Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
NUMBER 194
To understand the different responses to religious confrontation in the two realms, modern scholars have focused on the
intensity of the cultural interaction with the Christian environment. The Jews of Spain are known to have been deeply integrated into the overall political, economic and social structure.
They were also highly acculturated, with the relatively affluent
acquiring a broad general education in addition to the traditional
Jewish curriculum, and exhibiting cultural tastes similar to those
of their Gentile neighbours. In contrast, the Jews of medieval
Ashkenaz are usually depicted as having shared neither of these
characteristics, and for many historians their social and cultural
insularity was the key to their steadfastness in 1096.
Historians have recently begun to question the reliability of the
Hebrew First Crusade narratives, and to suggest that the apostates were more numerous and apostasy less atypical of the 1096
experience than was once thought.2 If true, this new perspective is
of singular importance, because it undermines the Ashkenaz
Sepharad dichotomy: one can no longer reduce the medieval
experience to a binary structure of cultural engagement versus
insularity. Deliberation between these two options has characterized the internal debate over Jewish identity throughout Jewish
history. The Old Testament is replete with warnings about the
dangers of fraternizing with idolatrous neighbours, while in Late
Antiquity the following talmudic dictum succinctly expresses
a positive attitude towards cultural engagement: He found a
pomegranate, ate its contents and disposed of its peel.3 The
Maimonidean Controversy, which erupted in Maimonides lifetime and repeatedly thereafter through the ages, surrounded this
same dilemma.
For modern historians, beginning with the nineteenth-century
devotees of the Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums),
2
See Kenneth Stow, Conversion, Apostasy, and Apprehensiveness: Emicho of
Flonheim and the Fear of Jews in the Twelfth Century, Speculum, lxxvi (2001),
933. Yet Stow goes too far when he writes: All of the chronicles . . . stress the frequency
of conversion, and the Hebrew chronicles are concerned as much with conversion to
Christianity and return to Judaism as they are with Kiddush HaShem (ibid., 923,
925). See also Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish
Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia, 2004), 58; Simon Schwarzfuchs, The
Place of the Crusades in Jewish History [in Hebrew], in Menahem Ben-Sasson,
Robert Bonfil and Joseph R. Hacker (eds.), Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry
[in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1989), 25167.
3
Hagigah, 15b. This issue is at the heart of the most recent survey of Jewish history:
David Biale (ed.), Cultures of the Jews: A New History (New York, 2002).
NUMBER 194
I
NUMBERS
4
Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et chretiens dans le monde occidental, 4301096 (Paris,
1960), 138.
NUMBER 194
10
NUMBER 194
for, medieval Jewish life. However, the impact of this shift for the
heroic image of Ashkenazic Jewry has been blunted in two ways:
by maintaining that it compared favourably with that of Spain;
and by classifying the Franco-German apostates as predominantly the victims of coerced baptism.
II
COERCION
11
this distinction catches the modern reader by surprise and highlights its anachronistic and tendentious nature.
The classic example of the conflation of coerced and voluntary
apostasy is the case of the son of Gershom of Mainz, the spiritual
and communal leader of German Jewry in the tenth century.
