ERSPECTIVESERSPECTIVES AJSPPThe Magazine of the Association for

IN THIS ISSUE: Martyrdom through the Ages

SPRING 2009 AJS Perspectives: The Magazine TABLE OF CONTENTS of the Association for Jewish Studies President Sara R. Horowitz From the Editor ...... 3 York University From the President ...... 4 Editor Allan Arkush From the Executive Director ...... 6 Binghamton University Editorial Board Martyrdom through the Ages Howard Adelman Introduction Queen's University Shmuel Shepkaru ...... 8 Alanna Cooper University of Massachusetts Amherst Foils or Heroes? On Martyrdom in First and Second Maccabees Jonathan Karp Daniel R. Schwartz ...... 10 Binghamton University Heidi Lerner Origins of Rabbinic Martyrology: Akibah, the Song of Stanford University Songs, and Hekhalot Mysticism Frances Malino Joseph Dan ...... 14 Wellesley College Vanessa Ochs Radical Jewish Martyrdom University of Virginia Robert Chazan ...... 18 Riv-Ellen Prell Martyrs of 1096 “On Site” University of Minnesota Shmuel Shepkaru Eva Haverkamp ...... 22 University of Oklahoma What Does Martyrdom Lore Tell Us? Abe Socher Miriam Bodian ...... 26 Oberlin College Shelly Tenenbaum “The Final Battle” or “A Burnt Offering”?: Clark University Lamdan’s Masada Revisited Keith Weiser Yael S. Feldman ...... 30 York University Steven Zipperstein Perspectives on Technology Stanford University Scholarly Communication in the Twenty-first Century: Managing Editor A Changing Landscape Karin Kugel Executive Director Heidi Lerner ...... 36 Rona Sheramy Diarna: Digitally Mapping Mizrahi Heritage Graphic Designer Matt Biscotti Frances Malino and Jason Guberman-Pfeffer ...... 42 Wild 1 Graphics, Inc. Remembering Our Colleagues Please direct correspondence to: Joseph M. Baumgarten (1928 – 2008) Association for Jewish Studies Moshe Bernstein ...... 46 Center for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street Sarah Blacher Cohen (1936 – 2008) New York, NY 10011 Elaine Safer...... 47 Voice: (917) 606-8249 Fax: (917) 606-8222 E-Mail: [email protected] Benny Kraut (1947 – 2008) Web Site: www.ajsnet.org Eugene Korn ...... 48 AJS Perspectives is published bi-annually by the Association for Jewish Studies. AJS Perspectives encourages submissions of articles, announcements, and brief letters to the editor related to the interests of our members. Materials submitted will be published at the The Association for Jewish Studies is an discretion of the editors. AJS Perspectives reserves the right to reject articles, affiliate of the Center for Jewish History. announcements, letters, advertisements, and other items not consonant with the goals and purposes of the organization. Copy may be condensed or rejected because of length or style. © Copyright 2009 Association for Jewish Studies AJS Perspectives disclaims responsibility for statements made by contributors or advertisers. ISSN 1529-6423 FROM THE The Association for Jewish Studies wishes to thank the EDITOR Center for Jewish History and Dear Colleagues, its constituent organizations—

am going to keep my column very short this the American Jewish Historical time, and leave it to the guest editor, Shmuel IShepkaru, to introduce the articles that he has Society, the American Sephardi assembled on the history of Jewish martyrdom. All I will note here is that this issue’s main section is Federation, the Leo Baeck followed by two pieces about technology. Heidi Lerner’s regular column this time does not parallel Institute, the Yeshiva University our main topic but explores some of the newest developments in Web technologies and policies and Museum, and the YIVO the resulting implications for Jewish studies. In something of the same vein, Frances Malino and Institute for Jewish Research— Jason Guberman-Pfeffer describe some amazing new ways in which the Internet is being harnessed for providing the AJS with office to study Mizrahi heritage. Our issue concludes, sorrowfully, with the obituaries of three recently space at the Center for departed colleagues. Jewish History. Allan Arkush Binghamton University

3 library, and other government units that cherish academic employees, has put forth an academic freedom,” CCGES asserted its FROM boycott initiative. In three successive intention to “continue to invite drafts of the resolution, revised in outstanding academics from around THE response to widespread criticism from the world, to participate in, and inside and outside the academy, contribute to, its academic activities.” PRESIDENT CUPE called first for a ban on Israeli professors on Canadian campuses The CCGES statement can serve as a Dear Colleagues, unless they pass an ideological litmus general affirmation of the freedom of test; next, for a ban “on Israeli inquiry so fundamental to the work ately I have been thinking a academic institutions, not of the academy. While countries have great deal about the theory individuals”; and finally, for a ban on developed slightly different Land practice of academic Israeli academic institutions that parameters for the idea of academic freedom. Faced with events on my support “either directly or indirectly, freedom and its application to the own and other university campuses in military research or the Israeli state rights and obligations of professors, North America, I observe with alarm military,” encouraging a more students, and universities themselves, the clash between the crucial general, if vaguely defined, “academic the underlying principle is, in the principles of academic freedom and boycott of Israeli academic words of the American Association of the slow but steady growth of the institutions.” Elsewhere, CUPE University Professors (AAUP), that movement to boycott Israeli elaborates: a boycott would include “Freedom of thought and expression academics and academic institutions. refusal “to participate in academic is essential to any institution of This movement, which first began in cooperation, collaboration or joint higher learning. Universities and Great Britain with the University and projects with Israeli universities . . . colleges . . . interpret, explore, and College Union’s proposed boycott of conferences in ,” and so forth. expand that knowledge by testing the Israel academics and institutions and old and proposing the new. This has spread recently to Canada and Fortunately, this movement has faced mission . . . often inspires vigorous the United States, is an affront to the resistance from diverse corners of the debate on those social, economic, principles of academic freedom that campus. The Canadian Centre for and political issues that arouse the define our profession. As one German and European Studies strongest passions. In the process, academic organization puts it, (CCGES), a research center at York views will be expressed that may academic freedom is “the lifeblood” University in Toronto, recently seem to many wrong, distasteful, or of the university. The right to express released a public statement affirming offensive. Such is the nature of the full spectrum of views and to the right to free inquiry and freedom to sift and winnow ideas.” subject ideas to interrogation and condemning academic boycotts. While speech on campus is governed discussion from many perspectives is While it does not mention Israel in by the law of the land, subject to at the heart of the work we do in the particular, the CCGES statement was legal restrictions on hate speech, academy. To borrow from the slogan written and released in pointed defamation and libel, the university is of an old television advertisement for response to the CUPE boycott construed as a special place that rye bread, you don’t have to be in initiative. Its opposition to such stretches the acceptable parameters. Jewish studies to oppose an academic boycotts rests on both historically The AAUP notes, “On a campus that boycott of Israel. based sensitivity to exclusionary is free and open, no idea can be practices at universities and banned or forbidden. No viewpoint In Canada, where I teach, the commitment to the value of or message may be deemed so hateful movement to boycott Israeli academic freedom. Explaining that or disturbing that it may not be academic institutions and those who CCGES’s “thematic focus makes it expressed.” Its Canadian correlative, teach and research under their aegis particularly aware of and sensitive to the Canadian Association of has found a proving ground. I use the pernicious effect of the University Teachers (CAUT), the term in two senses: both as subversion and curtailment of expresses similar principles: “Robust testing and as proofing and refining academic freedom and exclusion of democracies require no less.” rhetoric and strategies. In recent researchers and teachers on the basis weeks, the Ontario branch of the of their ‘nationality’ and/or ethnic Still, the selective application of the Canadian Union of Public Employees origins,” CCGES “declares its principles of academic freedom has (CUPE), a large union that includes rejection of any ban or boycott . . . of me concerned. Today I learned from adjunct university faculty; graduate researchers and other public figures a speaker invited to my campus to students; office and maintenance based on their nationality.” Placing make the case for an academic staff; as well as transit, healthcare, itself in alliance with “other academic boycott of Israel that there are “some 4 things that are more important than openness of campuses to all views As a learned society with an academic freedom.” Some of my and all nationalities is viewed as a international membership that colleagues have argued that speaking potential chill on academic freedom. includes Israeli professors and out against an academic boycott is graduate students targeted by such innately undemocratic. Responding Let me be clear. I am not making an an academic boycott, and hundreds to a call for other academic units to argument in these pages about of scholars who collaborate with endorse the CCGES statement or to Middle East politics. I am making an Israeli colleagues and educational, draft their own affirmation of argument against the dangerously archival, and cultural institutions, the academic freedom and free inquiry, inconsistent defense of academic Association for Jewish Studies several heads declined, stating that freedom right here in North strongly opposes boycott movements they feared, as one put it, that such a America. Universities are the place that threaten the professional status statement did not “acknowledge the for impassioned debate, and people and integrity of its members, and importance of extending freedom of cannot always be expected to be their ability to conduct their expression to everyone” because it polite. Academic freedom is often an academic work in all its facets might be understood as dissenting exercise in discipline and courage— unimpeded. In past years, AJS has from the call to a particular academic discipline because one must joined with the American Academy boycott. sometimes countenance a view one for Jewish Research and other finds personally abhorrent, and learned societies in forcefully The debate about boycott among courage because one sometimes must opposing resolutions to boycott professors and graduate students is articulate a view not popular within Israeli academics and their the backdrop for the so-called “Israel one’s community or among one’s institutions, and will continue to do Apartheid Week” (IAW), an annual peers. At its best, this freedom holds so. AJS’s role as a learned society event on several North American ideas up to scrutiny. We might must be to work on behalf of the campuses, which has increasingly convince others to give up ideas that academic freedom of its membership featured anti-Semitic speech and yield to reason, argument, and and to forge cooperative projects imagery, violent rhetoric, and physical evidence, or we ourselves might be with other learned societies that intimidation. Ironically, many of convinced to change. But when the promote genuine, equitable, and those refusing to endorse the rights shape and tenor of the discourse meaningful academic exchange on of academic freedom for Israeli works to intimidate, to block out our campuses. professors and institutions defend in divergent views, to reify new absolute terms the right to stage IAW orthodoxies, or to affirm only Sara R. Horowitz free of any restrictions whatsoever. In selective rights of expression, then York University a discussion that has become the concept of academic freedom increasingly Orwellian, affirming the becomes meaningless.

THECALLAJS IS PLEASED TOFOR ANNOUNCE THEAPPLICATIONS RECIPIENTS OF THE 2007 CAHNMAN GRANTS: CAHNMAN PUBLICATION SUBVENTION GRANTS

The Association for Jewish Studies is now accepting applications for the Cahnman Publication Subvention Grants, a program underwritten by a grant from The Cahnman Foundation of New York. Cahnman Publication Subventions will help subsidize costs associated with the preparation of first books for publication. In keeping with the Cahnman Foundation's mission, scholarly manuscripts that explore Diaspora Jewish life and culture in regions once home to sizable Jewish communities (e.g., Europe, North Africa) will be eligible for consideration. Applicants must be AJS members, have completed their Ph.D. degrees within eight years of the deadline, and have a commitment for publication in English from an academic or university press. Submission deadline: June 26, 2009.

Please visit the AJS website at www.ajsnet.org/ajsawards.html for further information.

5 educational institutions freeze or cut endowed chairs, graduate student departmental budgets—including travel grants, or the most FROM lines for new positions, travel comprehensive position listing in the subsidies, and discretionary funds— field without the support of more THE learned societies face fewer positions than 1,700 individual members and listings, advertisements in their 42 institutional members. EXECUTIVE publications, and conference registrations. As a recent article in AJS’s conference, publications, DIRECTOR the Chronicle of Higher Education website resources, and grants are noted (“Bottom Lines Cause central to our mission, and all fiscal Dear Colleagues, Unease at Societies of Scholars,” planning revolves around upholding December 19, 2008), societies the excellent standards of these hat the current economic expect to know the full impact of programs. Furthermore, at a time crisis is having a severe the economic crisis in mid to late when every dollar counts for Timpact on colleges and 2009 and 2010, when a new cycle members, AJS is committed not only universities will not be news to of membership renewals and to preserving currents benefits but anyone reading this column. conference registrations takes place. expanding its services. This includes Perhaps less obvious are the myriad Until then, it is time for planning. seeking new grants to support ways in which learned societies such members’ research and conference as AJS are caught up in the As for AJS, while we do not have an participation; upgrading the AJS challenges facing higher educational endowment, we do have solid website to support an online institutions in these unprecedented reserves that have been built over membership system, with a member times. The mission, programs, and the past several years through directory and individual member members of learned societies are cautious spending and conservative pages; and expanded resources on rooted in the faculty, departments, investing. Our goal has been to pedagogy and Jewish studies. and presses of higher educational create a financial cushion for institutions; what affects these emergencies and, in the long term, AJS has also taken several steps to entities directly affects the to let the earnings from this fund reduce members’ travel expenses to associations that represent them. grow into a resource for programs. the 41st Annual Conference, Discussion among executive This continues to be the reserves’ December 20–22, 2009 in Los directors of societies large and small guiding principal, but as is the case Angeles. These steps include: have focused on a number of for other learned societies, much common concerns: job security, depends on the health of • Special arrangements with the salaries, and employment benefits of membership renewals and Hyatt Regency Century Plaza its members; the job market facing conference registrations in the Los Angeles, a four-star, luxury new PhDs; the status of adjunct coming year. It cannot be hotel and spa, for reduced rates faculty; the ratio of faculty to emphasized enough that individual of $119/night ($109/night for students; and the availability of members’ commitment to AJS, students). In addition, those who research support. represented by their annual dues and stay three nights will get the conference registration, is central to fourth night at 50 percent off. Likewise, learned societies must plan the strength of the organization and for a trickle-down effect from our ability to support Jewish studies • Additional benefits for AJS declines in college and university teaching and research throughout members staying at the Century endowments, institutional giving, the year. Likewise, Jewish studies Plaza: a 15 percent discount at and, in the case of public schools, programs’ and departments’ all in-house restaurants and state support. The core revenue commitment to AJS, as represented food outlets; 15 percent streams of learned societies that by their institutional membership, is discount for services at the support programming and activities essential to AJS’s work supporting Equinox Spa (located on the throughout the year tend to be fairly program development and graduate grounds of the hotel); $10 uniform across associations: student training, and conducting special daily pass to the membership dues, conference research on the field. AJS Equinox Gym; and special registration fees, publication sales, publications, the annual conference, reduced in-room Internet position listings, advertising and and the website could not function service of $4.99/day. exhibit fees, and contributed without a broad-based membership; support (both by foundations and nor could AJS offer the directory of • Special reduced roundtrip fare individuals). When higher Jewish studies programs, research on of $24 on Super Shuttle

6 between LAX airport and the participation in the annual Please let me know other ways that Century Plaza. meeting. AJS can better serve members. The association takes very seriously our •Discounted tickets at local AJS is also organizing special panels role as both a learned society and cultural institutions, including and presentations at the meeting in professional organization, and the Los Angeles County Los Angeles to help members remains committed to supporting Museum and Skirball Cultural navigate professional challenges and the intellectual and professional Center. personal finances in the current lives of members. We are eager to economy. For the second time, we know about the state of Jewish •An AJS Conference Travel Blog will host a panel on careers outside studies on campuses, the nature and (http://ajstravel.wordpress.com/), of academia, with representatives of area of budget cuts facing graduate with news about special airline various professions speaking about students and faculty, and the ways fares to Los Angeles. In addition, opportunities for Jewish studies in which AJS can help individual AJS will send e-mail blasts to PhDs. AJS also plans to bring in and institutional members navigate members about fare specials. representatives from TIAA-CREF through, and continue to thrive in, (to discuss retirement planning); these challenging times. • An expanded conference travel Vanguard (to discuss saving for grant program, with more college); and a financial planner Rona Sheramy resources to support untenured who specializes in working with Association for Jewish Studies faculty and graduate student academics. Association for Jewish Studies 41st Annual Conference December 20–22, 2009 Hyatt Regency Century Plaza • Los Angeles, CA Conference Information Now Online at www.ajsnet.org. Join the AJS for more than 150 sessions devoted to the latest research in all fields of Jewish studies.

