On the Margins of a Minority : Leprosy, Madness, and Disability among the Jews of Medieval Europe [1 ed.] 9780814339329, 9780814339312

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On the Margins of a Minority

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On the Margins of a Minority Leprosy, Madness, and Disability among the Jews of Medieval Europe

Ephraim Shoham-Steiner Translated by Haim Watzman

  wayne state university press detroit

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English-language edition published 2014 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013951088 ISBN: 978-0-8143-3931-2 (jacketed cloth) ISBN: 978-0-8143-3932-9 (ebook)

English translation published by arrangement with the Zalman Shazar Center. This book was published with the support of the Israel Science Foundation.

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Simply because this is life’s way: once you belong to a certain group, you belong, however different you are. S. Y. Agnon

In memory of Professor Michael Heyd (1943–2014), a teacher, a mentor, and, above all, a noble man.

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Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Leprosy as a Concept 21 2. Social Attitudes toward Lepers 45 3. What Is Madness? 73 4. Social Attitudes toward the Insane 105 5. The Physically Impaired 137 6. Disability in Sacred and Private Space 157 Epilogue 183 Notes 191 Bibliography 237 Index 265

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Preface

On one winter day in 1995 I found myself participating in the daily afternoon prayer service at one of the tiny synagogues that dot the Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market in Jerusalem. The synagogue’s gabbai (sexton of synagogue affairs) had flagged me down and asked me to come help form the minyan (the requisite quorum of ten men). When I entered, I quickly counted the gathered worshipers so that I could estimate how long I would have to wait before the quorum was present and the prayers would begin. To my surprise, I counted nine others, but the gabbai remained outside trying to convince another passerby to enter. I stepped out and told him that we were already ten. He replied that one of the men inside could not be counted in the quorum because “he’s not entirely okay.” At that moment another man, number eleven, walked in. We were thus ten male adults, the required quorum to perform the service, actually ten “normal” male adults and one who was “different.” The service began immediately, and I had no opportunity to ask the gabbai to explain his diagnosis. I did not know which of the men in the room was exceptional, and during the portion of the service during which each devotee recites the amidah prayer silently, I tried to figure out who the gabbai had not seen fit to count. Only by looking closely was I able to discern that one of the devotees was behaving unusually. Had I not been alerted by the gabbai, though, I probably would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary about him. As the leader of the service repeated the amidah prayer out loud, I stole another look at the man, who was still engaged in his silent prayer. I saw that he followed the words in his prayer book with his finger as he read. When he completed his personal devotion, much later than the rest of us, he listened to the remainder of the leader’s repetition and uttered the appropriate responses. The only facet of his behavior that indicated anything out of the ordinary was his voice, which was louder than that of the other worshipers. He stressed the words sharply and repeated the responsive phrases several times. Why did the gabbai think this man could not be included in the quorum? Ostensibly, he met all the criteria for active participation in the religious ix

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ritual of the afternoon prayer service. But apparently something else, concealed behind the formal requirements, bound the quorum together and made distinctions between who could and could not be included within it. This event is not the reason I chose to study marginal individuals in medieval European Jewish society, but it helped sharpen my feeling that my subject was as relevant to modern society as to past ones. It should also be noted that medieval rabbinic law and tradition continue to resonate in present day orthodox Judaism, and thus the matters that will be discussed in this book share a contemporary relevance alongside the historical ones. I will not enumerate here all the reasons that led me to devote myself to this issue, but I am honor-bound to name two works that inspired me to delve into the subject. The first is a short book by Shulamit Shahar on marginal groups in the Middle Ages, and it immediately caught my eye.1 In reading it, I learned that while there had been extensive research on the Jews as a marginal group, this was hardly the case when it came to Jewish society’s collective attitudes to the marginal individuals within it. A bibliographical survey provided further confirmation. Furthermore, in light of the Jewish community’s position at the margins of European society, the questions Shahar posed seemed even more acute with regard to marginal individuals in the Jewish community itself. Another work that encouraged me to pursue the subject was an article by Bronislaw Geremek, a medievalist who became Poland’s foreign minister after the fall of Communism. Geremek contributed an in-depth discussion of marginal individuals in medieval European society to a collection edited by the late French historian Jacques Le Goff.2 I conjectured that, given the small size of the Jewish community in medieval Europe, I would have difficulty investigating marginal groups within it, and that my study would need to focus not on collectives but rather on individuals who for one reason or another found themselves on its margins. These people would ostensibly be on the margins of the margin—at the fringe of a society that was itself on the fringe. All arguments in this book are mine, and all translations those of the English translator unless otherwise noted.

1. Shahar, Marginal Groups. 2. Geremek, “Marginal Man.” x

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Acknowledgments

During the years that I labored on this study—first as my PhD dissertation, then on revising and expanding that work for publication in book form, and finally in adapting the book to English—I benefited greatly from the advice, support, encouragement, and criticism of many wonderful people. I cannot possibly name them all, but neither do I want to evade this pleasant duty. First, I wish to express my gratitude to my teacher and mentor Avraham Grossman, who oversaw my work from the beginning through its various incarnations, starting with a research paper that was written under his guidance for a master’s-degree seminar in the Department of History of the Jewish People at Hebrew University back in 1997 and ending with this book. This work could not have been completed and published without the benefit of his open door, cogent counsel, wisdom, knowledge, and attentive ear. I am especially pleased to be able to thank several of the teachers I have studied under. Michael Heyd of the History Department at Hebrew University was one of my early professors, and from our first acquaintance he believed in my ability, supported me, and followed my progress. It was thus natural that I would ask him to be a member of the academic committee that oversaw this research project. His advice, encouragement, and critical reading sharpened central points in this work and lie at the foundation of many of its conclusions. Michael’s untimely passing in February 2014 left his students and colleagues with a tremendous sense of loss. I dedicate this book to his memory as a token of my deepest appreciation to him as a scholar, mentor, and as a “mentsch.” Another member of the committee was the late Israel Moshe Ta-Shma, of blessed memory, who, despite his mortal illness, asked to read a draft manuscript of the work on which this book is based and to offer his comments. From his final sickbed he sent this study on its way with his blessing. In the mid 1990s Menahem Ben-Sasson brought me into his “suckers’ seminar”—a wonderful group that met at his home. We earned the epithet “suckers” because at first we earned no academic credit for the seminar. In addition to the sharp analytical tools he bestowed on us, which remain in xi

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my kit to this day, he treated us both paternally and affably. I owe much to the discussions held in that forum. Many friends from that circle and outside read sections of this work, offering their comments and critiques and helping me repair many flaws. I owe a debt of gratitude to Scott Uri, Alek Isaacs, Amos Geula, Yehudah Galinsky, Roni Weinstein, Yochi Fisher, Ted Fram, Rami Reiner, Iris Shagrir, Yael Shenkar, and Adiel Schremer. Special thanks are due to Ora Limor, Israel Jacob Yuval, and Simcha Emanuel, who helped me in their areas of expertise and showed me how to reach the destinations that I sought. Ron Barkai invited me to participate in an advanced graduate seminar on the history of medicine at Tel Aviv University in 1999, thereby opening a door for me into the world of medieval medicine and the extensive research literature in this field. I also wish to thank the staff of the Israeli National Library in Givat Ram, Jerusalem. Its reading rooms, especially the Judaica Reading Room, became a second home to me from the time I wrote my dissertation, and in many ways still is. The former director of the reading room, Ms. Elona Avinezer, and her team of librarians were always happy to help me, as was Mr. Shlomo Goldberg, director of the Loans and Circulation Department. I received special assistance from the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, in particular from Ms. Yael Okun, whose help, advice, and broad knowledge enriched this study. My friends Yitzhak “Chiko” Gila and Noa Shashar read the entire Hebrew manuscript and trimmed away the excess. Zvi Yekutiel, general director of the Zalman Shazar Center, faithfully and with paternal fondness saw me through all the stages of designing and publishing the Hebrew version of this book, even when I was overseas. I was also assisted by Yehezkel Hovav, whose sharp eye and discernment helped me weed out errors; by Ma’ayan Avineri-Rebhun, who chaperoned me through the process of producing the book; and by Lilach Chlenov, who worked on the preparation of the Hebrew manuscript and edited it precisely, faithfully, and sensitively. Many of my friends in the United States encouraged me to revise the book and translate it into English. This was no easy undertaking and I especially thank Ephraim Kanarfogel of Yeshiva University and Elisheva Carlebach of Columbia University for encouraging me to do so. Ephraim Kanarfogel and Guy Miron facilitated in making Wayne State University Press the vehicle of this endeavor and in procuring the generous aid of the Israel Science Foundation, whose Humanities Publication Grant financially enabled this endeavor. My Jerusalem neighbor Haim Watzman carefully translated this book and helped me present my ideas adequately to a broader community of scholars. Daniel Tabak from New York City and Jason Rogoff from Jerusalem read the final English manuscript. Their wise and subtle counsel, xii

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piercing critiques, and insightful comments made me rethink some of the ideas in this book and produce an updated and better product. Finally, I wish to thank the dedicated staff of Wayne State University Press, and especially editor-in-chief Kathy Wildfong, for walking me through the process of the current book’s production. My family is my constant pillar of support. My parents, Jacob and Ziona Steiner, supported, encouraged, assisted, and followed with great anticipation every stage of my research, writing, publishing, and translating. My five sons—Shahar, Adi, Yuval, Be’eri, and Sha'qued—give their love and have patience with my professional obsession, granting me mental and spiritual tranquility, the kind of support that every scholar needs in order to bring his work to a successful conclusion. Finally, I am ever grateful to my wife, Oshrat, without whom this book would not have seen the light of day. I cannot possibly express the love and appreciation I feel for her. I echo Rabbi Akiva in saying that all I have, comes ultimately from her. Several institutions provided me with material support while I wrote my dissertation and then turned it into a book. For three out of the four years I spent working on the dissertation, I was aided by a Rotenstreich fellowship for outstanding PhD candidates from the Israeli Council for Higher Education. During my work I also received support from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. I was able to turn the dissertation into a book thanks to the generous Kreitman Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev from 2002 to 2004. I spent the 2005–6 academic year as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies. I wish to express my gratitude to the center’s director at the time, Jay Harris, and to my companion Harry Starr fellows for creating a pleasant atmosphere that allowed me to bring my Hebrew book to its conclusion. The assistance I received from the Leslie & Vera Keller Fund for the Advancement and Promotion of Jewish Heritage provided the final financial push. My heartfelt thanks go to all of the above for their confidence in this study. The English version of the book was supported by a special grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) grant no. 02/2013, as well as by the discretionary fund of David Newman, dean of humanities and social sciences at Ben-Gurion University, and Zui Hachohen, rector of the university. This book is dedicated to the memory of two of my students, Eran Yohanan Picard and Asher Baruch Marcus, graduates of Himmelfarb High School—where I taught for many years—who lost their lives in a terrorist attack in the study hall of The Otzem Pre-Military Torah Academy at Atzmona. They were murdered on the same night—23 Adar 5762 (March 7, 2002)—that I completed the dissertation on which this book is based. xiii

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On the Margins of a Minority

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Introduction

Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, French scholar Julius Robert reported that the legend inscribed over the gate to the medieval Les Innocents cemetery in Paris read: “Beware the company of the madman, the Jew, and the leper.” While this is merely an anecdote, it is nevertheless a telling one. Jews, lepers, and madmen were among the disvalued people in the medieval Western European society that Robert was investigating.1 This mindset, which says much about the way in which madmen and lepers were perceived in society at large, sharpens the need for us to understand attitudes toward them within a society that was itself a marginal group in medieval Europe: the Jewish community. In medieval Europe, individuals belonging to the Jewish faith were considered Other, an abstract entity against which society defines itself by negation. Every society examines the Other within it as it considers the real or imagined elements of its own identity. The study of attitudes toward what sociologists have termed “involuntary marginals” and their placement within the mentality of past societies has flourished in recent years. The sense is that investigating those at the margins of historical inquiry can provide the observer with tools for understanding the cultural mentality and atmosphere of societies.2 Thus, the present study takes as its subject men and women within the Jewish minority in medieval Europe who found themselves, to their detriment, in situations in which they were tagged and classified as different, whether because of their physical or mental condition. Although the issues to be discussed in this book apply to societies of all periods, they will be investigated within the temporal boundaries of the European Middle Ages and the geographical and cultural borders of the region that Jews called “Ashkenaz.” It is imperative to state at this early stage that the use of the word “marginal” for individuals with challenging mental and physical situations refers to the medieval designation; it is in no way meant to reflect a contemporary categorization of individuals with disabilities. For the purposes of this study, 1

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I have chosen to focus on three categories of extreme marginality: individuals with degenerative diseases such as leprosy, persons deemed mad or insane, and those with visible physical deformities that rendered them dysfunctional. Irene Metzler writes in Disability in Medieval Europe the following about the use of terms: “Some terminological tolerance, however, is needed by the modern reader, in that since I am dealing with a historical topic, I perforce have to quote historical words, labels and terms. Hence I will use the now archaic, abusive or politically incorrect terms ‘cripple,’ ‘dumb,’ ‘mute,’ and such like without in future placing them in quotes.”3 Like Metzler, I too will be using terms that to the modern reader may seem archaic and to some even abusive. Indeed, the terms used in this book refer to the way the individuals who are at the center of this book were identified, labeled, and referred to in the European Middle Ages, and these identifications and labels in turn led to the activation of a social system of explicit and implicit rules of behavior toward them. In contrast with cultural, national, religious, ideological, and social Others, whose perceived marginal statuses derive from their departure from standards set by a particular group, class, political elite, or society, the Others that this study addresses were marginal by more universal human criteria.4 Physical deformity, disability, and disease, as well as mental instability, are first and foremost involuntary conditions juxtaposed on the men and woman who bear them without the ability to reject them. Nevertheless, these are phenomena found in every society, from the most simple hunter-gatherer bands to complex modern and postindustrial societies. Feelings like dread of disease, of misshapen bodies, and of warped personalities are universal, and some responses to individuals who are in these situations display similarities among societies distant from one another in time and place. Whatever the differences between nations, religions, and societies, disease (especially salient and disfiguring disease, such as leprosy), insanity, and obvious disability are a challenge to those who suffer from them and elicit reactions from those around them. Liminal states of this sort have always presented a challenge to society as a whole, and in particular to social institutions such as the nuclear family, extended family, and community. Marginal physical and mental states challenge the perceived “proper” order and confidence in human capacity, and such confidence is a key factor in coping with the world.5

Why the Margins? Studies examining societal attitudes toward disabled and marginal individuals constitute a relatively new scholarly field, one that owes its development 2

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to a general academic reorientation that began in response to the appearance of political movements advocating equal rights for women and for racial and ethnic minorities. The growing depiction of these groups in historical and social research was a consequence of their influence on Western society over the previous 150 years. As their influence grew, so did scholarly interest in people who had previously been considered marginal.6 Two fundamental assumptions lie at the basis of this study. The first is that a society’s attitude toward its marginal members is not only determined by the objective state of the individual, but is also derived from a much broader cultural-mental context. “Mental” and “mentality” require a brief clarification. In this study, it will be used in the sense offered by Shulamit Shahar: “Mentality (mentalité) means the inexplicit world view held in common by a large number of people in a given culture; it refers to values, beliefs, positions, and things taken for granted by those who share that worldview, which changes only through a very slow and gradual process. Mentality is not identical to a learned world view or to cultural norms, though these play a part in shaping it.”7 Aron Gurevich, a member of the Annales school of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, defined history from the perspective of the study of mentality in the following way: “The historians of this approach are interested in people’s views about themselves and about their human and natural environment, in the particularities of their worldview, and in the ways in which they sensually and conceptually comprehend reality, because they want to understand social relations as thoroughly and in as great detail as possible.”8 These two definitions show that an examination of a society’s attitude toward marginal individuals can serve not only as a window into the mores of that society, through which we can gain a sense of what takes place on the level of praxis, but it also enables us to track the mindset that shapes the society’s attitudes toward marginal individuals. This examination makes it possible to discern templates and patterns of thinking characteristic of the society that, when laid bare, help us understand the constituent elements of the sum total of behaviors that we call “social attitudes.” While the study of disability and the issue of social attitudes toward the disabled and individuals with special needs is a relatively young yet rapidly growing field, in the social sciences one can already discern scholarly maturity. In the field of history, and medieval studies in particular, recent years have seen a steady growth and rising interest in this subject.9 Historical study of disabled and marginal individuals faces, like all sociohistorical research, problems that are by no means easy to resolve. The historian, after all, cannot conduct observations of the society he studies as social scientists can, and scholars who have undertaken 3

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such projects are not unaware of these methodological difficulties. The researcher who chooses to work in the field of medieval Jewish social history faces fewer methodological problems than his or her predecessors did a decade or so ago. Earlier writers have forged a path that combines general history, Jewish history, and the social sciences. This book has been influenced by studies of medievalists and historians of medieval and early modern Jewry that have combined methods used in history and the social sciences, thus laying a general and stable theoretical foundation for the composition of social history. Even if the path followed here is relatively new, it falls within the boundaries of a map whose borders and limits have already been drawn by others with great expertise.10 Nevertheless, there are quite a few methodological difficulties impeding a study such as the one presented here. Many of the sources that underpin this study were not written by the individuals under investigation but rather by external observers who mentioned the mad, the lepers, and the disabled in their accounts, at times voicing their plight by proxy. In this respect this study shares characteristics similar to studies of the role of woman, children, and the poor in medieval society in general, and medieval Jewish society in particular. Furthermore, with the absence of a proper demographical database we are faced with some fundamental questions that may never be answered, such as percentage of these marginalized people in the general population. The methodological difficulties are indeed limiting, but they can also serve as a springboard for a refreshing change in the approach to the sources that are of primary interest to this study. The point of view proposed here— examining the marginal individual in order to learn about him or her and the society in which he or she lived—can help the scholar, especially one who studies a society like that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe, to delve deeper into questions of the definition of collective identity and of the bounds of the collective—who is included, who is excluded, and who stands on the margins. Those on the margins have been excluded from one collective yet have also not been included in any other. This raises a number of questions: Are those who find themselves in such a liminal state treated differently by the group than are its other members? If so, what is the nature of this treatment? What shapes it and assists in its construction? To what extent are such distinctions unambiguous and irreversible? All of these issues will be discussed in this book. In the research for this book I focused on collecting, as systematically as possible, information about the men and women who are the subject of my 4

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study, until I reached a critical mass of material that could, in my evaluation, enable me to not only make specific comments about certain phenomena but also general ones about processes and trends. This task, which I first perceived as one of collection, turned out to be anything but simple. I discovered that the lexicon of terms describing marginal individuals is rich and varied. The terms in this lexicon are derived in many cases—but not all— from Talmudic literature and biblical allusions that formed the linguistic and cultural background of the learned Jewish elite. In parallel with the collection of this material and its literary and philological analysis, I scrutinized the social attitudes toward these individuals and groups as reflected in these texts. These attitudes are expressed both in reports about these people and in their own attitudes toward those around them. This critical mass makes it possible for me to weigh evidence from the Jewish arena, as little and as limited as it may be at times, against phenomena that occurred in the area closest to that of medieval European Jewry—that is, in contemporary Western European Christian society. This comparative dimension is of critical importance for a number of reasons. For one, the Jews of medieval Western Europe were part and parcel of the society around them. They usually spoke its languages, lived in its climate and under similar conditions, and were tied to it in a myriad of economic and social ways. We might expect, then, to see similarities in their responses to identical human phenomena. Contemporary writers shared this belief and asserted that the Jews were affected by their surroundings, despite cultural differences and religious confrontation. The author of Sefer Hasidim, for example, states specifically in one passage that the conduct of the surrounding non-Jewish society greatly influenced the lifestyle of local Jews: “In most places, the Jews in each and every city follow the customs of the non-Jews.”11 In addition, medieval Christian society in Western Europe has been the subject of a growing scholarly literature. The “Other” within this society as well as marginal individuals and marginal groups have been discussed since the 1990s. In recent decades there has also been a growing scholarly interest in the nexus between disability studies and medieval studies. The models developed therein can be applied to the study of medieval European Jewish society as well. This study has been conducted with special attention to the non-Jewish environment. Where possible, I have made an effort to cast light on points of tangency, similarity, and difference, as well as on the implicit and explicit polemics conducted by the two societies regarding these issues. My emphasis on the comparative dimension constitutes an additional, overlying layer to 5

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the core study of processes of continuity and change in Jewish society’s attitudes toward marginal individuals and my attempt to explain them.

Time and Space The literature on marginal groups influenced by the Annales school in social history indicates that changes (if they occur) can be discerned and understood more deeply when a given study covers a long period of time.12 This study addresses a premodern society governed by tradition, and it is perhaps safe to assume that whatever changes took place were not revolutionary in character. That being the case, it becomes easier to delineate and follow such phenomena and processes over a lengthy period. I have chosen to focus this study on the acme of Jewish life in the geocultural space called Ashkenaz from the eleventh century to the beginning of the fifteenth century. In terms of space, and geographical scope this book focuses on the geocultural sphere of northwestern Europe. The Jews called this area Ashkenaz, and in this book the term will be used in its broad sense. The scope of this work is thus not restricted to Germany itself (as the term is sometimes understood) but rather includes the eastern periphery of present-day Germany on the one side, and, on the other, northern France and its northwestern periphery—that is, England. The “peripheral” regions of England and the central European lands were greatly influenced by events in Germany and France, and in many cases it is precisely in these areas that events occurred that left valuable sources of information in their wake. It seems Jews first settled in communal form in the north of the Alps—in the German river valleys and in what is now northern France—in the ninth century.13 We, however, only have written evidence of the existence of Jewish communal life from the tenth century onward. The earliest material I have found relating to marginal individuals comes only from the late tenth century. The end of the period that this book addresses is the beginning of the fifteenth century, at which time a number of processes led to a decline of Jewish settlement in the area. During the fifteenth century this decline grew sharper as Jews migrated eastward to Poland and southward to Italy. While Ashkenazi Jews preserved their special character in their new homes, they were exposed to new influences, and the cultural atmosphere around them changed. Even though these changes took place over a long period of time, we can point to some significant turning points at the close of four centuries of medieval Jewish life in Ashkenaz. Two of these deserve special notice for the current study. One important change in the attitude toward lepers took place 6

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at the beginning of the thirteenth century. At this time, a new view of leprosy spread throughout Europe: it ceased to be viewed as a spiritual malady and came to be understood and treated as an infectious disease.14 A second change relates to the insane. Regarding the insane, the critical turning point seems to have been during the course of the fourteenth century. This was noted by James Brodman: “People whose behavior we would now characterize as disturbed were not differentiated from the run of beggars until the fourteenth century when society began to sort the poor into various categories.”15 In the past, scholars tended to view the entire Ashkenazi geocultural space as being cut from one cloth, making no distinctions among areas within it. More recently, a number of writers have pointed out that there were significant discrepancies among different regions of this vast space, which manifested themselves in any number of planes of life. Scholars of medieval Jewish intellectual history have pointed to differences in the content and methods of study, educational models, customs, and legal rulings, as well as differences in liturgical rites. All these variations break the Ashkenazi “monolith” into a variegated mosaic.16 Nevertheless, without dismissing the uniqueness of each of these subregions, in many ways Ashkenaz was a single cultural unit that distinguished itself from Jewish society and culture on the Iberian Peninsula.17 In studies of marginal groups and marginal individuals, medieval Western Europe has been treated many times as a single unit. At the basis of the claim that Latin Christendom was a single cultural unit is the similarity between the area’s political units and forms of government, its sociopolitical organization, material culture, high culture, and cultural-religious underpinnings.18 The Jews of medieval Western Europe were for the most part members of the population’s urban component, and, as such, they had much in common despite their geographic dispersion.19 Of special interest in this context is that the Jews of medieval Europe were perceived in the collective consciousness of the Christian culture as a minority and marginal group.20 Given the different character of the Jewish community of Iberia—its distinct historical background and the effect of long-term Islamic influences—it seems logical that this area needs to be discussed separately, and that it lies outside the framework of this book.21

A Minority within a Minority Medieval European Jewish communities lived under the sway of a dominant society, that of Western European Christianity. There is nothing new in this statement, but it is all the more significant when the subjects under study are 7

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those who, because of a physical or mental condition, were pushed into the margins of the minority group itself. Of course, physical and mental impairments also bore layers of meaning in the majority Christian society, which possessed an ideal of bodily wholeness and health with roots in Hellenistic and Roman values. But another ideal persisted alongside this classical one. Christians believed in an ideal of potential redemption that lay within the broken, shattered body of Jesus. They also believed that the suffering and death of Jesus had brought salvation to all of mankind. During the Middle Ages, belief in Jesus focused on his body, its symbolism, and the agony of his death, a belief Christians viewed as the only path to true redemption.22 In the name of this ideal, zealous believers who directly or indirectly afflicted their bodies were admired as followers of the principle of imitatio Christi (the imitation of Christ), who expressed their complete identification with the God who had become flesh and who in that form had suffered the mutilation of his body and death.23 Furthermore, during the formative years of the Christian ethos in the early centuries of the Common Era, Christianity made exemplars out of martyrs and saints who endured physical suffering in life or on their way to death. In its view, such suffering granted atonement for sins and was a standard to be aspired to, at least ideally.24 At the same time, the Christian worldview stressed the importance of charity and loving kindness (caritas)— that is, aid and succor to the unfortunate. Lepers and cripples were perceived as being worthy of compassion, and those who saw to their needs in this world were promised reward in the world to come. The Church also viewed acts of charity as emulation of Christ’s deeds, since he too, according to the Gospels, engaged in such acts, offering aid and healing to the ill, lepers, the deranged, and the paralyzed.25 Beginning in the eleventh century, many European monasteries opened their sickrooms and hospitals not only to their own monks and those of their order, but also to the public, which included lepers, cripples, the paralyzed, and the deformed.26 From the thirteenth century onward, municipal authorities, royal courts, and wealthy individuals competed to construct shelters for the sick and unfortunate and to fund the upkeep of such institutions. Michel Mollat has examined this process in his book on the medieval poor.27 He notes that many of the deprived in the Middle Ages suffered from some deformity, deriving from a lack of treatment of injuries and illnesses, substandard living conditions, poor nutrition, exposure to the elements and the constant long-distance walking necessary to subsist on alms begging. Poverty was also often correlated with madness, deformities, and disease, on the one hand magnifying the negative image of both these groups, but on the other hand making a response to their needs 8

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more urgent. The conduct and value system of the surrounding society must be taken into account in considering Jewish treatment of marginal individuals and the deformed. The beliefs and attitudes surveyed here, among them the surrounding society’s ambivalent view of the ill, must also be addressed when evaluating the behavior of Jews toward the unfortunate among them.

Terms of Reference: Involuntary Deviants or Marginal Individuals In recent years a change has occurred in the study of marginal individuals within society, especially those who do not belong to the social category of voluntary marginal individuals. Social research has been greatly influenced by ideas from the philosophies of literature and language that stress the importance of terms of discussion, modes of discourse, and construction of consciousness by terminology. Language, as pointed out in the teachings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, reflects consciousness, but it also constructs it and can thus affect social attitudes toward these populations.28 When I began this study, I made frequent use of a term common in the social science scholarship of the 1970s: “involuntary deviant.” But the term “deviant” is extremely problematic. Recent authors have made use of alternative terms, among them “different,” “special,” “handicapped,” or “marginal.”29 At present, “marginal individual,” along with “disvalued individual” or “disenfranchised person,” is gaining currency.30 This change of terminology reflects the desire of contemporary Western society and of scholarly inquiry in recent decades to refrain, to every extent possible, from the value judgment inherent in language. For this reason, I have chosen to use “marginal individual” instead of “involuntary deviant” when referring to those individuals who find themselves in a situation that departs from social norms and rules. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that while the society under study—medieval Jewish society in Western Europe—may have contained within it individuals, such as the Hasidei Ashkenaz (the German Pietists), who felt the shame and humiliation that were the lot of marginal individuals, such sensitivity was not widespread, certainly not to the extent it is today. The term “marginal” may, of course, cover a broad range of individuals and groups. At the center of the present study are those who have become marginal individuals involuntarily—that is, the physically handicapped, the mentally disturbed, the feeble-minded, and the mentally deficient.31 Voluntary marginal individuals—itinerants, criminals, and heretics—are not examined in this study and are deserving of separate treatment. To 9

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understand these processes, sociologists have used Labeling Theory.32 The reader may well wonder about the applicability of theories developed in the study of modern societies to premodern societies like that of the Middle Ages. In my view, they can indeed be applied if done so with due caution. So, for example, one of the working assumptions of theories such as Labeling Theory is that societies have a consensus of values. Agreement on values (which, according to sociologists like Émile Durkheim, is one of the components of social cohesion) makes it possible to view certain individuals as marginal, as defined by society. Critics have attacked this assumption because, they claim, there is no way of pointing to an obligatory value consensus in a complex and multicultural modern society. In contrast, these critics say, such a consensus is only possible in traditional societies, which are more socially homogeneous. Even if in practice a value consensus does not exist, traditional society at any rate endeavors to reach such a state. At the very least, writers belonging to the learned elite attempt to portray their society as if such a consensus does indeed prevail. This critique can help us apply theories such as Labeling Theory to medieval society in general, and to the medieval Jewish community in Ashkenaz in particular, because a superficial examination indicates that such a theory can be better applied to premodern societies than to modern society.33 The question of what brings a person to the margins and what characterizes marginal individuals has occupied many sociologists, especially since the end of World War II. In the 1950s, the American sociologist Erving Goffman coined one of the fundamental terms in this research field, “social stigma,” and he applied it in particular to the mentally ill.34 Goffman’s studies, and those of his followers, present society’s attitude toward the marginal individual as binary: rejection or acceptance. In recent years, an updated model has gained acceptance, one that offers a more complex picture. It was formulated pithily by Israeli sociologist and ethnographer Shlomo Deshen in his study of blindness: New studies of disability conducted in recent years display an awareness of the multifariousness of the placement of disabled people in different societies and cultures. The regnant claim in these studies is that despite the urge to segregate the disabled into special categories and to stigmatize them, this [urge] is not universal. In contrast with Goffman, these new studies stress that disabled persons are not inferior everywhere. . . . Moreover, during the last decade, a group of sociologists who have addressed disability in the Western world have pointed out the opposite of stigmatization of the disabled. Instead, 10

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they have underlined phenomena of acceptance of the disabled by the healthy, rather than rejection. According to these studies, and contra Goffman, factors such as family life, religiosity, humanistic ideology, and friendship can lead to the integration of the disabled among the healthy.35

Deshen notes post-Goffman sociological writing on disability has accepted the complexity and contradictions of human existence as a given. It has assumed that stigmatization of the disabled and disfigured is not universal and that attitudes should be treated as variables linked to two factors: the mental world of the society in question, and the historical and social circumstances that might well be different from those taken for granted by Goffman. I am inclined to accept these principles and their contention that a variety of behaviors and representations, even contradictory ones, can coexist in a society, and even in the utterances of a single person. Such a range of attitudes toward the marginal individual apparently derives from the varied nature of specific cases and from society’s role in each particular case.36 My intent in this study is to show that the disabled, disfigured, mentally ill, and leprous encountered multifaceted attitudes in the public within which they lived, and that the public’s treatment of them was not necessarily bipolar, as Goffman had it. This is especially the case in ethnically and religiously cohesive units with a strong sense of common destiny. All of this is true of the lion’s share of this study’s subjects. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the mentally disturbed requires an additional theoretical basis beyond that offered by sociology. It has been taken as almost a given that the study of mental illness, particularly since the 1960s, is a response to the theories of Michel Foucault. Foucault took up the subject of the social meaning of mental illness, and he called attention to the relative nature of the concept as well as to the importance of loci of power and power relationships in the application of the label “mad” to a person. The present study will address Foucault’s important contribution to scholarly discourse on mental illness and the critique of his theory by those in other fields, historians in particular.

The Sources The study of marginal societies and individuals lies far from the core of social, religious, and political activity, even if they often converge. Working on marginal individuals in society is not like examining, for example, the 11

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role of intellectuals in society. While the study of those at the margins is extremely important, the marginal individuals themselves have left us few, if any, sources of information, and the sources left to us by those at the center of society, religion, and intellectual life seldom address people on the margins.37 Consequently, data have had to be gathered piecemeal and within the framework of an ongoing attempt to place each piece in a chronological and geographical continuum. The import of each source has also been evaluated by examining previous traditions, being mindful of the circumstances under which the sources’ authors were writing, and reading parallel sources from the surrounding society. The aim in all of this has been to grant the sources meaning for historical work that seeks to go beyond the anecdotal. Most of the sources that this study analyzes come from anthologies that regularly serve students of medieval Jewish history. Principal among these are responsa and other types of halakhic literature. This study also incorporates literary sources from Jewish folk literature, ethical literature, Bible commentary, sermonic literature, and commentaries on and interpretations of liturgical poetry (piyyut). These sources often bear the strong imprint of the world as it was and the prevailing mood of the commentators, preachers, and their communities. While most of them are not new to scholars, they have not yet been examined from the perspective offered here. Likewise, this study required tracking down references to marginal individuals and responses from such individuals themselves in sources that still exist only in manuscript form. Among these, one genre that has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive study bears mentioning: medieval “folk” medical literature. This is distinct from the “learned” medical literature, which is found in manuscripts devoted specifically to the genre and which was influenced by the medical theories that prevailed in the ancient world and the Middle Ages. This latter corpus has been researched for several decades, and portions of it are published from time to time.38 In contrast, we have much less scholarly knowledge regarding the medical literature embedded in Hebrew manuscripts that are not devoted to medicine specifically. Such sources contain hundreds of formulas for making potions, medications, salves, and amulets. The texts are sometimes to be found in works devoted to Jewish law, ethics, homiletics, and other textual material usually of a rabbinic nature, such as halakhic rulings, or alongside them in the margins between works or in the colophon attached to a manuscript to document its provenance. These passages are sometimes recorded in abbreviated form, sometimes in a mixture of languages. In some, the influence of the non-Jewish environment is quite evident. Though this genre has not yet been studied as a unit, this study has attempted to make use 12

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of it. These practical prescriptions, some of them partially or fully magical, were meant to heal the ill in body and spirit, treat infertility, and provide a response to other medical phenomena. Such sources offer evidence of what phenomena were perceived as being illnesses and of the ways in which people sought to cope with such maladies. The distribution of the sources testifies to the extent to which the population at large and the educated class sought out such formulas and potions.39

“Dead Men Tell No Tales?” Cemeteries and the Demography of Marginal Individuals In studying social attitudes toward marginal individuals of the type addressed in this book, the quantitative question discussed briefly above is of great importance. Just how many people are we talking about? What is their proportion in the population? Furthermore, what specific disabilities and diseases afflicted them? The answers to these questions can tell us about the salience of the physically disabled in the population under study. Such data has important implications for social attitudes toward these individuals. But the nature of the historical period and the paucity of our knowledge about medieval demography as a whole, and of medieval Jewish communities in particular, make it difficult to answer such quantitative questions. For the same reason, one has a hard time judging the types of disabilities that afflicted them. One way of finding partial answers to these questions is to look at the human remains of these communities in Jewish cemeteries across Europe. Most of these cemeteries, however, have not been studied. Even those in Western Europe that have been examined via archaeological excavation have been of limited value for this study. In many cases, the excavators have not carried out sufficiently comprehensive anthropological and osteo-archaeological analysis of a type that could help answer the questions posed above. The exceptions are a few cemeteries in Germany, France, and England in which both the epigraphic findings (gravestones) and the human remains themselves have been studied. Most prominent among these is the medieval Jewish cemetery known as Jewbury in York, England. A comprehensive excavation and survey was conducted there in 1981, and its findings were published in 1994 by the York Archaeological Trust, in cooperation with the British Council of Archaeology. The partial anthropological and medical examinations of the bones conducted by scholars at the University of York produced information on the demographics of the Jewish community in England during the medieval period.40 A relatively large number of 13

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individuals were interred in this cemetery, as compared with the findings from cemeteries excavated in Germany, France, and Spain that are so meager they make it difficult to draw any conclusions.41 In some places, as in the old Jewish cemetery in Cologne, the digs were conducted when the area around the cemetery was undergoing rapid urban development at the beginning of the twentieth century, making them more of a rescue excavation than an archaeological study. An attempt was made then to salvage the bones of the dead and rebury them at an alternate site. In this case, research was directed principally at the gravestones, not at the human remains.42 The old York cemetery is a unique case. The bones exhumed at Jewbury include only one skeleton that offers incontrovertible evidence of a serious birth defect that unquestionably caused disability. Six additional skeletons, however, exhibit congenital osteological aberrations that caused physical deformation of some sort (for example, noticeable asymmetry of the skull and face). Four other cases documented in the study seem to show congenital spinal defects that affected posture and perhaps also mobility. Some of the skeletons exhibit signs of rickets (a disease of insufficient density of bone tissue that causes skeletal deformities), but most of these belonged to children who were buried when they were approximately one year old, having apparently died of other illnesses and complications.43 Anthropological analysis revealed marks of physical trauma that occurred prior to death in 27 out of the 377 skeletons examined (as opposed to damage caused to the bones subsequent to interment). Of course, diseases that leave skeletal marks do not always cause disability; for example, well-healed fractures leave marks on bones, even though they generally do not affect functionality after recovery. Furthermore, trauma to soft tissues often leaves no marks on the bone. Mental illness, as well as physical disabilities such as blindness, deafness, and some forms of paralysis, also leaves no marks on the skeleton. The relatively small number of both birth defects and defects sustained during the course of life lead (admittedly without any statistical analysis of the data) to a rough estimate that noticeably deformed or disabled people made up a relatively small proportion of the population represented in the cemetery, in the area of 1 to 2 percent. It should be noted that this finding is consistent with broader findings of studies of contemporary cemeteries in York, as well as of other medieval cemeteries around Europe, which served as a basis for comparison for the Jewbury study. The paucity of the archaeological evidence, and our limited ability to make use of it, takes us back to the textual evidence. Despite its problematic nature, we need to use it to decipher patterns of past human behavior, and 14

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to learn the extent to which the disabled were salient in society and the kind of treatment they received.

Factors that Shape Social Attitudes toward Marginal Individuals Sociological studies of marginal individuals have shown that what determines social attitudes toward the these people is not necessarily the objective severity of the deformity but an amalgam of sociocultural attitudes toward that deformity, the disabled individual’s social standing, and his or her personality. Meira Weiss’s study of parental attitudes toward children with birth defects is informative in this regard.44 External appearance is connected to image, and image, in turn, to behavior toward the object being related to. In the cases she studied, Weiss found that the deformed body of the disabled person subliminally threatens the healthy: “Unaesthetic means a threat to the basic order: we have a view of how a person should look and we reject those whose external appearance impinges on our basic image of the ‘person.’ ”45 Deformity, serious disease, or odd behavior is only a detail among a constellation of factors that can categorize a person, but one such trait can come to designate the person as a whole and overshadow all of the other traits. This phenomenon, which we may call “identity spread,” is a key factor in the production of attitudes toward marginal individuals and has implications for the self-identity of these individuals and for their external identities—that is, the way the collective identifies the individual. Evident handicaps such as blindness, deafness, stuttering, motility disability, and physical deformity, as well as mental deficiency characterized by exceptional behavior, often become the most prominent personality characteristics of the person who suffers from them. These characteristics attract public attention, eclipse other elements of personality, and serve to identify the individual within the group. Epithets such as “the blind,” “the deaf,” “the cripple,” “the long-nosed,” and “the mad” have their source in this phenomenon. The use of such epithets in the sources used by this study is especially evident because of their literary character. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that responsa usually lack any personal element. Only in rare cases does the respondent or editor of the collection identify by name individuals who are the subject of the halakhic discussion. While the importance of such references to disfigured individuals should not be minimized, neither should one jump to sweeping conclusions about the nature of the society in which these literary sources originated. 15

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One more claim to be found in social research literature is that the disfigured themselves, and their attitudes toward their disabilities, play a decisive role in determining society’s attitudes toward them.46 The attitude of the disfigured toward their disabilities derives in general from social conventions and reflects prevailing frames of mind that the disfigured themselves have internalized.47 The revulsion that many healthy people feel at the sight of the deformed is not connected to a specific time and place, just as it is not necessarily linked to the delicate fabric of relations between parent and child on which Weiss focused. Susan Sontag explained that attitudes toward the ill person, especially one whose disease has caused visible disfigurement, is in fact a reflection of the observer’s attempt to create a distinction between his or her self and the “disorder” embodied by the afflicted individual. Sander Gilman wrote in a similar vein. The fear generated by a deformed person stems also from the danger of being infected or afflicted by deformity, which is a constant menace to the healthy person.48 The developments in medicine that began with the Scientific Revolution and the process of disenchantment that followed at the beginning of the modern period weakened, to a considerable extent, the presumption that disfigurement signifies divine displeasure. Nevertheless, this feeling persisted.49 In premodern societies, such as those of the Jews and Christians of medieval Western Europe, it was common wisdom that deformities were caused by supernatural powers—even if through natural agency—and were brought on by sin. The reverse of this phenomenon was the feeling of pity and compassion felt for the afflicted. Such feelings, and the religious and social precepts that validated them, lay behind a broad, institutionalized apparatus for providing aid and comfort to the misfortunate. This, too, will be examined in the course of the present work. There have been a number of approaches to the position of the marginal individual and the deformed person as individuals in society. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the sociologist Émile Durkheim explained that balance and cohesion secure society’s stability and sanity.50 Therefore, a society must maintain a number of survival mechanisms, including defining the goal of the society’s existence, developing means of social acclimation and perpetuation to preserve desired social patterns, and regulating internal pressures within the society. All these, Durkheim wrote, maintain social cohesion. He believed that solidarity was the glue that held society together and distinguished between two types of social solidarity. “Mechanistic solidarity” draws its power from social similarity and shared values among the individuals in simple societies. “Organic solidarity” characterizes more 16

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complex societies and stems paradoxically from social differences and disparity of values among individuals. In such societies, Durkheim maintained, education and persuasion play an important role in creating solidarity. There are two contending sociological approaches to such issues as social definitions, social stratification, and social oversight. The functionalist school describes society as a system in which each component maintains mutual social ties with all other components on one level or another. In this way, each component contributes to social cohesion and the creation of solidarity. The opposing approach sees society as being in a state of constant conflict (as does the Marxist school, which it resembles). In this view, social confrontation with external factors and internal processes of classification are the means by which a society defines itself, creates social stratification within itself, justifies this stratification, and preserves its cohesion. This conflict approach maintains that every society is, at its core, defined on the basis of the distinction between the “we” and the “they.” To this end, every society employs two mechanisms: internally directed socialization, and selfclassification or self-determination made against the Other. According to this approach, not only does conflict not harm society, but it actually helps unite and motivate it. Attitudes toward the disabled and the deformed turn out to be a particularly important and essential aspect of a society in which the basic solidarity is, in Durkheim’s terminology, mechanistic—that is, it derives from the social similarity and common values of individuals. Many societies in the premodern era accord with this model. In such societies, tradition has the power to dictate behavioral norms, the social ethos, and the code of values—or, at least, so claim members of the literate elite who have left us accounts of such societies. Furthermore, even individuals who seek change and innovation present this change as being based on venerable tradition. In such a society, a person of limited mobility or functionality may not be classified a priori as socially marginal but may nevertheless end up being placed in a different category from those who observe the society’s cultural ethos, religious rites, and code of values in full. The fact that this individual is not party to the acts of the collective impinges on her status and changes attitudes toward her. In a society in which solidarity between individuals is based on core values like the performance of religious precepts or the study of sacred texts, one who is disabled, deformed, or suffers from a severe physical or mental illness and thus has difficulty observing this praxis would find herself labeled as marginal. In such a society, it is difficult to believe that individuals who cannot participate in its rituals and traditions would be accepted with equanimity and equality by the rest of society. 17

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In a traditional society like that of medieval European Jewry, individuals maintained a social consensus, or at least that is the impression given by medieval rabbinical writings. A similar situation prevailed, or at least the Church hoped it prevailed, in the respublica Christiana—that is, in the cultural-religious unit of medieval Western Europe. Nevertheless, Jewish society was a cultural, religious, and ethnic minority within medieval Europe, and to maintain its distinctive identity it had to differentiate its system of values from those of the society around it.

Who Defines Who Is Marginal? In medieval times as today, the fine line dividing “marginal” from “normal” and between different intensities of marginality was drawn by society, subject to social motives and prevailing norms within it. Attitudes toward marginal individuals are culturally dependent and differ among societies and time periods. Nevertheless, there are certain fixed components to the determination that an individual is marginal, among them disfigurement of the body, limited mobility and functionality, and an internal sense of marginality. But it is not only society that decides who is marginal. Sometimes a person’s feeling of marginality is intensified by a subjective feeling, an internal self-image. This is especially the case with regard to injuries or deformities that are not clearly visible. So, for example, impotence or infertility may give an individual the sense of being different or marginal even when the afflicted person and his or her sexual partner neither express this verbally nor behave differently in public (although childlessness would be externally evident over time). This feeling may stem from the individual’s interpretation of how he or she is treated by those around them, and from their self-criticism of their looks or behavior. Such a feeling does not necessarily reflect reality and may be entirely subjective. An examination of Jewish medical literature, in particular magical literature with its store of charms, spells, and adjurations, displays the conditions for which people sought cures, thus showing the cases in which individuals are defined by society or by themselves as marginal.51 For example, if one finds an amulet and elixir to cure baldness on a list of medical-magical treatments, it may well indicate that the society within which the list was written saw the absence of hair on the head as a deformity, or that bald people in this society felt exceptional in some unpleasant way. Treating baldness as a medical problem similar to other maladies on the one hand, and as a flaw correctable by medical-magical intervention on the other, is a meaningful statement about what the society in question viewed as marginal.52 18

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In this book, three pairs of chapters address three groups of marginal individuals. The first pair discuss lepers and leprosy, the second madness and madmen, and the third impaired and disabled individuals. Chapter 1 surveys the disease of leprosy and its significance in texts that influenced social attitudes to the leper in medieval European society and in the Ashkenazi society within it. This chapter gives an especially prominent place to the world of rabbinic literature, as well as to the problematic nature of the term “leper”— starting from its biblical iterations in rabbinic literature to its transformation into the name of a disease that, for all its severity, is fundamentally different from the disease described in the Bible. The moral attitude toward leprosy and its sufferers is examined here as it is expressed in the exegetical, homiletic, and ethical literature, as well as in guidance manuals. Sin and death are among the most common images attached to leprosy, so they and their meanings in both Jewish and Christian sources are also examined. Chapter 2 examines social attitudes toward leprosy and lepers as expressed in rabbinic responsa (responses written by religious authorities to queries they received). Here I have stressed in particular the difference between the attitudes of the rabbinic and scholarly elite and those of the public—or some of the public, at the very least—to the disease and its victims. Chapters 3 and 4 look at madness and attitudes toward the insane. The question of the relativity that lies at the foundation of the definition of insanity is addressed in this context, and I survey the changes that have taken place in this field of research since the time of Michel Foucault and the scholarly discourse that developed out of his work. Chapter 3 examines the manifestations of madness and its causes as seen by medieval men and women, and the effect these signs had on the treatment received by the insane. Chapter 4 looks at social attitudes toward madness and madmen via two principal types of sources: midrashic, ethical, and guidance literature on the one hand, and texts from responsa and halakhic rulings on the other. Chapters 5 and 6 are more heterogeneous than their predecessors. They address medieval Ashkenazi social attitudes toward people with various kinds of impairments and disabilities. Chapter 5 begins with a discussion on disability, impairment, sin, and punishment, addressing questions of the ideal body and the religious meaning of impairment in light of these ideals, and moves on to discuss the related topic of the relationship between disability, sin, and divine retribution. This chapter also addresses the role of physical impairment in the interfaith dialogue and medieval religious polemics. Chapter 6 discusses disability and impairment in the two separate realms— the sacred space of the synagogue and the private interpersonal realm of the home. This chapter touches on the reaction in the synagogue to people 19

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whose impairments stand in stark contrast to the ritual roles they play in the synagogue and the ability of certain impaired individuals to partake in rituals in the sacred space in light of their disability. In the private realm of the home I chose to discuss cases regarding both reactions to an impaired spouse and the reaction to the birth and presence of a child with physical impairments. Among the different impairments discussed in this chapter are limited mobility, manual dysfunction deftness, and blindness. As is clear not all disabilities are discussed here—there are far too many for me to write about adequately. Therefore, I have chosen to place my emphasis on acute conditions that caused their sufferers to be labeled as different from the moment they had contact with other people.

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Chapter 1

Leprosy as a Concept

R. Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg (Maharam), a thirteenth-century Ashkenazi halakhic respondent, devoted one of his many responsa to the connection between leprosy and the laws of inheritance. The precise wording of the question posed to him has not survived, but his brief answer covers many of the issues to be addressed in this section. “He who maintains that the leper is considered a dead person for the purposes of inheritance,” R. Meir wrote, “it is a deed of the Sadducees, and it is nonsense to ask such a thing. The words of the legal guardians are correct and there is no reason for delay in this ruling.”1 At first glance it seems difficult to reconstruct the context in which the question was asked; the text is obscure and offers little information. But, in fact, the basic outlines of the issue at hand may be discerned. A set of heirs had to divide an inheritance and sought to exclude one of their number, a leper, on the grounds that he was considered legally dead. This gambit, had it succeeded, would have enlarged the portions of the remaining heirs. R. Meir rejected the heirs’ argument, refused to accept the equivalence of the leper to a dead person, supported the intention of the inheritance’s trustees to grant a portion to the leper, and sharply—even harshly—rebuked the other heirs.

What Is Leprosy? Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, is widely considered to be one of the most severe human afflictions. Even today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when leprosy is much less widespread than it was in the past, we still 21

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think of it as a fatal, degenerative, disfiguring, incurable, isolating malady. In its most severe manifestations, the disease attacks the arms and legs and, in acute cases, leads to loss of limbs, mutilation of the body, and severe distortion of the face. For this reason, leprosy has been, throughout history, the subject of beliefs and prejudices, some of them with foundation and others fantastical. Over the ages, a social construction of repulsion has been built around leprosy and has been applied not only to those who actually suffer from the disease, but also to anyone who has been diagnosed or labeled as a leper, including some who are not infected at all. Modern scholarship and science have accumulated considerable medical, historical, and sociological knowledge about leprosy, but the disease and its sufferers continue to unsettle many of us. Our medical understanding remains incomplete, and a number of aspects of the disease continue to be debated in medical literature. It was not until relatively recently that drugs were found that can ameliorate or even cure the disease. The number of sufferers has declined over the last several decades, largely thanks to the activities of governments, relief organizations, and international bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO). Through public education and the dispensing of medication, the number of new infections and the disease’s geographic range have been drastically reduced.2 The disease we call leprosy is more properly known today as Hansen’s disease, named after the Norwegian physician who in 1873 first isolated and identified the agent that causes it—Mycobacterium leprae. The infection mechanism is better understood today, and it seems almost certain that environmental and genetic factors both play an important role. Today we know that the incubation period is between three and five years. Despite the revulsion and the intense fear of infection that the disease elicits, close to 90 percent of the vector’s carriers never display any clinical symptoms, and the body’s immune system overcomes the bacterium without any need for medication. Apparently, a genetic defect affecting the immune system explains the high rate of infection within families. Infection is a slow process and requires long and steady exposure. Medical literature distinguishes among several different forms of the disease. Lepromatous leprosy, the most severe, is typified by the development of hard nodules in the skin and the deterioration and disintegration of tissues. These lepers lose their limbs, they develop a whistle in their breathing, and their faces emit unpleasant odors. Tubercular leprosy, in contrast, is characterized by light, sharply defined spots on the skin. In both forms, the bacterium attacks the nervous system, in particular nerves in those parts of the body that are cool (30 degrees centigrade is the bacterium’s maximal temperature). Sufferers thus lose peripheral nervous 22

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sensation in their extremities. Other effects include paralysis and the appearance of lesions. The affected person first feels stinging pain (paresthesia), followed by a loss of sensation in the affected limb. In the end, the collapse of peripheral blood vessels and the deterioration of the nerves and muscles can cause the limb to dry out and fall off painlessly. This causes sufferers to lose vital parts of their bodies, such as hands, digits, toes, even eyelids, and many thus suffer from limited mobility.3 Studies of medieval Europe have found a relatively high incidence of the disease, but it should be kept in mind that many people who were not infected were labeled lepers because, among other reasons, an accusation that someone was leprous had social implications. Some individuals were diagnosed as lepers long before the disease’s most severe symptoms appeared, and others in the absence of any symptoms whatsoever. Therefore, in the context of the present discussion there is no real significance to the question of whether the lepers under study here actually manifested the clinical disease we know today (although in many instances this was indeed the case). For our purposes, what is important is the social significance of their classification by medieval Jewish society as lepers or as suffering from similar diseases like shehin (boils). Attitudes toward leprosy and lepers in Jewish society after the destruction of the Second Temple have not yet been studied, and works published within the last two decades have acknowledged this lacuna.4 But medieval European society’s attitudes were investigated as early as the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, when collections of sources and critical editions of medieval texts began appearing in print. This literature addressed the establishment, upkeep, and funding of institutions for lepers.5 Intensive scholarly attention to the treatment of lepers in medieval Western European society began with increased interest in social history in general, and in marginal groups in particular. An important and oft-quoted work is Saul Nathaniel Brody’s survey of the image of leprosy and the treatment of the leper in medieval literature.6 Under the rubric of “literature,” Brody included a wide variety of genres, including sermons, commentaries, canonical law, belles-lettres, and municipal bylaws. Nevertheless, he devoted most of his attention to the image of the leper in literary works, both prose and poetry, without giving any significant attention to the social aspects of the issue. Another work that addressed the status of lepers in medieval Europe and described their lives in the leprosarium is Peter Richards’s The Medieval Leper and His Northern Heirs.7 Richards wrote the history of a Danish leprosarium built during the Middle Ages on a windswept island in the North Sea, which operated until the beginning of the modern age. Richards showed that the 23

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tradition of banishing lepers in this area of Europe continued into the modern era. These works, dating from the 1970s, paved the way for an understanding of the special social role played by lepers in medieval Europe. Lepers were placed alongside other marginal groups, such as Jews and witches, all of whom were labeled as Others. From the thirteenth century onward, the Other played a significant role in the self-definition of Christian society in Western Europe. A notable account of this social process can be found in the work of R. I. Moore.8 Scholarly interest in lepers in medieval Western European society produced comparative studies on the status of lepers in other contemporary societies both inside and outside Europe.9 One such study is an article by Michael Dols that addresses lepers in medieval Islamic lands and notes differences between the attitudes of Islamic and Christian societies.10 At the beginning of the 1990s growing interest in the body, its images, and the mental significance of these components of culture also reinforced interest in lepers and leprosy.11 At the same time, other studies followed the development of science and medicine and the creation of medical institutions that treated lepers.12 The final decade of the twentieth century saw a change in the understanding of medieval attitudes toward leprosy.13 The Israeli anthropologist Liora Navon has noted that scholars of previous generations presented an unbalanced picture of medieval European attitudes to lepers. Under the influence of the perceptions and imagery of leprosy in the West, they tended to present the harsher face of society’s treatment of lepers. Today’s writers offer a more nuanced view. A good example is Bernard Hamilton’s study of King Baldwin IV of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, who suffered from the disease: This prophecy [Isaiah 53:3–4] encouraged men to see Christ in those suffering from leprosy, just as they could see Him in the poor. It was this perception that led healthy men to devote their lives to the service of lepers in the Order of St. Lazarus and in leper houses, and such attitudes were quite widespread. As Nicole Bériou and François-Olivier Touati have shown, there developed in the Latin Church during the twelfth century a school of thought which considered that leprosy, if accepted in the right spirit, could be the occasion of a vocation to a religious life, and that the leper house might then become a quasi-monastic institution.14

As we can see from Hamilton’s analysis, medieval folks understood leprosy in a variety of ways. Indeed, this variety discussed briefly by Hamilton 24

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was more recently examined in the exhaustive study about the actual treatment of lepers in medieval times as well as the myths and misconceptions associated with the disease in Carole Rawcliffe’s book on leprosy in medieval England.15 As we shall see, a similarly complex picture prevailed within Jewish society of medieval Western Europe. Jews and Christians shared a perception of leprosy as a negative phenomenon that expressed sin and death. Alongside a perception of the leper as dangerous, problematic, and a sinner who also led others to sin, we also find compassion for the leper, and attempts by the shapers of Jewish consciousness (halakhists, moralists, rabbis) not to banish the leper from society. Even those who maintain that the predominant attitude toward lepers paints a bleak picture, Jewish sources display an attempt not to banish the leper entirely. This tendency is evident among decisionmakers and the rabbinic elite, whereas the Jewish masses tended to exclude and cast out the leper. To add to this complexity we should also take into consideration some perceptions medieval European Christians had about Jews, a topic recently discussed at length by Irving Resnick. In a chapter dedicated to the nexus between Jews and leprosy in his recent monograph, Resnick discusses the belief that all Jews were leprous and that this leprosy could only be cured by the purifying waters of the baptismal font.16 With this notion in the background, internal Jewish attitudes toward their own lepers are all the more interesting. To address this complexity, this section of the book is divided into two chapters. The remainder of this chapter will examine the theoretical background of social attitudes to leprosy and lepers as expressed in literary sources. The next chapter will analyze responsa and ethical literature, which reveal what actual social attitudes were.

“He Shall Dwell Apart; His Dwelling Shall Be Outside the Camp” (Lev. 13:46): Leprosy and Exclusion Every discussion of leprosy and lepers, especially in the Jewish context, begins with the Bible.17 The Bible discusses the subject several times, in a number of different contexts:18

• The story of the miracles performed via Moses in Egypt (Ex. 4:6–7); • The laws of ritual purity and impurity in Leviticus (Lev. 13–14);19 • The command to exile lepers (metzora‘im) and people with urethral discharge (Num. 5:2); 25

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• Miriam’s leprosy (Num. 12: 10–16);20 • The command “In cases of tzara‘at be most careful” (Deut. 24:8); • The cycle of stories about the prophet Elisha: the leprosy suffered by Naaman (II Kgs. 5:1–20) and by Gehazi (II Kgs. 5:27), and the four lepers at the gate of Samaria (II Kgs. 7:3–11); • The leprosy of King Uzziah (II Kgs. 15:5; II Chron. 26:16–21).21

Alongside the term tzara‘at, Biblical authors used several other terms that are synonymous or close in meaning, all of which refer to skin diseases. Each of these—shehin, ava‘bu‘ot, garav, sappahat, baheret, bohak, netek, and nega‘—has a unique meaning in its biblical context, and each refers to a specific cluster of physical symptoms. Nevertheless, even in the Bible the different terms are sometimes used as synonyms for tzara‘at, and this is especially true of shehin, ava‘bu‘ot, and nega‘.22 Is Hansen’s disease the disease that the Bible refers to as tzara‘at, which has been translated as leprosy? Unlike the biblical disease called zivah (“discharge”), whose symptoms are almost identical to modern-day gonorrhea, biblical and medical scholars agree that there is no correspondence between the symptoms of tzara‘at and Hansen’s disease.23 Medical researchers have tried to identify tzara‘at with a disease known today; some of these attempts are polemical or apologetic in character.24 Nevertheless, the conclusion of the most up-to-date work in the field is that there is no medical connection between tzara‘at and what we now call leprosy.25 Identification of the two ailments derives from the fact that in the Septuagint tzara‘at is translated as lepra. The church fathers, relying on this Greek translation, assumed that the degenerative disease that they were familiar with, which was known as lepra, was indeed biblical tzara‘at.26 Rabbinic sources that address leprosy (both legal-halakhic texts and those with homiletic and ethical characteristics usually referred to an aggadic) generally address the tzara‘at of the Bible rather than the disease we now call leprosy, with which the authors of this literary corpus were acquainted.27 In the Middle Ages, Jewish commentators were also divided on the question of whether the leprosy of their day was the tzara‘at of the Bible. Some of them realized that the symptoms differed. A sharp statement of the disparity appears in the Torah commentary of R. Shmuel ben Meir (Rashbam).28 At the opening of his discussion of tzara‘at, he wrote (Lev. 13:2): “All of the sections [describing] tzara‘at on people, on clothes, and on houses . . . we cannot explain according to the peshat [= the literal meaning] of Scripture, nor according to the human wisdom of derekh eretz. Rather, the midrash of our sages, their laws, and their traditions that they received from the early Sages 26

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are essential.”29 Rashbam wrote unambiguously to make it clear that there was no cause for attempting to apply contemporary knowledge of the disease referred to as tzara‘at in his time to the tzara‘at described in the Bible.30 In many places in his Bible commentary, Rashbam advocated understanding the text through rational thinking, in keeping with the principle of “peshat [interpretations] that emerge anew every day.”31 Therefore, it is especially notable that he rejected this approach to the matter of tzara‘at. In his view, any legitimate understanding of the subject had to be based solely on the words and traditions of the Sages.32 In contradistinction, other medieval commentators did link the leprosy of their day to the Torah’s tzara‘at. One such commentator was R. Levi b. Gershom (Gersonides).33 He made the connection in his commentary on the story of Naaman, a Syrian commander cured of tzara‘at by the prophet Elisha (II Kgs. 5). Gersonides wrote: “That you may cure him of his leprosy”: The curing of tzara‘at is called “asifah” [lit. gathering]34 for tzara‘at makes the one into many, because [it is due to] the intensification of the putrid heat [that] the natural heat that binds the organism’s limbs together is greatly weakened. Therefore, you find that a leper’s [metzora‘] limbs fall off. This is why it says here that “your flesh shall be restored to you and you shall be clean,” because the leper’s [metzora‘] flesh is not “his” given that he lacks that which binds his flesh to him.