Modern scholars could not imagine that the apostasy of this
mans son could have been anything but coerced, and so, beginning with Heinrich Graetz, they attached the story of Gershoms
son to the persecution of Mainz Jewry in 1012. Most narratives of
this episode report the quick reversion of the forced apostates of
Mainz and note that Gershoms son died before he was able to
revert. This circumstance, they posit, explains the tradition that
Rabbenu Gershom observed a fourteen-day period of mourning
for his son, rather than the seven days mandated by Jewish
tradition.18
A closer look at the sources concerning the mourning observed
by Gershom illustrates the manipulation of this story by medieval
rabbis and thus also later by modern historians. Isaac ben Moses
of Vienna (d. c.1250), the earliest source, states the rule that one
should not mourn villains who died unrepentant, but then adds
the following caveat: However, in times of destruction,19 I heard
from my teacher, Rabbi Samson [of Coucy], that Gershom
mourned for fourteen days for his son that apostatized.20 Isaac
does not impute to his teacher the assumption that Gershoms
child was forcibly converted; Samson merely reports the apostasy
18
Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den altesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart,
4th edn, 11 vols. (Leipzig, 187097), v, 3379, 4724 (n. 22). Shlomo Eidelberg
rejects the possibility that Gershoms son apostatized during the 1012 persecution
on the grounds that he could not possibly have preferred apostasy to banishment,
which was the available alternative. See Gershom ben Judah, Responsa, ed. Shlomo
Eidelberg (New York, 1956), 11. For another critique of Graetzs reconstruction, see
H. Tykocinski, Die Verfolgung der Juden in Mainz im Jahre 1012, in Beitrage zur
Geschichte der deutschen Juden: Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstage Martin Philippsons
(Leipzig, 1916), 23. On the Mainz persecution, see also Avigdor Aptowitzer,
Introduction to Sefer Rabiah [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1938), 331; James Parkes, The
Jew in the Medieval Community: A Study of his Political and Economic Situation (London,
1938), 38; Avraham Grossman, The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: Their Lives, Leadership
and Works (9001096) [in Hebrew], 3rd edn (Jerusalem, 2001), 90, 112; Grossman,
Roots of Kiddush Hashem, 125; Grossman, Early Sages of France, 502; David Malkiel,
JewishChristian Relations in Europe, 8401096: A Historiographical Review,
Jl Medieval Hist., xxix (2003), 7980.
19
i.e. shemad, which can refer to physical or spiritual destruction, namely apostasy.
20
Isaac ben Moses of Vienna, Or Zaru 6a [Sown Light] (Zhitomir, 1862), pt 2, 88c,
x428.
12
NUMBER 194
(cont. on p. 13)
13
This ambiguity also appears in a responsum by Rashi, concerning two families who bait each other incessantly. The community
orders them to desist, and one family refuses to comply. A
member of the other family promptly reminds his adversary
that he had been polluted during the period of destruction. Then one of
them stood and told him: Do not mention [it], for this has been the
subject of a decree, and he did not state who had issued the relevant
decree. And now it has been learned that Rabbenu Gershom decreed
that anyone who mentions this shall be excommunicated.26
The protagonist that mentions Gershoms ban uses the expression during the period of destruction, which suggests that he
thought, or at least contended, that Gershoms ban applied
only to coerced apostates. This, however, is open to question,
because if a copyist erroneously had added just one letter to this
phrase, he would have transformed its meaning: bmy hShmd
means in the waters of destruction, a common epithet for baptism, free of any element of coercion, but bymy hShmd refers to a
period of persecution and thus to coerced apostasy. Medieval
Hebrew manuscripts are rife with scribal errors of this kind,
and hence whether Gershoms edict covered voluntary as well
as coerced apostasy cannot be determined. The confusion in
this case is, I think, typical of the absence of unequivocal distinctions in the high Middle Ages between coerced and voluntary
baptism, which suggests that to eleventh-century Jews such a
distinction was unclear, unimportant or both.
A pair of contradictory rulings by Gershom of Mainz further
illustrates this point. In one text Gershom allows a penitent apostate of priestly descent to perform the priestly blessing in the
synagogue, trumpeting the importance of allowing such a
person to return to his original status;27 but in another
responsum on the same case Gershom issues the opposite decision.28 It has been suggested that the two responsa actually deal
(n. 25 cont.)
Twelfth-Century Ashkenaz, Jl Medieval and Early Modern Studies, xxix (1999), 436
41.
26
Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (hereafter Rashi), Responsa, ed. Israel Elfenbein
(New York, 1943), 82, no. 70.
27
Gershom ben Judah, Responsa, ed. Eidelberg, 5760, no. 4; Simhah ben Samuel
of Vitry, Mahzor Vitry, ed. Simon Hurwitz (Nuremberg, 1923), 97, x125 and later
sources.