• Major exhibit of leading publishers of Jewish studies scholarship

• Film screenings and performances free and open to the public

• AJS Gala Banquet and Plenary, Sunday, December 20 (stay tuned for information on subsidized banquet tickets)

• Evening receptions sponsored by Jewish studies programs and research institutions

• Gourmet kosher meals catered by the Century Plaza hotel

Special reduced room rates at the Century Plaza ($119.00 single and double occupancy; $109.00 student rate) available through November 16, 2009. Contact 1-800-233-1234 for reservations. Be sure to ask for the Association for Jewish Studies rate.

Deadline for reduced advance conference registration rates ($105.00 regular/associate members; $55 student members; $150 non-members) is November 16, 2009. See AJS website for registration information.

7 Shmuel Shepkaru

he following section on process of reutilization and behavior. Joseph Dan’s essay Jewish martyrdom reflects memorialization. Their authors have addresses the transition from Timportant new developments sought to explain the martyrdom to martyrology in early in a changing scholarly scene. For a transformation of martyrological mystical-rabbinic works. This long time, a number of early studies reports into martyrologies, some of transition appears to have very little in the history of Christianity, which which are still part of the liturgy to do with any external threat and viewed Christian martyrdom as an today. Without denying the seems to be connected with the expansion of a Jewish ideal, and the historical value of these emergence within Jewish society of lachrymose approach to Jewish martyrologies, scholars have a mystical-rabbinic circle. Self- history itself, jointly perpetuated the critically scrutinized their objectivity sacrifice in these works constitutes notion that martyrdom has always and objectives. Still other the mystics’ expression of love for been an integral part of , researchers have investigated the the divine. Also “sacrificed” in these the natural result of the Jews’ employment of the martyrological works are the authoritative religious conflicts with foreign notion in an assortment of sources: Talmudic stories for the sake of a powers. In recent years, however, a folkloric, mystical, historical, legal, more fictionalized depiction of the growing number of works have and fictional, to mention a few. All sages’ executions. These mystical- demonstrated that Jewish of this has made it possible for fantastic narratives were among a set martyrdom (or kiddush ha-Shem) is representatives of diverse disciplines of stories (biblical, apocryphal, and a much more multifaceted and within Jewish studies to come Talmudic) that later on captured the mysterious phenomenon than together to investigate the topic of imagination of medieval Jews. Yet in anyone previously imagined. martyrdom in an interdisciplinary numerous instances medieval Defying Albert Camus’ assertion in fashion. martyrs are reported to have The Fall that martyrs can never be surpassed the early examples of understood, scholars have In this issue of AJS Perspectives, we martyrs being killed by their attempted to explain why some present a small sample of recent oppressors. In the Middle Ages, Jews opted for death over life, while developments in this field of some Jewish martyrs are reported to others did not. They have raised scholarship. The essays follow a have taken their own lives and even similar questions with regard to historiographical lane from the late the lives of loved ones. entire Jewish communities. On a antique Near East, through larger scale yet, they have inquired medieval Europe, to the present The Middle Ages can therefore be into the phenomenal and State of Israel. Daniel Schwartz’s regarded as a period of what Robert conceptual developments of essay compares two Jewish works of Chazan here characterizes as martyrdom. When did the idea of the Hellenistic period, which “radical” kiddush ha-Shem. martyrdom enter Judaism and why? uphold different types of resistance Certainly, the violent efforts to When and why did the idea of to Greek rule. While one idealizes convert Jews to Christianity shaped abandoning life voluntarily become militant confrontation, the other the radical martyrological reaction. an ideal, and how did it develop endorses the voluntary death of the But the radicalization of kiddush ha- into an ideology? noncombatant. The comparison Shem also reflects the exposure of illustrates how local needs medieval Jews to the cultural and Other studies have addressed the determine the idealization of Jewish religious ideals of the Christian

8 society in the midst of which they in order to remedy this drawback. antiquity between a militant or lived. Eva Haverkamp’s essay shows In the case she describes, the martyrological model surfaces anew how Jews incorporated Christian records of the Inquisition tribunals in modern-time Israeli literature. symbols and even Christian sacred reveal a surprising twist to the story. But as the essays here show, spaces into their narratives to prove Martyrdom and myth in modern martyrdom was never just a matter the paradoxical point that they were Hebrew literature is the concern of of choice. worlds apart. the final essay, by Yael Feldman. Feldman describes how history and Shmuel Shepkaru is Associate Such symbolic embellishment may religion converged in Zionist poetry Professor of Jewish History at the stand in the way of the search for to assist in the creation of a new University of Oklahoma. He is the historical truth. Miriam Bodian’s national Israeli mythology. At least author of Jewish Martyrs in the essay on the case of a crypto-Jewish symbolically—the essays presented Pagan and Christian Worlds martyr makes this point and here barely scratch the surface of (Cambridge University Press, 2006). demonstrates the need to utilize a our vast topic—we have thus come variety of texts, if they are available, full circle. The choice in late

The AJS is pleased to announce the recipients of the JorJordandan2008 DorotSchnitzerSchnitzer Grants: BookBook AAwarwardsds

The AJS is pleased to announce the 2009 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award Program, the Association for Jewish Studies’ annual book award program, made possible by funding from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation of Portland, Oregon. These awards recognize and promote outstanding scholarship in the field of Jewish studies and honor scholars whose work embodies the best in the field: rigorous research, theoretical sophistication, innovative methodology, and excellent writing.

Each year, the AJS awards two $5,000 Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards.The two submission categories for 2009 are: • Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Archaeology • Jews and the Arts (visual, performance, music)

Only AJS members may submit their books for consideration or be nominated for consideration by a third party (publisher, etc.). Any book published in English from 2005 through 2009 is eligible for consideration. A book may be submitted up to two times within a four-year cycle. Scholars at all stages of their careers are eligible to apply.

Recipients of the Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards will be recognized at the AJS’s 41st Annual Conference, December 20–22, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, CA. The award will also be announced in AJS publications and other professional and national media.

Deadline for Submissions: June 26, 2009.

Please visit the AJS website at www.ajsnet.org/ajsawards.html for further information.

9 of a woman later known as Hannah in Jewish tradition, and her seven FOILS OR HEROES? sons). Accordingly, if the story turns around at the beginning of chapter 8, ON MARTYRDOM IN FIRST that is because God hears the blood calling out to Him from the ground (8:3) and, in response, His wrath AND SECOND MACCABEES turns into mercy (8:5). It is, in other Daniel R. Schwartz exception to the general rule. words, the martyrdoms of chapters Similarly, Gentiles, especially Greeks, 6–7 that allow for Judas he First and Second Books of were by and large full of respect for Maccabaeus’s victories, which begin Maccabees tell the story of the Jews, which is of course only to in chapter 8 and continue until the T Judaeans who rebelled be expected, since we are all “men” end of the book. Thus, for 2 against Greek rule and established a (4:35). Indeed, even Antiochus Maccabees, sin is the problem and sovereign Jewish state in its stead. himself wasn’t so bad: chapter 4 martyrdom is the solution. As the The authors of these two works, depicts him as enraged at the murder seventh son puts it in 7:38, his however, came from very suffering and that of his different historical FOR 2 MACCABEES, SIN IS THE PROBLEM brothers stayed the Almighty’s contexts: 1 Maccabees anger, which had justly been reflects the partisan AND MARTYRDOM IS THE SOLUTION. loosed against the nation. viewpoint of a mouthpiece of the native dynasty that led the of a Jew and punishing the In 1 Maccabees, in contrast, sin is not rebellion and came to rule the state, perpetrator quite demonstratively the problem. Non-Jews are the while 2 Maccabees is the work of a (4:37–38), just as it explains that problem. As summarized above, diasporan Jew accustomed to living Antiochus would have punished Gentile kings are wicked, Gentiles are under Greek rulers. Accordingly, another such villain too were it not wicked (unless, as the Romans, they anyone who compares these two for the influence exercised by a are not our neighbors and are far Jewish works of the second century corrupt courtier (4:45–46). enough away not to bother us, BCE to one another will easily notice Accordingly, if chapter 5 has chapter 8), and Jews who “yoke manifold differences. Antiochus attacking Jerusalem and themselves” together with Gentiles (1 robbing the Temple, it also assures us Macc. 1:15, echoing Num. 25:3, 5, For example, 1 Maccabees naturally that this happened only as the result the Phineas story; see below) are portrayed Greek kings as typically of a misunderstanding (5:5–11). wicked. Therefore, what is needed is evil, summarizing one-hundred-fifty not atonement but, rather, heroic years of Hellenistic kings—from Among other things, 1 and 2 opposition and that is where the Alexander the Great until Antiochus Maccabees also differ with regard to Hasmoneans come in. The author, Epiphanes—with the observation that martyrdom, although neither this writing on behalf of the Hasmonean “they caused many evils on the difference nor its correlation with the dynasty, is careful to portray the earth” (1:9). Indeed, Gentiles in two books’ disparate origins are founder of the dynasty, Mattathias, as general are evil: the frequent attempts immediately apparent. In 2 a latter-day Phineas, who too “was of “the Gentiles roundabout” to Maccabees, the role of martyrs is zealous” (2:24), “zealous for the law, attack the Jews and wipe them out clear: they are the very pivot of the as had been Phineas” (2:26). He are underlined with relish (5:1, 10; story. The book has a simple consequently killed a Jew who was 12:53), for they serve quite well to structure: after the first three about to sacrifice as the king justify the need for independent rule. introductory chapters the story goes required, killed the royal official downhill quickly, with sinful enforcing the decree as well, and In contrast, the author of 2 Hellenization in chapter 4 entailing raised the first call to rebellion. That Maccabees frequently stresses that divine punishment (4:16–17), which the biblical parallel also explains why Gentile kings were usually benevolent takes its form in Antiochus’s attack Mattathias’s descendants, as Phineas to the Jews, laying special emphasis on Jerusalem and the Temple in (Num. 25:10–13), are entitled to the on the fact that they showed great chapter 5 and his decrees against high priesthood, is not merely a respect for the Temple of Jerusalem Judaism in the first verses of chapter coincidence. The list of “whereas” (3:2–3; 5:16) and thus indicating 6. But that is followed in the rest of clauses in chapter 14, documenting that Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who chapter 6 and all of chapter 7 by all the Hasmoneans’ accomplishments persecuted the Jews and defiled the lengthy and graphic accounts of in their wars over the next decades, Temple, was merely an unfortunate martyrdom (of the old Eleazar, and completes the same picture and 10 justifies the proclamation, preserved Bacchides sent a treacherous peace period (as today), had the option of in that chapter, that they are to feeler to Judas Maccabaeus and his being soldiers in their own army, and remain the nation’s rulers forever. brothers, they saw through it and accordingly make valiant soldiers, prudently kept their distance, but “a including those who died nobly—the Martyrs have no place in this story, congregation of scribes,” some sixty heroes of 1 Maccabees. Each book except insofar as they show how bad “pious people,” convinced that “a naturally lionizes the role models of the Gentiles are. Accordingly, martyrs priest of the seed of Aaron” would its community. A broader, deeper, figure in 1 Maccabees on only three not hurt them, accepted the and more unsettling conclusion occasions, briefly and solely for that treacherous overtures and were would add that those who view purpose and, thus, as foils for the real martyrs positively relativize the value heroes. First, at the very end of of life in this world, and, as in 2 chapter 1 a few verses (vv. 60–63) Maccabees, place more of an record the execution of those who emphasis on life after death, and, persisted in circumcising their consequently, on the distinction children and refrained from between the body (which stays in eating forbidden foods; that the grave) and the soul. In passage is followed by chapter contrast, those, like the author 2, which opens elsewhere, and of 1 Maccabees, who view with no causal nexus, à la martyrs as pious fools, lambs, “Meanwhile, on the other led uselessly to slaughter, limit side of town,” by introducing their view to this world: what Mattathias and his five sons you see is what you get. Insofar and then recounting the way as religion has something they began the rebellion. That fundamental to do with what is, chapter 1 portrays the there is beyond this world and problem and chapter 2 introduces beyond what we see, and insofar as the solution, a far cry from the Judaism is a religion, it becomes move from 2 Maccabees 6–7 to 2 easy to understand why the term Maccabees 8, where the martyrdoms “Judaism” appears (for the first time are the solution. In 1 Maccabees, in in extant literature) and is showcased the move from chapter 1 to chapter Silver Tetradrachm of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, in 2 Maccabees (2:21; 8:1; and 164 BCE. Courtesy of the Center for Online 2, martyrdoms function only to show Judaic Studies, www.cojs.org. 14:38), and harder to understand that the Hasmonean solution, which how Judaism might play a significant is the opposite of martyrdom, is what promptly arrested and executed (1 role in a Jewish state. This, in turn, is needed instead. Macc. 7:10–17). If, in the first two goes some of the way toward cases of martyrdom in chapters 1–2, explaining why exponents of Judaism, Similarly, in 1 Maccabees 2:29–38, we saw open-eyed people choosing to such as Pharisees and Qumran we read of pious Jews who refuse to pay the ultimate price rather than sectarians, found themselves in defend themselves on the Sabbath; as disobey the Torah, here the author opposition to the Hasmonean state, a result, all one thousand of them are takes off his gloves and presents those and may also contribute to the easily killed by royal troops. This foils as pious fools, who make the understanding of similar situations in leads the wiser Mattathias and his Hasmoneans’ wisdom, and the Israel today. men to decide to defend themselves rightness of their way, stand out all if they are ever attacked on the the more. For the dynastic historian, Daniel R. Schwartz is professor in the Sabbath (1 Macc. 2:39–41), a policy the author of 1 Maccabees, this was Department of History of the Jewish indeed followed at 9:43–47. Thus, the point of the story. People at the Hebrew University of here too pious and well-meaning Jerusalem. He is the author of 2 martyrs serve only as foils for those A minimalist analysis of this Maccabees (Walter de Gruyter, 2008). who see things the way they really are comparison of the two books would and draw the requisite practical restrict itself to noting that Jews of conclusions. the Diaspora possess, qua Jews, no army. Having at their disposal no Finally, in chapter 7 we read of a other route to a “noble death” than Syrian governor, Bacchides, sent to martyrdom, they make martyrs the Judaea together with a villainous heroes of 2 Maccabees. In contrast, Jewish priest, Alcimus. When the Jews of Judaea in the Hasmonean