The biblical description of tzara‘at does not include the loss of limbs as described here. Gersonides interpreted the biblical verse in light of what he saw or knew from his own experience, and he assumed that leprosy, a disease characterized by loss of limbs, was identical to biblical tzara‘at. It is entirely possible that he adopted this view of tzara‘at from the Christian society around him, which indeed equated the two. Although the section of Leviticus that discusses tzara‘at (Lev. 13) and the biblical command to send the metzora‘ outside the camp (Num. 5) demonstrate that tzara‘at causes ritual impurity, there is no explicit textual link between tzara‘at and sin. The subject of the biblical commands regarding tzara‘at is ritual purification. The Levitical lections that relate to tzara‘at form part of the priestly corpus and are principally concerned with the role of the priest in the diagnosis of tzara‘at and in determining what instances of tzara‘at cause ritual impurity in the afflicted (who must be sent away), and in which cases the afflicted remains ritually pure or regains that status (and may thus be included in the public). It is no coincidence that the commands 27

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about sending the afflicted out of the camp (Num. 5) appear adjacent to the section that deals with the formation of the Israelite camp in the wilderness and construction of the Tabernacle. According to the logic of purity expressed in these verses, ritually impure individuals must leave the camp because of its sanctity, the location of the Tabernacle within it, and the commencement of the Tabernacle’s regular activity as a sacred entity. This activity was a manifestation of the immanent divine presence in the camp, a presence that cannot abide ritual impurity (impure discharge, tzara‘at, and ritual impurity of a dead body) and the ritually impure in the sanctified space.35 Nevertheless, the tzara‘at that afflicted Miriam, Gehazi, and King Uzziah is depicted by the Bible as punishment for sin. The Bible stresses that Miriam was afflicted because she slandered her brother Moses, that Gehazi fell victim to tzara‘at because of his avarice, and that tzara‘at appeared on Uzziah’s forehead because he broke biblical law in entering the Temple to offer incense.36 The concept of tzara‘at as an affliction sent by God to punish sinners can thus be found in the Bible, even though there is no explicit statement of this sort in Leviticus.37 In other words, while the legal portions of the biblical text do not stress any equivalence between tzara‘at and sin, the narrative sections do, and the latter influenced both Jews and Christians in medieval Europe. Before addressing leprosy and its status in the medieval world, rabbinic literature must be considered. Scholars of Western European Christian culture and its attitudes toward leprosy agree that the source of the view of leprosy in both Jewish and Christian writing and consciousness was the world and literature of the Jewish Sages. While the negative view of tzara‘at begins in the Bible, it was the Sages who, in their interpretations, laid the foundation for later views of the affliction.38 The Sages imbued leprosy and lepers with a problematic image, and they addressed the disease from a manifestly moral point of view. Brody opens his book with a survey of a number of Jewish texts, with the purpose of pointing out how closely the Jewish conception of leprosy (especially in rabbinic Midrash) resembled Church traditions.39 According to Brody, it is difficult to establish the extent to which Christian attitudes toward leprosy had their source in Jewish culture. Nevertheless, given that both cultures were European and shared a Mediterranean origin, he felt that it was to be expected that there would be much similarity between them.40 Brody’s thesis is far reaching, even sweeping, but it certainly contains a kernel of truth. In rabbinic sources there seems to be a distinction between halakhic and ethical texts. The halakhic sources on the subject address issues of ritual purity and are concerned largely with the biblical condition of tzara‘at. The ethical 28

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midrashim, in contrast, are fairly clear in their view of leprosy as a punishment and condition linked intimately with sin, and they seem to address the medical condition we today term Hansen’s disease. The authors of the ethical midrashim typically viewed the Bible as a unified, harmonious text, and thus linked stories of the Prophets—in which the subjects of tzara‘at and sin were explicitly related—to Torah laws, which do not depict such a connection. The texts from Leviticus that describe the process by which a metzora‘ is purified and expelled, and the similarity between the offering brought by the metzora‘ and the sin offering, all led the Sages to interpret these Torah passages as dealing with the subject of sin and atonement. An extreme example of this is the rabbinic view that one of the signs that God gave Moses at the beginning of his prophetic mission at the burning bush—afflicting his hand with tzara‘at and then curing it—was a sign that Moses had sinned. Up to this point, the Bible makes no explicit statement that Moses had committed a transgression. But in their exegesis, the Sages maintained that God’s choice to use tzara‘at as a sign to Moses was meant to indicate that Moses had wronged the Children of Israel when he asked, “What if they do not believe me?”41 In his comment to this verse, the medieval commentator R. Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi) accepts this view: “With this sign, too, He hinted to him that he had slandered by saying ‘they will not believe me’; therefore, He inflicted tzara‘at on him, just as Miriam was stricken [with tzara‘at] for slander.”42 Rabbinic interpretations of the sin of the Golden Calf also refer to tzara‘at in saying that the very possibility of being afflicted by tzara‘at was a consequence of the sin of worshiping the Calf.43 A number of Talmudic and midrashic homilies are based on the fact that the laws regarding the ritual purification of the menstruant and parturient appear adjacent to the laws of tzara‘at. Some medieval commentators and teachers accepted these homilies and quoted them in their writings.44 Halakhic discussions in Talmudic texts stress the ritual impurity of the metzora’, in keeping with the concerns of the biblical text. The Mishnah devotes two tractates to the subject—Nega‘im on tzara‘at and Kinnim on the process of ritual purification of the metzora in the Temple. These two tractates, however, are not explicated systematically in either the Babylonian or the Palestinian Talmud, since such topics, among others, were deemed irrelevant for a time when the Temple no longer existed.45 While discussions of tzara‘at do appear in the two Talmuds, they are scattered among the tractates, where they appear in a variety of contexts. Some of these discussions address people suffering from nonbiblical “tzara‘at” and other severe diseases. From the descriptions, it seems that these latter cases were of leprosy (Hansen’s disease) or similar maladies identified as 29

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leprosy.46 These latter diseases clearly had no connection to the condition of biblical tzara‘at. In general, sufferers of these latter conditions were labeled as mukei shehin (sing. mukeh [masc.] shehin, or mukah [fem.] shehin), meaning “afflicted with shehin.” This malady is referred to many times in the two Talmuds and is described in great detail. It appears in discussions of which subjects are causes for divorce, the laws of levirate marriage, and me’un (a girl’s right to refuse an arranged marriage).47 An examination of the usage of mukeh shehin in rabbinic literature shows that it was applied consistently to people suffering from a disease whose symptoms closely resemble those of Hansen’s disease.48 Another term used in rabbinic literature is ba‘al ra’atan (pl. ba‘alei ra’atan), which refers to the sufferer from the ra’atan disease.49 The Babylonian Talmud and the Tosefta include the ba‘al ra’atan on their lists of twenty-four types of shehin and note that it is the most severe of all.50 This disease called ra’atan, the description of which is particularly graphic, is quite reminiscent of modern-day leprosy. The Talmud stresses that ra’atan makes the sexual act dangerous for its sufferer. A woman whose husband suffers from the disease is forbidden to have intimate relations with him, because sexual relations with him will cause his flesh to rot and become gangrenous, thus worsening his condition. Below we shall see that this characterization of the illness was given meaning in medieval halakhic discussions.51 The injunction applies to a man ill with the disease, not a woman. In fact, the Talmud does not address women with this affliction, nor does it deal with the question of whether her condition would also be worsened by sexual relations with her husband. The discussion of ra’atan and sexual relations refers to sages (R. Ze‘eira and R. Eliezer) who took special care in their contact with a ba‘al ra’atan. R. Johanan warns about “the flies of a ba‘al ra’atan”—flies that approached or were in contact with such a man. Yet the same Talmudic discussion praises R. Joshua b. Levi, who was not deterred by ba‘alei ra’atan and even preferred their company, ignoring his colleagues’ warnings about contact with them.52 This praise underlines R. Joshua’s exceptional behavior, far different from that common in his time. It also indicates that the reluctance to have contact with ba‘alei ra’atan derived from a fear of infection or magical injury and not from a desire to avoid ritual impurity. Thus far we have seen how the concepts in question blended into one another and how the semantic field associated with tzara‘at broadened in rabbinic literature. Medieval halakhists tried to impose some order as they grappled with the texts in which these terms appeared—but not always successfully. Testimony to the confusion of terms can be seen in the Torah 30

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commentary of R. Joseph b. Isaac Bekhor Shor, who lived in northern France in the twelfth century, to Leviticus 13:46: The tzarua‘ [=one afflicted with tzara‘at] . . . adopts the customs of mourning for he is as if excommunicated from heaven, as his [wife and] children have separated from him. “He shall call out ‘impure, impure’ ”—so that [all] will keep their distance from him. Our rabbis have said [BT Shabbat 67a] that he must make his pain public so that the public will request mercy for him. “He shall dwell apart”— since this sickness spreads among people who attend him regularly; therefore, he must be alone so that others will not be accustomed to him, and he is forbidden from having sexual relations because such relations enervate him. “Outside the camp”—-this too is so he will not be close to people because of his illness, and also because of impurity, for he transmits ritual impurity by entering [a house] as a corpse does.53

Bekhor Shor sees the metzora‘ as a person who endangers those who come into contact with him, just like the mukeh shehin and ba‘al ra’atan. Yet, he states that he is impure and banished from the public sphere because he is ritually impure. He does not decide in favor of either approach. Further evidence can be seen in the way the Ashkenazi halakhic scholar, R. Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi of Bonn (Ravyah), who lived from 1140 to 1225, grappled with the need to interpret the Talmudic laws relating to the metzora‘. One would have expected Ravyah to address those laws in his commentary on Mo‘ed Katan, the tractate in which such laws appear.54 But in a brief concluding sentence to his discussion of the tractate, after an overview of the subject as it appears there, the author explains why he chose not to treat the issue: “I have no need to interpret the laws of the metzora‘ because a priestly examination cannot be performed, and we are not at all expert at diagnosing [tzara‘at];55 besides, the laws of the metzora‘ are not practiced in our times, though we do [still] stay away from them due to the danger.”56 After stating why he chose not to discuss these laws, Ravyah nevertheless noted that people keep their distance from metzora‘im because of the danger they present. He did not specify the danger. The Bible does not say that the metzora‘ is sent out of the camp because he presents a danger—the reason is rather that he is ritually impure. Ravyah “imported” the danger factor from the link between biblical tzara‘at and things said regarding the mukeh shehin and ba‘al ra’atan in the Talmudic and midrashic sources cited above, and 31

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from his surrounding contemporary society, which in some cases considered contact with lepers to be physically dangerous. Ravyah placed the responsibility for creating the distance on society rather than on the leper himself: “we do [still] stay away from them due to of the danger.” In other words, it is not the leper who is required to stay at a distance from society. This may reflect a reality in which lepers were not quarantined; therefore, Ravyah recommends staying away from them. Below we shall see that works such as Sefer Hasidim, written during Ravyah’s lifetime, confirm that this was in fact the state of affairs at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries.57 At that time, leprosaria operated throughout Europe but, as some scholars have recently pointed out, lepers could also be found begging on the roads and in the markets, in contact with the public.58

Tzara‘at of the Soul—Tzara‘at as a Metaphor We have seen that in both the Talmud and medieval Jewish texts the term metzora‘ generally refers to a person afflicted with biblical tzara‘at, whereas the terms mukeh shehin and ba‘al ra’atan designate Hansen’s disease. Even though it is clear that there is no medical connection between the two conditions, one can see that they were already associated in Talmudic times. The Talmud even makes this connection explicit: “R. Hanina said: ‘Why are there no ba‘alei ra’atan in Babylonia? Because they eat spinach and drink hizmei beer.’ R. Johanan said: ‘Why is there no metzora‘ in Babylonia? Because they eat spinach, drink beer, and bathe in the waters of the Euphrates.’ ”59 In this period, the term metzora‘ was lifted from its biblical context and associatively linked to the broad semantic field of mukeh shehin, nagu‘a (lit. “afflicted”), and ba‘al ra’atan. Even if, in principle, the two Talmuds distinguish between the term metzora‘, which refers to the biblical affliction, and the term mukeh shehin, which is used to designate people suffering from diseases such as leprosy, we can nevertheless see that the terms above were also used synonymously. A similar broadening of semantic fields to include a number of terms that refer to distinct maladies but are nevertheless used as synonyms for leprosy can be seen in other languages as well.60 Rabbinic literature, with its treasury of figurative, associative, and linguistic imagery, played an important role in shaping medieval Jewish literature. This was true even of places in which Jewish settlement began only during the course of the Middle Ages. The acceptance of the Babylonian Talmud in medieval Europe as a whole, and in Ashkenaz in particular, had an effect on the use of the terms under discussion here.61 Ashkenazi rabbinic leaders 32

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adopted the conceptual world that prevailed in the Talmud and adapted it to their own needs. They seem to have been cognizant of the expansion of this semantic field, so it is not surprising to find the confused terminology describing both biblical tzara‘at and leprosy in medieval Jewish sources. Metzora‘ and mukeh shehin, then, are used interchangeably and linked to ba‘al ra’atan, even if this latter term is not mentioned explicitly in the bible. In these texts the term metzora‘ designates biblical metzora‘im, lepers, and those suffering from other common diseases associated with leprosy. An example of this, and of the negative connotations of tzara‘at in the Middle Ages deriving from Talmudic and biblical passages, can be found in a thirteenth-century text written by R. Meir of Rothenberg (Maharam). In an introductory note to a responsum that was omitted from the printed version and survived only in the manuscript, Maharam wrote: “And you sent me this young man, your relative, for a cure for his tzara‘at.”62 At first glance this may seem like a matter concerning a Jewish leper in need of a cure. However, a closer look at the details and the legal context indicates that the word tzara'at was used metaphorically. The question Maharam was grappling with was the degree of freedom a husband has to divorce his wife if he has not warned her that she is violating Jewish practice (‘overet al dat). Maharam’s response shows he did all he could to help “cure” the young man in question from his problem, described by the word tzara‘at, which referred more to his troublesome marital situation and not to any physical ailment. Maharam rectified the problem in the young man’s life through bringing about the divorce that solved his troubles.63 This reading is based on the understanding that in the Talmud the term tzara‘at served not only as a description of a physical reality of disease or impurity but was also used in an extended sense. The expression hits home because of the phonetic similarity between the word tzarah (tribulation, suffering) and tzara‘at. The implication is that just as a metzora‘ must undertake ritual purification to get rid of the affliction, so must a husband avoid, separate from, and seek to rid himself of a bad wife to end his suffering. Some medieval Jewish sources make a quite explicit link between tzara‘at and sin, both in adducing and expanding on rabbinic homilies and in statements of their own. One example can be found in the “hymns of greatness” (himnunei ha-gedulah) in Heikhalot Rabbati, one of the mystical heikhalot works ascribed to the circle of the “descenders to the chariot” (yoredei hamerkavah). Peter Schäfer has noted that, according to these hymns, anyone who mocks the mystics will be afflicted with tzara‘at, shehin, or a slew of skin diseases as punishment for having shamelessly ridiculed those who should be admired rather than mocked.64 The text indicates that God himself defends the mystic and grants him the power to harm his enemies and mockers. 33

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Later, one finds explicit statements identifying leprosy with sin and punishment, especially among the circles affiliated with German Pietists. Sefer Gematriot, ascribed to R. Judah he-Hasid (d. 1217), equates the serpent, the primeval progenitor of sin, with the leper.65 Sefer Hasidim also cites a passage from the Talmud regarding David’s tzara‘at.66 Another such text can be found in the R. Eleazar of Worms (d. ~1240) commentary on the haftarah (the selections from the Prophets that are read in synagogue after the reading of the lection on Sabbath morning) for the metzora‘ lection. In the glosses on this reading, the four metzora‘im at the gate of Samaria (II Kgs. 7) are identified, in keeping with a midrash, as Gehazi (servant of Elisha) and his three sons. Playing with the letters in the first verse of the story, R. Eleazar links their affliction to their sin of avarice—Gehazi’s accepted payment from the Aramean commander Naaman for the prophet’s services in curing him of tzara‘at, even though Elisha had refused payment. According to the text in Kings, Gehazi was afflicted with tzara‘at as a result (II Kgs. 5:27).67 R. Eleazar states this incisively in a commentary quoted in his name: “When a person has on the skin of his body”: R[abbi] E[lazar] of Worms explained: this as it is said “man does not abide in honor (Psalms 49:13).” In other words, this man emerged naked from his mother’s belly and did not have awareness nor wisdom nor speech nor mobility. God stood him up on his feet, gave him speech, wisdom, awareness, and intelligence. He dressed him in precious garments, gave him sustenance, and raised him. He [=the man] forgot all of this great beneficence and did not understand that all of this honor was from God; therefore, “he is like the beasts”—just as the beasts go out to seek their pasture, so he is afflicted with tzara‘at and must go out, for it is said “his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” Thus the entire passage can be explicated as being connected to sin and receipt of its punishments.68

This commentary clearly states that the metzora‘ is a person who is to be distanced from society. Moreover, in being distanced from human society he is compared to a beast.69 The rabbinic sources stress that tzara‘at is a commensurate punishment. As Eli Yassif has shown, commensurate punishments are generally inflicted on the body, with tzara‘at being only one such manifestation.70 In the medieval Jewish worldview, several sins were seen as being punished by tzara‘at, in particular sexual transgressions and violations relating to heresy. The midrashic literature enumerated eleven reasons why 34

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“afflictions [nega’im] appear”: “Let our master teach us: regarding how many things does tzara‘at appear? Our sages taught as follows: afflictions appear for eleven reasons . . . and for sexual transgressions, as is written ‘and the Lord will smite with a scab [sippah]’ (Isaiah 3:17), and it is written ‘for a rising, and for a scab [sappahat], and for a bright spot’ (Lev. 14:56).”71 Tzara‘at is thus not only a punishment for sexual wantonness: it is viewed as a sexually transmitted disease that directly attacks the organs with which the sin was committed.72 Furthermore, in the Middle Ages, Jews viewed leprosy (which they called tzara‘at) not only as a disease closely tied to sexual immorality and immodest sexual behavior, but specifically as being caused by a failure to observe the laws of the menstruant, which prohibit intercourse during a woman’s menstrual flow and for seven days thereafter, after which the woman must purify herself by ritual immersion. In particular, it was linked to intercourse during the menstrual flow itself. So, for example, the Bible commentary attributed to R. Eleazar of Worms quotes from an earlier homiletic work Midrash Tadshe compiled either in the tenth or eleventh century that at birth a man is warned that tzara‘at is the punishment for breaking this taboo.73 The commentary goes on to assert: “Furthermore, my teacher found that if [a woman] has relations with her husband and she is menstruating, her children will be afflicted with tzara‘at for even twenty generations. If she engages in sexual relations by daylight the child will be afflicted with a bright spot [baheret]; if by moonlight, the child will be afflicted with tzara‘at. [Relations with a] menstruant are [deemed] very grave by God [hamurah niddah lifnei HKB”H], so all those who are not meticulous with her will in the end be afflicted by tzara‘at, and for this reason the [laws of ] the parturient are adjacent to those of afflictions [nega‘im].”74 Similar ideas may be found in R. Eleazar’s halakhic work Sefer ha-Rokeah: “Whoever is not careful about her menstruation buries her children, and her husband who has sexual relations with the menstruant [will have] his children afflicted by tzara‘at.”75 R. Isaac b. Moses of Vienna, a contemporary of R. Eleazar, adduces similar traditions about tzara‘at in the section of his Or Zarua‘ devoted to the laws of the menstruant. He writes that tzara‘at results from sexual relations during a woman’s menses: “And the [Midrash] Tanhuma says ‘This is the law of the metzora‘: Do not allow your mouth to lead your flesh to sin etc. (Ecc. 5:5).’ The Torah spoke euphemistically: if your wife told you that she is menstruating, do not lead your body to sin and touch her. Do not say before the angel responsible for forming the embryo ‘I sinned inadvertently and did not know’ . . . why should the children you bring forth be afflicted with tzara‘at?”76 R. Avigdor b. Isaac ha-Tzarfati wrote in the same spirit in his Bible commentary.77 35

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It was not only Jews who linked sexual relations during menstruation to tzara‘at—Christians did as well. Such notions appear in the writings of leading medieval Christian thinkers and exegetes like Hrabanus Maurus (c. 780–856, abbot of Fulda and later archbishop of Mainz) and Thomas of Chobham (a twelfth-century English theologian), as recently noted by Sharon Faye Koren.78 The source for both Jews and Christians is the medical tradition of the classical period and the Middle Ages.79 Medieval medical writings and legal documents concerning the banishment or quarantine of lepers refer to these concepts. Nahmanides, who lived in Barcelona in the mid-thirteenth century, was well acquainted with medieval medical traditions and referred to these beliefs in his Bible commentary. In a passage on the segregation of the menstruant and the possible connection between menstruation and tzara‘at, he wrote: “The doctors have also said that if [the fetus] is nourished with fine blood and all its nourishment comes from good blood, and yet some menstrual blood settles within him, then it will blight him and produce various kinds of shehin and ava‘bu‘ot. And according to our rabbis (Tanhuma, Metzora’, sec. 1), if a little [menstrual blood] remains in its body, the newborn will be a metzora‘. For all these reasons, it is fitting for the Torah to ban sexual relations with a menstruant.”80 The fourteenth-century physician Bernard de Gordon of Montpellier wrote in a similar vein, in particular in his work Lilium Medicine.81 Against this background, it is hardly surprising to find that, in the Middle Ages, lepers were commonly viewed as sexually incontinent. The sources reflect a view that lepers were conceived and born as a consequence of their parents’ inability to contain their sexual urges during the menstrual period, and that this behavior may be attributed to the offspring as well.82 Nevertheless, attributing sexual profligacy to lepers was also meant to label them as dangerous. The labeling of groups as sexually hazardous was a characteristic means of social regulation in medieval Europe.83 Such accusations were often voiced against Jews and witches, as well as lepers.84 Alongside the link to sexuality, tzara‘at and therefore leprosy were linked by biblical and rabbinic tradition to another area of transgression, namely, slander.85 The book of Numbers depicts Miriam’s leprosy as punishment for her vilification of her brother Moses for having taken a Cushite wife. The mid­rash and, in its wake, medieval Bible commentators found a link between the affliction and the sin of slander not just in this passage but also in the Levitical passages about tzara‘at.86 Among the sources that make this connection explicit is a homily by the fifteenth-century German sage R. Jacob ben Moshe Halevi Mulin (Maharil): 36

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Therefore, a person should be very, very careful not to slander. It is, after all, a big sin like one of the cardinal sins of idol worship, sexual transgression, and murder. It has both a prohibition and a positive command. It is written, “take heed of the affliction of tzara‘at” (Deut. 24:8), which means to say take heed of slander which brings on tzara‘at. And if you say how do we know that this warns against slander? Do not afflictions appear on account of seven sins?87 One can say that it is because it is adjacent to “Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam” (Deut. 24:9), and she was afflicted with tzara‘at for having slandered her brother Moses. . . . And it is an a fortiori: if Miriam, Moses’s sister, who had done so many good things for him, for she stood watch over him to rescue him when he was thrown into the Nile and [did] many other such things as sisters do for bothers, was [nevertheless] afflicted with tzara‘at when she slandered him, all the more so someone who slanders his fellow Jew.88

This homily is full of references to sources that preceded Maharil, but he used the punishment of tzara‘at to warn those members of his generation who listened to his teachings to stay away from this sin. It is not clear from this homily whether Maharil was referring to the leprosy of his day or to biblical tzara‘at, but he explicitly linked tzara‘at to slander and made it valid for his time as well. As noted above, the Jews of medieval Europe were not alone in presuming a close relationship between leprosy, sin, and punishment. Early Church texts laid the foundation for a similar Christian view. So, for example, a Christian interpretation of Psalms 38 identified the psalmist’s disease as leprosy, and on this basis made it one of the seven Christian psalms of repentance.89 Even though only a few of the Church Fathers addressed the book of Leviticus in their sermons and commentaries, those who did addressed the chapters containing the laws of purity (Lev. 12–15). Origen viewed biblical tzara‘at as an allegory for sin;90 in his sermons on these chapters, he drew a direct line between tzara‘at and the sins of the soul, and he even linked the specific skin afflictions referred to in the biblical text with specific sins, all of them spiritual. Many medieval Christian writers, biblical commentators in particular, stressed that biblical tzara‘at was a disease of the soul (anima),91 a disease that—unlike the leprosy of their time—expressed sin and was sometimes itself a punishment for sin.92 They believed that the diseased are polluted

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and pollute their surroundings, first and foremost morally and spiritually, and only secondarily in a physical sense. According to some of these writers, tzara‘at is the physical reflection of lack of faith and heresy, which are spiritual violations.93 In his commentary on the book of Job, the sixth-century pope Gregory the Great maintained that the boils (shehin) that afflicted Job’s body were a reflection of apostasy.94 Noting that the skin of a person with boils has both sores and places without sores, he averred that the body testifies to the state of the soul—part of which is afflicted with heresy and part of which remains untainted. The leper is like a person who preaches heresy—he conveys a message in which truth (healthy flesh) and falsehood (diseased flesh) coexist, so as to make his arguments more suggestive and thus more dangerous to the victims he seeks to catch in his net. The eighth-century clerks of the pontifical chancery also used leprosy as a metaphor for heresy when they authored the Donation of Constantine, a central Church document putatively written by the first Christian emperor. The donation, written in the first person, lays out the reasons that led Constantine the Great to accept conversion to Christianity by St. Sylvester, the bishop of Rome, and to grant him and the church primacy in Western Europe. According to the Legenda Sancti Silvestri (Legend of St. Sylvester), the document that provides the narrative background for the donation (which was itself a legal document), Constantine’s baptism was preceded by a series of futile endeavors to find a cure for the leprosy that afflicted him. These included, on the advice of his doctors, the murder of innocent infants so that he could bathe in their blood, a treatment considered effective against the disease.95 Upon baptism, the emperor was miraculously cured of his disease. In this story, tzara‘at symbolizes lack of faith, which is expunged by the act of baptism. It underlines the connection between tzara‘at and the disease’s status as an external and metaphorical expression of a lack of faith, as well as cruelty. Similar themes appear in the story of the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, at Rheims.96 Since tzara‘at was viewed as an affliction that was the external expression of spiritual corruption and moral defects, and because biblical tzara‘at was identified with leprosy in medieval Europe, lepers were banished from medieval society, which was also a conscientious fulfillment of the biblical ethos of sending the metzora‘ out of the camp.97 According to R. I. Moore, European society, particularly at the beginning of the thirteenth century, sought to define itself. One of the tools it used to this end was the designation of marginal groups as dangerous to the existence of Christian society. Among the groups so designated were lepers, Jews, and Muslims. Even if we do not accept Moore’s sweeping claim, we can hardly 38

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ignore the fact that these three groups were often lumped together. In 1321, for example, lepers and Jews were accused of conspiring with Muslims to bring a plague upon the French kingdom and its king. Testimony obtained by torture “proved” that lepers, who ostensibly had contact with Muslims, also committed acts indicating that they rejected Christianity and desecrated its sacraments. The lepers’ ostensible methods for poisoning France’s water involved deliberately defiling consecrated hosts, transmogrifying them from givers of life into deadly poison. The French Inquisition put lepers on trial and accused them not only of conspiring with Jews and Muslims against Christians, but also of defiling the sacraments.98 Natural repugnance for lepers played a role in identifying leprosy with sin and lepers with heretics. The appearance of lepers, especially those in advanced stages of lepromatous leprosy, was indeed repellent in the extreme. Nevertheless, other medieval Christian writers viewed lepers as deserving of compassion and, in embodying the sufferings of this world, as resembling Christ who as God incarnate suffered and died in order to bring salvation to his believers.99

“The Leper Is Considered Dead” Let us now return to the responsum with which we opened this section’s discussion, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (Maharam)’s ruling regarding heirs who sought to deprive one of their number, a leper, of his share. While this is a halakhic ruling that would seem to belong to the next chapter, it presents a theoretical analysis important to the present discussion. The heirs’ position that the leper was not a legal persona and therefore could not hold property derived, in part, from their familiarity with the law of the surrounding society. The Jewish heirs internalized the legal attitude of Christian society toward lepers and sought to use it to their economic advantage. In order to give their position a Jewish cast, however, they sought to base their claim on the rabbinic statement that “the leper is considered dead,” which they tried to apply to the laws of inheritance.100 Maharam firmly rejected their position and agreed with the trustees who apparently brought the issue before him or before a regional tribunal that was perplexed by the petition and forwarded it to Maharam, who was the highest Jewish legal authority in Ashkenaz in the late thirteenth century. The expressions “it is a deed of the Sadducees” and “it is nonsense to request such a thing” are very sharp and give the impression that Maharam not only rejected the heirs’ position but was so incensed by their line of legal argumentation that he called them Sadducees— tantamount to calling them heretics. 39

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The phrase “deed of the Sadducees” comes from Babylonian Talmud tractate Bava Batra. It is found in a section dealing with precedence in inheritance.101 The expression can be understood in several different ways there. Maharam’s use of it indicates that in his view the heirs’ position not only had economic repercussions; he deemed it an act of heresy and even as an attempt to undermine the foundations of the halakhic order. If this is indeed the case, Maharam portrayed the heirs in an extremely negative way, and not only because they wanted to deny a leper his rightful share of an inheritance. Why did Maharam use such strident language? Why did he vilify a group of people whose motives seem to have been purely pecuniary? It may well be that Maharam was playing with the double meaning of the term “Sadducee.” In rabbinic texts, Sadducee is used as a synonym for “schismatic” (min), which is also used to refer to a Christian. In medieval Western Europe, the image of the metzora‘ was regularly applied to those execrated on religious grounds and to those accused of heresy and schism. The works of the thirteenth-century English jurist Henry de Bracton portray schismatics as being afflicted not with biblical tzara‘at but rather with tzara‘at of the soul (lepra animae). These individuals, like their physically afflicted fellows, are not legal entities for the purpose of property ownership. Individuals who were placed outside the bounds of the Church’s mercy by excommunication were also referred to as lepers.102 On more than one occasion we also find that a person afflicted with physical leprosy was perceived as also having leprosy of the soul and of bodily manifesting the signs of his heresy with the physical signs of the disease. Carlo Ginzburg has shown that in several Western European languages the same word is used to mean “witch,” “leper,” and “heretic.”103 Furthermore, one finds the image of the heretic whose soul is leprous even in medieval Jewish sources. In these, too, the impurity of leprosy is likened to the impurity that adheres to the apostate. Midrash Tadshe, mentioned earlier as one of the later midrashic-homiletic texts states: “The Sages analogize the impurity of tzara‘at to the impurity of the spirit and the heart. And these are those who abandon fear of God and cling to idol worship, such as Jeroboam b. Nebat, who sinned, led the public to sin, and defiled Israel with tzara‘at of the spirit, as it is written: Jeroboam son of Nebat . . . and his mother’s name [is] Tzerua‘ (I Kgs. 11:26) because she brought tzara‘at of the spirit on the people and turned their hearts away from Me.”104 The fact that the link between tzara‘at/leprosy and heresy was a familiar concept in contemporary surrounding Christian society and in Jewish texts before Maharam’s time may explain why Maharam chose to use the term “Sadducees” here. That term’s double meaning related to the double 40

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meaning of the term tzara‘at—the latter is a disease that some saw as cause for depriving a person of legal status, and metaphorically it referred to heresy. Maharam lashed out at those who claimed that the metzora‘ should be denied his share of the inheritance by wielding the other side of the blade with which they sought to smite the leper. They wanted to banish the leper from his inheritance in a way that they knew about from the surrounding society, whereas Maharam retaliated in kind by pointing to their predilection for interpreting Scripture according to their needs and for their inclination toward heresy. He evokes both through the code word “Sadducees,” labeling them in the same manner as some people were labeled as being afflicted with leprosy of the soul.105 We have seen that Maharam severely rebuked Jews who sought to apply to lepers an ethos that he thought violated Jewish law. While general conclusions cannot be drawn on the basis of a single piece of evidence, further evidence presented below demonstrates that Maharam was fighting against what seems to have been a trend in his time, one that had its source in the non-Jewish environment. And Maharam refused to submit. As we shall see, this struggle is important for understanding the status of lepers in medieval Ashkenazi society and for understanding the tension between the rabbinic elite and the laity on this issue. The negative social image of lepers among Jews and non-Jews created revulsion at the same time that it fed off natural revulsion against them. A northern French Christian manuscript on penitential disciplines, published in English as Medieval Handbook of Penance, was used from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. It required a person who sinned with a forbidden, erotic kiss (before marriage, or with a person with whom sexual contact was otherwise forbidden) to atone for the sin by kissing the hand of a leper and giving him charity.106 The efficacy of such a requirement and the extent of the atonement it provided derived from the natural revulsion against contact with lepers. Further testimony to this revulsion is abundant in the medieval European literature surveyed by Brody.107 Some Christian saints, among them Elizabeth of Hungary, Francis of Assisi, and Claire, were revered, among their other virtues, for their willingness to associate with lepers, whom they provisioned, bathed, bandaged, and even let sleep in their beds. These deeds served to highlight the public’s aversion to lepers, as well as the potential for Christian compassion and charity that could be demonstrated by contact with them. Association with lepers as part of the penitential process was common not only among saints. Examples of such behavior were cited by Gerard of Nazareth, the Latin bishop of the city of Latakia in the principality of Antioch (in modern-day Syria) during the years 41

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1139–61. All cases involved the treatment of lepers, one of them involving a man named Alberic who shared food with lepers, kissed them each day after mass, bathed and dried their feet (an act of Christian charity based on the deeds of Jesus as depicted in John 13:1–20), made their beds, and bore the weak and crippled among them on his shoulders. Contact with their bodily fluids and sores nauseated him, yet he persevered in his good works.108 An echo of the fear and revulsion caused by lepers can also be found in Jewish texts. The Talmud described the revulsion caused by those afflicted with ra’atan (that is, leprosy), but we can also find such references in medieval sources. An anonymous Ashkenazi Bible commentary states the following about the metzora‘: “ ‘Dwell apart:’ because even if a person steps on his phlegm he is injured [nizok].” The word nizok indicates not only physical but even quasi-magical revulsion from the potential for injury posed by the phlegm of the metzora‘.109 In the thirteenth century, the author of Sefer Hasidim asked that a person suffering from shehin (i.e., leprosy) act so as not to pollute ritual waters like that of the mikveh (ritual bath), because the healthy are revolted by his disease. Revulsion thus derived from the physical presentation of the disease and from magical and metaphysical traits appended to it. This chapter has examined the common beliefs and ideas about lepers as they appear in commentaries, homilies, and midrashim, as well as in Jewish and Christian legal documents. Influenced by earlier scriptural and rabbinic texts that went through various iterations before reaching the Middle Ages, these sources link negative behavior, sin, and death to tzara‘at, and in some cases they connect the biblical affliction to leprosy. Medieval Western European Christian society displayed ambiguity toward leprosy. On the one hand, the biblical strictures of banishment were taken to apply, and lepers had the same legal status as the dead and so could not own property. On the other hand, the leper’s physical and social torment was equated with that of Jesus and taken to be an emblem of how those who suffer in this world will enjoy salvation in the world to come. While these texts were produced by a narrow, intellectual elite, we may presume that they reflect beliefs and ideas that prevailed in broader circles of society. Of course, the repulsive appearance, odor, and voices of lepers were also important factors in shaping negative attitudes toward them. Jewish and Christian beliefs and ideas about leprosy, as expressed in these texts, display a great deal of similarity. Likewise, they exhibit similar views of the disease’s origins, means of its spread, and the need to separate the afflicted from society. The two societies also shared a conception of leprosy as 42

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the physical manifestation of an internal moral failing or lack of faith. Brody, as noted, attributed this similarity to the common Mediterranean conceptual world that shaped both early Christianity and rabbinic literature of the Mishnaic and Talmudic eras. I should stress that the findings of this chapter are universal; they are not limited to Ashkenaz. This should hardly be surprising, given that beyond the conceptual foundation that medieval Jewish and Christian culture shared lay the natural human sense of revulsion caused by deformities and by illnesses that seem to be contagious. But for all these similarities, Jewish sources do not evince the same insistence on the banishment of lepers from society that emerges clearly in the texts produced by the surrounding Christian society. This distinction will be further reinforced by the sources presented in the next chapter. These texts, originating in a broad geographical area over an extended period of time that stretches from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, demonstrate an attitude toward lepers that can be summarized by a phrase used in Jewish legal texts that address the acceptance of converts: “The left [hand] pushes away while the right draws close.” These documents display a basic human aversion to lepers and also reflect the prevailing attitudes of the larger society in which the Jews of Ashkenaz lived. Yet Jewish social and religious leaders, who produced the extant texts, grappled with the desire to banish and segregate the leper, while in many cases they sought, to every extent possible, to include lepers within Jewish society.

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Chapter 2

Social Attitudes toward Lepers

Although much can be learned about a society from exegetical literature, as was examined in the previous chapter, one of the most important literary sources for the historical and social research of medieval Jewish communities is halakhic codes, responsa, and ethical treatises. A few words about two of these three respective genres are needed. Most volumes of responsa are collections of legal precedents meant to serve as references for Jewish adjudicators. At times, copyists and editors of responsa collections omitted parts of the replies they deemed superfluous; often these omissions included the exact phrasing of the question along with the circumstances of the case. In certain cases, however, these sections have been preserved in printed or manuscript versions, and as such they offer a glimpse into the milieu in which both petitioners and respondents lived. The advantage of responsa as a historical source is that they generally present situations and problems that were of direct and practical concern together with an account of how halakhists resolved them. The real-life nature of the questions and answers generally reflects the common wisdom and mood of the time and place in which they were composed. Of course, this genre must still be treated with caution for many reasons. One set of reasons can be grouped under the rubric of textual problems. As stated above, transmission of responsa was not always direct, and material could be filtered. Collections of responsa also underwent editing processes over long periods of time. In some cases, only fragments of the original responsum are extant. Another problem is many of the questions do not have precise dating and source of origin; at times we can speculate from the content or from intratextual evidence about these 45

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matters, but in some cases modern readers are left in the dark. Once one has overcome the hurdles of properly identifying the circumstances surrounding a query, the question of extrapolations comes to the fore. Responsa reflect the ideas, mores, and vision of a narrow band of society: the social stratum of the learned male elite. In some cases we can safely assume that although halakhists were consulted, their rulings may or may not have been followed.1 These methodological concerns also apply to halakhic codes compiled by rabbinic legal authorities in an attempt to regulate life according to Jewish law. This chapter will also investigate ethical and moral treatises, such as Sefer Hasidim (lit. The Book of the Pious). This literature was produced within rabbinic circles in which systematic and sometimes extreme doctrines were propounded. Though the views of these authors were not always accepted by the community at large, there are places where an author tells us in passing about what he perceives to be the maladies or virtues of the society in which he lives, which enriches the overall picture. Furthermore, while Sefer Hasidim represents a particular social and religious group with its own internal world of values, this and similar works were written in dialogue with non-Pietist society and serve as a window into the consciousness of the times.

First Testimony: Rabbi Gershom’s Responsum Perhaps the earliest testimony about a Jewish leper in medieval Europe originates with a responsum written by R. Gershom b. Judah of Mainz (d. 1028) known as Rabbi Gershom the “Light of the Exile” (Me’or ha-Golah).2 His responsum dates to the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century.3 The responsum addresses the case of a man who came down with a disease identified as shehin a year after his marriage. His wife continued to live with him for five more years, but at the end of that time she sought a get (writ of divorce), which her husband refused to grant. Since a woman cannot terminate a marriage of her own volition, the question asked of R. Gershom was whether the man should be coerced to give his wife a get. Another issue raised was whether the man would be required, were he to be coerced to grant a get, to pay his wife her ketubbah, that is, the amount stipulated in their marriage contract to be paid to her upon dissolution of the marriage.4 The analysis focused on whether the woman should have been considered a rebellious wife (moredet) for refusing to live and have relations with her husband, thereby losing her right to the ketubbah, and whether she had a right to a divorce on the grounds that he had become repugnant to her on account 46

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of his disease. R. Gershom ruled that the man should be coerced to divorce his wife but was not required to pay her ketubbah.5 This case, like others to be examined in the course of this chapter, addresses the dissolution of a marriage due to an illness of one of the spouses. The disease in question, and the physical revulsion it engenders, often led to crises that required outside intervention. The facts of this case are that the husband was diagnosed as suffering from shehin soon after his marriage, but his wife seems to have consented to continue to cohabit with him for a number of years thereafter. As the disease progressed and his condition deteriorated, apparently she became unable to tolerate the marriage. Note also that while the husband was diagnosed (by some unknown party) as suffering from shehin, he was not termed a ba‘al ra’atan. If he had been labeled the latter, owing to the fact that intercourse would have worsened his condition, divorce would have been justified. This suggests that neither the petitioners (the wife’s representatives) nor the respondent suggested that the husband’s illness in and of itself justified the divorce. While the responsum offers information about some of the problems that arose in the cohabitation of a couple when one of them had fallen victim to leprosy, the petitioner and respondent are quite parsimonious when it comes to offering details of the case. Furthermore, the halakhic terms and Talmudic terminology used make it difficult to draw conclusions about social attitudes toward lepers, beyond the difficulty of living and having intimate relations with one. Nevertheless, in contrast with the prevailing attitudes in Christian society to be presented below, the diagnosis of leprosy clearly did not automatically and immediately dissolve a Jewish marriage. The question of divorce arose only at the point when the disease, by making the husband repugnant to the wife, became a barrier between them.

“The Lepers Want to Take Her In”—Rashi’s Responsum A slightly later responsum offers a view of the dynamics between a husband and wife in a similar situation. This responsum, which is attributed to Rashi, is the first detailed evidence of a case of leprosy in Jewish medieval Western Europe that had public repercussions. The responsum survives in two printed versions: the first (version 1) in a collection of responsa from various Franco-German sages,6 and the second (version 2) in a collection of Maharam’s responsa.7 The two versions are similar in wording but differ in some ways. Because of their importance to our discussion each will be examined in turn. 47

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Version 1 At first glance, the case at hand seems to be one of misrepresentation in a marriage agreement. A husband claimed ta‘anat mumim, that is, that his wife had concealed a handicap from him when their marriage agreement was negotiated, and, had he known about what he claims was a preexisting condition, he would not have married her. In finding out only later that she was a leper— she developed marks on her face—he claimed that the marriage transaction had been mistaken (mekah ta‘ut) since he wed her under false pretenses. The text states that the wife did not deny the appearance of the marks, but she claimed that at the time of their marriage she had been healthy and unblemished. Furthermore, she denied that the marks were symptoms of leprosy and instead claimed that they had appeared in reaction to the anguish and anger she felt as a result of her husband’s behavior. In other words, the wife claimed that they were what we would today call psychosomatic symptoms. Her main claim was that her husband expelled her from their home without paying her ketubbah, and, in fact, she was the petitioner to Rashi in this case. Her claim was apparently lodged through the agency of a representative, because the beginning of the discussion does not mention a man and a woman but rather two men: “Reuben and Simeon came to be judged before our rabbi Solomon, his wife cries out . . .” (The names Reuben and Simeon are commonly used as pseudonyms in halakhic discussions.) The responsum offers a physical description of the woman, and it implies that her condition could be diagnosed. The husband declares: “It is clear that you suffer from tzara‘at and the marks of tzara‘at appear on you—the nose and the rest of your face have broken out in boils [shehin].” Reference to the nose and skin blemishes on the face that are characteristic of medieval descriptions of leprosy fit our knowledge of the way the disease develops.8 Diagnosing leprosy in the Middle Ages was no simple matter. The variety of symptoms associated with leprosy that appear in medieval medical literature is so broad that people who suffered from other skin conditions were undoubtedly diagnosed as lepers. Since diagnosing a person as a leper had far-reaching social and legal implications, the finding became, as we have already seen, a flexible tool for political, economic, and other kinds of revenge.9 The responsum’s description is also consistent with that found in other medieval Jewish sources.10 The husband’s description uses terms from the broad semantic field discussed above, such as tzara‘at and shehin. The wife rejected her husband’s account: “And she says: ‘No, for I entered the marriage canopy unblemished, and as for your saying that the symptoms of tzara‘at are evident on me, it is not true nor will it be,11 for my entire body 48

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is whole.’ Two blemishes have, indeed, appeared on her face after he expelled her from his home, out of anguish and anger.” The wife argued that what her husband took to be the first sign of leprosy was no more than a skin condition that resulted from the trauma of being cast out of her home. The husband further claimed that before their marriage his wife sensed that she was ill with leprosy (tzara‘at), and that she knew that the disease ran in her family and was likely to be latent in her body as well.12 The point of making this argument was apparently to indicate that once the marks had appeared on her face, the woman should have known, on the basis of her family history, that she had leprosy. The husband, in claiming that leprosy was a hereditary disease that ran in her family, may have been indirectly referencing a passage from tractate Yevamot, in which it is recommended that a man not wed a woman from a family of epileptics or lepers.13 The anthropologist Mary Douglas has written extensively about the connection between disease, trauma, and social exclusion. She has noted similarities between accusations of leprosy and witchcraft, as well as the connection between these accusations and lawsuits that are meant to result in social exclusion: “A successful accusation is one that has enough credibility for a public outcry to remove the possibility of repeating the damage.”14 The husband in the case at hand indeed buttressed his legal claims with one of a social nature. Douglas argues that for such an accusation to do its work, it must be properly aimed: “To be successful, an accusation should be directed against victims already hated by the populace. The cause of the harm must be vague, unspecific, difficult to prove or disprove. The crime must be difficult to deny, even impossible to refute.”15 The husband seems to have carefully calculated his accusation of leprosy, but he did not take into account the first of Douglas’s conditions: public outcry. As it happens, the public, to which the responsum refers as “some of the community [miktzat ha-kahal],” took the wife’s side. They asserted that they had known the husband for several years and that he had never made any complaints about his wife. Moreover, they testified that they had seen the woman enter the marriage healthy and unblemished. They even challenged the ability of their contemporaries to diagnose the biblical disease, “since we do not know the signs of tzara‘at.” In other words, the claim that the woman was unquestionably afflicted with the disease was unsupportable, because no one knew for certain what the symptoms of the biblical condition were. This statement shows what the husband’s real claim was—he wished to have the biblical code banishing the leper enforced against his wife; the position of “some of the community” conveyed to the husband that this could not be imposed. 49

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The wife, for her part, made two claims: first, that she was not a leper nor, for that matter, afflicted with any skin disease at all; and second, that the husband’s claim that she had hoodwinked him could not be accepted because the symptoms of tzara‘at are unknown. In addition to countering the charge of deception (mekah ta‘ut), the wife’s second claim fundamentally refutes the assumption that her case was one of tzara‘at. On the face of it, this claim is superfluous, but its significance becomes evident against the background of the non-Jewish attitude, the era, and the explanation offered for the wife’s blemishes. The questions of whether tzara‘at is grounds for divorce and what laws apply to a couple when either the husband or the wife is afflicted were also taken up in Christian canon law. In contrast to halakhah, which views divorce in general as a legitimate, even if not commendable, legal procedure, the medieval Church permitted divorce only in exceptional cases, and then only with the consent of high-ranking Church authorities. Since the Church views marriage as a sacrament and the institution of marriage as holy, only supreme Church authority can contravene the sanctity of the marriage bond and dissolve it. The question of divorce in the case of leprosy was discussed as early as the reign of the Frankish king Pepin III “the Short” (r. 751–68). The king ruled that leprosy was grounds for divorce, but his contemporary, Pope Stephen II (752–57), ruled the opposite. Their dispute was not only religious but apparently political too. The Church ruling was codified in a later period. The Third Lateran Council of 1179, which convened during the papacy of Alexander III (1159–81), established rules for the treatment of lepers under canon law. Article 23 of the council’s decrees was devoted entirely to the issue; among other matters, it granted legal status to leprosaria. In parallel, this period saw the acceptance of the new opinions on marriage formation in canon law.16 Perhaps most importantly, Pope Alexander III affirmed their position in recognizing that a marriage could be contracted only with the consent of both parties and stressing the importance of consensual relations in the framework of marriage. Modern scholars of canon law and of the medieval family have stressed that this legislation was Alexander’s most important contribution to shaping Church attitudes toward marriage. The pope also permitted a couple to maintain intimate relations when either husband or wife had fallen ill with leprosy, so long as both parties consented. Pope Urban III (1185–87) annulled the marriage of a woman whose husband was a leper, thus allowing her to remarry.17 The Jews of Europe were most probably cognizant of these developments. Rashi’s response to the claims presented above does not limit itself to a halakhic ruling—it also takes a moral stance. Rashi rejected the husband’s 50

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claim that he was deceived at the time of the marriage and that the marriage was thus invalid. The husband, he ruled, could not claim that he received “defective merchandise.” Rashi accepted the testimony given by “some of the community,” thereby rejecting the husband’s charges. He did not address the claim that members of the woman’s family were known to be lepers, nor did he engage whether the wife’s symptoms constituted tzara‘at. He accepted the fact that at the time of the petition the wife exhibited blemishes that were not to her husband’s liking, but he believed the wife’s contention that they appeared after the marriage as a reaction to the husband’s obnoxious behavior. Rashi took the claim of tzara‘at to be an attempt by the husband to defame his wife, and in response he sharply rebuked the husband: The husband has displayed bad behavior and shown himself not to be a descendant of our forefather Abraham, whose nature was to show compassion for all people, and all the more so for a member of his family who entered the covenant [of marriage] with him. Had he set his heart on bringing her closer, to the same extent that he has set it on distancing her, her grace would have attracted him. For thus have our rabbis stated: “A place is appealing to its inhabitants”—even if it is marred by bad water and the land is desolate. In the same way, a wife is appealing to her husband.18 Happy is he who was privileged to merit her and to acquire the next world through her, since even among those who deny God we have seen many who do not distance their wives, and so are the women with their husbands, and through [that admirable deed] they put us [Jews] to shame. And this man has hardened his behavior and has testified against the wife of his youth.19 The verdict regarding him is that he must treat her according to the custom of the daughters of Israel, and if he will not draw her close with compassion and respect, he should divorce her and pay her entire ketubbah.

Avraham Grossman has correctly noted that Rashi “went to much greater lengths to condemn the husband than was required from a purely halakhic perspective.”20 Indeed, the halakhic aspect is minimal in this version of the responsum, and the moral condemnation forms the bulk of Rashi’s reply. When Rashi rebuked the husband, accusing him of not being “a descendent of our forefather Abraham, whose nature was to show compassion for all people,” he used an idiom that literally refers to the genealogical descent of the Jewish people, not its moral ethos. But Rashi was likely alluding to a Talmudic statement that puts a moral cast on Abrahamic descent: “As it is 51

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written, ‘and [in order that He] show you compassion, and in His compassion increase you’ (Deut. 13:18)—it is clear that anyone who has mercy on people is a descendent of our forefather Abraham and anyone who does not have mercy on people is not a descendent of our forefather Abraham.”21 In other words, compassionate behavior reflects Abrahamic descent. The husband in this case displayed no compassion for his wife and thus revealed himself not to be of Abrahamic descent.22 Later in his responsum, Rashi quotes from the Babylonian Talmud tractate Sotah, expanding on one of the three manifestations of grace cited in the Talmud: “A place is graceful to its inhabitants.”23 If a place has appeal for its inhabitants even when imperfect, certainly a wife should hold appeal for her husband even when she has lost her beauty. Though the husband’s charge was that his wife developed leprosy, Rashi translated the problem into terms of beauty and appeal and confronted the husband with the Talmudic statement, as he interpreted it, about a wife’s charm.24 The use of the term “grace” (hen) is also not coincidental. In the same passage in tractate Sotah, the Talmud states that one of the three types of grace is that of a purchase (mekah) in the eyes of its buyer. This allusion, in the context of a halakhic discussion of a deceptive transaction (mekah ta‘ut), in this case of “purchasing” a wife, is significant. Rashi implies that even if the husband was no longer physically attracted to his wife, he should have valued her based on the fact that he “purchased” her, that is, that she was his. The fact that Rashi framed the debate in terms of grace and appeal shifts the focus from the claims of tzara‘at and shehin. Moreover, talk of grace also evokes a Talmudic passage mentioned in the previous chapter, in which R. Joshua b. Levi is described as not being afraid to sit together with metzora‘im and ba‘alei ra’atan. R. Joshua cited the following verse: “A loving doe, a graceful [hen] mountain goat” (Prov. 5:19), and he reasoned that “if [the Torah] bestows grace upon those who study it, would it not also protect them?”25 In the same way, perhaps, Rashi intimates that the wife’s grace would not only draw her husband close but protect him if he but let it. Rashi then contrasts the husband’s behavior with that of “those who deny God,” that is, with the Christians. Rashi asserts that even they do not banish their spouses in cases like this. Why did Rashi make this comparison to Christian behavior? Apparently, one reason was the nature of the husband’s claims. The husband clearly believed that the appearance of tzara‘at was in and of itself a sufficient cause for divorce, and he was convinced that his wife displayed symptoms of tzara‘at. The husband also made the claim that he had been deceived at the time of his marriage, but from his point of view it was not really important precisely when the disease had appeared. This 52

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emerges even more sharply from version 2 of the responsum, which will be discussed below. The view that tzara‘at itself was grounds for divorce corresponded with the most stringent approach in the surrounding Christian society. As we have seen, though, that approach was not accepted by all Christians. Most likely, Rashi adduced the Christian position to give added force to his condemnation of the husband. He appeals to the group from which the husband seems to have adopted his position, but he reaches the opposite conclusion.26

Version 2 There are a number of differences between the two versions. First, in version 2, the parties to the dispute are the husband and the wife rather than the wife’s representatives and the husband.27 She demands either restoration to her home and marriage, or a proper divorce with compensation of her ketubbah. Second, in version 1 ethical considerations play a major role, while the financial arrangements are mentioned only in passing. In version 2 the financial aspect is discussed at length. Here, Rashi offers the husband two alternatives: to take back his wife, or to divorce and compensate her. Much of the discussion is devoted to the question of what would happen if the husband could not pay the ketubbah. This may offer some clues about the family’s social class, the class to which the responsum is directed. At the end, Rashi again raises the possibility that the husband could once again cohabit with his wife rather than pay the high compensation for which he would otherwise be liable: “But it would be good if he were to set his heart on taking her back, so that heaven might have mercy on him, grant him the merit of being fruitful and multiplying through her, and protect him from all misfortune, as it is written, ‘[in order that He] show you compassion, and in His compassion increase you.’ . . . Solomon ben R. Isaac.” Third, in version 2 the husband makes an unusual claim: “The husband also claims that the lepers want to take her in, but the community28 testified that she was healthy when he married her, and he is lying in saying that the lepers want to take her in—he is just spreading rumors.” To support his position, the husband testified that some lepers (metzora‘im)—we do not know whom exactly—were willing to take his wife in,29 a claim that his wife and the community denied. As in version 1, the community stands by the wife. In addition, the woman and the community claim that the husband is a liar and that he fabricated the story about the lepers wanting to take his wife in. The husband, it turns out, had gone beyond simply claiming that his wife 53

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was a leper. He went so far in seeking to prove that his wife was a metzora‘ that he made up evidence and spread rumors. He seems to have believed that simply presenting his wife as a leper would be sufficient to dissolve the marriage and release him from the obligation to compensate her. He also believed that a claim that the lepers were willing take her in would strengthen his argument that she suffered from the disease. Clearly, the wife and community believed that the charge of tzara‘at was a serious one, since they did their best to counter the claim and to portray the husband as the guilty party. The public consciousness reflected in the responsum is one in which the lepers themselves were taken to have the capability to diagnose who suffered from their disease. This, too, seems to reflect what we know about medieval society. One of the ways of diagnosing leprosy was a “diagnosis board.” Such panels, the composition of which varied, were active from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries. In some cases, the members included religious authorities (church officials and clerics) and medical authorities (doctors and barber-surgeons). At times, they came from only one of these groups. Until the fourteenth century, lepers also sat on these boards.30 From the fourteenth century onward, as social control intensified, especially in the cities, European municipal authorities established diagnosis boards. At this time the boards were professionalized and staffed principally by members with medical training.31 Rashi’s responsum is the only Jewish source that refers to lepers as being a distinct group that could take in those individuals whom society tagged, or was about to tag, as lepers. The assumption is also that the members of this group had the “authority” to diagnose leprosy, or at least to offer an opinion that was taken seriously. What is the nature of this society of lepers? Was it a separate community? Did a Jewish leper society exist on the margins of Jewish society, just as one existed on the margins of the larger European society? If not, did the marginal society of lepers include Jews as well, and if so, did this society make distinctions between its Christian and Jewish members? In other marginal societies in medieval Europe, such as criminal society, barriers of this type were sometimes lowered and religious distinctions were very faint. Testimonies from different times and places in medieval Europe show that there were instances in which religious distinctions were not only blurred, but in which real cooperation developed between marginal Christians and Jews.32 Such questions go beyond the level of textual facts and information and relate to the very core of the issue of Jewish identity. The nature of this leprous community affects one’s reading of the responsum. If, on the one hand, the lepers who wanted to take the woman in were not Jewish, then Rashi’s effort to preserve the marriage was in fact an attempt to prevent 54

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the woman from leaving Jewish society. This consideration, in fact, appears frequently in the writings of medieval halakhists, especially in discussions of questions regarding divorce.33 On the other hand, if the leper society referred to here was specifically Jewish, it means that Jewish society adopted, early on, the view that the leper was a pariah.34 Such people, for their own benefit and that of others, were set apart from society and did not live within it. Furthermore, if a separate Jewish leper society did exist, then we may presume that it developed in parallel with the Christian leper society. It may well be, in that case, that non-Jewish society dictated a policy that the Jews had little choice but to accept. To examine these questions, a brief survey of the status of medieval leprosaria is in order. The available evidence for the existence of societies of Jewish lepers at the cusp of the eleventh and twelfth centuries needs to be evaluated in this light. A number of scholars have studied the geographical distribution of hospitals and charitable institutions for lepers in medieval Europe.35 Our knowledge about them has grown extensively, thanks to studies focused on such institutions in the European urban sphere.36 Roberta Gilchrist discussed the relationship between sources like this one from France that states “since it would be dangerous to maintain the leprous and the healthy together given that the healthy might become leprous, leprosaria are built outside the cities” and corroborating archaeological evidence.37 But does this evidence demonstrate the existence of similar institutions in Jewish communities? Emily Taitz argues that just as there were Christian leprosaria by 1273 in Troyes, for example, so there “must have been parallel Jewish institutions.” Taitz bases her contention on the Church chronicle of Geoffrey de Courlon. The latter relates that in 1146 King Louis VII of France permitted Jews in the area of Sens to build a leprosarium, along with synagogues and cemeteries.38 There is evidence of a Jewish leprosarium in the city of Provins, near Troyes, nearly one hundred years later, in 1244.39 References from fourteenthcentury Germany indicate that Jews may also have hospitalized lepers in communal charitable institutions (batei hekdesh) for the indigent and ill. Jewish lepers are also mentioned in non-Jewish sources from the area of Germany, albeit in a period later than that in which Rashi’s responsum was written.40 Additionally, there are attestations about permits allowing the settlement of Jewish lepers in certain regions in Germany. In the fourteenth century, a Palatine count granted a permit to a group of Jewish lepers to settle in his realm and receive his protection, although certain restrictions rode on the permit. The permit states that “they must sit and live in the field [zu Felde sitzen und wohnen]”—that is, they had to live outside the 55

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city.41 But these fragments of evidence do not add up to a complete picture. Salo W. Baron took an apologetic tone about the scant evidence regarding Jewish lepers: “Jews may have been less frequently afflicted by this dreaded disease than their neighbors. It has even been suggested that their ancestors in ancient Palestine had been totally immune from it until the Hellenistic age. . . . Were the contagion among medieval Jews as widespread as among their Christian contemporaries, we doubtless would read much more about it in the contemporary rabbinic and medical sources.”42 Nevertheless, given the recent scholarship of Irving Resnick about the Christian claims of Jewish leprosy, this notion may have made its way into this permit. Despite Baron’s outright apologetic tone, his claim does echo medieval Jewish sensibilities as reflected in Jewish–Christian polemics that indeed claimed that Jews didn’t suffer from leprosy as much as Christians. Peter of Poitiers (1130–1205) attributed the perceived immunity of Jews to leprosy to the fact that because of their ritual laws Jewish men abstain from intercourse with menstruating women.43 Jewish polemical writers like the anonymous author of the thirteenth-century Jewish polemical work Sefer Nizzahon Vetus, when discussing the powers of Christian saints, the cult of their relics, and the belief in their ability to cure illnesses make the following statement: “This is the interpretation of the statement, ‘You have saved us from evil and faithful diseases,’ in which we thank God for saving us from being afflicted with impure issue and leprosy and being burned by fire [serufei esh]44 as they are, for the Lord is the one who cures us.”45 This unambiguous tone was meant to serve polemical purposes and address claims raised by Christians that Jews were leprous. It is unlikely, however, that this writer would have made a patently false claim. It would seem that in the thirteenth century, a time when there were a relatively large number of lepers in Europe, the number of Jews with the disease was probably small enough to substantiate such a claim. But we still face the problem of a dearth of evidence. Several hypotheses that are not mutually exclusive can be offered to explain this paucity: (1) The numbers of Jews suffering from leprosy were indeed small. In previous decades, scholars asserted that leprosy was pandemic in medieval Europe.46 They based their contention on the relatively large number of medieval references to the disease and to institutions devoted to healing those afflicted. Today, however, estimates of the number of actual lepers are much lower. Taking this into account, we may presume that even if the level of infection among Jews was more or less the same as in the general population, the number of lepers in medieval 56

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Western European Jewish communities would have been tiny, simply because the number of Jews in many communities was small. (2) Moreover, the charge of leprosy was often used to exclude undesirables from society. Mary Douglas and Mark G. Pegg have noted that in various periods during the Middle Ages accusations of leprosy served as grounds for applying social sanctions.47 In other words, many of the references to lepers may have been rhetorical rather than expressing actual numbers of infected individuals. (3) Expulsions of Jews from Western Europe almost certainly meant that Jewish institutions for lepers, like the one in thirteenth-century Provins, were abandoned at the beginning of the fourteenth century, perhaps even earlier. Unfortunately, we have no surviving documentation, if any ever existed.48 There is no lack of evidence, however, when it comes to Christian charitable institutions. In general, these continued to function even during difficult periods when their funds dwindled and they received fewer contributions. In some cases, municipal or royal authorities adopted these institutions during trying times, which enabled them to flourish again when circumstances improved.49 Some institutions continued to function as charities even when their original missions changed. When the number of lepers in Europe declined significantly at the end of the Middle Ages, many leprosaria were refashioned as hospitals, shelters for the poor, or charitable institutions of other kinds, such as soup kitchens. One such example is the Sherburn leprosarium near Durham, England.50 Founded in the middle of the twelfth century and designed to house sixtyfive lepers, it received generous financial support during the thirteenth century, some of which came from the English crown. During the fifteenth century the number of lepers declined—in 1434 the institution had eleven staff members, thirteen paupers, one woman, and only two actual lepers. By 1552 there were no lepers at all. In the sixteenth century the institution’s original purpose was forgotten, but it continued to function as an almshouse until modern times.51 Similar institutions that functioned continuously often left a comprehensive body of documentation. But the fate of Western Europe’s Jews did not allow the preservation of documents from such institutions until the present day. As a result, tracing the history of Jewish leprosaria, if they existed, is much more difficult. Who, then, were the lepers that appear in version 2 of Rashi’s responsum, the ones who were willing to take in the wife? Perhaps there was a community of lepers, but no official institution that cared for them. Reiner Barzen 57

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claims that in the fourteenth century there is evidence about what may be interpreted as a Jewish leprosarium in the German town of Germersheim. Germersheim was one of the satellite Jewish communities associated with the larger Jewish community of Speyer in the middle Rhineland. In the list of deaths associated with a blood-libel persecution in April 1343 published by Salfeld we find mention of certain sick individuals (holim) who are listed separately from the victims. If there was a leper house it likely functioned as a supracommunal entity under the auspices of the larger and more established Jewish community of Speyer. Other sources mention a “Gisbar le'cholaich,” an “alms collector for your sick,” among the martyrs who perished in Speyer in the Black Plague riots of 1348–49. It is quite probable that this refers to the official who was responsible for the house for the sick, which was located in Germersheim. Nevertheless, as compelling as this may sound, the individuals cared for by this institution are not mentioned explicitly as metzoraim or mukei shehin (the usual term for lepers in Ashkenazi literature) but rather with the general term holim (lit. sick).52 It is possible that the reference in the later version of Rashi’s responsa was inserted into the eleventh-century text by later copyists, probably in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, based on their own life experiences. In sum, a number of points emerge from the two versions of Rashi’s responsum. In both, Rashi preferred to preserve the marriage despite the crisis, and the community and respondent in each case sought to prevent the woman from being classified as a leper. The Talmudic principle that the burden of proof falls on the party that seeks to change the status quo and deprive his or her counterpart of property or status is evident in the responsum, and in this case the husband was unable to provide the necessary proof. Alongside the halakhic ruling, Rashi attempts to persuade the husband on moral grounds that he should not terminate the marriage despite his wife’s illness. He even makes claims regarding divine reward and punishment to encourage the husband to retract his demand to divorce his wife—Rashi was unwilling to accept a situation in which the wife would be banished from Jewish society by being classified as a leper. This latter tendency will appear prominently in later sources.

Sefer Hasidim and the Responsum of Maharam of Rothenberg: Equanimity toward Lepers? In examining Ravyah’s position on the laws of tzara‘at, we noted earlier that in the period under discussion, and especially before the thirteenth century when social control waxed, lepers mingled with the healthy but lived on the 58

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margins of society. Contemporary Jewish sources reflect this as well. Sefer Hasidim is one of the most important sources we have for understanding the medieval Ashkenazi world. The work includes a number of interesting references to lepers in Jewish society and details society’s attitude toward them. These passages indicate revulsion toward the leper, but this revulsion did not lead to the leper’s eviction from society. The first such passage refers to the use of water sources for bathing: “ ‘You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind’ (Lev. 19:14)—a man who is mukeh shehin should not bathe in water and [let] another bathe after him [for] the latter one will be afflicted with shehin. Thus has it been made known ‘Love your fellow as yourself,’ (Lev. 19:18), ‘do not stand upon the blood of your brother’ (Lev. 19:16).”53 The precept laid down by the author of Sefer Hasidim requires a person suffering from shehin to warn subsequent would-be bathers away by notifying them of his disease. Clearly, the place under discussion is a public bathhouse or ritual bath, for the passage assumes that the two bathers do not know each other or that one could be unaware of the other’s illness—to the point that one bather is “blind” to the disease of the other. The author of Sefer Hasidim, like Ravyah, is aware of the danger of contact (even indirect contact) with the mukeh shehin, and stresses the sick man’s obligation to report his illness in problematic situations like this one. Yet, there is no proscription against the mukeh shehin bathing after the healthy person,54 nor do we see an attempt to forbid the leper to bathe in the bathhouse. This stands in contrast to the common state of affairs in Christian society, where the presence of the leper in society was at times tolerated but not their contact with water sources. The special “leper mass” ceremony that marked the leper’s banishment from society included a special admonition on the subject. The priest commanded the leper: “I forbid you to wash your hands or even one of your belongings in a river, spring, or any other body of water of any kind.”55 In contrast, the author of Sefer Hasidim hardly seems disturbed at the prospect of a mukeh shehin bathing in a body of water used by the healthy. This is not the only instance of equanimity regarding the metzora‘ and mukeh shehin in Sefer Hasidim. Here, for example, is a passage addressing food: A person who is mukeh shehin on his palms or on the back of his hand, but his fingertips are healthy [and] without shehin and he eats with them, should not apply [with his fingertips] fat that is forbidden to eat to the shehin [sore] unless he does not eat with that hand. [This is] because he cannot wash the hand due to the shehin. [It is forbidden] unless he has on his hand a glove that is called in the 59

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language of Ashkenaz Handschuh, lest the food come into contact with the fat.56

The author of Sefer Hasidim is concerned that a mukeh shehin might eat forbidden foods, in this case a forbidden fat that is an ingredient in an ointment that he applies to the sores on his hands.57 The solution mentioned is the use of a glove (Handschuh) that prevents contact between the food and the ointment on the hand with which he eats. A second passage on the issue of food addresses a person who has eaten with a mukeh shehin who has sores on one of his hands and who used the aforementioned Handschuh: A certain [leper] put a Handschuh on his right hand, took a grace cup [kos shel berakhah—a cup of wine on which a benediction is recited], and made the blessing. His companion said to him: “why did you do that?” He said: “because my right hand is mukeh shehin and a grace cup must be held in the right hand, for it is written ‘I raise the cup of deliverance’ (Ps. 116:13), and the sacrifices [were done with] the right hand. His companion said to him,” but R. Simeon permits [using] the left hand, and no Tanna permits [using] the right hand when it is clothed. Furthermore, an onlooker does not know that your hand is mukeh shehin.58 So, given that your left hand is healthy, take it in your left hand.59

The subject under discussion relates to the laws of making blessings over food.60 The fact that one of the diners suffers from shehin—and therefore has applied an ointment to sores on his right hand, which he subsequently gloved—does not prevent him from taking part in a meal with a healthy companion or from engaging in a Torah discussion.61 Nevertheless, we do see here one of the important principles of Sefer Hasidim’s doctrine—the avoidance of dramatic irony between the actor and the action. This principle motivates the writer to prefer that the mukeh shehin hold the glass of wine he is blessing in his left, healthy hand, even though the Talmud prefers holding the glass in his right hand. Sefer Hasidim prefers the left hand to the right when there is a barrier (the glove) between the hand and the cup being blessed. The purpose is to distance the afflicted hand as far as possible from the cup of wine that is the center of the ritual act. Another central principle of Sefer Hasidim, and of the German Pietists’ ethical writings more generally, is its genuine concern that all human beings be treated with respect.62 Yet this concern is not expressed in halakhic works 60

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influenced by the Pietists, such as Or Zarua‘ written by R. Judah he-Hasid’s student R. Isaac of Vienna.63 In a discussion of how an amputee should don phylacteries, R. Isaac cites a ruling from Sefer Hasidim that does not appear in the extant versions of the work: “In Sefer Hasidim it is written: one who has netek or shehin whose pus runs on the spot where the [head] phylactery is placed should don arm phylactery but not the head one. One who has a [burn] on his arm should don the head phylactery but not the arm one.”64 This text indicates that even people suffering from leprosy (both netek and shehin are part of leprosy’s semantic field) wore sacred objects like phylacteries. The problem described here is similar to other problems that concerned Sefer Hasidim—contact between loathsome bodily fluids, such as mucus and pus, and sacred objects.65 That these fluids are caused by leprosy is not a matter of concern; leprosy bears the same status as a burn. These Jewish authorities saw no reason to prevent lepers from remaining in the company of the healthy when eating, discussing the Torah, and using public bathing facilities so long as they observed certain restrictions. One also gets the impression that they saw no reason why lepers should not participate in ritual acts and use sacred objects such as phylacteries.66 Yet we can also discern an effort to prevent lepers from using sacred objects and from creating a ritual connection between the sacred and the physical manifestations of their illness, though this attempt at separation applies to all things loathsome and not just lepers. The question, then, is whether the position of Sefer Hasidim portrays common practice or a standard to which the author aspires. Metzora‘im and mukei shehin are members of a group whose honor is of serious concern to the author of Sefer Hasidim. This sensitivity, as noted above, is a basic principle of the Pietist philosophy, and its roots may perhaps lie in the social status of the Pietists within their communities.67 One section of Sefer Hasidim describes a custom of spitting at a person suffering from skin afflictions such as leprosy. The act of spitting was thought to provide magical protection against leprosy for the spitter, so the action might very well have not been intended as a show of contempt for the leper. Nevertheless, degradation of lepers was an unavoidable byproduct.68 From the point of view of the author of Sefer Hasidim, the spitter’s intentions did not change how the sick person interpreted the act, so the author sought to put an end to this custom. As was his wont, the author viewed the situation through the eyes of the wounded party, adopted that point of view, and from it analyzed and interpreted the symbolic interaction and nonverbal communication between the afflicted and his surroundings. The author came down on the afflicted person’s side because he was concerned with shielding him or 61

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her from embarrassment. One should not presume that the author rejected the custom out of ignorance for the act’s magical aspect; on the contrary, he rejected it despite his awareness of its magical effect: “Likewise, if he sees such people [= mukei shehin and nega‘im], he should not spit because they are all His handiwork. Created beings69 and the ill all depend on the hand of the Creator and are all His handiwork, so it is inconceivable that someone would spit on account of any person.”70 In other words, not everyone viewed spitting at a leper simply as an act of magical defense; some also saw it as an expression of moral contempt for the victims and even as a way of indicating that the afflicted were themselves responsible for their condition. In critiquing this attitude, Sefer Hasidim underscores that the state of the ill depends on the “hand of the Creator,” not on the deeds or moral turpitude of the afflicted. This implies that some of those who spat at lepers even believed that they were not “His handiwork.” In contrast, Sefer Hasidim stresses that the afflicted are God’s creations and that both the healthy and the afflicted owe their respective conditions to their Creator. The polemical style of this passage indicates that the social mores were not to the liking of the author, and that at least some Jews treated those with skin illnesses derisively, to the extent that they even expressed their dislike in theatrical ways. Further testimony to such social attitudes toward unfortunates comes from another passage in the same work: There are people without arms or legs or eyes, so born or afflicted, but He has created whole people who see to the needs of those who lack limbs. Just as an infant is born but cannot walk and his mother sees to all his needs, so God provides those lacking limbs with people who see to their needs. And so all of Israel are fathers and mothers to one another, as it says, “your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children” (Deut. 29:9)—it does not say “and your children” but “your children” without a waw, to teach that every person in Israel should be in your eyes as your children so that you will provide for all their needs.71

The tone is clear. The author of Sefer Hasidim believed that society bears a divinely mandated responsibility to care for the disabled. This imperative is redoubled because the usual formulation “all of Israel are guarantors [‘arevim] to one other” draws its force from its similarity to financial guaranteeing or mutual oath-taking, whereas here the mutual responsibility derives from vertical familial relationships (parents–children). These are blood ties, 62

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and such a statement bears momentous significance in Ashkenazi society at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries.72 The use of such terminology and the apologetics that derive from it indicate that the author of Sefer Hasidim apparently needed to find religious and moral justifications for coming to the aid of the deformed and to overcome the revulsion that they elicited. Although tzara‘at and shehin are not mentioned explicitly in this passage, which addresses the deformed and handicapped in general, owing to the disease’s consequences they were certainly included—at one point or another—in this category. In the severest stages of lepromatous leprosy, when the extremities begin to wither and fall off, some of those afflicted become disabled and need assistance to move and to carry out basic tasks. In the passage quoted above, Sefer Hasidim demanded that its readers act above and beyond normative standards. Beyond the requirements to refrain from displays of disdain and revulsion for the ill, and to be sensitive to the victims’ self-respect, they had to also see to the needs of the stricken. This task, it turns out, was not easy. Contact with metzora’im and mukei shehin was difficult, and those who cared for them needed a strong will and intense religious devotion. Nevertheless, such a religious requirement comported well with the high moral standards that became common with the rise of pietist movements in Western Europe during the twelfth century, and with the appearance of the mendicant orders at the beginning of the thirteenth. This demand was also in keeping with the spirit of the times in which Sefer Hasidim was written and the author’s meta-halakhic precepts.73 With that being said, Sefer Hasidim does also include requirements that, prima facie, seem to contradict this concept—such as the one demanding that a father not put his daughter or son into a situation in which the marriage framework would be annulled. The author maintains that the requirement of levirate marriage may be negated if it would require a young woman to marry an old man or a young man to marry a woman with shehin.74 The author is aware of the revulsion elicited by contact with people who have shehin, and all the more so regarding cohabitation with them, especially without prior consent. His moral teachings are also motivated by a concern for the preservation of sexual purity in society, and he seeks to reduce the number of individuals discontented in their marriages. “Equanimity” regarding lepers living within society can also be seen outside the circle of German Pietists and in passing statements made in responsa. In the mid-thirteenth century Maharam was asked to rule in the case of a woman who found blood spots on her garments. In general, such spots would be taken to be menstrual blood, which has ramifications regarding 63

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intimacy between a husband and wife. The woman in question, however, suffered from shehin. Maharam ruled that the spots did not indicate menstrual impurity even during her period, not to mention during the seven “clean days” she was required to count after the conclusion of her period. In other words, if the woman found a blood spot on her clothing or bed linens, her default assumption should have been that the blood came from the sores caused by her illness rather than from menstruation. Such a question would not have been posed had the woman in question not been married and engaging in sexual relations with her husband.75 If we assume that most of the responsa in the collections attributed to Maharam were written in reply to real-life questions rather than theoretical ones, this constitutes evidence of a woman with leprosy or some similar ailment who maintained intimate relations with her husband. In contrast to the situation we encountered in Rashi’s responsum, here the disease did not lead to the dissolution of the marriage.

