Bonds Between the Living and the Dead Part I

This chapter focuses on R. Judah the Pious's position regarding prayer and alms for the dead and evaluates it against the geonic stance he inherited, contemporary Jewish sentiment and practice, and various streams of Christian positions. In keeping with medieval thinking, R. Judah tightens the bonds between the living and the dead. The living, he believes, owe a great debt to the dead, who continuously pray on their behalf. In rabbinic thought, although the ordinary dead can be petitioned to pray for the living, it is commonly the holy dead — specifically the patriarchs and matriarchs — who pray on behalf of the nation of Israel, and the living are not obligated, nor do they choose, to reciprocate in prayer on behalf of the dead. In Sefer ḥasidim, however, the average dead assemble annually to pray on behalf of the living, and the living, in turn, are obligated to pray on their behalf.

Status in the Hereafter

This chapter analyses R. Judah the Pious's selection of ghost tales that pertain to the individual's status in the afterlife. It contrasts elements of his tales with rabbinic notions of the afterlife and compares them with those found in tales that circulated in the Germano-Christian environment. In both language and content, the Pietist tales of Sefer ḥasidim that describe the state of the individual in the hereafter contain elements that parallel those found in the early medieval visionary literature, as well as in the high medieval exempla collections. Popular motifs, such as vivid descriptions of corporeal torture by demonic agents, figure prominently in both Sefer ḥasidim and contemporary literary sources and artistic representations. Other shared characteristics include the principle of talio and the disproportion between sin and punishment. The problem of corporeality — already apparent in the areas of the dangerous dead and the attire of the dead — surfaces yet again both in Sefer ḥasidim and in the Christian exempla collections.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the degree of cultural embeddedness that was manifest among the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz with regard to their beliefs and practices surrounding the dead and their world. Medieval Ashkenaz as a cultural milieu included the Jewish communities of Germany (the empire north of the Alps), France north of the Loire, and England. Historians of western Europe have documented major transformations in attitudes and practices related to death and the hereafter which took place in that period. One such transformation consisted of a movement away from the perception of death as a generalized, objective experience and towards a more subjective, individualized notion of it. Belief in personal judgement after the death of the individual similarly became widespread at the time. Historians of medieval Jewry have also pointed to the primacy of the high medieval period in the shaping of Jewish practices and attitudes regarding the dead. Bearing in mind the simultaneous shifts in consciousness and praxis within both the dominant culture of Christian Europe and the subculture of medieval Ashkenaz, the book seeks to discover whether these changes were related or merely coincidental. It assesses how far death-related beliefs and practices that circulated in the Germano-Christian environment of the time penetrated Sefer ḥasidim, the great religious-ethical work of the Pietists.

The Holy Dead

This chapter identifies the heightened value assigned to martyrdom in the medieval period as an example of appropriation of Christian concepts involving the holy dead. The ghost tales of Sefer ḥasidim reflect the martyrs' exalted position as the holy dead of Ashkenaz. The use of the medium of the ghost tale in Sefer ḥasidim in order to illustrate the impropriety of burying the wicked beside the righteous attests to the influence that outside forces had in shaping the Pietist conception of the martyrs as the holy dead. Instead of miraculous interventions that prevented situations of improper burial in the talmudic narratives, in the Pietist stories the dead themselves seek out the living in order to correct existing situations of improper burial. Shared motifs between the relevant ghost tales of Sefer ḥasidim and those found in the Icelandic sagas and exempla literature reveal the affinity between pre-Christian, Christian, and Pietist notions regarding the burial of the wicked amidst the righteous. These shared motifs testify to the appropriation by the Ashkenazi community of the Christian notion of the martyr-saints as the holy dead, and its adaptation to the Rhineland martyrs.

On Sin, Penance, and Purgation

This chapter evaluates R. Judah the Pious's position on posthumous punishment as compared with rabbinic tradition and tosafist commentary. It assess his views on the matter in light of the changes that occurred within the Christian doctrine of penance and the rise of Purgatory in the high medieval period. The sabbath rest of souls — a belief commonly held by Jews of the time — has no place in R. Judah's vision of Gehenna. Besides increasing the duration of posthumous punishment, the Pietists also heighten its severity. Such punishment is punitive rather than purgative, and is to be avoided as much as possible through the performance of harsh acts of penance in this world. Several important themes of the early medieval penitential literature have been transferred onto the pages of Sefer ḥasidim. Having substituted the doctrine of Inevitable Sin for Original Sin, and depicted the Pietist master as a Christ-like figure of atonement, R. Judah has unwittingly adopted a thoroughly Christian world-view. Moreover, R. Judah's advocacy of voluntary corporeal suffering, as well as his definition of the hasid as one who lives in constant daily battle with sin and in ascetic withdrawal from the pleasures of this world, demonstrate the Pietists' identification with several fundamental monastic ideals.

