In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Preface As often occurs in scholarship, findings and pathways that are chanced upon initially can ultimately yield significant results. After the completion of my Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages, which focused primarily on the societal and curricular structures of education and rabbinic learning in medieval Ashkenaz, I began, mainly for a change of pace, to reread and to explore further kabbalistic and other mystical literature that appeared in Provence and Spain during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. I was struck early on by the fact that a number of these texts mentioned or alluded to Ashkenazic rabbinic figures, including German Pietists and apparently some tosafists as well. To be sure, these names were sometimes jumbled or misconstrued. Nonetheless, mindful of the illuminating studies by Israel Ta-Shma on the absorption and adoption of Ashkenazic customs and practices by the Zohar, and by a number of recent studies that successfully trace Provengal and Spanish kabbalistic themes directly back to Hasidei Ashkenaz, I set about trying to ascertain whether these Ashkenazic scholars were merely being co-opted by kabbalists in order to lend their kabbalistic material additional significance and context, or whether the Ashkenazic rabbinic figures mentioned were actually involved in some type of mystical studies, of which the kabbalists might have been aware. The results of that initial inquiry were published under the title "Rabbinic Figures in Castilian Kabbalistic Pseudepigraphy: R. Yehudah he-Hasid and R. Elhanan of Corbeil," as part of a special issue of the Journal ofJewish Thought and Philosophy.l In the documentation for that study, I pointed to evidence both journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3 [Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Esotericism, and Hasidism] (1993):77-109. PREFACE from manuscript sources and from published medieval rabbinic texts which suggests that tosafists such as R. Jacob of Corbeil, R. Isaac of Corbeil, and R. Meir of Rothenburg, among others, were indeed familiar with various types of mystical teachings. These results, in addition to other related findings, indicated that a larger study of additional manuscript texts and published works was worth undertaking, in order to evaluate properly the extent to which tosafists were involved in aspects of mysticism. The book now before you is a presentation and discussion of those findings. The tosafists flourished in northern France and Germany (and, to a lesser extent, in Austria, Italy, and England) during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They revolutionized the study of the Talmud, following the pioneering efforts of their ancestor and teacher Rashi. The claim that a number of tosafists were familiar with mystical doctrines is rather new, and perhaps even startling. In previous studies, I have followed the dominant view in modern scholarship—which will be reviewed below in the introduction— that the tosafists were decidedly talmudocentric. This view assumes that despite the very full library of earlier Jewish literature which they had at their disposal, the tosafists concentrated their efforts and training on the mastery of the talmudic text and on the surrounding halakhic and rabbinic literature, with the possible exception of biblical studies. But even the study of the Bible was undertaken, for the most part, through the prism of the talmudic corpus.2 There was no overt interest in or concern with extra-talmudic pietism, let alone with issues of theology and theosophy. OnlyHasidti Ashkenaz—led by R. Judah he-Hasid and his devoted student, R. Eleazar of Worms, and reflecting interests of the pre-Crusade period—were involved in these disciplines and practices; at the same time, they critiqued aspects of tosafist dialectic and Ashkenazic religious life in general, including prevalent prayer customs and liturgical texts. A few words about the structure of the presentation are in order. Chapters 1 and 2 will identify the varieties of ascetic and pietistic practices that can be found among northern French and German tosafists. There was certainly no formal pietistic movement among the tosafists, and a number of tosafists were categorically against ascetic practices that can be labeled as perishut. Nonetheless, forms of self-denial, hasidut, and even tiqqund teshuvah (which have been associated heretofore only with the Hasidti Ashkenaz), can be traced in tosafist writings.3 Possible connections between the tosafists who 2 See my "On the Role of Biblical Studies in Medieval Ashkenaz," The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Walfish (Haifa, 1993), 1:151-66. 3 Analogous material can be found in tosafist writings to all five sections on "religious issues" delineated by Yitzhak Baer in his classic study of hasidut...

Share