T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R LY R E V I E W , Vol. 95, No.

1 (Winter 2005) 115

Accounting for the Self

Preliminary Generic-Historical Reections on Early Modern Jewish Egodocuments
J. H. CHAJES

A S A DI S T IN C T L I TE R A RY G EN R E, autobiography is characterized by the authors intent to relate a retrospective narrative account of his or her own life. Its emergence was long regarded as an indication of the development of the modern concept of the individual self.1 This view has more recently fallen out of favor, however, undermined by the unmistakable expression of individual identity to be found in autobiographical writing outside of the traditional canon, and in works written by women, laborers, and non-Europeans.2 The rise of a modern sense of history has been suggested as having contributed to the emergence of the modern autobiographical sensibility: as the attempt to relate a retrospective, narrative history of ones life, autobiography is most fundamentally a history in which the author is his or her own subject.3 In Jewish studies, the genealogical relation of modern autobiographical writing to the tsavaah, or ethical will, has been frequently asserted.4 Marcus Moseley, however, has argued that there simply is no such thing as premodern Jewish autobiography. Jewish autobiography per se emerged entirely in response to
1. This view was rst championed by Jacob Burckhardt in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Middlesex, 1990) and then developed by Wilhelm Dilthey (Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding [The Hague, 1977]), George Misch (A History of Autobiography in Antiquity [London, 1950]), and others. 2. For a short history of scholarship, see Rudolf Dekker, Introduction, Egodocuments and History: Autobiographical Writing in its Social Context since the Middle Ages, ed. R. Dekker (Hilversum, 2002), 720. 3. See Aviad Kleinberg, We Did Not Know That He Was Like That: Three Medieval Autobiographies (Hebrew), Alpaim 13 (1997): 4464; Philippe Lejeune, Lautobiographie en France (Paris, 1971), 64. 4. See most recently Avriel Bar-Levav. When I was Alive: Jewish Ethical Wills as Egodocuments, in R. Dekker, ed., Egodocuments and History, 4559.

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Winter 2005) Copyright 2005 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.

ARTICLES

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Rousseau, he contends; earlier egodocuments5 were only recognized and read as autobiographies retrospectively, after the assimilation of the Rousseauian model.6 Moseley regards most of these premodern works as peculiar literary products for which Jewish culture had no use until the rise of the Haskalah and its sensibilities. This position, although compelling, does not answer the one question that will be the focus of this essay: what did those who wrote autobiographically in earlier eras think they were doing when they put pen to paper? It is certainly the case that the cachet of Rousseau coupled with the glamor lent to autobiography by the Burckhardt school spurred scholars of Judaica to seek out and to publish would-be Jewish exemplars of the genre.7 Their mission did not stop with recovery, howevermany scholars went to great lengths to fashion autobiographies out of documents that did not quite measure up to the gold standard. A brief example: in the 1929 Hebrew translation of Glikl of Hamelns memoirs, A. Z. Rabinowitz displaced the opening ethical will to the works conclusion so that we might receive a work that begins, as should all autobiographies, with reminiscences of childhood.8 The organic links between Glikls work and the ethical-will genre were thus muted, while its conformity to the classic structure of autobiography was substantially enhanced. Examples could easily be multiplied.9 As for autobiographical writing of mystics, so central to the Christian and Islamic mystical traditions, we nd no signicant parallel in Jewish culture. Kabbalists were famously reticent about conveying their experience in the rst person, generally preferring the objectied third-person mappings of theurgic realms and the mechanics of their theurgical manipulations. In Gershom Scholems classic adumbration of the seminal characteristics of Jewish mysticism, this feature received special prominence: the kabbalists, he wrote, are no friends of mystical autobiography. They aim at describing the realm of Divinity and the other objects of the con5. This term egodocument, coined by Jacques Presser in the early 1950s, may be applied to autobiographical writing from notes, letters, diaries, and memoirs and encompasses any text in which an author writes about his or her own acts, thoughts and feelings. See Dekker, Introduction, 12. 6. See Marcus Moseley, Autobiography: The Elusive Subject, in this issue (JQR 95.1 [2005]); also M. Moseley, Jewish Autobiography in Eastern Europe: The Pre-History of a Literary Genre (Ph.D. dissertation, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Trinity College, Oxford, 1990). Moseleys dissertation became available to me after I completed this essay, and our views are largely complementary. 7. This point is made repeated in Moseley, Jewish Autobiography. 8. A. Z. Rabinowitz, Zikhronot Glikl (Tel Aviv, 1929). 9. And they are, in Moseley, Jewish Autobiography.

