Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz. Elisheva Baumgarten
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Название: Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz
Автор: Elisheva Baumgarten
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: История
Серия: Jewish Culture and Contexts
isbn: 9780812290127
isbn:
Chapter 2 concentrates on fasting as a form of repentance, describing the development of Jewish fasting from late antiquity to medieval Europe with particular attention to its medieval features, and contextualizing Jewish fasting practices in their medieval Christian context. The comparison of these Jewish rituals with Christian observance focuses on patterns of daily life by detailing the distinctions and similarities between Jewish and Christian activities.
Charitable giving is the focus of Chapter 3, using data from the Nürnberg Memorbuch to present a case study of donations that were contributed as gifts for the soul (pro anima) in the Nürnberg Jewish community during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Here I explore gender distinctions by examining tensions between the control of resources and the desire to make contributions as evidenced in this extraordinary record.
Chapter 4 studies the well-known practice of Ashkenazi women performing positive time-bound commandments that are typically considered in the realm of exclusive male praxis. This discussion reflects on the scholarly attention that this topic has received in earlier studies of women’s history and piety in two ways: first, by locating the evidence of women’s deeds within the context of conventionally male observances; and, second, by demonstrating how these practices developed and were transformed during the medieval period. I argue that class rather than gender played a role in the initial practices adapted by women, and I document the cultural trends in the thirteenth century pertaining to male practice that led to further changes in women’s practice.
In Chapter 5, I consider piety as displayed via hair, dress, and appearance and ask how Jews established themselves within and in contradistinction to the majority culture. Here I underline the importance of what medieval Jews and Christians noticed on the streets of their cities, a topic that has largely been ignored to date.
In Chapter 6, rather than investigating piety per se, I present textual evidence of pretenders: Jews who feigned piety and whose deceptions were discovered. Unlike religious deviants, these individuals mimicked communally recognizable pious behavior, were later revealed as frauds, and then were called to account by community leaders. These stories provide another context for reflecting on male and female piety and impropriety. Chapter 7 draws together many of the recurring social and comparative themes of the entire study.
This introduction would not be complete if I did not reiterate that most topics covered in the volume pertain to many religious cultures, certainly medieval Christianity and Islam. For example, fasting and charity were common methods for expressing piety in all three religions.108 So, too, corporeal impurity during prayer was a concern among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Despite the pervasive nature of these themes, their associated rituals were adapted over time and space.109 The chapters in this study address how Jewish men and women displayed piety within their Jewish communities and in the context of the northern European Christian urban spaces where they lived, making vivid their roles as active participants in this culture. Their performance of religious deeds made explicit their views on proper religious conduct, their relationships with God, and especially links with one another.110 Much as Rashi defined the piety of the stork as intrinsically tied to the friends with whom she shared her food, this study endeavors to describe how Jewish piety was defined within the social context of the medieval urban centers of northern France and Germany.
CHAPTER 1
Standing Before God: Purity and
Impurity in the Synagogue
Blessed are you … who has sanctified us with his commandments … separating us from impurity and cautioning us to beware of menstruants and (their) discharges.
—Eleazar b. Judah, Sefer Rokeah, #317, p. 195
Rashi and his students produced a number of books that detail the customs observed in their communities.1 In several such works, there is a recurring passage that describes a practice attributed to select women of their time:
There are women who refrain from entering the synagogue when they are menstrually impure although they do not need to do so. So why do they do this? If they believe that the synagogue is like the Temple, then why do they enter even after having immersed?2 … In that case, one should avoid entering the sanctuary forever, [that is] until a sacrifice is brought in the future (after the arrival of the Messiah). But if the synagogue differs from the Temple, they should surely enter. After all, we [men] are all impure due to nocturnal emissions and [exposure to] death and insects, yet we [still] enter the synagogue. Thus we deduce that [a synagogue] is not like the Temple, and women may [also] enter. But in any event, it is a place of purity and [these women] are acting admirably (yafeh hen osot).3
According to this text, some medieval Jewish women avoided the synagogue when they were menstruating, even though this practice was not required by halakhah, and their decision was considered praiseworthy. As in most religious cultures, medieval Judaism valued engagement in communal prayer in a specially designated venue as a preferred manner of communicating with God. In the medieval Jewish context, prayer services were primarily conducted in the synagogue4 and necessitated the presence of a male quorum.5 In this citation attributed to Rashi, certain women who were accustomed to attending prayers with their congregation chose to express their devotion to God and respect toward their community by refraining from entering the synagogue during their menstrual cycles.6 Their decision can be read as paradoxical, since presence rather than absence often defines piety.
As noted in the introduction, the search for popular piety straddles the boundaries between the individual and communal spheres. Each Jew who engaged in religious practices, both “pious” and conventional, did so in anticipation of ultimately being personally judged by God. However, their actions were also expected to have bearing on the standing of the congregation as a whole. As such, concerns about corporeal purity were understood to have ramifications for individuals and for the entire community.
This chapter discusses the heightened sensitivities to physical purity and impurity that led to pious practices which influenced participation in synagogue prayer.7 By tracing the development of observances that relate to corporeal purity in medieval Ashkenaz, this chapter investigates how presence (and absence) in the synagogue came to signify piety and the extent to which concerns about bodily purity became correlated with gender.8 After examining the evidence for these practices and their developments among Ashkenazic Jewry during the High Middle Ages, I then situate this data within the framework of Christian customs that were associated with female and male bodily purity and access to sacred spaces, especially entering the church to celebrate Mass. This contextualized investigation leads to the conclusion that the medieval Christian environment provides essential data for understanding the development of Jewish customs and ideas on the relationship between personal purity and communal participation in sacred spaces.
Absence and Presence in the Medieval Synagogue
It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the synagogue was the institution par excellence of medieval Jewish life, as the setting СКАЧАТЬ