Unfortunately, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the letters of the English alphabet and the Hebrew aleph-beis. There is one Hebrew letter that can be p.r.o.nounced as either b or v, so the name Abrabanel and Abravanel are both reasonable transliterations of the same Hebrew spelling. Similarly, another letter can be p.r.o.nounced either s or sh. In both cases, there are diacritical marks that can be used in the Hebrew to indicate the intended p.r.o.nunciation, but these are omitted in most written Hebrew.
The glottal ch sound found in many Hebrew words has no English a.n.a.log. This is used in the words chiam and bruchah, meaning respectively life and blessing, and p.r.o.nounced as the ch in Bach or Loch Ness. It should be easy for Germans and Scots to p.r.o.nounce, but it gives many English speakers trouble. Some transliterations use the letter h for this sound, others use the awkward looking kh; given that English readers expect to see ch used for this sound in loan words from Gaelic and German, it is hard to justify these other alternatives.
A final reason for irregular transliterations from Hebrew to English lies in places where both Hebrew and English grammar can be used. Should we construct the plural of mitzvah, commandment, as mitzvahs, following the English rules for plural formation, or should we construct the plural as mitzvos or mitzvot, using the Hebrew rules for plural formation? I will do the latter because it demonstrates how a Jewish character would say the word where a writer might want to emphasize their Jewishness by having them drop in an occasional Hebrew word. I recommend doing this in careful moderation except where you want your Jewish characters to come across as incomprehensible.
In the context of remarks in the novel 1632 about the American habit of using acronyms, it is relevant to note that the Jewish world has been using acronyms for a very long time. The Jewish Bible is known as the Tanach, formed from the initials for Torah, nevi"im (prophets) and ketuvim (writings), with random vowels added to allow it to be p.r.o.nounced as a word. Similarly, stam calligraphy is used for the texts of the Sefir Torah, tefilin and mezuzot. Many more of these acronyms will be mentioned later, in the section on Jewish names.
Judaism: A Brief Introduction Judaism centers on the covenantal obligation of Jews to perform the 613 divine mitzvos that have been identified in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. As a result, Judaism has, at its core, a code of law known as halacha, a word meaning "the path." It is reasonable to compare this to the canon law of the Church, but where Christianity is a matter of faith and can survive without its law code, it is difficult to formulate versions of Judaism that are not centered on the mitzvos.
Jewish law was considered to be binding on all Jews, and throughout most of the European Jewish world of the seventeenth century, Jewish courts were empowered by the Christian authorities to enforce this code of law in all disputes between Jews. Halacha is not just a religious code, for example, it includes a highly developed code of commercial law, and matters of doctrine or creed are not addressed in any depth.
The two primary jobs of a rabbi have traditionally been to serve as a teacher and a judge of Jewish law. It follows that the Talmud, which is the central text of every rabbinical seminary or yeshivah, can be thought of as a law text-although it is much more than that. The Talmud is ma.s.sive and must be studied in the context of more recent rabbinic rulings. As a result, shorter codes of Jewish law have long attracted readers. In the seventeenth century, the Shulchan Aruch by Rabbi Yosef Karo of Safed was the newest compendium, but it was also somewhat controversial.
Under Jewish law, all prohibitions can be suspended when doing so will save a life, excepting the prohibitions against murder, idolatry and s.e.xual immorality. Dietary prohibitions and modesty rules fall by the wayside if they stand in the way of saving a life, as do the prohibited categories of work on the Sabbath and even the laws against theft. In times and places where Jews were subject to serious persecution, many Jews interpreted the obligation to save lives narrowly, applying it primarily to Jewish life.
The Jewish world of 1632 was a complex one; broadly speaking, it was divided between the Ashken.a.z.ic and Sephardic communities, but this greatly oversimplifies the picture. The Jews of Italy, in particular, included an indigenous community dating back to Roman times that was neither Ashken.a.z.ic nor Sephardic. This community had its own ritual tradition dating back to Roman times, although by the seventeenth century Italy also hosted Ashken.a.z.ic and Sephardic communities, most notably in Venice. The Babylonian and Yeminite communities were also distinct.
In general, the division between the different Jewish communities was not one of ideological disagreement, but one of traditions. The Jews of these communities usually agreed that the traditions of the other communities were valid and that, within each community, these traditions had the binding force of law. The greatest differences between these communities were in the prayer book, where one community or the other had made additions to the basic structure of the liturgy mandated by the Talmud, and in minor dietary laws-particularly those surrounding Pa.s.sover.
In addition to the traditional and ritual differences between the Ashken.a.z.ic and Sephardic communities, there was significant prejudice. Sephardic Jews still remembered being at the center of the Jewish world prior to their expulsion from Spain, and tended to think of their Ashken.a.z.ic cousins as uncultured and vulgar. Ashken.a.z.ic Jews, in turn, resented this dismissive att.i.tude.
