Ajs Review, 1995 No 2

Front Matter Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. i-510 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of ...

Author: Robert Chacan

11 downloads 1360 Views 22MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Front Matter Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. i-510 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486818 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Cambridge University Press and Association for Jewish Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to AJS Review.

http://www.jstor.org

AJS VOL. XX, NO. 2 1995

ti TheJournalof the Associationfor JewishStudies

('I

REVIE

Volume XX, Number2 1995

FORJEWISHSTUDIES ASSOCIATION WALTHAM,MASSACHUSETTS

AJS Review EDITOR:

NormanA. Stillman, University of Oklahoma EDITORS: ASSOCIATE

Nehama Aschkenasy, University of Connecticut,Stamford Rela Geffen, Gratz College RobertGoldenberg,State University of New Yorkat Stony Brook Joel Kraemer,University of Chicago BenjaminC. I. Ravid, Brandeis University MarshaRozenblit, University of Maryland EDITOR: CORRESPONDING

Lloyd P. Gartner,Tel-Aviv University BOOKREVIEWEDITOR:

Gary Rendsburg,Cornell University EDITORIAL ASSISTANT:

John Borrego The AJS Review (ISSN 0364-0094) is publishedtwice annuallyby the Association for JewishStudies. Manuscriptsfor considerationshouldbe sent to Prof. NormanA. Stillman,History Department,455 W. Lindsey, Universityof Oklahoma,Norman,OK 73019-0535. Books for review shouldbe sent to Prof.GaryA. Rendsburg,Dept. of NearEastern Studies,360 RockefellerHall, CornellUniversity,Ithaca,N.Y. 14853-2502. ? 1996 by the Associationfor JewishStudies IN THEUNITEDSTATESOFAMERICA MANUFACTURED

AJS REVIEW THEJOURNALOF THE ASSOCIATIONFORJEWISHSTUDIES VOLUMEXX, NUMBER2, 1995 Articles 285

JONATHAN KLAWANS

Notions of Gentile Impurity in Ancient Judaism 313

ROGERJAYKAPLAN

Derivational Processes: Underlying Forms and Analogies in Hayy0j's Linguistic Works 333

KENNETH WISHNIA

"A Different Kind of Hell": Orality, Multilingualism, and American Yiddish in the Translation of Sholem Aleichem's Mister Boym in Klozet 359

RACHEL FELDHAY BRENNER

Between Identity and Anonymity: Art and History in Aharon Megged's Foiglman

Review Essay 379

Robert Chazan. Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath DAVID BERGER

Book Reviews 389

Mordechai Cogan. Obadiah: Introductionand Commentary Uriel Simon. Jonah: Introduction and Commentary DANIEL GROSSBERG

391

Tony W. Cartledge. Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East JACOB MILGROM

393

David Noel Freedman, A. Dean Forbes, and Francis I. Andersen. Studies in Hebrew and Aramaic Orthography. SAUL LEVIN

ii

CONTENTS

395

Susan Niditch. War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence SAULM. OLYAN

396

John C. Reeves. Jewish Lore in Manichean Cosmogony: Studies in the "Book of Giants" Traditions MICHAELE. STONE

399

Willem Cornelis van Unnik. Das Selbstverstdndnis der jiidischen Diaspora in der hellenistisch-rimischen Zeit DAVID WINSTON

402

Michael Mach. Entwicklungsstadien des jiidischen Engelglaubens in vorrabbinischer Zeit MARTHA HIMMELFARB

405

Jonathan J. Price. Jerusalem under Siege: The Collapse of the Jewish State, 66-70 C.E. STUART S. MILLER

409

Doron Mendels. The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine SETH SCHWARTZ

411

Lawrence H. Schiffman and Michael D. Swartz. Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Textsfrom the Cairo Genizah: Selected Textsfrom TaylorSchechter Box K1 STEVENM. WASSERSTROM

414

Stephen D. Benin. The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought IDIT DOBBS-WEINSTEIN

417

David Novak. The Theology of Nahmanides Systematically Presented DANIELH. FRANK

420

Barry Dov Walfish. Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages JEREMY COHEN

CONTENTS

422

iii

Simon Schwartzfuchs. A Concise History of the Rabbinate CHAIMI. WAXMAN

424

Stefan C. Reif. Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

427

R. Po-Chia Hsia. Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial JUDITHR. BASKIN

430

MagdalenaOpalski and Israel Bartal. Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood MICHAEL C. STEINLAUF

433

Brian Cheyette. Constructions of "TheJew" in English Literatureand Society: Racial Representations, 1875-1945 DANIEL R. SCHWARTZ

438

Steven J. Zipperstein. Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha'am and the Origins of Zionism ALAN S. ZUCKERMAN

440

James William Hagy. This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston STUART M. BLUMIN

441

Jacob Rader Marcus. United States Jewiy, 1776-1985 GERALD SORIN

447

Shelly Tenenbaum. A Credit to Their Community:Jewish Loan Societies in the United States, 1880-1945 BARRYR. CHISWICK

449

Frederic Cople Jaher.A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness:The Origins and Rise of Anti-Semitism in America E. KNEE STUART

452

Haim Genizi. America's Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952 LEONARD DINNERSTEIN

iv

454

CONTENTS

Steven T. Katz. The Holocaust in Historical Context. Vol. 1. The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age JACOB NEUSNER

458

Nechama Tec. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans ZEVGARBER

461

StanfordJ. Shaw. Turkeyand the Holocaust: Turkey'sRole in Rescuing Turkishand European Jewryfrom Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945 AVIGDOR LEVY

465

Richard Bolchover. British Jewry and the Holocaust LLOYDP. GARTNER

467

Alex Grobman. Rekindling the Flame: American Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948. MICHAEL BROWN

470

Kenneth Hart Green. Jew and Philosopher: The Returnto Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss ALLAN ARKUSH

473

Nathan Katz and Ellen S. Goldberg. The Last Jews of Cochin: Jewish Identity in Hindu India DANIEL GOLD

474

Rachel Simon. Change within Tradition among Jewish Women in Libya HARVEYE. GOLDBERG

477

Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman. TheJews of Yemenin the Nineteenth Century: A Portrait of a Messianic Community REUBEN AHRONI

481

Teshome G. Wagaw. For Our Soul: Ethiopian Jews in Israel EPHRAIM TABORY

484

Avraham Balaban. Between God and Beast: An Examination of Amos Oz's Prose MICHAEL TAUB

CONTENTS

486

David Schoenbaum. The United States and the State of Israel DONNA ROBINSON DIVINE

489

Collected Studies

503

Books Received

v

Publication of this volume of the AJS Review has been made possible by a grant from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. The Association is grateful for this support and encouragement.

NEW

FROM

CALIFORNIA

UDAICA Intimate Enemies .Je'd andArabsln' a Shared Land MERON BENVENISTI

Foreword by Thomas L. Friedman

"Few Americans can appreciate the intensity, substance, and complexitv of the struggles in Israel without reading this book." - an Lustick,President of the Association for Israel Studies $24.95 cloth

An Obsession with Anne Frank lMeyer Levien and the Diary LAWRENCE GRAVER "Beautifully and poignantly told, this story holds a mirror up to American Jewrv's own coming to terms with the Holocaust." -James Young, author of H"ri/ingand Retritinqg the holocaust A. CentennidlBook, $28.00 cloth, illustrated

Crossing the Jabbok

If/ness andDeath in A/;bkenazi Judailtn in Si'vteenth-through

ANineteenth-Century Prague

SYLVIE-ANNE GOLDBERG

Translated by Carol Cosman

"Brilliant ... both in its conceptual originality and in its success in opening up a whole new vista onto early modern Jewish - Hillel J. Kieval, history." University of Washington C'nltraverna.,, S45.00 cloth, illustrated

NEW IN PAPER-

Carnal Israel ReadingSex in TalmudicCulture

DANIEL BOYARIN "One of the very few programatically feminist readings of ancient rabbinic culture that, at the same time, is deeply learned in the sources and existentially committed to the traditions grounded in them." -Re/Ltious StudiesReview A Centennial $14.95paper Book,TheNewHistoricism,

....... ... ..... .........

.....

UNt bkter rderSITY OF ALIFORNIAPRESS C0--66 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

SNEW

I.

IN

rewishStudies I

Portraitof American Jews

Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History

TheLastHalfof the TwentiethCentury

TheRolesand Representation of Women

Samuel E. Heilman Has America been a place that has preserved and protected Jewish life? Is it a place in which a Jewish future is ensured? With a sociologist's perspective, Samuel Heilman argues that the same conditions that have allowed Jews to live in relative security since the 1950s have also presented them with a greater challenge than did the adversity of earlieryears.

"Meticulouslyresearched and eloquently written, Hyman's work will become the standard referencein Jewish women's history, providing the cornerstone for all future work."-Marion Kaplan, Queens College and the GraduateCenter, City University of New York

The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies Clothbound, $30.00 1994 Paperback,$14.95 National Jewish

The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies Clothbound, $30.00 1994 Paperback,$14.95 National Jewish Book Award

Sephardi and Eastern

Jewries in Transition

SpiritualandMysticalDeath in Judaism MichaelFishbane

Aron Rodrigue

The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lecturesin Jewish Studies Clothbound, $25.00

Images of

Paula E. Hyman

The Kiss of Go

HonorBook

TheTeachers of theAlliance IsraeliteUniverselle,1860-1939 Clothbound, $40.00

Available from your local bookstore or call 1-800-441-4115 UNIVRSIT

OF

ASHIGTONPRES

THE

JOHN

TEMPLETON

FOUNDATION

announces its 1996 program of

FOREXEMPLARY PAPERS AWARDS in

HUMILITY THEOLOGY encouragescholarlyresearch on matters of both spiritualand scientific significance, the Foundation invites scholars to submit papers on topics regarding the constructive interaction of:

To

1. Theology and the naturalsciences 2. Religion and the medical sciences, or 3. Religion and the human behavioralsciences. Papers should display a spirit of intellectual humility, a respect for varied theological traditions, and a spirit of open-minded inquiry regarding the nature and meaning of our experience within a vast and intricatelystructured universe. PRIZESOF $2000 WILLBE AWARDED in November, 1996, for exemplary papers. The deadline for submission of papers is June 15, 1996. (Please designate one of the three broad subject areaswhen submitting a paper.) To be eligible for Award consideration, a paper must also: 1. Have been accepted for publication or published since June, 1993, in a peer-reviewed scholarlyjournal or in some other comparably selective scholarly publication, 2. Be between 3,000 and 10,000 words in length and be accompanied by an approximately600-word precis (in English, even if the paper is written in a differentlanguage). For further information on this program of Awardsfor Exemplary Papers, includingthefull list of criteriabywhichpaperswill bejudged,you maywriteto:

Exemplary Papers ProgramDirector THEJOHNTEMPLETON FOUNDATION P.O. Box 8322 a Radnor, PA 19087-8322 USA

Notions of Gentile Impurity in Ancient Judaism Author(s): Jonathan Klawans Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 285-312 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486819 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



NOTIONS OF GENTILEIMPURITY IN ANCIENT JUDAISM by JONATHAN KLAWANS This study investigates the history and natureof Gentile impurityin ancientJudaism.'It is deceptivelysimpleto assumethatGentiles,2who did 1. Thebesthistoricalreviewof Jewishpuritylaw remainsJacobNeusner,TheIdeaof Purity in AncientJudaism(Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1973).Therearetwo importantbutdatedmonographs devotedto Gentileimpurity:AdolfBtichler's"TheLeviticalImpurityof theGentilein Palestine Beforethe Year70,"JewishQuarterlyReview,n.s. 17 (1926-27): 1-79, andGedalyahuAlon's "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"in Jews, Judaismand the Classical World:Studies in Jewish History in the Timeof the Second Templeand Talmud,trans.Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem:Magnes Press, 1977), pp. 146-189 (Hebreworiginal:Tarbiz8 [1937]: 137-161; for convenience,citationsthroughoutthis paperwill be from the Englishversion).BUtchler revieweda large numberof Jewish sources,rabbinicandearlier,andcame to the conclusion thatGentilesbecamelegally impureonly whenedicts to thateffect wereissuedshortlybefore the first Jewish war againstRome. The first of these edicts extendedmenstrualimpurityto Gentilewomen,thusmakingGentilemen defiledthroughtheirwives.Therabbissubsequently declaredGentilemen impurein theirown right,as "a precautionary measureagainstRoman sodomy"(p. 3). Alon's articlesystematicallyattemptsto refuteBtchler's claim thatGentile impurityemergedin the firstcentury.Alon defendedthe antiquityof the notionby associating the impurityof Gentiles with the impurityof the idols they worshiped.Alon was confident thatGentileimpuritywas "oneof the earliesthalakhot"(p. 168). The approachesof Alon and Btichlerare assessed in Gary G. Porton,Goyim:Gentilesand Israelitesin Mishnah-Tosefta (Atlanta:ScholarsPress, 1988), esp. pp. 276-280. See also G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament(London:Macmillan,1962), pp. 21-22, n. 2. Also relevantis Sidney B. Hoenig, "Oil and PaganDefilement,"Jewish QuarterlyReview,n.s. 61 (1970-71): 63-75. FalashanJewsconsidernon-Falashans to be defiling,buttheirpurityrulesareoftendistinct,and thus do not necessarilyreflectancientJewishpractice.See A. Z. Aescoly,Seferha-Falashim (Jerusalem:R. Mass, 1943), p. 43. 2. For convenience,this term will be used here throughoutto mean both non-Jewsand non-Israelites.

AJS Review 20/2 (1995): 285-312

285

286

JONATHAN KLAWANS

not observepuritylaws, would have been consideredrituallyimpure(Kmt) as a matterof course. Indeed,a numberof scholarsmaintainthis position.3 In fact, however,the situationis a bit morecomplex.AncientJewishsources reflecttwo conflictingtensions.On the one hand,bothbiblicaland rabbinic law(consideredGentiles to be exempt from the laws of ritualpurity.4On the other hand, Gentiles ate impurefoods, came into regularcontactwith impure substances,and-what is worse--committedidolatryand defiling sexual acts.5Ultimately,some rabbinicsourcesdo state that Gentilesare, in fact, rituallyimpure(e.g., T. Zabim 2:1).6 The goal of this paperis to analyze,distinguish,andtracethe historyof thesetensionsanddevelopments in ancientJudaism.7 3. Forexample,see EmilSchitrer,GeschichtedesjiUdischen VolkesimtZeitalterJesuChristi, 3 vols., 4th ed. (Leipzig:J. C. Hinrichs,1901-09), vol. 2, pp. 89-92, andvol. 3, pp. 182-183; HermannL. Strackand Paul Billerbeck,KommentarzuntNeuen Testamentaus Talmudund Midrasch,5 vols. (Munich:C. H. Beck, 1924-28), vol. 2, pp. 102-105, and vol. 4, p. 375; Rudolf Meyer,"Ka0ap6q,"in TheologischesWorterbuch Neuen Testament,ed. Gerhard zumn Kittel, 10 vols. (Englishtrans.:GrandRapids:Eerdmans,1964-76, vol. 3, pp. 418-423); Emil Schtrer,TheHistoryof the JewishPeople in theAge of JesusChrist,rev.anded. GezaVermes et al., 4 vols. (Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark, 1973-87), see esp. vol. 2, pp. 83-84; JeromeH. Neyrey,"TheIdea of Purityin Mark'sGospel,"Semeia35 (1986):91-128, esp. pp. 100 and 108;andmostrecently,JamesD. G. Dunn,"TheIncidentat Antioch(Gal.2:11-18),"reprinted with an additionalnote in Jesus,Paul and the Law:Studiesin Markand Galatians(Louisville: Knox Press, 1990),pp. 129-182, esp. pp. 142 and 167-168. Westminster/John 4. See below,"RitualandMoralImpurity" and"TheMishnah:Tracesof GentileImpurity." 5. At least this was the perception.The truthof such claims is not of concernhere;see below,"ImpurityandProfaneness"and"Gentilesas MorallyImpure." 6. It is possible-but by no means necessary-that the emergenceof Jewishproselyte immersionis connectedto the conceptionof Gentilesas rituallyimpure.See SolomonZeitlin, "TheHalakain the Gospels,"HebrewUnionCollegeAnnual1 (1924):357-373, andidem,"The Institutionof BaptismforProselytes,"Journalof BiblicalLiterature52 (1933):203-211. Onthe generalnatureof Jewishproselyteimmersion,see especiallyH. H. Rowley,"JewishProselyte Baptismandthe Baptismof John,"HebrewUnionCollegeAnnual15 (1940):313-334. Onthe lackof earlyevidencefor the rite,see ShayeJ. D. Cohen,"Conversionto Judaismin Historical Perspective:From Biblical Israel to PostbiblicalJudaism,"ConservativeJudaism36, no. 4 (1983): 31-45, esp. pp. 37-39. While Zeitlin'ssuggestionis in some ways compelling,it is not necessaryto view Jewishproselyteimmersionsolely as a purificationritual.The presence of the rite, therefore,is not clear evidenceof a notionof Gentileimpurity.It would appear, however,that the notion of GentileritualimpuritynecessitatesJewishproselyteimmersion. Thus the lack of early evidence for this rite supportsthe claim being madehere,thatGentile ritualimpuritywas not an ancienthalakhah. 7. It is by no means to be assumedthatpurity-consciousreligionsconsideroutsidersto be defiling. While Shiite Muslims consideroutsidersdefiling, Sunni Muslimsdo not; see

IMPURITY IN ANCIENTJUDAISM GENTILE

287

The issue of Gentile impurityhas obvious significancefor the proper understandingof both the developmentof Jewish law and the natureof Jewish-Gentileinteraction.Indeed, this topic has been freshlydebatedby James D. G. Dunn and E. P. Sanders,theirprimaryconcernbeing JewishGentile interactionand the controversyat AntiochbetweenPeter(Cephas) andPaul(Gal. 2:11-18).8CitingSchtirer,the monographby Alon, anda few primarysources, Dunn claims that the ritualimpurityof Gentilesis to be assumed,and thatJewish-Gentileinteractionwas thereforelimited.'Sanders countersDunn, arguingthat the ritualpuritysystem for the most partdid not apply to Gentiles,and thatJewish-Gentileinteractionwas thereforenot limited by such legislation. Sandersdoes, however,maintainthat Gentiles wereimpure,withthe only ramificationof theirimpuritybeingtheirexclusion from the Temple.'0Sanders'scritiqueof Dunnis convincing;it is clearthat Jews did in fact interactwiththeirnon-Jewishneighbors,anddidnotconsider themselvesdefiledaftersuchcontact.Sanderserrs,however,in confusingthe issues of exclusionfromthe Templeandritualimpurity. As Jacob Milgrom has shown, misunderstandings of purityin ancient Judaismcan often result from misinterpreting the biblicalevidence."That appearsto be the case here as well, andthereforethis studywill begin witha few observationsconcerningbiblicalpuritylaws. Afterthat,prerabbinicand BernardLewis, TheJews of Islam (Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1984), pp. 33-34, and Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, trans. Andras and Ruth Hamori

(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1981), pp. 213-216. On the Zoroastrianconception of outsiders as impure, see Jamsheed K. Choksy, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism:

TriumphOverEvil (Austin:Universityof TexasPress,1989),pp. 8, 41, 79-90. On theHindus' acceptanceof foreignersinto the uppercastes, see Louis Dumont,HomoHierarchicus:the Caste Systemand Its Implications,rev. ed., trans.MarkSainsburyet al. (Chicago:University of ChicagoPress, 1980), pp. 193-194 and202-208. 8. See Dunn,"Incidentat Antioch."Sandersfirstrespondedin "Purity,FoodandOfferings in the Greek-Speaking Diaspora," Jewish Lawfronz Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London:

SCMPress,1990),pp. 255-308, esp. p. 284. Sandersrecentlyexpandedhis responsein "Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians 2:11-14," in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John in Honor of J. Louis Martin, ed. Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa

(Nashville:AbingdonPress, 1990), pp. 177-188. See also Sanders,Judaism:Practiceand Belief 63 BCE-66 CE (London:SCMPress, 1992),pp. 72-76. 9. "Incidentat Antioch,"p. 142. 10. "JewishAssociationwith Gentiles,"p. 176. 11. Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Conmmentalr,Anchor Bible,

vol. 3 (New York:Doubleday,1992),pp. 1004-1009.

KLAWANS JONATHAN

288

thenrabbinicsourceswill be considered.Whatwill emergefromthe analysis is the fact that puritylanguageis used to referto two distinctphenomena: ritualimpurityand moralimpurity.It will also be seen thatthe exclusionof Gentilesfrom the Templeis not to be seen as a puritylaw per se. It will be seen that ritualimpuritydid not generallyapply to Gentilesat all until the tannaiticperiod,andeven duringthatperiod,the notiondid not takehold on a widespreadbasis. ThoughGentileswere consideredto be morallyimpure from a much earlierdate, this conceptiondid not cause Jews to consider contactswith Gentilesto be rituallydefiling.Thus,it is an errorto assume thatJewsin ancienttimesgenerallyconsideredGentilesto be rituallydefiling, andit is even more of an errorto assumethatsuch a conceptionwouldhave been an impedimentto Jewish-Gentileinteraction.

The Biblical Legacy

It is not necessaryhere to presentyet anothersummaryof biblicalpurity law.12It is, however,necessaryto emphasizetwo distinctionsthatwill help clarifythe statusof Gentilesvis-a-visJewishpuritylaw. The firstdistinction The seconddistinction to be madeis thatbetweenritualandmoralimpurity.13 to be madeis thatbetweenimpurityandprofaneness.14

12. On the particularsof biblicalpuritylaw, see TikvaFrymer-Kensky, "Pollution,Purification, and Purgation in Biblical Israel," in The Wordof the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday,ed. Carol L. Meyers and

M. O'Connor(WinonaLake:Eisenbrauns,1983) or, alternatively, Sanders,"Didthe Pharisees Eat Ordinary Food in Purity?" Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, pp. 131-254. See also Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16; and The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), and Baruch A. Levine, The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus

JewishPublicationSociety,1989),esp. pp. 243-248. (Philadelphia: 13. On the need for such a distinctionin puritylaw, see the relatedstudy of rabbinic purityby JacobNeusnerandBruceD. Chilton,"Uncleannessin FormativeJudaism:A Moral or an Ontological Category?" in The Religious Study of Judaism: Description, Analysis, Interpretation, vol. 4, Ideas of History, Ethics, Ontology and Religion in Formative Judaism

(Lanham,Md.: UniversityPress of America, 1981), pp. 81-106. Milgrom,Leviticus1-16, alludesto a similardistinction(pp. 37-38, 44-45), as does Frymer-Kensky, "Pollution," p. 404. 14. On the need for this distinction,see Milgrom,Leviticus1-16, pp. 37, 615-617, and "Pollution,"pp. 404-406. Frymer-Kensky,

GENTILE IMPURITY IN ANCIENTJUDAISM

289

RitualandMoralImpurity "Ritualimpurity"refershere to the highly contagiousbut generallyimRitualimpurity permanentdefilementsalso commonlyknownas "levitical."'5 resultsfromprimaryor secondarycontactwithanyone of a numberof natural processesand substances,as describedin Leviticus11-15 andNumbers19. The causes of ritual impuritygenerally share the characteristicsof being Whilethe durationof impurityvaries, naturalandmoreor less unavoidable.16 as do the requisitecleansingprocesses,ritualimpurityis impermanentand, for the most part,removable.7It is not a sin to contractthese impurities,"s though there are two ways that ritualimpuritycan lead to sin. Refusalto as wouldcomingintocontact purifyoneself wouldconstitutea transgression, with the sacredwhile in a stateof impurity.19 The Bible, however,is concernedwith anotherformof impurity,referred to here as "moral."20 Moralimpurityresultsfromcommittingcertainacts so heinousas to be considereddefiling.In the HolinessCode,sexualandcultic sins result in moral impurity.21 In Ezekiel, murdertoo defiles (33:25-26).22 15. The term"ontological"(usedby NeusnerandChilton)wouldalso be fittingherein that it connotesa naturalstate,as opposedto a moralone. 16. Frymer-Kensky, "Pollution,"p. 403; Sanders,"Didthe PhariseesEatOrdinaryFoodin Purity?"pp. 140-143. 17. Scalediseaseandhousefungusesaregenerallyimpermanent, buttheyarenotremovable; they mustheal on theirown. The otherritualimpuritiesdissipateafterfixedperiodsof time. 18. See Neusnerand Chilton,"Uncleannessin FormativeJudaism,"pp. 86-90; FrymerKensky,"Pollution,"p. 403. 19. See, for example,Lev. 7:20-21, 15:31,22:3-7, andNum. 19:20. 20. Thistermis usedby NeusnerandChilton,"Uncleannessin FormativeJudaism"; Levine referredto this type of impurityas "figurative," Leviticus,p. 134. Milgrom,in Leviticus1-16, use of puritylanguagein moralcontexts(p. 37), as does Neusner speaksof the "metaphorical" in Idea of Purityin AncientJudaism,pp. 24-25. Frymer-Kensky contrastsritualimpuritywith see "Pollution,"p. 404. See also Btichler,"TheDefilingForceof Sin in the "danger-beliefs," Bible," in Studies in Sin and Atonenzentin the Rabbinic Literatureof the First Century(London:

OxfordUniversityPress, 1928), pp. 212-269. Biichlerdistinguishesbetween"levitical"and "spiritual(or religious)"impurities(p. 214). 21. On sexual sins, see Lev. 18:24-5. For the defilingforce of idolatry,see, for example, Lev. 20:1-3, Deut. 7:25, 12:31. Generally,see Levine,Leviticus,pp. 243-248. The prophets also frequentlyreferto such acts as defiling.See, for example,Jer.2:23 (idolatry);Ezek. 8:10 and also Ps. (idolatryand diet), 20:30-31 (idolatry);Hos. 5:3, 6:10 (generalunfaithfulness); 106:35-40 (idolatryand murder);cf. Amos 2:7 (sexualimmoralityas a profanationof God's name). 22. Levine,Leviticus,p. 243; cf. Ps. 106:35-40.

290

JONATHAN KLAWANS

Unlike contractingritualimpurity,the commissionof these defilingacts is prohibited,and violations are punishable.In fact, accordingto Leviticus chapters18 and20, the Israelite(orresidentalien)who commitsidolatrousor sexualsins is to sufferdeath.On the otherhand,thereis no contact-contagion associatedwith moral impurity;one need not bathesubsequentto primary or secondarycontact with an idol, an idolater,or an individualwho has committeda sexual sin.23Thus there is no purificationrite akin to those associatedwith ritualimpurity.Moralpurity,rather,is achievedsimply by punishingthe sinners,or by refrainingfromcommittingmorallyimpureacts in the firstplace. Still, despitethe lack of contact-contagion, moralimpurity can be conveyed: these acts defile the land of Israel (Lev. 18:25, Ezek. 36:17),24and the sanctuaryof God (Lev.20:3, Ezek.5:11).25Forthis reason, the communitymust dedicateone day a year for the purgationof sin (Lev. 16:1-34). How do these two types of purityaffect Gentiles?Firstof all, Gentiles arenot affectedby the ritualpuritysystem.They areexemptfromalmostall of the biblicalpuritylaws,26 andnowhereis the Gentileidentifiedas a source or possibleconveyorof ritualimpurity.Centurieslater,the rabbiswere quite clear on this point: Gentilesare not susceptibleto ritualimpurity.27 Though the Bible containsno explicitstatementto thiseffect,thebulkof the evidence leads to the same conclusion. And whatis the statusof Gentileswithregardto moralimpurity?According to the Pentateuch,Gentileswere wont to commitacts thatwere morally defiling.They engagedin defilingsexualbehavior(18:27), they ate impure foods (Lev. 20:22-26), and they also, obviously,practicedidolatry(Deut. 12:1-4). And lest Israeliteslearn to follow paganways, intermarriage-at 23. Cf. Frymer-Kensky, "Pollution,"p. 403. 24. Cf. Bitchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement, pp. 212-217.

25. Womenwho, willingly or unwillingly,have been partnerto a sexualoffense,or have been in relationswith a foreigner,suffera permanentdebasement,whichis oftenexpressedin the languageof impurity.See, for example,Gen. 34:5, Num.5:13, andEzek.23:17. 26. Theresidentalienis consideredto be susceptibleto impurityfromcorpses(Num.19:10) andfromeatinganimalcarcasses(Lev. 17:15-16).Onthe disparateviews of P andH vis-a-vis the residentalien,see Milgrom,Leviticus1-16, pp.48-49, andNumbers,pp. 398-402. See also Christianavan Houten,The Alien in IsraeliteLaw (Sheffield:JSOTPress,1991).On P,H, and purity, see Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronontic School (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1972), pp. 225-232. Interestingly,the TempleScrolldoes not mentionnon-Israelitesin the (extant)parallelto Num. 19 (11 QT XLIX-L). 27. See below, "TheMishnah:Tracesof GentileImpurity.".

IN ANCIENTJUDAISM IMPURITY GENTILE

291

least with their neighbors-was prohibited(Exod. 34:15-16, Deut. 7:1-4; cf. Ps. 106:35-36).28This line of thinkingis most prominentin the books of Ezra and Nehemiah,both of which explicitlyconnectthe prohibitionof with the defilingbehaviorof local Gentiles.29 Yetothervoices intermarriage in the Bible are less decidedon this issue. In the HolinessCode,the citizen and the residentalien alike are to adhereto the sexual prohibitions (nn•i) (Lev. 18:26),andindeed,to all of theprohibitivecommandments.30 Moreover, some prophetictexts envisionthe ultimatepeacefulgatheringof Gentilesand Jews in Jerusalem.31 This opennessis also evidentin Jonahand Ruth,both of which depict righteous and repentantGentiles. Clearly these texts do not considerGentiles to be inherentlymorallyimpure.At any rate,what is most importantto note here is thateven the texts thatexplicitlyconnectthe with impureGentilebehaviorgo no furtherthan prohibitionof intermarriage that.Indeed,no biblicaltext considersGentilesto be rituallyimpure. ImpurityandProfaneness Separatefrom, but relatedto, the concept of purityis the concept of profaneness.While "impure"(mtn) is the ontologicalopposite of "pure" (-Itn), "profane"(5bn)is the ontologicaloppositeof "sacred"(tulp). These dichotomiesare clearly set forth in Leviticus 10:10, which states, "foryou mustdistinguishbetweenthe sacredandtheprofane,andbetweentheunclean andthe clean."32 A "profanation" (515n)is a violationof the sacredthatis not 28. Generally,see ShayeJ. D. Cohen,"SolomonandtheDaughterof Pharaoh: Intermarriage, Conversion, and the Impurity of Women," Journal of the Ancient Near East Society 16-17

see Rolandde (1984-85): 23-38, esp. pp. 23-26. On the disregardfor this commandment, Vaux,AncientIsrael (New York:McGraw-Hill,1961),p. 31. Foran assessmentof the various biblicaltraditionsandtheirimplications,see ShayeJ. D. Cohen,"FromtheBibleto theTalmud: The Prohibitionof Intermarriage," HebrewAnnualReview7 (1983):23-39. 29. See Ezra9:1-10:44; Neh. 9:1-3, 10:29-31, 13:1-3, 13:23-30;cf. 1 Esdr.8:68-9:36. It is truethatonly local women are of immediateconcernhere,but thenagain,local women arethe only ones likely to have been availableto the Israelitesfor marriageat thattime.It is a shortstep fromEzra9:10-12 to a generalprohibitionof intermarriage. 30. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p. 1055 and Numbers,pp. 398-402. Milgrommakes a distinctionbetween "prohibitive" commandments,which are violatedby sins of commission andapplyto both Israelitesandresidentaliens,and"performative" whichare commandments, violatedby sins of omissionandapplyonly to Israelites. 31. See, for example,Isa. 2:1-4 andMic. 4:1-5. 32. Cf. Ezek. 22:26 and44:23. See Milgrom,Leviticus1-16, pp. 615-617.

292

JONATHAN KLAWANS

connectedto puritylaws perse.33A numberof violationsdirectlyrelatedto the sanctuaryareseen as profanations,suchas the use of tools in theconstruction of the altar(Exod. 20:22), the eatingof the well-beingsacrifice(MaIshnrT) on the thirdday (Lev. 19:8),andmoreimportantlyfor ourconcerns,the entry into the sanctuaryof a priestwitha physicalirregularity (Lev.21:18).Priests in this categoryare not, however,seen as impure;they may eat sacredfood, while the defiledpriestsmay not (21:22, 22:4-7). Thuswe see thatsomeone who is not rituallyimpurecan still threatenthe purityof the sanctuary,by being profane. It is Though not inherentlyimpure,Gentiles are inherentlyprofane.34 for this reasonthatGentileswere ultimatelyexcludedfromthe sanctuary.35 Joel declares, "And Jerusalemshall be holy; Nevermoreshall strangers (3nlt) pass through it" (4:i7). This perspectiveis seen most clearly in Ezekiel, who consistentlyrefersto the entryof Gentilesinto the sanctuary as a profanation.36 Ezekiel states, "Toolong, O House of Israel,have you committedall your abominations,admittingaliens (1~i'n), uncircumcised of spiritand uncircumcisedof flesh, to be in My SanctuaryandprofaneMy very Temple"(44:6-7, emphasisadded).As this verse implies,the presence of Gentiles in the sanctuaryis a profanation,and not a defilement.37 The exclusionof Gentilesshouldnot be seen as a puritylaw becauseit appliesto all Gentilesat all times. Impurity,as we have seen, is generallya temporary state,andcanbe conveyedin andoutof theTemple.Theexclusionof Gentiles

33. Thusa violationof the Sabbathis seen as a profanation(Exod.31:14).The use of ?n to denotea ritualimpuritydoes appear,but this use is exceptional.See Lev. 21:12, 22:9; and Milgrom,Leviticus1-16, p. 37. 34. It is true that the legal codes of the Pentateuchnever explicitlyreferto Gentilesas profane.Nonetheless,since "profane"is the ontologicaloppositeof "sacred,"the statusof non-Israelitesas profaneis implied when Israel is called sacred.See Lev. 10:10 and, for example,19:1-2. 35. Althoughthere is no explicit early evidence for the exclusionof Gentilesfrom the Temple,a numberof postexilic sourcesare repletewith this ideal. In additionto the sources citedbelow,see Isa. 52:1 and2 Chron.8:11.But on the latterverse,see Cohen,"Solomonand the Daughterof Pharaoh,"pp. 34-37; CohensuggeststhatSolomon'smotivein 2 Chron.8:11 was not to excludeforeigners,but to preventhis havingmaritalrelationsin the vicinityof the sanctuary. 36. See 7:21, 36:20-21, andthe followingquotation. 37. Cf. Hoenig,"OilandPaganDefilement,"p. 70.


293

is to be comparedto the exclusionof priestswith a physicaldeformity:they areexcludedbecausethey areprofane,even thoughthey arenot impure.38

The Greco-Roman Period

In the Jewishliteratureof the Greco-Romanperiodwe see threephenomena relatingto Gentile impurity.First we see purityterminologyused with referenceto certainbehaviorsof Gentiles,andto underscorewarningsagainst Jewish participationin such behaviors.As we will see, these texts-at the most-assume Gentiles to be morallyimpure.Second, we see a continued exclusion of Gentiles from the holy precincts,which in one questionable instanceincludesthe entirecity of Jerusalem.This phenomenonresultsfrom the conceptionof Gentilesas havinga lower,andmoreprofane,status-not ritualimpurity.Finally,in two first-centurysources(Josephusand the New Testament)we see evidencethatsome JewsmayhaveconsideredGentilesto be rituallyimpure.39 Gentilesas MorallyImpure In Jubilees,40the authorincorporatesthe followingadmonitionintoAbraham'sblessing of Jacob(22:16): 38. Thebulkof theevidencesuggeststhattheexclusionof GentilesfromtheTemplegained popularityin the Persianperiod.Sanders,in his Judaism,recallsNum. 15:14-16andJosephus, Antiquities12.145-146, and concludesthat the exclusionof Gentilesfrom the Templewas achievedby "thelate thirdor earlysecondcenturyB.C.E."(p. 72). YetSanderserrsin believing that the exclusion from the Templeis a reflectionof Gentileimpurity("JewishAssociation withGentiles,"p. 176); this view is also heldby Scot McKnight,A LightAmongthe Gentiles: JewishMissionaryActivityin the SecondTemplePeriod(Minneapolis:FortressPress, 1991), p. 23. In favorof the positiontakenhereareEliasJ. Bickerman,"TheWarningInscriptionsof Herod'sTemple,"Jewish QuarterlyReview37 (1946-47): 387-405; Hoenig,"Oiland Pagan Defilement,"p. 70, andPorton,Goyim,pp. 259-268. 39. Generally,on Jewishpuritylaw in this period,see Neusner,Idea of Purityin Ancient Judaism,pp. 32-71. 40. Scholarly consensus dates Jubilees to the second centuryB.C.E.Since it will be demonstratedthat Jubilees does not considerGentilesto be rituallyimpure,it will not be necessaryfor our purposesto considerthe sectariannatureof this work. See Schtirerand Vermes,Historyof the JewishPeople, vol. 3, pp. 312-313.

294

JONATHAN KLAWANS

Separatefromthe nations,anddo not eat withthem.Do not act as theydo, and do not becometheircompanion,for theiractionsaresomethingthatis impure, and all theirways are defiledandsomethingabominableanddetestable.41

Due to its use of puritylanguageand its demandfor separationfrom the Gentiles, this passage has been used to defend the antiquity of the ritual

impurityof Gentiles.42Yet the concernhere is not thatGentilepersonsare rituallydefiling,43but that Gentilebehavioris morallyabominable,because they practice idolatry (22:17-22).44For this reason, Abrahamurges his descendantsto remainseparatefromthem--even to refrainfromeatingwith them.45Yet Jubilees here says nothing about Gentiles themselvesbeing a sourceof ritualimpurity. A subsequentpassage,Jubilees30, reiteratesthe prohibitionof intermarriage, and for the first time explicitly extends the prohibition to all Gentiles (30:7):46

If thereis a man in Israelwho wishes to give his daughteror his sisterto any foreigner,he is to die. He is to be stonedbecausehe hasdonesomethingsinful andshamefulwithinIsrael.The womanis to be burnedbecauseshe hasdefiled the reputationof her father'shouse;she is to be uprootedfromIsrael.47 41. Translationhere and below fromJamesC. VanderKam, TheBookof Jubilees,2 vols. (Louvain:Peeters,1989); here vol. 2, p. 131. Also see 0. S. Wintermute,"Jubilees:A New in TheOld Testament ed. JamesCharlesworth, TranslationandIntroduction," Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (GardenCity,N.Y.:Doubleday,1983),pp. 35-142. 42. For example, Dunn, "Incidentat Antioch,"p. 142; and Neyrey,"Ideaof Purityin Mark'sGospel,"p. 100. 43. Jubileesallows for the ownershipof Gentileslaves (15:12-13, 24), a practicewhich would not be condoned if Gentile persons were consideredan inherentsource of ritual defilement.Presumably,the behaviorof slavescan be controlled. 44. See also 1:9, 12:2, 20:7, 21:15, and22:22, whichall consideridolatryto be defiling. 45. The concernabouteatingwith Gentiles(22:16)is echoedin othertextsof theperiodas well; cf. Dan. 1:8;Jud. 12:1-2; Tob. 1:10-12; Josephand Asenath7:1, 8:5; Add. Est. 14:17; and3 Macc.3:4. The concernabout"inter-eating" resultsgenerallyfromconcernaboutimpure foods, but idolatryis also noted as a concern(JosephandAsenath8:5; Add. Est. 14:17;and Aristeas 139, 142, 145). It is difficult,if not impossible,to see this concernas a reflectionof Gentileritualimpurity.If that were the concern,all such contactwould be problematic,not just eatingtogether.See Hoenig,"OilandPaganDefilement,"esp. pp. 70-71; Sanders,"Purity, Food andOfferingsin the Greek-Speaking Diaspora,"JewishLawfromJesusto theMishnah, pp. 255-308; cf. idem,Judaism,pp. 214-217. 46. See Cohen,"Fromthe Bible to the Talmud,"p. 26. Bookof Jubilees,vol. 2, p. 193 47. VanderKam,


295

The text goes on, emphasizingthe importanceof avoidingvarioussexual defilements.Jubilees' use of puritylanguagein these and similarpassages reflects not the ritualpurity laws of Leviticus 11-15, but the prohibitions is prohibitednot because appliedto all Israelin Leviticus18.48Intermarriage Gentilepersonsarerituallyimpure,butbecauseGentilescommitidolatryand sexualsins.49Indeed,Joseph-who is praisedfor his refusalto fornicatewith Potiphar'swife-is apparentlyleft unaffectedby the physicalcontactthat occurredwhen she embracedhim (39:9). Ritualpurityis the concernof only one passagein Jubilees(3:8-14), whichechoes some of the childbirthpurity laws of Leviticus 12:2-5.50Moral impurity,however,is Jubilees'constant concern."'As noted above, contactwith what is rituallyimpureconveys a temporaryandremovableformof uncleanness.In Jubilees,however,Jewish associationwith Gentiles is understoodto resultin Jewish participationin the abominablepracticesof theirneighbors.Jubilees'strongpolemicagainst Jewish-Gentileinteraction,whichseeksto preserveIsrael'smoralpurity,does not testify to the ritualimpurityof Gentiles. As in Jubilees, in Joseph and Asenath,Joseph refuses to lie with an idolatrouswoman.52In fact, Josepheven refusesto kiss Asenath,because"It is not fittingfor a man who worshipsGod ... to kiss a strangewomanwho will bless with her mouthdeadanddumbidols andeat fromtheirtablebread of strangulation" (8:5).53Yet Josephis willing to touchAsenath,for he puts off her advanceby placinghis handon her chest (8:5). While kissing such a woman is consideredan abomination(8:7), Asenathis not referredto as 48. Cf. 16:5,20:3-7, and23:14-17. On the interpretation of Lev. 18, see Cohen,"Fromthe Bible to the Talmud,"p. 26. andtheconcernwithidolatry 49. The connectionbetweenthe prohibitionof intermarriage is commonplacein Jewish literatureof the Greco-Romanperiod.The following passages, leads amongothers,all explicitlyconnectthe prohibitionwith the concernthatintermarriage to idolatry:Josephus,Antiquities8:190-196; Philo,SpecialLaws3:29;Pseudo-Philo,Biblical Antiquities21:1, 30:1, 43:5; andTest.Levi 9:10. Generally,see Cohen,"Fromthe Bible to the Talmud,"esp. pp. 26-27; andMcKnight,LightAmongthe Gentiles,pp. 23-24. 50. Surprisingly,there is no great concern in Jubilees about ritualpurityper se. The extensivenarrativeof Abraham'sdeath,for instance,does not includeany mentionof corpse impurityor any remindersof the needto be concernedwith thattaboo. 51. Cf. the passageslisted in nn. 45 and49 above. 52. This work most likely originated in Egypt, between ca. 100 B.C.E.and 117 C.E.See Schttrer and Vermes, History of the Jewish People, vol. 3, pp. 548-549.

53. Translationby C. Burchardin Charlesworth,Old TestamentPseudepigrapha,vol. 2, pp. 177-248.

JONATHAN KLAWANS

296

rituallyimpurein any way.Asenath'skiss-and more-becomes permissible forJosephwhenAsenathhasrenouncedidolatry(19:5, 10).54Andyet,Asenath hasperformedno conversionritualsandno formalritesof purification, though she does wash her hands and face in 14:15.55Joseph'sproblemis this: he will not kiss a woman whose lips may have utteredidolatrousphrasesor consumeduncleanfood (8:5). Suchan act wouldbe a directassociationwith idolatry.Yet, in this text, it seems thatanyonewho renouncesidolatryis no longera sourceof impurity.The sourceof thismoralimpurity-if it caneven be called that, since this text does not use such language-is not Gentiles, but idolatry.56 The following passage from the Letter of Aristeas has been similarly

as evidencefor the notionof Gentileimpurity:57 misinterpreted Whenthereforeour lawgiver,equippedby God for insightinto all things,had surveyedeach particular,he fenced us aboutwith impregnablepalisadesand with walls of iron,to the end thatwe shouldmingle(impltoyryipeca) in no way with any of the other nations,remainingpure (&dyvoi) in body and in spirit, emancipatedfrom vain opinions,reveringthe one and mightyGod abovethe whole of creation..... And therefore,so thatwe shouldbe pollutedby none norbe infectedwith perversionsby associatingwith worthlesspersons,he has hedgedus abouton all sides with prescribedpurificationsin mattersof food anddrinkandtouchandhearingandsight (139, 142).58

Again, the use of purity language in this passage has caused it to be misinterpreted.Aristeas is concernedhere not with the ritualimpurityof Gentiles,but with theirmorallyimpurebehavior.This passageis liftedfrom 54. It is not perfectlyclear that Asenathhas converted;she may only have renounced idolatry,which is not tantamountto conversionto Judaism.See ShayeJ. D. Cohen,"Crossing the BoundaryandBecominga Jew,"HarvardTheologicalReview82, no. 1 (1989):13-33, esp. p. 21. 55. This wouldnot, however,be sufficientfor the removalof ritualimpurity. 56. It also seems thatit is possiblefor Jews andGentilesto eat together(21:8);see n. 46 aboveandthe discussionof Aristeasbelow. 57. See Dunn,"Incidentat Antioch,"p. 142. 58. TranslationfromMoses Hadas,Aristeasto Philocrates(New York:Harper& Brothers, 1951), p. 157. This letteris generallybelievedto datefromthe secondcenturyB.C.E. (Schiirer and Vermes,History of the Jewish People, vol. 3, pp. 679-684). Also see R. J. H. Shutt, "Letterof Aristeas:A New Translationand Introduction," in Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, pp. 7-34.

IN ANCIENTJUDAISM GENTILE IMPURITY

297

a largerapologeticthat is concernedprimarilywith the food laws and their capacityto separateJews from Gentiles(149-151; cf. 128, 138, 169). The dietarypracticesof the Gentilesare associatedwith theiridolatry(138) and sexual indiscretion(152), while the dietaryrestrictionsof the Jews serve to keep them safe from such practices(139, 142, 149). This perspective, however,does not embracea notion of an inherent,ritualGentileimpurity. The Jewish translatorseat in the king's palaceon seven consecutivenights, after he has made properpreparations(181-186).59 In Aristeas,Jews and havebeenmade, Gentilescan associate,andprovidedthe properpreparations can eat The of is even ritual not to be found Gentiles together. impurity they in Aristeas,or, for thatmatter,in the otherJewishliteratureof this period.60 Exclusionof Gentilesfromthe Temple A numberof sources from the Greco-Romanperiodtestify thatit was Thesereferences-and the actual unlawfulfor Gentilesto enterthe Temple.61 that have been inscriptions clearlyrelevantto the issue at excavated62--are do that but not Gentiles were consideredrituallyimpure.In hand, they testify 59. Thesepreparations, thoughnot clearlyexplained,arealludedto againin 203, 221, 236, with his 248, 262, and 275. See also 274, wherethe king is depictedas "mingling"(ouuvwv) Jewishguests. 60. Alon originallysuggestedthat Judith'sritualsof purification(12:7) were a response to the contact with Gentiles that occurredwhile she was in Holofernes'camp ("Levitical Uncleannessof Gentiles,"p. 154).YehoshuaGrintzalso entertainstheideain his (Hebrew)The Book of Judith: A Reconstruction of the Original Hebrew Textwith Introduction, Commentary,

Appendicesand Indices (Jerusalem:BialikInstitute,1986),pp. 158-159. Alon latersuggested that Judithbathedbefore her prayersbecause it was her custom to do so, whetherin the companyof Israelitesor Gentiles;cf. "TheBoundsof the Lawsof LeviticalCleanness,"Jews, Judaismand the Classical World,pp. 190-234, esp. p. 202 (Hebreworiginal:Tarbiz9 [1937]: 1-10, p. 8). Alon's retractionwas wise: thereis not enoughmaterialin the text to conclude thatJudithconsideredherGentileassociatesto be rituallyimpure.Indeed,the ease withwhich Achiorentersthe city andeven becomesa Jew-all withoutanyritualof purification-argues againstthe notionthatthis text assumesGentilesto be rituallyimpure. 61. Jewish War 5:193; Antiquities 12:145, 15:417; cf. Philo, Embassy to Gaius 212. See also Jewish War 1:152, 1:354; Antiquities 3:318-319, 11:101, 14:482. The Mishnah's position

on this issue (e.g., M. Kelim 1:8) will be consideredbelow in "TheMishnah:Tracesof Gentile Impurity."See McKnight, Light Among the Gentiles, pp. 22-23.

62. P.Jean-Baptiste ludaicarum,2 vols. (VaticanCity:Pontifical Frey,CorpusInscriptionum Instituteof ChristianArchaeology,1936, 1952), vol. 2, # 1400. The text is also reproducedin Mass.:Harvard RalphMarcusandAllenWikgren,eds.,Josephus,vol. 8 (Cambridge, University Press[LoebClassicalLibrary],1969),pp. 202-203. Fora discussion,see Bickerman,"Warning

298

JONATHAN KLAWANS

EliasBickerman'swords,"Thepaganvisitorof theTemplehoweverwas shut outnotbecausehis handsorheartwereuncleanbutbecausehe wasanalien."63 Most of our sources-including, unfortunately, the inscriptions-provideno this for exclusion. 12:145 explanation Antiquities impliesthatthe exclusion of Gentiles was a purity law, for Gentiles are excludedfrom the Temple Yet Jewish just as the flesh of uncleanbeasts is excludedfromJerusalem.64 War5:193 is more to the point: the concern is with the sanctityof the Temple,which must be protectedfrom impurityas well as a host of other things. Hence women, whetherrituallyimpureor not, are excluded from entrybeyondthe courtreservedfor them.65Womenand Gentiles,as well as impairedpriests,are excludednot becausethey areimpure,butbecausethey are of a lower,andmoreprofane,status.If Gentileswereconsideredritually impure,we would expect them to defile in and out of the Temple,because thereis no categoryof ritualimpuritythatresultsonly in an exclusionfrom the Temple.66 ritual In addition,we wouldexpectthereto be somepurification they could perform,in orderto rid themselvesof ritualimpurity.Gentiles were excludedfrom the Templenot becausethey were impure,but because they were profane.67

Inscriptionsof Herod'sTemple,"andVirgilRoy Lee Fry,"TheWarningInscriptionsfromthe HerodianTemple"(Ph.D.diss., SouthernBaptistTheologicalSeminary,1974). 63. "WarningInscriptionsof Herod's Temple,"p. 390; cf. AgainstApion 2:209-210, 2:257-261. Accordingto Bickerman,the exclusionof aliens was a commonpracticeamong the peoplesof the ancientworld(pp. 389-390). 64. Cf. J. M. Baumgarten, "ExclusionsfromtheTemple:ProselytesandAgrippaI,"Journal of JewishStudies33 (1982): 215-225, esp. pp. 215-216. 65. Jewish War5:198-204, Antiquities15:319;cf. M. Kelim 1:8-9, cited below in "The Mishnah:Tracesof GentileImpurity." 66. Thus we mustrejectSanders'ssuggestionthatthe exclusionof Gentileswas the only practicalramificationof Gentileimpurity("JewishAssociation,"p. 176). 67. Boththe TempleScrolland4Q Florilegiumsuggestthatproselyteswereto be excluded from the Temple(11QT XL:6; 4Q Flor 1:4).See JosephM. Baumgarten,"TheExclusionof 'Netinim'and Proselytesin 4Q Florilegium,"Revuede Qunzran8, no. 1 (1972): 87-95, and "Exclusionsfrom the Temple,"pp. 215-225. At Qumran,proselytes(again,like women)are excludedfrom the Templebut are not otherwiseconsideredto be impure.The exclusionof proselytesresultsfromtheirinherentprofaneness:so inherentis thisprofanenessthatit endures even afterconversion.See LawrenceH. Schiffman,"Exclusionfrom the Sanctuaryand the City of the Sanctuaryin the TempleScroll,"HebrewAnnualReview9 (1985): 301-320, esp. pp. 303-305.


299

In Jewish War1:229 and its parallelin Antiquities14:285,it is related how MalichuspersuadedHyrcanusto barHerodfromentryinto Jerusalem, lest his soldiers violate the purificationthat precededthe holiday.68Alon presentsthis text as unambiguoustestimonythat Gentileswere considered This approachto the passageis too simplistic.Firstof all, it must impure.69 be kept in mind that Malichushad serious concernfor his own life, and had reasonto bar HerodfromJerusalemat all costs.70Both Jewish Warand Antiquities,moreover,make it clear that Malichus'claim was merely an excuse for keepingHerodout.71WhenHeroddid enterthe city, presumably with his entourage,the only people who seem to have been upset about it were Malichus and Hyrcanus.No purity-consciouscrowds raised great objections.But even if they had, this would be furtherevidence thatJews were concernedwith excludingGentilesfromsacredprecincts,andnot with the ritualimpurityof Gentiles.72 GentileRitualImpurityin First-Century Palestine? In JewishWar2:150, JosephusnotesthatEssenesbathewhentouchedby a memberof an inferiorcaste, "asaftercontactwith an alien" (&rroXobe•Ocxi Kc06mCrrp d&XXoi)Xp ovUPUpCTvr cq). Alon believes thatthe simile compares the relationshipbetween the varyinggroupsof Essenes to the relationship betweenall Jews and Gentiles.73 This interpretation, however,is forced.The 68. PresumablySukkoth(cf. the rabbinicuse of an).See RalphMarcus,ed., Josephus,vol. 7 (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress [LoebClassicalLibrary],1976), p. 413 n.d. The Greektranslatedby Marcusas "topurify"is dyvEbke. The regularSeptuagintparallelfor is n•tu KclaXpiCEIV. 69. "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"p. 154. 70. Malichushad murderedAntipater,and Heroddid subsequentlykill him in revenge (Antiquities 14:292).

71. Note Jewish War'srp6nxa4l ("pretense") andAntiquities'rrpopBphfrlro 5e airiav ("he as a pretext"). gave 72. Josephusdescribesin detailthecaretakento keepthepriestlyvestmentspure(Antiquities 18:90-95), and Alon believes thatthe passagealso testifiesto the ritualimpurityof Gentiles ("LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"p. 154). However,thereis a text-criticalproblemhere that Alon does not mention:the purificationbeing discussedmay apply only to the high Mass.:Harvard priest(Antiquities18:94;see L. H. Feldman,ed., Josephus,vol. 9 (Cambridge, the text itself UniversityPress [LoebClassicalLibrary],1969),p. 67, n.b.). Moreimportantly, gives no reasonto assumethat the vestments--orthe priest-were madeimpureby contact withGentiles. 73. "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"pp. 153-154.

300

KLAWANS JONATHAN

texthasonly Essenesin mind;it is nota runningcomparisonbetweenEssenes andotherJews. One can deducefromthis text only thatEssenesbathedafter contact with Gentiles, in additionto bathingafter contactwith low-status Essenes.AssumingthatJosephus'factsareright,thisreportwouldconstitute the earliest evidence that some Jews-in this case Essenes--considered Gentiles to be ritually defiling. Josephus'Essenes also consideredoil to be defiling, a conceptionthat was not common to all Jewry (JewishWar 2:123).74Thus what may have been true of Josephus' Essenes was not necessarilycharacteristicof otherJews.75 Acts 10:28 is commonly cited as evidence for the notion of Gentile Thepassagedescribestheconversionof theGod-fearingcenturion, impurity.76 Cornelius,whosehomePetervisits.Peteraddressesa crowdthathasgathered there,saying:"Youyourselvesknowhow unlawfulit is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of anothernation;but God has shown me that I shouldnot call any man common or unclean."Peterhere all but says that Jews considerGentilesto be defiling.And whatis more,the prohibitionof 6 finds a parallel visiting the home of a non-Jew(1rpooapXEcOw &XXoiAyl) in M. Ohalot 18:7, which declaresGentilehousesto be unclean.77 Yet there area numberof problemswith seeing this verseas evidenceof Gentileritual impurity.First, the term translatedby RSV as "to associate"(KoWX•0xo0) almostalways implies a very close association.ThroughoutLuke-Acts,the term is used to mean "join,"though on one occasion it means "cling."78 In other New Testamentliterature,the term is often employedin a sexual context;following the Septuagint,Matthew19:5 uses it in a translationof 74. Hoenig,"OilandPaganDefilement,"pp. 63, 66. 75. Even though the relationshipbetweenQumranand the Essenes is questioned,it is thereis little evidence from the importantto note that, Jewish War2:150 notwithstanding, Qumranliteratureitself to supportthe claim that all Gentileswere consideredto be ritually impure.Despite Qumran'spurityconsciousness,some of the sectarianlegislationassumes economic relationswith the Gentiles. For example, CD XII:6-11 prohibitsselling certain animalsandJewishslaves to Gentiles,but not all economicactivity. 76. Alon, "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"p. 154; Neyrey,"Ideaof Purityin Mark's Gospel,"p. 100; StrackandBillerbeck,KonmmentarzuntNeuen Testament,vol. 1, p. 102. Acts is commonlydatedto the end of the firstcenturyor the beginningof the secondcenturyC.E. See HansConzelmann,Acts of theApostles(Philadelphia: FortressPress,1987),p. xxxiii. 77. At least until the houses are examined(18:8); see below, "TheMishnah:Tracesof GentileImpurity." 78. The wordmeans"join"in Luke15:15andActs 5:13,8:29,9:26, and 17:34,and"cling" in Luke 10:11.See also Rom. 12:9,whereRSV translatesthe verbas "holdfast."


301

Genesis 2:24.79It is by no means clear,therefore,thatthis passageimplies that simple contact with Gentiles is forbidden.It is more likely that close contact, such as visiting homes, is what this verse has in mind. Moreover, it is importantthat Peter does not here say that such contactwith Gentiles Thus it appearsthat Acts 10:28 is defiling; he says that it is forbidden.80 shouldbe seen in the light of texts like JubileesandAristeasthatsee certain Jewish-Gentileinteractionsas prohibitedlest theyleadto idolatry.Acts 10:28 should not be seen as a parallelof M. Ohalot 18:7, which does not forbid visiting Gentilehomes, butconsidersit defiling.8" And of courseit mustbe emphasizedthatthe authorof Acts was himself a Gentile,82who was by no means sympatheticto Jews or Judaism.83 Thus one can assume that Luke is exaggeratingin Acts 10:28.84Indeed,Luke himselfprovidesevidenceof his exaggerationwhendescribingthe so-called "God-fearers."85 The termappearsa numberof times in Acts,86and each of these passages testifies that Gentiles came to the synagoguesor otherwise socializedclosely withJews.Acts 14:1reports,in addition,thatPaulpreached 79. Gen. 2:24: "Hencea man leaves his fatherand clings to his wife." The wordis used similarlyin a numberof otherNew Testamentpassages.See particularly1 Cor.6:16-17 and Eph.5:31. 80. Cf. SchtirerandVermes,Historyof theJewishPeople,vol. 2 pp. 83-84, whichinterprets Acts 10:28in the lightof M. Ohalot18:7:"[Acts10:28]does not meanthatsuchan association was forbidden,but thateach such associationwas a causeof defilement."This view, however, is forced:the Greektermused here (0t0PtTo4)means"unlawful." 81. AnotherimportantNew Testamentverse to consideris John 18:28, which statesthat therewereJews who refusedto enterthe praetoriumlest they be defiledandnot be ableto eat the Passoversacrifice.It shouldbe notedthataccordingto John18, Matt.27, andMark15, the praetoriumis whereJesus was beaten.One can assumethatany numberof bloody activities tookplace there,andthattherewouldhavebeen a fearof contractingcorpseimpurity. 82. Helmut Koester,Introductionto the New Testament,vol. 2, Historyand Literature of Early Christianity(Philadelphia:Fortress,1982), p. 310; JosephA. Fitzmyer,The Gospel and Commentary, AnchorBible, Accordingto LukeI-IX: A New TranslationwithIntroduction vol. 28 (New York:Doubleday,1979), pp. 41-47. 83. JackT. Sanders,TheJews in Luke-Acts(Philadelphia: Fortress,1987). 84. Ibid.,p. 257. 85. A. T.Kraabelquestionedtheexistenceof God-fearers in antiquityin "TheDisappearance of the 'God-Fearers'," Numen28 (1981): 113-116. Yet Louis Feldmanprovidesa thorough review of the evidence, and all but proves the existence of God-fearersin antiquityin his Revue "Proselytesand 'Sympathizers'in the Lightof the New InscriptionsfromAphrodisias," des 6tudesjuives148 (1989): 265-305. 86. See Acts 10:2,22, 35; 13:16,26, 43, 50; 16:14;17:4, 17; 18:7(Kraabel,"Disappearance of the 'God-fearers'," pp. 114-115).

302

JONATHAN KLAWANS

in a synagogue at Iconium and spoke to a companyof Jews and Greeks. There seems to have been a similar situationin Thessalonica,as reported in Acts 17:1-4. Despite 10:28, Acts as a whole sees no inherentbarriers to Jewish-Gentileinteraction,even in synagogues.HadGentilesreallybeen consideredto be inherentlyimpure(rituallyor morally),Gentileswouldnot have been invitedto the synagogues,andthe class of God-fearerswouldnot have existed.87 GentileRitualImpurityin TannaiticSources With the rise of rabbinic Judaism,the concept of Gentile impurity In contrastto muchof the earlierliterature, experienceda transformation.88 the Mishnahand the Toseftado not referto the moralimpurityof Gentiles. This follows from the fact that the tannaimused puritylanguagealmost On theotherhand,idolatryhas exclusivelywith referenceto ritualimpurity.89 become a sourceof ritualimpurityin its own right."And althoughGentiles arestill consideredexemptfromtheritualpuritysystem,a numberof tannaitic sources assume Gentiles to be rituallyimpure.91 The Mishnahpreservesa few tracesof this notion, while the Toseftaexplicitlyarticulatesa principle of Gentileimpurity.The Talmudim,finally,preservethe traditionthatGentile impurityemergedthroughtannaiticdecree-a claimwhosehistoricity,oddly enough,has been too often rejected. 87. One otherpassagein Acts is pertinentto our topic, and thatis the narrativein Acts 21 in whichPaulis arrestedon the chargeof havingintroducedGentilesinto the Temple.The appliedto the Josephuspassagesnotedaboveapplyhereas well. Note how, in interpretations 21:28, Paul is accusedof profaning(Kotv6w)the Temple,not defilingit. Acts 24:6 employs the similartermPEXrIt6w (which in the Septuagintcommonlytranslatessn). Note also that Paulpurifieshimselfbeforeenteringthe Temple(Acts 21:23-26). In this regardsee M. Yoma 3:3, whichobligatesall Jews--even those not impure-to immersebeforeenteringtheTemple courtfor service. 88. Generally,on rabbinicpuritylaw, see Neusner,A Historyof the MishnaicLaw of Purities,22 vols. (Leiden,E. J. Brill, 1974-77), esp. vol. 22. 89. This point is emphasizedby Neusner and Chilton in "Uncleannessin Formative Judaism,"pp. 81-85. 90. See, for example,M. AvodahZarah3:6. Generally,see Btichler,"TheDefilingForce of Sin in Post-BiblicalandRabbinicLiterature," in Studiesin SinandAtonement, pp. 270-374. 91. Thebestreviewof Gentileimpurityin tannaiticsourcesis Porton,Goyim,pp. 269-283. Porton,however,deals with the MishnahandToseftaas a unit,while for this topic,it is better to deal with themseparately.

IMPURITY IN ANCIENTJUDAISM GENTILE

303

The Mishnah:Tracesof GentileImpurity It is importantto note at the outset thatthe Mishnah,for the most part, M. Negaim considersGentilesto be unaffectedby the ritualpuritysystem.92 3:1 states explicitly that Gentiles do not contractimpurityfrom "leprous" impurities (•3vn).93 The same is trueof Gentileclothinganddwellingplaces (M. Negaim 11:1, 12:1), and M. Zabim2:1 suggests thatGentilesare not susceptibleto impurityfrom irregulargenital flows.94 Gentile corpses do not convey impurityby carriage(M. Niddah 10:4),95and Gentilesemen is also not consideredto be a source of impurityfor Israelites(M. Mikvaoth 8:4). Accordingto M. Niddah7:3, the bloodstainsof Gentilesdo not convey impurity.96 A few mishnaicsources,however,appearto attributemenstrualimpurity to Gentilewomen. In M. Niddah4:3 (= M. Eduyot5:1) the housesof Hillel andShammaidisputeover the statusof a Gentilewoman'sblood.The School of Shammaideemsthe blood to be pure,while the Schoolof Hillel deemsthe blood to be impure,like her spittleand urine.97 This perspectivefinds some confirmationin M. Toharot5:8, whichdeemsimpureall the spittleof a town in which a Gentile, Samaritan,or mentallyunfit womandwells. This text also, by singling out Gentilewomen, suggeststhatGentileswere held to be susceptibleto menstrualimpurity.CompareM. Makshirin2:3, whichruleson urinepots used by both Israelitesand Gentiles:"if the greaterpartwas from 92. Generally,see Alon, "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"pp. 154-156;Porton,Goyinzm, pp. 272-273. 93. Unless otherwisenoted,all citedpassagesareunattributed. Translations of theMishnah and of certainmishnaictermshere and below are takenfromHerbertDanby,TheMishnah: Translatedfrom the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford

in placeof "impurity." UniversityPress, 1933). Note thatDanbyuses "uncleanness" 94. "All are susceptibleto uncleannessby reason of a flux, even proselytes,"but not Gentiles.CompareT. Zabim2:1, quotedbelow in "TheTosefta:GentileImpurityEstablished." 95. Cf. B. Nazir61b. 96. Gentilelands are presumedto be impure(M. Toharot4:5), but this affectsIsraelites, not Gentiles. 97. Btichleremphasizesthe importanceof this text and suggeststhat the attributionof menstrualimpurityto Gentile women was the earlieststage (ca. early 1st cent. C.E.)in the emergenceof the notion of Gentileimpurity("LeviticalImpurityof the Gentile,"pp. 9-15). Alon, on the otherhand,acceptsthe Gemara'sresolutionof this conflict,andsuggeststhatthe disputein M. Niddah4:3 actuallyconcernsflux impurity(ibid.,pp. 161-162, esp. n. 27). The plainsense of the Mishnah,whichexplicitlymentionsthe bloodof a Gentilewoman,precludes Alon's interpretation.

304

KLAWANS JONATHAN

the cleanpersons,the whole is clean;if the greaterpartwas fromthe unclean persons,the whole is unclean."Herethe concernmaybe menstrualimpurity; the concerncould also be fluximpurity.Butthis textdoes notunambiguously equatethe Gentileswith the impure.Rather,it seemsthatGentiles,like Jews, may be pureor impure,dependingon the circumstances.98 Possibly,all three of these passagesassumethatGentilesconvey menstrualimpurity.Even so, the evidenceis far fromoverwhelming. There are also a few passages in the Mishnahthat appearto attribute corpseimpurityto Gentiles.In M. Ohaloth18:7,the dwellingsof Gentilesin the land of Israelare consideredunclean,ostensiblybecauseGentileswere in the habit of throwingmiscarriagesdown theirdrains.99 this Importantly, all does not to Gentile certain residences are not apply dwellings: ruling to at all and the rest can be deemed (18:9-10), susceptible impurity pure upon examination(18:8). Moreover,thereis no evidencethatthe impurity discussedhere extends beyond the dwelling.Since the impurityof Gentile houses appliesonly to the house, andpertainsonly in certaincircumstances, thereis no evidencehereof the ritualimpurityof Gentilesper se. M. Pesahim8:8 (= M. Eduyot5:2) recordsa debatebetweenthe houses of Hillel and Shammai: TheSchoolof Shammaisay:If a manbecamea proselyteon thedaybefore in the Passoverhe mayimmersehimselfandconsumehis Passover-offering And the Schoolof Hillelsay:He thatseparates himselffromhis evening.. is as onethatseparates himselffroma grave. uncircumcision 98. It is also possible,butless likely,thatM. Makshirin2:3 assumesthatGentilesarenever impure.Thusthe pots wouldbe consideredclean if thecombinednumberof Gentilesandpure Israelitesis higherthanthatof impureIsraelites.Thereis anotherrelevantrulingthatis equally inconclusivewith regardto our topic.M. Sheqalim8:1 states:"Anyspittlefoundin Jerusalem may be deemedfree from uncleanness,exceptingwhatis foundin the UpperMarket.So R. Meir."Since this statementis attributedto RabbiMeir,it can be assumedthatthe rest of the sages held a differentopinion, and it is difficult-if not impossible-to tell here what that opinionwould have been. In the Yerushalmi(8:1; 51a), R. Avinsays in the nameof Joshuab. Levi thatthe prohibitionis due to the presenceof Gentilesin Jerusalem,butotherexplanations areofferedas well. 99. Cf. M. Ohalot18:8 andM. Niddah3:7; cf. Maimonides,Commentary on the Mishnah ad loc.; ChanokhAlbeck, ShishahSidreMishnah,6 vols. (Jerusalem:BialikInstitute,1958), vol. 6, p. 186; Neusner,MishnaicLaw of Purities,vol. 4, pp. 340-341; Porton,Goyinz,p. 274, n. 22.


