieval Judaeo-Arabic (Jerusalem, ²1980, reprint 1995). 121 Unlike Arabic-speaking Karaites (and Samaritans), who wrote many of their Arabic works with Arabic characters, probably not least as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Rabbanite Jews. 122 See the dictionaries by Joshua Blau, millon le-ṭeqsṭim ‘araviyim-yehudiyim mime ha-benayim— A Dictionary of Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Texts (Jerusalem, 2006), and Mordechai Aqiva Friedman, millon ha-‘ivrit ha-yehudit mime ha-benayim—A Dictionary of Medieval Judeo-Arabic (Jerusalem, 2016); Moshe Piamenta, Dictionary of Post-Classical Yemeni Arabic, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1990–1991). 123 Rabin, Development of the Syntax, passim. 124 See Wilhelm Bacher, Die hebräische und arabische Poesie der Juden Jemens (Budapest, 1910). 125 Examples are: Netan’el b. Yesha‘ya (14th cent.), sefer me’or ha-afela/nūr aẓ–ẓalām, ed. Yosef b. David Qāfiḥ (Jerusalem, 5717 [1957]), and Shelomo ha-Rofe (Sulaimān aṭ-Ṭabīb) (15th cent.), midraš ha-ḥefeṣ, ed. Me’ir Havazelet, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1990–1992).

92

Languages of the Jews

ja’s Tafsīr].126 This is evident not least from the multiplicity of Yemenite manuscripts which contain Judeo-Arabic works especially from al-Andalus, which elsewhere were lost,127 unless they were previously translated into Hebrew. These centuries were not only the heyday of the Judeo-Arabic language but, inseparably linked to the latter, the heyday of Jewish science. From philosophy of religion (kalām) through the natural sciences and medicine to poetry,128 philology and lexicography,129 along with the translations of the Hebrew Bible and large parts of Rabbanite literature like the Mishnah and Talmud were rendered into the language of Islam. In association with this, the relevant Judeo-Arabic exegetical literature from a Karaite and Rabbanite provenience has become a focus of research in recent decades. A reservoir of Judeo-Arabic literature is provided by the Cairo Geniza. The Mongol conquests in the 13th century and the end of the Abbasid caliphate marked the beginning of the decline of Arabic-Islamic culture. Lamented already by Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), the demise was continued in the end of al-Andalus and also affected the Arabic-speaking Jewish community.130 The swan-song of the Judeo-Arabic literature of al-Andalus was the works of Saʿadja ibn Danān (1410/ 20–ca. 1505), in which the trilingualism characteristic of al-Andalus blossomed for the last time.131 The end of medieval globalization and the increasing fragmentation of the Arabic-Islamic world did not mean that the Judeo-Arabic language and culture disappeared, but they did mean a particularization of Judeo-Arabic language and culture: in place of just one lingua franca came local versions, city and regional dialects.132 The linguistic form in each case was influenced by linguistic symbiosis with languages of the environment.

126 And also printed: sefer keter tora—tāğ, ed. Shalom b. Yosef ‘Iraqi Katz and Avraham b. Ḥayyim Naddāf, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 5654[1894] etc.). 127 Like the Divan of Yiṣḥaq Ibn Ḫalfūn (ca. 960–1030) of Córdoba, for instance, which survived only thanks to Yemenite copies: Aharon Mirski, ed., šire yiṣḥaq ḫalfūn (Jerusalem, 5721 [1961]). 128 Arie Schippers, Spanish-Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition: Arabic Themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry (Leiden, 1994); Yosef Tobi, Proximity and Distance: Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Poetry (Leiden, 2004). 129 The first relevant literary history was written by Moses (Abū Hārun) b. Ya‘aqov Ibn Ezra (ca. 1055–ca. 1135), kitab al-muḥaḍara wal-muḏākara—Liber Discussionis et Commemorationis, ed. Abraham S. Halkin (Jerusalem, 1975); Moritz Steinschneider: Die arabische Literatur der Juden (Frankfurt am Main 1902; reprint Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 1986), Jonathan Decter, Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe (Bloomington, IN, 2007). 130 Shlomo Dov Goitein, Jews and Arabs—Their Contacts through the Ages (New York, 1955; reprint 1964 etc.). 131 See e.g. Se‘adyah Ibn Danān, aḍ-ḍarūrī fī l-luġa al-ʻibranīya/sefer ha-šorašim, introducción, edición e índices por Milagros Jiménez Sánchez (Granada, 1996). 132 David Cohen, »Judaeo-Arabic Dialects,« in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam, IV (Leiden, 21978), 209–302.

93

6 Ladino

A Maghrebian, North African, Yemenite, Damascene, Aleppine, Baghdadian, etc. Judeo-Arabic came into being, each with its own grammar, morphology, syntax, and lexicography,133 not to mention local and regional languages such as the Berber languages in the Maghreb, which were adopted by Jews and developed into specific Judeo-Berber languages.134 Common to all these languages is the fact that they were not only spoken vernacular languages but also literary languages and—in some cases—have survived to the present day. Yet little has been preserved of the Judeo-Arabic literature that came into being from North Africa, across the Near and Middle East, and as far as Yemen.135 The end of the Jewish Diaspora in the Arabic-Islamic world around the middle of the 20th century also heralded the beginning of the end of Judeo-Arabic as a spoken vernacular, which today—apart from the few remaining Jewish communities in the Arab world—has an »afterlife« only as a language for occasional literary use,136 but now mainly as an object of study in academic linguistics.

6

Ladino

Judezmo (ǧudezmo)—one of the Judeo-Romance languages (see above, p. 74 and 89) and the language of Sephardic Jews, mainly called Ladino or Jewish Spanish137— emerged on the Iberian Peninsula from the interaction between Jews and their non-Jewish contemporaries (Christians) speaking Ibero-Romance languages. Documentation of its origins goes back to the eighth/ninth century. That this language of Jews was seen by their non-Jewish contemporaries as their own Jewish language, as is evident from various literary witnesses, is due not only to the circumstance that it was written in Hebrew-Aramaic square script or its cursives, but it also has its basis in its special »mixture,« which besides Hebrew and Aramaic components has numerous Judeo-Arabic additions.138 Ladino also has special grammatical, mor-

133 See the bibliographic information in Khan, »Judeo-Arabic,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 54–63. 134 Joseph Chetrit, »Jewish Berber,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 118–129; Joseph Chetrit, »Judeo-Berber,« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 58b–60b. 135 Robert Attal and Yosef Tobi, yehude ha-mizraḥ u-ṣefon afriqa—bibliografya (Jerusalem, 1980). 136 Yosef Tobi, »Literature, Judeo-Arabic,« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 271b–278a; Sasson Somekh, »Arabic Literature (Modern), Jewish Writers,« in: ibid., I, 240a–244b. 137 David M. Bunis, »Judezmo (Ladino),« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 366–450 (bibliography, 429–450); Yaakov Bentolila, »Judeo-Spanish,« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 69b–76b; Winfried Busse, La lengua de los sefardíes: tres contribuciones a su historia (Sefardische Forschungen, 2; Tübingen, 2014). 138 See the lexicographic examples in Bunis, »Judezmo (Ladino),« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 404–412.

94

Languages of the Jews

phological, and syntactic features.139 David Bunis summarizes these special features as: a primarily Jewish religious and cultural frame of reference, reflected in the use, until recent times, of a Hebrew-letter orthography; the incorporation of Hebrew-Aramaisms, especially to denote concepts of special cultural or emotive significance; a sacred-text translation language maximally mirroring the syntax of the original Hebrew and Aramaic source texts; the selective, deep-level incorporation—but also occasional conscious rejection—of elements from the neighboring cultures; and the amalgamation of the total Jewish linguistic configuration into a unique new entity, the total constellation of whose structural features tends to be shared by all users of the Jewish linguistic synthesis, but absent in the historical, regional, and stylistic correlates used by non-Jews.140

In line with the history of Sephardic Jews, the coming into being of their language is generally structured in three sections. The first, its formative period, comprises the development of the language from its beginnings on the Iberian Peninsula and the regional and local versions that arose, up to the end of the 15th century, in contact with the local languages spoken at the time (español, castellano etc.). The second relates to two or three centuries following the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula (late 15th/early 16th cent.), in which Ladino, separated from its original linguistic context, experienced certain changes which—in line with the two key refuge regions of the (early) Sephardic Diaspora in the Maghreb and in the Ottoman Empire— led to the emergence of two different linguistic forms, which are generally described as Middle-Ladino/Ḥaketía. Ḥaketía, apparently derived from the Arabic ḥikāya (»story, narrative«), designates the Maghrebian form of Ladino, as developed in the Maghrebian-Arabic dialects and Berber languages spoken in the Maghreb (Morocco).141 Meanwhile, grouped under the headings Middle and modern Ladino are the forms of Ladino that gained shape among the Sephardic Jews who found shelter in the Ottoman Empire, first in cities such as Izmir and Istanbul, Thessaloniki142 and Sarajevo,143 and later on also in other cities in the Balkans such as Plovdiv, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, and other places which likewise became centers of Sephardic culture and science.144 Key works

139 On this cf. Bunis, »Judezmo (Ladino),« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 377–404; further, Mark A. Gabinskij, Die sefardische Sprache, trans. Heinrich Kohring, rev. Winfried Busse and Heinrich Kohring (Sefardische Forschungen, 1; Tübingen, 2011). 140 Bunis, »Judezmo (Ladino),« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 369–370. 141 Bentolila, »Judeo-Spanish,« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 73b–75b. 142 Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, Die Geschichte der sephardischen Juden. Von Toledo bis Saloniki, trans. L. Herschhorn (Bochum, 2005). 143 Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, The Jews of the Balkans. The Judeo–Spanish community, 15th to 20th centuries (Jewish Society and Culture; Oxford, 1995); Eli Tauber, »Historiografija o jevrejima u Bosni i Hercegovini,« Pregled 52/2 (2011): 205–222. 144 Armin Hetzer, Sephardisch: Einführung in die Umgangssprache der südosteuropäischen Juden (Wiesbaden, 2001); Michael Studemund-Halévy, Christian Liebl, and Ivana Vučina Simović, eds., Sefarad an der Donau. Lengua y literatura de los sefardíes en tierras de los Habsburgo (Barcelona, 2013).

95

7 Yiddish

on second- and third-phase Ladino are owed to Kalmi Baruh (1896–1945), who since his dissertation Der Lautstand des Judenspanischen in Bosnien (Vienna 1923) rendered outstanding research, but is now largely forgotten and deserves to be remembered.145 A further contribution to the development and spread of the language and literature of the Sephardic Jews (including in Ḥaketía) was the founding of Jewish printing houses in cities in the Ottoman Empire, but also in Italy (in Livorno146), in which between the 17th and 19th centuries not only innumerable Judeo-Arabic but also Ladino printings appeared.147 In a short time a library of religious works came into being, beginning with the translation of the Torah into Ladino (Istanbul, 1547), then pertinent rabbinic exegetical, halakhic and liturgical works.148 From the 19th century on increasingly »worldly« literature, poetry, and drama,149 and finally from the mid-19th century all manner of newspapers and magazines were published.150 A special chapter in the history of Ladino is the development of its phonetics and orthography, both of which experienced various changes until, from the late 19th/early 20th century, the Hebrew-Aramaic square script increasingly took a back seat, being replaced by Latin, and in the Cyrillic-writing context (Bulgaria, Serbia) by Cyrillic characters. Ladino is now generally written in Latin characters, although there is no discernible standardized transliteration for it, and the transliteration essentially follows the phonetic system and orthography of the languages of the environment.151

7

Yiddish

7.1

The Origins of Yiddish

Ashkenazic-Jewish cultural history divides medieval Europe into eight cultural and linguistic regions: Yovon and Tugermo (Greece and the Greek-speaking areas of Asia Minor, South Italy and Sicily); Loeyz or La‘az (Romance-speaking areas of Italy and

145 Baruh Kalmi, Izabrana djela (Sarajevo, 1972); idem, Selected Works on Sephardic and Other Jewish Topics, 2 vols. (Jerusalem 2005–2007). Baruh died in 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 146 Matthias Lehmann, »Livorno (Leghorn),« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 278a–280a. 147 Abraham Yaari, rešimat sifre ladino ha-nimṣa’im be-vet ha-sefarim ha-le’ummi we-ha-universiṭa’i (Jerusalem, 1934); idem, ha-defus ha-‘ivri be-qušṭa (Jerusalem, 1967). 148 Bunis, »Judezmo (Ladino),« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 374–376; Olga Borovaya and Matthias Lehmann, »Judeo-Spanish Literature,« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 76a–80b. 149 Muhamed Nezirović, Jevrejsko-španjolska književnost (Sarajevo, 1992). 150 Ḥaim Kamhi, »Jevrejska publicistika u Bosni i Hercegovini,« in: Spomenica 400 godina od dolaska Jevreja u BiH (Sarajevo, Odbor za proslavu 400-godišnjice, 1966), 167–173. 151 Bunis, »Judezmo (Ladino),« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 377–385.

96

Languages of the Jews

southeastern France); Sefarad (Iberian Peninsula, Occitania [Provence] and bordering areas to the west, north of the Pyrenees as far as the Atlantic); Tsorfas (Gaul [central, western, and northern France]); and Ashkenaz (German-speaking areas) with the border areas in-between, Loter (Alsace and Lorraine) in the west and Lusatya (Sorbian-Bohemian area) in the east; as well as Hogor (land of the Magyars) and Knaan (Slavic-speaking areas in Central and Eastern Europe).152 Within this cultural landscape, between the ninth and the eleventh century there developed the language which, since the eleventh century is called loshn ashkenaz (language of Ashkenaz), since the 13th/14th century yidish-taytsh (Jewish German) or for short taytsh (Deutsch, German), and since the 17th/18th century, especially in the Central and Eastern Europe, is called yidish (idish).153 There is still competition for the original locus of Yiddish between Lorraine-Rhineland, the Danube area, and the Sorbian-Bohemian region.154 There was probably not only one place of origin. But there is much to be said for the idea that Jewish-German, which emanated from various medieval city dialects of the southern and western German realm, very quickly became the vernacular of Jews in Ashkenaz and thus the strongest of the three pillars on which Ashkenazic trilingualism rested: of (spoken) Jewish German, and (studied and sometimes written) Hebrew and Aramaic.155 Thanks to Jewish German, in everyday life Jews—despite the contrast due to their religious difference—were not separated from their Christian environment, but were able to interact: after all, they all spoke the same language. For unlike the later Yiddish this Jewish-German (yidish-taytsh) as a spoken language did not differ from the German spoken at the time.156 Texts such as »Meister Hildebrand,« »Dukus Horant, auch Dietrich von Bern«157 and others show that this remained so until well into the 16th century.158 The only difference from contemporary German was the alphabet used for the writing of Jewish-German: Hebrew-Aramaic square script—as the Jews could not read Latin, Gothic, and Cyrillic characters, which they called gálkhes (»the tonsured ones,« i.e. priests). Even Moses Mendelsohn (1729–1786) had to write his German translation of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew letters so that Jews could read it and use it as an aid to learning German.

152 See Dovid Katz, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish (New York, 2004; ²2007), 19–24. 153 The literature on Yiddish is boundless; see Lily Kahn, »Yiddish,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 641–747 (bibliography, 716–747); Joshua A. Fishman, ed., Never Say Die: A Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters (in Yiddish and English) (The Hague, 1981). 154 Overview of the hypotheses in Kahn, »Yiddish,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 644–647. 155 See Katz, Words on Fire, 45–77. 156 Bettina Simon, »Judendeutsch und Jiddisch,« in: Alfred Ebenbauer and Klaus Zatloukal, eds., Die Juden in ihrer mittelalterlichen Umwelt (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar, 1991), 251–260. 157 Dukus Horant, ed. Peter F. Ganz, Frederick Norman, and W. Schwarz; with an excursus by Salomo A. Birnbaum (Altdeutsche Textbibliothek, suppl. vol. 2; Tübingen, 1964). 158 Lajb Fuks, ed., The Oldest Known Literary Documents of Yiddish Literature (Leiden, 1957).

97

7 Yiddish

At a very early stage, the Hebrew alphabet was adjusted to the phonetic requirements of German; this was facilitated (a) by the fact that in Ashkenazic Hebrew specifically Semitic consonants (laryngeals/gutturals, emphatic s and t sounds) had lost their meaning and so could be used elsewhere, and (b) the doubled pronunciation of some consonants (here b/v, k/kh, and p/f) adopted with Masoretic grammar into Hebrew could replace phonemes which are present in the German but not the Hebrew alphabet: Thus aleph is used for the vowels a and o, ‘ayin for the vowel e, yod for i and e, double-yod for the diphthongs ey and ay, waw for the vowels u and o, double-waw for the sound w, and waw-yod for the diphthongs oy and au; further bet for b vs. accented bet (ḇ) for v, pe for p vs. accented pe for f, and kaf (and qof) for k vs. accented kaf for kh (ḥet [ḥ or kh] only in Hebrew loan words), taw (t, at the end of a syllable or after an open syllable) for s, and ṭet (ṭ) for t.159

7.2

A Language with many Dialects

Max Weinreich (1894–1969),160 the »father of Yiddish philology,« coined the oftcited dictum, a shprakh iz a dialekṭ miṭ an armey un floṭ—»A language is a dialect with an army and a fleet«—to characterize the relationship between language and its subordinate dialects in Yiddish. It is one language, but it lives in its many dialects. Alongside its intensive vernacular and literary use the wide dissemination of Jewish-German and the later Yiddish led to internal linguistic differentiations and to the emergence of numerous geographically and chronologically distinguishable forms in grammar and lexicography and especially in its various local phonetics.161 Yiddish was always a »land with many provinces,« without ever forming a standardized »high« language.162 Efforts to standardize Yiddish in grammar, lexicography, orthography, and phonetics go back only to the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut

159 Katz, Words on Fire, 79–81; Kahn, »Yiddish,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 649. 160 Paul Glasser, »Max Weinreich,« in: David Gershon Hundert et al., eds., The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 vols. (New Haven and London, 2008), II, pp. 2014–2016. 161 Max Weinreich, Studien zur Geschichte und dialektischen Gliederung der jiddischen Sprache (Marburg, 1923; new ed., ed. Jerold C. Frakes, Atlanta, 1993); Alexander Beider, The Origins of Yiddish Dialects (New York, 2015); cf. the online Yiddish Dialect Dictionary: https:// yiddishdialectdictionary.com. 162 Marvin Herzog, Vera Baviskar, Ulrike Kiefer, Robert Neumann, Wolfgang Putschke, Andrew Sunshine, and Uriel Weinreich, eds., The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, I: Historical and Theoretical Foundations (Tübingen, 1992), II: Research Tools (Tübingen, 1995), III: The Eastern Yiddish—Western Yiddish Continuum (Tübingen, 2000); vols. IV–XI in preparation. Max Weinreich, geshikhṭe fun der yidisher shprakh: bagrifn, faktn, meṭodn, 4 vols. (New York, 1973) = History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble and Joshua A. Fishman, and ed. Paul Glasser, 4 vols. (Chicago and New Haven, 1980–2008).

98

Languages of the Jews

(YIVO) founded in Vilnius163 in 1925. However, these efforts—associated in particular with Max Weinreich and his son Uriel Weinreich (1926–1967)—came to naught because of the destruction of the eastern Jewish world and the murder of its inhabitants during the Second World War. A comprehensive dictionary of the Yiddish language on the model of the Grimm dictionary of German did not get beyond the first three volumes (letters aleph and bet, first half). YIVO Yiddish lives on only in the academic world, largely in the form of the manual164 written by Uriel Weinreich and his dictionary.165

7.3

From Jewish-German to Yiddish

Yiddish is structured chronologically as Early Yiddish (up to mid-13th cent.), Old Yiddish (mid-13th cent. to the end of the 15th cent.), Middle Yiddish (mid-14th/15th cent. to the mid-17th cent.), Early New Yiddish (mid-17th to the end of the 18th cent.), and Modern Yiddish (19th cent. to the present).166 Geographically, two large language areas are distinguished: Western and Eastern Yiddish. Between them lie Prussian Yiddish in the north and »Franconian-Bohemian« Yiddish in the south. Both Western and Eastern Yiddish are in turn divided into three language provinces (with dozens of regional and local dialects):167 To Western Yiddish belong northwestern or »Dutch-North German« Yiddish, CentralWestern or »German« Yiddish and Southwestern, Alemannic or »Alsatian-SwissSouth German« Yiddish. Eastern Yiddish is represented by northeastern or »Lithuanian« Yiddish, central-eastern or »Polish-Hungarian« Yiddish, and southeastern or »Ukrainian« Yiddish. Such is the irony of history: The language boundary between Lithuanian and Polish Yiddish is marked—as was the linguistic boundary between Ephraimites and Gileadites in biblical times (Judg 12:5–6)—by the different pronunciation of the shin: Thus the Lithuanian Jews (Litvakes) also pronounced shin not as sh, but as s, which is why they are called those who redn sabesdik, who »say Sabbes [instead of Shabbes]«.168 There is a further difference in the pronunciation of the diphthongized long ō, which has the sound ey instead of oy. The Litvakes therefore call Polish Jews not poylishe, but peylishe yidn, and they say teyre for toyre (Torah). Western Yiddish has remained essentially within the German-speaking context and the surrounding languages of this neighborhood show clear traces of influence

163 Cecile Esther Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (Cambridge, MA, 2014). 164 Uriel Weinreich, College Yiddish: An Introduction to the Yiddish Language and to Jewish Life and Culture (New York, 1949; 61999). 165 idem, modern english-yidish/yidish-english werṭerbukh—Modern English-Yiddish English-Yiddish Dictionary (New York, 1968; ²1977; new ed., 1990). 166 Kahn, »Yiddish,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 647–654. 167 Katz, Words on Fire, 140–154. 168 ibid., 145.

7 Yiddish

99

on its further development. Since the 18th century (not least in the course of incipient emancipation and assimilation) even a stronger realignment of Yiddish with German is observable169 and traditional Yiddish words are being replaced by »new« German words (moyl becomes mund, German »Mund« etc.). Eastern Yiddish, however, is developing in a different direction. In consequence of the expulsion of Jews from western Europe since the 14th/ th 15 century and their forced migration primarily to Central and Eastern Europe (they were received in the Polish-Lithuanian Aristocratic Republic, and here especially in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania), Yiddish was transferred into an essentially Slavic-speaking environment. Here, recognizably from the 17th/18th century, it developed into a Yiddish that was detached from Western Yiddish, running parallel to the development of German. On the one hand it was closer to the original Jewish-German (yidish-taytsh), but on the other it diverged increasingly from it, becoming a separate language independent of German, displaying alongside Hebrew and Aramaic words,170 increasingly Slavic elements in lexicography as well as in morphology and syntax. »The end of the 18th century marks the dawn of Eastern Yiddish as a distinct literary language differing from the earlier Western-based standard and reflecting the Slavic lexical component,« writes Lily Kahn.171 Loshn ashkenaz and yidish-taytsh became mame-loshn, the mother tongue of the Ostjuden (East European Jews). Yiddish retained its shape as a »German« language best in the non-Slavic Lithuanian (and Hungarian) context. Apart from the above-mentioned pronunciation of the diphthongized long ō (ey instead of oy), litvish, Lithuanian Yiddish, is closer than Polish or Ukrainian Yiddish to Jewish-German not only in its phonetics but also in vocabulary. Yiddish in all its facets, however, is not only the everyday language and vernacular of Ashkenazic Jews, but equally its literary language. Yiddish book printing began in both the west and the east, which in due course in both areas produced an entire Yiddish library.172 In the course of the Haskala, the Enlightenment among the Jews of the East, in the 19th century, Yiddish—initially pejoratively called Jargon by the Maskilim (Enlighteners), before they recognized it as the medium for

169 Katz, Words on Fire, 175–223. 170 See the dictionary of H. Golomb, millim bilsheyni: hebreish-idishes werter-bukh, fun hebreishe werter, oysdrike un toyre-werter, welkhe weren benutst in idisher geshprekh un in ihr literatur (Vilnius, 1910). 171 Kahn, »Yiddish,« in: Kahn and Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages, 651; see Michał Gajek, »Wpływy polskie w jidysz według History of the Yiddish Language Maxa Weinreicha—przegląd i próby weryfikacji,« Studia z Filologii Polskiej i Słowiańskiej 51 (2016): 88–118. 172 See e.g. Jean Baumgarten, »The Printing of Yiddish Books in Frankfurt-on-the-Main (17th and 18th Centuries)/L’impression de livres yiddish à Frankfort aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,« Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem 20 (2009): 1–24; Clemens P. Sidorko, Basel und der jiddische Buchdruck (1557–1612). Kulturexport in der Frühen Neuzeit (Schriften der Universitätsbibliothek Basel, 8; Basel, 2014);

100

Languages of the Jews

conveying their ideas to the people—experienced a heyday as both vernacular and literary language. In the 19th century it was to penetrate all areas of culture and science, as is evident from the innumerable translations of works of world literature, philosophy, and science from various European languages into Yiddish.173 There were a growing number of works originally written in Yiddish (poetry, prose, and drama), as well as philosophical, scientific, sociological, and medical treatises, and finally the Yiddish press, flourishing from the second half of the 19th century.174 All this led to Yiddish being accepted as the national language of Ashkenazic Jews, at least in Eastern Europe, the recognition of which as such was one of the demands of the konferents for der yidisher shprakh175—to the annoyance of those who saw a revitalized Hebrew as the national language of the Jews.176 The same thing was repeated two decades later: The YIVO conference of 1929,177 devoted to the standardization of Yiddish, was followed in 1931 by a second Berlin Conference for Hebrew.178 Yiddish attained its climax as literary and especially scientific language in the 1920s and 30s179 with the above-mentioned YIVO in Vilnius (with its branches in Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires), along with its publications.180

173 To date, however, there is no comprehensive survey of translations into Yiddish. 174 Stefan Schreiner, »Das Erbe der Litwaks,« in: J. C. de Vos and Folker Siegert, eds., Interesse am Judentum. Die Franz-Delitzsch-Vorlesungen 1989–2008 (Münsteraner Judaistische Studien— Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur christlich–jüdischen Begegnung, 23; Münster and Berlin 2008), 287–323. Israel Zinberg (Yisroel Tsinberg), di geshikhte fun der literatur bay yidn, 8 vols. (Vilnius, 1929–1937; Buenos Aires, ²1964), IV–VIII; English: A History of Jewish Literature, trans. Bernard Martin, 12 vols. (New York, 1972–1978), VI–XII; Zalmen Reyzen, leksikon fun der yidisher literatur, prese un filologye, 4 vols. (Vilnius, 1926–1929); leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, 8 vols. (New York, 1956–1963); Zalmen Zylbercweig and Jacob Mestel, leksikon fun yidishn teater, 6 vols. (New York, 1931); Berl Kagan, leksikon fun yidish–shraybers: mit toysfes un tikkunim tsum leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literaturund 5,800 psewdonimen (New York, 1986), English online at https://library.osu.edu/projects/ hebrew-lexicon/Yiddish-Leksikon-yid.htm. 175 Yidisher visnshafṭlekher insṭiṭuṭ—Filologishe seḳtsye, ed., di ershte yidishe shprakh-konferents: barikhtn, opklangen und dokumentn fun der tshernowitser konferents 1908 (Vilnius, 1931) Wolf Moskovich, ed., Yiddish—a Jewish National Language at 100 (Jews and Slavs, 22; Jerusalem and Kiev, 2010). 176 Martin Buber, »Die hebräische Sprache und der Kongreß für hebräische Sprache,« in: Martin Buber, Werke III, 211–218; Joshua Fishman, »The Hebraist Response to the Tshernovits Conference,« in: Alan Kaye, ed., Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1991), I, 437–448; Barbara Schäfer, »Hebräisch im zionistischen Berlin,« in: Michael Brenner, ed., Jüdische Sprachen in deutscher Umwelt. Hebräisch und Jiddisch von der Aufklärung bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2002), 68–75 (70–72). 177 See the conference volume: der aynhaytlekher yidisher oysleg: materialn un proyektn tsu der ortografisher konferents fun yiwo, ershte zamlung (Vilnius, 1930) 178 Michael Brenner, Jüdische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (Munich, 2000), 227–229. 179 Katz, Words on Fire, 257–300. 180 See the impressive Bibliography of the Publications of the Yiddish Scientific Institute—YIVO, I: 1925–1941; II: 1942–1950 (New York, 1943–1955).

101

7 Yiddish

Yiddish underwent a special development in the Soviet Union. From the late 1920s, while Hebrew was suppressed as the language of the Zionists, Yiddish enjoyed not only tolerance as the language of the »proletarian Jewish masses« but—despite the persecution and murder of numerous representatives of Yiddish literature in the 1930s and in the early 1950s181—it even enjoyed a certain degree of promotion.182 In the White Russian Soviet Republic, Yiddish (alongside Russian, White Russian, and Polish) was even for a while a fourth official language included on state coats of arms. The price of promotion, however, as that in spelling and phonetics, though not in vocabulary, Soviet Yiddish was purged of all Hebrew-Aramaic elements, and all Hebrew-Aramaic words were to be written as pronounced: Mošeh became Moyshe (mem-waw-yod-shin-‘ayin) etc.183 The prime example of this Yiddish is the periodical Sovetish heymland, which appeared in Moscow from 1961 to 1991, initially every two months and from 1965 monthly, and is the post-Stalinist continuation of the periodicals Sovetish and Heymland, which in turn had a second life in Di yidishe gas (published in Moscow from 1993 to 1999).

7.4

The Yiddish of the Pious

Yiddish remains the vernacular of the Ḥasidim and Ḥaredim, who—for instance in Brooklyn, Antwerp, and Jerusalem—shy away from using Hebrew in everyday life and have maintained a form of Yiddish as their colloquial language. However, especially in the context of Israeli Hebrew, it increasingly displays Hebraisms, and because of its limitation to the vocabulary needed in everyday life, it is moving further and further away from the Yiddish as proposed and desired by the founding generation of YIVO.184 In contrast, YIVO Yiddish »lives on« today essentially as a—increasingly—taught and studied academic subject at universities in many parts of the world. Little researched so far, finally, is the Yiddish brought to East Asia by Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe,185 in particular from the late 19th century onwards (Harbin and Shanghai may be mentioned here), where, in the Chinese and later also the Japanese context they not only spoke it but also cultivated it as a literary language.186

181 See Stefan Schreiner, »12. August 1952—der Mord an den sowjet-jiddischen Dichtern und seine Vorgeschichte,« Orientierung 57 (1993): 89a–93b. 182 Katz, Words on Fire, 300–306; Gennady Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War (Legenda Studies in Yiddish, 7; London, 2008). 183 See the rules for Yiddish orthography published by the Institut Evrej’skoj Proletars’koj kul’tury bei der Akademija nauk Ukraïns’koj RSR: di sowetishe yidishe ortografye klalim funem nayem yidishn oysleg (Kharkov and Kiev, 1932); on this topic: Gennady Estraikh, Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development (Oxford, 1999). 184 Katz, Words on Fire, 246–255, 375–394. 185 Jonathan Goldstein, ed., The Jews of China, I: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Armonk, NY and London, 1999). 186 See, provisionally, Chang Shoou–Huey, »China und Jiddisch. Jiddische Kultur in China, chinesische Literatur auf Jiddisch,« in: Roman Malek, ed., Jews in China. From Kaifeng to Shanghai (Monumenta Serica, 46; Sankt Augustin and Nettetal, 2000), 479–498.

102

8

Languages of the Jews

Judeo-Persian

Although we can do no more than touch upon it here, it would be inappropriate to omit Judeo-Persian from a survey of the languages of the Jews.187 Judeo-Persian stands as a collective term for a number of Judeo-Persian language forms and dialects,188 produced as spoken and written languages from the oldest still continuing Jewish Diaspora189 and documented in an absolute wealth of literature,190 the oldest witnesses to which go back to the time of the Achaemenids (6th to 4th cent. BCE). Over time, the Judeo-Persian-speaking realm stretched from the east of Turkey and Iraq191 across Iran, Azerbaijan and Daghestan (Caucasus),192 Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Bukhara, Samarkand), Afghanistan193 and Tajikistan,194 as far as

187 The Handbook of Jewish Languages has no article on Judeo-Persian (sic!). 188 Gilbert Lazard, »La dialectologie du judéo-persan,« Studies of Bibliography and Booklore 8 (1968): 77–98; Thamar E. Gindin, »Judeo-Persian Language,« in: Ehsan Yarshater, ed., Encyclopædia Iranica, I–XVI (London and New York, 1985–2013; online New York, 1996–; from vol. XVII only online at https://www.iranicaonline.org), XV, 132–139: eadem, »Judeo-Persian Language,« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 62a–64b; further, Roubène Abrahamian, Dialectologie iranienne: dialectes des Israélites de Hamadan et d’Ispahan et dialecte de Baba Tahir (Paris, 1936). 189 Habib Levy, Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran—the Outset of the Diaspora, ed. Hooshang Ebrami, trans. George W. Maschke (Costa Mesa, CA, 1999); Houman Sarshar, Mayer I. Gruber, Jacob Neusner, Vera Basch Moreen, Daniel Tsadik, Mehrdad Amanat, and Orly R. Rahimiyan: »Judeo-Persian Communities of Iran,« in: Yarshater, ed., Encyclopædia Iranica, XV, 89–132 (with extensive bibliography). 190 Amnon Netzer, »Judeo-Persian Literature,« in: Yarshater, ed., Encyclopædia Iranica, XV, 139–156 (with extensive bibliography); Thamar E. Gindin and Vera B. Moreen, »JudeoPersian Literature,« in: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 64b–69b; Vera Basch Moreen, In Queen Esther’s Garden: an Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature, translated and with an introduction and notes (Yale Judaica series, 30; New Haven 2000). 191 With the exception of the Jews of Kurdistan, who speak Aramaic dialects (see n. 103). 192 Whether Judeo-Tat (Juhūrī or Judeo-Tātī) spoken by the Mountain Jews in the Caucasus can be counted among the Iranian languages is, however, a matter of dispute among philologists; see Dan D. Y. Shapira, »Juhūrī (Judeo-Tat or Judeo-Tātī),« in North-eastern Neo-Aramaic North-eastern Neo-Aramaic: Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, III, 80b–81b. 193 Gherardo Gnoli, Le iscrizioni giudeo-persiane del Gūr (Afghanistan) (Serie Orientale Roma, 30; Rome, 1964); Eugen Ludwig Rapp, Die jüdisch-persisch-hebräischen Inschriften aus Afghanistan (Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft; supplement G; Munich, 1965). 194 Il’ya S. Dvorkin, ed., Prošloe u nastojaščee. Evrei v Srednej Asii [English subtitle: Central Asia Jews in Past and Present] (Trudy po iudaike: istorija ni etnografija/Transactions on Jewish Studies: History and Ethnography, 4; St Petersburg, 1995), also containing a detailed bibliography by Mikhail Nosonovskij on the history, languages, and literatures of the Buckharan Jews (270–289).

8 Judeo-Persian

103

Kaifeng in China, whose Jewish community is of Persian origin.195 In keeping with the size of the language area, the dialects spoken there are correspondingly numerous, as also are the characters used to write them. To the extent that we have written documentation, the Hebrew alphabet was used but also sometimes the Arabic-Persian alphabet and in the 20th century even the Latin alphabet. In areas that were part of the Soviet Union from 1924, the Cyrillic alphabet was used. Thus, the Bukharan Jews196 and the Mountain Jews in the Caucasus197 used Hebrew characters up to 1928, and after that Latin and then Cyrillic characters. The history and development of Judeo-Persian (and its dialects) are usually divided into periods, the turning-points are largely determined by the history of this language area: Old/Middle Judeo-Persian, early (8th–12th cent.), »Classical« (14th–17th cent.), and modern Judeo-Persian. Even if Jewish language and culture experienced its first blossoming in the Parthian and Sasanian Empire in which the Talmud Bavli arose,198 true Judeo-Persian developed parallel to Middle and even more neo-Persian, to which it is especially close.199 So too, Judeo-Persian language and literature, grammar and lexicography enjoyed its first blossoming between the 9th and the 13th century, in which the East Iranian cultural realm formed the Central Asian cultural oasis.200 A few years ago caves came to light in which manuscripts in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian were found, which are referred to by the name Afghan Geniza.201 From these caves also comes the oldest known Siddur (prayerbook), written in 820.202

195 Fook–Kong Wong and Dalia Yasharpour, The Haggadah of the Kaifeng Jews of China (The Brill Reference Library of Judaism, 32; Leiden and Boston, 2011); Tiberiu Weisz, The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions: The Legacy of the Jewish Community in Ancient China (New York, 2006); Extensive bibliography on the Jews of Kaifeng: Donald Daniel Leslie, Jews and Judaism in Traditional China. A Comprehensive Bibliography (Monumenta Serica, 44; Sankt Augustin and Nettetal, 1998). 196 Lutz Rzehak, »The Linguistic Challenge: Bukharan Jews and Soviet Language Policy,« in: Ingeborg Baldauf, Moshe Gammer, and Thomas Loy, eds., Bukharan Jews in the 20th Century. History, Experience and Narration (Iran—Turan, 9; Wiesbaden, 2008), 37–55. 197 Mordechai Altschuler, The Jews of the Eastern Caucasus (Jerusalem, 1990). 198 Jes P. Asmussen, Studies in Judeo-Persian literature (Studia Post–Biblica, 24; Leiden, 1973); idem, Jewish–Persian Texts: introduction, selection, and glossary (Wiesbaden, 1968). 199 Ludwig Paul, A Grammar of Early Judaeo–Persian (Wiesbaden, 2013); idem, ed., Persian Origins—Early Judaeo–Persian and the Emergence of New Persian: collected papers of the symposium Göttingen 1999 (Iranica, 6; Wiesbaden, 2003). 200 Which S. Frederick Starr was the first to recall a few years ago: Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s golden age from the Arab conquest to Tamerlane (Princeton, NJ, 2013). 201 Mario Ledwith, »Collection of ancient Hebrew manuscripts discovered in Afghanistan provide evidence Jewish people lived in country 1,000 years ago,« The Daily Mail January 3, 2013, (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2256870/Hebrew-documents-Talibanstronghold-reveal-evidence-Jewish-communities-living-Afghanistan-1000-years-ago.html) 202 Victoria Woollaston, »The world’s oldest Jewish prayer book? Hebrew text predates earliest known copy of the Torah by four Centuries,« The Daily Mail October 2, 2013. The Siddur can now be seen in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem (www.medievalists.net/ 2014/09/oldest-known-jewish-prayer-book-goes-display/).

104

Languages of the Jews

The cultural upheaval which began with the Mongol expansion in the 14th century did not leave Judeo-Persian unaffected. Now called »Classical« Judeo-Persian,203 which increasingly distinguished from its predecessors not only by Hebrew-Aramaic and occasionally Arabic elements, but also in its literature, mainly comprising works of biblical exegesis,204 revisions and translations of rabbinic texts,205 revisions and borrowings based on biblical material as well as translations of Muslim poetry etc. The emigration of Jews from Iran or the Persian-speaking cultural realm in the 19th and early 20th century, first eastwards to Central Asia, and then westwards, to the USA and Israel, caused new Judeo-Persian language islands to emerge, which also increasingly changed, and continue to change, the Judeo-Persian language. In Israel more and more Hebrew words and Hebraisms are being integrated into Judeo-Persian, etc. A rarity among the Judeo-Persian dialects, not to say a curiosity, is, finally, the 19th century Loterāʾi, referred to as a secret language, a special dialect which was widespread in Jewish communities in Iran and Afghanistan and spoken by Jews when they did not want the guim, their non-Jewish neighbors (goyim), to understand them.206

9

Conclusion

What makes a language a language of Jews or even a Jewish language? In the end this must remain an open question; for neither does the language spoken by Jews become ipso facto a Jewish language, nor can the adjective Jewish be unambiguously defined in combination with the word language. William M. Schniedewind was right when in his book cited in our introduction, he writes that the classification and naming of languages are not determined by the results of linguistic research but

203 Wilhelm Bacher, Ein Hebräisch-Persisches Wörterbuch aus dem Vierzehnten Jahrhundert (Jahresbericht der Landes–Rabbinerschule in Budapest; Budapest, 1900). 204 Herbert H. Paper, A Judeo-Persian Book of Job (Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 5/12; Jerusalem, 1976); Herbert H. Paper, A Judeo-Persian Pentateuch: the Text of the Oldest Judeo-Persian Pentateuch Translation British Museum Ms O$.5446 (Jerusalem, 5732 [1972]); Thamar E. Gindin, The Early Judaeo–Persian Tafsīrs of Ezekiel, I: Text, II: Translation (Sitzungsberichte/Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch–Historische Klasse, 763 and 766/Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik, 40 and 44; Vienna, 2007); Vera Basch Moreen, The Bible as a Judeo-Persian Epic—An illustrated Manuscript of the Judeo-Persian Poet ’Imrani’s Fath-Nama (»The Book of Conquest«) [a poetic translation of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1 and 2 Samuel], (Jerusalem, 2006). 205 David Yeroushalmi, The Judeo-Persian Poet ʿEmrānī and his »Book of treasure«: ʿEmrānī’s Ganǰnāme, a versified commentary on the Mishnaic tractate Abot/edited, translated, and annotated together with a critical study (Etudes sur le Judaïsme Médiéval, 15; Leiden 1995). 206 Ehsan Yarshater, »Judeo-Persian Jargon (Loterāʾi),« in: idem, ed., Encyclopædia Iranica, XV, 156–160.

9 Conclusion

105

by »linguistic ideologies.«207 This also applies to »Jewish« languages, i.e. languages which Jews have adopted in the course of their history. Their classification also followed and still follows »ideological« principles. For further reading Geoffrey Khan, ed., Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, 4 vols. (Leiden and Boston, 2013). Norman A. Stillman, ed., Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, 5 vols. (Leiden and Boston, 2010). Stefan Weninger, ed., The Semitic Languages. An International Handbook (Handbücher zur Sprachund Kommunikationswissenschaft/Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science, 36; Berlin and Boston, 2012). Lily Kahn and Aaron D. Rubin, eds., Handbook of Jewish Languages (Brill’s Handbooks in Linguistics, Leiden and Boston, 2015). Bernard Spolsky, The Languages of the Jews. A Sociolinguistic History (Cambridge and New York, 2014). Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde (Cambridge, 1993). Holger Gzella, A Cultural History of Aramaic. From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam (Handbuch der Orientalistik, I, 111; Leiden, 2015). Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. Shlomo Noble and Joshua A. Fishman, and ed. Paul Glasser, 4 vols. (Chicago and New Haven, 1980–2008). Dovid Katz, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish (New York, 2004; ²2007). Joshua Blau, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic (Jerusalem, ³1999). Israel Zinberg (Yisroel Tsinberg), A History of Jewish Literature, trans. Bernard Martin, 12 vols. (New York, 1972–1978). Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic. The Scriptures of the »People of the Book« in the Language of Islam (Princeton and Oxford, 2013).

207 William M. Schniedewind, A Social History of Hebrew. Its Origins through the Rabbinic Period (New Haven, 2013).

Jewish Philosophy and Thought Ottfried Fraisse

1

The Concept of »Jewish Philosophy«

Since the time of Isaac Israeli in North Africa (ca. 900), Judeo-Arabic texts have used the term filosofia for Greek philosophy. The phrase »Jewish philosophy,« however, was coined in the 19th century. In an age when nationalisms were enjoying a heyday, this term was formed by analogy with other philosophies, such as German or Anglo-Saxon philosophy. But as the adjective »Jewish« is not applied to a country or a language or the history of a nation as unambiguously as »German« or »AngloSaxon«—as Jews live in many countries, speak many languages, and are a part of many national histories—the phrase »Jewish philosophy« does not have clearly defined content. How can such a universal project, as philosophy claims to be, be more precisely defined by a multidimensional attribute like »Jewish«? It seems that the modern creator of the term »Jewish philosophy« meant it to be taken as an analogous phrase both in its nearness to and its distance from modern (national) concepts of philosophy.1 Salomon Munk (1803–1867), a Jewish scholar and librarian at the national library of Paris, expressed a distancing from modern philosophies by proposing a »Jewish philosophy« explicitly for a period he maintained had come to an end, namely for Jewish thinkers of the period between Arabic-writing Karaites (9th cent.) in the East and the expulsion of Arabic- and Hebrew-writing Jews in 1492 from Spain in the West. He did this hesitantly, knowing that not all his modern readers would be aware that in the Middle Ages philosophy was not one of the humanities but identical with the medieval concept of (natural) sciences. In an entry for the Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques, with the title »La Philosophie chez les Juifs,« Munk writes about the consequences of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492: The civilization of the Spanish Jews died out and was not soon to be replaced by another. We can still discern some echo of Jewish scholasticism; here and there outstanding minds are notable among the Spanish emigrants, like the famous Isaac Abravanel and his son

1 The term »Jewish philosophy« (philosophia ebraica/ebraeorum/judaica/mosaica etc.) was already in use in the Renaissance in reference to the Hebraic or Christian kabbalists (Johannes Reuchlin, Pico della Mirandola), but here the primary reference is to Kabbalah. In 1742, in the second volume of his Historia critica philosophiae, Jakob Brucker also speaks of a philosophia iudaica. However, this term was mainly of use to him in articulating his antiJudaism. See also Friedrich Niewöhner, »Vorüberlegungen zu einem Stichwort: ›Philosophie, jüdische‹,« Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 24 (1980): 195–220.

1 The Concept of »Jewish Philosophy«

107

Judah; but the history of »Jewish philosophy« (if this term can be used at all) is really now closed.2

The fact that Munk fashioned the term »Jewish philosophy« shows his intent that it should be on the level of modern (national) concepts of philosophy, able to strengthen group identity. Munk continues: The Jews, endeavoring to bring the Arabian philosophy in conformity with their religion, gave the peripatetic doctrine an especial character, by which it became for them, in some respects, a national philosophy.

It is indicative of his ambivalent relationship with the concept of the national that Munk pointed precisely to the inclusion of non-Jewish international knowledge as the constitutive element for a national philosophy of the Jews. On the other hand, this effort to bring the Greek-Arabic sciences into »conformity« with Jewish traditions always developed depending on the local circumstances: in the East (under Islam), with Baghdad as cultural center, it was different from in the West (under Christianity), with al-Andalus or Provence as center. Accordingly, the expulsion of the Jews from al-Andalus in the West led to a sharp break or even the demise of »Jewish philosophy.« This concept has an inherent tension which, to the present day, has led in historiographical works on a history of »Jewish philosophy« either to an emphasis of its universal dimension as the measure of an »international« philosophy, masking religious and local philosophy, or vice versa—with the effect that the concept of a »Jewish philosophy« largely loses its philosophical dimension or dissolves in one (Greek–European–Christian) concept of philosophy. The difficulty of defining a »Jewish philosophy« between the poles of Jewish religious traditions and non-Jewish philosophy led to incompatible models. At one end of the spectrum we find such a philosopher as Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), founder of Marburg neo-Kantianism. He is able to do without a determination of the relationship between the non-Jewish concept of philosophy and Judaism, because he views it as essential for understanding the essence of Judaism: »The philosophy of Judaism is the essence of Judaism; and without philosophy this essence cannot be understood.«3 The Breslau (Wrocław) philosopher of religion Julius Guttmann (1880–1950) diverges from this in emphasizing that »the Jewish people [...] did not come to philosophical thought on its own. It received philosophy from the outside.«4 In his view, however, it can still serve to identify the essence of Judaism as a religion of revelation. His student Leo Strauss (1899–1973) separated the relationship between Jewish traditions and modern philosophy even further. He thought a distinction could and should be made between Maimonides the Jew and Maimonides the philosopher, as two incompatible spheres. According to Strauss, 2 Salomon Munk, Philosophy and Philosophical Authors of the Jews. A Historical Sketch with Explanatory Notes (Cincinnati 1881), 36. 3 Hermann Cohen, »Die Errichtung von Lehrstühlen für Ethik und Religionsphilosophie an den jüdisch-theologischen Lehranstalten« (1904), in: Jüdische Schriften (Berlin 1924), vol. 2, 115. 4 Julius Guttmann, Die Philosophie des Judentums (Berlin 1933), 9.