28
Gershom ben Judah, Responsa, ed. Eidelberg, 601, no. 5; Responsa and Rulings by
French and German Rabbis [in Hebrew], ed. Ephraim Kupfer (Jerusalem, 1973), 292.
14
NUMBER 194
with different cases: the former with a coerced apostate and the
latter with a voluntary one, towards whose predicament Gershom
might have been less sympathetic.29 This, however, is a dubious
distinction, for we are told that the apostate under discussion had
become a clergyman, and it is therefore unlikely that his apostasy
was coerced.30 Moreover, Rashi allows a penitent priest-apostate
to resume his priestly status and functions whether or not his
apostasy was coerced.31 Only much later, in sixteenth-century
Safed, does Joseph Karo introduce the distinction between voluntary or involuntary apostasy into the legal literature once and
for all.32
The absence of a clear distinction between coerced and voluntary apostasy also emerges from Sefer Hasidim (Book of the
Pious), an ethical work of thirteenth-century Germany, consist29
Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 1256. Shlomo Eidelberg suggests that
Gershom only ruled stringently when the apostate had become a leader or officiant
in the service of idolatry, but, ironically, Grossman rejects this solution because
Gershoms two decisions present an identical set of circumstances. Incidentally,
Grossmans interpretation suggests that he subscribes to the view that Gershoms
son was the victim of forced baptism, rather than voluntary apostasy, although he
makes no explicit statement to this effect.
30
Eliezer the Great, a student of Gershom, did distinguish clearly between voluntary and coerced apostates, allowing only the latter to perform the priestly blessing,
but his responsum was unknown in the Middle Ages: see Responsa of the Tosafists [in
Hebrew], ed. Irving A. Agus (New York, 1954), 456; Grossman, Early Sages of
Ashkenaz, 2245. The ruling of Joseph Bonfils resembles that of Maimonides, in
the tradition of the Babylonian Gaonim: see Zedekiah ben Abraham, Shibolei
ha-Leqet ha-Shalem [Complete Sheaves of Gleanings], ed. Samuel K. Mirsky
(New York, 1966), 231, x33. Grossman also cites Judah ha-Kohen, a student of
Gershom, but does not provide a specific primary source.
31
The Tosafists cite Rashis stance on the priest-apostate (which was also
Gershoms lenient position), but only after they offer the traditional, more stringent
view, signifying that their stance on this issue was anything but slavish: see Tosafot on
Menahot, 109r, s.v. lo yeshamshu; Tosafot on Sotah, 39r, s.v. ve-khi mehader. But cf.
Tosafot on Ta 6anit, 27r, s.v. iy mah, which only offers the lenient ruling. Note that Meir
ben Barukh of Rothenburg refuses to follow Rashi: he rules that one does not instruct
the penitent priest to perform the priestly blessing, but that if he does so of his own
accord, he may be allowed to proceed. See Jacob ben Asher, Arba 6ah Turim [Four
Rows], pt 1, x128.
32
Joseph Karo, Bet Yosef [House of Joseph] on Arba 6ah Turim, pt 1, x128; Shulhan
Arukh [Set Table], n. 37. Karos innovation can be attributed, at least partly, to the loss
of tens of thousands of souls to Catholicism in Spain between 1391 and 1492, a
catastrophe which generated a wealth of rabbinic discourse on the subject of apostasy,
with an abundance of new insights. See Simhah Assaf, The Conversos of Spain and
Portugal in the Responsa Literature [in Hebrew], in his In the Tent of Jacob [in
Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1943), 14580; B. Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain: From
the Late 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources,
3rd edn (Ithaca, 1999).
