Jews in the Early Modern World by Dean Phillip Bell

Author:Dean Phillip Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461638001
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Ethics

If one surveys broadly the intellectual output of early modern Jews, one is immediately struck by the preponderance of ethical writings. These writings included moral tales, especially, for example, of the medieval Hasidei Ashkenaz (German Pietists) and various chronicles intended to strength certain behavior and mindset, such as Solomon Ibn Verga’s The Staff of Judah. Sermons preached in the synagogue were often later collected and printed in written form. Yiddish was becoming an increasingly important medium for communication, and a variety of publications in Yiddish provided Jewish education (especially in this area of ethics) as well as a host of popular tales. Some were adaptations of non-Jewish literature, for a wide audience that included an expanding middle class and, as some scholars maintain, a large female readership.

The Hasidei Ashkenaz (German Pietists) of the Middle Ages had handed down much of their morally infused teaching through various works, especially the Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Pious). That work was reprinted in the early modern period, and a variety of tales allegedly describing the activities of the Hasidei Ashkenaz circulated throughout Europe in Yiddish and, later, in Hebrew. Often these tales provided important moral and religious instruction. At the same time, they created something of a bridge connecting the Jews of the Middle Ages and the early modern period.45

While Ibn Verga’s work is generally recognized as a history, its focus on the causes for Jewish suffering evokes a powerful moral sense as well. Among the reasons that Ibn Verga supplied for hatred of Jews were divine anger, the sins of our fathers, natural causes that prolong the Exile because of our lack of merit, and the slaying of Jesus. Added to these factors, however, Ibn Verga added the following moral twist. Persecution is caused in part by jealousy or envy regarding religion, women, and money, all of which are involved in Jewish and non-Jewish relations. In addition, Ibn Verga argued that the people became accustomed to swearing falsely and that some Jews developed enormous pride, which they lorded over their Gentile neighbors, creating a good deal of animosity.46

Perhaps the late seventeenth-century memoirist Glückel of Hameln put it most succinctly. Of her work, she wrote to her children the following:

This, dear children, will be no book of morals. Such I could not write, and our sages have already written many. Moreover, we have our holy Torah in which we may find and learn all that we need for our journey through this world to the world to come. . . . The kernel of the Torah is, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But in our days we seldom find it so, and few are they who love their fellowmen with all their heart—on the contrary, if a man can contrive to ruin his neighbor, nothing pleases him more. The best thing for you, my children, is to serve God from your heart, without falsehood or sham, not giving out to people that you are one thing while, God forbid, in your heart you are another.

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