Reconstructing Ashkenaz

The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000–1250By David Malkiel

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5950-2

Contents

Preface............................ix1 Image............................12 Adumbrations.....................623 Martyrdom........................734 Survival.........................955 Apostates........................1146 Deviance.........................1487 Christians.......................2008 Sepharad.........................234Notes..............................263Index..............................343

Chapter One

Image

Was it for you, oh giants of the Talmud, that he toiled? He was forced to create a book that would provide refuge from the Greek philosophers, to afford some distance from Aristotle and Galen. Have you heard their words? Have you gone astray after their proofs? Not for you, my masters. Moses ben Nahman, letter to northern France

These words were penned in 1232 by Moses Nahmanides, doyen of Aragonese Jewry, in an effort to dissuade the leading rabbis of northern France from supporting a campaign against the teachings of Moses Maimonides. Maimonides should not be condemned, reasons Nahmanides, because his purpose was noble: He sought to provide the Jews of Arab lands with a theology compatible with the Greco-Arabic science and philosophy in which they were steeped, but one that would also safeguard them from the heresies of the ancient Greeks. Nahmanides explains to his northern addressees that they cannot possibly appreciate the challenge facing Maimonides because they were never exposed to philosophy and its perils.

Nahmanides' passage is among the earliest recorded testimonies by an outsider about the nature of Jewish culture in Ashkenaz, or Franco-Germany, in the Middle Ages, which is the subject of this book. In referring to the northern rabbis as giants of the Talmud, Nahmanides spotlights the centrality of the Talmud in the culture of Franco-German Jewry, and more important for his purpose, he emphasizes the Ashkenazic Jews' innocence of Greco-Arabic philosophical thought and its pernicious theological impact.

The comparison between Spain and Ashkenaz has been a common theme in the historiography of medieval Jewry, although intellectual horizons is only one issue concerning what differentiates the two cultures. And just as the comparative exercise served Nahmanides in the raging Maimonidean controversy, so too has it served a variety of agendas in modern Jewish historiography. Surveying the range of portrayals of medieval Ashkenaz offered by latter-day historians is the goal of this first chapter, which sets the stage for the reexamination of the prevailing image.

Medieval and Early Modern Perspectives

Modern Jewish historiography begins in nineteenth-century Germany, in the wake of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and these early historians certainly had a great deal to say about the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz for reasons particular to their own historical context. But as the Nahmanides quote illustrates, characterizations appear before the modern era in various genres, and for the most part these early discussions were known to modern historians and provided grist for their mills. Our story begins, therefore, in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Jewish writers rarely left accounts of historical events involving medieval Jews or Jewish communities. The most popular genre of writing about the past is the so-called chain of tradition, which lists scores of rabbis in chronological order, from master to disciple, to convince the reader of the integrity of the Oral Law. Although these texts usually focus on late antiquity, they sometimes continue into the Middle Ages, naming the heads of the Babylonian academies. Abraham ibn Daud's Book of Tradition, written in twelfth-century Toledo, falls within this genre and was highly influential. At the end of his particular chain, which concentrates on the Jews of Andalusia, Ibn Daud turns his gaze on those of northern Europe: "We have heard that in France there are great scholars and geonim, and that each and every one of them is a rabbi who inherits the Torah appropriately, [that is,] with the intention of passing it on." Ibn Daud names a few scholars from Narbonne, which was relatively nearby, and then adds the name of the greatest of the French tosafists or glossators, Jacob of Ramerupt, who is generally known as Rabbenu Tam. Clearly the Jews of France had acquired a reputation for excellence in rabbinic scholarship, word of which had reached the Iberian peninsula. This was also the impression of Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the Jewish communities of southern France in the twelfth century as he began his journey to the East. In his well-known itinerary, Benjamin expresses great respect for their institutions of rabbinic scholarship, singling out the academy of Rabad, that is, Abraham ben David of Posquières, the leading talmudist of southern France.

At around the same time, Moses Maimonides notes a distinction between the halakhic expertise of rabbis living in the Christian domain and those of the Islamic realm. He observes that the scholars of "France" (i.e., the lands of the Franks) and of the lands of the uncircumcised generally (i.e., Christendom), are not expert at the laws of jurisprudence (dinin) "because they do not use them extensively, since the uncircumcized do not allow them to judge, as the Ishmaelites do. Thus, when a case comes before them, they go on and on, and do not know it [the law] until they search the Talmud thoroughly, as we do today regarding the laws of sacrifices, for we do not deal with them." True or not, this is an astute suggestion about the significance of the political-religious context for the course of halakhic scholarship in Europe.

In contrast to the halakhic expertise of the Franco-German scholars, Jews from the Islamic realm noted their ignorance of other disciplines. Sephardic Jews saw their Ashkenazic brethren as deficient in Hebrew language and literature, in which realms the Sephardic Jews had made great strides under the influence of Arabic linguistics and literature. For instance, Joseph Kimhi, a Spaniard who settled in Provence in the mid-twelfth century, disparages the contribution of French Jewry—primarily Jacob of Ramerupt—to the linguistic debate about the nature of Hebrew, an issue over which Menahem ben Saruq and Dunash ben Labrat, the master grammarians of tenth-century Spain, had locked horns: "The Jews of France and environs engaged primarily in Talmud, and occasionally in Bible ... but not in Hebrew usage, and thus they did not gain mastery thereof." A bit later, Judah Alharizi, who pioneered Hebrew maqamah (rhymed-prose tales interspersed with metered verse), terms the poetry of French Jewry "not worth hearing ... hard as iron ... their rhymes are full of errors, they strain for innovation but are incomprehensible without explication." He sums up, "When the sages of France and of Greece set their hearts on the Torah and claimed its domain, all knowledge and wisdom they won for themselves—but abandoned song's kingdom to Spain."

The Jews of Germany and France were weak in Hebrew linguistics because they knew no Arabic, the language used by the Andalusian giants even when discussing Hebrew language. This curricular handicap also denied them access to the scientific achievements of the Islamic world, including those of its Jewish thinkers. In reply to a letter from Samuel...