There was also, of course, the matter of language. The mamaloschen (mother tongue) of the Ashken.a.z.ic community was Judische Deutsch, formed from German with a liberal admixture of Hebrew roots (laschon is, for example, the Hebrew word for tongue). In seventeenth-century Poland, Judische Deutsch was already well on the road to becoming what we now call Yiddish.
In areas where the larger community spoke various local German dialects, it is not clear that Judische Deutsch should be described as Yiddish, and considered as a distinct language, as opposed to just another German dialect. The Sephardic community, in contrast, spoke Ladino, or Judaeo-Spanish, while the Italian community spoke Judaeo-Italian. There was also an indigenous Jewish community in North Africa that spoke Judaeo-Arabic.
All of these languages contained numerous Hebrew words and were written in Hebrew characters. It is fair to say that these languages were mutually incomprehensible with the possible exception of slowly spoken and carefully enunciated Judaeo-Italian and Judaeo-Spanish. Rabbis, many laymen and some women in all of these communities would have known enough Hebrew to overcome any communication difficulties caused by these language differences.
As already noted, the Ashken.a.z.ic and Sephardic communities had distinct Hebrew dialects.
In Ashken.a.z.ic, the th sound had become an s, so Ruth was p.r.o.nounced Roos, and in Sephardic, it had become a t, so the name became Root. There was also a shift in the p.r.o.nunciation of some vowels and a shift in syllable emphasis. Where Sephardic Jews generally emphasized the last syllable, as in talit or amen, Ashken.a.z.ic Jews tended to emphasize the first syllable, talus or omain.
Jewish names Family names, as we know them today, were uncommon in the seventeenth-century Jewish community. From biblical times to the modern era, all Jews generally have patronymic names, so Moische ben Aaron is Moses, the son of Aaron, and Frumah bat Yosef is Faith, the daughter of Joseph. Jewish marriage, divorce and death records will always give the name in this form, as will Jewish court records. In addition, this form of name is used when a Jew is called up in the synagogue for any liturgical purpose.
There is one general exception to this, the family names Cohen and Levi, which are of biblical origin. The name Cohen, indicating priestly descent, has numerous variants, including Kahn and Kaplan. In the same way, Levi indicates descent from the biblical Levites and gave us family names such as Levine. In formal liturgical usage, these names are appended to the patronymic form, so Samuel son of Moses the Cohen would be known as Schmuel ben Moische haCohain.
When the Torah is read in the synagogue, the first and second sections of the reading are reserved for the Cohen and Levite, if any are present. This and a few other minor ritual privileges have ensured the continuity of these family names.
In the seventeenth century, a few Jewish families were using family names approximately as we use them today. Most frequently, these were used as a way of calling attention to relationships with prominent ancestors. For example, many descendants of the noted French Torah commentator and mathematician Gershonides, or Rabbi Levi ben Gershon used the family name Ralbag to call attention to their ancestry; Ralbag was simply the acronym for his full name.
Most of the great Jewish scholars have had their names reduced to acronyms. For example, the eleventh century French biblical commentator from Troyes known as Rashi was Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzach, and the greatest scholar of the twelfth century was the Rambam, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon of Cairo, known in the Christian world as Maimonides. Aside from Ralbag, however, these acronymic names did not generally become family names.
It was common to use the name of a home town as a last name. For example, the merchant and Talmudist Simon ben Eliezer was known as Simon Gunzburg after his birthplace; he lived in Ulm for a while and was also known as Simon Ulma. He was famous enough that his descendants carried on both of these names as family names, giving rise to the modern names Gunzburg and Ginsberg as well as Ulma and Ulman.
When someone had an extremely common name, for example, Yehudah ben Avraham, there was a need to distinguish them from others with the same name. The most prominent person with such a name in any given community generally got to keep the name, while others needed to add something. The Abravanel family, for example, is probably descended from a prominent resident of Seville named ben Avraham; other ben Avrahams from Seville would have had to use a different name. The question of whether it should be transliterated Abravanel or Abrabanel is fair. The former transliteration is more common, but because the letter v is p.r.o.nounced more like an f in German, the latter transliteration would be more likely in German lands.
In the mid-seventeenth century, Rabbi Schlomo ben Yitzach of Frankfurt had a very common name. There were many Solomons who were sons of people named Isaac. To distinguish him from others of that name, he was sometimes called Solomon Rothschild. The name Rothschild, in turn, was used because his father Isaac, the leader of the Frankfurt Jewish community, lived in a house with a red shield hanging over the door. These shields were put up in the Frankfurt Jewish quarter in the early 1600"s at the insistence of the Christian authorities. At the time, the name Rothschild had no special meaning, and in fact, Schlomo ben Yitzach also called himself Solomon Bacharach and would probably have preferred that name if the Christian authorities had not imposed the name Rothschild. His descendants, on the other hand, continue to take pride in the name Rothschild to this day.