“And His Wife Refuses to Be With Him”—A Responsum from Ms. Bodleian 692 A responsum found in ms. Bodleian 692, written about two hundred years after Rashi’s, also discusses the dissolution of a marriage as the result of an illness. In this case the husband is the afflicted partner. The text was written in thirteenth-century Ashkenaz and included in a collection of responsa that forms part of the manuscript in question.76 In this case, the wife asked a rabbinical court to grant her a divorce from her husband: A certain man on whom pustules77—strange ava‘bu‘ot like a nega‘— swelled up on his face forced his wife to remain with him, even though she refused to be with him. She [then] became pregnant from him. But since he is considered violent [muhzak],78 she fears for her life and is compelled to stay with him. This is a case where if she said “he is repugnant to me” we would not coerce her to be with him. There are authorities (ge’onim) who have written that he should be forced to divorce her because she has given cause for her statement and there is no greater cause than this. Though she certainly has no power to coerce him to divorce [on the grounds of his illness] since we lack expertise [in diagnosing] a mukeh shehin,79 even so all agree that we do not “muzzle” [hosemin] her [=force her to acquiesce].80 If he threatens her and forces her to be with him, she should be helped so that she not fall into evil ways [tarbut ra‘ah], 64

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and if he beats her or forces her to be with him, judgment must be entered against him [on the charge of ] beating another person.81

The discomfiture evident in the court’s decision can be seen in the sentence “we lack expertise [in diagnosing] a mukeh shehin.” Indeed, in contrast with the woman in Rashi’s responsum, the husband here is described not as a metzora‘ but rather as a mukeh shehin. The halakhic dilemma for the respondent, whose name is not given, is whether to classify the husband as a mukeh shehin. A positive diagnosis would enable the wife to request that the court compel her husband to divorce her, in accordance with the Talmudic dictum that shehin is grounds for divorce. The discussion is not limited to the man’s illness, as it also examines the problematic relations between the husband and wife. The husband’s disease and appearance are taken merely as aggravating circumstances. The responsum makes it clear that the man forced himself violently on his wife, and that as a consequence the woman became pregnant. Nevertheless, it is possible that the husband’s abhorrent appearance, which is presented as the immediate cause of the legal deliberation, is what caused the woman to feel repelled by him. The responsum indicates that the husband used violence not only to force his wife to engage in sexual relations with him, but also to compel her to do his bidding in other matters. The wife, we are told, experienced fear and humiliation. Unlike the situation described in R. Gershom’s responsum, the woman here did not enter a claim that her husband disgusted her, perhaps because she feared his reaction. By not entering this claim, however, she effectively tied the hands of the court and prevented it from aiding her. The authors of the responsum feared severing the marriage bond, both because the woman was pregnant and because she herself had refrained from giving them legal cause for a divorce. The language of the responsum and lack of a claim of disgust indicate that the wife, or her representatives, believed that mention of the husband’s condition would be sufficient to classify him as a mukeh shehin, without having to resort to the claim that the woman was repelled by him. On the basis of the Talmudic identification of mukeh shehin with ba‘al ra’atan, this diagnosis would have presumably required the court to rule that the wife was required to terminate intimate relations with her husband, given that the sexual act caused his flesh to rot. But the authors of the responsum sidestepped such a ruling and declared that “we lack expertise [in diagnosing a] mukeh shehin,” and as a result they could not rule that the husband had to divorce his wife or cease intimate relations with her. They still offered the wife relief on the grounds of justice, principally from broader 65

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social considerations and out of fear that she would “fall into evil ways,” but they would only exert their authority to dissolve the marriage if the husband threatened or battered her. In the final analysis, their hesitations and unwillingness to use all legal means at their disposal notwithstanding, they ruled in the wife’s favor. It should be noted that the ruling contains not a single reference to the possibility of banishing the husband from society or forcing a separation between the husband and wife. We shall see below that the fear of “falling into evil ways”—that is, the fear that a person will, under the circumstances that he or she faces, resort to illicit sexual relations—led halakhic authorities to seek to keep women (especially women who lost their sanity) within the bounds of Jewish society and prevent their expulsion.

The Responsum of Rabbi Hayyim “Or Zarua‘” The final text I will discuss here is a responsum by R. Hayyim Eliezer b. Isaac, nicknamed “Or Zarua‘” on account of his father, R. Isaac of Vienna, author of the popular halakhic compendium “Or Zarua‘” whom we have already met. The responsum is truncated and does not include the question posed to R. Hayyim. Like the previous responsa discussed, its subject is a marriage in which one of the partners suffers from leprosy.82 The text is not dated, but it seems to have been written at the height of R. Hayyim’s career as a rabbi in Vienna, either at the end of the thirteenth century or in the first decade of the fourteenth century.83 The wording of the responsum indicates that the question was referred to R. Hayyim by another court and that the suit was not heard in his own court. The first court had been asked to decide whether or not a certain wife should be classified as “rebellious”—that is, as refusing to engage in sexual relations with her husband.84 If she was, she would not be paid her ketubbah upon divorce. R. Hayyim immediately clarifies that this possibility is remote. Later he writes: “Regarding the wife you wrote about, [even] with the whole lengthy account we have not understood her to be rebellious.” Her husband had indeed claimed that she was rebellious, to which she responded that he was repugnant in her eyes (“meis alay”—a valid claim entitling a divorce). This claim was sufficient for the court to compel her husband to divorce her. But according to halakhic rulings that were binding precedents in thirteenth-century Germany, and which were meant to restrict grounds for divorce, a woman who entered a claim of disgust could divorce her husband but her ketubbah was forfeited—she received neither the standard compensation nor any additional sums that her husband had committed himself to when he married her. 66

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From the text, one can deduce that the wife cited her husband’s repulsive body odor in her petition. R. Hayyim thus addressed the question of whether this was sufficient to categorize the husband as a ba‘al polifos (suffering from a nasal disease that causes a very bad odor). This term appears on the list of disabilities, deformities, and blemishes that tractate Ketubbot considers grounds for divorce and full compensation of the ketubbah.85 R. Hayyim, however, refrained from applying the label: “In our case, where she wishes to compare the husband to a ba‘al polifos, in my opinion this does not seem reasonable.” Later, R. Hayyim asserted that the husband could be compelled to divorce his wife even if shehin appeared only on his head and not his entire body. In other words, the wife could enter a claim of disgust even if the condition was limited in scope. To R. Hayyim, it was obvious that the wife could not be forced to remain married to her husband after she had declared him repugnant to her. R. Hayyim had his doubts about her ketubbah because the court could only compel him to pay it if he could be categorized as a mukeh shehin, and R. Hayyim stressed that “we have no expertise” regarding what types of shehin are worsened by sexual relations and therefore what types can be considered Talmudic mukeh shehin. If the husband could be so categorized, he would have had to cease intimate relations with his wife, divorce her, and pay her ketubbah. As in the case of Bodleian manuscript 692, discussed above, we see a halakhic adjudicator reluctant to make a medical-halakhic diagnosis and accept all of its financial implications. In the end R. Hayyim rules that “based on the strength of our rabbis’ legislation, he must divorce his wife, even if it against his will.” He adds, however: “I cannot compel him to pay the ketubbah.” This responsum displays concerns similar to those found in Sefer Hasidim. R. Hayyim also understood how difficult it is for a wife to live with a man who she finds physically repulsive, so he views divorce as the only possible solution. It should be noted, however, that due to the nature of the legal material no details are supplied about the husband’s whereabouts or any other aspect of his social status. The texts presented above and in the previous chapter demonstrate that leprosy and its synonymous term shehin appear in the responsa literature mainly in cases where the diseases threaten the family, and in particular the institution of marriage. While the evidence shows that some people tried over many years to remain married to a leper, it is also quite clear that such a marriage was not an easy one. Some severe consequences of the disease attested in the responsa are impatience and violent behavior, revulsion at the sight of 67

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the afflicted and at the noxious odor that they emit, and aversion to sexual relations with leprous spouses. The rabbinic authorities and decision makers whose responsa and moral attitudes have been analyzed here had to cope with the desire of the healthy spouse to dissolve the marriage on the grounds of the disease and its attendant consequences. Such cases required the respondents not only to interpret the Talmudic text but also to understand clearly the social realities of their times. The last two responsa examined sought to prevent injustice while concurrently attempting to forestall the spurious use of legal claims of disgust and rebelliousness as a way to terminate marriages. Perhaps this should be understood against the background of an increase in the number of divorces in the Jewish community that began at the end of the thirteenth century. Avraham Grossman has even termed this the “Jewish women’s revolt in Germany,” and Israel Jacob Yuval has noted its continuation in Ashkenazi communities in Italy.86 In his responsum, R. Hayyim cited his own teacher, R. Meir of Rothenburg (Maharam). Maharam judged a number of cases in which women were accused of being rebellious, and while living in Nuremberg, Maharam imposed the following fine on one such woman: “He cited ordinances of the holy communities of the Rhine [declaring] that even what she brought in [to the marriage] she could not take [with her in divorcing her husband].” R. Hayyim qualified this by stating that he did not know if “this ordinance has spread”—that is, whether it had become authoritative. Although R. Hayyim and the authors of Bodleian manuscript 692 seem sensitive to the plight of those living with a leper, they were nevertheless concerned that a claim of disgust would be misused by women with an ax to grind. Facing this dilemma, some rabbis made every effort to preserve a marriage, while others sought to dissolve it. It is noteworthy that in no case is there any indication whatsoever that the halakhic authorities sought to banish the lepers in question from Jewish society. The responsum in Bodleian manuscript 692 tried to preserve the family unit except under violent circumstances, whereas the responsum of R. Hayyim mandated the end of the marriage but not the banishment of the leper. Sefer Hasidim and other such ethical works actually display a certain equanimity toward the disease and its sufferers, certainly when it comes to daily contact with them in public areas and even around the dinner table. In general, the evidence shows an ambivalent attitude toward leprosy and lepers in medieval Jewish society, whether in Ashkenaz or northern France. This certainly holds true for the rabbinic elite that produced the 68

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texts presented here. The sources that describe the conduct of the surrounding Christian society indicate that there were similarities but also a number of notable differences. The most important of these regards banishment from society. I believe the cause of this disparity to be that medieval European Jews were a minority. Responsa like those of Rashi and Maharam demonstrate that Jewish legal authorities were often confronted with the desire of certain groups within Jewish society to treat lepers in accordance with the standards they encountered in Christian society. Halakhic authorities, however, did not want to exclude marginal individuals from the community because, I propose, they were conscious of being themselves members of a minority, one that was continuously engaged in a religious polemic with the surrounding majority. They were a minority whose actions were under endless scrutiny either in reality or at the very least in their own consciousness. This situation can be compared to the behavior of another minority group during the High Middle Ages—that of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem, one of the Crusader states in the outre-mer. While this society’s spirit, values, and culture resembled those of the Christian Europe from which it originated and derived most of its attitudes and power, its members exhibited better treatment of lepers than their European contemporaries. Crusader treatment of lepers has recently been the subject of renewed scholarly interest. The political, commercial, and military ties that the Crusader kingdoms, especially the Kingdom of Jerusalem, maintained with Europe; the constant stream of immigrants from Europe; and the great affinity with Europe all meant that the Crusader states were notably European in character. Nevertheless, Crusader society differed from that of Europe in other ways, partly due to the influence exercised upon it by the surrounding Muslim society and by a variety of Eastern Christian communities. Frankish society had laws governing lepers, their property, and divorce from them, all of which were much more lenient than those of Europe. Among the Crusaders, we find an order of leper knights—the Order of St. Lazarus—and the occupant of the throne in Jerusalem just before the fall of the Crusader Kingdom was a leper himself.87 Scholars of the Crusader period have sought to explain this anomaly. Some have argued that the kingdom’s unique geopolitical circumstances in the East, coupled with the severe shortage of military manpower during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, led to greater acceptance of lepers. The advocates of this theory view the Order of St. Lazarus as proof of their claim.88 Others have maintained that the Crusaders treated lepers more humanely thanks to the moderating effect of Islam.89 More recent scholarship has preferred a more complex interpretation. It suggests that a specific combination 69

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of geographical segregation, politics, will, internal solidarity, and various economic and military considerations produced a situation in which the social and mental progression of Western European society, especially in England and France, did not occur in the Crusader Kingdom. These different conditions engendered a conception and image of the body that differed from that which prevailed in Europe, and that, in turn, led to a different attitude toward lepers.90 One of the more notable aspects of this line of thinking is that the Crusaders viewed themselves as a minority and that this consciousness was expressed in a number of ways, particularly in the imposition of severe restrictions on sexual contact with Muslims.91 Furthermore, Crusader society’s political concepts were more egalitarian than those prevailing in Europe at the time, showing that despite its ties to Europe the Frankish kingdom was distinctive. As a society, it was also open, to a certain extent, to influences from the surrounding culture of Muslims and Eastern Christians (an openness that was much criticized by the Crusaders’ European contemporaries). Nevertheless, the consciousness of the Latin community in the East was that of a minority under attack. This aspect of Crusader society is reminiscent of Jewish society in medieval Europe. Notably, the treatment of lepers in both Jewish and Crusader society differed from that of Western European Christian society. Attitudes toward lepers thus constitute a lens through which we may discern a society’s atmosphere. These attitudes, as part of a more general picture of social attitudes toward marginal individuals, enable even us—centuries distant from the subjects under study—to understand and compare societies. This chapter and the one preceding it have examined medieval Jewish society’s attitudes toward those of its members who were afflicted with leprosy, a disease identified with biblical tzara’at. The texts presented here evince an attitude best described as one of rejection tempered by inclusion. Some of the sources show that certain members of Jewish society rejected and humiliated lepers. Texts from the genres of Bible commentary and Midrash represent the leper as a sinner, as a polluter of his or her environment, as someone with whom both physical and spiritual contact is dangerous. On the conceptual level, then, Jewish and Christian attitudes toward lepers did not significantly differ. At the same time, we have seen that the application of theological principles to specific cases was decidedly more complex. Responsa and other genres of halakhic literature show that the shapers of halakhic consciousness went to great lengths in resisting the tendency to evict lepers from society, strip them of their legal and religious rights, and separate them from their families. Halakhists found the exclusion of lepers 70

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to be unacceptable; they sought to maintain social solidarity even though they understood how difficult living with a leper could be. I have also suggested that the roots of this phenomenon lay in the Jews’ status in medieval Europe as a minority on the defensive. Like twelfth- and thirteenth-century Crusader society in the East, Jewish society in Europe viewed itself as locked in a struggle with the majority that encompassed and beleaguered it. This conflict led the minority to consider every individual, even if disabled, as part of the community, certainly with regard to rights and duties. Medieval Christian society in Western Europe viewed leprosy as a disease that could be used to exclude all those labeled as being afflicted with it. Christian society in the East, influenced by Islamic moderation and, even more so, by the peculiar geopolitical circumstances of Crusader society and its high level of internal solidarity, resulted in a different approach to lepers. The Crusaders may not have seen lepers as part of society, but they did not employ the same mechanisms of exclusion known in Europe, at least not with the same severity. Western European Jewish society, which operated within Christian Europe, adopted some of the surrounding society’s patterns of segregation, but only on the conceptual level. The extant documentation demonstrates that Jewish religious leaders rejected the actual application of these ideas to specific cases.

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Chapter 3

What Is Madness?

In the late twelfth or early thirteenth century R. Shimshon ben Avraham of Sens (1150–1230) was asked to voice his halakhic opinion about the validity of a divorce charter (Get) that was given to a woman described as “temporarily” insane. The petitioners described the woman as follows: “She is at times completely mad and deranged for a month or two and then she completely recovers.” Nevertheless, the petitioners state quite clearly that there is no fixed “frequency” to the woman’s conditions, and her states of madness and their length are not predictable.1 This example fits nicely with a notion expressed in the writings of R. Shimshon’s contemporary, Maimonides. In his Mishneh Torah, a wide-ranging halakhic code from the late twelfth century, Maimonides devoted a paragraph in his laws regarding legal testimony (Hilkhot Edut) to whether a court may accept the testimony of those not entirely in their right mind. In his discussion he grapples with an ancient paradox: on the one hand, the relativity of madness and the impossibility of defining it precisely, and on the other, the fact that many can identify a mad person when they see one. He writes: “The most feebleminded, who do not recognize that things contradict one another and do not understand matters the way people at large do, and similarly the [continually] unsettled, rash, and deranged—these are all included in the category of the mentally unstable [shotim]. This matter is dependent on the judge’s discretion, as it is impossible to define in writing precisely what sanity [da‘at] is.”2 To be sure, Maimonides was not a European Jew; although born in the Muslim Caliphate of Cordova in Iberia in the 1130s, he spent most of his adult life in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt. Nevertheless, from the late twelfth 73

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century and into the thirteenth century Maimonides’s halakhic teachings became known and growingly influential in the Franco-German realm. His reservation that “it is impossible to define in writing precisely what sanity is” sharpens the question of attitudes toward insanity and the insane, the feeble-minded, and those not mentally sound—a most knotty question from a religious and legal standpoint as well as from a historical and social one. At its foundation the question posed in this chapter’s heading is the definition of social norms and, of course, of those behaviors that lie outside the norms. Unlike physical ailments discussed in the previous section on tzara‘at, where it was possible, even if difficult, to reach an almost absolute definition of what constituted the disease itself, insanity by its very nature is relative and elusive. Behavior considered normal in a given era and locale may, under different circumstances, be considered mad. Identical behaviors may be classified differently even in the same society when they appear in different social contexts, among different kinds of people, or within different groups.3 The diagnosis or labeling of a person as insane brings with it not only a specific set of social attitudes, but also an entire range of legal and medical assessments that have broad ramifications in areas as diverse as criminal liability, financial transactions and ownership of property, and various socially significant activities in one’s family, community, and sacred space. On the other hand, being labeled insane sometimes provides certain freedoms.4 Throughout history, the social oversight of some societies was more flexible toward the insane, and people were generally forgiving of a madman’s speech and behavior. For this reason, insanity, or pretending to be insane, became a refuge for members of a society who sought to critique that society and vanish—figuratively, if not literally—from the public arena so as not to incur social sanctions. Attitudes toward the insane, especially in societies of the past, raise particularly acute questions. What is insanity? What are the standards for determining whether a person is or is not insane? What distinctions are signified by the various terms used in rabbinic literature to refer to a person behaving abnormally—meshugga‘, shoteh, holel, and letz? Do potential distinctions between them result in different social, legal, or theological treatment? Is insanity, like other forms of disability and ailment, perceived as divine punishment, and, if so, did this perception affect attitudes toward the insane? Did Jewish madmen and madwomen in the Middle Ages, like their fellows in other cultures, receive special treatment because their behavior was viewed as evidence of their special ties to the supernatural and the upper worlds? What was the cultural significance of the label “insane” in the consciousness of medieval Ashkenazi Jews? Was the label a kind of license to behave in ways 74

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that the sane could hardly even imagine? How did individuals and groups treat the insane, and what social, cultural, and religious mechanisms operated in cases in which a person lost his or her mental balance, and with it the ability to function normally? Were attempts made to cure the insane, and if so, what methods were used? In this and the following chapter dedicated to the plight of the mentally disordered in medieval European Jewish society these questions will be comprehensively investigated through a close reading of a variety of sources from the period and area under study. Hebrew has many words to refer to people whose behavior is abnormal. As elsewhere, the language and imagery of the Bible serve as a foundation, but the Bible does not stand alone. In the premodern world, before the foundations for the study of the mind as we know it today were set, the terms used to describe exceptional behavior were numerous, though not clearly defined. The term shigga‘on (madness, insanity), in its different forms, was among those used to designate extreme moods that lead to exceptional behavior. Talmudic and rabbinic sources use any number of words and phrases with similar meanings: mi she-nikhnesah bo ru’ah ra‘ah (someone whom an evil spirit has entered), shoteh (simpleton, fool), mi she-nitrefah ‘alav da‘ato (someone whose mind is “scrambled”), mi she-yatza mi-da‘ato (someone out of his mind), sholal (perplexed), holel (incontinent), and others.5 Some of these expressions are biblical, but medieval writers did not always use them in their original sense.6 Faced with this abundance of expressions, I have decided to follow the lead of H. C. Erik Midelfort, a scholar of madness in historical societies, who maintains that the general English word “madness” is the correct term to use in reference to premodern societies.7 The historical societies under study here, those of Western European Christians and Jews in the Middle Ages, were aware of different types of mental disturbance but lacked the medical and scientific tools we now possess in order to fully distinguish among them. Some of the distinctions accepted today, including organic versus nonorganic disturbances, and “developmental delay” (such as Down syndrome and retardation caused or enhanced by environmental-developmental factors) versus mental illness, did not exist in the Middle Ages. Medieval writers called children who did not develop in a standard way k'sil (imbecile) or peti (gullible/naïve), which in this context mean stupid person, idiot, fool, and the like. Though these were the terms typically used to refer to those with learning and orientation problems dating back to birth,8 some did distinguish between these and the mad person, using terms like meshugga‘ (mad) and shoteh (fool) in reference to the latter. But this should not be taken to mean that they could distinguish among maladies or recognize that some disturbances stemmed 75

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from particular causes and not others.9 Nevertheless, in some cases one gets the impression that unlike the classification of a person as a k’sil or peti, which referred to birth defects, the classification of meshugga‘ or shoteh generally indicated a past period of “normalcy” and thus hope, however minimal, that the person would regain proper functionality in the future. This meant that society had to discern a process of transformation and use the label meshugga‘ or shoteh only if the adult had undergone the process of departure from the norm.10 Due to the nature of legal response—in which consequence and precedent play a dominant role—mental retardation and madness, despite their varying causes, may be halakhically treated as identical in being categorized under the rubric of those individuals defined as mehusarei da‘at (mentally deficient).11 A halakhic corollary is the significance of madness with respect to religious obligation, criminal liability, and property ownership. In his commentary on the Talmud, Rashi wrote: “Who is the shoteh referred to everywhere? He is [the one] exempt from [fulfilling] the commandments and from [receiving] punishment; his purchase is not a purchase, and his sale is not a sale.”12 These legal issues are closely tied to social attitudes, and some are discussed at length in scholarly literature. They will not, therefore, be treated at length here, even if they will be referenced from time to time. Despite the difficulties, both individual and collective attitudes toward madness and madmen have been the subject of considerable study, especially in the context of Western Europe. Works that address the consolidation of social structures and modern political entities in Western Europe have considered the question of the extent of social supervision and social attitudes toward those labeled as mad. Max Weber and Norbert Elias treated these subjects in the early decades of the twentieth century. The most influential thinker, however, has certainly been Michel Foucault, whose History of Madness was published in French in 1961 but only became highly influential in the 1970s, by which time a partial translation into English had been published.13 Following the work of these theoreticians, other scholars investigated madness in relation to some important processes in European society, especially in the early modern period. They looked at madness in connection with the process of secularization and the diminishing influence of the church, “disenchantment” from natural phenomena (that is, the understanding that nature functioned according to physical laws, not divine fiat), and the rise of rationalism.14 Similarly, madness was examined against the background of social regulation and the imposition of institutional oversight before the appearance of the modern state and during the process of its formation. New insights into the rise of bourgeois society and the inculcation of its values, such as the importance of the individual’s economic 76

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contribution to society in establishing his or her social status, have also shaped scholarly thinking about insanity.15 In recent years, some scholars have begun to take an interest in madness without necessarily connecting it to the ideas of Michel Foucault on the appearance of rationalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie at the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. Aviad Kleinberg has written: “There is no need to wait for the Age of Enlightenment to find a definition of the socially marginal figure as a mentally ill person requiring imprisonment and therapy, including reeducation.”16 This seems to fit nicely with the society under investigation here as well. With the rise of scholarly interest in the Other in cultural history and the history of mentalities, there has also been an increase in the number of studies about insanity, including social attitudes toward it and the way the mentally ill have been depicted in literary works and other texts.17 The works of Erik Midelfort and Michael Dols, in particular, have provided inspiration and an important methodological model for my work, in addition to furnishing a basis for comparison with it.18 In addition to Foucault’s theory and its offshoots, other fields have contributed to an understanding of the place of the insane in the medieval world. One prominent example is the work done on socializing and civilizing processes that developed in the 1980s and 1990s, which addressed both medieval society and the history of European folklore.19 Folklore has often served as a litmus test for social processes of a popular nature that also find expression in rituals and texts, both oral and written.20 What picture does this scholarship produce? All in all, it indicates that, in contrast with the modern age, a great deal of latitude was given to those whom society defined as mad. If these people did no damage to themselves or those around them, they were not restrained. Legal custody and responsibility for the welfare of the mad were assigned to their families. If madmen caused damage, they were dealt with by local, royal, and Church authorities.21 In medieval writings, madness is identified with nakedness, blatant sexual innuendo, shamelessness, screams and strange voices, hallucinations, and disordered and illogical speech. Though insanity was defined by an array of terms in the Middle Ages, it was perceived as a sickness. Thus, the insane were treated with the available means, in keeping with medieval medical knowledge. Some of the mentally ill, however, were also seen to be dangerous and were consequently imprisoned and even flogged. The purpose of incarceration was to protect them and their families from their violent behavior, or to cause the “external” beings (demons) that had possessed their bodies and souls to depart. Presumably, incarcerated madmen were often forgotten behind bars once they were there, but there is not enough evidence to support this. 77

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The small number of madmen and madwomen who were cared for in hospitals at the end of the Middle Ages, when such institutions came into being, were housed with other patients; not only were they not kept in separate institutions but they apparently were not even in separate wards.22 A significant turning point in attitudes toward the insane took place in the fourteenth century, when several processes converged to create greater awareness of madness as a phenomenon, leading to greater concern for the mentally ill and the institutionalization of care for them. Simultaneously, the insane were increasingly banished to the physical margins of society. The process of urbanization, the rising power of municipal authorities in Europe, and the fact that an increasing number of madmen and madwomen were living in more densely populated places, all led to heightened public awareness regarding their presence and condition. Since many of the mad were indigents who earned their livelihood as itinerants and beggars receiving alms, they were increasingly seen in a negative light. Hostility toward them grew, as did attempts to supervise them. At the same time, Europe underwent a process of medicalization, as I have already noted in the discussion of lepers. Increasingly, certain conditions were seen as diseases rather than spiritual problems, and the attempt to cure them by medical means led to a rise in the number of hospitals, greater oversight of the insane, and the growing involvement of medical professionals in their diagnosis and care. From the fourteenth century onward we find evidence that the hospitalized insane were given special cells, sometimes even in separate wings.23 In the fifteenth century, it became common practice to evict the mad from the city, sometimes even at public expense.24 In some places, the community (village, town, city, or neighborhood) was prepared to pay for the transport of the insane to places in which, it was hoped, their condition would improve. Such locations might be places in which holy people lived, or there were tombs of saints known to have therapeutic influence on the mentally disturbed. These measures were taken, in general, only against individuals with violent tendencies or whose behavior was considered hazardous, not against “village idiots” and “quiet” madmen. Thus, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century Europeans increasingly began to view madness as a medical rather than a religious problem, and, as noted above, some scholars—such as Michael Heyd—have seen this medicalization as yet another expression of the process of secularization and disenchantment characteristic of the early modern period.25 It is important to bear in mind that while some of the phenomena surveyed below stem from the writers’ observations of contemporary goings-on, others emerge from cultural contexts, conventions, and prevailing medieval 78

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and late Antique literary and legal formulations of the kind of behavior expected of madmen. Some of these phenomena occur in the private realm, while others extend into public space. We shall attempt not only to examine Jewish society, but also to unearth the conventions that lay behind common depictions of madness in contemporary Christian society.

Social Attitudes toward Madness In her 1975 book on madness in the Middle Ages, Judith Neaman devotes a chapter to the social standing of the insane. She asserts that there is little direct evidence bearing on the nature of medieval attitudes toward those labeled insane, and that the available evidence is late and problematic. Theoretical texts, such as medical-philosophical works, generally offer little information about the way society viewed the insane. Texts of a more descriptive nature, such as municipal records and chronicles and the records of charitable institutions and hospitals, are often fragmentary.26 Even when they do describe specific cases, they often fail to situate them within a broader context. Furthermore, these documents tend to omit information that their writers considered irrelevant to the needs of those who commissioned the documents. Neaman also stresses that we often cannot know the interests of specific writers. As if all of this were not enough, even passages that seem to reflect social attitudes toward the insane were often written formally, following literary conventions and tropes, and thus do not reflect historical reality. Though scholarship has progressed in the nearly forty years since Neaman wrote her book, and though some of the literary forms to which she referred may nevertheless still be of value in revealing specific mentalities, there is no escaping the fact that she was fundamentally correct in her account of the difficulties of studying medieval social attitudes toward marginal individuals in general and toward the insane in particular. Many of the sources available do not address social attitudes toward madmen and madwomen explicitly, and sometimes the information they contain is rather poor. Yet there is no choice but to extract from them whatever can be obtained. Social attitudes toward the insane understandably depend on time, place, and the specific manifestations of madness. The first task in uncovering societal attitudes toward the insane is to briefly address the means of coping with madness and the cures that were attempted. As noted above, medieval society distinguished between the violent and the serene or “quiet” madmen. Medieval Western European texts show that these two types were treated in different ways. Madmen who were perceived to be dangerous to themselves and those around them, and whose 79

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behavior was characterized by violent fits, were referred to as furiosus (pl. furiosi). They were incarcerated and often chained. In contrast, simpletons and individuals of unsound mind who displayed no destructive tendencies were allowed to circulate freely. Precisely such a distinction is evident in a fourteenth-century responsum written by Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (1250–1327) known by the acronym Rosh, in which a father testifies as follows about his son: “He is not mad and deranged [metoraf], but he is not conversant with the goings-on of the world.” His son, the father maintained, was not a violent lunatic but was nevertheless not in touch with reality.27 Evidence of the use of severe physical measures against violent lunatics, including depriving them of their freedom, grows toward the end of the Middle Ages, a time when city governments waxed in power and social supervision gained strength. In German cities— but not just German ones—madmen who were thought to be violent and dangerous were confined to small cells (Tollkisten). In the European legal literature of the thirteenth century, violent lunatics were likened to animals and beasts that could not be tamed or trained, and this imagery apparently also promoted confinement and physical restraint. 28 While incarceration and physical restraint were forms of punishment, they were justified as a way of protecting the madman from hurting himself and those around him. In cases diagnosed as demonic possession (possessio), physical restraint was even considered a remedy, because the use of harsh physical measures against such madmen was not only about safety but also aimed at creating discomfort for the demon and forcing him to leave the body he had taken over. A thirteenth-century English jurist, Henry de Bracton, wrote, for example, that “such men are not far removed from brute beasts which lack reason.”29 Jewish sources refer to other measures, in addition to beating, chaining, and flogging, aimed at inducing the supernatural being who had taken over the madman’s body to leave. R. Judah he-Hasid’s Sefer Gematriot includes, for example, the following passage: “Bitumen and galbanum have a bad odor, so the practice was to anoint those possessed by demons with ointments and herbs that have bad smells.”30 Sefer Hasidim links profound sorrow, particularly when accompanied by feelings of guilt, to loss of sanity: “It happened that a woman went out of her mind [yatze’ah mi-da‘atah] because her son died, and they began to turn her mind around with song. ‘one who sings songs to a sorrowful soul’ (Prov. 25:20), to forget her sorrow.”31 The woman’s acquaintances presumed that her mental imbalance was temporary and reversible. Therefore, and perhaps on account of their being present when the woman’s mental change took place, they sought to restore her mind with music. 80

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Music was not the only cure used in such cases. A proper and balanced diet was also viewed as beneficial. References to this can be found in halakhic texts that consider whether an insane person being treated this way should be fed on and before the Ninth of Av, a fast day preceded by days during which the consumption of meat and wine is forbidden. “Regarding a person of unsound mind (hasar da‘at) who was getting better day by day, Mahari Segal [=Maharil] was asked what to do in the week of the Ninth of Av and on the Ninth of Av. He ordered [him] to eat meat and drink wine the entire week and also not fast on the Ninth of Av.”32 Maharil viewed the healing process as being a matter of life and death no different from any other serious illness, and thus ruled that the treatment took precedence over the mourning rites and the eventual fast; therefore, he mandated that the treatment be continued without interruption. In the Middle Ages, it was also commonly believed that witchcraft could cause insanity. A collection of medieval Jewish charms includes recipes for potions, as well as adjurations, incantations, and amulets for those who had lost their minds or been possessed by demons.33 According to Sefer Hasidim, “Similarly, if [a witch] caused harm, the victim needs to eat from her bread and salt, [after which] the mind [nefesh] returns to its former state.”34 This remedy for insanity and for mental changes brought on by witchcraft seems to have its source in contemporary folklore and folk medicine. This connection between insanity and witchcraft leads us to a discussion of how madness was perceived in medieval consciousness. In general, insanity was seen as something negative and reprehensible. Early on, the designation “madman” metamorphosed from a clinical diagnosis into a pejorative. In other words, the appending of the adjective “mad” to a person did not necessarily mean that he had lost his mind. Social scientists who study the behavior of marginal individuals, such as Erich Goode and Alex Thio, have pointed out that the act of classifying a mentally ill person as mad causes the classifier to examine his or her own sanity.35 The very existence of a madman whose actions transgress behavioral norms breaches the social order. Therefore, not classifying him as mad or as irrational impairs social control. That being the case, it takes only one additional small step to attach the same label to everyone whose behavior is considered unacceptable. Medieval Jews used the terms “mad” (meshugga‘) and “madness” (shigga‘on) much as we today use the words “nonsense” and “foolishness”— words that imply no clinical diagnosis.36 For example, R. Abraham Ibn Ezra frequently applied these terms to opinions of other Bible exegetes that he rejected in his Bible commentaries.37 This is also the way to understand the statement by the twelfth-century northern French sage R. Jacob b. Meir 81

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(Rabbeinu Tam) on the use of a baptismal name (shem gayyut) in a Jewish writ of divorce to be given to a woman who had converted from Judaism to Christianity: “And I am astonished at you, how you said such nonsense [shigga‘on] as to write a baptismal name at all. For more than twenty divorces of apostates have been done in Paris and northern France and they wrote her Jewish name, and the same [is true] of Lotharingia, in accordance with the [opinion of the] Ge’onim.”38 A more extreme use of the term as an epithet can be found in the famous responsum of R. Asher b. Yehiel (Rosh), who moved from Germany to Toledo in the early fourteenth century, to R. Jacob b. Isaac of Valencia regarding a certain R. Jacob b. Moses. The latter had been branded a “rebellious elder” (zaken mamre), a Talmudic term applied to a scholar who insists on acting in accordance with his own halakhic opinion even after being overruled by the sanhedrin (highest rabbinical court).39 “The letter I sent to that brainless man [hasar moah], and you and the other should chase him, and if he does not recant, I enjoin you and the entire community to ban him, that meshugga‘ Jacob b. Moses, and banish him and bar him from the community of Israel. This matter needs strengthening so that every shoteh hasar da‘at comes to nullify the Torah of Moses our teacher. . . . It is a mitzvah to ban him from all of the Spanish communities.”40 Meshugga‘, shoteh, and hasar da‘at as used here do not mean that R. Jacob b. Moses was insane and could not be held accountable for his actions. On the contrary, R. Asher views his “madness” and insistence on acting contrary to the ruling of his colleagues to be the reason for treating him severely as a rational man gone wrong, a man deserving of condign punishment. The term “madman” serves, in this context, not to excuse the labeled person’s behavior but rather to brand it as unacceptable. R. Jacob’s “madness” was to vociferously dispute his fellow scholars even when shown to be wrong, which R. Asher saw as a serious danger. Another example of shoteh serving as an epithet, and not just as a term for a mental state, can be found in an Ashkenazi responsum from the first half of the fifteenth century: “Concerning the shoteh tall Eberlein41 who lives among you and who does not heed your voices . . . and it is his habit to publicly execrate and rebuff the sages for as long as I have known him.”42 This Eberlein had gotten involved in a dispute over giving Hanukkah geld (a customary charitable donation given on the festival of Hanukkah) to the students at a yeshiva in Regensburg, in southern Germany, and the argument led to a violent altercation between him and the students. Eberlein appealed to the city’s Christian authorities, namely the judge for Jewish affairs (Judenrichter). His behavior, and his appeal to a gentile court, led the author 82

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of the responsum to call him a shoteh, even though his behavior was that of a perfectly rational person.

Rabbinic Categories of Madness To understand medieval European Jewish attitudes toward the insane and mentally disturbed, it is first necessary to understand how such Jews defined madness, whom they considered mad, and what they thought caused this condition. As in the case of leprosy, the Jewish texts that address madness are of two types: theoretical discussions, like those found in Bible commentary, and texts that address actual cases, which include commentaries on traditional texts that also directly address the world in which the commentator lived. The lines dividing the different types of sources, however, are often indistinct. A baraita (a passage attributed to the Sages of the Mishnaic period but not included in the Mishnah) offers the following legal definition of madness (in this case shetut): “The rabbis taught: Who is a madman [shoteh]? One who goes out alone at night, and [one] who sleeps in a cemetery at night, and [one] who rips his garments.”43 The Talmudic discussion of the baraita does not state whether these diagnostic signs define the shoteh or are merely typical examples of a shoteh’s behavior. Indeed, medieval rabbis were split on this question. R. Simhah of Speyer, writing at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, issued a ruling in a divorce case involving a madwoman (shotah) in which he stated that “she is not to be considered a madwoman for the purposes of divorce until she displays the explicit signs of madness [shetut]”—that is, the specific behaviors enumerated in the baraita. In contrast, his northern French contemporary R. Samson b. Abraham of Sens ruled that a person can be halakhically labeled a madman due to general exceptional behavior, even if that behavior does not include all the actions enumerated in the Talmud.44 In the quotation from Maimonides that opened this chapter, he gives examples of those kinds of insane people whose testimony a court cannot accept, but he also states that “it is impossible to define in writing precisely what sanity is.” In his view, the written word is not a suitable medium for describing states of mind. An example of this dichotomy can also be found in medieval commentaries on the biblical episode of David’s behavior in the palace of Achish, King of Gath (I Sam. 21:14–16). This passage offers a relatively detailed description of behavior that was seen by onlookers as abnormal. The Philistines’ verdict about David’s behavior matched David’s desire to be seen as a madman (meshugga‘) so as to save his life: “And Achish said to his courtiers, ‘You 83

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see the man is raving; why bring him to me? Do I lack madmen that you have brought this fellow to rave for me? Should this fellow enter my house?’ ” The simple meaning of the text is that David was in fact entirely sane but succeeded in fooling the Philistines into viewing his behavior as that of a truly insane person: “So he concealed his good sense from them; he feigned madness for their benefit. He scratched marks on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down his beard.” King Achish and his subjects were certain that the man they saw before them had lost his mind. The Midrash, and medieval Hebrew literary texts following in its footsteps, expands on the story of David’s madness. Taking its cue from Psalm 34, which opens with the words “Of David, when he feigned madness in the presence of Abimelech,” the homily on Psalms Midrash Tehillim (also known as Shoher Tov),45 adds suspense to the story: “David began to supplicate and pray, and he said: ‘Master of the Universe, answer me!’ At that moment [=when he was led to the palace of Achish], God said to him: ‘What is your request?’ He said before Him: ‘Give me some of that madness that you created.’ God said to him: ‘Did not I tell you “He who disdains a precept will be injured” (Prov. 13:13), and you ask for madness?’ ” God eventually grants David’s request and David becomes mad. Here the midrash offers a surrealistic portrayal: “He would write on the doors and say ‘King Achish of Gath owes me a million! His wife—half a million!’ And Achish’s daughter and her mother were madwomen [shotot], so they would shout and act insane inside while David shouted and acted insane outside. [So] Achish said to his servants, ‘Do I lack madmen?’ At that moment David rejoiced so greatly that the madness left him as a result of his joy.” These passages are not clear on whether David’s change of behavior was under his control—that is, whether he really became insane or only pretended to be. In any case, his appearance was persuasive and therefore mandates that one take a close look at what behaviors in the story were understood by onlookers as indications of insanity. Since most of the texts to be cited here come from responsa and halakhic literature, this is the place for a brief discussion of the halakhic descriptions of madness (shigga‘on and shetut). As we have seen, attempts to offer ha­ lakhic definitions can already be found in the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Hagigah discussed earlier. The context of the discussion is the question of the obligations that apply to the bringing of a hagigah offering and to the precept of pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Mishnah offers a qualification: “All are required [to bring] a hagigah except the deaf man, the madman [shoteh], and the minor.”46 The discussion in the Babylonian Talmud delves into the definition and meaning of 84

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madness and defines the shoteh in the following way: “The rabbis taught: Who is a madman [shoteh]? One who goes out alone at night, and [one] who sleeps in a cemetery at night, and [one] who rips his garments. . . . R. Huna said: ‘only if they [=the symptoms] all coincide.’ R. Johanan says: ‘even one of them.’ What are the circumstances? If he exhibited this behavior in the manner of madness [shetut], [then] even one of them [should suffice]! If he did not do so in the manner of madness, even all of them together [should not suffice]! Rather, he does exhibit the behavior in the manner of madness.”47 It bears noting that the Talmudic definition of shetut addresses the extremes—that is, the editor of the Talmudic text chose to cite the most extreme examples of the kind of behavior that was seen in his time to be antisocial and characteristic of insane individuals. Most of the cases that appear in later responsa do not address whether the manifestations of madness in the cases at hand conform to the Talmudic definition. In general, if the authorities to whom the question is directed are asked about a person society defines as mad, they usually do not challenge that definition based on the Talmudic distinction. Instead, they follow the spirit of the Talmudic discussion encapsulated in the words of R. Johanan; that is, they examine the mad person’s actions and ask whether or not they were performed in “the manner of madness.” Moreover, there seems to be no uniform definition of madness that fits all areas of halakhah. In his discussion of the criminal responsibility of the mentally disturbed in Jewish law, Jacob Bazak has noted that the legal categories that apply to a madman in the laws of ritual slaughter differ from those that apply in matters of testimony, divorce, and marriage, even though there may be similarities.48 Since the need for rational faculties (da’at) changes from one circumstance to another, so does the definition of who is considered to lack the pertinent faculties. Halakhic authorities face a special difficulty when judging the case of a madman whose behavior is ambiguous. It must be kept in mind that it is no small matter for a court or legal authority to deprive a person of his or her ability to own property and of other legal privileges on the basis of mental state and measure of rationality. Therefore, a number of halakhic categories were created to address the intermediate states between normative and utterly mad behavior. One such definition is the “madman in one respect” (shoteh le-davar ehad), who in other areas functions as a regular person. The recognition of the variety of mental disturbances, their different origins, and a range of severity and manifestations is by and large a modern phenomenon. Nevertheless, medieval halakhic authorities did grapple with the issue of whether a person who is mad in one respect is mad in every other 85

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one as well. Another halakhic category is the person who is “at times sane and at times mad” (‘ittim halim ‘ittim shoteh), referring to a temporary bout of insanity in which a person is completely mad yet has periods in which he or she “recovers,” and at these latter times behaves like a healthy and rational human being.

The Causes of Madness and Their Metaphorical Use Madness exhibits a wide range of symptoms, and often the distinction between the insane and the normal lies in the eye of the beholder and may depend on social constructs particular to specific times and places. The desire to understand the causes of mental illness derives in part from the wish to prevent and cure it. An investigation of the sources of madness can also elucidate what kinds of behaviors specific societies view as taboo. Individuals who violate these proscriptions are often seen to have lost their minds. A taboo, like the concept of sin, operates to deter individuals from breaking down boundaries. When they are broken, the transgressor is viewed as insane, because it is believed that no normal person would do such a thing. One classic example of the relationship between taboos and madness is the discourse on religious conversion and insanity. A notable phenomenon in medieval Jewish and Christian writing about religious conversion is the identification of leaving one’s religion and adopting a competing one with madness. In his chronicle, Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) refers to two Cistercian monks who converted to Judaism, or were suspected of moving very close to Judaism. He portrays them as having lost their senses: “A certain monk of the same order, or rather, a certain demoniac in our own times, being as it were tired of the Catholic faith and worn out with the sweet and light burden of Christ’s yoke, and scorning, at the instigation of the devil, any longer to walk in the way of salvation . . . as if phrenetic and mad, and truly turned to insanity, fleeing to the synagogue of Satan. And to cut short the whole wretched story which we have dilated upon at great length to show our detestation, at last he caused himself to be circumcised with the Jewish rite, and as a most vile apostate joined himself, to his damnation to the enemies of the cross of Christ.” Gerald continues to report that another monk went through the same process. Subsequently, he explains that the difficulties of monastic life, and especially the appetites of the flesh, were what drove the two monks mad and caused them to seek out the Jewish religion: “They could no longer bear the harshness and rigor of that order, and instigated by the spirit of fornication they committed this crime.”49 86

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Giraldus’s explanation comes only after his claim that madness itself was the cause of their desertion of the “true” faith. In Christian theological writings, Jews were depicted not only as blind but as people of a bestial mind, whose lack of discernment meant an inability to grasp the profundity of the Christian gospel and thus led to the rejection of Christ.50 It is hardly surprising, then, that Christians who crossed the boundary into Judaism, and especially those belonging to the religious orders, were deemed mad by their Christian brethren. A similar pattern of thinking can be found in a story in a Jewish ma‘aseh buch (an Ashkenazi collection of legends and exemplar stories) about a boy who wanted to convert to Christianity.51 The story is part of a cycle of tales of hagiographical character about the mythic figure of R. Judah he-Hasid.52 It tells of a youngster whose father sent him to study with R. Judah. After meeting the boy, the pious rabbi refused to teach him, because he foresaw that the lad would convert. The parents, shocked by the news, chose to believe R. Judah and asked for his counsel and assistance. The sage recommended imprisoning the youngster and cutting him off from the outside world during the perilous year in which the prophecy was to come true. The parents should also, he advised, hire a tutor to teach the boy during that year. The purpose was to deny the boy his freedom during the period in which his desire to become a Christian would, according to the prophecy, overcome him. R. Judah also told the parents that this urge would be strongest on a particular day. Indeed, when that day came, a madness overcame the boy— he ranted that he wanted to run off and become a Christian: He kicked his teacher who stayed with him until he said to his teacher that he intended to become a Christian [tarbut ra‘ah]. The teacher immediately rose and shut the door of the cell with a lock. The student shouted and cursed heaven and rejected God [kafar ba-‘ikkar]; he affirmed the validity of Christianity [‘avodah zarah] and extolled it. His teacher then related everything to his father and mother. His father, mother, brother[s], brothers-in-law, and teacher opened the door and entered, for they wanted to calm him with their words. It was of no use. He called out for a priest to baptize him and said that if he were able to get out the door of his house he would see to it that all the Jews would be killed, all those who desire to extirpate and lead [others] away from belief in Jesus. When they saw that all of their words had been of no use, they bound his hands and feet in chains and ropes and left him tied up in the cell that

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entire day and night. They exited, closed [the door] behind them, and did not enter again until the next day.53

After the dangerous day passed, the boy calmed down, and what was perceived as his sanity returned. The labeling of a person who crossed religious lines as mad served to reinforce the self-confidence of believers who had not made such a choice, and as such mitigated, to a considerable extent, the threat to the public that conversion represents. Furthermore, depicting conversion as madness sought to deprive the competing religion of its victory—its new adherent was no more than a lunatic. But it is not only those who crossed such boundaries who were perceived as insane. In the mystical Heikhalot literature, those exposed to esoteric knowledge or experiences before having received proper intellectual and spiritual preparation go mad. Presumably, the purpose of this warning was to prescribe a mandatory course of training for mystics and prevent the dissemination of secret knowledge among the unqualified. Early evidence of this kind of thinking can be seen in the Jewish esoteric circle called Yoredei ha-Merkavah (those who ascend to the divine chariot). Heikhalot Rabbati, a work attributed to this group, discusses the voices of song in the heavens. These voices are classified, among other things, by the injury they are liable to inflict on those who hear them without preparation: “For with six voices do the supernal servants [middot], the bearers of the throne of His glory, the cherubim and the ophanim and the holy beasts, sing before Him. For each voice is exalted beyond its fellows and differs from that which was before it. The first voice: everyone who hears it immediately goes mad [mishtaggea‘] and becomes demented [mishtatteh]. The second voice: everyone who hearkens to it immediately strays [to‘eh] and does not return.”54 The meaning of this passage is twofold. On the one hand, it expresses a desire to delineate the boundaries of mystical activity and create barriers to entry. On the other hand, it displays a need to give the reader a sense of the sublime music of heaven. The Heikhalot literature, while ancient, was well known to the medieval Jews of Ashkenaz, and especially so to the Pietists, whose mystical works and ideas frequently refer to these texts. But divine voices are not the only danger to mental balance—visions of the upper and lower worlds could have the same effect, as could encounters with spirits and demons.55 This view is already evident in the two Talmuds and Midrash. R. Nathan b. Yehiel of Rome, the eleventh-century author of the Talmudic dictionary Sefer ha-‘Arukh, explained that God created an entourage of angels for all those who fear Him, and this entourage makes a path for each Jew 88

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through all of the spirits, demons, and harmful entities that fill the world. The angels form a veil covering the faces of the Jews so that they cannot see all the world’s demons before them. But if they sin, the veil is lifted and the sight of all the demons causes them to lose their minds.56 A similar account can be found in the Torah commentary of R. Avigdor Ha-Tzarfati, who lived at the close of the thirteenth century.57 R. Judah heHasid’s Sefer Gematriot also describes what happens when the hidden world is revealed to those who have not reached the appropriate spiritual level: “They see the horses of the chariot and go mad, as it is written, ‘I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness etc. (Zech. 12:4).’ ”58

Who Was Mad and What Was Madness in Medieval Ashkenaz Scanning Jewish European medieval literature, we can come up with a variety of definitions of behavioral patterns that were used to label individuals as mad or at the very least as suffering from a mental disorder. With the absence of an institutionalized medical profession and without the aid of modern psychology and psychiatry it was up to family members, religious leaders, and physicians of sorts to diagnose the mentally ill. In the following pages I wish to look at some examples that I classify into subgroups that will aid us in better understanding the characterization of madness in medieval Ashkenaz.

Defacement and Disfigurement— Behavior That Violates Social Codes Respect for property and for the physical integrity of others is a basic principle of social behavior and civil society. Defacement of property or causing physical harm, without any apparent motivation, is perceived as a symptom of madness. It indicates a lack of consideration for the monetary and emotional value of objects and disregard for the physical or mental anguish caused by physical injury. Of course, at issue here are defacement and disfigurement committed with intent, not by accident, and which can be attributed to the unsettled mental state of the violators. Yet the question of the extent to which madmen are responsible for these actions is not always clear.59 Rashi, for example, in his commentary on Ezekiel 21:36 (“and I will deliver you into the hands of barbarians, craftsmen of destruction”), states: “Barbarians—they go berserk [manhigin ‘atzman be-shigga‘on] so that they attack and destroy.” Rashi leaves open the question of responsibility—do these people willingly bring this state upon themselves so that they lose 89

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control, or do they lack control all along? An observer of such a person might find it difficult to determine with certainty the extent of the perpetrator’s responsibility.60 Medieval European texts paint a similar picture. For example, an English manuscript from the fifteenth century recounts the case of Agnes Alyn, a young girl who lost her mind and would awaken at midnight to scream, tear at her hands and feet with her fingernails, and rip her clothes. Another English girl, Guillelmina, behaved in a similar way, as another text relates.61 Alongside the antisocial aspects of this behavior, the texts indicate that the behavior was “beastly”—behavior so lacking in self-control that it seems to indicate a lack of human reason. Such behavior is notionally similar to anger, which is seen to be an emotion that unbalances a person, although it is generally short-lived. Some Jewish texts liken anger to idol worship—that is, to giving free rein to primal, animal instincts and allowing them to overwhelm human reason and restraint.62 Yet, defining anger as a type of insanity opens the door to absolving the angry person of criminal responsibility. This problem is addressed in a responsum written sometime after 1293 by R. Solomon b. Abraham Adret of Barcelona, better known by his acronym Rashba. R. Hayyim “Or Zarua‘” had sent Rashba questions about an altercation between a husband and wife that ended with the two of them trading blows in public.63 The wife, whose name was Arloga, accused her husband, R. Jonah, of heresy (minut) and of having sexual relations with his manservant: “She said to her husband in a loud voice that he was a heretic and that she had seen him engaging in an indecent act with his servant and once with his son, and what is more he committed the indecent act in the presence of witnesses that she had.” Arloga went out into the marketplace and made her accusations in public, in the presence of both Jews and non-Jews. Apparently, in the heat of the resulting altercation Argula’s hair was either loosened or uncovered and her armpits bared, both of which constituted indecent exposure according to the Talmud. The husband thus argued that his wife was violating Jewish practice (‘overet al dat), enabling him to divorce her without paying her ketubbah.64 He also accused her of tale-bearing, or of intending to inform on him to the authorities, as reported in Rashba’s summary of the case: “She also hired a certain gentile to go before the non-Jewish authorities to have her husband burned on account of this.” The responsum raises many questions, but important for the subject at hand is Arloga’s anger. The rabbinical court, which probably convened in R. Hayyim’s hometown of Vienna, concluded that the wife had deliberately 90

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humiliated and shamed her husband. But Rashba stressed in his response that the circumstances, and the wife’s fury, mitigated her culpability: In addition, they only intended those who habitually did so, but if she bared and loosened her hair haphazardly or spoke incidentally with young men a single time, she certainly does not lose her ketubbah. This is, in fact, what the mishnah teaches: “She goes outside with her head bare and spins [wool] in the marketplace.”65 Moreover, it [=the uncovering] was in a moment of anger, and in a moment of anger she is like a madman [shoteh], and God and His precepts are not in his [=the madman’s] mind at that time, as is said in Nedarim66 that for he who is furious not even the divine presence is important.

The view that a woman who loses her temper also loses her rational capacities—to the extent even the divine presence becomes unimportant—can tell us something about the way medievals understood the accountability of the insane for their actions. At the same time, this text stresses the lesser liability of a person so angry that her judgment was affected. Rashba indeed viewed the wife as a sort of temporary madwoman, and as such he deprived the husband of his ability to charge her with a crime that would allow him to divorce her without paying her ketubbah. Such an eventuality could have left the woman without any property or financial support if she lacked wealth and property of her own. In the worst-case scenario, her life would have been placed in jeopardy, since some court members wished to convict her of being an informer—a crime that would have put not only her property but her very person in danger. Rashba’s ruling saved her from such a fate.67

No Longer Human But Not Quite Beast Many behaviors seen as “mad” by medieval Europeans seem to be ones that might be called inhuman. Some of these behaviors, as we have seen, are manifestly bestial and brutish, while others subvert fundamental elements of the consensus about what being civilized means. Michel Foucault depicted madness as close to bestial: “Madness, in these later forms, was for the classical age a direct relation between man and his animality, without reference to a beyond and without appeal.”68 In the modern world, “bestial behavior” and “brutish behavior” have been used widely to describe the actions of the insane.69 The roots of this view lie in the Middle Ages, perhaps even earlier. One classic and fascinating testimony to this diagnosis, and perhaps a key 91

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to understanding it, can be found in a story cited in the commentary of R. Abraham b. Meir Ibn Ezra (d. ca.1167) on the book of Daniel. The fourth chapter of Daniel describes the change that came over Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylonia, as punishment for his arrogance. Ibn Ezra, in his longer commentary (he wrote two commentaries on the Bible, referred to as the short and long commentaries) on the book, tells the following story: I saw one of our trustworthy [ne’eman ruah] compatriots, and he told me that he was on a certain island, Sardinia, and a certain gentile [‘arel] ran away from his parents because he lost his mind and went mad [hishtaggea‘]. He lived with the deer for many years and went on all fours like them. The king of the island went out to hunt and took many deer, and the gentile madman [shoteh] who thought he was a deer was also taken. His parents came, recognized him, and spoke to him, but he did not reply. They put bread before him for him to eat and wine for him to drink, but he would not do so. So they gave him grass with the deer and he ate. At midnight, he fled back to the does of the field.70

Ibn Ezra cites this as a true story told to him by a reliable source who seems to have been a witness to the events. The context in which the commentator cites the story is the punishment meted out to Nebuchadnezzar— he was banished from human society, lived among the oxen, and took leave of his reason. Ibn Ezra explains that Nebuchadnezzar did not metamorphose physically into an animal: “Do not imagine that Nebuchadnezzar reverted [to be] a male or female beast, for it is written only that he dwelt among the animals and ate grass like them.”71 Ibn Ezra asserts that the king of Babylonia underwent a mental and behavioral transformation; he lost the “wisdom of the soul” (hokhmat ha-neshamah), that element of the soul that distinguishes humans from animals. If God takes this away, a person descends to the level of a beast, even though no outward physical change takes place. Ibn Ezra uses the story he cites to prove that this is not just an exegetical possibility; he had empirical support from a contemporary observation that such a thing could happen. While he cites the story as though it were a report of an actual event, from a literary point of view it resembles those wonder stories that were sometimes included in medieval homiletics and historiography, whose aims were to increase their own credibility.72 For Ibn Ezra, the story serves to provide a firm empirical basis for his gloss on Nebuchadnezzar’s mental transformation.73 92

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Ibn Ezra’s story also fits into another familiar folklore genre of the Middle Ages, that of the “wild man.” In medieval consciousness, the wild man was the antithesis of the civilized human. He was uncontrollable and disorderly, living beyond the inhabited lands of Europe and outside of Christendom, in places characterized by untamed nature, such as the thick forests that covered large swathes of Europe until the fourteenth century.74 The wild man, with his mixture of human and animal traits, was neither beast nor human. According to the common belief that prevailed throughout Europe, which found its expression in literature, art, ritual, and folklore, the wild people lived outside areas of human habitation, had long hair and nails, and sometimes walked on all fours. In rituals performed to mark the change of seasons, many European communities reenacted a hunt in which they led a person clad as a wild man in a procession.75 Alongside the wild man, European folklore also included sane, rational characters who, for specific reasons, turned either temporarily or permanently into wild men. One such character is Merlin (in Welsh: Myrddin), described in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin (Vita Merlini).76 The Sardinian protagonist of Ibn Ezra’s story was also such a character, for he was born civilized but turned into a wild man. This deer-man chose animal over human company; he also refused human food and preferred to eat grass (unprocessed plant food) rather than bread and wine (food produced from domesticated plants through processing by humans). He also differed from normal humans in lacking the important faculty of speech, which sets humans apart from animals. The story does not clarify whether this man lost his language because of the many years he spent in the wild, or if he gave up speech when he decided to live with animals. Beyond losing his language, the deer-man also cut himself off from human society, even severing blood ties. In the end, after capture and attempts to readjust him to human society, he fled and returned to the wild animals. Ibn Ezra’s deer-man also walked on all fours like an animal, as some pictorial representations depict the wild man.77 Another interesting element in the story is the fact that the deer-man fled at midnight (an hour at which demonic forces are at their most powerful), and that he returned to “the does of the field.”78 This latter phrase comes from Canticles 3:5, and its use here implies that the creature preferred deer not only as companions but also as sexual partners. Ibn Ezra’s story lacks, however, some elements that generally appear in other accounts of wild men, such as hair covering the entire body, elongated nails, growls, and incomprehensible speech. It includes one important component that Bernheimer and others have noted—the sense that the wild man is a human being who has deteriorated into a subhuman. This links the story 93

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to the literary tradition connecting the wild man to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, which can be traced back to a story found in the Midrash.79 In fact, Ibn Ezra’s deer-man is a figure who represents the inversion of basic human behavioral norms. As such, he serves as a template for defining madness. In other words, walking upright, speaking coherently, living in human society, displaying social skills, and eating “civilized” food are normative human behaviors. A person who deviates from them may, in certain social contexts, be labeled by society as mad.