108

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

the heart of Maimonides beats to the rhythm of philosophy but Maimonides had managed to hide this superordination of Greek philosophy over religious truth from the broader Jewish population by using an artistic (esoteric) style of writing. It is easy to imagine that such different »definitions« of the notion of »Jewish philosophy« also resulted in sharply divergent models of a history of Jewish philosophy. The present outline of »Jewish philosophy« attempts to do justice to the constitutive role played by the tension between the religious/regional and the philosophical/ international dimensions in »Jewish philosophy.« Efforts towards its conceptual definition in the language of (Western) philosophy are replaced by a performative »definition.« This line of approach follows, among others, Israeli scholar Shalom Rosenberg (*1935), who sees »Jewish philosophy« precisely in the explorations between (extra-Jewish) philosophy and intra-Jewish thinking in actu: The result of the encounter between these two sides (…), of the knowledge-thirsty person with the person before the Torah, that is exactly what Jewish philosophy is.5

This description from the perspective of the individual to the historiographic model can be seen in the work of the historian of philosophy Shlomo Pines (1908–1990)— another Israeli. For him, the non-linear and thus multi-perspectival history of philosophy of Jewish traditions is manifest in local interactions between Jewish traditions and with non-Jewish knowledge, especially in multicultural centers like Baghdad, Córdoba, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Recent research offers a focus at a point where this conformity between Greek-Arabian philosophy and Jewish traditions, as Munk put it, can be observed in actu.6 It is evident above all in the local translations—literal and culture-historical—of Arabian philosophy into Judeo-Arabic and Aramaic/Hebrew. Bringing Greek-Arabian philosophy into relation with Jewish traditions with the aid of the Jewish languages has the consequence that texts written by Jews in Greek (Philo of Alexandria), Latin (Spinoza), French (Jacques Derrida), or German (Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt) can only be called »Jewish philosophy« in a (even more) restricted sense, because these languages are not universally accepted languages of the formation of Jewish traditions—in addition to the fact that these authors did not predominantly try to contribute to the translation of non-Jewish thought into Jewish traditions. This conceptualization of »Jewish philosophy« avoids the historiographic method of representation on the basis of a linearly developing doxology of Jewish thinkers’ philosophical answers to »eternal« questions. Numerous concepts characteristic of the national philosophies of the modern period like the dualism of »faith

5 Shalom Rosenberg, »Symposium: Was ist jüdische Philosophie?«, in: idem, Moshe Hallamish, and Moshe Schwarz, eds., Hitgalut, Emunah, Tevunah, Ramat Gan 1976, 158–161 (Hebrew), 160. In this sense the Israeli school of so-called »Jewish thought« (mahshevet yisrael) ventures beyond the project of a »Jewish philosophy« because it reduces Greek philosophy to accidental elements in the Jewish traditions. 6 Yossef Schwartz, »Methodengeschichtlicher Aufriss zur Historiographie der Philosophie im Judentum,« in: Ulrich Rudolph, ed., Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Philosophie in der islamischen Welt, 4 vols., Basel 2012—, 1 Part 2 (in preparation).

2 Between Palestine and Babylon

109

and knowledge,« the whole terminology of the Christian Middle Ages (Aristotelianism, neo-Platonism etc.), and finally its role as mediator between East and West by the standards of Greco-Latin philosophical traditions, are logically accorded a subordinate role in this context. Because of the contextual background and translational conditions that constitute »Jewish philosophy,« its liberation from eurocentric and orientalistic concepts will be important. The focus in the following discussion will not be the question of a »Jewish philosophy« as a universal discipline, as proposed by the 19th-century scientific-political movement Wissenschaft des Judentums, but the question of how philosophical reflection was formed by the particular cultural matrix of Jewish life. How must we think of the »universal« from the point of view of the »particular«? Just as Franz Rosenzweig is an important source of inspiration for this criticism of »Jewish philosophy,« so too the latter adopts his paradigms of language, poetry and culture, so as to gain fresh access to the concept of a »Jewish philosophy« that relies on a false clarity.7

2

Between Palestine and Babylon: Philosophical Potential in Traditional Literature (2nd to 11th cent.)

The overwhelming majority of »Jewish philosophies« of all periods attached great importance to being rooted in the Bible and the rabbinic writings like the Talmud and Midrash. The weight of quotations from Scripture, however, far exceeds that of rabbinic writings. Scriptural commentary—especially in relation to the three texts ascribed to King Solomon: Qohelet, Proverbs, and Song of Songs—was for many centuries a key genre of »Jewish philosophy.« The book of Proverbs, for instance, begins immediately with attempted definitions of wisdom (Prov. 1–9). Examples of philosophical questions discussed on the basis of these books are: »Why are the righteous not always rewarded in life?«, »How does one find one’s way between good and evil?«, »What is the nature of man?«, »To what extent can the (rational) soul know God?«, etc. The text of Scripture has the highest authority, for the philosophically oriented Jewish commentators on the Bible. This authority cannot be contained in the concept of revelation—in unity with or in distinction from reason. The dichotomy between reason and revelation is, rather, an implement used since the Early Church as a weapon against philosophical sects (or later by Enlightenment philosophers against religions). Only in the modern period this pair of concepts, reason and revelation, was applied anachronistically to Judaism (and Islam). The Hebrew Bible was fixed in writing several centuries before the Early Church. In Jewish understanding, it is not interested in revelation in the sense of the redemptive power of faith.8 In Jewish tradition, the authority 7 Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson, New Directions in Jewish Philosophy, Indiana 2010, 1–16; Leora Batnitzky, Idolatry and Representation. The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered, Princeton 2000. 8 Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, Cambridge and New York 2012, 1–3.

110

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

of the Hebrew Bible is based on the seriousness with which its wording is treated, precisely not opposed to reason. One can gain a lively impression of this in the philologically subtle scripture expositions of rabbinic literature. Only thus could the Bible come to philosophically interested interpreters as a fully valid, rational conversation partner. However, there can be no doubt that the Tanach does not develop its (philosophical) themes with the help of a specialized vocabulary and in a syllogistic form. For all these reasons we face the paradox that the Hebrew Bible is ubiquitous in »Jewish philosophy« into the 19th century, but despite its early composition (5th cent. BCE—2nd cent. CE) does not begin in it.

3

Hellenistic Judaism: Alexandria

Long before the conquest of Alexandria by Caesar in 47 BCE, in the Hellenistic period (Ptolemaic Dynasty) there was a notable Jewish community in what was then the second-largest metropolis in the ancient world. An economic and scientific hub, which included its famous library, Alexandria was a significant cultural center. An indication of the close relations between the Jewish community and the Hellenistic environment is a partial translation of the Bible into Greek, prepared long before the Septuagint. Philo of Alexandria, whom we know came from a well-off Jewish family, was part of a delegation to Emperor Gaius Caligula in Rome in 40 CE (to defend Jewish citizens’ rights in Alexandria). He was well acquainted with the debates of Greek philosophy, which were split into a multiplicity of wisdom teachings. In certain Jewish writings as well, a key part is played by the concept of wisdom (Heb.: hokhmah, cf. the book of Proverbs). For this reason, for Philo, the various competing concepts of wisdom could become a key movens for his thinking, also in view of a Jewish canon of Scripture which was not yet fixed at this time and the concepts of rabbinic thought were only just beginning to develop. Philo used the form of scripture commentary, being one of its inventors, and making it the major part of his writings, so as to gain clarity on the relationship precisely of these two cultural spheres, Hellenism and the Jewish traditions. The fundamental idea of the link between the Hellenistic texts and the Torah can, however, already be discerned in a fragment handed down from the earliest-known Jewish interpreter of the Hebrew Bible. Aristobulus (died 160 BCE) stated: Plato followed the law which we [also] apply, and there can be no doubt that he worked through its [the Jewish law’s] content thoroughly.9

9 Aristobulus, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, vol. 3, ed. and Eng. trans. C.R. Holladay, Atlanta, GA 1995. See Maren Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge and New York 2011); eadem, Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography (New Haven CT 2018), and see the chapter by M. Tilly in these volumes.

4 Under Islam in the East: Baghdad and Kairouan

111

Philo stood in the tradition of this guiding hermeneutical principle, which tried to read the Jewish legal tradition creatively throughout Plato’s doctrine of law, thus developing this tradition further. For Philo, as an exegete, it was a problem that in his Republica (Rep. 378d) Plato criticized such figures as Homer and Hesiod, declaring them unfitting as a means of citizens’ education, instead of using their indisputable poetic power pedagogically, by means of philosophical exegesis. Philo does this with his own tradition when he interprets the myths about Moses as narratives of a philosopher-poet. In his scriptural hermeneutics, Philo combines Plato’s idea of God with the concept of Jewish monotheism, thereby justifying the didactic tradition of a »negative theology« (which in modern accounts is usually first associated with Maimonides or Nicholas of Cusa). In the footsteps of Plato’s Timaeus, Philo understands God as the first cause by which universe exists. The oneness of God is taken so strictly that it situates the origin of key categories of reality—form, matter, space, and time—in God. Philo combines this strictly monotheistic concept of God, with the reinterpretation of the Stoic/Greek concept of the Logos, as a cosmic-metaphysical essence, making the Logos a mediator between God and man.10 Thus, as the first (divinely) created synthesis, the Logos allows conclusions only as to divine activity but not God’s nature. To the extent that Philo ascribes towering intellectual faculties to Moses in the role of mediator of the divine Word (Post. 143–5), he needs an explanation that Scripture does not always seem to confirm this. Philo offers a pedagogical justification for this. Moses chose the literary form of narrative to reach the broad mass of people. The determinism of the philosophical view of the world has no destructive effect only for those who think philosophically.11 Possibly because Philo’s allegorical scriptural hermeneutics enjoyed an extensive reception history among the Christian church fathers and scholastics, it was not taken up by Jewish authors, neither in Antiquity nor in the Middle Ages. Not knowing of Philo, Maimonides therefore »had to« reinvent this concept of God and the project of allegorical Scripture exegesis.

4

Under Islam in the East: Baghdad and Kairouan

From the ninth century, long before Maimonides, »Jewish philosophy« developed another fruitful focus in the multicultural metropolis of Baghdad. The regional context with which Jewish thinkers interacted was not, in this case, Hellenism but Islam. The peculiarity of Muslim traditions to provide space not only for Islam but also for other religious and non-religious traditions—monotheistic traditions such as Christianity and Judaism, but also for pagan traditions such as the philosophical, poetic, and scientific literature of Greek authors—is indicated in scholarship by the

10 Philo replaced the concept of the Platonic nous with the divine Logos—which, as »Word,« was also a reference to Scripture. 11 Carlos Fraenkel, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza, Cambridge 2012.

112

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

notion of »Islamicate culture« (Hodgson). An example of this shared cultural and social space which could have been equally significant for the emergence of Arabian-Islamic and »Jewish philosophy« is possibly the Bayt al-Hikmah (»House of Wisdom«) in Baghdad. This academy founded by the Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn in the year 825, which, unlike the Christian monasteries in the West, was a publicly accessible educational institution, probably housed a huge library, an observatory, and a school. Political interest in the cultural capital of this facility also created favorable conditions for a Greek-Arabic translation movement. In several translation waves between the eighth and tenth centuries Greek texts were translated into Syriac and Arabic (the Nestorian Hunayn ben Ishaq and his team were particularly productive).12 It may also have been in the Bayt al-Hikmah that the public debates (majālis, sing. majlis) took place which provided a meeting place for the broad spectrum of religious and non-religious traditions represented in Baghdad. A (critical) report that has come down to us of one participant in such a discussion, about appropriate rules to be applied for discussions between the »various Islamic sects, but also unbelievers, Magians, materialists, atheists, Jews and Christians,« contains a revealing indication of the acceptance of philosophical logic as a key means of disputation: One of the unbelievers rose and said to the assembly: ›we are meeting here for a discussion. Its conditions are known to all. You, Muslims, are not allowed to argue from your books and prophetic traditions since we deny both. Everybody, therefore, has to limit himself to rational arguments.‹ The whole assembly applauded these words.13

In addition to specifically Jewish-Muslim cooperation in trade and administration, and partly as a result of the shared use of philosophy in defense of monotheism against pagan opponents, there is a strengthening of the spiritual affinity between Jews, Christians, and Muslims since the days of Muhammad. The medical profession in particular was for many centuries an accessible practical context for local exchange between philosophers with monotheistic leanings. Interreligious interaction is evident in the fact that Jews used Arabic sources on an equal footing with Jewish sources, as well as speaking and writing Arabic. In written texts, however—in Saʿadia Gaon’s translations of the Tanach and Prayer Book (Siddur), for instance—Jews used Judeo-Arabic, which is Arabic written in Hebrew characters with supplementary vocabulary from Hebrew and Aramaic. This shows that despite an astonishing degree of cultural exchange, Jews preserved their own cultural identity within the

12 The translators were not only concerned with the translation of a considerable corpus of texts from Aristotelian logic, physics and ethics, or of neo-Platonic metaphysics and political philosophy, and on to Ptolemaic astronomy, Euclidean geometry and Galenic medicine, but also with the creative transformation of Greek thought into a coherent system in the framework of a neo-Platonic Aristotelianism in the context of an »Islamicate culture.« 13 This report of the Spanish theologian Ibn Sāʾdī is handed down by the Muslim historian al-Humʾaydī; cited from Diana Lobel, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue. Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya ibn Paquda ‘s Duties of the Heart, Philadelphia 2007, x.

4 Under Islam in the East: Baghdad and Kairouan

113

dominant Muslim context.14 The extent to which this Jewish-Arab connection was linked to the Arabic language is evident by the 13th century. With the Hebrew translations of a large part of the Arab repository of knowledge in the West, »Jewish philosophy« in the Christian West and Arab philosophy in the Muslim East took recognizably different directions. In the Abbassid period (from the mid-8th cent.) the kalām method (Arabic for »disputation«), which relies on Aristotelian logic and physics, became a widespread phenomenon in the monotheistic religions. Its goal, among other things, was to provide an apologetic defense against dualist sects like the Manicheans. Among the earliest Jewish authors who subscribed to the philosophical (Muʿtazilite) kalām of the Basra school, are Dāwūd b. Marwān al-Muqammiṣ (early 9th cent.) and Saʿadia ben Joseph al-Fayyūmī (882–942)—for short: Saʿadia Gaon.15 As al-Muqammiṣ was for a time a convert to Christianity, his work, in Arabic, documents the philosophical and theological overlaps between the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions in the region of Baghdad. The exegetical works of al-Muqammiṣ, formed with the aid of Syrian Christian models, as well as the first Jewish summa theologica which he wrote, evince polemical friction between these traditions. With the help of the concepts of substance and accidence, al-Muqammiṣ denies the eternity of the world—against the dominant view in Greek philosophy. From the createdness of the world he then draws conclusions in favor of the existence of its creator, whose essence is his unity—a point which he develops in sharp polemic against Christianity. Ultimately, with his definition of justice as an essential divine attribute, al-Muqammiṣ finds himself in full agreement with Muʿtazilite kalām, as much as with the divine attributes of absolute benevolence and freedom of choice and the central role of prophecy in the mediation of God’s will and law. In the second half of the ninth century, two types of Jewish community formed in Muslim societies: on the one hand the Rabbanites, who recognized both the written Torah, the Tanach, and the equally divinely sanctioned oral Torah of talmudic traditions, and on the other hand the Karaites, who viewed later traditions as inventions of the rabbis and so, not authoritative.16 Shortly after al-Muqammiṣ, Daniel al-Qūmisī (ca. 900), an immigrant to Jerusalem from Iran, also represented Muʿtazilite kalām with its key themes of the unity and justice of God, but in addition he emphasized the exclusivity of the written (Mosaic) law. The split between the two communities, which began as a serious controversy, was already irrevocable by the end of the ninth century, although the two sides continued to cooperate despite their considerable theological differences.17

14 This characteristic difference between Jews and Muslims, both from close by and from a distance, has been blurred since Shlomo Dov Goitein’s much-cited expression of a Jewish-Arab »symbiosis.« See Philip Ackerman Liebermann, Judaism and/under Islam 650–1000 CE, in: Michael Tilly, Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.), Judaism I. History (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020). 15 Among Jews there are no signs of an Asharite kalām, which esteemed the omnipotence of God more highly than human free will. 16 See the chapter by Visotzky and Zawanowska in these volumes. 17 Haggai Ben-Shammai, »Kalam in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,« in: Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, eds., History of Jewish Philosophy, (London and New York 1997), 115–148.

114

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

The close proximity of Jewish thinking to Muʿtazilite kalām, however, is an exception, as far as the profile of »Jewish philosophy« in the Muslim world from the tenth century on is concerned. In order to give an account of the dynamic relationship between Jewish thinkers and the Muslim history of ideas in subsequent times, we need first to put aside the model of the three philosophical schools that is widespread in the history of modern philosophy—the Muʿtazilite, the neo-Platonic, and the Aristotelian—and recognize it as a simplification of the situation. According to this model, only thinkers who stand in the tradition of the texts of Aristotle and their Greek commentators (translated into Arabic), like Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias, are called philosophers (faylasūf, pl. falāsifa). Examples of these are al-Fārābī in the East and ibn Rushd in the West. In distinction from these, thinkers who looked to the (partial) paraphrase of Plotinus’s Enneads or followed the paraphrase of Proclus’s Elements of Theology are referred to as neo-Platonists. This is an unnecessarily sharp subdivision, as in Arabic sources the latter are also often called philosophers (e.g. al-Kīndī in the 9th cent., is called »the philosopher of the Arabs«). In addition, the two neo-Platonic paraphrases just mentioned were in circulation under the name of Aristotle: a Plotinus paraphrase has been handed down under the title The Theology of Aristotle and a Proclus paraphrase as the Book of Aristotle’s Explanation of the Pure Good (known in the West as Liber de causis). These translations, adaptations or paraphrases of Greek texts—including the Book of the Five Chapters of the Pseudo-Empedocles—were prepared in Baghdad by a group of scholars associated with the philosopher al-Kīndī (Arabic Plotinus). The modern distinction between Muʿtazilite, neo-Platonic, and Aristotelian schools therefore does not do justice to the dynamics among Muslim thinkers, nor is it a fair reflection of the interaction between them and Jewish authors. The situation was creatively eclectic, with several centers of gravity and wide areas of overlap. Only in this way it could become a lifetime project of al-Fārābī to separate in his sources the Platonic and neo-Platonic components from the Aristotelian concepts (which he preferred). So too, was it a lifetime project of Maimonides to conduct a rigorous purge of traditions which he held to be purely Aristotelian philosophy (e.g. al-Fārābī) of (supposed) concepts of kalām. As a consequence of this removal of rigid, idea-boundaries, there are some (rare) indications that Jewish thought was not always receptive towards Muslim thought only; occasionally it was also an independent force alongside Muslim philosophy. In the long version of the Theology of Aristotle there is a striking supplement to the neo-Platonic concept of emanation in the (competing) idea of a divine will; this allowed the concept of emanation to be made compatible with monotheistic thinking. Since all surviving versions of the long version are written in Judeo-Arabic, the manuscripts suggest great Jewish interest in the Muslim corpus of the Arabic Plotinus and perhaps even an active role in its composition.18

18 Sarah Stroumsa, »The Muslim Context,« in: Steven Nadler and Tamar Rudavsky, eds., The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy. From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge 2009, 49.

4 Under Islam in the East: Baghdad and Kairouan

115

Those philosophical centers of gravity mentioned with areas of overlap, can be illustrated by the contemporaries Isaac Israeli and Saʿadia Gaon, both from Cairo. Isaac Israeli (832–932) moved west, to Kairouan, Tunisia, where he became physician to the first caliph of the Shiite-Ishmaelite dynasty of the Fatimids, al-Mahdī ʿUbaid Allāh. Saʿadia Gaon (882–942) for his part moved via Damascus to the east, to the multicultural—religious, but also philosophical and pagan—center in Baghdad, where he became the theological head of a rabbinical educational institution in Sura. Isaac Israeli is associated with the neo-Platonically oriented writings of the Arabic Plotinus of Baghdad, but he modifies them at key points, sometimes even with elements from kalām; Saʿadia Gaon is associated with the center of gravity of Muʿtazilite kalām in which he brings in some Aristotelian elements but principally elements from the rabbinic traditions. A doctor, Isaac Israeli had a lasting impact thanks to translations of his medical and philosophical writings (including translations into Hebrew and Latin) in nonJewish, Latin Europe, but noticeably less so in the Jewish traditions. The latter writings include, in particular, The Book of Definitions and Descriptions (Arab. Kitab alḥudūd waʾr-rusūm), his Book of the Elements (Arab. Kitāb al-usṭuqusāt), and the Book of Substances (Arab. Kitāb al-ǧawāhir), preserved only in fragments. As the titles suggest, in his main works Isaac Israel avoids references to his Judaism—»perhaps out of Jewish scruples.«19 His frequently cited hermeneutical principle was that selfknowledge is the basis for knowledge of the world, as both are a specific combination of the intellectual and the material. Israeli’s idea of the creation of the world could be taken as a commentary on this hermeneutical principle: on the one hand, influenced by the strongly neo-Platonic orientation of the Arabic Plotinus, Isaac Israeli adopts a notion of creation in which he brackets the necessary (by nature) course of emanation with God’s power and will (as the cause of causes); God’s activity begins with the creation of the first two substances, First Matter and First Form. On the other hand, First Form is not identified »purely philosophical« with the intelligible substance, First Intellect, but he has First Intellect emanate only from the combination of the top two hypostases, First Matter and First Form—in deviation from his neo-Platonic model. After the descent of emanation into nature and the soul, this impediment to a spiritual continuum between God and the World is articulated once again at the end of the path of the neo-Platonic return of the soul to its origin: the enlightened soul unites not with God but only with the First Intellect. The fact that Isaac Israeli was in correspondence with Saʿadia Gaon and answered his questions does not lead to the conclusion that Saʿadia Gaon’s main interest was also in international philosophy or science. Unlike Isaac Israeli, Saʿadia Gaon’s main interest was in the Jewish traditions, which he redefined. Saʿadia Gaon designed a Jewish kalām, whose pathbreaking synthesis of rationality and rabbinic traditions created a lasting legitimisation for the reception of non-Jewish philo-

19 Charles Manekin, »Medieval Jewish Philosophy in Arabic,« in: John Marenbon, ed., Medieval Philosophy, Oxford 2012, 133.

116

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

sophical sources within the Jewish traditions. This is a legitimacy that prepared the way for the rational project of Maimonides—despite his harsh criticism of Saʿadia’s type of synthesis of tradition and philosophical thought, which (against Saʿadia’s declared intention) subordinated the quest for knowledge to religious objectives. In the introduction to his main theoretical work, The Book of Critically Chosen Beliefs and Convictions (Arab. Kitāb al-Mukhtār fīʾl-amānāt waʾl-iʿtiqādāt) Saʿadia Gaon names the senses, the intellect, and logic as three quasi-objective sources of knowledge. To these he adds a fourth source—which, he claims, is based exclusively on these three sources of knowledge. He says: Furthermore, we believe in »the validity of authentic tradition, by reason of the fact that it is based upon the knowledge of the senses as well as that of reason ...«20 Saʿadia Gaon thus laid claim to a new form of rabbinic theology which could never be in contradiction with empiricism or reason. Saʿadia Gaon follows two main objectives with this realignment: to guide the Jews of multicultural Baghdad (their outward security shaken) to a rational certainty, and to refute the Karaites’ (intra-Jewish) criticism of the apparent irrationality of rabbinic Judaism—of the so-called »oral Torah.« According to Saʿadia Gaon, the »oral and written Torah«—what the modern era calls »revelation«—are intended only as a kind of shortcut for those who may not have enough time or sufficient skills to reach the truth on the basis of sensory impressions, the intellect, and logic. Saʿadia Gaon develops his proofs of the creation of the world against twelve cosmological or skeptical theories that were evidently widespread in the Baghdad area. Because of its finite nature, Saʿadia argues, the world must have a beginning in time and therefore also a creator. Equally, against local dualistic and triadic conceptions of God, Saʿadia explains that the majority of divine attributes (such as justice and goodness) only describe the nature of God but are certainly not in contradiction with the oneness of God. Other topics dealt with by Saʿadia include human freedom of choice (in line with the local Muʿtazila), the resurrection of souls, and salvation through the Messiah, who will come when the people of Israel have returned to Eretz Israel and the temple is rebuilt (setting himself apart from the current idea of messianism in Christianity). Finally, Saʿadia adopts a concept from Muslim Muʿtazila which he completely reshapes for the interpretation of religious law: its conceptualization of the figure of the prophet. »Prophetology« is perhaps the most characteristic feature of Muslim thinking and its most important conceptual contribution to inter-religious discussion. This concept came to stabilize Muhammad’s eminent position in Islam and combined moral integrity with intellectual superiority and miraculous deeds. Muslim falsafa philosophers developed this concept of Mohammad’s prophethood further, connecting it with the figure of Plato’s philosopher king. They fashioned a political philosophy in which the philosopher rules the righteous city in personal

20 Samuel Rosenblatt, Saadia Gaon. The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, New Haven and London 1948, 18.

5 Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus

117

union as imam and king, by means of a perfect law (šarīʿa) which, complementing civil law (nomos), also leads to moral and intellectual perfection. Saʿadia borrowed the concept of Muslim prophetology directly but gave it new contours in the context of Jewish traditions. He linked the conceptualization of Moses as both the most important Jewish prophet and as philosopher-king with the first rationalistic interpretation of all the commandments (mitzvot). For the existence of the bulk of the commandments, Saʿadia assumed rational grounds which everyone can accept intuitively (prohibition of murder, stealing etc.). For the existence of a much smaller section of the commandments he was unable to give direct rational grounds (food laws, Sabbath commandment etc.), but he also »rationalized« the latter group of traditional laws (mitzvot shimʿiot) as a prerequisite for the practical implementation of the former group of the universal intellectual laws (mitzvot sikhliot). In so doing, Saʿadia initiated the new literary genre of taʿamei ha-mitzvot (lit. »reasons for the commandments«) for »Jewish philosophy,« Maimonides being the most famous in the long series of his revisers. The conceptual framework of the Muʿtazilite kalām was also used by Saʿadia’s successor in the Talmud academy of Sura, Samuel ben Hophni (died 1013), but also by significant Karaite opponents like Yūsuf al-Baṣīr (died 1014) in Jerusalem. In due course this context changed for the Jews in the East and was replaced by an Arab philosophy which was heavily influenced by the thought of ibn Sīnā. Abuʾl-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (1080–1164) testifies to this in his The Book of What has been Established through Personal Reflection (Arab. Kitāb al-Muʿtabar), in which he develops the priority of the perception of the self and the soul as a paradigm for his hermeneutics, which particularly rely on self-evidence. This principle of unity of perception enabled him to reject the Aristotelian concept of the soul, which distinguishes different mental capacities—notably the intellect from the other capacities of the soul. AlBaghdādī, who converted to Islam at the end of his life, met with a warm reception from the slightly later Jewish philosopher and physician Saʿd ibn Manṣūr ibn Kammūna (ca. 1215–ca. 1284), in Baghdad. His popular book Examination of Three Faiths (Arab. Tanqīḥ al-abḥāth li-l-milal al-thalāth) compares the truth claims of the three monotheistic religions in the form of dialog.21

5

Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus

The victory of the Abbasid dynasty over the Umayyads in the East in 750 led to the re-establishment of an Umayyad emirate in Cordoba by ʿAbd ar-Rahmān in 756. It was only after a long phase of defense and pacification that ʿAbd ar-Rahmān III (912–961) was able to subdue the last regional resistance. This was the beginning of a phase of great economic and cultural florescence which lasted until 1031, when

21 Ibn Kammūna‘s Examination of the Three Faiths. A Thirteenth-Century Essay in the Comparative Study of Religion, translated from the Arabic, with an Introduction and Notes by Moshe Pearlmann, Berkeley 1971.

118

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

the last Umayyad caliph was overthrown. In this period, with 500,000 inhabitants, Cordoba grew to become one of the most important cultural centers of the Mediterranean. Influential philosophical works of the East were taken up in Cordoba’s library, substantially enlarged by ʿAbd ar-Rahmān III: in particular, the works of falāsifa like al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, as well as the Arabic Plotinus from the circles of al-Kindi and Muʿtazilite kalām. Two other schools of thought from the Arab-Muslim cultural realm in the East were a further inspiration for Jewish thought in alAndalus: the most comprehensive medieval encyclopedia of scientific knowledge (Rasāʾil Ikhwān as-Safāʾ wa Khullān al-Wafāʾ), composed in the elitist circles of the Ikhwān as-Safāʾ (»The Brethren of Purity«), whose esoteric goal was purification of the heart and redemption of the soul through the acquisition of knowledge, and the Tahāfut al-falāsifa (»Incoherence of the Philosophers«) of the Muslim critic of the philosophers, al-Ghazālī. In addition, there were Muslim thinkers in al-Andalus such as ibn Bājja, ibn Tufayl, ibn Rushd, and the Sufi mystic and philosopher Muhammad ibn Musarra who were important for the Jews of Spain. One of the most creative Jewish thinkers was the philosopher and poet Salomon ibn Gabirol (ca. 1021–1070), who was educated in the literature of the Jewish tradition and in Greek-Arabian philosophy. As a »court rabbi« he moved—partially caused by his alternating patrons—between the public spheres of the political elites, the Jewish communities, and the Muslim court. This may have contributed to the fact that his five-part main work of philosophy—lost in the original Arabic— seems to be without recognizable Jewish features: »The Fountain of Life« (cf. Ps 36:10; in Arabic apparently Yanbūʿ al-Hayāh). The »international« character of this work was further reinforced by the strong neo-Platonic orientation of the al-Kindi circle (Arabic Plotinus) and motifs from Sufi mysticism. Despite lasting traces left behind in Jewish traditions (liturgy and Kabbalah) by ibn Gabirol’s poetry and philosophical mysticism, this main work, soon circulating only in Latin translation under the name Fons Vitae, had a notable afterlife, primarily outside Jewish literature. After its Jewish authorship had been forgotten, it found numerous supporters among thinkers of Scholasticism (in William of Auvergne and the Franciscans Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, and Duns Scotus). It was only in 1846, with the aid of manuscripts from the Paris National Library, that Salomon Munk was able to deduce that ibn Gabirol was the author of the Fons vitae. Unlike in many neo-Platonic schemes, in ibn Gabirol’s Yanbūʿ al-Hayāh the path of knowledge leads not from »top down« but »bottom-up«: from the concepts of form and matter in the sublunar physical world, via the three spiritual substances: intellect, soul, and nature; and the hypostases of universal matter and form to what the human intellect can know of the First Essence. On the path of ascent, and thus of the liberation of the human soul from natural matter, a prominent role is given to self-knowledge and its active imitation of the all-pervading divine will. The motives of love for God and desire for unity with God produce both a Sufi and a neo-Platonic echo. The divine will holds a key position in ibn Gabirol’s thinking. Its mediating role between transcendence and perfect unity of the creator on the one hand, and the emergence of lower substances on the other, has an effect on all levels of being:

5 Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus

119

form always gains the ability to interact with matter as causal principle through the mediating will: »From the will, form gains the power to hold on to matter through it.«22 By dint of its mediating function the will has a share both in the infinity of God and also in the finiteness of forms. Thus, the will is only the causative principle for finite forms when it lends matter the strength for their formation, but not their essence in itself. Rather, essence gains form exclusively from the substance of the next higher level of being, so that ibn Gabirol can link this hierarchical structure with the notion that the essences continually »shade themselves off,« the deeper they find themselves under the First Essence. In ibn Gabirol, this relationship of the immediacy of strength and the shading of the essences is repeatedly compared with the relationship between sun and light.23 The two aspects, the insertion of the mediating will between creator and creation, and the not-immediate effusion of the essences from the Creator, have the effect of weakening the character of a progressing emanation according to an inherent necessity; and of pantheism, always inherent in neo-Platonic thought.24 A reinforcing effect on this line of thought had Ibn Gabirol’s famous concept of a universal hylomorphism, by which the Yanbūʿ al-Hayāh gained its greatest impact. Hylomorphism assumes that all created substances and accidences possess both form and matter—and not only the physical substances but also the non-physical, such as the intellect and the soul. In addition, the omnipresence of the concepts of form and matter is further enhanced as the two things seem to »merge«: the omnipresent specifying character of form and the action of matter that supports the reception of forms (out of love for the source of the form, i.e. for the divine will) often seem to switch roles. It was this penetration of the (neo-Platonic) infinity of God and of finite creation (creatio ex nihilo) that ibn Gabirol was trying to reach through his definition of the divine will—a compatibilism which such disparate thinkers such as al-Ghazālī and Maimonides later saw as fundamentally unsatisfactory.25 The neo-Platonic dimension of Muslim philosophy found its most lasting and creative expression in ibn Gabirol’s work. Muslim philosophy, albeit to a lesser extent, also left its mark on the work of the thinker-poet Moses ibn Ezra (ca. 1055–ca. 1138), the astronomer, grammarian, and exgete Abraham ibn Ezra (1098–1164), the judge and philosopher Joseph ibn Zaddik (ca. 1075–1149) in Córdoba, and especially the work of Bachia ben Joseph ibn Paquda (2nd half of the 11th cent.) in Zaragoza. His main work, taking the name of the Hebrew translation, Hovot-ha-Levavot (»Duties of the Heart«), became hugely popular as a manual of ethics in the Jewish traditions

22 Clemens Baeumker, Fons vitae, V 39, 327. 23 For a selection of these passages see Karl Erich Grözinger, Jüdisches Denken, vol. 1 (Frankfurt, New York 2004), 529. 24 While Jacques Schlanger defended ibn Gabirol on this point, Julius Guttmann had no hesitation in calling ibn Gabirol a pantheist. Cf. Ottfried Fraisse, »Einleitung,« in: Salomon ibn Gabirol. Fons Vitae. Latin/German, Freiburg 2009, 7–50. 25 Manekin, »Medieval Jewish Philosophy in Arabic,« 134.

120

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

to the present, although largely without acknowledgment of his Arabic sources and background contexts. In his Guide to the Duties of the Heart (Arab. Al-Hidāya ʾilā farāʾiḍ al-qulūb, 1080 or earlier) Ibn Paquda in fact combines elements from neo-Platonic philosophy, rabbinic Judaism, Muʿtazilite kalām, hermetic (Gnostic) literature, and mystic Sufi piety (of al-Muḥāsibī in particular) to form a creative synthesis. As previously in ibn Gabirol, philosophy and mysticism are not seen as the individual’s two irreconcilable paths to God; rather, in mutual dialectical friction and penetration, the two paths form a philosophical mysticism. Like a classical Sufi manual, ibn Paquda’s work is structured in a series of chapters or »gates,« which, building on each other step by step, point the way from the right concept of the unity of God (tauḥīd) to the goal of spiritual life in the tenth »gate,« the true love of God (mahabba and murāqaba). Both in Islamic and Jewish philosophy ibn Paquda holds a special position, because he not only argues theologically like many Sufi scholars (such as The Book of Circles [Arab. Kitab al-Ḥadāʾiq] by Ibn al-Sīd al-Batalyawsī which saw many translations that Jewish thinkers cited), but attaches great importance to philosophical demonstration. In the introduction to his book, ibn Paquda distinguishes three parts of wisdom: (1) the science of nature (physics), (2) the sciences of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (mathematics), and (3) the science of God, the soul, and the intellect (metaphysics). All knowledge forms a unity (»All the parts of wisdom and their various branches are gates opened by God for the benefit of men, through which they may perceive religion and the world«), which is why the trained thinker is not satisfied with the acquisition of the tradition, but »[he] must employ his mind in verifying everything that is intelligible by way of demonstration and logical proof.«26 We may assume that ibn Paquda’s logical proofs impressed Maimonides, as, in his presentation of the concepts of negative theology Maimonides relied closely on the first »gate« of hidāya, and for the love and fear of God on the tenth »gate.« At the center of the work is the distinction between the »duties of the members,« i.e. the external signs of obedience and love for God, and the »duties of the heart,« which comprise the intentions that accompany the former duties. Many commandments combine both dimensions, such as prayer: it has words and gestures on the one hand, but at the same time these are also bearers of meanings which point the (rational) soul toward God. It is the task of philosophy (as for Maimonides) to purge (ikhlās) the soul of unsuitable and erroneous concepts or attributes in relation to God, and dismiss them (God is neither a multiplicity, nor created, nor non-existent). By emphasizing that everything that reason can think is different from God, space is created for the God of experience. Contemplation of creation leads humanity, supported by a moderate asceticism, to experience the traces of God in creation. These experiences enable the goal, namely the attachment to a personal God as comforter and a source of strength.27

26 Menahem Mansoor, The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, London 1973, 86 and 96. 27 Diana Lobel, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue. Philosophy and Mysticism in Baḥya ibn Paqūda‘s Duties of the Heart, Philadelphia 2007, »Introduction,« 9–10.

5 Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus

121

At the beginning of the 12th century, we can observe an increase in the attractiveness of Aristotelian concepts for Muslim and Jewish thinkers in al-Andalus. Among the Jewish authors is the mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher Abraham bar Hiyya (1065 or 1070–ca. 1136). With Aristotle, he emphasizes that form and matter exist only in the physical world, not in the sphere of simple (cosmic) substances, as extensively discussed by ibn Gabirol, among others. However, the concepts of Aristotelian thought, which were first disseminated by his Hellenistic interpreter Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius, then by al-Fārābī, Ibn Bājja, Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Rushd (before the original sources became directly available in translation in the 13th cent.), represented a form of rationalism, which is less easily combined with the biblical ideas of a creation ex nihilo than the Arab model of neo-Platonism, of a personal God and prophecy. Shortly before the Aristotelian concept of law became dominant in Jewish alAndalus (2nd half of the 12th cent.), the physician, poet, and philosopher Yehudah Halevi (1075–1141) writes against this shift of emphasis in a work that remains very popular. In the five chapters of his The Book of Refutation and Proof in Defense of the Despised Religion (Arab. Kitāb al-radd waʾl-dalīl fīʾl-dīn al-dhalīl) or for short al-Kitāb al-Khazarī (Heb.: Sefer ha-Kuzari), he undertakes a decidedly rationally argued and fundamental critique of the Aristotelian paradigm. Halevi, born in Toledo, was also influenced by Sufi-inspired Muslim thinkers such as al-Ghazālī and ibn Sīnā. Halevi—like ibn Paquda before him—uses the language of inner experience, as developed in Islam by philosophers, Sufi mystics, legal scholars, theologians, and poets, aligning his rabbinical Judaism with this approach. He does this in the form of a discussion between five conversation partners: the Khazar king Bulan, a philosopher, a rabbi, a Muslim theologian, and a Christian theologian. Halevi uses this discussion, based on a historical report on the conversion of a Central Asian tribe to Judaism (8th cent.), to back up his conviction of the abundance of Jewish traditions about (philosophical) logic in the search for truth. Halevi’s point of departure is a dream experienced by the Khazar king, which tells him that his intentions are good but not his actions. The result of this dialogue is that the Khazar king is persuaded of the truth of a life in accordance with the Jewish law by logical arguments. This shows that philosophical argument has a firm place in Halevi’s thought, but he defends against the (Aristotelian) notion of God as First Cause and against the latent identification of God with universal reason and so, against understanding the world based on the necessity of logic. He breaks through this bridge between God and the world with a radical revaluation of inner experience of Jewish particularity. Few thinkers have made so much of the significance of particularity in Judaism. He insists—in a decidedly anti-ascetic discussion style—on the uniqueness of the Hebrew language and the Jewish nation, as well as the centrality of the land of Israel. This dialogue between the Khazar king and the Jewish scholar, insists on the primacy of these particularities, even in philosophical questions concerned with the rational soul or epistemology. The granting of the law to the Jews is linked to Sufi terminology: for example, the descriptions of human perception (mushāhada, dhawq), human strug-

122

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

gle (qiyās, ijtiḥad, taqlīd), relationships with God (ittiṣāl, wuṣūl), and prophecy (mushāhada, nubuwwa, waḥy).28 Although Halevi would not have agreed to being called a philosopher, in book one he has the Jewish scholar say: »Heaven forbid that I should assume what reason rejects and declares impossible.« The fourth book betrays the fact that Halevi was intimately familiar with the current state of the philosophical doctrine of the soul. Halevi is attempting to recapture religious territory on the ground of philosophy, in critical debate, for instance, with the intellectualization of the topos of prophecy, as had been developed in Arabian falsafa. Without entirely denying the cosmic order of neo-Platonic/Aristotelian philosophy, Halevi confronts it with the Sufisounding concept of al-ʾamr al-ilāhī: its deliberately ambiguous meaning is both the »divine order« and also the »divine word,« and in concrete terms, also the »divine commandment.« The point of this multilayered expression is that the cosmic order cannot be known through the intellect alone—unless the word or commandment is added from the supra-intellectual divine realm: ... the divine order [al-amr al-ilāhī] and the souls [associated with it] have a secret character different from what you have mentioned, O philosopher.29

Similarly (against Saʿadia Gaon) Halevi also expands the concept of prophecy, completely intellectualized by the philosophers, by supplementing the intellect by a supra-human imaginative capacity. He documents this with the Sufi concept of »the inner eye« (al-ʿayn al-bāṭin). That this link should represent a supplement and not a disenfranchisement of the intellect, is proven by Halevi’s (albeit not completely clear) comment that the inner experience of the supra-intellectual imagination of the »inner eye« should »almost«(!) be subordinate to the criticism of the intellect. »It is almost [the case] that that eye is the imaginative faculty as long as it serves the intellectual faculty.«30 The significance of Halevi’s thought lies in its inherent friction with the particular. It is not unusual for his interpreters in our own day to succumb to the temptation to separate the assumption of the divine particularity of the Jewish people from Halevi’s epistemological project. They have taken the connection of the Jewish nation with the al-ʾamr al-ilāhī in terms of their biological or even genetic superiority. For Halevi, however, it is about spiritual superiority, not biological. Abraham Ibn Daʿud (ca. 1110–1180) is one of the first thinkers analyzing the key Jewish themes of divine attributes, free will, prophecy, law, and the philosophical concepts of intellect, cosmic emanation, and ethics, predominantly making use of Aristotelian concepts that he knew from the writings of al-Fārābī, ibn Sīnā, and ibn Bājja. Ibn Daʿud, who was born in Córdoba and worked there during Halevi’s

28 Diana Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy. Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi‘s Kuzari, New York 2000, 1–12. 29 Barry S. Kogan, »Understanding Prophecy: Four Traditions,« in: Steven Nadler and Tamar Rudavsky, eds., The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge 2009, 495. 30 Ibid., »Understanding Prophecy,« 501.

5 Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus

123

lifetime, fled from the Almohad conquerors who came to the Iberian Peninsula from North Africa in 1148. Ibn Daud escaped to Toledo, where he died a martyr. Ibn Daʿud is known especially for two works: the Sefer ha-Kabbalah and his treatise al-ʿAqīda al-Rāfiʿa, published in 1160–61. Both works are polemical in nature: The first defends Judaism against the Karaites with the aid of historical arguments, the second by philosophy. With reference to the continuous historical sequence of the sages, in the Sefer ha-Kabbalah (»On Jewish Tradition«) ibn Daʿud attempts to prove that the interpretation of Scripture had remained constant only within the tradition of rabbinic Judaism. al-ʿAqīda al-Rāfiʿa is preserved by virtue of two Hebrew translations, the more accurate of which by Solomon ben Lavi in the late 14th century, was published under the title Ha-Emunah ha-Ramah (»The Exalted Faith«). By means of criticism of Saʿadia Gaon, ibn Gabirol, and—though he does not mention him—Yehudah Halevi, he attempts to demonstrate the identity of philosophical thought and the Jewish traditions. The main aim of the book is to sort out the question whether human will is free or not. The book guides students interested in Aristotelian logic and natural philosophy (that of ibn Sīnā) to the concepts of substance and accidence, as well as form and matter. With the aid of Aristotelian variants of these concepts, ibn Daʿud defines the soul as the immaterial—and thus location-less—form of the body, which does not perish at death but is immortal. Ibn Daʿud also cites Aristotle’s proof of the existence of God: all movement comes from a Prime Mover, who is himself unmoved and incorporeal. Just as ibn Daʿud bridges the area between God and the physical world in accordance with Arabic natural philosophy by a sequence of incorporeal cosmic spheres, each of which has an intellect and a soul, so too, he subscribes to the naturalistic explanation of prophecy as developed by Arabic falsafa: in certain conditions relating to the receptivity of the human soul, a cosmically mediated emanation ensues via the lowest Intellect (the so-called active intellect) to the human capacity for imagination and the rational soul. Ibn Daʿud manages to mitigate the tensions between the religious concepts of Divine Providence and free will on one hand, and the Arabic version of Aristotelian natural philosophy on the other, by his ability to integrate these concepts into his Jewish world view, with the help of ibn Sīnā’s distinction between necessary and contingent causes. According to Ibn Daʿud, man does indeed have free will because in his view—contrary to previous Jewish thinkers—God knows the possible only as a possible (and not as a necessary) and so no conflict with human free choice can arise. Despite ibn Daʿud’s affirmation of Aristotelian natural philosophy, he shares Halevi’s polemic against Christians and Muslims in two points: (1) the assertion of the Torah (the law) as the only true divine covenant, and (2) the exclusive tying of the latter to the Jewish people and the Holy Land.31 Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204, known as Maimonides), like his slightly older contemporary Ibn Daʿud born in Córdoba, broadly agrees with the latter, without

31 Resianne Fontaine, In Defence of Judaism. Abraham ibn Daud. Sources and Structures of haEmunah ha-Ramah, Assen 1990.

124

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

naming him—especially regarding the problem of the divine attributes and the explanation of divine providence and prophecy with the help of causal-scientific concepts. However, Maimonides’s far more comprehensive standing, not only as a thinker but also as a scholar of halakhah, has made him the most important reformer, if not re-founder of Jewish traditions. The threefold claim of his work is (1) to re-shape the self-image of all Jews for all time through a philosophically oriented spirituality, (2) to make non-Jewish external philosophical or scientific knowledge an integral part of the most central of the Jewish traditions, namely the law, and (3) to insist upon the notion of causal reality as a central medium of divine revelation.32 Through the combination of these three claims and the history of their dramatic enforcement in a hundred years of cultural struggle in the south of France (13th cent.), the preparatory work of ibn Daʿud was almost entirely deprived of attention. Despite the same cultural context of Maimonides’ and ibn Daʿud’s thought, in 12th-century al-Andalus, the different course of Maimonides’ life may have contributed to the development of his spiritual standing. Like ibn Daʿud, the family of Maimonides had to flee from the radical Muslim movement of the Almohads (ca. 1149) when the latter removed the protected status of adherents of monotheistic religions (dhimmi). Unlike ibn Daʿud, however, after a ten-year phase of moving from place to place, Maimonides left Spain. In the year 1159/60 we find him in Fez, the heartland of the Almohads (al-muwaḥḥidūn, lit. »the unity confessors«) and 1166 in Fatimid Egypt, as physician to the secretary of Sultan Saladin. It is likely that Maimonides converted to Islam during his time in Fez, for self-protection. However, it is striking that a teaching of ibn Tumart, founder of the Almohad dynasty, firmly against all anthropomorphism and focused on a strict concept of the oneness of God, is also at the center of Maimonides’s thought. Even philosophy as the preferred medium by which to express the oneness of God, and a consequent tendency to define the Jewish faith with the formulation of »fundamental principles« (Arabic: usūl; Hebrew: ikkarim), characterize both the thought of ibn Tumart and that of Maimonides. The list of »13 fundamental principles« compiled by Maimonides, the second of which is the oneness of God,33 represented a radical and heavily criticized innovation in the Jewish traditions, because usually the rejection of tenets of faith (dogmas) marked a key distinction from Christianity. An important source of Maimonides’s creativity is the interweaving of the observance of the commandments (halakhah) and the acquisition of correct philosophical views—so much so that he called a Jew living strictly in accordance with the tradition and believed in a physical God a heretic. But how exactly is the combination of rationalism and halakhah to be understood? In Maimonides scholarship, inspired by Leo Strauss in particular, the idea became widespread that in the

32 Moshe Halbertal, Maimonides. Life and Thought, Princeton 2014, 4 and 358–359. See too, Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton 2009). 33 Maimonides in the introduction Perek Helek on Massechet Sanhedrin in his Mishnah commentary.

5 Under Islam in the West: al-Andalus

125

exoteric reading of Maimonides’s writings we need to seek the observant Jew, but in the esoteric reading of it, the Aristotelian rationalist. This doubling in understanding Maimonides was facilitated by the fact that these two emphases seemed to be split between his two main works: the Mishne Torah (»Second Torah«), written in Hebrew, which claims to make the Talmud superfluous by summarizing its halakhic discussions and bringing them to a definitive resolution, and the Dalālat alḤāʾirīn written in Judeo-Arabic (Heb.: More ha-Nevuchim or »Guide for the Perplexed«), in which Maimonides indirectly indicates his philosophical views on the phenomenon of prophecy and on the question of creation to Jews confused by Greek philosophy. The quest for the esoteric Maimonides, anchored by Strauss in a Platonic tradition of esoteric writing, which lasted almost 100 years, has not yet led to a consensus.34 A skeptical, a mystical, a traditional, and a philosophical way of reading the Dalāla confront each other more or less irreconcilably. But there is now no dispute that both works, the Mishne Torah and the Dalāla, must be read as coherent arguments for the same concern. It is inadequate to describe this concern as an intention to harmonize revealed truth and philosophical truth by means of reason. According to Maimonides, philosophical rationalism should, rather, became an integral part of man’s inner quest for the salvation of his soul for all time. By what conception does Maimonides merge the sphere of the most intimate religious experiences with the world of the non-Jewish sciences or philosophy (cf. Dalāla part 3, ch. 51)? He can do this because he rediscovers in the Bible the struggle within the human being, conducted against an external object (such as the »Golden Calf« in Ex 32), namely as the necessary fight against the imagination in terms of the »worship« of spiritual images. As, according to Maimonides, these anthropomorphic idols are linked with religious language, he undertakes a thorough reassessment of it. The whole of the first part of the Dalāla thus presents a new philosophical hermeneutic, applied to dozens of examples, such as how biblical talk of »God’s sitting« can be understood in a way that is non-anthropomorphic and not in contradiction with philosophical knowledge. But the big questions, too, like whether the world was created ex nihilo or whether it is eternal, are relevant to the image of God. In the second part of the Dalāla, Maimonides brackets two strands of discussion together which keep each other »in check« or sharpen each other dialectically: against Kalam thinkers (such as Saʿadia Gaon), Maimonides claims that it is impossible to present a demonstrative proof of the biblical idea of creatio ex nihilo, which is why the existence of God cannot and should not be proven by this idea. Rather a demonstrative (imagination-free) proof of the existence of God could only be based on acceptance of the eternity of the world. However, this conclusion cuts a long argument short and was meant as an intermediate result. Maimonides’ ongoing struggle was provoked by contemporary astronomical findings which weakened Aristotle’s argument for the eternity of the

34 Leo Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und seiner Vorläufer, Berlin 1935, or idem., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, Ill. 1952.

