AlS ASS0CIATI0N F0R JEWISH STUDIES J NEWSLETTER

No. 32 Summer 1982 Editor: A. J. Band

Editorial The passing of Gershom Scholem has elicited a spate of eulogies, Gershom Scholem and Jewish Studies evaluations, and necrologies unprecedented in the past few genera- tions of Jewish scholarship. Predictably, among the encomia one By Joseph Dan (Hebrew University) finds a reasonable amount of nonsense and cliche, articles either ex- tracted from encyclopedias or penned by journalists who had never Fifty-seven years ago Gershom Scholem, then a young scholar in heard of Scholem before his death had lent him a certain notoriety. Jerusalem, delivered the inaugural lecture of the Institute of Jewish Though Scholem died before the previous issue of the Newsletter had Studies on Mount Scopus, an Institute which became a year later the gone to press, we delayed publishing a necrology until we could pro- corner-stone of the Hebrew University when it was opened. Since vide one true to the spirit of the master — written by a disciple who then, Gershom Scholem, the teacher, the person and the scholar, had continues both the rigorous scholarly discipline and the broad in- been the moving power in the creation of the large center for Jewish terests of his teacher. studies in Jerusalem, with enormous impact on other emerging centers in Israel, and the established or new centers in other coun- The "Scholem phenomenon" will take us some time to assimilate tries. Three generations of scholars in the field of kabbalah followed and analyze. By the term "Scholem phenomenon" I refer not to in his footsteps at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and most of Scholem himself but his historic image. Why, for instance, did this the scholars in the field of Jewish thought throughout the world are particular scholar attract the attention of so many intellectuals who his colleagues, his students or his students' students. could never follow the subtleties of his philological studies which comprise the bulk of his prodigious scholarly output? Or why did For two generations, Gershom Scholem set the standards of Scholem become a celebrity among theologians, literary critics, and scholarship in Jerusalem and many other scholarly centers. His in- historians who probably did read the more synthetic, accessible sistence on detailed, philological and textual work characterizes works like Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism or Shabbatai Zevi or Jewish studies at the Hebrew University to this very day. His wide some of his more general though scrupulously precise and elegantly cultural horizons serve as an example of the integration of Jewish phrased essays? Was it merely his persuasive reevaluation of the studies with other scholarly disciplines. He built the field of Kab- balistic studies and, at the same time, was the moving power in the mystical element in the history of Judaism? And if so, what does this new school of Jewish historians at Jerusalem; he combined mastery tell us about these admirers? Were they looking for a picture of of a specific field with enormous impact on many others such as Judaism which evoked certain personal resonances? Was it religious studies and the history of ideas. He wrote his books in three Scholem's remarkable fusion of attention to details — "where the languages and many were translated to several other languages, mak- good God is found" — and his astounding comprehension of where ing him the best-known scholar in Jewish studies throughout the those details fit in the grand scheme of the history of ideas? world. Even those who stand in awe of Scholem's achievement must realize that the next generation will produce many critics of his work, During the first fifteen years of his scholarly work, Scholem con- perhaps of his facile usage of the dialectic or his connection of Sab- centrated on the history and development of kabbalistic literature. Many of his papers of that period were included in a series he called batianism with the rise of modernity. But this is precisely the way "Chapters in the History of Kabbalistic Literature", and indeed, the Scholem would have had it since his pursuit of historical truth was biographical and bibliographical element was the dominant one in relentless and unsparing; he was a demanding master and a fierce most of them. The chronology of major kabbalistic works, their adversary. mutual relationships, the sequence of their development, were Perhaps what made Scholem so fascinating a figure was his om- regarded by him as the backbone for the history of the mystical nivorous passion, so characteristic of other rebels against the Jewish dimension of Jewish culture. He dealt especially with the details of bourgeoisie of his youth. Scholem devoured everything at the pitch (Continued on Page IS) of passion, whether it was a Kabbalistic text, the Zionist solution to the Jewish problem (a facet of his system of beliefs which too few have cared to mention), or the poetry of Paul Celan — or chocolates. IN THIS ISSUE Unlike the shapeless, narcissistic passion of many of his cultist ad- mirers today, Scholem's passion was one born of study, of Annual Conference Program knowledge, of conviction. Once the facts had been marshalled, the Preliminary Announcement 2-4 conclusion reached, a decision for action was made, be it the deter- Book Reviews 5-16 mination of the authorship of the Zohar, the rejection of or- thopraxis, or the acceptance of the imperative of aliyah. He was no less engaged in the world in which he lived than in the world which he ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES studied. This, too, is a crucial aspect of the legacy he has left us. Widener Library M, Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 A.J. Band 2

Preliminary Announcement AJS FOURTEENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE PROGRAM 19-71 December 1982, Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston, Mass.

Sunday, December 19, 1982 10:30 A.M. Registration Mam Lobby 9:00 A.M. Session I, Section D: Back Bay Room Meeting of AJS Board of Directors Back Bay Room Jewish Demography: New York, A Case Study Chairperson: 2:30 P.M. Interest Groups: To be announced Business Meetings and Programs, I Rise and Fall of Jewish Neighborhoods To be announced Paul Ritterband (City College — CUNY) 3:45 P.M. Recess Jewish Identification Behaviours Steven Cohen (Queens College — CUNY) 4:00 P.M. Plenary Session I Stale Suite Discussant: Deborah Dash Moore (Vassar College) To be announced State Suite 5:30 P.M. Annual Business Meeting Oval Room 7:00 P.M. Dinner Oval Room 11:00 A.M. Session II, Section A: 8:30 P.M. ToPlenar be announcedy Session II Jewish Bible Translations Venetian Room Chairperson: Frederick E. Greenspahn (University of Denver) The Targum Rishon to Esther According to Paris Monday, December 20, 1982 Heb 110 of the Bibliotheque Nationale 9:00 A.M. Session I, Section A: Forum Room Bernard Grossfeld (University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee) Medieval Jewish Philosophy The Early History of the Buber-Rosenzweig Chairperson: Bible Translation To be announced Everett Fox (Boston University) Fifteenth-Century Political Philosophy: The Platonic Bible Translations and Jewish-Christian Relations: An American Perspective Tradition Jonathan Sarna (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Hava Tirosh-Rothschild (Columbia University) Religion, Cincinnati) The Platonic Form of the Kuzarl and the Interpretation of Judah Halevi's Thought Hillel Fradkin (Barnard College) 11:00 A.M. Session II, Section B: State Suite Gersonides on the Causation of Marvels Kabbalah Chairperson: Jacob J. Staub (Washington University) To be announced The Mythical Concept of History in Hechalot Mysticism Joseph Dan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) 9:00 A.M. Session I, Section B: state Suite In conjunction with the Jewish Law Association Abraham Miguel Cardoso and the Hermetic Tradition: The Christian Roots of a Jewish Theology Jewish Law Ira Robinson (Concordia University) To be announced Ambience and Ethos: Tales and Legends from the World of Safed Kabbalah Aryeh Wineman (Derby, CT) 9:00 A.M. Session I, Section C: Venetian Room American Jewish Literature: Conceptions of the Field Chairperson: Jeffrey Gurock (Yeshiva University) Participants: Daniel Walden (Pennsylvania State University) Alvin Rosenfeld (Indiana University) Elinor Grumet (Wellesley College) 3

11:00 A.M. Session II, Section C: Back Bay Room 1:30 P.M. Session m, Section C: state suite Modern Jewish History Social Thought and Jewish History Chairperson: Chairperson: To be announced William B. Helmreich (City College — CUNY) Emancipation and Counter-Emancipation The Role of Jewish Tradition in the Formation of Jewish in Denmark and Norway Political Standpoints Samuel Abrahamsen (Brooklyn College — CUNY) Lewis Feuer (University of Virginia) Hebrew Biography in the Haskalah and the Renaissance Beyond Ancient Judaism: Applying Max Weber's Sociology of Arthur Lesley (University of Toronto) Religion to Jewish History Hillel Levine (Boston University) Jewish Life in 18th-century The Hague Joel Cahen (Jewish Museum, Amsterdam) American Sociological Theory, Protestant Theology and Anti- Semitism Stanford Lyman (New School for Social Research) 11:00 A.M. Session II, Section D: Forum Room Contemporary Israeli Literature 1:30 P.M. Session m, Section D: Venetian Room Chairperson: To be announced A New Integrated and Inter-Disciplinary Approach to Undergraduate Jewish Studies: Jewish and Western Civiliza- Images of Women in the Works of Amos Oz tion Esther Fuchs (University of Texas at Austin) Chairperson: Narrative and Memory in David Shahar's Arnold J. Band (University of California, Los Angeles) The Palace of Shattered Vessels Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages Gilead Morahg (University of Wisconsin— Madison) David Stern (University of Judaism) The Images of Women in Israeli Literature— The Early Modern and Modern Periods Myth and Reality Steven Lowenstein (University of Judaism) Ruth Beizer-Bohrer (Rutgers University)

3:30 P.M. Plenary Session m State Suite To be announced 4:30 P.M. Interest Groups: 1:00 P.M. Recess Business Meetings and Programs, II-III To be announced 1:30 P.M. Session m, Section A: Forum Room 7:00 P.M. Reception Venetian Room Medieval Jewish Literature Chairperson: Sponsor: To be announced Ktav Publishing House Functions of the Frame in Judah Alharizi's Oval Room Book of Tahkemoni 7:30 P.M. Dinner David S. Segal (Ben-Gurion University) Oval Room 9:00 P.M. Plenary Session IV The Exegete as Teacher: Joseph ben Simon Tribute to Professor Harry M. Orlinsky Kara and Biblical Exegesis in Northern France Baruch A. Levine (New York University) Michael A. Signer (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Address: Religion, Los Angeles) On the Philosophy of Bible Translation The Rhetoric of the Medieval Jewish Anti-Christian Polemic Harry M. Orlinsky (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute Joel Rembaum (University of Judaism) of Religion, New York)