Nakedness, Shame, and the Lack Thereof Alongside phenomena like animal behavior of the sort described in Ibn Ezra’s story, medieval texts also depict other traits as lying on the border between human and beast. The first of these is nakedness, whole or even partial. The extent to which a person was clothed served as an important measure of one’s sanity in medieval society. The mother of Guillelmina, the young English girl referred to above, testified to a canonization tribunal that in addition to the physical disfigurement her daughter inflicted on herself and the destruction she wreaked around her, the girl also shamelessly (impudenter) exposed herself in public.80 Ahuva Belkin has called attention to the half-naked image of the clownrascal-madman (insipiens) in medieval art.81 The view that people who unabashedly shed their clothes in public are mad is also reflected in Jewish sources. In his explanation of the biblical term sholal (Mic. 1:8), Ibn Ezra explains that nudity is not only connected to madness but in fact demonstrates what is considered insane behavior: “Sholal—like a person who has shed [shelalo] his clothing and remained naked. Alternatively, it mentions the sholal because a madman [meshugga‘] who has lost his senses walks around sholal and naked.”82 Ibn Ezra stresses the lack of shame that is characteristic of the insane, which leads them to undress in public. Before him, Rashi wrote that “such is the way of the mad [shotim] who have no shame,”83 and the Talmud states that while generally the deaf, the mad, and minors all belong to a single ha­ lakhic category, the madman cannot claim compensation for being embarrassed, because he feels no shame.84 Shamelessness was the explanation offered for public disrobement. A connection between shame and clothing goes back to the third chapter of Genesis—once Adam and Eve gained “knowledge” and their eyes were opened as a result of their sin, they felt shame at their nakedness. The cultural connection between shame and clothing is seen in the sexual implications 94

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of Adam’s sin and in the concept of “knowing,” which in Biblical Hebrew also refers to sexual relations. Nakedness is viewed as normal in the private and intimate realm, but as a source of shame and blatantly sexual in public space.85 Embarrassment at being naked, covering the body, and clothing are thus fundamental markers of culture and reason in the Judeo-Christian value system that has exerted a strong influence on Western cultural perceptions.86 Nakedness defies a fundamental cultural concept and violates the basic behavioral code and social order.87 In contrast with nakedness, being clothed symbolizes human dignity and expresses social standing and social roles. In a society with a low level of literacy, the social significance of clothing and external appearance is all the more powerful—in such societies clothing literally makes the man. Some medieval circles criticized even partial nudity in arguably appropriate contexts—such as in the case of laborers at their work. Sefer Hasidim writes: “Even if no one is with him, a man should not be naked nor half-naked in front of another person, like laborers who wear only pants.”88 The standard set by Sefer Hasidim is exceptional and grounded in its generally strict doctrine regarding sexual modesty. Despite not being mainstream, even this source can teach us something about the boundaries of the normal. Apparently, in the Jewish community at large, it was normal for male laborers to strip from the waist up—and this custom was the target of Pietist criticism. All agreed, however, that full nudity in public was improper, and whoever presented himself or herself in this way was considered insane. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that, paradoxically, in some medieval contexts public nakedness was viewed as an act of zealous piety, even as evidence of prophetic inspiration. Such, for example, was the reaction to St. Francis of Assisi, who stripped himself naked in public. Francis’s acolytes and biographer viewed this act as a sign of his piety and determination.89 At the same time, the immediate responses to this action, especially by Francis’s family, show that stripping in public was deemed a symptom of madness.90

Throwing Mud—Quiet and Violent Madmen Throwing mud and refuse, rolling in the dirt, eating clods of earth, and generally associating with grime were seen as characteristic of the insane.91 These behaviors are also fundamentally animal-like. This is appositely expressed in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s gloss on the Karaite Yefet b. Eli’s interpretation of Habakkuk 2:6: “Ah, the one who piles up what is not his—how much longer?—and make ever heavier his load [u-makhbid alav] of indebtedness [‘avtit]!” Yefet wrote that the one who makes his load ever heavier is the “madman who throws mud [ha-tit] upon himself.” Such behavior was 95

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apparently so characteristic of the insane that people who wished to look mad also acted this way. Madmen, as noted above, may be placid or violent. Ibn Ezra’s comment refers to a person who behaves like a beast by throwing mud on himself but does not harm others. In contrast, casting mud on others was sometimes taken as evidence that a madman had passed from a passive to a violent form of the illness and required restraint. This difference is evident in an exemplum in Sefer Hasidim in which a Jew who is taken prisoner in a distant land pretends to be insane.92 At the center of the story is the way the Jew is eventually delivered from his captivity.93 Although the precept of ransoming prisoners was one that Jews observed zealously, and many Jewish texts included discussions of how precisely it should be observed, those considered insane were treated somewhat differently.94 The story opens with the following account: “A certain man was held captive in a distant land. He said to himself, ‘what can I do so that I will be able to observe the Sabbath?’ So, he pretended to be a madman [shoteh], and children played with him and made fun of him95 and gave him bread, and on the Sabbath he was not on the street but rather stayed at home indoors to play the fool [holekh ba-bayit le-hitlotzetz].”96 The “madman” in this story is not really insane—he takes on the guise of a deranged person and prefers the company of children to that of adults. This choice apparently makes it easier for him to maintain an aspect of his Sabbath observance during his captivity (servitude, rather than incarceration), and so to preserve a vital aspect of his identity.97 Later in the story, a group of Jews arrives in the city, accompanying a certain lord (sar), probably a Christian nobleman. The captive Jew hears the other Jews speaking “the holy tongue” (Hebrew) among themselves. He reveals his Jewish identity and asks them to help rescue him. Because the Jews are trying to keep a low profile, they devise a stratagem in which they take advantage of the fact that the captive is seen by his captors to be insane: They [=the traveling Jews] said: “Do not speak the holy tongue with us lest they realize that you are a Jew. Throw mud at us in the lord’s presence and mock us.” They then said to the lord, “If it please you! Give us this madman so that we can take him out of the city and exact our revenge from him with our own hands.” They gave him into their hands, and they bound him ignominiously to a horse’s tail and took him out of the city. Afterward they interrogated him [and found] that he was wise in Torah and asked his forgiveness for having humiliated him, for they [only] did it so that they [=the authorities] would not know that he was a Jew.98 96

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The story depicts the visiting Jews as persuading the “madman” to cross the boundary from passivity to violence. As a harmless fool, he was allowed to go where he wished and play with children, probably procuring his livelihood as a half-witted beggar. Once he turned violent and became a menace to those around him, however, sanctions were imposed on him. This outburst of what looked like uninhibited violent behavior enabled the Jews, perhaps despite the fact that they were Jews, to remove the captive from the city with the support of the lord they had accompanied. From the moment he threw mud and mocked the Jews in the lord’s presence, they were permitted to take the “madman” out of the city, ostensibly to punish and humiliate him, but in fact to release him from captivity. The story demonstrates that in flinging mud and ridiculing others, the captive’s status changed. He could no longer expect the protection and freedom of movement he had previously enjoyed. He could now be “taught a lesson,” and even Jews could, with the permission of the appropriate authority, use violent means against him, humiliate him, and expel him from the realm of human habitation. These actions were tantamount to a death sentence.99 The practice of tying a person to a horse’s tail and dragging him through the streets of a city was one of the harshest and most degrading punishments imposed in the Middle Ages. In England, for example, it was appended to death sentences in order to disgrace the condemned man before his execution.100 This story appears in a series of passages, homilies, and ethical tales on the subject of humility that the author of Sefer Hasidim uses to teach a moral. The protagonist forgave his rescuers for their attack on him, and despite their pleadings he refused to accept any compensation. The entire story is exemplified by verisimilitude, “the use of details familiar to readers from their own lives and from the collective consciousness of their society.”101 In this sense, the story reflects a reality of consciousness, such that even if the story never happened, it reflects a behavioral pattern—in this case, of the mad—prevalent in the minds and psyche of those people in whose world the story was told. As such, some of the characters—the children, the lord, and the visiting Jews before the captive revealed himself to them, and perhaps until they ascertained his scholarship—are not aware of the ruse and are persuaded that the man is indeed insane. In the world of the story, these characters relate to the protagonist “naturally.” The protagonist, like David in the palace of Achish, King of Gath (I Sam. 21), plays the part of the lunatic convincingly. The reactions he elicits are thus true to life and authentic, not hypothetical. In the world from which the narrator drew his story, and apparently in the world of his readership or audience, this was indeed the standard behavior of a deranged person. Furthermore, the story indicates how this society thought 97

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madmen should be treated, and there is every reason to assume that it shows how the insane were in fact treated. The advice the Jews give to the captive relates to the distinction made above between the quiescent and violent maniac. The story also displays an interesting aspect of social attitudes toward madmen within Jewish society. The rescue operation depicted in the story is carried out secretly, in a way intended to conceal the captive’s Jewish identity. This motif appears twice in the story—in the planning of the operation and after its accomplishment, when the Jews apologize to the man they rescued. An apology is called for, from their point of view, because they have not offered to rescue him by paying a ransom—as Jewish law requires. Instead, they preferred a strategy of roughing him up and humiliating him. Ostensibly, they sought to avoid any visible association between him and themselves. Their decision not to ransom him apparently indicated that they were not at all certain that he was not indeed insane; therefore, they chose to avoid any action that might identify themselves with him. So long as the rescuers believed the Jew they were saving might be insane, they did not think that they were required to pay money to ransom him. Only when it turned out that he was a Torah scholar did they apologize for the way they had treated him. The ethical point of the dialogue between the rescuers and the feigned madman is to empower the figure of the captive, portraying him as a man who did not use his scholarship to save himself from humiliation and degradation. At the same time, the story depicts the embarrassment the rescuers felt when they discovered his true nature. The Jews may have rescued a Jewish “madman,” but they may have devised their stratagem so that they could take amusement in abusing him. Their attitude toward him changed only when they realized that he was not only sane but also a man of learning. At the time of the story’s events, the Jews were on the road, outside their communal context, and it may well be that their sense of solidarity with other Jews was adversely affected by the mores of the road and the company they kept on their travels. We see that the “price tag” of Jews varied according to their level of knowledge. Another element of the story also deserves attention—the Jews’ request of the lord: “If it please you! Give us this madman so that we can take him out of the city and exact our revenge from him with our own hands.” Their request follows a pattern established within the perimeter set by a triangle of interests—those of themselves, of the authorities, and of the debasers of Jews. The close relations between the lord and the Jews in his entourage serve to strengthen this feeling.102 According to the story’s internal logic, the lord benefited in granting the Jews permission to punish the madman, because it enabled him to publicly demonstrate his political authority in a place that 98

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he frequented only occasionally. The man’s actions enabled the lord to show that he would not tolerate any attack on “his” Jews, and especially on those in his entourage. Even if the attacker was a madman, he was liable to be punished by the victims of his attacks. This ethical tale is mirrored by an event that took place far from Ashkenaz but still within Christian Europe. It occurred in the city of Manresa in the Kingdom of Aragon in 1320, as documented by royal documents.103 The city’s Jews petitioned the crown to arrest a man who they claimed was feigning madness, wandering the streets, and insulting and beating Jews. The Jews wrote that they had asked the local authorities to intervene but had been met with refusal. The king, who was the personal protector of the Jews in his realm, ordered his agents in the city to arrest the offender and imprison him, either because he had attacked Jews or because he was insane. In this case, the assailant was a Christian who apparently feigned insanity in order to avoid punishment. The local authorities first refused to act on the Jews’ request on the grounds that the attacker was mad and therefore immune to prosecution. His violent actions were not viewed by the authorities as crossing the line between passive and active madness. It was certainly possible that the offender’s violence was tolerated so long as it was directed only at Jews. The fact that they refused to help the Jews on the grounds that the man was insane, without regard for his violence, would seem to support this conjecture. To impose legal sanctions on the man, the Jews had to petition the king. The king’s instructions to the local authorities were that the man should be arrested; the reasons for his arrest were less important—the king’s principal concern was to achieve results. For the King of Aragon, attacks on his Jews was a challenge to his authority—so he wanted the man arrested whether or not he was actually a lunatic.

“As If Compelled by a Demon”: Rash Behavior, Loud Cries, and Sexually Suggestive Behavior Another behavior often attributed to the insane is involuntary sounds and movements.104 As noted above, verbal communication is of vital importance in defining human identity. It is hardly surprising, then, that a person who makes strange sounds that do not form fluent and comprehensible speech, or who cries out or screams in inappropriate situations, is considered mad or possessed by demons. These phenomena appear in many descriptions of people thought to be insane. The Talmud and Midrash refer explicitly to the screams of the mad and the possessed.105 Similar depictions can be found in Megillat Ahima‘atz, a “scroll of genealogies” attributed to R. Ahima‘atz b. Paltiel, a Jew living in southern Italy in the eleventh century. The composition 99

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recounts the lineage of the author’s family and miracles performed by his ancestor R. Shephatiah.106 Included among these miracles is the exorcism of a demon, and the description of the incident depicts the afflicted women as shouting and screaming. A few sources speak of unintelligible shouts, as well as intelligible but offensive outbursts of heresy or sacrilege, sexual allusions, or provocations.107 Such behavior was generally seen as the result of demonic possession.108 Christian sources stress that in many cases the victim’s voice changes (for example, a woman emits a man’s voice). This is explained by attributing the voice and its antinomian speech to the demon rather than the possessed. Jewish sources also report such phenomena and explanations.109 In such cases, mad people were imprisoned not because of their behavior but due to the nature of their vocalizations and the things they said. In the Talmud we find the phrase “as one compelled by a demon” (ke-mi she-kefa’o shed) applied to “normal” persons whose behavior resembled that of those who, so it was believed, were compelled to act that way by an evil spirit. Medieval Bible commentators used and explained this expression, revealing to us what behaviors they saw as typical of the possessed. Note that they were not speaking directly about persons who were possessed, but rather about others whose behavior reminded them of the way people overcome by demons behaved. These commentators revealed a set of beliefs and opinions about possession and its effects that fell into three categories: impulsivity, horror, and compulsivity. Common to all three was the sense that the person was acting involuntarily, at the bidding of a power that had taken control of her will. A fascinating comment on the Talmudic phrase can be found in the discussions of a passage found in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Nedarim.110 One subject of that passage is the proper way to engage in sexual relations. In the fourteenth century, R. Jacob b. Asher, known as the “Ba‘al ha-Turim,” wrote in his comprehensive halakhic code Arba‘ah Turim: “ ‘And he seems [ve-domeh] as if compelled by a demon’ means that he does it [=the sexual act] in fear and awe, as if a demon had forced him to do it.”111 R. Jacob goes on to quote the writings of R. Abraham b. David of Posquières (Rabad III): Rabad wrote: “some explain ‘he uncovers a handbreadth and covers a handbreadth’ [to mean] that he should not rub the sexual organ at the time of coition, so as to reduce his pleasure. ‘And he seems as if compelled by a demon’ [they take to mean] that he does it under coercion. He [=Rabad] explained ‘he uncovers a handbreadth [etc.]’ to refer to the woman: now he uncovers her to have sexual relations, and now he covers her. In other words, he would not prolong the act. ‘As if 100

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compelled by a demon’ [means that] it seemed to him [to perform the act] as one who a demon frightens and becomes frightened and drops what he is doing, [for] he would make the act of coition so brief.”112

The underlying assumption here was that sexuality and sanctity did not easily coexist; thus, a person who wished to be holy had to minimize the pleasure of intercourse. According to Rabad, and to R. Jacob’s interpretation of his words, speed and haste, fear and terror characterized a person possessed by evil spirits. Like public nakedness, which could be condemned but also praised depending on the circumstances, the behavior like that of a possessed person could be interpreted positively and seen as testifying to a high moral level. Such, indeed, is the description of ideal sexual behavior contained elsewhere in R. Jacob’s code.113 It is interesting to note that the opposite extreme of behavior, namely, the unrestrained sexual act accompanied by loud cries, grunts, and physical blows—typical of animals but also seen in humans—was similarly depicted as insane.114 Sexual relations in general are, in some sources, depicted as liminal, that is, as an act in which human beings lose their reason; their sexual desire overcomes them and they act insanely. This view can also be detected in a responsum of Maharam regarding a woman whose husband charged her with committing adultery. The husband had no eyewitness testimony to offer, but he claimed to have heard his wife with another man, “going mad together in [sexual] play [derekh sehok].” He described the adulterous couple as loud in the commission of the sexual act, to the point that the husband, eavesdropping on the other side of a wall, could hear their voices and groans, which were like those of the insane. Maharam reasoned, in opposition to the opinion of his colleague R. Hezekiah of Magdeburg, that hearing sounds is insufficient evidence to prove a charge of adultery, even in the case of testimony as incriminating as the husband’s. He said of such sounds: “This is nothing but breast fondling and madness [shigga‘on], and the madness [shigga‘on] explains the groans.”115

“Imaginary Disturbances Frighten Him”— Hallucinations and Delusions Seeing and hearing things that others do not are typical symptoms of mental illness. The technical name for the phenomenon is hallucination, and it appears as part of any number of psychotic states and disturbances. Modern psychiatry views hallucination as a symptom of several disorders on the continuum between personality disorders and psychosis. Not all hallucination, 101

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however, necessarily involves mental illness. It can be associated, for example, with a temporary physical ailment with no connection to insanity, such as a high fever. To use a medieval example for illustration, the ethical will of R. Judah he-Hasid describes a scene from the sickbed of a dying man whose speech indicates that he is demented: “If a man—and the same is true of a woman—who is sick says to a person ‘take this child who is here’ or ‘take something else,’ and he sees that there is nothing there, he should not say to him ‘please give it to me’ because that may worsen the situation; rather, he should say ‘I cannot.’ ”116 At the same time, Sefer Hasidim and related literature from the same Pietist circle contains depictions of people not suffering from physical illness who nevertheless see things that others do not.117 Frequently, these people are seen by those around them as mentally disturbed, although in some cases it later emerges that they had seen things to which others had been blind. Such is the story of a group of people gathered around the bed of a dying man: “There was once a man near death [goses] and they came to visit him. One of those sitting there saw that the Angel of Death was washing his sword and putting it in a cup. Someone carried the cup to someone entering the house and the person who saw this cried out to the one entering, ‘Don’t drink!’ Everyone thought he was crazy [she-yatza mi-da‘ato] because they did not see [the Angel of Death], and the person who entered drank. He immediately fell ill and died that same week.”118 Notwithstanding such cases, hallucinations were usually seen as evidence of mental illness. Such was the case of a young man from Marseilles whose divorce was the subject of three pieces in a Provençal collection of responsa. The first of these responsa opens by saying that the young man suffered from madness and that melancholy was one of his symptoms: “A report was heard about the young man that he fell ill from black madness [ha-shigga‘on hashehori].” Another description of his condition appears in the continuation: “He told them that for over two years hallucinations [mehumot dimyonot] had been constantly frightening him. He imagined that people were always in his belly and they frightened him. . . . When he lay on a bed, he imagined that the imaginary people always in his belly were frightening him, so he slept on the ground and on benches. His mind was not found to be distorted except for these fantasies that he said frightened him and those changes in his behavior that followed from him believing that proper behavior was actually damaging.”119 Here is a fully developed description of a man who saw visions and heard voices that commanded him to act in a particular way. It is not at all like the laconic descriptions we sometimes find in responsa. Here, the writer shares 102

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with his readers the opinion of those who observed the man and allows us to peer into the world of a mentally disturbed person. We learn that this man “sees” imaginary beings and is incapable of distinguishing between them and reality. Nevertheless, even though the wording of the responsum tells us that this is the only aspect of his behavior that seems abnormal to those around him, the man is taken to be mad, even if only “in a single aspect” instead of “in all aspects.” The characteristics of madness surveyed in this chapter touch on a person’s exposure (clothed or naked), behavior (human or animal-like), and “windows” into his or her mind (voice, appearance, and sexual behavior). People seem to have understood that the source of madness is in the mind, but they also knew that it has many physical manifestations. Some of these characteristics of madness derived from conventions rooted in ancient cultural standards, whereas others were contemporary and reflected the mood of the times regarding what was considered normal and exceptional. Clearly it was not only ancient literature that shaped the ideas medieval people had about what is mad behavior Were we to gather all of these markers of madness, we could put together an image that would represent the appearance and behavior of opposite an ideal person. The signs of madness enumerated here are details that also allow us to describe the “preferred person” in medieval Ashkenazi society. Madness, as a distorted mirror image, enables us to examine the way members of this society identified themselves and what they expected was normal behavior. The “normal person” who emerges from these descriptions is autonomous, not dependent. He or she are realistic, in the sense of interfacing with the world they see and hear what the others see and hear, they are in full control of their deeds actions and bodily movements. Such a person’s clothing, speech, and walk are moderate. A “normal person” is reserved, restrained, and balanced, and is able to have and does have regular social intercourse. Madness was characterized as a deviation from all the above. Such deviant behavior labeled a man or a woman as mad and the severity and range of the symptoms categorized the level of insanity.

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Social Attitudes toward the Insane

Having established what the mind and thoughts of medieval European Jews considered a manifestation of madness or insanity, let us now examine how the men and woman deemed mad were actually treated in the medieval Jewish European communities. Did their behavior instigate rejection, fear, compassion or a mixture of all three? Were the men and women deemed mad incarcerated, or were they cared for in the privacy of the home? Were they treated harshly or with empathy? What rights did they have, if any? Were they cast out, set to roam the streets and fend for themselves, or were they wrapped with the warmth of familial compassion? If they were taken care of in the family setting, what were the financial, emotional, and social costs of this endeavor? Was the rule similar for both genders, or was there a distinction? Could insane individuals participate in synagogue rituals? Were they at all allowed in, or were they not granted entry? If mad people were indeed barred from participation and entry, on what grounds was their access to the most identifiably “Jewish” space denied? These questions are at the heart of understanding the mechanics of the social attitudes toward those individuals deemed mad in medieval Jewish society. The sources discussed in the previous chapter may help us understand who was thought to be mad, but in order uncover the actual treatment of mad people in medieval European Jewish society we need to broaden our parameters and look at sources from the responsa literature. The responsa examined below address the issue of madness both directly and indirectly, and thus can illuminate social attitudes toward the insane and flesh out many of the internal issues related to the treatment of insane 105

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individuals in medieval Jewish society. As we shall see, in some cases a text’s silence or unstated assumptions about an issue can also be instructive. In an attempt to simplify the analysis I have chosen to divide the discussion of the evidence into two distinct realms using the anthropological categories relating to the human theaters of experience: the private personal and interpersonal realm, and the public arena. I have included the sacred space of the synagogue in the second category. Being a minority society in medieval Europe, Jews lacked any form of control over the public sphere. Other than attempting to regulate and possibly prevent mad Jews—both male but more often female—from roaming the streets, there was very little Jews could do about the public sphere. Thus, the discussion about the sacred space of the synagogue represents in many ways a discussion of the medieval Jewish public arena.

Madness in Interpersonal Space “The Heavens are between him and her” The family unit seems to have been the primary caregiver for mentally disturbed individuals in the Middle Ages, just as family members nursed and treated most physical ailments. As we have seen, hospitals and other such institutions made their appearance only toward the end of this period. Members of the nuclear family then, as today, did not find it easy to provide such care. Living under one roof with an insane spouse, parent, or child was necessarily demanding and exhausting.1 It is hardly surprising, then, that Maimonides addressed the Sages’ concern for the insane wife divorced by her husband. While according to the letter of Talmudic law a mad wife is considered competent to be divorced, the Sages promulgated certain protections for her. Maimonides’s concern that a madwoman would have trouble finding an appropriate and protective social framework led him to rule: He may therefore set her aside and marry another but [must] provide her with food and drink from her own funds. We do not [however] require him to provide her with clothing and to have sexual relations with her, because a sane person does not have the strength to share a home with the insane. [Furthermore,] he is not obligated to bear the costs of her medical treatment or to ransom her [if she falls captive], and if he divorces her she is divorced and he may send her out of his house and is not required to care for her again.2 106

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Maimonides’s explanation for his ruling regarding a mad wife is that “she will be left open to licentious men because she will not be able to take care of herself.” Such a solution, of marrying another wife without actually divorcing the first, was only realistic and feasible in Jewish communities of the Islamic-controlled Mediterranean basin and east, in which polygamy was acceptable.3 But for the Jews of Ashkenaz, especially after the ban on polygamy proclaimed by Rabbi Gershom b. Yehudah of Mainz (d.1028), known as the Ban of Rabbeinu Gershom, this was not an option. A spouse who lost his or her mind thus presented an especially difficult legal quandary with serious financial and social implications, to which some responsa were devoted. Again, the nature of the evidence in responsa and halakhic literature differs from that found in biblical exegesis and ethical literature. Both types of texts offer, along with their literary, legal, and exegetical formulations, information about the authors and their world. As was the case with leprosy, it is specifically responsa that open a window into the society in which the petitioners and respondents lived, touching on its realia even when the questions are of a theoretical nature. The responsa present folk beliefs, common wisdom, and fundamental human concerns about how society should treat and did treat those it defined as madmen. Determining the halakhic status of these exceptional individuals required discerning the extent of their rational faculties (da‘at) and the severity of their insanity (shetut or shigga‘on).4 Was the individual in question mad across the board, or only in only one aspect of his personality (le-davar ehad)? To what extent were individual madmen and madwomen aware of and in comprehension of the real world around them? What were their behavioral symptoms? Such issues form the central axis of this discussion of the ha­ lakhic standing of the mad in Jewish law. The madman’s status is discussed in the context of the laws of divorce, inheritance, yibbum (levirate marriage) and halitzah,5 ownership, juridical testimony, and the obligation to perform religious precepts. Halakhic authorities addressed the ability or inability of madmen to function in society and the question of whether they should be considered a legal entity for the purpose of ownership and criminal liability. Responsa sketch the contours of Jewish society and enable us to see how people treated and thought of madmen, what behaviors were considered tolerable, and what behaviors society had difficulty accepting with equanimity. This sort of writing also reveals the inclinations of Jewish leaders, who sought to preserve the Jewish social fabric in the face of strong internal forces and under the constant gaze of the surrounding Christian society. For a variety of reasons, Jews turned to halakhic authorities when faced with a mad spouse or child. Sometimes a ruling was sought before a couple 107

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had produced children. As we will see below in the responsum of Ravyah (d. ~1220) to R. Simhah of Speyer (d. ~1225), the tragedy was sometimes simple—a husband unable to divorce his wife but also unable to have a family with her. Sometimes mental deterioration led to uncontrollable fits of violence, physical suffering, and fear of sexual abuse that could lead to an unwanted pregnancy, as evidenced in the responsum of Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (d. 1327) discussed above. At other times the question was who had the responsibility for financial support of the mad spouse. In addition, mental soundness is one of Jewish law’s principal criteria for determining whether a person can incur legal obligations.6 To marry, divorce, own, sell, and buy, a person must be of sound mind (da‘at). This requirement meant that the issue of dissolving a marriage when one spouse becomes insane would need to be addressed and indeed found expression in various responsa. Rayvah responded to a query sent by his colleague R. Simhah, who had sent the same question to another important German rabbi, R. Ephraim b. Jacob of Bonn (d. 1197). As was customary, R. Simhah prefaced his question with several poetic lines, which he used to indicate that he was asking his addressees to do their best to find a way of freeing a man from his marital obligations. My heart contemplates and ponders [horesh] 7 in order to discern the principal thing [‘ikkar] 8 and the root. I seek each one [=reason?] separately to sunder those joined together. Let all who fear [God] and tremble be afraid, and devote extra discernment to find a cause [koah] for leniency. For the court has the prerogative to strengthen the weak, wretched pauper who wed an upstanding woman, a daughter of upstanding ones, with sound mind and lived with her for several years. He sired children from her who did not survive. After some time, [God’s] attribute of justice struck her and she went mad [nishtattah],9 and in these hidden matters of God there is to be no questioning in any way [aneh va-’anah].10 Despite this, he spent several years with her, and it was with difficulty that they separated him from her so that he would not be alone together with her, because there is no possibility of permitting the prohibition [on sexual relations] she generates [through menstrual impurity] neither by using sane women [to oversee her internal checks] nor through [her own] sensation [of her menstrual flow].11 This miserable man stands and shouts “woe to me regarding my wife, and woe to me [that I may not take] another [wife].” And he cannot release her with a get, so is he to spend his whole life with her and not fulfill [the mitzvah of ] 108

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having children? Therefore, we need the valorous counsel so that he not go to his grave without offspring. So, my teachers, let the matter be dealt with by great men like you—my teacher, the venerable R. Ephraim, and my teacher and rabbi Eliezer b. R. Joel Ha-Levi— clarify for us who “a woman who knows how to preserve her get” is in the case of a madwoman.12

R. Simhah’s account implies that the dilemma he faced was more than just a marital problem. Also at issue, apparently, was the matter of social control, specifically supervision of pregnancy and birth in the case of madwomen. The couple in question had had children, but they had not survived, and the circumstances of their deaths are not made explicit in the responsum. It appears that after some time, the woman lost her sanity. From the exact wording of the responsum, it is not clear if the woman “lost her mind” as a result of the death of a child or children, but we have already seen earlier that severe sorrow over the death of children was seen as a cause of insanity. The husband continued to live with his wife despite her condition, and the communal authorities were apparently concerned that they continued to have intimate relations, as the husband makes explicit in calling on the authorities to provide him with a way to have children. The husband seems not to have had any apprehension about living with a madwoman and continued to hope, or at least declared as much, that he would be able to have children with her. Clearly, he did not fear that his children would inherit his wife’s illness. The husband apparently justified his behavior by saying “and in these hidden matters of God there is to be no questioning in any way.” On the surface, this sentence can be interpreted as a statement by R. Simhah about the woman’s condition, to the effect that God’s actions cannot be questioned. But an examination of the source of this expression shows that it has a deeper meaning that sheds light on the events in question. R. Simhah’s words are a paraphrase of an expression that appears in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Berakhot in the context of a midrash that describes an encounter between the prophet Isaiah and King Hezekiah during the latter’s illness (II Kgs. 20:1; Is. 38:1). The prophet comes to visit the king on his sickbed and says to him: “Thus said the Lord: Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die; you will not get well.” The Talmudic exegete addresses the superfluous language—“for you are going to die; you will not get well”—and interprets it to mean that the prophet’s intention is that the king will die in this world and also lose his portion in the next world. The reason, according to a midrashic tradition, is that the king did not observe the commandment of procreation. 109

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The exegete has the prophet ask the king why he refrained from procreation, and the king replies that he had received a divine message that he would have “unfit” (evil) descendants (referring to the evil Judean king Manasseh). The prophet’s response is that the king should not base his actions on what is beyond his understanding and on what God has hidden for the future. This Talmudic allusion may well be the key to understanding the case.13 Apparently, people in the couple’s community argued that the couple was likely to produce “unfit” children. The husband, for his part, claimed that “in these hidden matters of God there is to be no questioning in any way”; in other words, that the nature of his offspring could not be known in advance and that he should not be prevented from seeking to have children with his wife. But the husband’s behavior is also puzzling for another reason. Most people would not want to live with a mad spouse, so the husband’s wish to continue to live with his wife was also the subject of criticism. Presumably the man in question was old enough that he feared a childless old age, as seems to be indicated in R. Simhah’s language: “so that he not go to his grave without offspring.”14 Marriages of older men to young women were not unknown in medieval Ashkenaz, but they were not viewed favorably in some circles.15 The husband in this case acted as one who, despite his wife’s illness, did not try to second-guess God’s will, and who disregarded the criticism leveled at him by others. He sought to continue to live with his wife despite her loss of sanity so that he could sire children who would survive. But the husband had a problem—R. Simhah relates that “it was with difficulty that they separated him [the husband] from her [the insane wife] so that he would not be alone together with her.” It turns out that other people in the husband’s community were concerned that his intimate relations with his mad wife might be sinful, since she could not be trusted to observe the laws of ritual purity properly. They thus sought to impose social supervision on the husband and prevent him from having sexual relations with his wife. While this is not stated explicitly, the “community” seems clearly to have been a body with the power and authority to enforce such an intrusion into a person’s private life—able to enter the man’s home and, as R. Simhah writes, “to sunder those joined together,” that is, to separate the man from his wife. As the question implies, the husband may have sought to address the concerns about his wife with the help of other women who could supervise his wife’s purification process. But the communal authority apparently forbade this arrangement even though it has a basis in the Mishnah, on the grounds that it was halakhically unacceptable.16 The stated reason for separating the woman from her husband was her inability to purify herself from her menstrual uncleanness (a halakhic 110

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prerequisite for maintaining sexual relations within a marital relationship). Communities, or at the very least religious leadership, sought to reinforce social cohesion by enforcing strict codes of ritual and religious behavior. A number of scholars have noted that the Jewish communities of Ashkenaz viewed themselves as “holy communities” (kehillah kedoshah or kehillat kodesh). This holiness was a product of their attempt to enforce and achieve punctiliousness in halakhic observance, in this case their meticulous observance of the laws of menstruation.17 The fact that the community was not prepared to accept the halakhic solution offered in the Mishnah indicates that its greatest concern was the husband’s desire for children. Given his wife’s condition, the burden of caring for any children that might be born was liable to fall on the community. This concern would have been reinforced if the husband were an older man unable to provide for his children and likely to die before they were grown, leaving the children to become indigent orphans. R. Simhah calls the man a “wretched pauper”; this phrase appears both in the text quoted here as well as again in the question, twice in the account of the case. Perhaps it is a literary trope meant to elicit sympathy for the petitioner, but it is possible that it indicates the family’s socioeconomic status. The family in question may have been a family on society’s margins, one that was liable to become an even heavier burden on the community were children to be born and the madwoman widowed. Another possible understanding of the community’s fear of allowing this couple to produce offspring could be the trepidation that the children, too, might not be of sound mind and would sooner or later become a burden on the community. This could explain why R. Simhah wrote about the children who had died. To lend force to the husband’s desire to have children it would have been enough to state that they had not had any, so the fact that the couple produced children who had died could be seen as reflecting a claim to the effect that if the children the woman had borne when she was sane had died, she was liable to give birth in the future to children as unfortunate as she was now. The community’s demand that the husband be separated from his mad wife led him to seek a halakhic remedy. As a counterweight to the halakhic claim that the separation was necessary to prevent him from having forbidden sexual relations with his wife, the husband noted his halakhic obligation to have children: “Woe to me regarding my wife, and woe to me [that I may not take] another [wife]. And he cannot release her with a get, so is he to spend his whole life with her and not fulfill [the mitzvah of ] having children?”18 Having been forcibly separated from his wife while remaining bound to her by marriage, society prevented him from having the children that halakhah required him to have. Furthermore, he could not divorce his 111

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wife because she was not of sound mind and therefore could not receive a bill of divorce. Under the circumstances, the legal options available were as follows: (1) allow the husband to continue to live with his wife, but not to have sexual relations with her, which would be tantamount to denying him the possibility of observing the precept of procreation; (2) allow him to divorce his wife by ruling that the woman was legally competent to receive a bill of divorce, thus allowing him to remarry; (3) make an exception to the ban on polygamy promulgated by Rabbeinu Gershom (which could be done by gaining the signatures of one hundred rabbis from three lands), thus allowing the husband to marry another woman without divorcing his mad wife. While R. Simhah thought, apparently with good reason, that the chances of being able to apply this last remedy were weak, he urged his addressees to accept his contention that in this case the ban could be lifted: “And if there is any hesitation about it [=permitting a divorce], let our rabbis agree to the lifting of the ban likewise permit this man to marry another with this divorce.”19 R. Simhah clearly thought that the most practical course of action was to find a creative legal solution that would allow a divorce based on a loose interpretation of sanity. R. Simhah asked if it would not be possible for the man to divorce his wife despite her condition, and so allow him to remarry. He sympathized with the husband’s predicament, describing him as shouting and crying for help. Nevertheless, R. Simhah’s letter indicates that he also had hesitations. This might have been the product of pressure exerted upon him by the community or the wife’s family.20 Furthermore, to override Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban, R. Simhah would need to gain a much broader endorsement of his position. Realizing the complications, he asked the recipients of his legal query to “devote extra discernment to find a cause for leniency.” He perhaps was implying that in the case at hand they should take into account social, as well as halakhic, considerations. While the responsum does not include a full clinical description of the wife, it contains an expression that can help us understand the way in which her contemporaries viewed her condition: “[God’s] attribute of justice struck her.”21 As we shall see below in the chapters devoted to the disabled, this phrase was applied to people who suffered severe physical or mental injury, injury that was viewed as a particularly severe punishment imposed by heaven. In Sefer Hasidim, which was contemporary with Ravyah, the phrase seems to be used as a synonym for Satan.22 The connection between severe divine judgment and Satan may also explain why such heavy social pressure was exerted to separate this husband from his wife and to prevent the birth 112

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of children. In his response to R. Simhah, Ravyah cited a case similar to the one at hand. It, too, centered on a childless couple in which the wife had lost her mind: Our teachers should know that we have seen the son of R. Samuel b. ‘Azriel of Mainz [whose wife] was truly mad, insane [shotah] like the woman you wrote about,23 and he would often hold up the prayers and cry for help [regarding] 24 the lack of procreation. He would ask for the lifting of the ban of the great scholar, the Light of the Exile [=Rabbeinu Gershom], but they did not want to lift it for him. They said better to lose one soul than to corrupt generations to come.25 He also went to Bonn but it was to no avail: our rabbis did not consent to lift the ban. Thus, we are also afraid to consent [to lift the ban] lest, God forbid, it result in ruin. And even though they would sneer about conduct of hester davar,26 they still did not permit it.27

The son of R. Samuel mentioned here, whose wife was “truly mad,” presented himself, with his father, before the super-communal synod (va‘ad ha-kehillot) in Bonn and protested. His objection was of the type made in Ashkenaz when a person was caught in a predicament within his community and felt that an injustice had been done to him—he held up or caused the cancellation of public prayer services in the synagogue.28 But despite his repeated remonstrations, the rabbis before whom he appeared did not agree to lift the ban of Rabbeinu Gershom so that he could take another wife in addition to his insane wife. Here, too, the husband justified his request with reference to the commandment to be fruitful and multiply—so we can deduce that the community was preventing him from engaging in sexual relations with his wife. The husband was caught in a marriage that could not be terminated, yet he was unable to observe the precept of procreation. Given the similarity of the cases, we may be justified in learning about one from the other, at least with regard to the public’s attitudes. In the case of R. Samuel’s son, and in contrast with the question posed by R. Simhah, the husband here was a well-known and highborn figure. Furthermore, the son made his protest several times, and despite being met with refusal he had no compunction in seeking out another venue in which to voice his claims. His trip to Bonn to seek legal recourse indicates that he and his father were well acquainted with every nook and cranny of the halakhic legal system, were personally acquainted with the hierarchy of its decision makers, and so did not hesitate to seek out a court that they thought would grant their request. We also see an attempt to appeal to a super-communal 113

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authority (the synod in Bonn) in order to solve a problem that seems to have led to a confrontation between the husband and the established leadership of his community. Note the measure of “equality before the law” that is revealed in both responsa—that is, the absence of the all-too-common medieval distinction between the wellborn and educated upper levels of society and the “poor and wretched.” Another interesting social aspect of Ravyah’s responsum about R. Samuel’s son emerges with regard to the halakhic adjudicators’ concern about creating a dangerous precedent by lifting the ban.29 This fear is expressed in the formulation “lest, God forbid, it result in ruin.” The desire to avoid setting a precedent, even in this extreme case, led the adjudicators to deliberately disregard the rumors surrounding the case, as the responsum states: “They would sneer about conduct of hester davar.” A wife’s madness was thus grounds for requesting divorce or for an exemption from Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban, and the urgency of such requests was redoubled by the clash between the command to produce progeny and the limitations created by the ban. In the larger Western European society encompassing Ashkenazi Jewry, women, especially those belonging to the higher echelons of society, were often accused of being insane in order to provide a justification for the dissolution of a marriage. Such a claim, like those that the woman was a witch or leper, allowed the accuser to appeal to Church authorities for an annulment. Men who wished to have children, especially members of the nobility who often had to produce a male heir to pass on their inheritance or continue their line, sometimes branded their wives as mad when they failed to produce a male heir. Whether the claim was true or false, it was almost the only way they could extricate themselves from an infertile marriage.30 It seems likely that Jews were familiar with this state of affairs and also resorted to charges of madness in order to end their marriages. Such a presumption is reinforced by the stress laid, in the two cases presented here, on the commandment to produce offspring. In both cases, the halakhic adjudicators, Ravyah and R. Ephraim of Bonn, rejected the petitioners’ requests. Dismissing the claim that madness is a cause for divorce, they in fact asserted the opposite. Jewish law, they wrote, prevents a person who is not of sound mind from being an active participant in a divorce procedure, which requires the consent of both sides. Both husband and wife must be fully mindful of the process, even if this is limited to “a childish mind.” The claim of an inability to observe the precept of procreation was rejected by both adjudicators as of insufficient weight to overwhelm this more fundamental principle, and the marriages were not dissolved despite the inherent problems. Ravyah was quite clear about this, as may be seen in the statement at the conclusion of his responsum: “As regards the decree of 114

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the Light of the Exile, we are not men of stature in this issue such that we can lift it, because many women are ill or childless, and [with them, too] there is no fulfillment of ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ Yet, we have not heard about any distinction between them [=the sick, childless, and insane].”31 Ravyah’s statement places loss of sanity, even in the case of a “real madwoman,” on the same level as that of the ill and the childless. He did not see it as justifiable grounds for divorce, despite the mill of rumors and the husband’s inability to observe the precept of having children. These two cases lead to two important conclusions about social attitudes toward the insane. First, it is clear that the Jewish public, especially its communal institutions, had qualms about the intimate relations between the mad and the healthy and were concerned that such unions would produce children who would become a burden on the community. Second, we see that there were people who, under certain circumstances, were prepared to live with a mad spouse so as to produce children. The desire to keep a marriage intact while simultaneously attempting to prevent the violation of prohibitions can also be seen in rulings made by thirteenth-century French halakhists. One example is an injunction attributed to R. Moses of Évreux: “ ‘You must release her outright [ve-shilahtah le-nafshah]’ (Deut. 21:14)—but if she is ill, he should wait until she recovers. And it would seem proper to say that so it is with the pure and holy daughters of Israel, that one must wait until she recovers. If so, should a wife become insane we compel her husband to stay with her, support her, and be wary of violating prohibitions as long as he is with her.”32 R. Moses stressed that the word le-nafshah be taken literally to refer to her soul or mind (nefesh), and since it appears on the heels of ve-shilahtah, which can be taken to refer to divorce (based upon Deut. 24:3), he deduced that a husband can only divorce a sane and healthy woman. He also addressed the issue of compulsion: a woman’s fate is not to be left to the generosity of her husband, and as such he is compelled to remain married to her even if he does not want to be. This compulsion operated on two levels—the husband had to remain with his wife and support her, but he also, as Ravyah stated in the responsum cited above, had to take care not to violate the prohibition against intimate relations with a ritually impure woman. Nor could he seek out surrogates outside his marriage. These sources indicate an aspiration to preserve marriages even in such difficult cases. But in some cases people simply were not willing to live with spouses who had lost their minds. As we saw above, the petitioner who appears in the question posed by R. Simhah declared his willingness to live with his mad wife in order to produce children. But as soon as he realized that he was 115

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forbidden to have intimate relations with her, and therefore could not have children, he asked for a divorce. Often those who remained formally married to insane spouses sought to relax, to the extent possible, the chains of their spouses’ dependency on them, in particular financial ties. This produced tensions and legal questions about sources of livelihood for the insane. As a result, testimonies about their circumstances and treatment have reached us. Two such examples are cited below. The first is a mid-thirteenth-century responsum written by Maharam of Rothenberg about a man who sought to sever his ties to his insane wife. The second is a responsum penned by Rosh between the end of the thirteenth and first decades of the fourteenth century about a woman seeking a divorce from a man whose mental faculties were in decline. She wished to receive a divorce before he lost his senses completely and would then be unable to consent to dissolving the marriage. In such a case, she would be left an ‘agunah, a woman “anchored” to her husband and thus trapped in a marriage, unable to remarry. We should bear in mind that in order to facilitate a divorce, both husband and wife had to be of a sane mind. Alongside the explicit halakhic discourse these responsa present, they also offer evidence of what was perceived as madness by the public and the anguish of those who had to live with mad spouses. In the first responsum Maharam was asked by a man whose wife had gone mad whether he was required to support her. In this case, the petitioner no longer cohabited with his wife; apparently, she had returned to her parents’ home.33 Maharam’s reply contains several phrases about Ashkenazi society’s attitudes toward the insane: In this case, even though he is not embroiled in conflict with his wife—for neither he nor she usually fights—the heavens are between them [ha-shamayim beino le-veinah] 34 because [God’s] attribute of justice struck her,35 so they are in any case not on good terms. But he [=the wife’s father] stipulated that “I am not giving you [support] unless you are on good terms with your spouse,” and he is not on good terms with his wife, for it cannot be considered good terms when he is unable to be with her in the manner of the entire world [ke-derekh kol ha-’aretz]. What is more, he made his conditions twofold36 and concluded by saying, “If God forbid there will be any conflict between them my desire is that you compensate me for everything.” Given that he said “any conflict etc.,” it implies any conflict whatsoever, and since he sent her out of his home there is an aspect of conflict here that falls under the language of “any conflict.” . . . So 116

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he [=the husband] needs to work for their support and if need be hire himself out or [provide support] through other means. The reason is that they [=very young children] cannot support themselves, and a madwoman is comparable to them. In fact, it appears to me to be quite the contrary—this constitutes proof even for a sane woman since every woman is comparable to these [children]. . . . So, he must provide his wife with sustenance even if she is healthy, and it is not his prerogative to say that she should beg on people’s doorsteps, since he can support her by working and through his handiwork, for “the dignity of the king’s daughter lies within” (Ps. 49:14), and there is clear support from there for the ruling of R. Elijah zt"l.

Maharam’s ruling was that not only did the husband’s financial obligation to his wife continue even once they were no longer living together, but that the husband had to work to support his wife if he was in financial straits. The first part of the responsum addressed an issue that does not appear in the question. The husband apparently made financial claims to his wife’s property, believing that he had a right to the money on the grounds that the laws of inheritance took precedence over the wife’s right to it for her own livelihood. In the husband’s opinion, the marriage bond is predicated on a “normal” way of life, and once this was no longer the case on account of his wife’s mental condition, he had no obligation to support her—the conditions of the marriage contract had been broken, even if he did not actually divorce her. The wife’s representatives (apparently family members) argued that the husband had to support and feed his wife even if he lived apart from her, and that if he did not provide this support from his property they should be able to sell her clothes, which were ostensibly his property, so that they would not have to support her from their own resources. The responsum addressed a marriage that had been accepted, as marriages often were, on the basis of a “bill of conditions” (tena’im). Maharam first investigated the extent to which the conditions were violated. One of the conditions was stipulated by the bride’s father: “I am not giving you [support] unless you are on good terms with your spouse.” Maharam explained that the case was not a simple one as there was no conflict between the husband and wife, which would be the normal situation in which a couple would be on “bad terms.” It was owing to the change in his wife’s mental condition that the husband was no longer on good terms with her, but this was something that had happened without his or her intent. Maharam ruled that even though there was no falling out in the normal sense, it was clear that objectively the husband was not on good terms with his wife. In this sense, he had 117

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violated the bill of conditions. Furthermore, not only was the husband not on good terms with her—he could not even live with her, and they certainly could not have any sexual relationship: “and he is not on good terms with his wife, for it cannot be considered good terms when he is unable to be with her in the manner of the entire world [ke-derekh kol ha-’aretz].”37 This text, like others of its kind, does not provide a clinical description of the woman’s condition, but it does offer a few indications. Maharam wrote that she could not “go among people.” Apparently, this was not a medical diagnosis but rather a social matter—that is, she was not fit for human company. In any case, the wife was unable to participate, even in the smallest way, in providing her own livelihood. She was shut up in her house and did not appear in public. Maharam compared her condition to that of very small children, infants and toddlers who require the constant supervision of an adult and who have no role in supporting their families: “The reason is that they cannot support themselves, and a madwoman is comparable to them.”38 We know of other cases in medieval Europe in which madmen and madwomen were confined to their homes. One such case is documented in a work by the fourteenth-century English mystic Margery Kempe. The tale is told as a demonstration of Margery’s mystical power and the miracles she performed through prayer. In this case, the miracle was mitigation of the suffering of a woman who had lost her mind around the time she gave birth. One day at church, Margery noticed a man who was praying and wringing his hands. When she asked him the cause of his sorrow, he related that his wife, who had recently given birth, had lost her mind. With his consent, Margery visited the deranged woman. When others had visited her, she would scream that demons and devils were walking among them, but when approached by Margery she saw angels around the mystic. Marjorie’s presence seemed to relieve the woman’s symptoms, but when she left the woman’s condition deteriorated. She screamed day and night, and the result was that “most people could not bear to live with her.” This expression is in the same spirit as Maimonides’s statement cited at the beginning of this chapter, that “a sane person does not have the strength to share a home with the insane.” Due to her condition, the woman was taken from her home to the edge of the city and interned in a chamber from which her screams could not be heard; she was also placed in fetters to keep her from harming herself.39 Society’s treatment of this madwoman helps us understand the attitudes displayed toward the madwoman in Maharam’s responsum. In both cases the woman was removed from public space, seen as unfit for human company, and not allowed to move freely. In the story about Margery Kempe, the madwoman was actually incarcerated and chained, unlike our case. But 118

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in both instances society rejected the madwoman, and she was confined to a protected, private space. The difference between the two cases was that the English madwoman was banished from society because of the discomfort she caused to the healthy. Maharam’s responsum indicates that the woman was removed from her husband’s home for a similar reason, but her confinement to the home of her parents (or other members of her family) was meant to protect her from society and society from her. We have seen that madmen and madwomen were subject to varied treatment. Some were incarcerated outside their homes, others in their homes, and still others were permitted to circulate in public. It may well be that the clinical condition of the woman at the center of Maharam’s responsum made it impossible for her to leave her home—she may have been confused or fearful, or she may have displayed symptoms that seemed threatening to others. The family’s embarrassment was also a factor in keeping her at home. Nevertheless, it seems to be significant that the insane individuals who did wander and beg for alms in the public arena were men (both Jewish men and most certainly gentile madmen who roamed the streets seeking bread), as we shall see later, whereas this case of confinement concerns a woman. This reality reflects the position of both Jewish and Christian authorities in the Middle Ages, who viewed female begging as a threat to public order. Begging was considered degrading; a man engaging in it could be tolerated, but it was seen by the male members of the learned elite to be totally inappropriate for a woman.40 A few scholars have made much of indications that in the early thirteenth century begging and the adoption of an apostolic Christian lifestyle were viewed as acts of spirituality and that Pope Innocent III approved the establishment of mendicant orders. Nevertheless, even in this context begging by women remained illegitimate.41 The concern of halakhic authorities was also aroused in this context primarily by the prospect of madwomen roaming the streets freely in search of livelihood. Contemporary sources are well aware that women involved in commerce traveled alone between cities despite the dangers.42 Some halakhic authorities and rabbis were concerned about this, but others, especially in the thirteenth century, chose to ignore the phenomenon.43 In forbidding the madwoman to beg for her livelihood, it may be that Maharam’s anxiety was not restricted to the woman alone but to the image of Jewish society as a whole. He may have feared a ruling that would appear to sanction begging by women in general, and mentally unbalanced ones in particular, because this might reflect poorly on the Jewish community as it appeared to gentiles. At the end of his responsum he wrote: “In fact, it appears to me to be quite the contrary—this constitutes proof even for a 119

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sane woman since every woman is comparable to these [children].”44 His conclusion was that it was obvious that the onus for supporting a mad wife lay on her husband. Even if he had to go out looking for work to provide for her needs, so that she would not have to go out and beg. But this was, for Maharam, only a specific case falling under the general rule that all husbands must support their wives. The guiding principle was “the honor of a king’s daughter lies within,” a biblical phrase that implies that the proper place for a respectable Jewish woman, a daughter of the divine King, is within her home. In Maharam’s view, this principle applied equally to all women. The responsum indicates that Jewish husbands and communities saw themselves as compelled to protect the honor of women who lacked the faculties and the social understanding of how to act and what was considered a dignified manner.45 This ruling would seem at first to contradict the concept that the mad have no sense of shame, because if begging did not cause them personal embarrassment there would be no cause for forbidding them to do so. But this, it turns out, is the heart of the matter—what was at stake was more than the individual’s shame but rather the image of the community. An examination of the reluctance of halakhists to allow a man to divorce an insane wife reveals another facet of the issue. In the Palestinian Talmud, R. Yannai relates to the level of caution that must be exercised during divorce proceedings involving a woman who has lost her mental faculties. “If she has gone mad [nishtatteit], he may not send her away. The school of R. Yanai said ‘because of gadeirah.’ ”46 R. Jacob Tam explains the term he had in his version of the Palestinian Talmud, namely gerirah, as follows: “This is how it should be interpreted—that she is attracted [nigreret] to everyone and they treat her as belonging to no one [minhag hefker].”47 Gadeirah and gerirah denote the inability of an insane woman to preserve her honor and not descend into sexual wantonness. This fear, attested already in the Talmud, also concerned halakhic authorities of the twelfth century. R. Isaac b. Moses of Vienna shared R. Tam’s concern “that a woman who can preserve her get but not herself is not to be divorced so that they will not treat her as belonging to no-one.”48 R. Isaac was apprehensive that a woman who cannot or will not restrain herself from forbidden sexual relations because of her mental state would be abandoned to wantonness if divorced. The same concern can be found in a halakhic ruling from the fourteenth century. R. Jacob b. R. Asher stressed in his Arba‘ah Turim as follows: “But if she has gone mad such that she does not know how to preserve herself, he may not divorce her even if she knows how to preserve her writ of divorce, for the sages ruled that people should not treat her as belonging to no one because she does not have a mind to watch herself.”49 120

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The fear of allowing a woman of unsound mind onto the streets after her release from her marriage was, in the view of the rabbinic elite, a threat to Jewish society. Such a woman was liable to fall victim to sexual predators, especially given her mental state. Rabbis thus sought to prevent men from divorcing wives who had lost their minds. Maharam’s responsum shows that even though life with a madwoman was sometimes unendurable, such a woman did not receive a get from her husband; she usually returned to her original family, which kept her at home. It is important to keep in mind that in traditional medieval society, women had less of a presence in public space than men did. When a woman left her home and entered the public space, she was considered to be in danger both from concrete and magical threats. This was especially the case if she was in a liminal state—on her way to the ritual bath, pregnant, or postpartum.50 A further worry regarding madwomen was that they might be sexually exploited by Jewish men or, even worse from the Jewish point of view, by non-Jews. The language of this responsum demonstrates that this fear was on Maharam’s mind, even though it is not stated explicitly. In places where Jews and non-Jews lived as neighbors, a sanction against divorcing a madwoman seems to have been insufficient. Since she could not protect herself yet was still a member of the Jewish community, special effort had to be exerted to prevent, at any price, her exposure in a public space where non-Jews were also present. This was vital in order to preserve the dignity of the Jewish community. The woman’s peculiar condition did not in any way disqualify her from remaining a member of the Jewish community. On the contrary, it required the rest of the community to take special measures to protect her from the dangers of the street. Such cases reveal a concept of gender that viewed women as potentially subject to shame, even if they themselves had lost their own subjective sense of shame. David Nirenberg has shown that sexual relations between members of two different religious groups often reflect the real or imagined power relations between them.51 This insight has broad implications in the case of Jewish madwomen. Rather than banishing such a person from the collective for the duration of her madness, medieval Jewish society took her in and restricted her freedom of movement to keep her from becoming a victim of the real and imagined sexual appetites of men in her own society and of the sexual profligates of the surrounding gentile society. Precisely because of her marginality, she became part of the center—to the point of becoming her society’s most protected member. A husband’s loss of sanity also constituted a serious challenge to the institution of marriage. A responsum of Rosh, which will be discussed further below, cites the declining mental health of a husband whose wife has 121

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petitioned him. While Rosh lived and worked for many years on the Iberian Peninsula, he was educated in Ashkenaz. The names that appear in the responsum indicate that it dates to his Ashkenazi period, before he moved west at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Another possibility is that the question was sent to him from Ashkenaz once he was already in Spain.52 The responsum lays out a tragic story. At its center is a failed marriage, one that seems to have been doomed from the start. According to the wife, she had been wedded to her husband in order to rescue her father from poverty or debts. In their penury, her parents had agreed to marry her to a man whom they knew to be mentally ill. Nevertheless, the woman admitted that she had agreed to the marriage because she presumed that she would be able come to terms with her husband’s mental state as it was at the time of their wedding. But, she claimed, his condition deteriorated. When they were first married, she had been able to live with him, but by the time she submitted her petition, life with her husband had become intolerable.53 Her depiction of his behavior includes outbursts of violence of a bestial nature: “When someone angers him, he hits, kills [horeg],54 throws, and kicks.” The deterioration in her husband’s behavior led the woman to fear that his condition might continue to worsen and have fateful consequences for her: “and madness [tippeshut] increases in him day by day, so she asks that he divorce her before he descends into complete lunacy, leaving her bound [‘agunah] [to him] forever.” This fear, its financial implications, and the fact that her fatherin-law gave her entire dowry to his son induced the woman to take action— she asked a relative to accompany her, and they went to her father-in-law’s home and stole some books (apparently very large and heavy volumes). The initial matter taken up by Rosh was whether the wife had the right to steal the books or had to return them and ensure her livelihood by other means. Only subsequently did he address the possibility of divorce. As in other cases we have seen, the parties opposing the sane spouse were the mad spouse’s relatives. In this instance, it was the husband’s father—evidence that the husband’s condition was indeed serious enough to prevent him from being involved in the litigation himself. The father’s depiction of his son’s condition differed from that of the wife: “Reuben responds: ‘You knew him [=his condition] before, and you considered [it] and accepted; he also is not raving mad [metoraf ], though he is not conversant with the goingson of the world [be-tiv ha-‘olam].” In his response, the father thus made two claims: first that his daughter-in-law could have refused to marry his son. She knew him before the marriage and was aware of his condition, so she was capable of evaluating whether she would or would not be able to live with him. This claim is a bit puzzling given the fact that the wife’s testimony 122

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makes it clear that, from her point of view, she had little choice but to agree to the marriage—her father and her husband’s father prearranged the marriage, and she and her husband were no more than human puppets. Second, the father portrayed his son as not “not raving mad, though he is not conversant with the goings-on of the world.” This was his attempt to mitigate the term metoraf used by the wife, a term that contains strong associations with violence. The father preferred a description that indicated low cognitive ability with no connotation of violence. Rosh’s ruling displays his concern about broadening the grounds for divorce set out in the Mishnah. Against this background, despite the wife’s fearing for her life, he did not believe that the husband should be compelled to give her a get. It is still important to bear in mind that a coerced divorce would have required the husband not only to divorce his wife but also to pay her ketubbah, while an uncompelled divorce would have left the wife without compensation. Rosh may well have also rejected the wife’s request for a compelled divorce in order to pressure her to return the books she had taken from her father-in-law. But, in any case, in principle Rosh’s ruling was that madness, even when it manifests itself violently, does not fall under the grounds for divorce enumerated in the Mishnah.55 The two examples adduced here illustrate the efforts made by halakhic authorities to preserve marriages at almost any cost. The latter case shows that the price was sometimes a very heavy one economically and especially personally. Nevertheless, in the absence of a modern system of hospitals and medical care, there was no way to remove such burdens from families or from individuals who had lost their minds; the latter lived in and cast their shadows over personal and interpersonal space.

Possessory Power and Criminal Liability An important issue that arises time and again in responsa literature is the question of whether a person categorized as insane is a legal persona when it comes to owning property. Can he or she receive a gift or inherit money and property? If so, what is such a person capable of doing with these gifts? In considering such questions, halakhic authorities define the extent to which a madman or madwoman is considered a possessory entity. In general, this depended on the extent to which they were rational and able to understand what was happening around them. For example, in a responsum written by Maharam concerning a madman who inherited a piece of property, we find that in addition to delineating the extent to which he was a legal person for the purpose of owning property, the adjudicator considered other social 123

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issues with significance for the present discussion. The problem faced by the petitioners was whether to appoint a guardian: “You asked me to render my opinion about a madman [shoteh] who inherited property in a place that has no rabbinic court—can witnesses see him in his place and testify in a place where there is a rabbinic court so that it can appoint a trustee to sell [the property] to provide for his sustenance?”56 There was no rabbinic court in the madman’s place of residence, so the court that heard the case required the services of two reliable men who could go see the madman, examine him, and testify as to whether he was indeed insane. With that information in hand, these non-expert but reliable witnesses were required to report to the court so that it could rule, on the basis of their testimony, that he was indeed mad. The court could then appoint a trustee who could sell the property in order to provide for the madman. It may be that the problem behind the question was even more complicated. Presumably the madman had been provided for by his family before receiving his inheritance. Once he inherited property, the purpose of appointing a trustee and of the testimony that would enable the appointment was to relieve the family or community of responsibility for supporting him. The madman in question apparently could not communicate coherently; to use Rosh’s language, he was “not conversant with the goings-on of the world.” Since he could not take advantage of the economic potential of his inheritance in order to provide for his livelihood, the court was asked to appoint a trustee. The question does not tell us anything clear about social attitudes to this exceptional person, but the discussion of the issue indicates that the madman was a burden on society, and that the community was eager to go through a complicated legal process in order to divest itself of this responsibility. In the case before us, no “professional” or medical diagnosis of the subject’s mental condition was required. The two qualified witnesses sufficed for the court. The assumption was that a person who is truly totally insane does not require a professional diagnosis for the determination of his legal status; a reasonable person’s opinion is enough. This view is quite different from what we saw in the case of lepers, where other lepers, religious authorities, and, later, doctors diagnosed the condition. The responsum indicates that the court saw no need for a professional diagnosis. The responsum is also enlightening about the extent of the support that was given to a madman when he had money under the supervision of a trustee: “And he is even given a wife if he is capable [bar hakhi], as it is said in chapter Heresh regarding the deaf man who lived in the neighborhood of R. Melakhiu.”57 Maharam noted that beyond the madman’s daily needs, if it was necessary and the madman was capable—that is, sufficiently sane—not 124

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only were women servants hired to serve him, but he was even given a wife. Maharam’s proof-text was a Talmudic story from the Babylonian Talmud tractate Yevamot about a deaf man who lived near R. Melakhiu. The man married, paying a large sum as part of his marriage contract. Sometimes the situation was reversed—a person who owned property lost his mind, and it was necessary to take special legal action to allow the court to dispose of his property as if he were dead or in debt, so as to provide for his dependents. R. Hezekiah b. Jacob of Magdeburg, Maharam’s contemporary and colleague, wrote: “The court dips into the assets of one who has gone mad to feed and provide for his sons and daughters . . . and if they said ‘do not bury him [=pay burial costs] from his assets’ they are not to be obeyed, for it is not up to them [to decide] that he enrich his sons and cast himself on the public.”58 R. Hezekiah here laid out the priorities with regard to the use of the madman’s assets and set forth the extent to which the court could be involved with his assets. The appointment of a trustee for a person who could not take advantage of his assets due to mental illness was a common and accepted remedy in both Jewish and Christian society. The thirteenth-century English jurist Henry de Bracton referred to it explicitly: [I]f the demandant is insane (furiosus) or of unsound mind [non sanae mentis] so that he knows not how to understand (discernere nesciat) or has no understanding at all [nullam habeat discretionem], for such men are not far removed from brute beasts which lack reason. . . . They cannot acquire property while they are mad or when they are not sound in mind [sane mentis] because they cannot consent, nor can they alien[ate] or give what they acquired because they can no more consent to an alienation than to an acquisition, but they retain seisin because they cannot change the animus they had when they were of sound mind. . . . To such men tutor or curator must of necessity be given. But what is to be said of a fool [fatuo]? A fool may acquire provided he has understanding in some matters. To such [a person] a curator is also given unless indeed he expressly renounces, because one does not acquire against one’s express will.59

Bracton distinguished between a lunatic (furiosus) and a fool (fatuo). In his view, there is no difference between a lunatic and an animal, so a trustee must be appointed to care for him. The use of the term furiosus, that is, a person who suffers from furor, attacks of fury, would seem to indicate that the violent madman is under discussion. 125

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As we have seen, responsibility for financial support of the insane fell, in general, on the afflicted’s close family and relatives or on guardians and court trustees who could handle the person’s affairs. The question posed to Maharam, and his response, cast light on the degree of leeway granted to these trustees and on the range of needs that they had to meet for those under their care. The extent to which madmen and fools were responsible for their actions, criminal acts in particular, also exercised the minds of halakhists.60 The issue was discussed widely in literature that addressed legal aspects of mental deficiency and the criminal liability of mentally imbalanced persons.61 This liability, like the other categories discussed above, was seen to be intimately connected to the question of the extent of mindfulness that could be attributed to a madman. The concept of criminal liability assumes that human beings have free will and can control their actions. The goals of punishment are also derived from this assumption. The punishment imposed on a person who has violated the criminal code includes an element of retribution and revenge, but it is also meant to teach the transgressor what the “correct” choice is so that he can make a better choice the next time he finds himself in the same situation. The necessary corollary is that a person who is mentally disturbed is not responsible for his actions, and there is no point in imposing a punishment to educate him. Since in the Middle Ages the assumption was that some external force inhabited the insane person’s body or possessed his soul, or that disease had affected his mind, he or she was considered to lack free will and the ability to make rational decisions. In fact, English Common Law, which has its roots in the medieval period, requires criminal intent (objective and, later, subjective) for an act to be considered criminal. Categorizing a person as insane thus deprives that person of the ability to have intent or to understand the significance of his or her actions. These principles are called mens rea. German law, as it appears in medieval legal compendia, also assigned diminished criminal liability to the mentally deficient. One of these works, Sachsenspiegel, states that if a madman or simpleminded person causes damage of any sort, that person’s legal guardian must compensate the victim.62

Madness in the Public Space “One Who Walks Down the Street Rending His Garments” In contrast with the severe measures taken against the violently insane, madmen who presented no danger to themselves or to others and who did not 126

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damage property were usually allowed to roam freely in the streets of medieval towns. Some of these insane individuals supported themselves by begging, which helped foster the association of madness with indigence and beggaring in the public consciousness.63 Many sources speak of madmen and madwomen who wandered outside half-naked or dressed in ways not in accord with contemporary mores. As we have seen, the link between madness and nakedness led observers to conclude that the insane had no shame and that it was thus reasonable to assume that they also lacked other fundamental human qualities. Many texts portray madmen as people rejected by adult society because of the repugnance and fear they elicited, and who kept company with children. Indeed, as Sander Gilman has shown, medieval iconography often displays the madman surrounded by children.64 Evidence of the connection between madness, nakedness, and keeping company with children appears in a passage in the thirteenth-century Jewish homiletic compendium Yalkut Shim‘oni. This midrashic collection was apparently compiled in Frankfurt in the mid-thirteenth century by a Rabbi Shimon about whom we know very little. The work is basically a midrashic digest based on earlier works. In the section dedicated to the tales of King David in the Book of Samuel the Yalkut editor recounts a dialogue between King David and God about the madman’s place in the world. “What benefit is there to this madman [shoteh]? A man walks down the street ripping his garments, and children laugh at him and run after him and the people make fun of him—is this pleasing to You? God said to David: David, are you complaining about madness [shetut]? You will need it someday!” R. Simeon’s description of the madman tearing his garments, the children’s play, and the adults’ poking fun are not found in any of the sources of the Yalkut Shim‘oni. Presumably these elements were added by R. Simeon and reflect approaches to the mad from his own times in the urban setting of medieval Germany. 65 Further evidence of the marginality attributed to the insane in public space can be found in an injunction in Sefer Hasidim concerning how to protect oneself from being extorted by a threat of witchcraft: “He who has a [non-Jewish] manservant or maidservant who threatens violently that if he does not free him he will cast a spell on him, better that he should free him.66 . . . If there is a wizard or witch who asks him [for money], he should not hesitate to give them a pashut or two so that that they will not enchant him, just as people give to demons and madmen [meshugga‘im] so that they will not harm them.”67 The language of this injunction is a bit obscure, but the fear of the magical acumen of gentiles in general and of gentile servants (Christians or pagans) 127

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in particular, emerges clearly.68 Also evident is a fear of demons and madmen and the custom to give such people thought to be possessed by demons money as a prophylactic against evil magic. Sefer Hasidim instructs its readers to offer a small donation, for the term pashut refers to a coin of small value. This indicates that madmen were seen as threats on the same level as demons and witches; they could thus extort money from the public. Furthermore, the insane were classified as parasitic, equated with beggars who lived off the small coins people gave them. The collocation of madmen with servants and demons demonstrates their marginal status in society. The banishment of madmen from the center of society and their inclusion among elements that threaten it is also reflected in an ethical injunction from the Rosh’s school: “Do not speak with a fool [meholel] or madman [meshugga‘] so that he will not take your words and belittle them.”69 Words uttered by a person are intended for a specific purpose (for example, communication with another person or prayer). The madman, by his very presence or by his peculiar response, misconstrues the intention of the speaker and makes whatever he says sound ridiculous. What is more, the madman’s inconsistent speech is constructed out of phrases heard in different places, which he subsequently uses in contexts that may serve to dishonor the person who originally said them. Such dishonor may be caused both by his words being used in inappropriate ways and from the very fact that he engaged in conversation with a madman. Clearly, the presence of the insane in “healthy” society caused unease, and society had difficulty deciding how to react to the various manifestations of madness. Despite the foregoing, and in contrast with the relatively abundant references in Christian texts, medieval Hebrew texts contain scant information about madmen in the public space. Can this be taken to mean that Jewish madmen and madwomen did not wander unrestrained? Obviously not— lack of evidence is not evidence. But it is certainly possible that Jews sought to prevent, or at least limit, the public presence of insane Jews. A possible motivation might have been that Jews preferred to cope with their mentally ill brethren within the confines of their own communities.70 The absence of evidence of communal institutions for the care of the mentally disturbed brings us to a model that anthropologist Yehuda Goodman has proposed regarding marginal individuals in modern traditional societies. Goodman calls such individuals “permanent children” or “fully dependent spouses.” Such an individual is generally cared for within the protected realm of the nuclear family, apparently with the assistance and support of the community.71 Communities were at times very apprehensive about having to shoulder the burden for caring for such individuals, and they took steps 128

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to prevent them from reproducing. This attitude was a direct consequence of the fact that medieval European Jewry lived as a religious minority that, despite its integration into the European fabric, nevertheless existed as a marginal community. As such, Jewish societies felt themselves—correctly or not—to be under constant surveillance by their non-Jewish neighbors. It would hardly be far-fetched to presume that Jews were apprehensive about exposing their mentally ill or impaired sons, and especially their daughters, to public view. This fear was not just of exposure. It was also reasonable for them to be anxious that a free-roaming Jewish madman might attack Christians or deface their sacred objects, buildings, or sites. Even an innocent remark or act might be interpreted as an offense by Christians seeking a pretext to attack Jews. Apprehension about the serious consequences of such an incident for the Jewish community might have led Jews to do all they could to confine those thought to be mentally ill or of unsound mind within the family and community. Indeed, when a Jew was accused of publicly harming or insulting a Christian person or sacred object, the common Jewish defense was that the offender was insane and that the Jewish community as a whole should not be held accountable.72 It is hardly surprising, then, that we have fewer Jewish than Christian testimonies about Jewish madmen and madwomen begging naked in the streets. This may also explain why the narrator of the exemplum story about the Jew who feigned madness, discussed earlier, located the story in a distant land.