The Sinful Dead

This chapter discusses how the sinful dead are punished in Pietist sources as opposed to talmudic ones. The notion that the dead return to Earth in order to suffer punishment for sin is rooted in pre-Christian beliefs surrounding the return of the dangerous dead. That such notions appear in high medieval sources testifies to the tenacity of pagan ideas regarding the dead; these beliefs survived for centuries under the veneer of Christianization, especially in the Germanic environment which formed the background to Sefer ḥasidim. The pre-Christian belief in the return of the corporeal dead to Earth, as well as an unabashed belief in the corporeal nature of the post-mortem punishments assigned to sinners, were ones that R. Judah the Pious absorbed from his environment and shared with his contemporary Caesarius of Heisterbach, among other Christian writers. The presence of the same beliefs regarding the dead in the writings of the German Cistercian and the German Pietist reveals a commonality between them. Ancient imaginings of the dead here cross religious boundaries and reflect a world-view that was shared by medieval Jew and Christian alike.

The Dangerous Dead

This chapter analyses the fear of the dead in Ashkenazi society as depicted in Sefer ḥasidim and other, non-Pietist, sources. In the Talmud, the holy dead appear bodily to the living. In Sefer ḥasidim, by contrast, the holy dead make no appearance at all. The tremendous disparity between the Talmud and Pietist accounts in terms of the emotional response elicited by the returning dead can be understood only in the light of the latter's reflection of a firmly rooted and strongly held belief in pre-Christian notions of the dangerous dead. Sefer ḥasidim and other Pietist sources reveal evidence of German Jewish belief in the violence, vengeance, and summoning power of the dead. These sources prescribe methods of protection against harm from ghosts, exhumation of bodies in order to stop the spread of disease, and various apotropaic funeral practices which parallel other, similar methods and practices extant in the Germano-Christian environment.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter summarizes the findings and main points of the book. What this study has revealed is that Jewish attitudes towards the dead and the hereafter in medieval Ashkenaz resembled more those of their Christian neighbours than those of their rabbinic ancestors of talmudic times. The unconscious interiorization, within Ashkenazi society, of Germano-Christian beliefs, customs, and fears about the dead — a result of acculturation — is clearly manifest. Although popular in origin, these practices, beliefs, customs, and fears were found among both elite groups and ordinary people within this small medieval Jewish enclave. Even the literary mediums through which the material was conveyed within the host society — visionary literature and the ghost tale — were adopted in Sefer ḥasidim and other, non-Pietist sources. The chapter then draws a sketch of the Pietist aspirations that emerge when one ties together the various strands of Pietist teaching on many of the subjects touched upon in previous chapters.

The Neutral Dead and the Pietist Dead

This chapter examines the role of the neutral dead in Sefer ḥasidim and shows how the concern for clothing the dead, in its various stages of existence, assumed specifically medieval forms. It also looks at the Pietist practice of burial in a talit with tsitsit, which highlights the singularity of the Pietists' unusually strong attachment to burial in such a garment and reveals an affinity with an ancient Germanic belief and custom regarding the afterlife. The belief that physical objects possessed the power to propel their bearers to Paradise was present in Ashkenazi sources both within and outside the Pietist circle. In this light, various Ashkenazi halakhists viewed specific garments of the dead, such as the tsitsit, as aids in the passage of the soul to the hereafter. These garments were not solely intended, as the talmudic rabbis would profess, for the time of the resurrection. The focus on the period immediately after death, rather than a concern with the World to Come, was a hallmark of the medieval period and one which separated yet again the world of the Pietists from the world of the rabbis of the Talmud.

Bonds Between the Living and the Dead Part II

This chapter studies R. Judah the Pious's theories of sin and accountability in Divine judgement relative to contemporary Jewish views, and explores his conception of God as depicted in Sefer ḥasidim. In opposition to the new religious mood, R. Judah sees justice, not mercy, as the dominant Divine attribute in posthumous judgement. With the individual to stand on trial alone and with the odds more against him than in his favour, R. Judah's view of God's judgement departs sharply from midrashic and contemporary liturgical and artistic images. While Ashkenazi commentators on piyut and illuminators of maḥzorim depict a compassionate God who throws away one's sins or tilts the scales of judgement in one's favour, R. Judah paints an austere portrait of humankind overwhelmed by the gravity and inescapability of sin in front of an unforgiving and unswayable deity. His rejection of all models of patronage, both Jewish and Christian, his refusal to allow merit to cancel out sin — a view which he holds in opposition to other Jewish thinkers of his day — and his vision of posthumous judgement as absolute justice untempered by mercy serve to isolate him from members of his own Pietist circle and render his notions of accountability for sin exceptional in Jewish tradition.