Jewish Studies

In the spring of 1944, the Yiddish poet and partisan Avrom Sutzkever was airlifted into the unoccupied Soviet Union. With him he brought more than new information about the Holocaust. He brought a distinct approach to witnessing, one that summoned Soviet Jews, and refugees especially, to tell him their stories in response. Sutzkever’s testimony differed from other important testimonial publications that appeared in
the Soviet media at the time. In the latter, we find a stylistic and conceptual separation between the voice of Jewish victim and Jewish advocate, observer and interpreter of catastrophe. By contrast, Sutzkever’s work, the epic poem “Kol nidre” in particular, emphasizes dialogue and reciprocity among different witness perspectives. His writing also
ascribes dignity and poetic beauty to the voice of the Jewish victim from Poland-Lithuania. In this essay, these observations about Sutzkever’s writing are set in conversation with
epistolary responses to the author from Soviet Jewish refugees.

Il contributo affronta, tramite l'utilizzo di fonti archivistiche, il ruolo svolto dagli ebrei di Messina nel commercio degli schiavi in Sicilia tra tardomedioevo e prima età moderna. L'obiettivo è una prima ricostruzione dell'inserimento di alcuni componenti della comunità giudaica peloritana nel lucroso traffico di questa preziosa "merce umana" e dell'atteggiamento dell'aljama nei confronti di importanti problematiche come la redenzione degli ebrei ridotti in schiavitù.

This article presents the Masonic career of a kabbalistic lithograph in the United States in the middle of the 19th century, against the background of a sectarian debate that concerned the religious character of Freemasonry. In their struggle for equality, Jewish Freemasons took advantage of the Solomonic heritage of Masonic mythology and advocated a Jewish origin for the fraternity, in which Kabbalah assumed a role of providing esoteric underpinnings for this narrative. The article shows that within the wider historical framework of Jewish-Christian relations, the kabbalistic lithograph became a tool in the hands of Jewish Freemasons in a Masonic sectarian debate.

Grazie all’opera di artisti e intellettuali, nel Rinascimento emerge una consapevolezza inedita del divenire storico che favorisce il culto del nuovo nelle arti, in letteratura, in filologia e nelle scienze. Il nuovo prendeva il posto del culto, una liturgia umana subentrava a quella divina. Questa rivoluzione tocca anche la cultura ebraica, motore e agente di un rinnovamento senza precedenti. Lo studio di Giuseppe Veltri ricostruisce la vita intellettuale ebraica nel Rinascimento italiano ed europeo, mettendo in luce momenti salienti del dibattito del tempo: la coscienza storica del divenire e la secolarizzazione, la funzione della poesia dantesca come ponte fra mondo ebraico e mondo cristiano, l’uso del volgare come simbolo del connubio delle diverse tradizioni, la nascita del criticismo, l’atteggiamento scettico come strategia e sintomo della crisi politica e intellettuale, il dibattito sull’immortalità dell’anima.

This paper discusses the Qurʾānic verses about the Jews and the people of Israel in terms of the naming and the content. Key questions to be addressed are: What is the purpose of the frequent mention of the people of Israel in the Qurʾān? What is the context and the content of the verses about the Jews and the people of Israel both in Meccan and Medinan sūrahs? What message or messages are intended to or can be conveyed by these verses?

ערב רב: פנים וחוץ בוויכוח הפרנקיסטי הוא ספר מרתק וחדשני החושף את סיפורה הייחודי של התנועה הפרנקיסטית, תנועה יהודית אפיקורסית שצמחה בפולין והתפשטה במרכז אירופה במחצית השנייה של המאה ה-18.

בעיני רוב היהודים פרנק היה 'משיח שקר' ידוע לשמצה. בעיני נוצרים נאורים ומיסיונרים מילנריסטים היה יהודי-נוצרי ואדם חופשי בדעותיו, שלו קשרים מסתוריים והוא משתמש במגיה ובמאגרי עושר סודיים. עבור מאמיניו היה למבשר שחרור מן המסגרות המקובלות המדכאות של מגדר, הלכה, מעמד, משטר ודת.

התנועה הפרנקיסטית עוררה הדים והיתה סלע מחלוקת גם בקרב גורמים דתיים ופוליטיים לא יהודיים: יוזף השני, קתרינה הגדולה, גתה, קזנובה ואחרים. תורותיו של יעקב פרנק, מנהיג התנועה, הציבו אתגר בפני היהדות הנורמטיבית, אך גם בפני האסלאם וזרמים בנצרות. הספר מברר מחלוקות פנימיות ביהדות המודרנית אך דן גם ביחסים בין יהודים לסביבתם במאות ה-18–ה-19.

