The Jewish Eighteenth Century: A European Biography, 1700-1750 0253049458, 9780253049452

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THE JEWISH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Olamot Series in the Humanities and Social Sciences Jason Mokhtarian and Noam Zadoff

THE JEWISH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY A European Biography, 1700–1750

k SHMUEL FEINER TRANSLATED BY JEFFREY M. GREEN Olamot Series in the Humanities and Social Sciences Published in association with Indiana University Press

Indi a na Univer sit y Pr ess

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA ­iupress​.­org © 2020 by the Olamot Center All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 25 24 23 22 21 20 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Feiner, Shmuel, author. | Green, Yaacov Jeffrey, translator. Title: The Jewish eighteenth century : a European biography, 1700-1750 / Shmuel Feiner ; translated by Jeffrey M. Green. Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2020. | Series: Olamot series in humanities and social sciences | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020010920 (print) | LCCN 2020010921 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253049452 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253049469 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253049476 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Europe—History—18th century. | Jews—Europe—Intellectual life—18th century. | Jews—Europe—Biography. | Judaism—Europe—History—18th century. | Judaism—Relations—Christianity—History—18th century. | Christianity and other religions—Judaism—History—18th century. | Europe—Ethnic relations—History—18th century. Classification: LCC DS135.E8 F4513 2020 (print) | LCC DS135.E8 (ebook) | DDC 305.892/4040922—dc23 LC record available at ­https://​­lccn​. ­loc​.­gov​/­2 020010920 LC ebook record available at ­https://​­lccn​. ­loc​.­gov​/­2 020010921

CONTENTS

Preface vii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Happy Times? The First Century in the Modern Age 1

Part I . 1700

1. Pictures from Married Life: Glikl the Daughter of Leib between Hamburg and Metz 55 2. “Rise Up and Succeed”: Absolutism and Court Jews in Baroque Culture 71 3. Jews in the News: The Angry Masses, a Holy Society, and “Judaism Unmasked” 93 4. Between Enlightened Thought and an Imaginary Universe 134

Part II . 1701–1725 5. “Everyone Wants to Be Happy”: Dangers and Amusements 161 6. “Our Miserable Brethren”: Jews in Time of War 191 7. Melancholy, Career, and Travels: Five Life Stories 212 8. Christians versus Jews: Bitter and Violent Relations 248 9. From London to Jerusalem: Confrontations and Disputes 286 10. The Storm over the “Hypocritical Serpent” 309 11. Competition over the Picture of the World: Witches and Human Knowledge 332

Part III . 1725–1750 12. To Silence the “Fellow from Padua”: Moses H.ayim Luzzatto and the Great Awakening 353

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13. Criticism and Ambition: From Gulliver to the Ba’al Shem Tov and Jew Süss 378 14. Contradictory Tendencies: Hostility, Violence, and “True Happiness” 419 15. “An Indelible Stain”: War and Expulsion 439 16. A Vision of the Future: Ascent of the Soul, a Path for the Just, and a Teacher of the Perplexed 477 17. Toward Mid-Century: The Awakening of Shame 513 Index 521

PREFACE

The eighteenth century was the Jews’ first modern century. The deep changes that took place in its course shaped the following generations, and many of its voices still reverberate today. Continuity, the preservation of sta­ bility, and the challenges of criticism and innovation were bound up with one another and aroused mixed emotions among the people of the time: perplexity, tense expectation, worry, and hope. The twisting and fascinating biography of the eighteenth century from the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe emerges from paying sensitive attention to life stories, to bright and dark experiences, to voices of protest, and to aspirations for reform and personal and general happiness— voices that arise from the many testimonies left by the people of the time. The British historian Derek Beales wrote: “No period can outmatch the catalogue of fundamental changes that came to pass during the Eighteenth Century,” and Reinhart Koselleck attributed particular significance and direction to this impression when he spoke of the century as the threshold over which the entire modern age emerged. While it is possible to identify deep historical changes in Europe and beyond even from the beginning of the early modern period, awareness of the New Age as a concept laden with values and aspirations, as an epoch in which accelerated and unprecedented processes were taking place, directed toward an open future, did not arise until the eighteenth century. The people of that century experienced the transition from the old era to the new era at varying degrees of intensity, and spokesmen for the Enlightenment even believed in the absolutely innovative character of their age and strove for improvement and perfection.1 Toward the end of the century, several leaders of the Jewish Enlightenment movement came to share this mood. They proclaimed the advent of the modern

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age not only as a historical period distinctly better than its predecessors but also, and primarily, as a welcome change in the path of humanity. They hoped that departure from the ways of thinking and political action that had been prevalent until their time offered a chance for a dramatic improvement in the lot of the Jews, as expressed, for example, with great excitement and anticipation in an issue of the groundbreaking periodical Hameasef, in 1786: “Today, every day, men of rare spirit and generous heart rise up to shatter the shackles of bitter exile, for the benefit of the Jews and to do good for them.”2 Of course, this optimistic view was merely partial and expressed a wish rather than the historical reality. The biography of the Jewish eighteenth century is tempestuous and rich in conflict. The tension between the new era and the old one, with its opportunities and dangers, dreams and apprehension, determined the course of its life. Those who sought religious innovation confronted conservative opponents who suspected them of heresy, and those who designed plans for a fundamental overhaul of education in the spirit of Enlightenment values confronted the rabbinical elite, protective and defensive of its authority. The outlines of the vision of a future, for an improved and enlightened world, where reason and humanism would overcome barbarism, were mingled with the opposite pictures of the world, painting reality in the gloomy colors of collapse. Struggles to remove the restrictions imposed on the Jewish minority in the name of humanistic tolerance vied with suspicion regarding their inherently flawed character, which perpetuated their alien nature and the dangers that it posed. At the centers of ferment and tension in Europe, and particularly among the Jews, the power of modern mankind’s autonomy was manifest. The identifying marks of the new self, of the individual who recognized his or her own value, are visible in almost every one of the vehement disputes that arose in the public realm. The time capsule of the eighteenth century contained the expectations and hopes of the people of the time for a significant change in their lives and for happiness. Many of them believed that happiness in this world was a right and a possibility, and they invested efforts in the realm of the individual and in the public sphere to establish an improved and better ordered life. In pointing out one of the most significant revolutions caused by secularization in the modern age, Michael Heyd stated: “Happiness, which traditionally referred to the world to come, increasingly became a concept relating to this world.”3 But this expectation also included the discourse, the dispute, and the competition regarding the nature of a happy life, as well as awareness of subjective distress and objective suffering, which, rather, colored the period in gloomy hues, in total contradiction to the optimistic images of the philosophes. For many people,

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perhaps even the overwhelming majority, “happy days” lay in the distant future, while the present was the absolute opposite. At the same time, throughout the entire century, a continuous effort was made to change reality, values, and the vision of the future, while that happy life was on the horizon, even if it was understood in differing and sometimes contrary ways.4 When the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote, “[Man] should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason,” he stated that the aspiration for happiness must be the life goal of the autonomous person, and it would become a historical project of rethinking and an exalted mission in the period he called “the Age of Criticism.”5 Research in Jewish history usually treats dispersed communities, the growth of new movements, social issues, relations with the Christian world, schools of thought, influential figures, and central writings (or publications), and it tends less toward the full reconstruction or comprehensive sketching out of an entire period. This work, which includes two volumes (this book being the first), each covering half a century, presents the period between 1700 and 1800 as a historical framework for the retelling of the history of the Jews of Europe. According to French historian Jacques Le Goff, in his last work, periodization, the division of the past into periods and centuries, is required and necessary to give meaning to the chapters of history. Le Goff did tend to mark out long periods (about a thousand years, which he calls the Long Middle Ages, for example, ending only in the mid-eighteenth century), but he conceded the need to set boundaries in the flow of time so as to grasp change. The division of the past into slices is far more than the creation of chronological units, because, as Le Goff argued, it also includes the idea of transition, of one thing becoming another, making it possible to examine the field of tension between continuity and change.6 The significant internal disputes that broke out and the stormy debate that arose during the eighteenth century regarding the status and identity of the Jews in modern circumstances are what gives unity to this epoch in Jewish history. In a chronological account in which the points of interest and the main axes are events and life stories in the region between England and Poland-Lithuania, this work constructs a history of the century, traces its principle trends, and mainly offers broad scope for the observations and self-understanding of the people of the time. As in every period, the Jews of the eighteenth century were not isolated and insulated from their surroundings. The Court Jews acted in the political, economic, and cultural realm of absolutism and the baroque. The religious movements of revival and enthusiasm received significance in the context of Christian religious revival, and the Haskalah appeared as a particular Jewish

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instance of the Enlightenment. The wars, revolutions, and political changes that altered the map of Europe also shocked the Jews. At the crossroads between the values of tolerance, humanism, and the Christian tradition, the question arose as to whether the Jews could be citizens and be included in the social, economic, and cultural fabric as native Europeans. The deep historical trends and the central axes of movement that characterize the beginning of the modern period are interwoven here first of all with the story of the events that took place in the eighteenth century. The lens focuses on a long series of episodes that reverberated in the public space, both in the relations of the Jews with their surroundings—from the success of the lobby of the wealthy Jewish elite in preventing the printing of Judaism Unmasked by the Hebraist Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, to discussions of the “Jewish Question” during the French Revolution—as well as in processes of internal change—from the efforts to revive Sabbatean belief in a world that was ostensibly redeemed already, to the post-Haskalah period, and the establishment of the Hasidic movement, and renewal of the struggle against it at the turn of the century. While the book is comprehensive and detailed, it does not seek to present a synthesis of all the existing historical information about this century but rather to recount the emergence, in actions and consciousness, of the modern Jewish world in one of its early and foundational stages. This is not a history of all the Jewish communities. It is confined to the Jews of Christian Europe and only occasionally refers to the Jews under the Ottoman sultan in the Balkan lands. This narrative history is not necessarily a retreat to a positivist history of events, people, and ideas. The gateway of the events is opened here, as much as possible, to the experiences and interpretations of the people of the time, with the aim of discerning the meaning that they themselves gave to the events. Despite the aspiration to include most of the materials that nourished the era and its major trends, this book does not pretend to include everything that took place in the Jewish communities of Europe at the time. Experts will certainly discover lacunae and wonder about the attention given to Central Europe rather than, for example, to the south; more to the Ashkenazi com­ munities and less to the Sephardic ones; more to cultural changes and less to economic developments. An important and useful addition to this book would be the inclusion of the Balkan communities and those outside of Europe (in the Middle East, North Africa, and the New World) in a global Jewish history. It is to be hoped that, at least regarding the Jewry of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, I have not ignored any central trends or lines of development that left a true mark or any influential figures, changing political discourse, episodes that became subjects of curiosity, or major religious and cultural works.

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Note s 1. Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005), p. 1; Reinhart Kosselleck, “Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert als Beginn der Neuzeit,” in Epochenschwelle und Epochenbewusstsein, ed. Reinhart Herzog and Reinhart Kosselleck (Munich: De Gruyter, 1987), pp. 269–282. 2. See Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment in the 19th Century [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2010), ch. 2. 3. See Michael Heyd, “The Problem of Secularization in the Modern Period: A Homogenous Linear Process?” [Hebrew] Zemanim 83 (2003): 8. 4. See Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Grove Press, 2006). 5. Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784), the third thesis, trans. Lewis White Beck. From Immanuel Kant, “On History” (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), available at ­https://​­w ww​ .­marxists​.­org​/­reference​/­subject​/­ethics​/­k ant​/­universal​-­h istory​.­htm. 6. See Jacques Le Goff, Must We Divide History into Periods?, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The first chapters of this book, covering the years 1700–1750, were written in 2011–2012, when I was a visiting professor of Jewish Studies at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, with support from a research prize of the Humboldt Foundation. I am grateful to these two marvelous institutions for their hospitality and the possibility of using their rich libraries and of meeting fascinating colleagues. During all the years of research for the writing of this and my previous books, the Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University has been an excellent academic home for me. The late Michael Heyd (1943–2014), a historian of the first order, was a source of inspiration for me. He was the one who introduced me to the fascinating world of the eighteenth century, starting from the course I took with him in my first year at the Hebrew University in the autumn of 1977. I also thank the Olamot Center of Indiana University for selecting my book, which was originally published in Hebrew from the point of view of an Israeli historian, and making my scholarship available to English readers. The translation and publication of this book was made possible by a generous donation to the Olamot Center by Joe and Barbara Alpert. I am grateful to the editors of the series, Jason Mokhtarian and Noam Zadoff, for their confidence in me and for seeing to the production of the book in the best manner. I also appreciate the work of my translator, Jeffrey M. Green, who mediated between Hebrew and English with precision and managed to preserve my style.

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INTRODUCTION Happy Times? The First Century in the Modern Age

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The Ger man Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, at the height of his fame, in the year when his bestseller, Phaedon, gained great success and its author received the flattering epithet of “the German Socrates,” had an excellent opinion of the century in which he was born. “I have never been able to compare Plato with the moderns, and to compare both with the muddled thinking of the Middle Ages,” Mendelssohn announced at the end of 1768 from his place of residence in Berlin to his colleagues in the Enlightenment community of Europe, “without thanking Divine Providence that I was born in these happy times.”1 However, within a short time his optimism was eroded, and his faith in historical progress was shattered by the effort of the Swiss minister Johann Kaspar Lavater to draw him, against his principles, into a Jewish–Christian debate and to challenge his loyalty to Judaism. But at the same time, Mendelssohn’s heart still throbbed with almost Renaissance-like enthusiasm for the rebirth of culture. He greeted the age of the “Moderns” with favor, and, along with many members of the European intellectual elite, he believed that tolerance was overcoming fanaticism and tyranny and that reason would liberate humanity from the bonds of “barbarism” and superstition.

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Pa r a ll el W in dows Like many people in that century, Mendelssohn lived with the feeling of an unprecedented generation gap and of a historical opportunity to attain happiness for humanity in this world. His father, who was born at the end of the previous century, whom he left behind in Dessau, seemed to Mendelssohn to belong to the old generation, with whom it was already difficult to create a common cultural language, and it was certainly impossible to introduce him to the social circles that he frequented in the capital city of the Kingdom of Prussia. Mendelssohn’s home became a prestigious and highly regarded salon for Christian and Jewish intellectuals, who met in the evenings for conversation, drinking coffee and tea, and for social entertainment of high-class men and women. Christian Gottfried Schütz, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Halle, told about this experience with excitement: “With all his great learning and acumen, Moses is also the most jovial man, the most noble character, and the most pleasant company.”2 This was also a marvelous year for Madame Kaulla, Hayele Raphael, the daughter of Raphael Isaac ben Benjamin and Rebecca Wassermann, who was born to the aristocratic family of a Court Jew in southern Germany. At the age of only twenty-nine, a decade younger than Mendelssohn, Hayele was already married and the mother of five, in possession of great wealth, which she had inherited from her father, and a sophisticated and successful businesswoman in her own right. Duke Josef Wenzel von Fürstenberg, who established a splendid and brilliant court for himself in the area of the Black Forest, typical of many of the rulers of Germany in his generation, awarded her a document, signed on February 29, 1768, granting her the official status of “Court Jewess.” Henceforth, she was known as Madame Kaulla, the principal supplier of jewels and horses to the duke, and for decades she engaged in commerce and credit on a large scale, becoming the richest Jewish woman in the region. The rococo style, enjoyed mainly by the wealthiest groups in European society, reached its peak at that time. However, although she lived in splendid houses in Donaueschingen and elsewhere, surrounded herself with stylish furniture, and did business with the owners of palaces where concerts and plays were held, her acceptance in that culture was limited. Exposure to new European tastes did not erode her traditional Jewish identity, and she was suspicious of those whose heart’s desire was to cross the boundaries of tradition. When, for example, a young Jewish man was sent to her from Frankfurt for training in business, upon noticing his exaggerated attention to fashionable clothing and a powdered wig, Madam Kaulla sent him back home with contempt. “Young man,” she said to

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him, “in our business you have to work hard and with effort from early in the morning to late at night, and not dandy yourself as you do according to the latest fashion magazines.” Something of her character and personality shows in a portrait in which she looks straight at the painter, observing him with pursed lips and the severe gaze of someone who knows her power and ability to succeed in business and is far from surrendering to the elegant spirit of the time.3 This Court Jewess probably never heard of a Jewish physician of her generation, Ephraim Luzzatto, who published a book of Hebrew poems in London in 1768, titled Elleh benei ha-ne’urim [These Are the Young People]. In the history of Hebrew culture in Western Europe, this was a special landmark.4 Although no more than a hundred copies were printed, this book marks one of the few efforts at that time to produce a work in Hebrew, which powerfully, intelligently, and also with a fine sense of humor expressed feelings of love, erotic attraction, and pleasure in nature. “Behold, your neck is as pure as the whitest wool, the fragrance of your breath is more pleasant than any perfume,” he rhymed in one of his poems. “Only because of you does desire come, and it waxes angry at me, so that I almost die in perdition.”5 Ephraim Luzzatto was born in the town of San Daniele del Friuli in northeast Italy, and he studied at the University of Padua. During the years when his contemporary Mendelssohn began to frequent Enlightenment circles in Germany, Luzzatto was living in London, working as a physician, and he was known to be a hedonist who exploited the temptations of the city, gambling in clubs in Soho in the company of theater people. Madame Kaulla would certainly have rejected his erotic poetry with revulsion, along with his fashionable dress, his romantic intrigues, his free way of life, and his permissive attitude toward the Jewish commandments.6 Unlike for Mendelssohn, Luzzatto, and Madam Kaulla, for Rabbi Jacob Emden, who was born in the last years of the previous century, 1768 was another year of bitter personal conflict, constant restlessness, and anger. On every side, he perceived grave dangers and enemies plotting against him, and, with his gloomy view of the age, he complained: “Woe, that we have reached the days of this great evil!”7 Jakob Frank, the leader of a sect of radical Sabbateans, whose libertine behavior aroused great apprehension in Emden, had already converted to Christianity by then, and he was imprisoned in the Polish city of Częstochowa. However, the episode was not over, and according to reports that reached Emden, Frank’s emissaries in Russia tried to enlist political support that would lead to his release, whereas the opposing emissary, Baruch MeErets Yavan, made use of his mastery of European languages and his connections with the Polish and Russian aristocracy to thwart them.8

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Emden’s book, Mitpah.at sefarim, printed in Altona in that year, also marked one of the high points in the painful, prolonged, and uncompromising struggle that he waged against Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz, from the moment that he had declared, seventeen years earlier, that Eybeschütz was a secret Sabbatean, even after his adversary’s death, and it also revealed the great tension between daring, radical thought and conservatism and fear of transgressing the boundaries of the religion. Emden’s attack on Sabbateanism in general and on Eybeschütz in particular (“Known to be an abominable wicked man who absolutely clearly set out to change the religion”) was phrased in pornographic rhetoric, with the intention of arousing disgust. The pessimistic, bitter, and angry tone of Mitpah.at sefarim is the mirror image of the romantic, hedonistic, and light style of Luzzatto in Elleh benei ha-ne’urim, two books utterly different from each other that took their place in the Jewish library in the same year. At the beginning of his book, Emden condemned the Sabbateans, the goal of whose “criminal soul [was] to loosen the reins, to violate the covenant, and the eternal law, spreading their legs to every passerby, heeding every adulterer, every sodomized and sodomizing beast . . . even demanding a donkey in the market . . . like a hog in garbage they plunge into manure, thus their soul takes pleasure and amusement in the excretion of human feces.” The scandal of Frankism in Poland (the emergence in the 1750s of the heretic sect led by Jacob Frank), and the claim voiced in the previous decade by the theologian David Friedrich Megerlin, that Eybeschütz, influenced by the Zohar, believed in Christianity spurred Emden to take an action that could be interpreted as subversive. In Mitpah.at sefarim he investigated that classic work of Kabbalah and concluded that, without challenging the holiness of Kabbalah or denying its truth, it was a work that also con­ tained later texts, which were merely attributed to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai. In Emden’s opinion, the Zohar absorbed disputable ideas and was composed of strata from various periods, and not everything said in it was authoritative. “I have no doubt at all,” Emden concluded categorically, “that, with all praise for the Zohar, it did not escape the penetration of matters that are groundless.”9 While the critique of the Zohar, though it was cautious and circumspect, shows Emden to be daring and undeterred from casting doubt upon the central work of Kabbalah, on the very same pages of Mitpah.at sefarim, we find a harsh attack on early Haskalah and European culture. In his criticism of Megale sod [Revealer of Secret], a work in praise of science by the physician Aharon Solomon Gomperz, who was a teacher and close friend of Mendelssohn, the one who introduced him into the company of the German scholars in Berlin and introduced him to the dramatist and poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emden denounced exposure to the realm of knowledge beyond the boundaries of

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Judaism as rebellion against religion, and he advocated thickening the borders between the two societies: “For all the gentiles, every man follows the name of his own god, and we will go with the Name of the Lord.”10 He dismissed the European culture of his time not only as “external” to Judaism, useless and contrary to the commandment to study Torah, but also as a libertine culture, throwing off restrictions and arousing urges. It was especially and entirely forbidden, Emden proclaimed, to study the French language, because reading the erotic novels that appeared in that language aroused “foul speech, lust, and desire of the instinct that burns for adultery, ‘a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease’ (Job 12:5), those who choose a life of wantonness, laughter and frivolity, concupiscence, and illusion.”11 However, at the same time, the beginning of the summer of 1768, while the rabbi from Altona sallied forth to wage another literary battle against the “apikorsim” (skeptics), Ephraim Luzzatto settled into the life of London, Madame Kaulla prepared for an impressive career in business, and Mendelssohn spoke highly of “the happy days” and enjoyed the social status of a much-sought-out pundit, in the Ukraine, over a thousand kilometers to the east of Berlin, dreadful horrors were taking place. Looking at that year from all angles, it seems there could not have been a graver contradiction between the success of the Jewish economic and cultural elite in Central and Western Europe and the bloody attack of the Haidamaks, the savage Cossack gangs who rebelled against the Poles for the third time, and, this time, they took out their rage on the Jews. Their leader, Maxim Żeleźniak, possessed a fraudulent document from the Empress Catherine II, ostensibly ordering him to slaughter Poles and Jews, and on June 18, after being joined by the Cossack regimental commander Ivan Gonta, who had been with the Polish army until then, Żeleźniak led his forces in a siege of the city of Uman. For two blood-curdling chilling days, the slaughter of the Jews of the city took place.12 The Yiddish chronicle recounting the pogroms and mourning for the victims cries out in pain and horror, describing the cruel blow to the human body: The hotheaded rioters committed a great slaughter in the House of Study, so that the blood flowed over the threshold. . . . With their feet they trampled suckling infants, and one of the rioters slaughtered several hundred Jews on a butcher’s block. The children were trapped for the sin of their fathers. The rioters stabbed tender children and bore them away on spears while they were still living. Woe to the eyes that saw this and woe to the ears that heard this. Some of the murdered people were thrown outside of the Sabbath boundary, and their bones rolled about all over. . . . They slashed them into pieces and cut off their heads, and the dogs and pigs dragged them outdoors.13

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Most of the of victims remained faceless, but eye witnesses preserved the names of two of them in historical memory. They were in the group that was imprisoned in the synagogue, who were attacked with fury and could no longer bear the sight of the slaughter and the men and women who committed suicide: “There was a Jew named Rabbi Leibush of Sharigrod, whose blood boiled like a fish fried in a pan, and he seized a sword and killed at least twenty of the rioters. And there was another one of them named Moshe Menker, who rose up even more and slaughtered some rioters with his knife.”14 In response, a cannon was fired at the doors of the synagogue and hundreds were killed. The Cossacks, seeking freedom, upset that stability of Eastern Europe for decades, and they rebelled against the class order that was based on the peasant serfdom and the aristocratic rulers. At that time, Poland itself was exposed to considerable Russian influence, and its weakness enabled its neighbors to conquer its lands in stages, beginning with the first partition, just four years later. In the end, the Russian and Polish armies suppressed the uprising, and the rebellious leaders were executed with no less cruelty. However, meanwhile, the Haidamaks managed to strike at more Jewish communities in the region, and their anger at class and economic exploitation at the hands of the Poles mingled with religious hatred. A letter sent immediately after the pogroms to the rabbi of the Königsberg community in Prussia estimated that more than fifty thousand Jews had been murdered. Even if the number was much smaller, in the consciousness of the people of the time it was a mass disaster. Many Jews were forced to convert. Others fled from their homes in destitution and suffered from hunger, and hundreds of bodies went unburied.15 Almost everywhere, the pitiless violence and murder was accompanied by ceremonies deriding the Jewish religion. Rioters entered House of Study in Uman and “removed the Torah scrolls and spread them on the earth and stamped on them with their feet and murdered some Jews on them.”16 The summer of 1768 left a bloody scar on the face of Ukrainian Jewry, and the fifth of Tammuz (the tenth month on the Hebrew calendar) was decreed a day of fasting and mourning for generations. Their feelings of horror and fury found expression in lamentations and in hope for revenge from heaven. “Earth, do not cover their blood, and may there be no place for their outcry,” mourned Rabbi Abraham Epstein, “until the Lord looks and sees from heaven and takes His revenge and the revenge of His people and His Torah, revenge for the blood of His servants, spilled like water.” To avoid challenging divine justice, the rabbi required his listeners to acknowledge their guilt. The Jews had lost bodily security as a punishment from heaven for the sins they had committed. In a special sermon devoted to the lessons from the pogroms, he demanded a

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spiritual accounting and especially stricter observance of the commandments and great caution not to violate the Sabbath and not to talk during prayers. In response to the pogroms, the rabbinical elite, as represented by Epstein, set a particularly high standard for religious conduct. This justification of divine justice (“You are righteous . . . and we have done evil”) was accompanied at the end of the sermon by just a few words of consolation: the tribulations and torments truly herald the advent of the Messiah.17 Was it possible then to believe in mankind in the spirit of the Enlightenment, which had reached its peak in Europe? Was it still possible to justify the violence and evil in the world as punishment from heaven or a judgment whose reason was beyond human understanding? And what member of a skeptical reading public could, for example, accept the claim that this was “the best of all possible worlds,” in the harmonious view of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the philosopher from Hanover, after Voltaire, l’enfant terrible of Europe, and the most determined combatant for the Enlightenment, had revealed, nine years earlier, in his philosophical novel Candide, the limits of optimism and torn off the mask that concealed acts of injustice from the face of human society? Was it possible to believe in the mercy of God, who wants the welfare and happiness of His creatures, and even promises the immortality of the soul after death in the spirit of Mendelssohn’s Phaedon, a second edition of which had appeared in Berlin just at that time? At least from the point of view of the attack on the Jews of Uman, nothing could have been farther than the refined and decorous life of rococo culture and the humanistic discourse of the Enlightenment in France, Germany, and England. For example, the beginning of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s career—the wunderkind from Salzburg, whose playing had already enchanted many of the palaces of princes and kings—was probably heard of in Warsaw, in the circle of the court of King Stanislaw Poniatowski, and in the courts of Polish magnates who had been exposed to the Enlightenment and to the fashionable tastes of Europe. By contrast, pitiless death at the hands of nature or of men was the fate of many, and adherence to religion and obedience to the directives of clergymen remained the life buoy to be grasped and to be reconciled with reality. However, religion also showed a cruel face, and not only against the Jews. For example, two years earlier, on July 1, 1766, in the village of Abbeville, in northwest France, a twenty-one-year-old man was executed for desecrating the sanctity of the Catholic Church. Jean François de la Barre was found guilty of mocking religious customs, refusing to kneel when a religious procession passed, and damaging the wooden image of the crucified Jesus. The local magistrate sentenced him to torture, the amputation of his arm, the cutting

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out of his tongue, and decapitation. His body was burned, and at the same time, Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary was thrown into the fire, as it was condemned as the inspiration for the acts of heresy, and the ashes were scattered in the Somme River. The exceptional voice of Cesare Beccaria of Milan, whose revolutionary work in Italian, “On Crimes and Punishments,” was translated into French in that year, was not yet able to influence the fate of people such as de la Barre. Beccaria attacked torture as cruelty for its own sake, having no place in an era of reason and humanity, and he condemned the death penalty as a remnant of ancient barbarism and as a distortion of religion, which the time had come to abolish. “The voice of the philosopher is too weak versus the tumult and the shouting of those who are led by blind custom,” wrote Beccaria, in awareness of the limits of the power of the written word, “but I say it will find an echo in the hearts of several wise men dispersed throughout the world.”18 In the lecture that he gave in 1768, when he was appointed professor of economics in Milan, he also criticized the injustice done to the Jews: they invented the letters of exchange that altered the development of commerce, because “they were persecuted everywhere, and not only because of baseless fanaticism but also because of greed for their riches.”19 While the cautious optimism of the philosophers was not universally shared, the Swedish crown prince, later to become Gustav III, revealed his thoughts to his tutor, though they stood in opposition to the spirit of the age. It was not at all certain that the new age had put an end to the persecutions and injustices of the earlier time: “To hope to extinguish superstition and correct human wickedness is, I believe, to seek the philosopher’s stone; as long as men live in society, as long as they have different passions and interests, they will be wicked and cruel. It is a fine thing to try to correct them, it is nearly impossible to succeed in doing it.”20 Moses Mendelssohn himself, who believed in the advent of happy times, was neither cut off from the reality of his time nor did he live in a fool’s paradise. In Phaedon he argued, for example, against Beccaria, that in some cases there was no alternative to imposing the death sentence on criminals. In that year, the King of Prussia, Frederick II, in his Political Testament, condemned the Jews in his kingdom and accused them of smuggling, counterfeiting, and financial fraud, which harm the economy of the state. A few months after that, Mendelssohn was to discover how his friend Lavater betrayed his trust, and he was forced to justify his loyalty to Judaism before public opinion, in opposition to the insulting public appeal for his conversion to Christianity. With cynicism mingled with repressed anger, Mendelssohn reminded Lavater that “according to the laws of your home city, your circumcised friend is not even entitled to

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visit you in Zurich,” and in a more general way, he recalled “the distress and humiliation that the Jewish nation is subject to at this time.” Still, in 1768 itself, in a letter to the well-known educator Johann Bernhard Basedow of Altona, Mendelssohn complained about the “civil oppression” and the restrictive and discriminatory legislation from which the Jews of Germany suffered.21 Was his faith in happy days preposterous, or was it premature? Did it reflect the reality of his day, or was it only a wish and an expectation that was far from fulfillment? The greater his expectations and the stronger his belief in possibility of reform, change, and improvement—the deeper his disappointment. This view from several of the parallel windows that opened simultaneously in 1768 is what also guides our reading of the entire story of the life of the Jewish eighteenth century. Dickens’s words from the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, a novel that takes place at the end of the eighteenth century in London and Paris, are particularly apt: “It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” The biography of the Jews of this century seeks to penetrate these contrary experiences and these opposing consciousnesses, this world of contradictions, confrontations—the dreams and apprehensions of the people of the time. The entire eighteenth century will be examined in this volume and the next, not only with the intention of tracing the principal historical trends and the revolutions that formed the modern age, but also to try as much as possible to touch the lives of the men and women who were the Jewish citizens of that century.

“Th e Fir st Per son of a Ne w Wor ld”: A Cent u ry Define s Itself The journal of events during the eighteenth century, many of whose pages will be cited here, is particularly laden with significant and dramatic changes. This journal reports about the political, public, and literary discussion of the political and social status of the Jews and the constant confrontation between tolerance and suspicion, between exclusion and civil rights. It points out the intervention of the state, which demanded reform of the Jews and diminishing the power of communal autonomy, and it speaks of the awareness of the threat that the “Holy Societies” aroused, in their aspiration for religious revival, and of the appearance of the enthusiastic kabbalistic movement of Hasidism and its persecution by their opponents (the Mitnagdim). The cultural war triggered by Haskalah and the dispute about the education of the younger generation changed the discourse in the public realm beyond recognition and brought about the growth of a judgmental and critical public opinion. Processes of

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secularization, which weakened the grip of religion on personal and social life, and, conversely, the urgent demand to strengthen the foundations of religion created the impression of a great split, and all of these developments were accompanied by many varied literary works, which expanded and renewed the Jewish library and challenged knowledge and values that had been inculcated through a venerable tradition. In the climate of criticism and protest on the one hand and the fostering of conservative positions and norms on the other, the Jewish eighteenth century flowed along several channels of change, expressing powerful processes of modernization, which were influential in the long run. Three of these stand out in particular: the strengthening of individual autonomy, an increase in conflicts and splits among individuals and groups, and the appearance of new and challenging camps and powers. Reference was made here intentionally to the consciousness of the times as happy, on the part of quite a few citizens of the eighteenth century, both bursting with expectations and attentive to the bitter disappointments, so as to paint the features of the new era in Jewish history. The point of view for describing these numerous tensions and conflicts, and many others, is dual: a history that reconstructs events and gives preference to the interpretation and significance given by the people of the time, and an intimate history that looks at several life stories and especially amplifies the voices of distress and hope. The optimistic consciousness appears, that of the believers in the vision of human progress, who aspire to repair the flaws in society; and with it is born, like a twin sister, consciousness of the fear which is its opposite, warning against changes in the order of the world, which was about to collapse. Evaluation of reality according to opposing values, different world orders, and varied visions of the future and lively awareness of the revelation of flaws and belief or skepticism about the possibility of correcting them created the modern situation, in which people are classified according to their position relative to the boundaries of the confrontation, which was growing ever more severe, between those loyal to the Old Order and those who aspired to create a New World. But how is it possible to write the biography of an entire century? The political system of Europe and the central processes experienced by the people of Europe are the changing climate in which the contexts of life exist and in which the tendencies of the century are bound up. The biography of the Jewish eighteenth century will be interwoven with the life stories of the people of the time, and it will be sensitive to the images by which they interpreted events for themselves. This tendency in recreating the eighteenth century is similar to Anna Green’s definition of cultural history as “an approach to the past that focuses upon the ways in which human beings made sense of their

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worlds, and this places human subjectivity and consciousness at the centre of cultural enquiry.”22 This biography does intend to be aware of and attentive to everything subject to the consciousness of the individuals of the time, and it is indeed marked by subjectivity. It listens, for example, to the various voices of 1768, to Mendelssohn’s temporary optimism, to Ephraim Luzzatto’s desires, to Emden’s anger, to the determination of Madame Kaulla, and to the unequaled existential despair of Rabbi Leibush of Sharigrod. As with the life of a person, so, too, with the historical life of a century, it is proper to describe things as they transpired along the time axis. This is not, of course, a process of foreordained progress, which burns bridges behind it and denies the past, nor is it the opposite story of retreat and the emptying out of the ostensibly ideal fullness of Jewish life. Rather, it is a life process that develops and changes, and passes through crossroads and copes with challenges, and its pace and meaning are measured and evaluated by the very men and women who experienced it. The chronological account and the simultaneous description give the historical picture its multidimensionality, for, unlike the course of an individual life, the biography of a century is also composed of events that received local attention or reverberated at a distance, as well as the stories of many varied people’s lives, as they moved in parallel and contemporaneously, but they did not necessarily intersect. The experience of life is certainly very individual, but when it is interwoven with the life of a generation, it also assumes broader and representative meaning. However, this is not a collective biography that seeks what is shared and blurs the faces of individuals. On the contrary, the personal viewpoint and the voice of the self are at their most fascinating and curious when one seeks to penetrate the past. The biographical turn influences our view of history by bringing out processes of individuation, while the individuals recognize their own value, uniqueness, and power to effect change. It also maintains that in the modern period, the main responsibility for choosing an identity and a way of life falls on individuals.23 By focusing on the lives of individuals, a historian can reveal the deepest tendencies in the years between 1700 and 1800. It enables us, among other things, to identify the power of the individual who recognizes his or her own value, which proves to be one of the significant forces in the life of this century. The struggle of those who seek to shape life as they will, as independent individuals, to influence reality and change it, versus those loyal to the tradition, who are afraid of change, whether they claim to be bolstering the tradition itself or finding old patterns to be an obstacle, is certainly among the principal stories of the eighteenth century.

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The German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig noted that people in ancient times did not know whether they were living in the fourth or fifth century. However, during the Renaissance, historical consciousness began to develop, and at least the elites in Europe were aware of the uniqueness of the period in which they lived.24 The gradual growth of this consciousness reached maturity and was consolidated among the elites after the two hundred years of the early modern period. Beginning in the eighteenth century, Reinhart Koselleck argues, one may mark the beginning of a new age of modern times (Neuzeit) in European history. Not only did technological, social, and political changes alter the order of life from one end to the other, but no less determining and significant was recognition of the entirely new character of the era.25 Indeed, the eighteenth century was aware of being in a process of becoming. It was not necessary to wait for the American and French Revolutions, for there was to be born among the educated Europeans self-awareness of life in a century sharply distinct from its predecessors, and almost always for the better. The great expansion of the Republic of Letters, the long-distance intellectual community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe and the Americas, the many frameworks for conversation among readers of books and newspapers, and of scholars, communications networks of letters and the exchange of information—all of these fostered belief in life lived in an exceptional century. It has been called the century of philosophy, the age of reason, of progress, of science, and of the flourishing of the arts, of enlightened rulers, of the overcoming of superstition by means of knowledge, the elegant century, or, as Kant defined it, the century of Frederick the Great, and by means of this definition he pointed out the freedom of thought, which, in Kant’s opinion, Frederick advocated, even in the strict regime of Prussia. At the beginning of the century, the people of the time already noticed an unprecedented pace of life, at least in the capital cities in Central and Western Europe. The imaginary visitors from the Orient, whom, as we shall see, the famous French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu sent to Paris in his Lettres persanes, were thunderstruck by the noise and crowding, by the many carriages that brought passengers from place to place rapidly, by the curiosity of the people sitting in cafés to be kept up to date with the news, and by the variety of opportunities offered by the great city for business and social pleasures. His contemporary, Voltaire, basked in contentment because he had the privilege of living in a secular age, which was so appropriate to his taste and to his desire for luxuries and the fine arts. In mid-century, the skeptical Scottish philosopher David Hume expressed awareness of distance from earlier generations when he stated in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

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that miracles and marvelous events did not take place in his time and that all phenomena are subject to natural explanations.26 The Empress Catherine II was able to point out internal contradictions in her time and to offer a more balanced view, considering belief in the supernatural: “Though our century has received the complimentary title of the ‘century of philosophy’ from all sides, and although we have already preselected its epitaph: Enlightenment! Many heads everywhere are seized by such sustained dizziness. . . . One quotes ghosts, sees through thick walls, consults with the deceased . . . cooks up gold, carries the stone of wisdom in one’s pocket, easily conjures the moon down the earth, and diverts the earth from its orbit.”27 But at the end of the century, after the American and French Revolutions, in protest against the conservatism of statesman Edmund Burke, who warned against the shattering of the idols of the tradition and the institutions that guaranteed stability, the English-born American radical liberal intellectual Thomas Paine proclaimed enthusiastically that his generation would be considered like “the first man in a new world.”28 Not everyone shared this enthusiasm, even though they acknowledged the unprecedented innovation of their time. “Let us therefore be disabused of the great superiority that we give to ourselves over all the centuries,” proclaimed, against the stream, Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, one of the lesser-known thinkers of the French Enlightenment. Later on, he said: “Let us be distrustful even of the pretended courtesy of our customs: there has hardly been a people so barbarous as not to have had the same pretention. . . . On the contrary I want to teach [our century] to judge past centuries with the same indulgence that people, whoever they are, must always have for other people, and which they themselves always need.”29 Opinions were divided, and apprehensions regarding a mortal blow to the regime and to the religion, and the collapse of the foundations of society and the values of morality under the pressure of philosophical criticism and the modern spirit of Enlightenment gave rise to a counterweight of conservatism. In 1771, when the Academy of Sciences of Besançon, in eastern France, held a competition for essays on the question of whether the influence of philosophy on “our century” was positive or negative, the competitors disagreed. In contrast to those who praised the philosophical spirit as responsible for the improvement and refinement of life, the academy also received an angry article asking, “What is the century we are living in? Is it a century of gold or of iron? What is philosophy, which has advanced so much in our time? Is it the love of wisdom or the desire for evil?” Science offers inspiration to heresy, and the philosophers encourage moral decline. The author went on to judge his century severely, calling it “a century of stupidity, a century of

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monstrous ideas and contradictions. It is a miserable era! Woe to the morals of our century! This twisted century would yet bring down a flood of crimes.”30 In contrast, even conservative clergymen, who condemned deist criticism of religions and revelation and who saw the French Revolution as an expression of radical anarchy, waxed enthusiastic when they came to summarize the great achievements of the century, which had so greatly advanced humanity, in their opinion.31 The Lutheran theologian Daniel Jenisch, one of the younger members of the Enlightenment circle in Berlin and an enthusiastic admirer of Mendelssohn, went farther than all his contemporaries, and in the last year of the departing century, in a monumental work in three volumes, containing about 1,600 pages, he explained to the intellectuals of Germany how the eighteenth century had shaped “our new Europe.”32 His work, which proposed the original approach of cultural history, identified the forces that throb in every area of life, from politics and international relations to educational institutions, fashions in entertainment, dance and the development of the fine arts, to emotions and morals. With exceptional ambition he sought to draw the comprehensive portrait of the period. With belief in enlightenment and optimism, Jenisch presented the century, especially the latter half, as one of progress, bursting with great achievements, one of the most splendid epochs in human history. While presenting himself to his readers as a Christian in his beliefs and a clergyman in his profession, Jenisch said that, for example, this did not prevent him from supporting the efforts of the rulers of Europe to advance a policy of religious toleration and to demand human rights for the Jews, whose situation until then had been the worst in all of Europe.33

Pr incipa l Tr en ds a n d Opposing I m age s in a Cent u ry of Contr a sts For two hundred years, historians have been responding to the question of what happened in Europe during the eighteenth century with a story laden with complex international relations, which culminated in revolutions that shaped the modern world for generations. In the beginning, it was dominated by incessant power struggles among royal dynasties: the Habsburgs, the Bourbons, the Hanovers, and the Hohenzollerns. At the end, great dramas unfolded: the revolt of the colonies in North America and their War of Independence, the revolt of the Third Estate against the French monarchy, and the first stirrings of the Industrial Revolution in England. When the story of the century is told from the point of view of the heights of European society, the kings, who retained authority and leadership, and

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who represented sovereignty over the territories and populations under their control, were the heroes: the Sun King, Louis XIV, who ruled France at the beginning of the century, and, at the end, Louis XVI, whose execution by the guillotine was the most violent step taken against the absolutist regime; Frederick I, who made himself the king of Prussia, and Frederick II, the Great, the son of the Soldier King, who, with several aggressive wars, led this kingdom to the status of a great power; William II, who came to the English throne from Holland in order to bolster the parliamentary regime after the Glorious Revolution; his heiress, Queen Anne, during whose reign England attained great political achievements and unprecedented economic success, and, upon unification with Scotland, became Great Britain; and beginning in 1714, George I, the first king of the Hanover dynasty. In Russia, the Czar Peter I began the century with a great process of reform to his country and made it into a great power, even demanding of his subjects that they adopt the appearance (men with short beards and powdered wigs) and the fashion of Western Europe. Catherine II stood out among his successors, for more than thirty years directing the fate of the largest state in Eastern Europe; and in the empire ruled by the dynasty of emperors dwelling in Vienna, Maria Theresa stood out, having ruled the state for forty years and bequeathing it to her son, Joseph II, the who was the model of enlightened absolutism in Europe of the 1780s, a monarch who believed in toleration as a guiding principle of policy and who acted vigorously to improve the lot of all the subjects of the state. From the viewpoint of international relations, the decisive trends were the relative decline of France with respect to the rise of the power and influence of England, Russia, and Prussia, and the turning points that were mainly effected by political conflicts and wars: the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714); the Great Northern War (1700–1721) at the beginning of the century; the Prussian invasion and conquest of Silesia from the Austrians in 1740, at the instigation of Frederick II, at the beginning of the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748); the Seven Years War (1756–1763), which was a world war in Europe and overseas; the three partitions of Poland (1772–1795); the American Revolution, which ended in 1782; the war between Russia and Turkey; and the wars following the French Revolution at the end of the century. Following the failure of the Siege of Vienna in 1683, the Karlowitz Treaty of 1699 was signed, and the Ottoman Empire entered the eighteenth century in weakened condition, losing territory and withdrawing from its influence in Europe. The dispute regarding the chronological boundaries of the century, between the “long century” and the “short century,” assumes that the international political system was decisive and asks, for example, whether the French Revolution terminates the

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century as early as 1789 or whether the century concludes only after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Did the Glorious Revolution in England begin the century in 1688, or even earlier with the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648, or did it perhaps begin no earlier than 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, the end of the War of Spanish Succession? Historians of Europe, who seek to present a broader picture of long-range processes, such as the development of consumer society and capitalism; the consolidation of the centralized state; participation in the colonial project in the New World; the construction of improved and effective communications networks making possible the more rapid and freer flow of goods, people, and information; and the spread of literacy and the giving way of traditional knowledge in favor of new ideas, include the eighteenth century in a much longer historical unit, encompassing more than three hundred years: the early modern period. It begins in the mid-fifteenth century or the early sixteenth century and generally ends with the French Revolution.34 The modern period, according to this approach, begins only with the nineteenth century, or at the earliest with the great watershed of 1789. However, any observer of these pictures of the past immediately discerns the uniqueness of the eighteenth century. In the subdivisions of the early modern period, this century is often represented as standing by itself: it begins with significant demographic growth and the development of large cities, the exceptional figures of rulers and innovative scientists, literary works that express an unprecedented humanist and critical ethos, a series of dramatic events that the people of the times themselves already saw as revolutionary, and deep consciousness that developed among the elites that they were living in a modern age. All these and other characteristics distinguish this century from those that had gone before it. As early as 1978, historians rejected the claim that the eighteenth century witnessed fewer innovations than did the seventeenth century, and solid foundations were laid for regarding the century as a special era, beyond the early modern period.35 At that time, the German historian Rudolf Vierhaus suggested listening to the voices of the people of the time—to learn that, despite the many differences in time and place and the constant tension between the New Europe and the Old Europe, it was possible to trace the routes of transition to the modern age, which were paved in the eighteenth century. No story of the eighteenth century from beginning to end can fail to point out a series of considerable changes. The growth of the modern bourgeoisie, for example, and its sensitivity, as well as that of other segments of society, to questions of social order, rights, limits to the power of the government, cultural

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change, and the empowering of the individual person indicate the significant changes that took place in European society.36 Giving special attention to the eighteenth century does not necessitate choosing a narrative of progress, as did many of the people of the age when they told the story of the time they were living in, nor does it come at the expense of sober observation of the lives of those men and women who benefitted only slightly from the many changes. Although in political thought fierce criticism was voiced against the mechanisms of enslavement and discrimination of the regimes, this was not at all a century of social equality or of political rights. Even under the pressure of absolute rulers, who sought to concentrate political powers in their own hands alone, the aristocracy preserved the class structure of society with determination, as it accorded them privileges and vast economic and social capital. Not surprisingly, dynastic interests overcame national identification, and German princes and princesses could be, for example, rulers of England, Russia, and Poland. A rather small number of families possessed most of the lands and properties and the leading administrative, judicial, and military positions. The situation of millions of peasants at the bottom of the social ladder was hard, and many of them still lived to one degree or another as serfs, who were obligated to provide labor and make various payments to the owners of the land on which they lived. In 1771, Voltaire, who himself enjoyed the comfortable life of members of the upper class by virtue of his wealth and status, wrote, with irony mingled with arrogance and awareness of his good fortune, that “more than half the world is still settled and populated by two-legged creatures who live in horrible conditions, similar to their natural state, with means that barely provide them sustenance and clothing, hardly enjoy the gift of speech, are hardly aware of their misery, living and dying without knowing it.”37 Many peasants found themselves landless, living on the margins of society as beggars and highwaymen, who had nothing to lose in life, and sowing fear in the rural areas of Europe. Commerce, which expanded, and the development of the mercantile system, which was concerned with increasing the financial wealth of the state, strengthened and expanded the middle class of merchants and entrepreneurs of small cottage industries in the cities of Europe, as well as the teachers, physicians, and experts in law. This European bourgeoisie made possible social mobility through the acquisition of wealth and property, it promoted economic enterprise, and it stood for an ethos of diligence and success. A vibrant and sparkling society of urban consumerism grew up in the capital cities, giving great impetus to architecture, styles of dress, furnishing, and the creation of art and ornamentation. However, life in the cities was not without

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danger: cities were crowded, exuded bad odors, and were more exposed to epidemics and fires, and among the residents, there were thousands and tens of thousands of people in dire poverty, migrants from the villages who found no work, as well as criminals. The multitude of prostitutes is just one indication of their harsh plight. Their number in Paris in the 1780s was estimated at twenty thousand, and in London, in the 1790s, there were more than fifty thousand.38 Hierarchical relations of power, patronage, and control characterized European society. Lords ruled over peasants and servants, kings over their subjects, the religious majority over religious minorities, men over women. However, in the eighteenth century, the voice of social criticism grew stronger, demanding rights and freedoms and condemning servitude and discrimination. No longer was it a natural, accepted, and self-evident order. The development of cities and of the middle class, and the increase in literacy and the thirst for knowledge and pleasure were the infrastructure for the growth of the culture of Enlightenment and humanistic values. The catalog of literary works, scientific research, philosophy, and art reflects an extremely rich century. The dramas of Lessing and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany; Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s new doctrines of education, economics, and politics, as well as the thoughts of Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, and Kant; the French Encyclopedia of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert; Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws; and the feminism of Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman are only a few examples of this literature. Daring theories were proposed to explain the natural world and human society. The Enlightenment as a culture of protest, the dissemination of knowledge, and criticism sought to effect a change for the better by means of discourse and the printed word. The reading of books and newspapers, and the meetings in the coffee houses, the theaters, and the clubs of learned societies created public opinion and formed tastes, fashions, and style. Interest in art and support for artists was mainly concentrated at first among kings, aristocrats, and churches, who could afford to finance baroque and rococo palaces and the expensive works of art that decorated them. François Boucher, for example, served the mistress of Louis  XV, Madame de Pompadour, in France, and Johann Zoffany served Charlotte, the wife of King George III. Outstanding musicians who were in demand, such as Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, Joseph Haydn, Georg Friedrich Händel, and Mozart, also worked under the patronage of high aristocrats. However, during the century, as the consumer power of merchants, businessmen, and professionals increased in the cities, the art market expanded; the number of independent artists, who no longer needed the favors of patrons, grew; and the works of the period became available to the public.

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The scholars of the Enlightenment laid the foundations for theories of painting, architecture, literature, and music. Furniture, porcelain ware, gold watches, wallpaper, and other decorations in the rococo style, which was the heir to the aristocratic baroque, entered the homes of the bourgeoisie. Talented and famous actors such as David Garrick in England attracted large audiences to theaters. Novels were printed in editions of thousands, and some of them, such as Pamela by Samuel Richardson, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding, Fanny Hill by John Cleland, and The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, were bestsellers. The knowledge from the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries penetrated the Enlightenment and changed the attitude toward the world of many members of the European elite. Isaac Newton, who had discovered several of the basic laws of physics at the end of the previous century, sent science in new directions. In 1704, Newton published his work on optics, providing the Enlightenment with its metaphor of light, reason that lights up the darkness of earlier ages and removes old prejudices and superstitions. New geographical regions were being discovered by daring adventurers and travelers, the high point of this being James Cook’s landing on the eastern coast of Australia in April 1770. The encounter with the cultures of the New World both kindled the imagination and encouraged a reevaluation of the values and patterns of European society in comparison with societies that were perceived as natural and free of inhibitions, but it was also bound up with the exploitation and cruel enslavement of Africans transported to the New World. The hero of Voltaire’s Candide burst into tears when confronting a black slave on a sugar plantation in Surinam: “As they drew near to the city, they came across a negro stretched out on the ground, with no more than half of his clothes left, which is to say a pair of blue canvas drawers; the poor man had no left leg and no right hand”. Candide was shocked, and the slave explained: “It is the price we pay for the sugar you eat in Europe.”39 Religion in Europe remained dominant both in the public and political spheres and also in the private domain. The conflicts between Catholics and Greek Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Calvinists, not to mention the distinction between Christians, Muslims, and Jews, were key factors in international relations, in legislature, and in social relations; however, several enthu­ siastic religious revival movements arose among both Christians and Jews. The most prominent of these were Pietism, which began to develop at the end of the previous century among German Protestants; Methodism in England, by means of which the religious leader, John Wesley, wished to renew the Anglican Church; and Hasidism among the Jews of Poland and Lithuania, whose

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charismatic leaders, the Zadikim, offered channels for bridging the gap between man and God, preferring emotional and ecstatic prayer to Talmudic erudition. Indeed, in 1758 a newspaper published in Edinburgh wrote about the religious thirst of the masses, who sought special teachings of religious piety, saying that never had there been a period when religion was so fashionable.40 On the other hand, the tension between the rising power of the centralized state and the church reached one of its peaks with the dissolution of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order, in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV under pressure from France. Given the threat posed to various religions by the skeptical criticism of the Enlightenment, the state, and the strengthening of the ethos of the autonomous person who does not require instruction from clergymen, during this century “religion” began to be a framework for leadership, institutions, and values acting in new circumstances of loss of the monopoly over culture, education, morals, and social norms. In intentionally addressing the person and life in this world, the Enlightenment eroded religion both with respect to the power of the churches to continue supervising every area of life and also with respect to criticism of the theological explanations for nature, history, and interpretation of man’s place in the world. This criticism nourished the humanist vision of improving the life of mankind and of earthly redemption by human agency without needing the consolation of promised redemption from heaven or after death. Science and medicine were still largely groping in the dark and far from modern science, which was to develop in the following century. Alchemists who claimed to produce miracles; medical charlatans; experts in the secrets of magic and sorcery such as Samuel Falk, “the Baal Shem of London”; exorcists and tamers of spirits in ceremonies of magic spells and the smoking of incense in the Jewish communities of Germany such as Rabbi Samuel Essingen; magicians and adventurers such as Count Cagliostro or Franz Anton Mesmer, the inventor of animal magnetism—all enjoyed success among both Christians and Jews and in the courts of kings and princes. The popular magical medicine man and exorcist from southern Germany Johann Joseph Gassner was pursued in the 1770s by many in the religious and political establishment who were fearful of uncontrolled religious enthusiasm, but even he gained the respect of scholars and defense by believing Catholics.41 Various inventions and discoveries continued at the same time to strengthen the modern ethos regarding the power of science. In 1717, a diving bell made it possible to descend to the depths of the sea; in 1752, the American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod. The invention of the spinning jenny by English inventor James Hargreaves for spinning cotton and, five years later, the construction of a steam engine by

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Scottish inventor James Watt were significant breakthroughs in the Industrial Revolution in England. French chemist Antoine Lavoisier completely changed chemistry in the 1770s when he discovered that water was composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and that the atmosphere contains a mixture of gases, and when he formulated the law of the conservation of matter and discovered new elements. The British German astronomer William Herschel, who was determined not to leave a single point in the sky unexamined, discovered the planet Uranus in 1781. The hot air balloon of the French Montgolfier brothers (Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne) managed to take off in 1783, and English physician Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine in 1796 gave hope for almost complete protection from one of the most murderous diseases. At least among those exposed to the culture of the Enlightenment, the new science began to undermine the religious explanations of the world and the authority of clergymen, and it increased faith in the power of mankind to subdue nature and tame it to attain happiness on earth. However, the answer to the puzzling question regarding the influence of the Enlightenment on people’s lives in Europe is not a simple one. Very few people in 1762 read the explosive On the Social Contract by Rousseau, which began with the outcry: “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”42 Too, the criticism of the disaster that avaricious European merchants brought down on millions of natives of America and Asia and of the cruelty of the enslavement of black Africans hardly changed anything, and neither had the movement to abolish slavery, which just began to organize at the end of the century, achieved anything much yet. Apparently, the protests voiced in conversations in coffee houses and literary salons and discussions in scientific academies did not improve the lot of those who struggled every day to keep body and soul together. The vast majority of the citizens of Europe lived only alongside the refined and stylish life that was accompanied, for example, by the art and music of the rococo, the new taste in architecture, furniture, music, and painting, which spoke of pastoral pleasures, amusements, play, picnics, music, and song in the concert halls in the homes of the aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeoisie. The complex fabric of the eighteenth century, rich in contrasts and contradictions, can be reconstructed in at least two different narratives. The first is dramatic and optimistic, and its voice is that of significant change; the second is more moderate and skeptical, acknowledging merely moderate changes and mainly emphasizing limitations in the ability to get free of the patterns of the past. The optimistic story describes the faulty structure of values of the Ancien Régime and points to new forces that eroded it and brought it to a situation of crisis, concluding with the victory of the French Revolution: “The triumph of

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the Revolution, partial though it was, meant the end of the old order. . . . New ideologies had emerged; old orthodoxies had been thrown off.”43 The official winner according to this narrative was Enlightenment. As early as the seventeenth century, rationalist philosophers arose to bring down the Old Regime, which was ruled by religion, and during the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, they established a New Order.44 The second volume of Peter Gay’s classic book on the Enlightenment, published in 1969, begins with a sentence that contains this narrative in its entirety: “In the century of the Enlightenment, educated Europeans awoke to a new sense of life. They experienced an expansive sense of power over nature and themselves. . . . Fear of change, up to that time nearly universal, was giving way to fear of stagnation; the word innovation, traditionally an effective term of abuse, became a word of praise.” Under the heading, “The Recovery of Nerve” the optimistic narrative identifies the historical direction of progress in every area of life: The Age of Pessimism, which was formed by Christianity, was challenged at that time by scientific achievements, overcoming epidemics, revolutionary changes in food production, the growth of the “humanistic sentiment,” the incessant drive to improve and perfect, the collapse of social hierarchies. The driving force of “the spirit of the time,” and the historical process itself led to the weakening of the sacred and the supernatural, to the freedom of humanity, and the victory of rational humanism.45 In recent years the most prominent historian of the Radical Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel, has been promoting the optimistic narrative of the eighteenth century. In his opinion, the true revolution in the modern age was intellectual. It is rooted in the thought of the Jewish philosopher Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza, born in the Sephardic community of former Marranos (Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula were converted or were forced to convert to Christianity) in Amsterdam during the second half of the seventeenth century, and it ultimately led to a political revolution at the end of the eighteenth century and nourished democratic regimes.46 In contrast, the skeptical narrative proposes descent from philosophical heights and abandonment of the glowing and dramatic images that were attached to the eighteenth century, and, in their stead, acknowledges the fact that no tangible change occurred in the lives of most of the inhabitants of Europe. The radical slogans of the revolution and the humanistic and liberal ideas of the Enlightenment did not touch on them, and they did not feel the spirit of liberation hovering over Europe. For the majority, according to the British historian Jeremy Black, life was a struggle for survival similar to that of their grandparents. The new trends in science, medicine, politics, industry,

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and legislation were only embryonic, and they only began to influence the life of the majority from the nineteenth century on.47 A gendered look at the situation of women confirms Black’s gloomy evaluation. Although some women stood out as rulers (Queen Anne in England, Maria Theresa in Austria, Elizabeth and Catherine in Russia) and others were authors and leaders in taste and style in high society, in many respects the lives of women were restricted and subject to particularly strict supervision. The few enlightened thinkers who wished to provide education and rights for women failed to change gender relations in any significant way. The family was decidedly patriarchal, and there was almost no challenge to the rights and control of men over women. Women received relatively meager education, their legal status was inferior, many of them were poor and exposed to abuse, and their sexuality was seen as threatening and sinful. Giving birth exposed women of every social class to palpable danger of death. Birth out of wedlock led to punishment and social ostracism. Therefore, the murder of illegitimate children was common. Margaret Hunt concludes her comprehensive research on the lives of women in eighteenth-century Europe as follows: “Almost everywhere, women were more encircled by unfreedom and constraint then men, the result of a felt need to monopolize and control their productive, reproductive, and emotional labour, to exclude them from occupations or activities men preferred to monopolize, and to neutralize or channel their magical sexual power so that it would not cause social disorder.”48 In Black’s opinion, the lives and actions of the members of every social group were ruled by a hostile environment during the eighteenth century. On the one hand, as noted, he casts doubt on the achievements attributed to science and medicine, on the degree of influence of the Enlightenment, and on the success of the initiatives to deal with the phenomena of serfdom and poverty; on the other hand, he offers a broad catalog of the threats that loomed over the lives—difficult in any event—of the people of the eighteenth century. Dangers to life were abundant: epidemics, serious viral diseases, natural disasters, and famine. Meager food and poor hygiene and sanitation led to large-scale mortality among both infants and adults. In the face of the hardships of life and its disasters, many people in Europe clung to religion, sought an explanation of their distress in the church, or sought help from witches, experts in magic, and sorcerers. Only a few people believed in the possibility of progress and the improvement of life. The majority lived in insecurity and fear of the future, and their aspirations in life were very limited.49 This dark plot was constructed largely under the impression of social history, which describes the past from below and seeks to balance the picture of the Age of Reason that is painted by intellectual history. But it is

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also nourished by the criticism of the Enlightenment, which began in the eighteenth century itself and continued in shock at the terror of the French Revolution. Postmodern criticism also plays a part. Its harbingers were philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (the Dialectic of Enlightenment). These members of the Frankfort School, and others such as Michel Foucault, not only pointed out the failures of the Enlightenment but also held it responsible for anti-humanistic trends of oppression, and restriction of freedom camouflaged as tolerance, reason, and the bureaucratic, systematic organization and administration of society and the machinery of government.50

“Th at M a n Is I”: Th e A ppe a r a nce of th e Moder n Self Should we adopt the pessimistic or the optimistic narrative? Be enthusiastic or skeptical? Of course, we are not required to choose either of the two narratives in tracing the history of the Jews of Europe in the eighteenth century. Even someone who attributes great weight to tendencies of continuity and the powerful grip of the tradition and points to the distress and suffering of the masses struggling for daily survival cannot ignore the ferment of change, which led those who sought to maintain the old order and stability to entrench themselves in defensive positions. The very expectation of happiness and belief that it could be attained in personal and communal life nourished the aspiration for change. The emancipation of the individual, even if it was partial in that century and very elitist, ultimately made the processes of modernization possible in Europe, processes from which the Jews also benefitted. The new discourse about the natural rights of the individual, the political discussion of citizenship, religious toleration toward minorities, literary and artistic creation, and the humanistic sentiment of the Enlightenment in general were the direct result of the birth of the free personality.51 The thought that the world must be redeemed by man and not as a gift from God provided inspiration for the projects of those who believed that a better world was attainable from the eighteenth century on. However, even those who were enthusiastic believers, imbued with divine inspiration, who rejected secularization and dreamed of religious and messianic utopias shared this awakening of the ambitious, critical self, aware of its own value and striving for a better world. The autonomous person is probably the main protagonist of this century. The English philosopher John Locke laid the conceptual foundations for the autonomous person, in that he presented man as capable of shaping himself and his surroundings by means of the experience he acquires and the facts he

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learns.52 Lynn Hunt shows that in the eighteenth century a lengthy historical process came to its peak, when people in Europe and the colonies of North America were mentally and emotionally prepared to understand why human rights were necessary and, in fact, self-evident.53 The great political changes would not have been possible were it not that individuals had begun to “pull themselves away from the webs of community and had become increasingly independent agents both legally and psychologically.”54 Philosophers and novelists filled the hearts of many enthusiastic readers with the feelings of horror aroused by acts of cruelty, violent assaults to the body, slavery and torture, and the consciousness that people have the right to pleasure, happiness, and contentment. Portraits, stories in the popular press about the lives of ordinary people, the new theories of education that focused on the child as an individual whose goal was to develop as much as possible and to succeed, instructional books that told the reader how to enjoy healthy and happy old age, philosophy from Locke to Kant that strengthened confidence in the human ability to change one’s life by means of one’s reason, and the theory of the social contract, which explained the agreed-upon connection of individuals to a political entity—all these expressed the great influence of the idea of individual autonomy. Of course, the individual has always been the agent of initiative and activism in every historical period, and as Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt showed, already in Italy during the Renaissance a process began by which a person became an individuum, and a personality developed that stood on its own strength.55 However, it appears that in the eighteenth century awareness of independence and liberty, destiny and rights of the individual was heightened with unprecedented sensitivity. In Hunt’s opinion, the person who succeeds in distinguishing himself from other individuals does not triumph but rather develops empathy, compassion, and identification with his fellow. In that way, she believes, new men were born in Europe, and the rights of man at last became self-evident. Those who formulated the documents underlying the political revolutions proclaimed the duty of the state to protect the body of the individual and his property, and they recognized his right to freedom and, in the case of the American Revolution, his natural right to the pursuit of happiness as well.56 In innumerable portraits, medallions, diaries, friendship albums, and autobiographical works, and on theatrical and operatic stages, individuals began to tell about themselves and to proclaim their uniqueness. For historians, these are “ego-documents,” which in the words of Jacques Presser, who coined the term, provide documents in which the ego is revealed or is hidden willy-nilly.57 The declaration of independence of the autonomous person can be heard, for

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example, in the opening sentence of Rousseau’s Confessions: “Here is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly after nature and in all of its truth, which exists and [the likes of] which probably will never exist.” Rousseau announced the removal of the individual from the collective framework and the uniqueness that distinguished him. “I wish to show to those who resemble me a man in all of the truth of nature; and that man will be me. . . . I dare believe that I am not made like any of those [people] who exist. If I am not worth more, at least I am different.”58 The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor stands out especially as a leader of the trend that sees the development of the ethos of the autonomous self as the most important turning point in the modern age, and he suggests understanding historical processes in the mirror of the development of the self. In his Sources of the Self Taylor shows how the modern innerness developed not only from abstract thought but also from context of historical life.59 The modern self appeared at the beginning of the century among the intellectual elites of Northwest Europe and its branch in North America. In that century, when a new appreciation of commerce arose; when the aristocratic codes of honor and the value of the soldier receded in favor of the value of orderly and tranquil life typical of the bourgeoisie; when the modern novel arose, describing its protagonists not as models to be emulated or rejected, but as people whose ordinary lives were interesting in themselves; and when a clear preference for marriages chosen by love, and the control of the patriarchal family over the life of marriage partners diminished, then the autonomy of the individual expanded greatly. The search for love, intimacy, and a private space that was not supervised by society also had great significance for the awakening of the individualistic ideal; and it joined forces with another eighteenth-century trend: the growth of sentiments. Conjugal and parental love have always existed, of course, but in this century, the belief arose that sentiments are the realm of the individual, that they arise from a person’s connection with nature, and that one is not only allowed to express them, but, perhaps, the purpose of life was embedded in them. The greatest influence on the culture of sentiments was from tempestuous and tear-jerking novels such as Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloïse (1761) and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), two successful bestselling books that changed the taste of their readers. As the secular relation to nature as a source of feelings and morality grew stronger at the expense of a connection with religious instructions, materialism also developed in the radical Enlightenment in Europe. The French philosopher Denis Diderot, for example, a leader in the culture of the Enlightenment, regarded religion as an obstacle preventing the fulfillment of man’s natural

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desire for happiness. In his Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, Orou, the Tahitian, addresses a Christian priest from Europe who did not accept the offer that he enjoy sexual relations with Orou’s wife and daughters, saying: “I don’t know what this thing is that you call religion, but I can only think ill of it, because it prevents you from tasting an innocent pleasure, to which nature, the sovereign mistress, invites all of us.”60 In Taylor’s opinion, in this age of the advance of secularization, nothing less than an anthropocentric turning took place, in which, in addition to the gradual disappearance of the mysterious and the supernatural from the world of man, reason, self-appreciation, and consciousness of self-assurance led to the weakening of fear and distancing from dependence on the power of God.61 Christianity had advocated living life with death always before one’s eyes, but in the humanistic thought of the eighteenth century this became a demand for paradise now, on earth, with a new purpose for mankind. According to the British historian Roy Porter, the modern, autonomous self was born, and, consequently, in a deep process of secularization, the soul died and in its place belief in the body grew up: flesh and blood full of desires and instincts, the self. Life on earth became a worthy goal in itself, and the achievement of happiness became the new gospel.62 The optimistic tale of the birth of the autonomous individual who frees himself, rules himself, and strives to rule over his world was indeed challenged fiercely by thinkers and scholars, who criticized it as an ethos invented by the Enlightenment, and they pointed out its hazards. Historians of the eighteenth century understand today that the historical picture is extremely complex, even for those who clearly identify a significant series of processes of secular­ ization and who reject the dialectics of an Enlightenment that lead to oppression and disaster in the name of reason and freedom. In the discourse on the self of the century, for example, it is impossible to ignore either the ideas of the materialists or those of the spiritualists, who dismiss the self and restrict the area of individualism.63 However, the processes of secularization took place even within religion itself and not necessarily in absolute isolation from it and, therefore, the new self can be identified not only in the Enlightenment but also in movements of religious revival that appeared in this century. From the time that individualism became a modern mentality and began to dismantle depen­ dence on traditional systems, it also nourished the subjective approach in religion, and it could produce either the deepening of religious experience or its weakening or nullification.64 Among the new religious groups of Christians and Jews, such as the Methodists, the Pietists, and the Hasidim, there were experiences of rebirth, change of heart, enthusiasm in the worship of God, the joy in being together with the members of the group, and valuing the ability of

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every individual to attain exalted religious objectives—all among the forces that attracted new members to them and expanded their ranks. Radical groups among the German Pietists, for example, challenged the Christian tradition, strove for “better times” for the society, and fostered individualism.65 As we shall see, the ethos of the autonomous personality, which seeks to free itself from the traditional and the authoritative, is also what lay at the foundation of the radical religiosity that threatened the social order, which was promulgated during the century by the leaders of the Sabbatean groups. In a pioneering article published in 1945, Jacob Katz pointed out “the individualistic tendency in thought and sentiment, which emerged because of the removal of individuals from their class attachments and their differentiation” as one of the major trends in the modern age. Based on the theory of the German sociologist Hans Weil, Katz argued that the more this process advanced, there also developed “an individualistic world view, which took shape from a way of looking at the world through the perspective of the individual,” and the educational theory emerged promoting “the free and developing personality, nurturing the unique self.”66 This was a trend common to many in Europe, and the Jews did not imitate it. Rather, they took part in creating it. Among them, as well, a new erotic, individualistic ideology also emerged in the eighteenth century, attributing great value to love and to marriage for love. As part of the growth of the new self, a revolution in sexuality took place in Europe: recognition that sex was private and no longer had to be under social supervi­ sion, recognition that sexuality was natural for humans and provided pleasure, and also recognition that women’s sexuality was legitimate and not a threat against the social order and religious discipline.67 In both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities of Europe, the rabbis discovered during the eighteenth century that it was difficult for them to impose religious laws when it came to intervention in intimate life. Religious supervision over sexuality in general, and over women’s sexuality in particular, frequently failed. In the beginning of the century, for example, the rabbi of Ansbach, Jacob Reischer, was shocked by the confession of a married woman who admitted “that she acted sinfully twice with an adulterer who seduced her, and because of his seduction, her evil impulse attacked her until it brought that sin upon her ‘as if with cart ropes’ (Isaiah 5:18), and she was seduced and willingly slept with another man, who was not her husband twice.” Her husband was a captive, far from home, and in consequence of these relations, she gave birth to a girl, whom the rabbi declared to be a mamzeret (a child born of forbidden sexual relations). Because of her adultery, she was forbidden to remain with her husband, and the rabbi proposed severe ways of repentance and atonement that included mortification of the flesh, sitting on the earth in

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an unheated room, fasts, refraining from wine and meat, immersion in freezing water, the wearing of black, refraining from wearing jewelry, and a formula of confession that she had to recite in Yiddish: “This is what I did, I committed adultery in fornication as a married woman and I made myself forbidden to my husband and gave birth to a mamzer, I am ashamed and abashed.”68 In contrast, in another episode that took place in the 1730s in the community of Altona, in northern Germany, the husband of a woman accused of adultery refused to divorce her, as ordered by the rabbis. To the rabbis’ great frustration, he would not obey them, “remaining in his rebellion not to heed the words of the Torah and the commandment issued by the Lord, that she is impure to her husband.” In Amsterdam there even occurred a “panic of adultery” in response to the many sexual transgressions, and the historian of Western Sephardic Jewry, Yosef Kaplan, noted “a Sephardic Jewish version of the vision of emotional individualism, which began to show itself in various sectors of the ‘Nation.’”69 The more that intimacy and the satisfaction of the erotic desires of the couple were valued, the more the leaders of the community understood they were facing a threat to their authority and to the social order. Emotional individualism and the demand to mark out the area of erotic relations as a protected personal area were among the arenas of the revolt of the individual who sought to free himself from the imposition of discipline on his intimate life. For example, the Oxford deist Matthew Tindal declared in 1730 that desire was inherent in human nature and that it was always forbidden to condemn it as a religious sin or a civil crime, and clergymen must not supervise it.70 One of the most conspicuous expressions of the anthropocentric turning was the ability to express publicly embarrassing childhood experiences and erotic experiences, and thereby to proclaim a new relation to the body. Rousseau, for example, shared with the readers of the Confessions his childhood diseases, his emotions, and his bursting into tears, as well as his frustrating and unsatisfied sexual awakening in his youth. In great detail, he described his desire for a prostitute in Venice, desire that became disgust and sexual failure when he saw a “withered” nipple on her naked breast. At the start of the story, he explained to his surprised readers: “Whoever you are, who want to know a man, dare to read the three or four pages that follow; you will know J.-J. Rousseau thoroughly.” After describing an earlier episode with a prostitute in Venice, he wrote: “No, nature did not make me for enjoyment. She put in my poor head the poison of that ineffable happiness, for which she put the appetite in my heart.”71 The memoirs of Giacomo Casanova, another person who was aware of the power of the individual to shape his own life according to his will and of his right to satisfy his desires, were also written as a confession. Though he described in detail his conquest of many women in the course of

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his wanderings in Europe and the pleasures of sex, he began The Story of My Life by stating the boundaries of a person’s freedom and by declaring his belief in God: “Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion.”72 Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, was different from the former two in that his atheism and radical determinism authorized sexual experiences and fantasies in which the egotistic, violent, and cruel satisfaction of the bodily instincts overcame every other human value. Even for those far distant from the dark and savage world of the Marquis de Sade, erotic freedom was one of the forces that excited their souls. In the 1780s, after his return from travels in Italy, Goethe, the greatly admired German poet, wrote erotic poems that radiate sensual feelings of happiness and desire, as, for example, in the second Roman Elegy, which describes a sexual experience: More than ever I dreamed, I have found it: my happy good fortune!/ . . . Simple dress of rough homespun,/ At but a lover’s mere touch, tumbles in folds to the floor./ Quickly he carries the girl as she’s clad in chemise of coarse linen—/ Just as a nursemaid might, playfully up to her bed./ . . . Jupiter’s welcome to more from his Juno if he can get it;/ Let any mortal find rest, softer, wherever he can./ We are content with Cupid’s delights, authentic and naked—/ And with the exquisite creak/crack of the bed as it rocks.73

At mid-century, in his autobiography, which recounts his life from his childhood to his determined struggles in the Jewish public arena, Rabbi Jacob Emden told about sexual temptations that he encountered on his way. Whereas Goethe identified erotic pleasure with happiness, which is man’s purpose in life, Emden, a free personality and a conservative rabbi, in whom these characteristics dwelled side by side, dealt with temptation in religious terms of sin, impulse, and the obligation to restrain the desires of the body; but even when formulated in religious terms as a desire that is unworthy in the eyes of God, and not in humanistic terms of happiness, Emden’s confession does not deny the body, but rather it brings out even more strongly the desire to give it freedom. As we shall see, when a Christian woman in a village in Bohemia wanted him to lie with her, he fled from her embraces, but in his memoirs he reveals that “the feeling of indecent desire was not lacking.”74 The autobiography of this rabbi from northern Germany preceded even Rousseau’s Confessions as a work in which an individual reveals his hidden desires, his ambitions to gain fame, and his angers and loves and physical and spiritual desires in extremely open fashion.75

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The expectation of sensual happiness led to the search for gratification, intimacy, pleasure, beauty, and worldly success. In political thought, fostering civil contentment became one of the aims of the state, and the Emperor Joseph II proclaimed, in his Edict of Tolerance of 1782, that he hoped to contribute, by abolishing restrictions and discrimination and the introduction of reforms, to both the benefit of the state and the happiness of all his subjects. The new theorists of education believed that the rational use of bodily and intellectual powers would produce happy people. In the same decade, Kant believed that the autonomous person was now learning to know his power to shape his world and to attain happiness: “Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.”76 The essence of the life experience of this century is present here. The individual human being who creates himself and seeks to gain happiness is the essence of life in this biography of the eighteenth century. The “happy days” of the century are not the naive declaration of scholars blind to the distress of life in the world, but rather are the definition of a goal, a mission, and a purpose. The idea itself and the ambition itself encouraged criticism and initiative, and introduced a feeling of discomfort and challenge to stability. They reverberated as a threat even among Jewish religious leaders in Eastern Europe at the end of the century, and they challenged those defending the walls of the tradition.

A De mogr a phic T u r n a n d Its M e a ning Beyond this deep trend of the emergence of the new self that sought happiness with the support of philosophers and authors, several other significant general trends were active in this century, on a large scale, changing the face of Europe, and the most conspicuous of these was demographic growth. Rhédi, a character in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, wonders why the population of earth has decreased, becoming sparser than in the past. In his opinion, only a tenth of the number of people who lived in antiquity were living now. More surprisingly, they become fewer every day, and at this rate in another ten centuries there would be nothing but a desert. Epidemics, and especially venereal disease, famine, and other disasters, have struck mankind harshly. Montesquieu exploited the discussion of demography to express criticism of slavery: A very remarkable thing about this America is that, while it receives every year new inhabitants, it is itself a desert, profiting nothing from the continual

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drain on Africa. Those slaves, transported into a foreign clime, perish there in thousands; and the work in the mines in which natives and foreigners are constantly employed, the poisonous vapours which issue from them, and the quicksilver which is continually in use, destroy them without remedy. There is nothing more absurd than to cause countless numbers of men to perish in extracting from the bowels of the earth gold and silver, metals in themselves absolutely useless, and which constitute wealth only because they have been chosen as the symbols of it.77

However, like many people of his time, and especially in the first half of the century, Montesquieu could not have discerned the new trend. In fact, contrary to his pessimistic opinion, a demographic shift took place at the same time as the anthropocentric turning. While at the beginning of the century the population was stable, and in certain areas it was declining as a result of wars, epidemics, and famine, in the eighteenth century the population of the world grew from 640 million in 1700 to close to 1 billion (978 million) in 1800. In Europe, the population grew from 118 million at the start of the century to 187 million by the end. From the beginning of the century till mid-century, there was relatively gradual growth of 16 percent, while in the second half of the century it grew by about 30 percent.78 Toward the end of the century, so great was the awareness of this increase that Thomas Robert Malthus, the economist and demographer from Cambridge, sounded the warning in his Essay on the Principle of Population that the supply of food in the world could not keep up with population growth. Although the factors of scarcity, natural disaster, disease, infant mortality, and low life expectancy all acted to limit population in many places, the general trend indicated growth. Improved nutrition, expansion of arable land, and fewer drought years led to an increase in the annual demographic growth rate in Europe from 1.3 per thousand people to about 4 per thousand. Nevertheless, the number of infants and children who died before reaching maturity was staggering. Data from the second half of the century show that in France 273 out of 1,000 children died before reaching 1 year of age. In England it was 165, and in Sweden 200. These figures, of course, affected average life expectancy, which did not reach 40. In England, for example, it was 36.8 years in 1700 and 37.3 years in 1800, and in France it was lower: 24.8 years in 1740 and 33.9 years in the last year of the century.79 Population growth increased the rate of migration to the cities: the number of residents of Paris came to 650,000 by the end of the century; of Vienna to 220,000; of Warsaw to 129,000; of Saint Petersburg, which was only established at the beginning of the century, to 218,000; and the population of Berlin increased from 55,000 in 1700 to 150,000 at the end of the century. London

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became the largest city in Europe, and in fact in the entire world (until it was overtaken by Istanbul and Beijing), as its population increased from 615,000 in 1715 to nearly 1 million in 1800, out of 8,600,000—the total population of Great Britain. The colonization of the islands of the West Indies and of America was accelerated with the expansion of the population of Europe, and the demand for colonial products, especially sugar, increased. In 1800, about 2 million Europeans already lived in the Spanish colonies of the Americas, and the number of white people in the newly established United States came to 5.5 million, twice the number at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. During the eighteenth century, the slave trade also reached its peak, and the economic growth of Europe depended to no small degree on the cruel exploitation of slaves on plantations. During the eighteenth century, the number of Africans in the New World already came to 6 million.80 British historian William Doyle stated that the causes of the demographic revival of Europe in the eighteenth century were complex and a subject of disagreement. However, without doubt, this was one of the most significant developments of the century, whose consequences affected every area of life.81 The gradual disappearance of the bubonic plague, the beginning of the struggle against smallpox by means of vaccination, a more favorable climate, and better harvests, as well as a certain decline in the extent and intensity of wars—all of these contributed to an increase in life expectancy. The cities grew, pressure to supply food for the population encouraged improvements in agriculture and hastened colonial trade, and at the same time many people suffered from hunger, and vagrants cut off from any community and without permanent places of residence roamed the roads of Europe. The Jewish population of Europe was small, and their proportion among the inhabitants of the continent was only between .75 percent and 1 percent. Demographic growth is important not only for understanding the dimensions of the Jewish people and the places where they lived, but also for understanding several tendencies for change in the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century. Although they were apparently only a tiny minority, the people of the time were aware of the increase in the number of Jews, and some of them even tried to estimate their number and offer explanations for their growth.82 Jacques Basnage, for example, a French Huguenot who was a pioneer in the writing of Jewish history, estimated in 1707 that the Jewish people numbered 4.5 million.83 However, this figure is exaggerated, and in that year, an article in a German publication estimated that the total number of Jews in Europe was less than 1 million.84 Montesquieu, who explained the reasons for the decrease in the population of the world in 1721, stated that in the particular

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case of the Jews, hopes for redemption encouraged fertility among them: “The Jews, always being exterminated, and always increasing again, have repaired their continual losses and destruction by the single hope, shared by all their families, that from one of them shall spring a powerful king who will be the master of the world.”85 As in Europe in general, the rise in life expectancy and the number of children who reached maturity, rather than an increase in the number of births per family, were a central factor in the demographic growth of the eighteenth century. In the whole world, according to the presently accepted estimate, there were approximately 1,100,000 Jews in 1700, and in 1800 there were more than twice that number: 2,400,000. Most of that population growth was in Europe. At the beginning of the century, there were 716,000 Jews in Europe, including the Balkan countries; at the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, their number came to 1,700,000; and on the threshold of the nineteenth century, there were more than 2 million Jews in Europe, about 80 percent of all Jews. The number of Jews in Turkey and Greece at the end of the century is estimated at more than 120,000, mostly in the large communities of Istanbul (about 30,000), Salonika (about 25,000), and Izmir (about 10,000), and there were a few thousand in Adrianople.86 In Central Europe, control over the Jewish population and the restriction of residence permits for young couples led to the relatively small size of the communities. For example, 3,000 Jews lived in Frankfort at the beginning of the century, about 1,000 lived in Berlin, and only the large and venerable community of Prague stood out in its size. According to the census of 1729, some 11,500 Jews lived in Prague, increasing to 15,000 by mid-century. No more than 25,000 Jews lived in the regions that were to become Germany at the beginning of the century, with about 3,000 in Alsace, which was in France, and about 30,000 in the communities of Italy. Capital cities and port cities attracted Jewish immigrants who hoped to succeed in business and trade, and at the end of the seventeenth century, new or renewed communities also arose, such as that of Berlin in 1671, Copenhagen in 1684, Königsberg in 1701, and Stockholm in 1774. Migration, mainly from Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland, greatly expanded the map of the communities of Hungary, and between the 1740s and the 1780s, the Jewish population there increased fourfold, coming to about 80,000 in 1787.87 In most of the major cities in Western and Central Europe, there was constant growth in the Jewish population: the number of Jews in Amsterdam grew from 2,500 in 1720 to 15,000 in 1800; the triple community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek in northern Germany numbered about 9,000 Jews at the end of the century; and the number of Jews in Berlin, despite strict supervision,

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already reached 3,000. The Jewish population of Germany was more than 100,000 at the end of the eighteenth century, and in the Austrian Empire, which annexed Galicia in 1772, their number reached more than 300,000. On the eve of the revolution, there were about 40,000 Jews in France, most of them (35,000) Ashkenazi residents of Alsace and Lorraine, in the east of the country, and a minority (3,500) Portuguese in Bordeaux, Bayonne, and the Four Communities in the Papal States in southern France, and about another 500 lived in Paris.88 The census held in the kingdom of Poland–Lithuania in 1764 shows that one of the conspicuous trends in Jewish demography in that century was the considerable growth of the communities there and the increase of their relative proportion of the Jewish people. The 300,000 Jews who lived in the kingdom in 1700 were more than a quarter of the total Jews in the world. By the year of the census, they numbered 750,000, and in 1800, after the last partition of Poland, there were already 1,200,000 Jews in Eastern Europe—half the number of Jews in the world and the absolute majority in Europe. In the year of the census, the communities of Brody (8,600), Lvov (7,400), Leszno (6,000), Cracow (4,150), and Vilna (3,900) were the largest Jewish communities in those regions.89 In America, the roots of a Jewish community were planted, one which was to grow mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the start of the eighteenth century, there were only about 200 Jews in the British colonies, and when the thirteen colonies attained independence after 1776, about 2,500 Sephardic and Ashkenzaic Jews lived there. A small and demographically unstable Jewish settlement existed in the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias in Palestine, under Ottoman rule, with constant arrivals and departures, and all together they numbered between six and eight thousand people.90 The demographic growth of the Jews was a sign of modernization, and it also facilitated internal and external changes. The Jewish presence in the central cities of commerce and culture in Europe and the American colonies—places such as Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, The Hague, Amsterdam, Livorno, London, and New York—made it possible for some of them to take an active part in the changes affecting the society at large, and it accelerated the cultural integration (acculturation) of members of the Jewish minority. Although the Jews were still vulnerable to attack, overall, during the eighteenth century, in many places in Europe they were able to live in stability and relative security. The violent attacks against the Jews in Poland–Lithuania were more severe than in other countries in Europe, but they did not bring the communities down. During the eighteenth century, more than thirty blood libels (accusing Jews of ritual murder of Christian children) were documented, most of which ended with

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conviction and cruel execution, but murderous pogroms like those of Uman in the Ukraine in 1768 were exceptional. Beginning in the 1760s, the rise of humanistic protest, successful appeals on the part of Jews, and the intervention of the Catholic pope led to a significant decrease in libels and judicial murder.91 Even when there was still no change in the legal status of the Jews and tra­ ditional intercessors remained in force, the demographic growth increased the interest in the Jewish population shown by the authorities and government officials and led to reform programs, to ideas about planning Jewish businesses from above, about traditional education, and about the possibility of integrating the Jews in the state as subjects capable of contributing to it. Thinkers began to develop the principled political, religious, and cultural discourse regarding the question of whether such integration was possible and what obstacles were in its way, and this discussion also slipped into Jewish society. In the eighteenth century, the Jews were primarily a nation of merchants, though money-lending did not disappear. The majority continued to deal with matters connected to the agrarian economy, including breweries and trade in wine, salt fish, horses and cattle, and peddling. Along with these there were also physicians, stock traders, entrepreneurs in the textile industry, bookkeepers, and other businessmen. The economic opportunities enabled expansion of the wealthy elites of the families of the agents of magnates, merchants, and lessees of estates, villages, and taverns in Poland–Lithuania, of Court Jews in Vienna and in many other cities throughout the Holy Roman Empire, and of economic entrepreneurs in Prussia and international traders and bankers in England, Italy, France, and Holland.92 Many members of these elite families soon adopted the fashions and manners, the languages and cultural tastes of Europe, and at the same time, they showed concern and demonstrated responsibility toward weaker groups. The support of the wealthy members of the communities for students of Torah, for religious movements, for the publication of religious books and Haskalah literature, for students of medicine, and for projects of educational reform was extremely vital, and their ability to support the weak members of society or to intercede with the authorities strengthened the general Jewish feeling of solidarity. The success of the Sephardic Jewish merchants in Italy, for example, made it possible for them to penetrate the commercial markets of the Muslim world and to exploit the special status that Europeans enjoyed in the Ottoman Empire by virtue of capitulation treaties. Thus, in the 1730s, the Picciotto family from Livorno, who, under the protection of the French consul, settled in the international trading center of the city of Aleppo as European “Francos,” influenced the processes of innovation as bearers of European culture among the Jews of the Middle East.93

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As Gershon Hundert shows, the demographic growth of Eastern European Jewry was important both for the trend of continuity and for that of change. The Jews were about half of the urban population there, and in some places, they lived with the sense of being a majority, not a minority as in the communities of Central and Western Europe. Life in a large group of Jews offered defense against difficulties and dangers from the outside, preserved religious and cultural identity, and imparted a feeling of living in a powerful Jewish civilization. The increasing number of young people provided entrepreneurs, leaders, and loyal members who enlisted in the new movements. For example, these young people nourished Hasidism and made possible the expansion of its ranks at the end of the century, also enabling enlargement of the elite of Torah scholars, as well as the beginnings of Haskalah.94 At the same time, throughout Europe, the margins of Jewish society expanded, as did the number of poor people and beggars, who were homeless and suffered from persecution at the hands of representatives of the law and the state and the community leaders. However, the more than doubling of the Jewish population of Europe in the eighteenth century also made it possible for Jews to extricate themselves from communal intimacy, to feel less obligated to the group, to leave it or criticize it, and to demand the right to live their lives as they pleased. From this point of view, the emergence of an individualistic world view is also one of the consequences of the demographic increase.

Towa r d R e e va luation of th e Cent u ry in Je w ish History Beginning with the first Jewish historians in Germany in the nineteenth century, no one has failed to attribute to the eighteenth century, especially the second half, special importance in modernization. Isaak Markus Jost, for example, looked at the century that preceded him with the optimism of a liberal Prussian Jew, and he presented the period that began with Frederick II in 1740 and ended with the Napoleonic Wars as an era of progress in the granting of freedom to Jewish citizens, the spread of science among them, and the decline of the “Rabbinism,” which he detested.95 Heinrich Graetz, for whom the emancipation and Haskalah were the foundations of the great story of the modern period, regarded the period between the activities of Menasseh Ben Israel in Amsterdam and the start of Moses Mendelssohn’s publications in Berlin as a premodern dark age in Jewish history, during which almost nothing of interest transpired.96 In his History of the Jews (1868), Graetz called the chapter on the first quarter of the eighteenth century “General Demoralization of Judaism,” pointing to the gigantic

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and, in his view, insupportable gap between the development of Europe and the closed and self-segregated state of the Jews, who remained in the Middle Ages during the formation of the New Age. For example, they were unable to heed the first harbingers of emancipation, and they did not realize that Europe was in a process of deep change. Therefore, while Enlightenment was growing in the century of philosophy, when the ancient prejudices of the Church were gradually disappearing, there were hardly any Jews who responded to this challenge and could represent their nation with honor. While European history was maturing, the Jews remained in the age of ignorance and fantasy, and, apart from the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, they were ruled by religious leaders and kabbalistic doctrines that rejected reason, and groups of Sabbateans caused innumerable, humiliating scandals.97 For Graetz, this was the background that made it possible to better recognize the meaning of the change that Mendelssohn introduced at mid-century. For him, Mendelssohn was almost a mythological hero, who succeeded both in reviving the culture of his people and heralded, by virtue of his status and fame, the promising future of citizenship. Almost two generations later, with the aim of bringing out the history of Polish Jewry alongside that of Germany, Simon Dubnow traced a picture of the long eighteenth century of the Jews, beginning at the end of the Thirty Years War and the messianic Sabbatean movement and ending with the French Revolution, the Partition of Poland, and the spread of Haskalah. The Jews of Germany and Poland were dominant in shaping this “transitional period,” which, according to Dubnow, was characterized by many processes, of which the two most prominent were Emancipation, a process that came to maturity in revolutionary Paris, and the polarization between the “advanced” Jews of Germany, among whom the Mendelssohn camp arose, and the declining Jewry of Poland, governed by Hasidic leaders.98 The nationalist historians in the generations parallel to Dubnow and those who came after him began to identify some of the changes that took place in Europe of the eighteenth century as a crisis. The German-Israeli historian Yitzhak Baer argued in Galut that, starting in the mid-seventeenth century, traditional belief was shaken in two directions: the refutation of messianism in the gigantic failure of the Sabbatean movement and the victory march of Haskalah, so that the Land of Israel lost its importance, assimilation increased, faith in a national future faded, and consciousness of the unity of the people disintegrated. Gershom Scholem deepened the narrative of crisis even further, finding the destruction of the traditional world in the modern age, to which radical Sabbateanism contributed in a dialectical process, and in the history of the Jews of Germany in

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that century he already identified the first points of weakness that would lead, in his opinion, later on to assimilation.99 Ben-Zion Dinur was the most optimistic of these historians. According to him, unlike Graetz, the new times had already begun in the eighteenth century, in the overcoming of the failure of Sabbateanism and a long series of successes that heralded the Emancipation, the possibility of integrating in the economy of the modern state, and also renewal of the living connection with the Land of Israel, which he thought was symbolized by the immigration of the group headed by Rabbi Judah the Hasid in the first year of the century.100 To a great degree, Dinur depended on the pioneering research on Court Jews by Selma Stern, who, like him, sought to situate the processes of change among the Jews of Europe in an earlier time, decades before Mendelssohn and the Haskalah. Stern wove the Court Jews of Central Europe, from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, into the broad contexts of the growth of absolutist regimes, the mercantilist economic development, and the flourishing of baroque culture, presenting their contribution to the establishment of the German community and increasing integration in society and the state. In a historical spiritual accounting after the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe, she even regarded the extraordinary personal ambition of the Court Jews, in their success and in the failure of those of them who lost all their assets and even their lives, as an early example of the tragic fate of the Jews in the modern period in general.101 Perhaps more than any other historian of the Jewish people, Jacob Katz represents the narrative of the Old Regime and the Revolution, which was accepted as the main story of eighteenth-century European history. Beginning with his highly influential Tradition and Crisis, Katz presented the Old Regime in the image of the traditional Ashkenazic society of Europe, and he described how the Hasidic movement (in only a limited way, and in the region of Eastern Europe) and the Haskalah movement (the most significant dismantling force) led to its collapse and the beginning of a triple process of inner disintegration, criticism of the religious tradition, and assimilation.102 Haskalah rationalism, on the one hand, and Hasidic mysticism, on the other, had subversive social expressions in the form of societies of Maskilim (enlightened Jews) and courts of Hasidism, with their charismatic leaders, which, in his opinion, destroyed the traditional stable patterns of life. For this reason, in Katz’s view, the eighteenth century, or, more precisely, its last decades, were a turning point in Jewish history: the time of the traditional society had passed, and from then on the Jews would live in entirely different circumstances, without institutions that could impose obedience to the religious norms that

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had hitherto been the foundation of existence and with separation of Western and Eastern Jews in Europe.103 Israeli historian Azriel Shohet challenged Katz, showing that, at least among the Jews of Germany, the mid-eighteenth century was already a time of crisis in the traditional world.104 In historical writing after Jacob Katz, the paths of Jewish modernization are traced in a variety of colors, and its story is heard in polyphony. The gates for leaving the ghetto were many, the collective identity was preserved in innovative patterns in the new age as well, and one hardly need speak of a crisis. The story of the great change is, in fact, composed of many secondary stories, which call attention to particular local contexts. In his interpretation of the Jewish center in Poland, for example, Israeli historian Moshe Rosman pointed out the new possibilities available in the eighteenth century for those wealthy Jews (“the Lord’s Jews”) who served the feudal economic system of the families of the magnates, powerful members of the high aristocracy, because they crossed the line between Jewish and non-Jewish culture, paving the way for others; and Gershon Hundert argued that Polish Jewry developed differently from that of western Central Europe, and the currents of change were modern less because of their content than because they took place in a period already acknowledged to be new.105 They were preceded by Todd Endelman, whose research on the Jews of Georgian England depicts modernization that is dependent on neither ideology nor emancipation. Endelman’s central claim is that the dominant channels of change among the Jews of England, even at the start of their settlement there in the mid-seventeenth century, were social and economic integration and acculturation to the accepted patterns of life around them. In this process, unlike the story in Tradition and Crisis, the tradition was abandoned and the traditional ways of life dissipated without the intermediary of intellectuals and without theoretical criticism. David Ruderman’s study of Jewish intellectuals in England during the Enlightenment continued in this direction, showing how, in English-speaking countries, a collective psychology developed among the Jews, who felt comfortable in the political and social environment, less defensive and limited than in other European countries, and they wished to identify, more or less, with the societies in which they lived.106 Thus, Endelman and Ruderman challenged the long-held assumption that the beginnings of Jewish modernization were rooted almost exclusively in German Jewry, and they sought to prove by means of the English case that other strategies for adapting to modernity existed separately.107 With the enlargement of the panorama to include Jewish communities that had not hitherto occupied a significant place in the general picture of the history of the Jews in the modern period, and as doubt was shed upon the

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usefulness and exclusiveness of the narrative of departure from the ghetto, the need and possibility emerged to include in the story of the modern period, for example, the history of the Jews of Italy, those of the Ottoman Empire, and the Sephardic communities in Western Europe. Jonathan Israel’s book European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750, paved the way for a new interpretation and set this period apart as standing on its own between the Middle Ages and the modern period.108 While he presents the life of the Jews in the first 150 years of the early modern period, especially after the mid-seventeenth century, as a fascinating success story, in which contacts between Jews and non-Jews reached a peak, the communities grew in size and strength, economic activity flourished, and the spiritual world became particularly rich, in his opinion, the period between 1713 and 1750 marked a decline. Thus, Jonathan Israel led the pessimistic narrative of the eighteenth century in Jewish history, and not because of the difficulty in identifying true turning points in the traditional world, but because in almost every possible parameter that can be verified, this was a period of failure. By emphasizing the restrictions imposed on expansion of the Jewish population of Germany, especially in Prussia, and the shrinking of the Sephardic communities in Holland and England, as well as several communities in Italy and the Balkans, and by ignoring the general growth of the Jewish population in Europe during the century, Israel argued that in fact there was a demographic decline. Other indications of decline were, in his opinion, loss in the status of the Court Jews after the Treaty of Utrecht assured a long period of peace and lessened the need for their services, in addition to the decline of the Sephardic Jewish communities in Western Europe, a significant falloff in their economic activity, as well as assimilation and religious conversion. In the area of cultural creativity, he stated categorically that the intellectual degeneration of Jewish life was a more or less universal phenomenon during the first half of the eighteenth century and only at mid-century were the first signs of renewal seen, such as the Hasidic movement. Israel attributes only disintegrative influence to Haskalah, which is represented by Mendelssohn in his book, as one of the forces working to weaken communal institutions. His pessimistic narrative does not relate to the project of the renewal of Jewish culture led by Haskalah and to the long-term consequences of the Enlightenment revolution, which gave rise, among other things, to the modern Jewish Republic of Letters.109 Setting the boundaries of the early modern period in Jewish history has proven to be a fertile project. The gates of the historiographical ghetto that Jacob Katz built around the two hundred years before Mendelssohn (which he calls the end of the Middle Ages) have been opened wide, and recent research has revealed: “Changes and upheavals took place among the Jews following

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the transition to printing, geographical discoveries that also influenced their picture of the world, the scientific revolution, whose echoes were absorbed among educated Jews in a short time, and the early Enlightenment, even the radical expressions of which aroused reactions among the intellectual elite of the Western Sephardic community.”110 David Ruderman criticized Jonathan Israel, pointing out the weakness of research written from an external point of view, which is mainly interested in the economic successes of the Jews and the social encounter with the Christian world but which ignores their inner life and culture.111 His book Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History relies on much new research on the Jews of Italy, Holland, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland—the work of a new generation of historians, mainly in the United States and Israel. It presents the primary trends that are tied together in the early modern period of Jewish history. The trends—which include accelerated mobility and migration, the crisis of rabbinical authority, significant cultural change caused by the invention of printing and the blurring of religious identities among Hebraists, Sabbateans, former marranos, and apostates—end the Middle Ages and are harbingers of the accepted story of Jewish modernization. He proposes seeing the “early modern period” as a neutral label that indicates a length of time and not the expression of a narrative of change or crisis, and certainly not a story of progress. Whereas Jonathan Israel concludes his discussion with 1750, the early modern period in Ruderman’s book extends over 290 years, from 1492 to 1782, and it includes most of the eighteenth century.112 However, when one looks closely at the changes and the many turning points that took place between 1700 and 1800, the eighteenth century no longer appears to be part of the early modern period, but, as noted, as the first century of the modern age. The unprecedented changes that took place in various areas of life did not skip over the Jews. As among many others, so, too, among them modern sensitivity developed to evaluate those changes that signaled they were living in a “new world.” The century can indeed confuse those who are interested in distinguishing clear boundaries between the old and the new, the religious and the secular, the traditional and the modern, for there is no doubt that such clear divisions never existed in historical reality. However, it was not a cloudy period whose tendencies are still blurred. The early modern period in Jewish history, which began with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, ended two hundred years later, at the close of the seventeenth century. The new century that began in 1700 already had special features of its own, and its story is far more tied to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that followed it than to the one that preceded it.113

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The expectation of happiness and belief that it was possible to attain it were the living pulse in the hearts of many, and it drove them to aspire for a better world. Mendelssohn, in 1768, believed in “happy times,” and this belief was, of course, a subjective interpretation. But the gap between this belief and reality nourished discontent and refusal to accept the existing order as it was. It raised penetrating and disturbing questions, some of which threatened stability, and others placed truly explosive charges beneath the foundations of the Old World. Rousseau asked why people, who were born free, continued to live in chains. Kant explained why people were still subject to authorities external to them and were too lazy to make independent use of their reasons. Early feminists such as Wollstonecraft asked in the most direct and blunt manner why women were subjected to their husbands. Voltaire asked the greatest question of all: why was man created at all, and if, in the face of distress, superstition, and injustice, it was possible to believe that God had created the best of all possible worlds. Moses Mendelssohn, in frustration and despair, asked why even when humanity strove for liberty, improvement, and perfection, it was so difficult to free itself of the prejudice and discrimination against the Jews and to uproot these evils. But in 1783, fifteen years later, he still believed that the states of Europe would see to it that the Jews could take part in the general happiness. It would be a happy age, Mendelssohn wrote in the final pages of Jerusalem, when religious toleration would become a guide. In an emotional appeal, which combined bitter pessimism and the vision of a future of “happy posterity,” he addressed the leaders of Europe: “Should the time not yet be ripe for abolishing it completely without courting damage, try, at least, to mitigate as much as you can its pernicious influence, and to put wise limits to prejudice that has grown gray with age. At least pave the way for a happy posterity toward that height of culture, toward that universal tolerance of man for which reason still sighs in vain!”114

Note s 1. This declaration was appended in 1768 to the second revised edition of Phaedon, in a second printing that appeared in the following year: Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Berlin, 1769), pp. 209–210; Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon, or On the Immortality of the Soul, trans. Patricia Noble (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), p. 153. 2. Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973), pp. 159–160. 3. Gabriella Katz, Die erste Unternehmin Süddeutschlands und die reichste Frau ihrer Zeit, Madam Kaulla, 1739–1806 (Filderstadt: Markstein Verlag, 2006);

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Rotraud Ries, “Unter Königen erwarb sie sich einen grossen Namen: Karriere und Nachruhm der Unternehmerin Madam Kaulla (1739–1809),” Ashkenas 17 (2007): 405–430. 4. Ephraim Luzzatto, Elleh benei ha-ne’urim (London, 1768). 5. Ibid., p. 39. 6. See David Mirsky, The Life and Work of Ephraim Luzzatto [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1994); Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2011), pp. 110–111. 7. Jacob Emden, Mitpah.at sefarim (1768) (Jerusalem: Machon Orach Zadikim, 1994), p. 106. 8. Jacob Emden, Sefer Hitavqut (Altona 5522–5529 [1762–1769]), pp. 149–151 (letter dated April 10, 1768). See Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2011), pp. 138, 183–184. 9. Emden, Mitpah.at sefarim, pp. 1–4. See Pawel Maciejko, “The Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere: The Emden–Eibeschuetz Controversy Reconsidered,” in Simon-Dubnow-Institut Jahrbuch-Yearbook VI, Special Edition: Early Modern Culture and the Haskalah, ed. David Ruderman and Shmuel Feiner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2007), pp. 135–154. On attitudes toward Kabbalah at that time, see Moshe Idel, “Perceptions of Kabbalah in the Second Half of the 18th Century,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991): 55–114. 10. Emden, Mitpah.at sefarim, pp. 102–105. See Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 74–75. 11. Emden, Mitpah.at sefarim, pp. 105–106. 12. ChaeRan Freeze, “Uman,” YIVO Encyclopedia, Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 1942–1943; Simon Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam, vol. 6 (Tel Aviv: Dvir 1965), pp. 90–93; Simon Dubnow, “Der tsvaiten hurbn fun Ukraine (1768),” Historishe Shriftn I (1929): 27–54; Gershon Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 16–17. 13. Simon Berenfeld, Sefer [Hadema’ot Hadea’ot] 3 (Berlin, 1926), pp. 391–396; “Maamar h.erev Gonta,” in Jonah H.ayim [Gurland, and not: Gorland], Leqorot hagezerot ‘al Yisrael, Book 1 (Cracow, 1886–1893), pp. 67–93. 14. “Maamar h.erev Gunta,” pp. 70–71; Sefer Hadema’ot, p. 294. 15. Letter from Starokonstantynów to Königsberg, 17 Av, 5528 (1768), in Leqorot hagezerot ‘al Yisrael, Book 3, pp. 29–31. 16. Sefer Hadema’ot, p. 294. 17. Abraham Meir Halevi Epstein, “Divrei avraham,” in Leqorot hagezerot ‘al Yisrael, Book 1, pp. 82–91. 18. Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, ed. Richard Bellany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 71. On the

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fundamental change in the attitude toward the body in the eighteenth century and on corporal and capital punishment, see Randall McGowen, “The Body and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Modern History 59 (1987): 651–679. 19. The lecture was given on January 9, 1769. See Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, pp. 129–140. 20. Marc Fumaroli, When the World Spoke French, trans. Richard Howard (New York: NYRB Classics, 2011), p. xxi. 21. Shmuel Feiner, Moses Mendelssohn, A Sage of Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 81–82. 22. Anna Green, Cultural History (New York: Red Globe Press, 2008), p. 4; Alesssandro Arcangeli, Cultural History: A Concise Introduction (London: Routledge, 2012), ch. 1; Peter Burke, What Is Cultural History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008). 23. See Michael Rustin, “Reflections on the Biographical Turn in Social Sciences,” in The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Sciences, ed. Pru Chamber­layne, Joanna Bornet, and Tom Wengref (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 33–52. 24. See Paul Mendes Flohr, Progress and Its Discontents, The Struggle of Jewish Intellectuals with Modern [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000), p. 44. 25. See Reinhart Koselleck, “Das Achzehnte Jahrhundert als Beginn der Neuzeit,” in Epochenschwelle und Epochenbewusstsein, ed. Reinhart Herzog and Reinhart Koselleck (München: Fink Wilhelm, 1987), pp. 269–282. 26. See Montesquieu, Les lettres persanes (Amsterdam, 1721), letters 23–24; Tom L. Beauchamp, ed., David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, A Critical Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), sec. 10, pt. 2 (“Miracles”). 27. Quoted in Jeremy Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1700–1789 (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 261. 28. Thomas Paine, “Rights of Man,” in Common Sense and Other Writings (New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005), p. 248. 29. Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues (marquis de), “Discours sur le caractère des différents siècles,” in Oeuvres de Vauvenargues (Paris, 1857), pp. 159, 162. 30. Paraphrased from Jeremy Caradonna, “There Was No Counter Enlightenment,” Eighteenth Century Studies 49, no. 1 (2015): 62–64. 31. Hieronymus Andreas Mertens, Historische Uebersicht des Ende gehenden achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Augsburg, 1798). 32. Daniel Jenisch, Geist und Charakter des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, politisch, moralisch, ästhetisch und wissenschaftlich betrachtet, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1800). 33. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 203–214. 34. See for example, Mary E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Euan Cameron (ed.), Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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35. Bernard Fabian, “Vorwort,” Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert als Epoche (Studien zum Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, 1) (Nendeln: KTO Press, 1978), pp. 7–9. 36. Rudolf Vierhaus, “Kultur unde Gesellschaft im achtzehnten Jahrhundert,” in Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert als Epoche (Studien zum Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, 1) (Nendeln: KTO Press, 1978), pp. 71–85. 37. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, The Science of Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1969), p. 4. 38. William Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 143. 39. Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism, trans. Theo Cuffe (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 51–52. 40. Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (October 2003): 1062. 41. See H. C. Erik Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Josef Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth Century Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Sara Zfatman, Jewish Exorcism in Early Modern Ashkenaz [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2016); Nimrod Zinger, The Ba’al Shem and the Doctor, Medicine and Magic among German Jews in the Early Modern Period [Hebrew] (Rishon LeZion: Yediot Sefarim, 2017). 42. See Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 67. 43. Doyle, The Old European Order, p. 378. 44. Paul Hazard, The European Mind: The Critical Years, 1680–1715 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990); Frank E. Manuel, The Age of Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1951); Isser Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, Tradition and Progress, 1715–1789 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982). 45. Gay, The Enlightenment, pp. 3–551. 46. Jonathan Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 47. Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 424–425. 48. Margaret R. Hunt, Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Harlow: Routledge, 2010), p. 26. 49. Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe, ch. 1. 50. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectics of Enlightenment (New York: Seabury Press, 1972); Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Pantheon, 1965). 51. Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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52. See Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (London: Penguin, 2003). 53. Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007). 54. Ibid., p. 29. 55. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, pt. 2, ch. 1, “The Development of the Individual” vol. 1 (New York: Harper, 1958), pp. 143–146. 56. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights. 57. See Arianne Beggerman and Rudolf Dekker, “Egodocuments and the Study of Cultural History,” in The Past and Beyond, Studies in History and Philosophy Presented to Elazar Weinryb, ed. Amir Horowitz, Ora Limor, Ram Ben-Shalom, and Avriel Bar-Levav (Raananna: The Open University, 2006), pp. 245–262. 58. J.-J. Rousseau, Les Confessions (Paris: Garnier, 1964), pp. 2–3. 59. Charles Taylor, Sources the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). On the concept of individual identity in the eighteenth century, especially in England, see Dror Wahrman, Making of the Modern Self: Identity Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 60. Denis Diderot, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, ch. 3, ­w ww​.­g utenberg​ .­org​/­cache​/­epub​/­6501​/­pg6501​.­html, trans. from the French. 61. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007), ch. 8. 62. Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, pp. 463–474. 63. See Charly Coleman, The Virtues of Abandon: An Anti-Individualist History of the French Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). 64. See Yehoshu’a Arieli, “The Modern Age and the Problem of Secularization—An Historiographical Question,” in Priesthood and Monarchy, Studies in the Historical Relationships of Religion and State, ed. Isaiah Gafni and Gabriel Motzkin (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1987), p. 193. 65. See Douglas H. Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013), ch. 10. 66. Jacob Katz, “Marriage and Sexual Life Among the Jews at the Close of the Middle Ages,” Zion 10 (1945): 47–54; Lawrence Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979). 67. Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London: Allen Lane, 2012); Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 68. Jacob Reischer, Sefer Shevut Ya’aqov, pt. 1 (Halle, 5469 [1709]), no. 128.

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69. Yosef Kaplan, “The Threat of Eros in Eighteenth-Century Sephardi Amsterdam,” in An Alternative Path to Modernity, The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 280–300. On the incident in Altona, see Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 58–59. 70. Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex, pp. 106–107. 71. Rousseau, Les Confessions, (Paris: Garnier, 1964), p. 377, trans. Jeffrey M. Green. 72. Giacomo Casanova, The Story of my Life, trans. Arthur Machen, ­w ww​ .­f reeinfosociety​.­com​/­media​/­pdf​/­4363​.­pdf. 73. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Erotica Romana, 3, ­w ww​.­g utenberg​.­org​ /­fi les​/­7889​/­7889​-­h​/­7889​-­h​.­htm​#­l ink2H​_4​_0003. Not published until 1914. 74. Jacob Emden, Megilat sefer, ed. David Kahana (Warsaw, 1897). The citation here is from the critical edition by Abraham Bick (Jerusalem: Sifriat Moreshet, 1979), pp. 107–110; see Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in EighteenthCentury Europe, pp. 52–54. 75. On Jewish autobiography in general and on Emden’s book in particular, see Marcus Moseley, Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). 76. Immanuel Kant, On History, ed. and trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963). 77. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, quotation is from letter 119, trans. John Davidson, ­https://​­en​.­w ikisource​.­org​/­w iki​/­Persian​_ Letters​/­Letter​_ 119. 78. See, among others, Doyle, The Old European Order, ch. 1; Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Penguin, 2007), pp. 40–92; Massimo Livi-Bacci, Population and Nutrition: An Essay on European Demography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 79. The data come from the following sources: Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), pp. 165–170; Mark Kupovetsky, “Population and Migration,” YIVO Encyclopedia, Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 1423– 1429; Sergio Dellapergola, “Changing Patterns of Jewish Demography in the Modern World,” Studia Rosenthaliana (Special Issue) 23, no. 2 (1989): 154–179; Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 171–173; Shaul Stampfer, “The 1764 Census of Polish Jewry,” in Bar-Ilan, Annual of Bar Ilan University, Studies in Judaica and the Humanities, 24–25, ed. Gershon Bacon and Moshe Rosman (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1989), pp. 41–58; Alexander Putik, “Prague Jews and Judah Hasid: A Study on the Social, Political and Religious History of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,”

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Judaica Bohemiae 37 (2002): 74–77; Netanel Katzburg, The History of the Jews in Hungary [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1976), ch. 3; Arthur Ruppin, The Sociological Structure of the Jews [Hebrew] (Berlin: Shtibel, 1934), pp. 54–56; Shaul Stampfer, “The Increase of the Population and Immigration Among Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the Modern Time,” in The Broken Chain, Polish Jewry through the Ages, vol. 1 [Hebrew], ed. Israel Bartal and Israel Gutman (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997), pp. 263–285; Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 39–40; Jacob Barnai, The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992), ch. 15; Eliahu Cherikover, Jews in Times of Revolutions [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1957), pp. 28–36; Shmuel Ettinger, ed., History of the Jews in the Islamic Countries, vol. 2 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1986), pp. 196–209. 80. See note 79. 81. Doyle, The Old European Order, p. 7. 82. See note 79. 83. Henri Baptiste Grégroire, “Sur la Régeneration Physique, Morale, et Politique des Juifs” (Metz, 1789), ch. 8. 84. “Erster Versuch: Die Summe der Juden in Europa zu bestimmen,” StaatsAnzeigen 13 (1789): 87–88. 85. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, letter 120. 86. See note 79. 87. See note 79. 88. See note 79. 89. See note 79. 90. See note 79. 91. On the blood libels, see, among others, Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijazka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” Polin 10 (1997): 99–140. 92. See Selma Stern, The Court Jew: A Contribution to the History of Absolutism in Europe (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1985); David Sorkin, “The Port Jew: Notes Towards a Social Type,” Journal of Jewish Studies 50, no. 1 (1999): 87–97; Lois Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Moshe Rosman, The Lord’s Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Robert Liberles, Steven M. Lowenstein, Marion A. Kaplan, and Trude Maurer, Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ch. 4. 93. See Yaron Harel, Syrian Jewry in Transition, 1840–1880, trans. Dena Ordan (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), introduction. 94. See Gershon Hundert, “Jewish Life in Poland-Lithuania in the 18th Century,” in The Broken Chain, Polish Jewry through the Ages, vol. 1 [Hebrew], ed.

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Israel Bartal and Israel Gutman (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997), pp. 225–242; Moshe Rosman, “Hasidism as a Modern Phenomenon: The Paradox of Modernization without Secularization,” in Simon-Dubnow-Institut JahrbuchYearbook VI, Special Issue: Early Modern Culture and Haskalah, ed. David Ruderman and Shmuel Feiner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2007), pp. 215–224. 95. See Reuven Michael, Jewish Historiography, From the Renaissance to the Modern Times [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1993), pp. 242–243. 96. Heinrich Graetz, The Structure of Jewish History and Other Essays, trans. and ed. I. Schorsch (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1975). 97. Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 10 (Leipzig, 1897), pp. 293–300. 98. Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam. 99. Yitzhak F. Baer, Galut (New York: Schoken, 1947); Gershom Scholem, “Redemption through Sin,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Schoken, 1995). 100. Ben Zion Dinur, At the Turn of the Generations [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1955), pp. 19–68. 101. Stern, The Court Jew. 102. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., trans. B. Cooperman (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1993). 103. Jacob Katz, “The Eighteenth Century as a Turning Point of Modern Jewish History,” in Vision Confronts Reality, ed. R. Kozodoy and K. Sultanik (New York: Herzl, 1989), pp. 40–55. 104. Azriel Shohet, Beginnings of the Haskalah among German Jewry [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960). 105. Rosman, The Lord’s Jews, p. 183; Hundert, Jews in Poland–Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century; Adam Teller, Money, Power and Influence in EighteenthCentury Lithuania, The Jews on the Radziwill Estates (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016). 106. See Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830; David Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 107. Jacob Katz himself contributed to this trend. See Jacob Katz (ed.), Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1987). 108. Jonathan Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 109. Ibid., pp. 237–274. 110. Yosef Kaplan, “Jacob Katz’s Approach to the Jewish Early Modern Period,” in Historiography Reappraised, New Views of Jacob Katz’s Oeuvre [Hebrew], ed. Yisrael Bartal and Shmuel Feiner, (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2008),

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pp. 19–35, the quotation is from p. 34. On Kaplan’s special contribution to the picture of the early modern period, see Yosef Kaplan, An Alternative Path to Modernity, The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 111. David Ruderman, “Israel’s European Jewry in the Age of Mercantalism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987): 154–159. 112. David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); David B. Ruderman, “Looking Backward and Forward: Rethinking Jewish Modernity in the Light of Early Modernity,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume VII, The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, ed. Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1089–1109. See also Joseph Hacker, “Is There an Early Modern Period in Jewish History?” in Milestones, Essays in Jewish History, Dedicated to Zvi (Kuti) Yekutiel [Hebrew], ed. Immanuel Etkes, David Assaf, and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2015), pp. 165–180. The more balanced picture of the Jewish eighteenth century, which does identify the dimension of change and combines trends of continuity and innovation in a process of movement toward modernization, is found in Francesca Bregoli and Federica Francesconi, “Tradition and Transformation in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Jewish Integration in Comparative Perspective,” Jewish History 24 (2010): 235–246. 113. See Shmuel Feiner, “Change in 18th-Century European Jewry: From the Norms of Tradition and Crisis to the Dramas of the Modern Experience,” in Historiography Reappraised, New Views of Jacob Katz’s Oeuvre, ed. Yisrael Bartal and Shmuel Feiner (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2008), pp. 37–58. 114. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, On Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1983), pp. 138–139.

Part I

1700

one

k

PICTURES FROM MARRIED LIFE Glikl the Daughter of Leib between Hamburg and Metz

In the winter when the eighteenth century began, Glikl the daughter of Leib, an enterprising trader of precious stones and jewels from northern Germany, began a new chapter in her life, a step she regretted to her last day. Eleven years had passed since the tragic and painful death of her beloved husband, Haim Hamel, and she had managed to preserve her independence and, on her own, to maintain the two life projects dearest to her: wide-ranging business dealings, which assured her a high standard of living, and extensive family relations, which were prudently attached to the Jewish propertied elite. At that time, in January 1700, her defenses fell and her psychological strength gave way. The widow Glikl, who had turned fifty-five and already saw herself as an old woman, weary and gloomy, succumbed to the norms of tradition and the pressures that her children exerted on her and married again. After secretly selling her commercial inventory, on Sunday, January 3, she left Hamburg, her beloved native city, on a journey that would take her, half a year later, under a marriage canopy in Metz, in northeastern France. The move to Metz deprived her of control over her fate and made her dependent on her husband and, later, on her children. The expensive wedding presents that she received from her husband, Hertz Levi, one of the richest merchants in the community, proved to be a honey trap. “But oh, dear Lord and Maker, that gold chain turned literally into shackles and bands of iron.” Thus Glikl poured out her soul in her autobiographical work, as we know, the only one written by a Jewish woman in that period.1 Although she justified her plight because of her deep fear of God and accepted her fate as a verdict not subject to appeal, she regarded her second marriage as the loss of freedom and initiative and as no less than the ruin of her life. Her

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happy days lay behind her, and the new century promised worries and crises such as she had not experienced in the past. Glikl did not want to be a burden to her children and, like many of the steps she had taken in her life, her considerations regarding her marriage to Levi, whom she met for the first time only six days before the wedding, were calculated and practical: “I supposed that by marrying such a successful man with extensive business dealings I would be able to help my children and through him bring them a lot of business. But alas, what happened was exactly the opposite.”2 What happened in her new home in Metz? Why was her disappointment so great? The Jewish community on the banks of the Mosel River, which Glikl joined, was growing stronger. The Jews of Metz provided supplies, mainly horses and grain, to the French soldiers stationed in that border city. The Jewish bankers specialized in providing credit, and their business thrived. The Jewish community, which numbered about 1,200, was well organized, stable, and loyal to traditional norms. Glikl herself praised the robustness of the communal autonomy and the devotion to religious values she saw in Metz: “When I first came here this was a very fine, decent community; there was a fine community building, and all community parnasim, literally all of them, were learned men. . . . In those days no man ever wore a peruke, in the community building, and it was unheard of to litigate in non-Jewish courts of law outside the Jewish quarter.” But with economic success came ambitions to live according to the styles of dress and leisure of Europe. Having recourse to the general court system rather than to a rabbinical court was interpreted as a first fissure in the authority of the rabbinical leadership. Openness to relations between the sexes, entertainment, and permissiveness worried the rabbinical leaders, who sought to strengthen discipline by passing communal ordinances.3 About a decade later when Glikl recorded her memories of Metz, she distinguished among several tendencies toward change. She wrote: Then there was no “such ostentation as today. Neither were people accustomed to such expensive foods then as they are now. People took pain to give their children an education and always employed the most important rabbis.”4

Disa ppointm ent a n d Prote st: Bet w e en Glik l a n d M a ry A stell Glikl found it hard to feel at home in Metz, and for the rest of her life she felt she was living in a “foreign land.” She wrote about these chapters in her life in her Yiddish diary “with trembling hand and hot bitter tears,” regretting, but believing that her sins caused her to agree to the marriage and that all that

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happened afterward was punishment from heaven. The hope of living with her second husband in Metz in wealth and honor was dashed in a short time. The death of the husband of her youth in 1689, whom she had married at the age of only fourteen and with whom she had raised a large family and a successful business, altered her life and confronted her with difficult life challenges. Her situation as a widow forced her to play further roles, but it also expanded her independence. Glikl recovered and worked diligently to keep developing her commercial business. She took care of her children, fostered her connections with the families of Jewish merchants and the men of wealth in Central Europe, and was highly respected in those circles. When she visited the community of Frankfurt, for example, Glikl wrote with pride: “I was given every honor a woman could possibly get.”5 But the trip to Metz in 1700 cut short the full life of success and satisfaction that had brought her comfort for the loss of her husband and marked the beginning of failure and decline. The journey began inauspiciously, as she explained: “Just as I was about to set out on the journey with my son R. Moshe to hold his wedding, and from there continue to Metz, God, blessed be He, brought a sickness upon me, may you be spared, that kept me in bed for six weeks.” When Hertz Levi was informed of this, he quickly sent her an encouraging letter. But even before meeting him, she doubted the sincerity of his concern, suspecting that he was afraid of losing the match and with it the money that Glikl would bring him. In mid-February she recovered and went to Hamburg, first to sell more of the stock of textiles that remained in her possession at the Braunschweig fair, and then to Baiersdorf, to see her son married there to the daughter of the Court Jew Simon Baiersdorf in the spring. However, the date of that marriage was postponed, and therefore so was Glikl’s wedding, which had been set for May 6 (Lag Ba’omer). Only after that, in the early summer of the year 1700, and with a heart prophesying evil, did Glikl draw near to Metz. At a stop along the way in Frankfurt in early June, she received a present of “some gingerbread and other trifles for the road” from Hertz Levi, along with a letter. And he wrote with such great courtesy “so that I never dreamed of the great misfortune in store for me.”6 Hiding her sad feelings, Glikl reached Metz on Friday, June 11, where she was received by a delegation of the most respectable women in the community, including the wife of Rabbi Gabriel Eskeles and the wife of the head of the rabbinical court, Aharon Worms. From the wedding ceremony, which took place just six days later, Glikl remembered mainly “all the weeping.” Before the ceremonial banquet in the evening, Hertz Levi displayed his treasures to her, but she only commented bitterly in her diary: “My husband took me into his

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study and showed me a large chest containing an assortment of necklaces and rings, but from then to this day he has never given me a single ring or coin of even flimsiest gold or silver, so it’s not because of me that he went bankrupt.” The Christian guests who arrived at the home of the groom and his bride congratulated Glikl, but this only deepened her sense of being a stranger, because she did not know how to answer them in French and her husband had to answer for her. The friction and alienation between her and her surroundings were clear as soon as she entered the house. Hertz Levi’s children respected her, but they made clear that during their mother’s lifetime they had enjoyed many more “favors.” In contrast to the partnership she had shared in the business of Haim Hamel, now she found herself isolated from her husband’s business. In the house itself she roamed about like a stranger. In her own words, she wrote: “I discovered that the housekeeper was lord and master in the house; she had everything in her control . . . never asking me what food to prepare or what she should do, which was not in my liking at all; in my household in Hamburg I was not accustomed to letting a servant be lord and master.”7 Though her marriage to Haim Hamel had been arranged, a close and deep conjugal relationship developed. In contrast, her second marriage, which had been by choice, was not a love marriage. In her diary she even reveals some erotic revulsion: “My husband would groan a great deal at night, and on several occasions I asked him what was wrong, why was he groaning like that.” Hertz Levi answered that it was his habit, but she suspected that he might not have been able to get over the loss of his first wife, who had died only a year earlier, “Everybody said he and his wife had such a good life together—that he was unable to forget her.” In any event, his sighs at night, his irregular sleep, and his physical weakness disturbed her and heightened her disappointment with her second marriage, since “I should never find another Reb Haim Hamel.”8 Just a short time earlier, she had reminded herself in her diary of one of the painful moments she had undergone before her first husband’s death, when she was not allowed to hug him for the last time. After it was clear that there was no longer any hope of saving his life, she said to him: “Dearest, may I touch you?” But because she was menstruating, he refused to allow her to violate the laws of the religion: “God forbid, my child, you’ll soon be going to the ritual bath.”9 On the way to Metz she had already sunk into depression, and this was not only “because my poor heart was foreboding how it would all turn out,” but also because she would be facing a new intimacy: “after all I was sad that I was about to go to another husband.”10 Their first meeting was formal and void of any emotion. Levi was accompanied by Glikl’s father-in-law, Abraham Krumbach, and they “welcomed me, sat with me for a while, then went on their

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way. I swear, at first I didn’t even know which of them was the bridegroom since I had never seen either of them before in my life—had Reb Abraham not said to me jokingly that I better not make the mistake of thinking him the bridegroom, to which my reply was silence.”11 Not by chance did she choose to include a folktale in her diary, one that took place at the court of “a king in the lands of Arabia,” and central to it was disappointed romantic love that is replaced by sexual violence, incest, and the rape of “the beautiful Danila” by “Amonis,” her brother.12 Feelings of remorse gnawed at Glikl’s heart, and she tormented herself for having married Hertz Levi. She imagined the escape route she had missed, a course in life that would distance her from her distress. It would have been better for her to remain a widow, to take care of her younger children’s marriages, and then to abandon the cares of the world and cultivate her soul. Her place of refuge could have been beyond the borders of Europe, in Jerusalem, which she imagined as a marvelously spiritual place: I should have done as a good pious Jewess should: abandon all worldly vanities and, with the little I had left, set out for the Holy Land; there I would have managed to live as a pious Jewess without being burdened down by the troubles and cares of my children and relatives and by worldly vanities, there I would have managed to serve God, bless be He, with all of my soul and all my might. But, as I said, due to my sins God led me to think otherwise and did not deem me worthy of this.13

The path to refuge in the Land of Israel was now blocked. As we shall see, Hertz Levi lost all his money, Glikl was forced to invest her savings, she found herself dependent on her children, and everything she had tried to avoid happened in the end. Her self-confidence and independence absorbed a mortal blow, and it seems that she could not even find consolation in her religious faith. Glikl, who spoke and wrote in Yiddish and apparently also knew German, could not know about her contemporary in London who launched an extraordinary protest at that time against the subjection of women who were trapped in marriages. The woman in question was Mary Astell (1666–1731), who, in 1700, just when Glikl married for a second time, published Some Reflections upon Marriage anonymously.14 Mary Astell and Glikl the daughter of Leib were separated by far more than the distance between Metz and London. Astell had received a broad education, displayed impressive ability in pointed polemical writing in English, and made her voice heard by means of printing, in a place where she had writers and intellectuals as partners. Glikl, in contrast, knew mainly Jewish religious writings in Yiddish and some in Hebrew, and her writing was

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very personal, not intended for a large readership and certainly not meant to arouse public discussion. When Astell, the daughter of an upper-middle-class family in Newcastle, in northern England, realized that her family could not provide her with sufficient financial means to marry a well-established man, she chose to live as an independent unmarried woman in London. There, with the help of men and women who were her patrons, she entered high society and became a writer. Unlike Glikl, who married twice and had fourteen children, Astell never married and was childless. But she was the one who criticized the flaws of marriage and bewept the misfortune of women, proposing a reformed version of marriage by choice and affinity. At the dawn of the new century, Astell’s clear voice made itself heard in public opinion among readers in England. In the name of three of the most important values that were to be the basis of the Enlightenment over the century—humanism that recognizes the value of the person, the natural right to freedom from servitude, and rational considerations—she protested against what she saw as the oppression of women.15 Astell raised the subject for public discussion, and she asked her readers not to judge according to what had been customary from time immemorial and had been accepted as an unchallenged convention but according to the standards of free, rational thought. As Immanuel Kant said eighty-four years later in his essay “What Is Enlightenment?” Astell also understood that such thinking required daring. Only truth, declared Astell, is our guide, and “to plead for the Oppressed and to defend the Weak seemed to me a generous undertaking”.16 She regarded improvement in the state of society and humanity and, in particular, that of marriage and the status of women as both ethical and possible. However, she understood that this critical ethos required a conceptual change, because it challenged convention, and only a few minds were strong enough to tolerate these principles and their practices.17 Belief in the human right to happiness encouraged her to write Some Reflections upon Marriage. Based on the assumption that happy marriages were hardly to be found, and that in most cases the wife is particularly miserable, she reached the conclusion that the institution of marriage itself was not faulty but the relation of men to women was faulty, because of men’s feeling of superiority to women in general and especially in conjugal life. When men were educated to treat women with respect, not to exploit the authority of their rule, and not to think that slaves of the female gender were living at their side, the marriage would succeed. Women, for their part, were entitled to acquire an education that would develop their abilities, and they had to show great caution before choosing for themselves a monarch for all their lives and giving him absolute ruling authority.18

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Astell did not value love and sexuality in conjugal relationships. She treated the question of marriage mainly as a political question of relations of control and power. Her struggle for the rights of women was against the tyranny of absolute rule. The greatest flaw in marriage was the status of the man as the omnipotent ruler, to whom the wife was subject. In one of the most revolutionary sentences in her book, she protested against the subjection of women in the name of the natural liberty of every human being: “If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves? As they must be if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery?”19 In that century, which was to hear quite a few revolutionary slogans for liberation in the name of liberty and reason, Astell’s declaration had radical significance. Astell may not have intended it, but she was already moving on the path of liberal criticism—although, paradoxically, she belonged to conservative circles in England of her time and in general she refrained from breaking with the social and religious order, which was based on obedience to those in authority. She writes: “Tho’ the Order of the World requires an Outward Respect and Obedience from some to others, yet the Mind is free, nothing but Reason can oblige it, ’tis out of the reach of the most absolute Tyrant.”20 But beyond that, every governing authority, from the king to the private family, is entitled to demand obedience only when it is working for the benefit of its subjects to improve their lot, but not otherwise. It is no wonder that tyranny arouses the oppressed to throw off even a yoke that has been placed on his neck legally, when it becomes too oppressive. Queen Anne’s accession to the throne of England in the spring of 1702 strengthened Astell’s confidence in the power of women, for now it would not occur to anyone that it was a sin to give women the power to govern men. Could one think that the queen was required to obey her servant instead of issuing orders to him? The great queen was, in Astell’s eyes, a model for the empowerment of women, and she discerned signs of the end of days in her monarchy, an age that would promise not only peace between the wolf and the lamb but also liberation from tyranny for half of the human race.21 The intellectual climate of early Enlightenment was, as noted, distant from Glikl’s world, but many ties still connected the Jewish mother and businesswoman from northern Germany to the English author from London in 1700. Both women believed in God, clung to their religion, and declared their reconciliation with divine justice and also with the gender hierarchy. In agreeing to a second marriage, Glikl was expressing confidence in the institution of marriage as a safety net for women, and even Astell, who was more critical, did not oppose marriage but rather sought to correct the flaws she saw in it.

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Both women wished to be excellent in their fear of heaven. Glikl respected learning and admired important rabbis, and Astell was in close connection with the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican Church, and in her works she sought to deepen commitment to Christianity. Her struggle on behalf of women was not intended to subvert the foundations of religion, but rather to heed the will of God more attentively. Both women found models to emulate in their reading of scripture. When Glikl sought a model for piety and sanctity, for example, she found it in Pessele, the wife of Modl Ries from Berlin, another contemporary Jewish businesswoman: “Surely there’s been no one like her in the whole world since the matriarchs Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. Truly no woman could hold a candle to her when it comes to piety and righteousness, especially as she was a woman of valor and ran the business. She provided a most ample living for her husband and her sons, in Vienna as well as in Berlin.”22 For the readers of Some Reflections upon Marriage, Astell established a pantheon of women with religious power and governing authority, such as Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron; Deborah, the prophet; Esther; Ruth; Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, who with divine consent opposed her husband to help carry out the divine plan; and the daughters of Zelophehad, who demanded of Moses, as told in Deuteronomy, that he guarantee them their inheritance. As Astell wrote cynically: “The World will hardly allow a Woman to say anything well, unless as she borrows it from Men, or is assisted by them, But God Himself allows that the Daughters of Zelophehad spake right, and passes their Request into a Law.”23 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the wife and mother, as well as the unmarried childless woman, shared the hope that married life would offer happiness to women as well as men. Glikl certainly did not see herself as a suffering saint, which is how Astell described women in subjection to their husbands, bearing their fate in silence, but she did share Astell’s discontentment. The marriage to Levi became a coercive connection, or as she put it: “shackles and bands of iron” In Glikl one cannot find general protest against the tyranny of men, but she, too, had thoughts about marriage and she, too, believed in partnership that promised a happy marriage. About her conjugal relations with her beloved husband Haim Hamel, she wrote: “Had God not inflicted this blow on us, taking away so soon the crown on my head, I know there would be no happier, more agreeable couple in whole world.”24 The melancholy voice of her memoirs after 1700 seems to be reconciled with her fate as ordained by heaven, but as Natalie Zemon Davis interprets it, this is also the voice of a dispute with God, asking Him to listen to her and explain her suffering.25 Glikl never

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doubted that God was the true judge, but writing about her life enabled her to sound a voice of private protest to herself and to her children. The protest was soft and implied. By the exceptional act of personal writing, Glikl removed herself, at least on an intimate level, from the larger group of the community and the family, and she defined herself as an independent individual.

A m bition, Honor , a n d Su bm ission to Fate This personal protest could arise within her only because, in contrast to the disappointment and the feeling of failure by the choice she had made in traveling to Metz and marrying Hertz Levi, she had the memory of her experiences from the years of success. Ambition for success accompanied Glikl throughout her life and nourished her expectations for happiness. In writing her memoirs, she preserved the story of her success for herself and her children with pride that was a source of consolation for her. She was raised in one of the few wealthy Jewish families who were permitted to live in the free port of Hamburg and to enjoy the opportunities for trade and business and contact with all of Europe as well as the New World beyond the Atlantic. When she married as a young girl and moved into her mother-in-law’s house in the smaller city of Hameln, she felt she had fallen in her standard of living: “Everyone knows what Hamel is, compared to Hamburg; I was a young girl, used to being indulged in every way since childhood by parents, friends, and relatives.”26 But the couple quickly began to build their life with great energy and to amass capital of their own in their trade in gold, precious stones, and jewelry. Their geographical range included trade fairs in Leipzig, Frankfurt, and Braunschweig in Germany, and business destinations in Danzig, London, and Amsterdam. At the same time, the children were born and the parents showered them with great love. When they grew up, in addition to financial success, there was the task of arranging matches. The matchmaking network for the affluent Jewish families where Glikl and Haim looked for suitable connections extended over the communities of Berlin, Vienna, Hanover, Cleve, Metz, and many other cities. Glikl measured her success in the money she earned, in the dowries of her children, in connections with the elite of merchants and people of means, and in overcoming the many dangers that lurked for all the residents of Europe: an extreme climate, floods, epidemics and illness, robbers, bankruptcy, and poverty. In her thirty years of marriage, as noted, Glikl had fourteen children, at an average of one every two years. She had seven sons and seven daughters, two of whom died: a week-old infant son and a three-year-old daughter. The loss of the three-year-old was the greatest disaster that struck the couple and marred

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their happiness. “My late daughter Matte,” Glikl wrote, “was then three years old. You never saw such a clever, adorable girl. . . . But the good Lord loved her even more.” After four weeks of illness and suffering, the little girl died, leaving Haim and Glikl stunned with sorrow: “My husband, of blessed memory, and I were so grief-stricken that we both suffered from serious illness for a long time.”27 However, in a world where infant mortality and the death of children was common, coming to a third or half of all infants in many places, the maturation and marriage of twelve children was regarded as an impressive success.28 While Glikl was opening a new and gloomy chapter of her life in Metz, a Jewish couple in Prague sat in their home and mourned for the loss of all seven of their children. The conjugal life of Beer and Bella Perlhefter was also a partnership. However, unlike Haim and Glikl Hamel, their partnership was not in business and raising children. Beer, a Torah scholar from Moravia, was often absent from the home. In one of the letters that his wife wrote to him from Schnaittach in southern Germany, where they had lived before returning to Prague, the city of their youth, to Altdorf, where Beer was teaching the famous Christian Hebraist Johann Christoph Wagenseil, Bella complained about his prolonged absence: “It would be right for you to come here one day, if you can, and you should know your pretty daughter, may she live, and you won’t know her if you don’t see her.”29 Bella did the best she could to raise her children, to support them, and to overcome severe difficulties. Suspicion that Beer Perlhefter was active in the Sabbatean movement aroused fears and limited his ability to earn a living from rabbinical positions. For more than a generation, a heavy shadow had been cast on the Jews: the Messianic movement aroused by Sabbatai Zevi, its resounding failure with his conversion to Islam in 1666, and the death of a man whom many had believed to be the Messiah caused great consternation. For Glikl, this was already a distant memory of great expectation and enthusiasm that gave way to bitter disappointment experienced in the community of Hamburg when she was in her early twenties. As she envisaged it, the collapse of the Sabbatean hopes was like a failure to give birth: “Indeed we hoped like a woman sitting on the birth stool and working hard with great torments and pain, and she is certain that after all the torments and pain she will rejoice in her baby, but after all the torments and pains, nothing comes but the sound of wind.”30 However, some members of her generation were believers, and Beer Perlhefter was one of them, working to preserve the Messianic faith even decades after the death of Sabbatai Zevi. In kabbalistic works he tried to decipher the secret of the Messiah, and for several years he also served as a Sabbatean preacher in the company of Abraham Rovigo, whose home in Modena, in

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northern Italy, was a Sabbatean center. Bella Perlhefter managed to cope with all of these problems, but after the death of the last of her seven children, she was on the verge of a breakdown. Then she proposed an exceptional partnership to her husband to erect together a literary and religious monument to their children: to write a book in the vernacular Yiddish that would address readers who did not belong to the learned elite and that would contain within its pages a vast reservoir of knowledge about the Jewish religion and offer religious and ethical guidance, as well as a narrative that would recount the holy history of the Jewish people from the creation of the universe until redemption and the resurrection of the dead. Around 1700, the couple wrote the final version of their monumental work, Beer Sheva (Well of Oath/Seven), which was divided into seven parts, each dedicated to the memory of one of their sons and daughters who had died in childhood. Bella wrote her own foreword to the manuscript, in which she expressed her deep sorrow and protested against the divine justice of “a righteous person who suffers,” though she was also reconciled to the reversals in human fate, as she had learned from Ecclesiastes: “The sun rises and the sun sets” (Eccles. 1:5). The high rate of infant mortality dealt the Perlhefters a dreadful blow. Beer Sheva, like Glikl’s memoirs, remained only in manuscripts, intended to console childless couples and those who did not see their children reach adulthood, to strengthen fear of heaven, and as justification of divine judgment.31 The tension between fear of reversals of fate, protest against fate, and submission to fate was shared by Bella Perlhefter, Glikl, and many other people of their time. In her research on the wealthy Jewish elite of the Court Jews in Germany, Selma Stern described their thirst for success, and she also noted reconciliation with fate among those whose careers ended in failure. This was a characteristic of the world of the baroque, and the authors of the time wrote dramatic descriptions of the unexpected fate that struck people and the fall from fame and fortune to the depths of poverty and suffering: “A generation torn by long wars, church schisms and social upheavals liked to invent heroes whose lives demonstrated the vanity of all human striving . . . What the writers of the period called ‘Tyche,’ sometimes mere chance and sometimes a capricious fate that led men to salvation or destruction.”32 Ultimately, Glikl saw her fate similarly. Nature is what decreed that she should collapse from the peak of success, bear disappointments, and decline in status: “It was really the eye weeps and the heart rejoice, nature can’t change that.”33 However, she protested to God against her fate: “Indeed, mighty God, You know how I spend my time in grief and sorrow. I was a woman held in great esteem by my devoted husband throughout our long life together; I was the apple of his eye. But upon his death

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everything vanished: my wealth, my honor, for which I will weep all my life, despite being aware of my weakness—I am committing a grave sin by wasting my time in such sorrow and mourning.”34 The wisdom about life that she bequeathed to her children left them with an image of an arbitrary and inscrutable world. The upheavals of fate and the difficulty in understanding why God brings this one down low and raises the other one, left only total submission: “We must put everything in the hands of almighty God, not forgetting that this world of vanity is fleeting.”35 However, although she clung to these religious values, and despite her exhortation to trust in God and her rejection of life in the transitory world, “the world of vanity,” in fact she lived in the earthly world, and there she achieved success and happiness. When she wrote about her achievements, nothing recalled her gloomy thoughts or the idea of submissively delivering human fate into the hands of heaven. She was proud of the profit she made in business, in her hard work, in her frequent trips to fairs, in the generous credit people were prepared to place at her disposal, and in the respect with which she was received everywhere. Glikl internalized the ethos of wealth and splendor of the baroque princes of her time, and she measured the value of the Jews in her circle according to their familiarity with dukes, kings, and emperors. She knew who ruled the states of Europe, and she identified with the idea of justifying the power and authority of the kings by divine grace: “God, blessed be He, is the one who gives the kings everything and puts it into their heart to dispense favor, according to His holy will, for the minds of the king is in the Lord’s hand.”36 The splendid wedding of her eldest daughter, Tsipor, who married the son of the Court Jew Eliahu Gumpertz of Cleve, in 1673, was retained in her memory as one of the most exciting peaks of her success. Her description of the match and the wedding banquet is a historical document that opens a window on the life led by the elite of wealthy Jews, in baroque style, and on their values. While “my husband was still a young man, and we had just started doing well for ourselves,” they attained a marital bond with “a most influential man, with a reputation of being very wealthy, worth over one hundred thousand reichsthaler, which was quite true.” This fortune was among the greatest in Glikl’s estimations of wealth. In the hierarchical society of her contemporaries, this property and the annual income from it were a measure of success and happiness. She complained in her diary about changes in Jewish high social circles in the early eighteenth century that the wealthy people of the time were not satisfied with what they had, whereas in her youth, a very wealthy man was worth ten thousand reichsthaler, and all of them lived better than the wealthiest men live at this time. In the tangle of various monetary values in Europe,

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it is not easy to calculate income or the gap between wealth and poverty. A child’s tutor in Germany, for example, made at most sixty thalers, whereas the salary of rabbis in demand ranged between three and six hundred thalers in mid-century. Glikl provides a certain point of comparison: property of five hundred reichsthaler was enough to live comfortably on. Anyone with that amount of money “knew how to enjoy life and were contented, more so than today, when the rich are greedy.”37 Glikl boasted that at the bourse in Hamburg, “Many people did not believe it [the rumor about the match from Amsterdam, where the fathers of the bride and groom had met], so that large bets were placed at the Bourse.” Of the wedding itself, which took place in Gumperz’s palace in Cleve, she mainly remembered the wealth displayed, the expensive meal served with exotic wines and fruits, the dances, and the honorable guests. The place was “truly fit for a king, outfitted as comfortably as a lord’s home. Now we had not a moment’s peace all day long because the eminent men and women of the nobility who all came around wanting to see the bride.”38 An exceptional opportunity to acquire the favor of one of the important rulers in Prussia was missed at the wedding, and Glikl wrote sadly about the failure to make a close connection with him. Cleve was then under the sovereignty of the principalities of Brandenburg-Prussia and ruled by the prince elector, Frederick Wilhelm, one of the noblemen who had the right to choose the Holy Roman emperor, and among the aristocrats present at the wedding was the thirteen-year-old Prince Frederick. Gumpertz wanted to give him the present of a gold watch set with diamonds, which was worth five hundred reichsthalers, but one of his friends advised him: “Why for? Do you want to give the young prince such an expensive gift? Had it been the elder crown prince it could have been done.” Because Frederick’s elder brother was the crown prince, it was better to invest in the one who would reach the throne. But since then the elder Prince-Elector had died, and “the younger one succeeded him, who is crown prince yet.” Indeed, Prince Frederick Wilhelm III inherited his father’s throne in 1688, and thirteen years later he was crowned Frederick I, the first king of Prussia. Glikl estimated that “had Eliahu given the gift to the young prince, it is likely that the latter would never have forgotten it—these illustrious personages never forget such things.” Nevertheless, the splendid Jewish wedding of the wealthy Jewish elite filled Glikl with great satisfaction. The future king of one of the rising powers in eighteenth-century Europe may not have received the expensive gift, but “the young prince [Frederick] together with Prince Moritz [ruler of Cleve], and all the notables, departed, highly pleased.” Even some two decades after that wedding, one can still hear Glikl’s excitement and be

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impressed by the feelings of happiness that flooded her: “No Jew had been similarly honored in a hundred years.”39

Note s 1. Glikl’s memoirs are newly published and translated into Hebrew by Chava Turniansky, Glikl Zikhronot: 1691–1719 (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2006). The quotations here are taken from the English translation: Glikl Memoirs, 1691–1719, ed. Chava Turniansky, trans. Sara Friedman (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2019). This quotation is from p. 277. See also Marcus Moseley, Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 155–176. 2. Glikl, Memoires, p. 262. 3. Glikl, Memoires, p. 298–299. See Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 62–65. Jay R. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), ch. 2. 4. Glikl, Memoires, p. 299. 5. Ibid., pp. 257, 273. See Ada Rapoport-Albert, “Glikl Hamel as a Widow,” in Studies in Ashkenazi Culture, Women’s History, and the Languages of the Jews Presented to Chava Turniansky [Hebrew], ed. Israel Bartal et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2013), pp. 379–391. 6. Glikl, Memoires, p. 270, 273. 7. Ibid., pp. 278–279. 8. Ibid., pp. 280, 261. 9. Ibid., p. 200. 10. Ibid., p. 275. 11. Ibid., p. 276. 12. Ibid., pp. 263–269. For a broad perspective on the life of women in Glikl’s time, see Yemima Chovav, Maidens Love Thee: The Religious and Spiritual Life of Jewish Ashkenazic Women in the Early Modern Period [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009). 13. Glikl, Memoires, p. 258. 14. Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage (London, 1700). Reference here is to the third edition, to which she added an introduction and disputed with her critics: Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage. The Third Edition. To Which Is Added a Preface in Answer to Some Objections (London, 1706). 15. On Astell, see Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Ruth Perry, “Mary Astell

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and Enlightenment,” in Women, Gender, and Enlightenment, ed. Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 357–370; Christine Mason Sutherland, The Eloquence of Mary Astell (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005). 16. Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, pp. 90–91. 17. Ibid., introduction to the third edition. 18. Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, p. 31. Her demand for expanding the education of women was already present in her first book, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, published in 1694. It received wide attention, and a fifth edition was published in 1701. Here Astell preceded her fellow Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft by a hundred years. The latter’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women appeared in 1791, and she is regarded as the mother of feminism. On marriage patterns in England in 1700, see Maureen Waller, 1700: Scenes from London Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000), ch. 1. 19. Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, preface to the third edition. 20. Ibid., p. 45. 21. Ibid., preface to the third edition. 22. Glikl, Memoires, p. 313. See Chovav, Maidens Love Thee, p. 253. 23. Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, preface to third edition. 24. Glikl, Memoires, p. 97. See Chava Turniansky, “A Jewish Woman’s Life: The Memoires of Glikl (Hamel),” in Sexuality and the Family in History [Hebrew], ed. Israel Bartal and Isaiah Gafni (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1998), pp. 177–192. 25. See Davis, Women on the Margins. 26. Glikl, Memoires, p. 87. 27. Ibid., pp. 139–140. 28. On infant mortality in Jewish society, see Chovav, Maidens Love Thee, pp. 164–170. 29. See the Hebrew letters of Bella Perlhafter: Bernard Weinryb, “Historisches und Kulturhistorisches aus Wagenseils hebräischem Briefwechsel,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 47 (1939): 340. 30. Glikl, Memoires, p. 153. 31. See the edition by Nathanael Riemer and Sigrid Senkbeil, Beer Sheva by Beer and Bella Perlhefter: An Edition of a Seventeenth Century Yiddish Encyclopedia (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011). See also Nathanael Riemer, “Zwischen christlichen Hebraisten und Sabbatianern, der Lebebensweg von R. Beer und Bila Perlhefter,” Aschkenas 14, no. 1 (2004): 163–201; Weinryb, “Historisches und Kulturhistorisches,” pp. 325–341; Elisheva Carlebach, “Bella Perlhefter,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, accessed February 28, 2018, ­https://​­jwa​.­org​/­encyclopedia​/­a rticle​/­perlhefter​-­bella. 32. Stern, The Court Jew, p. 247.

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33. Glikl, Memoires, p. 273. 34. Ibid., p. 138. 35. Ibid., pp. 137–138. 36. Ibid., p. 139. 37. Ibid., pp. 155, 61. 38. Ibid., p. 156. 39. Ibid., p. 159.

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“RISE UP AND SUCCEED” Absolutism and Court Jews in Baroque Culture

Glikl belonged to the er a of absolutism in Europe, and, like many in her generation, she held the aristocratic elites of the “important lords” in high esteem. Their leadership and ostentatious way of life also inspired the Jews from those circles of merchants, businessmen, and entrepreneurs to which she belonged. Eliahu Gumperz’s residence in Cleve, like many other palaces in the states of Germany, was overshadowed by the palace that was regarded as the highest example: the Palace of Versailles. Indeed, more than anyone else, the representative of the era during the seventy-two years of his reign was King Louis XIV of France, who was only seven years older than Glikl. He wielded all governmental authority for most of the years of his life (1643–1715). When Glikl reached Metz in 1700, she came under the sovereignty of the Sun King. His status was at a peak in that year, and, although France had been weakened by fighting many wars at the end of the previous century, it was still the unchallenged power in Europe.