126

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

world and tilted the scale again in favor of creatio ex nihilo. We see how boldly Maimonides ties central notions of Jewish faith to current findings of non-Jewish scientific knowledge—always with a concern with purging any conception of God of physical attributes. In Maimonides’ linking external scientific knowledge and the concept of knowledge in Jewish traditions, a specific form of proof plays a prominent role: The proof based on scientific causality. This can be observed in Maimonides’s explanation of the phenomenon of prophecy. Maimonides, as is so often, relies on the explanatory model of the falāsifa, which discussed prophecy as a natural process and not as a divine intervention. Prophecy is a compulsory result of the preparation of the imaginative and rational capacities of the soul by perfecting of one’s conduct and by the pursuit of comprehensive knowledge. Maimonides says: »Listen to the truth, no matter who speaks it.« Preparation for prophethood is thus placed in the hands of man alone. Complying with causal laws, the cosmic emanation flows onto the developed intellect and the perfected imaginative capacity, which translates this emanation »without loss« into pictures. Though in one important point Maimonides marks a step-change from the falsafa: the will of God has the chance to prevent a morally, intellectually, and imaginatively perfected person automatically becoming a prophet. That this is not meant in the sense of a limitation of scientific and causal thinking is evident from the special position of the most important Jewish prophet: Moses. According to Maimonides his prophecies are based exclusively on the cosmic emanation that follows causal laws invariably and without any involvement of the imagination. Maimonides’s efforts to secure for the sciences and philosophical rationalism a firm place in the Jewish traditions, and to exclusively open up developed intellects their penetration into the presence of God, triggered huge frustration among Jews who had no scientific education. Still during his lifetime, in a letter on the »Resurrection of the Dead,« Maimonides had to defend himself against the fierce criticism that in his view only the educated would experience the resurrection of the dead and attain eternal life. He annoyingly replied that he certainly had not denied the resurrection of the body for all Jews and accepted it as a (short-term) miracle—but at the same time he did not retract a word of his conviction about eternal life for developed intellects. This criticism, first voiced in the East, was conveyed to the West. Between 1204 and 1305, several waves of protest by halakhic authorities (Rabbi Meir Abulafia, Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham, Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret) ensued in the region between northern Spain and the Provence, against the general claim of Maimonides’s Mishne Torah that it had replaced the Talmud, and in particular against the presence of international scholarship and (Greek) philosophy at the heart of the Jewish traditions. These fiercely polemical debates (with a ban, a counter-ban, and even the burning of the Guide the Perplexed), conducted in the form of public letters, gained momentum especially after the translation of the Dalāla into Hebrew in 1204 by Shmuel ibn Tibbon of the Provence, because this gave a much larger circle of Hebrew-reading Jews access to Maimonides’s allegorical interpretations of Scripture. The latter had no small part in the development of a Maimonidean »school,« which not only changed the esoteric intellectualism of Maimonides

6 Under Christianity in the West: Southern France, Spain, Italy

127

into an exoteric one but proclaimed a consistent »scientification« of Jewish traditions in a more visible and unambiguous way than Maimonides had intended. After a hundred years the controversies died down, though this may have been through sheer exhaustion. The compromise of the banning of study of the Greek-Arabic sciences for students under 25, negotiated in 1305, was simply ignored by the philosophers—without consequences.35 The Maimonidean school had become an integral part of the Jewish traditions.

6

Under Christianity in the West: Southern France, Spain, Italy

For »Jewish philosophy« (as for European cultural history as a whole), it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the translation movement, initially championed mainly by members of the Tibbon family who had fled from the Almohads, from Spain to Christian-dominated southern France. This movement achieved a good deal more than just translation from one language into another. Jewish translators of Greek-Arabic-Jewish knowledge from Spain also brought about a reinterpretation of this knowledge within the cultural context of Christendom. This is reflected in the fact that the Jews did not accept the language of scholarship (Latin) which was prevalent within their new surroundings (in contrast as with Arabic in the Muslim environment) but chose Hebrew—provoking a social repositioning of their body of knowledge, the implications of which scholarship is only just beginning to understand. For five generations, the Tibbon family, beginning with Yehudah ibn Tibbon and then his son Shmuel, initially translated original works by Jewish authors (Saʿadia Gaon, Bachia ibn Paquda, Maimonides) from Arabic to Hebrew, but also, from the third generation onwards, with Moshe ibn Tibbon, a large number of medical, astronomical, and mathematical writings by Arab authors, especially the Aristotle commentaries of ibn Rushd. This prompted a considerable expansion of the vocabulary and versatility of the Hebrew language, so that in the 13th century philosophical discussion of the Maimonidean heritage was basically conducted outside Spain in Hebrew (though in Spain Shem Tov ben Joseph ibn Falaquera’s extensive Arabic commentary on the Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn should be mentioned). It was in southern France that for the first time an exclusively Hebrew-language philosophical culture developed, while nevertheless the writings of originally Arabic-writing Jews continued—on into the 16th century—to be the most frequently cited sources of these Jewish authors, thanks to their translation into Hebrew. This specific philosophical culture in Hebrew in southern France was characterized by a group of thinkers influenced heavily by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as well as 35 Gregg Stern, Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture. Jewish Interpretation and Controversy in Medieval Languedoc, London 2009. Bernard Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition. The Career and Controversies of Ramah, Cambridge, Mass. 1982.

128

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

Maimonides (though not yet by scholasticism): Isaac Pollegar (died 1330), Joseph ibn Kaspi (died 1340), Moshe Narbonni (died 1362), and Levi ben Gershom (called Gersonides; died 1344), who also expressed views critical of ibn Rushd. This group unites a new concept of faith (Heb.: emunah). The Arabic term iʿtiqād, which was translated by the translators of Maimonides as emunah, means, in its Arabic context, only the correspondence of an inner idea with an externally perceived something. In this sense, iʿtiqād can include rational and traditional, certain and dubious, and indeed true and false ideas. This broad meaning of the concept of emunah was now considerably narrowed down by the Hebrew philosophers under the influence of Ibn Rushd, with the help of Aristotle’s distinction between Knowledge and True Opinion. Only a rational explanation of why x is what it is qualifies knowledge as knowledge, distinguishing itself from True Opinion, which lacks this justification. From this, Gersonides drew the conclusion that in his view prophets who predict the future but have no rational explanation for the event that is to occur, possess no knowledge. In other words, in Aristotelian understanding, knowledge is theoretical knowledge only, and in this regard—against Maimonides—the prophet is subordinate to the philosopher. As a consequence of this conviction Gersonides and later Moshe Narbonni openly represent the position that theoretical knowledge is a sufficient condition for the bliss or immortality of the soul—a position which Maimonides had dealt with strictly esoterically.36 The great astronomer and mathematician Gersonides was the most important Jewish Aristotelian after Maimonides. In his famous work »Wars of the Lord« (Milchamot Adonai) he does not always agree with the latter. Although he agrees that Aristotle’s proof of the eternity of the world is not sustainable, he diverges from Maimonides (and most Jewish philosophers) in accepting creation from formless matter coexistent with God, thereby denying creatio ex nihilo. He sees all earthly events as determined by the cosmic spheres; and human beings can only free themselves from this determinism if they understand the laws of motion of the heavenly bodies. As Ḥasdai Crescas later did, Gersonides criticized Maimonides’s assumption that nothing can be stated about God as regards his essence. Discussion of the fundamental impossibility of statements about God (doctrine of attributes) takes up a good deal of space in Maimonides’ Dalāla. In criticism of the kalām he came to the conclusion that (biblical) statements about God, according to which he is »just,« »punitive,« or »knowing,« are statements which have no accidental or substantial correlation with God (equivocal terms) and if they were indeed to say something about God, would damage the unity and uniqueness of God (Maimonides had accepted statements about God only those worded negatively—God is »not unjust« or »not unknowing«—and attributes relating to his activity, witnessed to in the creation of the world). Gersonides argues that if every statement about God is perfectly equivocal, the arguments for assertions of the philosophers, according to which, for instance, God is an intellect in actu, would also miss the mark. Gerson-

36 Charles H. Manekin, »Hebrew Philosophy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: An Overview,» in: Frank/Leaman, History of Jewish Philosophy, 354.

6 Under Christianity in the West: Southern France, Spain, Italy

129

ides solves the logical aspect of this problem by searching a middle ground: those arguments are indeed related to God but the terms »intellect« or »knowledge« are affirmed of God »by priority,« while their affirmation of human beings is »by posteriority« only. In this way, according to Gersonides, the uniqueness and unity of God would not be damaged.37 In 14th and 15th-century Spain, however, in post-Maimonidean, Hebrew-language philosophical thought, a second group of authors can be identified who took a more tradition-oriented stance in answer both to the Jewish Averroists and to attempted Christian conversions: Profiat Duran (died 1414), Ḥasdai Crescas (died 1410/11), Simeon Duran (died 1444), Joseph Albo (died 1444), Abraham Bibago (died 1489), Isaac Arama (died 1494), and Isaac Abravanel (died 1509). Anti-Jewish riots in 1391 and forced baptisms, along with voluntary conversions, would occasion a deep spiritual and social split within the Jewish communities in Spain. Philosophically uninformed rabbis blamed the infiltration of »foreign wisdom« by the philosophically interested rabbis of the preceding century as the cause of the difficult condition of the communities. This context favored the—initially esoteric—development of Kabbalah as a transformation of Maimonidean traditions from within. The sharpest philosophical attack on Maimonideanism, however, came through Ḥasdai Crescas, a rabbi in Saragossa, who had lost his son in the riots of 1391. In his work »Light of the Lord« (Or ha-Shem) which became paradigmatic for Maimonides criticism for the foreseeable future, Crescas opted for a dual attack: (1) a fundamental criticism of Aristotelian philosophy and (2) criticism of Maimonides’ theory of human happiness. Crescas attempted to undermine Aristotelian physics as a closed hierarchical system. Against the Aristotelian concepts of space, the denial of the existence of the vacuum and the finiteness of the universe, Crescas argued in favor of the existence of empty space, the vacuum, and even a space beyond the world— with the consequential possibility of the existence of several worlds.38 Against Aristotle’s conviction of the impossibility of an infinite series of causes, Crescas tries to show the logical possibility of an unlimited chain of causes, and thus also infinite space and time. The guarantee of this cosmic order, according to Crescas, follows not from unconcluded causal chains with a necessary beginning, but from divine love. Crescas also tried to undermine the Maimonidean equation of the acquisition of knowledge with the acquisition of human happiness and immortality. According to Crescas, human happiness is not enabled by the intellect as a medium of connection with God; rather, oneness with God is gained by love for him—a concept of love which is defined by fulfillment of the commandments. For Crescas, the fulfillment of the commandments as mandatory for all Jews leads to recovery of the incorporeality and holiness of the soul—independent of the intellectual insights which a person has gained in the course of his life. Not only was this a radical rejection of Maimonides’s inherent differentiation of the elite from the broader population, as

37 Manekin, Hebrew Philosophy, 359–360. 38 Warren Zev Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas, Amsterdam 1998, 3–45.

130

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

he had made happiness and eternal life dependent on the gaining of knowledge, but also the emphasis on fulfillment of the commandments had a clearly antiChristian point as well. However, most of the Sephardic thinkers—including some of Crescas’s students (Joseph Albo, Profiat Duran)—held fast to the Maimonidean concept of an exclusively cognitive focus of Jewish existence, not least because in Spain the latter embodied the traditional self-awareness of the Sephardic elites. Crescas’s criticism of Maimonides’s logocentrism stretched out a new thought horizon, which—unlike post-Maimonidean Hebraic thought in southern France—enabled both polemical and affirmative references to Christian thinkers.39 The 15th century mandatory study of Judeo-Arab sources continued in the curriculum for the training of physicians, diplomats, ministerial officials, and bankers. Commentaries on the Aristotelian-Averroist text corpus continued to be written (Abraham Bibago, Joseph Ben Shem Tov), as well as on Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed (Profiat Duran, Simeon ben Tzemach Duran, Shem Tov ben Joseph ibn Shem Tov, Isaac Abravanel). The application of Aristotelian logic even found its way into the interpretation of the Talmud (though not without fierce opposition).40 On the other hand, the challenges posed by scholastic philosophy (»Christian triumphalism«) were taken up. Isaac Arama understood the study of scholastic philosophy as an intellectual challenge as well, using its study to focus more sharply on its links to Jewish traditions. In this manner, argumentation in the format of quaestiones found entry into Jewish texts, and numerous scholastic texts were also translated into Hebrew.41 Abraham Bibago cites a number of Franciscans (Alexander of Hales, Duns Scotus) and Dominicans (Thomas Aquinas). This nearness to scholasticism had two consequences for Jewish thought: in post-Maimonidean thinking in Spain (1) there is a re-shaping of the concept of faith; (2) Maimonidean ikkarim (»principles«) are elaborated into the status of a philosophical genre. In relation to the latter, Sephardic authors like Joseph Albo, Abraham Bibago and Isaac Arama created an abundance of different hierarchies of the guiding principles in the Jewish traditions on the basis of Maimonides’s 13 ikkarim. With the exception of Albo and Crescas, most considered creatio ex nihilo the most important principle of the Torah. The peaceful co-existence of these dogma hierarchy lists shows that the ikkarim were not (as in Christianity) understood as an instrument for the enforcement of orthodoxy. For Jewish thought traditions, however, the former topic was far more significant: for Narbonni and Gersonides, theology and philosophy covered the same scope, in line with Aristotelian metaphysics. Now in parallel with Aquinas’s distinction between philosophy (or natural theology) and theology (or sacra doctrina), there was only a partial area of overlap as numerous statements of theology cannot be proven by human reason and must be believed. In the 15th century the concept

39 Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, »Jewish Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity,« in: Frank/Leaman, History of Jewish Philosophy, 499–503. 40 Daniel Boyarin, Sephardi Speculation: A Study in Methods of Talmudic Interpretation, Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben Zvi and the Hebrew University 1989 [Hebrew]. 41 Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters, Graz 1956, 469–89.

6 Under Christianity in the West: Southern France, Spain, Italy

131

of faith thus shifts from objective towards the subjective. Within this concept of faith, as a result, the subjective components and the idea that Jewish traditions are based on principles, get in a relationship of latent tension. So it was no surprise that Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508)—the last active philosopher in Spain before the expulsion of the Jews in 1492—rejected the idea of a Judaism reliant on »dogmas.« Freedom of human choice moved into the center of his concept of faith. Just as the Jews’ option to act against God brought about the exiling of Jews among the nations, so too Israel’s free choice of God will redeem the land of Israel. The (right) choice for the Torah, as Abravanel shows in his »Principles of Faith« (Rosh Amanah), requires the acceptance of the entire Torah in its set, letter-by-letter sequence—a kabbalistic concept and indication of the ongoing transformation of Maimonidean traditions from within. Abravanel’s concept of a supra-naturalistic history of Israel’s free choice not only refers back to Augustine’s idea of human decision for or against the earthly or the heavenly Jerusalem (De Civitate Dei), but also forwards to humanism in 16th-century Italy. References of Jewish-Arabic philosophy to Christian scholasticism in 13th and th 14 century Italy are even stronger than those in Spain, with such authors as Jacob Anatoli, Zerahiah ben Shealtiel Ḥen, Moses of Salerno and Shemaria of Crete. This is the time of translations of Aristotle and ibn Rushd, including the translation of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed into Latin. The increasing re-accessibility of the Greek originals of Aristotle in the second half of the 15th century brought about a re-intensification of Aristotelianism (and Maimonideanism) in Italian universities. Judah Messer Leon (ca. 1420–ca. 1480), who had studied medicine and philosophy at the universities of Bologna and Padua, stood as spokesperson for the Jewish Aristotelians. He enjoyed high regard—partly because of his contacts with the richest Italian banking family, the Pisas—and conducted a patrician lifestyle. The youth of the Jewish upper classes learned Torah and halakhah, but also followed the curriculum of trivium and quadrivium. Familiarity with scholastic thinking is reflected for example in the fact that in his encyclopedia of logic, Mikhlol Yofi (»Purest Beauty«), Judah Messer Leon strove to replace Judeo-Arabian logic (in Gersonides) by the tradition of scholastic logic, which he considered superior. He was supported in this by Elijah del Medigo (1460–1497), a Jewish thinker from Crete, who as an outstanding teacher of the Aristotelian-Averroist corpus had taught Italian academics, churchmen, and humanists (such as Girolamo Donato, Domenica Grimani, and Pico della Mirandola) from 1480 to 1490. But Judah Messer Leon’s Aristotelianism was not the sole and undisputed answer to Renaissance humanism, in which man is perceived as the center of the world. By 1550, when the political status of Jews in Italy changed for the worse and the churches and secular authorities sharply limited their economic activities, Jewish thinkers tried to give new contours to their feeling of spiritual superiority over their Christian neighbors (cf. Simone Luzzato’s Socrate overo dell’humano sapere). Jewish intellectuals understood the secularizing tendencies of the Renaissance— such as effective human rhetoric—as part of the knowledge of nature, and this knowledge was never in conflict with the revealed knowledge of the Torah. In his Honeycomb‘s Flow (Nofet Tzufim), Judah Messer Leon supports the claim that the

132

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

biblical text, not the (pagan) orator of Antiquity, is the model of the perfect presentation. However, parallel to Marsilio Ficino’s merging of the scholastic masters (Aquinas in particular) with a large number of traditions (Platonism, neo-Platonism, Hermeticism, Pythagoreanism, Zoroastrianism, and Kabbalah), Jewish thinkers were happy to take these variants of humanism on board. In his The Dialogues on Love (Dialoghi d‘Amore), Judah Abravanel (ca. 1460–after 1521), son of Isaac Abravanel, created a Jewish answer to Marsilio Ficino’s idea of unity of that variety of knowledge traditions (priscina theologia). Judah, better known by the name of Leone Ebreo, saw in Judaism, especially in the esoteric traditions of ancient Kabbalah (from which in his view Plato derived his philosophy), the perfect unity of the Beautiful, the Good, and the True. Leone Ebreo must have challenged his father, who held Aristotelianism in high regard. In Ebreo’s platonically inspired philosophy, imagination, and allegory were given an opposing assessment to that of Maimonides because for Ebreo, imagination is not any longer an obstacle to knowledge of the truth. Instead, as an imitation of the absolute beauty of God, beautiful speech also participates in the divine beauty. By rejecting the metaphorical language of the Torah not as a shell for its philosophical content, as Maimonides had taught, instead seeking in the beautiful speech of the Torah the key to the divine mysteries and to creation, Leone Ebreo created the model of a new philosophy. While the Jewish communities were reluctant to accept the latter, his Dialogues on Love was a bestseller throughout Europe. Christian humanists’ interest in the Kabbalah was awakened because it possessed the image of an old, theoretical science with a claim to universal knowledge. Yohanan Alemanno (ca. 1435–ca. 1504) played a key role, not only for the merging of the philosophy of Jewish thinkers with Kabbalah, but also for the emergence of a Christian Kabbalah. Conversely, Alemanno’s wish to combine the study of Kabbalah, alchemy, astrology, and magic, with practical manipulations of nature promoted a proto-experimental way of looking at nature, which caused him to establish contact with (Jewish and non-Jewish) experimenters in magical practices. Not just Alemanno but also Jewish scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries such as Leone da Modena, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, and Azaria de Rossi, looking for the hidden »handwriting of God« in nature—to take up a topos common of their time—had a share in the emergence of a new philosophy of nature.42

7

Ottoman Empire: Thessaloniki, Istanbul

In the numerous Yeshivot of the Ottoman Empire, the most famous of which was that of Joseph Taitatzak in Thessaloniki, the study of halakhah was conducted together with study of the secular sciences. For Sephardic Jews coming into the Ottoman Empire in the course of the 16th century, the secular sciences were so important for their self-image that the works of Aristotle continued to be studied 42 David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, New Haven 1995. Tirosh-Rothschild, »Jewish Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity,« 504–529.

7 Ottoman Empire: Thessaloniki, Istanbul

133

with their medieval commentaries. Romaniote scholars worked with their Sephardic colleagues by preparing summary translations of the Greek originals for them, a language the Sephardis did not speak, while the Romaniotes were keen to learn about Sephardic philosophy. Moses Almosnino (ca. 1515–ca. 1580)—the most highly regarded Jewish thinker in Thessaloniki—wrote super-commentaries on Aristotle (Physics, Ethics) and al-Ghazālī (Maqāsid al-falāsifa) and recommended the study of Ibn Bājja, ibn Sīnā, ibn Rushd, and Ptolemy—which proves that their books were available. The technology of book printing guaranteed the availability of the sources and also promoted the concern of Ottoman Jews to disseminate the philosophical traditions among non-professional students, as well. An indicator was the reprinting of the Sephardic »classics« such as Bachia ibn Paquda’s Hovot ha-Levavot, Maimonides’ More ha-Nevuchim, and Joseph Albo’s Sefer ha-Ikkarim. Popularization of philosophy was aided by Solomon Almoli’s encyclopaedia »The Collector for all Camps« (Meʾasef le-Khol ha-Machanot, ca. 1530), with introductions to grammar, logic, mathematics, music, geometry, optics, astronomy, medicine, magic, alchemy, etc. Almoli insisted that knowledge of these sciences was necessary for an understanding of the revealed traditions of the oral and written Torah.43 As a result of the educational interest of Jewish thinkers in the Ottoman realm, the most popular genres included discussions of hermeneutics and ethics, but also philosophy that combined Midrash and Kabbalah in a creative way. Increasingly, philosophy became an aid to kabbalistic theology, with a special interest in the mystical »cleaving« (devequt) of the human soul to God. The process that had been launched in Italy continued in the Ottoman Empire, with more and more kabbalistic elements being introduced into medieval Aristotelian Maimonideanism. The idea that Kabbalah comprises all human sciences, including humanism, as well as poetry, rhetoric, and history, made its introduction into an Aristotelian framework a logical answer to Renaissance humanism: King Solomon as homo universalis. One of the most important philosophical Jewish texts in the Ottoman Empire was Almosnino’s commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which is marked by a shift away from Maimonidean intellectualism to the voluntarism of a Ḥasdai Crescas—more precisely, a redetermination of the relationship between intellect and will in human action (especially halakhah). To a certain degree the Sephardic thinkers succeeded in reconciling the contemplation of God on the one hand, and the love of God on the other, within practical reason. The love of God in this case does not mean, as in Maimonides, the perfection of theoretical reason, but rather the perfection of the practical will. A consequence of this concept of perfection with practical connotations is that now—quite unlike in Maimonides—women are also involved in the concept of immortality.44

43 Joseph Hacker, »The Intellectual Activity of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,« in: Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus, eds., Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, Harvard 1987, 95–136. 44 See Almosnino, Maʾametz Koach (Venice 1588), 216a (quoted after Tirosh-Rothschild, »Jewish Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity,« 544).

134

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

Under the leadership of Isaac Luria (1534–1572) in Safed, Aristotelianism became fully obsolete. In his development of a cosmology and doctrine of the soul with the aid of Platonic, gnostic, and mythical ideas—as a mirror image of Maimonides’s demythologization—Luria’s remythologization of Jewish traditions occurs. A student of Isaac Luria, Israel Sarug (ca. 1540–1610), brought his teacher’s kabbalistic synthesis between (neo-)Platonic philosophy and halakhah to Italy and Amsterdam. There, the Converso Abraham Cohen de Herrera (ca. 1570–1635) was one of his students. On his return to Judaism, the latter wrote his Puerta del cielo (Gate of Heaven), a neo-Platonic account of Lurianic Kabbalah, which was read by Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Hegel, and Schelling in Latin translation.

8

The Reconfiguration of »Jewish Philosophy« in the Context of Modernity: Amsterdam, Berlin Haskalah, and Wissenschaft des Judentums

From the 17th century onwards, the concept of »Jewish philosophy« changed in Europe, becoming fundamentally distinct from the configurations discussed above. The following factors led to the fact that the quest for truth between (extra-Jewish) philosophy and internal Jewish thought came to be subject to changed rules. First of all, this quest was slowed by the re-situating of natural philosophy, which was part of metaphysics and theology in the Middle Ages, but now was absorbed by scientific/experimental study of nature (as in the work of David Gans, who had contacts with Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe in Prague, 1541–1613). Second, the mythologizing re-interpretations of Jewish traditions by Kabbalah became increasingly impenetrable to scientific analysis. As a result, the two poles between which the »Jewish philosophy« of the Middle Ages had unfolded in the 17th and 18th centuries shifted further and further apart: (1) the pole which conducted the search for truth solely by the human intellect, and (2) the pole which insisted on the authoritative role of the written and the oral Torah (a condition for the emergence of a Jewish Orthodoxy in the modern period). The former tendency, which was furthered by the denominational contacts between Jews, Conversos (»new Christians«), and those Conversos returning to the Jewish faith (»new Jews«), produced an early form of Jewish Enlightenment in Amsterdam, among thinkers like Uriel da Costa (1584–1640), Juan de Prado (ca. 1612–1669) and Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677). Spinoza is closely linked, on one hand, with the medieval intellectual tradition (in particular Maimonides and Crescas), without whom his work cannot be understood. On the other hand, his thought is no longer fed from the productive friction between his affirmation of Jewish traditions and an interest in non-Jewish philosophy. For his work he chose a language which cannot interact with Jewish traditions: Latin. The second trend is embodied by rabbis who often equated philosophy with heresy (cf. the banning of Spinoza) and sought a path between new autonomy and new orthodoxy. In fact, modern orthodoxy is not, in principle, opposed to scientific thinking. In Germany (Jacob Emden

8 The Reconfiguration of »Jewish Philosophy«

135

(1697–1767), Italy (Moshe Ḥaim Luzzatto, 1707–1746), and also in eastern communities such as Prague (Judah Loew, ca. 1529–1609) and Vilnius (Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon, 1720–1797), outstanding scientific works were written by orthodox authors. Between these two tendencies in modern Jewish thinking, which are difficult to bridge, the Berlin Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) embodies a transition phase. The philosophy of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and Salomon Maimon (ca. 1753–1800) is another enlightenment which combines an internal with an external perspective. As normally the case in the Middle Ages, their enlightenment was based on a thinking between two languages, German and Hebrew.45 The Hebrew writings of the two authors were part of a Hebrew Haskalah, to which also thinkers like Naftali Herz Wessely (1725–1805), Isaac Satanov (1732–1804), and Isaac Euchel (1756–1804) belonged. It discussed such topics as (modern) education and (Jewish) upbringing, tradition and modernity. Maimon wrote a Hebrew commentary on Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed. But Mendelsohn and Maimon also wrote in German and were thus part of the non-Jewish Enlightenment in Berlin. Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (1783) justifies for a non-Jewish public his adherence to both things: Judaism as a natural religion within the secular state, and the revelation of Jewish law. Similarly, with his Versuch über die Transscendentalphilosophie (1790) Maimon sought to have direct dialog with Immanuel Kant, but Kant refused. This bilingualism dissolved within a single generation, in favor of German. Here the dramatic story of the assimilation of the Jews to German culture begins. Part of this is the division of Jewish traditions into four—partly incompatible—self-understandings: neo-Orthodoxy, Conservative, Liberal, and Reform Judaism (and in the United States the Reconstructionism inspired by Mordechai Kaplan).46 But when no consensual understanding of Jewish traditions any longer exists, even philosophy can no longer perform the mediating role it had in the Middle Ages. Almost paradigmatic for this history of assimilation is the movement co-founded by Leopold Zunz in Berlin in 1818, the scientific/political movement, Wissenschaft des Judentums. Ironically enough, its research into medieval »Jewish philosophy« was an important component of its philosophical response to the self-determination of Jewish modernity.47 The parameters used by their scholars lay outside medieval »Jewish philosophy,« because their point of departure was not a common understanding of Jewish traditions but the modern (non-Jewish) concept of history. Similarly, for Spinoza and Mendelssohn, this was the concept of political philosophy or for Moritz Lazarus and Abraham Geiger the concept of ethics. Applicable here is

45 Ross Brann and Adam Sutcliff, eds., Renewing the Past, Reconfiguring Jewish Culture. From alAndalus to the Haskalah, Philadelphia 2004. 46 See the chapter by Deborah Dash Moore in these volumes. 47 James A. Diamond and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Encountering the Medieval in Modern Jewish Thought, Leiden and Boston 2012. George Kohler, Reading Maimonides’ Philosophy in 19th Century Germany. The Guide to Religious Reform, Dordrecht 2012.

136

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

Isaac Husik’s conclusion concerning Jewish intellectuals in the modern era, with which he ends his history of medieval philosophy: »There are Jews and there are philosophers, but there are no Jewish philosophers and there is no Jewish philosophy.«48 Both Jewish self-understanding and extra-Jewish theoretical perspectives have multiplied considerably in the past 200 years. Nonetheless, it can be observed that modern Jewish thinkers who adopt the concepts of non-Jewish philosophers—those of Kant (Moritz Lazarus and Hermann Cohen), Herder (Nachman Krochmal), Hegel (Samuel Hirsch), Schelling (Rosenzweig), Condillac (Samuel David Luzzatto), Spencer (Achad Ha’am), Heidegger (Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas), and Dewey (Mordechai Kaplan)—have always maintained a critical distance in relation to their thought systems. If, despite the significant differences between medieval and modern thought of Jews, one wanted to identify a structural similarity, one might say heuristically that they are both thinkers of the »in-between.«49

9

Jewish Diaspora and Israeli Thought after the Holocaust

The murder of a large portion of European Jewry prompted a post-war shift in philosophical thinking to the new centers of Jewish life: the United States and Israel. Among the few thinkers of the second half of the 20th century in whose philosophical work the tension between the Jewish religious traditions and general science is of key significance would be Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) in France,50 Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (1903–1993), and Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) in the United States,51 as well as Rav Abraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook (1865–1935) and Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) in Israel.52 In the context of the Shoah, from 48 Isaac Husik, A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy, New York 1958, 432. 49 On the feminine in Jewish philosophy and on »feminist Jewish philosophy« see Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, »Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy,« in: »Philosophy, Jewish,« ed. Michael berenbaum et al., Encyclopaedia Judaica, 22 vols., 2nd ed., Detroit 2007, vol. 16, 105–116. See, too, the chapter by Gwynn Kessler in these volumes. 50 Richard A. Cohen, »Emmanuel Levinas: Judaism and the Primacy of the Ethical,« in: The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, edited by Michael L. Morgan, Peter Eli Gordon, Cambridge 2007, 234–255; Leora Batnitzky, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas. Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation, Cambridge 2006. 51 Reinier Munk, The Rationale of Halakhic Man. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Conception of Jewish Thought, Amsterdam 1996; Edward K. Kaplan, Samuel H. Dresner (Hrsg.), Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, New Haven 1998. 52 Lawrence J. Kaplan and David Shatz, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality, New York and London 1995; David Hartman, Conflicting Visions: Spiritual Possibilities of Modern Israel, Jerusalem 1990; Avi Sagi, »Yeshayahu Leibowitz: A Breakthrough in Jewish Philosophy: Religion without Metaphysics,« Religious Studies: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 33 (1997), 203–216.

9 Jewish Diaspora and Israeli Thought after the Holocaust

137

the tension between the thought worlds of the greatest halakhic authority of his Lithuanian background, the Gaon of Vilna, and the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, whom he met in Freiburg, Levinas developed an unconditional ethics of responsibility for the Other, which precedes the autonomy of the self (Totalité et infini, 1961). Similarly, Soloveitchik attempted to describe his background world of Lithuanian Talmudists in the categories of Western culture (Halakhic Man, 1944). His philosophy of halakhah insists that theological speculations are not an appropriate answer to the tragedy of the 20th century, but rather require an active perfection of the moral character of man and a lived spiritual growth. Heschel, too, using traditional sources, sought practical answers to the ethical issues of Jewish life in the modern era, but he too refused to formulate a »theology after Auschwitz.« Instead, for Heschel, as for Soloveitchik, the founding of the State of Israel is a sign of the mercy of God. Rav Kook, from Latvia, dealt with the paradox that it was precisely the secular Zionists who had set in motion the return to the Holy Land with the help of Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah and Ḥasidism). He presented this as a dialectical idea of history which was able to interpret the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the practical progress of the Zionist Yishuv in the context of the beginning of redemption. On the basis of this »materialistic« view of the holiness of the Land and the nation, as the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of the Yishuv (1921), Rav Kook was able to combine non-Zionist orthodoxy with secular Zionism. Leibowitz, also from Latvia, conducted a life-long fight against precisely this objective view of the holiness of the Land, for which Rav Kook had provided the foundation in his religious Zionism. The Jewish worship of God demanded by the Torah was strictly a-historical. Any sacralization of the historical land, nation, or state Leibowitz rejected as idolatrous, even suspecting it of fascism. Thus, Leibowitz condemned the occupation since the Six Day War in 1967—for the sake of Israeli society. In his view, occupation in the name of religion would undermine its democratic and Jewish parameters. As to the »definition« according to which »Jewish Philosophy« was presented here—dynamics between (Jewish) languages as a means to rethink and reshape the inside and outside divide of Jewish traditions—there is evidence that protagonists will turn towards further fixed (Jewish but not only Jewish) dichotomies which wait to become destabilized: between rational and visual cultures, between conceptualizations of the male and the female, and between Jewish and Muslim struggles with modernity. Though many euro-centric, orientalist, and colonialist dichotomies (far too long also within the traditions of »Jewish Philosophy«) remain, these are worthwhile to be reconsidered through vital philosophical creativity. For further reading Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion. An Introduction into Modern Jewish Thought, New Jersey 2011. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers, Oxford 1997. James A. Diamond and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Encountering the Medieval in Modern Jewish Thought, Leiden 2012.

138

Jewish Philosophy and Thought

Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman, and Charles H. Manekin, eds., The Jewish Philosophy Reader, London and New York 2000. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, eds., Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge 2003. Willi Goetschel, The Discipline of Philosophy and the Invention of Modern Jewish Thought, New York 2013. Julius Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, London 1964. Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson, New Directions in Jewish Philosophy, Indiana 2010. idem, Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism, New York 2014. Raphael Jospe, What is Jewish Philosophy?, Tel-Aviv 1988. Martin Kavka, Zachary Braiterman, eds., The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: The Modern Era, Cambridge 2012. Menachem Kellner, Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought. From Maimonides to Abravanel, Oxford 1986. Andreas Kilcher and Ottfried Fraisse, eds., Lexikon jüdischer Philosophen. Philosophisches Denken des Judentums von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart 2003. Joel L. Kraemer, ed., Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, Oxford 1991. idem, Maimonides: The Life and World of one of Civilization’s Greatest Minds, New York 2010. Oliver Leaman, Jewish Thought. An Introduction, New York 2006. Steven M. Nadler, T.M. Rudavsky, eds., The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge 2009. Hilary Putnam, Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein, Bloomington 2008. Eliezer Schweid, A History of Modern Jewish Religious Thought, 2. vols., Leiden 2011–2015. Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1996. Dov Schwarz, Central Problems of Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Leiden 2005. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century, Leiden 2014. eadem, Woman and Gender in Jewish Philosophy, Bloomington 2004.

Modern Jewish Literature Matthias Morgenstern

1

Concept

In early modern Judaism, literary publications were connected with the exegetical and homiletic tradition of the Torah and its exposition and complied with religious standards. The literary output of Jews in modern times has meanwhile released itself from such ties. »Literature« now means writing which, as belles lettres, aims primarily to meet aesthetic demands and expects to be appreciated and discussed accordingly. Against this background it is questionable whether the adjective »Jewish« should be applied to authors, the content of their texts or the (implied or real) recipients.1 As the modern period has no criteria for the classification of content as specifically »Jewish« or »non-Jewish,« since the 19th century the adjective has mainly been applied to authors’ ethnic origin or religious background. But this understanding often lacks precision. Writers such as Heinrich Heine, Franz Werfel, and Kurt Tucholsky, who were baptized at a point in their lives, declared their sympathy for Christianity or were indifferent to their background, often continue to be called »Jewish« or to be viewed in the light of their Jewish heritage. With adherence to Judaism having become controversial in the modern period, since the turn of the 19th to the 20th century there have been attempts to revisit the »Jewish« character of writers’ texts. Setting aside the impossibility of an unambiguous definition of what is »Jewish« in modernity, it should be noted that it was a matter of emphasizing »Jewish« contributions to the emergence and development of national European literatures and the cultural productivity of Jews, as a way of countering prejudice and discrimination. In response to discourse of an apologetic and assimilatory nature, in the early 20th century a cultural Zionism formed whose aim was not to classify the texts of Jewish authors on the literary spectrum of European national languages but to determine what was »distinctively Jewish.« In his essay Begriff und Programm einer jüdischen Nationalliteratur (1913) Moritz Goldstein made a distinction between radical Zionist literature, which had to be written in Hebrew, and moderately national Jewish literature, which could be writ-

1 With reference to the recipients, texts produced by non-Jews for Jews come to mind, such as the novels in Hebrew by the Israeli Palestinian Sayed Kashua (Dancing Arabs, 2002; Second Person Singular, 2010).

140

Modern Jewish Literature

ten in other languages and defined itself by its subject matter.2 In New Hebrew literature, as it emerged in 20th-century Palestine (after 1948 in the State of Israel), many writers preferred not to be called »Jewish« but »Hebrew« or »Israeli« authors. They were linking the »Jewish« with what in their view was a diaspora and ghetto mentality that the »New Hebrews« needed to overcome. In this context the »Canaanite« movement came into being, defining itself, in sharp antithesis, by its rejection of all things »Jewish.« Its literary representatives aimed to create a completely new culture on the soil of the Land of Israel, involving the population that was settled there before the Zionist immigration. In the present context we can do no more than mention the problems of the historical and ideological interpretations of »Jewish literature« in modern times; we cannot provide answers to the questions that arise from them. We will proceed pragmatically, eschewing definitions and generalizing ascriptions and taking account of ambiguities. Our discussion focuses on authors who see themselves as Jewish and/or in the judgment of their peers clearly belong in a Jewish context. Our primary interest is in authors and topics which display links to traditional Jewish literature and culture or to older or more recent Jewish history. Our structure focuses on the most important language areas: Yiddish and Hebrew, still closely interwoven in the 19th century, as well as German and English, with an emphasis on North America (with an added section on the Brazilian Clarice Lispector). We include sections on drama and poetry.

2

Pioneers and Beginnings

In his programmatic Hebrew essay Halacha und Aggada,3 Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934) discusses the significance of the formal language of the Talmud for present-day creative art, paying specially attention to Aggada (ascribed to the belles lettres). A possible source in the Ashkenazic cultural realm is edifying literature in Yiddish, such as the anthology Tse’na U’re’ena, compiled around 1590 by Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi (Hebrew: »Go out and see,« after Song 3:11). These collections of legends, anecdotes, parables, and allegories on the weekly lections of the Torah, mainly intended for women, were derided by Jewish Enlightenment figures. However they allowed women to participate in traditional Jewish education and prepared the way for later fiction. In 16th-century North Italy a »secular« Yiddish literature came into being. Its proponents were immigrants and refugees from the German-speaking realm who continued to use their own language. Their most important representative was

2 Andreas Kilcher, Introduction, in: Lexikon der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, Stuttgart 2000, IX. 3 Bialik, »Halacha und Aggada,« in: Der Jude 1919/1920, issue 1–2, 61–77 (German trans.: Gershom Scholem); also Matthias Morgenstern, »Die Schechina zwischen Halacha und Aggada,« in: Enno Edzard Popkes and Bernd Janowski, eds., Das Geheimnis der Gegenwart Gottes, Tübingen 2014, 157–174.

3 On »German-Jewish Literature«

141

the scholar Elijah Levita (Eliyahu ben Asher ha-Levi Ashkenazi, 1469–1549) from Nuremberg, who in the course of his stay in Venice in 1509 to 1515 wrote the Sreyfe lid, a poem about a fire which had ravaged the Rialto quarter.4 In 1507 Levita had written the Bove-bukh, a humorous adaptation of the knightly (originally Norman) romance Buovo d’Antona.5 In the secular literature of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula after 1492, romances (romanceros) also had a role to play; in some cases they were sung as ballads.6 Jewish-Spanish literature (Ladino) of the 19th century also made a name for itself with translations from English (Shakespeare) and French (Molière). Ḥasidic stories of the 18th century also served as a source of literary inspiration.7 Many of the hagiographic tales of the masters of this Eastern Jewish renewal movement were originally transmitted orally. Their collection and linguistic shape, as well as their literary and philosophical classification, are owed to 20th-century authors like Martin Buber (1878–1965)8 and the Yiddish storyteller Menashe Unger (1899–1969).9 Motifs from the Ḥasidic world inspired further literary work.10 The Berlin Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) was the real starting-point for modern Jewish literature: Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Hebrew Bible (1781) and his aesthetic/literary-critical writings produced in the context of his friendship with Lessing initiated the emergence of German-Jewish literature. Interest in the Bible, which was read and interpreted directly (without the customary mediation of rabbinic commentaries), was now linked with efforts to revive Hebrew as the »pure language« (safa berura), the development of which from an idiom used only in worship and traditional scholarship into a living secular people’s language began in Enlightenment Berlin.11 Ephraim Moses Kuh (1731–1790) was also prominent in this environment, as the first German-speaking Jewish lyrical poet. Around the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, literature was the theme of the Berlin Salons run by Jewish women like Henriette Herz (1764–1847), Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833), and Fanny Lewald (1811–1889).

3

On »German-Jewish Literature«

Among the preferred genres in Jewish writing in the German-speaking realm in the 19th century were satire, jokes, and pamphlets. Salomon Maimon’s Autobiogra-

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Elie Weil, Levita—Humaniste et Massorete (1469–1549), Leiden 1963, 59f. Jean Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, New York 2005, 176. Jacob Katz, »The Musical Tradition of the Romancero,« EJ 10, 1351–1353. Cf. Yosef Dan, Ha-Novella ha-chassidit, Jerusalem 1966; idem, Ha-Sippur ha-chassidi, Jerusalem 1975. Martin Buber, Die Erzählungen der Chassidim, Zurich 1949; idem, Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman, Frankfurt am Main 1906. Menashe Unger, Pschis‘che un Kotsk, Buenos Aires 1949. Cf. Isaac B. Singer, The Manor, New York 1967. Cf. Shalom Spiegel, Hebrew Reborn, New York 1930.

142

Modern Jewish Literature

phy (1792/93) is associated with sarcastic or humorous depictions of escape from ghetto life. Female Orthodox Jewish writers soon appeared as defenders of unflattering tradition, such as the daughter of Orthodox Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Sarah Guggenheimer (1834–1909), whose novels appeared under the pseudonym of Friedrich Rott in Der Israelit (the »central organ for Orthodox Judaism«). Largely unnoticed by the non-Jewish public, Orthodox writers continued this work in the 20th century: e.g. Isaac Breuer12 and Selig Schachnowitz (1874–1952), whose novel The Light from the West (1933) is a hagiographical depiction of the life of the rabbi Moses Schreiber (1762–1839).13 While the term »Jewish« is clear enough in the texts just mentioned, the problem of defining what is »Jewish« became increasingly significant for the betterknown writers of the last decades of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. This was not just because of the susceptibility of this term to ideology amidst widespread discussions about emancipation and assimilation, but also in view of conditions in social and political life, with the epithet »Jewish« often being the decisive factor in accepting or rejecting texts. So, in 1933 »Jewish« triggered the burning of authors’ writings—among them works by writers who had hitherto not regarded themselves primarily as »Jewish.« This also applies to authors who continued to write in German in exile after 1933 (and 1945), like the dramatist Max Zweig (1892–1992) and the essayist Werner Kraft (1896–1991), both of whom died at an advanced age in Israel.14 Prague author Franz Kafka (1883–1924), testifies that he has nothing »in common with Jews« (Diary, Dec 25, 1911), but elsewhere describes himself as having a »Western Jewish« background. Kafka never discusses the topic of »Jewishness« openly in his literature; any hints about this are a matter of controversy, despite the interpretive efforts of his friend Max Brod (1884–1968). But based on the open and often allegorical character of his texts, Judaism-related interpretations of his work are possible and, given his biography, even probable. Discussions about Judaism were initiated in Prague by Martin Buber’s Drei Reden über das Judentum (1911). In his essay Der jüdische Dichter deutscher Zunge (The German-speaking Jewish Poet, 1913), Max Brod called for Jewish writing to be for the

12 Breuer’s novels Ein Kampf um Gott (1920) and Falk Nefts Heimkehr (1923), describe their heroes’ catharsis and return from secularism to Orthodoxy, see Matthias Morgenstern, »Zwischen ›Krieg und Frieden‹ und ›Im Westen nichts Neues‹,« in: Margarete Schlüter, Giuseppe Veltri, and Klaus Herrmann, eds., Jewish Studies between the Disciplines. Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer, Leiden and Boston 2003, 405–420. Breuer’s daughter Ursula Merkin (1919–2006), a great-granddaughter of S. R. Hirsch, continued the family tradition with the publication of her novel, Borrowed Lands (2000). 13 By founding his famous Pressburg talmudic academy in 1806, Schreiber boosted the selfassertion of Orthodoxy in Europe. 14 An example in the German-Jewish context is the literature scholar Anat Feinberg (born in Tel Aviv in 1951), who teaches Hebrew and Jewish literature at the Centre for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg, and publishes works on academic topics in German. Her novel Das Leben und andere Irrtümer (1999) was translated from Hebrew into German.

3 On »German-Jewish Literature«

143

benefit of the Jewish community or for a Jewish objective. Kafka rejected this as assimilation.15 Ultimately, he also distanced himself from Zionism, despite his attempts to learn Hebrew—he read the beginning of Brenner’s novel Breakdown and Bereavement (see below) in the original.16 His travel plans to Palestine were not realized. Kafka’s novella Das Urteil—dealing with a father-son conflict which ends with the death of the son—was written down in the fall of 1912, just a few days before the Jewish Day of Atonement. The novel fragments Der Process (1914–1915) and Das Schloss (1922), both published posthumously by Brod, can be read as a reflection on the Jewish (Ḥasidic) understanding of law and judgment. Kafka’s interpretation can perhaps be labeled »heretical« (with Scholem), on the grounds of profanation or repeal of the law.17 Gershon Shaked also interprets the »Jewish« in Kafka negatively; the central motif of his fragment Der Verschollene—in Brod’s edition (1927) Amerika—is taken, he suggests, from the Christian myth of the »eternal Jew.«18 Kafka, writer of world literature, became a »Jewish« author as a result of his reception by modern Israeli authors (including A. B. Yehoshua; see below). The characterization remains ambivalent among other eminent authors as well. Joseph Roth (1894–1939), born in Brody (present-day Ukraine), who in his essay Juden auf Wanderschaft (1927) and his novels Hotel Savoy (1924) and Flucht ohne Ende (Flight without End, 1927) occupied himself with »Jewish« motifs—the topic is the fate of displaced Jews, referred to himself as a »baptized Jew«19 and a committed supporter of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His »most Jewish« book, Hiob, Roman eines einfachen Mannes (Job, 1930), uses biblical motifs (the »Binding« of Isaac; the Joseph narrative from Genesis; Job) in depicting the tragic sufferings of the Eastern Jewish Singer family following the dismantling of traditional precepts. Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), also an Austrian author, discusses the problems of GermanJewish co-existence in the Habsburg monarchy in his novels Der Weg ins Freie (The Road into the Open, 1908) and Das weite Land (Undiscovered Country, 1911). An increasingly prominent part is played by such themes as anti-Semitism, especially in his stream-of-consciousness novel Leutnant Gustl, and arguments with Zionism, from which Schnitzler distanced himself, despite his friendship with Theodor Herzl. In Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (autobiography, 1921),20 Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934) defines himself as a »German Jew,« who was not a »Jewish Jew.« His

15 Andreas B. Kilcher, »Franz Kafka,« in: Lexikon der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, Stuttgart 2000 279. 16 Gershon Shaked, Die Macht der Identität. Essays über jüdische Schriftsteller, Frankfurt am Main 1986, 16–17. 17 Kilcher, Kafka, 281. 18 Shaked, Identität, 53. 19 Uncertainty as to whether Roth had indeed converted to Catholicism persisted to his death. At his funeral, friends discussed whether a Kaddish or the Lord’s Prayer should be recited at the grave; cf. Andreas Kilcher, »Joseph Roth,« in: Lexikon der jüdischen Literatur, Stuttgart 2000, 499. 20 Micha Brumlik responded in 1996 with his also autobiographical book, Kein Weg als Deutscher und Jude.