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templation in an impersonal way, by burning, as it were, their ships behind them. They glory in objective description and are deeply averse to letting their own personalities intrude into the picture.10 Unlike their counterparts in Christianity and Islam, kabbalists left few richly intimate revelations that might cast light on the social or psychological background of Jewish mysticism. The excitement is palpable, then, when mystical autobiography presents itself in Jewish circles. This genre is generally regarded as having emerged in sixteenth-century Safed, with works by R. Joseph Karo, R. Elazar Azikri, and R. Hayyim Vital, though autobiographical fragments by earlier kabbalists, including R. Abraham Abulaa, R. Isaac of Acre, and others have been enthusiastically exposed and analyzed by scholars. Still, these fragments are slight indeed when measured against the riches of Karos Maggid mesharim, the journal-entries accompanying Azikris Mille de-shamaya, and Vitals profoundly neurotic Sefer ha-hezyonot. Moshe . Idel has drawn special attention to the near simultaneous appearance of these three works in sixteenth-century Safed, referring to them as mystical diaries constituting a literary genre of confessional writing.11 Their emergence, he has argued, was one of several indicators of the new subjective turn in the Kabbalah of the mid-sixteenth century in which the importance of the individual kabbalisthis personal soul history, his unique path and mission, his charisma and revelationsis more pronounced than ever before in the history of the Kabbalah. Jewish mystics should not, however, be cast as the only medievals who, for whatever reasons, left us little in the way of autobiographical writing. A rather laconic few lines written by a fourteenth-century Jew were thus sufcient to generate a well-known article by Israel Yuval some years ago, perhaps misleadingly entitled A German-Jewish Autobiography of the Fourteenth Century.12 Indeed, when viewed in a broader
10. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (3rd rev. ed., New York, 1961), 1516. 11. Moshe Idel, On Mobility, Individuals and Groups: Prolegomenon for a Sociological Approach to Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah, Kabbalah 3 (1998): 145 73, esp. 163. 12. Israel Jacob Yuval, A German-Jewish Autobiography of the Fourteenth Century, Binah 3 (1994): 7799. This is a translated adaptation of the original Hebrew article that appeared in Tarbiz 55 (1986). The brief autobiography, found in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Michael 74 (Neubauer Catalogue no. 1171), was published by Yuval as an appendix to the article. Herman-Judahs twelfthcentury autobiographical description of his conversion to Christianity is a more substantial example of medieval Jewish autobiographical writing. See J. Hermannus and G. Niemeyer, Hermannus Quondam Judaeus: Opusculum De Conversione

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context, the mystics of sixteenth-century Safed would seem to have been downright precocious: what nonmystics composed comparable rst-person accounts of their lives before the seventeenth century? Autobiographical writing among Jews seems to have taken wing in the seventeenthcentury, with the exemplars of R. Leone Modena and his grandson, Yitshak Min ha-Leviim; of Glikl of Hameln; of Asher Levi; and the fantastic . rst-person documents of Abraham Yagel and David ha-Reuveni.13 Yet late medieval and early modern Jewish egodocuments rarely, if ever, conform to the strict generic form of autobiography. Examining the works of Karo, Vital, and Azikri, we nd that not one attempts to relate a coherent retrospective narrative of its authors life. Moreover, each one of these three works might well be in a class of its own. Karos Maggid mesharim has been received in what appears to be a heavily redacted form, perhaps one tenth of its original length, and rather forcibly redacted into the structure of a Torah commentary.14 Its content is a unique admixture of mystical teachings, blandishments, and admonitions, communicated to Karo by his angelic familiar, the eponymous Maggid. These latter cast light on intimate facets of Karos life but do not make Maggid mesharim the equivalent of a modern diary, let alone autobiography. The autobiographical fragments associated with Azikris Mille de-shemaya hardly constitute a coherent work at all, having been culled by Mordechai Pachter, their industrious editor, from the side-margins of the manuscript of the ethical treatise that is the true bearer of the name Mille de-shemaya. This anthology of self-referential marginalia is optimistically referred to in the historiography as Azikris diary. In his introductory comments, Pachter explained the methodology behind the creation of this diary: I edited [the diary of R. Elazar Azikri] not according to the order of the location [of the entries scattered in two manuscripts], but rather in
Sua (Weimar, 1963); K. F. Morrison, Conversion and Text: The Cases of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine Tsatsos (Charlottesville, Va., 1992). 13. A. Z. Aescoly, Sippur David ha-Reuveni (Jerusalem, 1993); M. Ginsberger, ed., Die Memoirien des Ascher Levy aus Reichshofen im Elsa (15981635), (Berlin, 1913); D. Carpi, ed. Medaber tahpukhot (Tel-Aviv, 1985); Mark R. Cohen, ed. The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi (Princeton, N.J., 1988); BethZion Abrahams, ed. The Life of Gluckel of Hameln, 16461724, Written by Herself (London, 1962); David Ruderman, ed. A Valley of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham Ben Hananiah Yagel (Philadelphia, 1990). See especially the introductions to The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi and A Valley of Vision for extensive discussion of and further bibliography on seventeenth-century Jewish autobiographical literature. 14. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (2d ed., Philadelphia, 1977), 2437 (Hebrew edition of 1996, 3649).