15
Sefer Hasidim [Book of the Pious], ed. Jehuda Wistinetzki and Jakob Freimann
(Frankfurt am Main, 1924), 465, x1922. These dicta do not support Haym
Soloveitchiks claim that the Jews of Ashkenaz never wondered to what extent the
individual was simply a victim of circumstances and to what extent his conduct was a
consequence of his inner ambiguities: see Haym Soloveitchik, Religious Law and
Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example, Assoc. for Jewish Studies Rev., xii (1987),
215.
34
Alfred Haverkamp, Baptised Jews in German Lands during the Twelfth
Century, in Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen (eds.), Jews and Christians in
Twelfth-Century Europe (Notre Dame, Ind., 2001), 262. See also Baron, Social and
Religious History of the Jews, iv, 146.
35
Abraham Meir Habermann, The Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France
[in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1945), 56.
36
Ibid.
16
NUMBER 194
Ecclesiastical legislation on baptized Jews gives voice to the suspicion that their conversion was either insincere or incomplete.
Burchard of Wormss Decretum, dated 1012, deals extensively
with this problem: converts may be forcibly prevented from
reverting to Judaism; they must not consort with Jews, for fear
that they might revert; lapsed converts are to be treated harshly.38
And this concern was perennial. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran
Council declared: Some . . . who have come to the baptismal
font voluntarily have not departed completely the old self so as
to put on a more perfect one. Since they retain remnants of their
37
Numquam consentit sed penitus contradicit nec rem nec characterem suscipit
sacramenti. See Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, vii, History
(Toronto, 1991), 2434; Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 1013; Baron, Social and
Religious History of the Jews, ix, 13; Walter Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews
(Ebelsbach, 1988), 82.
38
John Gilchrist, The Perception of Jews in the Canon Law in the Period of the
First Two Crusades, Jewish Hist., iii (1988), 13. See also Blumenkranz, Juifs et
chretiens dans le monde occidental, 10434.
17
Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 310; Baron, Social and Religious History of the
Jews, ix, 14. Haverkamp explains that Christians suspected Jewish converts of preserving traces of their Jewish origins even after generations: see his Baptised Jews in
German Lands, 2657.
40
. . . et factus est alienus a communi sepultura Judaeorum, similiter et
Christianorum, tum quia factus fuerat Christianus, tum quia ipse, sicut canis reversus
ad vomitum, rediit ad Judaicam pravitatem: see Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene,
ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols. (Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores, Rolls ser., li,
London, 186871), iii, 13. The translation is from G. G. Coulton, Life in the Middle
Ages, 2nd edn, 4 vols. in 1 (Cambridge, 1954), ii, 34. See also Cecil Roth, A History of
the Jews in England (Oxford, 1941), 1920, 22; Baron, Social and Religious History of the
Jews, iv, 125, 146. The dog-vomit image is based on Prov. 26:11; it had already been
used, in the same context, by Gregory the Great: see Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic
See and the Jews, i, Documents, 4921404 (Toronto, 1988), 5, doc. 5.
41
Cf. the similar issue of the speed with which a woman taken captive by Gentiles
returns to her community. Talmudic law assumes that such a woman has sexual relations with one or more of her captors, but she may return to her husband if she rejoined
her community and family at the earliest possible opportunity, since one could then
assume that her sexual act had not been consensual. For the earliest discussion of this
issue, from late twelfth-century France, see Mordecai ben Hillel on Kiddushin, x568;
Ephraim E. Urbach, The Tosaphists: Their History, Writings and Methods [in Hebrew],
4th edn, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1980), i, 133. See also Gerald I. Blidstein, The Personal
Status of Apostate and Ransomed Women in Medieval Jewish Law [in Hebrew],
Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri, iiiiv (19767), 53.
42
See Adolf Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch [House of Study], 6 vols. (Jerusalem, 1938), v,
14852; Abraham David, Inquiries Concerning the Legend of the Jewish Pope
(cont. on p. 18)
18
NUMBER 194
the Ashkenazic image is that all the apostates (who were few and
coerced) revert to Judaism at the earliest opportunity.43 Reversion is the key to the issue of coerced versus voluntary baptism,
for non-reversion or delayed reversion undermines the edifice
of coercion which underpins the heroic reputation of medieval
Ashkenaz.