144

Modern Jewish Literature

»most Jewish« novel, Die Juden von Zirndorf (The Dark Pilgrimage, 1897), is a narrative from the second half of the 17th century, playing out against the background of the messianic disturbances caused by the Sabbatean movement. In Caspar Hauser— Die Trägheit des Herzens (1908), in a scene that might rather be described as unJewish, Wassermann describes »an outsider existence, as is typical for Jews.«21 In his late detective novel Der Fall Maurizius (1928), critic Gershon Shaked finds echoes of the medieval anti-Jewish accusations of blood desecration; Gregor Waremme, from a background in Russian Judaism, whose false testimony in court led to a miscarriage of justice, was »a sort of embodiment of Judas« and a stereotypical »eternal Jew.«22 With regard to the years after 1933, the writers who remained in the realm of German rule—for instance, the dramatist and publicist Erich Mühsam (1878–1934), who knew Martin Buber and Gustav Landauer and was murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp (as a Communist and a Jew)—should be distinguished from those who went into exile, like Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958) and Franz Werfel (1890–1945). In her short story Post ins Gelobte Land (»Post to the Promised Land,« 1945), the Communist Anna Seghers (1900–1983) deals critically with Zionism from her exile in Mexico; she returned to the Soviet occupation zone in 1947. Her best-known novel Das siebte Kreuz (The Seventh Cross, 1942) tells the story of seven escaping Jewish concentration-camp prisoners, all of whom, bar one, were recaptured and executed. Like Seghers, Arnold Zweig (1887–1968), who had settled in Haifa in 1934, decided in 1948 to go and live in the GDR. His novel Das Beil von Wandsbek (The Axe of Wandsbek), a literary adaptation of the events of Altona Bloody Sunday of July 1932, first appeared in Hebrew translation (1943) before its publication in German (Stockholm 1947).

4

Yiddish Literature

Because of its ever-present argument with the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), Yiddish literature was involved in intense exchanges with the literature of the German-speaking world from the start. Mendele Mocher Sforim (literally: »Mendele the Bookseller,« the pseudonym of Sholem Yankev Abramovich, 1835–1917), initially writing in Hebrew in the 1860s, then turned to Yiddish and for the rest of his life alternated between the two languages, in which he expressed himself with equal richness and color. His stories describe the ideological struggles between the old, observant generation and the Enlightenment-inspired younger generation,23 between assimilationists, Orthodox, and adherents of the Zion movement (Choveve Zion).

21 Hans Otto Horch, »Jakob Wassermann,« in: Lexikon der jüdischen Literatur, Stuttgart 2000, 595. 22 Shaked, Identität, 144. 23 Cf. his Hebrew novel Ha-Awot we-ha-banim (Fathers and Sons), Odessa 1886.

5 English-language Literature

145

Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich), born near Kiev in 1859, emigrated in 1906 to the USA and, apart from a stay of several years in Geneva, lived in New York, where he died in 1916. As a satirist and humorist he depicts the life of Eastern Jewish immigrants to North America. His best-known works include his novel Tevye the Dairyman, which was written in the years 1896 to 1916 and served as the inspiration for the Broadway musical Fiddler On The Roof. His texts were translated into Hebrew by his son-in-law Isaac Dov Berkowitz. Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) worked, among other things, as secretary to the Jewish community in Warsaw, where he was confronted with the economic misery of the Jewish rural population who had moved to the big city. His concern was to spread the ideas of the Enlightenment and socialism; in this context, he campaigned against early marriage, for instance. His most important works are poems, novellas, and novels in Yiddish and also in Hebrew, as well as an account of his travels from 1891 (Bilder fun a provints-rajse) which describes the pitiful conditions of life in the Russian-Jewish settlement district. Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1992), born into a Ḥasidic family near Warsaw, emigrated to the USA in 1935. There he worked as an editor of the Yiddish newspaper Forverts, and became known for his short story that Saul Bellow translated into English as Gimpel the Fool, in 1953. His narratives reveal deep familiarity with the traditional Eastern European environment; in this context he did not shy away from controversial topics like lesbian love and transvestism, as in his story Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, which was filmed with Barbra Streisand in the leading role. In 1978, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the only Yiddish writer to receive the honor.

5

English-language Literature

The first thing to note is the American-Jewish literature of the Yiddish narrative tradition. As Henry Roth’s (1906–1995) novel Call it Sleep (1934; German: Nenne es Schlaf, Cologne and Berlin 1970) shows, this applies both in formal linguistic regard (with an English that resonates with the Yiddish) and also with regard to motifs, which in Roth are reminiscent of Sholem Aleichem.24 With his description of the childhood of a son of Jewish-Galician immigrants on New York’s East Side, the novel displays autobiographical features. The heroes of Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) also resonate with Eastern European Jewish literature. They are figures in the tradition of Job or of Schlemihl. In The Assistant (1957) the reader encounters the bitterly poor colonial merchant Morris Bober, a refugee from tsarist Russia, who no longer observes the commandments and rarely goes to synagogue. One day he is attacked by the Italian mafioso Frank

24 Cf. Sholem Aleichem, Adventures of Mottel, the Cantor’s Son, New York 1953. The original Yiddish version of this novel (his last) was published in two parts (1907 and 1916). On Roth cf. Shaked, Identität, 210–212.

146

Modern Jewish Literature

Alpine, who however shows remorse and begins to serve for a pittance in Bober’s shop. When Bober dies, the rabbi extols him as a »true Jew« who had lived »with a Jewish heart« and had remained faithful to »the spirit of our faith.«25 Frank finally converts to Judaism. Another pitiful and also comic figure is the matchmaker Pinye Salzman, who, in the short story The Magic Barrel, is supposed to help Leo Finkle, theology student at the Yeshiva University in New York, to find a suitable marriage partner. In his historical novel The Fixer (1966), Malamud describes the story of the Russian Jew Yakov Bok, who becomes an orphan as a result of a tsarist pogrom, whereupon he leaves the old Jewish lifestyle, studies Spinoza, and tries to start a new life. A murdered Christian child is discovered in his neighborhood. Bok is accused of child murder and thrown into prison, where he begins to come to terms with the Jewish history of suffering and accept his Jewishness.26 Chaim Potok’s (1929–2002) novel The Chosen (1967) is not far removed from this environment, in which the heroes still have no fundamental doubts about their identity. When Danny Sanders, son of an Eastern European Ḥasidic rebbe, and Reuben Malter, son of a Zionist intellectual, bump into each other, despite a series of conflicts the protagonists remain solidly within their Jewish environment. The question of the boundaries of what is »Jewish« is raised more clearly in Potok’s 1972 novel My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a Jewish boy who goes against the wishes of his parents to follow his inner vocation, becoming a painter. However, he has to come to terms with the Christian image of the Crucified One. Doubts about modern Jewish existence are openly discussed by Bruce Jay Friedman (born 1930). His novella Stern (1967) is about an anti-hero who flees from his identity because he shares the angst of the European Jews, who were not fighters.27 The whole problem of assimilation erupts fully in the work of Saul Bellow (1915–2005). Born Solomon Bellows in a suburb of Montreal, Bellow was brought up as an Orthodox Jew, learning Hebrew and Yiddish alongside English and French in his youth.28 His parents (who emigrated in 1913) moved to Chicago in 1924. In a broken form the Eastern European big-city environment of his youth still shines through. In his novel The Victim (1947), the Jew Asa Leventhal, editor of a specialized New York magazine, is confronted by Kirby Allbee, a down-at-heel New Englander. Allbee blames Leventhal for his failed professional and private life and showers him with reproaches. Leventhal reacts with sympathy, wanting to help Allbee, but he ends up himself becoming the victim of guilt feelings and constant further accusations. The confrontation of the two unfortunates has been interpreted as a literary reworking of the universal problem of human alienation in modern mass societies.29 But Allbee makes use of openly anti-Semitic clichés. He »sees

25 26 27 28 29

Bernhard Malamud, Der Gehilfe, Munich 1984, 277. Cf. Shaked, Identität, 133–135. Cf. Shaked, Identität, 214. Victioria Aarons, The Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow, Cambridge 2017. Claus Schweer, »Saul Bellow, The Victim,« in: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, Vol. 2, Munich 1988, 447.

5 English-language Literature

147

himself as the Servant of God, who bears the suffering of others. Leventhal—responsible for Allbee’s crucifixion—then becomes a Judas Iscariot,«30 an embodiment of the »eternal Jew.« Leventhal is also supposed to be »guilty« of the death of his nephew, the son his brother had with an Italian Catholic woman—a modern version of the ritual murder accusation.31 It is therefore clear that the book, published two years after the end of the Shoah, should be read as a reflection on the conditions of the time. Bellow works on an »archetypal problem of Jewish existence, the question of guilt« and also on the guilt feelings manifest in the self-reproach of those who wonder how they managed to survive the Holocaust: »The whole world points to the Jews as scapegoat, and often enough Jews accept this verdict.«32 In his 1964 novel Herzog, Bellow describes the fate of a failing intellectual: like Bellow, Herzog, professor of philosophy and history, is a child of a family that immigrated from Russia via Canada. He has a crisis when Madeleine, his second wife, wants a divorce after cheating on him with a close friend. He experiences the pains of his situation as a Jew: »The Jews were long alienated from the world, and now the world is alienated from them.«33 Cynthia Ozick (born 1928), whose parents had immigrated to America from White-Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, is also occupied with the relationship between Judaism and Western culture. Additionally, there is the problem of the place of women in the Orthodox synagogue, to which, despite her criticisms, Ozick still belongs. In contrast with her American writer colleagues, Ozick’s oeuvre does not contain any kind of alienation from religion. The satirical narrative, Envy, or, Yiddish in America (1969), a key story for Isaac Bashevis Singer, is occupied with the demise of the Yiddish language and culture in North America. Her novel Foreign Bodies (2010) alludes in the style of Henry James to the contrast between the »new« (perhaps rather naïve) America and the old Europe. Bea, the freshly divorced Jewish teacher from New York, has to travel there on her brother’s behalf, to retrieve her nephew Julian, who is stranded on a trip abroad. In Paris, however, Bea does not meet the expected superior cultural world but a Holocaust survivor. Reflection on the horror of the Shoah, which confronts the young American and his aunt with the seriousness of life, occurs indirectly—with the topic of the Holocaust the artistic conflict with reality reaches a limit. In view of this experience, Bea queries the meaning of her existence anew. In a meditation on her failed marriage, she thinks of the mosquito which, according to the Midrash, crawled into the ear of Titus and sent mad that ancient emperor with whom the Jewish misfortunes began.34 In his first publication, a collection of five short stories (Goodbye Columbus, 1959), Philip Roth (1933–2018) deals with the concerns of rebellious young Jews as they

30 31 32 33

Shaked, Identität, 139. Shaked, Identität, 143. Shaked, Identität, 143. Saul Bellow, Herzog, Cologne 1985, 213. Cf. also Jörg Drews, »Saul Bellow, Herzog,« in: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, Vol. 2, Munich 1988, 442f. 34 Cynthia Ozick, Miss Nightingale in Paris, Munich 2014, 287 (cf. b.Git. 56b).

148

Modern Jewish Literature

try to leave the religious ghetto of their families and make their way to college and suburban American life. The cover story is about the unhappy love of the narrator, Neil Klugman, a Jew from Newark of East European descent, with a more assimilated and more wealthy Jewish girl, Brenda, studying in Cambridge/Massachusetts. »Goodbye, Columbus«, a highly evocative quote from a New York Yiddish theater chanson, sung during the graduation ceremony of Brenda’s brother Ron at Ohio State University, characterizes an atmosphere of farewell. In the end, Neil’s relationship with Brenda falls apart while he returns to the values of traditional Judaism. Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) consists of a monologue by the psychotherapy patient Alexander Portnoy, who tells his psychiatrist Dr. Spielvogel of his overly sheltered upbringing in a Jewish family and his inhibited, guilt-ridden sexual obsessions. Roth uses the devices of satire, exaggeration, and unbridled obscenity, with which Portnoy’s protest breaks new ground. Sabbath’s Theater (1995), Roth’s »masterwork« (Harold Bloom), is about an elderly Jewish puppeteer named Mickey Sabbath from New Jersey, who takes pleasure in provoking women around him, prodding them to erotic adventures and manipulating them to perform roles similar to his puppets. His life oscillates between embarrassing escapades, frivolous encounters, illness, and pain. When he finally succeeds in bringing to the stage a »real« theater play (King Lear), the performance turns out to be a failure. After his 15-year-long lover Drenka dies of cancer, Sabbath is tempted to put an end to his life but recoils from doing so. Instead, he returns to Drenka’s tomb where he urinates in remembrance of their former sexual union. Roth’s scenes of voyeurism, exhibitionism, fetishism and indecent theater scenes induced the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, to refer a »distasteful and disingenuous book«35 In 2004, Roth published his novel The Plot Against America, an alternative history in which the aviator and America First Committee activist Charles Lindbergh beats Franklin D. Roosevelt in the US presidential election of 1940. The novel is told in the perspective of the author himself who follows the fortunes of his family in the years 1940–1942 under the Lindbergh presidency with his pro-German and antiSemitic leanings. In a 2017 interview, Roth made remarks about similarities between his fiction and the recent election of Donald Trump.36 Allen Lelchuk’s (born 1938) novel Miriam at Thirty-Four (1974) is centered on the American Jewess Miriam Scheinmann, who was unhappily married to Stan, a Jewish academic. With the help of her analyst, although the latter is staying in Israel while the events take place, she has separated from her husband, and now, with her (also Jewish) attorney’s help, she fights for custody of her children. Gershon Shaked read this narrative as an indicator of a crisis in American Jewish society, seeing it as pointing to the fact that »Freud’s messianic gospel, which was to free humanity

35 Michiko Kakutani, »Mickey Sabbath, You’re No Portnoy,« in: New York Times, August 22, 1995. 36 Philipp Roth Emails on Trump, The New Yorker, January 30, 2017.

6 Hebrew Literature

149

from its repressions« had not worked properly. The »promised land of sexual freedom« was no less repressive than traditional Jewish society.37 Shortly after her birth in western Ukraine, Chaya Lispector (died 1977) came with her family to Brazil, where she took the first name Clarice. As a young woman she broke with the traditional Jewish way of life, although she continued to occupy herself with kabbalistic texts.38 She became known through her collection of stories, Family Ties (Laços de família, 1960) and her novel The Apple in the Dark (A maçã no escuro, 1961). The chapter headings of this novel—the first part, »How a Human Comes into Being,« is followed by the chapters »The Birth of the Hero« and »The Apple in the Dark«—suggest that this is an allegory of the biblical creation story. This is a mystically distorted and theologically upside-down Genesis, in which »Adam« is »created« by his sin (even if only imagined), and in fact he designs himself. As without God, »even if he is an artificial God, ... there can be no sin.« The magical linguistic processes that accompany Martim’s self-redemption, however, can also be compared with the motif of the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton of the divine name in the Golem narrative known from Jewish folklore.39

6

Hebrew Literature

In the wake of the new appreciation of biblical Hebrew during the Enlightenment, Jewish Enlightenment figures (Maskilim) developed what was later called the Meliza style for their writing, a mosaic style which detached itself from the rabbinic Hebrew of the medieval Talmud and integrated biblical vocabulary, word-links and verse parts into their language, as a way of renewing Hebrew. The outstanding representative of this style was Abraham Mapu (1808–1867). In 1853, in Ahavat Zion (Love of Zion), Mapu presented the first novel of the newer Hebrew literature, the love story of a couple, Amnon and Tamar, at the time of the prophet Isaiah. On the basis of the descriptions of the landscape and agriculture of the Holy Land, the novel was much read and later translated into Yiddish and several Western European languages as well as Russian. It is regarded as having prepared the way for Zionism.40 Regarded next to Mapu as the most important writer of the Haskalah is the publicist and editor of the Viennese Hebrew monthly Ha-Shachar (»The Dawn«), Perez Smolenskin (1842–1885). In his novel Ha-To’eh be-Darkhei ha-Chaim (»The Wanderer on the Paths of Life«) he describes the adventures of a Russian Jewish orphan,

37 38 39 40

Shaked, Identität, 169–180 (quotations are from 172 and 179). Benjamin Moser, Why this World. A Biography of Clarice Lispector, Oxford 2009. Cf. Moser, Clarice Lispector. In 1866 Mapu followed this with a second novel, also with a biblical-historical basis, with the title Aschmat Schomron (The Sin of Samaria), the topic of which is moral failings in the ancient Northern Kingdom of Israel; Pnina Navè-Levinson, »Abraham Mapu,« in: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, Vol. 11, Munich 1988, 120.

150

Modern Jewish Literature

whom fate sends on an Odyssey to eastern and western Europe. His experiences in this process are mainly unpleasant, and in the end, he loses his life in a pogrom in Odessa.41 Under the influence of Mendele Mocher Sforim, in the last decades of the 19th century there was a turning away from the Meliza style, which was now felt to be far removed from reality.42 A substitute for the still non-existent Hebrew colloquial language was then found in Nussach, the well-structured Hebrew style for which Mendele activated linguistic-cultural traditions, introducing the terminology of canonical literature (Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash) into secular contexts. In succeeding generations, Mendele’s linguistic forms became almost a »classical norm in the history of Hebrew narrative prose«43 and influenced Chaim Nachman Bialik. Mendele’s tales, in which the author often has a »bookseller Mendele« appear as the main character, are predominantly »character novels«. This becomes clear in the Sefer Hakabatzanim (Book of the Beggars), a »grotesque society tale« which came into being between 1909 and 1912. Notable are the melodramatic elements and periodic interjections of ironic comments by the narrating hero. In these tales the acting characters, who lack any inner development, make a static impression; they only change in space, not in time—a stylistic device by which the author expresses his critique of the social conditions in Eastern Europe. The best-known of Mendele’s successors is Shmuel Josef Agnon (actually Samuel Josef Czaczkes, 1888–1970), who in 1966 was the first Hebrew writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature together with the German-Jewish lyricist Nelly Sachs (1891–1970).44 By means of quotations and allusions to traditional literature, Agnon’s texts reveal the rootedness of the Eastern European Jews in the religious and spiritual world of Talmud and Midrash. This testimony bears a melancholy and sometimes almost plaintive tone. Agnon names a certain naivety and alienation from the world as the price of Eastern Jewish religiosity. In a manner often more comical than tragic, his protagonists fail in their efforts to detach themselves from this world. The novel Hachnasat Kalla (»The Search for a Bridegroom«), which appeared for the first time in book form in 1931—the subtitle reads, »The wonders of Ḥasid Reb Judel from Brody and his three virtuous daughters, as well as the greatness of our brethren, the children of Israel, in the empire of the eminent [Habsburg] emperor«—borrows linguistically from Ḥasidic legends. At the same time, it is a kind of picaresque novel which tells of Reb Judel, a destitute and world-estranged naïve Ḥasid who wants to find a bridegroom for his eldest daughter and travels around

41 42 43 44

Leo Prijs, »Perez Smolenskin,« in: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, Vol. 15, Munich 1988, 634f. Shaked, Geschichte, 29. Shaked, Geschichte, 30. Cf. Gerold Necker, »Gershom Scholem and Shmu’el Yosef Agnon: Metamorphoses of a Friendship,« in: Hans-Jürgen Becker and Hillel Weiss, eds., Agnon and Germany: The Presence of the German World in the Writings of S.Y. Agnon, Ramat Gan 2010, 41–62.

6 Hebrew Literature

151

the country on the advice of the »holy Rabbi of Apta,« to beg for donations for the dowry in all Jewish communities. Perhaps Agnon’s best-known novel, Temol Schilschom (1945) is a sequel to this story. The topic is the fate of a grandson of Reb Judel’s—characteristically, he bears the name Jitzchaq Kummer (»Isaac Trouble«)—who wants to free himself from his pious surroundings and emigrates as a young Zionist to Palestine, in the time before the First World War. There, we are told in the beginning, he wants to help to build up the land, but he too wants »to be built up« (edified religiously). It is precisely this dual objective that causes his plan to fail. He feels as little at home with the »spiritually poor« secularist agricultural pioneers as with the ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem. After a long period wandering around impoverished, disturbed, and insecure between the various Jewish worlds, he finally dies from an infection from a dog bite. For Agnon the fate that rests upon the Jews across the generations is manifest in the tension between the secular (and Hebrew) Palestine and the rabbinically (and Yiddish-) influenced Eastern Europe. Decisive steps towards the development of the new »Israeli Hebrew« as a spoken language can be observed in the writers that came to Palestine in the first Aliyah (the wave of immigration from 1892 to 1903). The use of linguistic models from ancient Jewish literature to describe the new reality in the Land of Israel were now felt to be antiquated, inappropriate, and comical. A new ideal emerged that led to Hebrew being mixed with Arabic expressions—and no longer with Yiddish. This was accompanied by a desire to cut all connections with the traditions of exile and begin a new life also from a cultural point of view.45 An outstanding author of this generation was Moshe Smilanski (1874–1953), born near Kiev, who came to Palestine in 1890, where in 1891 he was one of the founders of the settlement (and later city) of Hadera. In his work he expressed the ideals of workers’ Zionism and propagated the construction of Palestine through the »religion of labor.«46 Unlike many of his contemporaries, Smilanski was against excluding the Arabs from the labor market. He had a high regard for those who had been inhabitants of the land for many years, who knew its flora and fauna, and from whom immigrants should, in his view, learn. He had an almost romantic devotion to them. Using the pen-name Havaja Mussa, in 1911 he published a collection of short stories entitled Bene Arav, about the co-existence of Jews and Arabs in the early days of the Zionist settlement of Palestine.47 Looking back nostalgically at these beginnings, at the end of his life he published reports of experiences from the time of the first two immigration waves to the Holy Land. The work of writer and critic Josef Ḥaim Brenner (1881–1921) contrasts with the naïve optimism of Smilanski. The main protagonist of his novel Shechol Wechishalon

45 Gershon Shaked, Geschichte der modernen hebräischen Literatur, Frankfurt 1996, 217. 46 Shaked, Geschichte, 102. 47 Yehudah Slutsky, »Moshe Smilansky,« in: Encyclopaedia Judaica Vol.15, 3–4, Jerusalem 1972. Françoise Saquer-Sabin, Le personnage de l’Arabe palestinien dans la littérature hébraïque du XXe siècle, Paris 2002.

152

Modern Jewish Literature

(»Loss and Failure«), Ezekiel Hafez, is a neurotic anti-hero who fails in his mission to be a Zionist pioneer. Unable to cope with work on the land, he flees to his ultraOrthodox relatives in Jerusalem, where his neurosis develops into open madness. In his other stories as well, Brenner shows outsiders and losers in society, whom he sarcastically contrasts with the winners who enjoy success in social standing and sex. Brenner worked creatively with language with his translations into Hebrew (including Gerhard Hauptmann, The Weavers; Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment). The most important subject in his texts is the critical discussion of diaspora existence, which, for Brenner, meant decadence and indolence. He saw the solution of the current problems of Judaism not in ideological constructs but in the collective and existential experience of productive work, especially in Palestine. The description of this ideal came to him from his critique of life in exile, which Brenner called »parasitic« and painted in dark colors.48 His texts were called »literature of despair«49 and subjected to vigorous attack. He was said to be »inclined towards Jewish anti-Semitism« (Yehezkel Kaufmann).50 The climax of the controversy, triggered by an article published in the magazine Ha-Poel ha-zair (The Young Worker), was the »Brenner Affair.« The writer had reported that numerous Jews in Europe were being baptized, declaring that the people of Israel did not need to fear this development, as its existence was not under threat. However, in the ensuing storm of indignation it turned out that this pronouncement had nothing to do with sympathy for Christianity, but was based on Brenner’s self-critical attitude, which was against any ideologization of Judaism. No less radical and controversial was the work of Uriel Shelach (born Heilperin, 1908–1981), who in 1937 published a sharply anti-religious and also extremely nationalistic poem with the title Tora. The text was signed with the name Yonatan Ratosh, which the author subsequently retained (as an allusion to the Hebrew root r-t-sh, »smash to pieces«). In 1939, Ratosh founded a movement that called itself the »Young Hebrews,« but became known by the name »Canaanites.« In an essay with the title A Letter to the Hebrew Youth (1943) Ratosh argued that ties to Judaism and also to conventional Jewish nationalism should be completely severed. Instead, with reference to pre-biblical ancient Near Eastern mythology, the shared heritage of the Semitic peoples of the Near East should be developed.51 The writers of the generation born in Palestine in the 1920s who began to write in the 1940s (Hebrew: Dor ba’Aretz, »[first] generation in the land«), linked up ideologically with the experiences of the Zionist labor movement. They followed a course that kept its distance from religious tradition and featured socialist realism.52 They shared the experiences of those born in the 1930s, who experienced

48 49 50 51 52

Shaked, Geschichte, 79. Shaked, Geschichte, 76. Shaked, Geschichte, 79. Cf. Ehud Ben Ezer, Unease in Zion, Jerusalem 1986, 232ff. Shaked, Geschichte, 221.

6 Hebrew Literature

153

the founding of the state as young men and soldiers, also called Dor ha-Medina (Generation of the State) or Dor Tashach (Generation [5]708, the Hebrew date of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948). This event left a lasting impression upon Israel’s collective consciousness, partly because the war exacted the highest blood toll in percentage terms and was experienced as a life-or-death fight. In retrospect, those involved in the war saw these battles as a founding event, which was to mark the political and social conditions of the country for decades to come. In politically influenced memory and in the literary models, these experiences were embellished in mythology. Three components of this war »myth« were dealt with literarily with particular frequency: the struggle of the few (and poorlyarmed) defenders against the many, the emergence of the Palestinian refugee problem, which was supposedly caused by the poor behavior of the Arabs, and the motif of the futile peace efforts of their own government, whose initiatives always met rejection. The intrusion of elements from Russian, German, and English in these years testifies to the sociolinguistic consequences of the waves of immigration. In literature, numerous neologisms emerged at the hands of authors influenced in particular by the lyrical poet Avraham Shlonsky (1900–1973), whose translations from Russian (e.g. Pushkin’s Eugen Onegin; Gogol’s The Government Inspector) and English (King Lear and Hamlet) influenced the development of the Hebrew language. In 1951, in his autobiographical narrative, Moshe Shamir (1921–2004) linked the war theme with the motif of the »new Hebrew [Man].« The novel was dedicated to his older brother Elik, who had been ambushed in the war of independence and fell. Shamir begins with the sentence: »Elik was born of the sea.«53 Elik, who had sacrificed his life in the fight for his fatherland, became the ideal »new Hebrew,« who had let go all connections to his past and reshaped his identity, setting himself sharply apart from diaspora Judaism, conceived of as old, sick, and bent. The literary adaptation of warrior discourse sets standards for Israeli society, providing models. What characterized the self-awareness of the Israelis of this generation—just a few years after the horrors of the Shoah—was the experience of existential threat and of having escaped. On the other side stood the experiences of a new orientation in the Land of Israel, fundamentally different from that of the diaspora: a value system in which the important thing was not words but deeds, action, this-worldliness, and physicality. An expression of this feeling in life was Shamir’s novel Hu halach ba-Sadot (He went into the fields), published in 1947, which tells the story of the young Mika, who, having survived the Shoah and having managed to reach the country via Iran, meets 20-year-old Uri from a kibbutz and falls in love with him. But one day, before they move into their shared room, Uri is persuaded by a school friend to join up with a Jewish elite unit to fight the British army and help bring illegal immigrants into the country. Uri knows that Mika, who meanwhile is pregnant, will not approve, and asks for a few days’ postponement. But then he follows the call. He 53 Shaked, Geschichte, 232.

154

Modern Jewish Literature

accepts the task of blowing up a railway bridge and is shot dead in the process. When Mika hears of Uri’s death she is once again overcome by the shadow of the Holocaust. But then she accepts her role as mother and bears the child, one of the first newborn children after the founding of the state of Israel. The male hero falls »in the fields.« The responsibility for his fate is the motif that holds Shamir’s narrative together.54 In the collective volume The Gods are idle (1949) Nathan Shacham (1925–2018) published the short story Seven of them, about the moral circumstances accompanying the war, especially the question of what sacrifices the state should require of its soldiers and what moral compass they should follow.55 The fate of a group of soldiers is depicted, who are surrounded by their opponents during the fighting. Their radio is defective; but more dangerous still is the breakdown of communication within the troop. This scenario reflects the fact that the command structures of the armed forces and the ethos of the army still awaited development after the founding of the state. Elements of the troops had to battle with internal tensions, because alongside the official military, party militias from pre-state times continued to exist.56 »A proper army,« to Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was a desideratum for the country’s newly gained statehood that would help bring the immigrants together in unity. This meant the officers’ corps had to be beyond reproach, with a morality corresponding to the Jewish ethos. In a much-discussed scene, this morality is queried. A soldier is given the order to leave the protected area to take water to a wounded Jewish soldier outside. The subordinate performs his task only with hesitation. Thereupon, comrades from the other side send an Arab prisoner to meet him, who is to take the flask of water from him and carry it through the minefield. A solution for the »mine problem« seems to have been found. The soldiers force the Arab outside once again, exposing him to enemy fire. After the prisoner has been shot dead by his compatriots, who think he is an Israeli, the commander can no longer avoid the question of the norms of international law and of what is allowed in a »proper army.«57 In the work of Aharon Megged, born in Poland in 1920, who came to the land with his parents in 1926, the topics of pioneer life are given a satirical twist. In his 1954 novel Hedva va’ani (Hedva and I), Megged, himself a long-term member of Sdot Yam kibbutz (1938–1950), imagines a couple who, disillusioned by work on

54 On its interpretation cf. Matthias Morgenstern, »Freundliches Feuer, feindliches Feuer,« in: Müller and Wintersteiner, eds., »Die Erde will keinen Rauchpilz tragen« (»The Earth does not want a mushroom cloud«), Innsbruck 2011, 183f. 55 Shacham’s novel Rosendorf Quartet is available in translation (Frankfurt 1990, reprinted 1994 and 2001). For the biography and work of Shacham: Gershon Shaked, Hebrew Narrative Fiction, Hakibbutz hameuchad 1993, 317ff. 56 Michael Wolffsohn, Politik in Israel, Opladen 1983, 508f. 57 Morgenstern, »Freundliches Feuer,« 184f.; for the dramatization of the subject, cf. idem, Theater und zionistischer Mythos. Eine Studie zum zeitgenössischen hebräischen Drama mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Werkes von Joshua Sobol, Tübingen 2002, 78.

6 Hebrew Literature

155

the land, leave the kibbutz and move to the city of Tel Aviv. This city, the only big city in Israel in the 1950s, is, however, depicted as run-down and decadent. While Hedva wants to be successful at any cost, Shmulik pushes for a return to the kibbutz, and finally has his way. The book was an extraordinary success; it was also adapted for the stage and television. Also in the tradition of the settler novel are short stories by Amos Oz (1939–2018) such as Elsewhere, Perhaps (1966) and A Perfect Peace (1982), both of which take place in community settlements.58 Following the breakdown of his marriage, Yonatan, the son of the kibbutz secretary breaks out of the collective life and flees into the Arava desert south of the Dead Sea, where he seeks »perfect peace,« in words taken from the Bible (cf. 1 Kgs 8:56). Azariah, a Holocaust survivor who has found shelter in the kibbutz and has befriended Yonatan’s wife, writes a letter in which he exclaims: »An individual is not public property! Nor the property of parents, wife, property of the kibbutz and certainly not . . . property of the state . . . The individual belongs only to himself.«59 In Elsewhere, Perhaps, the topic of leaving the kibbutz is linked with an encounter with a Holocaust survivor. In a later creative period—in his partly autobiographical novel Panther in the Basement (1995)—Oz uses anachronistic flashbacks to episodes from history to place the Zionist pioneers’ experiences in a comical and sometimes grotesque light. Political relevance is attached especially to the final days of the Second Temple, which Zionism claims to link up with in its state foundation. But when—»so that Masada will not have to fall again«—the Romans are opposed by the modern Jewish brigade, which served in the British army in the Second World War, the present is also »fictionalized« and seems unreal.60 A prominent critic of established prose in Israel and its secular-Zionist view of history was the Orthodox literary critic Baruch Kurzweil (1907–1972). Kurzweil accused contemporary authors of denying their Jewish roots and campaigned for a style detached from socially oriented ideologies. Under his influence, literature became more multi-layered. The best-known of these »new« writers who addressed motifs which had been held in disregard in »Zionist realism« is Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018), born in Czernowitz (Bukowina), a Holocaust survivor who spoke German, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Romanian, English, and Italian, but published in Hebrew. A central theme in his novels is the process of coming to terms with the events of the Second World War in Eastern Europe. In his novel Blooms of Darkness (2006), during the deportations of Jews from a ghetto to the extermination camp, a Jewish family succeeds in finding a hiding-place for their child in a brothel. At night, in an adjoining room,

58 Cf. Bernd Feininger, Amos Oz verstehen. Literatur und jüdisches Erbe im heutigen Israel, Frankfurt am Main 1988, 186ff. and 381, n. 27. 59 Amos Oz, Menucha Nekhona, Tel Aviv 1982, 1982, 296; on this novel cf. also Anat Feinberg, »Amos Oz, Menucha Nekhona,« in: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, Vol. 12, Munich 1988, 857. 60 Cf. also Amos OZ, »Jerusalem hinter dem Mond,« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Dec 9, 1995, »Bilder und Zeiten,« 1–2.

156

Modern Jewish Literature

the eleven-year-old Hugo hears the voices of German soldiers. Hugo manages to survive and grow into a man who understands life and its horrors. In his novels, Abraham B. Yehoshua (born 1936) offers unconventional answers to the question of Jewish identity.61 He diagnoses a disturbed father-mother relationship as a collective neurosis of the Jews. The Jews, according to Yehoshua, had alienated themselves from Palestine since Antiquity, because »Father God« had disputed their Mother Earth. Ties with the Land without divine mediation were impermissible, interpreted as »desecration« of the »mother,« and punished. In Exile, the Jews were therefore »feminized« and forced into passivity. Yehoshua pleads for a radical reinterpretation of the tradition, to find a »normal« relationship with the homeland.62 As the wars of the present are charged anew by the »father complex« of old, Israel threatens to fail in its historical tasks—the securing of the Jews’ existence and their »normalization.«63 A symbol of failure in Yehoshua’s stories—e.g. his novel The Lover,64 the background for which is the Yom Kippur War (1973) and in Molcho (1987)—is typically weak, unemancipated men who engage in flights of fancy, while Jewish women are attracted by young Arabs. In Friendly Fire (2009), the »psychoanalytical« interpretation of history and the current conflict in the Middle East are brought into direct relation when the father of a reservist who loses his life in the Palestinian territories when shot in error by a comrade, meets with a Palestinian woman who can provide information as to the circumstances of his son’s death. In conversation with this woman, who is educated and speaks excellent Hebrew,65 a perspective on the Middle East problem emerges which shines a light on taboos. The Palestinian woman’s accusation does not relate to territorial or material demands; rather, her reproach is that by behaving the way they do, the Israelis are making their national task of assimilation of the Palestinians into Jewish society impossible: »You have taken lands and water for yourselves, you control our every move, so at least give us the chance to join you, otherwise we will kill ourselves together with you. But as well as you insinuate yourselves with others, you shut yourselves off just as much, you don’t mix and you won’t let anyone mix with you. So what is left for us to do? Only hate you and dream of the day when you will leave.«66

61 Cf. Avraham B. Yehoshua, Exil der Juden—eine neurotische Lösung? St. Ingbert 1986; Matthias Morgenstern, Fremde Mutter, in: Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 23, Neukirchen 2008, 199–202. 62 In a lecture at Tel Aviv University in 2002, Yehoshua summarized his worldview by saying that Zionism is the remedy for the Jewish sickness that comes to expression in the diaspora situation (Dan Laor, Ebraismo, sionismo, israelianità. Il pensiero politico di A.B. Yehoshua, in: Emanuela Trevisan Semi, ed., Leggere Yehoshua, Torino 2006, 96). 63 Laor, Ebraismo, 96f. 64 For Yehoshua’s biography cf. Anat Feinberg, »Biogramme hebräischer Autoren,« in: idem, Moderne israelische Literatur, Munich 2005, 230. 65 Abraham B. Yehoshua, Friendly Fire, Boston, 2008, [430]. 66 Yehoshua, Friendly Fire, [407].

6 Hebrew Literature

157

Since the end of the 20th century, literature by women has emerged in Israel which illuminates the social and political problems of the Land from a feminist point of view. Besides the biblical scholar Zeruya Shalev (born 1959), a daughter of the literary critic Mordechai Shalev, who in her novels Love Life (1997) and Husband and Wife (2000) analyzes the failure of erotic and familial relations, there are female authors from an Orthodox background: such as Yehudit Rotem, born into a Budapest family from Satmar Ḥasidism in 1942.67 Yehudit Rotem’s novel I loved so much, describes traditional family life as a succession of compulsory ritual tasks, which follow a fixed temporal sequence: Sabbath, religious festivals, laws of marital purity, sex, the search for a husband for ones daughters. However, the heroine is able to free herself from her imprisonment and proves her strength by confronting her memories and taking her life into her own hands. Mira Magen’s short story Love, Afterall (2001) comes to terms with tradition in a different way.68 The narrator, a nurse, lives lone and wants to stay single, but nonetheless desires to have a child. She learns that one of the doctors regularly contributes to a sperm bank to boost his income. This is a doctor who has no erotic interest in her, any more than she has any interest in him. She asks him whether he would like to sleep with her to father a child. They make a date for shortly before the doctor changes hospitals. Here it is clearly the man whose task is merely to be of service to the woman and then disappear. In her novel The Book of Creation, Sehara Blau (born 1973) finds the most radical expression for female criticism of conventional gender constructs.69 The narrator, a religious Jew, is a virgin embittered by her single life. With the help of formulas from the mysterious Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira) she fashions a golem out of muddy cemetery earth. For the first time in Jewish history a woman creates such an artificial being. In traditional golem tales, the monster falls in love with the daughter of his master, Chief Rabbi Loew of Prague, a love that remains forbidden in religious law. In this setting, which anticipates the possibility of future cloning, such a relationship is exactly what is desired. For her personal use at home the woman creates a super-man. She becomes a true heroine by joining up with him, reversing the creation myth. In the anti-war texts since the last third of the 20th century—as for instance in David Grossman’s (born 1954) The Yellow Wind (1988) and his novel To the End of the Land (2008)—literature in Israel is also becoming a forum for criticism of Zionism itself. Over the decades the originally secular-Zionist program has to some extent 67 Cf. Françoise Saquer-Sabin, »Frauen, Ehe und Erotik in der israelischen Literatur hebräischer Sprache,« in: Christian Boudignon, Matthias Morgenstern, and Christiane Tietz, eds., »…und schuf sie als Mann und Frau«. Studien zur Genderkonstruktion und zum religiösen Eherecht in den Mittelmeerreligionen, Göttingen 2011. 68 The Hebrew title (»When I lie down and when I arise, woman«) is a variation upon the Shema Israel (Deut 6:7)—but in Biblical Hebrew this text is given masculine possessive suffixes. In the context of the novel the concern is with »arising« after sexual intercourse. 69 Cf. Sehara Blau, Yetser lev ha-adama (2007).

158

Modern Jewish Literature

become dressed in mythological garb, being combined with elements of a premodern linguistic world. Recent Israeli literature has brought this critical function to the notice of the world. In the short stories by Reuven (Ruby) Namdar, born into a family of Iranian Jews in 1964, mystical traditions deal with fallen angels, messianic figures, and various experiences of judgment in the hereafter and life after death—as in his first collection of short stories, Haviv (1998), which was awarded two Israeli prizes for literature. In 2013 the author, living in New York, published The Ruined House, which has as an epigram a saying from the Babylonian Talmud about the tears that God weeps over the destroyed Jerusalem temple. The narrative plot takes one Jewish year, ending on New Year’s Day, the 1st of Tishri of the following year (= Sept 18, 2001), one week after 9/11 in New York. At the center of the action is the successful New York professor of literature Andrew Cohen, who is preparing his course on the subject of »criticism of culture or culture criticism« for the coming fall semester when he is suddenly overtaken by enigmatic visions. Although Cohen is a completely secular Jew, in these mystical experiences he appears as a kind of reincarnation of the last high priest before the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Between his seven main chapters, Namdar has inserted blocks of text containing, in addition to a central text, detailed marginal glosses, modeled in form on a page of the Talmud. Alongside classical rabbinic texts on the purification ritual, to which the high priest had to submit himself in the seven days before the Day of Atonement the arrangements also contain non-talmudic passages as well as texts of the liturgy for the Day of Atonement, which describe the actions of the high priest. Namdar took his inspiration from the Gate of Rebirth, the mystical description of a kind of time travel by reincarnated souls, ascribed to the kabbalist Chaim Vital (1542–1620). The theme of these visions, service in the Jerusalem temple, is transformed apocalyptically with superimposed pictures of destruction from the Auschwitz extermination camp. In the reflection of this image, shown by the author in depth-psychological terms, Cohen, the New York scholar, sees the ruins of his own life. According to Jewish law, his name (Cohen means »priest« in Hebrew) identifies him as a descendant of the ancient temple priests. This novel can be seen as an expression of a »Hebraicity,« which deliberately aims to burst the geographical and symbolic boundaries of what is Israeli but is no less Jewish for all that. In 2014, Namdar received the renowned Sapir Prize for the novel, the first and only author living abroad to receive it.

7

Drama

The relationship between modern Jewish authors and the theater is marked by the fact that the canonical literature of Judaism contains no dramas to relate their work to. In addition, there are art-critical and theater-hostile traditions such as the prohibition of images, the prohibition of dressing up (Deut 22:5 »a woman shall not wear men’s clothing, a man shall not wear women’s clothing«) and later halakhic norms (rules of chastity and modesty; the prohibition of women’s voices being

7 Drama

159

heard in public). Exceptions were the Purim games, popular since the 16th century, satirical non-religious performances, mainly in Yiddish, with variations on the story of the biblical book of Esther. These humorous performances, often accompanied by song and dance, prompted plays from the first Jewish playwrights of the modern period—the Italian Jewish Renaissance poet Yehudah Sommo (Leone Sommo de Porte Leone, 1527/29–1592) and the Enlightenment figure Moshe Ḥaim Luzzato (1707–1746/47)—although they were not suitable for practical performance and remained uninfluential. In the German-speaking realm of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as a result of the work of many Jews in the theater, primarily as actors (Erwin Kalser) and directors (Otto Brahm, Max Reinhard, Leopold Jessner), the impression grew that Jews had a special affinity with the theater—a topic that was often the subject of literary treatments.70 The actors and directors just mentioned certainly did not mean to create »Jewish theater«; forced into a »Jewish role« in National Socialist Germany,71 however, those authors who were able to emigrate to Palestine contributed to the development of drama that also understood itself as »Jewish.« As examples we may mention Max Brod (1884–1968), who worked in Tel Aviv as a playwright at the national theater, Habimah, and Max Zweig (1892–1992), whose play Die Marranen was given its premiere in Hebrew translation by the Bimah in December 1938. The first play to be performed in Hebrew in modern Palestine (1899), a production by Moshe Leib Lilienblum (1843–1910) translated from Yiddish under the title Zerubabbel, is symptomatic of the relationship between tradition and theater. While it followed a biblical model (1 Chr 3:17ff.) in being about the return of the exiles from Babylon to the Land of Israel, this was actually a more pedagogical than artistic performance with a nationalistic-Zionist orientation, which broke new ground with the reciting of classical Hebrew texts. The dichotomy between the material and the demands of modern dramatic forms remained a factor up to prestate times, as Aharon Ashman’s (1896–1981) melodrama Michal, the Daughter of Saul (premiere 1941) shows. There is an exception in Tyre and Jerusalem (1933), a play in which the Polish-Jewish author Matityahu Shoham (1893–1937) brings to the stage the prophet Elijah’s struggle against the Israelite king Ahab and his Phoenician wife Jezebel (1 Kings 17–2 Kings 2). This play, distinguished by its high, classical Hebrew-influenced literary quality, was regarded for many years as the Jewish play par excellence. In 1934 it won the city of Tel Aviv’s Bialik Prize. However, it was never performed—because of its archaic language it was regarded as unplayable. And its updating of biblical texts, which shows the prophet in undignified, compromising scenes, might have been difficult for Orthodox religious circles to accept. The play was not given its premiere until 1988, in the context of a festival in Tel Aviv.72

70 Cf. e.g. Karl Emil Franzos, Der Bajazzo, Frankfurt am Main 1988. 71 Cf. Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland, Frankfurt am Main 1985. 72 Cf. Matthias Morgenstern, Das israelische Theater. Noten und Notizen, Münster 2016, 15f.

160

Modern Jewish Literature

The most prominent biblical motif that often plays in the background is the story of the »binding« of Isaac from Gen 22. This narrative is evoked by linguistic signals, such as when the term »sacrifice« is used, as in Yigal Mossinson’s (1917–1994) play, In the Wastes of the Negev (1949). This three-act play is about a kibbutz in the Negev, Biq’at Yoav, which was besieged by the Egyptians during the war of independence and was placed in a militarily untenable situation. Two kibbutz activists, Abraham and Rebecca, have interiorized the model of the erstwhile resistance to the Romans in the desert fortress of Masada: »Masada shall not fall again!« They are prepared to send their son to his death in a hopeless commando mission. Before the curtain falls, one of the protagonists shouts: »We are a cruel generation, which kills its young sons. The old live on, and the young they send to their deaths ...«73 The pain felt for the victims of war and the insistence on personal suffering run through Israeli drama in later decades as well. While the »binding of Isaac« was initially understood in terms of a mystical conception of a shared fate, after the Six-Day War (1967) impulses emerged which found form in political drama of protest against the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The work of Hanoch Levin (1943–1999) is an example of a re-reading of the binding of Isaac which at the same time works with the methods of the theater of the absurd. In his musical The Queen of the Bathtub (1970) a dirty bathroom serves as a metaphor for the country’s situation after winning the war, in which the late prime minister Yitzhaq (»Isaac«) Rabin had been chief of staff and a whole generation of soldiers had identified with the son on his way to the place of sacrifice. A key scene in which »Abraham« and »Isaac« appear has the »Aqedah« (»binding«) written all over it. »Someone has to make a sacrifice; there is no alternative,« Levin has Abraham exclaim, directing criticism at »no-alternative« wars using the phraseology of the Israeli politicians.74 The dramatist Shulamit Lapid (born 1934) looks at the story of the patriarchs from Sarah’s point of view. In Surrogate Mother (1990) she picks up on the narratives of the »endangerment of the ancestral mother« (Gen 12:10–20 and 20:1–18), which report that on two occasions Abraham briefly left his wife at the harem of a foreign potentate, using her beauty to save his own skin. This episode sheds light on the patriarch’s »sidestep« with Hagar, the ancestress of the »Ishmaelites« who in the present are in competition for the land with the »true« children of Abraham. In conversation with a psychologist on the stage, the background to the family conflict is »reviewed.« Sarah’s strange »infertility« is linked to the fact that the patriarch is more interested in the »land« than in his wife. To compound the situation, he is pursuing an incestuous relationship with Sarah: according to Gen 20:12 she is his half-sister. Outbursts of violence further back in the family history also play a role, an allusion to the midrashic tradition starting with the destruction of Abraham’s father Terah’s idols and the subsequent murder of Abraham’s brother Haran (Rashi

73 Quoted from: Matthias Morgenstern, Theater und zionistischer Mythos. Eine Studie zum zeitgenössischen hebräischen Drama unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Werkes von Joshua Sobol, Tübingen 2002, 68. 74 Levin, What does the Bird Care, Tel Aviv 1987, 89.

7 Drama

161

on Gen 11:28). In accordance with the biblical model (Gen 18:2), three men arrive who announce that their hostess will become pregnant, giving her something to »laugh« about (Gen 18:12–13), and mystery then falls on the question of the paternity of the expected son and heir. According to the matrilinear laws of post-biblical Judaism it is not a matter of the sonship of Abraham. It is all about Sarah, even if she is only a »surrogate mother.«75 In The Murder of Isaac, Motti Lerner (born 1949) raises the issue of a »sacrifice« which has to do with a traumatic event for Israel, the internal political dispute for the peace process with the Palestinians. This play, which came about after the murder of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhaq Rabin by a Jewish extremist on 4 November 1995, presents, in addition to the main character »Isaac« Rabin and his wife Leah, the rival »Benjamin« (the leader of the opposition and later prime minister Netanyahu) as well as the murderer Yig‘al Amir. The conflict on the stage ignites with the liturgical revenge formulas pronounced by radical settlers (»Blessed be you, Eternal One, our God, who visits all enemies of our soul with the reward they deserve«), which in the course of the action are suddenly directed against the secular Jewish authorities. Resistance to Rabin’s peace plans leads to a legal religious prohibition to give up Jewish settlements and finally to a curse against the one who, in the opinion of the religious fanatics, is responsible for the »abandonment policy.« Using the example of Rabin, who was murdered because he was open to compromise, Lerner shows the consequences of a »dramatics« that has since brought the peace process to a standstill. This play, a work commissioned for Tel Aviv’s Kameri theater, was such a hot potato for internal politics, that the Israelis initially decided not to put it on the stage themselves. The world premiere took place in 1999—in German translation—in Heilbronn’s Stadttheater.76 In his play Queen Esther (1973), Nathan Alterman (1910–1970) rubs biblical material the wrong way, by re-styling the heroine of the book of Esther as a femme fatale. The scene of the striptease demanded of the Persian queen Vashti (Esth 1:11–12) is depicted in earthy terms with midrashic motifs. The tension between Vashti and King Ahasuerus then switches, following the model of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata, to a general war of the sexes, in which women deny themselves to their husbands. Esther, who gives herself to the king, looks like a lascivious and opportunistic strike-breaker.77 The Palestinian Woman (1985) by Joshua Sobol (born 1939), uses the adultery of the biblical king with Bathsheba (2 Sam 11). Sobol shows how the love story of the Jew David with his Arab partner Magda fails. The most important stylistic device is a play-within-a-play structure in which the framework action constantly interferes in the actual story and is itself changed by it. In the framework plot, the main figure, Udi, plays a law student who is politically active for the peace process and is working on the production of a film in his spare time. As »David« in the

75 Cf. Morgenstern, Das israelische Theater, 185–214. 76 Cf. Morgenstern, Das israelische Theater, 228–233. 77 Cf. ibid., 244f.

