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Harvard Uuiversity eel/ler for JLwish Studies
THE PRIDE OF JACOB

Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work
edited by
Jay M. Harris

Distrilmtrd by
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts alld London, England

2002


TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE
Jay M. HllrriS . .......•••••• •• ••• .• ••.•••. _ ••• .•.... 7


REBEL IN FR.ANKFUIlT: THE SCHOLARLY OlliGINS OF JACOB KATZ DmJid N. J\I/yers .................. . ....... •• ........ 9
JACOB KATZ ON HALAKHAH AND KABDALAH /sTfici Ta-Sill/lfl . ...................... . ..... .... . .. 29
JACOB KATZ ON JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE ACES David &rger ........................ . ........ . .. . 41
EARLY MODERN ASHKENAZ IN THE WRITINGS OF JACOB KATZ Elisheva Carlebach . ................ . . . ...... . . . .. . . 65
JACOB KATZ AS SOCIAL HISTORIAN Pau/a E. Hymn" . . ... .. .. .. .. . . .. ................ 85
JACOB KATZ ON THE ORIGINS
AND D IMENSIONS OF JEWISH MODERNITY: THE CENTRALITY OF TIlE GERMAN EXPERIENCE Da[lid EllclISOII ....... ...... .. ...... ............... 97
HOW CENTRAL WAS ANTI-SEMITISM TO TH.E HISTORICAL WRITING OF JACOB KATZ? Richard 1. CohcII ................................. 125
TAULE or CONTENTS

A IfUNe :Alt./AN RIIAI'SODY IN BLUE: JA~ '\ III KA r/:s 'I'AR I IY SURRENJ)ER TO HAGAR'S ALLURE J\lidldd 1-:. .'iii/II'/' .................................. 141
.Ii\( '()I\ KAT/,. \)N IIAI AKI IAI-I, ORTHODOXY, AND H ISTORY ............................ 163


IA(,{)II 1{i\'1 / . AS A I )1'\SI ~RTATr()N ADVISOR ...••......... 173



PREFACE

In May, 1998, the world ofJewish scholarship lost OIle ofits last giants, Pro­fe;sor Jacob Katz. The Center for Jewish Studit.-s at Harvard University joined the rest ofthe academic world ill mounting the loss ofour frequent guest and teacher. Never ab>;)in would this wonderful mind (and engaging raconteur) grace our lecture halls or enliven our conferences. The loss was great and keenly felt. A commemoration was in order.
As Professor Katz's )'orzrir approached, we began plans for a conference to coincide with his second, devoted to a review ofhis multi-faceted corpus. It is indicative ofthe esteem in which Professor Katz was held that putting tOb>cther this conference was all unusually easy task. Although scholars are somctimes loam to be distracted ITOlU their work, in this casc the many schol­ars whose work appears in the.~e pages--most ofwhom had never written on Katz bcfon..-jumped at the chance to participate in this conference. And each in turn produced an incisive treatmcnt ofbis or her chosen topic. As a result oftbeirb'r.lcious efforts, Katz's remarkable range and versatility became readily apparent to all; even those familiar with his work could only marvel whcn conITonted with the ncar filll menu of Katz's interests over a short time. [
I will eschew the common practice ofeditors and remin from describing each paper in a paragraph. Such descriptions as I could produce would sC:lrcely dojustice to the richncss that is ill store for the reader. I wish to note only that, in thc pages that follow, Katz's work is subjected to its fair share of criticislU. Although some might deem this improper in a volume such as this,
I. TIle one major area ofinterest lIot discussed at the conferenct' and not rep­resented fully in these pages is Katz's work onJewish nationalism. As our plans were coalt."scing, Katz's student, YosefSallllon, published a paper Oil that very subject, and another treatment so soon after seemed superfluous. See Yosef Salmon. "The Historical Imagination ofJacob Ka[z: On the OriginsofJewish Nationalism," Jewisll Sorilll SII/dies 513 (1999): 161-7t).


JACOB KATZ ON JI'.WS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE M IDDLE AGES
11,IVid Berger H" "Ik/yll College and tlte GradHate Celttcr, CUNY
I , \\ ~dlOlan indeed have produced seminal works ofabiding value in areas ,.!!hlde their primary field ofexpertise. Jacob Katz's £WiIlSivelle5s and ToJcr~ HI, I', which is precisely such a work, is remarkable testimony to the power of \ "k k'aming, penetrating insight, and exceptional instincts to overcome "',"Iicant lacunae in the author's cOl1lJlland ofrelevant material. I Katz was II'" ., medievalist; he was not deeply conversant with Christian sources; and I.. . Iid not study the full range ofJewish texts relevant to the relationship I,. 1\\ l'l'U medieval Christians andJews. Thus. Christian works play virtually .", ",k in any f.'lcet ofhis analysis. His discussion ofthe motivation ofChris­I I I II , 011 verts tojudaism, for example, makes no reference to the one memoir I" ',lll·h a convert that addresses this question explicitly, and his assertion that II.. .toarine ofjewish toleration was not fully worked out until Aquinas 1""\ Illes a somewhat misleading impression that probably results from lack "I LlI l1iliarity with earlier texts by churchmen oflesser renown. Apart from II" I.II1IOUS Paris disputation, to which he devotes an important chapter, he III ,J, r~ virtually no use ofjewish polemical literature, so that we find precisely " 110 ' Idcrellce to Sifcr Yosif'w-Meqmme, the central polemical text in thir­
I, ,
11111;:enmry France. and no reference at all to the N4:;a{,o" Verl/s, a m<tior , " "tl,ibtion ofanti-Christian arguments in medieval Ashkenaz, which is the
The English venion was published by Oxford Univenity Press in 1961. The ! kbrew, &i" Yelllldim Ie-Goyim Oerusalcm: 1960), appeared earlier but. ac­<,ording to the preface, was written later and hence, says Katz, t.1h.-s pfl'n'­d,·lIce. In a number of quite important instances, the Hebrew is superior not h.'cause of revisions but because at that point Katz's conlll13nd of writtl'll I',nglish was not fully adequate to the task and whoever assisted him did no! .11ways capture [he necessary nuances.
spIK'rl' ofculture standing at the center ofhis work.:! Yet this little volume.
described by Katz himsclf as a collection of essays rather than a sustaincd
study. has deservedly become the starring point f~r all serious discussion of Jewish approaches to Christianity in medieval Europe.
When a scholar writes a book about a subject that he is not fully trained
to address. the question ofmotivation arises in more acute fashion than usual.
I strongly sllspect that Katz was drawn to this theme as a result of a religious
concern that he acknowledges and an ethical one that he downplays. His
autobiography describes the inner struggles of Orthodox Jewish univcnity
students in interwar Gennany. "The dileillma for Illost of Illy fellow students
secm ed to be rooted in a sense ofcontradiction between theJewish tradition
by which they lived and the scientific concepts and universal values encoun­
tered during their academic studies. The apologetic efforts of Orthodox Judaism... were aimed at creating an ideology to bridbTC this abyss."] He maintains, howcver, that he himself was not bothered by the discrepancy between traditionalJudaism and an "extental system ofconcepts and valucs"; his cOllcent was with evidence for historical development within a purport­edly closed, unitary tradition whose authority seemcd to rest on its imper­viousness to change.
Although r do Ilot doubt that Katz was disturbed by the latter tension, r doubt very much that he was unconcemed about the fonncr. It canllot be unalloyed coincidence that the theme of E.wlusivf.'lIf.'sS (Illd To/emll{f.' ullites both issues by examining the development ofJewish law \vith respect to the standing of Gcntiles. perhaps the quintessential area in which Judaism was accused ofviolating the requirements ofuniversal values. Rabbi David Zvi Hoffinallll, the leading Cennall rabbi in the late-nineteenth and early twenti­eth cennuies, was impelled to write an apologetic work onJewish attitudes toward believers in other fuiths.4 We now know that Rabbi Jehiel Jacob W cinbcrg, the distinguished leader ofthe Berlin Rabbinical Seminary at the
2. Although &;frr l~osl!f Ita-lIIcqdlllle had not yet ~x:en published in its entirety, much ofthe work was available in print. See JUdall Rosemhal'ssulllInary ofthc publication history in his edition Oenlsalem: 1970), Introduction. p. 32. The Ni;;aboll Vr/us had bet'n published byJohann Christoph Wah'Cnseil, '[(itl ~~lIrll Satanae, vol. 2 (Altdorf 168 1), pp. I -ZOO.
3· Jacob Katt, IVitI! My 011'11 Eyes: 11Jc Alltobil!i?rdphy oja Historiall (Hanover and London: 1995), p. 82.
4· £kr S/mfdlllll-Amrh IIl1d die R"bbinclI lIe/x'r d(l5 Vallae/tllis dtTJlldell ;:'1 A"deN­.e/"'il~b{~" (11194).
II WS AND CHRISTIANS I N . THE MIDDLE ACES
\"ry time that Katz smdicd in Frankfurt, was profoundly troubled by 1111\ I'" .hleIH. 5
Moreover, Katz himselfprovidt-s us with several indications of his OWI1 "'II<;itivities and sympathies. He argucs that a historian has the right to USl' tht· Io'n n "!'hortcoming" as an exprcssion of moral judgment with respect to " .• dier socictil..'S without violating the principle that latcr values alien to thost' .." .. it-ties should not be imposed ill the process of historical assessment. His lu\lificarion for this position rests on the argument that evcn the IlIcdicvals h,ld some sense ofa universal humanitarian standard, although they would u'J-,'lllarly suspend it in the fuce ofwhat they perceived to be the demands of Ilwir religion; it is precisely their awarcnt'SS of such a standard that allows a Ilismri;1Il to renderjudgment as to thc degree oftheir fealty to it. One cannot Iidp but wonder ifKatz would really have avoided all moral judgment ifhl' IIwe studying a society that he considered bereft ofany universal humani­urian concem. He appears to be straining to find an academically plausiblt· .1I},'1IIllCllt allowing for the infiltration ofan explicitly ethical prism into his historical analysis, thereby satisfying both his moral and his historical COIl­\ocnce.
In the last few lines of tile prefuce to the Hebrew version, he allows US;I Ill'eting glimpse into his hope and conviction that the book is not irrelevalll \0 the issues ofthe day.
The roots of contemporary problems extend to the fur reaches of the past, and Jc\vish-Gentile relations even today cannot be ullderstood without knowing their earlier history. A historian is pennitwd to belicve that whclI he distances thc reader frOIl1 thl' prcsent, hc does not sever him from it; rather, he provides him with a vantage point frolll which he call more readily encompaSs even the place where we now stand.6
In ilw/ltsiI/CII('SS alld To/crallcr as well as his other essays 011 our theme. Kat:r ~'lW himselfas a rebel against dubiousapologetics. He does nO[ hesitate to st:,,~, flacly that a key contention ofHoffillanll's work aq,.uing that IIlcdicvaIJl'\\'s had declared their Christian cOlltemporaries free of idolatry is misleading.1 111
5. See Marc ll. Shapiro, &11I'Ct'lIll1e Y(,5IJil'd ''''urld alld MlXiem On/llld').\T nit' 14" al/d '·Vurks oj Rabbi Jelsirl Jamb Wrinbcrg 1884-1966 (London and Portl;ul,l. Oregon: 1s)(}9), pp. 182-83.
6. &in Yclwdim {('-Guyim, p. 8.
7. "$hcloshah Mishpatim Apologetiyyim Ix'-Gilguleihem," reprillll'd in Jal'III, Katt. HII/"klJall IIC-Qabbal"h Qerusalcm: 198~), p. 211 5. "Miskading" i~ ;111 :lenl TaCt' but not quitt., adequate translation ofthe stronger original (l'ill'l 1'11,/ 1I/,1! '''/1) .
the wake ofKatz's analysis, it is difficult for us to recapture an environment in which excellent scholars affinned that AshkcnazicJews ofthe Middle Ages had uttcrly excluded Christianity from the catcgory ofavodall zarah , the tech­nical tenu imprecisely translated as idolatry. Katz remind~ us that sllch asser­tions were made not only in explicitly apolo~tic works; Hanokh Albeck, for example, in a major snldy ofthe Mishnah, asserted that the views of medieval
Jewish authorities are encompassed in thc position ofR. Menahcm ha-Meiri, which is, in fact, striking ill its atypical liberalism.· At the same time, I do not doubt that Katz was impelled to study ha-Meiri's posture, which he describes as "undoubtedly a great achievement,"9 precisely because it ~ffordcd him the opportunity to highlightJewish tolerance without sacrificillgscholarly integrity.
Whatever Katz's motivations, it is time to tum to the substance ofhis work.
I would like to examinc the scope ofhis interest in medievalj ewish-Christian
relations, his methodology, his contribution to the state ofthe question when
he wrote, the validity ofhis arguments in and ofthcmselves, and the degree
to which they stand up in light oflater scholarship and the sources he failed
to examine.
One ofthe hallmarks ofKatz's approach, which has little ifany precedent in t.-arlier historiography, is the great significance that he 3S'>igns to instinct. Visceral reactions, he al'bJUes, can weigh Dlore heavily than te)."tS. Thus,j ewish revulsion at Christian rituals and symbols is no less Important than (onnal halakhah in detennining that Christianity is avodalt z arah and inspiring the decision of martyrs. 10 Katz ascribes this emotional reaction to Ashkcnazic Jcws---correctiy, in my vicw--dcspite his awareness that pawnbroking put them into contact with C hristian Salida and produced serious temptations to
relax taboos against benefiting from such presumably idolatrous objects.
Sensitivity to a different sort ofpopular instinctplays a major role in a later
work in which Katz examined the evolution oflega! approaches to the use
ofGt,ntiles for work on the Sabbath. Here again, he argues ti13t texts can
occasionally be subordinated to "ritual instinct," so that ordinary jews will
ask (or penllission to violate serious prohibitions that do not repel them while
8. 011 this point, lUt:z 1I0tes that even Hoflillanll recognized the uniqueness of ha-Meiri's :tpproach. See Katz, "Sovlanut Datit be-Shitato she! R. Menal.lclll ha-Meiri ba-Halakhah u_be_Pilosoflil," in Halakl,.h ,,,,-Kabbalah, p. 191, n. I.
9. &iI' Ydmdim Ie-Goyim, p. 128 (my translation); &dlfSillf'tltss alld Toleraucr, p.
128.
10. & ill Yr!mdim Ie-Goyim, p. 34.; EwlllSivcllcss ,lilt! To/em"c(, p. 23·
II WS AND C H R ISTI ANS IN THE MIDDL E AGES
.1'
,d blining from seeking dispensation to engage iu behavior that is less ol~l'c
II' "iable to the legal mind but unthink.'lble in light of deeply entrell(·hnl
, IIlotions.
Srandards for evaluating assertions about instinct can be elusive. Thus, 1
\\ III sometimes be discussing my instinct abOllt Katz's instinct about the
"'~tillct ofmcdievaljews. Evidence, o(course, is not irrelevant to this enter­
I'I i~l'. norwas itirrelevant in medieval discourse. OneofKatz'sgreatstrcngths
1\ lhat he recogniu."S this. For all his emphasis on the prin13CY ofemotions,
Imtillct, and a sense ofsocial identity, he is not carried away by his insight.
II i~ only on the ran.'St ofoccasions that he loses sight ofthe interplay o(thesc
Lu·turs with more disciplined intellectual pursuits, whether theological or
1,.lr,lkhic. Except in those rare moments, his work is a model ofbalance as a
\llpple and subtle mind reconstructs the delicately poised interweavil;g of
ullexamined, primal reactions, economic and social needs, and the reasoned
,·,.lInillation of autllOritative texts.
Even Katz's marginal, poorly infomll~d discussion ofpolemic reveals this \/rL'llgth. Thus, he appreciates the significance ofthe intellectual dimension 'I/\vhatlllany observers l13ve ~nasstatic and uninteresting ritual combatand 1,\, points to the illtl'malizing o(anti-Christian exegesis as evidence of tht, .Il'CPjewisb sensitivity to Christian arguments. Thus, he says, both R.joseph 1kkhor Shorand R. Isaac Or Zarna assert that Deuteronomy 6:4. affinns not IlIl'rciy that the Lord is God but that He is 011' God, thereby proclaiming that 11\1 other nation can claim Him as its OWlI.' I Still, Katz does Ilot regard llltd­h 'mal arguments as the jt'WS' primary lille o(defense. They were decidedly 'I.·coudary to the emotions of group identification and the attraction of Iud:tism's entrenched symbols.11
Katz underscores tillS approach ill his more detailed discussion ofmartyr­dom. Ordinaryjews, he says, martyred themselves not because offamiliarity with the niceties of their halakhic obligations but because they had becn rL'ared on stories of heroic self-sacrifice. ') Despite these observations, histo­rians debating the roots of Ashkenazic martyniom---alld odler instances or "xtreme behavior--arc nOt as sensitive to this point as they should be. To t:th· .1 11 example outside the purview o(medieval Ashkenaz, a Christian writer tdls lilt' story of Moses o(Crcte, a fifth-century Messianic pretender, who lx'r­~uaded aU thc j ews to jump into the Mediterranean \vith the 3S'>urancc th,1I
II. &i" Vrlilldim It-Goyim, p. 30. The English vemoll (£\TI/lSivcllcss Dlld Tolrr<l!~·.·,
p. 19) is so truncatt.'d that [he point is almost completely lost.

1.2. & ill Yr/llldilll If~Goyilll, p. 32; E\T/lIsivnless a/ld ToItrllllcr, p. 21.
13· Bei" Ytlmdi", ff-Goyim, p. 91; £\T/USivt'lIfSS and TvifTtIIlCf, pp. 84-8;5.
DAVID UERGER

til\.' sea would split to facilitatc theirjoun1ey to the Promised L111d. Historians have retold the story with a sense of amazement at such mass credulity or skepticism as to the historicity ofthe accoullt. q Although I am by 110 means prepared to assert confidently that these events occurred, the plausibility of the narrative increases dramatically once we appreciate the impact of stories
about heroic faith absorbed from childhood.
A well-known rabbinic legend relates that the Red Sea split only after Nahsholl ben All1inadav ofthe tribe ofJudah demonstrated his unquestion­ing faith by leaping into the roiling sea. '$ Today, l"VCry school child reccivill~ a traditional J ewish education is familiar with this story. We call1lot know If this was the case in fifth-celllury Crete, but ifit was, the probability thatJews could have been capable ofslIch behavior is enhanced exponentially. In the safety ofa classroom, there is no price to pay for expressions ofsmug disdain for the lack offaith displayed by pusillanimous skeptics standing at the edge ofthe sea. 13m as the Jews ofCrete looked out at the Mediterranean facing a potentially deadly choice, the natural resistance to irrational action would be sorcly challenged by a lesson ingrained from the illception oftheir religious
. "conSClousness.
14.
Salo Baron expressed both reactions, the first ill a general discussion ofIlll"SSi­anic figures and the second in a more dctailed account ofMost.'S. The reasons for skcpticism, he says, arc thc Christian author's emphasis onJewish credulity and his assertion that those saved by Christian fishcnncn acccpted baptism. Sec A Sc.rial and RoeIWil)lls History cift1lejf'WS (New York, London, aud Philadelphia: ty(JO), vol 3, p. [6, and vol. 5, pp. 36(j--(')7. Gerson Cohen, who excluded messi­anic movcments attt'Stcd only in Christian sources frolll his analysis of the nlt.'ssianic stances ofmedieval Jewish COlllmunicil.'S, remarked during a Colulll­bia University colloquium in the mid-l960s th.1t his own skepticism about the historicity of this account is rooted in the fact that the Jews' credulousl1l.'SS regarding false messiahs combilK-o. with their rejection of dle [me one is a standard, polemically useful Christian topos. Cohcn's policy ofexcluding mes­sianic accounts by non-Jews has recently come under act.1ck. See his "Messianic Postures ofAshkenazim and Sephardim," in Srl/dils ofrhe l.J:(I &ttek II/stifllll', ed. by Max Kreutzbcrgcr (New York: 1967), p. 123,11.11, and Elisheva Carlebach, &tll'l'l'lI Histor)' (llld flo/x:: Jewislt Mwianism ill Asltkellaz IlIId SepllllTlld. TIlird Amlllal Lcall rr of lltl' Vi('forJ. & Imallo/llitz C/l!lir ofjl'lI'is/r History (New York: Touro Collt.-ge, 1998), pp. 12-IJ.

15.
See the refercnces in Louis Gillzberg, ·I1Il·lr.t!elllls <?ftltr Jell's (Philadelphia: 1928), vol. 6, pp. 75-79 (n. J88).