“Wa r H a d J ust Brok en Ou t bet w e en His Highne ss th e K ing of Fr a nce a n d His Highne ss th e E m peror” No sign of Louis XIV’s self-image and of his aspiration to project authority and splendor was stronger than the portrait commissioned by the king from the painter Hyacinthe Rigaud at the end of 1700. This was one of that baroque painter’s greatest achievements. Rigaud had already made a name for himself in French court circles. He specialized in impressive portraits of the men and women of the aristocracy, in splendid, sumptuous dress, with great ornamentation, in poses that sought to express power, and in colors that expressed

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splendor. “Rigaud,” said the baroque art scholar Germain Bazin, “created in painting . . . the portrait of the ‘man of quality,’ whose value he conveyed by the nobility of the attitude, expressiveness of the gesture, and movement of the draperies—in short, by the passion of which he showed his generous temperament to be capable. The aim was less to depict an individual and a character . . . than to affirm the social rank and ‘condition’ of the sitter.” In his portrait of Louis XIV, Rigaud created the image of royal majesty, vested in all his attributes.1 In the huge oil painting of Louis XIV, nearly three meters high and two meters wide, Rigaud portrayed royal power in all of its aspects. He costumed the king in a purple coronation robe, on which fleurs-de-lis, the symbol of the Bourbon dynasty, are embroidered in gold. He is holding white gloves, wearing red shoes and white silk stockings, and on his head is a wig that flows over his shoulders. The king stands next to his throne in a pose projecting confidence. Above and behind him are crimson velvet curtains, and the king possesses all the attributes of governmental power: beside him is a golden crown, in his hand is a scepter, and he wears a sword studded with diamonds. When the portrait was completed in 1701, it was meant to be sent to Spain as a gift to Prince Philip of Anjou, the king’s grandson, who had been crowned as king of Spain. However, Louis XIV was so enthusiastic about the portrait, which successfully represented the absolute superiority of France, that he decided to keep it in the Palace of Versailles. He asked Rigaud to paint a smaller copy of it for his grandson. Henceforth, every visitor to the palace who saw the painting, and whose eyes met the king’s authoritative gaze, absorbed the political and cultural message very well: the king retained the full authority of government, confirmed the legitimacy of the dynasty and the superiority of the aristocratic class, and in his person he embodied the state at whose head he stood. The ideology of the absolute regime as leaning upon authority deriving from God was reinforced by a theologian of the era, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, who was also one of the mentors of the crown prince who later became Louis XV: when the king sits in his office in the palace and administers the state, “this is the image of God who seated on His throne in the highest heavens sets the whole of nature in motion.”2 From the point of view of the royal portrait and the religious foundation of the regime, not even in one’s wildest imagination could the thought have occurred that in another nine decades the Ancien Régime would fall in France. However, in the immediate context of the painting, in that very first year of the eighteenth century, a sign of change did appear. The painting intended for the king’s grandson not only represented the absolutist regime, and not only baroque art, which served and embellished it, but it also told about the events

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that were occurring in 1700 in the system of international relations. Rigaud’s painting was commissioned for the king’s new palace in Madrid to strengthen the House of Bourbon, while Louis XIV was ruling France and his grandson Philip V was the king of Spain. However, in a short time, to ensure his grandson’s rule, the French king would go to war. The series of events that began in November 1700 culminated in the weakening of France and the gradual decline in the status of Louis XIV. On November 1, King Charles II of Spain, known as “Carlos the Bewitched,” died, leaving no heirs. The issue of the Spanish succession was already central in European politics. Diplomats had prepared for the death of the king in advance, and they had found a solution: the division of Spain between Austria and France. In early 1700, agreements were signed between England, Austria, Holland, and France for the division of the Spanish Empire, which included not only Spain itself but also extensive territories ruled by Spain in the Netherlands, Italy (Milan, Naples, Sicily), the Americas (most of South America, Central America, Florida, and California), and the Philippines. However, those who opposed the division prevailed upon the king to leave a secret will that contradicted the partition agreement and bequeathed the entire empire to seventeen-year-old Prince Philip of Anjou. About two weeks later, on Tuesday, November 16, Louis XIV summoned the Spanish ambassador to his office at the Palace of Versailles, along with his grandson and courtiers. The Duke of Saint-Simon wrote the following about this meeting, which led to the fourteen-year War of the Spanish Succession: “Immediately afterward, the king, contrary to all custom, had the double door of his office opened, and he ordered everyone who was there, almost a crowd, to enter; then, passing his eyes majestically over the numerous company, he said: ‘Gentlemen,’ pointing at the Duke of Anjou, ‘here is the King of Spain. His birth called him to that crown, the late king did so as well by his will, the entire nation desired it, and has demanded it of me insistently; it was the order of heaven; I have agreed to it with pleasure.’” Then the king addressed his grandson and said: “Be a good Spaniard, at present this is your first duty, but remember that you were born French, to maintain the union between the two nations; this is the way to make them happy and to preserve the peace of Europe.”3 This was not a conciliatory declaration. On the contrary, it was a declaration of war. The moment the king turned his back on the agreement to partition Spain, he brought international confrontation closer. Austria already had a candidate of its own for the Spanish throne, the Archduke Charles, the second son of Emperor Leopold I. France did not wait long, and by December Philip V had reached Madrid, French forces were prepared to seize Spanish territories in the Netherlands, and France received

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the right to trade in slaves from Africa from Spain under the new king. The latter was of great economic importance, and it was also a provocation against England. A coalition of Austria, England, and Holland formed against Spain. The battles began a few months later, first in northern Italy and then on many fronts in the Netherlands, along the Mosel and the Rhine Rivers, and in naval operations on the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.4 Glikl was engaged in commerce, and her frequent trips required her to follow changes in international relations. When she went to live in France, she mentioned the war as something that affected everyone: “Since war had just broken out between his Highness the king of France [Louis XIV] and his Highness the Emperor [Leopold I] and his allies; no need to mention them since everyone knows who they were.”5 The war was disastrous, and nearly half a million people were killed in it. Its consequences for Louis XIV were particularly dramatic. While in Glikl’s private life the year 1700 marked the end of her time of success and the beginning of a crisis, for the Sun King it marked political failure. Looking back on the events some two generations later, the German intellectual Eobald Toze wrote, “Louis XIV had gained satisfaction in that he saw his grandson seated on the throne of Spain, but to preserve that achievement he was forced to enter upon a new and oppressive war, in which the enemy coalition had a great advantage, and he nearly lost all the fruits of his victories in the previous fifty years.”6 While the fame of kings such as Louis XIV declined, the War of the Spanish Succession gave rise to new heroes, whose successes on the battlefield gained widespread admiration in Europe. Most prominent of these was Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), the son of a French officer. After his request to join the French officers’ corps was rejected by the king, he left the country and, at the age of twenty, joined the army of the Emperor of Austria, Leopold I. He stood out in the battles to lift the Turkish siege on Vienna in 1683, and this success paved the way to a long and brilliant military career, first against Turkey and, starting in 1701, against France. One of the peaks of his success was the victory in the battle of Blenheim, in southern Germany, in 1704, where Eugene joined another celebrated hero of the time, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), a commander of the English army.7 Prince Eugene’s career demonstrates the individual’s ability to gain fame, to attain senior positions of command and government, to build splendid palaces, and to acquire great property and precious works of art by means of his ambition and skills and not only his lineage. Preparations for the War of the Spanish Succession gave an opportunity to other leaders to fulfill their dreams and achieve their ambitions. Frederick III,

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the prince elector of Brandenburg–Prussia, had been striving for a decade to obtain a royal title, and to that end he needed the agreement of the Holy Roman emperor, which he did not receive, mainly because the Catholic emperor was interested in having Prussia neither separate from his empire nor in a Protestant kingdom in Germany. However, Leopold I wanted a ruler in Prussia as an ally in his struggle against Louis XIV, and in return for Frederick Wilhelm’s support, he acceded to his request. On the very same day, Novem­ ber 16, 1700, that Louis XIV proclaimed his grandson the king of Spain, in Versailles, in Vienna, the emperor agreed that Prussia should become a monarchy, in return for a large sum of money and several thousand Prussian troops who would assist the Austrian army. Soon afterward, on December 13, 1700, the coronation ceremonies of Frederick I, began with an impressive parade, in which three thousand horses pulled the carriages of the gigantic entourage from Berlin to Königsberg. They ended there a month later (January 18, 1701) when the king, in a purple robe with diamond buttons, expressed his sovereignty, his autonomy, and his lack of dependence on the emperor and the leaders of the Church, by placing the crown on his own head.8 Frederick I, who was, as was mentioned, the young guest of high status at the wedding of Glikl’s daughter Tsipor in Cleve, was now forty-three years old and “King in Prussia.” He adopted all the formalities of an absolute monarchy and began to move Prussia toward the status of a great power. No wonder Glikl regretted their failure to predict his successful career and that the Jews who hosted him did not make trusted connections with him even then. However, in the end, her in-law Eliahu Gumpertz did gain Frederick’s favor. On May 24, 1700, about three weeks before Glikl’s wedding in Metz, the ruler of Prussia signed a document appointing Gumpertz as chief tax collector in Cleve and Mark, an appointment that guaranteed substantial income for Gumpertz and his family.9 Prussia had opened its gates to the Jews only thirty years earlier, and then it was with a tightly closed fist, with preference for families of means, who could help develop commerce, and since then supervision of the Jewish minority had gotten more severe.

“You r Fa ithfu l Serva nt Behr en d L eh m a n n in th e A r m y Ca m p Opposite th e Cit y of R iga” When the War of the Spanish Succession broke out, battles were already being waged in another large-scale war in Europe: the Great Northern War. While in the War of the Spanish Succession, the aim was to block French hegemony, in the Great Northern War, which lasted twenty years and claimed more than

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three hundred thousand victims, the aim was to weaken Sweden in Northern Europe. In a treaty signed on March 13, 1700, King Frederick IV of Denmark; the king of Saxony and Poland, Augustus II; and the czar of Russia, Peter I, joined together to challenge the young king of Sweden, Karl XII, and to wrest from his hands the rule over various territories in Scandinavia along the Baltic coast.10 The idea was to exploit Sweden’s weakness, given that a young boy was seated on the throne. However, Karl XII, though only eighteen years old, surprised his enemies with a preemptive strike against Denmark. On June 2, a few months after Glikl had left her home in Hamburg, Sweden captured nearby Altona, and on August 18, Denmark was compelled to leave the coalition. An echo of these events is heard in the register of the Altona community: at the beginning of the summer of that year, the leaders implored the members of the community to respond to their requests for the proper management of the elections for the leadership, “because of the great noise of war at present, as is known to everyone.”11 Glikl did not have a detailed view of the complicated map of international relations during this war, but she had learned very well from earlier confrontations that “the kings of Denmark and Sweden are never in good relations, although they are friends and they intermarry with each other, all the time they retain resentment against one another.”12 Augustus II (the Strong, 1670–1733), the prince elector of Saxony and the king of Poland, launched the first military attack, with the aim of conquering Livonia (in present-day Latvia) from Sweden. He was one of the most ambitious rulers involved in the international arena of Europe in the early eighteenth century. Like Louis XIV, Augustus also sat for Rigaud, who painted a gigantic portrait of him in 1715, two meters and a half in height and a meter and seventy centimeters in width. He wore royal robes and grasped a scepter, almost a double of the Sun King. Augustus was thirty when the war broke out, and he was known as a combination of the powerful Hercules and the hedonistic Dionysus. He had several princesses as mistresses and, according to the legends associated with him, fathered more than three hundred children. He contributed to baroque art and architecture as a patron and builder of palaces in Dresden (the Zwinger) and Warsaw, and he established the fine and prestigious porcelain factory in Meissen. Jakob Heinrich von Flemming, who was Augustus the Strong’s military commander and right-hand man, knew him best of all: He possesses qualities which are most admirable in so considerable a prince. A pity it is that he was not reared as a prince should be, but lived with wasters and prostitutes whose outlook he has made his own. . . . If, instead of trusting to his strong constitution, he would live a more temperate life,

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he would certainly reach a great age. He is noble, full of sympathy and of heroic courage. He is envious of the fame of others. Ambition and lust for pleasure are his chief qualities, though the latter has the supremacy. Often his ambition is curbed by his lust for pleasure, never the latter by his ambition.13

Less flattering estimations found him an intemperate king who was convinced that the purpose of the state and his subjects was to serve the ruler’s desires and that a wise prince never allows himself to be influenced by moral considerations, and therefore he sacrificed his country and its people for his ostentatious wishes. When he tried to obtain the Polish crown for himself, he did not hesitate to deplete the country’s treasury, and he was not deterred from betraying the Protestant heritage of his Saxon ancestors and converting to Catholicism. The main motive was personal, and he himself confessed that his greatest ambition was to be famous. He dreamed of a union between Saxony and Poland because he wanted to excel and rise above his two rivals, George I, the new elector in Hanover, king of England, and Duke Frederick III, the elector of Brandenburg.14 Augustus’s army attacked the Swedes in Livonia in the winter of 1700, laying siege to Riga on the Baltic coast. The battle should have been decided during the summer. The king reached the area of the siege, and in August cannons were brought in to subdue the fortified city, emplacements were built for them, and an ultimatum was delivered to the besieged Swedish army. On August 16, Augustus the Strong received a letter from Issachar Ben Yehuda Halevi Berman (the Hebrew name of the ambitious Court Jew Behrend Lehmann, 1661–1730). Offering his support, Berman wrote: “I arrived from Warsaw via Lithuania to Mitau, and in a few days I hope to reach the camp of the army besieging Riga.” Then, on August 26, he sent another letter, signed with his German name: “Your faithful servant Behrend Lehmann in the camp of the army before Riga.” Lehmann wrote to the king: “Your highness has struck the Swedes on the battlefield.” Now the heavy artillery was ready for action, and there was no doubt that Riga would be shelled, “until no stone lay upon another.” He added: “I believe that before the king leaves the region, Riga will be in his hands, with God’s help.”15 Indeed, on August 27 the artillery of the Polish and Saxon army shelled Riga, and the commanding general, Flemming, hoped to obtain the first significant achievement in the war. Lehmann, who remained in the army camp at least until the end of September, witnessed the shelling, and he certainly knew, as the newspapers recounted, that the heavy bombardment produced no result, the damage was minimal, and Riga did not fall.16 From an overall perspective

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on the war, the attack in the Baltic region did not further the power or ambition of Augustus the Strong. The armies of Peter the Great invaded Estonia and laid siege to the city of Narva, but in the battle that took place on November 30, in the midst of a heavy snowstorm, the army of Karl XII won a decisive victory. Some twenty thousand Russian soldiers were killed, about a quarter of the army, and twice as many were taken prisoner. With Russia humiliated and stricken and Denmark out of the coalition, the king of Sweden now set out to take revenge against Augustus the Strong. In a series of victories as the war continued, he succeeded in depriving Augustus of the kingdom of Poland in 1706, in favor of the Swedish protégé Stanislaw Leszczyński (1677–1766), and he even threated Saxony itself. In the end Sweden was defeated, and Russia and Prussia, which entered the war later on, gained in power as a consequence. However, in the first year of the war, Sweden showed superiority, and Augustus the Strong’s hopes of gaining more power were dashed.17 How did Behrend Lehmann, a thirty-nine-year-old Jew from Halberstadt, make his way to the heart of a military battle in the Great Northern War and into this tangle of personal ambition, dynastic interests, desire for revenge, and striving for fame? What role did he play in the service of Augustus the Strong? How did he gain his expertise in the courses of the war? How did he become informed about the king’s itinerary, take a position in complex international relations, and show such political awareness? For Behrend Lehmann, who played a key role as a supplier, banker, and diplomat in the court of Augustus the Strong, 1700 was one of the most difficult and exhausting years of his life. In the spring, he traveled extensively in Europe to obtain horses, shoes, and much additional equipment for the soldiers in the army and to raise large sums of money that would enable the king to make war. He arrived in the battle zone and at the siege of Riga with two of his brothers-in-law and business partners. He was in close contact with General Flemming and the king, and reported to them about his difficulties in raising the money, and mainly he implored them again and again to pay their debts to him, so that he would not lose his credit because of lack of liquidity. Flemming stated in his notes: “He needs money in order to give the rein to his generosity, to gratify his wishes and satisfy his lust for pleasure, and thus he values those who procure him money, lower than those who content his desires. . . . He does not require that money be furnished him by unlawful means, but if it be so furnished, its acceptance causes him no discomfort, and if he can put the blame of it on another he feels himself free of all reproach.”18 This is an apt description of the connections between the king and his Court Jews, including Behrend Lehmann, who was one of the senior men

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responsible for the country’s finances. Lehmann was born in Essen, Germany, to a wealthy family, prominent in the Jewish community there. His career began when he was young and went into business as a supplier of coin, as an agent of the court of the prince elector of Brandenburg–Prussia, and he settled in Halberstadt.19 He owed his success to the role he played in one of the greatest political intrigues of the seventeenth century, when he helped Augustus the Strong obtain the crown of Poland. The Polish state, whose kings were chosen by the nobility, was prone to intrigue. After the death of Jan III Sobieski, who had gained fame by leading the Polish army that liberated Vienna from the Turkish siege, several candidates competed for the throne. Augustus stopped at nothing to fulfill his ambition to become the king of Poland. Lehmann scurried about in Europe, employing subagents and obtaining credit from rich Jews in almost every corner of the continent, placing at Augustus’s disposal a loan that came to ten million thalers. Much of the money was given personally in bribes to Polish noblemen who participated in the election. Indeed, this effort bore fruit, and Augustus overcame the candidate who was supported by the king of France, and he was crowned as the new king of Poland in 1697 in a splendid ceremony in Kraków.20 In that year, Augustus the Strong granted to Behrend Lehmann the title of diplomatic legate, “Resident of the Kingdom of Poland and Lower Saxony,” and Lehmann enjoyed advantages because of his close connections with Saxony–Poland and with Brandenburg–Prussia. Thus, he was able to continue advancing his commercial business and to become closely acquainted with many members of the ruling elite in Europe and to gain experience in managing large financial systems and in exerting diplomatic efforts. During the war he demonstrated such great loyalty to the coalition of Augustus the Strong and Leopold I that a complicated and delicate diplomatic and financial undertaking was entrusted to him: sale of the Saxonian territory of Gommern to the king of Prussia in return for help in the war against the Swedes. Lehmann reported that the negotiations had begun with success, and twenty thousand Prussian soldiers could set out “against the King of Sweden to subdue him with a threat or by use of force to make peace with our lord the king,” and in his opinion this action would work “for the benefit of the Roman Empire, for Your Imperial Majesty would succeed in resisting your enemies in a short time.”21 Like the king whom he served, Behrend Lehmann was endowed with the baroque quali­ ties of ambition, personal initiative, risk-taking, and expectation of success. The personal connections he maintained with princes and kings such as Augustus and King Frederick I of Prussia, with whom he used to play chess, were of utmost importance to him. Like them, he enjoyed a high standard of life, lived

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in splendid houses, traveled in a coach harnessed to six horses, accompanied by servants in livery, and if, in fact, he is the one portrayed in an anonymous painting entitled “Court Jew with Ring,” he wore splendid velvet robes, was clean-shaven, and dressed in the clothing of the aristocracy.22 No less than he strove to attain the pleasures of life that can be purchased with money, Lehmann also sought the admiration of his Jewish brethren, and on various occasions he demonstrated his commitment to basic religious values. He obtained various commercial concessions and residence rights for himself and other Jews in Halberstadt, Prussia, and in Dresden in Saxony he paid high taxes to the community to fund its activities for the general welfare, contributed to the synagogue, and at the turn of the seventeenth century he endowed Torah study. In 1698, he initiated the establishment of a kloiz in Halberstadt, a house of study intended for a small group of select Talmudic scholars, all of whose time would be devoted to study. They were given a yearly stipendium of 150 thalers, almost three times the average salary of a teacher. In the same year he was also involved in a large and expensive project of printing the Talmud. A few months before the beginning of 1700, with a special privilege awarded by Emperor Leopold I and by the Duke Frederick III, and with an enormous investment of Lehmann’s money, the sum of fifty thousand thalers, the production of five thousand copies of fifteen volumes was completed in a printing shop in Frankfurt an der Oder. Behrend Lehmann sent many copies for free to yeshivas and houses of study in the communities of Europe, and the approbations of rabbis from Moravia, Poland, Holland, and Germany testify to the great enthusiasm with which this edition of the Talmud was received. The paper, the format, and the font were all excellent, and this was the first time the Talmud was printed in Germany. The rabbi of the community of Frankfurt am Main thanked Behrend Lehmann for his initiative and generosity, which responded to a shortage of tractates of the Talmud, “Because they have become scarce, to be found only one in a city and two in a family.”23

“Th e Lor d, Bl e ssed Be H e, M a k e s L a dder s, This One Is Low er ed, a n d Th at One Is R a ised U p” The life of Behrend Lehmann was involved with international networks of European politics and also with networks of the Jewish community and religious culture, and this was typical of wealthy Jews of his generation. The encounter between the absolutist state, thirsty for money, which had not yet established orderly administrative and fiscal mechanisms, and the personal wealth of the Court Jews, and their ability to raise vast sums of money and

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supply commodities that were in demand, opened a window of opportunity that led to the flourishing of a Jewish elite with power and status. Its loyalty to the primary affinity group and its Jewish identity, in a period before the emergence of a worldview that challenged the clear boundaries between Jews and Christians, overcame any thought of assimilation into the aristocracy and impelled them to be concerned for the welfare of Jewish society. Their demonstrative loyalty to the community and the values of the religion led more than a few historians to deny the meaning of the phenomenon of Court Jews as a sign of historical change. In their opinion, even in earlier times, as, for example, in medieval Spain, rich Jews played similar roles. Moreover, the Court Jews were able to separate the world of business, which they entered in order to make money, and the Jewish world, in which they were ensconced and with whose values they identified. Ultimately, as Jacob Katz stated, there were no cracks in the structure of the society and the community, because “so long as the absolute state did not influence the life of the group, but rather strengthened the status of individual within it, there was no functional deprivation in its institutions.”24 In the 1930s and 1940s, two prominent historians, quite different from one another, did attribute the breakthrough of the Jews into the modern world to these financiers and merchants. Ben-Zion Dinur, a founder of the Jerusalem School of Jewish history, presented them as pioneers in emancipation, in the broad sense of “the organic interweaving of the Jews in the economic and public, cultural and political fabric of the nations and states in which they dwelled and where they lived.”25 Hannah Arendt was to uncover the roots of anti-Semitism led by her research in the political philosophy of Europe, in the existential experience of the Jews in Nazi Germany, and in the collapse of the vision of assimilation. She regarded the Court Jews as no less than the starting point of modern German Jewish history. The great Jewish lenders to the state found themselves in a system favorable to mutual defense: they defended the interests of the state by means of their wealth and business acumen, and the state showered them with privileges, which made them into special Jews, who enjoyed protection. In return for payment and services, the Court Jews also received civil rights even at that early stage—protection of their bodies, their possessions, and their homes; though they did not assimilate into the society, the dilemmas of Jewish German identity, which so much characterized later generations, already began to develop in them.26 However, it appears that Selma Stern went deeper than everyone else in understanding the dramatic meaning of the Court Jew, because she was sensitive enough to identify not only the fields of his activities in various

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areas including diplomacy, military supplies, loans to heads of state, and assistance to the community, but also his personality and mentality. Stern pursued the interpretation differently. Like Dinur and Arendt, she saw the Court Jews as a first expression of the modern interweaving of Jews in the life of Europe and as an introductory chapter to the times in which the Jews would be included in many areas of life, calling them a prelude to the age of Emancipation. Her attention was attracted to the independent personality of the Court Jew. She presented him as a child of his period, as a Jew whose success was bound up with the absolutism of the royal courts, whose active and splendid ways of life typify baroque culture. In Stern’s opinion: “He differed from the Court Jew of the earlier period not only in that his activities were of a more varied nature and embraced finance, diplomacy, commerce and politics, but also in that he possessed a remarkable degree of industriousness and restlessness, a great interest in speculation and action, a strong desire for success, a lust for money and profit, an ambition to climb higher and higher and to assimilate as completely as possible to his environment in speech, dress and manners.” His significance at this historical crossroads of the emergence of the modern Jews was therefore unprecedented: “He was an individual with clearly marked features and significance and definite characteristics, the first fully recognizable personality to emerge in modern Jewish history.”27 The large-scale moneylenders and military suppliers to the Holy Roman emperor exemplified more than anyone the power of the Court Jew. According to one estimate, between the end of the seventeenth century and the 1730s, the emperors of Austria borrowed an enormous sum, coming to thirty-five million gulden (a coin worth about two-thirds of a thaler) from thirteen rich Jews.28 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the most prominent of these, Samuel Oppenheimer, “the Jew from Heidelberg,” was about seventy years old and at the peak of his career as the principal agent (Kaiserlicher Oberhoffaktor) of Emperor Leopold I. The large amounts that he loaned at the relatively low interest rate of 6 percent, and his supplies to the army in the decisive wars against the Turks, enabled the emperor to retain his status in the international arena. Oppenheimer underwent quite a few financial crises, and his difficulty in collecting his debts brought him to the verge of bankruptcy and even to be put on trial and imprisoned for a short time. However, so long as the emperor needed his services, he could continue, along with his son Menah.em Mendel Immanuel (1657–1721), to maintain his widespread network of businesses, to head a network of subagents dispersed in dozens of places in Europe, and to run what was in effect a private bank. He retained his reputation as a “Jew with good credit,” and he continued to accrue wealth and live in splendid houses in

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Vienna on the basis of a special privilege, enjoyed by only a few wealthy Jews, since there was no longer a community there after the expulsion of the Jews from the Habsburg capital in 1670, in a step demonstrating Christian piety.29 In his will, drafted five years before his death, Oppenheimer asked his children and sons-in-law to continue his life’s work and its associated values as family policy. On the one hand: “to stand and serve in the palace of his highness the imperial king,” with loyalty, diligence, and integrity. On the other hand: to exploit their status as preferred Jews and to act in solidarity for the sake of their brethren as community leaders. I order you, wrote Oppenheimer in a mixture of Yiddish and Hebrew, not only to invest effort in success in business, but to also “favor our Jewish brethren, who are scattered and dispersed in the whole world, since you are known in the house of the king, you will be able to observe the general benefit and to intervene with diligence and without being lazy.” The wealth they had accumulated entailed the duty to take care of the community: “and may the thread of mercy be spread over you, and this is no small matter, the giving of charity by the rich to the poor, individuals and the many.”30 Close family ties among the sons and daughters of the Jewish aristocracy preserved the wealth within narrow circles. Thus, for example, Samuel Oppenheimer was the uncle of Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664–1736), who was the husband of Gendel, who was the daughter of the Court Jew Leffmann Behrens of Hanover and the in-law of Behrend Lehmann, and David and Gendl’s son Joseph Oppenheim was married to the granddaughter of Samson Wertheimer. When Samuel Oppenheimer was lying on his deathbed in the spring of 1703, standing along with his son Mendel Oppenheimer were his partner in business and his dwelling in Vienna, Samson Wertheimer (1658–1724), who came to replace him at the emperor’s court, and his nephew David Oppenheim. Rabbi Oppenheim, who was born in Worms, Germany, but was then living in Prague, was one of the most prominent figures in European Jewry at the start of the new century. He was the chief rabbi of Prague and all of Bohemia (starting from 1702) and the former rabbi of Moravia. Along with his business dealings and rabbinical writing, he also invested great effort in his collection of books and manuscripts, which was to become one of the most important Jewish libraries (in the Bodleian, etc.). None other than one of the heroes of the Austrian army, Prince Eugene, contributed to enrich this library. Jewish books that he collected on his military campaigns were delivered to Samuel Oppenheimer, and from him, they passed to David Oppenheim and served as the base of his collection. Wertheimer, who was originally hired by Oppenheimer, had built up a flourishing business at the same time, and together they worked, for example, to fund a loan to finance the War of the

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Spanish Succession. At the beginning of the century, Wertheimer was already the richest Jew in the states of Central Europe and known as the “Jewish Kaiser.” Like David Oppenheim, Wertheimer was also a learned rabbi who had served in communities of Hungary, and both were known as the most senior rabbis and notables. The summer after Samuel Oppenheimer’s death, the Emperor Leopold I awarded Wertheimer, in return for his invaluable services to the empire, the official title of the First Imperial Agent. He and his son Wolf and the members of their family received protection, valuable gifts, and a long series of residence privileges, freedom of movement, licenses to trade, and the freedom to practice their religion without hindrance. Of course, what determined the hierarchical relations between the heads of the government in Vienna and the Court Jew were primarily business interests. There was not yet any echo of natural and universal human rights, and the privileges also went no further than the limitations of an arrangement that promised, by the grace of the emperor, protection in return for vital services to the state. Nevertheless, in the document that was signed on August 29, 1703, there was early recognition that at least a select group of Jews was worthy of freedom from discrimination and restrictions.31 Something of the personality and self-awareness of the agents of the army and the treasury who were associated with the court of the emperor in Vienna in the early eighteenth century appears in the portraits of Samuel Oppenheimer and Samson Wertheimer. The two portraits do not conceal their Jewish identity, which is shown by their beards and head coverings, but they also fit in well with absolutist baroque culture. Like the painting of Louis XIV, these portraits display the personality of powerful men who inspire respect. Richard Cohen, who examined the etching of Oppenheimer, which was commissioned by one of his agents in Hungary shortly after his death, attributed considerable importance to it at the dawn of the processes of secularization among the Jews of Europe. He stated that the portrait of Oppenheimer was the first to display a Jewish man’s secular achievements.32 Selma Stern clearly formulated the mentality of these select and privileged Jews who were already standing on the threshold of the modern age—“They  .  .  . took on certain qualities which were characteristic of aristocratic society of that period: an exaggerated Ichgefuehl, an egoism which found satisfaction only in ceaseless activity and in personal success, and an extraordinary degree of self-confidence.”33 Glikl, who was closely connected with these elites, also knew how to decipher the ethos that motivated them.34 Like them, she aspired to social and economic mobility, and, together with her first husband, she assigned herself the task and goal of “doing well” in life.35 This ambition is revealed both in her

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vigorous and restless activity in business and in the huge effort she invested to marry her children as high as possible on the social ladder, which is to say, as close as possible to the families of the respected and wealthy Court Jews. The wedding of every child required a great deal of money. Glikl, as we have seen, derived an abundance of pleasure from the marriage of her eldest daughter, Tsipor, to the son of the Court Jew from Cleve, Eliahu Gumpertz, and a few years later the Hamel couple almost obtained the daughter of the richest and most famous Jew of all, Samuel Oppenheimer, for their son Nathan. To their distress, because of a series of upsets, the marriage did not take place, and they missed the opportunity of becoming Oppenheimer’s in-laws and thus to continue climbing the ladder of prestige and family connections. Floods that disrupted communication between Vienna and Frankfurt delayed delivery of the bride’s dowry, and the groom’s parents mistakenly assumed that Oppenheimer had changed his mind about the betrothal, so they committed themselves to an inferior marriage connection, though it was still among the Court Jews. As Glikl recounted it: Another match that was propose, this one was practically agreed upon, was with the daughter of the distinguished R. Samuel Oppenheimer, but God delayed it so that it never came about, since the parents on both sides were supposed to deposit the dowries with my pious brother-in-law, our master and teacher R. Itzik Segal in Frankfurt. We always had several thousand in precious stones on deposit with him, and the previously mentioned distinguished R. Samuel was also supposed to send his dowry to Frankfurt, which he did. But it was wintertime, a big flood delayed the delivery of the dowry, and it was fourteen days overdue.

The confirmation from Frankfurt that the money had been deposited came too late, and Nathan was already engaged to another woman. Glikl managed only with difficulty to hide, even in her memoirs, what her family saw as an unforgivable error. Glikl reconciled herself to the other engagement, and she consoled herself that her in-law “Eliahu [Balin] was known as a trustworthy man among Jews and non-Jews alike.” But she also regretted the loss: “Had Providence seen fit to give this couple a happy fate, with success—like the esteemed Reb Samuel, who rises up and succeeds every day, things would have been fine.”36 Glikl continued to follow Samuel Oppenheimer’s career closely, and his success was a model for her. She was pleased when her son Nathan became at least related to the notables in Vienna, and enjoyed business connections with Oppenheimer and his son, but these, too, went awry: in 1697, Oppenheimer and his son were arrested on false charges that they had plotted to eliminate their

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partner, Samson Wertheimer, and Nathan was unable to redeem the promissory notes in his possession. The affair threatened to bring financial disaster down on the family, and Glikl decided to try to rescue her son from the crisis of his debt and the freezing of his credit by immediately going to Vienna from the fair in Leipzig, where she was staying, to ask the help of the other senior Court Jew, Samson Wertheimer, “who was our good friend at the time.” However, in a short time news reached Leipzig that “the previously mentioned gentlemen had been released from jail,” and they immediately transferred the money to repay all their loans. The crisis was averted, but Glikl complained about this dependence upon the great Court Jews, and she wrote in bitter criticism. Even though those notables paid all the expenses, “they will never be able to repay us for the fright, trouble, and worry they gave us.”37 She had a much closer connection with Samson Wertheimer following her son Zanwill’s marriage to the daughter of Moses Bamberg, who was the brother-in-law of the “notable” she admired so much both as a learned rabbi and as a Court Jew with capital and status. In the last year of the seventeenth century, they even exchanged personal letters. Wertheimer was involved in arranging the marriage connection, and he knew the groom, Zanwill, who did business in Vienna, and in great admiration he invited Glikl to enjoy his protection and to expand her business to the capital city of the empire. When he heard that Glikl was about to leave the fair in Leipzig and travel to Bamberg for the wedding, which had been set for the first day of Tammuz (June 28, 1699), Wertheimer hastened to warn her that serious riots against the Jews had broken out in that city, and he advised her to leave there as soon as possible and go to Vienna and stay with him: “Then I received a letter from the distinguished R. Rabbi Samson saying that due to the great rage against the Jews in Hamburg [should be: Bamberg], I should go from the wedding to Vienna and stay in his house, where he would give me two of his best rooms. And any business I wished to conduct, I had his permission. Toward this end I received from him a valid imperial laissez-passer.38 In the end, she did not accept the invitation and go to Vienna, and thereby she might have missed the opportunity to avoid the fate that lay in store for her in Metz and to strengthen her position as an independent businesswoman. Glikl envied and admired a pair of Court Jews from Berlin, dealers in diamonds and jewelry, Jost Liebmann (1640–1702), whom Glikl knew by the name of Judah Berlin, and his wife, Esther Liebmann (1645–1714). The life of this couple, whose business was so successful at the end of the seventeenth century in the service of the prince elector of Brandenburg and later, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, in his service when he became King Frederick I of

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Prussia, appears to resemble that of Haim and Glikl Hamel. They were almost the same age, they worked together as a couple in advancing trade and concern for their family, and, after the husbands’ death, their widows continued in business on their own. However, Glikl regarded Jost Liebmann as someone who owed his success to her own husband, and with more of a hint of envy she found it hard to see how a man who had begun his career as a minor agent and partner, who had been employed by them, and who traveled with them and for them to fairs, for example, buying merchandise in Amsterdam and selling it in Danzig, ultimately became one of the richest Jews in Germany. Unlike other Court Jews, Jost and Esther Liebmann avoided risky deals connected with military supplies and loans to rulers. They specialized in precious stones and earned their vast wealth by nurturing the splendid life of luxury and wealth of the princes and the king of the Hohenzollern dynasty. They translated their success into control of the young community of Berlin, which already numbered nearly a thousand. The Liebmann family established a synagogue in their house and presented their status with ostentation. When Jost Liebmann traveled from Berlin to Cleve in a carriage hitched to twelve horses, he demonstrated his feeling of aristocratic freedom by passing through all the customs stations without halting, as he presented the special permit that entitled him to free passage.39 Glikl attributed some of this success to herself: she and her husband had helped him take his first steps in commerce, and “all those who had business dealings with us became as rich as kings.”40 She remembered how he had come to them as her husband’s relative and immediately left an impression: “He was very knowledgeable and astute in business too, very sharp. My husband, of blessed memory, says to me: “Gliklichen, what do you think of our employing this young man and sending him to Danzig?”41 Ultimately, Liebmann’s ambition led to a dispute between the partners and they parted ways, leaving the Hamel couple with the heavy feeling that he had deceived them. From the distance of time, Glikl still related to him with suspicion, as someone who did not stand out in his integrity and who had taken money from them illicitly, but in the end she was impressed by his success, and after she was received with royal honor in their home in Berlin, she forgave the distress he had caused them. Their rich hospitality on the Sabbath made a huge impression on her: “If I were to write of all the honors shown me by . . . everyone in Berlin, especially the distinguished R. Judah [Jost Liebmann] and his wife [Esther], I could never describe it in full. Although R. Judah was at odds with all the Viennese [families who had come to Berlin from Vienna], he nevertheless sent over the most expensive sweetmeats imaginable for the Sabbath and hosted a wonderful

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meal in my honor.”42 Perhaps, Glikl reflected, one should learn about the vicissitudes of fate and the ways of Providence from his brilliant career: “How human affairs change over time. God, blessed be He, makes ladders, lifting one up, causing another to descend.” The story of his life was a model of success: “R. Judah came to us with nothing at all, and God, blessed be He, helped him so much that I believe even one hundred thousand reichsthaler banco would not suffice to buy him out now; he enjoys such business and esteem from his Excellency the Kurfürst [Duke and Prince Elector Frederick III], that I believe that if he continues to prosper in this way, and if God, blessed be He, does not object, he will die when his time comes as the richest man in all Ashkenaz.”43 She herself never achieved any of the titles she desired. Her wealth did not come near to the hundred thousand reichsthaler of the men of great wealth, and she was not known as a “Court Jewess” like Esther Liebmann. However, she completely shared the values of this Jewish aristocracy. When she wrote about the greatness of Jost Liebmann in her memoirs, saying that he was held in “aestimatio” by the ruler of Brandenburg–Prussia, in her Yiddish memoirs Glikl used a term taken from the vocabulary of absolutism and the baroque to capture the ethos of the Court Jew. Thus, she revealed the extent to which the Court Jews participated in the world in which people with ability and talent sought to fulfill their ambitions in the most grandiose way possible and to obtain an honorable and splendid status for themselves and those close to them by making aristocratic connections with men of authority. One cannot mistake the very clear measures of success: wealth, a flourishing business network, and connections of trust and estimation with the ruler’s court. Glikl had exactly those hopes for success. The desire to rise up and succeed appears several times in her memoirs, and she also evaluated the story of her life according to those criteria of ascending the scale of wealth and status as the motivating force of life. But in the second half of 1700, she saw with disappointment that her place on the hierarchy of mobility was far from her aspirations. While Jost and Esther Liebmann succeeded in climbing up to the highest rungs of the ladder of success, she had descended to one of the lower rungs. After years when she had been able to hold her own and not slacken in the effort to be someone who rises up every day, she found herself in retreat. In the spring she was in Baiersdorf and relished her son Moses’s splendid wedding. She went on to Frankfurt, where, as mentioned before, “I was given every honor a woman could possibly get,” and she continued to Fürth to complete the liquidation of her business. Then, in the company of some friends, she set out on a

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“very beautiful” and enjoyable journey in the direction of Metz.44 However, after she stood under the marriage canopy with her second husband, a harsh feeling of humiliation gnawed at her, like a prince deposed from his throne or a noblewoman shunted to the sidelines. All at once, she lost her status and honor as an independent businesswoman in charge of a splendid family. Hertz Levi isolated her from his business, most of her friends and relatives were far away, and in her new house people related to her with suspicion and restricted her. Just when Esther Liebmann reached the peak of her power in Berlin, Glikl was no longer on the track of ambition and achievement. Within a short time, she was also to discover that her second husband’s economic situation was not as secure as she had thought. Humiliation and blows to their honor were occasionally the lot of wealthy Court Jews. Indeed, this happened to Esther Liebmann herself, a year before her death, when she found herself in prison and dependent on the favor of the king of Prussia. It also happened to Behrend Lehmann at the height of his success, when Augustus the Strong publicly humiliated him, though in the past he had placed full trust in him and acknowledged that he had become the king of Poland with Lehmann’s aid. At a ball that he held in his palace in Warsaw, as a joke, or perhaps with the inspiration of his partner in the Great Northern War, Czar Peter the Great, Augustus decided to remove his Court Jew’s beard. Peter regarded the removal of beards as a transition from barbarism and backwardness to progress and Russian integration into Europe, and he forced it upon his subjects. Perhaps the Saxon king of Poland thought that Behrend would lose some of his Jewish identity when his beard was removed. Behrend Lehman’s feeling of humiliation at that moment is evident only in his plea to Augustus the Strong at least to let him remove his beard by himself. But the king took pleasure in his violent and symbolic act and was unwilling to heed Lehmann, who promised that, if Augustus desisted, he would pay Augustus five thousand thalers.45 As we shall see, Samuel Oppenheimer, the most senior Court Jew, suffered an even greater humiliation—indeed danger that his life’s work would collapse—in the summer of 1700.

Note s 1. Germain Bazin, Baroque and Rococo (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), p. 148. 2. C. B. A. Behrens, The Ancien Regime (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), p. 85.

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3. See Arthur Hassall, Louis XIV and the Zenith of the French Monarchy (New York, 1895), pp. 337–338. See also Harold Nicolson, The Age of Reason: The Eighteenth Century in Reason and Violence (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1961), pp. 17–18. The quotation from Saint-Simon is translated from vol. III, ch. 3 of the Mémoires, ­https://​­f r​.­w ikisource​.­org​/­w iki​/­M​%­C3​%­A9moires​_(­Saint​ -­Simon)/Tome_3/3. 4. See T. C. W. Blanning, ed., The Eighteenth Century: Europe 1688–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 192–199; Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 279–282. 5. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 293. 6. See Eobald Toze, The Present State of Europe, trans. Thomas Nugent, vol. 1 (London, 1770), p. 86. 7. See Nicholas Henderson, Prince Eugene of Savoy (London: History Book Club, 1966); Hanne Egghardt, Prinz Eugen: Feldherr, Staatsmann, Mäzen (Wien: Haymon Verlag, 2010). 8. See H. W. Koch, A History of Prussia (London: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1978), pp. 67–69; Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, pp. 228–229. 9. David Kauffmann, Die Familie Gumperz (Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1907), pp. 118–119. 10. See Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 282–287. 11. See Heinz Graupe, Die Statuten der drei Gemeinden Altona, Hamburg und Wandsbek, vol. 2 (Hamburg: Hans Christian Verlag, 1973), p. 133. 12. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 59. 13. Von Flemming’s impressions of King Augustus are quoted in Tony Sharp, Pleasure and Ambition: The Life, Loves, and Wars of Augustus the Strong (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), p. 257. 14. Paraphrased from Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 77–78. 15. Josef Meisel, “Behrend Lehman und der sächsische Hof,” Jahrbuch der jüdisch-literarischen Gesellschaft 16 (1924): 227–252 (quote on p. 240). 16. Relationis Historiae Semstralis Continuatio (Frankfur am Main, 1701), p. 90. 17. Sharp, Pleasure and Ambition, pp. 165–185. 18. Ibid., p. 261. 19. On Behrend Lehman see: Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 74–85; Heinrich Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat: Geschichte und System der Hoffaktoren an deutschen Fürstenhöfen im Zeitalter des Absolutismus, nach archivalischen Quellen, vol. 2 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1953); Manfred R. Lehmann, “Behrend Lehmann, The King of Court Jews,” in Sages and Saints, ed. Leo Jung (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1987), pp. 197–217; Lucia Raspe, “Individueller Ruhm and killektiver Nutzen: Berend Lehmann als Mäzen,” in Hofjuden—Ökonomie und Interkulturalität: Die jüdische Wirtschaftselite im ­18​.­Jahrhundert, ed. Rotraud Ries J. Friedrich Battenberg (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2002), pp. 181–208; Berndt Strobach, Priviligiert in engen Grenzen: Neue Beiträge zu Leben, Wirken und Umfeld des Halberstädter Hofjuden Berend Lehmann, 2 vols. (Berlin: Epubli, 2011).

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20. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantalism, p. 136; Cathleen Bürgelt, “Der jüdischer Hoffaktor Berend Lehmann und die Finanzierung der polnischen Königskrone für Augst den Starken,” Medaon 1 (2007), ­w ww​. ­Medaon​.­de. 21. Letter in French dated March 18, 1703: Meisel, “Behrend Lehman und der Sächische Hof,” p. 244. 22. Vivian B. Mann and Richard I. Cohen, eds., From Court Jews to the Rothschilds: Art, Patronage, and Power 1600–1800 (Munich: Prestel, 1996), pp. 66, 191. 23. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot (Frankfurt an der Oder, 5557). See Max Frudenthal, “Zum Jubiläum des ersten Talmuddruks in Deutschland,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 42 (1898): 80–89, 134–143; Mann and Cohen, eds., From Court Jews to the Rothschilds, pp. 205–206. 24. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, quoted from pp. 65–77, 287 of the Hebrew edition. Yosef Kaplan points out the similarity between the Court Jews of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the Jews who played similar roles in the Middle Ages: Yosef Kaplan, “Court Jews before the Hofjuden,” in From Court Jews to the Rothschilds, ed. Vivian B. Mann and Richard I. Cohen (Munich: Prestel, 1996), pp. 11–25. On the historical contexts of Court Jews, see Michael Graetz, “Court Jews in Economics and Politics,” in Mann and Cohen, eds., From Court Jews to the Rothschilds, pp. 27–43. 25. Ben Zion Dinur, At the Turn of the Generations [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1955), pp. 22–24. 26. Hannah Arendt, “Antisemitism,” in The Jewish Question, ed. J. Kohn and R. H. Feldman (New York: Schocken, 2007); Hannah Arendt, “Privileged Jews,” Jewish Social Review 8 (1940): 3–30. 27. Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 10–12. 28. Arendt, “Antisemitism,” p. 79. 29. Max Grunwald, Samuel Oppenheimer und sein Kreis (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1913). 30. Israel Taglich, Nachlässe der Wiener Juden im 17. Und 18. Jahrhundert (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1917), p. 15. 31. See David Kaufmann, Samson Wertheimer der Oberhoffactor und Landesrabbiner (Vienna, 1888), pp. 29–33; Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 86–93. 32. Richard I. Cohen and Vivian Mann, “Melding Worlds: Court Jews and the Arts of the Baroque,” in Mann and Cohen, eds., From Court Jews to the Rothschilds, pp. 97–99, 208. 33. Stern, The Court Jew, p. 235. 34. On her encounter with Court Jews and the deep impression made on Glikl by their success and way of life, see Natalie Zemon Davis, “Riches and Dangers: Glikl bas Leib on Court Jews,” in Mann and Cohen, eds., From Court Jews to the Rothschilds, pp. 45–57. 35. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 155.

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36. Ibid., p. 167–168 (the translation is based also on the Hebrew edition, Glikl, Zikhronot, pp. 292–297). 37. Ibid., pp. 253–255. 38. Ibid., pp. 237–239. 39. Stern, The Court Jew, p. 236. 40. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 134. On Jost and Esther (née Schulhof) Liebmann, see Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 49–55; Deborah Hertz, “The Despised Queen of Berlin Jewry, or the Life and Times of Esther Liebmann,” in Mann and Cohen, eds., From Court Jews to the Rothschilds, pp. 67–77. 41. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 102. 42. Ibid., p. 209. 43. Ibid., pp. 133–134. 44. Ibid., pp. 272–275. 45. On this incident, which took place on March 9, 1699, see Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat 2, p. 173.

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JEWS IN THE NEWS The Angry Masses, a Holy Society, and “Judaism Unmasked”

An incident that occurr ed in the streets of Vienna on Wednesday, July 21, four days before the fast of Tisha B’Av (the Ninth Day of Ab), between a Jewish servant and a Christian chimney sweep led to serious riots. A furious mob broke into Samuel Oppenheimer’s large and splendid home at 1 Bauernmarkt Street, only a hundred meters from the impressive Gothic St. Stephen’s Cathedral and very close to the Peterskirche (St. Peter’s Church). The eager and alert editors of one of the most important news journals in Germany included a detailed report of this dramatic event in its second semester edition of 1700. They revealed it to a large and curious readership, also giving it extraordinary significance beyond a local anti-Jewish attack.1 Under the headline “Historical Description of Stories That Should Be Especially Remembered,” the journalist of Relationis Historicae, which was published semiannually in Frankfurt, with a hundred closely printed pages in each issue, reported on everything from tensions in royal courts and international conflicts to robberies and murders, as well as sensational stories that came from remote villages. With the self-importance of those dwelling in the center of things, looking out at everything around them from the free commercial city of Frankfurt am Main, and with impressive ambition to present their readers with a kind of universal contemporary history, the reporters satisfied the thirst for news and took note of the frequent changes occurring at the dawn of the new century. Those attending the Easter fair in the previous year learned from the newspaper about the consequences of the Treaty of Karlowitz, which had been signed the year before (1699) between Austria and the Ottoman Empire; about the first battles between Sweden and Denmark, which marked the beginning

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of the Great Northern War; and about one of the reforms of Peter the Great, who instituted the change to the Gregorian calendar in Russia on January 1, 1700, to draw closer to the states of Central and Western Europe. Readers were amazed to hear about natural disasters such as the earthquake in Sienna, Italy, on February 6, 1700, which destroyed many houses and caused great damage, and about the great fire in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the same month. They were invited to wonder at the sensational and strange story about a snake that had penetrated the body of a tailor’s wife in a village near Danzig and lived in her for a long time, and its offspring emerged from her stomach. And, with extensive coverage, with no less descriptive detail than in reports about other events, they were also informed about the riots that broke out in Vienna.

“To R e m in d [th e Je ws] How Th e y Na i l ed Je sus to th e Cross” The distinct boundaries between the identity of the Jews as Others within Christian society and culture did not necessarily give rise to Jewish “Ghettos” or prevent shared daily life. Even when, from time to time, animosity appeared, it was frequently mutual. The spark that set off the riots in Vienna in the summer of 1700 was apparently provocation that came in fact from a Jewish servant in the Oppenheimer home who possessed great self-confidence and believed that he shared the immunity of the powerful Court Jew. When the servant walked past a tavern that was on the other side of the street, he made fun of a chimney sweep. The latter, who was sitting and drinking beer with friends, pounded on a wooden bench in response, “as though to remind [the Jews] how they nailed Jesus to the cross.” Now it was the servant who was insulted, because of the calumny against the Jews and mention of the ancient accusation. He told the chimney sweep and his companions to stop pounding, and when they refused, he returned to the Oppenheimer home and asked the help of the guards who were permanently posted at the gate of the house where he served. When they tried to arrest the chimney sweep and take him to jail, he resisted, even when the guards whipped him. He called for help, people gathered immediately and started a fight, and this enabled the chimney sweep to escape. A Jew was looking out of a window of the house, and someone threw a stone at him. The tumult escalated, and a mob besieged the house, threw eggs and rocks, and stormed it. The windows of the house were broken, the gate was breached despite the effort to block the entry with wagons, and the house guards retreated under pressure. Then looters broke into the home of the wealthy Jew, the banker of the empire. They went from room to room, stealing

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silver, gold, and jewels and destroying expensive furniture, and went down to the wine cellar and smashed casks. In a desperate effort to drive the invaders out of his office, which was in fact the head office of the private bank that he administered in Vienna, in which were stored promissory notes, contracts, and thousands of other documents, Oppenheimer threw sacks of coins out of the window. However, this did not help, and the office, too, was plundered. The rioters tore account books and took with them almost every document they found, thinking they would be worth money.2 It is not difficult to imagine how Oppenheimer felt during those long hours. Like Behrend Lehmann, who suffered a stinging insult when his beard was brutally and publicly cut off by the Prince of Saxony and King of Poland, Oppenheimer encountered violence he was unable to prevent. Someone like him, who had known power and closeness to the imperial palace must have been particularly sensitive to the violent and humiliating invasion of his home and to the miserable situation, in which he, the honored and respected Court Jew, an elderly man who had just turned seventy, found himself. When he hid, shouted, pleaded with the mob not to harm him or his business documents, and tried to appease the angry mob that was besieging his house by scattering money, he saw the economic empire that he had established collapse before his eyes. However, the action of the guards of Vienna, who were summoned to suppress the riot, was swift and vigorous. They fired into the crowd, killing ten and wounding dozens, and when not even that halted the looting, they took five cannons from the emperor’s military warehouse, brought them to nearby Saint Peter’s Square, and placed the house under heavy guard. In the dead of night, when the rioting had died down, two leaders of the mob, the chimney sweep and his comrade the sword sharpener, were dragged from their beds and arrested. After a short trial, they were hanged from the iron grill on the window over the gate to Oppenheimer’s house. All day Thursday, their bodies remained hanging as a warning sign, and they were not taken down until the evening. The next day, Friday, July 23, a proclamation was circulated in the city demanding the return of the loot within three days, especially the promissory notes and business documents. A strict prohibition was imposed on jewelers and goldsmiths against the sale of stolen property. Anyone who voluntarily returned the silver, gold, furniture, and documents to the imperial court of justice would be pardoned, and whoever did not do so would receive severe corporal punishment. Though order was restored and some of the property was returned, the damage was still enormous. The furniture that was destroyed; the account books that were lost, which essentially wiped out financial debts; and the total loss to Oppenheimer’s property came to about a hundred thousand

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gulden. A week later, on July 30, an order was issued from the court of Leopold I to all his Austrian subjects, again confirming the imperial protection given to the Jewish families of Vienna. The emperor condemned the invasion of Oppenheimer’s home and the looting as disturbing the public peace and as rebellion against the government. He emphasized that the Jews under his protection were permitted to deal in commerce without suspicion or threat and that anyone who attacked them would be punished.3 The riots lasted less than a day, and no one in the Oppenheimer household suffered bodily injury. However, the dramatic report that could be read in the news almanac that was published in Frankfurt conveyed surprise, pointed out the danger affecting Court Jews, and revealed the ability of simple people to rise up and destabilize the situation. It was clear that this was not a local riot that struck a single house in Bauernmarkt Street, but it was an event affecting Jews in general. Indeed, the pounding on the wooden benches of the tavern not only recalled the accusation of the crucifixion, which had marked the Jews as a demonic group for centuries, but it also marked the boundary between the religions. Although no Jewish community had existed in Vienna for the previous thirty years, the exalted and influential position of the Court Jew still appeared to some Viennese to be a distortion of the existing order by someone who was regarded as different, alien, and inferior. Thus, the exchange of insults between the Jewish servant and the Christian chimney sweep could ignite a huge outbreak of rage focused on the home of the rich Court Jew who was relatively immune and who enjoyed privileges. Oppenheimer should not have been particularly surprised. He knew very well that many people found it difficult to accept his success in the emperor’s court and wanted him to be humiliated. Three years before the riots, Oppenheimer had been imprisoned with his son because of a false accusation, and he knew that some people in the imperial court were only waiting for the moment when they could strike at the relations of trust between him and Leopold I. Thus, for example, his son Emmanuel reported to him about the outburst of one of those officials at a meeting in Vienna in 1693: “Together with my cousin Moshe Epfinger, I entered the room of that wicked man, and he began by saying, ‘I will not rest until I bring your father and you to the gallows, because in my eyes you are thieves and dogs, and I want to throw you down the stairs.’”4 Even Prince Eugene, who was closely connected with Oppenheimer, complained that Jews with long beards were the ones who determined the fate of entire nations.5 Selma Stern saw the fury of the masses against Oppenheimer as a representative example of the tragic fate of Court Jews in general as a sign of the illusory quality of their success, making them victims of the political and economic

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system, and as an almost inevitable result of the enormous risks they took upon themselves as Jews involved up to their ears in the workings of the absolutist state.6 However, in the end, the protection of the emperor in this case was absolute. Whether motivated by fear of an uncontrolled mass uprising that threatened public order or by knowledge that he could not afford to lose the banker whose help he would need for the new war, the emperor and his officials took steps that ultimately suppressed the riots and guaranteed the life, security, and privileges enjoyed by Oppenheimer and his family. In the imperial court in Vienna, the reverberations of the prolonged and far more serious riots that had broken out in Bamberg in the second half of the previous year had not yet died down. These were “the great rage” against which Samson Wertheimer warned Glikl. In the early summer of 1699, because of a severe shortage of food and escalating prices, mobs attacked the Jews, broke into their houses, and plundered them, because of suspicion that the Jews had bought all the grain and were directly responsible for the famine. The riots spread to dozens of other places in the region of Franconia, and the palaces of nobles were also attacked, until soldiers sent by the bishop presiding in Bamberg restored order. Samuel Oppenheimer himself recovered relatively quickly, and his financial difficulties in the final years of his life derived less from the damages of the plundering of his house than from failure to collect payment on the many loans he had extended. A few months after the riots, he was already helping the Austrian army at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, and the emperor honored him with the title of Oberkriegsfactor (chief war agent). As for his Jewish servant, the one who had caused the provocation, having been insulted by the chimney sweep’s anti-Jewish gesture, he certainly no longer regarded himself as a victim, when just two days after the riots broke out he saw his Christian adversary’s body hanged publicly from the grill over the window of the house where he worked.

Bet w e en Lon don, Ber lin, a n d Sa n dom i er z In the summer of 1700, other events that were significant for the lives of the Jews occurred in various places in Europe at the outset of the new century. When Glikl arrived in Metz and married Hertz Levi, in mid-June, Behrend Lehmann traveled to the front of the Great Northern War on the Baltic Sea. As we shall see, just then in Central Europe a large group of Jews had organized themselves with the aim of moving to Jerusalem to greet the Messiah. At the same time, the Court Jews who supported them had begun to respond to the

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threat posed by a hostile book, Judaism Unmasked, by intervening with the emperor. Meanwhile, in London, six days after Glikl’s wedding, on Wednesday, June 23, an extraordinary ceremony took place. King William III invited the wealthy merchant and businessman Solomon de Medina (1650–1730) to his palace at Hampton Court and knighted him. Sir de Medina, a native of Bordeaux who settled in Amsterdam with his family and then moved to London, where he managed wide-ranging commercial business, was connected to the British East India Company, served as an agent of the merchant company of the Dutch Jews Machado and Pereira, and received loan contracts for supplies to the English army—mainly bread and grain—from the king. His close relations with the king had been recognized several months earlier when the king was invited to de Medina’s home in Richmond and ate at his table.7 De Medina was one of the first Jews in all of Europe to be granted membership in the aristocracy, and he remained the only one in England until Moses Montefiore was knighted nearly 150 years later. In the opinion of David Katz, the historian of English Jewry, this was a pivotal moment in the history of the community, which had been establish only a few decades earlier. The granting of de Medina’s aristocratic title “symbolized more than any other single event of the post-readmission period how acceptable the community itself had become.”8 The negative images and stereotypes did not disappear, however. Relations between the king and de Medina depended on their interests, and the visit to his home and the knighthood were not divorced from the problem of debts, which the monarchy found hard to repay. Nevertheless, the possibility of full integration in the modern state received symbolic expression. Like the Court Jew in Central Europe, Sir Solomon de Medina built up an economic empire, accumulated great wealth, and received preferential treatment in return for vital financial and commercial services. The number of Jews in London at the beginning of the century approached one thousand, fewer than in the Sephardic communities in Amsterdam and Hamburg, but the community was clearly thriving economically and depended on the vigorous, worldwide activity of traders on the stock market and merchants in the colonial trade in diamonds and sugar with India, America, and the Caribbean islands.9 This activity demanded initiative and boldness and, frequently, a degree of adventurousness. Thus, for example, at the time when Solomon de Medina received prestige and knighthood, the people of London were following the investigation and trial of the notorious Scottish pirate Captain William Kidd, who was imprisoned in the infamous Newgate Prison after his arrest in North America. The man who incriminated him was a Jew named Benjamin Franks, a diamond merchant the same age as de Medina, who had

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been impoverished after an earthquake in Jamaica and moved to New York. There for several years, he took part in Captain Kidd’s voyages on the Atlantic. At first, Franks hoped to reach India and establish an agency for trade in diamonds, which would function in parallel with his family in London. Afterward, he assisted Kidd and even attacked merchant ships with him, until he testified against him in the autumn of 1697 in the port of Bombay, upon leaving the pirate ship Adventure Galley. In early 1700, Franks fled from London and sailed to America, to avoid testifying against Kidd before Parliament. However, on the way, French pirates took over the ship he was sailing on, and this adventurous Jewish merchant was only liberated by the crew of a British ship at the end of April.10 The flourishing of London and the many opportunities for economic success in conditions of relative toleration attracted many Jews. Ashkenazi merchants from Hamburg and elsewhere joined the Sephardic community in London, but gradually they separated from it to establish their own community. Solomon de Medina was a loyal and active member of the community until he left in 1702 and settled permanently in Amsterdam. He contributed money, took part in the meetings of the parnasim (official community leaders), and was a partner in erecting the new and splendid synagogue of the Sephardic community in Bevis Marks, in the city of London. The cornerstone of the synagogue was laid in August 1700, and it was opened a year later, also symbolizing the firm establishment of the community. During the entire last decade of the previous century, the community had retained Rabbi Solomon Ayllon (1655–1728) to lead its religious life, but the parnasim, the members of the Mahamad (board of directors), had to defend him against his detractors again and again. He was accused of marrying a non-Jewish woman in his native Salonika, and it was insinuated that he was a Sabbatean. Indeed, while he was living in the Balkans, later on in the Land of Israel, and in his journeys among the communities of Italy, Ayllon was a Sabbatean and was in contact with several leaders of the movement, including Nathan of Gaza, who had been Shabbatai Zevi’s right-hand man. However, while he held the rabbinical office in London, Ayllon concealed this and gave no expression to it.11 On the eve of Passover 1700, the rabbi announced his resignation and prepared to travel to the far better-established Amsterdam community, where he had been offered a rabbinical position. Perhaps he was sick of the disputes with Rabbi Jacob Pidanki and his son Abraham, who harassed him and refused to accept his authority, or perhaps the new position attracted him. It could also be that he decided to leave London because he was frustrated by his failure to control those who rebelled against religious discipline. In a letter sent several

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years before his resignation to a rabbi he revered, Jacob ben Aaron Sasportas of Amsterdam, he referred with disappointment and anger to the members of the community who displayed indifference to the prohibitions of the religion and seldom attended synagogue services. Rabbi Ayllon condemned them vociferously for “disobeying the word of God and maintaining their rebellion, violating the Sabbath and festivals in public, and [they] do not believe in the words of our Sages of blessed memory, and do not heed our decrees.” He regretted that they were detracting from the image of the Jews in the eyes of the Christians, and he cast doubt on the Jewish identity of those “sinners of Israel with their bodies.” More than anything, however, he complained that his aggressive religious policy, aimed at distancing them as much as possible from “the kosher Jews” of the community was not supported sufficiently by the parnasim. “If the leaders of the holy community obeyed me,” Ayllon wrote, proposing severe methods of punishment, “they would ostracize the cursed ones who violate the Sabbath and separate them completely from the Jewish community, to forbid eating their bread and circumcising their sons even on weekdays and not to bury them even at a distance of four ells. . . . And maybe they would turn away from their evil way, because of the shame, and they would not violate the Sabbath in public.” So long as these steps were not taken, it was no wonder they mocked rabbis like him, “and not only do they not leave their evil way, but they also mock and insult the angels of God.”12 The libertine literature that flourished in the great and lively city of London reported that Jews participated in the hedonistic life of the capital, whose population was already approaching six hundred thousand. The city was plagued with poverty, crime, illness, drunkenness, and prostitution, and the seductions were many. In his frivolous and gossipy book about the pleasures of London, published in 1700, satirist Tom Brown included a fictional letter sent to “Miss Lucy,” one of the women of Covent Garden who offered herself to wealthy men, when she chose a Jewish lover. The Christian man whom she excluded from her life and who felt betrayed is amazed that she left him for a Jew, and in the coarse and hostile language of the street, he smarts under the insult but also shows curiosity about Jewish sexuality: So then, I find, ’tis neither circumcision nor uncircumcision that avails any thing with you, but money, which belongs to all religions; [. . .] and you fall down before the golden calf which, the rabbis say, was some excuse for their idolatry. Upon this footing, I’ll allow you to grant some favours to your Old Testament spark, so long as his pot of manna continues full, and you find

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him, like the Land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey. [. . .] I long [. . .] to be informed whether Aaron’s bells make better music than ours.13

As we shall see, Aailion’s successor, H.akham David Nieto, who came to London from Livorno, had to face quite a few challenges in coping with permissiveness as well as with skeptical criticism of religion. Religious control would be from then until the end of the eighteenth century an issue of primary concern to rabbis, preachers, and community leaders. Was it possible to impose discipline and halakhic and ethical norms when temptations and pleasures were so readily available and the desire to be liberated from discipline was so prevalent? Ordinances restricting luxuries and ostentatious dress were adopted in many communities, justified by fear of arousing the envy of the Christians. In Metz, for example, a special effort was made to restrict men and women from attending parties together and to prevent mixed dancing.14 These items characterize the Western European path of Jewish integration in the big cities. In comparison to other places, the official authorities of the state intervened very little in their lives and allowed them to develop in a tolerant climate. In contrast, the news coming from the communities that arose in the principate of Brandenburg, shortly before it became the kingdom of Prussia, were quite different. They expressed the Central European model of Jewish existence under suspicious absolute regimes, which employed severe, selective, and very restrictive systems of control, which, in turn, weakened autonomous authority. The renewed acceptance of the Jews there in 1671 was accompanied by many limiting conditions; it was intended for only fifty families and was open for reconsideration in twenty years. In 1700, governmental officials of Prince Elector Frederick III reexamined the legal status of the Jews, their obligation to pay taxes, and their rights to engage in commerce. While they encouraged the economic activity of wealthy families such as that of Jost and Esther Liebmann, they also observed the growth of new communities with apprehension. Restriction on the number of Jews now became the permanent policy of the Prussian regime. In 1700, when the prince elector became aware that seventy Jewish families were living in Berlin and that more than six hundred Jews were living in Halberstadt, as well as a few hundred in Königsberg, Frankfurt an der Oder, and in a few other places, he issued directives demanding closer supervision and the limitation of the number of Jews who possessed privileges, letters of protection entitling them to live, move, and trade freely. To this end, the leaders of the communities were co-opted and made to serve as an arm of governmental supervision. This deep involvement was, among other things, a response to an appeal to the prince elector when

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internal conflicts increased between the Riess and Veit families, who had been expelled from Vienna, and the Liebmann family, who found it impossible to agree about leadership positions and places of public prayer. In this manner, the power of the chief parnasim was augmented, and a Jewish aristocracy was formed, supported by the government and having an oligarchic character. In a series of decrees signed by Frederick III between January 24 and December 7, 1700, the parnasim were required to see to the payment of the annual protection duties, to make sure foreign Jews and beggars did not infiltrate and remain in the city for more than three days, and to stand beside the officials with the aim of finally expelling those “who will become a burden on the public and on the Jewish community.” An order signed on November 13 added a special tax to the existing burden, eighty-five thousand thalers per year, intended to reinforce the brigade of twelve thousand soldiers, joining in Prussia’s war effort in the Great Northern War.15 In Southern Europe, the pressure on the Jews in Italy increased. On January 6, 1700, the leaders of the Venice community resigned after the Senate demanded enormous sums of money, and the debts that had become a prolonged problem had become too heavy to bear.16 About thirty thousand Jews lived in the various states of Italy at the beginning of the century. Except for the three thousand Jews in the thriving community of merchants in Livorno, they had been living in ghettos since the sixteenth century. The Catholics, whose strength was increasing, demanded the separation of Jews and Gentiles as much as possible, control over books by means of censorship, and preaching for conversion. In closed and crowded neighborhoods in Venice, Ferarra, Mantua, Padua, Rome, and elsewhere, the organized life of the community included Italian, Ashkenazi, and Sephardi Jews. Italy was home to some of the most important centers of Hebrew printing in the world and a rich culture. Robert Bonfil describes the unique Italian model of the age of the ghetto as an “intermediary situation between acceptance and expulsion,” reflecting the ambivalent attitude toward the Jews in the period between the Middle Ages and the modern period: “to separate them without rejecting them, and, if you will, to accept them on condition that they self-segregate.”17 Although the policy of the ghettos was a palpable expression of extreme hostility toward the Jews in the municipal space, it also made possible a high degree of communal autonomy, but not necessarily isolation. Extending upon Bonfil’s conclusions, David Ruderman pointed out: “Despite the explicit aim of the architects of the ghetto to insulate Christian culture from the alleged pollution of its Jewish minority, the closure paradoxically opened up new opportunities for cultural dialogue and interaction with the Christian majority as

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Jews saw themselves a more organic and natural part of their environment than ever before.”18 In the past, Italian Jewry in the eighteenth century was seen as sunk in crisis in comparison to the splendid era of the Renaissance, but now attention has been drawn to the signs of growth and prosperity such as the developed silk industry in Mantua and rich productivity in Halakha and belles lettres.19 Because of the extensive freedom granted by the Medici rulers, the nazione ebrea (Hebrew nation) of Livorno thrived. Its members, who were not required to live in a ghetto, as mentioned above, integrated into the local society and culture to form a fertile symbiosis, and they were imbued with a feeling of security and identification with the Tuscan homeland.20 In the medical school in Padua, in a cosmopolitan atmosphere, for decades a unique encounter took place between the Jewish residents of the ghetto and students who came from the communities of the Western Sephardic Diaspora, Germany, and Poland who were exposed to European science. Ruderman attributes far-reaching significance to the “Paduan experience”: “From the perspective of Jewish cultural history, Padua’s medical facility was more than a center for training Jewish physicians. It was also a major vehicle for the diffusion of secular culture, especially scientific culture, within the pre-emancipatory Jewish communities of Europe.”21 Everyone in Europe suffered from precarious security and were quite vulnerable, but the violence toward the Jews was accompanied by hostility toward the members of an alien religion. In Padua of the early century, the Jews continued to mark the tenth of Elul (the last Hebrew month) every year in memory of the pogrom against the Jews of the ghetto that took place in 1684 during the war between the Republic of Venice, on the Austrian side, and the Turkish threat. In Franconia, they were still recovering from the pogroms of the summer of 1699, which began in Bamberg, and there, too, they instituted a memorial day. In Vienna, as noted, the home of Samuel Oppenheimer was attacked, and in Prague, a woman named Jetel Ginzburg was murdered cruelly. She had been on her way to sell jewelry, and her body was thrown into the river. The murderer, Johann Pitztum, was not executed until October 29, 1700, a year and a half after committing the crime. Mass riots broke out to free him and his accomplice from the verdict.22 Reports even more hostile and violent arrived from Poland. The presence there of about three hundred thousand Jews was a decisive factor that determined their patterns of life and consciousness of self. Unlike the Jews of Berlin, the Jews of Poland enjoyed extensive autonomy. They possessed authorization to live in the private cities of the magnates, assuring them protection and many possibilities for earning a living, and supervision was much more lenient. Moshe Rosman has shown,

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for example, to what degree Moses Fortis and Israel Rabinowitz, the business managers of the giant estates owned by the Sieniawski and Czartoryski families, were similar to the Court Jews in Germany. They served as managers and commercial agents, but they assured the interests of the Jews and were patrons of communities and of Torah scholars. Their wealth, their closeness to the rulers, and their high status strengthened the feeling of stability. Gershon Hundert concludes that the “Polish Jews and their neighbors felt that the Jewish community was a rooted and permanent one.”23 This self-awareness had two contradictory meanings. On the one hand, it made a full Jewish life possible, in a large network of communities, leadership in district and national institutions, and a strong connection between wealthy Jewish families and the magnates who ruled large estates and private cities. On the other hand, the friction between Jews and Christians and their frequent encounters aroused hostility because of economic competition and religious fanaticism. A glance at the register of the supracommunal organization the Council of Four Lands regarding 1700 reveals, for example, the strength of Jewish autonomy, as the committee intervened in severe conflicts between one community and another, in bitter personal struggles over control and leadership, and in the punishment, for example, of a leader of the Posen community who was accused of embezzlement, of informing to the authorities, and of corruption.24 A great deal of self-assurance was shown in an incident in a village in the north of the Volhynia, when a soldier from a cavalry brigade arrived there in 1700 to collect taxes and met with violence on the part of the disgruntled Jews who attacked him, stole his uniform and weapon, and drove him out in disgrace.25 However, this stable and self-confident existence was also disturbed by harsh events. The Jews of Poland had recovered from the severe blow dealt by the revolt of the Cossacks in the mid-seventeenth century, but, as Gershon Hundert notes, the first decade of the eighteenth century was a time of almost absolute chaos in Poland–Lithuania, mainly because of the suffering caused to everyone by the years of war against the Swedes.26 The wide-ranging suffering was exacerbated by the hostility of the peasants, the city folk, and the aristocracy, in addition to the fanaticism of the Catholic Church. The members of the higher aristocracy had a clear interest in granting protection to the Jews under their sovereignty, but they also believed in the Jews’ cunning character and religious inferiority. According to Hundert, the well-organized and wealthy Catholic Church was then confronting a growing and expanding Jewish population, and it could not accept their control over urban life. It responded with a murderous theological, public, and symbolic attack: “While the Church nurtured Jewish separatism through libelous accusations and judicial murders, it simultaneously

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enhanced the degree of Jewish integration into the economy of the state, thereby contributing to Jews’ security.”27 In 1700, the Jewish merchant Alexander Berek, who made a living by transporting grain down the rivers to the port of Danzig, was awaiting execution as decreed against him by the Polish Crown Tribunal in Lublin. His body had already been broken by severe torture, but he never admitted to the charge made against him. Berek had been arrested for the murder for the purpose of religious ritual of a Christian girl less than three years old whose body had been found in a church at the end of the winter of 1698 in the city of Sandomierz (southeast Poland in West Galicia). The girl’s mother told the investigators at first that the death had been natural, but after undergoing torture, at the initiative of the bishop of Cracow, she accused Alexander Berek and his wife of mutilating the body, saying that she had given the girl to the Bereks while she was still alive, “and when I got her back from them later on she was dead, without one eye, and wounded.” This was one of the most grievous instances of the blood libel in Poland, and the main force behind it was the senior Church official Stefan Żuchowski. He produced evidence against Berek and claimed that “the Jews need Christian blood like hungry dogs.” He attacked what he presented as a Jewish takeover of trade in his city, and he incited war against the Jews, who drew their power and thirst for Christian blood from Satan. Regarding the tortures imposed on the accused, Żuchowski wrote: “Some people believe it was necessary to torture not only the body that was stretched on the rack but also to burn its shadow with candles, because it is not unlikely that Satan hid the tortured body behind the shadow, and this substitute for him was stretched on the rack.” Four years passed before the verdict was carried out in Lublin, with extreme cruelty: the accused was beheaded, and his body was cut into four pieces and placed on view, mounted on pikes, on the roadside.28 Within a few years, in the same place, another blood libel arose, and Żuchowski stood behind it as well. Along with the distress caused by the war, a new chapter in religious fanaticism began in Poland, and in parallel with a wave of dozens of witch trials, sharp arrows were directed particularly at the Jews from the beginning of the century. Several blood libel trials were held, ending in murder.29 Poland was no longer a desired destination for Jews from other places, and one measure of their distress was the migration of Torah scholars to Central and Western Europe. As Rosman shows, Ashkenaz [Germany] became a promised land, because it offered better conditions, and it was “flooded with Polish rabbis and religious functionaries, who competed fiercely for posts no less prestigious than the important positions in Poland.”30

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“I m m edi ately a fter H e A r r i v e s in Jerusa l e m H e W i ll Go to th e W e ster n Wa ll, a n d Th en th e M e ssi a h W i ll Com e” The news about the Jews in the Frankfurt annual for 1700 was highly partial, and it did not mention events in London, Venice, Prague, or Sandomierz. But alongside the item about the riots against Oppenheimer in the center of Vienna, the readers were asked to take note that something far more important, dramatic, and exciting was taking place among the Jews of Europe. A convoy of Jews known as Hasidim (pietists), who came mainly from Poland and Lithuania, was organizing, led by a charismatic and inspiring rabbi named Judah H.asid. They were planning to go to Jerusalem, and they were infused with messianic expectations. In the opinion of the author of the item, at the beginning of the century no less than “the new hope of the Jews, which they disseminate widely, for the reestablishment of a Jewish state” had arisen.31 Few Jews journeyed to the Land of Israel or settled there permanently, but during the eighteenth century, this option was feasible and available. By mid-century it was possible to sail from Venice to Sidon or Acre in three weeks or from Istanbul to Jaffa in twelve days, for the price of eleven thalers for a ticket.32 After the end of the confrontation between the Austrian and Ottoman Empires with the Treaty of Karlowitz, which was signed at the beginning of 1699, the journey was more secure, though many dangers threatened travelers from natural disasters and robbers. In the Land of Israel itself, a Turkish province ruled at a distance by Sultan Mustafa II (1695–1703) through the regional governors (pashas) of Damascus and Sidon and the district governors (the sanjak-beys) under them, several thousand Jews lived in communities of Sephardim and Ashkenazim in difficult conditions, in debt and under constant threat from creditors.33 However, it was not a community in decline or lacking in vitality. Close to the time of the immigration of the convoy from Central and Eastern Europe, the community of the Land of Israel raised large sums of money, built some forty stone buildings in Jerusalem, and improved the water cisterns in the Ashkenazi quarter (H.atser haqodesh, the holy courtyard). At the end of the summer of 1700, they even competed the construction of a “splendid house of study, full of books,” and a large synagogue roofed with a stone dome.34 News about events in the Land of Israel was transmitted via exchanges of letters between those living in the Land of Israel and the communities in Europe and in Islamic countries, and by the many emissaries (known by the Hebrew acronym of SHaDaR, rabbinical emissaries), who, in their long

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voyages, solicited the contributions vital for the existence of the Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed and sought to foster solidarity. Some of the shadarim also wrote fascinating travel journals. As Matthias Lehmann showed, the encounters between the emissaries and Jews throughout the Diaspora created communications networks, and in the eighteenth century these formed a pan-Jewish community.35 The Ashkenazi community, which was a minority among the Jewish inhabitants of the Land of Israel, saw itself as a branch of the European communities and demanded assistance from them. For example, poor scholars in Jerusalem were asked to pray at the Wailing Wall on behalf of wealthy Jews in Central Europe, and the Jews in Safed were asked to maintain the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yoh.ai in Meron and to pray there, among other things, for the welfare of the community of Fez in North Africa.36 Clumps of dirt from the Land of Israel were thought to have special powers. People bought them from the emissaries and treated them as amulets against troubles. In 1700, the emissary ‘Ovadia Ben Issachar brought dust from the Mount of Olives to Hungary. Jacob Leipnik kept that dust along with the shrouds he prepared for his burial, and in his will he requested that “this earth should be scattered on me in my grave with precision on my whole body, including my feet.”37 A special package sent to Rabbi David Oppenheim included “two pieces of the stones of the place, the holy earth, with soap made here from olive oil and sanctified dust from this land of ours.”38 You will recall that before entering upon the second, gloomy chapter of her married life, Glikl had also considered moving to Jerusalem as a city of refuge from her troubles and finishing her life in “the Holy Land” as a pious widow who withdraws from the practical life of this world. It was not uncommon for men whose whole world was the study of Torah, for whom dwelling in the Land of Israel was their soul’s desire, to move there. For example, Rabbi Judah Leib Pochowitzer from Pinsk, who had emerged unscathed from the murderous attack of Russian soldiers in White Russia forty years earlier, sought to give thanks to God for watching over him and saving him and his family by settling in Jerusalem. In 1700, on the way, he stopped in Venice and had his book, Kevod h.akhamim, printed. In the margins of the introduction, he traced a picture of his gloomy life in exile and his hopes of fulfilling his dream: “He writes in the bitterness of his soul and worries in pain about the destruction of the house of our Lord and about the prolonging of the exile and the desecration of His great Name and about the sorrow of our brethren, the House of Israel, may the Lord be with me and bring me to the Holy Land.”39 However, the group reported about in the journal from Frankfurt had a decidedly messianic motive. This holy society was seized by great enthusiasm

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and by faith in its ability to bring on redemption for the benefit of the entire nation. As some of their contemporaries suspected, at least some members of the group were Sabbateans, and the trip to the Land of Israel and the messianic tension that accompanied it nourished hopes that forty years after Shabbetai Zevi’s conversion, the Messiah would return and reveal himself again. In the generation after Shabbetai Zevi’s signal failure, those who believed in him and in the possibility of the imminent advent of redemption were a small and dispersed minority, suspected of heresy. Therefore, the true motives beyond the aspirations of the immigrants of 1700 were concealed, and their supporters had the impression that they were a pious group promoting repentance from sins, offering its members a life of religious devotion and withdrawal from the material world. This journey was not spontaneous. Rather, it was organized gradually during the final years of the seventeenth century and was based on a Sabbatean network that was spread mainly in Poland, Turkey, and Italy at the turn of the century. The Sabbatean prophet Joshua Heschel Zoref of Vilna, for example, who lived in Kraków until his death in 1700, was one of the focuses of this network. Gershom Scholem attributes great importance to him in the consolidation of a religious leadership that challenged the traditional rabbinate in the name of asceticism and “the feeling of superiority of a person who has left the material world and stands on the highest spiritual level, and perhaps also from the desire to help reveal the kingdom of heaven on earth.”40 Heschel Zoref was in contact with the circle of Sabbateans in Italy, two prominent members of which were Abraham Rovigo of Modena and Benjamin Cohen of Reggio. In this circle it was believed that, in expectation of the imminent advent of the Messiah, Jews should emigrate to Jerusalem. Indeed, Mordecai Ashkenazi of Żółkiew, who was present in Modena then, basing himself on a Magid (a herald angel) from heaven who told him secrets and showed him visions, among other things also urged the wealthy Rovigo, as early as 1696, to prepare for the voyage.41 Another Sabbatean prophet, Zadok ben Shemariah of Grodno, Lithuania, promised, on the basis of numerology and “letters from heaven,” that the messianic revelation would take place in 1695 (5455), “and the redeemer is Shabtai Zevi and none other.” He spread the word in many places in Central and Eastern Europe. “Therefore, my teachers and masters, hear this and repent,” wrote Zadok ben Shemariah in a prophetical tract, “and if you do so, you will be forgiven from heaven and merit ascent to Jerusalem, amen.”42 Rabbi Judah H.asid grew up in this highly charged climate, and in this year, he began his campaign of revival for repentance and paving the way for the messianic age. He began to enlist followers in his Holy Society and to seek financial support from some of the Court Jews in Germany and Austria.43 Jacob Emden,

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whose book Torat haqanaut (The Doctrine of Zeal) is an important source for the story of this journey to Jerusalem, had no doubt that Judah H.asid was acting as part of a broad and well-camouflaged messianic, Sabbatean trend: “After [Zadok of Grodno] this cult of Hasidim of R. Judah H.asid arose very soon, and they did perplexing things and promised redemption, to bring the messiah in a short time . . . and found many helpers and great notables and rabbis who believed in them.”44 Judah H.asid did not claim to be a prophet like Heschel Zoref and Zadok ben Shemariah, but he believed in the prophecies of redemption and in the need for repentance, and, being a charismatic preacher, he succeeded in instilling in his listeners faith that the Messiah was at the gate and that shedding all sin was the order of the day. At least a few hundred Jews, and possibly, according to a higher estimate, more than a thousand, wanted to join in the move to the Land of Israel under his leadership. Gershom Scholem regarded H.asid as the prominent figure among the wandering preachers who built Sabbatean networks and conveyed writing and messages from place to place and acted to arouse people to repent and prepare for redemption: “R. Judah H.asid was the great preacher, who with enormous enthusiasm swayed the hearts of the masses, both men and women, translating the language of piety into the language of the moral demands of the Sabbatean pietists.”45 By camouflaging the messianic movement and its connection with Shabbatai Zevi, R. Judah H.asid made it difficult for the rabbis of the communities that he visited to identify its true nature. For example, a rumor reached a relatively few ears that in a sermon that Judah H.asid gave in the synagogue of the community of Pińczów, Poland, “he said explicitly that [Shabbetai Zevi] was the redeemer and none beside him. And all the sermon was about that in a way that almost the whole audience rose up against him and they almost wanted to stone him.”46 Although movements of popular religious enthusiasm always arouse suspicion, lest they break through the boundaries of the religion and undermine the authority of the established leadership, a movement of penitence could gain its support because it was consistent with the religious values shared by everyone. During the eighteenth century, both Christians and Jews were to be challenged by many religious revival movements, and rabbis and early Maskilim took part in the struggle against Sabbateans, pietists, and kabbalists who claimed divine inspiration. This confusion was one of the earliest childhood memories of Rabbi Jacob Emden, who stood out during the century because of his sharp senses when it came to identifying the Sabbatean underground. When, for example, Rabbi Saul, the son of Heshel of Kraków, met Rabbi Judah H.asid’s group in Poland, he expressed reservations about

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“the surprising things” they did, but “the aforementioned wise rabbi lacked this knowledge and did not know the nature of this bad faith,” and he asked the advice of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, Emden’s father, who was the head of the kloiz in Altona. In the memory of the rabbis of Poland, the Sabbatean movement principally belonged to the Jewish communities in Islamic countries. Therefore, he addressed the rabbi, who, since he had served as a rabbi in Sarajevo, Bosnia, was known as H.akham Zevi, “who grew up in a land of the East and trust him that he knows the nature of this new, cursed sect.” The answer he received declared that without any doubt it was a Sabbatean group. Indeed, Rabbi Ashkenazi added, it was not hard to mistake it, as the important rabbis who believed in Shabbetai Zevi erred in the previous generation, but now, after it has been laid bare, it was right to condemn it emphatically and to understand that the exaggerated devotion and piety was merely a mask. According to Emden, his father’s intervention brought a stop to the propa­ ganda of Judah H.asid in Poland, and he and his group went on to wander among the Jewish communities of Germany: “My father and teacher, of blessed memory, advised the aforementioned genius [Saul Heshel] to condemn the actions of this strange new sect, that plucks out the roots of faith, and destroys and muddies the state of the remnant of Israel, and thus did the aforementioned Talmudic authority, and he pursued them, and repelled them, so they could not set foot in the land of Poland, and they went to Ashkenaz.”47 However, Emden’s reconstruction of the events was written and published about half a century afterward, whereas testimony from the time of the events themselves, the travels in Europe and then to Jerusalem, reports about the enthusiastic, almost unreserved support the travelers received everywhere they appeared. Even Emden was constrained to admit that the participation of a second leader, even more impressive than Judah H.asid, a man with the authority of a preeminent scholar, Rabbi H.aim Solomon of Kalisz, who was known as H.ayim Malakh contributed considerably to the success of the journey.48 Despite his close connections with Sabbateans and his belief in Shabbetai Zevi, which was far more open than that of Judah H.asid, even the sworn enemies of Sabbateanism found it hard to condemn him. Thus, for example, Rabbi Leib ben Ozer of Amsterdam, the author of the Yiddish chronicle The Story of Shabbetai Zevi, apologized and explained: And you, beloved brethren, you can see how great is the power of the sitra ah.ra [literally, “the other side,” i.e., Satan], that he causes believers like these, to go so far as to commit such serious transgressions and still regard them as commandments. . . . As I have heard all my life a great deal about one man whose name was H.ayim Malakh, who was thought of as a great kabbalist, and

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he used to teach Kabbalah to some rabbis in Poland . . . and it’s possible that then he was truly a kabbalist . . . therefore it appears that in the beginning he was truly in sanctity and afterward the qelipot [lit. “shells, the impure spiritual forces”] of the sitra ah.ra clung to him, until he too would interpret sayings from the holy Zohar about Shabbetai Zevi and say that Shabbetai Zevi was the just redeemer.49

Indeed, H.ayim Malakh was one of the most important men active in the Sabbatean network during the 1690s. He contacted those who shared his belief in Turkey and Italy; he knew Shabbetai Zevi’s scribe, Samuel Primo, in Adrianople; and he was apparently in contact with Sabbateans who converted to Islam in Salonika (the Dönmeh). He met Heshel Zoref and Judah H.asid, lived with the moderate Sabbateans Abraham Rovigo and Benjamin Cohen, and when he returned to Poland, he studied in the House of Study in Żółkiew, which was the Sabbatean base in Galicia. In 1696, he informed Rovigo and Cohen that he had gone far beyond the Sabbatean doctrine they had taught him, and regarding understanding of the “secret of the divinity” of Shabbetai Zevi, he had adopted the far-reaching ideas of Primo, who was far better versed in the faith of Shabbetai Zevi than even Nathan of Gaza. He could divulge more exact details to them only orally, and it could be that such a meeting would take place soon in Jerusalem: “and also deep matters such as those that when the Holy One lets us meet face to face and we will teach sweet secrets and it will be possible soon with the help of the Lord for we are traveling to the Holy Land and I heard from the Torah Sage the master and rabbi Mordecai [Ashkenazi] that you two intend to travel to there.”50 In any case, after the Sabbatean expectations for the year 5455 [1695] were unfulfilled, H.ayim Malakh was the one who marked that date close to 1700 as the goal for the Holy Society’s immigration to Jerusalem: “and he used to say that the first redemption would be the last redemption, and just as Our Teacher Moses disappeared for forty years in the Land of Kush, Shabbetai Zevi also had to disappear, and after forty years he will be revealed . . . and accordingly the redemption by Shabbetai Zevi must come in the year 5466 [1706].”51 In 1700, close to the date of departure for the Land of Israel, in the summer, the two Polish Sabbateans Rabbi Judah H.asid and Rabbi H.ayim Malakh arrived in Vienna to gain the support of the families of the Court Jews. H.ayim Malakh exploited the time to prove the correctness of his faith and wrote to one of the opponents of Sabbateanism, Rabbi Abraham Broda of Prague, “that he should send him certain well-known wise men, who have a grasp of the wisdom of the Kabbalah, and they would dispute with him about faith in Shabbetai Zevi.” This was a frustrating experience for Broda. The two chosen students whom

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he sent to Vienna, Jonah Landsofer and Moses H.asid, absorbed a Sabbatean reading of the Zohar from H.ayim Malakh for two weeks, finding hints of the messianism of Shabbetai Zevi, and they returned to Prague without knowing how to deny it. According to Emden, who learned about the dispute from a student at the yeshiva in Prague, it is possible that even a hint of a doubt entered their hearts because “he deceived them with attractive heresy.” Rabbi Broda’s anger at his students, who failed, and his demand of them that they formulate well-ordered responses to the claim “as if it were explicitly written in the Zohar to believe in Shabbetai Zevi” came too late.52 The challenge presented by H.ayim Malakh and Judah H.asid was in fact even more serious than the dispute on the correctness of Sabbatean belief. The epithets attributed to them, Malakh (angel) and H.asid (pious), indicated extreme religious devotion, deep fear of heaven, asceticism, and knowledge of the secrets of Kabbalah. This was a religious leadership that offered an exciting and attractive alternative to the Torah scholars. Varieties of kabbalistic teachings were indeed highly influential during the eighteenth century and held a central place as the secret, holy mystical theology of the Jewish religion.53 The many kabbalistic books of ethical guidance that appeared in Hebrew and Yiddish contributed to making concepts, ideas, and instructions in performing the commandments available to the general public. In the course of the eighteenth century, the colorful figures of the charismatic and enthusiastic religious leaders who drew their conceptual apparatus from esoteric doctrines and who organized circles of disciples and faithful, pious admirers were to form a large gallery. Almost every one of them was gifted with characteristics peculiar to the new age, when the individual reveals signal traits and believes in his own power and truth; is prepared to perform exceptional acts; speaks out against the existing situation; offers an inspiring vision of repentance, sanctity, and redemption or cleaving to God; strives for achievements and influence; and, as noted, challenges the religious leadership in the name of his own truth. Thus we will encounter, among others: Nechemiah H.ayon, who was suspected of Sabbateanism; Moses H.ayim Luzzatto, who claimed direct revelation of the secrets of the Torah from the mouth of a magid from the upper realms; Jacob Frank, the leader of a libertine and nihilistic sect; Israel ben Eli’ezer (the Ba’al Shem Tov, known as the Besht), whose company of admirers formed the kernel from which Hasidism was later to emerge; and Rabbi Nah. man of Bratslav, whose complex personal makeup and messianic vision were interconnected. H.ayim Malakh and Judah H.asid were the most prominent of this sort of religious leader at the beginning of the century. From various accounts about

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them and from the few passages of their sermons that have been preserved, we see a high degree of self-esteem, confidence in their response to religious and social criticism, and a drive to persuade the public to support their path. The German semiannual from Frankfurt describes the group of “Hasidim” under Judah H.asid inspiring leadership as being permeated by high religious tension. It recounts that the group was comprised of thirty-one families, with more than one hundred and twenty men, women, and children; that it reached Central Europe from Poland; and that it initially had camped in Nikolsburg, Moravia. From there, a small contingent headed by Judah H.asid went out to various communities in Germany to call for repentance, to enlist more members for the journey, and to raise more financial support. Their extreme austerity and physical asceticism aroused curiosity: They immersed themselves daily in cold water and did not sleep on beds. They only slept for an hour or two at night, and they spent the rest of their time studying the Talmud. During all the days of the week they did not eat until they thought the stars had already come out in the sky, and their food was no more than bread and oil. Except on the Sabbaths and Festivals, they did not want to eat anything that came from the flesh of an animal. For this reason they are called H.asidim, or those who fear heaven. Their clothing was unusual. . . . On their journeys they wore long black cloaks, but when they were in the company of Jews, or when they went to the synagogue, their most distinguished men—Rabbi Judah H.asid (a man of forty years, and the others were approximately thirty) and three others, whose names are Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Nethaniel, who possessed the spirit of prophecy, and Rabbi Shaul—wore white satin garments like shrouds, so greatly did they arouse wonder.54

The Christians who observed the journey in Germany also noted the arousal of faith in the end of the exile among the Jews: “With such an absolute idea and belief that the Messiah would truly come very soon, a Jew here in Frankfurt told the Christians, ‘In a year I won’t be here, and neither will you be here.’”55 On the Great Sabbath, on the eve of Passover 1700, the worshippers in the synagogue in Frankfurt underwent a special experience: “The Jews [here] do not cease speaking of and praising the clear and mighty voice of Rabbi Judah H.asid, when he preached to them on April 3 [1700], on the Sabbath of the Jews. [Rabbi Judah H.asid] and three others who were with them have glowing faces and [despite their asceticism and fasting] are handsome and strong, as if they had eaten the best food.”56 Rabbi Jacob Emden conveyed a very similar description of the ecstatic sermons that fired up the listeners: “Rabbi Judah

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H.asid stood in synagogues and preached with great admonitions and arousal, and much weeping, and he made an impression on the multitude.” However, his father, the H.akham Tsevi, and other opponents, who were apprehensive about this second wave of the Sabbatean movement, tried to argue against him that “in fact he was not a scholar,” but this did not deter his faithful. The frustration and perplexity in the face of what appeared to be a religious revival that could not be halted is seen in his attitude of respect and esteem: “And perhaps the intention and thought of Rabbi Judah H.asid were good, according to his slight wisdom and limited understanding, and in any event he did well to arouse the people to repent because of the weeping and tears that he shed, but the end proves that his assemblage was not in the name of heaven.”57 Testimony about Judah H.asid could almost fail to connect him to Sabbateanism, nor did everyone who joined his Holy Society share in Sabbatean faith. However, his daring approach is revealed, for example, in his address to women in his journey of arousal for repentance, and this had a decidedly Sabbatean source of inspiration. Ada Rapaport-Albert has shown how Shabbetai Zevi had an exceptional attitude to women, valued their spiritual elevation, and wanted to include them in religious ritual, such as, for example, women’s calling up to the Torah. In her opinion, common to all these actions was “public and conscious deviation from the restrictions of the Halakha and the tradition, [and they] hint in one way or another about a vision of breaking through the strictures against incest in the messianic era, and about the change in the relations of males and females that it entails.”58 Indeed, breaking down the boundaries of gender in a similar direction to that of Shabbetai Zevi was one of the most surprising and exciting deeds done by the leaders of the journey to the Land of Israel in 1700: Not only did Rabbi Judah H.asid give sermons of admonition among men, but he also went to the women’s house and removed a Torah scroll and brought it in his bosom to the women’s synagogue. And he preached words of admonition to the women, and this was something puzzling to many people. He only deceived the multitude to think that everything was for greater sanctity and greater spirit, showing that women were like white geese in his eyes, and in truth this is a level of spirituality and awe, something that had been unheard of among the Jews until then.

Jacob Emden conveyed this account, which implies that women did not arouse his desire, because he already lived in a messianic age, after “the slaughter of the evil impulse,” in the name of his father, who witnessed Judah H.asid’s visit to the community of Altona. However, in this case as well, the H.akham Tsevi conceded that his success was phenomenal. Once he swept away the women, it

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was even harder for his opponents to convince people that he was the leader of a dangerous, heretical movement. Although “for this alone it would have been right to boycott him, in my opinion, nevertheless the rabbis of blessed memory did not muster the strength to protest against him about this thing, because the multitude of the men and women were bound to him and regarded him as a man of God.”59 Rabbi Judah H.asid also showed particular sensitivity to the fate of women, as shown by one of the very few of his teachings that has been preserved: Indeed, I have heard people say in the name of the saintly rabbi Judah of Szydłowski of blessed memory. That he said thus about those people who betray their wives and go to distant countries to be teachers of children there, and afterward they engage in some business and grasp with their hand to acquire many coins and great wealth, and without doubt they falter in the sins of nocturnal emission. And then, when they want to go back to their homes, robbers come upon them and steal and take everything they have. And those people do not know that from every drop of ejaculation an evil spirit is created, heaven forfend, and those evil spirits resemble people and take all his money from him.60

In this short homily Judah H.asid bound together his criticism of those who travel by themselves to earn a likelihood and neglect their wives for prolonged periods with his Hasidic-kabbalistic dread of sexual temptation in general and particularly of ejaculation in vain. He also threatened these men that they would lose their wages and also encounter sexual tension, whose release was a dreadful sin, whose consequences in the hidden worlds were the reinforcement of the forces of abomination. The words of Rabbi Nathan Neta of Mannheim, who was the head of the rabbinical court of Haguenau, Alsace, before joining the trip to Jerusalem, probably provide the strongest testimony enabling us to appreciate the attraction of the charismatic religious leader Judah H.asid and the enormous enthusiasm that his message of repentance and redemption aroused. Even at a distance of several years, Nathan could reconstruct his powerful emotions when he joined the ranks of the journey and felt that he was part of a great deed, which gave new meaning to his life. “In the place where I dwelled, the lovely holy community of Haguenau, may God preserve it, I was tranquil in my home, and alert in my sanctuary, with books open before me night and day.” Thus, Nathan describes his life as a scholar and community rabbi, until a change took place in him: “I saw exalted people gathered in a large group. . . . It is a high wall, this holy society, a great public of Jews . . . and greater than all was

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the pious saint, the foundation of the world, . . . full of the spirit, an angel of the Lord of Hosts . . . Judah [H.asid].” The combination of devotion to penitential rituals of pious asceticism and the determination to travel to Jerusalem captivated his heart and set his soul trembling, and he did not hesitate to abandon his comfortable life in Alsace and his position as the rabbi of a community to enlist in the joint experience of the group: “I saw with my eyes the great deeds of the saintly, and their intention was worthy to go into the city of God, and the whole congregation are all holy ascending angels of God, and the spirit of my stomach disturbed me and my heart told me follow the majority . . . and be dusted with the dust of their feet, and you will be sheltered in the shadow of the sanctuary of the Lord, the oasis of Mount Zion.”61 From this moment on, during all the forty-three years that were to pass until his death in the House of Study in Mannheim, Rabbi Nathan was one of the members most strongly identified with the Holy Society, first in Jerusalem, and afterward in Italy and Germany. At his final station, according to the hostile judgment of Jacob Emden, “a sect of wanton people gathered, left over from the group of Rabbi Judah H.asid, wallowing in its blood, who performed great abominations.”62 Echoes of social criticism remain in a sermon whose sharp arrows strike at the wealthy elite: “Rabbi Judah H.asid of blessed memory said in a sermon of rebuke that resha’im [the wicked] uses the same letters as ‘ashirim [the wealthy], their wealth is for wickedness, for when a person is poor, he commits himself to being philanthropic and scattering his wealth for charity, and when he becomes wealthy, he doesn’t give anything.”63 However, contrary to this criticism, he and his group—aside from the support of rabbis, enthusiastic disciples, and women—also enjoyed the generous assistance of several rich Court Jews, without which they very well might never have reached Jerusalem. The campaign of revival for penitence among the communities of Germany and Austria, which was devoted primarily to raising money and to assure support for the immigrants when they reached the Land of Israel, was very successful. Samson Wertheimer obtained transit permits within the Austrian Empire on the route between Vienna and Venice, and David Oppenheim, then the rabbi of Moravia, extended his protection to the travelers, especially to the scholars among them. His connection with those dwelling in the Land of Israel was already known, and the books and manuscripts that were sent to him from Jerusalem were one of the sources of his library. After the death of the Ashkenazi rabbi there, in the summer of 1699, he was asked to consider accepting the rabbinate. Though the chances were slim, and he had already rejected the proposition categorically, arguing “that this is strange and distant . . . that

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he might leave the land of his birth and ‘that glory may dwell in our land’ [Ps. 85:10],” nevertheless they continued to importune him: “Therefore, I report the matter to the high honor of Your Torah, because of the greatness of the strong love between us, throughout good days and years, that if you make up your mind to come here, I will endeavor, with God’s help, to do anything you command me, and may it be glorious to him.”64 Samuel Oppenheimer took special care of the travelers in 1700. We must assume that neither he nor the other supporters knew that Sabbatean messianism lay behind the journey. Rather, they provided assistance because they were impressed by the religious values that these pious people demonstrated, because they shared the traditional hope for redemption, and because of the importance of maintaining a Jewish settlement in Jerusalem. The semiannual from Frankfurt reported that “the famous Jew from Vienna, Samuel Oppenheimer,” had provided “the Holy Society” of Rabbi Judah H.asid with special passage permits so they could travel along the route along the Danube River to the Black Sea. He chartered two ships for them and supplied them with clothing, food, and money, and his son Menahem Mendel Emmanuel had even taken upon himself the position of treasurer, directing the financial support from Vienna and bearing the title, “Warden of the Land of Israel and of the Holy Society.”65 Preparations for the voyage itself were completed in the beginning of the summer of 1700, and the news journal reported that the travelers would be leaving on June 20 in ships proved by Samuel Oppenheimer. The various sources do not provide precise information about the routes or the number of participants. Exaggerated estimates claim that during the years of organization, about 1,500 Jews joined Rabbi Judah H.asid, of whom several hundred died along the way and others abandoned the project. However, about a thousand people supposedly reached the destination. According to lower estimates, in the end between 150 and 400 people reached Jerusalem. They were apparently divided into two groups and were delayed in Europe for at least another two months. The group that was staying in or near Vienna could have witnessed the attack on the home of their patron Samuel Oppenheimer in mid-July. The most reliable testimony regarding the departure of the voyagers is probably that of Wolf Halevi of Lublin, a young scholar who belonged to the hard core of the Holy Society and was Rabbi Judah H.asid’s nephew on his sister’s side. He told the Hebraist Johann Jakob Schudt, who observed the life of the Jewish community of Frankfurt and documented it at the beginning of the century, that Rabbi H.ayim Malakh had sailed with some of the travelers to Istanbul through the Black Sea, and from there to the Land of Israel, while Rabbi Judah

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H.asid led the larger group from Vienna to Italy through the Austrian Tyrol, and they had sailed from Venice.66 The conversation between Schudt and Halevi, which took place exactly ten years after the voyage, in the small town of Ipsheim in Franconia, is indicative more than anything of the tragic fate of this Sabbatean voyage. The identity of the pious Jew who joined the trip led by his uncle, with expectations for speedy redemption, had changed significantly by 1710. Wolf Halevi returned to Europe from Jerusalem and converted to Protestantism in the Church of St. George in Nördlingen, in southern Germany. He studied medicine and established a family, and at that time, he was a learned and respected physician who had taken the name of Franciscus Lotharius Phillipus.67 What took place in Jerusalem in the fall of 1700, a few days after the end of the long and exhausting journey, was a devastating blow to the travelers, put paid to their hopes and high expectations, and shattered the ranks of the Holy Society. For some of the people, including Wolf Halevi, the disappointment was unbearable and led them to cross the lines, for in the atmosphere of enormous religious tension aroused by Rabbi Judah H.asid and Rabbi H.ayim Malakh, nothing could have been more destructive. Gedalia of Siemiatycz and his brother Moses were among the travelers who arrived from the home district of their leader in Lithuania. In his travel account, Shaalu shlom yerushalayim, Gedalia described their consternation in a few sentences, which convey an experience laden with emotion. On Wednesday, the New Moon of H.eshvan 5561 (October 14, 1700), the group arrived in Jerusalem. “Most of the group were sick because of the travails of the voyage and especially on the sea and the scanty rations we had on the ship,” but Judah H.asid immediately took care “to rent dwellings for the whole group” in the courtyard of the Ashkenazi synagogue, and on the eve of the Sabbath, they already began to fulfill his vision of advancing redemption with enthusiasm. He immersed himself in the ritual bath and asked to go to pray immediately at the Wailing Wall.68 “And it happened that when Rabbi Judah H.asid went up with four hundred of his students,” another travel diary recounts later on, “he resolved in his heart that immediately after reaching Jerusalem, he would go to the Western Wall, and then the Messiah would come.” But, catastrophically, “when he immersed himself, and his disciples attended him in the immersion, an unclean animal touched him during the immersion in the water, and he shouted in his disciples’ ears that they should raise him up, because he was going to die.”69 When he emerged, “he immediately fell ill, for our many sins, and he prayed the Sabbath evening prayers with earnestness, and when he came to his home he fell on his bed and lay without consciousness and spoke without knowing

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what he was saying.” The collapse of the leader of the Holy Society aroused great dread. His son-in-law Isaiah Segel shouted, “Father-in-law, father-in-law, be silent!” The doctor who was summoned was unable to help, and then Rabbi Judah H.asid lost the power of speech, “until he died without saying a word and without a will,” and he was buried on the Mount of Olives on Monday, October 18. Before the immigrants had managed to spend even an entire week in Jerusalem, they lost their leader, and the effort to bring on the Messiah was halted from the start.70 The response of Rabbi Nathan Neta of Mannheim, the faithful disciple of the Holy Society, reveals the severity of the crisis caused by Judah H.asid’s sudden death. While he did accept divine judgment, it was hard to hide the painful meaning: “And when we went up to the outskirts of Jerusalem, we said this is the return, this is arrival in the courtyards of the House of the Lord, to worship Him in unison, for this is His seat of honor, and we are sheltered in the shadow of His honor upon our heads, and the people were very joyous because for love of holiness, for we left the land of the nations and impurity like the impurity of menstruation, and we came to the place of sanctity.” However, “within three days after our arrival, [God] removed the vessel of His wrath, outside its time and outside its place, and he crushed the head of the group, and the decree went out, take the head of theirs . . . the great light Judah [H.asid], who rose up and was raised up to the yeshiva on high, and he perished and was gathered up and may his rest be honorable.” From that moment, Rabbi Nathan mourns in the language of Lamentations: The glory departed, the splendor of the society departed, and its downfall came, and it dwelled in ruin in the hidden place, and the adversary caught up with it. . . . The men went away and dwindled, and they bowed down in the prison of evil and grief, and lament and sorrow increased for the daughter of Judah. . . . And those remaining were feeble and sighing and moaning and found no rest even for a moment. . . . A man left his place and his home, and his people were sent away and abandoned, some here and some here, scattered and dispersed.

The Holy Society fell apart, and most of the immigrants apparently left Jerusalem. Nathan himself remained there for about another six years, but he lived in depression and constant dread: “And I the poorest of the thousands of immigrants to the land, and my soul poured out in sorrow. . . . Trembling seizes me every day.”71 Unlike Rabbi Nathan, Rabbi Jacob Emden was pleased by the misfortune of the members of the Holy Society who had failed, but from the perspective

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of half a century he also pointed out that those who returned to Europe from Jerusalem actually contributed to the extremism of the Sabbatean group: “R. Judah H.asid died in Jerusalem within three days of his arrival there, and all his army dispersed from him, and the land vomited them forth, after they gave praise to their abomination, they returned to the impure land [Europe]. Nevertheless, they persisted in their foolishness and did not cast away their actions . . . and they sowed the seed of their heresy in the land of Ashkenaz and Poland.”72 This failure also encouraged Schudt, the Christian Hebraist and rector of the gymnasium in Frankfurt, because in his opinion it proved that Jewish messianic belief was grounded in error. From information that reached Germany he learned that Rabbi Judah H.asid had died immediately after his arrival in Jerusalem, and as a consequence a wave of conversions arose. About a hundred of them, he claimed, converted to Islam in the Land of Israel, and the others, who returned to Europe, became Christians. In addition to Wolf Halevi, Judah H.asid’s nephew, he also mentioned Rabbi Simh.a H.asid, who converted to Christianity in Bamberg and also became a physician in Germany, taking the name of Matthias.73 In Jerusalem Rabbi H.ayim Malakh continued trying to revive the Sabbatean faith and the renewed revelation of the messiah in 1706, but he only attracted a minority of the community.74 Gedalia of Siemiatycz, for example, went out of his way to shun believers in Shabbetai Zevi and to present his brother Moses, who had also been a member of the Holy Society and apparently a moderate Sabbatean, as seeking to differentiate himself from them. The encounter with the Land of Israel led to discouragement with hopes for redemption. While struggling in an alien environment, under difficult conditions of want, to support himself and his family, in the eyes of Gedalia nothing was farther or more contrary to the reality of life than the faith of those Sabbateans, who “say that since 5426 [1666], the Shekhina has not been in exile, and there is no need to mourn for the exile.” To those living from hand to mouth, shouting for aid from the Jews abroad, and feeling great estrangement as Europeans in the Middle East, they no longer had many illusions. “What can we do? We are Ashkenazim,” Gedalia complained, sharing his feeling of humiliation with the readers of his book, “since we do not know their language [Turkish and Arabic], and in their eyes we are like those who cannot speak and like a man who does not understand their language, and we are like estranged strangers among the [Sephardi] Jews and a fortiori among the Gentiles . . . and we are truly a laughingstock among them.”75 And then the bargain, whose terms the “notables” in Europe regarded as having been violated was terminated. “The people of the lands promised Rabbi Judah H.asid that he would not have to be concerned

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about money, because they would send him enough for his needs, but he should only go up and act to bring about the advent of the Messiah,” in the words of the emissary, Moses Yerushalmi, but, “when the people in the lands of Ashkenaz heard that Rabbi Judah H.asid had died, they no longer sent money, and the disciples trusted in the Ashkenazim, but they did not send any.”76 The gap between the joy of the promised messianic age and the reality of poverty, inferiority, and alienation in the Land of Israel was huge. The dissolution of the religious tension brought some members of the Holy Society to commit the most extreme action of all: apostasy and the severance of all family connections and solidarity with the Jews. Jacob Emden, again glad at the misfortune of the supporters of Sabbateanism, hoped that those wealthy Jews would learn a lesson: The followers of the Holy Society “sent several souls to destruction in a place where those impure fowl dwelled, in Vienna, Prague, and Mannheim, and in their old age some of the great and honored notables lost their fortunes, for everywhere those hypocrites are found, there is found a curse.”77 His words were not completely baseless, because he was very familiar with the fate of the Oppenheimer family. Only a short time after the collapse of the Holy Society in Jerusalem, the Austrian government began to declare the bankruptcy of Samuel Oppenheimer to free itself of the heavy debts it owed them, and his son Menahem Mendel Emmanuel, who, as noted, was responsible for the finances of the Holy Society, became entangled in prolonged legal processes and died before his time, impoverished and broken.78 From then on the distress of the residents of Jerusalem became an almost chronic problem, which the Court Jews and the rabbis from the Jewish elite in Central Europe were asked again and again to help solve. Samson Wertheimer and David Oppenheim were the ones who would regard this as their mission. Meanwhile however, the Court Jews upon whom the existence of the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel depended, were occupied with another task, which also was of major concern to them that year: activating an effective lobby to block and freeze what appeared to be a campaign of provocation that endangered the Jews of Europe.

“Th e Qua r r el bet w e en M e a n d th e Je ws Li v ing in th e Cit y of Fr a nk fu rt” The year 1700 ought to have been the happiest and most successful year in the life of the learned Hebraist and expert in Judaism Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (1654–1704). On January 18, the prince elector of the Palatinate, Johann Wilhelm, appointed Eisenmenger as professor of Oriental Languages at the

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University of Heidelberg. Thereby, at the age of forty-six, he completed the circle he had begun as a diligent student at that university, continued during long years of wandering in Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, and many other places, during which he mastered Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish, collected hundreds of old and contemporary books, conversed with rabbis and apostates, and acquired great knowledge about Judaism and the Jews, until he received the appointment he desired. In that very year, Eisenmenger completed his lifelong project after nearly twenty years of intense work; he had his Entdecktes Judenthum (Judaism Unmasked) printed in two volumes comprising more than two thousand densely printed pages.79 In the spring, more than two thousand copies were printed, and Eisenmenger awaited the fame that would be his as a respected scholar. He also was pleased that for the first time Christians would know what really was hidden behind the Jewish religion. The full title of the book pointed to what Eisenmenger saw as a sensation: Judaism Unmasked, or a Basic and True Accounting, How the Obstinate Jews Revile the Doctrine of Belief in the Trinity and Curse the Holy Mother, the Books of the New Testament, the Authors of the Gospels and the Apostles, and Despise and Curse all Christians. His hostile polemical attitude, joined together with the modern drive to provide the public with sensational and curious news, could not have been more evident. The author’s erudition was entirely mobilized to attack Judaism, while claiming to provide unprecedented new insights and to translate and publish in German that which the Jews had tried to conceal for generations in books and writings in Jewish languages: “In addition this book will offer many matters that were not entirely known to this day, or which have not yet been sufficiently publicized, with all the errors that are in Jewish theology and in the religion.” Eisenmenger’s observations of Jewish public life were so updated that he managed to include information about the new messianic fervor led by Rabbi Judah H.asid on his way to the Land of Israel.80 Since he believed that, in the messianic age, the Jews were commanded to kill all the Christians, especially the Germans, whom they identified as descendants of the ancient peoples of Canaan, in his opinion he was pointing out a palpable danger and seeking to sound the alarm bells.81 Judaism Unmasked was one of the high points of the Hebraism that devel­ oped into a significant trend in the scholarship of the baroque period in the seventeenth century. The dual aspiration of these Christian scholars, to learn about Judaism, on the one hand, and to criticize it, on the other, led to research in Jewish literature, from the Bible to the Talmud, as well as medieval philosophy and Kabbalah. The Hebrew language was taught in many European universities as a classical language of importance to theologians, texts were studied

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with diligence and translated, a comprehensive bibliography was published, and the particular type of the Christian Hebraist took shape. Christian Hebraists, as David Ruderman has said, presented a very interesting challenge to the Jews, beginning with the early modern period, because they stood for the loss of exclusiveness for them: “They were no longer the sole arbiters of the sacred texts of the Jewish tradition and certainly not of the Hebrew Bible.”82 Contradictory trends characterized Hebraism, and its meaning was complex and ambivalent. On the one hand, “not only did the prestige of Judaism increase in many people’s eyes, mainly among the educated, but also true cultural contact was made, and personal friendships also arose between the scholars of Hebrew and the Jews.” However, on the other hand, “this interest in Jewish literature was directed at an explicit theological and propagandistic target.”83 For example, Johann Christoph Wagenseil condemned the blood libel, persecutions, and insults directed at the Jews, but at the same time, he called for the defense of Christianity against defamation by the Jews and expected them to convert. The attraction along with the revulsion and rejection paradoxically enable us to view Christian Hebraism both as a chapter in the growth of religious tolerance, which challenged traditions and prejudices in relation to the Jews and Judaism and enlarged the boundaries of Jewish–Christian dialogue, and also as another incarnation of hostile aggression against the Jews, fueled by these scholars with evidence from Jewish writing itself. In Eisenmenger’s arguments this ambivalence is hard to find. Being plagued with fear of Jewish violence, of contempt for Christianity in Jewish literature, and of the effort to convert gentiles, in the thousands of pages of his book Eisenmenger collected texts that, according to his interpretation, represented extremely hostile attitudes toward Gentiles. He talks about ritual murder, confirms blood libels, and warns against the danger posed to the welfare of Christians. The Jews are not loyal to the state authorities, one cannot rely upon their oaths, and one must avoid treatment by Jewish physicians, who would not hesitate to harm a Christian child, he avowed. To a large degree, Eisenmenger drew upon the old polemics against Judaism, but he believed that scholars like himself had a special scientific and public mission, because they alone could prove the truth of their arguments from the sources and make them known to the public by means of printing. Though he was a serious scholar, and his book is laden with sources in Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, and Arabic, translated into German and accompanied by many footnotes, accurate references, and indices, he approached the sources from an a priori anti-Jewish position, assuming that the Jews were capable of any abominable action. “Fundamentally Eisenmenger was a Christian theologian with missionary leanings,” wrote Jacob Katz, who

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investigated some of his hostile evidence. “He believed that the Jews, so long as they are committed to their Judaism, dwelt in darkness and religious and ethical blindness.”84 Eisenmenger’s book was a gigantic project of hostile and tendentious deconstruction of the Jewish religion, presenting it as dark and contrarian, aggressive, coarse, and closed, all of whose efforts were directed at total war against Christianity. In his opinion, conversion can solve all of this. On pages 1027–1028 of the second volume, the last pages of Judaism Unmasked, Eisenmenger opened to the Jews the only gate for reform and redemption available to them: “To conclude this book, I hope with my whole heart,” that this chosen people, from whom the Redeemer of the human race was born, and only lack of faith in him caused their rejection by God and their contemptible fate, will open their blind eyes and see the light, accept belief in Jesus and the New Testament, and become our brothers.85 Even before readers could gain an impression of Judaism Unmasked, all of Eisenmenger’s hopes were dashed. When his project of many years reached completion, and the two volumes were printed, Eisenmenger expected to make a change among Christians and Jews. However, his goal was thwarted just before publication. No copies of the printed manuscript left the printing house in Frankfurt, and its circulation was forbidden. Halfway through the year that had begun full of promise for Eisenmenger, the scholarly project to which he had devoted his whole life encountered a crisis. Indeed, the book did “frighten the Jews of Germany,” and Court Jews in Vienna and elsewhere quickly and effectively intervened to prevent its circulation.86 It cannot be known exactly how the Jews of Frankfurt learned about the book that was about to be published in their city, but on Saturday night, May 22, 1700, Simon, the secretary of the community, wrote an urgent letter in Hebrew to Samson Wertheimer in Vienna, asking him to intervene with the emperor.87 For several weeks consultations apparently took place, in which Samuel Oppenheimer participated, and on July 12, 1700, a few days before the violent attack on Oppenheimer’s house, Wertheimer finally sent a letter on behalf of the Jews living in the empire to Leopold I, protesting the attack and the incitement against the Jews and asking to forbid the circulation of Eisenmenger’s book, because it was liable to arouse the masses and lead to serious riots and rebellion against the government.88 Samson Wertheimer’s appeal to the Holy Roman emperor was a masterpiece by a self-confident politician who took it upon himself to represent all the Jewish communities. In a series of arguments, he explained why Judaism Unmasked not only threatened the Jews, but that, most of all, it harmed the interests of the state. Wertheimer reminded the emperor that the riots against the Jews of Frankfurt had died down only a year ago, a wave of violence that

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began in Bamberg and spread to dozens of other towns. Bands of rioters possessed a fraudulent document that ostensibly permitted them to take vengeance against the Jews, and only a special order of the emperor had stopped it. Now a new threat against public order had emerged. Wertheimer emphasized to the emperor that Judaism Unmasked had been written by a scholar whose understanding of Hebrew and Judaism was faulty. “Not only does the book contain distorted and abominable things,” Wertheimer explained the dangers inherent in Eisenmenger’s work, “but it was also written in German, with one, single purpose, that reading it would arouse and encourage the simple and prejudiced people, those still under the influence of the events of the past year, to act against the Jews.” This time, Wertheimer warned the emperor, it was very possible that the incited mob would not direct their fury only against the Jews. The state and imperial rule were liable to suffer the consequences: “It is possible that the words of the book and its circulation could easily cause a revolt. [This time] the rebellion would not only cause violent persecutions of the Jews, but that the armed masses might cause an even more dangerous situation, so that the whole empire would be in danger.” To strengthen the protection of the Jews and to prevent this crisis, Wertheimer proposed several urgent steps. A special order, to be promulgated in Frankfurt and the other cities of the empire, would forbid the sale and circulation of the book, impose a heavy punishment on anyone who violated the prohibition or secretly sold the book, and all the printed copies would be confiscated. “Only these actions,” Wertheimer stated, “will bring peace and harmony and especially defense of the Jews’ security.”89 Leopold I could not ignore Wertheimer’s letter of protest, especially since it was laid upon his desk at the height of the riots in Samuel Oppenheimer’s house, which required his immediate intervention. The danger of disturbing the public order and mass uprising seemed more imminent than ever. Indeed, within a few days, on July 21, 1700, an imperial order was promulgated against Judaism Unmasked, adopting all of Wertheimer’s arguments almost word for word, and it even accepting the measures he proposed for thwarting its negative influence. Until further notice, the emperor declared, it was severely forbidden to publish or circulate the book.90 However, the edict did not close the door on publication completely. It ordered postponing the circulation of the book until a special committee of inspection, whose members would include rabbis along with Christian scholars with knowledge of Hebrew, should make recommendations. At that time a prolonged process of complex executive discussion began regarding the fate of Judaism Unmasked. Wounded and frustrated, Eisenmenger quickly appealed the decision. In a letter he sent to Vienna on August 9, 1700, he complained to the emperor: How can we accept the terrible desecration

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of those who say that Jesus’s soul came from Satan and dwelt in the depths of hell? He asked for the emperor’s assistance in defending Christianity. It was no wonder that the Jews strove to stop him from revealing their secrets, which he had not falsified, but quoted from their own sources. His sole desire was for the Jews to see the light of Christianity and convert, and he did not incite riots and violence as he was accused. Besides, how could it be that they were allowed to write against us freely, while the decision against Judaism Unmasked bound the hands of those who sought to reveal what the Jews really think about us?91 In the following months, deliberations were held in the court in Vienna, and for his part Eisenmenger also had a lobby to recommend release of the book for publication. Samson Wertheimer was asked to explain who had appointed him to be the spokesman in the affair, and how he could prove that Eisenmenger had counterfeited the sources he cited in his book. Wertheimer had to write another letter to the emperor to make certain that the emperor’s determined position against circulating Judaism Unmasked would not change. In this letter, dated December 22, he again warned the emperor against renewal of the riots in Bamberg, and he explained that the Frankfurt community had appointed him to represent them, but, since the matter was more general, he had approached the emperor in the name of all the Jews. As for the contents of the book, Wertheimer again argued that no Hebraist was capable of understanding the Jews’ Hebrew books the way the rabbis did. In the emerging competition over the interpretation of Judaism, in effect he absolutely denied the capacity and pretension of Christian scholars to properly present the Jewish religion, and he accused them of error and deceit. Other Hebraists, who followed the affair closely, and especially Eisenmenger’s good friend Johann Schudt of Frankfurt, were surprised by the Jews’ demonstration of power, in that they succeeded in thwarting the book’s publication. Perhaps the determining factor was Samuel Oppenheimer’s money, as he paid the author considerable compensation, but to Schudt’s disappointment, the result was that criticism of the Jews was silenced.92 The Court Jews of Vienna and Hanover assumed responsibility for leadership of the entire community, and they succeeded in managing Jewish politics. Despite their fragile status and their exposure to attack by the masses and the whims of the rulers, in 1700, by blocking the riots in Vienna, by sending several hundred Jews to the Land of Israel, and in their struggle against Eisenmenger, powerful Jews showed they were capable of exploiting the financial power they had accrued to act effectively in the service of general Jewish interests. A change began to be visible in the power relations between the state, representatives of Christianity, and the Jews. In the eyes of both Christians and Jews, a book written in the vernacular, no longer in Latin, the language of scholars, had enough power

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to arouse feelings of threat and danger. The theological aspiration to reveal the danger posed by the Jews was countered by the threat of disturbing public order. Unlike traditional disputes between Christianity and Judaism, in 1700 the Hebraists sought to present their criticism as based on scientific truths, the result of precise research and close acquaintance with Jewish sources, and the Jewish intercessors endeavored to defend the Jews less with apologetics about Judaism than by convincing the authorities that the attack on Judaism posed a threat to public order with political significance. Dependence on his Jewish bankers on the eve of the War of Spanish Succession overcame the Catholic emperor’s commitment to protect Christianity. Leopold I, who thirty years earlier had expelled the Jews of Vienna as an expression of his Christian piety, now had other considerations. The Eisenmenger affair indeed shows, in the words of the historian Ben Zion Dinur, “signs of new times: governments saw themselves as obligated to include the Jews in their concern [for the public welfare]. Evidently, under the influence of the Jews, by virtue of their economic status, governments could not be indifferent to their demands.”93 Eisenmenger did not give up. He kept trying to convince the emperor to reverse his decision. In the following years he gained the support of several rulers in Germany, including the king of Prussia, Frederick I. In a series of appeals he demanded justice, reported on the financial loss he had incurred, attached an accounting of his losses, and complained about his illnesses and misery as an innocent man who was persecuted and losing all he had. On the verge of despair, he was willing to give up, in return for large financial compensation, but two years later Eisenmenger still hoped that his book could come out. In a Hebrew letter to Schudt from Heidelberg, he shared his frustration and rage against the Jews, who had made him fail: Because of the quarrel between me and the Jews living in the city of Frankfurt, bereaved of my book, which I published against those of uncircumcised heart, I announce to you that three weeks ago I received a letter from Vienna, in which a great man announced to me that I would defeat all my enemies in a short time, because the judges see that I am innocent in every matter, and that the Jewish informers and slanderers who spoke words of deceit and falsehood against me, the Holy One, blessed be He, who is righteous in all His ways and hates lies will help me and shame them and cover them with disgrace in their wickedness and bring vengeance upon their head.94

However, this hope was not fulfilled. Eisenmenger died in the winter of 1704 before seeing the copies of Judaism Unmasked in circulation and reaching readers and without succeeding in his life’s mission, to publicize the secrets of the Jews.

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Note s 1. Relationis Historicae Semestralis Continuatio (Frankfurt am Main, 1700), pp. 96–97. 2. Reconstruction of the riots in the Oppenheimer residence according to Relationis Historicae Semestralis Continuatio, p. 97; Grunwald, Samuel Oppenheimer und sein Kreis, pp. 128–137. See also Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 36–37. 3. A. F. Pribram, Urkunden und Akten zur Geshichte der Juden in Wien, vol. 1 (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1918), pp. 269–271. 4. See Grunwald, “Shmuel Oppenheimer and His Opponents” [Hebrew], Zion 11 (1946):149–150. 5. Stern, The Court Jew, p. 93. 6. Ibid., pp. 35–36. 7. See Oscar K. Rabinowitz, Sir Solomon de Medina (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1974); Anthony Greenstreet, “William III Knights Solomon de Medina,” History Today 50, no. 6 (2000): 55. 8. David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), p. 190. 9. Todd M. Endelmann, The Jews of Britain 1656–2000 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 29–38. 10. See Robert Ritchie, Captain Kidd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 65–66; Fritz Heymann, Der Chevalier von Geldern: Eine Chronik vom Abenteuer der Juden (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1937), pp. 182–208; Matt Goldish, “The Strange Adventures of Benjamin Franks, An Ashkenazi Pioneer in the Americas,” in The Jews in the Caribbean, ed. Jane Gerber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 311–318. 11. On Rabbi Solomon Ayllon see Katz, The Jews in the History of England, pp. 179–180; Matt Goldish, “Jews, Christians and Conversos: Rabbi Solomon Aailion’s Struggles in the Portuguese Community of London,” Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994): 227–257. 12. See Goldish, “Jews, Christians and Conversos,” pp. 237–242. 13. Tom Brown, Amusements Serious and Comical (1700) and Other Works, ed. Arthur L. Hayward (London: Routledge 1927), pp. 199–200; Waller, 1700, Scenes from London Life, pp. 274–276. 14. Berkowitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860, ch. 2 Masoret umahapakha, pp. 84–92. 15. Selma Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden vols. 1, 2 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1962), pp. 211–229; Yosef Meisel, Pinqas qehilat berlin, 5482–5614 (Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1962), pp. 12–15; Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam, vol. 6, pp. 238–246; Miriam Bodian, “The Jewish Entrepreneurs in Berlin and the ‘Civil Improvement of the Jews’ in the 1780s and 1790s” [Hebrew], Zion 49 (1984): 172–174.

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16. See Riccardo Calimani, The Ghetto of Venice (Milan: Oscar Mondadori, 2005), ch. 19. 17. Reuven Bonfil, Bemarah kesufa: h.ayei hayehudim beitalia beyemei harenaissance (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1994), p. 66. On Livorno, see Francesca Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). 18. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History, p. 62; Robert Bonfil, “Changing Mentalities of Italian Jews between the Periods of the Renaissance and the Baroque,” Italia 11 (1994): 61–70. 19. See David Malkiel, Hapulmus hayehudi notsri ‘erev ha’et hah.adasha (Jerusalem: The Dinur Center, 2004), introduction. 20. See Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, ch. 1. 21. David Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press: 1995), p. 104. 22. Alexander Putik, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” Judaica Bohemiae 35 (2000): 21–22. 23. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, p. 7. On the relations between the magnates and the agents of their courts and the communities, see Rosman, The Lord’s Jew. 24. Israel Heilprin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 5341–5525 [1581–1765], vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), p. 225. 25. Rephael Mahler, Toldot hayehudim bepolin (Merh.avia: Hakibuz Ha’arzi 1946), p. 313; Joel Raba, “Protokol shel kinus va’ad gelilot vohlin beshnat 1700 (h.aluqat mas hagolgolet),” Gal’ed 7 (1982): 215–220. 26. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 15–16. 27. Ibid., pp. 77–78, 85. 28. See Guldon and Wijacka, “The Accusations of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” pp. 123–128; Hillel J. Kieval, “Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusation,” YIVO Encyclopedia, Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 196–197; Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), pp. 25–26; Meir Balaban, Letoldot hatenu’a hafrankit, pt. 1 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1934), pp. 55–56; Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 73–76; the quotation is from Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam. 29. Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816, ch. 4. 30. Moshe Rosman, “The Image of Poland as a Center of Torah Learning after the 1648 Persecutions” [Hebrew], Zion 51 (1986): 435–448. The quotation is from p. 444. 31. Relationis Historicae Semestralis Continuatio, pp. 95–96. 32. See Abraham Ya’ari, Masa’ot erets yisrael (Tel Aviv: Modan, 1996), pp. 391, 429.

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33. Barnai, The Jews in Palestine, ch. 11; Amnon Cohen and Mina Rosen, “Erets yisrael baemperia ha’otmanit ‘ad sof ha’et ha h.adasha,” in Hahistoria shel erets yisrael 7, ed. Amnon Cohen (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Insitute, 1981), pp. 91–274; Meir Beniyahu, “Qahal Ashkenazim birushalayim beshanim taf-mem-zayin—taf-qufzayin,” Sefunot 2 (1958): 128–189. 34. See the testimony of R. Gedaliah of Siemiatycz in his book, Shaalu shelom yerushalayim (Berlin, 1706); Quntres shaalu shalom yerushalayim lr. gedalia misiemiatycz, ed. Zalman Shazar (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 12. See also Ya’ari, Mas’aot erets yisrael, pp. 329–330. 35. Matthias Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). 36. Letter from Fez to Safed (Adar, 5460), in Fez veh.akhameiha, ed. David ‘Ovadia (Jerusalem: Beit Oved, 1979), p. 302. See Arieh Morgenstern, Striving for Zion, Messianism after the Sabbatean Crisis [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Maor, 2005), p. 70. 37. Avraham Ya’ari, Sheluh.ei erets yisrael (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Insitute, 1951), p. 70. 38. Letter from Arieh Judah Katz to David Oppenheim (22 Nissan, 5459), in Meir Benayahu, “H.alifat igrot bein haqehila haashkenazit biyerushalayim ver. David Oppenheim,” Yerushalayim 3 (1951): 119. 39. Judah Leib Pochowitzer, Kevod h.akhamim (Venice, 5460 [1700]). 40. Gershom Scholem, “Hatenu’a hashabtait bepolin,” Meh.qarim umeqorot letoldot hashabtaut vegilguleiha (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974), p. 88. 41. Jacob Mann, “Hityashvut hamequbal avraham rovigo veh.avurato biyerushalayim beshnat 5462 leyetsira (1702), Measef zion (1934), pp. 59–83. 42. Gershom Scholem, Meh.qerei shabtaut (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1992), pp. 574–578. 43. See Benayahu, “Ha h.evra haqedosha shel rabbi Judah h.asid ve’aliyato leerets yisrael,” pp. 133–182; Pawel Maciejko, “Judah Hasid Ha-levi,” YIVO Encyclopedia, Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 2048–2049; Putik, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” pp. 4–140; Putik, “Prague Jews and Judah Hasid: A Study on the Social, Political and Religious History of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” pp. 72–105; Samuel Krauss, Die Palästinasiedlung der Polnischen Hasidim und die Wiener Kreise im Jahre 1700 (Vienna, 1933). 44. Jacob Emden, Torat haqanaut (Amsterdam, 5512 [1752]), fol. 26b. 45. Scholem, “Hatenu’a hashabtait bepolin,” p. 99. 46. Meir Benayhu, “Hatenu’a hashabtait beyavan,” Sefunot 14 (1971–1978): 513. 47. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 26b–27b. 48. On H.ayim Malakh, see Scholem, Hatenu’a hashabtait bepolin, pp. 100–108; Scholem, “Iggeret meet h.ayim malakh,” in Meh.qerei shabtaut, pp. 579–590; Pawel

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Maciejko, “Malakh, Hayim ben Shelomoh,” YIVO Encyclopedia, Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 1120–1121. 49. Leib ben Ozer, The Story of Shabbetai Zevi [Yiddish and Hebrew], ed. and trans. Shlomo Zucker and Rivka Plesser, (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1978), p. 191. 50. Gershom Scholem, “Igeret meet h.ayim malakh,” Meh.qerei Shabtaut, pp. 579–590. 51. Leib ben ‘Ozer, Sipur ma’asei shabbetai zevi, pp. 191–192. 52. Emden, Mitpah.at sefarim, fol. 2a–b; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816, p. 76. 53. See Idel, “Perceptions of Kabbalah in the Second Half of the 18th Century,” pp. 55–114. 54. See Relationis Historicae Semestralis Continuatio, p. 95; Johann Jacob Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 2 (Frankfurt, 1714), pp. 58–64; Benayahu, “Ha h.evra haqedosha shel rabi yehuda h.asid,” pp. 145–146. 55. This testimony was first presented by Johann Andreas Eisenmanger, and it is cited by Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 2, p. 64. See Benayahu, “Ha h.avara heqedusha shel rabi yehuda h.asid,” pp. 150–151. 56. Relationis Historicae Semestralis Continuatio, p. 95. 57. Emden, Torat haqanut, fol. 27a. See Benayahu, “Ha h.avara heqedusha shel rabi yehuda h.asid,” pp. 147–148; Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam. 58. See Ada Rapaport-Albert, “On the Position of Women in Sabbatianism,” in The Sabbatian Movement and Its Aftermath: Messianism, Sabbatianism and Frankism [Hebrew], ed. Rachel Elior, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001), p. 235. See Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666– 1816 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011). 59. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fol 27a. See Rapoport-Albert, “On the Position of Women in Sabbatianism,” pp. 238–239; Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy, pp. 140–141. 60. The homily of Rabbi Judah H.asid is quoted by Tsvi Hirsh Kaidenober, Qav hayashar (Frankfut am Main, 5565 [1705]), ch. 11. 61. Nathan Neta Mannheim, Sefer meorot nathan (Frankfurt am Main, 5469 [1709]), author’s introduction. 62. Benayahu, “Ha h.evra haqedosha shel rabi yehuda h.asid,” p. 166. 63. Abraham ben Eli’ezer Hacohen, Ori ve’yesh’i (Berlin, 5474 [1714]), fol. 56a. 64. Benayahu, “H.alifat igrot bein haqehila haashkenazit biyrushalaim ver. David Oppenheim.” The letter from Arieh Leib Katz, 5 (Tammuz, 5459 [1699]), cited on pp. 120–123. 65. See Joseph Issachar ben El h.anan, Shlosha serigim, introduction; Relationis Historicae Semestralis Continuatio, p. 95. 66. See Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 2, pp. 62–63; Benayahu, “Ha h.evra haqedosha shel rabbi Judah h.asid,” pp. 152–153; On Schudt and his

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ethnographical project, see Yaakov Deutsch, “Johann Jacob Schudt: Der erste Ethnograph der jüdische Gemeinde in Frankfurt am Main,” in Frankfurter Judengasse: Jüdisches Leben in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Fritz Backhaus et al. (Frankfurt: Societäts Verlag, 2006), pp. 67–76. 67. Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 2, p. 63; Benayahu, “Ha h.evra haqedosha shel rabi yehuda h.asid,” p. 174. 68. Gedalia of Siemiatycz, Shaalu shlom yerushalayim (Berlin, 5476 [1716]); Shazar, Quntras shaalu shlom yerushalayim le r. gedalia misiemiatycz, p. 10. 69. Mas’aot moshe yerushalmi in Avraham Ya’ari, Mas’aot erets yisrael (Tel Aviv: Modan, 1996), p. 448. 70. Gedalia of Siemiatycz, Shaalu shlom yerushalayim, pp. 10–11. 71. Mannheim, Sefer meorot natan, fol. 27a. 72. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fol. 27a. 73. Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 2, pp. 62–63. 74. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fol. 27. 75. Gedalia of Siemiatycz, Shaalu shlom yerushalayim, pp. 18, 24, 40. 76. Masa’ot moshe yerushalmi, p. 448. 77. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fol. 27a. 78. Stern, The Court Jew, p. 248. 79. Johannes Andreas Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1700). 80. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. 2, pp. 667–668. 81. Nils Roemer, “Colliding Visions: Jewish Messianism and German Scholarship in the Eighteenth Century,” in Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 271. 82. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry, p. 119. 83. Shmuel Ettinger, Modern Anti-Semitism, Studies and Essays [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1978), p. 41. 84. Jacob Katz, “Darkhei havaat hareayot shel eisenmenger meameqorot hatalmudiim,” Divrei haqongres hahamisi le mada’ei hayahadut, 2 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1972), pp. 210–216; Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), ch. 2. 85. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. 2, pp. 1027–1028. 86. On the Eisenmenger affair, see Gerson Wolf, “Der Prozess Eisenmenger,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 18 (1869): 378–384, 425–432, 465–473; Leopold Löwenstein, “Der Prozess Eisenmenger,” Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums 18 (1891): 209–240; Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 199–200; Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Merkantilism, pp. 234–235; Stefan Rohrbacher, “Gründlicher und wahrhaffter Berich: Des Orientalisten

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Johann Andreas Eisenmengers Entdecktes Judenthum (1700) als Klassiker des wissenschaftlichen Antisemitismus,” in Reuchlin und seine Erben, ed. Peter Schäfer and Irina Wandrey (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), pp. 171–188. 87. Wolf, “Der Prozess Eisenmenger,” p. 380. 88. See Kaufmann, Samson Wertheimer der Oberhoffactor und Landesrabbiner, pp. 11–15; Wolf, “Der Prozess Eisenmenger,” pp. 380–381. 89. See Max Wiener, “Des Hof- und Kammeragenten Leffmann Berens Intervention bei dem Erscheinen judenfeindlicher Schriften,” Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1879), pp. 59–62; Heinrich Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat: Geschichte und System der Hoffaktoren an deutschen Fürstenhöfen im Zeitalter des Absolutismus, 5 (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1965), pp. 63–65. 90. Löwenstein, “Der Prozess Eisenmenger,” pp. 225–227. 91. Eisenmenger’s letter of appeal: Löwenstein, “Der Prozess Eisenmenger,” pp. 227–232. 92. Johann Jacob Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 1 (Frankfurt, 1714), pp. 426–438. 93. See Dinur, “Hazmanim ha h.adashim betoldot yisrael,” p. 26. 94. Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 1, pp. 439–440.

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BET WEEN ENLIGHTENED THOUGHT AND AN IMAGINARY UNIVERSE

While Eisenmenger was devoting his erudition to religious polemics, an exciting and unprecedented revolution was taking place in European thought, whose leaders were striving to move in exactly the opposite direction: freedom of conscience and thought, tolerance, and distancing the state from intervention in religious life.1 While the Hebraist from Heidelberg was endeavoring to publish Judaism Unmasked in Frankfurt in the first year of the eighteenth century, the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), a graduate of Oxford and a professor there, one of the most prominent and influential leaders of this revolution, observed with satisfaction his success in provoking a new discussion, in which reason and liberty were the basic values. From his home on the Oates estate in Essex, the sixty-year-old philosopher sent warm good wishes for the beginning of the new century to the friends among whom he had lived in political exile in Holland until the Glorious Revolution of 1688, men who shared his liberal ideas: “I wish that this century may end in joy, and the new century may enter in joy.”2 Indeed, Locke, who suffered severely from asthma and would only live to see four years of the eighteenth century, was one of the great architects who founded the thought and values of that century. Together with his younger friend Isaac Newton (1643–1727), the scientist whose discovery of the laws of physics conquered giant territories for the scientific revolution, Locke challenged traditional thought until, by around 1700, a significant critical movement had been aroused, attacking those who leaned upon the authority of the past, based on assurance “that there existed alternative ways of thinking to those prevalent in Europe.”3

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“To Ba nish th e Sh a dows” Proponents of the new science believed that Newton, Robert Boyle, and other scientists had shown that the laws of nature and their mechanical action provided an explanation of the world that did not require the hand of God. The poet Alexander Pope regarded Newton as a miraculous phenomenon, changing reality through and through, like a new creation of the world: “Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:/ God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.” Voltaire, who admired Locke, praised him for his empirical approach and his independence: “Mr. Locke has displayed the human soul in the same manner as an excellent anatomist explains the springs of the human body. . . . Above all, he consults himself; the being conscious that he himself thinks.”4 Locke’s publications during the final decade of the outgoing century, especially, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Letters Concerning Toleration (1689–1692), The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), and Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) gained an enthusiastic readership as well as strong opposition. Clergymen published pamphlets attacking what seemed to be an unforgiveable blow against faith, and the pope placed An Essay Concerning Human Understanding on the Index of Forbidden Books. Indeed, Locke’s challenge was substantial. His work on education, for example, demanded a deep reform in society’s attitude toward children. He demanded that the individualistic ethos, which recognizes the value of the individual, freedom of his thought and action, and the uniqueness of his character, should henceforth shape the principles of education. In a humanistic spirit, Locke sought to spare the pupils unnecessary fears, superstitious belief in ghosts and demons, and cruel punishment. Instead, he advocated fostering virtues and concern for their physical and mental welfare. The change in education and, with it, in all of society was possible because a person was born a tabula rasa: “I considered [the son] only as white paper, or wax, to be molded and fashioned as one pleases.” The ideas and values absorbed in the pupil’s brain in his experience of life and education instill a unique personality in him: “Each Man’s Mind has some peculiarity, as well as his face, that distinguishes him from all others; and there are possibly scarce two children who can be conducted by exactly the same method.” The final sentences of Some Thoughts Concerning Education were truly a revolutionary modern manifesto calling for liberation from dependence on tradition and old customs. Locke concludes that his essay “may give some small light to those, whose concern for their dear little ones makes them so irregularly bold, that they dare venture to consult their own reason in the education of their children, rather than wholly to rely upon old custom.”5

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The Letters Concerning Toleration, which favored the separation of church and state, had considerable political significance. Like many other Protestant thinkers, Locke was influenced by what appeared to be the grossest violation of the principle of toleration in his generation, the severe step taken by the Catholic monarch Louis XIV in 1685 when he revoked the Edict of Nantes and subsequently prohibited Protestant worship in France. Locke was living in Holland at the time and was familiar with the Huguenots, who chose to leave France and take refuge in the Netherlands. In Letters Concerning Toleration he called for the state to refrain from intervening in religion and for the church to eschew religious coercion.6 His revolutionary message is expressed with sharp clarity: “The care of Souls cannot belong to the Civil Magistrate, because his Power consists only in outward force: But true and saving Religion consists in the inward persuasion of the Mind; without which nothing can be acceptable to God.”7 Locke presented this position as consistent with true Christianity, in which he himself believed, but his innovative doctrine, in fact, demanded that the state should undergo deep secularization and voluntarily withdraw from areas under the province of religion. People’s opinions could not be changed by laws and punishments; hence, it was preferable for the state to give attention to life in this world and no longer be concerned with life in the world to come. The doctrine of toleration advocates freedom of belief and worship, honors all faiths, and denies the idea of a single religion. In Locke’s opinion, ancient Judaism was such an example of toleration, as the Israelite commonwealth did not impose its religion on the pagans under their rule: “Amongst so many Captives taken, so many Nations reduced under their Obedience, we find not one man forced into the Jewish Religion, and the Worship of the True God.” From this, Locke drew unprecedented conclusions about the tolerance deserved by the Jews of his time in Christian Europe. The necessary separation between religious affiliation and civil rights required a principled change in thought regarding the Jews. He rejected the religious ardor of those who expected Jewish conversion, and he proposed that the state should be indifferent to the religious faith of its citizens, unless they were atheists suspected of lacking a conscience, or Catholics, whose loyalty to the government could not be counted on in England. The status of the Jews must be different: “Such an Injury may not be done unto a Jew, as to compel him, against his own Opinion, to practice in his Religion a thing that is in its nature indifferent.” Besides, “If a Jew do not believe the New Testament to be the Word of God, he does not thereby alter anything in men’s Civil Rights.”8 Locke’s radical declaration could henceforth serve as the basic idea behind every proposal to rescind the restrictions imposed on the Jews: “Nay if we may

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openly speak the Truth and as becomes one Man to another; neither Pagan, nor Mahumetan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the Civil Rights of the Commonwealth, because of his Religion. . . . And the Commonwealth, which embraces indifferently all men that are honest, peaceable, and industrious, requires it not.” Severing the connection between civil rights and religious affiliation neither denigrates the religion of the Jews nor makes their citizenship dependent on forgoing or concealing their tradition: “If we allow the Jews to have private Houses and Dwellings amongst us, why should we not allow them to have Synagogues? Is their Doctrine more false, their Worship more abominable, or is the Civil Peace more endangered, by their meeting in publick, than in their private Houses?”9 In the Second Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke replied to a critic who was shocked by the extension of toleration to non-Christians, declaring that in his opinion as well Christianity was the true religion and that the conversion of the Jews was a religious aspiration for whose accomplishment Christians prayed. However, once again he defended the separation between religious ideals and policy, including civil rights.10 Three generations later, Locke’s doctrine of toleration became the inspiration for Moses Mendelssohn in his campaign to end the civil restrictions imposed on the Jews and against the religious authority and coercion of the rabbinical elite. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the educated community of Europe, two opposing trends confronted one another. One is represented by the aspiration of Eisenmenger to unmask the danger posed by the Jews to Christian Europe and to condemn their religion; the other is expressed in Locke’s recommendations to include the Jews in the new doctrine of religious toleration. Locke was a pioneer among those who entered what Paul Hazard called the intellectual battle waged by the rationalists of the marvelous generation of 1680–1715, to banish shadows and provide some light in a world that was full of error. They declared themselves to be “modern,” preferring the present to the past and seeking happiness in this world. Thus, while Europe was sinking into wars for territory, political hegemony, and dynastic rule, in the realm of learning and culture brilliant ideas emerged, inspiring criticism of the Old World and the demand for a New Order.11 However, the tension between the new philosophy and humanistic concern and the reality of life full of suffering and fanaticism was still huge. Many philosophers, including Locke, had already aroused a sense of threat among those loyal to the Old Order, who rejected the new skeptical thrust, but none so much as Spinoza (1632–1677), whose name became synonymous with dangerous heresy. The Portuguese Jewish philosopher from

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Amsterdam belonged to one of the new Jewish communities established at the end of the sixteenth century by several hundred former Marranos, who left the Iberian Peninsula and openly returned to Judaism in Holland. It is probably no coincidence that Locke wrote the Letters Concerning Toleration while he was living in Holland, where he was closely familiar not only with the dispute on toleration waged in that country and not only with the toleration toward religious sects and the distress of the Huguenots who were exiled from France but also with the relative toleration enjoyed by the Jews, earlier than anywhere else in Europe.12 Spinoza’s penetrating critique of religion and his identification of nature with God (pantheism) aroused strong opposition. When he was only twenty-four years old, he was excommunicated by the Portuguese Jewish leadership of the Amsterdam community because of “the dreadful heresies he committed and taught,” and afterward he lived as an individual, outside of Jewish society and religion.13 In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza voiced some of the most radical arguments advanced by that time against religion and the clergy. “We see most people endeavoring to have about their own commentaries as the word of God, and giving their best efforts, under the guise of religion, to compelling others to think as they do.”14 Rather than encourage peace and good morals, religion arouses hatred and conflict, and the clergy exploit the fears of the masses to control them, wrote Spinoza. Instead of seeking the truth, religion has become superstition and a collection of prejudices that nourish discord and religious fanaticism. The prejudices diminish the value of humanity, and they “degrade man from rational being to beast . . . completely stifle the power of judgement between true and false, [and] seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason!”15 While Spinoza’s ideas gave him a central place in the development of the new thought in Europe beginning at the turn of the seventeenth century, like other critics of religion from his community, such as Uriel da Costa and Juan de Prado, Spinoza effected no deep change among the Jews. According to Yosef Kaplan, “Their criticism led them to a total denial of separate Jewish existence, and for that reason they abandoned their community, in one way or another, without establishing a movement of change or any alternative organization.”16 However, Spinoza’s ideas and the story of his life continued to reverberate in Europe. For example, Yirmiyahu Yovel sees Spinoza as the lonely Jew, who both exemplified Jewish life without faith and the commandments or a communal framework and also looked at Jewish history with secular and rational eyes. According to Yovel, Spinoza was a harbinger of general European secularism and also of the secularization of Judaism.17

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The man who contributed the most to publicizing Spinoza at the turn of the eighteenth century was the French Huguenot philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647– 1706). In his Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical Critical Dictionary) he devoted a long and detailed article to Spinoza and established his image as an atheist for generations to come. His unique dictionary demanded a sophisticated and subversive reading and created tension between what appeared to be belief in God and submissive acceptance of His actions in human history and a rationalist critique that mercilessly dissected familiar religion and presented it in a negative light. The book caused a scandal among the conservatives, while for critical and liberal thinkers it became “the Bible of the eighteenth century.”18 Bayle lived in Rotterdam, where he had gone into exile after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and in 1700 he was working on the second edition of the dictionary, which appeared two years later. Though Bayle condemned Spinoza, he ultimately not only presented his biography and doctrine at length, as no one had done before him, but, by means of the article, he also sought to prove Spinoza’s argument that atheists can be virtuous people according to natural law. To religious ears, this may sound like a paradox, said Bayle, but that is how God created man, and this could be evidence of His mysterious wisdom, which we find so hard to understand.19 Bayle’s moral compass directed him, and his sensitivity to acts of injustice and cruelty was the standard by means of which he reread the Bible and inculcated repugnance for fanaticism in his readers. He argued that when the authority of scripture conflicts with human understanding and ethics, the authority is false. For example, with criticism that almost borders on satire, he describes the triangular relationship of Isaac, Rebecca, and Abimelech, the king of Gerar, in the Bible. He condemns Isaac and Rebecca for pretending to be brother and sister and allows the reader to conclude that Abimelech is, in fact, the honest one in the story. He expresses amazement at the apologetic Jewish and Christian interpretations of the story and does not eschew sexual innuendoes that show the story in a ridiculous light that peels away the veil of sanctity. He comments: “In all honesty it is being too rigorous to wish that a patriarch or a married prelate not engage in some slight recreations with his wife without closing all the shutters of the windows.” However, the most conspicuous example of Bayle’s subversiveness is his presentation of King David in the abhorrent image of a leader with no conscience, who causes suffering and fails every ethical test. Bayle asks: Are we permitted to judge the king chosen for leadership by God in that fashion? And he answers: “The profound respect we ought to have for this great king, this great prophet, ought not to prevent us from disapproving the blemishes that are to be found in his life. . . .

