Post by Funky George! on May 6, 2009 20:28:47 GMT -5
Aaron J. Haberman
JUST 243 Term Paper
5/6/09
Re-defining Lachrymose: Why Judaic Studies 243 Would Displease Salo Baron
In his biography of Salo Baron, Robert Liberles defines the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history” as “meaning that view placing great emphasis on persecutions at the expense of appreciating the rich and varied nature of the Jewish historical experience.” (Liberles, 117.) By this definition, the syllabus of Judaic Studies 243 can be easily defended against the suggestion that the course placed too much emphasis on Jewish sufferings; though the course thoroughly studied the persecutions, expulsions and blame-games of the Jewish historical experience that often lead to a lachrymose conception of Jewish history, much attention was paid to the flourishing world of rabbinical Judaism, including the Geonim in Sura and Pumbedita, and Maimonides, a man who served as a leader to Jews abroad through interactions with Jewish communities of Yemen and Paris, and whose Mishneh Torah remains central to religious Jewish life. Further studies on the Ashkenazi Hasidim, Jewish mysticism and the culture of Jewish women reflect an effort to understand Jewish individuals, Jewish culture and relationships between Jews. The study of these topics fosters an understanding of the historical Jewish experience outside the realms of tragedy, persecution and general stigma and demonstrates that this course avoids placing great emphasis on Jewish suffering, and thus avoids constructing Jewish history as lachrymose.
Yet there is a gap in this chain of logic that can be attributed to Liberles’ definition of Baron’s famous phrase. Although the “great emphasis placed on persecutions” is an integral part of Baron’s famous phrase, Baron’s frustrations extended to standard efforts to study Jewish life beyond the pale of persecution. A closer look at Baron’s words reveals that the lachrymose conception of Jewish history is a criticism of the study of Jewish scholarship. Liberles writes that, “Baron refers to the lachrymose conception as ‘the Graetzian conception of Jewish history,” referring to Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz (Liberles, 118.) Yet Graetz’s construction of Jewish history is not focused on the periodic persecutions Jews faced. Indeed, Liberles indicates that Graetz’s work’s focus was to avoid overemphasizing Jewish struggle: “Moreover, it was specifically to avoid overly emphasizing the sufferings of the past, that Graetz gave such pivotal attention to scholars and scholarship.” (Liberles, 118.) This indicates that when Baron referred to the lachrymose conception of Jewish history, he was not only lamenting an overemphasis on Jewish persecutions. He was also lamenting the standard method of countering the overemphasis on Jewish persecutions: the focus on scholars and scholarship in Jewish history.
Baron objects to such efforts to understand Jewish history within a vacuum. Graetz, Baron feels, “wishes to identify [Jewish] history through internal factors.” (Liberles, 117.) Liberles notes that Baron criticized another historian for similar depictions of Jewish history as isolated. Baron refers to Graetz’s theory as an “older treatment of Jewish history which may, perhaps uncharitably, be designated ‘the isolationist approach to Jewish history’”. (Liberles, 120.) Baron explains that in Jewish historiography, studying scholars internalizes Jewry when it must be understood in context with the rest of the world. “There is a growing feeling that the historical explanations of the Jewish past must not fundamentally deviate from the general patterns of history which we accept for mankind at large…” Liberles writes that Baron wishes to normalize Jewish history; suffering must be put framed within the context of events like the Crusades and the Black Death that affected Jews, but also affected the outside world. In Baron’s view, to study Jewish suffering and scholarship is to pretend Jews lived in isolation, separate from “mankind at large”, apart from instances of persecution, begetting the concept of Jewish otherness, and the notion that all of Jewish history is a lachrymose experience.
Understanding that Baron views the study of scholars and scholarship as part of the lachrymose conception of Jewish history calls into question the validity of the argument that Salo Baron would not view this course as a lachrymose conception of Jewish history. For a course to avoid depicting Jewish history as lachrymose in Baron’s eyes, it must do more than avoid overemphasizing Jewish suffering. The course must not depict a world of isolated Jewry, and thus must avoid studying scholarly figures and works at the expense of Jewish culture, Jewish experiences and Jewish relationships with outside forces. To continue to link Judaism directly to rabbinical studies creates a sense of otherness and internalizes Jewish history.