11 AJS INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERS The Association for Jewish Studies is pleased to announce the following Institutional Members for the 2008-09 membership year: American Jewish Historical Society American Jewish University Arizona State University, Jewish Studies Program The Center for Cultural Judaism , Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies Cornell University, Jewish Studies Program Duke University, Jewish Studies Program Foundation for Jewish Culture Georgetown University, Program for Jewish Civilization Hebrew College Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion Indiana University, Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program The Jewish Theological Seminary, The Graduate School Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies Northwestern University, The Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies Old Dominion University, Institute for Jewish Studies and Interfaith Understanding Pennsylvania State University, Jewish Studies Program Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies Stanford University, Taube Center for Jewish Studies Trinity College, Jewish Studies Program The University of Arizona, Arizona Center for Judaic Studies University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Jewish Studies University of California, San Diego, Judaic Studies Program University of Connecticut, Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life University of Denver, Center for Judaic Studies University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Program in Jewish Culture and Society University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Judaic and Near Eastern Studies Department University of Michigan, The Frankel Center for Judaic Studies University of North Carolina at Asheville, Center for Jewish Studies University of Oregon, Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies University of Pittsburgh, Jewish Studies Program University of Tennessee, The Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies The University of Texas at Austin, Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies University of Virginia, Jewish Studies Program University of Washington, Jewish Studies Program, Jackson School of International Studies University of Wisconsin—Madison, Center for Jewish Studies Vanderbilt University, Program in Jewish Studies Washington University in St. Louis, Program in Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies Yeshiva University YIVO Institute for Jewish Research York University, Centre for Jewish Studies If your program, department, or institution is interested in becoming an AJS institutional member, please contact Rona Sheramy, AJS Executive Director, at [email protected] or 917.606.8249. 12 13 ORIGINS OF RABBINIC MARTYROLOGY: RABBI AKIBAH, THE SONG OF SONGS, AND HEKHALOT MYSTICISM Joseph Dan fellow martyrs endure forever in narratives—describing in vivid hree ancient narratives Jewish collective memory. details the tortures that these sages, sustained and encouraged especially Rabbi Akibah, Rabbi TJewish martyrs in the Middle There is no doubt that the Ishmael, and Rabbi Hanina ben Ages. One was the Binding of , martyrdom of Rabbi Akibah and Tradion, endured before finally a biblical story that many several other great teachers of the being killed—are well-known to believed did not occur anyone who has read some of exactly as told in Genesis: the Talmudic aggadot. Yet it is instead they believe that significant that the text that Isaac was really sacrificed by became the cornerstone of his father on the altar, and Jewish martyrological literature only later came back to life is actually not a Talmudic one. from the ashes. The second It is an independent narrative, was the story of the entitled Aseret Harugey Malkhut “Woman and Her Seven (Ten Who Were Martyred by Sons,” originally told in the the Empire), a text that derived Book of Maccabees, and material from the Talmudic later told in rabbinic stories but added several figures literature as “Hannah and not found there and developed Her Seven Sons.” The the stories in ways that have no heroine is a mother who basis in the Talmudic tradition. witnessed each of her sons In several cases, the stories in executed by the Hellenistic this narrative even contradict king Antiochus after she those of the Talmud. The list of encouraged them to refuse ten martyrs in the narrative is to worship idols. Yet the historically impossible: the sages most potent and prevailing included in it could not have ancient narrative, most lived and died at the same time, often quoted in and the stories often contradict martyrological contexts and Talmudic chronology. Several raised as an example of scholars tried but failed to devotion to the God of amend the list and construct Israel, was that of the one that could be regarded as martyrdom of Rabbi reflecting true events. One can Akibah and his colleagues, only conclude that Aseret the great Tanaim of the Harugey Malkhut is actually a early second century, as work of fiction. This raises an told in several Talmudic intriguing question: Why did tales and best remembered Depiction of Rabbi Akibah in the Mantua Haggadah, 1560. Jewish tradition forsake the as the “Story of the Ten Reprinted from The Jewish Encyclopedia (Funk and Wagnalls, authoritative stories presented in 1925), s.v. “Akiba ben Joseph.” Martyrs.” This narrative was the Talmud, and cherish the adopted into a hymn, a piyyut, Mishnah was a historical event that fictional narrative that in many entitled Eleh Ezkera (These I occurred in the 30s of the second respects differed from and Remember), and recited in the century and was connected with the contradicted that tradition? synagogue, ensuring that the persecution of the Jews by Emperor memory of the tortures and Hadrian in the context of the Bar The problem becomes even more sacrifices of Rabbi Akibah and his Kochbah rebellion. The Talmudic perplexing when the sources of the

14 narrative are investigated. The rather than a guide to proper Komah (The Measurement of earliest version of the narrative of behavior during the experience of the Height), in which the physical the “Ten Martyrs” is incorporated martyrdom. How did a narrative measurements of the “Creator of within another text, Hekhalot that served as a literary framework Genesis” are listed in huge, Rabbati (The Greater Book of for a work describing a mystical astronomical numbers. This Celestial Palaces), an esoteric work experience become the basis of the anthropomorphic treatise, an that is the most detailed and classical Jewish narrative about embarrassment to many medieval profound expression of the martyrdom? Jewish thinkers, contains a promise, experiences of the ancient Jewish guaranteed by Rabbi Akibah and mystics, the “Descenders to the In the Talmud, the martyrdom of Rabbi Ishmael, that anyone who Chariot.” The core of this ancient Rabbi Akibah and Rabbi Ishmael is studies it will “inherit this world treatise (probably written in the presented as the story of the cruel and the world to come.” At the third or fourth century CE), is a death of two of the greatest basis of this mystical work are the detailed description of the ascension halakhic authorities of that time. In verses in the Song of Songs of Rabbi Ishmael (described here as Hekhalot Rabbati, the martyrdom (5:10–16) that describe the beauty a “High Priest the son of a High of these two sages is presented as of the body of the beloved male Priest,” which was an impossibility the death of two great mystics, who figure. The Shiur Komah identified because Rabbi Ishmael was born knew the hidden secrets of the this figure as that of the Creator about the time that the second divine world and experienced a himself. It should be remembered Temple was destroyed) to the divine mystical meeting with the Lord that it was Rabbi Akibah who made realms, the seven the radical palaces that are statement that “all located within the TISSIGNIFICANT THAT THE TEXT THAT BECAME THE scriptures are holy, seventh, highest I and the Song of firmament. Rabbi CORNERSTONE OF JEWISH MARTYROLOGICAL LITERATURE IS Songs is the holy Ishmael was sent of holies” upon this mission ACTUALLY NOT A TALMUDIC ONE. . . . WHY DID JEWISH (Mishnah by his teacher, Yadayim). It was Rabbi Nehunia TRADITION FORSAKE THE AUTHORITATIVE STORIES also Rabbi Akibah ben ha-Kanah, who stated that when it was PRESENTED IN THE TALMUD, AND CHERISH THE FICTIONAL the Song of Songs reported that the was “given” to emperor of Rome NARRATIVE THAT IN MANY RESPECTS DIFFERED FROM AND Israel on Mount decided to execute Sinai by its real ten of the leading CONTRADICTED THAT TRADITION? author, “the king sages of the people who owns peace” of Israel. He was (melekh she-ha- sent to inquire in the celestial God sitting on his throne of glory. shalom shelo) rather than Shlomo, realms whether the order of The “Story of the Ten Martyrs” Solomon, son of David. Some execution was a decision by the developed by additions and scholars understood this regard for emperor himself—in which cases embellishments of the Hekhalot the Song of Songs to be the result these great sages could nullify it text, and not the Talmudic one. of the belief that it includes a self- without much trouble—or whether Why did Jewish tradition prefer the portrait of God, presented in the it was a divine decree, to which they portrait of supreme martyr who is a Shiur Komah text. had to succumb. Important as this mystic to one of a halakhic sage? question is, the treatise, Hekhalot Another meaningful connection Rabbati, is much more interested in There is another matter that has to between the sage who became a the details of Rabbi Ishmael’s be considered with regard to the martyr and the Song of Songs is ascent, how he overcame the image of the prototypical martyr, evident in the well-known narrative, dangerous guardians of the gates of Rabbi Akibah. This concerns the “The Four Sages Who Entered the the palaces, and what magical means role of King Solomon’s Song of Pardes,” about a group led by he used to go from one palace to Songs in Rabbi Akibah’s (and to Rabbi Akibah, who was the only another, than in the earthly fate of some extent Rabbi Ishmael’s) life, one who successfully completed that the great sages about to be thought, and death. Another mysterious, possibly mystical, martyred. Hekhalot Rabbati is ancient mystical treatise that is journey. The text of this narrative, clearly a text of mystical speculation attributed to these two sages is the first presented in the Tosefta to

15 Hagiga chapter 2, includes a biblical section Shirah (relating to the Song trying to understand the emergence verse that is attached to each of the of the Sea, sung when the people of of one of the most potent Jewish four sages. The one describing Israel crossed safely the Red Sea expressions of adherence to Rabbi Akibah’s experience employs after escaping from Egypt), there is martyrdom, one should remain alert a Song of Songs verse (1:4): “Draw a commentary in the name of Rabbi to the surprising fact that we have me, we will run after thee, the king Akibah to the third verse in the first here an attachment to fiction rather has brought me into his chambers.” chapter of the Song of Songs (just than history, a close relationship to a This may be the earliest example in before the verse concerning the classical mystical text, a unique rabbinic literature of the king in the entrance to the Pardes): “therefore adherence to a sacred text, the Song Song of Songs being identified with the virgins love thee.” The Hebrew of Songs, reinterpreted as expressing God. Thus we find Rabbi Akibah’s term is alamot, young girls. Rabbi the love of God, and an identification spiritual life closely associated with Akibah reads this word in a different of this love with the experience of the the verses of the Song of Songs, a way: al mot, as two words, meaning: death of the martyr. text which he attributed to God “because of death.” That means: we himself and believed that the people love you [God] because you make Joseph Dan is the of Israel had received in the us die for you. This became one of Professor of , Emeritus, in theophany of Mount Sinai. the most frequently quoted verses, the Department of Jewish Thought at expressing the deepest feelings of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Is there a connection between Rabbi the martyrs who sacrifice their lives He most recently authored a five- Akibah’s radical reinterpretation of because of their love of God, the volume series, History of Jewish the Song of Songs, the traditions martyrs who love him not only Mysticism and Esotericism (Shazar that associate him with mystical despite, but because, he demands Institute-The Israel Historical experiences and mystical texts, and this ultimate sacrifice of them. Society, October 2008 [volumes 1–3, his fate as a martyr? It seems that we in Hebrew]; volumes 4–5 have to give a positive answer to this Do all these elements come forthcoming in 2009). question. In the Mekhilta, the together? I am not sure. Yet when