16.
Lest I be accused of equating Moses son of Amram with Mosl!S ofCreee and ignoring the e:.r1icr miraculous events dut presumably justified Na1)shon's


JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Let us now retum to the martyrs ofAshkcnaz. A vexed question Ct·lllr;ll to recent historical debate asks ifthejusti6cation for suicide and the killillt' ofothers emerged out ofalmost routine analysis of texts or if it was moldc~j by emotional conslderatiolU and the need to justify the actions of sailltcd anCt..'Stors. This is not the occasion to survey the state ofthis question in its fullness. Nonetheless, there remailU lllllch to be said both for Katz's general approach and for his specific observatious. Ht: noted, for example, a highly unusual fa nnulation in Tostifot that persuasively underscores the impact of martyrdom's extrao rdinary emotional resonance on halakhic discourse. The tosafists remark that the ordinary processes of halakhic reasoning appear to yield the conclusion that it is pennissible to commit idolatry under threat of death provided that the act dot."S not take place in the presence of tell Jews. TMafot docs not merely reject this position. Rather, we are witness, at lea~t initially, to what Katz properly describes as an extraordinary phcnomenon­a cri de roCllr instead ofan argument. "God forbid that we should rule in a case of idolatry that one should transgress rather than die. "'1
In the current debate, Avraham Grossman and Yisrael Ta-Shma have taken issue w ith H aym Soloveitchik's position that the willingness of Ashkenazic authorities tojustify suicide and even the killingof children in the face ofenforced idolatry cannot have emerged from a straightforward appli­(·ation o flegal reasoning but rather from the need to justify the behavior of the martyrs. Soloveitchik's argument rests in part 0 11 the resort of these :lUthorities to aggadic sources; his critics, however, assert that Ashkenazic
Jews drew no material distinction between halakhah and aggadah, so that
decision,lct me put thl.'Se obvious distinctions on the record. They do not, in Illy view, undenlline the l'SSenrial psychological observltion.
17· Tosqfot AlfOlialt Zlralt 54a, s.v. iId III'-.;itl 'a. See Bei" Ytl/lldi", Ie-Goyim, pp. 90­91 ; EwilfSilJClltSS (/lId Toinal/(r, pp. 83-84. I have a personal stake in this argu­ment. Without any conscious memory of lhe passage in Katz's book, I was stmck by precisely thc sante fomlUla while studying that IIWYo/ for reasons unrelated to history, and I prt:licllted his point as my own when writing thl' introduction to TIlt j l'wislt-Cltrisliall DdJale i,1 tile HiRiI Mida/I' A~cs (Philadel­phia: 1979) in dle mid-197OS. While the book was in press, I re-reld KalZalld discovered to my combined pleasure and disappointJllellt that my "discovery" had :Jready been made. The prilltt:d version (pp. 25-26), therefore. contains a footnote attributing the point to &ill }'t/llldim It-Goyim with the observation that the English version is so bland that "the emotional force ofthe afb'llllll'm is vinually lost." (It renders lll!SV<'-sltalolll, which I have translated "God f()rbid," as "Far be it frolllus.") When I related the story to Katz years later, he told me how pleased he had been with this insight when it had origin.ally stmck him.
I)AVIlJ BERGER

the-ir arguments from texts that Soloveitchik would place out ofbounds arc l·utirely consistent with their own worldview.18
I think it is fair to say that even in medieval Ashkenaz, the first resort of rabbinic decisors would be to texts that we would describe as halakhic. At the same time, I do notbelieve that they would dismiss evidence from an aggadah by saying, "I do notrecognize this genre as authoritative in a legal discussi~m."
Thus, when mainstream authoriries issue a problematic ruling based ennrely on aggadic material, we are justified in asking pointed questions about mot.i­vation, as long as we do not insist that the resort to aggadah demonstrates In and of itself that highly unusual processes must be at work. In short, our antennas should bc raised, though we may ultimately decide that nothing extraordinary is happening.
With respect to our issue, I am not even certain dlat it is appropriate to characterize all the sources adduced in the mcdieval discussion as aggadic; 19 nonetheless, I am strongly inclined to think that a deeply emotional need to validate the heroism ofthe martyrs did play an important role i.n Ashkenazic decision-making. Katz's tosajof is highly relevant here, but an cven more significant text has not, in my view, been given its due by eithcr side in this controversy, even though all the parries know it very well.
R..abbi Meit of Rothenburg, the great thirteenth-ccntury dlx;isor, was asked whether atonement is necessary for a man who had killed his wife and children (with their consent) to prevent thcir capture by a mob demanding conversion to Christianity. He responded that suicide can be defended in such a case, but it is llluch more difficult to find ajustification for the killing of othen;. Nonethcless, hc rose to the challenge by proposing an original extension ofa rabbinic midrash on a biblical text. Defenders of martyrdom by suicide had long cited the assertion in Bereslu"t Rabb~/' .3 ~: 19 th~tthe \~~rd "but" (ak/,) in Genesis 9:Slimits the scope ofthe prohlbmon agamst SUICide that imllledi.ately follows.20 R. Meir suggested that this word, and hence dlis
18. S('(' Haym Soloveitchik, "Rdigious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashke­nazic E--omplc," AJS RCl'iclI' I Z (1987); 205-21; Avrahalll Grossm:m, "Shof3Shav she] Qiddush ha-Shcm bc-Ashkcllaz ha-Qcdumah," in Q<-duslwt ha-Ijllyyilll '>r-Ijcmjha-Nrjl's!J: KOllf'lz Ma'amarim II'-Zikhm slid Amir Yekutief, ed. by Isaiah Gafni and Aviezer Ravitzky Oerusalcm: 1~)3), pp. 99-130; Isracl Ta Shma, "Hitabbedut ve-Re;'ll) ha-Zulat al Qiddush ha-Shem: Li-Shc'cJat Mcqolllah she! ha-Aggadah be-Massorct ha-Pcsiqah ha-Ashkenazit," in YI'III/dim mullli~­Z'A'lal': Gczcmt Tam"" ba_Historiah u_ba_HislOriogmpbinh, ed. by Yom Tov AssIS et al. Oerusalcm: 20(0), pp. ISO-56.
[9. See the following notc.
20. Even though /krl'shil Rtlbbail is an aggadic text, this passage has the 50und and
IEWS AND CHRIST IANS I N THE MIDDLE AGES
limitation, also governs the fCmainder ofthe verse, which prohibits lllurcllT.
It follows that killing others may bc pennitted under the same circumst.1IKl"S
thatjusrilY suicide. H e prefaced thissuggestioll with thc observation that "till'
I'osition that tlus is permissible has spread widely, for we have seen and found
I nany great men who slaughtered tlleit sons and daughters," and he followt."(1
i, with the powerful assertion that "anyone who requires atonement for this
is besmirching the name of the pious men of old."
Though large questions oftilis sort cannot be settled definitively by a singk q)urce, this respOIuum, itseenu to me, is as close to a smokinggun as we could l·ver expect. An Ashkenazic rabbi of the first rank tells us that (1) it i.~ a \·hallenge to find grounds for permitting the killing ofothers; (2) the reason I,)t seeking such grounds is the fact that the practice has been widespread .llllong great r:r.bbis; (3) one can permit this by an [unattested, innovativeI l·xpansion ofa rabbiluc midrash on a biblical ven;e (a very rare procedure in thirteenth-ccnnlry halakhic discourseJ;l! and (4) anyone who disagrees with this original proposal to accomplish an admittedly problematic task is Iwsmirching the name of the pious men of old.
Soloveitchik hinuelf cites thi. .. resporuum only to underscore its tragic character and to note that It. Meir "was hard put to find a reply" to the que'stion. He goes 011 to assert that "for the murder ofchildren few could find .1 defense, and 2ilmost all passed that over i ll audible silence." The lenb>thy I()otnote to this sentence makes no reference to R. Meir, and readers are given 110 indication ofthe main point ofhis responsum.u Even though he ncver \VTote the words, "This is penllitted," it is beyond question that this is the thrust ofR. Meir's ruling. The greatest decisor in thirteellth-ccnnlfY Ger­Illally composed an emotion-laden respollSmll that provides powerful evi­dence for Soloveitchik's-3lld Katz's-positioll.
Despite R. Mcir's initial reluct.1llce to extend the pennission to commit ~llicide to include the killing of others, the unhesitating readiness of SOlllt· AshkenazicJcws to do so is not, I think, an impenetrable mystery. OnCl·
feci ofhalakhah, so that Soloveitchik's argument that micides were justifil'd by aggadah pure and simple probably requires qualification. It would be going very fur indeed to expect Ashkenazic Jews to shrink from relying upon all explicitly legal fomlUlation solely became it appears in a non-halakhic midnsh.
!.J. In my ·'E;leqer Rabbanut Ashkcnaz ha-Qt-dumah," Tmbi;; 33 (1984): 484, 11.
6, I made the point that R. Meir's dctemlinillg a halakhah on the basis ofa
partially original midf3Sh on a biblical verse is highly unusual among mroie\'JI
authorities. In private conversations, two leanled scholars illsi.~ted that they do
1I0t consider such a practice strikingly atypical, but I am not persuaded.

!.!.. "Religious Law and Change," pp. 2()(j-iO.

3!-,>ain, I am inclined to assign pride of place to instinctive and emotional considerations. But lct lilt.: OCb>1n by proposing a formal arguUlent that Illay well have been taken for granted though it is unattested in the medieval sourc(.'S and has not been noted in the current debates. A much-cited passage in Da'al ZcqCllifJIllli-&'afci lIa-Tosafol to Genesis 9:5 indicates that U1Ulamed Ashkenazic jews had clearly and apparently unself-consciously applied the passage in &rcshir RaMah not only to suicide but to the killing ofchildren as well. If we tum to that midrashic passage, we find that it points to the death of Saul as one of the paradigmatic exceptions to the prohibition against suicide. But Saul initially asked a servant to kill him; it was only after the servant refused that the king killed himself. (I leave aside the more compli­cated issue of the subsequent stal)' in II Samuel 1 where an Amalekite tells David that Saul's suicide attempt was not wholly successful and that he acceded to a royal request to complete the task.} The reader ofthe m.idrash has every right to aSSlime that the exception made for Saul includes his initial request as well as his final action.l3
At the s.."lllle time, [ do not believe that such arguments went through the minds ofj ews preparing to commit suicide in the blood-stained arenas of Mainz and Worms. Let us imagine the scene. A large group ofj cWll is facing the certainty ofdeath orcouversion. To save themselves from slaughter at the hands ofdle crusading hordes-or from the prospect ofdescending into the maelstrolll ofidolatry in the face oftorture--they decide to take their lives. They know that they will be instantaneously transported to a world ofeternal light at the side ofAbraham, lsaac,jacob, and Rabbi Akiva. Do they take their children with them to eternal bliss or do they leave thelll to wander alllong the bloody corpses oftheir parents until they are found and raised to live a life of idolatry? [ am tempted to say dlat the choice is clear. In fact, it is not. The choice to slaughter your children is never clear, and the ab'·OIlies ofthat choice arc evident in the Chilfulg chronicles ofdIOse terrible events. None­
23· Cf Radak.'s conmlcntary to ISamuel 31 :4, whichstatcs-citing our midrash­
that Saul did nOtsln. without proffering the slightcst hint that the initial request.
reported in the very same verse, was improper.
Shortly after I submitted this article to the (:ditor, Prof. Ephraim Kanarfogel
called my attention to his discussion in a forthcoming article oOtabbenu Tam's
position on the fear of succumbing to torture as a halakhic justification for
suicide. See Kanarfogcl's "Hill"klw" and Me;iut (R.ealia) in Medieval Ashke­
naz: Surveying the Parameters and Defming rhe Limits," scheduled to appear
inJl'wisfl La1l1AIIIIIWf 14 (2001), where he analyzes the relevance ofthe talmudic
assertion (K(,/lfbbQ/ 33b) that Hananiah, Mishacl, and Azariah would haw
bowed to the statue made by NebuchadnC"zzar had they been beaten. I thank
Prof. Kanarfogcl for affording Ule the opportunity to read the typescript.
IEWS AND C HRISTIANS I N THE MIDDLE AGES
"
thdess, the choice was made, and I think it fur more likely that it was Illadl' nn th~ basis ofan instinctive reaction than on the basis of textual analysis. ()nce !twas made, sllbsequentjews, at least for the most part, had little emo­tional choice but to rea.ct like R. Meir ofRothenburg, though he agonized ,'vcr the qu(.'Stion far more than most, and his transparent stnlggle has much tt) teach us about the interaction between hea.rt and mind.
. One elen~ellt in Katz's own fonnulation ofthe lllartyrological psychology "f AshkenazlCjews may even be too weak. He poses the Illedievals' qU(.'Stion .IS to the penllissibility ofsuicide or the kiUingofchildren "to avoid religious ,·ompu!sloll and the temptation to apostasy." He goes all to say that "the .IIlswer ~f:,,"shkenazic rabbis was inclined toward stringency from the Ollt~ct ... , and It IS clear that they were not concemed that this stringency fell into the category ofa decree that dIe masses arc unprepared to withstand."<l.4 In other words, IlOt only the rabbis but even the masses were inclined toward ~llch a response. Ifso, we may well ask ourselves about the propriety of the tl'nn "strin~e.ncy" here. The question posed was whethersuicides and killings were pemI~lble, and the answer was in the affinnative. In any other Contc-xt, .1Il affimlatlVe answer to a question beginning, "Is it pennissible?" would be
characterized as lenient, not stringent. For all his deep underst.1I1dil1g ofthe psyche ofmedieval Ashkenazic jews, Katz could not avoid the unconscious illlposition ofhis (and our) instincts lIpon theirs by transfonlling a qltlt" into .1 blflllra, a leniency into a stringency. Difficult as it is for us to fathom, these IIll'dieval jews lIJalllcd the answer to be, "It is pemlissiblt=."
Many years ab>"O, Illy intert=st in the centrality ofmartyrdom for the Ash­kt.'nazic psyche was piqued by a passage in dIe Nj++a~101I VCfIIS, which im­pelled me to draw attention to both Katz's ros4o/ and R. Meir of Rothen­111lrg'S respollSlltn. That passage, which wOllldsurely have caught Katz'sshatp ,'ye had he read the text, transmutes the story made famous by Judah Halcvi's I-:n:zari into a celebration ofthe willingness to be martyred as the hallmark of the true faith. As in the Kllzari, the soon-to-be-converted ruler is impressed h)' the fact thatjudaislll is the second choice ofboth Muslim and Christian, hut he is even more impressed when the jew is prepared to sacrifice his life

where the others arc not.~s Finally, Katz makes the telling observation that the talmudic concept of 1"lr"csia describing a public act underwent an iliLmunating transfornlation in tile Middle Ages. For the talmudic s..1ges, an act fell into the category ofparhc­.1";" ifit was done in the presence oftcnjews. In the fonnal, leb'"31 sense, this
.!.;. Bcill Yclllldimle-Gv),im, p. 91. The English version (EXc/IIS;'ICIIl'JS afld To/cmll((\
p. 84) docs not quite convey the poim.
.!5· 'nIejnl-i$h-Cllristi<ll1 Drbal(" ill tile HiS" J\.liddl('A.~s, pp. 2M7, 216-18.

)..! DAVID B ERGER
did not chang<.-, but when medieval Jews described the death of martyn in a public setting, they usually referred to the intent to sanctifY God's name by projecting devotion to the non-je'\vish world. It was this confrontation that b>ave the act of martyroom its critical context and its transcendent purpose.
In citing concrete evidence for this important and penetrating insight, Katz cail, nonetheless, overreach. The Hebrew version contains a footnote asserting that the intent ofthe lllartyrs to have Christians recognize the tmth ofJudaism is made explicit (nitparcsh) in a commem by R. Solomon b. Shim­shon..l6 The comment cited certainly expresses thejews' fervent expectation that Christians will recognize that tmth, but the illstnllllcnt of this recog­nition is not jewish martyrdom but the Lord's eschatological vengeance against Christendom. Because of this divine punishment, Christians will perceive the outrageous injustice that they had perpetrated by spilling the blood ofjewish babies in the name ofa false belief.
Botb the Ashkenazic variant of the KUZ(ln story and the hope for escha­tolob';cal Christian enlightenlllent bring us to Katz's discussion ofconverts. Once again, his imtincts guide him very well cven in the absence of an exten­sive evidentiary base. He understands, ofcoune, the nll1 spectnlll1 oflllotiva­tions for jewish cOllvenion to Christianity, from pragmatic interests to gen­uint! convictioll. His tendency, however, predictably illclim.'S toward social explanation: ill a profoundly religious age, Jews attracted by the values of Christian society would expn.'Ss this attraction by embracing the religious form in which those valucs expressed themselves . .!7 Though I would assign somewhat more force than did Katz to the attraction ofChristi all afb'lllllents, I am, nonctbek'ss, inclined to think that his emphasis is correct. He intuits this psychological proces.~ despitc tht' fact that his entire discussion ofthe motiva­tions ofJewish apostates takes place with vimlaJly 110 reference to Christian sources, which appear in Olle footuote containing a reference to a fcw pages in two secondary works. 28 I have already alluded to the fact that our olle detailed personalmcmoir ofthe convenioll experience by ajcwish convert to Christianity, Hennall ofCologue's Opl/scula de CtlllvcrsiollC SI/(I, is cntirely absent from the analysis--an inconceivable omission for anyone with real familiarity with Latin materiaJs. And yet, H ennan's account strikingly re­inforces Katz's point, subordinating, though not ignoring, intellectual argu­ments, and emphasizing :1.11 attraction to the vaJues of simple piety . .Ig
26. Beill Yr/mdim Ie-Goyim. p. 97. 11.•1-1.
27. &ill YelllIlfim Ir-Goyim, p. 83; Ewlrlsil'rllcss IIlId Toft'rmrer, p. 76.
28. Beill l'r/mdim Ir-Goyim, p. 83. 11. 46; £w/rlsir't'IIr.ss alld To/nailer, p. 75, 11. 6.
29. Gcrlillde Nicmcyer, cd., Hrn/ralll/us qllolldamjudllt'IIS opllscrrlrmr dr corwl'rsiollt'
II W~ AND C HRISTIANS IN THE M ID DLE AGES
:\.1

"iimilarly, Katz argues with no concrete evidence that the reason why 1I,\·dicval Ashkenazic jews persisted in converting Christians di..'Spite thl' " f,vious difficulties is that they saw every instance of conversion to j udaism
" .1 proofand declaration of the tmth of the jewish religion to the out5ide \\ , ,rid. 30 The Ni.ua~w" Vetlls strikingly confinns this intuition-not only in I he story of the Emperor that we have already encounteri..-d but also in a 1'·I~s;'lge dealing frontally with the implications of conversion writ large.
With regard to their questioning us as to whether there uc proselytes among U$, they ask !.hili question to their shame and to the shame of their faith. After all, one should 1I0t be surprised at the bad deeds ofall cviljew who becomes an apostate, because his motives arc to enable himself to eat all that his heart desires, to h';ve pleasure to his flesh with wine and fomication, to remove from himsclfthe yoke ofthe kingdom of heavcn so that he should fear nothing, to free himself from all the cOlluualldments, cleave to sin, and COllcem himself with worldly plea­SllT<.'S. But the situation is different \vith regard to proselytes who con­verted to Judaism and thus went of their own free will from freedom to slavery, from light to darkness. If the proselyte is a man, then he knows that he Illust wound himselfby removing his foreskin through circumcision, that he must exile himself from place to place, that he must dL1'rive himself of worldly good and fear for his life from the extental threat ofbeing killed by the uncircuJIlcised, and that he \vill
sua, A/olIUlUl'uta Qnnalliac His/llrica; Qrrrlft'll ::r" Qis(~$clri("tc drs ,Hittclafters,
vol. 4 (Weimar: 1963), esp. p. 108. (fhe te;\,1; had been published twice before Niemeyer's edition.) See Jeremy Cohen, "The Mcmality of the Medit.-val Jewish Apostate: Peter Alfonsi, Hemunn ofCologne, and Pablo Christiani," in jl'wish Apostruy ill tht /I,,[odem World. cd. by Todd EndeJJlIall ;l,nd Jeffrey Gurock (New York: 1987), pp. 2O-.p; and Karl F. Morrison, Ccmlfrsioll aud Text: "flIt' CAst's ojAugustine oj Hippo, HenJl(w-Jlldah, (ll/(i Gms/(IJltil1t-"I"s./lS(IS (Charlottesville and London: 199:1:), which also contains an English rr:lIIslation. Well after Katz wrote his book, Avrorn Saitlllall argued that the Opl/Slllfrml is, in fact, a fictitious work by a bom Christian; see his "Hcnn:um's OpllslII/rrm dt COI/I'ffliollt Sua: Tmth or Fiction?," Rrlml' des Etudesjl/irlCS 47 (1988): 3 I-56. The most recent discussion ofthis question is Jean-Claude Schmitt. Die (1/110­biOJ?raplu·yhe Fiktio,,: Hm"mm dl'$jlldCl/ Bekdmm.f? (Kleine Sehriften des Aryc­Maimoll Instituts 3; Trier, 2(00). Since no one had doubted the authenticity of this work when Katz wrote, I have rcfeITCd to it as Hennann's in my discussion. As Schmin argues, many relevant insights can be gIeant'<i from it even if it is <.'SSCnrially fiction.

30. Brill YcJmdim Ie-Goyim, p. 85. The English version (Ew /usirft'lIl'ss(llId To/erllllce.
c
lack many things that his heart desires; similarly, a woman proselyte also separates herself from all pleasures. And despite all this, they come to take refuge under the wing ofthe divine presence. It is evident dut they would not do [his lInlL·ss they knew for certain that their faith is widlom foundation and that it is all a lie, vanity, and emptincss. Consequen tly, you should be ashamed when you mention the matter of proselytes. J I
Katz's related argument that the generally positive attitude toward con­verts in the Middle Ages reflects an active quest for Jewish triuIllphF. is less than compelling in and ofirscJf, but is in Illy vicw confinucd by the pervasive tOile ofJewish polemic and considerable evidcnce from C hristian sources, nonc ofwhich played ally role ill fomling Katz's conclusion. Although I do not belicve that we should go so far as to speak ofa medieval Jewish mission, thcre is strong reason to believe thatJews confrontcd Christians on the streets ofEurop(' to pose religious arguments and took great satisfaction in produc­ing a sense ofdiscomfiture or defeat in the mind of their interlocutor.l3
ThatJews reviled apostates is self-evident, and yct they insistcd that such converts retain the legal staws ofJcws. Katz devoted an article to the appli­cation ofthe talmudic fomlllla "even though he ~inned he is an ISfdclite" to the abidingJewishness ofthe apostate.34 He proved the validity ofan earlier suggestion thatRashi was tl..--sponsible forthe use ofthis e).l'ression to establish the standing of apostates as Jews; then he proceeded to examine the larger social context ofthe new undcrstandingand widepopuJarity of this fonllula. The explanation, he says, is neither halakhic logic in itself nor R ashi's personal predilections but the real struggle camed on by the Jewish commu­nity against conversion and forced apostasy. 35
On the one hand, there are legal and psychological advantages in seeing the apostate as non-Jcwish. He does not generate a levirate relationship, so that his widowed, childlcss sister-ill-law can many without asking him for
J. release; you can lend him money at interest; you can indulge your utter rejection ofhim. In this connection, Katz makes another acute obscrvation
] I. 111cjl'wis/I.Chrisliall Dc/mlc ill IIII' H(l?h Middle A,~, #21 I , English 5(."(;tion, pp. 'olY/. ]2. &/1 Yelmdim /r·G'yim, p. 88; £-.:c1l1sil'l'llt$S alld TtI/cr,mrr, p. 81.
3]. See my "Mission to the Jews and J(.'wish-Christlall ContactS in the Polcmical Literature ofthe High Middle Ages," Amcrican His/orical R.elri(,II'9! (1986): 576­91­
34.
"Af al Pi she-tlata Yisracl Hu," in Halakhall IIt'-Qabbalah, pp. 255-{)().

35.
"Afal Pi she-I:lata," p. 262.