1:30 P.M. Session ID, Section B: Back Bay Room Tuesday, December 21,1982 The Origins of Liberal Judaism in England 9:00 A.M. Session IV, Section A: Venetian Room Chairperson: Institutional Continuity Between Pre-70 and Post-70 Judaism David Ellenson (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Chairperson: Religion, Los Angeles) Baruch Bokser (Dropsie College) The Contribution of Lily Montagu Ellen Umansky (Emory University) Temple and Synagogue Pre-70 and Post-70 in Judaism and Christianity The Contribution of Israel Mattuck John Townsend (Episcopal Theological Seminary) John Rayner (Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London) The Conflict Between the Priestly Oligarchy and the Rabbinate The Contribution of Claude G. Montefiore in Erez Yisrael During the Talmudic Period Joshua Stein (Roger Williams College) Reuven Kimelman (Brandeis University) Jewish Liturgy: Qumran and Yavneh Lawrence Schiffman (New York University) 4

9:00 A.M. Session IV, Section B: 11:00 A.M. Session V, Section C: Venetian Room Medieval Jewish History Forum Room Modern Jewish Thought Chairperson: Chairperson: To be announced To be announced Jews and Christians in the Sermons of Saul Response in the Holocaust and Attitudes Toward Modernity: Morteira (17th-century Amsterdam) A Study in Orthodox Jewish Thought Marc Saperstein (Harvard University) Irving Greenberg (National Jewish Resource Center) A Few Months in 1492: Immigrant Jews and Native Christians Israel Salanter and Orhot Zaddikim: Restructuring Medieval in the Kingdom of Navarre Jewish Ethical Literature Benjamin R. Gampel (Jewish Theological Seminary of Hillel Goldberg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) America) Martin Buber on Adult Education The Jews and the Reconquest in Medieval Spain Israel A. Ben-Yosef (University of South Africa) Norman Roth (University of Wisconsin — Madison) Torah as Charisma in Modern Jewish Experience Aryei Fishman (Bar-Ilan University) 9:00 A.M. Session IV, Section C: state suite Jewish Political Power: Illusions and Realities 11:00 A.M. Session V, Section D: Forum Room Chairperson: Modern Hebrew Literature Robert O. Freedman (Baltimore Hebrew College) Chairperson: To be announced American Jewry and 19th-century American Foreign Policy Issues Concerning Jews Metaphor and Metonymy in Agnon's A Guest for the Night George L. Berlin (Baltimore Hebrew College) Naomi B. Sokoloff (Universty of Arizona) The Role of American Jewry During the Holocaust: Matching On the Structure of Uri Zvi Greenberg's Refyovot hanahar Power and Responsibility Alan L. Mintz (University of Maryland) Henry L. Feingold (Baruch College — CUNY) Agnon and the Need for Tradition American Jewry and the Eisenhower Administration David Aberbach (Cambridge University) Isaac Alteras (Queens College — CUNY) The Interplay Between the Biblical and the Colloquial in Modern Hebrew Poetry 9:00 A.M. Session IV, Section D: Back Bay Room Bio-Ethics and Jewish Tradition Ruth Kartun-Blum (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Chairperson: 1:00 P .M. Meeting of A JS Board of Directors Back Bay Room David Novak (New School for Social Research) Physicians' Fees Jose Faur (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) Ethical Issues in Psychiatry Leonard Kravitz (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of A call has been issued by the Northeast Modern Languages Association's sec- Religion, New York) tion on Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Languages and Literatures for papers The Ethics of Genetic Research Seymour Siegel (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) to be given at the 1983 annual spring convention, April 14-16, at the Erie Hilton Hotel, Erie, PA. The topic for the 1983 convention is "The Modern 11:00 A.M. Session V, Section A: Back Bay Room Idiom in Hebrew and Yiddish Literature." Send all inquiries and proposals to Yael Feldman, Middle East Languages and Cultures, Columbia Universi- Bible ty, New York, N.Y. 10027. Complete papers (20 minutes of presentation) Chairperson: To be announced should be submitted by September 1, 1982. Juvenile Delinquency in the Bible and the Ancient Near East • * * David Marcus (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) Prof. Louis H. Feldman will be offering, under the auspices of the National Gen. 3:15 and the Meaning of 'aybah Endowment for the Humanities, a seminar for twelve .college teachers on Stanley N. Rosenbaum (Dickinson College) "The Greek Encounter with Judaism in the Hellenistic Period" at Yeshiva To be announced University, New York City, during the summer of 1983. A stipend will be given for living expenses. For further information write to Prof. Feldman, 11:00 A.M. Session V, Section B: State Suite 500 W. 185 St., New York, N.Y. 10033. Deadline for applications: March t, Child-Rearing and Family in Eastern European Jewish History 1983. Chairperson: To be announced Attitudes Toward Marriage and the Family in the Eastern European Haskalah David Biale (State University of New York at Binghamton) Communal Solidarity and Family Loyalty Among the Jewish Elite of Victorian England Todd M. Endelman (Indiana University) Articles for AJSreview The Hypergamous Marriage of Jewish Solonieres in Berlin, Articles to be considered for publication in AJSreview, Volume 8 (1983), 1780-1806: Emancipation or Betrayal of Their People? should be sent to AJSreview Editor Robert Chazan, Queens College, Dept. Deborah Hertz (State University of New York at Binghamton) of History, Flushing, New York 13367. 5

Else Lasker-Schuler, Hebrew Ballads and Other Poems. Translated, thought it "a wonderful thing to be Jewish" (though her affections edited, and with an introduction by Audri Durchslag and Jeanette did not embrace the Jewish bourgeoisie) and why, as she assured Litman-Demeestere and a preface by Yehuda Amichai. Philadelphia, Rachel Katinka, the poems Avraham Kariv proposed translating into Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980. xxii, 103 pp. Hebrew were already "written in Hebrew." A native of Rhineland, the sixty-year-old Lasker-Schuler was forced to flee the Nazis in the early 1930's and died impoverished at Jerusalem in 1945. Still, there Reviewed by Stanley F. Chyet (Hebrew Union College-Jewish In- is a sense in which she never knew exile; her translators remind us of stitute of Religion, Los Angeles) her insistence that she had been "born in Thebes," though she "first saw the light in Elberfeld..." For T. S. Eliot, "a continual extinction of personality" was what Durchslag and Litman-Demeestere have on the whole served her literary effort required of the artist. His own work provides scant well, even admirably. Hers is not a sensibility easily accommodated testimony to this doctrine; an extravagant lyricist like Else Lasker- in English, and my recpgnition of the difficulties makes me pro- Schuler ("Ich bin der Hieroglyph, /Der unter der Schopfung steht") foundly respectful of what her translators have achieved in the bi- would have spurned the idea as absurd. She expressed a tendency in lingual Hebrew Ballads and Other Poems. Twenty years ago the late which art is experienced as solipsism: the world — the most real Walter Kaufmann strove to make his translations of German poets world — is constructed dream-like around the self of the individual "extremely faithful, not only in meaning but also in tone." Durch- artist. I've no wish to disparage Eliot, but he meant malgre tout to slag and Litman-Demeestere have striven to do the same for Lasker- affirm verities that the industrial civilization of the past two centuries Schuler. The results are not always unchallengeable. A few examples: had virtually obliterated. What Lasker-Schuler and many other ar- in "Weltflucht" (its title translated too starkly as "Flight"), render- tists of her generation seem to have responded to more freely (not ing "zu spat zuriick" as "too late to return" obscures the link be- that Eliot's Wasteland can be thought of as a purblind response) is tween this line and an earlier line, "Zu mir zuruck," rendered ably as the circumstance, largely an effect of the industrial revolution, that "Back to myself"; would not "too late to go back" have been their world had turned away from, turned its back on intelligibility, preferable? Or, in "Abend," is "Jugendnot" rendered properly as the moral and social intelligibility of the European past: that is what "callow agonies"? That rendering seems too clever or too judgmen- Nietzsche confronted, and George and Rilke as well as Lasker- tal, somehow missing (or dismissing) the potent sense of melancholy, Schiiler: "Ich finde mich wieder / In dieser Todverlassenheit, / Mir of yearning, encountered in one's adolescence. Or, in "Abraham ist, ich lieg von mir weltenweit / Zwischen grauer Nacht der und Isaak," is the irony of "Der aber liebte seinen Knecht" con- Urangst." Frederic Grunfeld reports that Lasker-Schuler "led a veyed adequately when translated "Who truly loved his servant"? gypsy existence in furnished rooms and Bohemian cafes"; his report The "truly" is problematic here; "surely" or "doubtless" might comes as no surprise. have come closer to the poet's intent. Or why, in "Pharao und Joseph," has "Pharao ist von Gold" been rendered as "Pharaoh is Another, related element in Lasker-SchUler's work deserves fashioned of gold"? Why the superfluous "fashioned"? And why, notice: its emphatic "orientalism," what Erich Mlihsam called "the in "Franz Marc," is "ein herrlicher Jakob" translated as "a lovely Are of oriental fantasy." For some five or six generations preceding Jacob" when what the poet means is a Jacob "lordly" or "magnifi- her own, Europeans had been discovering or rediscovering what they cent"? designated the Orient; they had thrust off fatefully again into Outremer and bludgeoned into existence a number of remarkable im- But these are peccadillos, hardly grave failings, and in their superb perial structures — in India, in the Levant, in Central Asia, in the Far versions of such poems as "David und Jonathan," "Mutter," "An East — working an inevitable enlargement of European economic Gott," and "Jerusalem" — to name just a few — the translators and political horizons. But the European imagination, too, thrust off amply atone for what might elsewhere leave us dissatisfied with their and shaped a fateful new metaphorical Orient; it shows itself attempt to evoke the relentlessly vagabond spirit of Lasker-Schuler. everywhere in the intellectual and artistic product of the late 1700's They have also supplied an illuminating introduction, helpful notes, and the 1800's: from Rasselas, Zadig, the Lettres Persanes, and the and an extensive bibliography. EntfUhrung aus dem Serail on to Kubla Khan, Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat, Gottfried Benn, briefly her lover and later an admirer of Hitler, and the varied splendors of Byron, Verdi, Humboldt, Schliemann, eulogized Else Lasker-Schuler in 1952 as "the greatest lyric poetess Borodin, Saint-Safins, Flaubert, Gaugin, Nietzsche, et al. (And one that Germany ever possessed." On the basis of the translations pro- might add the popular "Alhambra" style in architecture, the ornate vided in Hebrew Ballads and Other Poems, English readers may very shrines of Freemasonry, and the Comte de Gobineau's dismay in the well conclude that Benn was not guilty of outrageous exaggeration. phantasmagoric shadow of eastern hordes.) Of course it was not merely or exclusively a matter of explicit "oriental" forms; far more it was an expansion — a liberation — of the imagination, of taste. It reflected a willingness to embrace the exotic, the elemental, the sen- sual, a readiness to defy the restraints of a fancied Hellenism and neo-classicism. This is the light in which all of Lasker-Schiiler's work, not only her HebrSische Balladen and Das Hebraerland, should be seen. It helps us understand why, as Grunfeld recalls, she 6