162

Modern Jewish Literature

film he meets his partner »Magda,« played by the Jewish Israeli woman Dalia. At the heart of the narrative framework are two scenes with biblical echoes, which are to be taken as a »play within a play within a play«: a Purim scene, in which David and Magda appear dressed as Orthodox Jews, and the sketch-like staging of a »parable of the sheep and the wolf,« with which »Magda« and her former Palestinian boyfriend aim, during a festival on Israel’s Independence Day, to point out the injustice that in Palestine the stronger is devouring the weaker. As in the biblical Nathan parable (2 Sam 12), ultimately the »sheep,« Magda, is at risk. A group of right-wing Israeli troublemakers are provoked by the parable and ambush the actors after the performance, assaulting the pregnant actress. As with Bathsheba (2 Sam 12:15–20), the consequence is a dead child. In his play Judith among the Lepers, first performed in 1981, Moshe Shamir78 picks up material which belongs to the canon of the Septuagint but did not make it into the Jewish Bible. But why was the apocryphal story of the siege of the city of Bethuliah by the Assyrians and its miraculous rescue by Judith erased from the Jewish memory? Shamir starts with this question, aiming for the insight that Judith’s deed could not have been possible without her being »defiled.« Interest now shifts from the question of Judith’s personal »guilt« to her relationship with her people and to the fate of her tradition. Shamir tries to show that in the present as well, the realization of dreams cannot have been possible without violence and destruction, and therefore »guilt.« Before the curtain falls, as a result of the Holofernes episode, Judith’s child is born—the child is to be called Judith or Jude—and the author brings his heroine back to Judaism.79 After previously refusing contact with Germany, at the end of his life Shamir agreed to a translation of his texts. In 2001/2002 Stadttheater Heilbronn staged the German premiere of his play The Heir, which deals with the problem of »reparations« to Israel against the background of the Eichmann trial in the 1960s. In Hanoch Levin’s Job’s Sufferings (1981) an additional part is played by enjoyment of provocation, when the Job story is mixed with elements of the Passion of Christ and the naked, crucified Job is shown on stage. In Joshua Sobol’s (born 1939) Jerusalem Syndrome (1988) as well, New Testament quotations are integrated, when in the battle against the Romans in the first post-Christian century the Zealots use a saying of Jesus (»I have come to kindle a fire on earth,« Luke 12:49–53). Sobol’s Ghetto trilogy on the ghetto in Vilnius during the Holocaust—Ghetto (1984), Adam (1989), Underground (1990)—biblical motifs solve a problem posed by the topic. The mass murder of Jews contradicts the demands of plausibility, the credibility of the plot, and thus the very essence of the dramatic. Nor does it allow

78 On Shamir as a dramatist cf. Morgenstern, Mythos, 46–58. And see above for a discussion of his fiction. 79 The price demanded by historical decisions is dealt with in a similar way by Shamir in his two-act play, War of the Sons of Light (premiered in 1956 in the Kameri theater, Tel Aviv) on the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE). The play derives from his novel King of Flesh and Blood. (Tel Aviv 1954).

8 Lyric Poetry

163

moments of tension as in classical dramatic theory—these come about in relations between people who are neither deeply evil nor beyond reproach, but morally of »middling quality« and are in principle responsible for their well-being through their behavior. So, the murders that occurred during the Shoah cannot be plausibly represented on the stage. Sobol solves this problem by having the conditions set by the historical framework in his plays appear to be separate from any ethical judgment and at the same time »mandatory« or »fateful.« The actions of the Nazis bear the hideous features of a demonic »creation.« In the »world« created by an evil demon, the »creatures« of the Holocaust interact, while »God«—like Satan in the Job poem—plays his game with his creatures. Like Job, the Jewish doctor of the ghetto hospital is confronted with the absolute will of his »Nazi creator.« His answer to him is: »Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer Thee? I lay my hand upon my mouth« (Job 40:4f.). The Nazi henchman does not query the reason for his action, but answers like God in the »sound of a gentle whisper« and »out of the whirlwind« (1 Kings 19:12 and Job 38:1). The metaphor of an »upside-down creation« makes it possible not to present the victims as ethically superior. The issue is then less the obvious crimes of the murderers, than the disputed »guilt« of those who, under coercion, collaborated with the executioners and survived, and who now feel compelled to wonder whether they put up enough resistance. The examples given make it clear how biblical motifs in Hebrew theater raise the matter of experiences that move Israeli society, holding up a mirror to it and leading to a critical confrontation with social reality. Finally, they provide language to enable a coming-to-terms with the most horrific crimes in human history.

8

Lyric Poetry

In the context of his critique of the art-critical traditions of Judaism (the prohibition of images), Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) put forward the view that Psalmsoriented poetry was the artistic genre of the Mosaic religion and its prophetic ethics.80 Cohen’s aesthetic theory includes the assertion that, through the prism of Luther’s translation of the Psalms, modern German poetry has drawn in a special way from Jewish sources. Although this perception met with a good deal of sympathy on the part of Jews from the German-speaking realm before the First World War, it remained a matter of controversy as to whether and to what extent poets with a Jewish background who had turned their backs on Judaism could be regarded as confirming it—the best-known of them being Heinrich Heine (1797–1856). The use of 19th-century German-language lyric poetry composed by both Jews and non-Jews as an argument for the Jewish capacity for integration was firmly contradicted by the Aschaffenburg neo-orthodox rabbi Raphael Breuer (1881–1932)

80 Hermann Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, Berlin 1928, 166.

164

Modern Jewish Literature

with reference to Heine.81 Critics claimed that many modern Jewish German-language poets followed biblical models in terms of form—for instance, Else LaskerSchüler (1869–1945), who in an echo of Heine’s Hebräische Melodien, compiled Hebräische Balladen in 1913. Otherwise, however, there were few positive points of contact with traditional religious life. In her poem »Mein Volk,« (1905) for instance, LaskerSchüler expresses her Jewishness from an explicitly ethnic point of view, refusing to accept the dominant discourse of assimilation. Her last book to be published during her lifetime, the volume of poems My Blue Piano (Jerusalem 1943), combined the symbol »of a music-playing, harmony-addicted educated middle class with the nostalgic color of German romanticism.« The title poem became a »metaphor for the demise of German Judaism.«82 In contrast, the Darmstadt-born poet Karl Wolfskehl (1869–1948) emphasized the Roman-German heritage of his ancestors who lived in the Rhine-Main area. In 1903 he published the three-volume anthology Deutsche Dichtung together with Stefan George. It was only as a result of the experience of exile—in 1933 he emigrated first to Italy and from there to New Zealand—that he identified more strongly with the historical legacy of Judaism. His cycle Job, or The Four Mirrors, compiled in New Zealand, contains the poem »An die Deutschen,« written previously in Rome in 1934. In it he puts his farewell to the land of his birth (»Your walk was mine/One with you by stab and blow/Steadfast what was one to us,/One the large, one the small«). But he was unable to manage a clear confession of his Jewishness, rather combining his search for identity with a longing-filled apology for Germanness and the »German spirit.«83 For Paul Celan, real name Paul Antschel (born 1920 in Czernowitz), the experience of loss—of home, of parents, who were murdered by the Germans in the Ukraine during the Shoah, and of the spiritual and cultural tradition that was annihilated in the Second World War—was also a primary focus. In the poem La Contrescarpe, published in the cycle No-One’s Rose (1963) dedicated to the RussianJewish poet Ossip Mandelstam, he puts his memory of the morning after the Kristallnacht of 9 November 1938. On that day, Celan crossed the German capital on his way from Poland to France: »Via Cracow/you came, at Anhalter/Bahnhof/smoke flowed to your glances/which was already from tomorrow.«84 Celan became famous for a few lines in his Todesfuge, written in Bucharest in May 1945 »Black milk of dawn we drink it in the evening/ we drink it afternoon and morning we drink it at night/we drink and drink.«85 The poem ends with the much-quoted expression of death as a »master from Germany« and the naming of two women’s names

81 Matthias Morgenstern, »Von jüdischer Züchtigkeit und sinnlichem Vergnügen,« Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 28 (2001), 121–148, esp. 129f. 82 Alfred Bodenheimer, »Else Lasker-Schüler,« Lexikon der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, Stuttgart 2000, 379. 83 Thomas Sparr, »Karl Wolfskehl,« Lexikon der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, Stuttgart 2000, 628f. 84 Paul Celan, Die Gedichte. Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt am Main 2003, 161. 85 Celan, Gedichte, 40.

8 Lyric Poetry

165

which recall Goethe’s Faust and the biblical Song of Songs (»your golden hair Margarete/ your ashen hair Shulamith«).86 Celan’s poem Engführung (Constriction), written in 1957/58 (» brought/into the terrain/with the unmistakable tracks:/ grass written in capitals«) shows a path through a Shoah extermination camp. The poem »Zürich, Zum Storchen,« dedicated to the memory of a conversation with Nelly Sachs on Ascension Day, 1960, is about Jewish religion: »Talk, there was, of surfeit, of/ lack, of you/ and you again, of/ the murk through the brightness, of/ the Jewish, of/ your God«.87 The poem ends with an expression of radical skepticism: »We/ know not/ what/ is true.« In Paris, ten years later, Celan took his own life. The Alsatian lyrical poet and scholar Claude Vigée (born 1921) was brought up speaking Alsatian Yiddish. In school he was forced to speak French. In the Second World War, he experienced persecution by the National Socialists and by French Vichy collaborators. Affected by this experience, he changed his surname »Strauss« to Vigée, reflecting God’s statement about himself in Isaiah 49:18 (»I live«, French »j’ai vie«), in the inverted order of the Hebrew. His poetry, which was published during his time as a university lecturer in the USA and after 1960 in Jerusalem, is marked by the longing for a lost homeland. He gave expression to this longing in poems in dialect, such as in his Alsatian poem Schwàrzi Senggessle flàckere ém wend (»Black stinging nettles flutter in the wind«), composed in Jerusalem in 1982 during the Lebanon war. The poems of early Zionist New Hebrew Classicism bring the experiences of loss and of a break with the past by making use of traditional Hebrew (i.e. biblical) language. A poem by Shaul Tchernichovsky (1875–1943), written in Heidelberg in 1899, bears the title »Before the statue of Apollo.« In biblicizing Hebrew, the poet sings of his penitent return to the »ages-long forgotten God« of the Greeks. To this heathen God »of primordial moons and other days,« Tchernichovsky turns as »first of the returnees,« as he regretfully abandons the teaching of his ancestors. He complains that the ancient Jewish religion suppressed people’s feelings, reducing them to objects of pity. But with Apollo there was »light,« »life,« and »beauty,« for which he yearned with »every fiber of his soul«: »I came to you and bow before your image/I bow the knee and fall on my face before all/ that is good and honorable, before all that is upright…«88 These lines appear to be a complete denial of the biblical message. The monotheism propagated by the prophets is contrasted here with the worship of a Greek god. What had been labeled as false prophecy in ancient Israel and was regarded as idolatry for centuries of Jewish tradition, is elevated with a glorification of life and its natural drives and stimuli. There can surely be no stronger expression of discontinuity from traditional Judaism than this text of a poet whose words show the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche.89

86 Celan, Gedichte, 41. 87 Celan, Gedichte, 126. 88 Shaul Tchernichovsky, Shirim, Jerusalem 1959, 72–74; Josef Klausner, Geschichte der neuhebräischen Literatur, Berlin 1921, 116f. 89 For an interpretation see Eisik Silberschlag, Saul Tschernichowsky. Poet of Revolt, New York 1968, 44.

166

Modern Jewish Literature

In Bialik’s poem »On my return,« the renunciation of tradition again sounds triumphant.90 The poet describes his return to the sickbed of his dying grandfather in Zhitomir, Ukraine, where he was brought up. The grandfather, a strict Ḥasidic Jew and »limp old man,« was occupied with traditional texts until his dying day, »rocking over the Talmud page.«91 An illustration is given not only of an individual death but a morbid Diaspora existence in which people »sink completely in the old,« and which rots »until we stink.«92 The counterpart to this scene of degeneracy is found in Bialik’s poem »Die Toten der Wüste« (The Dead of the Desert, 1902), in which the picture is painted of a Promethean Jew, corresponding to the culture-revolutionary mood in Eastern Europe and at the same time a stimulus for resistance to the Jewish pogroms. Here the poet takes the fate of the wilderness generation—who escaped from slavery in Egypt but never reached the Promised Land, being made to die in front of the boundaries of the Land because of their sin—as a foil for his description of the present situation. In Bialik’s piece, rebellion against this fate shifts into a metaphysical revolt against the Creator.93 »In the midst of the storm, amidst the raging/ they shout:/ We are the heroes!/ The last generation of servitude the first generation of liberation./ Gather together, march in hosts/ against the horror and wrath of Heaven!/ Let us rise up (alinu) in the storm!/ And if a God has refused us help,/ let us arise without him!«94 The leading lyrical poets in the years following the founding of the State of Israel were Nathan Alterman and Avraham Shlonsky. Both write in a »high tone« and both are occupied with the topic of the collective experiences of their time. Alterman’s best-known lines are taken from his poem Magash Hakesef (Silver Tray), which was published in December 1947 and is still publicly read at official ceremonies on Israel’s memorial day (Yom ha-Zikkaron). The poem sings of the victims of the war of independence, who presented the Jewish nation with independence »on a silver tray.« Similarly, Avraham Shlonsky, for instance, in his cycle »Amal« (work) sings of the time of his rural life in the newly founded kibbutz of Ein Charod, where he spent ten months with his wife in 1921.95 Turning away from this poetry of pathos, Yehudah Amichai (birth name Ludwig Pfeuffer, 1924–2000) and Nathan Zach (1930) came together to found the magazine Likrat (Hebr. for »towards«), whose authors sought a more authentic and more per-

90 Ernst Simon, Chajjim Nachman Bialik. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und sein Werk, Berlin 1935. 91 Simon, Bialik, 35. 92 Simon, Bialik, 35. 93 Chaim Nachman Bialik, Gedichte. Translated from the Hebrew by Ernst Müller, Cologne and Leipzig 1911, 127; cf. also Simon Rawidowicz, »Bialik, Chajim Nachman,« in: Jüdisches Lexikon, Vol. I, Berlin 1927, 955–961. 94 Bialik, Gedichte, 127f. 95 Avraham Shlonsky, Poems, 2 vols. (Hebr.), Sifriat Poalim 1958, vol. 2, 105. There, in an address to the maternal earth, we read »Draw me to you, Mother ... and with the dawn draw me to work.«

8 Lyric Poetry

167

sonal manner of expression.96 Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Würzburg, in 1935 Amichai had emigrated to Palestine, where he attended an Orthodox school. A course in Biblical Studies followed, and in 1971 a professorship at the University of California (Berkeley). Although Amichai left a religious way of life behind him already at the age of 15 or 16, he kept the existential questions and was also able to reach non-religious Israelis through his poetry. His best-known poem—entitled »Both of us together and each for himself«—contains the words: »perhaps hope, something new, may still be possible/ For us both. For you and me.«97 Nathan Zach (originally Harry Seitelbach), born in Berlin in 1930 as the son of a Jewish father and an Italian mother, immigrated to Palestine with his parents in 1935, and served with the Israeli army in the war of independence. In 1959 he published his essay »Thoughts on the lyric poetry of Nathan Alterman,« which can be seen as a manifesto and expression of rebellion by the young Israeli writer. His best-known poem (1979) »For man is like the tree of the field?« is frequently recited, and also sung, on Yom ha-Zikkaron (Israeli Memorial Day) and also in the context of the annual festival of trees (Tu bi-Shvat), »as man grows, so too the tree,/ like the tree, a man falls too.« Since its inception, modern Jewish literature is characterized by two diverging tendencies: movements of emancipation from and critical arguments with the canonical texts of the Jewish religious tradition—the Bible, Rabbinical Literature, and, to a minor degree, also Kabbalah—and, at the same time, successive movements of recourse to traditional Jewish motifs and patterns which served (and continue to serve) writers as a source of inspiration and renewal. It is the ambiguity of this mixture which furnishes fresh new access to different facets of the modern world of experience. In the 20th century, Jewish literature has also mirrored and dealt with the two major events in Jewish history in our era, the Shoah and the development of the Zionist enterprise, which led to the foundation of the State of Israel. The reflection of these events in Jewish literature has contributed to worldwide interest and appreciation. The pieces of literature dealt with in this chapter have generated lively discussions, both in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora, and stirred up enthusiasm among critics and the general public. In numerous translations into other languages and in ensuing adaptations (including film or stage adaptations), they have inspired and furthered fresh literary creativity, in many cases also beyond the Jewish world.

96 For a critique of the literature of the »Generation of the State« see Nathan Zach, Air Lines. Talks on Literature, Jerusalem 1983, 20–28. 97 Anat Feinberg, »Yehudah Amichai, Shirim 1948–1984,« in: Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, Vol. 1, Munich 1988 , 393.

168

Modern Jewish Literature

For further reading Baumgarten, Jean, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, New York 2005. Feinberg, Anat (ed.), Moderne hebräische Literatur. Ein Handbuch, Munich 2005. Freeden, Herbert, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland, Frankfurt am Main 1985. Geiger, Ludwig, Die deutsche Literatur und die Juden, Berlin 1910. Gilman, Sander L. and Jack Zipes, Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096–1996, New Haven 1997. Kilcher, Andreas, ed., Lexikon der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, Stuttgart 2000. Morgenstern, Matthias, Theater und zionistischer Mythos. Eine Studie zum zeitgenössischen hebräischen Drama unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Werkes von Joshua Sobol, Tübingen 2002. Saquer-Sabin, Françoise, Nouvelles hébraïques d’aujourd’hui. Espaces et Territoires—Pouvoirs et Marginalités, Münster 2017. Shaked, Gershon, Geschichte der modernen hebräischen Literatur. Prosa von 1880 bis 1980. (German trans. Anne Birkenhauer, Frankfurt am Main, 1996). Steiner, George, Sprache und Schweigen. Essays über Sprache, Literatur und das Unmenschliche, Frankfurt am Main 1973. Waxman, Meyer, A History of Jewish Literature. Volume V: From 1935 to 1960, New York and London 1960. Yudkin, Leon Israel, 1948 and After. Aspects of Israeli Literature, Manchester 1984.

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender Gwynn Kessler

When the author of the biblical book of Qohelet proclaimed, »there is nothing new under the sun,« he could not foresee the revolution of the late 20th century liberation movements in the U.S., in which feminism played a significant part. Nor could the prophetic voice attributed to Jeremiah (Jer 31:22) that proclaimed, »for God has created a new thing in the land: female shall encompass man,« have imagined his vision as a compelling rallying cry for women’s liberation in the late 20th century and beyond. I mobilize these two verses with their interplay between that which is old and that which is new, to discuss feminism, gender, and Judaism. This chapter provides an interpretive literary history of feminist engagements with Judaism in the U.S. in the last half century. I frame this narrative chronologically, providing a decade by decade overview. This allows for attentiveness to developments and trends and encourages awareness of a significant degree of continuity. Taking a »decade approach« helps move us away from unnecessary divisions inherent in »second-wave« and »third-wave« framings.

1

1970s Jewish Feminism: Coming out Fighting

Feminist engagement with Judaism and Jewish texts begins to emerge in the early 1970s as part of the larger feminist critique of society, culture, and religion(s). Grass-roots feminist activism and scholarship in academic institutions intermingled. As groups of women gathered, organized, and valued women’s experience(s), and their own and others’ consciousnesses, Jews stood among them, applying these actions to aspects of Judaism, its textual traditions, organizational structures, and leadership positions. During this time, the first American female rabbis were ordained—Sally Priesand as a Reform rabbi in 1972 and Sandy Eisenberg Sasso as a Reconstructionist rabbi in 1974.1 This period included the growth of Jewish Renewal and the Havurah movement, both of which challenged the synagogue as a central institution of traditional Jewish religious life and offered more egalitarian approaches to Jewish leadership and participation.

1 On the ordination of women as rabbis see Pamela Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination 1889–1985 (Boston: Beacon, 1998). On lesbian rabbis, see Rebecca T. Alpert, Sue Levi Elwell, and Shirley Idelson, eds., Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).

170

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

The Jewish women in the U.S. feminist movement embodied different types of Jewishness, be they religiously affiliated (e.g.: Renewal, Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox, see Deborah Dash-Moore, Judaism in America in: Michael Tilly, Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.), Judaism I. History (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2020).), culturally or ethnically identified, or secular—to the point that connections between their activism and Judaism sometimes remained unarticulated or unacknowledged.2 They were lesbians and straight women, leftists and liberals, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, women of color and white women. They came from differing socio-economic backgrounds and they held diverse views about the State of Israel and Palestinian rights. In 1972, a group of religious Jewish feminists disrupted the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly’s annual convention with their demands for full inclusion in Jewish life. In turn, the 1973 National Conference for Jewish Women was disrupted by »working-class and gay women« angered by their exclusion at the women’s conference.3 Although such diversity became visible in anthologies published in the 1980s, it is important to acknowledge its presence already from the beginnings of U.S. Jewish feminism(s). Similarly, while greater attention will be placed on anti-Semitism in the women’s movement in publications in following decades, it too surfaced in the 1970s, perhaps most publicly at the United Nations Conferences on Women convened between 1975 and 1985. The 1975 UN Conference in Mexico City passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. In so doing, the first UN Conference on Women led some Jewish feminists present to acknowledge anti-Jewish sentiments in the women’s movement in the U.S. and abroad; for many Jewish feminists it was a catalyst for deeper integration of both their feminist and Jewish identities.4 The 1973 summer issue of Response: A Contemporary Jewish Review and the 1976 publication of The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives edited by Elizabeth Koltun, represent a »watershed moment« at the beginnings of feminist Jewish scholarship. Both volumes incorporate sections on »History,« »The Jewish Community Today,« »The Life Cycle,« »Women and Jewish Law,« and »Israel,« in addition to their sections on »Jewish Texts.« Feminist interpretation of Jewish texts is evident through most of the contributions, from those excavating the place of Jewish women in Jewish history, to those examining the status of women in halakhah, to those rewriting liturgy and rituals for women and girls in Jewish life cycles. One of the earliest and most influential feminist interpretations from the 1970s, Judith Plaskow’s midrash on Genesis 2 that reclaims the post-biblical character Lilith, appeared in the section of Response entitled »Spiritual Quest.« Thus, from its very beginnings, feminist textual interpretation occurs within the varied contexts of larger feminist engagements with Jewish history, practice, ritual, and religious/spiritual/cultural expression.

2 See Joyce Antler, Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2018). 3 Much of this information is found, with more detail, in Paula Hyman, »Jewish Feminism in the United States,« in Jewish Women in America: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1997. 4 See Letty Cottin Pogrebin, »Anti-Semitism in the Women’s Movement,« Ms. magazine, June 1982.

1 1970s Jewish Feminism: Coming out Fighting

171

In the section specifically on »Jewish Texts,« Response (1973) includes only two contributions, Mary Gendler’s »The Vindication of Vashti« and Judith Hauptman’s »Women in the Talmud.« Koltun’s volume (1976) expanded this section, including two other articles focused on rabbinic sources: Linda Kuzmack’s »Aggadic Approaches to Biblical Women« and »Women as Sources of Torah in the Rabbinic Tradition« by Anne Goldfeld. In addition, Phyllis Trible’s »Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation« and Sonya Michel’s »Mothers and Daughters in American Jewish Literature: The Rotted Cord« are also included—increasing the breadth of its section on »Women in Jewish Literature« so that it ranges, albeit with significant gaps, from biblical, to rabbinic, and then to contemporary Jewish literature. One of the key aspects of early feminist Jewish scholarship can be gleaned from some of the section headings in Koltun’s volume (»Women in Jewish Law,« »Women in Jewish Literature«) as well as the titles of the individual contributions (e.g. »Women in the Talmud« in Response). The focus on women was declared to be an important part of Jewish history, culture, religion, and literature. This new focus served as a corrective both to prior scholarship, which largely disregarded women and their contributions and was a compelling critique of patriarchal Jewish texts themselves, which marginalized and relegated women to secondary status.5 This is evident throughout a number of essays that critique women’s exemption from time-bound positive commandments, women’s exclusion from Jewish learning and reciting memorial prayers, halakhic practices surrounding menstruation, and the comparisons made between women, minors, and slaves throughout rabbinic sources.6 Rachel Adler, in one of her two contributions to the Response volume, »The Jew Who Wasn’t There,« writes passionately about the secondary, »less-than,« status of women in Judaism, calling women »peripheral Jews.« Adler ends her article with an appeal to another post-biblical midrashic literary creation: the man-made golem who is a pale shadow of God’s creation of humanity. After calling upon halakhic scholars to revisit and change the peripheral status of Jewish women within halakhah, she writes, »For too many centuries, the Jewish woman has been a golem created by Jewish society. She cooked and bore and did her master’s will, and when her tasks were done, the Divine Name was removed from her mouth. It is time for the golem to demand a soul« (1973: 82). Adler’s breathing new life into the golem, Plaskow’s conjuring of Lilith, and Gendler’s »vindication of Vashti,« bring to light another key strategy of feminist textual interpretation, already present at its beginnings: reading from the margins

5 An article written by Cynthia Ozick published in Lilith 6 (1979) refers to the scholarly »disregard« of Jewish women as a »purposeful excision« and »deportation out of study.« Although the article was published in 1979, I discuss it in the next section on the 1980s because of its reprinting in Susannah Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader (New York: Schocken Books, 1983). 6 Hyman’s contribution, »The Other Half: Women in Jewish Tradition,« in Response (1973) and in Koltun (1976), is notable for its succinctness and comprehensiveness.

172

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

or centering marginalized voices and characters. In many ways, the same strategy is used, writ large, in any inquiry about women in Jewish history, culture, and literature. In these early articles, Jewish women, once cast as »peripheral,« begin to occupy more central places in scholarship about Judaism and the interpretation of Jewish texts. Early Jewish feminist strategies not only strike at the margins, they also sound a rallying cry aimed at the heart of monotheistic religions: male God language. The 1973 Response issue was published in the same year as Mary Daly’s influential book, Beyond God the Father, where Daly posits conceiving God as a verb, a Be-ing, not as a static noun. In Plaskow’s contribution to Response (above), Plaskow first points out that male God language excludes Jewish women from tradition: »There is the fact that we address God as he. And it is not just that we use the masculine pronoun in the absence of a neuter one, we image him in male terms. Thus, he is King, Lord, Shepherd, Father, etc.« (1973: 14). Later in the essay, Plaskow gestures toward a conception of God more akin to Daly’s »God as verb,« when she writes, »›I am who I am,‹ thought God, ›but I must become who I will become‹« (1973: 18). The textual, interpretive move is somewhat understated, but no less profound: the Hebrew phrase ehyeh asher ehyeh in Exodus 3:14, usually translated as »I am that I am,« may be justifiably rendered I will be who I will be. In Plaskow’s midrash on Lilith, she includes a midrash on God’s naming; God names Godself in the biblical text, and in Plaskow’s text, God rethinks that name, offering an image of God not only who is, but who is also always becoming. Echoes of the classical talmudic text wherein God laughs and proclaims, »My sons have defeated me« (b. Baba Metzia 59b) are here met with a companion, feminist spin; albeit left implicit, God may be heard laughing and proclaiming, »My daughters have defeated me.« The naming of God based on Exodus 3:14 presents an opportunity to image God as neither male nor female or both male and female, because in Biblical Hebrew, the first-person noun lacks grammatical gender. Although some Jewish theologies, feminist among them, advocate for non-gendered or non-exclusively female images of God, at the end of the 1970s the scales seem tipped far more toward the side of calling upon »God-She.«7 In her 1978 book, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Christian biblical scholar Phyllis Trible re-examines biblical images of God, compellingly revealing feminine/female images of God within the Hebrew Bible.8 As a starting point, Trible uses Genesis 1:26–28, And God created the adam in his image, in the image of God He created him, male and female he created them (1:27). Trible asserts, »Clearly, ›male and female‹ correspond structurally to ›the image of God,‹ and this formal parallelism indicates a semantic correspondence« (1978: 17). In subsequent chapters, Trible links biblical

7 See Marcia Falk, »Notes on Composing New Blessings toward a Feminist-Jewish Reconstruction of Prayer« in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1987). See also Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society Press, 1998). 8 Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978).

2 1980s: Toward Finding the Right Question(s)

173

passages about the wombs (reḥem) of women to passages about God’s compassion (raḥum), offering such translations as, Is Ephraim my dear son? My darling child? For the more I speak of him, the more I do remember him. Therefore, my womb trembles for him; I will truly show motherly-compassion upon him (Jer 31:20). She also draws attention to several biblical passages that use birth imagery when describing God. For example, The Rock who gave you birth you forgot, and you lost remembrance of the God who writhed in labor pains with you (Deut 32:18) and Like a travailing woman I will groan, I will pant. I will gasp at the same time (Is 42:14). She summarizes, »we have highlighted female metaphors for God and thus allowed scripture to reinterpret scripture for new occasions« (1978: 68). In the Introduction to 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. Women who were bold enough to address this issue directly found that nothing aroused the ire of male theologians and churchmen so much as the charge that traditional language about God is sexist« (1979: 4). The articles in this volume about feminism and Judaism consistently address the issue of male God language. Naomi Janowitz and Margaret Wenig translate Sabbath liturgy using female pronouns for God, Plaskow uses female God language in her ceremony marking the birth of a daughter, and Aviva Cantor refers to God in the Passover Haggadah as »ruler of the universe« instead of as »king.« In another article in Womanspirit Rising, »Female God Language in a Jewish Context,« Rita Gross argues for the importance of female images of God. She writes, »... it is time to move beyond God the Father« (1979: 168). She succinctly explains the need for female imagery of God, »I am equally convinced that images of God as a male person without complementing images of God as a female person are both a mirror and a legitimation of the oppression and eclipsing of women« (ibid.). Judging from the amount of contributions on female God language in Womanspirit Rising, at the cusp of the 1980s Jewish feminist theology was one of the central aspects of Jewish feminist engagement. Other foundational criticisms articulated in the anthologies from the earlier 1970s such as the marginality of Jewish women in ancient texts and modern scholarship, the secondary status of women in halakhah, the need to expand Jewish history so that it includes Jewish women, and feminist readings of classical Jewish texts, also continued to be concerns of feminist scholarship in subsequent decades. Coupled with the need to address the diversity of Jewish women on the bases of sexuality, class, and ethnicity, as well as the need to confront anti-Semitism in the Women’s Movement, a formidable agenda for Jewish feminism and Jewish feminist scholarship was set for the 1980s—and beyond.

2

1980s: Toward Finding the Right Question(s)

The early 1980s witness the publication of a number of books and edited anthologies about feminism and Judaism—from many different perspectives. For example,

174

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

Blu Greenberg, a modern orthodox Jewish woman, published On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition in 1981. The following year, Evelyn Torton Beck’s edited volume, Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology came out. In 1983, On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader, edited by Susannah Heschel was published, and in 1984 Rachel Biale published Women in Jewish Law: An Exploration of Women’s Issues in Halakhic Sources. In the same year, Susan Weidman Schneider, one of the founding editors of Lilith magazine published Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today, and in 1986 both the The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology edited by Irena Klepfisz and Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz and Miriam’s Well: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year by Penina Adelman were published.9 Despite the not insignificant differences between the modern Orthodox Greenberg and the secular lesbian feminist Beck, what unites many of these books is their shared theme of integrating identities—especially those identities once deemed irreconcilable. The integration of feminist and Jewish identities, all the more so feminist and Orthodox Jewish identities or lesbian and Jewish identities, was commonly conceived as threatening. It was as if such integration would bring about the disintegration of Judaism itself.10 Nevertheless, Greenberg asks how is one both feminist and orthodox, and charts an exemplary path. Beck’s volume offers many different paths to being lesbian/feminist and Jewish. Beck’s anthology demonstrates the myriad ways one can be Jewish and lesbian, and how one engenders these identities as feminist along with many other identities (e.g.: African-American, Arab, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, American, Israeli, secular). Nice Jewish Girls excels at articulating the ways in which its contributors embody multiple identities, showcasing differences within the categories of »Jew,« »woman,« and »lesbian.« The Tribe of Dina also highlights diversity; it furthers the effort begun in Beck’s collection by incorporating more Israeli Jewish—Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi—voices. Both anthologies also contain a range of materials, including autobiographical and theoretical essays, letters, poems, pictures, interviews, and feminist interpretations of Jewish texts and traditions (discussed below). Beck writes, »We have recorded Jewish lesbian lives in pictures, poems, fiction and essays. We have made theories about our lives« (1982: xxxi). Both anthologies address

9 Blu Greenberg, On Women and Judaism: A View From Tradition (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1981); Evelyn Torton Beck, eds., Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982); Susannah Heschel, On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader (New York: Schocken Books, 1983); Rachel Biale, Women & Jewish Law: An Exploration of Women’s Issues in Halakhic Sources (New York: Schocken Books, 1984); Susan Weidman Schneider, Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984); Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz and Irene Klepfisz ed., The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology (Sinister Wisdom 29/30, 1986); Penina Adelman, Miriam’s Well: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year (Fresh Meadows: Biblio Press, 1986). See Ellen Umansky, »Females, Feminists, and Feminism: A Review a Review of Recent Literature on Jewish Feminism« in Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Summer, 1988) for a review essay on many of these books. 10 See Heschel (1983: xvii-xxiii) for some examples of negative responses to Jewish feminism from both men and women.

2 1980s: Toward Finding the Right Question(s)

175

anti-Semitism in the broader feminist community and both discuss conflicts and divisions Jewish feminists experience about Israel. The presence of the Holocaust hovers over both volumes, with specific engagement by contributors in each. Again, Beck writes, »Some of us experienced World War II directly, but all of us were touched by the Holocaust« (1982: xxx). Finally, both Nice Jewish Girls and The Tribe of Dina highlight the voices of secular Jewish feminists. They foreground feminist engagements with Judaism that represent Jewishness as more than a religious identity.11 Susannah Heschel’s On Being a Jewish Feminist captures much of the diversity among feminist Jewish religious identities and experiences. For example, two essays are included about women reciting the mourners’ Kaddish. Sara Reguer, who identifies as an orthodox Jewish feminist recounts some of the challenges and small triumphs she experienced saying Kaddish during the year after her mother died. Deborah Lipstadt writes about her ultimate inclusion—being counted as the tenth member of a prayer-quorum—in a nondenominational, yet Orthodox/Conservative storefront synagogue, while she observed the anniversary of her father’s death. Arleen Stern writes about learning to chant Torah at a Havurah Summer Institute, and Laura Geller, a Reform rabbi, writes about the importance of the ordination of women and the presence of female rabbis in congregations. Within Heschel’s collection, the juxtaposition of differing perspectives highlights not only diversity, but divergence and disagreement. Heschel’s anthology brings together Cynthia Ozick’s 1979 article, originally published in Lilith, »Notes toward Finding the Right Question,« where Ozick begins with a harsh critique and dismissal of female God language and feminist theology, and Judith Plaskow’s direct response in »The Right Question is Theological,« which articulates the importance of female God-language. Ozick’s article is typically read as asserting that the »right question is halakhic,« and that the way forward for feminist Judaism must thus emerge from within halakhic grounds.12 Plaskow strongly disagrees that feminist repair of Jewish tradition can be founded in halakhah. She characterizes halakhah as the symptom. She writes concerning the limitations of Jewish feminism that focuses solely or even primarily on halakhic change, »It has focused on getting women a piece of the Jewish pie; it has not wanted to bake a new one!« (1983: 223). According to Plaskow, Judaism has to come

11 The Tribe of Dina incorporates religious Jewish essays as well, e.g.: Jyl Felman’s essay »Why I want to be a rabbi,« and Julie Greenberg’s »Seeking a Feminist Judaism.« 12 This is most explicitly articulated in Ozick (1983: 142). The last section of Ozick’s piece, where she dissents from her own argument against the right question as a »sacral/theological« one, as well as places within the earlier sections in the piece, suggest that Ozick herself is critical of halakhah as the primary vehicle for change. For example, Ozick asks, »...why do the sincerest scholars of Torah appear to offer Jewish women stopgap tactics, tinkering, placebos and sops, all in the form of further separation and isolation?« (1983: 139). She continues, »These recommendations for study and prayer within a frame of continuing segregation fail to address the one idea that calls out to be addressed. They are not solutions ... they are evasions of the matter« (1983: 139–140).

176

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

to terms with the essential otherness of Jewish women, which, »is part of the fabric of Jewish life« (1983: 231). This otherness is brought into sharp relief by male only God-language/imagery and the acknowledgement that »the Jewish tradition is not the product of the entire Jewish people, but of Jewish men alone« (1983: 230).13 Rachel Biale’s Women & Jewish Law was a welcome contribution for Jewish feminists who maintain that women’s status in halakhah is a primary concern, as well as the most legitimate or effective vehicle through which to enact change. Ozick lamented the »loss of an army of Torah scholars,« Jewish women who have been systematically excised from Jewish tradition and »deported out of the houses of study« (1983: 140). Rachel Biale helped arm them with some of the knowledge this female army would need. Biale offers a far more comprehensive treatment and discussion of the halakhic sources than previously available. Biale’s audience reaches beyond Orthodox or halakhic Jews. Biale writes, »The collection of halakhic sources in this book is intended as a first step toward drawing women into the circle of the Halakhah« (1984: 4), a halakhah she sees as characterized by canonized disagreement and change rather than evidence of »rigid conservatism« (1984: 5). Biale, similar to Judith Hauptman and Blu Greenberg, asserts that halakhic sources reflect »a gradual and persistent effort to redress the fundamental imbalance in power between men and women which characterizes biblical law« (1984: 5). She acknowledges, »While women could and did gain more halakhic rights in the course of generations, they never gained halakhic power. They have been silent recipients, outsiders to the process« (1984: 8). Biale asserts that learning halakhah is essential to meaningful modern Jewish discourse. She writes, »it is necessary to acquire a shared ›Jewish language,‹ which is the language of the traditional Jewish sources« (1984: 9). Halakhah is accompanied by, if not subsumed under, another language—that of midrash, the exegesis or interpretation of scripture. Although an explicit focus on halakhah was expanded in the early to mid-1980s through the work of Biale and Greenberg, there is an equally foundational use of midrash that emerges in 1980s Jewish feminist writing. Two years after Biale’s Women and Jewish Law, Penina Adelman publishes Miriam’s Well: Rituals for Jewish Women Around the Year (1986). Adelman’s focus on Jewish women’s ritual recalls the sections on »the Jewish life cycle« in the 1970s anthologies discussed above. She expands the use of midrash seen in Adler’s and Plaskow’s articles by incorporating rabbinic midrashim about women alongside contemporary feminist midrash. Her book follows the cycle of the Jewish year, using women’s connection to Rosh Hodesh, the celebration of the new moon recorded in rabbinic sources, as the overall framing. The title of the book, Miriam’s Well, has its basis in the midrashic link made between the well that accompanies Israel during their desert wanderings after the Exodus from Egypt and the biblical figure of Miriam: »The whole time Miriam lived, the well sustained Israel. When Miriam died, what does scripture say? And Miriam died there, and there was not enough water for the 13 See Ozick, Notes Toward (1983: 136–140) and Greenberg, On Judaism (1981: 76).

2 1980s: Toward Finding the Right Question(s)

177

congregation (Num. 20:1–2)—for the well disappeared« (t. Sotah 11:1). Within each monthly ritual, alongside embodied ritual acts, Adelman weaves in women’s stories, which bring together rabbinic and modern scriptural interpretations focusing on female characters from the Bible. In her chapter on the Hebrew month of Sivan, which here celebrates a child’s coming of age and first menstruation, Adelman discusses Keturah, wife of Abraham, briefly mentioned in Genesis 25:1. She builds on the rabbinic midrash that connects Keturah’s name to the Hebrew word for fragrance (ketoret): »And her name was Keturah. She was scented with mitzvot and good deeds« (Gen. Rab. 61:4). In Adelman’s »Keturah: The Story of Incense,« she expands and alters14 this brief rabbinic tradition and writes her own midrash to fill in the—scriptural gaps about Keturah’s life. She provides Keturah with a childhood, heritage, religious culture, and a rebellious spirit, similar to the rabbinic midrash about Abraham smashing Terah’s idols—making her a fitting match for Abraham. Telling this story in the context of celebrating menstruation during a Rosh Hodesh ritual demonstrates how Rosh Hodesh groups were able to »return to traditional sources as a way of reinforcing Jewish identity instead of breaking from it completely« (1986: 6). Adelman’s use of rabbinic and modern midrash in a feminist Jewish context provides one of the most explicit and sustained early examples of the importance of midrash—not just halakhah—to Jewish feminism. But the centrality of midrash already undergirds both Nice Jewish Girls and The Tribe of Dinah.15 Much of Beck’s Jewish Girls is framed by a rabbinic statement attributed to Hillel the elder, »If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when?« The first section of the anthology—presented under the section heading »If I am not for myself, who will be for me?«—consists of contributions that confront anti-Semitism in the women’s movement, demonstrating Jewish women speaking and advocating for themselves as Jews. Another section, titled »If I am only for myself, what am I?« is comprised of essays that reflect on the need to work together with other communities in their fights against oppression. Irena Klepfisz articulates her Jewishness as inspiration for fighting against the injustices of racism, classism and oppression of every kind. Kaye/Kantrowitz’s essay weaves together the displacement of Native Americans, the effacement and murder of African Americans, the legacy of slavery, the devastation of the Holocaust, the negative effects of poverty and tokenism, and the chilling acts and ultimate acquittal of klansmen in a civil trial. Aliza Maggid’s essay about lesbians in the Interna-

14 In its context, the classical rabbinic midrash conflates Hagar and Keturah, insisting that they are the same person, see GenR ad loc. Adelman, in contrast, develops Keturah as a different person. For another early example of feminist midrash, but on the biblical matriarch Sarah, see Umansky, »Creating a Jewish Feminist Theology: Possibilities and Problems« in Anima 10/2 (1984). See also Savina Teubal, Sarah the Priestess: The First Matriarch of Genesis (Swallow Press, 1984). 15 Jody Myers notes the early contributions of feminist midrash by lesbian activist Judith Stein. See Myers, »The Midrashic Enterprise of Contemporary Jewish Women,« in Jews and Gender, ed. Jonathan Frankel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

178

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

tional Movement of Gay/Lesbian Jews concludes by acknowledging the need to join »in the struggle against the many ›isms‹ that oppress all lesbians and gays, all Jews, all people of color, and all minorities« (1982: 119). Framed by Hillel’s statement, both sections build upon, update, and further his teaching; they are a midrash. The last question attributed to Hillel — »If not, now when?«—implicitly frames the entirety of Beck’s anthology. The collection as a whole proclaims that now is the time for women, feminists, and lesbians, to be recognized as part of Judaism. Another section heading for Beck’s anthology, »A Coat of Many Colors,« frames contributions that demonstrate the diversity of Jewish women’s experiences and identities, midrashically linked to Joseph’s coat and thereby written into the very fabric of Jewish tradition. Midrash is also central to the anthology The Tribe of Dina. The title is itself a midrash that fills in a biblical silence concerning Jacob and Leah’s daughter. The sons and grandsons of Jacob are the eponymous progenitors of the tribes of Israel, but Dina has no tribe. And where Dina is a silent victim in Genesis 34, then written out of the biblical story altogether, the contributors to The Tribe of Dina supply her with a multitude of voices providing her, and many other Jewish women, a place in Jewish history—and its future. Another section of this anthology takes on the silence of Lot’s wife. It opens with two poems by Enid Dame, both of which give voice to Lot’s wife’s experience of the destruction of Sodom. In »Manna from Heaven,« Elana Dykewoman tells of an Israelite who separates herself from the community during the desert wanderings and tastes manna. And through a midrashic retelling of the biblical exodus from Egypt, with references to doubled labor, drowning of first-born dreams, head lice, frogs, a city under the plague of darkness and rust-red tap water, Ellen Gruber Garvey narrates the story of office workers being led out of an office before the 1980 New York City Transit Strike by God’s mighty hand: »With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm we are freed from the house of bondage. The horse and his rider, rider and subway car, bus and railroad car have been thrown into the sea« (1986: 172). Focusing only on halakhah, or theology for that matter, occludes the centrality of midrash to early Jewish feminism.16 Midrash traverses boundaries between »religious« and »secular« Jewish feminists. Susannah Heschel’s anthology contains a number of contributions that manifest midrash’s centrality to Jewish feminist transformation. In »The Lilith Question,« Aviva Cantor reframes the medieval midrashim about Lilith, embracing Lilith as a positive role model for feminists.17 Arthur Waskow’s »Feminist Judaism: Restoration of the Moon« also offers a contemporary midrash based on earlier rabbinic midrashim. In »Bride, Spouse, Daughter: Images of the Feminine in Classical Jewish Sources,« Arthur Green presents rabbinic midrashim where Israelite men are imagined as female in relation to their male God, as bride or daughter. He also discusses

16 Plaskow and Umansky readily acknowledge the importance of midrash for feminist theology. See also Umansky (1982; 1984; 1985). 17 Cantor’s article was originally published in the first issue of Lilith (1976).

2 1980s: Toward Finding the Right Question(s)

179

kabbalistic sources that image the divine as female. Although he questions »the usability of feminine imagery as created by a male religious community« (1983: 249), he suggests that such images provide material with which to work (1983: 254). And Claire Satlof ’s contribution turns to the midrashic elements of American Jewish feminist writers of the 1970s: Esther Broner, Joanne Greenberg, Rhoda Lerman, Cynthia Ozick, and Nessa Rapaport. She writes, »In their presentation of new myth and midrash—and the very fact that they can ›augment the texts‹—Jewish women are recasting tradition and pronouncing a previously unspoken word« (1983: 203). Even Cynthia Ozick, in »Notes Toward Finding the Right Question,« concludes her essay with a powerful appeal to augment Torah itself. As an example of the force of her critique of the »scandal« of Torah regarding women—the exclusion of women from Torah: This wall of scandal is so mammoth in its centrality and its durability that, contemplating it, I can no longer believe in the triviality of the question that asks about the status of Jewish women. It is a question which, reflected on without frivolity, understood without arrogance, makes shock itself seem feeble, makes fright itself grow faint. The relation of Torah to women calls Torah itself into question. Where is the missing Commandment that sits in judgment of the world? Where is the Commandment that will say, from the beginning of history until now, Thou shalt not lessen the humanity of women? (1983: 149–150).