Sacred Space—Madmen in the Synagogue As we have seen in the public spaces and streets of medieval European cities, Jews had limited ability or a complete lack of authority to establish boundaries or make rules. This, however, was not the case in their own sacred space. There, Jews generally enjoyed cultural and religious autonomy. Unfortunately, in this realm we also suffer from a paucity of information about attitudes toward the insane. Since the insane, especially those who were serene, circulated in Jewish society in some numbers, the question of contact between them and objects or spaces to which sanctity was attributed had to be addressed. Fear of such contact was shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Early Christian sources indicate anxiety about contact or proximity between sacred and ritual objects and individuals perceived to be possessed by demons. Such contact was considered dangerous and liable to lead to desecration of the objects.73 Texts from the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period also evince concern about contact between the insane 129

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and the sacred. Thomas More (1478–1535), one of England’s leading humanists at the dawn of the early modern period, wrote about how he used his religious authority to evict a madman who had entered his church. The individual in question had been released from London’s St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital for the mentally disturbed following treatment that was believed to have cured him. But when he entered the church where More prayed, he proceeded to peek under the dresses of women during the service, lifted their skirts above their heads when they genuflected, and made odd noises during silent prayer. More had him ejected and flogged.74 Muslim texts bear witness to the barring of madmen from mosques. Michael Dols describes the experiences of the Sufi mystic Abu Sa‘id Abu al-Khayr (967–1049). His eccentric and ascetic behavior led the people of his city, who at first did not believe in his holiness, to label him a madman. They had banished him from the mosque during prayers, and the worshipers refused to continue with devotions until he had left the sacred precinct.75 At the same time, sacred objects imbued with divine powers were used by religious authorities to cure people thought to be suffering from possession and madness. Sefer Hasidim contains a demand not only to evict madmen from synagogues but also to prevent them from entering in the first place: “ ‘Should this fellow enter my house?’ (I Sam. 21:16) and it is written ‘to rave [lehishtaggea‘] for me’ (ibid.), a fortiori that [we] should not allow a madman to enter a synagogue. Moreover, he disturbs concentration [kavvanot] and people laugh at him.”76 This brief injunction reflects the apprehension noted above. The fear expressed here is of the entry of the itinerant madman from public space into the synagogue. The prohibition against his entry should be understood against the background of the special concern displayed by the author of Sefer Hasidim for sacred space and the quality of the liturgical activity of the community of worshipers gathered within it. It is evident that the author believed that the madman would disturb the worshipers and detract from their concentration. This brief passage is constructed as a homily based on verses from the book of Samuel examined above. The story in Samuel concludes with a royal order banishing David from the king’s palace but leaving him unharmed. Sefer Hasidim bases the injunction to keep madmen out of synagogues on the exegetical principle of a fortiori.77 If David, who was not really mad but only pretended to be so, was banished from the palace of the human king Achish, all the more so should a real madman be banished from a synagogue, which is the home of the King of Kings. Sefer Hasidim’s reading 130

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obscures the positive, life-saving aspect of madness as expressed in the story of David and focuses solely on the problematic aspects of insanity. What sort of mad behavior marred the concentration of the worshipers? What led them to laugh at the madman? What was so disturbing about his presence in the synagogue? No clear answers are offered in the injunction cited above; rather, they should be sought in the biblical verses that the passage cites, in the context in which this portion appears in Sefer Hasidim, and in our analysis up to this point. The verses and early midrashim regarding David’s feint of madness tell us the symptoms he mimicked to show that he was insane: loud screams, defacement of property, and physiognomic changes in his countenance that indicated the mental metamorphosis that he had ostensibly undergone. These aspects of David’s behavior are a key to understanding the typical behavior of the madman to which the author of Sefer Hasidim reacted. According to these symptoms, it is possible to discern which behaviors typical of the insane caused the author to be concerned about the presence of madmen in sacred space. An adjacent section lays out the proper behavior of the worshiper and concludes: “Since it is impossible to concentrate except in still silence [bi-demamah dakkah], when praying there must be quiet so that one can concentrate.”78 Sefer Hasidim thus views silence as a condition for the acceptance of public prayer—concentration is necessary for acceptance and it is unattainable without silence. Avraham Grossman has stressed that tone cannot exaggerate the importance of prayer in the religious outlook of the German Pietists. No other medieval Jewish group, he asserts, made prayer, the precise formulation of it, the concentration required for it, and the place in which it was practiced so central both in theory and in daily religious practice.79 Nevertheless, broader Jewish circles have left testimonies to their belief that silence was vital for prayer and for its acceptance in heaven.80 The demand can be found both in ethical literature and in didactic exempla included in anthologies of stories for preachers and clerics who addressed this issue. These stories stress that distraction, frivolity, and restlessness at prayer are Satan’s work.81 That being the case with the behaviors typically attributed to the mad (even the most serene of them), it is hardly surprising that the author of Sefer Hasidim was perturbed by the presence of a madman in a house of prayer, and that he viewed the man’s behavior as detrimental to concentration and to the quality of prayers uttered there. But was it only the need for attentiveness in prayer that led the madman to be labeled as one who disturbs concentration and therefore as one who 131

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should be barred from the synagogue? A deeper look shows that the need for silence and concentration was not the only motive. The public’s reaction to the madman’s behavior, to the noises he made, and to the associations that those noises elicited must also be taken into account in evaluating the reasons for the ban declared by Sefer Hasidim. Sefer Hasidim’s author seems to have discerned not only the fear of ridicule into his short discussion about the madman’s admittance into the synagogue but there is a sexual cast to the behavior of the insane as well. This was another reason for blocking his entry into the sacred space. The diction used in his description of the madman seems to indicate this: “He disturbs concentration and people laugh [mesahakin] at him.” The word mesahakin can be taken to mean that the worshipers mock the madman or encourage him to carry on his inane behavior for their entertainment, which was the reading presented above. But sehok (or tzehok) is also used in manifestly sexual contexts. As noted above, one of the characteristic acts of the madman in the view of the medieval folk was disrobement and nakedness. To this we may add the possibility of sexually overt gestures that may have been the reason of the madman’s mockery. This, too, must have been a factor in the author’s precept that madmen should be kept out of the synagogue. In sacred space, nudity and extroverted sexual gestures were especially intolerable.82 Even though the precept cited here does not mention nudity, its placement in Sefer Hasidim shows that the author had this in mind.83 The section that immediately follows the one under discussion addresses partial nudity in the synagogue: “He whose garments are torn and whose chest is exposed, or whose ribs and underarms are exposed, cannot stand before the Torah scroll or open and close the ark, because his flesh is exposed. And it is inconceivable that one be exposed in front of the [Torah] scroll or the ark.”84 This precept specifies what sort of bodily exposure Sefer Hasidim maintains can and cannot be tolerated in the synagogue. The book’s author takes a stringent position, forbidding the baring of parts of the body that are usually clothed in sacred space more generally, and in front of the Torah scroll and ark more specifically. Sefer Hasidim thus seeks to bar madmen from the synagogue for a number of related reasons, all ultimately connected to the kind of behavior that the author sees as typical of the insane, as expressed in the biblical verses he cites and in the broader context in which he places this precept. The madman does not obey the dress code incumbent on those who enter sacred space. The sounds he makes may elicit laughter and ridicule, and are overall improper; they have no place in the synagogue, and the noise he produces interferes with the concentration required of worshipers and disturbs the 132

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harmony and holiness of the synagogue. Given all this, the madman must not be allowed to enter the synagogue in the first place.85

The Holy Madman As we have seen by way of generalization, madmen were not tolerated in sacred space. Still, the insane sometimes found a place in sacred space in the role of the holy madman. Both Eastern and Western Christian texts indicate that, under certain circumstances, “abnormal” behavior usually taken to signal madness was instead taken as evidence of sublime religious qualities. In other words, some writers viewed the madman as a person who had been privileged with a special divine dispensation or with a simple and correct understanding of God’s will.86 The view of him as a saint was not common, but it did exist. Some Christian writers even wrote biographies of such people, with the intention of presenting them as exemplars of spirituality. I have yet to find, however, any trace of a similar phenomenon in Jewish sources. This absence requires an explanation, and it seems to be rooted in the religious significance of knowledge in Judaism. In Christian theology, due to the original sin (peccatum originalis) mankind was damned, expelled from paradise, and deprived of immortality. Only the agony and death of Christ on the cross offered atonement for Adam and Eve’s transgression in eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The implication of this central theological fact is that knowledge is, in some sense, identified with sin. This made it possible to claim that a person without knowledge—or, rationality—was closer to the primal state of humankind in Eden, before the Fall. Medieval Christianity stressed mystery—that is, to believe the Christian articles of faith, one had to set aside rationality. The different natures of Christ—divine and human—were considered a mystery, and believing in them required abandoning rationality and resorting to faith alone. The Christian believer was required to have faith in miracles occurring daily, such as the one that took place each time she celebrated mass and received the Eucharist. She was adjured to believe that the wine and wafer literally transubstantiated into the body and blood of Jesus—not symbolically, but in actual fact. In this context, Christians could conclude that a person lacking in knowledge and rationality, a person in whom they were considered concealed, was a person of greater faith and religious attainment. Such a person’s spiritual state and actions would thus be closer to the “truth,” since she did not require the mediation of knowledge or rationality, which have their sources in sin. The boundary between the person whom society called mad, whose behavior and actions were condemned by society, and the person who was 133

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admired, valued, and called saintly for the very same behavior, was a fuzzy one, as Aviad Kleinberg has shown in his analysis of the tales of Brother Ginepro.87 In contrast, Judaism (at least until the popular emergence of Kabbalah in the later medieval era) places study and knowledge at its center, both in its principles of belief and its ritual, and eschews mystery in its central theological precepts. This seems to have precluded a cult of the saintly madman. Furthermore, in the Jewish view, a state in which knowledge or rationality is imperfect is problematic to the point that a term from the same semantic field as “madness,” teruf, which means an extreme state of confusion, is applied largely to unstable states of mind that interfere with the proper observance of ritual in general and prayer specifically.88 The fact that Jews believe that prophecy ended with the destruction of the Temple means that they cannot easily attribute prophetic vision to people who claim to hear divine voices. This is not to say, of course, that Judaism lacks mystical aspects or to claim that it is a completely rational religion. In fact, Judaism has had its share of mystics, mystical experiences, and forms of quasi-prophecy throughout history. Nevertheless, Jews—or at least halakhic authorities— have tended to reject those claiming divine communication if the claimant is unable to or does not adhere to Jewish law, the observance of which requires sound rational faculties. Or, at the very least, such individuals have needed to have enough knowledge to give convincing arguments as to why ha­lakhic precepts should be abandoned or changed (e.g., Shabbetai Zevi). This is because the centrality of knowledge, intention, and rationality, at least in daily ritual practice, is much more salient in Judaism than in Christianity. It is hardly surprising, then, that medieval Jewish writers did not attribute importance and sanctity to those whose behavior seemed to indicate a lack of understanding or rationality. On the whole, however, medieval society, both Jewish and Christian, sought to distance and remove the madman from the company of “normal” people. We have not yet seen any significant difference between Jews and Christians, the phenomenon of the holy madman aside. Everyone was apprehensive about contact with the insane and mocked their behavior. Madmen were in some cases confined, and in others allowed to wander freely. They served as a warped mirror image of normative society that people sought to avoid. Yet, in the absence of modern means of supervision, many madmen and fools walked among the healthy in the Middle Ages, where they often became the object of ridicule by both children and adults. Some of the mad wandered the streets because the only way they could obtain a livelihood was to beg; others, generally the most severely disturbed, were expelled 134

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from their families and communities. Some elements in society (such as the German Pietists) expressed concern about the entry of the insane into sacred space. The overtly sexual behavior of some madmen elicited a strongly negative reaction. Disrobement, noisemaking, and obscene gesturing, all associated with madness, goaded society into viewing the insane as undermining social stability. This chapter has been devoted to madness, the behavior of the insane, and society’s attitudes toward the insane, as examined through the prism of texts from a variety of genres. After surveying the manifestations and characteristics of madness as presented in these sources, we have sought to understand how medieval society grasped the reasons behind why people behaved insanely—out of extreme anger or sorrow, or because of magical influences. Sometimes, defining someone as mad required no more than two witnesses without any medical training; it was sufficient that a person depart significantly from standard behavior to be considered insane. Madness was, as it continues to be, a relative category, because every society sets its own standards for labeling people mad. That being said, certain kinds of behavior associated with madness are common to nearly all societies. Medieval society related to madmen differently in different spaces—domestic, public, and sacred. They were banished from sacred space, both because their presence disturbed prayer and study and because their presence was thought to have a magical effect. They were also denied sanction, or their capacity was circumscribed in accordance with their mental condition, to perform certain acts of legal force in public space—they could not do business, nor could they buy, sell, inherit, or bequeath goods and property. So long as they were not a danger to themselves or others, the presence of madmen and madwomen in medieval society was tolerated in the public sphere; they were considered to be part of the world of children, who were of lesser mind than adults. Notably, Jewish society opined that the presence of madwomen (as opposed to madmen) in public space constituted a danger, both to the women themselves and to the Jewish community in which they lived. Jewish halakhic authorities thus made every effort to keep madwomen out of public areas and restrict them to the private domain. This gender distinction grew out of the concern that madwomen could not be expected to conform to communal standards of sexual modesty and that their honor— which was identified with the honor of the Jewish public as a whole—would be violated. The primary burden for the care of the insane fell on the family. Families had to tolerate life with a mad spouse or child despite its difficulties and in 135

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spite of the high personal price the sane members of the family had to pay. It has been demonstrated how families related to their insane members and what they thought about them. Jewish communities apparently lacked institutions devoted to their care. This fact, together with apprehension about the presence of the insane in public space, meant that the burden of care fell first on the family, and it was only when the family was incapable or absent that the community and its agents assumed the task. In medieval Jewish society, prayer and study, which took place in the sacred space, were central activities, with commercial dealings falling not far behind. The banishment of madmen and madwomen from these areas, or at least the attempt to do so, indicates that in medieval Jewish communities madness was a most severe disability. Ostensibly easy to diagnose, it was difficult to understand and almost impossible to cope with and treat. Insanity was a nexus for magical beliefs and associated fears, problematic behavior, shamelessness, and the lack of rationality and mindfulness so vital to human existence, thus making the mentally disturbed a puzzle, a dilemma, and a burden for the sane.

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The Physically Impaired

I stumbled all my years from so much weeping and so many troubles that my eyes dimmed in their sockets. I have therefore asked one of my friends to write to you, my colleague R. Isaac b. R. Moses; I dictate and he writes it down. I will respond to you in brief.

In this touching opening to a responsum addressed in the second decade of the thirteenth century to R. Isaac ben Moshe of Vienna (“Or Zarua‘”), his older contemporary, Ravyah (R. Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi of Bonn), wrote of his geriatric affliction: blindness. Beyond forcing him to limit his intellectual activity, his loss of sight disrupted his life and caused him considerable distress, as is evident in these few short lines.1 Tellingly, he stated that his tears and sorrow were a cause of, not just a reaction to, his disability. In another passage, Ravyah related that his eyesight dimmed because of his grief over a traumatic event—the martyrdom at the stake of his brother, R. Uri b. R. Joel ha-Levi, in the year 1216.2 Even if Ravyah wrote with some literary license, whatever exaggeration he allowed himself was grounded in the prevailing belief of ancient and medieval times that heavy weeping could cause blindness. A passage on the subject of old age in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Shabbat stresses that an increase in crying at an advanced age brings on blindness.3 Commenting on this passage, the northern French biblical and Talmudic exegete Rashi (d. 1105) writes: “ ‘And the clouds come back again’ (Eccl. 12:2)—a dimming of the eyes will come and conceal the light, for his weeping will increase in his old age due to a weakening of strength and his many troubles.” Indeed Rashi himself may have revealed here some of 137

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his own feelings on the matter. In his old age, during the final decade of his life, Rashi witnessed the horrifying massacres of northern French and Ashkenazi Jewry during the tragic events of the First Crusade (1096), but nevertheless, this may not serve as proof to Rashi’s old age blindness. Blindness and difficulty walking (“I stumbled”), both cited by Ravyah, are only two potential impairments that can make a previously independent individual disabled and reliant on the help of others. In other words, these and other handicaps can marginalize someone who was previously at the center of society. This chapter and the next will explore the lot of medieval Ashkenazi Jews who found themselves on the margins of society because of physical disability. This book’s two previous sections were devoted to specific types of disorders—leprosy and madness. This section is more anthological in its approach and focuses on social attitudes toward various kinds of disabilities. Ostensibly, each disability should be accorded separate treatment, but this is not possible for two reasons. First, the amount of material available on each specific condition is limited and thus insufficient for an in-depth examination. Second, even today we tend to view disabled individuals collectively. For example, legislation mandating accessibility for the disabled refers to them as a single group, without reference to the type of disability. Having said this, it should be noted that society, a heterogeneous entity, has historically regarded and in many ways still regards the disabled, despite the differences among them, as a heterogeneous group composed of several subgroups. Just as legislation attempting to secure the rights of disabled individuals has only recently become part and parcel of the legal code in western society, so too the historical study of impaired and disabled individuals is also still in its infancy.4 This is especially true of Jewish studies, and with relation to the medieval period. In embarking on a historical study, it bears noting that there are significant challenges to be faced. Up-to-date demographic studies conducted both in the early 1990s and more recently (2011) by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank indicate that more than 1 billion individuals worldwide—about 20 percent of the world’s population—currently suffers from a disability that impinges to some extent on their lives.5 The absence of good demographic studies on the European Middle Ages leaves us in the realm of speculation with regard to this period. Nevertheless, as we have seen when discussing the data that can be culled from medieval cemeteries, there is no reason to believe that in the past the proportion of disabled individuals was any lower, even if we do not have precise data. In fact, given the capabilities of modern medicine, we should perhaps assume that the proportion of disabled individuals was even higher in the past than it is now. At the same time, we should also consider that 138

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living with a physical limitation over an extended period of time was more difficult in the past and therefore meant that disabled individuals in past societies had a lower life expectancy.6 Physical handicaps, particularly those affecting the legs and feet that make it difficult to walk, were among the most common disabilities in the Middle Ages, as they continued to be into modern times. With the absence of accurate demographic and statistical data about this time period we are not able to say to what extent mobility impairments were prevalent. A quick glance at the artistic works of the mid-sixteenth-century Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) for example, in his famous work The Battle between Carnival and Lent may teach us about the variety and the relative prevalence of these afflictions, but this cannot be taken as empirical evidence. In Ronald Finucane’s book The Rescue of the Innocents, on medieval miracles involving children that were ascribed to the intercession of Christian saints, he divides the handicapped children into separate categories with regard to their pleas to saints.7 The physically handicapped were constant presences at saints’ tombs. This too can be seen in medieval art, where the motif was an identifying feature of saints’ tombs where miracles were believed to have taken place. A similarity can be found in the portrayals of beggars in medieval Christian art in Western Europe. Michel Mollat, in his study of the poor and poverty in medieval Western Europe, stressed the high correlation between poverty, begging, and illnesses, especially disabling ones.8 It is important to remember that in the Middle Ages, conditions like bone fractures, inflamed cuts, and bruises were liable to lead to at least short-term disability. Sometimes, if complications set in or the bone was set unprofessionally, the injury could cause a permanent handicap. Conditions that today seem barely worth mentioning, or which at the most cause short-term discomfort, could cause permanent disability in medieval times. This resulted from the high incidence of broken limbs and improper healing due to a paucity of medical knowledge, limited access to trained medical practitioners, nutritional deficiencies, and the lack of proper medical and hygienic conditions for broad swathes of the population. In the premodern period, a fracture that was not properly treated led, in the best-case scenario, to disability in the form of permanent limited mobility, requiring a crutch, prosthesis, or sometimes the permanent assistance of another person. In the worst-case scenario, it could lead to infection, gangrene, and death. In the mid-thirteenth century, R. Isaac b. Moses of Vienna described various types of footwear, including prosthetics available in his time, in his laws of halitzah.9 The possible pervasiveness of disabilities of the legs and feet raises the question of how exceptional a sight such a person was and to what extent he or she was labeled by others. Mollat found it difficult to determine 139

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whether the primary causes of poverty for the disabled were biological or economic. In a society in which the majority of individuals secured income through manual labor, and in which commerce required mobility, a disabled individual had serious trouble being self-sufficient. Nevertheless, we should not reject out of hand the assertion that when, due to pressures in the thirteenth century, many Jews turned to pawnbroking and lending money at interest, physical disability became less of a barrier to making a livelihood. The scholarly field at the nexus between disability studies and medieval studies is in its nascent stages. This part of the book contributes to this discussion through the lens of medieval Jewish studies. Before beginning our analysis, we must first clarify the term “disability,” for it is at the heart of this third section of the book. In her 2006 pioneering study Disability in Medieval Europe, mentioned briefly in the introduction, Irene Metzler makes an essential distinction between disability and impairment: One of the issues central to my research is the question whether we can at all refer to medieval “disabled” persons, or whether we are dealing historically with medieval “impaired” persons who might not share much of the “special needs” status of their modern counterparts. It is therefore preferable to speak of “impairment” during the medieval period, rather than of “disability”, which implies certain social and cultural connotations that medieval impaired persons may not have shared with modern impaired people. . . . Any historical approach to “impairment” or “disability” should therefore explore not just past medical or biological theories of impairment, but tie these in with contemporary cultural notions, such as religious and philosophical ideas during the Middle Ages.10

Metzler’s book has set very high standards for discussing disability and physical impairment in medieval Europe. To be sure, it is a groundbreaking work, and as the author suggests, she limits herself only to the philosophical, literal, and theological aspects of the subject, leaving the social aspects to a later monograph. I have followed a different path and chose to integrate the discussions.11 This section in the book will address attitudes as expressed in behavior toward the disabled, such as fear and revulsion, as well as the support and comfort impaired individuals received from medieval Jewish society and from its respective leadership. Such attitudes find expression in sources touching on two principal arenas—the interpersonal and the public-sacral. So as not 140

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to get caught up in generalizations, I will distinguish among several types of disabilities: physical handicaps (in particular those affecting mobility), blindness, and body disfigurements.

The Ideal of a Whole Body and the Meaning of Impairment Research on the body and its social meanings has recently made considerable advances. Scholars such as Brian Turner and Anthony Giddens have cast light on the importance of the image and representations of the body as tools for understanding societies and as mirrors of social transformations.12 This field has also made great strides in Jewish studies, especially in the work of Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Daniel Abrams. For example, the anthropomorphism of God and its rejection have had important implications on the way in which both the intact and injured human body was perceived in religious writings,13 creating the perception that the whole human body mirrors a whole personality, serves as an implement for the realization of God’s will in the world, and reflects the “image of God” in miniature. In the chapter about creation in Genesis we read how man is created in the tzelem (image) of God (Gen.1:27). This belief often shaped the perception of bodily defects, the valuestatus and social role of the deformed person, and society’s attitudes toward such a person. If indeed God is somehow personified by man, what is an impaired man? Another aspect of body image that preoccupied medieval Christian theologians was the necessity of the physical body for salvation and resurrection. Carolyn Walker-Bynum has shown in her work that this belief cast a pall over the cult of saints’ relics.14 Nevertheless it goes without saying that although saints were revered despite their impairments or their martyred bodies that suffered disfigurement, the ideal of a whole and unblemished body prevailed in both Christianity and Judaism. A whole and intact body was thought to be a fine vessel through which to worship God and carry out the commandments. Thus, once disabled or impaired it was logical to think of such a body as imperfect and speculate as to the reason it was struck by disabling situations.

Disability and Sin A fundamental issue at the epicenter of the socioreligious status of disability is the relationship between disability and sin. A connection between the two 141

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can be traced as far back as the Bible. Judith Z. Abrams explains that in some cases, the deformity symbolized both the cause of the sin and the sufferer’s unwillingness to change his or her behavior. In passages such as “do not take bribes, for bribes blind the clear-sighted and upset the pleas of those who are in the right” (Ex. 23:8) or “you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just” (Deut. 16:19), the biblical author compares the sinful situation caused by offering and accepting a bribe to the impairment caused by blindness. Alternatively, these verses portray the sinner whose impairment (the symbolic blindness of a bribed judge) causes a sin (biased or “blind” judgment).15 In any event the nexus between sin and impairment is very clear. The most explicit discussion on bodily impairments in the bible is, of course, in Leviticus. Priests officiating in the cult of the tabernacle and later in the temple were required to be unblemished, and a list of impairments and blemishes is put forth in the Levitical text. Jacob Milgrom noted the similarity between the list of physical defects that disqualified a man born into the priestly class from serving in the Temple and the physical flaws that disqualified an animal from being offered as a sacrifice.16 This resemblance stems from Leviticus’s fundamental view that wholeness is a prerequisite for holiness.17 It would be overly hasty to jump to conclusions about a connection between deformity and sin, and Abrams is no doubt correct in maintaining that aesthetics play an important role in this matter. In other words, it was not the possible sin that was supposedly manifested in the impaired individual that prevented his participation in the cult but a very extreme notion of esthetics that governed the need to make sure that both the act of officiating sacrifice as well as the offering itself will be unblemished. This notion is evidenced by the prophecy of Malachi in the early days of the Second Temple where matters of decorum seem to be at the center of his preaching against offering blemished animals at the newly rebuilt temple in Jerusalem.18 Talmudic and midrashic literature addresses bodily impairments and disabilities in many contexts. There are two particularly important passages in rabbinic literature, one in the Tannaitic midrash on Leviticus, and the other in later sources that used it. The midrash further discusses the physical flaws mentioned above that disqualify a priest from service in the Temple.19 Each of these passages lists different disabilities, based on a passage from Leviticus, which restrict a priest from participating in the Temple rite. The Torah enumerates 12 blemishes, but the precise meaning of some of them is not known for certain. Rabbinic literature expanded this list to include 142 blemishes. Milgrom explains that the ethos that emerges from the Bible conceptually links flawless external appearance to full and active participation 142

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in the priestly class. The lists were meant to define who was permitted to officiate in the Temple and offer sacrifices on the altar. These rabbinic discussions catalogue many of the physical deformities known from the time of the Second Temple through the Talmudic era.20 These Talmudic passages make almost no reference to social attitudes toward the deformed, nor is there any inquiry into the causes of the deformity or whether behavior was a cause. Nevertheless, the passages construct a negative attitude toward the deformed by classifying them as being unfit to come into contact with sacred offerings.21 The Babylonian Talmud, in a rather mysterious remark, declares that what happened in the Temple or Tabernacle, which were located in this world, reflected occurrences in the transcendental world. Just as the high priest burns incense and offers sacrifices in the physical world, so the archangel Michael offers sacrifices on the altar of heaven. Although the issue of physical impairment is not what is motivating this Talmudic passage it nevertheless reinforces the requirement that the priests, who embody in their actions the events occurring in heaven, be perfect in body, since the heavenly world was conceived of as unblemished.22 While these laws concerning the actual temple cult lost most of their practical relevance with the destruction of the Temple (70 CE) and the cessation of its rituals, the moral view they represent remained in force with regard to the functions that the priests continued to perform in the sacred space of the synagogue. This is true, for example, of the laws relating to the priestly blessing bestowed during the synagogue service. In the Babylonian Talmud tractate Megillah, the Talmud forbids a priest with a physical blemish from reciting the priestly blessing in public. The reason offered does not derive directly from the prohibition in Leviticus; rather, it is of a social character involving esthetics but incorporating ethical aspects as well into the discussion.23 The text disqualifies both “he whose hands are painted” and “he whose hands have blemishes,” indicating that the prohibition seeks to prevent worshipers from being distracted by the priest’s abnormality or exceptional appearance. The social concept that lies behind the prohibition is that the physically blemished priest stands out, such that his actions and pronouncements, even if discharged properly in the context of prayer, are liable to be overshadowed by the disfigurement that might distract other supplicants. The sages viewed praying with intention (kavanah), serenity, and concentration to be of great importance, as we saw in the previous section, and thus they sought to prevent distraction. This view is different from the prohibition against having a blemished priest officiate. While the former may have some, albeit not direct, connection to sin and sinning, here the disqualifying problem is not about sin, 143

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but rather the disfigurement is merely a cause of social distraction. This in turn coexists with another perspective, also represented in the Talmud and Midrash, that the blemish constitutes punishment for sin. For example, Midrash Tanhuma relates that before the revelation at Sinai, many of the Children of Israel suffered from disabilities—Egyptian slavery had left them with the physical scars of servitude. “They would climb to the top of the scaffold and either a falling stone or beam would sever their hands or clay would get in their eyes and blind them, and they would be crippled.”24 According to the Tanhuma after the deliverance from Egypt and in preparation for the revelation of the Torah, God cured the Israelites.25 The concept at the foundation of this midrash is that to stand before God and receive the Torah—that is, to ascend spiritually—the Children of Israel had to be physically immaculate. The disabilities mentioned in this midrash are the external expression of the period of physical and spiritual slavery in Egypt; spiritual debility is manifest as physical debility. The midrash then stipulates that God even considered waiting for the birth of a new generation, one that would not bear the physical marks of slavery in the form of physical blemishes. The midrash argues that the Torah, which is flawless, had to be given to a flawless generation. In the end, however, He chose to heal the afflicted.26 But then, asks the midrash, why does Numbers 5:2 relate that after the revelation God commanded that “anyone with an eruption [tzarua‘] or a discharge and anyone defiled by a corpse” be sent outside the Israelite camp? Furthermore, God promised explicitly at the time of the Exodus that “I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the Lord am your healer” (Ex. 15:26). The midrash responds by saying that the blemishes reappeared as a result of the sin of the Golden Calf.27 This midrash stresses that even though the world’s physical laws dealing with disease and health were breached in Israel’s favor at the Sinaitic theophany, right after this moment of grace the laws of nature came back into force.28 The equality of status that prevailed at Sinai ended as soon as sin returned to the camp, brought about by the Israelites themselves in the form of the Golden Calf. God’s retribution was swift when he reinstated blemishes and physical disfigurement and undid his miraculous cure. The divine cure applied only at a particular moment, after which physical blemishes once again became part of natural existence.

Physical Impairment and Divine Retribution As we have seen, physical impairment or a blemish may be perceived as an expression or even personification of a particular sin. Another well-established 144

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view in the Jewish tradition, which has its roots in the Bible, identifies impairment as a punishment. In many places, the Bible portrays God in terms of a flesh-and-blood king who imposes physical punishment as a way of asserting His authority over His subjects, and as retribution for violations of the behavioral norms He expects from them.29 The first creature to be punished this way in the Bible is the serpent (Gen. 3). According to the sages, God punished the serpent physically for having tempted Adam and Eve to sin: “At the time that God said ‘on your belly shall you crawl’ (Gen 3:14) the ministering angels descended and severed its arms and legs and its cry reverberated from one end of the earth to the other.”30 The Babylonian Talmud also provides examples of physical impairment as punishment for sins. In one such example, R. Ashi casts a physical punishment on two individuals, Bar Kipuq and Bar Avin. They proposed to eulogize R. Ashi’s colleague Ravina by praising him with superlatives while disparaging and insulting other, living sages. Rav Ashi caused them to be physically afflicted by using some sort of curse. The Talmud stresses that the deformity inflicted on the two transgressors was so severe that their twisted legs made it physically impossible for them to participate in the ritual of halitzah, in which their brothers’ wives would, if left widowed and childless, have to remove their shoes in order to release their brothers-in-law from the obligation to marry them.31 Medieval European Jewish Bible commentators took a similar approach. The northern French twelfth-century exegete R. Samuel b. Meir (Rashbam) characterizes Jacob’s limp from his struggle with the angel (Gen. 32:25) as a divine punishment. Jacob sought to avoid confronting his hostile brother, Esau, rather than put God’s promise to protect him to the test. In retribution, God sent the angel both to prevent Jacob from escaping and to injure his thigh as chastisement for his lack of faith. According Rashbam, God treats all those of little faith in this way, going so far as to compare Jacob to Balaam (whose legs were crushed when he sought to evade God’s command not to curse the Children of Israel).32 Divine punishment for sin played an important role in the German Pietist school. The Pietist concept of penance was based on a belief that bodily afflictions are an omen or punishment.33 In the absence of a regular and direct communication between God and man (for example, in the form of prophecy), God fills his world with omens, symbols, and what the German Pietists called “hints and signs.”34 The principle of measure for measure is part of this system, and a person must decipher God’s will and divine “messages” by examining the hidden meaning in ailments and afflictions.35 In one of the hundreds of stories that Sefer Hasidim cites as exempla, one incident relates 145

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that a physical deformity can be the direct result of sin: “In the same manner that a man makes fun of others, so they will make fun of him. There ‘was once someone who laughed at a person who saw the house and the attic as one [=he could not focus his gaze on a single visual field, what we would call cross-eyed]. [Subsequently,] he [=the one who laughed] had sons born to him with this [disability].’ ”36 The punishment described in the story has a double meaning, for it also results from causing emotional injury to another impaired individual. A more complex version of the same principle can be found in another passage from Sefer Hasidim. “There was a case where someone did not wish to take off his shoe [to participate in the halitzah ceremony]. He fell ill in his legs, and they told him that the transgression of refusing to do halitzah caused him to fall ill in his legs. He performed the halitzah and was cured.”37 In this case, the temporary illness causes the man to expedite the performance of a halakhic duty, and that performance cures his affliction.38 Ashkenazi ethical literature also addresses the question of what a person should do when afflictions come one’s way. In addition to inventorying one’s deeds and thinking about repentance, one is also enjoined to take practical steps to deal with the injuries and ailments. The question becomes especially acute in light of our discussion of the identification of injury with sin and the demand that a person understand the affliction as punishment for sin. Sefer Hasidim states: “If terrible injuries afflict a person, he should think of what knights do: they go to war to display their heroism and do not flee from the sword because they are ashamed to do so. They are killed and wounded only because of their shame [that prevents them from fleeing], for they will not receive a reward from their lieges for their death in battle. Thus, ‘Though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him’ (Job 13:15)—and I will serve Him in order not to receive reward.”39 The way of coping with illness and injury proposed here by Sefer Hasidim takes its inspiration from the medieval European chivalric code.40 The relationship between the seigneur and his knight serves as a model to be emulated. It is not just one of give and take. Ideally, it involves unqualified and unbounded loyalty; the knight should be prepared to lay down his life even for what seems to be a lost cause. Just as the code of honor forbids a knight to flee from a battle that looks hopeless, so one should not flee from confrontation or lose faith in what looks like a lost battle against injury, illness, or handicap. This view is consistent with Joseph Dan’s analysis of the question of the sanctification of the Holy Name (kiddush Ha-Shem) and martyrdom in the thought of the German Pietists.41 What appears in Sefer Hasidim is a suggestion, even a demand, to sanctify God’s name. A person is expected 146

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to act “beyond the letter of the law,” to steel oneself and demand of oneself ever more, especially in times of distress. Such a demand is not surprising against the background of the spiritual world of the German Pietists, who subscribed to a system of meta-halakhic requirements. Nevertheless, it is worth inquiring into the inspiration for this view. The source is not a Jewish one, and the author does not make any attempt to place his precept into a Jewish context.42 The concept that a physical impairment, deformity, or disability is connected to sin was known to medieval Jews from the Talmudic tradition cited above. But it was also a prevalent view in the surrounding non-Jewish society. For example, similar notions appear in the twelfth-century Miracula anthology compiled by Philip, prior of a community of Augustinian canons regular to which the relics of St. Frideswide, patron saint of Oxford, were entrusted. One story included in the anthology tells of a woman named Mabilia who suffered a severe disability as a punishment for sexual licentiousness. Roland Finucane writes that the chronicler related how Mabilia’s womb swelled after she sinned and that the following autumn she gave birth with great pain and suffering. As if that were not enough, her arms and legs were paralyzed and her spine twisted to such an extent that when the time of her “churching” came,43 it was only with great difficulty that she was able to drag herself on the ground. Philip stresses that her pain and agony were punishment for acts of harlotry that, in turn, made it difficult for her to undergo purification after birth, one sin thus leading to another.44 Such sources and stories are common in the exempla literature used by medieval preachers. Their sermons further stress the concept that physical affliction is connected to both sin and punishment. By the end of the Middle Ages, this link was so well-established that in some literary works sins were personified as misshapen human beings. One such example is the procession of the seven deadly sins in Edmund Spenser’s (c. 1552–99) Faerie Queene. Here the seven deadly sins—luxuria (lust), gula (gluttony), avaritia (greed), acedia (sloth), ira (wrath), invidia (envy), and superbia (pride)—take on human form. Some of them are portrayed as figures suffering from familiar defects or illnesses.45 To what extent was a deformity viewed as a punishment? Was a handicap always perceived as a manifestation of the divine will in a retributive mode, as an omen from which the sufferer and his beholders should draw conclusions about their behavior, as the ethical literature mandates? One aspect of this question is the extent to which a handicap was seen as a natural phenomenon. The midrash cited above, describing God healing the Children of Israel before revelation, indicates that both sin and deformity are natural 147

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phenomena. God only temporarily healed the impaired and later restored the “natural” order of things. Sefer Hasidim includes statements of a somewhat similar nature, which view physical deformity as a natural phenomenon: There are people without arms or legs or eyes, so born or afflicted, but He has created whole people who see to the needs of those who lack limbs. Just as an infant is born but cannot walk and his mother sees to all his needs, so God provides those lacking limbs with people who see to their needs. And so all of Israel are fathers and mothers to one another, as it says, “your tribal heads, your elders and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children” (Deut. 29:9)—it does not say “and your children” but “your children” without a waw, to teach that every person in Israel should be in your eyes as your children so that you will provide for all their needs.46

The existence of deformed people among the healthy is thus a “natural” phenomenon. The view, to which the author of Sefer Hasidim also subscribes, that some people with deformities may have been afflicted because of their sins, does not (at least according to this source) impinge on society’s duty to give succor to those suffering from the deformities. Not only is this obligation taken for granted, no distinction is made in this ethical ruling between those who have congenital defects and those who are only later stricken. The author of Sefer Hasidim views caring for the marginal individual as a duty parallel to that of parents to care for their children. In other words, the healthy have an absolute obligation to help the disabled. The relationship among the members of Jewish people is not described here in the common terms of mutual “fiduciary” responsibility. It is an injunction to aid the helpless based on a biological link identical to the blood tie between a parent and child. Is this the way things actually were? Do we have here a description of reality or only an ideal to be aspired to? This question will remain open for the time being. To conclude our discussion on the possible relationship among sin, punishment, and physical impairment let us look at a short anecdote told about a communal religious leader who was struck down by an affliction. This brief testimony is an eyewitness account from the book Sefer Maharil, a collection of rulings put together by the students of R. Jacob b. Moses Moellin (Maharil). Maharil was a central leader of Ashkenazi Jewry in the first third of the fifteenth century. The author, Maharil’s student and the compiler of the book, Rabbi Zalman of Sanct Goar, stresses that the incident was a living 148

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memory to him, such that every time the melody of the liturgical poem “Shepherd of Israel” (read on fast days) was chanted, he recalled the occurrence, for this was the song sung by the community during Maharil’s illness and the prayers for his speedy recovery. From the description of the illness given in the text, it seems that Maharil had suffered some sort of brain seizure that brought on paralysis and a loss of sensation, virtually incapacitating him. Nevertheless he eventually recovered and regained his former abilities. His immediate community responded by mobilizing to save their leader using the age-old tool of communal prayer and vigil. On the one hand, we have no evidence that anyone viewed Maharil’s illness as a sign of a sin he had committed. On the other hand, the author of the testimony indicates that Maharil himself understood what had happened to him and what had caused his affliction. The writer believed, however, that the rabbi chose not to share this information even with his rather intimate circle of family members and disciples. It seems that physical impairment was perceived in the European Middle Ages not solely as a punishment for sin but also, at times, as a physical expression of sin. Nevertheless, because of human nature and the medieval belief in the immanence of sin in the material world, as well as the fact that impairments were not uncommon, both sin and deformity were seen as natural phenomena. The learned elite and the authors of ethical manuals sought to see physical deformity as an opportunity for soul searching, a call to inventory one’s deeds in an attempt to identify a correspondence between a person’s deformity and the actions for which he or she was presumably punished. Physical disability was addressed on the personal and communal level, and despite the ethos that views deformity as a sin or as a manifestation of God’s will, the circumstances of each particular instance affected the extent to which the case at hand was viewed as an expression of this moral principle.

Physical Impairment Halakhah and Polemics Jewish law, or halakhah, addresses the status of disabled individuals on several levels. In Jewish law, impaired people are seen as a part of the world governed by God, one that is subject to the system of divine reward and punishment. These individuals’ nonnormative condition testifies to the fact that a higher power rules the world. In light of this, the rabbis formulated a benediction that was to be recited upon seeing a person with an obvious deformity. While one would have thought that it should be left to each individual to decide how to react to the disabled, the Mishnah and Tosefta, followed 149

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by the Talmud and Midrash, sought to regulate contact between the healthy and the disabled. Formalizing contact between the two groups first required categorization and a precise definition of disability. The Babylonian Talmud Tractate Berakhot addresses the blessing to be recited upon seeing a person with a disability: “One who sees a black man, an albino [buriq], someone red-spotted in the face [gihor], someone white-spotted in the face [lavkin], a hunchback, or a dwarf (a deaf-mute, insane person, or a drunk) says, ‘Blessed is the One who varies creatures.’ On an amputee, a lame person, a blind person, or a mukei shehin, one says, ‘Blessed is the true Judge.’ ” I will not discuss here the precise nature of each of these listed disabilities. What is important for the matter at hand is the distinction between two groups: while the disabilities in the first group are understood to be natural phenomena, those in the second are taken to be manifestations of God’s judgment as is reflected in the phrasing of the second blessing. The person making the blessing says that he acknowledges that the almighty’s judgment is true even if mortals may not fully fathom the logic behind it.47 The blessings to be recited upon seeing such people have two purposes, the first of which is declarative-theological. The benedictions are an articulation of the beholder’s testimony to the responsibility of the one Creator for all his creation, in all its aspects and varieties, good and bad. Not just the beautiful, aesthetic, and healthy were created by God—He also created and is responsible for those creatures that seem to be flawed and “problematic.” This seems to be a rejection of dualistic, Gnostic, and pagan doctrines that ascribed the unfavorable occurrences in life to a malevolent deity and the favorable ones to a benevolent being. The second purpose of the declaration is social. The blessings are a ritual act of social regulation. They include a tacit system of value judgment that contributes to shaping the consciousness of divine reward and punishment that stands at the foundation of the halakhic order. Medieval authorities and adjudicators sought to interpret these categories and apply them to different kinds of disabled people. They attempted to understand the distinctions made by the Sages between those born with a disability and those whose appearance had changed.48 One example is found in the writing of the fourteenth-century Halakhist R. David b. Joseph Abudarham, who lived in Christian Spain. He contended that a Jew should recite the blessing on whom he feels sorry for, such as a Jewish person who was whole and was afflicted but not on a gentile in a similar situation. Nevertheless, Rabbi David quotes other halakhists that differ from him on this, like R. Abraham b. R. Isaac Av Beit Din [=Chief Justice], who wrote in response to a question that one makes the blessing “varies creatures” even on worshipers of stars and constellations.49 150

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It is important to keep in mind that certain types of disability, such as blindness, impaired hearing, and complete deafness (as is opposed to mobility impairments), brought with them not only social labeling but also legal-halakhic categorization. As a rule, the blind person, unlike the deaf one, was considered a legal-halakhic persona in every way and was required to observe all religious precepts (mitzvot) and rituals, with a few minor exceptions. On the other hand, given that a deaf person’s speech was often incoherent, others sometimes took it to mean that the deaf were not in their right minds. In cases of innate acute deafness, even if the deaf person wasn’t suffering from congenital mental retardation, growing up in a premodern environment that didn’t think deaf people were educationally able and susceptible to any sort of stimuli caused many deaf people to develop symptoms of developmental or acquired retardation (at the very least, an inability to communicate with the surroundings in a comprehensible way). This distinction reveals something about legal thinking in the ancient and medieval world—blindness might have seriously impaired a person, but it did not, according to halakhic authorities, mar the “mindfulness” that was thought of as an essential trait of a rational human being. Congenital deafness, on the other hand, impaired not only the ability to receive sensory input, but also was thought to damage cognitive development. Halakhic authorities thus maintained that those deaf from birth could not develop the mindfulness that was the sine qua non of being a legal persona from the halakhic point of view. Language and coherent speech were considered reflections of mindfulness to such an extent that, in the eyes of both Jewish and non-Jewish medieval philosophers, the ability to speak was what differentiated humans from animals. Until modern times, with the establishment of schools for the deaf and the development of sign language, people who were hearing-impaired from birth had difficulty demonstrating their mindfulness. They were thus categorized as lacking mental faculties. In premodern society, the deaf were often referred to as “deaf-mutes,” and as a result their legal-halakhic position was akin to that of fools, who needed the guardianship of adults with fully developed mental faculties. This is the source of the oft-mentioned trio in halakhic discourse—the deaf, the fool, and the minor (heresh, shoteh, vekatan = HaShU).50 The inability of the deaf to communicate effectively with their surrounding world meant that they could not be accepted as members of society. The blind, in contrast, were unable to use one sense and thus were unable to absorb some aspects of the world, but they could still communicate with others, leading them to be considered of sound mind. Evidence of the complex issues surrounding the legal categorization of the blind is reflected in the rulings made by many halakhic adjudicators that 151

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the blind were bound to perform certain mitzvot. The printed Tosafot on tractate Bava Kamma addresses the question of whether a blind person may be exempted from performance of mitzvot. The commentary states that it would be unreasonable to exempt a blind man, “for if so, he would be like a gentile who does not behave in accordance with the Torah of Israel at all [ein noheg be-torat yisra’el kelal].” In this view, observance of the commandments defines the Jewish social collective, so exempting the blind from this observance is tantamount to placing him, like a gentile, outside the community. Concern about the Jewish identity of the blind led some authorities to rule that they were obligated to perform some commandments that involved seeing, even though by standard halakhic thinking they should have been exempt. The reasoning was that they should not be distinguished and thus separated from other Jews. According to these halakhists, since a blind man was seen by others, he should be obligated like any other Jew. So, for example, a blind person should ostensibly be exempted from the requirement to place fringes on his four-cornered garments (tzizit), since the Torah verse mandating this states “look at it and recall all the commandments of the Lord” (Num.15:39). The blind man cannot see the fringes, so he cannot possibly remind himself of the commandments. But in his sermon relating to the passage, R. Hayyim Eliezer b. Isaac “Or Zarua‘” cited the Talmudic ruling that “women are exempt from fringes and a blind man is obligated to have fringes.” The fringes are taken to be external markers of a man’s Jewishness, and since the blind man is a member of the collective he must wear fringes like every other male Jew, even though he cannot “use” them for the purpose they were designed, namely to be seen and serve as a memento. A different and unique position was taken by late-eleventh/early-twelfthcentury R. Judah b. Barzillai al-Bargeloni, the author of Sefer Ha-‘Ittim, who maintained that a blind man is exempt from performing mitzvot and therefore not only from wearing fringes but also from donning phylacteries. The Cologne-born Rabbi Asher b. Yehiel, who immigrated to Iberia in the early fourteenth century, expressed surprise at this opinion, noting that while the obligation to see the fringes is stated explicitly—“look at it”—which could serve as legitimate grounds to exempt the blind, no such requirement is mentioned with regard to phylacteries—so the blind should be obligated to perform this commandment. Blindness, like disabilities affecting mobility, was not rare—indeed, it was one of the most common maladies of the premodern period. At the beginning of this chapter I made a reference to Rashi’s depiction of blindness as the companion of old age. Modern scholarship has confirmed these notions.51 In later periods, remedies for some problems of vision became available, but 152

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in the thirteenth century eyeglasses were either unknown or extremely uncommon. Even when glass lenses to improve eyesight were introduced, their high price made them a rare commodity. In a small number of cases in which visual disability was caused by disease (for example, cataracts), sight could be restored by treating the impairment. But no treatment or prophylaxis was available in most cases of impaired vision, and the condition often deteriorated into partial or complete blindness. Even in treatable cases, the success rate of interventions, especially surgical, was low, and the recovery process was not always successful. Nevertheless, society distinguished between those whose blindness was “natural,” even if not congenital—such as impaired vision in the elderly— and cases in which young people lost their eyesight, which was much less common and therefore a condition accompanied by much more severe social consequences. A young man who went blind might have been compelled to divorce his wife on the grounds of developing an impairment subsequent to the marriage. In contrast, an elderly scholar like Ravyah might well have bewailed his condition, but there is no evidence that his standing within his family or community was affected. All of the foregoing should be seen in the context of the relationship between the place of the disabled in society and the position of the Jews in medieval European society. As we saw earlier regarding lepers, Christian society perceived disease, unsightliness, and disability as not only physical problems, but also evidence of spiritual or moral flaws. Leprosy, with its utter ravaging of its victims’ bodies, was explained as a physical manifestation of the sufferers’ moral and spiritual failings. Christian polemicists claimed that afflictions suffered by Jews were proof of God’s wrath toward the entire community. The whole Jewish community was labeled as physically, and therefore spiritually, deviant. Christian writers portrayed Jews as being blind to the Gospel, deaf to Christian truth, and hardhearted and stiff-necked in the face of Christian enlightenment. They described physical conditions that represented spiritual shortcomings and obstinacy. Christian texts and doctrines depicted Jews as uglier than Christians, and this ugliness was taken to be proof that “carnal Israel” was no longer God’s chosen nation, that title having been transferred to “spiritual Israel”—that is, to the Christians. The assumption behind this was that the whole, the good, the beautiful, and the successful were also truer and more correct, that beauty and success were evidence that the people who had these traits, in reality or in their self-image, pursued the right path and were God’s elect. Christians interpreted the verse Malachi 2:9—“And I, in turn, have made you despicable and vile in the eyes of all the people, because 153

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you disregard My ways and show partiality in your rulings”—as testimony to the status of Jews, who had rejected Jesus.52 A notable example of this can be found in the writings of the eleventhcentury Anglo-Norman chronicler and churchman Orderic Vitalis. The context in which such a statement appears is a controversy surrounding the “Jewish pope” Pierleoni, who later became antipope Anacletus II. Orderic related that at the synod of 1119, chaired by Pope Callistus II, even before Pierleoni’s candidacy to head the Church had been proposed, it was evident just by the looks of him that something about the man was not as it should have been: “Announcing this as if it were a great triumph and exceptional pleasure, the envoy pointed out with his finger a dark-haired, pale youth [nigrum et pallidum adolescentem], more like a Jew or a Saracen than a Christian, dressed in splendid garments, but physically deformed [corpore deformem]. At the sight of him seated beside the Pope, the French and many others laughed scornfully, and called down shame and swift destruction on his head, out of hatred for his father whom they knew as an infamous usurer.”53 Orderic related to the man’s looks, which, in his eyes, all pointed to his Jewish origins. Jews, apparently, were well aware of these representations—in fact, they attempted to turn them back on the Christians in polemics between the two faiths. Ironically, the same verse from Malachi quoted above was used to the opposite effect in a debate between an anonymous Jewish apostate and the thirteenth-century French financier and polemicist R. Nathan b. Joseph Official, the father of the author of the Jewish polemical work Yosef ha-Mekanne. The apostate claimed that “you are uglier than all other men on the face of the earth, whereas our people are extremely beautiful.”54 This argument may sound surprising, coming as it does from a Jewishborn apostate, whose physical appearance presumably did not change when he was baptized even if he did feel a perceived betterment of his position in his new surroundings. R. Nathan’s response is no less surprising, since he accepts—perhaps sarcastically—the apostate’s claim that Jews are ugly while putting a positive spin on it. He metaphorically invokes flowers and fruit: Jews are like plums, whose flowers are white (that is, fair and pure) but whose fruit are black (that is, ugly); gentiles, in contrast, are like apples, whose flowers are red (blood-red) and whose fruits are also red (that is, beautiful). The white flower, according to R. Nathan, symbolizes purity, whereas the red flower stands for conception during menstruation. “Thus, we are from clean and white seed, so our faces are black, but you are from the red seed of menstruants, so your faces are yellow and red.”55 The Jewish polemicist accepts that gentiles are good looking, but he asserts that their beauty stems from an impure source. In fact, it is precisely 154

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ugliness and deformity that are evidence of a pure source, of conception that took place in a state of purity and not during menstruation. A similar approach can be found in an argument made by the anonymous polemicist in the thirteenth century book Nizzahon Vetus: “One can respond further by noting that Gentiles are incontinent and have sexual relations during the day, at a time when they see the faces on attractive pictures; therefore, they give birth to children who look like those pictures, as it is written, ‘And the sheep conceived when they came to drink before the rods’ ” (Gen. 30:38–39).56 The author of Nizzahon Vetus also accepts that Jews are ugly, but he gives it a positive cast by comparing the immodest sexual practices of the gentiles with the modesty of the Jews. Jewish continence causes them to produce dark and ugly offspring, because they only engage in sexual relations discreetly, in the dark of night. The Christians, in contrast, have sex in broad daylight, when the couple can see beautiful drawings during the act (on the ceiling or wall), and this affects the appearance of the children they conceive. In passing, the polemicist compares this with the stratagem of Jacob the patriarch when he sought to breed Laban’s sheep. This is a broad hint that Christian sexual mores are like those of animals. In this chapter I attempted to bring to the forefront of the discussion some of the aspects that are in the background of the social attitudes toward impaired individuals in medieval Ashkenaz. As we have seen, the Talmudic and halakhic discussions about impaired individuals had a strong influence on medieval perceptions, especially with regard to the role of impairment as a manifestation of sin or of divine retribution. The prevailing ideas in the surrounding Christian majority society also had an important input in this respect. Nevertheless, although the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz were aware of the Christian polemical idea that they are both ugly and blind to the religious truth, they embraced the one (ugliness) and turned it on its head in their own polemical writing while completely rejecting the other (blindness). After having looked at the literary legal and ethical background regarding disabled individuals, let us now turn to the question of what really happened in the two most important realms of medieval Jewish life: the sacred space and the interpersonal space of family life.

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Disability in Sacred and Private Space

“A Familiar Sight in His City”: The Familiar Disabled Individual The medieval Ashkenazi anthology Zekher ‘Asah le-Nifle’otav, attributed to R. Judah he-Hasid, states: “He commanded regarding the sacrifices [that] it is a matter of propriety for the slave to appear before his master with a fine gift, and for this [reason] he distanced the deformed from his service as offerers [=priests] and offerings, as it is said: ‘Just offer it [the deformed animal] to your governor’ (Mal. 1:8).”1 A similar idea can be found in a passage from Sefer Yere’im, written by R. Eliezer of Metz in the late twelfth century. Regarding the biblical command that a priest with a physical deformity not approach the altar, he states: “Our Creator commanded [us] to fear the [resting] place of His presence so that the deformed not enter even if they do not perform the service.”2 The view expressed in these two texts offers two explanations as to why priests with deformities may not perform the Temple service and why animals with deformities may not be offered in that service. R. Judah maintains that this would be disrespectful to God. This view is based on the ancient prohibition against offering paltry sacrifices. It finds expression in Malachi’s statement “just offer it to your governor,” which stands at the center of R. Judah’s exegesis. With this, Malachi admonishes the Jews who try to offer maimed and worthless animals to the pahah (the Persian governor) to see if he would deign to accept such a contemptible gift. R. Eliezer points out that only those fit to stand in God’s presence—the unblemished—can enter. These concerns, in addition to others, constantly reassert themselves in the 157

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discussion of the disabled in sacred space, especially when the disabled are at the center of ritual activity, as when a priest blesses the congregation, a man is called to read from the Torah, and a cantor leads the service. In a discussion in the BT tractate Megillah, concerning the issue of a priest whose hands or feet are blemished in some way (either with color stains or with afflictions and deformities) the talmud offers a list of deformities of the hands and feet that disqualify a priest from participating in this ritual. Since the priest wraps his body in his prayer shawl when he makes the blessing, the prohibition addresses only those abnormalities visible to the public at the time of the blessing (the priests must remove their shoes to make the blessing and extend their hands in a blessing gesture). Though the disabled priest was barred from participating in the general Temple service and from entering the ritual area, this Talmudic discussion is restricted to the ritual act of the priestly blessing performed regularly after the temple destruction in synagogues. We find no proscription barring a disabled priest, or any other person with such a condition, from entering the “lesser temple,” that is, the synagogue. In the case of the priestly blessing, the prohibition is determined based on the prominence of the defect and the distraction it is liable to cause the congregation assembled for prayer. The Talmud thus focuses on the exceptional individual—the ban does not apply to a priest who is “a familiar sight in his city” (dash be-‘iro). Such a person’s disfigurement does not distract the worshipers, so there is no reason to keep him from blessing them. It should be noted that this is an ancient law that dates to the Tannaitic period, and most medieval texts that adduce it do so almost out of rote. Nevertheless, it is occasionally reiterated with a different cast, and voices of opposition can be heard. R. Moses ha-Parnas, a student of R. Meir of Rothenberg who lived in the late thirteenth century, cited the Talmudic ruling in his Sefer ha-Parnas but added: “A person should not mock and say ‘is a commoner’s (hedyot) blessing effective?’ since the essence of the blessing is not independent on the priests but rather on God.”3 R. Moses had previously stressed that the reason for disallowing a deformed priest to make the blessing was because “the people see him,” but then he added another factor as well: mockery. Disabled but familiar priests could ascend the platform in front of the ark to bless the congregation, and apparently some community members complained that the blessing made by those priests was inferior and useless, as evidenced by the sarcastic question quoted by R. Moshe, “Is a commoner’s blessing effective?” The word hedyot used in the text derives its meaning from the Talmud, where it usually means “simple,” “regular,” or “common man,” although it seems that when it is used here it has a derogatory underpinning and connotes “blemished,” “inferior.” The impression 158

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one gets is that mockery was elicited by the apparent contradiction between the content of the blessing and the defects of the priests in question. The blessing was meant to provide defense and protection, but the priest himself in this case did not benefit from them. In his responsum, R. Moses explains that “the essence of the blessing is not dependent on the priests,” that is, the priest is merely a conduit for God’s blessing. Along with taking care that the priests giving the blessing are free from distracting deformities, the Talmud stresses that the priest must pronounce the words of the blessing properly. Just as a correlation exists between the priest’s appearance and the quality of his blessing, so is one understood to exist between the power of the blessing’s words to protect the recipients (veyishmerekha: “may He protect you”) and proper pronunciation. One of the exempla in Sefer Hasidim addresses this issue and indicates that there was considerable uncertainty about it. A certain priest would raise his hands [for the blessing] and say “veyishmedekha” with a dalet [instead of a resh].4 A pious and sagacious man stopped him, because we do not let someone who does not know how to distinguish, for example, between he and het [and] dalet and resh lead public prayer or say the priestly blessing. He [=God or an angel] then came to the sage in a dream [and said] that if he did not return him to the platform, He would expel him [=the sage] from Paradise, because in his heart he wanted to say veyishmerekha with a resh. He went and reinstated him.5

The Pietist sage ostensibly acted as halakhah required, both in the spirit of the Talmudic ruling forbidding priests from offering the blessing if they cannot pronounce words properly, and also in keeping with the Pietist doctrine of strict adherence to the precise wording and pronunciation of the prayers.6 But other works, even those predating Sefer Hasidim, are not as exacting about accurate pronunciation and instead stress intention: “R. Aha said: Regarding the ignoramus who calls love [ahavah] hatred [eivah], because he says ve-ayavta [=you shall hate] instead of ve-ahavta [=you shall love],7 God said ‘his skipping is a token of love to Me.’ ”8 This statement is a work of art in its own right, since R. Aha based his teaching on Song of Songs 2:4 but reversed the letters of one of the words, reading dillugo (his skipping, his omission) instead of diglo (his banner). This deliberate misreading of a biblical passage serves to symbolize his assertion that on the deepest level the intention of the heart, not the fluency of pronunciation, is most important.9 Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between a person who 159

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says a prayer to himself and one who stands before a congregation to bless its members as its emissary. A priori, the sage’s ruling—well grounded in Talmudic and Pietist imperatives—that the priest in question not be allowed to recite the blessing was understandable and acceptable. But after the sage was threatened in a dream, he accepted the priest’s assertion that intention, not pronunciation, should be the determining factor. The story exemplifies the conflict between two important principles in the teachings of the German Pietists. The first manifests itself throughout Sefer Hasidim—“God desires the [intention of the] heart.”10 The second is the Pietist preaching about the importance of strict adherence to the form of the prayer service, including precise pronunciation, with stress on the mystical and magical meanings of the words of each prayer. This tension aside, there is yet another factor that cannot be ignored: the special Pietist concern with respect for all persons as a religious principle—a principle that plays a major role in this story.11 The scholar’s initial reaction was much like that expressed by the question “Is a commoner’s blessing effective?” in the passage from R. Moses Parnas. The irony that emerges between the doer’s intent and deed is not limited to the ritual of the priestly blessing. The cantor, as an emissary of the public, was a focal point of public attention inside the sacred space of the synagogue and outside it. It is hardly surprising, then, that cantors with physical defects were often the objects of public discontent. In the second half of the thirteenth century, Maharam was asked “whether a man struck by [God’s] attribute of judgment is fit to be the prayer leader.”12 The printed version of Maharam’s reply does not reveal which deformity or disability was seen as evidence of God’s severe judgment. Examination of a parallel version of the responsum, which exists in manuscript form, offers more information: Regarding your question whether a man struck by [God’s] attribute of justice and whose arms have fallen [ve-nafelu zero‘otav] is fit to be the prayer leader, the simple answer is that it is obvious that he is certainly fit. On the contrary, [using him is the] choicest way of doing it [mitzvah min ha-muvhar] because the King of Kings, God, wishes to use broken vessels, unlike a common [hedyot] king of flesh and blood. For it is written, “God, You will not despise a contrite and broken heart” (Ps. 51:19), “with the contrite and the lowly in spirit” (Is. 57:15), for none are disqualified by blemishes except priests in the Temple service.13

This manuscript version of the responsum is more complete than the printed texts, offering as it does an explanation of exactly how the severe 160

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judgment was manifested. The ambiguous “whose arms have fallen,” in preference to “amputated,” “broken,” or “cut off,” may indicate that the cantor suffered from leprosy. In his response, Maharam offers support for his ruling from a midrash on the book of Leviticus: R. Abba bar Yudan said: “everything that He disqualified in an animal He permitted in a person. He disqualified an animal that is ‘blind or broken’ (Lev. 22:22), [and] sanctioned it in a person: ‘God, You will not despise a contrite and broken heart’ (Ps. 51:19).” R. Alexandri said: “if this commoner (hedyot) uses a broken vessel it is disgraceful for him, but all of God’s implements are broken, as it is written: ‘The Lord is close to the broken-hearted’ (Ps. 34:19), ‘He heals their broken hearts’ (Ps. 147:3), ‘[I dwell] with the contrite and the lowly in spirit—reviving the spirits of the lowly, reviving the hearts of the contrite’ (Is. 57:15), a broken and despondent heart.”14

The fact that the midrash underlies the responsum raises the question of why those who asked the question chose to disregard the information that was ostensibly available to them in the midrash. It may well be that the petitioners were familiar with the midrash but did not think that so prominent a deformity would be included in the category addressed by it. Alternately, they might have viewed the midrash as a text offering moral guidance rather than a halakhic ruling. In taking exception to the disabled cantor, they might have been expressing more of a deep-seated feeling rather than uncertainty about the meaning of the midrash. Maharam chose to focus on the cantor’s disability in order to leave no doubt in their minds. The phrase “a man struck by [God’s] attribute of justice” was apparently the phrasing used in the question. In quoting it, the petitioners gave voice to their belief regarding the hapless and the disabled, especially with regard to their presence and role in sacred space and at the focal point of ritual activity. In their view, people suffering from deformities were people against whom God had rendered a severe judgment, and this would explain why they did not want to allow this person to represent the public by leading the prayer service in their synagogue. As they saw it, the cantor’s physical defect was not the only thing that disqualified him, but his physical condition directly impacted his public role. If as cantor he was supposed to ask God to judge the members of the congregation mercifully, and his body testified openly to the severity of God’s judgment, he could not properly perform the role of cantor. As with the priest mentioned by R. Moses Parnas and the one in the 161

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exemplum from Sefer Hasidim, the tension between doer and deed created what the public saw as an intolerable dramatic irony. Maharam took exception to this view and overturned it. While the defect might have indeed represented a severe judgment by God, the disabled person’s difficulties and suffering might well, in Maharam’s view, offer the public an advantage if it sought to arouse God’s mercy. The question of the service of disabled people in sacred roles and space, such as the tension between the ritual and its performer, was also addressed in the Christian society that surrounded Ashkenazi Jewry. The debate began in the early Church, but it crystallized into a systematic theological analysis cast in typical terms and imperative language only in the twelfth century. By the thirteenth century it was accepted as authoritative. This period saw the consolidation of the view that came to be referred to as ex opere operato, which roughly means “not the doer but the deed.” Its first formulation, denying the importance of the person performing an action, appears in the writings of the Church Fathers, and thereafter in the summary known as the Decretum, attributed to Gratian in the twelfth century. Cardinal Lotario dei Conti di Segni, later Pope Innocent III, took up the subject at the end of the twelfth century in his De Missarum Mysteriis (On the Mystery of the Mass).15 He wrote that in the sacred office the Church stresses the act, not the actor. He took this position in response to those (like the Donatists and other sects deemed heretical) who maintained, contrary to orthodox dogma, that the sacraments lost their force or efficacy if the clergyman who performed them was blemished in one way or another.16 Church Fathers such as Augustine had used a similar formulation in their arguments distinguishing between Christian rituals and Mosaic law and in their battles against Christian sects that were later labeled heresies. Innocent explained that according to the Mosaic law the ritual’s performer has to be a worthy vessel, because the quality of the celebrant affects the efficacy of the ceremony. In Christianity, however, the sacrament derives from God’s grace and has force and value in and of itself. The sacrament is not affected if the person who performs it is unfit. Nevertheless, canon law prohibited disabled individuals from serving as priests and performing sacraments; priests with physical impairments were banned from performing sacred services.17 Restrictions were placed on priests with physical impairments for several reasons. First, despite the principle of ex opere operato the priest nevertheless represented, in the eyes of the believers, the body of the Church. Second, the Church’s identification of its priesthood with the biblical priesthood led to the application of the biblical ban against disabled priests, as laid out in Leviticus, to Christian clergy. An example from the mid-twelfth century can be found in 162

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a letter from Bishop Jocelin of Salisbury to Pope Eugenius III. The bishop wrote that the hand of a priest in his diocese had been cut off in an attack by robbers during the chaotic reign of King Stephen. He asked the pope whether this priest could continue to celebrate mass despite his disability, given the tragic nature of the circumstances. Critically, during the mass a priest must lift up the host before the worshipers, sanctify it, and pray. The pope replied in the negative.18 Ruth Mellinkoff has noted that the Liber Extra, the work commissioned by Pope Gregory IX in 1234 to be the official Church collection of those decretals promulgated between 1140 and 1234, devoted an entire chapter to the issue of the validity of ordinations of disabled priests. Gratian’s Decretum attempted to deny priestly ordination to the disabled. But in practice, due to political pressures or bribery, individuals with disabilities and physical deformities were appointed to high positions in the Church and priesthood.19 Maharam’s responsum offers a different approach. The prayer leader is not a priest and does not officiate in the Temple. Therefore, a physical disability cannot disqualify him from leading prayer services in the synagogue.20 He arrives at this position by adhering closely to the textual interpretation that views the disabled as ineligible for participation in the sacrificial service. This allows Maharam to distinguish between disabled members of the priestly caste and prayer leaders, who are not members of this caste. This distinction also seems to be intended to contradict those who, like the Christians, believe that a person who performs a sacred act is like the Temple priest. Furthermore, as is not the case with earthly kings and the ritual practices of the Christian Church, the Jewish God prefers those who pray to him and who serve as emissaries of the public as “broken vessels.” While the midrash speaks of broken and low hearts, using the term “broken vessels” metaphorically, Maharam sees no reason to disqualify prayer leaders who are physically impaired. The question posed to Maharam and his reply testifies to tension between the public and its leader. While the public sought pretexts for removing the deformed cantor from his position, the supercommunal leader Maharam took the side of the disabled. The congregation’s gaze was also directed beyond the boundaries of the Jewish collective—it sought to conform to the ritual-religious standards of the Christian majority around them. The leader, however, saw his role as ensuring that the Jewish public remained loyal to its distinctive, Jewish position on this issue. Likewise, the claim that R. Moses Parnas grappled with was of a similar nature. According to the anonymous derider, a benediction made by a “commoner”—that is, a physically impaired priest—is itself impaired and 163

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ineffectual. R. Moses replied that the priest is no more than a conduit, a medium that transmits the divine blessing. The quality of the blessing thus derives from God, not from the priest. Moreover, R. Moses stated that even if the priest who raises his hands to offer the priestly blessing suffered deformity in the organs that were seen to bestow the blessing—that is, the hands—his defect would not impair the blessing because it came ultimately from God rather than the man who pronounced it,21 although the man bestowing the blessing had a deformity indicating that he may not have been properly blessed. Did the approaches of Maharam and his student R. Moses gain acceptance in Ashkenaz? Although the matter seems to have been unequivocally settled by them, the issue crops up again in a responsum written at the end of the Middle Ages by R. Israel b. Hayyim Bruna, known as Mahari Bruna: While I was in the community of Brünn, I was asked a question from the land of Hagar [=Hungary] whether to appoint a physically-deformed prayer leader, whose married daughter became pregnant through harlotry when her husband went to Russia and remained there for five years. I responded that it does not appear correct to me, only I have seen in Or Zarua‘ that a disabled prayer leader should not be appointed but have forgotten where it appears. But it seems to me that that . . . since our prayer substitutes for the sacrifices—as it is said “instead of bulls we will pay [the offering of ] our lips” (Hos. 14:3)—it is not at all proper to appoint him ab initio as a permanent prayer leader. But one may appoint him on occasion, for he is no worse than a blind man who sometimes prays. But where there is no one else [to serve as prayer leader], we may not neglect our prayers because of this, given that we all pray as individuals and prayer is only rabbinic.22

The prayer leader in question was flawed in two ways: he had a physical defect (the precise nature of which is not detailed) and, as if that were not enough, his daughter had become pregnant during her husband’s five-year absence. Here, too, we see that a prayer leader was considered to be like a priest officiating in the “lesser Temple,” the synagogue. Indeed, later in his exposition, Mahari Bruna addressed the question of whether a cantor can be disqualified in the same way a priest whose daughter has engaged in harlotry is disqualified (Lev. 21:9). Unlike Maharam, he maintained that the disabled cantor cannot be given a permanent appointment to lead synagogue services 164

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because of the similarity between prayer services and the sacrificial service in the Temple and between the role of the cantor in the synagogue and the priest in the Temple. Still, he did not disqualify the man from leading services, so long as he did so on an irregular basis. Mahari Bruna cited the weighty support of Or Zarua‘ for his reservation, but he could not find the relevant passage, and I have found no such passage, either.23 But Mahari Bruna was quite firm about his position, and while he did not permit the appointment from the beginning, he opined that if a quorum had already assembled for prayer, and the disabled man was the only person who could lead the prayers, then the service could not be canceled on the grounds that he was unfit. Mahari Bruna informs us in passing that blind men sometimes led services, too. As we saw above, a blind person’s defect was considered to be less of an impairment than other handicaps to functionality in general, and in sacred space specifically. Mahari Bruna’s responsum also indicates that the status of the disabled person in sacred space and the ritual activity that occurs therein still preoccupied Jewish communities at this time. Furthermore, these communities continued to see a relationship between the Temple service and the priesthood on the one hand, and prayer services and their leaders on the other, and that this perception influenced halakhic rulings.