Avoth Yeshurun, The Syrian-African Rift and Other Poems. Any translation of this poetry must effectively reproduce aspects Translated and with a foreword by Harold Schimmel. Philadelphia, of its peculiar, "inarticulate" style. Though he seems to identify the The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980. 133 pp. general stylistic problem, Schimmel does not deal with it very suc- cessfully. Instead of recasting the twisted syntax and colloquially wrought phrases into a parallel English version of prost diction, he Reviewed by Warren Bargad (Spertus College) opts for an extreme "faithfulness" to the text, narrowing his vision to individual words and syntactic phrases. The attempt to reflect the In the afterword to his Pegimot, a collection of translations and poet's usage with such literalness and precision unfortunately creates adaptations (Tel Aviv, 1979), the Israeli poet Meir Wieseltier states the impression that the translator has made little effort to perceive that "transforming [poetry from one language] into another the poetry and its style as a total, expressive unity. The poems appear language is ... a process in which one should and must combine a less than inarticulate, as they ironically should; they often seem in- total faithfulness with a total, unabashed unfaithfulness The comprehensible. translated poem, therefore, is considered first of all as to how it The problem in the translations is not imprecision, it is precision stands in its new, translated version, and as to the interest and enjoy- gone awry: ka'asher ish lo ro'eh is given as "when a man doesn't ment it engenders in this version. At the same time, there is no doubt see," when it should be "when no one's looking"; yare'afr mukhan that we have before us a flawed version; as good as it is, there is omed is "a ready moon stands" instead of "the moon stands always something lacking in it " Translating poetry is, to be sure, ready"; and ledaber bah tsarikh is "to speak to her you need" in- a difficult, often hazardous, always trying task. The difficulties are stead of "you should talk to her." The overdone literalness often there under "normal" circumstances: how to achieve a re-expression leads to mistranslation, but pure mistranslations, the results of of someone else's art; how to tranform the particular poetic language misreadings, also abound: #ashuv kamet is given as "important as into a poetic reproduction which is not overly flawed; how to convey dead"; hashekhuna al shemo as "the neighborhood on his name"; a sense of the original. When the poetry is especially difficult, shikheha as "forgetfulness," when it refers to the biblical law of abstruse or complex in and of itself, the difficulties of translation are grain left behind in the field; shenatpaff as "quick-pace on Pesach" enormously compounded. instead of "the year of '28." The outright errors are troubling — Avoth Yeshurun's poetry is indeed complex. The poetic voice is at they should have been detected at the editorial level — but the more once that of an observer, a commentator, a stream-of-consciousness annoying lapses, since they purport to reflect Yeshurun's style, are rememberer. The vision is quite graphic, down to earth, focussing on the constant dropping or misuse of articles and personal pronouns: a multitude of everyday objects and occurrences: birds, plants, a "Coat/he wore/ shoe" instead of "a coat" and "a shoe"; bookcase, a watch, a woman, daily errands and chores. Often the ha'eynayim should be "his eyes" not "the eyes"; hibita is "she images combine in metonymic association: a child and the moon, a looked" not just "looked." And sentences like "This [book]case bookcase and poetry, a bird's nest and old Tel Aviv. The themes are has more than man/can assume Energy" (p.25), "Big in riding he is mainly the vulnerability and fragility of existence, the all- in her eyes" (p.57), and "Goes round in my head/this name several inclusiveness of poetry and poetic materials, reminiscences of days" (p.97) may faithfully reproduce Yeshurun's syntax, but they childhood, parents, and pioneering days which flow plangently into are essentially unfaithful to his tone and diction. His language is the present. Memories of milking cows combine with Kol Nidre prost, not a pidgin. talesim that blend in turn with the rain in Tel Aviv which, in its ironic The essential error the translator makes in this volume is to con- everydayness, elicits all memory and other primordial forces. The fuse Yeshurun's special poetic language (hisparole, in Saussure's ter- poet's own identity, experience, and growth, his perceptions of the minology) with deviations from standard Hebrew usage (Saussure's land and its essence, its and his frustrations, are all combined in an langue). In identifying the poet's diction and syntax as deviations evocative, often fitful spewing out of words, images, disjointed from langue, Schimmel has opted for a kind of deviate English, a sentences and abrupt disruptions of sequence. pidgin which follows too carefully the "rules" of the language he The essential ingredient in Yeshurun's poetic style is its low dic- finds in the text. Had he recognized Yeshurun's language as an tion, its abject colloquialness. (Harold Schimmel, the translator, idiolect, a one-of-a-kind parole, he might have sought a parallel calls it "the accent, the gesture in the voice.") The voice often seems means — less "precise," perhaps, but also far less awkward — to "primitive," crude or peasant-like (prost, as the Yiddish has it); it transmit the poet's particular style. The new version might have been seems even to border on the inarticulate. This purposeful, simulated "flawed" or less "faithful," but, as Wieseltier notes, it also might style creates a tone of naturalness and artlessness, much akin to the have engaged the reader with a greater, more enjoyable sense of situations and images Yeshurun employs throughout the poetry. The Yeshurun's complex but compelling poetry. illusion engendered has two purposes: to evoke the lowly yet vigorous origins of significant experience (the shtetl, the physical labor world of early Tel Aviv, the flea market, the flowerpot); and to shape a poetic voice which reflects a verbal struggling toward ar- ticulation. The words and phrases appear to flow too quickly, to be unrestrained and unfiltered; the poet grasps spasmodically at the ex- pression of inner worlds of memory, feeling, and association. 7

Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Com- then explains in a similar manner throughout his works. Saperstein mentary on the Aggadah. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, demonstrates the application of the decoding process in chapter 4, 1980. 289 pp. (Harvard Judaic Monographs, 3) "From Exegesis to Innovation," to such diverse concepts as the nature of the active intellect, the role of women, and the nature of Reviewed by Michael A. Signer (Hebrew Union College-Jewish In- the messianic age. stitute of Religion, Los Angeles) One of the unique aspects of Isaac ben Yedaiah's work is his ex- position of halakhic texts in an aggadic commentary. Practical halakha, the performance of ritual acts, is expounded by Rabbi Isaac It is the aspiration of many medievalists to discover a manuscript in order to make the tradition consonant with reason. The influence and reveal its author. With the problem of authorship resolved, the of Maimonides is pervasive in the development of Rabbi Isaac's next challenge which presents itself is the possibility of taame hahalakhot. demonstrating that the text reflects a systematic view of the world, In his effort to interpret the Aggadah, Rabbi Isaac utilized illustra- and illuminates the social, cultural and intellectual milieu of a unique tions drawn from his own life experience. Saperstein evidences civilization. Marc Saperstein appears to have fulfilled these aspira- scholarly skill in abstracting these passages from the commentaries tions in his book, Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Com- and corroborating them with evidence from Hebrew and Latin mentary on the Aggadah. His work displays erudition, facility in sources. A talmudic warning against association with gentile rulers unraveling difficult texts, and the uncanny ability to take the text far evokes a description of the funeral of a wealthy courtier. On the beyond the limits of the word. Saperstein reveals commentaries on basis of several Latin financial documents Saperstein makes a strong the aggadot of the Talmud and the Midrash Rabbah against the argument that the passage probably describes the funeral of Astruget background of various literary works of thirteenth-century Proven- Judaeus, a fiscal officer of Louis IX. cal Jewish and Christian society. The rabbinate of Provence in the second half of the thirteenth cen- Provence had been a center for innovative Jewish literary pursuits tury receives extended treatment in the commentaries. Rabbi Isaac since the twelfth century. Talmudic and halakhic critical method continued the tradition of criticism of the rabbinic curriculum with flourished; kabbalah took root; and the synthesis of philosophic its exclusive concentration on Talmud. He contrasts these narrow- teaching and Jewish traditional literature was manifest both in minded individuals with his own teacher, Rabbi Meshullam B. Moses translation and in exegetical works. Twenty years ago Isadore Twer- of Beziers, who demonstrated great breadth of learning. Like his sky began to make the literary efforts of this complex civilization contemporary Jacob Anatoli, Rabbi Isaac chastises preachers who available to modern Jewish studies. His monograph, Rabad of Pos- either twist the words of the talmudic sages beyond their meaning by quieres: A Twelfth-Century Talmudist (Harvard University Press, use of allegory, or who accept the works of the sages literally without 1962), set a paradigm for research in halakhic exegesis. The diverse proper investigation of their meaning. literary genres utilized by Rabad were separated into thought To complete his description of the social milieu of Rabbi Isaac, categories which emerged from central themes. Another intellectual Saperstein analyzes a number of passages relating to apostasy and to portrait of Provencal Jewry, Frank Talmage's David Kimhi: The Christianity. The commentary narrates an imaginary disputation Man and His Commentaries (Harvard University Press, 1975), between Rabbi Isaac and a Christian opponent. The arguments of develops a carefully nuanced portrait of a thirteenth-century biblical Rabbi Isaac's opponent reveal the growing trend in the second half exegete as a reflection of his intellectual and social milieu. With of the thirteenth century to demonstrate the truth of Christianity on Saperstein's book we move from halakhic and biblical exegesis into a the basis of talmudic Aggadah. From the structure of the argument relatively unexplored literary genre, aggadic exegesis. It is also Saperstein opines that Pablo Christiani may have argued with Rabbi significant that Saperstein has chosen to focus on an author whose Isaac before proceeding to Barcelona in 1263. Saperstein's works were almost completely unknown, Rabbi Isaac ben Yedaiah of arguments with respect to the date of the passage seem convincing, Beziers. but until there is more evidence about Fra Pablo based on his own The argument of this book is carefully constructed. The first writings no final identification of Rabbi Isaac's opponent can be chapter, "The Aggadah: Problem and Challenge," traces the made. response of medieval Islamic, Christian, and Jewish literature to the Decoding the Rabbis represents a major scholarly achievement. It talmudic Aggadah. Christianity and Islam utilized the Aggadah to should be of interest to scholars outside the discipline of rabbinics. ridicule Judaism. Therefore, Geonim and medieval rabbis were often Social historians, scholars of medieval literature and culture will find forced into an apologetic position with respect to the Aggadah. much of interest here. Saperstein's careful analysis and translation of In the second chapter, "Isaac ben Yedaiah and the Sages," Saper- the sources will enhance their view of the nature of Provencal Jewish stein gives a systematic statement of the assumptions about aggadic thought and society. This book presents a methodological key for the interpretation which are implicit in Rabbi Isaac's commentaries. The examination of exegetical texts which will enable modern readers to discovery of an exoteric and esoteric meaning within the Aggadah understand them as a reflection of the minds and lives of medieval receives further attention in chapter 3, "Cryptic Meanings in the Ag- Jews. gadah." This chapter presents the utilization of a "code" within the commentaries. Concrete words such as "fire" or "water" in the Ag- gadah represent abstract concepts which Rabbi Isaac ben Yedaiah 8