II WS AN]) CHRISTIANS IN THE MI DDLE AGES
,I,,,ul the transfonnarion ofa talmudic teml. For the Sages, one who habit­" ,I/v violated a particular injunction was a IIIlImar\o\-ith respect to that injull c­!'''II (mwllar Ie-x); fo r medievJ.l Jews, III/lilJa' le-became simply IIIf1ll/ar--all 'l,,,';tate whose vcry essence is the transgression of the Torah.
llllt there were countervailing concems ofconsiderable, ultimately deci­
1\ ,. L'lllotional and pragmatic impact. Jews wantcd to demonstrate that I, il'l isnl has no force, that it could not effcct a tr.l.Ilsfonnatioll ofidentity, and dwy also wanted to encourage converts to retum to Judaism.36 To these , "mirlcratiollS I would add a third:Jews wanted to see all the sins ofapostates 1\ sim. To be sure, the conversion it.~elf, bamng filtUrc repcnta!ll.:e, scaled 11(I·ir f.1.te. Nonetheless, as long as they remain Jews, every desecration ofthe \ .Ihbatlt, every taste offorbidden food increases the tcmperature ofthe hellfire I'lepared for them.
Katz's instincts about Jewish attitudes toward Christianity can sometimes II' It be tested at all. He asserts, for example, that AshkenazicJews were sincere both when they prayed for the peace of the govemment and when they I·r.!}'ed for its ultimate destruction.37 I am inclined to belicve that he is right, Iollt I cannot think. of an easy way to prove it. The complex interaction of .Itfraction and revulsion toward the Christian world is particularly difficult to I,ill down. Citing the work ofYitzhak Baer, Katz affin lled that we now know I hat religiou.~ phenomena in both communities emerged Ollt ofa comm on I I"l'nd, but the l1lcdievals themselves, he argued, did not know this. For them, Illl'se very religious impulses srrenbrthened the instinct to recoil from the o ther
Jr.. "Afal Pi she-I:fata," pp. 262-65.
37· &ill Yelmdilllie-Goyilll, p. 60; £wlrlsil'l'lIl'$S alld "[""ohm/{(', p. 5 I. The dificrence beNleen the Hebrew and English vcrsions ofthis passage is so striking dlat ror all Katz's insistence that hc spumed apologetics, it is difficult to avoid tht' impression that he or his English stylist softened the fonnulation for a non­Jewish audience. The Hebrew reads, "The vision ofthe end ofdays signifil'S the overturning of the current order, when the dispersed and humiliated people will see itS revenge frOIll itS tormentors. The hope for a day of reveuh'l,.' and the prayer fo r the arrival ofthat day may be considered as conflicting with a profession ofloyalty to the government. ... " Here is the English: "A rcven.:ll of the existing order was envisaged ill the lIl('ssianic age, when the dispersed and humiliated Jewish people was to come into its OWIl. The eIltertaining of such hopes, and the prayer for their fulfillment, might well be considered as conflicting with a profession ofloyalty...."
On the much debated question of whedler Ashkenazic Jews looked for­\vard to Christian conversion or annihilation at thc end ofdJ.Ys, sec my "AI Tadmitam ve-Goralam shcl ha-Goyim be-Si&l.It ha-Pulmus ha-Ashkenazit.'· in Yl'llIIdim l/lIII/Ja-:(,.dm' (above. n. 18), pp. 74-91.

n'li~ioIlY With all the substantial progress that has been made since E.WJII­sir1mcss alld Tolerallce to enhance ollr understanding ofhoth the openness and the hostility of Ashkenazic Jewry to its Christian environment,311 Katz's assessment has, in the main, withstood the test of time.
Katz places gre:lt emphasis on theJewish instinct that Christianity is avodail zarall, asserting that any economically motivated change in this perception would appear to stand in absolute contradiction to the classic perception that the world is unconditionally divided between brae! and the nations.40 A bit later he argues that retaining this perception was necessary to safeguard the corrununity against absorption and conversion:'[ There is certainly much truth in this, but to test it onc would have to introduce at least some compar­ative dimension. How didJews under Islamhandle this problem?Thcysurely regarded Muslims as part of" the nations," and with sufficient effort it was possible to classify them as idolatcrs;-P nonetheless, neither Maimonides nor the great majority ofrabbinic authorities took this step. Though Katz makes no reference to Islam in this context, he does allude to the small size of Ashkenazic communities and the intense missionary efforts exerted by Chris­tians as faCtors that increased thejewish need forself-defense. I do not believe that this is enough to explain the different reactions under Christendom and Islam, particularly since the intensity of missionary efforts in Nonhem
38. Beill ytlllldim fe-Goyilll, pp. 98-99; Ewlusillaltss alld ToltY/ma, pp. 93~4.
39· See my discussion and references in Ger:'lidJ. Hlidstcin, David Berger, Shnaya
Z. Leiman, and Aharon Lichtenstein,judaism's E,/colillter willi Olfltf C,dtlll'N: Rqutirm 01 illtegralioll?, ed. byJacob]. Schac[cr, pp. 117-25, as well as in "AI Tadmitam ve-GorltLtm shd ha-Goyim" (above, n. 37). Se\" also Ivan Marcus, llifuaU of ClliWwoJ: j",.u/I AC{IIltllratiOIi ill Mtdieval EllfOP<' (New Haven and London; 199<) ; lscaelJ. Yuvai, SJlalti Goyim bt-Bjtllekh (Tel Aviv, 2000); and much relevant discussion in Avraham Grossnun's ljakllllui A sM.'Cliaz lIa­Risilouim O~rusalem: 1981) and lfakhmei ('Arfat ha-Rishotlim Oerusa.lem: 1995) and in Ephr.ti.In Kanarfogel,jru"-sh EdllcatiCI/I alld SOOtt)' ill the High Middl~Ago­(Detroit: 15)()2).

40. Bei" ytl/lidilllle-Goyilll, p. ]6; Eulllsi~less alld Tofrrallfr, p. 25. The fonnula­cion in the English version is not as sharp.
•1-1. &ill Yrlllldim fe-Goyim, p. 46; EwlU5ivellw and To/erame, p. 37.
.p. So the anonymous rabbi attacked by M:umonides in his Epistlt 011 Martyrdolll; see Abraham Halkin and David Hamllan, Epistles of Maimotlides: Crisis and uadmhip (Philadelphia: 1993), pp. 16,21. C( also lfiddllslui IIa-Rall to S.m­Iltdn·tl6Ib. (Thc author is not R.abbi Nissim Gccondi but a somewhat earlier Spanish talmudist.)
JEWS AND C HRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Europe through the twelfth ccntury is very much in question:B Katz ac­luowlcdged that the theological chasm separatingJudaism from Christianity played some role here, and in this instance I think that the actual content of kwish and Christian beliefS deserves pride ofplace. We shall soon encounter
•
ht' emphasis by R. Meuahem h.-Meiri on the deep and genuine divide Ilt.,tween Christianity and paganism, but in the final :rnalysis it is a daunting

•.
L~k to argue that worship ofjesus ofNazareth as God is not avodal! zarah by .he standards ofjewish law.


In his final work, Katz did utilize medieval Jewish-Muslim relations as a 1001 for evaluating the causes of the tense relationship between jews and (:hristians in the same period."" Here he endorsed the position that tensions were Illuch greater in the latter case because the truth of one religion dt'pcnded on the falsehood ofthe otheronly in thejewish-Christian relation­~hip. This stray remark requires elaboration. A~ I wrote on another occasion with respect to polemicalliterature,'U the jewish-Christian encounter was morc stressful because ofboth its greater intimacy and its greater difference. Since the Hebre-.v Bible played a considerably les.s important role ill Islam .han it did in Christianity, arguments over its meaning, including. ofcourse,
•he identity ofTrue Israel, were incomparably more significant in thejewish­(:hristian interaction. With regard to theology, itwas the greater gap between Jt·\\'S and Christians that was decisive in exacerbating tensions. "Islamic monotheism len: no rOOill for the creative rancor that produced the philo­~ophica1 dimension ofjewish-Christian discussions, which addressed such issues 3S trinity and incarnation. "-46 In our context, sharper tenninology Olay he in order. Christianity was allOdah zarah; Islam was not.
A comparative dimension might also have been useful in testing one aspect of Katz's controversial hypotheSis about the difference between medieval Ashkenazim and theirsixteenth-andscvcnteenth-century counterparts. Katz .Isserts that by the seventeenth century, Ashkenazic Jews had spiritualized the ideal ofmartyrdom and were fur less aggressive in confronting Christianity. These changes, he says, resulted from greater insularity. Christianity had hecome less of a psychological rcality, and the sense of spiritual thrcat or Il:mptation had diminished.-47
-1-3· See my "Mission to the Jews" (above, 11. 33) .
-1-1-. Et LlbqOf IIC-Et It-Hitbollnl Oerusalem; 1999), p. 54 .
01.5· ''Je\vish-Christian Polemics," 711~ Encyclopedia of ReI(f?ioll [I: 389.

01.6. ''Jewish-Christian Polemics," 389.
47. "Bcin Tam'u le-T<I.'I). Ta·t," in Ha/ak/ltlh IIC-Qllbbalall, pp. 311-30.
DAVID UERGER

This i$ not elk' fonun to address the controversy over this thesis in detail.
f think that Katz was wrong about spiritualization and right about aggres­
siwnes:~, but his reason for the decline in aggressivellC5s is highly speculative.
We would do well to ask why medieval Provencal, Italian, and SpanishJews
were less a~'TCSsive than those of Northem Europe in thl"ir anti-Christian
works. Were thoseJews less tempted by Christianity? Was it less of a psycho­
logical reality forthem? In these societies, itis likely that differences in cultural
attitudes and nonns ofexpression were at work. But then, as the Middle Ages
wore on, there was fear. This is certainly evident in late medieval Spain,
where the T ortosa disputation took place in a profoundly different atnlOS­
pherc from the one that had prevailed in Barcelona a century and a half earlier,
but there were similar transfonnations in Ashkenaz as well. Ib bbi Yebid of
Paris did not dare to address Nicholas Donill in thc manner that his contelll­
por.uy Ashkenazic corcligionists wrote or even, I am inclined to think. still
spoke to Christians on the street. Later--buc still well before the period
ideutified by Katz-Yom Tov Liplllann Mu~hJhausen was lIlu~h less caustic
than Joseph Official, and he found it nect-"SSary to deny the obvious meaning
ofpejorative Jcwish tenus applied to Christian sallcta."'s Thc public aggrcs­
sivencss ofAshkenazic Jewry changed because it had to change.
Katz's social explanations for the stance of medieval Jews on legal issucs in the Jewish-Christian relationship always make intuitive sense, but on rare occasions his fonllulation is problematic or the evidence is pushed too hard. Thus, he points to all assertion in Scfer ~-{asidilll that penance is needed for a
Jew who desecrated the Sabbath to save a gentile and contrasts it to the injunctions in the same work to fight a Jew who is attempting to kill an innocent gentile and to take up anllS in suppOrt ofChristian allies who fulfill their obligations to their Jewish partners. The contrast in tht--se positions certainly requirL'S explanation, and Katz suggests two distinctions that somc­how appear to merge. There is a difference, he says, betweell reflective and spontaneolls reactions and between the response to an individlL1l Christian and the approach to Christians as a stereotyped f:,'Toup. The rcJkctiv~ rcaction requires penance; the spontaneous one requires you to help. The individual is entitled to your assistance; the representative of the group is not.",9
In this instance, however, these arc problematic distinctions. It is hard to see why saving someone on the Sabbath involves less ofa direct, spontaneous emotion than saving him from a Jewish murderer, or why the fonn~r is a stereotypical Christian while the latter is an individual. I think that Katz is
4-8 . &frr Ni;;;;"~/o1I (Altdorf: 1644), p. 194.
4!)· Brill Yrllllriim Ir-r.lIJ'im. p. 10j; E"dwir'rllcs.( ,mri Toler.mec, pp. [00-1.
IEWS AND CH IU STIANS IN THE MID D LE AGES
,'nITec[ in his further assertion that the imperative to help the gentile may well emerge trom a direct human reaction that transcends self-interest, but I can­lIut prove this. Even ifthis is so, the distinction between the cases can result troll! the cOllviction, or even instinct, that indifference to the life ofa gentile may-and should-be ovcrridden fur more readily than the prohibition .Igainsr violating the $.1bbath.
In another instance, I believe that Katz'S intuition is correct, but he presses the evidence to the point ofmisrepresentation. McdievalJews had a powerful incentive to pennit dle deriving ofbenefit from gentile wine; at the S..lme tillie, they did not drink it and in most cases did not want to drink it. As Katz pres~nt.~ it, Rabbenu Tam pennittcd benefit on the basis of an arb'1.lI1lellt that should logically h.wc pemlitted drinking as well. When Iti objected by point­ing to this implication, R'lbbenu Tam withdrew hi~ argulIlent and produced a different aile that would not lead to the unwanted conclusion. Katz points out that the Talmud itsclfmakcs no distinction between benefitanddrinking, so that only the extra-halakhic concem prevented Itj and R abbellu Tam from endorsing a consistent position.)O
fn a footnote found only in the Hebrew venion, Katz concedes that R. Tam's statement "can be interpreted to mean that his ruling was reported inaccurately, but even ifthis is so one can still wonder why Ri would have been upset by the conclusion that Rabbellll Tam reached in the fonn it was reported to hun."5 I First ofall, R. Tant's statement canllot just be illft'f]Jrt'led to IllI.:an that his position was misreported; that is the only thing it can mean. Second, although the Talmud does not b>enerally distinguish between deriv­ing benefit fro m Gentile wine and drinking it, in a critically relevant line in this discussion it docs. Iti obj~ctcd to a permissive ruling that was both un­precedented and contrary to accepted practice. What is really striking is R. Tam's reaction, "God forbid," to Ri's assertion in his name, a reaction that powclfully supports Katz's funciament.1l thesis about the depth ofthe instinct at work here. We have already seen an instance in which Katz was acutely sensitive to the significance ofthis fonuula. In this case he did not pick it up, apparently because he was committed to the position that R. T am had changed his mind. The deep avenion ofAshkena:t:ic authorities to pCn11itting the drinkingof gentile wine really does emerge here, but Katz has constructed a misleading scenario regarding both the unfolding ofR. Tam's position and its presumed incollsistency.sJ
50.
Bciu Yelmdlml('-Goyim, pp. 55-j6; £w/II$II1('1less IlIId Til/trailer, pp. 46-47·

51.
& ;11 Yrlmt/im Ie-Goyim, p. 56, 11.36.

52.
Aftcr writing this, I had the benefit of reading the typl'SCript of Haym Sofo­


DAVID BERGER

In his analysis of the perception of Christianity as QI,odah zarah. Katz rrL'qucntly reiterates what he presents as a fundamental characteristic of halakhic literature: the limited, local application ofa principle mobilized to deal with a particular problem. The point is that fonuulations implying that medieval Christiam arc not idolaten werc not generalized beyond the nar­row context that produced thc:m. I do not doubt that this characteristic of halakhic literature, which Haym Solovcitchik has called "halakhic federal­ism,"SJ is real, and Katz uses it con vincingly to refute scholars who equated the tosafists with the Meiri by attributing to them a principled denial that medieval Christians worship (If'odaf, zarah. But 011 a matter so fillldamelltal to the self-perception ofAshkenazic Jewry and its rl'i:ltiollship with its environ­ment, we are entitled to ask whether the overwhcJming instinct that Chris­tianity is avodafl zarah should infonll our understanding ofthe local contexts themselves. Did medieval Ashkenazic halakhists ( ...ver mean to say-cven in narrow applicatiom-that Christianity is not QI'Odah ztlraJ,?
The answer to this question lila), very well be no. In some ofthose cas<.'$, Katzappears willing to interpret the relevant statelllenl~ so narrowly that they do not make any assertion about the Christian religion itself Thus, the decla­ration that the gentiles alllong us (or "in this time") arc not worshippers of Ql1f.ltlaJJ zarah means only that they arc not particularly devout. H The most important example ofthis issue, TosaJot's aSSt'rtion that "association" (shift'if) is no t fo rbidden to non-Jews, elicits a morc ambib'1.IOIlS treatment. Katz 's owu
n,jtchik's study, "Sal;tar hi-Stalll Yenalll bc-Ashkcnaz-Pereq bt'-Toledot ha­
Habkhah yc-ha-Kalkalah ha-Y chudit bi-Yemei ha-llcinayim," which will
have appc3n!d ill Tami.; before the publication of this micle. I am grateful to
Prof Suloveirchik for providing me with this typescript. which contains ~n
important analysis ofthe exchange betwcen Iti and Rabbellu Tam and argu...'S
pl'rsua~i\'Cly fortht' existence ofa deeply in!,'T;liued instillcD,'e revulsion alllong
Ashkellazic Jews at the prmpect ofdrinking gentile wine.
Katz's report ofa tos."tfist position in another case also requires com.'CtlOIl,

but the mislcadillg fonllulation is only slightly olrthe IlLlrk. He tells us that Ri
p . .'nnincd taking imerest from gentiles beyond the requirements of bare sus­temllCt', because Je,vs were now a minority among the gentiles (&ill )'tlmdim If-Goyim, p. 4.0; EW/IIsil'tJl(,-SS al1d 1'o/(7,lI/c(', p. jO). This is a category Katz uses to explain a larger pattern oOlalakhic adjustment. So he mobilizes it here, when in fuct Ri grounded his pemlissive rolillgnoton the Illllllerical stanIS oftheJews but all the rdated (.1(;[ that they arc subject to economic pcrsccutiou.
5]. Haf,ddralr, lGllka/a/r, v('-Dimmrry A ; mi Qenlsalcm: '985). pp. 79-81.
54. "Shdoshah Mishpatim Apologcciyyim be-Gilguleihclll, ,. in Halaklwlr !'c­
Q/b/Mill/r, p. 284.





JEWS AN D C HRISTIAN S IN THE MIDDLE AGES
presentation in an earlier article ,as well as in hi.~ book, indicates that he under­stands the tenn [0 refer to worship ofGod along with something else. Thus, Christianity would not be aI)()d<l1l zarah for gentiles. This principle, however. was applied only in the narrow context in which it arose, to wit, accepting an oath from a Christian in a business dispute. ss In the article, however, he proceeds to discuss "meticulous jurists" (/1(1tI1l'i fUI/ak/wl! dlly,/,willl) who understood the tosafists to mean only that bocntilcs Illay take an oath in God's name while also thinking ofanother entity; they never meant to suggest that gentiks may associate God with something else in worship. Nonetheless, Katz does not retract his earlier interpretation, and in the Hebrew venion of the book he reiterates it without going on to discuss the meticulous jurists. If, as is v(.'I')' like1y, fOSf!.f(lt never meant to say that Christian worship is not 'I/Iodtlfl ;::ilmf, for gentiles, there is no example of narrow application herc. Ther<.' was never any principle that could have been generalized.56
One ofthe weaknesses ofllalakhic fcderJ.lislll is that it cannot easily survive scmtin),. When expoSt!d to the light. it withers. Alld so we come \0 ha-Meiri. where olle ofK.au's points is precisely that federali.~l1 widlers, to be replaced by an all-embracing principle excluding Christi:llls frolll the catt'gory of idolaters. MallV ofKatz's best characteristics cmeTb7t: in this .malysis: rensitivity to language. t~ pitch, to tOIlL"-1I0t JUSt ha-Meiri's new forumla describing C hristians and Muslims as nations bound by the ways of relib>ions, but the celebratory language and the elimination ofother a'b'1.nncllts as unnecessary. We find alice again a remarkable instinct that cuts to the core ofa phenom­enon even wheR' hard evidence is thin: in this case, the instinct that philos­ophy is somehow at work here even though the evidence Katz adduces for [his is not utterly compelling and the position to be explained is the opposite of that of Maimonides. III other instances we have seen Katz's intuitions
"Sheloshah Mishpatim" p. 279. C( lkil/ )'r/lIIdim le-wl'tlll, p. 163. The EllgJish

55· version, li.XriUStl'f'llfSS .lIId "liner.lllft', p. 163, omits the reference to worship. As we shall sec, this Illay well he a hetter understanding ofT<lSl!fi1t, but in light of the two Hebrew discussions, I doubt that it repn."SCllts Katz'S tnle intent at this poillt in his analysis.
56. Then.' is an additional interpn:tive option chat was proposl'd to \llldt'rstand this t(/S(//ilt that Kat7 does not addl"L'SS in the article or in the He-brew wcsion ofthe bo~k, bllt it lIl:rkes :tn appe:rr.lllce in the English. Shillrif may IlW311 nothing mon: than the inclusion ofrefL'rl'llces to God and something else-in this case the saints-in the same o:rth. Christian worship remains <I1'lliillh Zdrdll even for !,'Cntik'S. I have discussed the-various interpretations ofthis ttlS.y.u ill Appendix III of'11/1' Rebbe, IIII' Messiah, tlud tire Sellud,1I (!fOrt/wdos Iudifference (London and Portland, Oregon: '!OOI).
DAVID BERGER

fotltinned by polemical works; in this cast', Moshc Halbcrtal has demon­Hrated the essential correctness ofKatz's instincts by reference to philosoph­ical and other texts. $7
Finally, the question ofChristianity as avodah ;::am" is intimately connected to thc question ofthe damnation or salvation of Christians. On two occa­sions, Katz noted a paSS-1.ge in the H ebrew account of the 1240 Paris dispu­tation where R. Yehiel indicated that Christians call be saved ifdley obscrve the seven Noahidc laws.58 Katz does not directly address the transparent problem that apodal! zarah is onc ofthose commandments. N onetheless his discussi?1l of thiS. p~S~bTC and of the disputation as a whole is extrel;lely percepovc, and his IIlslght that dle need to R'Spond to Christian attacks on the Talmud could lead to the growth ofgenuine tolerance has significance beyond the geographical and chronological arena that COllcems him in this
s9

chapter.
Let us conclude, theil, by returning to Katz's introdllctory comment about the contcmporary relevance of his work. Within thc mcdievalliniverse of discourse, we can unhesitatingly speak of both tolerance and intolerance when discussing the dominaut religions. When you have thc power to kill
or expcl-and these options are realistic within your universe ofdiscourse­y~u exhibit tolerance ifyou refrain from exercising that power. When you kill or expel one group but not another, you have shown tolerancc toward the group that remains. The more tolerallt the society, the higher the standard an individual or subcollllllunity Illust meet to be considered tolerant.
57· Moshe Halbertal. &ill Torah Ic-l;lok!wlIl": Rabbi Ml'lIabl'w I/O-Mdn' If-Ba'/J/d Ila-Ha/ak"a" lla-MlIillllmim bi-PnJllf''II('f' Uerusalem: 2000). pp. 80-108. Katz laid spl'cial t'lllphasis on ha-Meiri's remarkable assertion that a Jcwish convcrt to Christianity is entitled to the rightl; accordt'd to civilized believcrs, whereas an UIlCollvl·rted hen·tic is not (Brill Yr/rlUiim [r-G)yilll. pp. 124-2S; £WlIlSir1('IICSS IIlId Totumla', pp. 123-24). On a simibr assertion by Mosl'S ha-Kohen ofTor­dl'Si!las, sec my "Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud: A Fourteenth-Cennu), Jr~vlsh Response to tilt' Attack on Rabbinic Judaism," in RrI(~iolls.I,'l'spra«lrr illl M II/rlalll"., ed. by Bemard Lewis and Friedrich Nicwochner (Wiesbadcn: [9<)2), p. 126. Nott', [00, YOill Tov Lippman Muehlhauseu. Scfrr Ni';:;ilbo/l,
p. 193·
SK. "Sheloshah Mishpatim," p. 273; Bei" }?rlllldim lc-G)yim, p. 115; EW[lIsil'l'lI('sS and Ti.)/mlllcr, p. Ii 3. See Illy discussion of this passage in "AI TadllliUIll vc­Goralam sild ha-Goyim," pp. 80--81.
59· Sl'e Illy observations in "Christians, Gentiles, and [he Talmud," p. 130.