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It is of great concern to true religion that the lives of the orthodox be judged by the general concepts of right and order.”20 Religion, according to Bayle, cannot defend immoral conduct solely by virtue of its authority. Bayle’s Historical Critical Dictionary marked one direction of the attitude of the rationalist scholars in Europe toward Judaism. King David’s resounding moral failure, in fact, is a stain on Judaism, as well as on Christianity, which claimed to be its successor. Although Bayle had a tolerant attitude toward the Jews, he depicts Judaism in dark colors in the dictionary. Thus, he represents one of the contradictory tendencies in the new European thought: acceptance of the Jews on the basis of the civil considerations proposed by Locke, and rejection of the Jews in consequence of the reevaluation of ancient Judaism.21 This dual trend is expressed in the new picture of Judaism as painted by the brush of deist scholars. Bayle’s critique fit in well with the scholarship of Christian Hebraism, and it was also accepted by a group of English deists at the end of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries. John Spencer of Cambridge, for example, sought to show that the Jewish religion wasn’t original, because it drew upon ancient Egyptian customs. Charles Blount added that the Jews had been expelled from Egypt as lepers and that Moses had learned most of his teaching there. Other deists found monotheism in the earlier cultures of Persia and China and claimed that the Jews had copied it from them. The deists, who believed in a universal, natural, and ethical religion and in the divine source of scripture, examined the Bible according to Bayle’s method and sought evidence of the Jews’ barbarism.22 The most thoroughly deist of all was the Irish-born philosopher John Toland (1670–1732). His opponents regarded him as a Spinozist and the most destructive of all critics of the churches. In his writings he showed an attitude of criticism mixed with toleration toward Judaism.23 On the one hand, Judaism could not withstand the test of reason and it was also influenced by Egyptian rites, and he criticized its dependence on miracles as the basis for faith; on the other hand, one had to admire Moses’s fundamental enterprise as a legislator and creator of a pure religion. In his Christianity not Mysterious, Toland argued that the test of a true religion lay in its not contradicting reason and not containing superstitions. In Dublin, the book was sentenced to be burned for impugning Christianity, and in 1700 it was examined by a religious court in London, until a higher court halted the judicial process. Toland felt persecuted and, like Bayle, he prepared a second edition of the work, in which he responded to his critics and, at the same time, expressed his condemnation of religious fanaticism even more strongly.24 His world view also led him to reach conclusions

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regarding the hostile and discriminatory attitude toward the Jews, in general and in Britain in particular. As we shall see, a few years later Toland published his pamphlet Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland, demanding, in the name of deism, political recognition of the Jews’ right to become citizens of the state where they lived and to whose prosperity they were contributing.25

“One Shou ld K e ep V ery Dista nt from th e St u dy of Phi losoph y ” The rationalist, critical philosophical discourse of Locke, Bayle, and Toland, which developed in parallel to the new scientific discourse, which Newton brought to a peak, and the blows that traditional religion absorbed from skeptical thinkers from Spinoza on, stimulated European intellectual life in 1700. The drive to reveal “the errors” and discover the truth about nature, mankind, and religion characterized “the moderns” and caused apprehension among the theologians, who sought to preserve the sanctity of scripture and of religious traditions. However, in the first year of the eighteenth century, almost none of this reverberated among the Jews, even when the shifts in European thought already had clear consequences for their image and fate. The familiarity of the Court Jews with the political, diplomatic, and financial areas of the European powers did not affect their thinking. The Jewish contemporaries of the rationalist philosophers in the first year of the century were rabbis such as Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, David Oppenheim, and Moses Hagiz; those who propounded kabbalistic ethics, as did Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover; and the Sabbateans such as Abraham Michael Cardozo, Rabbi Judah H.asid, and H.ayim Malakh. With some disappointment, the historian Heinrich Graetz noted that while Toland, known as the brave hero battling against petrified Christianity, raised his voice for granting citizenship to the Jews, those to whom this was most critical knew very little about him and felt no change at all in the direction of the winds.26 In the Ashkenazic communities, no significant intellectual elite of scholars who were not rabbis arose in the years after Spinoza, the presence of Jews in the universities was extremely restricted, and very few of them were familiar with the new scientific discourse in European languages. The predominant norms accorded social prestige to scholars of Torah and influence to preachers, kabbalists, and experts in charms and magic spells. The popular ethical book from the beginning of the century, Qav hayashar, warned unequivocally: “One should keep very distant from the study of philosophy, which opposes

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faith, because it is alien fire [Num. 3:4], and it was said of it, ‘surely her house leads down to death . . . those who enter will not return’ [Prov. 2:18–19], and one should even keep a distance from the study of nature.”27 The absence of philosophical works such as the Guide of the Perplexed by Maimonides from the Jewish library, for it was not printed until 1742, made it impossible to confront the comments in Qav hayashar with the categorical words written at the end of the twelfth century: “You must beware of sharing the error of those who write amulets [kameot]. Whatever you hear from them, or read in their works, especially in reference to the names which they form by combination, is utterly senseless; they call these combinations shemot [names] and believe that their pronunciation demands sanctification and purification, and that by using them they are enabled to work miracles. Rational persons ought not to listen to such men, nor in any way believe their assertions.”28 As we shall see, this situation was to change as early as the first decade of the eighteenth century, when the early Maskilim appear, and when physicians, graduates of the Universities of Padua, Frankfurt an der Oder, and Halle were exposed to the new science and to the critical trends in philosophy. They endeavored to recover the philosophical thought of the Middle Ages for Jewish culture and understood the challenge posed by deism, the pantheism of Spinoza, and new discoveries in cosmology. While the new philosophy eschewed the world of mystery and vain beliefs that were not acceptable to the rational mind, the supernatural world was extremely present among the Jews, and its grip grew stronger with the increase of kabbalistic influence. In that generation of the end of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, among whose members French historian Paul Hazard discerned the enormous philosophical ferment and the “Crisis of the European Mind,” Gershom Scholem found Sabbatean propaganda “to prepare hearts for a spiritual revolution.” In his opinion, “anyone who peruses the popular literature of this kind, especially the books printed between 1690 and 1715 in Żółkiew, Dyhernfurth, Wilhermsdorf, Fürth, and Salzbach, which were intended for the simple people in Poland and Germany, will easily discover the close connections of some of their authors with the centers of pietist Sabbateanism.”29 The critics of the religious revival heralded by Rabbi Judah H.asid were rabbis who feared Sabbatean heresy, not skeptical philosophers. Popular support for it was, as noted, widespread: “For the masses of the people, men and women, were bound to him and regarded him as a man of God.” However, among the Jews, there were almost no followers of the radical, blunt, and open disdain expressed by Spinoza thirty years earlier: “Piety, great God! And religion are become a tissue of ridiculous mysteries; men, who flatly despise reason,

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who reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt, these, I say, these of all men, are thought . . . to possess light from on High.”30 The customs practiced in Hasidism, which represented piety on the highest level, and the preachers of redemption and repentance on the basis of mastery of the secrets of the religion exerted great influence in the period when supernatural experiences shaped religious life. The year 1700 was a turning point in the life of Rabbi Moses Hagiz (1671–1751), for example, a native of Jerusalem who eventually became one of the most prominent rabbis of his places of residence—Amsterdam, London, and Altona—who combated the threats to the traditional religion and the rabbinical leadership posed by Sabbateanism and secularization. For several years he had been involved in severe conflicts resulting from his concern for maintaining the yeshiva that his father had established in Jerusalem, requiring him to travel back and forth between Italy and Egypt. In that year, when he was only twenty-nine years old, he was on the verge of despair, until one night in Livorno, when “a good angel and defender [appeared,] rebuking me . . . and instructing me, and speaking to me in writing and orally, [saying] how long will you lie there, you lazy man.” This revelation completely changed his life, saved him from despair, and filled him with confidence, encouraging him to fight for his opinions with determination, undeterred by polemics, and to make his independent way.31 In 1700, Pinchas Katzenellenbogen (1691–1764) the future rabbi of the communities of Moravia, was only a child of nine years old in the community of Fürth, and his entire world was Torah study. He was then in the midst of the training process that would eventually offer him entry into the rabbinical elite, to which his aristocratic family belonged. An experience from that year was engraved in his memory, a special event that strengthened his belief in the hidden world and in the power of the “masters of the name” who were expert in the secrets of magic. At the Festival of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), Katzenellenbogen’s grandparents were stricken by a mysterious demon that lay in wait for them. On the first night of the holiday (September 28, 1700), his grandmother tripped on the stairs on her way to the Sukkah, “and she said that she felt someone take her arm powerfully and throw her down”; and a few days later, when “after midnight my grandfather, my teacher and master, the great Rabbi Leiser of blessed memory, rose to attend to relieve himself, and he was a very fat man, and a demon (according to rumor it was the same demon as above) assailed him until he fell down.”32 Even casually paging through some of the books that were placed on the shelves of the Jewish library in 1700 shows the absolute superiority of the rabbinical elite in the realm of the printed word, knowledge, and values. Two

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years before his death, Rabbi Yair Bacharach (1638–1701), who was in Worms at that time, managed to publish a selection of his halakhic rulings, entitled H.avot yair. With the name of this book of Halakhah, the author paid tribute to his much-admired grandmother, H.ava [Eve], “who was unique in her generation in her knowledge of Torah.” The book was printed with the generous support of Samson Wertheimer of Vienna, and it was prefaced by an enthusiastic endorsement by Rabbi David Oppenheim.33 Though Oppenheim was the rabbi of the community of Nikolsburg in Moravia, at the turn of the century he was living far from there: “I sign here in the holy community of Hanover, in the house of Assembly of Sages of my father-in-law, the famous, notable leader of the generation, Rabbi Eliezer Lipman [Leffmann Behrens] of the Seed of Aaron.” Enclosed in that kloiz established in Hanover by the Court Jew Behrens, Oppenheim was able to devote himself almost entirely to the study of Torah in the company of excellent scholars. Similar Houses of Study arose in several communities in Central and Eastern Europe, starting in the seventeenth century in Altona, Halberstadt, Mannheim, Berlin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Grodno, and Minsk, and they mark significant changes in the organization of Torah study and the rise of the status of the rabbinical elite. Elchanan Reiner connects this with “the existence of a stratum of very wealthy men and the rise of the urban middle class in the Jewish communities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” The religious values shared by the scholars and the householders and the aristocracy of the families of Court Jews strengthened the group, “most of whose time was supposed to be devoted to the study of Torah,” and who were supported by the community, because it regarded these scholars as maximally expressing the values of Jewish society.34 Continued survey of the Jewish library at the beginning of the century shows that these scholars also wrote books not intended solely for the learned elite. Thus, for example, readers could learn about history from the Yiddish translations of two well-known works from the sixteenth century: Shevet Yehudah by Solomon ibn Verga, which describes the suffering of the Jews over the generations, peaking in the expulsion from Spain, and seeks to decipher the secret of the Jewish fate; and the chronicle Tsemah. David, by David Gans of Prague, which describes the events of the Jewish and universal past, from the creation of the world, attributing religious value to the strengthening of faith in divine providence.35 These books were a source for shaping a picture of the past and for internalizing the tension between exile and expectations for redemption. However, the rabbinical elite, which regarded study of the Talmud and Jewish law as the most essential activity, attributed little value to the books for, as Rabbi Issachar Berman of Ansbach wrote in the endorsement

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he wrote for Shevet Yehudah, they were meant “for the masses who are not learned in Torah, and for women.” They had the same attitude toward a book that was on the way to becoming a bestseller, written at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac of Janów, Tsene-rene. By presenting literal and homiletical interpretations of the Bible, this book enabled women and men who were not among the learned to study portions of the Bible and the prophets in Yiddish, their native language, on the Sabbath and holidays, and thus to gain knowledge of the essence of their Jewish tradition.36 Another Yiddish book reflected the deep penetration of the Kabbalah among large groups: Abir ya’aqov, by Rabbi Simon Akiva Ber of Schnaitach. Published in 1700, it contained kabbalistic stories and commentaries on the portions of the week of Genesis, and was meant to provide an intimate experience of study. Rabbi Ber suggested that husbands and wives should study the book together, after waking from their Sabbath naps, and attain new insights into the Torah.37 This genre was apparently in great demand, and in that year the volume ‘Oneg Shabbat was reprinted in Prague. This was a collection of passages from kabbalistic literature about the religious meaning of the Sabbath and the kabbalistic qavanot (intentions) behind the laws of the Sabbath. The author of this book, written in the previous generation, was the kabbalist from Prague, Abraham Reuben Hacohen Katz. In his introduction, the printer explained the obligation “to study books of Kabbalah on the Sabbath, especially the Zohar, in the depth of the Torah, and to honor the supplementary soul and to raise one’s soul from step to step to the highest one by means of the secrets of the Torah”; however, “not everyone is capable of understanding and learning” the Kabbalah. Therefore, a book of short and simple excerpts, appropriate for the general public, was needed.38 The rabbinical elite did its best not only to supervise printed books, but also, by means of halakhic rulings, to penetrate many areas of life, even the most intimate. Thus, for example, many of the halakhic questions addressed to Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi (Hakham Tsevi) in 1700, collected in his book of responsa, dealt with sensitive questions of marriage, sexual behavior, and menstruation, among other things. For example, he tells the story of “a woman who was regarded as a widow and entered the marriage canopy with someone but did not have sexual relations, saying that she was menstruating, . . . and now her husband wants to divorce her, does he have the right to divorce her against her will?”39 In 1700, Rabbi Jacob Katz of Koblenz on the Rhine was troubled by a question concerning a woman from his community who was forced to avoid her husband for a long period of time because of the presence of small spots of clotted blood. On the one hand, it was strictly forbidden to engage in conjugal

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relations with a menstruating woman, and it was his responsibility as a decisor (poseq) not to permit it in a situation of doubt; but on the other hand, the woman was suffering, “and it was bitter to her because of her miserable soul, which was barely capable of purifying herself for her husband for many days.” He did not trust himself to decide alone and consulted one of the century’s best-known rabbis, Gabriel Eskeles, from the community of Metz, a brother-in-law of Samson Wertheimer and of Jacob Katz himself, the rabbi whom Glikl admired because of “his righteous and charitable deeds.”40 In a long halakhic exposition, from which women themselves were excluded—though, without the slightest doubt, they would obey its conclusions—the rabbi’s responsum went into the details of women’s anatomy and physiology. He also suggested seeking the opinion of physicians, who might be able to offer an authoritative answer to the question of whether the blood came from menstruation, which would make the woman unclean, or from another source, which would not be defined as menstrual blood. Ultimately, the responsum allowed the woman to immerse herself and terminate her unclean status, although the doubt was not removed, for the rabbinical decisor continued to believe that he was unable entirely to remove serious apprehension regarding “the prohibition [punishable by] severance from the Jewish people [karet] with every act of sexual intercourse, perish the thought.” In the final analysis, concern for the couple overcame his doubt regarding the grave sin, and he decided “to make peace between husband and wife and release her from this grievous restriction, because for a long time she had been separated from her husband.”41 Alongside this halakhic literature, which was accessible only to the scholarly elite, ethical literature in Hebrew and Yiddish was widespread, maintaining beliefs and opinions and enforcing proper religious behavior. Glikl advised her children to be reconciled with the tribulations of life and to strengthen their fear of heaven by studying ethics, and she also mentioned two of the most popular works, which were written at the end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by Moses Henoch of Prague and Isaac ben Elyakum of Posen: “Read in Brantshpigl [Burning Mirror], in Lev tov [A Good Heart], or those who can study, read in books of moral instruction, you will find everything there.”42 In a short time, a widely read and influential book of ethics was to enter the Jewish book market, one that Glikl did not yet know: Qav hayashar, written by Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover and published in a bilingual Hebrew and Yiddish edition in 1705, though it was already finished by the beginning of the century.43 Qav hayashar depended to a large degree on a work by the author’s teacher, Joseph ben Judah Yudl of Dubno, Yesod Yosef, and included many citations from the Zohar, from stories about the ARI (Rabbi Isaac Luria) and his disciples,

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and from other ethical works. Nevertheless, Kaidanover managed to make a distinctive mark on it, in the personal and intimate conversation in which he engaged the reader. The book conquered people’s hearts, and from the time of its first printing in Frankfurt until the end of the century, twenty-five further editions were published. Kaidanover was born in Vilna to an aristocratic rabbinical family. He experienced violent pogroms in Poland, and in his wanderings, he became embroiled in trials and was imprisoned until, according to his introduction to the book, he settled in with his wife’s family, “in the holy city of Frankfurt am Main, and the King of the world brought me into His rooms, naked and lacking everything, and my only possession was my work, which I had written, this book, to benefit the many.”44 Kaidanover was also the one who was familiar with the single extant sermon by Rabbi Judah H. asid, which he included in his book, and he might have heard him deliver it, when the leader of the Holy Society reached Frankfurt and preached to the community, inspiring repentance with great enthusiasm. Qav hayashar reads like a collection of ethical sermons delivered by a reproachful preacher who is convinced that it is his mission to place warning signs before sinners. “Man, man!” Kaidanover remonstrated the readers of his book in the very first chapter: “If you knew how many demons of the sitra ah.ra [Satan] lurk in the quart of blood in the human heart, certainly you would subjugate your body and soul to the Creator, blessed be He.” The 101 other chapters of the book depict a horrifying image of the world and offer only small consolation within a gloomy universe, in which only full commitment to severe religious discipline and extreme caution against committing sins can serve as a lifebuoy. The universe that the student of Qav hayashar encountered at the beginning of the eighteenth century clashed completely with the new rationalist philosophy that was developing in Europe then. Demons and devils populate it: “The air of the upper space is full of the souls of people that cannot yet come to their place of rest,” and on certain days of the year, broad control is given to evil spirits and the evil eye.45 The laws of nature that Newton discovered did not control the world, but rather hidden, demonic forces and a person’s fate (that of the Jewish man, to be precise) depended on his degree of observance of the laws of the Torah and passive submission to God. “Wisdom” that is not employed to increase fear of heaven is harshly condemned: “When in his wisdom a man gives rise to vain actions and lies, and wicked and corrupt matters, which are not according to the religion and law of our holy Torah, then he stains and mars his soul. Woe to that wisdom, woe to that reason, that causes sorrow to one’s soul and severe and bitter misadventures and torments in Gehenna.”46

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Contrary to the new trend, which suggested, in the spirit of Locke, that people should study the world by means of observation and experience, Qav hayashar recommended passing one’s bitter and dangerous life in this world with closed or lowered eyes to avoid falling into temptation. Holding the view that “if a person sees unclean creatures with his vision, he will be reincarnated in the spirit of pollution. . . . He will draw up the filth and the filth will cling to his eyes,” Kaidanover preached that “one must not feast one’s eyes with observation and not see with them except by chance,” and especially, “one must not look at an evil place, lest one be brought to sin, such as women and maidens who bring a man to spill his seed.”47 Sexual sins in generally and especially the sin of emitting semen in vain, either inadvertently or on purpose, occupied a central place in kabbalistic ethical literature. In addition to the halakhic transgression, the grave consequences for the hidden world were emphasized.48 “I saw in one book,” wrote Kaidanover, “because a man fornicates with a strange woman, then an evil spirit in the image of that woman is created, and when his time comes to leave this world, that woman comes and grasps him and leads him to Gehenna.”49 Nevertheless, something of the reality of life made its way past these demonic walls into this severe ethical work, overcoming the rigid norms and ignoring the threats and dangers. Kaidanover included criticism in it, responding to his own life experience both in Poland and Germany at the end of the seventeenth century, and to his familiarity with the elite of the agents of the magnates and the Court Jews, thus testifying to a certain weakening of religious discipline. Qav hayashar took note of a new and particularly worrisome type of sinners, demanding scrupulousness and repentance, and he warned about the severe punishments in store for them. For example, there were already people who dared to oppose the religious elite and reject their authority, and he rushed to threaten that “someone who sullies his mouth and speaks skeptically about Torah scholars . . . his punishment is reincarnation as a dog.” Others ignore the boundaries separating Jews from non-Jews, like “someone who drinks non-kosher wine in a tavern of the uncircumcised, and he also fails in transgression with alien women.”50 At the beginning of an era when the attraction of European fashions was growing, women were called upon to resist the temptation and avoid baring their bodies: “Women must be more modest than men, and not follow the whims of their heart in the manners and dress of the uncircumcised, as I have seen now, within a short time, recently, those who break out have increased, going in their dress like the daughters of the uncircumcised, and there is no distinction between Jews and the uncircumcised . . . who walk with their neck extended and naked down to their breasts. Who can

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tell the greatness of their punishment, for they detain redemption, for our many sins.”51 Qav hayashar protests against the meetings of the sexes at parties (“and at balls, men and women dance together and do not know that Satan and many evil spirits dance with them”), and he accuses the merchants who work very closely with their Christian colleagues, shaving their beards and transgressing the laws of kashrut. He totally rejects the signs of linguistic accommodation: “Recently there have come those who habituate their little ones to speak in French and other languages . . . making French and foreign languages the main thing, and the study of Torah something transitory.”52 Kaidanover’s fundamental attitude, which negated earthly life, offered no possibility of justifying the aspiration of the Jews of his time for openness toward European culture and pleasurable experience. Qav hayashar declares categorically “that this world is ‘vanity and vexation of spirit’ [Ecc. 4:4], and man’s sole purpose is to inherit the world to come,” and he absolutely rejected pleasures and joy, with the ancient argument of memento mori: “Let every person think in their heart, is it not the end of a person to die, and when the soul departs from the body, which is shriveled and dry, and the skin clings to the flesh and his bones are weakened, and worms take over the body, then let them think where are the pleasures and luxuries that his soul delighted in?” Indeed, “there is no joy or laughter in this world,” and the moralist held forth in harsh words: “When our messiah comes, then our mouths will fill with laughter, and thus every person must know how to placate the blessed Creator, not to show laughing faces now in the hour of destruction, for laughter is forbidden to us now.” Awareness of exile as the severe and gloomy reality is the obligatory source of inspiration. Consolation is reserved only for the distant future, beyond the bounds of familiar human history, for the age of miraculous redemption and cosmic perfection of the world, promised by the messianic, kabbalistic Utopia. Kaidanover concluded his book with that hope: “Satan and the qelipot will be removed from the world with the advent of our messiah, for all will be perfect, and the evil impulse will be nullified.”53 Even while Qav hayashar pointed out some of the flaws in the Jewish society of his time, the author was confident in the solidity of his religious values and in the deterrent power of the punishment in store for sinners. However, a small number of Jews, whose travels throughout Europe, education, and profession expanded their horizons, enjoyed closer contact with the new knowledge. These were primarily medical students and certified physicians whose years of study had left such a great impression on them, that they were aroused to acknowledge, with pain, the weak points of their native society. This is precisely what happened to Tuvia Cohen (1652–1729), who was born in Metz to

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a family of rabbis, kabbalists, and physicians from Poland and the Land of Israel. He studied at universities in Germany and Italy and was employed as the court physician in Istanbul and Adrianople, from where he emigrated to Jerusalem.54 The considerable scientific knowledge that he acquired, and his career, resulted from a conscious decision to blaze an independent trail for himself. After the death of his father, who was the rabbi of the Metz community, young Tuvia moved to Poland, but he was disappointed and sought a different life for himself, outside of the circle of Torah scholars. He decided to take fate into his own hands and travel to Italy to study medicine at the University of Padua, but on the way from Poland he met another young Jew, Gabriel the son of Moses of Brody, and together they decided to try their luck at a university nearby, in Frankfurt am der Oder. Until then German universities were closed to Jews, so the two young men petitioned the prince elector of Brandenburg, Frederick III. Not only did he grant their petition, but he also promised them a stipend: “And he commanded the heads of the school in the city of Frankfurt on the River Oder to accept us with good countenance to study science in their colleges, even though this is against their law and custom, because no Jew ever studied in that school.”55 The studies, which they began in 1678, opened new horizons for them. Acquiring the respected profession, the post of personal physician to the rulers of the Ottoman Empire, and the honorable status that this conferred, enabled Tuvia to develop into a self-assured and self-esteemed man. However, the expe­ rience of their studies in Frankfurt left a scar on Tuvia and Gabriel’s hearts, one that did not disappear even after they became respected physicians. Even almost a quarter of a century later, Tuvia still had not forgotten how he had been forced to admit the Jews’ cultural inferiority, when Christian scholars arrogantly demanded of him and his companion: “Where is your wisdom and intelligence? It has been taken from you and given to us.” The almost complete absence of Jews from the world of science in Europe was seen in the German university as evidence of the superiority of Christianity. The knowledge with which the two students arrived in the university was not suited for the challenge they faced, and they were forced to admit that Jewish culture suffered from a great lack of knowledge: “Though we were, thank God, expert in verses and passages from the Talmud and Midrash, nevertheless in disputes against them we were poor and indigent.” Tuvia, who was only twenty-six when he discovered this broad fissure in the walls of Jewish knowledge, decided that the duty to repair it lay upon his shoulders. He had to fill it to the best of his ability, to defend the honor of the Jews, and to compose a book of science as a project of rehabilitation.56

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Ma’ase tuvia, which was written in Adrianople, was already finished at the beginning of the century, but it was printed and made available to readers seven years later. Another medical book, Sefer dimyon harefuot, entered the “Jewish library” in 1700. However, it lay on the border between the new science and ethical and kabbalistic literature.57 The Wallich family of physicians from Frankfurt am Main attained a respectable position in the community, and after the death of Abraham Wallich, “an expert physician for many who was known and famous and experienced here in our community,” his son Judah printed a short work from his literary remains, describing several common and particularly deadly diseases, proposing ways to preserve health, and the appendix that takes up about a quarter of the book is a catalog of medicines. Ostensibly, Judah Wallich placed an exceptional book in the Jewish library, strengthening trust in professional physicians and increasing the prestige of the “science of medicine,” which was competing with folk medicine and magic spells. The certified and trained physician was exposed in his work to harmful habits of life and to human weakness, and he criticized habits of excessive eating and consumption of wine and of extended horseback riding that injured the back and spinal column, and he even stated, for example, that “lying too much with women and having intercourse many times in a single night is very bad for them.”58 When the physician discovered that his professional work collided with the pretentions of “women witches,” who stood in his way and advised women to shun his medicines, he warned them in sharp terms, which connected eschewing forbidden medicine to religious ethics: “Do not go to old and alien women to get advice from them, to look at the heathen rites they do, acts of sorcery and acts of evil spirits with thunder and lightning, for they are deceptive and vain acts, and upon them will come the harsh judgment with anger and fury, and they both will fall, the sorcerer and the patient together, into Gehenna and the pit of destruction.”59 However, Sefer dimyon harefuot, which rejects “witchery,” did not categorically abandon the magical approach to illness. In the threatening tones of the preacher, he sought to convince his readers that belief in God and His Provi­ dence, repentance, prayer, fasting, and subjugation of the evil impulse are ultimately the most effective means for preserving bodily health. Someone who suffers from kidney stones, for example, will learn from Wallich’s book that the source of the illness is excessive sexual desire, which is satisfied by the sin of relations with non-Jewish women. Children’s diseases are punishment levied against the adults’ sin of adultery, and lung disease can be cured only “by fear of the word of God . . . because torments come because of sins, and if you are cautious to avoid sins, you will not need curing.”60 Though it was a book of science,

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Sefer dimyon harefuot also belonged to the revival movement that was aroused by the Holy Society of Rabbi Judah H.asid. When Judah Wallich was preparing the manuscript of the book, which he finished two months after Judah H.asid’s appearance at the Frankfurt synagogue (June 4, 1700), he made a direct connection between the religious movement that impressed him and the bodily ailments that he described in his book. He rebuked those who, in his opinion, were wallowing in a life of wantonness, accusing them of bringing severe illness upon themselves. The cure for the disease of dysentery, for example, was the avoidance of sin: “You will find the medicine of the soul for those illnesses and sins doubled and redoubled in all the sages of ethics, whether ancient or recent, in bundles and bundles, and especially now when deeds of piety are found everywhere, and perhaps they will spread from those pious men who passed through our community here [in Frankfurt] a short time ago.”61 With great satisfaction because of the presence of that religious enthusiasm, which had arisen before his eyes and swept him away, too, and under the influence of the ascetic customs and the piety of the Holy Society, the physician from Frankfurt recommended preference for “spiritual medicine,” offered by religion rather than the natural medicine offered by science.

Th e Ne w Gener ation at a Crossroa ds This blurring of the boundary between an ethical work and a medical work, and the heavy presence of sin, sharpen the question: In what direction were the Jews of Europe headed on the threshold of the new century? Did any hint of the times penetrate the Jewish library? Did the news of 1700 coming from Jewish communities and reporting, among other things, on a blood libel in Poland, riots in Vienna, prevention of the publication of an anti-Jewish book, and a Sabbatean journey to Jerusalem indicate tendencies for change, or did they testify to the persistence of familiar traditional trends—the fragile existential situation of the Jewish minority, the need to call upon intercessors, the strength of religious faith, and messianic hopes? As we have seen, the world of the Court Jews, who were deeply involved in commerce and business, in government intrigues, entailing rational considerations and a complex system of interests, was not detached from the rabbinical elite and the religious values sanctioned by kabbalistic ethical works. Very few echoes of the revolution in European thought penetrated the Jewish sphere, and the drive to challenge the supremacy of religious values and the authority of their spokesman hardly existed. However, it is difficult not to be impressed by another trend common to most of the figures active among the Jews in 1700. It would be no exaggeration

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to state that in the climate of baroque culture a particular type of Jew also emerged, endowed with a freer personality and aspiring for success as an individual: Court Jews embodied the spirit of initiative and the acceptance of risk both in business and in the struggle for Jewish interests; visionary religious leaders tried to shape and advance the movements of religious zeal and hope for redemption; adventurers emerged, such as Benjamin Franks, who joined the crews of pirate ships; a businessman, Solomon de Medina, was associated with the king of England; a physician, Tuvia Cohen, built up a professional career for himself and sought to change the structure of Jewish knowledge; and women such as Glikl and Esther Liebmann identified strongly with the ethos of ambition and success. All these Jewish people expressed individualism in one way or another, as early as the first year of the eighteenth century, and, to use Glikl’s words, desired mainly to rise up and succeed. It would be more than symbolic to take note of three members of the new generation that had just been born, each of whom, in his own way, demonstrates and represents some of the characteristics of the threshold of the modern age. In 1698, in Heidelberg, Joseph the son of Issachar Süßkind Oppenheimer was born, the man who later became known as the Jew Süß, the right-hand man and partner in deep reforms of the state governed by the ruler of Württemberg, Karl Alexander, in the 1730s. Self-assurance and self-esteem drove him to acquire wealth and power and to live a fashionable life on a high level of hedonism and luxury. Though, during his short life, he never severed his ties with his Jewish origins, his deistic views and self-indulgent way of life released him from religious obligations.62 In June 1697, in Altona, Jacob, the son of the H.akham Zvi, was born. He grew up to become one of the most prominent rabbis of his generation, who made his own independent way and acquired the reputation of an uncompromising combatant for his views, never deterred from launching prolonged and vehement polemics against bitter opponents. Jacob Emden was one of the outstanding guardians of religion in the eighteenth century, against a series of threats both from Sabbateanism and from skepticism and permissiveness. However, he also showed great curiosity about the innovations of his century. Because he was so self-aware as a unique personality, in his memoirs he did not refrain from recording his intimate experiences and bodily sensations, and he also found his childhood worthy of inclusion in his autobiography. From the day of his birth, as the first son after three daughters, his parents showered him with special affection: “My parents were very fearful and trembled for me and I grew up on their knees as a child of delight, in joy and great tenderness and longing.” In telling the story of his life, Emden did not even see fit to ignore the

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skin and urinary diseases from which he suffered, “aside from the other severe and nasty diseases found among all children such as chicken pox and teething; I was especially susceptible to tonsillitis, catarrh, and cough.” In 1700, when he was three years old, he was sent to study in a cheder (a traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language), and, in retrospect, he expresses pride in his abilities and excellence compared to the other pupils, but he rends the teachers: “Most of the instructors in whose hands I was placed for study were cruel, and they beat me without mercy.”63 In Okopy, on the border between Poland (the Podalia district) and the Ottoman Empire (the Wallachia region, which was ceded to Romania 150 years later), at the turn of the century (1698 or 1700), Israel ben Eliezer was born. He became a ba’al shem (literally “master of the name”), who was gifted with magical powers of curing, and the leader of a group from which the Hasidic movement arose in the second half of the century.64 He became famous as the Ba’al Shem Tov, aware not only of his powers to work miracles but also of his right to criticize Torah scholars, to proclaim a fresh religious message about the service of God to those around him, offering them a model of ecstatic prayer and cleaving to God, and teaching them to show social sensitivity. Unlike Emden, the stories of his childhood are enveloped in a veil of legend and permeated by the mythology of hagiography in a volume known as Shivh.ei habesht (Praises of the Ba’al Shem Tov). Whether these were the fruit of memories that he himself conveyed to his first listeners and admirers or were spun out of later legends, the stories about the lives of his parents “in the state of Wallachia near the border,” in settlements during the wars between Poland and Turkey, reflect something of the historical circumstances. Like the biblical Joseph, his father Eliezer fell into captivity and rose to eminence as a military adviser to “the tactics of war,” but he retained his Jewish identity and refrained from prohibited contact with a Gentile woman. By virtue of that, Elijah announced to him that “a son will be born to you who will bring light to Israel.” The Hasidic tradition relates, as told by the Besht, that for him to be born on the high level of the righteous man of his generation, his father had to shed all sexual desire: “the Besht said that it had been impossible for his father to draw his soul from heaven until he had lost his sexual desire.” According to this childhood story, his personality, which yearned for freedom, was already revealed in the first years of his life. Like Jacob Emden, he, too, was sent to cheder, but “it was his way was to study for a few days and then to run away from school. They would search for him and find him sitting alone in the forest. They would attribute this to his being an orphan. There was no one

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to look after him and he was a footloose child.” Israel ben Eliezer preferred to isolate himself in the mountains, he did not conform, and he did not submit to the discipline and supervision of the community. This early tendency toward deviance, independence, and breaking boundaries is preserved in the Hasidic tale: “In the course of time they gave up in despair and no longer returned him to the melamed. He did not grow up in the accustomed way.”65

Note s 1. See Hazard, The European Mind. The Critical Years. 1680–1715; Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1730; Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1772 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 2. John Locke to Philippus van Limburch, January 6, 1700, in Electronic Enlightenment, ­w ww​.­e​-­enlightenment​.­com [original letter is in Latin]. 3. Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800, p. 183. 4. Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800, p. 179. Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), letter XIII. 5. Locke, “Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. John William Adamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 179. 6. The Letter Concerning Toleration first appeared in 1689, and in 1700 a second edition of it was published, which included the third letter as well. Here cited from John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings, ­http://​ ­fi les​.­l ibertyfund​.­org​/­fi les​/­2375​/­Locke​_ 1560​_ EBk ​_v6​.­0​.­pdf. 7. Ibid. For a comparison of Locke’s conception of toleration compared to that of Spinoza, see Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 265–270. 8. Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration. 9. Ibid., pp. 68–69. 10. Ibid., pp. 101–102; and see Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 218–225. 11. Hazard, The European Mind: The Critical Years, pp. 29–52, 119–154, 292–303. 12. See Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth Century Amsterdam (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), ch. 1. 13. See Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 14. Benedict Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, translated from the Latin by R. H. M. Elwes, ch. 7, ­https://​­a rchive​.­org​/­stream​/­tractatustheolog00elweuoft​ /­tractatustheolog00elweuoft ​_djvu​.­t xt. 15. Ibid., preface.

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16. See Kaplan, An Alternative Path to Modernity, The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe, p. 19; Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in EighteenthCentury Europe, pp. 16–21. 17. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics. 18. Nicolson, The Age of Reason: The Eighteenth Century in Reason and Violence, pp. 40–43; Hazard, The European Mind, pp. 99–115; Israel, Radical Enlightenment, ch. 18. 19. See Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, Selections, trans. and ed. Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp 399–408. 20. Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, pp. 3–15; (“Abimelech),” pp. 43–63, quotation from p. 13; (“David”), quotation from p. 53. 21. Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, pp. 89–99, 220–225. 22. Manuel, The Broken Staff, ch. 7; Shmuel Ettinger, “Yahadut veyehudim be’einei hadeistim haanglim bemea ha-18,” Modern Anti-Semitism, Studies and Essays (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1978), pp. 57–87. 23. See Robert Sullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy: A Study in Adaptation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), ch. 5; Hazard, The European Mind, pp. 148–152; Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 197–206, 227–237. On his attitude toward Judaism, see Sutcliffe, Judaism and the Enlightenment, pp. 197–206. 24. John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (London, 1702). 25. John Toland, Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1714). 26. Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 10, pp. 292–293. 27. Kaidenober, Qav hayashar, ch. 53. 28. ­https://​­en​.­w ikisource​.­org​/­w iki​/­The​_Guide​_ for​_the​_ Perplexed​_(­Fried lander)/Part_I#CHAPTER_LXI. 29. Scholem, Hatenu’a hashabtait bepolin, p. 98. 30. Spinoza, Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus, preface. 31. The autobiographical story appears in the introduction to by Moses Hagiz to his father’s book, Jacob Hagiz, Sefer halakhot qetanot (Venice, 5464 [1704]). See Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moshe Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 50–53. 32. Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, Yesh manh.ilin (Jerusalem: Mahon Hatam Sofer, 1986), pp. 175–176; and see Immanuel Etkes, The Besht: Magician, Mystic and Leader, trans. Saadya Sternberg (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), ch. 1. 33. Yair H.aim ben Moses Samson Bacharach, H.avot yair (Frankfurt, 5459 [1699]).

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34. Elchanan Reiner, “Wealth, Social Position and the Study of Torah: The Status of the Kloiz in Eastern European Society in the Early Modern Period” [Hebrew], Zion 58, no. 3 (1993): 287–328, esp. 290, 301, 309. 35. Solomon ibn Verga, Shevet yehuda (Solzbach, 5460 [1700]); David Ganz, Tsemah. david (Frankfurt, 1698). 36. Jacob ben Isaac of Janów, H.amisha h.umshei torah belashon ashkenaz tseina ureina, Dyhernfurth, c. 1700. See Chone Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature: Aspects of its History [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1978), pp. 115–117. 37. Cited here from a later edition: Simon Akiva Beer, Abir ya’aqov (Amsterdam, 1717), introduction. See Chava Weissler, “Vernacular Kabbalah, Embodiment, and Women in Early Modern and Contemporary Periods,” in Gender and Jewish History, ed. Marion Kaplan and Deborah Dash Moore (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), p. 220. 38. Abraham Reuben Hacohen Katz, ‘Oneg shabat (Prague, 5460 [1700]). A second edition of a book by the same author, in which collected quotations from kabbalistic literature: Abraham Reuben Hacohen Katz, Liqutei reuveni (Amsterdam, 5460 [1700]). 39. Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, Sefer sheelot uteshuvot haniqra h.akham tsevi (Amsterdam, 5402 [1712]), responsum no. 3 (from the year 5460). 40. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 299. 41. Jacob ben Benjamin Katz, Shev ya’aqov (Frankfurt, 5502), pt. 1, responsum 36. 42. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 50. 43. Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover, Sefer qav hayashar (Frankfurt, 5465 [1705]). This edition was bilingual in two volumes, and soon after it an edition in Hebrew alone appeared in a single volume (5467) [1707] and another bilingual edition in 5466 [1706]. See Yeshayahu Shachar, Criticism of Society and Leadership in the Musar and Drush Literature in 18th-Century Poland [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Dinur Center, 1992), pp. 3–6; Zeev Gries, The Book in the Jewish World, 1700–1900 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007); Jacob Elbaum, “‘Kav ha-Yashar: Some Remarks on Its Structure, Content, and Literary Sources,” in Studies in Ashkenazi Culture, Women’s History, and the Languages of the Jews, Presented to Chava Turniansky [Hebrew], ed. Israel Bartal et al., (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2013), pp. 15–64; Moshe Idel, “On Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Koidonover’s Sefer Qav Hayashar,” in Jüdische Kultur in Frankfurt am Main von dem Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Karl Grözinger (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997), pp. 123–133. 44. Kaidanover, Qav hayashar, author’s introduction. On his life, see the introduction to his father’s book, which he had printed a few years earlier: Aaron Samuel Kaidanover, Sefer tiferet yisrael (Frankfurt, 5456 [1696]), introduction by the author’s son. This book also received the approbation of Rabbi David Oppenheim.

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45. Kaidanover, Qav hayashar, chs. 5, 32. 46. Ibid., ch. 1. 47. Ibid., ch. 2. 48. On the intense concern with the problem of seminal emission in the ethical literature of that period, see Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 131–137. 49. Kaidanover, Qav hayashar, chs. 14, 69, 22. 50. Ibid., chs. 7, 34, 66. 51. Ibid., chs. 87, 82. 52. Ibid., ch. 82. See Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in EighteenthCentury Europe, pp. 30–31. 53. Kaidanover, Qav Hayashar, chs. 36, 87, 93, 95, 102. 54. David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), ch. 8. 55. Tuvia Katz, H.eleq rishon misefer ha’olamot o ma’ase tuvia (Venice, 5467 [1707]). Cited here from Tuvia Hacohen, Ma’ase tuvia (Cracow, 5668 [1908]), author’s introduction. 56. Tuvia Hacohen, Ma’ase tuvia. 57. Abraham Wallich, Sefer dimyon harefuot (Frankfurt, 1700). See Samuel Kotek, “‘Al dr. Y. L. Wallich,” Qorot 7 (1977): 154–163; Nimrod Zinger, The Ba’al Shem and the Doctor, Medicine and Magic among German Jews in the Early Modern Period [Hebrew] (Rishon LeZion: Yediot Sefarim, 2017), pp. 239–246. 58. Wallich, Sefer dimyon harefuot, p. 30. 59. Ibid., p. 13. 60. Ibid., p. 21. 61. Ibid., p. 22. 62. See Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 44–45. 63. Jacob Emden, Megilat sefer (Jerusalem: Sifriat Moreshet, 1979), pp. 83–84. 64. On mystery surrounding the Besht’s birthplace and childhood, and on the myth connected to his life, see Moshe Idel, “‘In the State of Wallachia, Near the Border,’ or: Was the Besht Indeed Born in Okapy?” Eurolimes 5 (2008): 14–20; Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 65. In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov, [Shivhei ha-Besht], trans. and ed. Dan BenAmos and Jerome R. Mintz (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson 1993), pp. 7–13.

Part II

1701–1725

five

k

“EVERYONE WANTS TO BE HAPPY” Dangers and Amusements

In the concluding lines of her memoirs, Glikl Hamel describes a mysterious and astonishing event that was observed from the river near the city of Metz and flooded her heart with concern. In the early spring of 1719, “In Nisan 5479, a woman was standing on the bank of the Moselle at night, washing dishes. At about ten o’clock light shone out as clear as day. As the woman gazed heavenward, the sky was open . . . with flashing sparks.” For a moment the woman, perhaps Glikl herself, experienced a kind of religious vision, the meaning of which she had to decipher, and “then the sky closed up again as though a curtain had been drawn over it, and once again there was darkness.” Glikl was already seventy-four years old. Her second husband had also died an untimely death, and behind her were nearly two decades of life in the community of Metz, which disappointed her. Whether she was an eyewitness or whether she merely heard about it, that impressive and surprising revelation, when the heavens opened and the night was lit up, both enchanted her and flooded her with dread. She believed that all that was left to her then, after the sign from heaven, was to pray and hope that it did not bode ill: “May God, blessed be He, let this bring good, Amen.”1 Like most people in her generation, Glikl could not have known that she was reporting a natural phenomenon that was observed in various places in Europe, the fall and disintegration of a large meteor on the night of March 19, which was described by the English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656–1742). The observations that Halley reported to the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge (now Royal Society), whose president was Sir Isaac Newton, were amazingly similar to those of Glikl: An “Extraordinary

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METEOR seen all over England . . . I was surpriz’d to see a sudden great Light, much beyond that of the Moon, which shone then very bright . . . The Colour of it was whitish, with an eye of Blue, of a most vivid dazzling Lustre, which seem’d in Brightness very nearly to resemble, if not surpass that of the Body of the Sun in a clear Day.” The meteor appeared shortly after 8 p.m. Bright sparks shone from it, and it was hardly possible to look at it directly without being blinded, until it faded and disappeared in the darkness.2 Since beginning his career as a young scientist at Oxford University, until he was appointed royal astronomer in 1719, responsible for the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, Halley had devoted himself to astronomical and meteorological observations. He mapped and catalogued the stars, observed eclipses of the moon and Mars, studied sunspots, and made a voyage to the southern Atlantic for the purpose of magnetic observations. Halley made his name when, in a book on comets published in 1705, he calculated the mathematical laws of the movement and gravity of the comet that bears his name, which was observed in Europe in 1682 and was to return in 1758. While Glikl interpreted the glowing sky at night as a vision arousing thoughts about the future, Edmond Halley was interested in the orbit of the meteor, compared it to other meteors, tried to calculate its dimensions, and compared the phenomenon of its brilliant light to that of the Northern Lights, which had been observed in November of that year. For Halley, it was part of his massive research on the Earth and heavenly bodies, and he was spurred on by the belief that scientists could explain the laws by which nature behaved.3 After centuries, during which unusual and exciting natural phenomena such as the fall of meteors were interpreted as signs from Heaven announcing severe catastrophes such as death, wars, earthquakes, epidemics, and droughts, scientists explained that they were not violations of natural law at all, removing the veil of mystery from them. The moment it was possible to calculate the date of a comet’s return or to prove that the sparks burst out as a result of the meteor’s disintegration, these sights in the sky were no longer miraculous. Comets, too, it was now taught, obey the laws of nature that God laid down at the Creation.4 Pierre Bayle devoted a whole book to comets, and in his view, those who believed in their power were subject to prejudices and superstition contrary to reason and experience. In the chapter “On the Authority of Tradition,” Bayle argues that this is a test case, showing how appearances enslave people and subject them to a preposterous tradition. Scientific understanding of comets, by contrast, not only removes magic from the world, but it also makes it possible, according to Bayle, for any rational person to free himself from dependence on conventions and ancestral tradition.5 Those who hadn’t

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read Bayle may have been exposed to the anonymous satire A History of the Ridiculous Extravagancies of Monsieur Oufle, which was published in French in 1710 and in English in the following year. Almost like an encyclopedia, it collected beliefs in the supernatural that existed at the beginning of the century and also offered a long reading list about them. The hero, Monsieur Oufle, has read “a vast Number of Books which treat of Magick, Witchcraft, Spectres, Phantoms, Hobgoblins, Wanton Spirits, Elves, Fairies, Judicial Astrology, Divinations, Apparitions, Charms, and, in a Word, whatever the most Celebrated Authors have written in favour of a great many Superstitious Practices,” and he was taken in by them. The satire presents him with ridicule, accompanied by caricatures, as a gullible fool, mocked by everyone. This was one of the first examples of a broad campaign waged by the Enlightenment, the purpose of which was to expose the fools who, like Monsieur Oufle, waste their money on magicians, fortune-tellers, and alchemists; wander in error; and are led astray by charlatans, cheats, and pretenders.6 The first quarter of the eighteenth century was laden with tension and contradiction, and the gap between the interpretations of nature is just one of them. Among the Jews, while students and physicians challenged the image of the Old World in the name of the scientific ethos, laying the foundations of the early Haskalah, new “Masters of the Name” appeared, whose magical abilities attracted many followers. More than anything, the challenge of Sabbateanism, which undermined the foundations of the normative religion, continued to deprive the vigilant rabbinical elite of sleep. Something of the challenge of Spinoza’s religious skepticism was already reverberating at the beginning of the period, encountering high defensive walls. Deist discourse on Judaism showed a dual face of tolerance and rejection. The widespread wars offered an opportunity for talented military suppliers but also caused great suffering to the communities in the areas of battle. The court Jews maintained their elevated status and their aristocratic way of life, but some of them faced crises. At the same time as rationalists such as John Toland demanded a dramatic change in the status of the Jews in society and the state while addressing the learned public, the king of Prussia authorized publication of Eisenmenger’s Judaism Exposed and passed legislation restricting the Jews in his kingdom. In Poland, Jews were tortured and cruelly executed in repeated blood libels. However, beyond this, between 1701 and 1725, the free personality, already in evidence in the first year of the century, continued to develop. Observation of Jews who left behind a full or partial report of their lives in this generation enables us to penetrate deeply into their hopes, expectations, and apprehensions, and to get to know their picture of the world.

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Th e Be st of A ll Possi bl e Wor lds The question of comets represents the large issue of the tension between “ancients” and “moderns,” between tradition and innovation, and between faith and science, and it was exploited in the struggle for human independence, liberation from belief in the supernatural, and criticism of tradition. The scholars and philosophers of the Enlightenment launched an ambitious project on the reeducation of European society. They wrote against the errors of traditional thinking, depicted superstition as the enemy of human happiness, and offered alternatives. Bayle reproves his interlocutor in his reflections on comets: “Do you want, then, for me to tell you, as an old friend, whence it is that you come to have a common opinion without consulting the oracle of reason?”7 Tuvia Cohen, the Jewish physician with a degree from the University of Padua, might not have read Bayle, but in Ma’ase tuvia he, too, denied the supernatural meaning of comets. Tuvia embraced the conclusions of the new cosmology only in part, but regarding comets he was determined and unequivocal: “The inquirer may come and ask whether this star brings some message to the world. The answer is that even though multitudes of the nations believe that a comet tells the future and announces the death of kings and ministers and their assistants, and famine, and other evil omens, they open their mouths in mockery, because it has no power or virtue to proclaim any of that.” Faithful to the new ethos of natural science, Tuvia declares that one should not believe that the comet was supernatural, “since its origin and being is determined by nature.” Very much like Bayle, he calls upon his readers not to fear natural phenomena like these, not to believe in vanity, and even not to rely on tradition: “And do not be frightened if one of the nations says, ‘we have heard, and our ancestors told us, that every time a comet comes to the world, fury comes to the world.’” Divine providence, which he did not doubt, does not depend on such signs and omens, “because there has never been a generation from the time the earth was established when some damage or sudden sorrow did not happen, and this is decreed from heaven, even had there never been any comet at all.”8 Another Jewish physician, David Nieto (1654–1728), a rabbi who was born in Venice and served as the H.akham [rabbi] of the Sephardic community, Sha’ar Ha-Shamayim in London, from the beginning of the century to his death, internalized the new science and thought and also guided his readers in the direction of critical thinking, caution in supernatural interpretation, and religious belief that was consistent with science. As we shall see, his book Kuzari sheni (1714) was intended to be a defense of Judaism from a rationalist point of departure. Therefore, he also required first seeking a natural explanation for

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phenomena perceived by the senses. Thus, for example, by means of a “looking cane” that enables one to look from a distance of two miles, and by means of a “speaking trumpet” (a megaphone providing communication between two ships at sea from a similar distance), a minister supervised a simple shepherd from a distance and transmitted instructions to him. When the frightened shepherd heard a voice, “he turned this way and that and saw that there was no one, and he saw no image except the voice, and he was astonished and in a panic, because he thought the voice fell from heaven, or Satan, or an evil spirit sought to fool him to destroy him,” until the minister revealed that everything had been done entirely naturally. Using this anecdote, which demonstrates the tension between a scientific explanation and one that attributes natural phenomena to supreme forces alone, Nieto meant to prove that Rabbi Yehoshua was correct in the famous dispute, presented in the Babylonian Talmud, in arguing that one must not heed a voice from heaven or decide the Halakha according to it. Moreover, a warning appears here against religious pretention disguised as miracles: “If Rabbi Yeshoshua had heeded the words of the divine voice, perhaps an evil, devilish man might appear and do a trick . . . and a voice might be heard as if it came down from heaven, saying things that are incorrect about God and His Torah, and vain and hasty people might join with him and throw off the yoke of the kingdom of heaven.”9 A month after Glikl’s observation of the meteor, a novel appeared in London that also related marvelous events. This novel immediately became a bestseller in England and other countries in Europe, stimulating the imagination of readers in following generations as well: The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years in an Uninhabited Island, on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River Oroonoque, Including an Account of His Deliverance Thence, and His After Surprising Adventures. With His Vision of the Angelic World.10 This fictional story, which was inspired by the true case of a Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who survived on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean and managed to return home in 1711, is presented as a journalist report recounted by Robinson Crusoe himself. This was not a supernatural event from Heaven but an adventure in the natural New World of distant islands, stormy seas, merchant ships, the dangerous life of sailors, pirates, and the encounter with “savages” of different cultures. Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) was a merchant, businessman, secret agent in the service of British king William III, journalist, and prolific author, who had already published works on various subjects. He brought out his succesful adventure novel in 1719 to show how a single man could act in nature, exploiting his reason and experience to survive, and how, with his own hands, showing exceptional

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ingenuity, he could construct a complete civilization almost ex nihilo, under conditions of danger and isolation in the face of threatening forces of nature. Defoe’s novel contributed to the further growth of the autonomous self, as he himself recommended his book in the introduction: “If ever the story of any private man’s adventures in the world were worth making public, and were acceptable when published, the Editor of this account thinks this will be so. The wonders of this man’s life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be found extant; the life of one man being scarce capable of a greater variety.”11 Defoe wanted to teach a lesson and educate his readers, and his Robinson confesses the sin of having lived a wanton life, without acknowledging the existence of God, and he tries to atone by prayer, by reading the Bible, and by turning Man Friday, the native he met on the island, into a good and believing Christian. However, this is not an ethical work intended to inspire fear of Heaven, and Defoe places many heavy hints to his readers in his novel to dissuade them from understanding the world in a manner inconsistent with reason. For example, when Robinson discovers green barley sprouts growing next to him, he is seized with astonishment and concludes “that miracles were not yet ceased: nay, I even thought that God had appointed it to grow there without any seed, purely for my sustenance in this miserable and desolate island.” But “on a sudden it came into my mind, how I had shaken the husks of corn out of the bag, and then my admiration ceased, with my gratitude to the Divine Being, as thinking it was but natural, and not to be conceived a miracle.” Robinson is capable of building his life without divine intervention. He does believe that his rebellion against his father, who had forbidden him to go to sea, is what caused him to suffer so many tribulations, and in the end, he is at peace with his decision to follow his ambitions, to see the world, and to experience adventures. His father had advised him to enjoy a happy life of economic ease, which was assured to the moderate, sober middle class, but he chose a much less stable existence of struggle with nature and creativity, and, in the end, that life made him a happy man, but not in the way proposed by his father. For example, he had the possibility of choosing his religious belief in the encounter between Christianity and Friday’s natural religion, “for three years did my man and I live in the greatest enjoyment of happiness. Indeed, I believe the savage was as good a Christian as I.”12 In his hours of loneliness on the island, Robinson thought about the meaning of his bitter fate and of evil in the world: “Certainly God has appointed these my sufferings to befal me. And here I fixed my firm belief that it was his will that it should be so; and then proceeded to enquire, why should God deal with me in this manner? Or what have I done thus to deserve his indignation?” It was very

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likely that he had been punished for his sins, but how can he answer Friday’s innocent question: “Why God no kill devil, make no more tempt, no more do wicked?”13 A contemporary of Defoe’s, the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), offered an optimistic response to this sharp skepticism. This gifted mathematician and prolific polymath developed infinitesimal calculus in parallel with Newton, visited almost every country in Europe, met Spinoza in The Hague, carried out diplomatic missions, established the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, served Duke Ernst Augustus of Hanover and his son Georg Ludwig (Britain’s future George I), and was principally known because of his philosophical system, the claim that everything that exists in the world is composed of monads. These are primary units that are not material. They are closed, autonomous, and indivisible, and they exist in a world of harmonious unity, determined in advanced, which God created. Therefore, “from the supreme Author’s perfection it follows . . . that the order of the entire universe is the most perfect that could be.”14 This optimistic approach, which believes in the goodness of God and in his desire for the good of his creatures, is expressed in his Theodicy, a work in which he deals with the question of the existence of evil in the world and justifies God, both with arguments that, ultimately, the goodness of the world is abundant, far beyond what one thinks, and the evil is eternally subject to the good, and also with the argument that everything is for the best, and everything that happens has sufficient reason, and that evil also helps the good to overcome. About half a century later, Moses Mendelssohn was to renew Jewish thought about the world, inspired by this optimism, while Voltaire, in his satire Candide, objected strenuously to what he took as ignoring the injustice and horrors in the world and to Leibniz’s insufferable and uncritical acceptance of existing reality and his apparently ingenuous belief that God created the best of all possible worlds. But before Mendelssohn was born, and when Voltaire was still named François Marie Arouet (1694–1778), a rebellious boy of sixteen who had left his Jesuit high school in Paris, Leibniz’s picture of the world gave great hope to the individual person and to all of humanity. The world was not hostile and threatening, and the future bore “new enjoyments,” history was progressing, and human life was a continuous journey toward happiness, as proclaimed by the final sentences of one of Leibniz’s last works: “Our love for God . . . satisfies all our hopes and leads us along the path of supreme happiness. That is because the perfect order established in the universe brings it about that everything is the best possible. . . . Thus, our happiness won’t and shouldn’t ever consist in a mind-numbing complete enjoyment with nothing left to desire, but rather in a perpetual progression towards new pleasures and new perfections.”15

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“E v eryone Wa nts to Be H a ppy ” In that very year, the Anglo-Dutch philosopher and physician Bernard Mandeville, who was born in Rotterdam, challenged the scholars of Europe by writing: “As every Body would be happy, enjoy Pleasure and avoid Pain if he could, so Self-love bids us look on every Creature that seems satisfied, as a Rival in Happiness.” In his Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, published in London in 1714, Mandeville revealed man in all his nakedness as an egotistical creature, ruled by nature, which drives him to satisfy his appetites, to obtain luxuries, and to gratify his desires. Human society is composed of individuals who aspire to self-gratification and personal success, which are often obtained by fraud, deceit, and plotting. However, in his opinion, these traits are vital for a flourishing “bee-hive.” This philosophical book of ethics advocated the removal of the obstacles standing in the way of the individual who strives to attain the best life for himself, stating that the natural subjection to pleasure, the pursuit of wealth, and ostentation does not damage society. Rather: “private vices are publick benefits.” Even a libertine, whose morality is thoroughly debased, can serve the flow of money and commerce. Hence, a society that is capable of harnessing individual ambition for the public good will be rewarded.16 This new ideal was demonstrated in the great cities of Europe in a broad variety of “new pleasures” that a metropolis can offer to someone who can afford them and has free time for amusements in the theater and the opera, in conversation and reading newspapers in coffeehouses. For example, Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Steele (1672–1729), two brilliant writers who also played a role in English politics, wrote and published two popular journals, The Tatler and The Spectator, in London from 1709 to 1714, providing a mirror of what was happening in the city. They reported to their readers about the conversations in various coffeehouses, about news of the War of the Spanish Succession and the Great Northern War, gossip, and criticism of books and plays, and they included articles on social processes, the importance of love, the improvement of education, the delicacy of taste, and the happiness that could be gained from decent and moderate home life. A daily newspaper had begun to appear in London in 1702, but Steele declared that the general goal of his publication was not only to provide news: “The general purpose of this Paper is to expose the false arts of life, to pull of the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affection, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour.”17 The individual was central to the new publications, who promoted the idea that “is it not much better to be let into the Knowledge of ones-self than to hear what passes in Muscovy or Poland?” In the tenth issue of

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The Spectator, Addison pointed out what he saw as his greatest accomplishment: “I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee-houses.” He recommended to his faithful readers that they should make reading the newspaper an inseparable part of their family breakfast, along with bread, butter, and tea, before they went to work.18 On the morning of September 27, 1712, Addison placed a short article on the tables of his readers, containing everything that was important to know about an exceptional group of people: the Jewish minority. Their dispersal throughout the world, from Europe to Africa, China, America, and Western India, and their loyalty to their ancient religion makes it impossible to ignore their presence, he wrote. The impression one gains is that there are a very large number of Jews in the world, and this is because they marry young, deny a life of abstention, do not become drunk, do not serve in armies, and do not fight. Their survival throughout history despite dreadful persecutions and massacres committed against them arouses wonder, wrote Addison. In the global world of commerce, crossing continents and seas, they play a vital role in weaving international networks: “They are, indeed, so disseminated through all the trading parts of the World, that they are become the instruments by which the most distant Nations converse with one another, and by which Mankind are knit together in a general Correspondence: They are like the Pegs and Nails in a great Building, which, though they are but little valued in themselves, are absolutely necessary to keep the whole Frame together.” Though Addison valued their function in the expanding world economy, he did not suggest to the readers of The Spectator that they should revise the traditional image of the Jews as alien in Europe. Their dispersal, he suggested, testified to a nation of wandering merchants, who willingly and of necessity were unable to find a home anywhere. Taking up the long-standing argument, he, too, believed that the survival of the Jews played a central role in the divine plan to leave witnesses to the truth of Christianity. Could they be citizens of Europe? In Addison’s opinion, specifically in the New Age, it was manifest how much the Jews withdrew into themselves and segregated themselves because of their restrictive religious law, which hampered them and did not enable them to integrate and take part in the new culture. Observing the laws of kashrut, for example, “shuts them out from all Table conversation, and the most agreeable Intercourses of Life.”19 Closer and more precise observation would have shown Addison, who exaggerated the importance of the Jews dispersed in the world, that more Jews were nevertheless joining the “Table conversation” in London and in other European cities.

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When The Tatler appeared on April 12, 1709, the “moral weekly” was born in Europe, addressed to the bourgeois class, to merchants and businessmen, professionals, artists and authors, and even store owners, whose social clubs were the coffeehouses. These newspapers were successful on the continent as well. They were translated into French and German and served as an inspiration for the early Enlightenment. In the moral weeklies, “an ideological conception that conquered the souls of the middle classes broke out of the studies of scholars and thinkers.”20 The goal was double: both education for an ethical bourgeois life and also entertainment and pleasure. In this transitional period of the beginning of the century, alongside the model of the aristocrat and the gentleman, the social ideal of the bourgeois arose, and Steele and Addison, in the moral weeklies, supported and advanced it. According to them, the English businessman, dressed simply, without unnecessary ornament, holding a walking stick instead of a sword, was the model to be imitated. They sought a code of behavior that would be an example for the human character, men and women committed to the social order, to bearing the burden of social obligations, to simplicity and courtesy. In their eyes, a worthy man was one who was capable of finding happiness and tranquility within the walls of his home and in the bosom of his family and a handful of good friends.21 Jürgen Habermas pointed to the meaning of the moral weekly as one of the important milestones in constructing the modern public sphere: “When Addison and Steele published the first issue of The Tatler in 1709, the coffeehouses were already so numerous and the circles of their frequenters already so wide that contact among these thousandfold circles could only be maintained through a journal.” At first, the moral weekly belonged to the life of the coffeehouses and later, in writing and in print, to the conversations that were held in them. Finally, they came to address a broad public opinion, developed a dialogue between writers and readers, managed to disseminate the values of Enlightenment, and continue the liberation of civil morality from the religious establishment.22 The new thirst for news was a prominent characteristic of the public sphere, which was cultivated by the coffeehouses and the newspapers. It combined well with the growth of an urban consumer society in the ethos of the right to happiness: “[Public opinion] converged around one idea that resonated everywhere, happiness. Europeans came to believe that they should enjoy life on earth instead of enduring it in order to win a place in paradise after death.”23 Robert Darnton followed the rumors, gossip, newsletters, street songs, and other channels by which news was conveyed, especially in Paris. He defined what was born in the cities of Europe during the eighteenth century as “an early

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information society.”24 The question “What’s new?” and the consumption of news, curiosity to be up to date about what was happening in one’s city and in the wide world, the reading of newspapers, and the conversations in hundreds of coffeehouses came to a peak, so much so that The Tatler could draw a kind of caricature of a person whose addiction to the news gave rise to truly obsessive behavior. He rose early in the morning to be the first to read the newspaper, and “he had a wife and several children; but was much more inquisitive to know what passed in Poland than in his own family, and was in greater pain and anxiety of mind for King Augustus’ welfare than that of his nearest relations.” This life of tense attention to the news, at that time about the front in the Great Northern War, impoverished him and destroyed his health. Upon meeting him again recently in St. James’s Park, The Tatler recounted, the writer asked him “whether he had yet married his eldest daughter? He told me, No. ‘But pray,’ says he, ‘tell me sincerely, what are your thoughts of the King of Sweden?’ For though his wife and children were starving, I found his chief concern at present was for this great monarch.”25 This figure who emerged from the streets of London discovered that behind the new bourgeois culture and the pleasures of the metropolis, poverty and the hard life of the lower class were hidden. Addison and Steele did write something about the need for schools for the poor and against betting, which reduced men to poverty, but in general this dark side was not emphasized in the moral weeklies, and information about such topics came by other means. Three years after the appearance of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe revealed something of the world of women who live in poverty, crime, and prostitution in Moll Flanders. Like Crusoe, the heroine of this novel manages to build her life with her own hands, in a struggle against forces that assail her, but her point of departure is very far from that of a bourgeois family. As she tells the reader on the title page of the book, she was born in London’s Newgate Prison. For twelve years she was a thief, and for another twelve years, she supported herself by prostitution. She married five times and barely escaped the hangman’s noose. Defoe places a severe complaint about society in her mouth: society is responsible for keeping people marginal by denying them decent situations, and it is guilty of the moral degradation of the novel’s heroine. Why are the children of convicts not transferred to orphanages, which would give them education and vocational training, to be servants or apprentices in business? “Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left a poor desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helper in the world, as was my fate; and by which I was not only exposed to very great distresses, even before I was capable either of

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understanding my case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of life which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body.”26

Nat u r a l Disa ster s, Fir e s, th e Distr e ss of th e Poor , a n d Pl e a su r e s The moral weeklies did report about military campaigns, victories, defeats, and retreats in the two great wars that were being fought in Europe at that time, but in the warm bosom of the coffeehouses, people avoided touching on the fate of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, most of them members of the low classes in European society, who paid with their lives in dozens of bloody battles in the interests of states and the ambitious royal dynasties of kings, princes, generals, and seekers of fame. In the struggle against the forces of nature, the poor also stood on the lowest rungs of the social ladder, more exposed than were others. Just a few months before the appearance of The Tatler, an extreme cold wave passed over Europe, causing disaster to many people. The scientists of the Royal Society who investigated the changes in the climate reached the conclusion that the winter of 1708–1709 was the coldest in the history of mankind. The temperatures plunged to the lowest in December 1708 and January 1709, and scientists tried to provide meteorological explanations for the exceptional phenomenon, gathering reports from Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, Italy, France, and, of course, England and Ireland. Voices of fear and reports on disasters came from everywhere. The snow was heavy, rivers and lakes froze, birds froze and fell to the earth from the sky, many animals died of thirst and hunger, and travelers on the roads of Europe froze to death or lost hands, feet, noses, and ears. The newspapers reported that hungry wolves entered the cities and that several dozen people died in the streets of Paris. In England, vagrants without shelter collapsed in the city streets, as did mailmen and newspaper deliverymen. Soldiers in the French and Italian armies died of cold. The harvests of vegetables, wheat, and fruit were destroyed, causing famine. The snow made buildings and bridges collapse, and when the thaw came, the flooded rivers caused great destruction.27 Rabbi Moses Meir Perles of Prague, who was the secretary of the Court Jew Samson Wertheimer, recounted that never had such a frightening and dangerous winter been known: “When I came close to the city of Vienna several times I went through deep water, and the flood inundated me [see Ps. 69], because the water rose over my soul [see Ps. 124], and many events overcame me, from the hard and strange times, and the harsh frosts the like

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of which no one remembers from the winter of 5469.”28 Rabbi Jacob Emden, who was then twelve years old, recounts his memories of the winter of 1710, which caused suffering and panic among the travelers on the roads. He accompanied his father, the H.akham Zvi, from Altona to Amsterdam, where he had been invited to fill the post of rabbi: “My father’s household traveled at the end of the winter of 5470, and it was the time of the melting snow, which had fallen very abundantly in that harsh and mighty winter, and we were very late on the road, and the wagon on which were all the women and children was about to break apart and fall into the water that rose and came over our soul, their shout rose on high, and were it not for the Lord, who saved us, the water would have swept us away.”29 Natural disasters continued to strike during the first quarter of the century. For example, a rapid and extreme fall in barometric pressure caused a gigantic, destructive storm that struck Lisbon, Portugal, and its surroundings in November 1724. Defoe himself discovered early sensitivity to the disasters long before Robinson Crusoe, when he published his report and interpretation of a hurricane that rampaged in southern England on November 24, 1703, and left behind nearly nine thousand victims. Defoe also collected information from various sources, quoted eyewitnesses, and, in dramatic style, told about the damage that was caused and the experiences of the victims. He presented himself in the double role of reporter and God-fearing philosopher who did investigate the natural causes of the extreme flow of the winds to advance science but also sought to teach modesty: the scientist was incapable of understanding the causes, and open questions would always remain, requiring acknowledgment of the hand of God, “the author of nature.”30 Even more violent than the blows of the weather were those of epidemics. In one of his later works, Defoe reminded the residents of London about the great, murderous Plague of 1665, but in the first decades of the new century, epidemic illnesses hovered over the multitudes like a threatening sword. Beginning in 1704, the Plague spread from Poland and Lithuania to Scandinavia, and in certain places it did not disappear for an entire decade. The number of victims of the Plague that struck in 1709–1711 in Prussia, Sweden, and Finland is estimated at three hundred thousand; in Stockholm alone, one-third of the population was wiped out. Emperor Joseph I (1678–1711) was infected with smallpox in Vienna and died on April 17, 1711, at the age of thirty-three, after only six years on the throne. Louis, the Duke of Burgundy, the grandson of Louis IV and the heir to his throne, and his wife, Princess Marie Adelaide of Savoy, the young parents of King Louis XV, all died from that disease in 1712, within six days of one another. The smallpox epidemic in Paris seven years

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later killed about fourteen thousand residents, and the destructive epidemic that broke out in Marseilles in 1720 killed about forty thousand people, half of the city’s inhabitants. Defoe, who reported on the smallpox epidemic in the English press, told with shock that the French government imposed a blockade on the southern regions of the country in an effort to prevent the spread of the smallpox plague, and it treated those trying to flee with barbaric violence.31 Not until 1721 did the first breakthrough in resisting the epidemics emerge, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of the British consul in Istanbul, used an immunization technique that she had learned from Turkish women. When she returned to London, she provided immunity from smallpox for her three-year-old daughter by means of inoculation, introducing a small amount of the disease’s pus under her daughter’s skin. However, the process of inoculation by means of intentional exposure to the disease was still seen as dangerous, and very few people in England trusted such a process. Despite the support of scientists of the Royal Society, and even though George I permitted the inoculation of two of his grandchildren, the “spotted monster” continued to threaten the lives of many.32 Three Yiddish poems expressed in rhymes the great panic that gripped the Jewish quarter of Prague when the epidemic that struck it in 1713 claimed the lives of more than three thousand Jews, one-third of the members of that venerable community. For five months, from July to December 1713, the “stench” raged in the city. Those who could afford it fled from the city. The others shut themselves up in their houses and placed handkerchiefs soaked in vinegar over their mouths and noses, to avoid breathing the bad air that, in their opinion, carried the disease. While trying as much as possible to keep order, to supply food, and to observe the autumn holidays, many of the Jews of Prague were sewing shrouds. The poems described the difficult situation, such as the pile of corpses awaiting burial in the cemetery, but, as shown by Hava Turniansky, who, on the basis of these poems, reconstructed the sense of disaster felt by the Prague community, the epidemic was seen as punishment from Heaven, and even those whose relatives did not survive accepted the divine decree.33 Dread of disease is also notable in the introductions that rabbis wrote for books, presenting themselves as surviving by the grace of God. Thus, for exam­ ple, Rabbi Joseph ben Jacob, the rabbi of Sielec in White Russia, told about three months of the epidemic in his community: “For in the month of Elul 5470 [1710] the flame of the epidemic burned in our community, and we fled from the city to the forests . . . and I wandered in the forest for several days without bread . . . and our eyes saw the death of the children of Israel, nearly a hundred pure souls.” Rabbi Johnathan ben Joseph of Ruzhany lived for several months as

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a refugee in the mountains when “the wrath of God struck my homeland with the rod of His anger with the plague, may the Merciful One preserve us, this was in the year 5470, in wandering I left my home city, which is the holy city of Rasnai, in the state of Lithuania, may God fortify and preserve it, in haste to the field and valley with my wife and my household, and from there I fled to the mountain, because I was afraid that the evil would catch me and kill me.” And the rabbi and dayan (rabbinic judge) of Pińczów Benjamin Ze’ev Wolf wrote his will and prepared for death during the epidemic of 1707, because he was one of the few who did not flee for their lives: For fire burned all around us, and a plague was sent, may the Merciful One preserve us, in all our camps, and the notables and leaders of my city fled, and I remained alone in the city with a few . . . and seeing that men and women, righteous and good, were dying, a great many, all of a sudden, while I was talking to them, and they died in a short time, may the Merciful One preserve us, then I said I was doomed, and I lost my reason and hope, for according to nature it was impossible to be saved from death.34

Another source of danger and constant concern were the many fires that were common in the large, crowded cities. The fire that broke out in the home of Naphtali Katz (1649–1718), the rabbi of the Frankfurt community, on Wednesday night, January 14, 1711, was engraved in the memory of the residents of the city for generations as one of the most severe disasters to strike the Jews of Germany in the eighteenth century. The elegies written immediately afterward said: “Such destruction never was since the Temple was destroyed,” and “for this our hearts quailed, on the destruction of our holy community and our Temple, which our eyes saw, for our many sins, that fire burst out and devoured its palaces, and the Street of the Jews was burned, and nothing remained of it.” The fire that spread rapidly from the rabbi’s house to the crowded houses in the street destroyed the Jewish ghetto almost completely in one day, leaving ruins, a red sky that was seen from a distance, and columns of smoke. The strong winds that blew in the midst of the winter, the shortage of water, the difficulty in reaching the houses built close together, and the narrow street foiled all efforts to extinguish the fire. About five hundred houses were burned, and eight thousand out of twelve thousand Jews were left homeless and lost all of their property. Aaron Ber, for example, one of the richest members of the community, lost his splendid house, with its fifteen rooms and the cellar that preserved kegs of select wine, and valuable paintings by Dutch painters that decorated the walls and corridors and stairwell. The synagogue where, eleven years earlier Rabbi Judah H.asid had enthralled his listeners with his sermon,

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was entirely burned down. The poorest of the refugees from the fire found refuge in the sanctuary built for the victims of the epidemics, and the rich ones rented rooms in other streets of Frankfurt or in towns outside of it. Rabbi Katz received warm hospitality in the home of a Christian tailor. As soon as the dimensions of the disaster were known, people began to seek its causes and propose explanations. Christian theologians and Jewish preachers, including Rabbi Naphtali Katz himself, agreed that the fire was a punishment for the sins of the Jews. Medals that were minted to commemorate the fire perpetuated the belief that the heavens made certain that the fire would not spread to the Christian streets and, for example, did not ignite the tower where gunpowder was stored. Rabbi Katz was imprisoned and interrogated, though in the end it was concluded that the negligence of a tailor, who had left a burning candle in an attic, had caused the conflagration. However, rumors that inflamed people’s imaginations claimed that the rabbi, who was known to be a practical kabbalist, had been conducting mysterious magical ceremonies, invoking spirits and angels, and they had lit the fire. The rabbi’s testimony not only failed to refute these rumors, but they might have stirred them up even more. According to him, one of the household servants had smelled smoke, and he immediately ran outside, and on his way he met an unknown man who was holding an axe, and then he opened the door of one of his rooms, fire bust out of it. In the end, the rabbi was released on bail, and after he understood that responsibility for the fire would always lie upon his shoulders, he left Frankfurt for Prague, tried to resume the rabbinical post he had formerly held in Poznan, and died seven years later in Istanbul, on his way to Jerusalem.35 The community recovered quickly, solicited contributions, and immediately began to build a new synagogue. To defend the community against hostile Christians, who regarded the fire as the hand of God and a sign that the Jews should no longer be permitted to live in the city, on March 18, 1711, an order was issued in Vienna renewing the kaiser’s protection of the Jews of Frank­ furt. Rabbi Samuel Schattin, who headed the kloiz and was the second-most senior rabbinical figure in the city, mourned the disaster: “Fire went out by the decree of the Highest, and at the houses of God with all our houses, down to the foundation, with all its treasures, holy books and our property . . . and all Israel wept because of the fire, for truly no fire was never known or heard of the likes of it, and some of us were left with nothing but their bodies, and of some of us not even that was left.”36 The dirges written especially for the memorial day, which was marked every year on 24 Tevet, implored God to bring redemption and expressed the increase in messianic expectations. “Quickly speed our salvation . . . place us in your holy place,” wrote Rabbi Schattin, “redeem

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your nation and your consort from the hand of their enemies . . . bring the end of days quickly in our time, may the voice of the herald be heard in our precincts.” The theologian and Hebraist Schudt, who had documented the case of Rabbi Judah H.asid, printed this dirge in his book, along with other testimony about the fire, and he spoke of it as a dramatic event that called for paying attention to what was happening among the Jews. Schudt had the impression that, like the failure of the messianic movement aroused by Rabbi Judah H.asid, here, too, was ultimately a theological victory that undermined Judaism. No wonder the Jews who understood it as a punishment “accepted the decree with quiet forbearance and confessed the sins that had brought this great sorrow upon them.”37 The contributions of wealthy Jews such as Samson Wertheimer of Vienna enabled the Jews of Frankfurt to recover from the catastrophe that had struck their community, but many other Jews in Europe could not even dream of joining such an affluent community. In a hostile world full of dangers, both from the forces of nature and from humans, many poor Jews roamed the roads, among them beggars who had lost everything and lacked any permanent residence, thieves hungry for bread, and gangs of highway robbers. Travel was dangerous at the beginning of this century not only in the frozen winter or in the season of floods. In the Mediterranean, the infamous pirates of Malta lurked, and when they captured Jewish travelers, they forced the Society for the Ransom of Prisoners, which had been established for that purpose in Venice, to ransom them with large sums of money. Thus, for example, in January 1704 the Ma’amad of London, the leaders of the Sephardic community there, transferred contributions to Venice, to observe the commandment of redeeming prisoners in an urgent matter: “A ship from Malta reached the port [of Venice], and on its deck were three miserable Jewish captives from the Levant, Aaron Apia, Abraham Peretz, and Joseph H.aim Ashkenazi, bound in iron shackles, ill treated, and forced to desecrate our holy Sabbath, all for the purpose of obtaining a significant sum as a ransom.”38 The phenomenon was very common. Captives came from Malta almost every day, and the available means were insufficient to ransom them all. Highway robbers lurked on the roads, not hesitating to commit murder and rape. The halakhic work Shevut ya’aqov (1709) tells the story of a woman who surrendered to robbers to save her husband’s life. The sense of danger and the feelings of dread that assailed her burst out from the short factual account: “A group of people were traveling, and one of them had his wife with him, and toward evening, they went to a tavern near the woods, and evil, murderous men found them there, and they were prepared to commit murder to get money. When they saw the trouble that was coming upon them,

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to kill them, and the [bandits] did listen to their pleas for their lives, then the woman sacrificed herself, with her Jewish husband’s agreement, and thus she saved them.” The couple pleaded with Rabbi Jacob Reischer not to regard the sexual relations forced upon her as fornication, which would require the husband to divorce his wife, and he ruled that this was a case of rape and the woman was permitted to remain with her husband.39 Jews who were called ­arh.­ei ­parh.­ei (riffraff, an Aramaic expression used in the Talmud, lit. flying wayfarer), undesirable, suspicion-rousing vagrants were also part of the European population at the foot of the social hierarchy. Usu­a lly, the voices of the Jewish poor are inaudible in historical sources, but a rough and coarse vagrant’s song in Yiddish, printed in 1708, broke this silence. Three years before the great fire in Frankfurt, a group of poor wayfarers stand before the gates of the street of the Jews. They encounter a nasty guard, who blocks them with his staff, examines their documents according to the order of the wardens, and drives them back on their way. Frozen with cold, they shout, “Save us,” and say the lines of the song, “Have mercy on us.” One of them cries out, “I have no garment or trousers,” and another asks how the dear God can look upon what this evil man is doing. This protest song expresses the frustration, envy, and hatred of these arme leit (poor people) and does not omit the curses directed at the rich in general and on the Jewish gatekeeper in particular: “The blessed Lord gives him the privilege of enjoying this world, but in the world to come they will roast the wicked man and burn him on blazing spits. The blessed Lord will pay him back in the world to come. I hope he will become an evil spirit and hover about forever.” For the moment, the wicked man is sheltered by the holy community, and he makes ill use of his authority: “He says I want to torment and cause pain to the travelers, and when I die, let dogs shit on my grave. Therefore, people, you can understand why the wicked man does not want to walk in the paths of God.”40 Preachers and teachers of ethics, such as Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover in Qav hayashar, warned against closing one’s heart to the poor; demanded solidarity, hospitality, and charity; and condemned the rich who “live delicately and in luxury . . . their faces are always golden and strong and healthy, because of their heart’s desires.” The indigent were in severe distress: Nothing remains in their hand except the straw on their bed . . . when the time and season of cold and freezing arrives, the rich man is in his well-built house and sitting like a prince in his house in the winter and his oven is hot, and the poor man not only has he a dwelling full of holes, but he also has no

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coins to buy wood and is without the ability to warm his soul properly, and the cold breaks his soul and his body and the souls of his household, and in time of rain it drips and drops and pours water on his neck.

With sensitivity and compassion, Kaidanover treated the miserable life of those without means, for “all the days of a poor man he is in sorrow day and night, he and his household sigh,” and he placed the responsibility with the leaders, who “are easy on themselves and hard on others.”41 However, reprimanding the miserly could not solve the problem of poverty or respond to the increase in the number of wandering beggars all over Europe. For decades, the community registers had been full of the tension between the values of charity and solidarity and the wish to keep away undesirable Jews as much as possible. In the early eighteenth century, this tension joined with the policy of the centralized states to increase control over the population and distinguish between the useful and those who were regarded as a burden. In particular, from the start of the century, the officials of the Prussian kingdom initiated close supervision of the Betteljuden (Jewish beggars). The officials made it impossible for the beggars to obtain a residence permit, and with the help of the community leaders, they encouraged the beggars’ expulsion. In 1705, for example, the Jewish leaders in Berlin were given the policing task of preventing crime and the entry of Jewish vagrants and beggars into the city, and in 1712, supervision was further increased by a special edict issued by the authorities for the purpose of preventing the infiltration of poor people without the right of residence, with the blunt declaration that it was “forbidden to tolerate” the presence of such people in the state.42 The steep class divisions were institutionalized in the Berlin community with regulations that awarded rights and duties but only according to criteria of property. Men were measured by their monetary value, and the group of taxpayers from whom it was possible to be chosen as parnas (trustee) was divided in three: “high in value,” those with wealth coming to three thousand reichsthalers; “medium,” whose value was from twelve hundred to three thousand reichsthalers; and “low in value,” those who could not prove they had assets greater than twelve hundred reichsthalers, a relatively high amount compared to other places, permitting a comfortable standard of living.43 The voices of the poor themselves, wandering on the roads and trying to arouse pity and open the purses of the wealthy, are also heard from the petitions written for them, containing stories of distress and reasons for deserving support. Though they did not write these petitions themselves, these appeals were based on reality and revealed not only how the poor came to their situation but

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also the bitter competition among them and the effort they invested to get written recommendations from a rabbi or official, to convince prospective donors that their case was exceptional and that they were not “like the other riffraff who are accustomed to this.” The letters obtained by the beggars tell miserable stories about survivors of fires who lost all their property; the victims of robberies who fled for their lives, wounded and bleeding; servants desperate for work; a woman whose husband disappeared after joining with “men of war, empty and hasty”; a man whose wife was rotting in prison, whom he had to ransom; or the father of a girl who was about to marry but the father was unable to pay the sum promised in the prenuptial agreement. Reality and imagination are mingled in them, to convince donors of urgent necessity, of a severe crisis, and of the desperate need for succor and support.44 While the Jewish vagrants were seen as deserving compassion and support, they were mainly regarded as a social and ethical problem, an economic burden, and a danger to the organized communities. Rabbi Yair Bacharach was asked “about a Jewish thief in a certain community, who was arrested and hanged there a few days later, and the governor demands an enormous sum to allow him to be buried in a Jewish grave.” Indeed, the community was obligated to bear the expense of burying him, the rabbi decreed, but in the beginning of his response he reproved those who asked him the question of not helping the man before he sank into crime. A small monetary subvention for that poor Jew would have prevented him from becoming a thief, and mainly avoiding scandal: “For it is a desecration of the Name of God since the gentiles accuse all of Judaism because of this.”45 In another case, Rabbi David Oppenheim was asked to rule on the validity of a Moravian woman’s marriage, because in her youth, before marrying her current husband, she had joined a group of criminals (“she joined these wicked mice [a Talmudic expression], thieves of the Jews, who are called rats”), where she was exploited sexually by the leader of the gang, who seduced her with a fictional marriage.46 Among the lowest classes of Jewish society, women were particularly vulnerable. Many of them were hired as servants at a cruelly young age. While they gained protection within the household to which they were attached, they were also exposed to exploitation. “Their sexuality was always conspicuous,” remarked Elliot Horowitz in his study on masters and servant women, “and it was always considered problematic, though attention was mainly paid to the problems they caused to others and not to the suffering of servant women as a result of other people’s sexuality activity.”47 In a collection of Yiddish letters exchanged between Amsterdam and London in 1713, Judah ben Isaac Katz expressed concern to his relative Aaron ben

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Moses Sofer about his daughter Blimche whom he had sent to work as a servant; he heard that she had left her wealthy Jewish employer. In this heartbreaking letter, Judah begs Aaron to report to him about her to the best of his ability (“you can observe my Blimche”). Because his ability to make a living is limited (“my status is bad”), Judah also wants to know if Blimche’s sister Braynche, a diligent and brave girl, can find work as a servant in London.48 There is no way of knowing what happened to Blimche, but halakhic authorities were often called upon to deal with questions about servant girls who had been seduced by members of the household where they were employed. In the halakhic work ­Pah.­ad ­yitsh.­aq by the rabbi and physician from Padua and Ferrara, Isaac Lampronti, for example, we hear the injured voice of Rachel Foa of Caselli, whose employer, Yedidya Luzzatto, raped her on the eve of Passover 1715. “I wanted to go, and you wrapped around my body and wouldn’t release me,” the servant lodged her complaint against him while testifying before the rabbinic court, recounting the act of rape, “and you stripped my pudenda, and I didn’t want to, and I placed my thighs upon each other, and I wanted to scream, and you put one hand over my mouth, and with your other hand you spread my thighs and had your way with me.”49 Shevut ya’aqov by Rabbi Jacob Reischer of Ansbach, Bavaria, opens a window on the values of the society within which the servant women had very low status: he was asked about the case of “the son of a rich man, who married a Jewish maiden who was in the house, before witnesses, and then changed his mind, and his father and his family also protested, saying that he should not marry her, and the maiden was unwilling to accept a bill of divorce, and he wants to marry another woman.” Rabbi Reischer turned his back on the woman and, contrarily, rather than sympathizing with the injured woman, understood the man’s retraction well and the desire of his family to be free of the obligation and not to be connected by marriage with a servant girl from the bottom of the social hierarchy. Not only did he rule against her, but he also reprimanded and humiliated her, treating her like a prostitute who was willing to “abandon herself,” and he suspected that she had purposely plotted to ensnare the innocent son of her wealthy employer and seduce him. Therefore, the rabbi did not hesitate to rule: “not to tie him down [to the servant woman], [because we are concerned] that all servant women in the house will set their eyes on the rich members of the household and abandon themselves to them, to [force] him to marrying her, and since she acted improperly to be married without a matchmaker, so we act improperly with her, so she should accept her get [bill of divorce].” If she should refuse, the rabbi threatened her, she would be abandoned and unable to marry again for her whole life: “and if she does not wish to

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accept her bill of divorce, he will be permitted to marry another, and she will sit until her hair turns white.”50 An increase in the number of cases when a servant woman became pregnant led the leaders of the community of Hamburg and Altona to decree in the winter of 1724 that “a whore who becomes pregnant from fornication” will be excommunicated, her name will be publicized, and she will be expelled from the community, and “the whores who are servants . . . if they gave birth within the aforementioned year, then if she is a servant, she will also be excommunicated as above.” If the infant wasn’t weaned, she would be given a short postponement, “while she has permission to suckle it,” but immediately “at the end of the set time, it is forbidden for her to be here for a single hour.”51 Wandering beggars, thieves, and servant women endangered the social and moral order, and the rabbis, as guardians of the religious norms, made certain that the class barriers between rich and poor would not be dismantled. At the same time, some halakhic authorities were aware of the increasing presence of Jews in the new locations of the emerging urban environment, aware of their curiosity about current news, and aware of their desire to exploit the many possibilities for entertainment and enjoyment. The desire for novelty and eagerness for new experiences were already sufficiently present for the rabbinic elite to refer to them. Rabbi Jacob Reischer knew that the coffeehouses were attracting Jews, too, so that in the first decade of the century it was a current fashion, and “they are used to going to coffeehouses on Shabbat and drinking coffee that is cooked there.” Being responsible for discipline, he warned against sitting in coffeehouses not only on the Sabbath and not only because of halakhic concerns regarding the drink itself and its manner of preparation, but “he who fears the Lord, even on weekdays does not go to their house to drink . . . because this is a ‘dwelling of jesters’ [Ps. 1:1], and he who would preserve his soul, will keep a distance from it.” However, he, too, knew very well that the craving for coffee was not easily curbed, and therefore a severe ruling was necessary: “It also should be feared that coffee is easy to make and to become habituated to it and very eager for it, and certainly there is reason to pass severe injunctions.”52 The physician Tuvia Cohen, who was among those Europeans who were eager for coffee at the start of the century, did not hesitate to express reservations about the drink. Among the counsels for preserving the body that he offered his readers in Ma’ase tuvia was an enthusiastic recommendation for the quality and virtues of coffee: “Behold, you take its fruit, except for the shells, and you grind it well into powder, and a drink is made from it to strengthen the stomach and improve digestion . . . and anyone who is used to drinking it in the morning finds it impossible to open his eyes without drinking it.”53

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As we have seen, coffeehouses were also the places in the public domain where newspapers were read and news was consumed. Rabbi Jacob Emden, who came of age in Europe beset with lengthy wars, was familiar with large cities such as London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, and Hamburg, and he patronized coffeehouses. He spoke of the spread of newspaper reading among the Jews as well and noted that it was necessary to clarify, for example, whether the Halakha forbade reading them on the Sabbath. Emden included his decision in Sheilat ya’avets, the halakhic book that he had printed in Altona when he settled there again in the 1730s, but he related to a phenomenon that was manifest earlier: “On the matter of newspapers printed in big cities and large towns every week in this state to announce news in the land and exciting events about the war and other events aside from them that happen in the world every day. . . . Especially in a time when there is a war and an hour of emergency in the world and sometimes merchants have a great need to know which side is winning and there is even reason to be concerned because of matters of life and death.” Like Reischer, Emden identified the Jews’ eagerness for the new culture of the European metropolis. He understood the importance of the newspaper and its usefulness. He shared the curiosity and admitted that the newspaper gave him enjoyment. His explanations of his ruling considered both the need and the pleasure. Since there already were Jews who were addicted to reading newspapers, it was fitting for the authorities to avoid severity: “In any event, where there are two reasons, pleasure and a current need, and it causes sorrow to forbid it, especially for someone used to reading them, and his soul yearns, and he desires to know what is happening, . . . therefore it seems to me entirely permissible.” The decision is somewhat hesitant, because information appears in newspapers about “merchandise and property and objects that are sold and other bargaining and the business of merchants, that it is certainly forbidden to read on the Sabbath.” But in the rabbi’s eyes, this was not an obstacle, and he instructed readers to be careful and skip the items about business and the economy.54 The eagerness for the pleasure one could enjoy in Europe at the start of the eighteenth century gradually became one of the characteristics of life in a new era, and, aside from coffeehouses, it found may other channels. In some places, even in the first quarter of the century, the regulations and sermons employed by the leaders of the communities as mechanisms for supervision and control over the behavior of the Jews had to cope with those who wished to weave their lives into the fabric of the secular culture of the European metropolis.55 In 1705, Rabbi Joseph Stadthagen (1640–1715), for example, who observed the thirst for pleasure and entertainment among the Jews living in small villages in the

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Hanover area, described the many entertainments in the taverns: heavy drinking, smoking, dancing, card-playing, and wearing oneself out with entertainment. Coffeehouses had not yet reached there, but wine cellars for the drinking of alcoholic beverages in public were common places of amusement: “A place of drinking in fountains of wine is a permanent place in every single city, and wine and strong drink are sold there, and all intoxicating beverages, and in German they call it Keller.” Though Rabbi Stadthagen was supported by the Court Jew from Hanover, Leffmann Behrens, he did not refrain from reproving the wealthy who desired the pleasures of life: “They pursue luxuries and possessions, and they make their bellies a god, to eat and drink, not according to the religion of the Torah, and their clothing is like that of high officials, laden with the load of appetite, to follow after their instinct, with much fornication, and the power of their palaces and mansions, which they build for gaming and revelry.”56 Those responsible for maintaining the existing order and discipline were disturbed. The community leaders tightened supervision over the Jews’ way of life and costume by means of sumptuary regulations. While these regulations had existed for many years, from the beginning of the eighteenth century fashion in dress posed new challenges. For example, the regulations of the community of Posen betrayed pressure and distress when they presented a list of forbidden costume accessories and, in the first years of the century, warned against “great loss of money in costumes of silk of all colors and embroidery in silver and gold, and the wealthy are no different than the poor, and no one pays attention to the bitter and embittered exile . . . the barrier that was raised by our predecessors in great and powerful regulations, and ostracism and excommunication.” In 1702, the “proper members of the public” decided that contempt for these regulations demanded severe measures, and therefore, “if anyone transgresses, his sentence will be to burn the forbidden garment in the synagogue courtyard, and especially silk clothes with hems decorated with silver embroidery that are forbidden.”57 The new regulations issued by the Frankfurt community on July 18, 1715, were more detailed and made subtle distinctions regarding colors, types of cloth, various items of clothing, lace, and decorations, and their appropriateness for weekdays or wedding parties, Sabbaths, and holidays. For example, they stated with severity that “the wearing of colored or white wigs is forbidden to men, under threat of punishment and excommunication.” On the same occasion, the community also imposed restrictions on visiting spas, a new area that combined cures with social entertainment: they were not allowed to visit the springs of Schwabach on the first nine days of the month of Av, and anyone

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violating this regulation would be punished with the high fine of a hundred thalers, which an ordinary Jew could not have afforded.58 In the united community of AHU (Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek), the opportunities for entertainment and amusement were particularly plentiful and varied, and, especially in Hamburg, they included, in addition to taverns and coffeehouses, trips in carriages, cruises on the Alster River, horseback riding, dancing lessons (tantsin etsel tantsmeister), fencing, ball games (gikl boidn), and performances of theater and opera. The regulations endeavored to set boundaries for pleasure-seekers. In 1706, men and women were forbidden to enter “both a coffeehouse and other houses,” and, likewise, one was not allowed to go “to the opera, theater, puppet show, either on weekdays or the Sabbath and holidays, with a fine of ten thalers,” and one was not allowed to play games of chance. The regulations of 1714 again stated that “no person may attend the opera,” but it did leave a certain leeway: “except on the week when Hanukkah or Purim falls.” Anyone violating the regulation will be punished, “because it is an absolute prohibition, and anyone who he is a householder, he will not be eligible for any appointment,” and others were liable to lose their community membership. Ten years later, when these entertainments had become even more common and sought after, it was stated that “no women and maidens may go to the opera, even including on weekdays.”59 The community regulations sought to close the gates, as much as possible, through which people evaded religious supervision, to institute many prohibitions and restrictions and to make the desire for pleasure sinful. For example, Reshit bikurim published by Rabbi H.anokh Henekh in Frankfurt in 1709, contains reproaches written in anger and frustration: “to forbid all kinds of games, both cards and all other games, from everything that the mouth can say and the heart can think, and it is forbidden,” shouted the rabbi categorically in the face of the collapse of religious discipline: This includes men and women, lads and maidens, male and female servants, at all times and in every place . . . to keep a distance from ugliness and what resembles it, and it is forbidden to dance, what is called tantsn of a man’s wife with another man or with a lad even a relative of hers, because of marit ‘ayin [appearances], and a man may not dance with an unmarried woman hand in hand, it is unforgivable . . . and also it is worthy to correct matters of proud garments which are renewed every day as we see from the nations, and many pitfalls come from this, for our many sins.60

However, these remonstrations could not put an end to the desire to exploit the new possibilities, to enjoy, to play, to dance, and to transgress boundaries and

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ignore prohibitions and regulations. Over the course of the century, the elite leadership was to discover that its power to resist the desires of the autonomous personality for a life of freedom was weakening.

Note s 1. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 310; Zemon David, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth Century Lives, p. 72; Cf. Torniansky’s note, Memoirs, n. 314. 2. See Dr. E. Halley, “An Account of an Extraordinary Meteor,” Philosophical Transactions 30 (January 1719): 978–990. Halley did not observe the meteor himself but submitted the description submitted by “Our very worthy VicePresident Sir Hans Sloan, Baronet” who “happen’d to have his Eyes turned towards it, in its very first Eruption.” ­http://​­rstl​.­royalsocietypublishing​.­org​ /­content​/­30​/­360​/­978​.­f ull​.­pdf+­html. 3. Glikl’s description is very accurate, and she erred about the date by only a day or two, when she mentioned the month Nissan 5709, when in fact it took place on 29 Adar. See John Gribbin, A Brief History of Science (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1998). 4. Hazard, The European Mind, The Critical Years, 1680–1715, pp. 155–179. 5. Pierre Bayle, Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet, trans. Robert Bartlett (Albany: State University of New York, 2000). 6. Laurent Bordelon, A History of the Ridiculous Extravagances of Monsieur Oufle (London, 1711); and see Dorinda Outram, Panorama of the Enlightenment (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006), pp. 13–15. 7. Cited from Hazard, The European Mind, p. 179. 8. Tuvia Hacohen, Ma’ase tuvia (Venice, 5607 [1707]); other editions: (Jessnitz, 5481); (Cracow, 5678), ‘Olam hagalgalim, ch. 11, p. 51. 9. David Nieto, Mate dan vekuzari, pt. 2 (London, 5474), par. 298. See Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, ch. 11. 10. ­https://​­w ww​.­g utenberg​.­org​/­fi les​/­11866​/­11866​-­h​/­11866​-­h​.­htm. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Leibniz, “Principles of Nature and Grace Based on Reason,” ­http://​ ­earlymoderntexts​.­com​/­assets​/­pdfs​/­leibniz1714a​.­pdf. See Hugo Bergmann, Toldot hafilosofia h­ ah.­adasha, minikolaus kuzanus ‘ad tequfat hahaskala (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), ch. 16; Hazard, The European Mind, pp. 217–236. 15. Leibniz, “Principles of Nature and Grace Based on Reason.” 16. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ­http://​­oll​.­l ibertyfund​.­org​/­t itles​ /­mandeville​-­t he​-­fable​-­of​-­t he​-­bees​-­or​-­private​-­v ices​-­publick​-­benefits​-­vol​-­1; Porter,

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The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment, pp. 171–176. 17. Richard Steele, “To Mr. Maynwaring,” The Tatler 1, London, 1709, dedication. 18. Joseph Addison, The Spectator 10, London, Monday March 12, 1711. 19. Ibid., September 27, 1712. 20. Meir Gilon, Kohelet musar lemendelssohn ‘al reqa’ tequfato (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1979), p. 26. 21. See Hazard, The European Mind, pp. 323–330. On Addison, see Nicolson, The Age of Reason: The Eighteenth Century in Reason and Violence, pp. 149–166. 22. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 42–43. 23. See Robert Darnton, “The Unity of Europe: Culture and Politeness,” in George Washington’s False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 76–88. 24. See Robert Darnton, “The News in Paris: An Early Information Society,” in George Washington’s False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 25–75. 25. Richard Steele, The Tatler 155, London, Thursday, April 6, 1710. 26. Daniel Defoe, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (London, 1722). 27. W. Derham, “Observations on the Great Storm,” in Philosophical Transactions from the Year 1700 to the Year 1720, ed. Henry Jones (London, 1731), pp. 113–125; Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800, p. 7. 28. Moses Meir Perles, Megilat sefer (Prague, 5470 [1710]), author’s introduction. 29. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 84. 30. See Daniel Defoe, The Storm, or A Collection of the Most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters Which Happened in the Late Dreadful Tempest Both by Sea and Land (London, 1704); G. A. Starr, “Defoe and Disasters,” in Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Alessa Johns (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 31–48. 31. See Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford, 1900); Ragnhild Hatton, Europe in the Age of Louis XIV (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), p. 10; Daniel Gordon, “Confrontations with the Plague in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Dreadful Visitations, ed. Alessa Johns, pp. 3–29; Daniel Defoe, Due Preparations for the Plague (London, 1894), cited in ‘Adi Ofir, Alimut elohit: shnei h.iburim ‘al alimut veason (Tel Aviv: Hkibutz hameuchad, 2013), pp. 204–209. 32. See Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present (London: Harper Collins, 1997), pp. 274–276.

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33. Chava Turniansky, “Yiddish Song as Historical Source Material: Plague in the Judenstadt of Prague in 1713,” in Jewish Historiography: Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988), pp. 189–198. 34. See Joseph Ben Jacob of Pińczów, Rosh Yosef (Köthen, 5476 [1716]), introduction; Johnathan Ben Joseph of Ruzhany, Yeshu’a beyisrael (Frankfurt, 5480 [1720]), introduction; Benjamin Zeev Wolf Ben Shabetai, Misgeret ­hashulh.­an (Berlin, 5473 [1713]); Abraham Ya’ari, ­Meh.­qeri sefer: peraqim betoldot hasefer ha’ivri (Jerusalem, 5518 [1958]), pp. 105–109. Following the plague that broke out in 1709, in the community of Posen, “the number of householders in our community [decreased] by almost a half ” (Joseph Perles, Geschichte der Juden in Posen [Breslau, 1865], p. 90). 35. On the fire in Frankfurt in 1711, see Aaron Freimann and F. Kracauer, Frankfurt (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929), ch. 8; Mordecai Halevi Hurwitz, Rabanei Frankfurt, trans. Joshua Amir (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1972), pp. 71–81; Ya’ari, ­Meh.­qerei sefer, pp. 55–59; on Rabbi Naphtali Katz, see Avriel Bar-Levav, “Rabbi berachia mimodena verabi naftali hacohen katz, avot ­hameh.­abrim sifrei h.olim umetim,” Asufot 9 (1995): 199–234. 36. Samuel Ben Joseph Schattin, Kos hayeshuot (Frankfurt, 5471 [1711]), introduction. 37. Johann Jacob Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 2 (Frankfurt, 1714), pp. 71–82. 38. R. D. Barnett, “The Correspondence of the Mahamad of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Jewish Historical Society of England, Transactions 20 (1964): 40. 39. Reischer, Shevut ya’aqov, pt. 1, question 117. 40. Ain naya klag lid, benign ani hagever, oif meshares fun Frankfurt (Basel, 5468 [1708]), in Aaron Freimann, “A nai klaglid oif meshares fun Frankfurt,” Filologishe shriften 2 (1928), pp. 171–174. Freimann claims that the poem was printed in Hanau and not in Basel, where there was no Hebrew printer at that time. I am grateful to Professor Shlomo Berger of blessed memory for his help in translating the poem. 41. Kaidanover, Qav yashar, chs. 9–10. 42. See Rudolf Glanz, Geschichte des niederein jüdischen Volkes in Deutschland (New York: Waldon Pr. [Dr.], 1968); Bodian, “Hayazamim hayehudiim beberlin, hamedina haabsolutit veshipur matsavam haezra h.i shel hayehudim ­bemah.­atsit hashniya shel hameah ha18,” pp. 172–173. The Prussian edict of October 17, 1712: Christian Otto Mylius, Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum 5, 5 (Berlin, 1737– 1755), no. 30, pp. 151–152. 43. See Meisel, Pinqas qehilat berlin, pp. 44–45.

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44. Menachem Friedman, “Mikhtavei hamlatsa leqabtsanim—‘katavim,’” Michael 2 (1973): 34–51. 45. Yair Chaim Ben Moses Samson Bachrach, H.avat yair (Frankfurt, 5459 [1699]), question 139. 46. Menachem Friedman, “H.avurot ganavim ufesh’a yehudiot bemotsai yemei habeinayim,” in Yosef da’at: ­meh.­qarim behistoria Yehudit modernit mugashim le prof. yosef salmon lehag yovlo, ed. Yossi Goldstein (Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University, 2010), pp. 189–201. 47. See Elliot Horowitz, “Bein adonim lemeshartot ­bah.­evra hayehudit haeiropit bein yemei habeinayim lereshit ha’et h­ ah.­adasha,” in Eros, erusin veisurim: miniut umishpah.a bahistoria, ed. Israel Bartal and Isaiah Gafni (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1998), pp. 193–211. 48. Jacob Maitlis, “London Yiddish Letters of the Early Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Jewish Studies 6 (1955): 153–165, 237–252. 49. Cited in the article by Horowitz, “Bein adonim lemeshartot b­ ah.­ evra hayehudit haeiropit bein yemei habeinayim lereshit ha’et h­ ah.­adasha,” pp. 195–196. 50. Reischer, Shevut ya’aqov, pt. 1, questions 112–113; Horowitz, “Bein adonim lemeshartot ­bah.­evra hayehudit haeiropit bein yemei habeinayim lereshit ha’et h­ ah. adasha,” pp. 297–208; Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in EighteenthCentury Europe, pp. 56–57; Rebecca Kobrin, “Jewish Maidservants in East European Society, 1700–1900,” in Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, ed. Richard I. Cohen et al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press and Hebrew Union College Press, 2014), pp. 307–316. 51. Simcha Assaf, “Umbevuste yidishe qehila doqumenten funem pinqas fun qehilas ah”u,” YIVO Bletter 32 (1949): 114–115; and see Elisheva Carlebach, “Fallen Women and Fatherless Children: Jewish Domestic Servants in Eighteenth Century Altona,” Jewish History 24, (2010): 295–308. 52. Reischer, Shevut ya’aqov, pt. 1, question 12. See Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 48–49; Maoz Kahana, “Shabat beveit haqafe shel qehilat qodesh Prague, Zion, 78 (2013): 5–50; Robert Lieberles, The Jews Welcome Coffee: Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2014), pp. 41–49. 53. Tuvia Hacohen, Ma’ase tuvia, pt. 3, ch. 16, pp. 64–65. ­54.​ Jacob Emden, Sheilat ya’vets, pt. 1 (Altona, 5499 [1739]), response no. 162. 55. See Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, chs. 1–2. 56. Joseph Stadthagen, Sefer divrei zikaron, pt. 1 (Amsterdam, 5465 [1705]), fols. 74a–b 65b; pt. 2, fol. 8a. 57. The register of regulations of the community of Posen, pp. 310–311. See Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 87–95.

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58. Neure Frankfurter Jüdische Kleider-Ordnung . . . Aus dem Hebräischen ins Hochdeutsche übersetzt, von Johann Jacob Schudt (Franckfurt, 1716). 59. Collected regulations of the AHU communities in Hebrew and Yiddish, and a German translation in Graupe, Die Statuten der drei Gemeinden Altona, Hamburg und Wandsbek. 60. H.anokh Henekh Ben Leib Arieh, Reshit bikurim (Frankfurt, 5468 [1708]), pt. 2, fol. 29a.

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“OUR MISERABLE BRETHREN” Jews in Time of War

One of the most penetr ating points of view on Europe during the first two decades of the new century was that of Usbek and Rica, the fictional tourists from Isfahan. In the Persian Letters, Montesquieu brought them to France at the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the interregnum (1715–1723) of Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, until the reign of the young king Louis XV. The two visitors undertook their great voyage out of “the desire for knowledge” and “to go looking laboriously for wisdom.” The letters they sent home were written “in surprise and wonder” seeing the huge difference between the customs of Europe in general and Paris in particular, and the customs of the countries of the Orient. Like Man Friday in Robinson Crusoe, they represented the outside observer, who with his simple logic finds it hard to be reconciled with the accepted rules of the European state, religion, and society. Hence, their objective report often becomes sharp criticism. The Muslim “savage” offered a relative and comparative point of view and placed a critical mirror before the eyes of European readers of their time. The French aristocrat Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755), published the Persian Letters in Holland in 1721 as a clandestine, subversive work. That moment inaugurated the Enlightenment as a protest movement that judged European society and displayed evident displeasure.1

“En dl e ssly De stroy ed a n d En dl e ssly R e v i v ing” The excited tourists from Persia documented the new, vibrant, and dynamic life in the European metropolis of Paris. The noise, the crowding, and the speed shocked Usbek and Rica. In one of the early letters, Rica writes: “We

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have been a month at Paris, and all the time constantly moving about.” Compared to the moderate pace of life in Asia, he continues, everyone is in a hurry, pushy and irritable: “There is no people in the world who hold more by their vehicles than the French: they run; they f ly: the slow carriages of Asia, the measured step of our camels, would put them into a state of coma. As for me, although I am not made for such hurry, and who often goes a-foot without changing my pace, I am sometimes as mad as a Christian; for, passing over splashing from head to foot, I cannot pardon the elbowings I meet with regularly and periodically.” The residents of the great city are interested in everything and pursue new sensations: “The curiosity of the people of Paris exceeds all bounds,” writes Rica. In the coffeehouses, they amuse themselves with games of chess and gossip, and in the Tuileries Gardens nouvellistes (newshounds) gather and spread rumors, discussing the political maneuvers and military campaigns that are taking place in Europe at the time.2 Usbek is surprised by the relative freedom given to women in Paris and by their provocative dress, and he is impressed by “the artful composition of their complexion, the ornaments with which they deck themselves, the care they have of their bodies, the desire to please.” While in the harem in Isfahan, the women exploit his absence and give free rein to their repressed desires, he and his companion were astonished by the Parisian women’s wanton dress at the theater and the opera, reporting that “an immense number of courtesans are maintained by the libertines of Paris,” and the priests and monks are not partic­ ular about the vow of chastity. Montesquieu did not yet know about the reverse insight, brought to Europe from the Muslim East by Mary Montagu, according to whom, “Upon the whole, I look upon the Turkish women as the only free people in the empire.” In a letter to the famous poet and philosopher Alexander Pope, she wrote that covering their faces and bodies, which seems like subjection to people from the West, gives the women “entire liberty of following their inclinations without danger of discovery.”3 The trip to Europe arouses new thoughts about the status of women in Usbek: “It is an all-important question among men, whether it is better to deprive women of their liberty, or to leave them free”; and from a philosopher Usbek learned that “nature never dictated such a law. The dominion which we exercise over them is tyrannical.”4 By means of his fictional foreign guests, Montesquieu effectively conveyed the feeling of liberation in France after the death of Louis XIV. The yearning for sensual pleasure, for love, and for amusement was expressed in art, especially the paintings of French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, which were desired in the homes of aristocrats and courtiers. These paintings broadcast joie de vivre

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and describe amusements and erotica (Les plaisirs du bal, 1717, and Fêtes galantes, 1719), music (Leçon de musique, 1716), promenades, theater, and celebrations, as well as themes from classical mythology and bucolic scenes. He painted actors and comedians, scenes from fairs, and especially the amusements of groups and amorous couples in nature and the festival of courtship, and he documented the lives of the upper classes, presented as an ideal of pleasure in life. For example, in his famous painting of 1719, The Embarkation for Cythera, the Greek island regarded in antiquity as the dwelling of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, a place of love and freedom of emotion, couples are shown in various stages of sensual involvement.5 Baroque music accompanied this art in the first quarter of the eighteenth century and the social values that it reflected. In the year when the Persian Letters was published, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) composed the Brandenburg Concertos, dedicated to the music-loving prince of Anhalt–Dessau, Leopold, and in Mantua, the Venetian-born composer and violin virtuoso Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) composed The Four Seasons, which imitated the sounds of nature—the birds, bands of hunters, the storms, and the silence of night—as if to provide a rich musical accompaniment to the paintings of Watteau. How, wonder Usbek and Rica, can such an open society, avid for amusements and pleasure, allow religious priests to rule it? How, for example, can one understand that “there is another magician more powerful still, who is master of the king’s mind, as absolutely as the king is master of the minds of his subjects. This magician is called the Pope.” Montesquieu used his literary figures to convince his readers of his deist arguments that the dogmas of Catholicism (“that three are no more than one; that the bread he eats is not bread, and the wine he drinks not wine”) are inconsistent with simple reason of visitors from outside the circle of Christianity, and that tolerance is preferable to fanaticism and polemics. Could it be true that the Inquisition was still active in Spain and Portugal, where “there are certain dervishes who do not understand raillery, and who cause men to be burned as they would burn straw” for the sin of heresy. In the Persian Letters he ridicules religious practices that seem like superstitions to him (“Thou regardest me with horror if I do not remove a certain small portion of my flesh”), and he criticized belief in amulets, as Rica, the Muslim, writes from Paris in 1720 to the Jewish physician Nathaniel of Livorno: “You . . . place your entire confidence in some mysterious letters; and without that safeguard would be in perpetual dread.” If we wish to be happy, the time has come to free ourselves from dependence on the supernatural: “Men are most unfortunate beings. They hover constantly between false hopes and ridiculous fears: and instead of relying on reason, make themselves monsters to terrify them, or phantoms to mislead them.”6

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Montesquieu’s critique did not stop at religion, and his outlook encompassed the entire French regime, as well as international relations in Europe. In 1721, six years after the death of the Sun King, it was possible to observe the results of the wars that were waged on the continent from the beginning of the century and to criticize the king who had endangered the status of his kingdom: “The King of France is the most powerful of European potentates. . . . He has undertaken and carried on great wars, without any other supplies than those derived from the sale of titles of honour.”7 When the Persian Letters were published, the great wars were already in the past, and France was the major loser. The War of the Spanish Succession had begun with a declaration against the Grand Alliance, which included Austria, England, and Holland, and, as we have seen, two victorious generals stood out in it: Prince Eugene, who served the emperor of Austria, and the Duke of Marlborough, who commanded the English army, and their victory at Blenheim in 1704 was a decisive turning point. The effort to bring the war to an end was accelerated after the harsh winter of 1709 and the blood-soaked battle that had taken place in the autumn of that year, leaving thirty-four thousand dead and wounded, lying along twenty-five kilo­ meters in the battlefield of Malplaquet, in Flanders. In fact, Queen Anne took England out of the war then, the new government of the Tory party in England reached a peace agreement with France at Utrecht, and a year later Austria also joined the process, with the Treaty of Rastatt. France did manage to keep Philip V on the throne of Spain, the central cause of the entire war, but it was determined that France and Spain would not be unified. Austria gained control of parts of Italy and the Netherlands. The Netherlands gained a more secure and fortified border, and England was recognized as a maritime and colonial power. France recognized the rule of its Hanoverian kings; England gained territories in North America, Gibraltar, and Majorca; and it received highly profitable concessions in the colonial Atlantic trade in slaves. In July 1713, England celebrated its achievements in a thanksgiving ceremony in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, with a Te Deum and a Hymn of Praise composed by the young German successful musician Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1759). In the Great Northern War, which was waged at the same time, Sweden failed and lost its status as a regional power, despite the victories of the bold young king Karl XII at the beginning of the war. At the beginning of the century, Sweden overcame the Russian army in Nerva, invaded Lithuania and Poland, conquered Warsaw in 1702, deposed Augustus the Strong, and brought about the coronation in 1704 of Stanislaw Leszczyński as king of Poland. However, the tables turned, and while Karl XII was occupied in Poland and Saxony, the Russia of Peter the Great recovered and began a victorious campaign of

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conquest in the Baltic region. In 1703, he founded the city of St. Petersburg, and this was an important foothold on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and from 1712 on it became the capital of Russia. In the decisive battle that took place between Russia and Sweden in Poltava on June 27, 1709, Karl XII was defeated and fled to the Ottoman Empire. Augustus II was restored to the Polish throne in that year, under Russian protection, and a great deal of territory in the Baltic region passed into Russian hands. The coalition of Peter the Great was joined in 1714 by George I of England, who tried to ensure access to the North Sea. A year later, Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia also joined, with the aim of controlling the outlet of the Oder to the Baltic Sea. The peace treaty that was signed at Nystad in 1721 expressed the new status of Russia as a European power and the decline of Sweden.8 In one of the last of the Persian Letters, Montesquieu weighed the relative importance of each of the countries of Europe in his time. The Austrian Empire maintained its power, though it appeared to be so fragmented that it is “the only one which grows stronger from its losses . . . and becomes invincible in defeat.” Spain was in decline: “overborne by its own greatness and its fictitious wealth, it lost its strength and even its reputation, preserving only its original pride.” Poland “makes . . . a bad use of its liberty and of the right it possesses of electing its kings.” The Dutch Republic was “respected in Europe, and . . . feared in Asia, where its merchants behold many a king bow to the dust before them.” Italy, “once mistress of the world, [is] now the common slave; its princes disunited and weak.” In Russia, by contrast, “the reigning prince wishes to change everything; he had a great quarrel with his subjects about their beards; the clergy and the monks defended their ignorance with equal obstinacy.” But the most prominent power in his opinion was England: “Here you may see liberty flaming up again and again from discord and sedition.” Today it is an island of stability, “mistress of the sea (a thing unheard-of before), combin[ing] commerce with power.”9 This general survey of Montesquieu’s did not ignore the Jews, and in the sixtieth letter, sent by Usbek in 1714, from Paris to Izmir, he reports a significant improvement in their status in European society, signs of which were already visible. The figure of the Jews is colored in a mixture of respect and contemptuous and suspicious prejudice. Usbek writes, “You ask me if there are any Jews in France,” and goes on to say, “wherever there is money, there are Jews as well.” They are not much different from the Jews of the East, because “nothing resembles a Jew in Asia so closely as a Jew in Europe. Among the Christians, as with us, they display that invincibly stubborn religious conviction which verges on folly”. This, however, was not the last comment on the Jews in the

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Persian Letters. Montesquieu explains with compassion that “the Jewish religion is an aged tree-trunk which has covered the earth with two branches that it has produced—Islam and Christianity; or rather, it is a mother who has given birth to two daughters, and they have inflicted a thousand wounds on her.” Fortunately, the days when fanaticism prevailed are about to end, he writes, because the nations of Europe “have realised that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who do not conform to it.” This reversal bears with it the promise of far-reaching change: the Jews “have never [enjoyed] such freedom from disturbance as that which they now have. Among Christians there is a beginning to be less of the spirit of intolerance that used to spur them on. It did no good to chase the Jews out of Spain.”10 Montesquieu displayed sensitivity for the suffering of the Jews and respected their ability to survive under difficult historical circumstances, drawing hope from their messianic faith: “The Jews, always being exterminated, and always increasing again, have repaired their continual losses and destructions by the single hope, shared by all their families, that from one of them shall spring a powerful king who will be the master of the world.”11 It is not easy to understand why Montesquieu thought the Jews were enjoying unprecedented freedom. Had he been impressed by what he knew about the Sephardic Jewish communities in Amsterdam and London, or by the special rights and protections that the preferred Court Jews received from the emperor in Vienna or the king of Prussia? Or did he simply want to raise the bar of expectations when he envisioned, as a prophet of the Enlightenment, an era when tolerance would ensure the happiness of humanity? The viewpoint of the veteran and respected Jewish physician from Padua, Dr. Isaac Haim Cantarini (1643–1723) was the absolute opposite, though he could have confirmed Montesquieu’s words about the power and vitality of messianic hopes. In his opinion, the state of the Jews in the early eighteenth century was never at a lower ebb. In the beginning of his book, ‘Et qets (the Time of the End [of Days]), which was printed in Amsterdam in 1710 and written in rhymed Hebrew prose, creative and ornamented, he painted a dark picture of humiliation, saying that the Jews are treated like beasts, discarded like worn-out shoes and filthy rags in the street, and the persecutors threaten to destroy their last remnant. He added that their experience of life is one of huge existential dread: “eyes worn out, ears deafened, hands weakened, thighs broken, hips destroyed, knees collapsed, dread in the abdomen.”12 Like Montesquieu, Cantarini was well aware of what was happening in Europe, and he also harbored high hopes. For him,

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the awareness of crisis, humiliation, and dread expressed in ‘Et qets was the mirror image of the messianic future, which he did not merely expect to see. Rather, he devoted most of his book to precise calculations of the advent of redemption. After the disappointment of the messianic hopes that had been pinned on the false messiah Shabbetai Zevi and the expectations of his believers that redemption had been delayed by forty years, until 5467 [1707], also failed to be fulfilled (“the deer [tsevi in Hebrew] has fled and has brought nothing good”), Cantarini awakened a new hope. According to his calculations, the Messiah would be born precisely at the end of the first decade of the eighteenth century, and the End of Days would come in only one generation, in 1740, which was the 5500th year of the creation of the world.13 These calculations of the End of Days and Cantarini’s messianic picture of the world depended on a meticulous and up-to-date reading of contemporary European history. “Since the day I was twenty, until today I have been burdened with the work of medicine,” he told about himself, but he always was able to observe what was happening around him with a comprehensive gaze, feeling at home in the city where his family roots were very deeply planted, and he was involved with the learned community of the University of Padua.14 Cantarini dealt with the natural sciences, corresponded with scholars and Hebraists in Latin and Hebrew, and, being ordained as a rabbi, he responded to questions about the Halakha, and he also wrote poems and sermons. This learned Italian was a senior member in the network of the rabbinical elite of his generation. But he was also an enthusiastic promoter of the scientific ethos and a supporter of Jewish medical students, including his close friend Tuvia Cohen. While writing Et qetz in 1707, Cantarini closely followed the news coming from the palaces of kings and princes and from the battlefields of Europe. In virtuosic Hebrew, he described the passionate dramas excellently, identifying the senior leaders and weighing the balance of forces in real time. “Queen Anne, the daughter of King James, the wife of the Danish Prince,” he wrote, referring to the achievements of the English queen in the war of succession, “is a brave woman and very terrible, and up to now her timing has been good, her courage and awe is upon all the nations of the earth.” The British queen made a treaty with Holland and Emperor Joseph I “against Louis XIV, the great and mighty king of France.” Cantarini explained how this comprehensive international conflict arose immediately after the death of the king of Spain, referring to the defeats of France in Italy and the great successes of “the heroic general of Marlborough, England,” and the victory in the siege of Turin, which was led by “the daring minister of the emperor’s army, Eugene of Savoy.” The Austrian army was trying to suppress the rebellions of the Hungarians, a civil

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war was being waged in Poland, and “against August the duke of Saxony. The King of Sweden set out from his country and challenged him to war, and another king was raised instead of him, Stanislaw is his name.” In that year, Augustus the Strong had already left Poland, and meanwhile, “the great Duke of Moscow [Peter the Great] had risen against the Kings of Sweden and Stanislaw and removed him from the throne.” It was not yet possible to predict the outcome of the wars being waged at the same time in so many places in Europe, but it was noteworthy that the Ottoman Empire had not yet intervened: “for nevertheless the King of Turkey has not yet put the blood of war against peace in his nose, nor has he girded sword on thigh in heroic pose, and no challenge arose.”15 In the complex international politics Cantarini discerned dramatic changes that expressed the spirit of the new age and bore messianic significance. In his opinion, the extremely visible and blunt challenge to the legitimacy of the king in Europe indicated a breakdown in accepted norms for the benefit of personal interests: “In every corner, wars are great. Not only to conquer a city and seize a state. Swords are whet, bows are drawn, to humble and throw down and humiliate the man on royal throne.” In his view, the challenges of those striving to rule were unprecedented. In England, the Catholic king James II of the Stuart dynasty was ousted, and in his place the Protestant William III was crowned, but James’s son (James Francis Adward Stuart), in French exile, was still regarded by his followers and supporters as the Old Pretender. King Philip V of Spain was challenged by an Austrian rival, and in Poland a struggle was waged between the supporters of Augustus II and Stanislaw Leszczyńskij. Before the astonished eyes of the rabbi and physician from Padua, Cantarini, the basic rules of European governments had been broken. “The day has come for removing kings and installing others in their place during their lifetime.” Since people dared to challenge the traditional manner of inheriting the throne, he had no doubt that redemption was imminent. The Jews did not take an active part in the wars, but this is a propitious hour, with apocalyptic repercussions. In this surprising time of the “removal of kings,” an age pregnant with change, one can predict a turning point in the fate of the Jews: “Now Jacob and Israel will be told of God’s deeds, and eyes will not darken with seeing the dreadful miracles all about them.”16 A Christian millenarian reading of the Bible in the light of the international tension in Europe during the wars also aroused messianic hopes at the beginning of the century, even including detailed plans for the establishment of none other than a Jewish state. One of the most determined activists for achieving that end was Oliger Paulli (1644–1714), a wealthy Dane who traveled tirelessly between Holland, the German states, France, and England,

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composing pamphlets and letters to herald a new world religion that would unite all believers, and to announce the imminent redemption of the Jews. Paulli proclaimed that Jerusalem and the Temple would be built in the kingdom of the Jews in 1720, and he sought to gain support for his plan and to overthrow the Ottoman Empire. He called upon all the countries of Europe to take part in the great mission. He implored the King of England William III, the French crown prince, the kings of Prussia and Denmark, and Czar Peter the Great to form a pan-European army to conquer the Land of Israel for the Jews and to provide a fleet of ships for the ingathering of the exiles. He presented himself to the Jews as the grandson of a German Jew and as a descendant of King David, but suspicion that his ultimate intention was to bring about the conversion of the Jews prevented them from supporting him. The fears of the rulers of Europe regarding the establishment of new forces, destabilization of the public order by adventurers, and suspicion of political subversion led to Paulli’s imprisonment in Holland, and finally he was entirely forbidden to continue his propaganda campaign in Denmark.17 In the year of Paulli’s death, immediately after the War of the Spanish Succession, another Christian adventurer tried to convince the leaders of Europe to support another ambitious plan, to advance the messianic age and, among other things, to establish a Jewish state. In 1714, the Marquis Philippe Gentil de Langallerie established the “Universal Theocracy,” and, based on prophecies of the End of Days, he began to put together a far-reaching political–messianic program for the establishment of a coalition, which, unlike Paulli’s plan, would work in cooperation with the Ottoman Empire. In his vision, a new religion would arise on the ruins of the Catholic Church, and a gigantic army would be mobilized to conquer Rome, overthrow the pope, and establish a state for the Jews under Turkish protection.18 With respect to the Marquis de Langallerie, Cantarini’s insight, that in the wars of the beginning of the century, the personal interest of the individual striving for success and prominence, was quite accurate. The Marquis de Langallerie first served as a successful officer in the army of Louis XIV. However, in the wake of a personal quarrel, he deserted and crossed the lines. In 1706, he joined the Austrian emperor’s army, taking part in battles in Italy as a cavalry officer under Prince Eugene, and was promoted to the rank of general. After gaining credit for the victory at Turin, he quarreled with the prince, and in 1709, he began to serve as a general of the Lithuanian cavalry in the army of Augustus II, though not before offering his services to his rival, the King of Sweden Karl XII, as well as to Peter the Great and the king of Prussia. This adventurer and mercenary shifted his loyalty many times, and toward the end of the war, he even changed

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his religion from Catholicism to Calvinism, acquired Jewish friends, and began to develop a messianic religious vision. Around 1710, in Dresden, he got to know the Court Jew Behrend Lehmann and his secretary Alexander Siskind. Four years later, Langallerie arrived in Amsterdam, and his plans for an overall reconfiguration of the political and religious map of Europe began to take shape in practical form. With the help of a circle of Portuguese Jews and a relative of his, another French aristocrat, Gottfried Ludwig de Linange, an adventurer in his own right, to whose name a long series of frauds was attached, he established an actual messianic organization. The marquis appointed Isaac Mendes da Costa as his secretary, the son of one of the wealthy merchants in the Portuguese Jewish community, and Alexander Siskind as the minister of finance. During his years of work as secretary and translator for Behrend Lehmann, Siskind used his knowledge of French, from his home city of Metz, to make connections with various aristocrats. Now, having moved from Germany to Holland, he sought to succeed in business independently. Siskind also showed ability in Kaballah and grammar, and in a Hebrew letter from the end of 1714, he is called “the lord and hero in the war of the Torah, in the Talmud and Bible, his honor Alexander Siskind of Metz.” De Linange, who presented himself as a prince, was busy at that time in planning an order of knights for his messianic movement. Nathan Gelber, who investigated this episode thoroughly, saw in the royal archive in Vienna a blue-and-white silk ribbon, on which the name of God was embroidered in Hebrew, and the figure of an upside down angel. In Holland, de Linange opened an indirect line of communication with the Ottoman Empire for the Marquis de Langallerie, by means of Osman Aga, the diplomatic representative in The Hague, and on December 8, 1715, an agreement was signed between them, according to which, in return for several thousand soldiers and dozens of ships, which would fight to overthrow the pope, the Turks would allocate territories for the settlement of Jews and Christians. Now the two hoped that the Jews of Holland and Germany would contribute money for the establishment of the state, and in early 1716 they began a propaganda campaign among the Jews. By then, however, this activity was perceived as a political threat, and following reports from Holland that reached Emperor Karl VI in Vienna, he intervened personally and issued a warrant for the arrest of de Langallerie and de Linange. The two French aristocrats were arrested in June, along with their two Jewish assistants, Isaac Mendes da Costa and Alexander Siskind. The four were interrogated and tried in the capital of the Austrian empire for the crime of conspiring to overthrow the Christian governments of Europe and for cooperation with the Turks. The Marquis de Langallerie died in prison, de Linange was condemned to life imprisonment, and the two Jews were banished from the empire.19

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Nothing remained of the messianic organization, and the mysterious Jew Alexander Siskind, who was the French marquis’s right-hand man in Holland, paid a high personal price. In a pitiful letter that he sent to the emperor from prison in Vienna, we find that he had been in prison for two years, and his future was unknown. In his interrogation he told, for example, how the agreement that de Langallerie signed with the Ottoman Osman Aga, which laid out the plans for a war against the pope and the emperor, was circulated in many copies in coffeehouses and various places in Europe, and he did not deny his involvement in propaganda among the Jews, but in his plea to the emperor, he denied that he played a central role in the episode. He conceded that he had business connections with de Linange, but his function was no more than to serve as a translator for Isaac Mendes da Costa and to obey his orders. Now he, an innocent man, was subject to severe punishment, and his wife and two children were suffering from terrible misery. It appears that his request for a pardon was accepted, and in early 1718, his book of Hebrew grammar, Derekh haqodesh, was published in the city of Köthen in the duchy of Anhalt. He wrote: “I will guard my mouth as with a barrier all around against words of disputes, this is the basis of this holy book to preserve from disputes.” This was the author’s reference to his tribulations, placed at the beginning of his book. He regretted that he could not write a more comprehensive book, “because its hour was pressing,” and he signed at the end: “with trimmed wings and humbled to the lowest dust, to lick the feet of the holy nation, Alexander Siskind.”20 This episode lived on for decades in the historical memory of Christian and Jewish Europe. Two generations later, Moses Mendelssohn wrote in derision about what he regarded as a “plot hatched by project makers like Langallarie and others of his companions.” Their only purpose was to exploit messianic yearnings to grab “bundles of money from wealthy Jews.” In 1782, Mendelssohn saw an urgent need to reassure European public opinion that the actual implementation of hopes to return to the Land of Israel was limited by a religious prohibition against “rushing the end,” and neither was it visible on the horizon. Hence, there was no reason for apprehension that it might have “any influence on civil conduct” or that it presented a difficulty for the willingness of the Jews to take part in civil society.21

“A Huge Da r k Dr e a d a n d a M ight y Com motion” Beyond these fantastic plans and expectations for redemption, which were inspired by the upheavals in tempestuous international relations, the wars

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severely affected the lives of many members of the Jewish minority in Europe during the first two decades of the century. The Court Jews and merchants, who controlled efficient networks of agents and lines of credit, were involved in supplying various military units, while the communities in the heart of the areas of combat and troop movements suffered from attacks and riots. Jonathan Israel pointed to the dramatic significance of the War of the Spanish Succession on the Sephardic Jews, especially on the community of merchants in Holland. The economic power of the extensive networks of colonial trade benefitted from the connection between Spain and Holland. Hence, when the situation changed and political relations between France and Spain began to improve, the status of the Sephardic merchants was considerably weakened. Being aware of the expected consequences for their status, they made a particular effort to support the Austrian candidate for the Spanish throne. The brothers Daniel and Joseph De la Penha, for example, actively assisted the Austrian prince who was proposed to become Carlos III of Spain, and in 1705–1708 Austria still hoped to defeat France. However, the Treaty of Utrecht was disappointing for them, because it left Louis XIV’s nephew as king of Spain and made England the primary naval power, at the expense of Holland.22 In England, talented and efficient military suppliers were active, running large systems of food supply. In 1705, the former marrano Joseph Cortissos was appointed chief supplier to the English army. He lived in Barcelona, despite the danger of the Inquisition, and he was involved in battles in Spain itself. Cortissos held contracts to supply the armies of England and Portugal, contracts that he received from the Earl of Peterborough, who led the campaign to crown the Austrian Carlos III. However, following the failure of this effort and the great danger that Cortizos took upon himself, he incurred huge debts and failed to receive the money due to him, until he was bankrupt.23 The other prominent supplier was Solomon de Medina, who, as mentioned earlier, bore an English title of nobility. He no longer lived in London but in The Hague, and during the war he specialized as a supplier of bread and bread wagons for units of the English army, first as an agent of the company owned by Antonio Alvarez Machado; after 1707, he was the chief supplier, with contracts from the most prominent English military officer in the war, the Duke of Marlborough. To meet the conditions of the contract, he needed great expertise, the ability to form business partnerships with other Jews, and daily reports on the course of the war. He had to bring the bread wagons to the battlefields in the Netherlands. For that purpose, de Medina developed information networks and was constantly informed about the movements of various military units and about political developments. Every soldier had to pay by himself for the

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bread from his army salary, and the supplier received both a global sum and a subsidy from the English government. However, the payments were late, and de Medina found himself funding the supply from his own pocket. He fell into debt to his subagents, until in 1711 he was forced to abandon the contract. Not only was he on the verge of bankruptcy, writing letters imploring to be paid before his entire business collapsed, but he was also caught in a political crisis in that year. The English government, led by the Tories, pressured the Duke of Marlborough to make a separate treaty with France and put an end to English involvement in the war. In the effort to depose the duke, his name was defamed and he was represented as corrupt and venal, acting against the interest of the kingdom. Among other things, his opponents claimed he had received bribes from the Jew who held the concession to supply food to the army. De Medina was summoned to testify before a special commission of inquiry in London, and on the basis of his testimony, it was reported to Parliament that the commission had reason to believe that there was an impropriety in the contracts for the army, and for that reason, Sir Solomon de Medina, the supplier of bread and bread wagons in the Netherlands had been summoned and interrogated, and, after expressing discomfort at being thought of as an informer and accuser of a great man, de Medina reported on the amounts of money received by the Duke of Marlborough in the past five years. In December 1711, the duke was relieved of all his functions, and Parliament stated that in his dealings with de Medina illegal actions had been committed.24 Another consequence of the war affected the small Jewish settlement at the strategic point of the Rock of Gibraltar, which England seized, although according to Paragrap. 13 of the Treaty of Utrecht, it obligated itself to honor the demand of France and Spain to drive out the Jews and Moors. In early 1714, Queen Anne ordered the implementation of that clause, but the British governors managed to delay enactment of the expulsion order. Requests such as that sent to the governor by the Jewish merchant Manuel Diaz Arias in October 1717, in which he warned that his expulsion would cause great damage to his business and that of other merchants, swayed the governor to prefer local interests, and six years after the queen’s order some 130 Jews were living in Gibraltar, and they were permitted to establish a synagogue.25 On other fronts of the War of the Spanish Succession, Court Jews from Vienna played vital roles in supplies, enabling the armies of Austria and its allies to hold their own in campaigns against France. Prince Eugene was particularly grateful, because at the beginning of the war he saw how his soldiers were suffering from shortages and being impoverished. He warned the emperor that he might lose his own crown because of that, expressing doubt at the army’s

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ability to win without basic resources. Of Oppenheimer’s contribution to the war effort, it was said: “Everything came under his control . . . the organization of supply wagons, the delivery of grain, gunpowder and projectiles, the supplying of horses, etc.” Oppenheimer’s death in 1703 was seen as a disaster, “so terrible a blow that the Emperor’s enemy, France, could not have devised anything as harmful.”26 At this juncture, Samson Wertheimer proved to be not only a worthy successor but also the one who could save Austria from defeat. For the Austrian siege on the city of Landau in the summer of 1702, for example, he provided cash for the commander of the army, the crown prince Joseph (Emperor Joseph I after 1705), making it possible to pay his troops and improve the morale in the ranks, to purchase vital supplies, and, ultimately, to defeat the French.27 Wertheimer’s value for the court in Vienna increased, and in 1703, as noted, he received generous privileges that strengthened his position. The document signed by Leopold I states: “When the great war over the Spanish crown broke out, he came to the assistance of the Roman Empire and significantly expedited the military actions.”28 Immediately after the victory at Landau, a delegation left the Jewish community of Frankfurt to express loyalty to the ruler and to give his wife and him valuable gifts, to congratulate him, and to renew his protection of the Jews. At the meeting, which took place in Heidelberg on October 4, 1702, Joseph I listened to the speech of the intermediary and member of the council of the Frankfurt community, Aaron Oppenheim, who wished “his Roman highness and all the exalted members of his household, and the entire House of Austria, long life, constant good health, success in government, and rescue from all his enemies, just as the Holy One, blessed be He, granted rescue to his servant King David and redeemed him from his powerful enemies.” Joseph confirmed his commitment to the Jews, saying he would favor them as his father the emperor and his forefathers had done.29 The connections between the Jews and the Habsburg dynasty seemed stronger and more stable than ever, and even an apparent incident of espionage for France did not overshadow them. At the end of 1703, a severe and prolonged inner conflict in the Prague community led to the conviction of a trustee of the community, Samuel Taussig, by means of forged letters that his rivals, Aaron Riess and Solomon Weiskopf, sent to the Austrian authorities. He and his son-in-law Baruch Austerlitz were arrested in Vienna, but the Jewish lobby once again demonstrated its effectiveness. Letters and documents, which were presented in the capital, urgent meetings with senior government officials, Wertheimer’s intervention, and pressure from Rabbi Oppenheim

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ultimately revealed the plot that had been hatched against them. The family chronicle Megilat Shmuel, which tells in great detail about the efforts to free Samuel Taussig and his son-in-law, knew that the beginning of 1704 was the right time. Several fortified towns had been captured from Austria by the Bavarian army, France’s ally, and therefore, “there was a great commotion in the whole court of the emperor,” and senior officials did not have time “to take care of Jewish matters.” Indeed, by early May they were cleared of all charges of espionage and freed.30 In the end, the imperial interest won out: to exploit the resources of the wealthy Jews and to avoid paying what was due to them. Samuel Oppenheimer’s son was close to Prince Eugene, and he continued to help him as a supplier to the Austrian army in the war with the Turks in 1716–1719. The imperial treasury had run up huge debts to Oppenheim’s father, and for years he sued for their payment. However, the court decided against him and, in fact, demanded that he should pay the state. Emmanuel Oppenheimer was impoverished and died in 1721. His widow, Judith, who also failed to collect the many debts to her family, was required to leave Vienna.31 Whereas in England, Holland, and Austria it was mainly the rich Jewish merchants whose business suffered because of the part they played in the War of the Spanish Succession, in Eastern Europe the Great Northern War and the domestic quarrels in Poland caused instability, misery, and danger of death. Cities were besieged and conquered by turns by units of the Russian and Swedish armies, special taxes were levied for the war effort, and both sides expected the Jews to show loyalty and fear of espionage and assistance to the enemy.32 The Swedes, who conquered Lvov in 1704, demanded a ransom of the Jews, and, as a threat, they hanged two community leaders by their fingers until they almost died.33 The city of Vilnius also passed by turns from Swedish to Russian control, and in addition to the damage of the war, it underwent periods of famine, plague, and conflagration.34 At meetings of the directors of the community of Posen, the delegates complained about the difficulty of maintaining the community life, and it was reported that it was almost impossible to continue Torah study in the yeshiva, “because of the mishaps and tribulations and events that came upon us in these hardest of times.”35 The city was conquered by Sweden, and in the end of 1704, it was besieged by army units of the Saxonian–Russian coalition, until Karl XII arrived and managed to ward off the attack. The Jews besieged in Posen were under fire: “These soldiers endeavored to destroy and to demolish the city, and they fired rockets and burning fire, and several

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gaps were opened in the wall, and they shot cannonballs and flames of fire and kinds of gunpowder into the city.” The siege and the shelling continued for three uninterrupted weeks, the city was surrounded by thick smoke, and it suffered: “from iron balls that weighed forty pounds or more, that were filled with kinds of fiery combustion.” The Jewish quarter was not severely damaged, and the Jews even emerged safely from the mission imposed on them to extinguish flaming grenades with their hands. But occasionally soldiers broke in, and, in the words of the scribe who wrote in the community register, “All the aforementioned soldiers were embittered in particular to run in a mass and leap in a formation called ‘sturm tsu loifen’ [to storm], to strike with sword and murder and destruction and to take booty.” The fear was great, and “hardly anyone had strength of spirit; like water all our bones flowed and fell apart. . . . The sorrow grew ever stronger, and we shouted to the Lord our God, and we consecrated a fast and called an assembly,” until on Monday, November 3, 1704, the armies besieging Posen withdrew. The members of the community had no doubt that their prayers had been answered and a miracle had occurred.36 The dangers that lay in wait for them in times of peace became more severe in times of war, and several personal stories about escape express their perilous feelings. One of these was written by Rabbi Jacob Joshua Falk (1680–1754), the author of Pnei Yehoshu’a on passages in the Talmud, who was born in Kraków and lived in Lvov. In 1702, Falk was a twenty-two-year-old scholar at the beginning of his career in the rabbinical elite, already the head of a yeshiva. On November 23, he miraculously survived the explosion of a gunpowder warehouse in the city, a disaster in which many buildings collapsed and thirty-six Jews were killed, including his wife, her parents, and his daughter. He himself was buried under ruins: “I entered the deepest valley of the bottom of the earth, truly within a crater, because of the weight of piles and piles of debris that fell on me, even the beams of our house.” Rabbi Falk reported that fear of death gripped him, and he did not believe he could be saved. But then he found an opening among the burning ruins of the houses and extricated himself.37 Those who fled from the city to avoid injury wandered on the roads, which were no less dangerous. Rabbi Joseph ben Jacob of Pincszow, for example, sought shelter in a forest in Lithuania with his son in the autumn of 1710 when “there arose against us a detachment of Greek soldiers, and they put us inside a house and stood at the door with drawn swords and surrounded the house with bundles of straw and hay to condemn us to burning.” No one could be assured of his property, related Rabbi Johnathan ben Joseph of Ruzhany. “For constant troubles afflicted my country immediately, one after the other, plague, famine, the sword of peace and of war. Kingdoms battled against each other until they were

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weakened and decimated and impoverished, the entire city and the state, and, among them, I, too.”38 Because the Jews of Poland were suspected of disloyalty, in 1702 the governor of Lublin had to declare explicitly, in the name of the king, that the Jews were not guilty of abetting the Swedes or of espionage for them.39 In an old community register, Simon Dubnow, a native of Mastislaw in White Russia, found out how the czar, Peter the Great, intervened to save the Jews there while Russian army units passed through the area: “On 28 Elul 5468 [August 4, 1708] the emperor who is called the czar of the moskeviter, who is named Pieter the son of Alexiavitz, his royal highness, came with a great and weighty mass of soldiers, and some of his people fell upon us, robbers and oppressors, without his knowledge, and blood was almost spilled.” However, the community register relates that, fortunately, the czar “himself, came personally, to our synagogue. . . . With the help of the blessed Lord, the emperor saved us and took revenge for us and ordered to have thirteen of the men hanged immediately, and the land was quiet.”40 In 1716, the battered community of Posen suffered yet another calamity when the Tarnogród Confederation organized to make war against Augustus II. The high Polish aristocracy, headed by Marshal Stanislaw Ledóchowski opposed the Saxon ruler’s policy of centralizing the regime at the expense of aristocratic privileges. Before the rebels were quashed with the help of the Russian army, they seized several cities, including Posen. The eyewitness account of Rabbi Elyakim Getz, who survived the pogrom against the Jews of the city, describes the hours of dread he underwent on Friday, July 25, 1716: “I was in hiding with about ten souls on top of the old synagogue, and I did not see any soldiers. We did not know that anyone had been killed until it was a little quieter, and we saw—woe to the eyes that saw such sights—all the Torah scrolls lying naked on the ground and several people and Torah scholars who had been murdered in the synagogue and the courtyard of the synagogue, mothers and pregnant women, and dying babies, aside from several hundred souls who had been injured and bruised and stricken.” Everyone was paralyzed seeing “all the murdered people thrown down and lying in disgrace all day long on Friday and the Sabbath, for it was not possible to bury them until Monday because of the panic and great and powerful uproar: for our many sins, great dark fear and an ungodly commotion.” As if that was not enough, a fire broke out on the night of March 16, 1717, and destroyed most of the houses in the Jewish quarter, so that the king of Poland issued a decree exempting the stricken community from payment of taxes until it could rehabilitate itself.41 The study of Mordecai Nadav, who sought to balance the picture, shows that despite the distress brought by the Great Northern War, when Poland

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became a battlefield and Russian and Swedish soldiers spread fear and dread, and despite the difficulties of the communities in paying debts and in maintaining Jewish autonomy, the Jews of Poland and Lithuania did not sink into a deep crisis, and, despite everything, they managed to retain a large degree of stability.42 Nonetheless, it is impossible to ignore the pitiful cries for help that were addressed to all the Jews in Europe in response to the war, as, for example, in a letter sent in 1708 from the community of Lublin: “They devoured all the people and they stripped our skin from us. One trouble came, and another hard by. Troubles attacked us quickly, without surcease between disaster and disaster. They have surely surrounded us. The worm has eaten the remainder of the crop, and what the worm left, the locust devoured. This one seizes, and that one tramples, this one plucks, and that one dismembers us.”43 News of the situation in Eastern Europe and requests for help reached the communities to the west of the continent. In 1710, the small but affluent community of London sent a contribution to the Jewish victims of the war, and the Parnas, Moses de Medina, the son-in-law of Sir de Medina, transferred 276 pounds sterling via Amsterdam for “our miserable brethren in Poland, because of the disasters that struck them.”44 At the conclusion of the Great Northern War, Behrend Lehmann proposed to Augustus II an original political solution to the Polish problem. The self-confidence of this Court Jew, whom we met in front of the walls of the besieged city of Riga at the beginning of the war, brought him to make a surprising intervention in European international relations in 1721. While maneuvering between the Saxonian and Prussian courts, Lehmann proposed no less than the partition of Poland. He prepared a detailed document for Augustus II, containing a diplomatic plan that would bring about the erasure of the Polish aristocratic republic from the map and its division among Prussia, Saxony, Russia, and Austria, almost as happened fifty-one years later. The plan aroused the czar of Russia’s anger, and he demanded Lehmann’s punishment. The plan was also rejected with skepticism by the leaders of Saxony, who, in Lehmann’s opinion, could have come out well, with assurance of rule over part of Poland. The ethos of excelling and personal achievement drove Behrend Lehmann to display daring in business, to get involved in disputes with the rulers of countries, and to invest in expensive and impressive projects. He took risks for the sake of success, he worked tirelessly to demonstrate profitable results to the rulers of Saxony-Poland and Prussia, and his initiative in the matter of Poland sought to show that it was possible to change the situation. When he presented his daring plan for the partition of Poland in Dresden to von Flemming, the minister of war of Saxony, the king’s right-hand man, he showed exceptional

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confidence: “You think the Jews don’t know anything? [On the contrary], they know everything, most important matters pass through their hands.” Lehmann was exaggerating in his conversation with von Flemming as to the degree of Jewish involvement in European politics, and he added, with self-esteem: “Your majesty can believe that I, too, know what is happening in the world.”45

Note s 1. Montesquieu, Persian Letters. 2. Ibid., Montesquieu calls them “nouvellistes” in French, and the English translation by John Davidson calls them “quidnuncs.” 3. See Billie Melman, “H.ofesh ­meah.­orei ha ra’ala: hitbonenut ‘­beah.­er’ bameot ha-18 veha-19: nashim ma’araviot ‘al nashim yam tikhoniot,” in Eshnav ­leh.­ayeihen shel nashim b­ eh.­evrot yehudiot, ed. Ya’el ‘Atsmon (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1995), pp. 232–299. 4. Persian Letters, no. 38. 5. See Lauterbach, Antoine Watteau; Outram, Panorama of the Enlightenment, pp. 203–207. 6. Persian Letters, 24, 29, 46, 59, 83, 85, 143. 7. Ibid., no. 25. 8. See Black, Eighteenth Century Europe, 1700–1789, pp. 279–289; Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, pp. 543–561. 9. Persian Letters, no. 136; on Russia, see Jacob Abbot, History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia (New York, 1869) ch. 9; Persian Letters, no. 51. 10. Persian Letters, no. 60. The English translation is also taken from: Montesquie, Persian Letters, trans. C. J. Betts (London: Penguin, 1973). 11. Ibid., no. 119. 12. Isaac H.ayim Cohen ­Mehah.­azanim [Cantarini’s Hebrew name], ‘Et qets (Amsterdam, 5470 [1710]), quotation from fol. 1a. On him, see Zalman Shazar, Hatiqva lishnat 5500: be’iqvot “’et qets” ler[abbi] ­yitsh.­aq h.ayim hacohen min ­ hah.­azanim hamekhune dr. kantarini (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1970). 13. Isaac H.ayim Cohen ­Mehah.­azanim, ‘Et qets, fol. 32a. 14. Letter from Isaac Cantarini to the clergyman, Christian Theophile Unger, published by Samuel David Luzzatto, Otsar ­neh.­mad 3 (1860): 131–135. 15. Isaac H.ayim Cohen ­Mehah.­azanim, ‘Et qets, fol. 41a–b. 16. Ibid. 17. On the episode of Oliger Paulli, see Nathan Gelber, Zur Vorgeschichte des Zionismus: Judenstaatsprojekte in der Jahren 1695–1845 (Vienna: Phaidon Verlag, 1927), pp. 13–24. 18. On the Marquis de Langallerie’s network, see John T. O’Connor, “Exploitations and Subversions of Utopian Ideals: The Schemes of Two French

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Exiles in the Netherlands,” EMF Studies in Early Modern France 5 (1999): 42–59; N. M. Gelber, “Hamarqiz de langallerie vetokhnito lemedinat hayehudim,” American Academy for Jewish Research, Proceedings 21–23 (1952–1954), Hebrew pagination: vol. 21, pp. 1–18; vol. 22, pp. 1–16; vol. 23, pp. 41–65. 19. On his connections with Jews, see David Kaufmann, “Die Beziehungen des Marquis de Langallerie zu den Juden,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 59 (1895): 199–201, 213–215; Gelber, “Hamarqiz de langallerie vetokhnito lemedinat hayehudim,” pp. 7–18. 20. Alexander Siskind Ben Samuel Zanvil of Metz, Sefer derekh haqodesh (Köthen, 5478 [1718]). His letter to the Emperor Karl VI: Nathan M. Gelber, “Quelques documents relatifs aux projets juifs du Marquis de Langallerie,” Revue des Études Juives 89 (1930): 235–236. 21. These remarks were published in Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, 2 (Berlin and Stettin, 1783), pp. 72–77. 22. Jonathan J. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), chs. 17–18. 23. Charles Rubens, “Joseph Cortissos and the War of the Spanish Succession,” Jewish Historical Society of England, Transactions 24 (1975): 114–133; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, p. 218. 24. Rabinowicz, Sir Solomon de Medina, chs. 6, 8; Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1750, pp. 127–133; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, pp. 218–220; Nicolson, The Age of Reason, pp. 58–61, 167–185. 25. Joshua Hassan, The Treaty of Utrecht 1713 and the Jews of Gibraltar (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1970). 26. Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 26–30. 27. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, p. 133. 28. Kaufmann, Samson Wertheimer der Oberhoffactor und Landesrabbiner, pp. 29–33. 29. Hurwitz, Rabanei Frankfurt, pp. 68–69. 30. Aaron Freimann, Leqorot hayehudim beprag bishnot 5460–5465, vol. 2, Megilat shmuel (Berlin, 1899). See Putik, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” pp. 94–98. On the fate of the Jews in the communities in Franconia, who abandoned their homes in 1703, when the prince elector of Bavaria went over to the French side in the war against Emperor Leopold, see Pinqesei qehilat shneitakh, ed. Meir Hildesheimer (Jerusalem: Mekitze Nirdamim, 1992), p. 230. 31. Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 248–249. 32. Dubnow, Divrei Yemei ‘Am ‘Olam, pp. 62–64. 33. Balaban, Letoldot hatenu’a hafrankit, pt. 1, p. 54; Berenfeld, Sefer hadema’ot, 3, pp. 210–211. 34. Israel Klausner, Vilna yerushalayim de lita, dorot rishonim, 1495–1881 (Tel Aviv, 1989), pp. 49–50.