16 17 under Roman domination during concern as well. Sometimes they the second century, were prepared took recourse to extreme forms of RADICAL to give up their lives rather than sacrifice of life, extending far transgress the prohibition of beyond the rabbinic demand for JEWISH worshipping idols. The willingness acquiescence to death under certain of the former to die and the actual limited circumstances. On some deaths of the latter were occasions, Jews did not wait for MARTYRDOM remembered, memorialized, and their persecutors to inflict death; in Robert Chazan valorized by subsequent Jewish these unusual instances, Jews took tradition. Indeed, the martyrs of the their own lives and even the lives of he Hebrew term kiddush ha- second century were inserted into loved ones. One of the best known Shem (Sanctifying the Divine the very heart of the Yom Kippur of these cases of radical Jewish TName) is generally translated liturgy, an indication of profound martyrdom took place at Masada, as martyrdom, the willingness to die veneration for their heroism. Still, the last stronghold of the rebellion in a manner that bears witness to against Rome that began in the year God. This term, in fact, extends 66. It seems that the ideals that well beyond the sacrifice of life animated the rebels in this last on behalf of the deity and his stronghold were largely covenantal demands to Roman values of heroism cover a wide range of and honor, the desire to behaviors that signify die in a dignified human testimony to manner and to avoid God in multiple cruel and ways, some of humiliating death them rather at the hands of mundane. the Roman However, since legionnaires. the most dramatic and A second, well- hence the known instance most striking of radical Jewish form of martyrdom took kiddush ha- place in the Shem is the Rhineland Jewish sacrifice of life communities, itself on behalf of where assaults God, there is a occurred in spring tendency to regard 1096 as a result of a kiddush ha-Shem as distortion of the call to synonymous with the First Crusade issued martyrdom. by Pope Urban II toward the end of 1095. While most Martyrdom, to be sure, is hardly crusaders headed eastward to do a salient theme in the Hebrew Bible battle against the Muslim foe corpus, and during long stretches of without introducing Jews into their Jewish history it did not play a Daniel in the Lions’ Den, design for stained glass, by Lucas van Leyden, 1509-1533. thinking or their campaign, some significant role in Jewish thinking © Trustees of the British Museum. northern-French popular bands and behavior. Normative rabbinic undertook a crusade against the law did identify three major from late antiquity to the Middle Jewish infidels closer to home. The transgressions that if forced upon Ages, the idea of martyrdom by no large and unruly popular band that Jews had to be resisted even at the means dominated Jewish thinking. coalesced around the charismatic cost of life. A number of important figure of Peter the Hermit seems to historic figures, including Daniel Jews living in societies in which have engaged in the financial and his companions, who martyrdom emerged as a core exploitation of its Jewish enemy. purportedly lived under Persian religious value absorbed this value The German popular bands, rule, and key rabbinic leaders living and made it a central Jewish galvanized into action by the 18 preaching of Peter and his associates, expanded their anti-Jewish message WHILE THE SOURCES FOR THE EXTREME JEWISH BEHAVIOR CAN into a more extreme call either to kill or to convert Jewish HARDLY BE DEEMED COPIOUS, THERE ARE ENOUGH communities in their entirety. INDEPENDENT TESTIMONIES, LARGELY JEWISH, BUT INCLUDING While the sources for the extreme Jewish behavior can hardly be SOME CHRISTIAN NARRATIVES AS WELL, TO ESTABLISH THE deemed copious, there are enough independent testimonies, largely REALITY OF RADICAL JEWISH MARTYRDOM THAT WENT FAR Jewish, but including some Christian narratives as well, to BEYOND THE RABBINIC REQUIREMENT THAT JEWS ACQUIESCE establish the reality of radical Jewish martyrdom that went far beyond TO DEATH AT THE HANDS OF THEIR PERSECUTORS. the rabbinic requirement that Jews acquiesce to death at the hands of rabbinic sages of the second century carefully, has concluded that there is their persecutors. The Rhineland did not presage the radical suicides in fact no halakhic justification for Jews, confronted with the demand and killings carried out by the these unusual behaviors. He for conversion or death, took their Rhineland Jews; rather, these earlier suggests that these instances of Jews own lives and the lives of their behaviors fit the standard mold taking their own lives and the lives children in massive displays of what envisioned by the rabbinic norms— of loved ones constitute deviations they perceived to be utter fidelity to acquiescence to death at the hands from standard Jewish legal norms. the demands of their covenant with of non-Jewish persecutors. The Soloveitchik, sensitive to social the God of Israel. Since these Jews powerful precedent more regularly factors as well as halakhic norms, were intensely proud of their invoked was the patriarch Abraham, suggests that momentous commitment to the halakhic norms who is portrayed in the biblical considerations must have led the and the rich aggadic legacy of narrative as having been fully Rhineland Jews of 1096 to depart rabbinic Judaism, their behavior has prepared to offer up his beloved son so strikingly from the legal norms to proven something of a puzzle to Isaac in response to divine demand. which they were so intensely modern scholars. The problem with this imagery is, devoted (AJS Review 12:2 and of course, the fact that the divine Jewish Quarterly Review 94:1 and The narratives bequeathed to us by demand was rescinded, and Isaac 2). the Jewish survivors of the 1096 was spared. While the Rhineland persecution are lavish in their praise Jews used this discrepancy to extol Some time ago, I suggested that the of the radical martyrs of that year. their own virtues projecting radical Jewish behaviors of 1096 Interestingly, these sources make no themselves as achieving greatness must be understood against the effort to justify the radical behaviors beyond that of their forebear backdrop of the remarkable in terms of the norms of Jewish law. Abraham, the divine decision to test religious fervor unleashed by the In their reconstructions of the Abraham by demanding the sacrifice papal call to the Crusade. While it is utterances of the radical martyrs of of Isaac and then rescinding the highly unlikely that Pope Urban II 1096 and in their third-person demand raised more questions than intended to elicit this explosive observations on these martyrs, the it answered. Subsequent Ashkenazic popular enthusiasm, in fact his call Jewish narrators make no mention rabbinic authorities could not struck a powerful nerve in rapidly of halakhic norms, either in defense produce halakhic or aggadic developing western Christendom. of, or as a challenge to, the justification for the radical acts of While some of the warriors who set behaviors they record. There is 1096, although this failure by no out on the mission were motivated recurrent mention of historic means led them to censure these by cooler visions of the enterprise, precedents, but these references are behaviors. To the contrary, these many were moved by imagery of highly problematic. The martyrs rabbinic authorities by and large radical, religiously inspired self- themselves and their chroniclers insisted on the rectitude of the sacrifice. Among the popular regularly cite the biblical figures martyrs’ conduct, despite their German bands, this readiness for from the book of Daniel and the failure to provide requisite self-sacrifice was especially rabbinic sages who fell victim to justification. prominent. To the extent that Roman persecution. As noted, willingness to serve God through however, the behaviors of Daniel Haym Soloveitchik, who has studied extreme self-sacrifice became the and his companions and the these episodes of radical martyrdom hallmark of late-eleventh-century 19 religiosity, Jews caught up in the crusading bands responsible for the Jewish victims to break with the spirit of the age absorbed this Rhineland attacks. Again, there is traditional Jewish norms of willingness for self-sacrifice and no evidence that Pope Urban II martyrdom (Speculum 84:2). The expressed their dedication with an introduced millenarian elements in traditional moderation of Christian anti-Christian competitive edge his call to the crusade. Once more, policy towards Judaism and Jews through their unusual however, the popular response went and the Jewish position on the martyrological behaviors (see my well beyond the papal call. The taking of human life were subverted book, European Jewry and the First millenarian excitement seemingly by the destabilizing impact of Crusade, University of California spawned a parallel enthusiasm millenarian expectations. Press, 1987). among the Jewish minority. For both Christian attackers and Jewish Robert Chazan is the S. H. and More recently I have proposed yet victims, the onset of a new era Helen R. Scheuer Professor of Hebrew another possible factor to explain meant the suspension of normal and Judaic Studies at New York the radical Jewish martyrdoms of constraints, which allowed—indeed University. He is the author of The 1096. Close reexamination of the encouraged—the attackers to Jews of Medieval Western Hebrew narratives has revealed contravene traditional Christian Christendom: 1000–1500 Jewish perceptions of millenarian safeguards established for Jewish (Cambridge University Press, 2006). convictions among the popular safety and security and moved the

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20 21 Jews motivated by the belief that Xanten. In separate reports, Shlomo death was far better than apostasy. bar Shimshon and Eliezer bar MARTYRS Individual Jews and entire Nathan both tell about the fate of communities understood these the Jews in each of these refuges. OF 1096 deeds as active resistance against their Christian persecutors. At first glance, neither Shlomo’s nor Eliezer’s report about Xanten “ON SITE” According to Shlomo’s account of provides location-specific Eva Haverkamp the events in Cologne, these Jews information. Shlomo’s account were part of a larger group that highlights a Friday evening gathering rom April to July 1096, survived the persecution in Cologne to celebrate the beginning of the groups of crusaders and city thanks to Christians who hid them Sabbath, one that could have Fdwellers attacked Jewish in their houses. In an attempt to occurred at any other place. Shlomo, communities along the Rhine, protect this whole group from however, adds the detail that “shorn” Moselle, and Danube rivers. Driven further persecution, the Archbishop ones came to one of the Cologne by the same motives that drew them intervened and distributed them refugees, Natronia bar Isaak, to as crusaders to the Holy Land to among seven surrounding villages convince him to accept baptism. fight the perceived enemies of with fortifications, one of which was Christianity and to “free” Jerusalem, they gave European Jews a gruesome choice: to be baptized or killed. Four decades later, Shlomo bar Shimshon described the scene in the village of Xanten as follows:

This pious, faithful man, the priest that is highest among his brethren, said to the congregation seated around the table: “Let us recite the grace to the living God, our father in heaven. For the table substitutes now for the altar. Now, because the enemy is coming upon us, let us rise up and ascend to the house of the Lord and do immediately the will of our Creator to slaughter on the Sabbath sons, daughters, and brothers, so that He bequeath upon us this day a blessing. Let no man spare himself or his friend. And the last one to remain shall slaughter himself by the throat with a knife, or thrust his sword into his stomach . . .

The pious and faithful Jews were preparing for self-sacrifice as an act of kiddush ha-Shem, translated as “Sanctifying the Divine Name.” Besides the willingness to let oneself be killed to avert baptism, these cases of kiddush ha-Shem were acts Photo of St. Victor’s Cathedral, Xanten, Germany. Courtesy of Tourist Information of suicide or the killing of fellow Xanten, www.xanten.de.

22 Shlomo describes a group of Jews reflects the content of text Phi 3. The pious sacrificing of life is who “just as the Sabbath was (except for a story about a scholar compared to the sacrifices that setting in . . . were sitting down to from France which is probably were offered to God at the eat bread, having sanctified the Eliezer’s addition). A comparison temple in Jerusalem before its Sabbath” by reciting prayers and the between the parallel texts of destruction by the Romans. blessing over the bread. Aware of Shlomo’s and Eliezer’s accounts 4. Reward for the sacrifice will be paradise, where the martyrs will A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE PARALLEL TEXTS OF sit in the company of the righteous and see God. SHLOMO’S AND ELIEZER’S ACCOUNTS MAKES APPARENT THE EXTENT TO WHICH HLOMO EDITED ADDED AND 5. Finally, Shlomo puts into S , , Moses’s mouth a call on God PRODUCED A TEXT THAT IS VERY LITERARY AND CAN to take revenge for “Thy servants’ blood that is spilt and INDEED BE CHARACTERIZED AS “HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE” . . . that will yet be spilt . . . .” MOST IMPORTANTLY, SHLOMO HAS INTEGRATED INTO HIS Shlomo’s narrative about Xanten stands out as the most theological XANTEN ACCOUNT THE CORE ELEMENTS OF A among all the accounts about Cologne and the surrounding THEOLOGICAL PROGRAM THAT DEFINES AND LEGITIMATES refuges. It contains the longest speech of the entire chronicle, THE ACT OF KIDDUSH HA-SHEM. several comments by the author himself, and an extensive epilogue. the imminent danger, a prominent makes apparent the extent to which Nowhere else in the chronicle do member of the group, Moses Shlomo edited, added, and we find the theological elements of haCohen, called on God for their produced a text that is very literary the kiddush ha-Shem ideology rescue, without success. Turning to and can indeed be characterized as grouped together with such density the community, Moses then “highly imaginative” (words that and interwoven with many encouraged them to take their lives Ivan Marcus applies to his entire additional associations. When in martyrdom, describing the chronicle). Part of Shlomo’s considering the entire chronicle— prospects of eternal life in paradise, imaginative work went into the which also includes accounts about and the group agreed to commit many citations of and associations Worms, Mainz, Speyer, Trier, Metz, kiddush ha-Shem “with one mouth with texts of the Bible, the Midrash, Regensburg, and Prague—the and one heart.” According to and the Talmud. These allusions report about Xanten turns out to be Shlomo, all members of the group provide the subtext of the Xanten Shlomo’s most programmatic text. performed kiddush ha-Shem; their account and demand a second layer bodies were buried, but we do not of interpretation. Most importantly, But why did Shlomo choose to use learn who actually buried them. Shlomo has integrated into his his narrative about the events at Xanten account the core elements of Xanten for his most theologically The first step in interpreting a theological program that defines developed statement? As Eliezer’s Shlomo’s account of Xanten is to and legitimates the act of kiddush rendering demonstrates, Shlomo’s look at the genesis of his report. ha-Shem. These elements are: account could have been a great Shlomo and Eliezer have used a deal shorter. We may also learn common source for their chronicles, 1. The sacrifice of Isaac by something from Shlomo’s narrative a text that I call Phi. This text is lost Abraham; the Aqedat Yitzchak about the perceptions Jews had of but can be reconstructed insofar as it or “Binding of Isaac” is the the place assigned as their refuge: contained at least those texts that general model for martyrdom he reports on “shorn” ones who both chronicles have in common. In and self-sacrifice. were “acquainted with” the the case of the report on Xanten, Cologne Jew Natronai bar Isaac and Eliezer is very concise, giving only 2. God will not yield to the “had come to him throughout the the bare facts of the event. We find prayers and pleading of the entire previous day attempting to almost all of his text again in Jews, for he had come “to test persuade him ‘to defile himself in Shlomo’s account. Therefore, we this generation [that they may] their evil waters’”—i.e., to be can assume that Eliezer’s report demonstrate their love for Him.” baptized. These “shorn” ones must