IEW S AND CHRIST IANS I N THE MIDD LE AGES
For a relatively powerless minority, the simation is quite different. We can ~peak of theoretical tolerance and intolerance, but because the group in lluestion has no authority to enforce its nom lS, we sometimes slip into a usage in which intolerance becomes synonymous with hostility. This equation, however, blurs important distinctions. Bemard of Clairvaux, for example, was hostile to Jews, even very hostile, but he was simultaneously tolerant, ..:ven-by medieval Christian standards-very tolerant. 60 No medieval J ew (';111 be judged by this standard, because no J ew was confronted with the temptations or restraints of power.
Powerlessness confcrs freedom to express hostility without the need for a real confrontation with the consequencc~. One can curse one's enemies, con­demn them to hellfire, list the innumerable offenses for which they should be l'xecutcd and the many obligations that they Illust be compelled to discharge -and then go to bed. Power brings responsibility and sllbject~ its bearers to the discipline ofgoverning.61 Powerle~sness provides the luxury ofboth Ull­fl'sted tolerance and untested zealotry. Neither the tolerance nor the zealotry Illay survive the transition to power.
Whether we frame the issue as hostility versus cordiality or tolerance versus intolerance, K:ltz'S studies reveal how medieval Jews confronting a Christian mciety dealt with the nonnative texts that they had inhcrited. Though thcir strategies often carried significant practical consequences, the effects wcre limited by thc reality of exile. Katz, 011 the other hand, wrote in an <lb'"C of n..'StoredJewish sovereignty. He certainly welcomed this, but he also saw the dangers and no doubt hoped that his work, free ofthe unhi~torical apolob'"Crics of an earlier generation, would provide guidance as well as understanding. This dimension of his achievement is difficult to assess. But withill the four dis ofscholarly endeavor, the impact of his oeuvre is beyond cavil. Every scholar of the Jewish experience is indebted to Jacob Katz for setting a standard ofemditioll, insight, and clarity that we can only strive to approach.
60. See my"The AttitudeofSt. BemardofClailVauxtoward theJew1," Prrxrtdil!~s of /lie AlI1criC<1II AClldelllyforJrwish Researrh 40 (1972): 8g-108.
6 [. Note the discussion of some of th(.'Se sometimes surprising complex-itirs in Kenneth R. Stow, "Papal and H..oyal Attitudes [owardJewish Lending in tht, Thirteenth C enNry," AJS Rn,ier,J6 (1981): 161-84·


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Haroard Uuiversity e el/lerforJewish Studies
THE PRIDE OF JACOB

Essays onJacob Katz and His Work
edited by

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Jay M. Harris
Distributed by
Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts :Iud London, England
2002


TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE Jay At, Hams . ........•. ... ......• , •. .... ......•.• . 7
I-tEUEL IN FH.ANKFUR T: THE SCHOLARLY O IUGINS orJACOB KATZ Dm,;d N. NI)'t'rs .................................... 9
JACOB KATZ ON HALAKHAH AND KABBALAH
Israel Til-SIIIIIII . .... .. .. .... ... .... ........ ........ 29


JACOB KATZ ON JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE MII)DLE AGES David '&'rgcr ..... .. .. .. .. . ........... . ......... . . 4 I
EARLY MODERN ASHKENAZ IN THE WRITINGS OF JACOB KATZ Elislleva Carlebach . .. .... .... ... ............ ........ 65
JACOB KATZ AS SOCIAL HISTORIAN Pall/a E. H yma" . ............ . . . ••••• •. • .. . .. . 85
JACOB KATZ ON THE On..IGINS
AND DIMENSIONS OF JEWISH MODERNITY:
THE CENTR.ALITY OF THE GERMAN ExPERIENCE
David EllclISOII ... . ......... . .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .• .. ... 97


HOW CENTRAL WAS A NTI-SEMITISM TO THE HISTORICAL WItITING OF JACOn KATZ? Richllrd 1. CohclI ........................... . . . . . . 125
6 TABLE Of' CONTENTS
A IIl JNCAHIAN R IIAPSODY IN BLUE: JA! '( III Kfl J /.'s ','ARJIY SUllilENIJER TO HAGAR'S ALLURE 1\ ' i.h,d 1\. Siff!!',. . .. . .......... . .. . .•......... 14 1
J A( '( III I{ATi'. t IN I [AI AKIIAH, ORTHODOXY, AND HISTORY ........... ........ ..... ....... 163

11\( '( III I{i\', / . AS A I )1:-'SlmTAT[ON ADVISOR blllll"'l/wl l :·lb·~ . .. . ...... . . ••.•.. .... 173

PREFACE

In May, 1998, the world ofJewish scholarship lost one of its last giants, Pro­fessor Jacob Katz. The Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University joined the rest of the academic world in mourning the loss of our frequent guc.'St and teacher. Never again would this wonderfiil mind (and engaging raconteur) grace our lecture halls or enliven our couferences. The loss was great and keenly felt. A commemoration was in order.
As Proft.-'Ssor Katz's yorzeil approached, we began plans for a conference to coincide with his second, devoted to a review ofhis multi-faceted corpus. It i~ indicative ofthe esteem in which Professor Katz was held that putting together this conference was an unusually easy t3sk. Although scholars are SQmctillH."S loath to be distracted frolll their work, in this case the Illany schol­ars whose work appears in these pages-most ofwhom had never written on Katz before-jumped at the chance to participate in this conference. And each in tum produced an inci~ive treaoncnt of his or her chosen topic. As a result oftheir gracious efforts, Katz's remarkable range and versatility became readily apparent to all; even those familiar with his work could only marvel when confronted with the near filII menu of Katz's interests over a short time. [
I will eschew the COllllllon practice of editors and refrain from describing each paper in a paragraph. Such descriptions as I could produce would scarcely do justice to the richness dlat is in store for the reader. I wish to note only that, in the pages that follow, Katz's work is subjected to its t:'lirshare of criticism. Although some might deem this improper in a volume such as this,
(. The one major area of i1}[erest not discussed at the conference and not rep­resented fillly in these pages is Katz's work onJewish nationalism. As our plans were coalescing, Katz's snldent, YosefSalmon, published a p~pcron that vel)' subject, and another trcaonent so soon after seemed superfluous. See Yosef Salmon, "The Historical llllagination ofJacob Katz: On the Origins ofJewish Nationalislll," j ewisl, Serial Stl/diN s/3 ( 19')<); 161~).


I;,ARL Y MODERN ASHKENAZ IN THE WRITINGS OF JACOB KATZ
Hlisheva Carlebach
(JIII'eIlS College, CUNY
l.!Cob Katz's pioneering trilogy, Traditio'l alld CriS;5. E;wiltsil'f'lIcsS {/Ild Tolcr* ,ilia', and Out oftIle Ghetto, paved new paths for the exploration ofJewish ',,}cicty in an age of transition. l Katz introduced and legitimated the 1I11,'dlOds and goals ofsocial history into a field that had been dominated by n·!i6>101lS and intellectual history. Close to a half celHury afler the publi­, .Irion of Katz's first works, the field has b'Town and expanded llpon Katz's tiJUudational insights. Possibilities for mining new resource collections COI1­li tltlC to grow, and disciplines such as comparative religion, sociology, and .lIlthropology continue to enrich the perspectivr.:s from which the J ewish past
C.m
be understood. The great strides taken by scholars in both methodology .Uld accessibility of sources allow for a reexamination of Katz's original .lsslltl1ptions, directions, and choices from the perspective afforded by time, hindsight, and genuine progress in the field Katz shaped. Like every great uriginator, Katz challenged many ofthe dominant methodological assump­(iOIlS ofJewish historiob>r.lphy in his work, even while his own conceptions, like those ofevery scholar, were infonned by implicit values, opinions, and IIOtiOUS.

I.
'l;adilhm (lIId Crisis (Glencoe, N.Y.: 1961; mils. Bemard Dov Coopemlan, 1993; rcpr. Syracuse: 2000); £\'(/USil1('II('55 '.IIId 10/('7'(1/1«: SlIIdics illj ewish-Qlltile RrlalilJns ill Medieval al/{Ilvlodem Times (London: 1961; New York: 1(73); D llt (iftlll~ Ghetto: 'nil' Sorial Bac-k..!?nJlIIrd ofjr1llish Emallripation, 1770-1870 (Cam­bridge, Mass.: 1973; New York: 1~178). Bemard Coopcmlan's (.ossay. "Afier­word: T r.lditi(J11 aud Crisis, The Study of Early Modem Jewish History," remaills all invaluable analysis of the place of Tradition aud Crisis in Jewish hismriography. I thank Professors lSf3cl Bartal and Haym Soloveitchik fortheir discussions ofmy rl'lllarks, although only my own vil'ws arc reflected herein.


f ,ft
E Li SHEVA CA RL EBAC H

III his introduction to ExdHsivclless (Jlld Tolermlcr Katz defined his subject ill three ways: first, by its chronological foclls, the early-modem period; second, by its geographical!culturnllocus, Ashkenaz; and third, by its subject, Jewish-Gentile relations. Let LIS examine each ofthcse in tum.
A!; for periodizacion, Katz was virtually the firstJ!!~torian of the Jews to view the Early Modem period as a discrcte"age of transition. As the model for a broad-based analysis ofan age oftransition, 110 synthesis parallels Katz's collective oeuvre,) His predecessors tended either to see a radical break betweellllledieval traditional J ewish life and modem conditions4 or, alter­natively, to elevate insignificant developments to the status of"ptecursors" ofhter historical currents, although they were not necessarily rdated, j At the
2. Original Hebrew title, Beyn ytlmdim fl'~~yilll: Yol/llu ha-)'I/",dim {i-sllck/lcncllem bi-l'flll('/I<I,brillal'illl lI-lJi-/rhi/allta-zclllall Ite-had"sh (Jerusalem: 19(0).
3.
European historiography of the spirit and culture of a tr:IlIsitional age has a notable pedigree, Johann Huizinga's Dutch masterpiece, n,t Autulllll rJ{ lite Middle A.l!es, trans. R.odney J. Payton and Ulrich M:lIll1nirzsch (Chicago:·,.996) and Jakob Burckh3rdt'§ Ci,JiIi';:IItioll of Ihe Rl'IIaiSSIIIICI' ill [Idly, trailS. S.G.c. Middlclllore (London and New York: Ij)CJO) exemplify dIe tradition. In link­ing the E.1rly Modem period and the notion of a society whose valut""$ were ill crisis, Katz's venerable pn..-deccssors include Paul Hazard, La m·se de III (rJuscicuCt' ellTOpel'lIlIC (1680-1 715) (paris: 1935); Geoffrey Parker and Leslie Smith, eds., ""l1ll Gn'IT(I/ Crisis oflht $e.J(Jllml/h Omllry (London: 191)7); c£ Chimell Abr.llllSky, "The Crisis ofAuthority within EuropeanJewry in the Eighteenth Century," in Sit'b.fried Stein and Raphael Loewe, cds., SlIIdies ill j ewisll ReI(l1irJIlS <11111 lme//n'tllal History Prrsl'IItcd ta Alcxalldcr Ai/mallll (University, Ala.: 1979), pp. 13-29·

4.
Many orehe larger narrative histori~'s oftJH..' Jewish people depict a sudden shifi from tbe darkness of the medieval period into the light of the age of Mosl'"S Mendelssohn, with little intervening ab>"C of lransition. For example, see Hein­rich Grnetz, Dil'rr; Ytllln l'isr"e/ (trans. S.P. Rabinowitz), v. 8, pp. 526-27=


, .. ~'~::l'iI .~:' J'::l ,K,:" "Jjj,'~::l ,,0"'0" iI~' ,,~ : jj~"'K= K=' 01!:i;::o:m ·:j,n 101 nlnll< ,: , m;'l1 l~'~~':-t:" tl< t:"~" m~ll<::O ~::nm t:nl1! j:: ~:!j:: 'j ':-K,O" : :! e::mi
Ii""'" j'l::l;tK Ii": C;'I','= mj:: 'nle superb collective effon Grmum-jell'is/! His/rJ'}' ill Modem Tim es, Michael Mt'Ycr, cd. (New York: 11)96), perhaps due more to organizational than ideol­ogical imperatives, breaks sharply between the E.1r1y Modem and subsequent periods (v. I, PI" 260-(2).

5. Azricl Shol,lat, 1111 i'iIlfjri II'lwl"lOl: Rcslli/ ha-hask"/,,h br-y"hadm,,?enuauyah Oeru­salem: 1960), providcs some ('xample~ of the lattt"r tl"ndency; c( the sophis-


I "lolLY MODERN ASHK EN A Z
\ .lIIlt' time that Katz sharpened the chronolol:.>1cal framework, he attempted I" dissolve and transcend political and geographicallilles. Katz defined his j ~"I}t...rraphicalJcultural scope, as "the province of Ashkenazi Jewry in the II idl"r scnse, i.e, from the jewries of Northem France and Gennany in the Illiddle ages and from the life of thei r descendants in Germany aud eastern Europe (Poland and Lithuania) between the sixteenth and the eighteenth I , t'Ilturics." With this broad definition, Katz posed qut..'stions conccming the 1/ 1IIIldernization ofmedieval Jewry that remain ofthe greatest sigllificance for )1 \Il,dellts ofjewish history, What defines thc COlllmOIl parameters that allow I I .•' lIS to draw parallels and even to erase the bounda.ry lines between Jews ofone
'\
,,",tiollal, political and historical experience and those of a different milieu?
,
What comlllonalities allow us to speak ofa Jewish transition to modernity, , I,llher than a French-Jewish, Genll3n-Jewish, English-Jt."wish, etc,? Where IIll1st we acknowledge that finn lines exist? 6 ,I
By advocating the value of a general rather than particularistic picture, Katz' work highlighted the need for a fOnl} ofcomparative historical analysis I,I dut has only recently begun to blossom in j ewish historiography,7 But by I'rivileging the concept of"Ashkenaz" as his primary unit of analysis, Katz (·I imillated one set ofconstrJints only to adopt another that already occupied .1 fonniclable position in the jewish historiob>raphical imagination. Many ~ 1IIl'anings have been projected onto the elastic tcnn "A~hkcllaz," A'i Ismar '\~·horsch has d(."Scribed ill his insightfill essay, Gennan maskilim rejected ~ Illcdieval Ashkcn:tz as symbolic ofjewish cultural m.mlarity and tumed [0
I'
ticated analysis of maskilic precursors by Shnmd Friner, ';Ha-haskalah ha­
Illuqdemct bc-yahadut ha-meah ha-shelllonah eSteh," '[,,,bi.; 67 (191)8): t 8!)­:!....o.Jon,1than Israel's EUflJ!:oealljclI'ryilllhr A,I!CI!{Mt'n"dllfilislll, ' 55{}--175cJ (Oxford:
1985) analyzed the transitional age ofEuropean Jt'\\'S from a perspective COIII-I'
pletdy different from Katz's, essentially arguing that changing t.'(:ollOlllil im­
pefa tivt'"S ofull.' European St.1tl'S opened new doors for both Ashkenazic :and
SephardicJe\\'S in Western Europt.".

o. See Katz's fomlUlatioll, Traditio" (wd Crisis, 5'"'9, 2;.'\, II. 2.
7. On this methodology, see Todd Endclman's introduction to Call1paril~f!jl'l/!ish Sorit'lirs (AnI! Arbor: 19')7), pp. 1-21. Endc1mal\ citl'S Katz's work as exemplal)' ofan extreme tendency to survey "broad expanses ofJewish history, collapsing diffcrenl..'t.'s among communities and subcomillunities in order to force their varied experiences into a uniform model or framework," For exalllpies of a comparative approach, sec YosefHayim Yerushalllli, "Assimilation and Racial Anti-Semitism: The Iberian and the Gennan Models," Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture no. 26 (New York: 1982) and the recent VOIUlIll', Michael Brenller, Rainer Lit'dtkc, and David R.ichtt'r, ecls., T"", Na/ialls: Brilish "lid C.cmlll"jrU's ill ('Ampamljllt PrrsfXYlilJ(' (Tiibill!'>\'Il: I9lY)}. I
,I
ELiSHEVA CARLEBACH

11H..'dieval Sepharad as the model of cultural openness.s They criticized the
educational sylltt'm that they hoped to reform, as "insular, ungraded, and
adult orientated"; they advocated the inclusion of secular subjeca, the
curbing of talmudic exclusivity, the study ofHebrew grammar, and the train­
ing for independent thinkiJlg, for which the ideal paradigm remained the
Sephardic school system. For WiSSf"Sc/laji historians, classical medieval
"Ashkenaz" signified the continuity of rabbinic scholarship mto the medi­
eval period, a sign ofthe vitality ofjudaism in its exilic period and, therefore,
to be evaluated as a basically positive and desirable development. Only in the
later period had Ashkenazic jewry, overcome by persecution and suffering,
lost its original vitality, veering onto a course of spiritual degeIle-ration and
intellectual decline. Graetz saw the emergence ofkabbalah as the result ofa
twisted exilic mentality. "Despite its foreign origius and its roots in the imagi­
native fuculty. they called it 'Hokhmat ha-emet.·... lt emerged in the course
ofcontroversy and always fomented dispute and disunity. "9 He characterized
the fruits of the work of Mahari"l and Isaac Tymau as "a mere unspiritual
cataloging of cuStOIll,"IO whereas Moritz Giidemanll blamed the hyper­
trophy ofmilllla~~ o n the Black Plague.II These historians defined Ashkenaz
in an essentialist llL1lUler; developllll!l1ts that did not quite fit into their ideal,
they disdained as accrctiom that did not emerge from the esse-nce of , Ashkenaz.
Possibly intending to correct the derisive judgment of his predecessors,

Yil"Zhak Baer posited an Ashkellaz that preserved its inner Jewish core. that
created from the authentic wellsprings of the Jewish past, and that avoided
the inteUectual arrogance that doomed the Sephardic j ews to collective apos­
tasy in the fuce of crisis. Baer characterized the distinctiveness of medieval
Ashkenaz in its religious piety, and contrasted it favorably to rationalist
Sephardic Jewry that had become distanced from its jewish roots.12 Some­
8. Ismar Schorsch, "The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy," LeQ &l'fk I"srillltl' Yr",vook 34 (1989): 4'7-f)6· See also John Efron, "Scientific Racism and th{' Mystique of Sephardic Rldal Superiority," Leo Batik lllstiflltr YMriJ()(Jk 38
(1993): 75"""""96·
9.
Gr:I.{'[Z, Dir'n'i Ycmri YiS1a('/ (crans. S. P. R.abinowin), 5:69.

10.
Cited in Y. Dinari, "Ha-minhagve-ha-h:tlakh:lh be-teshuvot i)akhlllei Ashellaz ba-me'ah ha-15," in E.Z. Melamed, cd., Be/yami" de Vries Alcmoria/ Volume Uerusalem: 11)68), p. 197.


II. Moritz Glidelllann. Geschidltr dl's Er::irlum.esrl'tsCtrs lind d(f" CII/rur der alKlldliill­disdrrllJudm wiilm·"d dt.'S Mirlriditt11 (trailS. into Hebrew. Fri{'dbcrg, &fer Ira· loralr r>tlra-imyim be-,Iftzor 11/l-/IIa'..lr<ll1 be-yt'IIIl'i Ira-beillayim; Warsaw: 1899).
12. David N. Myers, Re-illllruli".fl tlrrJcwislr Past: ErmJprlllljl'rlli$/r lrlullrctll<l/s arid lire



hARLY MODERN ASHKENAZ (.,
what paradoxically, Bacr believed that medieval Ashkenaric society had .rllsorbed many ofits most admirable features from the surrollnctingChristian ',ociety, including its representative and democratic modc of self-govem­Ilil'lit, its martyrologicaJ ideology, its exegetical-polemical tradition, and its Illtl'malization ofthe Christian penitential pietism that shaped 1:lasidllt As"­
J:nlflz.13
Modem scholarship has applied its own associations to the cultural charac­Il'zistics clustered with Ashkenaz, often to comtruct a polemical ideal type. To Gerson Cohell, Ashkenaz signified rabbinic elitism, intellectual fuuda­rrll'ucalislll, rampant anthropomorphism, political quietism, willingness to rll:1rtyrdolll, and messianic passivity. I .. For the curators ofa museum exhibit "11 the cultural legacy of Ashkenaz, "Ashkenazi heritage Iwlas a unique , ulmral phenomenon that developed in Gennan lands during the Dark Ages .IIK\ persisted...in German lands.... llt consisted of al nearly unbroken and .I~tonishingly uniform flow of thought and action." Ashkenazi hallmarks \\'l're: "disciplinl', meticulollSlles.~ and persistence," the modem notion ofthe "yekke" superimposed on the medieval past. IS 11/1: EIIC}'rlopediaJlldaica Ifol­
I. ,wing the entry in Ellcyclopedia IlI,;t] defined thejews ofAshkcnaz as "fl.lllda­mentalist and rigorist, COluonant mainly with intemalJewish sources, ideas, .llId customs... circulllscribed by study of the Bible and Talmud."16 Dan Miron a.Kribed to modem Hebrew lAshkenazic) literature a conception of IIIl'dicval Ashkellaz that served as the foil for Jewish modernity. "To the Illudemjewish imagination. at least to that which found its exprL~slonl!l rlludem Hebrew literature, medieval Ashkenaz was the non plus ultra ofthe
Ziollist Rrrum tCl History (New York and Oxford: 1995). pp. 120-23.

13. Yitzhaq Bat'r, "Ha-mcgamah ha-d1ti~l)eVTatit shcl 'Sefer f;bsidim'" Zioll J (1938): I-SO, t'Sp. 3-S; cf. thc quite differellt interpretation of Haym Solo­witchik. "Three Themcs inScfer l:iasidim," AJS RCiliewl (1976): 3II-S8, esp. 317·
I .~. Gerson Cohen, "Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and St1'hardim," Leo Baed:. Melllorial Lecture no. 9 (New York: 1967); repro in Marc Saperstein. cd., Esselllial Papers 011 l\1rssialli( fdOll('lIJl'llts alld Prrsollllfilies ill j ewish History, (New York [9')2), pp. ~02-233, esp. pp. 212, 219 (referenel'Sarc to the btter edition.) Cf. my " Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism Between Ashkenaz and Sepharad" Anilual Lecture ofdlC" Sclmanowirz Chair ofJewish History, Touro College. (New York: 1998) pp. 1-30.
I 'i. Sylvia Hershkowitz, introduction to Gertrude Hirschler, ed., tbhkclla.<:: 771t' GenllallJnllis/r Hrrira,er(Ncw York: Yeshiva University Museum. 1988), p. :>,-lii.
II•. Iij 3: 720, S.I'. "Ashkenaz." Ephraim E. Urbach, Ellcydopcdia Ivrit S. II. " Ashkenaz ...
ELlSIIEVA CARLEBACH

7"
Jewish exilic experience [their clllbr.Kl' ofmartyTdom... ]. It conjured up Jewish civilization most deeply rootL'd ill Galut." This symbolic Ashkcnaz "huddled physically in narrow ghettoes...voluntarily in thcir cultural spiri­cual ghetto."[7Jacob Katz, too, constructed a medieval Ashkenaz to serve a.<; a contrast to the Early Modern Jewish society hl' <lIlalyzl'd. particularly in ilS
relationship to the Christian world.
Ucforc we approach Katz'S A~bkellaz, let us acknowledge the complex history of the tenu's Us.1ge, and sollle ofthe earlier meanings invested in it. Medieval users of "AshkcIl3Z" intended highly specific geographical or
cu!tur:ll referellts. 'S Recall one of the few surviving $l'cular poems from medieval Ashkenazic lands, in which the French author skewers thejews of Ao;hkcnaz:
~rl~:.:i· n~.,;;;:~ 01'

When I left France and
jonnleyed down to Gcnnany, 'n,,' n:l:';~ r'N I;.x I found a people there as crud 'l1X;;;:j;l ,r:lX CZii ,:.,.,: C'.ll:':l
as ostrichl.-"S ill the dl'Sert. i.... '. ...L" .i.. ....
Oh, Israel is not fOI'S.1ken ... ...• ~,,, I".I·XX.· ·oJ
I sc~rchl'd up and down AIs.1Ct' n:l'X 01r':-X 'nb~n but could find nothing of note. n;'ili DUN ,vi" NI;.i except that, --Oh, perversity! ii~ii:l X';oD X,;,,: -there the WOllll'n ride o\'er the men. '~JJj t:,hxn ';.v nO~ii Oh. lsrncl is not fOI'S.1ken ... ...I:-XiO' jO':X X': ";I
I 3111 heartily sick ofthese A~hkt·nazilll. C'O:l:iX:: iiX!.:l 'n:!ip The), an: grim faced and C'Ui O·.l~ C~i:l on ":l have beards like goats. C'tli 1!'.:l:l I:.lpt ~N Don't bdil've a word they breathe. 1'Yi 1:,,1:-l~Nn!:iN Oh. brad is not forsah'n.. ...':-:-:"0-I''.:ll;.X Nt, ':l
(fhc editor IlOtes that the Hebrew word almall (I!'.:l';N) echoc'S thc French "allemand," so that the phrase can be read satirically: "A Genllan UewJis not an Israelite. ')19 Already for this fourtecnth-<:cncUfY author, the tenu Ashke­
17.
Dan Miron. "Ashkenaz: Modem Hebrew Literatufl' and the Pre-modem GcnnallJcwish E:-.:peril'nce,,. Ll'O Ihl'ck Mcmorial Lccnlrc nO.33 (Ncw York: (989), pp. 14-16.