Ozick recalls the rabbinic move to Yavneh acknowledging, »When Torah seemed frayed, we ran to repair it« (1983: 150). She writes, »So what we must do is find, for this absent precept [Thou shall not lessen the humanity of women], a Yavneh that will create the conditions for the precept« (1983: 150). In another essay Ozick writes, »at an earlier Yavneh, Yochanan ben Zakkai plunged into the elaboration of Aggadah and preserved Torah by augmenting it« (1970: 279). Whether or not Ozick’s eyes would see and her ears would hear the collective works of Jewish feminist writing as answering such a call, her new Yavneh is being founded through the writings surveyed, as well as those not mentioned here. The latter half of the 1980s begin to demonstrate the expanding scope of feminist engagements with Judaism and the increased integration of feminist criticism in established fields in Jewish Studies. The publication of Nehama Aschkenazy’s Eve’s Journey (1986) and Esther Fuchs’ Israeli Mythogonies (1987), solidify the emergence of feminist criticism of Modern Hebrew Literature. Judith Romney Wegner’s Chattel or Person?: The Status of Women in the Mishnah (1988) foreshadows the growth of feminist studies in Rabbinics in coming decades.18 Aschkenazy’s work is noteworthy because, instead of writing her own midrash to »augment Torah,« she subjects rabbinic midrash to feminist critique. Whether one begins with the rabbinic midrash asserting, »As soon as Eve was created, Satan

18 Nehama Aschkenazy, Eve’s Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literature (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986). Esther Fuchs, Israeli Mythogonies: Women in Contemporary Hebrew Fiction (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987). Judith Romney Wegner, Chattel or Person?: The Status of Women in the Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

180

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

was created with her« (Gen. Rab. 17:6), which Aschenazy considers a »devastating commentary,« or the lengthy misogynist midrashic exposition of why woman is created from adam’s rib and not any other body part (Gen. Rab. 17:8), which she introduces as »derogatorily comic,« both texts, and countless others, provide evidence in support of her claim that, »The Jewish sages who produced the Midrash attempted to steer many stories, originally free of sexist biases, into the patriarchal orbit« (1986: 11). In fact, whether biblical or rabbinic texts are »less sexist« when compared to each other will be debated. Typically, feminist biblical scholars view at least some biblical traditions as offering empowering models for women, while feminist Rabbinics scholars maintain the opposite.19 In fact, both biblical and rabbinic sources are, to use the language prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s, »patriarchal.«20 Within the rabbinic corpus, both midrashic and halakhic sources are also patriarchal. Whereas Aschkenazy focuses on the androcentric underpinnings of midrashic sources, Judith Romney Wegner’s Chattel or Person (1988), examines the halakhic ones. Two anthologies at the end of the 1980s complement the earlier feminist/women’s anthologies and set the stage for trends of the coming decade: A Mensch Among Men: Explorations in Jewish Masculinity (1988), edited by Harry Brod, and Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish (1989) edited by Christie Balka and Andy Rose.21 Both collections are pioneering. Brod’s brings together essays that self-reflexively explore Jewish maleness and masculinity that are feminist and antihomophobic. Balka and Rose’s is the first gay and lesbian Jewish anthology incorporating a range of topics and time periods. Both anthologies bring into focus what is embedded in earlier Jewish feminist works: that a discussion of feminism and Judaism, and the creation of a feminist Judaism, not only entails a focus on women but also a focus on the social construction of all genders and sexualities. Gender and (hetero)sexuality are neither self-evident nor God-given universal and eternal truths, but rather unfolding, shifting concepts that are locatable in history and subject to change.22

19 As seen above, Greenberg, Hauptman, and Biale tend to see halakhic change evident in rabbinic documents as improving the lot of women; implicit here is that the biblical sources are »more sexist.« Contrast Frymer-Kensky (1992). 20 The words patriarchy and patriarchal fell out of use in the 1990s amidst claims being too simplistic, overarching, and monolithic. However, see Charlotte Higgins »The age of patriarchy: how an unfashionable idea became a rallying cry for feminism today« in The Guardian June 22, 2018. 21 Harry Brod, ed., A Mensch among Men: Explorations of Jewish Masculinity (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1988). Christie Balka and Andy Rose, eds., Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989). Both Beck’s Nice Jewish Girls and Klepfisz and Kaye/Kantrowitz’s The Tribe of Dina are published in revised and expanded versions in 1989. This same year Christ and Plaskow’s Weaving the Visions, their second anthology on women and religion, was published. 22 See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) and Adrienne Rich, »Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,« in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 5 Number 4 (1980).

3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

181

Throughout the 1980s, Jewish feminists continued to develop feminist rituals and theologies, examined the status of women in halakhah with more depth, continued to move marginal figures from the Bible to the center of their writings, confronted antiSemitism in the larger women’s movement, and they incorporated a range of voices that reflect a diversity of feminist Jewish identities. Finally, they mobilized different strategies for bringing about feminist Jewish change, be it sociological,23 communal,24 halakhic, midrashic, or theological. Although no singular feminist approach or method emerged as dominant, indeed singularity and dominance or hierarchy being key ideas against which feminism and feminist theories define themselves, the extent to which feminist midrash is called upon to instantiate feminist change is noteworthy. Arguing about what »the right question« for Jewish feminism is, both captures and occludes the formative works produced during the 1980s. The question yields a multitude of right questions: about theology, halakhah, midrash, literature, Jewish social organizations, and religious leadership. The right question is, what are differences within the category of »woman«and »man«? And as Andy Rose asks, how will the Jewish community—from youth organizations to synagogues to federations—rise to the challenges of helping ease the pain of physical suffering and social isolation felt by people living with HIV and AIDS (1989)? And as Rebecca Alpert asks, how do lesbians and gay men, and the wider Jewish community, confront the homophobia of Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 and confront the heterosexism as well as the androcentrism of Jewish texts and culture (1989)? And as Adrienne Rich quotes: »If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?« And she adds, »If not with others, how?«25 In the 1980s, the right questions proliferated.

3

1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

The sheer volume of scholarly books about Judaism, women, gender, and the (male) body published in the 1990s marks the decade as particularly significant for Jewish feminism, and Judaism and gender. These publications, on the one hand, herald the achievement of many of the goals of Jewish feminism—acknowledging women’s existence in, contributions to, and perspectives on Judaism, Jewish history, literature, and culture. By the end of the decade, no field within Jewish Studies remained untouched by feminist theory and gender studies; Jewish feminism seemed to have

23 See Scarf, »Marriages Made in Heaven?: Battered Jewish Wives« in Heschel, On Being (1983: 51–64). 24 For communal change, see Paula Hyman »The Jewish Family: Looking for a Usable Past,« Rosa Kaplan, »The Noah Syndrome,« and Deborah Lipstadt, »Women and Power in the Federation« all of which are in Heschel, On Being (1983). 25 Adrienne Rich, »If not with others, how,« in Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1986). I thank Rebecca Alpert for bringing this poem to my attention.

182

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

shifted the very ground on which Jewish Studies—and Judaism—had been laid. On the other hand, the incorporation or inclusion of women and gender studies »disciplines« Jewish feminism, bringing it into the scholarly fold, but in so doing it also tames it. Both estimations have merit to varying degrees.26 A comprehensive assessment of feminist engagement with Judaism during the 1990s is impossible to cover in this context; this fact alone signals the triumph of Jewish feminism begun in prior decades. This decade witnessed the rapid growth of the integration of feminist and gender theories in Jewish Studies. Scholarship is not the only flourishing field of the period, as reflected in the growing number of memoirs and midrashim published by Jewish women during this decade. Furthermore, there are significant publications in liturgy, anthologies of Jewish women’s writings, and the continued growth of feminist rituals. Jewish feminist activism, as well as lesbian and gay activism, continues apace. A number of Jewish feminist and women’s organizations were formed during the 1990s, many of which still exist today.

3.1

Feminist Scholarship; Gender and Jewish Studies

In 1990, Judith Plaskow published Standing Again at Sinai, the first scholarly monograph to set forth a comprehensive Jewish feminist theology. The central exclusionary textual move that frames Plaskow’s book, Exodus 19:15, where at the moment the Israelites stand at the foot of Sinai and Moses warns the people Do not go near a woman, finally receives a collective reckoning—if not repair. Many scholars, working across the chronological span and geographical and topical terrain of Jewish history and culture, as well as those working in most disciplines of Jewish Studies, »go near« women. Judith Baskin’s edited volume, Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, published in 1991, presents twelve chapters arranged chronologically on women from the Bible, late antiquity, the medieval period, and much of modern history in Europe, to the 20th century in the US.27 Lynn Davidman and Shelly Tenenbaum’s edited volume, Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies (1994), takes a broader disciplinary approach — covering the range of contemporary Jewish Studies disciplines, with chapters written by leading scholars from biblical studies, rabbinics, feminist theology, philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, literature, and film studies.28 Both volumes remain extremely well suited for use in college courses on Judaism and Jewish Studies; their use in such settings fills in significant gaps in how Judaism and Jewish Studies have taught. These works encourage students and readers to recognize that, prior to the advent of Jewish feminism, the study of Judaism and Jewish studies presented a partial perspective that

26 For a critique of feminism in Jewish Studies, see Esther Fuchs, Jewish Feminism: Framed and Reframed (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018). 27 Judith Baskin, Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991). A second edition of Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, with four additional chapters, was published in 1998. 28 Lynn Davidman and Shelly Tenenbaum, ed., Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

183

focused almost exclusively on men’s writings and experiences about Jewish history and culture. As Davidman and Tenenbaum write, »Feminist scholars in all disciplines have demonstrated that although mainstream scholarship has purported to study basic human experiences and to reflect on universal texts, their definition of what is worthy of attention has reflected the standpoint of the male producers of this knowledge.«29 Susan Niditch’s (in Jewish Women, 1991) and Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s (in Feminist Perspectives, 1994) respective chapters on women in the Hebrew Bible introduce readers to previous publications in Jewish feminist biblical studies.30 The chapters not only lead readers interested in further study to seek out Niditch’s Underdogs and Tricksters (1987) and Frymer-Kensky’s In the Wake of the Goddesses (1991), but open readers to the many other significant publications of the 1990s.31 Ilana Pardes’ Countertraditions in the Bible (1992), for example, deftly applies literary and psychoanalytic theories to biblical passages, uncovering traces of female power and presence that stand in productive tension with the overall androcentric perspective of biblical narrative.32 Alice Bach’s edited collection, Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader (1999) brings together many influential articles of the 1980s and 1990s and offers readers a wonderful introduction to strategies through which to read and questions to ask of a biblical text, including reading the text for alternative interpretations and not letting the narrator of the text set the agenda.33

29 Davidman and Tenenbaum (1994:6). 30 On the question of what defines Jewish feminist biblical studies, see Adele Reinhartz, »And Midrash She Wrote: Jewish Women’s Writing on the Bible,« in Shofar Vol. 16 (Summer 1998) and »Jewish Women’s Scholarly Writings on the Bible,« in The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See also Esther Fuchs, »Jewish Feminist Approaches to the Bible« in Women and Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship, ed. Frederick Greenspahn (New York: New York University Press, 2009) and Cynthia Baker, »Jewish Feminist Biblical Studies« in Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014). 31 Susan Niditch, Underdogs and Tricksters: A Prelude to Biblical Folklore (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1991). See also: Carol Meyers, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Esther Fuchs, »Who is Hiding the Truth? Deceptive Women and Biblical Androcentrism,« and »The Literary Characterization of Mothers and Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible,« in Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Studies, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1985); »Marginalization, Ambiguity, Silencing: The Story of Jepthah’s Daughter« in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Volume 5, Number 1 (1989). 32 Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). 33 Alice Bach, ed., Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999). See also: Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe, eds., The Women’s Bible Commentary (Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992); Carol Meyers, Toni Craven, and Ross S. Kraemer, eds., Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Bible (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000); and the multiple volumes in A Feminist Companion to the Bible Series, ed. by Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).

184

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

The two chapters on women and feminist perspectives on Rabbinics by Wegner (Jewish Women, 1991) and Hauptman (Feminist Perspectives, 1994) introduce the reader to Wegner’s earlier monograph Chattel or Person (1988), as well as Hauptman’s previous articles; readers may also anticipate Hauptman’s Rereading the Rabbis (1998).34 Both chapters also engage with Jacob Neusner’s earlier scholarship on women in the Mishnah.35 Ross Kraemer’s contribution in Baskin’s volume, »Jewish Women in the Diaspora World of Late Antiquity« is an important supplement to both Hauptman and Wegner, as it presents evidence from nonrabbinic sources available from inscriptions, papyri, and other literatures of the time period. Through Kraemer’s chapter the reader is introduced to previous scholarly works on women in the Second Temple period, such as Bernadette Brooten’s pioneering Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue (1982).36 A number of books available introduce the reader to the varieties of feminist approaches and even fundamental disagreements among scholars engaged in feminist work.37 Susan Starr Sered’s »Jewish Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective,«38 opens the door to her monograph, Women As Ritual Experts (1992), as well as to the broader fields of anthropology and feminist anthropology and religious studies.39 Sered’s focus on Kurdish, Yemenite, and Ethiopian Jewish women, along with Renee Levine Melammed’s contribution, »Sephardi Women in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods«40 helps redress the more common focus on Ashkenazi Judaism. Chava Weissler’s contribution to Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, »Prayers in Yiddish and the Religious World of Ashkenazic Women« leads to Weissler’s earlier article »Traditional Piety of Ashkenazic Women« (1987) and to her book Voices of the Matriarchs (1998).41 Readers of Paula Hyman’s contributions to both volumes may anticipate her future Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (1995) and be lead back to one of the earliest articles on feminist Jewish history, »Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902«

34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998). See, for example, Jacob Neusner, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Women (Leiden, Brill: 1980). Bernadette Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue (Chico: Scholars Press, 1982). See Leonie J. Archer, Her Price is Beyond Rubies: The Jewish Woman in Graeco-Roman Palestine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990); Ross S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Rivka Haut and Susan Grossman, eds. Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992); Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (Tübingen: JCB Mohr, 1995); Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Integrating Women into Second Temple History (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). In Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies, op cit. Susan Starr Sered, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). In Baskin, 1998, op cit. Chava Weissler, »Traditional Piety of Ashkenazic Women« in A History of Jewish Spirituality, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1987); Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998).

3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

185

(1980).42 Joyce Antler’s contribution on gender in American-Jewish literature in Feminist Perspectives anticipates her future monograph, The Journey Home (1997), which blends history and literary to narrate Jewish Women’s history from 1890 to the 1990s.43 Readers of Antler’s chapter and Naomi Sokoloff ’s chapter on Modern Hebrew literature (Feminist Perspectives, 1994) could discover other works about women and gender in Jewish literature.44 Finally, readers of Hava TiroshRothchild’s »Dare to Know: Feminism and the Discipline of Jewish Philosophy« (Feminist Perspectives, 1994) can anticipate Susan Shapiro’s »A Matter of Discipline: Reading for Gender in Jewish Philosophy« (1997) as well as Hava Tirosh Samuelson’s edited volume Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy (2004).45 Each article opens doors to the wealth of feminist Jewish scholarship, as Baskin writes, »Expanding our knowledge of Jewish women not only enlarges what we know about Jewish history and the Jewish experience but redefines our very conceptions of what Jews and Judaism were and continue to be about« (1998: 21).46 During the same years, an important cluster of scholarly monographs were produced by men.47 These books both build on, and reflect tensions with, Women’s Studies and feminist theories of the 1980s and 1990s, as the field witnesses an increased focus on gender (as opposed to women) not only as a social construct,

42 Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Seattle: University of Washington Press); »Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902« in American Jewish History Vol. 70 No. 1 (September 1980). 43 Joyce Antler, The Journey Home: Jewish Women and the American Century (New York: Free Press, 1997). 44 For example: Naomi Sokoloff, Ann Lapidus Lerner, and Anita Norich, eds., Gender and Text in Modern Hebrew Yiddish Literature (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992); Judith Baskin, ed., Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994). 45 Susan Shapiro, »A Matter of Discipline: Reading for Gender in Jewish Philosophy« in Judaism Since Gender, ed. Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt (New York: Routledge, 1997). Hava Tirosh Samuelson, Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004). 46 Judith Baskin, The Jewish Woman in Historical Perspective 2nd edition (Wayne State University Press, 1998). 47 Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (London: Routledge, 1991); David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Howard EilbergSchwartz, People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992); Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) and Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Howard Eilberg-Schwartz’s, God’s Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994). See also: Michael Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995); Elliot Wolfson, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995); Lawrence Hoffman, Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

186

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

but also as an expression of power.48 During these decades, Women’s Studies, and the developing Men’s or Masculinity Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Gender Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies, the latter especially infused with queer theory and transgender theory, all continue to grapple with the »history of sexuality«— the very fact that sex and sexuality have histories. Men as well as women are not born, but made, and the social construction of all genders provides a fruitful site for the study of both male and female, as well as queer and trans, embodiment(s). This cluster of books share a focus on the Jewish body, albeit usually male yet often »feminized,« and pay considerable attention to sexuality; their impact vis-a-vis Jewish feminism, however, is debated.49 Despite lingering questions brought about due to the overwhelming focus on men’s bodies and male (hetero)sexuality, these books, combined with feminist scholarship in Jewish Studies, paved the way for future studies on gender, sexuality, and women’s bodies beginning in the late 1990s but more prevalent in the early 2000s, among them books by: Miriam Peskowitz, Rachel Adler, Shulamit Valler, Susan Kahn, Charlotte Fonrobert, and Cynthia Baker.50 The monographs by Peskowitz, Adler, Fonrobert, and Baker call attention to a trend underway at the middle of the 1990s, signaled by the use of the word »gender« instead of women in their titles.51 Increasingly, the use of the term gender will at times elide that of woman/women or both terms will be used together, as

48 See, for example, Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). See also M. Foucault, History of Sexuality (1978); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Susan Stryker, »My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage« in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1994), 237–254 and see now eadem, »More Words on »My Words…« GLQ 25 (2019) 39–44. 49 See the review by Naomi Seidman, »Carnal Knowledge: Sex and the Body in Jewish Studies« in Jewish Social Studies Vol. 1(1994) 115–146. See also: Charlotte Fonrobert, »On Carnal Israel and the Consequences« in Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 95(2005), 462–69; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, »The Corporeal Turn« in Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 95 (2005), 447–61; Fuchs, Jewish Feminism (2018: 109–149). 50 Miriam Peskowitz, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender and History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998). Shulamit Valler, Women and Womanhood in the Talmud (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999). Susan Kahn, Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Reproduction in Israel (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). Charlotte Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). Cynthia Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 51 A comparison of the titles and individual chapter titles of two edited volumes published in 1995, Maurie Sacks’ Active Voices: Women in Jewish Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995) and Tamar Rudavksy’s Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of Tradition (New York: NYU Press, 1995) is possibly instructive insofar as it seems to date or locate some sort of distinction between studies on women and those on gender in academic publishing in certain segments of Jewish Studies.

3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

187

the relationship among the aforementioned fields of gender, sexuality, and the body and Women’s Studies are continually negotiated. One of the critical interrogations pursued in Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt’s edited volume, Judaism since Gender52, concerns the use of the terms women, gender, feminism, sex, and sexuality in Jewish scholarship. Peskowitz’s, »Engendering Jewish Religious History,« critiques the use of gender as a »practical synonym for women or feminism.«53 She points out that in using gender as a synonym for women, the work of »gender« as it relates to power is left untouched and one may neglect to acknowledge the way »engendering Jewish history« assumes that Jewish history and culture, as well as Jewish Studies, is always already gendered—male/masculine. As Rachel Adler, in Engendering Judaism writes, »There is not and never was a Judaism unaffected by the gendered perspectives of its transmitters and augmenters.«54 The period between 1996 and 1999 also witnessed the publication of Marcia Falk’s The Book of Blessings, Laura Levitt’s Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home, Rebecca Alpert’s Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition, and Rachel Adler’s Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics.55 One of the shared themes running through these books is transformation; each holds the vision of a transformed Judaism in their sights. Such transformation is perhaps most tangible in Marcia Falk’s The Book of Blessings. Putting into practice her theory of composing feminist Jewish liturgy, articulated almost a decade before in her article »Notes on Composing New Blessings«56, The Book of Blessings represents a monumental reworking of both Jewish liturgy and Judaism. One need only remember that Jewish liturgy itself represents a continual process of the distillation and refinement of Jewish thought and embodied practices to grasp how Falk’s bold endeavor is simultaneously monumental and iconoclastic. Laura Levitt’s Jews and Feminism reminds its readers that transformation is multifaceted, slow, and complex, and that personal histories—as well as collective and political—are fraught and haunted. She engages with texts as far-ranging as the ketubbah (marriage contract), rabbinic traditions about marriage and rape, Carol Pateman’s The Sexual Contract,57 Napolean’s queries to Jewish notables about Emancipation, contemporary feminist theory, Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai, and the poetry of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz and Irena Klepfisz. Throughout these engaged

52 53 54 55

Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt, eds., Judaism since Gender (New York: Routledge, 1996). Peskowitz, ibid., 17–39, our passage on p. 30. Adler, 1998, p. xiv. Marcia Falk, The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996). Laura Levitt, Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search from Home (New York: Routledge, 1997). Rebecca Alpert, Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999). 56 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 3 (1987), 39–53. 57 Carol Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). The other authors mentioned here are cited in this work.

188

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

readings, Levitt traces the ways Jews have been transformed, not always for the better, by liberal aspirations and achievements, as they have sought new homes — in America, in the academy, and as feminists in Judaism. In many ways, what is centrally transformed through her critiques are the concepts and symbols of home and self. Transformation, as much as the creation of powerful liturgy, is a process that necessitates refinement, grasping hold, and letting go. In her groundbreaking book, Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition, Rebecca Alpert deftly transforms Jewish lesbians from sites of transgression to agents of the transformation of Judaism.58 The title of the book bespeaks the refusal of Jewish lesbians in the early 1980s to be marginalized or rendered invisible. Bread—on a Passover Seder plate (when bread is forbidden)— reflected the degree of transgression that many lesbians experienced vis-a-vis their relationship with Judaism and in Jewish communities. A lesbian transformation of Judaism entails not only »coming to terms« with homophobic textual traditions but also re-centering other textual traditions—from the Bible and more contemporary writings—that offer a »usable past« for lesbians (and others) upon which to build. Alpert interprets Exodus 19:15 (»do not lie with a male as you would with a woman«) and 20:13 (»If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman . . .«), biblical passages historically understood to prohibit male same-sex sex acts, as well as Lev 18:3 (»You shall not copy the practices of Egypt . . .«), which post-biblical interpreters mobilized to discourage lesbian sex. She herself mobilizes other texts to challenge such views. For example, Genesis 1:27, which states that humanity is created in God’s image, teaches that lesbians and gay men (and people of all genders) are also created in God’s image. Ruth and Naomi’s relationship is offered as a model of lesbian love. In Alpert’s midrashic reading of Plaskow’s earlier midrash, Eve and Lilith have »entered into the world of a romantic friendship« (41). Finally, through her mobilization of the biblical prophet Micah’s exhortation to do justice, love well, and walk modestly with God (6:8), Alpert constructs a Jewish framework— with examples of personal rituals and communal activism—based on specifically lesbian experiences that serve as a model for further feminist transformations of Judaism. Rachel Adler’s Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics, argues for a feminist transformation of Judaism steeped in a renewed halakhah, defined as »a communal praxis grounded in Jewish stories« (25). A Jewish praxis, Adler writes, »must mirror the fluid boundaries that exist among theology, halakhah and ethics, liturgy, and textual exegesis« (xxiii). The stakes for a feminist, engendered Judaism are relatively high for Adler, as she explains that engendering Judaism conveys two meanings. First, it conveys how Judaism is »an evolving system, constantly reshaped and renewed through its relations with its changing historical contexts« (24). Second, she notes »the impact of gender on the texts and lived experiences

58 See also Tracy Moore’s edited volume, Lesbiot: Israeli Lesbians Talk about Sexuality, Feminism, Judaism and Their Lives (London: Cassell, 1995). Levitt’s Jews and Feminism is also noteworthy for her engagement with Jewish and non-Jewish lesbian writers.

3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

189

of the people Israel« (ibid.). She writes, »Until progressive Judaisms engender themselves in this second sense, they cannot engender adequate Judaisms in the first sense« (ibid.). Though perhaps best known for her »B’rit Ahuvim« an egalitarian alternative to the ketubbah—Jewish marriage contract—and her statement, »A story is a body for God« (96), Adler’s heuristic approach draws on a method of cooking she attributes to »Eastern European Jewish grandmothers« (xxiii-xxiv). One cooks by mixing together readily available ingredients. Adler expounds the necessity for feminist theologians to work with the available sources they have, much like any good cook. She writes, »For both the shtetl cook and the feminist theologian, to be usable the method must be heuristic: attentive to potential resources in its immediate environment, imaginative about combinations, and flexible about the structure of the recipe« (xxiv). What would happen if this cooking analogy served as a means for answering Plaskow’s earlier call that Jewish feminists »bake a new pie?« By the end of the 1990s, there appears to be a wealth of ingredients and recipes from which to draw. The 1997 publication of the Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore, contains 910 entries. Eight hundred are biographies of individual Jewish women, and an additional 110 are topical essays. The Encyclopedia is available online with open access, as part of the larger digital publication of Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (2006), through the Jewish Women’s Archive website (JWA.org).59 In 1998, the academic journal Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues published its inaugural issue, and from its first volume the multi-disciplinary breadth of feminist Jewish Studies scholarship has been on display. Nashim now stands alongside Lilith magazine, as well as Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and our Friends, (first published in 1990, discussed below); the existence of all three periodicals demonstrates that as important as academic feminist Jewish studies is for the feminist transformation of Judaism, it is by no means the only site from which feminist Judaism emerges.

3.2

Jewish Women’s Writings: Memoirs and Midrash; Commentaries and Anthologies

At the end of her review essay »Females, Feminists, and Feminism,«60 Ellen Umansky expresses the need for »full-length books by single authors that explore questions of Jewish feminism in detail.« She articulates a similar need for autobiographical books that reflect upon the »spiritual growth« of their authors. While the first need is certainly fulfilled during the 1990s in the Jewish feminist scholarship dis-

59 Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Paula Hyman and Dalia Ofer. Jerusalem: Shalvi Publishing Ltd. CD-ROM (2006). 60 »Review: Females, Feminists, and Feminism: A Review of Recent Literature on Jewish Feminism and the Creation of a Feminist Judaism,« Feminist Studies 14 (1988), 349–365.

190

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

cussed above, many of the following books answer both of Umansky’s expressed needs that she sees as vital to »the creation of a feminist Judaism«. In fact, Umansky and Dianne Ashton present such autobiographical history in Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A Sourcebook. Umansky’s introductory article sets out this history. In Jewish Women in America, Wendy Zierler provides a historical survey of Jewish women’s autobiographies of the 20th century, through the early 1990s. And the Hebrew-English bilingual anthology, The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present, edited by Shirley Kaufman, Galit Hasan-Rokem, and Tamar Hess further augments the available resources.61 Recognizing such historical precedents is important, and yet it seems possible that closer study and comparison would yield some important differences in more recent works, precisely in their efforts to articulate and forge a feminist Judaism.62 A large number of memoirs, providing a rich sampling of the diverse social locations from which American Jewish women write about their own unique lives, emerged throughout the 1990s.63 All of these writers, among them professors, performance artists, rabbis, poets, activists, and one former member of the Knesset of Israel, »wielded their pens« to proclaim, »I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life’s story?«64 Throughout the 1990s, Jewish women continued to write about female biblical figures or otherwise supplement biblical texts. Merle Feld’s poem addresses the questions of where women were at Sinai, what might they have been doing, who removed them and why?65 Marge Piercy’s The Art of Blessing the Day has a section of poems called Toldot, Midrashim (Of History and Interpretation), where she melds

61 Ellen Umansky and Dianne Ashton, eds., Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A Sourcebook (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 1992). Wendy Zierler, »Autobiography« in Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997). Shirley Kaufman, Galit Hasan-Rosen, and Tamar Hess, eds., The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems form Antiquity to the Present (New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1999). 62 See Joyce Antler, The Journey Home for brief discussion of additional Jewish women’s memoirs published in the 1980s (1997: 313–316). 63 Vanessa Ochs, Words on Fire: One Woman’s Journey into the Sacred (Boston: Harcourt, 1990). Marcia Freedman, Exile in the Promised Land: A Memoir (Ithaca: Firebrand Books, 1990). Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991). Esther Bronner, The Telling (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1993). Elizabeth Ehrlich, Miriam’s Kitchen: A Memoir (New York: Penguin Putnam, 1997). Jyl Lynn Felman, Cravings: A Sensual Memoir (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). Tirzah Firestone, With Roots in Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith (New York: Penguin, 1999). Merle Feld, A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey (Albany: CUNY Press, 1999). Haviva Ner-David, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Towards Traditional, Orthodox Ordination (Needham: JFL Books, 2000). Rebecca Walker, Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (New York: Riverhead, 2000). 64 Mary Antin as quoted in Zierler (1997). 65 Merle Feld, »We all Stood Together« in A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey (Albany: CUNY Press, 1999). The poem is dedicated to Rachel Adler. I thank Rabbi Tamara Cohen for drawing it to my attention.

3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

191

midrash and poetry about biblical Eve, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob.66 Even her titles are exegetical emendations, for example, »The Book of Ruth and Naomi.« Why would feminists favor the younger female and absent the older one, or deny reclaiming a story that could be a model for female friendship and love? Naomi Graetz, Alicia Ostriker, Ellen Frankel, Norma Rosen, and Jill Hammer each publish books that add to the voices of women (and at times men) in the Bible, drawing their readers’ attention to women’s relative lack of speech and place in the text and re-centering their stories.67 They all locate their projects in midrash; Rosen and Hammer’s books devote considerable attention to explaining rabbinic midrashic methods, while Frankel eloquently begins with a midrash building on earlier traditions. When examined together, one of the most interesting aspects of these books is the diversity and creativity of each project. Ostriker’s last two chapters juxtapose a breathless prose narration about God (the father) lying in a hospital bed followed by a poetic, prayer summoning God (the mother), Shekhinah. Rosen at times exhibits an uncanny ability to deploy the rabbinic strategy of bending biblical time. Thus, Sarah calls out, »Have you seen my beloved? I beg you tell me which way he’s gone,« collapsing the Song of Songs with the Binding of Isaac. Furthermore, Sarah’s beloved is Isaac, not Abraham, and thus Rosen recasts the Akedah as a story about the love between mother and son, not obedience of father to God. She also adds another dimension to the incestuous imagery in the Song. Examples of the creative, at times revelatory, aspects of each of these works can be multiplied, and of course readers will find their own passages to highlight. Each work helps feminist readers in »the effort to reenter Jewish texts without the sacrifice of contemporary selfhood«.68 Feminist textual interpretation is certainly central to the creation of feminist Judaism, but it must be accompanied by the creation or renewal of rituals that incorporate how Jews of all genders embody Judaism. The publication of a two volume work edited by Debra Orenstein, Lifecycles Volume 1: Jewish Women on Life Passages & Personal Milestones and Lifecycles Volume 2: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life recognized the importance of both feminist textual interpreta-

66 Marge Piercy, The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). 67 See Jody Myers, »The Midrashic Enterprise« (2000) for a discussion of Orthodox women’s midrashic interpretation. See also Anita Diamant, The Red Tent (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997) and Adriane Leveen, »A Tent of One’s Own: Feminist Biblical Scholarship, a Popular Novel, and the Fate of the Biblical Text« in Women Remaking American Judaism, ed. Riv-Ellen Prell (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007). 68 Rosen, op cit., p. 69. During the 1990s a number of Jewish feminist anthologies on the Bible and biblical themes were also published, among them: Christina Buchmann and Celina Spiegel, eds., Out of the Garden: Women Writers of the Bible (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1994); Judith A. Kates and Gail Twersky Reimer, eds., Reading Ruth: Contemporary Women Reclaim a Sacred Story (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994); Judith A. Kates and Gail Twersky Reimer, Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997); Enid Dame, Lilly Rivlin, Henny Wenkart, eds., Which Lilith? Feminist Writers Re-create the World’s First Woman (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).

192

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

tion and ritual innovation and expansion.69 The typical lifecycle events throughout much of Jewish history: circumcision, bar mitzvah, marriage, and death have reinforced the androcentric and patriarchal »world views« of Judaism. Lifecycles Vol. 1 celebrates the physical and emotional transitions and states of being that have been ignored or served as sources of intense pain to many Jews.70 By incorporating rituals that celebrate coming out as gays and lesbians, personal growth as single adults, adoption of children, choosing not to have children, celebrating conversion, intermarriage, middle-age, and rituals that help ease the pain of infertility, miscarriage, and divorce or separation, Lifecycles transforms Jewish practices—the fabric of Jewish lives—and reimagines and celebrates a Jewish future. At the end of each volume of Lifecycles there are »how to« sections; how to write a midrash, how to create a ritual. The idea is crucial to creating and engendering a feminist, inclusive Judaism. There will always be the need for more readings of sources, more rituals, for more transitional and embodied states. The details of the »who what where when and why« of Jewish lives will always be changing. Lifecycles helps with the how of these beings and becomings. How will Jews create rituals that acknowledge and celebrate relationships beyond a permanent, or even longterm, monogamous frame? How will Jews celebrate all of their embodied, differently-abled selves? How will Jews celebrate gender expressions and transitions in all of their possibilities? How will Jews become aware enough of their privilege(s) so as to relinquish exclusionary practices? Treating feminist Jewish Studies scholarly works and Jewish feminist memoirs, midrashim, and ritual developments in separate sections might reify a boundary between »scholarship« and »popular« feminist writing, a challenge that feminist theory itself seeks to unsettle. All of the works discussed from the 1990s, as well as those from previous decades, validate Ostriker’s assertion, »By the time the spiritual imagination of women has expressed itself as fully and variously as that of men, to be sure, whatever humanity means by God, religion, holiness, and truth will be completely transformed.«71

3.3

Bridges, Feminist Organizations and Social Justice Work

In 1990, the same year Plaskow’s Standing again at Sinai was published, Bridges: A Journal for Feminists and Our Friends, was founded. Elly Bulkin, one of Bridges founding

69 Debra Orenstein, ed., Lifecycles Volume 1: Jewish Women on Life Passages & Personal Milestones (Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994). Debra Orenstein and Jane Rachel Litman, eds., Lifecycles Volume 2: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life (Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1997). 70 See also Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Motherprayer: The Pregnant Woman’s Spiritual Companion (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995) and Susan Berrin, ed., Celebrating the New Moon: A Rosh Chodesh Anthology (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). And see Vanessa Ochs, Inventing Jewish Ritual (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2007). 71 Ostriker, op cit, xiii.

3 1990s: Coming of Age: Jewish Feminism and »(En)gendering« Jewish Studies

193

editors, writes, »Bridges is an explicitly Jewish participant in a multiethnic feminist movement. It connects Jewish women who are active in antiracist, economic justice, peace, lesbian/gay and Jewish renewal movements; integrates analyses of racism and classism into Jewish-feminist thought ... It publishes substantive essays on such topics as campus organizing, the Holocaust, Jewish women’s rituals, incest, dis/ ability and Israel and Palestine.«72 The same year, the Reform Movement officially ended their policy of discrimination based on sexual orientation, accepting lesbian and gay Jews as rabbis. Concurrent with the growth in feminist Jewish Studies scholarship and Jewish feminist publications, the 1990s also witnesses an impressive expansion of Jewish feminist organizing and organizations. Among the organizations are: the Los Angeles Jewish Feminist Resource Center (1990); ICAR, The International Coalition for Agunah Rights (1992); Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project of the JCC in Manhattan (1993); The Jewish Women’s Archive (1995); JOFA, The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (1996); Keshet, a grass-roots volunteer organization advocating for LGBTQ visibility, inclusion, and equality (1996); the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (1997), and in Israel: Kolech: Religious Women’s Forum (1998), which was inspired by JOFA, and Achoti (2000), which aims to increase the visibility of Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Palestinian, Bedouin, and migrant women.73 Beginning in the 1990s, many of the prominent LGBTQ synagogues were led by lesbian rabbis; these rabbis, along with straight feminist rabbis, furthered the efforts of Judaism in countless ways. Many of these organizations intersect through education and advocacy about important social justice issues that have been central to Jewish feminism since its inception; and remain ongoing sources of struggle into the 21st century. They have been instrumental for Jewish feminist advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and more recently transgender and gender non-conforming Jews. Feminist advocacy has grown on behalf of »agunot«—women unable to obtain an halakhic divorce from their husbands. Other Jewish social justice work includes feminist activism for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine, Women of the Wall’s struggle to achieve safe access for communal prayer services for women while wearing tallitot (prayer shawls traditionally worn almost exclusively by Jewish men), donning tefillin (phylacteries), and public reading from a Torah scroll.74 And, finally, Jewish feminism continues to fight against classism, racism, and white privilege, increasingly acknowledging Jews of color in the Jewish community worldwide.

72 Elly Bulkin, »Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends« in Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (1997). 73 On Mizrahi feminism in Israel, see, for example, Henriette Dahan-Kalev, »Tensions in Israeli Feminism: The Mizrahi-Askenazi Rift« in Women’s Studies International Forum Vol. 24 (2001), 1–16; and »On the Logic of Feminism and the Implications of African-American Feminist Thought for Israeli Mizrahi Feminism« in The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy (2003), 669–84. 74 See Bonna Devorah Haberman, Israeli Feminism Liberating Judaism: Blood and Ink (Lexington Books, 2012).

194

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

In many ways, Jewish feminist organizations connect feminist Judaism and Jews across decades. Moreover, the feminist Jewish organizations mentioned here inform and are informed by Jewish feminist writings. The success of Jewish feminism depends on the bridges built and maintained by Jewish feminists of all genders, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds; working across generations, with diverse methods for affecting a feminist transformation of Judaism.

4

21st Century: »New« Jewish Feminism

At the beginning of the 21st century Jewish feminists have cause for celebration and frustration. On the one hand, women, among them women of color, and »out« lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews have been ordained as rabbis in all of the progressive denominations in the United States.75 In Orthodox Judaism, a number of women have undergone rabbinic learning and training and use the titles, »maharat,« »rabbanit,« »rabbah« and »rabbi« as they teach and lead communities. More feminist Jewish organizations have been founded; there is even an accessible and inclusive »21st century mikveh« (ritual bath), called Mayyim Hayyim (living/flowing water). Feminist scholarship and scholarship about gender, sexuality, and the body in Judaism continues to be produced, and feminist Jewish writing of novels, memoirs, commentaries, and midrashim multiplies. On the other hand, struggles for justice and equality persist. Women of the Wall still struggle for a just solution in Israel; agunot (women chained to husbands who refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce) are still trapped in halakhic limbo. Advocates for peace in Israel/Palestine still fight and protest human rights violations; LGBTQ Jews still face homophobia, transphobia, and heteronormativity, as well as cisgender normativity. Jews of color still face racism and tokenization as many Jewish communities struggle to acknowledge their own white privilege. And the next generation of Jews, though often raised with women—straight or queer, white women or women of color—as their rabbis, are still often indoctrinated to the use of male-only language for God, especially in Hebrew prayer and blessings. Questions about, as well as claims to, »newness,« are pervasive in a number of 21st century anthologies.76 At the beginning of the century, two anthologies justifiably asserted their newness: Danya Ruttenberg’s Yentl’s Revenge (2001) and David

75 See Nadell (1998) and Alpert, Elwell, and Idelson (2001). Gay men have received ordination in Orthodox Judaism as well, but typically they have not been »out« before receiving it. See Steven Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). 76 Elyse Goldstein, ed., New Jewish Feminism: Probing the Past, Forging the Future (Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2009). Frederick E. Greenspahn, ed., Women and Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship (New York: NYU Press, 2009).

4 21st Century: »New« Jewish Feminism

195

Shneer and Caryn Aviv’s Queer Jews (2002).77 Both anthologies are among the first books about Judaism to incorporate (out) queer and transgender Jews. As Susannah Heschel points out in her brief introductory remarks to Yentl’s Revenge, there is a tone of ownership and authority, and as Ruttenberg stresses, myriad choices one may make. Similarly, Shneer and Aviv write, »In 1990, queer Jews were grateful for the honor of being allowed to be Reform rabbis; in the new millennium, queer Jews demand nothing less than the right to be married by those rabbis.« If a generation ago feminists were »standing at Sinai,« now they are climbing to the top of the mountain. There are, however, challenges in seeing Jewish feminism ascendant. While some of the authors write with awareness of Eastern European/Ashkenazic hegemony and privilege,78 the urgency of correcting this injustice is powerfully articulated in Loolwa Khazzoom’s contribution in Yentl’s Revenge, »United Jewish Feminist Front.« Such need is further demonstrated in Khazzoom’s edited volume, The Flying Camel (2003).79 Despite this critique, which extends far beyond Yentl’s Revenge and Queer Jews, the work these books achieve, as well as the work began in Nice Jewish Girls, The Tribe of Dina, and Twice Blessed before them, is furthered by a large number of books focusing on Judaism, genders, and sexualities published during the first decades of the 21st century.80 In Elyse Goldstein’s anthology New Jewish Feminism, part of what is new in that volume is the acknowledgment of queer and trans Jews. Embedded in Elyse Goldstein’s opening remarks devoted to »Gender, Sexuality, and Age,« is her own reflection that, »The new generation of thinkers has taught us that feminism widens the conversation about gender altogether. What is a gender? What does being ›femi-

77 Danya Ruttenberg, ed., Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seattle: Seal Press, 2001). David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, eds., Queer Jews (New York: Routledge, 2002), quote below on p. 6. 78 See especially Hirschmann and Wilson, »Next Year in Freedom!« in Queer Jews (2002). See also Ruttenberg’s Introduction in Yentl’s Revenge (2001). 79 Loolwa Khazzoom, ed., The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage (Seattle: Seal Press, 2003). 80 See, e.g.: Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini, eds., Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Steven Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men (2004); Marla Brettschneider, The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006); Gregg Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser, and David Shneer, eds., Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (New York: NYU Press, 2009); Danya Ruttenberg, ed., The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (New York: NYU Press, 2009); Andrew Ramer, Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories (Maple Shade Township Lethe Press, 2010); Miryam Kabakov, ed., Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires: An Anthology (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2010). Noach Dzurma, ed., Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in the Jewish Community (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2010); Joy Ladin, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012). See also Deryn Guest, Robert Goss, and Mona West, eds., The Queer Bible Commentary (London: SCM Press, 2006).

196

Judaism, Feminism, and Gender

nine‹ or ›masculine‹ mean anyway? Does our biological sex or the genitalia we were born with still define us?«81 She opens by citing a comment she once heard made by orthodox Rabbi Yitz Greenberg (Blu Greenberg’s husband): It used to be that you would be born an Orthodox man in Brooklyn, and you would die an Orthodox man in Brooklyn. Today you can be born an Orthodox man in Brooklyn. but die a Reform woman in Paris.82

What emerges most prominently as »new« in New Jewish Feminism is the growth and development of feminist Orthodox Judaism—much of it stemming from Jewish Israelis.83 Their books, most of which are published in English between 2004–2013, and additional articles in Hebrew, significantly shape the current and future feminist transformation of Judaism. As with feminist, queer, and trans Jews, feminist Orthodox Jews speak with their own knowledge, authority, and choices. Twelve out of the thirty-seven essays in New Jewish Feminism include discussions about Orthodox feminism, and seven of these essays have Orthodox feminism as their primary focus.84 Orthodox feminism is a major component of »New Jewish Feminism.« Two prominent trends in Jewish feminism of the 21st century are the increase of queer and transgender voices and Orthodox feminist voices. At times, these voices are intertwined.85 These trends are joined by an increasing awareness, especially among Jewish activists, of the Ashkenazi-centrism of much of Jewish historiography, including that of Jewish feminism. Perhaps on the horizon is a new »New Jewish Feminism« that reflects the multiracial makeup of feminist Jews throughout history and today.86

81 Goldstein, op cit, 240. 82 Goldstein, op cit, 239. 83 See, e.g.: Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2004); Tova Hartman, Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation (Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2007); Ronit Irshai, Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature (Massachusetts, Brandies University Press, 2012); Yael Israel-Cohen, Between Feminism and Orthodox Judaism: Resistance, Identity, and Religious Change in Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Haviva Ner-David, Chana’s Voice: A Rabbi Wrestles with Gender, Commandment, and the Women’s Rituals of Baking, Bathing, and Brightening (Teaneck: Ben Yehudah Press, 2012); Rochelle Millen, Women, Birth, and Death in Jewish Law and Practice (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2004). See also Jewish Legal Writings by Women, ed. by Micah Halpern and Chana Safrai, (Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 1998). 84 For comparison, transgender Jews are mentioned in 11 of the contributions, but only one article is devoted to them. »Queer« is briefly mentioned in only three essays; lesbians are significantly discussed in four essays. There is a virtual absence of any mention of Jews of color, Mizrahi and Sephardi Jewish women, and only two essays mention the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. See Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) and Brettschneider, The Family Flamboyant (2006). 85 See, for example, Kabakov, Keep Your Wives (2010) and Greenberg, Wrestling with God (2004). 86 It is noteworthy to recall that Beck, Nice Jewish Girls (1982) and Klepfisz and Kaye/Kantrowitz, Tribe of Dina (1986) strove for such diversity.

5 Conclusion

5

197

Conclusion

The author of the biblical book Qohelet, quoted at the beginning of this essay, proclaimed »There is nothing new under the sun« (1:9). Whether he stated this with the utmost pessimism, or just a degree of resignation, both sentiments were premature. In certain ways, the changes brought by Jewish feminism ushered in a new era of Judaism—»a new thing in the land«—to recall Jeremiah’s prophecy, also quoted at the beginning of this essay. While some things remain yet on the horizon, they can be glimpsed, and conceivably achieved. The author of Qohelet also proclaimed, »Of making many books there is no end … « (12:12). As Jewish feminism forges ahead, one feels excited, cautiously hopeful for future trends and triumphs. While some of these future trends are already emerging, there will be others one cannot yet know. May there be no end to Jewish feminist/queer/trans making of books, and inclusive Jewish feminist (re)visions. For further reading Christie Balka and Andy Rose, eds., Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish. Boston: Beacon Press (1989). Judith Baskin, ed., Jewish Women in Historical Perspective. Second Edition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press (1998). Evelyn Torton Beck, ed., Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology. Revised and Updated Edition. Boston: Beacon Press (1989). Susannah Heschel, ed., On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader. New York: Schocken Books (1983). Paula Hyman and Dania Ofer, eds., Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jerusalem: Shalvi Publishing CD-ROM (2007). Jewish Women’s Archive: jwa.org. Loolwa Khazzoom, ed., Tbe Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage. New York: Seal Press (2003). Debra Orenstein, ed., Lifecycles Volume 1: Jewish Women on Life Passages & Personal Milestones. Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing (1994). Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers (1990). Riv-Ellen Prell, ed., Women Remaking American Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press (2007). Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism. Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press (2004).

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II Norman Solomon

Relationships among followers of different faiths have become significantly more benign since WW2, and reflection on the horrors of the war with the accompanying attempt to exterminate the Jewish people has spurred the process. Long-term factors such as Enlightenment views on human rights, secularization, globalisation and the progress of scholarship have provided the soil within which such a development could flourish; without these, and with receding memories of WW2, it is unlikely the changes would be sustained.

1

Historic overview

The Hebrew Bible polemicizes against the religions of the nations; idols are to be smashed, idolaters defeated and destroyed. Jonah, Zachariah, Deutero-Isaiah and others recognize that there are God-fearers among the nations, and prophesy that one day all nations will recognize Him. People of all nations will indeed be welcomed, but only when they recognize the God of Israel, abandoning their corrupt, idolatrous forms of religion. Foundations for a less confrontational theology were developed after the close of the Bible in response to a changing world. The Sages of the Talmud amplified concepts such as ḥasidei ummot ha-ʿolam »the righteous among the nations« and the »Noachide Law« to accommodate the growing perception that many who were not of Israel entertained refined notions of God and high moral aspirations. Socially and politically, under foreign rule, Jews were guided by Jeremiah’s letter to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, »Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper« (Jer 29:7). With the rise of Christianity and Islam, both of which religions proclaimed One God and denounced idolatry, the conventional model of Israel versus the idolatrous nations proved inadequate. Judah Halevi (ca. 1070–1141) outlined in his Kuzari a view of those faiths as »preparing the way« for eventual acceptance of the true Torah; Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) likewise argued that Christians and Muslims were on paths which led to truth; the Yemenite Rabbi Netanel Beirav Fayyumi (d. 1165) argued, in his Bustan el-ʾUqul, that God sends a prophet to every people according to their language and spiritual development,1 the Qur’an being an authen1 cf. Qur’an 5:48 and 14:4.

1 Historic overview

199

tic revelation for Muslims but not for Jews. Rabbi Menaḥem Meiri of Perpignan, Catalonia (1249–1306), devised the category of ummot ha-gʾdurot bʾdarkhei ha-datot »nations constrained by the rule of law« to accommodate contemporary Christians. But there were reservations; the Catalan Ḥasdai Crescas (1340–1410), reacting to Catholic conversionism, devoted considerable energy to his Refutation of the Principles of Christianity. Moreover, the kabbalistic movement which spread from thirteenth-century Spain adopted an essentialist view of »Israel«, emphasising the distinctive spiritual quality of Jews as »chosen people«; this assumption of a metaphysical difference between Jewish and non-Jewish »souls« undermined the distinction between ancient »idolaters« and contemporary Christians and Muslims. Where one religion is in a position of political dominance, as Christianity in medieval Europe or Islam in North Africa and the Middle East, there can be disputation or discussion, but not true dialogue. Even when freedom of expression is guaranteed by the dominant party, as in the majālis of the early Islamic Caliphate, participants tend to be prudently circumspect. Forced disputations, such as those of Barcelona (1263) and Tortosa (1413/14), gave way in the early modern West to »Christian Hebraism«, with constructive scholarly contacts, such as those of Obadiah Sforno with Johannes Reuchlin and of Manasseh Ben Israel with Hugo Grotius. On the social plane, however, discrimination remained, driven by religious stereotypes. Christians and Muslims, throughout the Middle Ages, tolerated semi-autonomous Jewish communities in their midst, but treated them with contempt; Jews reversed the contempt, reflecting it back on the host societies, to whom they referred pejoratively as goyim (»nations«, »gentiles«)—meaning nations other than, and inferior to, Israel. Manasseh Ben Israel (1604–47), engaging directly in dialogue with leading Christians, presented Judaism in terms which resonated with Christian culture and were not threatening to Christian society. The Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) argued that Judaism was a religion of reason, free of irrational dogma. Such liberal ideas became standard among acculturated Western Jews, including the Notables of the French Sanhédrin convened by Napoleon in 1806, but were less favoured in Eastern Europe. Nineteenth century German Jewish liberals cultivated a less defensive image of Judaism. The historian Heinrich Graetz (1817–91) maintained that Judaism was the sole true monotheism, the only rational religion, and its mission was to preserve and propagate its sublime ethical truths throughout humanity. The philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) argued that Israel’s messianic vocation was imitatio dei in the form of protector of the alien; the Liberal Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873–1956), in Das Wesen des Judentums (»The Essence of Judaism«), stressed ethical monotheism and the absence of irrational dogma. Martin Buber (1878–1965) adopted Feuerbach’s philosophy of personal experience as manifest in relationships. God, for Buber, is »the eternal Thou«; halakha as a system removed from the direct experience of God, loses significance. This interpretation of Judaism enabled Buber to regard Christianity, or at least Jesus, in a favourable light. His philosophy of encounter (Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung: »All true living is meeting«) generated space within which dialogue might thrive.