305

Yetwhat This text is commonlypresentedas evidenceof Gentileimpurity.1?? it implies, I think,is that,accordingto the Hillelites,the conversionprocess The text does not explain (for males) results in a temporarydefilement.101 why this is so, but it likewise does not statethatunconvertedGentilesdefile in any way. And importantly,the text concernsonly men, and thus relates nothingaboutthe statusof Gentilewomen. M. Kelim 1:8-9 sets forthwho is excludedfromwhichchambersof the Templein Jerusalem.In this scheme, Gentilesare put in the same category as those who have contractedimpurityfrom contactwith a corpse-these all being excluded from the rampart (in-rm).102Importantly, this ruling is

inconsistentwith the latertraditionthatholdsGentilesto be impurelike those who suffer from flux (zabim),for zabim, menstruants,and parturiantsare barredfrom the TempleMountaltogether(M. Kelim 1:8). Keepingin mind all thathas been said above,it is not necessaryto view an exclusionfromthe Templeas tantamountto a declarationof impurity.Althoughmanyexclusions arebasedon ritualpurity,some arebasedon status.The Courtof Israelitesis off limitsto all women, as well as those (men)who havenot completedtheir atonement(M. Kelim 1:8;cf. M. Middot2:5). Of course,only the high priest is allowed in the Holy of Holies, but this is not the resultof the impurityof the otherpriests.The highpriesthas a higherstatusthantheotherpriests,and the priests,in turn,have a higherstatusthanimpairedpriestsor Israelitemen. Similarly,Israelitemen have a higherstatusthanIsraelitewomen,andeven Israelitewomen have a higherstatusthanGentiles.None of these classes is consideredto be inherentlyrituallyimpure. M. Toharot7:6 containsthe Mishnah'sonly unambiguousrulingabout This passage deals with the statusof a house thathas Gentile impurity.103 been enteredeitherby tax collectorsor by thieves,amongwhom theremay 100. Alon, "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"pp. 150-151;Dunn,"Incidentat Antioch," NeuenTestament, vol. 1, pp. 102-104. p. 142;cf. StrackandBillerbeck,Kommentar zumn 101. The Gemara(Pesahim92a) suggeststhatthis is a preventivemeasure,lest the new convert,who could neverhave contractedimpuritybeforehis conversion,thinkthatimpurities contractedbeforePassovercan be removedwithoutwaitinga week. 102. On the rampartsee M. Middot2:3. 103. Mentionshouldbe madeof M. Terumot8:11,whichimpliesthata Gentilecandefilea heave-offering.It is not indicated,however,how thatdefilementoccurs-whethertheGentile's touchis sufficient,or whetherthe Gentileintendsto bringthe offeringinto contactwith some impuresubstance.It is likely thatthe term"defile"heremeanssomethingmoreinsidiousthan simplecontact,since the followingparagraph(M. Terumot8:12) uses the term"defile"in the sense of "rape."

306

JONATHAN KLAWANS

have been a Gentile. The house enteredby tax collectorsis deemedto be impurewhetheror not a Gentilewas amongthem.The assumptionshereare thatJewish tax collectorswould have been ignorantof or insensitiveto the law (YV" V=), and that tax collectorstouch everythingin a house.'" The Mishnahgoes on to discuss a robbedhouse,all of whichis deemedimpureif a womanor a Gentilewas amongthe thieves-regardlessof whatwas or was not touched.It is difficultto interpretthis Mishnahwithoutthe assumption thatGentilesare impure.'05 While some mishnaic passages operateon an assumptionof Gentile impurity,the evidence thathas been reviewedhere is not conclusive.More thanone-sixthof the Mishnahis devotedto the laws of impurity,and only eight mishnaicstatementsare even worthyof considerationin this regard. Of these passages, only three testify to some form of Gentile impurity: M. Niddah4:3 (where the Hillelites ascribemenstrualimpurityto Gentile women),M. Ohalot18:7 (whichdeem certainGentilehousesto be impure), and M. Toharot7:6 (which deems Gentilesthemselvesto be impure).The paucityof sources is notable,but what is more significantis the fact that the notion of Gentile impuritydoes not figureprominentlyexactlywhereit shouldthe most:TractateAvodahZarah. TractateAvodahZarahis moreconcernedwithJewish-Gentile interaction thanany othertractatein the Mishnah.It is also thistractatethatis concerned with the defiling force of idolatry.'16Yet the primaryontologicalcategories but"permitted" relatingto idolatryandGentilesarenot "pure"and"impure" 104. For thejuxtapositionof sinnerswith tax collectors,cf. Matt.9:9-13, Mark2:13-17, and Luke 5:27-32.

105. The Tosefta(Toharot8:6) assigns this rulingto R. Meir.For a rulingthatpermits admittinga Gentilewomaninto a Jewishhome, see M. AvodahZarah2:1, discussedin this section. 106. Alon ultimatelysuggeststhatGentileimpurityresultsfromthe impurityof idols and idolatry("LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"p. 147). Alon's reasoningis as follows: He notes thatrabbinicsourcesdifferwith regardto the natureof Gentileimpurity,some sources comparingGentilesto a zab, othersto a reptile,and othersto a corpse(pp. 168-169). Alon sees a similarconfusionwith regardto idol impurity,andthereforeassumesthattheremustbe a linearconnectionbetweenthe two (pp. 171-172). Alon's logic is faultyenoughon its own, but the analysisof M. AvodahZarahfurtherweakenshis thesis. If Gentileswere considered to be inherentlyimpurefromthe earliesttimes, becauseof associationwith idolatry,as Alon suggests,then one would expect to findreflectionsof thatinjunctionherein the tractate.Yet, as will be seen, thereare few echoes of the impurityof idols here,andnoneof the impurityof Gentiles.


307

and"forbidden."'07 Indeed,it is strikinghow littletheissueof impurityfigures in this tractate.Idol impurityemergesfor the firsttime only halfwaythrough the document,in 3:6. Moreover,idol impurityis hardlyinherent:M. Avodah Zarah3:8 statesthat "Nonemay sit in its shadow,but if he has sat therehe remainsclean."'0sThe impurityof Gentiles,in this tractate,is even less of a concern.M. AvodahZarah5:5 addressesa situationwherean Israeliteanda Gentileare eating at the same table. Specificsituationsare problematic,but such contactis not deemedto be defilingor prohibited.'19 Mishnayot4:9-12 suggest that there was a certain amountof Jewish-Gentilecollaboration even with regardto wine productionandthatsuch contactis not considered to be problematic.10The extent of permissibleJewish-Gentileinteraction is symbolized by the story of RabbanGamalielbathingin the baths of Aphrodite(3:4)-and the Mishnahrecognizesthatsuchbathsweredecorated with idolatrousimages (1:7, 3:4, 4:3). M. AvodahZarah2:1 also permits Gentilewomen to serve as midwivesandwet-nursesfor Israelitechildren.1' Thus it is permissiblefor Gentilewomen to enterJewishhouses.12 Clearly, these passages testify that a greatdeal of contactwas permissible,and not problematicwith regardto purity.M. AvodahZarahis eitherunfamiliaror unconcernedwith Gentileimpurity. 107. Only in M. Avodah Zarah5:11 do the ontologicalcategoriesbecome somewhat blurred.There, certainwinepressesare deemed clean, in contrastto an earthenwarepress, whichis deemedto be forbidden. 108. The Mishnahthenstatesthatan idol thatencroacheson publicspacedoes not convey the impuritynormallyconveyedto an Israelitewho passes underan idol. And in M. Avodah Zarah3:3, Israelitesarecommandedto throwcertainidols into the DeadSea, withoutmention of impuritycontractedeitherfromtouchor fromcarrying. 109. See also M. Bekorot5:2, wherethe School of Hillel permita Gentileto join with a priestin the consumptionof a firstling.See also M. Berakot7:1: the exclusionof a Gentile froma fltnhsuggeststhateatingwith a Gentileis permissible.Generally,see Sanders,"Jewish Associationwith Gentiles,"p. 175. 110. Generally,the MishnahprohibitsdrinkingGentile wine (103 T")because of the possibilityof its use in idolatrouslibations.While the rabbisconsideredGentileimpurityto be a rabbiniclaw, they ascribedscripturalauthorityto the prohibitionof Gentilewine. See B. AvodahZarah29b, Deut. 32:38;cf. Dan. 1:5-16. 111. Any nursingby a Gentile is to take place in the house of a Jew. At least for this purpose,it was consideredpermissiblefor Gentilewomen to entera Jewishresidence.Here thereis no concernthatthe house will be deemedimpure.CompareM. Toharot7:6, discussed above. 112. Israelitesare not permittedto serve in such capacitiesfor Gentiles,lest by doing so they contributeto the proliferationof paganworship.

308

JONATHAN KLAWANS

The Tosefta:GentileImpurityEstablished Many of the toseftansources that relateto Gentileimpurityecho their mishnaicparallels.Like the Mishnah,the Toseftaemphasizesthat Gentiles are not affectedby ritualimpurity.Gentiles, Gentileclothing,and Gentile dwelling places do not contract"leprous"impurities(T. Negaim 2:14-15, 7:10, 7:15). Similarly,Gentile corpses do not convey impurityby carriage for them"(T. (T. Niddah9:14),113andthe red-heiferritualis "notappropriate Parah12:11).114As in the Mishnah,Gentiledwellingplaces are considered impure(T. Ahilot 18:7-12).115 Wherethe Toseftadivergesfromthe Mishnah,however,it is to emphasize the ritualimpurityof Gentiles.The most importanttext in the Toseftawith regardto Gentileimpurityis T. Zabim2:1, whichstatesthat"Gentiles(0311), the proselyte('•1),and the residentalien (rvin) do not convey flux-impurity. But even though they do not convey flux-impurity,they are considered impure, like sufferers from flux, in all their respects."While no single principleunderliesthe Mishnah,for theToseftathefollowingprincipleholds: Gentilesarenot susceptibleto Israeliteimpurities,buttheydefilenonetheless. T. Yom ha-Kippurim4(3):20 relatesa traditionabouthigh priestsexcluded from Templeservice due to contactwith a Gentile'sspittleon the Day of Atonement.116 Moreover,T. Avodah Zarah3(4):11, T. Ahilot 9:2, and T. Toharot8:9 assumethat contactwith a Gentileresultsin the contractionof No passagein the Mishnahwas concernedwith Gentile midras-impurity.1"7 midras-impurity. Interestingly,in T. Niddah5:5, R. Meiris quotedas saying thatthe Schoolof ShammaiconsideredGentilebloodto be impure(againstM. 113. But here the ruling is attributedto R. Simeon, who also states that the impurity of Gentilesderives only from the scribes (tirno 'trin n?Imm See below, "The NtKv). •• Talmudim:Impurityby Decree." 114. Porton,Goyim,p. 273. 115. And T. Toharot5:2 parallelsM. Makshirin2:3; see discussionabove. 116. Alon, "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"pp. 152-153, 165; Biichler,"Levitical A Comprehensive Impurityof theGentile,"pp.8-9; cf. See SaulLieberman,ToseftaKi-Fshutah: on the Tosefta,10 vols. (New York:JewishTheologicalSeminary,1955-88), vol. Commentary 4, pp. 805-806. 117. The last passageconnectsGentilesto corpseimpurityas well; cf. T. AvodahZarah is conveyed 4(5):11, whichalso operateson an assumptionof Gentileimpurity. Midras-impurity to any objecton which a zab leans, sits, or walks.The objectso defiledthenconveysimpurity as well.


309

The Toseftaalso prohibitscertainJewish-Gentileinteractions Niddah4:3).11" thatthe Mishnahpermits.In T. Shabbat9(10):22,it is prohibitedfor Israelite children to be nursed by a Gentile or an unclean beast.119Finally, it is curious

that T. Kelim 1:6-10 fails to mention the exclusion of Gentilesfrom the Temple. Could this be because M. Kelim did not pair the Gentile with

the zab?120 Comparedto the Mishnah,the Toseftais more interestedin the ritualimpurityof Gentiles,andmoreconsistentin treatingthatdefilementby analogyto an Israelitezab. The Talmudim:Impurityby Decree In the rabbinicliteratureof the amoraicperiod,we findadditionalsources that make explicit the notion of Gentile ritual impurity.Many of these sources,moreover,claim thatGentileimpuritywas not an ancientnotion,but the resultof a tannaiticdecree.'21While the numberof sourcesis small,it is largerelativeto the totalnumberof tannaiticsourcesthattestifyto anydegree of Gentileimpurity.B. Shabbat83b, B. Niddah34a, andSifraZabim1 each preservea baraitawhich statesthatGentilesdefilelike zabim.122The baraitot thatappearin the Bavli concuron one furtherpoint:thatthis impurityis the resultof a decree.123This claim is corroborated by the amoraictraditionthat in B. B. Avodah Shabbat Zarah 17b, 36b, and Y. Shabbat1:4, 3c.124 appears connect the women These sources to the "eighteenedicts" impurityof Gentile supposedlydeclaredon the eve of the firstJewishwaragainstRome.125Only Based on Manuscriptsof the Tosefta 118. Lieberman,TosefethRishonim:A Commentary and Worksof the Rishoninm and Midrashimin Manuscriptsand Rare Editions(Jerusalem: Bamberger& Wahrmann,1937-39), vol. 3, p. 269. 119. Yet T. Niddah 2:5 permits the activity. CompareT. AvodahZarah3:3, and see Lieberman,ToseftaKi-Fshutah,vol. 3, pp. 149-150. The PalestinianTalmud(AvodahZarah 2:1, 40c) permitsthe activity,but statesthatthereis to be no fearaboutimpurity(whichcanbe takento meanthatone shouldexpectthereto be concernaboutimpurity). 120. Recall that the MishnahpairedGentiles with those who who sufferfrom corpse were excludedfrom the Temple impurity(permittingthem up to the rampart),while zabinm Mountaltogether.See the discussionof M. Kelim 1:8 above. 121. This notion is reflectedalso in T. Niddah9:14, whereR. SimeonconnectsGentile impurityto the scribes. 122. MichaelHigger,Otzarha-Baraitot,10 vols. (New York:ShulsingerBros.,1944),vol. 8, p. 399, # 56. : x)" 123. "... tr I-T)•• 124. Higger,,•y Otzarha-Baraitot,vol. 7, p. 181, # 489. see SolomonZeitlin,TheRiseandFall of theJudaean 125. Fora romanticreconstruction, JewishPublicationSociety,1967)vol. 2, p. 239. UnlikeB. Shabbat State,3 vols. (Philadelphia:

310

KLAWANS JONATHAN

one sourcein the Bavli explicitlymentionsGentileimpuritywithoutmaking referenceto some sort of decree,and thatis a problematicand unparalleled baraitathatappearsin B. Shabbat83b.126 Based on the eighteen-edictstraditions,SolomonZeitlindatesthe origin is quitefantastic--he of Gentileimpurityto 65 C.E.2"Zeitlin'sreconstruction Zeitlinis correctin do not. the texts that facts Nonetheless, providesmany tradition that Gentile impurity of the rabbinic the recognizing importance resultedfrom a decree. This fact is found not only in the eighteen-edicts traditions,but in B. Shabbat83b, and B. Niddah34a as well. While it is we have seen thereis little true that a decree could reenactan old law,"12 in evidencethat this law existed the firstcenturyC.E.,and none whatsoever thatthe notionexisted beforethen.It would surelybe a curiouscoincidence if Gentile ritualimpuritywere an ancientnotionunnotedin the Hellenistic or the Roman period and then falsely considerednovel by the amoraim. It seems best to conclude that the ritual impurityof Gentilesdid in fact become a legal realityonly as the resultof a decree(or a seriesof decrees) issued sometime duringthe tannaiticperiod.'29The conceptof the decree the differencebetweenthe Mishnah also providesa vehicle for understanding andthe laterrabbinicsources.The Mishnahprobablyrepresentsa timewhen the notion was still gainingground.Thus thereare a few tracesof the new halakhah,while the declarationitself cannotbe found.The Toseftaand the Talmudimreflectgreateracceptanceof the notion,for the declarationitself andthe othertraditionsnotedabove,thetraditionin B. AvodahZarahconsidersGentilewomen to be like menstruants, not zabim. 126. Higger,Otzarha-Baraitot,vol.9, p. 280, #55. Fora discussionof thepossibleantiquity Jewish of this source,see DavidHalivni,MeqorotU-Mesorot:SederMoedShabbat(Jerusalem: TheologicalSeminary,1982), pp. 236-268. andtheEarlyTannaitic 127. "ProselytesandProselytismDuringtheSecondCommonwealth et al., 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Period,"in HarryAustrynWolfsonJubileeVolume,ed. SaulLieberman AmericanAcademyfor Jewish Research,1965), vol. 2, pp. 871-881; see esp. pp. 877-878. Zeitlin,by extension,associatesthe originof Jewishproselyteimmersionwiththe samedecree. for conversion(immersionandsacrifice) It is trulya curiouscoincidencethatthe requirements arealso requiredfor the purificationof a zab (pp. 877-878). See n. 6 above. 128. Alon, "LeviticalUncleannessof Gentiles,"pp. 156-158. 129. The decree(s)may or may not have explicitlyplacedGentilesin the legal category of the zab. While most of the sourcesagreewith this analogy,a few (B. Shabbat83b and B. AvodahZarah36b) questionthe point. Since flux impurityis a severeformof impurity,it is possibleto explainthe "traces"of impurityfoundin the Mishnahas echoes of such a decree, for flux impurityaffectsblood,urine,andspittle.


311

and more of its ramificationsfound theirway into these texts. It is what is firstarticulatedin the Toseftathateventuallybecamepredominant in Jewish law: Gentilesare not susceptibleto ritualimpurities,thoughthey defile like zabimnonetheless.130 It is unfortunatethatthe tannaiticsourcesdo not indicatewhy Gentiles came to be viewed as rituallyimpure.Whilethe Bavli does preserveamoraic traditionssuggestingmotivationsfor the eighteenedicts,these traditionsare late and somewhatcontradictory.31 Yet what these traditionsboil down to seems reasonableenoughandindeedobvious:the notionof Gentileimpurity was motivatedby a separatisttendency.32" Yet,ironically,thenotionof Gentile became in impurity predominantonly the late tannaiticor early amoraic period,andby thattime, the mainimpetusfor the puritysystem,the Temple, was long destroyed.Therefore,it remainsunclearwhat,if any,practicaleffect this separatistnotionhadon Jewish-Gentileinteraction.Nonetheless,the fact remainsthatwe see a single, but notable,separatistideal gaininggroundin the late tannaiticor earlyamoraicperiod. Conclusions WhendiscussingGentileimpurity,it is imperativeto distinguishbetween ritualand moral impurity.In the Bible, the only ritualimpurityexplicitly appliedto Gentilesis thatof corpses.However,thereis no indicationin the Bible thatGentileswere considereddefiledbecauseof theirdisregardfor this taboo. The priests and prophetsascribemoralimpurityto idolatry,sexual sins, and the sheddingof blood-acts which werebelievedto defilethe land and the sanctuaryof God. Gentileswere consideredmorallyimpureto the degree that they were deemed guilty of such sins. As a result,the biblical view towardGentilemoralimpurityis varied. Some Jewish literatureof the Greco-Romanperiodstronglyemphasizes the moralimpurityof Gentiles.A few of these texts (AristeasandJubilees) 130. Forcitationsin subsequenthalakhicliterature,see "Tum'ahbe-Goyve-Eved,"Talmudic Encyclopedia,vol. 19, p. 500. 131. Genebasays in the nameof Rav thatthe edictsweredeclaredbecauseof idolatry(B. AvodahZarah36b), and Rav Nahmanb. Isaac says that young Gentileboys were declared impureto preventsexual contactbetweenthem and Jewishboys (B. AvodahZarah36b, B. Shabbat17b). 132. Thus Zeitlin'ssuggestionthatnationalistmotiveslay behindthe decreesis probably not farfromthe truth,but it remainsjust a suggestion.See "Halakain the Gospels,"p. 361.

312

JONATHAN KLAWANS

discourageJewish-Gentileinteractionbecauseof the latter'smoralimpurity. But in muchof this literature,it is possiblefor JewsandGentilesto associate quite closely; physical contact occurs in many of these texts, and is not consideredproblematic.Only two late-first-century sourcescan be said to to a notion of Gentile Acts But testify may well be exaggerated, impurity. andJosephus'reporton the Essenestells us nothingabouttheirnon-Essene contemporaries.In the Greco-Romanperiod, and probablyin the Persian period as well, Gentiles were excluded from the Temple.This exclusion, however, resulted from the Gentiles' profaneness,and not from inherent ritualimpurity. In the Mishnafiand Tosefta,no mentionis madeof the moralimpurity of Gentiles.At the same time, the Mishnahshows a few tracesof the notion of Gentile ritualimpurity.This notion finds its firstexplicit articulationin the Tosefta,while the TalmudimrecordtraditionsclaimingthatGentileritual impuritycame aboutby decree.Thus the rabbinicandprerabbinicevidence converges:thereare no tracesof the notionbeforethe firstcenturyC.E.,and the rabbinicsources claim that the conceptis new. Gentileritualimpurity indeed emergedin the first century,and only graduallytook root until its authoritativeformulationin the ToseftaandTalmudim.'33 Columbia University NewYork,N.Y.

133. I would like to thankProfessorsBurtonL. VisotzkyandLawrenceH. Schiffmanfor of this paper. kindlyassistingme in the preparation

Derivational Processes: Underlying Forms and Analogies in Hayyûj's Linguistic Works Author(s): Roger Jay Kaplan Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 313-332 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486820 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



DERIVATIONAL PROCESSES: UNDERLYINGFORMSAND ANALOGIES IN HAYYUJ'SLINGUISTICWORKS by ROGERJAY KAPLAN

0.0 Introduction

This studyexaminesRabbiYehudaHayytj's (945-1000 C.E.)use of two derivationalprocesses:underlyingforms and linguisticanalogies(singular: Arabic , J; Hebrew rip),' which were an integralelementof his work. Since his goal was to show the derivationof Hebrewverbs from triliteral roots,he focusedon weak verbswhose surfaceformsdid not demonstrateall threeradicals.He comparedmanyweakverbsto otherverbalformsin order to identifythe exact inflectionof words,especiallytheirverbalpattern(Qm) andconsonantalroots. HayyOjwas the authorof linguistictreatisesin whichthe conceptof the triliteralroot in Hebrewmorphologyand lexicographywas firstproposed. This articleis adaptedfrom my dissertationon Hayyclj'sworksand a paperdeliveredat Ohio StateUniversityon February,25, 1992. I wouldlike to thankMichaelZwettlerandZilla Goodmanfor reviewingearlierversionsof this article. Hayyfij = Rabbi Yehuda Hayydij, The Weak and Geminative Verbs in Hebrew, ed. Morris

Jastrow,Jr.(Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1897) (Arabic). 1. Regardingthe Arabicoriginof the use of analogiesin grammarandothersciences,see EdnaCoffin,"IbnJanah'sKitdbal-Luma':An Integrationof MedievalGrammar Approaches," in Michigan Oriental Studies in Honor of George Cameron, ed. Louis Orlin (Ann Arbor:

Departmentof Near EasternStudies, Universityof Michigan,1976), p. 75, and C. H. M. Versteegh, Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), pp. 16, 90

n. 1, 96 ff. Also see n. 8 below.

AJSReview20/2 (1995):313-332

313

314

ROGER JAYKAPLAN

Bornin Fez, NorthAfrica,he spentmuchof his adultlife in Cordoba,Spain, wherehe becameone of the leadingfiguresin the fieldof Hebrewgrammar and linguistics. His works, all writtenin Judeo-Arabic,include:(1) c JiW Iv ("TheBook of VerbsContainingWeakLetters"), j, .,S,in ? which he arguedfor the existenceof the triliteralrootandthe phenomenonof ' ("The weakradicalsin the Hebrewverbsystem;(2) 1f 1 J3 • I ', J.i Book of VerbsContaining[Two]Similar[Letters]"),whichfocuses on roots whose secondandthirdradicalsareidentical;(3) ~L( ("TheBook of 1J.J:.,of in which HayyOjexplainedthe behavior the seven Hebrew Vocalization"), vowels in variousphonologicaland morphologicalenvironments;2 and (4) 1 Book of which Plucked is a j .:JI ("The Feathers"), semi-exegetical . andsemi-philological analysisof select biblicalpassages.3 developedtwo methodsto examinethederivationof weakverbsin IHayyOj orderto identifythe verbs'triliteralconsonantalroots.First,he distinguished betweenthe underlyingform(deepstructure)andthesurfaceformof theverb. usedthe underlyingformbecauseit demonstrated the three Typically,IHayyOj radicalsbeforethey underwentany morphologicalor phonologicalchanges. Second,he appliedlinguisticanalogiesto show the inflectionandderivation of a verb. He employed two types of analogies.In one, he comparedthe verb to an analogousverb in the root Givenformswere comparedto '•D. analogousinflectionsfromthisrootin orderto distinguishwhichlettersof the verbwereradicalsandwhichwereformatives.In the secondtypeof analogy, he comparedthe weak verb to a strong verb of the same inflection.The discussionof HayyOj'suses of derivationalprocessesis organizedaccording to the differenttypesof underlyingformsandanalogiesas shownin Figure1. Whileeach of theseprocedureswill be detailedbelowwithspecificexamples from Hayyctj'sworks, the focus of this paperwill be on the firstprocess, "underlyingforms,"and the threetypes of them found in Hayyoj'sworks: namely,unattestedverbs,attestedverbs,andindividualradicals.

2. These three works were published as The Weakand Genzinative Verbs in Hebrew and

translatedinto Hebrewin the Middle Ages by Moshe ha-Kohenibn Giqatillaas ,'1Do l,?v ,',o, pr'p'r,ed. JohnW. Nutt(London:Asher& Co., 1870)andby AbrahamibnEzraas pl7pr ed. LeopoldDukes (Stuttgart,1844), andinto Englishby JohnNuttas TwioTreatiseson Verbs Containing Feeble and Double Letters (London: Asher & Co., 1870). 1on (Jerusalem: Kedem, 1969/70); 3. Ed. Paul Kokovtsov, in n nl rmvn ,* 'nmnn'' ,:t'n also see Sh. Abramson, nlvm') 3n (Jerusalem: Mosad Ray Kook, 1988). ?,

DERIVATIONALPROCESSESIN HAYYOJ'SLINGUISTICWORKS

Figure 1. Derivational processes used by

315

Hayyiij

Derivationalrelationships

/

Underlyingform(asl)

UnattestedAttested Consonants verbs verbs

Analogies

Analogiesto Analogiesto strongverbs rY'•D

1.0 Significanceof Study The significanceof studyingHIayytj'suse of derivationalprocessesis twofold.First,sinceHayytj was the firstto proposetriliteralrootsforHebrew, it is importantto understandthe criticalmethodshe employedin developing his revolutionaryattemptto derive weak verbs from triliteralconsonantal roots.4Second, modem scholarship'sdescriptionof these methodsneed to be reexaminedin light of a detailedanalysis,a studyof terminology,and a comparisonto modem linguistics.The intentionhereis to show thatHayylj developedmethodsto exploreverbalderivations,includingunderlyingforms and analogies,in orderto derive the consonantalroots of weak verbs and to provehis hypothesisof triliteralrootsin Hebrew.Furthermore, when one 4. By "weak"verbsis meantverbalformswith absentradicals,i.e., formsin whichnot all threeradicalsappearin the surfacestructure; consequently,I haveelectedto use theterminology of "weak"and "strong"when referringto roots andverbs.Since Hebrewmorphologyallows for the regulartransformationof weak roots, it would be improperto call their inflections "irregular." HIayytjdefinedweak roots as those thatincludeamongtheirradicalsone of the lettersXt,r,1,, . Strongrootsdo not includeany of theseletters.Hayytjalso madenoteof other radicals,namely,5, 2, andrn,thatbehavelike weak letters,but the focus of his workis on the formerset of consonants.See Hayytj, p. 122, 11.10-12, and RogerJay Kaplan,"A Critical Analysisof the PhilologicalMethodsof Yehudaben David(Hayytj)"(Ph.D.diss., New York University,1992), pp. 156-157.

316

ROGERJAYKAPLAN

examines many underlyingforms, it is revealedthat simply definingthe linguistictermasl as such does not adequatelydescribeHayyOj'sintentions in these particularderivations. An importantaspect of this work is understandingthe natureof the underlyingform, which Hayytj identifiedby the Arabiclinguistictermasl. Hayytj never specificallydefinedasl, but from the contextualusage of the term,his intentionsare evident.In his writings,asl meansthreethings:(1) consonantalroot (used 278 times; 36 percentof the time) (2) an individual radical(used 25 times;3.2 percentof the time),and (3) the underlyingform (of a verbor radical)(used470 times;60.8 percentof the time). Regardingthe third use of the term asl, in his 1984 examinationof HayyOj'sterminology,cAli-Khilidtranslatedit as "basicform"(t10' nm1y).5 The verbal forms chosen by HayyOjfor these analogies,however,are not "basic forms" (i.e., minimally inflected forms of the verb), nor are they necessarily"stems,"butrather,manyareunderlyingformsor deepstructures of the verb.In orderto provethe derivationof verbs, comparedverbs .HayyOj roots.The formsused to otherverbalforms of the same root or of different in these derivationalprocesseswere eitherattestedbiblicalwordsor lexical forms createdby Hjayyfj,some of which are not acceptedlexemes of the language. Then, in his 1991 article, Ilan Eldarcorrectlyidentifiedthis linguistic form (asl) as n'nflvn nto'rrn~,or "underlyingbasic form";yet his ensuing discussionand analysis is limited (only six pages).6The bulk of his work focuseson HayyOj'sapplicationof theconceptandnoton thedevelopmentof theconceptitself. Furthermore, Eldarfailedto accountfor all of thevariations of the derivationalprocesses.He said, The conceptof asl with referenceto derivationalprocessit [sic] is appliedto underlyingformand it refersto a theoreticallyexpectedform,i.e., thatwhich conformsto the qiyds. The theoreticalunderlyingformsare abstractand not

5. cAli Khalid Wathad, "The Linguistic Thinking of Rabbi Yehuda Hayyij Through His Terminology in Its Arabic Original and Their Hebrew Translations"(Master's thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1984) (in Hebrew). 6. Ilan Eldar, "Hayyfj's Grammatical Analysis," 1i3i1& 54 (1990): 169-181 (in Hebrew). The discussion of the underlying form is found on pp. 176-178, with the application of the concept detailed on pp. 178-181.


317

pronouncedor pronounceablebut deemedtoo heavy..... the concrete/surface forms are modificationsof the correspondingunderlyingforms.7

While this descriptionof Hayytlj'swork is true,it is truefor only some of his derivationalmethods. The asl as appliedby Hayyfljis not always an underlyingformand in thesecases cannotbe identifiedas a stem,as implied referencesto by the phrase"nltinmna. Eldar'sgeneralityregardingHIayyOj's with the In underlyingforms linguistictermasl mustbe qualified. effect,many of what Hayytj identifiedas underlyingforms do not conformto modem scholarship'sdefinition of the concept, in particularin transformational grammar.In contrastto Eldar'sandcAli-Khalid's perspectives,theunderlying formis notalwaysthebasicform(stem?)fromwhichthesurfaceformderives. The problemin correctlyidentifyingthe formused in these analogiesis that Hayylj used one term, asl ("root"),to refer to differentconceptsand differentprocesses.Thoughthe sametermis used,one cannotassumethatthe same methodof derivationis occurring.A perusalof Hayyfj'sworksreveals some ambiguityin understandinghis intentionsregardingthese derivations; some thinkthatsince HayyOjidentifiedmanyverbsas "roots"(usingthe term asl), the indicatedformmustbe a basicform.This,however,is notthecase. A basicformimpliesa minimallyinflectedmorphologicalunitof the verb--the verb at its most primitivestate--otherthanits consonantalroot.Thatis, the verbbeforethe additionof formativeletters,inflectionmarkers,etc. But the form Hayytj identifiedwas not always a basic form. Thoughhe accepted manybasic forms, when he comparedverbsto others,morefrequentlythan not the verbs used in the comparisonswere not basic forms.Thus,it is best to call these items somethingotherthan"basicforms." In regardto analogies,theiruse was very commonamongbothmedieval Jewish and Muslim scholars.8They made comparisonsbased on analogies in many disciplines, including philosophy and linguistics. In linguistics, philological analogies allowed grammariansto understandthe relationship between words. Identifyingthis relationship,whetherit was morphological or etymological,was importantbecausethenthe meaningof one wordcould 7. Ibid., from English summary, p. vii. 8. On the use of analogies in Arabic linguistic literature of the Middle Ages, see Haim Blanc, "Diachronic and Synchronic Ordering in Medieval Arab Theory," in Studia Orientalia Mentoriae D. H. Baneth Dedicata, ed. J. Blau et al. (Jerusalem: Magnus Press, 1979), p. 158; and Ramzi Baalbaki, "Early Arab Lexicographers and the Use of Semitic Languages," Berytus Archaeological Studies 31 (1983): 117-127.

ROGERJAY KAPLAN

318

be compared to that of another; this new informationcould then be applied in biblical exegesis. One use of morphological analogies was in determiningthe derivation of words. That is, two verbal forms could be semantically likened to each other if it could be shown that they were morphologically similar. 2.0 Asl: Underlying Form The first derivational process to be examined is that of underlying form, which is revealed through HayyOj's use of the Arabic term asl ("root").It is recalled that even though the focus of Hayy0j's treatises was the presentation of the concept of the triliteral root, the most common usage for asl was the concept of underlying form, as stated above. The high frequency of the use of asl as "underlying form" reflects Hayy0j's immediate goals in writing ..d• i JWY JL. yI k•S. While these are works cj ,.j I j•,,c. l, ,I and?.)L*I , of a philological nature, Hayyfj's primary goal was not to identify and list the consonantal roots of biblical verbs, but ratherto introduce the concept of weak letters and identical radicals and their behavior. The use of the term asl for analogies was a very useful tool to that end. A verb's underlying form demonstrates that the verb derived from a triliteral root, and that its weak radicals underwent various morphological and phonological transformations. This comparative process effectively allowed Hayydj to support his new approach to Hebrew philology. The idea of deriving a verb from anotherform of verb in orderto determine its morphological origin was first applied by Arab grammarians;the use of analogies was a popular tool used by such philologists as Sibawayhi (8th cent.) and ibn Djinni (10th cent.). In fact, Sibawayhi claimed that a primitive form of the surface forms of verbs existed. Haim Blanc explained Sibawayhi's approach: Themostpervasivenotionfoundin theKitdb,as in all subsequentgrammarians, with referenceto derivationalpriority,is that of 'asl, lit. 'origin,root'. It is appliedto basic,primaryor underlyingform;no explicitdefinitionof it occurs, and it refersnow to historicallyolderform [sic], howevervaguelyconceived, now to theoreticallynormalor expected form, consistentwith the (largely 'concrete, inexplicit) qiyds. The 'asl may or may not differ from the havebeen,"in surfaceform',andis, in short,whatthe given formis, or shouldlafz. principle."9 9. Blanc, "Diachronic and Synchronic Ordering,"loc. cit.


319

formsandbiblically Thus,the idea of underlyingforms,bothungrammatical attested words, was first used by Sibawayhi.Later Hebrew and Arabic also adoptedthis useful method. grammarians One of the firstHebrewphilologiststo use underlyingformsin his work was Yehudaibn Quraysh.In his tenth-centurylinguistictreatise"itftVin,'~ rootsare referredto by the Arabictermsasl ("root")anduss ("foundation"). In discussingverbsin the hitpa'l patternthatdemonstratesthe metathesisof the initial v of the root with the n of the patternprefix,Ibn Qurayshdid not directlyidentify the root. Instead,he comparedthe verbs to other verbs in orderto suggest that they were from the same root. For example,regarding the verb ("andhe bowed down"Gen. 18:2),he wrote, inn.outl Inv =l I nnwn.1 nM,I "nVI... ....I ,.I the foundationof the word is ?ahat["bow!" Prov. [regarding]way-yifta~hn 14:19] . .. . way-yiffaI ["andhe bows" Isa. 2:9] ... wi-&ah ["andhe bowed"

Isa.2:17].

Dan Becker, in his 1984 critical edition of InSoWin, assertedthat the intentionof the authorwas not to say thattherewere threerootsto the verb innull but ratherto infer thatits root was the same as the rootof these three other words, i.e., the biradicaln-v.'2 This is true,but more can be said of this passage.Ibn Qurayshsaid thatthe "foundationof the word"was ". inv, n ..o. . n•. ..." He did not say that they share the same foundation. This is becausehe saw a derivationalrelationshipbetweenthe verbalforminniv'n and the formsiniv,nvn, andni. In modernlinguisticstudies,transformational-generative grammardistinguishes between deep and surfacestructuresof sentences.Noam Chomsky argues "that the phrase structurerules (and lexicon) generate the deep structures of sentences and that the rules of the transformational component

of the syntax map these into surface structures."'3 Applyingthis theoryto a form one which is producedusing the rulesof the is morphology, surface languagefroma specificform,knownas theunderlyingform.Thisunderlying 10. Yehuda ben Quraysh,n;1ro1n, ed. Dan Becker (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1984). 11. Ibid., p. 337. 12. Ibid., p. 63. 13. Geoffrey Horrocks, Generative Grammar (London: Longman Group UK Ltd., 1987), p. 36 (emphasis in original).

320

ROGERJAYKAPLAN

form representsan earlierstage in the derivationof the surfaceform;it may or maynot in itself be an acceptablelexeme.In contrast,a stemis a formthat is representativeof an entire paradigmof forms;it allows for the addition of affixes.14 In other words, there is a direct morphological-derivational relationshipbetween a deep structureand a surfacestructure;in fact, the surfaceformis predictedby rule. In Hebrew,abstractconsonantalroots generatestems which in turnare transformed,with the addition of affixes, into lexemes of the language. Though in some languages,roots and stems may be identical,this is not the case in Hebrew.Even Hayytj differentiatedbetweenabstractroots and forms of a word. He identifiedroots as sets of individualconsonantsand not minimallyinflectedstems,whichappearto be the third-person masculine in In inflection the the inflection of these pa'al pattern."' singularperfect certain and occur to create other stems, morphological phonologicalchanges forms,some of whichrepresentthe deep structureof the language'slexemes. ForHayyOj,the underlyingformis an intermediary step in the applicationof linguisticandgrammaticalrulesfromthe inflectionof thestemto thecreation of the surfacestructure. a directderivaActually,Hayyhjwas less concernedwith demonstrating tional relationshipbetween the underlyingand surfaceforms than he was with providingexampleswhich identifythe triliteralroot of the weak verb. In doing so, Hayytj used three types of underlyingforms (all identifiedby the use of the term asl): (1) unattested/ungrammatical forms;16(2) attested forms;and(3) geminatedformsof radicals(see Figure2). Yet,notall of these conformto the definitionof a deep structurein transformational grammar or to the "primitiveform"used by Sibawayhi.For Hayy0j,the underlying form (asl) was not always a form from which the verb derivedor even a 14. Bent Jacobsen, Transformational-Generative Grammar (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co. 1977), p. 240. 15. For example, Hayyfij identified the root by its three individual radicals and not by any vocalized form, i.e., by the consonants and not the lexeme nij, which appears to be the n''p basic stem. HayyOj, p. 203, 1. 12. 16. "Ungrammatical"means that the verb does not follow the morphological or phonological rules of the language and consequently is not an accepted lexeme. For instance, the verbal form ("will fall") is neither grammatical nor acceptable because the weak 3 should assimilate ?,!.p*into the second radical in this inflection (see Figure 3). This definition is in contrast to "nonattested"forms, which refer to lexical items that may be grammatical but are not found in the Hebrew Bible.


321

verbal form from the same root as the word in question, and consequently is not strictly a deep structure. In effect, one cannot always find a direct relationship between the underlying form and the surface structure, which cannot necessarily be predicted by rule. This is true in some places where the indicated form is an attested form derived from the same root as the verb in question. In these cases, the asl is often given only for the purpose of an analogy.

Figure 2. Types of underlying forms a.

Unattested/ungrammatical form representing intermediary step in

inflectionof verb;illustrateshow verb would appearhad weak or geminated letter not been assimilated, elided, or undergone some other morphological or phonological transformation. b.

Attested-surface form of same root (often in another verbal pattern) which best preserves consonantal radicals.

c.

Geminated radical which is not geminated in given form due to phonological restrictions and/or morphological irregularities.

2.1 Unattested Verbs First, Hayy(j's application of an underlying form of an unattestedverb is examined. An example of an unattested verb can be seen in the derivation of the third-person masculine singular imperfect inflection of the root ?-D-3("to fall"). There are three stages in the inflection of this verbal form, as shown in Figure 3. It is the form 5inl("will fall") in (c) that represents the surface structure of the verb. The underlying structure is the intermediaryform (b) ?5tr*. Recall that the underlying form usually demonstratesall three radicals, as is the case in (b). In effect, a deep structureform that fails to do this would not have any practical application for Hayyfj. Consequently, the philologist often identified unattested and ungrammatical verbal forms like since exhibited all three radicals. 5iq,:* they

322

ROGERJAY KAPLAN

Figure 3. Formation of third-person masculine singular imperfect padal of a.

Regular inflection of strong verb in third-personmasculine singular imperfect in pa'al pattern appears as ?y.t.

b. Thus, 5-D-3("to fall") should be inflected accordingly: ?5i*..a c.

Since firstradical, 3,precedes nonguttural,phonological rules require that it assimilate into second radical, D.bThe outcome is 5Ste("will fall"). DageS forte in D here compensates for assimilation of 3. a. Finalvowel/o/ occursin regularinflection of thispattern; is dueto /a/lin Yin thisroot. radical 5',?p presenceof guttural b. FriedrichHeinrichWilhelmGesenius, Gesenius'sHebrewGranmmar, ed. and trans.E. KautzschandA. E. Cowley (Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,1910;2nd

Eng.ed., 1970);pp. 173-175,sec.66.

The application of this type of unattestedunderlyingform is seen throughout Hayyfj's linguistic works. For example, regardingthe verb02 ("he rose"), Hayyfj wrote,

01 1 llTtv)slnv)P.A 4- '2,),-.4,,i

jll 6 ? ,.•.Wjjj.2

I will make this clearer,saying thatthe underlyingformof yaqmrn["herises up"]is [*]yiqyom,like yilm6r ["hejudges"]yilprt ["heguards"]. Regarding the phrase "IN i•'l1

("the morning was light" Gen. 44:3) from the

root"'--N("tolight"),Hayyfj said, I contendthat the underlyingform of the perfect6r is [*]dwaw r [unattested] on the patternqat^ntt["I am not worthy"Gen. 32:11]yaq^itt["Ihave laid a snare"Jer.50:24] ydkh6l["heis able"Gen. 32:26]. 17. HIayydj, p. 69, 11.6-7. 18. Ibid.,p. 89, 1.9.


323

In text (2) HayyOj compared an ungrammaticalverbal form (~'i'p*) with one which is attested (t inv). The verb utay is the third-personmasculine singular imperfect inflection of the strong triliteralroot V-D-v.Assuming that is from the weak root lint0, HayyOjinflected this root in the verbal form M.'p2 the same person, gender, number,and tense as tn9p,but as if the medial radical were strong. (He concluded that the medial radical was one of the matres lectiones because, among other things, the ' is consonantal in the verbal form _ip ["validated" Est. 9:32].) The outcome was ilt*,19 which Hayy(j then and "inY . A compared to two verbs with no weak radicals, namely itg, one-to-one comparison of each letter confirmed the philologist's hypothesis; just as "1-n-vwere the radicals of the root of liny, so were u---p2the radicals of n,~i*. Thus, HayyQj concluded that the underlying form of the verb 0112 not only because it was this ungrammatical form that was the form M~i',* represented how the verb should have been inflected had it not contained a medial weak radical but also because it demonstratedall three radicals. Text (3) is similar to the first as it uses a verb derived from a different root to create an analogy for the proposed underlying form. As he did with the form formed a hypothetical inflection of the root, in this case 1•3,2*,Hayyfj derived the form "ilr*. This unattestedverb is vocalized just as the root 1-1r• is. Similarly, the verbs and',in.ip are inflected on the verbal form 5'•1 'nS•t'~ same but with the the first-person perfect morpheme -ti^.Therefore, pattern, given that the three radicals of the verbal form 5i; are 5-D-' on the pattern pd'61, HayyQj asserted that the triliteral root of "~1 was r--K.Thus, the underlying form here is this ungrammaticalform (nilx*) which demonstrates the three radicals of the weak root. It is worth pointing out that the underlying forms given by do not the forms. in .Hayyoj stems of surface each the form allows Yet, represent underlying one to predict the surface form. For example, with Hayytj argued that ni',2*, weak the medial radical requires the transformationto the surface form of In fact, a difference between the applications of the underlying forms r•.•. in passages (2) and (3) reveals an importantpoint. The ungrammaticalforms of each example are inflected according to different patterns-pd'al (in text [2]) versus pdc2' (in text [3]); in addition, a derivational relationshipis drawn between a perfect inflection and an imperfect inflection (as in the case of the verb 0r), and between two perfect inflections (as in the case of the verb nix). 19. HayyQjacceptedthe I and ' as being interchangeable as medialweakradicals;consewith ' fromthe root -r-ipwas acceptableto him. quentlythe form Wi•',_*

ROGERJAY KAPLAN

324

In the latter example, an imperfect form of ?ivl is attested:?5D (Gen. 13:16). Therefore, it seems that HayyOj did not impose a hierarchical order for the tenses; that is, Hayyoj did not claim that one tense is derived from the other, or that the underlying form must be perfect (or imperfect). Instead, HayyOj chose whatever form, conjugation, or tense that best allowed him to illustrate his point and make the analogy. For the verb tnp;, it was the pdcal imperfect, but for "•i, it was the pdC61perfect. 2.2 Attested Verbs In contrast to the examples above, HayyOj used attested verbal forms as underlying forms of some weak verbs. Using the same root, HayyQj changed the verbal pattern of the underlying form from that of the surface form. In other words, HayyOj may have used the pic'l form of a root as the underlying form of a pd~al surface form of the same root. In effect, in these cases "underlying forms" function for comparativepurposes and not to demonstrate a derivational relationship, but were specifically chosen because they demonstrate all three radicals of the root of the surface structure.Since these grammatical forms are inflected in another verbal pattern, there is no direct derivational relationship, and consequently they do not conform to transformationalgrammar's definition for deep structures. One example of an underlying form of an analogy that includes an attested verb as given by Hayyfj is the form ("validated"Est. 9:32). To illustrate the absent medial weak radical (1) in v)_ the verbs ani ("they rose up" Ps. 86:14) and ai ("he rose up" I Sam 17:48), HayyOjwrote, nx

I Lj. I

" _l1.4 1•. Betweenthe qafandmernis thelatentquiescentwhichis the secondradical,its it divriyha-purimhd'elle ["validating underlyingformis qiyyainas in qiyyanm these observancesof Purim"Est. 9:32]. , vi(sic) z•,ivirl

mDp 0' A;• m?, ,.,lj

Text (4) shows that the underlying form of the verb in, is the form ip. The latter verb, from Est. 9:32, with the geminated , reveals that the radicals 20. HayyQj, p. 66, 11. 12-13. HayyQj's (or the scribe's) version of this biblical passage is defective; the preposition nf is not in the Masoretic text.


325

of the former are '1 and a with a medial weak radical-the '. Hayyfj used because it showed all three radicals of the root as inflected in the pical M0,. pattern. In order to demonstrate that the perfect inflection ty derived from the medial weak triliteral root l-j-a,I;Hayytjfound another form of the verb, in this case an attested biblical form, that preserved the three radicals. Hayytj was from the root '-'-p, then by analogy, so concluded that if the form 19,. was the verb though both verbs have the same consonantal Again, even .va.used the term root and Hayytj asl for these processes, is not the stem or i'. form cannot be the deep structure of the verb =1 derived. In fact, the surface is a third-personperfect pd'al verb, predicted from the indicated form: tWi? and trp is a third-person imperfect pical verb. Another example of a derivational relationship with an attested form made known" Hos. 5:9) and 'S••yi ("I have involves the verbs 'S•ryin ("I wrote,21 appointed" I Sam 21:3). Regarding them, H.ayyftj Indeed(the verb)is said withyod andwithhlz'(as in) w'-etha-nd'riuny6da'tt ("andthe young men I have appointed"I Sam. 21:3), andits underlyingform is h6da'tt(Ezek. 20:11, Hos. 5:9). In text (5), Hayytj claimed that the underlying form of the verb was '1•'i' derived from the root •T"-'. Hayyfj's analysis of these words '?ny•ri-both differs from that of modern linguists. Whereas HayyOj concluded that the two words were the same verbal form with only the orthographicdifference of the initial letter-i versus ', modern scholarship derives the two words from different conjugation patterns with different meanings. Specifically, it is argued that the verb is in the p6'al patternmeaning "I have '1nY•i' inflected Sam and that 21:3),23 appointed" (I 'Swyin is inflected in the hifil meaning "I make known" (Hos. 5:9). Hayyfj's use of the linguistic term asl here indicates that the underlying form is the "correct"form, i.e., the way that he thought the word should have been written. That is, he saw 'i.Yi' as being directly derived from 'nylin; the underlying form of is because the latter 'n•lin. '•T.i' 21. Ibid., p. 15, 11.6-7, see n. 23 below. 22. Ibid., p. 15, 11.6-7. 23. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, eds., A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), p. 394; here the verb is emended to m"•1i or .virTs.

ROGER JAYKAPLAN

326

best preservesthe original(andcorrect)formof the verbbeforeit underwent the orthographictransformation. HayyOjderivedthe form 'Inylinfrom the inflection of the weak root hifil ~-r-,,making it the "correct"spelling, and considered'inYi' a defective form of this verb. Consequently,one can concludethathere the asl is, in fact, an underlyingformof the surfaceform. HIayyfjbelievedthatthe form'i.•P' couldbe predictedfromthe underlying form'9.P iY since the consonantsr and' wereofteninterchangeable.24 2.3 Individual Radical

Hayyfj used the same comparativeprocess when discussing specific radicalsof a root. He identifieda few words which he thoughtrequired clarificationregardingtheirpointing,in particularthe geminationof one of theirradicals.In these cases, Hayyftjclaimeda non-geminated radicalshould have carriedddgS-'.Thus, he referredto the geminatedform of the radical as the underlyingform of the non-geminatedradical.For example,Hebrew phoneticrules do not allow for ddg-s'in the gutturalsand the consonant 1 even though morphologicaland/orphonologicalconditionsmay call for suchpointing.These circumstancesled HayyOjto arguethatsince the radical shouldhave had ddgj?, the underlyingformwas the geminatedguttural. To illustratethis point, let us look at the verb ping•("I will be exalted" Isa. 33:10), which Hayylfjcomparedwith the unattestedform rinxt, both fromthe root -n-. Of onif, HIayyfjwrote,25 Therjyl shouldbe geminated to accountfortheassimilation of thetaiv. Hayytj consideredthis verb an inflectionof the hitpe' l pattern.In effect, he arguedthatbecausethe n of the hitpaeil prefixhas been assimilated,the following consonant,the I (also the firstradical),shouldhave takenddgi?. In text (6), the underlyingform is not anotherverbalform or conjugation and the of the word in question,but ratherthe orthographicrepresentation correspondingpronunciationof a radicalin thatword.HereHayyojused the term asl ("underlyingform")to refer to the geminationof the letterI in 24. Kaplan, "Critical Analysis," p. 208. 25. HayyQj,p. 121, 11.11-12.

DERIVATIONALPROCESSESIN HAYYUJJ'SLINGUISTICWORKS

327

the word and not to another lexeme of the medial weak root -rn-. .HayyOj explained the peculiarity of this verb by showing how one of its radicals He have written and/or demonstrated should been pronounced. theoretically this by showing that the radical 1, in the given word Don~, was not geminated even though it should have been. Therefore, even though the underlying form, the geminated 1, is hypothetical, it demonstrates what Hayyoj thought the correct form was and how the verb in question deviated from it. Again, the underlying form is not the whole verbal form, but rather the deep structure of just the radical. 3.0 Analogies The second process by which Hayyfj examined derivationalrelationships was the use of analogies, a method of inquiry common to medieval Jewish and Muslim scholars, as mentioned above. Two types of analogies are found in Hayyoj's works. One is analogies to forms derived from the abstractroot 5-Y-!, and the other is analogies to forms derived from strong verbs. In each, Hayyoj's primary intent is maintained-to show the derivation of weak verbs from triliteral roots. 3.1 Analogies to the Root 5•?-' HayyOjexamined derivational relationships by comparing given verbs to their analogous inflections in the Hebrew root 5-Y-D(P-c-L). This type of analogy was effective for several reasons. First, a verb that does not display all of its radicals in its surface form can be hard to identify, but by showing its analogy with a strong verb, not only can the three radicals be identified more easily but so can its full inflection, including verbal pattern, tense, gender, and person. Second, being a strong root, •?-Y- can be used as an abstract example in Hebrew morphology, because it does not lose any of its radicals in any inflection.26In these cases the Arabic term asl does not appear and thus these analogies are not underlying forms. 26. This is so despite the guttural Y in the root, which cannot be geminated in the pi'cl and hitp~ijl patterns. For HayyQj's purposes and according to his definition of weak radicals (i.e., X, I, or '), the root ,-Y-Dis an appropriatechoice as it does not include any weak radicals and ,I, consequently none is omitted from any inflection.

328

ROGERJAY KAPLAN

Hayy0j's deliberate choice of the Hebrew root -i,-D for these analogies is significant. In doing so, he rejected the opinion of the "first Hebrew for the grammarian," Sa'adia Gaon (882-942), who chose the root ,-a-t, choice model abstract Hebrew root.27Hayy0j's rejection of Sa'adia Gaon's revealed the influence of medieval Arabic grammarianswho began using the cognate Arabic root F-'-L (J-~ -j) to abstract morphological forms as early as the eighth century.28The tenth-centuryArabic grammarianibn Djinni made this very clear when he wrote:

Know thatwhen he [the grammarian] speaksof the roothe meansthefd', the the and the first,second,andthirdradicalsof the root],andthe 'ayn, idm [i.e., additions[formatives]are what is notfd',Yayn, or ldm:An exampleof this is daraba ["hehit"];the ddd from darabais the firstradicalof the root,the rad its second,and the ba' its third... In both Hebrew and Arabic, the words meaning "verb,"pocal ( D)in Hebrew and fi'l (J.%) in Arabic, are derived from the same Semitic root. Clearly, Hayy0j saw the effectiveness of using this root in Arabic and thus applied it to Hebrew for the same purposes. Though Hayyoj did not rely solely upon the root 5-,-D for analogous forms, he frequently employed it. By using the abstract root, Hayyfij was able to indicate which radicals of a verb were the first, second, and third by showing their analogous places in a form derived from this root. He also identified the tense and/or person of a verb using this process. For example, he compared the imperfect inflections of the root ,-T-'-to analogous inflections of the root 5-Y-D.The verbs ("you will know") and ,Y1 ("I will know") were likened to the forms r.n and respectively. IHayyij's _px, ?,y.n 27. See Esther Goldenberg, "The First Hebrew Paradigm,"nnnw543 (1978): 83-99 (Heas Representing the Paradigm in Sa'adia's Inflectional Table," ~flV5 brew), and "'Yn•u' 55 (1991): 323-326 (Hebrew). Also see S. L. Skoss, Saadia Gaon, the Earliest Hebrew Granmmarian(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1955). 28. See Sibawayhi, 'Amir ibn 'Uthman, Kitab Stbawayhi, ed. 'Abd al-Salim Muhammed in GerardTroupeau,Lexique-index Harin (Baghdad: Bulaq Press, 1966), and cf. the root J-J, p. 164. Kitdb de Klincksieck, (Paris: Stbawayhi du 1976), tditions ed. Ibrahim Mustafa and 'Abd 29. AbO 1-Fath 'Uthman, ibn Djinni, al-Munsif (,.Al), Allah Amin (Cairo, 1954), I, p. 11, 11.10 ff.

DERIVATIONALPROCESSESIN HAYYUJJ'SLINGUISTICWORKS

329

goal here was to identify the radicals of these verbs, and their inflections; his comparison revealed that just as was the second-person masculine have been, and just as bYw was singular imperfect inflection, so must?.•n Y"/ the first-person singular imperfect inflection, so must rYJ have been.30 In another example, to show what were the radicals of the given verb compared the verb •n'il ("and [the flocks] conceived" Gen. 30:39), to the abstract form showed H.ayyQj that the geminated so, HayyQj 1~*,1. By doing two of this "s, i.e., In,,o*) (which represents imperfect verb was both the radical. In tense inflection marker and the first other words, when each word is stripped of all inflectional markers, the remaining letters are the radicals. Consequently, just as the root of •'D1' is b?--D,the root of nl is nn-'.31 This type of analogy was also used by HayyQj to show.n that a verb is not from a certain weak root. For example, Hayy0j contended that the verbal form ("you measured" Num. 34:10) was not from the final weak on'•.in If it was from this root, then the analogous form derived from the root n-T-n. root 'b--D would be He said, however, that no such form existed in mnn)brn. all of the Bible and concluded that was not from this root but from op•n'n, another.32In other words, the n does not represent the first radical as the ! of ?l'•!~Yr

does.33

3.2 Analogies to Strong Roots The third type of derivational process was analogies to strong verbal forms. For example, in discussing initial weak verbs, HayyQjcompared the verbal form '3~t ("he covered me" Isa. 61:10) to the strong verb '324 ("he guarded me" unattested). He wrote, is like

y •dtdct^

mrinr

34,

.

.8

30. Hayylj, p. 44, 1. 15. 31. Ibid., p. 45, 1. 15.

32. Ibid.,p. 218, 11.2-6. He may have been makingthis pointto argueagainstMenahem ben Saraq (Menahem ben Mahberet Menathem,ed. Herschell Filipowski [London: SartOq,Sifer Hevrat Me'orerei Yeshanim, 1854], p. 183), who said that this verb was from the biliteral root n-r. Brown (et al., Hebrew and English Lexicon, p. 16) derived it from the root inflected '-r-H in the hifil pattern. 33. Hayyfj, p. 218, 11.2-5. It can be said that Hayyfij contradicted himself by deriving the form and then saying that it did not exist. •nr•n 34. Ibid., p. 54, 1. 6.

330

ROGER JAYKAPLAN

This passage (8) shows the analogy of a weak verb to a strongverb. to find an analogousform Here, HayyOjdid not use the Hebrewroot '-"-D for the verb. Instead,he directlycomparedthe verb ~ot to the verb •tmip•t in orderto indicatewhat were the threeradicalsof the formerverbalform (i.e., 0-t-') and what was its inflection-that being third-personmasculine singularperfectwith the first-personsingularpronominalsuffix. In otherplaces, Hayyojaddedthata word'smorphologywas "i#j ," ("on the pattern")of a strongverb. For instance,the pa'al infinitiveof the weak root is jiv? ("tosleep"),which,accordingto HayyOj,was "onthe •nvThe analogyof the ("to break").35 pattern"of •~lbV ("to keep")and form to an infinitiveof a strong verbexplainsits unusualinflectionand li•.t. ji•v? thatit is also an infinitiveof the pd'al verbalpattern.This type of analogy is rarein his works,but nonethelessis one of the methodsby whichHayyQj identifiedthe morphologyof verbs. 4.0 Summaryand Conclusions This study has explored derivationalprocesses in Hayytj's linguistic treatises.Therearetwo processesby whichHayyajexaminedthederivational relationshipsof weak verbs: (1) he identifiedthe underlyingform (deep structure)of the verb; (2) he employed two types of linguisticanalogies: (a) he comparedthe verb to an analogousverb in the root ?-,-D; and (b) he comparedthe verb to a strong verb of the same inflection.In orderto understandwhat methodswere used by HayyQj,we firstlooked at his use of the termasl ("root"),which was found to have morethanone meaning. Besidesreferringto consonantalrootsandone individualradicalof thatroot, asl refers to the underlyingform of a verb. The underlyingform proved to be the most frequentand productiveprocess by which Hayytj explored Hebrewmorphology.In fact, he utilizedthreetypesof underlyingforms:(1) forms,(2) attestedforms,and(3) geminatedforms unattested/ungrammatical of radicals.By using the underlyingform in analogies,Hayytj was able to show how weak verbalformsderivedfromtriliteralroots. The examinationof these derivationalmethodsrevealedthatthe underlying form was not the basic form or the stem of the weak verb.For Hayytj, the underlyingform, identifiedby the linguistictermasl, was frequentlya 35. Ibid.,p. 63, 11.4-5.


331

theoretical ungrammatical derived form of the verb in question, similar to the "primitive form" employed by Sibawayhi. These forms, as well as those for individual radicals, were found to be true deep structures of the verbs in question. Some attested forms, however, in particularthose derived from verbal patterns different from that of the weak verb, cannot be called deep structures;this even though HayyOjcontinued to label this type of derivational process with the term asl. Despite his attempt to show the derivation of weak verbs from triliteral roots, he did not always give the underlying form of the verb that would indicate its direct derivation. Instead, in a number of cases, applied the same term (asl) for forms that did not demonstrate a direct H.ayy0j derivational relationship with the weak verb in question. In fact, the forms indicated by asl cannot be used to predict the surface form by rule; instead they merely demonstrated the three radicals of the root. After all, Hayytj's overriding purpose in writing his linguistic treatises was to show the derivation of weak verbs from triliteralroots. Though he may have derived the underlying forms in the process, he did not seek to indicate them for each example. Consequently, not all his references to the linguistic term asl are truly deep structures. Transformational grammar requires a direct derivational relationship between the deep and surface structures, but in a number of Hayytj's examples, only an indirect relationship can be cited. Thus, while HayyOj may have been responsible for introducing the concept of deep structuresto Hebrew philology, he did not consistently apply the term with which he associated the concept. Furthermore,regarding analogies made to verbs derived from the abstract root and to strong verbs, HayyOj did not provide underlying forms ?-Y'D to show the exact derivations, but rather, he sought verbal forms which indicated which radicals of the verb were the first, second, and third. Again this illustrates the philologist's goal to provide proof of the derivation of weak verbs from triliteral roots and not necessarily to document the deep structures of those verbs. By showing analogous derivational relationships, Hayy0j supported his thesis regarding the behavior of weak radicals, and introduced valuable new tools to Hebrew linguistics, including the abstract root ''''. HayyOj was not only responsible for articulating the concept of triliteral roots and weak letters in Hebrew morphology, but for adding to our understanding of Hebrew philology. His comparative processes, some of which have been explored here, were new and innovative approaches to

ROGERJAY KAPLAN

332

understanding the Hebrew language in the Middle Ages. HayyOjintroduced students of the Hebrew language to the concept of the triliteral root and explained in depth the process by which he arrived at his conclusions. While one's conclusions are of the utmost importance, it is equally important for scholars to develop a methodology and systematically prove a thesis. Hayyoj did just that; he developed new ideas and also provided new tools of inquiry for Hebrew studies which have been in use ever since. Ohio StateUniversity Columbus,Ohio

"A Different Kind of Hell": Orality, Multilingualism, and American Yiddish in the Translation of Sholem Aleichem's "Mister Boym in Klozet" Author(s): Kenneth Wishnia Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 333-358 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486821 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



"A DIFFERENT KIND OF HELL": ORALITY,MULTILINGUALISM, AND AMERICAN YIDDISH IN THE TRANSLATIONOF SHOLEM ALEICHEM'S MISTERBOYMIN KLOZET by KENNETHWISHNIA I wish to address two basic questions that are confronted in the translation of "immigrant"or "border"literature:' (1) What is the translatorto do with a multilingual source text? And (2) How should one approach a literary transcriptionof a text that is already a literarytranscriptionof an oral culture, without betraying that culture? The traditionalapproach,which argues thata translationshould sound like "it was written in" the TargetLanguage, would probably posit the following: The Source Language audience was multilingual, and would presumably have understood all of the Source Text, therefore one should translateinto a single TargetLanguage so that all of the text can be understoodby the Target audience. But recent theorists in the field of translation studies have argued 1. I use "border"in D. Emily Hicks's sense of the term: "Whatmakes borderwriting a world literaturewith a 'universal' appeal is its emphasis upon the multiplicity of languages within any single language; by choosing a strategy of translation ratherthan representation,border writers ultimately determine the distinction between original and alien culture." Hicks, Border Writing: The Multidimensional Text(Minneapolis, 1991), p. xxiii. Furthercomplicating this issue, Andre Lefevere notes that translations themselves are "texts produced on the borderline between two systems." Lefevere, "Mother Courage's Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature,"Modern Language Studies 12, no. 4 (1982): 4.

AJS Review 20/2 (1995): 333-358

333

334

KENNETHWISHNIA

that we should attempt to preserve some of the multilingual elements, some of the "foreignness" of the Source Text, even at the expense of creating an estranging polyglot text.2True, the latter is a bit problematic,but to eliminate the multilingual elements of the original text is even more problematic. Very little conclusive work has been done in this area. Michael S. Doyle has written about preserving the deliberate use of foreign terms in a Source Text, but his study is restricted to titles.3 An article by Rogelio Reyes on Chicano literatureintroduces the term "interlanguage"to refer to a text written "in a synthesis or blend of two separate languages."4Reyes mentions the "lack of a tradition and lack of methodology"' for approachinga multilingual source text, and sums up the issue as follows: If the purposeof translationis merelyto make the messageof the original accessible to the English reader,a monolingualpresentationwould be more of the originalis intended, appropriate.If, however,a deeperunderstanding e.g., of the writer'sskill with form and content,the interlinealpresentation wouldbe moreappropriate.6 Reyes's "interlineal"translationof a Chicano poem takes the following form: I hearhuesos [bones]crack in pain y Iloros[andanguish] la brujapangs [-the witch'spangs] sus hijos han olvidado[hersons have forgotten]...7 2. See for example Samia Mehrez, "Translation and the Postcolonial Experience: The Francophone North African Text," in Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivit), Ideology, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London, 1992); Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation: Historv, PostStructuralism, and the Colonial Context (Berkeley, 1992); and Lawrence Venuti, introduction to Rethinking Translation. 3. E.g., Carlos Fuentes' Terra Nostra, Michael S. Doyle, "Contemporary Spanish and Spanish American Fiction in English: Tropes of Fidelity in the Translationof Titles," Translation Review 30-31 (1989): 41-46. 4. Rogelio Reyes, "The Translation of Interlingual Texts: A Chicano Example," in Translating Latin America: Culture as Text. Translation Perspectives VI, ed. William Luis and Julio Rodriguez-Luis (Binghamton, 1991), p. 301. 5. Ibid., p. 302. 6. Ibid., p. 303. 7. Ibid.

SHOLEMALEICHEM'SMISTERBOYMIN KLOZET

335

I found this a useful tool for one or two circumstances encountered in the translation of Sholem Aleichem's one-act comedy, Mister Boym in Klozet. Yiddish writers were by definition multilingual, because Yiddish was never the "master"language of the countries in which they lived; in addition, any Jewish male educated enough to pick up a pen in Yiddish most likely knew Hebrew as well. The classic Yiddish texts may not be interlanguages in Reyes's sense of the term, but they are certainly products of the marginal, cultural hybridization that can be said to characterizeborder literature.8 The traditional "grandfather"of Yiddish literature, Mendele MoicherSforim (ca. 1836-1917), wrote about this Jewish version of what W. E. B. Du Bois, writing of the African-American experience, termed "double consciousness": Oursages have said thata Jew has two souls, a weekdayone anda holy one. Our Hebrew languageis the holy one, a holy and pure language,in which the world is seen as in a mirror,and which is as old as the worldand whose springwill neverrundry.The otherlanguageis the weekdayone, of painand suffering,as sad as the Jewish soul is duringthe week. And these two souls, these two languages... I would not wantto exchangefor anotherlanguage.9 This split was so severe that the young David Pinski (1872-1959) did not realize that I. L. Peretz (1852-1915), the Hebrew romantic poet, and Peretz, the Yiddish satirist, were the same person,1' and that the name of the first, ground-breaking Yiddish literary journal, Kol Mevasser, was a Hebrew expression." Peretz believed that "the Jews were in the anomalous position of being an ethnonational group without a truly national language."'2 8. "Marginality may have been the Jew's archetypal experience," says Ruth R. Wisse in her introduction to A Shtetl and Other YiddishNovellas (New York, 1973), p. 14. 9. Charles A. Madison, YiddishLiterature: Its Scope and Major Writers(New York, 1968), p. 48. 10. Ruth R. Wisse, I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Seattle, 1991), pp. 40-41. 11. As a microcosmic example of the issues in this article, the title of this journal has been translated variously as "The voice which brings tidings," Joseph and Frances Butwin, Sholent Aleichem (Boston, 1977), p. 29; "A Heralding Voice," Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised: A Study in the Rise of Modern YiddishFiction in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1973), p. 5; and "Voice of the Herald," Wisse, A Shtetl, p. 3. 12. Joshua A. Fishman, Yiddish: Turning to Life (Amsterdam, 1991), p. 30.

336

KENNETHWISHNIA

This multilingual anxiety is avoided, condensed, or cut entirely in many translations. In spite of its unifying nature (the "Yiddish speech community . interacted with other far-away Yiddish-speaking communities vastly more than with the neighboring speakers of the local or national non-Jewish languages .... Yiddish literature was launched for a pan-Europeanmarket of readers")," Yiddish was looked down upon for being "grammarless"'4and even worse. Forthosewhocouldabsorbthemselvesin thelearningof theTorahto wastetheir time on [Yiddishliterature]was consideredsinful .... it was the maskilim's acceptednotion that grammatical"confusion"and dialecticaldivergencyin or "corruption" Yiddishstemmedfrom the originalaestheticsin of "mixture" of HebrewandGerman.Theybelievedin a linguisticmythwhichattributed to Yiddishan aesthetically"pure"past as well as a "fall."'5 The Hebrew-Yiddish split is not unique. Parallelsituationsexist today between classical and vernacularArabic, Greek, Tamil, Sinhalese, Hindi, etc. Although the latter binaries are, in Joshua Fishman's words, "genetically related," in all cases the "high" language is "no one's mother tongue."'6This is similar to the relationship of Latin to the Romance tongues. "As Dante put it: 'Latin is perpetual and incorruptible, and the vulgar language [i.e., Italian] is unstable and corruptible.'"• Dan Miron notes that literary bilingualism or multilingualism was common in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but has been rare since then because it "goes against our cultural grain. It contradicts our basic modem (i.e., Romantic) notion of good and 'true' literary expression. This expression, we have become inclined to assume, cannot survive the loss of utmost directness, which means that it is usually not to be achieved in any but a native tongue."'8Although Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) felt that "even when you write in Hebrew, you think 13. Dovid Katz, Grammar of the YiddishLanguage (London, 1987), pp. xviii-xix. 14. Fishman, Yiddish, p. 22. 15. Miron, Traveler Disguised, pp. 2, 65. 16. Joshua A. Fishman, "Bilingualism and Biculturalism as Individual and as Societal Phenomena," Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 1, no. 1 (1980): 4. 17. Jan Ziolkowski, "Cultural Diglossia and the Nature of Medieval Latin Literature,"in The Ballad and Oral Literature, ed. Joseph Harris (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), p. 194. 18. Miron, Traveler Disguised, p. 7.