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35. Pinqes hekhsherim shel qehilat posen, p. 322. 36. Perles, Geschichte der Juden in Posen, pp. 88–90; Meir Balaban, “Hayehudim bepolin ‘al parashat hameah ha 17 veha 18,” Beit yisrael bepolin (Jerusalem, 1948), p. 92. 37. Solomon Buber, Anshei shem, photocopied ed. (Jerusalem, 1968), pp. 104–109. 38. Ya’ari, ­Meh.­qerei sefer: peraqim betoldot hasefer ha’ivri, pp. 106–108. 39. Adam Teller, “In the Land of their Enemies? The Duality of Jewish Life in Eighteenth Century Poland,” Polin 19 (2007): 436. 40. Simon Dubnow, “Fun von mein arkhiv,” YIVO Bletter 1 (1931): 404–405. 41. Perles, Geschichte der Juden in Posen, pp. 90–93. 42. See Mordecai Nadav, “’Iyun b­ ehitrah.­eshuyot beshalosh qehilot polinlita biyemei m ­ i lh.­emet hatsafon ­u leah.­a reiha (bashlish harishon shel hameah ha18),” Transactions of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Section 2 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies 1982), pp. 89–95; Teller, Kesef, koah. vehashpa’a: hayehudim b­ eah.­uzat beit radziwell be lita bameah ha18,” pp. 43–44. 43. Berenfeld, Sefer hadema’ot 3, pp. 209–210. 44. Barnett, “The Correspondence of the Mahamad of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” pp. 20–21. 45. Strobach, Privilegiert in engen Grenzen: Neue Beiträge zu Leben, Wirken und Umfeld des Halberstädter Hoffjuden Berend Lehmann 1, pp. 101–120; 2, pp. 77–122.

Seven

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MEL ANCHOLY, CAREER, AND TRAVELS Five Life Stories

The war in Europe influenced the life of Glikl in the last two decades of her life. Like Behrend Lehmann, she, too, was well informed about events in the world. However, at that point in time, her horizons were limited to the region where she lived, and her hopes for life were low. The deep apprehension that accompanied her in 1700 when she reached Metz and began a new chapter in her life in the company of her second husband, Hertz Levi, was confirmed far beyond what she could have imagined. “God, blessed be He, laughed at all my thoughts and plans, woe is me,” Glikl wrote one of the most defeatist but also the most protesting sentences that she ever penned, “long beforehand God above had decided upon my ruin and troubles in order to punish me somewhat for my sins, because I put my trust in human beings.”1

A Tr agedy in th e Wom en’s Section Glikl’s world, which had expanded until then, marked by success and growth of her family, business, and her circles of acquaintance, now retracted. Her loveless marriage of convenience deprived her of independence. She lost a great deal of her property, no longer undertook journeys, and even her self-esteem as the head of a household was taken away from her. Perhaps the words of a poem by a contemporary of hers, Sarah Fyge Egerton, would have spoken to her. Egerton protested against the tyranny of men and the denial of women’s liberty, complaining in a poem called “The Emulation,” “From the first dawn of life, unto the Grave,/ Poor Womankind’s in every State, a Slave.”2 By contrast, Glikl continued to justify God’s judgment, fearing that “Divine retribution

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could have been much worse”; but, as we have seen, at this stage of her life, she was complaining, at least to herself, about her distress and bad luck. In July 1701, Glikl learned that her son, Leib Segel, died in Altona at the age of twenty-seven. Though he hadn’t given her a lot of pleasure as a son, her maternal heart was broken with sorrow, and she mourned him from afar, as “he was the best person in the world,” who was endowed with a “Jewish heart,” and she forgave “this son of mine from the bottom of my heart for all his mischief; he let himself be led astray, alas.” A year later, her beloved son Zanwil died in Bamberg, before seeing the birth of his daughter. His widow had already managed to remarry and lose her second husband, “so this good young person’s youth has been quite miserable for her till now, poor thing.” In Metz, Hertz Levi’s economic situation declined, after he ran into difficulties in his business of supplying the French army, at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession. He could not pay his debts, and “his creditors exerted such pressure on him that he was forced into bankruptcy and had to leave behind everything he had for them to possess.” In 1702, only about a year and a half after the marriage, Glikl found herself in a deep crisis. Her husband was in danger of imprisonment, and officers of the court seized the house. “How I suffered!” Glikl wrote. “My late husband was forced to go into hiding. His creditors, when they found out, sent three rogues over to take inventory; they listed every last nail in the wall, then sealed everything up, not leaving me food for even a single meal.” The humiliation was unbearable, the blow to her prestige and status was mortal. For three weeks in a row, Glikl was deprived of all her rights in the house: “I remained in the heated room with the housekeepers; the rogues were there too, they were the masters, no one was allowed to enter or leave the room. If I wanted to leave once during the day, they would search me to see if I had anything on me.” The household goods were auctioned off, the creditors who had known Hertz Levi as honest and reliable trusted that he had not hidden other property, and they came to an agreement for settling the debts, but the fall in their standard of living was rapid and extreme. A considerable part of her children’s money, which Glikl had deposited with Hertz Levi, went down the drain. She lost all the money she had brought in when she married, and she realized that, catastrophically, she could not even claim the sum promised by her husband in the marriage contract. From then until the end of her life, Glikl was in distress. Her situation was extremely miserable, especially “during the steep price increase here a few years ago, we often literally had no bread in the house.”3 The family’s center of gravity passed to the younger generation, particularly to Glikl’s son-in-law Moses Krumbach, who became one of the wealthy leaders of the Metz community over the years. On July 24, 1712, ten years after going

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bankrupt, Hertz Levi died, and Glikl was widowed for the second time. She had no doubt that heartbreak because of his son Samuel’s failure had brought her husband’s life to an end. Now, from her own bitter experience, she believed that excessive aspiration for success and wealth led to disaster. Samuel Levi had succeeded in a career as a learned rabbi. He had returned to Metz from the yeshivas in Poland as an ordained rabbi, and he received a respectable position as the rabbi of communities in Alsace, and he was “a learned man, successful at everything, and shrewd.” However, he and his wife, Knendele, desired a higher standard of living. Glikl showed understanding for their striving for the heights, and she explained that they “both came from wealthy households that maintained a grand style and did much good, and they too aspired to the same situation, but a rabbi’s salary was inadequate for that.” The ambition for a good life outweighed the prestige brought by Torah scholarship and rabbinical posts. Samuel went into business, becoming the Court Jew of Duke Leopold Joseph of Lorraine, and he went to live in the city of Lunéville, beyond the borders of France. In 1708–1709, at the height of the War of the Spanish Succession, Samuel leased the mint from the duke and also opened a flourishing store, borrowing a lot of capital from other Jews for his business. “The Duke and his entire court would buy everything from him,” Glikl wrote, “for the Duke and his ministers were fond of him,” until reversals in the war undid him. King Louis XIV suspected that the Jews would side with the enemy, and he suspected that Duke Leopold would form an alliance with Austria. As a business advisor to his son, Hertz Levi warned Samuel that leasing the mint was dangerous. “He did not think such a thing could succeed, mainly because His Highness the King of France would never tolerate it, given that Metz is so close to Lunéville, not more than a day’s ride, while all the monies were intended for circulation here in Metz.” His apprehensions were well founded, and “now as the war grew fiercer between His Highness the King of France and the Emperor, the king issued an edict prohibiting any transfer of monies into or out of France.” Samuel and his business partners had to return to Metz and close their business in Lorraine. An order to the governor of Metz, issued by the king of France in 1712, was promulgated publicly to the Jewish community, explicitly naming the men in question, stating “that if they wish to remain in Lorraine, well and good; however, they were forbidden on pain of sundry punishment to set foot anywhere in France ever again.” Some of the partners feared to lose their right of residence in Metz and obeyed the orders of the French regime, but Samuel and his partner, Moses Rothschild, decided to remain loyal to the duke. Hertz Levi could not bear that blow and he sank into depression: “He took it so hard that he could no longer bear the sorrow and anguish,” and he died within a few months.4

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Hertz’s untimely death spared him an even greater dose of frustration and sorrow. Samuel and Knendele Levi did manage to live for several years in wealth and luxury, like princes in the splendid and brilliant house they built for themselves in Lunéville. He established a synagogue for himself, she made certain to dress according to the latest fashions of Paris, and they treated their guests to the finest food and drink. But after he was made responsible for the treasury of the Duchy of Lorraine, criticism against him increased. He lost his position, in 1717 he went bankrupt, and he was pursued by creditors as his father had been. In May 1717, the couple was sent to prison and only released after their assets were seized and they made a high payment.5 Glikl did not record in her memoirs what happened to Samuel and his family in those years in Lunéville, but she did include a folk tale about Alexander the Great, from which one may learn what disasters are in store for those who “pursue base money over-avidly.” The more her personal situation deteriorated, the more her great ambitions for success faded, and moral lessons increased, directed at those who seek to accrue assets and achievements. The lessons that Alexander the Great learned the hard way was that so long as a man’s eye exists, it cannot be satisfied.6 Another story that Glikl chose to include in the story of her life reflects the worst nightmares of the Jewish merchants who, like Hertz Levi’s family, fell into great debt, were pursued by their creditors, and were punished by imprisonment. In addition to the familiar pictures of life in Europe, there were adventure stories that mingled truth and fiction about voyages in dangerous oceans and exciting encounters with savage cannibals, teeming with sexual desire. In a Yiddish adaptation of a similar story that appeared, among other places, in Addison and Steele’s The Spectator in 1711, we are told, in a version consistent with the contexts of Jewish culture and its values, about the adventures of a “pious Jew” who did not do well in business, failed to pay his debts, and was sentenced to imprisonment. His beautiful “pious wife” was kidnapped, her husband was freed and went to search for her, the ship he was traveling in sank, and he “was flung to a great desert inhabited by savages.” There the “wise man was obliged to lie with her [the daughter of the king] at night, and they lived as man and wife.” The woman “conceived and bore a savage boy.” Then he is miraculously rescued, flees, and from the ship that saved him he sees how the savage woman, “caught up the child by his feet and tore him in two, flinging one half onto the ship and furiously devouring the other half.” Finally, by a series of miraculous coincidences, he rejoins his children and his “pious wife,” who managed with determination, even in captivity, to refrain from forbidden sexual contact. The sailors, impressed by the piety shown by the couple, converted to Judaism. The moral of this story also advocates submission and

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acceptance: “It is a lovely story, a consolation to sad, anxious hearts, showing that we must never lose hope that God will come to our aid.”7 After Hertz Levi’s death, Glikl’s life became even more restricted. Her faith was sorely tried, and her feeling of humiliation grew deeper. “He went to his rest leaving me needy and in distress.” The small sum that she obtained, despite everything, from her marriage contract, was not enough for her to live an inde­ pendent life. She was driven out of the house where she had lived until her husband’s death, and the home of her daughter and son-in-law was too small to accommodate her as well. Glikl, who used to live surrounded by servants as the mistress of an upper-class household, found herself in difficult straits: “In the end a certain householder, Jacob Marburg, built for me a little cubicle where I had neither stove nor fireplace, but I stipulated the conditions that I could cook in his kitchen and stay in his winter house. But whenever I wanted to go to bed or just go to my room, I had to climb up twenty-two stairs, which was extremely difficult for me because I was not well most of the time.” Three years later, Glikl ran out of money and in the spring of 1715, when she was seventy, lacking any alternative, and against all her principles, she went to live in an accessible room on the ground floor of her son-in-law Moses Krumbach, her daughter Esther, and her grandchildren. Now she ate at their table, and she had to be grateful for their good treatment of her and was entirely dependent on their assistance. Glikl surrendered: “I had never wanted to live with my children, for several reasons. However, as time went by, I could bear it no longer.”8 She divided her time between her room and the synagogue. She recounts: “If I am not here for lunch, served punctually at noon, the very hour Psalms are recited in the synagogue for the soul of Yachet, my son-in-law’s pious mother; this has been going on for a long time and may quite possibly continue until the coming of the Redeemer, and this lasts a full hour. Afterwards, when I come from the synagogue, I find my meal ready, three or four different dishes, delicacies all, that truly I don’t deserve.” In her diary she told about the exalted status of the new rabbi of the community, Abraham Broda, who came to Metz from Prague in 1709, and “they built him a brand new house with a study . . . to the best of my limited knowledge this was done nowhere else.” However, Glikl only observed this elite of men learned in Torah from the outside: “For me, as a simple, lowly woman, it is not correct that I push myself right between towering mountains.”9 In the beginning of the summer of 1715, Glikl witnessed a disaster that took place in the women’s section of the synagogue. In the midst of the prayers on the second day of Shavuot on Saturday, June 8, when the congregation was listening intently to the singing of “the cantor, Reb Jokele, the great singer

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from the community of Rayshe [Rzeszów] in Poland,” a noise was heard, and the woman who were sitting crowded together on the second floor of the synagogue were stricken with fear that the roof was about to collapse on their heads. Immediately, a great commotion arose. The women ran to the stairs to escape, and many of them were crushed in the ensuing panic. “In their haste to precede one another,” Glikl described the horrible scene, “they toppled over each other, God preserve us, trampling each other to death underfoot. In about half an hour, six women were killed and more than thirty injured, some fatally. . . . More than fifty women were sprawled on the stairway all entangled, as if stuck on top of each other with tar, the living with the dead.” The men on the ground floor rushed in panic to seek their dear ones and to remove the women from the upper floor, for fear that the dome of the building would collapse. Glikl herself had been sitting in the women’s section on the ground floor, immersed in prayer, and when the panic broke out, first of all she made certain to remove her pregnant daughter Esther and to escape with her, until she tripped on the steps: “I fell and knew no more, I could not move, I did not call for help.” Fortunately, one of the men picked her up and saved her from being trampled, and she went out into the street, screaming, “I ran around frantically like one who has lost his mind, heaven forfend,” until she found Esther in the home of a relative, “sitting there literally with no clothes on or head-covering, with several men and women standing over her reviving her from her faint.”10 Like the story about the Torah scholar, his pious wife, and the savage woman, this terrible experience is also presented in Glikl’s diary as a story with a moral that strengthens religious faith and arouses one to repent and fear heaven. Since no flaw at all was found in the synagogue building, which might have caused the noise, theories about supernatural intervention arose. Even Glikl, who was skeptical and didn’t think one should believe in every conjecture, saw fit to present the sworn testimony of a woman called Esther who was sitting with her five-year-old son on the stairs of the women’s section, and who “saw six very tall women wearing small head-covering; these women then went and pushed this Esther down a few steps.” The spirits of the mysterious women disappeared, and then the panic-stricken women rushed down the staircase. But Glikl had a more persuasive explanation. She connected the punishment that struck the women of the synagogue in particular to a violent quarrel that had broken out several months earlier, on the holiday of Simh.at Torah of 1714 (5475). An insulting remark of one of the women to another one, while all the women were stretching their necks and trying to see all the Torah scrolls from the balcony allotted to them, had provoked a violent reaction. Very quickly: “A fight broke out among the women, who started tearing the kerchiefs from

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each other’s head, woe is me, and stood bareheaded in the women’s section. As a result, the men, in the men’s section, also started brawling and quarreling, despite the reverend gaon [the great Talmudist] R. Abraham [Broda] who was shouting at them with threats of excommunication to be silent and stop the desecration of the holy day.” When Glikl saw the bruised women, with disheveled hair, who escaped from the women’s section on Shavuot, she believed that it all had happened because of that sin, because of the fight in which woman had violated their modesty in public, and the honor of pious woman had been trampled in public.11 The tragedy in the synagogue left its mark in the collective memory of the people of the time. Glikl was not the only one who tried to find religious meaning in the death of the six young women. Thus, for example, the cantor of Metz, Solomon Lipschitz, in his rhymed, grandiloquent style, lamented the blow of midat hadin (the divine attribute of strict justice) against the women on the day the Torah was given: “an angelic voice cries beware, every heart quails, and every head is bare; the soul flees from its bodily lair,” and he implores those who saw the horrible sights, “may your ears to this give heed, and, with this, improve your every deed.” Unlike Glikl, Lipschitz was not in Metz at the time, and he published his account of the incident three years later. From the viewpoint of a professional cantor, who believed that he was highly qualified in the sensitive and important area of leading the community in prayer, he had another explanation for the commotion that led to the disaster on Shavuot of 1715. He pointed an accusing finger at the cantor, because he prolonged the melody, unnecessarily, in the morning prayers in the sections before reciting “Shema’ Yisrael,” and his booming voice created the impression of the great explosion.12 Lipshitz’s book, Teudat shlomo, which mentions the disaster in Metz, is a book of special instructions for cantors. Along with words of high esteem for the profession and emphasis on the musical and religious capacities needed for an excellent cantor, the book contains the story of the author’s life and demands for recognition of his abilities and of his authority to direct others. The book makes heard the voice of an ambitious young man, born in the community of Fürth, who made an impressive career for himself, until he reached the level of “the great singer,” for whose services notable communities such as Prague competed. Lipschitz did not conceal his pride at having climbed the ladder of professional success and for commanding a high salary and social prestige. The ethos of success and achievement, which we found among the men and women of the wealthy elite and its leaders, also throbbed in the cantor’s heart. At first he was one of those wandering cantors who made a living with difficulty, and there was hardly any difference between them and beggars: “for they are in the

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villages and small towns . . . and their livelihood is very limited, and some of them have to beg from door to door from now on, and some of them demonstrate the laws of ritual slaughter, and they themselves have to walk in fields and sleep in villages.” That was his fate, too, Lipschitz recounts, “I was truly without bread, and I experienced all of that.” His first position was a starting point, “when I was a cantor in the holy community of Wallerstein, a small city with few people.” But he aspired to far more than that community in Bavaria, which did not have the means to hire a cantor, and while he lived there, he had to make ends meet by working as a slaughterer and by teaching children in cheder. “My beginning was bitter, but I hoped my end would be sweet,” Lipschitz shared his feelings from those times with his readers. He did improve his situation with another position in the community of Pfersee, also in Bavaria. There he gained respect, and, he says, those who heard his impressive voice, which was developing, encouraged him to continue to advance: “Why are you asleep, and why are you sitting here? You are worthy of greater things.” Indeed, he was not satisfied there, and he offered himself to wealthier communities. In the end his great dream was fulfilled, to rise and obtain the prestigious post in Prague. “The blessed Lord raised me up from the depths, from a deep place it to a great height.” Lipschitz did not conceal his enthusiasm: “I was received with great honor in the synagogue of Pinh.as and the Zigeuner synagogue of Prague, and my feet rose to stand on a boulder.” And when the veteran cantor, Rabbi Jonah, left, “my sun shone and I was hired as the cantor of the community of Prague.”13 The next position in Metz was one of the peaks in his career. At this stage, he found himself defending his profession against charlatans, whose self-esteem was high but whose level was low: “Everyone builds a stage for himself and wraps himself in a prayer shawl that does not belong to him, and does not want to learn from his colleague, saying, who is he and what is he, that I should learn from him? I myself am a good singer. Let him come and learn from me!”14 The voice of an ego that values itself and competes with professional colleagues to attain achievements of its own is heard now not from the circle of wealthy Court Jews with noble titles, and not from the rabbinical elite, but from a far less group of subsidiary religious functionaries known as klei qodesh (lit. “holy utensils”). The story of the cantor Solomon Lipschitz about how he climbed to the peak of his profession and attained prestige opens another window on the life stories of ambitious Jewish men. Glikl encountered a series of crises in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and in her old age her life was restricted to the community of Metz, the synagogue, and her close family. By contrast, we will now reconstruct the lives of three young men whose vision of the world and self-image in the same period continually expanded. After becoming familiar

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with the viewpoint of a woman formed by the women’s section of the synagogue, ethical works in Yiddish, and the values of piety and fear of heaven, now we will hear the voices of men who, like Glikl and the cantor Lipschitz, left behind written records, in which they themselves are central. Pinch.as Katzenellenbogen, who was born in Dubno in the Ukraine, wrote memoirs entitled Yesh manh.ilin (Those Who Bequeath), a testament to his sons in the form of the life story of an aristocratic member of the well-born elite of Torah scholars. Jacob Emden, who was born in Altona, wrote Megilat sefer (Scroll of the Book) in an emotional state, an intimate confession of the tensions and contradictions that shook his life and the story of his travels and disputes to ensure that future generations would accept his positions and arguments, and that his rivals would not manage to distort them. The third man, Abraham Levi, from the small village of Horn in northwest Germany, wrote a travel journal in Yiddish, telling how as a seventeen-year-old lad he had set out to see the great world, driven by curiosity that he was unable to overcome.

Pinch a s K atzenell enbogen: A R a bbinica l Ca r e er in His Fath er’s Sh a dow All his life, Pinchas Katzenellenbogen sought to be a worthy son to his father and to continue the family tradition. For several generations, the men of the family had excelled in Torah study and occupied prestigious rabbinical posts. From early childhood, he was taught to believe that there could be no greater achievement than to imitate his father and follow in his footsteps, and nothing was more significant than to gain his father’s respect. The hundreds of pages of memoirs that he wrote in the middle of the century expressed limitless admiration for his father, Rabbi Moses Katzenellenbogen, whom he regarded as a “great pious man,” a considerable scholar, and a respected community rabbi. But when he was only ten years old, his venerated father injured him to the depths of his soul, and a feeling of frustration and confusion entered his memoirs for a moment. His family left Poland after Moses Katzenellenbogen was arrested because of the Podhajce blood libel in 1699, and they moved to Fürth, Germany, where Pinchas’s maternal grandfather was appointed rabbi of the community in 1701, and his father joined the scholars in the kloiz. Pinchas’s life was devoted to the great task of Talmud study and training to be a Torah scholar, an expert in the exclusive, sanctified world of Jewish knowledge. However, the boy’s faculties had not yet developed sufficiently: “In the summer of 5461 [1701] I was studying with one teacher, and in the winter of 5462, when I was ten years old, I saw no good sign in my studies.” When his father examined

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him on Tractate Sanhedrin of the Talmud, he failed. “I couldn’t answer a thing,” he admitted, and he was panicked by his father’s severe response: “At that, our holy rabbi of blessed memory opened his mouth and said, since I am of the holy, pure lineage of the great Rabbi Meir of Padua, and second to him Rabbi Judah of Padua, and third to him the famous authority Rabbi Saul Wahl . . . and I am the sixth in line from Rabbi Meir of Padua, and this, my son, is the seventh in line to him, he said in anger, and I went away in humiliation.”15 This rebuke pierced his heart. Not only had he disappointed his father and failed to attain the necessary achievements in Talmud study, he was liable to sever the aristocratic chain of generations, for which there was no atoning. The burden on his shoulders was enormous: to be a worthy heir of the “holy lineage” of the great men of the rabbinical elite. Pinchas was not broken. He clung to the mission of his life to fulfill the expectations of his family and not to shame his father. His identification with the ethos of erudition in Torah was complete, from then to the end of his life. After recovering from the rebuke, he implored his father to accept him as his student, but the rabbi was not quick to accept his pleas. Torah study was severe and did not allow compromise: “You my son are small and weak, and you do not know, and I study diligently with close logical reasoning, and I strike my students, and I am afraid that you will not have the strength to bear the blows.” Pinchas replied that he was ready for anything, and from then on his results improved, even though his father did not hesitate to carry out his threats, and when he found it difficult to gain command over the five tractates of Talmud that he had studied by the time he reached the age of bar-mitzvah in 1704, his father punished him with a whipping: “He struck me when I did not know, and those torments were torments of the love of the blessed Lord.” From then on Pinchas’s character became more severe and more submissive. He was deeply grateful to his father for teaching him Talmud without lenience or mercy. His emotions were repressed, and the obedience that he showed was absolute: “I would change nothing, either great or small, except to fulfill everything my father, my master and teacher of blessed memory, commanded me. I followed his counsel and performed everything he wrote to me and heeded his voice.”16 The memoirs contain little of Pinchas Katzenellenbogen’s emotions, and the European world in which he lived is barely visible. There are no echoes of the wars, and he mentions the coronation of the Austrian emperor, Karl VI, in Vienna in 1711 only in passing. Compared to Glikl, the cantor Solomon Lipschitz, and, as we shall see, Jacob Emden, Katzenellenbogen was never troubled by difficulty in earning a living. He was supported by his father all his life, by the dowry he received from his wife’s family, and by his salary as a rabbi. The

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world he described was closed. Its boundaries were marked by the yeshivas of Prague and Nikolsburg where he studied, by the communities that hired him as rabbi, and by the gallery of venerable rabbis whom he was privileged, as he says, to frequent. The most successful members of the rabbinical elite were his models. Among the formative experiences in his training to be a scholar were his years of study in Prague (1708–1710), when he studied with the rabbi of the community, David Oppenheim, and also with “the mighty tamarisk, the famous rabbi, Abraham Broda,” whose fame was rising among Torah scholars, and “his great light shone with a great name.” He then spent two years studying in Nikolsburg, and he reports his success with pride: “in the high yeshiva of the community of Nikolsburg there were about thirty students, some among them having journeyed from other countries, and, with God’s help, I gained a better reputation than them all.” During all those years, his father was making great efforts to arrange a marriage for him, but he forbade Pinchas to travel to Poland either for Torah or for a marriage. His father’s imprisonment in Poland inspired him with great fear, which he imparted to his son. “Because he was frightened by the frequent plots in Poland.” Pinchas himself could not forget his visit to the prison, when he was only eight: “I remember that I was permitted to go to him in the prison, in the evening, after I parted from the home of the teacher I was studying with, I went to him in the prison, and he amused me with walking on his feet, which were shackled with iron chains.” The entire family felt fortunate when they were able to settle in Germany and join the scholarly elite. Katzenellenbogen’s world was that of men devoted absolutely to the study of Torah. The story of his life in Yesh manh.ilin was ultimately merely an appendix to his will. He wished to bequeath the family tree, of which he was so proud, to his sons, his rich Torah library, which contained several hundred volumes, and the determination of a scholar penetrated with awareness of his religious mission. As a member of the seventh generation of descendants of Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen of Padua (1473–1565), he regarded himself as obligated to unbroken continuity, and any change was regarded as a threat. When he explained, for example, why he was accustomed to standing while reciting the kiddush on the Sabbath, he said, “everything is as I received it from my father and teacher of blessed memory, and why should I change, for he was a great, saintly man, and he frequented the greatest rabbis of the world, and he received it from his father of blessed memory, and his father from his fathers, the great rabbis, and thus I go in their footsteps, and anyone who changes is at a disadvantage.”17 The rabbinical appointments he obtained, first in Wallerstein (1719–20), when he was only twenty-eight, and later in Leipnik and Markbreit, provided

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stability and honor, but not satisfaction or joy. Like Lifschitz, the cantor, he was also concerned with advancing his career. When he got older, Pinchas Katzenellenbogen received a respected rabbinical position in the community of Boskowitz, in Moravia, but the hierarchy of communities was known to all, and his hopes during his twenties and thirties to reach more significant achievements and to gain a position in one of the “three important rabbinates” in southern Germany were frustrated. He consoled himself: “Certainly it was decreed in heaven that I was not fated to be in the German states, for I know in the character of the state, that it was impossible to acquire fine possessions [of learning] on a solid basis, because of the many disturbances imposed on the head of a religious court.”18 Yesh manh.ilin was not only a life story and a testament, but also a book that taught magic spells and examined the powers of “masters of the name.” Immanuel Etkes has noted that this can be surprising, because of the light it sheds on the place of magic in the life of the members of rabbinical families.19 Katzenellenbogen’s family tradition conveyed a double message. On the one hand, warning and prohibitions against using magic, and, on the other hand, detailed formulas for cures by using magic charms and spells, and even the precedents of the heads of households who did not refrain from demonstrating their mastery of these secret powers. One finds a similar contradiction in his book regarding his dual attitude toward Sabbateanism: on the one hand, absolute condemnation as an error, and, on the other hand, belief that even the writings of Nathan of Gaza, Shabbetai Zevi’s prophet, contained kabbalistic teachings that were worthy of study.20 Pinchas Katzenellenbogen said that magic was dangerous, “for I also know today that ‘Masters of the Name’ who were engaged [in magic] at those times, of whom I know that the vast majority of them truly did not come out clean, some of them damaged themselves, and some shortened their days, and some did not have children.” Of himself, he testified, “I never engaged in practical Kabbalah, and I never did anything by means of the holy names,” but he deviated from this rule several times. Many magic charms were conveyed in the networks of the rabbinical elite, in books of magic spells, and in the advice of itinerant Masters of the Name, as well as amazing stories about the miracles performed by well-known Masters of the Name. Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover, the author of Qav hayashar, told him about excellent charms against epilepsy among children, and in 1720 Benjamin Beinush of Krotoszyn, a Torah scholar and wandering kabbalist who gained fame as an expert in holy names, visited Katzenellenbogen’s home in Wallerstein and taught him how to repress a man’s sexual desire and avoid spilling seed. In that year, another Master of the Name, Joseph of Yerushalayim, stayed with him

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and shared esoteric knowledge with him, for “he was expert in knowledge of the palm and of the face.”21 The magic that Pinchas Katzenellenbogen was familiar with was largely intended to protect women. In his picture of the world, women were present at two critical crossroads of life: the covenant of marriage and the birth of children. In 1712, after a long search, an appropriate bride was found for him. Katzenellenbogen was already twenty-one years old, and the marriage arranged for him with Sarah Rekhil the daughter of Jacob Oettingen, was, in his view, successful, for although he had no assets, his status as an outstanding scholar from an aristocratic family assured him a significant sum of money as well as two years of support at his father-in-law’s table. The couple had two daughters before Sarah died while giving birth to a third daughter. After eight years of marriage, what he chose to say about his wife was included in Yesh manh.ilin only in a discussion of charms appropriate for danger to women in childbirth. Katzenellenbogen found that a woman “the opening of whose labia” is insufficient is in a dangerous category, and this is indicated by her palms: “I saw in my first wife, who was modest and respectable, Rekhil, of blessed memory, that her palms were short, when I measured her palms against mine, and her middle finger did not reach the end of my middle finger, and thereby I knew that she would give birth in sorrow, and that is truly how it was.” In his memoirs, he recounts that “in giving birth for the third time, when I was living in the community of Wallerstein, it was harder for her than in the first ones . . . and she began to be in difficulty on Friday evening, 27 Kislev 5480 [1719], and she suffered hard labor pains until Tuesday, and she had a stillborn son, and she, too, was ill.” He did not place the blame solely on his wife’s physiology, but also on magic spells against her. He had no doubt that the Christian midwives were ill-meaning witches, “and it was evident that the gentile midwife, may her name be blotted out, did harm to her with spells, until she died in severe pain.”22 The lesson he learned is that from then on he must provide himself with spells to provide better protection to women giving birth. Indeed, when he visited Benjamin Beinush shortly after his wife’s death, he received amulets from him and precise instructions as to make sure they worked effectively. Less than a year passed, and in 1721 Katzenellenbogen married Mistress Alik, “a daughter of great people,” an aristocratic woman, who also had “long palms, and in truth all the babies that she had afterward were born with ease, with God’s help, and she never had any need for the aforementioned charms.” Katzenellenbogen believed that the bitter fate of women was decreed from heaven, as happened, for example, with the new bride, Beila, the wife of Solomon, the judge from Pinczow, whose terrible death he described in detail. The young

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woman prepared herself for immersion in the ritual bath, “the first time she was called upon to purify herself for her husband after the wedding,” when disaster struck: “A bad thing happened to her, may the Merciful One save us, when she was sitting in the tub to be washed, she had a deaf maidservant, and in the evening, when she couldn’t see her well, the servant went out, and she was sitting in the bath, and [the maidservant] took boiling water off the fire and poured it into the bathtub on her head and her body, and she screamed, and the maidservant didn’t hear her voice, until she died burned by the heat of the boiling water.” Katzenellenbogen justified divine judgment, saying it was decided in heaven.23 The lives of the men who belonged to the rabbinical elite were not without disappointments and remorse. In a letter to his father written in 1724, Pinchas Katzenellenbogen admitted that the rabbinate was not easy for him: “What should I do from now on, seeing that I really am weak by nature, and in details my head is heavy, and in simple matters my head is confused, and especially when there is no order in people’s strange cases, and the impertinent people of the generation are harsh litigants? . . . And now my status in the rabbinate is not sincere, for I detest it, and against my will I live to be occupied with it and its judgments.” However, that was the only way of life he knew, so he never abandoned it. His loyalty to his father was absolute, so that when “when he wished, and his soul yearned for me to be close to him in the country of Schwabach, he left his comfortable rabbinical post and accepted an inferior one, “because of his great insistence and intelligent arguments to stand by my father and teacher of blessed memory, I submitted my opinion and desire to his opinion and desire.”24 It was much harder for him to submit to his father when matters touched upon his inner world. The restrained story of his life, about methods for studying Talmud and Halakha, and about joining the networks of the aristocratic elite of scholars, could not conceal the fissures through which the dark side of the young Katzenellenbogen’s soul is visible. Pursued by a deep feeling of sin, combatting his evil impulse, and trying to subdue his physical appetites, he subjected himself to ascetic practices. “In truth from then on I behaved with piety and cleanliness, in abstinence and caution,” he says. He immersed himself in the ritual bath in absolute darkness, and “I made restrictions and barriers for myself, to avoid stumbling, and indulging myself in eating and drinking and bodily appetites, which are totally permitted,” because “the evil impulse provoked me to devour me freely.” In a letter of 1714, which he hesitated to include in his book and reveal to his sons, he implored his father to stop interfering in his life. He confessed to him about his existential battle against Satan, his evil desires, and he asked his father

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not to block his chosen path to repentance, so as not to put him to the test of choosing between the commandment of honoring parents and the need to cure his soul. “I lay down and slept an eternal sleep, a sleep of dread of death fell upon me,” he confided his nightmare to his father, “fear and trembling came to me, and I was covered with horrors and terror seized me.” Now, at last, the author’s voice is heard in this restrained book of memoirs, the pious Jew who is tormented by dread of sin, who confesses, who seeks to gather strength like “a man of war” against the desires that gnaw at him, and who is on the verge of his first and apparently last rebellion against his father, who sought and also obtained absolute control of his son’s life. “It would have been better for me to lie in bed for twelve months,” the twenty-three-year-old son writes to his father, “rather than have you make this decree against me,” to refrain from the ascetic practices he had taken upon himself.25

Jacob E m den: “So Th at M y R ighteousne ss W i ll Com e to Light a n d th e Tru th W i ll Te stif y for M e” When Jacob Emden visited London in the winter of 1721, he was shown an oil painting of his father, Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, who had died in Lvov three years previously. The surprising encounter with the portrait of his admired father moved him so that “when I first saw his painted picture in London, I recoiled, as if he were standing there alive.” Later he wrote in his memoirs, Megilat sefer, with great excitement, about how his father’s visit to London in 1714 was an unforgettable event: “There he was treated with almost royal honor, for the heads of the community of Sephardim sailed toward him in royal ships. . . . And the city of greater London resounded with the voice of the great multitude who had gathered to greet him. And the neighbors asked: What is this about?  .  .  . Did the Messisah come?” Indeed, the achievements and fame of scholars had a great deal of social significance, and the status of the rabbinical elite grew even stronger in the first decades of the eighteenth cen­ tury. The success of outstanding rabbis in the eyes of their students and of the communities where they served rewarded them and their families with salaries and social prestige. His admirers showered the H.akham Zvi with honors, gifts, and contributions when he visited London, and before he left they also asked him “to leave them a crafted portrait, coated with paint, for a good memory and a pleasant remnant.” Despite his opposition, a professional painter managed to draw a portrait in secret, and then “copies were made and sold expensively, and they are found in the London bourse.”26 As Richard Cohen explains, at that time the demand for portraits of rabbis increased, and

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a cult of personality emerged around the figures of certain rabbis, arousing a desire among the faithful to keep an idealized and glorified version of their rabbi’s life, to make it an integral part of their life, and to identify with it.27 Of course, Emden himself did not need them. Like Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, he, too, lived in his father’s shadow from childhood. His father’s life story was known to him in detail, and he regarded the preservation of his heritage as a mission. Moreover, he lived with clear and sharp awareness that in his own life he could not recreate his father’s life. With deep identification, Emden says that from the time he became self-aware, “I felt my father’s sorrow, his torments and insults . . . that arose against him to keep him from earning a living and to diminish his honor.” During the visit to London, he knew very well the circumstances under which his father had gone there seven years earlier, as a refugee from a stormy dispute in Amsterdam around his suspicion that the kabbalist Nechemiah H.iya H.ayon was a Sabbatean. As we shall see, the H.akham Zvi and his colleague, Rabbi Moses Hagiz, encountered such severe misery and isolation that they were forced to abandon Amsterdam and flee from their rivals. The entire family, including the sixteen-year-old Emden, took refuge in the small city of Emden in northern Germany, while the head of the household traveled to London. In his memoirs, when he mentions his acrimonious dispute with Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz, which was to be one of the greatest scandals in the Jewish world from mid-century on, Emden finds that, surprisingly, his life moved along the way that his father paved for him: “For like the case of my father and teacher of blessed memory [in the H.ayon affair], so it was for me in the case of Eybeschütz. Truly similarly, that which happened to the father happened to the son.” In Megilat sefer, Jacob Emden could therefore liberate the feelings of frustration and insult that piled up in him, seeing the injustice that, in his opinion, had been done to both of them.28 Despite the similarity in the relations between father and son, Emden’s life was far more tempestuous than that of Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, and the story of his life, as he put it in writing, was far less restrained. Though Katzenellenbogen served as the rabbi of several communities, he never became a well-known public figure like Emden, nor was he involved in a maelstrom of controversies. Unlike Katzenellenbogen’s Yesh manh.ilin, Megilat sefer was intentionally written as a polemical and confrontational autobiography. Intensely aware of his independent status and of his uniqueness in society, Jacob Emden aspired to preserve the memory of his version of his life and that of his father in the pages of his book for coming generations, to refute what he saw as the mendacious version of his enemies. Emden wanted to make his own mark on history. He explained that he had recorded the story of his life

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“so that no cloud may dwell upon the sun of my righteousness because of the evildoers . . . my mortal enemies will surround me and slander me to befoul me among those who live on the earth. . . . Certainly, many of their libelous writings will remain in the world for some time. Therefore, I am constrained to clarify my doings before God and man, so that my righteousness will come to light and the truth will testify for me.”29 The picture of life that Emden left in his memoirs is more colorful, sharp, and masculine than any other testimony about a Jewish self of the eighteenth century. The strength of Megilat sefer, according to Jacob Schachter, the major scholar of this unique autobiography, is that it manages to peel away the outer layer of biographical fact and provide access to the inner, intimate life of the author. Jacob Emden not only describes what happened to him, but also what it was like to be him.”30 Until he was twenty years old, Emden’s life was interwoven with his father’s. His birth in 1697 was of particular significance to the family of the H.akham Zvi, who had already headed the kloiz in Altona for seven years. The family tradition, which he conveyed to his son, was like that of the Katzenellenbogen family, with abundant outstanding males as scholars of Torah and rabbis of communities, but also afflicted with traumas and disasters, wanderings, and rescue. The escape from the pogroms of 1648–1649 was deeply inscribed in the family memory: Jacob Emden’s grandfather, Jacob Wilner (1638–1711), fled from Poland from the rioters. After establishing a splendid family in Hungary and Moravia, he was imprisoned in Prussia, and upon his release he emigrated to Jerusalem. The H.akham Zvi was also struck by disaster. At the age of twenty-eight, with a rich career of study and the rabbinate of the Balkan community of Sarajevo already behind him, he lost his first wife and their daughter in the Austro-Hungarian conquest of Buda, Hungary, from the Turks in 1686. He miraculously survived the explosion of “a ball of fire from a large burning tube that is called a cannon, which fell in the house where he was dwelling. . . . It broke the house into splinters and fissures.”31 Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi then left for Prague and Berlin, rehabilitated his life, and established a new family with Sarah, the daughter of Rabbi Meshulam Mirlesh from the united communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek. In 1690, he settled in Altona as a respected and well-reputed rabbi, and the couple had ten children. Jacob Emden, the first son after three daughters, was raised with much worry and special attention. In the case of this curious and lively boy, the training was successful, and at least according to Emden’s high self-esteem, there was no doubt that he satisfied the expectations. Meanwhile, the H.akham Zvi became involved in disputes that threatened the stability of the family. His independence and his devotion to the truth he believed in took its toll: “He had the

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heart of a lion to save the oppressed from the oppressor, he bowed to no one in Torah, and he followed the principle of fearing no one. Because of this, he always had opponents from among the leaders of the city.”32 From an adolescent boy’s point of view, Emden’s life seemed to be a long chronicle of tribulations and frustrations. When he was twelve, the H.akham Zvi led the family on a difficult journey in the height of the winter of 1710, from Altona, where his life was embittered, and his salary was low, to Amsterdam, where he was promised a far more lucrative post as the rabbi of the Ashkenazic community. Not only did Emden see this as being transplanted to a foreign country, “the state of Holland, which we had not known before, new air, new customs, and how many alterations did we undergo until we became used to the nature of the country, since the foods and beverages were not suitable to us, as we had been used,” but there, too, the father became involved in a harsh and oppressive dispute. In these circumstances, even reaching the age of bar mitzvah left a gloomy memory. He reported in rhyming prose: “The sensuous banquet caused me fear, dark and drear, a time of worry, grief, and tear.” Then Nechemiah H.iya H.ayon arrived in Amsterdam, and the family’s life grew even more precarious. The H.akham Zvi condemned H.ayon as a dangerous Sabbatean and, as mentioned above, he was forced to abandon his rabbinical post and leave with his family at the beginning of 1714 and once again to wander on the roads and seek shelter.33 Perhaps the extreme condemnation of Sabbateanism and the personal price father and son paid for it are connected to no small extent to the tendency toward Sabbateanism that lay in the family’s distant past, for Jacob Emden’s great grandfather Rabbi Ephraim Cohen, his grandfather Jacob Wilner, and at least until the disappointment with Judah Hah. asid, and the H.akham Zvi’s brother, Jacob’s uncle Benjamin Ofner of Prague, all harbored Sabbatean leanings.34 But there is also no doubt that, after the controversy with H.ayon, which Emden experienced in Amsterdam, when he was sixteen years old, the Sabbatean threat lay like a heavy cloud that shadowed him all his life, both as a source of his personal troubles and also as a challenge and a truly existential mission to continue the struggle begun by his father. As with the families of Glikl and Katzenellenbogen, the effort to find an appropriate match for the children was also a focus of Emden’s family life. Just when the H.akham Zvi traveled to London, Jacob Emden received an offer of marriage with the daughter of “the leader in Torah, Rabbi Levi of Emden,” where the family had lived in 1714. In the young man’s eyes, this offer was very attractive, both because of the father’s wealth, which could assure him the life of a scholar with no financial worries, and because of the large dowry promised

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to him, and, more than anything, because he was drawn to the girl, who was, in his opinion, “an educated and learned maiden, there was truly no one like her in all of Germany.” However, like Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, Jacob Emden could not disagree with his father, who refused the match, and he submitted to his authority, though this was a decision that decreased his happiness and left a scar in his soul. Even after marrying three times, he felt that he had missed the woman he loved. “I did not reveal what was in my heart, and I surrendered, to accept my father and teacher’s agreement with love,” Emden wrote in his memoirs with pain that had not disappeared after about forty years, “for a sad and harsh day found me.” After the H.akham Zvi returned from London, the family traveled to Berlin and then to Breslau, and there Jacob Emden was forced to obey and accept his father’s choice of a partner in life. In 1715, he married Rachel, the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Katz, of the community of Broda in southeastern Moravia (Ungarisch Brod), and the grand-daughter of Rabbi Naphtali Katz, who was, as mentioned, the rabbi of the Frankfurt community until the great fire of 1711. This was not a happy time in the life of the maturing Jacob Emden, who discovered how tightly his hands were bound, and that fateful decisions for him were made by other people. Various diseases and depression that assailed him were the signs of his distress in body and soul. The cold winter caused him respiratory disease (“the prince of coldness struck me, and my breath was blocked several times”), and hemorrhoids plagued him, and insomnia embittered his life: “it brought melancholy upon me and wouldn’t let me sleep, and many times I hardly tasted sleep, and I would roll from side to side on my bed in worry, grief, and sighing . . . until I truly was disgusted with my life.” As the wedding day approached, he wrote about his depression: “I was overcome by a sense of gloom,” and the wedding remained in his memory as a trauma. Not only did he have to part with his father and live in a strange city with his parents-in-law, and not only did he discover, to his distress, that his wife’s father did not fulfill the financial obligations in the prenuptial agreement, but on the first night the groom experienced frustrating sexual failure: “We arrived in Breslau on Shavuot, and the day of my marriage was in the days of restriction [the three days before the giving of the Torah when men were told not to have sexual relations, see Ex. 19:15], but not a day of heartfelt joy,” he recounted, “because at the time of the commandment to consummate the marriage, I was impotent, and I was in this troubled state for several days. I did not know the taste of sexual intercourse or the taste of a virgin, and joy and happiness were gathered from me, though I was already seventeen at that time.”35 The three following years did not improve Jacob Emden’s depressed spirit very much. He mourned his fate and his lost youth: “In my life I never had a

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moment of tranquility, at the time of the blooming of the bud of my youth, from the womb from the dawn of the dew of my childhood, my days of childhood and youth, passed in poverty, back from whence they came, in straits of sorrow and torments.” Immediately after the young couple arrived in Broda, an epidemic broke out there, and they fled from the city to take shelter in the forests and villages. In the encounter with Moravia and with his wife’s family, “I saw a new world, new nature, new customs.” His standard of living fell because “in the home of my late father-in-law, his livelihood was difficult at that time, and I was forced to be satisfied with only bare necessity, contrary to the softness of my nature and my habits when I was studying in my father’s house.” While his father-in-law took the wedding presents sent by “the notables of Vienna” for himself and hid them from his son-in-law, his wife’s family tried to discover whether he was concealing a large sum of money, so they could remove it from him. Though he wished to devote all his time to studies, he was also constrained to teach Talmud and Halakha, and he found consolation and refuge with a group of students and colleagues. Even after he overcame his failure on the first night, he did not find pleasure in married life, and affection did not develop between the spouses. Emden confessed, “I also tasted a taste more bitter than death, because my wife, may she rest in peace, was an assertive woman.” In his view, Rachel was a rigid and grouchy woman, and even after her death, after twenty-four years of marriage, he could not forget how she had refused, for example, to accept a guest whom he had invited, and “for her fury she fought me [in Hebrew this phrase is a play on words: meh.amat h.amata mah.ta] and drove me out of my mind, to preserve peace in the house, nor how she used to quarrel with the servant women who were subordinate to her.”36 The death of his father in 1718, in Lvov, enabled Jacob Emden to free himself from that oppressive life and to pave an independent way. He took a trip to Poland on his own, and there he found a family that supported scholars and who admired his abilities. His mother, unlike Glikl, though she was only forty-one, refused every proposal “from the great folk of Poland” to remarry, and she also died a few months later. Emden prolonged his stay in Lvov, where he felt he was far more in his natural environment than in his wife’s company in Moravia. Emden wrote to his wife that, as a member of the rabbinical elite, there was no place more suitable for him. “In this country especially, masters of the Torah find all they wish, both livelihood and respect, and in matches. . . . Especially if they are from an aristocratic family, everyone pursues them.” He certainly would have wanted to gain the generous hospitality and huge admiration that his father had enjoyed in the last two years of his life, when one of the

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richest Jews in Poland, Israel Rabinowitz, took him under his wing. That “Israel Ritpin was an official called ‘eqonom’ of the powerful Sieniawsky family, which owned extensive lands and many forests in the country of Poland, and many serfs”—Emden told about the special connection between a talented Jew and one of the greatest families of the magnates. He was responsible for all the business and finances, “and this man also feared heaven and was of sound opinion, and he took it to his heart to merit the performance of a commandment by taking my father and his household under the wings of his command.” There was no limit to the favors showered upon him by the Jewish aristocrat Rabinowitz, who was the right-hand man of Elżbieta Helena Sieniawska, the most powerful woman in Poland, only so that he could give himself credit because of the famous rabbi who was dwelling in his house, and, in his memoirs Emden could only list all the material needs that provided for the most comfortable life: “He gave him a large house to live in for free, and he gave him a guard day and night, a servant ready and waiting for all needs of the house, and he also gave him fruit and enough milk and butter and cheese for his bread and the bread of his household . . . and he sent him as much wood for heating as he needed, also plenty of fowl and live fish from the fish ponds under his supervision and in his charge, and everything for free, for no money.” However, his father’s life, full of all good things, remained an unfulfilled dream for him. His wife refused to leave her parents, and Emden returned unwillingly to his home in Broda, after a year-and-a-half of absence.37 Unlike Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, who could devote himself to his studies without worrying about earning a living, Emden now had to support himself and his family, after four years of eating at his father-in-law’s table. As his father’s eldest son, he also had to take on the tasks of selling copies of his father’s book of responsa and trying to collect old debts owed to him in Hamburg. After a few months, he left his home again and in 1720 he took a trip, which lasted more than two years, to the cities in Europe.38 This long journey was also full of disappointments and failed to provide the income Emden hoped to derive from it. However, it proved to be a significant and formative episode in his life. In his early twenties, “when I was still young, and my nature had not emerged,” he could experience things and encounter tempting opportunities. In Hamburg, he discovered that he could not expect to collect money owed to his father but he was received with respect, and there his desire to acquire knowledge of the world emerged. “I desired to know and become familiar with German writing in their script. . . . For my heart always tended to investigate matters of the world and the nations and their beliefs and qualities and opinions and histories and sciences, which are not to be known from our holy books,” Emden wrote from

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Hamburg in his memoirs. His exposure to the German language and the world of knowledge beyond the boundaries permitted to a Torah scholar had a subversive aspect, and it took place in secret. With the help of a servant, who had just started learning to read and write himself, he learned Latin letters, “and in a short time I attained good knowledge of reading foreign books in German.”39 It was also difficult for him to sell his father’s books in Frankfurt, because the community had not recovered from the fire, and he almost decided to return to his home in Broda before news from London, which was published in the newspapers, reached him in 1721, about how “Mordecai Hamburger returned home from the countries of the sea, from East India . . . and he brought back a treasure of precious stones, especially among them was one large and very valuable diamond, and there was none like it in the whole earth.” Because this successful merchant’s brothers owed money to the H.akham Zvi, and, as we shall see, he himself was grateful to the rabbi for standing by him when he was excommunicated in the Ashkenazic community of London, Emden hoped that he could return from a visit to London with a great deal of money in his pocket. The journey by sea was difficult, the expenses were many, and, despite the hospitality he received from Mordecai Hamburg, the husband of Friedchen, one of Glikl’s youngest and most beloved daughters, Mordecai refused to acknowledge responsibility for the debt and made do with “a few guineas for travel expenses.” Ill and disappointed, Emden sailed to Amsterdam in early 1722, and he immediately began to defend himself against the rumor that he had not resisted the temptation to visit one of the city’s coffeehouses during his visit to London. Rabbi Judah ben Solomon Nardin wrote to him: “I heard the slander of the many about your highness of the Torah that you drank coffee in the home of a Gentile when you were here, although the Ashkenazim who are living there told your highness of the Torah that it was forbidden, because of suspicion of the milk that they put in it.” Indeed, Jacob Emden answered him, this was an error, which he regretted, both because of the Halakhic suspicion connected with drinking coffee and because of the example he was supposed to set for others, not to cross the boundary of Jewish space in pubic. The young rabbi confessed his sin and took note of the tension between the temptations of the great city and the severe norms of the religion, to which he, as a member of the rabbinical elite, was committed. “I heed the reprimand of my shame,” Emden replied, “in that it is said of me that I drank coffee in the houses of Gentiles, which are established for that. . . . And first of all, my apology: I admit the truth that I did not do right, and even while I was there, I said that to myself, and I immediately left that place, I became aware of myself, and I felt very badly.”40

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Other temptations awaited Emden in 1722 on his way from London via Amsterdam and Fürth back home. In a carriage that took him to Prague, he discovered that his route required Jews to present a travel document or risk imprisonment. “In a forest near the community of Iger, I went to a custom agent’s house, so he would write a travel document for me.” The official was not at home, and his wife tried to seduce the traveler who knocked on her door. Emden admitted that he could not deny the sexual attraction. Nevertheless, he managed to subdue his instinct: “I rejected that lovesick woman, although I am not lacking in feeling and indecent desire, or without sensation and desire,” and therefore he shouted and wept until the woman’s desire calmed, and she left him alone. When he finally managed to enter Prague and was hosted by his family, he withstood an even greater erotic temptation. Esther, his uncle Wolf Ofner’s daughter, had recently been widowed and returned to her father’s house, and while was staying there she began to lust for him: “She was daring enough to show me excessive fondness, to get close to me, almost kissing me. Even when I was in my bed, she came to cover me up will with the blanket.” This time, Emden wrote, he almost succumbed to the temptation: “I was then a young man, in the full power of my warmth, and I had been away from home for a long time, and I was very hungry for a woman, and here an unmarried woman was available to me, a very pretty girl.” Had he asked, she certainly would have immersed herself in the ritual bath, and there was no doubt that she would not have divulged the intimate secret to anyone. During the day the house was vacant, and no one would have noticed them. Emden’s awareness of himself as a man could not have found stronger expression than when he recalled that opportunity: “Several times the deed was close to being committed, like the fire of youth . . . if the blessed Lord had not given me enormous strength to bear it and great power to overcome my enflamed instinct, which almost forced me to fill its needs once. . . . For I was a man in full power and instinct, and a pretty and very pleasant woman was before me.” The overcoming of his urge, when two women sought to seduce him on their own initiative, was nothing short of a miracle from heaven, as with Joseph, who fled from the arms of Potiphar’s wife.41 These two experiences of sexual seduction reveal the depth of Emden’s awareness that many possibilities for self-realization as an independent individual, experiencing life and capable of evading religious, communal, and familial supervision were available. As David Biale shows in his study of Jewish sexuality, “in Emden’s autobiography, we find for the first time in the Ashkenazic world . . . hints of genuine introspection and a conscious sense of an erotic self.”42 However, to save himself from sin, Emden summed up the lesson

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he learned in Prague: sometimes it is preferable to forgo the autonomy of the individual. Without divine providence, it would not have been within his power to restrain his lust: “So I knew that in the end, free choice is in the hand of God, and His hand will not leave us.”43 In telling the story of his voyage between the final stations of his long journey back to Broda, Emden also revealed something of the tense relations between Jews and Christians. The boundaries between the societies were crossed frequently in everyday life in close contacts and frequent encounters that were experienced in overlapping spheres of life, but when they sat together for long hours and days on end, crowded on the seats of a coach, rolling along the dangerous roads of Europe, incidents occurred fairly often. Emden, who, together with several other Jews, hired a place on the Landkutsch from Prague to Brünn, in late 1722 found himself in the company of a priest and an Italian merchant, who shoved the Jews rudely into the less comfortable places in the coach and also attacked them: “We suffered various insults from those evil people who did not leave us in peace for a moment. We could not keep the commandment of putting on tefillin, to pray properly in front of them, and they constantly called us ‘lousy Jews!’” When the road became windy and passed through steep mountains, the Jews were required to get out and walk, but then the carriage flipped over and rolled down a slope. The baggage fell and injured the Italian merchant seriously, and he and the priest left the shared carriage and found shelter in a nearby village. Emden took pleasure in the sweet victory, pleased at their discomfiture, and he also saw the accident as a miracle from heaven, testifying to divine providence. “Their heart almost died within them, knowing we were happy because of their downfall,” he wrote with satisfaction. “We saw revenge against our enemies, and we continued on our way, happily and goodheartedly in the name of God, sitting alone in the wide carriage, and we could keep our commandments without Satan and the wicked men on the way.” Emden finished the story of trip by saying that he met the priest in Brünn, and “he shook his head at me and told me he would never ride in the same carriage as a Jew again.”44 In early 1723, transportation from Brünn to Broda was by sleigh, and this time Emden was injured on one of the twists in the road. “The carriage I was sitting in slid to the side, so that my leg was caught between the two carriages, and I thought my foot was smashed, because it hurt a lot.” Emden returned home limping and empty handed, to the trials of life, which now demanded most of his time, and to his wife, Rachel: “My late spouse immediately became pregnant, and the burden of expenses grew for me.” Only at this stage in the memoirs do we learn that his eldest son was born during the first year after the

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wedding, that another son died during his years of travel, and that the meaning of the expansion of his family for him was the increase in the financial burden. He immediately entered upon frustrating business dealings in the area between Hungary and Holland, suffered from plots and cheats, was harmed by competitors, and by the decline in the value of the sheep’s wool and goat hair he was trading in, and he was taken in by swindlers. With yearning he recalls the attractive offers of a stipend equivalent to the high salary appropriate for the rabbi of an affluent community, a stipend that would give him the life of a scholar, free of worry: “Some wealthy men from Vienna volunteered for me, without my knowledge, to provide me a livelihood and comfort, about ten or twelve reichsthalers week in and week out, and they obligated themselves for several years, so that I could sit at home and study Torah not in hardship.” One of his friends also wrote, “From the mouth of the rabbi and famous wealthy man, Rabbi Samson Wertheimer, who once told him what he heard from me, that he used to say, I will not rest until I see to making him wealthy.” Life in Moravia was disappointing, not offering the success Emden dreamed of. All his life, Emden sought the admiration of the people around him, and he expected they would acknowledge his capacities as an excellent scholar. He boasted, “In truth I was very well-liked, and not only in the holy community of Broda, and most of the congregation love me as much as their soul and feel blessed by me.” But he aspired for happier days, when he would assume a prominent place as a public figure among the Jews.45 As we shall see in the coming chapters, after leaving Moravia and returning to Altona, where he was born, he did become a central figure and was famous mainly as the most dominant warrior against Sabbateanism, a rabbi who placed himself in the position of an uncompromising defender of religious faith against the threats he identified with the “new world.”

A br a h a m L e v i: “A s I Discov er ed by M yself a n d a s I Saw w ith M y Ow n E y e s” The third young man of the first quarter of the century, to whose desires and ambitions we have access, was seventeen years old when he decided to fulfill his childhood dream and head out on a journey throughout Europe. In 1719, when Emden was in Poland and in doubt as to whether he should return home, Glikl hoped that the meteor that she saw in the sky of France did not portend catastrophe and closed her journal forever, and Pinchas Katzenellenbogen received his first rabbinical appointment in Wallerstein, Abraham Levi (1702–1785) left his parents’ house in Talle, which is close to Lemgo in northwest Germany, to

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fulfill his childhood dream and see the wonders of the world. At the age when Emden found himself helpless in a marriage bed in Breslau, and bound with family obligations, Levi was free of worries about his livelihood. His father, who had arrived in the Duchy of Lippe in Westphalia from Schnaittach, Bavaria, supported him and provided him with letters of recommendation to his relatives in the communities of Central Europe and even joined him at the start of his itinerary. As he presented himself in the introduction to his travel journal, he was motivated by great curiosity to see the world: I wrote for my own pleasure and to tell my good friends about the details of my journey. . . . Many people never leave their bed and remain at home, and never move away from their chairs, lest they catch cold. In contrast to them, in my childhood, at the age of five, I already left my father’s home in the village of Horn to study. . . . Before long the wide world began to attract me by means of the history books [that I read], I was aware that I mustn’t delay the beginning of my journey too long. So great was the desire that awakened me, that when I reached the age of seventeen, I set out on my way.46

Abraham Levi saw himself as different from others. He refused to remain bound to his close surroundings, sought to build his life with experiences and encounters with unfamiliar places and societies, to acquire knowledge, and mainly to expand his horizons and derive great pleasure from all of this. The books that he read kindled his imagination, and wanderlust burned within him. He wanted to see famous historical sites and big cities with his own eyes.47 In effect, the lad from Talle adopted the model of the Grand Tour to acquire knowledge of the world, which was common among the European aristocracy, and he represented the modern ideal of the independent individual who develops his personality to become a cultured, educated person with extensive knowledge of the world. As with Glikl’s memoirs, Levi’s travel journal is written in Yiddish, but, unlike hers, it lacks expressions, words, and verses in Hebrew or prayers and pious advice. He was not a Torah scholar who traveled, like Katzenellenbogen, in search of appropriate places to study Torah in the company of prominent rabbis or to obtain a lucrative position, and, unlike Emden, his trip was not a necessity, and he was not interested in business. It was decidedly an educational trip for a young man who did not belong to the scholarly elite, who was still free of concerns and independent, and who also did not seek a suitable marriage. He was entirely open to absorb the experiences of the journey. Abraham Levi, as a Jew wandering on the pathways of Europe, was also unlike the heroes of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, who arrived in Paris from Isfahan, because in his journal there was no place for biting criticism, and

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because he did not feel like a foreign tourist, but rather as a native. Europe was then nearly quiet after two decades of war. Security on the roads had improved, but every traveler shared the ordeals of bad weather, stormy seas, violence in inns and hostels, the need to beware of robbers, to avoid places stricken by plague, and fear of falling into the hands of Turkish pirates. Levi stayed in the Jewish quarter wherever he went, enjoyed the hospitality of relatives, prayed in synagogues, took an interest in the life of the community, and was aware of the restrictions on movement and residence imposed upon the Jews in various places, and he also experienced attacks by fanatical Christians. For example, he knew very well that a Jew who arrived in Spain would be burned at the stake, but none of this contradicted his feeling that Europe, with its cities, sites, and baroque culture, was ultimately his home as well. Moreover, the possibility of moving within a network of Jewish communities and families, spread out almost everywhere he went, only reinforced his self-confidence and his feeling that he was a full participant in European life. In his journal he stated that he put into writing everything that had impressed him and was found worthy of special attention. It was not a guidebook for tourists who might wish to follow in his footsteps to those places, but rather a personal travel journal, that describes the way the world looked through his eyes, sharing his unique experiences with the reader. For almost five years of travel in Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Austria, and Italy, his inquisitive, curious, and excited gaze absorbed and documented natural landscapes and famous places, which attracted tourists such as he. High mountains, rushing rivers, streams flowing with pure water, stone bridges, wine cellars, fortified castles, ancient churches and cathedrals, well-tended and designed gardens, clock towers, and the tolling of church bells thrilled him. He was attracted by the splendor of baroque palaces and the splendid ceremonies in the rulers’ courts, and he painted colorful and detailed pictures of the architecture, furniture, golden decorations, aristocratic dress, and military uniforms. Abraham Levi began his trip in January 1719, and over a year and a half he crossed Germany and Bohemia before arriving in Vienna, which had been his main destination. In his journal he traced the map of the sites he passed through and their special attractions for Jewish tourists. For example, in the small community of Friedburg, some hundred and twenty Jews lived, and their synagogue was old and beautiful, but even more impressive was the community crowded into the ghetto of Frankfurt. Levi wrote that he was impressed by the tall buildings, by the synagogues built of stone, and especially by the city, which was a magnet for scholars: “Many foreign Jews, students from all of Germany and Poland, are found here” to study with the great scholars. He was seized with

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excitement when he entered the alleys of the Jewish quarter of Worms, learned about the bitter fate of the Jews there during the Crusades, and, with religious awe, sat on the seat in the synagogue upon which, according to the tradition, Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki), the great commentator on the Torah, had sat. From there he continued to Mannheim, between the Rhine and Neckar Rivers. He was impressed by the order of the straight streets and mentioned that the splendid palace of one of Samson Wertheimer’s sons was there. Nuremberg was unfriendly to the Jews, and he had to pay an entrance fee to visit the city for a single day, and this, too, only with the close supervision of a Christian woman. After staying with his father’s family in Schnaittach, he reached Prague in the spring. That city made the strongest impression of all on him. The capital of Bohemia was one of the most beautiful cities he had seen. He described its various neighborhoods, the Moldau River that ran through it, and the famous stone bridge, with statues placed along it, and the Jewish tourist could read the words of Isaiah in Hebrew, inscribed in gold on the statue of the crucified Jesus: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” He estimated that thirteen thousand Jews lived in the Jewish quarter, protected by the soldiers of the emperor. He listed the names of eight synagogues, from the Altneuschul to that of Pinh.as and Maisel, and he described the service for the greeting of the Sabbath, led by the famous cantor Jokele, the same cantor who had prolonged the prayers in the Metz synagogue when disaster struck the women’s section. Levi recounted that all Europe knew him, which was why masses of people came to the synagogue before the entry of the Sabbath to hear the melodies that Jokele composed for the prayer concert, accompanied by a chorus, an organ, and other musical instruments.48 In the winter he went on to Moravia, and in Nikolsburg he was impressed because the community observed the commandments of the religion with particular devotion, making certain that all the shops would be closed on the eve of the Sabbath. Being aware of the inner cultural boundaries that were emerging within Jewish society, Abraham Levi noted that many Jews had reached this community from Poland, and it was easy to identify them because of their different clothing and the men’s long beards. We cannot know whether he himself was clean-shaven, nor does he say anything about his faith or whether he was conscientious in keeping the commands, but his comment about those Polish Jews, “zi zaynen frume lait” (they are religious people), represents a different self-image and distinguishes him from them as a different type of Jew, from the West, and he was more open than they to the contemporary lifestyle. When he visited the growing community of Pressburg in Hungary he remarked on the similarity between the Jews there and the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, and

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he praised the famous wines, but, with particular sensitivity to what he identified as the boundaries of European civilization, he explained that to the east of the city, over the mountains, people lived who were “wild and bestial, in the summer they hardly wear anything . . . and they are always ready for war and fighting, and in their behavior they are very similar to the Turks.”49 In contrast, Vienna, the capital of the empire, whose gates he entered in February 1720, made his head spin. The city was heavily guarded, and supervision over entry into the city was strict: “I was examined, with all the baggage in my possession, to discover whether I had any contraband,” though the letter he bore to his uncle Samson Wertheimer apparently served as an entry permit. The first impressive building that he saw was the Belvedere Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the lionized Austrian general, which had just been completed at the time of Levi’s visit: “Here one sees first of all the home of Prince Eugene and the garden attached to it. It is marvelous to see the gleam of the four gilded towers of the house; thus, it should be known that this house is one of the outstanding buildings of the city of Vienna.” During his first days in Vienna, he managed to join a tour of the emperor’s palace and to see its wealth and beauty from within: “I reached the reception hall. The hall was decorated with many large chandeliers, with large mirrors, and with high-backed chairs.” When he left the route and wandered about in the castle, he reached the kitchen: “I was truly amazed at seeing how large the kitchen was, and I even counted more than a hundred ovens, standing against all the walls of the kitchen.” He saw Emperor Karl VI in a parade, when he left and entered the palace. The baroque splendor, the huge retinue, the escort of the soldiers, and the trumpeters made his heart throb. “In their wake came the coach drawn by six horses of the same color, and in it was the emperor, with the empress at his side. The coach was surrounded by fifty bodyguards bearing long lances on their shoulders.” He stood in a crowd of onlookers who were as impressed as he was by Empress Elisabeth Christine: “I saw the empress dressed in men’s clothing, riding on a horse and busy with hunting, and like the best of the hunters she shot an animal and did not miss.” Vienna offered its residents and visitors many opportunities for entertainment and pleasure. Levi reported that performances of comedies and operas drew large crowds, and he wrote a detailed description of the sensuous and luxurious experience of the baths. “Here it is also possible to enjoy the bathhouses along the Danube River.” In his journal, Levi described an extraordinary experience he himself had and his erotic excitement: “When we enter the building, we are led to a room and sit in a bathtub while we are entirely naked and wrapped only in a towel. Immediately a woman enters, who provides the treatment. She fills the bathtub with water that is hot enough. Then she scrubs

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the bather’s body from foot to head.” The treatment lasts two hours, and the male bathers also enjoy smoking a pipe, and they pay only seventeen kreutzer (less than a fifth of a thaler).50 Abraham Levi, who, like everyone in his generation, could recognize success and appreciate it—high social status, brilliant life, social prestige—went beyond himself to describe the famous Court Jews. “The Jews in this city, Vienna, are the richest in all of Europe,” and the most prominent of all was Samson Wertheimer, the emperor of the Jews and a relative of his. With huge enthusiasm, Levi recounted his praises and honors. Dozens of the king’s soldiers constantly guarded the gate of Wertheimer’s home. He owned palaces in Vienna and elsewhere. He bore the title of Chief Rabbi of Hungary, contributed his own money to the building of synagogues and to assistance for the poor, and his influence and support extended as far as Poland and Jerusalem. His wealth was so vast that he gave all six of his children a gift of two hundred thousand Dutch guilders when they got married. Compared to him, the second-most important wealthy Jew in Vienna, Mendel Emmanuel Oppenheimer, who also lived in a splendid palace guarded by soldiers, was an old, clean-shaven man, a trait that Levi was sensitive to and that reflected the differences in generations among the families of the Jewish aristocracy. During the second and third decades of the century, Wertheimer was indeed one of the most admired men in the Jewish sphere between England and the Land of Israel. His title as First Imperial Agent, his wealth, his high, aristocratic way of life, and his success in the Eisenmenger affair made him a leader sought out by many. His loyalty to the rulers of the Habsburg dynasty was the source of his power. He and his son Wolf went to the emperor’s coronations in Frankfurt on May 5, 1705, when Joseph I was crowned, and on December 22, 1711, when Karl VI became emperor. In his will, which he wrote three years before Levi’s visit to Vienna, he expected his sons to continue in his path, “to serve in his mighty highness’ royal court, as I did, since God gave me his grace and mercy before their highnesses, the great ones of the kingdom, to this day.”51 The exceptional status of the families of the court Jews did not prevent the humiliation that was the lot of all the Jews of Vienna. Levi wrote that the Jews were required to bend the knee every time they passed a priest bearing a statue of the crucified Jesus on a cross, and how he ran for his life when a student pursued him, shouting, “Jew, take off your hat”. This form of attack was notorious. Jacob Emden, for example, explained that he never went to Vienna for that reason: “Even though I wished to see the place, Vienna . . . I refrained from it for fear of the abuse of the Catholic priests carrying statues in the streets of

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Vienna, as it is known, that whoever meets them endangers his soul. Therefore, I have never seen that place, Vienna, at all.”52 In the end, Levi never met his famous uncle Wertheimer, and he stayed in Vienna for only a relatively short time before going on to Italy in the spring of 1720. Neither his appearance nor his dress indicated that he was Jewish, and he spoke German very well. Concealment of his identity was quite useful to him. Thus, for example, at the gates of the city of Salzburg, he pretended to be Christian to avoid paying the high tax of twenty guilders, presenting himself as a diamond polisher on his way to Venice. After crossing the alps via the Brenner Pass, he saw Italy as a paradise on earth. He took pleasure in the landscapes, the sight of flocks of sheep spread across green meadows, and the warm weather. He even decided to learn Italian. In May, he wandered in the alleys and along the canals of Venice, constantly excited by the commotion, by the fact that there were no horses and carriages in the city, and by how colorful everything was. Like a curious and enthusiastic tourist, he made a list in his journal of the most highly recommended places: the Ponte Rialto, Piazza San Marco, the Doge’s Palace, Saint Mark’s Basilica, and the two impressive bronze horses over its gate, and, finally, the Jewish ghetto, where, in his opinion, about two thousand Jews lived, in a varied community divided among the special synagogues of the Italian, Sephardic, Levantine, and Ashkenazic communities. For about half a year, from July to September, he stayed in Padua, enjoying the protection and guidance of Rabbi Isaac Cantarini, the rabbi and physician who, as mentioned, offered a mystical interpretation of the upheavals in international relations in Europe. Levi was impressed that Padua stood out in caring for the weak, and therefore its leaders established a home for the children of prostitutes, and it was famous as a center for the study of medicine. Cantarini took him to visit the faculty of medicine at the university, and together they viewed an anatomy lesson in which a cadaver was dissected, and they tarried near the skeleton of a Jew who had converted to Christianity on view in a glass case. In Padua, Levi’s admiration increased for innovations in science and for scholars in general, but he also was impressed by the ancient books preserved on the shelves of the abbey of Santa Giustina, laden with huge tomes, including manuscripts of the Torah. As he continued his trip in Italy, he was shocked to learn that the Jews of Ferrara were required to listen to the sermon of a Franciscan monk on the Sabbath, and when he passed through Bertinoro, he remembered, in a burst of pride in his Judaism, that Obadiah of Bartenura had lived there, the author of a classic fifteenth century commentary on the Mishnah (the collection of Jewish Oral Law edited in the third century by R. Judah ha-Nasi).53

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Rome, where he lived for more than two years, was the longest stop on his trip. Thirsty for knowledge, excited, and capable of appreciating the traces of the ancient past in Europe, he was especially drawn to ancient and historical sites, from the ruins of the Colosseum to the Arch of Titus. He also observed the costumes of the Carnival and got to know the life of the Jewish community very well, “which sits in the best place in the city, on the banks of the Tiber River.” He was sorry to hear about their distress under constant pressure to convert to Christianity and about their obligation to be present at sermons in a church. However, the Christian religion did not deter him when, with the eyes of a tourist seeking excitement, he wished to satisfy his curiosity and experience the great ceremonies that took place in the city. On May 8, 1721, when the new pope, the Italian Michaelangelo dei Conti, was invested in Rome as Pope Innocent XIII (1655–1724), a young Jew, the twenty-one-year-old Abraham Levi, was in the crowd. Again, he concealed his Jewish identity and crossed the boundary separating Jews from Christians, even in that sensitive place at the very heart of Roman Catholicism, so as not to miss out on the ceremony. He managed to sneak into the retinue of the servants of cardinals and bishops without being detected, and thus, in St. Peter’s Basilica, he witnessed the arrival of delegations of churchmen and diplomats from various countries, and he saw the new pope dressed in a red robe. One of the princes rebuked him for his audacity: “Get back, boy. So many nobles are standing in the back, and you have to stand in the front!” Ten million people were waiting in the decorated streets, Levi reported with great exaggeration, but he had the luck to rub shoulders with noblemen, to see everything from close up, and to have the experience, which, without giving it religious meaning, excited him so much with its power.54 Levi could not carry out his plan to expand the scope of his journey and depart from Italy for the Muslim East, first North Africa and Egypt, and from there to Palestine and Jerusalem. When he reached the port of Naples with Elisha H.aim Voltari, an Italian merchant who wanted Levi to join him, Voltari’s wife fell ill, and the captain of the ship refused to allow her on board. This was a palpable miracle, Levi recounted, because the ship that sailed without them was attacked by pirates (“Tirkeshe roiber”), who overpowered it on the Mediterranean off the North African coast, and sold all the passengers into slavery. Their later effort to sail from the port of Livorno also failed, when their ship ran into a storm on the way there from Naples and had to take shelter on the island of Porto Ercole. This island was under Spanish dominion, and Jews were forbidden to land there. This time as well, Levi tried to conceal his Jewish identity, as he had done many times on his journey, but an Armenian priest was also on board, and Levi had been in the habit of making fun of him in Italian, assuming

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that he didn’t understand the language. To take revenge against him, the priest informed the soldiers stationed on the island that Levi was a Jew, hoping that he would be handed over to the Inquisition. This misadventure was avoided, since the captain of the ship placed the Jewish passengers under his protection, saying they could not be arrested so long as they were on board his ship. When they finally reached Livorno, Levi heard that the plague had broken out in Cairo, and he decided that the obligation to honor his parents, who had been expecting him with concern for nearly five years, was more important than the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Jerusalem. He left Voltari, and in the summer of 1723, in the company of a Jew from Amsterdam, he finished his journey on a route that led him from Italy via Munich and Frankfurt, and then along the Rhine, to his home. He then continued on to Holland.55 Levi’s unique travel journal reveals how Jewish life in Europe appeared from the viewpoint of a young tourist toward the end of the first quarter of the century. The chief places of Jewish scholarship in Central Europe were Frankfurt and Fürth; Vienna was the focus, because of the wealthy families, whose support was solicited by many, and Venice and Rome were the thriving centers of Italian Jewry, even in the ghetto, under Catholic pressure. Livorno and Amsterdam were flourishing and relatively free centers, which had mainly been built up with diligence by former Portuguese conversos, and Prague and Nikolsburg were old, conservative communities, where religious life was highly developed. The Jews of Poland, the largest group in Europe, largely remained outside the world Levi encountered. They entered his horizon only as immigrants from regions of great piety and rigorous tradition, or as poor people asking for money from the wealthy Jews of Central Europe like the last of beggars. As Shlomo Berger concludes: “Abraham Levi was not yet trapped in the duality bound up with the process of modernization. His soul did not yearn for foreign culture, nor did he advocate, either openly or indirectly, the adoption of Enlightenment principles of one kind or another. In his consciousness, he remained a traditional man, though he did distinguish himself from the Polish Jews whom he met in Prague and Nikolsburg.”56 However, even if not for a moment did any critical thought occur to him, that anything in Jewish life required change, the pages of his travel journal resonate with the voice of a Jew in the new world, whose cultural scope extends far beyond that of the Torah scholars, crosses the boundaries of community and the networks of family, the rabbinate, and commerce, encompassing almost all that Europe in the baroque age could offer, from the palaces of the emperor and the pope to the library, the university, and the bathhouses. Levi was appalled by the Christians’ fanaticism and their hostility to the Jews, but he was strongly attracted, with no twinges of conscience, to the glory and splendor that radiated

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from the cathedrals. Even without being a scholar, and without acquiring a systematic education, he is surprising in his attraction to significant historical sites, and in his deep awareness of the relativity of historical narratives and to the subjectivity of the narrator, whose ego is central, so that the story about himself is what is interesting. His unique, personal point of view was, for him, the only one possible. As he declared in the introduction to the second part of the journal, he recounts his own truth and only his own truth, as he discovered it himself, and as he saw it with his own eyes.

Note s 1. Glikl, Memoirs, p. 261. On this final chapter, see Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives, pp. 13–19; Zemon Davis, “Riches and Dangers: Glikl bas Leib on Court Jews,” pp. 54–57. 2. ­http://​­w ww​.­eighteenthcenturypoetry​.­org​/­works​/­pse03​-­w0520​.­shtml. See Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, pp. 70–71. 3. Glikl, Memoirs, pp. 285–291. 4. Ibid., pp. 292–297. 5. The life of Samuel Levi during the years after the death of his father was reconstructed in Davis, “Riches and Dangers: Glikl bas Leib on Court Jews,” pp. 56–57. 6. Glikl, Memoirs, pp. 282–284. 7. Ibid., pp. 73–84. See Richard Steele, The Spectator, Tuesday, March 13, 1711; Iris Idelson-Shein, “What Have I to Do with Wild Animals?: Glikl Bas Leib and the Other Woman,” Eighteenth Century Studies 44, no. 1 (2010): 57–77; Iris Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different Kind: Jewish Constructions of Race During the Long Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), ch. 1. 8. Glikl, Memoirs, pp. 297–298. 9. Ibid., pp. 298, 301–302. 10. Ibid., pp. 303–306. 11. Ibid., pp. 307–310 See Davis, “Riches and Dangers: Glikl bas Leib on Court Jews,” p. 258 (notes 218, 220). 12. Solomon ben Moses Lifschitz, Sefer te’udat shlomo (Offenbach, 5478), fols. 14–16. 13. Ibid., fols. 9–10. 14. Ibid., fol. 7b. 15. Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, Yesh ­manh.­ilin, p. 177. 16. Ibid., pp. 177–178, 209. 17. Ibid., pp. 71–72, 159, 178, 180, 261. 18. Ibid., p. 68.

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19. Immanuel Etkes, Ba’al Hashem, The Besht Magic, Mysticism, Leadership (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2000), p. 23. 20. Maoz Kahana, Mehanoda’ beyahadut ­leh.­atam sofer: halakha vehagut lenukhah. etgarei hazman (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2017), pp. 53–60. 21. Katzenellenbogen, Yesh ­manh.ilin, pp. 78, 89, 93–96. 22. Ibid., pp. 98–99. 23. Ibid., pp. 108–109, 243. 24. Ibid., pp. 68, 83, 275. 25. Ibid., pp. 119–131. 26. Emden, Megilat sefer, ed. Kahana, p. 37; Emden, Megilat sefer, ed. Bick, pp. 55–57. 27. See ­Yerah.­m iel (Richard) Cohen, “Vehayu ‘eineikha root et moreikha’: Harav keiqonin,” Zion 58 (1993): 407–452. The quotation is from pp. 409–410. 28. Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 53–54, 84 (all quotations from the Bick edition). On the visit of the H.akham Zvi to London, see Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moshe Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies, pp. 143–146; David Kaufmann, “Rabbi Zevi Ashkenazi and His Family in London,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 3 (1899): 102–125. 29. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 83. 30. Jacob J. Schachter, “History and Memory of Self: The Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), p. 441. On Emden, “one of the most enigmatic figures in eighteenth-century Judaism,” see David Sorotzkin, “R. ya’aqov ‘emden veyesodoteiha shel hayahadut ha h.aradit,” in Ortodoqsia umishtar hamodernit: hafaqata shel hamasoret hayehudit beeiropa ba’et ­hah.­adasha (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad, 1972), pp. 281–348. On Emden as a decided individualist, see Shmuel Dothan, “Rabi ya’aqov ‘emden vedoro (1697–1776), Hebrew Union College Annual 47 (1976): 105–125. 31. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 26. 32. Ibid., p. 30. 33. Ibid., pp. 84–85. 34. Alexander Putik, “The Prague Sojourn of Rabbi Jacob Emden as Depicted in His Autobiography Megilat Sefer, On the Aschkenaz-Emden-Wilner-Offner Family History and the First ‘Eybeschuetz Affair,” Judaica Bohemiae 42 (2006): 53–124; Jacob J. Schachter, “Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism: The Case of Hakham Zevi Ashkenazi,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 16–17 (2001): xxxi–xlix. 35. Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 59–64, 85–88. 36. Ibid., pp. 87, 196.

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37. Ibid., pp. 65–66, 88–97. On Israel Rabinowitz, see Rosman, The Lord’s Jew: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century. 38. On his travels in Europe in 1718–1723, see Putik, “The Prague Sojourn of Rabbi Jacob Emden as Depicted in His Autobiography Megilat Sefer,” pp. 53–124. 39. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 125. 40. Jacob Emden, She‘ilat ya’avets, pt. 2, Altona [5530], responsum 142. See Liberles, The Jews Welcome Coffee, ch. 3. 41. Emden, Megiat sefer, pp. 107–109. 42. David Biale, Eros and the Jews, p. 152. 43. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 110. 44. Ibid., pp. 110–111. 45. Ibid., pp. 111–120. 46. Abraham Levi’s Yiddish work, entitled “Raiz besharibung fun avraham levi,” was copied in two parts in 1764 and published in a scholarly edition by Shlomo Berger: Travels among Jews and Gentiles: Abraham Levi’s Travelogue (Amsterdam, 1764), text edition with introduction and commentary by Shlomo Berger (Leiden: Brill, 2002). See Shlomo Berger, “Kavim leyoman hamasa’ shel avraham levi meamsterdam (1764),” H.uliot 4 (1997): 39–52; Shlomo Berger, “The Desire to Travel: A Note on Abraham Levy’s Yiddish Itinerary (1719–1723),” Aschkenas 6, no. 2 (1996): 497–506. 47. Levi, Raiz besharibung, p. 63. 48. Ibid., pp. 65–68, 69. 49. Ibid., pp. 70–75. 50. Ibid., pp. 75–81. 51. Israel Taglaicht, Nachlässe der Wiener Juden im 17. Und 18. Jahrhundert (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1917), no. 9; Levi, Raiz besharibung, pp. 78–79. 52. Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 120–121; Levi, Raiz besharibung, p. 80. 53. Levi, Raiz besharibung, pp. 80–90. 54. Ibid., pp. 119–120. 55. Ibid., pp. 128, 132. 56. Berger, “Kavim leyoman hamasa’ shel avraham levi,” p. 40.

Eight

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CHRISTIANS VERSUS JEWS Bitter and Violent Relations

For Judah ben Isaac Katz, a poor Ashkenazi Jew in Amsterdam whose heart, as we have seen, was heavy with worry about his daughter Blimche, who was working as a maidservant in London, the city did not look brilliant and inviting. His mood was far more somber than that of the young traveler Abraham Levi, who considered Amsterdam a city of freedom. But in a letter he sent from Amsterdam on January 3, 1713, to Aaron Hasofer in London, he was pleased to share exciting news with him, which raised his spirits: “Letters that reached me from Frankfurt tell that a priest gave a sermon about his religion in Bamberg, [saying] that there was nothing true in the crucified Jesus, and there is no religion better than the Jewish faith.” When they asked him whether he had gone mad, the priest insisted that this was his belief. He was tortured cruelly, and, since he did not repent, he was burned alive at the stake. It cannot be known whether this was a report of an actual incident or just a rumor that circulated in the Jewish communications network between Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and London. But from the point of view of the Jews who reported it as news, the priest’s denial of Christianity in Bamberg and his acknowledgment of the truth of Judaism was like a surprising victory.1 Tension between the religions was still undoubtedly one of the most influential factors in the life of the Jews in the first decades of the eighteenth century. As a minority religion within the large Christian majority, Judaism was under suspicion, supervision, and criticism. Fear of the plots hatched by the Jews in secret, to injure Christians, was great, and learned Hebraists were called upon to examine what was really written in prayer books, in the Talmud, and in mysterious books of Kabbalah. The enthusiasm about a priest who crossed the lines, like the satisfaction Jacob Emden felt at the misadventure that befell the

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Christians who had joined him on his trip in the coach from Prague to Brünn, were therefore exceptional responses. Usually the news showed that the ambitions of believing Christians, clergymen, and the rulers of countries to reveal the secrets of the Jews, to prevent injury to the sacraments of Christianity, and, more than anything, to demonstrate Christian superiority were highly significant for Jewish existence.

Der ision of Chr isti a nit y? Th eologica l Confrontations In the summer of 1703, King Frederick I, in Cölln, on the banks of the Spree River, signed an edict that set boundaries and instituted close supervision upon the rites of the Jews in the small new communities in Prussia. The prayer, ‘aleinu leshabeah. (We must praise), which is part of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy and concludes all three daily prayers, includes the phrase, “For they kneel and bow down to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who does not redeem,” was singled out as a venomous attack against Christianity and as contempt for Jesus, against which the state had to protect itself. The governors of the kingdom derived benefit from the settlement of Jewish merchants, but from the beginning of the century not only did they restrict the right of residence by means of expensive letters of protection (Schutzbriefe), which were issued sparingly, but also by interfering in religious life. “With all the personal tolerance of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and all the toleration for various sects,” Selma Stern emphasizes, “the state itself was Christian and religious.”2 The king himself, the ministers of his government, Christian Hebraists, Protestant professors, and senior officials dealt with the matter of ‘aleinu leshabeah. as if it were one of the central problems, upon which the fate of the Kingdom of Prussia depended.3 The affair began to unfold on Christmas Eve 1701, when the convert Christian Rahtz brought to the attention of the Prussian government the information that Jews were especially prone to speak derisively of Jesus in that season. Frederick I promised to examine thoroughly the suspicion that the Jews were contemptuous of Christianity, and indeed, within a short time, a memorandum written by another apostate, Franz Wenzel of Küstrin, reached him, confirming that words of contempt were indeed an everyday matter among all the Jews. He claimed that in the prayer ‘aleinu leshabeah., which mocked Christianity, they used to spit in reference to Jesus and to jump a little from the place where they were standing. This was not the first time that ‘aleinu leshabeah. was identified as hostile to Christianity, and the sentence referring

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to other religions had been removed from most printed prayer books. But in the writings of Christian Hebraists, including Eisenmenger, the claim was widely made that now-ostensible proof had been received from the mouth of a convert who was intimately familiar with the customs of his former brethren, and who wished to demonstrate his fidelity to Christianity. On September 13, 1702, Frederick I declared that he would not tolerate this desecration, and that anyone who committed it would be punished severely in body and property, and he ordered the opening of an investigation among rabbis and community leaders regarding the prayer, ‘aleinu leshabeah.. The edict, which was promulgated a year later (August 28, 1703), connected the supervision policy of the centralized state with Christian theological considerations. The state could not ignore its responsibility to its subjects, who were not only frail flesh and blood, but they also bore eternal souls within them, and it could not fail to support the Church and identify with its apprehensions. Thus, its responsibility extends beyond life in this world to the redemption of souls in the world to come, and the king’s mission was “to defend our God, our Lord, and our Savior Jesus Christ.” Defamation of Christianity was absolutely prohibited, and the problematic sentence in ‘aleinu leshabeah. was no longer allowed to be recited, and it was forbidden to spit and to jump when saying the prayer. To prevent circumventing this royal decree, the prayer would no longer be recited silently, but out loud, before the heedful ears of special inspectors who would sit in the synagogues. At the height of the great battles in the wars of the early century in Europe, the Prussian authorities attributed enormous, perhaps magical, importance to words recited by Jews in their prayers. The transgressors who refused to obey the edict would be punished, would lose their letters of protection and their right of residence in Prussia, and they would be deported.4 Frederick I believed that his task was to contribute to curing the Jews of their blindness and opening their eyes the truth of Christianity, but he also feared losing his merchants and suppliers. Therefore, on the one hand he made certain to reinforce the protection enjoyed by the Jews, ordering that it was forbidden to exploit the struggle against the desecration of Christianity to attack them or undermine the security of travelers in the kingdom, and on the other hand he promulgated new and detailed instructions regarding the supervision of the ‘aleinu leshabeah. prayer. An order of February 23, 1704, forbade even the silent murmuring of the offending words in the synagogue or at home, and the inspectors were required to know Hebrew well.5 However, the gap between word and deed was great, and in most places there was no actual supervision. But the new community in Königsberg, East Prussia, a community that numbered fewer than thirty families of merchants and craftsmen from Germany

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and Poland, which had just been recognized in the year when Friedrich I was crowned, the supervision was particularly stringent. The city council asked permission of the king to appoint a special inspector of the Jews’ synagogue, and in late 1704, for the first time, Friedrich Wilhelm Bock entered the synagogue on Kehrwiedergasse.6 Bock was a convert who, for one thaler per week and living expenses, filled the position under the aegis of the Albertina Universität. Although almost no complaints were sent about violation of the edict, the suspicious and humiliating supervision continued in Königsberg deep into the century, and only seventy years later Moses Mendelssohn’s intervention played a decisive role in cancelling it. Governmental intervention in the lives of the Jews grew deeper in the beginning of the century in other countries in Europe as well. In France, supervision was placed over marriage arrangements by order of the king (January 11, 1701), requiring an official summary of the marriage contract in French, with authorization by a notary within fifteen days after the wedding.7 In Prague, Hebrew books were seen as a threat to Christianity, and supervision over their printing, possession, and importation was tight and placed in the hands of the archbishop of Prague and Jesuit scholars. Manuscripts were inspected, books were confiscated, and in 1702, for example, the censor ordered a surprise inspection to seize volumes of the Talmud that had been smuggled in a wagon from Breslau and concealed at an inn near Prague.8 David Oppenheim, who had just received the prestigious appointment as rabbi of the Prague community, feared for the fate of his large and expensive collection and decided it was preferable to have his library be kept in a more tolerant country. Since he had already stayed in Hanover with his father-in-law, Leffmann Behrens, and he knew Prince Elector Georg Ludwig quite well, now he wanted to strengthen his position there, despite his commitment to the rabbinate of Prague. In July 1703, the governor of Hanover agreed to grant generous letters of protection to him and his family and to allow them to purchase a large house, because, “for several various reasons I intend to dwell in Hanover for a long time.”9 In London, the two houses of Parliament at the beginning of Queen Anne’s reign passed a law seeking to make it easier for Jews to convert to Christianity. After eighteen-year-old Mary Mendes de Brete converted, her father, one of the wealthy members of the Sephardic community, refused to recognize her, claiming she had been a servant in his home, and he had no obligation to support her. A petition from the representatives of the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft in London complained: “Most of the Jews in London live in the said Parishes; and, though they enjoy the Protection of the Government, and the free Exercise of their Religion, and grow rich, yet they bear such a Hatred to our

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National Religion, that, in case any of their Children embrace the same, they utterly disown them, and treat them with great Cruelty.”10 On June 24, 1702, the members of the House of Commons passed a law determining, under threat of punishment, that it was the duty of a Jewish parent to provide monetary support and educate a son or daughter who converted to Christianity.11 In the rare cases of crossing the lines to the Jewish camp, the theologians and Hebraists condemned the betrayal of Christianity. Thus, for example, Schudt told the story of Moses Germanius, the formerly Christian scholar Johann Dieter Späth, who converted to Judaism in Amsterdam, was circumcised, and established a Jewish family, and he suspected that his death on April 26, 1701, was not natural. Because he showed signs of regret and there was apprehension lest he return to Christianity, in Schudt’s opinion the Jews saw to the shortening of his life.12 German pietists were especially penetrated by the missionary spirit and hopes for the conversion of the Jews. One of them, Johann Müller, sought to gain their sympathy be means of propaganda printed and circulated in vernacular Yiddish, as he did on Rosh Hashanah (autumn, 1702), in a “letter of love to all prisoners of hope to all the Jews of the Exile who are waiting for redemption.” He blessed his readers for the New Year and presented a number of proofs from the Bible of the truth of Jesus’s messianic message.13 The conversion of the Jews was also regarded as a supreme goal by Johann Christoph Wagenseil of Altdorf, one of the most prominent Christian Hebraists, whom we have already met in his contacts with Jews of his time. In a series of compositions in Latin and German in 1703–1705, he joined his voice against the intolerable injury inflicted by the Jews to the sanctity of Christianity, contempt for the Cross, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary; he reinforced Christian apprehension regarding the ‘aleinu leshabeah. prayer; and he even proposed that the state should apply its force to prevent it by making the right of residence conditional on promising to preserve the honor of Christianity. However, Wagenseil was also repelled by what he regarded as false accusations leveled against the Jews. He rejected coercion and opposed the practice “that in Germany and other countries Jews and their children are baptized against their will and forced to study the doctrines of Christianity.” Humiliation and abuse of the Jews was unacceptable, and they must not be cursed, have stones thrown at them in the streets, be forced to drink non-kosher wine, or have their mouths smeared with pork. He asked that others behave with friendliness and compassion toward the Jews, and not to forget the Jewish origins of our Savior, and the Jews’ role in preserving scripture. He argued that if they are not rejected and threatened, but rather granted protection, they will ultimately acknowledge our religious truth.14

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Direct religious disputes were rare, but from three-thirty until seven in the evening, on Monday, July 21, 1704, a rabbi and an apostate found themselves debating in public on the theological issues that separate Jews from Christians. They stood opposite each other on either side of a table in the palace of the prince elector of Hanover. Only a day before, the Court Jew, Leffmann Behrens, had summoned Rabbi Joseph Stadthagen to the palace to respond to the anonymous apostate, who promised Prince Georg Ludwig that he could prove the truth of Christianity from scripture and rabbinical literature. Stadthagen, whom we have already met as a rabbi dwelling among rural Jewish communities and an opponent of the new trend toward entertainment and pleasure-seeking, could not refuse the request. In a detailed account, in Hebrew and Yiddish, he wrote: “In the year 5464, on Sunday, 18 Tammuz, the famous notable, his honor Rabbi Leffmann of Hanover sent a special messenger to me with a small carriage.” He requested that Stadthagen arrive by noon, “since his highness, the Kurfürst duke, ordered us to dispute with an apostate who had come for that, a great scholar and expert in books.” Though he already was experienced in disputes with Christian clergymen, and though he knew German and French well from Metz, the city of his birth, he was nervous and apprehensive about the heavy responsibility. Wearied by the fast of the seventeenth of Tammuz, which he had just finished, Rabbi Stadthagen set out on a long night’s journey to Hanover, while Leffmann Behrens saw to collecting the books that would be the focus of the dispute, according to a list supplied by the convert, and he asked Rabbi Aaron Apttrot, one of the scholars he supported, to accompany the Jewish delegation as an assistant and to help find appropriate quotations. The audience in the baroque palace of Hanover made a strong impression on Rabbi Stadthagen, and closeness to the aristocracy was exciting for him no less than it had been for Glikl and for successful Court Jews. The prince elector himself, Georg Ludwig, who was to become King George I of England in ten years, stood “so close to me that I touched from the left to the right arm of his highness, the Kurfürst.” In addition, other princes from the ruling family had gathered, the Duke of Celle, the priest, the head of the Lutheran church, Gerhard Wolter Molanus, and around them “others standing in attendance, everyone behind the high highness the Duke, and behind me the hall was full, as well as the room in the hall in front of the hall, there were also many people in the foyer and the courtyard below, standing and listening.”15 The most fascinating and involved figure in the dispute was Georg Ludwig’s mother, Duchess Sofia of Hanover (1630–1714), who was born in Amsterdam, the granddaughter of James I and, until her death, the crown princess of England. At the time of the debate, Sofia was already seventy-four years old and

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known as a learned and curious woman, an admirer and patron of Leibniz, who served as a librarian and scholar in the Hanover court. She was familiar with the innovative philosophical writing of the time, including the works of René Descartes and Spinoza. The duchess was interested in Rabbi Stadthagen, and as soon as he entered, she gestured to him. He did not stumble in displaying courtly manners: “I immediately went to her and placed my hand, that is, my fingers, on her hand with a bow and expressions of gratitude.” The dispute itself was a duel with quotations from books and their interpretation, but in a relaxed atmosphere and refraining from vilification. The duchess insisted on observing the rules, to refer only to the books agreed upon in the lists, and to quote only in German, not in Latin, so the audience could understand. Rabbi Stadthagen explained the special challenge he was facing, since “at this time we are dealing with new questions, recently raised, that are not found in the books of faith or in the earlier books of disputes, and a great deal of composure was needed for it, especially before ministers of such as these.” In response to texts that ostensibly demonstrated the blindness and obstinacy of the Jews and their loss of divine chosenness, and to questions about the meaning of the persistence of exile or the messianic nature of Jesus, the rabbi mainly answered by proposing a different interpretation. He surprised the audience by demonstrating familiarity with the New Testament, and also when he was not reluctantly admitted that not everything was well ordered in Jewish society, claiming that it was no wonder that the redemption had not come, since Jews were not generous to one another. He encountered sympathy when he protested against the most penetrating question of all, “What is the true religion?” “Any sensible person can imagine the fear that seized me when I heard that. . . . What could I say?” Stadthagen told about his feelings at that moment, and then he recovered his wits and said out loud: “During the days of my life I have disputed on questions of religion, but always in defense and never in an attack on someone who believes in a different religion, and I did so this time, too.” This response to the question that had pushed him into a corner aroused respect and agreement. “You spoke well,” Prince Elector Georg Ludwig told him, and his mother, the Duchess Sofia, summarized the dispute, stating that the convert had not succeeded in proving his arguments. Now Rabbi Stadthagen stepped forward to part from her, “with gratitude and other words worthy of such a ruler, and she answered with these words: ‘I thank you. We all have one God.’”16 Four years earlier, the prince elector of Hanover, in response to an urgent request that Leffmann Behrens had addressed to him, played a central role in the pressure group that persuaded the Austrian emperor to prevent once again the circulation of Eisenmenger’s polemical work, Judaism Unmasked. The

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efforts to release the book for publication, made by the author himself until his death in 1704, and his heirs afterward, never ceased for a moment. The Prussian king, Friedrich I, who had recitation of the ‘Aleinu leshebeah. prayer supervised, was also in the forefront of this struggle. In a letter to Emperor Leopold I (April 22, 1705), the prince elector implored the king, with the similar argument of the protection of Christianity, to reconsider the decision, and in internal correspondence he suggested having the book printed in Prussia. He received no answer, due to Leopold’s death, but the future Friedrich I was undeterred and continued to exert constant pressure on the new emperor, Joseph I, as well, several months after the latter renewed the injunction against Judaism Unmasked.17 Meanwhile, other instances of the encounter between the state, the religion, and the Jews took place around the fate of young people who converted to Christianity, such as Mary Mendes de Bretta in London. One of them took place in the Prussian city of Memel: when Esther de Jonge converted to Christianity, government functionaries sought to protect her from her family, and especially from her grandfather Moses Jacobson, requiring him, under threat of grave punishment, to support her and stipulating that when she married she must receive a share equal to that of her brother and sister, in money, clothing, and cloth given for her marriage.18 Another incident took place in Prague on October 8, 1705, when a thirteen-year-old orphan, Leibl Altshul, ran away from his grandparents’ house and took refuge in one of the monasteries, desiring to learn about Christianity and convert. All the efforts of the grandfather, Wolf Karpels, the members of his family and of the community, and others to persuade the boy and the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Prague to return the boy to them were in vain. Leibl’s interrogation showed that his conversion was not forced, but was a decision made of his own free will, as was recorded in his name: “More than a year ago I realized that there are here and everywhere else three times more Christians than Jews, and that the emperor, the pope, and other learned men are Christians, and that many Jews become Christians, but Christians never become Jews, so how could the Jewish religion be correct and Christianity be bad? Because of that I decided to check whether I could become Christian.” In early 1706 he was baptized, and the issue now was his financial support. Alexander Putik, who reconstructed the details of the case, gathered that Leibl was an adventurous lad, for whom the horizons of Jewish life were too narrow. In Putik’s opinion, Leibl’s testimony reflects that the main motivation for the conversion of Jews such as he was the desire to escape the minority group and join the majority. His grandfather sent him an imploring letter, which shows his great sorrow and how grave the disaster of Leibl’s conversion was for the family: “My beloved grandson, my boy Leibl, I swear to God,

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I will give you ten times more than before. Every day you’ll get ten kreutzer, and I’ll have two sets of clothing made for you.” But nothing swayed Leibl’s determination. The advantages of life among the majority, with fewer limitations, seemed far more interesting and exciting than what his family could offer him when they tried to tempt him with gifts and promises of a rich bride, and, as a Christian bearing the name of Joseph Constance, after growing up, he made a military career for himself.19 Conversion of the Jews was regarded as a primary theological aim even among those who represented a tolerant attitude within the Christianity of the time. In the year when Leibl converted in Prague, a Calvinist clergyman, Jacques Basnage, published his History of the Jews (L’Histoire des juifs) in Rotterdam (1706–1707). This book was translated into English two years later, and for decades it was the central book from which both Jews and Christians learned about nearly seventeen hundred years of Jewish history, from the destruction of the Temple until the beginning of the eighteenth century.20 Basnage, who was born in France, like his friend Pierre Bayle and many others took refuge in Holland. With his impressive Hebraist and classical scholarly training, he wished to continue from where Josephus left off and trace the history of the Jews in their exile in systematic fashion and with a critical approach that examined the sources of the past with a rational and philological eye, rejecting baseless legends, and presenting their religion and literature in their full extent. Their conversion was, in his eyes, inevitable and necessary for the completion of the divine plan for redemption. Nevertheless, one must not stand idly by, and it was a Christian duty to persuade the Jews that they were in error, but coercion contradicted the will of Providence. Basnage believed that God, for reasons known only to Him, had kept them from general conversion until some unknown time. Indeed, with respect to proper behavior toward the Jews, Basnage included many calls for tolerance and moderation in his history book. In the introduction, he wrote that there was no sense in blaming the Jews for every disaster and crime, there was neither justice nor mercy in the violence directed against them, in exposing them to riots and execution, there was no truth to the blood libels, and the cruelty of the Catholic Inquisition was insufferable. Within this sacred Christian story, in which the Jews are first of all those who sinned, who rejected Jesus, and who were punished for their blindness with exile and a life of humiliation and suffering, he included what he regarded as the miracle of their survival. Basnage declared that “il n’y eut point de Miracle que Dieu ne fit depuis ce tems-là, pour conserver ce Peuple, qu’il avoit adopté” [there is no miracle that God has not done since then to conserve the

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people He adopted], and what believing Christian would not be astonished and impressed by the success of this despised and persecuted nation to continue to exist. In his anger at the inhuman attitude toward the Jews, we already hear an echo of the early Enlightenment advocacy of religious tolerance. He speaks of the thousands of Jews slaughtered by cruel and barbarous fanaticism, which did not weaken or destroy them. They still exist, he said, despite the persecution of Christians and pagans, who joined forces to destroy them.21 Heinrich Graetz, who sought harbingers of religious tolerance toward the Jews in the early eighteenth century, attributed great importance to Basnages’s History of the Jews in that historical turning point. For the first time, a Christian theologian proved that the Jewish people had a history of its own, even after Jesus, and that the historical facts show that many of the Christians’ accusations against Judaism were baseless, and that the attacks against Jews were unjust. However, this turning point, in Graetz’s opinion, remained without any response, because only very few Jews were sensitive enough to feel the change that he was proclaiming.22 In the preface to the second, expanded edition of 1716, Basnage himself expressed the hope that the Jews would read his book and find information previously unknown to them. This expectation was indeed fulfilled, for, until the beginning of the nineteenth century and the publication of the Geschichte der Israeliten (1820–1829) by Marcus Jost, Basnage’s book was almost the only source available to those wishing to study the continuum of Jewish history. One of the first Jews to consult it was Moses Hagiz: “I found in a book printed in Rotterdam in 1706, in their calendar, by scholar named Basnage, in the part that he calls Historia Judaica or Continuation of Josephus, though he wrote quite a few pages against the Talmud, in the end, against his will, he had to praise it.”23 In these few lines, Hagiz took note of the inner tension in Basnage, who was torn between sacred and secular history, between Christian theology and critical, tolerant, humanist. Adam Sutcliffe sums up Basnage’s dual position: “[His] rationalist objectivity and tolerance is repeatedly undercut by his Calvinist theology. He attempted to study Jewish history simultaneously as an objective historian and as a doctrinally committed pastor.”24 Thus, at the beginning of the century, Basnage stood between two worlds, with one foot planted in the trend toward religious tolerance, which would be the most important banner of the Enlightenment, and his other foot in the Christian world, which still was offended by the obstinacy of the Jews and their loyalty to a messianic future. The Jews, he says, constantly hope for a splendid return to their status and their land, which will raise them above all the nations on earth.25

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A postate s, Li bel s, Tort u r e, a n d J u dici a l M u r der In 1710, in different corners of Europe, two converts from Judaism appeared whose personal change of heart impelled them to make a mark upon their former brethren. The difference between them was great: the first apostate, in the spirit of Basnage, sought to persuade the Jews of the correctness of Christianity, and his critique of Judaism bore the signs of the new way of thinking; the second was hostile and belligerent, who sought to reveal the darkest plots of the Jews and to provoke hatred of them. In an English pamphlet published in London and addressing the Jewish reader’s common sense, John Xeres laid out the reasons the led him to abandon Judaism and embrace Christianity. He was an international merchant from Safi, Morocco, who formed ties with English businessmen, became involved in theological discussion, apparently went bankrupt, and then moved to England, where he converted in 1709. His pamphlet was intended to supply further theological weapons to open the eyes of the Jews, and in it one hears the polemical missionary voice of his spiritual guide, the Huguenot pastor Pierre Allix, who had become an Anglican. However, Xeres also made his personal, rebellious Jewish voice heard, combining criticism of Catholicism with rationalist, anti-clerical criticism of the Oral Law, of excessive rabbinical authority, and of their policy of stifling free thought. In his short Hebrew introduction, he writes: “How shall I respond to the Jews, who call themselves Israel and read the Bible like Karaites, and thus they oppose messianic [i.e., Christian] teachings and the Holy Trinity.” He expressed the hope that his readers would be able to ignore their prejudice against apostates and heed logical arguments, to accept proofs from scripture that justify the step that he took. His father wanted him to be a rabbi, and he studied with the best teachers, becoming an expert in Talmud. He went to Spain twice and Portugal three times, and there he spoke with Christians, but even though he was under the protection of the Inquisition (apparently as a candidate for conversion), he was repelled by the coerciveness of the Catholic conversion policy. When he understood that this path contradicted the spirit of religion, and that the priests allowed no room for freedom of thought and independent examination of the religion, he found that their system was very similar to that which he had experienced with the rabbis. They also demand “entire respect to their Word and Authority, as to believe their Right Hand is their Left, if they please to affirm it.” In the name of common sense, Xeres declares, “this absolute Authority is good for nothing, but to force upon a Man the Profession of a false Religion, or to fix him immoveably in such a Profession, if he has the Unhappiness of being bred in it.”26

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Jan Serafinowicz, who converted in Lublin in April 1710, was a different sort of apostate. He was not a moderate person guided by common sense, but an intemperate convert, obsessed by the desire for revenge against his previous faith. It is said of him that he was an alcoholic who became entangled in debt. His godmother was none other than Elżbieta Helena Sieniawska, the wealthiest noblewoman among the Polish magnates. She owned many estates and possessed enormous property and authority. Serafinowicz’s involvement in the blood libel that began to develop in Sandomierz proved to be dangerous.27 Ten years had passed since the previous blood libel in that place, and once again a tempest broke out. Under the leadership of a senior priest, Stefan Żuchowski, a huge maelstrom of investigations, testimony, arrests, tortures, trials, and executions broke out. The body of a Christian orphan boy, Jerzy Krassowski, was discovered in the courtyard of the rabbi of the community, Jacob ben Samuel, on Friday, August 8, 1710, and the investigation led by the city prosecutor found traces of blood in the house. The rabbi, his son, and his son-in-law were arrested, and the incident was transferred to the royal court in Lublin, where the remnants of the body, from which, according to rumor, drops of fresh blood flowed, were sent in a chest. Other Jews were arrested and sent to a series of interrogations under torture. The judiciary processes were prolonged, and no one admitted guilt. The death sentence that was issued three years later affected only three of the accused, since the others had died on the torturer’s rack or during imprisonment. Abraham, the rabbi’s son, could not stand the suffering of the whipping that tore his body and the sight of the others, whose bodies were broken and crushed by the torturers, and after his father died he announced that he wished to convert to Christianity. When the trial was moved from Lublin to Sandomierz, Abraham had already become Michael, who gave incriminating evidence, according to which the Jews of the community were required to supply a quantity of Christian blood to their fellow Jews in the community of Rakow. Michael was only thirteen, but his conversion did not have a bit of free will, nor any prospect of a happier life, but rather dread and horror alone. On February 13, 1711, he testified that, “on Friday afternoon, before the boy was tortured to death,” he had seen a Jew who had come from Rakow and given his father a letter in Hebrew. The letter purportedly demanded that the community must cooperate and supply Christian blood, or the rabbi would be cursed and removed from his post.28 As shown by Pawel Maciejko, Serafinowicz’s purpose was not only to prove the guilt of the accused in this particular case, but in general to show that Jews always need Christian blood. Serafinowicz presented himself as an authority, capable of testifying from his personal experience, as a former member of the

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rabbinical elite, who had even taken part with his own hands in the murder of Christian children. The Jews used the blood in magical ceremonies, a young couple who married would receive an egg with Christian blood, and the Jews could not make matzot for Passover without the blood. Quite a few of these accusations and horrifying descriptions of obtaining the blood can be found in the long confession that he gave in 1719, a short time before his death in a Christian hospice in Gdansk.29 The threat inherent in Serafinowicz’s testimony and writing was seen as so serious that the leaders of the supra-communal committee of the Polish Jews, the Council of Four Lands, addressed his godmother, Sieniawska, asking her to organize a public religious dispute in Warsaw, to enable them to refute his arguments and slanders. However, Serafinowicz did not attend the dispute, to which senior governmental and ecclesiastical figures had been invited, and he disappeared. Sieniawska was disappointed, and on May 22, 1712, she published a strong statement in which she sided with the Jews: “Since the convert to the Catholic religion, Jan Serafinowicz, in his accusations against the Jews, which were published almost everywhere in the world, has not tried so far to confirm even one of them,” and “since the aforementioned Serafinowicz has fled, without my permission or knowledge, and without proving his propositions in any way, therefore, so that these and other Jews will no longer suffer because of slanders and suspicions, I grant them this document.”30 The document of protection was unable to influence the course of the trial itself, and in November 1713 three of the accused, who had survived imprisonment and torture, were sentenced to death and executed in Lublin, by decapitation with a sword. In Hebrew sources, a version of the prayer El Male Rah.amim (God, full of mercy) has been preserved, ending with a desperate plea for divine revenge for the deaths of “the holy Torah scholar our master rabbi Zecharia . . . his soul left him at the same time as the soul of the holy and pure Rabbi Shemariahu the son of Rabbi Eliezer . . . and the soul of the holy and pure Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman . . . he extended his neck for the slaughter, with broken hips and a shattered body, and the soul of the holy and pure Benjamin Zeev . . . who first went down to the stake to be burned with fire and sulfur, the burning of blazing torches . . . woe and alas, in shrieking and moaning and breakdown.”31 The opposite picture, that espoused by the Christians of Sandomierz, is preserved in colorful oil paintings in one of the local churches, perpetuating for generations the story of the blood libel from the beginning of the eighteenth century, showing the observer what appears to be wicked torture of helpless Christian children by bloodthirsty Jews. One of the paintings depicts the torture of Jerzy Krassowski by bearded Jews wearing black, strangling his neck with a scarf and pinching his naked body with pliers.32 Gershon Hundert sums

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up the Sandomierz incident: “Thus, both the Crown and the highest reaches of the Church hierarchy supported the procedure that led to the judicial murder of seven Jews.”33 The king of Poland, Augustus II, the same Saxon ruler for whom Behrend Lehmann worked, even acceded to the request to punish all the local Jews, and on April 28, 1712, he signed a royal edict, which, even though it was not actually carried out, hovers like a threatening sword: to expel all the Jews of the community and to make the synagogue into a church. The violence did not stop at the Polish border. In the same year as the verdict was issued in Lublin, Menachem Amlander of Amsterdam had an experience on the famous bridge in Prague which, even thirty years later, he was unable to erase from his memory: The Gentiles placed a copper cross on the bridge over the river . . . and they tried to force the Jews to bow down to it, perish the thought, and to fool them they engraved the Name of God on it in Hebrew letters. . . . But the Jews observed a warning from the Torah, not to bow down to any image, and they passed by it without honoring it, and very often this aroused the anger of the students . . . and several times they killed them, as I saw myself in 1713, when a student smashed the head of a Jewish woman for that.34

Moreover, the danger from apostates seeking revenge, such as Serafinowicz, did not exist solely in Poland. In the winter of 1715 in the city of Lüdenscheid, in the Duchy of Cleve, an investigation sought the truth of an accusation of “an eighteen-year-old vagrant named Itsik Zosil . . . that the Jews hate the Christians so much that they will only sell meat to a Christian if they have urinated on it, and he said that he saw this every day at the butcher’s shop in Altona.” This was quickly proven to be a false accusation, made up by a young man in Prague whose crimes had led to his imprisonment and who had converted to free himself. However, he became involved in crime again, fled from the city, and wandered about in Europe, stealing to support himself, and changing his identity from time to time, converting once again: “He proposed that he wished to convert to the Roman Catholics once and another time to the Lutherans, and once again with the Calvinists, to get money.” After he was arrested, and his story was shown to be a falsehood, he tried to save himself with another plot, testifying that in the community of Nijmegen, Holland, he had seen how Jews slaughtered a Christian baby on Yom Kippur and squeezed its blood. But after an investigation, no truth was found in this story either, “and they arrested him in earnest, and he sat in harsh confinement for many years.”35 In parallel, the war of the books continued, with the aim of revealing the Jews’ secrets from their writings, and to protect against desecration. After

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Friedrich I of Prussia failed in his repeated efforts to convince the emperors of Austria to permit the circulation of Judaism Unmasked, in 1711 he decided to allow the printing of the book within the boundaries of his kingdom. Eleven years after it was printed and impounded in Frankfurt, seven years after Eisenmenger’s death, and beyond the reach of the Viennese Court Jews’ intervention, the book was finally published in Berlin, becoming a valuable source for those who wished to restrict the Jewish religion and defame it. In Prague, censorship of books increased in severity, and in 1712 a series of raids on Jewish homes began in search of books that, in the inspectors’ opinion, derided Christianity. In the inspection, the Jews’ books were sorted into categories based on the degree of danger, and out of 1,171 titles, 499 were condemned to be burned.36 Two years later, on July 17, 1714, an edict of Emperor Karl VI raised supervision of the Jewish library to a new level, demanding that every book imported into Bohemia must be submitted to inspection within six weeks, or it would be confiscated. Seven years after that order was in force, the censor in Prague estimated that the Jews owned about a hundred thousand forbidden volumes. The printing of books without prior inspection, their importation, and their possession were forbidden.37 Jacob Emden, who was not aware of this strict control, told about his trip to Prague in 1722: “Immediately upon my entry in this great city, which in any event is more dangerous than other great cities, because of the black priests [Jesuits] and their disciples, at customs several books of responsa by my father of blessed memory, which I had in my possession, were taken from me, and there it is very dangerous to bring Talmudic books to the city, because a royal decree was issued against it.”38 The crime of possessing books that allegedly defame Christianity caused disaster to the brothers Elkan and Hirsch Frankel, who, at the start of the century, managed to climb to the pinnacle of Jewish society in the Principality of Brandenburg-Ansbach, in northern Bavaria. One of them became the chief officer of the community of Fürth, in Schwabach, in 1709; the other became the chief Rabbi in Schwabach. However, they only managed to enjoy their high position for a few years. They were undone by bitter rivalry with another family of Court Jews, the Model family, by the vengeance of a relative, Jesse Frankel, who converted, by the mean spirit of Georg Appold, one of the ministers of the government, and by the banning of the books suspected of defamation of Christianity and of sorcery that were found in their homes. They were arrested and put on trial in 1712, putting an end to their career as community leaders.39 About five hundred Jewish families lived at that time among one hundred fifty thousand residents of this small principality, whose rulers, from the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty, established a baroque court for themselves, under French influence, seeking to

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attain a life of splendor and luxury with the help of the Court Jews. The resounding fall of the Frankel brothers cut short two paths of success in life: business and the rabbinate.40 In February 1712, a warrant for the arrest of the two brothers was issued, their homes were searched, their property and books were seized, and the trial of Elkan Frankel (1654–1720) was begun, separately, before that of his younger brother, Hirsch (1662–1740). The testimony that was heard presented Elkan Frankel as a corrupt Court Jew, who had acquired many enemies. In addition to accusations of irregularities in managing the business of the court and injury to the honor of the duke, he was also accused of hiring the services of a Jewish prostitute, of courting his sister-in-law, the rabbi’s wife, in dancing with women. Examination of the books he had received from his brother also led to an accusation of being a partner in the defamation of Christianity. The response of the accused, that this was a plot designed to overthrow him, despite his faithful service to the duke and the state, was rejected. Elkan Frankel was found guilty, and before being sent to life imprisonment in the fortress of Wülzburg, he was taken, on November 2, 1712, to the market square in Ansbach, and there he was whipped in public in a humiliating ceremony. Several months later, in mid-1713, Rabbi Hirsch Frankel was also sentenced to life in prison. The book Sefer hashba’ot, which was found in his house, in his case, made his connection with magic and his involvement with practical Kabbalah the main subject of his trial, and the court granted the authority to convict him to the scholars of the university of Altdorf. Was the rabbi a sorcerer, possessing dangerous powers? Did he endanger Christianity? Did he cooperate with his brother in order to exploit and damage? They inspected the books that the rabbi owned and found that condemnations of Christianity and Jesus were prevalent openly and in code words in many of them. Under interrogation, Rabbi Hirsch Frankel admitted that he was a Master of the Name, who could use magic spells, amulets, and various charms. He did deny that he had used black magic to do harm, but his interrogators discovered that he had the skills of a sorcerer, such as the ability to talk to the dead, to invoke the devil, to free people condemned to death, to curse enemies and kill them, in addition to abilities to cure such as spells for giving birth to sons and to restore potency. They accused him of teaching his brother how to become invisible and thus helping him to manage his business cunningly and to know what his rivals were planning several steps in advance. The verdict, which was signed on May 26, 1713, stated that he had already incriminated himself when he asked for the return of the book that had been confiscated, saying, “In this book there are magic spells against spirits, other spells, and rabbinical blessings . . . and if someone read it and didn’t understand it right, he would place himself in danger, lest some

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life-threatening disaster befall him.” The judges concluded that they had successfully revealed the false beliefs of the Jews, and in their books of Kabbalah and prayer books and prayers of repentance, they had found “an injury to the Savior of the world and defamation of the Christian faith.”41 In many states in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century as well, fear of the nefarious influence of books led implementation of control and censorship. In the case of the Jews, the book inspectors combated not only the threat against public order or the stability and legitimacy of the government, but also a theological opponent, and the punishment was severe. In this case, the erudite condemnation of the Jewish library, as though it were intended to strike at Christianity, destroyed the lives of the Frankel family. On May 19, 1713, Rabbi Hirsch began to serve a life sentence, kept in isolation and shackled in the Mauerburg fortress in Schwabach. His books and the valuables found in his home were confiscated, his family barely survived, and his wife, Raisele, fled to Frankfurt with their children. Elkan Frankel died in prison after eight years, but Hirsch survived twenty-three years until in 1736, Prince Karl Wilhelm Friedrich accepted the Jewish prisoner’s plea for a pardon, as he was seventy-four years old by then.42

John Tol a n d’s Prote st The entries in the calendar of events of 1714, the year when the War of the Spanish Succession ended, continue to report a rise in the level of suspicion of the Jews. In a memorandum of August 13, German and French merchants in Berlin addressed the government with a request to prevent competition from Jewish stores in the sale of luxury items, and in Frankfurt Christian merchants warned against Jewish competition in the popular items of consumption: coffee, tea, and sugar, arguing that the tradition of the segregation of this alien and inferior group must be preserved.43 No one who crossed the alte Brücke (the old bridge) over the Main on the way to Frankfurt could fail to see the mural with the crude caricature of the demonic and contemptible figure of the Jews. The Judensau (the Jew sow), was depicted, showing Jews in the company of Satan, riding on a sow, licking its rear end, and sucking on its teats, painted, and sculpted, or printed in etchings and woodcuts in various places in Central Europe in the Middle Ages, planting the repugnant image of the Jew in the heart of the multitude, by means of extremely influential visual propaganda. In 1714, an etching was printed based on the mural in Frankfurt. The Christian Hebraist and rector of the gymnasium in Frankfurt, Johann Jacob Schudt—we have already see how he documented everything that took place in this community at the

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beginning of the century—was the one who decided to publish the etching. As if the circulation of the Judensau were not enough, heading the picture from Frankfurt was a drawing of the tortured body of the infant Simon of Trent, who, according to the blood libel of 1475, had been murdered for ritual purposes. Even if Schudt did not support the claim that the Jews used Christian blood, publication of the picture of the helpless, naked, two-and-a-half-year-old child, whose entire body was spotted with stab wounds, could convince the believers of the Jews’ criminal intentions.44 Yet, in that very year, from the pages of an exceptional treatise, which was published in London, a different and contradictory voice was heard, suggesting a thoroughgoing change in thought about the Jews and policy toward them. This was the voice of the Irish political philosopher John Toland, who addressed public opinion in Britain, indeed in all Christian Europe, calling for a historical spiritual accounting. Toland was revolted by the suspicion, discrimination, plots, and persecution of the Jews during the centuries of Christian history, and he raised the doctrine of religious toleration from the school of Bayle and Locke to a new level, when he proposed that Parliament should include the Jews in the Law of Naturalization. The treatise was published in 1714 in an edition of 2,000, with the title Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland, with the universal motto taken from the Book of Malachi 1:10, “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” This was simultaneously a protest against religious fanaticism, “a Defense of the Jews Against All vulgar Prejudices in all Countries,” and a political initiative whose purposes was to help the Whig Party pass a naturalization bill that would include Protestants who were not Anglicans, despite the opposition of the rival Tory Party.45 Toland’s campaign for the naturalization of the Jews did not rest solely on abstract rational and humanistic principles, but also on close acquaintance with the restrictions imposed on them in several of the places in Europe that he had visited. “Tho their throats are not so familiarly cut as formerly,” they are treated with extreme severity. “I have been in several Cities, where they are infamously lock’d up every night, in a quarter by themselves, under a peculiar guard, as at Prague; and in others, as at Colen, they are not permitted to dwell within the City.” In his opinion, in the city of Cologne, rather than levying a daily fee on Jewish merchants entering the city to do business, they should encourage them to settle permanently and even grant them rights and communal autonomy, so they would develop the economy. Look, he said, how Lisbon declined following the expulsion of the Jews, and how Livorno has flourished since the settlement of the Jews there. In Italy, he was shocked to see that the Jews were marked by special items of clothing, a yellow hat in Rome and a red one in Venice, and it

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was known that the Jews of Poland were about a fifth of the total population; they enjoyed extensive autonomy and were free to study the laws of their religion, “yet they are treated little better than Dogs in the first place, and are often expos’d in the last to unspeakable Calamities.”46 Toland’s direct encounter with the Jews combined with his deist positions regarding the right to religious tolerance and with his commitment to liberal politics in the writing of The Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews. The treatise was written with compassion and sympathy for the fate of the Jews, and with admiration for the ancient Jewish religion, whose foundations were laid by Moses, one of the greatest legislators in human history, and, like Basnage, Toland was impressed by the very survival of the Jews as a nation even after years of oppression and persecution. His public campaign on behalf of the Jews was linked to the ambitious goal of effecting a dramatic change in all of humanity. “As soon as I declare that I mean the Jews, it will be easily conceiv’d, that my principal aim is not to be popular,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, tis manifest almost at first sight, that the common reasons for a GENERAL NATURALIZATION, are as strong in behalf of the Jews, as of any other people whatsoever.” The naturalization of the Jews, he argued, will add thousands of people who will contribute as producers, merchants, and consumers to the development and flourishing of Britain, as is already proven by the Jews in Amsterdam and London. Toland’s revolutionary treatise proposed for the first time that governmental institutions should include the Jews in civil society by means of legislation and marginalize the consideration of religious affiliation, and thus he presented the Jews as a case study for liberal values in general. In Toland’s view, the law of general naturalization was inextricably bound up with the value of freedom and the principle of freedom of conscience. He believed that there was no more glaring example of the subjection of Christian Europe to prejudice and fanatical clergymen. In contrast to the segregation of the Jews, suspicion of criminal acts, and discrimination of them in the name of popular religious beliefs (“Others will gravely tell you, that they may be distinguish’d by a peculiar sort of smell, that they have a mark of blood upon one shoulder, and that they cannot spit to any distance”), Toland presented the Jews as a human society that was no different from others. His anti-clerical sentiments burst out in anger when he pointed an accusing finger: “The Annals of all European nations are foully besmear’d with the [Jews’] blood, since Christianity got the mastery.” Religious fanaticism characterized both monarchs and the masses: but their most inveterate Enemies were the Priests, who devoutly offer’d up those human Sacrifices, not only to share their Goods with the rapacious Prince, but also to acquire the reputation of zeal and sanctity among the

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credulous vulgar. Every thing, in sort, tho ever so false or impossible, serv’d for a handle good enough to rifle, or expel, or slaughter the Jews. . . . [They were] made to be the cause of plagues, and famine, and every other disaster, that happen’d in the course of nature. . . . So dangerous and destructive a monster is SUPERSTITION, when rid by the Mob, and driven by the Priests.47

In that Toland’s Reasons retold the story of the bloody relations between Jews and Christians in fifty pages, very bluntly overturning the relations between criminal and victim and composing a comprehensive indictment against Christian Europe and a defense brief for the Jews of Europe, they swam against the stream with great difficulty. Toland was already suspected of religious and political subversion, and, as Justin Champion writes, “Toland’s Reasons was published then into an ideological environment, hypersensitive and hostile to discussions of naturalization. . . . To advance the cause of Jewish naturalization was to be considered beyond the pale.”48 Toland’s position was exceptional even among the English deists of his time. Their struggle for free thought and against the flaws the found in Christianity continued to exploit the strategy of revealing ancient Judaism as flawed from the foundations and contradictory to the values of reason and morality.49 Contrary to the author’s expectation, Reasons did not arouse public discussion and was not taken seriously by the government. It took another generation before an opening occurred for the naturalization of the Jews in the colonies with the Plantation Act of 1740, and about forty years until a debate was held in the Parliament in London on the Jew Bill (1753). Almost seventy years passed before a broad public and far more principled political discussion began in Prussia, at the beginning of the 1780s, on the conditions for the naturalization of the Jews. Only one response appeared, in which the anonymous author warned that if the Jews were naturalized, they would infringe the rights, freedoms, customs, and privileges of the English, they would take over the stock exchange, and they would be less likely to convert.50 However, Toland’s revolutionary treatise, although it failed in the effort to shift public opinion to new directions, and although it aroused no significant reverberation, did not come before its time. It was inspired by the values of Enlightenment, which had been developing since the turn of the century, and its motive force was religious tolerance, which advanced new philosophical and political thinking. Perhaps, for example, when Montesquieu placed the claim in the mouth of one of the protagonists of his Persian Letters that Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance against the Jews that animated them, perhaps he was thinking about Toland’s Reasons.51

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“Woe, You A r e a Sinfu l Nation, O House of Isr a el, a Peopl e Wa lk ing in Da r k ne ss a n d Gloom” Beyond the world of ideas and printed books, the Toland’s treatise of 1714 could not actually advance what in retrospect might be seen as the process of the political emancipation of the Jews. Contrary to his principles, the rivalry between the religions and the desire to preserve the purity of faith influenced relations between Jews and Christians to a considerable degree. In the memory of the Jewish communities of Poland at that time, the image of “the holy and pure woman, the matron, Miss Adel, the daughter of the head and leader, Moses Kikinish,” who was executed on 27 Elul 5478 (September 23, 1718) after she took upon herself the full responsibility in the trial for the blood libel of the Drohobycz community in Ukraine. On the eve of Passover, her Gentile servant woman placed the body of a child in her house, whom, she admitted, she had murdered upon the order of her mistress, for ritual purposes, and Adel was arrested along with several leaders of the community. “The priests said they would spare her life if she converted, and they tried hard to tempt her to do so,” the tradition on Adel continues, “and the woman was very beautiful, young, and her husband was great in money and property, and her family was held highly among the Jews, and she refused in her righteousness to abandon the Lord, and she died with joy for sanctifying His great Name.”52 Basnage’s survey of the present state of the Jews all over the world found that there were far worse places for them than Poland. In his opinion, Judaism could flourish there, and the Jews could find refuge. Like Toland, Montesquieu, and others, Basnage was aware of the revival of the Catholic Inquisition against Judaizers. Toward the end of this survey, Basnage wrote that, while the Pope honored the Jews under his protection, the kings subject to his discipline treated them with barbaric severity. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition offered them only one of two alternatives: to live as hypocrites or to be burned at the stake.53 Indeed, while Toland published the Reasons for religious tolerance and the naturalization of the Jews in London, following the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, which placed Philip V of the House of Bourbon on the throne, a new wave of violence against “the crime of Judaism” arose on the Iberian Peninsula. No openly Jewish people were present there, but the suspicion that clung to New Christians, the descendants of formerly Jewish families, only grew stronger. The ambition to purify Christian faith, to uncover Judaizers, to force them to repent, and to punish them severely motivated a struggle against Judaizing, led by the Inquisition. After several years of efforts at reform, to

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increase the power of the state and its superiority to the church, the direction changed. Jonathan Israel states that the victorious Spanish Inquisition renewed its authority and discovered exactly how to recover its prestigious status among the illiterate and superstitious. In 1718, it began a comprehensive and radical campaign in Spain and Portugal, and, with investigation, torture, and punishment, it succeeded in suppressing the remaining marranos.54 In the spring of 1720, for example, a report reached London from the embassy in Madrid that the Inquisition had condemned eleven Jews, and three of the women among them were sentenced to be burned at the stake. Two of them repented, were interrogated, and then burned, but Margarita de Yuste, a beautiful twenty-two-year-old seamstress, refused. She was not intimidated into denying her religion. They held her near the fire for some time, hoping that, like the two old women who preceded her, she would be frightened and repent. But she pushed away the cross that was held out to her, shook off the people who were holding her, and, saying she was going to the true God, without sinning by idolatry, she rushed into the flames.55 In the first thirty years of the century, 165 auto-da-fes were held in Spain, and eighty-six in Portugal. The research of Michael Alpert shows that, starting in 1715, these frightening ceremonies were held almost every month, and the tribunals of the Inquisition were active in many cities in Spain. Most of the accused were declared to be Judaizers, and between 1700 and 1725, some 113 men and women were executed at the stake, and this large number of victims of the Inquisition is apparently an underestimate. According to Alpert, “both in Portugal and in Spain, on the eve of the century of the Enlightenment, the Inquisition was still energetically pursuing crypto-Judaism among the descendants of the New Christians of the fifteenth century. Secret Judaism, astonishingly, was still alive and would call forth a still more fierce and bloody response in the first decades of the eighteenth century.”56 Alpert also shows that the investigation files are full of the personal stories of the accused and describing in detail the tortures they underwent, the temptation to reduce pain in return for confession and repentance, and the humiliating ceremonies that accompanied the pubic punishment. On March 15, 1722, Isabel da Paz was found guilty by the Inquisition tribunal of Toledo, that, although she had been baptized as a Christian, “has gone back to the old and superseded Law of Moses, performing its rites and ceremonies, believing that she can be saved in that Law, committing the crimes of an Infidel, Heretic and Apostate from our Holy religion.” Whereas she repented and was pardoned, seven months later (October 28, 1723), in the same place, Diego Lopez de Castro, a fifty-one-year-old merchant, was executed after a spy was placed in his cell and reported as evidence of his Judaism that he

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changed his clothing and underwear on Fridays and did not touch pork, blood sausage, or rabbits.57 Some forty years were to pass before the humanistic argument against corporal and capital punishment grew stronger. One of the most significant of these is Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which was joined by Moses Mendelssohn’s protest against torture, which barbarism permitted itself to employ. Meanwhile, many Jews were suffering in jail cells and tortured elsewhere in Europe as well. The Inquisition was not alone in breaking the bodies of the accused by torture. One of the harshest testimonies to this practice from the 1720s is found in the Megilah, written by the Court Jew from Hanover, Isaac Behrens, to tell how, because of debts and plots, the great firm founded by his grandfather, Leffmann Behrens, collapsed, and how he managed to survive the years of imprisonment, until a personal Purim miracle took place, and he was released.58 The two young grandchildren, Gumpel (1690–1738) and Isaac (1695–1765), barely had a chance to enjoy the status of Court Jew and the protection granted to them in 1720 by the prince elector of Hanover and king of England, George I, before grave accusations were lodged against them and criminal proceedings were initiated. When Isaac was on the way to the fair in Leipzig, on the eve of Passover in that year, soldiers of Prince Leopold arrested him, and he was only released after the intervention of the ruler of Hanover and paying the enormous fine of two thousand thalers. This incident, however, was negligible compared to the dramatic change that took place in the lives of the brothers Isaac and Gumpel Behrens a year later. On April 1, 1721, only two hours after they had left Hanover on a business trip, an urgent warrant for their arrest was issued, in the wake of a rumor that the brothers had gone bankrupt and were fleeing from the city with the intention of cheating their creditors and concealing their property with Behrend Lehmann, Isaac Behren’s father-in-law. The brothers were brought back to Hanover under heavy guard, their homes were searched, all their property was registered and sealed, their documents were seized, and after a short period of house arrest they were transferred to a prison and repeatedly interrogated in an effort to force them to confess their crimes.59 The story of the fall of the Behrens grandsons became a sensational news item, and rumor circulated on the Jewish communications networks. Jacob Emden did not conceal his pleasure at the downfall of this wealthy and famous family, who lost everything. In his memoirs, Emden tells how fortunate he was not to have been entangled in that web. When he traveled from Hamburg to Frankfurt on his way home, he had lodged in Hanover with Gumpel Behrens just a few days before the disaster struck him. He reported: “He and his brother Rabbi Ephraim [Isaac] were still at the height of their honor. I dwelled there

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for a few days, and they treated me with every respect and prepared a special, honorable room for me.” But that very week, a few days after he left, the brothers were in enormous trouble. They lost the great wealth they had inherited from their ancestors and also destroyed that of others, an enormous and terrible sum, and they lost it in bad business. Emden boasted about the honor accorded to him by the wealthy Jew, but he was far from sympathizing with him. Moreover, he placed the blame upon him and his brother, condemning them for wasting the family’s wealth. At that time, Emden thought only about his own good fortune, thanking God that he was not in their house when the officials came to seize the property, for then he would have lost all his luggage, “If I had not rushed to leave the house before the officers of the court came to seal everything that was there after their flight.”60 The Megilah, written by the twenty-six-year-old Jewish prisoner Isaac Behrens, delivers the intimate and painful voice of an individual in distress, whose body was worn down during five long years in prison. This is one of the most detailed accounts of a Court Jew who laments his bitter fate after falling into the talons of the law, the claims of creditors, and the interrogations. He sought to present his version of the affair, to deny categorically the claim that was leveled against his brother and him—that they had gone bankrupt and purposely concealed their property—claiming that even while he was in prison, they proposed various plans for paying the debts. Though the story is one of a dramatic downfall, it is written in the most balanced style possible, not accusing anyone explicitly, nor condemning those responsible for his imprisonment, or the prison guards and torturers. However, the descriptions of life in prison, the many restrictions, the effort to maintain a routine of prayer and eating only kosher food, which was prepared by a Jewish cook, and requests to permit visits of the prisoners’ wives, and the complex legal processes—all these together paint a picture of his suffering. Isaac realized how grave the situation was when he was taken in the middle of the night to the prison in the Cleve Tower, and after a short time of house arrest he was forced to part from his wife. “Imagine,” he remembered in pain, “what lamentation and commotion there were in the house.” On Thursday, August 21, 1721, the order was given to shackle the accused: [They placed] a thick iron rod between our feet with two rings around our ankles and locked them, and this is called “irons.” Our legs cannot spread farther than the length of the iron rod. . . . From the middle of the iron a thick chain extends, which is connected to the arm with a ring, that is also locked. An order was given to open it when we ate or prayed. Except for that,

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it was locked, day and night. . . . It is easy to describe how oppressive the iron rod was, first because it was heavy, and second because it prevented us from walking. We could not get from the table to the bed. In addition, we could not lie down comfortably. . . . This was almost impossible to bear, and our legs swelled.61

Some two and a half years passed in terrible conditions in prison. On February 12, 1724, it was decreed that they were to be interrogated under torture, to extract a confession, and toward the end of May they were transferred from the prison to the city hall, where the torture cellar was. “They showed me the court order that permitted torture,” wrote Isaac Behrens, “and they encouraged me to confess to the charge and tell the truth, or else I would be brought down into the dungeon, and the order would be carried out.” Afterward, they presented the hangman to him, the man responsible for torture, and without delay a violent procedure began: “The hangman began to shout with a horrible voice, and at the same time he hit me on the head several times and tore off my sidelocks; not a hair remained on my head. In short, he acted with me in such a terrible way that I screamed that maybe in the end we could reach a peaceful arrangement.” During evening prayers, Behrens reports, “I gathered as many confessions as possible, and I prepared myself like a man ready to meet his death.” For two and a half hours, his body was tortured in the dungeon. He suffered shouts and blows without cease, he was told to undress, the torture device called Spanish boots crushed his feet, his arms were stretched, ropes tightened his shoulders, and drops of sulfur and tar burned his back. The prisoner Behrens screamed in pain and fainted several times, but his torturers roused him and did not stop until “I collapsed, and my whole body was broken.”62 Isaac Behrens’s Megilah did not merely recount yet another bloody chapter in the relations between Christians and Jews. It mainly revealed, in a unique autobiographical document, the physical feelings of the naked, tormented body. Born to the Jewish aristocracy, the son-in-law of Behrend Lehmann, the Court Jew of Saxony, Poland, and Prussia, became a prisoner, bound in chains, and struggling to stay alive. Nothing in the Megilah refers to the rivalry between the religions. This was the story of an individual facing other individu­ als, who tore his body apart and caused him unspeakable pain. At no stage during those five years, not even in the torture chamber, did the two brothers admit they intended to declare bankruptcy, and in that respect their enemies failed completely. However, after his and his brother’s night of torture, the attitude toward them changed. Even the torturing hangman, whose name Isaac knew, visited him and advised him how to mitigate his pain and hasten his recovery.

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Violence and mercy dwelled together. “They had to take care of me like an infant who can’t do anything by himself,” Isaac recounts. “They had to put the food in my mouth.” His wife, Leah, received permission to visit him often and take care of him. The great contradiction in the fragile lives of the Court Jews found expression here. While in the early 1720s her father continued to be occupied with the international politics of Europe, and, as noted, even presented a plan for the partition of Poland, his daughter, the mother of seven children, the wife of the prisoner Isaac Behrens, himself the grandson of the Court Jew who secured the title of prince elector for George I, did everything she could to save her husband’s life. She interceded for him with the government, took care of his food and the conditions of his imprisonment, and cared for him in his cell in the prison until he recovered from the wounds of his torture, was liberated, and deported from Hanover.63 Another violent episode came to a head in the early summer of 1722 in the small community of Aussee, Moravia, once again illustrating, with a single extreme event, the sensitivity of the Christians and the vulnerability of the Jews living among them. Three leaders of the community were removed from prison to execute the sentence of lashing that had been issued against them: “One after another they will be tied, naked to the waist, fastened tightly to the stake in the center of the market, and they will be beaten by the officer with whips and scourges, each one thirty blows on his naked back and body, and in the presence of all members of the community, so that the House of Israel will hear and no longer act criminally.” After absorbing the lashes and being marked as criminals, the three were expelled and took refuge in Poland: “They swore their feet would never tread on the land of his highness the emperor all their lives, forever, at the loss of their souls, and afterward their houses were sold, and they went to the Poland.” These personal corporal punishments were only part of the collective punishment that destroyed the community. On the second day of the Shavuot holiday (May 23, 1722), which fell on the Sabbath, a scene of radical public humiliation took place: the destruction of the synagogue. “The distinguished leaders of the community, the notables and the wardens, gave the keys of the synagogue to the municipal officers, and with them were workers and day laborers to destroy and tear down the building of the synagogue at the expense of the community.” Weeping Jews and cheering Christians stood in the street and watched as they smashed the wooden roof and demolished its beams, how they undermined the dome with iron tools until it collapsed, how they tore out the windows and the grates, and afterward broke the stone walls, and all this was accompanied with crude actions and insulting shouts: “This one relieved

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himself on the wall of the synagogue in public, that one urinated on the wall, and the other one opened his mouth without restraint and shouted words of mockery and laughter and frivolity against the Jews who lived there in the street in the neighborhood of the synagogue, to make them angry.”64 The public destruction of a synagogue by special order of the emperor of Austria was, at that time, an exceptional and perhaps even unique event. It is described in detail in another Megilah, composed at the same time as that of Isaac Behrens, and it, too, recounts an evil decree and rescue. Megilat sedarim, written in emotional and dramatic style by the intercessor for the Aussee community, Abraham ben Mordecai Broda, is a chronicle that perpetuated for generations the memory of the miracle that took place for the one hundred twenty families of the community. Only thirty years later, in 1753, did Jewish intercession manage to persuade Maria Theresa to overturn her father’s decision and to permit the existence of public Jewish houses of worship. It all began with a violent incident in the synagogue and with the provocation of the priest, Samuel Gelinek, who burst into the Yom Kippur prayers in (September 9, 1721) and condemned the Jewish religion with defamatory words and deeds: “He went to the pulpit of the cantor reciting the Kol Nidrei prayer, opened his mouth without restraint before the cantor, and spat his spit into his face, he struck the open holiday prayer book, lying on the reading stand, with his cane, in front of the cantor, confused the prayers, and shouted out loud, ‘Woe, you are a sinful nation, O house of Israel, a people walking in darkness and gloom,’ and he cursed and berated the Jewish religion very greatly.”65 A commotion broke out in the synagogue. The prayer was suspended, four community officials tried to calm him down, and finally they grasped him “strongly and started to remove him from the synagogue, and he struggled with them until the dust from the floor rose very high,” but the door was locked from the outside. In those minutes, the Christian servant woman who served as a Sabbath goy fled. “She ran out into the darkness in front of the market in the streets of the city and shouted out loud and roared, ‘The Jews are in their synagogue, the whole community, from young to old, and they raised their hand against our lord the deacon, quickly run to the synagogue of the Jews and save him from the hand that strikes him, and do not delay, because the noise in the synagogue is so great that they are almost killing him.’” An angry crowd gathered immediately, ran to the synagogue, and broke in. The women sitting on the second floor were stricken with panic and tried to flee by the stairs descending from the women’s section: “They ran, one after the other, and the women pushed and shoved each other from the passage down from the balcony, until

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several women fell one after the other, and pregnant women, because of the great fear and noise, aborted their fetuses.” Fortunately, the deacon calmed his rescuers down and told them that his life was not in danger. The crowd dispersed, the prayer resumed, but the official response to the incident was first placed in the hands of the local authorities, then with the government of Moravia, and finally with Karl VI himself. Did the Jews of Aussee really commit a severe crime and violently attack a Christian clergyman? The community officers who tried to expel the deacon were arrested, but, in light of the testimony of the victim himself, there was a good chance of their being freed. Ultimately the vengeful informing of a Jew, a member of the community, turned the case against them. Joseph, the son of Rabbi Issachar Ber, joined the group of emissaries from the community who visited the prisoners, and afterward he addressed the city magistrate and told him that another Jew was involved in the incident, and his part in beating the deacon was greater than the rest. Investigation showed that the accusation was false, but things that he ostensibly heard from the prisoners served as an admission that violence was exerted. The emperor signed the sentence of the destruction of the synagogue, and the absolute prohibition against public Jewish prayer in Aussee. To prevent the intercession of the Court Jews of Vienna, the sentence and prohibition were kept secret until they reached the city governors and were carried out within a day, before there was time to prevent it.66 “The royal decree reached the municipal government on the first day of the Shavuot holiday, 5482 (1722),” Abraham Broda wrote in the style of the Book of Esther, “and immediately the municipal governors and the municipal scribe rose up onto the prayer platform during the reading of the Torah.” Once again, the sacred and autonomous space of the Jews was violated in the midst of religious rites. From the pulpit, in the German language, the severe orders of the emperor were heard, the command to destroy the building. It was impossible to conceal the officials’ schadenfreude: “And the municipal authorities said, you, House of Israel, the whole community, with your own ears you have hear the verdict passed upon you by our Lord, his Highlaeness, the Emperor, and therefore now give us the keys to the men’s and women’s sections, and clear out of the synagogue and go home, for we are destroying and obliterating and ruining the synagogue from top to bottom to the foundations.”67 The end result of the blow to the honor and body of the Christian clergyman was humiliating corporal punishment and also violent punishment against the building that symbolized more than any the Jewish presence of the Jews in the Christian public sphere. In the 1720s, Voltaire joined in the protest against fanaticism and violence, which had begun at start of the century. He had then begun to take his first

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steps toward fame as the most determined fighter of all against superstitions, prejudices, and injustice in the name of religion. His daring in sinking the sharp teeth of criticism into the institutions of government and the church led to suspicion of subversion, and in 1717 he was imprisoned in the Bastille by special order of the king. In those early years, his attitude toward the Jews, which was characterized throughout his life by mixed and contradictory emotions, also began to take shape. Thus, for example, in 1722, he passed on information about the Jews of Metz that allegedly incriminated them for espionage on behalf of Austria, and he added venomous sentences about the treacherous nature of the Jews.68 But in his epic poem, “La Henriade” of 1724, one of Voltaire’s first developed literary works, which made him famous in Europe, he launched a furious attack against religious zealotry, which had led to such dreadful bloodshed throughout history, and he also included lines that condemn the Inquisition: “In Madrid, in Lisbon, they light those fires,/ Pyres where Jews are sent in sorrow/ By priests, every year, with pomp,/ For not abandoning the faith of their ancestors.”69 In 1723, the first volume of Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples représentés par des figures dessinées by Bernard Picart appeared. In this work, two French Protestant refugees, who took refuge in Amsterdam, the author and illustrator, Picart, and the publisher Jean-Frédéric Bernard, criticized the Catholic Inquisition. An etching published in the book, describing the torture chamber in Madrid and the horror of a tortured body, testified powerfully to the cruel violence of the Inquisition, provoking the reader to consider the question of the logic and justice of the religious outlook in general. Picart hoped that even those who respected religion would understand that they had to condemn the clergy and their evil influence, for any human being is repelled and horrified by torture.70 In the same year, James Anderson drafted the regulations of the Freemasons lodge in London, opening the door of that society, in principle, to all religions, on the basis of the laws of ethics and tolerance. These societies in Western and Central Europe were among the first to enable voluntary social unification, crossing borders and rising above country and religion. Nine years after the bylaws were drafted, the first Jewish member was accepted, Edward Rose, in the London lodge. Jacob Katz, who made a thorough study of the encounters between Jews and Freemasons and the contradictory trend of segregation and integration that was current among the latter, found great significance in this social and cultural milieu and a harbinger of the future: “Here we are in the deist atmosphere of the eighteenth century and indifference to a person’s connection with religions and histories.”71

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In the daring novel by Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress, which was published in London in 1724, the author sketched the figure of a repulsive and demonic Jewish diamond merchant. Like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, Lady Roxana, his heroine, the daughter of a French Protestant family who took refuge in England, successfully repaired her shattered life after being abandoned by her husband. She did all she could, she says, to gain hope for a happy life for herself. The ethos of personal success is expressed, in her case, in the unique story of an ambitious woman, who, by means of intrigue and the charms of her body, attains money, sexual freedom, social status, and, mainly, independence. When she wants to sell her valuable diamonds in Paris, she is put in contact with a Portuguese Jewish merchant from Holland who lives in France, and he tries to cheat her. She says, “As soon as the Jew saw the jewels I saw my folly, and it was ten thousand to one but I had been ruined, and perhaps put to death in as cruel a manner as possible.” He threatens her at their very first meeting: “[He] put himself into a thousand shapes, twisting his body and wringing up his face this way and that way in his discourse, stamping with his feet, and throwing abroad his hands, as if he was not in a rage only, but in a mere fury. Then he would turn and give a look at me like the devil. I thought I never saw anything so frightful in my life.” The heroine’s protectors finally thwart the “wicked things” of “that dog of a Jew.” However, Defoe supplied a humiliating punishment for that Jewish diamond merchant, arousing hostile feelings toward him. The servant of the prince who had taken Roxana under his protection, treated him, as the French call it, à coup de baton—that is to say, caned him very severely, as he deserved; and that not satisfying him, or curing his insolence, he was met one night late upon the Pont Neuf, in Paris, by two men, who, muffling him up in a great cloak, carried him into a more private place and cut off both his ears, telling him it was for talking impudently of his superiors; adding that he should take care to govern his tongue better and behave with more manners, or the next time they would cut his tongue out of his head.72

Mose s M a rcus, Glik l’s Gr a n dson This chapter in the biography of the Jews of the eighteenth century, which opened several windows on the tangled relations between Christians and Jews, starting with the rumor that arrived in London about the German priest who paid with his life for acknowledging the superiority of Judaism and wanted to convert, ends with the painful conversion to Christianity of a young man from

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an elite Ashkenazic family of London. On May 24, 1724, Moses Marcus sent a short letter in English, written in Amsterdam, to his parents Mordecai and Friedchen Hamburger. He apologized to them for being seduced into conversion and announced that now he had changed his mind: “but as I was born a Jew so I will Die a Jew I go here to Sinagogue & Live as a Jew ought to do so I hope God Almighty will pardon my Sins.”73 Moses Marcus, who was born in 1701, was the eldest son of a successful Jewish couple who had emigrated from Hamburg to London. Mordecai was a wealthy diamond merchant who made an enormous fortune in eight years (1713–1721), while he was living in India, first in the French colony of Pondicherry and then in the English colony of Madras. Friedchen, as we have seen, was the daughter of Glikl. When Mordecai returned from India to resume his high place in the Jewish society of London, a surprise awaited him, which shattered his world. His son Moses, was then only twenty and had high hopes were pinned on him that he would bring prestige to the family as a Torah scholar and rabbi, told him that while he was studying in Hamburg he had met Protestant scholars, was attracted to Christianity, and began to be convinced of its truth. On January 1, 1723, Moses Marcus had converted to the Anglican Church. His father immediately disowned him, and, as had happened in previous cases, the apostate son went to court to require his father to continue supporting him with money, as had been stipulated by the Act of Parliament of 1702. David Ruderman, who reconstructed the Marcus case, found special interest in it, giving it great significance in the development of relations between Christian Hebraists and Jews at the beginning of the century. Moses Marcus’s rabbinical education enabled him to become one of the agents of communication and dialogue between the two communities and to mediate between Judaism and Christianity among his fellow Anglicans. His conversion was never final or full, but it left him torn, moving back and forth between his old and new faiths. On the one hand, he could attack the Oral Law, and, on the other hand, he could defend Judaism from Christian criticism.74 His letter of supposed remorse to his parents in the spring of 1724 might have been intended to extricate him from the financial distress into which he had fallen, but it did not contain the truth. Later in that year he had returned to England, and, with the assistance of clergymen who supported him, he published a book containing more than a hundred pages, entitled The Principal Motives and Circumstances That Induced Moses Marcus to Leave the Jewish, and Embrace the Christian Faith.75 Five years after Glikl finished writing her personal memoirs in Yiddish in Metz, her grandson’s life story was published in England, and for two shillings one could read the account of his conversion. Like the works of other apostates, Marcus’s Principal Motives primarily served as Christian

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propaganda. He explained how his eyes had been opened, showed how the truth of Christianity could be proved from Jewish sources, and repeated the common claims that the Jews were living in darkness and error. However, Marcus’s memoir retains an independent voice even when the autobiographical introduction befits what is expected of him as a new Christian. He says he is a young man of twenty-three without experience in the world and presents himself to his readers as having fortunately been raised in a family of means, whose highest desire was to provide him a comfortable and happy life. His parents’ concern for him was unlimited, and they spared no expense to make him a great and happy man of the world. His family was well connected and well known among the Jews of Germany and Poland, he was the apple of his father’s eye, and when, at a young age, they saw that he was capable of study, his mother and father had invested in his education, so he could become a respected gentleman as well as a learned Jew and a rabbi. When his father went to India, his mother saw to his education. She sent him to Hamburg, where he learned European languages as well as Hebrew and Talmud. At the age of about nineteen, he had been ordained with the title of rabbi, but then he began to have contact with Christian clergymen, he read the New Testament for the first time, and he considered conversion. At first, his renewed meeting with his father, who had returned from India, in London, flooded both of them with feelings of love, but the son secretly continued his contacts with English clergymen, and at last he confessed to his father. In telling about the moment when his life changed completely, he wrote: “I could not but acquaint my Father, that we were in the greatest Error imaginable; at which Discourse he was surprised, and entreated me with the most endearing Words to desist from that notion, for it would be the Ruin of me, both in Soul and Body, and if I should turn Christian he would not allow me one single Farthing; but would rather spend a hundred thousand Pounds in Law against me, and would also seek Means that I should be destroy’d.” Mordecai Hamburger’s frustration was so great, that, in a rage, he drew “a Case-Knife” against his son.76 The cost of conversion was unbearable for Marcus, and his autobiography was, among other things, an accounting of the suffering caused by leaving Judaism. After the failure of the temptations and pressures to keep him in Judaism or to convince him to change his mind, threats ensued. On the day of his conversion, a group of Jews grabbed him by force. They took him into an inn and offered him money if he were to travel to Holland or Germany and become Jewish again, and when he refused they cursed him and threatened his life. He did not succumb but chose eternal happiness and not earthly happiness, and

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Marcus declared his commitment to his new religion. But this did not ameliorate his melancholic condition. His ties with the loving family with whom he had spent his childhood and youth disintegrated, and they became hostile, wishing to destroy him. He completely lost his comfortable life and the servants who had surrounded him, and he sank into financial distress and social isolation. The feeling of rejection stunned him: “I quickly found myself like a shipwrack’d Man, plunged in an Ocean of Hardship.” However, Moses Marcus did not blame his parents or the Jews in general for the sinking of the ship of his life. Rather, he saw it as an almost self-evident outcome his youthful rebellion against everything that was precious to him. His decision had been voluntary, based on conviction that he could expect a new and happy life. The decision had been made with the open eyes of someone who knew in advance that his life would change completely: “I left a great temporal Certainty for Uncertainty, and carnal Ease and Pleasure, for great Troubles and Afflictions.”77 The year 1724 was the last of Glikl’s life. She died on September 19, Rosh Hashanah, 5485. Did news reach her in Metz, more than six hundred kilometers distant, over land and sea, from London, about the events in the home of her daughter Friedchen? Did she know about her grandson’s letter of remorse, which had reached his parents about five years before her death? Or did she perhaps even know about The Principal Motives? Natalie Davis believes that this was rather likely, because, after the publication of the book, it would have been difficult for her daughter Friedchen to shield her from such a blow.78 During the last years of her life, Glikl no longer wrote in her journal, so it is impossible to know whether she followed the case of Moses Marcus. However, if Glikl did know about it, that pious, seventy-nine-year-old woman, who went to synagogue every day and warned her daughters that “we must be all the more careful then not to arouse the anger of our Father in Heaven,” but to hold tightly to the life rope that was thrown to us, “our holy Torah, that cautions us so that we may not drown,”79 her grandson’s conversion to Christianity not only caused sorrow and pain to his parents, and stained their family with shame and betrayal, but also crushed his grandmother’s heart.