Nicknames were common in the Jewish world of the seventeenth century, and it was common for Jews to go under variant names in different circles. Yitzach of Frankfurt, for example, was probably Isaac Frankfurter to his Christian neighbors. To his close friends and colleagues, he was probably Yitz. In German, if you could address him informally in German as du, you would call him Yitz; if you had to address him formally, with Sie, he would be Yitzach. To his wife or mother, he might have been Yitzelle (little Yitz).
Names in translation also occurred. The name Chiam became Vidal in Judeo-Italian and Ladino because it means life. The names Tzvi and Ari, meaning deer and lion, became Hirsch and Loew in Judische Deutsch. The name Loew became a family name as early as the fifteenth century. Rabbi Yaakov Loew ben Chiam, born around 1480, was Reichsrabbiner or chief rabbi of the German Jews. The most famous member of this family was the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague (1525-1609). Today, the Maharal is remembered as the creator of the Golem of Prague; this legend may have been unknown in the mid seventeenth century but his work on whether it was permissible to use automatic mechanisms to do work on Shabbos was fairly well known.
The master of the house, baal beis in Hebrew, was known as the balebus in Judische Deutsch.
Any familiar but also highly respected man was likely to be addressed as Reb, used as a t.i.tle of respect, but only with his first name. The honorific Reb is close in value to Mister, as it was used in the nineteenth century, which is to say, as a t.i.tle for the master of the household; any balebus was therefore ent.i.tled to this honorific. The honorific Rav was appropriate for rabbis only, and the wife of the rabbi would be the Rebitzin. Tradition discouraged unmarried men from serving as rabbis.
Women of the seventeenth-century Jewish community sometimes had Hebrew names but in other cases, they had German or distinctly Judische Deutsch names. The Maharal"s children included Gitele, Tilla, Rachel, Leah, Vogele and Realina. Some biblical names, such as Eve or Rebecca would rarely be heard in their German form, but rather, they would be p.r.o.nounced in their Hebrew form, Chava and Rivka except in dealings with non Jews.
Jews and Gentiles The laws governing the Jews of seventeenth-century Europe encouraged them to support themselves through the loan business. In exchange for being allowed this one source of income, Jews were forced to pay special taxes. In areas with significant Jewish populations, these "Jew taxes" were a major source of income. For the n.o.bility, raising the Jew taxes and having the Jews pa.s.s these on as high interest rates was a safe way of squeezing money out of the their subjects because borrowers generally directed their anger at the Jews for the high interest rates instead of blaming the government.
The Jews of the seventeenth century generally lived within walking distance of synagogues because of restrictions on the distance a person could travel on the Sabbath and a prohibition on riding on the Sabbath. When possible, Jews lived in walled and gated compounds within towns and cities; Jewish law encourages this because the prohibitions on carrying on the Sabbath relax considerably if you are within a walled area, called an eruv, although the city walls themselves would suffice.
Christian law, based on the papal bull of 1555, required that all Jews living under Christian rule live in the Jewish quarters of their towns and required that the gates to the Jewish quarter be closed on Sunday, lest the Jews spoil the Christian Sabbath. The gated Jewish quarter provided some protection from mob violence directed against Jews, particularly around Easter when attacks against Jews were common enough to be described as traditional.
The term ghetto itself was relatively new in the 1630"s, dating only to 1516, when the princ.i.p.ality of Venice restricted Jewish residence to an area formerly occupied by a foundry, or ghetto, in Venetian Italian. Many German towns had Jewish districts organized along a single long street; in most such towns, the district was known as the Judenga.s.se-Jewish lane. The most famous Judenga.s.se was that of Frankfurt am Main.
Despite papal and imperial decrees that all Jews be confined to the Jewish quarters of towns, there were Jews living outside these quarters. Such Jews were known as Shutzjuden, or protected Jews, and they lived outside the Jewish quarters only because they paid Shutzgeld, protection money, to the local n.o.ble. In effect, this Shutzgeld was a bribe to the n.o.ble in his role as magistrate to have him overlook the decrees he was legally charged to enforce. By the seventeenth century, status as a protected Jew was generally governed by a contract that could be inherited. In some areas, Shutzgeld was a major source of income to the local n.o.bility.
Jewish commerce with non-Jews was strictly limited. Jews were forbidden to sell new goods, join guilds, bear arms or hold public office. Aside from money lending, the only other businesses generally permitted were trading in used goods such as sc.r.a.p and rags.
In the seventeenth century, the restrictions on Jewish occupations began to soften. Jews had to be careful about this, carefully constructing legal fictions in order to bend the rules. For example, where a Jew could not legally buy and then resell some product, he might legally act as a broker, taking delivery of the product from the seller, delivering it to the buyer and taking care of the cash transfer for a fee. Restrictions on Jewish commerce were generally more likely to be enforced in areas with significant Jewish populations; they were weak where Jews were few and far between.
