Angle of Deflection

This chapter reflects on the principle of 'angle of deflection' or 'measurable deflection'. This principle has been utilized superbly by Mark Cohen in his path-breaking work on Jewish economic activity in the Islamic world. But the principle of angle of deflection still has its critics. Some have seen in it a reflection of legal formalism. Whether law develops from within, as a consequence of an internal dynamic, or whether its motor force is social pressures and the personal predilections and ideologies of judges is an ancient jurisprudential question. The principle of angle of deflection is, however, not a jurisprudential but an evidentiary one. Both formalists and realists agree that the dominant motor force in a system does not operate to the exclusion of all else. The rule of the angle of deflection provides the historian with a criterion by which to assess whether or not a specific jurist in a specific case was influenced by outside considerations.

Jewish and Roman Law: A Study in Interaction

This chapter discusses the laws regulating usury (ribbit). In the course of studying ribbit, more specifically, the problem of personal surety in usury contracts, certain peculiar developments in Provençal halakhic thought came to the author's attention which were not explainable by indigenous forces. The geographical distribution of the discussion seemed oddly disproportionate, the fictions too blatant, the types of problem that were raised seemed inappropriate for the period, and the terminology was occasionally alien. The author was compelled to look outside Jewish law for possible stimuli. Placing the Jewish developments within the context of twelfth-century Provençal law shed light on a number of seemingly inexplicable points. The Jewish literature, on the other hand, provided new information about the Gentile law of the time and yielded fresh corroboration for theories of the penetration of Roman law in Provence. However, at the same time this material seemed to point to an earlier date for certain legal developments than is generally accepted. It is these findings that the author wishes to bring to the attention of the scholars of Provençal law.

Topics in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh

This chapter focuses on Ibn 'Ezra's Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh. Conflicting reports are to be found in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh as to the origin of the soul. At times it is described as originating from the holy spirit via a process of inbreathing. On other occasions it is said to have been lit from the flames of the Kavod or of the heavenly throne. Other passages speak vaguely of its having been created from the place of the heavenly spirit. Whether any of these processes, or all of them, are genuine acts of creation or only emanations cannot be determined from the text. A prominent place in the Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh is occupied by demuyot, mirror-images of man fashioned at the beginning of Creation and which stand in endless array before the Kavod, drawing their sustenance from the absorption of the heavenly light that streams forth from the Kavod, and in turn transferring this vitality to their earthly counterparts. The demut is a counter-shape and plays no role in the religious experience of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz.

The Literary Remains of the Gedol ha-Mefarshim

This chapter presents an extension of the author's characterization of Ravad of Posquières. It begins by studying the literary remains of the gedol hamefarshim. Passing over the talmudic commentaries, which was discussed in the previous chapter, the chapter examines the few works of Ravad that have come down to us and probes whether they have a coherent, unified text or whether every text of Ravad's oeuvre is 'open' and in flux to this day. Is there nothing stable in his literary legacy? The chapter then looks at the bitter rivalry that developed between Ravad and R. Zeraḥyah ha-Levi of Lunel, the author of the Sefer ha-Ma'or, a rivalry that consumed and embittered much of Ravad's life.

Three Themes in Sefer Ḥasidim

This chapter discusses how R. Yehudah he-Ḥasid's sense of right and justice, what he termed din shamayim (heavenly law), had little in common with halakhic norms; it resembled instead the 'natural law' of the Stoics, a sense of justice imprinted in all men's minds that guided them to a common perception of the right and the equitable. The meaning often given to din shamayim, the centrality attributed to it in the German Pietists' thought, and the image of the-Ḥasid as torn (consciously or not) between two competing sources of authority reveal more about the outlook of modern Jewish historiography than about the thinking of those medieval German Jews who so aspired to the epithet 'Ḥasidim'. The chapter then questions whether the celebrated remarks of Sefer Ḥasidim about talmud Torah and talmidei ḥakhamim constituted a theoretical evaluation of these institutions and thus expressed a basic axiological critique, or whether these words arose from a distinct historical context and possessed a specific address. It is the tosafist movement that forms the backdrop to Ḥasidei Ashkenaz. Much of Sefer Ḥasidim, both good and bad, is a product of and a response to the disruptive effects of the new dialectic.