200

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) contrasted the situation of the Christian who can reach the Father only through Jesus with that of the Jew »who does not have to reach the Father because he is already with Him«. In the early twentieth century it was possible to sense, in the careers of Baeck, Buber, and Rosenzweig, that religious philosophy might, like Biblical studies, be an enterprise in which Jews and Christians could share on equal terms. Then came Nazism; voices of reason and understanding were stilled. But seeds had been sown that would ultimately bear fruit when the time was ripe for serious dialogue. Buber settled in 1938 in Jerusalem. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), his successor as Director of the Freies jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, was expelled by the Nazis in 1938 and settled in the USA in 1940. Socially active, Heschel communicated his religio-ethical concerns through participation in the American civil rights and antiwar movements, marching together with Martin Luther King Jr. He involved himself deeply in interfaith activities between Jews and Christians and in 1964 urged on Pope Paul VI the need for a Catholic declaration on relations with Jews. Enlightenment philosophies of toleration, together with the rise of secular government and the granting of citizenship to Jews, had paved the way for unforced dialogue between Western Jews and Christians as social equals. Other contributory factors were improved communications, heightened global awareness, the undermining of religious authority in response to scientific discoveries, the specific challenges of historical scholarship to traditional views of sources of religious teaching including the Bible, and the development of non-theological, sociological and anthropological studies of religion. In the aftermath of the Holocaust all these elements combined to generate an unprecedented flowering of inter-faith relations, not only between Jews and Christians, but encompassing all faiths. Increasingly since WW2 religious communities have come to see themselves as on the defensive; they find common cause in fighting against secularity and what they perceive as the lowering of moral values. Religion no longer dominates daily life; education, welfare, social relations, counselling, and even ritual are nowadays governed by secular institutions and professionals; the stories and heroes of popular culture are not those of religious tradition. Statistics attest a radical change in the religious complexion of society. Recent (2011) government figures for England and Wales show that although 59.3% claim affiliation to some sort of Christianity (down from 71.1% in 2001), the proportion disclaiming any religious affiliation has risen from 14.8% to 25.1% in the same period. Of course, this still leaves 74.9% with some sort of religious affiliation (other sources give a lower figure). Religion remains significant in the private realm, in huge variety, but no longer defines the public life of the nation. That is why interreligious dialogue is now perceived as necessary to enable peaceful cooperation in a religiously plural and increasingly global society and is now mainstream social policy. The prime objective of dialogue in the interfaith context is therefore mutual comprehension and harmonious living, not the pursuit of agreement on absolute

1 Historic overview

201

truth, and certainly not conversion. Traditional religions all regard certain basic provisions as non-negotiable; but dialogue is not negotiation, so challenges no one to abandon deeply-held convictions. Even so, convictions are often subtly reinterpreted to reflect a broader human understanding of the religious experience that underlies doctrinal formulations. »Faiths«—e.g. Judaism and Christianity—cannot engage in dialogue, for they are abstractions; only people—living Jews and Christians for instance—can engage with one another. Even then, the dialogue is not merely of Jew and Christian, for one walks beside unseen. There is always a third presence, mediating, without which neither can communicate with the other.2 Dialogue is possible because we are able to mediate our traditions through a common language and a common culture, that of modernity. This shared culture, with its historical critical approach and secular humanism, is not a neutral medium. Rather, it is an active »third presence« in dialogue, so all-pervasive (as Aristotle said of the »music of the spheres«) that it is in danger of not being noticed. A powerful movement of the human spirit, it both sets the rules for engagement and challenges traditional doctrinal formulation. Dialogue among »ordinary« Jews, Christians, and Muslims is not inherently problematic, provided the clergy do not interfere; people meet as human individuals, not as avatars of religion. However, throughout the Middle Ages the clergy interfered mightily; fraternisation across religious boundaries was strongly discouraged by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and conventional religious teaching propagated distorted stereotypes of »the other«. Even today, uncritical religious and nationalistic ideologies are capable of generating false images (anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, »goyim«), rendering people mutually suspicious. When dialogue does its work, each learns to look on the other as fellow human being rather than as religious stereotype. Dialogue takes place, naturally and informally, among ordinary people in the home or workplace; it proceeds at an academic level; and it has been promoted, more formally, at an institutional level, between Churches, governments, and the like. Jews engage in institutional interfaith dialogue from several motives. Most regard it as a way of defending Jews and Judaism from misrepresentation and defamation; some see it as a theological imperative arising from core Jewish values;3 some as a forum for the defence of the State of Israel; some as a way of ensuring that the religious voice is heard and religious values play their part in public decisionmaking; others, in common with adherents of other religions, reflect on the havoc wreaked on society by past religious conflicts and aspire through mutual understanding and friendship to ensure that this never happens again.

2 Norman Solomon, »The Third Presence: Reflections on the Dialogue,« in: Dialogue with a Difference: The Manor House Group Experience. (eds. T. Bayfield and M. C. R. Braybrooke; London, 1992), 147–162. 3 David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: The Idea of Noahide Law (Liverpool, 2011).

202

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

2

Jewish-Christian Dialogue

2.1

Beginnings

The London Society for the Study of Religion, founded in 1904, had among its leading members the Liberal Jewish scholar Claude Montefiore (1858–1938). The London Society of Jews and Christians, the oldest interfaith organization of its kind in the United Kingdom, was founded in 1927 by religious leaders of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and of Westminster Abbey (Anglican); still active, it defines its aims as: »To increase religious understanding and to promote goodwill and cooperation between Jews and Christians, with mutual respect for the differences in faith and practice.« Also in 1927 the National Conference of Jews and Christians was founded in the United States, and was shortly followed by a parallel organisation in South Africa. One of the earliest academic initiatives was taken in 1938, when Rabbi Louis Finkelstein (1895–1991) at the Jewish Theological Seminary, together with Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) of Union Theological Seminary, and the anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901–1978) 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). In Britain, the Council of Christians and Jews was formed in 1942 under the leadership of William Temple, then Archbishop of York. Caution as well as encouragement is evident in this communication dated 2nd July 1942 from Temple, who was confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury in April of that year, to Dr Joseph H. Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire: My own approach to this matter is governed by the consideration that the effectiveness of any religious belief depends upon its definiteness, and that neither Jews nor Christians should in my judgement combine in any such way as to obscure the distinctiveness of their witness to their own beliefs. There is much that we can do together in combating religious and racial intolerance, in forwarding social progress and in bearing witness to those moral principles which we unite in upholding.4

The well-being of society, not theological dialogue, let alone conversion, is the aim. Hertz doubtless concurred. Both men, insisting on the »definiteness« of religious belief, were distancing themselves from philosophies that regarded all religions as aspects of One Truth, their differences insignificant—and also abjuring attempts at mutual conversion. Following WW2, and under the impact of the revelation of the facts of the Shoah (Holocaust) and the establishment of the State of Israel, many Christians in the West felt themselves impelled to reassess their traditional relationships with Jews and Judaism, and at the very least to repudiate anti-Semitism; it was painfully

4 Marcus Braybrooke, Children of One God: A History of the Council of Christians and Jews (London, 1991), 16–17.

2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue

203

obvious not only that the Churches had failed to oppose anti-Semitism effectively, but that Nazism had exploited traditional Christian stereotypes. Individual Christian theologians such as James Parkes (1896–1981) in England had already argued powerfully for the revision of traditional Christian attitudes to Jews and Judaism, and their ideas were to bear fruit in the post-war years; scholarship, moreover, had discredited the polemical New Testament portrayal of Jews and Judaism, and this had already led to some degree of theological reappraisal. Enter Jules Isaac (1877–1963), a distinguished French historian who had been dismissed from his post under the Nazi occupation of France. After WW2 Isaac devoted much of his life to combating anti-Semitism, which he saw as rooted in what he called the Christian »teaching of contempt« (l’enseignement du mépris). Retaining nevertheless a high esteem of Christianity, he promoted Jewish-Christian reconciliation and Jewish-Christian dialogue; in 1947, with Edmond Fleg, he cofounded the French Judeo-Christian Friendship organization (L’Amitié Judéo-Chrétienne) and in the following year had a hand in the establishment of a parallel organisation (Amicizia Ebraico-cristiana di Firenze) in Florence, Italy. Also, that year, he presented, to a group of European Christian and Jewish intellectuals in Paris, his Eighteen Points for the »rectification necessary in Christian teaching« regarding the Jews to counter anti-Semitism. The American Conference of Christians and Jews had in 1944 proposed an international gathering of representatives from Christian-Jewish constituencies. This gathering materialized in Oxford, England, in August 1946, in the form of a Conference which aimed to define the fundamental rights and obligations of all human beings, regardless of religion or race. But while noting that Jews, Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestant Christians had all at times suffered persecution, the Conference recognized that anti-Semitism called for special treatment, and called for the convening of a dedicated emergency conference to specifically address antiSemitism. It also mooted the possibility of formation of an International Council of Christians and Jews. The Emergency Conference on Anti-Semitism took place in Seelisberg, Switzerland, the following year, and was attended by sixty-five prominent members of the Roman Catholic and Reformed churches, and of the European and American Jewish communities. Here, on 5 August 1947, on the basis of Isaac’s Eighteen Points, the »Ten Points of Seelisberg« were agreed: 1. Remember that One God speaks to us all through the Old and the New Testaments. 2. Remember that Jesus was born of a Jewish mother of the seed of David and the people of Israel, and that His everlasting love and forgiveness embraces His own people and the whole world. 3. Remember that the first disciples, the apostles and the first martyrs were Jews. 4. Remember that the fundamental commandment of Christianity, to love God and one’s neighbour, proclaimed already in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, is binding upon both Christians and Jews in all human relationship, without any exception.

204

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

5. Avoid distorting or misrepresenting biblical or post-biblical Judaism with the object of extolling Christianity. 6. Avoid using the word Jews in the exclusive sense of the enemies of Jesus and the words The Enemies of Jesus to designate the whole Jewish people. 7. Avoid presenting the Passion in such a way as to bring the odium of the killing of Jesus upon all Jews or upon Jews alone. It was only a section of the Jews in Jerusalem who demanded the death of Jesus, and the Christian message has always been that it was the sins of mankind which were exemplified by those Jews and the sins in which all men share that brought Christ to the Cross. 8. Avoid referring to the scriptural curses, or the cry of a raging mob: His Blood be Upon Us and Our Children, without remembering that this cry should not count against the infinitely more weighty words of our Lord: Father Forgive Them, for They Know not What They Do. 9. Avoid promoting the superstitious notion that the Jewish people are reprobate, accursed, reserved for a destiny of suffering. 10. Avoid speaking of the Jews as if the first members of the Church had not been Jews. The Ten Points were issued in 1947 by the Christian participants as an independent group, with no formal Church backing. In 1948 proposals for an International Council of Christians and Jews met with indifference or hostility; although ICCJ dates its inception from that time it was not until 1962 that it was established as the International Consultative Committee of Organizations Working for Christian-Jewish Cooperation and not until 1974 that it became fully operational under its present name. Nor did the Roman Catholic Church respond with any degree of urgency. Jules Isaac (1877–1963) is said to have met with Pope Pius XII in 1949; there is no evident consequence of that meeting. However, Isaac describes in his diary a cordial »private« meeting with John XXIII in June 1960; this is thought to have 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«. The draft eventually took form as Note 4 of the Declaration Nostra Aetate; in this, the Church distances itself from the »teaching of contempt«.

2.2

The World Council of Churches until Sigtuna (1988)

Meanwhile the World Council of Churches, whose members include some Orthodox as well numerous Protestant Churches, began to redefine Christian attitudes to Jews and Judaism. At its first General Assembly, in Amsterdam in 1948, delegates reflected on the hundreds of thousands of Jews who had been taken from that city to the Nazi death camps, and declared: »to the Jews our God has bound us in a special solidarity linking our destinies together in His design«. Anti-semitism was condemned as »irreconcilable with the Christian faith ... sin against God and man«, and this condemnation of anti-Semitism was vigorously reaffirmed at the Evanston (1954) and New Delhi (1961) Assemblies. Both the establishment of the state of

2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue

205

Israel and the nature of Judaism as a living faith were noted. Unfortunately, the gesture towards the Jewish people, however well-intentioned, was seriously undermined in Jewish eyes when love for the Jews was expressed by redoubled call to mission. »Hitler sought to destroy our bodies; these Christians seek to destroy our souls by weaning us away from our faith« would convey the more sceptical Jewish reaction, though many Jews did recognize and welcome the Churches’ genuine contrition. In those early WCC pronouncements Jews were treated as a theological object rather than as living people with whom one might engage in dialogue. Discussions with Jews about possible direct consultation are recorded from about 1962. Eleven Christian and nine Jewish leaders (from the Synagogue Council of America) met in August 1965 at Bossey to discuss »The Situation of Man in the World Today«. The consultative process then initiated profoundly affected the report of the Committee on the Church and the Jewish People which was accepted and commended »for further theological study« by the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order at Bristol U.K. in 1967. Reserve with regard to the call to mission to Jews was expressed in section IV, »The Church and her witness«: »The existence of this unique relationship raises the question as to whether it conditions the way in which Christians have to bear witness of Jesus to Jews«; proselytizing, in the sense of »the corruption of witness in cajolery, undue pressure or intimidation«, was rejected. Direct consultation with Jews seems still to have been regarded as delicate. Dr. Gerhart M. Riegner of the World Jewish Congress and Eugene C. Blake, then General Secretary of WCC, convened a meeting in June 1968, but the first meeting to be made public was in February 1970. A dozen years passed before 16 July 1982, when the chief fruit of all these deliberations, the Ecumenical Guidelines on Jewish-Christian Dialogue, was »received and commended to the churches for study and action« by the Executive Committee of the WCC at Geneva. Further progress was made at the Consultation on the Church and the Jewish People in Arnoldshain, West Germany, 10–14 February 1986, but the most significant advance was the document formulated at the November 1988 meeting in Sigtuna, Sweden, of the WCC’s Committee on the Church and the Jewish People. This document recognizes the lack of consensus among its members on mission and on the significance of the Land of Israel, but claims wide agreement for the following: 1. The covenant of God with the Jewish people remains valid. 2. Anti-Semitism and all forms of the teaching of contempt for Judaism are to be repudiated. 3. The living tradition of Judaism is a gift of God. 4. Coercive proselytism directed towards Jews is incompatible with Christian faith. 5. Jews and Christians bear a common responsibility as witnesses to God’s righteousness and peace in the world. In addition, nine affirmations were agreed at Sigtuna; these recognized Israel’s call, acknowledged the spiritual treasures shared by Jews and Christians, made clear that Jews should not be blamed for Jesus’ passion, and expressed sorrow at the Christian share of responsibility for Jewish suffering, culminating in the Shoah.

206

2.3

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

Articulating a Jewish Response

Jews have no Pope, nor any obvious representative religious body to speak collectively on their behalf in dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church or the World Council of Churches; there are, moreover, many who identify themselves as Jews without any religious commitment at all. Who, then, might represent Jewry in formal interfaith dialogue? To solve this problem Dr Riegner of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), with assistance of Prof. Jean Halpérin, convened the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) in 1969, on the basis of an agreement between the WJC and the Synagogue Council of America. The American Jewish Committee joined in 1970, followed by Bʾnai Bʾrith Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Council in Israel for Interreligious Relations5. IJCIC includes religious leaders from Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism, from Israel, Europe, the USA and elsewhere, who work together in the interests of interfaith understanding. Members of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) refuse to allow »theology« on the agenda; they claim to be following a line laid down by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. This does not indicate reluctance on the part of the RCA to engage in dialogue. To the contrary, in February 1964, when the first high-level dialogues between the Churches and Jewish representatives were mooted, they issued a statement making clear both their commitment to dialogue, and the limitations to which it is subject: We are pleased to note that in recent years there has evolved … a desire to seek better understanding and a mutual respect among the world’s major faiths. The current threat of materialism and secularism and the modern atheistic negation of religion and religious values makes even more imperative a harmonious relationship among the faiths. This relationship will only be of value if it will not be in conflict with the uniqueness of each religious community … Each religious community is endowed with intrinsic dignity and metaphysical worth …6

Soloveitchik, in his capacity as chairman of the Halakhah (Jewish Law) Commission of the RCA, had been asked for his opinion, which he eventually expressed in a paper, »Confrontation«, published in Tradition, the journal of Yeshiva University, where many RCA rabbis were or had been his students.7 It may be noted that his guidance rests not on halakhic considerations, but on questionable philosophical arguments; in no sense is it a »ruling«.

5 Jewish Christian Dialogue: Six Years of Consultations, published by the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations and the World Council of Churches’ Sub-Unit on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1975), 17–18. 6 The statement is reproduced in Tradition 6/2 (1964), 28–29, following the original article. 7 For a detailed critique see Norman Solomon, »The Soloveitchik Line,« in: Problems in Contemporary Jewish Theology (ed. D. Cohn-Sherbok, New York, 1992), 225–39.

2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue

207

There is not strict parity between Jewish and Christian delegations at such Consultations. Christians define themselves solely in religious terms, whereas Jewish selfunderstanding hinges both on religious concepts and on a sense of Jewish »nationhood« or »peoplehood« (which some regard as itself a religious value). Then there are differences in ecclesiastical structure. The Roman Catholic Church is a hierarchical structure capable of issuing authoritative statements and guidelines; the World Council works on the basis of consensus amongst its member Churches, to whom it can commend its resolutions »for study and action«. The World Jewish Congress, in contrast, is a lay body, not qualified to make theological pronouncements or recommendations. On the other hand, the WJC does feel qualified to make political statements on behalf of »World Jewry« or Israel, and this is not paralleled in the WCC. Formal dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish people is undertaken by the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ILC). On the Catholic side, this consists of representatives of the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, created in 1974 under Paul VI. (The CRRJ is an office within the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity; the Roman Curia treats Jews as internal, in contrast with the World Council of Churches which treats them as external, within the remit of the sub-unit for dialogue with people of »other faiths«.) On the Jewish side, IJCIC is the representative body. The ILC has continued to meet frequently; the 23rd International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee Meeting took place in Warsaw, 4–7 April, 2016, on the theme of »The ›Other‹ in Jewish and Catholic Tradition: Refugees in Today’s World«.

2.4

The Roman Catholic Church

The development of a coherent Catholic standpoint vis-à-vis Jews and Judaism can be traced through documents and papal pronouncements: 1. Ecumenical Council Vatican II, Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to non-Christian Religions (28 October 1965): Nostra Aetate no.4 2. Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews: Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate (no. 4), 1 December 1974. 3. Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews: Notes on the correct way to present the Jews and Judaism in preaching and catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church, 24 June, 1985. 4. Popes from John XXIII onwards have consistently promoted the improvement of Catholic-Jewish relations. John Paul II made several personal pronouncements, including a reference to »the old covenant, never revoked by God«. The process is comprehensively summed up in a document issued by the CRRJ in December 2015, on the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate, under the suggestive title »The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable« (Rom 11:29), where it is made plain that relations between Catholics and Jews should be regarded by Catholics on a different and more intimate basis than those with other religions.

208

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

Though the Holocaust had figured in some drafts, the final text of Nostra Aetate in 1965 managed to ignore it. The 1975 Guidelines referred to it obliquely, and the 1986 Notes more clearly, if perfunctorily. In 1990, 45 years after the Shoah, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, meeting in Prague with IJCIC, issued a document containing an admission of guilt on the part of the Church, and this was subsequently endorsed by John Paul II. A similar slow process characterized the Holy See’s attitude to a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. Theodor Herzl (Diary Vol. 3 p. 345) records his meeting with Pius X on 27 January 1904, when he was allegedly told: »We cannot support this movement. We cannot stop Jews from returning to Jerusalem, but we certainly cannot help them. The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.« On the other hand, the Zionist leader Nahum Sokolow recorded a sympathetic hearing from Benedict XV in 1917. Nostra Aetate, issued seventeen years after the foundation of Israel, makes no mention of the state; the 1975 Guidelines are likewise silent. The 1985 Notes for Preaching and Teaching at last »invited« Christians to understand the religious attachment of Jews to Israel, whilst remarking »The existence of the State of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law.« Only in 1993/94 did the Holy See establish full diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, removing thereby a major stumbling-block from Catholic-Jewish relations. Some question the propriety of the Holy See engaging in diplomatic relations as a national entity. But it does, so there is relief that Israel no longer has to submit to the insult of being treated as if it was somehow less of a nation than numerous others, many of them totalitarian and corrupt, which the Holy See »recognizes«. The diplomatic connection has been cemented by papal visits and by the establishment in 2002 of the bilateral committee of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel with the Vatican (see below).

2.5

The World Council of Churches after Sigtuna (1988)

Relations between IJCIC and WCC have not always been smooth. The Harvard 1984 and Geneva 1986 WCC/IJCIC meetings were constructive enough. Later on, however, the two organisations fell out over WCC Resolutions on Israel and over the appointment as head of the Secretariat of a converted Jew. Low key meetings nevertheless continued between the top officials, while WCC sought dialogue with other Jewish organisations—notably the Anti-Defamation League—or individuals. WCC has taken several initiatives to broaden the scope of Christian-Jewish dialogue. Together with IJCIC, it conducted an African Christian-Jewish Consultation, in Nairobi, Kenya, in November 1986; in December 1993 it convened a conference on Jewish-Christian Dialogue in the Light of Asian Cultures and Religions, at Cochin, South India. It was a novel experience to engage in dialogue in a situation where Christians were themselves a minority religion and where, though the Holocaust was not without relevance, people did not feel that they were living constantly in its shadow.

2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue

209

WCC has not shied away from dialogue on politically sensitive issues. One of the most fraught meetings was an International Conference of Jews, Christians and Muslims on Jerusalem, convened by the WCC at Glion, overlooking Lake Geneva, in May 1993. Though Palestinian and Israeli delegates had come with diametrically opposed viewpoints and there was considerable posturing, an agreed joint statement was eventually cobbled together and forwarded to Washington, where official PLO/Israel talks were apparently bogged down. Unknown to delegates, the real dialogue was even then taking place in Norway, where it would shortly lead to the Oslo Peace Accords. Allan Brockway has summed up the required changes in theological perspective as seen within the World Council of Churches:8 1. Common Roots: Call to Abraham; revelation of One God; giving of Torah. 2. Parting of the Ways: The first Christians were Jews; inclusion of gentiles into Church and distancing from Jewish people; separation of Church and Jews; different views of scripture, Jesus, messiah; empowerment of Christianity; recent awareness of guilt for »teaching of contempt« which led to Shoah. 3. Traditional Theological Issues: Covenant and election—Israel’s covenant never displaced (difficult theological consequences of this notion); Scripture—Judaism not to be equated with O.T. (Bristol 1967), but in what sense is N.T. »fulfilment«? Torah and law—not legalism, but covenant—Jesus observed Torah law—oral Torah; Jewishness of Jesus and his thought—Christological implications—»Christ has bound the church to the Jewish people«—difficulty (inappropriateness) of term »Messiah«. 4. Contemporary Theological Issues: Anti-Semitism and Shoah, variants of anti-Judaism— early Christian anti-Judaism continues pre-Christian prejudice and adds Christian input—history of pogroms and persecution; modern religious freedom saw secular anti-Jewish movement adopt Christian prejudices—contemporary Christian penitence; Israel—revival of state baffles church—recognition of state as safeguarding existence of the people—the tie between people and land »remains by the grace of God« (Netherlands Reformed Church 1970)—aspect of continuing covenant, but not »theological validation«; Mission—change of emphasis from mission to dialogue— rejection of »proselytization«; common responsibility of Jews and Christians towards world c justice and righteousness—wait and hope in God.

2.6

Individual non-Roman Churches

Several Churches have taken independent initiatives. Lutherans have boldly repudiated the anti-Semitic teachings of their founder, Martin Luther, expressed in his notorious 1543 tract »The Jews and Their Lies«. In 1982 the Lutheran World Federation issued a consultation stating that »we Christians must purge ourselves of any hatred of the Jews and any sort of teaching of contempt for Judaism«; at Driebergen

8 Allan R. Brockway et al., eds., The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People: statements by the World Council of Churches and its member churches (Geneva, 1988), Section III, 149–76.

210

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

(1991), and again at Helsinki in 2011, the Lutherische Europäische Kommission Kirche und Judentum (LEKKJ) reiterated this stance, calling for the reformation of church practice. Such statements have been repeatedly endorsed, not least on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s promulgation of the 95 theses in 2017. Anglicans have found it difficult to recognize any problem in their relationship with Jews. They have never persecuted Jews; if England was the home of the Blood Libel and the Expulsion such events pre-dated the formation of the Anglican Church. More percipient Anglicans realize that they must take responsibility for the Christian heritage as a whole, and that a constructive and non-patronising relationship with Jews and Judaism is essential not merely to the social order but to Christian self-understanding. The first Anglican-Jewish Consultation took place at Andover in November 1980 on the theme of Law and Religion in Contemporary Society. I was co-convenor with Bishop Richard Harries of Oxford for a second, at Shallowford House, Staffordshire in 1987, and also for a »local« meeting of British Jewish leaders and the Church of England at St George’s, Windsor, in 1992. It was at Shallowford House, one sultry Summer afternoon in what was scheduled as a rest period, that Gerhart Riegner held participants spellbound with an unscheduled, electrifying account of his role in Geneva in 1942 in the frantic attempt to convince Allied leaders that Hitler really was applying the Final Solution. Bishop Harries persuaded the Anglican Church to draft a document on JewishChristians Relations for consideration by the Anglican Communion at the decennial Lambeth Conference in 1988, and I accepted his invitation to be Jewish Consultant to the drafting committee. Political sensitivities led to the draft eventually extending to relations with Muslims as well as Jews. The Bishops at Lambeth unanimously commended the final document for study and encouraged Churches to »engage in dialogue with Jews and Muslims on the basis of understanding, affirmation and sharing illustrated in it.« The document is remarkable for its insistence on the »common witness to God« of the three faiths; it neither obscures the differences between and within the faiths, nor compromises the uniqueness of the Christian-Jewish relationship.9 Special mention should be made of a pioneering series conducted by the British United Reformed Church10 in the 1980s. These differed from most other consultations by involving lay members of communities in greater numbers than scholars and religious leaders; the volume which emerged from the first five meetings has about it a practical and popular approach lacking in the formal documents produced by the larger Churches.11

9 »Jews, Christians and Muslims: The Way of Dialogue. Appendix 6, «Resolution 21) of The Truth Shall Make You Free: The Lambeth Conference 1988 (London: Church House Publishing, 1988), 299–307. 10 The United Reformed Church was inaugurated in 1972 through the union of the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Church in England and Wales. 11 Christians and Jews in Britain: A Study Handbook for Christians (London: United Reformed Church Mission and Other Faiths Committee, 1984).

2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue

211

Acknowledgment is due also to the International Council of Christians and Jews and to its member Councils in more than twenty countries; their impact both on the formation of opinion in the Churches and on the implementation of such guidelines as are produced is immense.

2.7

Orthodox Churches and the Demise of Communism

After 1989 the anti-religious communist governments of eastern and central Europe collapsed, leaving the way open for the Churches to regroup. Already before 1989 delegates from »Iron Curtain« countries had begun to participate in dialogue; some of the most notable contributions had come from Poland, where in Kraków in 1987 I was present at a memorable consultation with the Polish Bishops’ Commission on the Jews and learned of the progress already made in a country where CatholicJewish relations have a problematic history. Increased participation with East Europeans enabled a broader dialogue with Orthodox Churches, not least those of Russia and Ukraine. At a consultation in Athens in 1993 between the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Churches and IJCIC, Orthodox Church leaders and theologians from several East European and Middle Eastern countries determined to embark on a programme of reassessment and re-education in Jewish Christian relations. Whether the far-reaching resolutions, endorsed at subsequent meetings, are fully implemented, hinges on the extent to which the Orthodox Churches are prepared to accommodate themselves to modernity; nor would it be realistic to assume that Christian Jewish relations is high on the list of Orthodox Christian priorities at this time.

2.8

Some Recent Statements

The International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ILC) has continued to meet more or less annually, issuing a series of joint declarations and statements, sometimes less significant for originality of content than for the mere fact of how, where and by whom they were issued. The 13th ILC meeting (Prague 1990) issued a »Common Declaration on Anti-Semitism«; the 15th meeting (Jerusalem 1994) was in favour of the family; the 20th meeting (Budapest November 2008) declared »Every Society Must Respect and Defend Human Dignity«, hardly something to capture the headlines, though perhaps a timely reminder in Hungary. At the very least, the continuation of such meetings indicates the determination of both parties to maintain good relations between their communities and to ensure that past achievements are built upon and promoted worldwide. Mention has already been made of the 1991 Driebergen Declaration, in which the European Lutheran Commission on the Church and the Jewish People distanced itself from Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish expressions. Other Churches, some independently and some in collaboration with Jews, have articulated their commitment to improved Christian-Jewish relations, few more powerfully than the Swiss Bishops Conference, the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches and the Swiss Federation

212

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

of Jewish Communities, who met in 2007 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Seelisberg Conference and assess its achievements. Christian M. Rutishauser notes the farsightedness and socio-political realism of the 1947 Conference in laying foundations for Jewish-Christian dialogue and for the fight against anti-Semitism. Since the 1950s, he claims, dialogue between Jews and Christians has taken on a less political and more interreligious character, notwithstanding an increasing focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of the recommendations of the Seelisberg Conference in the social, educational and legal domains have been fulfilled or are in development, while in the interreligious realm, the major churches have affirmed the positive relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Today it has become commonplace to speak about a JudeoChristian tradition, something that was inconceivable in 1947. Not only the Catholic Church but many of the Reformed Churches have radically revised their relationship with Jews and Judaism; the deicide charge and the teaching of contempt are no longer a part of mainstream Christian theology; indeed, »the critical voice has at times attacked so harshly that valid elements of Christian faith have been held as anti-Jewish or, from the Jewish perspective, as a relapse into paganism«. Rutishauser notes that, since Seelisberg, numerous theological topics relevant to Jewish-Christian dialogue, such as the concept of Messiah, the meaning of chosenness, the concepts of sin, expiation and sacrifice, the liturgy, and the significance of law and Gospel, have been studied from both Jewish and Christian perspectives. As he rightly observes, the traditional notion of Judaism as the »mother religion« of Christianity has given way in the light of historical research to »another metaphor of Judaism and Christianity as sibling religions, both as legitimate outgrowths or branches from Biblical Judaism.«12 The Seelisberg anniversary festivities included the reading of a new declaration which, though national in character, reflects sentiment in many communities in the western world; it aims to integrate religious and socio-political orientations while addressing »the regressive tendencies that accompany the current social revolutions.« Some extracts will illustrate the flavour: … The attitudes of the Reformed Churches and the Roman Catholic Church toward Judaism have changed fundamentally, from a relationship of ambivalence and mistrust or even enmity to one of coexistence and brotherly and sisterly cooperation. Anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism have been reduced strongly in our country through a variety of religious, educational, social, and political initiatives. In light of the current major changes within our increasingly pluralistic and complex society as a whole, we are confronted with the appearance of regressive and reactionary currents. The signers thus commit themselves now and in the future to combat every form of discrimination based on ethnic background or beliefs; to work ceaselessly on the sensitive relationship between Jewish congregations and Christian churches; to seek out and

12 Quotations in this section are from Christian Rutishauser, The 1947 Seelisberg Conference: The Foundation of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue. Center for Jewish Learning at Boston College e-journal 2/2 (2007) (downloaded 10 August 2017 at http://escholarship.bc.edu/scjr/vol2/ iss2/), 34–53.

2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue

213

promote mutual understanding and theological dialogue; and to draw on the best of one’s own religious traditions for an existence in peace and justice within Swiss society.

The signatories also pledged themselves to work together for integration of an historical understanding of the Shoah into the consciousness of all members of society; for an objective and constructive reaction to events in the Middle East, especially those in Israel/Palestine; for the integration of Muslim immigrants; for the public and political presence of religious groups for the benefit of the entire populace; for effective assistance in the light of new social injustices; and for the advancement of concrete measures »for the protection of our earth, which has been placed in our hands, and of God’s creation«.

2.9

Israel and Interfaith Dialogue

The establishment of the State of Israel opened a Pandora’s box of problems for Jewish theologians.13 What, from a religious point of view, is the relationship between Land and People? Is the restoration of Jewish independence the beginning of the messianic redemption process? What meaning can a secular State have for religious Jews? How can the values of rabbinic Judaism be reflected in the affairs of a modern State? How, and to what extent, should Israel safeguard the rights of Christian, Muslim and other minorities? How, in the context of Israel, are classical Jewish universalist teachings to be interpreted? What is the relationship between the »diaspora« communities and Israel? Add to this all the agonising problems raised by a perceived need to defend one’s new-found sovereignty by war. Discussion of such topics by contemporary Jewish thinkers reveals vigorous debate and a wealth of opinions, much of it relevant to interfaith dialogue. Several initiatives have been taken over the years to enhance mutual understanding and acceptance among Israel’s diverse religious communities. The Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), associated since 2015 with the Rabbis for Human Rights organisation, was founded by Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish in 1991 to promote understanding and communication between members of different faith communities in Israel and to build foundations for lasting fellowship.14 Its sixty or so associated organizations include Jewish-Arab groups, various interfaith forums, institutes, universities, and museums; it sponsors a variety of education, dialogue and action programs, including a Jewish-Muslim dialogue group for professionals and community leaders which meets in Haifa. Its ambitious mission is »to harness the teachings and values of the three Abrahamic faiths and transform religion’s role from a force of division and extremism into a source of reconciliation, coexistence and understanding for the leaders and followers of these religions in Israel and in our region.« Although both dialogue and action are on its agenda, ICCI

13 Cf. Martin Kloke, Zionism and the State of Israel, in: Michael Tilly, Burton L. Visotzky (Eds.), Judaism I. History (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer 2020). 14 http://rhr.org.il/eng/icci/

214

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

emphasizes that »Dialogue is not enough«. One excellent example of action is provided by the school and village Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom (»Oasis of Peace«);15 this is a community jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, set up by Fr Bruno Hussar OP in 1972, and which now has various projects across the country. Israelis, including several Chief Rabbis, have participated in interfaith dialogue since the foundation of the State, and the inception of diplomatic ties between Israel and the Holy See in 1993 stimulated further dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century the Israeli Chief Rabbinate has engaged in bilateral discussions with the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews; annual meetings have alternated between Jerusalem and Rome, with the leading role on the Jewish side being taken by Shear Yashuv Cohen (1927–2016), Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Haifa; after his death in 2016 the Jewish delegation was led by Rabbi Rasson Arussi, of the Chief Rabbinate Council. Following the 14th Meeting, in Rome, November 28–30, 2016, a joint statement, »Promoting Peace in the Face of Violence in the Name of Religion«, was issued. Acknowledgement was made of »the tragic sins of past violence that have been perpetrated in the name of religion, and the terrible blasphemous abuse of religion in our current times that desecrates human life, denying human liberty and difference, and posing critical challenges for our respective traditions«16. The Catholic presentation sought to assess the extent to which religions could play a role in the resolution of conflicts and the construction of a new international order based on justice, peace and the care of Creation; the Jewish presentation stressed the sanctity of the human person, the principle of free will, and appreciation of diversity as a reflection of the Divine Presence and Will, and called for religious leadership to exercise »theological humility« in interpreting their respective traditions in a manner that avoids violent intent towards others. Delegates noted the Marrakesh Declaration, which had recently called for the protection of human dignity and religious diversity in Muslim lands. Finally, »the principle of universal respect for the holy sites of each religion was affirmed; and note was made of attempts to deny the historical attachment of the Jewish People to its holiest site. The bilateral commission vigorously cautioned against the political and polemical denial of biblical history and called on all nations and faiths to respect this historic religious bond.« Similar meetings, with similar proclamations, have taken place between the Anglican-Jewish Commission of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Perhaps even more significant was The First Alexandria Declaration of the Religious Leaders of the Holy Land,17 calling on all parties to abstain from demonization and violence, to oppose »incitement, hatred and misrepresentation of the other«, to respect the sanctity and integrity of the holy places and to ensure freedom of religious

15 www.wasns.org 16 L’Osservatore Romano, 1 Dec. 2016. 17 http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-3/first_alexandria_declaration.html

2 Jewish-Christian Dialogue

215

worship for all. The list of signatories is impressive; it is headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Grand Mufti of Al Azhar, following which come the signatures of the major leaders of Israel’s Jewish, Muslim and several Christian denominations. Christian Zionism18 may have contributed to the 1917 Balfour Declaration; since 1948 Christian Zionists have vigorously supported the State, not least through their influence on American politics. »Zionism« is a guiding theme of fundamentalist organizations such as Christians United for Israel and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. In 2008 Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin of Efrat, »the most prominent rabbinic spokesperson to Christian Zionists«19, established the Center for Jewish–Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC), an educational institution at which Christians who tour Israel can study the Hebrew Bible with Orthodox rabbis and learn about the Hebraic roots of Christianity; CJCUC partners with both Christians United and the International Christian Embassy. On 3 December 2015, 28 Orthodox Rabbis released a statement through CJCUC entitled »To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians«, stating »We Jews can acknowledge the ongoing constructive validity of Christianity as our partner in world redemption, without any fear that this will be exploited for missionary purposes«.

2.10

Jewish Responses

By the end of the twentieth century so many Churches had made formal pronouncements condemning anti-Semitism, rejecting the »teaching of contempt«, confirming the ongoing vitality of Judaism and the like, that the absence of any corresponding Jewish pronouncement was beginning to look insensitive if not downright discourteous. IJCIC, a secular-led conglomerate, was not in a position to undertake this task. However, in 2000, an independent, cross-denominational group of rabbis produced a document, Dabru Emet (»Speak Truth«) concerning the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.20 This was signed by over 220 rabbis and intellectuals from all branches of Judaism, as individuals and not as representing any organisation or stream of Judaism; some declined to sign because they felt it was theologically naïve, others they felt that it gave out a relativistic message. However, it was well received and has been much used, as intended, in Jewish educational programmes in schools and adult education. Its themes are: 1. Jews and Christians worship the same God. 2. Jews and Christians seek authority from the same book.

18 Moshe Davies, With Eyes Toward Zion: Scholar’s Colloquium on America-Holy Land Studies (New York, 1977). 19 Faydra L Shapiro and Brad Young, Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border (Eugene, 2015), 134. 20 http://www.jcrelations.net/Dabru_Emet_A_Jewish_Statement_on_Christians_and_Christiani ty.2395.0.html

216

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

3. Christians can respect the claim of the Jews on the land of Israel. 4. Jews and Christians together accept the moral principles of the Torah (Pentateuch). 5. Nazism is not a Christian phenomenon. 6. The controversy between Jews and Christians will not be settled until God redeems the entire world as promised in scripture and no one should be pressed into believing another’s belief. 7. A new relationship between Jews and Christians will not weaken Jewish practice. 8. Jews and Christians must work together for justice and peace. The document was not aimed at Christians, but at the Jewish community as a whole; even so, the European Lutheran Commission on the Church and the Jews saw fit to issue a warm response on May 12, 2003. Eighteen years elapsed from the end of WW2 to the issuing of Nostra Aetate; fifty more passed before an Orthodox Jewish religious body formally responded (though of course it had already stimulated half a century of direct dialogue). There was perhaps a feeling, on the Jewish side, that it was too good to be true; caution is still evident in the Statement, »Between Jerusalem and Rome«, adopted in March 2016 by the (Orthodox) Conference of European Rabbis and the Rabbinical Council of America and presented to Pope Francis in September 2017: »Initially, many Jewish leaders were skeptical of the sincerity of the Church’s overtures to the Jewish community«.21 Notwithstanding the Orthodox disavowal of »theology«, this document is heavily theological, from its opening statement interpreting how God »fashions a single human being as the progenitor of all humanity« to its assessment of the Christian doctrine of Incarnation as idolatry: »fraternity cannot sweep away our doctrinal differences«. This said, the Rabbis are generous in their acknowledgement of »heroic individuals« among Catholics who fought against the persecution of Jews even in the darkest times, and enthusiastic in their praise of steps taken by Catholics from Nostra Aetate onwards to revise the »teaching of contempt« and inaugurate an era of reconciliation with Jews. A »Road Forward« is sketched, rationalizing dialogue within the broad context of the religious, as guardians of freedom and morality, versus the non-religious, who are assumed to lack such virtues: We understand our mission to be a light unto the nations to include contributing to humanity’s appreciation for holiness, morality and piety. As the Western world grows more and more secular, it abandons many of the moral values shared by Jews and Christians ... We therefore seek the partnership of the Catholic community in particular, and other faith communities in general, to assure the future of religious freedom, to foster the moral principles of our faiths, particularly the sanctity of life and the significance of the traditional family, and »to cultivate the moral and religious conscience of society.«

There is some irony in turning to the Catholic Church—or the Rabbis—to assure religious freedom; historically, both have sought to impose their interpretation of

21 www.jcrelations.net/Between_Jerusalem_and_Rome_-.5580.0.html

3 Other Religions

217

religion on others. One may also question the apparent reduction of Judaism to moral principles, something more characteristic of Liberal than Orthodox Jewish teaching. But more significant than the theology of the document is the basic fact of its creation and formal presentation; this in itself confirms that the Orthodox Rabbinate is firmly supportive of interfaith dialogue.

3

Other Religions

3.1

Dialogue with Islam

Until the nineteenth century most of world Jewry was concentrated in the Islamic empires. The long history of relations between Jews and Muslims has been recently covered by Meddeb and Stora22 (2013); in that volume Michel Abitol details how »the eruption of Europe into the Levant and the Maghreb alienated the Jews from their Muslim neighbours«, a process aggravated by European colonization, nationalism and the rise of Zionism.23 The growing presence of Muslims in the West and on the world stage, and conflicts of various kinds in the Middle East, have heightened the need for a broader dialogue of »Abrahamic Religions«. Also, the resurgence of Islam and the tensions experienced by Christians in the Middle East as well as Muslims in the West have led the Churches to focus increasingly on their relationship with Islam. In Israel, the need for dialogue between Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians, has always been obvious. In the 1970s organisations such as ICCJ began to ask whether the Jewish-Christian dialogue might be »expanded« to encompass Islam, and the same question has been raised again as recently as the CCJR annual meeting in New York in September 2017. »Expansion« may not be the best term, since it suggests replacement. Tripartite dialogue of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is important in its own right, but there remain distinct Jewish-Christian, Jewish-Muslim, and Christian-Muslim agendas; all are vital, and they must not be confused or conflated. Several tripartite dialogues emerged in this period. There was, for instance, a series associated with St George’s, Windsor (the Chapel Royal), convened by Dean Mann on behalf of HRH Prince Philip and Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan, later joined by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Few Jews were present at the somewhat fraught early sessions, but numbers and trust were built up over the years. A fair degree of unanimity was reached by delegates on the supporting role of religions in conservation; at a meeting in Amman in October 1993 a constructive discussion took

22 Abdulwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora, eds., A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day (Princeton and Oxford, 2013). 23 Michel Abitol, »The Beginnings of the Separation: From Coexistence to the Rise of Antagonisms,« in A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day (eds., A. Meddeb and B. Stora, Princeton and Oxford, 2013) 297–319.

218

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

place on »Richness in Diversity«, at which the Interfaith Declaration: A Code of Ethics on International Business for Christians, Muslims and Jews was finalized. An independent initiative in London in 1997 by Sir Sigmund Sternberg, the Revd Dr Marcus Braybrooke, and Dr Zaki Badawi resulted in the formation of the »Three Faiths Forum,« a more grass-roots organization catering for the needs of »ordinary people« and youth. Similar bodies have been set up in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere. By the beginning of the 21st century the need for interfaith dialogue had been endorsed by governments irrespective of democratic credentials. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, for instance, initiated in 2008 an interfaith conference to »solve world problems through concord instead of conflict,« and this was attended by Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Tao religious leaders among others. At the same time, through a collaboration of Hebrew Union College, Omar Foundation, and the University of Southern California, the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement was created. Also in 2008 Muslim scholars from The Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations (part of The Woolf Institute, Cambridge, on which more below), with the support of Muslims scholars throughout the world, published a heartfelt, if verbose, »Open Letter: A Call to Peace, Dialogue and Understanding between Muslims and Jews«, expressing the hope that »this letter be accepted as a small step towards opening doors to genuine dialogue and understanding [and also] lead the way towards concrete outcomes in Muslim—Jewish relations in different parts of our shared world.«24 The Woolf Institute now has formal links with the Doha (Qatar) International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID), which has involved Jews in its conversations since 2005, and held its 13th International Interfaith Conference, on »Religion and Human Rights«, in February 2018. The US Foundation for Middle East Peace reinvented the wheel in July 2009, welcoming »30 Imams and Rabbis from 11 European countries« to share their ideas on religious dialogue at a United Nations venue in New York. Subsequent initiatives include those already mentioned under »Israel and Interfaith Dialogue«. Also in the US, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) has reached out to the Jewish communities, collaborating with the Union of Reform Judaism and the Jewish Theological Seminary, while Jewish organisations are numbered among the founders of the anti-Islamophobic organisation, »Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign«. Salaam/Shalom, founded in the UK in 200525, aims to build bridges between communities, particularly Muslim and Jewish communities, to prevent conflict and discrimination between minority and marginalised groups, and to use media and the arts as a tool for positive social change; it has funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain. A similarly named women’s organisation, the Sisterhood of Salaam/ Shalom,26 boasts 150 chapters across North America.

24 www.woolfinstitute.cam.ac.uk/cmjr 25 www.salaamshalom.org.uk 26 https://sosspeace.org. Sharing the Well: A Resource Guide for Jewish-Muslim Engagement is a useful guide to current engagement in North America: see www.jtsa.edu/sharingthewell.

3 Other Religions

219

The King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID), based in Vienna, is an inter-governmental organization that promotes inter-religious dialogue to prevent and resolve conflict; it was opened in 2012 by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Republic of Austria, and the Kingdom of Spain, following the initiative of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Among its board members is Rabbi Dr David Rosen, whose commitment to interfaith relations underlies much of the achievement in this field of organisations including the Anti-Defamation League and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. In February 2016 KAICIID launched the Center for Research and Training in Interfaith Relations in Rabat, with representatives of Moroccan Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Significant activity takes place also at a more humble level, where contentious issues sometimes have to be faced. For instance, in 2015 the West London Synagogue invited the An-Nisa Society’s Supplementary Muslim School to be part of a year-long Jewish-Muslim interfaith project for young people, culminating in a 5-day heritage trip to Morocco. Despite strong misgivings on the part of pro-Palestinian Muslims the project was highly successful and has been repeated annually.27

3.2

Non-Abrahamic Religions

Interfaith dialogue is intrinsically problematic for Abrahamic faiths28, for whom the belief in One God implies a denial of others, and this inherent intolerance is amplified when combined with the belief in a single, or final, revelation. Hindus and Buddhists—to label them with Abrahamic categories such as »polytheist« or »atheist« is inappropriate—tend to be inclusive rather than exclusive and readily see other faiths as expressing the same ultimate reality. Christian/Jewish/Muslim dialogue has developed in response to specific perceived wrongs and prejudices, such as the tendentious portrayal of Jews in the New Testament. »Eastern« religions, on the other hand, have encouraged interfaith dialogue in pursuit of the vision of a harmonious global society within which people of all religions together share, from their several aspects, in the One; Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (Sufi) mystics sometimes express themselves in similar terms. The World’s Parliament, or Congress of Religions (WPR), an early attempt to create a global dialogue of faiths, was set up in 1893 in Chicago; delegates included the Hindu Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), the apparent need at that time being for dialogue between »East« and »West«. Its mission, as proclaimed on its website, is »to cultivate harmony among the world’s religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just, peaceful and sustainable world.« Among its offshoots is the World 27 Humera Khan, »Dialogue in Action: Encountering Obstacles,« in: Faith Initiative 36 (Summer/ Autumn 2017), 19–20. 28 There is no agreed collective term for the religions of Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists and others who are outside the Jewish/Christian/Islamic tradition. »Dharmic« is sometimes used as a collective, as is the nowadays geographically inept »Eastern«.