The word "gentile" itself is worthy of note. In the Jewish world, the term used would invariably have been goy, or goyim in the plural. In Hebrew, this word means exactly the same thing as the Latin gens, a race, a people or a nation. As used in Judische Deutsch, the word goy became a synonym for gentile; it only had negative connotations because, until recent times, it was a safe a.s.sumption that if a person was a Gentile, he was likely to be anti-Jewish and therefore dangerous. Jews did trust some Gentiles, but such trust was rare, conditional, and risky. All Jews were generally familiar with stories about Gentiles who had proven themselves to be trustworthy through many years and then had betrayed that trust.
One story, in particular, ill.u.s.trates the risks of such trust. Over the centuries, there have been many churchmen who extended considerable protection to the Jews, only to withdraw it. Martin Luther is the most famous example; early in his career, he urged that Jews be treated with great respect, but once he concluded that such tolerance would not convince large numbers of Jews to convert to Christianity, he wrote On the Jews and their Lies (1543), one of the most anti-Semitic works ever written. Luther went so far as to say "We are at fault in not slaying them." As a result of this change, the Jewish communities of many of the new Lutheran lands faced persecution so severe that essentially all of the Jews were driven out.
Of course, the term "anti-Semite" would be entirely unfamiliar to any resident of the seventeenth century. It is a nineteenth-century term, coined by Wilhelm Marr when he wanted a respectable and scientific sounding term for the older Judenha.s.s-literally, "Jew hatred."
In general, when Jews and Christians interacted, there was a very strong asymmetry.
Christians were urged by their tradition to do everything they could to convert Jews, while Jews were urged by their tradition not to talk about Judaism to non-Jews. For the past thousand years, the experience of the Jewish community with such dialogue had been extremely negative. The Catholic Church had organized many disputations in which Jewish and Christian scholars were pitted against each other, but the outcome of these disputations was generally preordained and frequently fatal for the Jewish partic.i.p.ant. As a result, genuine interfaith dialogue was extremely rare and when it occurred, it was almost always conducted in private.
In the context of 1632, for example, it is quite likely that Rebecca Abrabanel would have been quite reluctant to say much about the depth of her own allegiance to Judaism to Michael Stearns for several years after she married him. He might not even notice small observances she maintains while living with him, and when he does, he may completely misunderstand their significance.
Jewish Dress In general, in every age, Jews have dressed more or less like their neighbors. Examination of medieval illuminated ma.n.u.scripts makes this quite clear, as does examination of the works of several seventeenth-century artists. There are, however, some distinctively Jewish elements to clothing.
The first of these is the response to the commandment to wear "ta.s.sels on the corners of your garments" (Numbers 15:37). This has led to the universal Jewish custom of men wearing a tallus or prayer shawl during morning prayers. In the Sephardic dialect, this was p.r.o.nounced tallit.
Medieval persecution and pietism combined to lead Jews of the medieval Ashken.a.z.ic community to convert this to an undergarment that could be worn all day without being obvious. The big tallus gadol was still worn during morning prayers. Only the four tzitzis, or ta.s.sels of the little tallus katan undergarment hung out into public view. To any Jew or to any Gentile who came in regular contact with Jews, these fringes served as a badge that the wearer was Jewish. German Jews frequently referred to the talus katan undergarment as a tzitzis, after the fringes it carried.
By the seventeenth century, the Ashken.a.z.ic tradition was that all men, starting in cheder or elementary school, wore tzitzis, but only married men wore the tallus gadol. The story in the Sephardic world is less clear; Jews in the Ottoman Empire were wearing the talit katan, but it is difficult to identify evidence that the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam wore this undergarment.
Certainly, "secret Jews" living in Spain or Portugal would be risking their lives to wear such a garment.
In 1434, imperial law required German Jews to wear a Jew badge, in keeping with the papal bull of 1425. The requirement that Jews wear the Jew badge was rigorously enforced, although some exceptions were made by n.o.ble decree, usually for court Jews or physicians and sometimes for their families. In rare cases, the badge laws were abolished for an entire community; for example, in 1541 Charles V annulled them in the county of ottingen. Generally, though, badge laws remained in effect until the Emperor Joseph II abolished them in 1781.
The most common form for the Jew badge was a yellow ring two to three inches in diameter worn on the left breast of the outer garment. Some ill.u.s.trations show a ring that looks like it might have been a bra.s.s hoop, perhaps pinned onto the garment, but the instructions that have survived for making the badge describe a yellow cloth ring that was to be sewn on.
By the late seventeenth century, when ruffed collars were in vogue, a yellow collar, or a collar with a yellow edge, became a common form for the badge, but the legal requirement of a yellow ring remained in force to the end of the century in much of the Holy Roman Empire. In many cases, women wore the same badge, but Jewish women"s headdresses were also distinctive and served the same purpose in many communities.
During prayer, all Jewish men have traditionally covered their heads with a hat, although this is generally agreed to be a matter of tradition and not law. In the Sephardic community, some Jews only wore hats during prayer, but the Ashken.a.z.ic tradition was to wear head coverings at all times. By the seventeenth century, as several portraits by Rembrandt make clear, many of the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam were wearing an essentially modern yarmulke at all times, and wearing it under other, more fashionable hats when out in public. There is no reason to believe that the Ashken.a.z.ic tradition was any different, as this certainly conforms to the practices of Eastern European Jews into the twentieth century.