Ultimately, a better understanding of what the lachrymose conception of Judaism encompasses reveals that Baron would have categorized this course as lachrymose. This essay will divide the course syllabus into three parts in order to demonstrate that the course should be categorized as a lachrymose conception of Jewish history. First, it will look at topics which examined Jewish culture and experiences unrelated to scholarly life. Then, it will look at the emphasis the course placed on Jewish suffering in order to argue that course failed to link the Jewish experience to the history of mankind at large. Finally, it will address the aspects of the course that focused on Jewish scholarship in order to argue that the amount of time this area of study received at the expense of examining Jewish culture and instances of joy in Jewish history serve to define the course as lachrymose according to Salo Baron’s determining factors in that it both looked at Jewish history in a vacuum and interfered with the possibility of studying the “rich and varied nature” of Jewish history.
Certainly, this course explored Judaism outside the realms of studying and scholarship. Several Jewish communities received focus during the semester. Early mystics who sought to be able to view the heavenly chariot were discussed. The Karaite stance against Talmudic study was examined, and focusing on the Karaites did reveal Jewish interactions with external forces when we learned that Egyptian communities regarded traditional Jews and Karaites as the same, but this was hardly an area of focus and does not reflect an effort to explore Judaism as part of mankind at large. The Ashkenazi community of Germany’s stance on mysticism was a particularly rich study of a unique Jewish tradition.
Studying the mysticism of the Ashkenazi Hasidim was one of the richer studies of a historical Jewish community. Particularly enlivening about the study of this community was the fact that they felt a connection to ancient Judaism. Perhaps this community felt their mysticism was justified by linking in to the past, but nonetheless studying this community revealed an attempt by a Jewish community to relate their culture and customs to the past. Their books on how man can view the glory of God offered a unique look at a community’s spirituality; the attempt to understand a community’s uniqueness fits the criteria of studying the rich and varied experience of Jews in history. Yet the only insight into their interactions with outside civilizations comes when Joseph Dan explains that they held “deep hatred of the Christian church.” (Dan, 48.) Furthermore, the community’s asceticism reveals that its people did not embrace the modern world, and so they lacked an enriching culture; there is very little relatable or culturally retainable about the community. The focus on Jewish women is also an attempt to understand Jewish history outside of scholarship and suffering that still depicts a lachrymose experience.
The experience of Jewish women hardly can be described as joyful or rich in nature. Baron’s definition of the lachrymose conception of Jewish history encompasses suffering and scholarship. Suffering typically relates to persecution, but the experience of medieval Jewish women is clearly a study of suffering. The first sentence in the chapter titled, “Women’s Culture and Education” in Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe explains that, “One of the major areas of discrimination against Jewish women in the Middle Ages was that of education and culture.” (Grossman, 154.) Implicit in this statement is that there were many areas of discrimination against women in the Middle Ages. The basis for the female experience in the medieval period was what tradition said about them; they were created to be a fitting helper for man, which shaped the attitude towards women. Though the focus on the subject of women’s role in the Middle Ages is an attempt to study culture, education and issues of gender, it reveals yet another instance of suffering within the Jewish community of the Middle Ages, and certainly is a lachrymose subject. Furthermore, the chapter is very much a study of the opinions of rabbis on women, again resorting to scholarship to discuss Jewish history.
There were, however, more heartening studies of Jewish culture. The study of Sephardic poetry revealed Shmuel ha Nagid’s Jewish drinking songs. Such songs were popular within the Spanish Muslim world at the time, and reveal a culture unconfined by religion, with Jews borrowing culture from Muslims. The course also briefly examined Haggadah drawing, including the Sarajevo Haggadah, revealing religious art among Jews.