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chronological order. This is the fundamental and essential structure of a diary qua diary. . . . I did all this in order to give the text before useven in its external aspectthe form of a diary in all respects.15 Pachters perseverance has provided the modern reader with convenient access to marginalia providing a window into the personal suffering of a distinguished rabbinic gure consumed by the death of his children, but this convenience should not be mistaken in the historiography for what it is not. Finally, Vitals Sefer ha-hezyonot comes the closest of the three to . conventional autobiographical form. Vital opens with a retrospective glance at his childhood before proceeding to note signicant chapters of his adult life in discrete entries.16 Much of the work is devoted to the recording of dreams and visions: Vitals, as well as those shared with him by others, in which he gured prominently. Recognizing that many of these early modern egodocuments are not autobiographies, many scholars have referred to them as diaries, or yomanim. This modern Hebrew neologism, like the words diary and journal, derives from the root meaning day. It would thus seem to have just the right amount of ambiguity to make it useful, as it may serve for daily entries of intimate revelations, for example, Dear Diary . . . as well as for to do lists of a more prosaic order (journal is also the technical term referring to the daily transfer of transactions from the memorandum book in double-entry bookkeeping17). That said, we would be well advised to avoid unselfconsciously referring to Azikris fragments, or to any of the other egodocuments of the period, as diaries. To avoid anachronism, the question must be asked: What did the author think he or she was writing? In some cases, the answer is fairly clear, as with the documents that are clearly ethical wills written for the sake of the readers, be they descendants or disciples of the author. Indeed, the ethical will and other pre15. Mordechai Pachter, The Diary of R. Elazar Azikri (Hebrew), From Safeds Hidden Treasures: Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Safed and its Sages in the Sixteenth Century (Jerusalem, 1994), 12186. Quotation from 12122. 16. Hayyim Vital, Sefer ha-hezyonot, ed. A. Z. Aescoly (Jerusalem, 1954). On . the work as autobiography, see Michal Oron, Dream, Vision and Reality in Hayyim Vitals Sefer ha-hezyonot (Hebrew), Mehkere Yerushalayim be-mahshevet Yis. . . rael 10 (1992): 299309. An English translation has been published in Morris M. Faierstein, Jewish Mystical Autobiographies: Book of Visions and Book of Secrets, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, 1999). 17. Stuart Sherman, Telling Time: Clocks, Diaries, and English Diurnal Form, 16601785 (Chicago, 1996), 59.