18.
On the hi.~tol)' of the Il'nll Ashkl-naz, St':C infrr alia, Sblolllo Eiddbcrg, "Ashkenaz," in Gertrude Hirschlcr, l'd., Asllketw;;:; 1111;" C.cn1lmljrll'il!t Herita<~ (New York: Yeshiva Univt'rsity Museum, 1988); 1:] 3: 720. S.I'. "Ashkcnaz."

19.
POI.:m. transl~tioll, and note from T. Canlli. 'fl,r Prr{~ui" Bc)(lk oj Hrbrrul Vmt' (New York: 1981). p. 453·



EAR. LY MODERN ASHKENAZ
!lax referred to a set ofculnlral characteristics as well as to a specific geographic l'ntity. The tern} has enjoyed a long and flexible career ill this dual capacity. Yet so long as a relatively cohesive and stable j cwish settlement endured in olle cultural and geographical realm, we can acccpt that the self-definition of its members included some sense ofbelonging to a collective tradition, reach­ing hack over time. Katz is certainly justified in stating that some fonn of Ashkenazic collective idcntity Can be positcd for the nu."<iieval centuries.
The methodological difficulties begin when Katz stretches the medieval 1 conception of a culnlral unit forward into the Early Modem period and l'quates culrural identity with historical reality. His idealiz(."<i depiction of j ewish-Christian relations in the mcdieval world contrasts handily with an j l'qually homogenized Early Modem Ashkenazic jewry. Katz characterized jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Agt."S as having a high degree of economically vital interaction, leading to an intense awareness ofChristians and Christianity within IllcdievalJcwry. The modified definition ofChris­tians in the thought ofthe Mciri stands as thc highwatcr mark ofthis devel­opment. According to Katz, sllch a strong level ofinteractioll \vith Christian!! no 10IlgeL~~isfed in the Early Modern period, when Jews silllply stopped .\ rcla.tiug to the Christian world altogether. Katz viewed this as a negative development, characterizing this insularity as "lethargy" ofmental attitude.20 I Only the breakdown oftraditional j ewish patterns ofthought with the advent I of Haskalah and Hasirnsm evennlally ledjews ofAshkenaz to renewed ti~ with the Christian world and a reinvigorated Illentallife. If Katz had written his assessment ofthe Early Modem period slightly later. hc might have chosen the title "The Closing of the Ashkenazi Mind."
Katz arrived at this picture by insisting that the conceptual unity of Ashkell3z operated as an historical entity, ill his oft repcated definitions: "The j ews ofFr:l1lce and Gernlany, and their descendants in central and eastenl European cOuntries....These jews underwent b'Tcat changes between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries.".21 Katz wellt out ofhis way to justifY his inclusion ofPolish jewry. He wrote ofthe eastward migration ofGennan Jews and ofPolish j ews who regarded themsclvc..'S as a branch ofAshkenaz as defined by the linguistic cOllllllonality ofYiddish. Katz continued, on this basis alone, to argue: "No justification, therefore, is necessary for the inclu­sion ofPolish j ewry in a study that aillls at tracing the development ofjewish­Gentile relations within Ashkenazi jewry. We shall in fact, fail to find any marked difference between German and Polish jewry in this period, and we must regard both as historical descendants ofAshkcnazij ewry ofthe Middle
20. £w/lfJive/U'$j and Tolcrancr, pp. 136-37.
21. Ewillsil'f'IIW al/d Toil'TdllCt', p. 13 I.
ELi SH EVA CARLEBAC H

Agl·S."~~ K.u'Z nmcludl'd thiS poi!l[ by saying that "divergences" that oc­Olm:d, IIt'w rtlwkss, could be attributed to "historical Detors." This is prc­cisdy W]H'I\' hI' has hluITl'd the boundaries: the essentialist entity called Ashkl'11.I"jt" J I'WIY lIlay have diOcrcllt "historical conditioning" wherever it lIlay IX'. hut IX'I";IlISC it shan ..os llll' cons(:iousness ofbelonging to Ashkenazic
jl·wry. il (",111 lK' In';III'1i as an historical tlllit.
I 1\'1"\'. WI' 11 11151 paUSl' hl aSSl');," this sweeping inclusiveness. In temlS ofCOIll­IIll'n"j,tl ,Iud i;ullily til'S \W lIlay indcl'd speak of a meta-Ashkenazic inter­collllI'niu)!; \V".'h of relationships in the Early Modem period. Often con­tlm"lt'd ill Yiddish, privatc correspondence, wills and testaments, business doc.'UIIKIIL'i ami chrollick-s do, indeed, provide ample evidence ofintricate lll'tworks off:1111ily and business connections (although Katz barely rdates to the worlds ofYiddish writing). In other realms, "Ashkcl1az" is far from a his­torically valid constmct.13 Historical consciousnL"SS ofbclonging to a culrural duster does not mean that historical experience, even in the broadest sense, is parallel. David Rudemlan has already commented on the "difficulty of treating Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia and Gennan lands as one continuous landscape."~4 In his attempt to draw the definitive picture of Ashkenazic society at the eud ofthe Middle Ages, Katz glossed o ver some very critical distinctions existing within the world of Ashkenaz..IS
R abbinic sources served as Katz's Illost important guides in the construc­tion of his nonn; yet even sources frolll the realm of '/(l'nk//(lll and mill//(l.~ cannotsustain Katz's picture for the Early Modem period. It is certainly true that the elite of sixteenth-century Polish halakhists, such as Maharsha"l,
22.
E.W/lisillfllrss aud Tolerancc, p. 1]2.

23.
I thank Hillel Kieval for introducing this notion in his cOlUments at the conference. Benllrd Weinryh, 'nlt] ews vjPo/rmd: A SociI/I alld Btv/lOlIIi( His/ory <:f /heJewisli COlIl/lumi/y ill Pvlal1dfrom 1/00 tv l80v (Philadelphia: 1973), p. ix, argues that although there were myriad economic contact>; and partnerships between the Jews ofPoland and European AshkenazicJewry, their economic structure, their economic interrelations with the Christian society around them, and many of meir economic activities differed fundamentally.

24.
David Rudennan,] rlllis/z I1lOu.~ht ami Srielllijic Discovrry ill Early Modem Europr (New Haven: 1995), p. 67·

25.
It is perh3p$ superfluous to lIlention that by not specifying in his tides that he is dealing with "Je\vish-Christian" relations whenever he writes uJewish­Gentile" relations, Katz seems to be positing that the celltrnl experience ofJews in the diaspora was that ofJews within the Christian world. For an example of a fruitful comparntivc approach, see Mark R . Cohen, U"der Cm«m a"d Cross: "I111:Jeu'j iI' tire .Uiddl" A~rs (Princecol1: 1994).



I \ lt l.Y MODERN ASHKEN A Z
It "III"a, and Levush, regarded themselves as heirs and defenders ofAshkcna­" h.llakhic tradition against the powerful incursion ofSeph.udic influences, I'll linllarly of the S/III/t'a/l Amkl, and Lurianic kabbalah; in this sense it is " ·ll.Iinly fair to accept their "Ashkenazic" sclf-assessment.~6 However, al­III' 'Il~h Polish haJakhists ofthe sixteenth century may have regarded them­" Iw's as Ashkenazic to the core vis-a-vis Sepharad. they regarded themselves I' 11.lving superseded the geographical Ashkenazim [the Genllan scholars] in II lt·ir level of scholarship.'~7 Contemporary Gennan halakhists often be­,11••. IZlCd the lack of sensitivity by Polish halakhists to authentic traditions of A,hkl'naz. It. Chaim of Ulm (b. 1575) defended the ancient customs of h hkenaz ag:ainst the " new arrivals recently come to Ashkenaz. rabbis frOlll 1', .I.md."28 R. Hayim ofFriedberg. brother ofMahara"l, chastised the editor ,.1 RCIl1"a's Tomt I:/atat "The prernce ofthe proofreader mentions explicitly Idl.lt the work is appropriate fori I)oland, Russia [Ukraine]. Bohemia and 1\ I< Iravia ...and perhaps any place where the language ofAshkenaz [Yiddish! 1\ ~puken. The printer then added, ofhis own accord, an c).l'licit mention of I\~hkcllaz' as well as 011 the title page...in order to increase sales.".!9 R. 11.lyim protested the inclusion ofGennanJews in the publisher'S blurb. Any It'lldcllCY to fold the haJakhic precedents and customs ofGenllanJcws into 11 1{~c ofthe larger entity now called Ashkenaz was anathema to him, and he 1\ I llcrely one representative figure. Early modem halakhists operated with no I'
• lear-cut definition ofwho belonged within"Ashkenaz." In a recent illumi-! 11.lting study, Joseph Davis has anaJyzedjust how difficult it was to establish ,I consensus ofwho was"Ashkcnaz" vis-a-vis the acceptance ofthe authority , IIflhe Shu/ball An/kll. Some halakhists advanced a defmition based all terri-' lury, some on rnmily descent, and still others advocated all individualistic and I.Il'b"Cly voluntary corporate cOllception.30 Moreover, in the specific realm
.!fi. On this, see i.a. Elchanan Reiner, "The Ashkenazi Elite at the Beginning of the Modem Era: Manuscript \IS. Printed Book," Poliu 10 (1997): 85"'"98.
.!7. Jacob ElbaulIl, Petie/WI vt-hislagnll: 1/(1 yr/zirah ha-nlfi/(lllil-ha-sifmtilIu-Polill 11­ve-'Irlzvt Ashkcnaz be-shilhd ycmri 1/(I-/IIe'a11 "a-slzcs/I emil Ocrusalem: 1990), p.
15, n. 12, cites from several tshUllOt of Maharsha"l (#72, #85) that bespeak
disdain for the scholarly level of"hakhamim bend Ashkenaz."

.!K. Eric Zimmer, Galla/tall 5111:/ Hakhalllilll (Beer Shcva: 1999), pp. Z32, 234. Sec
pp. 210-16 on R . Hayilll b. Bezald of Friedherg's vociferous opposition to
halakhist:s who glossed over the Ashkenazic-Cemmn-Jewish--precedcnt,
and pp. 220-37, which originally appeared in Sinai 102 (1988): 226-40.

29. Zimmer. Callaifllll, p. 213.
30. I thank Professor Joseph Davis ofGean College for allowing me to read, prior
EL ISHEVA CARLEHACH

that Katz cmphasizedJewish-Christian relations, the very circles h~ cited to construct the seamless ideal unity were aware of the profuund dIfference between German and Polish cirCulllstancNY
In olle of his most innovative emphases, Katz noted that he would Ilot merely analyze Christian attitudes toward Jews,. dle cOl~v~ntional.focus of most snldics ofmcdieval and Early ModemJewlsh-Chruuall rclanons, but that he intended to study the "ch.luges ofatritude 011 the part ofJews toward
their non-Jewish environment," He further defined,
Attitude...implics, first of all, some ideo,logical apprec~ation o,r th,c nature and essence ofthe society with which the group 1Il question IS confrontc..>d....[ It) also has a practical bearing: The e~tenceofdIe Jews was depl'ndcnt upon cconomic relations WIth .cennl.t.'S.: but wc.re.not these relations illlpedcd by the mutually exclUSive religiOUS ~ffihatlOllS of the parties? The same qU{.'Stion is even more relevant With regard
to social intt::rcourse,

Here, we enter into another methodological difficulty, ~or i~ is o~e th.iug to discuss an ideological posture and ano.ther to ~quate It WIth hlstoncal experience, In the reahn ofjewis~l-ChriStlan rclatlOllS,. Katz ~mpl.oxed the rubric "social history" to uudenmlle th e processes o.f history Itsel~ At auy time, j ewish-Gentile relations may appear to ~ave d.lffered accoromg to the country cOllcem cd, but the differences were m reahty no.morc than muta­tions ofthe samc pattern."3~ Yet, to take only the mostobvIous cxample from
to its publication, his essay, "The Rcception ofthe S~ul~lall 'Arokh. and the Fonnation of Ashkenazic Jcwish Identity," formcollllng In AJS Rrvrflll,
3" Sec ElbauilI, Petjclurll!t-/lis'I~~ru', l:l, citation from Isserles: " . ,,::~ il1l.'i,'J:::l D:l~N m",~: 'J~:l U'~.li [l:lJ j,,: 1l Orlx.ti ]'X and similarly, R. Hayllll bl'u Bezalel Friedberg. who observed thatJews were not as downtrodden in Poland as they were in Gennan lands, While in Poland no Gentile. woul.d dare to hann a Jl'W. ill Genllan lands Jews were &cdy persecuted e"cn III their own spaces: ,,:-x nu"o: ,,~~ :l"~ '10::1, 'il~ U'I" 'j1 C~ .,";;:; !l'" [;':"0'] :Oi;' nl"O::
r11:;~" ~i" "':-1' ,'::''S;' :;,,~'X ~"1il'jj : 1;-:i: X:;"I '1l ,":l1 [ll:lOI" nl'S,I"] , . ... ......... n" '...,..... .,....... J.,.,._;..,.., "L...,.
':::J f"::;i' p'ti1" :;'~:l ",;;' c:'X ~:;, .•17. '.' . "....... , "" " .. ''''' -, .­""-1 0'" w, •••,-,'..,..,--r.,.... .' l..
.~ "..I.,~-.:;'n n~ m"n'='o o"~n~ ,~ Xi' ''In rx, Ol'n
_ ...
11­
::10;' fili":o,' :::l1it:i ,o,K m'S'x~ ":X. ,. ,m"'np= o'::n~ C',:l, T,t;!) ,.in
...in" ilp;; 10 o-pm" Thus, in the vel)' respect that K3tz cillphasized, the thinkers and leaders wen' aware of profound diffcrenct.'"S ill circumst.1J)ces.
32. Ew/usil'I'III'S$ 11/111 TolamlCl.'. p. xi.



t ARLY MODERN .... S H KEN .... Z
Ihis period, the historical patterns ofGennan and Polish jews could not 1i:1"1· ,Iiflcrcd more, In the first decades ofthe sixteenth century, most Genn3n j..:ws \wre expelled from the Imperial cities, culminating with the R egclIsblll).: ,'xpulsion of 15 19.Just as Polish jewry reached a criticalmas5 with new ;llld 'l't·ure Jewish settlement, Gemlanjewry approached its nadir ofinsecure and w ry sparse population distribution. This shift ch anged the demographic pro­lik ofGenllan jewry. With the e.xccption ofFrankfurt and W onns, none of r IIll' urban centers associated with Genllan Jewish settlement persisted. TIll' ,hllllinant profile wa.. a scattered, isolated one, oftcnjust several households,
I·JIL'se tiny communities did not cxist behind ghetto wall.., and althoughjews h·lldcd to live close together, this was not always thc case,)l The early­Ilrtxicm demOb'T3phic shift also marked a decline in tile intcllecrual profile of t ;l'm~anJews. With the sole exception ofFrankfi1rt, largc yeshivot ceased to ,·xist or to attract students ill Genuan lands. Gennan j ews sent their best ' Ilidents to Polaud and oftcn hired private tutors and rabbis from tbere, but ,·nuld rarely count on local scholarship to produce j cwish intcllectuallead­
• TS.l4 The Landjlllfl'IISd/lytCfl, which organized the scattt'red Genllanjews into I'lose confederations, canl10t compare in tenns ofpower and influence to thc I ;/·.,d ArlJdIr AratzQt, the council ofFour lands, nor could local kcllillol filllC­liun on the same level except in the largest comlllunitics,Jj
jt.·ws livillg in small groups among a Christian population with whom they II ltcfacted on an ongoing basis for every need diffcred in their relations to IIIl'ir Christian environment from those in larh'"Cr dusters with hundreds of i:lIl1ilies who could more easily afford to isolate thcmselve. .. fTom theif sur­
13. Microhistories ofJewish cOlllmunitk-s in the Early Modem period in Gcnnan
lands that fit this pattent abound. For an example, st'e Claudia Ulbrich, S/ur/mllil

lind Mm~ar({e: Mllchl, Gescll/ee/lt IUIiI Rdigiol1 in cilia liimllie/I('1I Cesell$clrafi de$ J8. Jallflwlldcrts. (Asl.:hkenas. Zeitschrift flir Geschichtc llnd Kultur der Juden. Beihefi -1-; Vicnna-Cologne-Weimar: Bohlall Vcrb g, 1999).
.\-I. Khone Shmeruic, "Bahurim lllc-Ashkcnaz be-yeshivof Polin," in Shmuel
Ettingcr, Salo Baron, Ben Zion I)inur, Yisrael Halperin, cds., Stf(f )'OI'f'I/r.
'lilzllaq Bat'T Qcrusalem: 1961), pp. 30-1--17,

l:i. On thcofl:,'1Ulization ofGenllanJcwryin this period, s..:c Daniel]. Cohen, "Die
Landj udenschaften in Hes~en-J)anJlst.ldt bis zur Ernanzipation als Orb>alle der
jiidischc Sclbst\,crwaltung," Nrrm/lIlJldrrt jallre Gesdlirlm Ii(f jlldell iu Hesseu
(Wiesbadcu: 1(83); Eric Zimmer, HarmQny aud Di$(OM: Au Alii/lysis of Iilr
Declille ofjl'wi$h Self Gcwruml'll' ill 151/1 Carlll'}' Europe (New York: 1970):
idclll,jewis/r Syllt>ds ill GmllmlY duri".!! Ilrc Lale Middle A.l!ts (New York: 1978):
Mordcchai Brt'uer in Cell/lIm:fnl-isll Hi$to,}, i" i\1odem Times, Michael Meyer,
ed. (New York: 11)66), pp. (1)-1--208, and source cited at p, 398.

7(' ELISHEVA CARlEUACH
roundillbrs. The "ghetto mentality" (for there was no cllforcedJewish space
in Poland for Jews in this period), of "intensely Jewish life ofthe ghetto, a
relationship dominated by Jewish exclusiveness" that Katz associated with
Polish Jewry was not the reality for most Jews in Gennan-spcaking lands.36
Ironically. in cities that imposed real ghettoes, whether Venice, Fr.tnkfurt, Qr
Prague,Jewish minds were never dosed to the Christian world, andJudaisllI

there cannot be characterized as a "closed system of thought."
The astonishing growth, settlement patterns, and economic role ofJews in Poland in this period differed fundamentally frol11 the conditions in Ger­mall lands. Sala Baron saw in the rapid expansion ofPolishJewty an "epochal transfOnllation." In tcnllS ofrapid fe-adjustment to a less hostile environment and myriad economic opponunities, Baron viewed Polish Jews as closer to the jews of medieval Islam or Christian Spain: "Population growth of the dimensions experienced by Polish-Lithuanian Jewry during the crucial centmy and a halfbefore the Cossack uprising of 1648 also helped give rise to a revolutionary transfonllatioll in the general social and economic Struc­nlrc ofAshkcnazicjewry."nJews and Christians in Poland worked together in a variety of economic activities, a far richer pattem ofcontinuous inte~ action than Katz's depiction allows.38 T hose ci~es that adopted the policy de 1101/ tolemlldisjl/dads did so out offearof)ewish economic competition, a testi­mony to j ewish success in penetrating vital aspects of the Polish urban economy.19
Katz defined insularity as "the disappearance of tension with the outside world," characterized by three illiponant changt."S. Firs..s that "polemics vir­tually cease." Thi.~ hallmark characterized only Early Modem Poland. In Genllan and central European lands, polemical encounters continued, although sporadically; indeed, all the exceptions to the rule that Katz cites refer to GeOllan-speaking lands. The pn."Sellce or absence ofpolemical en­
36. 1.:'\'dllsil1CIIW (/lid T O/Crdllct', pp. 132-33.
37. Salo Baron. A Social alld Rrlt~i(>lIs History ojlilejcII1s (New York: 1976), v. 16, PP· 21 4-15·
38. On the population ofPolish Jews, see Shaul Stampfer, "Gidul ha-uchlusia vc­hagira be-yaludut Polin-Lita be-et Ila-I.ladashah," ill Israel Bartal and Israel Guttman, eds., KiYllII1 Vt-SIII~IICr: l'elllldri Fo/i" Ir-f/orotcilll~m Oerusalem: 1997).
v. I, pp. 263-85. On thC'lr C'<:onomlC Integration, S<.."C Moshe Rosman, "Ychudd Polin ad shenat 1(i48: Mcgamot politiyor, kalkaliyot, vc-hevratiyot," pp. 59­82, in ule sallie volume; Edward Fram, Ideals Fa(t Rrfl/ily: jtrvish LillI alld life ill H)/alld, 155crJ655 (Cincinnati: 1997), ch. I.
39· Jacob Goldberg, HfI-lirvmil II<1-yelllfdit be-mallllrklll.'t !lolil/-Uta; trans. Sophia Lassm.11l Ocrusalem: 19Cj() , pp. !)-80.



I i\ ItLY MODERN AS H KENi\ Z
,olluters between jews and Christians in this period had mllch k"SS to do with
Illtcrnal change ofattitude on thc part ofJcws than with extemal hctors. T Ill"
Itl'fonnation in Gennan lands led to periodic bouts of interest ill je\~sh
, nnversion; the lack of any central political power in Gennan lands (as
R ichard Kiekheffer hasafbrued ill another context) kept convcrsionary inter­
I·~t offpolitical agendas duough most ofthe Early Modem period. [n Poland
Illl' virtually total lack ofinterest in jewish cOllversion by the Polish C hurch
111 this period, rather than mental isolationism on the part of Jews, detcnnined

o

,Ill' absence ofpolemical ..tension .....
The second hallmark of Early Modcm insularity noted by Katz w as a lack

\ICinterest in seeking proselytes and a contradictory attitude toward apostates.
This is a somewhat unusual criterion, for surely the seeking of proselytes
.1Iuong Christians was not a cOll1mon feature ofmedieval jewish life, even if occasional exceptions occurred. In other respecl~, such as the facilitation of , tile retum ofpenitent apostates, Katz is right on the mark for Polish jewry, hut not for Gennan lands, where many meslllllll",adim attested tnat vigorous \'olllnumal efforts were made to prevent conversion out, and to facilitate the return of penitent apostates.4'
The third basis for Katz's analysis was the reaction of Polish Jews to the pOb'Toms of1648-49. The willingIll ..."Ss to martyrdom, he aTbrued. along with thl' absence ofpolemical exchange, betrayed how distant the world ofPolish jcws had grown from that ofChristians, for the encounter was utterly dcvoid ofj c\vish polemical engagement. Here. recent scholarship has shown that only subsequent chroniclers saw Qiddl/slt Haslu!1II in these eve'll~; contem­porary jews were not b'Cnerally given the choice ofbaptism or death. Later IiteTlry hands tTansfonm ..-d murder into manyrdolU.41 Moreover, although it
40.
Richard Kieckhcficr, Rcprrssion of Heresy ill Medieval GenllallY (Liverpool: 1979). On the lack of interest in converting Jews, see the recent work by Magdalena Teter, "Jews in the Legislation and Teachings of the Catholic Church ill Poland (1648-l n2)," Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2000, esp. ch. 3, "Bryond AdversosJudacos."