Though on its own, the emphasis placed on suffering on this course was not overwhelming, it was extensive and does contribute to a lachrymose conception of Jewish history. Rather than regurgitate the persecutions studied in this course, I will examine how the study of these persecutions failed to satisfy Baron’s goal of normalizing Jewish history. The study of Jews’ treatment during the Crusades both overemphasized the role of Jews in the Crusades and received too much attention in the course. The only Jews facing persecution in the Crusades were German communities that Christian troops encountered on the path to war with the Muslims. The First Crusade was hardly a conflict involving Jewry at large, yet this course extensively examined European Jewry and the First Crusade Robert Chazan, paying attention to each instance of Christian encounter with Jews. We learned about Jewish efforts to appease Crusaders with money, the crisis the Jewish community of Germany faced regarding forced conversions, the option of suicide and its Talmudic merits, the aftermath of the First Crusade on the Jewish community, and the protection Jews received during the Second Crusade. Seeing as Chazan indicates that the First Crusade did not have any lasting, damaging impact on German Jewry, the study of persecutions Jews faced during the First Crusade was particularly lachrymose. The study of the First Crusade did reveal Jewish relationships with neighbors, as they expected protection from local government. The focus on how Jewish communities regarded both converts and those who killed themselves and their families to avoid conversion does count as a study of Jewish communities, but it only came in the wake of tragedy, and was a lachrymose subject by nature. So, too, was the examination of the blood libel accusation Thomas of Monmouth launched against Jews.
Thomas of Monmouth launched an unbelievable accusation that the Jews of Norwich drew lots and were forced to kill a Christian child. Gavin Langmuir explains in his article “Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder” that Thomas hardly had witnesses, with his strongest witness being a Christian maid who had claimed to live in a Jewish household, and could not prove his accusation that the Jews had paid police forces to be silent. Much of Thomas’s efforts were to depict William as a saint. Langmuir notes that the story is, “above all important for the general history of Jews…for it is our most direct evidence for the first medieval accusation that Jews were guilty of ritual murder.” (Langmuir, 821.) The story is itself hardly impacted the Jewish community of Norwich, and the course did not study how the community reacted. Indeed, the study may have offered insight into the birthplace of anti-Semitic accusations of murder, and can only be classified as lachrymose, offering no insight to the Jewish community, individual, or even experience. It only examined a potential origin of a recurring nightmare in Jewish history. Langmuir’s assertion that the story is important for Jewish history reveals that he subscribes to a lachrymose conception of Jewish history; the story reveals nothing positive about medieval Jewry, nor does it offer any insight into the attitudes or customs of Jewry. The story is important to the history of Jewish persecution, but surely is not an insight into the history of the Jewish people, just as studying Jewish scholars hardly provides an understanding of medieval Jewry. The same can be said of disputations and trials the Jews faced in Paris and Aragon; examining the need for Jewish rabbis to defend sacred texts and beliefs in public displays a history of contempt and skepticism regarding Judaism, and does not reveal anything about medieval Jews and their lifestyles.
The study of accusations launched at Jews during waves of the Black Death revealed another baseless charge against Jews. Jews were accused of poisoning wells, and, perhaps due to economic motives, Jews were the target of a massacre in 1380. The course explained that Jews were defended from the charges by Christian who noted that the plague occurred in areas where Jews did not live, and that Jews would not be so foolish as to poison themselves as well. Yet much of the reading was devoted to the makeup of the mob attacking Jews and the political and economic reasons for mob violence towards Jews. Furthermore, the course did not study Jewish reactions to the plague. It was noted that the Jewish populations were ravished and transformed by the plague, but we did not examine Jewish reactions to the plague, or elements of culture and Jewish society that were affected. It is necessary to study such persecutions and suffering, but the focus on Christian accusations against Jews could have been complemented by studies of Jewish communities afflicted by the plague.
Perhaps the two biggest areas of study unrelated to persecution in this course were studies of scholars and scholarship: the Geonim and its Responsa literature in Baghdad, and the works of Maimonides. Though the study of both topics reflects an effort to understand Jewish history outside the realm of tragedy, it must be categorized as Graetzian for its focus on scholarship. Maimonides was perhaps the most cultured and accomplished man examined in the course: he understood and admired Aristotelian philosophy; he eloquently expressed disdain for astrology; he displayed mastery over the Talmud by organizing its teachings and laws in the Mishneh Torah; he advised the Jews of Yemen on how to handle a man who claimed to be the Messiah; he attempted to synthesize Judaism with rational thought; he was a physician. Despite the depths of Maimonides’ acculturation, studying his accomplishments conforms directly to the standard of studying scholars. Maimonides spent time in many nations, but his experiences with them are only obvious in the words of his works; such experiences were not a specific focus in this course outside of episodes spent fleeing from the Almohads. In his book, A Maimonides Reader, Isadore Twersky writes that, to Maimonides, “non-Jewish sources are equally relevant and valid.” (Twersky, 28.) Indeed, when this course studied Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides’ efforts to explain Jewish beliefs in external, non-Jewish terms in an effort to rationalize Judaism. This is a study of external factors impacting a Jewish man. Yet the scholar is the vehicle, and encounters with the external world only occur because studying his work reveals the presence of external influences. Furthermore, the course did not study how Jews reacted to Maimonides’ commentary on Aristotelian philosophy; we learned that Maimonides did not think the truth was meant to be available to the masses, and never focused on Jewish reaction to Western philosophy. The study of the Geonim, meanwhile, failed to enliven Jewish history or create a culture outside of scholarship.