During the middle ages, Ashken.a.z.ic Jews developed the custom of wearing peaked felt hats that came to be known as "Jews" hats." For two centuries prior to 1425, German Jews were required to wear such hats, and they remained in occasional use even after the enactment of the badge laws. There is no evidence, however, that these hats were worn in the seventeenth century, and one apparent reason for the introduction of the Jew badge was the decline in popularity of the distinctive Jew"s hat.
Broadly speaking, Jewish law forbids shaving, although the use of scissors to cut the hair very closely is permitted. More detailed a.n.a.lysis of Jewish law shows that shaving of parts of the head and face are permitted, but not the sideburns, chin or upper lip. Generally, prior to modern times, few Jews would have shaved except secret Jews, who would have followed the shaving customs of their Christian neighbors. In the Ashken.a.z.ic world of the seventeenth century, many men would have trimmed their facial hair closely with scissors, while others, particularly rabbis, would grow full beards. The tradition of growing long peyos-sidelocks-as a sign of piety was distinctly Ashken.a.z.ic, with medieval origins. Sidelocks could be pushed behind the ear or allowed to hang free. Doc.u.mentation of the age of these traditions is found in illuminated ma.n.u.scripts.
The modesty code of Jewish law has generally been interpreted as requiring Jewish women to cover their arms and legs, and also requiring that married women cover their hair. This was not materially different from the conventions of the Christian world of the seventeenth century, but it is noteworthy that Jewish women of seventeenth-century Germany frequently wore a headdress that took a two-horned or two-paddled form, possibly supported by a pair of combs set into a single bun at the rear, or possibly covering a "double bun" hairdo similar to that worn by Princess Leia of Star Wars fame. The veil worn over the buns and hair combs was frequently marked by two blue stripes, and the badge laws of some regions recognized such a veil as a variant Jew badge.
Remember that the folk costumes of European women frequently involved elaborate headdresses that clearly identified their regional or ethnic origins; the distinctive Jewish women"s headdress fit into this more general pattern. In sixteenth-century Italy, Jewish women began to wear wigs as head coverings, but this fashion spread slowly, and it was only centuries later that most Ashken.a.z.ic women began to wear wigs in order to technically cover their hair while following bareheaded fashions of the era.
Finally, note that the modesty code of Jewish law was generally interpreted as forbidding men and women from touching in public. As an example, for a Jewish man to shake hands with a Jewish woman would have been considered quite improper in the seventeenth century. To use modern terminology, initiating such contact would have been seen as s.e.xual hara.s.sment. There was also a tradition that a Jewish man should not give something directly into the hands of a Jewish woman other than his wife; instead, men would set things down where the woman could pick it up. This tradition avoided the risk of touching and it avoided coming close to the marriage ritual, since one way to create a legally binding marriage involved the groom giving an item of even nominal value into the bride"s hand. Similarly, for a man and a woman other than his wife to enter a room and close the door behind them could create the impression of s.e.xual impropriety, so this too was prohibited.
Jewish Travel Jewish law forbids work and travel on Shabbos, the Sabbath or Sat.u.r.day; Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; the two-day holy days of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, Shavuos, Pentecost; and the first and last two days of each of the eight-day festivals of Succos and Pesach, Pa.s.sover).
The dates of the festivals are fixed in the Jewish lunar calendar, and Shabbos and all of the festivals run from sunset the night before to nightfall of the final day. Authors interested in writing historical fiction that involves Jewish characters should use a perpetual calendar to locate the dates of the festivals for the year in question. The resources section at the end of this essay lists several good perpetual calendars available on the Web.
The travel restrictions for the Sabbath allow walking 2000 amos (cubits) beyond the border of the city walls, and they forbid carrying anything, even something as small as a housekey, outside the border of the eruv or walled Jewish district. Many modern commentators arbitrarily define 2000 amos as one kilometer, although 3000 feet would be more accurate. The restrictions on travel and carrying during the festivals are only slightly less restrictive.
The complexities of the general requirements for observing the spring festival of Pesach are such that Jews of the seventeenth century would not begin a long trip until Pesach was over.
Where Easter falls after Pesach, it would generally not be safe to begin the trip until after Easter, as a matter of self-protection. Long trips during the winter would be unlikely because of the weather and lack of all-weather roads, but if a Jew set out on such a trip, he would generally attempt to return home at least a week before Pesach in order to have the time to prepare for the festival.
Similar constraints surround the fall holiday season, which for Jews, runs from Rosh Hashana through the Days of Awe to the fast day of Yom Kippur and then through the festival of Succos, which ends with Simchas Torah. Jews on a long trip would generally plan to reach their destination before Rosh Hashana, and they would rarely start a major trip until after Simchas Torah. Long distance travel after these fall holidays would be rare because of the weather.