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modern varieties of egodocuments that evince concern for a reader need to be distinguished from the personal mystical documents published as diaries, when they appear to have been written for the author alone. And again, it would seem that scholars are inclined to fashion diaries even from recalcitrant materials. In one case, a document originally published as notes was simply republished as a diary, proving that by another name the rose might indeed smell sweeter.18 Most recently, two ledger books have been published by Michal Oron as diaries (yomanim).19 But the books, as well as the comments of their original inheritors and editors, may offer the sharpest insights into the intentions of their writers. Abraham Horowitz (c. 15501615), whose famous ethical will Yesh nohalin (Amsterdam, 1701) inuenced generations of writers in this genre, . referred to immortalizing his tsavaah for the members of his household (and descendants) in a hidden scroll (megillat setarim),20 a term which has a long history going back to talmudic literature. For centuries it was used to refer to privately held notebooks, ostensibly containing material of a halakhic nature. Such works might simply contain class-notes that were not intended for publication, or be brief written records of teachings in ages where the transmission of such things was primarily oral.21 They might also be works that never entered the public domain because of the controversial nature of their contents. According to Rashi (10401105), such documents were suppressed or hidden because they contained controversialbut legitimateindividual opinions that were best kept out of public view without being forgotten.22 No longer using it in its sense of halakhic compendium, Horowitz nevertheless retains the private, personal, and perennial senses of the term. The rebbe of Komarno, Yitshak . Isaac Safrin, used Megillat setarim as the name of his dream-journal, a
18. I refer to Isaiah Tishbys A Mystical-Messianic-Experiential-Visionary Diary by Rabbi Moshe David Valle (which originally appeared in M. Idel, W. Harvey, and E. Schweid, eds., Sefer ha-yovel li-Shelomoh Pines: Bi-melot lo shemonim shanah [Jerusalem, 1990], 2:44172. Reprinted as Yoman misti-meshihi havay. . ati ve-hezioni le-rabi Moshe David Vale, in I. Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and its . Branches (Jerusalem, 1982), 3:847910.)which was upgraded to diary in the title in his collected articles from the less committed notes (reshimot) in the original article. 19. Michal Oron, Mi-Baal shed le-Baal Shem: Shmuel Falk, ha-Baal Shem miLondon (Jerusalem, 2002). I discuss these extremely interesting documents below. 20. Avraham Halevi Horowitz, Yesh nohalin, Sadilkov 1835, p. 7a. I would like . to thank Prof. Joseph Davis for alerting me to Horowitzs usage of the term. 21. See the responsum of the Babylonian Gaon, Rav Natronai, in Robert Brody, ed., Teshuvot Rav Natronai bar Hilai Gaon (Jerusalem, 1994), 385. 22. See Rashi on bShab 6b, lemma megillat setarim.

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work seemingly modeled on Vitals Sefer ha-hezyonot.23 It is interesting to . note that an analogous term, libro segreto, was used by Florentine businessmen in the late Middle Ages to refer to the secret ledger book in which they recorded information of special signicance for themselves and their heirs that they did not wish to be known to outsiders.24 The term megillah was also used in early modern Ashkenaz to refer to family scrolls written in Yiddish; these told of tragedy or deliverance experienced by a member or members of the family and thus were of a memoiristic character. Like Megillat Esther, these scrolls were written with a liturgical context in mind, to be read annually on a family Purim celebrating the deliverance from an oppressor.25 Another variety of personal writing is invoked by R. Hayyim Vitals grandson Moshe in his introduction to Sefer ha-hezyonot. In this work, his . grandfather had written of all the things that happened to him [R. Hayyim Vital] from the day of his birth until the day of his death. And all of the dreams that he dreamed, and that others dreamed about him he wrote in one kuntres and hid them in his archive (ginzem be-vayt genazav). And the aforementioned rabbi, out of his great modesty, did not want this kuntres published.26 Moshe Vital refers to his fathers manuscript as a kuntres, something of a medieval neologism apparently derived from quinternus, a quire of ve sheets.27 This was a fairly generic appellation that could be used for all
23. See Faierstein, Jewish Mystical Autobiographies. 24. See Gene Brucker, Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati (New York, 1967), 910. 25. Examples include Megillat Shemuel (describing the imprisonment of R. Samuel Tausk of Prague (written in 1720); Megillat evah by Yom-Tov Heller (15791654); Megillat Gans (Germany, mid-seventeenth c.); Megillat Rabbi Meir (1631; published in Kovetz al yad, 1904). See I. Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature: Old Yiddish Literature from Its Origins to the Haskalah Period, trans. B. Martin (Cincinnati, 1975), esp. 24041. See also Moseley, Jewish Autobiography in Eastern Europe, 199204. 26. From Introduction of R. Moshe Vital ztl to Sefer ha-hezyonot, (Manzur . edition, Jerusalem, 2002). 27. Malachi Beit Aryeh, Hebrew Codicology: Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts (Jerusalem, 1981), 4445, n. 77; Daniel Sperber, A Dictionary of Greek and Latin Legal Terms in Rabbinic Literature, Dictionaries of Talmud, Midrash, and Targum 1 (Ramat-Gan, 1984). My thanks to my friend Dr. Hillel Newman for his assistance with these references. See the use of kuntresim in Sifre ba-midbar 134 (in the sense of public record).