41.
Edw1rd Fram. "Perception alld Reception ofRepelltant Apo5t:1tt.'S in Medi­
evalAshkt!naz and Prelllodem "oland," AJS Rtltil.'ll' 21 ( 19l)6): 299-339. Con­
ceming the effortS made by Gennan Jews [0 facilitat~ ute retum orapostates,
sec my forthcoming article '''lch will dich nach Holland schich'l)': Amsterdam
and the Reversion to Judai~m of Gennan-Jewish COIlVCrt:$," in Richard
Popkin and Marrin Mulsow, eds., &errl C"lIIlt'rriOlls ill Amsterdam (Archives of
the History of Ideas Scrit.'S, Kluwer Academic Publishers, forthcoming).


42.
Edward Fram, "Creating a Tale ofMartyrdol1l in Tulczyn, 16 .. 8," in Elishe\'3.
Cariebach,Jollll Efron, and David Myers. eds.• }crl';sh Hislory midjewish J\lcl/lory:



ELiSHEVA CAR.LEBACH

is true that some Jews in Gcmtan lands were still rejecting conversion as an alternative to death, many more were publicly embracing Christianity with no immediate coercion whatsoever.
But Katz did not set out to explore only intemaiJewish attitudes. He also looked to the shift in the attirude o(Chrisrian society concerning the possi­bility ofa place for Jews as individuals within society. Here the contrast between Polish and GennanJewry could not be starker. The picrure painted by Katz, especially in £'l.:c/lIsi,'clless Illld To/am/le, ofa Jewry so completely insular that "Christianity never presented a temptation,"'u may have been true for Polish Jewry, but it is the diametric opposite ofthe Gemlan experi­ence. This is true both for the attitudes ofChris tim society to Jews as well as the reciprocal attitudes ofJews toward Christianity. In Gennany, the Protestant Churches sporadically made serious attempts to reach out toJews. Most notable amongthese,Jakob Spener'5 Pietist movementspawnedseveral succcssnli missionary offipring, the institutes of Edzard in Hamburg and Callenberg in Halle_ More importantly, Christian Hebraists throughout Ger­lllan lands sustained a centuries-long effort to represent Judaism and Jewish life to a Christian audience. They employed Jews as rotor.; and infonllants. Their contact \vithJews and knowledge ofJudaism yielded a rich bounty in converts to Christianity and left virtually no comer ofjewish ritual life un­inspected.! Converts from judaism as well as Christian Hebraists set out on a
( colossal project that spanned three centuries and produced translations into Genllan ofmanyJc\vish texts, handbooks ofJewish customs as detailed as any sifer m;II/ltlxim, and even dictionaries and guidebooks to instmct Gennaru i.n Yiddish. Any Gennan Christian who wanted to prepare for an encounter with Jew5 could find ample material in his vernacular with which to infoml and ann himself, and many did just that . .(.4
No similardevelopment took place in Poland. From the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century, the Catholic clergy of Poland fought 011
" \
many fTonts: "Notjust Genllall style Protestantism, but Greek Orthodoxy, and the Islam of tile Tatars were some of the many religions and denomi­
...."
.' nations contending for space." Even as the Catholic Church began to consol­idate its powerin Poland, conversion oftheJews remained the preoccupation
Essays ill HOllorCl.fYowfHayim YmlSftalmi (Hanover and London: 1998), pp. 89
112.

43. £Wf'lSiVf'1I1!S$ alld ToirrallCl', p. 155·
44-See my book, Dil>idtd &JU/s: GlIIvttfsJromJlltlaism ill Early Modem Gmllatr Lmr/) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 20(1) for aspects ofnlissiOI1 and conwr ' ;011 ill sixtCCllth-to eighteenth-century Genn:m lands.
EAR.LY MODER.N ASIIKENAZ
~fseveral individuals but never a concerted effort on the part o f all)' l'S!";lh.
hslullcnt. The ntagnate economy still depended too heavily on the servin' of
Jews. Those members of the clergy who wisht:d to approach Jews were
mocked for their utter lack ofunderstanding ofthe basics ofjudaism. They
tended to revert to the, by then, primitive method ofciting biblical proof­
texts and. in some cases, the kidnapping ofJewish children for conversion.
No parallel movement to the Christian Hebr:lists ofGenllanlands took root
in Early Modem Poland. By and large, the Church in Poland thro\lgh the
t'ighteenth century lnade no concerted overtures to the largest Jewish com­
munity within the Christian world-1-5
The crisis oftraditional ideals represented by the Genllan Haskalah was a
complex historicalllloment precipitated by many factors. internal and exter­
nal, long-tenn and immediate. One strand ofthe move toward refashioning '
Jews and their religion was the internalization of the Christian critique of
Judaism due had been articulated by the converts and Hebraists in the previ­
ous cenrurics. Many ofthe initial efforts at educational, economic, religious,
and even linguistic and sanorial refonn ofjudaism in late-eighteenth-and
L'3rly-nineteenth-century Gennan lands focused on items that had been the
subjects ofprior Christian critique. The "crisis" was not tbe result ofpurely
intemal jewish developments, but of the prolonged discussion ofJews and Judaism in Gennan to which theJews were not impervious. Since 110 such discussion took place in Poland in the sixteenth to eighteenth cenmries, no such absorption ofChristi all criticism could have taken place, regardless of how frequcnt the social and cconomic exchanges.
The attempt to view all Ashkenaz with the same lens brought Katz to the
troublesome need to find an equivalent disintegration ofJewish attitudL'S in
Eastern Europe to the Gerntall Haskalah. He found it by dr.l\ving a purely
chronological line to the 11lid-e.ightcenth centtlry, and viewed Hasidism as a
rupture from tradition, a move much criticized in subsequent historiography.
Ofthe two movements, only the Gemlan Haskalah represented an engage­
ment with the opinions and arguments expressed in the Christian critique.
Otheraspects ofKatz's focus onJewish attitudes toward Christianity in the Early Modem period bear closer scmtiny as welL In order to construct the Jewish nonns, K..tz chose sources produced primarily by two sets ofJewish dice: the rabbinate, as represented both by halakhic sources as well as drasllOl and /Ill/Har literature; and communal records that promoted a view of the ufficial conununity as run by its lay leadership. Katz saw cOlllmunal institu­
-IS. Teter, op. cil., eh. 3, andJacob Goldberg, Ha-lIIumlJri", «-l/IlJlllkkhtt PtJ/ill-Li(a
Ot'l11s..lem: 1985).

ELISHEVA CA RLEBA CH

1'10
tions as super-personal aggrcgatt.'S that also behavcd ac.cor~ing to nonns, within which the individuals must fimction:46 He mamtalllcd that th:sc sources provided as good a picture of "tradition," the ideal past ofJeWIsh
society, as historians could ever get. . The usc ofJewish thinkers such as Mahan"l and Rem"a .to c~emphfy Jewish insularity is problcmatic even all its own tenus. Their phlloso~hy
placed Christians and Christianity in particular spaces .on .an ontolOgical plane, but each man's philosophical approach to ~on-~eWlS~ hfe and thought did not even necessarily mirror his own pragillatlC onentatiOIl, let alone th.e attitudes ofhis contemporaries from every social class. Mahara"l's thotlght.ls deeply sigllifical1t for the intellectual h~story ofdle period, but for the ~oClal history? Katz's statement "~ahara"l ls an ~x~,ellcnt example of a thin~er whose ideas cOlltndict the eVIdence of reality suffices to tll.ake the pO~llt. Philosophical works cannot function as the basis for cOllStnlCtl.Oll of a s~clal­historical norm. Katz's assertion that there is only one unchanging and SilUple
conception of Christianity in the Jewish world,
rn~O'i1i1 jlnln S~ i1'~Z' fKJ"J O!:;'::l miiT'i1 uN iiM",":; n'nKJ~' nnN jlO':JiI


appears to simplify the more complex reality .in c~nforrni~ "with the ideals of "social history," but it does not reflect iustoncai rcalia. 7 Sourct.-s ~hat reflect ideals held by the most articulate and leading Segllle~1tS of socIety cannot be read as constructions ofthe lived reality ofthe less artlculate classes. Even draslUlh literature, arguably the most revealing among his sources ? f sociaJ nonns and f.lilun-'S, was more ofa literary genre dIan a record ofsOCIal conditions, with scholars in this period often basing their senllons on pre~e­I dents that tended to emphasize the scholarly and exeg:tic~l over pracncal concems."s Sermons were carefully edited before pubhcanon and, hke. all homiletic literature, often cxaggerated for the sakc of emotional or rheton.cal effect. In cities where intnlsive C hristian censors obsessed over subversive Jewish incitenlcnt against Christianity, Jews would have sclf-cellsore~ any statcll1etlt.~ in homiletic collections that could be constnled as offenSIve to Christians and Christianity. In late-seventeenth-cenrury Prague, for e~aIll­pic, Jt.'Suit influence brought the govenUllent to dcmand p~e-censorsh'l} of Jewish sennollS. Preachers would be requircd to present thelr sennons three
Ibid., p. 300.
For a picture ofaJt'wish community whose profile deviatl-~ i~ so many w<lys

47· from the idealized nann, see "The Prague Jewish Commumty In the Late 17th and Early 18th Cenrurics," jl/daica Bohemia 36 (2000); 4-140. I thank Dr. Plitik for sharing his work with me prior to its pllblication.
48. Elba\lll1, Pc/mill/ ve·l!is/a.em/, pp. 223-47·

EAR LY MODER N ASHKENAZ
days prior to delivery in H ebrew "with German translation.""9 How couid
any scrmons pllbli~hed undersuch circumstances yield a true picture ofJewish
attitudes toward Christians and Christianity?
By relying on the literature ofthe official classes, Katz did not include ill his construction ofthe nann the vast vemacular world of Yiddish in Early Modem Ashkenaz. thus f.liling to reflect the lives and ideals of women and llnlcamed men, as Chava Weissler has argued for another context.50 Her argument is particularly valid for the realm Katz wisht.-d to illuminate most. as Jewish women often sClVcd as the primary interfuces in the most quotidian realms ofJewish-Christian transactions. Jewish women engaged in a wide range of c01l11l1crci<ll and cconomic activities, traveling to fairs, lending money, and cottage-indusny manufacturing. This ubiquitous access could easily lead to religious terrain. From the early si.xteenth century in Genllan lands, as the attention of Christian polemicists was drawll to the domestic aud private sphere, Jewish women figured more prominently in thcircxpositions ofJcwish life and became direct targets ofthdr appeals. Christianillissionarics sought aut J ewish wives and daughters when the family men proved intrac­table. Missionary-minded theologians fonnulated arguments specific<llly to persuade Jewish women and reached Ollt toJewish women direcdr as having the most to gain from convl;!rsiou to C hristianity. Thc missionary literature mocked the Jewish religion for assiglling inferior roles to women in Jewish custom and liturgy, and criticized Jewish society for the gender differen­tiation in Jewish education. This became a common topos in the literature aimed at promoting conversion among Genllan and Central EuropeanJew­ish women.
The tcnsions, compromises, and exchanges that took p....ce in the daily interactions betweenJewish women and their Christian milieus are reveaJed in f.ullily chronicles, ethical wills and testaments, and private correspondence. To take some illustrative eX:llllples, when Christian HebraistJohann Chris­toph Wagenseil hoped to lure aJewish ('uHily to remain ,vith him in Altdocf, he entered into a prolonged correspondence with Bella Perlhefter, the Prab'11C native who adamantly refilsed his overtures.SI A Yiddish will \vrltten by a
49.
St'e the primary documents in Putik, "The Prague Jt>wish Community," appendix I.

50.
See [he exchange between Katz and Chava Weissler, " Law, Spirituality, and Society," j r.1fIisII Slfia/ Studies 2 (191]6): 87-98, 105-8.

51.
Hemard Weinryb, "Historisches und Kulturhistorischt'saus Wagenscils hebrii­ischcll Brid\vechscl," Mlmatss(/Jrifi frir C'.cs(/,icilte IIIld Wmeuu/uifi des jm/cII' tlwllls. N.S. 47 (1939): 325-41.


'" ELiSH EVA CARLEBACH
"­
jt'wish woman near Manl1heim in 1713 contains a prolegomenon stating that if
Heaven forbid, during my final illness, I will be induced by Others, ... to thoughts or deeds agaill5t the One and Only God or his oral Torah. even against olle tiny fraction thereof, I hereby pronounce before witnesses that they should be invalidated ... and any thoughts against the Jewish religion should be as naught,Sl
Alternatively, when Pamas Abraham Jacob wrote his will, he included the Christiau poor of his village. S3 Members of a society that lived completely insularly and without tension tow3rd its surroundings would not have produced these cases. If. in fact, PolishJewish women did not live with sllch friction~ even though they were equally active in economic activities that brought them into contact with Christians. then the contrast deselVcs timher study.
Although the methodological assumption that there was a Jewish popular or folk culture that mn counter to the elite, mbbinic culture is beset by serious difficulties. wc can at least assume that rabbinic culture had long leamed sclf­restraint reb'drding expressions that aroused the ire ofofficial censors search­ing for anti-Christiana, whereas the less conspicuous stratum ofculture that found iG way into some Yiddish writing had ncver made similar adjusollents. It constituted a private and hidden layer of Jewish culture and the posture toward Christianity embedded in it ought to be taken into account. It re­flected a realm ofdaily transactions betvteenJews and Christians, the tensions that accompanied them, the strategies adopted by Christians to penetrate that world, and those adoptedbyJews to repel conversion effectivclythat halakhic aud official communal sources often did not reveal. Jewish resistance to Christian overtures was embedded deep within the culture ofAshkenaz and was expressed in many ways, some polemical and aggressive. others subtle, profound, and hidden. In their autobiographlcal and ethnographic texts, converts fromJudaism to Christianity constantly alluded to a cwrore alllong COlllillon Jews that was different from the text-based image of the Jewish religion.
The omission ofthis type ofsource material is particularly regrettable be­cause a pioneering work in Jewish social history should have given voice precisely to those classes that official history neglected. Katz's choice of sources precluded such a transfonnation within his own work. Yet Katz did
52. Joseph Bloch, "Le testamentd'une fellmlejuiveau COilUIlCllcemeilt du XVIIIe siccle," Rbme dtJ budtJ juives 90 (193 I): 156.
53. Ulbrich, Simiamilllnd Marxarctt, p. 315.
EARL Y MODERN ASHKENAZ
write one ofthe first attempts at a social history of Early ModemJcwry. I lis tum to social history was path-breaking and facilitated monumental challh"l.·s in the research agenda ofJewish historians. Because Katz's tum to allew disci­plinary mode came from a scholar who had clearly mastered the primary sources for intellectual history and wanted to expand the boundaries, his work had a profonnd impact on Jewish academe. Decades after his books w('rc published, and despite the bodies of criticism from various angles, social history has become one of the fundamental ways to explore Jewish history and the Early Modem period has emerged as a scpamtc unit in the design and construction ofits periodization.



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

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Unrrill, Jay Michaol, 1956· lat
Tho prldo of Jacob:


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4Jb3.95-aO
Hmvard UflilJersity
Ccuterfor Jewish Studies

THE PRIDE OF JACOB


Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work

edited by
Jay M. Harris

Distriblltrd by
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England

2002

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE
Jay .M. Harris . ............... •..•........••..... ... 7


R.EBEL IN FRANKFURT:
THE SCHOLARLY ORIGINS OF JACOB KATZ

Dmlid N. Atlycrs ............ . ............... • •...... 9


JAcon KATZ ON HALAKHAH AND KAUUALAH Israel Ta~SI/JI/a . ..... ......... . ...... . . .... ........ 29
JACOB KATZ ON JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE MIlJDLE AGES DlWid &rger .. . ..................... . . .. ... ..... . 41
EARLY MODERN ASHKENAZ IN THE WRITINGS OF JACOB KATZ
Elisl'CJJ(f Carfebadl . ................... . ........ . . . .. 65


JACOU KATZ AS SOCIAL HISTORIAN Pallia E. H yma" . ...... . ...... . .... • ............... R 5
JACOB KATZ ON THE O IUGINS
AND DIMENSIONS OFJ EWISH MODERNITY:

THE CENTRALITY OF THE GERMAN EXPERIENCE
Dtivid EllcliSOll .................................... 97


How CENTRAL WAS ANTI-SEMITISM TO THE H ISTORICAL WRITING OFJACOB KATZ? Richard I. Cohm . .... . .......... . ....• . . ... 125
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A IluN<;AIt. IAN IlI IAI'SODV IN BLUE: J I\( 'IIH K A !'I:S T AR!)Y SURltENDER TO HAGAR'S ALLURE M i,I/"d /0,:. Sif/wI" . ............................. . ... 141
J A< 'j )11 KAT/, { IN I IAI AKIIAI-I, ORTHODOXY, AND HISTORY /1/"\'/,,. i l"lh,'fi<ll . ....... ... ...... . . ................ 163
J At 'j III 1(/\ I /. AS A t)f\S]\JnAT[ON ADVISOR III/m,ll/lit" 1:"11..:",' . ···················[7]


PREFACE

In May, 1998, the world ofJewish scholarship lost onc afits last giants, Pro­fessor Jacob Katz. Thc Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University joined the rest of the academic world in mounting the loss ofour frequent b'l.IL"St and teacher. Never 3b>ain would this w ondcmilmind (and engaging raconteur) grace our lecture halls or enliven Ollr conferellces. The loss was great anu keenly fclt. A COlllmemoration was in order.
As Professor Katz's yorzcit approached, we began plans for a conference to coincide with his second, devoted to a review ofhis multi-faceted corpus. It is indicative ofthe L'"Steclll ill which Professor Katz was held that putting together this conference was an unusually easy task. Although scholars are SOIlK'timL'S loath to be distracted from their work, in this case the many schol­ars whose work appears in these pages-most ofwhom had Ilevcnvnttcn on Katz bt:fof(.~jllmped at the chance to participate in this confercnce. And each in tum produced an incisive treatment ofhis or her chosen topic. A<; a result of theirgr.tcious efforts, Katz's remarkable range and versatility became readily apparent to all; even those familiar with his work could only marvel when confronted with thl' near filII m ellu of Katz's interests over a short time.!
I will eschew the comlllon practice of editors and refrain from describing each paper in a paragraph. Such descriptions as 1 could produce would scarcely dojusticc to the richness that is in store for the reader. I wish to note only that, in tlle pages that follow, Katz's work is subjected to its fuir share of criticism. Although sOllie might deem this improper in a volume such as this,
,. The olle major area of interest not discllSSCd at the conferellce and not rep­resented fully in these pages is Katz's work onJcwish nationalism. As our plans were coak-scing, Katz's student, YoscfS.limon, published;t paperon that vel)' subject, and another trcat:ruent so soon altcr seemcd supcrfluous. See Yosef Salmon, "The Historical Imagination ofJacob Katz: On thi.' Origins ofJewish Nario!lalislll ."Jt~l,ish Social Stl/dil's 5/3 (!999): /61-79.


How CENTRAL WAS ANTI-SEMITISM TO THE HISTORICAL WRITING OF JACOB KATZ
Richard 1. Cohen TI,e Hebrew Uuiversity, jen/sa/em
&
For IllanyJacob Katz is associated with his untiring efforts to uncowr the ways in which traditional judaism maintained itsdf, faced the development of Kabbalah, and encountered the threat to its existence in the modem period.I For othe~ he is known for his seminal studies on the precursors ofZionism and some of their religious fib'tm!S, notably Rabbis Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and Yehuda Alkalay, and his more programmatic es.~ays on the nature of the movement and its evolution. Another aspect ofKatz's historical involvement was related to his inquiries into the failure ofJewish integration into Genmm society, the recurrent appearance ofanti-Jewish attitudes. and the ultimate tragedy ofEuropeanJewry during W orId War II. Though all regions ofJew­ish history engaged his interest and research. Gennan-Jewish history in medi­eval and modem times lay at the center of his professional involvement. in no small measure due to the events of World War II. Indeed, one is struck, in reviewing Katz's work, by the comldSting temperament that reigned over his oeuVTC. Alongside the optim.istic and open nature ofthe Illan as an individ­ual and an historian. there lies the pessimism ofthe European Jew ofthe previ­ous generation, who was forever gr:tppling \vith the implications and mean­ing of the Holocaust and the enduring generations ofanti-Semitism. As he wrote in Cmlllllelltary in 1975: "Whatever subsequent gcneration.~ will Jll:l.ke cfit, for the generation tbat lived through it the Holocaust can only be charac­terized as a trauma, a wounding experience beyond the reach ofintellectual conceptualization.".2 Yet, he could not relinquish his search for an historical understanding. Similar to historians of his generation of the likes of Leon
I. For an updated biography of Katz's writings, see dle appendix to ZirJII 63, 4 (1998): 3g-(i1, "In Memory ofJacob Katz" (Hebrew).
2 . JacobKacz, "Was the Holocaust Predictable?" CommNllary LlX, 5 (May, 197,5):
45. For versions ofthis article in other languages, sec ibid., no. 144, p. 49.
ItICHARD t. CO HEN

u(,
I'oliakov,jacob Talmon, and Shmuel Ettinger, Katzdid not accept a "lachry­mose conception" ofJewish history, but wa.~ motivated, as they were, to uncover rhe ultimate reasons and sources ofthe tragedy ofEuropean jewry.3 This essay will argue that though Katz never researched directly the Holo­caust prr sr, many of his studies-fur removed from the Holocaust at fuce valuc--wcre infonlled by a profound drivc to cxplain why thejews, and not auy other people, wcre the victims ofthis event in history. Put differendy, how the ultimate tragedy of the j ews rc1att~s to their prcvious history and cannot be simply confined to the historical events ofthe years [933-45. This argument requires a preliminary mcthodological COlllment.
[n 1958, the same year that jacob Katz published his classic work Traditio" allli Crisis, Femaud fir.lOde! published in Ali/lillI's his conceptual presentation oftime-framcs in history, in particular his programmatic study ofthe"IOllg1f1' dUffc." Braude! argued that mcntalities ofindividuals and collectives-their values, beliefs, rituals, customs, and 1l0nlls-are shaped by developments that arc not apparent to all but have a definite impact on historical development. Moreover, firaudel wa.~ cOllcemed with the interaction ofa large network of structurt.'S, be they socit'ty, culture, politics, cnvironment, or t'conomics. Change within these stmcturt.'"S evolves slowly and can be evaluated, at tiIllt:S, within the perspective of short, medium, and long time-periods, though 13raudcl advocated mort' and more the "lo"~If/, du,ee" as the necessary tool for the historian.~ Traditio" alld Crisis, I would ar~,'ue, did just that, choosing the long-frame of history, although Katz at that period was hardly aware ofthe development in French historiography from the early d-lYS of the AliI/all's. Katz's presentation in Tmditiml alll{ Crisis posited the centrality ofthe evolu­tion ofthe jewish "organic" unity from the Talmudic period until the late eighteenth century. This unity detennined, to a vcry significant measure, the waysjewish society preserved its uniqueness, developed remarbble intemal resiliency, countered non-jewish fib'1.lres, structured its laws oforganization and inter-£"1lllily relations, and so 011. What was central to Katz's af1:,'1.uuent was also at the root ofthe Braudclian notion offO"J~IIl' dlfrer. actions taken by jC\'IS at different moments ofthe post-Talmudic period, even centuries later, were, to a significant degree, influenced by this mennlity. huerestillgly, it
3. On the laehrymusc conception ofJewish history, see Robert Libcrles, 5(1/(1 IViltlllayrr &roll. Arrhitl'C/ OfJewish HisfMy (New York and London: 19')5), pp. 338-59·
+. Ft'mand I3raudd, "Histoirc et sciences socialf;$; la IOllgUl' duree," lllllla/es: «OIl(llllil'5, so<iet(IS, cil'ilisdfiolls IV ([958): 725-53; ail abbreviatt'd English venion ofthe anicle was publishl'd in F. Br.lt1dcl, 011 His/ory, traIlS. Sarnh Matthews (Chicago and London: 1980). pp. 25-54·
[[OW CENTRAL WAS ANTI-SEM[T ISM 1':'7
was only in the last decade ofhis life-as far as I have been able to tIdCl'"-th:l [
Katz commented on the notions ofthe French orientation. He did so CI-iti­
c.llly in his essay "On j ewish Social History" (1991),S claiming that "short"
.Iud "long" "are relative tenns that say nothing about the characteristic

I~·atures of the specific time-periods being examined" while suggesting a different characterization. He proposed using the tenns "epochal" and "supra-epochal"-adding his definition: "A period of time that can be characterized in tenns ofconstant features is epochal, while a phenomenon whose illlpact stretches over several individual periods or epochs is supra­epochal." The supra-epochal nature becomcs apparent through analysis of .1 specific historic problem. Yet his dismissal ofthe Frcm:h lenuinolob'Y did not persist. Several years later, in his A TilllcJor lllqlliry-A Time for Rt;j1utiolt-­published shortly after his death-Katz reversed his earlier objection to the norion of /(JlIglle dllrt!c. He now saw its value as an important principle, as it makes one <lware that a contemporary event has its source "deep in the far past...(influenced by) factors that act in a hidden manner over a long period.'" This reevaluation appean in the central chapter of thc book, l'ntided, quite significandy though uncharacteristically for ~tz, ":The Course of)ewish History ill the Shadow ofChristianity" (rn"j~Jii "0 it~::i:! ii~j'ii~ii ;Pii~O~i1ii l"i1~).H
5. "OnJewish Social History: Epochal and Suprn-Epochal Historiogrnphy,"Jl'wish His/(lry 7 (Spring, 1993): 92ff. The essay W.lS originally published in the TouT)' Fl"Scschrift in 1991 in Gennan; SN· Katz bibliography (n. I, above, no. 27+).
6. Ibid. , p. 93.
7.
Although this is the only refcrence to 1(IIIJ~lIr diITiY, it is Illeaniubrful coming when it dOl"S in the context ofhis discussion ofanri-SemitisllI,Je"\vish nation­alism, and their historical outcome. St.'eJacob Katz, A Tilllefor Illqlliry..........A Tillie f(lr Rejlectioll. A Histori((l/ &"Y 01/ israel t/lfOI(eh the A.ecs [in Hcbfl'w] Oerusal...m: I !J{)8/99), p. 47. This remains the only untr:lnslated book by Kat'J:, yet it con­tains some illuminating perspectives on his historical writiug. The first chapter, entitled "History and the Historians, New and Old," wa~ trans1ated by Ada l"tapoport-Albert and published as a special UookJet by The Institute ofJewish Studies, University College, London, 1999 with a short appreciation ofKatz and his writings by Chimen Abramsky and R.apoport-Albcrt. This booklet is absent from the Katz bibliography (see 11. I, above).