The issue of immediate or delayed reversion is not the brainchild of modern historians, but is found in medieval sources. In an
effort to excuse the apostates, one of the Hebrew accounts maintains that in 1096 the community of Regensburg reverted immediately following the departure of the enemies of God, and
performed great acts of penitence, for they did what they did
under great duress.44 In Metz, too, we read that the conversion
lasted only until the days of wrath had passed, after which the
apostates reverted to Judaism with all their heart.45 The pathos
with which the narrator emphasizes that reversion was immediate
and unalloyed betrays the anxiety felt by many contemporaries
concerning the loyalty of these (or any) apostates.
The same chronicler introduces another apologetical element
when he insists that the forced apostates did not deviate from the
dietary laws, and only rarely went to their [Christian] place of
worship. Moreover, we read that the converts Christian neighbours knew of the insincerity of their conversion, and that these
apostates observed the Sabbath laws in full view of the Christian
populace.46 Clearly they thought that, although they could not
yet revert, it was important to exhibit continued fidelity to
Judaism, both actively, by continuing to observe the commandments, and passively, by neglecting Christian rituals.47
(n. 42 cont.)
19
20
NUMBER 194
All the same, Rashi replies vehemently that to abstain from their
wine would shame them, and that coerced apostates could never
bring themselves to offer idolatrous libations (that is, to participate in Christian worship). This formulation links reversion and
coercion. The penitent apostates in question are blameless, writes
Rashi, for everything they did, they did on account of [fear of] the
sword,53 and they turned away [from Christianity] as soon as they
could.54 The question testifies to the prevalent confusion about
the significance of the distinction between forced and voluntary
apostasy. Rashi emphasizes the element of coercion, and, indeed,
this is an exception to the indifference generally exhibited by
medieval authorities. However, by affirming that these apostates
were quick to revert, he grants the premise that the allegiance of a
forced apostate remains suspect until he or she returns to the
fold.55
Elsewhere Rashi writes, of all the forced converts, that their
heart inclines heavenward, for their end testifies to their beginning, that they left and returned when they found salvation.56
This looks like a ringing endorsement of the eternal loyalty of the
forcibly baptized, but, upon closer inspection, the opposite is
clearly the case. Rashi shares the conviction that one can only
be sure that a forced converts heart inclined towards heaven
after his or her return to the fold, when their end testifies to
their beginning; until such time, an apostate is an apostate,
whether baptism was voluntary or coerced.57 That Rashi did
not take reversion for granted is also apparent from his
53
evhat herev, as in Ezek. 21:20. The same phrase appears in the Sefer Hasidim
passage (ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 85, x262) about a community in which
during a time of persecution some were killed and some apostatized with the intention
of returning to Judaism when they could, but they apostatized on account of fear of
the sword .
54
Rashi, Responsa, ed. Elfenbein, 1889, no. 168. The identity of these apostates
and the circumstances of their apostasy are unclear. Ben-Zion Dinur assumes that this
text refers to those Jews who apostatized under threat of death at the hands of the First
Crusaders: Ben-Zion Dinur, Israel and the Diaspora [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1961), pt
2a, p. 43. Ephraim E. Urbach attributes the responsum to Isaac Dampierre (d. 1185?),
but offers no proof for this attribution: Urbach, Tosaphists, i, 2445.
55
Cf., from a later period, Responsa of the Tosafists, ed. Agus, 2312, no. 125.
56
See Judah ben Asher, Zikhron Yehudah [Memory of Judah], ed. Judah Rosenberg
(Berlin, 1846), 52b. For the phrase their end testifies to their beginning, see also
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 26.
57
Cf. Grossmans view that Rashis statement that the heart of the coerced apostates
is directed heavenward is to be taken at face value: Grossman, Early Sages of France,
154.