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sorts of documents, most famously perhaps applied to Rashis talmudic commentary by the Tosasts. Scholars have also suggested commentarius as the etymology of kuntres, making it an apt appellation for Rashis commentary indeed.28 In addition to its sense as commentary, in classical Latin commentarius could signify just the kind of texts we are exploring: a notebook, a private or historical journal, a register, or a memo.29 While Moshe Vital claims that his grandfather did not wish these personal testimonies to be published, the occasional direct appeal to a reader does indicate that Vital had more in mind for this kuntres than oblivion. That his project was unusual, however, is evident from these same appeals. In one case, Vital writes, Do not be surprised that I write my dreams30 and justies his odd project by invoking a talmudic story in which R. Yohanans view of his student R. Asi changed forever in the wake of a dream. Examining a later dream-journal kept by the Sabbatean prophet R. Mordecai Ashkenazi (16501729), we nd that its rst reader, Ashkenazis teacher, R. Abraham Rovigo (16501713), referred to it as having been written in a pinkas, a notebook often used to keep accounts. This term derives from the Greek a writing tablet.31 (Scholem faithfully retained this classication, publishing his study of the text as On the Dream-Pinkas of R. Mordechai Ashkenazi.) Thus Rovigo explains his redaction of the material: Here is relevant that which is written below . . . but it was not written in this pinkas. So that it would not be lost, I joined them in one pinkas. And it was already written up to that point, and for that reason they are not in order.32 In addition to providing a contemporary genre-name to the dream journal, Rovigos comments shed light on a further salient characteristic of much of this writing: it is scattered across multiple notebooks, and frequently out of order. Notes might be written in different pinkasim depending upon available space, thus breaking up entries that came from one period of writing. As was the case with Pachters reconstruction of Azikris personal marginalia, Rovigos
In the sense of document, memorandum, see Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim, Remez 749. Midrash tehillim 45.5 (ed., Buber, 271) reads (cf. Jastrow, s.v. kuntres). 28. Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Jerusalem and Haifa, 1987), s.v. kuntres. 29. Samuel Krauss, Griechische und lateinische Lehnworter im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1898). 30. Vital, Sefer ha-hezyonot, 80. . 31. Menahem Haran, Codex, Pinax and Writing Slat, Scripta Classica Israelica 15 (1996): 21222. 32. G. Scholem, Halomotav shel ha-Shabtai R Mordechai Ashkenazi (Jerusalem, . 1937), 8.

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redaction was necessary to introduce coherence and chronological ow to Ashkenazis pinkasim. If one writes a kuntres, one writes in a pinkas. The pinkas was a ubiquitous accoutrement of urban Jewish life going back to antiquity, the ledger book of every shopkeeper, as in the oft-invoked henvani who . swears [to the correctness] of his pinkas in mShevuot 7.1. Writing in a pinkas was a serious matter that could have weighty legal implications; debts recorded in a pinkas could even be extracted from the unfortunate debtors orphaned children.33 Throughout the Middle Ages, individuals (shopkeepers and traders) as well as communities (synagogues and communities) maintained pinkasim as ledger books tracking all matters of nancial consequence.34 A pinkas would typically include entries denoting when money was borrowed or lent, and when objects were pawned or redeemed. Signicantly, thoughts and feelings do not seem to be recorded in Jewish pinkasim before the early modern period. Only then did evaluation nd its place alongside impersonal documentation, itemization having opened the way for narration.35 A similar trajectory may be seen in the development of libri di ricordanze or livres de raison (among other names), which grew out of record books in which the household life and economy and the extrahousehold business were combined, enriched by the details that had been told around the re.36 These domestic memoirs rst emerge in fourteenth-century Florence. In fteenth-century France, notaries, burghers, and even rural traders kept them; and by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they became quite common in middle- and upper-class French and English society. A signicant multiplication of egodocuments from the sixteenth century onward has also been identied by Dutch scholars, who have worked collaboratively to study well over a thousand egodocuments. Beginning around 1750, they argue, it became fashionable to keep a diary
33. See, e.g., Shulhan arukh, hoshen mishpat 91,5. . . 34. The geniza preserves four sorts of pinkasim: individual ledger books of shopkeepers and traders, and collective ledger books of synagogue beadles and communities. The earliest reference to a communal pinkas dates to the early eleventh century. My thanks to Prof. Menahem Ben Sasson for succinctly summing this up for me. 35. See Sherman, Telling Time, 57. 36. Natalie Zemon Davis, Ghosts, Kin, and Progeny: Some Features of Family Life in Early Modern France, The Family, ed. A. Rossi, J. Kagan, and T. Hareven (New York, 1978), 87114, esp. 97. For examples of livres de raison from the late fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries, see Marie Rose Bonnet, Livres de ` ` raison et de comptes en Provence: Fin du XIVe siecle-debut du XVIe siecle (Aix-enProvence, 1995).