Note s 1. See Maitlis, “London Yiddish Letters of the Early Eighteenth Century,” p. 242. 2. Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, 1, 2, pp. 115–117. 3. On the restrictions upon recitation of ‘Aleinu leshabeah., see Ludwig, Ernst Borowkski, Moses Mendelssohns und Georg David Kypke: Aufsätze über jüdische

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Gebete und Festen, aus archivalischen Akten (Königsberg, 1791); Ludwig Geiger, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin (Berlin, 1871), 1, pp. 16–19; 2, pp. 26–28; Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study, pp. 308–309; Jill Anita Storm, Culture and Exchange: The Jews of Königsberg 1700–1820, (dissertation, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, 2010), ch. 2. 4. Christian Otto Mylius, “Edikt wegen des Juden-Gebeths Alenu,” Corpus Constitutionum Marchiarum 5, no. 5 (Berlin 1737–1755), no. 15, pp. 41–147. 5. Borowski, Moseses Mendelssohns und Georg David Kypke, pp. 30–37. 6. Storm, Culture and Exchange: The Jews of Königsberg 1700–1820, ch. 2. 7. Jay Berkowitz, “Acculturation and Integration in Eighteenth Century Metz,” Jewish History 24, no. 3 (2010): 271–294. 8. Putik, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” pp. 28–37. 9. The correspondence between David Oppenheim in 1703 and the prince elector of Hanover, in Isaac Dov Feld, “H.aluqei avanim,” in Yes ­manh.­ilin, ed. Katzenellenbogen, pp. 441–442. 10. Journals of the House of Commons, 1316.11.1699–25.5.1702 (London, 1803), p. 748. 11. See Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, pp. 192–196, 798–800. 12. See, “Five Seventeenth-Century Christian Hebraists,” in Hebraica veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 286–308; Sutcliffe, Judaism and the Enlightenment, pp. 152–158. 13. Mikhtav ahava (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1702). A copy of this missionary propaganda pamphlet in Yiddish is found in the university library of Rostok, the Tichsen Collection of Hebraica and Judaica. See Marion Aptroot, “Writing ‘Jewish’ and not ‘German’: Functional Writing Styles and the Symbolic Function of Yiddish in Early Modern Aschkenaz,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 55 (2010): 127–128. 14. Johann Christoph Wagenseils, Benachrichtigung Wegen einiger die gemeine Jüdischheit betreffenden wichtigen Sachen (Leipzig, 1705), pp. 45–49. 15. Rabbi Stadthagen’s account of the dispute was published from a manuscript in Abraham Berliner, Religionsgespräch, Gehalten am Kurfürstlichen Hofe zu Hanover 1704 (Berlin: Louis Lamm, 1914). 16. Berliner, Religionsgespräch, Gehalten am Kurfürstlichen Hofe zu Hanover 1704: Schedlitz, Leffmann Behrens, Untersuchungen zum Hofjudentum im Zeitalter des Absolutismus, pp. 146–148; Rotraud Ries, “Die Residenzstadt Hanover als Kommunikationsraum für Juden und Christen um 1700,” in Leibniz und Judentum, ed. Daniel J. Cook, Hartmut Rudolph, and Christoph Schulte (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008), pp. 49–77.

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17. Wolf, “Der Prozess Eisenmenger,” pp. 431–432. 18. Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden 1, 2, pp. 460–462. 19. On conversion to Christianity in Prague and the episode of Leibl Altschul, see Putik, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and 18th Centuries,” pp. 37–55, 132–135. 20. Jacques Basnage, The History of the Jews from Jesus Christus to the Present Time (London, 1708). 21. Basnage, The History of the Jews, pp. 8–9, 748 (in the original: Jacques Basnages, L’Histoire et la religion des juifs, depuis Jesus-Christ jusqu’à present, vol. 1, p. 2). 22. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, X, pp. 289–293. 23. Moses Hagiz, Sefer mishnat h.akhamim (Wandsbek, 5493 [1733]), fol. 24a. 24. Sutcliffe, Judaism and the Enlightenment, ch. 4; Miriam Yardeni, “New Concepts of Post-Commonwealth Jewish History in Early Enlightenment: Bayle and Basnage,” European Studies Review 7 (1977): 245–258; Jonathan Elukin, “Jacques Basnage and the History of the Jews: Anti-Catholic Polemic and Historical Allegory in the Republic of Letters,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 603–630; Lester A. Segal, “Jacques Basnage de Beauval’s Histoire des Juifs: Christian Historiographical Perception of Jewry and Judaism on the Eve of the Enlightenment,” HUCA 54 (1983): 303–324; Gerald Cerny, Theology, Politics and Letters at the Crossroads of European Civilization: Jacques Basnage and the Baylean Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Republic (Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff, 1987), ch. 5. 25. Basnage, The History of the Jews, p. 748. 26. John Xeres, An Address to the Jews, Containing His Reasons for Leaving the Jewish and Embracing the Christian Religion (London, 1710). I am grateful to Professor Matt Goldish, who called my attention to this pamphlet and made the manuscript of his paper available to me: Matt Goldish, “A Convert among the London Conversos: New Light on the Oral Law Debate,” Association for Jewish Studies 35 (December 2003). 27. Adam Teller, “‘In the Land of their Enemies’? The Duality of Jewish Life in Eighteenth-Century Poland,” Polin 19 (2007): 431–436. 28. Joanna Torska-Bakir, Sandomierz Blood-Libel: Final Report 2006, University of Warsaw, ­w ww​.­researchgate​.­net​/­publication​/­266560162​ _Sandomierz ​_ BloodLibel​_ Myths​_ Final​_ Report​_ 2006; Gulden and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” pp. 125–128; Balaban, Letoldot hatenu’a hafranqit, pt. 1, pp. 55–60. 29. Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816, pp. 100–102; Maciejko, “Christian Accusations of Jewish Human Sacrifice in Early Modern Poland: The Case of Jan Serafinowicz,” Gal-Ed 22 (2010): 15–66 (citation from p. 17).

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30. Balaban, Letoldot hatenu’a hafranqit, p. 59; Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, I, p. 265; Rosman, The Lord’s Jew: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century, pp. 206–207. 31. Berenfeld, Sefer hadema’ot 3, pp. 229–230. 32. On the contemporary public attitude toward the blood libel in Sandomierz in the context of the pictures exhibited in the synagogue, see Torska-Bakir, Sandomierz Blood-Libel, Final Report 2006. 33. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 74–75. 34. Menachem Amlander, Sefer shearit yisrael (Jerusalem: Huminer, 1964), pp. 244–245. 35. Ibid., pp. 281–286. 36. Gershon Wolf, “Auto da Fe jüdischer Bücher in Prag 1714,” Hebraeische Bibliographie 6, no. 31 (1863): 35–29: Putik, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” p. 36. 37. Ibid., p. 108. 38. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 108. 39. On the case of the Frankl brothers, see Isak Nethanel Gat, The Sorcerer from Schwabach, The Process of the Chief Rabbi of the Brandenburg-Ansbach Principality, Hirsch Fränkel [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibuz Hameuchad, 2013); Gedalia Nagal, Ba’al Shem lemaasar ‘olam: goralo hatragi shel harav hirsh frankl (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1993); Siegfried Haenle, Geschichte der Juden im ehemaligen Fürstentum Ansbach (Ansbach, 1867); Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 256–257. 40. See Gat, The Sorcerer from Schwabach, ch. 7. 41. Nachricht von den bey Hirsch Fränckl gewesenen Rabiner der Hoch Fürstl: Brandenburg Onolzbachischen Landen Angesessenen Judenschaft angetroffenen Superstiose, oder wie es die Juden nennen practice Cabbalistischen (Onolzbach, 1713). 42. See Gat, The Sorcerer from Schwabach, chs. 11–15. 43. Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, 2, 2, p. 29: Liberles, The Jews Welcome Coffee, pp. 100–102. 44. Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 2, p. 257. On the motif of the Judensau in visual art and on the picture in Frankfurt, see Isaiah Shachar, The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and its History (London: Warburg Institute, Institute of London, 1974); Richard Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), p. 58. 45. Toland, Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland. 46. Ibid., pp. 42–43. 47. Toland, Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 22–25. 48. Justin Champion, “Toleration and Citizenship in Enlightenment England: John Toland and the Naturalization of the Jews, 1714–1753,” in Toleration

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in Enlightenment Europe, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 133–156. On Toland, see also Max Wiener, “John Toland and Judaism,” HUCA 16 (1941): 214–242; Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes, ch. 7; Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, ch. 11; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, pp. 234–237. 49. See Ettinger, “Yahadut be’einei hadeistim haangliim bameah ha-18,” pp. 57–87; Ettinger, “’Emdat hadeistim klapei hayahadut vehashpa’ata ‘al hayehudim,” Historia vehistorionim (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1993), pp. 215–224. 50. A Confutation of the Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews (London, 1715); Champion, “Toleration and Citizenship in Enlightenment England,” p. 146. 51. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, 60. 52. Berenfeld, Sefer hadema’ot, 3, pp. 232–233. 53. Basnage, The History of the Jews, pp. 747–748. 54. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740), pp. 566–584. 55. Ibid., pp. 574–575; Michael Alpert, Crypto-Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001), p. 144; Elkan N. Adler, “Auto De Fé and the Jew,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 15, no. 3 (1903): 412–439. 56. Alpert, Crypto-Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition, p. 151; Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book that Changed Europe: Picart and Brenard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 209–210. 57. Alpert, Crypto-Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition, pp. 1–4, 143. 58. The Megilah written by Isaac Behrens in Yiddish was published in English translation in Louis and Henry Fraenkel, Forgotten Fragments of the History of an Old Jewish Family (Copenhagen: Henry Fraenkel, 1975), pp. 76–94. The original MS: Isaak Behrens, Megilah 1738: MS in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana of the Amsterdam University Library, Sign. Hs Ros 82. 59. Berndt Strobach, Bei Liquiditätsproblemen: Falter—Das Verfahren gegen die jüdischen Kaufleute Gumpert und Isaak Behrens in Hanover, 1721–1726 (Berlin: Epubli, 2013); Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 252–253. 60. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 102. 61. Fraenkel, Forgotten Fragments of the History of an Old Jewish Family, pp. 84–87. 62. Ibid., pp. 89–91. 63. Ibid., pp. 92–93. 64. Abraham Broda, Sefer megilat sedarim, ed. David Kaufman (Berlin, 1895). The quotation is from pp. 25–31. See also Michael L. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 28–29.

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65. Broda, Megilat sedarim, p. 17. 66. Ibid., pp. 18–26. 67. Ibid., pp. 26–27. 68. Katz, Anti-Semitism, from Religious Hatred to Racial Rejection [Hebrew], pp. 42–43. 69. La Henriade, poëme par Voltaire (Paris, 1813), p. 50: “Dans Madrid, dans Lisbonne, il allume ces feux/ Ces bûchers solonnels, où des Juifs malheureux/ Sont, tous les ans, en pompe envoyés par des prêtres/ Pour n’avoir point quitté la foi de leurs ancêtres.” See Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire (New York: MJF Books, 1992), pp. 33–41. 70. Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt, The Book that Changed Europe, ch. 8. 71. Jacob Katz, Freemasons and Jews, Real and Imaginary Connections [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1968), pp. 22–23; Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasons and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 72. Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress, or a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim, in Germany, Being the Person Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana, in the Time of King Charles II (London, 1724). 73. The letter from Amsterdam, dated May 2, 1724, appears in Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158–1917) (London: Soncino Press, 1938), pp. 97–98. 74. David B. Ruderman, Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), ch 2. See also Katz, The Jews in the History of England, pp. 206–215; Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Coral: Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade (New York: Holms & Meier, 1978), pp. 149–159. 75. Moses Marcus, The Principal Motives and Circumstances that Induced Moses Marcus to Leave the Jewish, and Embrace the Christian Faith, with a Short Account of His Suffering Thereupon, Written by Himself (London. 1724). 76. Ibid., pp. xx–xxi. 77. Ibid., pp. 9–10, 16. 78. Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth Century Lives, pp. 66, 258–259. 79. Glikl, Memoirs, pp. 44–46.

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FROM LONDON TO JERUSALEM Confrontations and Disputes

When Moses Marcus was only a child of five years old, his father was in the center of a scandal that threatened both his business and his status in the Jewish community of London, which deprived him of his rights of membership in the Ashkenazic community of the Great Synagogue. Synagogues also served as a significant arena for internal struggles. As Jacob Katz explained, the synagogue was, primarily “an institution intended to gather the community in prayer,” and a place for the worshiper “to remove himself from the secular sphere and plunge into the sphere that sets aside an area for holy things,” but in fact it had many secondary functions in the area of communal governance, which blurred the lines between the holy and the profane: “In the synagogue warnings were sounded, excommunications were proclaimed, oaths were sworn, and individuals were banned from it as a punishment.” This was the Jews’ public space, a place for social meetings, for business conversations, and one of the central sites “for the display of social stratification, for determining the hierarchy of the high and the low.”1 Several events that took place within synagogues in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin illustrate the special sensitivities, power struggles and inner tensions, and the challenges and threats confronting the religious leadership during the first decades of the century.

Conflicts in th e S y nagogu e In the fall of 1706, close to the start of the new year 5467, the Ashkenazic rabbi of London, Uri Feibush (Aaron Hart), proclaimed a severe decree of excommunication against the diamond trader Mordecai Hamburger. As the excommunicated man himself recounted: “He said in public, before the entire congregation

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in the synagogue, that I was under excommunication, and no one was permitted to walk within four ells of me . . . and the instruction did not allow me to perform any commandment [in public, in the synagogue] or receive a public blessing, and he kept saying that I had no hope of rehabilitation . . . until the High Priest arises with the Urim and Tumim.” Being shunned in the synagogue was insulting and humiliating. He was not allowed to be called to the Torah on the Sabbath or holidays, he and his wife were deprived of their reserved seats, and even beggars, asking for charity, were forbidden to approach the home of that wealthy family: “When the man went home, he was pursued with all sorts of persecutions, even poor people who came here would be placed under guard so they wouldn’t come to this house.” It was even rumored that “they wrote in the community register about this man that he would be given a donkey’s burial, without a funeral.” On the holiday of Sukkot, the atmosphere in the synagogue was especially tense: “All during the holiday, nobody prayed properly in the synagogue, they just ran back and forth in front of him . . . and his wife rose from childbirth and went to the synagogue, and they didn’t want to give a name to her daughter as is customary among the Jews.” The insult suffered by Friedchen, Glikl’s daughter, when they refused to announce the name of her newborn daughter was stinging. She sat in the women’s section and kept herself from crying, and when she returned home, the family held an alternative ceremony. Rabbi Johann Holleschau (from the community of Holleschau in Moravia), a Torah scholar and the tutor of the family’s children, who was Mordecai Hamburger’s protégé, announced the girl’s name, but “the shame was great.” Friedchen “wept and made the others weep with her because of this event.” This was the first step toward the absolute separation of the Hamburger family from the community of the Great Synagogue. Aside from the public insult, the ban had immediate consequences that endangered the diamond merchant’s business: “They raised a great scandal in the bourse among the uncircumcised traders.” If the Jewish merchants who supported Mordecai Hamburger had not explained what was at issue to their non-Jewish colleagues, he would have lost the good name he had acquired.2 News about the dispute in London spread rapidly, even to Jews outside of England. What was the reason for this confrontation that had arisen in the relatively small, young community of London and threatened to split it? Jacob Emden summed it up in a few words: In the Ashkenazic community of London, “a quarrel was born regarding a bill of divorce that was issued there. Because of a minor comment spoken by his honor Mordecai Hamburger, his enemies wanted to devour him alive for no reasons, and my honored father and teacher [the H.akham Zvi] saved him from the lion’s fangs, to whom he almost fell

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prey.”3 A conditional bill of divorce, which had been issued on August 27, 1706, in the presence of Rabbi Feibush and two witnesses, to the wife of Ensil Cohen, a merchant who gambled at cards, failed, and became burdened with debt, caused the uproar. He was in danger of imprisonment, hid in his house, and planned to leave London in secret to avoid his creditors and to try his luck in the West Indies. The bill of divorce was issued hastily to make certain that his wife would not be an ‘aguna (bound by marriage) if he disappeared on the dangerous voyage to the New World. Mordecai Hamburger’s relations with Rabbi Feibush and his chief supporter, the trustee of the community, Abraham Hamburg (who was known as Rabbi Aberleh), were already tense, because they had prevented him from establishing a private synagogue in his house. He challenged the validity of the bill of divorce, both because it had been issued in secret and because it had been written by an inexperienced scribe from the Sephardic community and not by the Ashkenazic cantor, who was regarded as an expert. When the woman who had received the bill of divorce heard of this, she was stricken with emotional turmoil, “and she wept and muttered like someone whose dead husband lay before her, because the divorce was an error.” Rabbi Feibush blamed Hamburger for condemning the bill of divorce and for making his suspicions public, and he proclaimed that Hamburger was in irradicable excommunication. From that moment on, the incident blew up and became a scandal that was on everyone’s tongue and divided the community. On one side Rabbi Aberleh and Rabbi Feibush resolutely stood by their position, and on the other side Mordecai Hamburger and his supporters attacked the excommunication and demanded its cancellation. It was clear to everyone involved that the struggle went far beyond the issue of the validity of the divorce, and now it involved communal discipline, the status of the leaders, and the abilities and authority of the rabbi. Rabbis from both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities of Holland and Germany were asked to intervene and express an opinion, and Rabbi Feibush published the reasons for his decision in a special pamphlet, Urim vetumim, which was the first Hebrew book printed in London.4 It was a collection of testimony and halakhic argument to prove the validity of the bill of divorce, and a very personal defense brief for the rabbi of the Great Synagogue, who regarded himself as unfairly injured. Not only had Mordecai Hamburger intervened in an area under the rabbi’s authority as an expert in Jewish law, Uri Feibush complained, but now he is slandering him among Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities: “That man raced and hurried among the markets and streets and taverns, and the Name of God was desecrated thereby, and I was mocked and shamed.” Before the special rabbinical court, which Rabbi

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Feibush convened, including the rabbi of the Sephardic community, David Nieto, witnesses testified that they had heard Mordecai Hamburg make arguments against the bill of divorce. He had publicly declared, “The bill of divorce given to Ensil Cohen yesterday was a ‘cheat’ in the English language, that is to say, a deceit, in German, schelmischer bill of divorce, and he also said that the bill of divorce was invalid and there was a swindle in it.” Three days later, another witness testified that he had called the bill of divorce, in English and German, an act of trickery, and he had also burst out in a rage with a more sweeping accusation and with coarse curses. His anger about the injustice led to a general rebellion against rabbinical authority, astonishing in its vehemence and boldness: “He also testified . . . how Mordecai had spoken then, [saying] they write what they want, the scholars are scoundrels and do whatever they please.”5 Rabbi Johann Holleschau fought for Mordecai Hamburger in the arena of the rabbinical elite and responded to Rabbi Feibush’s Urim vetumim with a counter-pamphlet entitled Ma’ase rav. In it, among other things, was the weighty opinion of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, which declared in the most categorical manner, that there were no solid halakhic grounds for the excommunication, that unforgivable injustice had been done to the excommunicated man, and that Rabbi Feibush had made a grave error.6 Holleschau exploited the opportunity to challenge the trustworthiness of the Ashkenazic community leaders to preserve the religion, as there was an increasing tendency among the members of the community to frequent London’s fashionable spas and places of entertainment and to vacation in the villages outside the city. He accused Rabbi Feibush of not standing in the way and stifling the new custom of “going to the country, a place of gardens and orchards, to graze, to eat and to drink milk there, which was milked by Gentiles without Jewish supervision, as well as bread baked with milk, and it was hard for them to accept the prohibition against milk.” He accused Rabbi Aberleh of breaking through “the fence of scholars in public,” because, according to rumors, “he went to drink in a coffeehouse on the Fast of Esther, where Jewish merchants gathered, and, by contrast, the uncircumcised.”7 After the excommunication and the banning from the synagogue, and after the exchange of insults and slanders, there was no way to heal the rift, and in 1707 the Ashkenazic community of London split apart. In his house on Magpie Alley, Mordecai Hamburger established a synagogue to compete with the Great Synagogue. He then bought land for a separate cemetery, and he appointed Johann Holleschau as the rabbi of the new community. On the title page of the new and revised edition of Ma’ase rav, Johann presented himself as “head of the rabbinical court and rabbi of the holy Ashkenazic community

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in London, in the house of the notable Mordecai from the holy community of Hamburg.” On May 15, 1725, the synagogue was established with the laying of the cornerstone of a new building close to the home of the community’s founder, and it was named after him: The Synagogue of Mordecai Hamburger, and was known as the Hambro Synagogue.8 The founder of the new community had to travel to India again because of a crisis in his diamond business, and he died six years after construction began on the new synagogue. His son Moses was only six when the episode erupted and the community split, though it is not impossible that his parents’ humiliating excommunication and exclusion from the synagogue and his father’s severe criticism of the Talmudic scholars left scars that had not disappeared when he decided to abandon Judaism. However, from a different point of view, this episode indicates that at the beginning of the century the Jews of London were in fact establishing themselves around the communities of synagogues, and their self-assurance was growing. Rabbi Holleschau, who was one of the new immigrants who came from Central Europe, explained why he did not fear challenging the leadership of the Ashkenazic community: “There is no awe and fear, because we, the House of Israel, dwell under the kingdom of England and beneath lords and ministers, who are merciful and kind to us, and they are the righteous of the nations of the earth.” Awareness of the integrity and fairness of English law also affected the Jews and strengthened their position: “If a person gives a houseful of silver and gold, they will not pervert justice, only what is in their books of law and judgment.”9 A few years earlier, a scandal arose in the older and larger Sephardic community, reverberating far beyond the walls of the new Bevis Marks Synagogue of the “Sha’ar Ha-shamayim” community. Rabbi David Nieto stood at the focus of this incident. As noted earlier, he was a physician, scientist, philosopher, and Jewish theologian who had arrived in London from Italy in 1701. As with Mordecai Hamburger, a contemporary of his in the nearby Sephardic community challenged the rabbi and slandered him in public. Joshua Zarfati, one of the senior members of the Sephardic community and a prominent supporter of its institutions, made almost the most severe complaint possible against a rabbi whose job was to represent the beliefs and norms of the Jewish religion. Zarfati claimed that the sermon that Rabbi Nieto gave in the synagogue on the Sabbath December 1, 1703 revealed him to be one of the modern heretics who refused to distinguish between God and nature. When the rabbi said in his sermon “that the blessed Lord and nature, and nature and the blessed Lord are all one thing,” a commotion broke out. Those who were familiar with the critique of religion, could gather that the rabbi was hinting at a mechanistic understanding of the

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world and perhaps even at Spinoza’s ideas. Like Hamburger in the Ashkenazic community, Zarfati was punished by exclusion from the synagogue. He was called before the Mahamad and accused of violating the regulations that forbade finding fault with the H.akham (rabbi).10 Emden also remembered this episode, because in it, too, his father played a central and decisive role: “For it happened then that H.akham Nieto, the head of the rabbinical court of the Sephardim in London, gave a sermon on nature which is the blessed Lord himself, and because of this, quarrels arose against him, as there were two separate sides in disagreement, and those on one side were enemies of the H.akham Rabbi David Nieto and lying in wait to find a transgression in him, that he sinned with heresy perish the thought. They made a scandal and a commotion in their congregation because of that sermon.”11 In an atmosphere where high sensitiv­ ity had developed to criticism of religion based on Spinoza’s philosophy and challenges from Newton’s science, even a few words spoken from the preacher’s pulpit could provoke a great outcry. David Ruderman writes that Nieto used strategies similar to those of the Anglican proponents of the new science and natural religion, who believed in a new theological combination of Christianity and Newtonian science, entirely rejecting deism, materialism, and pantheism. Nieto’s mission in life, as a rabbi and an intellectual, was to protect religion from those challenges, so that his sermon was misinterpreted as a blow to faith. When he said in his sermon that God should not be separated from creation, he meant, like his Anglican parallels Robert Boyle and Samuel Clarke, to identify the universal, beneficent natural order with Divine Providence and to counter thinking that awarded mighty power to secondary causes rather than to God.12 The one who could realize this and understand Nieto best of all was the H.akham Zvi. When it became clear to the leaders of the London community that their brethren in Amsterdam supported Zarfati’s group and were in no hurry to back them, they declared that now the London community no lon­ ger regarded itself as dependent on them. What had begun as a theological debate became, as in the parallel case in the Ashkenazic community, a political question of authority and leadership. In a step demonstrating autonomy, the Mahamad asked for the opinion of the Ashkenazic rabbi. In the summer of 1705, almost two years after the controversial sermon, he signed a Responsum in Altona that exonerated Rabbi Nieto and condemned those who were attacking him. Nieto’s own words are cited at the beginning of the response, corroborating what he had said publicly in the synagogue and explaining that his attention had been to defend the faith, and his opinion was consistent with religion: “They say that I said in the assembly that the blessed Lord and nature, and nature and the blessed Lord are all one. I say that I did say that, and I maintain

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it and insist on it.” Moreover, if someone does not believe this and denies that “the very thing that is Providence is what we call nature . . . and those who do not believe that are Karaites and apikorsim [skeptical heretics]. When I said ‘nature,’” Nieto explained, “I referred ‘to all-encompassing nature’ and not to particulars, and this was to deny the opinion that it is within the power of nature, subject only to its laws, to move the world without divine intervention.” Rabbi H.akham Zvi found this a sufficient explanation, produced sources that proved that Nieto was not the first to say this, argued that in calling Providence “nature” there was no “diminution of the honor of the Lord,” and he concluded “that we must be grateful to the generally wise and exalted Rabbi David Nieto for the sermon that he gave, and to warn the people lest they incline their hearts to the opinion of philosophers who speak of nature, for many errors arose from that, and to brighten their eyes with our true faith, that everything is from Him, blessed be He, in Providence.”13 This responsum was greeted with joy by the Mahamad, but after the episode of Nieto’s sermon had faded, it left tension and division within the Sephardic community, and above all it raised the level of sensitivity to questions of religion and faith. The H.akham Zvi was involved in yet another dispute that stirred up the Ashkenazic community of Amsterdam for a decade. In this instance, neither a controversial theological issue nor suspicion of heresy, nor yet questioning the halakhic validity of a bill of divorce gave rise to the dispute that divided the community, but rather a difference of opinion regarding cantorial style, a question of musical taste that degenerated into bitter partisan and personal dispute. The struggle between the supporters of the Polish cantor Yeh. iel Mikhl of Lublin, who used to sing with two assistant cantors at his side, and the supporters of the German cantor Arieh Wolf came to a peak when a violent fight broke out in the sanctuary of the synagogue on one of the most important Sabbaths of the year, shabbat shuva (the Sabbath of Repentance) before Yom Kippur (September 7, 1709).14 Once again, it was Jacob Emden who described this incident in vivid, dramatic colors: “The two belligerent parties, regarding which of the aforementioned cantors would pray in the great synagogue on the Shabbat, came to blows, even to the spilling of blood, striking about them with the podiums to hold prayer books that are called shtender, which they threw and struck each other with, seeming to be about to kill each other.” The rabbi of the community, Arieh Leib from Kalish, rose to give a sermon, “a reprimand to arouse the people to repentance, and because of the great dread and fear and panic that fell upon the rabbi and head of their rabbinical court at that time, he immediately took to his bed on his arrival at home and never rose again.”15

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Because of the great excitement and fury at the desecration of the holy inte­ rior of the synagogue, the rabbi suffered a stroke, dying two months later. The H.akham Zvi was appointed the rabbi of Amsterdam, and, immediately after assuming the post in 1710, he had to cope with the controversy, which had not died down. Like the two scandals in London, the dispute had become a power struggle laden with personal motives and borne by a spirit of battle that was unwilling for reconciliation or compromise. Like Mordecai Hamburger and Joshua Zarfati, in Amsterdam, too, the leaders of the opposing parties continued to maintain their positions, to level criticism, and to besmirch and slander their rivals, with the great self-awareness of individuals who wanted their voices to be heard, their opinions to be accepted, and for the entire community to acknowledge the truth they represented. Jacob Emden, who was only in his twenties, was impressed by the force of the dispute and by the determination of the rivals to address the authorities, to spend huge amounts, and not to give in until victory. In his opinion, not even in wars between countries or in struggles between religions was there such deep animosity: “There could not be so much hatred between two faiths and countries, divided and separate, as the loathing between these two sides of the cantors.”16 The community regulations that were composed in the following years sought to reinforce the discipline that had had been violated. Anyone who struck his fellow would be excommunicated, pay a fine, and be forbidden to enter the synagogue, and “women who curse each other in the synagogue will not be permitted to come to the synagogue for a month, and if they strike each other, they may not come to the synagogue for three months.”17 The Berlin community was also divided into rival factions, according to the origin of the members: a group of immigrants from Vienna and the Liebmann family. In the first decade of the century, the Court Jewess Esther Liebmann, the woman who was so much admired by Glikl because of her enormous success, stood out especially in the community. Along with her husband, Jost, and, after his death, as an independent widow, she accumulated considerable assets by selling jewelry and precious stones to King Frederick I, and she gained positions of power and respect in the community for herself and her family. However, her ambition encountered increasing opposition, led by another Court Jew, her sworn rival Marcus Magnus. As in London, this rivalry led to a split in the Berlin synagogue. Whereas Esther Liebmann demanded that the synagogue in her house should be the principal and exclusive house of prayer for members of the community, Magnus initiated the establishment of a general synagogue, which did not belong to a single family. Despite Esther Liebmann’s opposition, addresses to the authorities, and threats that she would

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not contribute to its establishment, in 1712 the cornerstone on the new synagogue was laid. She managed to delay construction for several months, until, the following year, the worst thing of all happened: the king to whom she had been close died. His successor, Frederick Wilhelm I, treated her with severity she had not known in the past. He had Esther Liebmann arrested and placed under house arrest on the charge of cheating the Prussian Court in the sale of jewelry. The new king also approved renewed construction of the synagogue, and on September 14, 1714, five months after Esther Liebmann’s death, in the presence of Queen Sophie Dorothea, the splendid community synagogue on Heidereutergasse was dedicated, known as one of the most impressive eighteenth-century synagogues, a symbol of the consolidation and unity of the young community, which was to assume a central place on the economic and cultural map of the Jews of Europe.18 In the year when the cornerstone of the Berlin synagogue was laid, despite Esther Liebmann’s furious opposition, while the dispute over the cantors continued full steam ahead among the Ashkenazi Jews of Amsterdam, in the Sephardic community of Amsterdam a small group of religious sceptics, identified as “Karaites,” was discovered. In the synagogue, on February 28, 1712, the Mahamad proclaimed the excommunication of two brothers, Aaron and Isaac Dias da Fonseca, and David Almanza, expelling them entirely from the community and denying them entry to the synagogue, on grounds of religious heresy. As Yosef Kaplan explains, in the beginning of the century, the antinomian views of deists and Spinozists gained new impetus in the Western Sephardic Diaspora, and “in this climate, any sign of open challenge to the authority of the halakha and the rabbis was sufficient to provoke a vehement reaction among the community leaders.” Indeed, the excommunication, which was proclaimed only two weeks after the rabbi of the community, Solomon Ayllon, received a letter about a group that practiced religious permissiveness and held heretical views, was extremely severe. It stated that the three accused were undermining the foundations of the religion, because they “are following the sect of Karaites and act as they do, entirely denying the Oral Law, which is the foundation and underpinning of our holy Law.” The effort made by the rabbi and representatives of the Mahamad to convince them to retract and acknowledge the true path was unsuccessful, and they “continued to maintain their harmful and heretical beliefs.” The punishment of excommunication was vital and inevitable to preserve the purity of Jewish faith and to expel the deviants: “Since we are charged with the duty of purifying the evil from among us, so as not to scatter its poison and so that it will not spread and infect others, the lords of the Mahamad decided unanimously, and with the consent of the lord Hakham, to

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proclaim a decree of excommunication against the three aforementioned men and to expel them from the Nation.” Kaplan is of the opinion that the three Karaites represented a subterranean trend in the Sephardic communities of Western Europe, which was led not by actual Karaites, continuing the movement that arose in the eighth century, but by neo-Karaites. These people took their doctrine from contemporary Christian Hebraists, who understood Karaism as an expression of pure, rational, original Judaism. According to this interpretation, Karaism rejected the accretions of rabbinical Judaism, which was focused on the Oral Law, providing the sceptics of the age a Karaite ideology, which justified what appeared to the community as religious permissiveness. However, the effort to create a reformed Judaism, free of the sovereignty of the Talmudic Halakha, was a failure, and after these three Karaites were discovered and excommunicated, they no longer had any way to exist within the Jewish realm as exceptional individuals, protesting against the entire group with an identity that was normative neither with respect to religious thought nor to religious practice. Thus, not surprisingly, in the summer of 1713, the two Fonseca brothers converted to Calvinist Protestantism and cut themselves off from their former brethren, whereas David Almanza, the third excommunicant, announced publicly in the synagogue that he wished to retract his grave deviations and great sins, and apparently, after his excommunication was rescinded, he abandoned the community.19 The threat of heresy of the Karaite sort was familiar in the communities of Western Europe, and about a decade earlier, as noted, Rabbi Nieto argued, in his apology for the sermon on nature and God, that his struggle was aimed at Karaites and heretics. Now, a short time after the incident in Amsterdam, Rabbi Nieto struggled against denial of the Oral Law and the authority of the rabbis in a book entitled Mate dan which appeared in London in 1714.20 Reading of Mate dan shows how great was the fear of the religious elite. “I heard that the deniers grumble against the Sages,” Nieto recounted, “saying that they made up the laws and commandments by themselves, and God did not order them.” Religion as it was known was nothing but the creation of the rabbis, and instead of being beneficial to the Jews, it posed difficulties. “They [the rabbis] made laws and invented customs that were nothing but first-order damages and to all the Jews, in body and in purse.” Without doubt, continues the defiant position—and Nieto was capable of imitating the deists’ voice—that their intention was to attain power and influence, and “to raise themselves up and rule over the community.” Perhaps even Mordecai Hamburger’s protest, which for a moment invoked the subversive outcry and derided Torah scholars, echoed in Nieto’s ears when he cited the argument that the severities of

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Halakha served a powerful interest: “They are useful for the great honor of the rabbis, because thereby they expand their rule and cast excessive fear upon the community, and thereby they oppress them and burden them forever.”21 Eager for battle and proud of his ability to provide convincing answers, Nieto produced more and more proofs and examples from the Jewish sources to bolster the authority of the Sages. However, he understood that his task was more difficult, because these were not the old Karaites, and he had to respond to a critique of religion based on rationalism and the new science. Though the rabbi from London was familiar with the innovations of science, was impressed by them, and even presented them in his book, he intentionally devoted his greatest effort to distinguishing between the “natural philosopher” and the man of religion, the rabbi, the “divine philosopher.” Whereas the latter is entirely focused on knowledge of God as the omnipotent Creator, who sets nature in motion, his adversary is focused on knowledge of nature as such, and he is shaken in a tangle of doubts regarding “divine wisdom,” and, because the Torah does not guide him, he has no grip on reality, and he is doomed to uncertainty. David Ruderman shows that Nieto did accept science as a partial truth, but never as the complete truth: “In the light of incompleteness of scientific achievement, there remains a place for the rabbis and the divine origin of their sacred revelation.”22

Cr isis in th e L a n d of Isr a el A visitor from Jerusalem was a close observer of the new challenges and threats to rabbinical authority in the communities of Western Europe, quickly becoming a vehement and prominent social and religious critic. Beginning in 1707, Rabbi Moses Hagiz lived in Amsterdam and earned his living as a tutor in the homes of the wealthy merchant families, and in that year he published his critical work, Sefat emet (Language of Truth). This was primarily a well-argued defense of the duty to support the Jews living in the Land of Israel and to honor the emissaries who begged for contributions, but it was also a document no less important than Nieto’s polemics in Mate dan for insight into the new trends, ways of thinking, and patterns of life at the beginning of the century.23 Hagiz’s intimate acquaintance with the Jews of Amsterdam persuaded him that it was his task to rehabilitate the authority of Torah and to guard the ramparts of the religion.24 In his opinion, the affluent and self-confident communities, headed by Amsterdam and London, sought to avoid their responsibility to weaker and poorer communities, thereby diminishing Jewish solidarity. In his view,

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reluctance to assist the Jews of Jerusalem was a worrisome test case for the solidity of religious faith and the preservation of Jewish identity. He beseeched the wealthy, “who splurge and give of the abundant wealth that God has given to them . . . to fornicate with the daughters of the land, to carriages, to the eating meat, and the building of thousands of houses and courtyards,” to set aside some of their wealth for their brethren, who are in misery. In a few months in Amsterdam he had learned that awareness of the destruction of the Temple and the exile was not self-evident. It was contradicted by the feeling of successful integration, comfort, security, belonging to the place, and, in its wake, a new awareness of time was developing, that dulled traditional memory, “which has lasted for such a long time, and it is forgotten from the heart like a dead person, because this destruction is already old mourning for us,” they said to Hagiz, “and everyone in his city believes that I be fine, because this is Jerusalem for me, because I am quiet and secure, without the yoke of Torah and the yoke of morality, and what does the trouble of Jerusalem mean to me now, the success of the cities where we are now is more than enough.”25 Others stated that if settling in the Land of Israel brings on the days of the Messiah, they weren’t interested: “With my own ears I heard a few stupid, impertinent people say, in the wickedness of their heart and their wealth, that if the messiah comes to make rich and poor equal, let him not come, and let it not happen, because what is he to us?” To their surprise, the emissaries soliciting contributions encountered opposition, and they were even defied bluntly. “Why do you come?” the emissaries are asked with mockery, only “to collect money so that the rabbis can drink coffee and smoke tobacco, and write whatever they please in their books?”26 Hagiz regarded these provocations as no less grave than open rebellion against God, and in Sefat emet he defended himself against them and pointed out the virtues of the Land of Israel. Its sanctity was incomparable, and Providence watched over it everywhere, redemption depended on its settlement, and those who dwelt there ascend to a high religious level. He demanded continued support for the Jews there, at least to the same degree as the Christian residents of the land enjoy funding from their brethren in Europe. Like Rabbis Feibush and Nieto in London, Hagiz also understood this criticism as part of a broader trend and as an expression of rebellious ferment against the authority of the rabbis on the part of “Jewish heretics who hate the regulations and decrees of the Sages.” In addition to being a protest against the neglect of the Land of Israel, very early in the century Sefat emet was also a polemic against skepticism and permissiveness. Hagiz pointed out the Karaite, deist, and atheist heresies, described fashionable Jews, and complained about “those who shave off their beards and

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wear wigs and consort with the Gentiles and travel in carriages.” The particular circumstances of Amsterdam, where they encountered relative tolerance and an affluent consumer society, were liable to stand in the way of anyone who wished to follow the path of Halakha: “Because they live in lands where they have liberty combined with wealth . . . they throw the yoke of the tradition of the Sages from their necks.”27 In Yitzhak Baer’s classic essay on the evolution of the concept of exile in Jewish history and consciousness, he found fascinating evidence of a historical turning point in the voices that emerged from Hagiz’s Sefat emet. The foundations of religious faith had been challenged, and the messianic expectation of return to the Land of Israel had been sidelined. These skeptics and hedonists threw off the yoke of concern for the whole Jewish people and its political affiliations and tried to establish themselves and make as comfortable a life as possible in their “homeland” in exile. Indeed, Hagiz’s style was belligerent, and at least from his point of view it expressed a feeling of crisis: “Let molten brass and lead be poured down the throats of those insolent men,” he cried out, because they “refuse to heed the words of the sages, the sages of truth and justice.”28 However, the consciousness of being a man exiled from the city of his birth, of a visitor who is not at home and has no rabbinical position is also what enabled Hagiz to fulfill the mission he assigned himself: to be a critic from the outside, who, in his opinion, also can see flaws and failures better than others, who is independent, and can freely and openly say what is on his mind. Thirteen years after Hagiz published his defense of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel, emissaries from Jerusalem appeared in Amsterdam and reported that their synagogue had been attacked and destroyed: “On 8 H.eshvan [September 11, 1720], Arabs and Ishmaelites fell upon the Ashkenazic synagogue in Jerusalem and burned everything made of wood, and the four Torah scrolls, for our many sins. If the synagogue were not built entirely of stone, it would have burned down completely, perish the thought. They also placed the great and important members of the community in detention.”29 What happened at that time in Jerusalem, Hagiz’s native city? Why did the Muslim neighbors attack the synagogue? The burning of the synagogue and destruction of the quarters of the community and the center of its life, brought a prolonged crisis to a peak, one that had only become more severe during the first two decades of the century, since the arrival of the group headed by Judah H.asid. As we have seen, his sudden death caused confusion among the Holy Society. Some of its members returned to Europe, while others tried to maintain the messianic tension, but meanwhile their distress grew more severe, and the burden of debts to Muslim creditors made the future of

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the Ashkenazim in Jerusalem precarious. In these two decades, the small communities in the Land of Israel were subject to difficulties in survival, tension, and ferment, and rabbis, Sabbateans, and emissaries from the Land of Israel all took part in the discourse around them, along with intercessors, and concerned Court Jews. Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities demonstrated solidarity and contributed to their assistance, and the crisis was a high priority for the leaders almost everywhere. Along with the growing challenge of Sabbateanism, the fate of the Jews living in the Land of Israel became an international Jewish issue and received special attention.30 In the summer of 1714 it became clear to Joseph ben Issachar Ber, a native of Prague, who was serving as the sultan’s physician in the court of Ahmet III in Istanbul, that he was already paying too high a price for his willingness to assist in rescuing the Ashkenazic community of Jerusalem, and that his life was in danger. His personal future was bound up with the future of that Jewish community, which he had never visited. He wrote an urgent letter to his contacts in Frankfurt, full of excitement and anxiety, making accusations and describing the threats against him and the tangle of problems in which the efforts to resolve the distress of Jerusalem once and for all had become embroiled. Joseph the Physician asked himself and his correspondents how he got himself into this trouble? Why had he accepted, three years ago, the requests that had come to him in Istanbul from the communities of Vienna and Frankfurt, to intercede in the effort to reach a compromise on payment of the debts? He accused his correspondents of exploiting his good heart, of grave misconduct, of breaking promises, and of abandoning him to threats on his life. Not only had he failed to save Jerusalem and obtain the compromise, but he had also become the target of attacks by the creditors. In his earlier letters he showed magnanimousness and willingness to help his brethren in distress, but in this letter, he wrote bitterly, mainly about his own distress, and the interest of the individual overcame the general interest. The more he intervened in matters of state, the more he was informed against in the sultan’s court, and he was accused of betraying the empire. A letter was sent to the sultan claiming, “I was greater than the mighty king of Turkey, that my net was spread over Jerusalem, over the Ishmaelites who dwell there.” With great anger, Joseph the Physician complains to the people in Frankfurt responsible for contributions to the Land of Israel, for because of them he was going to lose his high position in Istanbul: “Where are the promises you made? I counted on your word when I entered this weighty business, and now you have averted your eyes, as though you didn’t see me, and from the holy city of Jerusalem.” The personal insult stung and was no less important to him than the danger to

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Jerusalem. At that moment, he wrote, he had no choice but “to leave my house and all my possession and flee for my life,” because his devotion to the cause of Jerusalem had been catastrophic for him. If emissaries were sent, with thirty thousand reichsthaler, half of the required sum, the situation might possibly be saved. If not, “you must know for certain that I and the entire Ashkenazi community are in danger, and also the synagogue, and, perish the thought, there will be no memory of Ashkenazim in Jerusalem.”31 Years before the attack on the synagogue in 1720, as noted, the burden of debt threatened the very possibility of maintaining the Ashkenazic community. The necessary sum had not been raised, and the efforts, which had been made in an international network with representatives in Istanbul, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Jerusalem, to solve the problem with an overall diplomatic and financial maneuver, had failed. When Abraham Broda, the rabbi of Metz until 1713, who held the letter of credit, which was intended to pay the debts, was forced to return the donors’ money in his community, a few days after receiving the desperate letter from Joseph the Physician, there was no longer any way to resolve the crisis. This put an end the initiative that Samson Wertheimer had directed for three years, whose purpose was to obtain a settlement of the debts through the Turkish sultan and to obtain significant contributions, which would be paid directly to the creditors. Suspicion that the contributions were not reaching their destination and rumors about a corrupt functionary who was embezzling the money confronted Wertheimer with the task of assuring the supporters of the settlement in the Land of Israel: “That it would not appear to be like throwing into the sea, like drawing water and throwing it on a dung heap [Mishnah Ketubot 6:5], and the sea is not filled.”32 Aside from acknowledging the religious significance of the settlement in Jerusalem and demonstrating solidarity with a community in distress, this involvement was a test of leadership for Wertheimer. Much was expected of him, the pressure was great, and, even if he could find time for this important task, he was unwilling to do it without help.33 Unlike his success in preventing the publication of Judaism Unmasked, this time he failed in the effort to extend a safety net over the Jews of the Land of Israel. Although his response was not documented, he evidently did not despair and retained the donations, and, after his death in 1724, they were passed on to be administered by his son Wolf, we may assume that, like Joseph the Physician, he, too, felt that he had risked his status, and that his prestige as an international, influential Jewish leader had been damaged. In these two decades David Oppenheim was also deeply involved in support for Jerusalem. For him, as well, his status as a patron and the many

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hopeful eyes that looked up to him were important considerations in his public life. In 1701, in addition to his functions as the central rabbi in Moravia and Bohemia, he accepted the post of the rabbi of Jerusalem and the title of “President of the Land of Israel,” which was first offered to him three months after the death of Judah H.asid.”34 The heads of the Jerusalem community did not expect Oppenheim to leave Europe and settle in the Land of Israel. Indeed, like Wertheimer, he never went there. However, they hoped that his status, fame, and influence would help them settle the crisis and strengthen the position of Torah scholars, and that his halakhic decisions would help resolve disputes and quarrels. His self-image as the biblical Joseph, who bore the yoke of leadership, was well suited to these hopes in the age of absolute rulers: “The eyes of all roam from the end of the land for me to be, in my poverty and humility, the guardian of all in the land and outside it, and several holy communities and delicate countries, the pride of the Diaspora, hang upon my words and my arms like an amulet on a hero, and the people of the Lord, who lie beneath my burden, will act according to my word, so that it is almost impossible to withstand it.”35 Both parties were content, and in 1707 Oppenheim even received a splendid certificate of appointment to the rabbinate, naming him the rabbi of Jerusalem for life. Despite the distance, he did not regard his office as simply a matter of honor, and from his place of residence in Prague, he demanded proper leadership by means of letters and instructions to emissaries, and he was not reluctant to issue severe reprimands. All these initiatives only slightly alleviated the misery of the Jews in the Land of Israel. Bitter letters, begging for help and describing the distress were sent to Oppenheim, to Wertheimer, and to the administrative centers for the contributions in Istanbul and Frankfurt. The gloomiest picture was that painted by the leaders of the community in 1708: “It is impossible in any way in the world, except for all of us to flee with our wives and children, perish the thought, and the synagogue . . . our holy courtyard will be transformed from sanctity to an abomination.”36 Emden and almost everyone else who was involved in the effort to rescue the Jewish settlement in Jerusalem from its distress at the beginning of the eighteenth century, saw the debts and the network of financial support, as only one of the problems with which the Jews of Europe had to cope with respect to the Land of Israel. No less worrisome was the Sabbatean presence, after the immigration of Judah H.asid. These two problems were interconnected, as Hagiz hinted when he cited the skeptical question he had heard in Amsterdam: why were the Jews of Jerusalem worthy of assistance, since “it seems that those who live there are rebels, and actually worthy of reprimand and punishment instead of assistance.”37

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Even after Judah H.asid died, the Sabbatean presence in Jerusalem did not disappear. In 1702, the Sabbatean Abraham Rovigo immigrated from Modena, enabling those remaining from the society to maintain their framework, which was centered on the kabbalistic yeshiva that he established, where the Zohar and the ideas of the Rabbi Isaac Luria were studied every morning. In the spring of 1702, Rovigo and “Rabbi Isaiah, the son-in-law of the holy Rabbi Judah H.asid of blessed memory,” met to choose ten rabbis among whom it was worthy to sit, such as Nathan Neta’ Mannheim, whose outpouring of grief for the death of the society’s leader we have heard. He recounted that he was on the verge of despair until the yeshiva was opened: “and I was called upon to attend the House of Study of . . . the famous, divine kabbalistic rabbi, the generous donor . . . our master Rabbi Abraham Rovigo.”38 As one of the prominent leaders of moderate Sabbateanism, who believed that the redemption, which began with the appearance of Sabbetai Zevi, was still incomplete, and therefore nothing “should be changed in the revealed Torah, in externals, and in actions,” Rovigo could be accepted as a rabbi whose legitimacy was not suspect.39 His wealth and erudition gave him an honorable position in the city, though he, too, was forced to leave and collect money as an emissary from the Land of Israel in Europe. In 1706, for example, he intervened in the serious dispute in London, which tore the Ashkenazic community in two, and he was called upon to support Rabbi Uri Feibush in the excommunication he imposed on Mordecai Hamburger, on the strength of his authority as a kabbalist, a scholar, and a resident of Jerusalem.40 In Jerusalem, the tension around Sabbateanism only intensified. In the fall of 1704, David Oppenheim sent severe directives to all the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem as to how to exclude and persecute “the new members of the society,” who were dividing the community and publicly defying the commandments of the religion. Cancellation of mourning and fasting for the destruction of the Temple in consciousness of a redeemed world disturbed and infuriated him. How could it be “that they see, for our many sins, the destruction with their own eyes . . ., and still the House has not been built . . ., and no one speaks to free the captives, and how did their wicked heart dare . . . not to fast or perform other acts of mourning for the destruction of the Temple, and who and what is he who dares to do this?” From his place of residence in Prague he ordered the imposition of “severe excommunication, exclusion, and cursed rejection against those who commit all the aforementioned acts regarding mourning for the destruction of the Temple.”41 Oppenheim’s appointment as “the prince of the Land of Israel” and as the rabbi of the Ashkenazi community he was indeed expected to exert a counterforce against the effort to establish a Sabbatean center there.42

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H.ayim Malakh and his disciples rather than Rovigo and the kabbalist yeshiva in Jerusalem caused the greatest concern among the opponents of Sabbateanism. This Sabbatean leader, a scholar and kabbalist from Poland, who was instructed in Sabbateanism in the Balkans and in Italy, and, among other places, in Rovigo’s home in Modena, was exposed to radical theology in the last years of the seventeenth century. The belief of the radical Sabbateans, that the appearance of the Messiah had already transformed the world into the age of redemption had immediate consequences for religious practice. It was the basis of the feeling of liberty that throbbed among the Sabbateans and for the antinomian approach, which suspended the commandments and even turned sins into commandments. “We heard that H.ayim Malakh, may the name of the wicked rot, made an image of Shabbetai Zevi from wood,” Jacob Emden reported about a Sabbatean ritual, “and they held it in their hands and danced with it in the synagogue, saying words of song and praises to it.”43 These practices and the blunt antinomianism of cancelling the fasts for the destruction of the Temple were a source of embarrassment for the Jews of Jerusalem during the first five years of the century, until actual steps were taken against them. In the spring of 1705 a special emissary left Jerusalem, Yeh.iel Mikhel, who bore an urgent letter to the leaders of the Council of Four Lands in Poland. Apprehension and a feeling of weakness regarding Sabbateanism arose from every line of this letter. Support was needed in the struggle to drive the Sabbateans out of Jerusalem, but the local community had little power, “and our hands lack the strength here in the holy city to punish them or to condemn them to expulsion without the counsel of the great rabbis who are abroad.” The letter asked not to mention the names of the signatories, so that no one would know that they were the ones who asked for intervention. They did not even dare to write down all “the ugly things” that took place there, which the emissary would tell them orally. But they could no longer restrain themselves. They had to warn against “people who have recently come, whose ancestors could not have imagined them, who vex you with their wiles [Num. 25:18], saying that H.ayim [=life] will add life to you, and an evil angel [Malakh] will say amen.” This “sect of destroyers” headed by H.ayim Malakh transgressed the boundaries of the religion, continued to believe that Shabbetai Zevi was the Messiah, and made days of fasting into holidays. The Jewish religion was threatened by the sect of heretics and was facing palpable danger of schism. Would the super-communal leadership of the large Jewish community in Poland, whose representatives in Jerusalem were addressing them, succeed in making this known widely and confer power and authority upon them, making it possible to avert the danger of the establishment of Sabbateanism in the Land of Israel?44

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The crisis in Jerusalem and the Sabbatean threat joined the Ashkenazi and Sephardi leaders together in a common struggle. When the emissary passed through Istanbul, three senior leaders of the local community provided him with an additional letter addressed to the officials and rabbis of “the cities of Germany and Poland” signed by the Rabbis Judah Rozanes, Eliahu Alfandari, and Abraham Kimh.i. They wrote that they had already excommunicated H.ayim Malakh, revealing him to be a false prophet and follower of Shabbetai Zevi, and now they called upon all the communities not to allow him to preach in public, not to extend hospitality to him, and to pursue the “cruel H.ayim Malakh, may wrath and fury and trouble be sent to him.”45 At that time H.ayim Malakh himself was apparently not in Jerusalem, and “he had gone to the cities of Poland and Germany to gather bands and to create communities.” Even without the intervention of the leaders of Poland it appears that radical Sabbateanism was removed from the city around 1705, as Gedalia of Siemiatycze wrote with a feeling of success. His deep sense of exile, which only grew stronger upon his direct encounter with the land, with the Turkish regime, and with the Arab population, entirely contradicted the Sabbatean consciousness of liberty, the feeling that there was no longer “exile of the Shekhina and no need to mourn the exile.” According to him, his brother, Moses of Siemiatycze, a member of the “holy society” and one of the ten chosen men who were accepted in Rovigo’s House of Study, was the one who initiated the removal of the Sabbateans. “He and his comrades rose and burned the thorns out of the vineyard, they being Rabbi H.ayim Malakh and his comrades,” until now, “there remains there only chaff, without wheat.”46 The rumors about the Sabbateans in Jerusalem were not beneficial for those asking for financial assistance, for it deterred donors. About forty years had passed since the collapse of Shabbetai Zevi’s messianic movement, and the members of this generation saw in Sabbateanism an incomparable existential danger. A theology that was interpreted as heresy combined with subversion of the norms of the tradition and rabbinical authority, introducing a divisive factor in Judaism. While Jerusalem was purified of Sabbateanism by the middle of the first decade of the century, the return of H.ayim Malakh and Sabbateans from Judah H.asid’s group to Europe was seen by the enemies of Sabbateanism at that time as a dangerous turning point that strengthened their hold in many communities. In the summer of 1702, the emissary from Jerusalem, Nathanel ben Solomon, a member of the Holy Society, preached that the advent of the messiah was imminent, and they must segregate themselves from the Christians. This aroused the wrath of the authorities, who were afraid that his sermons would disturb the peace and provoke riots, and a warrant for his arrest was issued.47

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Fear lest the Sabbateans might win the hearts of wealthy Jews and that, with their support, they could spread and acquire followers was confirmed, for example, in Mannheim. In 1708 a kloiz was established there, financed by the Court Jew, Lemle Moses Reinganum, and it became a center for Sabbateans in Germany. Among others, Isaiah, the son-in-law of Judah H.asid and Rabbi Nathan Neta’ Mannheim, who had previously been one of the scholars at Rovigo’s House of Study in Jerusalem, arrived there. Emden spoke of this group with revulsion: “Those who sit in the House of Study there, a dwelling of scoffers and a sect of scoundrels, remnants of the assembly of Rabbi Judah H.asid, bathed in its blood, which performed great abominations and curses.”48 H.ayim Malakh spread antinomian Sabbateanism in Podolia, joining in the effort of those Sabbateans who had left the Land of Israel to enlarge their influence until “especially in the Land of Poland they left evil roots and made several communities into heretical cities [see Deut. 13:13–17].”49 The radical movement led by Jakob Frank in the second half of the century grew out of these groups.50 In 1713, Rabbi Naphtali Katz summed up in a few words the feeling of emergency that troubled his sleep: “The worships of Shabbetai Zevi are the infamous ones who destroyed Jerusalem, may it be rebuilt, and all of the Land of Israel in our days . . . And Satan is still dancing among us, who are scatted in all the lands, as in the generation of the Tower of Babel, and, unwilling to repent, they threaten to destroy the world.51

Note s 1. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis, translated from the Hebrew edition, ch. 17. 2. Johann Holleschau, Ma’se rav (London, 1707). An expanded edition of the book appeared in Amsterdam in the same year. See Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, pp. 204–215; Endelman, The Jews in Britain, 1656 to 2000, p. 52; Ruderman, Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth Century England, pp. 21–22; Yogev, Diamonds and Coral: Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade, pp. 156–158; David Kaufmann, “Rabbi Zevi Ashkenazi and His Family in London,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 3 (1899): 102–125. 3. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 56. 4. Uri Feibush Hamburger, Urim vetumim . . . neged hamotsiim la’az ‘al hagitin (London, 5467 [1707]). 5. Ibid., fols. 8, 10. 6. Johann Holleschau, Ma’ase rav, fols. 4–5. 7. Johann Holleschau, Teshuvat hageonim, fols. 15b–17a. 8. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, pp. 210–213; Kaufmann, “Rabbi Zevi Ashkenzi and His Family in London,” pp. 114–115.

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9. Johann Holleschau, Teshuvat hageonim, fol. 17b. 10. See David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), ch. 11; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, pp. 196–200; I. Solomons, “David Nieto and Some of His Contemporaries,” Transactions of the Historical Society of England 12 (1931): 1–101; Jacob J. Petuchowski, The Theology of Haham David Nieto, An Eighteenth Century Defense of the Jewish Tradition (New York: Ktav, 1970); Evelyne Oliel-Grausz, “A Study in Intercommunal Relations in the Sephardi Diaspora: London and Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century,” in Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and Others, ed. Chaya Brasz and Yosef Kaplan (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 41–59 (esp. pp. 43–49). 11. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 55. 12. Ruderman, “Hoge de’ot beanglia shel newton,” pp. 288–293; Alexander Barzel, “Teva’ kolel veteva’ prati: ‘al zihui Elohim ‘im hateva’ badrasha shel david nieto uveteshuvat ‘­hah.­a kham zevi’,” Da’at 17 (1986): 67–80. 13. Ashkenazi, Sefer she’elot uteshuvot, Responsum 18. 14. See Elhanan Tal, The Ashkenazi Community of Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2010), pp. 16–19; Pinkas hakehillot, Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities, The Netherlands (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1985), p. 20; D. M. Sluys, “The High-German Jewish Community in Amsterdam from 1635 to 1795,” Studies on the History of Dutch Jewry, 1 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), pp. 69–122, esp. 94–96. 15. Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 47–48. 16. Ibid., pp. 48–50. 17. Tal, The Ashkenazi Community of Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 54–55. 18. Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 54–55, 184–185; Deborah Herz, “The Despised Queen of Berlin Jewry, or the Life and Times of Esther Liebmann,” pp. 67–77. 19. For an account of the incident and its significance, see Yosef Kaplan, An Alternative Path to Modernity, The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 234–279. 20. Nieto, Mate dan vekuzari sheni. See Ruderman, “Hoge de’ot beanglia shel newton,” pp. 293–296; Petuchowski, The Theology of Haham David Nieto. 21. Nieto, Mate Dan, pars. 6, 85. 22. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, p. 324. 23. Moses Hagiz, Sefer sefat emet (Amsterdam, 5467 [1707]). See Ya’ari, ­Shluh.­ei erets yisrael, pp. 88–93; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moshe Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies, pp. 57–64. 24. Ibid., p. 58. 25. Hagiz, Sefer sefat emet, fols. 24b, 17a, 8a, respectively. Cf. also the similar criticism of Kaidanover, Qav yashar, ch. 82: “No one mentions the destruction of the Temple and no one takes note to pray for it[s rebuilding].”

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26. Hagiz, Sefer sefat emet, fol. 22a. 27. Ibid., fols. 10a, 4b, respectively. See Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ch. 1; Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land, pp. 119–133. 28. Hagiz, Sefer sefat emet, fol. 13a. 29. Amlander, Sefer sheerit yisrael, p. 287. 30. See Ya’ari, ­Schluh.­ei erets yisrael, ch. 8; Benayahu, “Qahal Ashkenazim biyerushalayim bashanim 5487–5507,” pp. 118–189; Jacob Barnai, The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century under the Patronage of the Istanbul Committee of Officials for Palestine, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992); Arieh Morgenstern, “Tuvia harofe ufe’iluto lema’an yehudei yerushalaim bein hashanim 1715–1729,” Kathedra 142 (2012): 27–54; Amnon Cohen (ed.), The History of Eretz Israel Under the Mamluk and Ottoman Rule (1260–1804), Vol. 7 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1981), pp. 199–274. 31. Letter of Joseph ben Issachar Baer, sent from Istanbul on 11 Tammuz 5474 [1714] to two “notable treasurers and officials faithful to the Holy City of Jerusalem” in Frankfurt, published by ‘Azriel S­ hoh.­at, “Shalosh igrot erets yisrael min hameah ha18,” Shalem I (1974): 235–256 (this letter is on pp. 246–248). 32. Correspondence of 1712 between Samson Wertheimer and Joseph ben Issachar Baer, in Isaac Rivkind, “Tseror mikhtavim leqorot hayehudim beerets yisrael,” Reshumot 4 (1946): 301–344 (two letters from Wertheimer and one two him, pp. 309–317). 33. Ibid., p. 309. 34. See Benayahu, “H.alifat igarot bein haqehila haashkenazit biyerushalayim ver. david Oppenheim,” pp. 108–129. 35. Isaac Dov Feld, “Igeret shalom vetokha h.a mikhevod rabeinu david Oppenheim zatsal l­ eh.­a khmei pu”m q”q yerushalayim,” Hama’ayan 16 (1976): 39–43. See Joshua Teplitsky, “Jewish Money, Jesuit Censors, and the Habsburg Monarchy: Politics and Polemics in Early Modern Prague,” Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 3 (2013): 109–138. 36. See Ya’ari, ­Shluh.­ei erets yisrael, p. 329. 37. Hagiz, Sefer sefat emet, fol. 2b. 38. Mannheim, Sefer meorot natan, author’s introduction. See Mann, “Hityashvut hamequbal r. avraham Rovigo v­ eh.­avurato biyerushalayim bishnat 5462 leyetsira (1702).” pp. 59–83. 39. Gershom Scholem, “Mitzvah habaa be’avera,” in Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Sabbetianism and Its Metamorphoses [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1974), pp. 29–35. 40. See Ya’ari, Igrot erets yisrael, p. 351. 41. Feld, “Igeret shalom vetokha h.a mikhevod rabeinu david Oppenheim,” pp. 39–55.

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42. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, p. 56. 43. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 27a–b. 44. The letter from the beginning of Iyya, 5465 is printed in Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 27b–28b, and in Israel Heilprin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, pp. 258–262. 45. The letter, “Geonei qonstantin” in Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 28b–29a. 46. Gedalia of Siemiatycze, Shaalu shlom yerushalayim, pp. 40, 24, respectively. See Benayahu, “­Hah.­evra haqedosha shel rabi yehuda h­ ah.­asid ve’aliato leerets yisrael,” p. 165. 47. Putik, “The Prague Jewish Community in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries,” pp. 111–120. 48. Gershom Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991), pp. 614–617. 49. Benayahu, “­Hah.­evra haqedosha shel rabi yehuda h­ ah.­asid ve’aliato leerets yisrael,” p. 167. 50. Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816, p. 11. 51. The letter is published in David Kaufmann, “La lutte de R. Naftali Cohen contra Hayyon,” Revue des Études Juives 36 (1898): 283.

ten

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THE STORM OVER THE “HYPOCRITICAL SERPENT”

Anti-Sabbatean polemics and seeking biblical precedents for what appeared to be a great collective sin, similar to an ‘ir nidah.at (literally, a rejected city, whose residents have become idolaters, as described in Deut. 13:13–19) or to the generation of the Tower of Babel did not suffice for everyone. Leib ben Ozer, for example, the beadle of the Ashkenazic community in Amsterdam, was overcome with excitement, knowing that an extremely dramatic sequence of events was taking place among the Jews, almost before his very eyes, and he decided to record it. His Yiddish chronicle, written in 1717–1718, The Story of Shabbetai Zevi, made him one of the first historians of Sabbeteanism.1 At the beginning of his work, he says he took the task upon himself because of his great curiosity. Sabbeteanism still aroused great interest among both Jews and non-Jews; Amsterdam, as a thriving economic crossroads, a port city visited by many travelers, and a center of printing, was the central location for gathering news, especially sensational, exciting news such as Sabbeteanism supplied. “Once when the mail came here to Amsterdam,” he wrote, “there was such great crowding that people almost crushed each other, to hear the news about the matter of Shabbetai Zevi.” He worked diligently: “I investigated and inquired all the time, as much as I could, asking important people and men of truth, who knew the root of the matter of Sabbetai Zevi, and I spoke with many people who themselves had visited him and eaten and drunk with him and knew about him very well. . . . [I swore] I would write explicitly, as far as my knowledge went. You will hear about dreadful deeds that took place at that very time and actually deceived the entire world.”2 In striving for exact documentation to uncover the truth, this chronicle displayed the prominent tendencies of the Enlightenment in Europe even at its

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early stages: unmasking the true faces of hypocritical religious functionaries, of enthusiastic pietists, of mystics and false prophets, who mislead their innocent followers. Leib ben Ozer was one of the first who viewed Sabbateanism not only as a religious and social phenomenon, a dangerous heretical sect that deviated from the accepted tradition, but also as an opportunity to distinguish between true and false, by taking a skeptical, critical position. He recommended studying the history of Sabbeteanism, “so that it will be an example, and if something like this or something similar happens again, you won’t believe easily.” False messiahs had misled the Jews in the past, and their harsh fate in exile only fostered messianic expectations, but the bitter experience with deceivers should teach that “we are not required to believe everything, for only a fool believes everything.”3 The source of the great power and the very existence of Sabbateanism was blindness to the truth: “At that time many lies were spread, so that it was impossible to believe in the truth, because of the falsehoods, though at that time people believed everything.”4

“h. ayon, W ho Confused th e Wor ld” Nearly half a century had passed since Shabbetai Zevi’s conversion to Islam, we are told by Leib ben Ozer, and even today, in the middle of the second decade of the century, “horrible deeds” were done by deceivers. H.ayim Malakh was wandering about in the communities of Europe, seeking an audience and deceiving his followers, because “he was very learned in visible and hidden matters, and his manner of study was pleasant and sweet,” and he was careful not to mention Shabbetai Zevi in public.5 In 1715, when Malakh visited Amsterdam, Leib ben Ozer was the one who prevented him from preaching in the synagogue. The beadle was sent to speak with him and he accused him directly of being Sabbatean. Leib ben Ozer, who did not hesitate to reprimand him and call him wicked, found himself in the presence of a man of nearly seventy, a persecuted wanderer who could not find a permanent place of residence, but who was confident in his belief. Several days after he left Amsterdam, a blunt and decisive warning letter arrived there from Frankfurt, sent by Rabbi Abraham Broda to the leaders of the community. “For the sake of His great Name, act and sanctify the name of heaven by your hand and expel him,” the rabbi urged them. “Why should you introduce the Angel of Death in your homes? Do not give him a place to sleep at night within your precincts.” Because “he causes a third destruction in Jerusalem and in the Jewish Diaspora.” Many people have fallen into his net, a severe decree of excommunication lay upon his head, and no contact must be made with him that would enable him to continue disseminating

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his teaching. If anyone in Amsterdam had not yet been convinced by his condemnation at the hand of Leib ben Ozer, by now they should understand that they must not be seduced by his impressive personality (“he was handsome and stately”) or by his status as a scholar and kabbalist. The author of The Story of Shabbetai Zevi was cautious lest skepticism, suspicion, and criticism of acts of deceit might lead to loss of hope for redemption and to denial of Kabbalah. Hence, he attributed the appearance of Sabbateanism to release of the powers of the Sitra ah.ra and acts of Satan. “All my life I was amazed that such acts, which have no substance, could take place in our days,” Leib ben Ozer wrote, until he learned from Sefer hagilgulim (The Book of Reincarnations) by H.aim Vital, that “the secrets of the Torah are conveyed to the qelipot.” The forces of the sitra ah.ra had been liberated and had redoubled their strength since the time of Shabbetai Zevi, and they were acting energetically to “deceive people.”6 Nevertheless, even after finding a theological explanation within the confines of the religion, it is still impossible to mistake his conclusion: the explosion of Sabbateanism taught about the need to reveal the truth, justified the persecutors of the Sabbateans, who sought to reveal the true face of those “who truly deceived the whole world” and to save the true religion, and it showed that innocent religious faith without criticism could lead to catastrophe. Heinrich Graetz, one of the pioneering scholars of the history of Sabbateanism, placed blame on the man whom he regarded as the most dangerous secret Sabbatean of all, and no less than one of the most corrupt religious leaders in the entire century: “Nehemia H.iya H.ayon, was an arch-swindler (Erzbetrüger), who, in his cunning, hypocrisy, arrogance, and ignorance, was very similar to the many deceivers who arose in the eighteenth century.”7 Who was H.ayon, and how did he become a persecuted Jew in the 1720s and 1730s, ostracized and reviled? Why did a scholar on such a high level and a kabbalist who yearned for knowledge of God, who never mentioned Shabbetai Zevi in his writing, who did not preach imminent redemption, and who did not believe that the time had come to suspend the commandments, come to be condemned as a heretic? For two years, 1713–1714, Neh.emia H.ayon (c. 1655–1730) was the center of a turbulent scandal that released powerful emotions and shook the Jewish networks of communication from one end to the other. The threshold of sensitivity in the presence of suspicion of skepticism like that of Spinoza rose in this age, when religious faith was challenged from many directions, as in the case of Rabbi Nieto in London, and, as we have seen through the eyes of Leib ben Ozer, suspicion also arose regarding Sabbatean subversion. Neh.emia H.ayon, who was born in Cairo to family from Sarajevo, studied in Jerusalem,

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served as a rabbi in Uskup in Macedonia, and afterward he lived in Nablus and in Safed, before setting out on years of wanderings. Rumors about “the great abominations committed by this scoundrel” and letters warning against him circulated in various places in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.8 However, had H.ayon not managed to have two of his books printed in Berlin in the winter of 1713, the affair would not have flared up and expanded to such a great degree. Seventy years before the Hebrew printing house in the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia became the center from which the innovative values of the Haskalah movement were disseminated, Divrei neh.emia (The Words of Nehemiah) appeared there, a commentary on the weekly Torah portion, followed by Sefer ‘oz le`elohim uveit qodesh haqodashim (The Book of Power to God and the House of the Holy of Holies), which became, in the eyes of his opponents, a dangerous, explosive powder keg and a red flag, around which the main controversy in the H.ayon affair was waged.9 For H.ayon, the period when he was finishing his books in Prague, collecting rabbinical authorizations, and having them printed in Berlin, licensed by the kings of Prussia, was the most successful in his life. It appeared that, after many years, his ambition to attain recognition as an outstanding kabbalist was about to be fulfilled: he would be admired by the great members of the rabbinical elite and gain the support of wealthy patrons. On the title page of the two books, he is presented as “the great light the general and kabbalistic rabbi, the divine rabbi and teacher rabbi Neh.emia H.iya H.ayon from the holy city of Safed, may it prosper and be built up.” Signs of his success were visible almost everywhere. The Prague community smiled upon him, he was treated with great honor there, and at first he lived in the home “of the notable Anshel Ginzburg,” and then under the protection of the family of Rabbi David Oppenheimer. Joseph, David Oppenheimer’s son, hosted him and supplied all his needs: “He took me into his home and gave me a bed and a table and a chair and a lamp, and I ate at his table.”10 The approbations for his books that he obtained from respected rabbis, including David Oppenheim himself, Gabriel Eskeles, the rabbi of Nikolsburg and Moravia, and Naphtali Katz, the kabbalist and rabbi who arrived in Prague after the fire in Frankfurt that changed the course of his life. All of them praised H.ayon as an “exalted and marvelous rabbi, a thoroughgoing sage . . . a great man with high ability to reason in visible and hidden things,” and they recommended his books warmly. Something of the secret of H.ayon’s charm and success in attaining such significant support can be heard in the words written later by Naphtali Katz, when he apologized for providing the approbation. Not only was there no reason to be suspicious or find fault, but this Sephardic rabbi from

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the Upper Galilee appeared to him as a particularly exotic and attractive figure. Rabbi Katz wrote the first impression that H.ayon made was exciting, “and his name became famous in Prague, how a divine sage had come from Safed.” Katz was persuaded that H.ayon was erudite and a serious kabbalist. He came to visit Katz with his personal assistant, whom he had brought from Venice, “behold I saw an old man, wrapped in a cloak, and appearing to be one of the attendant angels, and it has always been my way to be very welcoming to Sephardic men, more so to rabbis, and especially because the scribe had glorified him, not in his presence, to the heavens, and he said that the holy spirit dwells in him.” After they conversed about Torah matters, both exoteric and esoteric, “I found him full of knowledge and declared him to be one of the great and important Sephardim.”11 The accepting and unreserved support from the rabbis also opened the homes of wealthy families to H.ayon, and they contributed to the expense of printing his books, and when he arrived in Berlin, it also opened the gates of the printing house for him. In Berlin he enjoyed the support and protection of the Liebmann family, who were then waging a losing battle for control of the community, and the son-in-law of the Court Jew, Esther Liebmann, Rabbi Aaron Benjamin Wolf, who was the rabbi of the city and its surroundings, also gave his approbation to the two books.12 H.ayon’s greatest success was undoubtedly the publication of ‘Oz aelohim, by means of which he hoped to impart and disseminate his kabbalistic theology. In more than nearly two hundred pages, he discussed the great and sensitive issues of Zoharic and Lurianic Kabbalah, intending to clarify the essence of God, the processes of creation, and the system of the ten sefirot, which symbolize the degrees of revelation, and the qualities and powers of the divinity. Moreover, in the very beginning of the book, he revealed his intention to effect a change in the religious world of his time. In defiance of the well-known prohibition restricting and deterring rabbis from discussing the ma’ase merkava (literally, the work of the chariot), the divine mystical secrets whose source is in Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot, he announced in the heading of the introduction that he, Neh.emia H.iya H.ayon dealt with and sought “to understand and investigate and interpret ma’ase merkava.” The attention of those who studied the book was shifted from the substance of the discussion to the author’s personal and original voice, and to his claim to be changing the approach to esoteric knowledge. “Prick up your ears to hear my words,” H.ayon admonishes his readers, “and do not heed the vain words that say that we have no business with hidden things, that inquiry does not suit them.” The encounter with the esoteric knowledge of the Kabbalah was essential for every Jew, and the time had come to remove the veil of secrecy from mystical teachings and to open the locks. Not only was

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it permitted to investigate the secret of the divinity, and not only should it be free of restrictions, but this knowledge was necessary to attain the correct faith, the way to which was blocked. H.ayon rejected the argument that “if a man investigates, he will lose his soul, and he will begin to stink, and his stench will increase,” and he stated, “everyone who says so, has eyes blinded from seeing and educating their hearts.”13 The spirit of rebellion against the authority of the tradition throbs in H.ayon’s call, at the beginning of his kabbalistic theological work, to “investigate and interpret” the foundations of Judaism as a possibility available to any Jew. From this point of view, the H.ayon affair was also an expression of the dispute about the legitimacy of the independence of the individual in the realm of religion.14 As Elisheva Carlebach shows, having examined his writings with great precision and sensitivity, “whether H.ayon wished to sever or merely to conceal links to the figure of Shabbetai, his opponents correctly discerned that he was working within a Sabbatian framework.”15 Hagiz, who was one of the first to condemn H.ayon, also protested against the sexual aspect: “To believe that the God of Israel is not the cause of all causes, which is called ein sof [unending, infinity], and the first cause, but that there is need for a second cause, that He has an end and a boundary, and that he has an essence conceivable by flesh and blood, and that God is male and female.”16 The incident exploded in Amsterdam when H.ayon arrived there on July 9, 1713, with copies in his baggage of the two books that he had printed in Berlin. Hagiz swiftly flew warning flags, and within a few days spirits were aroused, and a dispute broke out between the Sephardi community, headed by Rabbi Solomon Ayllon, who greeted H.ayon with great honor and found no fault in his books, and Moses Hagiz and the rabbi of the Ashkenazi community, the H.akham Zvi, who publicized the bad reputation that had clung to H.ayon, demanding that his book be burned and its author be excommunicated and expelled.17 Panicked letters, tracts, urgent meetings, and many repeated investigations stirred up Jewish Amsterdam. The community was torn between H.ayon’s supporters and opponents, and boundary lines were drawn within the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. Theological discussion about the essence of heresy or the innovation of kabbalistic teachings were mingled with powerful personal emotions of competition and hatred. At first the Sephardi leaders considered the recommendations of Hagiz and the H.akham Zvi to be suspicious of H.ayon, even asking him to remain in the house where he was staying and not to frequent any synagogue until the investigation was complete.18 But after Rabbi Ayllon assembled a special committee to examine ‘Oz le`elohim, and its conclusions found no fault with the book, and after it was known that

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the H.akham Zvi had not waited for the conclusions but had excommunicated H.ayon on his own, “cursing him and banning him and warning that anyone who owned a copy of the book should burn it and throw away the ashes,” there was no way to heal the rift by agreement and compromise. Rabbi Ayllon did not conceal his revulsion at the H.akham Zvi’s arrogance (a man “who in his own eyes appears more important than our teacher Moses”), and he accused Hagiz of groundless incitement, and both of them of desecrating the name of God. The Sephardi community now closed ranks in the face of what appeared to be a grave insult to the honor of their rabbi, and of taking the affair beyond the bounds of Amsterdam. Despite the involvement of a Sephardi rabbi like Hagiz, the dispute was interpreted as a challenge to the Sephardi rabbi’s authority and as an Ashkenazi revolt against the superiority of the Sephardim in Amsterdam: “Then the men of the Sephardim spoke to one another, saying, who is this who has come to lord it over us and wishes to rule in a place that is not his own?”19 About a week after severe personal accusations were leveled by Ayllon against Hagiz and vice versa in sabbath sermons, on August 7, 1713 a verdict was issued, exonerating H.ayon of all suspicion. About a month after the dispute arose and forced him to hide and refrain from appearing in public, once again H.ayon was acknowledged publicly and even given a platform to preach from. Two leaders of the Sephardi community invited him to the synagogue, “and at the time of afternoon prayers, he entered with great honor, such as had not been seen, and a large audience accompanied him upon his entry and departure with joy and songs, and all the people were happy and blessed the rabbi, and the court that had passed a true verdict. And on the holy Sabbath day, they allowed him to preach, and they called him to the Torah with great honorifics.” The victory of H.ayon’s champions, which was demonstrated in the arena of the synagogue, was decisive, and as one of the letters states, describing the events of the summer of 1713 in Amsterdam with schadenfreude, “the faces of his enemy turned dark like the sides of a pot.”20 Hagiz and the H.akham Zvi, who had turned from accusers to accused, made certain, meanwhile, that the affair should reverberate outside of Amsterdam as well, and that their position should receive broad support from rabbis and community leaders. The dispute about H.ayon and his book, ‘Oz le`elohim, developed into a wide-ranging scandal. More than a hundred polemical writings, pamphlets, protests, expressions of opinion, personal letters, and judicial writs from the years 1713–1714 document the events. In these two years, during which international relations in Europe were stabilized with the signing of peace treaties putting an end to the War of the Spanish Succession, in Poland the verdict in the Sandomierz blood libel was carried out, Rabbi Hirsch Frankel was sent to

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prison because of the book of magic found in his possession, and in England new voices of “free-thinking” were heard, including Toland’s book on the possibility of Jewish naturalization, the Jewish leadership in many places was mainly concerned with the H.ayon affair. Writs of excommunication were issued by the rabbinical court of Nikolsburg, Moravia; reviews were published from Frankfurt and Altona in Germany; letters were sent to Amsterdam from community rabbis in Italy, most of whom came to the defense of the H.akham Zvi and Hagiz; threats from Izmir strengthened the suspicion against H.ayon; and letters of support arrived from Algiers and Aleppo.21 The pressure brought to bear upon the Sephardi leadership to retract their support for H.ayon grew in strength. Rabbi Judah Bariel of Mantua was particularly active, pointing again and again to the clear evidence of H.ayon’s heresy and showing that ‘Oz le`elohim contained teachings of Shabbetai Zevi and the kabbalist and Sabbtean prophet Abraham Miguel Cardozo.22 The insulted representatives of the Mahamad responded that they had the right to decide on their own, without considering the opinion and rulings of the H.akham Zvi. Their community was older and more prestigious, the H.akham Zvi refused to cooperate with them, and responsibility for the scandal lay entirely upon his shoulders. When the theological dispute became a matter of the leaders’ authority, they told the Italian rabbi in no uncertain terms not to intervene: “Your honor cannot be unaware that in this city there is a community of Portuguese Jews, may God increase its excellence, extremely noble and older than that of the Ashkenazim. It is not subordinate to anyone, and it is not obligated . . . to follow the views of any court other than their own.”23 In the winter of 1713, just five months after H.ayon’s arrival in the city, matters went out of control. After the attempt to summon the H.akham Zvi to a discussion, on November 11, he and Hagiz were both excommunicated, and the members of the community were forbidden to have any contact with them, so that “God will separate the evil from us and bless His people with peace.” On that very day, the H.akham Zvi contacted the municipal government through a Dutch notary with a complaint against Ayllon, but the excommunication was renewed by a special proclamation several days later.24 The Ashkenazi rabbi and Hagiz were entirely undone. “The abominable, hypocritical serpent H.ayon, who has confused the world” appeared to be victorious, and they had to pay the price. Toward the end of the winter of 1714, the two could no longer bear the hostility that was directed against them from every side, and they left Amsterdam for London. There, the excommunicated refugees were greeted with open arms by Rabbi Nieto. Moreover, within a short time the balance of power was reversed, and condemnations of H.ayon grew stronger,

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undermining the confidence of those who approved of him. Some of the rabbis whose approbations were published in H.ayon’s books announced that they had been deceived, that they had not seen the entire book, and that they retracted their approval and joined with the accusers. H.ayon’s presence in Amsterdam became an embarrassment, and he was apparently encouraged to go to Palestine. In time, the scales clearly began to weigh against H.ayon, but the three central figures in the affair were no longer in Amsterdam, and the controversy lost the feeling of urgency and continued mainly in the arena of polemical writing. As with many of the disputes that broke out among the Jews in the eighteenth century, the H.ayon affair combined theology, religious feelings, social considerations, and personal drives. The many extant documents indeed make it possible to observe the events of 1713–1714 from varied and contradictory points of view and to listen to the explanations of the actors themselves. For example, the H.akham Zvi refused absolutely to confront Rabbi Ayllon directly and debate about the teachings of ‘Oz le`elohim. When people implored him to cross the short distance separating the Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues and take part in the dispute, he rejected the invitation with contempt: “He said in surprise, how is it that they send to me, for can they give me any orders? Are they not fools for sending after me for this.”25 Jacob Emden, his son, was just a young boy then, but forty years later he made certain that his father’s position should be preserved for posterity. In his eyes, his father was the hero of the H.ayon affair, because he recognized the unprecedented heresy. In Emden’s opinion, the affair blew up mainly because of the inner tension in Amsterdam, and the considerations were not necessarily theological. He stated, “[Ayllon] coerced them with a temptation, and the lying opinion of the leaders of the state, which is called politics, is what made them deviate and turn backward to betray their faith.”26 Hagiz believed he was taking responsibility upon himself and serving as an authorized representative of the whole religious leadership in a time of crisis: “For true Torah scholars must be like sailors, striving with all their strength to save the ship, which is the world, to prevent it from being destroyed by the iniquity of sinners who flee from God.”27 Hagiz saw himself as the captain of a ship, with heroic self-sacrifice heading an existential struggle. Indeed, his efforts in pursuit of H.ayon was extraordinarily great. As Carlebach shows, Hagiz was the one who intentionally lit the fire, sought to arouse a broad public discussion, and was the chief disputant in its course. Hagiz successfully exploited printing as a means of deadly and pointed criticism. Thus, for example, in Igeret haqanaut, he divided the printed page into separate passages under various headings. On one side, under headings such as “Lips of Falsehood,” “The Serpent’s Voice,” or “Language of

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Deceit,” he quoted H.ayon and his supporters, and in other squares he crushed their words under the heading of “Lips of Truth.” He did not hesitate to revile his opponents as cheats, heretics, and adulterers, and he employed belligerent rhetoric in works with the threatening titles of “The Smashing of Sinners,” “The Seraphim’s Whisper,” and “The War of God and the Sword of God.” The targets indicated on the title page of “The Smashing of Sinners,” which was printed in his exile in London in the autumn of 1714, were very specific. Mocking his adversaries “the three calamities, H.ayon, Cardoso, and Ayllon . . . who reviled the Torah of God.” Hagiz confronted them, presenting his biography and his ego as an independent, tempestuous, and furious personality: “It is I who speaks,” Hagiz proclaimed in the beginning of this polemical work, “I whose name is Moses Hagiz from the holy city of Jerusalem, may it be preserved . . . I am young in days, absorbing forty, forty years are for understanding, like a bird wandering from its nest, I go and storm.” Hagiz continued to build his independent image as a stern warrior, saying he had been persecuted in the past, “many assailed me in my youth, but they did not overcome me . . . though they exposed me to the blows of the sons of Belial.” But his loyalty to the truth was unshakable. He was determined “not to bury his face in the earth, and though I am the smallest of the smallest of the Jews, I did not cease and will not cease to be a steed ready for this obligatory war.”28 The point of view of Rabbi David Nieto, who hosted the H.akham Zvi and Hagiz in London, was less personal, mainly emphasizing the worrisome public dimension of the H.ayon affair. In 1715, when all the documents already lay before him, and the storm in Amsterdam had died down, he wrote Esh dat (Fire of Religion) in Hebrew and Spanish, to refute the kabbalistic theology of ‘Oz le`elohim. In an accompanying work in Spanish, which was circulated in manuscript, he called attention to the broad consequences of the affair. Being closely acquainted with the ideas and political trends of his day, it was urgent for him to make it clear that even a kabbalistic work such as ‘Oz le`elohim, written in Hebrew, could not be concealed solely in the Jewish realm for a long time. The observant eyes of excellent Christian Hebraists would certainly notice it, and then it would be clear that its theology was surprisingly consistent with the rebellion against the religion on the part of the deists who denied the presence of God in the world and of the libertines, who broke down the confines of morality. H.ayon exposed the Jews everywhere in Europe to danger, supplying weapons to those who wish to attack them. “What ruler or state will take us in? What nation will tolerate us?” Nieto asked, adding: “What is liable to happen to us? What will they do to us? . . . Will they condemn us for becoming instructors in heresy, libertinism, and atheism?” The H.ayon affair threatened stability. For

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someone sensitive to the image of the Jews, the consequences were so grave that H.ayon appeared to be not only an enemy of the true religion, but also a danger to Jewish existence. A minority whose presence in Europe was shaky must, in his opinion, distance itself from extremism, and if they did not deny H.ayon in the most decisive manner, then their position would suffer a mortal blow.29 The rabbis who granted approbations to H.ayon’s books also found that their words of support written in Berlin in 1712 placed them in the eye of the storm, to their distress. David Oppenheim proclaimed that H.ayon had deceived him, and that he had transferred his approbation for the relatively innocent Divrei neh.emia to the controversial ‘Oz le`elohim, “which never occurred to me at all, and I never glanced at it.”30 Rabbi Naphtali Katz went out of his way to avoid even a shadow of doubt that he regretted giving his approbation to H.ayon, that he had retracted it, and that he absolutely condemned that cunning heretic. News of the events in Amsterdam reached Katz while he was in Breslau, and for several months he was unable to reach Prague and his family because of the plague that broke out there. In a number of letters to the H.akham Zvi in September and October 1713, he presented himself as a miserable man, saying that sorrows continued to fall upon his head. “I remain here without clothing for day or night, just a single wrap, and I sit and weep for my ill fortune in my old age,” he wrote, and now he was involved in that great affair and personal responsibility was placed upon him, “for they pin the failure on a failed man like me, perish the thought, for the misdeed was at my hand, when I gave my approbation to that heretical book.” Katz was extremely perturbed, and in those apologetic letters he did his best to defend himself and clear his name. He claimed that H.ayon deceived him and only showed him a few pages of his book. Though only a short time later, suspicion arose regarding H.ayon, the protection he received in the home of David Oppenheim provided him with immunity. Katz even took the trouble to go to Berlin to try to recover the letter of approbation before the book was printed, but H.ayon was living in a Christian’s house, and Katz was afraid that if he caused a fuss, the matter would come to the attention of the authorities. In addition to the list of suspicions against H.ayon, he added testimony of his own regarding his libertine behavior, “he is idle all the time with the appetites of this world, with eating and drinking and [playing] cards, a game called ‘l’Hombre,’” and regarding his boasts of his magical powers: “He said that he brought down Samael and his abominable chariot, and that they were all his abject slaves, and that Samael himself served him. . . . And that he had the ability to overturn the world and build worlds and truly to bring the dead to life.” It is very possible that Rabbi Katz had actually known he was giving approbation to a Sabbatean, but now he reviled H.ayon and joined the

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ban against him, not concealing his hope that thereby he could refute move all suspicion against himself: “So that people will not be mistaken about me and judge me as one who helps transgressors by giving my approbation, and now I am silent . . . I am prepared to agree with those who have already encouraged me to consider that man and his books banned and ostracized and set apart and separated from all the sanctities of the Jews, the community in exile, until he himself accepts repentance and is remorseful.”31

“To Shock th e H e a rt of th e R a bbis a n d Rouse Th e m from Th eir Slu m ber a n d In dol ence” According to Carlebach’s precise reconstruction of the ramifications of the affair, H.ayon’s enemies thought he would be easy prey, but they were deceived, for he fought back and displayed a great degree of self-confidence. In Carlebach’s opinion, the strong points in H.ayon’s personality and his resilience were what made the dispute dramatic and vital for a long time.32 Indeed, from H.ayon’s point of view, the rabbis appeared in an entirely different light. He observed the events with great alertness and was familiar with almost all the pamphlets, letters, and reviews, and he responded to them and struggled so that his version should be heard. His self-esteem and confidence in his religious mission did not wane. In ‘Oz le`elohim, he already proclaimed that he was convinced of the truth of his teaching. He declared that he was willing to pay the price of this mission as a tormented saint: “For it is known and visible to Him how much persecution I have suffered and will suffer for His blessed Divinity . . . and Blessed be the Lord who gave me strength to bear it.”33 The course of events in Amsterdam initially worked in his favor and gave him strong backing. Borne on its wings, he responded to his detractors and defamers and contributed to making them from pursuers to the pursued. For him, more than for any other participant in the affair, this was truly an existential challenge. He strongly denied the interpretation given to his books, claiming that his opponents had not read or understood them, and that everything was to be found in the Zohar and other kabbalistic works, in any event. He presented himself as revolted by Sabbateanism and denying its teachings, and he tried to enlist supporters for himself who would listen to his claims. As evidence of his propriety, he presented letters of support he had received from important rabbis, and he vehemently attacked those who had arisen against him as liars. Again and again, he claimed he was innocent and that his high status had been impaired. Just a few years prior, the leaders of the Izmir community had committed themselves to establish a yeshiva for him in the Land of Israel

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with their funds, going to great lengths to help him. In his response, which appeared during 1714, in a pamphlet entitled Moda`ah raba (A prominent announcement), once again H.ayon placed himself in the center of the affair and sought to gain sympathy. He denied the rumors about his life story by writing a short autobiography, describing the main waystations in his life (“My Chronicles”), presenting himself as a diligent and normative scholar who had lived at various times in Egypt, the Land of Israel, and the Balkans, married for the second time, and lived now in Safed. He never lived a wanton life as it was said of him, and when he was in Prague, “all my labor was in matters of Torah, and all day I meditated on it, and at night, in three months, I wrote the book, Divrei neh.emia, and I never wanted to eat in society, and not even in the home of Oppenheim himself, and only from the Sabbath to the Sabbath, and everything was so that I would not lose time from my heavenly work.”34 In a second pamphlet, Hatsad tsevi (He Who Hunts a Deer), H.ayon poured out more of his feelings. When he discerned the weakness of his rival, seeing the apparent defeat of the H.akham Zvi (in Hebrew, Zvi = deer), he printed a polemical work that defamed and cursed the former Ashkenazi rabbi of Amsterdam, turning the tables on him. H.ayon became the hunter, and the fugitive H.akham Zvi, the prey. H.ayon wrote that he could no longer restrain himself, his war was now a holy war, in the name of heaven, and there could be no restraint. Revenge must be taken against a cursed liar like Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi “in public, out loud.” The deer hunter called out: “How much persecution have I suffered from those who hate me in vain, I have never been one to take insult, and when it happened here for the first time that they said some wicked things about me and almost said that I had violated the entire Torah. . . . My ears rang at hearing the voice of a man who desecrated the name of heaven, who gathered and collected a band of robbers.” H.ayon indeed believed that he was the great victim and truly persecuted, and he sounded his wounded voice before rabbinical public opinion throughout the world and demanded a just trial. The protests and polemics in the H.ayon affair were mainly sent within the network that connected senior rabbinical scholars. “Therefore, before the throne of their Torah, I will shout in protest,” H.ayon addressed the religious leadership by which he had aspired to be accepted, and whose recognition he had craved for his whole life, because “for some time my comments on the Zohar have been attacked, Zvi [Hirsch Ashkenazi] and Moses Hagiz, one of them robs, and the other tramples, and thus, my teachers and masters, the highest columns of the land, upon which the entire world stands, rise up with the help of God to save the oppressed from the oppressor and the persecuted from his persecutors.” H.ayon added that he hoped for a final decision in the affair from the rabbis, and also rescue from great injustice: “Fight my

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fight and separate my words from his, and let him with whom the truth dwells, may their hand support him and their arms embrace him, and he with whom falsehood dwells, stand before him and strip away his cloak.”35 His hopes were not answered, and his counterattack was repulsed. At the end of that year, he discovered that almost no one was on his side, and he remained in isolation. Once again, he had to wander about, with the mark of disgrace of a Sabbatean heretic stamped on his forehead. During the following decade, H.ayon did not despair, and in adverse circumstances he tried stubbornly to enlist supporters and elicit letters of support that would clear him and ‘Oz le`eloheim. In Istanbul, in the summer of 1724, it seemed for a moment that he had attained his goal, when the rabbis of the community, headed by Rabbi Judah Rozanes, saw that “no one would invite me in their home or even give me a place to camp on the earth.” They had pity for him and agreed to remove his excommunication, on condition that he swear no longer to teach “the secrets of the Torah” to anyone. According to H.ayon, even Naphtali Katz reconciled with him and forgave him. However, Hagiz, who presented these arguments of H.ayon’s, once again confronted him with contradictory evidence and the opposite version, according to which this was a fabrication: Rabbi Katz refused to speak with him and certainly had not forgiven him, and the decision to rescind the excommunication was taken only under pressure from the Turkish regime.36 Even sworn enemies like Hagiz and Emden had to concede that in the lowest moments of his life H.ayon’s spirits still were not broken. Bearing new writings, he returned to the communities of Europe and even to the center of the affair, Amsterdam, and once again it was necessary to warn against this “old fraud,” who refused to surrender: “After H.ayon, may the name of the wicked rot, was excommunicated by one hundred and thirty great rabbis and more from the entire dispersion of the Exile in Ashkenaz, Poland, Italy, Turkey, and Africa, and he did not find repose for his feet wherever he went, they called out to him, go away, impure one, eleven years later he returned to those countries and again awakened the shame and the blemish.”37 The H.ayon affair, which raged in the 1710s and 1720s, nearly bursts apart under the burden of the modern meanings that can be found in it.38 We have already seen quite a few confrontations, suspicions, accusations, and excommunications in this period, but they were dwarfed by this affair. By means of the printed word, especially that which was published in Amsterdam, which was then the capital of Jewish printing in Hebrew and Yiddish, the H.ayon affair reverberated in many places simultaneously and developed into a furious conversation among dozens of religious figures and community leaders in Eur­ ope. The printed texts and the personal letters were almost without exception

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critical, suspicious, and pointed, and their polemical style divided the Jewish realm among doctrines, leaders, and camps. For example, in the attack on ‘Oz le`elohim, a distinction was made between permitted and forbidden books, which had to be banned and burned. The demand arose for tightening control over printed books, to prevent the printing of Sabbatean works bearing rabbinical approbations. The H.ayon affair, which began as an effort to block what appeared to be heresy, also took on a decidedly ideological dimension. H.ayon was viewed by his adversaries as undermining rabbinical authority, crossing the boundary of self-censorship, and removing the veil of esoteric secrecy that covered kabbalistic teachings. In Hagiz’s view, and especially in that of David Nieto, H.ayon’s theology was an expression of the philosophical critique of religion. Though it seemed at first that those who extended protection to H.ayon were stronger, Hagiz and his colleagues set a broad and effective public network in motion against him, deterring open Sabbatean action. They viewed the defeat of H.ayon as a mission to protect “the true faith” and the status of the rabbinical elite. As we have seen, Graetz—who studied this affair in all its details, though he was repulsed by Sabbateanism as a delusion, a blot on Jewish history, an expression of Jewish backwardness, and movement against the dir­ ection of the historical clock—was fully aware of its significance as a wakeup call for dealing with modern challenges, arguing that the Sabbatean movement and the enormous opposition to it were at least effective in “shocking the hearts of the rabbis and rouse them from their slumber and indolence.”39 Was H.ayon really the arch-deceiver that Graetz called him? Observation of the affair from the various points of view must center on the impressions of his contemporaries of the individual fighting for his opinion. H.ayon believed in himself and in his religious mission, in his own consciousness, claiming that not only was he not a deceiver and a heretic, but also he was the only one who knew the truth, the divine secret, and who was not deterred from announcing it publicly, even though he was unjustly persecuted as a suffering saint. The rabbi of Mantua, Judah Bariel, put his finger on this innovative dimension in H.ayon when he identified an independent, critical personality in him, one who crossed boundaries: “He says that everyone must look at the things above heaven, even if he is wrong. He states that the human quest is above the tradition.”40 Carlebach even compares H.ayon to the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, who insisted on his right to judge things by himself and broke free of subjection and obedience to human authorities.41 When we interpret the H.ayon affair this way, it takes on modern significance, so it is not difficult to understand why it aroused such great fears among those who regarded themselves as the guardians of the religion. If “the human

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quest is above the tradition,” nothing is immune to criticism, and the authority to rethink and seek the truth is transferred to every single individual. The level of suspicion kept rising, and in the end even those who fought against Sabbateanism were constrained to admit that without showing skepticism, applying critical thinking, and discovering the true face of imposters, it would be impossible to win the battle. Now we won’t believe everyone like fools, said Leib ben Ozer, as noted, and Moses Hagiz thought in very similar fashion. Fearing the consequences of the dispute, he did warn that when one attacks a book like ‘Oz le`elohim, this was not meant to be a general challenge to the validity of the Kabbalah (“guard your soul greatly to reflect upon the true sages and not to deny anything of theirs”); but in the same breath he also announced that from now on, “one must not believe everyone who comes and says, ‘I am a kabbalist, approach, and I will reveal the secrets of the Torah to you.’” The need of the guardians of the faith to purify the religion and the ranks of the religious elite brought them unintentionally closer to the new and even radical trend in Europe: to get rid of false, power-hungry religious leaders.42

“A ll Th e se Peopl e De serv e De ath Sentence” At the end of the first quarter of the century, in the summer of 1725, the most successful exposure took place in the struggle against the Sabbatean challenge. A bookseller, Moses Meir Kaminka, who had been sent from the Sabbatean center in the community of Żółkiew to circulate writings and build a network of “believers” in Central Europe, fell into a trap that was laid for him, and his arrest and interrogation opened a new broad and united front in the condemnation and pursuit of Sabbateanism throughout Europe. The Sabbatean emissary found allies in the kloiz of the community of Mannheim, and he apparently felt confident enough to reveal his identity and the purpose of his journey to a Jew named Petah.ia, who was staying in the same inn. However, Petah.ia violated the trust that was given him and informed two of the leaders of the Frankfurt community who were also visiting Mannheim. Petah.ia became an agent whose mission was to bring Moses Meir to Frankfurt, with the excuse that there was a large community there and he would find willing listeners to Sabbatean propaganda. Petah.ia promised Moses Meir a laissez-passer for the border crossings and payment of the cost of the trip. After a journey of about seventy kilometers, Moses Meir arrived at the home of the rabbi of the community, Jacob Katz, and the trap closed on him: “They locked the door, and six guards from among the beadles of the community stood at the entrance, indoors and out, to keep him from escaping, and when he came before the rabbi, he was told, ‘there is no

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peace, said the Lord, and you wicked man, repent!’ And he was silent like a dead dog, not answering at all.” A search of his effects discovered Sabbatean writings, including a special list of holidays marking the major events of Shabbetai Zevi’s life. The fast day of the ninth of Av, for example, was listed as “a holiday of rejoicing.” The emissary himself was expelled from Frankfurt in shame, and “he was nearly stoned by the young Jewish men.” According to Emden, “[now that] it is known how far the insolence of those cursed people goes, to send a special emissary to convert the Jews from the faith of their fathers,” inquiries were opened in various communities. “Vengeance was taken against everyone who was suspected of being infected by even the odor of this cursed heresy,” and the signal was given to launch a campaign that strengthened the pursuit of Sabbateans with unprecedented stringency and determination.43 The leaders of the communities between Poland and Holland invested a concrete effort to drive out the “sect of believers.” The sense of urgency was unmistakable, no other voices were heard, and there was no dissent. Historians have estimated that these were not small, marginal groups, but that the number of Sabbateans in Poland and the states of Germany and Austria came to fifteen thousand.44 Until then, a conspiracy of silence had reigned regarding Sabbateanism, but now it was entirely smashed. The counterpropaganda, the tracts, the excommunications, and the protocols of testimony were full of threats and warnings, and people spoke of “a plague circulating in the land of Ashkenaz.” Unlike the H.ayon affair, this time the Sabbateanism was revealed in its radical and antinomian guise—in testimony, in the reports of spies, and in seized letters—frightening the Jewish leadership.45 In the Frankfurt community, where the emissary who had come from Poland was exposed, a writ of excommunication was promulgated and later quoted in other places: That evil man, Moses Meir of Żółkiew, may his name be blotted out, with those who join the sect of believers in Shabbetai Zevi, may his name be blotted out, and all those who know and are familiar with the believers and help them with any kind of assistance, they are excommunicated and banned and expelled from every Jewish community, they are cursed by the tribunal on high and by the tribunal down below, may they be childless and die with no children, and anyone called a Jew should not come within four ells of them, and . . . not to accept this cursed man and those who join him and all the believers in Shabbetai Zevi, may his name be blotted out, in any holy matter, until they come and receive full repentance.46

Within a few days, the rabbinical courts of Mannheim, Fürth, the united communities of Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbek, and then Amsterdam, and, two

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months later, Prague as well, all joined in the excommunication. The ostracism and expulsion of the Sabbateans from the communities in 1725 was absolute. They were called heretics, not counted as brethren, and did not stand with the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai. Moses Hagiz, who was already living in Altona, played a central role in the struggle. He sent a long and detailed letter to the leaders of the Council of Four Lands in Poland to enlist them, too, as a supreme authority, in the pursuit of Sabbateans. He told them they could not stand idly by, for the seizure of the emissary, Moses Meir, showed that dens of Sabbateanism existed in Poland, “and you, did not the fire come from you, for the edge of the field has burned, and you, too, must eliminate the thorns from the vineyard.” He regarded this supra-communal organization as the closest thing possible to independent Jewish rule, with the authority to punish, and in any event he did not hesitate to say, “for all these people deserve death sentence at the hands of a court, although, for our many sins, from the day we were exiled, we do not have the staff of government, and the four types of capital punishment have been canceled, but in any event, their sentence cannot be rescinded.”47 The response of the leaders of Polish Jewry is not extant. Perhaps they were put off by Hagiz’s effort to involve them in such a vehement and extreme campaign. But the thought that Sabbateans should be condemned to death was consistent with the extreme tension that gripped those who led the attack. In the struggle against the Sabbatean heresy there was to be no compromise, and no favoritism, as proclaimed by the synagogue of Altona in the pamphlet, H.avia derabanan, the snake that was dispatched to strike the enemy, none of whom, even Torah scholars, will be cleared: “No matter who one is, a leader or a notable, or a commander of hundreds, even if he is learned or from the sect of modest pietists, a leader or official or a governor, man or woman.”48 Not only was there such a learned man, but grave suspicion clung to one of the most talented rabbis in Europe: Jonathan Eybeschütz (1690–1764). He had been living in Prague for ten years, was much admired as a rabbi, and was breathing down the neck of the rabbi of the community. Jacob Emden reported that at that time the manuscript of a kabbalistic work was found, Va`avo hayom el ha’ayin (And I Came This Day unto the Fountain, probably in 1724), and, although it was unsigned, the opponents of Sabbateanism were convinced that it had been written by Eybeschütz. Emden was visiting the community of Pressburg when colleagues who came from Prague submitted the work to him for examination. His response was deep shock: “My hair stood on end upon reading two or three sections because of the many

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imprecations and the opposite of the words of the living God in the secrets of Kabbalah.” He ruled that the book must be burned. Central to the doctrine of the godhead were detailed descriptions of physical sexuality that take place within various aspects of the godhead put off even those who were familiar with these sexual concepts, which were an inherent part of the language of kabbalistic texts.49 Va`avo hayom el ha’ayin was condemned as a heretical work, and for Emden, who exposed this text in his capacity as he was a rabbinical censor, this was a formative experience, which changed his life completely. “From then on I knew entirely clearly that this man, Eybeschütz was a bear lurking against Judaism,” Emden wrote in his memoirs, “and this entered my heart like the venom of a serpent.”50 Emden did not wish to publicize his suspicions, since it would be difficult to refute the denials. Eybeschütz himself joined the severe and strict excommunication of the Sabbateans, which was signed in Prague in 1725, a ban that cleared him of suspicion and insulated him from the dangerous affair of the Sabbatean agent, Moses Meir. But for Jacob Emden, this was a formative moment, and he began a long, obstinate campaign against Eybeschütz, as though he had really been stricken by a serpent’s fangs and was poisoned all his life. Emden was only twenty-seven years old when in an eloquent and emotional letter, which he sent on November 12, 1725, from Broda to Rabbi David Oppenheim in Prague, he announced his suspicions of Eybeschütz and his enlistment in the struggle against the Sabbateans. “When I read, my heart was torn.” Emden told Oppenheim about his impression of the supposedly heretical work attributed to Eybeschütz, but he also knew that this struggle was incumbent upon him as an existential necessity, as fulfillment of the testament of his father, the H.akham Zvi: “Since the matter touches upon me especially because of honoring my father, I remembered that these cursed people tried to destroy him because he was zealous for the Lord, and the Lord helped him and shared some of His honor with him, and his blood, too, is demanded from those who reviled him.” From then on, for the remaining fifty years of his life, Emden could not sever himself or distinguish between his personal sense of obligation and consciousness that the confrontation with Eybeschütz was a struggle until decisive victory and his public awareness that he had shouldered a religious mission. Emden was henceforth to live out the eighteenth century with tender and exposed nerves as a period that presented grave, threatening, and unprecedented heretical challenges. Looking back on 1725, he says that, as his father had done in the H.ayon affair, he must warn against Sabbateanism: “It is a danger to all of Judaism and a mortal danger for the Exile.” From now on

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everything must be done to drag its believers and writings from the shadows, to expose and publicize them, “to defend against their sharp venom, which penetrates the weak of heart and the feeble of brain,” and without considering the prestige of important and respected rabbis like Eybeschütz.51

Note s 1. Leib Ben R. Ozer, The Story of Shabbetai Zevi [Yiddish and Hebrew], ed. Shlomo Zucker and Rivka Plesser (Jerusalem, 1978). 2. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 3. Ibid., pp. 2–3 4. Ibid., p. 160. 5. Leib Ben R. Ozer, The Story of Shabbetai Zevi, pp. 189–193. 6. Ibid., pp. 192–198, 188–199, respectively. 7. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von aeltesten Zeiten bis auf Gegenwart, vol. 10, p. 315. 8. Menachem Friedman, “Igrot beparashat pulmus n­ eh.­emia h.iya H.ayon,” Sefunot 10 (1956), pp. 586–605; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, ch. 4. 9. ­Neh.­emia H.iya H.ayon, Divrei neh.emia (Berlin, 5473); N ­ eh.­emia H.ayon, Sefer ‘oz le`elohim uveit qodesh haqodashim (Berlin, 5473). Divrei ­neh.­emia was published during the last days of the life of King Friedrich I, who died on February 25, 1713, and on the title page it says, “under the reign of his highness our lord the praised and merciful and righteous king Friedrich I King of Prussia and the Elector Duke of Brandenburg.” ‘Oz le`elohim was published in the first days of the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm I (erroneously called the second on the title page). 10. H.ayon, Divrei ­neh.­emia, author’s introduction. 11. Letter of Naphtali Katz from Breslau to Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi in Amsterdam, 5 Elul 5473, in Kaufmann, “La lutte de R. Naftali Cohen contre Hayyon,” p. 274. 12. Stern, The Court Jew, p. 244. 13. H.ayon, ‘Oz le`elohim, author’s introduction, esp. fols. 1a, 41, 7b. 14. See Judah Liebes, “Hayesod haidiologi shebepulmus H.ayon,” Sod haemuna hashabtait (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2007), ch. 4; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 90–104. 15. Ibid., p. 97. The interpretation of the H.ayon affair follows that of Carlebach. 16. Moshe Hagiz, Sefer shever posh’im (London, 5474), p. 48. 17. See the reconstruction of the events in Friedman, “Igrot beparashat pulmus ­neh.­emia h.iya H.ayon,” pp. 490–495.

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18. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 50: “In their desire to depend in particular on my late father and teacher [the H.akham Zvi], knowing and recognizing him as a man of faith, in possession of wisdom and intelligence, and they denied their rabbi, Rabbi Solomon Ayllon.” 19. Friedman, “Igrot beparashat ­neh.­emia h.iya H.ayon,” pp. 515, 518. 20. “A letter written in Amsterdam about the event there and how it was,” in Friedman, “Igrot befarshat pulmus ­neh.­emia h.iya h.ayon,” pp. 516–519. 21. See especially the bibliography prepared by Menachem Friedman, “Igrot beparashat pulmus n­ eh.­emia h.iya H.ayon,” pp. 612–619. In addition, Isaac Samuel Emanuel, “Pulmus ­neh.­emia h.iya H.ayon beamsterdam, te’udot miginzei haqehila haportuguesit beamsterdam,” Sefunot 9 (1965): 209–246; Isaiah Zane, “H.ilufei mikhtavim bein r. moshe Hagiz and r. shimshon morporgo be’inyan nehemia H.ayon vesi’ato,” Qovets al yad 2 (1936): 156–196; For more about the expansion of the H.ayon affair, see Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, ch. 5. 22. See Friedman, “Igrot beparashat pulmus n­ eh.­emia h.iya h.ayon,” pp. 526–528. 23. Emanuel, “Pulmus ­neh.­emia h.iya H.ayon beamsterdam, te’udot miginzei haqehila haportuguesit beamsterdam,” pp. 228–231. 24. Ibid., pp. 238–240; Friedman, “Igrot beparashat pulmus ­neh.­emia h.iya h.ayon,” pp. 530–532; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 104–114. 25. From the register of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam, in Menachem Friedman, “Te’udot h.adashot ‘al parashat hapulmus be’inyan H.ayon,” Erets Yisrael 10 (1971): 237–239. 26. Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 50–55. See also Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 29–32. 27. Moses Hagiz, Igeret haqanaut (Amsterdam, 5474) (“Pi hadibur”). 28. Moses Hagiz, Sefer shever posh’im, introduction (“Bat qol yotset”). 29. Davied Nieto, Esh dat (London, 5475). See Raphael Lowe, “The Spanish Supplement to Nieto Esh Dath,” American Academy for Jewish Research 48 (1981): 267–297; Matt Goldish, “The Spirit of the Eighteenth Century in the Anti Sabbatean Polemics of Hakham Nieto,” in The Legacies of Richard Popkin, ed. Jeremy D. Popkin (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), pp. 229–248; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 143–148. 30. Letter from David Oppenheim to Leib Hamburger, 4 H.eshvan 5474 (October 24, 1713), in Isaac Dov Feld, “Mikhtav shalom mikevod hagaon rabeinu david oppenheim ztsl,” H.adarom 42 (1976): 175–187; Y. Z. Kahana, “Teshuvat r. david oppenheim bidevar haskamato ‘al divrei n­ eh.­emia h.iya h.ayut,” Sinai 21 (1947): 327–334; Friedman, “Igarot beparashat H.ayon,” pp. 506–508. 31. The letters of Naphtali Katz to the H.akham Zvi from September and October 1713 in the appendix to David Kauffmann, “La lutte de R. Naftali Cohen contra Hayyon,” pp. 256–286. See Judah Liebes, “Qavim ledemuto shel r. naftali katz mifrankfurt ­veyah.­aso lashabtaut,” in Kolot Rabbim: Essays in Memory

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of Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer [Hebrew], ed. Rachel Elior and Joseph Dan (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996), pp. 293–305. 32. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 86–89. 33. H.ayon, ‘Oz le`elohim, introduction. 34. ­Neh.­emia H.ayon, Moda`ah raba (Amsterdam, 5474 [1714]). 35. ­Neh.­emia H.ayon, Sefer hatsad tsevi (Amsterdam, 5474 [1714]). Polemics with other rivals is also found in the pamphlet: N ­ eh.­emia H.iya H.ayon, Sefer shalhevet ya (Amsterdam, 5474 [1714]). 36. Moshe Hagiz, Lema’an da’at kol ‘ami haarets ki yesh Elohim shoftim baarets (Hanau, 5486 [1726]), fols. 4–8. On H.ayon’s return to Europe, see Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 167–172. 37. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fol. 34b. See Friedman, “Igrot beparashat pulmus ­neh.­emia h.iya h.ayon,” pp. 504–505. 38. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, chs. 4–5. 39. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, vol. 10. 40. Letter from Judah Briel of Mantua to the heads of the Mahamad in Amsterdam, December 22, 1713, in Friedman, “Igrot beparashat pulmus n­ eh.­emia h.iya H.ayon,” p. 552. 41. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, p. 101. 42. Hagiz, Shever posh’im, p. 10. 43. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 35b–36a; Amlander, Sefer sheerit yisrael, pp. 285–289. 44. See Scholem, Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Sabbaetianism and Its Metamorphoses, pp. 109–110. 45. On the events of the anti-Sabbatean campaign of 1725, see Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 35–44; Scholem, Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Sabbaetianism and Its Metamorphoses , pp. 108–110; Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism, pp. 600–608; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 172–194; Putik, “The Prague Sojourn of Rabbi Jacob Emden as Depicted in His Autobiography Megilat Sefer” pp. 72–80; R. Jonathan Eibeschütz, And I Came This Day Unto the Fountain, critically edited and introduced by Pawel Maciejko (Los Angeles: Chrub Press, 2014), introduction. A large number of tracts and testimony from that year were collected in mid-century in manuscript: Joseph Prager (ed.), ­Gah.­ alei esh, microfilm edition of the manuscript from the Bodleian Library, in the National Library in Jerusalem. 46. Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism, p. 605. 47. “He’eteq mima shekatav harav hamanoh. hagaon hamefursam bedoro moh”r moshe Hagiz yts”u lehaalufim yoshvei midin rabnei vegeonei arets . . . dearb’a artsot polina ya’a, b­ eh.­odesh ­menah.­em shenat 5485,” in Joseph Prager, Gahalei esh, fols. 70b–83a. See Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, p. 192; a tract against Sabbateanism in the region of Podolia had appeared four years earlier,

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in September 1721. See Menachem Litinsky, Sefer qorot podolia veqadmoniot hayehudim sham (Odessa: M. E. Belinson, 5665 [1905]), p. 64. 48. Scholem, Kruzei ‘ h.ivia derabanan’ neged kat shabbetai zevi, p. 607. 49. See R. Jonathan Eibeschütz, And I Came This Day unto the Fountain; Moses Arieh Perlmuter, Rabbi Yehonatan Aybeshits ­veyah.­aso el hashabtaut (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1947). 50. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 116; Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 42a–44b; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 177–179; Putik, “The Prague Sojourn of Rabbi Jacob Emden as Depicted in his Autobiography Megilat Sefer,” pp. 53–124. 51. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 42b–43b.

Eleven

k

COMPETITION OVER THE PICTURE OF THE WORLD Witches and Human Knowledge

Sabbatean theology developed in a climate characterized by a significant presence of hidden and supernatural forces. For example, Israel ben Eliezer, who was later to gain fame in the communities of Podolia as a ba’al shem (Master of the Name) who possessed magical powers, was then in his twenties, and according to the legendary sources, had already demonstrated the ability to overcome demonic creatures. While he was working as an assistant to a teacher, who was responsible for the young children’s safety, a wizard attacked, turning himself into “a wild animal called a wakilak.” As a werewolf, he sowed dread and panic, until Israel ben Eliezer mustered enough courage to kill him using the name of God, and by hitting him on the forehead with his stick.1 Kabbalistic ethical works retained their popularity during the first quarter of the century. With the authority of rabbis and preachers, they shaped the picture of the world for their readers. We have already discussed Qav hayashar with its severe warnings against the temptations of the physical world and the dangers of demons who lurked in every corner. In 1712, a similar and even more successful book, Shevet musar (The Staff of Ethics), was published. Its author was a rabbi and preacher from Izmir, Elijah ben Abraham Hacohen Itamari. After its publication in Istanbul, a decade later, in Wilhermsdorf, Germany, another thirty editions appeared, it crossed borders, and was printed in parallel in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. Many eighteenth-century readers who studied the hundreds of pages of Shevet musar and were exposed to its severe ethical remonstrances and terrifying images were entirely unaware that the author, as Gershom Scholem proved, was a Sabbatean.2

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“De mons a n d Str a nge Mol e ster s to Pu nish th e W ick ed” Elijah Hacohen exploited the great dangers and disasters familiar to his contemporaries to touch upon his readers’ deepest fears and to admonish them to subdue their desires and impulses: Some young men and maidens die at their weddings, and sometimes from strange deaths, as when they climb a ladder and the house collapses on everyone, or the king decrees that they should be beheaded. He also places before his eyes people whose skin is flayed from their bodies while they are alive, with no mercy. They scream, and no one saves them. . . . People drown in water and rivers and are food for the fish. . . . Men and women go out of their minds and walk in the markets and streets with their buttocks exposed . . . and he places before his eyes the sound of screams and howls for sorrows and deaths.

Then, “will his uncircumcised heart not submit in trembling and fear, lest one of these [deaths] might strike him, or some of them, or all of them?” If someone is still tempted by his instincts, at the time of his sin he should imagine “roaming dogs screaming and wild beasts preying upon people and ripping their flesh with their teeth, and murderers with swords in their hands, slaughtering people before them, ugly forms full of eyes and hair. . . . And from this their body will be shocked and they will refrain from sinning.” This world is dark and dangerous, and the horrifying punishments of hell await sinners. The author of Shevet musar described its horrors (“the fire there is sixty times greater than the fire in this world . . . and there are several kinds of demons and strange and ugly molesters to punish the wicked”), and categorized the condemned according to their fate: “Some are hanged and throttled, and some are killed and choked, and some have their eyes put out and some are hanged by their scalps.”3 This ethical work appears to address both men and women, but the sinner central to it is the Jewish man. His wife is called upon, as a spouse, to do everything “so that she will be cherished by her husband, so that he does not consider another woman,” and to downplay her sexuality, which threatens to bring catastrophe down upon her husband.4 As in Qav hayashar, the husband, for his part, is called upon to lower his eyes, to refrain from looking at women, and to avoid thinking about things that arouse him. The great fear of the sin of spending seed in vain echoed in Shevet Musar as in many of the ethical works

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of the period, when the question of how to atone for seminal emission aroused almost obsessive attention.5 Kabbalistic interpretations increased the gravity of the sin, presenting it as a temptation of the sitra ah.ra to have sexual relations with satanic female powers. They recommended severe ascetical practices and strict orders of repentance. Shevet musar warned “with the transgressions of this intercourse with the wicked Lilith and the other powers of impurity, it clings to the sinning man and is prepared to take revenge upon him in the world to come, may the Merciful One save him from it and its like.” From earlier sources, he compiled prayers, entreaties, and advice to suppress erotic thoughts, even including public confession, in which the sinner confesses and rids himself of the severe consequences. Even if the semen is emitted involuntarily, it is not seen as natural, but as a sin exploited by the forces of impurity to increase in strength and to give birth to “demons and ghosts and sprites and spirits that are created from the drop of the semen.”6 Because of this concern, for example, in his will, dated 1722, Lemle Reinganum ordered that all his children must be kept at a distance from his funeral, to deny those that were born to him of Lilith: “When they take me from my house to the cemetery, may a special one of the aforementioned scholars announce . . . and decree with a great ban against all the children born of me, perish the thought, from the impurity of ejaculation, that no son of the deceased shall to from my house to the cemetery.”7 In an exceptional confession, Pinchas Katzenellenbogen revealed in his memoirs, Yesh manh.ilin, an incident that he remembered with embarrassment, and which flooded him with the great anxiety that seized him as a Jewish man, haunted every night by dread of spilling his seed in vain, and on the night of Yom Kippur the fear was many times greater: “I will also tell about a great deed that was done for me, and God was my helper to guard me and save me from the shame and impurity of ejaculation on the night of Yom Kippur, when I was visiting the community of Leipnik on Yom Kippur of 5484 [October 9, 1723], and I was sleeping on my bed, and I was close to the sacrilege of contamination with the impurity of ejaculation on the night of Yom Kippur, may the Merciful save us.” But then, he says, a miracle occurred, and from heaven the voice of his relative, Rabbi Gabriel Eskeles, burst out and woke him at the last minute: “And he called me by name, Pinchas, stand up, and I immediately stood up and trembled and shook and was saved from the impurity of sin on that holy day of awe.”8 The great dread of sin and of the disasters and disease that struck so many people led to increased demand for cures, for prevention, and for protection, which the people of the time hoped to obtain from folk healers and ba’alei shem. Facing a world painted in gloomy and threatening colors, practical kabbalists

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and books of magic spells, laden with natural and supernatural remedies, continued to supply protection throughout the eighteenth century, offering solutions to the most pressing and intimate crises of life.9 Professional ba’alei shem wandered among the communities of Central and Eastern Europe, gaining admiration and high status like that of outstanding Torah scholars, providing their magical services for payment. Some of them also published books of magic spells that included instructions, charms, and practical ways of preserving health and curing disease.10 For example, Zekharyah ben Ya`aqov Simner from Plungian wrote on the title page of his books of remedies and charms, published in Hamburg in 1709: “I wrote this to save people from dangers, and if perish the thought, they do not heed me, their blood is on their heads.” In one hundred and twenty dense pages, he offered a broad catalogue of ways to cope with problems of body and soul: “Remedies to avoid nocturnal emission and to drive away Lilith and to nullify bad thoughts”; defense against epilepsy, that “if he puts in his mouth the holy covenant [i.e. foreskin] of a child who has not ejaculated, by this he will be saved from the disease of epilepsy”; advice for marital life, “if you put some wolf milk on your wife’s throat when she is sleeping, she well tell you everything that is in her heart”; and also instructions for preparing an amulet: “a charm against the evil eye and to cancel a spell, let him take some living silver and white stones that are found in the gizzard, which is called magen, of a black chicken, from a male for a male and from a female for a female, and some salt, and put it in a walnut shell and block the hole with wax and wrap it in leather and hang it from his neck.”11 The more the ba’alei shem published books of magic charms and offered cures for illness and worry, and defense against danger, the more tension arose between the witch doctors and trained physicians and folk healers who used natural forces. In their books they presented the instructions and prescriptions of physicians, and they sent their patients to buy medicines from the apotek (pharmacy). However, while recognizing their value as experts and worthy rivals, they made certain to portray themselves as superior and more effective. In the introduction to Mif ’alot eloqim, Joel Ba’al Shem claimed the superiority of magic spells and differentiated between magical medicine and that of the physicians, with partiality for the former: “Because magic spells are unchanging, and they remain forever in the nature of their being, which is not so of medical practice, which changes over time, and therefore they cannot be relied upon well, except in emergencies.”12 Suspicion of folk medicine and especially of magic grew during the eighteenth century. Toward the end of the century, Solomon Maimon, who grew up in Eastern Europe and became a philosopher of the Enlightenment in Germany, criticized the ba’alei shem and presented them as charlatans, whose true

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face should be exposed. In his memoirs, Maimon relates: “A certain Kabbalist named Rabbi Joel Baalshem successfully cured several people of their ailment at this time. He achieved these results using medical knowledge, along with a bit of trickery. But he claimed that his treatments consisted exclusively of the Kabbalah Ma‘asith [the practical Kabbalah].” Maimon deprecated magical medicine, claiming that they used ordinary medicines: “The Kabbalists employed the standard medical procedure, but through their slight-of-hand tactics, they tried to divert the attention of onlookers away from this and toward their Kabbalistic hocus-pocus.”13 In 1725, when the book of magic spells Mif ’alot eloqim was published in Poland, in Italy the first edition of The New Science appeared. This monumental work by Giambattista Vico (1670–1744) of Naples,14 a professor of rhetoric at the university, sought to encompass the entire history of humanity and to find the laws by which the lives of nations were and are governed. Vico did not remove God from human social, political, and cultural life. Rather, he repeatedly emphasized that Providence “makes itself clearly felt.” However, just as in Newton’s science, while God might stand behind nature as the first cause, natural laws have a logic of their own, so, too, in Vico’s New Science, God is the source of inspiration for the autonomous social cosmos, whose laws are far clearer than the laws of nature, or they were created by people. Continuing in the Italian humanist tradition, Vico placed man at the center, and laid out the human sciences: “The world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and . . . its principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind.” According to the great historical process that he constructed, the two backward periods of tyranny have passed—the age of the gods and the age of the heroes—and now has come “the age of men, in which all men recognized themselves as equal in human nature.” Being a critical thinker of the early Enlightenment, he believed that superstition shaped the magical world picture of the ignorant masses. Vico declared: “Wonder is the daughter of ignorance; and the greater the object of wonder, the more the wonder grows.” Hence, “When men are ignorant of the natural causes producing things, and cannot even explain them by analogy with similar things, they attribute their own nature to them. The vulgar, for example, say the magnet loves the iron.” Despite his efforts to display religious piety and to argue for the superiority of Christianity, Vico marked the boundary at least between inferior popular religion and science: “The physics of the ignorant is a vulgar metaphysics by which they refer the causes of the things they do not know to the will of God without considering the means by which the divine will operates.”15

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Magic and science were not necessarily incompatible among scholars before they were entirely separated. However, an enormous chasm yawned between the New Science, which was written in awareness of living in “the age of men,” and Mif ’alot eloqim, which painted a picture of a world permeated by magic and offered magical medicine. Vico was far from the radical Enlightenment and the sarcastic criticism of Solomon Maimon, but he would most probably have dismissed books of magic charms as superstitious, the “physics of the ignorant.” But was this gap unbridgeable? Did such a huge distance really separate the new trends of thought and knowledge in Christian Europe from Jewish culture? For example, Rabbi David Nieto of London highly appreciated what was happening in his day beyond the bounds of Jewish existence, and the progress that he discerned in Europe excited him and fired his soul: “It is clear and evident to every person of knowledge, who understands science, that science and technology have risen to new heights in this generation in Europe. . . . That the inhabitants of Europe are more intelligent than the rest of people, and they go from one end of the world to the other and with good judgment and wisdom, with clear and sharp intelligence, they seek out what is worthy of knowing in distant lands, in natural science, in medicine, and in the customs of human beings.”16 But what was happening at that time within the confines of Judaism? In Nieto’s opinion, among the Jews the same long and unresolved dispute was being waged, as to whether it is forbidden or permitted to study “the sciences we call external.” The opinion of the learned rabbi, a physician who had studied in Padua, who was aware of innovations in science and philosophy, was critical, even angry, about what appeared to him as the intentional self-segregation of the Jews. “Perish the very thought that the sages of Israel should flee and drive away the Jewish people from the sciences needed to improve the world,” Nieto admonished, adding apologetics that presented the sciences as being at home in the Jewish world, “for [the Sages] of blessed memory only forbade books that led to heresy or wantonness or idleness leading to boredom. On the contrary, science was quarried from the Rock of Israel and flowed from the waters of Judah.”17 Like Vico, his Italian contemporary, Nieto did not deny the value of religion, and, as we have seen, he even placed the theologian, the man of religion, above the philosopher and man of science. But one cannot fail to hear the thirst for the sciences and even frustration because the scholars of Europe were in strong forward motion in research, discovery, and invention, and the Jews, whose creative power was so weak, were still discussing the question that was an obstacle to progress: whether all that was indeed permitted and did not contradict religion.

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“W isdom Enter s H er Ch a m ber s a n d Close s th e Door aga inst It” During the century, these primary feelings of Nieto’s, showing that he was ill at ease with the widening gap in the world of knowledge and with the cultural inferiority that detracted from self-respect, were to become one of the strongest driving forces for Haskalah among the Jews of Europe. A survey of the Jewish libraries of the early century would show that this wave of kabbalistic ethical works and books of magic charms responded to the needs of a large audience, but it was not the only trend. For example, Yosef Kaplan’s research reveals that rich private libraries in the communities of the Western Sepharidic Diaspora in Holland included, alongside religious works in Hebrew, many volumes in the various languages of Europe. The library of Rabbi David Nunes Torres (1660–1728) was especially impressive. While fulfilling his function as the rabbi of the H.onen Dal congregation in The Hague, he amassed a library that included almost everything that a learned European could obtain at the time in the fields of theology, classics, travel, science, history, and philosophy. Rabbi Torres, who took an independent position in the H.ay0n affair, sided with the H.akham Zvi and was known as a rabbi zealous for religious faith. He did not hesitate to criticize the families of the Jewish aristocracy, yet he acquired works for his library that were part of the new skeptical discourse (Descartes, Bayle, and others). Moreover, he was not deterred by the threat of excommunication, for he owned books that had been condemned by the Amsterdam community as heretical and forbidden works, such as those of Ariel da Costa and Baruch Spinoza. Rabbi Torres’s library was acquired by a driven book collector, and it provided him with knowledge of the critique of religion for the purpose of religious dispute. However, as Kaplan interprets it, it also reflected a powerful desire to know the world beyond the confines of Judaism: “Nunes Torres found no contradiction between his uncompromising commitment to the Halakha . . . and openness to the new intellectual discourse of the Western European philosophers. He collected books out of indefatigable intellectual curiosity and the attraction toward the various cultures with which he felt an affinity and closeness.” Thereby, Kaplan argues, the rabbi from The Hague unintentionally became an agent of enlightenment among the Sephardic Jews, and perhaps in Holland in general.18 In Livorno, the impressive library of the learned Rabbi Joseph Attias (1672– 1739) showed that he was too an agent of the European Republic of Letters. “He is an expert in all the sciences, owns a precious library of modern books,” recounted a traveler from Saxony who stayed with him. His Jewish identity

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was known, and he did not deny it, but, as shown by Francesca Bregoli, a scholar of the Jewish community of the Tuscan seaport Livorno, this man’s ambition, being a person whose raison d’être was the world of books, was to be considered a citizen of the first order in the intellectual circles of Italy and Europe. He endeavored as much as possible to separate his private Jewish sphere from his life as an Italian scholar. Atias entertained a learned salon in his home, corresponded with many philosophers, helped Giambattista Vico to circulate The New Science, and met Montesquieu in Florence. Among the 1,300 titles listed in the catalogue of his library were many current works of science and philosophy, including some books condemned as subversive by the Catholic Church, such as Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique, Locke’s Treatise on Human Understanding, and several volumes by the deist John Toland.19 The openness shown by rabbis such as Nieto, Torres, and Attias, who were at home in the European library, had almost no echo in Ashkenazi Jewry of the time. However, in various places in Central and Western Europe, especially Holland, another wave of the Jewish library emerged, and a parallel library was built up in Yiddish. As noted, Amsterdam was the center of Jewish printing, and the hundreds of titles printed there were circulated among male and female readers in Ashkenazi society and in Eastern Europe as well. According to Zeev Gries’s estimate, 1,597 books were printed in Amsterdam, out of a total of 9,060 books printed in Hebrew and Yiddish during the eighteenth century.20 Hardworking printers such as Solomon Props, Moses Frankfurt, and H.aim Drucker published a variety of books that mainly brought men who were not learned and literate women closer to the contents and values of the religion through the intermediary of the spoken language. Along with ethical works, translations of the Bible, instructions for teachers, and translations from the Zohar, the Yiddish library included works that promised to open new horizons to the worlds beyond Judaism. Books of instruction in Hebrew grammar, such as Masakh hepetah. (The Curtain over the Entrance, 1710) by Feibush of Metz sought to free Ashkenazi Jewish society from ignorance by mastering Hebrew. The author argued that, compared to the Sephardi Jews, whose mother tongue provided them access to broad culture, it could not be that the Ashkenazim even found it hard to understand religious books in Hebrew.21 Liblikhe tefilla (Loving Prayer, 1709), a prayer book in Yiddish by Aaron ben Samuel of Hergerschausen, went even further. In the introduction, the author proposed that, henceforth, Yiddish should be the language of the Jewish religion in general and particularly of prayer. Thus, children would understand the prayers, fear of heaven would be strengthened, and it would be possible to educate a wiser generation. For him, too, the Sephardi and Italian Jews were a model to be imitated: “What do

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the Sephardim do? They teach little children in their mother tongue and then they teach them the Holy Tongue with grammar for two or three years, and thereby they understand all the books in the Holy Tongue and the prayers. In Italy there are some prayer books in Italian.” Therefore, “those who wish to raise intelligent people will teach small children things that are acceptable to them, so that they will understand very well what they study, and this is possible only if they study in their mother tongue. Otherwise the child cannot understand what he studies.” The sweeping criticism of the failure of Jewish education and the plan to replace Hebrew with Yiddish led to the suppression of the book, and it was never placed on sale.22 Beyond this inner development in the realm of the Jewish book, curiosity and the desire for knowledge from beyond the bounds of religious literature brought several talented young men to make much more direct contact with European science from the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Hanover, between 1705 and 1710, Leibniz brought the twenty-year-old Raphael Levi (1685–1779) into his home, and became his much-admired teacher and personal instructor. Raphael had studied at the yeshiva in Frankfurt. He was a clerk for the Court Jew Simon Wolf Oppenheimer, and had no academic training when his talent for mathematics came to light, along with his ambition to expand his horizons with science, especially astronomy. It is difficult to know just how the famous German philosopher and scholar met the Jewish young man, but Leibniz apparently recognized his ability and respected him so much that he took it upon himself to train him as a scientist. Career paths in this field were not open to Jews at all, and when he grew older Levi became a private tutor. However, the impressive oil portrait of him, which was painted when he was elderly, depicts a Jewish scientist as he saw himself and as he appeared to his surroundings. He stands at a desk laden with scientific instruments, a telescope, and a globe, and on it lies the book of astronomy that he wrote and a manuscript about algebra. His beard is shaven, he wears a powdered wig and a black jacket with a white collar, and his gaze is that of a scholar aware of his self-respect and of the importance of his knowledge. Nothing in this picture indicates that he is a Jew. However, perhaps the key to this portrait and for understanding the motive power of the early Enlightenment, of which Raphael Levi was a pioneer, lies in the few things he said about himself as a Jewish scientist. His voice conveys the embarrassment he felt when he discerned the cultural inferiority of the Jews. “Rather than being superior to all the nations for the glory and splendor of God, now we are mocked by all the nations,” Raphael Levi complains in the introduction to his book on astronomy, Tekhunat hashamayim, and he declares his devotion and diligence in the study of science and his personal responsibility

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to contribute something to restoring Jewish honor: “I was an author zealous to remove the veil of shame from our face, and I was not at peace, nor was I tranquil or at rest, and I turned my nights into day until I composed paper after paper about all the sciences of humanity.”23 Two young men of Raphael Levi’s age, who shared his attraction to science, were Samuel Simon ben Jacob, a student at the university of Frankfurt an der Oder, and Isaac Wallich, who studied at the University of Halle. Unlike Levi, these two men fulfilled their aspiration for systematic academic study, received permission from the King of Prussia, and were accorded the title of Doctor of Medicine. Jacob, who was born in Lithuania, was overwhelmed when he met the scholars at the university, for the gap between Poland, where he came from, and Prussia, was unbearable. He felt isolated and sought a kindred soul. Wallich did indeed try to strengthen his confidence: “The reason for you sorrow and pain,” he wrote to Jacob in 1702, “is your downheartedness because you walk among them, and there is no [other Jew] with you,” whereas Wallich, in contrast to Jacob, was not deterred from appearing in the public space of the university and the German city: “For I walk outdoors, wearing a sword at my hip, as is the rule for those training and studying to be physicians, and no one tells me what to do.” Everyone looked at him in astonishment, “This one stands behind our wall, and that one looks out of the windows, and another peeks between slats, ‘whose branches run over the wall’ [Gen. 49:22] and together they whisper about me. I make my face like flint to walk among them, and I know that I will not be ashamed, for what can man do to me? God is my help, and I will not fear the multitude of people who engulf me.” Surprise that a Jew was joining the ranks of the physicians was great, and “they were amazed to one another, and their faces were enflamed at seeing one of our nation come among them.” Along with this public, personal provocation, on the part of a young man whose ambition overcame prejudices and traditional views, came a critique of the backwardness of his Jewish brethren. In words similar to those of Raphael Levi of Hanover, the student from Halle complained about the neglect of science and the distance from the world of European knowledge: “Especially in this generation . . . the springs and sources of intelligence are blocked, and wisdom enters her chambers and closes the door against it, and it dwells in the fissures of the rock, from the height of its dwelling, and its sits in darkness and hidden . . . and no one understands and no one notices and brings her home.” He, at least, had embarked upon the path of success as a respected student, close to the best scholars, and imbued with great drive to progress to the best of his ability.24 While these two students were studying at the university, Tuvia Cohen, a generation older, was already the physician of the Turkish aristocracy in

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Adrianople and Istanbul, after passing through many stages in life, from France, where he was born, to Poland, Germany, Italy, and the position in “the Land of Ishmael,” before moving to Jerusalem, as we have seen.25 Even two decades after he himself was a Jewish medical student at the university of Frankfurt an der Oder, and after the other students mocked him, saying, “Where is your wisdom and intelligence? It has been taken from you and given to us,” he had not forgotten the frustrating encounter with the European academy. The searing feeling of humiliation had not disappeared. Now, at least, he could feel satisfaction, because he had fulfilled his oath, that “if I find repose . . . with God’s help I will compose a work containing science and knowledge, to reply to those who shame us and show them that this science was not given to them alone.”26 His textbook, Ma’ase tuvia, did contain a great variety of information about the natural sciences, geography, and medicine in its three parts. It was published in 1707 in Venice, and a second edition appeared in Jessnitz in 1721. The personal drive of the few Jewish medical students who managed to succeed as scientists, and their awareness of the intolerable gap between European and Jewish culture, came together in Ma’ase tuvia as a concerted effort to make a dramatic change in the Jewish library. Not only was it a “book of the worlds,” as its original title put it, opening broad horizons for the Hebrew reader from cosmology to gynecology, and from agriculture to protection against fleas, but it was also a formative cultural event. There were no fissures in Tuvia’s commitment to Judaism and his fear of heaven, and he harbored no religious doubts. His picture of the world, as expressed in the structure of his book, placed the “upper world” above everything. Like others of his time, he was disturbed by religious skepticism and by Sabbateanism. Therefore, he began Ma’ase tuvia with theological chapters and a declaration that “it was proper for any who calls himself a Jew to know and believe in the existence of the blessed Lord.”27 The splendid approbations of the rabbis of Venice and of Rabbi David Oppenheim of Prague to the first edition, and those of the rabbis of Berlin, Dessau, and Halberstadt to the second one, enabled his book to be accepted within the circles of rabbinical culture. The author himself was very careful to point out possible contradictions between religion and science. Thus, for example, he suspected Copernican cosmology, arguing that “every divine philosophy should reject the opinion of Copernicus’s and those who accompany him, because all the evidence he and his comrades have brought is against Scripture and the words of the true prophets, whose word are to be trusted.”28 Nevertheless, Ma’ase tuvia clearly declares the independence of the Jewish man of science and delineates the boundaries between science and religion:

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“I am breaking into new fields. Now a new science of medicine will emerge, dwelling in the bosom of the physicians of our time,” Tuvia Cohen wrote at the beginning of the second part of his book, under the heading of “New Land,” heralding what already sounds like a deeply modern consciousness. The gap between the old and the new has significance for values, and it does not simply point out the distance between early and late. “The true physician,” who trained himself with a great effort, devotion, and self-sacrifice at a European university (“in study at the college of the Nations, which cast off Jewish students”), and who adopted the new science, is entirely different from charlatan witch doctors. The medical profession demands systematic specialization and official recognition, and it must not be left in the hands of “witches,” “wicked imposters,” and folk doctors who endanger the lives of their patients. Tuvia Cohen defines his profession: “Medicine is a science whose entire purpose is to adapt human nature to the choice of health.” With anger and contempt, he attacks “the filthy old women who fly about at night and during the day go after snakes and scorpions and whisper spells ardently. They are called doctors by simple people, who trust them, and the reason for this is great foolishness of those who neither know nor understand any science but hate it, and therefore they walk in darkness and grope like blind people at noon.”29 As a scientific work, Ma’ase tuvia is organized systematically, offers definitions, and is accompanied by illustrations and charts pointing out innovations. It was one of the most significant expressions of Jewish identification with the scientific ethos in the early Enlightenment period. Tuvia Cohen, who was closely familiar with his contemporaries’ supernatural and demonic picture of the world as well as with medicine based on charms, took an ironic and critical approach to them. Why, for example, did he not discuss palmistry in his book? “The author states: in that I treat natural things and am disgusted by those who walk about with great and marvelous claims and speak highly without any foundations, as with a grain of salt, there is nothing useful in them, and in my eyes it is a waste of time, and therefore I did not want to write about the science of observing palms and tracing them . . . and many similar errors, which are not worthy of attention.” Should one believe in the existence of creatures like centaurs or mermaids, as described by ancient books and travelers? In Tuvia’s opinion, rare instances of “changes in nature” might occasionally be possible, but even if he heard about it from an ostensible eyewitness, he would respond skeptically and say, “It is hard for me to believe.” Were demons responsible for various illnesses? As a scientist, he could not accept this, though the Sages of the Talmud believed in them, and one could not disagree with their words. Thus, for example, it was better to avoid that explanation without denying it

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explicitly, but to seek only natural causes. In his ironic criticism of the magical conception of illness, which was so widespread in Poland, he did not conceal his true opinion about ba’alei shem and their books of spells: “As for believing in the existence [of demons], I will say what is upon my heart: even if they never were and never were created, it appears they were created for the people of that country, for there is no land that is more preoccupied with demons and amulets and spells and magical names and dreams than the aforementioned land, and ‘may I never enter their council; may I never join their assembly’ [Gen. 49:6], and all the people who deal with such things.” Drawing an absolute boundary between himself as a professional physician and man of science and those whom he calls “witch doctors” was not easy for him, because he even found a book of magic spells among his father’s writings. Tuvia Cohen did not conceal this, but he chose to cite a natural cure for a serious scalp disease from it, faithful to his method, that “it is correct to speak of truly natural cures.”30 A great distance still separated Tuvia’s criticism and the explicit statement of Solomon Maimon at the end of the century, that magical medicine was an absolute fraud. But the reader of Ma’se tuvia found that the author offered him the possibility of judging for himself between the natural and the supernatural, between that which is conceivable and that which is hard to believe. Even the dismissal of Copernicus’s theory as “Satan’s first born” was accompanied by detailed explanations, arguments pro and con, and a chart in which the sun was at the center and the earth was orbiting around it, so that he allowed the new cosmology to remain at least as a possible choice. Indeed, “The Book of Worlds” offered a world to its readers, and in this respect, combined with education in critical thinking, adoption of the scientific ethos, and strengthening the status of the professional physician, who was a university graduate, he was one of those who inaugurated the early Enlightenment among the Jews of Europe. Compared to the dangerous, dark-countenanced world of Shevet musar, and the amazing marvels of the books of magic spells, he opened windows to a fascinating world, to learn about it and by amazed by it, and also to live in it comfortably, pleasurably, and in good health. In “The New World,” one of the sub-titles of his book, discoverers of continents such as Christopher Columbus appeared, along with wonders of the world such as the Great Wall of China, the colonial beverages of cocoa and coffee, and astonishing scientific instruments such as the microscope. A drawing of the female reproductive organs removed the veil of mystery from female sexuality. The reader at the beginning of the century could learn that women can have sexual satisfaction, and that in the medical literature there was, for example, testimony regarding a woman who, “in her youth, when she desired a man, her way was to rub her sexual organ, the

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clitoris, with her hand, and she would give seed [orgasm], but from then until now the habit has become natural.” Tuvia denied the claim of “one sect who say that women have no desire for men.” He himself, he says, treated a woman from an elite family in Turkey, who was filled with “excess sexual desire . . . and her womb was always open and sought sexual intercourse.” In daring contradiction to the books of ethics and magic spells, he states that the problem of ejaculation among men was ultimately natural, and, while it was possible to try to avoid it by diverting one’s thoughts (“for erotic thoughts only grow strong in a mind devoid of wisdom”), it is not described in the context of religious sin or as a plot of hidden forces and the desire of Lilith.31 Toward the end of the century, Rabbi Nieto’s hopes that the rabbinical elite would not remove science from the Jews’ world, and Tuvia Cohen’s wish that the expert physician would replace ba’alei shem and magic spells, became the principles of criticism and the vision of the future of Haskalah. Meanwhile, these were merely a few isolated voices that sought to make a change. Coincidentally, two small booklets were published in 1722. Very similar in form and marginal with respect to their influence, they represented two contradictory tendencies, which were heading toward confrontation. One of these booklets, Zevah. pesah. (The Passover Sacrifice) by Jacob Pesah., was published in Żółkiew with the blessing of the ba’al shem, Joel ben Uri Heilprin. It contained magic spells, folk medicines, and amulets, though many of the prescriptions for treating illnesses were based on knowledge of medicine. Nevertheless, since the source of the problem could be either natural or supernatural, the author recommended to his readers that they should avoid risk and stated that “those [plagues] that come from the system [the influence of Mars and Jupiter] and from the external ones [demonic forces], demand [holy] names and amulets, but the medicine of nature is of no use at all.”32 By contrast, in Offenbach, Anschel Worms (1695–1769), a Jewish student who “who knocks diligently at the doors of the science and art of medicine and of general philosophy,” offered a “key” to open a new world of knowledge to his Jewish brethren, similarly to Ma’ase tuvia. However, Worms went much farther. He was one of the early maskilim, who expected that reason and science would provide happiness for mankind. The textbook that he wrote, entitled Mafteah. haalgebra h.adasha (The Key to the New Algebra), already announced on the title page, in the dichotomic style of the Enlightenment, that its purpose was to open “the gates of reason for the nation that walks in darkness and has not seen the light in quantitative knowledge.”33 Anschel Worms saw himself as the herald of the knowledge revolution in Jewish society. His task was to redeem science, which had been abandoned,

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and to restore it to the center of Jewish culture, and thus to pave the way to “the light.” Truth be told, during his entire life as a physician in Frankfurt, he did not manage to close even slightly the huge gap between his ambitious vision and reality. If his claim was true, that he had already written textbooks in other branches of knowledge, from logic to optics and music, then he failed to have them printed. However, in the unusual introduction to The Key to the New Algebra, he left fascinating testimony to what had taken place within him as a twenty-seven-year-old student when he was exposed to science and felt, like the other Jewish students who preceded him, the shame of Jewish inferiority. In the author’s dream, algebra appeared before him as “a beautiful maiden, whom no man had known,” whom he himself rescued from death from the wreckage of a ship that had smashed on rocks. When she revealed to him that she was the Maid of Algebra, and that only he had been able to save her, an eternal covenant was forged between them. His thirst for knowledge now became his life mission, to rehabilitate the flawed world of Jewish knowledge. But he quickly learned that the label of researcher, which was applied to him, was a source of condemnation. The Jewish scientist was castigated as a heretic and an “epicurean,” and he was excluded from the rabbinical elite. Anschel Worms complained, “They lied, saying that he who follows the path of the sciences is not Talmudic and does not know the religion and the law of the Torah.” Even at this early stage, the powerful attraction of “external knowledge” and the drive to redeem science was recognized as one of the most turbulent focuses of the deep culture war within modern Jewish society.34

Note s 1. ­Shivh.­ei habesht, p. 40. 2. Elijah ben Abraham Hakohen Itamari, Sefer shevet musar (Constantinople, 5472). See Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 126–129; ­Shah.­a r, Biqoret ­hah.­evra vehanhagat hatsibur bepolin bameah ha18, pp. 81–82; Scholem, “R. eliyahu hacohen haitamari vehashabtaut,” Researches in Sabbateanism, pp. 453–477. 3. Sefer shevet musar, ch. 9, pars. 21–27; ch. 12, par. 7; ch. 26, par. 9. 4. Ibid., ch. 24. 5. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 131–137. See Shilo Pechter, Shemirat habrit: letoldotav shel isur hotsaat zera’ lebatala (doctoral dissertation, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 2007); Yemima Chovav, Maidens Love Thee: The Religious and Spiritual Life of Jewish Ashkenazic

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Women in the Early Modern Period [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009), pp. 60–63. 6. Elijah Hakcohen, Sefer shevet musar, ch. 27, par. 21; ch. 40, par. 17. 7. Monika Preuss, Gelehrte Juden: Lernen als Frömmgkeitsideal in der frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), p. 62. Cf. Sefer shevet musar, ch. 27, par. 3, which quotes Shnei ­luh.­ot habrit. 8. Katzenellenbogen, Yesh ­manh.­ilin, p. 78. 9. See Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership [Hebrew], ch. 1; H.agit Matras, Sifrei segulot verefuot be’ivrit (doctoral dissertation, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 1997); Nimrod Zinger, The Ba`al Shem and the Doctor, Medicine and Magic among German Jews in the Early Modern Period [Hebrew] (Rishon LeZion: Yediut Sfarim, 2017). 10. Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership, pp. 50–53; Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 142–153. 11. Zekharyah ben Ya`aqov Simner, Sefer zekhira (Hamburg, 5469 [1709]). 12. Joel Ben Uri Heilprin, Sefer mif ’alot eloqim (Żółkiew, 5485), introduction, fol. 3a. 13. Solomon Maimon, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation, ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamd and Abraham P. Socher, trans. Paul Reitter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 90. 14. See for example among many studies: Donald Phillip Verene, The New Art of Autobiography: An Essay on the Life of Giambattista Vico Written by Himself (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991); Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 15. Vico Giambattista, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fish (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1948), ­https://​­a rchive​.­org​/­stream​/­newscienceofgiam030174mbp​/­newscienceo fgiam030174mbp ​_djvu​.­t xt. 16. Nieto, Mate dan, fourth dispute, sig. 18. 17. Ibid., sigs. 314a–b. See Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, ch. 11. 18. See Yosef Kaplan, “Spinoza in the Library of an Early Modern Dutch Sephardic Rabbi,” in La Centralità del Dubbio: Un progetto di Antonio Rotondo, ed. Camilla Hermankin and Luise Simonutti (Florence: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki, 2011), pp. 639–622. 19. Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment, Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform, chs. 2–3 (the citation in p. 41). 20. See Zeev Gries, The Book as an Agent of Culture, 1700–1900 [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibuz Hameuchad, 2002), pp. 46–47. 21. See Solomon Berger, Yiddish and Jewish Modernization in the 18th Century (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2006); Solomon Berger, “Hayyim ben Jacob

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Known as Hayyim Drucker: Typesetter, Editor, and Publisher in Amsterdam,” in A Touch of Grace, Studies in Ashkenazic Culture, Womem’s History, and the Languages of the Jews Presented to Chava Turniansky [Hebrew], ed. Israel Bartal and others (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2013), pp. 157–180; Avriel Bar-Levav, “The World of (Rabbinic) Texts and the World of (Yiddish) Readers: Bilingualism in the Writings of Shimon Frankfurt of Amsterdam” [Hebrew], in A Touch of Grace, Studies in Ashkenazic Culture, Womem’s History, and the Languages of the Jews Presented to Chava Turniansky [Hebrew], ed. Israel Bartal and others (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2013), pp. 95–122; Chava Turniansky, “’Al sifrut didaktit beyidish beamsterdam (1699–1749),” in ­Meh.­qarim ’al toldot yahadut holand, 4, ed. Joseph Michman (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1985), pp. 163–177; Chava Turniansky, “Heder Education in the Early Modern Period,” ” in Heder, Studies, Documents, Literature and Memoirs [Hebrew], ed. Davis Assaf and Immanuel Etkes (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2010), pp. 3–63. 22. Aaron Ben Samuel, Liblikhe tefilla (Frankfurt, 5469 [1709]); and see Berger, Yiddish and Jewish Modernization in the 18th Century, p. 24; Simcha Assaf, Meqorot letoldot h­ ah.­inukh beyisrael, ed. Shmuel Glick (Jerusalem: JTS, 2002), pp. 180–184. 23. Steven and Henry Schwarzschild, “Two Lives in the Jewish Frühaufklärung: Raphael Levi Hannover and Moses Abraham Wolf,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 29 (1984): 229–276; Christoph Schulte, “Leibniz und sein ‘Schüler’ Raphael Levi,” in Leibniz und das Judentum, ed. Daniel J. Cook, Harmut Rudolph, and Christoph Schulte (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008), pp. 35–47. 24. See Aaron Freimann, “Briefwechsel eines Studenten der Medizin in Frankfurt a.d. Oder mit dem in Halle Medizin studierenden Isaak Wallich im Jahrte 1702,” Zeitschrift für Hebräische Bibliographie 14 (1910): 117–123. 25. See Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery, ch. 8; Singer, Ba’al hashem veharofe: refua ­beh.­ayei hayomyom beqerev yehudei germania 1648–1770, pp. 192–204; Arieh Morgenstern, “Tuvia harofe ufe’iluto lema’an yehudei yerushalayim bein hashanim 1715–1729,” pp. 27–54; Louis Lewin, “Die jüdische Studenten an der Universität Frankfurt an der Oder,” Jahrbuch des JüdishLiterarischen Gesellschaft 14 (1921): 217–238; 15 (1923): 59–63; 16 (1924): 43–86; Dirk Sadowski, “Jupitermunde und ‘verschlossene Gärten’: Tuvija Cohens Enzyekopädia der Naturwissenschaften und der Medizin Ma’ase Tuvija (1707),” Simon-Dubnow-Institut-Jahrbuch 9 (2010): 247–277. 26. Tuvia Hacohen, pt. 1 of Sefer ha’olamot or Ma’ase tuvia (Jessnitz, 5481 [1721]), entitled ‘Olam h.adash (Jessnitz, 5481); pt. 3 of Ma’ase tuvia, entitled ‘Olam h.adash (Jessnitz, 5481). Here a later edition is cited (Cracow: Moshe Sterenberg, 5678 [1908]), author’s introduction.