23 have been the canons from the In Cologne, the largest and most with this site of martyrdom and to chapter of St. Victor. significant town in German- create a new meaning for it. He speaking lands and the home of the expressed a rivalry between Judaism St. Victor was a community of refugee Jews, the church of St. and Christianity that had ancient canons well known beyond Xanten. Gereon was, after the cathedral, the roots but acquired new forms Victor had been venerated since the most remarkable building. Probably during, and in the wake of, the fifth century as one of the leaders of because of its golden mosaics, the 1096 persecution. the Thebean legion. According to people of Cologne called St. Gereon widely circulating martyr legends, the Church of the Golden Saints or On a literary level, Shlomo wanted this legion of Christian soldiers just Ad Sanctos [To the Saints]. The the Christian and Jewish martyrs to from the Orient had been sent to building had to be expanded in the face each other “on site.” Another regions north of the Alps by second half of the eleventh century source from the end of the twelfth Emperor Maximinian at the end of to cope with the crowds of century suggests even more: In the third century with orders to pilgrims—a sign of the growing 1197, Jewish martyrs, killed by combat the enemies of the Roman popularity of St. Gereon far beyond Christians in Neuss, were Empire. The legion had already Cologne. Remarkably, from the transported all the way to Xanten in been divided into several cohorts, ninth century, Xanten had also been order to bury them “at the graves and each cohort was on its way to a different military camp when the Roman emperor demanded the XANTEN HAD OBVIOUSLY BECOME THE SITE OF A JEWISH soldiers bring sacrifices to the pagan Gods, or perhaps even persecute MARTYR CULT. ITWAS UNDERSTOOD THAT THE NEW local Christians. The soldiers refused to obey and were MARTYRS SHOULD REST SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH THEIR consequently killed. A tale of woe PREDECESSORS HE EWISH MARTYRS WERE INDEED or passion from around the year . T J 1000 reports—and I paraphrase— FACING THEIR CHRISTIAN COUNTERPARTS “ON SITE.” how the foolhardy and bloodthirsty pagan soldiers murdered the courageous Victor, Christ’s soldier, called Ad Sanctos, from which the of the righteous who were buried together with his 330 companions name Xantum [Xanten] derived. there during the persecutions of in Xanten and let their “holy” The Jewish community seems to Tatnu (1096).” Xanten had bodies sink into the marsh. This tale have accepted this name and its obviously become the site of a has several parallels with Shlomo’s connection with the Thebaen Jewish martyr cult. It was story about the events in 1096 in martyrs’ cult; Shlomo and Eliezer understood that the new martyrs Xanten. write in perfect transliteration should rest side-by-side with their (Santos) or (Santa!). predecessors. The Jewish martyrs Did Shlomo’s decision to write a were indeed facing their Christian detailed and programmatic account On the basis of many more counterparts “on site.” Writing of Xanten have anything to do with references not mentioned in this around 1140, Shlomo might have the Christian legend attached to this brief précis, one may reasonably expressed a perception and practice particular spot? Since the Early conclude that the Jews of Cologne that was already in place. Middle Ages, numerous places have in general, and Shlomo bar been venerated as locations where Shimshon in particular, had a Eva Haverkamp is Professor of different cohorts and their leaders relatively detailed knowledge of the Medieval Jewish History at the allegedly suffered martyrdom; traditions and symbolism of St. Ludwig-Maximilians University in among the earliest cultic places Victor’s and the Thebeans’ Munich. She is the author of north of the Alps are Cologne with veneration in Xanten and Cologne. Hebräische Berichte über die Gereon as the stalwart leader figure In this situation, it is not surprising Judenverfolgungen während des and, significantly for our story, that the idea of emphasizing the Ersten Kreuzzugs (Hannover: Xanten, with Victor playing the martyrdom of the Jews in Xanten Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2005). same role. The cult dominated the and highlighting its theological locale in the form of the St. Victor significance suggested itself. community and made Xanten a Confronted with the Thebean famous pilgrimage site. martyrs, Shlomo bar Shimshon gave the Jews their own way to connect

24 25 familiar rhetoric traditional lore can really tell us and literary about historical events. WHAT DOES conventions. Without drawing conclusions about MARTYRDOM LORE What is the scholar the First Crusade chronicles or any to do with such other episode outside my field of material? More research, I’d like to discuss briefly TELL US? particularly, what is the Jewish how, in the course of my work, Miriam Bodian history scholar to do with a body of Inquisition documents have served lore that stretches back to to corroborate or confute stories of scar Wilde once memorably Hellenistic times? crypto-Jewish martyrdom that noted that “a thing is not circulated in the Portuguese-Jewish Onecessarily true because a A key task among scholars studying diaspora. man dies for it.” Jewish martyrdom has been to try to establish “what really happened,” Some of the Portuguese-Jewish lore It’s a curiously pungent statement. to use a quaint nineteenth-century does not even attempt to tell a real Wilde was saying something about formulation. This has meant story in particular; examples include martyrdom that experience tells us examining texts through the lens of the contrived commemorative is obvious. Yet we also know that context, bringing evidence from poetry of Daniel Levi de Barrios, the willing sacrifice of life, a sacrifice non-Jewish sources, comparing Antonio Enrique Gomez, and most people aren’t capable of different versions of the same story, others. But there are some making or are not asked to make, and so on. Much of the work that thumbnail sketches of crypto-Jewish has the mysterious effect of has been done has been highly martyrs recorded by Isaac Cardoso strengthening commitment to the belief or cause for which the martyr died. That mysterious effect is what gives Wilde’s remark its pith. The power of martyrdom has everything to do with reinforcing the perception of truth, but nothing to do with establishing truth.

Because a martyr’s death is such a valuable communal asset, it is preserved for future generations in the form of oral narratives, chronicles, and elegies. Of course, it is human nature to embellish and emend these accounts. People may even invent martyrdom accounts, “Different Manners in which the Office of the Inquisition Asked the Question,” from Picart, Bernard, and Jean depicting in a highly Frédéric Bernard, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (Prud’homme, 1807). condensed and personalized way the drawn-out struggles of a illuminating. Yet the controversies and Menasseh ben Israel that are of group against an oppressor. The still hovering about some of the a different nature. They, too, are body of lore around the death of classic texts most conspicuously, highly idealized, but unlike the martyrs is worked and reworked, perhaps, about the First Crusades poetic tributes, they offer the reader with new episodes introduced using chronicles, leave doubts about what specifics and aim for verisimilitude. 26 A good example is Cardoso’s particularly the specifics of time, the body away, interpreting it as a description of a sixteenth-century name, and place. Moreover, psychological defense on the part of case, which I will quote in full: Cardoso had grown up in this frightened onlookers. But this did central region of Portugal, and may not prevent him from accepting the [A] singular event occurred in himself have heard elderly Old fundamental facticity of the story.) Coimbra a hundred years ago. They arrested as a Jew one Diogo Lopes Pinhancos, in a place near THE POWER OF MARTYRDOM HAS EVERYTHING TO DO the town of Guarda in Portugal, in the Serra da Estrela, and, from WITH REINFORCING THE PERCEPTION OF TRUTH, BUT the time he was taken, he began to announce that he was a Jew, NOTHING TO DO WITH ESTABLISHING TRUTH. and wished to live and die in the Law of Moses. He was brought Christians (that is, persons with no before the Inquisition, and Jewish or Muslim ancestry) telling There is, though, another puzzling although they brought in the story. In any case, he had element in the account, an element theologians to convince him, he apparently seen the painting in the that is striking because it appears in always remained firm in his Coimbra convent depicting other thumbnail sketches of crypto- resolve. They sentenced him to Pinhancos and labeled with the Jewish martyrs. Had the Inquisition be burned alive. When he was latter’s full name, a painting some actually called in theologians to try placed upon the stake, tied with of his readers may also have seen. to convert a defiant Judaizer? chains of iron, and raised high, Would this not have been overkill, the fire began to touch him. But But then there is the “great given the extensive theological then a great portent took place, portent”: the disappearing body. training of the inquisitors, and the for the chains fell into the fire, Cardoso did not dismiss this meager religious traditions of and he disappeared and was no remarkable occurrence out of hand. crypto-Jews? Surely, even a highly longer to be seen. All of which In fact, it served a purpose in educated crypto-Jew, of the type caused consternation among the making his narrative convincing: it Cardoso had once been, could not multitudes of people who were explained what made the story easily have defended his beliefs present, and they said that the memorable to elderly Old under the punishing conditions of demons had such a craving and Christians, who otherwise would controlled interrogation. In any desire for him that they snatched presumably have had no particular case, even if such theological him away body and soul, and in interest in the death of a Judaizer. disputations occurred, who would this way they eased their suspense Did the body disappear? Of course have known about them, since the and astonishment. To this day, in not; but perhaps, we might audiences were conducted in strict secrecy and the victims had been burned at the stake? A KEY TASK AMONG SCHOLARS STUDYING JEWISH Luckily, in the case of the famous MARTYRDOM HAS BEEN TO TRY TO ESTABLISH crypto-Jewish martyrs (in contrast to virtually every other episode of “WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.” premodern martyrdom), we possess an astonishingly rich record of events and interrogations set down the Convento de la Cruz in rationalize, the body’s in detail by unsympathetic but Coimbra, he is painted, among “disappearance” was a distortion of disciplined scribes, the notaries of others being burned, with two something unusual that did the Inquisition tribunals. This brief demons at his shoulders, and with happen—the accidental collapse of essay is not the place to revisit the the name of Diogo Lopes de the stake, for example, which may old issue of the authenticity and Pinhancos. And elderly Old have led astonished onlookers to reliability of such records. Let me Christians used to relate that they lose sight of the body. In any case, just emphatically affirm that for the themselves had seen him, and had this fantastic detail does not most part these documents offer been present at the event. preclude the possibility that the detailed, unfalsified (yes), and basic facts of the story are accurate. unvarnished accounts of what There are elements of this story that (Cardoso himself rejected the transpired in prison cells and give it the “ring of truth,” notion that demons had snatched audience chambers. 27 Not all of these records have fetched and polemically motivated— died, it would seem, a martyr to survived, but as luck would have it, proved, after a study of the records atheism. an Inquisition dossier does exist of the prisoners’ trials, to be that allows us to test Cardoso’s accurate. (I should add that A word by way of conclusion: story. It was one of those thrilling evidence from other sources reveals “Reading between the lines” of moments in the humdrum life of a some of the channels by which martyrological literature to establish historian when I found it at the conversos were able to obtain historical facts, however National Archives in Lisbon—a information about the trials.) intelligently, is a verifiably risky dossier for a person named Diogo business. As some scholars have Lopes Pinhancos. That was the But to return to the specific case of stressed, and as my own research good news. The bad news was that the Diogo Lopes Pinhancos. Once I has underscored, martyrological it was in quite fragmentary and had found the dossier, I had firm literature may tell us more about otherwise poor condition. It did, at grounds to believe that the the survivors’ experiences than least, confirm that a man named fundamental outlines of Cardoso’s about the motivations, experiences, Diogo Lopes Pinhancos existed, and story were correct, as I had and trajectories of thinking of the that he was tried for Judaizing and suspected from the start. It came as martyrs themselves. We will burned alive at the stake. Moreover, a sobering challenge to my continue to want to know “what it revealed that efforts were indeed assumptions to discover, upon a really happened.” But to borrow made by theologians, including two careful study of the dossier awkwardly from Oscar Wilde, a Jesuit priests, to try to convert the fragments, that while Pinhancos did story of martyrdom is not defendant. But the incomplete die at the stake, he did not, necessarily accurate because its dossier revealed little about the apparently, die as a crypto-Jew. It is protagonist can be shown to have verbal exchanges between true that during the first part of his chosen a martyr’s death. Pinhancos and the theologians. trial he seems to have held firmly to crypto-Jewish beliefs. But at some Miriam Bodian is professor of history Still, by extrapolation from other point during his imprisonment he at the University of Texas at Austin. cases, one could conclude that a underwent a crisis of belief. From She is the author of Dying in the Law lively exchange might have taken October 1570 to April 1571, not of Moses: Crypto-Jewish place. The Inquisition did take long before his execution, he Martyrdom in the Iberian World enormous pains to convert defiant repeated, with variations, his (Indiana University Press, 2007). Judaizers, and such Judaizers, it conviction that he turns out, possessed the means not no longer believed only to defend their positions but to there was a God, go on the offensive. I have explored that he regretted this in my book Dying in the Law of having adopted the Moses, and will not repeat myself Judaism he was here. What I want to stress is this: taught by his family, that a claim made in the martyrdom and that he had lore in this case—a claim about the absolutely no polemical skills of the martyrs, one intention of that could well have been dismissed embracing by responsible scholars as being far- Catholicism. He