This course studied the organization and calendar of the rabbinical schools in Babylonia, learning of the seats reserved for elite scholars with specific Talmudic studies, and the spots for lesser students who chose their topics. These academies produced Responsa literature, or rulings on questions of religious practice. Questions came from Jewish communities throughout the world, revealing the presence of an international Jewish community. Unfortunately, yet again, scholarship is the vehicle and only through its study did this course explore less lachrymose subjects such as international Jewish interactions. Devoting study to understanding the functions of rabbinical academies betrays Baron’s wishes by focusing on historical Jewish scholarship at the expense of more varied experiences, and by shunning the opportunity to understand Jewish history as part of mankind at large.
Conclusion:
The word lachrymose is perhaps the biggest challenge in accepting this essay’s proposed definition of Salo Baron’s phrase, “the lachrymose conception of Jewish history.” Lachrymose refers to something that causes tears. An overemphasis on tragedy is lachrymose, but it is hard to relate to the idea that a focus on scholars and scholarship brings tears. Baron’s own words help make sense of what the lachrymose conception of Jewish history actually meant. Baron wrote that Jews “had become impatient with the nightmare of endless persecutions and massacres.” The Graetzian method of countering the idea that the Jewish experience is a nightmare is to incorporate a focus on historical Jewish scholarship. Baron, it seems, failed to see this as anything but lachrymose: of roughly one-thousand years of Jewish experience, the only notable positive quality is scholarship? Indeed, the overemphasis on scholarship and scholars serves to indicate the absence of art, music, literature and general community. In this sense, studying scholarship is lachrymose: it depicts an uncultured, lifeless people whose only trait worth being proud of is scholarship. Furthermore, Liberles notes that the study of scholars and scholarship isolates the Jews from the rest of the world and does not liberate Jewish history from having anti-Semitism as subject and cause, which, he writes, was Baron’s goal. To Baron, the lachrymose conception of Jewish history taught that Jews had never any positive experience with the outside world, and offered no joy to the Jewish experience; thus, studying Jewish ascetics and the struggle Jewish women faced may even be categorized as lachrymose. Baron said that, “Suffering is part of the destiny of the Jews, but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption”. Constructing Jewish history as periods of suffering and scholarship deprived the Jewish destiny and history of the repeated joy. In light of the Holocaust, this was a frightening construction of Jewish history. Baron set out to restore the joy to Judaism.
When this course shifted its focus from the persecutions Jews faced in the medieval period, it did not entirely satisfy Baron’s desire to depict a history outside of “suffering and scholars”. Though this course avoided overemphasizing Jewish struggle, in doing so, it too often relied on the study of scholarly careers and establishments. This course did depict the Jewish experience as varied. It examined Jewish women, Jewish poetry, Jewish mysticism, the organization of the Geonim, and the lasting contributions of Maimonides, along with his influence on Jews in lands such as Egypt, Fez, Yemen and Spain. Yet in large parts, this course failed to consistently depict Jewish interactions with the outside world as fruitful or gainful, and did not examine many episodes of joy. And as so much focus on medieval Jewry related to scholars and suffering, even unintentionally in the case of women, the course failed to consistently depict a substantive Jewish experience separate from scholarship, and rarely examined Jewish culture and positive Jewish interaction with the outside world. It is impossible to eliminate anti-Semitism from the Jewish experience, and it is impossible to eliminate persecution from Jewish history. I believe Baron’s ideals for studying Jewish history are impractical and to a certain degree wish to distort the historical Jewish history. This course was careful to pay attention to different Jewish thinkers, communities, practices and experiences, as shown in this essay, but too often the experiences were grim and the focus reverted to scholarship or suffering.