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and to write an autobiography.37 Most of these early autobiographies and diaries were written by authors from the bourgeoisie, who had become wealthy as well as politically powerful in the Golden Age. Clerics, professors, and lawyers were particularly well represented among these authors, occupations that not incidentally regularly required writing. Egodocuments from those who wrote much less in the course of carrying out their professional duties were also discovered, including diaries by artisans, shopkeepers, sherman, and farmers. Dirck Jansz, a Friesian farmer whose diary was analyzed by the researchers, used pages of it to practice his signature, and a Dutch journalist, Justus van Effen, wrote in 1734 that even simple farmers kept a family book, a precursor of the diary.38 Only a thorough study of extant Jewish egodocuments would enable us to determine to what extent a similar development from pinkasledger book to personal diary took place in early modern Jewish society.39
PINKASIM AND THE DISCIPLINING OF RELIGIOUS L IFE

While for centuries pinkasim seem to have been used exclusively for nancial record keeping, broader conceptions of the pinkas are suggested in classical rabbinic literature that would become signicant for early modern readers. First, there is the ancient metaphorical signication of the pinkas as a kind of heavenly Selbstzeugnis: a documentary witness to the self.40 This sense was implied on the cosmological level in the rabbinic dictum Even light conversation between a man and his wife is written upon the mans pinkas and they read it to him at the hour of his death (LevR 26.7).41 In the rabbinic imagination, each persons life is chronicled in a heavenly ledger-book kept by spirit-scribes. This text is read to him as he approaches death and judgment.42 It is the story of his life, each
37. Rudolf Dekker, Childhood, Memory and Autobiography in Holland: From the Golden Age to Romanticism (Basingstoke and New York, 2000), 12. 38. Dekker, Childhood, Memory and Autobiography, 1314. 39. Hundreds of individual pinkasim await inspection at the Mahon le-Tazlume . Kitve Yad. A substantial percentage of these are the record books of mohelim (242 by initial count using the computerized catalog), though tens or hundreds are by Jews of other professions. 40. Selbstzeugnis is used interchangeably with Egodokument in German-language historiography. See Dekker, Introduction, 9. 41. On this heavenly book or fate book (schicksalbuch), see Kraus, Leinworter, s.v. pinkas. 42. Contemporary study of so-called near-death experiences has dealt with this life review extensively. For a recent discussion taking into consideration cross-cultural and neurological studies, see Mark Fox, Through the Valley of the

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11

entry a weight on the cosmic scales, his fate hanging in the balance. This cosmic pinkas is part balance sheet, part biographya retrospective review of ones life in all its gory (and banal) details. The rabbis do not imagine the religious dimension of the pinkas to reside solely with the angels, however. The classic story that conveys the potential of the pinkas for religious self-chronicling is to be found in the tractate Shabbat of both Talmuds. Rabbi Ishmael (rst half of the second century C.E.) said: I will read [by the lamp on Shabbat] and will not incline it. He forgot and almost inclined it, and said, Great are the words of the Sages, for they said, Lest one forget and incline. Rabbi Nathan said, He actually inclined it, and wrote in his pinkas and said, I, Ishmael son of Elisha read and inclined the lamp on Shabbat; when the Temple is rebuilt, I will bring a sin offering. (yShab I 3b; bShab 12b reads fat sin offering.) Despite this precedent, some fourteen hundred years would elapse before rabbis would transform R. Ishmaels behavior into a model for emulation. Recognizing their documentary and disciplinary potential, rabbis in the sixteenth century begin to recommend the use of pinkasim to record everything: business transactions, dreams, and, like Ishmael ben Elisha, transgressions. Hayyim Vital, who we know was committed to the practice of committing his dreams to writing, adduced the passage from tractate Shabbat at least twice, though without framing it as a practice to emulate. Vital thought the passage signicant in light of the requirement to keep all 613 commandments, including those related to the sacricial cult of the Temple. One would certainly be reincarnated after the rebuilding of the Temple in order to complete the 613. For Vital, then, the journaling of ones sins (be they of commission or omission) was of nextworldly no less than this-worldly consequence.43 Seventeenth-century rabbis go the nal step in transforming the practice of Ishmael ben Elisha into a hanhagah, a religious practice to impleShadow of Death: Religion, Spirituality, and the Near-Death Experience (London and New York, 2002), esp. 103, 15660. 43. See R. Hayyim Vital, Shaar ha-gilgulim, hakdamah 16, ed. Brandwein (Jerusalem, 1988). In its discussion of repentance, the medieval Sefer Hasidim describes the recording ones sins as a practice of the rst pious (hasidim rishonim). The Parma manuscript (published by J. Wistinetzki, Berlin, 189193, 72) also stresses the importance of writing in a cryptic style to insure privacy. This addition seems to have been directed to contemporaries whom the author hoped would adopt the ancient practice.