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28 29 1924 (Lipsker 2001). Second, by naming his “THE FINAL BATTLE” poem Masada rather than “Metzada,” as established OR “A BURNT OFFERING”?: by Simhoni, Lamdan may have followed the “modern” Russian LAMDAN’S MASADA REVISITED translation of The Jewish Yael S. Feldman holding together a privileged Wars, published by Ya. L. Chertok position: Josephus’s Jewish Wars, in 1900 (Lapidus). Third, by he career of the Masada retranslated anew from the Greek extricating Lamdan’s Masada from myth in twentieth-century (Simhoni 1923), and the epic- the clutches of Simhoni/Josephus’s THebrew imagination is well dramatic poem, Masada (Lamdan “historical” Metzada we may undo known. Recent scholarship has 1926), which catapulted its author a long-attested confusion about the amply recorded its ups and downs to fame and reputation that lasted poem’s multifocal, paradoxical take from the heyday of the 1920s for several decades. Given the on the knotty issue of national Zionist thirst for heroic ancestors; proximity of their publication dates, martyrdom. through the distraught 1940s, when recent historiography has coupled it became the ambivalent emblem of these texts as major contributors to Masada’s ostensibly paradoxical both victimage and heroic yet the creation of the Israeli “Myth of vision has been noted for some time desperate martyrdom; to the Metzada,” more often than not and has been described in detail in revisionist 1970s, when “The assuming that Simhoni’s Hebrew several recent studies. The general Masada Complex” came under fire, Josephus had inspired Lamdan’s agreement is that the poem is torn and the valence of its legacy was poem. between two contradictory moods altogether questioned and often or ideologies: desperate pessimism rejected. I beg to differ. First, Lamdan had and optimistic activism. On the side been working on his poem prior to of despondency we may count its Within this modern history two the appearance of the translation, detailed imagery of arid rocks and Hebrew texts seem to be linked, publishing segments of it as early as merciless sun, of doubt and fear, of tears, bereavement, gallows, and despair unto death. Yet the poem was mostly remembered, especially in 1943 Warsaw and its environs, for the bravado of its opening canto: “Against the hostile Fate of generations / A stubborn breast is there bared with a roar: / Enough! / You or I! / Here will the battle decide the final judgment!” (Yudkin 1971, trans.). If we add the sonorous cadences and trancelike rhythms of nightly dancing around the bonfires, straddling Hasidic and secular horas perfected by the pioneers, and the fervent invocation qua pledge, “Arise, the Aerial View of the Masada Fortress above the Dead Sea. Photo by Mosher Milner, 1993. Courtesy of the State of Israel Government Press Office. chain of dance / Never 30 shall Masada fall again!,” it is not “the last stand” or “fighting to the historiography. Here however I difficult to imagine the uplifting last man” associated in the Israeli would like to focus only on the role of Masada through the trials mind with “Metzada”: “After these curious persistence of Yosippon’s and tribulations of the 1930s and things, the men left the city and “Metzada” in the Israeli mind, 1940s in both Palestine and Europe. challenged the Romans to fight, despite the almost unanimous killing too many of them to count. “suppression” of the book itself in That this self-boosting retelling has, The Jews thus had fought until they twentieth-century scholarship. in fact, nothing to do with the story all expired in the battle, dying for as told by Josephus seemed to have God and his Temple” (430). (A The unacknowledged source concerned nobody. Nor was anyone second, apparently later version responsible for this feat of memory, bothered by the fact that the poem according to David Flusser, was, I suggest, precisely Lamdan’s is rife with sacrificial imagery that is also nowhere to be seen in THERE IS NO DOUBT THEN THAT THE RITUAL- Josephus. I therefore suggest that the long-accepted yoking together SACRAL TONE OF MASADA IS MUCH CLOSER TO of Lamdan and Simhoni’s Josephus is misleading and has not THE MOOD OF YOSIPPON’S METZADA THAN TO contributed to an understanding of the poem. To clear up this THE MASADA SCENE IN THE JEWISH WARS. LIKE confusion I propose an additional source of inspiration: the tenth- THE FORMER, IT MELDS “NATIONAL AND SACRAL century Book of Yosippon. This anonymous version of Josephus’s ELEMENTS” (FLUSSER, YOSIPPON II, 180), THUS history, translated and rewritten in beautiful Hebrew from early SETTING THE TONE AND PERHAPS THE NORM FOR medieval Latin texts, may indeed be THE NATIONAL MARTYROLOGICAL DISCOURSES the source that taught Lamdan to fuse the imagery of ritual sacrifice THAT WERE TO FOLLOW. (qua martyrdom) with Greco- Roman military noble death, a intensifies the description of the poetic creation, Masada. Could not conflation that perfectly suited his heroic death, while erasing the his celebrated line, “Here will the ambivalent yet fully sympathetic religious overtones [431].) battle decide the final judgment!” vision. This vision is totally missing have been inspired by the Jewish in Josephus but was fashioned with As Yael Zerubavel has already “noble death” in a “final battle” great dexterity by the author of observed, “Jossipon’s [sic] later invented by the author of Yosippon Yosippon. modified version of Masada fits the for his Metzada heroes? Certainly activist conception of heroism in much more than Masada à la To begin with, writing in Italy in secular national Hebrew culture Josephus! But there is more. the tenth century, the author of much better than Josephus’s Yosippon begins the closure of the Yosippon seems to have anticipated original version.” Zerubavel further dramatic event with the words those contemporary readers who suggests that it is “most curious” “After these things . . . .” So what is find the collective suicide described that “the activist commemorative the famed opening of Genesis 22, in The Jewish Wars hard to accept. narrative derives its legitimation the aqedah, doing here? So, instead of having the Jews of from Josephus’s historical account,” “Metzada” (NB: not the Sicarii of while “Jossipon’s version has been I suggest that by referring to the “Masada”!) fall on their swords (or largely ignored in the modern events of the day before with this worse, kill each other), as they do in Hebrew commemoration of phrase, the author cleverly links the both Josephus’s history and in Masada.” I could not agree more. slaughter of the families with the Yosippon’s Latin source, the Pseudo- Yet this “curious” act of omission offering demanded of Abraham Hegesippus, the anonymous was not limited to the Israeli “after these things.” This is in fact Hebrew author has El’azar send commemoration of Masada. As Yosippon’s second innovation in this them off “to fight the enemy and Steven Bowman has suggested, the episode. El’azar has to negotiate die like heroes” (Sefer Yosippon, ed. ascendancy of Josephus’s history at with his men the dreadful act of Flusser, 1978). Yosippon’s closing the expense of Yosippon may attest putting their loved ones to death so statement neatly summarizes this to biases, conscious or not, running that they would not suffer at the innovation, echoed in the idea of deep in modern Hebrew and Jewish hands of the Romans. To do so he 31 not only presents this deed, just like “joyously, his head full of dew veqodesh!) for the impending final El’azar in Josephus’s version, as an drops,” confident that his gift (of battle; they moreover offer a selfless act of compassion; he also promises life? of death?) “will be pleasing donation of “the springs of our the men that this “mercy killing” [accepted]” (teratzeh, derived from youth” and the “first fruit of our “will be considered as a sacrificial the same root and meaning as the lives,” not to mention “handful of burnt offering that will please God verb used in Yosippon, “leratzon”). hearts,” “gold of dreams,” and (qorban olah leratzon la’adonay; Lamdan comes even closer to the “baskets of love.” p. 429). This addition, which helps language of the medieval text when turn the objects of murder into he describes the despair of being There is no doubt then that the “sacrificial victims” and hence abandoned by an absent God as the ritual-sacral tone of Masada is much sanctified martyrs, is also absent in lack of authority that would approve closer to the mood of Yosippon’s either Josephus or Yosippon’s Latin or accept as pleasing (yeratzeh) “the Metzada than to the Masada scene source. It follows logically however offering of our life and the sacrifice in The Jewish Wars. Like the former, from the opening of El’azar’s of our youth and love . . .” it melds “national and sacral speech, where a list of historical (“Weeping,” 63). elements” (Flusser, Yosippon II, precedence begins with “Do 180), thus setting the tone and remember your Father Abraham Finally, replacing Josephus with perhaps the norm for the national who took his only son to offer him to Yosippon may explain still another martyrological discourses that were God . . .” (emphasis is mine). general feature of Masada, its to follow. Should we then be overall religious vocabulary. As the surprised that the distinctive This is not the place to engage poetry of an ostensibly secular sacrificial image of bikkurim, rather Yosippon’s difficult negotiation with pioneer, Lamdan’s work is than the more common aqedah the prefigural Christian overtones of surprisingly preoccupied with the (“first fruit offering, a spring Isaac in his Latin source. I propose presence or absence of God. His carnival climaxing in human however that his rhetorical move images of “national martyrdom” are sacrifice”) resurfaced recently in was borrowed by Lamdan to great rooted much more than those of his David Grossman’s much celebrated effect. See for instance the section peers in the language of sacral novel Isha borahat mibesora (A named “A Tender Offering” (Olah ritual. In a section named “The Woman Fleeing from Tidings, rakkah; Masada, 28), where an First-Fruit Caravan” (Orhat 2008), the latest link in Israel’s “only son” ascends Masada bikkurim, 32), for instance, he puts fierce contest over its national in the mouth of martyrology? the climbers to the unyielding Yael S. Feldman is the Abraham I. rock of Masada Katsh Professor of Hebrew Culture startling images and Education in the Department of of gift-bearing. Hebrew and Judaic Studies and The first-person- affiliated professor in the plural subjects of Department of Comparative this canto carry Literature at . the “grain of our This article is based on her lives” and “our forthcoming study, Glory and joyous blood” as Agony: Rewriting Isaac/Sacrifice in a sacred (!) Tel Aviv (Stanford University Press). offering (minhah Association for Jewish Studies 41st Annual Conference December 20–22, 2009 Hyatt Regency Century Plaza • Los Angeles, CA See page 7 for details.

32 33 34 35 PERSPECTIVES ON TECHNOLOGY

Sciences (FAS) SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION required Harvard researchers to deposit their scholarly articles IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: in an open access (OA) repository to ACHANGING LANDSCAPE be managed within the library and to be Heidi Lerner concerning scholarly publishing made freely available Introduction (www.library.cornell.edu/ to anyone via the Internet In the world of scholarly scholarlycomm/resolution.html). (www.fas.harvard.edu/home/ communication, new legislation and This resolution was a direct news-and-notices/news/ successful legal actions in the private sector are now confronting problems of ownership and access HESE REPOSITORIES CAN BRING VISIBILITY TO MATERIALS to information resulting from the T rapid rise in prices of e-journal and THAT HISTORICALLY HAVE BEEN HARD TO ACCESS SINCE THEY e-book subscriptions and the restrictions imposed by their HAVE NOT BEEN PUBLISHED OR INDEXED, SUCH AS accompanying licensing practices. There remains, however, a lot of PREPRINTS, CONFERENCE AND WORKING PAPERS, STUDENT uncertainty and confusion about intellectual property, copyright, and SCHOLARSHIP, AND SCHOLARSHIP IN NON-TEXT FORMATS. fair use issues. There are also deepening concerns and frustrations about the amount of time it takes challenge and response to the for research results to reach the rising costs of many traditional press-releases/releasearchive/ public; about ever-changing scholarly publication venues, releases-2008/scholarly-0212 technology issues with which most and advocated for open access 2008.shtml). The mandate consumers are unfamiliar; and about publication of academic and further stipulates that faculty restrictions on what can be scholarly output and research. can only submit their articles published and how that content can In essence this resolution to journals that allow articles be disseminated. Creative uses of encourages tenured faculty to to be posted online digital technologies for distribution stop working with journals and immediately after they are and access to scholarly materials their publishers who engage in accepted for publication. This (both print and digital) such as out-of-sight pricing models and move has many implications, journals and books, discussion and also to resign from editorial not the least of which is its working papers, and other formats boards if changes to pricing impact on the author- of scholarship are emerging in structures are not made. publisher relationship, forcing response to these restrictive and authors to negotiate with their ever-fluctuating conditions. Jewish •In January 2008, the academic publishers on a case-by-base studies scholars, as contributors and world witnessed the passing of basis. consumers of intellectual works, the National Institute of need to be aware of these trends Health (NIH) public access law • In April 2008, one thousand and need to be engaged in the (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ professors from more than design, implementation, and use of policy.htm), which stipulates three hundred colleges and new venues for scholarly output. that all NIH funded research universities released a Some of the most significant articles must be deposited in statement affirming their developments include: PubMed Central (PMC) upon preference for high-quality, publication. affordable textbooks, • On May 11, 2005, the Cornell including open access University Faculty Senate • In February 2008, Harvard textbooks, over expensive endorsed a resolution University’s Faculty of Arts and commercial textbooks 36 (www.maketextbooksaffordable Open Access and Institutional Studies, an Internet Journal; Min-A: .org/statement.asp?id2=37614). Repositories Israel Studies in Musicology Online; Slowly and steadily humanities and Studia Judaica; Studies in • In autumn 2008 the social science scholars are showing Christian-Jewish Relations; Journal Association of Research support for open access publishing. of Hebrew Scriptures; Women in Libraries (ARL), in association Scholars individually can make their Judaism; and Quntres. These last with Ithaka Strategic Services, work freely available via their own two journals are published using released a report “Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication” (www.arl.org/ THE RECENT STATEMENT FROM ICOLC REFLECTS THE bm~doc/current-models-re port.pdf) designed to “look FINANCIAL IMPACT THAT THE E-BOOK MARKET HAS HAD ON squarely at new forms of UNIVERSITIES AND INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION scholarship and scholarly works . and consider them in their own lights.” This report described individual websites, or in Open Journal Systems from the an array of innovative digital institutional and discipline-based Public Knowledge Project, open scholarly resources that are in repositories. Another option is to source journal publishing and use today. Among these are publish in journals freely available to management software (http:// e-only journals; reviews, all on the Web. Some journal pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs). preprints, and working papers; publishers are experimenting with encyclopedias; dictionaries and this model by giving authors the Nonmandated institutional and annotated content; blogs and option of paying for open access to discipline-based repositories have discussion forums; and their articles. Other journal been around for some time. In professional and scholarly hubs. publishers provide an option addition to making scholarly output whereby articles become freely previously published in traditional • In the e-book world we available after a certain period of venues accessible, these repositories recently witnessed the time. can bring visibility to materials that settlement agreement between historically have been hard to access Google, the Authors Guild, There are several open access, peer- since they have not been published and the Association of reviewed, and currently active or indexed, such as preprints, American Publishers journals that are of interest to conference and working papers, concerning Google’s scanning Jewish studies scholars. These student scholarship, and scholarship of copyrighted works include, among others, Azure: Ideas in non-text formats. The University (http://books.google.com/ for the Jewish Nation; Eras; Jewish of California and the California googlebooks/agreement).

• On January 19, 2009, the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), an informal group of almost 150 library consortia from around the world issued a statement on the current worldwide economic crisis (www.library.yale.edu/ consortia/icolc-econcrisis-01 09.htm). The group called for publishers and vendors of electronic content to work together and look at some creative strategies to cope with the present situation.