JUST 243 Term Paper
5/6/09
Re-defining Lachrymose: Why Judaic Studies 243 Would Displease Salo Baron
In his biography of Salo Baron, Robert Liberles defines the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history” as “meaning that view placing great emphasis on persecutions at the expense of appreciating the rich and varied nature of the Jewish historical experience.” (Liberles, 117.) By this definition, the syllabus of Judaic Studies 243 can be easily defended against the suggestion that the course placed too much emphasis on Jewish sufferings; though the course thoroughly studied the persecutions, expulsions and blame-games of the Jewish historical experience that often lead to a lachrymose conception of Jewish history, much attention was paid to the flourishing world of rabbinical Judaism, including the Geonim in Sura and Pumbedita, and Maimonides, a man who served as a leader to Jews abroad through interactions with Jewish communities of Yemen and Paris, and whose Mishneh Torah remains central to religious Jewish life. Further studies on the Ashkenazi Hasidim, Jewish mysticism and the culture of Jewish women reflect an effort to understand Jewish individuals, Jewish culture and relationships between Jews. The study of these topics fosters an understanding of the historical Jewish experience outside the realms of tragedy, persecution and general stigma and demonstrates that this course avoids placing great emphasis on Jewish suffering, and thus avoids constructing Jewish history as lachrymose.
Yet there is a gap in this chain of logic that can be attributed to Liberles’ definition of Baron’s famous phrase. Although the “great emphasis placed on persecutions” is an integral part of Baron’s famous phrase, Baron’s frustrations extended to standard efforts to study Jewish life beyond the pale of persecution. A closer look at Baron’s words reveals that the lachrymose conception of Jewish history is a criticism of the study of Jewish scholarship. Liberles writes that, “Baron refers to the lachrymose conception as ‘the Graetzian conception of Jewish history,” referring to Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz (Liberles, 118.) Yet Graetz’s construction of Jewish history is not focused on the periodic persecutions Jews faced. Indeed, Liberles indicates that Graetz’s work’s focus was to avoid overemphasizing Jewish struggle: “Moreover, it was specifically to avoid overly emphasizing the sufferings of the past, that Graetz gave such pivotal attention to scholars and scholarship.” (Liberles, 118.) This indicates that when Baron referred to the lachrymose conception of Jewish history, he was not only lamenting an overemphasis on Jewish persecutions. He was also lamenting the standard method of countering the overemphasis on Jewish persecutions: the focus on scholars and scholarship in Jewish history.
Baron objects to such efforts to understand Jewish history within a vacuum. Graetz, Baron feels, “wishes to identify [Jewish] history through internal factors.” (Liberles, 117.) Liberles notes that Baron criticized another historian for similar depictions of Jewish history as isolated. Baron refers to Graetz’s theory as an “older treatment of Jewish history which may, perhaps uncharitably, be designated ‘the isolationist approach to Jewish history’”. (Liberles, 120.) Baron explains that in Jewish historiography, studying scholars internalizes Jewry when it must be understood in context with the rest of the world. “There is a growing feeling that the historical explanations of the Jewish past must not fundamentally deviate from the general patterns of history which we accept for mankind at large…” Liberles writes that Baron wishes to normalize Jewish history; suffering must be put framed within the context of events like the Crusades and the Black Death that affected Jews, but also affected the outside world. In Baron’s view, to study Jewish suffering and scholarship is to pretend Jews lived in isolation, separate from “mankind at large”, apart from instances of persecution, begetting the concept of Jewish otherness, and the notion that all of Jewish history is a lachrymose experience.
Understanding that Baron views the study of scholars and scholarship as part of the lachrymose conception of Jewish history calls into question the validity of the argument that Salo Baron would not view this course as a lachrymose conception of Jewish history. For a course to avoid depicting Jewish history as lachrymose in Baron’s eyes, it must do more than avoid overemphasizing Jewish suffering. The course must not depict a world of isolated Jewry, and thus must avoid studying scholarly figures and works at the expense of Jewish culture, Jewish experiences and Jewish relationships with outside forces. To continue to link Judaism directly to rabbinical studies creates a sense of otherness and internalizes Jewish history.