8.
Katz had originally calk'd the chapter "Between Strangeness and Integration" (m:~no;"1' nnl r :); 11Owcver, after the hook was edited, he changed the title to the <lbove. Thi~ was his own suggestion and not that of the editor, Mr. Yehezkd Hovav of The Zalman Shaz,"1r Center for Jewish History in Jeru­salem. I thank Mr. Ho\'3.v lor providing me with a photocopy with Katz's halldwrittl.'l1 corn'crioll.


, 'S H " " .. ,I I' I ,,'III N

'I 'Iw IIlh." ),l', I tut, "I'll"", Iv, II ,UII"I ".,,, ," ('\. 111\ \\ It I, II" 1,,,1<" ,. ,.1 I'l" 1< I, Ill' dl"ll'l·tl,d was at' tlw he,In " 1'" ,,,,·1. ,.1 K",,', \\",1.. I I,,, \\.1' II,,· "\"" 1<,' ofhis studil.'S on various hal.tkhi.· l'OIlC,'pt" "s, .111 I..,".,.1' ,I' I,,, III'h" Y "I '1711' 'SIUlbbt's Go)" : A Study ill HII,Ii.!!JiC Hf'xibilit), ,lIlll ill 111_' • "Ik, I,'d l','~l' ~11I.Jin Diville Law ill HI/mall HOllds and also in his und" I~(,:lllllillg o(jl'wish-< :l1l'iSI i;Hl relationships. anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust.1I Ind" l" 1. ill the abov,"­mentioned chapter ofhis last book, Katz argucd that the nebrativc Christbtl attitudes to Jews alldJudaisill and the desire ofJews to redeem thelllS('IVl's frOI11 the Christian environment stand out as the two phenomcna that illumi­nate the valuc of the historical framework of longue durCc. Thl."Se two illtt~r­related currents had, in his mind, a "significant role" in the Holocaust and the creation ofthe State of Israel. By asserting his affinllation of the long timc­frame, Katz came full circle with his initial pre-occupation with the fate of Gennan Jewry in his 1934 dissertation, which dealt with Gennan-Jewish assimilation and its ideology. 10 For the nexus ofthis issue to the hiS[orical fate of the Jews in World War II remained a persistent concern of Katz that brought him to inquire again and again into the intricate relationships between Jews and C hristians over the centuries. Forcver troubled by these historical implications, Katz could not be satisfied by an historical interpre­tation that placed the onus for these events solely on the years 1933--1.5. As he himself summarized his position in an intemational conference on ''Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism, 1919­
1945" ill Jem salem in 1982:
The key to the understanding of what happencd in the 19th and 20th
century inJewish-Gentilc relations, including its catastrophic climax in the
Holocaust, is not to be found in the immediate past but in the course of
Jewish history, at least since its entanglement with the history of Chris­
tianit)', It was the trab>lC mistake ofthe 19th century enthusias[S to belio.:ve
that the tract.'S ofsuch deep-scab..-d antagonism could be ciiminatt.-d simply
be declaring it unreasonable or unfounded. II
9. '/lie 'SlldbM (;(Jy': A Study ill Halakhic FlexibililY (Philadelphia: 1989); Diville UIII' ill HIll/ifill Hallds, Casl' Stlfllirs ill Halllkilic He:xibility aenL~lelll: [99S).
10. Jacob Katz, Die EI/tste/III11,1? dlTjudcullSSimilatioll il/ Delltschl.md III/d dcrt:'IIIdeologie (Frankfurt: 1935); reprinted ill idew, EWdll(ipati.JI/ ,1IIa As$imilatilili. Stlltiies ill M,)drm j /1I'ish Hislory (WI,.."Suuead: [972). pp. 195-276.
II. Idtlll , "Chrisri.1n-Jewish Antagonism on the Eve ofthe Modem Era,"Jlldaism alld Christidllity IIl1der the Impact /ifNali,Jl/lIl-SvrialislII, ed. Otto DOl! Kulk" and Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: I g87). p, ]4.,


Il'!\.\ t l rlll'''' \l,-A~ " Nil .. , 11-1, 1 1 , .... ' , "j
II.... ""1,,,,\ \\,1\ ,.".' ['Iii I II< 11,.1 ... .111'.[ ' '1"I,k ,1 "",' t." HItIl't~I.III,[ " \'t'lIl~
t il 1 ~1I1<'1 " "111 1,'\\ '\ "\\'11 \.'\" ,1 ~t"I" 1.11 " ,'1\ ,,'''1< ,,,,'d 1",,," it. Tbu~, iu ~el'k­
II I~~ .I 1"'''1 W, 11\" t<, tllI.].'I\I,II II III... """\ "I !Ill"',.,t.ldysmil' period, Katz CUlll'
I" , <'I'" I , It 'I ,u .I)' I")" 11\ ,J,'l--:" "I ,1/ hkul"l--:ic lll'xpiauatiolls but also the viabil­
,I \ ..rIhc ~..t'i,11 histuric,,1 II ICdl'llllllngy Ill' had advocated in the 1950S. ,.1 He
,11 ).',m·" ill rhl' e;,rly I(NOS ,hat "the history of anti-Semitism is thus one
,·\ .lJupIl' illllstr.lllng Illy thcsis that the social-historical approach cannot do
JlI\ti,'" to the entire array of questions raised in historiographical research.
AI,H1h>sid,' [his perspective, there is ample justification for tracing events and
PIOCt'SSt'S within a longer time frame."13
Th,' longer time fTamt.-the sllpra-ephocal or IOl/glle durer---for Katz
IIIl'ant in this regard the life ofJews "in the shadow of Christianity." The
, It"dow ofC hristianity had different implications for Katz, ranging from the
"',Iy thc political and social status ofthe Jews was detennined to its existential
Implications for the future ofjewish uniqueness. Particular historical events
•"uld lIot be completely disassociated from the framework that dominated Illl' relationship betweenJudaislll and Christianity, so with regard to specific , , 1~l'S ofJewish-Christian friction or localized outbursts ofanti-Jewish scnti­IlI1'nt. For Katz, neither the arguments raised during the Hep Hcp contro­w rsy of1819 nor the opposition ofcertain Freemason societies to allowJews l·lItry into their lodges, could, for example. be fully understood solely from within their immediate pri~m. They needed to be viewed withiIl the tradi­tional anti-Jewish prejudices that surfaced with the appearance of C hristian­ity, Similar to James Parkes andJules Isaac, and foreshadowing Gavin lang­muir, Katz saw the con£l.ict between Jews and Christians within the religious sphere, granting minimal relevance to pre-Christian attitudes [0 Jews and
Judaism, in contradistinction to two ofhisJerusalclll colleagues, Menachem Stern and Shmuel Ettinger.14 As he saw this supra-epochal conflict in reli­gious tenus in which Christian animosity to Jews and Judaism was met by
12.
Jacob Katz, "The Concept of Social History and Its Possiblc Usc in Jewish Historical Research," Scripta Hil'mso/ymilafla 1II (1956): 292-312.

13.
Katl, "On Jewish Social History," p. 96.

14.
I have mentioned only several scholan in order co situate Katz's writing, al­though many more writers and scholars have addressed [his issue in onc manner oran other .. Forseveral helpfulsurveys ofsomcofthis literature, seeJohn Gager, "11)(' Orixius'!f Antisemitism. Attitudes towardjmlais/II ill Pa,e<ttl aud Christian Allti­qllity (New York and Oxford: [983); Robert A. Everett, ChristiallilY witfrollt Allli$ClllilislII. jamfi Pmkcs alld tile Jewish,ellristillll £IICOlllltl'1 (Oxford, New York and Seoul: 1993), l"SP. pp. 189-277; Peter Schaefcr,jlldcophobill. Atfillldcs loward thcJews ill the Allrietll World (Cambridge, Mas.~.: 19')7),


RICHARD J. COHEN

1]2
EllrOpl':LlI ~ol"il'ty to thl'j ews ill the nlOdem period, accepting the overpow­t'rin~. t;lI"l ll.lti w Ilawn: ortht' medieval position. Indeed, as David Berger shows ill Ihis vulunll', K:ltz rdit'd to a great c.xtent on previous studies and rl'('t'iwti wisdom ,111(\ did lIot do basic research into the jewish-Christian POll'llli. nl'l ht, 1ll";O\I.J1 Katz approached the legacy ofthe jewish-Christian 11Iedit'v;11 tr:llliti\ll1. womlt'rill!!: how the modem period negotiated with its
!,:lst" Ir:Hiili,)lls ;llul prc\X't'lljl:1tioIlS,
K.117·S SIIl.!Y. ill tht' 11)6os, Oil tht' Fn:emasons :mdJews provided him an l'Xl'l'Ik1l1 ri';lIl1l'work with which 10 al1:liyze the resilience of traditional vit'ws. H I:rWIII:lSI III')' positl'd a u]livcrsalisric, humanistic ideology, openness 1\ I all pt·ol'ks•.1 volulltaristk society without the cudgels oftraditiOll. More­over, as Wt' uow know morc frolll the studic..'S ofMargaret jacobs and others, tht. Frt'1.'maso11S often hOllsed, especially in the eighteenth century, some of the moU radical enlightent.-d thought and in some lodges were clearly at odds with all fonns ofol"b<:lnized religion.Jl Such radicalism neatly corresponded to the emerging notions ofintegratioll that began to surfuce in jewish society ill different cOllntries. creating a perfect tcst case for Katz's inquiry into the process ofacceptance ofjews into European society. His painstaking research into the problems jews encountered in entering into Freemason lodges, espcciaUyin Gennany, revealed both the staying power ofChristian symbols, dogmas, and rituals, and a certain social and political reticence to allowing
Jews to become an integral part ofthe lodges. Associal equality was not taken for granted in the nineu."Cnth century, the desire ofj ews to join the lodges in large numbers was commonly stymied. This process of rejtttion mush­roomed in Weimar Gennany when cvenJews who had beel1lllcmbers ofthe lodges were now pushed out in significant numbers. In this development it was the inability ofFreemasonry to create within a growing secular world a wholly new tradition, free from Christian sources, that drew Katz's special
attention:
Since there was no binding local tradition in the other countries, it was relatively simple to adopt ideas and symbols !Tom any source that ap­

21.
See above, David Berger, "Jacob Katz on Jcws and Christians in the Middle Agc..'S," pp. 'P-63.

22.
Jacob Katz,jt''''s aud Fm:m<lSollS ill Europe 172:)1939, trans. leonard Oschry (Cambridge, Mass.: 1970), originally publishcd in Hcbrew in 1<)68 widl a somcwhat diffcrent title: Fm:/l/asous midJell's. Real (llId Imasillary Co/medians.


Margaret C. Jacob, L'l'i'l~ tlu: E111(flhtl'llmellt. Frtl'lll<lScmry alld Po/ilics ill Eight­

23·
Cfllll,-Ce",ury Ellropt (New York: ]9")1); idem, 11/t Radical EIl/i,ehtelllllclIl. Pallfhrists, Frrem<lSol/S aud Rqmbfir,11I5 (London: 1981).


HOW C ENTRAL WAS ANT I-SE MITI SM
' 11
pl.:ak-d to the mood and f.mcy ofthe members of each particular lodg\.',
and alllong thelll were those predisposed to mystic and mystifYing
doctrines. This type ccrtlinly did not abjure any Christian concepts and
symbols but even presumed to lead the Masons, ill the higher degrees,
to the revelation of profound Christian mysteries.2.f


The fact that the Freemasons were unable to create a setting for integration was the dearest affimmtioll for Katz that " the idea of total emancipation was
only an unattainable Utopia,".lj a fomlUlation he returned to on various occasions and that was clearly influenced by Mannheim's classic Jdto!O$.?)' (Iud Utopia. Jews alld Freemasolls. Yct, it had disrurbing implications as it "exempli­fies the difficulties encountered byjews in becoming absorbc..-d in Gennany"
(p. 8). Kaczcautioned, at the outset of the work, a~,'ainst reading laterconchl­siom into earlier developments. Integration was not achieved i.n many Jodges ;lS onc conti.nued to view the world in one sense or another through the prism ofreligion. For Katz this was all affinnation that, alongside its cohesive nature, religion had a very divisive role in modem secular society,:ro As long as the burden ofChristian tradition was present and impacted on society, as it did, complete integration ofj ews was mere utopia.
The inability to intch'fdte fillly was further enunciated in Gut ofthe C/,etf/), where Katz retumed to his 1934 dissertation and to the period in which he so often traveled, 1770-r870. Here Katz shows that the failure to intCl,.'I.lte had, of course, two sides-that of European society and that of the jews. European society's ambivalence toward the Jews manifested itself in the
III
eighteenth-century Enlightenment. It both endeavored to emancipate the jews but also hoped to see the gradual dissolution of tile j ews, their unique qualities and social framework. Katz was in full ab>Teement with nlllch of Arthur Hertzberg's argument in TI,e Frelld, EllliglirCIIlllcllt aHd thc J ell's (1968), which utilized jacob Talman's thesis on totalitarian democracy and applied it to the jewish context--specifically, that the Enlightenment vision was driven by a totalitarian mindset, paving the way to the disasters ofthe twenti­
2.... Katz, j ell'S' allJ F,ccmaSVlI$, p. 207; sec also ibid., pp. 197-206.
25. Jacob Katz, "The Gemlall-Jewish Utopia ofSocial Emancipation," SIll/liN oj
r/le Leo Bactk bUlitutt, ed. Max Krcutzberger (New York: 1967), p. So. Tills
essay, to my mind, represcnts most succinctly Katz's perspectiw on tlle iSSUl'S
of integration. Originally published in an abbreviatcd fonn in Dutch (19631
64), {Katz bibliography, no. 89}, dIe ess.1y was reproduced in several of his
colleatXi papers.

,6. Idem. "Religion asa Uniting and Dividing Force in ModcmJcwish History,"
TI/C Role oJReligioll ill Modtmjewislt Hiswry, cd. Jacob Katz (Cambridge, Mass.:
1975). pp. 1-17·

I!
,
RI C HARD I. CO HEN
\.'th century. Though Katz shied away from such a sharp fonnulation and took issue with Hertzberg's extreme categorization ofVoltaire, he was dearly in agreement with his interpretation of the "bargain of em:mcipation."l7 Hertzberg's critical assessment of the underlying motivation of the propo­nents of Emancipation sat well with Katz's evaluation of the false utopian belief in Jewish integration, mentioned above. Thus, Katz's shift from the phr.lSe "neutraJ society" in Tradition and Crisis to describe the Berlin milieu in which Moses Mendelssohn lived in the eighteenth century to "scmi­neutral society" in Our of tIll! Chl!ttl) was IlOt mere cosmetics. The fomler phrase was already present in the 1934-dissertation and withstood the inter­mediary historical events. Rather, the shift was occasioned by research Katz himself pursued between these works, first and foremost on theJews and the Freemasons, but also on the background to Mendelssohn'sjertlslTlt'lll.ls This change in cmphasis indicates a certain turn to a more pessimistic reading of the past. In a sense it was Katz's recognition that even the hallowed friendship between Mendelssohn and Lessingwas but a glimpse into an imaginary world that would never materialize in European society. It was a growing affir­mation that few elements in European society, supporters ofemancipation and its opponents, were able to overcome a basic desire for the demise of

Judaism. Katz was not the first to make this claim, but he now advanced it with considerable vigor, bringing to bear more and more examples of this milldset. The positions taken on the '1ewjsh Question" by Fichtc at the beginning of the nineteenth cenmry and by Momm.sen in the controversy over Treitschke loomed larger and larger in Katz's historiographical scheme as representatives ofboth sides ofthe divide . .)!} In essence, they reflected the pre-racial dream of seeing Jews voluntarily tenninate their existence. Notwithstanding the ~trides Jews had taken to penetrate European society and to refashion thcir Jewish identity, Jews continued to be considered a collective ("a state within a state")30 that would not or could not divest itself
27· Review of Arthur Hertzberg, J7I( Frnlch EIIII:f?hII'I/Wml dlld Ihe je1l's (New
York: 1968), COIIIlIIl'lllary XLVI (Oct. 1968): 94-96.

~8. "To Wholll Did Mendelssohn Reply hI His 'Jerusalem'?" Scripl" Hien)soly­
mira/In XXIII (1972): 21.1--43: originally published in ZiOIl 29 (196).

29· See, illlerlllia,Jacob Katz, "The Turning Point ofModcm Jewish History: 1111.'
Eighteenth Century," VisiOfI Colifnmts Realily, ed. Ruth Kozodoy (New York:
1989), pp. 40-55: idem, "Leaving the Ghetto," COIIIII/I'I/tary 101 (1996): 29-33.
Silllilar discussions appear in other works as well.

JO. !d1'1II, "A St:ltc within a Stice. TIle History of:m Ami-Semitic Slogan," TIlt Israd Amdl'lIIyofSdrtlctS IlIId HUlllallitirs Pnxl'tdillgs IV (Jemsalclll: 1969170), pp.
29"""58.


IIOW CEN TRAL WAS ANTI-S EMITI SM
'"

"t· its cohesive nature. In OI(l 4 tile Ghetto we arc presented with ,\ bll'a].. .']lpraisal ofthe onc hundred ycars ofJewish entry into European socicty-­Ihough Katz is specifically cOl1cenled with the integration into Genllany. a r;lCt that has engendered certain criticism.]' The social situation was magni­lied by the inability ofEuropean society to shed its stereotypical views ofthe Il'w, the legacy ofthe medicval tradition that reverberated over and over in
III!: arguments all integrating, emancipating, or accepting the Jews. Why was European society unable to free itselffrom the past as it emerged imo an age ofrationality? This was the historical issue that engaged Katz in IWO other book-length studies in the 19805, From Prejudice to Deslru(liOtl. Allli­,"iI'mitis"" ' 70(1-'933 brought together Katz's various forays into tht: changing tertaill ofJewish-Christian relations in the modem period. Beginning with Johannes Eisenmenger's study ofJudaism in the eighteenth century, through the writings of Deists, Voltaire, and various thinkers ofthe nineteenth ccn­tlllY, and culminating with racial theory, Katz pursued the interaction between ideas and social developments. He showed how certain expressions ofanti-Jewish animus continued to gain public support in the modem period, as the process ofJewish integration intensified. Moreover, ratioJ1aIL~ thinking was notable to erase completely the negative C hristian tradition and, though latent, it remained a significant factor in thc reception ofanti-Semitic ideas and movements in the late nineteenth century. Even secular arguments, advanced by such thinkers as Voltaire, Bruno Bauer, and Ellgen Diihring uunimizedJudaism as opposed to the Christianity they rcjected. One figure who attracted a special study, R.ichard Wagner, and who has often been aligned with racial thinking is seen in a less dramatic 111an11l,'r than oftt=1l portrayed. Wagner in Katz's interpretation epitomizes the merger of social conflict and latent anti-Jewish animus. In encountering certain obstack'S in his carecr in which Jews were involved, Wagner enunciated strong anti­Jewish pronouncements that had clear Christian toots. Jews remained, in his eyes, a separate entity and thus the only solution to their integration was by going asunder, by a process ofde-Judaization. This was not a break with anti­Semitic tradition but rathcr a refonnulation of a long line of anti-Semitic thinking. In casting Wagnet in this Illdl111Cr, Kat"L reduced the OIlUS of future events on the composer, but furthered his own understanding ofthe ways in which anti-Scmitic thought continued to persist in an agc ofreduced Chris­tian influence.31 Such an approach did not detract from the importance of
Sec, c.g., l)ieITe BimbaUIll and Ira Katznelson, "Emancipation and the l iberal
JL Offer," PMIIs ,yEmflllripfllio".jrws, Sf<ltes, I/Ild Citi.ulUl!ip. cd. P. Bimbaum and
I. Katzllelson (Princeton: 1995), pp. 3-)6, esp. 15-~4·
32. Jacob Katz, TII~ Darker Side cifGe"ills. RirlIt1,d 'Vt1,~IIer'S Ami-Stmitislll (Hallo,·cr
I \(, RICH .... RD I. CO HEN
I~Ki:l1 thinking. This foml ofanti-Semitic al"b711ll1cnt raised the stakes in the }.'\Vi~h-Christian imbroglio, but still did not reduce the power oftraditional views. According to Katz's understanding ofmodem anti-Semitism, "even ifthey negated the Christian motives responsible for the creation ofthe situa­tion. anti-Semites stiU took it as the basis oftheir operation. There is a patent historical continuity between the two phases oftheJewish prc=dicament. "33 Certainlysolutions were notofthe same order and possibilities ofescape &om Christian pfL"SSure were radically simpler than from the racial vise, but this did not loosen the hold of the pre-modern arguments and images all the modem
anti-Semitic thinkers.
As mentioned above, there were two sides to the failure of integration.
The other side, the bright one--rrom Katz's point ofview-was theJewish
one. Integration was also doomed. so to speak, sinceJews were unwilling to completely forego their attachment toJewish particularity as was envisaged by Enlightenment and emancipation thinkers from the end of the eighteenth cc=lltury. Ollt iftile C /letfo brought to light the persistence of Jews to maintain a sense of connection, what I prefer to call a feeling ofbelongil1g. Though the "state within a state"-Jewish autonomous existence--which assumed such exc(.."Ssive attention at the tum of the nineteenth century was clearly dissipated, many Jews continued to show an inclination to maintain some semblance ofidcntification with other JeW's and tht:Jewish past. Leaving the ghetto did not temlillate Jewish cxistence, but refashioned it in fonus that were uniquely theirs. Even as they emphatically desired integration, they developed an intricate web ofassociations and contacts that fOn1lcd a kind of subgroup in society. This notion was later developed by David Sorkin, who saw tlus evolution as being connected with the overaU burgt-'Ouing of the
Jewish cOllllllunity.14 Sorkin brought to beara host ofexamplcs to iUumiuate this trallsfonnation that affinned integration and concepts of Bjfd,.,~~ yet comciously or subconsciously generated greater :wociatioll with Jewish particularism. Jews did not simply accept the mold that had been shaped for them. They wanted new associations, new involvements, and even new appearnnccs, but not necessarily a total "mce lift." Katz viewed this devel­opment as the persistence ofJcws to remain a defined subgroup in society, an indication of their "atavistic" respome, "represented (by) an adherence to
and London: 1986).
3J. iIIrm, Prom Prejlldi« to Desrmetio". Allri-&mirism, 1700-1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: 1980). p. 32 1.
34· David Sorkin, TIl( 'frall,ifonlltlrivlI oJCrnmmJell'ry, 1780-18.,0 (New York and Oxford: 1987).