Robert Chazan, Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages. New ly that popes acted according to the law and were to be trusted within York, Behrman House, 1980. xii, 340 pp. (Library of Jewish Studies) certain precise limits, while kings were ever arbitrary and dangerous. The concept of the eventual victory of Church pressure must, conse- quently, be seriously rethought. Reviewed by Kenneth R. Stow (University of Haifa) The overwhelming reliance on charters for understanding the at- titude of the state must also be questioned, especially in the light of Robert Chazan's new reader is an event of some importance. what is known about the growing consciousness of institutional Teachers of medieval Jewish history have long labored without a development and the revitalization of Roman Law and its study from usable selection of texts gathering into a single unit diverse materials the mid-eleventh century on. Attention must focus on the vague con- pertaining to the relations between Jews, Church and State in this stitutional parameters and the inchoate bodies politic of Western period. Lacking, too, have been English translations of many of the Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth century into which the Jew important charters of privilege and, even more, of canon law could not be integrated. He thus became a constitutional outlaw, materials, especially drawn from the high medieval decretal collec- legally a Iudaeus, as Gavin Langmuir has recently concluded.1 This tions. Chazan's book eliminates both of these lacunae. Indeed, he problem of the unintegrable Jew was addressed in its own day by may be introducing some readers to the canon law texts, in particular such legal compilations as Las Siete Partidas (which, in its discussion those found in Gratian's Decretum and Raymond of Penaforte's of Jews, does not provide an example of governmental acceptance of Summa, for the first time. Teachers will thus find this book most Church pressures); but neither it, nor similar works, like the German welcome. law collections studied by Guido Kisch, were up to the task. The book rests on assumptions which have long been accepted, The process and movement to this outlawry, moreover, was not and on three most of all: (1) a potent ecclesiastical pressure resulted the simple result of royal economic rapacity nor, once more, a caving in the eventual capitulation of the forces of secular society, sealing in to a victorious church. The transition from the Jew, who was the fate of medieval Jewry; (2) these secular forces, as they revealed granted a tuitio (protection/privilege) charter by Louis the Pious in themselves most explicitly in charters of privilege, were venal and the ninth century only because he was considered a Roman law civis, operated in the absence of any comprehensive theoretical founda- to the Jew, who could not constitutionally exist in the Empire tion; and (3) apart from a movement from an "alliance" established without the 1236 charter of Frederick II, was far more complex. No between kings and Jews for reasons of mutual economic advantage one, in fact, has presented a convincing explanation for this constitu- to a state of hostility, repression and expulsion — or from mild tional devolution. It cannot be passed over in silence. The 820's toleration to degrading regulation — there was little significant charters of Louis the Pious, in particular, must not go unmentioned. change in the relations between the Jews and the State and the Jews What is called for in addressing the predicament of medieval and the Church throughout the Middle Ages. These assumptions are Jewry, then, is a nuanced approach. The traditional approach which set forth most explicitly in the introduction to that section of the allows taking a cross-section of texts, drawn almost exclusively from reader which deals with charters (p. SS); and they are once more twelfth and thirteenth century French and English sources — fleshed reflected in the division of the book into the following six sections: out mildly with texts from other localities (except Italy) of West and "The Formal Position of the Church," "The Charters of the State," Central Europe — and seeing that cross-section as representative of "Protection of the Jews," "Ecclesiastical Limitation," "Missioniz- the entire medieval Jewish experience is only possible when the ing Among the Jews," and "Governmental Persecution," with each historian relies on historically static fundamentals. Even within this section purposefully organized thematically rather than geo- restricted geo-chronological frame of reference, moreover, such a chronologically (p. ix). cross-section can obscure issues if its concentration on themes is These traditional views, however, may be brought into question. allowed to override regional differences and chronological To wit, it is readily demonstrable that as the formal Church — developments, as well as a more searching approach in general. although not all Churchmen or religious bodies within the Church — A reevaluation of traditional assumptions should appropriately achieved greater levels of organizational, legal and institutional begin in a section devoted to the "Theory of the State" (a term maturity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it learned to channel which, like "government," ought to be used carefully or discarded and particularize its pressures on the Jews in accordance with when discussing the Middle Ages, but never facilely or in- specific, canonically prescribed limits and privileges. In contrast, in- discriminately). Texts such as the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes stitutional immaturity, personal piety, and the sense of presiding and their Novellae, the Visigothic Laws, the Sachsen- and over a holy nation, to mention but three of many reasons, led more Schwabenspiegel, and the Siete Partidas could be put to good advan- than one king, and not just Louis IX (as is suggested on p. 281), to tage. More traditional materials, like charters, could then be better do such things as outlaw Jewish lending and eventually expel the exploited to reveal the development of the twin concepts of Perpetual Jews themselves from their realms. It is hard to accept that kings Servitude and Chamber Serfdom. In many ways, these respectively acted primarily from the "profit motive" (e.g., p. 318). And for this theological and civil concepts, and the story of their development, reason, it is not surprising that Jewish writers, like Meir b. Simeon encapsulate the essence of both the theory and practice of medieval and the anonymous thirteenth century author of what has universally Jewish existence. It is necessary to confront them head-on and in been thought of as the near contemporary account of tragic events detail as well as to survey regional variations in their definition and which supposedly occurred in the year 1007 (p. 293), argued forceful- application, even if but briefly. 9