337

in Yiddish,"both he andPeretzagreedthatYiddishrequiredthe importation of such "foreign"words as kritikandpoezye in orderfor complexliterary Yet an appreciationof these multilingualborrowings ideas to be discussed.19 in Yiddishtranscendedclass and education.David Roskies writesthat"On both sides of the Atlantic, Sholem Aleichem's stories were read aloud as part of a Friday evening or Saturdayafternoonritual,and even the most unsophisticatedlisteners could laugh at the trilingualwordplaythat now requireslengthyannotation."20 SholemAleichem'sMisterBoymin Klozetwaswrittenin theUnitedStates in 1915. It clearlyexhibitsthatthe culturaladaptationof Yiddishborrowing did not stop once Yiddishreachedthe "landof Columbus,"butratherpicked up speed. Sol Steinmetzmentionsthe canonizationin Yiddishdictionaries of such words as "pedler"and "olrayt,"and the unofficialreplacementof YiddishtermswithEnglishequivalentssuchas "biznes,""trobl,"and"mister" in Yiddishnewspapers.21 All of these appearin this play, andmustbe dealt with accordingly.In fact, when I was attemptingto identifyEnglish-Yiddish borrowingsin MisterBoymin Klozet,I came across Tsiervil, ikhzol pedlenmittey,mitvaynunmittsigayren?22 Or does he wantI shouldbe peddlingtea, wine, andcigars?

"Pedlen"seemed a likely candidate.But Weinreich'sdictionaryhad it as anentry,quiteplainlydefinedas "peddle."23 ButI learnedfromSteinmetzthat thisis a borrowing,usedso extensively(whichmakessensehistorically,given mostimmigrants'job prospects),thatit was "naturalized" in Harkavy's1928 dictionary.Perhapsfor Mr. Boym, the AmericanizedJew,it is "naturalized" 19. Ibid., pp. 18, 64. Again, this is not unique to Yiddish. All languages which were oral, when textualized, have needed an infusion of new vocabulary (e.g., Spanish under Alfonso X, nineteenth-century Romanian; even Latinate terms in English can be traced to this). 20. David G. Roskies, "Introduction to Sholem Aleichem: The Critical Tradition," Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 1. 21. Sol Steinmetz, Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America (Tuscaloosa, 1986), pp. 30-35. 22. Sholem Aleichem, "Mister Boyni in Klozet,"Ale Verkfun Sholeni Aleykhenz(New York, 1944), 4:289. 23. Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-EnglishDictionary (New York, 1968), p. 491.

338

KENNETH WISHNIA

Yiddish. But in the mouth of Shprintzel, his newly arrived sister, it is a borrowing. Suzanne Romaine employs the term "code-switching," defined by J. J. Gumpers as "the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems." According to Romaine, referredto as code-switchingis obviThe type of behaviorcharacteristically in to different what ously manyrespects happensin the situationdescribed... as diglossia . .. wheretwo languagesor varietiesco-existandare specialized accordingto function. There is an almost one-to-onerelationshipbetween languagechoice andsocial context.24 Additionally, it is common to incorporate the borrowed words into the grammatical structureof the "mother"tongue.25 J. R. Rayfield, however, mentions that the bilingual majorityof American Yiddish speakers nearly always quote proverbs, "whether they are English, Russian, Polish or Yiddish,"in the original language.26These last two concepts were useful for solving several translationproblems. A second issue is orality. Although historically Jews have had a high rate of literacy, orality and the oral mindset are major structural features in many of the works by the "Big Three" of classic Yiddish literature, Mendele Moicher-Sforim, I. L. Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem. This, too, is a result of the high/low Hebrew-Yiddish split. Although "Jews approximated universal male literacy from the preexilic period of their history onward,"27 that literacy would have been primarilyin Hebrew, leaving Yiddish-until the advent of nineteenth-century Yiddish literature-with the second-class status of a grammarless jargon in which appeared (paradoxically) books that were viewed as being only for women. Although Hodl, the daughter of Sholem Aleichem's most famous literary creation, Tevye the Milkman, "reads and writes both Yiddish and Russian,"28her education representsboth the rise of a modernity that will destroy the old lifestyle and also one of the author's 24. Suzanne Romaine, Bilingualisnm(Oxford, 1989), p. 111. 25. Ibid., pp. 133 ff. 26. J. R. Rayfield, The Languages of a Bilingual Community(The Hague, 1970), p. 55. 27. Fishman, Yiddish,p. 27. 28. Sholem Aleichem, "Hodl," Tevye the Dairynzan and The Railroad Stories, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York, 1987), pp. 53-54.


339

recurringmotifs in the Tevye stories--depictingpoor, hard-workingJews who are neverthelessextremelywell readandinsightfulcomparedwith the rich Jews of "Yehupets"(Kiev), who are every bit as stupidand hatefulas the supposedenemy, the rich capitalistsof the dominantnationality.(Cf. Shimele'spride in his daughter,Beylke, in The Jackpot:"Godgave me a daughterwith a sharpmind .... She can readand writeand handlefigures like nobody'sbusiness! . . . She's a smartgirl-she can read Yiddishand RussianandGermanand anythingyou want."29 Beylkechooses to runaway fromhome ratherthanbe betrothedto upper-classtwit SolomonFein.) of orality."Manwithoutwriting First,some of the generalcharacteristics thinks in terms of sound groups and not in words, and the two do not necessarilycoincide," writes Albert B. Lord, and he goes on to note the religiousroots of formulaicrepetition.30JackGoodyincludesthe following in a list of syntacticdifferencesbetweenthe writtenandspokenregisters: Writinghas the qualitiesof relianceon a moredeliberatemethodof organizing ideas, using such expositoryconceptsas "thesis,""topicsentence,"and "supportingevidence"... preferentialeliminationof false starts,repetitions, digressions,and otherredundancieswhich characterizeinformalspontaneous speech.31

Andamongthe manycharacteristics of oralitydescribedby WalterJ. Ongare its additive,redundant,participatory (nonobjective),agonistic,andformulaic We shall now narrowthe circle to some specificsof Yiddishorality. nature.32 Roskies writes that "of all Jewish subculturesYiddish is the closest to the folk tradition,"33 and Ken Frieden writes, "SholemAleichem is best known as an authorwho speaks for the commonpeople . . . becausehis to untrained digressive,free-associativestyleis mosteffectivewhenattributed narrators."34 29. Sholem Aleichem, The Jackpot, trans. Kobi Weitzner and Barnett Zumoff (New York, 1989), pp. 46, 53. 30. Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 25, 65-67. 31. Jack Goody, The Interface Between the Writtenand the Oral (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 263-264. 32. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word(London, 1982), pp. 37, 39, 45, 110. 33. David G. Roskies, "The Story's the Thing: Afterword," Prooftexts 5, no. 1 (1985): 68. 34. Ken Frieden, "Sholem Aleichem, Monologues of Mastery,"Modern Language Studies 19, no. 2 (1989): 25.

340

KENNETHWISHNIA

Indeed, the most popular of Sholem Aleichem's works are usually monologues directed to a single listener, or dialogue overheardby such a listener. Benjamin Harshav attributes the subject of the riddle, "Why does a Jew always answer a question with a question?" (to which the answer is, "Why not?") to "some essential characteristics of 'Talmudic' dialectical argument and questioning, combined with typical communicative patterns evolved in the precarious, marginal, Diaspora existence.""35 Ong widens the scope of this issue to other oral cultures:"Inoral cultures a request for information is often interpretedinteractively ... as agonistic, and, instead of being really answered, is frequently parried."36Thus a visitor to County Cork, Ireland, who asks a local, "Is this the post office?" receives the reply, "'Twouldn't be a postage stamp you were lookin' for, would it?"37So one may question how much of this "special kind of indirection"38in Yiddish speech patterns is the result of a unique "Talmudic dialectical argument" style ingrained in the culture, or whether it may be a characteristicof all oral cultures. The uniqueness of Yiddish is that it is an oral culture embedded within a literate culture, a true "double consciousness." The question is, How is a translator to deal with this formulaic repetitiveness? One prominent translator of Sholem Aleichem, the author's own granddaughterTamaraKahana, unfortunatelydid her work before the recent advances in translation theory. Declaring in her introductionto Adventuresof Mottel the Cantor's Son that "Yiddish is hardly translatable,"she announces, "I have therefore ruthlessly sacrificed strange rhythms and exotic expressions . . . for the preservation of a picture of a normal child in abnormal circumstances."'9Kahana's translations remain authoritative,but clearly this is an unacceptable attitude today. What of the other extreme? Harshav makes a good case for refraining from word-for-word literal translation with his translationof a passage from "Tevye Goes to Eretz Israel":

35. Benjamin Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish(Berkeley, 1990), p. 91. 36. Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 68-69. 37. Ibid., p. 69. 38. Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish,p. 100. 39. Sholem Aleichem, "A Note to the Reader," Adventures of Mottel the Cantor's Son, trans. Tamara Kahana (New York, 1952), no pagination. Similarly, Jeffrey Shandler quotes a 1948 tribute to Sholem Aleichem that labels him "the most untranslatableof writers." Shandler, "Reading Sholem Aleichem from Left to Right," YIVOAnnual 20 (1991): 309.

ALEICHEM'S MISTER BOYMINKLOZET SHOLEM

341

"Eh, I says to her, Golde dear, there is a verse, says I, 'if as sons or as servants'-as it goes with children,so it goes withoutchildren,I say.Wehave, says I, a great God, says I, and a good God, and a strongGod, says I, and nevertheless,says I, may I have the numberof blessings as the numberof times The-Master-of-the-Universe, says I, comes up with a piece of workthat better,says I, thatall my enemiesshouldhave such a year."... But she, may she forgive me, is a female, so she says: "You'resinning,Tevye. You must not, says she, sin." "Lookat this new thing, says I, did I say something,says I, bad?WouldI, says I, go, God forbid,againstthe ways of the Lord,says I? Because if, says I, He already,says I, createdsuch a beautifulworld,says I, that the childrenare not children,says I, and father-mother are mud, says I, so He probablyknows whatHe has to do." But she does not understand what I say and answersme out of the blue: "I'mdying, says she, Tevye,who will cook your supper?"40

Clearly,thereare too many "saysI's" for the modemEnglishreader.Hillel Halkin, who writes in his introduction to Tevyethe Dairyman, "The translator can and should retain some of these, but being overly faithful to them makes the English tiresome, and I have left quite a few out. Wherever the reader sees one such expression in the English, he can assume there may be more in the Yiddish,"41has translatedthe above passage (callingthe story,"Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel") as follows: I said to her, "Eh Golde, my dearest.It says in the prayerbook, im kevonim im ka'avodim-it's no differentwithoutchildrenthanwith them.Eitherway there'sa great,kind, mercifulGod above. I only wish I had a rublefor every dirtytrickHe's playedon us ... " But my wife, may she forgiveme, was a femalethroughandthrough."It's a sin to talkthatway, Tevye,"she said. "Youmusn'tbe sinful." "Whatdid I say wrong?"I askedher."DidI say anythingagainstGod?I'm sure that if He chose to make a wonderfulworldlike this in which children aren'tchildrenanymoreand parentsarenothingat all, He knew exactlywhat he was doing... " She didn'tfollow a wordof that,though,becauseshe only said to me in a whisper,looking at me with two eyes thatcould have crumbleda stone, "Oh, Tevye,I'm dying. Who'll cook yoursupperwhenI'm gone?"42 40. Harshav,Meaningof Yiddish,p. 105. 41. Sholom Aleichem, Tevyethe Dairymanand the RailroadStories,trans.Hillel Halkin (New York,1987), p. xxxix. 42. Ibid.,p. 98.

342

KENNETH WISHNIA

Most notably,many "says I's" have been replacedby new paragraph and indentations,and the Hebrewquotationhas been left in, transliterated, discussedin a footnote. Clearly,this is a vast improvementover excessive literalness,but translatorsmust also be awareof excessive "improvements." To cut the oral elementsin a storyis to cut an essentialculturalquality-to changethe text froman oral to a literarystyle. I. L. Peretz's Hasidic tale, "OybNisht Nokh Hekher"("If Not Even of an oraltale toldby one speakerto one or Higher")exhibitscharacteristics morelisteners.The openingsentence UnderNemirover nelmvern,farshvindn!43 flegtslikhes-tsayt yednfrimorgn is translatedby Eli Katz quite literallyas "Andevery morningat the time for the penitentialprayers,the Nemiroverrebbewoulddisappear;vanish!"44 Katz's parallel-texttranslationis intendedto be as literalas possible, and thereforeexhibits some of the problemsseen above in Harshav'sliteral Tevye, yet it also containssome elementsthathave been excisedfrommore literarilyinformedtranslations.By beginningthe storywith the word"And," Peretzmarksthe tale as words spillingfrom the mouthof a speaker.Marie Syrkin'stranslationis probablybetterfor the generalreader,but the opening "And"is dropped:"EarlyeveryFridaymorning,at the timeof thePenitential Prayers,the rabbi of Nemirov would vanish."45Note also how the oral repetition-"disappear;vanish!"-has been cut. Laterin the storythe voice of the narratoris inserted: Ikhgedenkshoynnisht,khulintsi nedorim.46 Katz leaves it in: "I can't rememberwhetherit was 'ProfaneThings' or 'Vows.'"47 Syrkindrops the sentencecompletely.Why?One final example of oralrepetitionin this tale: 43. I. L. Peretz,"OybNishtNokh Hekher,"Ale Verk(New York,1900),5:136. 44. I. L. Peretz,"IfNot Even Higher,"SelectedStories,trans.Eli Katz(New York,1991), p. 270. 45. I. L. Peretz,"If Not Higher,"TheL L. PeretzReader,ed. RuthR. Wisse,trans.Marie Syrkin(New York,1990), p. 178. 46. Peretz,Ale Verk,p. 137. 47. Peretz,SelectedStories,p. 272.

MISTER BOYMIN KLOZET SHOLEMALEICHEM'S

U71D IY•' • ,tW-31- P ltY "-T . M, •t•I•

343

7YnUtIY-- ?*,. "1 -

Veriz? Fregtmen dershroknfun shtubaroys.DerLitvakderkent,az es iz a kol fun a yidene,fun a krankeryidene.48

Katz: "Who is it? -A frightenedvoice calls from within. The Litvak recognizesa woman's voice; the voice of a sick woman."49 Syrkin:"'Who is there?'asks a frightenedvoice. The Litvakrecognizesit as the voice of a sick Jewishwoman,"'"which condensesbut does not eliminate. SholemAleichem'sRailroadStoriesarepresentedas dialoguesoverheard the by personaof Sholem Aleichem's narratorwhile ridingon trains.But even this narratorexhibits oral repetitionthat is cut in translation.In the ("TakenAway"),for example,one finds the following story "Tsugenunmen" passages:

Dos iz geven a kol funoybn.Maynetsveyparshoynen(unikhoykh)farraysn di kep aroyf, hoybn-oyf di oygn oyf der oybershter bank. Fun der oybershter

bankhengnaroptsvey fis in tife gumenekaloshn.Di tsvey fis in tife gumene kaloshntrogn oyf zikh a yidn mit a shvartzntsekudeltnkop, mit a farshlofn ponim,vos zet oys vi geshvoln...

48. Peretz, Ale Verk,p. 139. 49. Peretz, Selected Stories, p. 276. 50. Peretz, I. L. Peretz 180. Reader, p.

344

KENNETH WISHNIA

Beydekhapnzikhoyf oyf di fis, kukneyns oyf dos andere,unbeyde--oyfn parshoynfun der oybershterbank.Der parshoynfun deroybershterbankkukt tsu zey arop mitn farshvolenem ponim....

Ale dray kukn zikh on, glaykh vi zey voltn iberleynen,vos shteyt bay zey ongeshribnoyf di penemer.Un makhmesoyf zeyerepenemershteytnisht ongeshribngornisht,tuendi tsvey a freg baymdritn:51 These could be translated fairly literally as: Thatwas a voice from above. My two people (andI too) raiseour headsup, raise up our eyes, to the topmostberth.Fromthe topmostberthhang down two feet in deep rubbergaloshes. The two feet in the deep rubbergaloshes bearwith them a Jew with a black unrulyhead,with a sleepy face thatlooks swollen. ... Bothjump up to theirfeet, lookingone at the other,andboth-at the personin the topmostberth.The personin the topmostberthlooks down at them with his swollen face. .... All threelook at each other,just as if they wantedto readover whatwas writtenon theirfaces.And becausenothingwas writtenon theirfaces, the two up andask the third:

rendersthem as Halkin,calling the story, "Eighteenfrom Pereshchepena," follows: The last remarkcamefromabove.My two JewsandI cranedournecksto look up at the top berth.A pairof high rubbergalosheshungdownfromit. The feet in thembelongedto a manwith a headof unrulyblackhairanda face thatwas swollen from sleep. . . . The two of them were on their feet now, eyeing each

otherand the Jew in the upperberth,who lookedswollen-facedlybackdown at them..... All threestaredhardas if tryingto readeach other'sfaces. Since nothingwas writtenthere,however,the two Jewsresumedtheirinterrogation.52 Not only has a great deal of the oral repetition been condensed into a more modem "literary"prose, but an additional oral characteristicis subdued-that of metonymy. In his chapter "Some Psycho-dynamics of Orality," Ong suggests that oral peoples are less prone to abstraction than literate ones.53 51. Sholem Aleichem, "Tsugenumen,"Ale Verkfun SholemnAleykhent (New York, 1944), 7:64-66. 52. Sholem Aleichem, "Eighteen from Pereshchepena," Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories, pp. 164-165. 53. Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 49-50.


345

When the third person begins to speak, lying down in the upper berth, all that is seen of him is his boots. It is as if the boots were present, and the person attached to them an abstractioninferred from the boots-something a literate person might not consider to be a formidable leap of logic. (Sholem Aleichem uses this quite effectively to representa child's viewpoint, as when Mottel repeatedly calls an immigration official "Buttons.")54 So effectively did Sholem Aleichem disguise his narrator'spresence in his stories that Yosef Haim Brenner, writing in 1916, asks a question that would never be asked today: But was he a writer?... he was hardlya writerat all. He transcendedall literarygenres,literarytrendsanddefinitions-he was not a "folkwriter,"not even "thefolk writer,"but rathera uniquepoetic and folk amalgam,a living essence of the folk itself.55 Dov Sadan brings Sholem Aleichem back to human form, but shows how close the writer was to the heartbeat of his people: "It is no accident that Ginzburg and Marek included his lullaby in their anthology [of folk songs] of 1901, thinking it to be a pure folk creation."56 Given that Sholem Aleichem is the voice of the Yiddish-speaking Jews ("the writer of the Diaspora," in the words of one Israeli critic),57what happened when he, alone among the Big Three, emigrated to America? Between 1877 and 1917 approximately 2.5 million Yiddish speakers emigrated to America.58To condense or mishandle Sholem Aleichem's examination of the life they found in America is to leave the record unbalanced, with Sholem Aleichem reduced to a perhaps quaint chronicler of an old world long gone. But he is also the chronicler of Jews in transition-mostly in the old world, true, but several stories and plays chronicle the Jewish-American experience. As early as 1908, when Sholem Aleichem was touring Europe and America, having fled Russia after the 1905 pogroms,59Ba'al-Makhshoves 54. Sholem Aleichem, Adventures of Mottel, p. 231. 55. Yosef Haim Brenner, "On Sholem Aleichem [The Writer and the Folk]," Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 17. 56. Dov Sadan, "Three Foundations," Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 56. 57. Devar Hapoelet, Feb. 5, 1950; this reference is from Kobi Weitzner, SholenzAleichent in the Theater, forthcoming, p. 134. 58. Steinmetz, Yiddish and English, p. 16. 59. Butwin, Sholem Aleichent, p. 14.

346

KENNETHWISHNIA

wrote, "In the pages of his storybooks, Sholem Aleichem has captured an entire culture which is receding further and further from us."60Ruth R. Wisse makes the case that the "frequent problems of communication" among Eastern European Yiddish speakers depicted in the stories of Sholem Aleichem "suggest the break-up of that civilization, sometimes in gentle stages, sometimes with catastrophicsuddenness."61The plot of "Tsugenumen" concerns just such a breakdown in communication (along class lines) between three Jewish travelers. Sol Gittelman writes The shtetl is breakingup .... The Yiddishwritertraditionallywroteabouta worldand an experiencewhichwere commonlyshared.In the literatureof the Lower East Side, the Jew was no longerconcernedwith Czaristoppression, pogroms,or quotas for Jews in school. This was all partof the past. There were new problems,new preoccupations,and, ironically,new threatsjust as disturbingas those in the old world.62 The title of this paper, "A Different Kind of Hell," is taken from Curt Leviant's translation of "Mr.Green Has a Job."63The narrative,once again, is a monologue spoken to "Mr.Sholem Aleichem," only this time on American soil, in which the speaker discusses leaving behind one kind of chaos in the old country in order to start up a new kind of chaos in the United States-but I am particularly interested in the title, which in Yiddish transliterates as "Meester Green Hot a Dzhab," in which the English words "mister" and "job" are transliteratedinto Yiddish. The evidence that these are borrowings from English is removed in Leviant's version. In fact, the two tales Leviant translated as "Mr. Green Has a Job" and "The Story of a Greenhorn,"both written in the United States, are so full of English borrowings thatthe standard authoritativeedition of Sholem Aleichem's "Monologues" included (and still includes) an extensive glossary of transliterated Englishisms.64 However, of nearly a hundred Englishisms in two brief stories, only one is set off 60. Ba'al-Makhshoves, "Sholem Aleichem [A Typology of His Characters],"Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 14. 61. Ruth R. Wisse, "Sholem Aleichem and the Art of Communication," B. G. Randolph Lectures in Judaic Studies (Syracuse, 1979), 3:2-3. 62. Sol Gittleman, From Shtetl to Suburbia: The Famnilyin Jewish LiteraryiImagination (Boston, 1978), pp. 58, 132. 63. Sholem Aleichem, "Mr. Green Has a Job," Some Laughtet;Some Tears: Talesfrom the Old Worldand the New,~trans. Curt Leviant (New York, 1968), pp. 233-234. 64. See Frieden, "Sholem Aleichem, Monologues of Mastery,"p. 33.


347

as such in translation, with the neologism "allrightnik."65Another story in Leviant's anthology, "Otherwise, There's Nothing New," takes the form of two letters, one written home to the old country by a father who complains how Americanized his children are becoming and how difficult they are to understand, and another letter back from the old country, complaining how the first letter was so full of Englishisms as to be almost incomprehensible.66 What is a translatorto do with these multilingual issues? To ignore them would be to ignore the historical forces that were dividing a community that had been bound together by Yiddish for nearly a thousand years. Khone Shmeruk writes: The appearanceof Americanismsin Yiddishin SholemAleichem'swritingsis meantnot only to reflectthe actualcontactof Yiddishspeakerswith English; also, in his hands it becomes an element of humor,of languageplay, even providingthe basis for comic situations.... In the last yearof his life, Sholem Aleichem achieved virtuosityin this bilingualplaying with languagein his monologues"MisterGreenHas a Job"and"TheStoryof a Greenhorn."67 If we accept Shmeruk's statement, then to omit this "virtuosity"is a literary injustice. I will use two pages from TamaraKahana'stranslationof Adventures of Mottel the Cantor's Son to illustrate the extent to which it glosses the original. Mottel arrives in America, and soon begins to pepper his Yiddish with English words transliteratedinto Yiddish and set off by quotationmarks.These transliterated,quoted Englishisms proliferate, and eventually begin to appear without quotations as they become naturalized. While this linguistic shift is given some cursory treatment in Kahana's translation, most of the examples are suppressed. A single passage of the original text has ten Englishisms: "peyper-baks-fektori," "delivert," "reyz" (a "raise" in salary), "bos," "gud boy," "ollrayt," "groseri-stor," "kostomers," "tap-flor," and "drog-stor."68 Kahana sets off only two: "Boss" and "drugstore."''69 The problem is, How 65. Sholem Aleichem, "Monologn," Ale Verkfun Sholem Aleykhem (New York, 1944), 4:245-261; Some Laughter; Some Tears, pp. 233-236, 243-248. 66. Sholem Aleichem, Some Laughter, Some Tears, pp. 237-242. 67. Khone Shmeruk, "Sholem Aleichem and America," YIVOAnnual 20 (1991): 223. 68. Sholem Aleichem, "Motl Peysi dem Khazns," Ale Verkfun SholemnAleykhem (New York, 1944), 1:84-85. 69. Sholem Aleichem, Adventures of Mottel, pp. 264-265.

348

KENNETHWISHNIA

does one translate a text in which the characters have trouble with terms given in a foreign language into thatforeign language (in this case English)? The following passage is my translation of just such a moment in Mottel:70

Brokhehatesthatwordthe way an observantJewhatespig. There'sanother word that my sister-in-law can't abide, that's a "vinde." A "vinde" is what call here a fenster. Brokhe and woe shouldthat this, "Wind they regarding she can't to hear to bearsays You'll never them." Today, guess be "stockings." are for what would about the word zokn. Or, "stockings" you say example, "dishes"? Docould a lot thatNo. is them [Russian: dishes] you think, says Brokhe, "posude" be simpler thana lefi? It doesn'itsuit With nicer? What them. it resultsthata lefl is a "spun."It's not for nothingthatBrokhesays a proverb. (She has her own proverbs.)"Amerikeis a land, steyk is a delicacy,fork is a gopel, andEyngelshis a language."

This passage was completely cut from Kahana's translation. A translator should avoid taking textual liberties that are so extensive that they silence the artist's voice.7 But the ramifications of such errors of omission become even greater if one considers that Sholem Aleichem's work is seen as "the

70. Sholem Aleichem, "Motl Peysi dem Khazns," pp. 105-106. 71. Especially when one considers the censorship and other difficult conditions that Sholem Aleichem faced during his career (cf. A. Mukdoni, "Sholom Aleichem as a Dramatic Writer," in Melech Grafstein 's SholemnAleichemnPanorama, ed. Melech Grafstein [London, Ont., 1948], p. 222; and Shandler, "Reading Sholem Aleichem," p. 306). For a detailed description of even more extreme cases of "adapting" and "improving" Sholem Aleichem's works, see Weitzner, SholenmAleichermin the Theatre.

ALEICHEM'S BOYMIN KLOZET SHOLEM MISTER

349

quintessentialtest case for the issue of the translatabilityof Yiddishas a whole."72 All of this is centralto the translationof the play MisterBoymin Klozet, whichis also abouttheclashbetweenopposingYiddishculturesas represented by a brotherand a sister.He is an AmericanizedJew who liberallypeppers his Yiddishwith English,she is a "greenhorn" who complainsthatshe can't understandthis foreignlanguageEnglish,all the whilepepperingherYiddish with Russian.To ignore this issue by cuttingit would eliminatethe body of the play. I have thereforeopted to maintainthe multilingualdistinctions of the Source Text as follows: (1) to translatethe standardYiddishinto English except when it is being comparedto English as in the passage above, in which case I transliteratethe Yiddishinto English;(2) to keep the Englishismsmarkedin English by transliteratingthem from their Yiddish transliterations backinto Englishandsettingthemoff withitaliccapitals,and to use (3) Reyes's interlinealtranslationtechniquefor the Russian. In case that is a bit hardto follow, allow me to illustrate.Mrs. Boym's firstline in the play is, quite simply,Englishtransliterated into Yiddish:7 9 U n ru),Itrx Ow,l tl~ 01' t.11 .n't3 0YO•. I have transcribedthis as: "VATIZ DI TROBELVITYU?"Thisplay contains severalexamplesof Englishborrowingsdroppedinto the middleof Yiddish sentences.Just one examplewould be 'ttYx ' ,tamta to lN1r 1"T i~ which I have translatedas:. "Whydidn't you tell her DAT ?a1X1a t1 t3N.,74 AY EM NAT ET HOM?"Here, the languagesare mixed, but not within a single clause. However,when Mr.Boym asks her whereshe has been, Mrs. ~2 this is Ikh yj'l X Boym answers,tovr~-7a OyD.75Transliterated, ,n .tJ'K hob zikh gedrest, which is grammaticallycorrectYiddish,only the root of the final word is English.The expressionshouldbe somethinglike Ikh hob zikh ongeton. However,anothercommonpast participleendingis -t, as in "I brought,"Ikh hob gebrengt.So Mrs.Boym is takingan Englishverb,"to dress,"and conjugatingit as if it were Yiddish.I translatedthis sentenceas: "I was getting GEDRESSED" (despitethe fact thatYiddishspeakerswould not do this in an Englishsentence). 72. 73. 74. 75.

Shandler,"ReadingSholemAleichem,"p. 309. SholemAleichem,"MisterBoynzin Klozet,"p. 285. Ibid. Ibid.

KENNETH WISHNIA

350

of theEnglish AnotherrecurringEnglish-Yiddish meldingis thetreatment verb"to move"as if it were Yiddish,as in the followingtwo examples:76

=Lr JiK - Ir

tf'I

T'1n1 T1

,t8'UDV

n 1"Mt,T lyimmoypytllm

as ikh hob Badarftgevenzogn,az ikh bin nito,az ikh bin avekgeforn, ikh vil zi nit zen-un dats az oil! gemuft, Ikhvel nitmufn! In the first example, "move"is treatedas a past participle,"hobgemuft," while in the second, "mufn"takes the grammaticallycorrect infinitive form-grammatically correct, that is, if only the root were Yiddish!" I have translatedthese two sentencesas: You should have said that I am not here, that I've gone away, that I've GEMUFT,thatI don't wantto see her, UN DATSOLL! I won'tMUFN!

Note how I have also retainedthe oral repetition,which is used throughout to indicatehow Mr.Boym is drivinghimselffrantic.(e.g., a few lines later, "You'reright! You'reright!WhatshouldI do? Hide me! Lock me up! I'll hide myself! Wherecan I hide?"Surely,in termsof content,this could be reducedto a single English sentence.But this is physicalcomedy,and the stage directionsindicatethatMr. Boym is running"fromone cornerto the The repetitionis essentialto the comedy.) other,desperately."78 sisterShprintzelenters.Thoughshe, too, FinallyMr.Boym's "greenhorn" has grammaticallyincorporatedsome Englishismsinto herYiddish,as in Az di ale "biznesen"vos er hot mir gemakhtbiz aher,toygenoyf kapores.79 All the BIZNESENthathe set me up in up to now aregood for nothing. 76. Ibid.,pp. 285-286. 77. For a detailedlinguisticdiscussionof bilingualYiddish-English borrowingpatterns, see Rayfield,Languagesof a BilingualCommunity, chap.3. 78. SholemAleichem,"MisterBoymin Klozet,"pp. 286-287. 79. Ibid.,p. 288.

SHOLEMALEICHEM'S MISTER BOYMIN KLOZET

351

in which the English root "business"is treatedas a Yiddishword by the formationof its pluralby adding-en. But her Yiddishis meantto have the flavorof the old countrythatherbrotherandsister-in-lawhavelost. The final word in the above sentenceis Hebrew;Weinreichdefinesit as representing the "scapegoatin [a] pre-Yom Kippuratonementceremony,"80 certainlya culture-boundconcept.This is an exampleof why it is nearlyimpossibleto do justice to the multilingualnatureof Yiddishin translation.The word,like Tevye's Hebrewquotationsfrom the Torahand commentaries,would have been understoodby both old and new world Yiddishspeakers-but as it is not a recentborrowing,I have translatedit into the samestandardEnglishas the Yiddish.One would not treat"vocal,""corrupt," and "clandestine" in a text as from French Latin and to be set twentieth-century English borrowings off in translation.Perhapsglossing the Hebrewis a wrongchoice. But one mustdrawthe line somewhere.But where? WhenShprintzelfirstentersshe asks"8

[Russian: brother]? Shprintzel:He'snothere,mybratishek Mrs. Boym: Whatdo you mean,"bratishek"? Sit! Shprintzel: So you've forgottenYiddishso fast? Bratishekmeansa bruder

[Yiddish: brother]. This Russian/Yiddishpun could be translatedas above. However,since a play is intended for presentationwithout footnotes, I feel the line must be renderedas: "So you've alreadyforgottenYiddish?Bratishekmeans a brother."Somethingis alwayslost. I havetriedto compensateforit elsewhere, as in "to MUFN";"MUFN"is alreadyin the infinitive,so the "to"should be superfluous;however, since we are not dealing with the grammarof a language,but with a translator'sinterlanguage,I feel that "to MUFN"is justified. 80. Weinreich,ModernYiddishDictionary,p. 213. 81. SholemAleichem,"MisterBoynm in Klozet,"p. 287.

352

KENNETHWISHNIA

At one point Shprintzeluses a complete Russianphrase,given in the originalin transliteratedYiddish,Ytmon Ynx Oxta Y3VI,82 for which I have opted for Reyes's techniqueand renderedit as: "It's ne mala babe khlopote[Boy, the old lady has troubles!]." Thereis only one placewhereI haveleft an entireYiddishphraseto stand as Okh un vey iz mir. on its own, v' T'K I 1m,83which transliterates ,r11 at "Alas and woe is me," which This means, quite literally, nobodyhas been able to say seriouslyin Englishsince Heathcliffdisappearedfromthe pages of WutheringHeights.But people really do say it in Yiddish.Besides, "Oy vey" is one of those Yiddishisms(like "schmuck,""chutzpa,""kvetch,"or NinthCollegiateDictionary)that "klutz"-the only one includedin Webster's has madethe reversetrip--into English,certainlyno strangerto multilingual debatersof the Hebrew-Yiddish borrowings.In fact, if the nineteenth-century high-low rivalry had known more about English (few individualswould seriously call English's multilingualmixture "corrupt"or "grammarless" chargesthatYiddishwithstoodwell intothiscentury),it mighthave "jargon," ended the debate and allowed those involved to explore more productive concerns. The issue of translatingmultilingualtexts mustnotbe elided.How else is one to do justice to the social andpoliticaldistinctionsamongthe "Russified" Yiddishspokenby the richheir,SolomonFeinin TheJackpot,84the"devilish" GermanicYiddishof charactersin I. L. Peretzand I. B. Singer,85and the "Americanized"Yiddish of the later works of Sholem Aleichem, to say textsthat nothingof the worldof immigrantandpostcolonial"interlanguage" are being producedtoday?The classic writerswere forgingliteraryYiddish as they went. It must sound new, not cliched, becauseit "sounded"new to the readers,thatis, in theirexperienceof it as literature.We shouldlet literal "foreignness"give us some of this newness. SholemAleichemshouldnot be seen as thechroniclerof a deadculturein a dying language;his workalso pointstowardcontinuity.Althoughmuchof his experiencein the UnitedStateswas in manywaysjust as badas in Europe he still (poor criticalreceptionof his plays, bad health,money troubles),86 82. Ibid., p. 289. 83. Ibid., p. 288. 84. Sholem Aleichem, The Jackpot, p. 260. 85. Wisse, A Shtetl, p. 8. The Writeras Social Historian (New 86. Cf. Anna Halberstam-Rubin, SholenmAleichenzm: York, 1989), pp. 13-15, 116; Weitzner, Sholent Aleichem in the Theatre, pp. 4, 7.


353

saw hopein Americafor Jews-perhaps theironly hope.Afterall, continuous changeis betterthandeath,isn't it? This is the transitionalworldAmerican Jews come from. The work of Sholem Aleichemis a living transitionthat can illuminateourknowledgeof bothYiddishandEnglish.It is, in the words of Georg Lukacs, "a process .

. .

the concrete precondition of the present.""87

87. Georg Lukics, The HistoricalNovel, trans.Hannahand StanleyMitchell (Lincoln, 1983),p. 21.

KENNETH WISHNIA

354

Appendix MR. BOYMIN THECLOSET(1915) A Comedyin One Scene by SholemAleichem

Translatedfromthe Yiddishby KennethWishnia By permissionof the estateof SholemAleichemwith considerablehelpfrom ArnoldWishniaandRobertHoberman

Translation? 1993 KennethWishnia


355

CHARACTERS Mr.Boym Mrs.Boym sister Shprintzel,Mr.Boym's "greenhorn"

Mr.Boymcomes into his apartment,finds nobodythere,tosses downhis hat, and bangshis cane agitatedlyon the table. Mr. Boym: (Loudly)HU IZ HOM?(Evenlouder)HU IZHIER? (Mrs.Boymenters,wearingfine clothes.) Mrs. Boym: VATIZ DI TROBELVITYU? Mr. Boym: Wherewere you, Jenny? Whatis it DEN? Mrs. Boym: I was gettingGEDRESSED. Mr. Boym: Who's been here? Mrs. Boym: NOBADL Mr. Boym: (agitated)A man from the OFFISwas supposedto have been here! Mrs. Boym: Nobody'sbeen here ... Oh, yes! Yourlittle sisterwas here ... Shprintzelwas here!... ... Again?Whydidn't Mr. Boym: (gettingeven moreagitated)TERRIBEL! AY ET her DAT EM NAT HOM? tell you Mrs. Boym: How do you know that'snot whatI told her? Mr. Boym: You should have said that I am not here, thatI've gone away, thatI've GEMUFTthatI don't wantto see her, UNDATSOLL! Mrs. Boym: A lot she listens when you speakto her! She searchedthrough all the ROUMSlookingfor you! I thoughtI'd have a stroke! Mr. Boym: The devil takeit! Some sister!ThatShprintzel.ALBETSHYE that she's going to driveme out of the city,andI'll haveto MUFNoverto another city! (paces aroundagitatedly)She's makingme crazy!She's SPOYLTmy BIZNES!... She's drivingme into my grave! Mrs. Boym: So who's to blame?If you didn'tsendher the boattickets,she wouldn'thave come!

356

KENNETHWISHNIA

Mr. Boym: (runningaround)Boat tickets! How was I supposedto know she'dbe sucha pain!I thought,she'll come,I'll set herup in a BIZNES,she'll settle with her FEMILI,become a CITIZNER, cost me a few DOLER-UN DATSOLL!Go figure,thatthe VUMENwould bringme so muchTROBEL that I'd have to MUFN-that we'd have to MUFN, MISSEZBOYM,and there'snothingyou can do aboutit. Mrs. Boym: (with a melody) I won't MUFN! I'm OLLRAYT!(The bell rings.)

It's her!. Mr. Boym: (grabs his head) It's her? TERRIBEL! I can't take this! She's IMPOSIBEL! I'll make up a story! I'll commit suicide! (He grabs his hat, wants to run to the door The bell rings furiously.)

Mrs. Boym: Whereare you runningto? You want to runinto her,nose to nose? Mr. Boym: You'reright!You'reright!WhatshouldI do?Hideme! Lockme up! I'll hide myself! Where can I hide? (He runs aroundfrom one corner to the other one, desperately.) I'll wait in the KLOZETuntil she goes ... I beg

with her!Tellher:AY YSHONS you, Jenny,don't makeany long KONVERSA EM NAT HOM-UN DATS OLL! ... (Mr. Boym jumps into the closet. Mrs. Boym gets ready to grab Shprintzel when she comes in. Shprintzel enters, unexpectedly dressed in the American style, with a fine hat. She looks all around the apartment.)

Shprintzel:He's not here,my bratishek[brother]?* Mrs. Boym: Whatdo you mean,"bratishek"? Sit! So Yiddish so fast? Bratishekmeansa brother. Shprintzel: you've forgotten (Shesits.) Some brother!I thoughtthatI'd come all the way overhere,andhe wouldmakeme happy.Whata wonderfulthing:a richbrother,andin America even, a free country-it should only burn!And the people-they couldn't compare to our lowest water-carrier!And their language-POTAYTES, TOMAYTES,KITSHEN,and TSHIKEN,they should be kidnapped!A keler is a BAYSMENTa boydem a RUF YARDis a hojyf STRITis a gass, and GABITSH

is mist.Nu, how can it be good? If only I'd lived out my yearswithoutever knowingthis country!But he nasyadet[saton] me, my bratishek,andstarted hammeringme with letters,letterafterlettertelling me I shouldcome over to his America, to his golden land, where he will make me happy .... And *Bracketed translations are of Russian words.


357

I, like an idiot, let myself be talkedinto castingaside such a land,with such people,with leavingbehindsucha business,a goldenbusiness,a shmaltz-pit, an inn, with a dininghall, with a barroom,one way or another,for betteror for worse, we hadbreadto eat! Only in the last few yearsdid thingsget bad, becausethey startedchasingus out and therewas no one to stay at the inn andnothingto buy,otherwise,I wouldhave been a czarina!If it hadn'tbeen for the pogrom,would I have even budgedfromthatspot?I wouldn'teven have looked at it, what my bratisheklwroteto me aboutgood fortune,that a world was opening for my children, all roads are free .... It doesn't even

come close! Back home my Moyshe,even thoughtheydon'tadmitanybody, neverthelessfinisheda bookkeepingcourseby mail fromYankevMark'sin Lubovitsch,so I figuredthat here my brotherwould certainlyfind him a positionwith YankelSchiff, or with Rockenfellern,or in somebig office.... And my daughter,who in Russiatheywouldn'tacceptintohighschool,even so was learningat home sewing anddressmakingalso by mail-you'd think he'd at leastpristroyet[fix up] hera positionsomewherein a DEPARTMENT So who?What?Whenwe come, he's not here.Big deal,everyweek he sends me a TSHEK!"Wages"he gives me! Okhun vey iz mit;that I even came here! (She cries.) My mothershouldrise out of the graveandtakea look at her Shprintzel, how she lives from TSHEKNand from wages ... (dries her

eyes) An only daughterI was ... Amongeightsons--dogcatchers,hoodlums, boorishslobs-and all togetheronly one daughter... (pause)If, forexample, I mighthave at least some kind of establishment.... He promisesme, that bratishekof mine, afterthe holidayshe'll seek and findanotherBIZNESfor me. I don't want any BIZNES!Do me a favorwith yourBIZNES-I wanta GESHEFT, a real business, not a BIZNES! ... All the BIZNESENthat he set

me up in up to now are good for nothing.... He putsme outsideso I should sell kerchiefs! ... Back home they don't buy any kerchiefs in the street!

Ordoes he wantI shouldbe PEDLENtea, wine, andcigars?Backhomethey don't PEDELTany tea, wine, andcigars!Or,for example,he goes and rents me an apartment,so I shouldsubletit to the neighbors.I shouldbecome,that means, a LENDLORDIKHE. It's ne mala babe khlopote [Boy, the old lady

has troubles!]-So I come askingfor the rent,and they throwme down the stairs!What'sthe story?The storyis, thatI talkto themin our language!Of course, that's why I left from dear Russia-it shouldonly burn!-to come here, a poor widow, with orphanchildren,in orderthatI shouldconvertto your language! (Mrs. Boym can't repress a smile.) You laugh? Sure, you can

358

KENNETHWISHNIA

afford to laugh, you who live in such a good place (gesturing around with her hand) with such mirrors (she looks at herself in the mirrors) with a piano, with a gramophone, with closets ... (She goes to the closet where Mr Boym is hiding.) And your closets are probably full of every luxury,a real eyeful ... (She opens the curtain to the closet, and Mr Boym is discovered. All three remainfrozen.) Slow Curtain

StateUniversityof New York at StonyBrook StonyBrook,N.Y.

Between Identity and Anonymity: Art and History in Aharon Megged's "Foiglman" Author(s): Rachel Feldhay Brenner Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 359-377 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486822 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BETWEEN IDENTITY AND ANONYMITY: ART AND HISTORYIN AHARON MEGGED'S FOIGLMAN by RACHELFELDHAYBRENNER This precisely is the originalrole of narrative. . . to establisha theaterof legitimacyfor effectiveaction. -Michel de Certeau

In a recent article, "Israeli Literature Over Time," Aharon Megged describes his work as "unremittinglyconcerned with burningnational issues," mainly with the issue of Israel's relationshipto the Diaspora.'Megged's intense preoccupation with the Zionist ideology of the negation of the Diaspora emerged in his 1955 story "Yadva-shem" ("The Name"). The story presents a scathing criticism of Israel's dissociation from the history of the Diaspora and especially from the catastrophe of the Holocaust. "Yad va-shem" was followed by an article entitled "Tarbutenuha-yeshana ve-ha-hadasha"("Our Old and New Culture") in which Megged deplored Israel's severance of its Diaspora roots and urged a reexamination of the negative attitude toward the destroyed European Jewish culture.2In 1984, Megged published Massa ha-yeladimnel ha-aretz ha-muvtachat ("The Children's Journey"), a novel

1. AharonMegged,"IsraeliLiterature OverTime,"JewishStudies32 (1992):36. 2. AharonMegged,"Tarbutenu Massa,Sept.16, 1955. ha-yeshanave-ha-hadasha,"

AJS Review 20/2 (1995): 359-377

359

360

RACHELFELDHAYBRENNER

based on a true story abouta groupof young survivorsof the Holocauston theirway to Palestine.3This work,as Dan Laornotesin his review,"offersa perspectiveof the Diasporain the Holocaustwhichdiffersfrom [the typical Israeliattitudeof] contemptinfusedwith pity"towardthe DiasporaJew.4 Megged'sbestsellingnovelFoiglman(1987)reaffirmsthewriter'slifelong interestin Jewish historyand heritageas well as his repudiationof Israel's denial of the Diaspora.5The novel tells the story of the failed attempt of Foiglman,a Yiddishpoet and Holocaustsurvivor,to integrateinto the Israelicommunity.The popularityof the novel as well as its criticalreception thatthe storyof Foiglman'srejectionby theIsraelienvironment, demonstrates which ends in a tragedyof madnessand death,touchesa raw nerve in the Israelireader.Practicallyall criticalreadingsof the novel identifywith the Foiglmancharacterand approveof Megged's view of Israel'sdissociation fromthe Holocaustvictim. Thus, in an articlepoignantlyentitled"A ContinuousHolocaust,"Hillel WeisspraisesFoiglmanfor condemningIsrael'sattitudetowardthe Diaspora andclaims thatthe storyexposes "theshameanddegradationof the Jewishintellectualswamp which purportsto contendwith the enigma of Jewish A reviewby A. B. Yoffe,entitled"TheBirdman,"suggeststhatthe history."6 "message"of the novel indicatesthat "we cannotbuildour presentculture and lay the foundationfor a futureculturewithouttakinginto accountthe [Yiddish]heritageof the past."7Ziva Shamir'sarticle,"A YiddishSongbird," sees the book as a reminderto Israelisthat"Jewishdestinycontinuesto haunt its victims,"even when they do not considerthemselvesas such,and points view of the Jewishfuture.8A reviewby Abraham to thenovel'sindeterminate and Blatt, "Language Fate,"detects some hope for a futurereconciliation of past and present.Blatt's concludingcommentraises the possibilitythat

3. Aharon Megged, Massa ha-yeladimnel ha-aretz ha-mnuvtachat:Parashat yaldei slavino (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1984). 4. Dan Laor, "Megged be-ikvot Brecht" [Megged in Brecht's footsteps], Ha-Aretz, Nov. 2, 1984. 5. The novel has been reprinted three times, and translated into German and English. A record 30,000 thousand copies have been sold. 6. Hillel Weiss, "A Continuous Holocaust," Nekuda 17 (Jan. 5, 1988). 7. A. B. Yoffe, "The Birdman," Al Ha-Mishmar, April 24, 1988. 8. Ziva Shamir, "A Yiddish Songbird," Ha-Aretz, Oct. 23, 1987.

ART AND HISTORYIN MEGGED'S FOIGLMAN

361

"Megged'sFoiglman is perhapsa sign of a new covenant,or mediation, betweenthe worldof the deadandthe worldof the living."9 In most of the reviews, the relevance of Foiglman emerges in the perceptionof Megged'sfictionas bothmirrorandcorrectiveto socialreality. The centralityof Foiglman,the "Yiddishsongbird,"in the reviewsreflects Israel'spresentreadinessto reexamineits attitudestowardthe Diasporaand, especially, towardvictims of the Holocaust.The unusualcompatibilityof authorand critics concerningthe issue of Israel-Diaspora relationsdenotes the novel as an ideologically orientedtext the appealof which lies in its or "politicalcorrectness."Even a less favorablereview of "up-to-dateness" the novel appearsunderthe nostalgictitle "ToYiddishwithLove"andclaims that"thetimingof AharonMegged'sFoiglmanis correct.[Thenovel] does not need to swim against the current."'0 The reviewersappearto posit the novel as a reflectionof, ratherthana reflectionupon,Israel'schangingview of the Diaspora.Theiremphasison the virtuesof theforgottenYiddishlanguage and culturepresentsthe text as a "transparency" of Israel'stransgressions againstJewishhistory.This criticalapproachdiscloses the sense of remorse over Israel'sregrettablymisplacedideologicaldogmatism. Due to constraintsof time and space,the criticalreviewsunderstandably focus on the novel's content,a readingwhichhighlightsthe "realistic"illustrationof social situationandattitudes.A morecomprehensiveinterpretation of the text, however,can hardlyevade a considerationof its literaryform, especially in terms of its impact upon the reader.I would argue that the genericmode andthe narrativevoice in Foiglmanintendto elicit a particular responsefrom the reader.Of special importanceis the positioningof the novel's narrativevoice. As Emile Benvenistetells us, "Consciousnessof self is only possibleif it is experiencedby contrast.I use I only whenI amspeaking to someone who will be a you in my address.""The novel's confessional narrativeinducesreadersto definethemselvesas a "you"vis-a-visthenarrator and to respondto the voice in the text. The dialogic contactwith the text is established,therefore,throughthe constructsuggests genre of fictional autobiography.The autobiographical the centralityof the Israeli narrator,Zvi Arbel, ratherthan of Foiglman, 9. Abraham Blatt, "Lashon ve-goral" [Language and fate], Ha-Tzofe, Jan. 29, 1988. 10. Abraham Hagorni, "Le-Yiddish be-ahava" [To Yiddish with love], Davar, Dec. 4, 1987. 11. tmile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971), p. 224 (emphasis in original).

362


the ignored Holocaust survivor.The affinitybetween Israeli narratorand Israelireaderdrives home the text's outlookon the Diasporaproblematic. The Israelinarrator'sconfessionof his relationshipwithFoiglmanandof the tragicconsequencesof this relationshipevokes a sense of identificationwith Arbel'sexperiences.The Israelibackgroundwhichreaderssharewith Arbel supersedesthe nostalgic,but indirectand thereforeabstract,sympathywith the Foiglmanstory. Furthermore,the confession, as a narrativeploy to involve the reader, suggests the significanceof the artisticform in the literaryexplorationof Israel'spositionregardingthe Diaspora.I wouldarguethatwhile the content of the novel stressesthe meaculpaattitudefor the ideologyof disengagement from the exile, the form of fictionalautobiographyunderlinesan intention not only to come to termswith the deniedpast, but also to rectify Israel's politicsof the negationof the Diaspora. The novel, as a fictionalself-explorationvis-a-visthe inescapablereality of the lost heritage,reflects,therefore,a complexview of Israel'schanging attitudestowardthe Diaspora.Insteadof a merelyregretfulretrospectionof Israel'smistakes,as demonstrated,for instance,in the definitivedetachment from the world of GrandfatherZiskind in "Yadva-shem,"Arbel's introspection brings forth an attemptto reverse the movementof history and correctpast misjudgmentsin the context of the present.I would suggest thatas a life story,the narrativepresentsa complexattemptof meetingand mendinghistory,that is, of reassimilatingthat which has been eliminated, of reaffirmingthat which has been negated.The sophisticatedconstructof of an seems to implythatthe transformation historian-turned-autobiographer historicalrealityis possible. As this readingof the novel demonstrates,the autobiographer's explorationof the pastcalls attentionto his artisticgrowth. The transformation from telling historyinto telling one's own storysignals that the ability to amend historicalmisconceptionsis predicatedupon the powerof artisticimaginationandcreativity. It is interestingto note that the thematicof mendingthe past emerges prominentlyin Megged'searlierwork,Massa be-av ("Journeyin the Month of Av").12Here,the protagonist,DanielLevine,who, like Arbel,reexamines his life, fantasizesaboutmoving historybackward,aboutundoingthe past. In morethanone sense, Levinecan be seen as Arbel'sprototype.A physicist whose researchfocuses on the relativityof time, Levinedeploreshis escape 12. Aharon Megged, Massa be-av (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1980).

IN MEGGED'S ARTANDHISTORY FOIGLMAN

363

intotheworldof science,anevasionwhichhascausedthetragicdisintegration of his family. In a similarway, Arbel'slife story revealstwo disconnected personalityfacets. An eminent professorof Jewish history,Arbel escapes fromthe worldinto his research,whichexploresthepatternsthathaveshaped the historyof the Jewish people. His emotionalaloofnessbringsaboutthe deathsof Nora,his wife, andof Foiglman,his best friend.Arbel'semotional unfoldsin an attemptto accountof his personalgrief and self-recrimination understandhis life. GeorgesGusdorf'sargumentthatsocial roles hinderself-knowledgeand that "a knowledgeof the self can appearonly when the role is revealedto be nothingbut a role"" may help to explain Arbel'sundertakingto write an autobiographicalaccount at a time of familial and professionalcrisis. Divested of his roles as husband,father,friend,teacher,and scholar,Arbel facesa void he can neithercomprehendnorassimilate.His consciousdecision of his "public" to tell his life story indicatesa searchfor an understanding and"private"selves throughthe artof self-representation. Theactof writingcompelsArbelto re-viewhis life as a story.Thedistance that he gains through self-writingraises the awarenessof his emotional inadequacy.This growing self-awarenessbringsforththe realizationof the power of art. Towardthe end of the novel, that is, towardthe end of his autobiography,Arbel claims to have reacheda new understandingof the relationshipbetweenhistoryandliterature.He realizesthat it is the greatwriters,the novelists,whosee deeperandfurther thanus [the Andthereasonis thatthey,unlikeus, focusnoton eventsbuton historians]. people;theyplumbthedeeperrecessesof thesoul.Andthefuture,mankind's of thehumansoul. future,afterall,dependson thevicissitudes (p.243)14 This general statement,typical of a scholarlyanalysis,gains personalrelevance in the subsequent,unsparingself-accusation:"I, who all my life have examinedthe minutedetailsof events,did I hearthe anguishedcry of Nora'ssoul?"(p. 243). The questionrevealsArbel'sgrowingunderstanding 13. Quoted in Aexander Gelley, Narrative Crossings: Theory and Pragmatics of Prose and

Fiction(Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress,1978),pp. 65-66. 14. All thequotationsfromAharonMegged,Foiglmnan (TelAviv:AmOved,1987;reprinted 1987, 1988) aretakenfromthe unpublishedtranslationof the novel into Englishby Marganit Weinberger-Rotman. Page numbersarefromthe Hebreweditionof 1988.

364


of both the limitationsof his public role of historianand his obtusenessas a family man. This honest self-recrimination pointsto an emerging,critical self-perspective. Significantly,Arbel's realizationconstitutesa furtherdevelopmentof the central motif of interpersonalrelationshipsin Megged's other works. In MahberotEvyatar("TheNotebooksof Evyatar"),Olga, who eventually commits suicide, complains about her husband:"He is so egocentric,so inconsiderate.He does not appear to see the other person at all."'5In Ha-gamal ha-meofef ve-dabbeshet ha-zahav ("The Flying Camel and the

Golden Hump"),Lily confronts her husband,the writer KalmanKeren, in almost identical terms: "You are absolutelyinsensitiveto others. You are horriblyegocentric."'6In contrastwith these works, in Foiglman it is the husbandwho berates himself for having failed his wife. He thus reemphasizesMegged's existentialistcredo regardingthe importanceof empathic interpersonalrelationships,summed up in the novel Al eytzim ve-avanim("OfTreesandStones"):"Youridentityis determinednot only by yourselfbutby others.... Youarenot only whatyou thinkyou are,butwhat you arefor the otherand whatthe otheris for you."'7 Arbel'sawarenessof his inferiorityas an historianvis-a-visgreatliterary writerssignals his desire to emulatetheirinsightsinto the mysteryof being of himselfandhis relationshipswithothers. human,to gain an understanding Writing one's life signals a powerful need to reach an inner truth; a self-knowledge that, Gusdorf claims, is unrelatedto the public roles imposedby the externalworld. At the same time, autobiographical writing signifies a process aimed at understanding"the roles, the reifiedversions of personalitythat serve to representthe self to others."'8Innerknowledge re-visionof one's self thus can be attainedonly throughan autobiographical in social interaction.Arbel's comprehensionof himself is predicatedupon self-explorationin the contextof his social environment. Arbel'ssocial situationdisplaysa split betweenfamilyrelationshipsand professionallife. The appearanceof Foiglmanprecipitatesthe collapse of both his "private"and "public"domains.The poet-survivorconfrontsthe 15. Aharon Megged, Mahberot Evyatar (Jerusalem: Hakibbutz ha-Meuchad, 1973), p. 66 (my translation). 16. Aharon Megged, Ha-gamnalha-nzeofef ve-dabbeshet ha-zahav (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1984), p. 152 (my translation). 17. Aharon Megged, Al eytzimnve-avanimn(Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978), p. 30 (my translation). 18. Gelley, Narrative Crossings, p. 66.


365

historian with evidence of Israel's ideologically motivated mispresentationof the Diaspora. Subsequently, the historianengages in an endeavorwhich upsets the distinction between his family and his profession: by extending hospitality to the Holocaust survivor, he undertakes to integrate the consciousness of the Diaspora past into his family's present. Arbel's attempt to restructure his family life as a metonymic representation of mended history ends up in his wife's suicide, Foiglman's death, and the narrator's own ruin. Of the three, only the narrator,who transforms his misfortune into the art of autobiographical writing, suggests redemption in creative search for selfknowledge. An autobiography, Arbel's story combines his personal story and his historical research. The conflation raises the issue of affinity between personal and collective narratives. The desire to define the historical forces which determine an individual life and the life of nations informs Arbel's Weltanschauung.As an historian, he examines the notion of historical "master narratives" which convey the sense of universal order and define history as "vita magistra" (p. 152), the teacher of life. In terms of his private life, he searches for the meaning of the "master narratives" that have shaped his personal history. In a way, Foiglman's fate determines the master narrativeof Arbel's life story. A representative of the destroyed Jewish culture, Foiglman triggers Arbel's hubristic undertaking to mend history. At the same time, as a poet dedicated to the commemoration of the Holocaust, Foiglman raises Arbel's consciousness of the endurance of art in the face of historical upheavals. In the end, Foiglman loses his battle against Israel's indifference toward the Diaspora. Foiglman's defeat, however, does not spell the end of art. Rather,it becomes a legacy which engenders artistic inspiration, articulatedin Arbel's autobiographical undertaking. In fact, Arbel indicates the extent of Foiglman's impact upon his life when he points to the Yiddish poet as the raison d'etre of his autobiographical project: "An explanation is in order," Arbel writes. "I must explain how a strange man entered my life and destroyed it." And he blames his misfortune upon "this whole relationship between us-this unexpected, uncalled for, one might say compulsive relationship" (pp. 32-33). Elsewhere, in a more conciliatory mood, Arbel notes the depth of his friendshipwith Foiglman: "My fate became inextricably entwined with Foiglman's fate: bonds of affection and suffering united us" (p. 252). The motif of the centrality of the other in

366

FELDHAY BRENNER RACHEL

the individual'slife, a motif thatunderscoresMegged'soeuvre,resurgesin Foiglman,castingthe Yiddishpoet as a refractionof Arbel'spsyche. Arbel'surgencyto explorehis self-imageas reflectedin andthroughhis relationshipwithFoiglmanemergesatthecenterof thisfictionalautobiography. Foiglman,as a forcewhichspursArbel'sautobiographical undertaking, posits the Yiddish "birdman"as the Israeli's"wingedmuse."As a metaphorical of Arbel'shitherto-unrecognized creativepotential,Foiglman representation deflatesArbel'ssocial role and actualizeshis introspective,artisticself.'9 A Holocaustsurvivor,Foiglmanrepresentsundeniableevidenceof both biological and historicaldestruction.The victim-witnessof the Holocaust replaces the faith in the eternityof humanexistence with an awareness Arbel's wish to reconnectwith the historyof the of a recentapocalypse.20 Holocaustthroughbonding with Foiglmansets him apartfrom the other membersof his family, who, both emotionallyand conceptually,dissociate themselvesfromFoiglmanandhis past. Arbel's claim to reconnectwith the lost heritagediffers considerably from that of the protagonistin a classical novel. As a rule, the classical heroes rebel against social conventionsand paternalauthority;thus, they repudiatethe repetitivepatternsof heritageandtradition.21In contrast,Arbel assumesan antagonisticpositionvis-a-visthe classicalrebel.Furthermore, in a paradoxicalreversal,his identificationwithheredityandheritageconstitutes a serioustransgressionagainstthe Israeliconceptof familialloyalty. In termsof generationalcontinuum,thenarrator standsbetweenhis father andhis son, bothof whomrefuseto recognizetheirhistoricallinkagewiththe annihilatedEuropeanJewry.Arbel'spreoccupationwith his Jewishheritage, of the character of Lolitaas 19. Nabokov'sLolitapresentsa similarcase. An interpretation a refractionof HumbertHumbert'spsycheoutlinesa parallelto Foiglmanas an embodimentof the repressed,or latent,componentof Arbel'spersonality. 20. Foiglmanserves as a reminderof JonathanSchell'sobservationthatgenocidecan be seen as "theend of civilization[becauseit signifies]the totaldisorganization and disruption of humanlife, breakingthe links between mankind'spast and its future"(p. 146). In the post-Holocaustera, as Schell maintains,we face the knowledgewhich underminesour trust that "ourspecies is biologicallyimmortal"(p. 118). JonathanSchell, The Fate of the Earth (New York:Avon, 1982). 21. In his discussionof repetitionin the classicalnovel, EdwardSaid arguesthat"Tobe novel is to be ... a figurenot repeatingwhat most men perforcerepeat,namely,the course of human life, father to son. . . . The novelistic character is ... conceived as a challenge to repetition." Edward Said, "On Repetition," in The Literature of Fact: Selected Papers from the

EnglishInstitute,ed. AngusFletcher(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1975),p. 145.


367

and,specifically,his interestin the historyof persecutionsof Jewsin Europe, incurstheirangerand disappointment. Arbel'sfatheris an archaeologist,obsessedwithexcavatingtheCanaanite past of the Landof Israel.He deploreshis son's refusalto follow the dictum "Truthshallspringout of theearth,"anddisapprovesof his son'sreverting"to the type of the Jewish scholar,steepedin books, expoundingtexts"(p. 62). Arbel's father'sobsession with the Canaaniteland and civilizationreflects the desire to forgethis own Europeanoriginsand, with them,the destroyed EuropeanJewishcivilization. Arbel's son, Yoav, whose name alludes to the biblical King David's ruthlessgeneral,is an armyofficerwho defendsIsraelwith greatdedication andpatriotism.He despises his father'spreoccupationwith "therabbis,"for whomhe hashada "fundamental, deep-seated,hostilityfromearlychildhood" to Jewish sufferingin the Diasporais the direct (p. 147). According Yoav, result of Jewish self-betrayal,that is, the inabilityor unwillingnessof the DiasporaJews to defendthemselves(p. 135). BothYoavandhis grandfather considerArbel'spreoccupation withJewish sufferingin the Diasporaa transgressionof the ideologicalprincipleof the "new IsraeliJew."While the grandfather"uncovers"the Canaanitepast in his archaeologicaldigs, the grandsonactualizesthe analogybetweenthe free and fearlessHebrewsettlementin the land of Canaanand the rebirthof the State of Israel. Both charactersdissociatefrom the two thousandyears of Jewish sufferingin the Diasporawhich culminatedin the destructionof the Holocaust.Their treatmentof the Diasporaas an historicalhiatusintends to erase the memory of Jewish impotence.The omission communicates the desire to bypass that segment of historywhich underminesthe Israeli self-imageas heroicmakerof Jewishhistory. Ironically,theinsistenceof the"newIsraelis"on theiroriginsin theheroic, preexilic period signals the weakness of self-deception.The archaeologist and the soldier deliberatelyreformulatethe historyof the Jewishpeople in accordancewith theirown needs andpurposes.Unlikehis son andhis father, who wouldrathernot face the issue, Arbel'slifelonginvolvementwithJewish historyin Europepointsto his preoccupationwith the vulnerabilityof Jewish existence. Arbel's involvementwith the chapterof Jewish powerlessness exacts the price of social exclusion. Arbel's deviation from the ideologically prescribedpatternsof social behaviorplaceshimin thelong line of Megged'snonconforming protagonists.

368


Indeed,Meggedhimselfstressesthecentralityof theoutsiderin his work."IfI wereto finda threadrunningthroughall my works,"he claimsin aninterview, "it would be the problemof the individualwho is marginalin society-in Israelisociety,naturally-and who will alwaysremainanoutsider(TheCase of the Idiot,Asahel, "HeinzandHis Son andthe Evil Spirit,""TheWizard," In Foiglman,Arbel'sadherenceto pastJewishweaknessand and others)."22 sufferingdetermineshis exclusionfromthe environmentwhichpromulgates obliterationof this chapterin Jewishhistory. As an historian,Arbelfocuses on the long historyof Jewishpersecution by researchingthe model of the Jewishtownof Zamosc,routinelydestroyed in the pogromsof ChmielnickiandPetlyura,andfinallyin the Holocaust.In his scholarlyinvestigationof the patternsof the perennialpersecutionof the Jews,Arbelreachesthe conclusionthattheregularitywithwhichthedisasters occurrules out the historical"alternative" (p. 83). The alternative,as Arbel writes,is the possibilityto speculateretrospectivelyas to "Whatwouldhave happenedif?" (p. 83). The notionof the alternativeunderscoresthe premise that history,as it unfolds, may shape itself into numerousnarratives.The outcomesof thesenarrativesareunforeseeableat the timeof theirhappening. This premise, however, does not apply to the history of the Jewish Diaspora,which, as Arbel sees it, is a "replicationof events, unlike the historyof otherpeoples"(p. 82). Invariably,the Diasporatells the storyof the cyclical patternof unavoidabledestruction.As a Jewishhistorian,therefore, Arbelknows in retrospectno morethanthe victimsof the disastrousevents knewat the time.The recurrenceof the tragicfateof thepreviousgenerations elucidatedfor each followinggenerationthe tragicoutcomeof its plight.The Jewish historianbecomes a chroniclerwho merelyregistersthe events, or as Arbel observes, "a 'natureresearcher,'a biologist-as historybecomes biology"(p. 84). Arbel, however,cannotremainan impassivechronicleror an objective scientistvis-a-vis the disastroushistoryof his people.Unlikehis fatherand his son, who dissociatethemselvesfromthe historyof Jewishvictimization, Arbelcannothelp identifyingwith the persecutedJews.He tells us thatwhen he conductshis research,"I feel as if I myself was there,in the 'towns of slaughter,'amongthose fleeingto the fort ... amongthosehuddlingtogether in the synagogue... amongthosehidingin the cellars"(p. 84). His empathic 22. Aharon Megged in interview with Anat Feinberg, Modern Hebrew Literature, Winter 1988, p. 48.