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27. Tuvia Cohen, Ma’ase tuvia, fol. 2b. 28. Ibid., fol. 43a. 29. Ibid., fols. 82b–83a. 30. Ibid., fols. 96b–99b. 31. Ibid., fols. 119a–b, 128a–b. 32. Jacob Pesa h., Sefer zevah. pesah. (Żółkiew, 5482 [1722]). See Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership, pp. 42–43. 33. Anschel Wormes, Mafteah. haalgebra h.adasha (Offenbach, 5482 [1722]). 34. Ibid. The title of the introduction is: “This is the history of the events that happened to me with algebra, my dove and my darling.” See Shmuel Feiner, “Seductive Science and the Emergence of the Secular Jewish Intellectual,” Science in Context, 15, no. 1, (2002): 121–135.

Part III

1725–1750

Twelve

k

TO SILENCE THE “FELLOW FROM PADUA” Moses H . ayim Luzzatto and the Great Awakening

In 1729, when Yekutiel Gordon arrived at the University of Padua from his native city, Vilna, to fulfill his aspiration to study science and to “attain the crown of medicine,” he did not imagine that he would be exposed to a deep and inspiring religious experience there, and that he would become the righthand man of a kabbalist with a messianic vision. Unlike Isaac Wallich, Anschel Worms, and Tuvia Cohen, he set aside his dream of science as personal fulfillment and as a corrective for the Jewish nation, which suffers from lack of knowledge of the world, in favor of a dream of mystical reform, which would purify from sin and promise cosmic and national redemption. The student from Lithuania’s encounter with the young Italian kabbalist, Moses H.ayim Luzzatto (1707–1746) totally changed his life so that he considered abandoning his medical studies and devoting himself entirely to the study of Kabbalah and copying the writings of “my teacher and rabbi, the holy light and man of God” in the company of an exclusive secret society of admiring disciples. “With the help of heaven,” he recounted, “I truly set aside the external books, for which I came to Padua, and I take them up only a few times every week, having no leisure time, because of the many copies I am making from holy books, and night is as day for me, because I have already copied more than a thousand pages.” Gordon and his colleagues in the society listened with wonderous enthusiasm to Luzzatto, who, at the age of just twenty, had had “a magid appear to him, a holy, awe-inspiring angel, and he reveals secrets and wonders to him.” The magid commanded him to compose books in the Aramaic language of the Zohar, and his disciples were eyewitnesses to Luzzatto’s contacts with upper world by means of yih.udim (unifications), which require mystical and magical

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actions and bring the kabbalists to cleave to God: “The angel speaks through his mouth, but we, his students, do not hear anything.”1 In parallel with rationalism, which nourished the criticism of the Enlightenment in Europe, and of the early Jewish Haskalah, in the second quarter of the eighteenth century a religious revival took place. Belief in the experience of the illumination of divine revelation and close intimacy with the upper realms gave individuals and pietist circles inspiration for religious renewal, while among their opponents once again apprehension arose regarding destabilization of authority and the traditional order. Like the Enlightenment, the movements of religious awakening among both Christians and Jews accelerated processes of empowering the individual, who is aware of his unique power, and they educated for independence of thought.2

“Th e Bl e ssed Holy One Took M e a s th e V e ssel H e De sir ed” Yekutiel Gordon was thoroughly excited. The veil of secrecy surrounding the revelation that Luzzatto experienced and membership in a small circle of those sharing the secret aroused feelings of pride for being a member of a chosen group. He even stopped sending letters to his wife, who had remained behind in Vilna, to avoid losing precious time, which was entirely consecrated to the society of kabbalists. When Luzzatto told Gordon that he had been sent to Padua by heaven to bring him close to him, he was already on the verge of abandoning his university studies and a career in medicine. However, Luzzatto rejected that decision, and Yekutiel Gordon’s life path, combining science and Kabbalah, now received approval directly from the upper realms, and it, too, was enveloped in secrecy: “Because of my great love of Torah I was about to abandon external sciences,” Gordon related, “until [Luzzatto] told me, according to the magid: grasp both this and that, and let your hand not rest from those sciences.” Then, when he was at the peak of religious enthusiasm, without his teacher’s approval, Gordon spoke openly about the direct experience of divine intervention that had taken place in Padua, and, unintentionally, he gave rise to a huge scandal. His thirst for scientific knowledge had given way to a thirst for the secrets of Kabbalah, as Luzzatto himself wrote about him: when his powers were revealed to him, and when he knew he had merited illumination, “then he clung to me greatly, because his soul desired to learn the wisdom of truth, and I also prescribed study for him, and he, with the great fervor of his desire, wrote to an honorable notable about this matter to send him good news.” In the two letters, bursting with religious ardor, that Gordon sent on August 30, 1729,

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one to the notable Mordechai Jaffe of Vienna and the other to Joshua Heschel, the rabbi of Vilna, his home city, he revealed “with a whisper, for he had not yet received permission to divulge,” that in Padua an angel had appeared to Luzzatto, and that he had written thousands of pages of Kabbalah, and that he was a prophet inspired by the Holy Spirit. That which took place before his eyes was stunning and moving, divine revelation such as had not been since the time of Moses and Rabbi Simon Bar Yoh.ai, traditionally regarded as the author of the Zohar, and the significance of the revelation of these secrets to Luzzatto was crowning him as the guide to redemption.3 Though he asked his addressees to keep this exciting news a secret and not to circulate the letters, they were copied, and within a short time they came into the possession of some of the leaders of the rabbinical elite. Despite the pleas of the faithful disciple, “the fellow from Padua” now became a target for persecution. A copy of the letter reached Moses Hagiz in Altona, and he wrote an urgent note on the foot of it: “To the wise rabbis and leaders of the holy communities in the Diaspora . . . to tear up this letter and to inquire and investigate and uproot this evil society before its leprosy spreads among the masses, and to judge all the members of this group as persecutors of the Jews.”4 Gordon himself became the most reviled student, and, after his graduation, physician, among his Jewish brethren. Hagiz regarded him as a “provocateur and misleader,” Rabbi Jacob Emden called him “the fool” and “the witchdoctor,” and Rabbi Isaiah Bassan, Luzzatto’s teacher and loyal defender, showed the prejudice of the rabbis of Italy toward German and Polish Jews, and castigated him for incautiously revealing another man’s secret: “How did you rush to reveal to that R. Yekutiel, for did you not know that it was the way of the Ashkenazim and Poles to publicize and confuse, and they have always been the besmirchers of wisdom . . . so that the secrets of the Torah were revealed to outsiders, and a copy left their mouth in their impure language.”5 The unique and curious figure of Moses H.ayim Luzzatto, the episode of his persecution, and the effort to destroy his writings attracted much attention. Simon Ginzburg considered him to be the man who was destined to stand between the shadow of the Middle Ages and the light of the modern age.6 In historical memory, his image was depicted in the double figure of scholar and the kabbalist, living a life of inner contradictions on the boundary between tradition and modernity, woven into the fabric of the suspicions that enveloped the Sabbatean underground, of the roots of the Hasidic movement in Poland, of the dawn of modern Hebrew poetry, and of early Haskalah.7 The student, Yekutiel Gordon, was just one of the close eyewitnesses to the extraordinary burst of creativity and the ecstatic religious

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experience that took place in Padua. The year 1727, when he was only twenty years old, was indeed critical in Luzzatto’s life. In the beginning of the year, he was revealed to be a talented baroque author in Hebrew. In honor of the wedding of his friend, Israel Benjamin Bassan, the son of his beloved and admired rabbi, he wrote a pastoral play, Migdal ‘oz (The Tower of Strength), influenced by the work of Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538–1612), Il pastor fido.8 The complicated romantic plot features young men and women, lively and bursting with desire, pursuing pure love and powerful friendship, against the enchanted natural background of pastoral life. Erotic desire and love motivate the protagonists of the play, overcoming every obstacle of those who wish them ill. In the bosom of nature, far from the corrupt cities, royal palaces, and the pursuit of filthy lucre they find happiness.9 Seen in retrospect, some scholars have interpreted Migdal ‘oz as an allegorical play, that goes beyond its simple meaning and rises above the world of earthly pleasures and drives to express figuratively Luzzatto’s efforts to gain entry to the sealed fortress of Torah and win the king’s daughter, who symbolized the secrets of Kabbalah.10 However, Luzzatto’s baroque world was capable of containing both heart-throbbing dramatic poetry that believes in the pleasures of love, which are experienced by the grace of God, as the chorus of singers who address God conclude (“from Your sanctity look down and approve our joy. Give Your blessing to these lovers, awesome in praise, doing miracles”), as well as the experience of marvelous religious revelations, which he experienced in the very same year, while he was studying mystical intentions in his parents’ house. “On the New Moon of Sivan 5487 (May 21, 1727),” Luzzatto wrote, “while I was performing a specific unification, I fell asleep, and when I wakened I heard a voice saying [in Aramaic]: ‘I have descended to reveal to you the secrets of the holy king.’ For a moment I was trembling, and then I gained strength, and the voice did not cease, and it told me something secret.” This mysterious voice returned on the following days and revealed that it was “a magid sent from heaven . . . so that I could merit the revelation of Elijah. . . . Then Elijah came and told me secret things.” After that, “other souls were revealed, whose names I do not know,” and they dictated kabbalistic secrets to him, “and all these things when I fall on my face I do and see these holy souls as though in a dream truly in human form.”11 The testimony of an emissary from the Land of Israel, Raphael Qimh.i of Safed, who stayed in Padua about two years later, strengthened the picture among the doubters as well of the experience of revelation as Yekutiel Gordon first described it. Luzzatto, he told the rabbis of Venice, was a nazirite of God, “who does not wish to know the pleasures of this world, withdrawn and isolated

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in his house of study with his companions, wearying themselves with the Torah and fear of God is his treasure.” While he is immersed in a mystical experience and writes automatically in a trance, he is detached from earthly reality, and one must admit “that this is not natural, and his teaching and intelligence are not human.” “With my own eyes I saw the yih.udim that he performed,” Qimh.i testified, “when he falls with his face close to the table for about half an hour and afterward he stood with the pen in his hand and quickly wrote in a short time, less than half an hour, a folio or a folio and a half of secrets of the Torah, absolutely supreme things, and all in the [Aramaic] language of the Zohar, which is not within the power of the human mind, hand, or pen.” There was, in his opinion, no explanation for it, and one must admit that the experience is authentic, and that Luzzatto had indeed merited divine inspiration.12 In the early summer of 1727, Luzzatto already believed that heaven had destined him to disseminate esoteric doctrine and advance redemption. In a letter to the kabbalist Benjamin Cohen, he said of himself, “He, in His mercy, has chosen me . . . and the blessed Holy One took me as the vessel He desired.”13 At first only a few men shared the secret of the magid’s revelation, but apparently, toward the end of that year, a group of disciples began to gather around Luzzatto, students who studied Kabbalah with him and were told about his experiences. These included, in addition to Yekutiel Gordon, Isaac Marini, Israel Treves, and Moses David Valle. Later, a Holy Society established itself, and special bylaws were set. As Isaiah Tishby has shown, Luzzatto decided “to organize a secret mystical order . . . which was meant to act constantly and with great power for the repair of the Shekhinah and of the Jewish people, to hasten messianic redemption.”14 The seven disciples of the original core and other members who joined them from among the students, the physicians, and the Torah scholars in Padua were required to commit themselves to a series of rules that controlled their meetings, study, and behavior, as well as the hierarchy that was determined in the order of seating in the House of Study and proximity to Luzzatto. The focus of the group’s life was total devotion to continual study of the Zohar in shifts, day and night, as a means to attain the mystical and messianic goal of repairing the upper realms and “the repairing of all the Jews.” The study took place in a House of Study characterized by close relations of friendship among “the holy comrades,” who regarded themselves as the new embodiment of the group that had gathered, according to the Zohar, around Rabbi Simon Bar Yoh.ai. They obligated themselves “to love one another and to behave in brotherhood and with good heart,” and not to divulge to outsiders the teachings revealed to them in their studies, to maintain a high level of sanctity and fear of heaven,

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and not to speak about profane matters, and to acknowledge Luzzatto’s leadership and mastery.15 However, when the existence of the society became known through Yekutiel Gordon’s letters, it was seen as a threat, suspected of being a Sabbatean circle, and this intensified the sense of the urgent need among his persecutors to stop Luzzatto. The other bylaws sought to shore up the members’ self-confidence, to counterbalance their awareness of the cloud of opposition hovering over them: “to become stronger in their devotion to God and not to feel any mockery or derision in the world.”16 It is no surprise that a storm arose in response to the stories of what was taking place during the 1720s and 1730s in Luzzatto’s society in Padua. The prophetical pretensions and what appeared to be an expression of uncontrolled independent religiosity provoked responses and protest. Taking a broader view, the Holy Society fit into the religious awakening that was spreading in various corners of Christian Europe and the New World at the same time. The appearance of enthusiastic priests and preachers in Germany, France, England, Scotland, and the colonies in North America, and their success in gathering many followers joined together in the widespread desire for religious renewal, which is known, especially in the New World, as the Great Awakening. It appeared to the people of the time that a new and surprising dawn was breaking, a dawn of intense, emotional, and open faith, just when rationalist philosophers such as Spinoza, Bayle, and Locke were strengthening criticism and skepticism, and when the Enlightenment ideas of Montesquieu, the young Voltaire, and David Hume were doubting miracles and warning against superstition. The leaders of the religious revival recounted personal experiences of illumination and revelation, which had caused deep spiritual transformations in them and fortified their faith. They preached personal salvation through Christianity, spiritual rebirth, renewal of the heart, and repentance. Personal experience gave rise to new sects and faiths and to a broad evangelical missionary movement, which, by means of fiery sermons and printed tracts, which were circulated in thousands of copies, waged a campaign of propaganda and persuasion in every stratum of society, also touching the hearts of women, servants, and black slaves.17 Though there may be no direct connection between the visions of revelation, the reparations, and the mystical yih.udim in Luzzatto’s society in Italy and the movement of Christian revival of the time, the many parallels cannot be ignored. The year 1727, when the magid revealed himself to Luzzatto for the first time, and he began to hear secrets of the Torah and to experience the presence of souls and angels, was also critical in the religious awakening of Central and Western Europe and North America. A pietist movement had appeared in Germany in the previous century, when its theologians proposed a personal

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path to religious redemption and the revival of the religion of the heart, awakened by emotion. “He who seeks to conceive of God by means of his reason becomes an atheist,” stated one of the radical pietists, Count Nicholas Ludwig Zinzendorf (1700–1760), born into an aristocratic Austrian family, who, in the 1720s became the leader of the evangelical revival movement, The Moravian Brethren. In the early 1720s, he donated his lands in Saxony as a refuge for persecuted Protestants of Bohemia and Moravia, and the village Herrnhut, where they lived, became the center of a new movement. On August 13, 1727, a collective conversion took place in the village, when, during fervent prayer in the church, the participants underwent spiritual rebirth that swept them, and they believed that the Holy Spirit was dwelling within them. This was the foundational moment for the Moravian Brethren, who had agreed on regulations among themselves a few months earlier. Their Brotherhood Covenant (Brüderlicher Vertrag), which was signed on May 12, 1727, established the group, which lived in an atmosphere of intense religiosity. The covenant emphasized the importance of personal prayer, Bible study, and frequent confessions, as well as solidarity and mutual fraternity. While in Padua the regulations of the Holy Society stipulated constant study of the Zohar, which maintained religious tension, in Herrnhut they required constant prayer, day and night, which was not to cease for a hundred years. Within a few years, that which had appeared to be a small religious sect became a church in its own right. Zinzendorf was appointed its bishop, new communities arose, and the Moravian Brethren set out to win souls in Europe and beyond.18 The missionary zeal of the German pietists was also directed at the Jews, and in 1728, in Halle, a special institute, the Institutum Judaicum, was established, headed by Johann Heinrich Callenberg, to train missionaries, send them on journeys of religious conversion, and the printing of propaganda pamphlets in Hebrew and Yiddish.19 Just a few days before Luzzatto, according to his testimony, received direct divine inspiration, a mass religious awakening took place in Paris, which was identified with the religious and political protest of the Jansenists, a movement that emphasized the burden of original sin, the primal condemnation, and the necessity of divine grace for salvation. The movement was declared heretical and a deviation from Catholicism, and in 1713 it was banned by a papal bull entitled Unigenitus dei filius (Only Begotten Son of God). The tomb of the young Jansenist priest François de Pâris, who was famous for his religious devotion and his ascetic way of life until his untimely death, became a pilgrimage site, where miracles were experienced, prophecies were heard, and people were seized by religious ecstasy and mass hysteria. From the day of his burial on May 3, 1727, multitudes were drawn to the cemetery of Saint-Médard, where,

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as they testified, they received the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the mysterious mediation of Pâris. They believed that the grave had special powers for healing body and soul, that God showed His mercy there, and that there was no better evidence for the struggle against Unigenitus, of which Pâris had been a leader. The pilgrims recounted with emotion how grave illnesses receded, how the lame and the blind were healed, and open miracles took place and were confirmed by a special committee of physicians. Atheists and skeptics repented, and “dead souls” who had sealed their hearts against God underwent conversion. For four years, the ecstasy of the pilgrims to Saint-Médard increased, until it peaked in the summer of 1731. Individuals at first and later whole groups began to experience religious enthusiasm with uncontrollable attacks of trembling, extreme movements, leaps in the air, convulsions, and bodily contortion. This phenomenon of ecstatic seizure with convulsions and contortion was infectious. Tumultuous sights of contortions were seen for hours in the cemetery, shouts were heard, fervent prayers were recited, and many people fainted in excitement.20 At Oxford University, the Methodist movement, founded by John Wesley, developed within the Anglican Church. Wesley received his MA at the university in 1727, and for two years he had been keeping a spiritual journal, in which he expressed his aspiration to attain the level of holiness, to gain the personal experience of cleaving to Jesus, and the purification of his sins. In his theological thinking he denied the ancient condemnation of original sin, in which the Calvinists believed, and he maintained that every Christian can attain an intimate connection of the love of God and gain His grace. Wesley, who was ordained as an Anglican priest, founded the Holy Club together with his brother Charles. This was the first cell of the movement of religious revival whose members took the name of Methodists (insisting on a strict and systematic regimen in their religious life), a movement that was to expand and spread in the following decades. Wesley’s encounter with the Moravian Brethren when he traveled to the colony of Georgia in the North America in 1735 brought him close to German pietism, and when he returned to England, during a religious ceremony in London, on May 24, 1738, he underwent the religious experience of rebirth, the feeling that God had freed him of his sins, that his soul had been redeemed, and that he had attained inner peace. After that moment of conversion, his sense of religious mission grew stronger, and he preached the personal redemption of every believer. Immediately afterward, he traveled to the center of the Moravian Brethren in Herrnhut and met Zinzendorf. Upon his return to England, he consolidated his unique religious path and began a campaign of preaching to spread his message of religious revival. George Whitefield

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(1714–1770), a young member of the Holy Club who was later to become a leader of the religious revival in America, showed Wesley the enormous influence of mass sermons in the open air, and they became the Methodists’ main channel of action. Wesley proved to be a talented preacher, inspiring and indefatigable, and it is estimated that by the end of his life he had given about forty thousand sermons and covered more than three hundred fifty thousand kilometers.21 The earthquake that took place on October 29, 1727, in North America, in the region where several of the British colonies in New England were located (the later Commonwealth of Massachusetts), was significant for religious revival there. Clergymen reported that the dangerous natural phenomenon had led to a marvelous reformation. Panic-stricken men and women sought to repent and purify themselves of sin, streaming to the churches to confess and be baptized again. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards offered rebirth to their audiences. Leaders and emissaries of the Moravian Brethren and the Methodists arrived in American in the 1720s and 1730s, accelerating the Great Awakening. Whitefield’s public sermons aroused turbulent religious feelings in his listeners, and his spiritual journals, printed in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin, helped spread his message. Whitefield saw himself as Moses, reappearing to lead his flock in the desert to the promised land of redemption. In sermons such as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards warned that “There is no Want of Power in God to cast wicked Men into Hell at any Moment.” Despite theological differences and the number of movements, the religious revival was a trans-Atlantic phenomenon. The preachers presented themselves as “New Lights,” and the doctrine of rebirth electrified their followers on both shores of the ocean, and participation in ceremonies and sermons gave rise to ecstasy.22 Suspicion of Luzzatto’s society was not exceptional. The religious awakening in the Christian world encountered opposition and even persecution. The monarchy and the church in France feared the religious enthusiasm in the cemetery of Saint-Médard, so that in early 1732 its gates were closed by royal decree. When it became clear that this official step not only failed to halt the movement but strengthened it, and that ceremonies of religious convulsions were held in private homes, reaching extremes of bodily torment, beating, and stabbing, the order was given forbidding such ceremonies even in private. The phenomenon of convulsions was viewed as an uncontrolled religious scandal that threatened the authority of the Catholic Church and as rebellion against the king. John Wesley was silenced by the Anglican Church and forbidden to preach in its churches, although he declared that he did not wish to detach himself and take an independent path. Claims were made against him, that his pretensions to the inspiration of the holy spirit and magical powers was a

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deceit, that his theology was deviant, and that he was leading the masses after him on a path of error, that he was subverting the authority of the Anglican clergy, and that he might be seeking to restore Roman Catholicism to England by subterfuge. In America, the original support of the clergymen and preachers who brought the masses back to the Catholic Church gave way to opposition and apprehension of extremism and anarchy. Thus, for example, Charles Chauncy (1705–1786), the leader of the “Old Lights” who were concerned by the religious enthusiasm in Boston, led opposition to the “New Lights” of the reawakening and to his rival, Edwards. He attacked religious fervor, warning: “[This is] imaginary, not a real inspiration: according to which sense, the Enthusiast is one, who has a conceit of himself as a person favoured with the extraordinary presence of the Deity. He mistakes the workings of his own passions for divine communications, and fancies himself immediately inspired by the SPIRIT of GOD, when all the while, he is under no other influence than that of an over-heated imagination.”23 The behavior of the fanatical preacher James Davenport (1716–1757) aroused particularly grave suspicion, when he aroused his listeners in New London, Connecticut, to cast away their sins and throw their splendid garments, jewelry, wigs, and religious books with which he disagreed into the fire. The church establishment was shocked and decided this time not to enable that popular preacher’s voice to be heard. The council of the clergy in Connecticut met and discharged him from his post. Davenport later published a confession, expressing regret and promising to return to the straight path, declaring that all he had done was “under the powerful influence of the false spirit.”24 The religious experience of the years of the Great Awakening, the challenges with which it confronted its opponents, and its meaning in the history of religion in the eighteenth century shed light on Luzzatto and his disciples as well. As Michael Heyd has shown, the revival movements in the eighteenth century shifted emphasis from the objective to the subjective in the realm of religious consciousness, experience, and practice. Therefore, in paradoxical fashion, they were significant for secularization. Not only was a central place given to individual experience in these movements, but this shift also expressed the loss of the general consensus regarding the accepted “ladders” (for example the intermediary of the church or rabbinical authority) connecting people in this world and the divine source of the meaning life, which is beyond it.25 The aspiration of individuals for religious self- expression and the believers’ hopes for self-improvement and happiness were consistent with the optimistic expectations of the Enlightenment thinkers for reform, though the vision of happiness was different. Thus, for example, John Wesley could reject heretical

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deism and radical Enlightenment while at the same time defending religious toleration, believing in the possibility of human progress, waxing enthusiastic over the achievements of science, and condemning slavery. What Richard Hofstadter said about America holds true about the entire phenomenon: “Religious consciousness was intensified—this was the first and primary aim of the Great Awakening—but also the sense of the religious self was quickened, and following that the sense of possibility for individual choice in civic action.”26

“W r ite a n d Sign This, or W e W i ll M a k e Wa r w ith You to th e High H e av ens” For seven years, 1729–1736, the Luzzatto affair, which began with the letter that Yekutiel Gordon sent and aroused the heightened suspicions of his chief opponent, Rabbi Moses Hagiz, was the focus of the concerted and determined effort of the Jewish “Old Lights” to suppress and silence the voice of Jewish individualism, that spoke in the name of the “New Lights.” Luzzatto was the same age as the leaders of the Christian awakening, Wesley, Whitefield, and Zinzendorf, but he was, of course, far less influential. If, in parallel with the changes they sought to make among the Christian faithful, a movement of Jewish religious revival also began to emerge, it was nipped in the bud, and it failed. Luzzatto boasted that he and his society in Padua had attracted believers who wished to hear his teachings and be cleansed of their sins: “Now, thank God, many of the people come to me to seek God, every day, so that in truth there is not enough room for them and they repent of their sin and are purified, thank the Lord.” It appeared that the revelation of the hidden mystical circle attracted disciples, so that the first signs were evident of the organization of a movement whose ranks were expanding. “And here [Gordon] bore good fruit,” Luzzatto told in one of his letters. “For in a single moment the whole group turned to repentance, and every day people come to hear new Torah teachings, that I place before them, according to their intelligence, and many have come to receive corrections for repentance and they left great sins behind them.” It was also possible to point to at least the first instance of conversion, the change of heart, by the grace of God and Luzzatto’s inspiration, of a “sinner,” who became one of the new disciples: “Abraham Ferrarese exceeds them all, and he is a miracle, because in place of being a heretic and lawless man, he almost reached the level of saintliness . . . because [God] revealed the arm of His sanctity to show the people of Padua how it can change the heart of its sons for the better in one moment and restore to His love easily.” This must not be allowed to cease, Luzzatto implored, and the powers of evil and impurity must not be victorious, for “I already know

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that this is the accusation of the sitra ah.ra, that wants to deny goodness to its masters.”27 However, only nine months after the society was revealed, Luzzatto was forced to surrender to the rabbis of Italy and Germany and silence himself. Only twenty-three years old, he struggled with his opponents and persecutors and tried to show confidence and authority, but he did not manage to obtain significant and unconditional support beyond the circle in Padua. A huge and unbridgeable gap yawned between his self-image as a man who had been privileged with revelation and was capable of reaching religious heights and revealing secrets, and that of those looking from the outside at an enthusiastic and irresponsible young man who did not understand the consequences of his pretension, whose charisma overwhelmed his good sense, and who had to be put in his place, whether by persuasion or by threats.28 The beginning of the heavy pressure exerted on Luzzatto came in the panicked response of the rabbis of Venice when they received a copy of Gordon’s letter from Altona, with the words of Moses Hagiz in the margin: “to judge all the members of this group as persecutors of the Jews.” Could it be that God had chosen to renew His direct revelation by means of Luzzatto, they asked Rabbi Isaiah Bassan in dismay. What would happen if the matters came to light “among the ignorant, who mock such things?”29 In the ensuing months, dozens of letters were dispatched among the communities of Italy and between Italy and northern Germany, in an effort to clarify what was actually happening in Padua. Luzzatto believed he could explain to Hagiz how wrong he was about him, and, with some ingenuousness, he sent him a conciliatory letter. There was nothing to the suspicion that he was connected to Sabbateanism, he had no pretension to prophecy, he did not perform miracles, and he certainly had no intention of organizing a separate sect that would depart from Judaism. How had Hagiz rushed to attack and persecute him without investigating deeply, Luzzatto asked angrily, and especially, without knowing them, how had he dared to find fault with them and call them and “evil society,” “comrades, all of them holy servants of God with all their might, and they are wise and learned, without knowing them or what they do”? Now that Yekutiel Gordon had publicly revealed that Luzzatto had received revelation, why not “rejoice and be happy because [God] gave me the gates of light to know and understand and gain knowledge of the precious glory of His greatness and worship Him with a whole heart?”30 Hagiz’s answer, which arrived in Padua in early 1730, was crude and contemptuous. He advised Luzzatto and his society to withdraw right away from their despicable way, which is all falsehood, and which places a mark of shame

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on Judaism.31 Thirty years earlier, Hagiz himself had told how an angel was revealed to him and changed his life, but now he was not willing to concede the possibility of the revelation of a magid. Together with the rabbi of the communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek, Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen, in the winter of the end of 1729 and early 1730 he organized the campaign against Luzzatto. For example, he informed Rabbi Jacob Katz of Frankfurt that Luzzatto had gone too far in his temerity to reject authority. Luzzatto and Gordon should be persecuted, every book Luzzatto wrote should be burned as a heretical work, and “the lad and all the members of his society, should be condemned as inciters and corrupters.”32 For his part, at least in his personal letters to his rabbi, Bassan, Luzzatto also lost his composure. He called Hagiz a fool and an ignorant, quarrelsome man, who was captured by the forces of pollution. Otherwise, how could one explain “why his heart was hot and what evil would befall him if God responded to his requests? For must one must always walk in darkness and not in light? Would God neglect us forever and not peek at us through the slits, even in the land of our imprisonment?” These words betray not only messianic expectation but also the revolutionary self-awareness of a leader speaking in the name of the “New Light.” Luzzatto had received divine illumination, and the time had come for a historical turning point in religion. Thus, Luzzatto explained, it was hard to explain why Hagiz was waging a campaign to block him.33 Rabbi Bassan, who was in Reggio, was very disturbed, torn between his desire to protect his beloved student and fear of the opponents’ power. He was apprehensive about Hagiz’s fanaticism, for he was already known as a zealous warrior from the H.ayon affair. The noose around Luzzatto and his group kept tightening. They had already attacked him in Venice, and Luzzatto had answered with a letter in his own defense. Why were they attacking him? What was the meaning of that “great loud voice and the trumpet of war from one end of the land to the other?” Had no wise man not considered the matter and realized that the truth was with Luzzatto? Why was the voice of Bassan, who supported him, not taken into account? Under the increasing pressure, he saw himself as a victim: “For now they will do whatever they like to me, am I not bound on the altar of the Lord? I will not remove my innocent trust in him, and I will not fear flesh and blood, rather than doing what God command me.”34 But even his intimates kept imploring him to be cautious, to lower the flames, and not to glorify himself with a revelation, so that the storm would die down. For his part, he refused to what seemed to him as abject surrender and living a lie. In a letter to Katzenellenbogen, he went even farther. “God chose me,” he wrote. He was the true emissary of God, and why did they not examine him

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before judging him? Then Luzzatto defied rabbinical authority and boasted of a preferred spiritual authority, that drew directly from the upper worlds: “For the honor of your Torah knows . . . that all the esteemed rabbis of Ashkenaz and Poland, may the Lord keep them for the length of days, have power, but I, too, have the power of the blessed Holy One and his Shekhinah, and all the members of the yeshiva on high, who illuminate my eyes the with light of the Lord, and there should be no obstacle, perish the thought, to see whose words prove true.”35 This was the most extreme challenge uttered in the Luzzatto affair. In the name of personal enlightenment, he demanded recognition of the superiority of his power—that of an individual chosen by heaven—over all the rabbis of Europe. Indignant and furious, Rabbis Katzenellenbogen and Hagiz addressed the rabbis of Padua directly, demanding an immediate investigation, reviling Luzzatto as “a man of Belial, perpetually suspect of confusing the community of Israel.”36 The reserved support of Bassan, which by now shielded Luzzatto from his attackers only slightly, was evaporating. Hagiz increased his pressure on the rabbis of Venice, presenting Luzzatto’s challenge as the problem of the new time. At issue was the very ability of the Jewish faith to resist the desires for innovation. Taking an absolutely conservative position, clinging to the preservation of stability at all cost, Hagiz declared, “In this orphaned generation, the Jewish people does not need anything new, the innovations that come every year, against the truth accepted by us and confirmed by the Sages. For in my opinion on this matter, all the Jewish communities, their rabbis, and their leaders will agree that innovation is only a bad thing, and nothing good can come of it.” Luzzatto’s society in Padua looked to him like one of the outbursts of the desire for innovation in Jewish society, and Hagiz was determined to halt it at the threshold and to present the task of struggling against innovation as the mission of the entire responsible Jewish leadership of his time. Innovation presented such a great threat that they should not hesitate to impose excommunication, punishments, and coercion to do away with it. If Luzzatto’s voice were not silenced, he would quickly be proclaimed as an authoritative leader, and a new Torah would come from him. Hagiz proposed taking immediate measures to block him: Luzzatto must “surrender all his books and writings to the Rabbis of the general yeshiva [in Venice],] and he must commit himself, under pain of severe excommunication, and a serious oath, not to utter or publish from his writings anything in the name of a magid or a dreamer of dreams.”37 When Bassan warned Luzzatto that “my faith in your matter is growing cold,” and he was about to join the opposition, he showed signs of weakness and distress. Now he placed his fate in the hands of heaven: “For today I am

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weak and alone, what am I and what is my strength, to stand up to the whole world, when many rise up against me?”38 When, in the summer of 1730, a delegation came to Padua, headed by Rabbi Bassan, with the rabbis of Venice, Ferrara, and Mantua at his side, very little remained of Luzzatto’s determination to defend his truth “like a fortified city,” or of the outburst of an individual who believed in the superiority of his power (“I, too, have the power of the blessed Holy One and his Shekhinah”). He interpreted what was happening to him as a test, as the experience of submitting to the will of Providence or as the hiding of God’s countenance. On Monday, July 17, 1730, Luzzatto signed a document that was, for him, an offensive writ of surrender, which denied the entire world that he had built for himself in the preceding three years. He confessed to severe violation of discipline, confirmed the unchallenged authority of the Old Order in Jewish life. The individual was not permitted to express his independence, because “for every man who is called a Jew is subject and enslaved to Sages of Israel and must heed their words.” When Luzzatto signed the oath that was dictated to him, he had to admit that he could not avoid denying his independent voice: “For I must not, perish the thought, disagree with my rabbi and perform an action on my own against his opinion.” His surrender was complete. He obligated himself that any work that he might wish to publish would first undergo censorship by Bassan and other rabbis. Perhaps, most painful of all, at the time of the signature, Luzzatto was forced to convey all the manuscripts he written on Kabbalah to Bassan, and they were consigned to a special locked chest, which was kept in his uncle’s house in Padua.39 Although he truly sought to conciliate his admired rabbi and calm the storm, in light of the struggle he had waged in the past nine months and the harsh words he had spoken against his opponents, this was a particularly humiliating document. His chief enemy, Hagiz, whom he had compared to Satan, attained exactly what he had wanted. Religious innovation was prevented, defiance of the rabbis was punished, the pretention to divine inspiration proved to be meaningless, if not completely counterfeit, and Luzzatto’s kabalistic works, of which he was so proud, were forbidden to be published forever. The voice of the “fellow from Padua” was silenced in a course of action crowned by his persecutors as complete success. As the leader of a movement of religious reawakening, which was forbidden to exist, Luzzatto effectively went underground. He was careful not to violate his oath in public, and only occasionally, in private, did he express contempt for his adversaries, all of whom were “less than a garlic skin,” and as best he could he suppressed his anger. When the pressure became unbearable, in letters to

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Bassan he hinted what his real opinion was of the rabbis who sought to subdue students of esoteric doctrine: “This is evil, for our many sins, that most of the sages of Israel have distanced themselves from the truth and from the pleasant light of the glory of the Lord our God.” During the first week he still thought he should seek shelter from his persecutors in the Land of Israel (“and I have already determined for myself, with God’s help salvation, to go to a land better than these lands, the Holy Land”), but Bassan found a nuptial match for him, and he put off his program and prepared for marriage.40 His companions and followers in the society felt injured, but in the years after the oath, they actually grew stronger, agreed on new regulations, and continued to study the Zohar. Some members of the society were themselves creative kabbalists, and Moses David Valle, the most prominent of these, was apparently Luzzatto’s partner in leading the society, and he succeeded him later.41 In an incessant flow of creativity, Luzzatto wrote books, poems, prayers, and sermons throughout almost all his life. Central to his religious consciousness was the individual person as the chosen creature of divine creation, who, with the power of free choice, was capable and intended to attain the supreme perfection and happiness of cleaving to God. God wants the best for humanity: “He always gives light to those who draw near to Him, and there is no prevention of goodness on his part at all.” In his book Darkhei hashem (The Ways of the Lord), Luzzatto wrote: “The truly essential creation is the human race . . . the creature created to cleave to Him, blessed be He.” His aspiration was “to draw close to Him and to be illuminated by the light of His countenance, and to refrain from sins.”42 Tishby’s study of all Luzzatto’s manuscripts and printed works shows his belief that Kabbalah was preferable to the revealed and the simple meaning of the text, and sanctification of the material world and attaining the experience of cleaving to God were the highest goal of the religious effort. In 1734, four years after he signed the oath, persecution of Luzzatto was renewed. His plan to leave Italy and live with his brother in Amsterdam was interpreted as an attempt to return to his old ways and violate the conditions he had accepted.43 In this second campaign, Bassan no longer hesitated. He fought on behalf of Luzzatto, even at the personal cost of demeaning his own name. Fear of violation of the oath was baseless, he claimed, and the sealed chest full of Luzzatto’s writings had not been opened since 1730. However, the insulted rabbis of Venice addressed Hagiz and reported “that from the first day when he promised he would not teach his students, like a dog that returns to its vomit and a fool deluded in his folly, he reverted to his first position, to gather communities of comrades and disciples.” They reported that he was on his way

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to Amsterdam now, and that he intended to pass through Frankfurt and ask for the support of the rabbi of the community.44 Luzzatto did not know he was falling into a trap similar to the one laid by Rabbi Jacob Katz ten years earlier for the Sabbatean emissary, Moses Meir Kaminka. When he entered the home of the rabbi in Frankfurt on January 11, 1735, dreadful accusations were hurled at him, and before he could recover his wits, a court was convened, demanding that he sign a new declaration, admitting all the claims against him. The confession that he signed stated that he admitted violating his oaths of 1730 and wished to repent fully. The kabbalistic teachings that he wrote were made up, he had not accepted the authority of his rabbis, and he obligated himself and swore that “from today on I will not study the wisdom of the Kabbalah with anyone in the world, no matter who he is or when it is, not with a single person or two or more . . . and I will not write for myself or for others, no matter who they are, and, it goes without saying, not publish any of the foregoing.”45 In a panic and under pressure and threat, Luzzatto chose to do what was demanded of him to get free of his persecutors; and immediately afterward he left Frankfurt and headed for Amsterdam. Meanwhile, echoes of the Luzzatto affair spread, and his adversaries portrayed him as a dangerous enemy of Judaism. A severe decree of excommunication issued by Rabbis Hagiz and Katzenellenbogen completely condemned new kabbalistic teachings: “We have found that everyone who adds hidden things that are in the heights of the world does nothing but detract from the honor of heaven and the honor of the Torah and those who study it and gives assistance to frivolous people to understand things incorrectly, and nothing good can come of any such innovation.”46 They expected that rabbis from all over the Jewish world would join in the ban, and they addressed the rabbis of Poland, Germany, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, copies of agreement with the excommunication were sent, among other places, to the communities of Berlin, Glogau, Breslau, and Amsterdam, and from emissaries of the community of Safed, and they competed with one another with slander against Luzzatto and demands to expunge his writings and ostracize him. Rabbi Jacob Emden, for example, joined the public struggle for the first time then. In typically bombastic language he was to use in similar struggles later on, Emden attacked Luzzatto because “he thought ill of God, offered the counsel of Belial, set out to mislead the people of God” nor did he hesitate to declare that Luzzatto deserved the death sentence: “The new swindler, the author of Zohar taniana [a second Zohar], and new psalms, if this were the time of the Sanhedrin, certainly he would be condemned as one who curses [God] and gathers [firewood on the Sabath].”47

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How did Luzzatto feel in the face of this persecution and the furious voices calling for his punishment? How did he cope with the huge gap between his aspiration to cleave to God and to redeem the Shekhinah and his public condemnation as a dangerous skeptic? Two letters to Bassan, which were written when he had reached Amsterdam and felt relatively secure, reveal how he himself, who was in the eye of the storm, experienced the affair. He told the rabbi that his journey to Amsterdam was indeed a retreat and flight from his persecutors: “In expectation of escaping from distress and finding comfort I have hidden my soul until the anger subsides, and with every succeeding wave I bowed my head.” Luzzatto chose not to fight his enemies any longer. He instructed his disciples, whom he had left behind in Padua, to endure the slander and continue to study. However, in that personal letter, he called the rabbis who had attacked him wicked and ignorant, and he accused the rabbinical elite in Germany and Italy of great weakness, so much that “at this time no educated person seeks God but rather chaos and darkness rule over the city.” Luzzatto stated that his signature on the oath in Frankfurt was invalid and untrue, because he had been coerced. “They came against me with drawn sword and bow, the persecution of the entire Diaspora,” and he gave his version of what had happened in Rabbi Katz’s house: “They said to me, write and sign this, or we will make war with you to the heart of heaven.” He said it had been silly of him to resist, and perhaps this was a decree of heaven: “and would I be so mindless and foolish not to write what they wanted, where would I get the strength to stand up against the whole world? If they should say, why did God not save you, I would answer, I am His, and the whole world is His, and if He wishes it, what do I care?” But right at the time of the signature, he stated his truth: “I told them, see that I am signing a lie, because I have never imagined anything from my heart.” His enemies believed they had silenced him and overcome him, but he was contemptuous of them, and he could only weep over the great crisis.48 After writing that letter, Luzzatto calmed down somewhat, and he was happy because of his good fortune in Amsterdam, a city of refuge that accepted him with open arms, honor, and admiration. There people listened to his Torah lessons and refused to heed the tracts that slandered him, and “thank God here I sit with honor among the Sephardim, who all are fond of me as if they gave birth to me.”49 However, Luzzatto’s retreat and silence still did not satisfy Hagiz and Katzenellenbogen. Now they asked Bassan to deliver the locked chest of writings that had been kept in Padua to the rabbi of Frankfurt, so that its contents could be destroyed by fire. Luzzatto responded with indifference: “Indeed, if this whole storm is because of that chest of books, your excellency in Torah may order to have it taken from him [in Padua] and burn it before his eyes.”50

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Dozens of letters were exchanged for about a year on the matter of the chest of writings, which was viewed as dangerous by Luzzatto’s adversaries, containing explosive material. Should it be burned or buried? Who was to do it, and where? With the assistance of an Italian bookseller, the chest was sent from Padua in 1736, through Venice and Verona to Fürth, and from there to Rabbi Jacob Katz in Frankfurt. With the assistance of a blacksmith, he opened it, examined the thousands of pages, and decreed that indeed they had been written by “abomination and the qelipa and confusion of the mind.” On January 1, 1737, an extraordinary ceremony took place, directed by the rabbi. Some of the manuscripts were burned, and others were buried in a pit dug in the frozen earth. “The minority to be burned, and the majority to be buried,” Rabbi Katz reported to Hagiz with satisfaction upon completing the task, “in a place where no one knows their burial except for two agents to carry out the commandment, men who fear God, men of truth, who buried them deep, deep in the earth, and it is hard to remove it from there again, and there is their burial in a manner that soon they will root and be blotted out forever in the ground.” If other writing was discovered, they would be treated the same way, and evil will be eliminated from the world.51 Like the opposition to the Christian religious reawakening of that time, which, aside from any theological dispute, identified the main problem as the challenge to authority and social stability inherent in personal, independent, and enthusiastic religiosity, so too, in the Luzzatto affair, suspicion of Sabbateanism played only a relatively marginal part in the far more urgent need to consolidate religious discipline and the power of the rabbinate.52 As Robert Bonfil has shown, during the time of transition to the modern era in general the Kabballah contributed to the creation of a new realm for the individual, in that the focus of religious life passed from the establishment to the autonomous individual.53 As with the pietist and Methodist awakening, the intimate connection of the individual believer with God was the foundation of religious experience. The figure of the religious leader, who, based on his self-consciousness of having been chosen by heaven, offered a vision of a perfected future was central. In Luzzatto’s society, the individual religious personality of Moses David Valle, who wrote a mystical journal that details his dreams and visions, as did Yekutiel Gordon, who lived in intense, excited religious awareness as his rabbi’s righthand man. Fear of the influence of the printed book, whose teachings would be widely disseminated, with no possibility of supervision, was another modern challenge. Therefore, great effort was invested to ban, forbid, and destroy books and manuscripts that were liable to see the light in print. Most ironically, just at the time when Luzzatto’s chest of writings was regarded as a danger of the first order, a far more worrisome news item was

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published. Hagiz wrote to Bassan: “Rumor letters [newspapers] have come to me telling about a very wealthy man from the holy community of Ferrara who has changed his allegiance and drawn his four young sons with him.” This was none other than Rabbi Nehemiah Cohen, one of the three rabbis who had signed the document of Luzzatto’s oath in 1730 and were known as his primary persecutors. For Luzzatto this was proof of the baseness of his enemies, whose end testified to their beginnings, whereas Hagiz claimed that Nehemiah Cohen was one of Luzzatto’s teachers and was a follower of his. Thus, this was a warning sign to avoid his evil influence. The apostasy of the rabbi from Ferrara in March 1735 stunned Hagiz, but in this case, he could no longer do anything. As shocking as the rabbi’s conversion was, and liable to serve the Christians in theological polemics, the submission of the rebel from within in the name of religious innovation appeared to be a much more important challenge.54 When the chest was burned and buried in Frankfurt, with this extreme step of fear and zealotry boundary lines were also drawn, confirming the split between reformist innovators and the conservatives who were determined to exploit their authority to block what seemed to overthrow the existing order. The Holy Society in Padua continued to exist after its leader fled to Amsterdam. Luzzatto did his best to encourage his friends with letters, but after only a few years, he was told that the society was fading.55 Yekutiel Gordon, who was the living spirit of the society, to whom Luzzatto even allotted a role in the mystical–messianic drama he was constructing, finished his medical studies and returned to Poland in 1733. Gordon’s enemies still regarded him as a Sabbatean heretic, and Luzzatto defended his student’s good name: “With an innocent heart I can only say that he is an absolute saint and anyone who wishes to speak ill of him, his whole spirit will be that of a fool.”56 In Poland, Gordon showed himself to be a faithful disciple determined to preserve Luzzatto’s legacy, to promulgate his teachings, to teach his writings, to purify his name, and to transfer the model of the Holy Society from Italy to Poland. In the community of Shklov in White Russia, during the 1730s and 1740s, and later in Brest, he organized a secret mystical circle, which he headed.57 An eyewitness whom Jacob Emden interrogated in Altona at mid-century reported that Gordon established “his society of faith, and they called themselves a holy society,” in Shklov. They had a special uniform that marked them as an order, and he “carried with him a very thick manuscript book, which was written by his rabbi Luzzatto, with which he prayed and praised and according to which he did everything, and he studied that manuscript book with students and friends who listened to him.” This hostile testimony presented the group as wanton, immoral, and libertine (“they had a Gentile prostitute in their society, shared

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by all of them”), and Gordon as a heretic preaching the abolition of the commandments and rebellion against the authority of the rabbis. While Emden’s opinion was reinforced, “that there was great heresy in Luzzatto’s heart, and it grew evil roots,” he also conceded that a great effort was made in Poland to continue Luzzatto’s movement and even to expand its ranks.58 In the year when the chest full of Luzzatto’s writings was burned, and it seemed that his movement in Italy had been suppressed, in Podolia, Ukraine, the magical talents and mystical abilities of Israel ben Eliezer were revealed, and the early harbingers of a movement of religious revival and pietist reawakening developed, a movement far more successful than that in Padua. As suggested by Isaiah Tishby, Gordon, who circulated the writings of his rabbi and also organized holy societies, served to great degree as a bridge between Luzzatto and the Hasidic movement. “Traces of Luzzatto’s personal thought are evident in the central systems of ideas of Hasidic teaching,” especially the idea of cleaving to God as the highest goal and the demand to serve God in material and physical life, too.59 Gordon was more than a mystic whose religious outlook was formed in Luzzatto’s school. He supported himself as a physician, the profession he had acquired at the university, and, in addition to kabbalistic writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, he also brought Latin books of science and medicine back with him from Italy, and these enabled scholars with a leaning toward science such as Baruch Schick of Shklov (1744–1808) to promote the early Haskala in the following decades.60 When we encounter Luzzatto again in Amsterdam during the 1740s, we will see in him the inner tension evident in his disciple, the physician and kabbalist Gordon. Underlying Luzzatto’s worldview were two sources of illumination, by means of which a person can discover the world and decipher its secrets: “natural enlightenment,” and, that which is superior to it, “revealed enlightenment,” the source of which is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. While the former discloses the visible direction of God by means of the laws of nature, which do not change, and it is the province of “philosophers,” the latter reveals the inner and hidden direction, which can only be understood by means of Kabbalah.61 As with the European Enlightenment, the metaphor of light was central to his thought and life experience, and by means of it he could explain both the revelation of the magid and the corrective and redemptive vision that that fired his ambition to turn darkness into light.

Note s 1. Igrot ­ramh.­al uvenei doro, ed. Mordecai Shriki (Jerusalem: Machon Ramhal, 2001), letter 7, 7a. On the use of ­yih.­udim see Isaiah Tishby, “Qovets shel

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kitvei qabala miginzei r­ a mh.­a l bekitvei yad oxford 2593,” Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), pp. 657–659. See David Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York: New York University Press, 1995), pp. 17, 30. 2. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 176–179. 3. Igrot ­ramh.­al uvenei doro, letters 7, 7a, 14, 33, 44, 101. 4. Ibid., letter 7 (November 4, 1729). 5. Emden, Torat haqanaut, fol. 44a; Igrot ­ramh.­al, letter 13. 6. See Simon Ginzburg, The Life and Works of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Founder of Modern Hebrew Literature (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975), p. 10. 7. See Johnathan Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto [Hebrew], Tel Aviv 2014; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moshe Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies, chs. 7–8; Israel Bartal, “On Periodization, Mysticism, and Enlightenment: The Case of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,” in Early Modern Culture and Haskalah: Reconsidering the Borderlines of Modern Jewish History , ed. David Ruderman and Shmuel Fener, Simon-Dubnow-Institute Jahrbuch 6 (2007): 201–214; Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3; Shimon Ginzburg, ­ramh.­al uvenei doro: osef igrot ute’udot (Tel Aviv: Kolel Mate Yoseph, 1937); Isaiah Tishby, “Darkhei hafatsatam shel kitvei r­ a mh.­a l bepolin velita,” Qiryat sefer (1977): 139–150. And recently, David Sclar, “Perfecting Community as ‘One Man’: Moses Hayim Luzzatto’s Pietistic Confraternity in Eighteenth-Century Padua,” Journal of the History of Ideas 18, 1 (2020), 45–66. 8. Moses H.ayim Luzzatto, Migdal ‘oz, with an introduction and notes by Jonah Dor, Jerusalem 1972. 9. Ibid., p. 86. 10. See Fischl Lachover, ‘Al gevul hayashan v­ ehah.­adash (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1951), pp. 29–96. 11. Letter from Luzzatto to Benjamin Hacohen, 26 Kislev 5490 (Dec. 17, 1729), Igrot ­ramh.­al, no. 15, pp. 47–52. 12. Testimony of the emissary from Safed, R. Raphael Israel Qim h.i, 3 Kislev 5490 (Nov. 24, 1729), ibid., letter no. 8, pp. 27–30. See Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 196–198; Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, ch. 2. 13. Letter from Luzzatto to Benjamin Hacohen, Igrot ­ramh.­al, letter no. 15, p. 3. 14. See Isaiah Tishby, “Demuto shel rabbi moshe david vali uma`amado ­beh.avurat ­ramh.­al,” Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3, pp. 809–846 (quote from p. 811). 15. The bylaws of R ­ a mh.­a l’s society are in Igrot ­ramh.­al, letter 3, pp. 5–11. 16. Ibid., par. 7 in the additional bylaws from the beginning of 1731, letter 3, p. 8. 17. See Ted A. Campbell, The Religion of the Heart: A Study of European Religious Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Columbia: University of South California Press, 1991).

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18. See Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism, Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe; George Rude, Europe in the 18th Century, pp. 128–129; Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason 1648–1789, pp. 102–104. 19. See Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany 1500–1750 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 85–86; Christopher Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995); Christopher Clark, “The Hope of Better Times: Pietism and the Jews,” in Pietism in Germany and North America 1680–1820, ed. Jonathan Strom, Hermut Lehmann, and James van Horn Melton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 251–270; Aya Elyada, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish, Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). 20. See Robert Kreiser, Miracles, Convulsions, and Ecclesiastical Politics in Early Eighteenth Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Doyle, The Old European Order, 1600–1800, pp. 154–156. 21. See David Hampton, Methodism, Empire of the Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Randy Maddok and Jason Vickers, eds., The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 22. See Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750: A Social Portrait (New York: Vintage, 1973); Peter C. Hoffer, When Benjamin Franklin Met the Reverend Whitefield: Enlightenment, Revival, and the Power of the Printed Word (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2011). 23. Enthusiasm described and caution’d against. A sermon preach’d at the Old Brick Meeting-House in Boston, the Lord’s Day after the commencement, 1742. With a letter to the Reverend Mr. James Davenport. By Charles Chauncy, D.D One of the Pastors of the first Church in said Town, h­ ttps://​­quod​.­l ib​ .­u mich​.­edu​/­e​/­evans​/­N03978​.­0001​.­001​?­rgn​=​­main;view=fulltext, p. 3. Cited by Hofstadter, America at 1750, pp. 229–230. 24. Hofstadter, America at 1750, pp. 262–264; Hoffer, When Benjamin Franklin Met the Reverend Whitefield, pp. 92–93. 25. Michael Heyd, “The Collapse of Jacob’s Ladders? A Suggested Perspective on the Problem of Secularization on the Eve of the Enlightenment,” in Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Adam Shear, and Elchanan Reiner (Pittsburgh, PA: Hebrew Union College Press and University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), pp. 229–238. 26. Hofstadter, America at 1750, pp. 270–271. See also Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, pp. 95–96. 27. Letter from Luzzatto to Bassan (26 Kislev 5490), letter from Luzzatto to Bassan (26 Tevet 5490) and Luzzatto’s letter to Emanuel Kolbo (New Moon of Adar 5490), Luzzato, Igrot ­ramh.­al, pp. 52, 65, 91–93.

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28. For a detailed reconstruction of the Luzzatto affair see Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, chs. 7–8; See also Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, 10, Ch. 11. 29. Letter of the rabbis of Venice to Isaiah Basan, early Kislev 5490 (late November 1729), Igrot ­ramh.­al, pp. 18–20. 30. Letter from Luzzatto to Hagiz, 6–11 Kislev 5490 (late November 1729), ibid., pp. 32–34. 31. Letter from Hagiz to Luzzatto, 4–9 Tevet 5490 (the week beginning on January 2, 1730), ibid., pp. 107–110. 32. Letter from Hagiz to Jacob Katz, ibid., pp. 35–36. 33. Letter from Luzzatto to Bassan, 13 Kislev 5490 (Dec. 12, 1729), ibid., pp. 36–37. 34. Letter to Luzzatto from the rabbis of Venice, 27 Shevat 5490 (Feb. 9, 1730), ibid., pp. 88–91. He repeated this in a letter sent three days later to his friend the rabbi and physician Emanuel Kolbo: “And I must stand like a fortified city against everyone, with great courage and a strong arm . . . and the Lord God of Israel has ordered me to do everything I am doing” (ibid., pp. 91–93). 35. Letter from Luzzatto to Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen, 28 Adar 5490 (March 17, 1730), ibid., pp. 104–107. See Johnathan Garb, “Hamodel hapoliti baqabala hamodernit: ‘iyun bemikhtevei r­ a mh.­a l uvesevitato,” in ‘Al da’at haqahal: sefer hayuvel likhvod avi’ezer ravitsky, 2, ed. Yedidia Stern et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2012), pp. 533–565. 36. Igrot ­ramh.­al, pp. 110–113. 37. Letter from Hagiz to Venice, 3 Nissan 5490 (March 17, 1730), ibid., pp. 147–157. 38. Letter from Luzzatto to Bassan, 3 Sivan 5490 (May 19, 1730), ibid., pp. 210–214. 39. Luzzatto’s oath to cease writing according to a magid, Padua, Monday, 3 Av 5490 (July 17, 1730), ibid., pp. 229–231. 40. Letters from Luzzatto to Bassan, 8 H.eshvan 5491, 19 Adar 5491, Elul 5490, 14 Shevat 5491, 18 Iyar 5491, ibid., pp. 237, 240–241, 245, 248–259, 264–267. 41. Letters from Luzzatto to Bassan, 5 H.eshvan 5491, Elul 5490, 14 Shevat 5491, 18 Iyyar 5491, ibid., pp. 237, 240–241, 245, 258–259, 264–267. 42. Moses H.ayim Luzzatto, Sefer derekh hashem (Amsterdam, 1896) (the book was apparently written in 1735/36), pt. 1; Tishby, “Qovets shel kitvei qabala miginzei ­ra mh.­a l,” Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3, pp. 625–690. 43. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 231–232. 44. Letter from the rabbis of Venice to Hagiz, 20–24 H.eshvan 5495 (Nov. 16–20, 1734), and the proclamation of the rabbis of Venice, 8 Kislev 5495 (Dec. 3, 1734), ibid., pp. 299–309. 45. “Hatodah shel r­ a mh.­a l lifnei beit hadin befrankfurt,” 17 Tevet 5491 (Nov. 1, 1735), ibid., pp. 316–318.

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46. “Kruz harav ­yeh.­ezkel qatzenellenbogen veharav moshe h.agiz,” ibid., pp. 323–327. 47. “Haskamat harav ya’aqov emden,” ibid., pp. 345–347; Tofes h­ ah.­erem ‘al kitvei ­ra mh.­a l,” 5 H.eshvan 5496 (Oct. 21, 1735), ibid., pp. 362–365. 48. Letter from Luzzatto to Bassan, 5 Sivan 5495 (May 26, 1735), ibid., pp. 332– 335; Letter from Luzzatto to Bassan, 30 Av 5495 (Aug. 18, 1735), ibid., pp. 337–341. 49. Letter from Luzzatto to Bassan, ibid., p. 339. See also the letter from Luzzatto to Bassan, ibid., pp. 395–396. 50. Letter from Luzzatto to Bassan, 18 H.eshvan 5496 (Nov. 2, 1735), ibid., p. 361. 51. Letter from Rabbi Jacob Katz to Rabbi Moses Hagiz, ibid., pp. 434–435. 52. See Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 242–255. 53. Robert Bonfil, “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis at the Close of the Sixteenth Century,” Jewish History 3 (1988): pp. 11–30 (esp. pp. 13–14). 54. Letter from Hagiz to Bassan, 8 Nisan 5495 (March 31, 1735), Igrot ­ramh.­al, pp. 330–332. See also Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 237–242; Cecil Roth, “Forced Baptism in Italy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 27 (1936): 117–131. 55. Tishby, “Demutu shel rabbi moshe david Vali uma’amdo b­ eh.­avurat ­ra mh.­a l,” Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3, pp. 829–832. 56. Igrot ­ramh.­al, p. 271. 57. Tishby, “Darkhei hafatsatam shel kitvei qabala l­ era mh.­a l be polin uvelita,” Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3, pp. 911–938. 58. Jacob Emden, Ze sefer beit yehonatan hasofer (Altona, 5523), fol. 6a–b; Jacob Emden, Torat haqanaut, fols. 57–58. 59. Isaiah Tishby, “’Iqvot rabbi moshe h.aim luzzatto bemishnat ­hah.­asidut,” Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3, pp. 961–994. 60. See Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews, The Jews of Shklov, pp. 26–30. 61. Moses H.aim Luzzatto, Sefer adir bamarom (Warsaw, 1886), introduction; Tishby, “Qovets shel kitvei qabala miginzei ­ra mh.­a l bekitvei yad oxford 2593,” Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches, vol. 3, pp. 648–649; Luzzatto, Derekh hashem, pt. 3, ch. 3; see Jonathan Garb, “The Circle of Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto in its Eighteenth Century Context,” Eighteenth Century Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 189–202.

Thirteen

k

CRITICISM AND AMBITION From Gulliver to the Ba’al Shem Tov and Jew Süss

While Luzzatto was receiving divine illumination, and the Christian religious reawakening gained followers on both shores of the Atlantic, two daring travel books appeared in London, arousing curiosity and exerting influence, shedding beams of critical light on the flaws of human society, which required urgent reform. While the religious reawakening offered the passionate experience of repentance and openness to immediate contact with God, critical, ironic, and satirical literature strove to bring about a fundamental change in thinking and in the view of the world, demanding true reform in life on earth. The first of these books was Gulliver’s Travels by the Irish author Jonathan Swift (1677–1745), which was published in the fall of 1726. The second was Voltaire’s Letters Concerning the English Nation, written during a sojourn of a year and a half in London (1726–1727). It appeared in English in 1733 and a year later in French.1 The two authors met in London, knew each other’s work, and admired one another greatly. Voltaire, at age thirty-three, was at the start of his career as an enthusiastic proponent of the Enlightenment, and he saw England as a paradise that could serve as a model for all of Europe. Swift was sixty years old and almost despaired of his chances of attaining fame, and he regarded English society as corrupt and benighted. These two books, published anonymously, made a strong impression on their readers, and became bestsellers. Within three weeks of its first printing, ten thousand copies of Gulliver’s Travels were sold. Two more editions appeared in Dublin, where Swift was born. The book was immediately translated into French and German, and parts of it were printed in pirated editions. In England alone, fourteen editions of the Letters Concerning the English Nation were published during the first sixty years, while in France it was prosecuted as a dangerous clandestine book.

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Hone st Hor se s a n d Tol er a nt English m en Both of these books presented their readers with large mirrors, enabling them to compare countries and discover the flaws in the state, society, and culture where they lived. Like Montesquieu in the Persian Letters, published some years earlier, both Voltaire and Swift used travel narratives for the purpose of criticism, which exposed problems from the comparative, external, and relative point of view of the author as a traveler who comes to know the unfamiliar Other. They also presented an ideal model that could and should be emulated. Gulliver’s Travels brought the reader to strange and imaginary worlds, only to reflect upon the weaknesses of human society. The Letters Concerning the English Nation, which summarized Voltaire’s enthusiasm for the achievements of England and for the tolerance he found there, were primarily a protest against the suppression of freedom of belief and thought. Swift sent his hero, Lemuel Gulliver, first a ship’s surgeon and then a captain of several ships, on a journey “into several remote nations of the world,” and it stunned its readers. Swift’s friend, the poet Alexander Pope, wrote to him that everybody in London, from the aristocracy and members of Parliament to women and children, were reading his book, which had become a sensation. At that time, Swift had returned from England to Dublin, where he was the dean of the Church of Saint Patrick, an unsatisfactory post in the Anglican Church in Ireland. He was bitter because he had failed to fulfill himself, despite his academic achievements as a Doctor of Theology and his abilities as a prolific author who was deeply involved in English politics, and he was disappointed by his failure to gain sufficient esteem. His ironic writing aroused the suspicions of Queen Anne, who regarded him as a freethinker and denied him the post of bishop, which he desired. Indeed, because of his unbridled criticism, many viewed him as lacking both conscience and religion. In Gulliver’s Travels, his personal frustration and the bitter criticism that had built up within him flowed together, but first of all his readers devoured his exciting travel tales with delight. Together with Lemuel Gulliver they sailed to Lilliput with its tiny people, to Brobdingnag with its giants, and to Laputa with its islands floating in the air, and in the fourth part, the most exciting of all, to Houyhnhnmland, inhabited by intelligent and ethical horses, alongside of whom were the Yahoos, repulsive and primitive human beings. In each of his voyages, Gulliver was deviant, and from his shifting point of view, as a giant, a dwarf, and a low creature, he looked at himself and at his homeland with such wonder that it was difficult for him to return to England and accept being a member of the human race.

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Swift’s criticism hardly missed a thing. It was directed at the institutions of government, at the domestic and foreign policies of England, at social norms, at humanistic scholars and scientists, at entertainments, at styles of dress and leisure, and at the world of criminals. The more he told about his country of origin, the more he understood how strange, irrational, and inhumane it was, even in comparison to the fantastic places that he visited. The king of the land of the giants found it hard to believe his tales: “He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting ‘it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.’” Through Gulliver, Swift condemned the corruption of the powerful ruling classes; the culture of bribery that had spread everywhere, in his opinion; the gambling, prostitution, and libertinism that led to venereal disease and physical and moral degeneration. Again and again, he demonstrated the pointless cruelty of war and attacked colonialism. The king of Brobdingnag asks him, “What business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet?” As for colonizing the places he visited, he says cynically, “Those countries which I have described do not appear to have any desire of being conquered and enslaved, murdered or driven out by colonies.”2 He attacked sectarianism in Christianity and religious enthusiasm, though he himself was an Anglican minister. Gulliver’s Travels contains subversive criticism of the corruption of avaricious clergymen, avid for honor, and Swift blamed religion for horrible wars. Nor did he hesitate to mock religious fanaticism: “Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire. . . . Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.”3 Was Swift an author in despair, whose bitter and angry personality made him an extreme misanthrope? Is the moral of his book radical revulsion from human society, such that when Gulliver returned home, he kept a distance from his wife, “the smell of a Yahoo continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose well stopped with rue, lavender, or tobacco leaves.” Was Gulliver the opposite of the English literary hero who preceded him by eight years, Robinson Crusoe, who inspired hope in his readers, seeing the power of the individual to overcome the mortal dangers to which he was exposed with sophistication and creativity? The fourth part of the book offers the readers insight into Swift’s

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dream for the future, an enlightened Utopia that projects order, reason, solidarity, and moral virtue upon the dark reality of the world. In Houyhnhnmland, for the first time in his life, Gulliver was happy. “I enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquility of mind; I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy. I had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or pimping, to procure the favour of any great man.” In conversation with the horses, he did not discover the noble savage, like Crusoe’s Man Friday, but rather an idealization of humanity at its best: “As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it.”4 The kingdom of horses, which is governed by natural reason and morality represented the destination where one might attain happiness. In “A Letter from Captain Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson,” which Swift wrote about half a year after the book was published, for later editions, Swift did not conceal his hope that his work would shock reality. The success of the book and fame were not important to him, because “I wrote for their amendment, and not their approbation.” Now, as he was told, in the light of public disapproval, “I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.” The great question was whether the human race was capable of improvement. At least at that moment, he believed his hopes were far from fulfillment: for “the Yahoos [are] a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example.”5 However, Swift did not despair, and he continued to express his criticism, which reached its peak in the political satire, “A Modest Proposal For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.” To arouse public awareness of the distress afflicting the country of his birth, he proposed selling children at the age of one and eating their meat. With bitter irony he wrote, “I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.”6 In the last years of his life, Swift declined into severe mental illness, but he did manage to compose the epitaph in Latin to be carved on his tombstone: “Go forth, Voyager, and copy, if you can, this vigorous (to the best of his ability) Champion of Liberty.” The ethos of liberty and the struggle against its suppression were also the strongest forces motivating Voltaire, shaping his work and his public position as a French philosopher of the Enlightenment. The Letters Concerning the English Nation summed up the two wonderful years of his stay in England as a persecuted refugee from his country, who had already lost his liberty twice.

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He arrived in London in the spring of 1726 after a violent personal dispute with the aristocrat Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot, who provoked and mocked him and had him imprisoned in the Bastille for two weeks. Voltaire showed great curiosity to get to know London well and experience everything that the great metropolis could offer. “His fame as a poet got him the acquaintance of the learned, in a country where foreigners generally find but a cool reception.”7 Within two months, Voltaire learned English and began to speak it, he joined circles of writers and politicians, he met King George I and Prime Minister Robert Walpole, and became friendly with Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and others. He was admired as a fascinating conversationalist, went to the theater and to coffeehouses, and he felt as if he had truly landed on the shores of the kingdom of liberty. The French traveler found the secret of liberty in England primarily in the extraordinary variety of religious life. Comparing England to his Catholic homeland, Voltaire wrote in envy: “England is properly the country of sectarists. . . . An Englishman, as one to whom liberty is natural, may go to heaven his own way.” True, the Church of England was dominant and preserved its privileges, but zealotry against nonconformists was no longer as severe as it had been. In his close encounters with the Quakers, for example, Voltaire, though he was unable to master his ironic criticism of those who seek divine illumination through the religious experience of shaking and contorting the body, expressed surprise that there could be a modest, ethical, and humanist branch of Christianity, which showed no hypocrisy and which condemned the spilling of blood in religious wars. Voltaire explained the lesson he learned and the advantages of pluralism: “If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there as such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.”8 The Jews, who are taken by the deists such as Toland and Anthony Collins, as a test case for Enlightenment, are not absent from the Letters. Voltaire’s first encounter with a Jew in England (an encounter which, in fact, did not take place), did not augur well. In a letter to a friend in France, he told that, to his misfortune, he had arrived in England with only a letter of credit in the name of a certain Jew named Medina, for the sum of eight or nine hundred French livres (about sixty English pounds at the time), and he hoped to receive the money. But, upon arriving in London, he discovered that his “cursed” Jew had gone bankrupt, so he was in a strange city without a penny. The wealthy Jew with his aristocratic title, Solomon de Medina, was not in England at the time. Apparently, Voltaire wars in error, and his letters of credit were drawn upon the

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Jewish banker Anthony (or Moses) Mendes da Costa, who indeed had gone bankrupt just two weeks after Voltaire arrived in London. Good friends, even the king himself, rescued him from distress, but “his Jew” remained the banker who caused him disappointment and financial loss.9 The twenty-fifth letter, an appendix to the Letters Concerning the English Nation, which is entitled, “On Paschal’s Thoughts Concerning Religion” and does not treat the experiences of his journey, contains Voltaire’s venomous, deist critique of Judaism and the Jews. Their religious vision is violent and arrogant (“they await a messiah who will make the Jews masters of the Christians”), the basic principles of their religion are flawed (“the Ten Commandments did not even mention the immortality of the soul”), and history proves that their religion was taken from the Egyptians, hence, “it is very false to say that the Jewish law is the most ancient one, since before Moses, their legislator, they lived in Egypt, the country on earth most famous for its wise laws.” The Jews are morally inferior, they fail to meet the criteria of enlightenment, and they deserve condemnation: “As for the Jews, they were not hated because they believed in only one God, but because they ridiculously hated the other nations, because they were barbarians who massacred their conquered enemies without pity, because this vile, superstitious, ignorant people, without arts, without commerce, despised the best governed people.”10 Although Voltaire placed the Jews at the bottom of the ladder of humanity with these blunt words, in the Letters he conveyed his great message of toleration. In the sixth letter, he invited his readers to accompany him to the stock exchange and to witness the way the practical life of the economy and finance naturally and humanly create the surprising state of liberty and equality, which bridge differences in religion. “Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together as tho’ they all profess’d the same religion, and give the name of Infidel to none but bankrupts.” Economic interest, which does not distinguish among religions, and the stock exchange as a public and civic space offer the conditions for personal encounter, a tolerant atmosphere, and a common language among people as they are. From this point of view, religion, and Voltaire meant any religion, may appear ridiculous, but it can be regarded forgivingly, because it does not threaten public order: “At the breaking up of this pacific and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue, and others to take a glass. This man goes and is baptiz’d in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That man has his son’s foreskin cut off, whilst a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child.

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Others retire to their churches, and there wait for the inspiration of heaven with their hats on, and all are satisfied.”11 Whereas Voltaire’s deist outlook presented a contemptible image of Judaism, as reflected in the Bible and in books of history, and he also painted a negative picture of the inferior character of the Jews, the London stock exchange exemplified his vision of a happy future. The Jewish test case in the Letters revealed Voltaire’s ambivalence. He attacked the ancient Jews as barbarians, thus kindling and intensifying hostility, yet he also applied the principle of liberty and toleration to the Jews of his time, including them in the vision of a future liberated from the sediment of the past, managed without regard to the characteristics of nations and religions. Voltaire’s criticism in the Letters Concerning the English Nation was seen as subversive in France, unacceptable and threatening to overthrow the Old Regime. Just when clouds of suspicion hovered once again over Luzzatto’s head, and the chest of his writing was doomed to destruction, the French parliament in Paris commanded the seizure and destruction of the Lettres philosophiques, the French version of Voltaire’s book. On Thursday, June 10, 1734, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the verdict was carried out in public. At the foot of the staircase of the Palace of Justice, in the heart of the city, the executioner tore up the pages of the book and consigned the scraps of paper to the flames. Voltaire was not present. To escape the arrest warrant that had been issued against him, he had fled from Paris and hidden from those who wished to silence him. In the end, he took refuge with his lover, Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749), who left her husband and their three children for him. They lived together for several years in her chateau of Cirey, in the Champagne region, fulfilling the desire for liberty that Voltaire presented in the Lettres philosophiques, as the highest value that must be fought for with self-sacrifice. This was the happiest time of his life. He became wealthy through several sophisticated business deals in commerce and finance, obtaining financial independence and a life of comfort and ease. Liberty of the body and liberty of the thought were combined for Voltaire and his lover in the brilliant and ostentatious chateau that they restored, furnished, and decorated. Émilie du Châtelet was not only the consort of the philosopher of the Enlightenment, but she was also an exceptionally original and learned woman in her own right. She knew many languages, was well versed in the new science, translated Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, and made Newton’s theories accessible to French readers with a book that made her famous for generations. She also broke down the barriers of gender and stood out as a scholar, also giving free rein to her desires. Voltaire termed them sensual philosophers, full of desire, testifying to the quality of their relationship. Far from the capital, in

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Cirey, they created a private and autonomous sphere for themselves. There they enjoyed themselves, loved, read, and worked together on scientific research and criticism of the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity.12 In du Châtelet’s daring essay, unpublished during her life, “Examinations of the Bible,” she undermined the authority of the Bible, mocked the stories that seemed so fictional, and presented God as a cruel and vengeful figure, endowed with the basest of human traits. The deist critique of the Marquise du Châtelet denied the stories of miracles because God could not violate the laws of nature. The ancient Israelites of the Old Testament were seen to be primitive, the deity who helped them leave Egypt did so by means of cruel plagues, culminating in the killing of the first born, a horrible act, along with terrible, infamous injustice, for example, in the execution by stoning of the man who gathered firewood on the Sabbath [Num. 15, 32–36]. She was outraged by the humiliating ceremony prescribed for a woman suspected of betraying her husband. At least, she claimed, the ceremony was probably never performed, because it seemed ridiculous even to the Jews, and God never found another nation so stupid as to carry out everything he ordered.13 Her subversive essay was circulated clandestinely in manuscript, and it was apparently a source of inspiration for Voltaire, when he continued to develop his powerful and destructive critique of the Bible.

Voice s of In depen dence: “W ho A ppointed Th e m a s M inister s a n d J u dge s ov er Us to R epr i m a n d Us?” Within the Jewish minority in Europe, modern literature had not yet developed, and interest in science was relatively weak. Voltaire and Swift were not translated into Jewish languages. However, the critical tendency, expressing discomfort with the existing situation and revealing severe flaws in it, did have a Jewish parallel, and one can discern it even in the Old Regime, in harbingers of early Haskalah. While Gulliver’s Travels and Voltaire’s Letters expressed reproach and preached reform through literature, within Jewish society this function fell to the preachers, who, in the sermons they gave in synagogues and in the ethical works that were printed, pointed an accusing finger at the corruption of the leadership. This had traditionally been a subject of sermons, but when the barbs of reproach were aimed at what was happening “in our day,” when preachers waxed indignant against rabbis who had purchased their posts, and when they refused to accommodate the flaws of community government in the eighteenth century, the Age of Criticism, this had considerable significance.

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When Voltaire traveled to England, and Swift sent Gulliver on imaginary voyages all over the world, Berakhya Berakh ben Elyakim Getzl, a rabbi and preacher from Kraków wandered among the communities of Poland and Lithuania and observed the life of the Jews closely.14 He bore with him a special letter of appointment signed by the chief official of the Council of Four Lands, the physician Abraham Isaac H.azaq, who wrote that he had been deeply impressed by Berakhya’s integrity, devotion, and refusal to accept payment, and, therefore: “I grant the aforementioned rabbi power and strength to be a preacher and admonisher in all the four lands of Poland who are subject to its discipline, and to build fences and correct the transgressions of the generation in every single community, and he has the right to preach without asking any rabbi of leader, without protest or hindrance.”15 Like his contemporary, Luzzatto, Berakhya was a prolific and tireless writer. He claimed that he managed to write several thousand pages of new readings in Torah and Halakhah in twenty years. However, because of the travails of his journey, almost all of it was lost. When he tried to publish his first book in Halle, Berakhya was sent to prison, because he had entered the city without permission. Later, his manuscripts were seized following a halakhic dispute with the rabbi of the community of Szydłów, and the money set aside for printing his second book was stolen by the servant who attended him. Only a few pages saw the light in print, containing just some of his book of admonitions. However, in just that little bit, published in 1736, from his Zera’ birekh shlishi, we hear the protest of the itinerant preacher, showing that it was often voiced in a hostile atmosphere and understood as contentious and rebellious. No wonder the official of the Council of Four Lands had to emphasize that the letter of support was a writ of immunity, “perish the thought that any person should open his mouth against him about any matter, small or large.”16 Berakhya visited Brody, Slutzk, Szydłów, and dozens of other places, mainly attacking the rabbinical elite, of which he himself was a member. The standards by which he examined and judged the phenomena that outraged him were religious and thus different from those of his contemporary advocates of the Enlightenment in Europe. However, the ethical claims he made against the Jewish leadership were very similar. With Gulliver, Swift attacked the culture of bribery and corruption in England, while Berakhya was furious about the rabbis of his time, who expected gifts from the parents of their students, supplemented their income with usury, and demanded high fees for serving as judges for litigants who appeared before them. Because appointment to the rabbinate in Poland required official authorization, usually from the high aristocracy, this left a large opening for the purchase of rabbinical posts, and the transfer of

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huge sums to the Polish magnates as well as to the leaders of communities. He vehemently condemned this practice, which he saw as a severe religious and ethical transgression and as corruption that caused deterioration in the status of the rabbis: “Some of the rabbis in our times, who give a lot of money and purchase a rabbinical post for themselves, think they have bought a city full of slaves.” According to their reckoning, with the payments they collected from their “slaves” during their tenure, they could recover the investment. In Berakhya’s remonstrance, they were presented as blood-sucking tyrants and cruel cannibals. In a satirical description, shot through with rabbinical expressions, the preacher reproached them with harsh words: “And this is as it is said, who will give me a Torah scholar, and I will bite him like a donkey . . . like the way the Torah scholar acts who eats the marrow from the bones of householders, . . . to insinuate that though he is a Torah scholar, though he is outstanding in the Torah, only he does not behave properly and eats the marrow from human bones, for because they are required to give him presents and bribes, it seems as if he eats the bone-marrow of householders.”17 The preacher continues, saying that in his view, “a man who obtains authority and the rabbinate for financial benefit is thought of as consorting with a prostitute and a married woman, a body that is not his.”18 The problem is even more severe, because in his opinion, most of the faultfinders and teachers of ethics betray their role as guardians at the gate and are also corrupt. Instead of honestly revealing the truth, they hide it in return for favors, they flatter the wealthy and the leaders, and they direct their severe criticism mainly against the weak: “They go about from city to city, reprimanding, but they do not reprimand the rabbis and the heads of the state, but rather the masses of the people, and afterward they send out to the community, the societies, and the wardens, to cover their mouths with gold and silver . . . and they go to the home of every rich man to give them a gift.” The culture of bribery also spread to the institutions of Jewish autonomy in Poland–Lithuania, mainly when the distribution of tax revenues among the communities is being discussed, and the officials make their assessments favoring those who gave them the most benefits. In an extreme declaration, Berakhya stated his journeys among many communities over the years convinced him that it was difficult to find leaders who were not corrupt: “Though I have seen rabbis and heads of communities who do not accept any presents or bribes, but I wrote about the majority.” The preacher who took his role seriously as a social critic paid a high price. “Therefore, the aforementioned good rabbis love me very much,” he reported, “but the rabbis who take gifts hate me, because I reprimand them for that.”19 Berakhya’s voice was not an isolated one, and various other documents

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confirm the picture he painted. At a meeting of the Council of Four Lands in Jaroslaw in 1739, for example, the rabbis who were eager for posts providing high salaries were asked to devote their energy to doing their religious duty, “to protect the customs of our religion,” and to let others perform the secular duties of leadership.20 The Old Regime in Europe did not collapse because of Voltaire’s criticism in the Letters Concerning the English Nation, and the community government in Poland did not fall apart because of preachers such as Berakhya, but in the end the criticism was not without influence. This daring voice did threaten stability, point out abuses, and demand reform. The well-aimed remark of another Polish preacher of the time reflects this well. Many of today’s preachers, related Benjamin Wolff, were capable of speaking to the public on their own account alone. They are independent and are not afraid of losing the audience’s sympathy: “He whose pure heart has awakened him by himself to roam about in the land and correct what is twisted out of shape, they remonstrate with pertinent, pleasant, and good words, though most of the world [i.e., the elite] does not love them, saying, who appointed them as ministers and judges over us to reprimand us?”21 Those independent individuals of the time, into whose lives it is possible to peer, even at a distance of almost three hundred years, were, as we have seen again and again, among the most significant historical forces that shaped the eighteenth century. The combination of personal ambition for success, the attainment of fame and reputation, as well as a career and ascent to a position of power, with consciousness of a mission to improve society, provided them the necessary power to make their way. The year 1736, when the reproaches of the itinerant preacher Berakhya were published, expressing that independent spirit, was also a critical year in the lives of several of the unusual people among those who were born at the turn of the century, marking a personal and successful breakthrough into society and the attainment of a prominent position. For example, Voltaire was already important enough for the authorities to continue pursuing him, because of his critical and subversive writing. In that year, he was forced once again to flee from Cirey across the French border, to avoid arrest. Several months previously, he had received the first letter from the crown prince of Prussia, who was then twenty-four years old, and whose relations with his father, the king, were tense and sour. The young prince, who was to become Friedrich II, “the Great,” wrote in French, with great admiration. His letter begins: “Sir, though I do not have the satisfaction of knowing you personally, you are nonetheless known to me by your works. These are treasures of the spirit, if one may express oneself thus, works composed with so much

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taste, delicacy, and art, that their beauties appear anew every time one rereads them.” The Prussian prince, whose heart was won by the Enlightenment, and whose world was filled with French culture, did not hesitate to state that Voltaire was the finest representative of the eighteenth century, justifying its definition as the modern age. He continued, “I believe that I have recognized there the character of their ingenious author, who honors our century and the human spirit. One day great modern men will be obliged to you, and you alone.”22 Their correspondence, which began with this letter, was to develop into an extended and complex relationship, which led to personal meetings and culminated in Voltaire’s prolonged residence in the Prussian king’s palace. Among the Jews whom Voltaire could have met at the London stock exchange was Samson Gideon (1699–1762), the wealthiest and most famous of the Jews of England. In the 1730s, this man, the child of the aristocratic Portuguese Abudiente family, was climbing the economic and social ladder, one of the roads to modernization available to the economic elite of the Jews of Western Europe. With exceptional ambition, he was able to exploit the financial opportunities provided by the financial and commodities markets, which were developing rapidly, as a successful speculator in stock jobbing. Taking bold risks and treading the fine line between legal and illegal, he became an expert investor and increased his private capital every year. Determined to penetrate to the heart of high society and to gain admiration there, he married a Christian woman and had his children baptized in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The more his financial initiatives succeeded and became vital to the state, especially in the wars of the 1740s and 1750s, his connection with the Jewish community weakened. He left it in the end, though he did wish to be buried as a Jew. Though Gideon did not convert, and those who sought to harm him identified him as a Jew, during his life he followed the path of assimilation to the end.23 Abigail Levy Franks (1696–1756), born in London to a wealthy Ashkenazi family, took a different life path, balancing between integration in the general society and preservation of her Jewish identity. She moved to New York with her husband, and, in her letters, she showed herself to be a woman open to the culture of the Enlightenment and committed to critical thinking. Montesquieu’s Persian Letters and other books that she read inspired her to form her own world view. Writing to her son, who had returned to England, she said she did not think that religion should contain empty ceremonies and supernatural deeds. But at the same time, she was worried by the rapid pace of accommodation to the lifestyle of the upper classes in Western Europe and the New World. Hence, she expected her children to remain loyal to the Jewish tradition, and especially to the laws of kashrut.24

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A younger contemporary of hers, Leah Horowitz (1710–1790), was far from the world of the Enlightenment, but at that time she exploited the flexibility available to families of the rabbinical elite in Poland to acquire knowledge of Torah to a high level. Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolechów was only a thirteen-year-old boy when he met Horowitz around 1736 in his place of birth. She was the daughter of Rabbi Yekil Segal, the sister of Mordecai Segal, and the wife of Arieh Leib, all of whom had rabbinical posts in Galicia, and she was to become known as the talented and creative author of a book of supplications in Yiddish. Birkenthal wrote that he was required to go to Rabbi Mordecai’s home every Sabbath to study Talmud, “and then his modest sister, the learned and famous Mistress Leah of blessed memory, would sit with him.” In his memoirs, he told that she used to go over the text with him. “She would look at me and see and observe that I hadn’t understood a passage in the Gemara with Rashi’s commentary, she would say to me, why are you there and stumped? Please tell me the words in the Gamara that you are in doubt about.” Even after decades, he found it hard to conceal how impressed he was. “I would start to say some words from the Gemara before it or Rashi’s commentary, and she would start to say the words of the Gemara or Rashi by memory, clearly and well explained, as it was written there, and I learned from her words.” Her erudition was doubtless exceptional, and we know of no other women like her at that time and place. Toward the end of her life, Leah Horowitz’s self-awareness grew stronger, and she protested, as a learned woman who sought recognition of the segregated religious power of women. Hers was a frustrated and critical voice in response to the high culture of scholars, which was entirely closed to women.25 Not far from there, in the community of Brody, Ezekiel Landau (1714–1793), who eventually became the rabbi of the Prague community and a central figure in the rabbinical elite, was completing his training as an outstanding student, who was to win prestige and authority. Born to an aristocratic rabbinical family in Opatov, Poland, he boasted that his talents were discovered when he was very young: “People came to study with me even in my youth, as one of the teachers.” At the age of eighteen he married and joined the select group of Torah scholars and kabbalists at the kloiz in Brody. Landau himself gave exaggerated praise to this exclusive and exalted group: “I became connected with comrades, pure and God-fearing, we built a study group, separate from the congregation and isolated, and during the six days of the week, hidden and covered there, and all our concern, all the efforts of our strength, was in the sea of Talmud and decisors.” He received the rabbinic title morenu (Our Teacher) at the age of twenty-four, and he was ready to address the public and receive its adulation. The young rabbi began to write halakhic decisions, and several

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decades later he compiled them in an influential book, which became a classic halakhic work. Landau was famous for generations, known by the title of his book, which refers to his father: Noda’ beyehuda (Famous in Judea).26 In the biographies of the three figures, contemporaries of Samson Gideon, Luzzatto, and Landau, whom we met as children in the early years of the century, 1736 was a year of maturity and the achievement of status. Israel ben Eliezer (the Ba’al Shem Tov) from Podolia, in Poland, turned thirty-six around that time, and he believed that the time of his preparation (hahester, the concealment) had ended. Henceforth, he was allowed to reveal himself in public in the figure of a mystic and a ba’al shem, making successful use of magic to help people’s distress of body and soul, and a group of comrades and disciples gathered around him, full of admiration and wonder at his contacts with the higher worlds. This success was not self-evident. The Ba’al Shem Tov attained it gradually, in confrontation with skeptics and opponents. In his close surroundings, especially in the town of Kuty, a group of disciples had already formed, living in consciousness of spiritual elevation, and in the 1730s he had to struggle in order to gain their recognition and prove his abilities to them.27 As Immanuel Etkes reconstructs this critical turning point in his life, “after several instances in which his powers found expression, he became known as a miracle worker, and sick people began to come to his door. When their number increased, he abandoned work as a teacher and became a professional master of the name, and this was the source of his livelihood.”28 Jacob Emden had been living for several years in the central community of Altona in northern Germany and had won an honorable place among the elite of Torah scholars. His participation in the pursuit of Luzzatto opened up one of the paths of his life as a rabbi who warned against deviation from the proper faith and way of life. In 1736, he wrote Igeret biqoret (Epistle of Criticism), expressing with originality and courage his opinion on the halakhic question of giving permission to marry to a man whose sexual organs were injured. Confident in his own erudition and independence, he did not hesitate to disagree forcefully with rabbis who were his seniors.29 Meanwhile, in Württemberg, in southern Germany, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer reached the peak of his career as a Court Jew, who possessed extraordinary power. Duke Karl Alexander, who admired Oppenheimer’s abilities, delegated extensive authority to him in remodeling the state and performing various tasks in the economic and political system. On June 30, 1736, he was appointed chief court and war factor and keeper of the prince’s privy purse and was involved in intense activity combining the expansion of his personal business with concern for Württemberg and Karl Alexander’s interests. Relatively young and extremely active, Oppenheimer

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was deeply involved in his work in business and government. He concentrated authority and took on many posts, formulating more and more plans for reform of the state, to strengthen its economic power and governability, in opposition to traditional bodies, mainly the Assembly of States. Nothing could prepare Oppenheimer for the imminent collapse of the essentially fragile structure of his life.30 In weaving together the strands of these three biographies, one immediately sees that one cannot penetrate all three of them to the same degree. There is a great difference between the cloudy and puzzling figure of the Ba’al Shem Tov, who left little evidence written in his own hand, whereas a whole book was written about him (Shivh.ei habesht, Praises of the Ba’al Shem Tov, which was first published in 1814) containing hagiographical tales, suspect of being late and fictional, and Emden, who took pains to record the story of his life in his autobiography, Megilat sefer, as his ambition was to leave his teachings and opinions behind in as many printed books as possible. Unlike the former two, Oppenheimer’s life story was constructed by biographers on the basis of judicial and political documents, and his personal voice is heard only in official letters and memoranda or in testimony and the protocols recorded by his interrogators and critics in the last year of his life, and sources about him from within Jewish society are rather meager. However, just recently Yair Minzker demonstrates in his new and fascinating study how difficult it is to even try to make justice to the “true” figure of Oppenheimer who left so many different accounts of his life and death. The portraits that preserve his image, copper plate etchings and dozens of drawings, medals, and etchings provide exceptional visual testimony about Oppenheimer, while there is no extant portrait of either the Ba’al Shem Tov or of Emden. Nevertheless, even considering these differences, especially the sudden termination of the Jew Süß’s career, in the end they prove to have much in common. All three showed independence, initiative, and ambition, they aroused criticism, they embarked on the path of success in life that they chose for themselves, and they left a mark upon historical memory that lasted for generations.

R e v el ation in Podoli a: “A n d Peopl e Ca m e to Hi m from E v ery w h er e” During the 1720s and 1730s, the Ba’al Shem Tov underwent intense and stunning religious experiences in the path of his preparation for recognition as a spiritual figure with exceptional powers that connected him with upper realms. In a general way, these were consistent with the wave of renewal that

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was inundating Christianity in Europe and North America. According to Ted Campbell, a scholar of these religious groups in eighteenth century Europe, this was a distant echo of the cultural impetus of these movements of the religion of the heart. Even if, as in the case with Luzzatto and the Holy Society around him, it is difficult to point to a source connecting them or the circles of pious Jews in Podolia directly to the New Lights, the pietists, the Methodists, the Moravian Brethren, or dissidents who left the Russian Orthodox Church, the similarity among them and the parallel time frame enable us to look at the origin of Hasidism as a conspicuous Jewish case of the great religious awakening of that century.31 As told in Shivh.ei habesht in the 1730s Israel ben Eliezer married H.anna, the sister of the rabbi and kabbalist, Gershon of Kuty, and they had two children, Hirsch and Adel. This marital connection demonstrates the tension between the visible and the hidden in the figure of the Ba’al Shem Tov as a young man. At first, his brother-in-law, who was to become one of those closest to the Ba’al Shem Tov and an intimate partner in his mystical world, found it difficult to accept his sister’s marriage to a Jew who did not belong to the rabbinical elite, though he did know that the connection between his sister and Israel ben Eliezer had been made by his father, whose judgment he did not dare challenge. His brother-in-law’s conduct as a Jewish “peasant,” whose manners were coarse and whose occupation as a ritual slaughterer and a man who delivered alcoholic beverages to a tavern placed him at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and this embarrassed Rabbi Gershon so that he even tried, according to the Hasidic story, to “persuade his sister to obtain a divorce from him. But she refused since she knew his secret but did not reveal it to anybody.”32 His wife supported the family by leasing a tavern that had a license to sell alcoholic beverages, while the Ba’al Shem Tov, in his hidden life, like other ascetic pietists, secluded himself in the Carpathians: “He lived in a small village and made his living by keeping a tavern. After he brought brandy to his wife he would cross the river Prut and retire into seclusion in a house-like crevice that was cut into the mountain. He used to take one loaf of bread for one meal and eat once a week. He endured this way of life for several years.”33 Such a way of life was unusual but not unprecedented, and it was familiar form of ascetic pietism. In his autobiography, the philosopher Solomon Maimon, for example, reports about two men whose names were remembered among the Jews of Lithuania: Simon of Lubtsch, who fasted “during the day, every day, for six years, and in the evening, denying oneself of the pleasure of foods that come from a living creature,” and Jossel of Klezk, who, to hasten “the arrival of the Messiah . . . performed strict penances: fasting, wandering around

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in the snow, sitting through the night, and such things.”34 During these years of preparation, while isolating himself in nature, the Ba’al Shem Tov apparently acquired knowledge of folk medicine from the peasants, and he underwent experiences of revelation similar to Luzzatto’s, although, unlike him, they were direct and not through the intermediary of a magid.35 The Ba’al Shem Tov’s grandson, Rabbi Ephraim of Sodlikov, testified that his grandfather was convinced of his direct closeness to God, so that “he said in these words: ‘I swear to you that there is a man in the world who heard Torah from the mouth of the Holy One blessed be He and His Presence, and not from the mouth of an angel or such like, and he does not believe lest he be rejected by the Holy One blessed be He, perish the thought.’”36 The Ba’al Shem Tov’s secret was gradually revealed during the 1730s. Some of the people around him had already learned of his ability as a Master of the Name to heal the sick and to provide defense against demonic powers by means of natural remedies, charms, and amulets. From time to time, he himself revealed that he had received prophetic powers from heaven, the ability to foresee what was going to happen. “Praised be God, I have eyes to see from afar,” he wrote, for example, in a letter to the rabbi of the community of Sde Lavan (Biała Cerkiew) to warn him about a disaster that was going to occur in his house. In very early testimony about Rabbi Jacob Heilperin of Żwaniec, which is near Okopy where the Ba’al Shem Tov was born, the rabbi’s son related: “When I was young I remembered that when the famous rabbi, expert in Kabbalah, our teacher Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem of blessed memory performed a dream interpretation and it was shown to him that the soul of my father and teacher of blessed memory was the soul of Rabbi Alfasi [the RIF, of the eleventh century].” Similarly, his contemporary Meir Margaliot (1709–1790), the rabbi of the district of Ostrog, who knew the Ba’al Shem Tov as early as the 1730s, told this about him, with admiration: “From my youth, from the day that I knew with the devotion of love with my teacher and friend the rabbi, our teacher, Israel, may his soul be bound in the bundle of life, the aforesaid, I knew for certain that this was his conduct in sanctity and purity in great piety and withdrawal, and his wisdom, a saint will live in his faith, and from on high secrets were revealed to him, the honor of the Lord is a hidden thing.” Margoliot, like others who were close to the Ba’al Shem Tov, had no doubt that that he was a mystic on a high level.37 Thus, for example, according to one of the stories in Shivh.ei habesht, when the preacher David of Kolomyia in Ukraine found himself in the Ba’al Shem Tov’s home, he was impressed first of all by the intimacy he saw between the spouses, making him think at first that a simple person was before him (“[The Ba’al Shem Tov] slept with his wife in the same bed like a peasant”), but at midnight the guest witnessed a special event: “And

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he was occupied with what he was occupied in secret, and the preacher David woke up and he remembered that he saw a great light under the oven.” At first he was alarmed, because he thought a fire had broken out, until “he saw the Ba’al Shem Tov sitting and the light shining on him,” and he understood that he was observing the experience of divine inspiration.38 Immanuel Etkes, who sought to trace the Ba’al Shem Tov’s life by means of the few available sources and stories of praise, while giving special attention to his self-image, show how hard he strove during his thirties to gain a position of authority and to avoid failures. The more these expectations were fulfilled, and his confidence that he was worthy of influential status was reinforced by the people around him, the more Ba’al Shem Tov’s life changed. He moved from his house of seclusion in the mountains to a dwelling in Tluste, and he supported himself as a melamed (teacher of young boys).39 His abilities as a Master of the Name improved his status and led him to cross the turning point of “revelation.” In a letter that the Ba’al Shem Tov sent to Rabbi Moses of Kuty, he instructed Rabbi Moses in how to treat his brother’s sick son in Horodno, giving him the exact recipe for a natural remedy mixed with honey and sugar, to be drunk every morning on an empty stomach. With much self-esteem, he boasted that his magic charms were superior, for example, to those of Rabbi Naphtali Cohen, and that when he was shown an amulet that Cohen had written, the Ba’al Shem Tov recognized that it had been written while he was in the ritual bath and fasting, and “he said: ‘I could write such an amulet after eating and while sitting on a bed.’” He also had to overcome skeptics who mocked him, and physicians who were not willing to accept folk medicine. Shivh.ei habesht describes such a confrontation, which took place in Ostrog, when the doctor raised his hand against the Ba’al Shem Tov and said, “When I see the Ba’al Shem Tov, I will kill him with my gun.”40 Evidence of his success in gaining trust and also a reputation is found in his invitation by a wealthy family of dirzavtses (leaseholders), the Ickowicz brothers from Slutsk, to exorcise the ghosts from the new house they built in 1733. Not only did he carry out this task and place “guardians” in the home of Tovele and Shmuel Ickowicz, he also responded to the pleas of one of their wives, to use his prophetic power to answer the question, “How long will our days of good fortune last?” And how long would the family enjoy the many privileges granted to it on the Duke of Radziwell’s estate? The Hasidic tradition states that the Ba’al Shem Tov foresaw the end of the family’s period of good fortune, and, indeed, their business did collapse in the 1740s.41 When his magical abilities to exorcise dybbuks (possessing spirit) was proven to a group of pietists in Kuty, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s revelation was complete. According to a story related by in Shivhei habesht by Dov Ber of Linitz

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about a mysterious encounter, full of tension, between the Ba’al Shem Tov and a dybbuk inhabiting the body of a woman, it was no longer possible to conceal the Master of the Name. In the presence of Rabbi Moses of Kuty and his brother-in-law, Gershon, the dybbuk made contact with the Ba’al Shem Tov: “When she saw him she said, ‘Welcome Rabbi Israel,’ although he was still a young man. ‘Do you suppose that I am afraid of you?’ she said to him. ‘Not in the least, since I know that you have been warned from heaven not to practice with holy names until you are thirty-six years old.’” Then the Ba’al Shem Tov attacked “and said, ‘Be quiet, I will appoint a court to release me from my vow of secrecy, and I shall exorcise you from this woman,’” and the dybbuk was frightened and begged to leave without using magical means against him. Now the Ba’al Shem Tov could make a living as a Master of the Name: “Later on, several sick people came to him, but he refused to see them. Then once a madman or a madwoman was brought to him and he refused to see him. That night they told him that he was already thirty-six years old, and in the morning he calculated his age and found that they were correct. He saw that madman and cured him.” His success brought more men and women who asked for a cure and protection from him, “and people came to him from everywhere.”42 Afterward, too, he still had to prove himself to the group of pietists, to show that he was not an ignoramus, and that he was truly imbued with the spirit of prophecy. When, in the early 1740s, he moved to the private village owned by the aristocratic Polish Czartoryski family, he became what Moshe Rosman calls a “community kabbalist,” and a respected spiritual leader. The Medzhibozh community had the means to support him at its expense, and there he found a group of pious Jews and quickly overcame the opposition of several members of the group, who became his admirers. Only then, for example, did Nachman of Kosov agree to get to know him, and when he was convinced of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s supernatural ability to read minds, he admitted that he had misjudged him. In the light of his success, the leader’s own faith in his power to work for the general welfare grew stronger.43 While the circle that began to gather around the Ba’al Shem Tov in Medzhibozh in the 1740s was not yet consolidated, it was already the seed from which the Hasidic movement would later grow.44

“In a Short Ti m e I Beca m e K now n a s One of th e Gr e at R a bbis in th e L a n d, a n d M y Fa m e Incr e a sed in E v ery Cou ntry ” Jacob Emden also believed he was destined for greatness. His ambition to attain an honored and influential status in the heart of the rabbinical elite, and his

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sense of mission as his father’s successor in the constant struggle to guard the boundaries of the religion were the main forces that motivated him in the public sphere. In his thirties, while he was the rabbi of the community of Emden and later as an independent scholar in Altona, these hopes seemed to be on the way to fulfillment. In his memoirs, Megilat sefer, he claimed that he did not wish to serve as a community rabbi, and that the post was virtually forced upon him. He regarded his years in Emden, 1729–1732, as a breakthrough in his career and as a time of impressive success, and he did not hesitate to boast about it. “Needless to say, everyone in the community, from small to great, was fond of me,” he wrote, proud of his authority and of the discipline he imposed. “I was like an angel of God before them. No one defied me, and no one even opposed my hints.” From then on, he gained recognition, and “In a short time I became known as one of the great rabbis in the land, and my fame increased in every country.”45 The move from Broda to Emden brought him into renewed contact with the love of his youth, “the daughter of the notable man of Torah, Rabbi Levi,” whom his father had prevented him from marrying four years earlier. This woman, for whom Emden found it difficult to conceal his love, after they were both married and parents, “was a great and important woman, and very well educated.” When he first was a guest in the community, she struggled to keep him there, and she obtained the position of rabbi for him. As he wrote: “She kept me to eat bread and to stay in her house, and with her wisdom she effectively spoke to convince her father-in-law and his wife and all the members of the community, and in general she tried with all her power to keep me with them.” They had the opportunity of living near one another, although the special connection between them, formed when they were adolescents and whose power did not wane, never came to fruition.46 His heart’s desire was to return to his native city, Altona, and he appears to have regarded Emden as merely a waystation. Emden was a relatively small, independent port city in Ostfriesland, with six thousand residents. Though its Jewish community had fewer than a hundred families, it could afford to pay a rabbi’s salary (the highest salary paid to functionaries in the Jewish community). Still it was marginal.47 Jacob Emden fulfilled all the duties demanded of him, but he continued to hope he could soon make his way to a more prominent community. Meanwhile, he continued to develop as a Torah scholar, gifted with abundant creative powers, and he worked on several books of innovative readings of the Torah and of halakhic decisions. On the one hand, he declared that for him study was “only to become wiser in the Torah, solely for the wholeness of my soul,” but, on the other hand, he desired fame beyond the boundaries of Emden. In his first book he already revealed his tendency to avoid partners in

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study, not to join circles of scholars in a kloiz, and hardly take on any teaching duties. He said he could study only alone, in total independence. “What I wrote for myself, I wrote in my study,” he explained, marking out his particular private space: “I alone, without the precision of friends and the clever arguments of other scholars.”48 When friction and conflicts ensued between him and community leaders, especially with the leader Jonathan Levy, who had appointed him as rabbi, Emden understood he would have to abandon his position so as to retain the freedom that was so dear to him. His uncompromising personality (“because I did not look up to great people, nor did I fear anyone”) placed him on the path of collision with that notable, whom he now contemptuously called “the old man with miserable opinions.” Then, Emden says, he understood how precious his freedom was, “that my nature and that of the qetsinim [notables] was not the same, because they want people to submit to them, to benefit from them so they will be beholden to them, as was their custom and habit, and I did not place my neck under the yoke of flesh and blood. My soul revolted against that.”49 Beneath the appearance of success, Emden was disappointed, because he was not yet properly respected. In 1732, he rented an apartment in Altona and submitted his resignation from the rabbinate in Emden as a fait accompli. Even when rumors reached him that the central community of Frankfurt was interested in hiring him as a rabbi, he decided to retain his independence at all cost. His experience in Emden taught him that the wealthy elite of qetsinim wanted power for themselves, whereas he was born to be free: “not to suffer the burden of flesh and blood, in particular the arrogance of the German notables, especially in small places, where they comport themselves like alien gods.” He was willing to forgo income to avoid being dependent on anyone. In his personal scale of happiness, autonomy and health were preferable to success and money. “The yoke of human beings was not placed upon me,” Emden repeated his desire for freedom, and therefore, “I chose to be a free man and to live in my home country as a layman, and not to be a slave to this nation, as I wished.”50 Bodily suffering fortified his resolve to leave Emden. He had been very aware of the demands of his body and sensitive to differences in climate and food as a boy during the years of wandering with his father in Germany and Holland, and he believed that living hear the shores of the North Sea was harmful. “I found no rest in Emden,” he wrote in his memoirs. “All the years that we dwelled there I and my wife and the members of my household were all ill and weakened there. . . . Because of the air and the water and the food, which were not suitable to our temperament. Therefore, our days there were bad and could not be called life because of the suffering that took over our bodies.”51

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The move to Altona was a turning point for the learned rabbi, who was so determined to develop his independent identity, who guarded his independence zealously, and who was sensitive to his body and mind. He was comfortable in the city where he was born, and where his father had served as the rabbi, and he lived there almost continuously from then to his last day. Altona offered him improved health, freedom from the obligations of the rabbinate and dependence on community leaders, as well as passage from the margins of Ashkenazi Judaism to one of its centers, since at that time the three communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek had about five thousand Jews. It also placed him in the company of other prominent members of the religious elite. He prepared himself for life as an independent rabbinical scholar and, for example, he did not consider joining the local kloiz, established and funded by one of the wealthy members of the community and headed by Rabbi Samson H.asid. Immediately upon his arrival, he asked for authorization to maintain a special private synagogue in his home rather than join the community synagogue. Indeed, the presence of a scholar such as he in Altona was regarded as sufficiently prestigious for them to accede to his request, “and I had permission from the members of the community to establish a place of worship in my house.” The financial support he received from several notables in Amsterdam and London, income from trade in precious stones and other merchandise, as well as a small pawn brokerage run by his wife enabled him to support his family without a salary as a community rabbi and the attendant benefits. From the end of the summer of 1732 Emden’s family lived in a rented apartment, and six years later they settled in a spacious house purchased in auction. Emden took great pains with his new house. He renovated it (“because it was a ruin when I bought it”), established a synagogue in it, made a study for himself, installed a ritual bath in the cellar, a splendid sukkah (hut constructed for use during the Feast of Tabernacles) , and an indoor toilet. In the mid-1740s, he also set aside a room in his house for a private printshop, and he received a royal license from the Danish authorities to print books. Emden’s house in Altona not only offered maximal conditions for a comfortable life, but it also enabled him to attain the autonomy he so desired as an authoritative religious scholar without an official position, who was independent of the community institutions.52 However, even in Altona, Emden had to struggle for his position, and controversies and differences of opinion were his lot. In his memoirs, he devoted many pages to venomous criticism against the two other central rabbis in Altona: Moses Hagiz, whom Emden succeeded, largely speaking, in the uncompromising struggle against Sabbateanism, and the rabbi of the combined communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek, Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen.

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Both his rivals were over sixty years old, and Emden, in his mid-thirties, was seen as a threat to their authority, not subject to supervision. “I had to make myself a special place for prayer in my house,” Emden explained the root of his complex relations with Hagiz, “and this matter caused some division of hearts between us, because this was a thorn in the eye of the H.akham [Hagiz] may he rest in peace, and he began to despise me for it.” When he neglected to ask for Hagiz’s approbation of his book, Leh.em shamayim, and when he criticized him for drinking hot coffee on the Sabbath, the wall between them grew higher. Although he did not mean to disparage Hagiz’s merits, since he had devoted himself so entirely “to the war against the serpent [Nechemiah H.iya H.ayon], for he fought the battle of the Lord with all his heart and suffered greatly,” but it was hard to believe what he said: he flattered Rabbi Katzenellenbogen while mocking him behind his back, “It is easy for him to mock and shame the great and venerable sages of the generation, to whose ankles he did not come,” and in his relations with Emden he pretended to be friendly, though he betrayed him shamefully.53 Rabbi Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen received even more doses of slander. Emden belittled his scholarly abilities and claimed that he had purchased his desirable rabbinical position fraudulently and by the means of intimates, at a time when there were “several greater and better scholars than he” in Altona. Not surprisingly, the rabbi of the community regarded Emden as a subversive adversary, undermining his position: “I also heard that Rabbi Ezekiel was in a great panic upon hearing that I had settled here in the community of Altona.” The rabbi’s suspicions were not baseless. The newcomer, who was a generation younger, did not hesitate to disagree with some of the rabbi’s rulings, to mock him, and to accuse him of being a submissive servant of the community leaders, a particularly bad example for the religious leader of the community. As for his book of Halakhah, Knesset yeh.ezkeel, he heard that the Rabbi of Frankfurt believed it should be burned, because of the multitude of errors and flaws. Emden was equally angry because Rabbi Katzenellenbogen actually was successful and continued to live an easy life and to ignore criticism, repulsing his opponents, and thoroughly exploiting the pleasure of his position and authority. “The old head of the rabbinical court,” Emden wrote in frustration, enjoyed delicacies and select beverages, and “his life was sweet, pleasant, and good . . . and his heart was full of joy, and he thought that his lucky star helped him in every way . . . and it is surprising that he succeeded in his actions all his life, even the ugliest of them.”54 The great gap between what Emden regarded as the tyrannical rabbinical leadership of “the ruler in great arrogance and in immeasurable violence” and

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abundance, ease, and happiness was intolerable. His barbed and sarcastic criticism was quite similar to the sharp criticism that his contemporary, Voltaire, through the spectacles of the Enlightenment, leveled against clerical hypocrisy. Compared to the pleasurable life of the rabbi, who was so despicable in his eyes, Emden regarded his own life, even after he gained prestige in the circles of the rabbinical elite, as a long saga of suffering. As with Glikl in her journal, the pages of Megilat sefer enable him to express his dreams and disappointments freely. For example, his drinking habit almost took over his life. Alcoholic beverages weakened his health, and in Emden and Altona he suffered from his addiction to tea, which relived him in hours of melancholy: “Just in the business of expanding the heart, I looked too much to the drinking of tea, because it seemed to be helpful to me in fleeing the gloom that tormented me.” Overindulgence caused a painful and annoying kidney disease. It also affected his sexual potency, so that, he says, “my wife, may she rest in peace, was in great sorrow for me, because the spirit hardly ever arose in me, as if my potency was impaired, perish the thought, and I had no offspring from it all the time I stayed in Emden.”55 Married life did not make him happy, and he found it hard to conceal this even when he wrote about the women in his life with admiration. His first wife, Rachel, died in the summer of 1739, shortly after they entered their new and spacious home in Altona. In twenty-four years of marriage, she gave birth to ten children, of whom only three survived. He hoped that his second wife, Sara, the daughter of a wealthy family from Halberstadt, would be able to support him, so he could devote all his time to study and writing, but this hope was not fulfilled, and this marriage also ended in tragedy. Sara died from a grave illness at the beginning of their fourth year of marriage (1743), after giving birth to four children, one of whom, Nechama, reached adulthood. His third wife was his brother’s daughter, and she bore him five children. Emden was sixty years old when the last of these was born. However, he was deeply disappointed by her and explained the failure of their marriage by the difference in their origin, the gap between Ashkenazi Jews, born in Western Europe, like himself, and the Jews of Poland: “The sword of dispute was not silent all the days she was here with me [in Altona]. Though, aside from that, she was a pious, modest, and excellent woman, and certainly my sins, in combination with the well-known nature and upbringing of the people of Poland caused it, and therefore I did not see good fortune until now.”56 The frequent deaths of infants and young children broke his heart. As we have seen in the previous generation, with Glikl Hamel and with the Perlhefter couple, the awareness of the people of the eighteenth century of the high rate

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of infant mortality did not blunt the pain. Very much like his contemporary, the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, of whose twenty children, by two wives, only ten reached maturity, Emden had nineteen children with the three women he married, and only seven—four sons and three daughters—were still alive when he completed his memoirs. He found it especially difficult to recover from the death in 1740 of Zvi Hirsch, the son of his first wife, who bore the name of his father, the H.akham Zvi. The boy had already showed intellectual abilities worthy of the successor in the family tradition of excellence in Torah when he died at the age of only seven. Emden blamed the teacher, who took his pupil for a walk outside the city of Hamburg in the winter. The weather turned bad: “Suddenly it was cloudy, wind and snow and great cold, and the boy was very chilled.” In his eulogy, which connected the grief for his father with grief for his son, he mourned his death with words that pierce the heart and convey the shattering of Emden’s high expectations: “I hoped he would fill the place of my father of blessed memory, the Lord gave joy, and the Lord took it. . . . Woe, for He called me to break ‘mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth’ [Is. 42:1], the fruit of my loins was given in atonement for the sin of my soul, for this my eye will weep tears without cease.”57 Whereas in his family life he was dealt severe blows, Emden drew strength from his public status. When he joined Hagiz and Katzenellenbogen in their struggle against Luzzatto in 1735, despite all the bad blood among them, he was in exactly the place where he wanted to be: one of the guardians of the bastions of religion, aligned for defense against the increasing threats from within and without. Free from the duties of the rabbinate, despite the tribulations, illnesses, and family tragedies, he could expand the scope of his varied creation in the field of Torah and prepare his work for publication. By the end of the 1730s, Emden had finished the first part of his book of rabbinical responsa, Sheilat ya’vets. It contained 172 halakhic responsa, some of them very long and detailed, relating to questions that had reached him, aside from Emden and Altona, from Amsterdam, London, Berlin, and Mantua, among other places, demonstrating both his erudition and authority, as well as the expanding circle of his renown.58 In some of his response, the spirit of the time is felt. They cope with challenges presented by the changes in the way of life of successful communities of merchants. Thus, for example, Emden makes fun of Jews who are in the habit of keeping pet dogs and cats (“especially those smooth and naked dogs, that do not have hair, and they are purchased with precious money to play and be amused with them and to babble with them”), and he also condemned it because it was vanity and an imitation of Gentile manners. He invested special effort to end this deviation among women who had already taken up the fashions of the time

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and enjoyed walking with their dogs. The only permission he could find was to keep watchdogs, but “needless to say it is forbidden to women in general to raise them only for amusement, for one must fear far more than the mere suspicion, that they might be led into licentiousness.” In contrast, as we have seen, he permitted the reading of newspapers to know the news taking place in the world, even on the Sabbath, both because of the merchants’ urgent need to be up to date, and also to satisfy the reader’s curiosity, “for his soul desires and yearns to know what is taking place.” Like Voltaire, Emden identified the stock exchange as a neutral area that enabled close encounters between Jews and non-Jews in centers of commerce and finance, but, unlike Voltaire, he did not see it as the site of a beneficial opportunity for the creation of a civil society beyond differences of religion. Rather, he saw it was a place of danger and the temptation of religious permissiveness. Emden was asked, “Is there any slight possibility of a prohibition against going to the stock exchange on the holy Sabbath, without any business or secular speech, only to take a walk or to hear valuable news taking place,” and whether they did right in a certain community to punish a young man who went to the stock exchange on the Sabbath to assure the payment of a debt. Beyond the halakhic issue, which left room for leniency in an instance of severe economic loss, Emden added a consideration that seemed decisive to him: every visit to the stock exchange could appear to be intended for business forbidden on the Sabbath, and they were right to fear “that he caused a desecration of the Name among the uncircumcised merchants, when they say that the Jews do not observe the Sabbath properly.”59 After fewer than four years in Altona, it became clear to the senior representatives of the local group of scholars that the rabbi who was paving an independent way for himself was threatening their status. Hagiz, for example, boiled with fury, even according to Emden himself. But Emden argued vehemently that seniority and age were no guarantee of ruling guided by truth. Another question that arose for discussion in the community, regarding a woman whose husband had died. His brother was required to reject her, according to the laws of levirate marriage, so that she could remarry, but he had converted and disappeared. Emden ruled against Rabbi Katzenellenbogen, and since this responsum was published in Sheilat ya’avets, the leaders of the united Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek community forbade Emden from printing the book, so long as the rabbi was alive, and they even threatened to confiscate the printing house if he violated the prohibition. In Emden’s view, this was further evidence of the tyrannical rule of the community rabbi: “I do not want your decree as harsh as Pharoah’s. . . . I am not permitted to be silent, and I disregard your prohibition.” But in the end, he calmed down, pondered the meaning of

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continuing the confrontation, and waited a few years until the rabbi passed away and he could print She’ilat ya’avets and his other books in the private printing shop in his house. He gave free rein to his accumulated anger only in Megilat sefer and recorded the provocative words he cast against the leaders. More than anything, these words expressed Emden’s consciousness that his authority derived from his sovereign self. He stated that his obligation was solely to the truth and to God, and, therefore, “I stand in my place, to answer them bravely, that I will act only as my Creator instructs me.”60

Show Tr i a l: “Con v er sion Is a M atter for a Fr e e M a n” About five hundred kilometers separated Altona from the cities of Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart, in the Duchy of Württemberg in southern Germany, where, on March 12, 1737, the final and tormented year of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer started. He and Jacob Emden were almost the same age, and, though they did not know one another, and their careers were very different, they shared the consciousness of a lone individual struggling to justify his life against bitter rivals. During that year, or, more precisely, in the eleven months from Oppenheimer’s arrest on the day of Duke Alexander’s death, to his execution in Stuttgart on the morning of February 4, 1738, Süß’s life was exposed to everyone’s eye, and its every corner was illuminated and revealed. The only pamphlet that was written (in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish) describes the great drama in the succinct style of a newspaper reporter: Know that there was a man in the place Stuttgart in the state of Württemberg, who grew very very great in the willfulness of his heart and the pride of his wealth and his wisdom, and he was called Joseph Süß, and he was very powerful under the Duke Herzog Karl Alexander, and his greatness and authority grew day by day. On the day that the aforementioned lord Herzog died, immediately, on that night, did they, according to the authorities, arrest the aforementioned man, Süß, with iron chains, and he was imprisoned for eleven months in the great fortress of Hohenasperg, with military guards, placed in custody, now the whole world knows the course of his life.61

Indeed, no other Jew in the first half of the eighteenth century was so well known and famous. The Jew Süß’s life story was told in special pamphlets; rhymes were composed about him—poems of condemnation and pleasure at his downfall. Illustrated leaflets bore his likeness, and a series of medals described his birth in Heidelberg, his dazzling rise to riches, his career in

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Württemberg, the women he had known, his arrest, and the show trial he was subjected to. The protocols of the investigations—thousands of documents that were collected (letters and inventory lists)—documented his business and his private life and listed the contents of his clothing closets, the details of the art collection in his mansions, and they did not omit the inventory of his wigs and slippers. The officers of the prisons to the north and south of Stuttgart reported every day, sometimes twice a day, with precision down to the half hour, especially when he was held in the cell for prisoners condemned to death, what he ate and what he drank, who came to visit, how many hours he slept, and how he shouted in despair, paced restlessly back and forth in his cell, and refused to accept the injustice, after he failed to prove his innocence. The masses watched when he was taken to prison in an open wagon, and a crowd of more than ten thousand people was present when he was hanged. That year was a horrible one for a man whose brilliant career was cut short in one moment, and, from being a senior advisor to the rule of a state, who led the dazzling life of a baroque prince, became a penniless Jewish traitor. Oppenheimer lost his liberty and struggled for his life against a hostile legal system that reviled him as a man without compunction or morality. The conditions of his imprisonment were severe, first in the Hohenneuffen fort, and then as he was bound in chains in Hohenasperg. Aside from bread and raw eggs, he stopped eating almost completely, subsisting on tea and water. He shouted to his interrogators and in the criminal court that he was entirely innocent, and that they had proven nothing against him, and he prayed for revenge from heaven to punish them. His request that his trial should be held in a more neutral place such as the imperial court in Vienna was rejected, as were the offers made by rich Jews to ransom him. His physical condition degenerated during those months. His request to remove the shackles was accepted only in December, but his mother Michele’s emotional request to visit her son for the last time was rejected. Then the sentence was declared, on December 13, and on January 30, 1738, Oppenheimer was transferred to the cell for those condemned to death in the center of the city of Stuttgart, Herrnhaus. His five days there were extremely intense. The guards reported that he read a lot of Hebrew prayer books, that he hardly slept at all, that he ate nothing, and only drank water, which he sipped occasionally from a pitcher. Two Lutheran ministers from the Church of Saint Leonard entered his cell again and again, beseeching him to convert to Christianity. On Friday, January 31, the convert from Judaism, David Bernard of Tübingen, visited him with two of the few Jews who were permitted to live in Stuttgart: Marcus Nathan (Mordecai Schloss), the other court Jew who had been his business competitor, and Solomon Schechter. They saw that

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Oppenheimer was very frightened, walking back and forth like a lion in its cage, shouting, “Oh, God! Oh, God!” and grieving for his life, for his bad fortune, for the injustice. No one was allowed to tell him how and when the verdict would be carried out. He dictated a will to the visitors without knowing that there was no real intention to take it into consideration, and in it he bequeathed money to synagogues in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, to the Christian poor, and to his family. They also concealed from him that his young lover, Lucienne Fischer, had given birth to a son, as well as the news of the infant’s death a month before his execution.62 At eight in the morning on Tuesday, February 4, Oppenheimer was brought in chains before the criminal court to hear the verdict. The pamphlets that described his last day read like a newspaper chronicle, reporting that he shouted again in protest that he was not guilty. He rejected the last meal that was offered to him, and at ten he was bound to the wooden seat of an open wagon drawn by a single horse. Surrounded by 120 armed guards, the wagon drove along a path, on both sides of which stood a huge crowd, to the execution hill, which was outside the city. At the foot of the gigantic gallows that rose to the height of twelve meters, indefatigable clergymen tried to persuade him to convert. Oppenheimer murmured the Ten Commandments and repeated the verse, “Hear O Israel.” Then they removed his shoes, bound him, and took him up the fifty-two steps of the ladder to a birdcage of iron that was painted red. The executioner, Georg Frank, throttled him with a noose that he tied around his neck from the back. Thousands of spectators observed the events with excitement. The corpse was tied by the neck with an iron chain, and the door of the cage was fastened with locks. Oppenheimer’s life was cut short in his fortieth year, and now the artists who memorialized the event and the authors of the pamphlets and booklets that described his last days rushed to spread the news. Until 1744, for six years, his skeleton was exhibited in the cage on the top of the gallows.63 What were the circumstances that led to what seems clearly to have been an act of judicial murder, planned in advance and well publicized? Was it Christian malice against a Jew who, hubristically, rose above his inferior place in society? Another outburst of Christian hostility? Beyond the accusation that was thrown in Oppenheimer’s face, that he ought to have known that it was forbidden for a Jew to hold such exalted governmental posts, and in the many interrogations, the question of tension between Judaism and Christianity did not arise, and the intervention of theologians was not required. The business failures of some Court Jews had led to their arrest before this incident. We have seen that Elkan Frankl was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in prison,

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and the brothers Isaac and Gumpel Behrens underwent torture in Hanover so they would confess that they had concealed their bankruptcy from their creditors. But Oppenheimer’s trial was different, not only because it was the only case in which a Court Jew was executed. The case of “Jew Süß” was essentially political and modern in character, because it was a stark expression and a test case in the Duchy of Württemberg of the struggle of the old regime in Europe against trends of reform. In 1733 Duke Karl Alexander invited Oppenheimer to help him in an economic and administrative revolution that would make his state into a major power in southern Germany, and for four years he was at the heart of the most determining and advanced processes in Central Europe, moving toward the establishment of a modern centralized state that would replace the regime of privileged estates. Selma Stern attributed unprecedented importance to Oppenheimer’s short but intense career: “He is the first Jew . . . practically the only Jew, who influenced, even if only to a limited extent, the course of German history. He is the first example in Germany of the Jews in politics and the first Jewish representative of the new spirit of Enlightenment . . . the first Jew who undertook to transform not only the economic structure of a state but its political structure as well.” Oppenheimer took a leading part in making an undeveloped agricultural state, ruled by the estates, the gilds, and the corporations, into a centralized political entity ruled by an absolute monarch, in whose hands alone held control over the finances, economic development, industrial monopolies, the army, and the bureaucracy. Conspicuously going beyond the functions of a Court Jew, who provided military supplies, financial credit, and luxury items to the ruler and his state, by himself he developed political and financial policies and worked to carry them out. Identifying himself with the good of the country, he believed in the importance of a powerful and effective state and in the right of the absolute ruler to exert his power fully. The many memoranda that Oppenheimer wrote clearly show that the ideal state that he and Karl Alexander wanted to establish would be prosperous and rigid, tightly controlling what was done in its territory.64 Before being appointed to the senior positions in Württemberg, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer had established a private firm possessing huge capital and assets. At a very early stage in his life, after leaving Heidelberg, his native city, and traveling throughout Europe, he traded in jewelry and precious stones and acquired a position in several of the wealthiest and most splendid principalities in Germany. In Cologne and Mannheim he had served as a Court Jew, and at the same time he expanded his business. Ambition for financial success guided

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his entire life. He did not marry and establish a family but traveled from place to place in the fastest and most expensive carriages that could be found. He employed an army of clerks and wove far-flung ventures. Karl Alexander, who had stood out as a senior military commander and had fought in the army of the Austrian empire alongside Prince Eugene in the War of the Spanish Succession, was also energetic and ambitious. The connection between him and Oppenheimer enabled them both to fulfill their dreams of bold action. The duke, who had not yet attained a leadership position, converted to Catholicism out of identification with Austria, and he was determined to rule in Protestant Württemberg and to carry out reforms there, even in the face of suspicion and opposition. This principality had a double center of power: in parallel to the duke (the Herzog), the assembly of estates, which represented the urban elite and the senior clergy of the Lutheran church, wielded great authority, and in fact it could restrict the initiatives of the duke in almost every area by means of legislation. Not surprisingly the reforms pushed through by Karl Alexander and Oppenheimer, from the appointment of a ruling council loyal solely to the duke to full control of state finances, led to a collision and were regarded as an infringement of the laws and ancient privileges of the estates. For example, in a detailed memorandum that Oppenheimer, in his capacity as financial advisor and head of the finance department of the office of the court, sent to Karl Alexander on November 23, 1736, he severely criticized the management of the state finances and proved to the duke that in present circumstances he could not even know what his revenues were. He reminded the duke that he himself had complained, and that the situation had to be corrected, “and I must confess that the situation of the treasury and financial matters had reached excessive precarity.” It was necessary to concentrate all revenue into a single, central fund, but this was impossible because the hands of the duke and his advisor were tied, but the duke should know that “the constitution in this country, which cannot be changed, places it in an inferior position compared to countries where such central treasuries are administered.” This was more than a hint that there was no alternative to eroding the constitution considerably, as it was an obstacle to reform, a position which at the very least bordered upon incitement to political revolution.65 Oppenheimer’s close connection with the duke was very rewarding. In return for his loyalty and advice, he received various concessions that enabled him to continue to accrue power, money, titles, and privileges. The duke even considered addressing the emperor in Vienna so that Oppenheimer could receive a noble title. However, Karl Alexander’s death left him without any

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defense. The crown prince was a mere boy, the duchess did not back Oppenheimer, and the assembly of estates seized authority in the country and assumed the mission of placing full responsibility upon Jew Süß for the damaging policies of the late duke. The indictment against him was very severe, and mainly political: treason against the state, destruction of the constitution, joining with the Catholic party against the Protestant majority, deceiving the ruler, obtaining senior positions by deceit, and licentious behavior in relations with Christian women.66 The other modern characteristic of the “Süß affair” was indeed his style of life, which suited the baroque culture of the wealthy and high social class of Europe. In his thirties, the Court Jew of Württemberg attained almost everything that he could have seen as success: governmental authority, money, splendid mansions, and the ownership of valuable possessions. “Of all the Court Jews,” said Stern, “it was Jud Suess who in his character and manner of life adapted himself most closely to the baroque period.”67 In the eyes of the people of his time, he was typical of elegant men who wished to impress the people around him. They described him as having a mercurial nature, with indefatigable energy, who did everything in an urgent rush as if he knew how little time he had left. His positions, the titles, and the financial means enabled him to stand out more than others. From pictures of him we see an aristocratic figure, well aware of his value, who insisted on expensive and impressive clothing, from the hat on his expensive wig, to his gloves and the silver buckles on his shoes. The inventory of his house in Frankfurt is impressive in the quantity and variety of furnishings, art, and garments. They include, for example, silver and gold cutlery, special decorative cups and saucers for tea and coffee, fine porcelain vessels, portraits of princes and princesses, landscapes by well-known artists, rings and diamonds, watches and framed mirrors, sets of summer and winter clothing, and embroidered handkerchiefs. In the last months of his life as a free man, he invested in the palace that he bought on the Seegasse in Stuttgart, which he entered just two months before his arrest. With vast wealth, he renovated and expanded the three-story building, bought expensive furniture, built a wine cellar, and designed a broad ornamental garden. In Oppenheimer’s case, baroque acculturation was connected with distance from religion. When asked what his religion was, one of the first questions that interested his interrogators, he answered enigmatically that “he was born a Jew but he subscribed to the religion of honest men.” And when the interrogator continued to pressure him, saying that it was rumored of him that he had declared himself indifferent to religion, the protocol states that he confessed: “Indeed, he said that, but with the intention and explanation that he showed

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no enthusiasm for any religion, and therefore he does not lean to any religion or reject any religion.”68 These few words express Oppenheimer’s deistic world view, as does his request, immediately after his arrest, not to be judged as a Jew, though he had never denied his identity. This was the explanation he gave for a way of life that provided independence, not connected by tradition to a community, to a synagogue, nor to the system of commandments. His license and indifference to religion represented one of the roots of the process of secularization among the Jews. In business and social life, he was in close connection with many Jews and provided kosher food when he hosted them, but as a pronounced individualist, he chose a life of freedom from the prohibitions of religion.69 He remained unmarried until a late age, exceptional in his time—he only became involved in planning a marriage to a Jewish woman during the last year of his life—and this aroused special attention during his trial. The diligent interrogators managed to contact eleven women with whom he had had or tried to have sexual relations, and they accused him of living the wanton life of a libertine. It was discovered that on business trips, Oppenheimer and the men in his company, including, among others, his Jewish accountant, invited prostitutes to their rooms in inns. Oppenheimer and the women, all of whom were Christian, some of them servants, and most of them in their teens or twenties, were asked to describe their relations in minute detail. They were asked about the exact places and times of their meetings, and even for a graphic description of the sexual act itself. Did Oppenheimer force himself upon them? Was there full penetration? Did he ejaculate? Was there coitus interruptus? Barbara Schneider, for example, a seventeen-year-old servant from Haberschlacht, testified that when he seduced her to have sexual intercourse, Oppenheimer promised he would convert to Christianity and marry her. He spent the last months before his arrest with Lucienne Fischer, who was only eighteen years old, to whom he also promised a future life together in Holland. When she was detained for interrogation, she concealed her pregnancy, though she underwent an intrusive and humiliating examination. As we have mentioned, till the end of his life, Oppenheimer knew nothing about the birth of their son or his death.70 The coarse revelation of the most intimate details of his life expressed the spirit of the new times. The encounter of the Jew, with all the Satanic and mysterious images associated with him in the Christian world, and with politics, money, and erotica, fired people’s imagination. The desire of both the upper and lower classes for sensational news—to peer into an intimate life and hear juicy stories—was satisfied almost immediately by means of the rapid printing

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of pamphlets showing chronicles of Oppenheimer’s life, reports about his last days and final hours, and a great deal of visual material that was produced by artists who went to Stuttgart especially to document the event. In those emerging modern times, when an individual received particular attention, what riveted the readers of the pamphlets—those who listened to ballads written about the event, those who looked at the pictures and illustrations, and those who purchased medallions as souvenirs of the famous event, whose historical importance was recognized in real time—was first of all the story of a life. Rather than the story of a Jewish miscreant who was punished, the human biography, with its unexpected turns of events and the moments of joy and suffering, was at the center. Oppenheimer’s unbridled sexual appetites and the fraudulent plots to reap profits were indeed repeated motifs in the malicious accusations leveled against him. But in the end, all the accounts, even the most hostile ones, those that were convinced that his refusal to convert condemned his soul to eternal damnation, emphasized the human suffering. Joseph Süß, the man whose world collapsed, was the hero of the episode. The reports about the last days of his life brought the public into his prison cell, told about his distress, and described his body, riven with hunger and the fear of death, emotionally and with identification.71 When hope was lost, and despair increased, Oppenheimer, the baroque aristocrat, asked to meet with Jews in his cell. He refrained from eating food that was not kosher, prayed, and pronounced a confession in Hebrew. Though the scanty food and the difficult circumstances blunted his mind, he found final solace in his determination to die as a Jew, giving up his soul to sanctify the name of God. One of his visitors was Christoph David Bernard (1682–1751), a Torah scholar from Lvov who was already a community rabbi when he decided to leave Poland and convert in Germany, after which he received a post as a Hebraist in Tübingen. Bernard visited him along with Schloss and Schechter, and he was impressed by Oppenheimer’s determined fidelity to the faith he had discovered anew. His report on the conversations was intended to publicize Jewish obstinance in refusing to acknowledge the true faith, but it also documents Oppenheimer preparing his soul for death by intense reading of a book in Hebrew and repetition of “shema’ yisrael” and “the Lord is God.”72 Despite Oppenheimer’s opposition, the efforts to persuade him to convert to Christianity did not cease. The vicar Emanuel Hoffmann entered his cell repeatedly and refused to be affected by the heartbreaking scene taking place there. Oppenheimer shouted that he would die as a Jewish martyr, and he implored them to be silent and leave him in peace. He went mad because of the pressure exerted on him. Hofmann reported that all his efforts were in vain.

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Oppenheimer “shouted without ceasing his ‘adonai elohim,’ and asked me to go away.” He wept and begged and threw himself on the floor, pulled his hat down over his ears so he could not hear, covered his head with a blanket, and shouted at them to leave his cell at last and let him alone.73 In the last two days of his life, when he was exhausted, frightened, and in despair, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was worried about how Christians and Jews would remember him after his death. This was his last struggle to clear his defamed reputation. Through conversations with Schloss and Schechter, the leaflet from which his voice is heard was composed, giving his version of his life story. As a counterweight to the demonization and defamation, he wanted the transformation he underwent in prison to be remembered, and that his career ended with martyrdom. This pamphlet admits that in his life he did “act against the blessed Lord, and against people,” but after he repented and was executed, he should be remembered as a martyr: May his name be called among all the children of Israel, the holy man, Joseph Süß son of Reb Issachar Siskind Oppenheim of blessed memory, and his soul left him to sanctify the Blessed Name with the word “One,” and so may his soul rest in the Garden of Eden with all the other saints and penitents in the next world, amen and amen. By the merit of dying in complete faith and with a repentant and innocent heart for all the sins that he did, we and all the other children of Israel must not think ill of him until the coming of our messiah.

His final request of the two Jews who visited him was to light a candle in his memory for a year and to publish this version of the way his life ended: “He requested of the rabbi Mordecai Schloss that after his death it should be written to all the holy communities not to condemn his pure soul or to tell about bad things, perish the thought, except may the world know that he died to sanctify the name of God.” Since he had no heirs, and his property had been confiscated, all that was left to him to bequeath to following generations was bound up in this testament, in which he tried so hard at least to preserve his good name.74 His concern for his public image went beyond Jewish circles. Bernard reported that on the eve of his execution, Oppenheimer told him how wounded he was by the insults shouted by the crowd that was standing and watching when he was brought to Stuttgart in an open wagon from the prison in the castle in Hohenasperg. It would be no exaggeration to regard this monologue, which Bernard recorded, as the summary of his life, a key to understanding the tempest of emotions that churned within him in the face of the collapse of the life he had built with his own hands. Speaking emotionally, with a mixture of disappointment and anger, Oppenheimer told him:

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I do not now value the vast wealth that I acquired, by means of which I entertained princes, dukes, and noblemen at my table, serving the most excellent food in gold and silver vessels, and the most expensive wines. I do not value my intelligence and wisdom, by virtue of which I gave advice to great lords. I do not even care about the painful death that I will undergo. But I cannot bear it that I am condemned as a scoundrel, a chaser of whores, and a traitor to the state. What? A scoundrel? Did I take anything from anyone? What? A chaser of whores? True, I had one, two, or three women, but twenty, fifty, eighty, that’s a total lie. . . . They call me a traitor to the state while I never stole anything from anyone, but in fact I helped many people, including clergymen and laymen, to obtain their daily bread.75

Now, in the last scene of his life, at least he managed to retain his freedom of conscience even in the cell for those condemned to death, because he rejected the churchmen who tried to convert him. His clinging to Judaism was in fact the last protest he could lodge in liberty and freedom of choice. “I am a Jew and will remain a Jew,” proclaimed Oppenheimer to the minister, Georg Rieger. “I will not be a Christian just as I cannot be the emperor. Conversion is a matter for a free man.”76 Oppenheimer’s life, which was revealed in detail, became the property of the curious public and was presented as a dramatic scene and as fascinating news, which manifested many of the most significant trends in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. By intentionally interweaving his life in the whirlwind of forces at work in the state and economy, in the ethos of ambition, and in the hedonism of baroque culture, he was able to go far beyond the boundaries of community and religion. However, the upheaval in the last year of his short life displayed and fixed in people’s consciousness and in historical memory another insight—beyond the story of his life, the intrigues of politics, and the confrontation between the privileges of the aristocracy and the centralized state—ultimately, the centuries-old Christian-Jewish tension placed its heavy and victorious hand upon this tempestuous episode and brought it to its violent end.

Note s 1. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (London: Dent, 1983); Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, ed. and trans. Nicholas Cronk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 2. Swift, Gulliver’s Travels pt. 2, ch. 6, pt. 3, ch. 8, pt. 2, ch. 3, pt. 4, ch. 4. Quotations from Gulliver’s Travels taken from ­w ww​.­g utenberg​.­org​/­fi les​/­829​/­829​ -­h​/­829​-­h​.­htm.

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3. Ibid., pt. 4, p. 292 ch. 5. 4. Gulliver’s Travels pt. 4, ch. 10. 5. Ibid., pp. 37–41. 6. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal and Other Writings, ed. Carole Fabricant (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 230–239. 7. “Extract from Oliver Goldsmith’s Memoirs of M. de Voltaire,” published with Letters Concerning the English Nation, pp. 162–171. 8. Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, letters 1–6. 9. See letter dated Oct. 26, 1726: Theodore Besterman, Voltaire (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969), pp. 112–113; Rabinowicz, Sir Solomon de Medina, pp. 70–74. 10. Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, letter 25. Quotations taken from ­w ww​.­ebooksgratuits​.­com​/­blackmask​/­voltaire​_ lettres​_ philosophiques​ .­pdf, trans. Jeffrey M. Green. 11. Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, letter 6. 12. See David Bodanis, Passionate Minds: The Great Scientific Affair (London: Abacus, 2006), chs. 6–7. 13. Emilie du Chatelet, “Examinations of the Bible,” in Emilie du Chatelet, Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings, ed. Judith P. Zinsser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 201–250. 14. On him, see S­ hah.­a r, Biqoret ­hah.­evra vehanhagat hatsibur besifrut hamusar vehadrush bepolin bameah ha 18, pp. 6–13; Abraham Ya’ari, “Goralo shel mokhia h. (r. berakhya berakh ben eliyakim getzl usefarav,” ­Meh.­qerei sefer: peraqim betoldot hasefer ha’ivri (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1958), pp. 445–449. 15. Letter of appointment in the register of the Council of Four Lands, pp. 477–479. Following a halakhic dispute begun by his enemies, the letter of appointment was revoked, but it was apparently renewed and was valid during the 1730s. 16. Berakhya Berakh Ben Getzl, Zera’ berakh shlishi ‘al masekhet berakhot [apparently printed in Frankfurt an der Oder, 5496 of 5497]. 17. Ibid., fol. 29b. 18. Ibid., fol. 14b. 19. Ibid., fols. 14a–b. 20. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 96–98. 21. Benjamin Wolf ber. Matitiyahu, Taharot haqodesh (Amsterdam, 5493), introduction. 22. Quoted from ­w ww​.­monsieurdevoltaire​.­com​/­a rticle​-­correspondance​-­avec​ -­f rederic​-­de​-­prusse​-­partie​-­1​-­66487161​.­html. Trans. Jeffrey M. Green. 23. See Lucy Stuart Sutherland, “Samson Gideon: Eighteenth Century Jewish Financier,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 17 (1951/1952): 79–90; Todd M. Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1636– 1945 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990), pp. 25–26.

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24. Abigail Franks, The Letters of Abigail Levy Franks 1733–1748, edited with an introduction by Edith B. Gelles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 25. Zikhronot r. dov mebolechow (5483–5565), ed. Mark Wischnitzer (Berlin: Klal, 1922), p. 41. See Moshe Rosman, “Etgar trom feministi lemanhigut harabanit bepolin lita bameah hashmoneh ‘esreh: haqdamat ­teh.­inat imahot lesara rivka r­ ah.­el leah horowitz,” in Lo yasur shevet meyehuda: hanhaga, rabanut, veqehila betoldot yisrael, ed. Joseph Hacker and Yaron Harel (studies presented to Professor Simon Schwartzfuchs, Jerusalem, 2011), pp. 301–316. 26. Ezekiel Landau, Noda’ beyehuda, rabbinical responsa (Prague, 5536), author’s introduction. And see Kahana, From the Noda BeYehuda to the Chatam Sofer, Halakha and Thought in Their Historical Moment [Mehanoda’ beyehuda ­lah.­atam sofer: halakha vehagut lebukhah. etgarei hazman], pt. 1; Reiner, “Wealth, Social Position and the Study of Torah: The Status of the Kloiz in Eastern European Society in the Early Modern Period,” pp. 317–320; Sharon Flatto, The Kabbalistic Culture of EighteenthCentury Prague, Ezekiel Landau (the Noda Biyehudah) and His Contemporaries (Oxford: The Littman Library for Jewish Civilization, 2010), pp. 101–103. 27. See Joseph Weiss, “H.avurat pneumatikim ‘qedam h.asidit,” in Zaddik and Devotees: Historical and Sociological Aspects of Hasidism [Hebrew], ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), pp. 93–105; Dinur, “Reshita shel ­hah.­asidut veyesodoteiha hasotsialiim v­ ehamesh ih.­i im,” pp. 159–170. 28. Etkes, Ba’al Hashem, The Besht- Magic, Mysticism, Leadership, pp. 66–67. Other studies on the life and figure of the Besht are: Simon Dubnow, Toldot Hahasidut; Gershom Scholem, “Demuto hahistorit shel r. yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov,” Devarim bego, II (Jerusalem: Am Oved, 1982), pp. 287–324; Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, ch. 8; Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov [Hebrew], trans. David Lubish (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1999); Rosman, Founder of Hasidism; David Biale, ed., Hasidism, A New History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), sec. 1, pt. 1, chs. 1–2. 29. Jacob Emden, Sefer Igeret biqoret [qushta dina] (Altona, 5499). See Maoz Kahana, “Hamahapakha hamada’it veqidud meqorot hayeda’; refua, halakha, vealkhimia, Hamburg-Altona 1736,” Tarbiz 81 (1994): 165–212. Emden’s book was written in 1736 and published three years later (Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 198–199). 30. On him, see Selma Stern, Jud Süss: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen und zur jüdischen Geschichte (Berlin, 1929); Helmut G. Haasis, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, genannt Jud Süss, Finanzier, Freidenker, Justizopfer (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1998); Yair Minzker, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss, The Notorious Trial and Execution of an Eighteenth-Century Court Jew (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 31. See Campbell, The Religion of the Heart: A Study of European Religious Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, p. 145. Gershon Hundert is one of the few historians who has pointed to this context as demanding serious research.

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In his opinion, “there is no evidence or imitation of Christian movements by Hasidism. There is rather what historians of an earlier generation liked to call the Zeitgeist, nothing more, but nothing less either.” See Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 176–179. 32. ­Shivh.­ei habesht, p. 64; In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-Besht], trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1970), pp. 34–35. See Abraham Joshua Heschel, “R. gershon kotover, parshat h.ayav ve’aliyato leerets yisrael,” Hebrew Union College Annual 23 (1950/51): 17–71; Etkes, Ba’al Hashem, The Besht- Magic, Mysticism, Leadership, pp. 187–189. 33. ­Shivh.­ei habesht, ibid. 34. The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, pp. 75–76. And see Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, ch. 10. 35. See Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, pp. 226–234. 36. See Etkes, Ba’al Hashem, The Besht- Magic, Mysticism, Leadership, pp. 143–144. 37. Ibid., pp. 74–75, 59; Scholem, “Demuto hahistorit shel habesht,” p. 294; Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, p. 176. 38. ­Shivh.­ei habesht, pp. 79–81. 39. ­Shivh.­ei habesht, pp. 66–67; Etkes, Ba’al Hashem, The Besht- Magic, Mysticism, Leadership, p. 137. 40. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, pp. 156–158; ­Shivh.­ei habesht, pp. 73–74, 253; In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, pp. 40, 196–197. 41. See Adam Teller, “Masoret slutsk ‘al reshit darko shel habesht,” in ­Meh.­qerei h.asidut, ed. Immanuel Etkes and Joseph Dan (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1999), pp. 15–38. It states that the downfall would come after twenty-two years, but Teller estimates that it is more exact to reckon twelve years to the downfall of the leaseholders. 42. ­Shivh.­ei habesht, pp. 64–67; In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, pp. 34–36. 43. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism; Etkes, Ba’al Hashem, The Besht- Magic, Mysticism, Leadership. 44. Etkes, Ba’al Hashem, The Besht- Magic, Mysticism, Leadership, p. 216. 45. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 136. On this period in Emden’s life, see Jacob Joseph Schachter, Rabbi Jacob Emden: Life and Major Works (PhD dissertation, Harvard, 1988). 46. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 135. On the erotic meaning of this connection, see Moseley, Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography, p. 293. 47. See Pinkas hakehilot, Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities from Their Foundation till after the Holocaust, Germany, Vol. IV, North West Germany, Part I (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2007), pp. 241–257. In 1744, Emden was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia.