ערב רב מבוסס על מקורות פנימיים שחיברו פרנק ומאמיניו, על מקורות יהודיים פולמוסיים אנטי פרנקיסטיים, ועל מקורות שכתבו גורמים לא יהודיים בני הזמן. דרכו המוקצנת של יעקב פרנק עוררה עניין רב בו ובתנועתו, ולקורא מוגש ניתוח מעמיק של פרשה היסטורית ייחודית זו.
המחבר, ד"ר פאבל מצ'ייקו מן האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, חוקר את תולדות היהודים בפולין-ליטא בעת החדשה. נולד בוורשה וקיבל תואר דוקטור מאוניברסיטת אוקספורד. פרסומיו הרבים זיכו אותו בפרסים, במלגות ובמענקי מחקר רבים. שימש מרצה אורח באוניברסיטאות שונות, בארצות הברית, בצרפת, בגרמניה ובפולין.

This paper will explore a lesser known and underexplored member of the nineteenth century Haskalah, Mattityahu Strashun (1817–1885) from Vilna, Lithuania, and his personal relationship to Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars such as Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) and Shlomo Yehudah Rapoport (Shir, 1790–1867) and its effect on his scholarship. I will outline Strashun's methods of study by locating him within the historical and cultural world in which he was born and lived. I argue that three distinct contemporaneous movements influenced his scholarly achievements: the Russian Haskalah, Strashun's local intellectual circle that embraced the teachings and methods of R. Eliyahu ben Solomon Zalman of Vilna (Vilna Gaon, 1720–1797), and Wissenschaft des Judentums. I will demonstrate that each of these three – with particular focus on the influence of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its leading scholars – are apparent in Strashun's scholarship and worldview. Additionally, I will provide examples of correspondence between Strashun and leaders of the Wissenschaft des Judentums that illuminate his personal relationships with these scholars.

Claude Eatherly, pilota e metereologo,
era un ragazzo texano di
27 anni quando ordinò lo sgancio
della prima bomba atomica della
storia, Little Boy, che colpì Hiroshima
il 6 agosto 1945.
Nonostante la giovane età, non
era certo un dilettante: per quella
missione vennero scelti i migliori
piloti della US Army, e Eatherly
aveva già dato prova del suo valore
militare, abbattendo, nel corso
della sua fulminante carriera,
più di trenta aerei nemici. Dopo
lo sgancio della bomba, tuttavia,
lasciò l’esercito e rifi utò qualsiasi
riconoscimento al valore da parte
degli Stati Uniti. Compì anche
maldestre rapine e altri piccoli
crimini, con la speranza di trovare
sollievo nel biasimo collettivo. Ma
ciò non bastò a placare i suoi dilanianti
sensi di colpa e Eatherly
venne internato in un ospedale
psichiatrico. Fu in questo momento,
quattordici anni dopo Hiroshima,
che iniziò un carteggio con
Günther Anders, il fi losofo tedesco
autore del capolavoro L’uomo
è antiquato. Il risultato è questo
libro: un commovente scambio
epistolare tra Anders e un’anima
persa, in cerca di un’espiazione
tanto impossibile quanto necessaria.
Dopo anni di assenza dalle
librerie, torna disponibile una delle
testimonianze più toccanti sul
disastro che cambiò per sempre
la coscienza collettiva.

ר' יואל טייטלבוים – הרבי מסאטמר – היה אחד הרבנים הידועים והמשפיעים ביותר בעולם היהודי, ואף מעבר לו, בתקופה שלאחר השואה. הוא הצליח להקים את אחת החצרות החסידיות הגדולות ביותר דווקא בארצות הברית, מדינה שבה המודרנה, החופש האישי והמתירנות המינית היוו את ההפך המוחלט של השמרנות החסידית המסורתית. אחת הסיבות להצלחתו המפתיעה הייתה כי בניגוד למרבית הרבנים בני דורו, אימץ ר' יואל השקפה אנטי-ציונית קיצונית שהאשימה בגלוי את הציונות באחריות לפרוץ השואה ולתוצאותיה החמורות. לדבריו, חטא הציונות, המהווה כפירה בבורא עולם, היה כה חמור, עד כי לאל לא נותרה כל ברירה מלבד להעניש את עמו בעונש החמור ביותר – השואה.
מאמר זה יבחן את ההשערה לפיה השקפותיו האנטי-ציוניות של ר' יואל, ובמיוחד אלו הנוגעות להאשמת הציונות באחריות לשואה, הושפעו מן הצעדים, ההחלטות והאירועים אותן עשה או חווה בתקופת מלחמת העולם השנייה ומן הצורך להסביר אותן לחסידיו. חלקו הראשון של המאמר ידון בחייו הפרטיים ובפעילותו הציבורית של ר' יואל בין השנים 1937—1945 כפי שבאו לידי ביטוי בביוגרפיות שנכתבו אודותיו, בעיתונות התקופה ובמסמכים ארכיוניים. החלק השני יסקור את הביקורת על התנהלותו המפוקפקת, הן ברמה האישית והן ברמה הציבורית, ובסופו תוצגנה הדרכים השונות בהן ניסו ר' יואל עצמו, ובעקבותיו גם כותבי תולדותיו, לטשטש, להצדיק ולתרץ בדיעבד את מעשיו השנויים במחלוקת בתקופה קשה זו.