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ment. R. Meir Poppers (d. 1662) promoted the recording of ones charitable contributions in a pinkas as a practice of the pious (midat hahasidim).44 Others followed R. Ishmaels example more literally. R. Isaiah . Horowitz (1565?1630) urged every Jew to keep careful track of sins for which one was technically required to offer a sacrice. These were to be recorded in ones pinkas so that they might be remembered in the event that one merited to see the rebuilding of the Temple and could thus bring that sacrice. In a similar vein, though without the eschatological optimism, Joseph Yuspa Hahn of Frankfurt (15701637) advised readers of his Yosif Omets to review their sins and then to record them in a book for a remembrance (ya aleh otam al sefer le-mazkeret) until they could consult a sage for pentitential instruction.45 This new emphasis on the possibilities of religious self-chronicling is not without contemporary parallels. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian religious authorities begin to argue for a practice of self-chronicling . . . The practice was the daily Diurnall, and the trope depicted it as a kind of narrative ledger book.46 Thus in one Puritan treatise on diary keeping, John Fuller wrote: Tradesmen keep their shop books. Merchants their Accompt books . . . Some wary husbands have kept a Diary of dayly dispursements. Travellers a Journal of all they have seen, and hath befallen them in their way. A Christian that would be exact hath more need, and may reap much more good by such a Journall as this.47 Advancing an innovative explanatory paradigm, Stuart Sherman has argued that this new practice should be understood in the context of traditions of religious self-examination, astrology, and bookkeeping that were transformed as a result of revolutionary advances in chronometry in the second half of the seventeenth century, when a new technology for counting time on clocks emerged simultaneously with a new paradigm for recounting it in prose.48 Like the printing press then, and the com44. Hanhagot tsadikim, s.v. Meir Poppers, 31. A pietistic concern for keeping track of ones nances is also found in Jehiel Meir Epsteins (d. 1706) Kizzur shelah, Amsterdam, 1707, p. 11c. 45. Isiaha Horowitz, Sefer Shene luhhot ha-berit ha-shalem, ed. M. Katz (Haifa, . 1992) (YomaDerekh Hayyim Tokhehat Mussar 160), 2:444 (rst published 1649, Amsterdam); Joseph Yuspa Hahn, Yosif Omets (Frankfort, 1928), 204 (921). 46. Sherman, Telling Time, 49. 47. The Journal or Diary of a Thankful Christian (London, 1656; cited in Sherman, Telling Time, 49. 48. Sherman, Telling Time, xi.