369

responseto the victim leads him into the landof the annihilated.It estranges him from the present as he becomes increasinglyreclusive.Seemingly a typical professorimmersedin his research,Arbel immerseshimself in the realityof the horrorthat he recreates.Eventually,he projectshimself as a victim. Arbel's insistenceon claimingthe terriblefate of his people as his own signals a dangerousproposition.By assimilatingthe victim's fate in the Diaspora,Arbel runsthe risk of a-historicizinghimself,as his identification with the collective, anonymousvictim endangershis identity.An excessive degree of empathywith the DiasporaJew threatensnot only to outdatehis functionas an historian;it also drawshim into the orbitof the anonymityof cyclical annihilation. Arbel cannotfail to see the dangerin his associationwith the Diaspora horror.At the sametime,he cannotassociatehimselfwiththefictionof Israeli Jews as descendantsof the Canaanites,a tendentiousmisreadingof history whichhas left Israelrootlessin termsof its heritageandnationalidentity.The viabilityof Israelas the centerof Jewishlife andculturein thepost-Holocaust era is predicatedupon the acknowledgmentof its affinitywith the Diaspora. The appearanceof Foiglman,a representativeof the deniedpast, indicates the possibilityto incorporatethe Diasporapast'sstoryinto Israel'sevolving storyandthus to revitalizeJewishhistoryon Israeliground. The opportunitythatemerges,as Arbelsees it, is thatof a Hebrew-Yiddish culturalsynthesis, wherebyFoiglman'simmersionin the Israelilandscape becomes an emblematicrepresentationof such a merger.Arbeldevelops a plan accordingto which Foiglmanwill continueto live in Paris,but will spendhalf a yearin Israel;he will continueto writein Yiddish,buthis poems will be translatedinto Hebrew and publishedin Israel. Arbel rationalizes his solution by stressing the importanceof the qualitativeratherthan the quantitativevalue of an historicalevent. He observesthat "It is the good deeds-few andfarbetweenthoughthey maybe-that needemphasizing,so thathope, like a little candle,will light up mankind'spath"(p. 152). Theculturalalliancepromisesthereconnectionof Israelwithits historical roots. On the one hand, in its Hebrew translation,Yiddishpoetry,as a representativeof the Yiddishheritage,can no longerremainignored.On the otherhand,the exposureof the Holocaustsurvivorto the vibrancyof Israeli life will integratethe Jewish victim into the Jewishhomeland.This cultural synthesissignifiesa daringattemptto changethe courseof history.Not only

370


will the vitalityof Yiddishpoetryin Israeldefy the Nazi FinalSolution,but the transplantation of the DiasporaheritageintoIsraeliculturewill terminate theviciouscycle of Jewishculturalandphysicaldestruction. HadArbel'splan of an alternativecourseof historyprovensuccessful,theannihilatedDiaspora heritagewould have been rebornin Israel'sconsciousness.Ironically,the preposterous"alternativeof the DeathRay"(p. 254) suggestedby Foiglman communicatesthe failure of Arbel's plan. Absolutelycertainthat Israel's enemies will destroy the Jewish state in the same way as the Germans exterminatedthe Jews of Europe, Foiglman proposes to invent a lethal weaponwhich will destroythe enemiesof Israel.Foiglman'sdoomsdayplan standsin oppositionto Arbel'sdesireto breakthe cyclicalpatternof Jewish history.This planis, in fact, a reiterationof the cycle of destructionanddeath whichhas informedthe historyof EuropeanJewry.Thehistoricalalternative offeredby Foiglmanamountsto the end of all history.His alternativethus constitutesa parodiccommentaryon Arbel'splan to infuse Jewishhistory with the hopefulalternativeof the unknown. Foiglman's expectationof anotherHolocaustmarks the unbridgeable gap between the DiasporaJew and the "new"Israel.It is not only Israel's reluctanceto acknowledgethe Diasporapast as its own that creates the distancefrom the Holocaustsurvivor.It is also the inabilityof the survivor, the productof the Diaspora,to accept, let alone to internalize,the "unJewish,"carefreeand secularIsraelilifestyle. Withregardto the victim of the Holocaust,Israelseems unableto generatethe hope of a new beginning; the lifestyle thatit offerscannotalleviatethe burdenof the past. Foiglmanis totallyimmersedin the memoryof his Holocaustexperience, whichhe constantlylives andrelivesthroughreminiscences,testimonies,and stories of the Holocaust.Thus, for instance,in the firstmeetingin Arbel's house Foiglmanconstantlyrefersto the Holocaust.The fact thatNora was bornin Munichbringsforththe storyof his unexpectedmeetingwithhis twin brotherat the Munichcathedralafterhe was liberatedfrom Majdanek(pp. 44-45). The fact that Arbel'sfatherwas bornin Riga makeshim reminisce aboutan editorof a Yiddishnewspaperin Rigawho "latercommittedsuicide in the Warsawghettoby drinkingpoison"(p. 45). Even Daumier'sdrawing of Rosinanteremindshim of "thedeath-trainin Don Quixote"(p. 47). Foiglman'sname,which connotesthe idea of a wanderingbird,signifies the intuitivereturnof the migrantto his nativeplace.Foiglman'sinabilityto leave Europe,the site of the Holocaust,signals the failureof the Diaspora


371

Jew to set himself free of the Holocaustnightmare,whosehauntingmemory eventuallydriveshim to madnessandcauseshis death.Death,which,as his brothersees it, "lurkedand stayedin wait for him-for both of us, all the time thatwe were there[in the deathcamp],"has finallycaughtup with him becauseof his failureto makeIsraelhis home (p. 13). At thesametime,Foiglman'sinabilityto detachhimselffromtheDiaspora andsettlein IsraelforegroundsIsrael'sinabilityto set itself freefromJewish history.In this sense, the inextricableroots of the Yiddishpoet in Europe reveal Israel'srootednessin the Diasporasoil. It is thereforenot surprising thatthe nightmareof the destructioncatchesup with the "new"Israeldespite its self-imposedoblivionof the Diaspora. Ironically,Israel'sindelibleroots in the Diasporaemergemostevidently in the characterof Arbel's wife and Foiglman'sfiercestantagonist,Nora. The characterization of Nora demonstratesthatwilled repressionof the past does not effect a transitionfromhistoricalcyclicityto historicalprogression. Despite her vehementdissociationfrom the past, Nora, like Foiglman,is trappedin a memorywhicheventuallydestroysher.Nora'sparents,GermanJewishrefugees,have neverrecoveredfromtheirenforcedflightfromNazi Germany.Traumatizedby her parents'lifelong unhappiness,hauntedby her childhoodmemoriesof Germany,Nora strugglesto repressher fear of helplessnessandhumiliation. Nora'sattitudetowardthe historyof Jewishsufferingis reflectedin her sheexamineswaysto destroy professionallife as a biologist.Inherlaboratory, pests and parasites.Her last experimentinvolves an attemptto eradicatethe Mediterraneanfruit fly by implantingit with a specimenof fungus which woulddestroyit. It is in "thesilentworld[of nature]in which... fiercebattles are raging"(p. 258), ineluctablydeterminedby the principleof the survival of the fittest,thatshe seeks to escapeweakness.Theempiricalmaterialwhich she can manipulateat will in her test tubes counteractsthe helplessnessof the Jews vis-a-vis the "biological"patternsof destructionwhichdetermined theirhistoryin the Diaspora. Not surprisingly,Nora findsthe presenceof Foiglmanunacceptable.His experienceconfrontsherwiththerealityof theJewas the"leastfit"to survive. Foiglman'semergencefromthe shadowof the HolocaustunderminesNora's hard-wonrepressionof her past. Her subsequentescape into Israelinature and her affairwith a young Israeli,"a real natureman"(p. 192), to whom she introducesherselfas "Nurit,"bothan Israelifloweranda typicallyIsraeli

372


female name, do not provide relief. In the end, her recurringdreams,in which she loses her identityand her mind, searchingin vain for her house in "an ancientGermancity" (p. 120), the dreamsin which she screamsin German(p. 137), become too powerfulto repress.Nora'ssuicide amounts to an admissionof failureto free herselffromthe past.Her last will "to be buriednext to my fatherand my mother"(p. 4) conveyshersense of affinity with the heritageof humiliationand powerlessness.Thus, in the end, Nora becomespartof the cyclical modeof destructionof Jewishhistorywhichshe has been denyingfor so long. BothFoiglmanandNoradie beforetheycanproceedwiththeactualization of their projects.While Foiglman'splanned"DeathRay" remainson the fruit pages of his journal,Nora's experimentationwith the Mediterranean fly remainsconfinedto the test tube.The silence whichenvelopstheirfinal projectsconstitutesa tragiccommentaryon the Jewishvictim'sinabilityto breakaway from an unavoidablytragicend. In the last entryin his journal, Foiglmanceases to see himselfas a poetand,in his madness,pictureshimself as an emblemof the approachingapocalypse:"Ishallbe a blackraven,flying aroundthe world shouting:ConfoundSatan!"(p. 254). The unsignednote andthe unfinishedexperimentare all thatNoraleavesbehindher. The deathsof NoraandFoiglmanhighlightthe historian'sfailureto shift the courseof historyonto the pathof open-endedprogression.In this sense, the novel tells the storyof the demiseof thehistorian.Arbelendsup engulfed in the cycles of destructionwhich precludeany furtherstudy of history.A patheticfigure,devastatedby his losses, he embodieshis own view of the Jewish fate, emergingtotally powerlessvis-a-vis the forces of destruction thathave claimedhis loved ones. Himselfan "a-historian" now,he wanders in cemeteries,contemplatingdeathsthathe failedto prevent.The storyends showingArbelobservinghelplesslyhow in the decomposingbodies"history [is] transformedinto nature"(p. 261). In termsof Arbel'sreadingof Jewish history'smasternarratives,his own storyprovidesone moreexampleof this history'sinherentelementof destruction.In the aftermathof the Holocaust, the history of persecutionstill claims its victims, even amongthose who, like Arbel,were not there,but have attemptedto contendwith its patternof suffering. Whilethe plot ends on the note of despairanddeath,however,it does not fully coincidewith the messageconveyedby the form.As mentionedearlier, the genre of fictionalautobiographyis of particularimportance;it suggests


373

thatthe demiseof the historianhas generatedthe birthof the autobiographer. Throughthe story which tells of his "death"as an historian,Arbel asserts himself as a subject.In his explanationof why he has decidedto write his own story,Arbel says thathe has neverwrittena diary,because dealingin history... makesone humblein its presence,reducedto a miniscule grainof sand. .... My studyresembleda chamberat the top of a watchtower from which I looked out, into the expanseof time, throughtransparent glass which does not reflectone's image. Suddenlyyou are hit on the head;death has penetratedyourwell-protectedchamber,andyou heara voice commanding

you:Lookinside,man;examineyourways!

(p.32) This depictionof the genesis of his autobiography, especiallyin terms of its poetic rhetoric,indicatesa shift fromthe historian'sorientationto the perspectiveof a writer.The emphasison events which he used to observe and interpretin his capacityof historiangives way to an emphasison his inner,unique self. As an historian,Arbel ignoredthe spiritualimportance of the arts:"I distancedmyself from those springsof life, fromthe arts,of which poetry-more sublime than even history,as Aristotlemaintained,is one" (p. 28). It is throughthe rediscoveryof the powerof artthatthe inner self can be explored.Indeed,the poetic languageof Arbel'sself-description, wherebyhe sees himself alternatelyas "a minusculegrainof sand"and in an elevated position on a watchtower,attests to his growingpoetic skill. the rhetoricof the metaphorof the undevelopedself-awareness Furthermore, as "transparent glass,"the personificationof death,andthe dramaticsof the mode articulatethe speaker'squest for self-knowledge.Rather imperative than the historicaldeterminismof the cycles of death,Arbel'simaginative languagepointsto his awakeningvitality.Engagementin an artisticdiscourse signifiesthe rediscoveryof "thearts"as the "springsof life" (p. 28). Arbel's critical assessmentof himself as an historian,relatedfrom his new stanceas an autobiographer, revealsa considerablemeasureof insight. Arbel understandsthathis historicalstudy provided As an autobiographer, a rationalizationfor self-effacementwhich excused him from the painful obligationof self-examination.The preoccupationwith scholarship,which induceda self-projectionfromthe safetyof his "watchtower" intothe anonymous crowds of persecutedJews, createda distancefrom contemporaries. His passionate"love affair"with history(p. 39) reducedhim to "a grainof

374

FELDHAY BRENNER RACHEL

sand,"andat the same time, paradoxically,instilledthe hubristicambitionto masterhistoryby alteringits patterns. The deathsof NoraandFoiglmanchangeArbel'sworldview.The loss of his dearestpeoplepersonalizesthe notionof collectivesuffering,a realization whichenforcesthe self-perceptionof an accountableindividual.The growing self-awarenesstransformsthe historianinto an artist. when he argues GeorgesGusdorfhelps to elucidatethis transformation "theartistandthe modelcoincide,the historiantackles thatin autobiography, himself as object."23Autobiographyis a story groundedin factuality.The is, therefore,an historianwhoseidiosyncraticrhetoricdefines autobiographer him as an artist.The problematicof the historianas a storytelleremergesin the novel itself. Arbelis consciousof theextentof fictionalityin his historical writing: WhenI examinethe materialI havecollectedfor my research... knowing thatin orderto createa coherent pictureof life in a certainperiod,I willhave to arbitrarily selectfacts,thereis a questiongnawingin my mind:Isn'tthis kindof historical froma writinga formof fiction?InwhatwayamI different novelistwho,justlikeme,drawshismaterial fromreality,butoutof it creates a fictionalpicture? (p. 153) The proximityof history to fiction raises issues concerningthe intentionality of the novel's genre of fictional autobiography.Why does the author'srepresentationof his narratortake the form of historianturned If autobiographyis, in fact, an historicalaccount,and if an autobiographer? historicalaccountis, as Arbelobserves,"aformof fiction,"in whatway does narrativedifferfromany otherhistoricaltextthathe has his autobiographical so far? composed which invokes,yet does The borderlinecase of fictionalautobiography, notfit,the genericdefinitionof eitherautobiography or third-person narrative, seems to suggest that truthin narrativemay not be soughtat the level of eitherfact or fiction.Arbel'stransformation fromhistorianto autobiographer indicatesthatit is the processof becomingcapableof presentingone's life in one's specific mode that leaves us with the truthof the individualas yet "subject."This subjectrepresentsan I, whichis uniqueandunrepeatable, inAutobiography: 23. GeorgesGusdorf,"ConditionsandLimitsof Autobiography," Essays Theoreticaland Critical,ed. JamesOlney(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,1980),p. 31.


375

connected,throughthe discourseit engagagesin, with the rest of humanity and,especially,with the readerof the text. Arbel's autobiographicalconfrontationwith his own historyproclaims the possibility of exploding the notion of the individual'sanonymityin endless historicalcycles. In contrastwith Foiglman'sand Nora's stories, whichbespeakthe dead end of the incoherenceof madnessfollowedby the silence of death,Arbel opts for the art of self-articulation as the restorative processtowardsanityandlife. His storyaddressedto the readerdeconstructs the historian'sfantasyof the watchtower'sisolationandreconnectshim with humanity. Remarkably,the self-consciousnessthat he gains as an autobiographer seems to rectify Arbel'sfailureas an historian.His realizationof the power of creativityenables him to understandthat the possibilityof reconnecting Jewishpastandpresentlies in a sophisticatedconfluenceof factualityandart. At the sametime,his self-analysisleadshimto a recognitionof thenarcissistic aloofnesswhich has separatedhim fromothers.The abilityto realizethathe is but a link in the generationsof studentsand scholarsof historypresents him with a spiritualheiress,his last loyal student,GitaJacobovitz. As Arbel's disciple, Gita first follows in her mentor'sfootsteps and eventuallytakes over, enthusiasticallysuggestingart as a way to impress the integralityof the JewishheritageuponIsraeliculture.Havingrecognized the importanceof art, Arbel also recognizes his limitationsas an artist. As he admits to Gita, "I can't invent imaginarythings" (p. 237). His autobiographical writing,however,has taughthim the importanceof creative imagination.This realizationallows him to encourageGita to writea novel which will demonstratethe historicalconnectednessof the Diasporaand Zionism. "theindependentenvironment WolfgangIserwritesthatin autobiography of manis regardedas havingthe sole functionof actualizingthe potentialof the character."24 In Megged's Foiglman,and, as mentionedbefore,in many otherof his works,it is the abilityto interactmeaningfullywith the human environmentthatis essentialfor the character'sself-actualization. Having liberatedhimself from his watchtower,Arbel is capableof respondingpositively to Gita,and his responsepromisesto restorethe broken links with the past. In the sense of reconnectionwith the past, Gita's own 24. Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns in Communicationin Prose: Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 126.

376


life story seems of particularimportance.She is a newcomerto Israel.Her parentscame from Kishinev,the infamoussite of terriblepogromsagainst Jews; they spent the war in the camps in Transnistriaand then moved to Romania.Unlike Nora or Foiglman,Gita does not seem incapacitatedby her family's historicalburdenof suffering.Her successfulintegrationinto the Israelilandscapeas a universitystudent,combinedwith her interestin Jewishhistory,atteststo the possibilityof interconnection betweenthe Israeli presentand the Diasporapast. Such a possibility emerges in Gita's intentionto explore the affinity betweenthe Bundistand Zionistmovementsthroughart.Gitaplansa novel which will featureVladimirMedem,the Bundistleader,andTheodorHerzl, the founderof modemZionism,as protagonists.The novel will focus on the biographicalsimilaritiesof these two assimilatedJews, who bothrecognized the perpetuityof Jewish persecutionand set out, each in his own way, to implement a solution to the terriblecycle of Jewish suffering. Gita enthusiasticallyundertakingto writethe historicalnovel standsin contrastto anotherof Megged's protagonist-writers, Jonasin Ha-hayal ha-met("The on the Here the intended Dead"). Living biographyof one of Israel'sfounding fathersproducesresistancemanifestedin an inabilityto writethe story.Gita, on the otherhand,feels inspiredby the subjectsof her biographicalnovel. The search for models for the Israeli identityshould, so it seems, extend beyond the historyof the state and of the Yishuv.Throughan imaginative compositionof historicalmaterials,she will attemptto impressupon Israeli readersthe extentto whichtheiridentityis predicateduponthe historyof the Diaspora. In FoiglmanMegged presentsus with an autobiographical novel which a of a The novel. text of promises sequel biographical Foiglmanthusseems to call for continuingartisticeffortsto bridgeover the historicalgap of the denialof the Diaspora.The recourseto artisticsolutionswhichemergesin the novel signals an active and creativesearchfor ways to mendthe intentional oblivionof the past.The inconclusivenessof the story,whichtells of another story yet to be written,highlightsthe importanceof the artisticquest as a redemptiveprocess. Artistic quest implies the hope of renewal,while the originalityof artcontradictsthe notionof anonymity. of a realitywhichsignals Megged'snovel offersa mimeticrepresentation new,unconventionalsolutions.The authoruses thefamiliarin orderto seduce us into a considerationof an imaginativedeviationfrompopularpatternsof


377

thinking.In this sense, he createsin Foiglmana fictionalworldwhichmakes us both recall and respondto the forgottenworldof the Diasporaand thus, throughour imagination,redeem it from oblivion. The awarenessof the nation'spast restoresmemoryto the consciousnessof the present,memory whichno longercan be separatedfromthe narrativeof historicalprogression into the future. of WisconsinUniversity Madison Madison,Wis.

Review: The Barcelona Disputation Author(s): David Berger Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 379-388 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486823 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



REVIEW ESSAY THE BARCELONA DISPUTATION by DAVIDBERGER

RobertChazan.Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputationof 1263 and Its Aftermath.Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1992, x, 257 pp. In many respects, Robert Chazan's new book on the disputationof 1263 between Nahmanidesand Friar Paul Christianis an excellent and debateabout very importantcontributionto the century-oldhistoriographical one of the most famous events in medievalJewish history.The Barcelona disputation,where FriarPaul unveileda relativelynew approachappealing to talmudicsourcesas evidencefor the truthof Christianity, was manifestlya momentof high drama,so significantandso thoroughlyinvestigatedthatwe mightbe pardoneda certainskepticismaboutthe abilityof any scholarto say somethingnew aboutit. To a significantdegree,Chazanhas overcomethis obstacleby providingan overviewof the event thatforcesus to look at the largepicturefortifiedwith a healthyinfusionof commonsense. At the same time, partof the analysis seems to me to standin tensionwith itself, and I am inclinedto utilize some of the evidence thatChazanpresentsso lucidly to reacha conclusiondifferentfromhis. The book begins with a vigorous and persuasiveargumentagainstthe widespread,naturalinclinationto seek clear winnersand losers througha close analysisof the partisanrecordsof such disputations.The apt analogy to presidentialdebatesdrives home the point thatpeople who see the same event will often perceive the resultsquite differentlydependingupon their AJSReview20/2 (1995):379-388

379

380

DAVIDBERGER

ideological orientation(p. 14).' Even more important,Chazanshows how most of the significantdiscrepanciesbetweenthe LatinandHebrewversions of the disputationcan be accountedfor as differentperceptionsof the same discussionratherthan as purposefuldistortionsor outrightlies. While the argumenthere is not entirely new, Chazan'sanalysis is more systematic than that of his predecessors;he evinces greatersympathyfor the Latin accountthanIsidoreLoeb or YitzhakBaerwhileat the sametimereinforcing Loeb's argumentthatthis accountrarelymakesfactualassertionsthatflatly contradictNahmanides'narrative.In this crucialrespect,the book makesa majorcontribution. bothversionsas essentiallyhonest,though Despitehis effortto understand tendentious Chazan cannot avoida confrontation withthe issue works, highly of purposefuldistortionor lying, andherehe evincesconsiderablediscomfort. On the one hand, he writes that "the royal seal [on the Latin document], ... Nahmanides'generalstature,.. . and above all else, the publicnature of the event . . . make ... out-and-outlying unthinkable"(p. 14). On the followingpage,however,he affirmsthatthematteris notso simple.TheLatin version'sdepictionof Nahmanides'confusionand the latter'sdescriptionof his confidentattackson Christianityare "embellishment and exaggeration" of a sortthat"donot seem to me to warrantthe accusationof lying.If readers preferthatlabel to embellishmentandexaggeration,so be it." The problemhere is not semanticalone. It goes to the heartof Chazan's vision of the disputation.He explicitlyavoids the term"lie,"partlybecause of the analyticaldifficultiesthat it would cause him, and partly,I suspect, becausehe is sucha quintessentialgentleman.Butthebrutefactis thatChazan maintainsunequivocallythat Nahmanideslied about a truly fundamental aspect of the proceedings.At several importantmomentsin the Hebrew account, Nahmanidesinforms us that he succeeded in presentingcertain standardJewish criticismsof Christianbelief, sometimesin sharplanguage. Chazanregardsthis as virtuallyimpossiblefor two reasonsthatwe woulddo well to examine. The firstof these is the commonsenseobservation,alreadynotedto some degree by Baer, that it is highly implausiblethat Nahmanidescould have spokenin a public forumaboutthe utterirrationalityof the incarnation,the 1. As Chazannotes (p. 7), the basic observationwas madeby IsidoreLoeb in his classic article,"LaControversede 1263 A BarceloneentrePaulusChristianiet Moiseben Nahman," Revuedes EtudesJuives 15 (1887):2.

THE BARCELONADISPUTATION

381

militarismof the Spanish Christianstate, the Messiah'sfuturedestruction of Rome, or the curses to befall Christians.Nahmanidesreports-and a Christiandocumentconfirms-that he was grantedfreedomof speech,buthe also reportsthat he gave assurancesof his "goodsense to speakproperly." No grantof free speechcouldhaveextendedthisfar (pp.48-49, 94-97, 138). The second reasongoes to one of Chazan'smost importantinsights.He arguesquite correctlythatthe use of the Talmudto demonstratethe truthof Christianityprovideda structureto the debatebetweenJews and Christians in whichthe Christianside couldnot lose. In an exchangeaboutan allegedly Christologicalverse in the Bible, a Jew mightbe ableto reversethe argument if, however, by showingthatthe revealedtext in fact contradictsChristianity; the text is talmudic,it has no authorityfor Christians,so thatthe Jew can do nothingmorethanneutralizethe citationby showingthatit does not support Christiandoctrine."To have developed such a potent new techniqueand then let it be readily contravenedby the Jewish protagonistfurtherstrains credulity"(p. 50, and cf. p. 138). Indeed,adds Chazan,evidencefrom the laterTortosadisputationclearlydemonstratesthatChristiansapplyingFriar Paul's approachpreventedJews from raisingissues that could disturbthis one-sidedstructure(pp. 53-54). Chazan'sstructuralinsight,then,impelshim to affirmthe very strong position that even had Nahmanidesspokenwith consummatepolitenessand extremediffidence,he could not have presented a substantialpercentageof the argumentsthathe reports. Neitherof these pointscan be dismissedeasily.Nonetheless,the second strikes me as a case of anachronisticallyimposing the Tortosamodel on Barcelona, and both must confront a monumentalproblemthat Chazan toucheslightlybut fails to give its due. As Chazanindicates,indeedemphasizes,thedisputationatBarcelonawas a pioneeringexperiment.I have arguedelsewherethatmanyJewish-Christian debates of an informal sort had taken place over the generationsin an atmosphereof relativelyfree repartee.2It should not be takenfor granted thatthirteenth-century friarscould snaptheirfingersand changethe ground rules abruptlyand with total, immediatesuccess to one of ironcladcontrol over the Jewishparticipant.The ultimateauthorityduringthe debatewas not 2. D. Berger,"Missionto theJewsandJewish-Christian Contactsin thePolemicalLiterature of the High MiddleAges,"AmericanHistoricalReview91 (1986): 576-591. To be sure,the strongestevidencecomes fromNorthernEurope,but thereis enoughfromthe Southto sustain the point.

382

DAVIDBERGER

the clerics who had constructedthe new approach,but the king of Aragon. The king was obviously on the Christianside; nonethelesshe may have enjoyedthe spectacleof intellectualjousting,whichwouldhave beenruined by the ruthlesslyconsistentsuppressionof everynew pointthatNahmanides it is, I think,more wantedto raise.Not only is this scenarionot unreasonable; plausiblethanChazan'salternative.Amongmanyotherthings,Tortosawas a resultof lessons learnedat Barcelona. There is, of course, no doubt that Nahmanidesworkedunder severe restraints,andhe informsus morethanonce of initiativesthatwerethwarted by uneven ground rules. It is self-evident,however,that he would have attemptedto broadenthe focus of the debate,and there is little reasonto believe that at this point in historyevery such foray was doomedto abject failure.It seems to me thatthe picturehe presentsof occasionaltoleranceand occasionalrepressionis more thancredible;it is preciselywhatwe should relationship. expectat this transitionalpointin the medievalJewish-Christian Weareleft withthe sharpformulationsandmoderatelylengthyexcursuses that Nahmanidesreports,and there is no questionthat these must give us pause. At the same time, we must keep in mind that a remarkcan look much sharperon paperthan in an oral exchange,where its impactcan be mitigatedby a disarmingsmile, a shrug, a softness in tone, particularly if the partieshave a cordialrelationship,for which thereis some external evidence in the case of Nahmanidesand the king. More important,our instinctiveskepticismmustbe set againsta powerfulargumentfor at leastthe approximateaccuracyof these assertions.Nahmanidesprobablywrote his accountafterthe disseminationof the Latinsummary.He certainlyknewthat it would be subjectedto microscopicscrutinyin an attemptto discreditit. He also knew thatJamesI would surelybe informedof any false assertions thataudaciousand arguablydisrespectfulstatementshadbeen articulatedin the royal presenceand in two of the crucialinstances(aboutmilitarismand the incarnation)addresseddirectlyto him. We are,in short,beingtold thatit is hardto imaginethatNahmanidescould have said these thingsin the heat of a debatebecausehe had promisedto speakproperlyandbecausehe knew he would be stopped,but it is perfectlyimaginablethathe would have lied aboutsaying them in a carefullycomposeddocumentthatwould surelybe shownto the king. The core of this point was made alreadyby Loeb. "The friars,"he wrote, "couldhave said and writtenwhateverthey wantedwith impunity.

THEBARCELONA DISPUTATION

383

Nahmanideswould have exposed himself to gravedangershad he inserted inexactitudesor lies into his account.He would not have daredto do it."3In Baer'scritiqueof the disputation,he ignoredthispointentirely.4Chazandoes raise the argumentand replies as follows: "The only answerI can supply is thatNahmanideswas deeply convincedof the need for such a workand retainedsome confidencein the capacityof Jewishleverageto protecthim,as it eventuallydid"(p. 98). He goes on to saythatthe silenceof thosewhoheard Nahmanides'allegedremarkswouldbe moreproblematicthanthis difficulty (p. 98, and cf. p. 138). By "silence"he presumablymeans failure to cut off such statementswith ruthlessefficiency,since the absenceof a recorded objectionat a particularpoint in Nahmanides'narrativedoes not necessarily meanthattherewas none. Moreover,in a passagethatChazandoes his best to explainaway at a differentpointin his analysis(pp. 75-77), Nahmanides informsus thataftera day whichendedwithone of his aggressivecomments, he beganthe next morning'sproceedingsby askingthatthe debatebe ended becauseJews were fearfuland Christians,includingone whomhe identifies for himto speakagainsttheir by name,had told him thatit was inappropriate faithin theirpresence.5 Chazanis clearly uncomfortablewith his reply, and the force of the questionis even morepowerfulthanhe indicates.A royaldocumentof 1265 reveals that Nahmanidescame underattackfor "vituperation" againstthe Catholicfaith in whathe said at the disputationas well as in whathe wrote. This assertionin itself creates intractableproblemsfor Chazan'sposition, despite his plausible conclusion in light of a papal letter that it was the writtenwork "thatset in motion the cycle of prosecution"(p. 98). Whatis particularlytelling is that Nahmanidesdefendedhimselfby pointingto the 3. Loeb, "LaControverse," p. 7. 4. Y.Baer,"Le-Bikkoretha-Vikkuhim shel R. Yehielmi-Parisve-R.MoshehbenNahman," Tarbiz2 (1930-31): 172-187. 5. KitveiRamban,ed. C. D. Chavel(Jerusalem,1963),p. 312. Elsewhere(p. 97), Chazan arguesthatthe failureof the Latinaccountto takeNahmanidesto task for his "blasphemies" if he hadreallyspokenas he says.I do notfindthissilencetroubling.The wouldbe "unthinkable" Latinversionis verybriefandinterestedprimarilyin highlightingNahmanides'ineffectiveness; Moreover,the fact that emphasizinghis aggressivenesswould have been counterproductive. the king had allowed these statementswould have madethe chargeof blasphemyextremely difficultto level froma politicalstandpoint.It was the publicationof the book,whichthe king hadneverpermitted,thatmadethe attackon Nahmanidespoliticallyfeasible.It shouldalso be keptin mindthatfor all his sharpcomments,Nahmanidesneverclaimsto havesaid a negative wordaboutJesus.

384

DAVIDBERGER

freedomof speech grantedhim by the king at the disputation,a defensethat is clearly intendedto apply to the writtenwork as well. If we accept the statementshad neverbeen madeorally,this positionthat the "vituperative" defenseestablishesa standardfor chutzpahthatmay even eclipse thatof the proverbialparricidewho askedthe judge for clemencyas an orphan."After all," said Nahmanidesto the king, "you grantedme freedomof expression at the disputation.Since I ascribedmy vituperativestatementsin the written work to the oral disputation,the grantof free speech appliesto them.The fact thatthis ascriptionhappensto be false is entirelyirrelevant." And even this is not the end of it. No one has ever suggested that the judge accepted the young murderer'sargument.In our case, James I resistedthe demandsof the Churchfor draconianpunishmentandproposed mildermeasuresthanthe ecclesiasticalauthoritieswerewillingto accept.His reason?"We are certainthat the said permissionwas given to him at that time by us and by FriarR[aymund]of Penyafort"("cumnobis certumsit, dictam licentiama nobis et fratreR. de Pennafortisibi tunc temporisfore Evenif we recognizethe roleof largerpolicyconcernsin the king's datam").6 this scenariodoes morethanstraincredulity;it skirtsthe edges of position, the inconceivable.7 There is some uncertaintyas to whetheror not the book mentioned in this document,a book which was presentedto the bishop of Gerona and allegedly writtenat his request,is the same as our Hebrewnarrative. Chazan'sposition appearsto be that the book given to the bishop could not have been the Hebrewdisputationbut thatit was thatdisputationwhich was underattack.I do not understandhow this positioncan be reconciled with the royal document,which assertswith absoluteclaritythatthe book containingthe alleged vituperationwas given to the bishop;at the same time, it is easy to understandthe dilemmawhich forced Chazaninto this uncomfortablestance. On his assumptionthatNahmanidescould have said arise: virtuallynothingoffensiveatthe disputation,thefollowingconundrums 6. Heinrich Denifle, "Quellen zur Disputation Pablos Christiani mit Mose Nachmani zu Barcelona 1263," Historisches Jahrbuch des Girres-Gesellschaft 8 (1887): 239. 7. Even Martin Cohen's theory of collusion between Nahmanides and the king would not provide an adequate explanation. For this conspiracy theory, which Chazan rightly rejects, see Cohen's "Reflections on the Text and Context of the Disputation of Barcelona," Hebrew Union College Annual 35 (1964): 157-192. (Cohen's close reading of the Hebrew version as a sustained account of Nahmanides' public humiliation at Barcelona is remarkable,if unsettling, testimony to the awesome powers of human ingenuity.)


385

If the book representedthe disputationmoreor less faithfully,it wouldhave been almost impossible to label it vituperativewith any credibility.If the Hebrewnarrativeexistedin 1265 alongsidesucha faithfulreport,it is bizarre indeedthatthe latterratherthanthe formershouldhave been prosecuted.If the Hebrewnarrativedid not exist at thattime,how canwe imaginethatafter a terrifyingbrushwith severe punishmentfor writingan accurateaccount, Nahmanideswould proceedto write a much different,far moreaggressive, distortednarrative?If, on the other hand, this book was anythinglike the Hebrewwork in our possession, Chazancannotimaginethat Nahmanides would have given it to the bishop;moreover,the claim that the book was coveredby the grantof free speechwouldbe quiteincomprehensible. I am inclinedto regardthis book as very close to the Hebrewdisputation thoughprobablynot quite identicalwith it.8 Whatremainscrystalclear is thatNahmanideswrotea book with arguablyvituperativestatementsagainst thathe defendedit on the groundsthatthesestatementshadbeen Christianity, made at the disputation,wherehe had been grantedfreedomof expression, andthatJamesI endorsedthis defense. In general,Nahmanides'accounthas been confirmedby Christiandocumentationto a degree that we would hardlyhave had the rightto expect. The Latinversion,completewith its royal seal, says thatNahmanidesended the disputationby slipping out of town in the king's absence, while the Hebrewtext speaks of a friendlyleave-takingat which the king gave the rabbithreehundreddinarim,a paymentwhich is mentionedin a laterroyal document.Recordsthatpredatethedisputationimplytheexistenceof the sort of positiverelationshipbetweenthe royalcourtandtherabbiof Geronawhich emerges from Nahmanides'account.Perhapsmost significantof all is the confirmationof the grantof free speech.WhilereadingChazan'sanalysisof the ironcontrolexercisedby the Christianside andparticularly his argument aboutthe implausibilityof Nahmanides'assertionthathe playedsome role in formulatingthe agenda,I began to imaginethe scholarlyreactionto the rabbi'sclaimto a grantof freeexpressionhadwe notpossessedtheconfirming evidence.

8. This is more or less Baer's formulation in Toledot ha-Yehudimn bi-Sefarad ha-Noserit (Tel Aviv, 1959), p. 93. I assume, for example, that the very sharp introductory paragraph of our Hebrew text, which does not represent anything that Nahmanides said at the disputation, was omitted from the copy prepared for the bishop of Gerona.

386

DAVIDBERGER

Nahmanides,we would have been told, neededto establisha framework in which his blatantlyproblematicassertionsthat he criticized Christian beliefs so vigorouslyand publicly would appearcredible.He consequently constructedan exchangein which he extracteda promisethathe wouldbe allowed to speak freely. Given the new techniqueintroducedby FriarPaul andhis ecclesiasticalretainersand surelyenforcedby theirroyalsponsor,it is unthinkablethatsuch a dangerouspromisecouldactuallyhavebeen made. Could Besides,whatleveragedidNahmanideshaveto elicitsucha guarantee? he have threatenedto go home if the king did not acquiesce?Despite its cleverness,then,this is a transparent ploy whichpresentsone of Nahmanides' least credibleclaims. Yet the claim is indisputablytrue. None of this means that Nahmanides'oral formulationsmightnot have been somewhatmilderthanhis writtenversion(oreven thatthebookreferred to in the royal documentmightnot have been a bit milderthanour Hebrew text); it means only that he could not have writtensomethingat any stage thathe could not have defendedas a moreor less accuratedepictionof what he had said. Needless to say, I am not arguingthatthe Hebrewaccountis anythingresemblinga stenographicrecord.On the contrary,Chazanis surely correctin his observationthat"evena cursorylook at the textindicatesthatit cannotbe viewed as a thoroughaccountof the confrontation. Thenarrativeis fartoo shortfor that;thereportageon theChristianthrustsis fartoo restricted; the unfoldingof events is far too neat.The Nahmanidean narrativeis clearly a carefullycraftedrecordaimed at creatinga certainset of impressionsin the mindsof its readers"(pp. 102-103). It is indeedhighlyunlikelythatthe unmediatedimpressionmade by the disputationitself even upon Jews was the smashing,devastatingvictorythatthe readerof the Hebrewaccountsees, but Nahmanides'work createsits own impressionnot by the inventionof argumentsbutby emphasis,allocationof space,rhetoricalflourishes,partisan and the inevitableclarification,improvement,andelaboration interpretation, with the written formulationof an oral exchangeby a highly that come interestedparticipant. Chazandevotes an entire chapterto the narrativeart of Nahmanides' account.I do not believe that his discussionof the work's"verisimilitude" grantssufficientrecognitionto the role that verity can play in producing verisimilitude,andwhereChazansees inventionI see skillfuluseof emphasis, and narration.But I see this largelythanksto Chazan,and characterization,


387

I feel very uncomfortablein leveling even a minor criticismagainstthis marvelouschapter.It is brimmingwith literarysensitivity,and it enables us to understandthe impactthat this little work has made upon its readers throughoutthe generations.One of my clearestteenagememoriesis reading the Vikkuahha-Rambanfor the first time, and I am gratefulto Chazanfor of why I reactedas I did. giving me a betterunderstanding There is much more to be said aboutthe issues raisedin this book, but this is not the forum to discuss them in detail. Chazandevotes chaptersto the authorityof rabbinicaggadah,to Nahmanides'brief workon Isaiah53, andto his moreimportantbook on the redemption,Seferha-Ge'ullah.On the firstissue, a carefulstudy of Nahmanides'treatmentof aggadotthroughout his oeuvre remainsa desideratum.9 On Sefer ha-Ge'ullah,Chazanmakes a numberof valuableobservations;still, I wouldnot fully endorsethe assertion that "the same Nahmanideswho was so conservativeand secretive with respectto kabbalisticteachingswas explosivelyoriginalandopenwithrespect to equallydangerousmessianicspeculations"(p. 186). Seferha-Ge'ullahis indeed an innovative,importantwork, but it presentsa messianicdate that is safely in the futureand reflectsthe author'sconservatismin otherways as well. I think that Chazanis quite correctin emphasizingNahmanides' convictionthat the times demandedsuch a work, and this convictionitself tells us somethingimportantabout the insecuritiesof SpanishJews at the time of Nahmanides'impressiveachievementat Barcelona. And it was an impressiveachievement.Nearthe beginningof his study, Chazanpointsto the dangerof Jewishor Christianpartisanship thatcanaffect the study of the disputationand pledges his best effortsto avoid it. I have alreadyconfessed to a teenagecrushon Nahmanides'narrative,and I write this review with full awarenessthatI could standaccusedof both bias and credulousness.I will confess furtherthatmy regardfor Nahmanides'moral staturepreventsme from lightly dismissinghis summarystatement,which the structureof his work did not force him to make:"Thisis the substance of all the debates.In my opinion,I have changednothingin them."'"Chazan 9. Bernard Septimus's very brief discussion, to which Chazan makes frequent reference, is still the best treatment of this question; see his "'Open Rebuke and Concealed Love': Nahmanides and the Andalusian Tradition," in Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity,ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 20-22. 10. Kitvei Ramban, p. 319. A fair reading of this assertion is, I think, quite consistent with the sorts of changes that I believe Nahmanides did make.

388

DAVIDBERGER

himself, as we have seen, does take accountof "Nahmanides'stature"in a relatedcontext,and this is no less a legitimatehistoricalconsiderationthan theprobabilitiesof royalor ecclesiasticaldispleasureat a particular argument. The questfor objectivitymay sometimescompelus to bravethe appearance of bias, and the critical searchfor truthcan occasionallydrive us into the armsof the credulous. This is an admirablestudy-careful, learned,sensitive,and insightful. Much of it I can unreservedlyendorse. Even where I disagree with a fundamentalpartof the thesis, one of Chazan'sargumentsfor the positionI of the rejectturnsout to be a significantcontributionto our understanding structural impactof FriarPaul'suse of theTalmud.Nahmanides'performance in Barcelonawas farmoreforceful,wide-ranging,andeffectivethanthisbook is preparedto acknowledge,and yet Chazanhas providedus the tools for a moresophisticatedappreciationof thatvery achievement. School BrooklynCollegeandtheGraduate of NewYork CityUniversity NewYork,N.Y.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Daniel Grossberg Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 389-391 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486824 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS Mordechai Cogan. Obadiah: Introduction and Commentary. Uriel Simon. Jonah: Introduction and Commentary.Miqra' le-Yisra'el. Jerusalem:Magnes Press, 1993. xi, 96 pp. (Hebrew) These two works appear under one cover in the new series, Miqra' leYisra'el, edited by Moshe Greenberg and Shmuel Ahituv. The series carries the subtitle Perus' Mada'i La-Miqrd', "A Scientific Bible Commentary." Indeed, each of the studies under review here is both a Bible commentary for Israel and a scientific Bible commentary. The Hebrew in the "Bible Commentary for Israel" is modern, clear, and to the point, thus making the latest Scripture scholarship accessible to the Hebrew-reading public in a pleasing form. Simon's language and style, moreover, are even rich and elegant. The mada'i, or "scientific," designation in the subtitle is an apt one, in that the approach is a critical investigation of the classical biblical literature. Neither work in the volume under review is merely a textual and historical study, although both investigators do address these exegetical aspects to the degree that their respective books allow. For example, beyond the name "Obadiah"in the superscription to the book so designated, the Bible provides no details regarding the identity and time of the prophet. This has given rise to many theories. Mordechai Cogan succinctly presents an historical review of the various identifications of the prophet and his time. Cogan begins with the Talmud's equation of the prophet with the Obadiah who was over the palace during the reign of Ahab (b. Sanh. 39b): "Rabbi Isaac said, 'Why did Obadiah merit the gift of prophecy? Because he hid one hundredprophets in the cave' " (cf. 1 Kgs 18:4). There is, however, no basis for this identification in the words of the prophet himself. Cogan then cites several Jewish and Gentile views propounded in the course of time up to the present. Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (12th cent.), for example, wrote, "We do not know his [Obadiah's] generation, and we cannot say that he is the one mentioned in

389

390

BOOK REVIEWS

Kings." Rabbi David Qimhi (13th cent.) held: "This prophecy was [uttered] in the time of the Second Temple because of the Edomites' mistreatmentof Israel." Even today there is no unanimity. The approach our commentator takes is to compare the words of Obadiah(vv. 10-14) to the many descriptions of Edom's active participation in the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. (see Ezek 25:12, 35:5; Lam 4:21; Ps 137:7). On the basis of this comparison Cogan concludes that the prophecy belongs to the period of the destruction, perhaps as that of an eyewitness. Uriel Simon also deals with the historical dimension in his study of the book of Jonah. But in the case of Simon's Introduction and Commentary, the great value and force is in the sensitivity to style and lucid literary explication of the biblical work. Simon displays these qualities particularly in his introductory essay on the theme(s) of the book. The biblical short story's preference for indirect expression over explicit ideational, ethical, and psychological statements is obvious in Jonah. It is therefore difficult to uncover the one central unifying theme. Under four basic headings, Simon examines the numerous views, from rabbinic midrashim to modern biblical exegesis, that have been advanced. The four headings are "Repentance and Forgiveness," "Israel and the Gentiles," "False Prophet and True Prophet," and "Justice and Mercy." Our commentator clearly presents the several positions in the name of their proponents and then provides his own critique and endorsement of each. The writer of Jonah masterfully embellishes the story with intensive wordplays that complement and reinforce the strong thematic coherence. Simon's careful reading and aesthetic sense prove equal to the task of elucidating, for modern reader and scholar alike, the many literary gems in the book of Jonah. Simon does not fall prey to the all-too-common practice of merely pointing to rhetorical devices. Each stylistic feature plays a role in the total work. The accomplished biblical artist introduced significant features creating particulareffects. The able critic identifies the features and demonstrates their significance. Examples of two of Simon's insightful explanations of the recurrenceof key words and not their mere identification follow: First, he points out that in the scene aboard ship, the verb twl in the Hiph'il construction, "cast" or "throw,"appears three times: in the presentation of the problem-"The Lord cast a great wind upon the sea" (v. 5); in its erroneous solution-"They (hif.tf) threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea" (v. 5); and in its (hi.tla)

BOOK REVIEWS

391

correct solution-"They picked up Jonah and cast him (wayyittfla) into the sea" (v. 15). The second example is the repetition of the verb yd', "know," which serves to contrast the prophet's confident knowledge in the ship ("for I know," 1:12) and in Nineveh ("for I knew," 4:2) with the sailors' desperate request for knowledge ("so that we may know," 1:7), the religious humility of the Ninevite king ("who knows," 3:9), and the lack of knowledge that shields the myriads of children of the city from destruction ("who do not know," 4:11). The two commentaries are fine examples of biblical scholarship. By the nature of the the biblical book that each examines, the more valuable study is clearly Simon's work on Jonah. Theological, moral, and psychological insights abound within a well-crafted whole in Jonah, and Simon explicates these and other relevant aspects masterfully. Obadiah, the smallest book in the Hebrew Bible, numbering a mere twenty-one verses, illustrates the care the canonizers took to preserve even small, isolated prophecies. Obviously, however, the abbreviated size and genre of Obadiah do not permit Cogan to make the same contribution that Simon does. Nevertheless, within a necessarily smaller compass Cogan treats in an able manner issues of language, style, history, and intertextuality that arise from the words of Obadiah. Cogan's Obadiah and Simon's Jonah well deserve the labels "A Bible Commentary for Israel" and "A Scientific Bible Commentary."The general reader as well as the scholar will derive much benefit from the two works in this volume. Daniel Grossberg StateUniversityof New York at Albany Albany,N.Y. Tony W. Cartledge. Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Journalfor the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 147. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992. xxxi, 199 pp. This volume, despite its relative slimness, is a comprehensive and balanced treatmentof the ancient Near Eastern vow. It begins with exacting definitions of the terminology and a critical distinction between vows and oaths (pp.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Jacob Milgrom Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 391-392 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486825 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

391

correct solution-"They picked up Jonah and cast him (wayyittfla) into the sea" (v. 15). The second example is the repetition of the verb yd', "know," which serves to contrast the prophet's confident knowledge in the ship ("for I know," 1:12) and in Nineveh ("for I knew," 4:2) with the sailors' desperate request for knowledge ("so that we may know," 1:7), the religious humility of the Ninevite king ("who knows," 3:9), and the lack of knowledge that shields the myriads of children of the city from destruction ("who do not know," 4:11). The two commentaries are fine examples of biblical scholarship. By the nature of the the biblical book that each examines, the more valuable study is clearly Simon's work on Jonah. Theological, moral, and psychological insights abound within a well-crafted whole in Jonah, and Simon explicates these and other relevant aspects masterfully. Obadiah, the smallest book in the Hebrew Bible, numbering a mere twenty-one verses, illustrates the care the canonizers took to preserve even small, isolated prophecies. Obviously, however, the abbreviated size and genre of Obadiah do not permit Cogan to make the same contribution that Simon does. Nevertheless, within a necessarily smaller compass Cogan treats in an able manner issues of language, style, history, and intertextuality that arise from the words of Obadiah. Cogan's Obadiah and Simon's Jonah well deserve the labels "A Bible Commentary for Israel" and "A Scientific Bible Commentary."The general reader as well as the scholar will derive much benefit from the two works in this volume. Daniel Grossberg StateUniversityof New York at Albany Albany,N.Y. Tony W. Cartledge. Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Journalfor the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 147. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992. xxxi, 199 pp. This volume, despite its relative slimness, is a comprehensive and balanced treatmentof the ancient Near Eastern vow. It begins with exacting definitions of the terminology and a critical distinction between vows and oaths (pp.

392

BOOK REVIEWS

11-35), followed by a thorough survey of past literature (pp. 36-72) and a detailed analysis of the vows extant in ancient Near Eastern(pp. 73-136) and biblical literature (pp. 177-199). Tony Cartledge succeeds in demonstratingthat every ancient Near Eastern culture practiced vow-making; that vows were, with rare exceptions, made to a god and fulfilled at a sanctuary; that vow-fulfillment was a public matter; that prompt payment of a vow was essential; that vows were motivated by personal or (occasionally) national distress; and-for this reviewer his most important contribution-that vows were always conditional: if the deity did not fulfill the request, the maker of the vow was not obligated to fulfill the vow. A more nuanced distinction between oaths and vows would have been gained by referring to Loewenstamm's discussion in the Encyclopaedia Biblica.' Cartledge's conclusion that Num. 21:1-3 is a "crucial transition piece" would have been enhanced by examining the structure of Numbers 20-21.2 Also, the error of labeling Lev. 27:9-13 a consecration ratherthan a vow would have been avoided by simply observing that this section opens with the particle 'im, signifying that it forms a subunit of the preceding section (vv. 1-8), which explicitly deals with vows. The following section (vv. 14-25), dealing with consecrations, opens with the particle ki, signifying the beginning of a new unit. Cartledge's strength lies in literary analysis. A parade example is his close reading of Gen. 28:10-12, which allows him to build a strong case for declaring Jacob's vow to be "manipulative, manifold, and self-centered" (p. 171). His work is a substantive contribution to a long-neglected feature of the private individual's mode of worship in the ancient Near East. JacobMilgrom Universityof Californiaat Berkeley Berkeley,Calif.

1. Lowenstamm, s.v. "Oath," Encyclopaedia Biblica 7:479-494 (Hebrew). 2. Cf. J. Milgrom, Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), pp. 463-467.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Saul Levin Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 393-395 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486826 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

393

David Noel Freedman, A. Dean Forbes, and Francis I. Andersen. Studies in Hebrew and Aramaic Orthography. Biblical and Judaic Studies, vol. 2. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992. xi, 328 pp. Chapter 1 of the present volume is by Freedman (Andersen's teacher); chapters 2, 8, and 10 by Forbes; 4, 5, 6, and 15 by Andersen. The other seven chapters, plus a lengthy appendix, were written collaboratively, either by Andersen and Forbes or by Andersen and Freedman. As William H. Propp, the editor of the series, explains in the preface, this book arose from a conference at the University of California, San Diego, in 1986, to discuss the method and findings of Andersen and Forbes's Spelling in the Hebrew Bible, which came out in that same year (Biblica et Orientalia 41). Six years later, the newly published material is miscellaneous and on the whole supplementary;much of it was deemed peripheralor unsuitable for inclusion in their tightly focused Spelling. We can be grateful that it is made available here. And in the midst of many particularobservations I find one very striking and far-reaching conclusion: "The spellings now found in MT [the Masoretic text] are a perpetuation and preservation of norms that were put in place during the Persian period" (p. 250). In the list of references at the end, the most recent entries are reviews of Spelling in 1988 by J. Barr and D. Pardee. However, my own review of it in Hebrew Studies 30 (1989), 96-100, must have come out too late to be taken into account. I will not now summarize my chief criticism, the inadequacy of the authors' phonetic analysis. But I must in fairness remark that one crucial misstep is partially corrected here: Their statistical procedure in Spelling led them to disregard the thirty-eight occurrences of n 'your' or 'you' (masc. sing.), on the criterion that this is less than 1 percent of the total; for 1- occurs 6,998 times. Andersen now cites those thirty-eightpassages (p. 63)-which are really thirty-nine, since ;ip 'he will strike you' (Ps. 121:6) is inadvertently omitted. It is too bad that he gives only the locations, not the actual Hebrew forms, such as 'I will strike you' (2 Sam. 2:22, in contrast to the "converted perfect".i3.z 'and he will strike you', 1 Kings of the rare informs in certain ~.. 20:36). For to some readers the concentration environments might have suggested a phonetic cause: namely, dissimilatory deaspiration of the second [kh]to [k] when the first [K] is aspirate. I pointed out this recurrentphenomenon in an article "Grassmann's'Law' in the Early Semitic Loan-Word XITr6v, Studi Micenei ed Egeo-anatolici 8 (1969): KlOwiv,"

394

BOOK REVIEWS

66-75, and at greater length in The Indo-European and Semitic Languages (Albany, 1971), pp. 572 ff. Andersen and Freedman's discussion of this pronominal suffix elsewhere in the new book suffers from a grave misapprehension: "the Masoretes uniformly [!] read both these spellings as -ka [really {-ko}, with a fricative consonant usually and a back-vowel always], overriding the information preserved in the traditional spelling without he [the final letter n]" (p. 204). Here they overlook the pausal forms with no vowel at the end: 1? {lIk} 'for you', I= {Iimmik;} 'with you', etc., which prove it was an oral tradition of Bible reading-not some imaginary rule-that regulated where in the Bible text the Masoretes of Tiberias pronounced a final consonant with the vowel {-1}, and where without it. The misstatement is partly corrected on page 216, referringto "the pausal form, i.e., -ak"; but a different oversight weakens this paragraph.Commenting upon tm,5vK'to you' in a fragment of Deuteronomy (5:28) found at Qumran near the Dead Sea, Andersen and Freedman call attention to the Masoretic which is formally like a plural noun (cf. ;'I 'your sons'); but while ir.., noting that the Masoretic text contains "examples of the long spelling" (the thirty-eight or thirty-nine occurrences of tm-), they ought to have added that not one of these is plural. This fact would have been apparent if the table on page 63 showed not just the thirty-eight locations but the Hebrew words themselves. At the time when the Masoretic spelling was fixed, the consonant group [yK] in such an environment was uniformly aspirate before the vowel 'to her', r'ta 'her sons', [3]-no less than the consonant [h] itself in etc.-and therefore, by Grassmann's "law," [yK] r,.5 precluded any aspiration after the vowel. And whereas aspirationvery easily accompaniedthe voiceless velar consonant in ancient Hebrew (like many other languages), it could even affect-in a peculiarly Hebrew environment-a much less susceptible consonant. Thus the subject suffix 'n- 'they' or 'you' (fem. pl.), which on the whole retains its final n, is most inclined to shed it in verb-forms of the 'and they made [him] drink' (Gen.19:33, 35). The In"1type, such as instances are mainly ,'i.n in Genesis and Exodus (see The Indo-European and Semitic Languages, pp. 577-578). The articulatoryconstraint that produced in the Masoretic text, to the exclusion of also tended to produce '.- at times, instead of the usual *i,., statistical methods, are beyond my ability 4'.- Forbes's chapters, dealing withir'.-.

395

BOOKREVIEWS

to evaluate, but they are evidently composed with great expertise. Andersen and Freedman's treatment of the Aramaic inscription from Tell Fekherye (chap. 11) is remarkably thorough, commenting upon each and every word. (It is reprinted from "JSOT Supplement Series 48.") No Aramaic characters appear; instead they present first a straightforward transliteration, then a transliterationwith vowels added according to a reconstructionof the Aramaic language as they suppose it to have been before the period of the documents in Ezra 4:8 ff. (p. 140). Judiciously they disclaim phonetic accuracy. Their main concern is to locate the words in which the letters i, or ' stood only ,n, for the prolongation of a vowel sound, ratherthan for the consonants [h], [w], or [y] respectively. The reader is free to use the copious data without being committed to the same interpretationas Andersen and Freedman espouse. The meticulous attention to detail, which all three authors show on every page, enlarges the realm of knowledge in a difficult and highly technical field. Saul Levin StateUniversityof New Yorkat Binghamton Binghamton,N.Y. Susan Niditch. War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xii, 180 pp. In this concise and accessible monograph, Susan Niditch contributes significantly to the ongoing discussion of war ideologies in ancient Israel as evidenced in texts of the Hebrew Bible. This is a topic area largely ignored in the biblical field until recently, as the authorpoints out. When it has not been ignored, simplistic, linear developmental models often have been employed in attempts to understandIsraelite views of war. Niditch, to her credit, rejects such approaches. Instead, she allows for various competing ideologies of war existing simultaneously in Israel, both early and late; some of these ideologies share common characteristics, but each is distinct from the others, and all have equal claim to "authenticity."The author describes the history of "attitudes to war" in ancient Israel as complex, "involving multiplicity, overlap, and self-contradiction" (p. 154). She demonstratesconvincingly that there was neither a single Israelite war ideology nor a consistently privileged one among several. Niditch reconstructs a range of war ideologies reflected in texts of the

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Saul M. Olyan Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 395-396 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486827 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



395

BOOKREVIEWS

to evaluate, but they are evidently composed with great expertise. Andersen and Freedman's treatment of the Aramaic inscription from Tell Fekherye (chap. 11) is remarkably thorough, commenting upon each and every word. (It is reprinted from "JSOT Supplement Series 48.") No Aramaic characters appear; instead they present first a straightforward transliteration, then a transliterationwith vowels added according to a reconstructionof the Aramaic language as they suppose it to have been before the period of the documents in Ezra 4:8 ff. (p. 140). Judiciously they disclaim phonetic accuracy. Their main concern is to locate the words in which the letters i, or ' stood only ,n, for the prolongation of a vowel sound, ratherthan for the consonants [h], [w], or [y] respectively. The reader is free to use the copious data without being committed to the same interpretationas Andersen and Freedman espouse. The meticulous attention to detail, which all three authors show on every page, enlarges the realm of knowledge in a difficult and highly technical field. Saul Levin StateUniversityof New Yorkat Binghamton Binghamton,N.Y. Susan Niditch. War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xii, 180 pp. In this concise and accessible monograph, Susan Niditch contributes significantly to the ongoing discussion of war ideologies in ancient Israel as evidenced in texts of the Hebrew Bible. This is a topic area largely ignored in the biblical field until recently, as the authorpoints out. When it has not been ignored, simplistic, linear developmental models often have been employed in attempts to understandIsraelite views of war. Niditch, to her credit, rejects such approaches. Instead, she allows for various competing ideologies of war existing simultaneously in Israel, both early and late; some of these ideologies share common characteristics, but each is distinct from the others, and all have equal claim to "authenticity."The author describes the history of "attitudes to war" in ancient Israel as complex, "involving multiplicity, overlap, and self-contradiction" (p. 154). She demonstratesconvincingly that there was neither a single Israelite war ideology nor a consistently privileged one among several. Niditch reconstructs a range of war ideologies reflected in texts of the

BOOK REVIEWS

396

Hebrew Bible and identifies the cultural and historical contexts that might have generated and supported each of them. Seven in all are reconstructed: (1) the "ban" (hjrenm)as sacrifice to YHWH; (2) the "ban"as God's justice; (3) a Priestly ideology of war in Numbers 31; (4) the elite bardic traditionof ritualized battle as sport; (5) the ideology of "tricksterism,"associated with marginal characters who practice deception; (6) the ideology of expediency, where anything goes; and (7) nonparticipation(salvation throughmiraculous intervention by God). To each of these ideologies Niditch devotes a chapter. Each discussion is insightful and interesting. I am especially struck by the author's convincing argument for two hiirem ideologies, and her successful attempt to place the "ban"and its demand for extirpation in its wider cultural and religious context. This monograph has a number of strengths: a methodologically sophisticated approach to the study of war, utilizing social scientific theory in a judicious way; many insightful readings of biblical texts; clear writing and excellent organization. Though Niditch's work is intended for a broad audience, a careful reading of it will also profit specialists. But there are weaknesses of style and substance that must be noted. Many are the errors of spelling, typing, and Hebrew transliteration, which are distracting, and could easily have been prevented; in addition, the index is of limited utility because it contains mistakes: In terms of substance, problems sometimes arise when Niditch deals with interpretive issues tangential to her major theme, e.g., creation and temple building in Near Eastern myth (p. 38); or mnlek and child sacrifice (pp. 48, 56). These complex problems deserve the same kind of nuanced, sophisticated treatment Niditch provides in her theoretical discussions and in her exegeses of biblical texts central to her thesis. Given the problems of style and substance, I am left with the impression that the manuscript was rushed to publication. Saul M. Olyan BrownUniversity Providence,R.I.

John C. Reeves. Jewish Lore in Manichean Cosmogony: Studies in the "Book of Giants" Traditions. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 14. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992. xi, 260 pp.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Michael E. Stone Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 396-399 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486828 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

396

Hebrew Bible and identifies the cultural and historical contexts that might have generated and supported each of them. Seven in all are reconstructed: (1) the "ban" (hjrenm)as sacrifice to YHWH; (2) the "ban"as God's justice; (3) a Priestly ideology of war in Numbers 31; (4) the elite bardic traditionof ritualized battle as sport; (5) the ideology of "tricksterism,"associated with marginal characters who practice deception; (6) the ideology of expediency, where anything goes; and (7) nonparticipation(salvation throughmiraculous intervention by God). To each of these ideologies Niditch devotes a chapter. Each discussion is insightful and interesting. I am especially struck by the author's convincing argument for two hiirem ideologies, and her successful attempt to place the "ban"and its demand for extirpation in its wider cultural and religious context. This monograph has a number of strengths: a methodologically sophisticated approach to the study of war, utilizing social scientific theory in a judicious way; many insightful readings of biblical texts; clear writing and excellent organization. Though Niditch's work is intended for a broad audience, a careful reading of it will also profit specialists. But there are weaknesses of style and substance that must be noted. Many are the errors of spelling, typing, and Hebrew transliteration, which are distracting, and could easily have been prevented; in addition, the index is of limited utility because it contains mistakes: In terms of substance, problems sometimes arise when Niditch deals with interpretive issues tangential to her major theme, e.g., creation and temple building in Near Eastern myth (p. 38); or mnlek and child sacrifice (pp. 48, 56). These complex problems deserve the same kind of nuanced, sophisticated treatment Niditch provides in her theoretical discussions and in her exegeses of biblical texts central to her thesis. Given the problems of style and substance, I am left with the impression that the manuscript was rushed to publication. Saul M. Olyan BrownUniversity Providence,R.I.

John C. Reeves. Jewish Lore in Manichean Cosmogony: Studies in the "Book of Giants" Traditions. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 14. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992. xi, 260 pp.

BOOKREVIEWS

397

The story of the Book of Giants is one of the more extraordinarysagas of modern philology. The Gelasian Decree (6th cent.) refers to liber de Ogia nomine gigante qui post diluvium cum dracone ab haeriticis pugnasse perhibetur, apocryphus.' This remained inexplicable until 1946, when W. B. Henning, in a brilliant tour de force, partially reconstructed a work entitled "Book of the Giants" from scraps of manuscripts in various middle Iranian languages which had survived in the Turfan fragments.' It was a canonical work of Manicheism, supposedly composed by Mani himself (Reeves, pp. 9-28). Some Manichean Turfan fragments and the recently published Greek Cologne Mani Codex refer to other works known to Mani which were associated with biblical figures such as Adam, Sethel (= Seth), Enosh, Shem, Enoch, and Paul. Since the Mani Codex teaches us that Mani was brought up in an Elchasaite, Jewish-Christian sect in Mesopotamia, this is not in the least improbable.3 J. T. Milik recognized that certain manuscripts from Qumran contained Aramaic fragments of a Jewish work closely relatedto thatwhich Henning had pieced together from the Turfan fragments. In all, he identified at Qumransix definite and three possible copies of this work, which he called The Enochic Book of the Giants.4He thinks that it is quoted at CD 2:17-19, and, even if that is not a quotation, it certainly knows the story of the giants. The Book of the Giants is a Jewish work, then, connected with the narrative cycle that 1. E. von Dobschtitz, Das Decretunt Gelasianum, Texte und Untersuchungenzur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 38.4 (Leipzig, 1912), p. 54. 2. W. B. Henning, "The Book of Giants," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 11 (1943): 52-74, building on his own earlier articles. 3. The Cologne Mani Codex was published in a series of articles in Zeitschrift fiir Papyrologie und Epigraphik between 1975 and 1982 by A. Henrichs and L. Koenen. A critical edition is L. Koenen and C. R6mer, Der Kolner Mani-Kodex: Kritische Edition (Opladen, 1988). The literature on this codex and on Mani's Elchsaite origins is extensive; valuable indications may be found in Reeves, pp. 4-7. 4. 1Q23, 6Q8, 4QEnGia, 4QEnGib, 4QEnGic, and 4QEnGie. There are, perhaps, two further manuscripts of the work, 4QEnGid and 4QEnGif. See J. T. Milik, "Problmes de la litterature h6nochique a la lumiere des fragments arameens de Qumran,"Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971): 333-378; idem, "Turfin et Qumran.Livre des Grantsjuif et manich6en,"in Traditionund Glaube: Dasfriihe Christentunm in seiner Unmwelt, ed. J. Jeremias, H.-W. Kuhn, and H. Stegemann (G6ttingen, 1971), pp. 117-127; and idem, The Books of Enoch: AranmaicFragments of Qumrdn Cave 4 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 298-339. See furtherReeves, pp. 6-7.

398

BOOK REVIEWS

grew up around Enoch. The giants were the offspring of the union of the sons of God with the daughters of men (Gen 6:1), and the work names certain of them, and relates incidents which befell them, including their resort to Enoch for interpretationof a dream. Knowledge of traditionsabout these giants was preserved in Jewish literaturefrom Jubilees on in various forms. The Jewish work was appropriatedby the Manichees, and the Manichean forms of it are based on, but not identical with, the Jewish work. Here, then, archaeological discoveries have played a double role. The Turfan fragments established the existence of the work, which was only named in the Gelasian Decree, while the Qumran fragments demonstrated its Jewish origin. The striking convergence of Qumranand Turfanfragments has made it possible to gain some idea of the content and structureof this ancient Jewish work. All this and very much more has been set forth by J. C. Reeves in his fine study. The central part of this book is a careful re-edition and commentaryon the QumranBook of Giants manuscriptsto which the parallels from the varied Manichean sources are added at the appropriatepoints. This central chapteris extremely valuable; the commentary is learned, painstaking, and careful, and all future work on this document will have to take its departurefrom it. To the texts Reeves has prefaced an excellent chapter tracing the history of the Book of Giants in Near Eastern and Western languages, and the final two chapters are "Severus of Antioch and the Book of Giants" and "ManicheanCosmogony and Jewish Traditions." He draws out the importance of this Jewish work in the formation of Mani's thought. A concluding chapter,bibliography, and indices complete the work. Reeves stresses the formative influence of Jewish traditions on Mani's cosmogony, which was based on the Enochic legend of the Watchers and Giants. Mani assimilated these views, Reeves maintains, during his youth in the Elchasaite, heterodox Jewish group in which he was brought up. These facts lead Reeves to reevaluate the role of Iranian thought in the formation of Manicheism. While not denying some knowledge of Iranian religion by Mani, he claims that "the extent of Zoroastrian influence upon the young Mani has been overrated"(p. 209). This excellent work amasses a wealth of evidence and presents it in an authoritative and balanced manner. It is a major contribution to the study of ancient Jewish literature, a commentary on one block of the complex Enoch material from Qumran, and it also throws very provocative light on

BOOK REVIEWS

399

the origins of one of the great religious systems of antiquity. Reeves is to be congratulated. MichaelE. Stone HebrewUniversityof Jerusalem Jerusalem,Israel Willem Cornelis van Unnik. Das Selbstverstdndnis der jiidischen Diaspora in der hellenistisch-rdimischen Zeit. Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristenturns.Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993. 200 pp. The five chapters of this posthumous work by W. C. van Unnik were lectures given during the first ten days of April 1967 at the Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem. The editor, P. W. van der Horst, who obtained his teacher's unpublished manuscriptin 1991, has published it without omissions or additions; only the introduction, which gives an account of Van Unnik's life and writings, the footnotes, appendices, and indices are from the editor's pen, in addition to very minor alterations and some additional footnotes. Van Unnik begins by citing the well-known Hebrew phrase traditionally recited at the Passover seder, la-shanah ha-ba'ah bi-yrushalayinm,"next year in Jerusalem." The author fully identifies with this wish and avows himself privileged to have it at long last fulfilled. Quoting the pilgrim Psalm 122, he touchingly notes how especially attractive it was for him, as a pilgrim from the galut, to be in Jerusalem at Easter time to deliver these lectures on the problem of the Diaspora in the Hellenistic-Roman world. From the introduction we learn of his deep love for the Jewish people, which was partially due to his early contact with the Orthodox rabbi S. Ph. de Vries, who taught him Hebrew and whose book Joodse Riten en Symbolen (1932) undoubtedly influenced him. Jews have been preoccupied with galut, or Jewish homelessness, for two millennia, and the rebirthof Israel has not only not resolved this quandaryfor contemporary Jewry, but has only deepened and sharpened it.' Van Unnik's book, which focuses on the question of the self-understandingof the Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic-Roman period, provides us with a splendid and timely analysis of the earliest Jewish reflections on this pivotal aspect of Jewish experience. 1. See the excellent full-scalestudyof this issue by ArnoldEisen,Galut:ModernJewish Reflections on Homelessness and Homecoming (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).

Review: [untitled] Author(s): David Winston Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 399-402 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486829 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

399

the origins of one of the great religious systems of antiquity. Reeves is to be congratulated. MichaelE. Stone HebrewUniversityof Jerusalem Jerusalem,Israel Willem Cornelis van Unnik. Das Selbstverstdndnis der jiidischen Diaspora in der hellenistisch-rdimischen Zeit. Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristenturns.Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993. 200 pp. The five chapters of this posthumous work by W. C. van Unnik were lectures given during the first ten days of April 1967 at the Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem. The editor, P. W. van der Horst, who obtained his teacher's unpublished manuscriptin 1991, has published it without omissions or additions; only the introduction, which gives an account of Van Unnik's life and writings, the footnotes, appendices, and indices are from the editor's pen, in addition to very minor alterations and some additional footnotes. Van Unnik begins by citing the well-known Hebrew phrase traditionally recited at the Passover seder, la-shanah ha-ba'ah bi-yrushalayinm,"next year in Jerusalem." The author fully identifies with this wish and avows himself privileged to have it at long last fulfilled. Quoting the pilgrim Psalm 122, he touchingly notes how especially attractive it was for him, as a pilgrim from the galut, to be in Jerusalem at Easter time to deliver these lectures on the problem of the Diaspora in the Hellenistic-Roman world. From the introduction we learn of his deep love for the Jewish people, which was partially due to his early contact with the Orthodox rabbi S. Ph. de Vries, who taught him Hebrew and whose book Joodse Riten en Symbolen (1932) undoubtedly influenced him. Jews have been preoccupied with galut, or Jewish homelessness, for two millennia, and the rebirthof Israel has not only not resolved this quandaryfor contemporary Jewry, but has only deepened and sharpened it.' Van Unnik's book, which focuses on the question of the self-understandingof the Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic-Roman period, provides us with a splendid and timely analysis of the earliest Jewish reflections on this pivotal aspect of Jewish experience. 1. See the excellent full-scalestudyof this issue by ArnoldEisen,Galut:ModernJewish Reflections on Homelessness and Homecoming (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).