Since from the late Middle Ages to the Emancipation, Eastern European Jewry was spiritually, physically and linguistically isolated from the Christian society, we are inclined to believe that it had always been so ever since Judaism and Christianity turned their backs on each other in late antiquity, especially because rabbinical literature mentions Christianity by name only sporadical-ly. According to the traditional narrative, also represented by Paul Johnson in his History of the Jews, the destruction of the Temple, the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt and the spread of Christianity caused Judaism to turn in on itself for hundreds of years and became oblivious of its richer past and untouched by the outside world, as if living in a hermetically sealed world. This paradigm has difficulties accommodating that four Midrashim (rabbinic exegeses) in a collection of Jewish homilies for Sabbath titled Pesiqta Rabbati, recorded in the seventh century but prob-ably composed earlier, features Ephraim son of Joseph, another Messiah apart from David’s son, whose description contains an amazingly large number of Christological features, which strikingly resemble the Gospels’ Passion account and the book of Revelation. The homilies also draw heavily from Psalm 22, understood by Christian tradition as describing Christ’s sufferings. Recent scholarly discourse defines the polemics in which Jews take over Christian cultural or religious ideas to build their own religious identity as “counterhistory” or “inward accultura-tion.” Its confrontational form denies the opponent’s identity by frontally attacking Christian religious symbols to deprive them of the sanctity attributed to them, such as the medieval Jewish Gospel parody titled Toledot Yeshu. The other strategy is internalization or “re-Judaization,” in which Jews appropriate and take control over Christian symbols as if saying: “what the Chris-tians talk about is really our Messiah because anything may they say, we are still the true Israel.” It reinstates into the Jewish tradition ideas that were inherent in pre- and para-Rabbinic Judaism but embraced by Christians, so deemed heresy by the rabbis, thus found only in traces in the Talmud. Concerning Jesus Christ, one of them is the binitarian theology of “two powers in heaven,” which elevates human figures to divine status such as in the Enoch/Metatron tradition, and the other one is the idea of “two messiahs” stemming from the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. The Midrashim of Pesiqta Rabbati revive this latter in a seemingly traditional manner, but in fact they go far beyond the limits of Rabbinic messianism without precedent, among others by merging the Messiahs son of David and son of Joseph into the figure of a preexistent Ephraim, who undertakes suffering for the sins of humans at the time of the creation, which is unknown outside the New Testament. By wandering into such dangerous theological waters, the Midra-shim support the new scholarly narrative that the rabbis knew the Christian discourse, the Chris-tian interpretation of the Old Testament, and the New Testament more profoundly and relied on them to develop Jewish religious identity to a greater extent than we formerly thought, and that the spiritual and ideological borderline between the two sisters, Ecclesia and Synagoga, was far from so rigid and impermeable as it seems for the first sight.

Monday 11 January 2021, 19:00 Israel Time

Sword and Buckler in Hebrew Letters: Traces of Early Illuminated German Fight Books in Jewish Manuscripts
Prof. Sara Offenberg
Department of the Arts, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Two manuscripts produced in early fourteenth-century German lands reflect similar iconography of fighting with Sword and Buckler (small round shield); one is the well-known fencing manual, Leeds, Royal Armouries, MS I. 33, produced ca. 1320, and the other is a Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France héb. 9, made in 1304, that will be the focus of this paper. I wish to demonstrate that the iconography of the masorah figurata was adapted from German Fechtbücher (fencing manuals), which are books of instructions, usually with illustrations, detailing the fencing arts. First, I relate to the realia of Jews bearing arms and Jewish fencing masters. Afterward I discuss the iconography of the fighting figures; subsequently, after examining the texts that make up the micrography, I reach a broader conclusion regarding the reason the patron commissioned this work and the meaning of the scene. This lecture intends to demonstrate how Hebrew illuminated manuscripts can shed more light on the study of fight books iconography.