Screenshot of the Open University of Israel’s Pe’er website, http://ocw.openu.ac.il/. 37 Digital Library’s eScholarship respond to a thought, idea, emerging as a new publishing Repository and University of question, or review, in order to medium, so too are new forums for Pennsylvania’s amplify or criticize it. In turn, Web page preservation being ScholarlyCommons@Penn offer others may respond to those developed. For instance, the similar paradigms of open access postings, leading to ongoing Internet Archive’s Wayback publishing of research carried out discourse that can move within and Machine (www.archive.org/web/ within these institutions for many across other blogs. web.php) allows searchers to look types of scholarly content, including for Web pages that are no longer preprints, postprints, peer-reviewed Several blogs have come on the online. A check on the home page articles, datasets, edited volumes, scene that offer a counterpoint to for Menachem Butler’s first blog, and peer-reviewed journals. traditional scholarly discourse AJHistory, which has been bringing together postings, discontinued, finds archived pages Historically there have been commentaries, reviews, and musings from January 1, 1995–July 13, 2006. variations between disciplines with related to new and old rabbinica, respect to the ways in which digital bibliography, and historical oddities Open Access Textbooks scholarship has been shared and from tenured faculty, junior The soaring price of academic disseminated. Scientists and social scholars, graduate students, and textbooks is no secret. Open access scientists rely to a much larger others stationed outside the textbooks are complete, peer- degree on professional and academy who possess knowledge reviewed textbooks written by disciplinary repositories such as the and erudition in these areas. academics that can be used online Social Science Research Network Hagahot (http://manuscriptboy for free and printed for a small cost. and arXiv.org. Scholars in the .blogspot.com) issued by Pinchas What sets them apart from humanities have relied more on Roth, who identifies himself as conventional textbooks is their open listservs and discussion forums, Manuscriptboy; Michtavim license that allows readers flexibility which for Jewish studies scholars (http://michtavim.blogspot.com), to use, customize, and print the include the Jewish Studies Network written by Menachem Butler; and textbook. Open textbooks are (JSN), H-Judaic, H-Antisemitism, Tradition Seforim (http://seforim already used at some of the nation’s H-Holocaust, Jewish Languages, .traditiononline.org), edited by most prestigious institutions Mendele Yiddish Literature and Menachem Butler and Dan including Harvard, Caltech, and Yiddish Language, and Sephardi Rabinowtiz, are three blogs that Yale, and at some of the nation’s Mizrahi Studies Caucus Discussion have established themselves as largest institutions such as the List. Participants, however, usually important forces in Jewish studies, California community colleges, use these vehicles of communication providing an intersection of Arizona State University system, for limited purposes: to post academic Jewish studies, Orthodox and Ohio State University. research questions, announce recent Judaism, and scholarly rabbinica and publications, issue calls for papers, bibliography. Several open access textbook provide notification of conferences initiatives are in place including and fellowship opportunities, and Two disadvantages that blogging content from the Open University post book reviews. They generally suffers from in comparison to of Israel, which in 2008 launched do not include ongoing discussions traditional venues of scholarly the Pe’er project which makes freely or conversations. To this end, new publications such as journals and available to the public electronic forums of scholarly communication monographs, however, are versions of dozens of academic are emerging, enabling faster accessibility and permanence. textbooks (http:// dissemination of ideas and more Traditional publications benefit ocw.openu.ac.il/). The community dialogue. from the careful indexing systems Massachusetts Institute of that have long been in place and the Technology (MIT) was the first to Blogs preservation capabilities that start making course materials freely Blogs offer an alternative to the libraries have been able to develop available with its MIT traditional approach of writing and maintain. Although it may be OpenCourseWare Program (http:// articles that is offered by peer- easy to Google something and find ocw.mit.edu/), but the Open reviewed journals, which can be it in the blogosphere, a blog University’s project was the first to notoriously slow. In the discussion trail can be difficult to place entire textbooks online. blogosphere, responses to new navigate over a period of time scholarship can be posted in a because it may have shut down, E-Books matter of minutes or hours by links may be broken, or servers may Almost everyone in the academic readers of the blog who may be closed. Just as the Internet is world has heard about the settlement

38 of the class action lawsuit that the available online to the public (http:// simultaneous user licensing Authors Guild, the Association of www3.cet.ac.il/). These are mostly agreements. American Publishers, and individual recent titles; the project offers a authors and publishers filed against number of features that make e-books Conclusion Google for its Book Search program, attractive such as navigation tools, Jewish studies scholars and researchers which has been digitizing millions of searching via one search engine, have the ability to meet the challenges books from libraries. The Google morphological searching, and social of the changing landscape of scholarly Book Settlement is complex and the networking capabilities. communication. As more options and settlement must still be confirmed by opportunities become available they the court (the Association of American The recent statement from ICOLC need to think about how their Publishers has issued an FAQ that can reflects the financial impact that the e- research and teaching will be affected. be found at http://publishers.org/ book market has had on universities They must look at their own roles as main/Copyright/Google/Faq.htm). and institutions of higher education. creators, disseminators, and users of Google has long made clear its At present there are various pricing intellectual content and engage with intention to digitize all of the books in options offered by publishers and their institutional administrators, major U.S. libraries and has now aggregators, who provide access to librarians and information expanded its program to include some large collections of titles from many technologists, university presses, and of the major libraries in Europe, publishers via a single interface. professional societies in developing Japan, and India. Up until now, Universities and consortia can more awareness and innovation in new Google has not embarked on any negotiate rates for access to these paths of scholarly communication. collaborative scanning venture of collections through individual Hebrew books with Israeli libraries, agreements made without public Heidi Lerner is the Hebraica/Judaica but a nonprofit organization within disclosure. Libraries can acquire cataloguer at Stanford University Israel has embarked on a project to e-books on a title-by-title basis. They Libraries. create a library of scanned books on can also subscribe to or lease e-book Israel and Jewish culture, most of collections. The various models all which are under copyright. The have advantages and disadvantages, Center for Educational Technology with pricing structures usually based (CET) has signed contracts with a on the number of users in the number of major Israeli nonfiction institution or the resources that are book publishers to make their works acquired through restricted

39 40 41 cemeteries, fascination. As Shaymaa Salama, a schools, clubs, young Egyptian-Muslim researcher DIARNA: and traditional for Diarna, commented: “We never tombs of learned about this. Discovering DIGITALLY MAPPING biblical figures dozens of Jewish sites in Cairo and stand as even in small villages in the Nile testament to Delta is eye-opening.” For others, MIZRAHI HERITAGE the vibrant that Jews once lived among them Frances Malino and Jason Guberman-Pfeffer Jewish communities that once seems unfathomable. As one young spanned the entire region. Sudanese commented on a Diarna n a dusty side street in While the majority of these YouTube video, which features Tunis, above a solitary communities ceased to exist only footage of Khartoum’s abandoned Olocked doorway, one can within the past few decades, it Jewish cemetery: “I have never still see a faded Hebrew plaque. remains difficult to visit and often heard that Jews were living in This plaque is all that remains of the impossible to preserve their Sudan . . . and died there as well! tomb of Chief Rabbi Messaoud communal sites. As these sites decay Come on, be real, man. This is not Raphael el Fassi. According to and those with knowledge of them Sudan.” tradition, el Fassi set off on a pass on, future generations are caravan bound for Jerusalem from losing tangible connections to While we are in a race against time his native city of Fez. He made it as communities that once contributed to identify and document Mizrahi far as Tunis, where he died in 1775. significantly both to Jewish and sites, powerful new assets are now at world culture. our disposal: user-driven Web 2.0 In December technology. 2008, Ali Kaba, a Google Earth, a West African- A COLLABORATION AMONG SCHOLARS, SOCIAL free program Muslim ENTREPRENEURS OOGLE ARTH DEVELOPERS providing undergraduate, , G E , interactive satellite located this AND MIDDLE EASTERN RESEARCHERS, DIARNA imagery of the plaque on a entire globe to an research UNDERLINES THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL audience of 500 expedition for million users, Diarna (“Our LOCATION TO UNDERSTANDING THE PAST. allows anyone homes” in Judeo- with an Internet ), a new initiative dedicated connection to travel like a bird to mapping Mizrahi heritage. A Mizrahim have recently launched across the Middle East, collaboration among scholars, social Web forums where visitors post old unencumbered by political and entrepreneurs, Google Earth photographs and memories of their security restrictions. All sorts of developers, and Middle Eastern hometowns. These websites are Jewish sites are clearly visible and researchers, Diarna underlines the being discovered by a new “visitable” in a previously importance of physical location to generation growing up in cities unimaginable way. Google Earth understanding the past. By locating devoid of their former Jewish offers zoomable perspective, tiltable hundreds of sites, collecting old and communities. Some of these young views, 360-degree rotation, and new photographs of these sites, Muslims have begun posting even three-dimensional modeling of interviewing current and former contemporary photos of Jewish buildings. community residents, and communal sites, at times even assembling a multimedia layer in meeting requests from their former Diarna is assembling an interactive Google Earth, we are able both to Jewish neighbors to photograph map, stored in an online database virtually preserve Mizrahi heritage family graves and other nostalgic format and plotted directly onto and to make it accessible in a locales. This interaction yields Google Earth. For each site there myriad of popular educational valuable data on the past and present will be a multimedia place-marker formats. status of Jewish communal sites. featuring a brief summary of its importance as well as archival and Mizrahi communities from Saharan For a number of young Arabs, contemporary photos, video outposts in southern to Berbers, Kurds, and Persians, the testimony, and embedded links to Kurdish villages in Iran are rapidly hidden history of their region’s books, articles, and media. disappearing. The synagogues, Jewish heritage is a source of Additionally, some sites will be 42 • Baghdad’s only remaining Jewish cemetery, adjacent to Sadr City

• The abandoned synagogue in Ghardaya, a remote outpost in the Algerian Sahara

• The ancient Jewish fortresses of the Khaybar oasis in Saudi Arabia

• The tomb of the Baba Sali’s father, the Abir Yaakov, in Damanhur, Egypt

• Foum Deflah, a Vichy “discipline camp” in the desert Screenshot of the upcoming Diarna website. outside Figuig, Morocco

“rebuilt” as 3D models, thus Earth layer, and a website. The • Jewish cave-dwellers’ homes in enabling the virtual reconstruction result will be a model for digital Gharyan, Libya of outstanding Mizrahi sites. preservation applicable to communities, however defined, • The Hasmonean fortress of Diarna’s multinational and interfaith around the world. Machaerus, and accompanying coalition is composed of experts on First Revolt–era Roman siege the Mizrahim, coders and designers Demanding a fusion of academic, camps, in Jordan of the Diarna infrastructure, technological, and entrepreneurial photographers and researchers who skills, Diarna is a joint initiative • The Alliance Israélite travel in the region collecting between the start-up nonprofit Universelle “Hafsia” boys material, and Middle Eastern youth Digital Heritage Mapping and school in Tunis, Tunisia eager to map virtual common Wellesley College’s Jewish studies ground. From an academic program. Research institutions, • Jewish cemeteries in Kuwait, standpoint, Diarna offers a cutting- including Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, as Oman, and Sudan

• The Frank Iny School and Ezra AS THESE SITES DECAY AND THOSE WITH KNOWLEDGE Menachem Daniel Sports Club in Baghdad OF THEM PASS ON, FUTURE GENERATIONS ARE LOSING • The traditional tomb of Esther TANGIBLE CONNECTIONS TO COMMUNITIES THAT ONCE and Mordechai near Imam Khomeini square in Hamadan, CONTRIBUTED SIGNIFICANTLY BOTH TO JEWISH AND Iran WORLD CULTURE . • The synagogue where Maimonides was initially buried edge addition to historiography and well as leading international in Cairo’s Harat el-Yahud pedagogy by injecting geo-spatial photographers, have agreed to share positioning coupled with materials. Examining sites in Google Earth’s multimedia to document three-dimensional form can be awe- communities now recognizable only Highlights of the hundreds of sites inspiring as well as informative. For by remnants of abandoned property. already identified include: example, until 1950, on the holiday From a technical perspective, the of Shavuot, hundreds of Kurdish project is producing an open-source • Aleppo’s Great Synagogue, Jews would visit the traditional package linking a research database, which for centuries housed the “Tomb of Nachum,” and then multimedia archives, a Google legendary Codex make a morning ascent up the hill, 43 We anticipate that experts who have FROM AN ACADEMIC STANDPOINT, DIARNA OFFERS A studied individual communities will contribute to our effort. Researchers CUTTING-EDGE ADDITION TO HISTORIOGRAPHY AND who did field work, for example, in Morocco in the 1960s or Iran in the PEDAGOGY BY INJECTING GEO-SPATIAL POSITIONING 1970s may have valuable information on communal sites. Diarna’s model, COUPLED WITH MULTIMEDIA TO DOCUMENT of course, can also be applied to COMMUNITIES NOW RECOGNIZABLE ONLY BY mapping Jewish heritage around the world. Omer Bartov’s recent Erased: REMNANTS OF ABANDONED PROPERTY. Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton which they called “Mount Sinai.” researchers still assembling essential University Press, 2007) offers a timely After a ceremony at the summit, materials for a public launch. Over the reminder that digital heritage they would descend in a jubilant next year, we intend to complete mapping may be the only way to procession, banging drums and even mapping of at least five hundred sites, preserve some Jewish sites. brandishing swords in a dramatic amass a photo collection in a “pre-enactment” of the battle of searchable database with at least two Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Armageddon. When viewed with thousand photographs, and create Robison Professor of Jewish Studies Diarna’s Google Earth layer, the twenty model sites complete with and History at Wellesley College. hagiography of Nachum’s tomb, three-dimensional models and Jason Guberman-Pfeffer is the located at the foot of this translated site write-ups in Arabic, executive director of Digital Heritage spectacular hill in the Iraqi Kurdish Hebrew, Farsi, and French. A key Mapping and project coordinator of village of al-Qosh, is greatly milestone will be the release of a Diarna. To learn more about their enhanced. public Google Earth layer, which will project, including how to contribute anchor additional public educational research results, e-mail Diarna is currently in start-up mode, materials such as virtual guided tours [email protected]. with technical designers and and interactive exhibits.