21
(cont. on p. 22)
22
NUMBER 194
(n. 60 cont.)
after reversion to the fact that political power in medieval Germany was decentralized:
see his Perception and Reception of Repentant Apostates in Medieval Ashkenaz and
Pre-Modern Poland, Assoc. for Jewish Studies Rev., xxi (1996), 313.
61
Rashi, Responsa, ed. Elfenbein, 18990, no. 169. In the late thirteenth century, an
apostate named Andreas from the south of Italy writes that it is well known that poor
apostates escape to places where they are not known and revert to their origin: see
Joseph Shatzmiller, Jewish Converts to Christianity in Medieval Europe, 1200
1500, in Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache and Sylvia Schein (eds.), CrossCultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on his
Sixty-Fifth Birthday (New York, 1995), 315.
62
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 122. This tale is told
by Ephraim ben Jacob of Bonn (b. 1132), who stresses that the reversion occurred in
that same year, namely 1147, and he rather triumphantly contrasts the fate of these
apostates with that of the crusaders, who left their homes never to be seen again.
Oddly, however, Ephraims account does not include any large-scale incidents of
forced baptism that correspond to the story of mass reversion.
63
It is also possible that relocation was a form of exile, a penance for the act of
apostasy: see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, H. Teshuvah, ch. 2, law 4.
23
Gerald Blidstein, too, writes that the apostate had burned all
bridges.66 These scholars reflect the widely held conviction
that in the eyes of his family and community, an apostate ceases
to exist. This idea portrays the medieval Jewish community as
pure, if scarred; there may have been a few apostates, but they
departed the scene. The resultant image is of a homogeneous
community of devoted believers.
The idea that apostates cease to exist, and hence that one must
mourn for them at the time of their apostasy as if they had died,
has no obvious source. Some have inferred this from the case of
Rabbenu Gershoms son, interpreting the rabbis additional week
of mourning as an expression of mourning for the act of apostasy
per se.67 Yet the texts are quite clear that Gershom went
into mourning following his sons death, not his apostasy.68
64
(cont. on p. 24)
24
NUMBER 194
mourning at the time of the apostasy and on its account: see Isaac ben Moses of
Vienna, Or Zaru 6a, pt 2, x428.
69
Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 734, x192, cited by Katz, in his
Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 74.
70
Another Sefer Hasidim passage (ed. Wistinetzki and Freimann, 385, x1572) states
that one whose father apostatizes is called to read from the Torah not as the son of his
father, but rather as the son of his paternal grandfather, by which name he must also
sign contracts. Furthermore, if both his father and his fathers father are apostates, he
should use the name of his paternal great-grandfather. The elimination of any reference to the apostate father intimates that in a certain sense he ceases to exist. See also
Israel Isserlein, Terumat ha-Deshen [Offering of Ashes], pt 1, no. 21.
71
For the suggestion that apostasy is tantamount to death, see Sanhedrin, 60r (on
cursing God); N. Z. Y. Berlin on She8iltot, no. 110. The link was noted by Reuven
Margaliyot, in his commentary to his own edition of Sefer Hasidim (Jerusalem, 1957),
187, x190.
25
72
Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 1115; see also
Malkiel, JewishChristian Relations, 6771.
73
Mordecai ben Hillel on Ketubot, x306; Maimonidean Responsa [in Hebrew],
Nashim, no. 10. Likewise, Ephraim of Bonn tells the tale of the encounter, in 1146,
just outside the city of Cologne, between empty people who had been baptized (i.e.
voluntary apostates) and Rabbi Simon the Pious of Trier, and of their efforts to entice
him to apostatize: Habermann, Book of the Persecutions of Ashkenaz and France, 116.