As a result, except in the case where war or expulsion forced Jews onto the road involuntarily, the Jewish travel season would have been from the end of Pesach or Easter, whichever came later, until Rosh Hashana.
In general, long-distance travelers would hope to reach the safety of the Jewish quarter of a town by Friday of each week, and they would almost certainly avoid travel on Sunday because of the threat of persecution. The gates of many Jewish quarters were locked on Sundays. Thus, a typical traveler would have five days per week available for travel, and there are typically 109 days available for travel between Pesach and Rosh Hashana. Because Shavuos fell in midweek in 1632, long-distance travelers might well elect not to travel that week, and many travelers would not travel during the fast day of Tisha Bav in August, because travel on an empty stomach is uncomfortable.
Thus, a typical Jewish merchant would plan on about a hundred days of travel per summer. If we a.s.sume that this is done on foot with a loaded pack at about fifteen miles a day, this gives the traveler a range of fifteen hundred miles per year. As the crow flies, it is about five hundred miles from Frankfurt to Lodz, Poland, but it is dangerous to measure distances that way. On foot along the roads of the seventeenth century, the path could easily have been twice this long. A round trip to Lodz would thus be unlikely in a year, but a one-way trip could easily be planned. Any traveler planning such a trip would be well advised to leave soon after Pesach in order to allow for difficulties along the way, but such a traveler would not worry overly about the loss of a week here or there along the road. A well-to-do traveler on horseback or traveling by carriage could easily double this travel radius, planning on a visit to Poland and return in one summer with time to spare.
The biggest special financial difficulty faced by Jewish travelers was paying the Jew taxes required for entry or temporary residence in various communities along the way. This tax varied; sometimes Jews entering a city paid the same head tax as livestock. Foreign Jews in the county of ottingen were required to pay an eighteen kreuzen daily poll tax set in 1623. The annual rate was eight thalers in eighteenth-century Berlin, seven gulden in late seventeenth-century Oldersum. In addition to their use as a source of revenue, Jews taxes were used to prevent entry of Jewish refugees into a community and to discourage them from staying if they were pa.s.sing through, although there were occasions when these taxes were waived on humanitarian grounds.
Jobs in the Jewish community Whatever the source of income for the Jewish community as a whole, the internal economy of the community generally created a number of jobs. There were teachers, or malmuds, in the cheder-elementary school, and rabbis for the yeshivah-secondary school or seminary. Only the more important communities had yeshivos. In general, all Jewish communities dating back to Roman times had an established system of public education. The obligation to provide for schooling is placed squarely on the community in the Talmud, and there is ample evidence of public funding for schools in both the Ashken.a.z.ic and Sephardic worlds.
It is worth noting here that the Talmud, which is written in Aramaic, was the central subject of study in the yeshivah, so any yeshivah graduate was literate in both Hebrew and Aramaic. In general, yeshivah graduates are ent.i.tled to be addressed as rabbi, although not all of them are ent.i.tled to sit as judges on a rabbinical court. Not all yeshivos were organized formally, and some rabbis of the seventeenth century took on individual students for private study leading to ordination.
Because of the need for kosher meat, any Jewish community, even a small one, would have someone who was trained as a shochet, a specialist in kosher slaughter and butchering; the Yiddish word shechter, from the same Hebrew root, is also used, and it eventually became a family name. The training required for a shochet centered around study of the laws of kosher slaughter in the yeshivah, but of course, it also included practical training in the care and use of the specialized tools of kosher slaughter, how to properly salt the blood out of the meat, and other aspects of the butcher"s art. The most notable tool of the shochet is the knife used for slaughtering cattle; this has a 2-foot square-ended razor-edged blade that must be perfectly sharp and free of defects before each use.
The laws of kashrus generally place no restrictions on whole fruits and vegetables, but there are very strong prohibitions about drinking wine (or other grape products) that have been made with the intent that it be used by idolaters. This prohibition dates back to the times of the cult of Bacchus, but the use of wine as a Christian sacrament guaranteed the extension of this prohibition to the present day. Because of this, Jews generally have used kosher wines, that is, wines made by Jews. Kosher wine could be made by the individual homeowner, starting with whole grapes or raisins. However, there were many kosher winemakers in Europe; the great Torah commentator Rashi supported himself as a winemaker, and the better kosher wines were shipped over fairly long distances.
The laws of kashrus also forbid the eating of bread baked by a non-Jew, and they forbid cooking over a fire lit by a non-Jew. The concern about bread is that the bread may have been baked using lard or non-kosher tallow and that the oven itself may have been non-kosher because of contamination with food residues from non-kosher cooking. While anyone can bake bread at home, home ovens were still uncommon in the seventeenth century, so most communities relied on Jewish bakers or communal ovens. It was not uncommon for the communal ovens to be part of the synagogue complex.