400

BOOK REVIEWS

The preferred term today for Jews who live outside Palestine, or modern Israel, is "Diaspora" (from the Greek verb diaspeirn "disperse"), with its Hebrew equivalent tefusah (attested only once in a probably corrupt text of Jer 25:34, although forms of the verb pws "disperse"are not infrequent), as against the biblical galut, "exile" or "captivity."It derives from the Septuagint version of Deut 28:25, where the word leza 'dwih is rendered en diaspord, so that instead of "you shall be an object of horror,"the text takes on the meaning "you shall be in the dispersion" (cf. Jer 34:17: LXX 41:17). In Deut 30:4 diaspora is the Greek equivalent to niddahdkia"banishment";cf. Isa 56:8, LXX; Ps 146 [147]:8, LXX). The Greek translatorsdid not adopt an expression common in Greek literature, but an unusual word denoting the dissolution of something into its constituent atoms (Plutarch Mor. 1105a; Epicurus Ep. 1.65). Moreover, they rendered various Hebrew words that are not etymologically connected with the words diaspora/diaspeir6, thus creating a conception not recognized by the Hebrew text. The reason for this development, as Van Unnik points out, was that they found themselves in a situation unknown to the ancient biblical writers living in Palestine, i.e., the situation of dispersion. Clearly, they did not understand their situation as one of exile. Whenever golah and its derivatives occur in the Hebrew text, the seventy faithfully render them with either aichmalosia ("captivity"), apoikismos, apoikesia, apoikesis, apoikia, metoikia, metoikesia ("migration"), or paroikia ("sojourning"). J. M. Modrzejewski has sought to explain this surprising choice of expressions derived from the experience of Greek colonization for rendering the very different notion of deportation and exile: The Alexandriantranslatorsrefused to face the realitythat whereasGreek colonizationat the dawn of the city-statetook on the colors of a glorious adventure,the contemporarymigrationsof the Jews were the consequenceof the multiplecatastrophesthat . . . culminatedin the deportationof the entire people. In their presentationof the golah as a colony, they retrospectively alignedthemselveswith the Greekpast.The circumstancesof the times may have justifiedthis "revisionism."Since Alexander'sconquest,Jews had been allowedto participatein the new Greekcolonialenterprise.2 2. Joseph M. Modrzejewski, "How to Be a Jew in Hellenistic Egypt?" in Diasporas in Antiquity,:ed. J. D. Cohen and E. S. Frerichs (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), p. 70.

BOOK REVIEWS

401

Van Unnik takes issue with Karl Schmidt's analysis of the question of how it came about that the Greek Jews gradually abandoned the pregnant expressions "captivity" and "exile" in favor of "Diaspora."Schmidt pointed out that "the course of human history was always able to heal the severe wounds of the various deportations, and thatfrom a very early stage voluntary emigration contributed to the extension of the Diaspora."3He then went on to give a qualified approval to R. Rendtorff's view that Hellenistic optimism allowed a more favorable evaluation to replace the prophetic verdict on the Diaspora as a curse. Van Unnik argues, however, that the dire views of the Torah and the Prophets were certainly not weakened by the Septuagint. Whenever we encounter the words diaspora/diaspeirein, they are heavily laden with calamity. The views of Philo and Josephus are a separate case, since as apologists their testimony for the self-understandingof the Diaspora is of limited validity. In his Against Flaccus 45-46, Philo writes: So populousarethe Jews thatno one countrycanholdthem,andthereforethey settle in very manyof the most prosperouscountriesin Europeand Asia .... and while they hold the Holy City ... to be theirmother-city,yet those which are theirsby inheritancefrom theirfathers... are in each case accountedby themto be theirfatherlandin whichthey were bornandreared,while to some of themthey havecome at the timeof theirfoundationas immigrants(apoikian steilamenoi)to the satisfactionof the founders[trans.Colson]. Here the Jews of the Diaspora are a colony in the Greek sense, an emigration due to overpopulation. Apoikia is not connected with exile as in the Septuagint, and a certain sense of pride is unmistakable. Writing as an apologist, however, Philo could obviously not say that Jews live among the gentiles because of God's punishment. From a psychological standpoint, writes Van Unnik, we may say that Philo has suppressed the connection of the dispersion with the concrete situation in which he lived. As Y. Amir has noted, the Greeks founded colonies abroadand ruled them, and at times even imposed their sovereignty over the local population, whereas the position of the Jewish emigrants was generally one of a tolerated community, and nowhere that of masters. To soften that harsh reality, all Philo could do was to point to the fact that the Jews had arrived in some of the cities at the time of 3. K. Schmidt, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 2:100.

402

BOOK REVIEWS

their very foundation.4 Philo indeed sought to forget the Diaspora theology, but it was too deeply rooted in Scripture. The hope for the ingathering of the dispersion was so strong that even Philo shared it (even if only in one passage), and as hard as he tried he was unable completely to spiritualize it.5 In any case, concludes Van Unnik, it is impossible to make Philo the crown witness of an optimistic and proud view of the Diaspora. The widespread cosmopolitanism found in Greek thought, which was to some extent realized in the Pax Romnana,was, as Van Unnik sees it, quite antithetical to the Jewish view of the Diaspora, which was thus profoundly at odds with the spirit of the times. Philo attempted to produce some sort of synthesis, but the Alexandrian riots show how impossible such an amalgamation really was, and that ultimately one had to choose between two rival worldviews. DavidWinston GraduateTheologicalUnion Berkeley,Calif. Michael Mach. Entwicklungsstadien des jiidischen Engelglaubens in vorrabbinischer Zeit. Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum34. Ttibingen:J. C. B. Mohr, 1992. xvii, 457 pp. Jewish angelology, according to Michael Mach, emerges out of the dialectic between monotheism and ancient Near Eastern polytheism and reaches full flower under the influence of a similar dialectic in the Hellenistic period, although the nature of the relevant polytheism has changed. Mach argues that the biblical conception of the mal'akh, the messenger of the Lord, was originally quite distinct from the other primary locus of biblical angelology, the divine council. The distinct origins are reflected in the names given the members of the divine council, such as 'elohim, bniei 'elohin, seva' ha-shatnayyinm,and qedoshim, but not mnal'akhim.The divine council has its roots in the council of El, but there are no real parallels to the figure of the mal'akh in the religion of Israel's neighbors; unlike the messenger gods of 4. Yehoshua Amir, "Philo's Version of the Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," in Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period. Abraham Schalit Memorial Volume, ed. A. Oppenheimer et al. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1980), p. 156 (Hebrew). 5. See D. Winston, Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985), pp. 55-58.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Martha Himmelfarb Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 402-405 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486830 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



402

BOOK REVIEWS

their very foundation.4 Philo indeed sought to forget the Diaspora theology, but it was too deeply rooted in Scripture. The hope for the ingathering of the dispersion was so strong that even Philo shared it (even if only in one passage), and as hard as he tried he was unable completely to spiritualize it.5 In any case, concludes Van Unnik, it is impossible to make Philo the crown witness of an optimistic and proud view of the Diaspora. The widespread cosmopolitanism found in Greek thought, which was to some extent realized in the Pax Romnana,was, as Van Unnik sees it, quite antithetical to the Jewish view of the Diaspora, which was thus profoundly at odds with the spirit of the times. Philo attempted to produce some sort of synthesis, but the Alexandrian riots show how impossible such an amalgamation really was, and that ultimately one had to choose between two rival worldviews. DavidWinston GraduateTheologicalUnion Berkeley,Calif. Michael Mach. Entwicklungsstadien des jiidischen Engelglaubens in vorrabbinischer Zeit. Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum34. Ttibingen:J. C. B. Mohr, 1992. xvii, 457 pp. Jewish angelology, according to Michael Mach, emerges out of the dialectic between monotheism and ancient Near Eastern polytheism and reaches full flower under the influence of a similar dialectic in the Hellenistic period, although the nature of the relevant polytheism has changed. Mach argues that the biblical conception of the mal'akh, the messenger of the Lord, was originally quite distinct from the other primary locus of biblical angelology, the divine council. The distinct origins are reflected in the names given the members of the divine council, such as 'elohim, bniei 'elohin, seva' ha-shatnayyinm,and qedoshim, but not mnal'akhim.The divine council has its roots in the council of El, but there are no real parallels to the figure of the mal'akh in the religion of Israel's neighbors; unlike the messenger gods of 4. Yehoshua Amir, "Philo's Version of the Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," in Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period. Abraham Schalit Memorial Volume, ed. A. Oppenheimer et al. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1980), p. 156 (Hebrew). 5. See D. Winston, Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985), pp. 55-58.

BOOK REVIEWS

403

the ancientNear East, the mal'akhis not a god. Thatmnal'akh designatesa functionratherthana stateof being is clearfromits use for humanemissaries as well. The combinationof the two conceptions,which Mach calls "the heartof postbiblicalangelology,"takesplace in some of the laterpartsof the Bible, includingJob, some of the Psalms,Daniel,andZechariah. Mach considersany attemptto explainthe causes of the combinationto be "purelyhypothetical."But surely the prophets'claim to participationin the divine council, which appearsas earlyas the Templevision of Isaiahof Jerusalemand afterthat in a rangeof sources,deservesmoreconsideration thanMachgives it. The importanceof thisclaimfor Israeliteprophecyseems to me to raise questionsif not aboutthe distinctorigins,then at least about an ongoing separateexistence in biblicalliterature,for the mal'akhand the divinecouncil. In the second chapterMach discusses the Septuagint'stranslationsof termsfor angels as evidencefor the developmentof Jewishangelology.The collapsing of the distinctionbetween the membersof the divine council and the mal'akh continues;like angelic messengers,the membersof the councilareusuallycalledaggelos. On the otherhand,theSeptuagintattempts to distinguishbetween divine and human messengers,often, though not always, findinga translationotherthanaggelos for the humanmessengers. The Septuagintalso uses translationto eliminate some instancesof the Bible's failure to distinguishbetween God and His messengers,and the resultingtheologicalproblems.The chapterconcludeswith a discussionof the theological concerns about angels reflectedin the peculiaritiesof the translationsof two books of particularinterestfor angelology,Daniel and Job. In the lengthy thirdchapterMach discusses the materialcentralto his concerns,the extrabiblicalliteratureof the Hellenisticand Romanperiods. Mach sees the experienceof exile as leadingto the transformation of the of the divine council from court to setting heavenly heavenlytemple.The of multiplication angels should not be seen as a sign of the distanceof the transcendentGod, and the belief in the possibilityof humanfellowshipwith theangelsis at the heartof the new developments.Mostof theliteratureMach discussesis designatedas Jewishin the standardintroductions, althoughoften on less than entirelysolid grounds,but Mach also includes,quite properly, some earlyChristianliteraturein the discussion,such as the New Testament and the Apocalypseof Elijah.In this light the almostcompleteabsenceof

404

BOOK REVIEWS

attention to the Ascension of Isaiah, an early Christian apocalypse with a very interesting angelology, is surprising. Perhaps Mach's most important contribution is his nuanced discussion of the pagan and even polytheistic aspects of the representationof angels in Jewish literature. His treatment of Asenath's heavenly visitor in Joseph and Asenath, which he calls the "high point" of the integration of Jewish and pagan elements, is itself a high point of such investigation in both method and content. The appropriatequestion, Mach suggests at the beginning of his discussion of Joseph and Asenath, is how an ancient Jewish reader of the text, for whom the Hellenistic world was home, would have understood the work. Mach sees Asenath's heavenly visitor as one of many Jewish attempts to domesticate the Greek sun god Helios by turning him into an angelic figure. Mach even brings a third culture into the discussion, suggesting that the ancient Egyptian association of the pharaoh with the sun god plays a part in this narrative so deeply shaped by its Egyptian setting. But he also insists that most of the motifs associated with the visitor could also be seen as drawn from the Bible or later Jewish sources. Even the lofty status of the visitor, which Mach relates to the figure of Helios and which might seem to threaten monotheistic belief, is simply a furtherdevelopment of a possibility inherent in biblical angelology. Thus, while Mach never answers the question explicitly, he implies that an ancient Jewish readerwould not have viewed the world he lived in as easily separable into discrete Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian components, and thus might have seen elements that appear blatantly pagan to us as part of Judaism. The discussion of Joseph and Asenath is Mach at his best. The extended treatment of a single text permits attention to literary context and, as far as possible given the limited state of our knowledge, to the historical context as well. The rest of the chapter, divided into units that treat a particularmotif in a variety of extrabiblical texts, understandablygives less consideration to the larger concerns of the individual works in which the motifs appearor to their historical background. In these units Mach sometimes appearsto be offering, against his stated intentions, a collection of traditionsratherthan a history of the development of the traditions. I wish that Mach had provided a clearer map of his view of the lines of textual influence in the development of angelology, but his motif-by-motif discussion leaves the relevant comments scattered. The Book of Tobit,

BOOK REVIEWS

405

for example, plays an important role in Mach's discussion as a sort of bridge between the Bible and postbiblical works, but Mach never offers an extended assessment of its place in the development of angelology. George Nickelsburg's recent discussion of Tobit's points of contact with the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) makes Mach's view particularlyintriguing; the somewhat younger Book of the Watchers is surely a crucial influence on the development of angelology as on so many aspects of ancient Judaism. The last chapter of Mach's work is a fascinating demonstration that not all ancient Jews shared the dominant enthusiasm for angels. Some were quite selective in their embrace of aspects of angelology. The chapterincludes some provocative discussion of New Testament texts, but the bulk of it is devoted to a careful examination of Josephus' complicated attitude toward angels. Theologically, Josephus' feelings are mixed: angels pose some difficulties, but they also solve certain problems. But on the political level angels are a genuine danger because of the hopes anti-Roman forces placed in their intervention. Whether Joseph clarifies the ambivalence of the rabbis' angelology better than rabbinic literature itself, as Mach claims, requires demonstration in a future work, to which I look forward. MarthaHimmelfarb PrincetonUniversity Princeton,N.J. Jonathan J. Price. Jerusalem under Siege: The Collapse of the Jewish State, 66-70 C.E. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992. xiv, 361 pp. In this revised doctoral dissertation, J. J. Price attempts to write an "internal"history of the First Revolt against Rome that moves away from the usual emphasis on the progression of events to a more analytical assessment of "neglected details" (p. xiii). Although Price is dependent upon Josephus for clues, he is determined to pursue topics and information that were only peripheral concerns of the first-century historian, such as desertion, water and food supplies, and the composition of the Jewish army. Price focuses on developments in Jerusalem that he believes are pivotal to an understandingof the revolt as a whole, a revolt that was characterizedby stasis: "The revolution grew partly out of faction, weakened and sputtered from the start because of faction, and changed course ineffectively and without purpose because

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Stuart S. Miller Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 405-409 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486831 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

405

for example, plays an important role in Mach's discussion as a sort of bridge between the Bible and postbiblical works, but Mach never offers an extended assessment of its place in the development of angelology. George Nickelsburg's recent discussion of Tobit's points of contact with the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) makes Mach's view particularlyintriguing; the somewhat younger Book of the Watchers is surely a crucial influence on the development of angelology as on so many aspects of ancient Judaism. The last chapter of Mach's work is a fascinating demonstration that not all ancient Jews shared the dominant enthusiasm for angels. Some were quite selective in their embrace of aspects of angelology. The chapterincludes some provocative discussion of New Testament texts, but the bulk of it is devoted to a careful examination of Josephus' complicated attitude toward angels. Theologically, Josephus' feelings are mixed: angels pose some difficulties, but they also solve certain problems. But on the political level angels are a genuine danger because of the hopes anti-Roman forces placed in their intervention. Whether Joseph clarifies the ambivalence of the rabbis' angelology better than rabbinic literature itself, as Mach claims, requires demonstration in a future work, to which I look forward. MarthaHimmelfarb PrincetonUniversity Princeton,N.J. Jonathan J. Price. Jerusalem under Siege: The Collapse of the Jewish State, 66-70 C.E. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992. xiv, 361 pp. In this revised doctoral dissertation, J. J. Price attempts to write an "internal"history of the First Revolt against Rome that moves away from the usual emphasis on the progression of events to a more analytical assessment of "neglected details" (p. xiii). Although Price is dependent upon Josephus for clues, he is determined to pursue topics and information that were only peripheral concerns of the first-century historian, such as desertion, water and food supplies, and the composition of the Jewish army. Price focuses on developments in Jerusalem that he believes are pivotal to an understandingof the revolt as a whole, a revolt that was characterizedby stasis: "The revolution grew partly out of faction, weakened and sputtered from the start because of faction, and changed course ineffectively and without purpose because

406

BOOK REVIEWS

of faction, exhausting and consuming its own people" (p. xii). This premise makes Price's presentation all the more interesting as he demonstrates that disunity was not endemic to specific groups of rebels, as Josephus would have it, but rather was pervasive, affecting every component of Jewish society. Price sees the rebels as sharing an "intoleranceboth of the establishment and of each other" (p. 17). They should not be regardedas unified groups of revolutionaries who were inspired by apocalyptic texts, since theircharismatic leaders did not resort to these writings to gain a following. Moreover, the disparatemessages found in apocalyptic literaturewere hardlyof much use for the formulation of distinct or coherent political stances. Perhapssurprisingly, Price maintains that the Zealots were related to the sicarii inasmuch as both adhered to the fourth philosophy. At the same time, they were not identical, since their leaders, members, and roles were different. As for the aristocracy, it too was affected by significant differences and factionalism. In War,Josephus would have us believe thatthe aristocracystood united in opposition to the rebels, as he constantly resorts to the formulaic "Jewish leaders and high priests" as opposed to "the revolutionaries." In Antiquities, however, the historian notes how the aristocratswould rely on the revolutionaries to fight their battles. Price shows how the aristocracy can be broken down into "pro-Romans,"revolutionary high priests," "revolutionary priests," and "revolutionarylay nobility," resulting in a "free-for-allat the top levels of society" (p. 29). Josephus in fact tried to hide the complicity of the nobility with the rebels. Twelve thousand nobles may have been lost once the fragile coalition of 66 C.E.fell apart,but many of Josephus' own class should actually be seen as "committed revolutionaries" (p. 94) who joined the new leadership in prosecuting the war. Price does not shrink from musing about what might have been had the Jews managed to overcome their disunity. The Jews' strength in battle was precisely the result of their reliance on small weapons and hand-to-hand combat, which the Romans could only counter with cavalry and archers.Had the defenders of Jerusalem rationed their food and strategized, they might have been able to hold out longer. Price has left most of his detailed analysis to the fourteen appendices that comprise approximately 40 percent of his book. These include discussions of War as an historical source, external sources, numbers, chronological problems in War,the Jewish army, Jewish weapons, food, water, desertion, R. Yohanan b. Zakkai, famine, hand-to-hand combat, archaeological notes,

BOOK REVIEWS

407

and Titus' view of deserters. This reader found the presentation somewhat disjointed. It would have made better sense to present related themes in consecutive appendices. This, however, is a minor quibble, as some of Price's most interesting and at times debatable observations can be found in these excursuses. For instance, Price is particularlyadept at getting behind Josephus' famine motif, which it turns out is used to dramatize the cruelty of the rebels. Price notes that famine, because of its gradualdevelopment, was a convenient theme for Josephus to interject into the narrativeat will. Price is able, nevertheless, to extract useful information about the extent of famine during the siege. He also believes that much else could be learned if human and animal skeletal remains from the Jerusalem area were subjected to the same type of scientific analysis used by prehistoric archaeologists. Importantquestions pertaining to disease and diet might be answered, which in turn would shed further light on the extent of famine and even help distinguish, with greater certainty, between Roman and Jewish destruction layers. Price correctly notes (p. 252) that Dio Cassius and Josephus contend that famine and not thirst was a problem for the Jews duringthe siege of Jerusalem. Price argues that the one remark of Josephus concerning the dearthof water, War5, 409-410, pertains to 69 C.E.,i.e., before the arrivalof the Romans. At this point, the level of the Siloam and other springs may indeed have been low, as Josephus claims, due to seasonal fluctuations in precipitation. Price is perhaps a bit too quick to dismiss T. Parah 9:2, where R. Judah alludes to the lessening of the waters of the Shiloah (Siloam) during a time of polemos ("war"). Price is correct that the tradition does not specify which polenmosis intended, but it is conceivable that R. Judah(or any of his mid-second-century contemporaries) to whom the statement is attributedwould have had the First Revolt, in which Jerusalem was of course central, in mind.' Moreover, if later testimony is any indication, independent traditions about the Siloam undoubtedly existed. Thus Eucherius, the fifth-century bishop of Lyons and pilgrim, observed that the Siloam was known to gush, and that it also "does not flow continuously but only on certain days and at certain hours." The historian of the Crusades, William of Tyre (ca. 1174-1188), remarkedthat the 1. At M. Sotah 9:14, polemos is used in reference to the frictions in the time of Vespasian, "Quietus," and Hadrian. In this instance, however, events concerning Jerusalem are clearly not the issue.

408

BOOK REVIEWS

Siloam at times has "a deficiency due to slight drainage."2The point is that the rabbis may very well have preserved an authentic, independent recollection or at the very least a reasonable approximation of what happened. Even if they did not have the First Revolt or, more precisely, the siege of Jerusalem in mind, their awareness that the Siloam's water could dry up is enough to cause us to wonder whether the similar phenomenon alluded to by Josephus was more of a problem than previously thought. In his treatment of the escape of R. Yohanan from Jerusalem (Avot de Rabbi Natan A:4 B:6; B. Gittin 56a-b; and parallels), Price vacillates between complete rejection of the details of the story and acceptance of the circumstances and context, which he judges to be essentially accurate. Price acknowledges his minimalist approachto rabbinic sources, arguing that talmudic stories should be treated as fiction unless they can be confirmed by outside sources. Nevertheless, he concedes that it would be interesting to see whether the Yohanan legend "could stand as history" (p. 265). His conclusion: The escape/departure of Yohanan, as opposed to his encounter with Vespasian, is judged to be more plausible if not historical because the "rabbinictradition has at least not invented the circumstances of R. Johanan's escape . . . the context is real" (p. 265). Although Price has little confidence in the encounter with Vespasian, he has no difficulty resorting to the allusion to Vespasian that opens the entire account (e.g., Avot de Rabbi Natan A: "When Vespasian came to destroy Jerusalem"; B: "When Vespasian came and besieged Jerusalem") to date the departureof Yohanan. Here he rejects the usual tendency to emend the rabbinic sources to read "Titus"(instead of Vespasian) because Vespasian was indeed near Jerusalem in June 69 C.E.,as indicated in War4:551. This is an extremely importantcorrective. However, given the formulaic nature of the allusion to the arrival of Vespasian in Avot de Rabbi Natan (cf. A:6 end; and B:7) and the fact that in B. Gittin and Lamentations Rabbah (1:31) the notice is not even connected directly to the Yohananaccount (p. 266, n. 5), not too much should be made of this point, at least not where the date of Yohanan's departureis concerned. Interestingly, Price devotes an entirely separate appendix to a discussion of Titus' treatment of deserters in which he demonstrates that the Romans sought to preserve 2. See F. E. Peters, Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of the Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims and Prophets fromn the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times (Princeton, 1985), pp. 154, 295.

BOOK REVIEWS

409

a ruling infrastructure so as to ensure continuity after the revolt. Here he admits that Yohanan may very well have turned to the Romans, who were only too willing to encourage the establishment of religious institutions. Yet Price sticks to his criteria for judging rabbinic materials, and concludes that Yohanan's escape and meeting with Vespasian must both continue to be regarded as "unhistorical" despite his useful foray into the thorny area of rabbinic historiography. In the end, Price succeeds in directing our attention to the internaldetails of the insurrection. His book is an important contribution because it breaks new ground and forces us to think about the nitty-gritty of the First Revolt. StuartS. Miller Universityof Connecticutat Storrs Storrs,Conn. Doron Mendels. The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 1992. x, 450 pp. Doron Mendels's The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism is accessibly written and attractively produced, and is meant to be sold to a wide audience. If it were merely another specialized scholarly monograph,it could be dismissed with a sigh. Unfortunately, the book may well be used in undergraduate courses and the like. A stern warning is therefore in order. The argument of the book is as follows: The ancient Jews, like many other ancient nations, were nationalistic; sometimes their nationalism was passive (i.e., they did nothing about it), and a small number of mainly upper-class Jews "hellenized" (i.e., gave up nationalism), but these qualifications do not alter the prevailing facts. The Jews' political nationalism centered around kingship, land, the Temple, and the army. All of these symbols attained their fullest realization under the Hasmoneans, the dynasty which embodied the Jews' independent rule of their land, now purified of pagan presence and Hellenistic influence, and their control of their similarly purifiedTemple. The early Hasmonean army, too, was a potent national symbol, comparable to the citizen armies of revolutionary America and France, standing in sharp contrast to the ethnically mixed, largely mercenary armies of the Hellenistic emperors.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Seth Schwartz Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 409-411 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486832 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

409

a ruling infrastructure so as to ensure continuity after the revolt. Here he admits that Yohanan may very well have turned to the Romans, who were only too willing to encourage the establishment of religious institutions. Yet Price sticks to his criteria for judging rabbinic materials, and concludes that Yohanan's escape and meeting with Vespasian must both continue to be regarded as "unhistorical" despite his useful foray into the thorny area of rabbinic historiography. In the end, Price succeeds in directing our attention to the internaldetails of the insurrection. His book is an important contribution because it breaks new ground and forces us to think about the nitty-gritty of the First Revolt. StuartS. Miller Universityof Connecticutat Storrs Storrs,Conn. Doron Mendels. The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 1992. x, 450 pp. Doron Mendels's The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism is accessibly written and attractively produced, and is meant to be sold to a wide audience. If it were merely another specialized scholarly monograph,it could be dismissed with a sigh. Unfortunately, the book may well be used in undergraduate courses and the like. A stern warning is therefore in order. The argument of the book is as follows: The ancient Jews, like many other ancient nations, were nationalistic; sometimes their nationalism was passive (i.e., they did nothing about it), and a small number of mainly upper-class Jews "hellenized" (i.e., gave up nationalism), but these qualifications do not alter the prevailing facts. The Jews' political nationalism centered around kingship, land, the Temple, and the army. All of these symbols attained their fullest realization under the Hasmoneans, the dynasty which embodied the Jews' independent rule of their land, now purified of pagan presence and Hellenistic influence, and their control of their similarly purifiedTemple. The early Hasmonean army, too, was a potent national symbol, comparable to the citizen armies of revolutionary America and France, standing in sharp contrast to the ethnically mixed, largely mercenary armies of the Hellenistic emperors.

410

BOOK REVIEWS

This situation was drastically transformedunderthe Herodiankings. They were mere vassals of Rome, and indeed were not even purely Jewish (on p. 7, Mendels calls them "pseudo-Jewish"!). In this period, which began in 37 B.C.E., the nationalist symbols declined: the kings themselves were inadequate; they patronized pagans as well as Jews and thus did not allow the Jews fully to control their own land; they debased the Temple and the priesthood and deprived these institutions of their political power; their armies were only part-Jewish and were used mainly to terrorize the Jewish population of the kingdom. Matters declined still furtherafter the death of Agrippa I in 44 C.E., when the Jews lost even their unsatisfactory king and army. Nevertheless, nationalist sentiment apparently has its own mystical economy, for the death of Agrippa in fact made an explosive reassertionof nationalism inevitable(!). Hence the doomed revolt of 66-70 C.E., which strove to reactualize the nationalist symbols, but came up against the insuperable might of the Roman legions. This argumentis based on a readingof the evidence markedby elementary methodological unsoundness. How depressing it is to find speeches invented by ancient historiographers taken as the ipsissima verba of the characters supposed to have declaimed them. How depressing it is that Mendels reads Josephus's moralizations as if they represented the views of "the Jews," though even Josephus never claimed, for example, that "the Jews" were outraged at the decision to allow Levite Temple choristers to wear white linen-a decision which can have been controversial only among the Temple staff; Josephus says only that he himself was outraged, along with God. How depressing to read in a new book about the long-discredited idea of a "Zealot movement," to learn that"theJews" hated "Hellenists,"that"Hellenists"could not be pious Jews, and that the Jewish supportersof Rome were "Hellenists." How depressing, in sum, to read a book whose historical content is virtually a catalogue of discredited, credulous, and wholly unexamined opinions. Nor, as may be inferred from the summary provided above, is Jewish Nationalism rescued by conceptual sophistication. On the contrary,the very title warns of the muddle that lies ahead. It is very unwise to ascribe "nationalism"-which, to use the neat definition of Ernest Gellner, is the conviction that ethnic and political boundaries should be coextensive-to any premodern group without detailed and refined argumentation, mainly because nationalism in the strict sense presupposes the disembedding of the categories of politics and culture, which we would not expect to find in

411

BOOK REVIEWS

premodern societies. We should require such argumentationall the more so if some of the items of the alleged nationalist program (in this case "the land" and the army) seem to owe more to the concerns of romantic nationalism as mediated through classical Zionism than to the ancient evidence. In my opinion, Mendels's original contribution of such concepts as "passive [and so, undetectable!] nationalism," and his fateful conflation of nationalism and ethnicity, not to mention his chaotic and uninformed use of words like "symbol" and "ideology," bury the book. Seth Schwartz JewishTheologicalSeminary New York,N.Y. Lawrence H. Schiffman and Michael D. Swartz. Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Textsfrom the Cairo Genizah: Selected Textsfrom Taylor-Schechter Box K1. Semitic Texts and Studies 1. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992. 183 pp. It is well known that the study of Jewish magic remains in its infancy. It is somewhat less well recognized that study of the Genizah's original religious compositions--unlike the work on its voluminous documentary and rabbinic materials-likewise is still quite undeveloped. Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts fronmthe Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1 is a major contribution to both these nascent areas of inquiry. Fourteen incantation texts, mostly amulets-a representative sampling of the much largertotal-are made accessible here. They are framed, moreover, with all the desired apparatus: clear facsimiles, transcriptions, translations, commentary, substantial bibliography, and three indexes. The lengthy introduction, in particular, is valuable, providing a mise au point for future study of Genizah magical texts. Altogether, Hebrew and Aranmaic Incantation Textsfrom the Cairo Genizah is constructedamply and ably-and is presented in a usably compact (though not inexpensive) format. Aside from their intrinsic philological significance, the incantation texts in this volume raise a surprising number of importantinterpretivequestions, the answers for most of which are not yet available. They betray a richness of influence, in spite of the famous conservatism of magicians. Of these influences, their complex awareness of varieties of Jewish expression presents itself overwhelmingly.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Steven M. Wasserstrom Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 411-414 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486833 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



411

BOOK REVIEWS

premodern societies. We should require such argumentationall the more so if some of the items of the alleged nationalist program (in this case "the land" and the army) seem to owe more to the concerns of romantic nationalism as mediated through classical Zionism than to the ancient evidence. In my opinion, Mendels's original contribution of such concepts as "passive [and so, undetectable!] nationalism," and his fateful conflation of nationalism and ethnicity, not to mention his chaotic and uninformed use of words like "symbol" and "ideology," bury the book. Seth Schwartz JewishTheologicalSeminary New York,N.Y. Lawrence H. Schiffman and Michael D. Swartz. Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Textsfrom the Cairo Genizah: Selected Textsfrom Taylor-Schechter Box K1. Semitic Texts and Studies 1. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992. 183 pp. It is well known that the study of Jewish magic remains in its infancy. It is somewhat less well recognized that study of the Genizah's original religious compositions--unlike the work on its voluminous documentary and rabbinic materials-likewise is still quite undeveloped. Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts fronmthe Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1 is a major contribution to both these nascent areas of inquiry. Fourteen incantation texts, mostly amulets-a representative sampling of the much largertotal-are made accessible here. They are framed, moreover, with all the desired apparatus: clear facsimiles, transcriptions, translations, commentary, substantial bibliography, and three indexes. The lengthy introduction, in particular, is valuable, providing a mise au point for future study of Genizah magical texts. Altogether, Hebrew and Aranmaic Incantation Textsfrom the Cairo Genizah is constructedamply and ably-and is presented in a usably compact (though not inexpensive) format. Aside from their intrinsic philological significance, the incantation texts in this volume raise a surprising number of importantinterpretivequestions, the answers for most of which are not yet available. They betray a richness of influence, in spite of the famous conservatism of magicians. Of these influences, their complex awareness of varieties of Jewish expression presents itself overwhelmingly.

412

BOOKREVIEWS

These texts demonstratea level of popularreligionwhich coexists with and draws heavily upon the official traditionsof Jewish law and learning.The magical materialsand more formalJewish traditionssharecommonsources anda commonsystemof ritualandlaw .... MagicalmaterialsfromtheGenizah demonstratethoroughknowledgeof the Bible and considerableacquaintance with Jewishfolkloreand in some cases Rabbinictradition.Thesepeoplewere by no meansdisconnected,then,fromthe studyof andpracticeof Judaismas it is representedin the greatmediaevalcodes of Jewishlaw. (pp. 50-51) On the one hand, then, some incantations exhibit knowledge of legal terminology (pp. 108, 109, 135), including those for ketubbot (pp. 108, 134, 155) and get formulae (pp. 108, 109, 156). On the other hand, the magicians seem to have been familiar with Merkavah traditions (pp. 24-26). Still, the identity of the Genizah magicians and their clients remains obscure, despite admirable efforts on the part of the authors. What little can be said responsibly at this point is summarized succinctly (pp. 49-52).1 This frustrating impasse may force research on the amulets as Jewish literature into more comparative studies. Several areas of Jewish literatureare relevant in this regard. Of these, the materials for exploratioj include the (considerably varied) materials available from earlier Jewish practices, from contiguous Sephardic communities, from printed texts, and from later amulets. For example, the shir shel pega'im (p. 39) was already used in an apparently magical practice by the Qumran community, and was known to the rabbis.2 Schiffman and Swartz find the possibility that scribes wrote the amulets to be suggestive, but without evidence to confirm it (pp. 49-40). Similarly, a close comparison of these texts with others deriving from Jewish communities of the Middle East can be very helpful. An example is the "seven angels appointed over the seven days of the week" (TS K1.18,30 11.27-30; p. 74): 1. First names found here are common to the Genizah folk, but the amulets identified parties by the mother's name (p. 45). This would seem to have adhered to a magical procedure standard in the region. See Ignaz Goldziher, "HebrdiischeElemente in muhammedanischen Zaubersprtichen," Zeitschrift der Deurschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft 48 (1894): 348-350, esp. 350. 2. On the shir shel pega'im (Pss. 91 and 3) at Qumran and in rabbinic sources, see Bilha Nitzan, "Hymns from Qumran to Frighten and Drive Away Evil Ghosts," Tarbiz 55 (1985): 19-46 [Hebrew], and the comments in the following issue by Israel Ta-Shema and Joseph M. Baumgarten.

REVIEWS BOOK

413

Shorshe ha-shemot by Moses ben Mordechai Zacuto (1620-1697) employs the same hebdomad, though in a different order.3 Beyond these necessary comparisons with other Jewish texts, it also would be helpful to compare these incantations more fully with those found in Gnostic and Greco-Roman analogues, which the authors have done to a certain extent. They also have considered Jewish Aramaic texts, and furthermorehave noted Mandaic parallels at some points (pp. 18, 28). Finally, numerous examples of other Jewish amulets exist which could be inventoried for comparison.4ChristianAramaic (Syriac) parallels might usefully be added to the corpus of comparative materials.5It seems increasingly striking that Jewish magicians apparently inscribed texts not only in Christian Aramaic,6 but in Mandaic Aramaic7and Arabic as well.8 This growing body of evidence further "adds some weight to the supposition that magic may have been considered to some extent a Jewish specialization."9 Yet other comparisons could helpfully contextualize these texts. Of these, the closest at hand is Muslim magic. Even though these texts were composed in Hebrew and Aramaic, they betray Arabisms (pp. 68, 76, 89, 158). The authors note that at least one of the texts was written by a scribe who also wrote an amulet in Judeo-Arabic (p. 136). Since contemporaneous Muslim magic was replete with Jewish materials, this is perhapsthe most pressing and immediate comparison to undertake. Finally, new theoretic approaches are developing for the study of such texts. A promising psychoanalytic study of

3. A facsimile and discussion can be found in Haim Zafrani, Kabbale, vie mystique et magie (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1986), pp. 407-408. 4. For example, the materials collected and presented in the catalogue, Magic and Superstition in the Jewish Tradition, introductory materials by Arthur M. Feldman, Marcia Reines Josephy, and David Weinstein (Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1975). 5. Philippe Gignoux, Incantations magiques syriaques (Louvain: E. Peeters, 1987). 6. Ibid., p. 3. 7. Jonas Greenfield, "Notes on Some Aramaic and Mandaic Magic Bowls," Journal of the Near East Society of Columbia University 5 (1973): 154-156. 8. Israel Friedlander, "A Muhammadan Book of Augury in Hebrew Characters,"Jewish Quarterly Review, o.s. 19 (1907): 84-103. 9. Shaul Shaked and Joseph Naveh, Amulets and Magic Bowls: AramnaicIncantationsfrom Late Antiquity (Jerusalem, 1985), p. 18.

414

BOOK REVIEWS

magic, for example, has been undertakenspecifically on the basis of Jewish and Muslim magical texts.'0 With the publication of Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Textsfrom the Cairo Genizah, we are moving closer into position finally to rewritethe history of Jewish magic; the standardwork on the subject, that of Trachtenberg,was published in 1939.11 StevenM. Wasserstrom ReedCollege Portland,Oreg. Stephen D. Benin. The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought. SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xxi, 327 pp. This book is a comprehensive study of the long history of a hermeneutic principle known as "divine accommodation," the manner in which divine revelation adapts itself and is, in turn, adapted to human cognitive capacities over time. Ranging from Paul in the first century C.E.to Herder at the end of the eighteenth, the book covers the use of accommodation in a wide range of Jewish and Christian sources in orders of discourse as diverse as polemics, literature, philosophy, theology, and mysticism. As the first extensive study of an importantinterpretativeprinciple, the book is a long-overdue, welcome contribution to many disciplines, especially biblical studies and theology. There is little doubt that it can serve as an excellent reference source for future substantive studies of particularthinkers. Stephen Benin has mastered an overwhelming amount of material in support of the challenging and controversial thesis that, despite radical historical and conceptual transformations, the principle of divine accommodation is uniquely capable of exhibiting both the unity in diversity of discourses and the continuity underlying radical historical change. The very scope of the work involved in this study and the vast scholarly knowledge and attention 10. Muriel Djeribi, "L'incantation mythique: noms et 6criture," Ethnologie francaise 23 (1993): 94-103. 11. J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (New York, 1939)

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Idit Dobbs-Weinstein Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 414-417 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486834 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



414

BOOK REVIEWS

magic, for example, has been undertakenspecifically on the basis of Jewish and Muslim magical texts.'0 With the publication of Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Textsfrom the Cairo Genizah, we are moving closer into position finally to rewritethe history of Jewish magic; the standardwork on the subject, that of Trachtenberg,was published in 1939.11 StevenM. Wasserstrom ReedCollege Portland,Oreg. Stephen D. Benin. The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought. SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xxi, 327 pp. This book is a comprehensive study of the long history of a hermeneutic principle known as "divine accommodation," the manner in which divine revelation adapts itself and is, in turn, adapted to human cognitive capacities over time. Ranging from Paul in the first century C.E.to Herder at the end of the eighteenth, the book covers the use of accommodation in a wide range of Jewish and Christian sources in orders of discourse as diverse as polemics, literature, philosophy, theology, and mysticism. As the first extensive study of an importantinterpretativeprinciple, the book is a long-overdue, welcome contribution to many disciplines, especially biblical studies and theology. There is little doubt that it can serve as an excellent reference source for future substantive studies of particularthinkers. Stephen Benin has mastered an overwhelming amount of material in support of the challenging and controversial thesis that, despite radical historical and conceptual transformations, the principle of divine accommodation is uniquely capable of exhibiting both the unity in diversity of discourses and the continuity underlying radical historical change. The very scope of the work involved in this study and the vast scholarly knowledge and attention 10. Muriel Djeribi, "L'incantation mythique: noms et 6criture," Ethnologie francaise 23 (1993): 94-103. 11. J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (New York, 1939)

BOOKREVIEWS

415

to detail evident in it lessen the overall importance of any critical comments in comparison to Benin's achievement. But, although a critical evaluation of the work may seem petty, the challenging thesis and ambitious scope of the work invite a serious response. The book's subtitle, "Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought," as well as the descriptive reviews on the cover are somewhat misleading, for they foster the impression that this is a balanced comparative study of Jewish and Christian sources. Of the eight chapters constituting the book, however, only two, the fifth and the sixth, are devoted to Jewish sources, whereas the eighth is devoted to secular appropriationsof accommodation in the modem period. Moreover, the decided bulk of the study and its most sensitive, nuanced treatment is devoted to the patristic period. Chapter 1 is a survey of the development of the notion of accommodation and the central role it played in the-formationof Christiandoctrine.It examines its dual, interrelated development as both a negative and a positive principle for interpreting biblical texts in the writings of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Athanasius. Insofar as negative accommodation is used to articulate the radical difference between nascent Christianity and Judaism, insofar as it provides Christianity's raison d'etre by emphasizing the punitive nature of Jewish law, it serves as the foundation for the positive use of the principle. Tracing its origins back to Paul, Benin sketches the various, highly polemical, early Christian articulations of Jewish law as a restraint against a perverse, idolatrous humanity that is positively redeemed by Christ. Tracing accommodation's positive developments, Benin also briefly examines Christianity's claims to spiritual superiority in the light of the Gnostic claims to a more lofty spirituality. While Benin's scholarly objectivity in treating the diverse sources is commendable, it is unfortunate that nowhere in the book does he reflect upon the dual tension constituting the early development of accommodation nor upon the possible consequences of the "negative," apologetic foundation of this principle. Presumablyfor the same reason, Benin also refrains from evaluating the relative merits of competing claims. Since the entire study depends upon the force of the principle of accommodation to withstand criticism and radical change, the lack of critical evaluation robs the book of a clear focus and leaves it to the reader to provide the substantive thread(s) unifying the diverse and divergent narrativesummaries. In the light of the fact that one of the book's primaryvirtues and its most useful contribution to future scholarship is its presentationof a tremendously

416

BOOKREVIEWS

diverse body of materials within a single, relatively short study, and for reasons of economy, an outline of the content of chapters2 through8 is called for prior to its general evaluation. Chapter 2 surveys the development and adaptationof accommodation by the Antiochene and Cappadocian church fathers, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, and Theodoret of Cyprus. Chapter 3 is devoted to the highly polemical Syriac writings of Aphrahat, Ephrem, Isaac of Antioch, and Jacob of Sarug. Chapter 4 outlines the Latin development of accommodation up to the thirteenthcentury in the writings of St. Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, and Anselm of Havelberg. Chapter 5 briefly examines the use of accommodation in rabbinic literature.Chapter 6 traces its development in Karaite literature,Sa'adia Gaon, Bahya ibn Pakuda, Judah ha-Levi, Maimonides, Nahmanides, Gersonides, Ibn Kaspi, and the Zohar literature up to Dov Baer, the Magid of Mezhirech. It also devotes a few words to the fifteenth-century anti-Maimonidean Isaac Arama and to the Maimonidean, Abarvanel. Chapter 7 first outlines the repercussions of Maimonides' thought on William of Auvergne's and Thomas Aquinas' divergent applications of accommodation to divine law; second, it sketches its subsequent adaptations and transformationsby Nicholas of Lyra, Jacques Lef'evre, and Luther; finally it discusses, in greater detail, accommodation's central role in Calvin's writings. The very brief chapter 8 covers the survival of accommodation in the eighteenth century from the radically antireligious French philosophes to Vico, Lessing, and Herder. Its nine pages attempt to illustrate the claim that the philosophes' vitriolic rejection of religion was as much based upon the idea of accommodation as was the new understandingof (to quote Kant) "religion within the bounds of reason alone." The extensive notes to the chapters as well as the bibliography provide an invaluable apparatusfor future research. In the brief conclusion Benin indicates his awareness of the dangers inherent in his ambitious study. As he states, "There is, of course, a certain danger in attempting to describe the history of an idea and capture its myriad applications in seemingly countless different literaturesand times" (p. 209). Ironically, while the conclusion underscores the fact that accommodation "originated in the realm of religious polemics and apologetics and was confined to that sphere throughout the patristic, medieval and Reformation periods" (ibid.), Benin neither confines his study to this realm nor ever alludes to the distinction between substantive positive developments of the idea and

REVIEWS BOOK

417

its polemical use, nor does he draw necessary distinctions between marginal and significant thinkers, let alone evaluate more nuanced and highly relevant differences within generally similar positions. The readerof this study is left with the uneasy sense that, notwithstanding Benin's thesis, accommodation is a radically equivocal term only nominally applicable to the historically and generically diverse discourses in which it is used and abused. While detailed scholarship on minor polemicists, such as Aphrahat and Ephrem, may be important in order to balance the scales of evaluation as well as shed interesting light on major thinkers, it is highly doubtful that they can be treated with the same measuring rod as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and even more doubtful that their use of accommodation remotely resembles that of Maimonides and Gersonides. In the light of Benin's detailed, nuanced, and very sensitive treatment of the Greek and Syriac patristic sources covered in the first three chapters of the book, a sensitivity that reemerges in his treatment of Calvin, whom he describes, not unexpectedly, as "almost unequalled in his exploitation of accommodation," with the exception of Chrysostom (p. 197), the reader cannot but conclude that Benin's real scholarly interests and sensitivity remain with these sources. It is to be hoped that his futurework will explore in greater and finer detail the intriguing similarity between Chrysostom and Calvin. IditDobbs-Weinstein VanderbiltUniversity Nashville,Tenn. David Novak. The Theology of Nahmanides Systeniatically Presented. Brown Judaic Studies, no. 271. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. xiv, 149 pp. David Novak's book systematically presents the theology of Nahmanides (Ramban) in eight chapters. Nahmanides' views on the human soul, faith, tradition, miracles, the natural and the supernatural, Eretz Israel, ta 'amei ha-mitzvot ("the reasons for the commandments"), and eschatology are clearly and crisply presented. Novak proceeds in each chapter by means of a commentary on and/or explication of illustrative texts. In general, the texts employed are from the Commentary on the Torah, Nahmanides' crowning achievement, which he completed shortly before his death in Eretz Israel in 1270. I suspect that Novak's system of enumeration of texts will henceforth

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Daniel H. Frank Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 417-419 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486835 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



REVIEWS BOOK

417

its polemical use, nor does he draw necessary distinctions between marginal and significant thinkers, let alone evaluate more nuanced and highly relevant differences within generally similar positions. The readerof this study is left with the uneasy sense that, notwithstanding Benin's thesis, accommodation is a radically equivocal term only nominally applicable to the historically and generically diverse discourses in which it is used and abused. While detailed scholarship on minor polemicists, such as Aphrahat and Ephrem, may be important in order to balance the scales of evaluation as well as shed interesting light on major thinkers, it is highly doubtful that they can be treated with the same measuring rod as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and even more doubtful that their use of accommodation remotely resembles that of Maimonides and Gersonides. In the light of Benin's detailed, nuanced, and very sensitive treatment of the Greek and Syriac patristic sources covered in the first three chapters of the book, a sensitivity that reemerges in his treatment of Calvin, whom he describes, not unexpectedly, as "almost unequalled in his exploitation of accommodation," with the exception of Chrysostom (p. 197), the reader cannot but conclude that Benin's real scholarly interests and sensitivity remain with these sources. It is to be hoped that his futurework will explore in greater and finer detail the intriguing similarity between Chrysostom and Calvin. IditDobbs-Weinstein VanderbiltUniversity Nashville,Tenn. David Novak. The Theology of Nahmanides Systeniatically Presented. Brown Judaic Studies, no. 271. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. xiv, 149 pp. David Novak's book systematically presents the theology of Nahmanides (Ramban) in eight chapters. Nahmanides' views on the human soul, faith, tradition, miracles, the natural and the supernatural, Eretz Israel, ta 'amei ha-mitzvot ("the reasons for the commandments"), and eschatology are clearly and crisply presented. Novak proceeds in each chapter by means of a commentary on and/or explication of illustrative texts. In general, the texts employed are from the Commentary on the Torah, Nahmanides' crowning achievement, which he completed shortly before his death in Eretz Israel in 1270. I suspect that Novak's system of enumeration of texts will henceforth

BOOK REVIEWS

418

facilitate references to Nahlmanides'work; thus, CT:Lev. 19:1-II,15, referring to Nahmanides' Commentary on the Torah in Chavel's edition, may become Nalhmanides7.3 (Novak). While a certain loss of specificity is to be noted, it surely beats having to haul around Chavel's multivolume edition. In sum, Novak's Summa presents a fine overview of NaIhmanides'theology in a felicitous translation. Novak's book was written expressly to explicate an understanding of Nalhmanides' theology for contemporary theologians, those committed to the project of constructive Jewish theology in our day. Novak's project, therefore, is a normative, nonhistorical, one. He writes: "In attempting to adopt the methodological model of the classical codifiers [of Jewish law], I am expressing a commitment to the view that theology is a normative task for Jewish thinkers today" (p. xii). The very strength of Novak's systematic presentation of Nahmanides' theology creates a paradox at the heart of the book. The paradox is perhaps best illustratedby comparing Novak's book with a book like G. M. A. Grube's Plato's Thought.' The latter work presents in a systematic way, albeit without illustrative texts, the metaphysical, epistemological, moral, etc., views of a wholly unsystematic thinker, Plato. The comparison is revealing because for Novak, Nalhmanides too is an unsystematic thinker. Novak writes of Nalhmanides: ". . . had he presented a strictly kabbalistic theology, the richness of his approach would have been much diminished. His eclecticism allows a diversity of the types and methods of interpretation;and it is precisely as an exegete that he is best understood. A comprehensive system would have narrowed his exegetical options" (p. 15). And so, the paradox of Novak's book, a systematic presentation of an unsystematic thinker. The question for both Grube and Novak thus becomes: how much is lost in presenting an unsystematic thinker systematically? Certainly one loses the heuristic (exploratory) and dialectical flavor of their approach, the interplay (the "eclecticism") between different modes of presentation. In the case of Nahmanides, the interplay between philosophy and kabbalah, the very hallmark of his exegetical method, is diminished by adopting the model of the codifiers of the law. The paradox I have noted is, of course, motivated by Novak's desire to present Nalhmanidesfor contemporarytheologians. Given this and his consequent adoption of the model of the classical codifiers, the 1. 2nd ed., Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980.

REVIEWS BOOK

419

paradox is inevitable. It is to Novak's credit that he is clearly cognizant of the conundrum. But again, for a readercoming to the book from a non-normative, historical (or literary) background, a backgroundopposite to that of Novak's explicit audience, the paradox will remain not only unresolved, but troubling. Novak tends to play Nahmanides off against his predecessor,Maimonides. The former is unsystematic, the latter is systematic; the former is the great compromiser between the dictates of philosophy and of kabbalah, the latter is systematically philosophical. The contrast between Nahmanides and Maimonides is, I think, overdrawn. Maimonides is not such a philosophical system builder as Novak suggests. Maimonides is fully alive to the importance of historical, nonphilosophical, explanations in explicating ta 'amei ha-nmitzvot (e.g., Guide 3.32); indeed, Novak himself says that "Maimonidesdoes invoke history when explaining some of the lIiuqqim"(p. 9). And though Novak wishes to understand such historical explanations as subserving universal, perennial concerns which Maimonides wishes to underscore, this is not to deny the foundational role of history for Maimonides in any viable explanation of the law (especially huqqim) and our obedience to it. Readers will wish to compare Novak's claim (pp. 9-10) that for Maimonides, the huqqim are from a philosophical perspective the least important of the three types of commandments (contra Nahmanides, for whom, according to Novak, the huqqim are the most important on account of "their very mystery" [p. 10], their unphilosophical nature) with Josef Stern's quite opposite claim as to the emblematic nature of the (historical) huqqini for Maimonides.2Indeed, it is Nahmanides who, in understandingthe hzuqqinm as shrouded in "mystery," has recourse to the ahistorical mysteries of the kabbalah. My apology on behalf of Maimonides is not meant to detract from the real differences between Nahmanides and Maimonides, which Novak well brings out. Clearly the kabbalistic influence upon Nahmanides is a major non-Maimonidean moment. But in accepting kabbalahover philosophy as the deepest teaching of the Torah, it no longer is obvious to me who, Nahmanides or Maimonides, places "precedence of datum over theory" (p. 15). DanielH. Frank Universityof Kentucky Lexington,Ky. 2. In Maimonides and Histotr: ed. S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1986), pp. 92 ff.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Jeremy Cohen Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 420-422 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486836 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



420

BOOK REVIEWS

Barry Dov Walfish. Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xiv, 386 pp. The well-known talmudic discussion of whether the Scroll of Esther was truly canonical-whether it rendered the hands ritually impure, and whether it was divinely inspired-manifested both the fascination and the doubts that its story elicited among ancient readers. Strewn with motifs from Near Eastern folklore, devoid of explicit reference to God, and patently a product of Jewish experience in the Diaspora, Esther challenged the imagination and the theological sensitivities of the rabbis as much as it testified to the workings of divine providence in human history. By the time that the world of Jewish antiquity gave way to that of the Middle Ages, Esther had successfully qualified as Holy Scripture, but its ability to captivate and to stimulate the mind and pen of the exegete did not abate. On the contrary,as Barry Dov Walfish's monograph ably demonstrates, Esther appealed directly to the perspective of medieval Jewish scholars, who shared with their heroic forebearsin ancient Susa much of the difficulty of survival and self-expression as a religious minority in a land not their own. Did Ahasuerus' cooperation with Haman derive from wickedness, weakness, or essentially well-intentioned naivete? How ought one to evaluate Esther's willingness to join the royal harem, coupled with her reluctance to reveal her identity as a Jew? To what extent did Mordecai exemplify the qualities of the ideal courtier-or the attributesof good moral leadership as elaborated in Aristotle's Ethics? Does the story of Purimcelebrate the victory of biblical theology over an Averroistic inclination to astrology (exhibited by Haman), or does it relate the victory of good constellations over evil ones? To what extent can one explain the workings of the Persian court-e.g., in the trial and dismissal of Vashti-according to Aristotelian standardsof justice and political behavior? What lessons does Esther teach the medieval Jew concerning adaptation in the face of hostility and alienation? How does the story offer insight into the divine master-plan for the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people? These are only a few of the many questions that exercised medieval Jewish commentatorson Esther,whose responses Walfish has collected in Esther in Medieval Garb, an outgrowthof his 1983 University of Toronto doctoral dissertation. Walfish has surveyed some thirty medieval commentaries, from the days of Rashi through the sixteenth century,and here

BOOK REVIEWS

421

presents a study of their methods, emphases, and ideas. Part I (chapters 1-4) considers the concerns of the various commentaries with Hebrew grammar, lexicography, rabbinic midrash, Kabbalah,and Jewish historiography(in this case Jossipon); their reliance on non-Jewish sources-Aristotle, rhetoric,and astrology; their literary sensitivities to the style and structureof the biblical story; and the theological issues that engaged them. In Part II (chaps. 5-9) Walfish proposes to "leave the exegete's study and step out into the street" (p. 95), assessing the impact of the exegetes' distinctly medieval experience on noteworthy issues in their commentaries: the geography, architecture,and culture of ancient Persia; the realia and prevailing attitudes of interactionbetween Gentiles and Jews; the natureof the antisemitism confronting Diaspora Jewry; the workings of the royal court; and the relations between Jews and Gentile monarchs. There follow two appendices, including a helpful review of the exegetes and their opera, then bibliographies, and, finally, detailed indices. Esther in Medieval Garb amasses much interesting material,drawing from hitherto-unpublished sources as well as from printed editions, and testifies to the impressively erudite and persevering research of its author. Walfish correctly notes the dearthof works of intellectual history based on the study of biblical exegesis, and he admirablyundertakesto focus on the linkage between the cultural and historical context of the commentator and the substance of his commentary. Again, we must suffice with mere mention of several fruits of this endeavor: helpful distinctions between the characteristictendencies of Northern French, Spanish, and Provengal exegetes (chaps. 1-2); an insightful excursus on the literary analysis of Isaac Arama (pp. 68 ff.); acknowledgment of the "positive influence that contacts with Gentiles had on the development of Jewish thought" (p. 120); identification of particularincidents of Castilian court intrigue which may well have motivated rabbinic reflection on the biblical Haman (pp. 168, 192); and Abraham Saba's provocative contrast between the Ishmaelite ancestry of Ahasuerus and the Edomite roots of Haman (p. 136). As a work of intellectual history, however, Esther in Medieval Garb does not venture far enough. Its organization around themes within the exegetical literature on Esther, and not according to the progression of the biblical story or around the works of particular exegetes (or schools of thought), militates against a concerted treatment of the Scroll of Esther on the one hand, or of developments in the history of exegesis on the other. Owing to

422

BOOK REVIEWS

the structure of the volume, the author's conclusions are necessarily brief (less than half a page for each of the nine chapters, under four pages of "concluding remarks" at the end), conjectural, and ultimately inconclusive. Especially in view of the author's learned and painstaking research, I found this particularlydisappointing. The author has laid the groundworkfor much instructive historical analysis; one can only hope that he will return to the sources he has mined so well and consider their import more thoroughly. JeremyCohen Tel Aviv University RamatGan,Israel and Ohio StateUniversity Columbus,Ohio Simon Schwartzfuchs. A Concise History of the Rabbinate. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993. xii, 179 pp. The author of this work would have been well advised to write a book on the origins and development of the rabbinate, and to leave it at that. In its coverage of origins and development, this book is very admirable. In fact, as I read and contemplated most of the book, I kept thinking that Simon Schwartzfuchs short-changes himself with his title because he actually provides much more valuable detail than A Concise History of the Rabbinate led me to expect. In most of the book, the authordeftly provides a fascinating analysis of the origins and development of the rabbinate.Although there are those who would have us believe that contemporaryordinationstems directly from thesenzikha of mishnaic times and, perhaps, even earlier, the reality is quite different. As Schwartzfuchs indicates, the original ordination ceased long before the destruction of the Second Temple, and for centuries afterward there was none. Nor was the role of the traditionally ordained analogous to the contemporary role of rabbi. The rabbinateas we know it emerged in Europe hundreds of years later, and it emerged because of communal needs. As the nature of the Jewish community underwent dramaticchange with the advent of modernity, so too did the rabbinate,and Schwartzfuchs succinctly delineates the major patterns. The problems emerge when he attempts to cover the rabbinate in the

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Chaim I. Waxman Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 422-424 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486837 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



422

BOOK REVIEWS

the structure of the volume, the author's conclusions are necessarily brief (less than half a page for each of the nine chapters, under four pages of "concluding remarks" at the end), conjectural, and ultimately inconclusive. Especially in view of the author's learned and painstaking research, I found this particularlydisappointing. The author has laid the groundworkfor much instructive historical analysis; one can only hope that he will return to the sources he has mined so well and consider their import more thoroughly. JeremyCohen Tel Aviv University RamatGan,Israel and Ohio StateUniversity Columbus,Ohio Simon Schwartzfuchs. A Concise History of the Rabbinate. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993. xii, 179 pp. The author of this work would have been well advised to write a book on the origins and development of the rabbinate, and to leave it at that. In its coverage of origins and development, this book is very admirable. In fact, as I read and contemplated most of the book, I kept thinking that Simon Schwartzfuchs short-changes himself with his title because he actually provides much more valuable detail than A Concise History of the Rabbinate led me to expect. In most of the book, the authordeftly provides a fascinating analysis of the origins and development of the rabbinate.Although there are those who would have us believe that contemporaryordinationstems directly from thesenzikha of mishnaic times and, perhaps, even earlier, the reality is quite different. As Schwartzfuchs indicates, the original ordination ceased long before the destruction of the Second Temple, and for centuries afterward there was none. Nor was the role of the traditionally ordained analogous to the contemporary role of rabbi. The rabbinateas we know it emerged in Europe hundreds of years later, and it emerged because of communal needs. As the nature of the Jewish community underwent dramaticchange with the advent of modernity, so too did the rabbinate,and Schwartzfuchs succinctly delineates the major patterns. The problems emerge when he attempts to cover the rabbinate in the

BOOK REVIEWS

423

modern period in a few brief chapters. His treatmentof the American rabbinate is dissatisfying because he limits himself to "The American Rabbinical Schools." Essentially, Schwartzfuchs summarizes the histories of Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. He also includes a few lines about the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. As good as these synopses are, however, they do not add up to a history, even a concise one, of the American rabbinate. If the late Marshall Sklare's pioneering study did nothing else, it taught that in Conservative Judaism there is a world of difference between the seminary and the synagogue. Although the differences may vary, the same is true in Reform and in Orthodoxy.In one of his chapters on the modern rabbinate, Schwartzfuchs makes a number of sweeping assertions and takes matters out of context, with the result that they lose their meaning. For example, he asserts that the modern rabbinatereadily adapted to many of the aims of the Haskalah, such as not condemning science and suppressing exterior signs of difference between Jews and Gentiles. "They opposed," Schwartzfuchs continues, "the continued use of Jewish languages, and preached and wrote only in the national vernacular"(p. 125). Was this the way of the entire "modern rabbinate,"of all graduates of the Hildesheimer Seminary? Were not many, if not most, of them not ideologically opposed to the continued use of Jewish languages but acquiescent to the linguistic demands of their congregants? Schwartzfuchs's portrait of the modem rabbinatecontinues: "They were basically supportersof a religion of rationalityand were convinced that it was not antagonistic to revealed religion. In consequence, in a rare show of unity, they opposed Jewish mysticism and succeeded in eradicating all traces of Kabbalistic belief and learning" (ibid.). From the author's "concise history," one would never know that there was a popular Sabbatean movement and that the rabbinate undertook strong measures, discouraging mysticism being a major one, to prevent similar catastrophes. In the same vein and in order to preserve the leadership of the scholarly elite, Rabbi Elijah of Vilna was one of the most vociferous opponents of Hasidism. One would, however, hardly call the Gaon of Vilna a modernist. At least one other objectionable statement appears in the same chapter,in the discussion of women in the rabbinate.Schwartzfuchsnaturallybegins with the Reform movement, and discusses initial reactions to the newly ordained female rabbis. He asserts that "The Reform movement was faithful to itself in

424

BOOK REVIEWS

not hesitating to modify the Halakhah, which refused to recognize women in the public life of the synagogue" (p. 127). This is a basic misunderstanding of the very principles of Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism does not need to "modify the Halakhah," because it does not recognize the binding nature of Halakhah. Such modification is for Conservative Judaism to grapple with; it is simply not an issue for Reform. Despite these troublesome weaknesses, the book is a very good one. There is no other history of the rabbinateof the same breadthand depth. The author is fluent in many languages, which enables him to present primarydocuments and which gives him important insight into nuances in specific communities. We are thus treated to Schwartzfuchs's unexpurgatedtranslationof one of the earliest rabbinic contracts, that of Man Todros (Theodoros), the rabbi of the German community of Friedberg (Hesse), in 1575, among a number of other gems. For highly informative backgroundon one of the most significant roles in Jewish religious and communal life, Schwartzfuchs's book is, despite its weaknesses, a most valuable source. ChaimI. Waxman RutgersUniversity New Brunswick,N.J. Stefan C. Reif. Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History3Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 437 pp. Stefan Reif's Judaism and Hebrew Prayer deserves attention, especially as encyclopedic books on Jewish liturgy are rare, and because this one comes from the pen of a scholar who directs the Taylor-SchechterGenizah Research Unit at Cambridge. It recapitulates essays published elsewhere, constituting Reif's retrospective statement on the shape of liturgical research. Against the backdrop of a decade in which the textual paradigm of liturgical research has had little new to say, Reif begins by asking what the nature of such study should be (chap. 1). Assuming that it should be textual and historical, he considers the extent to which biblical Judaismis liturgical in the sense that rabbinic Judaism is (chap. 2); how synagogue liturgy evolved from a relatively unstructured tannaitic oral amalgam into a fixed geonic prayer book (chaps. 3-5); how a geonic text evolved subsequently into medieval rites (chap. 6) and then into a printed siddur (chap. 7); and how that

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Lawrence A. Hoffman Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 424-427 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486838 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



424

BOOK REVIEWS

not hesitating to modify the Halakhah, which refused to recognize women in the public life of the synagogue" (p. 127). This is a basic misunderstanding of the very principles of Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism does not need to "modify the Halakhah," because it does not recognize the binding nature of Halakhah. Such modification is for Conservative Judaism to grapple with; it is simply not an issue for Reform. Despite these troublesome weaknesses, the book is a very good one. There is no other history of the rabbinateof the same breadthand depth. The author is fluent in many languages, which enables him to present primarydocuments and which gives him important insight into nuances in specific communities. We are thus treated to Schwartzfuchs's unexpurgatedtranslationof one of the earliest rabbinic contracts, that of Man Todros (Theodoros), the rabbi of the German community of Friedberg (Hesse), in 1575, among a number of other gems. For highly informative backgroundon one of the most significant roles in Jewish religious and communal life, Schwartzfuchs's book is, despite its weaknesses, a most valuable source. ChaimI. Waxman RutgersUniversity New Brunswick,N.J. Stefan C. Reif. Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History3Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 437 pp. Stefan Reif's Judaism and Hebrew Prayer deserves attention, especially as encyclopedic books on Jewish liturgy are rare, and because this one comes from the pen of a scholar who directs the Taylor-SchechterGenizah Research Unit at Cambridge. It recapitulates essays published elsewhere, constituting Reif's retrospective statement on the shape of liturgical research. Against the backdrop of a decade in which the textual paradigm of liturgical research has had little new to say, Reif begins by asking what the nature of such study should be (chap. 1). Assuming that it should be textual and historical, he considers the extent to which biblical Judaismis liturgical in the sense that rabbinic Judaism is (chap. 2); how synagogue liturgy evolved from a relatively unstructured tannaitic oral amalgam into a fixed geonic prayer book (chaps. 3-5); how a geonic text evolved subsequently into medieval rites (chap. 6) and then into a printed siddur (chap. 7); and how that

REVIEWS BOOK

425

siddur fared in modern times (chap. 8), especially with the rise of movement identities (chap. 9). Reif's account is implicitly teleological, since it takes as its norm what came to be known as the "traditionalsiddur";it explicitly prejudices Orthodox versions of that work, declaring them to be its proper "historical continuation" (p. 295). But unlike most accounts, this one does not prejudice antiquity at the expense of anything post-geonic. As Reif tells it, biblical Jews were not liturgical, though postexilic leaders did experiment with public ceremonial and a theology of divine inscrutability and human sinfulness that would occupy the rabbislater.When the cult ended, rabbis debated the relative priority of prayer, Torah, and ma 'asim tovinmas the new essence of Judaism. Torah study and its attendant ma'aim tn ovim won (p. 67), though geonic literature valuing prayer overlooks the talmudic preference for Torah and good works as the real rabbinic leitourgia. Since Joseph Heinemann, almost all scholars have conceptualized tannaitic liturgy as oral, implying the coexistence of many parallel but different ad hoc prayer "scripts" intended for oral performances that had no necessary continuity beyond a single performative instance. Movement was not (as earlier philologists imagined) from a simple and original canonical Urtext to a multiplicity of rites all more or less outgrowths of the purer original, but the other way around: from a cultural system that encouraged alternative liturgical performances to one that preferredtextual fixity. Reif must be read as a polemic supporting Heinemann against Ezra Fleischer (see especially pp. 119-121), who recently revived the pre-Heinemann theory of a tannaitic fixed liturgy, dating it, however, only after 70 C.E.1Reif is already on record in deferential opposition to Fleischer on both counts: the liturgy was oral, he holds, but even in its orality, it was at least influenced by postexilic biblical models.2 But why would a tradition without a fixed text opt for a prayer book in the geonic era? Reif responds (in part) by emphasizing the newly available codex, which he traces to ninth-century Babylonia (p. 148), precisely the time of Seder Rav Amranm.In perhaps his strongest chapter, Reif then traces the Amram corpus through Europe, updating Zunz's pioneer work on ritual development by surveying most medieval prayer corpora to posit literary lines of development. Arriving ultimately at seventeenth-century Poland, he 2. Tarbiz59 (1990): 397-445. 2. Tarbiz60 (1991): 677-681.

426

BOOK REVIEWS

credits technology again as the cause of liturgical advance; not the codex now, but the printing press, which permitted standardized prayer books for the masses. Liturgy now becomes the study of that book: how enlightened maskilim "correct"its grammar,while reformers alter its theology. This sweeping account is not easily followed. As a collection of essays that appeared elsewhere originally, the book suffers from redundancy (e.g., pp. 122-132, which were necessary in the original, but are repetitive here). Moreover, the style is dense, since the author favors lengthy sentences that qualify and overqualify each claim, and elephantine paragraphsrunning two to three pages in length (e.g., pp. 309-313). But density arises also because Reif eschews the specificity of normal historical explanation. Typical is his treatment of the geonic curtailment of creativity, which he attributesto "crests and troughs ... periods of innovation ... followed by years of conservative retrenchment"(p. 147). Though true enough, this begs the question of just why retrenchmentoccurred when and where it did, why in Babylonia not Palestine, for instance, and why by geonim only in the ninth century, especially since (by Reif's own admission) the bound codex was used "a few centuries earlier" (p. 148) by Christian communities, so that the technological cause he favors cannot be held fully accountable. The point is not simply that Reif and I have a long-standing disagreement on whether we should explain the "crests and troughs"of liturgical creativity or fixity in political terms, associating fixity (as I do) with cultural systems such as the Babylonian, where successful canonization of authority permits control of religious expression.3 It is that Reif prefers not only recourse to technological capacity (the codex, the printing press) but more significantly, something akin to Aristotle's material cause, in this case the internaldynamic of the halakhah (see p. 366, n. 29)4 with its "natural"(!) ebb and flow, not necessarily linked to empirically demonstrable events external to itself. Such claims are not easily captured in a narrative designed for readers seeking historical specificity. This thus turns out to be a lengthy book, filled with extensive discussion; but the argumentis often frustratinglygeneral in nature. Still, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer recapitulates one very fine scholar's 3. See my Canonization of the Synagogue Service (Notre Dame, Ind., 1979). 4. In addition, see his review of my Beyond the Text: A Holistic Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington, Ind., 1987) in L'eylah, September 1988, p. 68.