Ultimately, a better understanding of what the lachrymose conception of Judaism encompasses reveals that Baron would have categorized this course as lachrymose. This essay will divide the course syllabus into three parts in order to demonstrate that the course should be categorized as a lachrymose conception of Jewish history. First, it will look at topics which examined Jewish culture and experiences unrelated to scholarly life. Then, it will look at the emphasis the course placed on Jewish suffering in order to argue that course failed to link the Jewish experience to the history of mankind at large. Finally, it will address the aspects of the course that focused on Jewish scholarship in order to argue that the amount of time this area of study received at the expense of examining Jewish culture and instances of joy in Jewish history serve to define the course as lachrymose according to Salo Baron’s determining factors in that it both looked at Jewish history in a vacuum and interfered with the possibility of studying the “rich and varied nature” of Jewish history.
Certainly, this course explored Judaism outside the realms of studying and scholarship. Several Jewish communities received focus during the semester. Early mystics who sought to be able to view the heavenly chariot were discussed. The Karaite stance against Talmudic study was examined, and focusing on the Karaites did reveal Jewish interactions with external forces when we learned that Egyptian communities regarded traditional Jews and Karaites as the same, but this was hardly an area of focus and does not reflect an effort to explore Judaism as part of mankind at large. The Ashkenazi community of Germany’s stance on mysticism was a particularly rich study of a unique Jewish tradition.
Studying the mysticism of the Ashkenazi Hasidim was one of the richer studies of a historical Jewish community. Particularly enlivening about the study of this community was the fact that they felt a connection to ancient Judaism. Perhaps this community felt their mysticism was justified by linking in to the past, but nonetheless studying this community revealed an attempt by a Jewish community to relate their culture and customs to the past. Their books on how man can view the glory of God offered a unique look at a community’s spirituality; the attempt to understand a community’s uniqueness fits the criteria of studying the rich and varied experience of Jews in history. Yet the only insight into their interactions with outside civilizations comes when Joseph Dan explains that they held “deep hatred of the Christian church.” (Dan, 48.) Furthermore, the community’s asceticism reveals that its people did not embrace the modern world, and so they lacked an enriching culture; there is very little relatable or culturally retainable about the community. The focus on Jewish women is also an attempt to understand Jewish history outside of scholarship and suffering that still depicts a lachrymose experience.
The experience of Jewish women hardly can be described as joyful or rich in nature. Baron’s definition of the lachrymose conception of Jewish history encompasses suffering and scholarship. Suffering typically relates to persecution, but the experience of medieval Jewish women is clearly a study of suffering. The first sentence in the chapter titled, “Women’s Culture and Education” in Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe explains that, “One of the major areas of discrimination against Jewish women in the Middle Ages was that of education and culture.” (Grossman, 154.) Implicit in this statement is that there were many areas of discrimination against women in the Middle Ages. The basis for the female experience in the medieval period was what tradition said about them; they were created to be a fitting helper for man, which shaped the attitude towards women. Though the focus on the subject of women’s role in the Middle Ages is an attempt to study culture, education and issues of gender, it reveals yet another instance of suffering within the Jewish community of the Middle Ages, and certainly is a lachrymose subject. Furthermore, the chapter is very much a study of the opinions of rabbis on women, again resorting to scholarship to discuss Jewish history.
There were, however, more heartening studies of Jewish culture. The study of Sephardic poetry revealed Shmuel ha Nagid’s Jewish drinking songs. Such songs were popular within the Spanish Muslim world at the time, and reveal a culture unconfined by religion, with Jews borrowing culture from Muslims. The course also briefly examined Haggadah drawing, including the Sarajevo Haggadah, revealing religious art among Jews.
