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14 “Idolaters Who Do Not Engage in Idolatry” Rabbinic Discourse about Muslims, Christians, and Wine R. Yosef Karo’s Shulnan ‘Arukh (published 1565/6), regarded as the final and most definitive of the medieval Rabbinic law codes, contains a curious statement in its discussion of laws regarding foreign wine. In the course of rehearsing the longstanding prohibitions against consuming and deriving benefit both from wine made by gentiles and from Jewish wine touched by gentiles, R. Karo addresses the status of wine prepared or touched by “idolaters who do not engage in idolatry” (Shulnan ‘Arukh, YD 124.6). This oxymoronic phrase encapsulates the complex history of medieval Rabbinic efforts to situate Muslims and Christians within a traditional classificatory system that divides humanity into the binary categories of Jews (i.e., monotheists ) and gentiles (i.e., idolaters). Even though Jewish authorities acknowledge that Muslims and Christians do not offer idolatrous libations, most continue to regard Them as “idolaters” for practical purposes. Because traditional prohibitions designed to protect Jews against inadvertent involvement in idolatry continue to mark the distinction between Us and Them, they retain some or even all of their force within societies dominated by Islam or Christianity. This case study, like those we examined in preceding chapters, demonstrates the degree to which medieval discourse about foreign food restrictions reflects and reinforces established conceptions of the relationship between Us and Them. The ideas about Them embedded in traditional systems of classifying humanity are of fundamental importance to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic ideas about Ourselves. For that reason medieval authorities take great pains to preserve these systems even in the face of evidence that real foreigners do not fit comfortably within customary categorical boxes. Unlike their Christian and Islamic counterparts, Jewish authorities do not seek to safeguard specific conceptions of particular groups of foreign209 ers because the Mishnah and Talmuds ascribe no significance to Them in formulating their definition of the Jewish Us. The Sages do, however, insist upon preserving a clear distinction between Us and Them, employing rules about wine as a means of marking gentile otherness and, thus, Jewish distinctiveness. Medieval rabbis , heirs to the Sages, formulate a wide variety of justifications for the continued applicability of foreign wine restrictions despite the high costs sometimes associated with such laws and irrespective of the actual similarities between Jews and their monotheisticneighbors. These similarities, ironically, manifest themselves indirectly through discourse about foreign wine restrictions: rabbis active in the Islamic world conceive of non-Jews in manners that resemble Sunni notions of non-Muslims, while rabbis active in Christian Europe imagine non-Jews in manners that resemble Latin Christian notions of pagans. Rabbis in both regions continue to employ distinctly Jewish styles of thought when discussing foreign food restrictions, but we will see that ideas and modes of thinking prevalent in specific cultural milieus also contribute to this discourse in significant ways. Before we turn our attention to rabbis active in medieval Islamic and Christian societies, it is worthwhile to return briefly to Sasanid Babylonia, as the Babylonian Talmud constitutes the foundational source for all subsequent discourse regarding foreign wine and thus provides a baseline against which to compare later statements. As we observed in chapters 4 and 5, the Sages divide the world into Jews and nonJews , and they treat individuals within the latter category as members of an undifferentiated mass of idolaters whose actions affect the legal status of wine but whose own perceptions of these actions are legally irrelevant. If a gentile comes into contact with wine in a legally significant manner, that wine is ipso facto prohibited not only for Jewish consumption but also for Jewish benefit on the presumption that it has been offered in an idolatrous libation. The following incident exemplifies this conception of gentile interaction with wine: “A citron fell into a barrel of [Jewish ] wine, and an idolater reached in to retrieve it. R. Ashi said, ‘Grab his hand so that he doesn’t sprinkle the wine!’” (B. A.Z. 59b). R. Ashi’s response tells us nothing at all about whether any gentile in Babylonia would have ascribed ritual significance to the act of shaking wine from his hand under these circumstances.1 Rather, it illustrates the fact that, according to Rabbinic law, a gentile’s act of sprinkling wine in this manner triggers the prohibition of the entire container from which that wine was drawn irrespective of the gentile’s intentions. Because of their focus on what gentiles do rather than how gentiles...

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