The entire body of materials brought forth and discussed to il- Solomon of Ondes, it appears (p. 149), had successfully won his lustrate the problems of Jews, Church and State must, indeed, be freedom by pleading forced baptism before the inquisition. But the handled with finesse, whether with reference to their selection and original inquisitional account goes on to relate that Solomon had arrangement or to technical polish. By employing in the translation been in jail for over a year awaiting the disposition of his plea. of Frederick I's 1157 charter (p. 63) and Alexander II's 1063 letter of Accuracy is also necessary in dealing with the texts themselves. The protection (p. 99) the words "belong" and "in servitude," for exam- following examples illustrate this point clearly, i) Document ple, rather than the accurate "attached" and "ready to serve," the references are not always as precise as they could be (and often they impression is conveyed that Chamber Serfdom and Perpetual Ser- are to an English translation alone, with no hint as to the vitude existed long before the actual moment of their birth. In fact, whereabouts of the Latin original). On one occasion, the reader is in both cases the Emperor and the Pope were vague and inadequate sent to the 1 "'03-35 edition of Rymer's Foedera when the page in their choice of words not because they chose to be, but because reference is, in fact, correct for the edition of 1816. The translation they themselves were unclear as to what the status of the Jews truly of the text in question, the 1190 charter of Richard I (p. 67), also was. More difficult is the matter of the 1293 letter of Philip IV to his contains some unusual place names: "Hame," "Thurroc," and seneschal in Carcassonne (p. 182). It is neither an example of "Ferrars." Except for the last, these names are the untranslated "Governmental Rejection of Church Pressure," nor of a royal con- Latin. It would have been preferable to seek a real translation, cern that was "primarily fiscal." (The letter does refer to potential perhaps Hamp(shire), West Thurrock in Essex, and one of the many loss of taxation, but, in context, this is a secondary issue.) Rather, Ferrieres in France (no locale in England has the Latin name, Fer- this text, whose first half accepts the notion of inquisitional activity rieres), rather than follow Joseph Jacobs in leaving the names un- and republishes the enabling bull, Turbato corde, verbatim translated (The Jews of Angevin England, p. 135). Jacobs' lead was (although the existence of this first half ought not to go unmen- again followed in translating John Lackland's 1203 letter of protec- tioned), has as its fundamental stricture that the inquisitors may not tion to the Jews of London (p. 123) as: "You shall defend them, af- exceed the mandate of the papal decree and that they must first ob- fording them assistance by force." Jacobs (there, p. 217) accepts the tain civil (royal) consent before proceeding against those accused. If Latin text of Tovey's Anglia Judaica (p. 68: "vos manu forti eis sub- there was any disagreement between the pope, the king, and the in- sidium facientes") and translates the phrase by "assistance with an quisitors, it was over procedural and jurisdictional matters, not armed force." But the more accurate version of the Patent Roll (for substantive ones. Besides, the Franciscan pope himself, Nicholas IV, 1203, p. 33, and cited here on p. 331) omits any reference whatsoever had already issued three letters in November of 1290 warning against to force and speaks of protection in the broadest sense ("vos univer- judicial (perhaps inquisitional) excesses, including specifically those saliter eis subsidium facientes"). against Jews.1 ii) The canons — laws possessing a general applicability — found Attentiveness to the issues is also necessary in discussing forced in Gregory IX's Decretales were edited from papal letters (and other preaching. Here a variety of attitudes may be seen, and not all of sources) originally drafted to suit specific occasions or needs. The them ecclesiastical either. The words of the Dominican, Paul Chris- editor of the modern edition, E. Friedberg, restored this original tian, may have been akin to a "death sentence" and felt like material for didactic purposes, but he set it apart from the canons "stones" (p. 263), but the papal bull, Vineam sorec (to which there is themselves by means of italics. In the translations here, no such dif- no reference), is silent about the use of force in connection with at- ferentiation exists, resulting in the misrepresentation of papal letters tendance at sermons, a force from whose use, whether through direct as canons (pp. 28-35). ecclesiastical or indirect secular means, the popes did not shrink on Likewise, since canonists frequently cited Roman Law in their numerous other occasions involving Jews. Moreover, while King discussions of Jewish status and regulations, it would have been James I of Aragon did order obligatory sermons (p. 255), it should preferable had Chazan not expunged from his translation the precise be pointed out that the (unnoted) papal letter1 which ostensibly ap- references to specific (Roman) laws found in the Summa of Ray- proved his decree addresses itself solely to those clauses of the mond Penaforte. Similarly, Penaforte's explicit legal citations of decree that deal with the well-being of converts; it does not discuss Gratian's Decretum and the 1234 Decretales, which appear in the sermons at all. Where, then, was the seat of the initiative on original in medieval legal shorthand — as is also the case with respect preaching: with popes, Dominicans, or kings? to Penaforte's "allegations" of Roman law — were emended to the Greater emphasis might also be placed on Jewish texts. Those in non-specific, "as in the Decretum" and the incorrect "as in the Finkelstein's Jewish Self-Government, Agus' Urban Civilization, decretal collections [early collections of papal decrees]" (p. 38). and especially Meir b. Simeon's Milftemet Mi$vah (fols. 70-72 and Also in this Summa, the abbreviation, "H.," is rendered as 226-28, although some sections from this tract are present) could be "Jerome" (p. 40) instead of the canonist, Huguccio (as the editor of exploited to show a Jewish awareness of how to confront and suc- the 1603 edition — the one used by Chazan — explains in the cessfully deal with papal, ecclesiastical, royal and baronial forces. preface). Along with the problems of selection and arrangement goes, of iii) The events described on p. 295 are said to have taken place at course, the question of introductions to the texts and to the various Le Mans in 992, with Count Hugh III of Maine one of the principal sections of the book. The student, for whom an anthology is primari- antagonists. But Haberman (Sefer gezerot, p. 11) and Gross (Gallia ly intended, needs analysis, detail and precise identifications. Sum- Judaica, s.v. Limoges) both specify Limoges as the site of the events. maries in generalized and even misleading terms give little help. (Continued on Page 10) 10

Endelman (Continued from Page 11) If they are wrong, and Le Mans is correct, an explanation should be 'The point is explicit in Chazan's "Emperor Frederick I, the Third Crusade given. It is also not clear why the events are classified as an instance and the Jews," Viator 8 (1977): 83-93, and especially p. 90, which speaks of "a key innovation in crusader legislation." of "Government Attack," since, as even Chazan himself writes, it is not certain whether, in 992, any attack occurred at all. iv) Peter of Blois is credited with saying (p. 246): "Life is granted today to the Jews — since they are our slaves ..." But, in fact, he Alfred Abraham Greenbaum, Jewish Scholarship and Scholarly In- \ said: "since they are the guardians (capsarii, not servi) of our stitutions in Soviet Russia 1918-1953. Jerusalem, Hebrew University, | treasure ... the Mosaic Law." Centre for Research and Documentation of East European Jewry, j v) On p. 263, the phrase, "a people of bougres," could have easily 1978. iii, 224 pp. been rendered as "Bogomil heretics," following the references to "bougres" in the index to Grundmann's classic Religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter. Reviewed by Michael Stanislawski (Columbia University) vi) Is it possible to speak of any medieval monarch, let alone the august Frederick II, seeking to "convince the masses" of the correct- This short survey of Soviet Jewish scholarship (a typescript revi- ness of his policies? (p. 124) sion of the author's Brandeis doctoral dissertation) confronts a for- vii) Crusaders as a translation for To'im is misleading. Eidelberg's midable challenge: how to weave together the diffuse, often frayed, "errant ones" is a bit better, since the term crusader is late twelfth strands of Judaica research in Russia since the Revolution without century at the earliest; before that, the term was pilgrim, peregrinus. succumbing to partisan subjectivity or bibliographical listing? The The Hebrew chronicle is a product of the m/d-twelfth century, and it task is an important one, since much valuable work was produced in was also possibly playing on Ezek. 10:44, "Ta'u 'ahare gilulehem this period in fields such as East European Jewish history, folklore, (wandered after their idols)". To'im thus means something more like Yiddish philology, and literary criticism, and both the development the bitter "idolatrous wanderers." and the ultimate fate of this scholarship are an integral part of Soviet viii) Was the message sent by the Jews — momentarily safe in the Jewish history. bishop's fortress in Worms — to their brethren who had been for- For the most part, Greenbaum succeeds in illuminating this com- j cibly converted truly "We shall be fully rejoined?" (p. 136) Or is the plicated and convoluted tale. His first three chapters chronicle the | Hebrew, joined "le-mavet u-le-Hayyim," rendered more accurately continuation of "bourgeois" scholarship until the consolidation of as rejoined in "death and in Eternal Life," thus suggesting the sense Soviet control "on the Jewish street" dictated its supersession by of despair and surrender which those still alive must have felt, not to Soviet-sponsored research, with its own trials, tribulations, and ac- mention their anguish for their fellow Jews? complishments. The last two chapters explore the ideological morass ix) In the introduction to Ephraim of Bonn's account of the plaguing this scholarship and the study of Judaica on the part of troubles in Mainz in 1188 (p. 118), it is said that Frederick I "issued a Soviet semitologists. major declaration: 'Anyone who harms a Jew and causes an injury, Throughout, Greenbaum is scrupulously fair and non-ideological his hand shall be cut off'." The implication4 is that this was a as he doggedly pursues and identifies his dramatis personae and their legislative innovation in matters pertaining to crusaders. Yet, a scholarly contributions. He has mastered the obscure, multi-lingual clause about cutting off the hands of those who attack Jews is found primary materials and scoured much memoir and secondary in the 1090 charter of Henry IV to the Jews in Speyer. An identical literature for clues relevant to his story. Here and again, particularly clause also appears in the 1157 charter given to the Jews of Worms by in matters relating to contextual legal or cultural affairs, there are the same Frederick I who issued the declaration present in the ac- minor lapses of detail or judgment, but the number of such slips or count of Ephraim of Bonn (pp. 62 & 65). What is more, the omissions is not great. Greenbaum has done a good job of stitching Anonymous of Mainz crusade chronicle reports that in retribution against those who had murdered Jews in 1096, Bishop John of together a coherent and convincing narrative. Speyer "Took a few of the burghers and chopped off their hands" What is missing is a sense of the compelling drama behind the (p. 134). scenes and between the lines of this scholarship. The reader learns very little about the personal and ideological struggles involved in Had more attention been paid to items like this last one, this book this work — the hopes, the pain, the disillusionment. Gearly, the could have made a lasting contribution. Still, because of its many very nature of the evidence hampers such an elucidation: censorship texts, Chazan's work remains a welcome and useful beginning. was very tight, and it is difficult to wax lyrical when summarizing tables of content. But the sources do contain —if, often elliptically— NOTES more pathos, and indeed more duplicity, than is indicated in this '"Tanquam Servi, The Change in Jewish Status in French Law About dispassionate survey. 1200," M. Yardeni, ed., Les juifs dans i'histoire de France (Leiden, 1980), In sum, Greenbaum's Jewish Scholarship and Scholarly Institu- pp. 24-54. tions in Soviet Russia is a competent and useful bio-bibliographical 'E. Langlois, Les Registres de Nicholas IV (Paris, 1886), nos. 3573-75. study of a subject that still merits more extensive treatment. 'S. Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XHIth Century (New York, 1966 — revised), no. 105, p. 255, issued no less than three and a half years after the royal order. 11