44 45 REMEMBERING OUR COLLEAGUES

literature at Baltimore Hebrew College JOSEPH M. (later University) and held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University (twice) and the BAUMGARTEN Annenberg Research Institute (now the Center for Jewish Studies at the (1928 – 2008) University of Pennsylvania). He was a Moshe Bernstein visiting professor at several institutions. While he never assumed a permanent The first time that I heard Joseph M. professorship at a major American or Baumgarten lecture, about thirty years Israeli research university where he could ago, he punctuated his discussion of have devoted more time to scholarship, some legal material in the Temple Scroll this did not perturb him. The life of a from Qumran with a reference to Photo reprinted by permission from Legal Texts congregational rabbi who had the time something “we learned in daf yomi a and Legal Issues: Second Meeting of the IOQS, to publish a good deal of scholarship Cambridge 1995. Published in Honor of Joseph couple of weeks ago. . . .” I remember M. Baumgarten (Studies on the Texts of the “on the side” was a source of great how pleased I was to hear a scholar who Desert of Judah 23; Brill, 1997). contentment to him. could casually mention in the course of his presentation to a learned academic once having been drawn to the The high regard in which his peers in group that he was an active participant academic study of Judaism and the Qumran studies held Joe can be seen in the traditional, but not-yet-wildly- then-recently-discovered Dead Sea from their decision to publish in his popular, cycle of Talmudic study. In the Scrolls, there was no turning back. He honor the proceedings of the second course of our increasingly close was one of the very first American meeting of the International acquaintance over the ensuing three scholars to concentrate on the Scrolls, Organization for Qumran Studies decades, I was to learn that this was and he continued to write about them (IOQS), held in Cambridge, England quite characteristic of Joe. His two for more than a half century. During this in 1995. Legal Texts and Legal Issues: ostensibly disparate personae— long period of time he did pioneering Second Meeting of the International Orthodox congregational rabbi and work on the legal texts found at Organization for Qumran Studies, college professor and researcher into Qumran, creating and shaping the Cambridge 1995. Published in Honor Qumran halakhah—were not academic field of Qumran halakhah. of Joseph M. Baumgarten (Studies on hermetically sealed off from one the Texts of the Desert of Judah 23; another. It may not have always been It was his profound knowledge of Brill, 1997) contains twenty-four fine obvious to some of his congregants and rabbinic literature in the classical mode scholarly essays, as well as a colleagues in the academy who observed that enabled Joe to be the trailblazer remarkable appreciation of Joe him in only one context that he had that he was in the study of postbiblical written by Professor Daniel R. “another side,” but the two professions legal material, antecedent to that of the Schwartz of The Hebrew University were thoroughly integrated within him. . He published article after article of Jerusalem to honor his teacher Those of us who knew both sides of on specific points in the Qumran legal both as a person and as a scholar. him appreciated the whole man. corpus, all the while developing and refining the methodology requisite to Joseph Baumgarten was a rara avis in the Born in Vienna in 1928, Joseph the analysis of such texts and Orthodox rabbinate in America: a Baumgarten received his classical formulating an approach now accepted congregational rabbi who was also a rabbinic education at Mesivta Torah and practiced virtually universally in the leading scholar in academic Jewish Vodaas in Brooklyn and was ordained in field. In what may be considered his studies. His passing deprives us not only 1950. He then went to Baltimore chef d’oeuvre, he applied his mature of a good friend and an outstanding intending to do graduate work in talents to the editing of the Cave 4 scholar but of a model whom we could mathematics at Johns Hopkins fragments of the hold up to our students as genuinely University, while living and learning at document, Qumran Cave 4. XIII: worthy of emulation. the Ner Israel Yeshiva. Had it not been The Damascus Document (4Q266- for a chance encounter with the great 273) (Clarendon, 1996), in the Moshe J. Bernstein is professor of Bible at biblical scholar and Semitist William official publication series of the Scrolls, Yeshiva University. He is the co-editor of Foxwell Albright, he might have Discoveries in the Judean Desert. the Festschrift in honor of Professor become a rabbi cum mathematician, but Joe served as professor of rabbinic Baumgarten. 46 When Sarah came to Philadelphia to produce her own plays and those SARAH written with her longtime collaborator Joanne B. Koch, I BLACHER introduced her to my little theater group of friends, who loved the performances: among them The COHEN Ladies’ Locker Room; Molly Picon; and Sophie, Totie and Belle. This also was (1936 – 2008) true when Sarah produced Elaine Safer performances at the University of Delaware: among them Henrietta Sarah Blacher Cohen, professor of Szold and Molly Picon. And because Jewish literature for thirty-three years Sarah was such a social person, who at the State University of New York loved to introduce people to one at Albany, playwright, comic, scholar, another, we often went backstage to and dear friend, died on November chat with the actors, and then out to 14, 2008, at age 72 of a degenerative dinner. The performances of Sarah’s neurological disease: Charcot-Marie- plays in Albany gave us another Contemporary American Literature; Tooth. Her husband of forty-two chance to be together. I recall reading Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor; years, Gary, was with her when she The Ladies’ Locker Room in and Making a Scene: The expired. Sarah was the most manuscript. What a treat it was to Contemporary Drama of Jewish- courageous person I have known. speak with Sarah about her ideas and American Women. Her pleasure in She came close to death at least twice how to turn them into drama. the comic sense of life is also reflected before her final demise, but always in talks she gave, such as “The managed to beat it. Somehow, she Sarah had a wonderful sense of Unkosher Comediennes: From drew upon an inner strength that humor and joy in living. We would Sophie Tucker to Joan Rivers,” talks yearned to live. So many of us discuss experiences until the serious in which Sarah enjoyed thought that Sarah would pull nature would give way to the impersonating the Jewish through this last time as well. humorous—causing us to rock with entertainers. Sarah’s work on humor, laughter. Sarah helped me to see the especially her books on Saul Bellow I met Sarah in 1964 when she was a comic aspects of our daily lives. Sarah and Cynthia Ozick, are classics in the graduate student in the English had amazing energy and was at the field: Saul Bellow’s Enigmatic department at Northwestern center of our Jewish American literary Laughter (University of Illinois Press, University, and I was a predoctoral group, which essentially became a 1974), and Cynthia Ozick’s Comic instructor there. So began a mishpocha: an extended family. Sarah Art: From Levity to Liturgy (Indiana friendship that lasted for more than introduced many of us and other University Press, 1994). forty-four years. After Sarah people to publishers, including those obtained a position in the English at the presses at which she was an Sarah had been working on a book department at the University of editor. She was first the editor of a that she tentatively called A Memoir Illinois, Chicago, and I got a series at Wayne State University Press of a Junk Dealer’s Daughter. The title position in the English department and later general editor of the is revealing in that just as a dealer may at the University of Delaware, we Modern Jewish American Literature turn his collection of rags into kept in touch by visiting each and Culture Series at SUNY Press. At profitable form for others, so Sarah other’s homes, meeting at the latter, in particular, she helped turned her disability into positive conferences, and traveling to plays countless people by reading their form: in a course she developed called together. I recall that we both manuscripts and encouraging them to “Drama of Disability,” in which she attended Cynthia Ozick’s publish their books in her series. treated The Glass Menagerie, The production of Blue Light when it Miracle Worker, and Children of a was performed at the Bay Street Sarah once told me that putting Lesser God; in her own plays, Theatre in Sag Harbor, Long together a collection of essays on a including The Ladies’ Locker Room; Island; after the show, Sarah, her specific subject was like getting and in working for the rights of friend Cynthia, and I had a little people together for a dinner party. disabled persons. Indeed, Sarah was ice-cream celebration. The joy she took in setting up these awarded the Lifetime Achievement “parties” is reflected in the titles of Award from the Muscular Dystrophy her books: Comic Relief: Humor in Society. 47 Among Sarah’s other honors are a Benny was no detached scholar Distinguished Fulbright to consumed by esoteric concerns but a Yugoslavia and her roles as media BENNY passionate advocate for, and explorer consultant to the National of, Jewish identity, ideas, and the Endowment for the Humanities and KRAUT experiences of his people in humor consultant for the Library of modernity. His personality seemed to Congress. Sara wrote and edited merge with his scholarship and he eleven plays and musicals (often with (1947 – 2008) instinctively embraced the dilemmas her longtime writing partner Joanne Eugene Korn of contemporary Jewish existence. B. Koch). Sarah is survived by her More often than not, he intertwined husband Gary, her sister Bess Rosen Professor Benny Kraut passed away at his academic interests with his Jewish Lichterman of Milwaukee, and nine age 60 on September 26, 2008, after communal involvement in both nieces and nephews, including her a week-long coma caused by sudden Cincinnati and Queens. great-niece Rabbi Julie Pelc of cardiac arrest. He enriched the lives of Venice, California, who recounts that all who met him, and his untimely Benny focused his academic work Sarah told her she “was like the death left both the academic and primarily in two areas: antisemitism daughter she never had.” “And, in Jewish worlds significantly diminished. and ; and the American many ways,” Julie explains, “I was Jewish experience. His first book, her progeny. . . . Sarah and I shared Benny studied Jewish and general From Reform Judaism to Ethical more in common than anyone else in philosophy at Yeshiva College, where Culture: The Religious Revolution of our family; our relationship was we first met and nurtured a close Felix Adler (Hebrew Union College, profound and sacred. . . . My Aunt friendship that endured through the 1979), was also the subject of his Sarah was feisty, rebellious, decades. He earned MA and PhD doctoral dissertation. He published outrageous, brilliant, and creative. . . degrees in Jewish history from the two other books on Jews and the . My Aunt Sarah didn’t just choose Department of Near East and Jewish founding of America and on German life, she took a lasso and wrung it Studies at Brandeis University in 1970 Jewish Orthodoxy in America, and around life and dragged life toward and 1975, respectively. After teaching more than forty scholarly articles. A her. . . . In her death Sarah remains briefly at Vassar, Benny built the Jewish voracious reader with a fine critical my greatest teacher about life.” studies department at the University of eye, Benny was book review editor for Another person who devoted herself Cincinnati, where he was department American Jewish History and a to Sarah is Marla Frazer, longtime director from 1976 to 1998. Later in member of the editorial board of assistant, friend, and helper 1998 he moved to Queens College, Shofar. Over the course of his career particularly in the last phase of CUNY to become professor of history he managed to pen a remarkable 170 Sarah’s life. Marla promised Sarah and director of its Jewish studies reviews for a variety of scholarly and Gary that she would be a program, as well as the director of the journals and popular publications. He caregiver for them throughout their Center for Jewish Studies. He remained also published essays in Jewish- illnesses. the Center’s director until spring 2006, Christian and Jewish-black relations while continuing to teach in the and participated in a number of Sarah was memorialized at a service department until his death. He academic activities in these areas. at Levine Memorial Chapel in augmented the center, revitalized its Albany on Friday November 11, public Jewish Lecture Series, and Biography underlay Benny’s résumé 2008, and buried at the created the Jewish Music and Theater and his unusual conjunction of Independent Cemetery in Performance Series as well as a Cinema interests. He was the son of two Guilderland. Sarah’s sheer joy in on Sundays Film/Dialogue Series. Holocaust survivors. His father, living, her excitement in engaging Under his academic leadership, Pinchas Zvi Kraut of Novo Sandz and in dialogue over all matters, and her Queens’ Jewish studies program Prezemysl, Poland, spent the entire sense of humor: these are the things expanded and diversified, and earned war in flight one step ahead of the SS I remember and these are the things national recognition for its quality and and imminent death. Wounded and ill that bring Sarah back to life for me. innovative programs. As Queens with typhus in 1943, he was saved by College president James Muyskens a Christian woman who hid him for Elaine B. Safer is professor of English stated, “Benny injected the Center and almost a year until the Russian at the University of Delaware. She is the Program with new energy and liberation. The SS killed his wife and author of Mocking the Age: The ideas, turning them into first class young daughter, and when the war Later Novels of Philip Roth (SUNY institutions.” At both Cincinnati and ended Pinchas emerged as the only Press, 2006). Queens, Benny won university awards survivor of a family that had for teaching excellence. numbered more than thirty prior to

48 they received a Canadian visa in l95l Modern Orthodoxy, i.e., the and arrived in Montreal in 1952, experiment of synthesizing Orthodox where Benny was raised. commitment with modern values and social reality. He spent his last years This tragic European history weighed researching and writing the history of heavily on Benny, giving his Yavneh, the (Modern Orthodox) personality an unmistakable angst and Religious Students Organization of existential weight. As Benny’s son, America, of which he was an early Yehuda, himself a budding biblical member. scholar, poignantly noted in the eulogy for his father, “My father was Ultimately it was the dialectic of these not Job, but he was the son of Job.” two opposing personality orientations But Benny did not succumb to any that combined with his extraordinary permanent pessimism or nihilism to analytic power, idealistic passion, and which living with the Shoah can so acute sense of responsibility made easily lead. He also had a charming Benny Kraut an energetic life force. boyish exuberance born of the spirit He was a beloved teacher, friend, and the war. Benny’s mother, Mania of the new world. He was intensely Jewish model to his students and to Trachman of Brzozow, Poland, also fascinated by the American and all of us engaged in plumbing the spent the war in hiding as a young Canadian experiment, with its meaning of Jewish identity in modern woman. For two years she lived in an optimistic promise of acceptance, culture. underground bunker, hidden and fed equality, and even success for Jews. by a local woman. Benny was named Could the new society indeed be Benny is survived by his wife, Penny, for Mania’s father, Ben Zion different for Jews, or would it prove his three children, Rachel Hackel, Trachman, a devotee of Bobover but the beginning of another German Yehuda, and Sefi, his son-in-law Hasidim with a beautiful cantorial “enlightenment”? Is it possible for Mordy Hackel, and three voice, who was shot by the Nazis Jews to escape antisemitism here? If grandchildren. May his memory be a while leading Rosh Hashanah services so, at what cost to Jewish tradition blessing. in September 1939. After the war, and historic Jewish identity? If not, Mania linked up with her cousin are discrimination and suffering Eugene Korn is the American Pinchas Zvi Kraut, and they were essential to Jewish metaphysical and director of the Center for Jewish- married in Krakow. They proceeded religious identity? Christian Understanding and to a DP camp in Linz, Austria, futilely Cooperation in Efrat, and editor of attempting to find family survivors. Hence Benny’s academic and Meorot: A Journal of Modern From there they moved to Munich, existential interests in the philosophic Orthodox Discourse. He teaches where Benny was born in 1947. issues of suffering, Jewish history, the medieval Jewish thought at Me’ah. Unable to obtain a visa to America, Holocaust, Judaism in America, and

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49 50 51 Aerial View of the Masada Fortress above the Dead Sea. (Cover Image) Photo by Mosher Milner, 1993. Courtesy of the State of Israel Government Press Office. Sacrifice of Isaac, artist unknown, attributed to Jean Poyet, late fifteenth century. © Trustees of the British Museum.

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