220

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

Congress of Faiths (worldfaiths.org), whose first meeting in 1936 was attended by both the Orthodox Chief Rabbi Hertz and Rabbi Dr Israel Mattuck, Chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. WPR continues to hold international gatherings at irregular intervals. More than 8,000 delegates attended its centenary in Chicago in 1993, aiming to celebrate, discuss and explore how religious traditions can work together on the critical issues which confront the world; the main theme, for which the German Catholic theologian Hans Küng drafted Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration, was the contribution that can be made by religions to the conservation of the environment. Recent meeetings have taken place in Cape Town (1999), Barcelona (2004), Melbourne (2009) and Salt Lake City (2015); the meeting planned for 2018 in Toronto has the ambitious programme, »The Promise of Inclusion, the Power of Love: Pursuing Global Understanding, Reconciliation and Change«. Relations between Hindus and Jews have been surprisingly amicable, bearing in mind the hostility of Bible and Rabbis to what they regard as »idolatry«, and the basic fact that Hindu worship focuses on idols, however these might be »explained« by the theologians. Social factors undoubtedly have something to do with this; Hindus have not routinely maligned Jews nor targeted them for conversion in the way that Christians have. Hindu-Jewish »summits« were held in 2007 (New Delhi) and 2008 (Jerusalem); the Jewish delegation was led by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and the Hindu delegation by HDAS (the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha). Michael Bender,29 basing himself on the reflections of delegates he interviewed, identifies four pertinent themes: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The newness of the dialogue The shared threats of secularism and terrorism Christian and Muslim proselytization Misrepresentation of practice, history and symbolism

While Hindu-Jewish dialogue at this level is certainly new, it should not be forgotten that, at least since the 1893 Parliament of Religions, Jews have been engaging with Hindus in the broader dialogue context; since the 1960s substantial numbers of young Jews, including Israelis, have spent time at ashrams and apprenticed themselves to Hindu gurus, occasionally rediscovering Judaism in the process. Jews of many kinds have, moreover, lived among Hindus in the sub-continent for two thousand years. Records for the early periods are scant; with the coming of the Portuguese we know of Jews being protected by Hindu princes from Catholic persecution. Common ground for Jews and Hindus, as against Christians and Muslims, was claimed on the basis that both religions tend to orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy; halakhah, determining behaviour for Jews, is analogous to dharma, the path mapped out for Hindus. It was also noted that, in contrast with Christianity and Islam,

29 Michael Bender, »The Hindu-Jewish Relationship and the Significance of Dialogue: Participants’ Reflections on the 2007 and 2008 Hindu-Jewish Summits in New Delhi and Jerusalem,« in: The Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies 14 (2015), 7–23.

4 New Horizons: Scholars and Theologians

221

neither religion is actively missionary; both have suffered from the violence of Christian and Muslim proselytism. Bender notes that Jews, »including the Chief Rabbinate of Israel«, have traditionally perceived Hindus as idolaters. A major achievement of these summits, in Bender’s view, was the realization by members of the Jewish delegation that this was incorrect; henceforth, they would engage in dialogue with Hindus with the understanding that monotheism was fundamental to both religions. Quoting Swami Dayananda’s opening remark that the first precept of Hindu religion is »There are not many Gods. There is only one God«, he further cites Sri Swami Viditatmananda: All that there is, is God. Whatever has form also has manifestation of God. God can be worshipped as something beyond forms, but at the same time, whatever has form, also has the presence of God. We find Hindus worshipping God in forms. It is not that the person worships the idol, metal or stone, that is in front of him, but it becomes a stepping stone for worshipping God. (21)

Such ideas can be traced back to ancient Vedic texts, but does this mean that Hindu worship is substantially different from what the biblical prophets were fulminating against? The Bible, denouncing the worship of »sticks and stones«, is polemical, as Kaufmann demonstrated; no one really confused sticks and stones with God. The Rabbis nevertheless continued to treat them as polytheists and »idolaters«, as did Christians. If the learned delegates now recognize that image-based worship is neither necessarily polytheistic nor depraved, they are correct; they should openly concede that this view is a departure from traditional norms.

4

New Horizons: Scholars and Theologians

Since 1945 Biblical studies have been transformed as more has been revealed of the ancient world, its languages, peoples and cultures. The Jewish context of Jesus and his work were illumined through study of the Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered in 1947) and other contemporary material; the Nag Hammadi library of Gnostic texts (discovered in 1945) threw new light on the development of the Gospels (particularly John) and early Christianity as well as on early Jewish mysticism. The Scrolls revolutionized the study of rabbinic Judaism too; scholars no longer read Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash as if they describe Judaism in the time of Jesus, but rather as recording the self-definition of Judaism as it evolved in the early centuries CE, parallel with and often in opposition to Christian self-definition in the same period. The »problem of evil« first arose when God failed to prevent Cain killing Abel; the Bible, and not just Job, is much exercised on the topic. Even so, the Shoah (Holocaust) focused minds once more on the question of why God lets »bad things happen to good people«, and by the 1980’s leading Jewish thinkers were deeply engaged in Holocaust theology. Some (Emil Fackenheim) argued that the Shoah was unique and posed a radically new question. Others reworked traditional themes: Richard Rubenstein rejected the traditional idea of God as the »Lord of history«; David Blumenthal went so far as to write a book comparing God with an abusing

222

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

parent, who has worked »wondrously through us« but who has worked »aw(e)fully against us.« Others (Robert Gordis, Dow Marmur, Emmanuel Levinas) were dissatisfied with such approaches to Judaism; Jews should go beyond the Holocaust, not allow themselves to be permanently imprisoned in it. For Christians the Shoah posed an additional question. How had Christianity itself, if unwittingly, contributed to such a great evil? Alice and Roy Eckardt, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Franklin Littell, John Pawlikowski, J-B Metz, Eberhard Bethge and Hans-Joachim Kraus are among those who reflected in the mid-twentieth century on the implications for Christian theology of the Shoah and came to accept that profound revisions were needed if Christianity was to retain moral credibility. In particular, »supersessionist« or »replacement« theology came under attack; the idea that the Church had replaced the Jewish people in God’s economy was recognised as generating the »teaching of contempt« and anti-Semitism. Such reflections were a vital component of post-WW2 dialogue.

4.1

Covenant Theology

Covenant theology became prominent in the sixteenth century by Protestant theologians, who spoke of a Covenant of Works, a Covenant of Grace and a Covenant of Redemption. It is essentially supersessionist, since it suggests that the place occupied by Israel (the nation) has now been taken by the true Israel (Christians)— though Israel (the nation) is not necessarily excluded. Eugene B. Borowitz, in an influential article first published in 1961, introduced the term Covenant Theology to characterize what he saw as an emerging paradigm shift in non-Orthodox Jewish thought.30 Always an element in Orthodox thought, it had been given a new twist by J. B. Soloveitchik, and has been picked up by a succession of Orthodox thinkers such as David Hartman and Jonathan Sacks. Covenant theology generates awkward problems for dialogue, since it posits a special relationship between God and a specific community. If you are content to regard »covenant« simply as metaphor to express a community’s relationship with God, no contradiction is involved when two or more community’s claim a covenantal relationship; if, on the other hand, you think »covenant« is a unique metaphysical object granted by God to the community He chooses, competition arises between rival claimants.

4.2

New Theologies: Feminism, Liberation, Creation

Christian Jewish Relations, published by the London-based Institute of Jewish Affairs,31 devoted issues to each of three developing areas of theology which, in the 1980s, began to impact on dialogue: Feminist theology (Vol. 19/2 June 1986); Libera-

30 Eugene B. Borowitz, Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew (Philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem, 1991), opening pages. 31 Since 1994 the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

4 New Horizons: Scholars and Theologians

223

tion theology (Vol. 21/1 Spring 1988) and Conservation, including Creation Theology (Vol. 22/2 Summer 1989). Was Rosemary Ruether right in seeing anti-Judaism as part of the very fabric of early Christianity, or are those of her critics right who explain New Testament hostility to Jews and Judaism as a by-product of the polemical situation in which the early Christians found themselves?32 Ruether was led to such considerations after becoming convinced that the subordination of women was woven into traditional religious language, ritual, and imagery, not least language about God. Dialogue between Jews and Christians (and eventually others) could no longer avoid awkward questions about prejudices (against Jews, against women) so deeply ingrained in traditional sources, nor were such prejudices confined to one side of the dialogue; Christians and Jews equally were challenged. More recently new questions regarding human sexuality have been placed on the dialogue agenda, particularly with regard to homosexuality. In all this the dialogue is not so much between different faiths as between liberals and conservatives. Liberation theology originated among South American Catholics, aware of the Church’s history of oppression in that area, as a response to the continuing poverty and ill-treatment of »ordinary« people. Though rejected as an all-embracing theology by successive Popes it has inspired many theologians, including some Jews,33 with its vision of making common cause with the poor and against injustice. Again, in broad terms, this is an aim to which all participants in dialogue can subscribe, though there is disagreement as to priorities and practicalities. Throughout the 1960s and 70s the West was in the grip of the fear of nuclear annihilation. This fear (if not the danger itself) receded, to be replaced by a new fear, that of destruction of the global environment. A common enemy brings people together. Since the seminal Interfaith Celebration of Nature which took place at Assisi in September 1986 to mark the 25th anniversary of the World Wildlife Fund, representatives of each faith have outdone one another in proclaiming their concern for the environment, including care for all living creatures, concerns easily supported by judicious quotation from traditional sources. Exactly how the environment is to be safeguarded is not within the province of Creation Theology, but of science and technology. From the point of view of dialogue, however, shared environmental concern builds a strong bond between people of all faiths.

4.3

The Global Context of Dialogue

The modern way of looking at things tends to de-emphasize doctrinal matters, and to focus rather on that which religions have in common. The Hermetic Tradition, 32 Rosemary R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York, 1974); Criticism in Alan T. Davies, ed., Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity (New York, 1979). 33 For instance, Marc H. Ellis, Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, New York, 1987).

224

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

developed by Renaissance humanists such as Erasmus, made possible the move to Christian ecumenism, whence it is a short step to an ecumenism of world faiths, Judaism included. Such an attitude presupposes a degree of scepticism and tends also to cultural relativism. God, when speaking to people, has perforce to use human language, and human language incorporates human culture. The same ultimate truth may be conveyed in different ways. Improved communications and transport have heightened awareness of different cultures and religions; none has a monopoly in ethics, morality or spirituality. Contemporary culture is open to all that has come before or that currently exists in any part of the world, east or west, north or south. This creates the need and opportunity for dialogue. Science has radically and irreversibly changed our view of the universe and our place in it. The human species, we now know, has evolved over millions of years; our possibly superior descendants may continue for billions more. Can salvation really hinge upon some minute formulation of doctrine or on the total fidelity to this or that individual sage or saviour? Against the broad panorama of millions of years that looks increasingly implausible. Faith leaders commonly declare their shared commitment to spirituality, to high ethical and moral standards, nature, the family, justice, peace and other desirables. But is the agreement more apparent than real?34 What actually happens when Jews and Christians (to keep the discussion within limits) descend from the high ground of pious generalisations and investigate what there is that they can accomplish together? What it is that they wish to promote, and what it is that they are objecting to in current secular lifestyles? All main groups of Christians and Jews have in the past agreed, subject to differences in detailed definition, to the prohibitions of adultery, incest and polyandry, and to a range of degrees of forbidden propinquity; they have prohibited male homosexual acts, male masturbation (Onanism), and sexual acts performed with animals; they have agreed, moreover, on the recognition of natural parenthood, both through a call to children to honour and respect parents, and through responsibilities of parents towards their children. On the other hand, they have disagreed on divorce (prohibited by many Churches, always accepted by Jews) and polygamy (variable attitudes have existed amongst both Jews and Christians); attitudes towards human sexuality have ranged widely within each faith; they disagree on the virtue of celibacy, on the handling of the menstrual cycle, possibly on female masturbation and homosexual acts, and certainly on contraception and abortion. Nor is it true that the main sources of Judaism and Christianity share the romantic, idealised attitude to the family which achieved prominence only in Victorian times. Rather, they accepted and regulated an existing social institution, to which in any case there did not appear to be any alternative. Sometimes they are critical.

34 Norman Solomon, »Forward Together,« in: From the Martin Buber House 20, Winter 1992/3 (ed. J. Schoneveld, International Council of Christians and Jews, Heppenheim, Germany).

4 New Horizons: Scholars and Theologians

225

Thus Trito-Isaiah (Isa 56:3)—»Let not the eunuch say, ›I am nothing but a barren tree‹«—preaches against the marginalisation of those lacking family connections; Elisha (1 Kgs 19:20–21) takes leave of his family to become the devoted disciple of Elijah; Christians praise the virtue of celibacy. The ideal family may well provide a stable emotional background and enable the development of favoured moral attitudes, but few families are ideal; instability and even tyranny within the family are common. When Jews and Christians together declare for the family and its values they must be aware of the downside, and be ready in many instances to champion the rights of the individual against the family. Likewise, when the religious call for higher standards of sexual morality, caution is needed. Which is the higher moral standard, the sexual repression encouraged by some religious authorities, or a more permissive, liberal attitude, which places a higher value on individual freedom and self-fulfilment? Should we condemn, or should we show compassion to those of whom we disapprove? To what extent should we aim to have our standards incorporated in public law? We can at least agree with contemporary secular morality that stable and loving relationships are of the essence of sexual morality, even if we disapprove of alternative lifestyles; to a significant degree we all seek a deepening of human relationships, and a sense of holiness in our lives.

4.4

Academic Developments

Several University faculties of theology have recast themselves as departments of religious studies; sympathetic teaching on other religions is widely available even in religious seminaries. In Oxford, what was historically a strongly Anglican faculty is now the Faculty of Theology and Religion, covering in addition to a broad range of Christian studies a rich variety of approaches to Jewish studies, Buddhism and Islam, including a dedicated chair in »Abrahamic Religions«. Theology has moved from a strictly confessional discipline to an aspect of humanistic study; the Faculty is, indeed, placed within the Humanities division of the University. Dialogue itself has become an academic discipline. In 1983 a new Centre for the Study of Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations was established at the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham, in parallel with the Centre for the Study of Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations already on campus. The Centre closed in 1994, but its pioneering work was eventually picked up by the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge. Founded in 1998, and directed since its inception by Dr Edward Kessler, this Institute later expanded to incorporate the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations—the first and so far only Centre of its kind in Europe— and the Centre for Policy and Public Education. In 2010, these Centres were amalgamated as the Woolf Institute,35 an independent research Centre and an Associate Member of the Cambridge Theological Federation. The Institute, a global leader in

35 www.woolf.cam.ac.uk

226

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

the academic study of relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims, aims to provide an academic framework and space within which people can tackle issues of religious difference constructively, while it reaches out to a global audience by offering a range of online courses which address the relationship between religion and society. Among its major achievements has been a National Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, drawing on input from all religion groups in Britain today, as well as humanists; the Commission’s report, Living with Difference: community, diversity and the common good, was published in 2015.

4.5

Dialogue Moulds Theology

Interfaith dialogue is vital for self-understanding in every faith. Only in dialogue is one forced to address the most contentious areas of one’s own theology. Provided he/she meets only with other Jews, a Jewish theologian may complacently restate the old doctrines of chosenness, of authentic rabbinic exposition of scriptures, of the permanence of halakha, of the Messiah who is yet to come. Dialogue shatters this self-indulgence, forcing the faithful to question their own theology. How, for instance, is »chosenness« to be interpreted when others plausibly see themselves as in a covenantal relationship with God? Why should privileged status be accorded to rabbinic interpretation of scripture as against other available hermeneutics? It is not of course the first time that Jews and Christians have developed their faiths interactively; they have done so ever since Christianity and rabbinic Judaism first defined themselves out of the maelstrom of first century Judaism. Some seven centuries later Islam similarly defined itself in relation to Judaism and Christianity; just as Christians had claimed to be the »fulfilment« of previous revelation, Muslims claimed that Muhammad was the »final prophet«. Historically, the process of differentiation generated hatred and bloodshed. The hope is that today we can engage in our theology openly, consciously, and with mutual regard and friendship. But this requires that we ask radical questions of our own traditions and are prepared to refine and advance them within the context of the contemporary world, having due regard to each other’s concerns. A sustained attempt at dialogue of this kind is recorded in Dialogue with a Difference: The Manor House Group Experience36, though the book cannot adequately capture the human aspects: how participants learned, over some years, to respect and understand each other, often sharing laughter, and acquiring the ability to entertain strong disagreements as well as common convictions, fears, and hopes. In December 1992 one of the participants, Richard Harries (Bishop of Oxford 1987–2006) initiated the Oxford Abrahamic Group, including Muslims, on similar lines. The nine topics fall into two groups: Foundations of Faith (Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad), and Resources for the Modern World (The Image of God in Humanity, Pluralism, Gender, The Environment, Life after Death). Each topic is ex-

36 Tony Bayfield and Marcus Braybrooke, Dialogue with a Difference (London, 1992).

5 The Popularization and Secularization of Dialogue

227

plored by a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim in turn, and followed by reflections from each of the three perspectives.37 Both volumes demonstrate how scholars of each of the religions work out their theology in the presence of the others. The extent to which this approach can be more widely adopted remains to be seen. Among independent initiatives one of the most remarkable is the International Jewish-Christian Bible Week, now approaching its fiftieth year, at which Jews and Christians from Germany and many other countries, laity as well as scholars and clergy, come together to study biblical texts against a background of the two traditions. Originally an annual event at Bendorf on the Rhine, since 2003 it has been hosted at Haus Ohrbeck, a Catholic foundation in Lower Saxony. It has been fascinating to see how both traditions have grappled with issues raised by modern critical Biblical studies.38 The Scriptural Reasoning movement, originating in the US in the early 1990s as a university-based forum for scholars of Modern Jewish Philosophy and scholars of Rabbinic texts to meet and study together, has spread to many parts of the world, engaging »Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, Daoists, and many other faith communities who use the tool to deepen friendships and understanding within their communities.« Groups operate at all levels, using the opportunity »to deepen one’s own faith commitment and deepen one’s engagement with members of other faiths simultaneously.«39 Bill Moyers’ 1996 Genesis was a 10-part television series aiming »to stimulate interfaith dialogue in a democratic spirit«; it featured not only Biblical scholars but a wide range of professionals and artists from all walks of life, discovering and debating the great stories of Genesis.40

5

The Popularization and Secularization of Dialogue

Most dialogue is not at the institutional level or among professional scholars and theologians, but informal, at the workplace, in the markets, at sports and entertainments; this is where people get to know each other as human beings, rather than as religious stereototypes. Several organisations promote interfaith dialogue among members of the public, who are free to participate according to their personal consciences and inclinations rather than as representatives of organisations. Local Councils of Christians and Jews have long played a role in such dialogue, which now extends across the religious spectrum.

37 The papers are published in Norman Solomon et al., eds., Abraham’s Children: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conversation (Edinburgh, 2006). 38 https://www.haus-ohrbeck.de/haus-ohrbeck/bibelforum/jewish-christian-bible-week.htm 39 http://www.scripturalreasoning.org/scriptural-reasoning-now.html 40 billmoyers.com/series/genesis

228

Judaism and inter-faith relations since World War II

In Britain, the Interfaith Network (IFN) was founded in 1987 »to advance public knowledge and mutual understanding of the teachings, traditions and practices of the different faith communities in Britain including an awareness both of their distinctive features and their common ground and to promote good relations between people of different faiths in this country«. Its 34 members range alphabetically from Bahai to Zoroastrian, taking in less obvious units such as the Druid Network and the Pagan Federation as well as a variety of Christian, Muslim and Hindu organisations and a single all-embracing Jewish one, the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Through its Interfaith Week programme and educational initiatives IFN not only reaches out to faith communities but works to develop greater understanding between those of religious and those of non-religious beliefs. In addition, it provides information and advice to local inter faith groups, chaplaincies, youth organisations and government departments.41 Even the UK government has come on board; since 2014 a Minister for Faith and Communities has been given responsibility to »work with religious and community leaders to promote faith, religious tolerance and stronger communities«. At the conclusion of Inter Faith Week in November 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May declared that it was »an inspiring effort across all neighbourhoods and faiths across the United Kingdom, in building understanding, tolerance and a sense of community. These sentiments are so important as we build a country where everyone has the chance to succeed and where no one suffers discrimination because of their background, ethnicity, religion or belief«.

6

Conclusion

The roots of modern inter-faith dialogue are to be sought in the massive social, technological and scientific changes that have shaped the modern age; global awareness and increasing mutual dependence have forced revision of traditional religious exclusivity and intolerance, generating new, more inclusive theologies. In the wake of the horrors of WW2 dialogue has advanced from a marginal activity mainly concerned, at least from the Jewish point of view, with combatting anti-Semitism, to a major international socio-political concern, embracing all faiths, and aimed at freeing the world from the religious conflicts which in times past generated prejudice and conflict. Jews, irrespective of denomination, have been deeply involved in all aspects of this activity. Not that there is room for complacency. Reactionary tendencies are present within all religious communities; traditionalists feel threatened by openness. The advances of recent years need careful nurturing if we are to succeed in creating a world free from religious bigotry and conflict.

41 interfaith.org.uk

6 Conclusion

229

For further reading Berger, David, Persecution, polemic, and dialogue: essays in Jewish-Christian relations. Boston, 2010. Bretton-Granatoor, Gary M., and Andre L. Weiss, Shalom/Salaam: A Resource for Jewish-Muslim Dialogue. New York, 1993. Brown, Daniel S., ed. Interfaith Dialogue in Practice: Christian, Muslim, Jew. New York, 2013. Fifteen Years of Catholic-Jewish Dialogue: 1970–1985, Rome, 1988. Fisher, Eugene J., James A. Rudin and Marc H. Tanenbaum, Twenty Years of Jewish-Catholic Relations. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1986. Revised and expanded edition. New York, 1993. Fry, Helen P., Christian-Jewish Dialogue: A Reader. Exeter UK, 1996. Goodman, Hananya, ed. Between Jerusalem and Benares: Comparative Studies in Judaism and Hinduism. Albany, 1994. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon and Eugene Korn eds. Jewish Theology and World Religions. London, 2012. Holdrege, Barbara A., Veda and Torah, New York, 1996. Kessler, Edward, An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations. Cambridge, 2010. Kronish, Ron, The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, A View from Jerusalem. Falls Village, 2017. Nettler, Ronald L., ed. Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations. 4 vols. to 1997. London, 1993. Novak, David, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification. New York, 1989. Parfitt, Tudor, Israel and Ishmael: Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations. Andover UK, 2001. Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations (e-journal of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (CCJR)) from 2005 http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/cjrelations/journal.html. Wigoder, Geoffrey, Jewish-Christian relations since the Second World War, Manchester and New York, 1988.

Index

1

Sources

1.1

Biblical Sources

Genesis 1 52–53, 62, 65–66 1:26–28 52–53, 62, 172, 188 2 66, 170 2:15 57 9:4 58 11:28 161 12:10–20 160 17:12 60 18:2 161 18:12–13 161 20:1–18 160 25:1 177 31:47 85 34 178 40:15 76 Exodus 3:14 172 16:23–24 66 16:29 66 19:15 182, 188 20 66 20:8–11 56, 65 20:13 188 21:10 55, 62 21:28–36 56 22:24 57 23 67 30:14 61 31:1–17 65 34:18–24 67 35:1ff. 65 35:3 66

Leviticus 11 58 12:3 60 16:31 69 17:13–14 58–59 18 62, 181 18:3 188 19:9–10 57 19:35–36 56 20 62, 181 21:1–15 63 23:4–44 67 23:23–25 68 23:32 69 23:40 68 23:42–43 67–68 25:1–24 58 25:35–37 57 Numbers 1:3 61 4:2 61 6:1–21 63 15:32–36 66 20:1–2 177 26:2 61 28:16–31 67 29:1 68 29:12–39 67 Deuteronomy 5 59, 65–66 5:12–15 59, 65 10 59 12:5 9 12:16 58 12:21 58

14 57–58 14:27–29 57 16:1–17 67 20:19–20 58 22:5 158 22:6–7 59 23:20 57 24:10–11 57 25:4 59 25:13–16 56 25:19–22 57 26:12–15 57 32:18 173 2 Samuel 11 161 12 162 1 Kings 8:56 155 17–2 159 19:12 163 19:20–21 225 2 Kings 18:26–28

76

Isaiah 19:18 76 23:16 78 36:11 76 36:13 76 42:14 173 45:18 53 49:18 165 56:3 225 58:12–14 66

232

Index

Jeremiah 10:11 85 17:19–27 66 29:7 198 31:20 173 31:22 169

113–118

Nehemiah 13:24 76 1 Chronicles 3:17ff. 159

Esther 1:11–12 161 4:16 70 9:22 70

2 Chronicles 32:18 76

Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

2 Esdras 23:24

76

2 Macc 7:31

76

Rabbinic Sources

m.Av 5:23 61 m.Git. 9:6–8 76 m.Hag 1:8 66 m.Hul 3:6 58 m.Ohal 7:6 55 m.Yad. 4:5 76 m.Yad. 4:6 72 t.Pea 4:9 57 t.Sotah 11:1 177 Gen. Rab. 17:6–8 180 Gen. Rab. 61:4 177

2

85

Ezra 4:8–6:18 85 7:12–26 85 12–26 85 18,7 85

Ecclesiastes 1:9 197 11:6 53 12:12 197

Psalms 22 78 36 118 45 78 60 78 69 78 80 78

1.3

Daniel 2:4–7:28

Job 1:21 64 38:1 163 40:4f. 163

Jonah 1:9 76

1.2

68, 69

b.AZ 58b 79 b.Baba Metzia 59b 172 b.Bets 16a 66 b.Ḥull 137b 79 b.Qid 29a 60 b.Sanh. 21a 72 b.Sanh. 21b 72 b.Yev 62b 53, 63 b.Yev 65b-66a 53 b.Yev 69b 55

Names

Abraham bar Hiyya 121 Abraham ibn Daʿud 122–124 Abraham ibn Ezra 119 Abravanel, Isaac 106, 129–132 Abravanel, Judah (Leone Ebreo) 107, 132 Abulafia, Meir ben Todros HaLevi (Ramah) 126 Abū l-Walīd Jona ibn Ǧanāḥ 81 Abū Nasr Muhammad al-Fārābī 114, 118, 121–122 Abū Yaʿqūb ibn Ishāq al-Kindī 114

‘Adanī, Shlomo 89 Adelman, Penina 174, 176–177 Adler, Rachel 171, 176, 186–188 Adorno, Theodor W. 35, 37 Agnon, Shmuel Josef (Samuel Josef Czaczkes) 150–151 Albo, Joseph 50, 129–130, 133 Allen, Woody 33–34 Almosnino, Joseph 133 Alpert, Rebecca 181, 187–188 Alterman, Nathan 161, 166–167

2 Names Amichai, Yehudah (Ludwig Pfeuffer) 166 An-ski, Solomon (Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynvl) 22–23 Antler, Joyce 185 Antschel, Paul see Celan, Paul Appelfeld, Aharon 155 Arama, Isaac 129–130 Arendt, Hannah 108, 136 Aristobulus 110 Arussi, Rasson 214 Ashkenazy, Nehama 179 Ashman, Aharon 159 Ashton, Dianne 190 Averroes see ibn Rushd Avicenna see ibn Sīnā Aviv, Caryn 195 Babel, Isaak 20 Bachia ben Joseph ibn Paquda 119–121, 127, 133 Badawi, Zaki 218 Bader Ginsburg, Ruth 38 Baeck, Leo 76, 199–200 Baker, Cynthia 186 Baron Cohen, Sasha 41 Baruh, Kalmi 95 Baskin, Judith 182, 184–185 Baybrook, Marcus 218 Beck, Evelyn Torton 174–175, 178 Bellow, Saul 33–34, 145–147 Benjamin, Walter 108 Biale, David 39 Biale, Rachel 174, 176 Bialik, Chaim Nachman 20, 140, 150, 159, 166 Bibago, Abraham 129–130 Blau, Sehara 157 Boyarin, Daniel 39 Boyarin, Jonathan 39 Brahm, Otto 159 Brenner, Josef Ḥaim 143, 151–152 Breuer, Isaac 142 Breuer, Raphael 163 Brod, Max 142–143, 159 Broner, Esther 179 Bronner, Simon J. 39, 41 Buber, Martin 23, 26, 141–142, 144, 199–200 Bulkin, Elly 192 Cantor, Aviva 173, 178

233 Cassirer, Paul 27 Celan, Paul 164–165 Chagall, Marc 37 Christ, Carol P. 173 Cixous, Hélène 38 Cohen, Andrew 158 Cohen, Eliyahu Yosef She’ar Yashuv 214 Cohen, Hermann 107, 136, 163, 199 Cohn, Harry 31 Crescas, Ḥasdai 128–130, 133–134, 199 Daly, Mary 172 Dame, Enid 178 Daniel al-Qūmisī 113 Davidman, Lynn 182 Dāwūd b. Marwān al-Muqammiṣ 113 Delmedigo, Joseph Solomon 132 Derrida, Jacques 108 Döblin, Alfred 27 Duran, Profiat 129–130 Duran, Simeon 129 Dykewoman, Elana 178 Einstein, Albert 27 Eisenberg Sasso, Sandy 169 Eli’ezer ben Yehudah (Eliezer Jitzchak Perlman) 83 Elijah ben Solomon Zalman see Vilna Gaon Elijah del Medigo 131 Elijah Levita (Eliyahu ben Asher ha-Levi Ashkenazi) 141 Emden, Jacob 134 Euchel, Isaac 135 Falk, Monica 187 Feuchtwanger, Lion 27, 144 Finkelstein, Louis 202 Flavius Josephus 88 Flechtheim, Alfred 27 Fleg, Edmond 203 Fonrobert, Charlotte 186 Fontane, Theodor 21 Fox, William 31 Francis (Pope) 216 Frankel, Ellen 191 Frankel, Zecharias 48 Freud, Sigmund 25, 148 Friedan, Betty 38 Friedländer, David 17 Friedman, Bruce Jay 146 Friedman, Norman L. 31 Frymer-Kensky, Tikva 183 Gans, David 134 Geiger, Abraham 46–47, 135

234 Geller, Laura 175 Gendler, Mary 171 Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom) 128, 130 Gilbert, Jean 29 Gilbert, Robert 28–30 Goldhagen, Daniel 36 Goldstein, Elyse 195 Goldstein, Moritz 26–27, 38, 41, 139 Goldwyn, Sam 31 Graetz, Heinrich 199 Graetz, Naomi 191 Greenberg, Blu 174, 176 Greenberg, Joanne 179 Grossmann, David 157 Gruber Garvey, Ellen 39, 178 Grünwald, Max 22–23 Guggenheimer, Sarah 142 Guttmann, Julius 107 Ha’am, Achad 20, 136 Halpérin, Jean 206 Hammer, Jill 191 Harries, Richard 226 Hasan-Rokem, Galit 190 Hayman, Paula 184, 189 Heine, Heinrich 10, 139, 163–164 Hengel, Martin 12–13 Henreid, Paul 31 Herrera, Abraham Cohen de 134 Hertz, Joseph Herman 202, 220 Herz, Henriette 141 Herzl, Theodor 143, 208 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 136–137, 200 Heschel, Susannah 174–175, 178, 195 Hess, Tamar 190 Heymann, Werner Richard 29–30, 32 Hillel 53, 177–178 Hirsch, Samson Raphael 47, 142 Hirsch, Samuel 136 Horkheimer, Max 35, 37 Hussar, Fr. Bruno 214 Ibn Khaldun 92 ibn Rushd (lat. Averroes) 114, 118, 121, 127–128, 131, 133 ibn Sīnā (lat. Avicenna) 117–118, 121–123, 133 Isaac Israeli 106, 115 Isaac, Jules 203–204 Itzig, Isaak Daniel 17 Jabotinsky, Vladimir 20 Jacob Anatoli 131 Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi 140 Janowitz, Naomi 173

Index Jessner, Leopold 159 John Paul II (Pope) 207–208 John XXIII (Pope) 204, 207 Joseph ben Shem Tov 130 Joseph ibn Kaspi 128 Joseph ibn Zaddik 119 Joseph Taitatzak 132 Juan de Prado 134 Judah Messer Leon 131 Kafka, Franz 25–27, 142–143 Kahn, Susan 99, 186 Kant, Immanuel 47, 135–136 Kaplan, Mordecai 61, 135–136 Kasher, Moshe 41 Kaufman, Shirley 190 Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie 174, 177, 187 Kessler, Edward 225 Khazzoom, Loolwa 195 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 39–40 Klepfisz, Irena 174, 177, 187 Koltun, Elizabeth 170–171 Kook, Rav Abraham HaCohen 136 Kraemer, Ross 184 Kraft, Werner 142 Krajewska, Monika 39 Krajewski, Stanisław 39 Krochmal, Nachman 136 Kronish, Ron 213 Kuh, Ephraim Moses 141 Kurzweil, Baruch 155 Kuzmack, Linda 171 Laemmle, Carl 31 Landauer, Gustav 144 Lapid, Shulamit 160 Lasker-Schüler, Else 164 Lasky, Jesse 31 Leibowitz, Yeshayahu 136–137 Lelchuk, Allen 148 Leone da Modena 132 Leone Ebreo see Abravanel, Judah Leone Sommo de Porte Leone see Yehudah Sommo Lerman, Rhoda 179 Lerner, Motti 161 Levi ben Gershom see Gersonides Levin, Hanoch 160, 162, 184 Levinas, Emmanuel 136–137, 222 Levine Melammed, Renee 184 Levitt, Laura 187 Lewald, Fanny 141

235

2 Names Liebermann, Max 27 Lilienblum, Moshe Leib 159 Lipstadt, Deborah 175 Lispector, Clarice (Chaya) 34, 140, 149 Locke, John 47, 134 Loew, Judah 135 Loew, Marcus 31 Loewe, Heinrich Eljakim 76 Luria, Isaac 134 Luther, Martin 163, 200, 209, 211 Luzzato, Moshe Ḥaim 131, 159 Magen, Mira 157 Maggid, Alizia 177 Maimon, Salomon 135, 141 Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, Rambam) 50, 57, 72, 107, 111, 114, 116–117, 119–120, 123–126, 128, 134, 198 Malamud, Bernard 145 Manasse ben Israel 199 Mapu, Abraham 149 Mattuck, Israel 220 Mead, Margaret 202 Megged, Aharon 154 Menachem ben Solomon Meiri (Rabbi Hameiri) 199 Mendele Mocher Sforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovich) 20, 144, 150 Mendelssohn, Moses 17, 41, 96, 135, 141, 199 Michel, Sonya 171 Montefiore, Claude 202 Mose de León 87 Moses ben Ezra 119 Moses ben Maimon see Maimonides Moses of Salerno 131 Moshe ben Tibbon 127 Moshe Narbonni 128, 130 Mossinson, Yigal 160 Mühsam, Erich 144 Munk, Salomon 106–108, 118 Namdar, Reuven (Ruby) 36, 158 Neusner, Jacob 12, 184 Niditch, Susan 183 Niebuhr, Reinhold 202 Orenstein, Debra 191 Ostriker, Alicia 191–192 Oz, Amos 37, 155 Ozick, Cynthia 34, 147, 175–176, 179 Pardes, Ilana 183 Parkes, James 203 Pateman, Carol 187

Paul VI (Pope) 200, 207 Peretz, Isaac Leib 145 Peskowitz, Miriam 186–187 Philo of Alexandria 88, 108, 110–111 Piercy, Marge 190 Pines, Shlomo 108 Pisarek, Abraham 30 Pius X (Pope) 208 Pius XII (Pope) 204 Plaskow, Judith 170–173, 175–176, 182, 187–189, 192 Pollegar, Isaac 128 Potok, Chaim 38, 146 Preuss, Hugo 27 Priesand, Sally 169 Rabbinic Acronyms – Maharal (of Prague) see Loew, Judah – Rabbenu ha Qadosh see Yehudah ha-Nasi – Rabbi Hameiri see Menachem ben Solomon Meiri – Ramah see Meir ben Todros HaLevi Abulafia – Rambam see Maimonides – Rashba see Salomo ibn Adret – Rashbi see Shimon bar Yohai – Rashi see Shelomo Yitzchaki – Ribaz see Yohanan ben Zakkai Rapaport, Nessa 179 Rapoport, Shoyme Zaynvl see An-ski, Salomon Rathenau, Walter 27 Rav Hai Gaon 72 Reguer, Sara 175 Reinhardt, Max 27 Riegner, Gerhart Moritz 205–206, 210 Riskin, Shlomo 215 Romney Wegner, Judith 179–180 Rosen, David 219 Rosen, Norma 191 Rosenberg, Shalom 108 Rosenthal, Hans 35 Rosenzweig, Franz 109, 136, 200 Rossi, Azaria de 132 Rotem, Yehudit 157 Roth, Henry 145

236 Roth, Joseph 27, 143 Roth, Philip 33–34, 37, 40, 147–148 Rubin, Reuven 37, 96 Ruether, Rosemary 222–223 Ruttenberg, Danya 194 Saʿadia Gaon (Saʿadia ben Joseph al-Fayyūmī) 112–113, 115–116, 122–123, 125, 127 Saʿadja ibn Danān 92 Sachs, Nelly 150, 165 Saʿd ibn Manṣūr ibn Kammūna 117 Salomon ben Abraham 126 Salomon ben Lavi 123 Salomon ibn Adret (Rashba) 126 Salomon ibn Gabirol 118–119, 121, 123 Samuel ben Hophni 117 Sandler, Adam 41 Sarug, Israel 134 Satanov, Isaac 135 Satlof, Claire 179 Schachnowitz, Selig 142 Schnitzler, Arthur 143 Scholem, Gershom 11, 28, 143 Schönberg, Arnold 27 Schreiber, Moses 142 Schulberg, Benjamin Percival (B.P.) 31 Seghers, Anna 144 Seinfeld, Jerry 41 Sforno, Obadiah ben Jacob 199 Shacham, Nathan 154 Shalev, Zeruya 157 Shamir, Moshe 153, 162 Shelach, Uriel (Yonatan Ratosh; born: Uriel Heilperin) 152 Shelomo Yitzchaki (Rashi) 10, 12, 160 Shem Tov ben Joseph ibn Shem Tov 130 Shem Tov ibn Joseph Falaquera 127 Shemaria of Crete 131 Shimon bar Yohai (Rashbi) 87 Shlomo Zalmen b. Yehudah Leib Katz 82 Shlonsky, Avraham 153, 166 Shmuel ben Tibbon 126–127 Shneer, David 195 Shoham, Matityahu 159 Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich) 20, 145 Silverman, Sarah 41 Simeon ben Tzemach 130 Simon, James Henry 22 Singer, Isaac Bashevis 145, 147 Smilanski, Moshe (Havaja Mussa) 151 Smolenskin, Perez 149

Index Sobol, Joshua 160–162 Sokoloff, Naomi 185 Sokolow, Nahum 208 Soloveitchik, Joseph Ber 136, 206, 222 Spielberg, Steven 33 Spinoza, Baruch de 17, 23, 41, 108, 134–135, 146 Starr Sered, Susan 184 Steinem, Gloria 38 Stern, Arleen 127, 175 Sternberg, Sir Sigmund 218 Strauss, Leo 107, 124 Tchernichovsky, Shaul 165 Tenenbaum, Shelly 182 Tergit, Gabriele 27 Tirosh-Rothchild, Hava 185 Torton Beck, Evelyn 174 Trible, Phyllis 171–172 Tucholsky, Kurt 139 Umansky, Ellen 189–190 Unger, Menashe 141 Uriel da Costa 134 Valler, Shulamit 186 Varnhagen, Rahel 141 Vigée, Claude 165 Vilna Gaon (Elijah ben Solomon Zalman) 135, 137 Vital, Chaim 158 Waskow, Arthur 178 Wassermann, Jakob 143 Weidman Schneider, Susan 174 Weinreich, Max 97–98 Weinreich, Uriel 98 Wenig, Margaret 173 Werfel, Franz 139, 144 Wessely, Hartwig 17 Wessely, Naftali Herz 135 Wolfskehl, Karl 164 Yehoshua, Abraham B. 156 Yehudah ben Shelomo al-Ḥarīzī 81 Yehudah ben Tibbon 127 Yehudah Halevi 121–123, 198 Yehudah ha-Nasi (Rabbenu ha Qadosch) 72 Yehudah Sommo (Leone Sommo de Porte Leone) 159 Yohanan Alemanno 132 Yohanan ben Zakkai (Ribaz) 12, 79, 179 Yūsuf al-Baṣīr 117 Zach, Nathan (Harry Seitelbach) 166–167 Zerahiah ben Shealtiel Ḥen 131 Zierler, Wendy 190 Zukor, Adolph 31

237

3 Keywords Zunz, Leopold 10–13, 80, 135 Zweig, Arnold 27, 144

3

Zweig, Max

142, 159

Keywords

abortion 55 adoption 54, 192 Afghan Geniza 103 Akedah (Binding of Isaac) 143, 191 Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeyter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland 23 Aliyah 151 American Conference of Christians and Jews 203 American Jewish Committee 206 Amicizia Ebraico-cristiana di Firenze 203 Anti-Defamation League 206, 208, 219 anti-Semitism 20–21, 25, 27–28, 31, 35, 40, 42, 143, 152, 170, 173, 175, 177, 181, 201–204, 209, 212, 215, 222–223, 228 Aramaic 63, 72–73, 75–81, 84–87, 90–91, 93–96, 99, 101, 103–104, 108, 112 Aristotelianism 109, 114, 131–132, 134 Ashkenas, Ashkenazim 16 assimilation 18, 23–25, 73, 99, 135, 142–143, 146, 156, 164 aufruf (Yiddish/German: calling-up) 63 Babylonian Exile 16, 77 Balfour Declaration 215 Bar/Bat Mitzvah 61 Berlin 10, 13, 17–22, 26–28, 30, 34–37, 40, 83, 100, 107, 134–135, 141, 145 Bʾnai Bʾrith 206 Brit Milah 59 f. Cairo Geniza 87–88, 92 calendar 66 canon 9, 110, 162 Center for Jewish–Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC) 215 circumcision 51, 60, 192 commentary 72, 89, 109–110, 133, 135, 180 Conservative 44, 48, 51–53, 62, 66–67, 71, 135, 170, 175, 206 contraception 53, 55, 224 conversion 51–52, 54, 60, 73, 89, 121, 192, 201–202, 220 covenant 51, 123, 205, 207, 209, 222 Covenant theology 222 creatio ex nihilo 119, 121, 125–126, 128, 130

Dabru Emet 215 Dead Sea Scrolls 78–79, 85, 88, 221 Decalogue 50, 65–66 diaspora 9, 11, 16, 24, 28, 35–37, 40, 42, 54, 67–70, 73–74, 79, 86–89, 93–94, 102, 136, 140, 152–153, 166–167, 184, 213 Diasporism 37, 40 divorce 45–46, 147, 192–194, 224 Ecclesiastes/Qohelet 197 education 17, 19–20 emancipation 18, 20, 73, 99, 142, 167, 200 Enlightenment 16, 44, 46–48, 56 Enlightenment/Haskala 17–19, 83, 99, 134–135, 141, 149 Eretz Israel 9, 16, 62, 67, 116, 140, 151, 153, 159, 205, 208 eruv 18 expulsion 19, 44, 106, 131, 141, 200 French Revolution 16, 45 funeral 64 gaonic 85, 87 globalization 92, 198 goy/goyim 33, 199, 201 Grand Sanhédrin (France) 44, 199 Greek (language) 88 Ğudezmo (ladino) 75, 93 Haggadah 68 Halakhah 124, 131–134, 137, 170–171, 173, 175–178, 181, 188, 199, 220, 226 Hallel 68–71 Ḥanukkah 69–70 Ḥaredim 101 Ḥasidim 101 Havurah Movement 169, 175 Hebrew 75 Hebrew Alphabet 72, 135 Holocaust, Shoah 11, 28, 33, 35–36, 38, 40, 54, 70, 136, 147, 154–155, 162, 175, 177, 193, 198, 200, 202, 208, 221–222 homosexuality 62 human rights 194, 198 Hylomorphism 119 idolatry 50, 165, 198, 216 In vitro fertilization 52–53

238 integration 13, 18–20, 27, 75, 163, 170, 174, 179, 182, 213 International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ILC) 207, 211 International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID) 218 International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ) 202–204, 211, 224 International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) 206–208, 211, 215 Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI) 213 Israel (State of) 11, 35, 37, 70–71, 137, 140, 166–167, 170, 201–202, 208, 213 Israeli Chief Rabbinate 51, 208, 214, 219–221 Jewish languages 74–76, 108 Jewish Renaissance 23, 28 Jewish Theological Seminary 11–12, 14, 202, 218 Judeo-Arabic 89 Judeo-languages 75 Judeo-Persian 102 Jüdischer Kulturbund 30 Kabbalah 118, 123, 129, 132–134, 137, 167 Kaddish 64 Kashrut 58–59 Kiddush 66, 68 kiddushin (betrothal) 63 King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) 219 London Society for the Study of Religion 202 London Society of Jews and Christians 202 Maccabees 70 Marrakesh Declaration 214 marriage 18, 25, 45–46, 51, 53–54, 62–64, 146–147, 187, 189, 192 marriage contract/ketubbah 51, 63–64, 91, 187, 189 Maskilim 83, 99, 149 Masoretes 81 matrilineal descent 51 matzah 67 Messiah 63, 116, 144, 148, 158, 199, 209, 212–213, 226 Midrash 48, 109, 133, 147, 150, 178, 180, 189, 221 migration 18–20, 22, 30, 33, 35 mikveh 51, 194

Index Minor Fasts 69–70 Mishnah 48, 50, 55–58, 61, 66, 69, 72, 80, 89, 92, 150, 179, 184, 221 Mishne Torah 125–126 mission 205 – (Christians towards Jews) 205 mohel/mohelet 60 mourning 64–65, 70 Nag Hammadi 221 National Conference of Jews and Christians 202 National Socialism 28, 30, 200 neo-Platonism 109, 114, 121, 132 nissuʾin (marriage) 63 Nostra Aetate 11, 204, 207–208, 216 Odessa 19, 35, 150 Orthodox 10, 18, 20, 26, 44, 47, 51–52, 62, 66, 134–135, 163, 174–175, 194, 196, 222 Oslo Peace Accords 209 Pact of ‘Umar 73 Palestine 13, 28, 35, 37, 47, 77, 79, 85–86, 109, 140, 143, 151–153, 156, 159–160, 167, 170, 193–194, 209, 212–214, 219 passages of life 59 Passover 65, 67, 70, 173, 188 patrilineal descent 52 piyyut 80, 85 pogrom 11 Prague 25, 34, 74, 135, 142, 157, 208, 211 pregnancy 55 Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) 53 proselytism 205, 221 Purim 69–70, 159, 162 Qumran 79, 88 rabbinic literature 14, 79, 85, 88, 110 Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) 206 Reform 10–11, 18, 44, 46–48, 51–52, 62, 67, 135, 169–170, 175, 193, 195–196, 206, 218 Romaniotes 89, 133 Rosh Hashanah 65, 68–69 Rosh Hodesh 69, 176 Sabbath 18, 46, 56, 60, 65–70, 117, 157, 173 Second Vatican Council 11–12, 204, 207 secularization 37, 49, 57–58, 87, 135, 137, 140–141, 150–151, 155, 157–158, 161, 170, 174, 178, 198, 200–201, 209, 213, 215–216, 224–225 Seder 67 Seelisberg Conference 203, 212 Sepharad, Sephardim 16–17, 19, 80–83, 87, 89, 93–95, 130, 132–133

3 Keywords Septuagint 76, 88, 110, 162 sexuality 25, 34, 39, 56, 61–64, 148–149, 173, 180, 186–187, 193–194, 223–225 Shavuʿot 65, 67–68 shechita 58–59 shofar 69 Simhat Bat 59 Simhat Torah 68 Sukkot 65, 67–68 Sura 115 tallit (prayer shawl) 61, 63, 193 Talmud 11, 33, 48–50, 55–56, 58, 61, 63, 66, 70, 80, 86–87, 92, 103, 109, 117, 125–126, 130, 140, 149–150, 158, 166, 171, 198, 221 Talmud Bavli 80, 87, 103 Talmud Yerushalmi 80, 86 Targum 85, 87 tefillin (phylacteries) 61, 193 Tel Aviv 20, 30, 35, 37, 40, 155, 159–161 Temple (Jerusalem) 9, 16, 79, 155, 184 theodicy 49, 221 Tisha BʾAv 69–70 Tosefta 80 Ultra-Orthodox 151 urbanization 20 Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden 10, 109

239 vernacular 48, 60, 74–75, 77, 93, 96–97, 99, 101 Vienna 25, 28, 34, 95, 219 wedding 46, 62–64 Weimar Republic 27–30 Wissenschaft des Judentums 10, 134–135 World Congress of Faiths 220 World Council of Churches (WCC) 204–205, 207–209 World Jewish Congress (WJC), 206–207 World War I 27, 29 World War II 11, 15, 28, 35, 198 World’s Parliament of Religions (WPR) 219 f. yeshiva 10 Yiddish 20, 26, 31, 33, 63–64, 75–76, 82–83, 95–99, 101, 140–141, 144–149, 151, 155, 159, 165, 184 Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut (YIVO) 98, 100–101 Yom Ha-Atzmaʾut 69, 71 Yom Ha-Shoʾah 69–70 Yom Kippur 60, 65, 68–70, 156 Zionism 20–21, 26, 28, 36–37, 40, 101, 137, 139, 143–144, 146, 149, 151–152, 155, 157, 159, 165, 167, 170, 208, 215, 217 – Christian Zionism 215