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puter today, the new clock was a technology the inuence of which knew no confessional borders; we must therefore be mindful of its potential inuence on Jewish writing habits no less than Sherman has been for Christian ones. Finally, let us consider two documents recently published by Michal Oron.49 In these documents, written by mysticalor at least mysteriousgures, the authors expose themselves, often prosaically, in the rst person. At least one of the two gures, R. Samuel Falk (171082), was a kabbalist who devoted much of his time to magico-mystical pursuits. His assistant, Zvi Hirsh Kalish, if not himself a kabbalist, was party to many all-night vigils of mystical prayer and study and observed his masters various forays into the more plastic arts of alchemy, metallurgy, and the secret rites of kabbalistic freemasonry. While not devoted to religious self-examination, the pinkas of Zvi Hirsh of Kalish exemplies the integration of ledger-book and life chronicling. While family genealogical lists and printed almanacs stimulated the writing of many personal chronicles, most early diaries are, like Zvi Hirshs, devoted primarily to the recording of nancial transactions. Alongside these, prosaic reminders and noteworthy events are also recorded. And if the literary qualities of Tzvi Hirshs and Falks journals leave something to be desired (Solomon Schechter opined of Falks that the language used was Hebrew, but the writer does not seem to have been on good terms with Dr. Syntax50), it is some consolation to realize just how typical their laconic style was: Most diaries consist largely of scribblings that were recorded as aides memoires. Only a few authors made daily entries. Impressions were usually freshly noted.51 Zvi Hirsh wrote to remember. His reminders were written in notebooks that, with time, became precious to him. He used a fresh pinkas for one trip to Holland, not wanting to take with him the notebook he used for his daily affairs in London. Thus his entry for Friday, the seventh of Cheshvan 5511 ( November 6, 1750): At this point, I began to write in a red pinkas because I traveled to Holland and didnt want to take this pinkas with me. The events until after Tisha be-Av are written there. Now I will write here, because that pinkas is already full.52 Zvi Hirsh assumed that others wrote to remember as well, as they
49. Michal Oron, Mi-Baal shed. 50. Solomon Schechter, The Baalshem Dr. Falk, The Jewish Chronicle, September 3, 1888, 16. Cited in Oron, Mi-Baal shed, 65. 51. Sherman, Telling Time, 16. 52. Oron, Mi-Baal shed, 179. Cf. Ashkenazis pinkasim according to Rovigo discussed above.

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undoubtedly did. Indeed, in one of two places where he refers to the notebook as anything other than simply a pinkas, he uses the term Sefer zikhronot, or Book of Memories. (In the other place, he calls it a yalkut, his collection of jottings.53) Clearly memories here is not meant primarily in sentimental, or even simply retrospective, terms, but in the sense of remindersfor the future. Thus, having agreed to lend an acquaintance a sum of money, Zvi Hirsh notes in his entry recording the transaction: And regarding this he promised me with solemn vows that he would write this [borrowing] in his book of reminders so as not to forget that which I did for him.54 If these notebooks are far removed from the retrospective life histories of full-edged autobiographies, they offer a perspective of their own on the uses of memory. What did these scribblers deem necessary to remember? Cookie recipes is actually part of the correct answer. Falk provides a number of them, evincing a special fondness for sesame seeds and rose water in his butter cookies.55 The declasse account book model works especially well for Zvi Hirsh, whose entries are largely devoted to recording his various deposits at local pawn shops, and the occasional redemption of those items. Because so many of these nancial transactions were related to his services to Falk, Falk himself became a natural object of additional, nonnancial entries in the pinkas. In these irregular, nonnancial entries, Zvi Hirsh primarily remarks upon the long magical vigils undertaken by his master, and his roles in many of them. These pinkasim thus offer unique insight into the social and economic background of Jewish magic, which I hope to discuss elsewhere. As the personal documents we have surveyed are of many types, and refer to diverse forms and modes of writing, the historian James S. Amelang has warned that we must carefully distinguish their characteristics and meanings if any sense is to be made of the act of authorship.56 Rather than fall prey to what Phillipe Lejeune has called the retrospective fallacy by anachronistically reading these egodocuments as autobiographiesand even aggressively editing them into the formal shapes of modern genreswe must begin with the generic forms available to early
53. Oron, Mi-Baal shed, 192. Falk also refers to his journal as a pinkas, pp. 198, 223. 54. Oron, Mi-Baal shed, 120. 55. Cf. the mouth-watering but transgressive leg of tref animal sauteed in butter and onions described on p. 124 (though no recipe provided). 56. James S. Amelang, The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe (Stanford, 1998), 15.

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modern authors.57 As we have seen, pinkas, kuntres, yalkut, and megillah are among the emic terms used by early modern Jews to refer to the media of their (self-) accounting. The material and generic forms of such egodocuments seem to have been largely coterminous, as each distinct format appears to have been conducive to a particular manner of selfexpression. A history of this redeployment of traditional media for selfaccounting, religious and secular alike, is yet to be written.

57. Phillippe Lejeune, Lautobiographie en France, 4144. Cited in Moseley, Jewish Autobiography in Eastern Europe, 149.