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48. Jacob Emden, Sefer ­leh.­em shamayim, pt. 1 (Wandsbek, 1728), introduction. Apparently, the book was not printed until 5493. In Megilat sefer, Emden mentions this work as the first of his books (p. 259). 49. Jacob Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 136–142. 50. Emden, Megilat sefer, p. 147. 51. Ibid., pp. 138–139. See also his letter to the community of Emden: “I left against their will only because of the weather from Friesland, which was bad for my health and that of my household in general” (Emden, Sheilat ya’avets, pt. 2, responsum no. 24). 52. On his life in Altona in the 1730s and 1740s, see Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 148–212. 53. Ibid., pp. 154–161. 54. Ibid., pp. 161–180. 55. Ibid., pp. 126–127, 134–135. 56. Ibid., p. 225. 57. Jacob Emden, Yatsiv pitgam (Altona, 5500). 58. Jacob Emden, Sefer She‘ilat ya’avets (Altona, 5499) (the book was actually printed in 5509). 59. Ibid., pt. 1, responsa 17, 162, 166. 60. On the efforts to prevent him from publishing his books, see Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 160, 170–173, 215. 61. Relatsion ‘al petirat Yosef sis zats”al (Fürth, 1738), in Totengedenkbuch für Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, ed. Hellmut G. Haasis (Worms: Worms, 2012), pp. 10–20; Minzker, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss, pp. 208–223. 62. See the description of the final months of Oppenheimer’s life based on a variety of documents: Stern, Jud Süß, ch. 11; Stern, The Court Jew, ch. 10; Haasis, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, pp. 320–433; Helmut G. Haasis, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer’s Rache (Blieskastel: Gollenstein, 1994); Haasis, Totengedenkbuch für Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, pp. 75–114; Minzker, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss. 63. See Haasis, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, pp. 443–449. 64. Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 116–131. 65. Stern, Jüd Süß, pp. 258–262. 66. See Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 116–136. 67. Ibid., p. 238. 68. See Haasis, Joseph Süß Oppenheimers Rache, p. 106. 69. See Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization, ch. 1; Israel, European Jewry, pp. 245–246. 70. See Haasis, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, pp. 213–262. 71. See Cohen and Mann, “Melding Worlds,” pp. 104–110. 72. See Christoph David Bernard, Ausführlicher Discours mit einem seiner guten Freunde (Tübingen, 1738).

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73. See “Wahrhaffte und gründliche Relation was sich in den letzen Stunden mit dem ehemalig Württembergischen Finanzien Directore” (Augsburg, 1738). 74. Relatsion ‘al petirat Yosef sis zats”al. The last minutes in his life were described in this pamphlet as follows: “With saying ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,’ his soul departed. To the gallows there were fifty-two steps, and with every step he said, ‘the Lord is God.’” 75. From the testimony of Christoph Bernard: Bernard, Ausführlicher Discurs, p. 17. See Haasis, Joseph Süß Oppenheimers Rache, p. 224; Minzker, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss, ch. 2. 76. Stern, Jud Süß, p. 169.

Fourteen

k

CONTRADICTORY TENDENCIES Hostility, Violence, and “True Happiness”

When we expand our gaze to the second quarter of the century, beyond Oppenheimer and Stuttgart, we find that the history of European Jewry was laden with other violent events that determined the fate of other Jews, whereas, moving in the opposite direction, some Jews continued to live as Europeans, thirsty for pleasure. As with the life of Jew Süß: on the one hand, new doors were opened before the Jews, and, on the other hand, a stubborn effort was made to perpetuate their demonic image and inferior status.

“How A r e W e Differ ent from E v ery Oth er Nation a n d Tongu e in Such a Long E x i l e” “They are our sworn enemies,” declared the entry titled “Jews” in a lexicon published in Leipzig in 1735. This learned article, which appeared in Volume Fourteen of a sixty-four volume encyclopedia, a total of 63,000 pages, the greatest project for disseminating knowledge that had so far been undertaken in Europe, was anti-Jewish propaganda in the most inflexible spirit of Lutheranism. The text continues its attack: “They slaughtered Christian children frequently, crucified them, tore them to shreds. They are the greatest of thieves. . . . Without doubt there is something in the Jew that can be identified immediately, making him different from other human beings. They arouse disgust and fear.” After God rejected them, they became “not my people” and “the children of Satan.” Two years before Oppenheimer’s arrest, the lexicon published this article, which emphasized the essential religious gap between Christianity and Judaism, confirmed the blood libel as an unquestionable fact, and stated that the only hope for reforming the Jews was their conversion.1

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The pietist mission in Prussia, led diligently by the Lutheran Orientalist Johann Heinrich Callenberg (1694–1760) sent dozens of emissaries from Halle, who studied Yiddish and Judaism thoroughly, to win souls over to Christianity and assist in attaining the messianic, theological goal of redeeming the world after the collective conversion of the Jews. These ambitious missionaries, imbued with intense faith in their task, reported on their travels with cautious optimism, saying that they had discovered weakness in the Jews’ commitment to their religion. According to their reports, in 1732 a rabbi in Frankfurt said, “They are no longer Jewish. They do not pray properly. They pray for the advent of the redeemer, but not wholeheartedly,” and this was a good opportunity to increase the effort to convert them.2 In London at that time, a different tendency was in evidence. The principle of religious tolerance, anchored in deistic and pluralistic thought, was expressed in the new edition of the Bylaws of the Freemasons in 1738: “’tis now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion in which all Men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves; that is, to be GOOD MEN AND TRUE, or Men of Honour and Honesty, by whatever Denominations or Persuasions they may be distuinguish’d.”3 However, the main body of deist literature in English merely exacerbated hostility toward Judaism, blackening the image of the Jews as indelibly flawed. In Matthew Tindal’s book, Christianity Is as Old as the Creation (1730), the ancient Israelites of the Bible are described as a nation of cruel criminals who did not hesitate to permit human sacrifice or to murder the Canaanites. The way to purify Christianity and restore it to its natural and moral roots and to show that that a contradiction between natural and revealed religion is inconceivable is to divest it of corrupt Judaism. This is also the message of The Moral Philosopher, by Thomas Morgan, a Welsh physician who was expelled from the Anglican Church because of his critical views. Seeking to prove that Christianity in his time was merely Judaism in disguise, Morgan established a counter-history in the world of scripture. Contrary to the spirit of Sacred History, with its admired heroes, he condemned Abraham for sacrificing his wife’s modesty, Joseph for oppressing the Egyptians under his rule, and the prophets for their religious fanaticism. In Morgan’s opinion, superstition, tyranny, and ecclesiastical authority that imposed religious coercion were all absolutely objectionable and the true heritage of Judaism.4 The actual Jews of Europe were not the British deists’ target. Rather than inciting to hatred of the Jews, deists were concerned with an inner Christian discussion. In the name of the new values of the Enlightenment, they sought to bring religion closer to nature, to humanism, to tolerance, and to reason. However, the great attention that deist

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literature gave to ancient Judaism ultimately made it into slanderous propaganda against the Jews as an inferior nation. The Lettres juives (Jewish Letters) by the radical philosophe Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens, was also a deist text. In six volumes that were published in French (1736–1738) and English (1739–1740), under the heading of The Jewish Spy, he criticized European society and Christianity with sharp wit. Unlike the English deists, d’Argens showed particular sensitivity to the situation of the Jews of his time, whom he had met, among other occasions, in his travels in Istanbul, Amsterdam, and Berlin, and he also envisioned a modern reform for them and a future horizon that did not entail conversion to Christianity. Following the example of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, in his satirical fictional work, he sent three Jews from the Muslim Orient to observe Europe with sober eyes. Unlike Tindal and Morgan, d’Argens held that Judaism contained the elements of natural religion, and it was close to deism. For example, his character, Aaron Monceca, writes from Paris to Rabbi Isaac Onis, in Istanbul, with ingenuousness that conceals critical irony: “I have discover’d a vast number of Jews at Paris, who don’t believe they are Jews, or know anything at all of the matter. . . . They believe a God, who created the World, who reward the Good and punishes the Bad. . . . But the Ceremonies are not indispensably necessary.” Indeed, they were only outwardly Christian. Monceca writes: “I laugh heartily at the ridiculous Attachment which the Jew have to the Fictions of the Talmud; and satisfy’d with the Substance of our Religion, I condemn its Superstitions,” declaring that only a religion consistent with reason and the light of nature could be acceptable to him. Rabbi Onis, when he arrives in Cairo, becomes a Karaite and levels destructive criticism against the Talmud, saying it was a hundred times more ridiculous than the Koran. In Karaism he finds pure Jews, the only ones who truly observe the laws of Moses. According to d’Argens, the future happiness of the Jews depends on their abandoning Talmudic Judaism and the commandments of Halakhah, in uncovering the rational kernel of their religion, and in the security offered by countries that have accepted the principle of religious tolerance. He mocked the theology that justified a humiliating attitude toward the Jews as proof of removal of divine choice from them and its transference to the Christians, and he attacks the Catholic countries that maintain the cruel Inquisition: Spain, sunk in superstition, ignorant Portugal, and fanatical Italy not only sanctify the unjust tribunals of the Inquisition, but they also wish to impose them on their neighbors. Through the eyes of the Jewish traveler, Isaac Brito, he describes the bloody auto-da-fe ceremonies, still practiced in Madrid, to his great revulsion, and he admires the courage of the

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Jews who gave their lives and refused to repent the “sin” of Judaizing, and he mocks the obligation imposed on the Jews of Rome to listen to Christian sermons. In contrast, the Marquis d’Argens praises England and Holland, which have translated Enlightenment and humanism into tolerant policy, saying that the Jews were free in Holland and England but oppressed everywhere else, both by Christians and Muslims. Freedom of religion makes the inhabitants of Holland content, humane, and bound to the basic principles of nature, and the Jew in Amsterdam enjoys all the rights of members of other religions.5 The anonymous English translator dedicated volume III of The Jewish Spy to the rabbis of the Amsterdam community in hopes that they would find at least ten Jews there similar to the protagonists of the books, who would dare to convert to deism, and he presented himself as a sympathetic friend: “If Your Nation is not so virtuous in general as some others, it has, however, had its able Men, and its great Men, as well as those. [I am] glad that I can do more Justice than they who judge of [your nation] with so much Prejudice and Partiality.” Like d’Argens, the translator believed that even the literary representation of Jews in discussions, who are endowed with a sense of criticism and good moral qualities, could have considerable significance for changing the attitude toward the Jewish minority in Europe.6 The theological and intellectual discussion that took place in lexicons, newspapers, and books by scholars had almost no influence on social reality for the time being. Thus, for example, a libelous poem, “The Shocking Tragedy,” about five rich Jews, was published in Nuremberg, many copies of which were circulated in Franonia, aroused hatred against the Jews in the region and led to violence, because it told a story about Jews who crucified a dog in Schwabach as a contemptuous parody of the crucifixion of Jesus. In early 1728, the court officials of the principality of Brandenburg–Ansbach hastened to publish a denial that the desecration had been committed, warning, with threats of punishment, that “in no way were the Jews to be accused in connection with the matter or to raise a hand against them.”7 Two years later, in the four days from August 24 through August 27, 1730, the tension between Christians and Jews in Hamburg broke out into street violence in which thousands of rioters took part, including sailors, shop owners, and young servants. A sermon given by a new and enthusiastic Lutheran minister and two incidents in the street, following which rumors were spread about attacks against Christians, were sufficient to arouse fury. Anger against a Jewish woman who was seen laughing out loud in a crowd that had gathered around another woman, a Christian who had arrived from Altona and who performed “acts of drunkenness and madness and folly and sang songs like a

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drunkard,” was the cause of a quarrel that was suppressed by soldiers. The next day, a Christian boy hit a Jewish child, and the family servant hit the boy with his cane. A jug of milk that was in his hand was smashed, and the boy ran away shouting, and once again a riot broke out. On Friday and Saturday, the Jews of Hamburg, in a panic, shut themselves behind bolted doors and closed shutters, while mobs gathered in the streets and threw stones. Rumors were rife about violent breaking and entry into houses. In the middle of the night, a delegation of notables went to ask for protection from the senate and were provided swift and effective protection. Many Jews fled for their lives to Altona, which was then ruled by Denmark. In fact, no one was killed, and, aside from broken windows, no damage was caused to property. The patrols dispatched by the senate and severe warnings that were proclaimed in the streets managed to stifle the riots and restore order. Rabbi Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen declared a day of fasting for the combined community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek, which he headed, to commemorate the redemption, as an occasion for religious soul-searching, and to strengthen religious discipline and appease divine wrath.8 The riots in Hamburg showed once again how fragile Jewish existence was, though they actually ended with the reaffirmation of the rights of the Jews and promises of liberty and protection. Neither the ideas that called for a reevaluation of the attitude to the Jews nor the principles of religious toleration motivated the authorities of Hamburg, but primarily fear of disrupting public order in the city, the importance of the Jews for the city’s commerce, and determination to prevent a popular uprising that might subvert the institutions of supervision and punishment. An eyewitness, Shlomo Zalman of Dessau, for example, was impressed by the proclamation of the military governor of the city, who went out into the streets himself to deter the rioters: “The rumor you are giving voice to is not good, a thundering voice at night within this city because of the Jews, and if in your opinion the Jews have sinned, the governors of the city who sit on thrones of judgment, they have the jurisdiction to punish the sinner appropriately, after investigation and inquiry.” The riots also showed that the Jewish minority had some bargaining power to improve their status with the municipal authorities. After the end of the episode, the Jews were asked not to display their religion ostentatiously by sounding the shofar (musical horn which is blown in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah) or building a sukkah. In response, representatives of the Sephardic community appealed to the senate, saying that under those conditions, they would consider moving to another, freer community, such as that of Amsterdam. The threat was effec­ tive, the senate revoked its demand, and Shlomo Zalman was able to conclude

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his chronicle of the riots with a declaration of victory: “With joy we observed the commandments of the shofar and the sukkah, and we prayed with the four species every day.”9 Rabbi Moses Hagiz, who lived in nearby Altona, was one of the prominent Jewish leaders who expressed gratitude to the rulers of the states of Europe: “and He showed grace to us before the mighty kings on land and sea . . . for by the grace of God every day they accept us with kind faces.” Not only were the Jews given “freedom of the soul” to maintain a life of Torah study and the observance of the commandments, but also “physical freedom to trade in the country as one of them.” Hagiz especially praised the Habsburg emperors and the kings of Poland and Prussia, and it was worthy “to be doubly and triply grateful to them and to pray for them . . . to be their loyal servants, for this is our obligation from the Torah, and it is proper for us to acknowledge their goodness and grace.” Three years after the riots, he also mentioned the recent popes in Rome, who had not attacked the Jews for half a century, in Hagiz’s opinion, “and no accusing trumpet has been sounded from those kingdoms or from any court of the kings of the land.”10 For those Jews in the kingdom of Poland–Lithuania, who were the victims of violent religious fanaticism that only increased in the first decades of the eighteenth century, this was little more than distant wish. Hagiz himself knew how different the situation was on the other side of Europe. Even while he was thanking God for preserving His people under charitable kings, he could not ignore what was for him and for many Jews of his time a paralyzing event that shocked the soul, and he found it difficult to understand its theological meaning. In the spring of 1728, several leaders of the Lvov community were arrested after the apostate, Johannes Filipowicz claimed that he had been incited to revert to Judaism. In a lineup, he pointed to three rabbis, who were interrogated under torture, and a special tribunal sentenced them to death: “All three will have their tongues pulled out, their hands will be cut off, and then their bodies will be cut into four parts and burned in fire.” One of them escaped to the Ottoman Empire, but the other two, brothers H.aim and Joshua Reiz. es, were forced to confess under torture that, using magical spells, they erased the holy oil from the apostate’s chest and also desecrated the image of Jesus. Throughout the ordeal, the two were pressured to convert to Christianity to alleviate their punishment. Joshua, the younger brother, a learned man of thirty-one, who was known as a pious ascetic, committed suicide, and his body was publicly abused (“He was sentenced to having his ankles pierced and tied to the tail of horses, so they would walk back and forth dragging him over garbage and mud”), and then it was burned. The entire sentence was carried out against H.aim

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Reiz. es, the head of a yeshiva and a very wealthy man of forty-one, on the eve of Shavuot, May 13, 1728. Jewish sources lament his suffering and describe his last moments with words that flooded the readers’ memories with the histori­ cal memory of “The Ten Martyrs”: “He opened his holy mouth and shouted shema’ yisrael until the end [of the verse], and he prolonged the word eh.ad [one] until the soldier aimed his blow at his heart and with one piercing his soul departed upon eh.ad, and he was still trembling and convulsing, and his blood was bubbling, and they cut his head in two with an axe and cut his body into four quarters.” Voices of dread burst forth from the pages of the register of the old synagogue in Lvov, where a special version of the prayer, El male rah.amim (God full of mercy) was written, with a call for revenge.11 News of the execution crossed borders. When Moses Hagiz heard of it in northern Germany, he was horrified, “for the Holy One, knows how angry I am and how much sorrow and bitter grief, and evil has touched my heart with the power of this event.” In frustration, he sought the meaning of the Jewish fate. Why “did the Lord deploy the weapon of His anger . . . especially in the land of Poland?” Regarding Poland, he was totally discouraged: “The land will certain mourn this, and every heart will tremble, because of what the Lord did in that land, and what will be in the end and with the continuation of this bitter exile. How long, God? For there is no consolation, and no leader, and we have no one to depend on, except our Father in heaven.” The episode of the Reiz. es brothers reinforced Hagiz’s opinion that the only way to be saved from skepticism is innocent faith, without “inquiry,” and absolute obedience to the rabbis (“faith of the wise”). He exploited theological doubt to demand purification of the flaws of the rabbinate. By pinning the guilt on the sins of the victim himself, he argued that H.aim Reiz. es accepted the verdict because he wanted to atone for his sins: “and he confessed publicly that he was condemned to have his hands chopped off because he had counted his money for the authorities to receive the rabbinate, and they commanded to cut out his tongue as punishment for learning the Latin language and other languages of the nations, and that they condemned his brain to be smashed he accepted as punishment for thinking about mundane matters and refrained from studying Torah.” For Hagiz, the testament of the holy man from Lvov was proof of the justice of the struggle that he himself was waging against the decline in the status of the rabbinate, and his dreadful fate taught a lesson against the corruption of the rabbinate by the purchase of posts for money and against dangerous openness to European culture.12 Hagiz’s impression of the suffering of the Jews of Poland was not far from reality. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century as well, several

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blood libels took place, directed and supported by the Catholic clergy, both high and low. The Enlightenment discourse of tolerance was distance, and protection by the government was ineffective.13 Yequtiel Gordon, for example, who returned to Poland from Italy in the 1730s to continue the holy society that Luzzatto had founded, almost went out of his mind because of the blood libels, and, like Hagiz, he did not hesitate to protest in an emotional prayer and ask why such a harsh fate had been decreed. He cried out: “Master of the Universe, how are we different from every other nation and tongue in such a long exile, the likes of which were never heard of? . . . We are killed for Your sake every day with cruel deaths, and we withstand many tribulations and many libels of lies that the countries of Poland tell about us, who say that blood will be charged to a Jew, blood that he shed from the blood of Christians, which the Jews use in the matzah of their commandment.” Could it be that the Christians are right when they say, “You have replaced us with another nation, perish the thought? . . . Will you not show mercy to us even from a distance, to maintain us, so that we will not fall into destruction? . . . How long will we hope for light, while there is darkness?” With theological daring, permeated with messianic hopes, he implored God: “Awaken! Why do You slumber, O Lord? Arise to deliver Your People, to save Your anointed one.”14 The accusation of ritual murder against the Jews of Poznan, which was fabricated on the eve of Passover in 1736, reverberated more than others in its time and was not forgotten for many years. On April 28, the body of a two-year‑old child was found, and the servant woman, Helena Suvianska, was accused of kidnapping it and selling it to the Jews. Four Jews were arrested in the wake of her testimony and interrogated under torture. The tortured bodies of two of the men, the preacher Arieh Leib and the stadlan Jacob ben Pinh.as were crushed, their skin was burned, and they died in torments a few days after being released from prison without confessing. Many of the men in the community fled, and one of them told how Jacob had rebuked his torturers and judges: “For you possess only mastery and control of my body, but my soul and the spirit of life will depart and be wrapped up in the bundle of life, and you will be sent down into the pit of destruction by the revenge of the merciful God.” The other suspects were interrogated, and some of them were condemned to death, but an appeal to the king of Poland, Augustus III, the spread of publicity about the affair beyond the boundaries of Poland, the intervention of the Court Jew Wolf Wertheimer, and the vigorous interrogation of the maidservant, who ultimately admitted that she had made up the libel, led to the freeing of the accused in the summer of 1740.15 In letters, petitions, and the actions of intermediaries, the community leaders struggled to save the prisoners, and they succeeded in

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mobilizing an effective support network. News of the fate of Leib the darshan (preacher) and Jacob the shtadlan (intercessor whose official function was to intervene on behalf of Jewish communities), “whose bodies were like a sieve from wounds and bruises and blows of fire . . . to horrify the human heart,” reached Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, Nikolsburg, and Venice. It remained in Jewish collective memory for generations and to no small degree it determined the dark image of Poland in the eyes of the Jews of Central and Western Europe.16 More than forty years later, Moses Mendelssohn recalled this blood libel as a contemporary event whose effect had not faded, and it epitomized unthinkable, extreme religious fanaticism that violated the values of the new age and required urgent reform. He mentioned the affair and said that the tortures to which the Jews were subjected were too barbarous to describe. Unlike Hagiz’s response, half a century earlier, finding that the violence committed against the Jews of Poland was a punishment from heaven requiring reinforcement of faith, strengthening of religious discipline, and acceptance of fate, Mendelssohn expressed fury at the unbearable cruelty and terrible injustice. He pointed an accusing finger at human wickedness. The horrifying details of the Poznan blood libel and the injustice, which cried out to heaven, nourished his ardor in the most important struggle that he waged in his life, the struggle for tolerance and freedom of opinion. Like his contemporary Voltaire, who combated superstition and acts of injustice committed in the name of religion, Mendelssohn was committed to what he saw as the main humanistic process of the Enlightenment: the effort to be free of barbarism.17 Mendelssohn, who was born in 1729, was only a child in his native city of Dessau when Catholic religious fanaticism and political instability determined the fate of the Jews. In Poland, however, this dark picture did not overpower or paralyze Jewish life. For example, the memoirs of Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolechów (1723–1805) does not ignore the distress and hostility, but the world he chose to describe was rather bright and pleasant. Central to his life was his Jewish family of successful wine merchants, who imported fine wine from Hungary for a clientele consisting of the Polish aristocracy, whose language they spoke, and they maintained good relations with princes, lords, priests, and they stored their merchandise in the cellars of churches and monasteries. “My father of blessed memory constantly dealt in trading Hungarian wine in partnership with my elder brother,” Birkenthal recounts, and to prove their affluence and solidarity, he proudly recalls how his brother finished his splendid house in 1737: “A larger and more beautiful house than those of our city Bolochów, and in it he build a cellar walled with stones and domed, and large enough for a hundred barrels

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of wine. A Hebrew inscription on the doorpost read, “completed in the year 5497.” Nevertheless he regarded the Poles as bitter enemies, and when, thirty-five years later, parts of the kingdom were conquered (the first Partition of Poland), he was pleased by their discomfiture: “All honor was removed from the people of Poland . . . and the verse was fulfilled, ‘and I gave my revenge against Edom’ [Ezekiel 25:14], that is the Christian nation of Poland, which is called Edom . . . and so may all our enemies and informers be destroyed.”18 The success of families like Birkenthal’s was always shadowed by danger. The death of Augustus II reopened the struggle for the Polish crown, and before Augustus III could stabilize his reign, in 1734 bands of rebellious peasant Haidamaks attacked Polish aristocrats and Jews in Vohlynia and Podolia, in the Ukraine. In 1737, the bishop of Kraków published an apostolic epistle calling for raising the social, economic, and religious barriers between Jews and Christians, so there would be no doubt about the supremacy of Christianity over “the enemies of God.”19 In the same year, the priest Jozef Turczynowicz established Maria Vita, an order of nuns in Vilna. The members of the order began a campaign of persuasion to convert Jewish women throughout Lithuania, and they did not draw the line at kidnapping girls. In 1739, the vigorous bishop of Lutzk and Brest, Franciszek Kobielski, joined the effort to convert the Jews and scolded the Jews of Poland: “You forget that you are living in our country, and you have no right to freedoms of this kind.” He sought to redraft the proper boundaries separating Jewish sojourners from the Christian owners of the country.20

“Oh H a ppine ss! Ou r Being’s En d a n d A i m!” In isolation from this interreligious tension and the severe punishment for actions regarded as religious crimes in Poland and Russia, the Republic of Letters in Western Europe continued to maintain an optimistic discourse on the virtue of mankind in a marvelous creation, on the right to happiness, and about the grace of God. In his Essay on Man (1732–1734), Alexander Pope wrote, “The proper study of mankind is man.” This work, in heroic couplets, was one of the wittiest and most influential of the 1730s in England. Though he was Catholic, and his work can be read as a song of praise for the perfection of the world that God created and for the harmony of nature, this declaration diverted discourse from theology, in which God was the center, to humanity. Pope sought to lower the expectations of the enlightened man, who believed he had the power to be like a god, and to admonish him to assume the virtue of modesty, to acknowledge his human limitations, and to acknowledge that

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his place in the great chain of being was between the animals and the angels, yet he actually documented the outburst of self-confidence of that “wondrous creature,” the curious inquirer and man of science, who sought to lay bare the mechanisms of nature. Pope wrote that only the virtues offered true happiness, but in the fourth epistle of the Essay on Man, he gave voice to what was for many people the foundational ethos of modern life: “Oh happiness! Our being’s end and aim!/ Good, pleasure, ease, content! Whate’er thy name!”21 Indeed, the aspiration for happiness burst forth, and in the background of this philosophical and poetic essay, the desire for a life of pleasure in the 1730s is evident. Something of this climate of hedonism and addiction can be heard, for example, in the light and comical suite that Johann Sebastian Bach composed in Leipzig in 1732, the “Coffee Cantata.” “Mmm! How sweet the coffee tastes, more delicious than a thousand kisses, mellower than muscatel wine,” enthuses Lieschen, who is addicted to coffee. “Coffee, coffee I must have, and if someone wishes to give me a treat, ah, then pour me out some coffee!” Her father tries to wean her from the beverage and impose his authority, but the chorus finishes the cantata with reconciliation to the new fashion: “A cat won’t stop from catching mice, and maidens remain faithful to their coffee. The mother holds her coffee dear, the grandmother drank it also, who can thus rebuke the daughters!”22 In 1733, when the Prussian adventurer Baron Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz visited London, he declared it to be the capital of Europe and enthusiastically described the many possibilities to live a pleasurable life there. The splendid sights of women and men dressed in good taste and displaying themselves at parties, in parks, and in the main streets convinced him that London was greater than Rome or Paris. The theater and the opera offered an abundance of pleasurable experiences, and withal “the Pleasures of this great City are of many and various Kinds,” so that one could day that a fortunate society like none other dwelled there. If you are esteemed “a Man of sense,” you can always find company for entertainment and conversation in the coffeehouses and chocolate houses, and you can converse about business and the news, and be brought up to date about gossip and read newspapers. “The Chocolate-house in St. James Street, where I go every Morning, to pass away the time,” von Pöllnitz reported, “is always so full that a Man can scarce turn about in it.” He was impressed because in these places in the new public sphere, social barriers broke down, and gentlemen could mingle with dukes and other aristocrats.23 His description of his trip to London did not conceal the low life of the metropolis, the boxing and animal fights, and he describes at length the dangers posed by robbers. Indeed, alongside the coffeehouses, another addiction grew up in the alleys of London: the dangerous addiction to alcohol. The Gin Acts of 1729 and

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1736 sought to control drunkenness, which had become a grave social problem, connected to vice and prostitution among the lower classes.24 However, the playwright John Gay, argued that happiness was no longer the sole perquisite of the wealthy and high social classes. He placed this provocative statement in the mouth of one of the band of robbers in his successful play, The Beggar’s Opera (1728): “We are for a just Partition of the World, for every Man hath a Right to enjoy Life.”25 Beginning in the 1730s, the painter and printmaker William Hogarth (1697–1764) became prominent on account of his biting satirical criticism of English society. As one of the most talented artists of the Enlightenment, he observed urban life with a probing eye and set up a mirror in which the faces of miserable drunkards, the hopeless poor, corrupt politicians, and wealthy profligates who stuff themselves with luxuries are reflected. In a series of drawings, A Rake’s Progress (1732–1733), which was circulated two years later in copper-plate engravings, scenes from the life of a young man in pursuit of pleasure are depicted as a moral lesson, as gambling and alcohol ultimately bring him to an insane asylum. In A Harlot’s Progress (1732), the life of Moll Hackabout is pictured, a young woman who arrived in London and paid the price of her innocence and the evil of women and men who exploited her and corrupted her soul and body, until she died at the age of only twenty-three. In Hogarth’s opinion, the moral bankruptcy of English society destroyed the life of young people and placed a mark of shame on everything.26 Economic distress also combined with the urge for adventure among several Jewish robbers, who were arrested and punished, and whose life story became sensational news. In 1730, in London, Abraham Israel, from Pressburg, Hungary, was executed for stealing from his employer. As in Hogarth’s drawings, his life was presented as the severe degeneration of a young man from a good Jewish family, with a religious education that he had acquired in a yeshiva in Prague, to a licentious fop in the streets of the big city. He became a criminal, and even at the gallows in Tyburn, he showed no remorse.27 Throughout Germany, organized gangs of Jewish robbers were active. One of the most notorious of these gangs was the “Lange Hoyum,” which in 1733 robbed a factory for gold and silver filigree in Coburg, Bavaria. In their interrogation and trial, it emerged that they were responsible for other robberies, including from churches, in Hessen, Franconia, and Hanover. The phenomenon of Jewish robbers was so prevalent that in Central Europe it shaped the demonic image of the typical Jew as a danger to society.28 At the other end of the Jewish social hierarchy, the desire for the pleasures of life increased, despite the moral sermons that sought to repress it. For example, Baron von Pöllnitz, who documented his travels in Europe, found a Jew in

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The Hague who played a central role in the life of high culture. Von Pöllnitz, whose opinion of the Jews was influenced to a great degree by the prejudices prevalent in Germany, was aware of the restrictions that kept them out of the public sphere. Hence, he was surprised to find that a Portuguese Jew, Francisco Lopez de Liz (1668–1752), possessed traits that were far from the traditional image of the Jew. In his travel book, he reported on his visit to The Hague in 1730 and mentioned the concerts that Lopez de Liz hosted for the general public on Monday afternoons, where one saw fashionable people of both sexes, and arias from French operas and cantatas were sung most beautifully: You will no doubt think it a Phænomenon to find that a Hebrew, whom in Germany we treat with a Sort of Disdain, which perhaps is neither very Generous, nor very Christian, should concern himself in the Spectacles, and presume to force an entire Town to conform to his Taste; but you are to know, Sir, that the Jews are treated in this Government, upon quite another Footing than they are elsewhere; and really, as for the Portuguese Jews, they deserve it; for a Texeyra, a Schwartzo, a Dulis, have done such generous Actions as are worthy of the most virtuous Christians. They live like Noblemen, and indeed, such you would take them to be. They are admitted into all Assemblies, and even their Wives appear there: They treat and receive all Persons of Distinction at the Houses: they differ in nothing from us but in frequenting the Synagogue.

The Prussian baron’s ideas were very far from those of his contemporary, Voltaire, but these words echo the impressions of the author of the Letters Concerning the English Nation from his visit to the London stock exchange. In the concert hall, von Pöllnitz found a place where Jews joined in the life of the city and in the culture of business and music, without being called upon to give up their religious identity.29 Francisco Lopez de Liz, whose wealthy family immigrated to London, lived in The Hague as one of the baroque Jews of his generation, displaying his wealth in a life of luxury, traveling in a decorated carriage attended by footmen, and he was a welcome guest in the homes of European high society. Lopez de Liz was entirely enamored of music and the fine arts. Aside from a precious and impressive collection of jewelry, he also collected music books, and the heart of the palace where he lived was the concert hall. Spending a fortune, he brought musicians and singers from France, who performed in selections from operas and became an attraction. In his visits to Versailles and Paris, he was drawn to young women singers and showered them with jewelry and money, and he became a target of gossip and barbed rumors. In a book about him, he was

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called a libertine and skirt-chaser, and he was compared to the famous Jew Süß, showing what the people of his time thought about successful and fashionable Jews: “Süß was hanged here, and de Liz there; thus those who pursue the appetites of the flesh find their place.”30 The Jewish point of view was no less critical. The leaders of the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam, for example, tried to restrict the tendency to entertainment, gambling, and parties as much as possible. The bylaws of 1737 warned, “Let no one in our community maintain houses of entertainment or dance halls or the like, and needless to say they should not attend them or use them as a cardplayer or dancer, since they bring considerable damage to the community.” However, the threat of revocation of membership in the community was no deterrent, and this clause had to be repeated in later versions of the bylaws.31 In the early 1730s, a young Jewish widow, Kitty, attracted the attention of the English public. She was the center of an episode that demonstrated the desires of the wealthy Sephardi families of London to enter high society. Catherine “Kitty” da Costa Villareal (1709–1747) was only twenty-one years old in 1730, already the mother of two children, when her husband, who was much older than she, died, and even during the week of mourning she formed a romantic connection with her cousin Philip da Costa. Her family sent her off to a distant village, and Philip sued her for violating a promise of marriage. The court rejected the suit, but in its course, Kitty was shown to be a frivolous woman, and Philip a libertine who frequented prostitutes. Wounded by the penetration of her private life and pressured by her family, she married again, and, through her husband, William Mellish, she joined an aristocratic English family, converted to Christianity, and saw to it that her children from her first marriage were conveyed to her custody and converted.32 Quite possibly, the figure of Philip da Costa inspired Hogarth when he drew the second scene of A Harlot’s Progress at that time. Moll, who arrived in London from the country, became the mistress of a wealthy Jew, who kept an apartment for her in the city. He surprises her during a visit by another lover, an aristocrat, and a fight breaks out. Crockery is smashed, and with a contemptuous gesture with two fingers she informs him that he is no longer part of her life. The figure of the Jew who keeps a mistress had already appeared on the London stage in the successful Beggar’s Opera. Who keeps a mistress best? ask the prostitutes in a comic scene of the play. One of them answers: “I, Madam, was once kept by a Jew; and bating their Religion, to Women they are a good sort of People.” Jewish women such as Hanna Norsa (1712–1784), a brilliant actress in Covent Garden and, starting in 1732, the mistress of Robert Walpole (the libertine

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brother of the statesman Horace Walpole), and like Eleanor Ambrose, who was a successful actress and singer in the theatrical spectacles of Drury Lane, the mistress of high naval officers and aristocrats were part of London night life. In their social criticism, Hogarth, with his observant painter’s eye, and Gay, the playwright, made a connection between the lifestyle of the wealthy Jews, their foppishness, and their libertinism. They appeared to have a permissive code of sexual behavior, explains the historian of the Jews of England, Todd Endelman, which was contrary to halakhic norms.33 The affair of Kitty and the scene drawn by Hogarth echoed in a wild comedy (1733) about the prostitutes of London, but in this instance the Jewish patron appeared in a particularly vulgar and contemptible guise. This comic play, which made A Harlot’s Progress into a pantomime with song, placed the scenes of London entertainments and amusements on the stage. It was presented in Drury Lane on Saturday, March 31, by the theater troupe led by Colley Cibber, and at the same time it appeared in print in a special pamphlet. The prostitute in the play is named Kitty. She enjoys a life of luxury, jewelry, and Eros, and she is kept by a Jewish procurer, Beau Mordecai. When Kitty rejects him for another suitor, she upbraids him with a coarse and offensive song, slandering his Jewish origins: “Farewell, good Mr. Jew;/ Now I hate your tawny Face; /I’ll have no more to do/ With you or any of your Race.” Mordecai answers that she will regret it and wishes her a life of prostitution in the streets of London. She leaves him one more option: “But come another Day, /When you have got your Pockets full.” Toward the end of the play it becomes clear that license and moral corruption have a price. Kitty is arrested by a policeman in a miserable apartment, and Mordecai is caught in the street by a new lover of hers, who beats him severely.34 Emissaries from the Land of Israel took it upon themselves from time to time to supervise the observance of the commandments in the communities of Europe. Thus, for example, in an epistle sent from Safed in 1727, apparently based on a complaint from one of the emissaries, the leaders of the community of Bordeaux were called upon to strengthen religious discipline, seeing that some women were refraining from immersing in the ritual bath and thus committing a severe transgression.35 Moses Hagiz, a native of Jerusalem, was one of the first to notice religious permissiveness among the Jews of the communities of Western and Northern Europe, and their desire—forbidden in his view—for pleasures. In Sefat emet, which had been written a generation earlier, he described, as we have seen, pleasure-seekers from the wealthy Sephardi community of Amsterdam: “With beards shaven and wearing wigs, and with

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the children of the gentiles they are sated and travel in carriages.” Since then his apprehensions only increased, and in 1733, under the impression of the crisis in rabbinical authority and the breakdown of the barriers of religion, he constructed a complete world view in Mishnat h.akhamim.36 For example, the case of the couple Yessil and Rekheli Halberstadt convinced him that indeed violation of rabbinical discipline in the name of freedom of the individual had become a phenomenon with which he could no longer cope effectively in traditional ways. The woman was accused of adultery and declared to be forbidden to her husband (“the cursed woman mentioned her is a prostitute and wanton and gives herself to any man”), but, surprisingly, the couple refused to separate. Yessil rejected the ruling of the religious court and of Hagiz out of hand and refused to divorce his wife immediately. Nor were they deterred by the severe decision, “to ostracize them from the Jewish community, to curse them, and revile them by name with all the rest of the transgressors of our people who turn a rebellious shoulder against the Jewish religion, in which they were born, and to which they adhered, and they have remained in rebellion for two years.”37 Hagiz declared in despair: “In this evil generation, there is no king among the Jews who will establish the religion with drawn sword.” With his sensitive instincts, the anxious rabbi grasped not only the free patterns of behavior of those who seek pleasure, but also the subversive voice that said, “what do the fences and restrictions that the Sages instituted mean for you, as they were flesh and blood like you and [you are] like them, do not heed their words.” He “whose heart leads him to reflect on the faith of the Sages” will ultimately, according to Hagiz, “deny the Lord above.” The task of the leaders in this hour of emergency was there simply this: to preach from every pulpit about the decisive importance of accepting rabbinical discipline, and to speak “specifically about the principles of faith, this is the faith in the Sages, as far as you may.”38 The religious ethos that Hagiz proposed intentionally combated the new ethos of man’s natural right to enjoy life. He denied the value of this world, quoted rabbinical sources as proof that “it is forbidden for a person to fill his mouth with laughter in this world,” and he required Jews to refrain from ostentatious parties and to avoid every sexual temptation to an extreme degree (“that a man must not look at a pretty woman, even if she is unmarried . . . it is forbidden to look at the bed that a man and his wife sleep in, if he knows them, as it will arouse the man’s appetite”), and in general, “that we must not be bound up with pleasures as we are now.”39 In opposition to hedonistic aspirations, which he condemned, for a happy life, Hagiz formed an alternative model, which, in his view, alone suited the characteristics of a

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Jew who believed with no reservations. Protesting against the values and patterns of life, which he observed with criticism and apprehension, he relegated “true happiness” to beyond this world: “for all the joys of life in this world are vanity and evilness of spirit, as they fade away and are lost, you cast a glance at them, and they are gone, and they are not to be trusted, even from moment to moment.”40 As we have seen, ethical works competed with each other with demands to nullify the value of the material world, as, for example, in the popular bestseller, Qav hayashar. But now, in the 1740s, these were counter strategies of life and religious teachings, which were formulated under threat. Hagiz’s ideal was at the same time critical, defensive, and assertive, defining boundaries and responding with rejection of the new patterns of life. In the opinion of the fearful guardian of the gates, a Jewish person (Adam Hayisraeli) must cultivate a different and special vision of happy times, one that was as differentiated as much as possible and distant from the seductions of contemporary Europe.

Note s 1. “Juden, oder Jüden,” Grosses Vollständige Universal Lexicon (Leipzig, 1735), pp. 1498–1503; and see Manuel, The Broken Staff, Judaism through Christian Eyes, pp. 250–252; Shochet, Beginnings of The Haskalah Among German Jewry [Hebrew], p. 8. 2. See Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941; Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (Cambridge, MA: Clarendon, 2006), p. 135. 3. The Constitutions of the Free-Masons: Containing the History, Charges, Regulations &C. of that Most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity, for the Use of the Lodges (London, 1723), p. 50. 4. See Shmuel Ettinger, “Yahadut veyehudim be’einei hadeistim haanglim bemeah ha-18,” pp. 71–84; Katz, Anti-Semitism, From Religious Hatred to Racial Rejection [Hebrew], pp. 29–31; Manuel, The Broken Staff, pp. 186–191. 5. Jean Baptiste, Marquis d’Argens, The Jewish Spy (London, 1744–1745). Reference is to vol. 1, letters 4, 37; vol. 2, letter 14; vol. 3, letters 103,109; vol. 4, letter 143. See Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 87–88; Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, pp. 208–212. 6. Marquis d’Argens, The Jewish Spy, vol. 3, dedication. 7. See Rainer Erb, “Der gekreuzigte Hund: Antijudaismus und Blutaberglaube im Fränkischen Alltag des frühen 18. Jahrhundert,” Aschkenas 2, no. 1 (1992): 117–150; Gath, The Sorcerer from Schwabach [Hebrew], pp. 81–88.

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8. On the riots in Hamburg in 1730, see Joachim Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529–1819 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 94–99; Max Grunwald, Hamburg deutsche Juden bis zur Auflösung der Dreigemeinden 1811 (Hamburg, 1904); Shlomo Zalman Segal of Dessau, Sefer ‘oz mivtah.a (Amsterdam, 5494 [1734]); Amlander, Sefer sheerit yisrael, pp. 257–263. 9. Cf. Lev. 23:40: “And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.” Shlomo Zalman Segal of Dessau, Sefer ‘oz mivtah.a, fols. 9b, 15b. 10. Moses Hagiz, Ele hamitsvot (Przemyślany, 1903) (Wandsbek, 5487), par. 564; Moses Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim (Wandsbek, 5493), par. 630. 11. On the episode of the ­Reiz.es brothers, see Majer Balaban, “Ein Autodafe in Lemberg im Jahr 1728,” Skizzen und Studien zur Geschichte der Juden in Polen (Berlin: L. Lamm, 1911), pp. 71–76; Bernfeld, Sefer hadema’ot, 3, pp. 233–238. The “martyrs of the kingdom” is a reference to ten prominent rabbis executed by the Romans in the Mishnaic period, commemorated in a hymn recited on Yom Kippur. 12. Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim, par. 174. 13. On the blood libels in the first decades of the century, see Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, ch. 4; Guldon and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” pp. 99–140. 14. See Arieh Leib Frumkin, Toldot h.akhmei yerushalayim, 2 (Jerusalem: Salomon, 1928), pp. 139–140. 15. On the blood libel in Poznan in 1736–1740, see Guldon and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” p. 129; Shmuel ben Azriel, Sefer Amudei toldot ‘olam (Berlin, 5491 [1731]), introduction; Amlander, Sheerit yisrael, pp. 273–274; Bernfeld, Sefer hadema’ot, 3, pp. 238–245; Mahler, Toldot hayehudim bepolin, p. 339. 16. See Abraham Berliner, “Za’aqat shever: shlosha mikhtavim asher ‘arkhu rashei ha’eda pozna be’et tsaratam el,” Qovets ‘al yad 11 (1935): 1–17. 17. Mendelssohn, “Vorrede, Manasseh Ben Israel Rettung der Juden,” in Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, 8, p. 9. 18. Zikhronot r. dov mebolechow (5483–5565), ed. Mark Wischnitzer (Berlin: Klal, 1922), pp. 40–92. 19. See Mahler, Toldot hayehudim bepolin, p. 332; Judith Kalik, “Hakenesia haqatolit vehayehudim beqraqov uveqazhimizh ‘ad l­ eh.­a luqat polin,” in KrokeKazimierz-Cracow, Studies in the History of Cracow Jewry [Hebrew], ed. Elchanan Reiner (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2011), pp. 69–87 (on the apostolic epistle, see pp. 78–80). 20. See Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 66–71; Jacob Greenberg, Converted Jews in the Polish Commonwealth [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1985), ch. 3.

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21. Pope’s Essay on Man was published anonymously in London in 1732 and 1734, and he did not admit to having written it until 1735. The citation here is from Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (Oxford, 1899). 22. ­https://​­d mitrimatheny​.­com​/­blog​/­blog​/­bach​-­s​-­coffee​-­cantata​-­l ibretto​ -­translation. 23. Karl Ludwig Pöllnitz, Memoires of Charles Lewis Baron de Pöllnitz, 2 (London, 1773), pp. 461–467. See David Kerr Cameron, London’s Pleasures from Restoration to Regency (Thrupp. 2001). 24. See Lucy Moore, ed., Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld (London: Penguin Classics, 2000); Dan Cruikshank, The Secret History of Georgian London (London: Windmill, 2010). 25. John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (London: Penguin, 1986), act 2, scene 1, p. 69. 26. See Christine Riding, “The Harlot and the Rake,” in Hogarth, ed. Mark Hallet and Christine Riding (London: Tate, 2007), pp. 73–94; Julie Peakman, Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2004). 27. See Avinoam Yuval-Naeh, “Foreigners at the Gallows: Representing Jewishness in 18th-Century London Crime Literature,” [Hebrew] Historia 28 (2012): 55–80; Avinoam Yuval-Naeh, “Jewish Criminals in Eighteenth Century England and the Making of British Identity,” [Hebrew] Zmanim 125 (2014): 100–109. 28. Uwe Danker, Räuberbanden in Alten Reich um 1700 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 1988); Otto Ulbricht, “Criminality and Punishment of the Jews in the Early Modern Period,” in In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, ed. R. Po-Chia and Hartmut Lehmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 49–70. 29. Pöllnitz, Memoires of Charles Lewis Baron de Pöllnitz, 2, p. 411. 30. On Lopez de Liz, see Des reichen Holländischen Juden Franz Dülitz geheime seltsame Begebenheiten und sehr merckwürdige Geschichte (Bastia, 1729); Fritz Heymann, Der Chevalier von Geldern: Eine Chronik vom Abenteuer der Juden (Amsterdam: Querido, 1937), pp. 217–222. Jacob Shatski, “Drame un teater bei di sefardim in Holland,” YIVO Bletter 16 (1940): 135–149. 31. See D. M. Sluys, “Uit den Amsterdamschen Jodenhoeck,” De Vrijdavond 9 (1932): 136–138, 152–154; Tal, The Ashkenazi Community of Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century [Hebrew], pp. 71, 140–141. 32. M. J. Landa, “Kitty Villareal, the da Costa and Samson Gideon,” Jewish Historical Society of England, Transactions 13 (1932–1935): 271–291. 33. Riding, “The Harlot and the Rake,” pp. 80–81; Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, p. 77; Cameron, London’s Pleasures from Restoration to Regency, p. 120; Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, p. 129. 34. Theophilus Cibber, The Harlot’s Progress or the Ridotto al Fresco: A Grotesque Pantomime Entertainment (London, 1733).

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35. See Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land, pp. 137–138. 36. Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim; and see Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, pp. 257–261. 37. Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim, par. 521. 38. Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim, par. 509, 552, 589. 39. Ibid., in two chapters: 18, on restricting laughter, and 19, on restriction pleasure. 40. Hagiz, Mishnat h.akhamim, par. 722.

Fifteen

k

“AN INDELIBLE STAIN” War and Expulsion

The 1740s began with a cold wave that struck especially hard in Western Europe, as recounted by an eyewitness, Menachem Amlander, of Amsterdam, in his history book, Sheerit yisrael: “In the year 5500 the winter was harsh, and no one remembers one like it, especially on the three days of 9, 10, and 11 of Tevet (January 9–11), the cold was so strong that truly no one was seen in the street.” With great emotion, he described the exceptional phenomena of nature and their destructive consequences: “Many died of cold, and the birds, too, fell from the air to the earth, as they died, and because of that everything became very expensive, and many people lost all their property, and to this day there are many people who feel this.”1

M a r i a Th er e sa: “I W i ll Be a Moth er to You, a n d You W i ll Be a Nation for M e” The last pages of this Yiddish chronicle read like columns of a newspaper, reporting on changes in the military and political arena in Europe that were taking place as the book was finished. The extreme climate appeared to herald a period of instability in Europe, placing new challenges before the Jewish minority. The death of the Emperor Karl VI in Vienna on October 20, 1740, without leaving a male heir to the Habsburg dynasty caused great political tumult. International relations were tense, treaties and agreements were rescinded, and within less than two months a war of succession had broken out, in which many states of Europe took part. Jewish communities in Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia found themselves in the midst of the battles and under siege, bombardment, and waves of violence and robbery committed by Prussian, Austrian,

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Hungarian, Polish, Saxon, and French soldiers. Four years later, in the winter of 1744, a new episode commenced, very disturbing from the viewpoint of the worried Jews as well as the enlightened thinkers who believed in religious toleration. On December 18, Queen Maria Theresa, Karl VI’s daughter, signed a decree expelling the Jews of Bohemia, an act that surprised the Jewish leadership all over Europe with its brutal hostility. It also astonished Christian leaders from the pope to the king of England, as did the queen’s uncompromising determination to carry it out. In early 1740, the Jews of Europe did not see any signs of this impending disaster, and they certainly did not anticipate the exceptional intense and extensive diplomatic effort to intervene and reverse the categorical decision that had been made in the palaces of government in Vienna. The Hebrew year of 5500, the years 1739–1740, had in fact been one of the dates around which messianic hopes for an era of peace and tranquility had arisen. It had been signaled by precise calculations thirty years earlier by the rabbi and physician from Padua, Isaac Cantarini, as the year of “the time of the end,” and it also fit into the messianic reckoning of the Sabbatean Nechemiah H.iya H.ayon. For the kabbalist born in Ferrara, Immanuel H.ay Ricchi (1688–1743), who wandered among the communities of Italy and the Land of Israel, the year 5500 marked the advent of the era of redemption, which would gradually develop and peak in 5541 (1780–1781).2 At that time, the Land of Israel attracted rabbis and kabbalists from Europe and North Africa (for example, H.aim Ben ‘Atar, from Sali, Morocco), who wished to settle there, hoping to receive religious exaltation of special quality, and to witness the redemption from close by. In that freezing, wintery year, the famous elderly Rabbi Elazar Rokeach of Brody (1665–1741) surprised the members of his Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam when he announced his resignation and imminent voyage to Safed, after “awakening from heaven has come upon me: why are you slumbering, rise and call out to your God in the Holy Land.”3 Harbingers of a different trend, which, in retrospect, was interpreted as a turning point in the political emancipation of the Jews of Europe, appeared on March 19, 1740, when both houses of the Parliament in London passed the Plantation Act, with no opposition, enabling Jews who lived in the British colonies for more than seven years to obtain British citizenship. In this case, for the first time in Europe a legislative body preferred the economic and national interest of the state to its Christian character in its policy toward the Jews, as, it was explained, increase in the population was a means to promote the wealth and power of any nation or state. This decision can justifiably be regarded as one of the first milestones in the process of the legal emancipation of the Jews

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of Europe. The Plantation Act stated that, to be naturalized, Jews would not be required to take an oath in the name of the true Christian faith. However, humanistic principles did not motivate this legislation but rather concern for the strengthening the colonies. In the 1740s, commerce flourished, and the sugar and tobacco plantations, which depended on black African slave labor, prospered. Just as the advocates of slavery ignored the harsh cruelty inherent in the slave trade for the benefit of the happiness and prosperity of the kingdom, so, too, Parliament agreed to forgo the religious oath. The Plantation Act affected relatively few people, and only about 190 Jewish property owners, most of them in Jamaica and a few in North America, were naturalized in accordance with it, and they were still prohibited from assuming public office. However, the precedent rejecting the obligation to take a Christian oath in order to obtain civil rights was nevertheless quite significant in marking the boundaries between citizenship granted by the state and the separation demanded by religious norms.4 Toward the end of 1740, it became clear that the changes in regime in Vienna and Berlin that edged the entire continent to the verge of explosion had far greater influence on the lives of the Jews of Europe than did the Plantation Act. The generational upheaval in the leadership of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia placed two people in their twenties on the throne, radically changing the political agenda. Frederick II (1712–1786) acceded to the throne of his father, Frederick Wilhelm I, as king of Prussia on May 31, 1740, and Maria Theresa (1717–1780) succeeded her father, the Emperor Karl VI, as the Duchess of Austria and the Queen of Bohemia and Hungary, though, being a woman, she could not be the empress. Only with considerable effort, by means of a special imperial decree (the Pragmatic Sanction) was her father able to gain the support of the rulers of Europe for transfer of power to a female heir, which was also contrary to the Salian Law, and thus to preserve the integrity of the empire and the continuity of the Habsburg dynasty. However, immediately after his death, she had to fight for her reign against rivals who crassly violated their promises. Initially hopes for both the new rulers were low. Maria Theresa was raised as an aristocratic young lady who enjoyed music, opera, theater, dancing, and archery. She had no systematic preparation for ruling a state, whereas Prince Frederick was an intellectual, who read classical literature and Enlightenment works in English and French. He admired Voltaire and was in regular correspondence with him. He also devoted much time to music as a composer and flutist, and he wrote history books. His tense relations with his father went far beyond adolescent rebellion, and it was not assured that he would succeed him.

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The young Frederick did not appear to be a future leader fascinated by diplomatic intrigue and military maneuvers. At the age of eighteen, tension with his father broke out into open rebellion against the military education destined for him, and, along with several allies, he planned to flee the tight and strangling grip of his father, the severe Soldier King, and perhaps even to take refuge in England. This effort came to a harsh and humiliating end. The rebellious son was apprehended on the night of his flight, August 5, 1730, and sent to prison in the fortress of Küstrin, charged with treason, while Hans Hermann von Kette, the young officer who assisted him, was beheaded outside Frederick’s prison cell. On orders of the king, Frederick was forced through the bars of his window to watch his friend die. Both the young monarchs were already married. Maria Theresa was in a love match with her husband, Duke Franz Stefan of Lorraine, had him appointed emperor, and she bore him sixteen children. By contrast, Frederick was forced by his father to marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern, and he disliked her. He isolated her cruelly from his life, as an expression of revenge against his father’s tyranny, and they never had progeny. Maria Theresa was a devout Catholic, and the influence of her Jesuit education never faded throughout her life. Frederick, though he was a Calvinist like all the members of his family, was contemptuous of religion and of the pietist awakening in Prussia, and it is no wonder that he read with pleasure Voltaire’s ironic critique of religion. From the moment the two became monarchs, she as the first and only woman in the Habsburg dynasty to attain supreme leadership, and he as a successor of the Hohenzollern dynasty, they displayed strong will, independent personality, the autonomous ability to make crucial decisions, exceptional ambition, and desire for success at any price, as well as full dedication to the interest of state power. They were both decidedly absolute monarchs, whose personality and sense of self-worth shaped more than anything the state they ruled and international relations.5 Karl VI’s death on October 20, and the commencement of Maria Theresa’s rule were decisive events of 1740. In an era when dynastic interests were still central in national conflicts, changes in leadership caused political and military chain reactions. As with the death of the king of Spain in 1700, setting off the War of the Spanish Succession, and the death of the king of Poland, Augustus the Strong, in the winter of 1733, which caused a renewed struggle for the throne in the War of the Polish Succession, Europe now entered eight years of confrontations. The upheaval undergone by the king of Prussia expressed the meaning of this turning point very well. On October 26, Frederick II wrote to Voltaire, saying: “The emperor is dead, and this death thwarts all my thoughts of peace.” That which would preoccupy him and fill his entire world, beginning

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in the following spring, would be “gunpowder, soldiers, and defensive trenches, no longer actresses and ballet and theater performances.” His duty to serve his nation would henceforth take first place. When Frederick ascended to the throne, Voltaire was overcome with excitement, and his expectations swelled so that the world seemed to him to be at the gates of redemption. Here was a historical opportunity, which was emerging before his eyes, in the century he was living in, to fulfill the exalted dream of the philosopher king. In an enthusiastic poem, which he immediately dispatched to the young king, he called him “King Solomon of the North,” but wiser and stronger than his biblical parallel, and he proclaimed: “Here, finally, is the most beautiful day in my life, the day the world was awaiting,” because now “a philosopher is the ruler.” In November, Voltaire left for Prussia as a spy for France, whose mission was to examine the king’s intentions. However, Frederick II, who was pleased to host him, concealed his plans from him and managed to separate life in the court from the preparations of his army. While Voltaire was on his way back to France, the Prussians had already invaded Silesia, and the war had begun. Disappointed, Voltaire implored the man whom he regarded as his student and colleague in the values of Enlightenment to bring about stability and peace in Europe after impressing it with his bravery. For his part, Frederick shared his excitement about his military action with him: On December 23, a few days after his army, under his direct command, crossed the border toward what has been called as “the rape of Silesia,” the king wrote to Voltaire: “Would you like to know how my life looks?” For fifteen days, men and wagons had been on the roads, “marching from seven o’clock until four in the afternoon. Then I eat, and after that I work, I receive annoying visits, and then there are all sorts of business to attend to.” Not everything was pleasant. It was his duty to punish and to ensure there was iron discipline among his subordinates, but this was how things must be. He added a comment that reveals some of his prejudices: “Among the Jews, one must be a Jew, and among idol worshipers one must be a pagan.”6 Frederick II’s decision to exploit the instability in Central Europe and what he saw as the weakness of the young woman who was finding it difficult to gain recognition of her right to rule the empire, in order to conquer the fertile regions of Silesia with a rapid attack, was made independently just a few months after he became king, against the advice of his military staff and the court. On December 16, 1740, he crossed the Oder at the head of an army of twenty-seven thousand Prussian soldiers. Although Frederick fled the battlefield in panic, the victory in the Battle of Mollwitz, on April 10, 1741, was credited to him. It was highly significant in the military confrontations at the beginning of the war and gained fame for him. The conquest of Silesia changed the balance of power

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in Europe. Overnight, Prussia became a new power, ruled by a daring monarch who was not afraid to take risks. Frederick’s uncle, George II of England, regarded him as a scoundrel looking for a fight, the worst who had emerged in Europe. The Prussian army, especially the infantry and cavalry, was recognized as one of the most efficient and best trained in eighteenth-century warfare. In effect, Prussia preempted France, Spain, and Bavaria, which had planned to violate their promises to honor the Pragmatic Sanction and to overthrow Maria Theresa and to place the prince elector of Bavaria, Karl Albert, on the throne in her stead. Thus, war became inevitable.7 In a special treatise, “The History of the War of 1741,” Voltaire wrote that he had always seen Christian Europe as a single republic, acting in coordination, with more in common than in division, even when certain parts of it tried to destroy each other. In his eyes, it was not surprising that the princes who made war against Maria Theresa were connected with her by blood or by treaties.8 Maria Theresa, the heiress of her ancestors’ possessions in Austria, crowned as Queen of Bohemia and Hungary, sought to have her husband crowned emperor. Thus, she could not allow herself to observe the war with a forgiving eye. In the year following her ascent to power, she was under heavy pressure, and her ability to rule was tested and challenged. Just as Frederick had not heeded the advice of those around him when he decided to conquer Silesia, so Maria Theresa rejected the recommendations of senior officials to accede to the territorial demands of Prussia and thus to prevent France from joining in, and she refused to give up even a part of the possessions she had inherited, even at the cost of a military attack. With England and Holland on her side, the queen acted to preserve the integrity of the empire. Later, she wrote about her inferior opening position: “I do not think anyone could deny that history hardly knows of a crowned head who started his rule under circumstances more grievous than those attending my accession.”9 Ultimately hardly any of the achievements of the coalition headed by France, which invaded Austria in 1741, were lasting. When Karl Albert of Bavaria was crowned as emperor, the Austrian army conquered Munich, his city. Prague was conquered twice, first by the French in November 1741 and later for a few weeks in the summer of 1744 by Prussia, but it reverted to Austrian rule. The alliance with England proved to be highly important in the Battle of Dettingen (June 27, 1743), on the Main River, where the British army, commanded by King George II, defeated France. Exactly thirty years after his music accompanied the ceremony of thanksgiving for the Peace of Utrecht, Händel, the most popular court musician in London, composed a special Te Deum, with magnificent choral music, to be performed in the royal chapel in the Palace of St. James, to

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celebrate the success at Dettingen in the presence of the king. During the War of the Austrian Succession, England was waging a second war against Spain (King George’s War) in North America, and it also succeeded in averting the danger of Jacobine invasion and revolt by Charles Edward, the “Young Pretender” to the British throne on the part of the Stuarts, who threatened the Hanover dynasty. Maria Theresa’s acceptance of the conquest of Silesia enabled her to obtain a peace treaty, signed at Aix-la-Chapelle on November 18, 1748, ensuring calm in Europe until the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756. Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa emerged stronger from the war, and they continued to rule for decades, making their mark on international relations and on European culture. Their two impressive palaces, designed by talented architects, closely supervised by the rulers during the years of the war, Schloß Schönbrunn in Vienna and Schloß Sanssouci in Potsdam, were models of rococo architecture and art, beginning in the 1740s, and symbols of absolute rule. Wolf Wertheimer (1681–1765), the son of Samson Wertheimer and his successor as the head of the family of Court Jews of the Holy Roman Empire, a family loyal to the Habsburgs, was involved up to his ears in the War of the Austrian Succession. First, he was active as a secret diplomat in the service of Maria Theresa, and then as a central figure in Jewish diplomacy, in the effort to thwart what appeared to be the queen’s personal war against the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. He was already over sixty years old and presided over a large family as the father of fourteen children and as the manager of a business that was well connected with the networks of the European aristocracy, but he inherited a problem from his father that threatened to bring down his business. A large loan that his father had advanced to the prince elector of Bavaria, Karl Albert, a pretender to the crown of the empire by virtue of his marriage to a woman from the Habsburg family, a loan of nearly two million florins, which was intended to cover the expenses of that marriage, proved to be uncollectable. It quickly became clear that the marriage, which was arranged thanks to the wealth of the Court Jew, also complicated the issue of the Austrian succession. From Karl Albert’s point of view, this was a successful investment, because it brought him closer to rule over the entire empire, whereas from the point of view of the Wertheimer family’s business it was a threat to their financial existence. Wertheimer continued to act as Court Jew and gained Austrian support, but to persist in his attempt to collect the debt he went to live in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, accompanied by two Austrian aristocrats, who were sent from Vienna to stand at his side. In July 1741, Wertheimer found himself between the hammer and the anvil: on the one hand as the Court Jew of the Habsburgs, and on the other hand

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dependent on the ruling family of Bavaria, which was about to invade Austria at any moment, along with the French coalition. Wolf ’s son Samuel lived in Pressburg, and Maria Theresa and her ministers, who were there for her coronation as queen of Hungary, exploited this to ask Wolf Wertheimer, through his son, to mediate between Austria and Bavaria and try to prevent the war. The mission was sensitive, and the responsibility placed upon his shoulders at that critical juncture in international relations was huge. Anton von Sinzendorf, one of the queen’s senior ministers, dictated an urgent letter to Samuel in Pressburg, for his father in Munich, who was to recite its contents to Karl Albert. It was a crucial request for direct negotiations and a plea to prevent an alliance between Bavaria and France. Dozens of messages were sent between Pressburg and Munich, and on July 21 Wertheimer himself went to the palace. Karl Albert, who was already determined to become emperor, told him that he doubted the intentions of Maria Theresa. Wertheimer proved himself then not only as an emissary but also as a talented diplomat in his own right, who presented his own arguments to convince the prince elector to avoid an alliance with states outside the Holy Roman Empire. This diplomatic effort expressed the true identification of the Court Jew with the interests of the Habsburgs and a feeling of belonging to the empire, which also characterized his father and his children. Ultimately, the mediation failed and the armies of Bavaria, France, and Saxony invaded Austria, with the aim of crowning the prince elector as Karl VII. Wolf Wertheimer remained in Munich for three more years before moving to Augsburg, whence, as we shall see, he waged a diplomatic campaign against the expulsion of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia.10 In London, at the same time, another wealthy Jew was assisting the English war effort, especially against Spain in the struggle for control of the colonies in the New World. He was Samson Gideon, who, with his financial talents and his connections with networks of many wealthy men, negotiated loans for the government. He gathered a list of Jews who together obligated themselves to back a large loan to finance the war, and he was also an adviser to the government on the financial markets. At a critical moment of financial peril because of the threat of a French invasion of England in 1745, which would assist “the Young Pretender” who had landed in Scotland with his troops to raise a Jacobite rebellion, Gideon managed to calm the financial market and restore faith in the letters of credit of the Bank of England.11 More than all the previous wars in the eighteenth century, the War of the Austrian Succession directly touched the lives of the Jews of Central Europe, struck several communities very hard, and almost brought down the community of Prague. Battles took place near Jewish communities, so the expertise

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of the Jews of that generation about the tangle of international relations, the events of the war, and the considerations of the courts of kings and princes is not surprising. In addition to the dozens of letters exchanged in the networks of the rabbinical elite and the families of the Court Jews, several journals and chronicles were written, enabling us to re-create the days of crisis and pressure of the 1740s. For example, Bezalel Brandeis, who was an eyewitness to the events in Prague, summed up the circumstances of the outbreak of the war in a few precise lines in Igeret mah.lat: The aforementioned saintly emperor [Karl VI] saw that he had no male progeny, and so that the kingdom and the inherited states should not pass into strange hands, he made his daughter, great in wisdom and beauty and in actions, Maria Theresa, whom he raised up and sustained and accepted as his heiress in all the states of his kingdom, with the agreement of many honorable kings and ministers, when in truth she was anointed as the archduchess of Vienna and in all the states of Austria and the people of Hungary close to it crowned her and in that city and in all the states of the kingdom there was happiness and joy.

However, these actions were interpreted as provocation: “Within a few months, the king of Prussia set out with a big army to the state of Silesia and conquered the city of Glogau, and afterward the royal city of Breslau with most of the state and the aforementioned villages. In those days we heard a confirmed rumor that the three kings of France, Prussia, and Saxony, and the Duke of Bavaria stood on the border of the countries with great armies . . . and in the summer of the year 5501 the king of France conquered the city of Linz in Austria.”12 A Jewish patriot living in Nikolsburg, Abraham Trebitsch told about this war in a chronicle, Qorot ha’itim (History of the Times), which singled out 1740 as a historical turning point. Though he was looking back at the period from the end of the century, he used good sources and showed great sensitivity to the meaning of the great events in Europe for the fate of the Jews. While he did not conceal the hostile steps taken by Maria Theresa, this Jewish historian showed affection for the queen and identified with her efforts to withstand the enemies who attacked her, unjustly, in his opinion. “Before his death her father ordered that she should sit upon the royal throne after him, and that she should be the female heir to all the states, so that no stranger should come,” Trebitsch recounted. “Only she did not seek the crown of the Roman Empire, neither for herself nor for her husband, but that it should remain preserved for the son to be born to her, and immediately after the thirty days of mourning in the city of Vienna and the state of Austria she was received as the queen.” However, she

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did not have time to consolidate her reign, and “about three months after the death of her father four kingdoms rose against her to challenge her.”13 His description of the coronation of the queen of Hungary is particularly impressive. He was enthusiastic about the royal splendor and about breaking down the barriers of gender. Maria Theresa’s husband was merely a “helpmate,” and the young queen’s equestrian abilities surprised the onlookers: On 11 Tammuz, which was June 25 [1741] in the city of Pressburg, they prepared a royal crown . . . only he will be her helpmate, and she wore royal robes as the custom of the country was her garment, and there was a coronation with singing and dancing, and the whole people saw and heard the voices, with strength and splendor and expensive garments for thousands and thousands of female and male singers and riders of coaches and wearers of armor and drums and horses and wagons covered in silver and gold and decorated with gold and precious stones, great wealth of gentlemen and ladies, and she sat in a coach with the royal crown on her head ornamented with precious stones . . . in her right hand the golden apple, the globe, yellow before her face, and in her left hand a golden scepter.

The coronation was performed outside the city in a place chosen intentionally to symbolize modesty: When she came to a place near the slaughterhouse, at the Danube River, near the water there was a small hill of refuse prepared for the coronation and appropriate, for the manners of the monarchy not to be proud, there she descended from the coach, and she rode a horse that was prepared for her, and two honored ministers walked alongside the horse to the right and left, and the ascent to the hill was distant and on a slope, though it was small, and she rode with no problem and without fear of the hill or the horse and a sharp sword was in her hand, and nevertheless she did not move or sway, and she announced out loud: I will be a mother to you, and you will a nation for me.”14

As a Jewish historian who already knew about the dramatic reversal in policy toward the Jews forty years after the fact, it was more important to Trebitsch to tell his readers in his Hebrew chronicle that at the height of the crisis in Europe, Maria Theresa gave birth to her son, Joseph, on March 13, 1741. The baby, who was only half a year old at the time of the coronation, would not only solve the problem of the Austrian succession, but, as a ruler, he was to gain almost messianic status among the Jews as a righteous monarch, who, unlike his mother, sought to benefit his Jewish subjects and make them happy. When the Jews of Prague held an impressive parade in the city in honor of the birth of the crown prince on April 24, 1741, a parade led by the chief leader, Simon Frankel, the

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rabbis of the community, and its notables, this was a public gesture of fidelity to the government and to the ruling dynasty. With an eye to the future, this parade, which was celebrated in an illustrated poster, was seen as welcoming Joseph II, who, exactly forty years later, in a series of decrees regarding the Jewish minority in his empire, would seek to apply the world view of religious toleration.15 Meanwhile, distress and apprehension increased in the cities attacked during the war. When Glogau, in Lower Silesia, prepared to defend itself against the Prussian attack in the winter of 1740, all the Jewish men, including many “who were not used to physical labor all their lives,” were conscripted for hard work in building fortifications. Menachem Amlander reported in Sheerit yisrael, “The holy community of Glogau was very frightened, and great dread fell upon them,” and as the siege was prolonged, they ran out of food. “They were constrained to eat coarse bread or barley bread, and some people mixed earth in with the flour and kneaded everything together and ate it that way because of the hunger, and many people hunted mice and cats and dogs and ate the flesh because of the hunger.” On March 8, 1741, the army, led by the prince of Anhalt–Dessau, Leopold I, broke into the city. At first, they rejoiced “and praised the Blessed Name because the siege was ended, and the city was not damaged, only the walls were destroyed, and not even a single Jew was killed, for this was a great miracle.” However, within a few hours “the joy became mourning, because they started to loot the city.”16 Half a year later, at the time of the High Holy Days, (September–October 1741), Prague was preparing for the onslaught of the French army. Once again, signs from the heavens foretold disasters: “on the night of the New Moon of H.eshvan (October 10), a large star was seen, and its tail extended from east and north to west and north in the figure of a burning fire, with sparks and glows, like the light of the moon in the middle of the month, and astrologers predicted bad things because of the great war.” As Brandeis wrote in Igeret mah.lat, these heavenly signs did not lie.17 Brandeis was not yet in Prague, but he could report about the war from the point of view of the panicked Jews, and in his chronicle, he reported on the sights and sounds of the war like a talented journalist. As in Glogau, the Jews were ordered to help fortify the walls, to prepare barrels of water for putting out fires, to dig defensive positions, and to guard the artillery batteries placed on them. Penitential prayers and psalms were recited in the synagogue, and Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz was placed in charge of distributing fasts: eighteen men took turns fasting every day. On Sunday, November 12, in the afternoon, everyone was alert and tense, after “it was heard that the French, Bavarian, and Saxon armies were close to the city,” and “a noise was

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heard as if the army had entered the city of Prague.” Heralds with drums called bearers of arms to their positions. The churches were ordered to silence their bells. On Saturday night, November 25, “many soldiers came in our streets and sought, upon order of the general of the Austrian garrison, to loot the Jewish street, and there was a commotion and much weeping.” Rabbi Eybeschütz was roused from his sleep to order the pious members of the community to follow orders, despite the danger: “My brothers and sons, go with them in peace for our community, and be ready and prepared for the world to come.” Within a few hours, on Sunday morning, November 26, French soldiers were already circulating in the streets of Prague, for the city had been conquered. Most surprisingly, the soldiers were accompanied by some French-speaking Jews, who reassured their coreligionists: “Do not dread and do not fear, for the king has ordered them not to harm the souls [i.e.,] of either the uncircumcised or the circumcised, and they will not set their hands at looting.”18 The Jews quickly gathered for prayers of thanksgiving, because no one from the community had lost his life, but on that very Sunday of the conquest one of the army officers entered the community hall, placed a watch on the table, and demanded that with two hours they must pay ransom in cash, so “they won’t loot the Jewish streets.” From then on, for more than a year, the inhabitants of the city, including the Jews, lived under heavy pressure, monetary extortion, and constant demands to supply “fodder for horses,” and orders to clear the synagogues and bathhouses for use as granaries. In the spring of 1742, the Austrian effort to reconquer Prague had begun. The siege that began on Passover and prevented the supply of food raised prices sharply and led to famine, until “the man of the wars began to eat the meat of horses, which they slaughtered every day.” This time, it was the French officers who demanded a contingent of one hundred Jewish men every day to raise defensive barriers. In August, the Austrian pressure increased, bombardments increased, and panic ensued. The Jewish calendar was the framework that gave meaning to the events of the war. “On the ninth of Av, when we were in the synagogue, close to the end of the lamentations,” Brandeis reported, “we heard the sound of shooting with arrows and guns and other weapons, and many swords, extremely loud, and this shooting was heard in the whole city, and the land thundered, and the heavens also dripped, and we were constantly in panic and dread, that curdled the blood because of the great sound of thunder from the cannons.” The French declared a curfew at night, so that evening prayers were recited at home and not in the synagogues. The hunger grew more oppressive, but the battle was not decided until the winter, and the French began to retreat. On December 13, 1742, a Jewish delegation from Prague received a promise

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from the Austrian Duke Josef Franz Lobkowitz, that the community would receive protection and defense. The Austrian army was welcomed enthusiastically, and Brandeis described it as a burst of patriotism of the subject loyal to his queen: “If all the seas were ink, it would be impossible to write about the great joy of the residents of the city, and from many houses musical instruments and trumpets could be heard, and several thousand souls stood on the ground and shouted together, Long live our lord [!] Queen Maria Theresa, and the French left for their country with great shame, and turned over hundreds of large canons and other equipment and military supplies in vast numbers to the Austrian officers.” In the Maisel and Altneuschul synagogues, the cantors recited blessings and pledge loyalty “to our pious master the queen, her highness Maria Theresa, may the blessed Lord give her blessing the future and success in all the deeds of her hands, and may all her enemies fall beneath her feet, and all the members of our community shout out loud amen.”19 In another arena of the war, the distress of the Jewish community of Nikolsburg increased. During the winter and spring of 1742, the city passed from hand to hand and stood in the middle between Prussia’s effort to conquer parts of Moravia and the army loyal to Maria Theresa, many of whose soldiers were Hussars and Hungarians. At first the Prussians tried to extort a lot of money from the Jews of the city and stole all the horses that were in their possession. Then came the Austrian soldiers, who did the same, demanding the sum of fifty thousand gulden within a few days. The rapid and effective intervention of wealthy Jews from Vienna was intended to halt this harassment. The most prominent of these was Baron Diego Pereira d’Aguilar (1690–1759), a former Marrano who had returned to Judaism. He owned the monopoly of the tobacco industry in Austria and was given an aristocratic title by Karl VI. D’Aguilar gained what he wanted, and an order signed by Maria Theresa was promulgated, “that no one should raise his hand against the Jews.” However, that order did not help the Jews of Moravia against the wave of pogroms that emerged in the unstable climate of the battles. “The evils of plundering increased throughout the whole country,” Trebitsch recounted, drawing up from Jewish memory the ancient disaster of the second century: “and they destroyed communities and battles like the ruins of Beitar.” The blow to the community of Kremesir, north of Nikolsburg, was particularly harsh: “On the eve of the Great Sabbath [before Passover] hundreds and thousands of hussars and peasants came to the city, plundered and robbed all the Jewish houses. . . . And they also murdered some Jewish souls, killing mothers with their children, and the Jews were afraid to go outside, and they came and went like madmen from house to courtyard

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and from courtyard to roof at a run, and outside the sword murders and sows dread.” In the background of the local riots, rumors circulated that the Jews were collaborating with the Prussian invaders: “The voice of the mob says that the Jews must be eliminated, and they foment lying accusations against us, and they say we are spies, and saying that we willingly gave the enemy [Prussia] a lot of money, and they are accustomed to saying that the king of Prussia is a father to the Jews.” For the first time in the war these voices began to be heard. They came to the ears of the queen in Vienna, and people said that for this betrayal the Jews should be punished by expulsion from the country.20

“If You Do Not W ish to Be Chr isti a ns, Be at L e a st Hu m a n Beings” During the years of panic and distress in the Jewish communities in the battle zones in Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia, a diamond merchant from Florence, Moses Cassuto, traveled through Europe on a fascinating and enjoyable voyage of business and tourism without being inconvenienced by the war. Indeed, in his travel narrative hardly an echo is heard of anything out of the ordinary taking place in Europe. His valuable merchandise was in demand in the courts of the aristocracy, and thus many doors were opened to him, as he frequented the wealthy elite. The various stations he passed through in 1741–1743 included the palace of the ruler of Saxony and king of Poland, Augustus III, in Dresden. He showed the king a large diamond and was present at a royal ball. In London, he entered the stock exchange, visited coffeehouses, and was impressed by St. Paul’s Cathedral. He saw King George II and his entourage when they returned to England from Hanover. He missed out on meeting Maria Theresa in Vienna because she was in Prague when he arrived there, to be crowned again as Queen of Bohemia after the French had been driven out. In Moravia, he was impressed by the synagogues and mentioned nothing about the troubles of the war. In mid-May 1743, the Jewish diamond merchant arrived in Potsdam, and Frederick II took time away from the celebrations of the second year of the victory over Maria Theresa to meet him and examine a special, very valuable diamond that Cassuto was placing on sale. The king was friendly to him, spoke to him in Italian, and offered him snuff. He also invited him to attend an Italian opera that was being staged at the time in Berlin.21 Cassuto’s trip as a welcome guest in the palaces of Europe, in the midst of the War of the Austrian Succession, was possible because the war was not continuous, was waged only in restricted areas, and did not entirely paralyze the vibrant life of the continent. Alongside

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the war, during the 1740s there was a rich parallel universe of high life, that aroused a feeling of unprecedent innovation and the flourishing culture, which the war did not overshadow at all. The 1740s also inaugurated the modern culture of celebrity: people who gained fame not because of their aristocratic connections and status, but by virtue of their talents and achievements. Like the Italian Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799), some of them were scientists, others were musicians, painters, and authors, as well as opera singers and actors, who with the applause of the audience, with the circulation of items in the press, or with conversations in salons and coffeehouses, became widely known, no less than their contemporaries, the monarchs Frederick II and Maria Theresa. David Garrick (1717–1779), the admired English actor, director, playwright, and producer, was immortalized in a dramatic painting by Hogarth, in which he appears in a scene from Shakespeare’s Richard III, pursued by the ghosts of those whom he murdered. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was eleven years older than Garrick. With exceptional diligence, he combined work as a scientist, performing experiments with light and electricity in his native city of Philadelphia, with a career as a printer and publisher, and as an author who exploited the press to disseminate information and to express witty and sophisticated criticism, which reverberated on both sides of the Atlantic, and he also rose to high office as a statesman. At that time, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) was a young and ambitious student who had already begun to stand out in the Republic of Letters as a literary critic, translator, and playwright, and whose works were to become classics of the German Enlightenment. In Vienna, Joseph Haydn (1731–1809) was taking his first steps upward as a penniless child prodigy, born into a peasant family, in a musical career that was to take him to the brilliant palaces of powerful rulers as he gained fame as one of the most prolific classical composers. In the Jewish world, by contrast, fame was still reserved almost solely to those who excelled in religious learning, such as Jonathan Eybeschütz, who, while still in his twenties in the Prague community, was admired by the many students who streamed to him, and the public who listened eagerly to his sermons. In 1750, when he moved to northern Germany, this was a major news item which the chronicle Qorot ha’itim, did not ignore: “in 5510, the great genius and model for the generation, the great and sharp-tongued preacher, Rabbi Jonathan, was accepted by the triple community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek, and there he greatly glorified and amplified the Torah, sat and taught, and raised up many disciples, and he dwelled there in honor.”22 Two rabbis younger by a whole generation, born in the 1720s in Lithuania and in the Duchy of Anhalt–Dessau, became no less famous than Eybeschütz. Elijah ben Shlomo

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Zalman (1720–1797), a scholar of great ability, who impressed those around him, returned to Vilna. He took upon himself severe discipline of absolute devotion to the study of Talmud, Halakha, and Kabbalah. Unlike other rabbis, he built his Torah world outside of the frameworks of the yeshiva and the House of Study for outstanding students, and even beyond the printed book. Stories of praise were told about his talent from study at an early age, and when he got older, he became a mythical figure of the diligent and devoted scholar in his lifetime. Though he chose a life of study for its own sake and seclusion from the world, and he never held any rabbinical post, he gained fame as the “pious master-scholar,” and his admirers publicized him and gave him as “The Vilna Gaon” the status of the highest authoritative leadership.23 In 1743, Moses ben Menachem (Mendelssohn, 1729–1786) arrived in Berlin from Dessau as a precocious prodigy of fourteen, who chose to leave his family and the city of his birth and to follow his ambition to continue in Torah study. Like Haydn, who went to Vienna and became a successful composer, the Jewish lad from Berlin became the famous philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. However, in the Jewish case, this was not only success, the fulfillment of a dream, and the possibility to develop his talent, but also breaking a barrier of immeasurable personal and historical significance. Instead of the career of an outstanding Torah scholar, fostered in Dessau and Berlin by his teacher, Rabbi David Frankel (1707–1763), who might attain rabbinical leadership, Mendelssohn chose the sciences and philosophy. Though he never abandoned the Talmud, the change in direction from religious studies to immersion in European thought from the Classical period to Locke and Leibniz, and the beginning of his path toward development as an author who took part as a member in the discourse of the Enlightenment in Germany, were a sensation in the eyes of both Christians and Jews. The move to Berlin, the encounter with other young intellectuals, and especially with his contemporary, Lessing, his insatiable desire for knowledge and rapid conquest of the rich library of European culture, opened a path in life before him that few Jews of his time could choose. Toward the end of the 1740s, Mendelssohn’s public image was already formed in a personal process of cultural conversion toward that which would make him into the “German Socrates” and the most famous Jew in Christian Europe.24 With his self-education as a philosopher, Mendelssohn became one of the speakers whose opinion was valued at that time in the Enlightenment Republic of Letters. From his place of residence in Prussia, he observed the French Enlightenment from a distance with caution and reservations. He saw how in the 1740s the Enlightenment’s critique became extremely daring, going far beyond his own beliefs and opinions. One example of this could be the physician,

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scientist, and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751). Five years after his service as a military physician in the War of the Austrian Succession, having seen the horrors of war from up close, he wrote Machine Man (L’Homme machine, 1747). Experimental science and reason taught him not only that mankind was part of the system of nature, as proposed by botanist Carl Linnaeus and naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, but he was also an entirely material creature. La Mettrie declared that he was a materialist, denied the existence of God and the soul, and dispersed radical statements throughout his book: “I appeal to the good faith of observers. Let them say whether it is untrue that man is originally nothing more than a worm, which becomes a man just as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly?”; “Let us conclude boldly that man is a machine and that there is in the whole universe only one diversely modified substance.” People who believe differently (“how miserable! How pitiful!”) are blind and unintelligent. In his opinion, human society will be more humane and happier when it frees itself from metaphysical beliefs. Religion and belief in God are an obstacle to natural happiness in this world. But tolerance of atheists was limited, even in Holland, where Machine Man was published. La Mettrie was forced to flee, and Frederick II was the only one who agreed to accept him at his court in Potsdam.25 The Paris police was already keeping another materialist, Denis Diderot (1713–1784), under close surveillance. His Philosophical Thoughts (Pensées philosophiques, 1746) was condemned to be burned by parliamentary decree because of “the poison of criminal and absurd thoughts,” and after the publication of “The Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who Can See” (1749), he was jailed for a few weeks. In those years, Diderot had begun to edit what would be the greatest work of the Enlightenment: Encyclopedia. The first volume appeared in 1751, and after it, over a period of about twenty years, another twenty-seven volumes appeared (of which eleven were volumes of illustrations), but its basic principles, especially the presumptuousness to present all of human knowledge in print, and thus to contribute to human liberation, to the education, secular redemption, and happiness of mankind, was already stated toward the middle of the century. Diderot explained the purpose of the Encyclopedia and his vision for the future: “The purpose of an Encyclopedia is to assemble the information dispersed on the surface of the earth; to present the general system to the men with whom we live, and to transfer it to the men who will come after us: so that the work of past centuries might not be useless work for the centuries that will follow; so that our nephews, having become better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happier.” Diderot did not conceal his hope and belief that, even if there was nothing to the promises of religion regarding

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the eternal life of the soul and the world to come, the fame that he and his colleagues would gain as authors of the Encyclopedia, when, in the future, it was understood that they had labored to guarantee human happiness, would be a form of eternal life.26 The philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Diderot, were proud of being born in the eighteenth century. Aware of living in an era of progress, they were excited. Diderot wrote that the encyclopedia had to be written by a hundred philosophers and, in fact, they arrived. This confidence of scholars and intellectuals in the superiority of the eighteenth century and pride in their unprecedent creativity, which uplifted mankind and drove society and culture forward, had dramatic historical importance. They nourished criticism of the past and separated the Enlightenment from all that preceded it. Thus, for example, the philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) claimed in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1747) that the difference between his time and prior generations was so great that it was difficult even to imagine those “barbaric” times. In his skeptical criticism of the possibility of miracles, he expresses the faith that the dimension of mystery had already departed from the world, and thought had become natural and rational. In his opinion, the “ignorant and barbarous ancestors” of civilized nations were the ones who reported on miracles. “When we peruse the first histories of all nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world where the whole frame of nature is disjointed and every element performs its operations in a different manner from what it does at present.” Here consciousness of the historical gap and the superiority of the eighteenth century was reinforced. Hume believed that “in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvelous.” Like Voltaire and the English deists, Hume also demonstrated the gap between epochs by challenging the miracles recounted in the Bible and denigrating the Jews: Here then we are first to consider a book presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts which every nation gives of its origin. . . . I desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart and, after a serious consideration, declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book . . . would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates.27

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Indeed, the culture of the Enlightenment did break out in the 1740s, and critical tendencies were woven into its fabric and coloring it. While Linnaeus and Buffon sought systematic understanding of natural history, and Diderot undertook the ambitious project of the Encyclopedia, Montesquieu was conducting comparative and pioneering research in the political, demographical, juridical, economic, and religious systems that laid the groundwork for political science. The witty and critical author of the Persian Letters devoted two decades to this life project, and when the seven-hundred-page volume of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit des lois) was published anonymously in Geneva in 1748, it was immediately acknowledged as one of the most influential masterpieces of the Enlightenment. By the time of the author’s death, seven years later, twenty-two editions had been published, and the book had been translated into several languages. In the 1770s and 1780s, it was a source of inspiration for the basic documents of the American and French Revolutions. The importance of The Spirit of the Laws was not only due to the famous principle of the separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Primarily it derived from the systematic, classified, panoramic, and mainly comparative presentation of various forms of government in human society. The many chapters of the book dealt with population policy, with the influence of commerce on the state, with the involvement of religion in political life, with black slavery, and with war. Montesquieu proposed various theories to explain the basic phenomenon of the differences among social and governmental systems in various places. For example, in his opinion, climate had decisive influence on people’s character. Linking natural and human science, he was able to state, for example, that people in cold climates were more energetic and bolder than were people in hotter climates, and that the operas in hot Italy were more turbulent that the tranquil operas in temperate England. Like many intellectuals of his time, Montesquieu hoped that his work would contribute to human happiness: If I could see to it that everyone had new reasons to love his duties, his prince, his homeland, his laws; that one could feel one’s happiness better in every country, in every government, in every position where one was found; I would believe myself the most fortunate of mortals. . . . I would [also] believe myself the most fortunate of mortals, if I could bring it about that people could cure themselves of their prejudice . . . that which makes people ignorant of themselves. It is by seeking to instruct people that one can practice the general virtue, which includes love for all.28

The declaration against discrimination and hostility toward the Jews, which reverberated in the pages of The Spirit of the Laws was one of the most vigorous

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and clear expressions in European public opinion until that time. When Montesquieu sought to demonstrate the danger that prejudice posed to human liberty in regimes that acted on behalf of religious interests (the idea that one must take God’s revenge), he drew upon a series of scandalous actions and vain accusations against the Jews from European history: a Jew accused of reviling the Sacred Virgin was sentenced to being skinned alive, the kings of England stole money from Jewish merchants with threats of cruel tortures, and the Jews were expelled from France by Philip IV in 1306 after they were accused of having lepers poison wells.29 However, even in enlightened times these persecutions did not disappear, and news of the continued punishment of so-called Judaizers in the Iberian Peninsula at the hands of the Inquisition revolted him. “A Jewess of eighteen years of age, who was burnt at Lisbon at the last auto-de-fé, gave occasion to the following little piece,” Montesquieu states at the beginning of “Most Humble Remonstrance to the Inquisitors of Spain And Portugal,” which he included in Book XXV of The Spirit of the Laws. In the name of an ostensible Jewish spokesman, Montesquieu mobilized his values as an Enlightenment thinker to attack the murderous cruelty of the Inquisition, to point out the deviation from the teachings of Jesus, and to condemn the fanatics who burned Jews, contrary to all human values. Montesquieu’s “Jew” cries out: “If you do not wish to be Christians, be at least human beings.” He continues: “Treat us as you would, if having only the weak light of justice which nature bestows, you had not a religion to conduct, and a revelation to enlighten you.” By placing a mirror before Europe, in which was reflected the face of the Christian enemies of Judaism, The Spirit of the Laws made the Jews into a touchstone for European culture in the eighteenth century. His remonstrations read like a manifesto to change public opinion: “You live in an age in which the light of nature shines more bright than it has ever done; in which philosophy has enlightened human understandings; . . . If you do not therefore shake off your ancient prejudices . . . it must be confessed, that you are incorrigible, incapable of any degree of light, or instruction; and a nation must be very unhappy that gives authority to such men.” The rational and moral views attributed to a Jew in The Spirit of the Laws aroused Europe to awareness that the attitude toward the Jews can determine the historical image of the entire eighteenth century: “It is necessary that we should advertise you of one thing; that is, if any one in times to come shall dare to assert, that in the age in which we live, the people of Europe were civilized, you will be cited to prove that they were barbarians; and the idea they will have of you, will be such as will dishonour your age, and spread hatred over all your contemporaries.”30

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Montesquieu knew very well that reality was still very far from the vision of The Spirit of the Laws. While he was submitting the eighteenth century to the judgment of history, believing that the general virtue could triumph and promote human happiness, perusal of the news from Eastern Europe brought home the great challenge that still confronted those who sought to overcome barbarity. During the 1740s, while in various places in Europe science and the culture of the Enlightenment flourished, in music, and in literature, and intellectuals, scientists, and artists offered horizons for happy life, the fate of the Jews in Poland and Russia was determined in contexts of internal instability, peasant revolts, and an increase in religious zealotry. In parallel with the awakening of hopes for an era of light in the West, in the East the end of the age of violence was not in sight. For example, in absolute contradiction to the principles of religious tolerance, Franciszek Kobielski, the bishop of Lutzk and Brest, continued to act vigorously in the district of Volhynia to convert the Jews. He himself, and the priests subordinate to him, forced the Jews in the communities of the district to listen to missionary sermons four times a year. The Shepherd’s Epistle, which Kobielski dispatched to the Jews in 1741, was posted on the doors of the synagogue, and its regulations limited contact between Jews and Christians as much as possible (especially with the serving women who were suspected of observing kashrut and of “forbidden acts and sins against the flesh”), and supervision was imposed on synagogues and the printing of books. This was done to confirm the superiority of Christianity and to demonstrate piety, as well as to prove the power of the church in relation to the high aristocracy, whose close connections with Jewish lessees were interpreted as unworthy from the Christian point of view.31 In 1744, peasant rebellions led by Wasko Woszczyłło in the district of Mogilev in northern Poland led to dangerous attacks on several Jewish communities (the Woszczyłło pogroms). A short account written in the register of the community of Mstsislaw describes the way the community was saved on Saturday January 18, 1744 from an attack similar to that against the nearby community of Krzyczew: “The aforementioned Gentiles, people from the villages around Krzyczew, plotted with evildoers truly to exterminate the seed of Israel.” However, their joy upon being rescued exceeded their fear for their lives. Upon the initiative of two lessees, Gedalia and Samuel Ickowicz, a Polish nobleman of the Radziwiłł family, who owned large estates in the region, intervened and the rioters withdrew. The Jewish imagination seized upon precedents from the ancient past, and the story of their rescue was seen as a repetition of the miracle recounted in the Book of Esther, and in parallel with the heroism of Jael, who killed Sisera, as told in the Book of Judges. Samuel

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Ickowicz’s wife, the woman who had invited the Ba`al Shem Tov to purify their new house with magical means, “did good actions with his highness the duke, like Queen Esther; [she] begged and wept before the duke, and of her it is said, ‘most blessed of tent-dwelling women (Judges: 5:24).”32 There was almost no year in that decade when an attack against the Jews was not recorded in Poland. In the spring of 1747, near a village tavern owned by Jews near Zasław, the corpse of a beggar named Antony was found, with stab wounds on it. The report of the investigation stated that when Jews approached the body, the wounds began to bleed. Several Jews were arrested, and they were accused of committing the murder in the tavern during a banquet in honor of a circumcision. At the trial, which took place in the fortress of Zasław, the accused were sentenced to a cruel death: two of them were sentenced to impaling, one was to be impaled after his body was dismembered, four were sentenced to having strips of skin torn from their bodies while they were still alive, after which they would be cut into four parts, and one was sentenced to dismemberment. The prayer “God, full of mercy,” expressed their fear and despair: “[may they] find proper rest on high on the wings of the divine presence . . . the souls of holy and pure [men], who were thrown to slaughter like kids and lambs . . . their souls were taken from them with the slash of a sword, and some on pegs of iron, and dismembered on stakes . . . before everyone outdoors their smashed bodies were displayed, and everyone who saw and heard was broken-hearted and moaned.”33 The stories of these libels are preserved in court documents, in scrolls that remain in manuscript, in community registers, and in lamentations and prayers, but they were hardly heard of beyond the location of the events themselves, and neither did they penetrate enlightened public opinion. Entirely different in this respect, and, in fact, the most dramatic and significant event in European Jewish history of the mid-1740s, was the expulsion of the Jews of Prague. The fate of some thirteen thousand Jews of the second largest community in Europe (after Amsterdam) was bound up with the battles in the War of the Austrian Succession, and it quickly became an international diplomatic issue. Rabbis, community leaders, intercessors, and Court Jews were quick to voice protests and to seek out every channel for revoking the decision to expel all the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia and to prevent Queen Maria Theresa from carrying out the expulsion from Prague. Their protest aroused the Jewish communities in Central, Western, and Southern Europe, which mobilized a high-level and significant lobby among the rulers in the capitals of the continent, who objected to the expulsion.

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“Th e y Incited th e Qu e en a n d th e M inister s of th e Mona rch y to E x pel Us” Two years after the prayers of thanksgiving for the queen in the synagogues of Prague, their loyalty to her was severely tested. It was widely understood that this was a surprising and unprecedented event, and not another decree of a hostile regime. Something of the feeling of shock can be heard in the letter of alarm that Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz sent to the community of Rome, asking them to lodge a petition with Pope Benedict XIV. After other efforts at intervention failed (“Their highnesses the kings . . . cannot be approached because now they are in the stimulus of war”), perhaps only the intervention of the leader of the Catholics could change Maria Theresa’s decision. The Purim persecution, which, as we have seen, was the ancient model deeply embedded in Jewish memory, served Eybeschütz as a framework and explanation of what had happened in his time, after the city of Prague changed hands, was conquered by Prussia, and immediately afterward returned to Austrian rule: “Not just in Prague but in all the states of Bohemia, against the Jews living in unwalled cities, they set their hands to plunder . . . and the queen was not at ease with that, but she set her mind to the entire kingdom of Bohemia, [decreeing] that within one month, the month of January, in the year 1745, according to their calendar, all the Jews must leave Prague and not one must remain.” The measure was especially grave because of the central position of the Prague community. “Hear me, brethren, this is a sad moment of Jacob, unlike any that has been for several centuries,” Eybeschütz wrote, sketching the image of Jewish Prague as it appeared to his contemporaries: a veteran community “which has been established for several centuries or a thousand years, and cemeteries and the tombs of holy men, world renowned authorities, for several thousand years.” In his opinion, it numbered about twenty thousand Jews, and to this day everyone’s eyes were raised to it as a center of Torah study. Prague was the Jerusalem of the age, “the city entirely beautiful, the joy of every country . . . and from there Torah went out to the entire Diaspora,” a major site for training the rabbinical elite and a source of rabbis who left it for many communities. Eybeschütz had arrived in Metz only two years earlier, after twenty-five years in Prague, so that he felt personal responsibility to do his best to protest against the expulsion, and he implored the leaders of Rome to intervene with “the lord of all the Christians, the pope in Rome, of whom we have heard from a distance, that our brethren there, the residents of the land of Italy, are known to him, and that he wishes well for our people.”34

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The Prague community even impressed hostile visitors such as the Prussian Baron von Pöllnitz, who was certain that it contained no less than eighty thousand Jews, and he learned that their quarter in the old city was like a small separate city, and they controlled commerce. Fifteen years before the decree of expulsion, he reported that the rumor that the emperor intended to limit the number of Jews in the city by granting residence permits only to the eldest son aroused such concern among them, that they were willing to pay any amount of money to prevent that measure.35 Now, in the winter of 1744, under the rule of that emperor’s daughter, matters seemed far more threatening.36 The Prussian army managed to hold Prague only for a bit more than two months, and in that short time popular resentment arose, and rumors circulated that the Jews of the city were collaborating with the conqueror and were receiving benefits. “All the days of Prussian rule, the mob accused the Jews falsely, saying they had brought in the Prussians,” an eyewitness, a member of the community, reported, “and in all the taverns of hard liquor and wine and coffee no one spoke of anything except about the Jews, and they agreed together that when the queen of Hungary came to the city and conquered it under his hand, they would take revenge (heaven forfend) against the Jews.” The Christians neighbors of the Jews made sure to place crosses and images of Jesus in their windows, to alert the Austrian soldiers, who were sure to come, not to attack their houses. This news reached Vienna and was published in several newspapers, which also reported that, as punishment for treason, people in the Habsburg court were already discussing the expulsion of the Jews. Within a few days toward the end of November, the Prussian soldiers did withdraw from Prague. In the interim, before the Austrian army occupied the city again, the Jews underwent two days of severe pogroms (November 26–27). Some twenty Jews were murdered and a hundred wounded, and a great deal of property was stolen. When the Jewish quarter was attacked, there was great panic: “They surrounded the Jewish street from four directions, surrounded gates and walls, destroyed doors and bolts, with arrows and with tubes of fire [i.e. guns] they threw balls of flame into the windows . . . the Jews’ flesh crawled with fear and dread, the Jews scattered into attics and cellars to hide and save their lives, from the growling of a great multitude, trembling and horrors seized them.”37 Every Jewish home was broken into and searched for valuables, stores of food were plundered, synagogues were looted, furniture was destroyed, and religious books were desecrated. Bezalel Brandeis reported in the second part of his chronicle Igeret mah.lat that to discover hiding places, the rioters used violent tortures: “Some were hanged by their feet and fire was lit beneath them,

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and some were nailed to the walls with nails and stakes in their hands, and some were tortured with burning candles under their armpits until they revealed their secrets to them and gave them what their hearts desired.”38 Brandeis, a thirty-seven-year-old rabbi from a well-connected learned family, had arrived in Prague a year previously. He had married Malka, the daughter of Samuel Halevi, one of the heads of the community there. With literary talent and great expertise in Jewish sources, and in Hebrew, he managed to describe the history of those hard days as a dramatic tale. He began Igeret mah. lat by opening a window into his personal experience. He and his pregnant wife fled from hiding place to hiding place, seized with dread. First they were in one room where twenty people had crowded in, trying to remain silent: “And our voices were not heard, although there were children and suckling infants among them, and we were in great horror, lest the voice of a child crying should be heard, and the serpent would come from behind us and before us, and the fear of death. . . . Fear fell upon us, and our flesh was hot from the pressure and the crowding, and we fainted, because we ate no bread all day.” After they were discovered, they climbed up to the roof and found shelter under the chimney. From there, they heard the cries of other members of the family who were caught and beaten, and others murdered. The moment it seemed that the house was on fire, they escaped to another shelter. In the end, the couple and most of their family escaped from the attackers. Others were not so lucky. The author’s brother was shot to death, as was Bezalel Lichtzieher, “whom the heathens tortured until they took away everything he had in the house through the window, and when his strength and money ran out, they shot him with fire, and he died.” Another Jew, who was found lying dead in the street, “as he ran away, and they shot him with an arrow, and his corpse rotted on the ground,” and it was not removed until the streets calmed down.39 When other soldiers from the imperial army entered the area to restore order, the community was paralyzed. The destruction after the looting was severe and extensive. But within three weeks, it turned out that an even great danger was threatening the existence of the Prague community. The decree of expulsion reached the city on December 22, signed four days previously by Maria Theresa in Vienna, announcing that “for many and most grave reasons we have decided that henceforth we will not tolerate any Jew in the kingdom of Bohemia.” On the eve of the Sabbath, December 25, Brandeis’s testimony continues: “this decree was announced in all the synagogues by the local magistrate, and on meeting places they hung notices, in which these decrees were written.” All the Jews of Bohemia, and later of Moravia, were commanded to leave the boundaries of the Habsburg Empire within five months, and by the

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end of January 1745, that is, only five weeks later, the presence of Jews in the city of Prague was entirely forbidden. The more extensive expulsion was already revoked in the spring, but, regarding Prague, the decree remained in force. Preparations began within a week, and the head of every family was required to report in writing the number of people in his house and to announce the destination to which he intended to travel. The Christian residents of Prague and peasants from the surrounding villages came to the Jewish streets to buy the belongings of the future exiles for a low price. The municipal authorities demanded immediate payment of debts to the state and to local merchants. The deadline was very short, the weather in the peak of winter was freezing, life was almost completely suspended, and even a delay of four more weeks, and then until the end of March, did not change the depressed mood very much: From the time of the great destruction [the November riots] we found no repose for our soul, poverty kept increasing, there was no business, not even for a single penny, our soul was dry, there was nothing except our eye was on household furnishings, that were sold for less than half their value, and even the cloak on our shoulders, and most people went in tattered clothing, and our faces were as black as a crow, and the sides of a pot, and our flesh was thin from servitude and sorrows and given over to worries and fasting and crying out.

Close to the time set for the expulsion, travel permits were distributed, and hundreds of people stood in line to obtain them. On March 26, the last Sabbath evening prayers were held in the Altneuschul, “with great weeping and tripled tears,” and on the Sabbath itself soldiers entered to guard the abandoned houses. Until April 1, almost all the Jews of the community had already left Prague. Only about two hundred of them received special authorization from the representative of Vienna in Prague enabling them to remain in the city for some time further because of their poor health. By mid-August they, too, were expelled, and no more Jews remained in the city. “The Jews began to travel and to send their families out of the city one by one,” another chronicle reported, “to scout out and seek another place to dwell there for the five months allowed by the kingdom to remain in the state of Bohemia.” But after this prohibition was revoked, only relatively few left the country, and most of them remained in the region and lived in difficult conditions, mainly in the surrounding villages and towns, or they wandered from place to place (“gathering in the fields and forests, and they found no rest to settle even in the unwalled cities and villages”). Only toward the end of the war, in the summer of 1748, in return for

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payment of a high tax and a limitation of ten years, was the decree of expulsion revoked, and the Jewish refugees returned to Prague and rehabilitated their community. No wonder Bezalei Brandeis and his wife, for example, who were still seized with the horror of the pogroms, chose to get as far away as possible from the city and settle in Mainz, never to return to the place where they had undergone such traumatic experiences.40 While the panic, shock, and paralysis that seized the injured community were reported, news of the decree of expulsion began to make waves. Within a few days, all the details about the Bohemian Decree were known in many European communities, and their leaders began to organize prayers, fasts, and donations. The troubles of the Prague Jews were placed in the framework of the familiar traditional significance of previous persecutions and connected to disasters deeply embedded in historical memory, such as the destruction of the Temple and the expulsion from Spain. The determination shown by the royal court in Vienna, the hurry and the short deadline strengthened the religious explanation, that sins had caused the disaster, and all the gates of mercy were closed. To avoid condemning Maria Theresa herself, many Jews believed that she had been maliciously deceived by the enemies of the Jews, who slandered them to her. In Prague, responsibility was pinned on three members of the city council: “Those evil dogs wrote accusations against us and spoke vain things, they incited the queen and the ministers of her state to drive us out.”41 The extensive solidarity demonstrated by the Jewish communities was the mobilizing force behind a broad diplomatic effort to intercede and prevent the expulsion by means of the political intervention of European states. The pain and concern were translated this time into a plan of action that removed the decree from its local context and made it an international affair that preoccupied the senior leaders and diplomats for several months. The leadership of Court Jews, merchants, and bankers who were closely familiar with the ways of ruling courts in the age of absolutism made sure that the fate of the Jews of Prague was placed on the agenda. About forty years after the pressure exerted by the Court Jews to prevent the circulation of Eisenmenger’s anti-Jewish book, the members of the second and third generations of those wealthy families launched a struggle in the general Jewish interest. Along with members of the rabbinical elite and the rabbis of large communities, they made every effort so that the makers of policy would know and understand that this was a grave and injurious measure, that the Jews could not accept it, and that they would combat it.

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The Jewish voice that was heard between December 1744 and the summer of 1745 was strong and vibrant. Petitions were lodged with the states of Europe, asking them to intervene with the queen in Vienna via widespread activation of the extensive networks of the Court Jews, contacts among communities, and success in arousing public opinion in the networks of newspapers published in Germany and Holland. Initiative for the action arose in Prague itself. The first letters and reports were dispatched from there, and emissaries immediately left for Vienna. The Jewish strategy of intercession was to exploit personal connections between the Court Jews and the communities in various centers and the ruling courts. However, the focus of communication, organization, and reporting was in the family of the Court Jew Wolf Wertheimer, whose father, Samson Wertheimer, had been the guiding spirit in the intercession in the Eisenmenger affair. At that time, Wolf was living in Augsburg, but his son Samuel returned to Vienna, and together they worked like a modern control room to gather information, to follow events from day to day, to launch initiatives, and to weigh alternatives.42 As Selma Stern writes: “He assembled his forces like a general about to storm an enemy fortress. Like an experienced statesman, he drew all the threads together and managed to weave about the queen a web that reached from Augsburg over Swabia, Bavaria, Franconia, Saxony, Brunswick, Berlin, Hanover, Holland, England, Denmark, and Italy to Austria. He called on all of them, the Court Jews of the archbishops and bishops, dukes, Electors, governors, and margraves, to intervene with their rulers and persuade them to induce the queen to withdraw her order.”43 In Vienna, once again the intercession of the Baron d’Aguilar stood out. However, in contrast to the success he had achieved two years earlier, in obtaining a writ of protection for the Jews of Nikolsburg, this time the doors of Maria Theresa’s palace were closed to him. In one of the first news reports, which he frequently sent from Vienna, Samuel Wertheimer reported a meeting that took place in the home of d’Aguilar on January 2, 1745: “Everyone, according to his intelligence and essence, suggested what was proper to do, and may the Lord fulfill our good counsel, for we are in great distress,” but d’Aguilar and others feared the queen’s anger, for she had ordered the removal of every Jew from before her: “For the anger keep increasing, and things are only bad every day, and an order was issued by the queen, that any Jew who comes to the royal court will be arrested and placed in iron chains, and because of that the Lord Baron d’Aguilar and the other men among us do not wish to deliver themselves to shame and indignity.”44 For now, the main effort was made to convince the close members of the queen’s family and to urge foreign diplomats from countries on the Austrian side in the war of succession to request cancellation of the

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decree of expulsion. Within three weeks, the Jewish intercessors managed to reach, among others, the queen’s husband, Francis I; the Stadtholder of Holland; the kings of Saxony–Poland, Piedmont, England, and Denmark; the Senate of Venice; the city council of Hamburg; the bishop of Bamberg; the archbishop of Mainz and Cologne; the pope; and even the Ottoman sultan. Items were published in newspapers in Germany and Holland, and the expulsion of the Jews of Prague became newsworthy. Samuel Wertheimer reported that in the Augsburg newspaper, a special page appeared with news of the pogroms against the Jews of Prague, but when this newspaper was circulated in the coffeehouses of Vienna, that page was removed. Wertheimer discovered another deception of that newspaper when he found an item favorable to the Jews in the copies sent to his home and that of his father, but when he read the same issue of the newspaper in a coffeehouse, he found that in other copies of the newspaper an entirely different story had been printed in the same place. In contrast, he was pleased to read a report from The Hague, which was printed in a newspaper from Leyden, about the strong reservations of the king of England against the expulsion of the Jews, and about his efforts to intervene on behalf of the Jews. In early February, Wertheimer himself wrote a news item about the celebrations and joy in Vienna to mark the birth of Prince Karl Joseph, to his mother Maria Theresa, while soldiers took stringent measures to prevent Jews from being seen at all in the streets of the city.45 Based on his deep research on the networks of Jewish intercession, Baruch Mevorach wrote: “The reader of the dozens of letters that constantly crossed each other’s path on the mail routes of Europe beginning in December 1744 sees that the arousal of Jewish groups to assist the community in distress is comparable to the response of the limbs of a single body. The unusual rapidity of the spread of information and the intercession to set diplomatic intervention in motion, which began almost simultaneously in several courts, all testify to this.”46 Selma Stern also attributed importance to the mobilization of the Court Jews to defend the general Jewish interest, but she also brought out the modern dimension of the episode, which differentiated it from traditional modes of intercession. In her opinion, the Court Jews estimated that the attack against the Jews at a time when it appeared that the countries of Europe were tending to include the Jews rather than excluding them was a move in the wrong direction.47 In this respect, the expulsion of the Jews of Prague received historical significance as no less than a test case for the legitimacy of a Jewish presence in Europe. Indeed, there was a sense that the earth was trembling beneath the feet of the Jews all over Europe. Hence, it is no wonder that the leaders of the Ashkenazic community in Amsterdam, for example, sent an urgent letter to

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Venice, warning against the dangerous precedent set by Maria Theresa: “Look and see whether such a thing has ever been, it must be feared lest the ulcer might spread and the fire might break out in the other kingdoms and states and every corner, because it is a moving blow, driving from one end [of the world] to another, every place where there are Jews.”48 The edict of expulsion that the queen had issued against the Jews of Buda, on the Danube, confirmed apprehension that it was not a unique occurrence, but a policy. In 1746, Maria Theresa enabled the Christian residents of the city to carry out the intention they had harbored for years and remove the Jews, and that community did indeed depart, though it found shelter in nearby Óbuda, which belonged to a family of Hungarian magnates.49 Two episodes from the feverish efforts at intercession express the character of the desperate and frustrating struggle against a rigid deadline, which first threatened all the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia and then only those of Prague. Respected leaders did not hesitate to humble themselves and display total submission so that the outcry of the Jews of Europe would finally reach the queen’s ears. “I got here close to Sunday evening,” Moses Kahan, one of the leaders of the Frankfurt community, reported to Wolf Wertheimer on his intervention with the archbishop of Mainz on January 3, 1745. “I was immediately received for a merciful interview with our lord, his highness the righteous Kurfürst, and with weeping about this to God, I prostrated myself on the earth, and I prayed, until I was truly seized by trembling.” Indeed, the result was good, and the archbishop immediately wrote to Maria Theresa, saying that the expulsion would injure the image of the entire empire, seeing an act that looked so contrary to the virtue of mercy. He, too, was aware that in the modern age, “the world” followed events, by means of public opinion, and judged them with a critical eye, according to moral criteria.50 At that time, the Jews still held out hope that international pressure would bear fruit, and the decree would be rescinded. But toward the end of March, many Jews had already left the city. In a desperate and humiliating stop, three intercessors from Prague made a final effort. The queen, who was recovering from the birth of her son, was about to leave Vienna to offer thanksgiving prayers at the monastery of Marienzell. On March 21, while she was on her way to the Schönbrunn Palace, Zanwil Korev, Wolf Lichtenstadt, and Herzke Fisk waited to accost her carriage. In submission to the twenty-eight-year-old woman, “When the queen arrived, the three men fell to their knees, holding a petition in their hand, and they wept bitter tears and begged until finally the queen ordered Prince [Heinrich] Auersperg, [the Grand Master of her Court],

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to accept the petition. He told them to stop crying and be quiet.” On the following day, tense and impatient to hear the response to the petition they had lodged, Korev, Lichtenstadt, and Fisk went to the prince. He responded, to their great disappointment, that the queen was busy with other matters, planning her trip, and she had not even bothered to read it.51 Maria Theresa’s personal behavior in the matter of the expulsion from Prague was particularly disturbing to the leaders of Britain, who were resolute in their intervention at the court in Vienna. As allies of Austria in the war of succession, they expected that at least out of political considerations their request to annul the decree would be heard with attention, and they found it difficult to understand the queen’s refusal. On January 8, 1745, Moses Hart and Aaron Franks appeared before King George II as representatives of the Jews of England. The two men, heads of wealthy Ashkenazi families from the mercantile elite in London, rushed to the royal palace after receiving information from Prague and Amsterdam, and they presented a well-argued petition. They stated that fifty thousand Jews were subject to the decree of expulsion and argued that it was an unjust action. They proposed that the king should establish an investigatory commission to examine the rumors of Jewish treachery and prevent collective punishment. According to their testimony, the king was impressed and convinced that it was a cruel step, and on that very day directions were issued, by means of William Stanhope, First Earl of Harrington, the head of the cabinet, to the ambassador in Vienna to intervene with urgency. The ambassador, Sir Thomas Robinson (1695–1770), a learned graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, devoted himself to the mission. In the name of the king, Harrison wrote to Robinson “if numbers of innocent people were made to suffer for the fault of some few traitors,” then the world would regard this as biased, and he instructed him to tell the queen that “His Majesty does extremely commiserate the terrible circumstances of distress to which so many poor and innocent families must be reduced,” if the decree were executed. Whereas in his intervention Augustus III, king of Poland, emphasized the economic damage that would be caused by the expulsion of the Jews, in England shock at the injustice was paramount. The argument that the decree of expulsion would arouse disapproval in the international sphere assumed that moral and humanistic considerations already played a significant part in determining policy. Arbitrary deeds could not be carried out without arousing public protest. In the English argument, the critical voice of Enlightenment is heard, protesting the injustice against the Jews in the name of universal humanity. Probably the clearest and most important statement, in this respect, is that

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which was included in the king’s name in the letter that Robinson received from Harrington on March 5, after their frustration had increased in view of the queen’s stubborn refusal to consider the international appeals. Not only was the expulsion contrary to the interest of her state, but “her persevering in that severe and merciless resolution could not be esteemed by all mankind as an indelible stain both in point of justice and clemency upon her hitherto moderate and equitable government.” The use of Enlightenment discourse, the demand to consider public opinion, the inclusion of the episode in a system of significance for all of mankind, and the warning regarding the moral disapproval that would be liable to cling to a state that took arbitrary measures made the expulsion from Prague a touchstone, arousing questions in principle and assuming modern meaning for the people of the time. As noted, in 1740, in the Plantation Act, England had already separated religious and civil affiliation, and in less than a decade it would be the first country in Europe to attempt to translate these principles, at least partially, into the judicial language of Parliament in the “Jew Bill,” another stage in the process of allowing the Jews of Europe to become citizens of their countries.52 During the first weeks, those active in the diplomatic campaign felt that the international pressure was very successful. Not only England but almost all the leaders of the states that the Jewish lobby addressed agreed to act to prevent the expulsion. However, as the actual date of the expulsion approached, it appeared that, aside from two postponements of the removal of the Jews of Prague, and later, the cancellation of the general expulsion, Maria Theresa did not heed the advice of the ministers close to her and the members of her family, nor did she respond to the petitions of the foreign diplomats. The disappointed Court Jews, kings, and diplomats found it difficult to be reconciled with their failure, and they wondered about the meaning of Maria Theresa’s refusal. Why did she instruct her associates not to give her the petitions? Why did she close the palace to ambassadors and intercessors? And why were people so afraid of her anger? Why did the queen insist that the Jews of Prague must be driven from the city? Was it the difficulty in receiving visitors particularly in the critical months of December and January, when she was in advanced pregnancy and not much involved in governmental matters? Or was she refusing to compromise on the policy that had already begun under her father, Emperor Karl VI, to restrict the number of Jews in the empire (the Familiant Law of 1726) and to prevent what her closest advisers saw as the damaging economic competition of the Jews of Prague with the Christian municipal population? Was the suspicion of collaboration with the Prussian invaders sufficient to make her resist all outside pressure to relent, even after those stories were proven to be groundless?

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The answer most probably lies in two insights communicated by the British ambassador in Vienna, Robinson, to his superiors in London, relating to Maria Theresa’s personality in the first years of her reign: her deep aversion to Jews, which was nurtured by the Jesuit education she received in her youth, and her ambition to demonstrate the power of her absolute rule. On March 26, Robinson sent a long summary report about his failed efforts to persuade the queen to relent: “The queen had commanded her ministers to receive no foreign representations upon a point which, as depending upon her sole Sovereign Will, She was at liberty to do as she pleased.” When people tried to persuade her to change her mind, she said decisively, “she should suspect any man, who should presume to divert her resolution, as one influenced by Jewish money.” Robinson went on to explain that it was hard to understand Maria Theresa’s behavior without considering the prejudices inculcated in her by her educators: “Her aversion to the sight of a Jew was too great to be concealed when at Pressburg she could not pass from the town to her palace but through the very street that was thronged by that people, and the very first order she gave upon her arrival at Prague the year before last was that no Jew should presume to enter the precinct of the Palace during her residence there.” This combination of aversion to the Jews and determination to impose her autonomous will overcame international codes, the interests of the state, and financial temptations. The intercessors from Prague offered her husband payment of all the Austrian military expenditures in Bohemia for half a year during the war, and the British ambassador did not conceal the threat that the cost of her refusal could be the stability of the alliance between Austria and Britain, but this was of no account compared to the demonstration of the single ruler’s power, as she sought to impose her mastery, in absolute freedom, as Robinson said with precision: “She was at liberty to do as she pleased.”53 Nevertheless, the Jewish lobby and international pressure did have some influence, though partial, gradual, and late, on the queen’s retreat from her sweeping decisions to expel all the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, and in the end upon her agreement in the summer of 1748 to allow the Jews of Prague to return. The exploitation of various channels of communication, the broad reverberations of the affair, the penetration of the courts of rulers, and public opinion among newspaper readers and the participants in conversations in coffeehouses gave it its modern contexts. The ethical arguments voiced during the affair, and mainly the presentation of anti-Jewish policy as arbitrary, deviant, and unacceptable in Europe of the mid-eighteenth century, an act that stained the state that committed it, brought the protest against the expulsion of the

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Jews into a new world, where the values of Enlightenment receive expression in politics as well. Most surprisingly, Maria Theresa’s image was not impaired. When the queen died in 1780, and Ezekiel Landau, the rabbi of Prague, eulogized her in Hebrew as the admirable “woman of valor” from Chapter 31 of Proverbs. Ignoring the episode that had taken place in his city ten years before his arrival and quoting the Bible—“She girdeth her loins with strength, and maketh strong her arms”—the rabbi praised her resistance to challengers in the War of Austrian Succession: “Is the deed not known, her rigor and heroism and the story of her greatness? Right away at the beginning of her reign, several kings and governments gathered against her with an army as numerous as the sand of the sea, and she did not fear their voice and was not frightened of their masses, and she rose up and drove them out of these lands with strength and heroism, and truly a woman who adorns herself with man’s adornments and dons the spirit of heroism is a marvelous thing.” Maria Theresa’s marvelous achievement was to repel the enemies who threatened her rule, and, as for the expulsion of the Jews—not a hint.54

Note s 1. Amlander, Sheerit yisrael, pp. 289–290. 2. See Arieh Morgenstern, “H.ishuvei haqets shel hamequbal ‘imanuel h.ai riqi,” Mysticism and Messianism, from Luzzatto to the Vilna Gaon [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Maor, 1999), pp. 19–36. 3. See Salman Shazar, Hatiqva leshnat 5500, be’iqvot “’et haqets” ler. Y ­ itsh.­aq h.aim kohen min ­hah.­azanim hamekhune dr. cantarini; Jacob Barnai, The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 35–36; Morgenstern, “Ha’aliyot leerets yisrael liqrat shnat 5500,” Mysticism and Messianism, From Luzzatto to the Vilna Gaon, pp. 37–75; Yisrael Bartal, “The Aliya of R. Elazar Rokeach (1740), Studies on the History of Dutch Jewry [Hebrew], 4 (1984): 7–25. 4. Raphael Mahler, Jewish Emancipation: A Selection of Documents (New York: The American Jewish Community, 1941), pp. 13–15; on the slave trade in the 1740s, see Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Penguin, 2007), ch. 2. 5. On Frederick II and Maria Theresa, see Clark, Iron Kingdom, The Rise and Fall of Prussia, 1600–1947, pp. 103–111, 183–246; Edward Crankshaw, Maria Theresa (London: Windmill, 2013). 6. See Pleschinski, ed., Voltaire—Friedrich der Grosse Briefwechsel, pp. 175– 176, 198, 211; Nicolson, The Age of Reason, pp. 121–124; Bodanis, Passionate Minds: The Great Scientific Affair, ch. 17.

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7. See Clark, Iron Kingdom, The Rise and Fall of Prussia, 1600–1947, pp. 190–197. 8. Voltaire, History of the War of 1741, The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, 33 (Akron, OH: Werner, 1905), ch. 1. 9. See Cruikshaw, Maria Theresa, p. 42. 10. Baruch Mevorach, “The Imperial Court Jew Wolf Wertheimer as Diplomatic Mediator during the War of the Austrian Succession,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 23 (1972): 184–213. 11. See Sutherland, “Samson Gideon: Eighteenth Century Jewish Financier,” pp. 82–83. 12. The manuscript of the chronicle, Igeret ­mah.­lat, in four parts (only the first three parts were written by Bezalel Brandeis) was published by Aaron Freimann, Leqorot hayehudim beprag bishnot 5502–5517, sefer igeret m ­ ah.­lat, Qovets ‘al yad (Berlin, 5658 [1898]), henceforth Igeret ­mah.­lat. The passage cited here comes from pt. 1, p. 1. 13. Abraham ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim (Bern, 5561), cited here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, pars. 1–2. See: Jirina Sedinova, “The Hebrew Historiogrpahy in Moravia at the 18th Century—Abraham Trebitsch (around 1760–1840),” Judaica Bohemiae X (1974): 51–61. 14. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, par. 4. 15. See Rudolf Glanz, “A berikht fun a ben-dor vegen der fayerlikhe protsesia fun di prager yidn dem 24sten april 1741,” Arkhion fun der geshikhte fun yidishn teater un drame, 1 (Vilna: Yivo, 1930), pp. 77–82. 16. Amlander, Sheerit yisrael, pp. 264–266. 17. Igeret ­mah.­lat, pt. 1, p. 2. 18. Ibid., pp. 3–4. 19. Ibid., pp. 4–18. 20. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, pars. 8–19. 21. See Richard Barnett, “The Travels of Moses Cassuto,” in Remember the Days: Essays on Anglo-Jewish History Presented to Cecil Roth, ed. John M. Shaftesley (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1966), pp. 73–121. 22. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, par. 24. 23. See Immanuel Etkes, The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), ch. 1; Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). 24. See Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, A Biographical Study; Feiner, Moses Mendelssohn: Sage of Modernity, chs. 2–3. 25. Julien Offray de la Mettrie, Machine Man and Other Writings, ed. Ann Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 1-39. See McMahon, Happiness: A History, pp. 222–233. 26. From the article Encyclopédie, ­https://​­f r​.­w ikisource​.­org​/­w iki​/­L​%­E2​%­80​ %­99Encyclop​%­C3​%­A9die​/­1re​_%­C3​%­A9dition​/­ENCYCLOP​%­C3​%­89DIE, trans. Jeffrey M. Green.

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27. David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 96–116 (sec. X: “Of Miracles”). ­http://​­philosophyfaculty​.­ucsd​.­edu​/­faculty​/­ewatkins​/­H UM4W2018​ /­Hume​-­M iracles​%­2810​%­29​.­pdf. 28. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des loix, preface, ­w ww​.­ecole​-­a lsacienne​.­org​/­CDI​ /­pdf​/­1400​/­14055​_ MONT​.­pdf, p. 19. Trans. Jeffrey M. Green. 29. See ­https://​­socialsciences​.­mcmaster​.­ca​/­econ​/­ugcm​/­3ll3​/­montesquieu​ /­spiritoflaws​.­pdf, pp. 494–496. 30. Ibid. 31. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, ch. 3; Goldberg, Converted Jews in the Polish Commonwealth [Hebrew], pp. 32, 75–81. 32. Simon Dubnow, “Mipinqesei qehilat mestislev,” Ea’avar 1 (1918): 63–75; Israel Heilprin, “Gezirat woszczyłło,” Zion 22 (1957): 56–67; Balaban, Toldot hayehudim beqraqov uveqazhimizh, 2, pp. 642–643. 33. Bernfeld, Sefer hadema’ot 3, pp. 246–247; Guldon and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” p. 130. 34. Johnathan Eybeschütz to the Community of Rome, 5505, published in Hashahar 12, 5644 (1904): 548–550. 35. Pöllnitz, Memoires of Charles Lewis Baron de Pöllnitz, 2, p. 216. 36. On the pogroms of November 1744 and the expulsion of the Jews of Prague, see, among others: Salomon Hugo Lieben, “Briefe von 1744–1748 über die Austreibung der Juden aus Prag,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Cechoslovakischen Repuyblik 4 (1932): 353–479; Salomon Hugo Lieben, “Handschriftliches zur Geschichte der Juden in Prag in den Jahren 1744–1754,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 2 (1904): 267–330; Salomon Hugo Lieben, “Handschriftliches zur Geschichte der Juden in Prag in den Jahren 1744–1754,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 3 (1905): 241–276; Aaron Freimann, “Zur Geschichte der Juden in Prag,” Zeitschrift für Hebraische Bibliographie 16 (1913): 97–100, 143–153; François Guesnet, “Texture of Intercession: Rescue Efforts for the Jews of Prague, 1744/1748,” Simon-Dubnow-Institut Jahrbuch 4 (2005): 355–375; François Guesnet, “Negotiating Under Duress: The Expulsion of Salzburg Protestants (1732) and the Jews of Prague (1744),” in Negotiating Religion: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. François Guesnet, Cécile Laborde, and Lois Lee (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 47–62; Solomon Hugo Lieben, “Leqorot hayehudim beprag mishnat 5504 ‘ad 5514,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 3 (1905): 31–47. 37. Lieben, “Handschriftliches zur Geschichte der Juden in Prag in den Jahren 1744–1754,” pp. 310–312; Baruch Mevorah, “Jewish Diplomatic Activities to Prevent the Expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia in 1744–1745,” Zion 28 (1963): 125–164 (here see pp. 126–128).

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38. Igeret ­mah.­lat, pt. 2, pp. 29–32. 39. Ibid., pt. 3, pp. 44–63. 40. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, 5505; Solomon Hugo Lieben, “Leqorot hayehudim beprag mishnat 5504 ‘ad 5514,” p. 36. Reconstruction of the expulsion here is based primarily on the chronicle, Igeret ­mah.­lat, pt. 2, pp. 32–43. 41. Igeret ­mah.­lat, pt. 2, p. 32. 42. On the struggle against the expulsion, see Mevorah, “Jewish Diplomatic Activities to Prevent the Expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia in 1744–1745,” pp. 125–164; Mevorah, “Hape’ilut haklal yisraelit lemini’at girusham shel yehudei bohemia,” ­Meh.­qarim ‘al toldot ‘am yisrael veerets yisrael (Haifa, 1970), pp. 187–232; Simon Schwartzfuchs, “Qehilot drom tsarfat, girush prag ver. yehonatan eibeschitz,” Pe’amim 23 (1985): 111–126; Guesnet, “Texture of Intercession: Rescue Efforts for the Jews of Prague, 1744/1748,” pp. 355–375. 43. Stern, The Court Jew, pp. 204–205. 44. “This is the relatsion or the story of the event that they wrote from the city of Vienna . . . Wednesday 18 Tevet, 5505,” in Heinrich Graetz, “Sendschreiben über die Austreibung der Prager und Böhmischen Juden unter Maria Theresia,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 34, no. 2 (1885): 58–59. 45. Lieben, “Briefe von 1744–1748 über die Austreibung der Juden aus Prag,” pp. 427–437. 46. Mevorah, “Jewish Diplomatic Activities to Prevent the Expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia in 1744–1745,” p. 136. 47. See Stern, The Court Jew, ch. 7. 48. Letter sent on January 22, 1745, from Amsterdam to Venice and circulated as a tract among many communities, in Heinrich Graetz, “Sendschreiben über die Austreibung der Prager und Böhmischen Juden unter Maria Theresia,” pp. 49–62. 49. See Katzburg, The History of the Jews in Hungary [Hebrew], p. 12. 50. Lieben, “Briefe von 1744–1748 über die Austreibung der Juden aus Prag,” pp. 388–391; Mevorah, “Jewish Diplomatic Activities to Prevent the Expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia in 1744–1745,” pp. 143–144. 51. Lieben, “Briefe von 1744–1748 über die Austreibung der Juden aus Prag,” p. 450; Guesnet, “Texture of Intercession: Rescue Efforts for the Jews of Prague, 1744/1748,” pp. 366–367; Mevorah, “Jewish Diplomatic Activities to Prevent the Expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia in 1744–1745,” p. 157. 52. On English intercession, see Johann Krengel, “Die englische Intervention zu Gunsten der böhmischen Juden im Jahre 1744,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 44 (1900): 268–281; Aubrey Newman, “The Expulsion of the Jews from Prague in 1745 and British Foreign Policy,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 22 (1968–1969): 30–41; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850, pp. 220–223.

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53. Krengel, “Die englischen Intervention zu Gunsten der böhmischen Juden im Jahare 1744,” pp. 275–280. 54. Ezekiel Landau, “Drush hesped,” in Marc Saperstein, “In Praise of an Anti-Jewish Empress: Ezekiel Landau’s Eulogy for Maria Theresa,” “Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn”: Themes and Texts in Traditional Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1966), p. 480.

Sixteen

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A VISION OF THE FUTURE Ascent of the Soul, a Path for the Just, and a Teacher of the Perplexed

The expulsion of the Jews from Prague became an international diplomatic incident and was covered in the press. In contrast, blood libels were prosecuted in Poland at least until the 1750s in relative obscurity. In central Europe, a network of intercession was activated effectively, using modern means and political connections to reach the hearts of decision-makers. However, in the Ukraine an entirely different voice was heard, offering mystical responses to the libels, the death sentences, and the pogroms that terrified many communities. This voice brings us back to the life of the Ba’al Shem Tov, who in the 1740s had already consolidated his status as a kabbalist and Master of the Name with marvelous powers and as the leader of a small group of associates and admiring disciples. At the height of the blood libels, the Ba’al Shem Tov reported that he had undergone an unprecedented mystical experience, raising his soul to upper worlds.

“Th en A ll th e Sh ell s W i ll Be De stroy ed a n d Th er e W i ll Be a Ti m e of Gr ace a n d R ede m ption” The Ba’al Shem Tov reported in a letter from Medzhibozh to his brother-in-law, Gershon in Hebron, that “On Rosh Hashana, (September 15–16, 1746), 5507, I performed an oath for the ascent of the soul, as you know, and I saw marvelous things in a vision, what I had not seen until now, from the day I knew my own mind.” By means of a spiritual ladder, he climbed up to the palace of the Messiah, and he asked permission to speak with Satan, to try to revoke the libels that were to be prosecuted against the communities of the Ukraine. This heavenly intercession was focused on the blood libel in Zasław. According to

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the Ba’al Shem Tov, he foresaw, with his power of prophecy, that it would take place in a year: “I prayed there for what the Lord did in that way, and about the great anger, that Samael [the evil one] was given several Jewish souls to kill, and some of them who converted [to Christianity] were later killed.” This protest, directed at Heaven with the courage of a defender penetrated with awareness of his mission on behalf of the whole community, failed to avert the decree, and the Ba’al Shem Tov had to be satisfied with knowing that at least the theological meaning of the blood libels had been explained to him, as well as their place in the divine plan. The disturbing question that he directed at Satan, “What did he see in it, and what was his opinion about those who converted and were killed afterward,” received a satisfactory answer, and he shared it with Rabbi Gershon: “He answered me that his intention was in the name of heaven, for if they remained alive after conversion, then, when there were more libels, then they would not [be able to] sanctify the name of heaven, because they all would convert to save their lives.” When the letter was sent, everybody already knew what had happened, but the Ba’al Shem Tov also explained why, after the blood libel of Zasław, the Jews who had been captured chose to be killed rather than convert, and, on the strength of his mystical experience, he proclaimed that this was precisely the will of God, who in this manner tested the faith of the children of his people. “And thus it was for our many sins afterward,” the letter, which was sent to the Land of Israel, reports the sorrowful events: “For the holy community of Zasław had a blood libel against several people, and two of them converted, and afterward they killed them, and the others sanctified the name of heaven with great holiness and they died horrible deaths, and after that there were blood libels in the holy community of Szepetówka and in the holy community of Dunajow and they didn’t convert after they saw what happened in Zasław, and all of them gave up their souls to sanctify the name and they sanctified the name of heaven and withstood the test.” However, the Ba’al Shem Tov returned from the palace of the Messiah and the conversation with Satan with a message of consolation that at least gave a purpose to the suffering. By virtue of that devotion of the soul, divine vengeance for the cruel deeds would ultimately come: “The Messiah will come and take our vengeance and make atonement for his land and people” (Deut. 32:43).1 The lack of writings of the Ba’al Shem Tov and the need to depend on hagiographic stories (mainly Shivhei Habesht) and on teachings transmitted in his name by his disciples and admirers makes this letter (in fact two letters from different dates that were combined into a single text) an autobiographical document of the first order, and scholars use it as a valuable key for deciphering his

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self-image. His brother-in-law, Rabbi Gershon of Kotov, who had been with him in Medzhibozh in the early 1740s, left Poland and arrived in Jerusalem in 1747, later settling in Hebron. Rabbi Gershon was the person closest to the Ba’al Shem Tov, who taught him how to attain mystical devequt (cleaving to God) by means of the letters of the Torah, and thus to penetrate the hidden secret of the text and to merit the flow of divine abundance. To a great degree their correspondence, of which only a little has been preserved, reveals their intimacy and shared ideas. The long wait for letters, which did not reach their destination for more than a year because of flaws in the postal system and plagues was frustrating, and the prolonged separation from his family, aroused powerful yearnings. “I sit here alone, imprisoned in my house of study, by myself all the time, with my little son,” Rabbi Gershon told his brother-in-law in a letter from 1748, “and I do not go out and come back in, and I have found no man after to my heart.” Whereas in Medzhibozh and earlier in the kloiz of Brody he had enjoyed fruitful partnership with scholars and kabbalists, in Hebron he felt doubly exiled: he found no one to talk to, and he did not feel comfortable as an Ashkenazi in a community that was entirely Sephardi. “If I dwelt among the Ashkenazim,” Rabbi Gershon wrote, “I would not have so many troubles.” Both of them knew very well that the Ba’al Shem Tov’s desire to join Rabbi Gershon in the Land of Israel was unrealistic: “The rabbis here asked me to write to you to urge you to come here and make your home here, and they desire to see your face, but what can I do, for I know your nature, that you must pray in your own congregation, aside from other things, that I have despaired to have you come to the Holy Land unless the messiah comes soon in our days.” While the great distance separated them, he waited impatiently for at least some letters that would inform him about the welfare of his family and share the spiritual world of the Ba’al Shem Tov with him. “For love is as fierce as death and more marvelous than the love of women, and don’t be tight-fisted with your brother, who desires thirstily to hear your pleasant words,” Rabbi Gershon implored him.2 However, beyond all this, the two were bound together by their mystical religious conversation. The Ba’al Shem Tov shared the experiences he underwent with his brother-in-law personally and in writing. He instructed him and did not conceal his pride about his status in the upper realms and awareness of his mission, which thrilled him. In the same letter, the Ba’al Shem Tov told how in the ascent of his soul on Rosh Hashanah, 5507, he was greeted with joy and honor, how he spoke with souls, and how his self-confidence increased in his power to exert influence, by means of kabbalistic deeds. The question he posed to the Messiah, “When are You coming, my Lord,” placed personal responsibility on his shoulders and was a sign to him of his vision of the future, although,

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to his disappointment, it postponed the time of redemption: “He answered me: ‘Once your Torah has spread throughout the world, and your fountains will be spread abroad, what I taught you and what you attained, and they will enable Jews to make ascents like you, and then all the qelipot will be destroyed, and it will be a time of reconciliation,’ and I was surprised at that, and I was very sad because of the length of time, so long, until it will be possible.” In that same ascent of the soul, his magical powers were intensified, and “three enchantments and three holy names” were communicated to him, with a severe warning lest those secrets be passed on to others. On Rosh Hashanah 1749 the Ba’al Shem Tov’s soul once again ascended, and he told his brother-in-law how he strove as an intercessor in the upper realms, with the good of the public in his mind, and hidden powers of prophecy were available to him: “I saw such a great prosecutor that Samael was almost given permission to completely destroy countries and communities, and I devoted my soul and prayed, let us fall into the hand of the Lord and let us not fall into the hands of men.” As in the case of the blood libel of Zasław, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s mystical intervention failed to avert the disaster, but this time it was changed into a severe epidemic, “great weakness and plague, unlike any that ever was in the states of Poland.”3 During the 1740s, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s circle formed in Medzhibozh. Like Luzzatto’s society, the disciples looked to the head of the group for guidance in the worship of God and took part in mystical prayer and action with him. Several members of this group lived in high spiritual tension, they studied Kabbalah, and they strove for ecstatic experiences, and some of them had previously been ascetics.4 The Hasidic tradition recounts that two of the most prominent followers of the Ba’al Shem Tov (Ze‘ev Kotses and David Forkes) were already the type of pietist who strove for fear of God on a high level and had taken special obligations upon themselves when they met the Ba’al Shem Tov for the first time. Hence, they did not immediately accept his leadership until they became convinced of his high spiritual abilities. One of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s innovations was instruction to change their religious attitude and reject asceticism and self-mortification. Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka, another member of the group, ceased the mortification of the body, by means of which he tried to overcome the “strange thoughts” and the temptations of sin and impurity that gnawed at his soul, after the Ba’al Shem Tov taught him mystical techniques to overcome them. According to one of the “praises” of the Ba’al Shem Tov, in which Rabbi Nachman proudly told stories about his marvelous closeness to the circle of the Ba’al Shem Tov: “When I was very pious, I went to a cold ritual bath every day, and in that generation no one could stand such cold water,” but nevertheless he could not chill the heat that burned within him, “and I could not

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free myself of strange thoughts, until I submitted to the wisdom of the Ba’al Shem Tov.” Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, formerly the rabbi of the community of Szarogród, who was discharged from his post and even driven out because of his ascetic ways, was one of the prominent members of the early band of disciples from the 1740s and one who disseminated the Ba’al Shem Tov’s teachings in print. He apparently underwent a personal and religious revolution when he discovered the Ba’al Shem Tov and submitted to him as an admiring disciple. In a letter preserved in Shivhei Habesht, he is asked not to torment his body with fasts: “I am deeply upset at your words that . . . you should not place yourself in this danger. This is the way of melancholy and sadness, and the Shekinah does not inspire through sadness but only through happiness of doing mitzvoth.” The Ba’al Shem Tov’s teachings rejected ascetic and gloomy pietism and required the importance of the body to be accepted, and he indeed instructed Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye: “Hide not thyself from thine own flesh, you should not, God forbid, fast more than is required and is necessary.”5 The attitude to the band of the pious followers, enthusiastic in the worship of God, was frequently skeptical and contemptuous, as one may hear, for example, in the satirical criticism of Rabbi Solomon (Ze`ev Kotses and David Forkes) (1717–1781), who regarded the influence of these followers on the public as a challenge to the authority of scholars: And some of them are devoid of any small or slim knowledge, nor did they labor in esoteric matters and not in the Talmud, Rashi’s commentary, or the Tosafot. Subtly they deal [1 Sam. 23:22], leaping on the mountains [Song of Songs, 2:8], raising a moan, and in prayers and entreaties, in song and melody, in voices and tunes, change dozens of times, and their deeds are strange. . . . They sway like the trees in the forest, their hair stands on end, and things like that, that our ancestors never imagined, and with our eyes we have seen, and they are the virtues of our time, and though he has not read and has not studied, he is called wise and termed a rabbi.6

Though this critical and hostile criticism might refer to pietist societies that preceded the Ba’al Shem Tov, they were very similar to his. However, among the more than two thousand Jews who maintained a well-developed community life in the city of Medzhibozh, the Ba’al Shem Tov and his society were highly respected. The list of houses in the city and tax payments, that Moshe Rosman discovered in the archives of the officials of the Czartoryski family, shows that the Ba’al Shem Tov lived in a house owned by the community, set aside for religious officiants and exempt from taxation. In the Polish registers of 1740, he is called the “kabbalist” and Ba’al Shem. In Rosman’s opinion, this means

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that the Ba’al Shem Tov “played an acknowledged role, was supported by the community establishment, and fit in well with the existing institutional structure,” and his society did not grow on the margins of Jewish society, nor did it threaten its stability.7 The figure of the Ba’al Shem Tov is discernible through the letter of the ascent of the soul, which shows how he regarded himself as a man possessing marvelous powers, and through the testimony of his contemporaries in the stories of praise: a man who would become central in an innovative, even revolutionary religious movement. The Ba’al Shem Tov formed a new pattern of leadership, whose authority was based on attractive charisma, and on a special connection with the upper realms, promising cures, moderation of anti-Jewish decrees, and concern for those suffering distress. The Ba’al Shem Tov’s fellowship in Mizhibozh was the kernel from which an enthusiastic movement of religious revival would spring, in parallel with the trend for religious awakening in Christian Europe. As Immanuel Etkes has shown, for the Ba’al Shem Tov, prayer was an exalted religious experience that offered the worshiper satisfaction and pleasure and had the power to influence and effect changes in God and in the other forces that populated the palaces of the upper realm. His followers took him to be a holy man, endowed with supernatural abilities. As with the Quakers in England, the enthusiastic preachers in the New World, and the faithful, given over to religious hysteria, in the cemetery of Saint-Médard in Paris during the 1730s, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s prayer was characterized by movement and convulsions, shouting and tremors. For example, it was told that “when the Ba’al Shem Tov repeated the Eighteen Benedictions out loud,” in the House of Study in Medzhibozh, “he was seized with a great trembling, and he would always shake and shake in his prayer,” and sometimes he made things around him tremble, as in a story told by David Forkes: “Once while the Ba’al Shem Tov was traveling he prayed near the eastern wall in a house. There were barrels full of grain that were placed at the western wall, and you could see that the grain was shaking.”8 As in all radical religious behavior, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s ecstatic prayer was subversive of the traditional order because it was a strong expression of the religious superiority of the individual. Unlike the figure of the communal kabbalist, who did not diverge from the establishment norms, the Ba’al Shem Tov did not accept the existing situation; he frequently voiced criticism and, to those who listened to him, expressed discomfort regarding religious and social phenomena that seemed erroneous or unfair to him, and he sometimes even confronted the leaders, religious officiants, and physicians. He disagreed with them from his existential point of view as a mystic, whose knowledge of the

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truth was higher, whose sensitivity was greater, and whose prayer was superior and more effective. The Ba’al Shem Tov boasted of his ability to discern the flaws in knives used for ritual slaughter and to expose unreliable slaughterers. As a self-appointed inspector who did not rely on the considerations of rabbis and leaders, he wandered among various communities, examined the level of meticulousness and intention in ritual slaughter, and he did not hesitate to demand that slaughterers who, in his opinion, had failed in performance of their duties should be discharged and never hired again. When he was dissatisfied with the content or style of sermons of reproach, he became angry, and he demanded that the preachers must acknowledge the special approach he proposed. One of the stories in Shivhei Habesht relates that he caused a preacher, who was directing sharp words of admonition at his listeners to stop in the middle of his Sabbath sermon in the synagogue: “The Ba’al Shem Tov heard that the preacher was vilifying the Jews. The Ba’al Shem Tov became angry, and he told the gabbai [beadle] to go and call the householders.” The rumor that the Ba’al Shem Tov was displeased made the audience leave the synagogue. Surprised and embarrassed, the preacher tried to find out what had caused the anger, and the response was a stinging rebuke: “The Ba’al Shem Tov jumped up and tears poured from his eyes. He said: ‘You speak evil of the Jewish people. A Jew goes to the market every day, but toward evening, when it becomes dark, he becomes anxious, OY, I’ll skip Minhah. He goes to a house and prays Minhah. Even if he does not know what he is saying, the Seraphim and the Ofanim are stirred by it.’” This is one of the major expressions of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s desire to change the standard for evaluating religious devotion and to place intention first, even at the cost of expelling the preacher, who evidently earned his livelihood that way. As a Master of the Name, he often competed with licensed physicians and mocked them in order to demonstrate their inferiority and to convince people that he possessed higher authority, as he replied “to a great Jewish doctor” who had failed to cure: “You approached the sick man corporally and I approach him spiritually.” In one quotation that found its way into Shivhei Habesht, it sounds as if he is placing the blame for a serious persecution of the 1750s (the affair of the Frankists) directly on the rabbinical leadership, which had failed, in his opinion. The comment is cloudy, and it might relate only to his discontentment with logic-chopping erudition, but one cannot ignore the harshness and subversion of his blunt language: “He was very angry with the rabbis and said it was because of them, since they invented lies of their own and wrote false introductions.”9

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In his study on the Ba’al Shem Tov, Immanuel Ekes traced the process of building his authority as a communal leader of a new kind, anchored “in his magical abilities, in the exceptional powers he was endowed with, in the ascent of his soul, in his ecstatic prayer, and in his mystical experiences,” and he concluded that it was the Ba’al Shem Tov’s charisma that gave validity and authority to his new path in pietism.10 This interpretation, which intensifies the Ba’al Shem Tov’s historical importance, also makes it possible to return to the earlier insights of Jacob Katz, the historian who sought to demonstrate that Hasidism was a revolutionary phenomenon in eighteenth-century Jewish history. He showed that a decidedly religious innovation, such as the penetration of Kabbalah into the consciousness of the community at large was enough to cause “a general change in values in the religious realm.” The central expression of this change was initially on the theological level, in the mystical meaning that was given to observation of the commandments, to study, and to prayer. Intention was important, because religious acts played a role “in activating and repairing the divine system.” Not only “the fate, the reward or punishment of the individual [depended on it], but also the advancement or delay of redeeming the entire world.” One of the immediate consequences of this tendency, which had already begun in the previous century, was the rise in the power of the religious elite of kabbalists. The Ba’al Shem Tov did not innovate this, but his charismatic personality, which attracted faithful disciples, all of whom underwent a fundamental conversion experience, and his self-confidence in his ability to help individuals and the public, brought together a “holy society” around him, making him famous, at least in his nearby surroundings, as a marvelous personage. The Ba’al Shem Tov’s circle was a decided example of religious awakening: “An outburst of charismatic religiosity whose validity and authority derive from consciousness of direct contact with the divine sphere.” From that point of view, Katz believed, this new pietism was not only “an additional variety of traditional values, but rather—at least in part—a change and replacement for them.”11 In the following generations, this religious and social revolution expanded greatly, so that toward the last quarter of the eighteenth century in Poland–Lithuania a large movement was formed, inspired by the teachings and figure of the Ba’al Shem Tov.