Though on its own, the emphasis placed on suffering on this course was not overwhelming, it was extensive and does contribute to a lachrymose conception of Jewish history. Rather than regurgitate the persecutions studied in this course, I will examine how the study of these persecutions failed to satisfy Baron’s goal of normalizing Jewish history. The study of Jews’ treatment during the Crusades both overemphasized the role of Jews in the Crusades and received too much attention in the course. The only Jews facing persecution in the Crusades were German communities that Christian troops encountered on the path to war with the Muslims. The First Crusade was hardly a conflict involving Jewry at large, yet this course extensively examined European Jewry and the First Crusade Robert Chazan, paying attention to each instance of Christian encounter with Jews. We learned about Jewish efforts to appease Crusaders with money, the crisis the Jewish community of Germany faced regarding forced conversions, the option of suicide and its Talmudic merits, the aftermath of the First Crusade on the Jewish community, and the protection Jews received during the Second Crusade. Seeing as Chazan indicates that the First Crusade did not have any lasting, damaging impact on German Jewry, the study of persecutions Jews faced during the First Crusade was particularly lachrymose. The study of the First Crusade did reveal Jewish relationships with neighbors, as they expected protection from local government. The focus on how Jewish communities regarded both converts and those who killed themselves and their families to avoid conversion does count as a study of Jewish communities, but it only came in the wake of tragedy, and was a lachrymose subject by nature. So, too, was the examination of the blood libel accusation Thomas of Monmouth launched against Jews.
Thomas of Monmouth launched an unbelievable accusation that the Jews of Norwich drew lots and were forced to kill a Christian child. Gavin Langmuir explains in his article “Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder” that Thomas hardly had witnesses, with his strongest witness being a Christian maid who had claimed to live in a Jewish household, and could not prove his accusation that the Jews had paid police forces to be silent. Much of Thomas’s efforts were to depict William as a saint. Langmuir notes that the story is, “above all important for the general history of Jews…for it is our most direct evidence for the first medieval accusation that Jews were guilty of ritual murder.” (Langmuir, 821.) The story is itself hardly impacted the Jewish community of Norwich, and the course did not study how the community reacted. Indeed, the study may have offered insight into the birthplace of anti-Semitic accusations of murder, and can only be classified as lachrymose, offering no insight to the Jewish community, individual, or even experience. It only examined a potential origin of a recurring nightmare in Jewish history. Langmuir’s assertion that the story is important for Jewish history reveals that he subscribes to a lachrymose conception of Jewish history; the story reveals nothing positive about medieval Jewry, nor does it offer any insight into the attitudes or customs of Jewry. The story is important to the history of Jewish persecution, but surely is not an insight into the history of the Jewish people, just as studying Jewish scholars hardly provides an understanding of medieval Jewry. The same can be said of disputations and trials the Jews faced in Paris and Aragon; examining the need for Jewish rabbis to defend sacred texts and beliefs in public displays a history of contempt and skepticism regarding Judaism, and does not reveal anything about medieval Jews and their lifestyles.
The study of accusations launched at Jews during waves of the Black Death revealed another baseless charge against Jews. Jews were accused of poisoning wells, and, perhaps due to economic motives, Jews were the target of a massacre in 1380. The course explained that Jews were defended from the charges by Christian who noted that the plague occurred in areas where Jews did not live, and that Jews would not be so foolish as to poison themselves as well. Yet much of the reading was devoted to the makeup of the mob attacking Jews and the political and economic reasons for mob violence towards Jews. Furthermore, the course did not study Jewish reactions to the plague. It was noted that the Jewish populations were ravished and transformed by the plague, but we did not examine Jewish reactions to the plague, or elements of culture and Jewish society that were affected. It is necessary to study such persecutions and suffering, but the focus on Christian accusations against Jews could have been complemented by studies of Jewish communities afflicted by the plague.
Perhaps the two biggest areas of study unrelated to persecution in this course were studies of scholars and scholarship: the Geonim and its Responsa literature in Baghdad, and the works of Maimonides. Though the study of both topics reflects an effort to understand Jewish history outside the realm of tragedy, it must be categorized as Graetzian for its focus on scholarship. Maimonides was perhaps the most cultured and accomplished man examined in the course: he understood and admired Aristotelian philosophy; he eloquently expressed disdain for astrology; he displayed mastery over the Talmud by organizing its teachings and laws in the Mishneh Torah; he advised the Jews of Yemen on how to handle a man who claimed to be the Messiah; he attempted to synthesize Judaism with rational thought; he was a physician. Despite the depths of Maimonides’ acculturation, studying his accomplishments conforms directly to the standard of studying scholars. Maimonides spent time in many nations, but his experiences with them are only obvious in the words of his works; such experiences were not a specific focus in this course outside of episodes spent fleeing from the Almohads. In his book, A Maimonides Reader, Isadore Twersky writes that, to Maimonides, “non-Jewish sources are equally relevant and valid.” (Twersky, 28.) Indeed, when this course studied Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides’ efforts to explain Jewish beliefs in external, non-Jewish terms in an effort to rationalize Judaism. This is a study of external factors impacting a Jewish man. Yet the scholar is the vehicle, and encounters with the external world only occur because studying his work reveals the presence of external influences. Furthermore, the course did not study how Jews reacted to Maimonides’ commentary on Aristotelian philosophy; we learned that Maimonides did not think the truth was meant to be available to the masses, and never focused on Jewish reaction to Western philosophy. The study of the Geonim, meanwhile, failed to enliven Jewish history or create a culture outside of scholarship.