Can a Disabled Person Be Called to the Torah? Embarrassment versus Dramatic Irony One of the core ceremonies that takes place in the synagogue’s scared space is the public reading of the Torah. This rite has always been a focus of public attention because members of the congregation actively participate in the service—they chant the text from the Torah scroll, are called to the Torah to make the blessings before and after each section of the reading, and translate the text into the vernacular for the congregation. May disabled individuals participate? If so, what happens when they are called to the Torah? Disabled individuals, like others whose presence is looked on negatively by many in the public at large, often experience embarrassment and humiliation.24 Biblical law regarding torts mandates that the perpetrator must compensate the victim based on multiple variables, including embarrassment.25 The Talmud states: “A tanna taught in front of R. Nahman b. Isaac: ‘Anyone who publicly embarrasses his fellow is like a murderer.’ ”26 This passage has been cited from ancient to modern times as a fundamental tenet of proper social behavior. In the case of disabled individuals the admonition is all the more serious, since ridicule and contempt come in reaction to a condition that the disabled person cannot control. 165

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There are many ways to cope with embarrassment, but it often constitutes a barrier between the disabled and the world around them. The sense of otherness that the defect causes sometimes leads the disabled to see society as hostile to them, as contemptuous of their verbal and nonverbal efforts to communicate. Sociologists who have investigated the social consciousness of disabled individuals have found that some in this group tend to view the world through “sociological glasses,” sensing themselves to be in conflict with the world around them. This feeling is caused in part by shame and alienation.27 The embarrassment felt by disabled persons is also expressed in their daily contacts with others outside sacred space, as attested by Sefer Hasidim, which displays enormous sensitivity: “And if he speaks with him, he should not look at the blind eye or any blemished area lest he be embarrassed. He also should not speak about a blemish of the kind that afflicts his fellow in front him.”28 This injunction is not limited to verbal encounters; simply eyeing the defect may also embarrass the disabled person. Symbolic interaction analysis and nonverbal communication between disabled and healthy people can aggravate the former’s sense that every glance and sign may hurt them, especially in certain contexts.29 The sensitivity of the author of Sefer Hasidim is also expressed in an editorial comment that opens a series of passages that address embarrassment and the need to avoid it: “Now I will write about transgressions that are tantamount to murder yet pass unseen, and their punishment is very great[,] . . . such as one who embarrasses his fellow or pains him in his presence to the extent that he becomes so embarrassed and distressed that if he would kill him he would [rather] accept death than be embarrassed.”30 The connection between embarrassment and death, which is exceptionally sharp here, takes us back to the Talmudic sources. The concern about embarrassing the disabled and the awareness of the significance of humiliating and degrading treatment—even if unintentional—are characteristic of Sefer Hasidim’s ethos. The author clearly assumes the point of view of the injured party rather than that of the collective. This preference demands explanation. It may well be that the source of this sensitivity was the sense of difference and exceptionality felt by the author of Sefer Hasidim himself.31 The book’s overwhelming religious demands and supererogatory ethos seem to have been impediments to its followers’ social integration, and often led to friction and conflict with the communities in which they lived.32 In fact, this issue is mentioned several times in Sefer Hasidim when it describes, in passing, how the pious might be mocked by the impious for their outstanding religious and ethical conduct. Against this background, let us turn to an injunction recorded in Sefer Hasidim that is intended to avert embarrassment to the disabled in the 166

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synagogue: “The cantor should take care not to call [to the Torah] one who is blind in one eye for [the reading of ] the passage of [the prohibition against offering] a blind [animal], because he will be embarrassed that he has only one eye.” Here we find a specific prohibition against causing embarrassment to a disabled person when reading a passage from the Torah that mentions his disability.33 But the basis of Sefer Hasidim’s sensitivity in this situation is not limited to the desire to prevent embarrassment,34 for the work similarly admonishes that a person who is suspected of prohibited sexual acts should not be called up when the passages in the Torah regarding these issues are read aloud: “They began to have the prayer leader call even ignoramuses [‘amei ha-aretz] to the Torah so as to appease them, and once the cantors took bribes they [began to] call everyone [to the Torah]. But it is inconceivable that the cantor should call to the reading of the forbidden sexual practices a person suspected of them, and regarding everything about which a man is suspected the cantor should not call that man [to the Torah reading] . . . and also so as not to humiliate him.”35 This teaching displays the purist position taken by the author of Sefer Hasidim. The passage, not all of which is quoted here, portrays the annals of the public reading of the Torah as one of moral decline. At first the readers were only “scholars prepared for it,”36 but then “bribe-loving cantors and honor-loving reprobates” got the upper hand to the extent that even ‘amei ha-aretz—a term that implies ignorance, laxness of observance, and sexual incontinence—were called to the Torah.37 He thus warned “corrupt cantors” that, whatever their impure motives, they should not call any people suspected of engaging in sins to be read in the Torah reading, because the person called to the Torah attests to the text being read before him.38 There is also an element of seeking to prevent embarrassment, but that is secondary to the problem of dramatic irony between the nature of the text and a person actively engaged in the behaviors condemned by the text. As we already saw in the case of lepers, Sefer Hasidim seeks to prevent a palpable incongruity between the text read and the person called to the reading, especially when the incongruity is apparent to the public: “So regarding everything about which a man is suspected, the cantor should not call that man [to the Torah reading]¸ because they [=the Sages] said that it cannot be that Reuben will stand up [on Mt. Ebal where the Deuteronomistic curse was recited (Deut. 27:20)] and say: ‘cursed be he who lies with his father’s wife’—unless he did not do that sin, and also so as not to humiliate him.” The Reuben alluded to here is the oldest son of the patriarch Jacob, of whom Jacob says in his testament to his sons: “for when you mounted your 167

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father’s bed, you brought disgrace—my couch he mounted!” (Gen. 49:4).39 A person called to the Torah was perceived by the author of Sefer Hasidim to be like Reuben, a person who serves as a witness to the text read before him, constituting the text by his very presence.40 The case of the disabled is thus like that of the suspected transgressor, for with the former there is also an incongruity and a dramatic irony sensed by all onlookers. While the explicit reason in Sefer Hasidim for preventing the disabled from being called to the Torah is to avoid embarrassment, it would seem that here too there is a dual motivation. A connection exists between the fact that reading the Torah passages on sacrifices is considered a surrogate for offering sacrifices, and the desire to prevent disabled individuals from being called to the Torah when they display the very defects that disqualify an animal from being offered as a sacrifice. In conclusion, disabled individuals were not prevented from taking part in rituals performed in sacred space, so long as there was no explicit halakhic reason to forbid it. But in instances where there was an obvious connection between the disability or deformity and the nature of the ritual, the author of Sefer Hasidim preferred that the disabled person not be the focus of the ritual, both out of concern that he might be humiliated and in order to forestall dramatic irony. The extent to which contemporary Ashkenazi society acted in accordance with Sefer Hasidim is the subject of considerable debate. But sensitivity to dramatic irony in public rituals and a desire to avoid causing humiliation were not concerns restricted to the pious circle of Sefer Hasidim alone. It is reasonable to presume, however, that the hypersensitivity we find in that work might have derived from the fact that its author was also the target of mockery and he himself had felt the sting of shame.

Calling the Blind to the Torah In the foregoing discussion of embarrassment and dramatic irony, a passage from Sefer Hasidim was cited that states that a person blind in one eye should not be called to the Torah for the reading of the passage about sacrificial blemishes. Halakha prohibits a totally blind man from being called to the Torah because originally those called to the Torah read from the Torah scroll themselves. A blind man could not read from the scroll, owing to his disability. In discussing this issue, Ashkenazi scholars revealed social attitudes toward the blind, the sighted, the ritual status of both, and the relationships between them. A close examination shows that these attitudes were not all cut from the same cloth, and that attitudes changed over the course of the Middle Ages with regard to the totally blind and their active 168

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participation in synagogue ceremonies—in particular, in the public reading of the Torah. As indicated, a blind man could not be called to the Torah because, in ancient times, those so honored would actually read the text from the scroll. Y. Yosef Cohen, who investigated this issue, maintained that this sanction was eased during the Middle Ages due to a change in the nature of the ritual. Fewer people were capable of chanting the text in the proper way, so it soon became customary for those called up to recite only the blessing over the reading, while the text was instead chanted by a cantor. Ashkenazi halakhists sought to offer remedies for the blind, but they had considerable hesitations in doing so. According to Cohen, their qualms derived from the contradiction between the law as laid down in the Talmud, and the desire to accord the blind the honor of taking part in the ceremony in light of the change in the way the ritual was performed. In Talmudic times, even blind people who knew the text of the Torah by heart could not be called to the Torah because the Sages had ruled that “things that are written may not be recited by heart.”41 In medieval Ashkenaz, the subject was open to discussion and opinions differed.42 During the first half of the thirteenth century, R. Simhah of Speyer gradually lost his eyesight due to old age, yet he continued to be called to the Torah on the grounds that the cantor read the text and he merely listened.43 Similarly, Maharam ruled at the end of the thirteenth century, perhaps basing his opinion on the precedent regarding R. Simhah, that an old man whose sight had dimmed was permitted to be called to the Torah on condition that, during the course of the reading, he run his fingers over the letters and follow the text being read before him in one way or another.44 Maharam stressed that this ruling applied to old men whose sight had dimmed—people who had once been able to see but could no longer do so. Maharil carried on in this spirit in the fifteenth century. He ruled as follows, in opposition to some of his predecessors: “Mahari Segal [=Maharil] said that even the ignoramus (‘am ha-aretz) and the blind read from the Torah. We do not act in accordance with Rosh, who ruled that a blind man should not read.”45 Maharil seems to have based his ruling on the reality of his time period—most of those called to the Torah did not actually read it themselves but had it read for them. That being the case, there was no fundamental difference between them and a blind man who cannot see the text. The rule that “he who hears it is considered to have said it [shomea‘ ke-‘oneh]” applied to all: blind and sighted, ignorant and learned. In other words, there was no reason for a man blind in both eyes not to be called to the Torah. Maharil functionally compared the blind to the uneducated, he viewed their disability as a technical matter—neither could read and understand the 169

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written text in practice, but both could participate in the ritual in accordance with the rule that equated listening with reciting. Fourteenth-century texts adduced above show that the blind were not only called to the Torah but also served as cantors—not from the beginning, but after the fact: “One may appoint him on occasion for he is no worse than a blind man who sometimes prays. But where there is no one else, we may not neglect our prayers because of this.” The erosion of opposition to calling the blind to the Torah might have also paved the way for them serving as cantors.46

Marriage to a Disabled Person As we saw in the previous chapter, a disabled person can be humiliated by no more than a glance or a casual remark. A physical disability can become the defining characteristic of a person in society’s eyes. This is evident in social attitudes toward those who marry disabled persons, and in the way disability has been considered grounds for canceling a betrothal or terminating a marriage. More recently, love, mutual esteem, and attraction have become the most common basis for the establishment of formal ties between a man and woman, but in many societies marriage has been a way of arranging relations between families, preserving family property, and achieving social advancement. As we saw in Rashi’s responsum on leprosy, some halakhic discussions of disability addressed a claim of mekah ta‘ut—commercial deception. The charge that a man or woman had deliberately sought to conceal a disability or deformity in order not to jeopardize a betrothal and wedding is called ta‘anat mumim, a type of commercial fraud that frequently appears in the halakhic literature as grounds for a divorce. Individuals who made this claim argued that had they known about the blemish, they would not have entered into the betrothal or marriage. The Torah itself does not directly address this legal category except in the case where a man claims that his wife was not a virgin at the time of their marriage (Deut. 22:17). The Talmud, however, does address concerns about fraud in choosing a mate and deliberate attempts by parties to a marriage to conceal flaws that might prevent it from taking place. Ta‘anat mumim is considered grounds for ending a marriage if three conditions are met: the alleged impairments were present prior to the marriage; they were known but concealed; and the petitioner did not consider and accept them (savar va-kibbel)—that is, he or she did not consent to the match despite acknowledging the blemish.47 It is essential to keep in mind that the Talmud stresses the importance of carefully examining candidates for marriage: “The presumption is that a 170

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man does not drink from a cup without inspecting it first.”48 The examination may be conducted by the interested parties or by their emissaries. Most traditional societies strictly forbade unmarried men and women to spend time alone together and also proscribed bodily exposure and sexual relations prior to marriage. Therefore, examination of candidates for marriage was assigned to individuals who were intimate with the designated bride or groom—members of their families and friends who had an opportunity to see the candidates in private. These people were expected to report any visible blemishes in advance of the marriage.49 If one was known to the candidate’s family, then, the Talmudic Sages reasoned, it was most likely known to the complaining spouse as well, and in that case there were no grounds for dissolving the marriage—even if it had not been evident from a cursory examination or would not have been seen in a chance meeting because it was concealed (for example, by a piece of clothing). A situation in which no such examination was conducted, in which case a candidate might not have had information about the physical state of the other person’s body, was referred to as nistahafah sadeh—a term that designates a heavy loss caused by an act of God that could not be anticipated. In other words, the petitioner could not have known in advance about the disability or deformity, or there was no sign of it when she had looked. For the claim to be accepted, a preliminary inquiry, which had to meet several criteria, was conducted regarding the blemish. R. Moses of Couçy, author of Sefer Mitzvot Gadol and a French halakhic authority of the thirteenth century, addressed the differences in the laws of betrothal and marriage between the cities of Western Europe and those of the Iberian Peninsula: It also says there that a man who takes a wife with no conditions [stam] and feminine blemishes are [subsequently] found on her [body], [then] if he did not know about this blemish and had not heard about it and accepted it, he can divorce her without paying her ketubbah—neither the fixed compensation nor the addition.50 Under what conditions is this the case? [If ] there was a public bathhouse in the city and he had relatives, he cannot say “I did not know about these blemishes” even [if they are] secret blemishes, because a person checks through his relatives and the presumption is that he heard and consented. If there is no bathhouse there, he can make a claim about concealed blemishes.51 An epileptic with attacks at regular intervals is legally considered under the rubric of concealed blemishes. One cannot make a claim if the blemishes are evident because everyone sees them and tells him, and the presumption is 171

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that he heard and consented. It is well-known that this law applies only to places in which it was the custom of women to walk in the street with their faces exposed, such that everyone knows them and says this is the daughter of so-and-so, this is the sister of so-and-so, as in the cities of Edom [=Western Europe] nowadays, but [not] in the cities of the Maghreb and Toledo and its environs where it is not the custom for women to go out to the street at all. And when a woman does go to the bathhouse, she goes at night and tries not to be identified and covers herself, so he can make a claim even regarding evident blemishes.52

One of R. Moses of Couçy’s sources was Maimonides, who also pointed out the different customs applying to women in Christian Western Europe as compared to women in the Maghreb, Iberia, and the area around Toledo (which, until the thirteenth century, remained under indirect Islamic influence). R. Moses stated that in Western Europe a woman’s physical blemishes—even concealed ones—could have theoretically been discovered when the woman went to bathe or immerse herself, which was not the case in Muslim lands. To Maimonides’s account he added his own observations from a trip as an itinerant preacher through the Iberian Peninsula during the 1230s. During this period, customs of an Islamic nature still prevailed even in Jewish communities that had come under Christian rule. Many women still kept away from the public bathhouse, especially in the daytime, and when they went they veiled their faces. Obviously, this had implications for legal claims regarding blemishes and for the distinction between evident and concealed blemishes. This required different halakhic standards regarding grounds for divorce, because what was evident in one society could not necessarily be seen in the other. At times, betrothals were made between disabled and healthy people, either because one party was willing to come to terms with the disability for any number of reasons or because there was real love between the couple. In other cases, the afflicted spouse incurred the blemish only after the marriage, at which time the question of whether this changed its conditions and could be grounds for divorce was raised. One case involved a man who went blind in both eyes, and it illuminates the way in which society understood blindness, and the social position of blind individuals in particular and the disabled in general. The mishnah states, without naming the sage who made the ruling, that a man afflicted by disabilities need not divorce his wife and give her a get. R. Simeon b. Gamaliel (Rashbag) qualified this law’s scope, applying it only in the case of 172

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minor blemishes. In the case of major blemishes, the man is compelled to divorce his wife (if she indeed wishes a divorce because of the blemish).53 The Talmud lists the major blemishes to which Rashbag refers: “such as if his eye has gone blind, his hand has been amputated, his foot has been broken.” In this case, or others of the same level of severity, a wife can petition a rabbinical court for a divorce, and the court can compel the husband to divorce her and pay her ketubbah. Maimonides ruled against Rashbag’s opinion, maintaining that even if a man incurs major blemishes such as these, he cannot be compelled to divorce his wife. The woman can dissolve the marriage but would not receive compensation. The question that arose in Ashkenaz was what the rule would be if a man becomes blind in both eyes, given that the Mishnah and Talmud only address single-eye blindness. Two Ashkenazi scholars of the thirteenth century addressed the issue: R. Simhah of Speyer and R. Isaac of Vienna,54 but they disagreed both in the facts of the case and in the halakhic conclusions to be drawn from it. The case involved a couple who had been betrothed but had not yet married, and the get that was requested was one to dissolve this preliminary relationship rather than a marriage. The young man, who was supposed to be sighted, turned out to be blind. As was the accepted custom in Ashkenaz, sivlonot (gifts meant to serve as confirmations of the betrothal agreement) were exchanged in advance of the marriage. In R. Simhah’s version of the story, the young man deliberately deceived the bride and her father—in other words, in full cognizance of his condition he caused his bride and her family to believe that he could see. If so, this would have been a case of “mistaken betrothal” (kiddushei ta‘ut). R. Isaac offered a somewhat different account of the facts, explaining that the young man “used to see well, but over half a year [=the period of the betrothal] gradually lost his eyesight.” If that were the case, the story is a tragic one of a loss of eyesight over a relatively short period of time, but not all at once. R. Isaac protested the attempt to compel him to divorce his bride, and in so doing he revealed important information about the mores of the writers and their contemporaries. “And to marry her to a blind man does not make her into an anchored wife [‘agunah], for he is fit for sexual relations, and we have found women who love blind husbands, such as the case of the ex-wife of R. Yose Ha-Gelili. In general, it does not seem right to me to permit compulsion [to get him to divorce her].”55 Unlike R. Simhah, R. Isaac maintained that marrying a woman to a blind man did not make her into an ‘agunah, a woman unable to marry another because her marriage cannot be dissolved, because the blind man was capable of siring children and the marriage could thus be consummated. 173

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Furthermore, R. Isaac argued that some women love their blind husbands and do not want to leave them. We might have expected R. Isaac to cite an example that was personally known to him; instead, he referred to a midrash about R. Yose Ha-Gelili and his ex-wife.56 While the story accords with the point R. Isaac wanted to make, it is nevertheless problematic for this purpose.57 R. Simhah, in contrast, ruled that the court should compel the young man to grant his betrothed a divorce and to pay her ketubbah. Moreover, in his view the issue was a straightforward one and the discussion a purely theoretical one (le-ravha de-milta), for the betrothal had been invalid. R. Simhah concluded his exposition with an incisive remark: “There is no anchoring [‘igun] greater than this! Because she may have preferred to go through life without a husband at all than to marry a blind man.” Therefore, the woman was clearly “anchored” and the man had to be compelled to divorce her. R. Simhah redefined the scope of a well-known halakhic rule formulated in the Talmud by Resh Lakish: “It is better to live together than to live as a widow.”58 This is a fundamental principle of Jewish personal status law, but R. Simhah circumscribed it by making it dependent on a woman’s preferences.59 It is difficult to determine which of the rabbis’ rulings is closer to the view of contemporary Jewish women regarding marriage to a blind man. The woman’s voice is not heard explicitly or implicitly in the discussion, and we have no indication that either rabbi consulted with the women in question, or with any other women for that matter. Nevertheless, R. Simhah sought to approach the issue from the woman’s point of view. As he put it, in this specific case there was no cause for imposing a marriage on a woman who was uninterested in it, even though, as he was well aware, halakhic authorities strongly preferred to preserve rather than dissolve marriages. R. Simhah chose to preempt marital misery in this instance rather than maintain the marriage at any cost. R. Isaac, for his part, wished to create a situation in which the decision would remain in the hands of the blind man himself, rather than it being forced on him. He deemed it superficial to present the case as one in which there was tension between consideration and inconsideration for the condition of the newly blinded man. Recall that two people were involved in the case, and, as R. Isaac noted, the issues were not at all simple—the punishments for violating the sacred laws of marriage (if a proper divorce was not arranged) and for engaging in adulterous sexual relations with another man are death, a divine sentence of eternal excommunication, and the classification 174

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of the children resulting from a forbidden union as bastards. Judges are thus compelled to take the utmost care in rendering their opinions.

The Birth of Disabled Children As it is today, in medieval times pregnancy was a time of mixed feelings—joy at the prospect of producing new life, but also apprehension about labor and its outcome. What sort of baby would be born? Healthy or, God forbid, ill or deformed? The fear of giving birth to a baby with extreme deformities is universal, and modern research has shown that in this regard cultural background, education, ethnic origin, and economic status have relatively little weight. Moreover, there is a high correlation between the abandonment of newborn babies and the nature of their deformities or disabilities. Children with internal irregularities that have no external manifestation are less likely to be abandoned by their parents than are children with external, unaesthetic ones.60 While these studies have been done in contemporary societies, they have included populations maintaining traditional lifestyles resembling those of medieval times and subscribing to similar ethics. The Bible stresses that Adam, the first man, begat children “in his likeness after his image” (Gen. 5:3). This indicates that just as Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, so too were their children. But the biblical narrative also reflects the “sigh of relief ” that parents emit when they see that their newborn baby is human, whole, unblemished, and unhurt.61 When this turns out not to be the case, many parents have the opposite reaction. The fact that the expression “in his likeness after his image” appears after the births of Cain and Abel and also after the murder of Abel caught the eye of many late Antique as well as medieval commentators and homilists.62 Some maintained that the children that Adam and Eve had before the birth of Seth were (with the exception of Cain and Abel) not only imperfect but inhuman. These commentators attributed this fact to the primeval sin and Adam’s process of repentance. One such view is found in the Babylonian Talmud: “R. Jeremiah b. Eleazar said: ‘All those years that Adam was in banishment [after the sin] he begot spirits and demons, as it is said: “When Adam had lived 130 years, he begot a son in his likeness after his image,” showing that until this time he did not beget in his likeness.’ ”63 This homily was cited and expanded on by such medieval commentators as R. David Kimhi (Radak, 1160–1235). His quotation of the North African R. Nissim b. Jacob of Kairouan (d. 1057), who cited the Babylonian R. Sherira Ga’on (d. 1006),64 offers us a peek into the beliefs and outlook of his time: 175

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Our rabbi R. Nissim wrote in the name of R. Sherira Gaon z"l: “the explanation of this matter is that the God cursed Adam; He gave him a sign that his children would not be like him just like women who give birth to strange creatures like these that our Sages mentioned—R. Judah said in the name of Samuel, a [woman] who discharges [a fetus] with the image of a demon has the impurity of childbirth. It is a fetus except that it has wings. And when Adam was cursed, he sired only strange creatures with the image of demons in the ugliness of their faces and backs, and they were evil spirits. . . . It is also the way of human beings to call those of ugly countenance and wicked people ‘demons.’ ”65

Radak’s commentary makes the standard connection between external appearance, the demonic label, and moral judgment. According to this link, ugly people traffic with the forces of darkness and engage in depraved behavior.66 Authorities in the medieval and early modern period used the fear of giving birth to a deformed baby or what they viewed as a monster as a means of enforcing social and religious codes of sexual ethics. Religious figures of authority (rabbis, priests, and ethical homilists in many faiths) used this fear, for example, in their efforts to ensure observance of the prohibition against sexual intercourse during menstruation. The claim that intercourse during that period would produce deformed children was enhanced in medieval and early modern Europe using the Latin pun menstruum quasi monstruum. Christian traditions based on the Apocrypha indicate that such births were also taken as a sign of things to come.67 Medieval Jewish sources that address birth and midwives discuss the birth of disabled children, as well as the phenomenon of the mulah.68 According to Galenic medicine, if a woman’s womb is too warm at the time of the man’s ejaculation, the “female seed” loses its strength to shape the fetus. The result, according to this view, is the birth of monsters or creatures that resemble animals. It was commonly believed that the birth of deformed infants could be predicted, such as if pregnancy continued past term.69 Midwives frequently encountered miscarriages, deformed fetuses, and other grave phenomena. They were the ones who had to give the bitter news to the mother, or to conceal the infant from her until she had made some recovery from a difficult and strenuous labor. Some Christian sources relate the voices of mothers when they were informed of the awful truth: “Why did I conceive such progeny in my womb? Why was such deformed offspring created within me? Woe is me—why was he not carried from 176

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my womb to the tomb?”70 The hope that a deformed baby would die was not necessarily a vain one. In many cases infants born before term or with blemishes did not survive long. Others did not live out their first year, and still others were abandoned.71 The birth of a deformed baby could lead not only to abandonment but also to infanticide. An exemplum in Sefer Hasidim depicts such feelings: “One was born with teeth and a tail. People said that eventually he would eat human beings, so it would be better to kill him. A sage said to them: ‘remove his front teeth and cut off his tail to the point that his body resembles that of others, and he will not be able to harm anyone.’ ”72 The infant in the story was born with “animal” or “bestial” traits, which led to fears that he was a demon or some other harmful being. Some of those who saw him experienced a natural revulsion against a creature that seemed part human and part beast. When they turned to a sage to ask how to dispose of the infant, he took a position that differed from that of the panicked public, who wanted to kill the baby. The nature of this child is not clear, but obviously the people who saw him believed that his teeth and “tail” indicated demonic origin.73 The latter appeared to demonstrate that the creature was not human, and the teeth indicated that, even if it were human, its development would be exceptional and dangerous. It is not clear from the story when the public took counsel and decided to kill the infant—it might have been at the time of birth, or perhaps some time later. Also unknown is whether this was a formal counsel or a general sense throughout the community. The fact that the mother did not intervene in the discussion is not surprising—it may well be that the deliberations took place in her absence, or that if she was present she chose not to respond. In any case, her nonintervention fits a familiar pattern—in modern society as well—of parental alienation from deformed children. Some further understanding of the context can be gained from another story, which appears near this one in Sefer Hasidim and tells of another request to permit the killing of people who were suspected of having magical powers that could harm children: There were women suspected of eating children. Some of the students [in the study hall] said: “the stubborn and rebellious son” (Deut. 21:18–22) [serves as a model], for [the Talmud explains that] since he will kill people, he is to be killed, [and] so it should be with these [women]. The sage said to them: “the Jewish people are not in their land [and thus are deprived of the judicial right to take a life], and there are women who do this against their will and there are [also] witches. Do this instead: declare, when they [=the 177

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community] and the suspects are in synagogue, that if one of the children is hurt, they will have the suspected woman’s teeth filed down on the stones that surround the well and she will die at that time. For it is written: ‘I will rescue my people from your hands, and they shall no longer be prey in your hands’ ” (Ezek. 13:21).74

The proximity of the stories and the common fear they display of children being consumed by demonic creatures directs us into the realm of magic. In both stories the narrator depicts a public uproar, countered by the calming instruction of a Pietist sage. According to the sage in the second story, the suspects should not be killed for two reasons: first, the status of the Jewish people in Ashkenaz, where they lack sovereignty and therefore the jus gladii—the right to execute someone for a capital offence; and, second, the case must be investigated carefully so as to distinguish between those women who are compelled to behave this way and act against their will and those who are actually casting the spells that lead to the crime. In both stories, the desire to eliminate the problematic creature comes not from an event that has already occurred, but from a fear of what is liable to happen. This is expressed in the proof-text that the students adduce, where they liken the women to the stubborn and rebellious son who, according to Deuteronomic law, is to be killed. Some rabbinic comments on these verses justify the death sentence on the grounds that such a son will eventually become a murderer. Similarly, the women, if not killed, will eventually eat children. The sage displays fortitude and, despite the public panic and the call for a simple solution, proposes an interim solution meant to mitigate the tension. In the case of the witches, he proposes that they be warned and threatened that their teeth will be dulled on the stones by the well. In the story about the baby, the scholar does not deny the baby’s demonic potential but suggests a surgical solution meant to excise the magic from the strange creature and turn him into a human being. In this way, the scholar reveals his opinion about the real meaning of the deformity—it is the source of the problem, not just a reflection of it. The demonic force is contained in the baby’s teeth and “tail,” and if these are removed, the infant will be normal. The demonic powers of the witches can also be countered by dulling their teeth on the stones around the well. The plethora of charms for women giving birth and incantations and adjurations for successful labor and healthy and whole offspring, which can be found even in medieval rabbinic manuscripts, testify to the fact that these disabilities were a major, ongoing source of concern. In the case of these

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disabilities, as with other kinds, Jewish public leaders and halakhists sought to intervene in favor of the exceptional individual. The foregoing section of this book has addressed the social aspects of attitudes toward disabled individuals. As we have seen, most of the available sources address two principal social contexts: the sacred space of the synagogue and the marital relationship. Biblical texts view the presence, and especially the participation in the divine service, of disabled or deformed persons in sacred space as problematic. In this regard, sources from before the destruction of the Temple differ from those produced subsequent to it; the latter restrict the requirement of physical wholeness for a participant in the divine service. This resulted from the change in the nature of the activity and a new focus on rituals that demand attentiveness on the part of participants (prayer and reading from the Torah). Thus, disabled individuals are accepted in sacred space as long as they do not distract the congregation from worship. For example, a priest with a physical deformity is not prevented from raising his hands for the priestly blessing unless his disability would distract the attention of the worshipers receiving his blessing. The importance attached to concentration in prayer led to attempts to bar those who could not articulate or pronounce the Hebrew words properly from serving as cantors. But this trend was countered by making intent the standard, which allowed the disabled to take part in ritual activity, including serving as cantor. The principle “God desires the heart” was applied in two cases: when the Pietist sage sought to ban a man with a speech impediment from making the priestly benediction, and when Maharam overruled a community’s attempt to stop a physically deformed man from serving as a cantor. In both cases, halakhists decided that the disabled could remain in their positions. Nevertheless, these cases show that medieval Jews feared that a disabled person who led prayers, read from or was called to the Torah, or blessed the congregation might detract from the efficacy of these rituals. Did all communities conform to these rulings? Were there communities that forbade disabled individuals from serving as cantors without bringing the question to halakhic authorities? And what about cases that were not recorded? The fact that we have records of attempts by halakhists and those who authored compendia of customs to change the practices of those who believed that a blessing given by a priest with a deformity was ineffective demonstrates that this belief was widely accepted and that such restrictions were imposed on the disabled. Such dilemmas were not unique to the Jews—they were debated in medieval Christian society as well. But as this 179

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chapter has shown, the two communities differed in this regard. Jewish leadership, even if not the general Jewish public, acted to integrate the disabled into sacred space and even allow them to lead rituals. This attitude may have derived from a desire to distinguish the sanctity that was reserved only for the Temple from the sanctity of the “lesser Temple” or to differentiate between Jewish and Christian rituals performed in their respective sacred spaces. Christian sources display a different approach. Despite the fact that Christian theology viewed the Old Testament and its commandments as spiritual instructions rather than injunctions to be taken literally, Christian authorities viewed the requirements regarding physical integrity as literally binding and applied them to their own priests who performed the sacraments on the church altar. The demand to avoid dramatic irony in ritual acts and the opposing concern about embarrassing disabled individuals created tension in sacred space. This found expression in the writings of the German Pietists, who were ever cautious about the serenity and sanctity of the synagogue, but it most likely prevailed in wider circles as well. The final portion of this section analyzed the development of the status of the blind in sacred space, especially in regard to their being called to the Torah, a development that also reflected changes in the involvement of the broader public in this constitutive ritual. In these chapters I discussed social attitudes toward the disabled in interpersonal space, especially within the family. I noted the problems that physical blemishes created within marriages and, in particular, when matches were made. A spouse from whom such matters were concealed could demand a divorce on the grounds of ta‘anat mumim, a claim that a man or woman had concealed from his or her prospective spouse a blemish that, if known, would have deterred the other party from entering into the marriage. The standard for this claim was culturally determined and differed from one area to another. Additionally, the nature of the disability resulted in differing assessments of how difficult intimate relations were with a disabled person. This chapter also addressed fears regarding magical properties of deformed children and the tension between communal demands to kill deformed babies thought to be dangerous, and some rabbis’ attempts to counter such initiatives. Life for disabled individuals in medieval Ashkenaz was not easy, and their contacts with society were marked by fear, revulsion, and misunderstanding. Nevertheless, the impression given by the written record is that Jewish leaders saw the issues as more complex. Rabbis assumed the responsibility for moderating reactions to the disabled, dissipating fears, and restraining certain public reactions—reactions that, in the best case, grew out of natural 180

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revulsion toward the exceptional person, and in other cases were aimed at serving economic or personal interests. Historical study of attitudes toward the disabled is still in its infancy. These chapters have sought to present the available material, some of which is not new, in a new light, and to thereby contribute to a more profound understanding of social and religious processes that took place in medieval Jewish society in Western Europe.

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Epilogue

In this book I have sought to foreground the historical discussion the story of individuals who regularly are in the shadow of obscurity. I have tried to turn our attention to those individuals in a past society who are usually doubly overlooked, both by their contemporaries and by modern observers using the lens of history to look back in time and learn about the past. But beyond the actual stories of the individuals who stand at the center of this book, I wanted to ask them to lend us their standing in their respective society in an attempt to grant us a more nuanced vantage point into this past. A society’s treatment of its ill, handicapped, and both mentally and physically disabled members, informs us about far more than just the lives of these individuals; it offers insight into the society’s social values, it’s at times unspoken agenda, its actual not proclaimed practice, and its functioning clockwork mechanism of social order. The way a society relates to its impaired members, and especially those whose marginal state is involuntary, offers a point of view from which one can discern wide-ranging opinions, beliefs, fears, perceptions, and moods. Such an examination reveals influences coming from outside of the society, variations within the society’s innate culture, and disparities between the actual and the ideal, between natural and instinctive reactions and constructed moral values. The study of a society through the ways in which it treated its disabled members has already been granted a place in historical and sociological research and has been my approach in this book, the first attempt of its kind in medieval Jewish history. Medieval Ashkenazi Jewry was itself a marginal society, an exceptional and nonstandard minority that lived on the periphery of a far larger, more powerful, politically and economically dominant Christian society. In many ways, the impaired individuals that are at the epicenter of this book lived on the margins of a periphery—they were the exceptional members of a society that was itself somewhat exceptional. This position, as complex as it may sound, grants us a unique opportunity to look at the past from a fresh new point of view. 183

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This book has opened a window into two worlds—that of medieval Europeans, Jewish and non-Jewish, and that of the marginal individuals within both societies. While the primary focus of this book has been Jewish society, treatment of marginal individuals by Christian society at the same focal points and in the same kinds of space has served as a steady source for comparison. In both societies, the independent voice of the marginal individuals has hardly been preserved in the sources. Only occasionally do we hear their plight in their own voice and almost never in their own unmediated accounts. Very few of the people at the center of this study have produced records of their feelings and experiences that have survived. One of the rare exceptions is the account by the late-twelfth- and early-thirteenthcentury R. Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi (Ravyah) of one Shlomo b. Hananel, who fell ill with a disease that not only crippled him but caused him a degrading malignance in his genital and reproductive organ. Solomon sought a cure and was willing to travel from his native Germany all the way to the Iberian Peninsula in his attempt to heal his ailment. Shlomo was diagnosed by a Jewish physician in Iberia, operated on, and actually survived the procedure. Although he was frightened, he returned home and his overall condition improved to the point that he asked to resume full and intimate marital relations with his wife. “I am healthy,” he is quoted in the first-person singular in a responsa penned by Ravyah, “as you can see, and I desire my wife like any other man.”1 But in many ways such evidence is so rare that it meets the proverbial exception that proves the rule. This study was thus based on less direct sources when I attempted to reconstruct the experiences of the disabled and societal attitudes toward them. In many cases, as I have shown, medieval Jewish society’s margins were narrow. Jewish communities did not permit themselves to leave their impaired members or exceptional individuals entirely to their own devices or to push them in the direction of Christian society. The religious leadership mapped out a position that in many cases attempted to include both compassion and very real anxiety about the fate of Jewish madwomen, for example, even when their presence was extremely difficult for the “normal” members of society, especially in the private interpersonal sphere. Halakhic authorities refused to allow women deemed mad to wander freely in public as beggars so they would not be abandoned and at the mercy of Christians. During the period covered by this book, in certain cases society revised its attitude toward marginal individuals. These modifications were caused partly by social transformations and partly by changes in people’s consciousness and beliefs. For example at the beginning of the period, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, blind men were not called to the Torah during 184

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prayer services since the person called up to the Torah was expected to be able to read from it, even if he didn’t actually carry out this duty. But the ceremony subsequently underwent a metamorphosis that altered the significance ascribed to it. Because of the decline in the number of people who actually understood the sacred Hebrew text, the chanting of the Torah text became the purview of a trained reader or cantor. This being the case, blind men who were called to the Torah no longer were expected to be able to read the text from the Torah scroll. In the fifteenth century, Maharil thus permitted them to be called to the Torah, enabling them to play a central role in sacred space. Medieval Jewish society was, as I have noted, a minority society. Expelling a person from the collective had far-reaching implications—among other things, the banished person might move into Christian society, or be used by Christians as an example of Jewish depravity. Furthermore, being a minority made Jews feel (justifiably or not) that the surrounding Christians examined and judged every step they took. To exemplify this point, the following insightful comment, made by Maharil in the fifteenth century on an entirely different matter, is illustrative. It addresses the possibility of extinguishing a potentially dangerous candle or fire on the night of the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement, an act strictly forbidden under regular circumstances: Since, due to our sins, we are subjugated by them [=gentiles] and they are constantly monitoring us, it is permitted even for a Jew to extinguish a candle manually and directly on even a Day of Atonement that falls on the Sabbath, which is usually very strict. Even if it is uncertain that the fire situation is very dangerous or it is doubtful whether there is even a danger at all, one should nevertheless not hesitate and put the fire out, for this is a situation that endangers human life [pikuah nefesh] since they are breathing down our necks, due to our many sins.2

At least some individuals in Jewish society, most notably halakhists, ascribed great importance to how their society looked to the outside world— in this case, to the Christians. Their views of whether marginal individuals should have been rejected by or included in Jewish society were affected by this consideration. The spiritual leaders of medieval Western Europe’s Jewish communities sometimes formulated their attitudes toward marginal individuals with the purpose of differentiating the Jewish community from the majority society. 185

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Sometimes this was part of an engagement in overt polemics, and at other times it was an expression of covert competition with the majority with an eye toward proving the moral superiority of Jews and Judaism. Our examination of Jewish society’s attitudes toward the three groups of marginal individuals addressed in this study shows that the rabbinic elite, at least, did all it could to keep lepers, the insane, and the deformed and disabled within the Jewish community’s fold. They did so not only to prevent these marginal individuals from converting to Christianity or becoming dependent on Christian charity, but also to ensure that Jewish society not be seen from the outside as less compassionate than its Christian counterpart, and therefore less cohesive. The Jewish and Christian societies of the Middle Ages shared many aspects but were also very different. A dichotomy of attraction and repulsion prevailed between them, and these shaped the greater part of the worldviews of those living in those times. It is hardly surprising, then, that the two societies differed in a number of respects in their treatment of marginal individuals. For example, in Jewish sacred space—the synagogue—physically disabled priests were allowed to bless the congregation. The dispensation derived both from the Jewish view that the synagogue was but a shadow of the Temple (where priests with physical defects were not allowed to serve), and from the Talmudic principle that the chronic disability of a community member eventually became familiar, and therefore unremarkable, to the other community members whose focus on prayer was imperative in the synagogue setting. In contradistinction, Christian priests with physical disabilities were not allowed to lead ceremonies in their sacred space, the church. In the Christian view, priests were the spiritual successors to the biblical priesthood, and each church mirrored the Temple in Jerusalem. Canon law thus applied the Levitical code that disqualified disabled priests from performing the divine service. Despite this significant disparity, medieval Jewish society was indeed mindful of disabilities in sacred space, and relevant issues were addressed time and again in the literature. Jewish society also treated marginal individuals in ways very similar to those of Christian society. This convergence had several causes. First, attitudes toward the Other, like other social phenomena, crossed religious and cultural boundaries. Second, both societies were traditional in character and synchronous in time, and they partially shared a common religious foundation. Third, Jewish society constantly observed the majority society around it and in part absorbed—consciously and unconsciously, intentionally and unintentionally—its beliefs and frames of mind. Even the extremely pious and purist author of Sefer Hasidim admitted 186

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so much in a revealing passage: “In most places, the Jews in each and every city follow the customs of the non-Jews.”3 This great similarity between Jewish and Christian modes of behavior and folk beliefs was noted in every discussion included in this work. This book still leaves a number of questions open for further research. Some of them, I fear, will remain unanswered because of the paucity of sources; we can only hope that documents discovered in the future will cast light on these issues. Other issues can be studied from the available sources. One of these questions is whether the patterns of thinking and behavior I have outlined with regard to medieval Western European Jewry also applied to other contemporary Jewish societies on the Iberian Peninsula and in the Islamic world, where other conditions prevailed. For example, medical science in the Islamic-Byzantine area was more advanced at this time than it was in Western Europe. It would seem logical to presume that attitudes toward the ill, the disabled, and the insane in these societies differed from or at least were influenced by factors that had little weight in the Franco-German sphere. The different nature of Jewish communal and supercommunal organization in these areas was also likely to have been an influential factor. Another question that remains unresolved and which is worthy of further discussion is whether medieval Jewish communities operated special institutions for their lepers. Jewish sources do not explicitly testify to the existence of leprosaria, although they are mentioned in a small number of outside sources. This lack of clarity might be attributable to a situation in which such institutions were not closely connected to local communities, which were the fundamental unit of Jewish organization in medieval Western Europe. They may rather have had a supercommunal character. We have a relatively large amount of evidence about Jewish communal institutions, but very little about institutions outside this framework. As a result, there is little that can be said as of now regarding the existence or nonexistence of Jewish hospitals for lepers; answering the question requires an extension of our knowledge about Jewish supercommunal institutions during this period. This work must also take into account recent changes in our understanding of the prevalence and role played by leprosy in Western Europe and elsewhere during the medieval period. In the past, scholars believed that the relatively large numbers of leprosaria in Western Europe, in particular from the twelfth century onward, were evidence that the disease afflicted a large number of people. Some went so far as to claim that leprosy was almost unknown in Western Europe before the advent of the Crusades, and that the appearance of leprosaria in the twelfth century resulted from the fact that Crusaders returning from the Levant brought the disease with them. The 187

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current view, however, is that the proliferation of institutions for the care of lepers is not necessarily evidence that the disease was indeed widespread. Furthermore, socio-anthropological work, and historical studies that have applied socio-anthropological methods, have shown that the negative image of lepers and the view, deriving from the biblical ethos, that affliction with leprosy was punishment for or a sign of sin, led to a situation in which diagnosing an individual with the disease was used as a way of banishing him from society—a social weapon. The large number of leprosaria in Christian Europe seems also to have derived from a desire to find additional channels for expressing Christian mercy. We have much evidence that many leprosaria operated at very low capacity. Jewish–Christian polemics also played a role. Jews at this time repeatedly asserted that, unlike the Christians, their community had no lepers, a claim that would have been difficult to substantiate had there indeed been more than a small number. Another important point is that the non-Jewish documents that refer to the existence of Jewish leprosaria are nearly all from a later period—the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century—and should be viewed with caution. Another issue worthy of further study is that of the major shift in attitudes toward madness that took place between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period. Whether we accept Michel Foucault’s assertion that this was a sweeping transformation, characterized by the mass confinement of the insane in hospitals, or take into account the critiques of his across-the-board generalizations and only partially accept his view, we should investigate whether the same phenomenon occurred in Jewish society. Our knowledge of this subject in the early modern Jewish context can best be described as meager. An investigation of Jewish attitudes toward the insane in this period, when European society as a whole was undergoing such a change, promises to be fascinating. Another important subject, one that some scholars have already noted, is the increase in the importance and acceptance of Kabbalah, kabbalistic practices, and kabbalistic justification of customs and practices in the Jewish world in the early modern period. This has implications for understanding cases of types that would previously have been diagnosed as madness or demonic possession, but which were at this time, in some cases, understood as the manifestation of a dybbuk—the soul of a dead person that takes control of a living one in order to undergo a tiqqun, a kabalistic process of “repair.” Furthermore, in the Talmud conceptual world, the madman is placed together with one notable sort of disabled person—the deaf—in the halakhic category of “the deaf, the mad, and the juvenile.” Here, too, the beginning 188

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of the modern age saw a change. As early as the seventeenth century, physicians began to study deafness and to search for solutions. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, schools for the deaf began to proliferate throughout Western Europe, in the same places that the Enlightenment flowered. The establishment of schools for the deaf in the eighteenth century and the growing recognition among Europeans that a deaf person was not a fool or simpleton led to a change in the attitudes of rabbis and halakhic authorities on this matter—a subject deserving a separate study. This book has focused on certain types of marginal individuals—those whose marginal status was involuntary. An examination of the burgeoning scholarship on marginal individuals and attitudes toward the Other indicate that the social margins included many others as well, among them the indigent, itinerants, criminals, those who plied low-status trades, and other individuals and groups that society either outright rejected (and at times continues to reject) or those not thought highly of for a variety of reasons. In some cases, I have shown, there was a high correspondence between the members of the groups discussed in this study and other groups, such as poor people and beggars. There were cases, however, when although an individual suffered from what was seen as a marginalizing impairment, he or she was not treated like the rest of those suffering from a similar condition due to social, religious, or economic standing. Thus, for example, despite the strictures relating to the blind, the resolute thirteenth-century Ashkenazi sage R. Simhah of Speyer continued to be called up to read the Torah in the sacred space of the synagogue, despite his inability to read the text. Finally, this work belongs to a relatively new avenue of scholarship. An account of this new direction has been given recently in several programmatic articles and books. It views marginality as a discipline and an analytical tool that can offer insights into the study of a historical period. In my view, Jewish history, like general history, should be examined not only from the point of view of society’s central stream, but also from the point of view of the social margins. Scholars must make heard the voices of marginal individuals, voices almost never heard in the past. It is my hope that this book will serve as a building block in this new scholarly structure. Perhaps, if we understand what views of the world shaped attitudes toward the disabled in the past, and if we recognize the fact that some of these views still prevail in our own time, it will be easier for us to change our own attitudes, and those of the society we live in, toward those deemed “marginal individuals” now and in the future.

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Introduction 1. See Robert, Signes; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 38n22. 2. See Goodich, ed., Other Middle Ages. 3. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, 3. 4. This does not diminish the fact that sometimes the characteristics of the Other with whom this study deals were ascribed to Others who, for example, willingly deviated from the social norm. Thus, one may argue that the apostate is insane and that the leper’s disease is an external expression of inner degeneracy. See Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 39. In this connection, and specifically with regard to the identification of deviation from the sexual norm with spiritual aberrance, see J. Richards, Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation, 42–73, 132–39. 5. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor. 6. On this see Henri-Jacques Stiker’s enlightening survey (History of Disability), Catherine Kudlick’s programmatic article (“Disability History”), and Richardson’s recent study (Blighted Bodies). 7. Shahar, Marginal Groups, 7–8. 8. Gurevich, Historical Anthropology, 30, 42–46. See also B. Z. Kedar’s preface to the Hebrew edition of another of Gurevich’s books, The World View of Medieval People. This book, originally published in Russian in Moscow in 1972, was translated into English as Aron Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G. L. Campbell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985). 9. When the Hebrew predecessor of this book came out in 2008, there were precious few comprehensive studies of medieval disability. Especially noteworthy among the scholarly contributions in the field was Metzler’s book Disability in Medieval Europe, published in 2006. In the field of Jewish history, and medieval Jewish history in particular, the present book is the first of its kind. 10. Among the historians of the Jews, the important work of S. D. Goitein (Mediterranean Society), who surveyed the whole range of Jewish Mediterranean culture as reflected in the documents found in the Cairo Geniza, should be noted. See also Robert Bonfil, “Myth, Rhetoric, History? An Inquiry into Megillat Ahima‘az,” in Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry: Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, ed. Robert Bonfil, Menahem Ben-Sasson, and Joseph Haker, 99– 135 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1989) (Hebrew); and more recently: Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Ahima‘az ben Paltiel (Leiden: Brill 2009); Marcus, Historical Meaning; Marcus, Rituals of 191

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Childhood; Goldin, Uniqueness and Togetherness; Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro, trans. Raphael Loewe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Yosef Kaplan, “The Self-Definition of the Sephardic Jews of Western Europe and their Relation to the Alien and the Stranger,” in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391–1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel, 121–45 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 11. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 1301. Sefer Hasidim was edited by R. Judah b. Samuel he-Hasid of Regensburg (d. 1217), who was also one of the book’s principal authors, if not the principal one. On the historical issues surrounding Sefer Hasidim, see Marcus, “Historical Meaning,” and cf. Dan, “Ashkenazi Hasidim.” I agree with Marcus’s position as formulated in his Piety and Society, 131. On Sefer Hasidim and the religious and social teachings of the German Pietists, see the collection of articles in Marcus, ed., The Religious and Social Ideas of German-Jewish Pietism (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1986; Hebrew). On the influence of Sefer Hasidim, see Soloveitchik, “Piety, Pietism.” 12. Braudel, On History, 64–82. 13. See Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz; Grossman, Early Sages of France; and Soloveitchik, Jewish Wine Trade. 14. Touati, “Contagion and Leprosy,” 192. 15. Brodman, Charity and Welfare, 85. 16. Grossman, Early Sages of France; Soloveitchik, review. 17. Ta-Shma, Minhag Ashkenaz Ha-Kadmon. 18. See Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages; Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society; Geremek, “Marginal Man”; Lambert, Medieval Heresy. 19. The Jews of the Iberian Peninsula ostensibly became part of the Western European cultural sphere in a piecemeal fashion with the advance of the Spanish Reconquista, which began in the eleventh century. But in fact the peninsula’s ArabIslamic heritage continued to be influential even thereafter. The Iberian Jewish community and the Ashkenazim remained distinct in their social and communal organization, their size, and the socioeconomic role played by the Jews in society at large. For this reason, Iberian Jews receive separate treatment. 20. See Barber, “Lepers, Jews and Moslems”; Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society; J. Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation; Nirenberg, Communities of Violence. 21. An additional region not treated in this book is the Jewish settlement in Islamic lands, which deserves a separate study. The distinct nature, language, and characteristics of the sources regarding the Jewish community in these places require different analytical tools. It should also be kept in mind that medical care, medical knowledge, and attitudes toward the disfigured, ill, and disabled in the Islamic world were fundamentally different from those in European society, at least until the mid-thirteenth century and even thereafter. The Greek–Roman–Byzantine medical tradition was not severed at the time of the Islamic conquest; rather, it was translated into Arabic, and it bloomed and developed under Islamic rule. 22. In this connection, see Camporesi, Incorruptible Flesh, and M. Rubin, “Person in Form,” 111–13. On Christian saints see Walker-Bynum, Fragmentation 192

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and Redemption; Walker-Bynum, Resurrection of the Body; and Wilson, Saints and Their Cults. 23. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 96. 24. Some of these martyred saint’s cults and cultic objects became the focal point of shrines dedicated to healing. In many cases, the focus of the healing shrine was the organ or other body part that suffered mostly in the saint’s martyrdom; see Wilson, Saints and their Cults. 25. The Gospels describe a number of Jesus’ curative acts that served as exemplars, both in terms of attempts to cure the ill and the view that the disabled were deserving of “Christian mercy” and charity. See Matt. 12:9–13; Luke 6:6–10; John 5:1–9; Luke 7:1–19; and Mark 1:40. 26. See Anne F. Dawtry, “The Modus Medendi and the Benedictines,” in The Church and Healing, ed. W. J. Sheils, 8–25 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982); Darrel Amundsen, “The Medieval Catholic Tradition,” in Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in Western Religious Traditions, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen, 65–107 (New York: Macmillan, 1986) and Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 27. Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages, 135–91. 28. In the professional literature of fields such as education, psychology, and social work, “deviant” and “exceptional” have replaced the terms used by the previous generation, such as “defective.” 29. This semantic shift reflects a change in consciousness that has occurred in recent decades regarding the possibility of advancing and improving the situation and status of persons suffering from physical disabilities and integrating them into society. This change simultaneously reflects the stand the disabled have taken in demanding recognition and rights on many levels, including that of language. The word “handicap,” which in modern English refers to disability, has its origin in horse racing. In that sport, weights are sometimes placed on horses in order equalize the burden carried by each horse. The etymology indicates that when applied to a disabled person the word designates a burden in the competitive world of Western society. See C. T. Onions, ed., The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 1:921. I am grateful to Elliott Horowitz for enlightening me on this matter. 30. A “disenfranchised person” is one who has been deprived of his or her rights. On this term and the study of groups to which it applies, see Boyarin, The Other. 31. To the best of my knowledge, the distinction between those whose deviance is “involuntary” and those who are deviant “by choice” comes from the American sociologist Edward Sagarin (a student of Erving Goffman). See Sagarin, Deviants and Deviance. 32. On labeling and the sociological theories that explain the labeling mechanism, see the classic work of Howard S. Becker, Outsiders. See also Goode, Deviant Behavior, which surveys the development, sources, and critiques of labeling theory. See also Sagarin, Deviants and Deviance. 33. See Thio, Deviant Behavior. 34. See Goffman, Asylums. 35. Deshen, Folding Cane, 197. 193

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36. I mean principally the phenomenon of the contradiction between what certain people write in their roles as commentators and what they write as halakhists, shapers of social consciousness, and in their responses to a given social situation. 37. Shahar, Growing Old, 20. 38. See Süssman Muntner’s studies of the Book of Assaf: Muntner, Introduction, and Muntner, Sefer Assaf. Ron Barkai has written studies of medieval Jewish gynecological texts; see Barkai, Les infortunes de Dinah, and Barkai, History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts. See also the studies of the late J. O. Leibowitz and Samuel Kottek, who surveyed and published the writings of Jewish and non-Jewish medieval physicians (e.g., Isaac Israeli, physicians of the Falaquera family in Provence, Arnoldus de Vilanova). 39. On this, see Shoham-Steiner, “ ‘This Should Not Be Shown,’ ” 53–59. 40. Lilley et al., Jewish Burial Ground. For a summary of the important findings in outline form, see McComish, “Jewish Cemetery” (Jane McComish is the current name of Jane Lilley). 41. For a summary of archaeological studies of Jewish cemeteries in Europe, including a map, see Jane M. Lilley, “Interpretation of Excavated Remains,” in Lilley et al., Jewish Burial Ground, 360–61. 42. Adolf Kober summed up the excavation findings in his “Jewish Monuments,” 1–92, 149–220. For findings regarding the Jewish cemetery of Barcelona, which was excavated in the 1940s, see Duran-Sampere and Millás Vallicrosa, “Una necrópolis judaica,” 231–59. This excavation also did not study the human remains, but this was not out of negligence; research methods in the 1940s simply did not allow the extraction of information from such findings to the extent that is possible today. 43. Lilley et al., Jewish Burial Ground, 466. 44. Weiss, Parental Relations. Weiss’s study was conducted in Israel at the end of the 1980s and focused on the relationships between parents and handicapped children in hospitals. This situation differs, of course, from that of the Middle Ages under study here. Nevertheless, Weiss’s work addressed sociocultural phenomena known since the dawn of history. In her introduction, Weiss writes: “Parents tend to adopt their children when these meet their culturally- and socially-accepted aesthetic criteria. Parents tend to reject their children when they contradict their standard of beauty. Moreover, a child’s appearance affects his image as a ‘person’ or a ‘nonperson,’ greatly affecting behavior toward him. In this way, external appearance connects to image, which connects to behavior” (17). I do not mean to argue here that everything that applies to parent–child relationships in the situation Weiss studied also applies to social relationships as a whole. The relationships of parents—mothers in particular—to their children is also discussed by Baumgarten, Mothers and Children. 45. Weiss, Parental Relations, 17–18; Rosenblum and Budde, “Historical and Cultural Considerations.” See also Entin-Rokeah, “Unnatural Child Death.” 46. Levitin, “Deviants as Active Participants,” 548–57. 47. The American sociologist John J. Macionis has written: “From time to time, everyone feels like an ‘outsider.’ For some categories of people, however, being an outsider—not part of the dominant group—is an everyday experience. The greater people’s 194

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social marginality, the better they are able to use the sociological perspective. . . .  People at the margins of social life, including women, gay people, people with disabilities, and the very old, are aware of social patterns that others rarely think about” (Sociology, 5). 48. See Sontag, Illness as Metaphor; and Gilman, Disease and Representation, 1–18. 49. Contemporary society’s treatment of the disabled and disfigured has been widely studied, and this is not the place to offer a comprehensive survey of the literature; but see, for example, Leonard Weller and Chaya Aminadav, “Attitudes towards Mild and Severe Mental Handicap in Israel,” British Journal of Medical Psychology 62 (1989): 273–80; Victor Florian et al., “Attitudes in the Kibbutz and City toward Persons with Disabilities, a Comparison,” Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin 32 (1989): 210–18. Studies have also been conducted on contemporary traditional societies that help explain the attitudes of past societies toward the disabled; see Abraham Stahl, “Beliefs of Jewish Oriental Mothers Regarding Children Who Are Mentally Retarded,” Education and Training in Mental Retardation 26 (1991): 361– 69; Mildred Blaxter, The Meaning of Disability: A Sociological Study of Impairment (London: Heinemann, 1976); Günther Cloerkes and Dieter Neubert, “CrossCultural and Historical Variations of the Social Reactions toward Disabled Persons,” International Journal of Rehabilitation Research 7 (1984): 339–40. 50. On Durkheim and his thought, see Elvin Hatch, Theories of Man and Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 162–213; and Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 129–74. 51. The distinction between magical and nonmagical medicine in medieval Europe, in both Jewish and Christian societies, was not very sharp. This was especially the case in Ashkenaz, which was little influenced by “learned medicine,” with its sources in the Arabic-speaking world, until the fourteenth century; see Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, 193–207. A good example of this can be found in a manuscript in the Vatican Library, ms. Vatican Ebr. 123 (IMHM 8690). This manuscript, which does not include works of the “learned medicine” genre, includes a procedure to cure a high fever that involves both instructions for lowering the fever and a magical incantation. The procedure is included in a numerological commentary on the Torah. On page 48 (fol. 78) of the manuscript pagination, Genesis 49:18 is cited. In that verse, Jacob says: “I wait for Your deliverance, O Lord!” A gloss in the manuscript gives the following interpretation: “It is beneficial to say ‘I wait for Your deliverance, O Lord!’ because the number of letters [in each word] diminishes [in Hebrew] and it is good to say it against the demons of the night, etc. For whomever has a fever, at first they should go to the river for three nights. They should take a small cup, draw water from the river, pour it on the ill person’s head, and say these [divine] names.” The manuscript is in an Ashkenazi script and is dated to the thirteenth century. I am grateful to my colleague Amos Geula for bringing this source to my attention. 52. A manuscript in the British Library, ms. BL 752 (Add. 15299), fols. 84r–91r, includes a list of amulets, adjurations, and incantations. Medical maladies and problems of day-to-day life are treated here with magical formulas, such as incantations 195

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for more successful Torah study, for the problem of forgetting one’s studies, for a burn from a hot iron, and for preventing burns. Among the talismans described on fol. 87v is one for curing baldness. Chapter 1 1. Meir, Sefer Sha‘arei Teshuvot Maharam, Crimona, §115. See also Agus, Rabbi Meir, 615. The recipient of the responsum was likely R. Isaac b. R. Eliakim of Straubing; see Urbach, The Tosaphists, 552–53; and also Germania Judaica, vol. 2, ed. Zvi Avneri (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1968), 807. Regarding the equation of the metzora‘ with the dead, see BT Nedarim 64b and Shemot Rabbah 1:34. 2. This summary is based on Brody, Disease of the Soul; Brodman, Charity and Welfare; and Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types.” For a medico-historical survey of medieval leprosy, see Mitchell, “Leprosy”; Hamilton, Leper King, appendix; and Rawcliffe, Leprosy in England. 3. Contrary to popular belief, leprosy does not actually cause limbs to fall off; rather, it can cause loss of sensation due to destruction of nerve endings, which increases the risk of mutilation and subsequent loss of limbs. See “leprosy,” The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, ed. Jacqueline L. Longe, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006), 2190. 4. Woolf, “Medieval Models,” 273n50. 5. See, inter alia, L. Le-Grand, “Les Maisons Dieu: Leurs statuts au XIIIe siècle,” Revue des Questions Historiques 60 (1896): 95–134; and L. Le-Grand, Statuts D’Hotels-Dieu et de Léproseries recueil de textes du XIIe au XIVe siècle (Paris: Picard, 1901). 6. Brody, Disease of the Soul. 7. P. Richards, Medieval Leper. 8. For a fine formulation of this approach, see Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society. Other works on this topic that exemplify the approach typical of the 1980s include Barber, “Lepers, Jews, and Moslems”; Belker, “Aussätzige”; Bériac-Lainé, “ ‘Mourir au Monde’ ”; Bériac-Lainé, Histoire des Lépreux; Ginzburg, Ecstasies. See also Touati, Maladie et société; and Alexandra Pfau, “Curing the Incurable: Voicing the Lepers in Medieval Narrative,” unpublished lecture from the International Medieval Conference, Leeds, July 2001. I would like to thank Alexandra Pfau for sending me her presentation and allowing me to quote it before its appearance in print. 9. Shahar, “Des lépreux”; Dols, “Leper in Islamic Society”; Barber, “Order of Saint Lazarus”; and most recently, Hamilton, Leper King. 10. Michael W. Dols’s final research project, published posthumously, deals with medieval Islamic society’s attitude toward other marginal individuals; see Dols, Majnūn. 11. See Camporesi, Incorruptible Flesh; Pegg, “Le Corps et L’autorité”; Douglas, “Witchcraft and Leprosy.” 12. See Rosen, History of Public Health; Larkey, “Leprosy in Medieval Romance”; Møller-Christiansen, Bone Changes; Demaitre, “Descriptions and Diagnosis”; Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine; Park, “Medicine and Society.” 196

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13. On the use of leprosy as a metaphor for segregation and seclusion, see Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types,” 697–736. 14. Hamilton, Leper King, 242. See also B. Turner, Body and Society, 89. 15. Rawcliffe, Leprosy in England in the Middle Ages. 16. Resnick, Marks of Distinction. 17. On the social status of the metzora‘ in the Bible, see Avraham, “Marginal People,” 96–132. 18. Job is not included here, for he was afflicted with boils (shekhin), not tzara‘at. In the postbiblical period, however, as we shall see below, the mukeh shekhin (one afflicted with boils) was equated with the metzora‘ in many respects. This caused the Church Fathers to view Job, despite his being described in the Bible as stricken with shehin, as a leper. In medieval Christian biblical exegesis, Job served as a prototype for the medieval leper both in writing as well as in the arts. On this see Revel-Neher, “Depictions of Job.” 19. On the tzara‘at laws in Leviticus, see Jastrow, “So-Called ‘Leprosy’ Laws.” On the anthropological aspects of the tzara‘at laws, see Douglas, Purity and Danger. Regarding the changes in Mary Douglas’s opinion on this matter, see “Sacred Contagion,” and Leviticus as Literature. 20. On Miriam’s tzara‘at, see J. Abrams, “Metzora(‘at) Kashaleg.” 21. On King Uzziah’s tzara‘at, see Beentjes, “ ‘They saw his forehead was leprous.’ ” 22. On shehin and ava‘bu‘ot see Exodus 9:10; on shehin and tzara‘at, see Leviticus 13:23. 23. Sawyer, Sacred Texts and Sacred Meanings, 391–94. 24. See, e.g., Charles J. Brim, Medicine in the Bible: The Pentateuch (New York: Froben Press, 1936), 154. 25. For an extended bibliographic survey of this matter, see Milgram-Beitman, “ ‘Sarrat.’ ” With regard to the connection between biblical tzara‘at and modern phenomena, see Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, 323–75; Leibowitz, “MedicoHistorical Introduction.” Many Bible scholars base their work upon Hulse’s important article; see Hulse, “Nature of Biblical Leprosy.” For an example in an updated commentary to Leviticus, see Jacob Milgrom, Anchor Bible, 773–75. 26. See also Avraham, “Marginal People,” 97–98; and Anderson, “Leprosy in Translations,” 207–12. 27. See Maccoby, “Corpse and Leper,” for the Talmudic development regarding the ritual impurity of tzara‘at and its relationship to the impurity of the dead. Regarding the ritual purification of metzora‘im in the late–Second Temple period and its relationship to the biblical edict, see Lieber, “ ‘Cleansing’ the ‘Leper.’ ” Evidence regarding tzara‘at in the rabbinic period can be found in New Testament descriptions, archaeological findings from the Second Temple and rabbinic periods, and rabbinic sources in the Mishnah and Talmud, which will be dealt with below. On the archeological findings regarding leprosy, see Dauphin, “Leprosy, Lust, and Lice”; and Koet, “Purity and Impurity.” 28. On Rashbam, see Urbach, The Tosaphists, 45–59; and more recently, Touitou, Exegesis in Perpetual Motion. 197