Jacob Kati, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, in his treatment of them, and herein lies one of the great strengths of 1700-1933. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1980. vii, 392 pp. his work: Katz takes anti-Semitic thought seriously. He does not dismiss the views of Jew-baiters as foolish, nonsensical, or half-mad, Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish but subjects them to careful analysis. He searches out the internal World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Chico, logic of anti-Semitic world-views, lays bare the assumptions em- California, Scholars Press, 1981. 28S pp. (Brown Judaic Studies, 23) bedded in frequently turgid and rambling volumes, and traces the relationship of these assumptions to contemporary intellectual cur- Reviewed by Todd M. Endelman (Indiana University) rents. He is particularly skillful in tracing the intellectual in- debtedness of later publicists and demagogues to earlier thinkers. In- deed, by emphasizing the great extent to which the basic notions of It can be argued that the history of modern anti-Semitism belongs European anti-Semitism were passed on from one generation of more properly to the realm of American and European writers to the next, Katz strengthens one of his own basic conten- historiography than Jewish. Anti-Semitism, after all, reflects stresses tions—the continuity of anti-Semitism throughout the entire modern and strains in the larger societies in which Jews live and mirrors ac- period. tual Jewish behavior only in a limited and distorted way. Not surpris- From Prejudice to Destruction is clearly a major contribution to ingly, then, historians outside the Held of Jewish history proper have the debate over the character of anti-Semitism after 1870. While been attracted to the study of modern anti-Semitism and have pro- some historians have held that the "new," areligious anti-Semitism duced, not coincidentally, some of the best writing on the subject. of the post-1870 period, with its emphasis on the unassimilable, The work of Fritz Stern, Peter Pulzer, Shulamit Volkov, Stephen racial traits of the Jews, marked a major departure from the older, Wilson, Robert Byrnes, Colin Holmes, John Higham, and Hans Christian variety of Jew-hatred, others have argued that there was an Rogger easily confirms this point. However, given the critical impact unbroken chain of contempt stretching from the Church Fathers to of anti-Semitism on Jewish life since emancipation, Jewish historians Adolf Hitler. Katz very much comes down on the side of those who as well have sought to explain its character and tenacity, although take the latter position. He argues—convincingly, to my mind—that their work, on the whole, has been less influential than that of their there was little in the ideological position of the "new" anti- colleagues in European and American history. The authors of the Semitism that was not said by the enemies of the Jews in the previous two volumes under review here can be taken as representative of century and a half. He shows, for example, that the notion that these two perspectives. Jacob Katz, the distinguished Israeli Jewish character was immutable and hence incapable of assimilation historian, has focussed primarily, but not exclusively, on the inner and impervious to baptism was frequently heard in the early- life and internal dynamics of Jewish society, while Norman Cohn, nineteenth century—long before pseudo-scientific theories of racial who was associated for many years with a research center for the determinism had appeared. The young Fichte, among others, be- study of persecutions and exterminations at the University of Sussex lieved in the permanency of the Jewish mentality. He wrote in 1793 in England, has been concerned with the history of various forms of that the only way to give citizenship to the Jews "would be to cut off collective psychopathology, such as revolutionary Christian mes- their heads on the same night in order to replace them with those sianism and witch hysteria. containing no Jewish ideas." At the same time, Katz also Katz's contribution to the study of Jew-hatred, From Prejudice to demonstrates that religiously-derived prejudices about Jews and Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700-1933, is old-fashioned in its ap- Judaism survived in the modern world independent of the Christian proach to the subject. Despite its title, it is not a history of anti- beliefs in which they had been rooted previously. They were Semitism in the broadest sense of the term (that is, an irrational transformed into new forms more appropriate for a less religious hatred of Jews that manifests itself in many spheres of life—politics, age, but their underlying animus against the Jews remained the same: culture, the economy, social intercourse, and so on), but primarily a the Jews were spiritually and culturally handicapped, a malevolent history of anti-Semitic ideas. Carefully and discerningly, Katz traces alien minority. Rationalism, while capable of demolishing much of the development of anti-Semitic thought from the eve of the modern traditional Christian belief, was unable to dislodge "the underlying period to the first decades of this century. Beginning with the Chris- emotional layers and even the basic conceptual configurations" tian tradition of Jew-hatred, as presented in Johann Eisenmenger's which had been part of the pre-modern religious outlook. "The Entdecktes Judenthum, Katz works his way through the entire spec- negative image attached to the word Jew thus retained its ideological trum of ideological anti-Semitism—rationalist, philosophical, moorings." nationalist, romantic, socialist, reactionary, volkisch, etc. Few in- Katz's explanation of the failure of Jew-hatred to decline with the tellectual traditions escape unscathed; most stand condemned. As spread of science and enlightenment and of its unexpected resurgence Katz demonstrates, even liberalism (at least in its continental variety) from the late-1870s is essentially sociological: "the very presence of was extremely ambivalent about the preservation of Judaism and the. the unique Jewish community among the other nations" was "the survival of the Jewish people. It is an ugly and depressing tale that he stimulus to the animosity directed at them." With emancipation, recounts, one that is hardly likely to bolster the self-regard of in- both friends and foes expected Jews to shed their characteristic rites tellectuals. and symbols and abandon their family exclusivity, occupational im- In light of the distasteful and provocative character of the balance, and mutual solidarity. However, instead of disappearing, materials with which he is working, Katz is remarkably dispassionate (Continued on Page 12) 12

Endelman (Continued from Page 11) Jews maintained their collective identity while, at the same time, is hardly necessary for a book whose reputation is already well achieving great prominence in cultural and economic life. Although established, it would be appropriate to. underscore some of its merits Jewish successes outside their own community tended to weaken and note, at the same time, some essential differences between it and traditional Jewish loyalties, anti-Semites did not see the conse- the Katz volume. quences of emancipation in this way. In their view, Jewry was grow- The subtitle of Cohn's work indicates clearly his focus: he is con- ing more powerful daily, threatening the material and spiritual cerned with the origins of the myth of the Jewish world con- welfare of state and society. spiracy—the deadliest form of anti-Semitism—and its growth in Katz's analysis of the persistence and resurgence of anti-Semitism Europe and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is the least satisfying part of his argument. This is due to his having provides the most complete account to date of how The Protocols of decided to study anti-Semitism as a body of ideas and to deem- the Elders of Zion came into being and then spread throughout the phasize the differences in the social and political settings in which world in the years after the First World War. His story begins with an these ideas were expressed, accepted, or, in a few cases, rejected. To extraordinary cast of characters in Russia and France—half-sinister, discuss anti-Semitic ideas without full regard to their reception is an half-comic eccentrics in the grip of murderous delusions—and ends unprofitable undertaking if the object of the investigation is to deter- in unparalleled tragedy during World War II. His writing is lively yet mine how prejudice led to destruction. Anti-Semitic writings cir- dignified, gripping but not melodramatic. It is a work of history that culated widely in all European countries in the half-century before can be said to have worn very well. the Second World War, yet only one country, Germany, made the Unlike Katz, Cohn searches for the roots of anti-Semitism's ap- extermination of the Jews an object of public policy. The most peal in the tensions and turmoil of the non-Jewish world. The persis- significant question for European historiography is why anti-Semitic tent solidarity of the Jewish people, their refusal to disappear as a ideas took root in Germany with a vengeance and virulence that were collective entity after emancipation, hardly figures in his account. lacking elsewhere and why countervailing political and ideological Rather, Cohn argues that a volkisch-racist view of the world ap- commitments were insufficiently strong to frustrate their spread. In pealed to certain groups within German society and, to a lesser ex- Katz's volume, anti-Semitism appears pretty much the same tent, other societies because of the particular history of those groups. everywhere. The same nasty ideas about Jews crop up with tedious Specifically, those strata of the middle class who felt gravely regularity in every country. Even in England, where political anti- threatened by the development of the modern industrial world and Semitism was never a serious threat, radical anti-Semites wrote about were struggling frantically to preserve their declining status formed Jews in the same venomous way as their Central European colleagues the backbone of modern anti-Semitic movements. Harassed, did. Yet it would be foolish to infer from their Jew-baiting pamphlets frustrated, and disoriented, thesepetits bourgeois saw in the Jews the and books that English anti-Semitism was the same phenomenon as beneficiaries, if not the creators, of the system under which they were German or Hungarian anti-Semitism. To be fair, Katz never explicit- suffering. Cohn then takes his argument one step further. He main- ly claims that anti-Semitism was everywhere the same, but his ap- tains that to grasp fully the appeal of genocidal-conspiratorial anti- proach to the subject does not encourage readers to draw distinctions Semitism during periods of crisis, it is necessary to understand the that other historians would be careful to make. specific psychological satisfaction afforded by such a theory to Undoubtedly the failure of the Jewish people to disappear as a col- beleaguered and confused citizens. In the concluding chapter to lective entity after emancipation contributed to resurgence of anti- previous editions of this work, entitled "A Case-Study in Collective Semitism at the end of the last century. However, most students of Psychopathology," Cohn offered a Freudian explanation of why anti-Semitism would not emphasize this point to the extent that Katz groups embraced conspiratorial fantasies about Jews. He omitted does. The great difficulty in maintaining his position is that such an this chapter from the current edition, not because he no longer explanation fails to account for the weakness of anti-Semitism in believes in the ability of psychoanalytic hypotheses to shed light on states with liberal political systems, like the United States and Great paranoid views and behavior, but because he now sees his initial in- Britain, where Jewish collective identity was as strong—if not terpretation as "somewhat primitive," given the increasing stronger!—than in Germany and Austria. The overwhelming tenden- sophistication of psychoanalytical thinking about anti-Semitism. In- cy in European historiography today is to attribute the strength of stead, he recommends the more adequate treatment of Saul anti-Semitism in Central Europe to the character of political and Friedlander's L'anti-semitisme nazi: histoire d'une psychose collec- social developments there: the failure of democratic ideas and in- tive (Paris, 1971). stitutions, the political immaturity of the industrial and commercial This is not the place to enter into the debate over the merits of middle class, the intensity and rapidity of socio-economic change psychoanalytic history. Suffice it to say that if there is one area of after 1870. This approach has the advantage of explaining why anti- historical inquiry in which traditional modes of historical explana- Semitism came to appeal to certain groups and not others and why it tion often prove inadequate it is anti-Semitism, or, to be more became a central political issue in some countries and not elsewhere. specific, radical, genocidal anti-Semitism. Interestingly, Katz, who Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide explores the growth of does not cite Cohn's work, devotes almost his entire book to the anti-Semitism in a very different manner than Katz's work. Pub- nineteenth century and only six pages to the inter-war period, in lished initially in 1967 to great critical acclaim, it has been out of which the most extreme forms of racial vilification and con- print for many years and has now been reissued in a paperback edi- spiratorial fantasy flourished. (The Protocols is mentioned only tion in the Brown Judaic Studies series. Although a full-scale review (Continued on Page 16) 13