“Th e W ise W i ll Glow Lik e th e Spl en dor of th e Fir m a m ent” The scholar of Jewish mysticism over the generations, Gershom Scholem, noted that the kabbalistic religious enthusiasm was focused around the personality

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of the Hasid. In his opinion, this was an entirely new phenomenon because the personage and his connection with believers as a venerated model for religious leadership was more important than the religious teachings themselves.12 This identifying sign of the new times, which was so conspicuously present in the Ba’al Shem Tov, is also to be seen in another kabbalistic biography that we have traced in this part of the eighteenth century. Rabbi Moses H.ayim Luzzatto, the young kabbalist who took part in the general religious awakening in Europe in the 1720s and 1730s, also headed a holy society as a Hasid. As noted, Luzzatto left his society behind and fled from his persecutors to Amsterdam. In the years when the society of the Ba’al Shem Tov was forming in Poland, Luzzatto was forced to observe the disintegration of his group in Italy from a distance. In his letters he did try to encourage his followers not to be discouraged, to try to preserve their brotherhood within the society, and to persist especially in continued study of the Zohar. However, they admitted that in his absence these tasks were almost impossible. “How great are our sighs for his departure,” one of the letters says. “For our many sins, since then we lack everything, especially the wisdom of truth [the Kabbalah], which has been relegated to an obscure corner, and study of the Zohar is under extreme duress, so that it is impossible to persist in study at night, except at the most four or five hours.” Several of the veteran members of the group left it, and the one who came to head it, the physician and kabbalist Moses David Valle, “by whose words we go out and by whose word we come in, does not know what to do.” In 1743, Luzzatto settled in Acre. In a letter to his disciples from that summer he promised, “I will not cease spreading my peace over you, even from a distance.” The response from Padua already was imbued with the spirit of decline. Without the personal, central presence of the holy saint, the Holy Society had no future, and in this respect at least Luzzatto’s enemies achieved what they wanted.13 However, nothing could block Luzzatto’s creative talent. Two of his books from the early 1740s, his ethical work Mesilat yesharim (The Path of the Just) and his allegorical play Layesharim tehila (Praise to the Just), whose similar titles correspond with one another became classics of early modern Jewish culture.14 Mesilat yesharim, published in Amsterdam in 1740, placed difficult demands before a Jew who sought to fulfill “the duty of a man in his world,” and to improve his moral qualities. Although, “he is a man and not an angel. Therefore it is impossible for him to reach the power of an angel.” Though Luzzatto acknowledged the weakness and limitations of mortals, he set overcoming the desires as the supreme task, resisting the pleasures and temptations of the world, and demanded that one should “certainly do everything one can to approach the level of an angel, and it is worthy to approach it.” He offered an

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inspiring vision to rare individuals, a gradual path toward deep spiritual experiences, enabling one to climb from stage to stage up to cleaving to God: “The endeavor is for a person to be entirely separate and removed from the material and always cleave at all times and in every hour to his God.” The clear language of the book, its relative simplicity, its systematic structure, and mainly its illuminated and optimistic view of man in the world made it the most popular and widely circulated ethical work of our times. The introduction already shows how far Luzzatto had come from the influential ethical works of the beginning of the century such as Qav yashar and Shevet musar. The “just man” to whom Mesilat yesharim is addressed did not dwell in a dark and threatening world populated by demons that sought to attack him with abominable powers capable of afflicting him with the horrible punishments of hell. Unlike the kabbalistic ethical works, which mistrusted human instincts, Luzzatto offered people the feasible and positive task of self-improvement and reforming the world, to go “toward the goal of true improvement, that is, whose outcome is strengthening the Torah and improving the brotherhood of nations.” In Luzzatto’s illuminated universe, the connection with God is similar to human love, with all the desire and pleasure it entails: Behold the matter of love is that a person should seek and desire closeness to Him, blessed be He, and pursue His holiness the way a man rushes after something more desirable than He with intense longing, so that mentioning His name, blessed be He, and to speak in His praise, and to be occupied with the words of His Torah and His divinity, blessed be He, will truly be an amusement and a pleasure, the way one loves the wife of one’s youth or one’s only son, powerful love, so that even talking about them is a pleasure and joy for one.15

Like the Ba’al Shem Tov, Luzzatto believed that a good preacher was not one who “slanders the Jews” with threatening words of reprimand, but rather a wise and loving guide and counselor who lays out a path in the maze “the garden of confusion.” Luzzatto recommended regarding the mundane world as inferior to the pleasures of the world to come, but he also proposed a full life of struggle with human nature by intentionally choosing a moral life in society, a life of liberation from submission to the material: “Very gradually he will be set free from the prison of folly in which the material confines him.” Like the Ba’al Shem Tov’s advice to Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye to abandon the path of asceticism, Luzzatto also severely criticized “the stupid, sanctimonious people” who, in his opinion, give a bad name to the exalted and desired virtue of piety, “so that according to the custom practiced in the world, when you see someone acting

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pious, you can’t refrain from suspecting him of coarseness in spirit . . . so that most people imagine that piety depends on reciting many psalms and very long confessions, difficult fasts, and immersion in ice and snow.” In Mesilat yesharim this model of piety, which tortures the body, is completely rejected: “There are all things that the mind is uncomfortable with, and the spirit is not tranquil, for true piety, which is desired and cherished, is far from the image of our reason.” True piety is natural for man. It is acquired by working on oneself, on improving moral virtues, and on a spiritual effort to rise above the material. To be a just man and not a self-afflicting man is the desire of the truly pious.16 Luzzatto was far from the Ba’al Shem Tov’s vicinity but, in parallel with him and his disciples, he developed several similar ideas, mainly on the importance of cleaving to God and on the possibility to encounter divinity within material life. According to Mesilat yesharim, this is possible even while cleaving to God: “Even at a time when one is busy with material things necessary to one because of the body, still his soul will not deviate from exalted communion with God.” Luzzatto, as noted, no longer held a position of leadership but, like the Ba’al Shem Tov, he believed that the mission of the true pious man was to lead the community: “It is worthy of every pious man to direct his actions for the benefit of his entire generation, to absolve them and to protect them.” Those who speak in defense of the generation “are the true shepherds of Israel, whom the Holy One blessed be He greatly desires, and they devote themselves for His flock and demand and intercede for their welfare and benefit in every way, and they always stand in the breach to pray for them and to undo harsh decrees.” It is not surprising that Luzzatto’s teachings, probably including the writings that Yekutiel Gordon brought with him when he returned to Poland from Italy, found their way into Hasidic thought, and the inner tradition of the Hasidic movement reported that even the early leaders regarded him as a pious and rejected his persecution and silencing.17 The play Layesharim tehila, which was published only three years later, would seem to be very distant not only from the realm of demanding ethical works but also from the kabbalists’ experience of revelation, and from the Torah culture of the rabbinical elite in general. This was a “poem of friendship” that Luzzatto wrote in honor of the marriage of one of his students, in which he demonstrates his literary talent and his rich mastery of the Hebrew language to demonstrate and strengthen his blessings with glowing words and poetry in praise of a happy life for the couple, wishing that “they should be sated with pleasures all their days.” Inspired by Italian pastoral poetry and continuing from his two early plays, Luzzatto produced a well-formed and impressive literary work in 1743 that was exceptional in its day and recognized in later generations as a

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masterpiece, inaugurating modern Hebrew literature. For example, here are the lines that begin the second scene of the second act: “Nothing is better than that I should turn to see these things, grassy meadows, springs of water, that flow from the tops of cliffs; I will direct my ear to the voice of the dove or the bird, I will lie on the hay beneath the tall tree.” They introduce the reader to a tranquil scene of pleasures, warm and sensual, with the beauty and abundant goodness of nature, a scene that seems to speak in Hebrew of the paintings of Watteau and Boucher, the French artists who portrayed the leisure of the upper classes. However, the similarity between the titles of Mesilat yesharim and Layesharim tehila is far from a coincidence. Despite the vast differences in style, the play was also ultimately an ethical work in which the advantage, nobility, and victory of the just man is depicted. At the same time, he both believes in divine providence and heeds the voice of reason. The allegorical villains of the play, Deceit, Folly, and Pride, the son of Desire, plot to tempt man to submit to them, but in the end they are roundly defeated. However, Integrity, the son of Truth and the hero of the play, is different from the pious man of Mesilat yesharim who is advancing toward cleaving to God because he desires life in this world, nature, and love. Luzzatto’s new light was therefore double. In these two works, which he wrote in exile in Amsterdam during the 1740s, he opened the gates of divine illumination and striving for Holy Communion with God and the gates of accepting the earthly world through contemplation and investigation of nature. Praise of the New Science is included in Layesharim tehila. The appearance of the curious scientist, in the figure of Inquiry, in the second act moves the pastoral and aesthetic adventure, with the pleasures and beauty of nature, to a new dimension. The monologue of Inquiry examines the complex world of plants in a detailed and precise manner, observing the functions of the roots that suck “all moisture and nourishment from the richness of this earth,” and he patiently teaches the way flowers multiply, all with the inspiration of the new botany, which had appeared just a few years earlier in the studies of Carl Linnaeus. This is just an example of the wonders of Creation, Inquiry explains, of the vast knowledge about animals and plants and of recognition of the wonderful harmony and order, which show the hand of God, the Creator, and of Providence, but which still can be learned only by him “whose eyes are no longer foolish or indolence.” Integrity, who listens to him, is surprised, and admits: “For knowledge is pleasant to the soul; it is a joy to the heart, light to the eyes.” However, Folly mocks the researchers who will “wear out their spirit, and fill books with abominations like the sand of the sea, with no benefit. They weary themselves to find out how the garden will grow at sowing time,” and she recommends a life of pleasure and frivolity (“Let us pledge to joy today, let us

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laugh at fear, for soon it will be tomorrow, and we will all die”). Deceit seeks to lower the scientific ethos and to present the dramatic phenomena of nature like storms and the eruptions of volcanos as subject to the blind laws of chance, but Patience moderates and compromises, placing faith in God above investigation and supports the opinion that one cannot decipher all the secrets of Creation.18 It would be an error to regard this play, brimming with joie de vivre, love, and faith, as evidence that Luzzatto was reconciled, that he had overcome the banning of his writings and forced separation from his group. In Layesharim tehila, Luzzatto expressed his anger. The optimistic image of the world that he drew in his allegorical play was, to a great degree, Utopian, whereas in the picture of reality, control and influence are in the hands of Deceit and Folly who, in their swindling and the support of the masses, bring harm to people of integrity and intelligence like himself. “For my soul is disgusted, and all those evildoers together are like an abomination in my eyes, children of the courts of intelligence,” Folly speaks out defiantly with words of hatred. The play takes place, according to the author’s introduction, in a dark age: “This is the history of the breakdown in time, for this is an evil age. The world is whoring after harlots and spreaders of lies [Ps. 40:5], and deceit seduces the heart of the masses and leads them to vanity. . . . For the spirit of desire led them astray corrupted them, and the seductions of the imagination enticed them.” In words that sound autobiographical in the light of Luzzatto’s experience, Intelligence complains about the fate of the innocent man who falls victim to his enemies: “How can people say of the world that it is built, for behold it is chaotic? . . . What about the foundation of law and justice, do you find them well founded? For only this have we seen: iniquity flourishes . . . and the few with faith are thrown to the ground; outside there is no level path, the innocent, those who avoid evil, are mocked and despised.” But the play, representing as yet unfulfilled wishes, concludes with the victory of the Just. In Luzzatto’s vision of the future: “The wise will glow like the splendor of the firmament, wise men will inherit honor, and all who have a soul in their mouths will say: Honor does not befit the fool, for the just, pleasant praise. . . . Indeed, this is the action of the Lord, and in the end honor will come.”19 A letter sent from Tiberias in the summer of 1746 reports that “the rabbi of the assembly and the divine kabbalist . . . Moses H.ayim Luzzatto died with all his household in the plague before the Lord on 26 Iyyar in the city of Acre near Tiberias, and he was buried in Tiberia near Rabbi Akiva, of blessed memory.”20 He was only thirty-nine years old, but the story of his life and his works ultimately gained him fame and renown, of which his persecutors and those who destroyed his works had deprived him. What appears in retrospect as a life

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of contradiction, and the combination of scholar, author, poet, moralist, and enthusiastic kabbalist, aroused great attention and made him one of the most influential figures to emerge from European Jewry in the eighteenth century. The Hasidic tradition cleared him of the suspicions that had clung to him, and in the name of Dov Ber, the Magid of Mezeritch, a disciple of the Ba’al Shem Tov, it was said, “His generation was not capable of understanding his righteous and asceticism, and therefore many of our people, because of great lack of knowledge, spoke greatly about this saintly man unjustly.” Surprisingly, Moses Mendelssohn offered a similar estimation. When Solomon Dubno, an early Maskilic book collector, published a new edition of Layesharim tehila in Berlin thirty-seven years after its publication in Amsterdam, thereby placing the play in the library of Haskalah, Mendelssohn sent a copy to the famous scholar Gottfried Herder (1744–1801), explaining that the author was a great genius but that the fanaticism of certain rabbis deterred him, and he withdrew into a life of isolation and died an untimely death. Indeed, the Maskilim adopted Luzzatto for themselves, finding in him a valuable precedent, a source of inspiration for Hebrew literature, and a martyr. As he said of himself, he was “bound on the altar of the Lord,” but he did not give in to his persecutors. They could identify with his fate and see him as a model for Maskilim whose opponents sought to silence them.21

“To Br ing Th e m to th e H a ppine ss of Succe ss, to M a k e Th e m H a ppy ” Even Jacob Emden, the third figure from these decades whose life story we are following in parallel with the Ba’al Shem Tov and Luzzatto, relented toward the man whom, a few years earlier, he had seen as an enemy. The two men never met, but Emden was quite familiar with Luzzatto’s story in Amsterdam and he felt satisfaction knowing that the threats and bans managed to avert the danger that he would establish a new religious sect. “For from then on, nothing bad was heard from him.” His ethical work Mesilat yesharim, and in addition a short and systematic introduction for those studying Talmud, which was printed in Amsterdam the year before the play Layesharim tehila, enabled even Luzzatto’s persecutors to moderate their opinion of him, though not to exonerate him entirely. When he wrote those words in the 1750s, Emden knew that Luzzatto had already died in the Land of Israel, but he could not forget that he had left behind “a root growing a head of wormwood,” his disciple Yekutiel Gordon, who was then disseminating his ostensibly heretical teachings throughout Lithuania.22

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The great conflicts in which Emden was to become embroiled still lay before him. They broke out in the following decade, whereas during the 1740s he was struggling to overcome the family tragedies that had struck him: the death of his first two wives and of his young children, with reestablishing his family with his third wife, and with recovery from the illness that in early 1743 had brought him to the verge of death. However, throughout that difficult period, he invested all his strength in what he thought would be the project of his life, which would acquire a place of honor for him in the Torah elite of his generation. In the three years between 1745 and 1748, he wrote feverishly and published three volumes that comprised almost two thousand pages of a comprehensive, complex, and complicated work on the prayer book. This was the encyclopedic, monumental project of a single man, unique in the culture of the Jewish religious book, produced in the private printing house in Emden’s home in Altona on the authority of the privilege he had received from the king of Denmark.23 Unlike the Ba’al Shem Tov, who did not commit his teachings to writing at all, Emden’s writing flowed abundantly. Unlike Luzzatto, it was impossible to silence Emden’s voice. His work on the prayer book was incredibly ambitious. He sought to attain perfection, to include everything possible, and to produce a work of the highest quality both in content and in form, giving special attention to fine paper and beautiful type. In his memoirs from that period, he recounts that the prayer book project was celebrated and aroused interest around him even before it was printed: “Behold, at the start of the work, immediately this project gained a reputation, and it found favor in the eyes of all who beheld it, such that everyone who saw it while it was still in his hand swallowed it [Isaiah 28:4], and almost as soon as the first part of it was finished, they already wished to buy it.” Emden did not hesitate to boast about his handiwork and thus he was, in fact, admitting how much he needed to have his abilities praised and his work admired. The goal he set for these three volumes was extremely exalted. In his view, it was not only a scholarly project and a guide to religious life but also a critical and corrective work that paved the way to no less than a happy life. He explained: “I included many moral messages in it, that I imagined would be very useful to arouse hearts, especially among my Ashkenazi brethren, to distance them from alien practices and remove every flaw from them, to bring them to the happiness of success and to make them happy.”24 Emden did not know about the project of the Encyclopedia, which was emerging in France just at that time, and whose initiators were inspired by a vision of human happiness. Indeed, the gap was enormous. Whereas the authors of the Encyclopedia believed in happiness attained by liberating humanity from the heavy hand of

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the tradition that bound and subjected them, by means of knowledge and rational, critical thought, the rabbi from Altona harnessed his prayer book project to shoring up the rabbinical elite and insulating the Jews from tendencies that were liable to undermine their faith and break through the boundary between Jews and Christians. His vision of happiness was far closer to that of the leaders of the religious awakening who wished to purify religion. Emden’s desire to gain the recognition of the rabbinical and communal establishment ultimately restricted the autonomy he strove so hard to achieve. We have already seen how the leaders of the community prevented him from printing Sheilat ya’vets to avoid infringing on the authority of the rabbi of Altona, Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen. Now, when he finished the first part of his prayer book, Emden swallowed his pride, overcame his contempt, and courted that rabbi in order to obtain an approbation of his book from him. However this, too, was unsuccessful. Anger against him arose when several influential businessmen in the community discovered two lines of criticism among the more than eight hundred pages of the book. They understood the lines as referring to them directly: “And it must be said of the moneychangers in these generations that their profession is robbery, a transgression that brings after it vexation and rebuke” [Deut. 28:20].25 The criticism, which Emden regarded as constructive, purifying, and useful “to make them happy,” was understood as infuriating provocation and led to delay in circulating the book. He could not understand the reason for the fuss and he was shaken by the hostility toward him, which came close to threats of bodily injury: “People who hated morality repaid me with evil for my pursuit of their benefit and true pleasure. . . . An outgrowth of sinful men made accusations against me . . . and they said with apparent sincerity, as I heard later from men of truth, that if they met me, they would set their hand against me.” The gap between his self-awareness as an injured and insulted advocate of religious reform, who found it hard to understand why people were angry at him, and the reaction of those wealthy men, who protested against placing their integrity in doubt, was considerable. Though Rabbi Katzenellenbogen did write an approbation for the book, he ordered the postponement of its circulation until it was examined and received the authorization of six members of a tribunal to be appointed for that purpose. With clenched teeth, Emden was forced to accept this supervision: “I did not wish to disagree with the rabbis, and I acceded to their request and gave them the book in as many copies as they wanted from me [six] via their warden, and I had a ready answer: though I was not obligated to do so, I was complying willingly and the investigating judges would be giving me pleasure by examining it well and closely, and they would correct my errors.”

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He waited in suspense for long months until the process was complete; he felt that they were intentionally delaying the decision and leaving him in a fog. Meanwhile, he continued working on the following two parts, though Emden constantly feared that the judges would decide to forbid the book and all his labor would be in vain. After half a year of imploring, he received a list of reservations. He rejected them all angrily but was careful not to print his defense brief. While the book was never prohibited, Emden felt like a helpless victim who could do very little against the efforts of his enemies to frustrate his project because “traitors plotted among themselves not to buy my book” and to slander the author. He admitted that, with respect to the book market, his project was a failure. He could barely sell any copies in the communities in the region where he lived, he wrote sadly in his memories, “therefore I was constrained to waste them and send them to other places, even to distant countries, Italy, Berberia [North Africa], and Poland, and other places. Almost all the copies were destroyed, and I haven’t earned a penny from them until now.”26 His defeat in the battle against the establishment of the Altona community did not weaken his resolve on the desire that burned within him to put his teachings in writing or on his vision to disseminate them and continue in his mission to denounce the flaws that, in his opinion, were disfiguring the religion, without taking his opponents into account. “Despite everything I did not retreat from printing and bringing to the work of the Lord light of the world,” Emden summed up the matter of his prayer book project, “which I continued in for the benefit of my soul and the needs of my spiritual life, and for the benefit of those who estimate what they are missing and lacking like me.”27 Indeed, taken together, the three parts of the prayer book comprise a religious Utopia built by strict Jewish law, sensitivity to the correct use of the language of prayer and the manner of its pronunciation, systematic guidance, which does not skip a single stage in life, theological principles that demand considerable intellectual and spiritual effort, education for a distinct and unique Jewish identity, and uncompromising moral preaching. The prevailing outlook of the prayer book was that religion penetrates every dimension of life, and it is total. The two first parts offer the “Jewish person” close instruction for every hour of the day and every day of the year, and the third part is instruction for every stage of life from birth to death. In his introduction Emden wrote that the book arose from discomfort. Prayer is so important that correction of its flaws—from understanding of the language and the intentions to pronunciation of the words, movements of the body, and the laws governing synagogues—is vital and urgent. Inspired by kabbalistic ideas, Emden expanded the meaning of prayer far beyond the obligations of Jewish law to the task of repairing the world and approaching

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the upper realms. People’s souls are connected to a spiritual rope, “and when they move the rope down below, they cause movement and action above, even though He is great beyond measure.” Like Luzzatto’s Mesilat yesharim, Emden’s work shows that he believed people were imprisoned in the materiality of the body and struggled with temptations. But, according to this Utopia, man’s highest task was “to be disgusted by the pleasures of mankind . . . that lie in wait for their blood and glorify themselves in it,” and that people must raise themselves up “and make wings of the spirit to carry them up, toward true benefit and eternal happiness, and this is the whole purpose of the Lord, blessed be He, in Creation.”28 For example, the religious Utopia demanded severe discipline in the synagogue, silence and sanctity, the dismissal of cantors whose singing harms morality and the absolute distancing of the profane world it would not become a “den of thieves.” Emden also refused to compromise in presenting an additional demand, which even he knew was impossible to fulfill, ruling that a Jew’s life could not be complete unless he moved to the Land of Israel. “We have forgotten dwelling in the Land of Israel completely, not even one in a thousand is aroused to possess it and settle there to live,” Emden complained, and he pointed to the neglect of this desire for the sake of integration into the lands of exile: “No one sets it upon his heart to seek its love to ask about its welfare and benefit or expects to see it, as it seems to us that we are living in tranquility out of the land that we have already found a different Land of Israel and Jerusalem like it.” In his opinion, in neglect of this commandment lay all the sorrows that strike the Jews. Keeping a physical distance from other nations and attaining sanctity are supreme religious goals and no excuse to delay this was acceptable. Even scholars could no longer claim they were living in Europe because of the important centers of Torah study, because in Emden’s critical eyes, scholarship in Europe was subject to a grave crisis: “Now, for our many sins, since the remnant of the exile in those countries has declined astonishingly, they have fallen in the poverty of Torah to the lowest level and the Jews have become destitute outside of the Land.” But as for himself, he nevertheless found justifications for remaining in Altona, despite his preaching about moving to the Land of Israel: “To my great chagrin, my dwelling is outside of the Land.” Emden added a personal note to the introduction to his prayer book, “Even if a house were given to me, an excellent dwelling of honor for Torah and prayer, and my eye were always viewing Mount Moriah, as long as the kingdoms are embattled, it is impossible to cross the sea and to stand in a place of such clear danger, especially so long as my children are tender.”29

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By including emigration to the Land of Israel in the religious Utopia as an act of extreme separation from the Gentiles, whose purpose was to preserve Jewish identity, Emden was responding to two threats that he had identified all his life. The danger of Sabbateanism was to overshadow his world from the following decade on, but it was hardly mentioned in his prayer book. In contrast, during the 1740s his fear of religious laxity and of the rationalist critique of religion reached its peak. Above all he feared the collapse of the barriers that separated Jews from non-Jews: the processes of adapting to the “alien” tastes and fashions of Europe, and the influence of “external” knowledge, which was not Torah. Specifically, he condemned philosophy, which cast doubt on traditions and beliefs that colored the picture of the new world. “Listen and give heed to the message of my tongue,” Emden wrote in his high-flown style, with intense awareness of an emergency: “How did you fail to preserve yourselves from the instrument of destruction in the hand of the enemy ambusher, who masters and musters my shame? Two are his bywords, robbery and destruction, alien ornaments and foreign studies.” With fury and disgust he attacked the enthusiasm with which women and men adopted modern dress: “Because of daughters of Zion with bared necks, I am disgusted with my life, and I cannot look in the face of darling boys dressed in a jumble of perfumed clothes, wigs on their heads dripping on their lechery, and all those who wear foreign clothes and freeze on their watch in their abominations, my soul is disgusted by them and I sit alone.” With his satirical literary ability, he presented the desire for fashion in a ridiculous light, though he also admitted that the phenomenon had spread widely and the religious supervisors were powerless to halt it. First, he described the women: To conduct themselves with the decorations of their garments, and their wives and sons and daughters with great precision with every new mode, they are severe with themselves and precise in observing [fashion] more than those nations that innovate it, and you will always see even a Jewish servant girl immediately wearing a garment in the new mode at the start, before it has spread among the masses of the land, and all the new colorful clothes, if they get old, are unable to satisfy their appetite and desire to be seen in them and to attract the eyes of everyone who sees them.

Then he describes the men: “But the males (who are called by the name of Jews) do more than that, who shave their earlocks to look like females.” The boundary between Jews and Christians had broken down, and fashionable behavior threatened that “because of the intense desire to resemble foreigners, without shame they testify of themselves that they have no part in the God of Israel.”30

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Consciousness of the danger explains Emden’s determination not to compromise on his vision of a perfected world, to present severe demands for proper religious behavior. One example of this is supervision of women’s bodies and the imposition of impossible restrictions on their behavior, speech, and movements. Women’s seductive sexuality requires severe supervision, “so that she will not be a yatsanit [streetwalker] and not learn the ways of those who go out fluttering and rebellious, in her home her feet shall never be sometimes outside in the streets, waiting at every corner.” From youth she must be taught modesty, “for all the glory of a king’s daughter is within,” and even “she must be hidden from people as much as possible.” Little girls are warned not to study in a dangerous environment, for it has happened “that schoolgirls have been raped,” and parents are warned against “the bad custom now in these countries that they send little girls to the house of the teacher even if he is unmarried . . . and this has to be watched and protested against, but they should send them to study with a knowledgeable woman, or they should be taught in the home of their parents.” In Emden’s religious Utopia, a married woman must avoid the public space. She must “be modest and remain in her house, and not go out from the doors of her home except for great need . . . and she should not go out wearing perfume, because its fragrance spreads, and men will come to desire and have transgressive thoughts.”31 As early as the 1730s, Emden was engaged in a double dialogue of attraction and revulsion with the spread of scientific knowledge in Europe and with philosophy, which he identified as one of the main sources of inspiration for heresy. “Happy is the innocent man who walks in the Torah of God without the wonders of philosophy,” he cries out now in the third part of the prayer book. His oppositional religious conception attributes decisive importance both to miraculous deviation from the laws of nature, which testifies to the sovereignty of God, and also absolute ascendancy of the members of the rabbinical elite as authorized interpreters of reality over philosophers and scientists. Rationalist philosophy is the great enemy of religion. “In its right hand the great, penetrating sword of destruction.” Though he was attracted to philosophy in his youth, Emden admitted, he quickly understood that the true motive of the philosophers was “to throw off the yoke [of religion] and to behave in a life of license.” In reading the works of Plato, for example, he was shocked by the idea of the inclusion of women and children, who bring man down to an inferior level. Therefore, attitudes toward nature can only be polar opposites: on the one hand, “the pious ascetics who approach God, who are called lovers and friends; they will ascend the mountain and proclaim the glory of God and confirm His strength and power in the world,” and, on the other hand, “the cursed wicked,

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the Greek philosophers and those who go in their footsteps . . . who say, ‘what is the Lord that we should serve him?’ and they appointed nature to rule over them.”32 Emden was not the only one who took note of the double threat of attraction to the fashions of the time and the influence of rationalist criticism from the viewpoint of the religious elite. At the same time, Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz gave a series of sermons in the community of Metz, struggling with similar problems. For example, he criticized the “wisdom of the philosophers” and “the criminals who rebel because they think the only intention of the commandments of the Lord is a rational intention, for it cannot be that a wise commandment should prescribe something irrational”; he protested against women’s revealing clothing, “truly revealing flesh and arms,” and against elegant dress that breaks down the boundary between genders, as “men and boys wear fine clothing and curl their hair, and even more so wigs, and they stand in front of the mirror, so that they sit right, and the hair on their head won’t be seen, and many things like that, which are meant as ornaments. Everyone who does this is violating a prohibition from the Torah, that a man must not wear a woman’s dress.”33 In the 1750s, Eybeschütz moved from Metz to the rabbinate of Altona where he became Emden’s sworn and existential enemy, but at this time they both spoke in a single voice, for they saw before them a danger eroding the values of the religion. Emden and the Ba’al Shem Tov were separated not only by the geographical and cultural distance between Altona and Mezhibozh, and by the degree of their acquaintance with the challenges of the New World, but also by the difference between a senior halakhic authority, a member of the rabbinical elite, and a charismatic leader with access to the upper realms. However, they met on the grounds of their belief in the magical influence of the sacred names. To strengthen and prove his argument against the philosophers, Emden defended belief in the supernatural. He warned against “a gullible person who believes everything” and against charlatans who specialize in amulets and pretend to be practical kabbalists, but with the same breath he said that someone “who denies what is known and belies famous deeds that are done by the power of Names” is a fool. Belief in the power of Masters of the Name became a test of religious belief in general, and anyone who doubted the marvelous stories about the exorcism of demons might be convinced by a magical ceremony in which Emden himself played an active part in Altona. “Two years ago there was a girl here who was possessed by an evil spirit, may the Merciful One save us,” Emden reported, and when he placed a gold ring that he had received from his father-in-law on her finger, and Masters of the Name was engraved on the ring,

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she responded ecstatically: “All her bones floated immediately, her hips were filled with horror, her faced turned yellow, and she closed her eyes, palpitation and terror in all her limbs.”34 Determined in his effort to convince his readers about the wonders of nature, Emden lodged severe criticism against Maimonides’s statements against magic in the Guide of the Perplexed. Why did “he belie the marvelous things that are done in the world because he could not conceive of them by rational deduction?” How could it be that he mocked “the actions that are performed by the power of [Masters of the] Names and amulets, that he made so much fun of?” Did he not know about the danger of heresy when he sought an explanation for miracles “that strove to account for them naturally?” The more he found it difficult to accept this, the more he began to doubt that Guide for the Perplexed was not written by the famous medieval philosopher Maimonides, the author of the halakhic masterpiece Mishne Torah, for these contradictory works “can never be joined together [i.e., reconciled], and two opposite views on a single subject can never been accepted.”35 Maimonides’s exalted place in traditional historical memory and his halakhic authority conflicted for Emden with his identity as a pronouncedly rationalist philosopher. Emden, who sought to establish a religious Utopia and who saw himself as standing in the breach to repel all the new threats, also began a new discourse in Jewish culture. The timing of this polemic with Maimonides was not coincidental. In 1742, The Guide of the Perplexed was restored to the Jewish library when it was published in Jeßnitz, in the German principality of Anhalt-Dessau, after an absence since the sixteenth century.36 This was a particularly significant event: philosophy, which Emden viewed as a bitter and dangerous enemy, once again appeared on the Jewish agenda.

“Th e In v e stigator w ith His R e a son Is Lik e a Se eing Per son w ith E y e s to Se e th e Obstacl e s on th e Roa ds” The publication of the Guide for the Perplexed was the high point in a lifelong project initiated and advanced independently by an anonymous and relatively marginal cultural agent, the prolific publisher and printer Israel ben Abraham, who altered the Jewish library single-handedly. Very little is known about the life of this convert from Christianity, perhaps even a priest or monk who became a Jewish scholar, an expert in the Jewish book market, and a professional and industrious printer. His impressive cultural biography is built on the more than one hundred books that he published in various printing centers

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in Germany between 1717 and 1745, with the patronage of Jews from the Wolf, Lehmann, and Fränkel families. He worked in Köthen, which is north of Halle, for about two years, but the significant commencement of his career as a printer was in the small city of Jeßnitz, on the Mulde River near Dessau and Leipzig, the city of the book fair. There, he became the director of the Hebrew printing house of the Court Jew Moses Benjamin Wolf. After wandering among various printing centers, he returned to Jeßnitz in 1738. Within a few years, thanks to a privilege granted by Prince Leopold I, with the support and encouragement of the rabbi of Dessau David Fränkel, the financial assistance of wealthy merchants and bankers from Prussia (mainly Veitel Heine Ephraim of Berlin), and the diligent work of a team of industrious proofreaders and printers, he managed to fulfill his ambition to restore a series of important but neglected works to the Jewish library. Like all printers, he was very familiar with the demands of the book market, and he supported himself by producing books that sold well such as Bibles and prayer books. However, in the last six years of his work, he adopted a publishing policy that was intended, as noted, to make a change. The restoration of Maimonides to a central place was a primary goal for him. In Jeßnitz, Israel ben Abraham first succeeded in publishing the Mishne Torah with commentaries in four volumes, a work that had not been printed in full for about one hundred and thirty years. He then printed a fine edition, “with beautiful new letters on good, white paper” of the Guide for the Perplexed, almost two hundred years after the first printing; and in 1744, in Jeßnitz, the dictionary of philosophical terms from the thirteenth century, Ruah. h.en, to be an auxiliary for understanding Maimonides’s Aristotelian vocabulary and to make it accessible to the contemporary scholar. The last in what appears to have been a well-planned series was the ethical work of Bahye Ibn Paquda, H.ovot halevavot (The Duties of the Heart), which was written in Arabic in the eleventh century and translated into Hebrew in the second half of the twelfth century. Before that, Israel ben Abraham also managed to print for the first time the astronomical manuscript Neh.mad vena’im, which was written in Prague in the early seventeenth century by David Ganz, the student of the Maharal of Prague (Judah Lowe ben Bezalel) and one of the few Jews who was interested in the innovations of science during the scientific revolution.37 Israel ben Abraham’s printing project was a conscious effort at cultural rehabilitation. He introduced information about science and philosophy, which had been relatively neglected for generations, in the world of the traditional Jewish book, which was then to a large extent colored by Kabbalah. Even in his first period as a printer in Jeßnitz, under the patronage of the Court Jew Moses Wolf, he saw to the publication of Ma’ase tuvia (1721) by the physician Tuvia

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Cohen. As noted, this was one of the first works in European Jewish culture that sought to make a significant revolution in knowledge and to improve the inferior status of the Jews at the time of the scientific revolution. Now, two decades later, Israel ben Abraham introduced his contemporaries once again to medieval Jewish knowledge, renewed the study of philosophy, and aroused interest in scientific discourse. Thereby he made his printing house in Jeßnitz a symbolic cultural crossroads, which, in the era of the European Enlightenment, shaped the early Haskalah of the Jews.38 This was not only an intentional effort to alter the status of “foreign wisdom,” but also a quiet and cautious breakthrough of internal criticism and an expression of dissatisfaction. The early Maskilim, including the printer from Jeßnitz, were far from seeking radical changes that would undermine the existing order. However, sensitive attention to their voice reveals their awareness of being, each in his own way, participants in a corrective project for innovation whose power was soft but whose fulfillment demanded the passing of barriers. One of these figures was Israel ben Moses Halevi of Zamość (1700–1772), the author of the commentary Ruah. h.en. He was born in a small village in eastern Galicia, a contemporary of the Ba’al Shem Tov and Emden. He was an admirer of Maimonides and a learned man. During his years in Zamość, he became curious about the natural sciences and philosophy, and he was one of the members of the Torah elite who took part in the early Haskalah. In the 1740s, Israel of Zamość moved from Poland to Prussia. First, he published Netsah. yisrael in Frankfort on the Oder, a book combining halakhic issues with knowledge he had acquired on his own, especially in mathematics and astronomy. Then he went to live in Berlin, where he wrote his commentary on Ruah. h.en, grafting more current scientific knowledge onto the science of the Middle Ages. The reader of the 1744 edition of Ruah. h.en could learn about Copernicus and Galileo and share in the author’s excitement about the invention of the microscope and the vacuum pump and hear news about the great progress of Europe: “And now behold I am telling what new things the Lord did on the earth, and this is after the Greek sciences were moved to Germany and the lands of the West, and a great many investigations began in the world and great sciences were born to them, and scholars multiplied upward and their wisdom increased over the wisdom of the Greeks ten times over.” The New Science challenged religious conventions, and Israel of Zamość shared his hesitations with the reader regarding Copernicus’s cosmology. Indeed, most scientists supported it as it was the closest to reason; on the other hand, it could not be accepted literally, because a Jew who feared Heaven “who smells the scent of his opinion, his soul is revolted, and it will be an affront to the

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spirit of the Torah and the words of the Sages of blessed memory, and a heretical belief.” Nevertheless, that was no reason to neglect science completely, and here his angry and reproachful voice grew stronger: “The accursed wicked people, the burning in ignorance, many of the profane, who are with us in this generation, who have taken this fool’s path, to think that fear [of God] will be lessened among those who know science.” In the introduction to Netsah. yisrael he already revealed some of his determination to face down those “whose way is to be contemptuous of all knowledge and information unknown to them . . . because they never felt the taste, the taste of wisdom, and they did never saw the light of intelligence,” and he justified his daring to express criticism even when those who protested against him said he had no authority to take upon himself the role of the prophet, for “having the temerity to say that I will purify the abomination of the children of this time.” When one juxtaposes Emden, who feared the threats of philosophy and science that displaced God, and Israel of Zamość, who believed that “The investigator with his reason is like a seeing person with eyes to see the obstacles on the roads,” one already discerns clearly the boundary at which culture wars were waged.39 Israel ben Abraham himself regarded Ruah. h.en as a textbook to prepare scholars for philosophy because “the masses of the people are not used to understanding the foreign words and philosophical terms that our teacher and rabbi of blessed memory [Maimonides] used in the aforementioned work [Guide for the Perplexed] from foreign books of science.” From his point of view, this book completed that revolution in knowledge that he had initiated. The Jeßnitz edition of the Guide for the Perplexed did not receive rabbinical approbations, as was the practice with religious books, and the printer himself justified and authorized the renewed publication of the work. The sensitive and subversive image with which he chose to emphasize the meaning of the publication of the philosophical book was the biblical image of human ambition intertwined with awareness of sin: desire for the Tree of Knowledge. Publication of the Guide for the Perplexed required daring to overcome warnings: “I wished to reach my hand out to eat of it . . . and behold many tell my soul, beware of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and do not touch it with your hand, and never dare to approach God to see, and you will fall and die, but I said, if God wished to kill me, He would not show me all these things.” Aware that he was a pioneer and successfully swimming against the current, with full belief in his mission, the printer wrote in his introduction: “This tree of knowledge is a tree of life for those who cling to it. Therefore, I girded my loins like a hero and went from gate to gate in the camp and cried out in the markets: ‘let those who are for the Lord come to me! [Ex. 32:26].’”40

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Like many of his generation, including everyone who took part in the eighteenth-century revolution of the Enlightenment, the printer from Jeßnitz was aware of the power of printing to effect cultural change. By publishing books of science and philosophy, and primarily by reintroducing Maimonides, the most famous and preeminent Jewish philosopher, to the world of Jewish knowledge, he exploited his expertise in printing and his knowledge of the book market to direct study toward “wisdom,” and thus he led one of the pronounced trends of early Haskalah. While Jeßnitz was a center of the early Haskalah for several years, in Berlin the first signs were visible of the emergence of a circle of scholars connected with one another by their thirst for knowledge. Israel of Zamość found support there from the families of merchants, which enabled him to continue developing medieval Jewish philosophy and at the same time serve as a guide for young men who were impressed by the Torah scholar who considered science and philosophy so highly. Among these was Aharon Gumpertz (1723–1769), the grandson of the Court Jew from Cleve, Eliahu Gumpertz and Glikl Hamel, and, in his own right, an ambitious young man who made every possible effort to expand his knowledge and become a scholar. His knowledge of German brought him close to the upper classes and enabled him to seek out guides and teachers among the German elite. Among these were the Marquis d’Argens when he was living in Berlin under the protection of Friedrich II and Johann Gottsched of Leipzig, to whom he did not hesitate to confess in an emotional letter of 1745 about his efforts to “quench his great thirst” for knowledge, languages, and philosophy. Ultimately, he reached Frankfort on the Oder and was able to approach science closely and systematically in the course of his medical studies.41 The presence of these scholars, who sought to broaden the horizons of Jewish culture in Berlin, was particularly significant for the life of the community. In December 1745, when Friedrich II returned victorious from one of the last campaigns against the army of Maria Theresa in the War of the Austrian Succession, the Jewish community held a formal ceremony of thanksgiving in the synagogue. Rabbi David Fränkel prepared a patriotic speech in honor of this event and Aharon Gumpertz was asked to translate it into German. On Rabbi Fränkel’s initiative and that of his relative’s, the supplier to the court Veitel Ephraim, and, as we have seen among the main supporters of the project of printing the works of Maimonides in Jeßnitz, the royal family was invited to be guests of the Jewish community. On December 28, three days after Friedrich II assured himself of rule over Silesia at the Peace of Dresden, essentially emerging victorious from the entire war, the rabbi gave a sermon, reading the king “a fine poem” in German and declaring loyalty to the kingdom of Prussia and identification with its victory.42

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In the mid-1740s, Israel of Zamość and Aharon Gumpertz were joined by Moses ben Menachem, a young man in his teens, who arrived from Dessau in 1743 as a student and relative of Rabbi David Fränkel when the rabbi was appointed to the rabbinate of Berlin. As we have already seen, in Berlin of the 1740s, Moses ben Menachem underwent the cultural transformation that made him into Moses Mendelssohn, the most influential Jewish philosopher of the eighteenth century. The encounter with the early Maskilim in the years most significant for the formation of a young man made it possible for him to change the course of his life pass from that of a rabbinical scholar who prepared himself for the world of Torah and the rabbinate to participation in the world of intellectuals in the Age of Enlightenment. Isaac Euchel (1756–1804), who belonged to the later generation that established Haskalah in Germany, was an ardent admirer of Mendelssohn and wrote his biography on his death, recounting some of what he had heard about those years in Berlin. The Guide for the Perplexed had a particularly dramatic influence on Mendelssohn, so it seems that the vision of the printer, Israel ben Abraham, that his book would be a Tree of Knowledge, was fulfilled immediately. “At that time, the Lord occasioned the book, the Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides of blessed memory, to come into his hands,” Euchel reported, and hinted at the story of the Garden of Eden, “and Moses saw that it was good for becoming wise and its insights were pleasant, and he endeavored with all his soul to read it and to think about it day and night, until he grasped the depth of its thoughts.” Thus, in his teens, by the intermediary of a medieval Judeo Arabic work in Hebrew translation, Mendelssohn discovered philosophy. Adding a dramatic tone, giving his admired and iconic figure the dimension of a martyr who mortified his body, Euchel quoted Mendelssohn: “He said several times, in the company of his comrades, in a jocular way, that Maimonides was the cause of the ruin of my appearance, that he spoiled my flesh, and for his sake I was weakened, but nevertheless I love him greatly, for he made many hours in the days of my life from mourning to joy.” This was the source of the legend about the hump that disfigured his back, and this oral tradition also shows Mendelssohn’s recognition that The Guide of the Perplexed caused a great upheaval in his life, “and therefore, until the day of his death, he remembered the benefit he had gained from it, and he did not forget the stream where he first slaked his thirst for wisdom, for which he wore out his soul, for it was the basis of his knowledge.” Abraham Kisch of Prague, who studied medicine at the university of Halle, and who arrived in Berlin to continue his studies, opened the gates of European thought and literature in Latin for Mendelssohn, so that he was able to read John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human

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Understanding slowly, looking up almost every word in the dictionary. Euchel commented that even in Berlin he had to conceal this leaning to philosophy, and therefore “he did it all in secret and under careful watch, so that it would not be known outside, lest his brothers be envious of him and spread word of it, and he would lose favor for abandoning his Torah and finding satisfaction with an alien daughter.”43 Toward the end of the first half of the eighteenth century, it appears that in various corners of Europe, feelings of discomfort and aspirations to reform humanity and society were growing in strength, and the voices of protest grew bolder than in the past. In this sense, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s group in Medzhibozh, whose leader provided inspiration for a religious awakening, the illuminated and welcoming world that Luzzatto built in Mesilat yesharim and Layesharim tehila, Emden’s religious Utopia, and the cultural renaissance of the early Maskilim all belonged to the spirit of the age. Immediately at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, in France, for example, a wave of political criticism emerged, some of the fundamental works of the Enlightenment were written, such as The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu, the project of the Encyclopedia was advancing toward publication, and, clandestinely, subversive works were passed from hand to hand, breaking through the conventions of religion and morality. Hopes for a happy life were the motivating power of the authors of the Enlightenment, who, mainly in elite circles, embroidered a vision of a universal, hopeful future for all of mankind, yet the critical climate also nourished more popular protest. Thus, for example, in the summer of 1749 a French medical student was arrested on suspicion that he had recited a slanderous and contemptuous poem criticizing King Louis XV. An investigation revealed a network of protest against the king and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Songs, posters, and conversations in coffeehouses undermined his image as an absolute sovereign who benefited his subjects. The protesters stated that France had emerged from the war without any gains, its economic situation was bad, the mistress who dictated political actions to the king was just a whore who destroyed France’s reputation, and, with the urgency of tyranny, the government was throwing philosophers into jail for expressing their views with courage. In general, as the secret police reported, people were saying that “there had never been such a bad king.”44 In England and France at that time, erotic novels were being written, expressing the awakening of libertine trends in culture and society, and they, too, had significance as protest against social and religious conventions. The mechanistic conception of nature, acting solely according to its own laws, and the influence of materialism, which reached a peak in the radical work of La Mettrie,

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Machine Man, the strengthening of individualist consciousness, and the belief that people have a right to happiness, pleasure, and joy, came together in literature that was intended to stimulate and arouse sexual desire. Immediately after its publication in 1749, the novel by John Cleland, Fanny Hill, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, became a bestseller and the most notorious pornographic book in eighteenth-century Europe. The story of the life of Fanny, the prostitute, which was made up of a series of detailed scenes of sex, caused a scandal in decent society, was condemned as an insult to religion, morality, and virtue, and its author was persecuted. Unlike moral tales that condemned prostitution as a social ill, as, for example, in the drawings of Hogarth, in Fanny Hill the emphasis was on the pleasures of sex. The sex is described in the novel as a mechanical act, but the book ends with a bond of love that gives bodily desire human and spiritual meaning. Fanny and her lover, Charles, establish a kind of temple to Venus on an island in the Thames, where body and soul join together and ascend to a peak of happiness. “Thus, happy, then, by the heart, happy by the senses, it was beyond all power, even of thought, to form the conception of a greater delight than what I now am consummating the fruition of.” This was an expression of radical secularism. Toward mid-century, Cleland’s novel proclaimed “the religion of libertinism. This religion that can be defined as believing, in contradistinction to orthodox Christianity, that sexual experience was central in human life and that sexual desire and pleasure were good and natural things.”45 While Fanny Hill was portrayed as frivolous, the heroine of the other prominent erotic novel of the late 1740s, Thérese philosophe (1748), an anonymous novel attributed to the Marquis d’Argens, one of Aaron Gomperz’s patrons, underwent, by means of sexual experience that liberated her body, a rapid process of disillusion with Christianity. The man who educated her in sexual libertinism was a cunning and corrupt Jesuit priest, who proved to be an anti-clerical deist thinker. In the name of his radically materialistic world view, all the restrictions imposed by religion on freedom and bodily satisfaction fall away. The reader, who is invited to peer into bedrooms and observe women and men who achieve peaks of erotic satisfaction, is exposed to a text that protests against religion in the name of the individual’s right to live according to nature and to obtain physical and spiritual happiness in this world. According to Thérese philosophe, pleasure is found in the self-love of every man and woman and in the possibility of enjoyment. She learns: “What an excess of folly it is to believe that God had us be born so that we should only do what is against nature, only what can make us unhappy in this world, in demanding that we must refuse everything that satisfies the senses, the appetites that he gave us!” In the same vein: “To be a

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perfect Christian, one must be ignorant, believe blindly, renounce all pleasure, all honor, all wealth, abandon one’s parents, one’s friends, preserve one’s virginity: in a word, to do everything that is against nature.” Now that Thérese has discovered the new truth, as a philosopher she can challenge the theologians and provoke them: “Answer me, duplicitous or ignorant theologians, who create our crimes as you please: who is it who placed the two combating passions in me, love of God and that of the pleasure of the flesh? Is it Nature or the Devil?”46 With the acute senses of a vigilant religious supervisor, Jacob Emden grasped the connections between hedonism, sexual libertinism, and philosophy. For example, he warned against learning French, because it made possible exposure to erotic novels, and he warned against crossing the bounds of morality for the sake of assimilating into the high culture of Europe: “This is what the wealthy sons of our nation do, they scatter their money to teach their sons and daughters the French language, to make them used to merriment and frivolity and foul speech.” He also knew that “the clever people of the nations also felt this,” and that in the conservative camp of Europe, people were convinced that “by studying the French language and by constantly reading fictional stories . . . one learns and gains much knowledge of the impurity in the matters of love of women and desire for adultery.”47 The erotic novels appeared in the late 1740s, as Robert Darnton explains, at a historical crossroads of the rapid growth of the French Enlightenment, the desire for a free life, and the expansion of the circle of free and critical thought at a time when everything was to be examined and nothing was sacred. In his opinion, the combination in Thérese philosophe of coarse graphic sexuality and metaphysical thought about man and God conveyed to its readers the idea that sensuality and philosophy are what make for the happiness of a rational man.”48 Lynn Hunt, who studied the invention of pornography in the eighteenth century, called it sexual enlightenment, and she pointed out its guiding principle: sexual appetite is natural, and its suppression is artificial and pointless. The senses play a positive role in making people happy in this world.49 Toward the end of the 1740s, Voltaire and Emilie du Chatelet strove to foster the personal happiness between them, and they expressed the opinion that it was possible for mankind in general to attain happiness. As we have seen, in describing their relationship, Voltaire wrote that they were both sensual philosophers, full of desire, combining philosophy and Eros, as in the novels. However, by that time their relationship had ceased being intimate, though the two continued to live together. The marquise fell in passionate love with a poet and military man, a decade younger than she, Jean François de Saint-Lambert, and she died in September 1749, a week after giving birth to their daughter.

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Just a few days before the birth, when she was in fear because of her impending death, du Chatelet feverishly wrote the final chapters of her life’s work, the French translation and original scientific commentary on Newton’s Principia Mathematica, which gained her lasting fame as one of the pioneers of the new science. Earlier, she had completed the Discourse on Happiness (Discours sur le bohnheur), which conveyed the essence of certain critical voices of the Enlightenment and painted a picture of the happy man. Her contemporaries knew this work in manuscript, and it was only printed thirty years after her death. Still it was another document presenting the image of the new person of whom the Enlightenment dreamed. Preceding Immanuel Kant by a quarter of a century, du Chatelet believed that the attainment of happiness depended to a great degree on a person’s determined decision to control his fate, to gain autonomy, and to liberate himself from restrictions. More than anything, she argued, one must not submit to convention, and no opinion must be accepted without due examination: “In order to be happy, one must have freed oneself of prejudices, one must be virtuous, healthy, have tastes and passions, and be susceptible to illusions; for we owe most of our pleasures to illusions.” From the viewpoint of a woman of the upper class, who developed sharp critical senses, who devoted herself both to love and to science, and who derived pleasure both from study and from the satisfaction of physical and emotional desires, she formulated a doctrine of happiness that was at the same time a vision of liberation from the restrictions of religion. Like Thérese philosophe, Emilie du Chatelet believed that it was proper to seek happiness and to heed the voice of nature, to respond to physical desires, and to ignore religious preaching against nature. However, in contrast to the heroine of the erotic novel, the Marquise du Chatelet also believed in the happiness of the learned, and especially of the women, who were denied male sources of happiness, such as fame on the battlefield. “The love of study is the passion most necessary to our happiness.”50 In early 1749, before the discovery of her pregnancy, and just a few months before she was stricken by the fate of so many women, without distinction of social class or education, who died before their time following complications in childbirth, du Chatelet and Voltaire were guests in Lunéville at the chateau of Stanislaw Leszczyński, formerly King of Poland and presently the Duke of Lorraine, the son-in-law of Louis XV. That is where du Chatelet met her new lover, and there Voltaire wrote one of his most radical works, The Sermon of the Fifty (Le sermon des cinquante). Like Discourse on Happiness, it was circulated anonymously in manuscript and read in a circle of friends before being printed in the early 1760s. The background story presents a secret society of fifty rationalist intellectuals who meet in a European city on Sundays for prayer and a sermon

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given every week by one of the members. “If the seeds of these words fall upon good soil, without doubt they will bear fruit,” declared Voltaire, referring to the revolutionary meaning of this secret society, which offered a substitute for Sunday sermons in church and bore upon its shoulders the mission of revealing the truth and paving the way for a good life of reason and tolerance. The sermon continues with a deist critique of the Bible, to which Voltaire and his mistress had contributed earlier. Various passages are presented in a ridiculous light as preposterous, illogical, and harmful to human ethics, and this ironic criticism sought to destroy the authority of Jewish and Christian scripture. “What horror seized us when we read the writings of the Hebrews together,” says the preacher in Voltaire’s text. In every chapter, one encounters blows to purity, justice, innocent faith, and universal reason. The Bible is full of “historical horrors revolting to nature and common sense.” God’s judgments are faulty, and Moses, for example, was a fanatical leader, vengeful and bloodthirsty. The representative of the deist society recites a subversive prayer: “God of all the globes and all beings. . . . Preserve your pure religion [in our hearts] and clear away all superstition from us. . . . Brothers, religion is the secret voice of God, who speaks to all people. It must unite us and not divide us. Thus, every religion that belongs just to one people is false.” The Society of Fifty attacked Christianity and sought to enlist support for the vision of a perfected future far beyond it, in the humanistic age: “When they realize that the Christian sect is actually nothing but a perversion of natural religion; when reason, free of its irons, teaches the people that there is just one God; that this God is the common father of all men, who are brothers; that these brothers must be good and just to one another . . . certainly then, my brothers, men will be more benevolent, being less superstitious.”51

Note s 1. The Ba’al Shem Tov’s letter (Igeret haqodesh) was published for the first time in Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Sefer ben porat yosef (Korzec, 1781), and it is found in several versions. Here it is cited in the Kozec version, with the addition of several sentences from the Fränkel-Bauminger version. On the versions of the letter and discussions of it in scholarly literature see: Joshua Mondshain, “Nusah. qadum shel igeret ‘aliyat haneshama lehaBa’al Shem Tov,” appendix to Sefer Shivhei Habesht, ed. Joshua Mondshain (Jerusalem: Mondshain, 1972), pp. 232–237. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 167–172; Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, ch. 6; Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership [Hebrew], pp. 88–100, 292–309.

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2. The letter from Abraham Gershon of Kuty to the Ba’al Shem Tov cited in Jacob Barnai, ed., Igrot Hasidim meerets yisrael (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi Institute, 1980), pp. 33–42. See also Heschel, “R. gershon qotover, parshat h.ayav ve’aliyato leerets yisrael,” pp. 17–71. 3. Mondshain, “Nusa h. qadum shel igeret ‘aliyat haneshama lehaBa’al Shem Tov,” pp. 233–237. 4. See Scholem, “Shtei ha’eduyot harishonot ‘al h.avurot ­hah.­asidim veha Ba’al Shem Tov,” pp. 228–240; Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, ch. 2; Ekes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership [Hebrew], ch. 5. 5. Shivhei ha-Besht, pp. 205, 103–105. The English translation: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-Best], trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), p. 65. See also Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, pp. 149–151; Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership [Hebrew], pp. 189–195, 198–201. 6. Solomon Chełm, Sefer Mirkevet Ha-Mishne (Frankfurt an der Oder, 5511 [1741]), introduction. 7. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, ch. 10. 8. Shivhei Habesht, pp. 85–88. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, p. 52. See Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership [Hebrew], pp. 134–140. 9. Shivhei Habesht, pp. 91–92, 229, 235–236, 306–307; In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, pp. 54–56, 177–178, 182–183. See also Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht— Magic, Mysticism, Leadership [Hebrew], ch. 3. 10. Etkes, Ba`al Hashem, The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership [Hebrew], pp. 273–274. 11. See Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis, chs. 21–22. 12. See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), pp. 343–344. 13. Igrot ­ramh.­al livnei doro, pp. 437–441. 14. Sefer mesilat yesharim, kolel kol ‘inyanei musar veyerat h,’ written by the eminent Sage Moses H.ayim Luzzatto (Amsterdam, 5500); Layesharim ­teh.­ila, a poem of friendship for the wedding day of the wise and intelligent R. Jacob de Gavish . . . I, the young man, Moses H.ayim Luzzatto composed it (Amsterdam, 5503). The scholarly edition consulted here is that of Jonah David (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1982). 15. Sefer mesilat yesharim, chs. 6, 19. 16. Ibid., introduction, chs. 6, 3, 18. The complete edition of the work and the manuscript of a Hakham vehasid dates from 1738; Moses H.ayim Luzzatto, Mesilat yesharim, ed. A. Shoshana and Y. Avivi (Jerusalem: Ofek, 2003). For commentary on Mesilat yesharim see Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, ch. 6. 17. Luzzatto, Mesilat yesharim, chs. 26, 19, and see Tishby, “’Iqvot rabi moshe h.ayim luzzatto bemishnat ­hah.­asidut,” pp. 961–994.

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18. Luzazatto, Layesharim ­teh.­ila, pp. 60–64, 73–78, 91–95. See Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, pp. 266–270. 19. Luzazatto, Layesharim ­teh.­ila, pp. 37–39, 55. 20. Igrot ­ramh.­al, p. 442. 21. See Garb, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, p. 322; Mendelssohn’s letter to Herder, Sept. 24, 1781: Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumausgabe, 13 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann, 1977), pp. 25–26; Shamuel Werses, “Dimuio shel r. moshe h.ayim luzzatto besifrut hahaskala,” Haqitsa ami, sifrut haaskala be’idan hamodernizatsia (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001), pp. 3–24. 22. Emden, Torat haqenaut, fols. 57b–58a. 23. The titles of the three parts of Emden’s prayer book: Palatin beit el ha’omed ‘al shiv’a ‘amudei shamayim (Altona, 5505); Armon ‘ir haelohim, sh’arei shamayim (Altona, 5507); Birat Migdal ‘oz, birkot shamayim (Altona, 5507). 24. Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 215–216. 25. Emden, ‘Amudei shamayim, fol. 269a. 26. Emden, Megilat sefer, pp. 217–223. 27. Ibid., p. 224. 28. Emden, ‘Amudei shamayim, introduction, fols. 7–8, 20a, 12b. 29. Emden, ‘Amudei shamayim, introduction, fol. 27a, fols. 31–38. 30. Ibid., introduction, fol. 18a; ibid., Sha’arei shamayim, fols. 75–78 (“ h.alon hamitsri”). 31. Emden, Birat Migdal ‘oz, birkot shamayim, fols. 17, 89. 32. Ibid., fols. 23–24, 119–121. 33. Jonathan Eybeschütz, Ya’arot devash (Sulzbach, 1799). The quotations are from the sermon given in Metz in the 1740s. 34. Emden, Beit migdal ‘oz, birkot shamayim, fol. 119a. 35. Emden, Birat migdal ‘oz, birkot shamayim, fols. 119b; 121b. 36. More nevukhim, lamaor hagadol geon yisrael harav rabeinu moshe bar maimon z”l (Jeßnitz, 5502). 37. See Dirk Sadowski, “‘Gedruckt in der heiligen Gemeinde Jessnitz’: Der Buchdrucker Israel bar Avraham und sein Werik,” Simon-Dubnow-Institut Jahrbuch 7 (2008): 39–69. 38. See Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, pt. 1. 39. Sefer ruah. h.en (Jeßnitz, 5504 [1744]), fol. 15b–17a; Israel Ben Moses Halevi, Sefer netsah. yisrael (Frankfort on the Oder, 5501 [1741]), introduction. See Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, ch. 12; Gad Freudenthal, “Hebrew Medieval Science in Zamosc ca. 1730, The Early Year of Rabbi Israel ben Moses Halevy of Zamosc,” in Sepharad in Ashkenaz, Medieval Learning and Eighteenth Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse, ed. R. Fontaine, A. Schatz, and I. E. Zwiep (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse

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Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007), pp. 25–68; Gad Freudenthal, “Rabbi Israel Zamosc Meets Early Modern Science (Berlin, 1744): “A Personal Dialectic of the Enlightenment,” in Thinking Impossibilities: The Legacy of Amos Funkenstein, ed. Robert Westman and David Biale (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 63–96. 40. Ruah. h.en, Divrei hamadpis; More nevukhim, “Amar Hamadpis.” 41. Letter from Aharon Gumpertz to Johann Gotsched: Theodor Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit, Auszüge aus seinem Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1855), pp. 833–835. On him see Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, ch. 12; Max Freudenthal, “Ahron Emmerich Gumpertz, der Lehrer von Moses Mendelssohn,” in Die Familie Gompertz, ed. David Kaufmann and Max Freudenthal (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1907), pp. 164–200; Gad Freudenthal, “New Light on Aaron Salomon Gumpertz: Medicine, Science and Early Haskalah in Berlin,” Zutot 3 (2003): 59–70. 42. Gad Freudenthal, “Ein symbolischer Anfang der Berliner Haskala: Veitel Ephraim, David Fränkel, Aharon Gumpertz und die patriotische Feier in der Synagoge um 28. Dezember 1745,” Judaica 61, no. 3 (2005): 193–254. 43. Isaac Euchel, Toldot rabenu ­heh.­akham moshe ben ­menah.­em (Berlin, 1789), pp. 6–12; Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study, pp. 21–27. 44. See Robert Darnton, Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). 45. John Cleland, Fanny Hill or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 220. See Randolph Trumbach, “Erotic Fantasy and Male Libertinism in Enlightenment England,” in The Invention of Pornography, Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, ed. Lynn Hunt (New York: Zone Books, 1996), pp. 253–282. 46. Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, pp. 249– 299. Quotation taken from Jean-Baptiste Boyer d’Argens, Thérese philosophe, ­https://​­f r​.­w ikisource​.­org​/­w iki​/­Th​%­C3​%­A9r​%­C3​%­A 8se​_ philosophe​/­1, trans. Jeffrey M. Green. 47. Emden, Sha’arei shamayim, fol. 78b; Emden, ­Mitpah.­at sefarim, pp. 105–106. 48. See Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, ch. 3. 49. See Hunt, The Invention of Pornography, Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, introduction; see also Margaret C. Jacob, “The Materialist World of Pornography,” in The Invention of Pornography, ed. Lynn Hunt, pp. 157–202. See especially her claim that the materialism of Thérese philosophe offered the only philosophy of nature that could address the individualism, desires, and interests, freedom and deviation from the routine, the dishonor, and the subversion that existed in the cities of Western Europe from the beginning of the eighteenth century.

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50. See Emilie du Chatelet, “Discourse on Happiness,” in Emilie Du Chatelaet, Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings, ed. Judith P. Zinsser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 348–365. 51. Voltaire, Sermon des cinquante, ­https://​­f r​.­w ikisource​.­org​/­w iki​/­Sermon​ _des​_Cinquante​/%­C2 %90%C3%89dition_Garnier, trans. Jeffrey M. Green.

Seventeen

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TOWARD MID-CENTURY The Awakening of Shame

The vision of happiness pr esented in erotic novels and philosophical works was the dream of authors who hoped for the establishment of a paradise on earth in the secular image of the vision of religious redemption. As Emilie du Chatelet admitted openly, those who could approach her new ideals were first of all superior individuals, whose social status and property enabled them to acquire refined tastes and to be open to free thought and a life of liberty. However, beyond what appears to be a Utopian vision for improving the world, it was important and significant to sharpen the critical scalpel with which the improved future would be carved out in the struggle to negate and destroy prejudice, superstition, false religions, corrupt clergymen, and injustice. The loudest voice that echoed at that time among those who desired change and believed in mankind’s right to happiness was the voice of protest against the heavy hand of tradition. From the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe, the end of the first half of the eighteenth century was symbolized by two texts from the German realm that were produced in 1749. They both gave voice most clearly to this protest, and they also brought the general discourse, which was abstract and elevated, down to earth, offering a vision of the future that could be translated into an immediate change of attitude and a plan of action. The spirit of criticism and the drive to reveal flaws in society inspired the poet and playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to write his one act play, The Jews, promoting discussion of the status of the Jewish minority in the enlightened public of Europe. It also inspired the Jewish businessman Isaac Wetzlar, who wrote Libes briv (Loveletter) in Yiddish, presenting his thoughts on the urgent need for new and improved arrangements to extricate the Jews from what he saw as a crisis.

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Lessing arrived in Berlin when he was only nineteen years old, with his heart set on becoming a successful playwright, the “German Molière.” Liberated from the conventions of his father, a Lutheran minister from Saxony, and no longer a student dependent on meager stipends, he devoted himself to literature, poetry, and drama, and made a place for himself among scholars and writers. His belief that the theater must be an ethical school inspired him with faith that his work could have influence and effect a change. The Jews was one of his earliest efforts to use drama to hold a critical mirror before society and point out possibilities for reform. Radical voices were very scarce in the German Enlightenment. Whereas Voltaire, in the Sermon of the Fifty presented ancient, biblical Judaism in a negative light, Lessing called people’s attention to the Jewish person in the present. In Berlin, Lessing had met the circle of early Maskilim and had formed a strong connection with them: first with Aharon Gumpertz, then apparently with Israel of Zamość, and, finally, he formed a special friendship with his contemporary, Moses Mendelssohn. The hero of The Jews was a mysterious Traveler who saved the Baron from robbers, who were going to murder him. He stayed in the Baron’s home, became close to his daughter, and made a good impression on everyone who met him. He was neither a philosopher nor a scholar, but rather a successful merchant. The tension in the plot increases, but the identity of the honest and virtuous Traveler remains obscure. His Jewish identity is revealed only toward the end of the play, but the first hint is given when a simple German peasant, coarse in manners and occasionally a robber as well as the exalted baron are sure that the immoral, bloodthirsty robbers were Jews, and they condemn them in the common demonic terms. The peasant, Martin Krumm, whose name means “crooked,” says the Jews “are swindlers, thieves, and highway robbers. Therefore, they are a people that the beloved God has cursed. I’d better not be the king, because I wouldn’t leave any, any single one of them alive.” Later on, the Baron says, “The Jews have caused me no little damage and vexation. . . . Oh, they are the most evil and despicable people.” When the Traveler is constrained to reveal that he is a Jew and to explain why he cannot accept the Baron’s generous offer of his daughter in marriage, the surprise is great, because the gap between the image of the Jew and the actual Jewish individual, whose conduct was so perfect and so “Christian,” can barely be grasped. Embarrassed, the Baron apologizes. Lessing places a short sentence in his mouth, essentially a historical confession and an indication of his hope for a change in the attitude toward the Jews, upon which the entire play hinges: “I am ashamed of my behavior.”1 This is the climax of the social and cultural experiment that Lessing performed in The Jews. By challenging the negative image of the Jew, the play

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suggested to public opinion in Germany and Europe in general that they should reconsider their historical error regarding the Jews. Christoff, the servant, who represents the lower social classes, finds it hard to understand how a Jew could treat him with nobility and forgive his treachery, and he assumes that this is an exceptional, almost supernatural phenomenon—a Jew without Jewish characteristics: “So there are also Jews who aren’t Jews at all.” The meaning of this remark is far-reaching. It conveys the expectation that the new Jew of the future will undergo full cultural conversion, so that almost nothing will be left to betray his traditional identity. He does not look like a Jew. His beard is shaven. He speaks German like everybody else. He is rational and ethical and he does not shun Christian society. In the vision of the future that concludes the play, the Jews are asked to change, and the Christians are asked to learn the lesson that the Baron learned and to be ashamed of their disgraceful attitude toward the Jews. The Baron says, “Oh, how worthy of respect the Jews would be, if they were all like you!” The Traveler replies: “And how likeable the Christians would be, if they all had your qualities!” A friendly encounter between Jews and Christians is possible, religious toleration is necessary, and the overcoming of mutual prejudices is one of the prime demands of the Enlightenment. For this to become a widespread social phenomenon, as noted, both Jews and Christians required a dramatic change: the Christians needed remorse and toleration; the Jews had to live a virtuous, ethical life, and had to undergo a cultural regeneration that would make them into model citizens. The new discourse about Jews and Christians, with its hopes, demands, and preconditions, endowed The Jews with great significance. When the play was published in the 1750s it immediately aroused a dispute in the Enlightened public opinion of Germany, raising the central question: Was the play merely Utopian, expressing a naïve wish, or did Jews like the Traveler actually exist, and had the process of cultural conversion and social integration already begun?2 Isaac Wetzlar, the author of the Libes briv, could have performed the role of the Traveler in Lessing’s play quite well. He was a successful businessman, a merchant, and the manager of a tobacco factory from Celle, a town between Hanover and Hamburg. He was close to the family of the Court Jew Leffmann Behrens, traveled widely throughout Germany, met aristocrats like the Baron as well as scholars, and gained respect and esteem among them. Though in his youth he had acquired a Torah education in Prague with the rabbi whom he admired, Abraham Broda, he did not belong to the rabbinical elite and even tried to exclude himself from it. Wetzlar believed that morality and virtues, combined with a clear understanding of the principles of faith, were the basis for fear of Heaven and the focus of religious life, and his particularly favorite

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book was H.ovot halevavot. The Liebes briv was an ethical work, but very different not only from the popular books that inspired dread such as Qav hayashar and Shevet musar but also from Mesilat yesharim, which had just then found a place in the Jewish library, presenting the pious Jew with the task of ascending the ladder toward devotion and sanctity. He was a learned man and familiar with all the strata of Jewish culture; he followed the most current works. He also knew Hebrew well. Nevertheless, he chose to write his ethical work in the Yiddish vernacular, intending it for men and women whose world lay beyond that of Torah scholars. In solidarity, with the feeling of a shared fate, and with concern and compassion, he held an intimate, direct, and honest dialogue with the readers in the Liebes briv. In his opinion, the leadership had both neglected and mistreated ordinary Jews, whom he addressed in the first line of his book: “A love letter to my dear brothers and sisters in this exile.” Instead of calling his work an ethical book, he chose to present it to his readers as a newspaper (Zeitung), a form of writing that had become very popular at the time and found many readers. Though many years were to pass before Jewish society had its own newspapers, this definition shows awareness of journalism, the revolution in communications. Wetzlar regarded Liebes briv both as a means of treating the sensitive and painful issues of the time from a critical point of view and as a way of expressing an alternative opinion that bypassed the rabbinical elite, and sent an open love letter directly to the public opinion of contemporary society. His ethical work, with its sixteen chapters, was written in the form of a series of articles in a newspaper that had yet to come into being.3 Though Wetzlar revealed little of his own life story in Liebes briv, it is still a very personal work. The author, who wrote in the first person, shared his concerns, his personal experiences, and his meetings with Jews and Christians, and he recommended books that he had read. Seeking to gain his readers’ trust, Wetzlar presented himself as a simple Jew like them, and his purpose was to make heard the suppressed voice of the simple people, the village Jews: men who were not learned and women whose education had been neglected. Though not written in a bombastic or radical style, on every page an outcry is heard against the failures of the leadership. “I am writing to my dear brothers, my equals, who are businessmen,” Wetzlar emphasized the compass of his intended readership, “and have no intention or ability to become rabbis or even less to teach students.” While the popular political protests that were circulated in Paris that year, in songs and conversations saying that the present king was the worst ever, Wetzlar, in his own protest, sought to prove that the Talmudic scholars and communal functionaries had sunk to an unprecedented low. The scholars and, in general, office holders such as community rabbis and

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preachers were merely a class in themselves within Jewish society, a sector with interests. Although it was supposed to bear upon its shoulders the knowledge and authority for preserving religious norms, in fact, many of its members were ignorant, failures at their jobs, and of poor character. The crisis was so deep that he had heard simple Jews say that “scholars are among the most contemptible people, doing the worst deeds.” Like swindlers and robbers, they had taken over the Torah and bent it to their will. Rabbinical posts were purchased with money, community rabbis sought to increase their income, preachers violated their trust, and no one knew how to present Judaism properly to the Christians. The community functionaries shared in this failure, and they did not hesitate to drain “the blood of country people” to exploit their authority and to “skin people alive.” No wonder this subversive love letter was circulated only in manuscript and no printer was found to publish it.4 Being one of the early Maskilim, in his reading journal Wetzlar took part in the Jewish renaissance of knowledge. He recommended the restoration to the Jewish library and to the bloodstream of religious culture the neglected ethical and philosophical works of the Middle Ages. In addition to H.ovot halevavot by Ibn Paquda, he also directed his readers to study Sefer ha’iqarim (The Book of Principles) by Joseph Albo and ‘Aqedat yitsh.aq (The Binding of Isaac) by Isaac ‘Arama (of the fifteenth century), or the book by Sa’adia Gaon, Haemunot vehade’ot (Beliefs and Opinions, the tenth century). He found an exciting collection of rare books in early editions when he visited David Oppenheim in Hanover. He also took note of new books that appeared at that time and apparently obtained The Guide of the Perplexed in the Jeßnitz edition. Like Israel ben Abraham and the circle of early Maskilim in Berlin, Wetzlar was an admirer of Maimonides. Unlike Jacob Emden, for example, whose prayer book in three volumes he knew very well, Wetzlar defended the importance of science as one of the ways of knowing the greatness and goodness of God; he also defended philosophy. While he was reserved about Kabbalah and suspected kabbalists of secretly promulgating the doctrines of Shabtai Zevi, for him Maimonides was a model. He rejected the critique of Emden and others by distinguishing “philosophers” from the Greek philosophers who denied the existence of a Creator. Just as it defended philosophy, the Liebes briv fought on behalf of “my dear sisters, the daughters of Israel,” whom the rabbinate had left, intentionally in his opinion, in a state of ignorance with no education that would enable them to know the Torah and understand the prayers. Wetzlar pointed out the error in interpreting Rabbi Eliezer statement in the Mishna, “He who teaches his daughter Torah teaches her lasciviousness,” which was used as an excuse to

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deprive women of education, and he asked those “evil scholars” who placed a barrier here to make sure that girls learned Hebrew and Torah. Whereas Jacob Emden was among those who portrayed women as attractive, seductive bodies that required segregation and restriction, Wetzlar believed in their ability to learn and, by virtue of that, to understand Hebrew texts. Wetzlar argued for gender equality on the spiritual level: “I know that the souls of the daughters of Israel come from God, just like those of the sons of Israel.” In response to Emden who, in his prayer book, warned against teaching girls French and Italian as they were the gateway to forbidden contact with Christians, he believed that providing Jewish education for women could prevent this better than any moral preaching, and therefore it was a general interest whose importance the rabbinical elite ought to realize.5 If the Baron in Lessing’s play was ashamed of the attitude of Christians to Jews, Isaac Wetzlar was ashamed of the deplorable image of the Jews in the eyes of the Christians. With sorrow and pain, he admitted that in his encounters with high-ranking Christians he heard complaints and condemnations that he could not refute. They looked at the Jews and were contemptuous of the ignorance of the rabbis, who presented Judaism in a shallow and distorted manner and belittled the value of the Talmud. Nor was coarse behavior in the synagogue, which had become a site for mundane conversations and even physical fights, unknown to them, and they were surprised by the neglect of the education of the children: boys and girls. How could the Jews conceal the shame? The crisis was so severe and the situation so faulty that it enabled Christians to be arrogant toward the Jews and mock them and their faith. The Liebes briv was read by only a few people who obtained copies of the manuscript. Hence, it did not raise a scandal in its time. Unlike Lessing’s The Jews, it did not reverberate in public opinion. But its value as a fascinating document from 1749 cannot be underestimated, for it also testifies to the modern ferment that was arising from the lower levels of Jewish society when simple Jews, who did not write books and whose opinion was not valued, protested against the leadership; it also expresses one of the relatively radical voices of the early Haskalah. Though he tried to stick to moderate and constructive criticism, Wetzlar did not manage to conceal his anger at the scholars, and he expressed it in harsh words, such as had almost never been written in ethical works or books of sermons. His aspiration was to reeducate the group that had a monopoly of knowledge and values, to strengthen and deepen the religion with ethical and philosophical interpretations, and not to weaken it. But in addition to the frustrations of a critic from within who reveals failures, neglect, and corrupt conduct, Wetzlar also felt deep shame because of Christian criticism.

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In the convoluted biography of the Jewish eighteenth century, which is reaching midpoint, Lessing’s The Jews and Wetzlar’s love letter meet in 1749 in symbolic manner around awareness of a mutual historical failure. The feelings of shame that arose in both of them nourished protest and criticism but also wove a vision of the future in which Christians and Jews would undergo a deep process of improvement and reeducation. In this sense, they laid down important milestones. Lessing, in Germany, continuing in the footsteps of Locke and Toland in England, and Montesquieu in France, looked toward the inclusion of the Jews in Europe in an atmosphere of religious tolerance. Wetzlar contributed to the growth of an educated and critical elite, which would challenge the fears of those who, like Emden, were leery of the dangers of the “New World.” With the advent of 1750 and the beginning of the second half of the century, it quickly became clear that these trends were continuing to cause controversy. In Berlin, Frederick II signed draconian regulations that tightened even further the supervision of the Jews of Prussia. Their suspicious and hostile spirit was a slap in the face for advocates of tolerance such as Lessing and Mendelssohn. Not far from there, in Frankfurt an der Oder, Solomon of Chełm, in eastern Poland, would publish his book Mirkevet hamishne, a commentary on Maimonides’s Mishne tora. In almost direct continuation of Wetzlar’s work, this rabbi, whose complete rejection of ecstatic, pietist religiosity we have already encountered, nurtured the image of Maimonides as a model “to open blind eyes so they will be bright” and attacked the foolishness of those “who cast any aspersions on study of the sciences.”6 Though he belonged heart and soul to the rabbinical elite, his critical voice would strengthen the desire to harvest the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, in the renewed encounter with Maimonides, and he fit into the age of criticism, which continued to foster hope for better times.

Note s 1. Quotations taken from Die Juden, ­w ww​.­g utenberg​.­org​/­cache​/­epub​/­9110​ /­pg9110​.­html, trans. Jeffrey M. Green. 2. “Es gibt doch wohl auch Juden, die keine Juden sind”; “O wie achtungswürdig wären die Juden, wenn sie alle Ihnen glichen!”; “Und wie liebenswürdig die Christen, wenn sie alle Ihre Eigenschaften besäßen!” See Harvey J. Dunkle, “Lessing’s Die Juden, An Original Experiment,” Monatshefte 40 (1957): 323–329. 3. The Liebes Briv of Isaac Wetzlar, ed. and trans. Morris M. Faierstein (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1996). See also Morris M. Faierstain, “The Liebes Brief:

520

T h e Je w ish Eighte en t h Cen t u ry

A Critique of Jewish Society in Germany (1749),” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 27 (1982): 219–241. 4. Wetzlar, Liebes briv, pp. 24–27. 5. Ibid., pp. 47–49. 6. See Ismar Freund, Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preussen (Berlin: Verlag von M. Poppelauer, 1912), 2, pp. 22–55; Solomon of Chełm, Mirkevet hamishne, introduction.

INDEX

Abir ya’aqov (Simon Akiva Ber), 145 absolutism, ix, 15, 71, 82, 88, 97, 101, 465 Academy of Sciences of Besançon, 13–14 Addison, Joseph, 168–70, 215 adultery, 28–29, 434 adventurers and adventure stories, 198–201, 215–16 Aga, Osman, 200 Age of Criticism, ix Age of Reason, 12 Agnesi, Maria Gaetana, 453 agriculture, 33 AHU (Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek), 34, 185, 228, 325, 399, 403, 423, 453 Akiva Ber, Simon, 145 alcoholic beverages, 184, 429–30 ‘aleinu leshabeah prayer, supervision of, 249–51 Alexander, Karl, 153, 404, 407, 408–9 Alexander the Great, 215 Alpert, Michael, 269 Altneuschul Synagogue, 239, 451, 464 Altshul, Leibl, 255–56 ambition: of Augustus II, 76, 77, 78, 79; as cause of disaster, 214; of Court Jews, 39, 82, 88; and expectation of happiness, 31; of Glikl, 63, 84–85, 88–89, 153, 214, 215; of Lehmann, 78, 79; of Liebmann, Esther, 153; of Liebmann, Jost, 87 American Revolution, 15, 25 Amlander, Menachem, 261, 439, 449

Amsterdam: Ashkenazic community of, 432, 467–68; and brawl in synagogue on shabbat shuva, 292–93; as a center of Jewish printing, 309, 322, 339; and H.ayon affair, 314–20; Jewish population in, 34, 35; and Jewish settlement in Land of Israel, 296; Sephardic community of, 37–38, 294, 312–17 Anderson, James, 276 Anne, Queen of Great Britain: Cantarini on success of, 197; and conversions of Jews, 251; leadership of, 15; and Rock of Gibraltar, 203; and Swift, 379; and War of Spanish Succession, 194; and women’s empowerment, 61 apostates, 258–61, 277–80 Arendt, Hannah, 81 ARI (Rabbi Isaac Luria), 146, 302 Arias, Manuel Diaz, 203 aristocracy: and absolutism of royal courts, 71; class structure preserved by, 17; close family ties among, 83; Jewish members of, 98, 241. See also Court Jews art, 17, 18, 71–73, 192–93 ascetic practices, 225–26, 393–94, 480–81, 496 Ashkenazi, Mordecai, 108 Ashkenazi, Zvi Hirsch (Hakham Tsevi/ Zvi): Amsterdam appointment of, 293; and birth of Emden, 153, 228; and brawl in synagogue, 292–93; death of, 226,

521

522

I n de x

Ashkenazi, Zvi Hirsch (Cont.) 231; disputes of, 228–29; and Emden’s marriage, 229–30; excommunication of, 315; families of, 228; and Hamburger excommunication, 233, 287, 289; on Hasid’s messianic campaign to Jerusalem, 110, 114; and H.ayon affair, 227, 229, 314–18, 321, 327; Nieto’s exoneration by, 291–92; oil painting honoring, 226–27; and rationalist philosophers, 141; and Sabbateanism, 110, 227, 229 Ashkenazic communities: in Amsterdam, 432, 467–68; and collapse of Old Regime, 39; and fight in synagogue on shabbat shuva, 292–93; in France, 35; and H.ayon affair, 314–17; and Hebrew language, 339; and Jewish library, 339; in Land of Israel, 106, 107, 299–300, 304; in London, 99, 286–90; and rationalist philosophers, 141–42; and Sabbateanism, 304; and sexuality, 28; in United States, 35 Asians, 21 Astell, Mary, 59–61 Attias, Joseph, 338–39 Augustus II, King of Saxony and Poland: and blood libels, 261; death of, 428, 442; and Great Northern War, 76–77, 78, 194, 195, 207; and international relations in Europe, 198; and Lehmann, 79, 89, 95; and proposal for partition of Poland, 208; and Stanislaw Leszczyński, 198, 207 Augustus III, King of Poland, 426, 452, 469–70 Austerlitz, Baruch, 204–5 Australia, 19 Austrian Empire: and financial support supplied by Court Jews, 82; Jewish population in, 35; and military suppliers, 203–5; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 195; and Oppenheimer, 97; Prussian conquest of Silesia, 15, 443, 444, 445, 447; Sabbateans in, 325; War of Austrian Succession, 15, 439, 443–48, 452–53, 455, 460, 469, 472, 502; War of Spanish Succession, 73–74, 97, 194, 203–5. See also specific leaders, including Leopold I and Maria Theresa

authority: Astell’s criticisms of oppression of women, 61; as bestowed by divine grace, 66; and Levi’s European travels, 365; open challenges to, 294–96; relationships with men of, 84, 88 autonomy and the autonomous self, 24–31; and Central European culture, 101; and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, 166; and Emden, 235, 398, 399, 492; and happiness, ix, 25, 27, 29–31, 205, 507; and Kabballah, 371; and Kant, 31; and Locke, 24; of Maria Theresa and Frederick II, 442, 471; in Poland, 103, 104, 266; Porter on birth of, 27; and power of elite leadership, 186; and radical religiosity, 28; and Rousseau’s Confessions, 26; and Sabbatean movement, 28; strengthening of ethos of, 10, 20, 25; and Taylor’s Sources of the Self, 26; and Toland’s naturalization campaign, 265– 66; and Vico’s New Science, 336. See also individualism Ayllon, Solomon, 99–100, 294, 314–18 ba’alei shem, 334–36, 344, 345 Ba’al Shem, Joel, 335–36 Ba’al Shem Tov (Besht; Israel Ben Eliezer), 477–84; abilities and powers of, 332, 373, 391, 482, 483; ascents of the soul, 477, 479, 480, 482, 484; and asceticism and self-mortification, 393–94, 480–81; authority of, 482, 483–84; birth and youth of, 154–55; criticisms voiced by, 481, 482–83; disciples of, 112, 480–81, 484; and Emden, 497; folk medicine practiced by, 394, 395, 483; home of, 481–82; as Master of the Name, 391, 394–96, 483; and Messiah’s coming, 479–80; prayer practice of, 482, 484; and religious revival, 373, 392–93 Bach, Carl Philip Emanuel, 18 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 193, 402, 429 Bacharach, Yair, 144, 180 Baer, Yitzhak, 38, 298 Bahye Ibn Paquda, 499 Baiersdorf, Simon, 57 Balkan communities, x, 41 Bamberg, Moses, 86

I n de x Bamberg riots, summer of 1699, 86, 97, 124–25 Bariel, Judah, 316, 323 Basedow, Johann Bernhard, 9 Basnage, Jacques, 33, 256–57, 268 Bassan, Isaiah, 355, 364–72 bathhouses, 240–41 Battle of Dettingen, 444 Battle of Mollwitz, 443 Bayle, Pierre, 139–40, 141, 162–63, 164, 256, 339, 358 Bazin, Germain, 72 Beales, Derek, vii Beccaria, Cesare, 8, 270 Beer Sheva (Well of Oath/Seven) (Perlhefter and Perlhefter), 65 Beggar’s Opera, The (Gay), 430, 432 Behrens, Gumpel and Isaac, 270–73, 407 Behrens, Leffmann, 144, 184, 251, 253, 254, 270, 515 Beinush, Benjamin, 223, 224 Benedict XIV, Pope, 461 Ber, Aaron, 175–76 Berakhya Berakh ben Elyakim Getzl, 207, 386–88 Berek, Alexander, 105 Berger, Shlomo, 244 Berlin: class divisions in, 179; demographic changes in, 32; Jewish population in, 34, 35; restrictions imposed on Jewish minority in, 101; synagogue dispute in, 293–94 Berman, Issachar, 144 Biale, David, 234 Birkenthal, Dov Ber, 427–28 Black, Jeremy, 22–23 blood libels: and anti-Jewish propaganda, 419; and Basnage’s History of the Jews, 256; and Christian Hebraists, 123; and claims of apostates, 259–61; decline in numbers of, 35–36; depicted in etching, 265; in Poland, 105, 268; in Poznan, 426–27; in Zasław, 477–78 Blount, Charles, 140 Bodleian Library at Oxford, 83 Bohemia: book censorship in, 262; Jews expelled from, 440, 463–64, 465, 468, 471; migration of Jews from, 34

523

Bonfil, Robert, 102, 371 books and book publishing: censorship of, 261–64; ethical literature, 146–47, 148, 332, 338, 385, 435; halakhic rulings, 145–46; literature of the Enlightenment, 18, 19; of magic spells, 223, 335, 338; novels, 19, 25, 26; printed by Israel ben Abraham, 498–500; published by rabbinical elite, 143–47; Sabbatean propaganda, 142. See also specific titles Boucher, François, 18, 488 Bourbon dynasty, 14, 72, 73, 268 bourgeoisie, 16, 17, 19, 26, 170 Boyle, Robert, 135 Brandeis, Bezalel, 447, 449, 450, 451, 462–63, 465 Brandenburg Concertos (Bach), 193 Bregoli, Francesca, 339 Brest, 372, 428, 459 British East India Company, 98 Broda, Abraham ben Mordecai, 274, 275 Broda, Abraham (rabbi), 111–12, 216, 222, 300, 310 Brown, Tom, 100–101 bubonic plague, 33 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de, 455, 457 Burckhardt, Jakob, 25 Burke, Edmund, 13 Cagliostro, Count, 20 Callenberg, Johann Heinrich, 359 Campbell, Ted, 393 Candide (Voltaire), 7, 19, 167 Cantarini, Isaac Haim, 196–98, 242, 440 cantors, 218–19, 292–93, 494 capitalism, 16 Cardozo, Abraham Michael, 141, 316, 318 Carlebach, Elisheva, 314, 317, 320, 323 Casanova, Giacomo, 29–30 Cassuto, Moses, 452 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 13 Catholics and Catholic Church: and decline in libels and judicial murder, 36; De la Barre’s execution by, 7–8; and expulsion of Jews from Prague, 461; and Innocent XIII, 243; and Inquisition, 193, 244,

524

I n de x

Catholics and Catholic Church (Cont.) 256, 268–69, 276, 421; and Kobielski’s treatment of Jews, 459; and Langallerie’s plans, 199, 200; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 193; and religious awakening, 361–62; segregation demanded by, 102, 104 celebrity, culture of, 453 centralized state, consolidation of, 16 Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses (Picart), 276 Champion, Justin, 267 Charles Edward, Prince (the Young Pretender), 445 Chauncy, Charles, 362 child and infant mortality, 32, 63–65, 401–2 Christians and Christianity, 248–80; and adventurers, 198–99; and apostates, 258–61; and Astell’s criticisms of oppression of women, 62; attacks by fanatical, 238, 241–42, 244; and blood libels, 35–36, 105, 123, 220, 256, 259–61, 265, 268; and book censorship/raids, 261–64; boundaries between Jews and, 495–96; conversions of Jews to (see conversions of Jews); conversions to Judaism, 252; and crucifixion of Jesus, 94, 96, 422; and Crusades, 239; and d’Argens’s Thérese philosophe, 505–6; and disasters seen as punishment for sins, 176; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 122, 254–55; Emden on relations of Jews with, 235; and expulsion of Jews from Prague, 462, 464, 468; and Ghettos, 94, 102–3; and Hebraism, 122–27, 140, 248, 250, 252, 295, 318; and Inquisition, 193, 244, 256, 268–69, 276, 421, 458; and inspectors in synagogues, 251; and Lessing’s The Jew, 514–15; and Levi’s European travels, 238, 239, 241, 243, 244; and Locke’s doctrine of toleration, 136–38; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 196; and permissiveness among Jews, 100, 101; and pogroms in Prague, 462; propaganda of, 278–79; religious debate with Stadthagen in Hanover, 253–54; and religious revival, ix, 19, 109, 358–63; and religious tolerance, 257; and riots in Vienna, summer of 1700,

94–97; role of death in theology of, 27; and supervision of ‘aleinu leshabeah prayer in Prussia, 249–51; Swift’s condemnation of sectarianism in, 380; and Toland’s naturalization campaign, 265–67; visual propaganda of, 264–65; and Voltaire’s Sermon of the Fifty, 508; and Wetzlar’s Libes briv, 518–19. See also Catholics and Catholic Church cities, life in, 17–18 citizenship: and Jew Bill, 470; and Mendelssohn, 38; and Plantation Act (1740), 267, 440–41, 470; and rise of autonomy, 24; and separating civil rights from religion, 137; and Toland’s naturalization campaign, 141, 265–67 civil rights, 81, 84, 137 class divisions and status, 17, 179, 181–82, 193 Cleland, John, 505 Clement XIV, Pope, 20 “Coffee Cantata” (Bach), 429 coffeehouses, 168, 170, 171, 172, 182–83, 185, 233 Cohen, Benjamin, 108, 111, 357 Cohen, Ephraim, 229 Cohen, Nehemiah, 372 Cohen, Richard, 84, 226–27 Cohen, Tuvia, 149–51, 153, 164, 182, 197, 341–45, 499–500 colonial America, 33, 35, 267, 440–41 comets, 161–62, 164 commerce, 17, 35 Confessions (Rousseau), 26, 29 conversions of Jews: and apostates, 258–61; Ba’al Shem Tov on, 478; Christian campaigns in pursuit of, 256, 419–20, 428; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 124, 126; Glikl’s grandson, 277–80; pressure experienced by Jews in Rome, 243; state support for, 251–52, 255–56 Cook, James, 19 Copernican cosmology, 342, 344, 500 Cortissos, Joseph, 202 Cossacks, 5–6, 104 Court Jews: and absolutism of royal courts, ix, 82, 88, 97, 465; ambition of, 39, 82, 88; aristocratic characteristics adopted by, 84;

I n de x civil rights enjoyed by, 81, 84; close family ties among, 83, 85; diplomatic efforts of, 467; and economic opportunities, 36; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 97–98, 124, 126, 465; and Emancipation, 82; and expulsion of Jews from Prague, 465–66, 467; financial support supplied by, 78, 79, 80–81, 82, 83–84, 97; in Germany, 39; and Great Northern War, 77–80; imprisonment and torture of, 270–73; and Jerusalem campaign of Hasid and Malakh, 111, 116; and Jewish settlement in Land of Israel, 121, 299; and kabbalistic ethical works, 152; and Levi’s European travels, 241; loyalty to Jewish community, 81; as military suppliers, 82, 163, 202–5, 407; and modernization, 81, 82; power and status of, 81, 82, 126, 163, 241; and rabbinical elite, 144, 152; and riots in Vienna, summer of 1700, 96; Stern’s research on, 39, 65, 81–82, 84–85; and War of Austrian Succession, 447. See also specific individuals, including Lehmann, Oppenheimer, and the Wertheimers criminals, robbers, and thieves: ancient Israelites characterized as, 420; Behrens brothers charged as, 270; and class divisions, 182; and corporal punishments, 273; Diderot charged as, 455; and dire economic circumstances, 18, 177, 430; Eybeschütz on, 497; in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, 430; in Germany, 430; halakhic rulings on, 180; and H.ayon’s Hatsad tsevi, 321; on highways, 177–78, 238; Jews accused/suspected of being, 96, 266, 419, 514; and Lessing’s The Jews, 514; in London, 429, 430; Mendelssohn on death sentence for, 8; Oppenheimer charged as, 405–6; Pöllnitz’s accounts of, 429; as related to seminal emission, 115; Relationis Historicae’s reports on, 93; Sabbateans compared to, 4; and Schudt’s distribution of inflammatory etching, 265; and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, 380; and Toland, 266, 267; and travel to Land of Israel, 106; and waves of crimes committed by soldiers, 439–40

525

Crusades, 239 cultural history, definition of, 10–11 Czartoryski family, 104 D’Aguilar, Diego Pereira, 451, 466 D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 18 D’Argens, Jean Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis, 421–22, 502 Darnton, Robert, 170–71, 506 Davenport, James, 362 David, King, 140 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 62, 280 De Clapiers, Luc, 13 Defoe, Daniel, 165–67, 173–74, 277 deists and deism: about, 140; goals of, 420; and H.ayon affair, 318; and hostility toward Judaism, 140–41, 163, 420–21; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 193; and religious tolerance, 420; Toland, 140–41; and Voltaire’s Sermon of the Fifty, 508 De la Barre, Jean François, 7–8 De la Penha, Daniel and Joseph, 202 De Linage, Gottfried Ludwig, 200–201 De Medina, Solomon, 98, 99, 153, 202–3, 382–83 demographic changes in eighteenth century, 31–37, 41 Denmark, 34, 76 Dickens, Charles, 9 Diderot, Denis, 18, 26–27, 455–56, 457 Dinur, Ben-Zion, 39, 81, 127 Discourse on Happiness (Du Châtelet), 507 Doyle, William, 33 Dubno, Solomon, 490 Dubnow, Simon, 38, 207 Du Châtelet, Émilie, 384–85, 506–7, 513 dybbuks, 395–96 dynasties of Europe, 14, 17 Early Modern Jewry (Ruderman), 42 early modern period, 12, 16, 41–42, 123 earthquake in North America (1727), 361 Eastern Europe, Jewish population in, 35, 37 Edgerton, Sarah Fyge, 212 Edict of Nantes, 136, 139 Edict of Tolerance (1782), 31

526

I n de x

education: deficits in scientific, 150–51; and literacy, 16, 18; Locke on, 135; restrictions imposed on Jews seeking, 150; of women, 23, 60, 517–18 Edwards, Jonathan, 361, 362 Eisenmenger, Johann Andreas, x, 121–27, 137, 250, 254–55, 262 Elisabeth Christine, Empress, 240 Elleh benei ha-ne’urim (Luzzatto), 3, 4 Emancipation: anticipation of, 39; and Court Jews, 81, 82; harbingers of, 38; and Plantation Act (1740), 267, 440–41 Embarkation for Cythera, The (Watteau), 193 Emden, Jacob, 226–36, 490–98; admiration sought by, 236; ambition of, 392, 396–97autobiographical material from, 392 (see also Megilat sefer); autonomy/ independence of, 235, 398, 399, 403, 492; and Ba’al Shem Tov, 497; and Behren family’s downfall, 270–71; birth and youth of, 153, 228–31; and brawl in synagogue on shabbat shuva, 292, 293; and Christian travelers, 235, 249; and coffeehouse accusation, 233; criticisms of senior rabbis, 391, 399–401, 403–4; drinking habit of, 401; on emigration to Land of Israel, 494–95; European travels of, 232–33; and Eybeschütz, 4, 327–28; family of, 235–36, 401–2, 491; on fashion and clothing choices, 495; father of (see Ashkenazi, Zvi Hirsch); financial support of, 399; on French language, 5, 149, 506, 518; on Hamburger excommunication, 287; and happiness, 491, 492; on Hasid’s messianic campaign to Jerusalem, 109, 110, 112, 113–14, 116, 119–20, 121; and Haskalah, 4; and H.ayon affair, 227, 229, 317; health issues of, 230; and Luzzatto, 355, 369, 372–73, 391, 402, 490; marriages of, 229–32, 401, 491; Megilat sefer, 220, 226, 227–28, 392, 397, 401, 404; Mitpah.at sefarim, 4–5; on newspaper reading, 183; on Nieto’s exoneration, 290–91; on pet dogs and cats, 402–3; prayer book of, 491–93, 496; and rationalist philosophers, 495, 496; on religious revival movements, 109; religious Utopia of, 493–96, 498, 504;

romantic interest of, 229–30, 397; and Sabbateanism, 3–4, 229, 236, 303, 305, 327–28, 399; on scholarship in Europe, 494; and science, 496; and sexual libertinism, 506; sexual temptations of, 30, 234–35; Sheilat ya’avets, 183, 492; and supernatural world, 497–98; on Vienna, 241–42; and winter of 1708–1709, 173; on women, 495–96, 518 “Emulation, The” (Egerton), 212 Encyclopedia (Diderot and d’Alembert, eds.), 18, 455–56, 457, 491, 504 Endelman, Todd, 40, 433 England: and France’s decline in power, 15; Glorious Revolution in, 16; Hogarth on moral bankruptcy of, 430; and hurricane of 1703, 173; Industrial Revolution in, 21; and King George’s War, 445; life expectancy in, 32; and military suppliers, 202; and modernization, 40; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 195; power and status of, 195; and Rock of Gibraltar, 203; Sephardic communities in, 41; and War of Austrian Succession, 444; and War of Spanish Succession, 73–74, 194, 197, 202–3, 205; and winter of 1708–1709, 172. See also Great Britain Enlightenment, 12–14; cultural drivers of, 7, 18–19; essential values of, 60; fundamental publications of, 504; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 191; and newspapers, 170; philosophers of, 454–59; reeducation campaigns of, 163, 164–65; religion’s power eroded during, 20, 21; religious revival paralleling, 27–28, 354; and scientific advances, 18, 19, 20–21, 23; and Toland’s naturalization campaign, 267. See also other individuals, including Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Hume Enlightenment, The (Gay), 22 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume), 12–13, 456 entertainment, interest in, 183–86 epidemics, 31–32, 173–75 Epstein, Abraham, 6–7 erotic novels, 504–6 Eskeles, Gabriel, 146, 334

I n de x Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke), 503–4 Essay on Man (Pope), 428–29 Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus), 32 Essingen, Samuel, 20 Estonia, 78 Etkes, Immanuel, 395, 482, 484 ‘Et qets (Cantarini), 196–98 Euchel, Isaac, 503–4 Eugene of Savoy, Prince, 74, 83, 96, 194, 203–4, 240 Europe: demographic changes in, 31–37, 41; international relations in, 15–16, 194–95, 197–98, 439, 442–52; Jewish population in, 33–37; Old Regime in, 22, 39, 384, 385, 388, 407; and tension between New and Old, 16wars and instability in, 15–16, 442–53 (see also specific wars); and winter of 1708– 1709, 172–73. See also specific countries European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750 (Israel), 41 “Examinations of the Bible” (Du Châtelet), 385 excommunication, 287–90, 293, 294–95, 369 executions, 7–8, 105, 163, 260, 268, 269 Eybeschütz, Jonathan, 4, 227, 326–28, 449–50, 453, 497 Fable of the Bees (Mandeville), 168 Falk, Jacob Joshua, 206 Falk, Samuel, 20 famine, 172 Fanny Hill (Cleland), 505 Ferrarese, Abraham, 363 Finland, 173 fires, 175–77, 180 folk medicine and doctors, 151, 334–36, 343, 345, 394, 395, 483 Forkes, David, 482 Fortis, Moses, 104 Fortunate Mistress, The (Defoe), 277 Four Seasons, The (Vivaldi), 193 France: absolutism regime of, 71, 72; decline in power of, 15; and desire for life’s pleasures, 192–93; and French Enlightenment, 13; and French language, 5, 149, 506, 518; French Revolution, x,

527

15–16, 21–22; Jewish population in, 34, 35; Jews expelled from, 458; life expectancy in, 32; and Louis XIV, 15, 71–73; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 191–94; religious awakening in, 359–60, 361; and War of Austrian Succession, 444, 450; and War of Spanish Succession, 73–75, 194, 197, 202–3 Frank, Jakob, 3, 4, 112, 303 Fränkel, David, 499, 502–3 Frankel, Elkan and Hirsch, 262–64 Frankfurt am Main: anti-Semitism in, 264–65; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 121–27, 134, 262; and Emden, 398; and expulsion of Jews from Prague, 468; expulsion of Moses Meir from, 324–25; fire of 1711, 175–77, 230, 233; Ghetto of, 238; Glikl’s visit to, 57, 88; and the Hamels’ business, 63; and H.asid’s messianic movement, 113–14, 117, 120, 152; House of Study in, 144; Jewish population in, 101; Jewish scholarship in, 244; and Jewish settlement in Land of Israel, 299–300, 301; Jew Süß‘s home in, 409; and Joseph I, 204, 241; and Kaidanover’s Qav hayashar, 147; and Levi’s European travels, 244; and Luzzatto, 365, 369, 370–72; messianic hopes in, 113; and Oppenheimer’s will, 406; Relationis Historicae’s publication in, 93, 96, 106, 107, 113, 117; restrictions imposed on Jews in, 184–85; riots in, 124; Talmuds distributed in, 80; and Wallich family, 151; and Wallich’s medical text, 152; Wertheimer’s financial contributions in, 177 Frankfurt an der Oder, 80, 101, 142, 150, 500, 502, 519 Frankism, 4 Franklin, Benjamin, 20, 453 Franks, Abigail Levy, 389 Franks, Benjamin, 98–99, 153 Frederick I, King of Prussia: and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 127, 163, 262; and Glikl’s family, 67, 75; and Great Northern War, 195; and Lehmann, 79; and Liebmanns, 86–87, 293–94; and supervision of Jews in Prussia, 249–51

528

I n de x

Frederick II, King of Prussia (Frederick the Great): accession to the throne, 441; condemnation of Jews, 8; and Enlightenment era, 389, 441; and freedom of thought, 12; and La Mettrie, 455; and supervision of Jews in Prussia, 519; and Voltaire, 388–89, 441, 442–43; and War of Austrian Succession, 442–45, 502 Frederick III, Prince Elector of Brandenburg–Prussia, 74–75, 77, 80, 88, 101–2, 150. See also Frederick I, King of Prussia Frederick IV, King of Denmark, 76 Frederick Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, 15, 294, 441, 453 Freemasons, 420 French Enlightenment, 13 French Revolution, x, 15–16, 21–22

Gordon, Yekutiel, 353, 354–58, 363–65, 371–73, 426, 487, 490 Graetz, Heinrich, 37–38, 141, 257, 311, 323 Great Awakening, 358–63 Great Britain: and Plantation Act (1740), 267, 440–41, 470; and Toland’s naturalization campaign, 265–67. See also England Great Northern War, 15, 75–78, 97, 102, 194–95, 205–8 Greece, Jewish population in, 34 Green, Anna, 10–11 Gries, Zeev, 339 Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 142, 498, 499, 501, 503, 517 Gulliver’s Travels (Swift), 19, 378–81 Gumpertz, Aaron, 4, 502–3, 514 Gumpertz, Eliahu, 66, 67, 71, 75, 85, 514 Gustav III, King of Sweden, 8

Galut (Baer), 38 Ganz, David, 499 Garrick, David, 19, 453 Gassner, Johann Joseph, 20 Gay, John, 430, 432–33 Gay, Peter, 22 Gedalia of Siemiatycz, 118, 120 Gelber, Nathan, 200 George I, King of England, 77, 174, 195, 253 George II, King of England, 444, 452, 469 Germany: and assimilation of Jews, 38–39; Court Jews in, 39, 81; immigration of Jews to, 105; Jewish population in, 34–35, 40; and Jew Süß (Joseph Oppenheimer), 407; and Levi’s European travels, 238–39; and modernization, 38, 40, 81; Sabbateans in, 325 Gershon of Kotov, 393, 396, 477, 478, 479 Geschichte der Israeliten (Jost), 257 Ghettos, 40, 94, 102–3, 175 Gideon, Samson, 389, 391, 445 Ginzburg, Jetel, 103 Ginzburg, Simon, 355 Glikl. See Hamel, Glikl Glogau community, 369, 447, 449 Glorious Revolution in England, 16 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 18, 30 Gonta, Ivan, 5

Habermas, Jürgen, 170 Habsburg dynasty, 14, 204, 241, 424, 439, 441, 442, 445, 446, 462. See also specific leaders, including Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria Hacohen, Elijah, 332, 333–34 Hagiz, Moses, 296–98; angelic encounter of, 143; and Basnage’s History of the Jews, 257; Emden’s criticisms of, 399–400, 403–4; and H.ayon affair, 227, 314–18, 321–24; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 355, 363–72; on pleasure-seekers, 433–35; and rationalist philosophers, 141; and rulers in Europe, 424; and Sabbateans’s expulsion, 326; and violence against Jews, 424, 425 Hague, The, Jewish population in, 35 Haidamaks, 5–6 H.aim Ben ‘Atar, 440 H.akham Tsevi/Zvi. See Ashkenazi, Zvi Hirsch Halevi, Wolf, 117, 118 Halley, Edmond, 161–62 Halley’s Comet, 161–62 Hambro Synagogue, 290 Hamburg, Germany: Emden’s experiences in, 232–33; Emden’s Sheilat ya’avets prohibited in, 403; excommunications of pregnant servants in, 182;

I n de x excommunications of Sabbateans, 325–26; and expulsion of Jews from Prague, 467; Eybeschütz’s reception in, 453; and failure of Sabbatean movement, 64; Glikl’s former life in, 55, 57, 58, 63, 64; Jewish population in, 34, 35, 399; Marcus’s conversion in, 278, 279; restrictions imposed on entertainment in, 185; riots in, 86, 422–24 Hamburger, Friedchen, 233, 278, 280, 287 Hamburger, Mordecai, 233, 278, 279, 286–90, 295 Hameasef (periodical), viii Hamel, Glikl: and absolutism of royal courts, 71; ambition for success, 63, 66, 84–85, 88–89, 153, 214, 215; Astell contrasted with, 59–60; and attitudes about marriage, 61–62; books recommended by, 146; and Court Jews, 86; death of, 280; death of child, 63–64, 241; death of first husband, 55, 57, 58, 65–66; death of second husband, 161, 214–15; deaths of adult children, 213; expectations for happiness, 62, 63, 66; and failure of Sabbatean movement, 64; financial problems of, 58, 59, 89, 213–14, 216; and Friedrich I, King of Prussia, 67, 75; grandson’s conversion, 277–80; and Great Northern War, 76; and Halley’s Comet, 161, 162; Jerusalem sojourn considered by, 59, 107; and Liebmanns, 86–88; and Oppenheimer family, 85–86; residing with children, 216; and tragedy at synagogue (1715), 216–18; and War of Spanish Succession, 74; and wedding of daughter, 66–68, 85; and wedding of son, 88; and Wertheimer, 86; widowhood of, 55, 57, 59, 216 Hamel, Haim: death of, 55, 57, 58, 65–66; Glikl’s marriage to, 58, 62; and Liebmanns, 87; loss of child, 63–64 Händel, Georg Friedrich, 18, 194, 444–45 Hanover dynasty, 14, 15, 194, 254 happiness: as aspiration of eighteenth century, vii, viii–ix, 21, 24–31, 43; and Astell’s Some Reflections upon Marriage, 60; and authors of Encyclopedia, 491–92; and the autonomous self, ix, 25, 27,

529

29–31, 507; changing attitudes on, 170; consciousness of the times as, 10; and Du Châtelet, 507; and Emden, 491, 492; Glikl’s expectations for, 62, 63, 66; Kant on, ix, 507; and Leibniz’s optimistic paradigm, 167; and marriage, 62; and Mendelssohn, 2, 5, 8, 43; and revival movements, 362; and secularization, viii–ix; and sexuality, 29–31, 505, 506; and Voltaire, 506; wealth as measure of, 66–67; of women, 507 Hargreaves, James, 20 Harlot’s Progress, The (Gay), 430, 432, 433 Harrington, William Stanhope, Earl of, 469–70 H.asid, Judah, 39, 106–21, 141, 147, 298, 301–2, 305. See also Sabbateanism and Sabbateans Hasidim (pietists), 27, 106, 109, 113 Hasidism: and collapse of Old Regime, 39; emergence of, 19–20; influence of, 143; Katz on revolutionary role of, 484; and Luzzatto, 373; origins of, 112, 393, 396; and religious awakening, 393; renewal in, 41; and supernatural experiences, 143. See also kabbalistic movement of Hasidism Haskalah: and collapse of Old Regime, 39; communal institutions weakened by, 41; and critical thinking, 345, 385; culture war triggered by, 9; driving forces for, 338, 345; and Emden, 4; followers of (see Maskilim); foundations of early, 163; and Israel ben Abraham’s printing project, 500; as Jewish instance of Enlightenment, ix–x; and Jewish library, 338; and population growth in Jewish communities, 37; religious revival paralleling, 354; and traditional beliefs, 38; wealthy Jews’ support of, 36; and Wetzlar’s Libes briv, 518–19 Hasofer, Aaron, 248 Haydn, Joseph, 18, 453 H.ayon, Nechemiah H.iya, 112, 227, 229, 311–24, 440 Hazard, Paul, 137, 142 Hebraists and Hebraism, 42, 122–27, 140, 250, 252, 295, 318

530

I n de x

Hebrew language, 3, 122–27, 146, 312, 318, 322, 332, 339–40 Henekh, H.anokh, 185 Henoch, Moses, 146 Herder, Gottfried, 490 Herschel, William, 21 Heschel Zoref, Joshua, 108 Heyd, Michael, viii, 362 highway robbers, 177–78. See also criminals, robbers, and thieves Historical Critical Dictionary (Bayle), 139–40 History of the Jews (Basnage), 256–57 History of the Jews (Graetz), 37–38 History of the Ridiculous Extravagances of Monsieur Oufle, The (anonymous satire), 163 “History of the War of 1741” (Voltaire), 444 Hogarth, William, 430, 432–33, 453 Hohenzollern dynasty, 14, 87, 249, 262–63, 442 Holland: and Jewish library, 338, 339; merchants of, 202; Sephardic communities in, 41; and trade with Spain, 202; and War of Austrian Succession, 444; and War of Spanish Succession, 73–74, 202, 205 Holleschau, Johann, 287, 289–90 Holy Society of Judah H.asid, 108–21, 147, 152, 298–99, 304 Horowitz, Leah, 390 H.ovot halevavot (The Duties of the Heart) (Bahye Ibn Paquda), 499 Huguenots, 136, 138 humanism, 7, 18, 20, 27, 36, 60 human rights, 25 Hume, David, 12–13, 456 Hundert, Gershon, 37, 40, 104, 260–61 Hungary, Jewish population in, 34 Hunt, Lynn, 25, 506 Hunt, Margaret, 23 Hurvitz, Elimelech, 180 Ickowicz, Gedalia and Samuel, 459–60 Igeret mah. lat (Brandeis), 462–63 individualism, 11, 24–31, 153, 354, 362, 363, 505 Industrial Revolution in England, 21 infant mortality, 32, 63–65, 401–2

Innocent XIII, Pope, 243 Inquisition, 193, 244, 256, 268–69, 276, 421, 458 Isaac Ben Elyakim, 146 Islam, conversion of Hasid’s pilgrims to, 120 Israel. See Land of Israel Israel, Jonathan, 22, 41, 42, 202, 269 Israel and Israelites, ancient, 136, 385, 420–21 Israel ben Abraham, 498–500, 501–2, 503 Israel Ben Eliezer. See Ba’al Shem Tov Israel ben Moses Halevi of Zamość, 500–503, 514 Italy: Ghettos of, 102–3; Hebrew printing in, 102; and Inquisition, 421; and Italian language, 518; Jewish population in, 34, 102; and Levi’s European travels, 242–43; and modernization, 41; pressure on Jews in, 102–3; Sephardic communities in, 41 Jacob, Samuel Simon ben, 341 Jacob Ben Isaac, 145 Jacobson, Moses, 255 James II, King of England, 198 Jenisch, Daniel, 14 Jenner, Edward, 21 Jerusalem: and Glikl, 59, 107; Hasid and Malakh’s messianic campaign to, 39, 106–21; Jewish emigration to, 107, 108; Jewish population in, 35, 106; and Levi’s European travels, 244; and Oppenheim, 300–301. See also Land of Israel Jerusalem, On Religious Power and Judaism (Mendelssohn), 43 Jew Bill, 470 Jewish Republic of Letters, 41 Jewish Spy, The (d’Argens), 421–22 Jews, The (Lessing), 513–15, 519 Jew Süß. See Oppenheimer, Joseph Süß Jokele (cantor), 216–17, 239 Jonathan Ben Joseph, 174–75, 206–7 Jonge, Esther de, 255 Joseph Ben Issachar Ber, 299–300 Joseph Ben Jacob, 174, 206 Joseph Ben Judah Yudl, 146 Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, 173, 197, 204, 241, 255 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 15, 31, 448–49, 467

I n de x Jost, Isaak Markus, 37, 257 Judah Ben Isaac Katz, 180–81, 248 Judaism Unmasked (Eisenmenger), x, 98, 122–27, 163, 254–55, 262 kabbalistic movement of Hasidism: and ba’alei shem, 334–36; and book publishing, 145; and Court Jews, 152; emergence of, 9; ethical works of, 332, 333–34, 338; and H.ayon, 311, 312, 313–14, 318; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 353–56, 367–73; and magic, 334–35, 338; and rationalist philosophers, 141; and sexual sins, 148–49; and the supernatural, 142, 332 Kahan, Moses, 468 Kaidanover, Zvi Hirsch, 141, 146–49, 178–79, 223 Kant, Immanuel, ix, 12, 18, 25, 31, 43, 60, 507 Kaplan, Yosef, 29, 138, 294–95, 338 Karaites and Karaism, 294–95 Karl Albert, Holy Roman Emperor, 444, 445, 446 Karlowitz Treaty of 1699, 15 Karl VI, Emperor, 200, 240, 241, 262, 439, 441, 447, 470 Karl XII, King of Sweden, 76, 78, 79, 194–95, 205 Karpels, Wolf, 255–56 Katz, Abraham Reuben Hacohen, 145 Katz, David, 98 Katz, Jacob: and Ba’al Shem Tov, 484; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 123–24; on functions of synagogues, 286; and H.ayon affair, 319–20; on individualism, 28; on Old Regime, 39–40; on religious attitudes, 276; and ruling on menstruating women, 145–46; on strength of Jewish community, 81 Katz, Mordecai, 230 Katz, Naphtali, 175, 176, 230, 312–13, 322 Katzenellenbogen, Ezekiel, 365, 366, 370, 399–400, 403, 423, 492 Katzenellenbogen, Pinchas, 143, 220–26, 227, 334 Kaulla, Madame (Hayele Raphael), 2–3, 5, 11 Kevod h. akhamim (Ben Issachar), 107 Kidd, William, 98–99

531

King George’s War, 445 Kisch, Abraham, 503 Koselleck, Reinhart, vii, 12 Krumbach, Abraham, 58–59 Krumbach, Moses, 213–14, 216 Kuzari sheni (Nieto), 164 “La Henriade” (Voltaire), 276 La Mettrie, Julien Offray de, 455, 504–5 Lampronti, Isaac, 181 Landau, Ezekiel, 390–91, 472 Land of Israel: and conduct of European Jews, 433–34; Court Jews’ support of settlement in, 121; crisis in Jewish settlement, 296–301, 304; destruction of synagogue in, 298; dirt and stones collected from, 107; Emden on emigration to, 494–95; and failure of Sabbatean movement, 38; Hasid and Malakh’s messianic campaign to, 39, 106–21; Jewish settlement of, 106, 107, 121, 440; and Levi’s European travels, 244; and messianic expectations, 297–98; and Oppenheim, 116; and Paulli’s exploits, 199; Sabbatean presence in, 299, 301–5 Landsofer, Jonah, 112 Langallerie, Philippe Gentil, Marquis de, 199–200 La nouvelle Héloïse (Rousseau), 26 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 1 Lavoisier, Antoine, 21 Layesharim tehila (Luzzatto), 485, 487–89, 490, 504 Le Goff, Jacques, ix Lehmann, Behrend: Augustus’s demand for removal of beard, 89, 95; and Great Northern War, 77–80, 97; and Langallerie, 200; and proposal for partition of Poland, 208–9 Lehmann, Matthias, 107 Leib Ben Ozer, 110–11, 309–11, 324 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 7, 167, 340 Leibush of Sharigrod, 6, 11 Leopold I, Emperor of Austria: and Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, 193; death of, 255; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 124–27, 255; and financial support

532

I n de x

Leopold I, Emperor of Austria (Cont.) supplied by Court Jews, 127; and Israel ben Abraham’s printing project, 499; and Lehmann, 79; and Oppenheimer, 82, 96; and protective order for Jews, 96; and Talmud printing and distribution, 80; and War of Spanish Succession, 74, 75, 127; and Wertheimer, 84, 204 Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt–Dessau, 449, 499 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 4, 18, 453, 454, 513–15, 519 Leszczyński, Stanislaw, 78, 194, 198, 207, 507 Letters Concerning the English Nation (Voltaire), 378–79, 381–84, 388, 431 Lettres juives (Jewish Letters) (d’Argens), 421–22 Lettres persanes (Montesquieu), 12, 31–32 Levi, Abraham, 220, 236–45 Levi, Hertz: death of, 214–15; financial problems of, 58, 59, 213–14, 216; Glikl’s marriage to, 55–56, 57–59, 62, 63, 89 Levi, Jonathan, 398 Levi, Raphael, 340–41 Levi, Samuel, 214–15 libertines and libertinism: as depicted in popular literature, 100–101; Emden’s cautions on, 5, 506; and erotic novels, 504–6; and H.ayon affair, 318, 319; Lopez de Liz accused of, 432; and Mandeville on vice, 168; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 192; Oppenheimer accused of, 410; Swift’s condemnation of, 380; and wealthy Jews, 506 Libes briv (Wetzlar), 513, 515–18 Liebmann, Esther: arrest of, 89, 294; Court Jew status of, 88; dispute over synagogue, 293–94; financial success of, 86, 88, 89; Glikl’s admiration of, 86, 87 Liebmann, Jost, 86–88 Liebmann family, 102, 313 Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Defoe), 165–67 life expectancies, 32, 33, 34 Lilith, 334, 335, 345 Linnaeus, Carl, 455, 457, 488 Lipman, Eliezer, 144

Lipschitz, Solomon, 218–19 literacy, 16, 18 Lithuania, 19–20, 175. See also Poland–Lithuania Livonia, 76 Livorno, 35, 102, 103, 244, 265, 338–39 Lobkowitz, Josef Franz, 451 Locke, John, 25, 134, 135–38, 140, 141, 358, 503–4, 519 London, England: Ashkenazic community in, 99, 286–90; demographic changes in, 32–33; Jewish population in, 35, 98; and Jewish settlement in Land of Israel, 296; libertinism in, 100–101; newspapers of, 168–70; pleasures of, 429–30; prostitutes in, 18; Sephardic communities in, 99, 432; status of Jews in, 169 Lopez de Liz, Francisco, 431–32 Louis XIV, King of France, 15, 71–73, 74, 75, 136, 197, 214 Louis XV, King of France, 504 Luzzatto, Ephraim, 3, 5, 11 Luzzatto, Moses H.ayim, 353–59, 363–73, 485–90 Ma’ase rav (Holleschau), 289 Ma’ase tuvia (Cohen), 151, 164, 182, 341–45, 499–500 Machado, Antonio Alvarez, 202–3 Machine Man (La Mettrie), 455, 505 Maciejko, Pawel, 259 Mafteah. haalgebra h. adasha (Worms), 345–46 magic spells: and ba’alei shem, 334–36, 344; books of, 338, 344; demand for, 334–35; in Katzenellenbogen’s Yesh manh. ilin, 223–24; and rabbinical elite, 223; and Tuvia’s Ma'ase tuvia, 344, 345 Magnus, Marcus, 293–94 Maimon, Solomon, 335–36, 337, 344, 393 Maimonides, 142, 498, 499, 502, 503, 517, 519 Maisel Synagogue, 239, 451 Malakh, H.ayim, 110–12, 117, 118, 120, 141, 303–5, 310 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 18, 32 Mandeville, Bernard, 168 Marcus, Moses, 277–80, 286, 290

I n de x Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, 439–52; accession to the throne, 441, 444, 447–48, 452; aversion to Jews, 445, 471; crowned Queen of Bohemia, 452; expulsion of Jews, 440, 446, 460, 461–72; marriage and family of, 442, 444, 448–49; and War of Austrian Succession, 439, 444–48, 451, 472; and Wertheimer, 445 Marlborough, Duke of (John Churchill), 74, 194, 197, 202, 203 Maskilim (enlightened Jews): corrective power of, 500; and cultural renaissance, 504; emergence of, 142; and Israel ben Abraham’s printing project, 500; and Israel of Zamość, 500–503; and Jewish Enlightenment (see Haskalah); and Jewish library, 517; and Lessing, 514; and Luzzatto, 490; Mendelssohn’s encounter with, 503; and rationalism, 39; and revival movements, 109; and Wetzlar, 517; and Worms, 345 Mate dan (Nieto), 295 materialism/materiality, 26, 27, 455, 494, 504, 505, 511n49 medicine: folk medicine and doctors, 151, 334–36, 343, 345, 394, 395, 483; and Jenner’s smallpox vaccine, 21; and Jewish medical students, 149–50, 197, 341–42; and Jewish physicians, 123, 149–50, 341–45 Medici rulers, 103 Megale sod (Gumpertz), 4 Megerlin, David Friedrich, 4 Megilah (Behrens), 270, 271–72 Megilat sedarim (Broda), 274 Megilat sefer (Emden), 220, 226, 227–28, 392, 397, 401, 404 Megilat Shmuel (family chronicle), 204–5 Meir, Moses, 324–27 Menasseh Ben Israel, 37 Mendelssohn, Moses: and “advanced” Jews of Germany, 38; and blood libel of Poznan, 427; career of, 5, 454; and Christian inspectors in synagogues, 251; on discrimination against Jews, 43; encounter with early Maskilim, 503; on happiness, 2, 5, 8, 43; influence of, 38; and Israel’s European Jewry in the Age of

533

Mercantilism, 41; Jerusalem, On Religious Power and Judaism, 43; and Langallerie’s plans, 201; and Lavater’s challenge, 1, 8–9; and Leibniz’s optimistic paradigm, 167; and Lessing, 514; and Locke’s doctrine of toleration, 137; and Luzzatto, 490; and Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, 503; and modern age, 1, 2, 37, 38; optimism of, 11; Phaedon, 7, 8–9 Mendes da Costa, Isaac, 200–201 Mendes de Brete, Mary, 251–52, 255 Menker, Moshe, 6 menstruation, 58, 145–46 mercantile system, 17 merchants, Jews’ work as, 36, 202, 205 Mesilat yesharim (Luzzatto), 485–88, 490, 504, 516 Mesmer, Franz Anton, 20 messianic hopes and movement: and Cantarini’s ‘Et qets, 197, 198; and Christian adventurers, 198–201; and emigration to Jerusalem, 108; and End of Days calculations, 197; and failure of Sabbatean movement, 38, 64; and Jerusalem campaign of Hasid and Malakh, 106–21; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 357; and Paulli’s exploits, 198–99; and settling in Land of Israel, 297 Methodists, 19, 27, 360–61 Mevorach, Baruch, 467 migration, 32–33, 34 Mikhl, Yehiel, 292 military suppliers, 82, 163, 202–5, 407 Minzker, Yair, 392 miracles, 13, 140, 165, 166, 223, 456 Mirkevet hamishne (Solomon of Chełm), 519 Mishne Torah, 499 Mitph. at sefarim (Emden), 4–5 “Modest Proposal, A” (Swift), 381 Moll Flanders (Defoe), 171–72 money-lending and usury, 36, 82, 386, 492 Montagu, Mary Wortley, 174, 192 Montefiore, Moses, 98 Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de: critique of religion, 193; denouncement of hostility toward Jews, 457–58; influence of, 519;

534

I n de x

Montesquieu (Cont.) on Inquisition, 193, 458; on international relations, 194, 195; Lettres persanes, 12, 31–32; on messianic hopes, 33–34; Persian Letters, 191–94, 195–96, 267, 389, 457; and religious tolerance, 267, 519; on slavery, 31–32; Spirit of the Laws, 18, 457–59, 504; on status of Jews, 195–96 Montgolfier brothers, 21 moral weeklies, 170–71, 172 Moravia: Jews expelled from, 463–64, 468, 471; and Levi’s European travels, 239; migration of Jews from, 34; synagogue destroyed in, 273–75 Moravian Brethren, 359, 360, 361 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 7, 18 Müller, Johann, 252 musicians and music, 18, 193. See also specific musicians, including Bach and Vivaldi Muslim world, commercial markets of, 36 Nadav, Mordecai, 207–8 Nah. man of Bratslav, 112 Napoleonic Wars, 16 Nardin, Judah ben Solomon, 233 Nathaniel of Leghorn, 193 Nathan Neta of Mannheim, 115–16, 119 Nathan of Gaza, 99, 223 Native Americans, 21 naturalization: campaign of Toland, 265–67; Jew Bill, 470 natural phenomena, 161–62 nature, forces of: destructive storms, 173; disasters seen as punishment for sins, 176; epidemics, 173–75; fires, 175–77; winter of 1708–1709, 172–73 Neh. mad vena’im (Ganz), 499 Netherlands, The, 194, 195, 202 Netsah. yisrael (Halevi of Zamość), 500–501 New Order, 22, 137 newspapers, 168–71, 183 Newton, Isaac, 19, 134, 135, 141, 147, 161 New York City, Jewish population in, 35 Nieto, David: cautions about supernatural explanations, 164–65; controversial sermon of, 290–92; criticisms of senior rabbis, 295–96; Hakham Zvi and Hagiz

hosted by, 316–17, 318; and H.ayon affair, 318, 323; and issue of cultural inferiority, 338; Kuzari sheni, 164; Mate dan, 295; and religious control, 101; and science, 296, 337, 345 Nikolsburg, Jewish community in, 451–52 North America, 14, 16, 19, 33, 35, 361, 445 novels, 19, 25, 26 Nuremberg, Germany, 239 Ofner, Benjamin, 229 Ofner, Wolf, 234 Old Regime in Europe, 22, 39, 384, 385, 388, 407 On Crimes and Punishments (Beccaria), 270 ‘Oneg Shabbat (Katz), 145 On the Social Contract (Rousseau), 21 Oppenheim, Aaron, 204–5 Oppenheim, David: and Bacharach’s book publication, 144; family ties of, 83; and H.ayon affair, 312, 319, 321; in House of Study in Hanover, 144; and Jerusalem campaign of Hasid and Malakh, 116–17; and Jewish settlement in Land of Israel, 300–301; and Katzenellenbogen, 222; library of, 251, 517; and plot against Taussig and Austerlitz, 204; and rationalist philosophers, 141; and ruling on sexually exploited woman, 180; and Sabbateanism, 327; and stones/dust from Land of Israel, 107; and Tuvia’s Ma'ase tuvia, 342; and Wetzlar, 517 Oppenheimer, Joseph Süß (Jew Süß), 153, 391–92, 404–13, 432 Oppenheimer, Judith, 205 Oppenheimer, Mendel Emmanuel, 82, 83, 96, 117, 121, 205, 241 Oppenheimer, Samuel, 82–86; death of, 204; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 124, 126; financial crises of, 82, 97, 121; financial support supplied by, 82–83; imprisonment of, 82, 96; and Jerusalem campaign of Hasid and Malakh, 117; as military supplier, 204, 205; and riots in Vienna, summer of 1700, 93, 94–97, 103, 125; and Sabbateanism, 302; and War of Spanish Succession, 83–84, 97, 204, 205

I n de x optimistic narrative of the eighteenth century, 21–22 Ottoman Empire, 15, 41, 198, 200 ‘Ovadia Ben Issachar, 107 Padua, Italy, 103, 242 Paduan medical school, 103 Pahad yitshaq (Lampronti), 181 Paine, Thomas, 13 Palace of Versailles, 71, 72 Palestine, Jewish population in, 35 Paris, France: demographic changes in, 32; and Emancipation, 38; Jewish population in, 35; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 191–94; newspapers in, 170–71; prostitutes in, 18; religious awakening in, 359–60; and winter of 1708–1709, 172 parnasim (official community leaders), 56, 99–100, 102 patriarchy, 23, 26 Paulli, Oliger, 198–99 Peace of Utrecht, 444 peasants, 17, 18 Perles, Moses Meir, 172–73 Perlhefter, Beer, 64–65 Perlhefter, Bella, 64–65 Persian Letters (Montesquieu), 191–94, 195–96, 267, 389, 457 Peter I, Czar of Russia, 76, 78, 194–95, 198, 199, 207 pets, dogs and cats as, 402–3 Phaedon (Mendelssohn), 7, 8–9 Philip IV, King of France, 458 Philip V, King of Spain, 73, 194, 198, 268 Phillipus, Franciscus Lotharius, 118 philosophers of the Enlightenment, 25, 454–59, 495 Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire), 8 Philosophical Thoughts (Diderot), 455 physicians, Jewish, 123, 149–50, 341–45 Picart, Bernard, 276 Picciotto family, 36 Pidanki, Jacob, 99 pietists, Christian, 19, 27–28, 252, 358–59, 420, 442 pietists, Jewish, 106, 109, 142, 310, 354, 373, 393, 395, 396, 480

535

pirates of Malta, 177 Pitztum, Johann, 103 plagues, 33, 173–75 Plantation Act (1740), 267, 440–41 Plato, 1, 496 pleasure, thirst for, 183–86, 192–93, 433–35 Pochowitzer, Judah Leib, 107 pogroms: decline in numbers of, 36; and Epstein’s message of divine justice, 6–7; memorial days marking, 103; in Posen, Poland, 207; in Prague, 462–63, 467; siege on city of Uman, 5–6; Woszczyłło pogroms, 459 Poland–Lithuania, 5–6, 207–8; Augustus II’s pursuit of crown in, 79; autonomy of Jews in, 103–4; and Ba’al Shem Tov’s followers and teachings, 484; blood libels in, 105, 259–61, 268; bribery in, 387; epidemics in, 173; and Great Northern War, 194, 205–8; Hasidism in, 19–20, 38; Jewish population in, 35; migration of Jews from, 34; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 195; partition of Poland, 35, 208–9; Sabbateans in, 325; and Saxony, 77; three partitions of, 15; violence against Jews in, 35, 103–5, 163, 424–28, 459–60; and War of Polish Succession, 442 Political Testament (Frederick II), 8 Poniatowski, Stanislaw, King of Poland, 7 Pope, Alexander, 135, 192, 379, 382, 428–29 population and demographic changes in eighteenth century, 31–37, 41 Porter, Roy, 27 portraiture, 71–73, 226–27 Portugal: and Inquisition, 193, 268–69, 421; Jewish population in, 35; and military suppliers, 202; and storm of 1724, 173 poverty and the poor, 178–82; and class divisions, 179; and Defoe’s Moll Flanders, 171–72; and demographic changes in eighteenth century, 37; Kaidanover on obligation to, 178–79; plight of, 17, 18; as social and ethical problem, 180; Voltaire on, 17; and winter of 1708–1709, 172 Prague: expulsion of Jews from, 460, 461–72; intercessions addressing expulsion of Jews, 465–72; Jewish population in, 34,

536

I n de x

Prague (Cont.) 462; and Levi’s European travels, 239; pogroms in, 462–63, 467; and smallpox epidemic, 174; supervision of Jewish minority in, 251; violence against Jews in, 103; and War of Austrian Succession, 444, 446–47, 449–51 Presser, Jacques, 25 Primo, Samuel, 111 Principle Motives (Marcus), 278–79, 280 prisoners, ransoming, 177 propaganda, anti-Jewish, 419–20 property, acquisition of, 17 prostitutes: and Augustus II, 76; and Cleland’s Fanny Hill, 505; and Defoe’s Moll Flanders, 171; and drunkenness, 430; and economic plight in cities, 18; and Frankel’s trial, 263; and Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, 432–33; and Gordon’s holy society, 372–73; halakhic rulings on, 434; and Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, 432, 433; and libertinism, 100, 432, 433; in London, 100; and Oppenheimer, 410; Paduan home for children of, 242; in Paris, 18; and Rousseau’s Confessions, 29; and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, 380 Protestants, German, 19 Prussia: and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 127, 163; epidemics in, 173; and France’s decline in power, 15; Jewish population in, 34; restrictions imposed on Jews in, 41, 101, 163; supervision of Jews in, 75, 249–51, 519; and War of Austrian Succession, 443–48. See also specific leaders, including Frederick II public sphere, 170, 183 Putik, Alexander, 255 Qav hayashar (Kaidanover), 141–42, 146–49, 178–79, 332, 435, 486, 516 Qimhi, Raph. ael, 356–57 rabbinical elite: Berakhya’s criticisms of, 386–88; book publishing of, 143–47; and Cantarini, 197; class divisions reinforced by, 182; corruption in, 386–87, 517; and Court Jews, 144, 152; and education for

women, 518; and Emden’s prayer book, 492; and expulsion of Jews from Prague, 461, 465; and H.ayon affair, 323; and Katzenellenbogen, 221, 222, 223, 225; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 355, 370; and magic spells, 223; and Mendelssohn, 137; and portraits of rabbis, 226–27; power and status of, 226; and Sabbateans, 163; and science, 345, 346; and Tuvia’s Ma'ase tuvia, 342; and War of Austrian Succession, 447; and Wetzlar’s Libes briv, 516. See also Emden, Jacob Rabinowitz, Israel, 104, 232 Rapaport-Albert, Ada, 114–15 rape, 177–78, 181 Rashi (Shlomo Yitzchaki), 239 Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland (Toland), 265–67 Reiner, Elchanan, 144 Reinganum, Lemel, 334 Reischer, Jacob, 28–29, 178, 181–82 Reiz. es brothers, 424–25 Relationis Historicae, 93 religious fanaticism: and Bayle, 139; and blood libel of Poznan, 427; of Catholic Church, 104–5; and Mendelssohn, 1, 427; Montesquieu on, 458; Morgan on, 420; in Poland, 104, 105, 424; Spinoza on, 138; and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, 380; Toland’s condemnation of, 140, 265, 266–67; Voltaire on, 275–76 religious tolerance. See tolerance Renaissance, 12 Republic of Letters, 12, 428, 453 Reshit bikurim (Henekh), 185 Revealer of Secret (Gomperz), 4 revival movements: among Christian sects, ix, 19, 109, 358–63; and Ba’al Shem Tov, 373, 392–93; critics of, 142; Emden on, 109; emergence of, 19; and Jerusalem campaign of Hasid and Malakh, 106–21; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 353–59, 361, 363–73, 384, 402, 485–90; news about events in, 106–7; and Wallich’s medical text, 152 Ricchi, Immanuel H.ay, 440 Riess family, 102

I n de x Rigaud, Hyacinthe, 71–73, 76 robbers. See criminals, robbers, and thieves Robinson, Thomas, 469–70, 471 Robinson Crusoe (Defoe), 165–67 Rock of Gibraltar, 203 rococo style, 2, 7, 19, 21 Rome, Italy, 243 Rosenzweig, Franz, 12 Rosman, Moshe, 103–4, 105, 481–82 Rothschild, Moses, 214 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 18, 21, 26, 29, 43 Rovigo, Abraham, 64–65, 108, 111, 302 Ruah. h. en, 501 Ruderman, David: on Christian Hebraists, 123; on Ghettos, 102–3; on Israel’s research, 42; on Jewish modernization, 40; on Marcus’s conversion, 278; on Nieto’s acceptance of science, 296; on Nieto’s defensive strategies, 291 Russia: and France’s decline in power, 15; and Great Northern War, 194–95, 205; and Poland, 6; power and status of, 195; Turkey’s war with, 15 Sabbateanism and Sabbateans, 309–28; attributed to Satan, 311; and blurring of religious identities, 42; critics and opponents of, 111–12, 142, 302–5, 310–11; and cultural climate, 332; Emden’s condemnation of, 4, 229, 236, 303, 305; and ethos of autonomous personality, 28; excommunications of, 304, 310, 314–15, 316, 322, 325–26, 327; and Eybeschütz, 4, 326–28; failure of, 38, 39, 64, 197; and H.ayon affair, 227, 229, 311–24Holy Society of Judah H.asid, 108–21, 147, 152, 298–99, 304 (see also H.asid, Judah; Malakh, H.ayim); and individualism, 28; in Katzenellenbogen’s Yesh manh. ilin, 223; in Land of Israel, 299, 301–5; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 355, 358, 364, 369, 371, 372; and Moses Meir, 324–27; population of, 325; propaganda of, 142; and rabbinical elite, 163, 323; and rationalist philosophers, 141; scandals associated with, 38 Sade, marquis de, 30

537

Saint Petersburg, Russia, 32 Saxony, 77, 208 Scandinavia, 173 Schachter, Jacob, 228 Schattin, Samuel, 176–77 Schneider, Barbara, 410 Scholem, Gershom, 38–39, 108, 109, 142, 332, 484–85 Schudt, Johann Jakob (Hebraist), 117–18, 120, 126, 127, 177, 264–65 Schütz, Christian Gottfried, 2 science: Anglican proponents of natural religion and, 291; and book publishing, 340–41; boundaries between religion and, 342–43; and Cantarini, 197; deficits in scientific education, 150–51, 340–41, 342, 346, 500; and du Châtelet, 384, 507; and Emden, 496; and inoculation practices, 174; and Israel ben Abraham’s printing project, 499; and Israel of Zamość, 500; Levi’s promotion of, 340–41; and Luzzatto’s Layesharim tehila, 488; and magic, 337; and Nieto, 296, 337, 345; and rabbinical elite, 345, 346; and reeducation campaigns, 164–65; religious explanations undermined by, 21, 135; state of, in eighteenth centry, 20–21; and Tuvia’s Ma'ase tuvia, 341–45, 499–500; and vaccinations, 21, 33, 174; and Vico, 336; and Wetzlar, 517; and Worms’s Mafteah haalgebra hadasha, 345–46 secularization and secularism, 26–27; and Basnage’s History of the Jews, 257; and Cleland’s Fanny Hill, 505; Cohen on importance of, among European Jews, 84; and Diderot’s Encyclopedia, 455; and expectation of happiness, viii; Hagiz’s fight against, 143; Locke on, 136; and materialism, 26; and Oppenheimer, 410; and Paduan experience, 103; radical, 505; Ruderman on, 103; and shifts in religious consciousness, 362; and Spinoza, 138; and strengthening of religious foundations, 10; and Voltaire, 12 Sefat emet (Hagiz), 296–98 Sefer dimyon harefuot (Wallich), 151–52 Segal, Isaiah, 119

538

I n de x

separation of church and state, 136–37 Sephardic communities: of Amsterdam, 37–38, 294; and commercial markets of Muslim world, 36; declines in, 41; and H.ayon affair, 312–17; and Hebrew language, 339–40; and Jewish settlement in Land of Israel, 299, 304; in Land of Israel, 106; in London, 99, 432; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 370; and Nieto’s scandal, 290–92; and Sabbateanism, 304; and sexuality, 28, 29; and Torres’s library, 338; in United States, 35; and War of Spanish Succession, 202 Serafinowicz, Jan, 259–61 Sermon of the Fifty (Voltaire), 507–8 servants: accusations against Jews made by, 274, 426; and Astell’s criticisms of oppression of women, 61; and blood libel of Drohobycz community, 268; and class divisions, 182; cruelly young, 180; and daughter of Katz, 181, 248; and Defoe’s Moll Flanders, 171; and Defoe’s The Fortunate Mistress, 277; Emden on clothing of, 495; and Emden’s German language skills, 233; and Emden’s wife, 231; Glikl’s difficulties with, 58, 216; and hierarchical relations of power, 18; of Lehmann, 80; and Oppenheimer’s trial, 410; and religious revival, 358; and riots following provocation of Oppenheimer’s, 94, 96, 97; sexual exploitation of, 180–81, 182; vulnerability of, 180–82 Seven Years War, 15, 445 sexual exploitation, 180–82 sexuality: and adultery, 28–29, 434; and erotic novels, 504–6; and happiness, 29–31, 505, 506; and individualism, 28–31; and mistresses, 432–33; semen emissions, 115, 148, 333–34, 335, 345; and sexual enlightenment, 506; sexual temptations, 234–35, 434; and sin, 115, 148–49; and Tuvia’s Ma'ase tuvia, 338–39; of women, 23, 28–29, 496 shadarim, 106–7 shame: Christian criticism as source of, 518–19; and Christians’ attitudes toward Jews, 514–15; and deficits in scientific

understanding, 341, 342, 346; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 127; Emden’s acknowledgement of, 233, 495; and English society, 430; of Feibush, 288; and Glikl’s grandson’s conversion, 280; and Hamburger excommunication, 287; and H.ayon affair, 322; and intervention of Court Jews with Maria Theresa, 466; and Katzenellenbogen, 400; and Lessing’s The Jews, 514–15, 518, 519; and Luzzatto’s Holy Society, 364–65; and permissiveness among Jews, 100; of Sabbatean emissary, 325; of semen emissions in vain, 334; and Wetzlar’s Libes briv, 518–19 Sheerit yisrael (Amlander), 439, 449 Sheilat ya’avets (Emden), 183, 492 Shepherd’s Epistle, The (Kobielski), 459 Shevet musar (Hacohen), 332, 333–34, 344, 486 Shevet Yehudah (Verga), 144–45 Shevut ya’aqov (Reischer), 181 Shivhei habesht (Praises of the Ba’al Shem Tov), 154, 392, 393, 394–96, 415, 478, 481, 483 “Shocking Tragedy, The” (poem), 422 Shohet, Azriel, 40 Siege of Vienna, 15 Sieniawska, Elżbieta Helena, 232, 259, 260 Sieniawski family, 104, 232 Silesia, Prussian conquest of, 15, 443, 444, 445, 447 sin(s): children paying for parents,’ 5, 151; collective, 309; of conversion, 278; and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, 166–67; and desire for pleasure, 185; disease as punishment for, 151–52; and Emden on autonomy of the individual, 234–35; Emden’s confession of, 233; and Emden’s sexual temptations, 30; and expulsion of Jews from Prague, 465; Glikl on punishment for her, 56–57, 59, 212–13; and Glikl on synagogue tragedy, 218; and Glikl’s mourning, 66; Hacohen’s advice on avoiding, 333; and Hagiz on execution of Reiz. es, 425; Inquisition’s punishment of heresy, 193; Jansenists’ emphasis

I n de x on original, 359; of Jew Süß, 412; and Katzenellenbogen’s asceticism, 225–26; and mortification of the body, 480; and mysticism, 353; and pogrom of Posen, Poland, 207; and Sabbateanism, 303; of semen emissions in vain, 115, 148, 333–34, 345; of a sexual nature, 28, 115, 146, 148, 151, 459; synagogue/temple destruction as punishment for, 175, 176, 177, 298; and Tindal’s defense of desire, 29; violence against Jews as punishment for, 6–7; Wesley on original, 360; and women’s sexuality, 23, 28, 148 Siskind, Alexander, 200–201 slavery, 17, 19, 21, 31–32, 33 smallpox, 33, 173–74 Smith, Adam, 18 social contract, theory of, 25 Sofia, Duchess of Hanover, 253–54 Solomon, H.aim, 110 Solomon of Chełm, 481, 519 Some Reflections upon Marriage (Astell), 59, 60, 62 Sorrows of Young Werther, The (Goethe), 26 Sources of the Self (Taylor), 26 Spain: decline of, 195; and Inquisition, 193, 268–69, 421; Jews expelled from, 42, 465; and King George’s War, 445, 446; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 195; and trade with Holland, 202. See also War of Spanish Succession spas, regulations placed on, 184–85 Späth, Johann Dieter, 252 Spectator, The, 168–69, 215–16 Spencer, John, 140 Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch), 137–39; books of, in Jewish library, 338; criticism of religious belief, 138, 141, 142–43, 163; and Leibniz, 167; and Maskilim, 142; and rabbinic sensitivity to skepticism, 291, 311; and Radical Enlightenment, 22; and revival movement, 358; and secularism, 138 Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu), 18, 457–59, 504 Stadthagen, Joseph, 183–84, 253–54 standards of living, 66–67

539

Stern, Selma: on Christianity in Prussia, 249–51; on Court Jews, 39, 65, 81–82, 84–85, 96–97; on expulsion of Jews from Prague, 466, 467; on Oppenheimer’s influence, 407; on reconciliation with fate, 65 stock exchange, 403 Stockholm, Sweden, 34, 173 storms, destructive, 173, 489 Story of My Life, The (Casanova), 30 Story of Shabbetai Zevi, The (Ben Ozer), 110–11, 309–10, 311 superstition, 1, 193, 358 Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (Diderot), 27 Sutcliffe, Adam, 257 Sweden: decline of, 195; epidemics in, 173; and Great Northern War, 75–78, 194–95, 205; Jewish population in, 34 Swift, Jonathan, 19, 378–81, 382, 386 synagogues: and brawl on shabbat shuva, in Amsterdam, 292–93; challenges to authority in, 294–96; conflicts in, 286–91; destruction of, 273–75, 298; and Emden’s religious Utopia, 494; excommunication from, 287–91, 293, 294–95; functions of, 286 Tale of Two Cities, A (Dickens), 1, 9 Talmud, 80 Tatler, The, 168, 170, 171 Taussig, Samuel, 204–5 taverns, 184, 185 taxes levied against Jews, 102, 242, 465 Taylor, Charles, 26 Te Deum (Händel), 444–45 Tehudat shlomo (Lipshitz), 218 theaters: as depicted in Watteau’s paintings, 193; and desire for pleasure, 168, 185, 193, 429; influence on public opinion, 18; Lessing’s on ethical role of, 514; and Lessing’s The Jews, 514; Luzzatto’s companions from, 3; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 192; and popular actors, 19; restrictions imposed on attendance of, 185; Voltaire’s attendance of, 382 Theodicy (Leibniz), 167

540

I n de x

Thérese philosophe (d’Argens), 505–6 thieves. See criminals, robbers, and thieves Third Estate, 14 Thirty Years War, 16 Tindal, Matthew, 29, 420 Tishby, Isaiah, 357 Toland, John, 140–41, 163, 265–67, 339, 382, 519 tolerance: and anticipated decline of fanaticism, 1; and Basnage’s History of the Jews, 256–57; and deism, 163, 420; as Enlightenment value, 267, 363; of Freemasons, 420; and Joseph II, 31, 449; and Lessing, 519; and Locke’s doctrine of toleration, 136–38; and Montesquieu, 193, 196, 267, 519; and Toland, 140, 266, 267 Torah scholars/scholarship, 37, 144, 148, 154, 220–21. See also rabbinical elite Torres, David Nunes, 338 torture, 7–8, 105, 163, 260, 269–73, 276 Toze, Eobald, 74 traditionalism, 38, 40, 513 Tradition and Crisis (Katz), 39, 40 Treaty of Karlowitz, 93, 106 Treaty of Rastatt, 194 Treaty of Utrecht, 16, 41, 202, 203 Trebitsch, Abraham, 447–48, 451 Tree of Knowledge, 501, 503 Treves, Israel, 357 Tsemh. David (Gans), 144–45 Tsene-rene (Ben Isaac), 145 Turkey, 15, 34 Turniansky, Chava, 174 Ukraine, pogroms in, 36 Uman pogrom in summer of 1768, 6, 36 United States, 33, 35 Urim vetumim (Feibush), 288, 289

35; and Levi’s European travels, 240–42; and protective order issued by Leopold I, 96; riots of summer of 1700, 93, 94–97, 103, 125; Siege of Vienna (1683), 15; and winter of 1708–1709, 172–73 Vierhaus, Rudolf, 16 violence against Jews: Augustus’s removal of Lehmann’s beard, 89, 95; executions, 7–8, 105, 163, 260, 268, 269; and Inquisition, 193, 244, 256, 268–69, 276, 421, 458; memorial days marking, 103; Montesquieu on, 458; in Poland–Lithuania, 35, 103–5, 163, 424–28, 459–60; in Prague, 462–63; and riots in Bamberg, summer of 1699, 86, 97, 124–25; and riots in Hamburg, 422–24; and riots in Vienna, summer of 1700, 93, 94–97, 125; synagogues destroyed, 273–75, 298; torture, 7–8, 105, 163, 260, 269–73, 276, 462–63. See also blood libels; pogroms Vivaldi, Antonio, 193 Voltaire: Candide, 7, 19, 167; contentment of, 12; and De la Barre’s execution, 8; on enslavement, 19; and Frederick II, 388–89, 441, 442–43; on happiness, 506; “History of the War of 1741,” 444; impact of criticism, 388; on Jews, 383–84; “La Henriade,” 276; and Leibniz’s optimistic paradigm, 167; Letters Concerning the English Nation, 378–79, 381–84, 388, 431; on Locke, 135; on meaning of life, 43; on peasants, 17; Philosophical Dictionary, 8; protest against fanaticism, 275–76; romance with Émilie du Châtelet, 384–85, 506; Sermon of the Fifty, 507–8 Von Flemming, Jakob Heinrich, 76–77, 78, 208–9 Von Pöllnitz, Karl Ludwig, 429, 430–31, 462

vaccinations, 21, 33, 174 Valle, Moses David, 357, 371, 485 Veit family, 102 Venice, Italy, 102, 242 Vico, Giambattista, 336–37, 339 Vienna, Austria: Court Jews of, 96, 241; demographic changes in, 32; humiliation of Jews in, 241–42; Jewish population in,

Wagenseil, Johann Christoph, 123, 252 Wallich, Isaac, 341 Wallich, Judah, 151–52 Walpole, Robert, 432–33 War of Austrian Succession, 15, 439, 443–48, 452–53, 455, 460, 469, 472, 502 War of Independence, 14 War of Polish Succession, 442

I n de x War of Spanish Succession, 15, 73–75; and Cantarini’s ‘Et qets, 197–98; financing of, 83–84, 127; and Glikl’s family, 213, 214; and international relations in Europe, 194, 197–98; and military suppliers, 202–5; newspapers’ coverage of, 168; and Oppenheimer, 83–84, 97, 204, 205 Warsaw, Poland, 32, 194 Watt, James, 21 Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 192–93, 488 Weil, Hans, 28 Well of Oath/Seven (Perlhefter and Perlhefter), 65 Wertheimer, Samson: admiration of, 241; disaster relief provided by, 177; and Eisenmenger’s Judaism Unmasked, 124–27, 144, 466; and Emden, 236; and Glikl’s family, 86; on Hasid’s messianic campaign to Jerusalem, 116; and Jewish settlement in Land of Israel, 121, 300; and Leopold I, 84; and Levi’s European travels, 241, 242; as military supplier, 204; and Oppenheimer’s arrest, 86; service as Court Jew, 83–84 Wertheimer, Samuel, 446, 466, 467 Wertheimer, Wolf, 241, 300, 426, 445–46, 466, 468 Wesley, John, 19, 323, 360–63 West Indies, colonization of, 33 Wetzlar, Isaac, 513, 515–18 Whitefield, George, 360–61 widowhood, 55, 57, 59, 87, 107. See also Hamel, Glikl Wilhelm, Friedrich, 75 Wilhelm, Johann, 121 William II, King of England, 15 William III, King of England, 98, 198, 199 Wilner, Jacob, 228, 229 Wolf, Arieh, 292 Wolf, Benjamin Ze’ev, 175 Wolf, Moses Benjamin, 499–500 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 18, 43 women: Astell’s criticisms of oppression of, 59–61; clothing choices of, 148, 495, 497; dying in childbirth, 224; education of, 23, 60, 517–18; Emden’s guidance for, 495–96, 518; happiness of, 507;

541

and Hasid’s messianic campaign to Jerusalem, 114–15; magic spells used to protect, 224; menstruation of, 58, 145–46; modesty expected of, 148–49, 496; and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 192; with power and authority, 62; and pregnancy out of wedlock, 182; and Queen Anne, 61; and rape cases, 177–78, 181; restrictions on lives of, 23, 496; sexual exploitation of, 180–82; and sexuality, 23, 28–29, 496; and Wetzlar’s Libes briv, 517–18widowhood, 55, 57, 59, 87, 107 (see also Hamel, Glikl) Worms, Anschel, 345–46 Woszczyłło, Wasko, 459 Woszczyłło pogroms, 459 Würrtemberg, 153, 391, 404–5, 407–9 Xeres, John, 258 Yavan, Baruch MeErets, 3 Yerushalayim, Joseph ish, 223–24 Yerushalmi, Moses, 121 Yesh manh. ilin (Katzenellenbogen), 220, 222, 223, 224, 227, 334 Yesod Yosef (Ben Judah Yudl), 146 Yiddish: publications printed in, 322, 332, 339–40; and Wetzlar’s Libes briv, 513, 516 Yoh. ai, Shimon Bar, 107, 357 Yovel, Yirmiyahu, 138 Zadikim, 20 Zadok Ben Shemariah, 108 Zalman, Elijah ben Shlomo, 453–54 Zarfati, Joshua, 290–91 Zasław, blood libel in, 477–78 Zekharyah Ben Ya`aqov Simner, 335 Żeleźniak, Maxim, 5 Zevi, Sabbatai: considered messiah by believers, 303; conversion to Islam, 64, 108; expectations for return of, 111; and failure of Sabbatean movement, 64, 197; and H.ayon affair, 311. See also Sabbateanism and Sabbateans Zinzendorf, Nicholas Ludwig, 359 Zohar, 4 Zoref, Heshel, 111 Żuchowski, Stefan, 105

Shmuel Feiner is Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University and Chairman of The Historical Society of Israel. He is author of Haskalah and History; The Jewish Enlightenment; Moses Mendelssohn, Sage of Modernity; and The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth Century Europe. Jeffr ey M. Gr een is a professional writer and translator who lives and works in Jerusalem. He is author of Thinking through Translation and Largest Island in the Sea.