BOOK REVIEWS

427

thinking on important matters. It deserves careful reading both by those within the textual paradigm who want to know the state of the question, and by those (like myself) who treat liturgy as a key to culture, but who must still grapple with textual data, even as those data are reformulatedfor other than textual ends. For Reif, and against my own view,5 liturgy is thus still a text, not (for example) a ritual script or a symbolic encoding of the worshippers' universe. Its rites vary according to textual selectivity, not sociological self-perception. And of all available versions, one is most authentic, namely, the Hebrew text patterned after the Babli, Rav Amram, and then the rishonim and acharonim of Europe, who ultimately codified its wording as halakhically proper. I do not subscribe to any of these a priori definitions, but I do recommend Reif's treatment as a cogent and serious presentation of his position, a reliable and well-documented work by a man who has read both secondary sources and primary texts, and who weaves them together in a thoughtful and responsible way. LawrenceA. Hoffman HebrewUnionCollegeJewishInstituteof Religion New York,N.Y. R. Po-Chia Hsia. Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. xxvi, 173 pp. A late medieval German manuscript containing judicial documents connected with the 1475 ritual murder accusation and trial against the Jews of Trentwas given to Yeshiva University in 1988. R. Po-Chia Hsia's study of this manuscriptand its context, undertakenat the invitation of Yeshiva University, is a highly readable anatomy of the texts it contains; it reflects constant awareness of environment, history, religion, politics, gender, personality, and mediated testimony. Hsia's compelling narrativeoffers a detailed portraitof a Jewish community on the verge of destruction, framed by a late medieval Europe torn by ecclesiastical and secular power struggles, obsessed with heresy and witchcraft, and threatened by Turkish incursions. In this time and 5. In Beyond the Text.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Judith R. Baskin Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 427-429 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486839 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

427

thinking on important matters. It deserves careful reading both by those within the textual paradigm who want to know the state of the question, and by those (like myself) who treat liturgy as a key to culture, but who must still grapple with textual data, even as those data are reformulatedfor other than textual ends. For Reif, and against my own view,5 liturgy is thus still a text, not (for example) a ritual script or a symbolic encoding of the worshippers' universe. Its rites vary according to textual selectivity, not sociological self-perception. And of all available versions, one is most authentic, namely, the Hebrew text patterned after the Babli, Rav Amram, and then the rishonim and acharonim of Europe, who ultimately codified its wording as halakhically proper. I do not subscribe to any of these a priori definitions, but I do recommend Reif's treatment as a cogent and serious presentation of his position, a reliable and well-documented work by a man who has read both secondary sources and primary texts, and who weaves them together in a thoughtful and responsible way. LawrenceA. Hoffman HebrewUnionCollegeJewishInstituteof Religion New York,N.Y. R. Po-Chia Hsia. Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. xxvi, 173 pp. A late medieval German manuscript containing judicial documents connected with the 1475 ritual murder accusation and trial against the Jews of Trentwas given to Yeshiva University in 1988. R. Po-Chia Hsia's study of this manuscriptand its context, undertakenat the invitation of Yeshiva University, is a highly readable anatomy of the texts it contains; it reflects constant awareness of environment, history, religion, politics, gender, personality, and mediated testimony. Hsia's compelling narrativeoffers a detailed portraitof a Jewish community on the verge of destruction, framed by a late medieval Europe torn by ecclesiastical and secular power struggles, obsessed with heresy and witchcraft, and threatened by Turkish incursions. In this time and 5. In Beyond the Text.

428

BOOK REVIEWS

place, church, state, and popular antisemitism converged in a vision of Jews as quintessential internal enemies of Christians. Hsia argues that the purpose of the Trent ritual murder trial was not only to prove Jewish guilt in the particularcase of the murderedchild, Simon, whose body had apparentlybeen placed in the cellar of a Jewish home on Easter Sunday, but to demonstrate that Jewish rituals and traditions were inherently evil, "thatthe very essence of Jewish [Passover] rites ... demanded the sacrifice of Christianboys" (p. 94). The Yeshiva University manuscript is a compilation of texts from several sources, representing the official story of the ritual murder in Trent. It was commissioned in 1478-79, during the popular campaign to secure the canonization of "Little Martyr Simon" in Rome, following papal vindication of Bishop Hinderbach of Trent of charges of judicial misconduct in the trial of the accused Jews. The manuscript records versions of the interrogations under judicial torture of nineteen men and four women of the Trent Jewish community which were conducted bilingually in German and Italian, with simultaneous transcription into Latin, and occasional statements in Hebrew. Hsia observes that beyond these linguistic transformations,"the manuscript reflects a far more sinister translation--one which transgresses the boundary between fact and fantasy, collapsing voluntary statements into involuntary confessions and distorting Jewish rites into a Christian ethnography of barbarism"(p. xxiv). The northern Italian city of Trent, combining Italian and German population and cultural features, was a bishopric. The powers of the German, Vienna-educated, Bishop Johannes Hinderbach,however, were circumscribed both by the feudal authority of Archduke Sigismund of Tirol and by the Italian-dominated papacy in Rome. In prosecuting his case against the Jews of Trent, Hinderbach faced opposition from both these quarters,and, as Hsia demonstrates, his determination to convict was driven as much by political self-assertion as by his pious conviction of Jewish guilt. The thirty Jews of Trent, mostly immigrantsfrom German-speakingCentral Europe, lived in three multigenerational households. The backgrounds, family relationships, and everyday activities of these men and women are preserved in their testimony. From these transcriptsHsia describes their lives and histories, as well as those of the several Jewish visitors who were trapped in their midst when disaster struck, and tracks the varying responses of each individual to the calamity with which the community was faced. Trent'sJews

BOOK REVIEWS

429

were divided by age, profession, education, wealth, and gender. Two of the household heads were moneylenders, although of different social status, and the third was a physician. Although all three households had frequentcontacts with Christians as business clients, patients, occasional servants, neighbors, and friends, the Jews were fundamentally outsiders in their German-speaking neighborhood, set apart by religion, occupation, and prosperity. Put to judicial torture, which often far exceeded the bounds permittedby law, and subjected to repeated brutal interrogations, the Jewish men were broken one by one, and offered the testimony they believed their interrogators wanted to hear. Efforts at intercession organized by Jewish leaders from other communities proved fruitless in altering the obduratedeterminationof Bishop Hinderbach to convict, as did efforts to obtain freedom for at least some of the Jews by a papal commissioner, Baptista Dei Guidici, sent from Rome to investigate the case. Over the course of a few months, most of the men of the community were executed. Some of the Jewish women, held under house arrest, were also interrogated. Their testimony reveals the highly differentiated gender roles within the small community, because women's limited part in Jewish worship and ritual made it possible for them to plead ignorance of events in which the men might have been involved. As Hsia writes, "Perceived as the weaker sex and marginalizedin religious rituals, the women were under less pressure to conform to the image of the demonic Jew" (p. 115); spared the death penalty, all the women were ultimately compelled to accept baptism. Hsia's multilayered version of this terriblestory of a community's destruction reveals in microcosm the mounting pressures which were threatening Jewish existence in western and central Europe as the Middle Ages moved to their close. It is a story which bears retelling, particularlywhen it is so abundantly documented by vivid voices from the past. JudithR. Baskin StateUniversityof New Yorkat Albany Albany,N.Y.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Michael C. Steinlauf Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 430-433 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486840 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



430

BOOK REVIEWS

Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal. Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood. Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1992. 191 pp. At a time when it has become difficult even to keep track of all the currentscholarship in the field of Jewish studies, it is remarkablethat there is still so little available on the history of the Ashkenazi civilization of Eastern Europe, the world from which the majority of present-day Jews are directly descended. The reasons for this cannot concern us here, but its results should; even in academic circles, a great deal of our thinking about this rathermajor portion of the past continues to rely on "what my bubbie told me." This applies particularly to the highly charged issue of relations between Jews and their coterritorial neighbors, and above all with the Poles. On the subject of Polish-Jewish relations, Jews and Poles, in and out of academia, hold opinions whose certainty seems to vary in inverse proportionto the state of their knowledge. The book under review is a significant and, in several respects, unique contribution to this sorely needed knowledge. Hardly by coincidence, it is also an excellent example of interdisciplinaryand multiculturalstudies. The authors, a Polish and a Jewish literary historian, have set themselves the task of tracking the traces, in both Polish and Jewish literature, of a key event in Polish history. The 1863 Polish insurrection against the Russians was the watershed in the creation of a modern Polish national identity; it created a myth of national resistance and martyrdom that animated Polish freedom struggles for well over a century, beginning against the tsars, and continuing against the Nazis and the Soviets. But this event also inspired an influential image of Polish-Jewish comradeship-in-arms,an alliance for freedom between (in the words of Antoni Slonimski, a twentieth-century Polish poet of Jewish origin) "the two saddest nations on earth."Chronicling the development of this image in Polish and Jewish literary texts resonates far beyond the texts themselves; in Eastern Europe, literature and literary symbols, as the authors are well aware, easily function as politics and, indeed, as prophecy. This is the stuff out of which national mythologies as well as national antagonisms are created and sustained. The significance of the present study, particularly at this moment in history, certainly transcends the Polish-Jewish context. For many readers of this book, the notion of Polish-Jewish fraternity,let alone the idea of a mystical Polish-Jewish union with messianic objectives,

BOOK REVIEWS

431

originally propounded by the Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz in the 1840s, will come as something of a surprise. While actual Jewish involvement in the 1863 uprising was largely limited to small groups of upper-class youth primarily in Warsaw, it included some powerfully evocative moments, among them the sermons of Dov Meisels, the Orthodox chief rabbi of Warsaw, preaching support for the rebels, and the martyrdom of Michal Landy, a young Jew shot by Russian troops as he lifted a cross carried by a fallen Polish comrade during a demonstration. In Polish literature of the uprising and the years immediately following, as this study reveals, the image of "the Jew with the cross," along with references to the Maccabees and other Old Testament imagery, is everpresent, no less a part of the emerging insurrectionary mythology than the well-known slogan, "For our freedom, and for yours." ContemporaryJewish sources are disproportionately fewer. They are the product of a handful of rationalist maskilim, distant observers of the events themselves, writing in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, and Russian, for whom a multinational empire was generally preferable to a uninational state, and who were particularly mistrustful of religiously tinged Polish nationalism. Their image of Jewish involvement in the insurrection was, as the authors conclude, "almost the exact opposite of the Polish perception" (p. 96). The second half of the study traces the fate of the idea of Polish-Jewish brotherhood during the half-century between the uprising and World War I. Championed at first by the Polish positivists, who encouraged Jews to put their economic expertise in the service of the Polish nation and to assimilate into Polish culture, the notion was increasingly undermined by economic, social, and political change. For one thing, capitalism, as it developed in Poland and indeed throughout Eastern Europe, was mired not only in class but in national antagonisms; the Polish intelligentsia, primarily of gentry origin, increasingly viewed Jewish entrepreneurshipand Jewish money as enemies of Polish values. It also began to occur to them that, even given the opportunity, Jews might not want to become "good Poles." The rise of Jewish nationalism, in both its Zion- and Diaspora-affirming varieties, was paralleled by the spread of a new sort of Polish nationalism whose cornerstones were ethnicity, Catholicism, and antisemitism. On the eve of Polish independence, the ideology of "Kochajmy sie" ("Let's love one another"), inspired by Mickiewicz and the symbols of 1863, appeared as "a vision of a golden age tainted with the bitterness of unfulfilled expectations"

432

BOOK REVIEWS

(p. 143). The authors trace this growing bitterness in the mutual stereotypes of Poles and Jews as reflected in canonized literature, as well as, much to the authors' credit, in the rapidly growing genre of popular literature. There are sophisticated observations here, as, for example, reflections on the political function of literary naturalism in debunking Romantic mythology and helping to introduce a biological stratum into both Polish and Jewish nationalism. While the authors were wise in not undertaking the entire subject of Polish-Jewish relations in history, their study leans somewhat too far in the opposite direction, and suffers from an insufficiently developed historical framework. Like it or not, scholars of East European history cannot assume their readers' familiarity with the outlines of their subject in the manner of their Western counterparts.The readers of this English-language study, most of whose sources are Polish, would have greatly benefitted, for example, from a simple chronicle of the events of 1863 and of the Warsaw pogrom of 1881. The omission of any discussion of events prior to the 1850s is also regrettable. For example, the reality, as well as the mythology, of modern Polish-Jewish comradeship-in-arms did not begin in 1863, but in 1795, when a Jewish regiment commanded by Berek Joselewicz fought under Tadeusz Kosciuszko against the Russians in the final defense of the Polish Commonwealth. While Joselewicz receives passing mention in this study, the importance of his example is never made clear; yet it was his name, more than that of Michal Landy, that functioned as a synonym for Polish-Jewish brotherhood well into the present century. More generally, in not extending its scope, if only in a historical overview, to the Polish Commonwealth, the study misses an important perspective on both the meaning of the 1863 uprising and the myth of Polish-Jewish brotherhood. For the uprising was a true watershed; it was as much about the past as about the future, as much about the longings of the Polish nobility for Old Poland as about modern nationalism. The authors note that the positive images of Jews in late-nineteenth-century Polish literature tapped the "categories and values characteristic of a traditional,premodern society" (p. 146), while the negative images of Poles in Jewish literature drew on the traditional Jewish stereotype of the "evil nobleman" (p. 113) Behind this welter of images stand centuries of a unique alliance between Jews and the Polish nobility that terms such as "traditional"and "premodern" are insufficient to characterize. But only placed squarely in the context of

BOOK REVIEWS

433

this history can the dream of a "golden age" of Polish-Jewish brotherhood, and more generally, the complexity and pain of Polish-Jewish relations in modern times, assume their full significance. MichaelC. Steinlauf Franklinand MarshallCollege Lancaster,Pa. Brian Cheyette. Constructions of "TheJew" in English Literatureand Society: Racial Representations, 1875-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xvi, 301 pp. The attention given to the Jew in England in the later years of the nineteenth century owes much to Disraeli's overwhelming presence. Brian Cheyette quotes a famous letter of Goldwin Smith: "The secret of Lord Beaconsfield's life lies in his Jewish blood. . . . Certainly a century and a quarterof residence in England on the part of his ancestors and himself has left little trace on the mind and characterof Lord Beaconsfield. He is in almost every essential . . . a Jew" (p. 15). What to make of Lord Beaconsfield and of his theories about race was an importantaspect of the British response to Jews. For Disraeli the Jew represented the spiritual nature of man, and "religion, property, and natural aristocracy" (p. 55). Because Disraeli was associated with imperialism and foreign possessions, when imperialism foundered, as it did in the Boer War, Jews were often blamed. As Cheyette argues in chapter 3, "Both Buchan and Kipling were to locate a supposed Jewish financial power within the realm of Empire in terms which were to oppose liberal and socialist constructions of mythologized 'Jewish financiers' in Southern Africa" (p. 92). In Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography, a remarkablebook of self-writing that is often as much a disguised autobiography as a biography of its subject, Disraeli writes: "The Jews represent the Semitic principle: all that is spiritual in nature. They are the trustees of tradition, and the conservators of the religious element. They are a living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of man" (p. 59). But ratherthan blame Disraeli for introducingracial discourse, one should understand him as taking up a defensive position to ward off those who would have excluded Jews from Parliament and who

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Daniel R. Schwartz Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 433-437 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486841 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

433

this history can the dream of a "golden age" of Polish-Jewish brotherhood, and more generally, the complexity and pain of Polish-Jewish relations in modern times, assume their full significance. MichaelC. Steinlauf Franklinand MarshallCollege Lancaster,Pa. Brian Cheyette. Constructions of "TheJew" in English Literatureand Society: Racial Representations, 1875-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xvi, 301 pp. The attention given to the Jew in England in the later years of the nineteenth century owes much to Disraeli's overwhelming presence. Brian Cheyette quotes a famous letter of Goldwin Smith: "The secret of Lord Beaconsfield's life lies in his Jewish blood. . . . Certainly a century and a quarterof residence in England on the part of his ancestors and himself has left little trace on the mind and characterof Lord Beaconsfield. He is in almost every essential . . . a Jew" (p. 15). What to make of Lord Beaconsfield and of his theories about race was an importantaspect of the British response to Jews. For Disraeli the Jew represented the spiritual nature of man, and "religion, property, and natural aristocracy" (p. 55). Because Disraeli was associated with imperialism and foreign possessions, when imperialism foundered, as it did in the Boer War, Jews were often blamed. As Cheyette argues in chapter 3, "Both Buchan and Kipling were to locate a supposed Jewish financial power within the realm of Empire in terms which were to oppose liberal and socialist constructions of mythologized 'Jewish financiers' in Southern Africa" (p. 92). In Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography, a remarkablebook of self-writing that is often as much a disguised autobiography as a biography of its subject, Disraeli writes: "The Jews represent the Semitic principle: all that is spiritual in nature. They are the trustees of tradition, and the conservators of the religious element. They are a living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of man" (p. 59). But ratherthan blame Disraeli for introducingracial discourse, one should understand him as taking up a defensive position to ward off those who would have excluded Jews from Parliament and who

434

BOOK REVIEWS

denigrated his qualifications because of his ancestors. Cheyette shows how the English response to the Dreyfus case included virulent antisemitism on the part of Belloc and Chesterton, who used the 1911-14 Marconi financial scandal to justify their antagonistic position on Dreyfus. And by quoting from contemporary biographer-apologists of those figures, Cheyette shows how antisemitism was reinscribed from generation to generation. What Cheyette discusses with remarkable insight and thoroughness is "the protean instability of 'the Jew' as signifier"(p. 8). He defines his mission boldly: "This study of semitic 'culturaldifference' is an attemptto rewrite the discipline of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English literature by placing a dominant racialized discourse at the heartof what constitutes the received definitions of literary 'culture' " (p. 4). Cheyette argues that the Jew was perceived as a double figure-simultaneously a mysterious exotic other like Disraeli, with magical potential to hypnotize the English into acceptance, and an insidious force to corrupt the purity of the British race. In each case, the British totemized him as Outsider. As Cheyette makes clear in his shrewd discussion of Culture and "The acculturated'Jew', in terms Anarchy, of this ambivalent Arnoldian liberalism, was an extreme example of those that may draw closer to 'grace' and 'beauty' by surpassing an unaesthetic, worldly Hebraism" (p. 5). Yet the presence of Jews, increased in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by emigration from tsarist Russia, exacerbated "the fear that a supposedly homogeneous national culture was being overwhelmed by an unassimilable 'other' " (p. 6). Cheyette's reading of Culture and Anarchy is particularlyshrewd. Consciously or unconsciously responding to the antisemitism of Thomas Arnold, his father,Matthew Arnold proposed the idea of a transformingculture"where Jews, newly assimilated into the nation-state, exemplify the Enlightenment virtues of tolerance, justice and equality" (p. 5). For Arnold, Hebraism was "both an alien 'semitic growth' and, at the same time, a metonym for the English Puritan tradition" (p. 20). The liberal humanist Arnold believed that culture could transcend racial differences, but-and this is a significant but-for Arnold, as Cheyette puts it, "The 'other' . . . must divest itself of racial particularism before being assimilated into a supposedly universalist culture" (p. 20). Cheyette shows that Jews became whatever English writers needed them to be: cosmopolitan or unpolished and boorish; capitalists indifferent to the national interest or homogenizing socialists. He shows how "writers [did]

BOOK REVIEWS

435

not draw on the eternal myths of 'the Jew' but actively construct[ed] them in relation to their own literary and political concerns" (p. 268). Indeed, Jews were totemized into Other much as hegemonic cultures always do to their minorities--and now, alas, as all too many cultural enclaves do to all outsiders. For English writers Jews have often served the role of a cultural psychotherapist on whom are projected whatever feelings are inherent in the writers; thus the constructions of Jews are really submerged English autobiographical and cultural data. What and how we totemize Other, including ideological constructs thatjustify the act of totemization-as Doestoevsky shows in his great Grand Inquisitor scene in the Brothers Karamazov, where Ivan constructs a dialogue that reflects his needs, and his character the Grand Inquisitor does the same-says everything about ourselves. I have some trouble with Cheyette's discounting of the teleological significance of the Holocaust: "Unlike other studies of pre-war literary anti-semitism, which mistakenly foreground the Holocaust, my approach is to stress the enlightened expectation that a superior 'culture' can modernize and civilize even 'the Jew' " (p. xi). And some of the terminology of cultural studies troubles me in a book which necessarily has and should have a humanistic cast: "As with Joyce, Eliot's poetry constructed 'the Jew' as a site of confusion and uncertainty" (p. 207). I found his discussion of Eliot quite compelling, but I think he somewhat misreads the dramatizedconsciousness of the antisemitic speaker of Eliot's Gerontion: "But the indeterminacy in Eliot's use of language is reflected, in particular,in Gerontion'sown inability to completely separate himself from 'the jew"' (p. 247). Gerontion may unwittingly speak in the base language he would attribute to Jews, but Cheyette's formulation is reductive. While his reading of Joyce's Ulysses has many fine insights, I cannot always follow the logic of the argument. He argues that "Joyce makes [Bloom] the site on which to challenge the reader's faith in a literary text to order 'reality' " (p. 206). Or: "His refusal to contain 'the Jew' within a realistic narrative, therefore, should be linked to his skepticism concerning conventional, modernizing discourses" (p. 218). Cheyette interweaves many prior critics and perhaps does not quite find his own voice. He misses the important link between Bloom and the Hasidic legend of the Lamed Vav-the thirty-six Just Men. Driven by his thematicengine, he also-perhaps understandably-misses much of Joyce's humor and fun in the passages he

436

BOOK REVIEWS

discusses. It is surprising that he does not take up why Joyce refers so frequently to the Boer War and why Bloom is associated with the Boer hero Christiaan de Wet. In fact, the Irish were particularly sympathetic with the Boers as fellow victims of imperialism, but perhapsJoyce is drawinga parallel between Bloom and other discriminated Jews, since in England Jews were being blamed for the Boer Warby people who thoughtlike Joyce's Deasy-the antisemitic Ulsterman in the "Nestor" section of Ulysses. Yet Cheyette has some compelling moments on Ulysses: "Far from postulating an alternative 'Jewish' history of 'persecution' to that of the Citizen's chauvinism, Bloom's uncertainJewishness is set against the fixity of the myths of Irish nationhood which are ruthlessly parodied throughoutthis episode" (p. 221). Cheyette sees literary works as sites where discourses are constructed as if they were buildings; but while one can admire the architectonics of buildings, Cheyette sometimes gives aesthetic concerns-as opposed to thematic issues-short shrift. The burgeoning field of cultural studies has become a respectable way of introducing thematic concerns into literary studies, whereas I grew up in a world where themes took a back seat to formal and aesthetic considerations. The concept of site has succeeded text as if authors were building constructions on ground that they had cleared. (We might recall the architectonic metaphors of the New Criticism, as influential formalism of the thirties through sixties which eschewed contextualism.) Nor is this book without the jargon of cultural studies, a jargon that has its own essentialistic premises: "While the historicizing of the semitic discourse under consideration avoids the essentialism that may be associated with the eternally 'mythic' construction of 'the Jew,' it should be stressed that it is as subjects of a 'discourse' and not as historical subjects that 'Jews' are situated in the literary texts under consideration" (p. 11). Of course every theoretical approach, including cultural studies-and of course deconstruction, its once powerful predecessor as the theoretical Holy Grail-substitutes its own kind of essentialism for others. At times, has not New Historicism and its offspring cultural studies become a kind of imperialism, willfully changing the geography of the literary texts they discuss to include subjects areas outside the borders of literary studies and willfully changing the semiotics to fit its own purposes? Cheyette has written an importantand well-researched study, even while raising issues about the field of cultural studies. Cheyette's historical scope and his wide and deep reading are impressive. His chapter titles give a sense

BOOK REVIEWS

437

of the range of his studies: "The Promised Land of Liberalism: Matthew Arnold, Anthony Trollope and George Eliot"; "Empire and Anarchy: John Buchan and Rudyard Kipling"; "The 'Socialism of Fools': George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells"; "The Limits of Liberalism: Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton"; "Modernism and Ambivalence: James Joyce and T. S. Eliot." It might have been useful to devote an entire chapter to Disraeli, since the response to him seems to play such a pivotal role in the subsequent English constructions of Jews, especially Arnold's and Buchan's. Cheyette might have had a coda on post-World War II constructions of the Jews, including Ishiguru's The Remains of the Day, for is it not the kind of racial discourses Cheyette discusses that leads to the rationalizations of that novel's Lord Darlington? And does not that book show how the teleology of the Holocaust is always a major signifier? And he needs more on how the various waves of Jewish immigration impacted on the writers he discusses. Clifford Geertz has written, "The problem of the integration of cultural life becomes one of making it possible for people inhabiting different worlds to have a genuine, and reciprocal, impact upon one another."' Disraeli's encounter with the dominant culture and his triumphant, if contentious, political career teach us that culture is dynamic, and at any given point heteroglossic, a dialogue of diverse thoughts, feelings, goals, and values. According to Isaiah Berlin, "Cultures-the sense of what the world meant to societies, of men's and women's collective sense of themselves in relation to others and the environment, that which affects particularforms of thought, feeling, behavior, action-... cultures differ."2Whatwe learnfrom Cheyette's study is that we need to honor cultural differences and respect the claims of cultural enclaves. Daniel R. Schwartz CornellUniversity Ithaca,N.Y.

1. Local Knowledge: Further Essay in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983), p. 161. 2. "Philosophy and Life: An Interview," New YorkReview of Books 30, no. 10 (May 28, 1992): 51.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Alan S. Zuckerman Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 438-440 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486842 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



438

BOOK REVIEWS

Steven J. Zipperstein. Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha'am and the Origins of Zionism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. xxv, 386 pp. In the pantheon of Zionist history, Asher Ginzberg, known by his penname Ahad Ha'am, rests alone. Nearly a century from the period of his most productive work, he still offers the hope of a Judaism that is not encompassed by religion and controlled by rabbis, and of a Jewish nationalism that is more than power politics. Whereas Herzl's political Zionism helped to lay the foundations of the state, and the socialist Zionists of the second aliyah began to construct a new society, economy, and political system, Ahad Ha'am remains associated with the dreams of cultural Zionism. For Ahad Ha'am, Zionism was a Judaic cultural renaissance. Steven Zipperstein's biography paints a complex portrait.Born the child of rich and well-connected parents-his father an honored guest at the court of the Sadagora Rebbe, his mother a niece of the LubavitcherRebbe-Ahad Ha'am became the leader of a generation of former yeshiva students who rejected the established religion of their communities and sought to master modern European culture. Always a dedicated political strategist, he molded his closest associates into the Bnei Moshe, a secretive cadre, dedicated to control the Hovevei Zion, Jewish education in Palestine, and the future of Judaism. Ahad Ha'am's magic lay in his pen. His essays rocked the Zionist movement, criticizing the state of Jewish settlements in Palestine when the accepted wisdom allowed only for praise, introducinga concern over the place of the Arabs in the land of Israel when no other Zionist leader acknowledged their presence, attacking Herzl for offering no vision of a Judaic renaissance when nearly all other Zionists offered only paeans to the movement's first internationalleader. Ahad Ha'am's message attracted Hayim Nahman Bialik, Leon Motzkin, Chaim Weizmann, and other Zionist luminaries. It broughthim to the keynote podium of several Zionist congresses and the editorship of Ha-Shiloah, the foremost Zionist journal at the turn of the century, and earned him the confidence of Weizmann, as the Zionist leader negotiated with the British over the terms of the Balfour Declaration. His reputation as an intellectual notwithstanding, however, Ahad Ha'am wrote no important works of scholarship. His best essays contain acerbic attacks and hints at a new vision, but no philosophical substance. Zipperstein

BOOK REVIEWS

439

shows that Weizmann and the other leaders of the Democratic Faction used Ahad Ha'am as a cultural symbol in their battles with Herzl, but rejected their presumed mentor's message as vague and not practical. Ahad Ha'am's relationship to Judaism was particularly complicated; he rejected its beliefs and practices, and his descriptions of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe and Palestine ignore the presence of vast numbers of observant Jews, as if they had no place in Judaism's present or future. At the same time, he encouraged his followers to form themselves into a circle that mimicked a Hasidic court, presided over regular Friday night meals with them, served by his wife, who continued to maintain a kosher home, and dismissed out of hand the claims of Reform Judaism in the West. Not surprisingly, Ahad Ha'am's vision was most appealing to Jews like himself, just removed from the yeshivas and shtiblech of EasternEurope. There was nothing shy about Ahad Ha'am's self-references. Taking Moses, Yohanan ben Zakkai, and Maimonides as explicit role models, he offered himself as the new leader who would transformJudaism for the new era. Zipperstein combines a careful reading of Ahad Ha'am's writings and the work of those who knew him, as well as a deep understandingof the social context of Odessa, the city in which Ahad Ha'am spent most of his adult life, and the Jewish colonies in Palestine, into a detailed picture that reflects the contradictions of his subject. He offers no sustained argument that disentangles the complexities of Ahad Ha'am's life and career. Only the attempt to clarify Ahad Ha'am's claims about the Arabs in Palestine (more a practical political problem than an ethical concern) serves as an analytic thread. No theories drawn from psychology guide the analysis of Ahad Ha'am's visions, activities, or family life. No theories from political science or sociology help to explain Ahad Ha'am's criticisms of the Jewish settlers, Herzl's political agenda, or the failure of the Bnei Moshe, or the use made of Ahad Ha'am by those who claimed to be his followers in Zionist politics. As Zipperstein details the extraordinaryextent to which Ahad Ha'am's work is self-referential (he nicely shows how even the pen-name itself implies kingship) and poorly developed (many of the claims are made by assertions, in which the conclusions are found in the points of evidence), as well as driven by an obvious political logic, he implicitly underlines but does not answer the fundamental need to account for Ahad Ha'am's success in his own day and the hallowed place he has continued to hold in Zionist history for nearly a century. As the philosophical weaknesses of Ahad Ha'am's essays

440

BOOKREVIEWS

emerge, Zipperstein leads the reader to wonder about the meaning of cultural Zionism and any effort to create a Judaic renaissance that moves beyond the boundaries of Judaism as a religion. Steven Zipperstein has brought the study of Ahad Ha'am into the world of serious scholarship. He provides materials and analysis that dissolve the halos of Zionist hagiography and detail the complexities of this extraordinary person. He establishes the questions but offers no general frameworkto guide future research. No longer a prophet, Ahad Ha'am remains elusive. Alan S. Zuckerman BrownUniversity Providence,R.I. James William Hagy. This Happy Land: TheJews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993. xi, 450 pp. "I admire the spirit of the Charlestonians,"declaims a character in Old Toney and His Master, one of the wagonload of proslavery novels published in the South just before the outbreak of the Civil War. "I regard them as the noblest race of merchants on earth. Even their Jews seem to deal fairly, and to lose their particular characteristics in the mercantile atmosphere of Charleston." This dubious compliment to Charleston's Jews illustrates the central theme (it is not quite an argument) of James William Hagy's This Happy Land, namely, the significant assimilation of Jews into the life of a city pivotal to the histories both of the South and of AmericanJewry.In Charleston, according to Hagy, Jews lost enough of their "particularcharacteristics"to live peaceably among Christian neighbors, serve the larger community in positions of influence, participate fully in the economic life of the city (including slaveholding and the buying and selling of slaves), and, in the years leading up to the Civil War,share with other Charlestoniansthe politics of Southern defiance. Did contemporaries acknowledge this assimilation into the "mercantile atmosphere of Charleston"in terms laced with antisemitism? Hagy offers little to qualify the CharlestonJews' own repeatedassertions that they lived in a "happy land" of tolerance and freedom. Hagy would have been more successful in maintaining this theme had he set out to probe the extent and limits of Jewish assimilation, and had he linked his findings to the history of Reform Judaism that constitutes the

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Stuart M. Blumin Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 440-441 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486843 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



440

BOOKREVIEWS

emerge, Zipperstein leads the reader to wonder about the meaning of cultural Zionism and any effort to create a Judaic renaissance that moves beyond the boundaries of Judaism as a religion. Steven Zipperstein has brought the study of Ahad Ha'am into the world of serious scholarship. He provides materials and analysis that dissolve the halos of Zionist hagiography and detail the complexities of this extraordinary person. He establishes the questions but offers no general frameworkto guide future research. No longer a prophet, Ahad Ha'am remains elusive. Alan S. Zuckerman BrownUniversity Providence,R.I. James William Hagy. This Happy Land: TheJews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993. xi, 450 pp. "I admire the spirit of the Charlestonians,"declaims a character in Old Toney and His Master, one of the wagonload of proslavery novels published in the South just before the outbreak of the Civil War. "I regard them as the noblest race of merchants on earth. Even their Jews seem to deal fairly, and to lose their particular characteristics in the mercantile atmosphere of Charleston." This dubious compliment to Charleston's Jews illustrates the central theme (it is not quite an argument) of James William Hagy's This Happy Land, namely, the significant assimilation of Jews into the life of a city pivotal to the histories both of the South and of AmericanJewry.In Charleston, according to Hagy, Jews lost enough of their "particularcharacteristics"to live peaceably among Christian neighbors, serve the larger community in positions of influence, participate fully in the economic life of the city (including slaveholding and the buying and selling of slaves), and, in the years leading up to the Civil War,share with other Charlestoniansthe politics of Southern defiance. Did contemporaries acknowledge this assimilation into the "mercantile atmosphere of Charleston"in terms laced with antisemitism? Hagy offers little to qualify the CharlestonJews' own repeatedassertions that they lived in a "happy land" of tolerance and freedom. Hagy would have been more successful in maintaining this theme had he set out to probe the extent and limits of Jewish assimilation, and had he linked his findings to the history of Reform Judaism that constitutes the

BOOK REVIEWS

441

most interesting portions of his book. Unfortunately, he conceived of his task, as others had before him, in the comprehensive terms of the chronicler rather than in the analytic terms of the historian. As a chronicler, Hagy wants to leave nothing out-seemingly, every document pertaining to every Jew, Jewish institution, or event involving Jews is reportedon, and much of the reportage is itself relatively undigested. The very first pages of his text become bogged down in the search for the names and origins of Charleston's first Jews, and following the final pages is a 135-page doubled-columned list of the names and vital data of every Jew the author could find living in Charleston before 1861. In between is a series of topically arrangedchapters (for some reason, the text too is printed in double columns), each chronicling one or another dimension of Jewish life in Charleston. Interspersedwith the text are three dozen tables, but nearly all of these turn out to be undigested as well, being no more than lists of names of Jews who worked in one or another occupation, or who owned slaves, or who joined the Refonned Society, or who advertised in local newspapers. I am not one to disparage thoroughness, and I do admire the remarkable comprehensiveness of Hagy's research. I would acknowledge, as well, the usefulness of his discussion of the Reform movement, which improves upon earlier accounts. But if in this and in other respects Hagy exceeds prior books, such as BarnettElzas's The Jews of South Carolinafronmthe Earliest Timesto the Present (1905), and Charles Reznikoff and Uriah Z. Engelman's The Jews of Charleston (1950), he does so without departing from their antiquarian format. Hagy has lengthened, but has not transcended, the compendium of facts pertaining to Charleston Jewry. StuartM. Blumin CornellUniversity Ithaca,N.Y. Jacob Rader Marcus, United States 1776-1985. Detroit: Wayne State Jewri3 University Press, 1993. Vol. 3, 925 pp.; vol. 4, 952 pp. Jacob Rader Marcus, the author of more than a dozen books on American and European Jewish history, began writing in 1916, and many of his works have become indispensable classics. No student of early American Jewish history can neglect, for example, Marcus's three-volume The Colonial American Jew (1970), his two-volume Early American Jews (1951-55), or

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Gerald Sorin Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 441-447 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486844 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

441

most interesting portions of his book. Unfortunately, he conceived of his task, as others had before him, in the comprehensive terms of the chronicler rather than in the analytic terms of the historian. As a chronicler, Hagy wants to leave nothing out-seemingly, every document pertaining to every Jew, Jewish institution, or event involving Jews is reportedon, and much of the reportage is itself relatively undigested. The very first pages of his text become bogged down in the search for the names and origins of Charleston's first Jews, and following the final pages is a 135-page doubled-columned list of the names and vital data of every Jew the author could find living in Charleston before 1861. In between is a series of topically arrangedchapters (for some reason, the text too is printed in double columns), each chronicling one or another dimension of Jewish life in Charleston. Interspersedwith the text are three dozen tables, but nearly all of these turn out to be undigested as well, being no more than lists of names of Jews who worked in one or another occupation, or who owned slaves, or who joined the Refonned Society, or who advertised in local newspapers. I am not one to disparage thoroughness, and I do admire the remarkable comprehensiveness of Hagy's research. I would acknowledge, as well, the usefulness of his discussion of the Reform movement, which improves upon earlier accounts. But if in this and in other respects Hagy exceeds prior books, such as BarnettElzas's The Jews of South Carolinafronmthe Earliest Timesto the Present (1905), and Charles Reznikoff and Uriah Z. Engelman's The Jews of Charleston (1950), he does so without departing from their antiquarian format. Hagy has lengthened, but has not transcended, the compendium of facts pertaining to Charleston Jewry. StuartM. Blumin CornellUniversity Ithaca,N.Y. Jacob Rader Marcus, United States 1776-1985. Detroit: Wayne State Jewri3 University Press, 1993. Vol. 3, 925 pp.; vol. 4, 952 pp. Jacob Rader Marcus, the author of more than a dozen books on American and European Jewish history, began writing in 1916, and many of his works have become indispensable classics. No student of early American Jewish history can neglect, for example, Marcus's three-volume The Colonial American Jew (1970), his two-volume Early American Jews (1951-55), or

442

BOOK REVIEWS

his Studies in American Jewish History (1969). For more than three-quarters of a century, Marcus has been an outstanding teacher and scholar. And now, with volumes 3 and 4 of United States Jewr); 1776-1985, this prodigious and apparently inexhaustible pioneer in American Jewish studies has completed an outstanding history of the Jewish experience in America. The promise of the first two volumes has been fulfilled: the set, encyclopedic in scope, is undoubtedly the most comprehensive account of the Jewish people in the United States written by a single author. Employing a wide variety of sources, from largely unused primary materials (many in his own considerable collection) to research papers done by students at Hebrew Union College, Marcus focuses on the cultural, political, and economic life of Jewish Americans from 1860 to 1920, with an extended epilogue for the period 1921-1985. And although one of the author's central conclusions continues to be that the Jews in the United States eventually relinquished traditional Judaism-though not Jewishness-much of his attention, again with telling effect, is devoted to religious behavior and institutions. Throughout, Marcus demonstrates that Jewish immigrants, whether "German" or "Russian," acculturated rapidly, but often on their own terms. They became Americans and made important contributions to American life, but they retained and reshaped their distinctive Jewish and even Judaic characteristics. In short, Marcus argues convincingly, Jews and Judaism changed, but they did not "melt." Despite the seemingly contrary fact that currently no more than 40 percent of Jewish Americans are synagogue members, Marcus insists that well more than half, perhaps as many as 75 percent, continue to identify with one or another of the four Jewish religious denominations. And despite his own evidence on the general decline of the synagogue-centered community throughout American history, Marcus, ignoring or dismissing the work of Jonathan Woocher, goes so far as to say that the "synagog [sic] is still more important than the charity federation" (vol. 4, p. 782), and is perhaps still the most important institution in Jewish American life.' Marcus, uncharacteristically, is not entirely persuasive here, partly because a great deal of his own impressive evidence in many sections, including 1. Jonathan Woocher, Sacred Survival (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), provides good evidence for his conclusion that the philanthropic federation movement is the most important defining element of the "civil religion" of the American Jewish community.

BOOK REVIEWS

443

"Americanization," "Zionism," "Socialism and the Jew," and "Jews and Culture," strongly suggests that large numbers of Jewish Americans have for a long time defined themselves as Jews through philanthropicendeavors, social and political liberalism, and concern for Israel, and not through active participation in synagogues. In his discussions of the denominations Marcus also misses some recent developments-the growing God imagery and mysticism, for example, within the Reconstructionist movement, which, until the last decade or so, heavily emphasized rationalism and completely rejected supernaturalism,and, for another, a new burst of growth in Orthodoxy and neo-Orthodoxy, including the return to the traditional fold of increasing numbers of women.2 He does, however, write clearly, concisely, and even-handedly about the varieties of Judaism, and using the indexes of all four volumes, one could get a very fine introduction to the history and current nature of Judaism's respective branches. After reading these volumes, one also gets a sense, clearly intended by the author, that America has not destroyed the possibilities for a Jewish religion here, but instead has given birth to a "new Judaism,"and will again. It is in these volumes, too, that Marcus pays great attention to the arrival of the Eastern European Jews, and to their achievement of hegemony in the American Jewish community. He recognizes that the integration of the "Russians" was made easier by the presence of a small but fairly well established German-Jewish elite, and unlike some practitioners in the field of American Jewish history, including Sherry Gorelick and Selma Berrol, he recognizes that many activities of the Germans, although part of patrician philanthropy, somehow went beyond mere charity, even if never reaching Gemiltlichkeit.3 Marcus does, however, overstate part of the conventional interpretationwhen he writes that, "Despite the ongoing Americanization of 2. For new developments in Reconstructionism, see Rebecca Alpert and Jacob Staub, Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach (New York, 1985); Arthur Green, See My Face, Speak My Name: A ContemporarytJewish Theology (New York, 1992); and Marc Raphael, Profiles in American Judaism (San Francisco, 1984). On the growth and durability of Orthodoxy, see Saul Bernstein, The Renaissance of the TorahJew (Hoboken, N.J., 1985); Lynn Davidman, Tradition in a Rootless World: WomenTurnto Orthodox Judaism (Berkeley, 1991); and Deborah R. Kaufman, Rachel's Daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women(Newark, N.J., 1991). 3. Sherry Gorelick, CirtyCollege and the Jewish Poor: Education in New York,1880-1924 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1981); and Selma Berrol, "Germansvs. Russians: An Update,"American Jewish History 73, no. 2 (December 1983): 142-156, consistently characterize the Germans as

444

BOOK REVIEWS

the East EuropeanJews these men and women maintaineda separatesubethnic community; they were totally different from the older Jewish settlers"(vol. 4, p. 731; emphasis added). The class position of many "established"German Jews was different from that of many arriving Eastern European Jews; but it is also true, as historian Hasia Diner has demonstrated, that many of the people who made up American Jewry on the eve of the great exodus from Eastern Europe had only been in the United States anywhere from five years to fifty years, thus representing many stages of the process of mobility and "Americanization."Moreover, like their Eastern Europeancounterpartsafter them, the German Jews, too, started out near the bottom of the economic and social hierarchy. The Germans also mirrored the future behavior and values of their Russian coreligionists in retaining, even as they transformed, a distinctive, ethnically Jewish culture. And both groups viewed themselves as bound up in a common global history.4 Throughout Marcus makes it clear that the integration of both the Eastern European Jews and the German Jews was facilitated by important confluences of Jewish and American values and institutions. The liberal values of the modern democratic republic, themselves partly founded on biblical precepts, meshed well with the Hebraic traditionof covenant and the prophetic emphasis on the pursuit of justice; the American idea of progress was compatible with the Jewish injunction to repair and perfect the world in an ongoing partnership with God; and the rational, secular American pursuit of individual happiness within an orderly community complemented modern Jewish this-worldliness and aspiration for personal achievement and communal fulfillment. Integration was also made easier by the absence of a virulent antisemitism. American liberal constitutionalism protected Jews. So did the separation of church and state. So did the fact that America, in Tocqueville's phrase, having been "born free," escaped the wounds and embittered memories of emancipation politics that so marked Europe. Jews were protected too by the presence of other targets of animosity, blacks and Catholics, for example. There were, however, a significant number of antisemitic incidents in American history from 1860 to 1945. Marcus unmitigated paternalists who persistently tried to remake their embarrassing Russian "cousins" by muting their Orthodoxy, their Yiddish, and their socialism. 4. Hasia Diner, "A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration,"American Jewish History 81, no. 1 (Autumn 1993): 22-33.

BOOK REVIEWS

445

adroitly reviews these episodes without making the mistake of equating them to Europe's persistently violent and state-sponsored persecutions of Jews, persuasively demonstrating once again that as far as the children of Israel are concerned, "America is different." There are, however, a number of minor problems in the sections on antisemitism. The Leo Frank affair (1913-1915), for example, is treatedprior to the Joseph Seligman incident (1877), and both are discussed as if they could be conflated, or analyzed in the same category. The snub of Seligman at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, was an example of the social discrimination German Jews suffered in the post-Civil War scramble for status in mobile America. Leo Frank, on the other hand, was unjustly and wrongly convicted of murder,and later lynched. Moreover, though both cases involved class resentments, these resentments came from different directions. Seligman, not atypically, was rebuffed from above; Frank, portentously,was killed from below. Also, Marcus's description of the 1890s Populists as "not specifically anti-Semitic" (vol. 3, p. 165) suggests that he is either unfamiliar with or discounts the work of Irwin Unger, Naomi Cohen, and LeonardDinnerstein.5 While most Populists were not antisemites, several importantrepresentative figures like Tom Watson and Ignatius Donnelly clearly disliked foreigners and Jews. Moreover, although antisemitic stereotypes portraying Jews as "non-producers,"mere manipulatorsof money, and sinister representativesof international finance had circulated in the United States well before the turn of the century and the rise of the Populist Party, Populist political rhetoric resembled those stereotypes very closely. And it is good to rememberRichard Hofstadter's point that although "it would be easy to misstate the characterof Populist anti-Semitism . . . the Greenback-Populist tradition activated most of what we have of modern popular anti-Semitism in the United States."6 Ultimately, however, Marcus, in his usual forceful and persuasive style, makes the case that antisemitism was never a real menace to the well-being of the Jewish masses in the United States. 5. Irwin Unger, "Critique of Norman Pollack's 'Fear of Man,' " Agricultural History 39 (April 1965): 75-80; Naomi Cohen, "Anti-Semitism in the Gilded Age: A Jewish View," Jewish Social Studies 41 (Summer-Fall 1979): 187-210; and Leonard Dinnerstein, Uneasy At Home: Antisenmitismand the American Jewish Experience (New York, 1987). See also Oscar Handlin, "Reconsidering the Populists," Agricultural Histoty 39 (April 1965): 68-74. 6. Richard Hofstadter, Age of Reform (New York, 1955), p. 80.

446

BOOKREVIEWS

In addition to the absence of a pervasive, public antisemitism, the heterogeneity of America and the pluralism it fostered also meant protection for the Jews. In fact American pluralism, which was partly shaped by Jewish thinkers, including Horace Kallen and Louis Brandeis, came to imply a positive obligation on the part of groups to participate fully in society so that society might derive benefit from their diverse contributions. And indeed, as Marcus demonstrates so brilliantly throughout these volumes, Jews and America did enrich each other. As important, the Jews in the period from 1860 to 1920 nurtureda linkage between American and Jewish ideals and identities. The synthesis, in all its varieties, was powerful; its accomplishments in culture (literature, journalism, film, and music, for example) and social thought and action (law, democratic socialism, cultural pluralism, and philanthropy, for example) reverberated not only in the second generation but, as Marcus's epilogue for the period 1921-1985 shows, even into the late twentieth century, continuing to inform American as well as Jewish American values. While Marcus also shows that "most American Jews . . maintain ... some relationship to their people and their faith" (vol. 4, p. 810), he does not show, curiously, that the Jewish community is shrinking, and that its leaders are fretful. Intermarriage(approximately 52 percentin the early 1990s) and its consequences are mentioned only cursorily in volume 3, and only up to 1912, and not at all in volume 4. Attention to this subject would have challenged Marcus's conclusion that the Jewish American "faces the future with trust, with confidence, with dogged faith" (vol. 4, p. 812). It is refreshing to watch Marcus identify those facets of context, behavior, and value that strengthen identification with Jews and Judaism, but it is difficult to avoid the sense that he is overly optimistic. The four volumes, constituting more than 2,500 pages, eighty-two chapters, and uncountable subheadings in chapters, are not quite designed for reading from cover to cover. But the texts, together with their 270 pages of bibliography and notes, are very valuable reference tools. They constitute a stunning, extraordinaryachievement. And the ninety-seven-year-old Marcus, unflagging in his dedication to work, his students, and his reading public, is now in the process of compressing all of this into a manageable single volume. The grand stature of Marcus, scholar, teacher, and the founder and director of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati for fifty years, is widely recognized. There are only two people now living in Cincinnati who

BOOKREVIEWS

447

have had streets named after them. One is former baseball star Pete Rose; the other is the venerable Jacob Rader Marcus. GeraldSorin StateUniversityof New York College at New Paltz New Paltz,N.Y. Shelly Tenenbaum. A Credit to Their Community:Jewish Loan Societies in the United States, 1880-1945. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. 204 pp. Shelly Tenenbaum has produced a short but well-written and welldocumented study of philanthropic Jewish loan societies, particularly the Hebrew Free Loan Association movement, covering the period from their origins (around 1880) to their relative demise at the end of World War II. This was a crucial period in the economic advancement and Americanization of the Central and East European Jewish immigrants who started arriving in the United States in large numbers in the early 1880s. The loan associations may have played a pivotal role in their economic lives as entrepreneurs and consumers. In a capital-poor community with entrepreneurialskills and entrepreneurial opportunities, any access to low-cost capital (liquid assets) would be vital for business success. Tenenbaum is to be commended for literally getting her hands dirty digging out fascinating information from primary sources, association archival records. The Hebrew Free Loan Associations played the role of a "poor man's bank," but they were not for the indigent, for, as their name implies, they did not provide charity but ratherloans that were to be repaid. Following the biblical injunction to not charge interest on loans to the Jewish poor (Exodus 22:24), the Hebrew Free Loan Associations generally charged no interest. Funds were raised from several sources, including dues from members who had voting rights but no special claim on loan funds, donations and bequests (especially from more wealthy German Jews), and, in the twentieth century, from Jewish Federations and community chests. Small, interest-free loans with a short repayment period (generally less than six months) were provided for business and personal purposes. Tenenbaum relates numerous instances of loans for acquiring a license, opening a store, buying tools, acquiring stock, etc. Moreover, loans, often to women,

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Barry R. Chiswick Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 447-449 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486845 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOKREVIEWS

447

have had streets named after them. One is former baseball star Pete Rose; the other is the venerable Jacob Rader Marcus. GeraldSorin StateUniversityof New York College at New Paltz New Paltz,N.Y. Shelly Tenenbaum. A Credit to Their Community:Jewish Loan Societies in the United States, 1880-1945. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. 204 pp. Shelly Tenenbaum has produced a short but well-written and welldocumented study of philanthropic Jewish loan societies, particularly the Hebrew Free Loan Association movement, covering the period from their origins (around 1880) to their relative demise at the end of World War II. This was a crucial period in the economic advancement and Americanization of the Central and East European Jewish immigrants who started arriving in the United States in large numbers in the early 1880s. The loan associations may have played a pivotal role in their economic lives as entrepreneurs and consumers. In a capital-poor community with entrepreneurialskills and entrepreneurial opportunities, any access to low-cost capital (liquid assets) would be vital for business success. Tenenbaum is to be commended for literally getting her hands dirty digging out fascinating information from primary sources, association archival records. The Hebrew Free Loan Associations played the role of a "poor man's bank," but they were not for the indigent, for, as their name implies, they did not provide charity but ratherloans that were to be repaid. Following the biblical injunction to not charge interest on loans to the Jewish poor (Exodus 22:24), the Hebrew Free Loan Associations generally charged no interest. Funds were raised from several sources, including dues from members who had voting rights but no special claim on loan funds, donations and bequests (especially from more wealthy German Jews), and, in the twentieth century, from Jewish Federations and community chests. Small, interest-free loans with a short repayment period (generally less than six months) were provided for business and personal purposes. Tenenbaum relates numerous instances of loans for acquiring a license, opening a store, buying tools, acquiring stock, etc. Moreover, loans, often to women,

448

BOOKREVIEWS

were made for special events, such as weddings,funerals,medical care, divorces, bringingover relatives, etc. One of the few tables in the book reportsthe annualnumberof loans and dollarsloaned by the New York HebrewFreeLoanSocietyfrom 1892 to 1940.Theaverageloanin 1892was $5, with the peak averageloan of $118 in 1929 (justpriorto the deflationin the 1930s),decliningalmostannuallyto $67 in 1940.The totalvalueof loans reached$1 millionin 1920 andstayedat aboutthatamountfor the restof the period.The averagesize of the loans was greateroutsideof New YorkCity. Since the associationsprovidedloans,a mechanismwas neededto assure repayment.Defaults were kept low (about 1 to 2 percent)by generally requiringthree qualified individualsto guaranteerepayment.Tenenbaum reportsthat the most frequentreason for denying a loan was the lack of of endorsers. creditworthiness The Hebrew Free Loan Associationsdevelopedin an environmentin which Jewish immigrantshad few materialassets but had a periodichigh demandfor small amountsof capital (liquidity)to starta businessor tide one over rough times and to financeepisodic personalexpenditures.More conventionalsourcesof capitalwereeithervery expensive(e.g., loan sharks, or not availablefor suchpurposes(e.g., commercialbanksand pawnbrokers) investmentbankers).These loans enabledmanysmallJewishentrepreneurs, whose main assets were theirskills, hardwork,and ambition,to get started and to withstandthe vagariesof business. In exploringthe issue of loans,the bookincludesmanyfascinatingtopics, includinga discussion of Jewish chicken farmersin Petaluma,California. There are extensive discussionsof competingcreditinstitutionscreatedor heavily influencedby Jews that evolved at the same time to providesmall businessor consumerloans, includingremedialloan societies,aktsiyes,and, yes, agriculturalcredit cooperativesfor the small Jewish experimentin farming.There is a particularlyinterestingdiscussionof the development in the United Statesof creditunionsby EdwardFilene,the German-Jewish departmentstoremagnateandsocialreformer,andthe spreadof creditunions in the Jewishcommunitypriorto WorldWarII. The Jewish loan associationsfaded with the change in the business environment.Relying primarilyon philanthropicsourcesfor capital,they faced capitalconstraintsas Jewish businessesexpandedand requiredlarger loans than they could provide. Moreover,other credit institutions,such as saving banks, credit unions, and federally supportedmortgagefunds,

BOOKREVIEWS

449

developedto providelow-cost consumerloans,andbankscreatedsmall-loan departmentsfor businessandpersonalpurposes. There is a richness of touching personal detail in the Association's administrativerecords-letters, minutes of meetings, and especially the applicationforms and repaymenthistories.The stories Tenenbaumrelates are tender,bittersweet,and tantalizing.For example,we aretold (p. 51) that the widow Mary Ackerman(a pseudonym),with two children,borrowed $170 in two loans in 1939 to starta dressmakingbusiness.Who were those willing to endorseher loan?Werethey friendsor relatives?Whatwere their occupations?Endorsersplayed a key role in the process, yet the study is silenton who they were andwhy they took the risk. How successful were Mary Ackerman'sdressmakingbusiness and the otherbusinessventures?Tenenbaumindicatesinstancesin whichsuccessive loanssuggestthatsomebusinessescontinuedandothersfailed.Yet,inevitably becauseof the natureof the data,thereis no follow-up. BarryR. Chiswick of IllinoisatChicago University Chicago,Ill. Frederic Cople Jaher.A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of Anti-Semitism in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1994. viii, 339 pp. Several years ago, historianLloyd Gartnernoted that Americanantisemitismhad "yetto receivethe thoroughstudyit warrants."' FredericCople Jahermeets the challenge and, in great measure,realizes the mandateof Gartner in A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of

Anti-Semitismin America. Don't look for anythingparticularly"new"or primaryhere;it was not the author'sintentionto do manuscriptor archival research.Rather,Scapegoatsucceedsas a workof synthesisandinterpretation, gracefullywrittenandsuitablefor coursesin AmericanJewish,religious,and social history. It is an encyclopedicsurvey of secondarysources, printed materials,and edited collections.If you need to enhanceyourbibliographic knowledgeof antisemitism,readScapegoat,althoughI foundthe European listings more complete than the American. For the latter, some books 1. Lloyd P. Gartner, "The Two Continuities of Antisemitism in the United States," in Antisemitism Throughthe Ages, ed. S. Almog (New York:PergamonPress, 1988), p. 311.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Stuart E. Knee Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 449-451 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486846 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOKREVIEWS

449

developedto providelow-cost consumerloans,andbankscreatedsmall-loan departmentsfor businessandpersonalpurposes. There is a richness of touching personal detail in the Association's administrativerecords-letters, minutes of meetings, and especially the applicationforms and repaymenthistories.The stories Tenenbaumrelates are tender,bittersweet,and tantalizing.For example,we aretold (p. 51) that the widow Mary Ackerman(a pseudonym),with two children,borrowed $170 in two loans in 1939 to starta dressmakingbusiness.Who were those willing to endorseher loan?Werethey friendsor relatives?Whatwere their occupations?Endorsersplayed a key role in the process, yet the study is silenton who they were andwhy they took the risk. How successful were Mary Ackerman'sdressmakingbusiness and the otherbusinessventures?Tenenbaumindicatesinstancesin whichsuccessive loanssuggestthatsomebusinessescontinuedandothersfailed.Yet,inevitably becauseof the natureof the data,thereis no follow-up. BarryR. Chiswick of IllinoisatChicago University Chicago,Ill. Frederic Cople Jaher.A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of Anti-Semitism in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1994. viii, 339 pp. Several years ago, historianLloyd Gartnernoted that Americanantisemitismhad "yetto receivethe thoroughstudyit warrants."' FredericCople Jahermeets the challenge and, in great measure,realizes the mandateof Gartner in A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of

Anti-Semitismin America. Don't look for anythingparticularly"new"or primaryhere;it was not the author'sintentionto do manuscriptor archival research.Rather,Scapegoatsucceedsas a workof synthesisandinterpretation, gracefullywrittenandsuitablefor coursesin AmericanJewish,religious,and social history. It is an encyclopedicsurvey of secondarysources, printed materials,and edited collections.If you need to enhanceyourbibliographic knowledgeof antisemitism,readScapegoat,althoughI foundthe European listings more complete than the American. For the latter, some books 1. Lloyd P. Gartner, "The Two Continuities of Antisemitism in the United States," in Antisemitism Throughthe Ages, ed. S. Almog (New York:PergamonPress, 1988), p. 311.

450

BOOK REVIEWS

providingfood for thoughtare E. Digby Baltzell's The ProtestantEstablishment (1964), George Marsden's Religion and American Culture (1990), Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness (1978), and the

very recentThisHappyLandby JamesW. Hagy (1993). the Scapegoatis thematicallystrong,even if the discussionssurrounding and of antisemitism sometimes overwhelm progress Europeanprovenance the Americancore of the tale. In five chaptersandan epilogue,Jahersweeps us forwardfrom antiquitythroughantebellumAmerica. When occasion permits,he is not loath to make comparisonsto the modem period,some of which are more apt thanothers.For example,he shouldoffer some sort of caveat to readersfor what might be overconfidentanalogiesbetween fifteenth-andtwentieth-century occurrences,as in "thepersecutionof Iberian New Christians . . . anticipated the search for Jewish forebears by the

Nazis and the Gestapo'srefusalto distinguishbetweenconvertsand those remainingJewish"(p. 75). Thoughoccasionaljuxtapositionof events such as these may be a bit jarring,the generalframeworkis compelling:that a continuityof antisemiticthoughtpersistsin history,is currentlyoperative, and is frighteninglyresilient;also, Europeanantecedentsare importantfor antisemiticdevelopmentsin the NorthAmericancoloniesand understanding laterin the UnitedStates. Of all the factorsthatminglein historicantisemitism--economic,social, national,cultural--Jaherfeels thatreligionis primary:"Noneof theothers... killedits Godandwasassignedby Christiandoctrine gavebirthto Christianity, a pivotal role in the cosmic strugglebetween the saved and the damned" (p. 16). Hellenized, pagan thoughtpercolatedthroughthe volatile Roman world too with crucial but opposite impact on Judaismand Christianity; what were minor currentsin the former became major in the latter.A pre-Christian perceptionof Hebrews,Israelites,andJudeansas misanthropic, or eccentric was institutionalized as Jew-hatredwithinthe contextof the odd, the Western Church,andits symbols.Historicalapologists Gospels, emerging T.Idinopulos,andR. B. Ward,are forChristianity, suchas J. M. Oesterreicher, dismissedby theauthor,whopointsoutthat,overthecourseof fifteenhundred years, Jews were removed from Christianpresence,satanized,diabolized, demonized,and periodicallychargedwith deicide, host desecration,blood libel, sorcery,and degeneracy.Why weren't the Jews simply extirpated? Apparently,this is Christianity'sperpetualambivalenceor dichotomyof feeling towardJews which evolved into a universalphenomenon:Christians

BOOK REVIEWS

451

love Judaism,at least the partsthey have adapted,but not Jews, a remnant of whom have to be preservedto witness the secondcoming.Such psychic tension had to find release and sometimes did creativelybut most often destructively-from social discriminationto murderousrages. Jaher's remainingchaptersdescribe the range of social and business discrimination,educational,political, and culturalstereotypingextant in Americauntil 1865. Some interestingnamesappearas inheritorsof a ContinentalJew-hatingtradition:JonathanEdwards,JohnQuincyAdams,James FenimoreCooper,BenjaminRush,CharlesGrandisonFinney,WilliamLloyd Garrison,WilliamMcGuffey,WilliamElleryChanning,WaltWhitman,Julia WardHowe, NathanielHawthorne,HarrietBeecherStowe,HermanMelville, the FederalistPartygenerally,but not Washington,Hamilton,or Adamsparticularly,and,to a lesser degree,thatparty'scollateraldescendantthe Whigs, althoughJudahBenjaminwas one of its southernbulwarks.Oddlyenough, or not so oddly becauseof their"popular"appealandpretense,Republicans and, later, Democrats attracteda Jewish membershipdespite Jefferson's ethnicambivalenceand a leadershiprepresentation of pro-slaveryiteswithin Jackson'sparty.On the whole,however,negativefeelingsforJews,no matter how verballyunattractive,were sublimated,channeled,and mitigatedby a failureto give themcredencewithinthe legal, constitutionalsystem. One minor carp I have with Scapegoat which I have alreadyalluded to is that Europeanthemes, either intentionallyor incidentally,are sharper and more clearly delineatedthan the American.For an Americanhistory monograph-after all, the title emphasizesthe New Wilderness-thismight requiresome scholarlyrethinking.It is perfectlylegitimateto write of the French Revolution, EuropeanRomance,CharlesFourier,and Karl Marx, but not at the expense of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which are barely recorded,the three financialpanics between 1819 and 1857, the Second GreatAwakening,andManifestDestiny,all of whichwereongoingAmerican eventsheighteningcivil discord,leadingto nationaldisunity,andprecipitating episodesof domesticantisemitism,but areentirelyomitted.Some imbalance notwithstanding, Scapegoatis an interestingandvitalinclusionto a growing on a most importanttopic. bibliography StuartE. Knee of Charleston University S.C. Charleston,

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Leonard Dinnerstein Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 452-453 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486847 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



452

BOOK REVIEWS

Haim Genizi. America's Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.

xi, 273 pp. At the endof WorldWarII, morethan30 millionpeoplefoundthemselves displacedin variouspartsof Europe,especiallyin the centralregion.These included prisoners-of-war,concentrationcamp survivorsand oppressors, slavelaborersin Germanfactories,anda motleyassortmentof others.Within a few monthsof V-EDay,May 8, 1945,mosthadbeenrepatriated, buta hard core of abouta million remaineddislocated.The numberschangeddaily as peopleleft or enteredvariouscountrieswhile othersjust wanderedaimlessly. The Alliedforcesdid a superbjob of helpingpeoplereturnto theirhomes,but were less successfulin accommodatingthe hundredsof thousandsof Balts, Ukrainians,Poles, Jews, Hungarians,Romanians,and otherEastEuropeans who wantedto be resettledelsewhere.Makeshiftassemblycenters,many of which had been concentrationor prisoner-of-war camps,housedmost of thesepeople. The Allies had foreseenthis problemduringthe warandhadestablished UNRRA (UnitedNations Relief and RehabilitationAdministration) to help care for those who remainedbehind. Unfortunately,because of lack of leadership,personnel,and financing,as well as difficultrelationswith the militaryforces,UNRRAoperationswerechaotic.Severalvoluntaryagencies from Europe and the United States also helped with the DPs (displaced persons),but the efforts of some of them were also less than satisfactory for the same reasonsthatplaguedUNRRA.The AmericanJewishvoluntary agencieslike JDC(AmericanJewishJointDistributionCommittee)andHIAS (HebrewShelteringand ImmigrantAid Society) were probablythe best of the lot andthe most successfulonce theywereallowedto workwiththe DPs, but they,too, had problemsbothwith UNRRAandthe Americanmilitary. Althoughover 80 percentof theirnumberwereChristians,the DPs were at firstperceiveden masse as being Jewish,and consequentlyin the United Statesonly Jews seemed interestedin helpingthem.Afterthe warendedin 1945 othernationswerejust as reluctantto takeDPs, andonly graduallydid theirpolicies change.It was generallyacknowledged,however,thatnot until the UnitedStatesundertooksome majoreffortto aid thesepeoplewouldthe problemsubside. Haim Genizi's impressivelyresearchedand well-writtenwork on this

BOOK REVIEWS

453

subject,America'sFair Share, covers the details of the situationfrom the Europeanscene throughresettlementin the UnitedStates.He examinesthe agencies and problemsinvolved, the variousinternecinewars betweenthe militaryand the voluntaryagencies, and the conflictsthat arose within the agenciesthemselves.He is particularlygood at showinghow it was not until 1947, when the fact thatmost of the DPs were Christiansbecamegenerally known,thatAmericanCatholicand Protestantgroupsjoined in the effortto bringDPs to the UnitedStates. Afteran intensivestruggle,especiallyon thepartof theCitizensCommittee on DisplacedPersons(CCDP),the lobbyingagencyestablishedto win the nation'sand congressionalsupportfor new legislation,Congresspassedthe DisplacedPersonsActs of 1948 and 1950,whichultimatelyallowed400,000 Europeansinto the United States. Jewish groups wantedto bar ex-Nazis, gentilesseemedindifferentto this issue;in its legislationCongressfacilitated the arrivalof thousands,if not tens or hundredsof thousands,who had once supportedHitler'spolicies. Genizi'sbook is not the firsttreatmentof theDPs. Thereviewerproduced America and the Survivors of the Holocaust in 1982, and MarkWyman's DP: Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945-1951 appeared in 1989. America's Fair

Shareis best in revealingthe statistics(numbersof peoplehelpedandmonies expendedby differentgroups)compiledby the variousorganizationsandin summarizingthe individualworkingsof the voluntaryand churchagencies involved in bringingDPs into the UnitedStates.Geniziis a gentlemanand andbigots.He never is thereforegentle in his criticismof maladministrators much affected American how antisemitism says policiestowardthe DPs, but he leaves no doubtaboutits significantimpact. This is a professionallydone work,reflectingenormouslydeep research on theauthor'spart.Genizicoversthetopicbroadlyandadequately. America's Fair Sharethus providesa good introductionto the subjectof DPs andtheir resettlementin the UnitedStates. Leonard Dinnerstein of Arizona University Tucson,Ariz.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Jacob Neusner Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 454-458 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486848 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



454

BOOKREVIEWS

Steven T. Katz. The Holocaust in Historical Context. Vol. 1. The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age. New York:Oxford University Press,

1994. 702 pp. The Holocausthas foundits philosophicalhistorian,the uniquenessof the Holocaust,its first fully articulatedand compellingpresentation.StevenT. Katzhas writtenthe best workof historicalinterpretation of the Holocaustin any language;the largestin conception,the mostmajesticin vision,the most carefulandthoughtfulin execution;aboveall, philosophicallythe best, most rigorouslyargued.Hereis philosophicalhistoryin the grandtradition:raising a massivequestion,answeringit with commensurate rigor.Greatscholarship matchesthe immensedimensionsof what is studied;profoundintellect,the depths of what is examined in the this-worldlycontext of the historyof humanity. This work of surpassingscholarshipon the most importantquestionof learningin our time commencesKatz's plannedthree-volumestudy,with the next parts announced as The Holocaust and Mass Death in the Modern Age and The Uniqueness of the Holocaust. His project addresses the critical

question,how are we to understandthe event of ourcentury?Katz'sanswer is statedin the title of the thirdvolume,but the argumentbegins in the one beforeus. A brief surveyof the contentsshows the remarkablescope of the work: "Consideringthe Holocaustin HistoricalContext,""OnDefiningUniqueness,""OnQuantityandQuality,""TheDestructionof CulturalCenters,""On Intentionality,""Romanand ClassicalSlavery,""MedievalAnti-Semitism: The Process of Mythification,""Medieval Anti-Semitism:The Positive Paradox,""The Persecutionof Witches,""Witchcraftand Misogynism," "Persecutionof Homosexuals,""Persecutionof Heretics,"anda conclusion. The shapeof Katz'sargumentemergesfromthis repertoire.He beginswith fourphilosophicalchapterson definitionandmethod,thechaptersof a general theoreticalcharacter.He then, in a sequenceof historicalchapters,works his way throughthe mattersof slavery,antisemitism,andthe persecutionof witches,homosexuals,and heretics.The theoreticalchaptersinvolve Katz's with the principalfiguresin the Holocaustdebate;I Auseinandersetzungen doubtthatany significantidea has been missedby him. But Katz contributesmore thana thoroughaccountof the problem.He proposes his own program: "an .

.