74
Solomon Ibn Adret, Responsa, pt 7, no. 179. On this source and the previous one
(Mordecai ben Hillel on Ketubot, x306), see Urbach, Tosaphists, i, 245; Soloveitchik,
Religious Law and Change, 214 n. 15. There is some evidence, including the
Mordecai ben Hillel text, that apostates wishing to revert were forced to undergo
ritual immersion before their reintegration into the Jewish community: see
Yerushalmi, Inquisition and the Jews of France, 372; Joseph Shatzmiller,
Converts and Judaizers in the Early Fourteenth Century, Harvard Theological Rev.,
lxxiv (1981), 6377; Blidstein, Who Is Not a Jew?, 376 n. 23. Placing obstacles in the
path of reversion seems to be a phenomenon of the later Middle Ages, rather than the
tenth to thirteenth centuries.
26
NUMBER 194
27
28
NUMBER 194
V
AETIOLOGY
29
30
NUMBER 194
97
31
105
Grayzel, The Church and the Jews, 946, doc. 6. Similarly, see ibid., 1389, doc.
29.
106
Ibid., 969, doc. 8. See also Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, ix, 21.
Rashi discusses such a case and admits that some (scholars) make noise i.e.
express doubt about this rule, but he dismisses their reservations: Mordecai ben
Hillel on Ketubot, x286. See Blidstein, Personal Status of Apostate and Ransomed
Women in Medieval Jewish Law, 569. Blidstein infers from this noise-making that
popular practice did not always require reverting apostates to separate from their
spouses. He also deduces that reversion was common, but this conclusion, while it
may be true, is not warranted by the case at hand. For a similar case from a later period,
see Meir ben Barukh of Rothenburg, Responsa, Prague edn, no. 1020.
108
Solomon Ibn Adret, Responsa, pt 7, no. 179, cited in Soloveitchik, Religious Law
and Change, 214 n. 15.
107
32
NUMBER 194
33
offers an alternative to the image of Jews and Christians in perpetual conflict, of spiritual warfare between the two religious
communities. For the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz apostasy and
apostates were part of everyday life. Jews traversed the religious
boundary with a nonchalance that bespeaks a high degree of
social and cultural intimacy with their Christian neighbours.
This sort of profile has typically been associated with the Jews of
medieval Spain, and thus our findings cast doubt upon the
AshkenazSepharad dichotomy, mentioned at the outset. This
has also been the direction of some recent studies of Spanish
Jewry, particularly with regard to the riots of 1391. Rather than
depict apostasy as the overwhelming Jewish response to the widespread violence, scholars have begun to attribute greater significance to martyrdom.116 From both perspectives, then, Ashkenaz
no longer looks quite so different from Sepharad, despite the very
real differences between the cultural horizons and social status of
the Jews in these two centres.
The AshkenazSepharad dichotomy carried implications for
historians of the modern era, who identified the modern Jew
with his Sephardic ancestor, because the more affluent and
powerful Spanish Jews mingled freely with Christians and were
highly acculturated.117 One may still maintain that intimacy
breeds apostasy, but this premise can no longer be restricted to
Spain, any more than Ashkenaz provides a model of unremitting
hostility on the one hand, and Jewish introversion and fidelity on
the other. Careful examination of the interplay of these characteristics in other historical contexts, such as first-century Alexandria
or seventeenth-century Amsterdam, may lead to the further
refinement of working assumptions in this area of concern.
These findings are also of some moment for those engaged in
neighbouring disciplines, particularly for sociologists concerned
with contemporary Jewry, who confront the problem of sustaining and deepening Jewish identity in the open society of the
116
Marc Saperstein, A Sermon on the Akedah from the Generation of the
Expulsion and its Implications for 1391, in Aharon Mirsky, Avraham Grossman
and Yosef Kaplan (eds.), Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People
(Jerusalem, 1991); Ram Ben-Shalom, Martyrdom and Jewish Martyrology in Aragon
and Castile in 1391: Between Sepharad and Ashkenaz [in Hebrew], Tarbiz, lxx
(2001).
117
Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation,
17701870 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 10423; Jay R. Berkovitz, The Shaping of
Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century France (Detroit, 1989), 117.
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NUMBER 194
David Malkiel