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29. Translation adapted from M. Cohen, Opening the Gates, 156n81. Cf. Rashbam’s Commentary on Leviticus and Numbers: An Annotated Translation, ed. and trans. Martin I. Lockshin (Providence: Brown University, 2001). 30. On the meaning of the expression derekh eretz in the writings of Rashbam, see Touitou, “Exegetical Method,” esp. 63–66. 31. Rashbam on Genesis. 37:2. The translation is taken from M. Cohen, Opening the Gates, 140. On Rashbam’s “simple meaning” or the Peshat exegetical philosophy see Rashbam’s Commentary; and H. Liss, Creating Fictional Worlds: Peshat-Exegesis and Narrativity in Rashbam's Commentary on the Torah (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 32. See also M. Cohen, Opening the Gates, 156n81. 33. Gersonides (1288–1344) was a Provençal commentator. See Kellner, “Bibliographia Gersonideana.” Recent studies covering aspects of Gersonides and his work include David Horwitz, “Gersonides’ Ethics: The To‘alot be-Middot in Ralbag’s Biblical Commentaries” (PhD diss., Yeshiva University, 2006); Seymour Feldman, Gersonides: Judaism within the Limits of Reason (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010); Sara Klein-Braslavy, Without Any Doubt: Gersonides on Method and Knowledge, trans. and ed. Lenn J. Schramm (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011). 34. The Hebrew word va-asafto in its biblical context appears to be close in meaning to curse-breaking or exorcism, deriving from Akkadian (w)ašapu, which means healing by means of witchcraft. See James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Kgs., ed. Henry Snyder Gehman (New York: Scribner, 1951), 378; Wolfram von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976), 3:1484. I would like to thank Dr. Jonathan Ben Dov for his help on this matter. 35. Levine, Anchor Bible, 181. 36. Two additional occurrences of tzara‘at in Kgs. are the four metzora‘im at the gate of Samaria at the time of Aram’s siege, and the episode of Naaman’s tzara‘at and his cure. 37. On this see Baruch, “Relation between Sin and Disease.” 38. See N. Rubin, “From Corpse to Corpus,” for an anthropological analysis of tzara‘at’s meaning in the rabbinic corpus. 39. Brody, Disease of the Soul, 107–21. 40. Ibid., 119. 41. Numbers Rabbah 7:5. 42. Rashi on Exodus 4:6. 43. Midrash Rabbah 18:4. 44. See Toviyahu, Midrash Lekah Tov, Tazria‘, sec. 2, 70; Moshav Zekenim al ha-Torah, Lev. 12:8; Pseudo-Rokeah, vol. 2, Tazria‘, s.v. ba-Midrash Tadshe, 238. See also Dan, “Anonymous Biblical Commentary,” 644. Dan also agrees that this work, despite the fact that it is incorrectly attributed to R. Eleazar, has its roots in the circle of German Pietists with which he was affiliated. 45. See Sussmann, “History of Halakha”; and Shlomo Zalman Havlin, “Babylonian Talmud,” in Encyclopaedia Hebraica, vol. 32 (Jerusalem: Encyclopedia Publishing Company, 1981), col. 859 (Hebrew). Nevertheless, it was specifically in 198

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medieval France that R. Samson of Sens wrote a commentary to tractates in the order of Taharot, which includes the tractate of Nega‘im. 46. Skeletal fragments and mummified bodies from Egypt have bearing on trends of leprosy in the Mediterranean expanse during this period. See Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types,” 697. 47. BT Gittin 43a, BT Ketubbot 40b and 77a. 48. BT Ketubbot 20b with Rashi. See also BT Hullin 129b, M Keritot 3:7–8, and BT Keritot 15a–b. 49. Tosefta, ed. Lieberman, Ketubbot 7:11. And so Lieberman, Tosefta kiFeshutah, Nashim. See further Margulies, Midrash Va-Yikra Rabbah, 348. On this see Rosner, “Illness Ra’atan.” 50. BT Ketubbot 77b. 51. On this see Shimon of Frankfurt, Yalkut Shim‘oni, Zekhariah, sec. 586; Theodore and Chanoch, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah (Vilna) 40–41; Margulies, Midrash Va-Yikra Rabbah, 16:1. This view stands in opposition to that of BT Mo‘ed Katan 7b with respect to the metzora‘. 52. R. Joshua explained his preference as follows: “ ‘A loving doe, a graceful mountain goat’ (Prov. 5:19)—if [the Torah] bestows grace upon those who study it, would it not also protect them?” 53. Bekhor Shor, Perushei Rabbi Joseph Bekhor Shor ‘al ha-Torah, 199 (Lev. 13:45). 54. BT Mo‘ed Katan 7a–8a, 15a. 55. Victor Aptowitzer, the first modern editor of Ravyah’s work, points out that he is unsure what the purpose of expertise is where there is no priest present, because the status of the metzora‘ can only be established by a priest (see Aptowitzer, Introduction to Sefer Ravyah). Given that the laws of the priesthood were only observed when the Temple stood, expertise or a lack thereof should not make any difference (M Nega‘im 3:1; BT Mo‘ed Katan 7b). 56. Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Ravyah, vol. 2, end of sec. 840, 351b. Other commentators on BT Mo‘ed Katan, among them Rashi, demonstrate a similar semantic treatment; see, Efraim Kupfer, Perush Rashi le-Masekhet Mo‘ed Katan (Jerusalem: Mekitze Nirdamim, 1961), 49–51. 57. The feeling that lepers and mukei shekhin had a dangerous element to them was not limited to Ashkenaz. Sefer ha-Hinnukh, ascribed to R. Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona and composed by someone from Nahmanides’s circle in the Christian regions of northern Spain in the mid-thirteenth century, speaks explicitly about being careful: “Similarly, [the Sages] proscribed putting coins into [one’s] mouth [out of concern that] perhaps dried spittle of a mukeh shehin or of metzora‘im or sweat is upon them, for human sweat, excepting sweat of the face, is the elixir of death.” See Sefer ha-Hinnukh, ed. Charles Chavel (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1953), mitzvah 546, s.v. ve-harbeh devarim. 58. See Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types,” 735–36. 59. BT Ketubbot 77b. Notwithstanding the context and association, it is clear that two different things are intended by ba‘alei ra’atan and metzora‘. 60. See Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types,” 697–701. 199

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61. On the acceptance of the Babylonian Talmud in Europe, see G. Cohen, Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures, 157–208; Dimitrovsky, “Is There a Jewish ‘Middle Ages’?”; and Bonfil, “Between the Land of Israel and Babylonia.” 62. The printed responsa is in Teshuvot Maharam, Lvov, §245. The manuscript is Ms. London, Beth ha-Midrash 14 (known as the “Sinai” manuscript; IMHM f. 4685), fol. 162d. Regarding the provenance and importance of this manuscript, see Emanuel, “Fragments of the Responsa.” 63. This idea alludes to the Talmud in BT Yevamot 63b: “A bad wife is tzara‘at to her husband. What remedy does he have? Let him give her a letter of divorce and be healed of his tzara‘at.” Modern readers may justifiably view this Talmudic remark as highly misogynistic. 64. See Schäfer, “Ideal of Piety,” esp. 14–15; and Dan, “Mystical ‘Descenders to the Chariot.’ ” 65. Sefer Gematriot, 47, 60 (12a and 18b, respectively, in ms. pagination). See Buber, Midrash Tanhuma, Metzora‘, sec. 7. 66. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 15, 20; BT Sanhedrin 107a. 67. In the continuation of his comment, R. Eleazar describes the four metzora‘im extremely negatively. Against the biblical text that depicts the four as loyal to one another, and against the affection we would expect of a father and brothers, R. Eleazar ascribes to each one a self-centered avarice and concern: “Another explanation: ‘and they buried (va-yatminu) [the spoils]’: each one turned aside (va-yet menu) from the path of the others so that they would not know where he hid his money.” See R. Eleazar’s commentary on the haftarot, which is the same as Rimzei ha-Haftarot le-haRokeah z"l (Warsaw, 1875), 7. 68. Moshav Zekenim al ha-Torah, 298 (Lev. 13:2). 69. On this comparison, its implications, and the connection among being bestial, existing outside of society, and abnormal conduct, see below. See also Bracton, Bracton on the Laws and Customs. 70. See Yassif, “Body Never Lies.” On commensurate punishment, see Urbach, Sages, 384–92, esp. 387n63. This approach was especially prominent among the German Pietists; see Dan, “Note on the History of Teshuva.” 71. Buber, Midrash Tanhuma, Metzora‘, sec. 10; and similarly Simeon of Frankfurt, Yalkut Shim‘oni, Va-Yikra sec. 563, Yish’aya sec. 397. 72. Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, 177–95. See also Brody, Disease of the Soul, 51–55, 129, 147–55; Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types,” 731–33; and Gesta Romanorum, Entertaining Moral Stories, trans. Charles Swan and Wynnard Hooper (New York: AMS Press, 1970), no. 151. 73. Pseudo-Rokeah, vol. 2, Tazria‘, s.v. ba-Midrash Tadshe. On this midrash and its time see Reizel, Introduction to the Midrashic Literature, 411–14. The midrash is apparently pseudo-epigraphically attributed to Talmudic figures (R. Pinchas Ben Yair), although it was probably compiled in Europe around the end of the first millennium. 74. Pseudo-Rokeah, vol. 2, Tazria‘, s.v. ve-‘od matza mori. 75. Eleazar b. Judah, Sefer ha-Rokeah ha-Gadol, sec. 317. For a similar perspective among Jews under Islam, see the Geonic responsa on BT Kiddushin in Lewin, 200

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Otzar ha-Geonim, vol. 9, Kiddushin, 186–89: “[Regarding] any leprous priest for whom no remedy is working, it is known that his father kilkel [=had illicit relations] with his mother when she was menstruating, for leprosy only afflicts because of [illicit relations during] menstruation, arrogance, slander, and miserliness.” 76. Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, vol. 1, Hilkhot Niddah, sec. 340, 270a, which is based upon Buber, Midrash Tanhuma, Metzora‘, sec. 3, 44. This understanding was also widespread among non-Jewish society in Germany; see, Schultz, Knowledge of Childhood, 74; and Dauphin, “Leprosy, Lust, and Lice,” 59–60. 77. Avigdor ha-Tzarfati, Sefer Perushim u-Fesakim al ha-Torah le-Rabbi Avigdor ha-Tzarfati, sec. 157, 130. 78. Koren, “Menstruant as ‘Other,’ ” 33–59, esp. 42–44. 79. Margulies, Midrash Va-Yikra Rabbah, 15:2. Similarly in Midrash “Eleh Ezkerah” in Jellinek, Beit ha-Midrash, vol. 2, 66. See also Sefer Gematriot, 47 (12a in ms. pagination). 80. Chavel, Ramban al ha-Torah, 104 (Lev. 18:19). 81. See Demaitre, “Descriptions and Diagnosis,” esp. 328–32; Brody, Disease of the Soul, 119. Brody makes reference to Va-Yikra Rabbah and Bartholomeus Anglicus. The treatise Lilium Medicine was translated into Hebrew, apparently in its totality, by Jekutiel b. Solomon of Narbonne, and it was called Shoshan ha-Refu’ah. This work merited wide dissemination and seriously influenced Jewish doctors. See, e.g., ms. Bodleian 2125 (IMHM 19939), fols. 1a–264a, and so ms. BL 1037 (Add. 15455; IMHM 4940). 82. See also Shahar, Marginal Groups, 69–74. 83. See Mizruchi, Regulating Society. On the connection between lepers and prostitutes, see Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, 18–19. 84. See Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 33–86. This is also one of the fundamental claims of Jeffrey Richards in Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation. Richards claims that the process of marginalizing “undesirables” in the Middle Ages included strident accusations, some truthful and some baseless, regarding sexuality. When framed this way, the social margins were also sexually threatening; groups that were perceived as upsetting the proper order were designated as Others, and the proper sexual ethos was strengthened. See also Douglas, “Witchcraft and Leprosy.” 85. Already in rabbinic literature we find explicit statements in this vein; see Buber, Midrash Tanhuma, Metzora‘, sec. 1, 42: “R. Pedat said: A covenant has been established in this world by God that whoever slanders will be afflicted by tzara‘at.” 86. See BT ‘Arakhin 15b, BT Kiddushin 49b, BT Keritot 26a; Sifre Devarim 275:9; Va-Yikra Rabbah (Vilna) 7:13; Simeon of Frankfurt, Yalkut Shim‘oni, VaYikra, secs. 563 and 937. 87 BT Keritot 26a; and Buber, Midrash Tanhuma (Warsaw), Metzora‘, sec. 4. 88. Minhagei Maharil, Hilkhot Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, sec. 14, 309. See Sifre Devarim, sec. 275. 89. Weiser, The Psalms, 324–25. 90. See Rouwhorst, “Leviticus 12–15 in Early Christianity.” 91. “Disease of the soul” was a medieval expression that referred to an unbelieving soul. Its source is in the Latin phrase leprosi anima. See Tubach, Index 201

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Exemplorum, motif no. 3031, 283. The frequency with which this expression is used increases dramatically in the early modern period, especially in the sixteenth century; see Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types,” 748. 92. For example, in John of Salisbury’s description of the punishments that afflicted Count Ralph (Radulfus comes Viromannensis) we find that his family and children were afflicted with leprosy: “Sed filius in puericia leprosus factus, miserrimus vivit adhoc.” See John of Salisbury, Memoirs, 12–15. 93. Brody, Disease of the Soul, 126. 94. One of the archetypes for the mukeh shehin for medieval Christians was Job, whose suffering was understood as a prefigurement of Jesus’ suffering. See RevelNeher, “Depictions of Job,” 104–11, figs. 10–11. 95. According to the medical principles of the Middle Ages, which drew from Galenic and Hippocratic medicine, the doctor had to overpower the sickness with something exceptionally similar to the cause of the ailment (simil similibus) or utterly opposed to it (contra contraribus). Pliny the Elder relates that the Egyptians used blood as a cure for leprosy; see Gaius Secundus Plinius, Naturalis Historia, trans. W. H. S. Jones, vol. 7 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), 271 (Book 26, 5). Cf. Shemot Rabbah 1:34, which relates that Pharaoh bathed in the blood of infants to be cured of his tzara‘at, a midrash that was well known by medieval Ashkenazi Jews. The midrash is quoted in Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, Hilkhot Pesahim, sec. 256, 319a, and also in the Bible commentary found in ms. Vatican 123, fol. 59b: “Regarding the signs [given to Moses]: why a snake first? Because Pharaoh bit them like a snake. In the end he became a metzora‘; therefore, the second sign was tzara‘at. . . . And he bathed in blood; thus, the third sign was blood.” The relevant illumination is found in the Haggadat Yehudah, which is in the collection of the Israel Museum. In the illumination, Pharaoh sits in a bath and above him is inscribed “King Pharaoh became a metzora‘ and continued perpetrating evil [deeds].” In a picture at the bottom of the page two men can be seen, the first holding an infant in one hand and a knife in the other, the second bearing a spear upon which two humanlike figures are impaled. The inscription above the picture reads: “The king commanded to slaughter the males and to bathe [his] limbs in their blood.” See Katrin Kogman-Appel, Die zweite Nürnberger und die Jehuda Haggada: Jüdische Illustratoren zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt, Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1999), pl. 36. For an analysis of the rabbinic background see ibid., 181. See also Israel Jacob Yuval, “ ‘The Lord Will Take Vengeance, Vengeance for His Temple’—Historia sine ira et studio,” Zion 59 (1994): 366–67n41 (Hebrew); Schultz, Knowledge of Childhood, 53; Brody, Disease of the Soul, 72. See David J. Malkiel, “Infanticide in Passover Iconography,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993): 85–99. 96. Gregorious Turonensis (Gregory of Tours), Decem Libri Historiarum, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum I:1 (Hannover, 1951), book ii, caps. 29–31, 74–78. On heresy as a disease see Tubach, Index Exemplorum, motif no. 3016, 237; Moore, “Heresy as Disease”; Moore, “Origins”; Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society. 97. See Navon, “Lepers as Figurative Types,” 697–703. 202

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98. Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 33–86; Barber, “Lepers, Jews, and Moslems”; Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 48–63. Regarding the “treaty” between Jews, Muslims, and lepers, see Allan Harris and Ellen Helmquist Cutler, The Jew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). 99. See Tubach, Index Exemplorum, motif no. 3019; and Hamilton, Leper King, 271–72. 100. BT Nedarim 64b. 101. BT Bava Batra 115b. On the use of “Sadducee” in medieval rabbinic literature, see Sussmann, “History of Halakha,” esp. the notes on 168 and 190. 102. See Bracton, Bracton on the Laws and Customs, 4:292. 103. Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 80. 104. Midrash Tadshe, sec. 16, in Jellinek, Beit ha-Midrash, vol. 3, 180. Regarding the provenance of this midrash see Mack, “Prolegomena and Example,” 78–82, 222–35. 105. Another possible way to understand Maharam’s words is tied to the tension between halakhah and aggadah; see Samson ben Tzadok, Sefer ha-Tashbetz, sec. 534. The author of the “Ashkenazic” Tashbetz was a close student of Maharam and tended to Maharam during his incarceration (1286–93). 106. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 303. 107. Brody, Disease of the Soul, 60–61. 108. See Kedar, “Gerard of Nazareth,” esp. 72. 109. Ms. Parma 2342, De Rossi 541, fol. 73b. This large manuscript contains a number of works. First, there is an anonymous Bible commentary that dates to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Most of the manuscript is written in an Ashkenazi script, yet some of the treatises contain amulets and cures that include French words, seemingly indicating that the manuscript was copied in a French region or that some of the treatises were composed in France. Chapter 2 1. A thorough methodological survey of the value of responsa as a source for medieval Jewish history may be found in Soloveitchik, Use of Responsa; and more recently, Glick, Window to the Responsa Literature, 223–90. 2. On Rabbi Gershom see Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 106–74. The responsum was first printed in the 1608 Prague edition of Meir of Rothenburg’s responsa, which was reprinted in Budapest in 1895. Bloch, who edited the Budapest reprinting, already noted that this responsum should indeed be read as a responsum of Rabbi Gershom; Teshuvot Maharam, Prague, ed. Bloch, §261, 40b. See Emanuel, “Fragments of the Responsa,” 86–87, and more generally Emanuel, “Unpublished Responsa.” And recently, Responsa of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg and His Colleagues: Critical Edition, introduction and notes by Simcha Emanuel (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2012). 3. The question whether leprosy was endemic in Europe in the pre-crusading era used to trouble researchers, but today it is fairly clear that leprosy and lepers were indeed present in Western Europe before the First Crusade. See Reader, “New Evidence.” 203

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4. The ketubbah is the written contract, but it often stands metonymically for the amount stipulated in the contract to be paid; thus, “pay the/her ketubbah.” 5. See Falk, “Rebellious Woman”; Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 240–52. 6. Teshuvot Hakhmei Tzarfat ve-Loter, §40. See also Isaac b. Solomon, Responsa Rashi, §207. 7. Version 2, which appears in Teshuvot Maharam, Prague, ed. Blakh, §853, opens with “Rashi was asked” and is signed “Shlomo ben R. Yitzhak.” Although the responsum printed in Prague in 1608 and reprinted by Blakh in 1895 do not have the full responsum, some manuscripts do. See ms. Prague 20 (IMHM 46410), §217, fol. 201c; ms. Moscow-Guenzberg 155 (IMHM 6835), fol. 143b. I wish to thank Professor Simcha Emanuel for his assistance on this matter. 8. For pictures of the facial symptoms of leprosy, see Dauphin, “Leprosy, Lust, and Lice,” 56–58. 9. Thanks to Møller-Christiansen’s osteo-archaeological research, which focused on the skeletal remains in leprosaria graveyards, we know much about the history of skeletal changes in leprosy patients. In his research, Møller-Christiansen also dealt with the misdiagnosis of leprosy. See Møller-Christiansen, Bone Changes, as well as a more recent study in Roberts and Manchester, Archaeology of Disease, 193–206. 10. See, for example, the following discussion of the responsum in ms. Bodleian 692. 11. The responsum has the wife citing a phrase from Deut. 18:22, which describes what happens when a false prophet’s prophecy does not come true (ve-lo yihyeh ha-davar ve-lo yavo). 12. This claim is somewhat odd since the husband should have checked this prior to the marriage. In the Islamic world matters were different; see Dols, “Leper in Islamic Society” 897. 13. BT Yevamot 64b. In responding to the husband, Rashi does not relate to this claim. 14. Douglas, “Witchcraft and Leprosy,” 726. 15. Ibid. 16. Donahue, “Canon Law,” 144–58. 17. Stephen R. Ell, “Leprosy,” in DMA, 7:549–52. See also J. Murray, “Individualism and Consensual Marriage,” 124n5; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 335. Steven Lay presents cases in which the decrees of Lateran III were not followed by secular authorities in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, for example. See Lay, “Leper in Purple.” 18. PT Yoma 4:1 (18b); BT Sotah 47a. The Talmud mentions three people won over by the grace of something: inhabitants by the place they live, a husband by his wife, and a purchaser by his or her purchase. Regarding the second, Rashi comments that “a wife’s grace is always upon her husband, even if she is ugly she is charming in his eyes.” 19. See Mal. 2:14. 20. Grossman, Early Sages of France, 140. 21. BT Beitzah 32b. 204

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22. See also Rashi’s comments on II Sam. 21:2, where he connects the Gibeonites’ cruelty to their not being of Abrahamic descent. 23. BT Sotah 47a, with Rashi who comments that “a wife’s grace is always upon her husband, even if she is ugly she is charming in his eyes.” 24. Ibid. 25. BT Ketubbot 77b. 26. On the influence of Christian marriage practices on Ashkenazi Jewry, see Falk, Marriage and Divorce, 96–120. 27. It is possible to explain this difference in light of the strengthening status of women in the times of Maharam. The copyists perhaps found it reasonable that the wife would make her claims in person and therefore omitted the discussion about the intermediating representative. On this change see Falk, Marriage and Divorce, and Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 244–52. 28. Version 2 just has “community” (kahal); it is not modified by “some” (miktzat) as in version 1. 29. See Brody, Disease of the Soul, 179–86. 30. Rosen, History of Public Health. 31. Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society, 4–5, notes that Jews participated in some of these urban boards. For evidence, albeit late given the limits of this study, from sixteenth-century Salonika, see Joseph b. David ibn Lev, She’elot u-Teshuvot (Bnei Brak, 1988), vol. 1, §30, 105–7. 32. For the connection between Jews and Christians in marginal groups, see Simonsohn, “Jewish Vagabonds”; E. Cohen, “Jewish Criminals”; Guggenheim, “Meeting on the Road”; Guggenheim, “Social Stratification”; E. Horowitz, “(Deserving) Poor”; Entin-Rokeah, “Jewish Church Robbers”; Entin-Rokeah, “Crime and Jews”; Ulbricht, “Criminality and Punishment.” The earliest sources can likely be found in Entin-Rokeah, for England had a relatively continuous record. As one moves closer to the end of the Middle Ages, the number of sources on this issue grows. 33. An example of this is the responum of Ravyah and R. Ephraim of Bonn to R. Simhah of Speyer regarding a wife who went mad; see chapter 3; Aptowitzer, Introduction to Sefer Ravyah, 201; Falk, “Rebellious Woman.” 34. On this term and its relevance to this study, see Shoham-Steiner, “Ultimate Pariah.” 35. Carlin, “Medieval English Hospitals”; and M. Rubin, “Development and Change.” 36. See, e.g., Uhrmacher, Leprosorien in Mittelalter; Touati, Archives de la lèpre; and Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England. 37. Gilchrist, “Medieval Bodies.” 38. Julliot, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens; Taitz, Jews of Medieval France, 125–26nn44–46. On Taitz, see Simon Schwarzfuchs, review of The Jews of Medieval France: The Community of Champagne, by Emily Taitz, Zion 62 (1997): 298–301 (Hebrew). 39. This leprosarium is mentioned in multiple sources: Henri Gross, Gallia judaica: Dictionnaire géographique de la France d’après les sources rabbiniques (Paris: 205

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Peeters, 2011), 493–95; Gilbert Dahan, “Quartier juifs et rues des juifs,” in Art et archéologie des juifs en France médiévale, ed. Bernhard Blumenkranz (Toulouse: Privat, 1980), 26n81; Françoise-Olivier Touati, “Domus Judaeorum leprosorum: Une Léproserie pour les Juif Provins au Moyen Age,” in Fondations et oeuvres charitables au Moyen âge: Actes du 121e Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, Section d’histoire médiévale et philologie, Nice, 1996, ed. Jean Dufour and Henri Platelle (Paris: Éditions du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1999), 97–106; William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 215n17, 309n94. Jordan mentions this as a site that Jews had to abandon in the expulsion of 1306; and Touati, Sickness and Society, 682, also mentions the abandonment of the Jewish leprosarium of Provins in 1274. 40. See Berliner, German Jewish Life, 69–70. On “batei hekdesh,” see Yuval, “Alms from Nuremberg,” esp. n26; and Yuval, “Hospices and Their Guests.” 41. See Baron, Social and Religious History, 207–8; and Wickersheimer, “Lèpre et Juifs au Moyen-âge,” 43–48. 42. Baron, Social and Religious History, 338n14. 43. Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 126. 44. It seems that the burns by “fire” referred to are the bodily manifestations of ergotism or ergot poisoning, also referred to in the Middle Ages as St. Anthony’s Fire. This disease was very common among the poor and individuals who consumed wheat and rye infected by the ergot fungus. 45. Nizzahon Vetus, in Berger, Jewish–Christian Debate, English section, 211, sec. 217, ll. 20–23 (=Hebrew section, 147, sec. 217, ll. 779–81); Breuer, Sefer Nizzachon Yashan, sec. 262, 182. 46. Rosen, History of Public Health, 64–65. 47. Douglas, “Witchcraft and Leprosy”; Pegg, “Le Corps et L’autorité.” Pegg has pointed out the changing direction of the “arrow of accusation” in the twelfth century. At first the accusation pointed upward—it was made by a group of lower status against a higher-status group as part of a general mudslinging campaign. Later, the direction of the accusation was reversed to point downward—the normative public accused itinerants, beggars, the indigent, and other unsettled and marginal individuals of being afflicted with leprosy, so as to label them as dangerous and to expel them from the cities. 48. On the loss of texts, see Emanuel, Fragments of the Tablets, 12–20. Emanuel’s discussion centers on religious texts, but the number of administrative texts that have survived is even lower, especially when the community in which they originated was destroyed and those involved in it were dispersed. See Shoham-Steiner, “Ultimate Pariah,” esp. 253n20. 49. Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages, 136–41. 50. This leprosarium is described in Rotha Mary Clay, The Mediaeval Hospitals of England (London: Methuen, 1909), but cf. Carlin, “Medieval English Hospitals,” 21. 51. P. Richards, Medieval Leper, 83. 52. For Gisbar le'cholaich, see “Germersheim” in Alfred Haverkamp (Hg.), Geschichte der Juden zwischen Nordsee und Südalpen: Kommentiertes Kartenwerk, 206

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vol. 2 (Hannover: Ortskatalog, 2002); and in F. J. Ziwes, Studien zur Geschichte der Juden im mittleren Rheingebiet während des hohen und späten Mittelalters (Hannover: Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden A 1, 1995). I wish to thank Rainer J. Barzen for sharing this information with me before publication. 53. This section appears in both Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 161, and Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 673. 54. The perception of infection in medieval medicine differed from that of modern medicine. For medical perspectives of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Edington, “Medical Knowledge,” 323. In the wake of the Black Death, new conceptions of contagiousness took hold. On the development of the concept of infection, see Temkin, “Historical Analysis.” 55. P. Richards, Medieval Leper, 124. 56. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 566. 57. From Hebrew medical sources later in the Middle Ages we find the use of animal fat (from “impure” animals and even pigs) in mixtures and creams used by those suffering from skin maladies, including shehin and tzara‘at. An excellent example is found in ms. Paris, BN Heb. 1122 (IMHM 15066), which is a collection of treatises dating to the fifteenth century on medicine and cures. On fol. 5v one finds a cream for tzara‘at that includes “half a litra of very old pig fat.” This mixture would be spread on the affected arms and legs. On use of “impure” materials in medicine by medieval European Jews, see Barkai, Dinah, 99–104. In Sefer Hasidim itself we find opposition to the use of forbidden foods for medical purposes; see Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 1161. 58. The source has shekhin instead of shehin. 59. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 567. 60. BT Berakhot 51a. 61. Cf. Dan, Studies in Ashkenazi-Hasidic Literature, 134–87. 62. In the teachings of the German Pietists, embarrassment is purifying and constitutes part of the path to Pietistic perfection. Also paramount in their doctrine is preventing someone else from being embarrassed; see Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 54, 1089, 973; Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 56, 87, 813, 781. 63. On R. Isaac’s connections to R. Judah he-Hasid and the German Pietists, see Aptowitzer, Introduction to Sefer Ravyah, 16–22, 344–50; Fuchs, “Studies,” 29–33. On the specific connection between the laws of phylacteries in Or Zarua‘ and R. Judah he-Hasid’s teachings, see Fuchs, “Studies,” 50. R. Isaac cites the writings of R. Judah in secs. 555, 561–63, 568, and 570. 64. Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, vol. 1, Hilkhot Tefillin, sec. 576, 473b. 65. This anxiety appears throughout Sefer Hasidim in many contexts. See Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 640; Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 894. Keeping one’s distance from anything “disgusting” led to extreme stringencies in laws regarding a menstruant; see Dinari, “Impurity Customs”; Dinari, “Profanation.” 66. BT Mo‘ed Katan 15a treats the general issue of the metzora‘ wearing phylacteries in the context of similar discussions regarding the excommunicated and mourner. There, however, it is fairly clear that the metzora‘ under discussion is the biblical metzora‘ and the issue is one of ritual impurity. 207

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67. See Shoham-Steiner, “ ‘The Left (Hand) Repels,’ ” 156–59. 68. On spitting as having a practical, magical effect see Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, 107, 120, 159. On the therapeutic and magical strength of bodily fluids, see Camporesi, Incorruptible Flesh. 69. Beru’im. An alternative reading is “the healthy” (beri’im). 70. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 99; Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 635. “On account of any person” has a universalist ring to it, and there is no reason to rule out leprous Christians. 71. Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 589. 72. For the size of the Ashkenazi communities at the beginning of our period, see Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 5–7; in the thirteenth century, see Y. Horowitz, “R. Hayyim Or-Zarua”; and at the end of our period see Jacob b. Moses Moellin, Shut Maharil he-Hadashot, §28, and Grossman, “Jewish Community.” See Grossman, “Family Lineage,” for familial ties and marriage within the Ashkenazi community. 73. On these precepts, see Soloveitchik, “Three Themes.” 74. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 1104, 1107. 75. Teshuvot Maharam, Lvov, §185. Maharam’s student R. Samson b. Tzadok also cites it in Sefer ha-Tashbetz, sec. 481. Agus, Rabbi Meir, 234, also quotes it. 76. This manuscript includes various works, including a very long collection (337 sections) of responsa and rulings by various German and French halakhists. The works appear to have been collected in the 1310s by R. Samuel of Eisenach, a student of Maharam. Regarding ms. Bodleian 692 (IMHM 17285), see Kupfer, Teshuvot u-Fesakim, sec. 156, 243 (in ms. 287, sec. 299). 77. See Rashi in BT Hullin 48b, based on which it would seem that the man here had hard-crusted abscesses on his face. 78. One cannot tell if his violence resulted from his ailment or if it was part and parcel of their relationship from the outset. On violence against women in the Middle Ages, see Prevenier, “Violence against Women”; and A. Roberts, Violence against Women. For violence in the Jewish community, see Grossman, “Violence against Women.” 79. On expertise in diagnosing mukei shehin, see Teshuvot Maharah, §155. 80. The expression “we do not muzzle her” is taken from BT Yevamot 4a, BT Makkot 23a. 81. See Teshuvot Maharam, Cremona, §291; Hagahot al ha-Mordechai, Ketubbot, sec. 186; Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, Bava Kamma, sec. 161, 46b–47a. See also Teshuvot Maharam, Berlin, §780, 913. 82. Teshuvot Maharah, §155. 83. See Y. Horowitz, “R. Hayyim Or-Zarua,” 107–12. Since the text mentions Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg as already deceased (Rabbenu Meir z"l = our master Meir of blessed memory) it cannot be earlier than the latter’s time of death namely 1293. 84. See BT Ketubbot 63a. 85. BT Ketubbot 77a. 86. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 240–52; and Yuval, “Appeal against the Proliferation of Divorce.” 208

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87. See Edbury and Rowe, William of Tyre, 61–65; and Hamilton, Leper King. On Baldwin IV’s leprosy see Mitchell, “Leprosy.” 88. Shahar, “Des lépreux.” Lay takes issue with Shahar’s contention that Baldwin was already a leper at his coronation; see Lay, “Leper in Purple.” See also Barber, “Order of Saint Lazarus.” 89. Dols, “Leper in Islamic Society,” esp. 915–16. 90. Pegg, “Le Corps et L’autorité”; Douglas, “Witchcraft and Leprosy.” 91. See Kedar, “On the Origins.” Sections 13 and 14 (p. 314) deal with a Frank who raped a Muslim woman. Section 15 (p. 319) discusses a woman who had sexual relations with a Muslim man. The full Latin text is cited at pp. 332–35. Chapter 3 1. R. Shimshon’s discussion appears in the Prague collections of the responsa of R. Meir of Rothenburg, Teshuvot, Prague, ed. Blakh, §455. 2. Moses b. Maimon, Sefer Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot ‘Edut 9:10. Maimonides appears to have been influenced by Islamic physicians on this issue; see Dols, Majnūn, 452. 3. For example, wild dancing in a dance club is considered the norm in contemporary society, and it is perhaps even encouraged. Yet identical behavior in the street, at work, or in a public area will garner responses labeling the dancer crazy or out of his mind. In extreme cases, such behavior might even lead to a comprehensive psychiatric exam. 4. Midelfort, History of Madness, 13–16. For his treatment of the court fool (Hofnarr in German), see 228–76. 5. Rashi, and others following him, explained hitholelut as crazy behavior (Rashi on Nah. 2:5; Radak on Jer. 51:7; Gersonides on II Sam 1:27). He also interpreted mehumah to mean insanity (Rashi on Zech. 14:13; Rashi on BT Bava Batra 9b, s.v. mesagges). One can also find hitholelut used as a synonym for insanity in Shut Maharik, §171, s.v. ta‘anot. 6. Notwithstanding the development of Hebrew itself, there is the additional factor that although the scholars discussed here wrote in Hebrew, their mother tongue was a European language. 7. See Midelfort, History of Madness, 1–11. He writes: “That is one reason why this book dwells on ‘madness,’ for the very word resists specification and defies the subtle professional euphemisms and refinements provided by medicine, law, theology, psychoanalysis, and modern social theory. Madness is so general, so vague a term that we find ourselves forced to ask what it meant in any given time or place, and so it well serves the purposes of an empirical historian who aims, as I do, to convey some of the flavor and strangeness of a forgotten culture” (11). 8. See Melamed-Cohen, Exceptional Child. 9. Midelfort, History of Madness, 19. 10. On societal attitudes toward children with special needs, see Schultz, Knowledge of Childhood; and Baumgarten, Mothers and Children. 11. Farbstein, Misphetei ha-Da‘at. Many thanks to Adv. Aviad Hacohen for pointing out this work to me. 209

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12. Rashi on BT Hagigah 3b. 13. Foucault, History of Madness. On Foucault and scholars who followed in his footsteps, see the collection of articles in Still and Velody, Rewriting History of Madness. An overview of the critique on Foucault can be found in Midelfort, History of Madness, 7–10. 14. See Heyd, Be Sober and Reasonable; Conrad and Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization, esp. chap. 3. 15. Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic”; Soergel, “Miracle, Magic,” 215–34. Of late, studies have been done on belief in possession in early modern Jewish society and its implications; see Mark, “Dibbuk and Devekut,” and Mark, Mysticism and Madness. In this connection, see also Chajes, “Judgment Sweetened”; Chajes, “R. Moses Zacuto”; and Chajes, “City of the Dead.” 16. Kleinberg, Fra Ginepro’s Leg of Pork, 169. 17. Select works in this area include Oesterreich, Possession; Rosen, Madness and Society; Neaman, Suggestion of the Devil; Chaput, “La condition juridique”; Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children; Gross, “La Folie.” Similarly, see Laharie, La Folie au Moyen Age; Fritz, Le discours du fou; and also Granshaw and Porter, Hospital in History. And more recently, W. Turner, Madness in Medieval Law and Custom. 18. Midelfort, History of Madness in Germany; Dols, Majnūn. See also Boaz Shoshan, “The State and Madness in Medieval Islam,” International Journal of Mideast Studies 35 (2003): 329–40. 19. See Jaeger, Envy of Angels; and Bond, review. 20. A good example can be found in the scholarship on wild men in medieval culture and European folklore; see Bernheimer, Wild Men. For a discussion of the roots of the concept “wild man” and its implications, see White, “Forms of Wildness”; and Bartra, Wild Men. On Nebuchadnezzar as the archetypical wild man, see Henze, Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar; and Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 113. 21. Rosen, Madness and Society, 139. 22. I have used “hospital” in full knowledge of the weak connection between medieval and modern care-giving institutions. Many medieval “hospitals,” in fact, were mainly shelters or places to imprison the mad and not places of healing and convalescence 23. An insane asylum (Tollhaus) was established in Elbing, which was located in lands conquered by the Teutonic Knights. In Hamburg a cell for the insane (Tollkiste) was established, which is mentioned in urban records from the year 1375. The Grosse Hospital in Erfurt had a lodge for the mad (Tollkoben), and the famous London hospital St. Mary of Bethlehem had six patients described in the records as menti capti already in 1403. St. Mary of Bethlehem started out as a regular medieval hospital but eventually housed so many of the insane that one of its names, Bedlam, became a synonym for insane asylum. See Rosen, Madness and Society, 139. 24. Rosen, Madness and Society, 140. 25. Heyd, Be Sober and Reasonable. 26. Neaman, Suggestion of the Devil, introduction. 27. See Asher b. Yehiel, Shut ha-Rosh, kelal 43, sec. 3, 179. 28. See Vanja, “Madhouses”; Sander, “Die ‘Dullen in der Kiste.’ ” 210

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29. Bracton, Bracton on the Laws and Customs, 4:308. 30. Sefer Gematriot, 23b. 31. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, 345. The use of music and song to cure madness is ancient and is attested in I Sam. 16:14–23. In the world of Islam—following Greek medicine—playing music in the ears of the mad was widely accepted as having a practical curative effect; see Dols, Majnūn, 121–26, 166–69. See also Shefer, “Insanity and the Insane.” 32. Jacob b. Moses Moellin, Sefer Maharil, Hilkhot Tish‘ah be-Av, sec. 11, 245. 33. In the list of charms found in the fourteenth-century ms. Parma, Palatina 2342, De Rossi 541, is one that purportedly can “return a person’s mind [da‘ato] [to be] as it was before.” 34. See Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 380–81, 1162. This remedy for insanity and for mental changes brought on by witchcraft seems to have its source in contemporary folklore and folk medicine 35. See Thio, Deviant Behavior, 268–74. 36. Shut ha-Rivash, §93: “Those vanities and crazy things [shige‘onot] that the convert told you . . . that through adjurations he causes the moon to descend from heaven—anyone who has a discerning heart will not believe those lies and impossibilities.” 37. See, among others, his comments on Lev. 11:26, Dan. 1:1, and his long commentary on Ex. 20:7. 38. Jacob b. Meir, Sefer ha-Yashar, Helek ha-Teshuvot, §25; see also §101. 39. See Baer, History of the Jews, 1:321–22. 40. Asher b. Yehiel, Shut ha-Rosh, kelal 21, sec. 9-B. 41. Yuval notes that “tall Eberlein” is also found in Latin (Heberle Largus) and German (der Gross Eberlen) sources; see Yuval, Scholars in Their Time, 355–56n81. 42. The source for this story is in ms. Bodleian 81 (IMHM 20356), fols. 41r–42r. See Yuval, Scholars in Their Time, 355–56nn78–81. This manuscript is also a source for responsa written by Maharil; see Jacob b. Moses Moellin, Shut Maharil, 12. 43. BT Hagigah 3b. 44. Teshuvot Maharam, Prague, ed. Blakh, §455. For the development of this dispute and its implications, see Farbstein, Misphetei ha-Da‘at., 39–65. 45. The midrash on Psalms is multilayered and contains statements from a variety of time periods. Scholars date the editing of the first section of this composition (the midrash on Ps. 1–118) to the eleventh century. It is already quoted in the writings of Rabbi Nathan of Rome (1035–1110), author of the encyclopedic compilation Aruch in eleventh-century Italy. See A. Reizel, Introduction to Midrashic Literature (Alon Shvut: Tvunot Publishing, 2011), 281 (Hebrew). 46. On the status of the mentally ill in halakhah, see Avraham Steinberg, “mental illness,” in Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, trans. Fred Rosner, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2003), 657–78; Avraham Steinberg, shoteh, in Encyclopedia of Medicine and Jewish Law, vol. 7 (Jerusalem: Dr. Falk Schlesinger Institute for Medical-Halachic Research at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, 2006), 534–624 (Hebrew); Silman, “Basic Norm.” 47. BT Hagigah 3b. 211

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48. Bazak, Criminal Responsibility, 221–23. 49. Jacobs, Jews of Angevin England, 283–85 (based upon Gerald of Wales, Opera [Rolls Series] 4:139). It is fitting to remember Dr. Elka Klein, of blessed memory, in this context, for she referred me to this source. “We do not erect monuments on the graves of the righteous, for their words are their memorial” (PT Shekalim 2:7). 50. See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, esp. 167–218. 51. See Tzfatman, “Old Yiddish Literary Genre,” 127; Yassif, “Sepher haMa‘asim,” 409; Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 350. 52. R. Judah he-Hasid became a figure around whom legends accrued not long after his death in 1217. His asceticism and engagement with esoteric aspects of Judaism contributed to the formation of a holy halo around him. By the end of the fourteenth century, and perhaps even earlier, Jews were making pilgrimages to his grave. See Reiner, “Pilgrims and Pilgrimage,” 217–21. 53. See Dan, R. Yehudah, 167. The Yiddish text can be found in Ma‘aseh Buch, ed. Samson Hanau (Homburg vor der Höhe, 1727), sec. 186. 54. The translation is adapted from Hekhalot Rabbati: The Greater Treatise Concerning the Palaces of Heaven, trans. by Morton Smith, and ed. Gershom Scholem and Don Karr, ch. 4, available online at www. digital-brilliance.com/contributed/ Karr/HekRab/index.php. The Hebrew can be found in Beit ha-Midrash, vol. 3, 86. 55. The perception that what one sees can affect one’s sanity can already be found in the Bible, which uses the term shigga‘on to describe the emotional feelings that accompany the sight of destruction as described in the biblical rebuke: “The Lord will strike you with madness [shigga‘on], blindness, and numbness of heart [timhon levav] . . . until you are driven mad [meshugga‘] by what your eyes behold” (Deut. 28:28, 34). Shigga‘on paralleled not only numbness of heart but also blindness. In this way, one can speak of eyes as windows of the soul, or, better, of the soul as a reflection of processes connected to eyesight. In the first verse, shigga‘on is divine punishment; in the second verse, it is a consequence of experiencing utter destruction. 56. See Nathan b. Jehiel, Sefer he-‘Arukh ha-Shalem, vol. 6, 429, s.v. firma. R. Nathan cites the Tanhuma in a number places, in addition to Shoher Tov, Ps. 17. 57. Avigdor ha-Tzarfati, Sefer Perushim u-Fesakim al ha-Torah le-Rabbi Avigdor ha-Tzarfati, secs. 112–13, s.v. hinneh anokhi sholeah mal’akh. 58. Sefer Gematriot, 36. The background to this question is R. Judah’s overarching exegetical approach that sees any anthropomorphic element attributed to God as problematic. On this see Dan, Esoteric Theology, 100–104. 59. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 164; Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 676, which is based on T Bava Kamma 9:31. 60. The Talmud links injury and destruction of property to temporary loss of awareness, sleep, and uncontrollable rage. See BT Bava Kamma 117b and BT Hagigah 3b. 61. Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, 73. 62. T Bava Kamma 9:11, BT Shabbat 105b. 63. Shut ha-Rashba, vol. 1. §571. This responsum is one of those sent to his contemporary Ashkenazi halakhists, such as R. Hayyim “Or Zarua‘” and Maharam. See Havlin, Responsa, 9. 212

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64. BT Ketubbot 72a. 65. In the Mishnah cited at BT Ketubbot 87b. According to Rashba’s reading, the Hebrew participles yotze’ah (goes out) and tovah (spins) indicate habitual conduct. 66. BT Nedarim 22b. 67. See Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 135–36. 68. Foucault, History of Madness, 148. 69. Goodman, “Exile of the Broken Vessels,” 143. 70. Ibn Ezra on Dan. 4:28. 71. Ibid. 72. Freeman, “Wonders, Prodigies, and Marvels.” 73. It is not impossible that this line of interpretation, which appears time and again in Ibn Ezra’s commentary on Daniel, was a product of polemical needs and Ibn Ezra’s attempt to undermine the potential for allegorical interpretations of Daniel. 74. Evidence for deforestation in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Central Europe and the fear that accompanied it can be found in Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 371. 75. Nijsten, “Feasts and Public Spectacles,” 107–44, esp. 130–31. 76. In his groundbreaking study in the early 1950s, Bernheimer already noted the connection between Nebuchadnezzar, madness, and the “wild man.” See Bernheimer, Wild Men, 12–14; Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children; Henze, Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar. Determining potential influences on Ibn Ezra’s commentary is not a simple task. Ibn Ezra wrote his short commentary on Daniel at the beginning of his wanderings, at which point he spent some time in Rome. He wrote his long commentary on Daniel in the early 1150s in northern France. We know that he spent time in Rouen and then crossed the English Channel into England, which was under the control of King Henry II Plantagenet. Around this time, the “wild man” made his first appearance in written literature as Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s (1100–1155) work. Geoffrey composed his Historia Regum Britanniae and Vita Merlini when Ibn Ezra was in the general region, and these works were also widely disseminated in England when Ibn Ezra visited there. Vita Merlini, the later of the two, was completed around 1148, which was also around the time Ibn Ezra arrived in northern France. Ibn Ezra, though, attributes the story to a certain trustworthy person (ne’eman ruah; see Chavel, Ramban al ha-Torah, Lev. 16:8, s.v. ve-R. Avraham katav). Ibn Ezra may have heard the story about Sardinia during his stay in Rome or Lucca, but it is also possible that he heard Geoffrey’s story about Merlin while in Northern Europe. In fact, parts of the “Sardinian” story have English elements to it. For example, deer could only be hunted in forests by the king or with the king’s permission. This law was quite old, but it was given additional emphasis and enforcement during the reign of Henry II Plantagenet. Nevertheless, there are no solid indications in the manuscripts that Ibn Ezra is referring to England, so this remains within the realm of speculation. A full manuscript that includes Ibn Ezra’s long commentary to Daniel is the fourteenth-century ms. Parma, Palatina 3099, De Rossi 694 (IMHM 70546). The commentary can be found on fols. 44v–53r. 77. See, e.g., images in T. Husband, The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980). 213

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78. See the story of Agnes Alyn mentioned above in Finucane, Rescue, 72–73. 79. See Bernheimer, Wild Men, 12–14. Penelope Reed Doob, who worked in the early 1970s on madness in medieval English literature, also connected these two stories; see Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children. See also Henze, Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar. 80. Finucane, Rescue, 74. 81. See Belkin, “Antichrist as the Embodiment,” 65–82; see also Belkin, “BeMoshav Letzim” (and see illumination 7). 82. Ibn Ezra on Mic. 1:8. 83. Rashi on BT Yevamot 113b, s.v. she-meshalehah mi-beito ve-hozeret. The Talmud assumes that a shoteh has no shame. 84. See BT Bava Kamma 86b: “R. Meir says that a deaf-mute and minor have shame; a shoteh has no shame.” 85. The bathhouse is an exception to this; see BT Bava Kamma 86b. 86. It is worth noting that nudity even in public space was legitimate, at times, in Hellenistic and Roman values. Sports in the gymnasium, for example, were played in the nude. 87. Forced stripping and nudity were part of the process of denigration that accompanied physical punishment. In the Roman Empire this was very widely accepted. The New Testament’s account of the crucifixion attests to this (see, for example, Matt. 27:28–38). We also find this in medieval Christendom; see E. Cohen, “Jewish Criminals,” 146–54; and at length in E. Cohen, Crossroads of Justice. 88. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 1060. On full and partial nudity in the synagogue, see secs. 486 and 459: “It is inconceivable for any Jew to be uncovered opposite the scroll and the ark.” 89. Thomas of Celano was Francis’s first biographer. He describes how Francis stripped in a city street in front of his father, family, and local bishop. In the biography, this disrobement was part of Francis’s renunciation of present and future worldly possessions. Francis’s father and some others viewed this act as evidence of insanity. This scene made its way into literature and art, and a modern theatrical reconstruction of this scene can be found in Franco Zeffirelli’s film Brother Son, Sister Moon (1972). On this act of Francis, see L. R. Little, “Francis of Assisi,” DMA, 5:191–92; Duffy, “Finding St. Francis.” On the repercussions of this act on Francis and his relationship with his family, see Trexler, Naked before the Father, esp. 7–29. 90. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, 17. 91. Finucane, Rescue, 73–78. 92. See my article for a lengthy treatment of this exemplum: Shoham-Steiner, “The Humble Sage and the Wandering Madman,” 38–49. 93. The motif of faking insanity leading to a positive outcome is well known in folklore (K1818.3 in the Aarne-Thompson motif index). On the exempla in Sefer Hasidim see Yassif, “Exemplary Story.” On the use of exempla in historical research, see Yassif, “Legend and History: Historians”; and Yassif, “Legend and History: Second Thoughts.” Cf. Yassif, Hebrew Folktale. I would like to thank Tamar Alexander, with whom I discussed this exemplum.

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94. For a survey of the various halakhic approaches to this issue, Khlab, “Freeing Prisoners.”Shepansky, Ha-Takanot be-Yisra’el, 2:51–56, details the various ordinances legislated regarding the redemption of captives. The most famous case of ransoming a prisoner in medieval Ashkenaz is that of Maharam. The Holy Roman emperor Rudolph I ordered the local lord in Tyrol to arrest and imprison Maharam in Görz when Maharam attempted to leave his realm. A huge ransom was demanded, which the Jews made a tremendous effort to meet in order to free their leader, but Maharam himself prevented them from paying the huge and unreasonable sum. While the communities of Ashkenaz negotiated his release, he died in prison in Ensisheim. A summary of this episode can be found in Urbach, The Tosaphists, 423–28. 95. The Hebrew phrase used is mesahakim bo, which can mean that they played with him, they made fun of him, or both. Both are probably intended by the author here. 96. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 902. The precise meaning of the last three words in the Hebrew is not evident. 97. It seems that by staying at home on the Sabbath the man minimized the violation of Sabbath laws, among then the prohibition to carry objects from one domain into another and the prohibition to go beyond the Sabbath limit (tehum shabbat). 98. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 902. 99. See Geremek, “Marginal Man.” 100. See, e.g., Entin-Rokeah, “Jewish Church Robbers,” 345. A graphic, contemporary depiction of this practice appears in an illumination found in the Chronica Majora of the thirteenth-century English chronicler Mattheus Parisiensis. In the drawing that accompanies the description of how the nobleman William de Marisco was taken out to be killed, we find the accused tied to a horse’s tail and being dragged. See S. Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, 234–35. 101. Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 327. 102. For a similar pattern in the context of a Purim custom, see E. Horowitz, “And It Was Reversed.” 103. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 31. See Assis, Golden Age, for Jews under the Crown of Aragon. 104. BT Gittin 70b. 105. BT Me‘ilah 17b, with Rashi and Tosafot. See also Shoher Tov, Ps. 34. 106. See Klar, Megillat Ahimaaz, 18–19. 107. Finucane, Rescue, 72–75. Finucane notes that this is likely a literary convention and not a precise description of events as they actually occurred. This claim does not vitiate the similarity between Christian and Jewish descriptions of the phenomenon. 108. It is important to underscore the difference between attachment and possession. Attachment is usually ascribed to the soul of a dead person that returns to visit the living on account of unresolved matters. Possession, in contrast, is typically ascribed to a being from the upper realms—an angel, demon, or even Satan—who co-opts an earthly body.

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109. Yoram Bilu surveyed the phenomenon of attachment; see Bilu, “Dybbuk, Aslai, Zar,” with the literature cited there. 110. BT Nedarim 20b. 111. Tur, Orah Hayyim, sec. 240. And so Tur, Even ha-‘Ezer, sec. 25. 112. The citation here is taken from R. Jacob’s citation of Rabad’s Ba‘alei haNefesh. See Abraham b. David of Posquières, Ba‘alei ha-Nefesh, 119–20. 113. Tur, Even ha-‘Ezer, sec. 25, treats the issue of the proper and ideal way to engage in sexual relations. “Like one compelled by a demon” is seen as a lofty level in the rejection of earthly desires. It seems clear from context that the act is being performed with zeal and emotional detachment. 114. BT Bava Batra 93a with Rashbam ad loc. 115. Meir b. Baruch of Rothenberg, She’elot u-Teshuvot mi-Maharam Nikhtavot, §98. See a similar use of the root sh-g-‘ in Schreiber, Teshuvot Hakhmei Provence, vol. 1, §2. 116. Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, Tzava’at R. Yehuda he-Hasid, sec. 14, 32. Reuven Margaliyot explains here that this piece is talking about a sick person suffering from visions on account of a high fever or a pregnant woman with a very powerful “imagination.” 117. At times, claims to see hidden matters or the future were met not with a public reaction of disbelief but quite the opposite. This was only the case, however, if the public were accustomed to see the person making the claims as unique; see Dan, “Demonological Stories.” 118. Joseph Dan cites similar stories in “Demonological Stories,” 283. One story, following the one cited in the main text, goes as follows: “A certain man was writing amulets and a demon came and lay with his wife right in front of him. But he did not see; only the wife saw.” 119. Schreiber, Teshuvot Hakhmei Provence, vol. 1, §§57–59. Three consecutive responsa mention this case and deal with defining the young man as mad and the implications of such a definition for divorce. The final phrase from this citation in the Hebrew—me-’ittam asher yidmeh ha-mo‘ilim la-mazikim—can also be read as “from his imagining certain things to be aiding the demons [=the “people” in his body].” Chapter 4 1. On the issue of the guardianship over the mentally ill, see Neugebauer, “The Treatment of the Mentally Ill,” 158–69. 2. Moses b. Maimon, Sefer Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Geirushin 10:23. 3. M. Friedman, Jewish Polygyny; and Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 68–70. At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, Ashkenazi society underwent changes, as Salmon-Mack has shown in “Marital Issues.” 4. Farbstein, Misphetei ha-Da‘at, has been instrumental in my comprehension of these issues. On the question of what exactly da‘at is, see 128–99. 5. Under the Biblical system of levirate marriage known as Yibbum, Halizah (or Chalitzah; Hebrew: hxylc) is the ceremony by which a widow and her husband’s brother (or next of kin) could avoid the duty to marry after the husband’s death. The ceremony involves the taking off of a man’s shoe by the widow of the childless 216

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brother or relative, through which ceremony he is released from the obligation of marrying her, and she becomes free to marry whomever she desires (Deuteronomy 25:5–10). 6. One of the fundamental reasons for the different legal status of the child, the deaf, and the insane is that early halakhists thought that their minds were not like that of “normal” people. On account of this, they created complex legal mechanisms that prevented exploitation of them and also supervised their legal activities. Ritual slaughter can be done by a minor if an adult stands over him and supervises him (‘omed al gabav), the divorce of a minor daughter is permitted if her father helps out, and so on and so forth. See Elon, Ha-Misphat ha-Ivri, 2:585–87. 7. Horesh literally means plow, but R. Simhah is waxing poetic and borrowing the phrase lev horesh from Proverbs (e.g. 6:14, 6:18), where the collocation of plowing with the heart cannot, of course, be taken literally. No doubt the image of plowing was also chosen with the continuation in mind, where the intellectual “plowing” uncovers the roots of the matter. 8. ‘Ikkar also means “root,” making it synonymous with the Hebrew word translated as root here, namely shoresh. 9. Shut Maharshal has here “on account of our many sins.” 10. BT Berakhot 10a is the source of the expression regarding God’s hidden matters. 11. See BT Niddah 13b: “if they have pikehos they can take care of things for them [matkinot lahen].” Pikehos (according to the Kaufmann codex’s vocalization), the feminine plural of the masculine singular participle pikkeah, refers here to women who do not suffer from blindness, deafness, etc.; they are of sound mind and ability. The mishnah is discussing the possibility of enabling certain women—including the deaf, mad, and blind—to eat the priestly tithe, because such women cannot check themselves properly for menstrual blood and confirm that they are ritually pure. The solution proposed by the mishnah is to assign to each such woman a “sound” woman who can help her check for impurity. Dablitzky believes that this option would not have worked in our case. One might also interpret this solution as one proposed for eating the tithe but not for the renewal of sexual relations after menstruation. 12. This responsum is cited in full in Shut Maharshal, §65. David Dablitzky, in Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Ravyah, also notes that R. Joel Sirkes makes mentions of this responsum in his Bayit Hadash, Even ha-‘Ezer, sec. 119, s.v. ve-khatav ha-Rambam. Victor Aptowitzer also mentions this responsum in his introduction to Sefer Ravyah; see Aptowitzer, Introduction to Sefer Ravyah, 201. The responsum is not cited in full by Aptowitzer; only Dablitzky’s version of Ravyah has it in full; Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Ravyah, vol. 3, sec. 921, 110a–115a. Dablitzky relies on two manuscripts: ms. Bodleian 637, and ms. London, Beth ha-Midrash 11. The responsum is found with minor variations also in ms. Bodleian 692, Oppenheim 317, fols. 276v–78r. Aptowitzer believes that this responsum was written between 1193 and 1196; see Aptowitzer, Introduction to Sefer Ravyah, 8. 13. Similar use of this expression is made in Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 1094. There, the discussion revolves around a man who refuses to marry a certain woman, despite her riches, because she has “wicked” brothers and he fears that his 217

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children will turn out to be like them, for the Talmud says that most sons are similar to their maternal uncles (BT Bava Batra 110a; see also Midrash Rabbah 7:5). The community responded to the man not to get involved in God’s hidden matters, citing BT Berakhot 10a. Here too the phrase appears in connection with an attempt to put off thinking about potential consequences of a marital relationship on account of something amiss with the wife. The following section, 1095, also treats thoughts and fears related to marriage: “But if he takes a woman whose father and mother are wicked and do not perform kind deeds, presumably [he does so] with the knowledge that the progeny will be wicked, and regarding this they did not say ‘what are you doing with the hidden matters of God?’ ” Apparently, if the bride’s parents are wicked, one should be worried about one’s offspring, but if her brothers are wicked, then one should not. 14. This is a literary flourish and should not be taken to mean that he was advanced in age, even if from the text it is clear that the couple did not recently marry and have been living together for a while. 15. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 1104: “It is written ‘[d]o not degrade your daughter and make her a harlot’ (Lev. 19:29), that you should not marry her to an old man or someone whom she considers disgusting. Likewise they said: ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is threshing’ (Deut. 25:4), that you should not force [her] to a yevamah who is mukat shehin (BT Yevamot 4). ‘Love your fellow as yourself ’ (Lev. 19:18)—just as you would not take her, so you should not pressure her. Moreover, ‘you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind’ (Lev. 19:14), that if she fornicates the sin is his, and even an old man who takes a young woman is a sinner.” 16. See BT Niddah 13b. 17. Marcus, “Kiddush HaShem.” See also Dinari, “Impurity Customs”; and TaShma, “On Some Franco-German Nidda Practices.” 18. Shut Maharshal, §65. 19. Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Ravyah, vol. 3, sec. 921, 112b. 20. The text originally describes the husband as wretched and indigent and the wife as from an upstanding family. This opposition can be taken to intimate that there was a socioeconomic chasm separating the families, and perhaps even issues of lineage. 21. My teacher Avraham Grossman pointed out to me that this expression appears with relative frequency in the writings of one of the early Ashkenazi halakhists, R. Judah ha-Kohen, author of Sefer ha-Dinim. See Meir b. Baruch of Rothenberg, She’elot u-Teshuvot mi-Maharam Nikhtavot, §§874 and 896. In contrast with the later authors of the responsa under discussion, R. Judah uses the phrase in connection with death, not with physical or mental disability. On the attribution of these responsa to R. Judah, see Teshuvot Maharam, 197–99; and Emanuel, “PseudoResponsa.” On R. Judah himself, see Judah ha-Kohen, Sefer ha-Dinim, introduction; and Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 175–210. 22. Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 13 and 164; Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 15, 361, and 1049. 23. Though the query is not accompanied by clinical descriptions of the wife’s condition, it is possible that it originally was. Indications of this are Ravyah’s ability 218

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to analogize between this case and the one forwarded to him by R. Simhah, as well as textual indications (e.g., “from your words we understand that she does not have the mind of six- and seven-year-olds [pa‘otot]”). One should also bear in mind that Ravyah was a physician by trade. 24. The Hebrew verb here is u-mafgin. An alternative reading has “because of ” (mi-penei). 25. This indicates a concern that the coupling of a healthy husband with a wife “struck by God’s attribute of judgment” would produce children afflicted by the wife’s malady. 26. The meaning of this phrase is uncertain. The expression hester davar is reminiscent of how the Hebrew root s-t-r is used in tractate Sotah in connection with a man warning his wife not to seclude herself with another man and the seclusion itself. The text here, then, would be hinting at inappropriate sexual acts and make Rabbeinu Gershom’s decree look absurd in this instance. Nevertheless, the rabbis still refused to lift the ban. 27. Shut Maharshal, §65. 28. On this widespread practice in Ashkenaz and the East, see Ben-Sasson, “Appeal to the Congregation in Islamic Countries.” 29. It is possible that the concern against lifting the ban on account of ruin was connected to what was perceived as the approaching lapse of Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban. All of the halakhists involved in the responsum lived around 1240. On this see Colon, Shut u-Fiskei Maharik, §101. 30. See Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 39, 195, 201, 288, 559. See also Morris, Papal Monarchy, 417–96; and CMH, 4:285–90, for the aborted marriage of King Philip II Augustus of France. 31. In some cases, such as where the affected party was “at times sane and at times mad,” there could be a means to effect divorce. 32. The source of this citation is ms. Cambridge, University Library Add. 3127 (IMHM 17556). This manuscript contains rulings from R. Yehiel of Paris alongside other works from the school of Évreux. The passage cited is based upon a statement in the Tosefta that was apparently lost, for it does not appear in this formulation in the texts of the Tosefta that had survived, though it is similar to a formulation in Sifre on Deuteronomy. Simcha Emanuel has noted that this source is identical to ms. Rome Casanatense 117. This manuscript was, according to the colophon, copied in 1463, and it includes fifty rulings from the Évreux school. Another similar formulation can be found in ms. Paris, BN Heb. 390 (IMHM 20242), fol. 254v. See Emanuel, Fragments of the Tablets, 195. On the circumscription of this whole issue to Franco-Germany, see Finkelstein, Sifre on Deuteronomy, sec. 214, 247. It is possible that this exegesis was only known to Ashkenazi scholars, for parallel versions in non-Ashkenazi rabbinic texts deal only with a sick woman, whereas here the woman is mentally ill. 33. Maharam felt that the husband had to support the wife so that she would not have to beg. This responsum is found in ms. Moscow-Guenzberg 155 (IMHM 6835), fols. 174v–181v. For a description of the manuscript see Emanuel, “Fragments of the Responsa,” 111; and Emanuel, “New Responsa.” 219

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34. This expression is found in M Nedarim 11:12. In its original context and Talmudic parallels (e.g., BT Yevamot 112a) the implication is that the husband is infertile. It would seem, however, that the paraphrase here is actually closer to the way the phrase is used in PT Nedarim 11:12 (44d), where it expresses the estrangement of the spouses: “Heaven is between me and you—as far as the heavens are from earth, so is this woman distant from that man.” 35. For a discussion of this phrase see n21. See also the responsum of Rashba cited in Colon, Shut u-Fiskei Maharik, §101. 36. That is, he stated the condition and its inverse. See BT Kiddushin 61a-61b. 37. See Gen. 19:31; BT Yoma 74b; Shemot Rabbah 1:12. A midrash with the same theme can be found in the Passover haggadah in the glossing of va-yar’ et ‘onyenu with zo perishut derekh eretz. 38. Ms. Moscow-Guenzberg 155 (IMHM 6835), fols. 174v–181v. 39. Neaman, Suggestion of the Devil, 125–26. 40. The Sages of the Talmudic period sought to prevent women from roaming and begging on the street, even when they were in dire need of charity; see BT Ketubbot 43a. 41. Passenier, “The Life of Christina Mirabilis,” 156. On this text see Thomas de Cantimpré, The Life of Christina the Astonishing, trans. with introduction and notes by Margot H. King (Toronto: Peregrina, 1999). 42. M. Shnitzer-Maimon (“Sexual Coercion of Women in the Ashkenazi Community [Northern France and Germany] of the 12th and 13th Centuries: A Discussion of the Halachic and Exegetic Sources of the Period” [PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 2011]) discusses a case involving a woman traveling in early thirteenthcentury Germany, probably for commercial purposes, who was raped by two Jewish travel companions 43. See Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Ravyah, vol. 3, sec. 920, 101a–110b. See Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 69. 44. Ms. Moscow-Guenzberg 155 (IMHM 6835), fols. 174v–181v. 45. See the Talmudic discussion on matters of dignity BT Bava Kamma 86b. It is noteworthy that all the examples in this Talmudic discussion are constructed in the male gender. The thought of a woman being subjected to public humiliation due to partial or full nudity or because of folly isn’t even discussed in the Talmud, probably because these women’s access to the public arena is already restricted. 46. PT Yevamot 14:11 (14b). 47. See the printed Tosafot to BT Yevamot 113b and to Gittin 64b. The importance of this discussion is, among other things, the fact that this is explicitly not a theoretical, scholarly discussion but a reflection of reality. Indeed, in the continuation one finds: “And thus ruled R[abbeinu] T[am] as the halakhah to be put into practice [halakhah le-ma‘aseh].” Despite the fact that a grown, insane woman has a father who can accept a get on her behalf, R. Tam felt that he would not be able to protect her from sexual predation: “for the father cannot protect her from hefker, and so at times when she is crazy she will not be cautious regarding hefker.” 48. Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, vol. 1, She’elot u-Teshuvot, sec. 778, 690b– 692a. R. Isaac mentions in passing another story of a woman who went mad, and 220

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comes down on Ravyah’s side—an adult woman who is insane cannot be divorced even if her father is involved, but if she can preserve her get and herself then she can be divorced. 49. Jacob b. Asher. Arba‘ah Turim ha-Shalem, sec. 119. 50. On women going into public space see Moses b. Maimon, Sefer Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Ishut 25:2: “It is well-known that this [law] applies only to places in which it was the custom of women to walk in the street with their faces exposed, such that everyone knows them and says ‘this is the daughter of so-and-so,’ ‘this is the sister of so-and-so,’ as in the cities of Edom [=Western Europe] nowadays.” See Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 293n8. Though these women could be found in public space quite often, that fact did not enervate the potency of the belief about the magical danger they were in while there. 51. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 163–68. This issue is emphasized in Limor, review. See also Nirenberg, “Religious and Sexual Boundaries.” 52. This responsa has been fragmented due to the topical organization of Shut ha-Rosh; see Asher b. Yehiel, Shut ha-Rosh, kelal 43, sec. 3, 179. Parts of the responsum can therefore be found in three separate places in Shut ha-Rosh: (1) kelal 43, sec. 3; (2) kelal 106, sec. 4; and (3) kelal 101, sec. 7. On Rosh’s responsa, see Urbach, “Responsa”; Toledano, “Responsa Collections.” Toledano claims that these three pieces are cut from one cloth and are all “Ashkenazi,” i.e., they were written before Rosh’s emigration from Germany. See Toledano, “Responsa Collections,” 109. 53. Whereas in earlier periods the claim of rebellion could end the marriage, such was not the case at the end of the thirteenth century. At that time, Maharam and his students disallowed, for all practical purposes, the use of the Talmudic law of the rebellious wife as a way for women to get out of undesirable marriages. See Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 240–51. Rosh even uprooted the Toledan practice of divorcing on such grounds not long after his arrival in Toledo; see Westreich, “Rise and Decline,” esp. 137–43. 54. It is difficult to imagine that the husband actually killed people. The Hebrew participle horeg can perhaps be explained in one of two ways: (1) in his fits of madness he would kill domesticated animals, or (2) he would hit with deadly force when angered, the latter explanation being the more probable one. 55. Rosh’s unwillingness to attend to the wife’s plight has taxed jurists for generations, and his responsum still does so to this day. See Eliezer Waldenburg, Sefer She’elot u-Teshuvot Tzitz Eliezer (Jerusalem, 1984), vol. 6, §42. The two forced explanations of Rosh demonstrate the onerous difficulty latent in his ruling, especially for those living in a modern world wherein the status of women has changed radically. 56. Teshuvot Maharam, Crimona ed., §160. 57. BT Yevamot 113a. 58. Piskei R. Hezekiah of Magdeburg, ms. Prague 20 (IMHM 46410), fol. 120c. 59. Bracton, Bracton on the Laws and Customs, 4:308. 60. On this see Silman, “Basic Norm.” 61. See Bazak, Criminal Responsibility. 62. This work was written by the German jurist Eike von Repgow (1180–1235), and it has survived in a number of illuminated manuscripts. It reflects oral traditions 221