Sefer Ḥasidim and the Social Sciences

This chapter explores the evidence advanced for some of the currently reigning ideas in the study of German Pietism. The texts of the movement are available to all. The question is, how does one read them? And how does one use notions and models drawn from the neighboring disciplines of sociology and anthropology? The chapter argues that Ivan Marcus has sacrificed his numerous insights for the sake of sociological and anthropological models, and the complexities and ambiguities of the movement, of which he is aware, have lost much of their vibrancy in the attempt to align them with constructs drawn from neighboring disciplines. It examines proofs adduced for three major theses of Marcus's book Piety and Society: the three-stage evolution of German Pietism, penance as a rite of passage into the pietistic fraternity, and finally, the sectarian nature of Sefer Ḥasidim.

Piety, Pietism, and German Pietism: Sefer Ḥasidim I and the Influence of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz

This chapter investigates the the differences between Sefer Ḥasidim I (sections 1–152) and Sefer Ḥasidim. No less striking than the absence of retson ha-Borè (the Will of the Creator), asceticism, and other defining themes of the Pietist movement is the parallel absence in SH I of exempla, which abound in the other sections of Sefer Ḥasidim. Over the course of time, different editors appended SH I to various collections of material of Sefer Ḥasidim, always taking care that SH I opened the collection, ensuring that the reader would first encounter not the startling tenets of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz but rather page after page of conventional pietistic discourse on love of God, fear of God, humility, and so on. It is remarkable to what extent SH I and those passages in Sefer Ḥasidim that were in the spirit of SH I shaped the historical image of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz. Study of the influence of Sefer Ḥasidim on the subsequent literature of Ashkenaz, whether halakhic or ethical, shows that not only were the new ritual world of retson ha-Borè or the book's radical social teachings wholly without influence, but also that they went literally unnoted.

The Riddle of Me’iri’s Recent Popularity

This chapter examines the recent popularity of R. Menaḥem ha Me'iri of Perpignan. It is commonly thought that the works of R. Menaḥem ha Me'iri were first published in the twentieth century. This is correct if one is referring to the series of Me'iri publications that Avraham Sofer produced from the huge, six-volume manuscript in the Parma Palatina Library, and which contains the Bet ha-Beḥirah on most of the tractates of the Talmud. However, a glance at any bibliography will immediately reveal that the Bet ha-Beḥirah on many tractates was already published in the eighteenth century. Some parts of it were printed in the eighteenth century, a few more in the nineteenth; but they were swiftly forgotten. In fact, the revival of his work did not begin in the 1930s: initially Sofer's publications had little impact. Only in the latter half of the twentieth century did they become popular, and various scholars moved quickly to put out the Bet ha-Beḥirah on other tractates of the Talmud and to publish new editions of the works that Sofer had already published, and these editions have been repeatedly reprinted. Why the centuries-long indifference and why the revival of the past sixty years? The chapter answers these questions.

Ravad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay

This chapter focuses on Ravad of Posquières, 'the greatest of Maimonidean critics'. Ravad's Hassagot were a sparsely disseminated work. Throughout the medieval period, when Ravad's influence was both massive and decisive, his glosses on the Mishneh Torah were little known and of less influence. It was Ravad's commentaries that first broke free from the geonic moorings, and it was these exegetical works that heralded the intellectual independence of Europe. His work was less definitive than Rashi's and far less comprehensive, but more original. It was his almost unparalleled capacity to confront talmudic texts unaided, to wrest their meaning single-handedly, that allowed Ravad to penetrate into those areas where no commentarial tradition was available — halakhic midrashim, tractates Kinnim, and 'Eduyot — and to range far and wide over the Yerushalmi and the Tosefta.

A Response to R. Buckwold’s Critique of ‘Rabad of Posquières: A Programmatic Essay’, Part II

This chapter is a continuation of the response to Rabbi E. A. Buckwold's extensive critique of the author's article on Ravad of Posquières. The author claimed that Ravad and Rabbenu Tam were revolutionaries, that they dispensed with 500 years of geonic tutelage, and that the innovative, the new in law often wears the guise of the old, all of which incurred R. Buckwold's wrath. The chapter first addresses the two major sources of R. Buckwold's disquiet. It then turns to a number of his lesser criticisms, both his assumptions and his mode of argument. R. Buckwold cites Menaḥem ha-Me'iri's introduction to Avot in explanation of the absence of written talmudic commentary in the time of the Geonim, and states that, as the language of the Talmud was understood by all, there was no need for commentary. The chapter argues that Me'iri's introduction to Avot, valuable as it is in some of the information it contains, is not a work of history and is of limited historical use.