The torah scroll required for a public worship service and the smaller scrolls enclosed in mezuzot and tefillin, to be discussed in a moment, were all required to be handwritten on parchment prepared from the skin of a kosher animal, usually calfskin velum. Every Jewish community of any significant size would have a sofer, a scribe trained in the copying of these texts. The sofer was generally a yeshivah graduate, and his practical training included the making of pens, ink, parchment and hide glue, as well as the copying of texts. With the advent of printing, it is highly likely that the first typesetters and proofreaders involved with Hebrew printing were soferim. A Jewish marriage contract, a ketubah, generally required the services of a sofer, as did divorce papers.
Every Jew is commanded "to write these words on the doorposts of your house"
(Deuteronomy 11:21), and this commandment has been taken almost literally since biblical times by affixing a small handwritten parchment scroll containing Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 to the doorpost of the entrance to a Jewish house. The case containing this scroll is called a mezuzah, and the most visible sign that a house is occupied by Jews is generally the presence of a mezuzah on the doorpost. On pa.s.sing through a door marked by a mezuzah, essentially all seventeenth-century Jews would give it a symbolic kiss, touching it with their fingers and kissing their fingertips.
As mentioned previously, all Jewish men would wear some form of talus, or prayer shawl during daily morning prayers. In addition, essentially all adult Jewish men of the seventeenth century would wear tefillin on weekdays but not on Shabbos or the festivals. Some writers prefer to translate the word tefillin as phylacteries; the latter is technically an English word, but it is so rare that there is no good reason to prefer it to the Hebrew.
Tefillin are cubical leather cases containing small parchment scrolls with the texts of Exodus 13:1-10, 11-16, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and 11:13-21, in fulfillment of the commandment to "Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a frontlet between your eyes." The tefillin worn on the forehead is held on by a leather strap with a complex quatrefoil knot at the back, while the tefillin worn on the upper arm is held in place by a long leather strap that is wound around the arm, hand and fingers in a complex way.
The Synagogue and Jewish Community By the middle ages, all Jewish communities in Europe had fairly well-defined communal structures. Communities were generally led by an elected council, and the head of this council, the Parnas, could properly be called the president of the community. Under Jewish law, the community was responsible for providing schools, a synagogue, a cemetery, a burial society, a bath house or mikvah, and financial support for widows and orphans. Ovens were also frequently constructed by the community since it was difficult for individual families to afford the large brick ovens of the pre-modern era. The community had the legal mandate under Jewish law to tax its members to support these inst.i.tutions. These obligations were reinforced by the Christian authorities, who frequently demanded that the Jewish community administer the Jew taxes and provide for the Jewish poor so that they would never burden Christian charities.
As a result of all of this, synagogue buildings frequently served many purposes beyond worship. They provided cla.s.sroom and meeting s.p.a.ce, and they frequently incorporated community facilities such as a mikvah or bath house and ovens. Backing the oven up against the wall of the mikvah was a good idea in areas where the winters were cold! Some mikvos even appear to have had Roman style hypocaust heating systems. Given that the Jewish community in the Rhineland dates back to Roman times, this should not be surprising, but of course, each time a community was expelled or slaughtered, such complexities tended to be simplified or lost.
Because ten adult men (age 13 or older) were required for a full religious service, the presence of a synagogue in a town generally implied the presence of around ten families.
Similarly, two synagogues implied the presence of around twenty, although unless there was an ideological or liturgical dispute, it would usually take a much larger population before a second synagogue was founded. The Christian authorities generally regulated the foundation of synagogues, but where there was no legally const.i.tuted synagogue, congregations frequently met in private homes.
The sanctuary of the synagogue or schul would always contain an ark, or cabinet along the eastern wall to hold the Torah scrolls. The ark would have both a cloth curtain and a wooden door, so you must open both to expose the Torah. When these are open, tradition demanded that the congregation stand as they would in the presence of royalty because the Torah is the word of G.o.d. It takes a Torah scroll to hold a full service, but a synagogue would hope to own at least two because many services had readings from different parts of the Torah that would require long pauses to wind and rewind the scroll if there was only one. The larger wealthier synagogues of the seventeenth century usually had many Torah scrolls.
The Torah scroll was handwritten on parchment, and it was wound around two posts, called the eitz chiam or trees of life. No other Jewish scroll was ever wound on two posts. The complete Torah scroll was big, with pages about two feet tall sewn side by side, with text written in columns about eighteen inches tall by six inches wide. Posts and all, a Torah scroll weighs ten to fifteen pounds, depending on how thin the parchment was sc.r.a.ped. Lighter scrolls on thin parchment with smaller lettering would cost more than big scrolls on thick parchment with big lettering. When stored in the Ark, Torah scrolls are always stored vertically, resting on their eitz chiam and leaning back against the back of the ark.