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that prevailed even before the writing of the book. See Dobozy, Saxon Mirror, 117 (book 3, sec. 3). 63. With this background, perhaps we can better understand a bewildering statement in Sefer Hasidim about paying demons and madmen; see Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 381. This connection makes it difficult to separate “true” madmen for paupers and beggars. See Simonsohn, “Jewish Vagabonds”; E. Horowitz, “(Deserving) Poor.” 64. Gilman, Seeing the Insane. See also Midelfort, History of Madness, 235–36. Midelfort presents an example from a work written by Johannes Pauli in the early sixteenth century (Johannes Pauli, Schimpf und Ernst I, Die Älteste Ausgabe von 1522, ed. Johannes Bolte [Berlin, 1924], no. 23, 21–22). 65. Shimon of Frankfurt, Yalkut Shim‘oni, I Sam. 21, sec. 131. Editors Hyman and Shiloni note that notwithstanding the fact that most of the paragraph cited derives from Shoher Tov on Ps. 34, some of the information in this text extends beyond the quote from Shoher Tov and thus may be understood as the thirteenth century Rabbi Simeon’s own observations from his life and time. 66. BT Sotah 3a understands the freeing of a Canaanite slave to constitute a violation of the positive commandment to work a slave found at Lev. 25:26. 67. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 381. Many thanks to my colleague Dr. Rami Reiner for our enlightening discussions about this passage. 68. This is especially interesting because Jews were identified with magic in the eyes of their Christian neighbors. See Hsia, “Witchcraft, Magic, and the Jews,” esp. 430–31. On slaves and attendants in medieval Ashkenazi household, see Toch, “European Jews”; and Lotter, review. Lotter’s critique moves the issue of slave trading closer to the period under discussion here and requires further investigation. 69. Katan, “Rabbi Asher’s (‘Rosh’) Book of Customs,” sec. 70. This should not be confused with the Orhot Hayyim written by R. Aaron ha-Kohen of Lunel. Katan deals with the work, its provenance, and its textual history, and he also published the text based on comparisons between ms. Montefiore 247, ms. Paris 710, and the first printed versions. 70. As we have seen earlier this was especially true in the case of a woman thought to be insane and hence especially vulnerable. 71. Goodman, “Exile of the Broken Vessels.” 72. For example Ephraim b. Jacob of Bonn, Sefer Zekhirah, 40, ll. 509–34. The account discusses the murder of a young Christian woman by a Jewish madman from Neuss. The community suffered dearly for this—seven men and one woman were tortured and killed, and three women were pressured to convert despite the Jewish community’s defense that the killer was insane. 73. See McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 238. 74. More, The workes, 197–98. It is noteworthy that the madman is removed passively from sacred space in this situation; he is neither distanced from the outset nor barred entry. 75. Dols, Majnūn, 384. In the Christian world, too, extreme self-flagellation and excessive “holiness” were targets for criticism, and those engaged in them were

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classified as crazy and at times restrained in chains. See Kleinberg, Fra Ginepro’s Leg of Pork, 299, 301. 76. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 458. 77. This a fortiori appears to have been invented by the author of Sefer Hasidim, as I do not know of any older source for it. 78. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 455. 79. See Grossman, “Prayer”; and Marcus, “Politics,” esp. 273–76. R. Judah heHasid himself castigated those who could not keep silent and concentrate during their prayers: “I apply to one who speaks in the synagogue while his friends are praising [God] and singing ‘[woe] My wicked neighbors’ (Jer. 12:14), ‘for the paths of the Lord are smooth; the righteous can walk on them, while sinners stumble on them’ (Hos. 14:10). He is not counted among his fellows, for he finds it abhorrent to praise his Creator and encroaches upon the Creator’s property, [as it says] ‘I will be for them a small temple (cf. Ezek. 11:16)—these are synagogues’ (BT Megillah 29a). We must not act frivolously in them. . . . Rather, bow before Him, sit in awe while hanging one’s head in humility and in reverence, and unify the name of heaven with concentration. Supplicate and sing happily before Him; come before Him with praise. Then He will be close and available to you. Pray with concentration when you say ‘Blessed is He.’ If you sit [talking about] insubstantial matters [devarim betelim] it is as if you mock Him and do not fear Him. Rather, think that He is standing opposite you—‘I am ever mindful of the Lord’s presence’ (Ps. 16:8)—place fear of Him upon your face and love of Him within you, and concentrate with all of your heart. Be humbled before Him and admit your sins. Search Him out always, and He will be available to you.” The foregoing is attributed to R. Judah and is found in a work titled Darkhei Teshuvah li-Medabber be-Veit ha-Keneset bi-Zeman ha-Tefillah, which can be found in ms. Vatican Ebr. 183 (IMHM 8698), fols. 175v–176r. This manuscript is a collection of many Ahskenazi works, such as Sefer Sha‘arei Dura, Teshuvot u-Fesakim shel Maharam mei-Rotenberg, penitential works written by R. Eleazar b. Judah of Worms, and responsa written by R. Judah he-Hasid. See also Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 18, 72–82. 80. R. Isaac b. Joseph of Corbeil, a thirteenth-century halakhist whose thinking was influenced by that of the German Pietists, went so far as to refer to the devotional practices of his Christian neighbors in explaining why silence is imperative in the sacred space: So we must apply an a fortiori to ourselves: seeing that the gentiles who do not believe anything stand mutely in their house of idols, all the more so should we who stand before the King of Kings, God [stand mutely]. We have found in the midrashim and the Talmud, and our fathers have also told us and we ourselves have seen, that some synagogues have been turned into [houses of ] idol worship because the people there behaved frivolously (kalut rosh) Sefer ‘Ammudei Golah (Jerusalem: Yerid ha-Sefarim Press, 2005), part 1, end of mitzvah 11, 46a. This citation also reflects the Pietist critique of the practice to hold up the prayers. See Sefer Hasidim, ed. Wistinetzki, sec. 462. On this practice, see Krauss, Synagogue History, 312–16; Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 145–46; Grossman, “Stopping the Service.” See also Ben-Sasson, “Appeal.” In seeking to instruct his followers in the importance of

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quiet and concentration in synagogue prayer, R. Isaac connected concern regarding laughter and frivolity, already noted in Sefer Hasidim above, with the demand for silence. And in fact, the Christians whose practice R. Isaac invoked have left us texts that call for silence and concentration in prayer. On the meaning of the synagogue in the mindset of medieval Ashkenazi Jews and the potential consequences of such a view, see Grossman, “Stopping the Service”; Isaacs, “The Synagogue’s Place”; TaShma, Early Ashkenazic Prayer, 199–222. 81. See, for example, Gregg, Devils, Women, and Jews, 46; Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 1:89–91. 82. Dickson, “Flagellants of 1260.” 83. On the importance of looking at the wider context in Sefer Hasidim, see Marcus, “The Recensions and Structure of Sefer Hasidim”; Sefer Hasidim according to MS Parma H3280, Parma, xxiv–xxvii. 84. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 459. 85. This disharmony caused by the madman can have dire consequences on sacred space whose holiness is not immanent and therefore requires constant “upkeep.” I believe that the author of Sefer Hasidim saw the very presence of the madman as a threat to this continuous support of the synagogue’s holiness. The synagogue’s holiness stems from the presence of sacred objects and a congregation performing liturgical activity, in which case its holiness can be vitiated if something or someone removes the concentration of those engaged in such activity. Although the synagogue’s holiness does not dissipate if a quorum of men are not present for a ritual involving a Torah scroll (see BT Megillah 27b), the absence of the quorum does have a qualitative effect on the ritual. See Isaacs, “Anthropological and Historical Study,” 127–33, 227–28. 86. On the sacred fool see Saward, Perfect Fools; Rydén, Life of St. Andrew the Fool; Krueger, Symeon the Holy Fool. For Christian influence on this figure in Islam, and in Sufism particularly, see Dols, Majnūn, 367–422. 87. Kleinberg, Fra Ginepro’s Leg of Pork, 301. 88. Many halakhists explored the issue of praying while one’s mind is not clear, whether it be on account of fear, illness, hunger, and so on. Rashi wrote that he himself did not pray when he was sick and only said a handful of passages: “It is prohibited for the sick to pray while the brunt of the illness is upon him, for his mind is very confused [nitrefah] and he cannot concentrate. I myself have had the practice not to pray while sick except for the recitation of the Shema‘ . . . for anyone whose mind is extremely confused [she-nitraf be-da‘ato] is forbidden to pray. Solomon b. R. Isaac.” See Teshuvot Maharam, Lvov, §201. Müller, Teshuvot Hakhmei Tzarfat veLoter, §60: “R. would say that a sick person is forbidden to pray, because owing to the brunt of the sickness upon him his mind is confused [metoraf da‘ato], and he cannot concentrate when he is sick. He should only recite the Shema‘.” Chapter 5 1. A blind scholar’s reliance on his students to pen his letters or works was considered a real problem in the world of halakhists. There was a tradition that R. Yehudai Gaon’s (purported author of Halakhot Gedolot according to some medieval 224

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halakhists) divergences in reasoning and argumentation from what was widely accepted resulted from mistakes inherent to his particular situation; see Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, vol. 2, Hilkhot Aveilut, sec. 432, 508a; Samson ben Tzadok, Sefer ha-Tashbetz, sec. 426; Rosh, Mo‘ed Katan, 3:3. On R. Yehudai Ga’on, his work, and its reception in Ashkenaz, see N. Danzig, Introduction to Halakhot Pesuqot with a Supplement to Halakhot Pesuqot (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1999); Avraham (Rami) Reiner, “The Acceptance of Halakhot Gedolot in Ashkenaz,” in Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought, ed. Howard Kreisel (Be’er Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006), 2:95–121 (Hebrew); and Avraham (Rami) Reiner, “From Halakhah to Commentary: Rashi and Halakhot Gedolot,” in Rashi: The Man and His Work, ed. Avraham Grossman and Sara Japhet (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2008), 311–26 (Hebrew). 2. Aptowitzer, Introduction to Sefer Ravyah, 67–68, 206. Aptowitzer also cites a similar tragedy about the R. Tam’s grief over the death of his brother R. Isaac b. R. Meir, who passed away in R. Meir’s lifetime and left seven orphans behind. R. Tam writes that the pain and crying over his brother led to his dim eyesight (68). See also Grossman, Early Sages of France, 169–70. On this case, see recently Susan L. Einbinder, “Seeing the Blind: The Lament for Uri ha-Levi and a Case of Hysterical Blindness,” JQR 20 (2013): 9–32. 3. BT Shabbos 151b. 4. There are currently few studies on attitudes toward the disabled in Jewish sources. See Greenblum, “Attitude of Jewish Sources”; Melamed-Cohen, Exceptional Child; and the important recent contribution of Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe. 5. The WHO and World Bank report on Disability published in 2011 edited by Dr. Etienne Krug, a Belgian physician and epidemiologist, is available online http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789240685215_eng.pdf through the WHO website, http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/index.html. The report is also the first of its kind to be available in Braille, and there is a specially adapted version for individuals with limited mental skills (mental retardation) that provides mostly pictures and captions. 6. See Longmore, “Disabilities”; Kudlick, “Disability History”; and Wright, “Developmental and Physical Disabilities,” 507. 7. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, 163. 8. Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages, 1–11. 9. The ceremony of halitzah was performed by a childless widow who wished not to marry her late husband’s next of kin. The ceremony involves the woman extracting the man’s shoe. In halakhic discussions we find cases where there might be a problem performing the ceremony when the man involved has leg problems (amputee, crippled, etc.) 10. Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe, 3 11. Since the publication of Metzler’s monograph the field at the nexus between medieval studies and disability studies has expanded. In 2010 Joshua Eyler edited a volume on reconsideration and reverberations of disability in the Middle Ages. Others have discussed the role of disability in the medieval Islamic world. These contributions 225

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seem to be the beginning of a growing interest in the field. See Eyler, Disability in the Middle Ages; Ghaly, Islam and Disability; and Richardson, Blighted Bodies. 12. B. Turner, Body and Society; Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy. 13. See Wolfson, “Images of God’s Feet,” 143–82; Janowitz, “God’s Body,” 183–202; D. Abrams, The Female Body of God. The Jewish body in the early modern period was extensively discussed from many aspects in M. Diemling and G. Veltri, eds., The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2009. 14. The ability of saints to reassemble their material remains was doubted in light of the wide distribution of the relics; see Walker-Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 253–58. Theologians also considered the question of the fate of lost body parts, such as hair, fingernails, foreskins, and of course parts of the body that were lost as a result of disease or accident. 15. See J. Abrams, Judaism and Disability. 16. Milgrom follows Douglas on this. Douglas summed up her discussion of the priestly laws thus: “In other words, he must be a perfect man if he is to be a priest” (Purity and Danger, 51). Modern biblical commentators have adopted Douglas’s conclusions; see Gordon J. Wenham, Book of Leviticus, 18–25, 288–92; and John E. Hartley, World Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 1992), 341–52. 17. Jacob Milgrom, The Anchor Bible: Leviticus 17–22, vol. 4 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1821–24. 18. J. Abrams, Judaism and Disability, 23–38. See Malachi 1:8—“When you present a blind animal for sacrifice—it doesn’t matter! When you present a lame or sick one—it doesn’t matter! Just offer it to your governor: Will he accept you? Will he show you favor?—said the Lord of Hosts.” On disability in the Bible and in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, see Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper, eds., This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007). 19. Sifra de-Vei Rav hu Torat Kohanim, Va-Yikra, sec. 3. 20. The Tannaitic Midrash, followed by the Mishnah and Talmud, offers detailed descriptions, based on Lev. 21:17–24, of the different kinds of deformity and note precisely which tasks priests who suffered from these deformities were unfit to perform. See Sifra de-Vei Rav hu Torat Kohanim, Emor, sec. 3, and BT Bekhorot 43b–45a. A concise summary of the principal points of these glosses was included in Yalkut Shim‘oni, written in Ashkenaz in the thirteenth century; see Simeon of Frankfurt, Yalkut Shim‘oni, Va-Yikra, Emor, secs. 631–33, 659–64. 21. On this, see Rosen-Zvi, “Bodies and Temple,” 49–87, which presents a new approach to understanding such deformities in priests in the period following the destruction of the second Temple. 22. BT Hagigah 12b; and BT Menahot 110a. 23. Other versions of the discussion are found in midrashic passages relating to verses regarding the priestly blessing in the book of Numbers Buber, Midrash Tanhuma, Naso, sec. 14, 32. 24. Midrash Rabbah 7:1. 25. Buber, Midrash Tanhuma, Yitro, sec. 12, 76. 226

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26. See the parallel in Bamidbar Rabbah 7:1. The sentence does not appear in Midrash Tanhuma. 27. Bamidbar Rabbah 7:1 identifies the deformed who stood at Mount Sinai with the leper mentioned after the Sinaitic revelation. 28. This midrash may be interpreted allegorically, whereby the deformities caused by slavery may be seen as physical deformities that symbolize the spiritual scars that make it difficult for a slave to accept a complex system of laws. Such a slave cannot take on the yoke of the Torah. Proof of this disability is reflected in how the Israelites cast off that yoke in the sin of the Golden Calf. 29. Two examples for this can be found in the Genesis cycle of the stories of Abraham. When a foreign sovereign like the Egyptian pharaoh or the Philistine Abimelech breaches basic ethics and “commandeers” the patriarch’s lawful wife, Sarah, God acts and punishes the monarch and his household with blemishes and afflictions in retribution for the sin. 30. Theodore and Chanoch, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah (Vilna) 20:5. In this sense, a physical deformity is no different from a disease such as leprosy, which is also portrayed as a punishment. In the midrash, the sages identify leprosy with the punishment meted out to the serpent 31. BT Mo‘ed Katan 25b. 32. BT Sotah 10a; and Rashbam al ha-Torah, Gen. 32:29. 33. On this matter, see Marcus, “On the Penitentials”; and Dan, “Note on the History of Teshuvah.” This principle is also found in Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 221, 229. 34. This shortened form will stand in for the longer one used by the Pietists, “He has created a remembrance of his wonders” (zekher asah le-nifle’otav). 35. This view is expressed in two connected ideas used by the German Pietists: “the will of the Creator,” and “hints and signs.” On these Pietistic guidelines, see Soloveitchik, “Three Themes,” 311–25; and Marcus, Piety and Society, 23–29. See also Ta-Shma, “Pamphlet Zekher ‘Asah le-Nifle’otav.” 36. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 222–23. BT Nedarim 50b and BT Behorot 43b. See also Semag, sec. 308, 85a. 37. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 1123. 38. The broad context of this act lies outside the scope of this discussion and is connected to the subject of halitzah in Ashkenaz during this period. For a historicalhalakhic treatment of medieval levirate marriage and halitzah, see Katz, “Levirate Marriage”; Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government, 229–30, 245–47, 253–55; and Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 90–101. 39. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 359. For a slightly different formulation of the same view, see Ta-Shma, “Pamphlet Zekher ‘Asah le-Nifle’otav,” 129. 40. The author uses the term parash, meaning “horseman” or ”rider,” in the sense of “knight.” See Dan, “Demonological Stories,” 278n1. The German word ritter means both “knight” and “horseman” or “rider.” 41. Dan, “Reflection of Kiddush ha-Shem.” 42. Sefer Hasidim teaches that ethics may be learned from righteous gentiles; see Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 58, which opens with the words: “Go out and learn 227

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from a gentile lord.” For an analysis, see Dan, Hebrew Story, 184–86. This story shows how central the fear of sexual licentiousness, and its attendant dangers to marriage and the family unit, was to the theoretical philosophy of the German Pietists. Both Jews and non-Jews shared this anxiety, as is obvious from section 19 of the eleventhcentury Decretum by the German ecclesiastical jurist Burchard of Worms, who displays a similar sensibility. See J. Richards, Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation, 136–37. 43. Churching was the time when a woman who had given birth was readmitted into the community; see J. M. Pierce, “Green Women and Blood Pollution: Some Medieval Rituals for the Churching of Women after Childbirth,” Studia Liturgica 29 (1999): 191–215. 44. Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, 37. 45. Heiges-Blythe, “Sins, Seven Deadly,” 659–60. Not all writers in medieval Ashkenaz saw disabilities as punishment for sin. For example, in R. Judah he-Hasid’s commentary on the Torah passage regarding Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son (Gen. 35:19), he offers a gloss on the expression “left-handed”: “ ‘And his father called him Benjamin’ means that in Jacob’s old age, he would lean on Benjamin’s left instead of on a cane when he walked, as per the custom that a young man leads the old . . . and God compensated Benjamin for the pain [he suffered] for he would bear his father on his left and right shoulder. . . . So God made his progeny left-handed (cf. Judges 3:15; 20:16)—not that their right hands lost their strength, but that their left hands were stronger and they could do everything with the left as with the right. 46. Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 589. 47. It should be noted that the same blessing is to be recited upon hearing news of the passing of a friend or relative. 48. Such is the case in Mahzor Vitry, Sefer Ravyah, and Sefer Ha-Eshkol, as well as in the halakhic literature of the fourteenth century, such as R. Jacob b. Asher’s Arba‘ah Turim: “One who sees a black man; a gihor—who is very red; a lavkan— who is very white; a hunchback—whose belly is large and due to his girth appears short; a dwarf; a darqonas—who is covered in warts; a petui ha-rosh—who has all of his hair matted; an elephant; or a monkey, makes the blessing ‘Blessed are you Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who] varies creatures.’ [As regards] the lame, the amputee, the blind, the mukeh ha-shehin ve-ha-bohaknin . . . if they are so congenitally, one makes the blessing ‘varies [His] creatures,’ but if they changed later one makes the blessing ‘the true judge.’ Rabad wrote [that it is said] specifically on one for whom one feels sorry, such as good-looking people who give pleasure to one who looks [at them], but one does not make a blessing on a gentile. He also wrote that one recites the blessing only on the first sighting, for that is when the change makes a strong impression.” 49. Sefer Abudraham, Birkot Shevah ve' Hoda'ah (the section on benedictions), 343–44. 50. On the deaf in Jewish law and the changes in modernity, see Volkov, “Deaf as a Minority Group”; Feldman, “Deafness and Jewish Law,” 12–24. For a newer approach, see J. Z. Abrams and W. C. Gaventa, Jewish Perspectives on Theology and the Human Experience of Disability (New York: Haworth Pastoral Press, 2006). 51. Shahar, Growing Old in the Middle Ages. 228

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52. On these themes in Christian anti Jewish polemics, see Rokeah, Jews Pagans, and Christians. 53. Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, 4:385. On this source, see A. H. Bredro, “Anti Jewish Sentiment in Medieval Society,” in Christendom and Christianity in the Middle Ages: The Relations between Religion Church and Society, trans. R. Bruinsma, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 274–306. 54. Joseph b. Nathan Official, Sepher Yoseph ha-Mekane, 95. 55. Ibid. 56. Berger, Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, 159 § 238 (the Hebrew source), and see p. 340 for the editors comments. Chapter 6 1. Ta-Shma, “Pamphlet Zekher ‘Asah le-Nifle’otav,” 129. 2. Eliezer b. Samuel of Metz, Sefer Yere’im, sec. 330. 3. Moses ha-Parnas, Sefer ha-Parnas, sec. 204. 4. This changes the meaning from “may He protect/preserve you” to “may He destroy you.” 5. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 424. A slightly different version of the story is preserved in one of the many collections based on Sefer Hasidim that can be found in ms. Bodleian 641 (IMHM 20557). This manuscript is dated to the fifteenth century. “Once a priest raised his hands [for the blessing] and said ‘ve-yishmedekha.’ A certain sage was there and removed him [from the platform], for we do not let someone who cannot enunciate the letters [le-hatekh ha-otiyyot] of the priestly blessing go before the ark. From heaven they showed that sage that if he would not return him to his place, he would be punished on account of it.” 6. BT Megillah 24b. 7. The context here is the second verse in the recitation of the Shema‘ (Deut. 6:5). 8. Midrash Rabbah (Vilna) 2:13. See Alexander, “Narrative and Thought,” 75. 9. On this issue see also Emanuel, “Responsa of Rabbi Solomon Aderet,” 1:423; and Jacob b. Moses Moellin, Shut Maharil ha-Hadashot, §23. 10. This principle is especially emphasized in the story of the shepherd and his unique prayer; see Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, secs. 4–6. It is important to remember that the Pietist sage did not act on a whim but took to an extreme the Pietist doctrine regarding the precise formulation of the prayers, a doctrine that formed an important part of the Pietist outlook. See Urbach, Sefer ‘Arugat ha-Bosem, 4:91–111. Also see Grossman, “Prayer.” 11. See Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 226–29. 12. Teshuvot Maharam, Crimona, §249. On this collection see Emanuel, “Fragments of the Responsa,” 14–15. 13. Ms. London, Beth ha-Midrash 14 (ms. Sinai; IMHM 4685). The responsum can be found on fol. 156d, sec. 1066. The manuscript dates to 1391, but the collection precedes that date by about ninety years. The collection was edited by Maharam’s brother R. Abraham b. Baruch of Rothenberg either during Maharam’s lifetime or shortly after his death. Many thanks to my colleague Simcha Emanuel for his important references. 229

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14. Va-Yikra Rabbah (Vilna) 7:2. 15. See Wright, “Medieval Commentary.” 16. See P. L. Hanley, “Ex Opere Operantis,” in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Thomson/Gale; Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2003), 5:500–501. The perspective that a ritual could be affected by its performer was taken by the Donatist movement, which Augustine fought against. The Cathars also shared this perspective. See Grundmann, Religious Movements, 227–28. Though what was to become the Catholic position was already laid out in the thirteenth century, it became part of Church dogma only at the Council of Trent. Once Innocent III and the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas were tied to the position, though, it became a matter of importance even if not yet of dogma. 17. See Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, 45–59. 18. See Cheney, From Beckett to Langton, 49. The question and answer were included as a religious-legal precedent in a decretal collection, the most important source of precedents in Church rulings and canon law. 19. The Catholic Church reemphasized its position as late as 1917, and it has only changed its attitude recently. It is worth noting that although the disabled were distanced from official worship or formal positions in the Church, they were not excluded from the worship itself. A difference existed between such a person being prohibited from leading the worship, especially in the task to serve as God’s representative through which God’s grace would rest on the congregation through the meal at mass, and that person being a part of the worship as a member of the community. I have not found any indications that the latter was prohibited. See Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 113–44. 20. Other approaches should be noted, such as that of R. Isaac of Bohemia, a student of R. Tam, regarding the payment of cantors. See Teshuvot Maharam, Lvov, §112. It can be found in Breuer, Rabbinate in Ashkenaz, 44n10. I would like to thank my colleague Dr. Alick Isaacs for pointing this source out to me. 21. Sefer Kolbo, a fourteenth-century Provençal work connected to R. Aaron haKohen of Lunel’s Orhot Hayyim, contains a more general formulation that omits the polemic with the derider: “He who has deformities of the hands, feet, or face, such as bent or crooked legs or hands full of white pustules, should not raise his hands [in priestly blessing] because people will look at him, but if he is a familiar in his city and they are accustomed to it[,] . . . it is permissible, for they will not look at him.” The similarity between this passage and that in Sefer ha-Parnas is great, but it is not surprising. On the use of Sefer Kolbo and Orhot Hayyim in Ashkenazi traditions, see Emanuel, “Responsa of Rabbi Solomon Aderet,” 49; Soloveitchik, Use of Responsa, 94–100; Havlin, “Works Kol Bo and Orhot Hayyim.” See also Kanarfogel, “German Pietism.” 22. Israel b. Hayyim Bruna, She’elot u-Teshuvot Yisra’el mi-Bruna, §25. R. Israel was born in Brno around 1400. (Bruna was the medieval Jewish pronunciation of what is now Brno, Moravia, in the Czech Republic.) His teachers were R. Israel Isserlein and R. Jacob Weil, who ordained him. Around 1440, R. Israel moved to Regensburg and opened a yeshiva. Eventually, he became rabbi of the city. He eventually moved to Prague and died there in 1480. As R. Israel himself writes in this 230

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responsum, it was sent to him from Hungary prior to his departure from Brno but after his ordination, placing it sometime between 1430 and 1440. 23. It is feasible that Mahari Bruna had in mind the juxtaposition of discussion regarding the disabled priest with the description of the prayer leader with Torah scroll in hand as “an angel of God.” See Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, vol. 2, Hilkhot Sukkah, end of sec. 315:2, 379avb. 24. See Margalit, Decent Society, 2–19, 115–50. 25. Ex. 21:18 and Rashi’s commentary there. 26. BT Bava Metzi‘a 58b. 27. See Macionis, Sociology, 5. 28. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 412; Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 768. 29. The author of Sefer Hasidim takes up a line of reasoning he also espoused in the context of metzora‘im. In Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 99 (and Margaliyot, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 635), we find a prohibition on spitting in the face of or in front of the metzora‘ as an act of magical protection in order that the metzora‘ not be embarrassed. 30. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 86. 31. See Shoham-Steiner, “ ‘The Left (Hand) Repels,’ ” esp. 158–59. 32. See Marcus, “Politics”; Soloveitchik, “Three Themes,” 229–30. 33. As an example of this requirement, the author of Sefer Hasidim cites a person blind in only one eye. But a person blind in both eyes cannot, according to Sefer Hasidim, be called to the Torah at all, because the purpose of going to the Torah is to read it, and even if most people are aided in the reading, this man cannot fulfill this purpose even if he knows the reading by heart. 34. See Mordechai, Berakhot, sec. 19. Based on his words, it would seem that there was no reading of the Targum in the synagogue. A possible explanation is that R. Abraham and R. Judah he-Hasid read the Hebrew text twice and the Targum once (shenayim mikra ve-ehad targum) while the Torah was being read. I would like to thank my colleague Dr. Alick Isaacs for this reference. 35. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 471. 36. Ibid., end of sec. 470. 37. Oppenheimer, Am Ha'aretz. 38. See Soloveitchik, “Three Themes,” 330–31; and Marcus, “Politics,” 260–61. 39. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 471. The piece before us makes use of the Talmudic discussion about the sin of Reuben, Jacob’s son. The Talmud clarifies that “anyone who says Reuben sinned is nothing but mistaken.” One reasoning given is that it is inconceivable that the descendants of Reuben could ascend Mount Ebal after entering the Promised Land and recite the verse “cursed be he who lies with his father’s wife” (Deut. 27:20) if their father had truly committed that very sin. The dramatic irony of such a situation would make the statement laughable. This argument lays the groundwork for explaining Reuben’s sin. See Gen. 35:22, Gen. 49:4, and BT Shabbat 55b. 40. This is a paradigmatic example of Pietist doctrine reflecting the perspective of Sefer Hasidim’s author and not necessarily reality as seen by his contemporaries. This is one of the meta-halakhic demands of the German Pietists; the connection 231

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between the reader and text read before him is characteristic of the Pietist perspective, and there is no need to assume that all synagogue-goers viewed matters in the same light. 41. BT Gittin 60b. 42. An overview of some opinions on this issue can be found in Y. Cohen, “Status of a Blind Person,” 9. 43. See Emanuel, Fragments of the Tablets, 156–57. 44. Teshuvot Maharam, Lvov, §149. See also Meir b. Baruch of Rothenberg, Teshuvot, Pesakim, u-Minhagim, Helek ha-Pesakim, sec. 106, 160. 45. Jacob b. Moses Moellin, Sefer Maharil: Minhagim, sec. 3, 452. Rosh’s ruling on this issue can be found in Asher b. Yehiel, Shut ha-Rosh, kelal 3, sec. 12; and in Tosafot ha-Rosh, Megillah, ch. 3, sec. 6 (printed in the Vilna edition of the Talmud). 46. Israel b. Hayyim Bruna, She’elot u-Teshuvot Yisra’el mi-Bruna, §25. In his commentary on R. Jacob b. Asher’s Arba‘ah Turim, R. Joseph Caro rejected the Ashkenazi allowance for calling blind individuals to the Torah; see Beit Yosef, Orah Hayyim, 141:2. In his Shulhan ‘Arukh he ruled that a blind man may not be called up; see Shulhan ‘Arukh, Orah Hayyim, 139:3. In his annotations to the Shulkhan ‘Arukh, the sixteenth-century, Kraków-based R. Moses Isserles (Rema) upheld the Ashkenazi position. He cited Maharil’s ruling that a blind man may be called to the Torah, “just as we call the uneducated.” One can hazard a few guesses as to the source of the difference between the Spanish approach of Rosh’s school and the “Ashkenazi” approach. It might be tied to the number of people who knew Hebrew in Spanish communities that Rosh visited at the beginning of the fourteenth century, or to the status of the blind on the Iberian Peninsula. It seems that once the Ashkenazi rabbinic elite recognized that there was no cause to discriminate between the blind and the sighted in liturgical activity, they sought to grant the blind equal standing with the sighted 47. We have already encountered this claim with respect to a leper (metzora‘) in the context of analyzing Rashi’s responsum; see chapter 2. 48. BT Ketubbot 65b. 49. Traditional societies in the early modern period, such as those in England and its colonies in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, attempted to resolve this problem by means of processes promoting familiarity and suitability, such as bundling. This custom involved bringing together the prospective spouses for one night before the marriage, whereby they could learn to better understand each other. They were not permitted, however, to have full sexual relations on that night. On this phenomenon and religious attitudes toward it, see Fischer-Yinon, “The Original Bundlers.” 50. This assertion is based upon BT Ketubbot 72b, which states that “if he betrothed her with no conditions [stam] and blemishes were [subsequently] found on her [body], she leaves without a ketubbah.” 51. Ibid., 75a–b. The formulation here is identical to that of Maimonides in Moses b. Maimon, Sefer Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Ishut 25:2. On the influence of Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah on R. Moses of Couçy’s Sefer Mitzvot ha-Gadol, see Galinsky, “Moses of Couçy.” 52. Semag, mitzvot aseh, sec. 48, 128. 232

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53. M Ketubbot 7:9. 54. The dispute can be found in Isaac b. Moses, Sefer Or Zarua‘, vol. 1, She’elot u-Teshuvot, secs.760–61, 674b–77a. 55. Ibid. 56. Theodore and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah, Parashat Bereshit 17:3. 57. According to the midrash, R. Yose’s wife was malicious. Despite the pressure exerted by his students, R. Yose originally refused to divorce her, even though she denigrated him and treated him with demonstrably little respect. Finally, after much persuasion, R. Yose gave in and divorced her. Subsequently, the woman married the official in charge of the urban markets. After some time, her second husband became blind, and she made rounds with him in the city streets collecting donations together. Notwithstanding their financial hardship, the woman and her blind spouse avoided R. Yose’s neighborhood. The husband, who in his previous life as an official was familiar with the city streets, came to realize that one area of the city was left out of their route. He was bewildered as to why his wife did not include R. Yose’s neighborhood on their collection route, and she responded that it was unpleasant for her. Her husband insisted that she take him there, and after they entered the neighborhood he began to strike her on account of the fact that she prevented him from availing himself of the financial opportunities that it presented. R. Yose heard her cries and took pity on his ex-wife and her husband, providing for them for the rest of their lives. A close reading of the story raises many questions about the great “love” to which R. Isaac refers: is the fact that the wife tied her hand to that of her blind husband and collected money with him testimony to their love? Or was it the fact that she received blows from him in the city streets? Perhaps R. Isaac had in mind the ostensibly greater love that the woman had for her blind husband than she had for R. Yose. It would seem that R. Isaac felt that notwithstanding the blindness that the second husband developed and their rocky relationship, the woman—having been divorced once from R. Yose—did not ask for a divorce from her second husband, which demonstrated her love for him. 58. BT Yevamot 118b and parallels. 59. These statements regarding the blind are especially interesting given that they were said by R. Simhah, who, as one recalls, became blind at an advanced age. 60. See Weiss, Parental Relations, 22–31. 61. Nahmanides explains Gen. 5:3 in this way: “It is known that all that is born of a living thing will have the likeness of its progenitors and their image, but because Adam was elevated in his likeness and image, for it said regarding him ‘He made him in the likeness of God’ (Gen. 5:1), it explained here that even his progeny had the same lofty likeness.” 62. Some commentators emphasized that this proves that Seth, Adam’s third son, was born circumcised like his father. Ancient traditions mention many biblical personalities (Noah, Jacob, Joseph, and others) who were born circumcised. The fact that Seth was circumcised was taken by these commentators as testimony to his wholeness, that he did not need any corrective. See Avot de-Rabbi Natan, ed. Solomon Schechter (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997), version A, chap. 2, 12; see also addition B to version A, 153. 233

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63. BT ‘Eruvin 18b. 64. See Nissim Gaon, Hamishah Sefarim, ed. Shraga Abramson (Jerusalem: Mekitze Nirdamim, 1965), 112. See also Teshuvot ha-Ge’onim, ed. Jacob Mussafia (Lyck: Mekitze Nirdamim, 1864), §25. This responsum is also cited in Lewin’s Otzar ha-Ge’onim, although this responsum is not cited in the name of R. Sherira but in the name of R. Hai Gaon. See Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, 3:9. Radak’s exact source for this interpretation still requires further investigation. As far as we can tell, Genesis was the only book of the Pentateuch on which Radak commented, and even this commentary was significantly less popular than those he wrote on the prophets and writings. This commentary was not printed in the Mikra’ot Gedolot edition of the Pentateuch but as Perushei R. David Kimhi ‘al ha-Torah, ed. Mosheh Kamelhar (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1970). See Mikra’ot Gedolot ‘Haketer,’ Genesis, ed. Menachem Cohen, 2 vols. (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1997–99). I would like to thank my colleague Yehudah Galinsky for his help in clarifying this issue. 65. Kamelhar, Perushei R. David Kimhi ‘al ha-Torah, Gen 5:3. 66. This perspective is characteristic of the Middle Ages and found its expression not only in writing but in art. See Mellinkoff, Outcasts. 67. For the connection of the birth of deformed or monstrous children to visions of the future and prophecy in late medieval and early modern Italy, see Niccoli, Prophecy and People. Niccoli claims in her book that this view is predicated on 4 Ezra 3:8 [=5:8], which is translated by Theodore Bergren as “menstruous women shall bring forth monsters” (parient monstra); see The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, ed. Michael D. Coogan, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 330. See also the discussion in The Apocrypha, ed. Eliyahu Shmuel Hartom, vol. 8 (Tel-Aviv: Yavneh Publishing House, 1967), sec. 3, “Hezyonot Ezra-Shalti’el,” 22 (Hebrew). 68. On the mulah see Barkai, History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts, 63. 73, 90, 133–44, and 171. 69. See Finucane, Rescue of the Innocents, 23. Finucane notes that although in most cases deformed children were abandoned, there were some atypical cases in which parents expended much effort (including visiting a saint’s tomb) in attempts to ameliorate their child’s plight (33). 70. Ibid., 33. 71. See Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 172. Baumgarten relates that the primary motive for abandonment in the Middle Ages was unwanted pregnancy from sexual relations that crossed classes or that was prohibited. Often, rape was involved. Extreme economic pressure and fear of being unable to feed another mouth also entered into the equation. There are also some cases of abandonment of deformed infants, whose primary cause was that most parents felt the prospects of their survival to be minimal. 72. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 171.On this case and related cases see: D. Shayoviz, “ ‘He Has Created a Remembrance of His Wonders’: Nature and Embodiment in the Thought of the Hasidei Ashkenaz” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2011); D. Rotman, “At the Limits of Reality: The Marvelous in Medieval Ashkenazi Hebrew Folktales,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 20 (2013): 1–28.

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73. Extreme deformity of the spine, which can be misconstrued as a “tail,” is a known medical condition called spina bifida; see Weiss, Parental Relations, 31–37. 74. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 172. Epilogue 1. Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi, Sefer Ravyah. 2. Jacob b. Moses Moellin, Sefer Maharil: Minhagim, sec. 11, 330–31. 3. Wistinetzki, Sefer Hasidim, sec. 1301.

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Index

abandonment, of infants, 175, 234n71 Abraham b. David of Posquières (Rabad III), 100–101 Abraham b. Meir Ibn Ezra, 81, 92–96, 213n76 Abraham b. R. Issac Av Beit Din, 150 Abrams, Judith Z., 142 Abu Sa‘id Abu al-Khayr, 130 accusations, effectiveness of, 39, 49, 206n47 Achish (King), 83–84 Adam, children begat by, 175–76, 233n62 Adam and Eve, 94–95 Ahima‘atz b. Paltiel, 99–100 Alexander III (Pope), 50 Anacletus II (Pope), 154 animal fat, in cures for skin maladies, 207n57 animal-like behaviors, 90–92, 95–96 animals, sacrificial, 142, 157 appearance, external, 142–43, 194n44. See also deformities archaeological evidence for medieval Jewish communities, 13–14 Arloga, story of, 90–91 arrogance, punishment of Nebuchadnezzar for, 92–93 Asher b. Yehiel (Rosh), 80, 82, 121–22, 152 attachment, to soul of dead person, 215n108 Avigdor b. Isaac ha-Tzarfati, 35

Babylonian Talmud, acceptance in medieval Ashkenaz, 32–33 Baldwin IV (King), 24–25 banishments from society, 38, 69, 78, 128 ban of Rabbeinu Gershom, 107, 117 baptism, as cure for leprosy, 38 Baron, Walo W., 56 Barzen, Reiner, 57–58 bathing, mukeh shehin and, 59 Battle between Carnival and Lent, The (Bruegel), 139 Baumgartren, Elisheva, 234n71 beastly behavior, 90–91, 95–96 beggaring, association with indigence and madness, 127 beggars, portrayals in medieval Christian art, 139 begging, by men vs. women, 119, 220n40 Bekhor Shor (Joseph b. Isaac Bekhor Shor), 31 betrothals, 171–72 blemishes on human bodies: in Christianity vs. Judaism, 141–42; inquiry into, in advance of marriage, 171–72; major vs. minor and issue of divorce, 172–73; as punishment for sins, 144 blessings, 60, 143, 150, 158–60, 228n48 blind individuals: calling to reading of the Torah, 168–70, 185, 232n46; issues surrounding legal 265

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blind individuals (continued ) categorization of, 151–52; marriage of, 173–74 blind men, wearing of fringes by, 152 blindness: congenital vs. loss of eyesight, 153; crying and, 137–38, 225n2; and issue of divorce, 172– 73; in premodern period, 152–53; Shlomo Deshen’s study of, 10–11 blood, as cure for leprosy, 202n94 Bodleian 692, responsum from, 64–66 bone fractures, in premodern period, 139 Book of the Pious. See Sefer Hasidim Bracton, Henry de, 125 British Council of Archeology, 13–14 Brody, Saul Nathaniel, 23–24, 43 Bruegel, Pieter, 139 bundling, in traditional societies, 232n49 burning bush, Moses and, 29 cantors, with physical defects, 160–62 Catholic Church. See Christian entries cemeteries, 1, 13–15 charitable acts and institutions, Christian, 8, 57 children: birth of disabled, 175–81; deformed, 234n69, 234n71; halakhic obligation to produce, 111–15; terms for, with learning and orientation problems, 75 chivalric code in medieval Europe, 146 Christianity: conversion of Jews to, 87–88; as dominant society within which medieval European Jews lived, 7–9 Christian saints, association with lepers, 41 Christian society: abnormal behavior as evidence of sublime religious qualities, 133; attitudes toward people with disabilities, 230n19; beliefs about leprosy, 42–43; dichotomy of attraction and repulsion between Jewish society and, 186; ideals of bodily wholeness

and of potential redemption, 8, 141; marginal groups designated as dangerous to, 38–39; perceptions about Jews and disease, 25, 153–54; requirements regarding physical integrity, 180; role of the Other in self-definition of, 24, 186–87; service of disabled people in sacred roles and space, 162–63; sexual relations of, compared to Jews, 155; view of tzara‘at as disease of the soul, 37–38 Christian theology, and original sin, 133 clothing, and shame, 94–95 Cohen, Y. Yosef, 169 Cologne, Jewish cemetery in, 14 commensurate punishments, 34–36 conception during menstruation, in argument over ugliness, 154–55 conflict approach, to issues of social definitions, stratification, and oversight, 17 Constantine, baptism and leprosy cure, 38 criminal liability concept, 126 Crusaders, 24–25, 69–70, 138, 203n3 crying, and dim eyesight, 137–38, 225n2 cult of the tabernacle, priests officiating in, 142–43 Daniel, Ibn Ezra’s commentary on book of, 92–93, 213n76 David, biblical episode of madness, 83–84, 127, 131 David b. Joseph Abudarham, 150 David Kimhi (Radak), 175–76 deaf person, legal status of, 151, 217n6 Decretum (Gratian), 162–63 deer-man, 92–94 defacement, as behavior that violates social codes, 89–91 deformities: among the poor in Middle Ages, 8–9; approaches to position of people with, in society, 16–17; 266

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beliefs about, in premodern society, 16; caused by slavery, 227n28; as cause of social distraction, 144; in children, 234n69, 234n71; as natural phenomenon, 147–48; and participation by priests in ritual activity, 158; as result of sin, 146; of the spine, 235n73. See also physical impairments demographic knowledge and studies of medieval Ashkenaz, 13–14, 138 demonic possession, 80, 99–101, 215n108 desecration of sacraments, lepers accused of, 39 Deshen, Shlomo, 10–11 deviants, involuntary, 9–11 disabilities. See impairments; madness; physical impairments disability, meaning of term, 140 disabled individuals. See impaired individuals disease, Christian society’s perception of, 153 disease of the soul, 37–38, 41, 201n91 disenfranchised person, defined, 193n30 disfigurements. See deformities disgust, as legal cause for divorce, 65–67 divorce: blemishes and issue of, 172– 73; disgust as legal cause for, 65–67; due to illness of one spouse, 46–47, 64–66; increase at end of 13th century, 68; issue of compulsion and, 115; ta‘anat mumim (type of commercial fraud) as grounds for, 170–75; when one spouse becomes insane, 83, 106–14, 120 Donation of Constantine, 38 Douglas, Mary, 49 dramatic irony, avoidance of, 60, 165–68, 180 Durkheim, Émile, 16–17 Elazar b. Judah of Worms, 34–35, 200n67

Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi of Bonn (Ravyah), 31–32, 107–8, 113–15, 137, 184 Eliezer b. Samuel of Metz, 157 Emanuel, Simcha, 204n7, 219n32, 229n13 embarrassment, avoidance of, 158–59, 165–68, 207n62 English Common Law, 126 ergot poisoning, 206n44 ethical texts: on coping with illness and injury, 146; distinction between halakhic and, 28–29; as historical source, 45–46; view of leprosy as punishment, 29 European society, self-definition by, 38–39 ex opere operato (not the doer but the deed), 162 Faerie Queene (Spenser), 147 fever, cure for, 195n51 Finucane, Ronald, 139, 147 folklore, and social processes, 77 food, blessings over, 59–60 fools (fatuo), 125 footwear and prosthetics, 139 Foucault, Michel, 11, 76, 91 Francis of Assissi, 95, 214n89 Frankish kingdom, treatment of lepers by, 69–70 fringes, wearing of by deaf men, 152 functionalist school, 17 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 93, 213n76 Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), 86–87 Gerard of Nazareth, 41–42 German Pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz): conflict between principles in teachings of, 160; issue of embarrassment in teachings of, 165–68, 207n62; leprosy identified with sin and punishment by, 34; martyrdom in thought of, 146–47; 267

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German Pietists (continued ) within medieval Jewish society in Western Europe, 9; nakedness and, 95; prayer in religious outlook of, 131, 179, 223–24n80, 223n79, 224n88; respect for all human beings, 60–61; role of divine punishment for sin, 145; sanctification of the Holy Name, 146–47 Germersheim, Germany, 58 Gershom b. Judah of Mainz, 46–47, 107 Gersonides (Levi b. Gershom), 27 Gilchrist, Roberta, 55 Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), 86–87 Goffman, Erving, 10–11 Golden Calf sin, and tzara‘at affliction, 29, 144 Goodman, Yehuda, 128–29 grace, 52, 204n18 Gratian, 162–63 Gregory the Great (Pope), 38 Grossman, Avraham, 131 Gurevich, Aron, 3 hagigah offering, obligations of, 84–85 halakhic texts: as historical source, 12, 45–46; on ritual purity and tzara‘at, 28–29 halitzah ceremony, 146, 216–17n5, 225n9 hallucinations and delusions, 101–3 Hamilton, Bernard, 24–25 Hansen’s disease (leprosy), 21–23, 26–27, 30, 32 harlotry, punishment for, 147 Hasidei Ashkenaz. See German Pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz) Hayyim Eliezer b. Isaac (Or Zaruah), 66–71, 152 healing shrines, 193n24 Hebrew language, words referring to people whose behavior is abnormal, 75

Heikhalot literature, and madness, 88 heresy, leprosy as bodily manifestation of, 40 Hezekiah (King), 109–10 Hezekiah b. Jacob of Magdeburg, 125 history, defined from perspective of study of mentality, 3 History of Madness (Foucault), 76 hospitalization of madmen and madwomen, 78 hospitals, 8, 210n22 human beings: German Pietists and respect for all, 60–61 human body, ideal of unblemished wholeness, 141 human sweat, 199n57 Iberian Jewish community, 192n19 Ibn Ezra (Abraham b. Meir Ibn Ezra), 81, 92–96, 213n76 identity spread, in production of attitudes toward marginal individuals, 15 impaired individuals: admonition against causing embarrassment to, 165–66; approaches to position of, in society, 16–17; calling of, to reading of the Torah, 165–68; historical study of, 138; in Jewish law, 149–50; on margins of a periphery, 183; as natural phenomena, 147–48; as percent of world population, 138; regulation of contact between healthy and, 150; responsibility of rabbis for moderating reactions to, 180–81; in sacred roles and space, 158–65; social consciousness of, 166; societal duty toward, 148 impairments: Christian society’s perception of, 153; distinction between natural phenomena vs. manifestations of God’s judgment, 150; evident, 15; legal-halakhic categorization of, 151; meaning of

268

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term, 141; sin and, 141–44. See also physical impairments indecent exposure, 91 infanticide, 177 infants: abandonment of, 175, 234n71; born with teeth and a tail, 177, 178 Innocent III (Pope), 162 Innocents cemetery, Les, Paris, 1 insane asylums, 210n23 insane persons. See mad individuals; madmen; madwomen insanity. See madness Isaac b. Joseph of Corbeil, 223n80 Isaac b. Moses of Vienna (Or Zaruah), 35, 61, 120, 139, 173–74 Islamic influence, in Jewish communities under Christian rule, 172 Islamic lands, Jewish settlement in, 192n21 Israel b. Hayyim Bruna, 164–65, 230–31n22 Jacob b. Asher (Ba’al ha’Turim, 100–101, 120–21 Jacob b. Meir (Rabbeinu Tam), 81–82, 120 Jacob b. Moses Moellin (Maharil), 36–37, 81–82, 149, 169, 185 Jeroboam b. Nabat, 40 Jesus, 8, 193n25 Jewbury cemetery, York, England, 13–14 Jewish literature, medieval, 32–33 Jews: dichotomy of attraction and repulsion between Christians and, 153–54, 186; distinctions between Iberian and Ashkenaz, 7; historians of, 191n10 Jews of Ashkenaz: archaeological evidence for medieval communities, 13–14; Babylonian Talmud and, 32–33; geocultural space, 6–7; and holy communities, 111; implications of expelling a person from collective,

185; importance of perception of, by outside world, 185–86; lumped together with Muslims and lepers, 38–39; medical literature of, 18; as minority within Jewish minority, 1; non-Jewish influences on lifestyle of, 5–6; tension between leaders and public regarding physical disabilities, 163. See also German Pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz) Job, 38, 197n18, 202n94 Jocelin of Salisbury, 163 Joseph b. Isaac Bekhor Shor, 31 Joshua b. Levi, 30, 52 Judah b. Barzillai al-Bargeloni, 152 Judah b. Samuel he-Hasid of Regensburg: on demented speech from dying man, 102; as legendary figure, 212n52; on madness, 89; Sefer Gematriot, 34, 80; story of Jewish boy who wanted to convert to Christianity, 87–88; Zekher ‘Asah le Nifléotav, 157. See also Sefer Hasidim Judaism: centrality of knowledge, intention, and rationality in, 134 Kanarfogel, Ephraim, xii ke-mi she-kefa’o shed (as one compelled by a demon), 99–101 Kempe, Margery, 118–19 kettubah, meaning and use of word, 204n4 Kleinberg, Aviad, 77 Labeling Theory, application to medieval society, 10 language, as reflection and tool of construction, 9 laws of betrothal and marriage, 171–72, 174–75 laws of inheritance, and leprosy, 21, 39 laws of the menstruant, 29, 35–36, 110–11 laws of tzara‘at, 29

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leper mass, 59 lepers: association with, as part of penitential process, 41–42; attitudes of medieval European society toward, 6–7, 23–25, 38–39, 68–71; in Christian worldview, 8; considered dead, 39–43; fear and revulsion caused by, 41–42; first testimony about Jewish, in medieval Europe, 46–47; Jewish, dearth of evidence of, 56–57; negative social image of, 41; Order of St. Lazarus, 69; prior to 13th century, 58–59; sexual profligacy attributed to, 36; society of, in Rashi’s responsum, version 2, 57–58; spitting at, 61–62; treatment by non-Jewish societies, 69–70 lepromatous leprosy, 22 leprosaria, 55–58 leprosy: accusations of, 49; biblical discussion of, 25–26; consequences of disease, 67–68; cures for, 38, 202n94, 207n57; diagnosing in Middle Ages, 48, 54; and divorce, 46–47, 50; and exclusion, 25–32; Hansen’s disease, 21–23, 26–27, 30, 32; Jewish and Christian beliefs about, 42–43; Jewish conception of, 28–29; laws of inheritance and, 21; marriage and, 63–64, 66–71; meaning of term, 21–25; as metaphor for heresy, 38; nerveending destruction in limbs, 196n3; prior to First Crusade, 203n3; rabbinic sources on, 26, 220n40; of the soul, 37–38, 41, 201n91. See also tzara‘at (biblical leprosy) Levi b. Gershom (Gersonides), 27 Lilium Medicine (Shoshan ha-Refu’ah), 201n81 literary sources, for historical and social research of medieval Jewish communities, 12, 45–46, 107

Lotario dei Conti di Segni (later Pope Innocent III), 162 lunatics (furiosus), 125 Mabilia, story of, 147 mad individuals: conversation with, as dishonorable, 128; giving money to, 127–28; halakhic standing in Jewish law, 107–8, 217n6; legal custody and responsibility for welfare of, 77–78, 105–6, 124–26, 128–29, 135–36; quiet vs. violent, 95–99; tensions about sources of livelihood for, 116; as threat to synagogue’s holiness, 129–33, 224n85. See also madmen; madwomen madmen: ability to inherit and own property, 123–24; behaviors typical of, 131; reasons for barring from synagogue, 131–33 madness: association with indigence and beggaring, 127; boundary between saintly behavior and, 133–34; characteristics of, 89–90, 94–95, 99–101, 103; described as bestial, 91–92; diagnosis or labeling of, 74; feigning, 96–99; halakhic descriptions of, 84–85; in marriage and divorce, 107–14, 116–18; medicalization of, 78; in medieval European texts, 90; music as cure for, 80–81, 211n31; rabbinic categories of, 83–86; relationship between taboos and, 86–89; as relative category, 135; significance of, with respect to the law, 76; social attitudes toward, 7, 76–77, 79–83; temporary, 73; as term, 75; treatment of violent vs. nonviolent, 80, 127 madwomen: concern for, 106–7; confinement of, 118–19; inability of, to preserve her honor, 120–21; and menstrual uncleanness, 110–11;

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protection of, 120–21; as threat to Jewish society, 121, 135 Maharam. See Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg (Maharam) Mahari Bruna (Israel b. Hayyim Bruna), 164–65 Maharil (Jacob b. Moses Moellin), 36–37, 81–82, 149, 169, 185 Maimonides, 73–74, 106–7, 172–73 marginal, as term, 1, 9 marginal groups, 7, 38–39, 54, 129, 183 marginal individuals, 3–4, 9–11, 15–18, 201n84 marginality, 2, 18–20 margins, studies of, 2–6 marriage: to blind individual, 173–74; efforts by halakhic authorities to preserve, 58, 120–23; examination of candidates for, 170–71; inquiry into blemishes, in advance of marriage, 171–72; laws of betrothal and, 174–75; leprosy and, 52–53; punishments for violating sacred laws of, 174–75; violence within, 65; when one spouse becomes insane, 121–23; when one spouse suffers from leprosy, 66–71 marriage agreements, 48–49 martyrdom, in thought of German Pietists, 146–47 martyred saint’s cults, 193n24 massacres during First Crusade, 138 mechanistic solidarity, 16–17 medicalization, process of, 78 medical literature, 12–13, 18, 36 medicine in medieval Europe, distinction between magical and nonmagical, 195n51 Medieval Handbook of Penance, 41 mehusarei da‘at (mentally deficient), 75 Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg (Maharam): arrest and imprisonment of, 215n94; on calling blind individuals to the Torah, 169; on cantors with physical

defects, 160–62; on interpreting sounds to prove adultery, 101; judgments regarding rebellious women, 68; on leprosy and laws of inheritance, 21, 39; on madman inheriting property, 123–26; on prayer leaders with physical disability, 163; on requirement of husband to support wife who had become insane, 116–18; responsum of, 58–64; on threat of madwomen to Jewish society, 121; tzara‘at used metaphorically by, 33; use of phrase “deed of the Sadducees,” 39–41; on woman who found blood spots on her garments, 63–64 mekah ta‘ut (commercial deception), 170 menstruant, laws of the, 29, 35–36, 110–11 menstruation. See sexual relations during menstruation mental illness, study of, 11 mentality (mentalité), defined, 3 mentally deficient (mehusarei da‘at), 75 meshugga‘ (mad), use of term, 75–76, 81–82 Metzler, Irene, 2, 140 metzora‘ (leprosy), connection to shehin and ra’tan in Talmudic times, 32–33 metzora‘im (lepers), 29, 31–32, 34, 52–54, 59–60, 200n67 minority within a minority, 7–9 Miracula (Philip), 147 Miriam, 28, 36–37 mitzvot, question of performance by blind man, 152 Mollat, Michel, 139–40 monasteries, European, 8 Moore, R. I., 38 More, Thomas, 130 Moses, signs given by God to, 29 Moses ha-Parnas, 158–59, 163–65 Moses Isserles (Rema), 232n46 Moses of Couçy, 171–72 Moses of Évereux, 115

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mosques, madmen barred from, 130 mukei shehin (those afflicted with shehin): associations with Hansen’s disease, 30, 32; bathing by, 59; blessings over food by, 60; and divorce, 64–65; sexual relations by, 65–67 music, as cure for madness, 80–81, 211n31 Muslims, as viewed by Christians, 38–39 Naaman, Gersonides’ commentary on story of, 27 Nahamanides, 36 nakedness, 94–95, 132, 214n86–87 Nathan b. Jehiel of Rome, 88–89 Nathan b. Joseph Official, 154 Navon, Liora, 24 Neaman, Judith, 79 Nebuchadnezzar (King), 213n76 Nebuchadnezzar (King of Babylonia), 92–93 Nirenberg, David, 121 Nissim b. Jacob of Kairouan, 175–76 nizok, defined, 42 non-Jewish society: concept of connection between physical impairment and sin, 147; influence on lifestyle of medieval Ashkenaz, 5–6; treatment of lepers by, 69–70 nudity, 94–95, 132, 214n86–87 numerology, and healing, 195n51 Orderic Vitalis, 154 Order of St. Lazarus, 69 organic solidarity, 16–17 original sin, in Christian theology, 133 Or Zarua. See Isaac b. Moses of Vienna the Other, 1, 24, 186–87, 191n4, 201n84 outsiders, 194–95n47 Pegg, Mark G., 57, 206n47 Peter of Poitiers, 56

Pharoah (King of Egypt), 202n94 Philip, 147 phylacteries (teffilin), wearing of, 61, 207n66 physical impairments: overview, 137–41; divine retribution and, 144–49; Halakhah and Polemics, 149–55; most common, 139; in rabbinic literature, 142; semantic shift regarding, 193n29; and violation of social codes, 89–91. See also deformities Pierleoni (later pope Anacletus II), 154 polygamy, ban on, 107, 112 possession, 80, 99–101, 215n108 poverty, causes of, 140 prayer leaders, 163–65 prayers, silence and concentration during, 131, 179, 223–24n80, 223n79, 224n88 premodern society, 16–17, 139, 152–53 priests, physical requirements for performance of ritual acts, 142–43, 157–58, 162–63 procreation, halakhic obligation of, 109–15 property defacement as symptom of madness, 89–90 prophecy, Jewish belief about end of, 134 punishments: commensurate, 34–36; imposed in Middle Ages, 97 ra’atan, similarities to Hansen’s disease, 30, 32 Rabad III (Abraham b. David of Posquières), 100–101 Rabbineu Tam (Jacob b. Meir), 81–82, 120 rabbinic sources, distinction between halakhic and ethical texts, 28–29 Radak (David Kimhi), 175–76, 234n64 Rashba (Solomon b. Abraham Adret of Barcelona), 90–91 Rashbag (Simeon b. Gamaliel), 172–73 272

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Rashbam (Shmuel b. Meir), 26–27, 145 Rashi. See Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi) Ravyah (Eliezer b. Joel ha-Levi of Bonn), 31–32, 107–8, 113–15, 137, 184 religious conversion, as madness, 86–89 Rema (Moses Isserles), 232n46 Rescue of the Innocents, The (Finucane), 139 research and study: assumptions at basis of, 3; focus of, 4–5; need for additional, 187–89; scope of, 6; sources analyzed in, 11–13 Resnick, Irving, 25, 56 responsa, as historical source, 12, 45–46, 107 Richards, Jeffrey, 201n84 Richards, Peter, 23–24 ritual acts by impaired individuals, 158, 179–80 ritual impurity, 27–29, 31–32 Robert, Julius, 1 Rosh (Asher b. Yehiel), 80, 82, 121–22, 152 sacrament desecration, lepers accused of, 39 sacred space, integration of disabled persons into, 180, 186 sacrificial animals, 142, 157 Sadducees, deed of the, 39–41 Samson b. Abraham of Sens, 83 sanctification of the Holy Name, in thought of German Pietists, 146–47 Sardinian story, 213n76 Schäfer, Peter, 33 schismatic, as term, 40 Scientific Revolution, 16 screams of the mad and possessed, 99–100 Sefer Gematriot (Judah he-Hasid), 34, 80 Sefer Hasidim: on coping with illness and injury, 146; equanimity regarding metzora‘im and mukeh shehin in, 59–60; on giving money

to witches and madmen, 127–28; on infant born with teeth and a tail, 177; injunction against admitting madmen to synagogues, 130–33; injunction against causing embarrassment or dramatic irony in calling to Torah, 166–68; on Jewish prisoner feigning madness, 96–98; Judah b. Samuel he-Hasid of Regensburg and, 192n11; on learning ethics from Gentiles, 227–28n42; link between profound sorrow and loss of sanity, 80–81; on nakedness, 95; on people suspected of having magical powers that could harm children, 177–78; on physical deformity as natural phenomenon, 148; on physical deformity as result of sin, 146; precepts regarding lepers, 59–64; on society’s responsibility to care for people with disabilities, 62–63 Sefer Maharil, 148–49 Sefer Mitzvot Gadol (Moses of Couçy), 171–72 Sefer Yeréim (Eliezer b. Samuel of Metz), 157 self-definition, by European society, 38–39 serpent’s punishment for tempting Adam and Eve, 145 Seth, birth of, 233n62 seven deadly sins, 147 sexual profligacy, attributed to lepers, 36 sexual relations: danger of illicit, outside Jewish society, 66; as dangerous for ba‘alei ra’atan, 30; between husband and mad wife, 110; as if compelled by a demon, 100–101; of Jews vs. Christians, 155; with mad spouse to produce children, 115; shehin and, 65–67 sexual relations during menstruation: in argument over ugliness, 154–55; and birth of disabled children,

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sexual relations during menstruation (continued ) 176–77; madness in women and, 110–11; prohibition against, 115– 16; tzara‘at linked to, 29, 35–36 Shahar, Shulamit, 3 shamelessness, and madness, 94–95 shehin: associations with Hansen’s disease, 30, 32; creams for, 207n57; as reflection of apostasy, 38. See also mukei shehin (those afflicted with shehin) Sherburn leprosarium, England, 57 Sherira Ga’on, 175–76 shetut (madness): halakhic descriptions of, 84–85; legal definition of, 83 shigga‘on: halakhic descriptions of, 84–85; meaning and use of word, 75, 81–82, 212n55 Shimon, 127 Shimshon b. Avraham of Sens, 73 Shmuel b. Meir (Rashbam), 26–27, 145 shoteh (fool, madman): legal status of, 76; used as epithet, 82–83; use of term, 75–76 silence, as condition for acceptance of public prayer, 131, 179, 223– 24n80, 223n79 Simeon b. Gamaliel (Rashbag), 172–73 Simhah of Speyer, 83, 107–13, 169, 173–74 sin and sins: blemishes on human bodies as punishment for, 144; deformities as result of, 146; divine punishment for, 145; leprosy identified with, 34; link between tzara‘at, 33–37, 144; as natural phenomenon, 147; original, 133; personification in literary works, 147; physical deformity as result of, 146; seven deadly, 147 skin diseases: cures for, 207n57; terms in the Bible that refer to, 26 slander, linked to tzara‘at, 36–37

social attitudes: constituent elements of, 3; toward lepers in medieval European society, 6–7, 23–25, 38–39, 45–46, 68–71; toward madmen and madwomen in Jewish society, 74, 98–99, 105–6; toward madness, 7, 76–77, 79–83; toward marginal individuals, 15; toward people with disabilities in Christian society, 230n19; toward the disabled and deformed, 17 social consensus, in traditional societies, 18 social research, influences on, 9 social stigma, defined, 10 social values, insight into, 183 societal duty toward people with deformities, 148 sociological studies of marginal individuals, 3–4, 11, 15–16 solidarity, and social cohesion, 16–17 Solomon b. Abraham Adret of Barcelona (Rashba), 90–91 Solomon b. Isaac (Rashi): on acts of madmen, 89–90; on crying and blindness, 137–38; husband’s claim that metzora‘im want to take wife in, 53–54; on infliction of tzara‘at on Moses, 29; on legal status of shoteh, 76; moral condemnation of husband in responsum by, 50–52; on praying when the mind is clear, 224n88; preference for preserving marriage, 58; responsum by, as first evidence of leprosy case that had public repercussions, 47; responsum by, version 1, 48–53; responsum by, version 2, 53–58; on three manifestations of grace, 52 Sontag, Susan, 16 Spenser, Edmund, 147 Speyer, Black Plague riots, 58 spine deformity, 235n73 spirit encounters, and madness, 88–89 spitting, at lepers, 61–62 274

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St. Anthony’s Fire, 206n44 synagogue’s holiness, 224n85 ta‘anat mumim (type of commercial fraud), as grounds for divorce, 170–75, 180 Taitz, Emily, 55 temporary insanity, 73 terms: biblical, which refer to skin diseases, 26; for children with learning and orientation problems, 75; in rabbinic literature referring to persons behaving abnormally, 74–76, 81–82; of reference, 9–11; use of labels and, 2 Third Lateran Council (1179), 50 Thomas of Celano, 214n89 Torah: calling of blind men to reading of the, 168–70, 185, 232n46; public reading of, by disabled persons, 165–68; stories of Prophets linked to laws of, 29 tubercular leprosy, 22 tzara‘at (biblical leprosy): associations with metzora‘im, 31–32; connection between menstruation and, 36; creams for, 207n57; as disease of the soul, 37–38, 41, 201n91; and divorce, 50, 52–53; halakhic texts on ritual purity and, 28–29; impurity of, as analogous to impurity of spirit and heart, 40; lack of medical connection between Hansen’s disease and, 26–27; link between sin and, 33–37, 144;

semantic field associated with, in rabbinic literature, 27–30 tzarah (tribulation, suffering), 33 tzarua (one afflicted with tzara‘at), 31 ugliness, of Jews vs. gentiles, 153–55 Urban III (Pope), 50 Uri b. R. Joel ha-Levi, 137 Uzziah (King), 28 violence within marriage, 65 Weiss, Meira, 15, 194n44 wholeness, as prerequisite for holiness, 142 “wild man” in literature, 93–94, 213n76 witchcraft, 81 women: eating the tithe by, 217n11; prevented from roaming and begging, 220n40; responsibility of Jewish husbands and communities to protect honor of, 120. See also madwomen Yalkut Shim‘oni (Shimon), 127 Yefet b. Eli, 95–96 York, cemetery in, 13–14 York Archaeological Trust, 13–14 Yose, and malicious wife, 233n57 Yuval, Yisrael Ya’akov, 68, 211n41, xii Zalman of St. Goar, 148–49 Zekher ‘Asah le Nifléotav (Judah heHasid), 157

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