William Scott Green, editor, Approaches to Ancient Judaism. purpose of the document. Those who are easily provoked will not Volume 2. Chico, Scholars Press, 1980. 207 pp. (Brown Judaic easily take to this kind of treatment; but the result is beneficial: Studies, 9) "Community structures are wholly based on Scripture. But Scripture is not wholly and exhaustively expressed in those structures. Scrip- Bunch M. Bokser, editor, The History of Judaism: The Next Ten ture has entirely dictated the character of romantic structures of the Years. Chico, Scholars Press, 1980. 147 pp. (Brown Judaic Studies, Mishnah. But the Mishnah is not the result of the dictation of close 21) exegesis of Scripture, except after the fact." Anyone who has con- tinued to read the article will discover that the argument is well argued and that Neusner is largely right. Reviewed by Alan F. Segal (Barnard College, Columbia University) In another essay of primary importance for the field in the next decade, Wayne Meeks outlines an agenda for the social description of the Pauline community which, if as successful as his social Here are two examples of the best aspects of the enterprise that description of the Johannine community, will certainly yield a more Jacob Neusner has begun. These two volumes — one representing profound understanding of this crucial aspect of early Christianity. some of the presentations of the Richter Foundation talks held at Meeks' comments about the categories of people prominent among Brown in 1980, the other collecting various essays which were given Pauline converts, based on M. I. Finley's "criss-crossing or published elsewhere — convey the excitement generated by in- categories", as having "high achieved status and low attributed quiries into method which Jacob Neusner has sponsored consistently status" will have important consequences when followed up in more in his years supporting and contributing to Jewish studies. Each detail. In my own research, I have been helped by adopting Robin volume is introduced briefly by the editor; each editor is a student of Horton's discussions of conversion to world religions among African Professor Neusner. tribes and from applying cognitive psychological theories of attribu- The excitement that I feel and like about these essays comes from tion to the ancient experience of conversion. I think that our studies the methodological questions that they ask, rather than the sense of a would yield a measure of convergence, but that would take us on a completely presented discovery. These are essays meant to develop a tangent now. His essay also contains a nuanced summary of his and series of questions for scholarship in the next decade, not essays his colleagues' work on Paul and an agenda for more detailed study reporting answers from the last. They are forward-looking and pro- for the future. vocative. Neusner himself sets the tone for these methodological In some way, the most important issues of the books must be questions in the essays that he chose to contribute to the volumes. elicited from the exchange between Neusner and Sanders, which There are two methodological papers — one in each volume, each at- began as a review and rejoinder of Sanders' Paul and Palestinian tempting to discuss its subject in the most provocative ways possible. Judaism in History of Religion. Professor Neusner is no doubt right For instance, in his essay, "Scripture and Tradition in Judaism with to point out that Sanders' definition of "pattern of religion" special reference to the Mishnah," he strongly criticizes the method becomes in effect a pattern of theology. The question of "Who is in of his friend Geza Vermes, whose epoch-making Scripture and and who is out?" turns out to be far more important to the Pauline Tradition's twentieth anniversary he is marking.1 He begins with a community than it does to the rabbinic community which provocative statement: "But violating the frontiers constituted by distinguishes between its own community and those to be given eter- the work of redaction, we no longer are able to raise the questions of nal rewards, not just because of the sinners within but largely political and social description and concrete historical, institutional because of the righteous without. The virtues of Sanders' book lie in analysis that begin when we ask, 'To whom was this story pointing out that rabbinic Judaism is not a "score-board" religion, important?' " The summary statement of these searching questions on the one hand, and that Paul's version of Christianity is a result of is: "Traditions-history produces historical results essentially useless his conversion to a new world-view. So I see some justice on each for social description." As a conclusion, I could not disagree with side of this argument. these statements more. When carefully executed, a good traditions- However, the problem of how to make disciplined comparisons, history can underline by contrast the particular social values of one which is covert in this exchange of scholarly opinion, is likely to be community over another bringing in the differing exegetical presup- the serious methodological issue for us to consider in the coming positions of each community. Neusner is perfectly correct in pointing years, at least when the field is religion per se. Those of us who are out, however, that most traditions-histories do not bother to ask members of Religious Studies or Religion Departments out of these kinds of questions. The earlier statement is consciously meant choice—because of a self-conscious desire to promote accurate study to provoke. Those who stop reading will miss the more subtle discus- of religion — must come head-on against this problem. This is the sion which follows. reason, no doubt, that both Sanders and Neusner suggest that the In the same way, the essay takes the following extreme position: comparison between Pauline Christianity and Judaism must be a ".. .the reason that the Mishnah does not cite scripture is that it does comparison of one whole system against another whole system. not have to. It stands on the same plane as Scripture. It enjoys the Sanders prefers to look at the theological sub-system whereas same authority as Scripture." (p. 183) Anyone who knows the rab- Neusner wants us to look at the whole religious enterprise, pointing binic corpus will catch the provocation here. The point is to describe out that Sanders' emphasis on theology also betrays Christian bias. a new way of construing the material which is closer to the original (Continued on Page 14) 14

Endelman (Continued from Page 11) Yet, how do we know what a "whole system" would look like? If we Jonathan D. Sarna, editor, Jews in New Haven. New Haven, The maintain that we must compare whole systems to whole systems are Jewish Historical Society of New Haven, n.d. [1978?]. iv, 148 pp. we not falling victim to a new version of the phenomenologists' mistake in comparing religions — namely, arbitrary solipsism? How Reviewed by Lloyd P. Gartner (Tel-Aviv University) can the whole system be compared when the making of the whole is so much a personal act of imagination with little agreement possible among disagreeing scholars? The humanistic social scientists whom The most typical genre in American Jewish historiography is the we often cite as giving us guidance have mostly given up trying to local community history. Its defects are notorious: leaden with isolate any religious system as a separate part of the "thick descrip- names and places, insistently laudatory, piously reminiscent over im- tion." In saying that we need to continue the comparative enterprise, migrant forbears, minimally aware of the environment beyond the at least in the study of Judaism and early Christianity, I am aware dignitaries and the institutions they celebrate. When one of us has that I am risking the same methodological problem. My provisional said he is writing a local history it is usually put in the form of a con- answer for the moment is that a certain amount of reductionism is fession. However, under the stimulus of the "new local history" as a advisable. It is for that reason that I can endorse, let us say, a com- major theme in American historiography, a number of better pro- parative theology as one possible disciplined comparison, once ductions have appeared which have almost vanquished the old style. Neusner's observations about the difference in the importance of Yet it is safe to predict that the old style will endure as long as there theology in each community is realized. are egos, individual and collective, which need to be massaged. The In the end, then, Sanders' most serious mistake is not that he com- saddest specimens of all are usually the outcome of the ill conceived pares theologies but that he assumes that the question of entrance in- labors of local groups. It is rare indeed to find a local history under to the community and continued membership within it has the same such sponsorship which exhibits scholarship and modesty and good theological force in each community. As Neusner has shown in a taste, but Jews in New Haven, edited by Jonathan D. Sarna, then a variety of other places, the difference between a Pharisee (and graduate student at Yale, does so in attractive fashion. ulitimately a normative Jew) and those outside the community is ex- With an eye towards future research, Jews in New Haven catalogs pressed in terms of purity, not salvation. This makes an enormous a variety of sources: its own archival holdings and numerous tape difference in the way the boundary is conceived. However, I prefer recordings, archival material at Yale and at the New Haven Colony (and this is admittedly a private prejudice) to compare religious Historical Society, a bibliography of New Haven Jewry, references systems on other grounds than theology because I cannot keep from to New Haven Jewry in early American Jewish newspapers, past and seeing how much theology serves as a short-hand for social and present synagogues with addresses and photographs, and a list of political forces within the community. local Jewish organizations. Oral history is well represented in the The volume also contains interesting articles by Richard S. book itself. The recollections of Isidor E. Offenbach describe the Sarason, William Scott Green, Peter Schaefer, G. W. Bowersock, J. community's transition from voluntary to professional social case Z. Smith, L. Schiffmann, and Herman Lichterberger. In the volume work, the German refugee problem, and the establishment of the edited by Bokser, there are articles by Goodblatt, Zahavy, Ravitzky, Jewish Community Council, while Charles Henchel candidly recalls Blumenthal, Levine and Eisen. Each volume comes equipped with a his career in community affairs, law, and Democratic politics which good summary of the article for someone who is referred to the book took him to the State Legislature and the judicial bench. Early days with a specific question in mind. Only space and time prevent me are recalled by Barry E. Herman's memoir of Maier Zunder, a 19th from attempting a discussion of each one of these interesting pieces. century German Jewish merchant who was the foremost lay figure in In terms of the production of the books, one might ask why the promoting public education. Justin Lewis sketches the background covers cite the editors as if they were the authors, when their con- of the local Bureau of Jewish Education's 1946 Code of Practice, tributions as editors have less to do with the selection of material while an early "rabbi", Israel Sachs, probably a shohet who assumed than with the technical aspects of production? There are quite a few the rabbinic title after Ellis Island, is recalled by Werner Hirsch. typographical mistakes, although I am much less bothered by these "The Passover Elections at the Sharon Israel" is a charming piece than many of my colleagues would be, since the two books are meant about an immigrant synagogue election, first published in 1915 in the to have a "dated" value. The importance of these books is that they Yale Sheffield Monthly, by Abraham S. Alderman. publish material quickly which needs to be looked at immediately so New Haven Jewry's relations with Yale University merit all the at- that we can have a significant methodological discussion of our field tention they receive here. The connection appears first in the benign to start this decade. Professor Neusner and his students have done us form of the student diary of Louis Ehrich, Class of 1869, astutely all a great service, both in providing the context for that debate and commented upon by Sarna, and in Arthur Chiel's account of the in making the discussions available to us. "Kohut Collection of Judaica at Yale." Dan S. Oren, a recent Yale graduate, probes deeper with his "The Jewish Student at Yale: A Preliminary Evaluation." He shows that as a small institution the university had a few Jewish students and there were few difficulties even with its pronounced Protestant cast. From approximately 1910, however, admissions discrimination and social exclusion took hold. (Continued on Page 16) 15