IIOW CENTR .... L W.... S .... NTI-SEMITISM , 37
a pattern of behavior after the reason for it had disappeared," a sign th.11 residues of the past wcrc still very much at work.H This position foreshad­owed a change in o rien tation ofhistorical writing on the nineteenth century iil the last gencrntion, whatJonathan Franke! has called the "re-mapping of 1l10dem Jc\vish history."36 Yet for Katz this proc~was inherently related to his tremendous concern with the acceptance or lack ofacccptallcc ofthe Jews by European society. As he l:lCer wrote in his From Preiudjc.e to D CS/11ldjOll. "this vcry guarantee of theirsUlvival elicited or intensified a pcculiar brand ofsocial animosity." That survival was facilitawd by J ewish "social cohesion and compactness," which activated "the complex ofimaginary notions about the Jewish mentality and other characteristics."37 Interestingly, the younger generation of scholars involved in this "re-mapping" has relegated anti­Semitism to a less central place in its lustorical understanding. This may be attributed to the impact of a more optimistic outlook on life, b~nerated in some cases by the American context ofsome of these writers. as Todd Endel­mall has argued,)8 and/or to the greater engagement with 1110rc contempo­rary issues, such as gender, spirituality, memory, and community.
Katz's depiction of the n.."'Siliencc of Jewish society in the nineteenth century, buttressed by the anti-Jewish animus. ccho('s his earlier concems with Jewish attitudes to C hristian society in earlier periods. Whereas in modern times the utopian vision of the Enlightenment that anticipated a di5.<;ipatcd Jewry, totany atomized in its economic, social, and cultural proftlc. encountered arelnarkable Jcwish persistence tosurvive, so Christian perspec­tives in the mcdieval period filced Jews, who were filr frOI1l submissive ideologically. Already in T mditiou aud Crisis but even more pronoullced in E.wlusilfCIlCSS lImf Tolermlcc aud in ShaMes Goy and numerous classic essays, such as e"n-n"n~,"mn r=,l9Katz endeavored to show how Jewish melltal-
Jacob Katz, Ollr oJrll~ Gherro. 'nll~ Social Bmi'grorllld oJjell'ish Ellurrlriparion, 1770­J5·
1870 (Cambridge, Mass.: 1973), p. 205; similarly in other pI.1CCS, see, e.g.,
"Religion as a Uniting and Dividiug Force," pp. 1-17·
Jonathan Franke!, "Assimilation and the jews in Nincteemh-Celltllry Ellrope:

36. Towards a New Historiogmphy?" Assimilation and COmmrll/if)'. nitjeUfs ill
Nincrernrh.CClrrury ErrnJpt', ed. jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zippcrsrcin (Cambrid~ and New York: 1992), p. 1.
Katz, From fujI/ dice ro [)esfnlCficJIf , p. 323·
37· Todd M. Endelman, "The Legitimization ofthe Diaspora Experience in Rc­
38.
cent jewish Historiob'Taphy," Modem j udaism II. 2 (199 1): 195-201).

iJubli1hed originally in Hebrew in die Bacr Festschrift Oems.1Icm: 1961), pp.
39· 318-37. For its reissue in Hcbrrw, see Katz bibliogrnphy, no. 216. Katz rc­
1'11 "'1' 1'1 ,,'III N

.In\,.\11 \I·I'.II .'I"II\,~\ ., ,,.1 ~h·."II.I'II"·". h.11I 111,,1 I .. 11111,... 1," h,,\\ 1111 \ \'Oll1fj'OIlI:ilill'l pb~'l'd ilSl·lfolil iIlIIH" II,,,kllll" 'lh,d, dl.II',. 11"\\ l ·hll~1I.1I1 altitudt'S Wl'rl' rcworkl'd 01' 1I~I1ISI;)I'II1l'd, .llId ItO\\' .1"\\' III .1 111'\\ s"Uil 'lt reconfigured their separatl·IH.'SS or str:.lllgl·Ill'SS. Th\, iUll'lptl y IWI",\,,'II Ihl' two vantage poincs--anti-jewish attitmk-s and Jl'\vish s•.-'par;Hl'm'S~-w.,~ constant and had a seminal role on the development ofJewish hist0'1', 'rhll:\ Katz strongly rcjected the notion that anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism b:1d no place in jewish history, I STo disreg:lT(i anti-Semitism or to claim that it wa~ only a phenomenon relating to the history of the country whcrein it tr;lIl­spired was to lJunimuc= its consequenccs for jewish relations with others and to overlook the role Jews played in this configuration, On the contrary, for Katz and for leadillgfigun:s in thc "jcnlsalclll school ofhistory," auti-Semit­ism was part and parcel ofthe rwists and tums in the unfolding relationship between the Jews aud European society, 16 This grand scheme, which Katz seems to have formulated early 011 in his career, accounts for his extensive studies into a wide realm ofissues that were intrinsic to the historical encoun­ter betweenJews and Christians. Yet, I should add that, even as Katz assertcd the relevance ofhistory to the !llodcn! event studied, he cautioned the histo­rian time and again not to project knowledge ofthe events on the conscious­ness of contemporaries who had 110 norian of the filture developments.
History-including the history ofEuropeanJewry-was IIOt predetcnnillcci and the Holocaust not "predictable, "17
In opting for the IOllgHe dw-fe as a Ilccess.uy category for comprehending the Holocaust or by placing the modem conflict on the back ofthe medieval
IS, This emergt'S from various essays and books, See in particu13r, Jacob Katz, "Misrc:ldings ofAnti-Semitism," Commcntary l.XXVI , I (1983): 39-44j idc/il. "World War I-A Crossroads in the History of European Jewry," Vo,d Vas/Irm SlIfdirs XXVlI (cd, David SilberklangjJerus.11{'m: 19<")<): 11-21. This essay was published after the appearann' ofthe Katz bibliography (above n. I) and is not mentioned there. See also idelll, A Timl'foT Inquiry, ch. 2.
,6. Clearly, individuals within the 'Jl'rusalem school" harbor ...d differelltvicw! on the centrality and penistenc{' ofanti-Semiti51ll OVCT time, For example, David
N. Myers ha5 argued that Yitzhak Baer continued to uphold the "lachrymose conception" ofJcwish history. Sc..'C RI'-IIllJCIllill,'.l tht'jnl>ish Pas/. Ellropr(llljl'lI'ish 11II1'I/rctu;lls alld thl' Zionist Rr/UnI to History (New York and Oxford: II)()S), p. 120j IsraclJacob Yuvai, "Yif2hak llaer and the Search for AudlcnticJudaism," 'DlrjclI'isl1 Past Rrl'isited: Rrj1rclitlllS 011 Moal'mjclI'ist. Hisl"rialls, cd, David N, Myers and David B, Rudenuan (Ncw Haven and London: 1998), pp, 71-87. The anitude of the "Jcnlsa.lelll school" to anti-Semitism dl.'Scrves a special study.
17, ruin alia, Katz, "Was lhe Holocaust Predietthle?" pp. 41-48.


11"\\ 'I N' "", "1\\ I\N II ~ I ~ 'III\ ""
'"
I.,.~... \', " .11 1 t.'III "11'1" 'II I,· "h .\, ' \, II. ,,,1\ "I Ih, >llghl 111,11 .Irglll'd Ii" .1 ~ ','1'1.1111 ,1'..,.11'0' "I, "1111111111\ 1"'/\\,'0'1,11.1,1"10,,,.01 .1I1I1111I"kl'll,lIIti-Sl'n,itislll. <;UIII 1I1)~ In"'1 ,lill;'n'llI 10.10 I..g"" llId, .11 10 1 \, III.LI..!}, approadll's but silarillg ;1
•"IIIIIHlIl hdicn 11.11 tr;I.rIII' ,".11/( :r,ri~I I.1I1 ,Illli-Jl'wish tl'achinb"; rCIlI:lilled thl' 1,\·dl'llcl.. of lIIodl'l'll ;mti-Sl'lllitislll and (ould very t'asily be reasserted ill a II"..krn I"tmtt'xt. thl'S\;.' scholars werc far from united on their connection to .11,,1 illf1(1l'IKl' on Nazi anti-Scmitislll,18 Probably the most significant voice I" Ill' add('d to the ~cllOOI came from Gavin LangTlluir, who, in his History, I<dr:~itlll, 'lilt! Alltisemitism, delved deeply into the C hristian sources and pilljloilltlxi cvent... in the twelfth century as a critical turning point in the lti~lUry of anti-Semitism, Though L.1ngnmir perccived strong associations hl'lwn'll Christian and Nazi anti-Semitism, emphaSizing many parallels be­
! \Vel'n their ideologies, he refrained from asserting a direct link between IIK'II I. Irrational projections dominated the minds ofmedieval Christians and Ilitler, but their solutions diffcred. 19 Recently, Jonathan Frankel in his '1iOllUIIlental study ofthe Damascus Affair has intimated that the ninetecnth I"I'JHUry'S preoccupation withjcwish rinlal murder affinns the claim that the III1'dieval Christian tradition continued to havC' a profound rt."SOnance in IIloden! anti-Semitism. The attacks on the Talmud during the Aff.'lir, the iJ'rational attemptll by liberal society to support classical anti-Jewi~h canards ~Hl the sacrifice ofh'lmans byJews and the use ofblood to make ma.;ot asserted I he perseverance ofthe medieval Christian tradition,.w In pursuing this direc­tion, the continuity of anti-jewish themes (the Jemgue dl/ree), Katz did not merely adopt the classical Zionist lIotion ofJudeophobia but confronted a recurrent factor in the history ofJewish society, In his quest to penetrate its

aberration in tIle twenticth century, Katz concentrated on the attitudl."S of
IS. My special [hanks to Marc Sapentein ofGeorge Washington University for his conmlents on the oral pre5Cm:nion ofthis paper on May 16,2000, He has also generously sh;ln..~d with me a paper ill progr<.'SS that deals with the theme of continuity and discontinuity in anti-Scmitism. Temporarily entitled "Chris­tim Doctrine and the 'Final Solution': The Stat{' ofthl' Question," the paper maps out a variety of opinions on the conllections between Christian 3mi­
J('wish :lttitudcs and those ohhe Nazis 011 (he Final Solution, For a differl'nI survey ~Ild focus, see Steven E, Aschhcim, "Small Forays, Grand Theories and Deep Origins: Current Trends in the Historiographyofthc Holocaust," SlllIlil's ill COlllnllIXImryjcll'ry 10 (cd. Jonathan Frankel; [9(4): IJ!)-6J.
19· Gavin Langmuir, History, RdWioll, allJ AllliselliitislII (Uerkdey, Los Angeles,
Oxford: 191)0) .

zo, Jonathan Frnnkel, 17/1: DmU(lSflU A.Oa;r. "Ritllall\ limler," Polit/(s, !!lId Ihl')1'11'5 ill 1840 (Cambridge: '9«17).
R I CHARD I. COHEN

• \1'
it}' in Christian Europe maintained itself as a minority religion vis-a.-vis the llIajority religion. Jews were always active agents in their f.1.te but "never llI<lsten of their own destiny. "40 Katz showed the theological and social mechanisms at work that guaranteed the minority's steadfustllcss in the fuce ofadversity-what he later called P'''L' ' X1,'i1 i1t7t'~ (a supreme heroic act) or in other contexts "the audacious Jews. "41 Christian notions ofsupremacy were mel with Jewish notions of spiritual supremacy and only gradually did these yield to less conflicting attitudes. That is, the difficult predicaments in which Jews found thelllselves, in the "shadow ofChristianity," both in the medieval and modem periods. sharpened for Katz his perception of the
Jewish situation.
If the f.1ilure ofintcbrration was a rl."Sult ofthe interplay between European reticence to accept the Jew andJewish singularity, did this imply thateventu­ally Jews were ill some sense responsible for anti-Semitism and ultimately the outcome ofthe events in World War II? As was commonly argued in Euro­pean dL~ClIssions on anti-Semitism-Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Saltre, to Ilame two of the most prominent writers-had Jews filUy assimilated they could have minimized anti-Semitic outbursts. T he converse could also be claimed and has been, that had Jews not left traditional society and entered into the modem tealm they could have prevented the onslaught against theill. Others still, like Theodor Herzl, believed that ami-Scillitism was bome ofthe friction caused by the penetration ofJews into European society and their clash with parallel nOll-Jewish elements. Katz, as far as I understand him, walked a tightrope amidst these various hypotheses, coming very close to intimacingthatJewish behavior was, in some way, a cause, but not r/,."Sponsible for anti-Semitic activity. He, who accepted "Jewish vulnerability ... to be the unavoidable legacy ofthe Jewish past, "41 viewed Jewish solidarity as a thom in the eyes of non-Jewish society, and upheld modcmity even though it ruptured the scams oftradition. Asking rhetorically, he wrote:
Yet who among us, even knowing what finally lay in score for them,
cau blame them for h3ving seized the modem opportunity, or for hav­
ing imagilll ..
'<i that it spelled the end oftheir historic tribulations? Who
tumcd to the theme ofJewish f(.'Spo nse to martyrdom in ab't.-'S ofdiversity in his
contron'rsy with Edward Fr.nll. Sec J. Katz, "More on 'Betweeu 10<"j6 and
1648-1649'," IHebrew l Zim/ LXII, 1 (1997): 2J-29.

40. Katz. "Leaving [he Ghetto:' p. JJ.
41. Idrlll, A 'lillie of IlIIllliry, p. 56.
43. Idrllr, "Misreadings of Anti-Scmitism," p. 4.j..

1.1"

IIOW CENT RAL WAS ANT I-SEM ITISM
among us, desirous of honoring their mcmory, would dare to judg~· their long and ardcllt struggle against the visc of circulllstance?43

In his discussion ofthe utopian vision ofintegration maintained by various J~'wish fib'1.1reS, and fint and foremost by Moses Mendelssohn, Katz had only Ihe highest regard: " His vision served for brcnerations to come as an ideal toward whidl to strive. Despite its failure to materialize ...Mendelssohn's lloble dream thus fulfilled a worthy function, and even our own disillusioned ~clleratiOI1 cannot, with propriety, treat it with disdain.""4 Katz was certainly ,Iware ofche fine lille he had drawn, praisingJewish modernity in its visionary scheme, l!xtolling Jewish solidarity. but also uncovering variolls negative :lttimdcs Jews had harbored toward Christians and Christianity during the Middle Abres. Did he think that these negative depictions influenced Chris­tian behavior toward the Jews? Katz is not explicit on this seminal issue. but he scentS co illlply that, on some level, it had a consequence. He concluded li.W/ltsivtllt'SS (llId Toierallcc with the rcmark that it is only "a later gcnention­our own-(that is 3ble) to lay aside the notions ofstatic doctrine and teach­ings. and courageously to trace the tme development of ideas and prnctict."S down the centuries. "4$ This is a surprising remark coming so soon after the Holocaust. Who in "that gcneration"-in the late fifties-was willing to call a spade a spade and "reveal" some ofthe harsher arb'1.lmentsJewish thinkers
harbored coward their Christian neighbors? It was the Zionist in Katz that feared not the repercussions ofhis rl.'"Search. It was in the spirit ofGershom Scholcm's call foraJewi~h historiography free from the apologetiCS of ftViSSCilSc/llift and in line with Katz's own understand­ing of the relllarkable contribution of Zionism to Jewish self-dib'llity. But years later, in his autobiography. K3tz recalled the reticence of Alexander Altmann, the editor of the proposed volume E:~:dll$illeIlI!Ss allli Tolerat/cl!, to publish the book as it "might provide ammunition for the enemies of the Jewish people."46 Katz. as I have mentioned above, was not very dear on what he thought about the relationship betwecIl Jewish attitudes to Chris­tianity and Christian responses to them. even though he claimed that their relationship was a "reciprocal one. "47 Um, ifhe thoughtJewish attitudes were
4J. Melli, "Leaving the Ghetto," p. 33·
44. Idrlll. E.wlusil>ruw arid Tolnallrt, pp. 180-81.
.s. Ibid., p. 196· Idem, Witll My Oll~' Eyes. 71le Arltobi~mp!l}' ojall Historiau, trans. Ann Brenller
.j.6.
and Zipora Brody (Hanover and London: 19'))), p. 147·
Katz, E.wlrrsil~rrrss all/I To/erarrce, p. J. Katz claims there: "TIle bchadour ofthe

+1·
IUCIIARIl I. CO HI:N

I I"
;1 ddillitl' f.lctor in the rise ofmodem al1t:i-Sellliti~l1l, one could have cxpcct('d
morc specific at[cntiol1 to these o pinions ill the most obviolls pl:lo •.--hi,
synthetic study From Persemtiotl 10 Dcstmdicm, where they arc indeed totally
absent. Though one could also claim that they had no role in such a discus­
sion, since Katz believed that in the modem periodJewish attitudes to Chris­
tianity had moved away from tbeir exclusive and contrary stand to a morl'
tolerant and utopic one, as seen in the writings of Melldcl-.sohn or thl'
decisions of the Paris Sandhedrin. Katz, it would appear, was more engaged
in understanding howJews reckoned with the majority religion than how
their behavior and attitudes affected its attitude to them. ThoughJews could
never become "masters oftheir own ('ne" in the European Slotting. through
their organistic and atavistic Dehavior they preserved a certaiu partiCUlarism
and were thus doomed to resentment. Particularism was not thl' cause ofanti­
Semitism, but it did arOllse opposition and the traditional voio ..-s of discon­
tent. These needed little to be triggered as they lay deep in the foundations
of Christian society. Katz seems to have accepted a time-hOllored Zionist
view, akin to the Pillskerian notion ofJudeophobia. The Zionist answer is
fillly upheld in reality and historically. It enabled Jews to reassert their self­
image, "regain their balance and freedom," and possibly reduce thc tension
between J ews and Gentiles.
In conclusion, according to Katz, living in the shadow ofChristi:mity for generations had its impact on all ,Ispects of Jewish life and self-image. Together with the enduring rabbinical tradition and its method ofillterpre­mtion ofdaily life,Jcws forgt'd an assertive, instnllllental manner ofdealing with die majority world. Halakhah and theology seemed to be shaped by these premises. As traditional life modified itselfdramatically, replaced by a Utopian vision best enunciated by Moses Mendelssohn, Jews believed that they could change themselves, or better, regenerate themselves, but not al­ways in the b'1.lise desired hy the non-Jew. Thus, regeneration could not be realized, as the donnant tradition ofChrisrian animosity was not able to live with the atavistic nature of J ewish society that could not totally dissolve. The IOllgue dmfe ofdeep-seated Jewish separateness, honed and sharpened over time, remained forever at odds with Christian-European society and, in reality. no utopian image could ever overcome that shadow. Therein lay to Illy mind an overarching thesis ofJacob Katz that penetrated, overtly and covertly, consciously and subconsciously, so much of his lucid and path­breaking historical research from his first foray into the study of Gennan­
J ewish as.~il1lilation in 1934.
Jews towards their neighbours is conditioned by the behaviour of the latter
towards thelll, and vice vem."


A HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY IN BLUE: IACOB KATZ'S TARDY SURRENDER 1'0 HAGAR'S ALLURE'
Michael K. Silber
'f 111' Hebrew Ulliversity, Jerusalem
1.

J.lcob Katz came late in life to chronicle his native Jewry, but when he did, Ilis contribution to the history ofHungarianJewry was substantial and lasting. It is the Hungarian dimension in Jacob Katz's historiography that [ wish to
('"plote here. We Illay begin by posing what llIight be a contrived qUC!loon: Why this tardy surrender to the allure of Hungarian Jewish history? One may be tempted to dismiss this question outright-after all, why should a historian of Katt's caliber and catholic interests, one who roamed the It.!ugth and breadth ofJewish history \vith sovereign 3SSur:J.llce, limit his compass to th~' Pannonian hills? There is mllch to commend this point. Indeed, Katz newt became a historian ofHungarian Jewry in the sense of those "national" Jewidl historians who adopted the nation-state as the primary framcwork of thdr analysis. Nevertheless, Katt did devote considerable time in his later years to the field, enriching it immeasurably. First, his biographical study ofthe Hi/Mill Sofcr in 1967 brought new understanding to the personality who more than any other shaped the course ofHungarian Jewish history. His monograph on the Orthodox secession. A H C)I/$t! Dh,iJed, published almost three decadt.'S later ill 1994. recounted and analyzed one of tile pivotal episodes in the histor­ical narrative ofHungarian Jewry, a tunlingpointthatsealed its fate and deter­mined its unique character as the llIost polarized of modem Jewish COIll­munities. In between, he published a series ofcase studies on what he called "ha1akhic f1exibility," where the discerning reader cannot but note that among the various "national" styles ofhalakhic deliberations and decisions, the tenor set by the Hungarians proved to be dIe most strident, stringent, and intrac­table (a source no doubt ofpervene national pride [0 some HungariaIlJews).
* Hag;lr is an archaic Hebrew (cnn for Hungary [ed·l·