. investigation of the relevant history

BOOK REVIEWS

455

of mass murderand genocide in all its diversity and expansiveness"(p. 11). To do this he has created "a series of analyticalcase studies of the major events that are relevant to ...

the complex process of answering the

uniquenessquestion"(ibid.). For each of his cases, he presentsa thorough account, explaining that "for the majorityof readersthese rich narrative and statisticalpresentationsare essential"(p. 12). The bibliographyand consequenthistoricalreliabilityof the work,amplyutilizedwhererelevant, shows that Katz has read very widely; his accountof the severalhistorical cases will have to be evaluatedby the relevantspecialists.Forlate antiquity, having directeda dissertationon slaveryin ancientJudaism,I can say that he has readall of the classical scholarlyworksmy studentdid andhas come to judgmentsthatcertainlyconformto the best contemporary learningin the Westernlanguages(German,French,English).Giventhe rangeof topicson which he has pursuedhis research,thatjudgmentmust suffice;he wins the reader'sconfidenceon every page. But it is the powerof Katz'svigorousandpenetratingthoughtthatreally gains the reader'srespect.Katz identifiesthe importantquestionsand deals with them;locates the potentialweak pointsin his argumentand addresses them; does not merely announcepropositionsbut amasses argumentsand evidence.Hereis what scholarshipshouldoffer. The criticalissue is addressedat the outset:whatcan we possiblymean andhow-absent a completerepertoireof genocidein all of by "uniqueness," recordedhistory-should we know thata given nationalcalamityis without parallel?Katzphraseshis definitionof uniquenessin termsof intentionality; here alone, genocideimplies "theactualizationof the intent. .. to murderin its totalityany national,ethnic,racial,religious. .. group... as thesegroups are definedby the perpetrator,by whatevermeans"(p. 131). This is what separatesgenocide from otherforms of mass murder(p. 134). Katz'smain pointis, "Employingthis definition,we can beginto recognizethatAssyrian, Babylonian,Persian,Hellenistic,Roman,and Crusadepolicy was cruel,but not every cruelty is genocide" (p. 135). So too, "not every barbarismis genocide"(ibid.). Being a trainedphilosopher,Katzproceedsto a negative inquiry:"culturalgenocide:whatthe Holocaustis not"(p. 139);then "what anti-Semitismis not"(p. 146). Lest this brief accountmake the book appearschematic,ratherthanthe closely arguedandcarefullyresearchedworkthatit is, let me cite the kindof argumentreaderscan expect fromchapterto chapterandpage to page:

456

BOOK REVIEWS

Three interlockingquestions now requireinvestigation:does the inhumane historyof pre-Naziantisemitism... includeoccasionsof physicalgenocide? Or, conversely. . . is the Hitlerianintentionto exterminatethe entireJewish people a crime withoutprecedent?Does the delimitingcategoryof physical genocide serve to individuatethe Shoahas an historicalnovumwithin-and without-the boundariesof Jewishhistory.The determinative, interdependent answersto each of these threequestionsis clear:therewereno priorinstances of physical genocide perpetratedagainstthe Jewishpeople ... ; Hitler's.. . biocentricdesign was unprecedented... the categoryof physicalgenocide will serve to individuatethe Shoahas an incommensurable momentwithinthe parametersof Jewishhistory. (pp. 146-147) Here is the kind of philosophically rigorous analysis that characterizes the work throughout. The second principal philosophical question concerns the relationship between "quantities and quality-between the number of victims in a given circumstance and the meaning of any such event" (p. 14). Katz insists that the Shoah is "not individuated" by reference to quantities. Nor does he find that the cultural impact separates the Shoah from other such events: ". .. the architectonic and geospiritual implications of the removal of the Polish-Russian umbilicus . . . do not serve to establish the uniqueness of the Holocaust" (ibid.). It is, then, the matter of intentionality, to which I made reference earlier, that forms the critical argument.The whole is summarizedin an economical sentence: "none of these prioroccasions of serious ill treatment and devastation were instances of genocide. None is comparable ... to the Nazi program of extermination"(p. 15). This leads Katz to furtherstudies on the comparison of premodern antisemitism, modern pre-Nazi antisemitism, and Nazi racial antisemitism: "This is an absolutely fundamentalinterpretive issue" (ibid.). The remainder of the book then presents "closely argued case studies of different major forms of prejudice and persecution in the classical and medieval eras" (ibid.). The firstconcerns slavery, a "multiform... institution . .. that ... was mediated by a variety of cultural,normative,and socioeconomic factors such that it was not genocidal; indeed, its composite origins, governing rationale, and utilitarian imperatives contravene the teleology of genocide" (ibid.). Christian anti-Judaism is shown to exhibit conflicting traits: "the church never initiated or condoned a policy of physical Judaeocide"(ibid.). Katz comments, "This profound disjunction must be fully assimilated

BOOKREVIEWS

457

into any adequate. .. reconstructionof the historyof antisemitismand must be given sufficient weight in any plausible understanding of how history bears, and does not bear, upon the larger matter of the uniqueness of the Holocaust" (pp. 15-16). Katz's analysis of the murderof tens of thousandsof Christian women as witches finds nothing in common between witch hunts and the Holocaust. So too, "almost no homosexuals were murdered. there was never an organized, comprehensive, and deadly campaign against homosexuals anywhere in Christendom"(pp. 16-17). Katz explicitly denies the intent to "deny,minimize, or distortthe suffering of... these victim-groups, nor do I seek to promote some unjustified claim to moral precedence for the Jewish victims of Nazism. Rather,my purpose is to make a fundamental methodological observation about how much of the

variegatedhistoryof persecutionis now beingrewritten"(p. 19). What of the role of Christianity? Katz's conclusion bears close attention: Themeaningof thesemedievalandearlymodernevents,rangingfrommedieval antisemitism,the persecutionof witches, and antihomosexuallegislationto the Crusadesagainst Albigensians,Waldensians,Moriscos,and Huguenots, including the far-reachingexpulsion of the Jews from Spain-all reflect a comparabledefiningChristiancontextwithits inherentstereotypicalencodings and substantial,yet limitedmodes of politicalbehavior.In each case, beyond the localized happenings,there exists an active theologicaldogmatics,an organizedand operativeculturalimpulse,that translatessocial practicalities into metaphysicalrequirementsat the same time that it seeks to incarnate doctrinalimperativesin empiricalevents. As a result,each of these historic encountersis simultaneouslyperceivedas a normativeencounter,theresolution of which has substantivetheologicalconsequences..... Yet . . . what may appearto us as paradoxicalbut whatis constitutiveof this civilization... is that the conversionof the nonbelieverand the abjurationof the hereticwere the preferredsolutionsto the evil and dangerthey represented; and for those entire communitiesthat provedunassimilable. . the ultimatesolutionwas expulsion. ...

as Christians, there were limits to their tyranny. They ...

couldbe inhumaneanddehumanizing,full of hatredandthe locusof unceasing atrocities,but these Christiansand this Christianworld did not, would not, could not, createAuschwitz. 577-578)

(pp.

Katz has inaugurateda work not of ideology,but of sustained,detailed research. His cases are carefully investigated, and at each point he shows how the Shoah is to be distinguished from the case at hand; and the distinctions

458

BOOK REVIEWS

make a massive difference: thus, for one instance, "The Shoah is to be distinguished from the Crusades and the medieval and early modem wars of religion in that Nazism aimed at the complete physical extermination of the Jewish people, not its conversion, or, as in the case of the Wars of Religion, the returnof the dissidents to the religious orthodoxy of their oppressors"(p. 580). Here he has given us his negative argument, telling us what the Shoah is not. A massive first step in an enormous intellectual and scholarly project, Katz's work marks its author as today's most accomplished scholar of the Holocaust as a problem of philosophical and historical interpretation.The true achievement of this work is best measured by comparison to earlier efforts to address the same question. These prior works prove too limited in scope or too general and prematurelyideological, as two among many earlier essays on the same issue suffice to show us. First, in the case of Arno Mayer's WhyDid the Heavens Not Darken? (1989), the generative hypothesis is itself altogether too limited in provenience. Second, Richard L. Rubenstein's The Cunning of History (1975) and The Age of Triage (1983) suffer by contrast as impressionistic and not richly instantiated. Compared to Katz's magnum opus, the former appears trivial, the latter insufficient. And it goes without saying, a long list of other candidates scarcely justifies review. No prior effort to situate the Holocaust in the frameworkof secular history has exhibited equivalent intellectual ambition, and none that follows can fail to be measured by the rigorously argued philosophical standard that Katz has set. Here we have a first-rate mind, asking an enormous question, and answering it with craft and care, perspicacity and deep thought. In Katz's Holocaust analyzed as a philosophical and historical problem, we have a definitive statement, an authentic academic masterpiece. JacobNeusner Universityof SouthFlorida Tampa,Fla. Nechama Tec. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York:Oxford University Press, 1993. xiii, 276 pp. Tuvia Bielski became famous as a resistance hero fighting successfully against the terrors of the Nazi Third Reich in the early 1940s. From his base of operations in the Nalibocka Forest (primarily)in western Belorussia,

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Zev Garber Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 458-460 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486849 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



458

BOOK REVIEWS

make a massive difference: thus, for one instance, "The Shoah is to be distinguished from the Crusades and the medieval and early modem wars of religion in that Nazism aimed at the complete physical extermination of the Jewish people, not its conversion, or, as in the case of the Wars of Religion, the returnof the dissidents to the religious orthodoxy of their oppressors"(p. 580). Here he has given us his negative argument, telling us what the Shoah is not. A massive first step in an enormous intellectual and scholarly project, Katz's work marks its author as today's most accomplished scholar of the Holocaust as a problem of philosophical and historical interpretation.The true achievement of this work is best measured by comparison to earlier efforts to address the same question. These prior works prove too limited in scope or too general and prematurelyideological, as two among many earlier essays on the same issue suffice to show us. First, in the case of Arno Mayer's WhyDid the Heavens Not Darken? (1989), the generative hypothesis is itself altogether too limited in provenience. Second, Richard L. Rubenstein's The Cunning of History (1975) and The Age of Triage (1983) suffer by contrast as impressionistic and not richly instantiated. Compared to Katz's magnum opus, the former appears trivial, the latter insufficient. And it goes without saying, a long list of other candidates scarcely justifies review. No prior effort to situate the Holocaust in the frameworkof secular history has exhibited equivalent intellectual ambition, and none that follows can fail to be measured by the rigorously argued philosophical standard that Katz has set. Here we have a first-rate mind, asking an enormous question, and answering it with craft and care, perspicacity and deep thought. In Katz's Holocaust analyzed as a philosophical and historical problem, we have a definitive statement, an authentic academic masterpiece. JacobNeusner Universityof SouthFlorida Tampa,Fla. Nechama Tec. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York:Oxford University Press, 1993. xiii, 276 pp. Tuvia Bielski became famous as a resistance hero fighting successfully against the terrors of the Nazi Third Reich in the early 1940s. From his base of operations in the Nalibocka Forest (primarily)in western Belorussia,

BOOK REVIEWS

459

he helped organizeand led the largestarmedJewish self-helpotriadin the rescue of Jews in WorldWarII. In 1945 he settledin EretzIsrael,where he remaineduntil 1956. Unassuming,withoutformaleducation,and totally apolitical,he neveraspiredto politicalor militaryleadershipthere,nor,in the postwaryears,did he attainmorethanaveragefinancialsuccess,workingas a cab driverand then as a truckowner.Huntedby Nazis, vilifiedby Russian partisans,cursedby Belorussianand Polish antisemites,this fearlessJewish leader was envisioned by his brigadeof forest Jews as a Bar Kochba,a Maccabee,a King David on horseback.Nonetheless,at the time of his death in Brooklyn,New York,in 1987,he was virtuallyforgottenby largesegments of worldJewry. NechamaTec, Universityof ConnecticutsociologistandShoahsurvivor, hopes to change this by bringing to light the untold story of Bielski's larger-than-lifeheroics and the accomplishmentsof his partisanbrigade,a projectinspiredandencouragedby herpreviousworkon righteousChristians who saved Jews. The incidents describedhere fit togetherwith her own Shoahmemoirs,Dry Tears(New York,1982);her book on Polish rescuers and Jewish survivors, When Light Pierced Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland (New York, 1986); and the story of Brother

Daniel, a Jew by birthand Catholicby religion,who passedas half German and half Polish and saved hundredsof Jews and Christians,In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen (New York, 1990). Like a multilayered

matrushkadoll, Tec's nonfictionis not only aboutaltruismbut about the emotionaland conceptuallongingthatoccurredbefore,during,andafterthe act of rescue. As a slice of historyin behavioralterms,Defiancedoes not feel dated, like a museumcurio. The informants,most of whom are survivorsof the Bielski brigade,express their interestin grouporganizationand discipline very directly-most explicitly in their accountsof the buildingof a forest communityand of the group'sdaringescape from a majorGermanassault during the "big hunt" (summer 1943); and as a result their story, while admittedlydaring,is not unusual.The informants'contribution-theyin and yang of destructionand destiny,of evil and good-is not exactly a novel either,yet it remainsinterestingbecause Tec's prose, haltingat times but well-spirited,is admirable. Whatis unparalleled,however,is the book'spivotalquery-in a time of horrificdistressanddistrust,whatconstitutesJewishconcernfor others?and

BOOK REVIEWS

460

its central philosophy-the Jew as victim and rescuer. It is not hard to be moved, on the one hand, by the ethical paradox posed by Bielski's credible conviction, "Itis more importantto save one Jew thanto kill twenty Germans," and on the other, by the passionate scream of a seventy-five-year-old Jewish partisan when he killed a captured SS man, "God, my grandfatherwas not a murderer,my father was not a murderer,but I will be a murderer." In the whole of Jewish history, there has been no more murderous an age, no period more villainous for the Jew, than the Shoah. With so much that is painful to remember-dislocation, despair,death-the generation after Auschwitz is one in which forgetting is fundamental. Yet, paradoxically, we occupy a time of ethnic cleansing and tribally administered mass death, and for this reason we are unable to close our eyes, cover our ears, and comfort our conscience. We are obligated to confront our shameful amnesia by hearing the victim's cry, "Do not forget," and Tec's book makes clear and distinct the voices of ordinary men and women who contributed to this clarion call. To follow the fate of memories of atrocity to self-preservationto rescue, Tec does her local-history homework, conducts numerous interviews with as many participants and apologists as will speak to her, and allows us to catch an accusation here, a confession there-through the usual stages of denial, explanation and counterclaim, sordid recollection, recognition and acceptance. Also, her sensitive portrayalof the rise and fall of Tuvia Bielski as a charismatic authority figure is insightful and sound. Regrettably, there are several errors in transmission: Lanham, Maryland, not New York (note 13, p. 225); Encyclopaedia (not Encyclopedia) Judaica (pp. 208, 227, 228); and Har Hamnuchot, not Haar Hmnuchot (p. 261), in Jerusalem, final resting place of Bielski. Yet it is evident that the author is thoroughly conversant with her subject. Readers may find themselves looking with new respect at Jewish morality, compassion, and self-regard under fire. Zev Garber Los AngelesValleyCollege VanNuys, Calif.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Avigdor Levy Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 461-465 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486850 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

461

Stanford J. Shaw. Turkey and the Holocaust: Turkey'sRole in Rescuing Turkishand European Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945. New York:

New YorkUniversityPress, 1993. xiii, 424 pp. Turkey'srole in events connectedwith the Holocaust,such as the rescue of JewsandJewishimmigrationto Palestine,hasbeenmentionedin numerous studies.The greatmajorityof them,however,discussspecificareasin which Turkeygenerally appearsto have played a reactiveor passive part. The book underreview is the first attemptto presenta comprehensivepicture of Turkey'sactivities from a Turkishperspectiveand based primarilyon hitherto-unusedTurkishsources. StanfordShaw, professorof Turkishand Judeo-Turkishhistory at the Universityof Californiain Los Angeles, is a foremostscholarin the field of Turkishhistoryand the authorof numerous books and articles, including The Jews of the OttomanEmpireand the Turkish

Republic(New York,1991). Shaw'smainargumentis thatTurkey,a country thatremainedneutralduringmost of WorldWarII and whose territorywas neveroccupiedby the Axis, was not a majoractorin the eventssurrounding the Holocaust,but thatits role was far frominsignificantandpassive.On the contrary,underthe weightof events,Turkeywas forcedto formulatepolicies and pursuean active role, especiallyin mattersthataffectedits own Jewish citizens.The book deals with threebroadsubjects:the conditionof Turkish Jewry duringWorldWarII, Turkey'srole in the transferof mostly illegal immigrantsto Palestine,and Turkey'sattemptsto protectand rescueJews, mostlyTurkishcitizens,in Nazi-occupiedFrance. During the period from Hitler'srise to power in 1933 to the outbreak of WorldWar II, the most noteworthyevent from the perspectiveof this book's topic was Turkey'sadmissionof hundredsof refugee scholarsand scientists, many of them Jews, who had fled Nazi Germanyand Austria. Turkeywas at the time in the processof modernizingits highereducational system, and the refugeescholars,whose numberincludedmanyof the most prominentpersons in their fields, helped develop and modernizeTurkey's universities.Theyalso establishedanddirectednew researchinstitutions.The absorptionof hundredsof scholars,most of whomwere unfamiliarwith the Turkishlanguageor with living conditionsin Turkey,was not an easy task, as Shawdocuments.Manyof the refugeesacceptedTurkishcitizenshipwhen it was offeredto them.Others,however,preferredto move on, aftera while, to other countries,with some continuingtheircareerson the campusesof

462

BOOKREVIEWS

well-knownAmericanuniversities.The experimentprovedhighlybeneficial to both parties;Turkeywas able to modernizeits academicinstitutionsand enrichits culturallife in severalimportantareas,whileformostof therefugee scholarsthe Turkishhaven providedan escape from certaindeath and an opportunityto continuewith theirprofessionalcareers. WhenWorldWarII brokeout,Turkeywas in an unusualsituation.Before the warit hadconcludeddefensiveagreementswith bothFranceandBritain, mainlyagainstItalianand Germanexpansionism.Turkeyhad enteredthese agreementson the assumptionof Soviet friendliness,in view of Moscow's strongoppositionto Fascism and Nazism. But the German-Sovietpact of August 1939 and later the Italian and Germanadvancesin the Balkans, the Caucasus,and North Africa left Turkeyincreasinglyisolated from its nominal allies and exposed to the full might of Axis power established along its borders.In orderto avoid provokinga Germaninvasion,Turkey maintainedan uneasyneutralitywhile mobilizinga largearmyof one million men. Turkey'spositionas a neutralpowerenabledher to maintaindiplomatic representationthroughoutNazi-occupiedEuropeand to serve as a major listening post for developmentsthere. Because Turkey'sstrategicposition was highly valued by the Allies as well as the Axis, both sides turnedthe countryinto an arenafor propaganda,politicalmaneuvering,andespionage activities.It was withinthis contextthatIstanbulemergedas one of the most importantcentersfor Jewishrescueoperations.Thebookdetailstheactivities of thevariousJewishorganizationsinvolvedin theseoperations,theirinternal of rivalries,andtheircontactswiththeTurkishauthoritiesandrepresentatives the majorpowers.In spite of closed frontiers,JewishrefugeesfromGreece, Bulgaria,Yugoslavia,Romania,Hungary,Poland,and even Hollandwere able to reach Turkeyby boat, train,and on foot. Therewere a numberof tragicdisasters,the worstof whichwas the sinkingof theStrumain theBlack Sea in February1942, with the loss of 769 JewishrefugeesfromRomania.In spite of this and othertragicincidents,Shaw concludesthatduringthe war years, 16,474 "official"JewishrefugeespassedthroughTurkeyin additionto approximately75,000 otherswho enteredthe countryillegally.Mostof these refugeescontinuedtheirjourneyto Palestine,legally or illegally,by sea or overlandthroughSyria. A separatesectiondescribesthe rescuesof Jews by Turkishdiplomatsin Greece.Turkishconsularofficials were able to protectJews who had valid

BOOK REVIEWS

463

Turkishcitizenshippapers.In some cases Turkishconsuls issued papersto Jews whose Turkishcitizenshiphad lapsed. In July 1944, on the island of Rhodes,the Turkishconsul, SelahattinUlktimen,at greatpersonalrisk, was able to save from deportationto exterminationcampsa groupof forty-two Jews, includingTurkishcitizens as well as spousesand relativeswho were not Turkishcitizens. In January1945, the Germanspermittedthe groupto be evacuatedto Turkey.In 1989, Ulkiimenwas honoredby YadVashemas a "RighteousGentile." The largestpartof the book, however,andhereinlies its most important contribution,deals with rescue operationsby Turkishdiplomatsin France. This partof the book is basedprimarilyon the hitherto-unutilized archivesof in Paris,as well as on the Turkish the Turkishembassyandconsulate-general ForeignMinistryarchivesin Ankara. Since 1864, the Paris-basedAllianceIsra61iteUniversellehadconducted wide-rangingeducationaland cultural activities among the Jews of the OttomanEmpire,and these continuedin republicanTurkeyuntil the mid1920s. On the eve of the FirstWorldWar,about35 percentof all school-age Jewish childrenliving in areas within the bordersof present-dayTurkey attendedAlliance schools, where Frenchwas the languageof instruction. For this and other reasons,since the end of the nineteenthcenturyFrance had become a preferreddestinationof emigrationfor many TurkishJews. Accordingto Turkishconsularrecords,at the startof WorldWarII, some 10,000TurkishJewslived in Franceamonga totalJewishpopulationof about 300,000.(Accordingto Germandocuments,in September1942,3,046 Turkish Jews remainedin Paris alone, after many had fled, mainly to unoccupied southernFrance.)These numbersdid not include TurkishJews who had becomeFrenchcitizens and allowedtheirTurkishcitizenshipto lapse.Shaw estimatesthatanother10,000JewswhowereTurkishcitizensin goodstanding lived in otherWestEuropeancountries. As representativesof a neutralpower whose friendshipwas valuedby Berlin and Vichy France,Turkishdiplomatsandconsularofficialswerein a position to protecttheir nationals.Severalfactors,however,made the task difficult.In the firstplace, the Germanoccupationauthoritiesdid not differentiatebetweenJews on the basis of nationality,while Vichytendedto treat "foreign"Jews, includingthose who had recentlybecome Frenchcitizens, with greaterseveritythannative-bornor long-establishedFrenchJews.Also, due to war conditions,several Turkishconsulatesin occupiedEuropehad

464

BOOK REVIEWS

to be closed. In France,only the consulatesin Paris,Lyon, and Marseilles to Grenoblein 1942) remainedopen.Additionally,the Germans (transferred conducted theiranti-Jewishoperations-arrests,roundups,deporgenerally tations to exterminationcamps-with abruptnessand arbitrariness.These circumstancesmadeit difficultfor TurkishJewsto contactthe consulatesand for the latterto intervenein time. Following the fall of France, many Jews began applyingto Turkish consulatesfor certificatesof Turkishcitizenship,and this becamea major preoccupationfor consularpersonnel.Amongthe applicantsthereweremany whose Turkishcitizenshiphad lapsed.The Ankaragovernmentwas at first reluctantto help them, fearing Germanreprisals.However,in the face of mountingappeals from Jewish leaders in Turkey,the United States, and Britain,the governmentchangedits positionin early 1942. Consulateswere orderedto place Jews whose citizenshiphad lapsed in a special category as "irregularcitizens" (gayri muntazam vatandaglar), and to provide them

with officialprotectionuntil the completionof the formalproceduresfor the evidence restorationof theircitizenship.Shawprovidesdetaileddocumentary of Turkishdiplomaticinterventionto preventthe applicationof anti-Jewish laws againstTurkishJews. Specifically,the Turkishconsuls intervenedto preventarrestsand deportationsof Jews to concentrationcampsin Eastern Europeand to protectJewishpropertyfromconfiscation. As a result of repeatedTurkishprotests,in February1941 the German authoritiesin Paris informedthe Turkishconsulatethatthey were prepared to make exceptions with regardto TurkishJews. Indeed,by May 1941 the Turkishconsul-generalin Paris could reportto his superiorsthat the Germanswere releasingarrestedJews who hadTurkishcitizenship.But the attitudeof the GermanandFrenchauthoritieshardenedas the warcontinued. In November 1942, the Germansbegan to investigateclosely the Turkish "certificatesof citizenship"and immediatelydeportedfor extermination any Jew whose Turkishcitizenshiphad lapsed or was in question.Also, in September1943 the Germanauthoritiesin Paris informedthe Turkish consulate that they would release TurkishJews only if guaranteeswere to Turkey. providedthatthese personswouldbe immediatelyrepatriated Indeed,as of 1943theTurkishconsulatesbeganorganizingtherepatriation of TurkishJews to Turkeyin groups.During 1943 and 1944 about 1,000 TurkishJews left for Turkeyby sea fromsouthernFrance.Duringthe spring and summerof 1943 three groups left by trainfrom Paris, involving in

BOOK REVIEWS

465

one case 200 personsand in anotherfifteenfamilies.BetweenFebruaryand May 1944, anothereight groups, totaling414 persons,left by trainfrom Paris.Smallergroupsalso departedfromBrussels.In early1944,the Turkish Foreign Ministry,at the intercessionof the Jewish Agency and the U.S. embassy in Ankara,was able to prevailon Vichy Franceto abandonplans to deportto exterminationcampssome 10,000 "Levantine" Jewsbelievedto be formerTurkishcitizens.AlthoughShawdoes not offertotalnumbers,it is evidentthatthe activitiesof Turkishdiplomatsin Francesavedthousandsof Jewishlives. Shaw'sbook containsmuchnew informationandoffersnew perspectives on several importantissues, and it is, therefore,a valuableadditionto the literatureon the Holocaust.The readershouldbe cautioned,however,that in spite of some initial statementsto the effect that Turkeywas not a majoractorin the events surroundingthe Holocaust,the authorin fact goes on to overstatethe significanceof Turkey'sactions and the humanitarian motives behind them. Perhapsthis is unavoidablein a study that focuses on Turkey,but more balance and pespectivewould have strengthenedthe case that Shaw is trying to make. Also, the narrativeincludes a large numberof excessively lengthy,uneditedexcerptsfrom official documents, correspondence,and the like, which are, at times, repetitiveand make it difficult to follow the main argument.Additionally,the book containsan inordinatenumberof typographicalerrorsand does not have an index. In spiteof these shortcomings,this is an importantworkthatno seriousstudent of the Holocaustcan ignore. AvigdorLevy Brandeis University Mass. Waltham, Richard Bolchover. British Jewry and the Holocaust. Cambridge:Cambridge

UniversityPress, 1993. xi, 208 pp. This book is two removesfromthe actualHolocaust.Therearestudiesof the Holocaustitself, concentrationcampsand killingsas well as resistance. Onceremovedis the sizableliteratureaboutproposals,policies,andattempts at rescue,and how they usuallyfailed or were sidesteppedby the anti-Nazi nations. At two removes from the Holocaustare works like the present

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Lloyd P. Gartner Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 465-467 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486851 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

465

one case 200 personsand in anotherfifteenfamilies.BetweenFebruaryand May 1944, anothereight groups, totaling414 persons,left by trainfrom Paris.Smallergroupsalso departedfromBrussels.In early1944,the Turkish Foreign Ministry,at the intercessionof the Jewish Agency and the U.S. embassy in Ankara,was able to prevailon Vichy Franceto abandonplans to deportto exterminationcampssome 10,000 "Levantine" Jewsbelievedto be formerTurkishcitizens.AlthoughShawdoes not offertotalnumbers,it is evidentthatthe activitiesof Turkishdiplomatsin Francesavedthousandsof Jewishlives. Shaw'sbook containsmuchnew informationandoffersnew perspectives on several importantissues, and it is, therefore,a valuableadditionto the literatureon the Holocaust.The readershouldbe cautioned,however,that in spite of some initial statementsto the effect that Turkeywas not a majoractorin the events surroundingthe Holocaust,the authorin fact goes on to overstatethe significanceof Turkey'sactions and the humanitarian motives behind them. Perhapsthis is unavoidablein a study that focuses on Turkey,but more balance and pespectivewould have strengthenedthe case that Shaw is trying to make. Also, the narrativeincludes a large numberof excessively lengthy,uneditedexcerptsfrom official documents, correspondence,and the like, which are, at times, repetitiveand make it difficult to follow the main argument.Additionally,the book containsan inordinatenumberof typographicalerrorsand does not have an index. In spiteof these shortcomings,this is an importantworkthatno seriousstudent of the Holocaustcan ignore. AvigdorLevy Brandeis University Mass. Waltham, Richard Bolchover. British Jewry and the Holocaust. Cambridge:Cambridge

UniversityPress, 1993. xi, 208 pp. This book is two removesfromthe actualHolocaust.Therearestudiesof the Holocaustitself, concentrationcampsand killingsas well as resistance. Onceremovedis the sizableliteratureaboutproposals,policies,andattempts at rescue,and how they usuallyfailed or were sidesteppedby the anti-Nazi nations. At two removes from the Holocaustare works like the present

466

BOOK REVIEWS

one, which does not deal with the Nazis' deeds nor with attemptsto save Jews, but instead"outline[s]the BritishJewishcommunity'ssocio-political philosophyanddemonstrate[s]how it shapedthisJewry'sresponseto the fate of EuropeanJewrybetween 1942 and 1945"(p. 144). This is the converse of what RichardBolchoverstates at the outset,thathe "examineswhat the community'sresponse to this historicalexperiencereveals about its own organisationalstructureand socio-politicalphilosophy"(p. 1). Althoughthe authorsays thathe startsin 1939 (p. 3), he reallybegins in 1933, which is morereasonablefor a studyof "socio-politicalphilosophy"in its bearingon Nazism and the Holocaust.Thereis promisein this approach,since it may allow for a deeperunderstandingof the manyfailuresand few successesof rescueattempts. BolchoverfindsthatAnglo-Jewrydid little morethaneloquentlydeplore what was happeningto the Jews on the Continentand expressits faith in ultimatetriumph.The biblicalparaphrases mingledwithrageof ChiefRabbi H. Hertz the main Joseph provide religiousevidence.Since the authorhas Hertz's tireless at placed attempts rescue outside the defined framework of the book, his powerfulrhetoricmay ring hollow. The presidentof the Board of Deputies during the war and as such the lay head of British Jewrywas Selig Brodetsky,a son of the East End who was a professorof mathematicsand the leaderof BritishZionism.He comes off poorly,since Bolchover generally sees wartimeZionist endeavorsas a refugefrom the intractableproblemof rescuingJews. But Brodetskywas not a Jew of the contract,"andhis wartimespeechesandarticlesdisplaysober "emancipation realism.Brodetsky'sremarkin his memoirsaboutnot havingknownthe full extentof the Holocaustduringthe war is in contrastwith whathe saidwhen the mass murderwas in full swing. Whatwas this "emancipationcontract"to which Bolchoveroften refers as a key to the public attitudesof EnglishJews? He meansthatthey "saw emancipationin Englandas a contractsuch thatthe Gentilestateandnation promisedcivic equalityto the Jews, and the Jews promisedto be solely a religiouscommunitymarkedonly by a particularsystemof faithandworship, and to abandonall non-theological'national'qualities"(p. 79). The author holds that Anglo-JewryduringWorldWarII and at othertimes was ridden by a "politicsof hope" and a "politicsof fear,"which arose respectively fromfidelityto the contractandfromfearof the consequencesof violatingit. A high groupprofileor politicaldemandsconstituteda violation.However,

BOOK REVIEWS

467

none of the author'ssource citationsfrom the Holocaustperiodrefers to contract."The extendeddebatesof the 1850soverJewish any "emancipation emancipationalso did not speak of it. The greatmajorityof BritishJews, especially the large numberwho providedsimple humaneaid to arriving refugees,probablyneverheardof it. In fact therewas neverany "contract." Thereis valuableinformationin Bolchover'sbook,butunfortunately he does not reallyget to his subjectuntilpage 54 of its 156 pagesof text. British Jewry and the Holocaust takes its place among the many books

whichhaveas theirsubjectJewishcommunitiesuntouchedbutmorallyscarred by the Holocaust.Forall the usefulinformationit conveys,Bolchover'sbook sharesthe insistentlyjudgmentalcharacterof most of them.A half-century afterthe horrificevents,one wouldhope for a moredispassionateview. LloydP.Gartner TelAvivUniversity Israel Ramat-Aviv, Alex Grobman.Rekindling the Flame: American Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.

xii, 259 pp. This is an accountof a handfulof men who madea differenceduringa critical,chaotic,desperatemomentof Jewishhistory.Preparedto ministerto soldiers,not survivors,the Jewishchaplainsin the Americanarmyin Europe duringthe Second WorldWar were, in fact, forbiddenat first by military regulationsfromworkingwith survivorswhile on duty.Mostof themfound ways, however,to meet the needs of the hour.At the least, they showedthe survivorsthat"AmericanJewrycared"(p. 197).At themost,theycontributed significantlyto the rehabilitationof the savingremnant. In this short volume, Alex Grobman,the formerdirectorof the Simon WiesenthalCenterin Los Angeles and the St. Louis Centerfor Holocaust Studies,makes a numberof importantpoints.Most unusual,perhaps,is the extentto whichchaplainswerewillingto contraveneordersand extraordinary risk theircareersto assist survivors.They obtainedfood, clothing,andother suppliesin enormousquantitiesby solicitingdonationsfromsoldiersandfrom thefolksbackhome.Less expectedly,theyprocuredarmysupplies,sometimes using creativemeasures,such as requisitioningthe food of Jewish soldiers

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Michael Brown Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 467-470 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486852 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

467

none of the author'ssource citationsfrom the Holocaustperiodrefers to contract."The extendeddebatesof the 1850soverJewish any "emancipation emancipationalso did not speak of it. The greatmajorityof BritishJews, especially the large numberwho providedsimple humaneaid to arriving refugees,probablyneverheardof it. In fact therewas neverany "contract." Thereis valuableinformationin Bolchover'sbook,butunfortunately he does not reallyget to his subjectuntilpage 54 of its 156 pagesof text. British Jewry and the Holocaust takes its place among the many books

whichhaveas theirsubjectJewishcommunitiesuntouchedbutmorallyscarred by the Holocaust.Forall the usefulinformationit conveys,Bolchover'sbook sharesthe insistentlyjudgmentalcharacterof most of them.A half-century afterthe horrificevents,one wouldhope for a moredispassionateview. LloydP.Gartner TelAvivUniversity Israel Ramat-Aviv, Alex Grobman.Rekindling the Flame: American Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944-1948. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.

xii, 259 pp. This is an accountof a handfulof men who madea differenceduringa critical,chaotic,desperatemomentof Jewishhistory.Preparedto ministerto soldiers,not survivors,the Jewishchaplainsin the Americanarmyin Europe duringthe Second WorldWar were, in fact, forbiddenat first by military regulationsfromworkingwith survivorswhile on duty.Mostof themfound ways, however,to meet the needs of the hour.At the least, they showedthe survivorsthat"AmericanJewrycared"(p. 197).At themost,theycontributed significantlyto the rehabilitationof the savingremnant. In this short volume, Alex Grobman,the formerdirectorof the Simon WiesenthalCenterin Los Angeles and the St. Louis Centerfor Holocaust Studies,makes a numberof importantpoints.Most unusual,perhaps,is the extentto whichchaplainswerewillingto contraveneordersand extraordinary risk theircareersto assist survivors.They obtainedfood, clothing,andother suppliesin enormousquantitiesby solicitingdonationsfromsoldiersandfrom thefolksbackhome.Less expectedly,theyprocuredarmysupplies,sometimes using creativemeasures,such as requisitioningthe food of Jewish soldiers

468

BOOKREVIEWS

who were fasting on Yom Kippur,and sometimesresortingto theft. Often they were assistedby non-Jewishofficersandenlistedmen andby Christian chaplains.Later,when the Brichawas positioningthe survivorsfor illegal immigrationto Palestine,chaplainshelped to securearmsand to smuggle A Jews and arms,activitieswhich mighthave gottenthemcourt-martialed. does American often been accused Grobman not make is that Jews have point of callousnesstowardHitler'svictims,of caringmorefor theirown security and reputationsthan for the lives of their brethren.Eitherthese men and the soldiers and civilians who answeredtheir call were exceptionalor the negativeevaluationmustbe rethought. Noteworthyis the chaplains'difficulty,at least initially,in ensuringthat survivorswould be dealtwith appropriately by the military.Fora numberof reasons,includingthoughtlessness,convenience,lack of personnel,British determinationto keep Jews out of Palestine,and the inabilityto realize for Jews, survivorswere kept in camps that repatriationwas inappropriate withhostileEasternEuropeanDPs, restrictedin theirmovements,sometimes guardedby their formerGermanpersecutors,and in many places forced to live in unspeakableconditions.As time went on, they were increasingly viewed as a nuisanceby the army.Appealsto commandingofficersavailed little at first,as did pressureon Washingtonby prominentJews. In the summerof 1945 the situationwas investigatedby EarlG. Harrison, the formerCommisionerof Immigration,who had representedthe United States on the Intergovernmental Committeeon Refugees. Harrisonwas Rabbi Abraham Klausner,the outstandinghero of the chaplainguided by survivorencounter.As a resultof Harrison'srevelations,GeneralDwightD. Eisenhowerissued ordersto amelioratethe survivors'suffering.Obtuseness regardingthe special needs of people who hadbeen markedfor murderwas not easily overcome,however,norwas antisemitism.The seedsof Holocaust denial were alreadypresent.Grobmannotes that"Americansoldiersknew so little about the Nazi treatmentof Jews that when they were taken to Dachau[in 1945], a majorityof them were positivethatit had been staged for propagandapurposes"(p. 85). Grobmanmanifests considerableimpatiencewith the generallywellmeaningmilitaryand political establishmentsand with AmericanJewry's leaders,who, he feels, reactedtoo slowly to the survivors'plight.He implies criticismof soldiersandcivilianofficialswhofailedto planadequatelyforthe taskof governingaftervictory,andof theJointDistribution Committee(Joint),

BOOK REVIEWS

469

AmericanJewry'sforemostinstitutionfor assistingJews abroad,which did notforeseethe scope of postwarproblems.Butlong-rangeplanninghasnever been an Americanstrength;armiesare createdto fight, not to govern;and the implicationsof the Holocaust,an unprecedented event in humanhistory, were not generallyforeseen.Consideringreactionsto events in Yugoslavia today,one mightmarvelat the speedand sensitivityof AmericanandJewish responsesto the survivors'needs. Grobman'sviews shouldbe comparedto the more sympatheticdiscussionby his mentor,YehudaBauer,in the latter's three-volumehistoryof the JointduringWorldWarII. Whateverone's estimationof the Americanforces or of Jewishgroups, Grobmanis surely right about the chaplains.They quicklyand accurately evaluatedthe spiritualand materialneeds of the survivors.Since no one else could or would deal with those needs, they undertookthe task without guidance,preparation,means, or back-up.Grobmanrelatestheir manifold activitieseffectively. There are some difficultieswith this volume which must be noted.One is the lack of a clear chronology,which leads to repetitionand confusion. Another is the author's failure to breathelife into his characters.Most are identifiedonly by age and religiousmovement("a twenty-six-year-old Conservativerabbi").Yet nowheredoes Grobmansuggest that age was a factorin theirperformance;and he explicitlystatesthat"No sect [sic] was moreresponsive"to survivors'needsthananyother(p. 197).Information that contribute to a fuller of the the communities might understanding chaplains, fromwhichthey came, theirfamilysituations,theirlengthof service,or their postwarpositions,is generallynot given. The most seriousshortcomingof the bookis its narrowfocus. Theauthor claims that his study is an attempt"to analyze the impact the European Jewish survivors"exerted "on AmericanJewry"throughthe chaplains(p. 195). He does this well for the few yearsaboutwhichhe writes,althoughhis anecdotalevidence suggestsgreaterinfluenceon policy andindividualsthan he concedes. Grobmanmakes no attempt,however,to measurelong-term impact,which would have necessitatedgoing beyond the periodto which he devotes his attention.He baldly assertsthat"asidefromdiscussingtheir activities with congregantsand friends after returningfrom Europe,most chaplainsno longerspoke abouttheseexperiences"(p. 197).This is curious, indeed.Grobmanwritesconvincinglyof the depthandsincerityof therabbis' concernandof theirself-sacrificingwillingnessto act.Suchstrongsentiments

BOOK REVIEWS

470

do not jibe with returning to America and forgetting about the survivors. If that happened, what is the explanation? And what does it tell us about the relationship of American Jewry to the Holocaust? As it stands, this well-researched book illuminates an important aspect of Holocaust history: the survivors in Europe just after the war. The spotlight, however, shines on a relatively minor detail: the chaplains. It is to be hoped that Grobman will continue his study and consider some of the larger questions he himself implicitly raises, and which he is obviously qualified to address. MichaelBrown YorkUniversity NorthYork,Ontario Kenneth Hart Green. Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss. SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion. Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1993. xiv, 278 pp. Generally recognized as one of the most important twentieth-century students of medieval Jewish philosophy, Leo Strauss attained much greater renown as an interpreterof Westernpolitical theory,both ancient and modern. Strauss was not only an outstanding scholar but the founder of what might be called a school of thought, the mentor of generations of "Straussians."The precise nature of his own philosophic teaching is, however, the subject of considerable controversy. This is the case largely because Strauss presented much of this teaching in a ratherelusive fashion, not in independent treatises but in the course of his often intentionally opaque commentaries on the writings of other thinkers. In the two decades since his death, growing numbers of his disciples as well as his critics have sought to do to Strauss's works what he himself endeavored to do to those of philosophers from Plato onward, that is, to ferret out their true, sometimes concealed meaning. Most of these writers, whether friendly or hostile to him, have tended to downplay the significance of Strauss's concern with specifically Jewish matters. Some of his most devoted followers, in particular,have treatedhis attention to Jewish problems as little more than the accidental point of departurefor reflections that ultimately took him far beyond the narrow boundaries of the Jewish world.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Allan Arkush Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 470-472 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486853 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

470

do not jibe with returning to America and forgetting about the survivors. If that happened, what is the explanation? And what does it tell us about the relationship of American Jewry to the Holocaust? As it stands, this well-researched book illuminates an important aspect of Holocaust history: the survivors in Europe just after the war. The spotlight, however, shines on a relatively minor detail: the chaplains. It is to be hoped that Grobman will continue his study and consider some of the larger questions he himself implicitly raises, and which he is obviously qualified to address. MichaelBrown YorkUniversity NorthYork,Ontario Kenneth Hart Green. Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss. SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion. Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1993. xiv, 278 pp. Generally recognized as one of the most important twentieth-century students of medieval Jewish philosophy, Leo Strauss attained much greater renown as an interpreterof Westernpolitical theory,both ancient and modern. Strauss was not only an outstanding scholar but the founder of what might be called a school of thought, the mentor of generations of "Straussians."The precise nature of his own philosophic teaching is, however, the subject of considerable controversy. This is the case largely because Strauss presented much of this teaching in a ratherelusive fashion, not in independent treatises but in the course of his often intentionally opaque commentaries on the writings of other thinkers. In the two decades since his death, growing numbers of his disciples as well as his critics have sought to do to Strauss's works what he himself endeavored to do to those of philosophers from Plato onward, that is, to ferret out their true, sometimes concealed meaning. Most of these writers, whether friendly or hostile to him, have tended to downplay the significance of Strauss's concern with specifically Jewish matters. Some of his most devoted followers, in particular,have treatedhis attention to Jewish problems as little more than the accidental point of departurefor reflections that ultimately took him far beyond the narrow boundaries of the Jewish world.

BOOK REVIEWS

471

This is most definitelynot true of KennethHartGreen.TakingStrauss at his word, Green arguesin Jew and Philosopherthat his Jewish thought "standsfirmlyand separatelyas a centralpillarof his entirethought"(p. xii). Beyond this, he maintainsthat Strausswas "alsoone of the most important Jewishthinkersof thepresentcentury"(p. xi). Greensucceedsmostadmirably in substantiatingboth of these contentions.By his own admission,however, he only approaches"in an exploratoryand initial way" the most difficult questionraised by Strauss'sJewish writings:"Whatwas the preciseshape and substanceof his finalcommitmentto Judaism?"(p. 198, n. 5). The firstfew chaptersof thisbook focus on Strauss'sintellectualdevelopment duringthe periodhe himself discussesin his famousautobiographical prefaceto the Englisheditionof his firstbook,Spinoza'sCritiqueof Religion, that is, the decade or so prior to 1928. Green here supplementsStrauss's terse and somewhatcryptic self-accountingwith a comprehensiveand judicious review of his earliest and least-knownwritings.He explainsin an unprecedentedlyclear fashion the natureof Strauss'sdissatisfactionwith contemporaryJewish thinkersand his ensuingexaminationand rejectionof the philosopherwhose understandingof revealedreligionexercised,in his view, such a decisive influenceon modemJewishthought,BaruchSpinoza. Continuingfrom where the previouslymentionedpreface leaves off, Greendevotes the latterpartof his book to a review of the way in which Strauss'songoing search for "an eminentlyreasonabletheology"led him to study the writings of Maimonides.Straussthoughtat first that he had found there a teaching that "wouldallow for both 'commitments'"which he himself "was strivingto maintain-to philosophicreasonand to Jewish revelation-throughthe personof the prophetwho is the mostperfecthuman being and thus encompassesboth separatetruths"(p. 107). But, as Green skillfullydemonstrates,Strausseventuallycame to realizethatMaimonides' position "was not as pellucid as he had been convincedit was" (p. 122). After discoveringthe significanceof Maimonides'esotericism,he saw that what had appearedto him to be the successfulharmonization of reasonand revelationwas in fact the exotericteachingof a man who "recognizesthat 'beinga Jew and being a philosopheraremutuallyexclusive'" (p. 127). Green does not take this to mean that StraussregardedMaimonides as someone whose Jewish thoughtwas "merelyan exoteric cover for an esoteric adherenceto pure philosophy"(p. 128). In the final pages of his book he forcefully argues that StraussconsideredMaimonides'versionof

472

BOOK REVIEWS

esotericism to have been marked by an appreciation of the extent to which the unverifiable yet likewise irrefutable "ancient Jewish biblical wisdom" representedrevelation "at its highest" (p. 130). He understoodMaimonides to be a "uniquely wise teacher," who taught that "the Hebrew biblical tradition is the best articulation of the claim for the moral life as leading to human perfection and happiness," and that it "may also contain, in its basing itself on divine revelation by the one God who is all-powerful, the only truly sound basis for a 'genuine' morality" (p. 133). Strauss's search through the writings of Maimonides for a way to reconcile revelation and reason led him instead, according to Green, to the realization that these two approaches to truthare in principle irreconcilablebut that each of them nonetheless can, in a sense, be retained. Strauss does not follow Maimonides, however, in concealing from the eyes of unworthy readers the essential irreconcilability of Jewish and Greek wisdom. He openly discusses it, describing the insoluble conflict between these two forces as the "core, the nerve of Western intellectual history." In the light of such statements, it may indeed be surprising that anyone could fail to recognize what Green so strongly maintains, that is, that Strauss continued to regard Jerusalem as a genuine alternative to Athens. But, as Green himself reminds us, Strauss was not only an interpreterof esoteric writings but also someone who was himself inclined, at times, to write esoterically. It is this that enables some of the people Green criticizes to regard Strauss's praise of Jerusalem as essentially exoteric. And it is largely for this reason that it is so difficult to answer the question, which Green broaches but admittedly does not resolve, concerning the nature of Strauss's final commitment to Judaism. Green, one is pleased to learn, is not yet finished. His footnotes (which are themselves deep reservoirs of important insights into Strauss's writings and the scholarly literature on them) indicate that he plans to continue his study of Strauss's Jewish thought. One looks forward to the additional volumes he promises with the confidence that they will illuminate other aspects of Strauss's thinking as thoroughly as his current book does his "return to Maimonides." Allan Arkush StateUniversityof New York at Binghamton Binghamton,N.Y.

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Daniel Gold Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 473-474 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486854 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

473

Nathan Katz and Ellen S. Goldberg. The Last Jews of Cochin. Jewish Identity in Hindu India. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. 352 pp. At the 1993 meeting of the American Academy of Religions, a roundtable discussion was held on the nascent field of Hindu-Jewish studies. As the heritages of ancient peoples still surviving today, Hinduism and Judaism bear cogent typological comparisons on problems of scripture, ritual, and pollution that can illuminate the dynamics of religious tradition.Perhaps the most abundant historical field for comparing the two religions is to be found in the Indian Jews, who stand at the margins of the Indian and Jewish worlds. Liable to be treated as a cultural curiosity, they have become the subject of a rich religio-historical study by Nathan Katz and Ellen S. Goldberg, the first of whom chaired the AAR roundtable. Though not the only Indian Jewish community, the Jews of Cochin, on southwestern India's Malabar coast, evolved the richest development of Jewish traditions in the subcontinent. Thus they are better known and better studied than the numerically greater Bene Israel of Maharashtraand the Baghdadi Jews, eighteenth-century immigrants who became economically and socially prominent in the cities of British India. Catching the attention either of social scientists working in India or of historiansof EasternJudaism, the IndianJewish communities have generally been tangentialto theirauthors' main field of expertise. Few treatments of them bring together competencies in both Jewish studies and Indian studies as fruitfully as Katz and Goldberg's book, and none is as thoroughly grounded in the study of religion. The book is divided into two main parts, the first historically oriented, the second ethnographic. Each part manages to offer both ample detail and comparative insights. The history gives a highly readable interpretationof the extant data on the community, drawing on rare sources to account for particular puzzles regarding Jewish immigration to and peregrinations on the Malabar coast. At the same time, it compares the traditional narratives of Malabar Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus to provide a context for Jewish identity in south India. The authors demonstrate how the Cochini minhag has maintained fidelity to Jewish observance while at the same time has developed customs that parallel local Hindu ascetic practice and royal ritual, thus enhancing the status of the community in the gentile world. Describing complete cycles of seasonal and life-cycle rituals, Katz and Goldberg present some compelling contrasts to the more familiar rites of

BOOK REVIEWS

474

European Jewry: a Passover that highlights not family rejoicing but ascetic practice; educational rites that focus not on the adolescent's bar mitzvah, but on the six-year-old's first public reading from the Haftarah. In giving attention to the adaptive strategies of the Cochin Jews, thereby making the very marginality of India's Jews intellectually meaningful, Katz and Goldberg succeed in an importantarea where many less interpretivestudies fail. They explain the dynamics of the long survival and indeed flowering of a Jewish community on the Malabar coast, and-wistfully-account for the nearly complete emigration of its younger generations today. DanielGold CornellUniversity Ithaca,N.Y. Rachel Simon. Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992. vii, 221 pp. Studies of the Jews of North Africa, like other areas of research,have been slow in placing the theme of women on their research agenda. The present work is the first English-language monograph to pay sustained attention to the topic. Somewhat ironically, it relates to Libya, the country of the Maghrib which had the smallest Jewish population, and concerning which there exists the least documentation. The strength of the book lies in its bringing together of almost all the available written sources relating to the topic. Among the sources are archives in Europe-notably those of the Alliance Isra6lite Universelle (AIU)-and Israel, and the writings of travelers to the region, mostly Jews. One importantdocument is a book writtenby a local Jew, Mordecai Ha-Cohen (1856-1926/29?), and this is complemented by many briefer contributionsby Libyan Jews written after the mass migration to Israel in 1949-51. Another important source for the decade before emigration is made up of the letters and reports of the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, which entered Libya with the Eighth Army. Simon also consulted two unpublished manuscripts in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. There are still a few known manuscripts in the hands of Libyan Jews in Israel, and perhaps in Italy as well, which ought to reach publicly available collections someday. These sources-more than one might have guessed in advance but still less than hoped for-share the same drawback. They

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Harvey E. Goldberg Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 474-477 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486855 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

474

European Jewry: a Passover that highlights not family rejoicing but ascetic practice; educational rites that focus not on the adolescent's bar mitzvah, but on the six-year-old's first public reading from the Haftarah. In giving attention to the adaptive strategies of the Cochin Jews, thereby making the very marginality of India's Jews intellectually meaningful, Katz and Goldberg succeed in an importantarea where many less interpretivestudies fail. They explain the dynamics of the long survival and indeed flowering of a Jewish community on the Malabar coast, and-wistfully-account for the nearly complete emigration of its younger generations today. DanielGold CornellUniversity Ithaca,N.Y. Rachel Simon. Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992. vii, 221 pp. Studies of the Jews of North Africa, like other areas of research,have been slow in placing the theme of women on their research agenda. The present work is the first English-language monograph to pay sustained attention to the topic. Somewhat ironically, it relates to Libya, the country of the Maghrib which had the smallest Jewish population, and concerning which there exists the least documentation. The strength of the book lies in its bringing together of almost all the available written sources relating to the topic. Among the sources are archives in Europe-notably those of the Alliance Isra6lite Universelle (AIU)-and Israel, and the writings of travelers to the region, mostly Jews. One importantdocument is a book writtenby a local Jew, Mordecai Ha-Cohen (1856-1926/29?), and this is complemented by many briefer contributionsby Libyan Jews written after the mass migration to Israel in 1949-51. Another important source for the decade before emigration is made up of the letters and reports of the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, which entered Libya with the Eighth Army. Simon also consulted two unpublished manuscripts in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. There are still a few known manuscripts in the hands of Libyan Jews in Israel, and perhaps in Italy as well, which ought to reach publicly available collections someday. These sources-more than one might have guessed in advance but still less than hoped for-share the same drawback. They

BOOK REVIEWS

475

mostly containinformationon women, but rarelypresentus with women's perspectives. The lettersof Miss Tully,sisterof the Britishconsulin Tripoliin the late eighteenthcentury,constitutean exception to these generalizationsthat is well knownto studentsof Libya.Both female(herfirstnameis unrecorded) and Christian,Miss Tully writes in her letters,among other things, about Jewish women linked to the pasha'sharemand courtwho playeda role in representingJewish intereststo the ruler.This is the proverbialexception, however, for there appearsnothing comparableto Tully and the Jewish womenshe mentionsin the nineteenthandtwentiethcenturies,whicharethe mainfocus of the presentwork. The dataavailablearepresentedin theframeworkof fivechapters:"Status withintheFamilyandthe Community," "Educational "FamilyLife,""Work," and "Participation in Public Life."The firstfocuses on the Opportunities," statusof women, clearlymarkedoff fromthatof men, in traditionalLibyan society.It also introducesthe main themeof the book-that despitevarious changesin women'sdress,education,andworkoutsidethe home,the overall orientationof the society with regardto genderdistinctionsdid not undergo significantrevaluation.Most of the secondchapterrevolvesaroundthe axis of marriage;for example,marriageage, courtship,bridepriceanddowry,the wedding and relatedceremonies.The predominanceof the data relatedto these topics itself speaksfor the majormeaningof womenandwomanhood in the sourcesavailable.In general,one wishes thatthe authorwould have commentedon the natureof the differentmaterialswithwhichshe worked.In the finalsubsectionof the secondchapter,"Male-FemaleRelationsBetween Jews and Non-Jews,"an incident from 1875/76? is cited from the work of Ha-Cohenin which Ottomannaval cadets made immodestremarksto a Jewish maid at the gate of the orchardof the Americanconsul in Tripoli. An ensuingcomplaintresultedin diplomatictensionbetweenthe Americans and the Ottomans.We readin a footnotethatAmericansourcesdescribethe tensionbut do not see it as growingout of an insultto a Jewishmaid,andare left to fend for ourselvesin makingsense of this discrepancyin information. The datain the chapterson workandeducationallow the mostsystematic account of changes in the lives of women. In additionto their domestic routines,some women earnedincomefromsewing,doingthe workat home. In the late nineteenthcentury,Tripoliexperiencedvariouseconomiccrises which may have been the occasionfor womenbeginningto workoutsidethe

476

BOOKREVIEWS

home on a sustainedbasis. The cleaning and dying of ostrichfeathers,as partof the commercialprocesslinkingcentralAfricato Europeanfashions, was an example of this development.When the AIU set up a school for girls in 1896, it providedtrainingin Western-stylesewing,cutting,knitting, embroidery,andironing.This introducednew skills butstill remainedwithin the confinesof conventionalnotionsof women'swork. It was not until the 1930s that there is some hint of a conceptual shift concerningwomen's culturaland social "place."This occurredin the context of the teaching of modem Hebrew in the Ben-Yehudahsociety, whichwas set up by young men fromthe traditionalJewishquarterwho had receivedan Italianhigh school educationand foundthemselvesattractedto Zionism. While the numberof Jewish girls receivingsome educationhad been increasingsince the late nineteenthcentury,the Ben-Yehudaheffort representedthe first time women were publicly encouragedto study any sort of Hebrew.The autodidacticinitiatorsof Ben-Yehudahtaughtfemale instructors,who in turnwere chargedwith teachinggirl pupils.This trend, which,like all education,cameto a haltduringWorldWarII,resumedwiththe meetingbetweenthe LibyanJewishcommunitiesandthePalestiniansoldiers, who expresslysoughtto contributeto the reconstitution of Jewishlife andthe cultivationof Zionistorientations.It representsan interestingconjunctionof Zionismand"modernization"-withspecialreferenceto women-in Middle Easterncountries,worthyof being examinedon a comparativebasis. The overalldevelopmentsare presentedwithina taken-for-granted modernizationperspective,to which are addedvariousdetailson how Jews in Libya sought to hold on to their traditionsand not lose their uniqueness. One line of analysis focuses on the role models which, amongthe variety available,Jews chose to imitate.Anotherreaderof the sourcesmighthave morestronglyhighlightedthe clash of voices: the local womenwho mocked Europeanwomen readingprayersfrom books in the synagogue(p. 110), or the local reactions to the impressionsof AIU staff that pupils were "half savage"and "not very intelligent"(pp. 122-123). Anotheroption is to show how individualsmanipulatedthe options availableto them, as in the case of the privateqiddushinof a high-school-agegirl to a considerably older man, followed by effortsof her parentsto have the marriageannulled underItalianlaw (pp. 65-66). The girl'shusbandandparentswere all highly Italianized,andbothsidesutilizedeverymeanspossible,whether"traditional" or "modern,"to advancetheircases. Whatdoes it meanthata "genuineyouth

BOOK REVIEWS

477

movementemerged"from the activitiesof Ben-Yehudahin 1943, when we laterlearnthatthe PalestinianJewishemissariesworkingwiththe movement "complainedthat most of the men cane to the Ben-Yehudahclub to meet girls, buy sweets and liquor,smokeandplay billiards"(p. 174)?Ratherthan placingdatainto the contextof homogenizednotionsof modernization,the specificityof divergingculturalvoices mightbe given greateremphasis. Differencesin possibilitiesof interpretation the book, notwithstanding, effort.If we thoroughlyresearchedand clearlywritten,is a groundbreaking can learnas much as Simon teachesus aboutJewishwomenin Libya,then surely the same should be possible for otherMiddleEasterncommunities. The study representsa significantcontributionand a challengeto further work. HarveyE. Goldberg HebrewUniversity Israel Jerusalem, Bat-ZionEraqiKlorman.The Jews of Yemenin the NineteenthCentury:A Portraitof a Messianic Community.Brill's Seriesin JewishStudies,vol. 6. Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1993. viii, 209 pp. Despitethe plethoraof articlesandbookson theJewsof Yementhathave been publishedduringthe past two decades,our knowledgeof the history of this Jewry remainsvery scanty.The few chronicleswrittenby Yemeni Jews cover only the past few hundredyears,andeven thendo not providea systematicpresentationof the eventsthatbefell Yemen'sJewishcommunity. In particular,we lack authenticsource materialfor the period stretching from antiquityto the end of the sixteenthcentury.As a result,the historical legacy of YemeniJewish antecedentsis envelopedin mythand legend.Our knowledgeof medievalYemeniJewryis equallysparse.Indeed,Maimonides' Epistle to Yemen(ca. 1172) is our only sourcefor the internalconditionsof the Jews of Yemenin the periodprecedingthe Ayylbid conquest.Even the recenthistoryof the Jews of Yemenis repletewith gaps andlacunae. Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman'sbook under review, an elaborationof her doctoraldissertationpresentedto the Universityof Californiain 1981, is not concernedwith filling any of the historicalgaps. Indeed,all the works she refers to in her book have been publishedby scholarsin the field, as she

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Reuben Ahroni Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 477-481 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486856 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

477

movementemerged"from the activitiesof Ben-Yehudahin 1943, when we laterlearnthatthe PalestinianJewishemissariesworkingwiththe movement "complainedthat most of the men cane to the Ben-Yehudahclub to meet girls, buy sweets and liquor,smokeandplay billiards"(p. 174)?Ratherthan placingdatainto the contextof homogenizednotionsof modernization,the specificityof divergingculturalvoices mightbe given greateremphasis. Differencesin possibilitiesof interpretation the book, notwithstanding, effort.If we thoroughlyresearchedand clearlywritten,is a groundbreaking can learnas much as Simon teachesus aboutJewishwomenin Libya,then surely the same should be possible for otherMiddleEasterncommunities. The study representsa significantcontributionand a challengeto further work. HarveyE. Goldberg HebrewUniversity Israel Jerusalem, Bat-ZionEraqiKlorman.The Jews of Yemenin the NineteenthCentury:A Portraitof a Messianic Community.Brill's Seriesin JewishStudies,vol. 6. Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1993. viii, 209 pp. Despitethe plethoraof articlesandbookson theJewsof Yementhathave been publishedduringthe past two decades,our knowledgeof the history of this Jewry remainsvery scanty.The few chronicleswrittenby Yemeni Jews cover only the past few hundredyears,andeven thendo not providea systematicpresentationof the eventsthatbefell Yemen'sJewishcommunity. In particular,we lack authenticsource materialfor the period stretching from antiquityto the end of the sixteenthcentury.As a result,the historical legacy of YemeniJewish antecedentsis envelopedin mythand legend.Our knowledgeof medievalYemeniJewryis equallysparse.Indeed,Maimonides' Epistle to Yemen(ca. 1172) is our only sourcefor the internalconditionsof the Jews of Yemenin the periodprecedingthe Ayylbid conquest.Even the recenthistoryof the Jews of Yemenis repletewith gaps andlacunae. Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman'sbook under review, an elaborationof her doctoraldissertationpresentedto the Universityof Californiain 1981, is not concernedwith filling any of the historicalgaps. Indeed,all the works she refers to in her book have been publishedby scholarsin the field, as she

478

BOOKREVIEWS

meticulouslyacknowledges.Almost all the apocalypseswhich are the main focus of her discussion were publishedin 1970 by YehudaRatzaby,who pioneeredresearchin this andotherareas. Klorman'smain contribution(indeed a significantone) lies in the fact that she providesus with a comprehensivetreatmentof the messianicand apocalypticcurrentsthat prevailedamong the Jews of Yementhroughout theirknown history,viewed withinthe contextof theirsocial and religious matrix.In doing this, she has gone througha vast numberof works,Jewish andMuslim,in orderto gleanrelevantinformationpertainingto the topicof her study. The bookbeginswith a generalbackground,aimedat settingthe stagefor the maintopic of discussion,nineteenth-century YemeniJewishmessianism. this it delineates the universal themes of Jewishmessianism, Following major a into the messianic outbreaksin provides glimpse pre-nineteenth-century those of the twelfth a Yemen,particularly century,gives cursoryreference to the Jewishmessiahof Bayhan(15thcent.),proceedswith an examination of the disastrousimpactwhich the Sabbateanmovementhadon the Jews of Yemen,and then shifts to a very insightfuldiscussionof the characteristic themes of Jewish Yemenimessianicwritingsin the nineteenthcentury.A whole chapter(chap. 5) is devoted to the rise and fall of threenineteenthcenturyJewish"messianiccontenders":ShukrKuhaylI (1861-1865), Shukr KuhaylII (1868-1875), and Yosef cAbdallah(1881-1893). The book ends with a discussionof the impactwhichthe Jewishmessianicfervorin Yemen hadon the migrationof YemeniJews to Palestine. The messianicidea, Klormannotes, is not limitedto JudaismandChristianity;it is also rooted,in variousformulations,in the traditionsof Islam. Thesetraditions,whichareclaimedto be basedon theauthorityof theProphet Muhammad,speak of an eschatologicalpersonagereferredto as al-Mahdf ("thedivinely guided one"), who will appeartowardthe end of time and restorethe truefaithof Islam.Upon his appearance,Islamwill be exalted. While the idea of the Mahdifinds expressionin the traditionsof Sunni Islamandis verypopularamongits masses,to theShiciit is anessentialcreed, an articleof faith.The Twelversgive the epithetof al-Mahdito Muhammad the twelfthof theirimdms.Theybelievethatthis imam al-Hassanal-'AskarT, has been withdrawnby God from the eyes of man and is now in a state of concealment(makhtfim).This mahdi,whom they referto as al-Muntazar ("theexpectedone"), will come forthat the end of time and inauguratean

BOOK REVIEWS

479

era of the utmostbliss andjustice. The doctrinesof ghaiba ("concealment") are thereforecentralto Sh-iiIslam. and raj'a ("return") It should be stressed that the Zaydis who ruled Yemen, althougha subsectof Sh-ii Islam, do not subscribeto the doctrineof the hiddenimam. Nevertheless,the belief in the Mahdral-muntazar,in its variousforms,has a stronggrip upon the masses in Yemen,be they Zaydis,Ismailis, or Sunnis. This faith in a divinely ordaineddelivererbecomes more acute in times of trial and tribulation,and these were not rarein Yemen,a land which was constantlysubjectedto thehorrorof revolts,internecinewars,strife,droughts, and famines. Klormanprovidesa commendableexpositionof the Mahdist movementsin Yemen. The significantrole whichastrologyplayedin medievalsocieties(Jewish, Christian,and Muslim)is well known.Personalaffairsandterrestrialevents were believed to be predestinedor influencedby the configurationand movementsof the celestialbodies.Astralandnaturalphenomena,the author notes, played a uniquerole in Yemenamongboth Jews and Muslims,who paid much attentionto them. Comets,meteors,eclipses, unusualwinds and storms,thunderand lightning,earthquakes,and the like were consideredto be heralds(dald'il)of futureeventsand,as such,weremeticulouslyrecorded. Thus, for example, Shabazi, the greatestof all YemeniteJewish writers, claimedthatthe yearof his birth(ca. 1619)witnessedan unusualappearance of two messianicstarswhichrosefromthe east "withtailslike a stick."These starswere believed to be proclaimingthe imminentcomingof the Messiah, who would bringsalvationto the worldandto the peopleof Israel.Thebook providesa fascinatingdiscussionof the impactwhich astrologicalelements had on the messianicfervorof bothJews andMuslims. Klormanseems enamoredwithwhatthisreviewerregardsas unwarranted sweepinggeneralizationsandcategoricalformulations.True,becauseof their tryingexperiences,theJewsof Yemencultivatedstrongmessianictendencies. The Messiahseems to have constantlyloomedupontheirhorizon.At times, as in the case of the Sabbateanmovement,Jewsin Yementhrewall cautionto the wind andgave way to unbridledmessianicenthusiasm,whichtriggereda harshreactionon thepartof theZaydiregime.Butto depicttheJewsof Yemen as "a messianicJewry"in which messianicfervorplayed"anunprecedented role in all sectors of life" is, to say the least, questionable.What does of "messianicJewry"mean,anyway?The sameis trueof the characterization YemeniJewish messianicexpressionsas uniquelybelongingto the tradition

480

BOOK REVIEWS

of what Klormanterms "activemessianism,"a tradition"notdominantin otherpartsof the Jewish Diaspora,"which, as she claims, insteadadopted passive messianism.No evidence is providedto supportsuch a categorical statement.Indeed, a survey of the fragmentaryhistory of YemeniJewry clearlyshows thatexceptfor the nebulousepisodeof the Messiahof Bayhan (mid-15thcent.),one can findhardlyany violentmessianiceruptionsleading to militantuprisingsamong the Jews of Yemen.Apocalypticdepictionsof the end of days with fieryformulationsarehardlya uniquefeatureof Yemeni Jewishwritings. The authorprovides a masterfulanalysis of seven Jewish apocalyptic writings,especially Sacidibn David's, which combinesdiverse messianic themes with astrology,traditionallegendarymaterial,and local folktales. She also rightly speaks of the strongand pervasivethematicimageryand terminologicalimpactwhich Islamiceschatologyexertedon YemeniJewish apocalypticworks, evidenced by the use of such terms as al-Mahdralmuntazar,al-Sufyadn,al-Nuc'manal-Darwtsh,etc. One wonders,however, whetherKlormanhas any particularYemeniIslamicapocalypticworks in mind. If so, which are they? Who were theirauthors?How do personalities like Faqih Sacid and Sharif Ismacil,referredto as "mahdis"in the Jewish apocalypticworks,figurein Muslimwritings?TheYemeniMuslimchronicler al-Wasicidismissesthemas mererebels.A shortdiscussionof YemeniMuslim apocalypticworksandperhapssomerelevantexcerptsfromsuchworkswould havebeenveryhelpful.Itis alsoregrettablethatin hertransliteration of Arabic and Hebrewterms,Klormandoes not makefull use of the diacriticalmarks expectedin scholarlyworks.A cursorylook at the seven apocalypticworks discussed clearly shows that diverse influencesmerged to producethem. The imprintof traditionalJewish eschatology,which tends to indulge in uninhibitedfantasiesaboutthe end of times,as Klormanpointsout, is indeed pervasive. Also evident, however, is the impact of Jewish mysticism. It shouldfurthermorebe rememberedthatIslamicmysticism(Safism)exerted tremendousinfluenceupon Jewish writers(see, e.g., the writingsof Bahya ibn Paqudaand AbrahamMaimuni),anddirectlyor indirectlyuponYemeni Jewish literaryworks. It would have been a worthwhileendeavorto trace the extentof these strandsof influenceon Yemeniapocalypticandmessianic writings. In pioneeringstudies, there is always much left to be desired.This is also true of Klorman'swork under review. It is neverthelessa welcome

BOOK REVIEWS

481

and significantcontributionto the studyof YemeniJewryin generaland to fascinatingfeaturesof its messianic writingsin particular.Hopefully,this book will stimulatefurtherinvestigationinto diverse facets of this highly intriguingtopic. ReubenAhroni OhioStateUniversity Ohio Columbus, TeshomeG. Wagaw.For OurSoul:EthiopianJews in Israel.Detroit:Wayne StateUniversityPress. 1993. xi, 293 pp. LikemanyJewswho havemovedto Israel,EthiopianJewsweremotivated by bothpushandpullfactors.Theeconomicandpoliticalsituationin Ethiopia, combinedwith the allureof Zion (andpoliticalactivityon the partof Israel to facilitatetheir exit), led to a much-publicizedmigratorymovementthat broughtover 15,000 Jews to Israelin the 1980s. TeshomeG. Wagaw,who left Ethiopiain 1974 andsettledin the UnitedStates,visitedIsraelduringthe 1986-87 academicyearto studythe Ethiopiancommunitythere.Theresultof Wagaw'sparticipantobservation,andhis interviewswithEthiopianmigrants and a host of officials,teachers,psychologists,politicians,food supervisors, rabbis,and manyotherswho had contactsanddealingswith the Beta Israel, is a comprehensivestudy from which we can learnmuch not only about EthiopianJews but also aboutIsraelisociety. The Beta Israel(commonlycalled the Falasha)claimto have led a life as authenticJews, in accordancewith the principlesof the Orit(OldTestament) and their own religious works which evolved over the centuries,for some 2,700 years. They came to Israel as Jews, but like immigrantsfrom other countriesbeforeandafterthem,foundthattheywereseenandidentifiedmore as membersof their countriesof origin than as Israelis.In theirparticular case, theirvery identityas Jews was challengedby therabbinate.Theissue of who is a Jew producedmuchtensionin the Ethiopiancommunityandled to strikesandprotests.It was an unfortunately realisticintroductionfor themto whatlife in Israelis like. The strugglethatensuedhelpedto underminetheir sense of identity,anywaymade fragileby the difficultmigrationmovement, which had seen families split apartand thousandsdie along the way. The

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Ephraim Tabory Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 481-483 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486857 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOK REVIEWS

481

and significantcontributionto the studyof YemeniJewryin generaland to fascinatingfeaturesof its messianic writingsin particular.Hopefully,this book will stimulatefurtherinvestigationinto diverse facets of this highly intriguingtopic. ReubenAhroni OhioStateUniversity Ohio Columbus, TeshomeG. Wagaw.For OurSoul:EthiopianJews in Israel.Detroit:Wayne StateUniversityPress. 1993. xi, 293 pp. LikemanyJewswho havemovedto Israel,EthiopianJewsweremotivated by bothpushandpullfactors.Theeconomicandpoliticalsituationin Ethiopia, combinedwith the allureof Zion (andpoliticalactivityon the partof Israel to facilitatetheir exit), led to a much-publicizedmigratorymovementthat broughtover 15,000 Jews to Israelin the 1980s. TeshomeG. Wagaw,who left Ethiopiain 1974 andsettledin the UnitedStates,visitedIsraelduringthe 1986-87 academicyearto studythe Ethiopiancommunitythere.Theresultof Wagaw'sparticipantobservation,andhis interviewswithEthiopianmigrants and a host of officials,teachers,psychologists,politicians,food supervisors, rabbis,and manyotherswho had contactsanddealingswith the Beta Israel, is a comprehensivestudy from which we can learnmuch not only about EthiopianJews but also aboutIsraelisociety. The Beta Israel(commonlycalled the Falasha)claimto have led a life as authenticJews, in accordancewith the principlesof the Orit(OldTestament) and their own religious works which evolved over the centuries,for some 2,700 years. They came to Israel as Jews, but like immigrantsfrom other countriesbeforeandafterthem,foundthattheywereseenandidentifiedmore as membersof their countriesof origin than as Israelis.In theirparticular case, theirvery identityas Jews was challengedby therabbinate.Theissue of who is a Jew producedmuchtensionin the Ethiopiancommunityandled to strikesandprotests.It was an unfortunately realisticintroductionfor themto whatlife in Israelis like. The strugglethatensuedhelpedto underminetheir sense of identity,anywaymade fragileby the difficultmigrationmovement, which had seen families split apartand thousandsdie along the way. The

482

BOOKREVIEWS

crisis of identitywas exacerbatedby the Israelipracticeof almostarbitrarily assigningnew namesto the EthiopianJews. Wagawprovidesa historicalbackgroundof life in Ethiopiaandthe place of the Jews in that country.The chapteron "Israelas an AbsorbingState" is worthreadingeven if one is interestedonly in the storyof migrationand settlementin Israelwithoutspecificreferenceto Ethiopians.The meltingpot theorythat characterizesIsrael'sorientationtowardmigrants,as it seeks to mold them into new Israelis,was bound to be even more problematicfor Ethiopiansthanfor othermigrantsbecausethe Westernaspectsof Israelilife were almosttotallyalien to most of them. The disparitybetweenEthiopianandIsraeliculturehas hada devastating effect on family life. The authorityof the male headhas been undermined, and thereare many single-parentfamilies,most of themheadedby females. The kes, or traditionalreligiousleader,does not providethe same degreeof spiritualandemotionalsupportas he didin thepast.Moreover,realfriendships betweenveteranIsraelisandEthiopiansarealmostnonexistent.Therelatively small size of the Ethiopiangroupand theirlack of advancedoccupational skills (as contrastedwith the later mass migrationfrom the formerSoviet Union) do not threatenmanygroupsin Israel.The Ethiopianscan therefore be regardedas a curiosity,be the subjectof assistancecampaigns,and then be forgotten.But the problemsthey face areveryreal.Wagawanalyzesthese problemsas he studiesthe difficultiesthe Ethiopiansencounterin absorption centersandin the educationalsystem.He is criticalof the lack of sensitivity on the part of the Israeli absorbers,who could have organizedand better preparedfor this not-unexpectedmigrationmovement. Thebookpresupposesno priorknowledgeof Israel.Perhapsthisis because Wagawis neitheran Israelinora Jew,andthereforeviews the situationas an outsiderandis sensitiveto the need for contextualexplanations.This results in the presentationof much backgroundmaterialaboutIsraelisociety that may be familiarto some readers.We learnaboutthe educationalsystemand the YouthAliyahprogrambeforelearningaboutthe specificproblemsfaced by the Ethiopians.The separateanalysesof variousschools and institutions thathave accommodatedEthiopianyouthis disconcertingfor those used to more quantitativeor summarydescriptions.The depictionof Israelilife is generallyquite accurate,but there are some breaches.Writingthat males predominatein a yeshiva implies thatgirls also studythere.The divisionof IsraeliJews into 30 percentreligiousand 70 percentsecularmakesit seem

BOOKREVIEWS

483

thatreligiouslife is morepolarizedthanit is in reality.Thereare occasional mistakesin the Hebrewtermscited,butin the overallframeworkof the book these lapses are trulyminor. Wagawnotes that the story of Ethiopianimmigrantsin Israelis a story of misperceptionsand lack of understanding. The culturalrift is substantial and mutual.Israelis and Ethiopiansdo not understandeach other'sexpectations. The Ethiopiansapparentlyexpect more long-termassistancethan the governmentintends (or can afford)to give them. Add to this the fact that the "Israelis"are actually organizationswith their own agendas,and individualswith theirown culturalstereotypesandprejudices,andwe havea volatilesituation.Wagawalso talksaboutpossibleracismagainstEthiopians in Israel.There are no harddata aboutthis. I wonderwhetherWagawhas been sensitized to the issue by virtue of his years in the United States. I suspectthat theremight be some racismin Israel,althoughI thinkthatthe comparisonmade in the book betweenYemenitesand Ethiopiansconfuses ethnicitywith racism. The volume includes an epilogue writtenin 1992 to try and bring the situationup to date. The book's thoroughnessup to that point makes the epilogue seem thin. We need a scholar like Wagaw,who can speak with the Ethiopiansin theirnativelanguages,andwho shows as muchsensitivity in understandingthe natureand workingsof Israeli society, to follow up this study.Wagawanticipatesthe childrenin this studyservingin the army. The armyindeed has inductedEthiopianmigrantsand (at least for a while) conductedspecial programsfor them. We need to know more abouthow the Ethiopiancommunityhas since developed.Weneed to knowhow earlier immigrantsfrom Ethiopiaaffectedthe absorptionof those who came in the 1990s. We also need to view such a study from a comparativeperspective. The mass inflow of Russians in recent years has led to tension between them and the Ethiopians,and to differentattitudeson the partof the native Israelipopulacetowardboth groups.Wagaw'sperceptivestudyservesas an excellent basis for understanding the past, and as a valuableframeworkfor furtherresearchin the migrationandabsorptionprocess. Ephraim Tabory Bar-IlanUniversity RamatGan,Israel

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Michael Taub Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 484-485 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486858 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



484

BOOKREVIEWS

Avraham Balaban. Between God and Beast: An Examination of Amos Oz's

Prose. UniversityPark:PennsylvaniaStateUniversityPress, 1993. 258 pp. Jungiananalysisof literarytexts usuallyfocuses on a few key concepts related to the workings of the unconsciousor to personalityformation. Jung, as we know, regardeddreamsand fantasiesas manifestationsof the unconscious,butalsoas creationsderivedfroma universalstoreof "primordial images"transcendingculturesand times.To Freud,dreamswere distortions or displacementsof repressedchildhoodexperiences,mainlyof an Oedipal nature.Jungbelievedthattheseimages,or "archetypes," werebornoutof the "collectiveunconscious,"so-calledbecauseit was "detachedfromanything personalandis commonto all men."' Jungiancriticssuchas NorthropFrye,the authorof Anatomyof Criticism withvarying (Princeton,1957),havebeenapplyingtheseconceptsto literature success.In this study,AvrahamBalabantracestheJungianelementsin Amos Oz's work,beginningwith his shortstoriespublishedin the earlysixtiesand continuingthroughthe novels ToKnowa WomanandFima.His commentson thesetwo novels wereaddedat a laterstageandaretreatedas "supplementary material,"since BetweenGod and Beast was originallywrittenin 1986, in Hebrew,before these two works appearedin print.These sections are not sufficientlyintegratedinto Balaban'stext. Also, one wondershow the author mighthavejudgedOz's oeuvreif these two importantworks,alongwith the yet untranslatednovel 'Al TagidiLayla ("Don'tSay Night"),had existedat the time of the originalcompositionof this criticalstudy. Following strictlyJungianlines, Balabanfirstfocuses on the early short stories,then discussesreligiousaspectsof Oz's novels;an analysisof water images and female charactersin Oz's longer works follows, and the book ends with a chapteron the elementof synthesisin them.Balaban'smethod of investigationis to focus on a centralJungianidea andsee how it manifests itself in a particularwork.While he is thoroughandinsightful,the moving backandforthcausedby his dealingwith select aspectsof a novel at a time, frustratedthis reader,who would have preferreda more unifiedanalytical structure. To illustrateBalaban'sapproach,I will offeran examplefromhis discussion of A PerfectPeace. It hadbeen customaryto view Yonatan'sflightfrom 1. Carl Jung, Two Essays in Analytical Psychology (Princeton, 1972), pp. 65-66.