Endelman (Continued from Page 11) the development of the kabbalah from the book Bahir, the first kab- Scholem's studies of the history of the Sabbatian movement are balistic work, the translation of which served as his Ph.D. thesis, to the best-known part of his scholarly work. Historians and laymen the Zohar, and then from the Zohar in the late 13th century to the alike were deeply impressed by his detailed description of the mes- works of the disciples of Isaac Luria in Safed late in the 16th century. sianic explosion within Judaism, which could not be dampened even During this period he studied most of the kabbalistic manuscripts by the conversion of Shabbatai Zevi to Islam. Scholem proved that, scattered in dozens of libraries all over the world, identified them and in contradiction of previous historians' views, the Sabbatian move- constructed a history of the kabbalah which in most cases remains ment really began as a religious theology only after the leader's con- unchanged, still supported by the studies of recent scholars in the version, and existed for over a hundred and fifty years after that field. event. The paradox of the converted messiah gave the movement its In the late thirties and the early forties Scholem produced four drive and its character, resulting in a wide spectrum of religious studies, which are the most important ones in his career: First, the phenomena, from religious antinomianism to extreme pietistic or- essay "Mitzvah ha-Ba'ah ba-cAvera", which in a very brief form thodoxy. He proved that Sabbatian beliefs could be found among presented his views concerning the role of mysticism and messianism the greatest leaders of orthodox Judaism which had lost its innocence in Jewish history from the expulsion from Spain to modern Hasidism after the Sabbatian crisis. Modern times in Jewish history begin with and the Enlightment; second was his definitive study of the problem that crisis, according to Scholem, which destroyed past values and of the authorship and chronology of the Zohar, published as the opened the gates of Jewish culture from within towards the new ideas fifth chapter of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; third was that penetrating from the outside, from Europe in which revolution and book itself, the product of a series of lectures in New York, which enlightenment were emerging. presented for the first time a comprehensive picture of Jewish Enlightenment and Hasidism are, according to Scholem, two dif- mysticism from talmudic times to modern Hasidism; and the fourth ferent, contrasting answers to the Sabbatian crisis. While some Jews was the first version of the history of early kabbalah, published in a turned to outside influences, others tried to resurrect the pre- book form in 1948 as Reshit ha-Kabbalah (before that it was pub- Sabbatian world, neutralizing the intense messianism of the Lurianic lished as a long essay in "Knesset le-Zecher Bialik"). Almost all the kabbalah which served as a basis to the messianic movements. work that Scholem produced after that most inspired period was the Scholem's works describe a consistent and coherent process of development of ideas and attitudes presented in these four studies. development from the eve of the expulsion from Spain to the modern For the historian of Judaism, there is no doubt that the ideas and Hasidic sects and the ideologies of post-enlightenment Judaism. analyses presented in "Mitzvah ha-Ba'ah ba-cAvera" created a At the same time, Scholem developed his studies of the doctrines revolution in the way that Jewish historians regard the history of of the Jewish mystics in a series of essays, many of which were their people. Scholem presented in this essay, and in the many books originally lectures at the annual meetings of the Eranos society. and studies that followed in the more than forty-five years since its These essays, covering subjects like the Zaddik, the Torah, the publication, the first comprehensive history of modern Jewish Shechinah, the Golem, good and evil, kabbalistic mythology, and culture from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Scholem described in Jewish messianism, were collected in several volumes which cover the detail the deep spiritual crisis which the expulsion from Spain major subjects of the theology of Jewish mysticism in various signified for Judaism, the deepening of the feelings of exile, the periods, presented in a textual and historical manner. In these essays awakenings of messianic expectations, the rejection of Jewish ra- the integration of the study of Jewish mysticism with the general tionalistic philosophy and the new, popular interest in the teachings disciplines of history of ideas and phenomenology of mysticism was of the kabbalah which was becoming more and more a dominant best examplified. The student of kabbalah working on these essays Jewish theology. These cultural and spiritual trends combined when received an insight into the larger context of human religious ex- new Jewish centers were established in the Ottoman empire and in perience and thought in which Jewish mysticism has to be Eretz Yisrael after the expulsion from Spain. On this background understood; scholars who have no direct contact with Hebrew texts Scholem explained the new mythical symbolism created by Rabbi could use Scholem's presentation to include Jewish mysticism in the Isaac Luria in Safed, a new Jewish mysticism based on the Zohar but general histories of mystical and religious phenomena. answering the basic existential problems facing Judaism at that time. One of the most important contributions of Scholem to Jewish Exile and redemption became the major issues in mystical specula- studies as well as to religious history in general was his new approach tions, rather than the mystical attempt to understand the process of to ancient Jewish mystical texts of the talmudic period, the Hechalot the creation in the past and the return to the Godhead by the same and Merkabah literature. This is one of the most difficult fields in ladder down which creation descended from Him in the beginning. Jewish studies since the texts that have reached us were scattered, The new kabbalistic mythology was future-directed and therefore unreliable and very often incomprehensible. Scholem collected the made historical activity by mystics possible. Lurianic kabbalah made main texts, discovered their relationship to each other, defined their mystical symbolism into an active force in shaping Jewish religious attitude towards the vast talmudic-midrashic literature, and studied and cultural action thus paving the way towards mystical messianism them in the historical context of early Christianity, the Dead Sea which will pursue actively a new future for the nation. Thus Lurianic Scrolls, the Apocrypha, the works of the early church fathers, and kabbalah, which spread fast and wide in the first half of the 17th cen- especially their relationship to early gnostic works. Scholem tended tury, became the basis on which Nathan of Gaza and the other Sab- to see in this early Jewish mystical movement a specifically Jewish batian theologians formulated their messianic activity. (Continued on Page 16) 16

Endelman (Continued from Page 11) gnostic phenomenon, and called this literature "Jewish understanding a specific Jewish problem contributes to the general Gnosticism". This title evoked a controversy, and many scholars, understanding of human history and thought. No other scholar in both in the field of Jewish studies and in the field of early gnosticism, modern Jewish studies achieved a prominent position in the general tended to reject Scholem's view on this subject, pointing out the fields of History of Ideas and Religion; and Scholem achieved this great differences between the conceptions of God, the world and evil without any apologetic attitude, with complete confidence in the im- in Hechalot literature and the teachings of the gnostics. It should be portance of his work, and, most important, without any attempt to pointed out, however, that Scholem insisted on the title "Jewish demonstrate the centrality of his studies to other fields. The inherent Gnosticism", meaning a specific Jewish phenomenon which, to integrity of his work, the profound insights, and the insistence on the some extent, resembles other gnostic phenomena; he never suggested study of details, chronology, biography and bibliography in a that this literature was nothing but a Hebrew version of the teachings philological system, proved to scholars in other fields the importance of the gnostics in Greek or Coptic. The same argument was raised of his achievements. The forty books and six hundred papers that I concerning the nature of kabbalah itself, some critics insisting that Gershom Scholem published, and the volumes still to be published, kabbalah was not a mysticism in the usual meaning of the term. are at the same time a detailed contribution to specific problems in Scholem saw the kabbalah as the Jewish phenomenon which has no the history of Judaism, its culture and spirituality, and a meaningful exact counterpart anywhere, but contains strong mystical elements, new aspect to the study of man's relationship with God in every while his critics identified "mysticism" with Christian mysticism, religion, every generation. and demanded that Jewish mysticism be similar in most aspects to Christian mysticism, which is regarded as "mysticism" in its fullest form. According to Scholem, Christian mysticism is but one manifestation of the religious mystical tendency, while Jewish mysticism is another; Christian gnosticism, in the same way, is but one manifestation of a common phenomenon within mystical Gartner (Continued from Page 14) schools, and Hechalot literature, according to him, is the Jewish ex- pression of the same inclination in the first centuries of the common The academic ability of Jewish students in general was admitted era. somewhat resentfully, but they were excluded from the social and, it appears, the athletic activities of their classmates. It testifies to Scholem began his work in the field of kabbalah with the study of basketball's Jewish roots that in 1925 Jews had to be found to form a its origins and beginnings. He never neglected this field, and his book winning team. The correspondence of Dean Jones and Robert N. on this subject (Ursprung und Anfange der Kabbalah, Berlin 1962), Corwin, Chairman of the Board of Admissions, shows that these is probably his most inspired and penetrating work. From loose, genteel anti-Semites fully approved of discrimination against Jews, scattered, anonymous pages Scholem built a detailed history of a while President Charles Seymour shared these views at least during hundred years, from the second half of the 12th century to the mid- the 1940s when he looked forward to restoring the quota on Jewish dle of the 13th, in which European Jewry re-discovered mysticism, admissions after the war ended. Later on, however, what held for mythology and gnosticism, and laid the foundations for an enor- winning basketball during the 1920s was found to apply to academic mous spiritual revitalization of Jewish worship and religious prac- distinction after the 1950s: if Yale was to rank at the top, a country- tice. The terminology, the spiritual drives and the historical context club image had to be dispelled and Jews, the exemplars of intellec- in which kabbalah became a meaningful movement within the most tualism, admitted freely. There could be numerous Jewish faculty important centers of European Jewry were studied by Scholem in a appointments, and perhaps big Jewish money would flow in, as it combination of philological expertise and deep spiritual insight. did. There is a subject here of importance whose outlines are sug- One of Scholem's most important works remains unpublished: the gested by Oren, namely Jews in American higher education. The dictionary of the Zohar, which is really a detailed study of kab- Yale-New Haven Jewry motif gives this book special interest, and it balistic terminology and symbolism throughout the ages. For nearly is altogether a pleasing beginning that does credit to all concerned. sixty years Scholem collected all such terms and symbols, and studied their context, their exact meaning in every work and generation, with the Zohar as the focal point. This work is an enormous series of studies covcering all aspects of kabbalistic theology. It is hoped that his disciples will be able to publish this multi-volume fundamental scholarly work. Endelman (Continued from Page 12) It seems to me that Scholem's greatest achievement, which can and should serve as an example to scholars in Jewish studies, is the once!) Thus, in reading Katz, it is often difficult to understand how demonstration that concentration on a seemingly-narrow aspect of cries for the repeal of emancipation, which were the hallmark of Jewish religion does not exclude the scholar from the universal field nineteenth-century anti-Semitism, led to the extermination of six of the humanities. Quite to the contrary, only the complete mastery million Jews. There is a yawning gap between his description of prej- of the particular, in every aspect, can bring a scholar to a meaningful udice in the nineteenth century and our knowledge of extermination position within the universal field. The study of Judaism is an in- in the twentieth. Whether psychoanalytic theory can help to fill that tegral part of the study of man and his ideas. Every success in gap is still an open question but at present it has few competitors.