This course studied the organization and calendar of the rabbinical schools in Babylonia, learning of the seats reserved for elite scholars with specific Talmudic studies, and the spots for lesser students who chose their topics. These academies produced Responsa literature, or rulings on questions of religious practice. Questions came from Jewish communities throughout the world, revealing the presence of an international Jewish community. Unfortunately, yet again, scholarship is the vehicle and only through its study did this course explore less lachrymose subjects such as international Jewish interactions. Devoting study to understanding the functions of rabbinical academies betrays Baron’s wishes by focusing on historical Jewish scholarship at the expense of more varied experiences, and by shunning the opportunity to understand Jewish history as part of mankind at large.
Conclusion:
The word lachrymose is perhaps the biggest challenge in accepting this essay’s proposed definition of Salo Baron’s phrase, “the lachrymose conception of Jewish history.” Lachrymose refers to something that causes tears. An overemphasis on tragedy is lachrymose, but it is hard to relate to the idea that a focus on scholars and scholarship brings tears. Baron’s own words help make sense of what the lachrymose conception of Jewish history actually meant. Baron wrote that Jews “had become impatient with the nightmare of endless persecutions and massacres.” The Graetzian method of countering the idea that the Jewish experience is a nightmare is to incorporate a focus on historical Jewish scholarship. Baron, it seems, failed to see this as anything but lachrymose: of roughly one-thousand years of Jewish experience, the only notable positive quality is scholarship? Indeed, the overemphasis on scholarship and scholars serves to indicate the absence of art, music, literature and general community. In this sense, studying scholarship is lachrymose: it depicts an uncultured, lifeless people whose only trait worth being proud of is scholarship. Furthermore, Liberles notes that the study of scholars and scholarship isolates the Jews from the rest of the world and does not liberate Jewish history from having anti-Semitism as subject and cause, which, he writes, was Baron’s goal. To Baron, the lachrymose conception of Jewish history taught that Jews had never any positive experience with the outside world, and offered no joy to the Jewish experience; thus, studying Jewish ascetics and the struggle Jewish women faced may even be categorized as lachrymose. Baron said that, “Suffering is part of the destiny of the Jews, but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption”. Constructing Jewish history as periods of suffering and scholarship deprived the Jewish destiny and history of the repeated joy. In light of the Holocaust, this was a frightening construction of Jewish history. Baron set out to restore the joy to Judaism.
When this course shifted its focus from the persecutions Jews faced in the medieval period, it did not entirely satisfy Baron’s desire to depict a history outside of “suffering and scholars”. Though this course avoided overemphasizing Jewish struggle, in doing so, it too often relied on the study of scholarly careers and establishments. This course did depict the Jewish experience as varied. It examined Jewish women, Jewish poetry, Jewish mysticism, the organization of the Geonim, and the lasting contributions of Maimonides, along with his influence on Jews in lands such as Egypt, Fez, Yemen and Spain. Yet in large parts, this course failed to consistently depict Jewish interactions with the outside world as fruitful or gainful, and did not examine many episodes of joy. And as so much focus on medieval Jewry related to scholars and suffering, even unintentionally in the case of women, the course failed to consistently depict a substantive Jewish experience separate from scholarship, and rarely examined Jewish culture and positive Jewish interaction with the outside world. It is impossible to eliminate anti-Semitism from the Jewish experience, and it is impossible to eliminate persecution from Jewish history. I believe Baron’s ideals for studying Jewish history are impractical and to a certain degree wish to distort the historical Jewish history. This course was careful to pay attention to different Jewish thinkers, communities, practices and experiences, as shown in this essay, but too often the experiences were grim and the focus reverted to scholarship or suffering.