485

BOOK REVIEWS

thekibbutzas essentiallymotivatedby his rebellionagainstsocialconstraints, a rejectionof theidealsandvaluesembodiedin his father,a foundingmember. A carefulreadingof thebook,however,revealsa phalanxof archetypalimages to suggest that Yonatan,alone in the desert,is undergoingthe processthat Jung calls "individuation."As Balabanexplains,in Oz's scheme a person discoversthat"hellexists not only in one's fellow man,butin totalliberation fromhim. Life must be foundbetweenthese two poles . .. the positiveand negative-the darkthatmustbe silencedat any price.Yonatanmustleadhis life accordingto the dictatesof his true heart,even at the cost of breaking social taboos"(p. 127). In essence, BalabanperceivesYonatan'sstruggleas a typical example of psychologicalconflict,which, accordingto Jung,can only be resolvedby a processof "synthesis." the title of Balaban'slast The technicalterm"Synthesis"is appropriately it means the reconciliation of conflictingforces,of the "Godly"and chapter; the "Beastly,"the "Apollonian"and the "Dionysian."As Balabancorrectly withthe darkerside of pointsout, Oz's workshows a constantpreoccupation the unconscious;his charactersstruggleto bringoppositesinto some kindof peacefulcoexistence,harmonyamongcompetingcomponentsof the psyche. Using A Perfect Peace as his paradigm, the authorof Between God and Beast

concludesthat "the struggleends with discoveryof the longed for unity of opposites, yet, because of the contradictingfeaturesof the forces that the a springboard for protagoniststry to unite, thatunitycan only be temporary, renewedstruggleand a new book"(p. 239). There are many virtuesto Balaban'sbook, especiallyfor the American reader,since Oz's worktendsto be overlypoliticizedandJudaicizedoutside Israel. It is the first such work in English, a perfect introductionto Oz's recurringthemes and their developmentfrom the early shortstoriesto the latest,longernarratives.Whilecognizantof thepoliticalandhistoricalcontext of Oz's mainheroes,Balabaninvitesa readingthatgoes beyondthe obvious particularsand into the deeper,more universallayers of these characters' psyche. The dynamicsof this psyche is governedprimarilyby forcesin the unconscious,with religion,mysticism,andgenderplayinga muchlargerrole thanpreviouslyshownby critics. MichaelTaub VassarCollege N.Y. Poughkeepsie,

Review: [untitled] Author(s): Donna Robinson Divine Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 486-487 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486859 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOKREVIEWS

486

David Schoenbaum. The United States and the State of Israel. New York:

OxfordUniversityPress, 1993. xiv, 404 pp. The militaryaid and diplomaticsupportextendedby the UnitedStates to Israelhas been very much a partof the nationalstoryof AmericanJewry since the end of WorldWarII. David Schoenbaumreversesplot andsubplot in order to study how the history of America'sJewish populationleft its imprinton United Statespolicies in the MiddleEast.Whilethe relationship between America'sJewish populationand America'sMiddle East foreign policy has receivedsome attention,the subjecthas triggeredmorepolemical thanscholarlyanalysis.Eventhen,only the periodsof crisis pronouncements and confrontationtend to be emphasized.Schoenbaumhas undertakenan extensive examinationof United States policies with regardto Israel.The book surveysthe developmentof UnitedStatespoliciesnot only in termsof the internationalandregionalbalanceof powerbut also in the contextof the changingstatusof AmericanJewry. The United States and the State of Israel draws on primary records,

secondaryworks,andmemoirsto explainalmosta centuryof policy-making directedto the idea and fact of a Jewish state in the Middle East. The book joins together summariesof strategicperspectiveswith reviews of informalcontactsbetween prominentJews, high-levelWashingtonpundits, andelectedpoliticians.The mainthrustof Schoenbaum'sanalysishighlights the followingfactors:the connectionsgeneratedby commonreligiousvalues, andadditionally,in his words,the "moralandpsychiclegacyof theHolocaust ... andthe exigencies of the Cold War"(p. 320). Schoenbaumaddressesthe economic linkagesbetweenthesefactorsandAmericanmilitaryprocurement, in for since the state's and Israel 1948. aid, founding politicalsupport The foundingof the WorldZionistOrganization coincidedwitha massive Jewishimmigrationto the UnitedStates.For manydecadesof the twentieth century-while a Jewish society and economy in Palestinewere forged withinthe frameworkof Britishrule-American Jews were still accustomed to being defined as culturallyalien. Israel'sgrowthand developmentas a upwardeconomicand sovereignstateoccurredduringa periodof remarkable social mobilityfor America'sJews. Jews foundfull acceptancein American society, and this success allowed them to galvanizetheir communityinto active lobbyingeffortson behalfof Israel'sinterests.Schoenbaumis not the firstto note thatJewishadvocacyhas helpedto shapeAmerica'srole in the

BOOK REVIEWS

487

MiddleEast.Wherehe departsfromotheranalystsis to suggesthow difficult it may be to measurethe effectivenessof suchadvocacyor the consequences of domesticJewish successes. Schoenbaumalso triesto recreatethe contextin whichthesepolicieswere fashioned.The textureof America'spoliticallife is depictedby describing themespreoccupyingthe publicor by mentioningtopicsof discussionwhich appearedin major newspapersand by drawing,once again, from highly personal recollections of events published in memoirs. How formidable a task selecting materialwas can be ascertainedby attendingto the book's extensivebibliography,whichincludesdocumentsas well as a comprehensive list of the publishedrecordsand the majorsecondaryworks. For this reader,however,Schoenbaum'sbook is challengingwith respect to the questionsit poses andultimatelyvexingwithregardto the assessments it presents.The descriptionsof policy-makingareso clutteredwithanecdotal detailthatit is difficultto follow the narrative.The inclusionof suchmaterial might have been intendedto producea seriousbook for the generalreader, but most people will simply be overwhelmedby the amountof unsorted information.The writingfails to evoke the temperof the times or to bring originalor criticalinsightto bearon the enormousamountof data.Thebook is muchlongerthanit needsto be andshouldhavebeeneditedmorecarefully. Still, Schoenbaum'swork shouldbe praisedfor approachinga problem many scholarsavoid. Of all areasof policy-making,externalaffairsappears the most distantfrom popularcontrol.While interestgroupsmay press in certaindirections,conventionalwisdom suggeststhatthe makersof foreign policy respond to strategicimperativesratherthan to domestic demands or needs. Scholars are most apt to examine foreign policies in light of ideologies or commonvalues ratherthanas an outcomeof domesticpolicy pressures.AlthoughSchoenbaum'sattemptto analyzeUnitedStatespolicies in the Middle East throughthe prism of domestic politics is ultimately unsatisfactory,the world of policy-makingwhich he opens up is worthyof seriousconsideration. DonnaRobinson Divine SmithCollege Mass. Northampton,

Collected Studies Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 489-502 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486860 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



COLLECTEDSTUDIES Herbert W. Basser and Simcha Fishbane. Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Historical, Literary, and Religious Studies. New Series, vol. 5. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism, no. 82. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993. 167 PP. Meir Bar-Ilan, "Witches in the Bible and in the Talmud."Noam CONTENTS: Zohar, "Women, Men and Religious Status."TirzahMeacham, "WomanMore Intelligent Than Man." Dalia Hoshen, "Semiotics as a Religious Question." HerbertBasser, "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead." HerbertBasser, "Is Midrash to Be Sterilized?" Shulamit Valer, "The Talmudic Sugya as a Literary Mosaic." Nissan Rubin, "BirkatAvelim-The Blessing of Mourners."Simcha Fishbane, "Most Women Engage in Society."

Avraham Biran, ed. Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1993. xvii, 770 pp. CONTENTS: Recollections of the past. Yolande Hodson, "The Palestine Exploration Fund: Recollections of the Past." Emile Puech, "The Ecole Biblique et Archeologique Frangaise-The First Hundred Years."Philip J. King, "The American Schools of Oriental Research." August Strobel, "The Deutsches Evangelisches Institut fUr Alterumswissenschaft des Heiligen Landes." Michele Piccirillo, "The Studium Biblicum Franciscanum."A. Graeme Auld, "The British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem."Ronny Reich, "The Israel Antiquities Authozity." Joseph Aviram, "The Israel Exploration Society." The First Templeperiod; New directions in biblical archaeology. Kenneth A. Kitchen, "New Directions in Biblical Archaeology: Historical and Biblical Aspects." Moshe Dothan, "Ethnicityand Archaeology: Some Observationson

489

490

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

the Sea Peoples." Israel Finkelstein, "EnvironmentalArchaeology and Social History: Demographic and Economic Aspects of the Monarchic Period." David Ussishkin, "Fresh Examination of Old Excavations: Sanctuaries in the First Temple Period." John S. Holladay, "The Use of Pottery and Other Diagnostic Criteria: From the Solomonic Era to the Divided Kingdom." Eliezer D. Oren, "Ethnicity and Regional Archaeology: The Western Negev under Assyrian Rule." Gabriel Barkay, "The Redefining of Archaeological Periods: Does the Date 588/586 B.C.E. Indeed Mark the End of the Iron Age Culture?" The Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods. Sharon Herbert, "The Greco-Phoenician Settlement at Tel Anafa: A Case Study in the Limits of Hellenization." Ehud Netzer, "The Hasmonean Palaces in Eretz-Israel." Benjamin Isaac, "Greek and Latin Inscriptions Discovered in Israel: The Current State of Research." Yaacov Meshorer, "New Discoveries in the Coinage of the Cities of Roman Palestine." Gideon Foerster, "The Excavations at Beth-Shean (Nysa-Scythopolis)." Yoram Tsafrir, "Settlement and Demography in Byzantine Palestine: The Archaeological Evidence." Open cult places. Uzi Avner, "Mazzebot Sites in the Negev and Sinai and Their Significance." Volkmar Fritz, "Open Cult Places in Israel in the Light of Parallels from Prehistoric Europe and Pre-Classical Greece." Robin Higg, "Open Cult Places in the Bronze Age Aegean." Baruch A. Levine, "Lpny YHWH-Phenomenology of the Open-Air Altar in Biblical Israel." Pierre de Miroschedji, "Cult and Religion in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age." Ora Negbi, "Israelite Cult Elements in Secular Contexts of the 10th CenturyB.C.E." Pirhiya Beck, "Transjordanianand Levantine Elements in the Iconography of Qitmit." Menahem Haran, "'Incense Altars'-Are They?" Seymour Gitin, "Seventh Century B.C.E. Cultic Elements at Ekron." A. Bernard Knapp, "Bronze Age Trade Patterns in the Eastern Mediterranean: Archaeometry and Bronze Age Society." Manfred Bietak, "The Sea Peoples and the End of the Egyptian Administration in Canaan."Paul Astrdm, "Late Cypriot Bronze Age Pottery in Palestine." Spyros lakovidis, "The Impact of Trade Distruption on the Mycenaean Palace Economy in the 13th-12th Centuries B.C.E." Ephraim Stem, "The Renewal of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean in Iron Age I." Hans G. Niemeyer, "TradeBefore the Flag? On the Principles of Phoenician Expansion in the Mediterranean."Yannis A. Sakellarakis, "Ivory Trade in the Aegean in the 8th Century B.C.E." Forty years of Dead Sea Scroll research. Jonas C. Greenfield,"The QumranScrolls: Published and Unpublished." Michael E. Stone, "The Apocrypha and Pseude-

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

491

pigraphaand the Dead Sea Scrolls."JosephM. Baumgarten,"TheQumran Cave 4 Fragmentsof the Damascus Document."LawrenceH. Schiffman, "SacredSpace: the Land of Israel in the TempleScroll."Interdisciplinary aspects of biblical archaeology. Naama Goren-Inbar,"Ethnoarchaeology:The

SouthernSinai Bedouin as a Case Study."MagenBroshi,"Methodologyof Periodas a Case Study."Paula PopulationEstimates:The Roman-Byzantine "The Integrationof FaunalData with Biblical Wapnish,"Archaeozoology, Archaeology."Shlomo Bunimovitz,"TheStudyof ComplexSocieties:The MaterialCultureof Late Bronze Age Canaanas a Case Study."JuvalPortugali,"RegionalExcavationProjects."Zvi Gal, "RegionalSurveyProjects: Revealingthe SettlementMapof AncientIsrael."OferBar-YosefandAnatoly M. Khazanov,"Anthropological Aspectsof RecentArchaeologicalResearch in Pastoralism." ThomasE. Levy,"Interdisciplinary ArchaeologicalResearch in Israel." Text and epigraphy: Recent discoveries. Joachim Krecher, "The

Ebla Tabletsand Their Possible Significancefor Biblical Studies."Marcel Nahman Sigrist,"Emar."Alan R. Millard,"TheTellFekheriyehInscription." Avigad, "HebrewEpigraphyToday."FrankM. Cross, "Newly-Discovered InscribedArrowheadsof the lth CenturyB.C.E."Reexcavatedsites and changing archaeological methods. Neil A. Silberman, "Petrieand the Found-

ing Fathers."LawrenceE. Toombs,"Tell el-Hesi."Joe D. Seger, "Gezer: A Twice-ToldTell, 1902-1909 and 1964-1974." Gus W. van Beek, "The Reexcavationof Sites:TellJemmeh."DanBahat,"WasJerusalemReallyThat Large?"MargreetSteiner,"TheJebusiteRampof Jerusalem:The Evidence from the Macalister,Kenyon and Shiloh Excavations."John Woodhead, "Tel Lachish:A ReexcavatedSite." EdwardF. Campbell,"Developments in the Excavation and Reexcavationof Shechem/TellBalatah."Amihai Mazar,"TheExcavationsat Tel Beth-Sheanin 1989-1990."Specialsession at the University of Haifa. Michal Artzy, "The Bronze Age Anchorage

Site of Tel Nami." Elisha Linder,"The Ancient Ship DiscoveredOff the Coast of Ma'agan-Micha'el."Avner Raban, "The 'Sea Peoples' Port at Dor." Symposium: The 2,000th anniversary of King Herod's city, Caesarea

Maritima.Robert R. Stieglitz, "Straton'sTower:The Name, the History, and the ArcheologicalData."RobertLindleyVann,"TheSearchfor Herod's Lighthouse."Lee I. Levine, "Caesarea'sSynagoguesand Some Historical on the LatinDedicatory Implications."ClaytonM. Lehmann,"Observations Inscriptionsfrom Caesarea."RobertL. Hohlfelder,"AnastasiusI and the Restorationof CaesareaMaritima'sHarbor:The NumismaticEvidence."

492

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

KennethG. Holum,"CaesareaMaritimain the ByzantinePeriod:Continuity and Change."Biblical archaeologytodayand tomorrow.WilliamG. Dever, "BiblicalArchaeology:Death and Rebirth."TrudeDothan,"Archaeology andthe Studyof CulturalDiversity."Moshe Kochavi,"TheLandof Geshur Eric RegionalProject:Attemptinga New Approachin BiblicalArchaeology." M. Meyers,"IdentifyingReligiousandEthnicGroupsThroughArchaeology." LawrenceE. Stager,"Towardthe Future:It's Justa Matterof Time." AvrahamBiran, ed. Biblical ArchaeologyToday,1990: Proceedingsof the SecondInternationalCongresson BiblicalArchaeology:Pre-CongressSymposium:Supplement.Jerusalem:IsraelAcademyof SciencesandHumanities, 1993. 149 pp. CONTENTS: Population.PatriciaSmith, "An Approachto the PalaeodemographicAnalysisof HumanSkeletalRemains."MagenBroshi,"ThePopulation of IronAge Palestine."GideonBigerandDavidGrossman,"Villageand TownPopulationsin Palestineduringthe 1930's-1940'sandTheirRelevance to Ethnoarchaeology." andSocial Production.ThomasE. Levy,"Production in Protohistoric Avi Palestine." Yuval Goren, Change Gopher,and Paul "The in the of Production SouthernLevant: Goldberg, Beginnings Pottery TechnologicalandSocialAspects."StevenA. Rosen,"Metals,Rocks,Specialization,andtheBeginningof Urbanismin theNorthernNegev."SarielShalev, "MetalProdcutionand Society at Tel Dan."AbrahamMalamat,"Mariand Hazor-Trade Relationsin the Old BabylonianPeriod."A. BernardKnapp, ProductionandPowerPoliticson BronzeAge Cyprus."Power "Metallurgical IsaacGilead,"SociopoliticalOrganizationin the NorthernNegev at the End of the ChalcolithicPeriod."WilliamG. Dever,"TheRise of Complexityin the Landof Israelin the EarlySecondMillenniumB.C.E."IsraelFinkelstein, "TheSociopoliticalOrganizationof the CentralHill Countryin the Second MillenniumB.C.E."ItamarSinger,"ThePoliticalOrganization of Philistiain IronAge I." ShlomoBunimovitz,"TheChangingShapeof Powerin Bronze Age Canaan." MarcBrettlerand Michael Fishbane,eds. Minhahle-Nahum:Biblical and OtherStudiesPresentedto NahumM. Sarnain Honourof His 70thBirthday.

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

493

Journalfor the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 154. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993. 337 pp. CONTENTS: Marc Brettler, "Interpretationand Prayer: Notes on the Com1 Kings 8.15-53." Gershon D. Cohen, "The Hebrew Crusade of position Chronicles and the Ashkenazic Tradition." Aaron Demsky, "The Route of Jacob's Funeral Cortege and the Problem of 'Eber Hayyarden (Genesis 50.10-11)." Michael Fishbane, "Law to Canon: Ideal-Typical Stages of Development." Marvin Fox, "R. Isaac Arama's Philosophical Exegesis of the Golden Calf Episode." Mordechai A. Friedman, "Menahem ben Aaron ibn Zemah's Anti-Polygyny Torah Commentary from the Geniza." Shamma Friedman, "The Holy Scriptures Defile the Hands-The Transformationof a Biblical Concept in Rabbinic Theology." Judah Goldin, "Reuben."Cyrus H. Gordon, "The Aramaic Incantation Bowls in Historic Perspective." Moshe Greenberg and Jonas C. Greenfield, "From the Workshopof the New Jewish Publication Society Ketubim Translators."Frederick E. Greenspahn, "How Modern Are Modern Biblical Studies?"William Hallo, "Disturbingthe Dead." Menahem Haran, "11QPsa and the Canonical Book of Psalms." Baruch A. Levine, "An Essay on Prophetic Attitudes towardTemple and Cult in Biblical Israel." Martin I. Lockshin, "Translationas Polemic: The Case of Toledot Yeshu."Shalom Paul, "Gleanings from the Biblical and Talmudic Lexica in Light of Akkadian." Bezalel Porten, "ElephantineAramaic Contractsand the Priestly Literature." Lawrence H. Schiffman, "Pharisees and Sadducees in Pesher Nahum." Menachem Schmeltzer, "Penitence, Prayer,and (Charity?)." Uriel Simon, "Yishaki: A Spanish Biblical Commentator Whose 'Book Should Be Burned,' According to Abraham ibn Ezra." ShemaryahuTalmon, "Fragments of a Psalms Scroll from Masada MPsb (Masada 1103-1742)." Jeffrey H. Tigay, "A Talmudic Parallel to the Petition from Yavneh-Yam."

Harry James Cargas, ed. Telling the Tale: A Tribute to Elie Weisel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. St. Louis: Time Being Books, 1993. 169 pp. CONTENTS: Harry James Cargas, "An Interview with Elie Weisel." Gail M. Gendler, "Elie Weisel: A Biographical Overview." Elie Weisel, "Marginal Thoughts on Yiddish." Harry James Cargas, "Can We Bring the Messiah? An Interview with Elie Weisel." Louis Daniel Brodsky, "Twelve Poems on

494

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

In Honorof Elie Weisel." the Holocaust."DorotheeSoelle, "Re-Membering: John K. Roth, "FromNight to Twilight:A Philosopher'sReadingof Elie Weisel."Elie Weisel,"Whenan Eye Says Kaddish."Leo Eitinger,"ToBring Hope and Help."WilliamHeyen, "Trees."HarryJamesCargas,"Nightas Elie Weisel, "ThreePoems."Emil L. Fackenheim,"Jew Autobiography." of Fidelity."Paul Braunstein,"Elie Weisel: A Lasting Impression."Alan L. Berger,"Elie Weisel's Second GenerationWitness:Passingthe Torchof Remembrance."Bob Costas, "A WoundThat Will Never Be Healed:An Interviewwith Elie Weisel."Elie Weisel,"Memoriesof Jerusalem." MosheCarmillyet al., eds. StudiaJudaicaII. Cluj-Napoca:EdituraSincron, 1993. 175 pp. CONTENTS: Lya Benjamin,"ModernJewry,Diaspora,Creativityin the Local Context."Moshe Carmilly,"JewishWritersConfrontedwith Censorship in the HabsburgEmpireand Romaniain the 18th-19thCentury."Pompiliu EmericCsengeri, Teodor,"TheHistoryof Jewsin RomanianHistoriography." "PoliticalEssays on Zionism in Transylvania(19th and 20th Century)." Ivan Sanders,"AncientLegends, Modem History-Jewish Themes in the Worksof Ills Kacz6r."SchwitzerJ6szef,"Exploringthe Sephard'sTrackin "ARomanianHebraistof the LadislauGy6maint, HungaryandTransylvania." Mircea Budai-Deleanu." Enlightenment-Ion Popa,"TheJewishWorldin the RomanianNovel (Endof the 19thCentury)."LiviuRotman,"Educational and SocialStructuresof RomanianJewsat theTurnof theCentury." EugenGluick, "JewishElementaryEducationin Transylvania(1848-1918)."IoanChirila, "Romanian-Jewish CulturalInterferencesin the ReligiousLiteratureof the 16thand 17thCenturies."NadiaBadrus,"Referenceson the JewishCulture Before 1700 in the BrukenthalLibrary."Ilic Kara, "Hintson Gheorghe Asachi's PublishingActivity in Foreign Languages."Virgil Florea, "The ScholarlyDevelopmentof LazarXaineanu."Pap Francisc,"The Problem of Museumsin Transylvaniaand the Jews."HermannMaiorovici,"Jewish RomeoGhircoiaxiu,"HarryH. Maiorovici-A Composersof Transylvania." of the Arts." CornelCraciun,"JewishPaintersin RomaniaBetween Dialogue the Two WorldWars."Raoul Xorban,"NineJewishArtistsVictimsof the Holocaust in NorthernTransylvania."Mircea Moldovan,"A No Longer Existing Synagogue in Cluj-Baritiu Street."Nicolae Gudea, "The Jews

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

495

in the Roman Dacia. 1. A Bronze Coin Emittedby Simon Bar Kochba Discoveredat Pojejena(Cara-SeverinCounty)." James H. Charlesworth, ed. Overcoming Fear: Between Jews and Christians.

SharedGroundAmong Jews and Christians:A Series of Explorations,vol. 3. New York:Crossroad,1993. xix, 198 pp. CONTENTS: James H. Charlesworth, "Fear: A Perennially Present Anguish."

Elie Weisel, "WhyI Am Afraid."RichardK. Fenn,"TheFearof the Other: An Introductionto the Problemof Social Dread."R. Alan Culpepper,"The Relations."HughAnderson, Gospel of John as a Threatto Jewish-Christian "TheFantasyof Superiority:RethinkingOurUniversalisticClaims."Doron Mendels, "Jewishand ChristianFears:An IsraeliPoint of View."Martin Hengel,"AGentilein the Wilderness:My EncounterwithJewsandJudaism." PaulD. Hanson,"StudyandExperience:TwoDimensionsof Jewish-Christian Dialogue."AlanF. Segal, "Howto RespectEachOther:LessonsfromJewishChristianScholarship."PederBorgen,"Overcoming Fear."W.BarnesTatum, "Clementof Alexandria'sPhilo-Judaism:A Resource for Contemporary Relations."EugeneJ. Fisher,"EighteenMonthsin CatholicJewish-Christian JewishRelations(April13, 1986-September11, 1987)."JohnT.Pawlikowski, "RedefiningtheRole of JewsandJudaismin ChristianTheologicalEducation: A ContinuingChallenge."RolandE. Murphy,"TheFearof the Lord:The Fear to End All Fears."ChristopherM. Leighton,"UnmaskingFear and Suffering:An Encounterwith RussianAnti-Semitism." Alice L. Eckardt, ed. Burning Memory: Times of Testing & Reckoning.

HolocaustSeries. Oxford:PergamonPress, 1993.xi, 340 pp. Paul R. Bartrop,"'No Real Racial Problems.. .': Australia, and the Evian Conference,1938." Henry R. Huttenbach,"The Refugees, in Kristallnacht Holocaust Context:Between BurningBooks (1933) and BurningBodies (1943)." Alice L. Eckardt,"ThePogromof Kristallnachtin ChristianContext."GershonGreenberg,"Foundations for OrthodoxJewish Theological Response to the Holocaust: 1936-1939." FranklinH. Littel, "ReinholdNiebuhr'sChristianLeadershipin a Time of Testing."Nechama CONTENTS:

496

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

Tec, "How Did We Survive?"MordechaiPaldiel, "TheRescue of Jewish Childrenin Polandandthe Netherlands." SusanZuccotti,"TheItalians'Role in the Rescue of the Jews." LawrenceBaron, "The Dutch Dimensionof Jewish Rescue."FriedaW. Aaron, "A Handfulof Memories:Two Levels of Recollection."Karl A. Plank, "The Survivor'sReturn:Reflectionson MemoryandPlace."SusanLee Pentlin,"'Ist Dies MeinLand?'Memoirsof GermanWomen."RenateBethge,"The8th Day of May: 1945 andthe Years After."IwonaIrwin-Zarecka, "CatholicsandJewsin PolandToday."Richard L. Rubenstein,"Waldheim,the Pope andthe Holocaust."GabrielleTymauer, "HolocaustHistoryandthe Gypsies."EberhardBethge,"Christians andJews in GermanyToday,and Bonhoeffer'sSustainingLegacy."HubertG. Locke, "BlackProtestantismand Antisemitism." Michael Fishbane, ed. The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought,

and History.Albany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress, 1993.296 pp. CONTENTS: IthamarGruenwald, "Midrashand the 'MidrashicCondition': Pre-

David WeissHalivni,"FromMidrashto Mishnah: liminaryConsiderations." TheologicalRepurcussionsand FurtherClarificationsof 'Chate'uYisrael'." Moshe Idel, "MidrashicversusOtherFormsof JewishHermeneutics: Some ComparativeReflections."Michael Fishbane, "'The Holy One Sits and Roars': Mythopoesisand the MidrashicImagination."David Stern, "The RabbinicParableand the Narrativeof Interpretation." Sara Japhet,"The NatureandDistributionof MedievalCompilatoryCommentaries in the Light of Rabbi Joseph Kara's Commentaryon the Book of Job." Josef Stem, "Maimonideson the Covenantof Circumcisionand the Unity of God." Elliot R. Wolfson, "BeautifulMaiden WithoutEyes: Peshat and Sod in ZoharicHermeneutics."ArthurM. Lesley, "Proverbs,Figures,and Riddles: The Dialoguesof Love as a HebrewHumanistComposition." RobertBonfil, "Can Medieval StorytellingHelp UnderstandingMidrash?The Story of Paltiel:A PreliminaryStudy on the Historyof Midrash."Ivan G. Marcus, "History,Story, and Collective Memory:Narrativityin Early Ashkenazic Culture."Steven Bowman,"SeferYosippon:HistoryandMidrash." Saul Friedlander. Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of

Europe.Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1993. xiv, 142 pp.

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

497

"GermanStrugglewith Memory"(1986). "A Conflictof MemCONTENTS: ories? The New GermanDebate about the 'Final Solution"'(1987). "The Shoah in Present Historical Consciousness"(1990). "Reflectionson the Historizationof NationalSocialism"(1987). "MartinBroszatandthe Historizationof NationalSocialism"(1991). "The'FinalSolution':On the Unease in HistoricalInterpretation" (1989). "TraumaandTransference" (1992). MurrayFriedman, ed. WhenPhiladelphia Wasthe Capital of Jewish America.

Sara F. Yoseloff Memorial Publicationsin Judaismand Jewish Affairs. Philadelphia:Balch InstitutePress, 1993. 191 pp. CONTENTS: Murray Friedman, "The Philadelphia Group-A Collective Por-

trait."Lance J. Sussman, "Isaac Leeser and the 'PhiladelphiaPattern'." Dianne Ashton, "'Souls Have No Sex': PhiladelphiaJewish Womenand the AmericanChallenge."David G. Dalin, "The Patriarch-The Life and Legacy of Mayer Sulzberger."Robert E. Fierstien,"SabatoMorais and the Foundingof the Jewish TheologicalSeminary."Ira Robinson,"Cyrus Adler,the Philadelphian."PhilipRosen, "Dr.SolomonSolis-Cohenand the PhiladelphiaGroup."Philip Rosen, "OrthodoxInstitutionBuilder:Rabbi BernardLewis Levinthal."JonathanD. Sarna,"TheMakingof an American JewishCulture."MartinP.Beifeld,"TheAmericanization of ReformJudaism: Case Friedman and JosephKrauskopf-A Study."Murray DanielJ. Elazar, "JewishLeadershipThenandNow." Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed. Gershom Scholem: The Man and His Work.SUNY

Series in Judaica:Hermeneutics,Mysticism, and Religion. Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1994. 127 pp. CONTENTS: Paul Mendes-Flohr, "The Spiritual Quest of the Philologist."

EphraimE. Urbach,"GershomScholemandJudaicStudies."IsaiahTishby, "GershomScholem'sContribution to the Studyof theZohar"J. Ben-Shlomo, "GershomScholem on Pantheismin the Kabbala."JosephDan, "Gershom ScholemandJewishMessianism."RivkaSchatz,"GershomScholem'sInterpretationof Hasidismas anExpressionof His Idealism."NathanRotenstreich, "GershomScholem'sConceptionof JewishNationalism." MalachiBeit-Ari6, "GershomScholemas Bibliophile."

498

COLLECTED STUDIES

Antony Polonsky, ed. Studies from Polin: From Shtetl to Socialism. London:

LittmanLibraryof JewishCivilization,1993. xxxiii, 581 pp. A collectionof articles,all of whichappearedpreviouslyin Polin: CONTENTS: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies, vols. 1-7 (1986-1992).

Avi Sagi andDaniel Statman,eds. BetweenReligionandEthics.Ramat-Gan: Bar-IlanUniversityPress, 1993. 39 pp. (English),208 pp. (Hebrew) AaronBen-Ze'ev,"NegativeEmotionsTowardsOthers:Morality CONTENTS: and Religion."Yuval Luria, "Religion,Morality,and Modernity."Yehudit Ronen, "'EverythingIs Foreseen, But Free-WillIs Granted."'Jacob J. Ross, "Why Is There an Obligationto Obey God's Commands?"Ze'ev Levy,"ReligionandMoralityin the Philosophyof EmmanuelLevinas."Roni as theBasis for theDevelopmentof theFinalPerson: Aviram,"Secularization Nietzsche'sCritiqueof Modernity."HayyimMerantz,"God,Morality,and Wittgenstein."Eliezer Goldman,"Religionand Moralityin the Philosophy of Isaiah Leibowitz."Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman,"Religionin Jewish Thought."Noam Zohar,"Manas God'sProperty:On the HalakhicObjection to Euthanasia."Shmuel Shkolnikov,"Grace,JusticeandAkrasia:Religion and Moralityin Maimonides."HayyimKreisel,"RabbiYehudaHalevi and the Problemof PhilosophicalEthics."Dov Schwartz,"EthicsandAscetismin the NeoplatonicSchoolof the 14thCentury." EphraimMeir,"IanT. Ramsey's Theoryon Religious Language:Disclosureand MoralBehavior."JeromeI. of the Bindingof Isaac:RabbiLeinerof Gellman,"A HasidicInterpretation Izbica."

Richard Siegel and Tamar Sofer, eds. The Writerin the Jewish Community: An Israeli-North American Dialogue. SaraF. Yoseloff Memorial Publications

in JudaismandJewishAffairs.London:AssociatedUniversityPresses,1993. 155 pp.

CONTENTS: HarveyShapiro,"I WriteOut of an UncreatedIdentity."David Shuetz, "The Storytelleras a Jew."HanochBartov,"By the Book."Meir Shalev,"TheStory of Creation."Nessa Rapoport,"Text,Language,andthe

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

499

Hopeof Redemption."Max Apple,"SqueezingHistoryinto a Teacup."Cynthia Ozick, "Of PolishedMirrors."Ted Solotaroff,"Marginality Revisited." Ted The to Solotaroff: End of IrvingHowe, "Response Marginalityin Jewish Literature." Alan Mintz,"TraditionandRenewal."RosellenBrown,"What's New in AmericanJewish Writing."RuthAlmog, "Polemosand Polemics." HillelHalkin,"SixForgottenPioneersof HebrewLiterature." MeirWieseltier, "Onthe Predominanceof Poetryin Modem HebrewLiterature." Amos Oz, "Responseto Wieseltier."AmozOz, "ImaginingtheOther:1."CynthiaOzick, Amichai "ImaginingtheOther:2." ChanaBloch,"ThePoliticsof Translation: andRavikovitchin English."HanochBartov,"OnReadingAmericanJewish Writers."Nessa Rapoport,"Afterword: The JewishWriterUnmasked." MarshallSklare.ObservingAmerica'sJews. Hanover,N.H.: BrandeisUniversityPress, 1993. xi, 302 pp. "A Sociologist of the Jews: Some Autobiographical CONTENTS: Remarks" (1993). "A Wife's Response,"by Rose Sklare(1993). "JewishAcculturation and AmericanJewish Identity"(1978). "TheJewish Religionin America" (1971). "TheConservativeMovement:AchievementsandProblems"(1972). "TheGreeningof Judaism"(1974). "JewishAttitudesTowardthe State of Israel"(1958). "Lakevilleand Israel:The Six Day Warand Its Aftermath" (1968). "Jews, Ethics, and the AmericanCity" (1972). "TheBicentennial Spirit:Jews, Yankees,andOtherEthnicGroupsin Boston"(1988)."TheJew in AmericanSociologicalThought"(1974). "TheSociologyof Contemporary Jewish Studies"(1974). "TheImageof the Good Jew in Lakeville"(1967). "TheConversionof the Jews"(1973). "Intermarriage andthe JewishFuture" (1964). "TheFutureof JewishGiving"(1962). "AmericanJewry:The EverDying People" (1976). "MarshallSklare:An Assessment,"by CharlesS. Liebman(1993). Russell A. Stone and Walter P. Zenner, eds. Critical Essays on Israeli Social

Issues and Scholarship.Books on Israel,vol. 3. Albany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress, 1994. vi, 268 pp. CONTENTS: Aviad E. Raz, "Rewriting the Holocaust: An Israeli Case Study

in the Sociology of the Novel." WalterP. Zenner,"Espionageand Cultural

500

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

Mediation."AbrahamMarthan,"AnAuthenticHumanVoice:The Poetryof Amnon Shamosh."Shmuel Bolozky, "On The SchizoidNatureof Modern Hebrew."MadeleineTress,"DoesGenderMatter?" WalterF.Weiker,"Studies on Ethnicity."James Armstrong,"The Search for Israeliness:Towardan Mainstream." UriRam,"FromApparatus Anthropologyof the Contemporary to Populus:ThePoliticalSociologyof YonathanShapiro."GioraGoldbergand EfraimBen-Zadok,"Governinga TurbulentNationalPolicy Environment." JeromeSlater,"The Significanceof Israeli HistoricalRevisionism."Yagil Levy and Yoav Peled, "TheUtopianCrisisof the IsraeliState."Ilan Peleg, "TheArab-IsraeliConflictandthe Victoryof Otherness." EfraimInbar,"The Intercommunal Dimensionin the Arab-IsraeliConflict:The Intifada." E. FernandezTejero and Maria Teresa OrtegaMonasterio,eds. Estudios Masor"ticos(X Congresode la IOMS).Madrid:Institutode Filologifadel CSIC, 1993. 154 pp. CONTENTS: M. J. de Azcairraga,"El libro de Isafasen el MinhatSay." A.

Dotan, "ReflectionsTowardsa CriticalEdition of PentateuchCodex Or. 4445." E. FernandezTejero,"TheSubstantiveot*1Accordingto the Masora of CairoCodex."T. Harviainen,"KaraiteArabicTranscriptions of Hebrew in the Saltykov-ShchedrinPublic Libraryin St. Petersburg." M. L. Klein, of the Proto-Massorah to Onqelos."M. T. OrtegaMonasterio, "Manuscripts "Some Aspects of the Masoraof the Codices Or. 4445 and Aleppo."E. J. Revell, "The Reading Traditionas a Basis for MasoreticNotes." J. Ribera, "RelationshipBetween Semanticsand Vocalization."M. Serfaty, "L'indispensable comparaisondes massoroten vue de leurcompr6hension." R. Yarkoni,"Yequti'elha-Naqdan-One of the Last Masoretesor an Early AshkenaziGrammarian?" JerzyTimoszewiczet al., eds. TeatrZydowskiw Polsce do 1939. Pamietnik Teatralny,vol. 41. Warsaw:PolskaAkademiaNauk, 1992.540 pp. CONTENTS: Michael C. Steinlauf,"Teatrzydowski w Polsce. Stan badaii." TomaszKuberczyk,"Przedstawienia purimowe."MichaelTaub,"Abraham Goldfadeni teatr zydowski."MiroslawaBulat, "TeatrZydowskiw Swietle

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

501

'Izraelity'w latach 1883-1905." JoannaGodlewska,"PolskiZyd. Jakub Appenszlakjako krytyk teatralny."Marek Web, "Organizacjai samopomoc. Z historii ruchuzawodowegoaktor6wzydowskichw Polsce."Jakub Szacki, "Najstarszedzieje tydowskiego teatru w Warszawie."Faustyna Toeplitz, "'Pod Trzema Murzynami'.Z dziej6w teatru zydowskiego w Warszawie."Zalmen Zilbercwaig,"Goldfadenna polskiej scenie." Elzbieta Wrotnowska,"Dwie glosy do artykuluZalmenaZilbercwaiga."Maria Prussak,"Goldfadena rosyjski teatr Buff." Chone Szmeruk,"Rozsianii rozrzuceni(Cezejt un ceszprejt)Szolem Alejchemaw Warszawie(1905 i 1910)." RyszardM;czyiiski, "TeatrKamiiiskiego."Elinor Rubel, "Teatr Mlodych (Jung Teater).Materialy."Michal Weichert,"StudioTeatralnei "Teatryzydowskiew JungTeater.Fragmentwspomnieii."EdwardKrasiniski, Warszawiemiqdzywojnami(1918-1939)."JosifGelston,"Bladzacegwiazdy na lwowskim firmamencie.Z notareko teatrze zydowskim."Kazimierz w lubelskiej Nowacki,"Teatrtydowski w Krakowie."StefanKruk,"Teatralia 'MyfliZydowskiej'1916-1917."AnnaKuligowska,Pierwszeprzedstawienia zydowskiew Lodzi."MalgorzataLeyko, "O wystcpachTrupyWileniskiejw Wiedniuw sezonie 1922/1923."MierczyslawAbramovicz,"Teatrtydowskiw Gdaiisku1934-1938." Jechiel Burgin,"TeatrMajdim."JerzyTimoszewicz, "BurzaSzekspira w Folks un Jugnt-Teater.InscenizacjaLeona Schillera (1938/39)."MalgorzataMagier,"Habimaw Polsce." JonathanWebber,ed. JewishIdentitiesin the New Europe.London:Littman Libraryof JewishCivilization,1994. xix, 307 pp. CONTENTS:Max Beloff, "Jews of Europe in the Age of a New

Eliezar Schweid, "ChangingJewish Identitiesin the Vilkerwanderung." New Europeand the Consequencesfor Israel."Sergio DellaPergola,"An Overviewof the DemographicTrendsof EuropeanJewry."JonathanWebber, "ModemJewishIdentities."NormanSolomon,"Judaismin the New Europe: Discovery or Invention?"NormanLamm, "The Jewish Jew and Western Culture:Fallible Predictionsfor the Turnof the Century."JonathanSacks, "FromIntegrationto Survivalto Continuity:The ThirdGreatEraof Modern Jewry."JonathanMagonet, "The Role of the Rabbiin the New Europe." Mikhail A. Chlenov, "JewishCommunititesand Jewish Identitiesin the FormerSoviet Union." Igor Krupnik,"Constructing New Identitiesin the

502

COLLECTEDSTUDIES

FormerSovietUnion:TheChallengefortheJews."AndrasKovwcs,"Changes in JewishIdentityin ModemHungary."KonstantyGebert,"JewishIdentities in Poland:New, Old, andImaginary." DominiqueSchnapper,"Israelitesand in New Jewish Identities France." ShmuelTrigano,"TheNotionof a Juifs: 'Jewish'Communityin France:A Special Case of JewishIdentity."Geoffrey Alderman,"BritishJewry:ReligiousCommunityor EthnicMinority?" Stephen H. Miller, "ReligiousPractice and Jewish Identityin a Sample of LondonJews." Julius Carlebach,"JewishIdentityin the Germanyof a New Europe."RobertS. Wistrich,"TheDangersof Antisemitismin the New Jewish Europe."EvyatarFriesel,"TheHolocaustas a Factorin Contemporary Consciousness."ElisabethMaxwell,"TheImpactof Auschwitzand Vatican II on ChristianPerceptionsof JewishIdentity."PierFrancescoFumagalli,"A New Catholic-JewishRelationshipfor Europe."MargaretBrearley,"Possible Implicationsof the New Age Movementfor the Jewish People."Daniel Gutwein,"TheNew EuropeandtheZionistDilemma."DavidSinger,"Jewish Renewalin the New Europe:An AmericanJewishPerspective."

Books Received Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995), pp. 503-509 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486861 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



BOOKSRECEIVED Aberbach, Moshe. Labor, Crafts and Commercein Ancient Israel. Jerusalem:

MagnesPress, 1994. xii, 294 pp. Agnon, S. Y. Present at Sinai: The Giving of the Law. Trans.Michael Swirsky.

Philadelphia:JewishPublicicationSociety, 1994. xxvi, 332 pp. Balaban, Avraham. Between God & Beast: An Examination of Amos Oz's

Prose. UniversityPark:PennsylvaniaStateUniversityPress, 1993. vii, 258 pp.

Basser, HerbertW., and Simcha Fishbane,eds. Approachesto AncientJudaism: Historical, Literary, and Religious Studies. New Series, vol. 5.

SouthFloridaStudiesin the Historyof Judaism,no. 82. Atlanta:Scholars Press, 1993. 167 pp. Beit-Ari6, Malachi. The Panizzi Lectures: Hebrew Manuscripts of East and WestTowardsa Comparative Codicology. London: British Library,1992.

xiv, 124 pp. Ben-Rafael, Eliezer. Language, Identity and Social Division: The Case of

Israel. OxfordStudiesin LanguageContact.Oxford:Clarendon,1994. x, 289 pp. Ben-Tor, Amnon, ed. TheArchaeology ofAncient Israel. Trans.R. Greenberg.

Paperbacked. New Haven:YaleUniversityPress, 1992. xxi, 398 pp. Ben-Zvi,Ehud,MaxineHancock,andRichardBeinert.Readingsin Biblical Hebrew: An Intermediate Textbook.New Haven: Yale University Press,

1993. xiv, 241 pp. Biran, Avraham, ed. Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology. Jerusalem:Israel

Academyof Sciences andHumanities,1993. xvii, 770 pp. -,

ed. Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology: Pre-Congress Symposium:

Supplement.Jerusalem:Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1993. 149 pp. 503

504

BOOKS RECEIVED

Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of

CaliforniaPress, 1994. xiii, 320 pp. Brettler, Marc, and Michael Fishbane, eds. Minhah le-Nahum: Biblical and Other Studies Presented to Nahum M. Sarna in Honour of His 70th

Birthday.Journalfor the Studyof the Old TestamentSupplementSeries 154. Sheffield:JSOTPress, 1993. 337 pp. eds. TheModernHebrew Burnshaw,Stanley,T.Carmi,andEzraSpicehandler, Poem Itself Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,1989.231 pp. Cargas, Harry James, ed. Telling the Tale: A Tribute to Elie Weisel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. St. Louis: Time Being Books, 1993. 169

PP. EdituraSincron, Carmilly,Moshe,et al., eds. StudiaJudaicaII. Cluj-Napoca: 1993. 175 pp. Cesarani, David. The "Jewish Chronicle" and Anglo-Jewry, 1841-1991.

Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1994.xiv, 329 pp. Charlesworth,James H., ed. OvercomingFear: Between Jews and Christians.

New York:Crossroad,1993. xix, 198 pp. Cheyette, Bryan. Constructions of "The Jew" in English Literature and Society: Racial Representations, 1875-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge

UniversityPress, 1993. xvi, 301 pp. Clines, J. A., ed. The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Vol. 1 (Aleph).

Sheffield:SheffieldAcademicPress, 1993. 475 pp. Cohen, Mark R. Under Crescent & Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages.

Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1994.xxi, 280 pp. Doron, Pinchas. Interpretation of Difficult Passages in Rashi. Pt. IV:

Deuteronomy.New York:Sepher-HermonPress, 1994. xxiii, 445 pp. (Hebrew). Drazin,Israel.TargumOnkelosto Leviticus.Hoboken,N.J.:Ktav,1994. xv, 278 pp. Eckardt, Alice L., ed. Burning Memory: Times of Testing & Reckoning.

HolocaustSeries. Oxford:PergamonPress, 1993. xi, 340 pp. Ellis, Marc H. Ending Auschwitz: The Future of Jewish and Christian Life.

Louisville:Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994. xii, 162 pp. Elon, Menachem. Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles. 4 vols. Philadel-

phia:Jewish PublicationSociety, 1994. lxxxii, 473 pp.; xxxix, 541 pp.; xxxix, 559 pp.; xxxiii, 658 pp.

BOOKS RECEIVED

505

Everett, Robert A. Christianity WithoutAntisemitism: James Parkes and the

Jewish-ChristianEncounterStudiesin Antisemitism.Oxford:Pergamon Press, 1993. xiv, 346 pp. Finkielkraut,Alain. The ImaginaryJew. Trans.Kevin O'Neill and David Suchoff. Texts and Contexts,vol. 9. Lincoln:Universityof Nebraska Press, 1994. xviii, 201 pp. Fishbane, Michael. The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism.

Seattle:Universityof WashingtonPress, 1994. xii, 156 pp. --,

ed. The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought,and History.

Albany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress, 1993.296 pp. Fisher, Eugene J. Faith Without Prejudice: Rebuilding Christian Attitudes

TowardJudaism.Rev. and expandeded. New York:Crossroad,1993. 208 pp. Friedlander, Saul. Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of

Europe.Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1993. xiv, 142 pp. Friedlander, Yehuda. Bemisterei Hasatira: Hebrew Satire in Europe in the

NineteenthCentury.Ramat-Gan:Bar-IlanUniversityPress, 1994. 232 pp. (Hebrew). Friedman,Murray,ed. WhenPhiladelphia Wasthe Capital of Jewish America.

SaraF. Yoseloff MemorialPublicationsin Judaismand JewishAffairs. Philadelphia:Bach InstitutePress, 1993. 191 pp. Genizi, Haim. America's Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952. Detroit: Wayne State University Press,

1993. xi, 273 pp. Glatt, David A. Chronological Displacement in Biblical and Related Liter-

atures. SBL DissertationSeries 139. Atlanta:ScholarsPress, 1993. xii, 220 pp. Goldberg, J. J., and Elliot King. Builders and Dreamers: Habonim Labor Zionist Youthin North America. New York:Herzl Press, 1993. 362 pp. Gorny, Yosef. The State of Israel in Jewish Public Thought: The Quest for

CollectiveIdentity.New York:New YorkUniversityPress, 1994. xiii, 279 pp. Green, Kenneth Hart. Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Thought of Leo Strauss. SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics,

Mysticism,and Religion. Albany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress, 1993. xiv, 278 pp.

506

BOOKS RECEIVED

Greenspahn, Frederick E. When Brothers Dwell Together: The Preeminence of YoungerSiblings in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Oxford University

Press, 1994. xi, 193 pp. Grossfeld, Bernard. The Targum Sheni to the Book of Esther: A Critical Edition Based on MS Sasoon 282 with Critical Apparatus. New York:

Sepher-Hermon,1994. xvii, 195 pp. Gunn, David M., and Danna Nolan Fewell. Narrative in the Hebrew Bible.

Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress, 1993. xvi, 263 pp. Halperin, David J. Seeking Ezekiel: Text and Psychology. University Park:

PennsylvaniaStateUniversityPress, 1993. xiv, 260 pp. Harrington, Hannah K. The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis:

Biblical Foundations.SBL DissertationSeries 143. Atlanta:Scholars Press, 1993. xv, 313 pp. Harris, James F. The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

1994. xii, 290 pp. Heller, Celia S. On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two

WorldWars.Detroit:WayneStateUniversityPress, 1994.xvi, 383 pp. Jacobs, Steven L. RethinkingJewish Faith: The Child of a SurvivorResponds.

SUNY Series in Modem Jewish Literatureand Culture.Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1994. xix, 150 pp. Jaher, Frederic Cople. A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise ofAnti-Semitism in America. Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity

Press, 1994. viii, 339 pp. Katz, Steven T. The Holocaust in Historical Context. Vol. 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xv, 702 pp. Knoppers, Gary N. Two Nations Under God: The Deuteronomistic History of Solomon and the Dual Monarchies, vol. 2. HarvardSemitic Museum

Monographs53. Atlanta:ScholarsPress, 1994. xvii, 349 pp. Korsak, Mary Phil. At the Start: Genesis Made New. New York: Doubleday,

1993. xiii, 237 pp. Kraemer, Ross Shepard. Her Share of the Blessings: Women'sReligions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World.New

York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1992. ix, 275 pp. Kravitz, Leonard, and Kerry M. Olitzky. Pirke Avot: A Modern Commentary

on JewishEthics.New York:UAHCPress, 1993. xiv, 114pp.

BOOKS RECEIVED

507

Kugel, James L. In Potiphar's House: The InterpretiveLife of Biblical Texts.

Paperbacked. Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1994. 286 PP. Kifhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, AmericanRacism, and German

NationalSocialism.New York:OxfordUniversityPress,1994.xviii, 166 PP. Kiing, Hans. Judaism: Between Yesterdayand Tomorrow.New York: Cross-

road, 1992. xxii, 753 pp. Lachs, Samuel Tobias. Humanism in Talmudand Midrash. London: Associ-

ated UniversityPresses, 1993. 150 pp. Laskier, Michael M. North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. New York:New York University

Press, 1994. xiv, 400 pp. LeMaster, Carolyn Gray. A Corner of the Tapestry:A History of the Jewish Experience in Arkansas, 1820s-1990s. Fayetteville: University of

ArkansasPress, 1994. xxiii, 622 pp. Levine, Baruch.Numbers1-20. AnchorBible Series, vol. 4A. New York: Doubleday,1993. xvi, 528 pp. Lowenstein, Steven M. The Berlin Jewish Community:Enlightenment,Family, and Crisis, 1770-1830. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

xii, 300 pp. March, W. Eugene. Israel and the Politics of Land:A Theological Case Study.

Knox Press, 1994. xiii, 104 pp. Louisville:Westminster/John Marks, Richard G. The Image of Bar Kokhba in TraditionalJewish Literature: False Messiah and National Hero. University Park: Pennsylvania State

UniversityPress, 1994. xii, 226 pp. Mendelsohn,Ezra.OnModernJewishPolitics.New York:OxfordUniversity Press, 1993. ix, 168 pp. Mendes-Flohr, Paul, ed. Gershom Scholem: The Man and His Work.SUNY

Seriesin Judaica:Hermeneutics,Mysticism,andReligion.Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1994. 127 pp. Mosse, George L. Confronting the Nation: Jewish and WesternNationalism.

Hanover,N.H.: BrandeisUniversityPress, 1993. 220 pp. Neusner, Jacob. Are There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels? South

FloridaStudiesin the Historyof Judaism,no. 80. Atlanta:ScholarsPress, 1993. xiii, 186 pp.

508

BOOKSRECEIVED

-. Judaic Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. South Florida Studies in the

Historyof Judaism,no. 84. Atlanta:ScholarsPress, 1993.xiii, 316 pp. Nitzan, Bilhah. Qumran Prayer & Religious Poetry. Studies on the Texts of

the Desertof Judah,vol. 12. Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1994.xxi, 415 pp. Olyan, Saul M. A Thousand Thousands Served Him: Exegesis and the Naming of Angels in Ancient Judaism. Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum

36. Ttibingen:J. C. B. Mohr(PaulSiebeck),1993. xiv, 148 pp.

Peckham, Brian. History and Prophecy: The Development of Late Judean

LiteraryTraditions.New York:Doubleday,1993. xiv, 880 pp. Polonsky, Antony, ed. Studiesfrom Polin: From Shtetl to Socialism. London:

LittmanLibraryof JewishCivilization,1993. xxxiii, 581 pp. Prijs, Joseph. Die hebraiischen Handschriften: Katalog auf Grund der Beschriebungen von Joseph Prijs. Basel: Universitatbibliothek, 1994.

115 pp. Rabinowitz, Isaac. A Witness Forever: Ancient Israel's Perception of Literature and the Resultant Hebrew Bible. Occasional Publications of the

Departmentof Near Eastern'Studiesandthe Programof JewishStudies, CornellUniversity.Bethesda,Md.:CDL Press, 1993.xvii, 148 pp. Ramras-Rauch,Gila. Aharon Appelfield: The Holocaust and Beyond. Bloom-

ington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1994. x, 211 pp. Robinson, Ira. Moses Cordovero's Introduction to Kabbalah: An Annotated Translation of His "Or Ne'erav. " Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1994. xxxiv, 238

PP. Rodrigue, Aron. Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries in Transition: The Teachers of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, 1860-1939. Seattle:

Universityof WashingtonPress, 1993. x, 308 pp.

Rose, Gillian. Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Black-

well, 1993. xii, 297 pp. Sagi, Avi, andDanielStatman,eds. BetweenReligionandEthics.Ramat-Gan: Bar-IlanUniversityPress, 1993. 39 pp. (English),208 pp. (Hebrew). Sawyer, John F. A. Prophecy and the Biblical Prophets. Rev. ed. Oxford: OxfordUniversityPress, 1993. xii, 180 pp. Schaifer, Peter, and Hans-JUrgenBecker. Synopse zum Talmud Yerushalmi.

Band1/3-5. TUbingen:J. C. B. Mohr(PaulSiebeck),1992. 321 pp. Siegel, Richard, and Tamar Sofer, eds. The Writerin the Jewish Community: An Israeli-North American Dialogue. London: Associated University

Presses, 1993. 155 pp.

BOOKS RECEIVED

509

Shepherd, Naomi. A Price Below Rubies: Jewish Women as Rebels &

Radicals. Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1993. xii, 336 pp. Sklare,Marshall.ObservingAmerica'sJews. Hanover,N.H.: BrandeisUniversityPress, 1993. xi, 302 pp. Stone, Russell A., and Walter P. Zenner, eds. Critical Essays on Israeli Social

Issuesand Scholarship.Books on Israel,vol. 3. Albany:StateUniversity of New YorkPress, 1994. vi, 268 pp. Suggs, M. Jack, et al., eds. The Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible

with the Apocrypha.New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1992. xxviii, 1597 pp. Talshir, Zipora. The Alternative Story: 3 Kingdoms 12:24a-z. Jerusalem

Biblical Studies,vol. 6. Jerusalem:Simor,1993. 318 pp. Timoszewicz, Jerzy, et al., eds. TeatrZydowski w Polsce do 1939. Pamietnik

Teatralny,vol. 41. Warsaw:PolskaAkademiaNauk, 1992. 540 pp. Tejero,Fernandez,and MariaTeresaOrtegaMonasterio,eds. EstudiosMasor ticos (X Congreso de la IOMS). Madrid: Instituto de Filologia del

CSIC, 1993. 154 pp. VanderKam, James C. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. Grand Rapids, Mich.:

WilliamB. Eerdmans,1994. xiii, 208 pp. Walker, Samuel. Hate Speech: The History of an American Controversy.

Lincoln:Universityof NebraskaPress, 1994. 217 pp. Webber, Jonathan, ed. Jewish Identities in the New Europe. London: Littman

Libraryof JewishCivilization,1994. xix, 307 pp. Zipperstein, Steven J. Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha'am and the Origins of

Zionism.Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1993. xxv, 386 pp.

Corrigenda: The French Revolution and the Jews: Assessing the Cultural Impact Source: AJS Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1995) Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486862 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 22:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].



Corrigenda The AJSReviewregretsthatdue to technicaldifficultiesan inordinatenumber of errorsappearedin J. Berkovitz'article,"TheFrenchRevolutionand the Jews:Assessing the CulturalImpact"in AJSReview20:1. In place of vilated vilations a indication the mounting

Read violated violations an indication

1. 3 frombot. last line 1. 1 p. 41 1. 1 middle mounting 42 1. 2 from bottom p. equaled equalled 1. 14 LINEOMITTED,READ:Forthe p. 61 Napoleonicregime,as for Jewishcommunalleaders,the Sanhedrinprovided the authoritative... 1. 1 n. 11 Eibeshutz Eibeschtitz n. 14 11.7-8 close up n. 20 1.4 milder implicit 1. 2 n. 24 Eibeschutz EibeschUtz 1. 2 Ya'arot ye'arot 1. 3 n. 59 L'6mancipation L'emancipation des juifs desjuifs 1. 2 n. 63 dr. Dr. 1. 2 n. 65 Jews in Jews and n. 81 1. 1 romanizeitalics p. 40

Ajs Review, 1995 No 2

Ajs Review 1995: Fall, No 1

Ajs Review, 1984 No 2

Ajs Review 1986: Fall, No 2

AJS Review 1985: Fall, No 2

Ajs Review, Fall 1989, No 2

Ajs Review 1987: Fall, No 2

AJS Review: Vol. XXI, No. 2, 1996

Ajs Review: Spring, No 1

Ajs Review, 1992, Part 2

Ajs Review 1987: Spring, No 1

AJS REVIEW - VOLUME THREE

AJS Review: Vol. XXI, No. 1, 1996

Ajs Review 1986: Spring, No 1

AJS Review 1985: Spring, No. 1

Ajs Review, Fall 1990

Ajs Review, Spring 1990

Ajs Review, 1988: Nos 1 and 2

Ajs Review, Volume Four (1979)

Ajs Review, 1993, Part 1

Ajs Review, Volume Two, 1977

AJS Review 17, 1 (Spring, 1992)

AJSreview AJS Review (1980 Volume 5)

AJS Review Volume Seven-Eight 1982-1983

AJS Review (The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies), Vol 18, No. 2 1993

AJS Review (The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies), Vol 19 No. 2 1994

Science and Technology Review July 1995

Science and Technology Review July 1995

Science and Technology Review August 1995

1995)

1995)

Ajs Review, 1995 No 2

Ajs Review 1995: Fall, No 1

Ajs Review, 1984 No 2

Ajs Review 1986: Fall, No 2

AJS Review 1985: Fall, No 2

Ajs Review, Fall 1989, No 2

Ajs Review 1987: Fall, No 2

AJS Review: Vol. XXI, No. 2, 1996

Ajs Review: Spring, No 1

Ajs Review, 1992, Part 2

Ajs Review 1987: Spring, No 1

AJS REVIEW - VOLUME THREE

AJS Review: Vol. XXI, No. 1, 1996

Ajs Review 1986: Spring, No 1

AJS Review 1985: Spring, No. 1

Ajs Review, Fall 1990

Ajs Review, Spring 1990

Ajs Review, 1988: Nos 1 and 2

Ajs Review, Volume Four (1979)

Ajs Review, 1993, Part 1

Ajs Review, Volume Two, 1977

AJS Review 17, 1 (Spring, 1992)

AJSreview AJS Review (1980 Volume 5)

AJS Review Volume Seven-Eight 1982-1983

AJS Review (The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies), Vol 18, No. 2 1993

AJS Review (The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies), Vol 19 No. 2 1994

Science and Technology Review July 1995

Science and Technology Review July 1995

Science and Technology Review August 1995

1995)

1995)

Recommend Documents