Torah scrolls were dressed differently in the Sephardic and Ashken.a.z.ic world, but the Amsterdam Sephardic world followed Ashken.a.z.ic customs. Sephardic scrolls were typically permanently bound into a wooden clamsh.e.l.l case with a silver cover. These cases are cylindrical, and when opened, they expose just enough of the scroll to be read. Ashken.a.z.ic scrolls were dressed in a cloth cover, typically the most expensive cloth available, with lots of fine embroidery, and then armed with a breastplate and crown. The crown, if there is just one, would look like what you expect a king to wear. If there were two, they would be called rimonim, and would be tall and narrow, sometimes resembling gothic spires, with one set over each of the eitz chiam. The armament for a Torah scroll would typically weigh several pounds, and it would be made of silver as befits royalty. The fact that the Frankfurt Jewish community had to sell its synagogue silver in the winter of 1631-32 is evidence of how desperate that community was, since this is close to the last thing a community would sell off in hard times.
Synagogues of the seventeenth century were generally built in the round, with a central reading table large enough to unroll the Torah scroll for reading and still have s.p.a.ce for several open books on each side. This was necessary because, during the Torah reading, the reading table needed to accommodate not only the reader and the person called up for the honor of saying the blessing over the reading, but also two checkers who follow along in their printed copy of the text and correct the reader when he makes mistakes. The reading table sits on a raised platform in the center of the room, called the bimah, and it faces the ark. In the seventeenth century, it was very rare to put the bimah anywhere but the center of the room.
During the Torah reading, everyone would typically sit facing the Bimah, and many would follow along with the reading if they had a copy of the Chumash, the printed text of the Torah.
Except during a few special prayers, notably the standing prayer or Amidah, it was not unusual to find quiet conversations while the service was in progress. During the Amidah, everyone was expected to stand and face east.
With extremely rare exceptions, women and men never prayed together in the seventeenth century. The Talmud states that the voice of a woman is indecent, and where some interpreters held that this applied broadly, it was generally agreed that this applied in the context of prayer. A notable exception to this rule is that after successfully giving birth, a woman was required to stand before the congregation to say a thanksgiving blessing. What would become a standard synagogue layout, with women"s galleries above the main level, was developed in Amsterdam around 1639. Prior to this, for many centuries, many synagogues had included a women"s gallery off to the side or in back. The minimum separation between the women"s gallery and the main sanctuary was a railing, but many synagogues had lattices. Technically, women had no obligation to pray in the synagogue, but there is ample evidence that many did.
Jewish Religious Practice In general, observant Jews would pray three times a day; in Jewish communities of the seventeenth century, one of the jobs of the synagogue shamus (sometimes translated as s.e.xton or beadle) was to bang on shutters in the morning in order to rouse his congregation for morning prayers. The longest prayer of the day was the morning prayer, which was traditionally said before breakfast and could take an hour. There were traditional short forms of this prayer that could be said if work was pressing, and in a real pinch, it could be reduced to just the Shema, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4). There was a strong emphasis on saying the morning prayers with the congregation if at all possible. The Shema was also said in the evening, and traditionally, Jews hoped that the Shema would be on their lips as their last breath.
The afternoon prayer had to be said before sunset, and the evening prayer had to be said after sunset. When these were said communally, particularly in the winter, they were frequently said in quick sequence, one after the other at sunset.
A central element of all three daily prayers was the Amidah or standing prayer, a sequence of bruchas or blessings said while standing. In the morning and afternoon prayers, the tradition for communal worship was to recite the Amidah privately, silently, in a whisper or in a quiet voice, and then have the chazzan, the cantor, chant it aloud when everyone had finished their private recitation. As a general rule, when a Jew heard someone say a blessing, he was required to respond Amen, or Omain, as an Ashken.a.z.i Jew would likely have p.r.o.nounced it. It follows that the congregation would respond with an Amen after each of the blessings in the Amidah. The evening Amidah was said privately, without a cantoral repet.i.tion. During the Amidah in particular, but while standing at prayer in general, Jews traditionally sway back and forth. This practice is ancient and well doc.u.mented in medieval sources.
All services contained psalms. One psalm in particular is said as part of every service, Ashrei, which is Psalm 145 expanded with a few borrowed verses of other psalms. The preliminary segment of the morning service included a block of psalms ending with Psalm 150 before the introduction to the Borochu, the call to worship.
After each section of each service, some version of the Kaddish would be said. This prayer is in Aramaic, not Hebrew, and there is the short or half Kaddish, the long Kaddish, and the mourner"s Kaddish. The Sephardic community has a slightly different version of the long Kaddish than the Ashken.a.z.ic, and some Jews speculate that the Lord"s Prayer of the Christian world began as yet another version of the Kaddish. The mourner"s Kaddish, it should be noted, is said by those who have lost a spouse, parent, child or teacher in the past year, or on the yartzeit (anniversary) of the death. All other Kaddishes would be said by the Chazzan. Different communities had their own traditons about standing or sitting, but in general, in the seventeenth centuries, most communities would stand during the Kaddishes.
Every Jew had the legal right to stop the service in the synagogue immediately before the Torah reading in order to present a grievance and demand justice. While this right was never widely exercised, it provided an important check against injustices being perpetrated by the community leadership.